The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham
THE
MILLER’S
DANCE
A Novel of Cornwall, 1812–1813
WINSTON GRAHAM
PAN BOOKS
I would like to thank Tony Woolrich
for much valuable help and advice,
especially on the technical aspects
of high-pressure steam.
Contents
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
BOOK TWO
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
BOOK THREE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
BOOK ONE
Chapter One
I
On a grey day early in February, 1812, a convoy was anchored off Hendrawna Beach on the north-west coast of Cornwall. One of the vessels was a brig called Henry, and another a sloop Elizabeth. Between them floated a lighter with a massive piece of metal lying upon it and protruding over each end like a stranded whale. There were also half a dozen row-boats and a couple of gigs, one of them Nampara Girl. The beach was black with helpers and spectators.
February was no safe time normally for any master to hazard his vessel so close upon an inhospitable stretch of tidal sand; but after gales and half-gales succeeding each other through November, December and January, a frost had fallen on the land. It was a light frost, disappearing each midday and coming down again at night – which was the norm for this area – but it meant that the wind had at last dropped and the sea was quiet. For a time it had even been feared they were to be frustrated by the sudden lack of that element of which they had for so long had too much; but after a couple of days the lightest of breezes had sprung up from the north-east and before dawn this Monday morning the convoy had set out from Hayle. It had taken them until noon to get here, which was full tide – though a neap tide, leaving a wide expanse of beach uncovered and much of the sand soft and yielding. The sea was very slight, its hair at the edge in little rolls of curlers hardly big enough to disturb a child.
The distance overland from Hayle, where the parts of the engine had been built, to Nampara was no greater than by sea; but to transport this heavy equipment through the miry lanes and over the rutted moorlands would have taken three times as long and with every possibility of getting bogged down. By sea was quicker and easier – always supposing the right moment was chosen.
The brig had been the first to discharge; since she drew the most water she had to be unloaded into rowing-boats and on to rafts well out; mostly this was the smaller stuff: the brasses, the safety-valves, the piston and piston rod, the cylinder covers, the eduction valves, the catch-pins, the flange bolts and all the working gear of a 45-inch steam engine. The sloop Elizabeth had been brought along mainly to carry the boiler, with which she could come closer inshore. Indeed she deliberately ran aground, even on a tide just beginning to turn, confident that when she was the lighter by seven tons she would refloat herself easily.
Ross Poldark, pausing a moment to bite a fish pie that his wife had brought him, stared at the scene and said: ‘I have never seen so many people on the beach since the wrecks after Julia died.’
‘Don’t speak of it,’ said Demelza. ‘That time . . .’
‘Well, then we were young. Now we are not so young. But I wouldn’t have it back.’
‘Not that. Nor all that followed. But I’d like to be twenty again.’
‘Well, now we have a son older than that. And working like one demented today.’
Demelza said: ‘Julia would have been twenty-two? No, twenty-one. Twenty-two this May.’
Ross swallowed his pie. Since the sloop came in, a broad pathway of sleepers consisting of old pit props had been laid from the bottom of the cliff out to the sloop – not separated as in a tramway, but one sleeper touching the next. The great boiler had been winched down until it rested on a timber frame, which itself stood on eight or nine smooth wooden rollers laid over the sleepers. Immediately it came to rest men had leapt upon the frame and flung ropes over the boiler, securing it to prevent lateral swaying; then they were off and away, manhandling it up the pathway, four men a side while others constantly rescued the rollers from the back and inserted them at the front again. It was not just a question of strength but of delicate balance, for if the rollers were not replaced exactly parallel the whole thing could slew off course and go tumbling into the sand.
Ross looked at the sky. It was leaden and would give them no stars tonight. The sea of course was unpredictable; a heavy swell might develop at any time, presaging wind, not succeeding it. But there were two hours of daylight yet, and once the stuff was unloaded and brought to the foot of the cliff there was no haste. It would be at least two days more before the rising tides reached their piece of cliff. They had all that time to haul it up to its destined site.
‘Before you run away, drink this ale,’ said Demelza, observing him already fidgeting to be gone.
‘Where is Clowance?’
‘Down among the others. You could not keep her out of it today. There . . . see her fair head.’
‘I see another fair head beside her.’
‘Yes, they are often together again these days . . .’
For the moment Ross’s mind and memory was still back in that day and night of the 7th January, 1790, when two vessels had been blown in on this beach in a storm and when almost a thousand people, most of them miners, had stripped them in a single tide. The seamen, washed ashore, had barely escaped with their lives, and preventive men and a platoon of soldiers had not been sufficient to halt the wrecking. Desperate with hunger and crazed with the drink they had found, the miners carried all before them, and those who got in the way of their loot did so at their own peril. Great bonfires raged on the beach and drunken figures danced round them like demons from a pit. The sea had been awash with rigging, sails, spars, bales of silk and kegs of brandy, and fighting, struggling men and women. Was it the same people – or some of the same people – who were peacefully unloading an engine for the mine Wheal Leisure which was being re-started on the edge of the cliff? And the hundreds of others who had drifted down from little hamlets around to watch? Ross himself that night so long ago had been half crazed with grief at the death of his only child; and his wife, herself sick to death’s point, a waif with wasted cheeks watching him hollow-eyed from her bed.
Now, more than two decades later, instead of being a near bankrupt and a soul bereft, he was fifty-two years of age, no fatter (if anything a little more gaunt), troubled with a painful recurring lameness from a ball wound he had received long ago in America, but otherwise well enough and to a small degree prosperous; a Member of Parliament, who had never distinguished himself in the House but who had established a reputation out of it, so that – for instance – George Canning had written to him a letter received only Friday last; a banker – with very little to contribute as a personal stake but an acknowledged partner in the Cornish Bank of Truro, and gradually profiting from the greater prosperity of the other partners; a mine-owner – of one mine, Wheal Grace, which had been fairy godmother to the Poldarks for nearly twenty years but was now slowly dying on them, and another, Wheal Leisure
And beside him, her dark hair lifting and trembling in the breeze, was his wife, his helpmeet, and still, against all probabilities, his love, ten years his junior in everything except wit and wisdom, little changed in looks or figure, but greying at the temples: a sign post she carefully obscured every week with some dye she bought in St Ann’s and which Ross pretended not to notice.
On the beach, in the charge of a distraught Mrs Kemp, was their youngest and noisiest, a black-haired ten-year-old of inexhaustible voice and vitality called Isabella-Rose. Near her, momentarily, was their seventeen-year-old daughter Clowance, dressed like a ragamuffin today in a blue fustian jacket and blue trousers rolled up above the knee, fair pigtail swinging as she moved swiftly from one knot of helpers to another. Their eldest child Jeremy, nearly twenty-one, was at present on board the lighter discussing, it seemed from his gestures, the strength and seatings of the windlasses with young Simon Pole from Harvey’s Foundry. In charge of the trolley which was to receive the giant cast-iron beam was Ben Carter, grandson of Zacky and potential underground captain of the mine.
Beside Clowance the other fair head Ross had remarked was that of the Viking-like Stephen Carrington. Picked up out of the sea, destitute and half drowned, some sixteen-odd months ago, this sailor had settled among them and had become a notable figure in the villages around. What was more, he had taken a great fancy to Clowance, and Clowance, it seemed, returned the interest.
Last year, following an unexpected visit to London and a later visit to Bowood in Wiltshire, Clowance had turned down an offer of marriage from Lord Edward Fitzmaurice, younger brother of the Marquis of Lansdowne. That she had been allowed to refuse such an offer was clear evidence among those who heard of it of the incurable and inexcusable insanity of her parents. As Mrs Pelham said to Caroline Enys, her niece: ‘It’s not as if he were a gouty old man with a paunch and a weak bladder; he’s but twenty-six or seven, with a seat in parliament and the highest connections, and – wonder of wonders in our aristocracy – clean living. Not the greatest conversationalist, nor the wittiest, but not at all ill-looking, and strong and healthy. That the girl should be so ineffably stupid one may set down to childish ignorance, but that your friends, her parents, put no apparent pressure on her to accept him is nothing short of an indictable offence!’
‘My dear Aunt,’ Caroline had said, ‘you must know that my two dearest friends are to me above criticism; but there are occasions, and this is not the first, when I have an unladylike desire to crash their heads together. Pray let the subject drop.’
However much she might rationally resent some of his behaviour, it seemed probable that Stephen Carrington, the unpredictable, tawny-haired man of action and stranger from the sea, helping to build the engine house for Wheal Leisure mine far away in Cornwall, had been the most important factor behind Clowance’s personal refusal of Edward Fitzmaurice. No doubt there were other considerations to be taken into account, principally the realization of her special love of Cornwall and of the outdoor life she had lived since she was a child. She would have had to exchange the wild rides on the beach, the bathing and swimming, the barefoot walks over the cliffs, the whole carefree existence of a child of nature for the artificiality of London life and polite society, overheated drawing-rooms and insincere conversation; a young titled lady far away from all her family and friends.
It was on all these matters that Mrs Pelham, and to a lesser degree Caroline, would have had Demelza instruct and reason with her daughter, pointing out that one could not live the life of a gypsy all one’s life even in Cornwall; that one had to grow up, and probably, eventually, marry and have children, that the possession of wealth, position, influence and a distinguished husband made a difference out of all computation in the world as it was at present constituted, that even for the sake of her future children if not for herself the opportunity to place oneself in such a position could not be rejected. But Demelza had not so pressed her daughter and the opportunity was gone for ever.
Instead remained this young man, Stephen Carrington, enterprising, intelligent, virile and unreliable. His very presence made Clowance’s blood run thick, her heart beat to a different rhythm. It had not been so with Edward Fitzmaurice. But who was to say in the end which would make the better husband?
The lighter was aground and had been nearly three hours, having run herself into the sand head-on. (She would be refloated about midnight.) The purpose of the long delay was to allow the sand to harden as much as possible before a similar sleeper track was laid from the cliffs – otherwise the sleepers were likely to sink into the sand under their own weight. This was the really difficult job. The giant cast-iron beam weighed eighteen tons – two and a half times as much as the boiler. A larger timber frame was now being brought along this second pathway of sleepers, with rollers to lay over the sleepers as before. This was altogether too heavy a job for men, and a double team of twelve horses – six a side – waited in harness to pull the makeshift trolley back along the track. Trolley and frame had been left until the last moment so that the minimum weight rested on the sleepers. A score of extra men with sacks, shovels and levers waited alongside to help in case of mishap.
While Ross and Demelza watched, the ropes round the beam began to tighten to near breaking-point as men strove to turn the handles of the low-geared winches. Presently the beam was hanging clear of the deck, which it over-reached at either end. Then the booms swung slowly out while men guarded the chocks hammered into the side of the lighter to prevent it from swaying. On such a foundation there was bound to be movement, but it was slow movement, and as the barge swayed and sank a few inches more to the left so the beam was lowered until it rested fully upon the frame. All was haste then: men lashed the beam into position – though being flat it was less likely to roll than the boiler – then leapt off the trolley as the teams of horses took up the strain and moved the load bumping over the pathway.
There had been a good deal of discussion beforehand about how best to transport the beam, and this way had been chosen as the least likely to run into serious trouble; as Ross approached the straining teams it looked as if there would be no hitch at all. It was slow, exhausting but satisfactory progress, the horses hock deep in sand and difficult to control, with Cobbledick leading one team and Jeremy the other.
Then while still about thirty yards from the cliff, a patch of treacherous sand let them down. It often happened on this beach; there was no such thing as quicksands, but here and there a soft patch would be left, created by a current of the retreating sea and not hardening as it dried like the rest. Here the track dipped a little, and as soon as the weight of the trolley came upon it the sleepers sank too deep for the rollers to have anything solid under them. The horses were halted by the sudden immovability of their load, and a total confusion immediately reigned; the horses backed and reared, Jeremy and Cobbledick clinging on to but not quite controlling the leaders; the trolley slewed and nearly came off the track altogether.
It was Ross’s instinct to take charge, but he checked himself. Ben Carter was already making the necessary moves. With eight men behind him armed with pinch bars, he ran forward and they levered the great load on course again while the horses resumed their orderly tugging. Slowly the whole thing began to move, while watchers standing near by cheered; but the rhythm had gone and the forward progression. Now each step was a violent lurch from one slithering roller and one sinking prop to the next. So it went on, with the cliffs getting slowly but agonizingly nearer. Foot by foot, levered and dragged, the beam was drawn towards the towering cliff, while the wooden sleepers dipped and twisted all ways.
In the ebb and flow of peopl
‘Where were you yesterday?’
‘In church. I do go now and then. And where were you?’
‘Looking for you.’
‘Not too hard, I’m sure.’
‘Why not?’
‘Else you might have guessed.’
‘What would’ve been the good if I’d come there? All your family around you.’
‘You speak as if they’re a plague.’
‘So they are when I want you to meself.’
‘Well, now you’ve got me,’ she said, looking at her captive hand.
‘To little use, I reckon. With half a hundred folk crowdin’ around us!’
‘And all observing the claim you are putting upon me.’
‘Should I not? Must I not?’
‘Not in public. Not just yet.’
‘Clowance, I’m tired of waiting. We see little or naught of each other—’
‘Oh, Friday you came to sup with us. Thursday we talked for time enough at the mine. Tuesday—’
‘But that’s among people. It is not among people that I wish to meet you, as you well know. Why, last year, afore ever I went away, we was more alone than this!’
She wriggled her hand out of his grasp. ‘Yes, I suppose.’
‘You know well. When can we meet in Trenwith again?’
‘Ah. I don’t know . . .’
A portly gentleman in a white stock and a black tail-coat but with leather boots over his stockings and knee-breeches came up to Ross. They had spoken earlier in the day when Ross had boarded the Henry from Nampara Girl. Mr Harvey. Mr Henry Harvey, after whom the brig was named. At thirty-seven, chief partner in the firm of Blewett, Harvey, Vivian & Co. of Hayle, where the mine engine had been built. He was the driving power behind the foundry’s rapid expansion. Indeed, soon to be the sole owner, if litigation went well.
He did not personally superintend the delivery of all such engines built by his firm, but this commission had special areas of interest. Firstly Captain Poldark was not just an ordinary mining venturer. Secondly his son, Jeremy, had dented the social traditions of the time by becoming more than half way to practical engineer and by being responsible for the final design of the engine they had built.