The Stranger from the Sea: A Novel of Cornwall, 1810-1811

by Winston Graham

  He said: ‘Stephen.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That day we were being chased by the gaugers. Did you go lame on purpose?’

  Stephen hesitated, then grinned. ‘In a sort of way, Jeremy. Though I did twist me ankle. I thought twas the only way of maybe saving the lugger.’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘I did come to look for you along the coast.’

  ‘Yes, I know … Did you see anything of the third gauger when you doubled back – the one you knocked down?’

  ‘Yes.’ Stephen laughed. ‘I knocked him down again – he was guarding the lugger.’

  ‘Oh, you did…’ Jeremy eyed his friend askance.

  After a few moments Stephen said: ‘There was no other way. He was there by the boat shed. He hadn’t found his musket – you mind I threw it in the bushes – but he was standing there with his knife out looking after his mates. I saw him before he saw me and came round the wrong way of the shed. He was out – just stirring – when I left.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jeremy again.

  Stephen looked back at his friend. ‘It was a gamble anyhow, wasn’t it. Whether I could dodge ’em and get away. The others might have taken a fancy to follow me instead of you when I doubled back.’

  Jeremy laughed. ‘I suppose so.’

  There was a further pause.

  Stephen said: ‘Well, I know what I fancy just at the moment: that’s a swim.’

  ‘I wouldn’t quarrel with the idea. But you’d do well to keep inshore today. This swell isn’t to be trifled with.’

  They clambered down the steep and slippery path, turned into the cave at the bottom and stripped off. Stephen was a little short in the leg for his height, but otherwise splendidly proportioned. Fine golden hair curled on his chest, diminishing to a narrow point at his navel. He had two wound marks, one on his right thigh, one on his ribs. The second looked recent.

  ‘That the gauger?’ Jeremy asked, pointing.

  ‘What? Oh yes. He left his sting.’

  They ran naked into the sea and were engulfed by it. Taking no notice of Jeremy’s warning, Stephen dived into the first breaker and emerged beyond it. He swam to the second, was turned upside down and came to the surface laughing and spitting. Another wave engulfed him. After being knocked over once Jeremy swam easily after him, dodging the big waves, swimming across their crests or sliding into their bellies before they broke. He suddenly felt glad that Stephen was back. In spite of his strong sexual feelings for Daisy Kellow, nothing really had moved the black ache from his heart. Not work nor play nor food nor drink nor lust. Perhaps for a little while Stephen could cure it. His attitude to life, full of enterprise and empty of caution, was in itself a tonic. If you were in the company of a man who didn’t care a curse for anything, it helped you to a similar view.

  They were in the sea twenty minutes. The water was still cold for the time of year but its movement so boisterous that one came out glowing. And the sultry air dried them as they ran a mile up the beach and back. They collapsed at the entrance to their cave breathless and laughing, for they had just been able to avoid Beth and Mary Daniel coming along high-water mark picking over the flotsam of the tide. Both ladies would have been a thought indignant at the sight.

  One of the sun’s shafts pierced the cloud cover and fell on the two young men, and both dragged on their breeches and lay back in the sand enjoying the heat.

  Stephen said: ‘D’you know, this is the life, Jeremy. You’re the most fortunate of human beings, aren’t you.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘To be born here, beside this sea, and into a home where there’s money enough. You’re not rich but you want for naught. Think of waking up every morning since you were born and looking out on this sea, this sand, these cliffs. There’s nothing dirty or ugly or underhand about them. All you get is clean things: sun and rain and wind and fresh clouds scudding over. If I had seventy years I’d want nothing better than to spend them all here!’

  ‘After a few you might get tired of it and want to move. You’ve not got a placid nature, you know. You’d want to be out fighting the world.’

  Stephen leaned back on his hands. ‘Who knows? Maybe. But when I think of me own life … Oh, there are plenty worse; I worked on a farm, was learned to read and write. But don’t you think your nature’s formed by the way you live? Mine’s been all fighting – having to fight to survive, sometimes having to cheat and lie. Who’d want to cheat and lie here?’

  ‘There seems to be a modest degree of it in these parts just the same.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not in human nature to be happy. Ecod, given an opportunity, I’d make a try here.’

  Some small birds were twittering in the back of the cave.

  Presently Stephen said: ‘And how is Miss Clowance?’

  ‘Well enough, I think.’

  ‘Will she think the worse of me?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For what happened the night afore last.’

  ‘No doubt you’ll be able to judge at dinner.’

  ‘Has she spoke much of me?’

  ‘From time to time.’

  ‘I mean – since she knew I was back.’

  Jeremy brushed some sand off his chest. ‘Stephen, I do not know what affection you have for Clowance or she for you. I do not even know if it is the sort that would – would take amiss the sight of you in the company of Violet Kellow on the night of your return. If all that is a little heavy sounding, I’m sorry. Why don’t –’

  ‘She saw me, then. Or did someone tell her?’

  ‘She saw you. I saw you.’

  Stephen sighed. ‘Pity … You know me, Jeremy. I do things on impulse, like. Like going in that sea just now. I don’t hum and har. Maybe I don’t think enough. But that’s how it is. Then I curse meself for an impulsive fool. D’you know it’s God’s truth that when I got to Grambler two nights ago me first thought was I must go see the Poldarks first thing. Who wouldn’t? Isn’t it natural? You were me true friends. But then I thought, what if I turn up on your doorstep, I thought, with nowhere to sleep? Twill look as if I expect you to put me up. So I went first to Nanfan’s and learned there of the bonfire. Right, I say to meself, I’ll call at Nampara and see if maybe Jeremy and Clowance are there and I can join them at the bonfire. So I walked up with the procession but cut away from it when I saw you all there. You were with Daisy Kellow and Miss Clowance was with that Ben Carter, and each one was paired off nicely, so I think to meself, no one will want me ramming me way in; and I see this tall man and someone says he’s Captain Poldark and I think, well, there’s better times to turn up like a bad penny than at a Midsummer Eve bonfire when everyone’s busy, and maybe, I think, I’ll be better off waiting till the light of morning. So off I walk back to Nanfan’s to get an early night.’

  He paused. The two women were abreast of them on the beach and Jeremy waved. They waved back.

  Stephen said: ‘I’ve told you, I’m an impulse man. I have to pass the gates of Fernmore, and there was lights burning, so I go in, and Mr Kellow’s away and Mrs Kellow and Miss Kellow have got their cloaks on and are arguing back and forth because Violet has said first she’s not well enough to go to the bonfire and then changed her mind and says she is. So I say to Mrs Kellow, I say, Mrs Kellow, if you’ll give me leave, I’ll take Miss Violet to join her sister at the bonfire and there’s no need for you to turn out at all. So after a bit of persuasion that’s how it was.’

  Jeremy reached for his jacket and took out his watch.

  ‘But you didn’t bring her to join her sister.’

  ‘Well, I reckon you know the Miss Kellows better than me, Jeremy. Control them, can you, either one or the other of ‘em? Like runaway horses. I say to Miss Violet when we get nigh the bonfire and she looks to be walking past it, I say to her, “Miss Violet, that path leads to the beach,” and she says in that taunting high mettlesome way she has, “Shut your mouth, fellow, and follow me.”’

  Jeremy pulled on his shirt.
‘It’s almost time for dinner. You can come up to my room first and tidy up.’

  ‘You know me,’ said Stephen. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, do I. Maybe I should, but it’s not me nature. Violet’s a pretty piece and out for a lark. You know what both those Kellow girls are.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jeremy uncomfortably. ‘I think we should go.’

  V

  Stephen was at his best at dinner, talking enough to be polite but not monopolizing the conversation. He answered Ross’s questions about the Philippe in such detail as seemed necessary. He explained that his ship’s fight with the two French warships had taken place during a storm. Captain Fraser had been killed by a direct hit from one of the French vessels and the rest of the crew had at once decided to surrender. But the cannon shot that killed Captain Fraser had wrecked their foremast, and before the French could help them they took the ground in high seas on what he supposed were the Western Rocks of the Scillies. He supposed the rest of the crew drowned, for there had only been himself and Harrison and Mordu to get away on the raft.

  He also took a lively interest in Wheal Leisure, the mine itself, the probable disposition of the lodes, the way the lodes were worked, the problem of water and the process by which it was pumped away. He showed a quick intelligence and a grasp of what he was told.

  Ross thought him probably the sort of young man who would bring an intense concentration to a subject that suddenly interested him, absorbing more, and more quickly, than someone who had studied for a long time. But he thought possibly the interest might, on occasion, as suddenly die.

  Jeremy’s long fingers, he noticed, were not so artistic as they had once been, and in replying to Stephen and explaining things to him there was a flicker of passion in his face. What had John Treneglos said? ‘Horrie says your boy’s a genius.’ Horrie, not being the brightest of young men, would be easily impressed, of course. Yet it meant something. Why hadn’t he, Ross, perceived more to his son than his apparent carelessness, his seemingly detached, feckless, facile attitude to life? Surely since his return home Jeremy’s conversations with him might have given him a hint of what was going on in the young man’s mind. He’d been short-sighted. Short-sighted in a way fathers so often were short-sighted, falling into the sort of trap Ross had prided himself he was immune from.

  Sitting there listening to the two young men, he admitted the fault in himself, yet he could not suppress his resentment with Jeremy for being so damned secretive about everything and leading him into such a false position.

  Ross had not told Demelza yet about the ‘fishing’. He must first tackle Jeremy on his own …

  Altogether the dinner was quite a success, except for Stephen. Clowance claimed a bilious attack and begged to be excused putting in an appearance. Half an hour before dinner-time she had told her mother she would accept the invitation to spend a holiday at Bowood with the Lansdownes.

  Chapter Five

  I

  The building of the engine house for Wheal Leisure began in early July. Much thought had gone into the positioning of the engine, for, although up to now all the buildings of the mine were situated at the top of the cliff, if the engine could be built at a lower level, some of the natural drainage could still take place and the engine would have a shorter distance to operate its main pump-rods. So a lower piece of cliff had been chosen some 100 yards from the mine, and a platform created by digging and blasting. There would be little enough room for everything, but it would do. Having then worked out and measured out the exact position of the engine and the boiler, a cellar was dug some nine feet deep, and thereafter another three feet dug round the cellar’s edge for the foundation of the house itself.

  An old quarry behind Jonas’s Mill was reopened, and for three weeks before the first stone was laid a succession of mule carts traversed the moors and the scrubland and the sand dunes in continuous train all the daylight hours. What they carried was killas or clay-slate, which was the most reliable and the most workable stone to hand. Even so, the last of the Wheal Maiden walls disappeared, for some part of them was of granite; Ross was also in negotiation with a granite quarry near St Michael to obtain more, for they would probably need 400 tons of the better stone to build the bob-wall which took most of the vibration and the strain. The difficulty with opening a mine which required an engine and an engine house was that it all had to be built strong enough to last and large enough to accommodate success. There had been occasions of engine houses collapsing because the foundations were not upon an adequate base or because the beat of the engine imposed too great a strain. Nobody knew whether in two years Wheal Leisure might again be derelict; but when building one had to prepare for the best.

  So having taken care to provide adequate drainage, they laid the first walls on the broad foundations, course by course, interspersing them with thin lime mortar, the largest and longest granite stones placed at the base and resting always on their broadest sides, with bars of iron running through it all to lend additional strength. When the walls were higher, high enough to accommodate the lintel of the door, more iron bars 10 or 12 feet long would be used, reaching through the thickness of the wall and bolted together at their ends so that they held the walls in their metallic grasp. At the level of the upper cylinder beams, holes had to be left in the walls for their ends, with room to move them laterally so that the cylinder could be got in. Later would come the larger aperture for the fitting of the bob-stools to accommodate the great balance beam. Above this would come the third floor, the slated roof and the tall brick-built chimney stack.

  The house would take at least two months to complete, even if there were no serious hitches and the weather stayed un-foul. A large shed also had to be built for coal, and Jeremy was trying to pick a suitable declivity in the sand dunes behind the house which he could have beaten down and laid with a mixture of lime, sand, water and pebbles to form a rain-water reservoir to supply the mine; otherwise it meant carrying barrels from the Mellingey stream which at its nearest was more than a mile away. In the blown sand and rock of the cliff and dunes they had so far been unable to find any spring, and there was no possibility of cutting a leat from the Mellingey unless one started miles back, for they were on higher ground here. The unfortunate paradox existed that, while all this trouble and expense was being gone to to drain water out of the earth, the water they brought up could not be used to create the steam to work the engine, for the minerals in it would quickly corrode the boiler. Such water of course could be used for the washing floors or buddles, or to work any stamp which might be required if some quantity of tin were mined. The original mine out-buildings could be utilized for the remaining offices.

  In order to increase his work force as little as possible Ross withdrew twenty tut-workers and masons from Wheal Grace. The tut-workers were the less skilled and the less well paid of the underground men, most of their work being the sinking and linking of shafts, the opening of new ground, binding, and the general maintenance of the mine. They were the worker ants of the mining world.

  As soon as news of the reopening got about, Nampara was besieged by miners looking for work. Ross took on a few but explained to them all that any sort of full recruitment would have to wait for the installation of the engine and the proving of the mine. Apart from constructing the house the main work at the moment was labourers’ work, sinking the shaft which was to drain the rest of the mine.

  The day after it all began Stephen said to Jeremy he would like to lend a hand. He didn’t mind, he said, what he did – lead a mule, mix cement, lay a course of stone, dig a drain; it was just something to occupy himself while he looked for permanent work. As Jeremy was hesitating he added:

  ‘I don’t want pay, of course.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘You at Nampara were all very good to me. I’d like to give a trifle of something in return. I have good muscles – don’t concern yourself for that.’

  Jeremy stared at the workers, who were busy on the
plateau below them. ‘There’s no reason to repay anything.’ Stephen said: ‘You do a fair measure of rough work yourself, helping here, helping there. Do you take wages for it?’

  ‘No … But –’

  ‘But you’re the owner’s son. Eh? Well, I’m the owner’s son’s friend. Does that not seem reasonable? Besides…’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘Well, to tell the truth of it I do not think I wish to be bound six days a week. I want time to look around, borrow a pony from you, see if there be anything promising in the neighbourhood. I want a bit of freedom, like, maybe two days a week to go off, perhaps local, perhaps to Falmouth, who knows. But when I’m here I’m here and I don’t like to be idle. So what could be better than helping with the new mine and assisting you?’

  Jeremy still thought of it. ‘Come when you wish, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell Ben and Zacky Martin, so if I’m not here they’ll know. Wages – they’re poor enough, God knows – but you shall get paid by the day. It will be a few shillings. I think it is right that way. I think we should all want it.’

  Stephen hesitated and then shrugged. ‘If that’s how you wish it, then I give way. Can I start tomorrow? Six in the morning like the rest?’

  II

  Sir George Warleggan was surprised to receive an invitation from Dr and Mrs Dwight Enys to dinner on Tuesday the 23rd of July at 4 p.m. Since calling on them in January in London he had nourished a bitter resentment against Dwight for giving him the advice that he did. He had included Dwight in the curses he heaped upon everyone connected with his disastrous speculations. It was only after some months that his sense of objectivity reasserted itself and he had to admit to himself that Dwight had in fact been entirely correct in what he said. The old King, though still very much alive, had not recovered his sanity, he was not able to resume his rightful authority as monarch; Dwight’s answers to his questions had been borne out by events. The use to which he put those answers was his own affair, his own fault. But that made it all the more galling, and a resentment remained.