Some hours passed, when a clerk brought in a card.
“For Mr Penwynn, sir.”
“Geoffrey Trethick,” said Mr Chynoweth, reading. “Take it in.”
The clerk obeyed, and a few minutes later he ushered the new visitor to Carnac into Mr Penwynn’s private room, where the banker and the stranger looked hard at each other for a few moments before the former pointed to a chair, his visitor being quite a different man from what he had pictured.
“Glad to see you, Mr Trethick,” he said. “I have read the letters you left for me, and shall be happy to oblige my correspondent if I can; but they seem to be quite under a misapprehension as to my powers. In the first place, though, what can I do for you?”
“Do for me?” said Geoffrey, smiling. “Well, this much. I come to you, a leading man in this great mining centre.”
Mr Penwynn made a deprecatory motion with his hand.
“Oh, I am no flatterer, Mr Penwynn,” said the visitor, bluffly. “I merely repeat what your correspondents told me, and what find endorsed here in this place.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Penwynn, as if owning reluctantly to the soft impeachment, “Penwynn and Company are a little mixed up in mines – and the fisheries.”
“Fisheries? Ah, that’s not in my line, Mr Penwynn. But to be frank with you, sir, I want work. I am a poor younger son who decided not to take to church, law, or physic, but to try to be a mining engineer. I am a bit of a chemist, too, and have studied metallurgy as far as I could. My education has taken nearly all my little fortune, which I have, so to speak, sunk in brain-work. That brain-work I now want to sell.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Mr Penwynn, “I am a banker.”
“Exactly. To several mining companies. Now, sir, I honestly believe that I am worth a good salary to any enterprising company,” said Geoffrey, growing animated, and flushing slightly as he energetically laid his case before the smooth, polished, well-dressed man, whose carefully-cut nails gently tapped the morocco-covered table which separated him from his visitor.
“May I ask in what way?” said Mr Penwynn, smiling. “Labour is plentiful.”
“Certainly,” said Geoffrey. “I have, as I tell you, carefully studied metallurgy, and the various processes for obtaining ore, especially tin, and I am convinced that I could save enormously by the plans I should put in force; and, what is more, I know I could save almost half the expense in some of the processes of smelting.”
“Indeed!” said Mr Penwynn, coolly.
“Yes; and also contrive a good many improvements in the sinking and pumping out of mines.”
“Then you have come to the right place, Mr – Mr – Mr Geoffrey Trethick,” said the banker, raising his gold-rimmed passes to glance at the visiting-card before him.
“I hope so,” said Geoffrey, with animation. “Ours is an old Cornish family, and I ought to be at home here.”
“Exactly,” said Mr Penwynn, sarcastically, “and you have come at the right time.”
“Indeed?” said Geoffrey, eagerly.
“Most opportunely; for most of our great milking companies are in a state of bankruptcy.”
“Yes, so I have heard. Well then, Mr Penwynn, if you will give me a letter or two of introduction, I should think there ought to be no difficulty in the way.”
“My dear sir,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling, “I’m afraid you are very sanguine.”
“Well – perhaps a little, sir, but – ”
“Hear me out, Mr Trethick. It seems to me you have come to the worst place in the world.”
“The worst! Why so?”
“Because every one here will look upon your schemes as visionary. If you had a vast capital, and liked to spend it in experiments, well and good. People would laugh at your failures, and applaud your successes – if you made any.”
“If?” said Geoffrey, smiling. “Then, sir, you are not sanguine?”
“Not at all,” said the banker. “You see, Mr Trethick, you will not find any one in this neighbourhood who will let you run risks with his capital and machinery, or tamper with the very inadequate returns that people are now getting from their mines. If you wanted a simple post as manager – ”
“That’s what I do want,” said Geoffrey, interrupting. “The other would follow.”
“I say, if you wanted a simple post as manager,” continued the banker, as calmly as if he had not been interrupted, “you would not get it unless you could lay before a company of proprietors ample testimonials showing your experience in mining matters. Believe me, Mr Trethick, you, a gentleman, have come to the wrong place.”
“Let us sink the word gentleman in its ordinary acceptation, Mr Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, warmly. “I hope I shall always be a gentleman, but I come to you, sir, as a working man – one who has to win his income by his brain-directed hands.”
“You should have gone out to some speculative mining place, Mr Trethick,” said the banker, taking one leg across his knee and caressing it. “Nevada or Peru – Australia if you like. You would make a fortune there. Here you will starve.”
“Starve! Not if I have to help the fishermen with their nets, Mr Penwynn. I can row well, sir,” he said, laughing, “and I have muscle enough to let me pull strongly at a rope. Starve? I’ve no fear of that.”
“No, no; of course not. I mean metaphorically. But why not try the colonies or the States?”
“Because I have a mother who impoverished herself to complete my expensive university education, Mr Penwynn; and it would almost break her heart if I left England.”
“Exactly,” said the banker, with a slight sneer; “but you have come as far from civilisation as you could get in visiting Carnac. Now then, take my advice. Come up to An Morlock, and dine with me this evening – seven sharp. I can give you a bed for a night or two. Then have a run round the district, see a few of the mines, and spy out the nakedness of the land. You will soon get an indorsement of what I say. You can then go back to London with my best respects to Rundell and Sharp – most worthy people, by the way, whom I would gladly engage – and tell them you have returned a sadder but a wiser man.”
He rose as he spoke to indicate that the interview was at an end, holding out his hand, one which Geoffrey gripped heartily, as he sprang, full of energy, to his feet.
“Thank you, Mr Penwynn. I’ll come and dine with you this evening. Most happy. As to the bed – thanks, no. I am going to hunt out lodgings somewhere, for I cannot take your advice. You don’t know me, sir,” he said, looking the banker full in the eyes. “I’ve come down here to work, and, somehow or other, work I will. I have enough of the sturdy Englishman in me not to know when I am beaten. No, sir, I am not going to turn back from the first hill I meet with in my journey.”
“As you will,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling. “Till seven o’clock then. We don’t dress.”
“Thanks; I will be there,” said Geoffrey, and the door closed as he left the room.
“He has stuff in him, certainly,” said the banker, gazing at the door through which his visitor had passed. “Such a man at the head of a mine might make a good deal of money – or lose a good deal,” he added, after a pause. “He’ll find out his mistake before he is much older.”
With a careless motion of his hand the banker threw his visitor’s card into the waste-paper basket, and, at the same time, seemed to cast the young man out of his thoughts.