The Four Swans (7 page)

`I wish Sam had gone with him.’

`I expect Sam will go over often enough.’

Sam went over often enough throughout those early months, and sometimes when the, weather, was bad spent the night there; but his own flock made many claims on him. And those outside his flock too. It was necessary in Sam’s view, always to practise what you preached. One must follow Christ by ministering to the sick of body as well as of soul. And although this winter was benign compared to last, conditions in some ways were worse. The price of wheat was 110 shillings a quarter and still rising. Half naked children with tumid bellies sat crouching in fireless dripping windy hovels. Hunger and disease were everywhere.

One morning, a brilliant clear cold morning of late February, Sam, having slept at Pally’s Shop, left with an hour to spare to reach Wheal Grace in time, for his core, so he stopped in Grambler at an isolated and run-down cottage where he knew almost all the family was ill. The man, Verney, had worked first at Grambler Mine, then when that closed at Wheal Leisure, on the cliffs. Since that too closed he had been on parish relief, but Jim Verney had refused to go in which meant separating from his wife, or to allow any of his boys to be apprenticed as paupers, knowing that that could mean semi-slavery.

But this morning Sam found that the fever had separated them where man could not. Jim Verney had died in the night, and he found Lottie Verney trying to get her man ready for burying. But there was only the one room and the one bed, and in the bed beside the corpse-of his father the youngest boy lay tossing and turning, sick with the same fever; while at the foot the eldest boy was, lying weak and pale but on the way to recovery. In a washing; tray beside the bed was the middle boy, also dead. They had no food, nor fire, nor help; so although the stench was unbearable, Sam stayed with them a half-hour doing what he could for the young widow. Then he went across the rutted track to the last cottage in the village to, tell Jud Paynter there were two more for the paupers’ grave..

Jud Paynter grunted and blew through his teeth; and said there were nine in this one already. One more and he’d fill it in whether or no. Leave it too long and the gulls’d get in, spite of the lime and spite of the boards he put down across she hole. Or dogs. There was a dirty hound been on the gammut these last weeks. Always sniffing and ranting around. He’d get him yet. Sam backed out of the cottage and went to leave a message with the doctor.

Dr Thomas Choake’s house, Fernmore, was back on his tracks barely a half mile, but one moved in that time from desperate poverty to quiet plenty. Even ten paces from the foetid little shack made all the difference; for the air outside was biting clear and biting cold. There had been a frost in the night but the sun was quickly thawing it. Spiders’ webs spangled the melting dew. Seagulls screamed in the high remote sky, partly in control of themselves, partly at the behest of the wind. Surf tumbled and muttered in the distance. A day to be alive, with food in your belly and youth in your limbs. ‘Glory be to the Lord Jesus!’ said Sam, and went on his way.

He knew of course that Choake did not concern himself much with the poor, but this was a neighbourly problem and such dire distress merited some special attention. Fernmore was little more than a farmhouse but it was: dignified by its own grounds, its own drive, its group of wind-blown and elderly pine trees. Sam went to the back door. It was opened by a tall maidservant with the boldest, most candid eyes he had ever seen.

Not at all abashed - for what had shyness to do with proclaiming the kingdom of God? Sam smiled his slow sad smile at her and told her what he wished her to tell the doctor. That two people, two of the Verneys, were dead in their cottage hard by, and that help was much needed for the youngest, who ran a hectic fever and coughed repeatedly and had blotches about the cheeks and mouth. Would surgeon have a mind to see them?

The girl looked him over carefully from head to foot, as if assessing everything about him, then told him to wait while she asked. Sam pulled his muffler more tightly round his throat and tapped his foot against a stone to keep warm and thought of the sadness of mortal life but of the power of immortal grace until she came back.

`Surgeon says you’ve to carry this back, and he’ll come seethe Verneys later in the morning. See? So off with you now.’

Sam took a bottle of viscous, green liquid. She had the whitest skin and the blackest hair, with tinges of red-copper in it as if it had been dyed.

`To swallow?’ he said. `Be this for the lad to swallow or—’.

‘To rub in, lug. Chest an’ back: Chest an’ back. What else? An’ surgeon says t’ave the two shillings ready when ‘e call.’

He thanked the girl and turned away. He expected the door so slam but it did not, and he knew she was standing watching him. All down the short stone path, slippery with half-melted frost, he was wrestling with the impulse which by the time he had made the eight or nine paces to the gate had grown too strong for him. He knew that it would be wrong to resist this impulse; but he knew that in yielding to it he risked misunderstanding in speaking so to a woman of his own age.

He stopped and turned back. She had her hands on her elbows and was staring at him. He moistened his lips and said : `Sister,, how is your soul? Are ee a stranger to divine things?’

She did not move,` just looked at him with eyes slightly wider. She was such a handsome girl, without being exactly pretty, and she was only a few inches shorter than he was.

`What d’you mean, lug?’

`Forgive me,’ he said. `But I got a deep concern for your salvation. Has the Searcher of hearts never moved in ee?’

She bit her lip. `My dear life and body! I never seen the likes of you before. There’s many, tried other ways but never this ! Come from Redruth fair, av ee?’

`I’m from Reath Cottage,’ he said stolidly. `Over to Mellin. We been there nigh on two year, brother and me. But now he..’

`Oh, so there’s another like you ! Shoot me if I seen the equal.’

‘Why?’

‘Sister, we have meetings thrice-weekly at Reath Cottage where we d’read the gospel and open our hearts t’-each other. Ye’d be welcomed by all. We’d pray together. If so be as you’re a stranger so happiness, an unawakened soul, wi’out God and wi’out hope in the world, we would go down on our knees together and seek our Redeemer.’

`I’ll be seeking the dogs to come after you,’ she said, suddenly contemptuous. `I wonder surgeon don’t give folk like you rat’s bane ! I would an’ all?’

‘Mebbe it d’seem hard for you. But if once your soul be drawn out t’understand the promise of forgiveness and-‘

`Cock’s life !’ she shouted. `You really think you can get: me to a praying feast?’

`Sister, I offer ee this only for the sake of –’

`And I tell ‘ee to be off, lug a Tell your old wives’ fables to them as wishes to hark to them!’

She slammed the door in his face. He stared at the wood for a moment, then philosophically began to walk back to the Verneys with his bottle of lotion. He would have to leave 2s with them to pay the surgeon when he called.

Having done this, he quickened his pace, for the height of the sun told him, it was time he was at the mine. His partner, Peter Hoskin, was waiting, and together they climbed down the series of inclining ladders to the forty fathom level, and stooped through narrow tunnels and echoing caves until they reached the level they were driving southwest in the direction of the old Wheal Maiden workings.

Sam and Peter Hoskin were old friends, having been born in the neighbouring villages of Pool and Illuggan and having wrestled together as boys. They worked together now as tut men; that is on a constant wage per fathom excavated, paid by the mine owner; they were not tributers who struck bargains with the management to excavate promising or already discovered ground and received an agreed share of the proceeds of the ore they raised.

Their work at present, driving away from the main excavations, was made more difficult because, as the distance from the air shafts increased, it became harder to sustain a good day’s work without moving out of the tunnel every hour or so to fill their lungs with oxygen. This morning, having picked away’ all that had been broken yesterday, and having carried it away and tipped it’ in the nearest cave or `plot’, they had recourse to more, gunpowder.

They put in the charge and squatted on their haunches until the explosive went off and sent reverberatory echoes and booms back along all the shafts and tunnels and wynds, with shivers and wafts of hot air from which they had to shelter their candles. As soon as the echoes died away they went back, climbed over the debris and fallen rubble and began to waft the fumes away with their shirts to peer through to see how much rock had come down. Inhaling this smoke was one of the chief causes of lung disease, but if you waited until the fumes dispersed in this draughtless hot tunnel it meant twenty minutes wasted every time you used explosive.

During the morning as they worked Sam thought more than once of the bold, defiant but candid face of the girl who had come to the door at the doctor’s. All souls, he knew, were equally precious in the sight of God; all must kneel together at the throne of grace, waiting like captives to be set free; yet to one who like himself sought to save a few among so many, some seemed necessarily more worth the saving than others. She, to Sam, seemed worth the saving. It might be a sin, so to discriminate. He must pray about it.

Yet all leaders - and he in his infinitely small way had been appointed a leader - all leaders must try to see into the souls of those they met, and in looking must discern so far as he was able the potentiality of the person so encountered. How else did Jesus choose his disciples? He too had discriminated. A fisherman, a tax collector, and so on. There could be no wrong in doing what Our Lord had done.

Yet her rejection had been absolute. One would have to pray about that too. Through the power of grace there had been convulsions of spirit and conversions far more dramatic than might be needed here. ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?’

At croust they moved out of the bad end into the cooler and less contaminated air of a disused cave which had been worked three years ago for copper before tin was discovered in the sixty level. Here they put on their shirts, took off their hats, sat down, and by the smeeching light of the tallow candles spent a half-hour over their meal. Munching his thick cold, pasty, Peter Hoskin began to chaff Sam about Drake’s new property and asked politely if he could have the grass captain’s job when Captain Poldark bought Sam a mine of his own. Sam bore this equably, as he often had to bear jokes about his religious life from other miners who were hardy unbelievers and meant to stay that way. His even temper had stood him in good stead many times. With an abiding conviction of the redemption of the world, it made little difference to him that some should scoff. He smiled quietly at them and thought no worse of them at all.

But presently he interrupted Peter’s mouth-filled banter by saying he had been to surgeon’s that morning to get aid for the Verneys, and that a maidservant had opened the door, tall and handsome but bold looking with white skin and blackish hair. Did Peter know who twas?

Peter, having been in the district a year longer than Sam, and having mixed in different company, knew well enough who twas. He sputtered some crumbs on his breeches and said that without a trace of doubt this would be Emma Tregirls, Lobb Tregirls’s sister, him that worked a stamp in Sawle Combe, and daughter of that old scoundrel Bartholomew Tregirls who had but recent found himself a comfortable home at Sally Chill-Off’s.

`Tholly went wi’ your brother Drake and Cap’n Poldark on that French caprouse. You mind last year when Joe Nanfan were killed and they corned back wi’ the young doctor.’

`Aye; I mind well. I should do !’

`Tholly went on that. Old devil ‘e be, if ever I seen one. E’d not live long round these here parts if some folk ‘ad their way.’

`And Emma?’

Peter wet his forefinger and, began to pick up the, crumbs he had spattered on his breeches. `Cor, that’s better now. I were nation thurled for that. I ‘ad scarce a’ bite for supper last eve, Emma? Emma Tregirls? Reg’lar piece. You want to be warned, you do. Half the boys of the village be tail-on-end ‘bout she.’

`Not wed?’

`Not wed, nor like to be, I’d say. There be always one man or another over-fanged ‘bout Emma; but gracious knows whether they get what they come for. She d’go mopping around but she never had no brat yet, not’s I know. Bit of a Mystery. Bit of a mystery. But that d’make the lads all the more randy…’

Sam was silent then until they resumed work. He thought quietly about it all. God moved in a mysterious way. He would not presume to question the workings of the Holy Spirit. Nor would he attempt to direct them himself. In due course all would be revealed to him.. But had there not also been Mary Magdalen?

On a sunny February afternoon which, although fine and bright, had all day had a, hint of frost lingering in it like a chill breath, the stage coach, on, the last leg ofits journey from Bodmin to Truro, stopped about a mile out of the-town: and deposited two young girls at the mouth of a lane leading down to the river. Waiting to meet them was a tall, graceful, shy young woman who in the last months had become known to the inhabitants of the town as the new wife of the vicar of St Margaret’s.

The young woman, who was accompanied by a manservant, embraced the two girls ecstatically, tears welling into her eyes but not falling; and presently they began to walk, together, down the steep lane, followed by the manservant with a trunk, and a, valise belonging to the girls. They chattered. continuously, and the manservant, who was accustomed to his mistress being excessively reserved and silent, was astonished to hear her taking a full part in the conversation, and actually laughing. It was a surprising sound.

As sisters they were not noticeably like - except perhaps in the fancy names which their father, an incurable romantic, had given them. The eldest and married one, Morwenna, was dark, with a dark skin, beautiful soft short-sighted eyes, of moderate looks but with a noble figure, just beginning to thicken now with the child she carried. The second sister, Garlanda, who had only come to bring her youngest sister and was returning to Bodmin on the next coach, was sturdy, , country-built, with candid blue eyes, thick irrepressible brown hair growing short, a vivid way of moving and speaking and an odd deep voice that sounded like a boy’s just after it had broken.