The Four Swans

  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 shilling ready when ’e call.’

  He thanked the girl and turned away. He expected the door to 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 to 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! 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 south-west 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 comed 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 Magdalene?

  Chapter Four

  I

  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 of its journey from Bodmin to Truro, stopped about a mile out of 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 alike – 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 shortsighted 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.

  The youngest of the family, Rowella, not yet fifteen, was nearly as tall as Morwenna, but thin, her general colouring a mouse brown, her eyes set close together over a long thin nose. She had very fine skin, a sly look, sandy eyebrows, an underlip that tended to tremble, and the best brain in the family.

  At the foot of the hill was a cluster of thatched cottages, a lych gate, the old granite church which dated from 1326, and beyond that the vicarage, a pleasant square house looking on to the river. They went in, dusted the mud and melting frost from their skirts and entered the parlour for tea. There the Reverend Osborne Whitworth joined them. Ossie was a big man with a voice accustomed to making itself heard but, in spite of the fashionable extravagance of his clothes, clumsy in the presence of women. Although he had had two wives, his understanding of the opposite sex was limited by his lack of imagination. He saw women mainly as objects, differently attired from himself, suitable to receive unmeant compliments, mothers of children, static but useful vehicles for perpetuating the human race, and frequently but only briefly as the nude objects of his desire. Had he known of Calvin’s remark that women are created to bear children and to die of it, he would probably have agreed.

  At least his first wife had so died, leaving him with two small daughters; and he had taken speedy steps to replace her with a new one. He had chosen one whose body appealed to him physically and whose marriage portion, thanks to the generosity of her cousin-by-marriage, Mr George Warleggan, had helped him wipe off past debts and improve his future standard of living. So far so good.

  But it had been borne in even upon his obtuseness over the last few months that his new wife was not relishing her marriage or her new position. In a sense he was prepared for a ‘going off’ in women after marriage, for his first wife, though welcoming their physical union to begin with, had shown a decreasing willingness to receive his attentions; and although she had never made the least attempt to refuse him there had been a certain resignation in her manner which had not pleased him too well.

  But with Morwenna it had never been anything else. He had known – indeed she had declared before marriage – that she did not ‘love’ him. He had dismissed this as a female quibble, something that could easily be got over in the marriage bed: he had enough confidence in his own male attraction to feel that such maidenly hesitations on her part would be soon overcome. But although she submitted to his large attentions five times a week – not Saturdays or Sundays – her submissiveness at times came near to that of a martyr at the stake. He seldom looked at her face when in the act, but occasional glimpses showed her mouth drawn, her eyebrows contorted; often afterwards she would shiver and shudder uncontrollably. He would have liked to believe that this came from pleasure – though women were not really supposed to get pleasure out of it – but the look in her eyes, when he caught it, showed all too clearly that this was not so.

  Her manner annoyed him and made him irritable. Sometimes it led him into little cruelties, physical cruelties, of which afterwards he was ashamed. She performed her simple duties about the house well enough; she attended to the calls of the parish, frequently being out when he expected her to be in; she was fond of his daughters and they, after a probationary period, of her; she attended church, tall and slender – well, fairly slender anyhow; she sat at his table and ate his food; she wore in her own undistinguished way the clothes he had had made for her; she discussed church affairs with him, sometimes even town affairs; when he went to a reception – such as the Penvenen wedding – she was at his side. She did not chatter at meals like Esther, she did not complain when she was unwell, she did not fritter money away on trivialities, she had a dignity that his first wife had quite lacked. Indeed she might have been the sort of woman he would be thoroughly pleased with, if the unfortunate but necessarily main purpose of matrimony could have been ignored.

  It could not. Last week when performing the wedding ceremony in his own church he had allowed his mind to wander from its immediate task and ponder a moment on his own marriage and the three purposes for which the Prayer Book said matrimony had been ordained. The first, the procreation of children, was already being fulfilled. The third, for the mutual comfort and society, etc., was fair enough; she was there most times and did his will. It was the second which was the stumbling block. ‘. . . a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.’ Well, he had not the gift of continency, and she was there to save him from fornication. It was not for her to shiver and shudder at his touch. ‘Wives,’ St Paul bad said, ‘submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.’ He had said it both in his Epistle to the Ephesians and in his Epistle to the Colossians. It was not for her to look on her husband’s body with horror and disgust.

  So at times she goaded him into sin. Sometimes he hurt her when he need not. Once he had twisted her feet in his hands until she cried out; but that must not happen again. It had troubled him in the night. He blamed her for that.

  But today in the presence of three young women he was at his best. Secure in his dignity – he had told Morwenna before they came that they must call him Mr Whitworth to his face but must always refer to him among others as the Vicar – he could unbend and be clumsily genial. He stood on the hearthrug with his hands behind his back and his coat-tails over his arms and talked to them of parish affairs and the shortcomings of the town, while they sipped tea and murmured replies and laughed politely at his jokes. Then, unbending still further, he told them in detail of a hand of cards he had played last night, and Morwenna breathed again, for to confide in this way was always a sign of his approval. He played whist three nights a week: it was his abiding passion, and the play of the previous night was his customary topic at breakfast.

  Before l
eaving them to their own devices he clearly thought it necessary to correct any impression of lightness in his manner or conversation and so launched into a summary of his views on the war, England’s food shortage, the dangerous spread of discontent, the debasement of money, and the opening of a new burial ground in Truro. Thus having done his duty, he rang the bell for the servant to clear away the tea – Garlanda had not quite finished – and left them, to return to his study.

  It was a time before normal conversation broke out again between the three girls, and then it was centred wholly upon the affairs of Bodmin and news they could exchange of friends in common. The sunny-tempered, outspoken, practical Garlanda was aching to ask all the questions she would normally have asked, all about preparations for the coming baby, and was Morwenna happy in her married life, and how did it feel to be a vicar’s wife instead of a dean’s daughter, and had she met many people socially in the town and what new dresses had she had made? But she alone of the other sisters knew something of Morwenna’s troubles, and she had seen as soon as they met this afternoon that they were not over. She had hoped and prayed that a few months of marriage, and especially the coming child, would have made her forget ‘the other man’. Whether it was thoughts of her lost love that were troubling Morwenna or merely that her gained love was not to her liking, Garlanda did not yet know, but having now met Ossie she could see some of the problems her sister had to face. It was a pity she was not staying, Garlanda thought; she might have helped Morwenna more than any of the others. Morwenna was such a soft gentle creature, easily hurt but temperamentally intended to be happy; in the next few years she would have to harden herself to deal with a man like Ossie, to stand up to him, otherwise she would go under, become as much like a white mouse and as much in awe of him as those two little girls who crept around. She had to be given strength.

  As for the sister who was staying, Garlanda did not know what she thought and probably never would. For whereas Morwenna’s quietness and reticence were really as open as the day and came only from shyness, so that anyone could soon penetrate to her thoughts and feelings and fears, little Rowella with her thin nose and narrow eyes and fluttering underlip had been inscrutable from the day she was born. Little Rowella, already three inches taller than Garlanda, was taking only a minor part in the conversation, now that, haltingly, it had broken out again. Her eyes travelled around the room, as they had been doing from time to time ever since she came into it, assessing it, forming her own conclusions, whatever they might be, as no doubt she had formed her own conclusions about her new brother-in-law.