The Miller's Dance (3 page)

Demelza said dismally: 'Shall you go?'

'Of course not. Certainly not yet. I cannot in fairness leave the opening and
management of Wheal Leisure en
tirely to Jeremy. I've been too often away, so that my own affairs have been neglected. I shall not easily forget the situation I found at Wheal Grace when I came back - was it nine years ago? God, the time has passed! All that organized theft...'

'It was chiefly Bragg and Nancarrow. It couldn't happ
en again.' -'Also,' said Ross. ‘
Also?'

'Conditions are bad enough here. There won't be enough grain to go round. By next month people will be starving in Cornwall too. It's not a pretty prospect.'

'But Mr Canning is very - persuasive. I know how much
you
feel for him.'

'Oh yes. Oh yes. He would not be so great a man if he were not persuasive. You should hear him in the House-, that bearpit! - how, in two minutes after he stands up, all the noise goes and they
listen!
But this time my duty lies here.'

Demelza wriggled in her seat, not convinced.
'Promise me one thing, Ross.' I’l
l try.'

'Promise that you will not be inveigled into another trip overseas. It is not right that you should be asked to undertake any more. However much you may enjoy it.'

'What conceivably makes you think I
enjoy
it?'

'Reading that old letter from Geoffrey Charles is what makes me think you enjoy it,' she said. 'I looked at it again only the other day. You behaved at that battle - that battle of Bussaco - without a single thought for your wife and family! What did Geoffrey Charles say about you? "Biting at the cartridges, leaping like a boy over boulders and dead Frenchmen alike, shooting and stabbing with the best." What a way to act for a man of your dignity and responsibilities! I'll wager Mr Canning would not have done it!'

'Canning is not a soldier
...
When you are in a charge like that you lose the sense of being old and sere and bent with rheumatism. One becomes—uplifted.'

'You're hardly old and sere and, as far as I know except for your ankle, you suffer no rheumatism. But if that is the only way you can be uplifted - by
killing
people
...'

He rubbed her ear. 'We've had that letter nine months if we've had it a day; you're a little slow to bring the charge!'

‘I’
ve been saving it up,' said Demelza.

'Well, have you, now.'

They were sitting together on the sofa in the parlour, each having come from different tasks and each taking ten minutes of the other's company. The great engine beam had just been successfully winched up the cliff, and tomorrow the assembling of the engine would begin.

'Very well,' said Ross, 'I have to admit that I was
...
uplifted. It happened. I dislike - hate - killing as much as most civilized human beings; perhaps more than most for I little enjoy shooting or hunting. I do not for a second believe Geoffrey Charles really enjoys it either. But look at that
last
letter; read it again. There is some strange sense of comradeship that for the moment at least transcends one's better self. Whoever thought that that little boy who was so doted on by Elizabeth (indeed one thought she spoiled him); who would have thought of him engaging in these desperate battles, with all the attendant hardships that he hardly mentions: the hunger, the damp, the fatigue, the loss and mutilation of one's friends
...
and yet seem actually to be
enjoying
himself! There is something rare about the Peninsular army now which adds a dimension to ordinary war.'

Isabella-Rose came into the house shouting at the top of her voice; she did not sound at all angry, just vehement. Mrs Kemp's lower tones followed her up the stairs. - 'Just hear that child,' Ross said. 'Is she going to be a singer or
a
fish
jouster?'

'I believe it's just good lungs. Certainly she is the noisiest of
the
three, and yet born when our life was at its calmest.'

'Anyway,' said Ross,
I
promise faithfully not to go fighting in Portugal ever again. Or anywhere else.'

'Not even in Nottingham?'.

'Certainly
not
in Nottingham! I played my part once in putting down a riot here, as you may remember, and the memory still sticks like a bloodstain that won't come but in the wash.'

Demelza moodily licked her lips. 'I think I have a tooth going bad. It hurt last night when I was eating an apple and it has not been comfortable since. I think it has gone poor.'

'Let me see.'

She opened her mouth and pointed.

He prodded and she made a statement that sounded like: 'Ee—ah-ose-ah-ee-ah-ink—ah-all-ee-ike-an-ay —ogers.'

He took his finger out 'That's a good language but I'll learn it some other time.'

'I was only saying that if I lose my teeth I shall begin to look like Aunt Mary Rogers.'

'Have you finished chattering for a moment?'

'Yes. I have now.'

'Restrain any further thoughts that come to your mind. Just while I look.' She opened her mouth again. He prodded. 'Is that it?' 'Eth.'

'You've made the gum sore. A piece of the apple skin must have gone into the gum. The tooth is perfectly sound.'

She closed her teeth on his finger, but not hard.

'Anyway,’
he said, having recovered his finger, 'if you look as well as Aunt Mary Rogers at her age you
'll be
coming along pret
ty nice. Now you mention it, I d
o see a resemblance.'

'Would you like to put your finger in again?' she asked.

There was a knock on the door and Jane Gimlett entered.

'Oh, beg pardon, sur
...
ma'am. I thought to see if the fire wanted looking to.'

'It does.'

They sat side by side on the settee while Jane built up the fire. Jane's hair is almost white, thought Ross. How long have they been serving us faithfully, she and John? Ever since he had thrown the Paynters out, and that was upwards of twenty-two years. John too had aged. He'd been a journeyman shoemaker before. Presumably they were content to serve the Poldarks for ever, so long as their own stren
gth and health remained. If he,
Ross, suggested they should retire on a pension they would be utterly downcast, cut to the quick, supposing that their service and attention had been falling off. Which it had not. So one accepted their service, their loyalty, their wholehearted commitment
...

'Thank
you, Jane,' he said as she went out, and she looked up surprised at his tone of voice.

So d
id Demelza, but said nothing.

Ross said: if I feel I have to go to London again in the spring, will you come with me?'

'That I could not. Dare not. Not, that is, unless I take Clowance; and I know she will not leave Nampara again at present. In
any case, as Stephen seems settl
ed here, it would only be running away from her problem - to be faced once again when she returned.'

'We can't order our children's lives, Demelza.'

'That is most especially what we have tried
not
to do!' she said indignantly. 'Maybe a little more interference would nave been to her benefit!'

He let this pass, aware that he had imposed his own double standards on her and on her children.

'They seem to meet quite rarely, Clowance and Stephen.'

'But when they do you can see that she is moved. Even the way she appears not to notice him.'

'D'you think she regrets refusing Fitzmaurice?'

^‘
No
...
She cried a little that first night. I've
told
you, haven't I! I felt
much
for her. It's some dreadful decision for a girl of her age to have to make. A young man so eligible I could have wept myself... I don't know if she quite realized what she was turning down. I fear she has inherited from us the expectation that marriages are all-loving and all-successful. We were able to bide our troubles from her when we had them, and she has only seen the bright side - of which there has been a wondrous lot. We have never bickered or quarrelled or been teasy over small things; and when she marries she wants the same!'

'Does she think she will get it with Stephen? He has a strange reputation in the village.'

‘I know,
It may be just rumour about a man who is easy in his ways
...
At least she has the sense to hold back. But she's half in love with him - or more than half - and she wasn't at all with Edward Fitzmaurice.'

There was a pause, each wanting to say more but each deciding to leave it there. Presently Ross got up and went to the top drawer in the bureau, took out the last letter they had received from Geoffrey Charles Poldark, came and sat beside her again.

‘I
t'
s time he was home,' she said, ‘I
wish he'd take leave. He could stay with us and visit Trenwith at his leisure. It needs him.'

'We have told him all that.'

'Read it to me, Ross. I've forgot the half of it.'

He frowned at
the letter, aware that only vanity prevented him from buying spectacles for close work.

'Sabugal,
the third of November, 1811,’
he read.

My dear Uncle Ross and Aunt Demelza.

I have been tardy in answering your letter of
the
12th August, but things of varying interest and moment have been occurring in these parts. Now we are back in our Winter Quarters, as they may be glowingly described, and time will be on our hands until the open season for shooting Frenchies begins again in the New Year.

You ask me to apply for Leave and visit you at Nampara. When I return to England and Cornwall no house shall see me before Yours, and if you are still generous enough to be of the same mind I shall stay with you as long as your Patience lasts. Thank you for that invitation; for Trenwith, I feel, will be draughty with gh
osts. I would love to see you al
l, and have so much to talk of; for it is more than a year now since that happy Meeting before Bussaco. In military ways for me it has been a wonderful year, a year in which after all the retreats and disappointments - even the retreat after Bussaco!—a change has taken place at last and we have been constandy, gradually advancing with great tactical skill. No one in the history of war, I believe, has so brilliantly demonstrated the virtues of
reculer
pour mieux sauter
as Wellington. I am reminded of the tide advancing on Hendrawna Beach, as Morwenna and I used to watch it; by little forward and by little back, yet ever irresistible.

I
could
obtain leave now and spend Easter with you-a splendid idea - yet will not; for such camaraderie and kinship has built up here among those officers and men who have survived, that I should feel ill at ease with my Conscience to leave them now, even if only for six or. eight weeks
. You would not believe how we e
steem each other - even though little is said!

But do not suppose, after
the
spartan life of this last summer's campaign - and that was spartan indeed! -
that we now shall lack all creature Comforts and Entertainment over the winter time. We have in prospect at this moment a series of dances, of festivities, of the new sport of steeple-chasing and the old sport of fox-hunting, of boxing contests and donkey races, and hunting for wolf and wild boar, of amateur concerts and 'professional' suppers which may lack the elegance of
the
London that I once knew but need fear no
comparison in the Zest
with which they are performed
and enjoyed.

Also, my dears, the ladies here are very sweet and warm and welcoming. There is a fine line drawn betwixt those whose warmth is restrained by considerations of chaste behaviour and those not. But all are equally gracious - even the nuns! Before I came to the Peninsula I used to expect the Portuguese ladies to be less attractive than the Spanish, but upon my soul, I believe there is little to choose. Perhaps when next you hear from me I shall be wed to one or another of them! I wish they did not have this Popish religion.

Before we retired here for the winter, we had one last splendid brush with Marshal Marmont at a place called El Bodon. I have no doubt that long before you receive this letter your News Sheets will have brought this village and plateau to your attention. But I can only say that, although we were ourselves a little late in the field, through no fault of
our own, this was one of the
most satisfactory Encounters ever to have been engaged in. It was the usual bloody affair, of course, but an Object Lesson in the way to fight battles when apparently outnumbered. I do believe in future manuals of war El Bodon will have an honoured place.