George Fenn - The Vicar's People

“Ah! the parson gets on better with you, my fine fellow,” said Geoffrey. “You haven’t so many corners as I have. Humph! I don’t like you, though. You seem to be the man in possession, though, here, and certainly she is a very charming girl.”

He met Rhoda’s eyes as these thoughts passed through his mind, and she encountered his gaze with a frank, open look, though he fancied that she seemed a shade paler than when he was talking to her a few minutes before.

Just then dinner was announced, and Mr Penwynn turned to speak to Geoffrey, but bit his lip and glanced at Tregenna, who, however, only smiled back and nodded, as if amused; for Rhoda, acting the part of mistress of the house, extended her gloved hand so unmistakably that Geoffrey stepped forward, the hand was laid upon his arm, and, passing the others, he led her across the hall to the handsome dining-room, thinking to himself that by rights the Reverend Edward Lee ought to have occupied his place.

The dinner was good and well served, every thing making it evident that Mr Penwynn was a wealthy man, and one who liked to show it; but the ostentation was a good deal toned down by his child’s refined taste, and was not obtrusive. The conversation kept up was such as would be heard at any gentleman’s table, and it soon became evident that the West-country banker and his daughter were well-informed, and loved and cultivated refinement.

Geoffrey particularly noted how clever and gentlemanly Mr Tregenna could be. By degrees it dawned upon him that he was the principal solicitor of the place, and without its troubling him in the slightest degree, he made out that Tregenna was evidently a suitor for Rhoda Penwynn’s hand. Both father and lover showed this, the former being plainly in favour of the match; while, in spite of her efforts to the contrary, Rhoda Penwynn displayed her consciousness of Tregenna’s expressive looks by redoubling her attention to Geoffrey and the new vicar – Geoffrey chatting freely, and in the most unembarrassed way, so different to any young man she had met before, and questioning her largely about the place and people.

“A glass of wine with you, Mr Trethick,” said the host, who, in spite of advances, adhered somewhat to old customs. “Tregenna, will you join us?”

“With pleasure,” said the latter, looking up and smiling, and as he did so the thought that had been puzzling Geoffrey all through the dinner met with a solution.

He had been wondering – his wonder running like a vein through the whole of the conversation – where he had met Tregenna before; but now it came to him that for certain they had never met, but that it was that smooth, deep, mellow voice that he had heard, but where?

“I have it,” he mentally exclaimed, as, raising his glass, he looked full in John Tregenna’s eyes. “You were the fellow I heard talking to that girl by the ruined mine?”

“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.