The Miller's Dance

  What had to be done must be done quickly, and Wellington had left Madrid as soon as he could and had marched with four of his divisions a distance of a hundred and sixty miles to invest Burgos. Since then little had been heard. It could be that any day a fast frigate would bring news of the fall of the fortress city and another great victory. But Burgos, people said, was a little like Badajoz, and Wellington was still without his siege trains.

  Looking at his maps, with Jeremy and Dwight, and sometimes Stephen, Ross expressed his concern. Not only was Madrid, it seemed to him, in danger of being retaken – which militarily did not matter so much – but Wellington’s army was in some danger of being caught between Clausel to the north of him and Soult to the south.

  The harvest in England was the best for years, and as the time of the election came on a comfortable glow lay over the farmlands of which England was still largely composed.

  Not that prosperity or discontent made much difference to the election, for the days the West Briton dreamed of were not yet come. Lord Liverpool was likely to be supported in Parliament by a much more comfortable majority. There were several bitter contests in Cornwall, notably those at Penryn and Grampound, where the election in each case took three days. In Truro, where it occurred as forecast on Friday the 9th, it was all over in half an hour. The Burgesses assembled and elected Lord Falmouth’s candidates nemine contradicente, as Mr Henry Prynne Andrew put it. They were Colonel Charles Lemon and Captain Ross Poldark.

  George Canning had been persuaded out of his safe seat to contest Liverpool, one of the open boroughs with a more or less popular franchise; out of its 100,000 odd inhabitants about 3,000 had the vote, though the voting was not secret.

  The contest, Canning wrote to Ross later, took eight days and brought him to the very edge of exhaustion, for each day the rival candidates had to attend the polling station and shake the hand of, and speak a few words to, every single voter as he turned up. Two men were killed in rioting between rival factions and a couple of hundred injured, but this was a quiet election for Liverpool.

  When the seat was at last won he was carried through the streets for three hours. ‘I am’, he wrote, ‘off to Manchester soon where I am to make a big speech, though it will not be to advocate the enfranchisement of that great city, much though they may expect it. As you know, my feeling is that it is better to risk a few injustices such as this than to consider a reform of the whole system, which could do irreparable harm to the balance of our constitution.’

  Though neither could see into the future, Canning’s becoming a member of the Liverpool constituency was to bring his friendship with Ross to breaking-point because of his advocacy of Liverpool metal interests. But that was far ahead.

  ‘It gives me a feeling of distinction to represent so fine a city as Liverpool,’ he ended his letter, ‘and there has been a heady stimulus in this close contact with a living – and very lively! – electorate. I had many doubts at the beginning as to the wisdom of attempting it, but now I feel war-weary and triumphant. I could, indeed, have saved myself the tremendous wear and tear because I find I have also been elected both for Petersfield and for Sligo.

  ‘But what good news that my old friend has not altogether cast us off and is returning to the battlefield! From the way you spoke and the way you wrote I had felt you an altogether lost cause. We are in for a strenuous session and I believe you will not regret this change of mind. We shall at least be together shoulder to shoulder in encouraging the firm prosecution of the War!’

  II

  October 9 was a day that came to be remembered by the Nampara household in ways other than for the re-election of its head to a seat at Westminster.

  At eight Ben Carter and Jeremy had their usual half-hour discussion about the mine. The £10 a share call would take them to the end of the year. There was certainly no justification yet for the re-opening of the mine, certainly nothing to cover the initial outlay of the engine, but what was being brought up and sold was lengthening the time it could run.

  Similarly there was no justification for building a whim engine, so the old Trevithick boiler continued to languish on its trestles in Harvey’s Foundry, together with the other bits and pieces assembled there in more hopeful days. What Jeremy had obtained from the other venturers when they met last month was sanction to try to improve the water supply. Jeremy’s catchment was clearly not going to be a great success in such a dry summer as this had been. What water fell tended to evaporate under the sun; so the supply of pure water almost since the mine was opened had had to be supplemented by mules carrying barrels from the Mellingey. It was wasteful and time-consuming.

  In a survey of the land, Jeremy had come to the conclusion that there was a point at which the much utilized and ill-treated Mellingey stream was twenty or thirty feet higher than the rain catchment he had built beside the mine. This point was not far from Wheal Maiden before the stream began its plunge down towards Nampara. The distance from Wheal Leisure was about a mile as the crow flew but nearly two by any feasible route. It was hard to be sure of the degree of fall, but even ten feet would be enough, and he was fairly certain there was that. So it was technically not impossible to construct a leat, which in places would have to become an aqueduct, which would convey a portion of the water from the stream in a wide semi-circle to the mine. This morning Jeremy was going with Zacky Martin to work out the practical difficulties and the cost.

  At eight-thirty, having seen Jeremy off, Ben made his usual tour of the mine, talking to the workers where he came on them, seeing that nothing untoward was occurring. In the last six months of extensive exploration the mine had been tunnelled and re-tunnelled so that it was now quite possible to lose one’s way in it, if a few basic principles were not known and observed.

  Having been over it all, Ben climbed back to the east workings of the 30-fathom level where much of the most productive work was still going on. There were twelve miners working here and they glanced up at him as he passed, wondering why he had returned. He could not have told them himself. It was not a suspicion that anything had been missed or that anything new could be found. The miners of twenty years ago had taken the best of the copper ore and left the less good, so it still paid to clear up this residue, still paid sometimes to pick at an unproductive-looking heap of deads or to climb up the long-since-abandoned rubble of an overhand stope to see what might yet be found there. But most of this had now been done.

  It was back thirty yards or more from where most of the miners were now working that Ben observed a little fall of rock. It was new and, ever mindful of safety, he upturned a box and stood on it, trying to see whether the timber of the roof – which was necessarily an old roof – was sound. It looked like beech and alder, which meant it had, like so much of the rest of the timber, been imported, probably from Dorset or Devon. This roof was known as a stull because it supported the attle from a stope – or series of deep steps cut overhead into the lode. As the miners climbed, the non-paying ground was piled up for them to use as a platform to work their way upwards. The ground being loose above this roof meant that the timber had a great weight to support. But it all looked sound.

  He went back another ten yards and mounted the stope, climbing to the top. This was one of the first pieces of work to be examined and one of the first to be discarded, for the lode had been thoroughly worked and there was nothing more worth considering.

  All the same he did examine the rock roof at the top, pulling at a piece of fairly solid-looking ground and finding rock and stones crumbling and rattling on his helmet. He lit another candle from his helmet candle and found a place for it on a slaty ledge. He took out the small pick he always carried in his belt and considered the matter. By rights there should have been another man with him; but he decided to chance it and gave a few sharp blows at the ground above him. He was at once engulfed in a cascade of falling stones which nearly knocked him over. He then perceived what looked like another tunnel or winze running above.

/>   At first he thought he had climbed as far as the 20-fathom shaft, but then realized he could not have done. Cautiously but without great excitement he slithered down the rubble to the 30 shaft, found a short ladder, carried it up and again mounted. Presently he found himself in a considerable cavern about ten feet high and some thirty long. It was not really above the shaft he had climbed from, but seemed to be pointing north.

  The air was very stale but breathable; his candle bobbed and dripped, lurching its insecure light into one hollow after another; grey walls, unmetalliferous; a broken spade, heaps of rubble, a drip or two of water from a greenish point in the roof. He picked at the wall here and there: rather slatier ground than usual, a few gleams of iron pyrites and copper pyrites. Ben coughed to clear his chest and moved towards the tunnel showing at the farther end. A little extra stirring of interest as he saw that this went deeply on and slightly down. Clearly this was a part of some old workings which had not been opened in recent years. Had there been an earlier mine? From memory he could not recall whether Captain Poldark had first started this mine in 1787 or re-started it.

  Safety again suggested he should fetch one of the men up from below to go with him – it was the common precaution against a sudden fall or foul air. Since he made it a rule for the men to obey, he could hardly flout it himself. He turned back to the ladder to go for either Stevens or Kempthorne, and as he did so he picked up the handle of the spade to see if it would give him a clue as to its origin and age. As soon as he touched it, it crumbled into dust.

  III

  Florence Trelask, Mistress Trelask’s daughter, now a thin bloodless spinster of thirty-nine, had called in the morning for a fitting of the wedding dress. Earlier Clowance had chosen the material and the design: it was to be a gown and petticoat of fine blue satin sprigged all over with white, and with white Ghent lace at the collar and cuffs. She and her mother and Miss Trelask had been closeted upstairs for an hour this morning. It almost fitted, it would almost do, but Miss Trelask, a perfectionist like her mother, had packed it all up again, wrapped it in innumerable folds of tissue paper and borne it away in a large white box which she tied to the saddle of her pony. It would be returned fully completed by the end of next week.

  After she left, Demelza rode to Killewarren to take dinner with Caroline, accompanied much against her will by Jane Gimlett to see that she was safe and did not tire herself. Demelza thought all this coddling nonsense. It was true that she felt unwell from time to time, and this was a complete change from previous pregnancies when, after the first three months, she had always felt most exceptionally healthy. But the symptoms were slight – a swelling of the hands, giddiness, a tendency to light fever – and might not even be connected with her condition at all. She hadn’t told Dwight and had no intention of doing so unless it became worse. And certainly it was no malaise that the presence or absence of Jane Gimlett was likely to influence.

  Clowance stayed behind to do some sewing, which was clearly the proper occupation for a young lady within two weeks of her wedding day. But although a much better sempstress than her mother, she had really little more taste for it, and would have preferred to be out riding or walking or picking wild flowers.

  In fact the day had a melancholy and autumnal look. There were precious few trees in this district to change colour or to drop their leaves, but the sea can look autumnal in its own right. Low clouds drifted across a fitful sun, and groups of sea-birds – gulls, kittiwakes and terns – were mirrored like mourners in the damp sands, all facing the breeze.

  When Ben Carter hesitantly opened the door into the parlour his eyes lighted at the sight of its only occupant. He came slowly in.

  ‘Oh, beg pardon, Clowance. I was looking . . . is anyone else at home?’

  ‘I think that could have been more elegantly said, Ben.’

  She seldom teased him, for he had no defences against her, but this time she could not resist.

  He flushed, and then smiled. ‘Well, you d’know what I mean.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t. Except that it is not me you are looking for.’

  ‘Well,’ he said again, and narrowed his brows. ‘No one is ever more welcome than you are . . . I mean, to find ’ere. It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just someone else you seek.’

  ‘Twas Cap’n Poldark I wished t’ave word with if he should be about. But they tell me—’

  ‘Papa is in Truro. And will not be back tonight, because he has to attend an election dinner. He will be home tomorrow complaining of the quality of the food he has been served and asking for one of my mother’s special pies.’

  Ben nervously fingered his jacket, which he was aware was not suitable for a social visit.

  ‘Jeremy not back yet, is he?’

  ‘No. I thought he was with you.’

  ‘And – and Mrs Poldark?’

  ‘Is out to dinner. There is only me, Ben. And Isabella-Rose. Which would you prefer?’

  There was a pause while he glanced at her sewing and she put it down.

  ‘Then I must wait till tomorrer, eh?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For what I have to tell.’

  ‘If you wish to. I don’t know what you have to tell.’

  ‘Tisn’t that I wish to . . . Clowance, I have made a discovery at Leisure, and I thought twas only right and proper to come over to Cap’n Poldark and see him about ’n.’

  She sat up. ‘What sort of a discovery? Copper?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say yet. I thought I’d best tell Jeremy or your father so’s we could look at this new thing together, like. I see no special signs of nothing as yet, but I have broke into old workings which I don’t b’lieve have been opened for a ’undred years or more. Know for sure, do ee, whether or no your father opened Wheal Leisure as a new mine back in 1787?’

  ‘There was something there before. Surely has not everybody from time to time spoken of the old Trevorgie workings? Jeremy said they have tried to link up with them at Wheal Grace.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me then that I have come ’pon them – that or something of that sort. Tis a kind of small cavern; I climbed up into ’n, and there was a broken spade handle lying ’pon the ground and when I picked him up he fell abroad just as if twas made of sand.’

  Clowance looked at him. They looked at each other. Clowance said: ‘Is it a shallow level?’

  ‘’Bout twenty-five, I should reckon.’

  She got up. ‘All right. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘What d’you mean, no! I am the only Poldark here and it is my duty—’

  ‘I – I don’t rightly know as tis all that safe! Anyhow, I could scarce permit . . .’

  ‘What could you scarce permit? Wait here; I’ll be no more than two minutes.’

  ‘Clowance!’

  But she was out of the door like a gust of wind, wafting a faint perfume in his face. He bit his dirty fingernail and waited.

  In less than four minutes she was down, in a blue seaman’s jersey, barragan trousers, heavy shoes, her hair caught in at the nape of the neck by a yellow ribbon.

  Protesting, he was led back across the beach to the mine, but his protests grew less as he saw they were having no effect and as the pleasure of her company overcame his doubt. When they stood in the engine house preparing to go down he thought he had never seen anyone so heartbreakingly beautiful as she was just then, wearing a drab miner’s jacket rather too big for her, her skin looking fresher in contrast, her brilliant fair hair flowering under the dirty miner’s hat.

  They climbed down to the 30 level, stepped off the ladder and splashed through the trickle of water escaping from the mouth of the tunnel, began to grope their way along in the direction of the east lode. Several times he held out a hand to help her over piles of attle, across supporting timbers, through narrowed channels where pillars of granite had been left to strengthen the pit props and the roof, but each time she waved him on with a smile. They reached
the sloping rubble stretching up below the exhausted lode, and here, some of the ground still being loose, she accepted his hand to be helped up. When he came to the ladder he went first and she quickly followed.

  They stood and looked around, holding their heads still so that their candles should not flicker. Ben lit two more candles he had brought and watched their flickering flames before he stuck them in convenient crevices. Clowance stooped to pick up the remnants of the spade.

  ‘Does this continue?’

  ‘Oh yes. Over there. I intended to ’ve went in but thought I should first acquaint Cap’n Poldark of it all.’

  ‘Let us go. Lead the way.’

  ‘Nay, Clowance, I think this be as far as you should go. Tomorrer . . .’

  ‘Tomorrow they will all be here. Lead on.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘If you do not go, then I will go alone.’

  With a sigh, Ben went ahead down the tunnel. They sometimes had to stoop almost double to avoid projections in the irregular roof. There were numerous cross-cuts and winzes, but it was not hard to distinguish them from the main tunnel, which was falling by perhaps an inch a yard all the while. They came to another larger cavern.

  ‘See here!’ said Ben. ‘They’ve used fire-setting, I reckon! That’d be afore gunpowder.’

  ‘What’s that? What d’you mean?’

  On one side of the cavern there was a pile of rock debris at the foot of the face: it looked like granular stuff, finely powdered quartz, as fine almost as sand.

  ‘In the old days,’ Ben said, ‘they’d belong to start a fire of brushwood and logs against the rock face; then when the face was heated proper, they’d quench it wi’ water, and the expansion caused by the heating followed wi’ the contraction of the cooling would make cracks where the face were weakest, so the rock could be picked out by pick and wedge later on. Twas hard work, and the fire and smoke below ground must’ve made some awful smeech, but twas the only way they ’ad. You can see the ashes here and the way the cracks was made.’