Chapter Forty Three.
Awakening to the Worst.
Geoffrey Trethick, as the servants had said, rose from the place where he was lying, and stood trying to think; but his brain seemed out of gear, and all he could master was the idea that he was not in a fit state to be at An Morlock. Consequently he groped his way out, staggered along the drive, and began to make for the hotel in a vague, erratic fashion, greatly to the amusement of such people as he met.
Fortunately for him about the sixth person he encountered was Amos Pengelly, who limped up, looking at him with a curious expression of disgust upon his countenance.
“‘Wine is a mocker,’” he muttered; “‘strong drink is raging.’ He’s been trying to forget it all.”
The stout miner hesitated for a moment, and then took and drew Geoffrey’s arm through his own, supporting his uncertain steps, and leading him straight to the hotel, where they were refused entrance.
“No,” said Mrs Polwinno, the landlady; “Mr Trethick had better take his favours somewhere else;” and Mr Polwinno, her little plump, mild husband, nodded his head, and said, “Exactly so, my dear.”
Amos Pengelly frowned, and the disgust he felt grew so strong that he was ready to loosen his hold upon Geoffrey, and leave him to his fate.
“He is false,” he said to himself, “and bad, and now he has taken to the gashly drink, and I’ve done with him.”
But as he spoke he looked in Geoffrey’s flushed face and wild, staring eyes, and something of his old feeling of respect and veneration for his leader came back, and with it a disposition to find some scriptural quotation to suit his case.
“‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves,’” he muttered. “Yes, he’s fell among thieves, who’ve robbed him of his reason, and I can’t leave him now.”
Taking hold of the helpless man a little more tightly, and knitting his brows, Amos Pengelly, in complete forgetfulness now of his scriptural quotation, proceeded unconsciously to act the part of the Good Samaritan, but under far more trying circumstances.
He had not gone far before he met Tom Jennen, slouching along with his hands deep down in the pockets of a pair of coarse flannel trousers, which came well under the arm-pits, and covered his chest, and the sight of those he met made Tom Jennen grin most portentously.
“Why, Amos,” he said, “they told me the gashly old mine was drowned, when it was engineer and head miner. Why, Amos, I thought you’d took the pledge.”
Pengelly tightened his lips and went on without answering, finding no little difficulty in keeping his companion upright.
“Ah,” said old Mrs Trevoil, standing knitting a jersey at her door, and smiling maliciously, “some folk gets up and preaches o’ Sundays among the Methodies, and teaches what other folk should do, and can’t keep theirselves straight.”
“Yes,” said a sister gossip, in a loud voice, “that’s a nice companion for a preacher. Shame on you, Amos Pengelly! You ought to be took off the plan.”
Pengelly’s face grew tighter, and he strode manfully on without deigning to say a word, or to make a reply, as he ran the gauntlet of the fisher-folk standing at the low granite doors, though the remarks he heard thrown at his own religious leanings, and at Geoffrey’s double fall from the path of virtue, stung him as sharply as if he had been passing through a nest of hornets.
“I’d take him ’bout with me to chapel o’ Sundays till you’ve converted him if I was thee, Amos Pengelly,” said one sharp-tongued woman at last, as he turned the corner of the steep lane where he lived; and then his own door was reached. He dragged Trethick inside, and passed his hand across his dripping brow before taking the young man, now terribly helpless, upon his back, after the fashion of a sack, and carrying him up the short flight of steps and laying him upon his own bed, where Geoffrey seemed to go off at once into a deep sleep.
For the drug had had a most potent effect upon him, from the fact that he had partaken of a terribly strong dose in the dregs of the bottle, where it had settled down; the two watchers at the furnace, though they had drunk deeply, neither of them having swallowed one-half so much.
As soon as Pengelly had relieved himself of his load, he sank down in the one chair in his bare bedroom, and sat watching Geoffrey hour after hour, waiting for him to awaken.
“When he’s sober, and in his right mind, I’ll talk to him,” said Pengelly, to himself; and there he sat, hour after hour, comforting himself by singing hymns in a low voice, giving them out first two lines at a time, after announcing number and tune, to an imaginary congregation gathered round; and this he kept up till the afternoon.
Then he went down to the mine, leaving Geoffrey locked in; but, on reaching the cliff, it was only to see so many people hanging about the buildings discussing the accident that he had not the heart to go there and be questioned; so he turned aside, and walked on past the old mine shaft to Gwennas Cove, hoping to find old Prawle outside, for he felt that he could not go to the cottage.
He had his wish, for the old man was there, sitting upon a stone and smoking his pipe.
“Well, Amos,” he said, as the miner came up, “so you’ve flooded the mine, I hear.”
“Ay, she’s full o’ water,” said Pengelly, sadly.
“Ah, that’s a bad job; but what fools ye must have been.”
“Fools, perhaps, not to keep a better look-out; but it’s done, Master Prawle, and we must get the water out. How’s Bessie?”
“Busy,” said the old man, shortly.
Pengelly stood looking down at him for some few minutes, wanting to speak, but flinching from his task.
“Well,” said the old man at last, “what is it? Ye’re a strange chap, Amos Pengelly. Ye won’t drink nor smoke a pipe, only stand and stare and glower, as if you was too good to mix with the like o’ me. Now speak out, or else go.”
“I want to know if it’s all true, Master Prawle?”
“If what’s all true?”
“What I’ve heard up churchtown.”
“How do I know what you’ve heard up churchtown? I was there this morning, and I heard that Wheal Carnac was flooded. Is that what you mean?”
“No, Master Prawle. I mean—I mean about Mullion’s lass. Is she here?”
The old man took his pipe from his mouth, and nodded.
“Did Master Trethick bring her here last night?”
The old man nodded again.
“And it is all true about—about the little one?”
“Ay, it’s all true enough,” said the old man. “But never mind about that. He’ll marry her by-and-by, and it will be all right next time. Look here, Amos, what are you going to do about Wheal Carnac?”
“I don’t know,” said the miner.
“Then get to know,” said old Prawle, eagerly. “Look here, Amos, you’re fond of coming and hanging about, and I know what you mean, of course. So look here, I say, if you want to be friends with me, Amos Pengelly, you’ve got to come and tell me what goes on there, and what you are going to do, my lad, about that mine, d’ye hear?”
“Yes, Master Prawle,” said the miner, heavily. “I must go back now.”
“Yes, you’d better,” the old man said, with a leer. “They don’t want men folk about here now. My Bessie has turned me out, and I don’t seem to belong to the place. I’ll walk part of the way back with you, Amos, and talk about the mine;” and, to Pengelly’s astonishment, the old man did so, talking eagerly the while about the water, and the best way to clear it off.
“P’r’aps they’ll give her up now, Amos,” he said, at last. “P’r’aps they won’t spend no more over her.”
“Very likely,” said Pengelly, wearily.
“Then mind this—if you want me to be on your side, Amos, you come over now and then and tell me all.”
Pengelly nodded, and they parted, the miner making haste back to his cottage, where he found that Geoffrey had not stirred, neither did he move all that night, while Pengelly dozed beside him in a chair.
It seemed as if he would never wake, and the probabilities are that a man with a less vigorous constitution would never have woke again, so powerful was the drug thrown with reckless hand into the brandy by the ignorant man.
In fact it was ten o’clock the next morning before Geoffrey started up and gazed wonderingly at Pengelly.
“You’ve woke up at last, sir,” said the miner, with a reproachful look.
“At last? What do you mean? Good heavens! How my head throbs.”
“It was a sorry trick to do, Master Trethick, and not a man’s part, to go and drown your brain like the pit.”
“Look here, Pengelly, my head’s all in a whirl. I’m ill. I hardly know what I am saying. How came I here?”
“I carried you here mostly, Master Trethick, sir, after you come away from An Morlock.”
“Did I go to An Morlock?”
“Yes, sir, I s’pose so—to say the mine was flooded.”
“Yes, of course, the mine was flooded; but did I go to Mr Penwynn’s?”
“Yes, sir, in a state such as I had never believed I could see you, sir—full of drink.”
“What?”
“I suppose you had been taking it to make you forget the trouble, sir. That drop I gave you at the furnace—”
“Ah, to be sure,” cried Geoffrey, who saw more clearly now—“that brandy.”
“Wouldn’t have hurt a child, sir,” said the miner, bitterly.
“But it sent my two men to sleep. What time is it now—three—four?” he cried, gazing at the window.
“It’s ten o’clock, sir, and you’ve been since two yesterday sleeping it off.”
“Then that stuff was drugged,” cried Geoffrey. “Here, Pengelly, may I wash here? I must go up to An Morlock directly.”
There was a knocking on the door below, and Pengelly descended, while Trethick tried to clear his head by drinking copiously of the cold water, and then bathing his face and head.
“Good heavens! If I went up to An Morlock in such a state what would they think? How unfortunate. Every thing goes wrong.”
The cold water did clear his dull brain somewhat, but his lips and throat were parched, and he felt terribly ill. So confused was he still, that for the time he had forgotten all about Madge Mullion, while the proceedings of the previous day seemed to him to be seen through a mist, and the more he tried, the worse confusion he was in. One thing, however, was certain, and that was that he must go up to An Morlock at once, and see Mr Penwynn about the mine.
“Humph! here is a comb,” he said. “I’ll straighten a little, and then run up home, and—”
He dropped the comb and caught at the window-sill, where a little glass was standing, for as he mentioned that word home, he felt giddy, and back, like a flash, came the recollection of all that had passed.
He had no home to go to. Rhoda must have heard of that awkward incident, and he had been up to An Morlock while under the influence of a drug.
“Feel giddy, sir?” said a voice. “I’ll give you a cup of tea before you go away; but here’s Mr Penwynn’s man been with a letter for you.”
Geoffrey caught the letter from the bearer’s hands, and, with a terrible feeling of dread oppressing him, tore it open, and read it through twice before he fully realised its meaning.
It was very short but to the point, and Geoffrey seemed to see the stern-looking writer as the words gradually took shape and meaning.
For Mr Penwynn said, in cold, plain terms, that, after what had taken place, of course Mr Trethick saw that he could not call at An Morlock again, and that he was commissioned by Miss Penwynn to say that she fully endorsed her father’s words. As to the mine, for the present Mr Trethick must continue his duties there, and in the conduct of their business relations Mr Penwynn called upon him to use his most strenuous exertions to reduce the loss, and to place the mine in its former state.
“Curse the mine!” cried Geoffrey aloud. “What is that compared to my character there? Pengelly,” he cried fiercely, “do people believe this scandal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And yesterday? What about me? How did I seem?”
“Like one, sir,” said the miner sternly, “who had forgotten that he was a man, and drunk till he was a helpless beast.”
“And I went there like that,” thought Geoffrey. “Perhaps she saw me. And she believes all this.”
He stood there with his head feeling as if a flood had burst in upon his throbbing brain.