The Miller's Dance Read Free Page A

impossible to explain to him her own mixed feelings, the overwhelming lure of his physical attraction warring with all her loyalties to upbringing, family and friends-with the added weight of little doubts about his attitude towards other women that could not altogether be set aside.
    She said:'Perhaps next week.'
    'Too far o ff. I want to see you tomorrow.’
    'No.'
    'Then Wednesday.'
    'No ... Friday I might, perhaps. I could go and see the Paynters, come on from there.' 'What time would it be?' 'About five.'
    'I'll be waiting. Don't fail me, will you.' 'I'll try to be there,' said Clowance, knowing well that she would.
     
    II
     
    The winter had been a draughty comfortless one but without severe cold. Its relative mildness had prevented some of the worst privations in the stricken English north; and even in the Iberian peninsula, where each side had gone into winter quarters exhausted after the bloody fights and sieges of the last year, the weather was not so icy as usual.
    Throughout a long campaign of desperate battles for hills and bridges and towns in Spain and Portugal one theme had predominated. Wherever Wellington was there victory was. Each of Napoleon's great marshals had taken him on in turn and each in turn had given way, having got the worst of it.
    Not yet had the ennobled general come into direct conflict with the greatest soldier of them all, but that might occur any time in the next campaign. Although Napoleon still ruled Europe, Englishmen everywhere held their heads higher. Splendid news had come in from the Far East too, where an expeditionary force of 3,500 men under General Auchmuchty had defeated 10,000 Dutch, French a nd Javanese troops and conquered Java - almost the last and certainly the richest French possession overseas. The picture was changing, for the Czar Alexander was at his most enigmatic and unyielding and Bonaparte was threatening I that dire punishments should fall upon the Russians.
    At home the King was sunk in his senility and the Prince Regent persisted in his folly of reposing his confidence in his old enemies the Tories and the government of the inefficient and ineffectual Spencer Perceval. Or so the Whigs felt. A year ago when he first became Regent the Prince had abruptly stated that he did not wish to risk making the change of government because his father might recover his sanity any day and be infinitely distressed and wrathful to find his own ministers dismissed. But as time wore on this showed up more an d more for the miserable excuse most of his thwarted friends had all along supposed it to be. Having supported the opposition Whigs against his father's Tories all his adult life, the Prince, on the very brink of his accession, had had second thoughts, had held back, trembled on the brink of seeing Grey and Grenville and Whit-bread and Brougham in office with the prospect of much-needed reform in England but a patched-up peace with France to go with it. Many straws in the wind might have swayed him at the last moment - even, however minimally, an interview with a certain Cornish soldier—only he knew how far one consideration and another had weighed.
    Of course the Opposition, being patriots at heart, had changed their tune about the prospects of Wellington in the Peninsula, and most of them took a more optimistic attitude towards the war than they had done twelve months a go. Yet mere were many among men still who pointed out that Bonaparte's set-backs were pinpricks when one observed me extent of his empire. In all Europe only Russia, sulkily obstinate, and Portugal, newly liberated, were not under Napoleon's heel. Half the countries of Europe were at war with England, and none of her manufactured products was allowed to be landed at any port. Ten thousand customs officers existed to see the law observed. Discovered contraband was seized, and often the ships that brought it burned as a lesson to all that the Emperor's edicts must be obeyed.
    To make matters worse England