The Vicar's People
It was not a bad reflection – to wit, that of a refined, fair face, that must have been very pretty fifteen or twenty years before; but now there was an eager sharpness in the features, as if caused by expectancy never gratified; the fair white skin had a slight ivory – old ivory – tinge, and the pretty bloom that once hid beneath the down of her cheeks had coalesced and slightly tinted the lady’s nose. It was but slight, but it was unmistakable.
Miss Pavey was well and fairly, even fashionably, dressed, and generally she wore the aspect of what she was – a maiden lady who loved colour, and had, after sundry matrimonial disappointments, retired to a far-off west-country, sea-side place, where her moderate independency would be of so much more value than in a large town.
She sighed as she contemplated herself in the glass, and then held her handkerchief to her face and bent her eyes upon a book as she heard the rustle of a dress, and the door opened, when she rose to meet Rhoda with effusion, and an eager kiss.
“My dearest Rhoda, how well you do look!” she exclaimed. “What a becoming dress!”
“Do you think so, Miss Pavey,” said Rhoda, quietly. “Miss Pavey again! Why will you keep up this terrible distance? My dear Rhoda, is it never to be Martha?”
“Well then, Martha,” said Rhoda, smiling. “I did not expect to see you so early.”
“It is early for visitors, my dear; but I thought you would like to know the news. We have so little here in Carnac.”
“Really, I trouble very little about the news, Miss Martha,” said Rhoda, smiling. “But what is the matter?” she added, as her visitor once more held her handkerchief to her face.
“That dreadful toothache again,” sighed Miss Pavey. “I really am a martyr to these nervous pains.”
“Why not boldly go to Mr Rumsey and have it out?”
“Oh, no! oh, dear no!” cried Miss Pavey, with a look of horror, “I could not bear for a man to touch my mouth like that. Don’t mind me, dear, it will be better soon;” and it seemed to be, for it was a pleasant little fiction kept up by Miss Pavey – that toothache, to add truthfulness to the complete set she wore, and whose extraction she carefully attended to herself.
“Of course you don’t care for news, my dear,” continued the lady; “I used not when I was your age. But when one comes to be thirty-two one’s ideas change so. One becomes more human, and takes more interest in humanity at large than in one’s self. You are such a happy contented girl, too; nothing seems to trouble you.”
“But your news,” said Rhoda, to change the conversation, as Miss Pavey smoothed down her blue silk dress.
“To be sure, yes, my dear. I saw the coach come over from the station – what a shame it is that we don’t have a branch railway! – and what do you think?”
“Think?” said Rhoda, looking amused, “I really don’t know what to think.”
“Pylades and Orestes!”
“I don’t understand you.”
“They’ve come, my dear, – they’ve come?”
“Pylades and Orestes?”
“Well, of course, that’s only my nonsense; but, as I told you, I saw the coach come in, and two gentlemen got down, both young and handsome – one fair, the other dark; and one is evidently our new vicar, and the other must be his friend. I am so glad, my dear, for I have been exceedingly anxious about the kind of person we were to have for our new clergyman.”
“Indeed!” said Rhoda, looking amused. “Why, I thought you went now to the Wesleyan chapel?”
“What a dear satirical girl you are, Rhoda. You know I only went there on account of Mr Chynoweth, and because Mr Owen stared at me so dreadfully, and was so persistent in preaching about dress.”
“But surely that was only at the mining and fishing women, who have been growing dreadfully gay in their attire.”
“Oh dear, no, my dear! oh dear no!” said Miss Pavey, shaking her head. “I have the best of reasons for believing it was all directed at me. You remember his text the last Sunday I was at church?”
“I am sorry to say I do not.”
“Dear me, I wonder at that. It was so very pointed. It was – ‘Who is this that cometh with dyed garments from Bozrah?’ and he looked at me as he spoke. I think it was disgraceful.”
“But, my dear Martha, I think you are too sensitive.”
“Perhaps I am, my dear; perhaps I am. I have had my troubles; but that Mr Owen was dreadful. You know, my dear, he had – perhaps I ought not to say it, but I will – he evidently wanted to make an impression upon me, but I never could like him. He was so coarse, and abrupt, and short-sighted. He used to smoke pipes too. Mrs Mullion has told me, over and over again, that he would sit for hours of a night smoking pipes, and drinking gin and water, with that dreadfully wicked old man, Mr Paul. Really, my dear, I think some one ought to warn our new clergyman not to go and lodge at Mrs Mullion’s. You see there is hardly any choice for a gentleman, and for one who looks so refined to go and stay at Mrs Mullion’s would be dreadful.”
“Mrs Mullion is very good and amiable,” said Rhoda.
“Yes, my dear, she is; but Mr Paul is not a nice person; and then there is that Madge – dreadful girl!”
Rhoda’s heart gave a higher-pressure throb at this last name, and Miss Pavey ran on, as she could if she only obtained a good listener, —
“I do think that girl ought to be sent away from Carnac; I do, indeed. Really, my dear, if I had felt disposed to accept any advances on the part of Mr Tregenna, his conduct with that flighty creature would have set me against him.”
Rhoda’s heart beat faster still, and the colour went and came in her face as she listened. She blamed herself for hearkening to such petty gossip, but her visitor was determined to go on, and added confidence to confidence, for, as it may be gathered, Miss Martha Pavey’s peculiar idiosyncrasy was a belief that was terribly persecuted by the male sex, who eagerly sought her hand in marriage, though at the present time a gossip of Carnac had told another gossip that Miss Pavey was “setting her gashly old cap now at Methody Parson.”
“Don’t you think, my dear,” continued the visitor, “that your papa ought to interfere?”
“Interfere? About what?” exclaimed Rhoda, whose thoughts had run off to her conversation with her father that morning.
“Why, what are you thinking about, Rhoda?” cried Miss Pavey. “Oh, you naughty, naughty girl, you! You were thinking about our handsome young clergyman and his young friend. Oh, for shame, for shame?”
“Indeed, I was not!” exclaimed Rhoda, half amused, half indignant at her visitor’s folly.
“Oh, don’t tell me, dear,” said Miss Pavey, shaking her head. “It’s very shocking of you, but I don’t wonder. See how few marriageable gentlemen there are about here.”
“Miss Pavey, pray don’t be so absurd,” exclaimed Rhoda.
“Oh, no, my dear, I will not,” said the visitor, blushing, and then indulging in a peculiar giggle; “but after all, there is a something in wedlock, my dear Rhoda.”
“A something in wedlock?”
“Yes, dear, there is, you know, speaking to one another as confidantes – there is a something in wedlock after all, as you must own.”
“I never think of such a thing,” said Rhoda, laughing, for Miss Pavey’s evident leanings towards the subject under discussion were very droll.
“Of course not, my dear,” said Miss Pavey, seriously. “We none of us ever do; but still there are times when the matter is forced upon us, as in this case; and who knows, my dear, what may happen? You did not see them, I suppose?”
“See? whom?”
“My dear child, how dense you are this morning! The two new-comers, of course. And don’t you think that something ought to be done to warn them about where they are to take apartments?”
“Certainly not,” said Rhoda. “It would be the height of impertinence.”
“Oh, really, I cannot agree with you there, my dear Rhoda. I think it would be grievous to let this young clergyman go to Mullion’s, and really there is not another place in Carnac where a gentleman could lodge. In fact, I would sooner make the offer that he should board at my little home.”
“Board – take apartments at Dinas Vale?”
“Certainly, my dear. He is a clergyman, and we ought to extend some kind of hospitality to him. I regret that my limited income does not permit me to say to him, ‘Take up your home here for the present as a guest.’ Of course I would not open my doors to any one but a clergyman.”
“Of course not,” said Rhoda, absently; and soon after Miss Pavey took her leave, Rhoda going with her to the door, and on re-crossing the hall noticing a card lying upon the serpentine marble table, against whose dark, ruddy surface it stood out clear and white.
At another time it would not have attracted her attention, but now, as if moved by some impulse beyond her control, she went up close and read upon it the name, —
“Geoffrey Trethick.”
Nothing more – no “Mr” and no address.
Chapter Four
The Wrong Place for the Right Man
“Well, Chynoweth,” said Mr Penwynn, entering his office which was used as a branch of the Felsport bank, “any thing fresh?”
Mr Chynoweth, the banker’s manager, generally known as “The Jack of Clubs,” was a little man, dark, and spare, and dry. He was probably fifty, but well preserved, having apparently been bound by nature in vellum, which gave him quite, a legal look, while it made him thick-skinned enough to bear a good many unpleasantries in his daily life. He was rather bald, but very shiny on the crown. His face was cleanly shaved, and he had a habit of bending down his head, and gazing through his shaggy eyebrows at whosoever spoke, and also when he took up his parable himself.
Mr Chynoweth had been busy inside his desk when he heard his principal’s step, and there was plenty of room beneath the broad mahogany flap for him to do what he pleased unseen.
What Mr Chynoweth pleased that morning was to play over again a hand of whist, as near as he could remember – one that had been played at Dr Rumsey’s house the night before, when one of the guests, Mr Paul, had, to use his own words, “picked the game out of the fire,” Mr Chynoweth being, in consequence, five shillings out of pocket.
He kept a pack of cards and a whist guide in this desk, and it was frequently his habit to shuffle, cut, and deal four hands, spread them below the flap, and play them out by himself for practice, the consequence being that he was an adversary to be feared, a partner to be desired, at the snug little parties held at two or three houses in Carnac.
On this particular morning he had just arrived at the point where he felt that he had gone astray, when Mr Penwynn’s step was heard, the mahogany flap was closed, and “The Jack of Clubs” was ready for business.
“Fresh? Well, no. Permewan’s time’s up, and he wants more. Will you give it?”
“No: he has made no effort to pay his interest. Tell Tregenna to foreclose and sell.”
Mr Chynoweth rapidly made an entry upon an ordinary school slate on one side, and then crossed off an entry upon the other, refreshing his memory from it at the same time.
“Dr Rumsey wants an advance of a hundred pounds,” he said next, gazing through his shaggy eyebrows.
“Hang Dr Rumsey! He’s always wanting an advance. What does he say?”
“Pilchard fishery such a failure. Tin so low that he can’t get in his accounts.”
“Humph! What security does he offer?”
“Note of hand.”
“Stuff! What’s the use of his note of hand? Has he nothing else?”
“No,” said Mr Chynoweth. “He says you hold every thing he has.”
“Humph! Yes, suppose I do.”
“Without you’d consider half-a-dozen children good security?”
“Chynoweth, I hate joking over business-matters.”
“Not joking,” said Mr Chynoweth, stolidly. “That’s what he said.”
“Rubbish! Can’t he get some one else to lend his name?”
“Said he had asked every one he could, and it was no use.”
“Confound the fellow! Tut-tut-tut! What’s to be done, Chynoweth?”
“Lend him the money.”
“No, no. There, I’ll let him have fifty.”
“Not half enough. Better let him have it. You’ll be ill, or I shall, one of these days, and if you don’t let him have the money, he might give it us rather strongly.”
“Absurd. He dare not.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Chynoweth. “When one’s on one’s back one is in the doctor’s hands, you know.”
“There: let him have the money, but it must be at higher interest. But stop a moment,” continued Mr Penwynn, as his managing man’s pencil gave its first grate on the slate. “You’re a great friend of Rumsey: why not lend him your name to the note?”
Mr Chynoweth had no buttons to his trousers pockets, but he went through the process of buttoning them, and looked straight now at his employer.
“How long would you keep me here if you found me weak enough to do such a thing as that, Mr Penwynn? No, no,” he said, lowering his head once more, and looking through his eyebrows, “I never lend, and I never become security for any man. I shall put it down that he can have the money.”
Mr Penwynn nodded, and his manager wrote down on one side and marked off on the other.
“Any thing else?”
“Wheal Carnac’s for sale.”
“Well, so it has been for a long time.”
“Yes, but they mean to sell now, I hear; and they say it would be worth any one’s while to buy it.”
“Yes, so I suppose,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling; “but we do not invest in mines, Chynoweth. We shall be happy to keep the account of the company, though, who start. How many have failed there?”
“Three,” said Chynoweth. “There has been a deal of money thrown down that place.”
Mr Penwynn nodded and entered his private room, when Chynoweth gave one ear a rub, stood his slate upon the desk, raised the flap and let it rest on his head, and then proceeded to finish his hand at whist, evidently with satisfactory results, for he smiled and rubbed his hands, placed the cards in a corner, and next proceeded to write two or three letters, one of which, concluded in affectionate terms, he afterwards tore up.
Some hours passed, when a clerk brought in a card.
“For Mr Penwynn, sir.”
“Geoffrey Trethick,” said Mr Chynoweth, reading. “Take it in.”
The clerk obeyed, and a few minutes later he ushered the new visitor to Carnac into Mr Penwynn’s private room, where the banker and the stranger looked hard at each other for a few moments before the former pointed to a chair, his visitor being quite a different man from what he had pictured.
“Glad to see you, Mr Trethick,” he said. “I have read the letters you left for me, and shall be happy to oblige my correspondent if I can; but they seem to be quite under a misapprehension as to my powers. In the first place, though, what can I do for you?”
“Do for me?” said Geoffrey, smiling. “Well, this much. I come to you, a leading man in this great mining centre.”
Mr Penwynn made a deprecatory motion with his hand.
“Oh, I am no flatterer, Mr Penwynn,” said the visitor, bluffly. “I merely repeat what your correspondents told me, and what find endorsed here in this place.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Penwynn, as if owning reluctantly to the soft impeachment, “Penwynn and Company are a little mixed up in mines – and the fisheries.”
“Fisheries? Ah, that’s not in my line, Mr Penwynn. But to be frank with you, sir, I want work. I am a poor younger son who decided not to take to church, law, or physic, but to try to be a mining engineer. I am a bit of a chemist, too, and have studied metallurgy as far as I could. My education has taken nearly all my little fortune, which I have, so to speak, sunk in brain-work. That brain-work I now want to sell.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Mr Penwynn, “I am a banker.”
“Exactly. To several mining companies. Now, sir, I honestly believe that I am worth a good salary to any enterprising company,” said Geoffrey, growing animated, and flushing slightly as he energetically laid his case before the smooth, polished, well-dressed man, whose carefully-cut nails gently tapped the morocco-covered table which separated him from his visitor.
“May I ask in what way?” said Mr Penwynn, smiling. “Labour is plentiful.”
“Certainly,” said Geoffrey. “I have, as I tell you, carefully studied metallurgy, and the various processes for obtaining ore, especially tin, and I am convinced that I could save enormously by the plans I should put in force; and, what is more, I know I could save almost half the expense in some of the processes of smelting.”
“Indeed!” said Mr Penwynn, coolly.
“Yes; and also contrive a good many improvements in the sinking and pumping out of mines.”
“Then you have come to the right place, Mr – Mr – Mr Geoffrey Trethick,” said the banker, raising his gold-rimmed passes to glance at the visiting-card before him.
“I hope so,” said Geoffrey, with animation. “Ours is an old Cornish family, and I ought to be at home here.”
“Exactly,” said Mr Penwynn, sarcastically, “and you have come at the right time.”
“Indeed?” said Geoffrey, eagerly.
“Most opportunely; for most of our great milking companies are in a state of bankruptcy.”
“Yes, so I have heard. Well then, Mr Penwynn, if you will give me a letter or two of introduction, I should think there ought to be no difficulty in the way.”
“My dear sir,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling, “I’m afraid you are very sanguine.”
“Well – perhaps a little, sir, but – ”
“Hear me out, Mr Trethick. It seems to me you have come to the worst place in the world.”
“The worst! Why so?”
“Because every one here will look upon your schemes as visionary. If you had a vast capital, and liked to spend it in experiments, well and good. People would laugh at your failures, and applaud your successes – if you made any.”
“If?” said Geoffrey, smiling. “Then, sir, you are not sanguine?”
“Not at all,” said the banker. “You see, Mr Trethick, you will not find any one in this neighbourhood who will let you run risks with his capital and machinery, or tamper with the very inadequate returns that people are now getting from their mines. If you wanted a simple post as manager – ”
“That’s what I do want,” said Geoffrey, interrupting. “The other would follow.”
“I say, if you wanted a simple post as manager,” continued the banker, as calmly as if he had not been interrupted, “you would not get it unless you could lay before a company of proprietors ample testimonials showing your experience in mining matters. Believe me, Mr Trethick, you, a gentleman, have come to the wrong place.”
“Let us sink the word gentleman in its ordinary acceptation, Mr Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, warmly. “I hope I shall always be a gentleman, but I come to you, sir, as a working man – one who has to win his income by his brain-directed hands.”
“You should have gone out to some speculative mining place, Mr Trethick,” said the banker, taking one leg across his knee and caressing it. “Nevada or Peru – Australia if you like. You would make a fortune there. Here you will starve.”
“Starve! Not if I have to help the fishermen with their nets, Mr Penwynn. I can row well, sir,” he said, laughing, “and I have muscle enough to let me pull strongly at a rope. Starve? I’ve no fear of that.”
“No, no; of course not. I mean metaphorically. But why not try the colonies or the States?”
“Because I have a mother who impoverished herself to complete my expensive university education, Mr Penwynn; and it would almost break her heart if I left England.”
“Exactly,” said the banker, with a slight sneer; “but you have come as far from civilisation as you could get in visiting Carnac. Now then, take my advice. Come up to An Morlock, and dine with me this evening – seven sharp. I can give you a bed for a night or two. Then have a run round the district, see a few of the mines, and spy out the nakedness of the land. You will soon get an indorsement of what I say. You can then go back to London with my best respects to Rundell and Sharp – most worthy people, by the way, whom I would gladly engage – and tell them you have returned a sadder but a wiser man.”
He rose as he spoke to indicate that the interview was at an end, holding out his hand, one which Geoffrey gripped heartily, as he sprang, full of energy, to his feet.
“Thank you, Mr Penwynn. I’ll come and dine with you this evening. Most happy. As to the bed – thanks, no. I am going to hunt out lodgings somewhere, for I cannot take your advice. You don’t know me, sir,” he said, looking the banker full in the eyes. “I’ve come down here to work, and, somehow or other, work I will. I have enough of the sturdy Englishman in me not to know when I am beaten. No, sir, I am not going to turn back from the first hill I meet with in my journey.”
“As you will,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling. “Till seven o’clock then. We don’t dress.”
“Thanks; I will be there,” said Geoffrey, and the door closed as he left the room.
“He has stuff in him, certainly,” said the banker, gazing at the door through which his visitor had passed. “Such a man at the head of a mine might make a good deal of money – or lose a good deal,” he added, after a pause. “He’ll find out his mistake before he is much older.”
With a careless motion of his hand the banker threw his visitor’s card into the waste-paper basket, and, at the same time, seemed to cast the young man out of his thoughts.
Chapter Five
A Look Round Carnac
“Tell’ee what, Tom Jennen, you fishermen are more nice than wise.”
“And I tell’ee, Amos Pengelly, as you miner lads are more nasty than nice. Think of a man as calls hisself a Christian, and preaches to his fellows, buying a gashly chunk of twissening snake of a conger eel, and taking it home to eat.”
“And a good thing too, lad. Why, it’s fish, ar’n’t it?”
“Fish? Pah! I don’t call them fish.”
“Why, it’s as good as your hake, man?”
“What, good as hake? Why, ye’ll say next it’s good as mack’rel or pilchar’. I never see the like o’ you miner lads. Why, I see Joe Helston buy a skate one day.”
“Ay, and a good thing too. But look yonder on Pen Point! There’s some one got hold of the bushes. I say, Tom Jennen, who’s yonder big, good-looking chap?”
“I d’no’. Got on his Sunday clothes, whoever he be. Don’t call him good-looking, though. Big awk’ard chap in a boot. He’d always be in the way. He’s a ’venturer, that’s what he is. Whose money’s he going to chuck down a mine?”
“What a chap you are, Tom Jennen! What should we mining folk do if it wasn’t for the ’venturers? We must have metal got up, and somebody’s obliged to speck’late in mines.”
“Speck’late in mines, indeed,” said the other, contemptuously. “Why don’t they put their money in boots or nets, so as to make money out of mack’rel or pilchar’?”
“Ah, for the boots to go down and drown the poor lads in the first storm, and the nets to be cut and swept away.”
“Well, that’s better than chucking the money down a hole in the ground.”
“Hey, Tom, you don’t know what’s good for others, so don’t set up as a judge,” and the speaker, a short, lame, very thick-set man, in a rough canvas suit, stained all over of a deep red, showed his white teeth in a pleasant smile, which seemed like sunshine on his rough, repellent face.
“Maybe I do; maybe I don’t. I say I don’t call him a good-looking chap.”
“Just as if you could tell whether a man’s good-looking or not, Tom Jennen. That’s for the women to do.”
“Ha – ha – ha! yes. Bess Prawle says you’re the plainest man she ever see.”
The miner flushed scarlet, and an angry light flashed from his eyes, but he seemed to master the annoyance, and said cheerfully, —
“I dare say she’s right, Tom. I never set up for a handsome man.”
“Like yonder ’venturer chap. He’s the sort as would please old smuggler Prawle’s lass.”
The angry flush came into the miner’s face again, but he mastered his annoyance, and said, rather hoarsely, —
“Hold your tongue, lad; the gentleman will hear what you say.”
“What’s that man doing up on the cliff?” said Geoffrey Trethick, who had walked down by the harbour in making a tour of his new home. “The one waving those things in his hands.”
“Sighting a school,” said Tom Jennen, in a sing-song tone, as, after the manner of sea-side men, he leaned his back against the stout rail which guarded the edge of the cliff.
“Sighting a school, eh? Of fish, of course?”
“Mack’,” said Tom Jennen, so curtly that he cut the word in half, and then proceeded to add to the brown stains at the corners of his mouth by hacking off a piece of tobacco with his big knife.