Chapter Thirty Nine.
More Unpleasantries.
Dr Rumsey was in, Mrs Rumsey said, but he was engaged. She would give Mr Trethick’s message, and she turned sharply round and shut the door.
“Confound the woman,” exclaimed Geoffrey, frowning, and he went off towards the mine.
His way lay through the principal street, and as he was passing the hotel it suddenly struck him that he had had a terrible night, and that he was half-starved.
“The engine won’t work without coal,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “I must have breakfast,” and, going in, he ordered the meal, ate heartily, and then, feeling refreshed and brighter, he hesitated as to what he should do—go down to the mine or walk across to Gwennas.
He stopped, thinking,—
“If I go to Gwennas, people will say that the case is clear against me.
“If I don’t go they will say that it is clearer, for I stop away because I am a coward, and that my conduct is cruel.
“Well, I won’t be brutal, at all events; so here goes to see Father Prawle, and to know how the poor girl is.”
He started off walking fast, but just then who should come round the corner but a thin figure in black, half-way between a sister of mercy and a lady in deep mourning.
“Miss Pavey, by all that’s wonderful!” he exclaimed. “What a transformation. What has become of the rainbow?”
“Ah, Miss Pavey,” he said. “Good-morning.”
To his astonishment and disgust, the lady darted a look of horror at him and crossed the road.
“This is pleasant,” he cried, angrily. “Why, that woman must know of it, and—”
He felt a chill of horror run through him, for he knew that she would go, if she had not already been, straight up to An Morlock and acquaint Rhoda with the events of the night, no doubt pleasantly dressed up.
“She must have seen the Rumseys this morning!”
He hesitated for a moment, and then turned to go straight up to An Morlock.
“I’ll go and tell Penwynn all about it.”
“Pooh! Absurd,” he cried. “What’s come to me? Am I to go and deny a scandal before I have been accused by my friends? Ridiculous.”
Laughing at himself for what he called his folly, he went right off along the cliff, looking with pride at the smoking of the Wheal Carnac chimney shaft, and pausing for a moment or two, with a smile of gratification upon his lips, to watch the busy figures about the buildings and to listen to the rattle and noise of the machinery.
Going on, he came to the slope down from the cliff path to the beach, and he could not help a shudder as he saw how dangerous it was even by daylight.
“I wonder we did not break our necks,” he thought, as he went cautiously down, and then amongst the granite boulders and weed-hung masses to where he had leaped in and swum to poor Madge’s help, for there it all was plainly enough—the long spit of rocks running out like a pier, the swirling water, and the waving masses of slimy weed.
“It’s a good job it was night,” he thought. “Hang me, if I shouldn’t have hesitated to dive in now.”
All the same he would not have hesitated a moment; but it was a wild, awesome place, and the chances of a swimmer getting easily ashore, after a dive from the rocks, were not many.
He went on picking his way as nearly as he could to follow the steps taken on the previous night towards the farther sloping path, pausing again as he came opposite to the adit of the old mine up on the cliff.
It was an ugly, low archway, fringed with ferns, and whose interior was glossy with what looked like green metallic tinsel, but proved to be a dark, glistening, wet lichen or moss.
The place, like all others of its kind, had an attraction for Geoffrey, and he went in a short distance to peer forward into the gloom of the narrow passage through the rock, and to listen to the dripping, echoing sounds of the falling water.
It was a part of the working of the old mine, and, doubtless, had been driven in first by the adventurers in search of a vein of tin or copper, after striking which they had sunk the perpendicular shaft on the cliff—the one by the path where he had had his encounter with Pengelly; and, by a little calculation, he reckoned that this adit or passage would be about a hundred yards long.
“I’ll have lights some day, and Pengelly and I will explore it.”
He went no farther, for there was always the danger of coming upon one of the minor shafts, or “winzes” as they were called, which are made for ventilating the mine, and joining the upper and lower galleries together. In this case the winzes would have been full of water, like the great shaft, up to the level of the adit, which would run off the surplus to the beach.
More by force of habit than for any particular reason, he threw a great stone in, to make a crashing noise, which went echoing and reverberating along the dripping passage, and then he went on.
“Poor lass, she would have had a poor chance,” he said, “if she had thrown herself down the old shaft up yonder. I don’t think I dare have dived down there. Nay,” he added, laughing, “I am sure I dare not.”
He went on fast now, noting the difficulties of the pathway up which he had helped Madge in the dark; and then, pausing half-way up to take breath, he uttered an exclamation.
“I shouldn’t have thought it possible,” he said. “Why, it seems almost madness now. Well, I got her there safely, and I have been thanked for my trouble.”
Old Prawle was hanging about, busy, as usual, with a fishing-line, as Geoffrey went down into the Cove, nodded, and tapped gently at the door.
“Well, Bessie,” he said, in his light, cheery way, “how is she?”
“Better, Mr Trethick,” said Bessie coldly; and the bright look passed from his face as he saw the girl’s distant manner.
“Has the doctor been?”
“Yes, Mr Trethick.”
“What does he say?”
“That she is to have perfect rest and quiet.”
“And your mother?”
“Better, sir. Will you speak to her?”
Geoffrey hesitated a moment, and then seeing that Bessie was misinterpreting his looks, he said sharply,—
“Yes, I will;” and following Bessie in, he found the invalid in her old place, airing and burning more things than usual, but there was such a reproachful, piteous look in her eyes, that he was quite taken aback.
“It’s of no use. I can’t argue with them,” thought Geoffrey.
“Here, Mrs Prawle,” he said aloud, “will you kindly see that every thing possible is done for that poor girl. You will be at some expense, of course, till Mrs Mullion and her uncle fetch them home. Take that.”
He laid a five-pound note on the table, and walked straight out, Bessie drawing on one side to let him pass, her face looking cold and thin, and her eyes resting on the floor.
“Pleasant,” muttered Geoffrey, and with an abrupt “Good-morning” he went out to where old Prawle was at work.
“Here, walk part of the way along the cliff with me,” he said. “Come away from the cottage.”
The old man looked up at him from under his shaggy eyebrows, and then followed him for a couple of hundred yards, and stopped.
“Won’t that do?” he said. “Are you going to give me some money for them two?”
“I’ve left five pounds with your wife,” said Geoffrey, sharply.
“Oh, come, that’s handsome,” said the old man. “But you couldn’t have done less.”
“Look here,” said Geoffrey, sharply, “you know what I told you last night.”
“Yes, I know,” said the old man, grimly.
“You tell them the same. I couldn’t talk to them. Undeceive them about it, and be kind to the poor lass. I’ll do all I can for you, Prawle, about the shares.”
The old man nodded and uttered a growl that might have been “All right,” or “Thanks,” or any thing else, and then Geoffrey went on towards Carnac.
“Tell them the same,” said the rugged old fellow, with a grim chuckle. “Why, I might preach to ’em for a month, and then they wouldn’t believe it any more than I could myself.”
Pengelly was anxiously awaiting his principal at the mine, ready to lay certain reports before him about the drive that was being made, and he did it all in so stern and distant a way that Geoffrey could not help seeing that his right-hand man had heard the report, and, what was more, believed it. The result was that it raised up a spirit of resentment in the young man’s breast that made him retire within himself snail fashion; but with this difference, that he left his horns pointing menacingly outside; and for the rest of that day he was not a pleasant person to consult upon any matter.
For in spite of the contempt with which he treated the whole affair, and his determination to completely ignore the matter, it was always torturing him, and there was the constant thought in his mind that Rhoda must sooner or later hear of it, if she had not already been apprised by Miss Pavey or some other tattling friend.
“Let them. If she’s the woman I believe her, she’ll write to me in a quiet indirect way, not referring to it, of course, but to let me see her confidence in me is not shaken.”
The amount of work he got through on that day was tremendous, and as he worked his spirits rose. He strengthened his plans for guarding against the breaking in of the sea; and at last, completely fagged out, he ascended from the mine, changed, and washed in the office, and, without speaking to Pengelly, went straight to Dr Rumsey’s.
The doctor saw him coming, and came to the door.
“Find you apartments, Mr Trethick?” he said, coldly. “In an ordinary way it would be impossible. Under the present circumstances it is doubly so.”
“Very good,” said Geoffrey, sharply. “You persist, then, in believing that?”
“I would rather not discuss the matter, Mr Trethick,” said the doctor. “Good evening.”
“I must go to the hotel, then, that’s all,” said Geoffrey to himself. “Confound them all! They will find that I’ve Cornish blood in my veins, and can be as pig-headed in obstinacy as the best.”