Read Online The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham - Free Book Online Page A

He'll do that, of course. But I felt I wanted to speak to you first - break the news ... which may not be good news for you and Mama.'
    'Why should it not be?'
    'Well, Stephen is - has no money; and as you know, he has no proper employment. He... has no pedigree—oh, I know you don't want that as such - you and Mama are above that—but if I had a daughter I should want to know something of the parents of the man she was going to marry. Stephen himself knows little. I think you all like him in a way. But perhaps not enough to wish him to become one of the family.'
    'But you love him?'
    'Yes.'
    'Then surely is that not sufficient?' 'You're very sweet, Papa. Is that how you truly feel? Is that how you will be to him?' Ross glanced away from her earnest gaze. Flicking through his mind, like the scenes of his life before a dying man, went memories of twenty years of fatherhood: the ineffable trust, the endearing love, the family squabbles, the uninhibited laughter, the intimate but sometimes prickly comradeship. And now she was in love - with a stranger. Not merely a stranger to the family, for anyone she married would be that, to begin at any rate (the closer one's family was, the more it risked in disruption), but a stranger from a distant county whose views and opinions from now on would automatically rank as more important to her than all the ties and loyalties of childhood. Was there even this evening a hint of hostility in her? - as if nature demanded a cleavage at this point, a clean fresh break between the old and the new, like an insert, a butterfly breaking away from its chrysalis. Something inherent in nature: one forced one's way out from the enclosing confines of family, turned one's back , marched on.
    'If I am being sweet to you,' he said, 'as you say I am - then you cannot expect me to be as sweet to him. You are my eldest daughter, much beloved; I must test him in any way I can to be sure that he cares as you care. If I light a fire under him it will be for your good. I must know, be positively convinced, about the way he regards you and how he is going to maintain you.'
    She was silent, still looking at him. 'What could he say that would convince you?'
    'I don't know. I shall wait to hear.'
    Clowance got up, picked up a primrose that had fallen out of a bowl, replaced it She wanted to say much more, talk to her father, explain, argue with him, tell him everything she could, if necessary in an emotional outburst His quiet acceptance of the news, though a vast relief, left her with not enough to say. There was a sort of vacuum. Sh e wanted to fight Stephen's battl es for him.
    'He's thirty,' she said sternly.
    'And you're not yet eighteen...'
    'Papa, he's the only man.'
    'The only one you have seen so far.'
    'I believe,' Clowance said, 'Mama was not yet eighteen when she married you. And I do not believe all her life she has ever looked elsewhere.'
    'But once,' said Ross.
    'Oh?' Clowance was suddenly alert.
    'And then but briefly. It was unimportant.'
    'Well, then. That is what I mean.'
    ‘ it does not follow. But it could follow. I would be happy —happier - if I felt sure of him; not of you.'
    These silly lies that are spread about him...'
    ‘I hadn't heard them.'
    'Any woman—any man - takes a risk in marriage. It's the risk we want to take.'
    Ross got up and began to draw the curtains. 'Well, I suppose it can be a while yet.'
    'Not long, if you will permit it, Papa. We have waited already.'
    'Waited!'
    The sudden steel in his tone made her jump. 'Well, it seems so to us. There was the first few months he was here -when you did not see him at all. And then there has been another eight months now. I... have tried to be sensible. Have I not? You must admit it! I think it was first sight with us both. But I went to London with Aunt Caroline a year last January - and then to Bowood this last July. Both times I tried to see it as a way of proving to myself whether I loved him or not. Both times it was the