The Vicar's People. George Manville Fenn
An Opinion of Tregenna.
“You’re a nice, smooth scoundrel,” said Geoffrey to himself, as he set down his glass, “and I have been drinking with you when I ought to have thrown the wine in your face, and told you that you were a blackguard.—But we don’t do this sort of thing in society. As long as there is a good thick coat of whitewash over the sepulchre, society does not mind, but smiles on ladies with no reputation if they are rich, and never opens its ears to the acts, deeds, and exploits of our nice young men. I wonder whether mine host knows your character, and what my fair young hostess feels? Don’t seem very sentimental about him, anyhow; and here’s my reverend friend quite cottoning to black whiskers, and enjoying his small talk. Ah! it’s a strange world.”
A brisk little conversation was just now going off between Rhoda Penwynn and the new vicar, Tregenna throwing in a word here and there, Mr. Penwynn smiling approval as he listened, while Geoffrey went on eating heartily, and following his thought.
“I may be wrong,” he went on, “but I feel pretty sure I could say something that would make you change colour, my smooth, cleanly-shaven gentleman, and if I did I should make you my enemy for life. Well, perhaps I could bear that, but I don’t want enemies, I want friends. If I’m right, though, I don’t think you ought to win ma’mselle unless you reform, probationise, and she condones. There, what a string! As the old women say—‘tain’t no business of mine.”
He glanced across at Tregenna just then, and that gentleman met his eye, smiled, and the discussion being over, asked him how long he meant to stay in the west.
“Stay?” said Geoffrey sharply. “Altogether.”
Tregenna raised his eyebrows a little, and just then the young vicar, in reply to a question from Mr. Penwynn, began speaking, in slow measured accents, about the vicarage to be built, and the alterations he meant to make at the church. A bright colour suffused his smooth pale face, as he found that Rhoda was listening to him, and that he was now monopolising the attention of the rest. However, he seemed to master his nervousness, and spoke out firmly and well to the end.
“You may try,” said Mr. Penwynn, smiling, “but I am afraid, my dear sir, that your ideas are as Utopian as those of Mr. Trethick there. However, experience teaches, as the Latin proverb goes; but, as an old inhabitant, I venture to say that before many weeks are over, both of you gentlemen will confess that you have undertaken a Herculean task. Religiously, the people of the lower orders are as wedded to Wesleyanism as in their mining tactics they are to their old-fashioned ways. Our rough Cornish folk, gentlemen, are as hard to move as our own granite.”
“Perhaps so, papa,” said Rhoda; “but we have not had many efforts made here to move them.”
“Thank you, Miss Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, flushing, and speaking with animation. “Those are the first encouraging words I have heard. Your daughter has touched the very point, Mr. Penwynn. I don’t want to talk like an egotist, but, speaking as an engineer, if you will show me one of your biggest pieces of Cornish granite, I’ll find a means of giving it a start; and I’ll be bound to say that if Mr. Lee here is as determined as I, he will find a way of moving the hardest of your Cornish hearts. Sir, I believe in that little word ‘Try!’ ”
The Reverend Edward Lee coloured slightly, and turned his glasses with more of interest upon the speaker, but he did not interpose.
“I wish you both every success,” said Tregenna, smiling first on one and then on the other, and Mr. Penwynn nodded his head, and laughed, saying—
“Youth is sanguine, Mr. Trethick. Try!”
“I will, Mr. Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, in a voice that, though quiet, was so full of the spirit expressed by those two determined words that Tregenna glanced sharply at him, and then at Rhoda, to see what effect they had had upon her.
She was bending a little forward, her lips parted, and a curious look in her face, as she gazed in the guest’s countenance, till, instinctively becoming aware that Tregenna’s eyes were fixed upon her, she let her own fall, but only to raise them directly after with a half-offended look of inquiry, as if asking why she was watched, and soon after she left the table.
The gentlemen stayed but a short time over their wine, for Tregenna, after exchanging glances with Mr. Penwynn, rose and made for the drawing-room, while Mr. Penwynn suggested a cigar in the garden.
“Yes, I should enjoy a smoke,” said Geoffrey, who suspected that this was a manoeuvre to give Tregenna an opportunity for a tête-à-tête, but the vicar declined.
“I have not smoked now for many years,” he said, and he glanced to the door as if to escape to the drawing-room in Tregenna’s wake, but Mr. Penwynn proceeded to endorse Geoffrey’s suspicions.
“Then I will not smoke either,” he said, passing his arm through that of his guest. “We’ll have a look round at the ferns and flowers till Mr. Trethick has finished his cigar. They’ll bring us coffee directly, and then we will join them in the drawing-room.”
There was no escape, so the young clergyman was marched off to inspect the peculiarities of his host’s choice ferns, with the beauties of the various sub-tropical plants that the banker had collected in his well-kept, rock-sheltered terrace. These being ended, the various points of interest in the distance about the bay were pointed put, evidently to gain time.
Meanwhile Geoffrey, who felt somewhat amused, sat upon a rock, smoked an excellent cigar, and thought a good deal as he gazed out to sea.
“Parson’s bored,” he said to himself. “He wants to get off to the drawing-room, and beam through his glasses on Miss Penwynn, who is unmistakably being courted by the smooth, dark gentleman. Most likely he is just now, with papa’s consent, popping the question. If she accepts him I should think it’s a pity, for somehow Mr. Tregenna is not my beau-ideal of a gentleman, while she is a bright, clever girl. However, it is no business of mine.”
He paused to knock the very long, carefully-preserved ash off the end of his cigar, which process seemed to be looked upon as one of very great importance, the cigar being petted and carefully smoothed down at the moist end where a little of the leaf was loose, lest this opening should at all interfere with the drawing; after which he tenderly replaced the roll of weed in his lips, uttered a sigh of satisfaction, such as might be given by any young man whose digestion was in perfect order, and exhaled a soft blue cloud of smoke.
“Curious thing this love,” he continued to himself. “Every one seems to go in for it, to the ruffling of a calm, smooth life, and gets into trouble. What a blessing it is that I have no inclinations in that direction! Humph! I wonder what the lady has said? Bah! stuff! nonsense! what is it to me? I’m not going to set up as head moralist, and meddle with these affairs. Her father must know best.”
He rose, and strolled down to the end of the terrace, to lean over a rugged mass of granite, and he was still there, enjoying the delicious calm of the evening, and marvelling at the beauty of the shadowy, phosphorescent sea, when he heard his host’s voice, and throwing aside the fragment of the cigar whose aroma was beginning to be marred by touches of burnt moustache, he turned to meet him.
“Tea is ready, Mr. Trethick,” he said. “Really I ought to apologise for my neglect.”
“Neglect, eh?” said Geoffrey, laughing. “Why, I could bear to be neglected like this every night. You gave me one of the best cigars I ever lit, and let me lounge here and smoke it in peace. Don’t apologise, Mr. Penwynn; I am quite satisfied.”
In spite of his indifference, however, Geoffrey could not refrain from looking curiously at Rhoda and Tregenna as he entered the drawing-room, but their unruffled features told no tales.
Rhoda was seated near the window, and Tregenna on the opposite side, looking more gentlemanly and polished than ever; while Rhoda at once rose, and began talking to the new vicar, leaving Geoffrey to chat over the handed-round tea to Tregenna about mines, their few successes,