The Vicar's People Part 30

"Paying, but poor."

"But it would be richer lower down, and we should hit the six-foot lode by driving."

"May be," said Geoffrey. "Humph, mundic! There's copper here too," he said, examining a piece of stone that glistened with the yellowish metal.

"That there be," cried Pengelly; "I'm sure Wheal Carnac would pay, sir; I always believed it; and old Prawle there at the Cove, though he's close, he knows it's a good pit."

"Yes," said Geoffrey, "I believe it would pay, well worked, and on economical and scientific principles."

"Pay, sir? Yes, I'm sure she would," cried Pengelly. "You look here, sir, and here, at the stuff."

He plied his crowbar most energetically, and Geoffrey worked hard, too, breaking fragment after fragment, and convincing himself that, though under the old plans it would not have paid to powder, wash, and extract the tin from the quality of ore lying thrown out from the mouth of the pit; yet under the system he hoped to introduce he felt sure that he could make a modest return.

"And there's such a chance, sir," cried Amos, with whom the working of Wheal Carnac was a pet project. "Look at the money laid out, and how well every thing was done."

"What became of the machinery?" cried Geoffrey, abruptly.

"It was sold by auction, sir; all beautiful, fine new engines, and boilers, and wheels, and chains--not old-fashioned ones, but new casts, and they bought it at Tulip Hobba."

"Where they work with it?"

"No, sir, it's stopped; and they do say as it could all be bought back for very little."

"Your very littles all mean thousands of pounds, Master Pengelly," said Geoffrey, thoughtfully.

"But they'd all come back, sir, and you'd have the machinery still. Do buy it, sir, and get her to work once more."

"Why, you don't suppose I've got the money to invest?" cried Geoffrey.

"Haven't you, sir?" said Pengelly, in a disappointed tone.

"Not a penny, my man."

"Never mind, sir; you get them as has, and we'll turn out such an output of tin to gra.s.s as'll make some of the clever ones shake their heads."

"More copper," said Geoffrey, picking up a piece of stone.

"Yes, sir, a bit by chance; but I don't think there's much. This pit was sunk for tin."

"Copper pays better than tin," said Geoffrey, as he went on from spot to spot. "You don't think any of this stuff was brought here from anywhere else?"

"Oh, dear, no, sir."

"Not thrown down to make the pit seem more valuable than it is? Such tricks have been played."

"Oh, no, sir. Besides, I wouldn't begin till she'd been pumped out, and some more stuff got up to try her."

"No," said Geoffrey, "of course not;" and he went on with his examination, finding nothing to cause him great elation, but enough to make him soberly sensible that there was a modest career of success for the mine, if properly worked.

Who was to find the money, and give him the charge?

That was the problem he had to solve, and as he returned the hammer to Pengelly, and walked slowly back, he wondered whether he should be fortunate enough to find any one with a sufficiency of the speculative element in him to venture.

He was so deep in thought that he nearly ran up against Rhoda Penwynn, returning from her early walk, and in conversation with the Reverend Edward Lee, evidently also on a const.i.tutional bout.

Rhoda gave him a smile and a salute, and the young vicar raised his hat stiffly; but Geoffrey's head was too full of tin ore, pounds per ton, cost of crushing and smelting, to give them more than a pa.s.sing thought; and he was only aroused from his reverie by a peculiar odour at Mrs Mullion's door, where that dame stood, buxom, pleasant, and smiling, to hope he had had a nice walk, and tell him that breakfast was quite ready, and Uncle Paul already having his.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

GEOFFREY IS FOOLISH.

Time glided on, and Geoffrey had very little to encourage him. He investigated Wheal Carnac a little more, and then stopped because he could go no farther. He found life, however, very pleasant at the far western home. He was invited to several houses; and played whist so well that he became a favourite, especially as he generally held bad cards. Then he sat a good deal with old Mr Paul, and bantered him when he was cross; while with Mrs Mullion he became an especial favourite, the pleasant, patient, innocent little body delighting in going to his room to tell him of her troubles, and about what a good man brother Thomas was, though she did wish she would be more patient.

"He gets more impatient as he grows older," she sighed; "and if his paper isn't on the table it's dreadful. You see, Madge is so fond of getting it to read down the list of marriages, while, when her uncle has it, the first thing he does is to look and see if any one he knows is dead. I always peep to see if any one I know is born."

Poor Mrs Mullion used to blunder on in the most innocent way possible, to her half-brother's great delight, while Geoffrey had hard work sometimes to refrain from a smile.

The young man's life was one of disappointment, but it was not unhappy; and more than once he found himself thinking of what it would have been had he had a sister, and that sister had been like Rhoda Penwynn. Then came thoughts of Madge Mullion, who seemed to be developing more and more a desire to enlist him in her train of admirers. Rumour said that she was fond of flirting, and her uncle angrily endorsed it. Now Geoffrey began to think of it, he recalled the fact that he received many little attentions at the girl's hands such as an ordinary lodger would not get. Fresh flowers were always upon his table, both in sitting and bed room; books were left in conspicuous places, with markers in tender pa.s.sages; he had caught Madge several times busy with needle and thread over some one or other of his articles of attire that needed the proverbial st.i.tch in time; and one night, as he lay in bed thinking, he suddenly recalled the fact that he had said in her hearing that if there was any colour in the universe that he liked, it was blue.

"And, by George! she has worn blue ever since. The girl's a regular man-trap, and old Paul's right."

"Well," he said, getting up, and giving his pillow a vicious punch, as he lay thinking of her more than usual, "she may go on till all's blue, for I sha'n't put my foot in the trap. Why, confound her impudence!

she's carrying on with that smooth-looking fellow Tregenna, or else my ears deceived me, and--bother the wench! she's very pretty, and _piquante_, and attractive, and all that sort of thing, and I wish she was at the bottom of the sea--a mermaid combing her golden hair--not drowned. Stupid wench!"

He then turned over, and mentally went down Horton Friendship mine, discussed to himself the losses that the slovenly manner of carrying on the work must entail to the proprietary; and then absolutely writhed over the contemptuous indifference his proposals received from those whom he looked upon as common-sense people.

"Hang them!" he growled. "The old cry. What did for our great-grandfathers will do for us. The farther you go back, the wiser people were; so that if you will only go far enough into antiquity there you find perfection.

"Now take my case," he said. "I don't propose any extraordinary new invention that shall take men's breath away. I merely say you are getting your ores in a costly, wasteful manner. That you are digging out of the ground vast quant.i.ties of mundic and throwing it away. Well, I say to them that mundic is pyrites, and contains so much sulphur; that, by a process, I can utilise that, so as to supply sulphur as a heat producer, to the great saving of fuel, besides which, I can give you metallic results as well, and make a large profit.

"Result: they shake their heads and laugh at me."

"Hang them! They're as obstinate as--as--well, as I am, for give up I will not."

Then, in a half-dreamy manner, he mentally went to the edge of the shaft at Wheal Carnac, and, as he had often done in reality, he picked up and examined the _debris_, lying where it had been thrown when the shaft was dug, and ended by going to sleep after half determining to try and get some apparatus fitted to allow of a descent, as far as he could go for the water, to examine the shaft and the adits, when if he could conscientiously feel that there was any prospect of the place being profitably worked he would make an effort to get a few enterprising capitalists together to take advantage of what was already done, and carry the mine on to prosperity.

The first person on whom Geoffrey's eyes rested the next morning as he entered his room was Madge Mullion, in a neat blue gingham dress, arranging a bunch of forget-me-nots in a little blue vase upon his breakfast-table, and ready to look very bright and conscious, as she started up to smile pleasantly in his face.

"Why, hang the girl! she has blue eyes, too," thought Geoffrey, as he nodded, by way of good-morning.

"Uncle Paul down?" he said.

"Yes, Mr Trethick, I heard him come down just before you, and--"

"The old rascal's got something good for breakfast," cried Geoffrey, with a p.r.o.nounced sniff. "What is it?"

"Curried lobster, Mr Trethick," said Madge, pouting her pretty red-- perhaps already too pouting--lips at the lodger's extremely mundane views.