“I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier,” he began. “I have come round about our mine. There is a question of a fresh field being opened up—between ourselves, not before it's wanted. I find it difficult to get my Board to take a comprehensive view. In short, the question is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it? The fees will be all right.” His left eye closed. “Things have been very—er—dicky; we are going to change our superintendent. I have got little Pippin—you know little Pippin?”
Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: “Oh yes. He's not a mining man!”
Hemmings replied: “We think that he will do.” 'Do you?' thought Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'
He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin—“King” Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the Camborne Grammar-school. “King” Pippin! the boy with the bright colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of. He remembered how one day “King” Pippin had said to him in his soft way, “Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you”; and in answer to his dubious, “Is that all right?” had replied, “Of course—I don't want you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman” (the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve). He remembered, too, an occasion when “King” Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself, and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.
Thinking of these things he answered curtly: “When shall I start?”
“Down-by-the-starn” Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful sprightliness: “There's a good fellow! I will send instructions; so glad to see you well.” Conferring on Scorrier a look—fine to the verge of vulgarity—he withdrew. Scorrier remained, seated; heavy with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a tumbler of sweet port.
A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.
The “King” Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four. He awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about himself. Pippin had still “King” Pippin's bright, fine hair, and dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still a bright colour and suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy. From the first, and apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain's table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, “among the big-wigs.”
During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's memory, and that for a disconcerting reason. In the forecastle were the usual complement of emigrants. One evening, leaning across the rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round, saw Pippin's face and beard quivering in the lamplight. “Poor people!” he said. The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some fine wire sound-recording instrument.
'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought. Impelled to justify this fancy, he blurted out: “You're a nervous chap. The way you look at those poor devils!”