The Miller's Dance

  ‘I be gwan that way, sur,’ said Music, beaming. ‘I be gwan right ’ome.’

  Dwight slowed his horse to keep pace with them. It was this companionableness that endeared him to the villagers. He had not changed a degree since he was an unsophisticated, barely fledged boy of twenty-four, living in Captain Poldark’s tiny Gatehouse, with no experience of doctoring except what he had learned from books and as a student in London, and very little more experience of women or human nature either. Now, forty-nine years of age, widely experienced, correspondent of famous men, called up to London sometimes for consultation, it was rumoured, and married to an heiress and living in one of the big houses, he still made time to slow his horse and chat.

  ‘If you wonder for me spade,’ volunteered Stephen, ‘I work two days a week on St Ann’s pier. It is in a poor way after the storms. Many of the granite blocks is part dislodged.’

  ‘I doubt they’ll ever make it secure against the worst gales,’ Dwight said. ‘There’s not enough of a natural barrier provided by the cliffs. At least not from the north-west. The wind brings the waves directly in upon it.’

  ‘He’ll never stand,’ said Music in his thin alto voice; ‘the wind bring the waves directly in upon him.’

  ‘I came round this way,’ Stephen said, ‘to leave a message for Music. Music works in the stables at Place House, y’ know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘His brothers be going to take out their boat tonight – they have her at St Ann’s – but Art has taken this fever that is abroad, so he can’t go. They want – John and his mates want Music to take his place.’

  ‘Gwan fetch my gear,’ said Music. ‘He’m all over to Grambler, you. Brother say, be over by sundown. Can just do that, I reckon.’

  Dwight looked at the sky. ‘There’s wind about somewhere.’

  Music smiled. ‘Nay, tis narthin’. He’m only dappled mackerel, sur. He’ll pipe up for a while when the sun d’ drop, but twill all be over in a hour or two.’

  ‘Wish I was going with ’em,’ said Stephen. ‘I’ve never had aught to do with fishing but I’d like a night afloat.’

  ‘Shall you go back to sea in the end?’

  Stephen glanced at Dwight to see if the question was loaded. Concluding it was not, he said: ‘It depends, Dr Enys. Sooner or later maybe. But living here, it is like being at sea.’

  ‘On the whole I prefer to be a landlubber.’

  ‘You can hardly call yourself that, surgeon.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, you being once in the Navy.’

  Dwight laughed. ‘It seems a long time ago.’

  The direct track to Sawle Combe came into view, and Stephen went off down it, spade on shoulder, his gait, it seemed, a little more rolling for the talk of being afloat. Music’s gait continued as of a man making a carefree way through a minefield.

  ‘Surgeon.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s what Stephen Carrington d’call ee. Surgeon. I like that. Could I call ee surgeon too?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  ‘You bein’ once in the Navy, sur.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Dwight watched Stephen disappear down the hill. He wondered why Stephen had seemed a little over-anxious to explain his presence near Place House. Why should he? What did it matter? Or was he imagining something that hadn’t been there?

  ‘Surgeon.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s amiss wi’ me, surgeon?’ Music Thomas asked, smiling.

  ‘Amiss? I don’t know that anything is. Are you not well?’

  ‘Oh, ais. Brave. Sur. Surgeon . . . Ha! Sur be short for surgeon, eh?’

  ‘If you like to look on it that way.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be insolent, sur. You d’know Parson Odgers? . . . You d’know what he d’say ’bout me once? He say I be in the front rank of the insolent squad. Tedn my intention, like! Tedn my wish to be in the insolent squad! It be just that I don’t always knows just ’ow to be’ave, see?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So if I d’say surgeon when I didn’t ought to, tis not a wish I ’ave to be in the insolent squad . . .’ He tiptoed a few yards in silence. ‘Sur, what be amiss wi’ me?’

  ‘You haven’t told me what is wrong with you?’

  ‘I never ’ad no sickness in me life, not ever, see? But folk d’laugh at me! Boys d’jeer. Girls . . .’ Still smiling, Music swallowed his large adam’s apple as if he had a quinsy. ‘Even Brothers. Both on em! They treat me like I were half an eedgit! Mebbe I aren’t a one for schoolin’, but I aren’t a lubber-head neither! I think to myself, mebbe surgeons know.’

  They went on a way without further conversation. Dwight glanced at the young man. He was about twenty, and outward signs were that he had not yet come to puberty. He was altogether an unusual figure, with his walk, his tall stooping weedy figure, and his voice; and country villages seldom took kindly – or silently – to the unusual. Dwight had always looked on him as a hollow young man. There was certainly nothing wrong with his counter-tenor voice when it soared in church, but in speech or in laughter it sounded false, empty of feeling. Sometimes too his eyes were empty, hollow, as if sentience had left them. One knew the look so well in the young man or woman who walked crooked and dribbled at the mouth and had fits: there were enough of such about, products of a brother–sister or father–daughter parentage, or of a midwife’s mishandling at birth or any other of a dozen misalignments. Dwight had always put Music down as a borderline case: demonstrably odd but not quite a simpleton. He had got himself into mischief once or twice but so far had kept out of the hands of the law.

  But this question he was putting . . . Some simpletons, in Dwight’s experience, were sensitive enough; but to them it was the world that was at fault, not themselves. It seemed that Music felt that the fault was in himself and vaguely detected the causes. It put him in a different category. And if Dwight was not mistaken, it was something new. As if he had only just come to realize his peculiarities.

  ‘Do you shave, Music?’

  ‘Well . . . more or less, sur. Most times I cut’n off wi scissors. If I go Barber ’e d’make game.’

  ‘Your voice has not yet broken. That is unusual in a man.’

  ‘Drop ’n on the floor and scat’n to jowds,’ said Music with a secret smile.

  ‘When you walk, why do you not put your heels down?’

  ‘When I were a tacker I walked on some ’ot coals. When it ’ealed over twas tender for so long I got into this way o’ walking.’

  ‘So if you got into this way of walking you could get out of it?’

  ‘Couldn’ now,’ said Music, a cloud coming over his face.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Couldn’ now.’

  Four small boys were working a field with two teams of oxen and were chanting their usual encouragement. ‘Now then, Beauty, come on, Tartar; now then, Britain, come along, Cloudy; now then, Beauty, come on, Tartar; now then, Britain, come along, Cloudy.’ They could have been young novitiates at their plainsong. Then one of them spoiled it by seeing Music and whistling rudely through his fingers.

  Dwight said: ‘In this world people – folk – do not like what is different from themselves. To be happy perhaps it is necessary to be as nearly like everyone else as possible. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Ais, I reckon.’

  ‘Because you are different they make fun. It is – a form of ignorance, but you cannot change it. But perhaps you can change yourself. Have you ever tried to talk – deeper, more in the back of the throat?’

  ‘Nay.’

  ‘Try. You don’t need to – what is it? – drop it on the floor and scat it to jowds. A man I knew once in London had just such a voice as yours for singing, but in speech his voice was as deep and firm as the next man’s. It might be worth your trying.’

  ‘They’d laugh the more.’

  ‘Possibly. But they could not laugh so much if you altered your way of
walking too.’

  Music’s attention appeared to be straying, as if the act of concentration could not be sustained too long. Or perhaps it was because Dwight’s replies were unwelcome to him.

  ‘When I walk on me ’eels,’ he said, ‘I d’feel like a duck.’

  ‘Perhaps you would for a while.’

  ‘Ducks d’walk on their ’eels. Quack, quack! Same as ’ens. Same as geese.’

  ‘Human beings – most of them – use both heel and toe. That’s the important thing.’

  They would soon be in Grambler village. Dwight said: ‘Well, I must be getting along.’

  ‘Surgeon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s amiss wi’ me?’

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘I can’t be sure. I would have to examine you.’

  ‘’Xamine me? What do that mean?’

  ‘If I looked at your feet I could probably tell you whether there was any malfunction – whether there was anything wrong with the ligaments of your feet which made it impossible to use your heels. That sort of thing.’

  After a moment Music said: ‘I got feelins just like normal.’ And laughed in embarrassment.

  ‘Good. Well, try what I have suggested. If you make no progress come to see me and I will see if I can advise you further.’

  Music touched his forelock and stepped back as Dwight urged his horse into a trot along the muddy stinking lane that divided the cottages. Music rubbed his long nose and watched him go. Then gingerly he lowered himself on to his heels as if afraid something in his feet might break.

  As Dwight went on he guessed he had scared the young man off for life. Any talk of an examination was enough to frighten the villagers away, especially if they did not feel ill. It was like the threat of the knife.

  All the same, Dwight reflected, if this did not occur and Music persisted with his questions, the sort of simple examination he had in mind would have to take place in the presence of some other doctor or apothecary. Otherwise, Dwight knew the sort of stories that might spread.

  Chapter Three

  I

  On March 1 Mary Warleggan, née Lashbrook, died. She was eighty. Her long life had spanned the rise of the Warleggans. Her small money when he married her had enabled Nicholas Warleggan to finance his first enterprises, and she had lived to inhabit a mansion near the river Fal, a splendid town house in Truro, to see her son one of the most powerful and most feared men in Cornwall, a Member of Parliament, a knight and an owner of a pocket borough.

  A simple woman whom riches had changed little, content with the simple pleasures of life when her husband and son allowed her to be, slow, intensely superstitious, warmhearted in a village way, wanting no thoughts beyond the comfort and sustenance of her family, ambitious only when told to be, and then with reluctance, she died slowly but without pain, her last conscious thought being regret that the conserves were not keeping as well as usual (had they not been boiled long enough?) and that she would never now see her beloved little Ursula in her first ball gown. On March 5, the day after the funeral, Sir George rode to see Lady Harriet Carter and, finding her at home, proposed marriage.

  He said with a thin smile: ‘It may seem a little hurried to come to you in this way so close on top of a bereavement, but it is not a wife I mourn. She . . . went long ago. I flatter myself – I trust not unduly – that during the last half year we have come to an understanding of each other which will not cause this request to seem premature or abrupt for any other reasons. I am not, as I have told you, yet in the affluence I would have liked to be before I spoke to you. Thanks to unwise speculations in the Manchester district, undertaken—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in her husky, drawling voice, ‘you have explained why you undertook them.’

  ‘It may be five years before I am as prosperous as I was before; but there is no risk now, no likelihood of my remaining anything but well-situated in a modest but substantial way; and you, I know, have made it clear that money could never be the deciding factor in your choice . . . My mother’s death – so grievous as it is – leaves Cardew without a chatelaine. I would ask you to take it – and me.’

  She did not smile at this but lifted her black eyebrows. ‘Are you inviting me to be your housekeeper or your wife?’

  He was not put out. ‘Both. But you should know by now how earnestly I would wish you to be the latter.’

  ‘Do I? Should I? By what means? Have you ever expressed, except in words, such an ambition?’

  ‘In what other way would you wish me to express it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ She smoothed her frock with strong, well-kept fingers. ‘I know that we are supposed to be members of the genteel landed gentry – would you so describe it? – but however reticent such a class may be – and observation of it suggests to me it is not really reticent when it comes to the point – the functional processes of humanity still prevail. Have you ever kissed me – tried to kiss me – on the mouth, I mean? Is there not a distinct hazard that the closer contact implicit in my becoming your wife might turn out to be distasteful to you when it was too late to change – or distasteful to me, even? For women have just as strong preferences as men, and are not, as I have pointed out, always swayed by thoughts of material advantage.’

  He looked at her carefully, but she was staring out at the wind-tossed day. He suspected that, now it had come to the point, she was making a token show of reluctance, of resistance. (Her thoughts, on at least one other occasion – last Christmas – had seemed to be perfectly clear.) She was a woman like any other, and as such was the subject of whim and errant impulse, which could soon be overborne.

  Yet could he be absolutely sure? Perhaps his manner had been stiff. Unprogressively punctilious. In dealing with the daughter of a duke he had tended to remain on his best behaviour. How change it now?

  ‘Very well, Harriet,’ he said, ‘if you will stand up I will certainly do my best to convince you that we are not – distasteful to each other.’

  ‘Why should I stand up? Do you not think a kneeling attitude would be more suitable for this occasion?’

  He almost did; and then suddenly was certain she would esteem him less if he accepted her suggestion. So he got up and took her hand. She looked up at him with a contemptuous glance. He pulled her to her feet. As they were kissing she suddenly laughed, so that her breath was on his cheek. Then she kissed him back.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose it is no worse than a cold bath. One can get used to it.’

  One of the giant boarhounds snoozing near the fire looked up and gave a throaty cough, like a lion.

  ‘Quiet, Pollux,’ said Harriet. ‘He is not used to seeing his mistress handled by a man. They were but puppies when the infamous Toby was alive.’

  George eyed the two dogs with distaste. They were something he had not quite bargained for when he made the first approaches to her. He disliked dogs on principle. (There was also another strange animal with great eyes, tiny but ugly, that swung sometimes from the curtains.) No doubt they could all be kept in the stables after the wedding.

  ‘The first of May?’ he said. ‘Would that be suitable?’

  ‘I believe you are mentally opening your diary. Close it and let us talk for a while.’

  ‘More talk? Certainly if you wish. But what is it you want to talk about?’

  ‘Anything. Nothing. Do you not ever indulge in bavarderie? . . . Idle chatter,’ she hastened to explain.

  ‘Of course. Not perhaps when I am waiting for an answer to one of the most important questions of my life.’

  Even now he could not exaggerate, say it was the most important. The most important had been on the 14th March, 1793. She moved a little away from him, which was not difficult for he had taken his hands off her shoulders when the dog growled.

  ‘Tell me, George, why do you have such a fearsome reputation in Cornwall? You have never shown a sign of earning it in my company.’

  ‘Fearsom
e? My name is respected! It’s impossible to be enterprising, progressive in a county such as this without making some enemies. But they bark and snap to no account.’

  ‘My aunt tells me your name creates fear and apprehension in some circles. Small traders, mining venturers and the like.’ In fact her aunt had said nothing of the kind. (At an earlier stage she had said: ‘If you intend to marry an upstart, why don’t you at least choose one with the makings of a gentleman.’)

  George said: ‘I trust you asked your aunt if I had a fearsome reputation with women.’

  ‘No, I did not, and I don’t suppose you have.’

  ‘Perhaps you would prefer it if I were a notorious rake.’

  ‘Having been married to one, perhaps not. Rather am I anxious to assure myself that once we are married you will not just write me down as an item in your ledger book.’

  This was rather near home, and he was conscious that his face was showing annoyance. With an effort he wiped it off.

  ‘No, Harriet, I truly love you, and ask you to marry me for that reason only. I never thought to remarry until I met you. Since then it has been my consuming wish. Even though you despise money—’

  ‘Very, very, very far from it!’

  ‘Even though you say you are not affected by the sort of affluence your husband can claim, if you suppose me to be a man much preoccupied by his financial affairs, then as a part of that supposition you must equally admit that I risked – and lost – a great fortune in order to have a better claim to your hand. You cannot have it both ways, Harriet!’

  She smiled. ‘You know women always want it both ways. But I take your meaning. And am suitably impressed. Did you say the first of May? What day of the week would that be?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Could the engagement be kept secret for another month?’

  ‘If you wish it. But . . .’

  ‘I do wish it. But if that is adhered to, then may I say, dear George, that all this is agreeable to me?’

  They embraced again. And again the dog growled. George found the embrace a far from unpleasant experience. She had a feminine-feeling body – more so than might have been supposed by her robust manner and neck-or-nothing attitude both on and off the hunting field. It pleased him. In little more than eight weeks he would have this woman sharing his bed, in a nightdress which would soon be taken off, and he would possess, with all the pent-up passion of his fifty-two years, the daughter and the sister of a duke. He was very glad that he had held his tongue this afternoon when tempted by her delicate jibes to reply in kind.