Полная версияThe Vicar's People
“I did, Tregenna. I pleaded your cause as hard as if it had been my own; but she is as firm as so much granite. My dear fellow, I am very sorry, but I am afraid you must give it up.”
“It’s a lie – a cursed lie!” roared Tregenna, who could not control his rage and disappointment. “You have been fighting against me all along, and it is by your orders that she throws me over. I see it all now. You have been playing a cursed, double-faced, traitorous part, and I was a fool to trust to your smooth tongue. But mark my words, Penwynn – ”
“John Tregenna,” said Mr Penwynn, rising and speaking with dignity, “you are now in a passion, produced by what is, of course, a bitter disappointment; but pray in what manner have I failed towards you that you should make such an unfair charge?”
“What have you done?” cried Tregenna, grinding his white teeth. “Did you not lead me on for your own ends to believe that she would accept me, and submit me to the humiliation of this second refusal, which I feel sure now was at your instigation.”
“Mr Tregenna,” said the banker, quietly, but with anger striving for the mastery, “will you have the goodness to go now. Some other time when you are cool I shall be willing to talk to you. We cannot discuss the matter now, for it would be better that we two should not come to an open quarrel.”
Tregenna snatched up his hat, darted a fierce look at the speaker, and strode towards the door, passed out, but in the act of banging it after him he recovered the mastery over his maddened brain.
He came back, closed the door after him softly, threw himself into a chair, and sat down with his forehead resting upon his hands.
Mr Penwynn stood by the table, with one hand in his breast, watching him, and for a time there was an impressive silence in the room.
At the end of a few minutes Tregenna drew a long, deep breath, and rose with his face calm, and a saddened look softening his eyes. He let fall his hands, rose, and advanced towards Rhoda’s father.
“Forgive me, Penwynn,” he said, humbly. “Let me apologise for what I said just now. Forgive me. You cannot tell the agony I suffered, nor conceive the utter feeling of despair and disappointment, nor the rage which seemed to force me to speak as I did. It is over,” he said, as if to himself, “over now. But you will forgive me, Penwynn?”
“Yes,” said the banker, quietly, “I forgive you, Tregenna.”
“My words,” continued the latter, “were as false and cruel as they were undeserved, and I cannot reproach myself enough for my mad folly. Can I apologise more humbly, Penwynn?” he added, with a sad smile.
“You acknowledge, then, that I did my best for you?” said Mr Penwynn.
“I do,” cried Tregenna, eagerly; “and I believe that you acted in all sincerity. Penwynn, you and I must not quarrel. As to Rhoda – Miss Penwynn – if I am not to have her love, let me enjoy her friendship and esteem.”
Mr Penwynn looked at the speaker coldly and searchingly for a few moments, but he could see nothing to indicate that the man before him was not perfectly sincere, and ready to say and do any thing in reparation of the past outbreak.
“You don’t believe me, Penwynn,” cried Tregenna, bitterly. “For heaven’s sake, have a little feeling for a man. Here am I thrown in an instant from a state of hope that I might realise my fondest wishes into a state of utter, abject despair. I am not an angel, man, that I can bear such a disappointment unmoved.”
Mr Penwynn still continued his scrutiny.
“It is a bitter – a cruel overthrow,” continued Tregenna, “and a few moments back I feel as if I must have been mad – I was mad. I could have said and done any thing. Even how I can hardly keep calm. Have some pity on me.”
“My dear Tregenna,” said the banker, laying his hand upon the other’s shoulder, “I do indeed sympathise with you in your disappointment, but I want you to believe that I have been perfectly straightforward and honourable.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Tregenna, excitedly, “I do believe it.”
“You know what Rhoda – Miss Penwynn – is. I ask you, is she like an ordinary weak girl?”
“No, you are right. She is not,” said Tregenna, mournfully. “If she were, I should not worship her as I do.”
“She has a will of her own,” continued the banker, “and she can be very firm. At your request I tried to soften her determination – asked her for time, asked her to let you continue your visits as a friend, and renew your proposal six months hence; but it was in vain, and I know her too well not to see that if you continue to press your suit you will not only lose all chance of her intimacy, but excite her dislike.”
“Did she say that?” asked Tregenna, with glittering eyes.
“Well, well, not exactly.”
“But she said that if I pressed my suit she should dislike me.”
“Oh, no! – not so explicit as that. I think not. I – ”
“Speak out plainly, Penwynn,” said Tregenna, sharply. “Don’t play with me.”
“Well, it was something of that sort; but she was greatly excited, for I had pressed her home.”
Tregenna was silent, and turned away his face, which was slightly convulsed. But he soon mastered his emotion, and at the end of a minute turned back to face Mr Penwynn.
“It is over now,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice. “Forgive me my anger, Penwynn. It was very hard to bear, but you see now that I was sincere. You are right – she is very different to other girls. But it would have been the pride of my life to have won her, and whoever does win her I shall hate from the very bottom of my heart.”
“Upon my word, Tregenna, I believe that your hatred will die in the bottom of your heart,” said the banker, wringing his visitor’s hand, “for it will never be called forth. I don’t believe that there is a man living who can rouse any love in Rhoda’s heart save one.”
“And who’s that?” cried Tregenna, with flashing eyes.
“Your humble servant,” said the other, smiling. “She loves me devotedly – God bless her! And I think that I, too, shall be ready to hate any one who robs me of the slightest smile or look.”
“I shall not be jealous of you, Penwynn,” said Tregenna, with a strange gleam in his eyes. “There, I’ll go now and have a walk on the cliff, so as to get my nerves back in tone. We are friends still?”
“Of course – of course!” said Mr Penwynn, warmly.
“I may call just as usual?”
“Call? My dear Tregenna, if you will take my advice, you will drop in just as of old, after drawing a line between the events of the past few days’ proceedings and those which are to come. Bury it all, and forget it as soon as ever you can.”
“I will – I will!” cried Tregenna, holding tightly by the banker’s hand. “It will be best. If I am a little strange at first, you must both look over it.”
“Of course! To be sure. Come soon, and let her see that it is all over.”
“I will!” exclaimed Tregenna; and, after shaking hands once more, he left the room.
“Thank goodness,” said Mr Penwynn, with a sigh of relief, “that’s over. I should not have cared to make an enemy of Tregenna.”
“Damn him!” cried Tregenna, as soon as he was alone, and he ground his teeth savagely. “Give her up? Yes, some day, perhaps: a proud, cold-blooded jilt. Wait a little, my proud beauty, for if I do not some day have you in the dust at my feet, my name’s not John Tregenna.”
He strode on rapidly by the track on the cliff side, leaving Wheal Carnac and the promontory to the left, and making straight for the unused mine on the path to Gwennas Cove.
He was alone now, as he thought, and, in spite of his self-command, he began gesticulating fiercely and talking to himself, without noticing that there was already some one on the track, who drew aside and walked into the unused engine-house to let him pass, and then stood uneasily watching him as he went towards Prawle’s cottage.
“Forget it, and give her up. Let it all be as a something of the past – eh, Master Penwynn? Yes, when Rhoda has been mine for some months – wife or mistress, we’ll see which. Not till then.”
He went on muttering more and more angrily to himself, and the figure that watched limped out to follow; but on seeing Tregenna encounter the rugged old man, Bessie’s father, and enter into conversation, he calmly limped away along the path.
“The old man will take care of her,” he muttered; “and I don’t believe that Bess would listen to him even if she won’t listen to me. But he’s a bad one – one as wouldn’t stop at any thing to have his will, and I don’t know as I’d feel very comfortable if I was him as stood in his way.”
Chapter Sixteen
Amongst the Rocks
Geoffrey Trethick found that his were very pleasant quarters at the cottage, for Mrs Mullion seemed to take quite a motherly interest in his welfare, while her daughter Madge formed an excellent lieutenant, having evidently been won over by the young man’s frank, pleasant ways as much as by his looks.
“If there is any thing I can do to make you more comfortable, Mr Trethick, I hope you’ll say so,” said Mrs Mullion, one morning as Geoffrey was just going out. “Both Madge and I have got so used to waiting on gentlemen that it comes quite natural to us.”
“I’m sure you are very kind,” said Geoffrey.
“Buttons on and darning, and that sort of thing, of course, we’ll see to. I used to do all that for our late clergyman, Mr Owen – a very nice, genuine man. He used to put me so in mind of poor Madge’s father. Ah!” she continued, sadly, “very different he was to his brother, Mr Paul – half-brothers, you know. Dear Edward never spoke like Thomas – Mr Paul – does. I don’t say but what he would be out of temper sometimes, all gentlemen will be, but he used to say his bad words inside like, so that you could not hear them.”
“A very good plan,” said Geoffrey, smiling.
“Thomas – Mr Paul, you know – says very strange things sometimes, but he means well, and he is a very, very good man.”
“Yes, so I believe,” replied Geoffrey.
“Our Mr Owen, too, was a very good man, and they were great friends. I liked him better than this Mr Lee. I went to hear him on Sunday, but I could not really make out what he meant, but I’ve no doubt he meant well.”
“Yes, of course,” said Geoffrey, “most clergymen do.”
“To be sure,” assented the amiable little woman. “Have you seen the Rumseys yet?”
“I’ve met the doctor,” replied Geoffrey.
“A very clever man,” said Mrs Mullion, “and his wife means well, but she drills the children so. She’s very proud, and thinks they have come down; but, as I say to my Madge, if she would not drill those poor children quite so much, and use a pocket-handkerchief to their noses, it would be so much better. Yes, Madge, I’m coming directly.”
Geoffrey wished she would go, for he wanted to write a letter; but the little lady kept prattling on.
“I want to see you get a good colour, Mr Trethick. You look Londony, you know. You must let me cook you a chop or a steak for breakfast – underdone, you know. Dr Rumsey says there’s nothing like it. So much better for you than fish; and I will say that of our butcher, he does have good meat. His only fault is that, as Mr Paul says, he seems to have a knife that will cut two pounds when you want one.”
“A common failing with butchers, I believe,” laughed Geoffrey.
“Yes,” said the little woman, innocently. “We get our milk there, and – to be sure! Now, look here, Mr Trethick, before you go out for those early morning walks of yours – ”
“Mamma!”
“Yes, Madge, I’m coming! Bless the child! how impatient she is when I’m here. But, as I was going to say, you must let me beat you up a new-laid egg in a glass of fresh milk. Lornocks have got a new cow, an Alderney, with such a beautiful bust, and I never saw richer milk in my life.”
“But, my dear Mrs Mullion, I’m not an invalid!” laughed Geoffrey. “The only consumption I suffer from is that of the pocket.”
“Hallo! You here?” said old Mr Paul, stumping in.
“Yes, Thomas. I was advising Mr Trethick about his health.”
“Stuff! He’s all health! Don’t take any notice of her, Trethick, or she’ll want to put you in a poultice every night! There, be off, woman!”
“Yes, dear, I’m going,” said the little woman, gently.
“She’ll be giving you beef-tea and arrow-root till you can’t see,” growled the old fellow. “I believe she was a nurse once.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, before she was born what she is.”
Geoffrey stared.
“And that she’ll be a hen next, like Mrs Rumsey, to set on eggs and cluck over chickens.”
“Metempsychosis?” said Geoffrey.
“Hah! yes! The niggers out in Poonah are right as right about that.”
“Very likely,” said Geoffrey. “Now, what do you suppose you’ll be next?”
“Don’t know,” said the old man, sharply; “but I’ve no doubt you’ll be a dog.”
“May I ask why?”
“Because you’re an impertinent puppy now!”
“Just as you like,” said Geoffrey, smiling. “But you look cross.”
“No, sir; things are not just as I like,” said the old man, seating himself upon Geoffrey’s table, but only to get off, go quickly to the door, open it softly, and then dash out – to come back disappointed, for there was no one listening. “Look here, Trethick, I want to ask you a plain question.”
“Go on, then.”
“That niece of mine goes out a great deal now – has gone out a great deal since you’ve been here. Is it to meet you?”
Geoffrey had hard work to sit unmoved, for he thought of what he knew, and wondered whether he ought to speak out: and he felt that the old man was watching him searchingly.
“No!” said Geoffrey, shortly. “It is not!”
“That’s right, I’m glad of it,” said the old man, taking a chair, and apparently more at his ease. “She’ll be a cat one of these days, hang her! But look here, boy. Don’t you look at her. The jade’s ready to lead on everybody she sees. If I were not her uncle, I believe she’d set her cap at me. Now, look here: I told you at first, and I tell you again, I’ll have no fooling.”
“Give me one of those cigars of yours,” said Geoffrey, rather bluntly, and apparently without paying any heed to the old man’s words. “I want a smoke.”
“Humph! Things are going crooked with you, then, are they?”
“Very!” said Geoffrey. “But come out to the summer-house, and let’s feel the free air.”
“Here, catch hold!” cried the old man, holding out a black cheroot. “That’s the only good trait in your character, boy, you do know a good cigar. He, he, he! You should try some I keep for Rumsey, and fellows like that.”
“Thanks, no,” said Geoffrey.
“Ah! I told you how it would be,” continued the old man, as they entered the look-out and took their seats. “I told you how it would be. I knew it well enough. So I did.”
They sat looking at each other for a few moments.
“You can’t get an engagement then, my lad, eh?”
“No,” said Geoffrey, lighting up; “not yet.”
“No; nor you won’t. That you won’t,” chuckled the old man, as Geoffrey sat himself on the summer-house table, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, began swinging one leg backwards and forwards.
“I’ve tried at twenty mines in the month I’ve been here,” said Geoffrey, “and pointed out ways of saving that would pay me a good salary ten times over, and put money in the proprietors’ or shareholders’ pockets.”
“Yes, and they laugh at you, don’t they?”
“Confoundedly,” said Geoffrey.
“Keep that leg still,” said the old man, poking at the swinging member with his cane.
Geoffrey gave the cane a kick, and sent it flying out on to the grass-plot, making Uncle Paul turn white with rage; but the young man got leisurely down and picked it up, retaining it in his hand as he reseated himself, and began making passes with it at a knot in the wood.
“Give me my cane,” said the old man, angrily.
“They’re as blind as moles to their own interests,” said Geoffrey.
“Do you hear? Give me my cane.”
“And treat all my advances as if I were trying to trick and defraud them.”
“I say, give me my cane!” cried the old man.
“They flatly tell me that my plans are new-fangled and foolish, and that they’ll have none of them.”
“Confound you, you insolent puppy! Will you give me my cane?”
“They’re as hard to move as so many mules,” said Geoffrey, handing the cane, and smiling in the old man’s face.
Uncle Paul snatched the cane, and made a threatening gesture as if about to strike, when Geoffrey held out one hand, school-boy fashion, for a cut on the palm, and the old man made as if to give it a vicious blow; but, as the other did not flinch, he checked the fall of the cane, and sat showing his yellow teeth.
“I’m glad of it, very glad,” he snarled. “I told you so; and now you may pack up and be off, for I’m sick of you, and want to see your back.”
“But I’m not going,” said Geoffrey, coolly. “I wouldn’t move for the world. You do me so much good.”
“I do you good, puppy?”
“To be sure you do. I get as bilious and acid, and put out with my ill-luck as can be, and then I come and take a dose of you, and it seems to put me right again.”
“You’re – you’re the most insolent, cool, impertinent puppy I ever met?” cried the old man; “and – and I wish you all the ill-luck you can get.”
“Thanky,” said Geoffrey. “Well, good-by for the present. I’m going to take a walk down to the Cove.”
“Of course,” snarled Uncle Paul. “Hi! here. Madge! Madge!”
“Yes, uncle,” she cried, running eagerly out of the porch, and across the grass-plot.
“Yes, uncle,” he snarled. “You jade. You were listening, and waiting for a chance for another look, or a word, with this puppy here.”
“Oh, uncle!” cried the girl, colouring up, for the old man had guessed the truth.
“Pray don’t protest, my dear Miss Mullion,” said Geoffrey, coolly. “Say you were. There’s no harm in it.”
“Harm in it?” cried the old man, fiercely, “harm? Why, you don’t suppose I’m going to let you, a mining adventurer, flirt and play tricks with my brother’s child, and then go off and never come back?”
“Youth is the time for folly, Mr Paul.”
“Yes; but there shall be no follies here, sir. Look here, Madge, this fellow’s not to be trusted. He’s always going over to the Cove, to make eyes at handsome Bess Prawle; so don’t you listen to him.”
Madge looked at Geoffrey inquiringly.
“It’s quite true, Miss Mullion,” said Geoffrey, bowing assent to the old man’s words, “I am going over to the Cove; and I dare say I shall see Miss Prawle the pretty. By the way, Mr Paul, are women any the better for being pretty?”
“You – you impudent jackanapes! You, you – There, ha, ha, ha! Look at her!” he cried, chuckling at the effect of his words. “She’s run indoors in a huff, and she’ll cry as soon as you’re gone.”
“Then I hope you feel happy, sir?”
“I do,” said the old man, rubbing the ivory top of his cane. “Look here, boy, do you mean any thing by being so civil to that girl?”
“What girl, sir?”
“Don’t aggravate me, boy. Her – Madge – that smooth-faced, good-looking cat.”
“I don’t mean any thing but to be civil.”
“Not marriage?”
“Well, seeing that I can barely keep myself,” said Geoffrey, laughing, “no.”
“Marry Miss Pavey, then,” chuckled the old man, maliciously. “Sweet creature. False teeth, false hair, false ways, false voice – falsetto. Lovely woman. See what a dresser she is. What a useful piece of furniture for a house.”
“Marry her yourself,” said Geoffrey; “you are an old bachelor.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the old man. “But look here, sir. My niece!”
“Still harping on my daughter.”
“No, I’m not, Polonius Junior; but upon my niece. You say she don’t go out to meet you.”
“No, she does not.”
“Then don’t be civil to her. Marriage is folly. My brother married Jane Mullion there, and she worried his life out with being so stupid, and then he died and left her and her child paupers.”
“Hang that word!” cried Geoffrey, warmly. “How I do hate it.”
“Then don’t go and make a race of paupers,” said the old man. “Bah! A young fellow has his work cut out in life, and starts on his journey by sticking a load of woman on his back. Then she sticks a load of baby on her back, and most likely goes on banging children all over him till the burthen gets too heavy to be borne, when the poor wretch breaks down and dies. Look at me, sir. I never married; but saved enough to live on, and keep other people. Follow my example.”
“And grow as cantankerous.”
“Do you want to quarrel, puppy?”
“Not I. I haven’t time.”
“What are you crying about?” said the old man, roughly, as he found that Mrs Mullion, attracted by his loud voice, had come to see what was the matter, and had heard a part of his last speech.
“At what you said, dear,” sobbed the poor woman.
“Don’t you mind what he says, Mrs Mullion,” said Geoffrey; “he doesn’t mean it. I’ll be bound to say he’s got a very soft spot in his heart somewhere.”
As he spoke Geoffrey walked out of the garden, whistling, and made for the cliff path, drinking in the deliciously-fresh sea-breeze as he went along.
“This place keeps one from having the dumps,” he said to himself, “it is so fresh and bright; but really, in spite of my vainglorious boasting, I’m afraid I am wasting time here. Nil des, though; I’m not beaten yet. Old Paul is glorious as a dose of bitters, if he didn’t give one quite so much about Brown Maudlin. Pretty girl, very; but wants ballast horribly. Hang the old man, he goes just the way to make a fellow think about her. But he’s a fine old boy. Now I’ll go and have a dose of resignation from poor old Mrs Prawle.
“That old lady always does me good,” he said, as he went on. “What sane man could grumble who has all his faculties, just because he cannot make filthy lucre, when he has that patient old lady ready to face him with her calm, subdued ways. Hang it, there’s a very pathetic side to her life!”
He did not see that he, too, was watched, as he went swinging along; but went right ahead in his thorough way, setting his mind on a certain goal, and hardly heeding any thing else; but he had not passed one clump of rocks far, when Amos Pengelly came out, and stood watching him till he disappeared, and then followed slowly, to make sure that Geoffrey went down to the Cove.
The rough miner’s face was very white and drawn, and he uttered a low moaning sigh as he satisfied himself that the man whom he was watching had gone straight to the Cove, and then he limped back some little distance, and, with a heavy frown settling on his massive face, he seated himself on a rock waiting for Geoffrey’s return, his fingers crooking and clenching into fists, and the ruined mine shaft not far behind.
Chapter Seventeen
At Gwennas Cove
Bess Prawle was leaning against the rough granite door-post, very handsome, picturesque, and defiant, as she knitted away at a coarse blue worsted jersey which she was making; looking up from time to time to watch her father, who, pipe in mouth, was weeding the little patch of garden, of which he seemed to be very proud, while every now and then he paused to speak.
Just then the old man raised his nose and sniffed.
“There’s your mother burning again, Bess. Go and see,” he growled.
The girl ran in to find poor old Mrs Prawle evidently greatly exercised in her mind lest a jersey of her husband’s should be put on damp, and hence she was scorching it against the fire.
“Oh, mother!” cried Bess impatiently, “how you frighten me. Pray do take more care.”
“Yes, yes, Bess,” cried the poor woman querulously, as she turned and re-spread the article of clothing on her knees, “but some one must see to the things being aired;” and Bessie returned to where the old man was at work, when he stood up and drew his hand across his mouth.
“I don’t care, lass; I arn’t lived to sixty without finding that when a young fellow keeps coming to a cottage like this, it isn’t only to see an old woman who’s sick.”
“Stuff, father! you’re always thinking young men come to see me.”
“Am I?” grumbled the old man. “Well, I know what I know, and I know this – that if that London chap keeps coming here to see you, I’ll break his gashly head, or shove him over the cliff as I would have done to Jack Lannoe if Amos Pengelly hadn’t thrashed him instead.”
“Then I’ll tell him what you say, father – no, I won’t,” cried Bess, sharply, “I’ll tell mother what you promise to do.”
She made a movement as if to go in, when her father caught her by the skirt of her gown, and drew her back.