The Vicar's People Part 6

"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 indors.e.m.e.nt 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 st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.sed. "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 la.s.s."

The angry flush came into the miner's face again, but he mastered his annoyance, and said, rather hoa.r.s.ely,--

"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.

"They do it in partnership like, sir," said the miner, eagerly, as he gazed in the new-comer's face, as if attracted by the sound of the word "adventurer."

"One of them goes up on the highest part of the cliff yonder, Pen Dwavas that is, and he watches till he sees a school coming."

"How can he see a school of fish coming?"

"Colour," growled Tom Jennen, who had now turned round, and was trying to spit upon a particular boulder on the sh.o.r.e below.

"Yes, by the colour, sir," said the miner, Amos, or more commonly Preaching Pengelly--"colour of the water; and then he signals to his mates. That's them gone off in yon boat."

"I see."

"They have their boot ready with the seine in--long net, you know--and rows out, just as you see them now."

"Yes; but what's the use of his waving those things now?"

"Them's bushes, sir," continued the miner, who was talking, and reading the new-comer at the same time. "Don't you see, them in the boot being low down, couldn't see which way to go, so he waves them on with the bushes."

"To be sure, yes," said Geoffrey. "I see now. They are throwing something over--yes, of course, the net. So that dark, ripply patch, then, is where the fish lie?"