The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham
‘It is like striking sparks near gunpowder barrels,’ Ross said. ‘Any moment one might blow up.’
‘You mean war with America again?’ Demelza said.
‘There is a probability. Many US Congressmen, I’m sure, look enviously at the open spaces of Canada and its undefended frontier. Our troops out there are minimal.’
‘I suppose there’s nothing we can do,’ Jeremy said.
‘I believe we should repeal the Orders in Council and no longer attempt to enforce the blockade so far as American ships are concerned. In any case they don’t have a large enough merchant fleet to sway the balance of the war decisively.’
After a silence Jeremy said: ‘D’you know . . .’
They waited but he did not go on.
Demelza said: ‘I hope you are not going to say what I think you are going to say.’
Jeremy smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps so.’
Ross frowned. ‘Is this a game I’m not privy to?’
Jeremy said: ‘I shall be twenty-one next week. Maybe it’s time.’
‘I don’t think it is ever time,’ Demelza said.
‘Well, Mama, I ask myself. The fire engine I’ve built is working well – there are no immediate flaws, praise be – though the mine so far has produced no results. I cannot see that I am especially needed here.’
Ross stared at his son and knew what they were talking about. With a shock of surprise he realized his own immediate feelings. As a matter of principle he welcomed the idea. As a matter of practical application he found he disliked it.
‘I think we are coming to a crisis in the war,’ he said. ‘I doubt if the outcome will be influenced in any way by anything you may do now.’
‘That would be a poor argument for anyone ever going to fight,’ Jeremy said.
Now the words were out, but it was no better.
‘Is it seeing Miss Trevanion again?’ Demelza asked with less than her usual tact; but her emotions were too deeply involved for finesse.
Jeremy flushed. ‘To an extent, yes. But that is not all. I did not tell you, either of you, that when I was at Harvey’s last week Richard Trevithick was there. He came in unexpectedly. I think Mr Harvey had told him what I was about and he came to see what we were doing . . . He tells me that the boiler I bought is unsuitable for a road carriage.’
After a moment Ross said: ‘That surely need not mean . . .’ He stopped.
‘It means that I have been making rather a fool of myself, Father, though Mr Trevithick was kind enough to deny it. It means, in effect, that the boiler is far too big to use in a horseless carriage on the common roads. The roads, as he points out, would not take it. The damned thing would become bogged down, or the wheels would break.’
Demelza said: ‘But in a year or two the roads may be improved. After the war . . .’
‘Oh yes. But when shall that be? Mr Trevithick was also kind enough to sketch for me the kind of boiler that would be needed to make such a machine practical; but he says that as yet there is not enough engineering skill to manufacture it.’
Ross cut into his pie but did not eat it. ‘So?’
Demelza said: ‘He made it run on a road.’
‘Yes, for a triumphant experiment, that is all. He says there can be no money in it – certainly not for years.’
‘But what of rail?’
‘Ah,’ said Jeremy, and also began to pick at his food. ‘Mr Trevithick had the same idea – perhaps by way of consolation. That, of course, was not my object in making this machine; but yesterday morning I rode over to Poldice mine to see if the venturers would be interested in a steam engine working the tramroad from their mine to Portreath harbour. They are not. They see it as impracticable, dangerous, and more expensive than horses. I pointed out the success of Mr Trevithick’s tramroad experiment in Glamorgan. They pointed out that it is no longer working . . .’
They ate for a minute or two in silence. Then Ross said: ‘I believe Francis de Dunstanville has a considerable interest in Poldice. I wonder . . .’
‘No, Father . . .’ Jeremy stopped and smiled, though there was not much humour in his face. ‘I think this has to be resolved without anyone’s influence – kindly though you mean it. It may very well be that the Poldice people are talking commercial good sense. What does seem to emerge is that I began this road machine with more enthusiasm for the idea than knowledge of the difficulties. Perhaps I am a little ahead of my time – though this set-back will not deter me from trying again very soon. It only seems that the very soon need not be immediately . . .’
There was another heavy silence. Demelza glanced from one to the other of her menfolk.
‘In the meantime . . .?’
‘Well, that is the point. This training I do with the Volunteers. Are the Volunteers not really a home for shirkers? While I could persuade myself that the things I was doing here were of sufficient importance . . . Now one has succeeded and the other failed . . . One thinks: oh, the war will be over this year, then the war will be over next year. But now, if the Americans come in . . .’
‘That will scarcely affect it,’ said Ross. ‘If the Americans come in it will be a major mistake on their part – and on ours. But they are too far away to exert a decisive influence. The war will be won and lost in Europe.’
‘Which, I think, is where I belong now.’
Demelza looked again at Ross, who was still eating, but absent-mindedly, as if he had no taste for the food.
‘Jeremy,’ he said, ‘I think you should wait a little.’
Both Jeremy and Demelza were surprised at this.
‘Why?’
‘What I said is literally true. If you were to go now, I could no doubt buy you a commission in the 62nd Foot or some associated regiment. But by the time you were trained I believe the crisis will have come and gone. I think it to be very close.’
‘And if it does not come?’
‘Then I shall not stand in your way.’
‘And you, Mama?’
Demelza’s eyes brimmed unexpectedly; both men observed them and were embarrassed at the unusual sight. She blinked the moisture impatiently away.
‘That I do not know, my son. We shall have to see, shall we not, when it is nearer the time.’
‘Ais, my dee-ur,’ said Jeremy, trying to defuse the situation; and then: ‘Well, Father, when we need that steam whim, I already possess a boiler which will suit it most admirably. That means we are almost half way with the engine.’
‘May it come soon,’ said Ross.
Jeremy had forgotten the other matter. ‘What do you suppose Paul Kellow asked me this afternoon?’
They did not try to guess, so he told them.
Demelza said: ‘Caroline told me last year they have borrowed money from Dwight too.’
‘The devil they have! Did she say how much?’
‘I think it was five hundred pounds. They asked for more, offering in return a part share in the business, but Dwight refused that and made a straightforward loan. It was Mrs Kellow who approached Dwight one day when he was visiting Violet.’
‘Are we being offered a share in the business?’ Ross asked ironically.
‘It wasn’t mentioned. Maybe there’s not much business left to offer.’
‘Kellow seems to employ his family on these distasteful jobs. Is he not man enough to come himself?’
Jeremy said: ‘I told Paul if you entertained the idea that his father should have to come and see you.’
‘Quite right.’ Ross looked at his wife, who had now recovered from her temporary weakness. ‘It’s a mite difficult, isn’t it.’
‘Hard to say no – when we remember what it was like.’
‘At least we did not borrow from friends.’
‘Nor you wouldn’t ever let me try neither.’
Jeremy glanced from one to the other. ‘Was it as bad as that?’
‘Worse,’ said Ross. ‘We sold some of the furniture – all the stock – your mother’s brooch.’
‘One very like it,’ said Demelza.
‘I don’t see that sort of poverty,’ Ross said. ‘All the same I should not sleep very comfortable if those two girls – particularly Violet – were turned out. Whether it was my direct fault or not, I should feel . . . Two years ago, of course, it would have been much easier for us.’
Jeremy said: ‘I bear responsibility for ever re-opening Wheal Leisure.’
‘So you do,’ said Ross. ‘But once you’d suggested it, I couldn’t get it out of my head either.’
‘And the Kellows, Ross?’
‘Well, I can certainly do it; though I confess it goes against the grain feeling the money may be emptied into a bottomless pit. Did Paul say what they were trying to do to save themselves?’
‘Oh yes. They have cut out two unprofitable lines altogether. Two others are running once weekly instead of twice. Paul himself is to do more driving, at least as a temporary measure. They hope to dispense with six men altogether.’
‘And that will make the difference?’
‘They hope so. I can’t say more than that. Perhaps Mr Kellow can explain.’
Mr Kellow in due course did explain. It was a rather distasteful interview. Charlie Kellow had none of his son’s premature dignity. He breathed stale spirits – to which had been added fresh spirits – over Ross. (Ross had a particular aversion for the sort of person who stands too close to you while he talks and pursues you relentlessly as you edge backwards.) Mr Kellow had a splendid array of figures which were elicited to prove that stage-coaching was in its infancy in Cornwall and that Kellow, Clotworthy, Jones & Co. were the best organized, best staffed and best equipped to take advantage of the expansion when it came. All they needed was working capital, enough to sustain them through the present recession, and they would be happily launched on a long and successful career.
Ross felt there was a sizeable element of truth in all this, in the sense that if this damned and interminable war ever ended there was bound to be a large extension of the turnpike road system in the West Country, and with it an expansion of coach, carriage and wagon traffic. What he was not sure about was whether this half ingratiating, half resentful, red-nosed, pot-bellied, shabby man was the one he could personally have picked to take advantage of it. But there it was. This man, chiefly because their respective sons and daughters were friendly, was the man he was being asked to help. Indeed this man, if the dice had fallen differently, might have become Jeremy’s father-in-law. Might still, he supposed! Was it a total impossibility even now?
He offered Mr Kellow a loan of £500 for two years interest free. It represented something like three weeks less for Wheal Grace to work if the decision was finally taken to close her down.
Mr Kellow accepted the loan with no sign of hesitation, though with a certain dignity of manner that hitherto had been lacking. Ross also suspected there was a gleam of regret in his eyes because he was thinking that as the request had been met in full he should initially have asked for more.
III
On May 11 Jeremy received a short note from Valentine, writing from Eton. ‘I have just heard from Geoffrey Charles, a note writ with his left hand. He has asked me to let you know he is alive and recovering. He was wounded thrice at Badajoz but is hoping to rejoin his regiment in a matter of weeks. His right arm was pierced and he says he was lucky to retain it, but at present it makes writing tedious so he asks to be excused. He sends his most faithful love to you all . . .’
IV
About five o’clock that afternoon when entering the lobby of the House of Commons to make a speech on the industrial unrest in the North, Mr Spencer Perceval, barrister-at-law, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was shot dead by a man called Bellingham, a Liverpool broker who had been ruined by the recession.
Chapter Nine
I
The Bounders’ Arms was a small inn not far from Sawle Church on the lane leading to Fernmore, where the Kellows lived. In the ’seventies and ’eighties of last century, under old Joe Tresidder, brother of the Jonathan Tresidder who had once been chief shareholder in Wheal Radiant, the inn had done good business and been a popular meeting place for miners. But the closing of Grambler Mine in November ’88 had been a mortal blow from which it had never recovered. The proliferation of casual ale-houses and kiddleys, where much smuggled liquor was drunk, had made matters worse, and when Joe died there was no one to carry on. So the old tavern had lapsed. For a while it had been occupied by two prolific but unstable families called Hoskin and Bartle. (The best of the last had worked at Trenwith for a time.) Then epidemics and poverty had carried them all off either to churchyards or to poorhouses and the place had remained in the possession of a cousin of the Tresidders. She had recently sold it to Ned and Emma Hartnell, who had opened it again as an inn and were hoping to live there with their two children and to attract enough custom to make ends meet.
In the last few months it had done well. There was an opening for the slightly superior drinking place, and the Bounders’ Arms, though very shabby, was big enough to offer two private rooms where the better-off could drink and talk in privacy and a degree of comfort. This was what had first attracted Jeremy Poldark, Stephen Carrington and Paul Kellow, and they met there now and again.
Jeremy had complained angrily to Stephen about being omitted from his scheme to buy the Penzance lifeboat. Stephen had said: ‘Don’t you see I am already depending on the Poldarks enough? . . . Because I’m to be your brother-in-law I could not ask for your help just as if you already were that. Could I now? Don’t you see?’
‘No, I don’t.’
The loan Clowance had made him was still a secret between them. ‘In any case, could ye have been so long absent from your home and from your mine?’
‘The mine could well dispense with my attentions. I believe now that my cousin Valentine Warleggan has the right idea when he supposes that his father never sells anything of value . . .’
‘Well, maybe another time we could do something together.’
‘Will there be another time?’
‘There’s always things turning up – believe me. It’s a matter of keeping your eyes open, being ready to take a chance.’
Jeremy looked at his watch. ‘Paul is late. D’you think he’s coming?’
‘I haven’t seen him for a week. He’s been away.’
‘I know. Stephen, I’ve been seriously thinking . . .’
‘Of what? Some other way of making money?’
‘Of taking a part in the war. I’m twenty-one. My father went when he was eighteen. His father bought him a commission as Ensign in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Wiltshire Regiment—’
‘Why?’
‘Why? . . . Why did he go? I think he was in trouble on some smuggling charge and—’
‘Ah! That is interesting. He was not above breaking the law when he was young.’
‘Everyone breaks that law, Stephen . . . We have just had news of Geoffrey Charles – that’s my cousin who owns Trenwith. He has been wounded three times at Badajoz; and here I stay making ill use of my time.’
‘Do you want my opinion, Jeremy?’
‘If you want to give it.’
‘I think you’d be crazed.’
‘Maybe.’
Mrs Hartnell came into the private room with two tankards of ale. She was a tall handsome youngish woman with brilliant black eyes and fine dark gypsy-like hair. She was twenty years younger than her husband who, until he inherited a little money from an aunt, had been head footman at Tehidy. The young men liked her because she was always gay and cheerful of manner and would chat to them, leaning with a forearm against the door-jamb, or exit discreetly if she felt they wanted to be alone. Jeremy reflected whimsically sometimes that, but for a quirk of fate, she might have become his aunt.
When she had gone Stephen said: ‘Fighting on land is a loon’s game. Even if you don’t get cut apart by a cannon ball or lose an arm or leg, you end up with nothing, n
‘What were you going to say?’
‘If you have to go to the war, why not in a privateer?’
‘That’s not going to war in the right sense.’
‘Well, I tell you you’ve just as much of a chance of fighting the French as you’ll find in Wellington’s army; but there’s some money to it.’
‘I think there’s something more to this than money. Anyway, I have none to invest.’
Stephen said: ‘Only last month the Percuil, a privateer out of Falmouth, recaptured a rich silk ship from Valencia that a French privateer was taking in to Cherbourg. A sharp fight and she was theirs – they brought her in to Falmouth. They say the value is eighteen thousand. Think of the prize money on that!’
‘I’ve no idea what it would be.’
‘Well, three thousand at the very least. Maybe twice that if they played their cards proper.’
‘I have no money,’ said Jeremy again.
‘None at all?’
‘After Trafalgar, to celebrate the victory, my father gave fifty pounds each to Clowance and myself to do with as we wished. I kept my little nest-egg in the bank in Truro, having no need for it, since we were given everything we wanted and generous pocket money as well. But last year, by arrangement with Harvey’s, I bought a Trevithick boiler from them and other parts – at half price because they were building the Wheal Leisure engine. Most of the fifty pounds went then . . . But that has now all come to nothing. I could as well have thrown the money in the sea.’