Part 16 (1/2)

”That's just what I did mean,” said the old man, frankly. ”Six months ago or so I made a certain proposition to the Squire, which would have been exceedingly to his advantage to accept--”

”And not to yours?” interrupted Richard, slyly.

”Nay, I don't say that, Sir,” answered the other. ”But it was one that he ought to have been glad to accept in any case, and which it was downright madness in him to refuse, if he wanted cash. It was a chance, too, I will venture to say, that will never offer itself from any other quarter. Mr. Whymper acknowledged that himself.”

”I know all about the matter, Mr. Trevethick: the Squire behaved like the dog in the manger to you. He won't work the mine himself, nor yet let you work it.”

”For mercy's sake, be quiet!” cried the landlord, earnestly, and looking cautiously about him. ”If you know all about it, you need not let others know. What mine are you talking about? Give it a name--but speak it under your breath, man.” The old man leaned forward with a white moist face, and peered into Richard's eyes as though he would read his soul.

”Wheal Danes was the name of the place, if I remember right,” said Richard. ”Carew has a notion that the Romans did not use it up, and that it only wants capital to make it a paying concern. It is one of his mad ideas, doubtless.”

Mr. John Trevethick was not by nature a quick appreciator of sarcasm, but he could not misunderstand the irony expressed in Richard's words.

”And is that what you came down to Gethin about?” inquired he, with a sort of grim despair, which had nevertheless a comical effect.

Richard could only trust himself to nod his head a.s.sentingly.

”Well,” cried the other, striking the table with his fist, ”if I didn't think you was as deep as the devil the very first day that I set eyes on you! So you are Parson Whymper's man, are you?” And here, in default of language to express his sense of the deception that, as he supposed, had been practiced on him, Mr. Trevethick uttered an execration terrible enough for a Cornish giant.

”I am not Mr. Whymper's man at all,” observed Richard, coolly. ”Mr.

Whymper is my man--or at least he will be one day or another.”

”How so?” inquired the landlord, his eyes at their full stretch, his mouth agape, and his neglected pipe in his right hand. ”Who, in the Fiend's name, are you?”

”I am the only son and heir of Carew of Crompton,” answered the young man, deliberately.

”You? Why, Carew never had a son,” exclaimed Trevethick, incredulously; ”leastways, not a lawful one. He was married once to a wench of the name of Hardcastle, 'tis true; but that was put aside.”

”I tell you I am Carew's lawful son, nevertheless,” persisted Richard.

”My mother was privately married to him. Ask Parson Whymper, and he will tell you the same. It is true that my father has not acknowledged me, but I shall have my rights some day--and Wheal Danes along with the rest.”

The news of the young man's paternity must have been sufficiently startling to him who thus received it for the first time, and would, under any other circ.u.mstances, have doubtless excited his phlegmatic nature to the utmost; but what concerns ourselves in even a slight degree is, with some of us, more absorbing than the most vital interests of another; and thus it was with Trevethick. The ambitious pretensions of his lodger sank into insignificance--notwithstanding that, for the moment, he believed in them; for how, unless he was what he professed to be, could he know so much?--before the disappointment which had befallen himself in the overthrow of a long-cherished scheme.

”Why, Mr. Whymper wrote me with his own hand,” growled he, ”that in his judgment the mine was worthless, and that he had done all he could to persuade the Squire to sell. And yet you come down here to gauge and spy.”

”All stratagems are fair in war and business,” answered the young man, smiling. ”Come, Mr. Trevethick; whatever reasons may have brought me here, I a.s.sure you, upon my honor, that they do not weigh with me now, in comparison with the great regard I feel for you and yours. If you will be frank with me, I will also be so with you; and let me say this at the outset, that nothing which may drop from your lips shall be made use of to prejudice your interests. I have gathered this much for myself, that Wheal--”

”Hush, Sir! for any sake, hus.h.!.+” implored the landlord, earnestly, and holding up his huge hand for silence. ”Do not give it a name again; there is some one moving above stairs.”

”It is only Solomon,” observed Richard, quietly.

”I don't want Sol nor any other man alive to hear what we are talking about, Mr. Yorke,” answered Trevethick, hoa.r.s.ely. ”You have gathered for yourself, you were about to say, that the mine is rich, and well worth what I have offered for it.”

”And a good deal more,” interrupted Richard. ”Perhaps a hundred times, perhaps a thousand times as much. We don't make so close a secret of a matter without our reasons. We don't see Dead Hands, with flames of fire at the finger-tips, going up and down ladders that don't exist, without the most excellent reasons, Mr. Trevethick. What we wish no eye to see, nay, no ear to hear spoken of, is probably a subject of considerable private importance to ourselves. Come, we are friends here together; I say again, let us be frank.”

Trevethick was silent for a little; he felt a lump rise in his throat, as though nature itself forbade him to disclose the secret he had kept so long and so jealously guarded. ”I have known it for these fifty years,” he began, in a half-choking voice. ”I found it out as a mere lad, when I went down into the old mine one day for sport, with some schoolmates. The vein lies in the lowest part of the old workings, at a depth that we think nothing of nowadays, though it was too deep for the old masters of the pit. I remember, as though it was yesterday, how my heart leaped within me when my torch shone upon it, and how I fled away, lest my school-fellows should see it also. I came back the next day alone, to certify my great discovery. It is a good vein, if ever there was one. The copper there may be worth tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions!” Never had the numeration table been invested with such significance. Trevethick's giant frame shook with emotion; his eyes literally glared with greed.

”You have been there since?” observed Richard, interrogatively.

”Often, often,” answered the other, hoa.r.s.ely; ”I could not keep away.