Chapter Twenty Eight.
A Chat with Uncle Paul.
They were busy days for Geoffrey Trethick and his factotum Pengelly, who hardly gave himself time to rest. The visit to Mr Penwynn that next morning had resulted in the information that he had commissioned Mr Tregenna to offer a certain sum for the machinery.
“And mind this, Trethick,” the banker said, “you have led me into this affair, and you will have to make it pay me well.”
“Never fear, sir,” said Geoffrey, “I’ll do my best.”
Visits to Gwennas were rare, and Geoffrey went to and from the cottage with an abstracted air, too busy to notice that Madge looked pale and careworn, and that Uncle Paul seemed a little changed.
The old man would waylay him though sometimes, poke at him with his cane, and get him into the summer-house to smoke one of the long black cheroots.
“Well,” he said one morning, “how are you getting along, boy? Swimmingly I suppose? I saw the water coming out at a fine rate.”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “we’ve got all the machinery fixed as far as was necessary, and the pumping has begun.”
“And you are going to make my hundred pounds come back to me, eh?”
“Well, not very likely,” said Geoffrey, “unless you buy fresh shares of the new proprietors. What do you say?”
“Bah!” exclaimed the old man; and they smoked on in silence for a time.
“Might do worse,” said Geoffrey.
“Rubbish! I tell you it will all end in a smash-up. You get your money regularly, and don’t let them have any arrears.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Geoffrey. “So you think there will, be another failure?”
“Sure of it I shall buy that piece of ground yet for a house. Sure to fail.”
“So old Prawle says.”
“Oh, old Prawle says so, does he?” continued Uncle Paul.
“Yes; and I told him the Indian file thought the same.”
“The what?” said Uncle Paul.
“The Indian file—you,” said Geoffrey, coolly.
Uncle Paul thumped his stick on the floor, and looked daggers.
“Look here, young fellow,” he said, sharply, “you go a deal too much to Gwennas Cove, and it don’t look well.”
“Haven’t been half so often lately,” said Geoffrey, coolly.
“You go ten times too much. Look here, boy, have you seen how pale and ill that jade, Madge, looks?”
“No. Yes, to be sure, I did think she looked white.”
“Fretting, sir, fretting. Now look here, boy, it isn’t square.”
“What isn’t?” said Geoffrey, coolly.
“So much of that going to Gwennas Cove, and rescuing young women from infuriated mobs, and that sort of thing. Lady very grateful?”
“Very.”
“Humph! Bewitched you?”
“Not yet.”
“Humph! Going to?”
“Don’t know.”
“Damn you, Geoffrey Trethick,” cried the old man, “you’d provoke a saint.”
“Which you are not.”
“Who the devil ever said I was, sir? Now, look here, you dog, I warned you when you came that I’d have no courting.”
“You can’t stop courting,” laughed Geoffrey. “It would take a giant.”
“None of your confounded banter, sir. I told you I’d have no courting—no taking notice of that jade—and you’ve disobeyed me.”
“Not I,” said Geoffrey.
“Don’t contradict, puppy. I say you have.”
“All right.”
“The jade’s going about the house red-eyed, and pale, and love-sick—confound her!—about you, and now you make her miserable by playing off that brown-skinned fish-wench with the dark eyes.”
Geoffrey’s conscience smote him as he thought of that day when he playfully kissed Madge, and asked himself whether she really cared for him now, but only to feel sure that she did not.
“Does this sort of thing please you?” he said.
“Confound you! No, sir, it does not. Act like a man if you can, and be honest, or—confound you, sir!—old as I am, and old-fashioned as I am—damme, sir—laws or no laws, I’ll call you out and shoot you. You sha’n’t trifle with the girl’s feelings while I’m here.”
Geoffrey’s first impulse was to say something banteringly; but he saw that the old man was so much in earnest that he took a quiet tone.
“Uncle Paul,” he said, “why will you go on running your head against a brick wall?”
“What do you mean, boy?”
“Only that you have got a notion in your head, and it seems useless for me to try and get it out. I’m busy and bothered, and have a deal to think about, so, once for all, let me tell you that I have hardly ever paid Miss Mullion the slightest attention, and, what is more, I am not so conceited as to believe she is making herself uncomfortable about me.”
The old man glared hard at him and uttered a grunt, for the eyes that met his were as frank and calm as could be.
“Then all I can say is that if what you say is true—”
“Which it is—perfectly true,” replied Geoffrey.
“Then it’s very strange,” grumbled the old man. “She never went on like this before. Have another cheroot, Trethick?”
“Now that’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard you say to-day,” said Geoffrey, smiling, as he took one of the great black cheroots. “I say, old fellow, these are very good. What do they cost you a-box?”
“Five pounds a hundred,” said the old man, quietly.
“What?” cried Geoffrey.
“Shilling apiece, boy.”
“Why I—’pon my word, sir, really I’m ashamed to take them.”
“Bah! stuff!” cried the old man. “Do you suppose, because I live here in this quiet way, that I’m a pauper? Smoke the cigar, boy. Here’s a light.”
Geoffrey lit up, and inwardly determined that in future he would keep to his pipe, while the old man sat watching him.
“So you mean to make the mine pay, eh, Trethick?” he said.
“Yes, I believe I shall, Mr Paul,” said Geoffrey, quietly. “I’m not starting with the idea of a fortune, but on the principles of which I have often told you of getting a profit out of a mine by economy, new means of reducing the ore, and living where others would fail.”
“Humph!” said the old man, looking at him thoughtfully, and they smoked on in silence.
“I was a bit bilious this morning,” said Uncle Paul at last, in an apologetic tone.
“Yes,” said Geoffrey, “I saw that.”
“Parson called and upset me. Wanted me to go and take the chair at a missionary meeting for the Hindoos, and I told him that the Hindoos and Buddhists ought to send missionaries to us. But don’t take any notice.”
“Not I, old gentleman,” said Geoffrey, laughing. “I rather like it.”
“Humph! I rather like you too, boy. You seem to do my biliousness good. You can stand a bullying without flying out. I haven’t found a fellow stand it so well since I left the coolies.”
“Mutual admiration,” laughed Geoffrey. “I like you, old gentleman, because you do fly out. It’s quite refreshing after a lot of disappointments to have some one to quarrel with.”
There was another pause.
“I say, Trethick,” said the old man, “then Penwynn and Tregenna are hand-and-glove in this job, eh?”
Geoffrey looked at the old man wonderingly, for he was evidently beating about the bush.
“I don’t know. There, don’t ask me questions, old gentleman,” was the reply. “I’m not at liberty to chatter.”
There was another silence.
“Madge isn’t a bad sort of girl, Trethick,” said the old man at last.
“No,” said Geoffrey; “she’s pretty and amiable, and I believe, poor lassie, she is very good-hearted. I often think you are too hard upon her.”
“Hard be hanged, sir! I’ve been her’s and her mother’s support these ten years.”
“Very likely,” said Geoffrey, dryly; “but a dog doesn’t like his crusts and bones any the better for having them thrown at him.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the old man, thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps I am a little hard upon her sometimes; but she aggravates me. Trethick, you are quite conceited puppy enough, I know, but that girl is fretting about you.”
“Ignorance is bliss, sir. I was not aware of it.”
“Ignorance is a blister, sir,” cried the old man, sharply. “But,” he added, more gently, “she is, I tell you. Trethick, she is a nice girl, and you might do worse.”
“Stuff, stuff, my dear sir!” cried Geoffrey, laughing. “You are mistaken, and I am not a marrying man. There, I must be off;” and, starting up, he swung off along the path, and away down towards the mine buildings, where steam was now puffing, water falling, and several busy hands were at work.
Uncle Paul watched him thoughtfully as he strode away, and then sat back thinking, as he gazed out to sea.