Six gentlemen were seated around the dining table of the parlor of Nampara House one windy afternoon in 1787.
They had wined and dined well, off part of a large cod, a chine of mutton, a chicken pie, some pigeons, and a fillet of veal with roasted sweetbreads, apricot tart, a dish of cream, and almonds and raisins. Mr. Horace Treneglos of Mingoose; Mr. Renfrew from St. Ann’s; Dr. Choake from Sawle; Captain Henshawe from Grambler; Mr. Nathanial Pearce, the notary, from Truro; and their host, Captain Poldark.
They had met to approve the preliminary work that had been undertaken at Wheal Leisure and to decide whether good gold should be risked by them all with the aim of raising copper. It was an important occasion that had lured Mr. Treneglos from his Greek, Dr. Choake from the hunting field, and Mr. Pearce from his gouty fireside.
“Well,” said Mr. Treneglos, who from his position and seniority occupied the head of the table. “I’m not going to go against expert advice. We’ve been hummin’ and ha’ing for more’n two years, and if Captain Henshawe says we should begin, well, damn, it’s his money being risked as well as mine, and he’s the one as did ought to know!”
There was a murmur of assent and some qualifying grunts. Mr. Treneglos put a hand behind his ear to gather up the crumbs of comment.
Dr. Choake coughed. “Naturally we all defer to Captain Henshawe in his experience of working mines. But the success of this venture does not depend on the working of the lode; otherwise, we should have begun a twelvemonth since. It is conditions in the trade that must determine our course. Now only last week we had occasion to attend upon a patient in Redruth who was suffering with an abscess. In fact, he was not our patient, but Dr. Pryce called us in for further advice. The poor fellow was far gone when I arrived at his considerable house, which had a fine drive and a marble staircase and other evidences of good taste and the means to gratify it, but between us we were able to alleviate the condition.
“This gentleman was a shareholder in Dolly Koath Mine, and he let fall the information that it had been decided to close all the lower levels.”
There was silence.
Mr. Pearce, purple and smiling, said, “Well now, in fact, I heard much the same thing. I heard it only last week.” He stopped a moment to scratch under his wig.
Dr. Choake said, “If the largest copper mine in the world is reducing its work, what chance has our small venture?”
“That doesn’t follow if our overheads are smaller,” said Ross, who was at the other end of the table, his bony distinguished face a shade flushed with what he had eaten and drunk. By growing longer side pieces he had partly hidden his scar, but one end of it still showed as a paler brown line across his cheek.
“The price of copper may fall still lower,” said Dr. Choake.
“What’s that you say? What’s that?” asked Mr. Treneglos. “I couldn’t hear him,” he explained to himself. “I wish he’d speak up.”
Choake spoke up. “Or it may equally well rise,” was the reply.
“I look at it this way, gentlemen,” said Ross. He drew at his long pipe. “The moment is, on the face of it, a bad one for the starting of ventures large or small. But there are points in our favor that must be borne in mind. Supply and demand rule the prices of ore. Now two large mines have closed this year, and any number of small ones. Dol Koath may soon follow Wheal Reath and Wheal Fortune. This will halve the output of the Cornish industry, so supply to the markets will be less and the price of copper should rise.”
“Hear, hear,” said Captain Henshawe.
“I agree wi’ Captain Poldark,” said Mr. Renfrew, speaking for the first time. Mr. Renfrew was a mine chandler from St. Ann’s and therefore had a double interest in the venture, but so far he had been overawed by the presence of so many gentlemen at the meeting.
The blue-eyed Henshawe had no such diffidence. “Our costs wouldn’t be one half what Wheal Reath’s was, ton for ton.”
“What I should like to know,” said Mr. Pearce deprecatingly, “speaking of course for the parties I represent, Mrs. Jacqueline Trenwith and Mr. Aukett, as well as for myself, is what figure we should have to obtain for our crude ore in order to show a profit at all. What do you say to that?”
Captain Henshawe picked his teeth. “It is so much a lottery what the blocks do fetch. We all know that the copper companies are out to get the stuff dirt cheap.”
Ross said, “If we get nine pounds a ton, we shall come to no harm.”
“Well,” said Mr. Treneglos, “let’s see your plan on paper. Where’s the map of the old workings? We can follow better then.”
Henshawe rose and brought over a big roll of parchment, but Ross stopped him.
“We’ll have the table clear for this.” He rang a hand bell, and Prudie came in, followed by Demelza.
It was Demelza’s first appearance, and she was the object of a number of curious glances. Everyone, except Mr. Treneglos, who lived in his own private world, knew something of her history and of the rumors that surrounded her presence there. The talk was old, but scandal died hard when its cause was not removed.
They saw a girl of just seventeen, tall, with dark untidy hair and big dark eyes that had a disconcerting glint in them when they happened to meet your own. The glint suggested unusual vitality and a latent mettlesomeness; otherwise, there was nothing special to remark.
Mr. Renfrew peered at her with puckered astigmatic eyes, and Mr. Pearce, while keeping his gouty feet ostentatiously out of danger, ventured to raise his quizzing glass when he thought Ross was not looking. Then Mr. Treneglos eased off the top button of his breeches, and they bent to peer over the map Captain Henshawe was unrolling on the table.
“Now,” said Ross. “Here we have the old workings of Wheal Leisure and the direction of the tin-bearing lode.” He went on to explain the situation, the angle of the shafts to be sunk, and the adits that would be driven in from the face of Leisure Cliff to unwater the mine.
“What’s this here?” Mr. Treneglos put a stubby, snuff-stained finger on a corner of the map.
“That’s the limit of the workings of Trevorgie Mine so far as it is known,” said Ross. “All accurate maps have been lost. These workings were old when my great-grandfather came to Trenwith.”
“Um,” said Mr. Treneglos. “They knew what they was about in those days. Yes,” he agreed sotto voce, “they knew what they was about.”
“What do you mean, sir?” inquired Mr. Renfrew.
“What do I what? Well, damn, if the old men was working tin here and here they was working the back of Leisure lode before it was discovered on my land. That’s what I mean.”
“I think he’s right,” said Henshawe, with a sudden quickening of interest.
“In what way does that assist us?” asked Mr. Pearce, scratching himself.
“It only means,” Ross said, “that the old men would not have driven all this way under such conditions for nothing. It was their custom to avoid all but the shallowest underground work. They had to. If they went this far, they must have found some good return as they went along.”
“Think you it is all one great lode, eh?” said Mr. Treneglos. “Could it run so far, Henshawe? Has any been known to run so far?”
“We don’t know and shan’t know, sir. Looks to me as if they was following tin and struck copper. That’s how it seems to me. It is very feasible.”
“I’ve a very great respect for the ancients,” said Mr. Treneglos, opening his snuffbox. “Look at Xenophanes. Look at Plotinus. Look at Democritus. They were wiser than we. It is no disgrace to follow where they led. What will it cost us, dear boy?”
Ross exchanged a glance with Henshawe.
“I am willing at the outset to be manager and head purser without payment, and Captain Henshawe will supervise the beginnings at a nominal salary. Mr. Renfrew will supply us with most of the gear and tackle at the lowest margin of profit to himself. And I have arranged for Pascoe’s Bank to honor our drafts up to three hundred guineas for the buying of winches and other heavy equipment. Fifty guineas each would cover the expense of the first three months.”
There was a moment’s silence, and Ross watched their faces with a slight cynical lift of his eyebrow. He had cut down the opening figure to the lowest possible, knowing that a big demand would result in another stalemate.
“Eight fives,” said Mr. Treneglos. “And three from Pascoe’s, that’s seven in all. Seven hundred on an outlay of fifty each seems very reasonable to me, what? Expected a hundred at least,” he added to himself. “Quite expected a hundred.”
“That’s only a first outlay,” said Choake. “That’s only the first three months.”
“All the same it is very reasonable, gentlemen,” said Mr. Renfrew. “These are expensive days. You could hardly expect to become interested in a gainful venture for less.”
“Quite true,” said Mr. Treneglos. “Well, then, I’m for starting right away. Decide by a show of hands, what?”
“This loan from Pascoe’s Bank,” said Dr. Choake heavily. “That means we should put all our business through them? But what’s wrong with Warleggan’s? Might we not get better terms from them? George Warleggan is a personal friend of ours.”
Mr. Pearce said, “A matter I was about to raise myself, sir. Now if—”
“George Warleggan is a friend of mine too,” Ross said. “But I don’t think friendship should come into a matter of business.”
“Not if it be detrimental to the business, no,” said the doctor. “But Warleggan’s is the biggest bank in the county. And the most up-to-date. Pascoe’s has old-fashioned ideas. Pascoe’s has not advanced in forty years. I knew Harris Pascoe when he was a boy. He’s a stick-in-the-mire and always has been.”
Mr. Pearce said, “My clients, I b’lieve, quite understood it would be Warleggan’s Bank.”
Ross filled his pipe.
Mr. Treneglos unfastened another button of his breeches. “Nay, one bank’s the same as another to me. So long as it’s sound, eh? That’s the point, eh? You had a reason for going to Pascoe’s, Ross, I suppose, what?”
“There is no grudge between the Warleggans and me, father or son. But as a banking partnership they own too many mines already. I do not wish them to come to own Wheal Leisure.”
Choake bent his heavy eyebrows. “I should not care to let the Warleggans hear you say that.”
“Nonsense. I say nothing that everyone does not know. Between them and their puppet companies they own a dozen mines outright and have large interests in a dozen others, including Grambler and Wheal Plenty. If they chose to close Grambler tomorrow they would do so, as they have closed Wheal Reath. There is nothing underhand in that. But if Wheal Leisure is opened, then I prefer to keep such decisions in the hands of the venturers. Big concerns are dangerous friends for the small man.”
“I quite agree, gentlemen,” Mr. Renfrew concurred nervously. “There was bad feeling in St. Ann’s about the closing of Wheal Reath. We know it was not an economical mine to maintain, but that does not help the shareholders who have lost their money, nor the two hundred miners who have lost their work. But it helps Wheal Plenty to offer only starvation wages, and it gives young Mr. Warleggan a chance of showing a tidy profit!”
The issue had touched some sore point in Mr. Renfrew’s memory. A wrangle broke out, with everybody talking at once.
Mr. Treneglos banged on the table with his glass. “Put it to the vote,” he shouted. “It is the only sensible way. But first the mine. Let’s have the faint hearts declare themselves afore we go any further.”
The vote was taken and all were for opening.
“Good! Splendid!” said Mr. Treneglos. “We’re getting on at last. Now this question of the bank, eh? Those in favor of Pascoe’s—”
Renfrew, Henshawe, Treneglos, and Ross were for Pascoe’s; Choake and Pearce for Warleggan’s. As Pearce carried with him the votes of his nominees, the voting was even.
“Damn,” mumbled Mr. Treneglos. “I knew that lawyer fellow would baulk us again.” Mr. Pearce could not miss hearing that and tried hard to be offended.
But secretly he was looking for a share in Mr. Treneglos’s estate business, and finding Mr. Treneglos firm on his course, he spent the next ten minutes tacking around to the old man’s point of view.
Left alone, Choake gave in, and the absent Warleggans were defeated. Ross knew their adventure was so small as to be hardly worth the attention of a large banking firm, but that they had received it he was in no doubt George would be annoyed.
The chief hurdles having been taken, the rest of the business went through quickly enough. Captain Henshawe stretched his big legs, got up, and, with a nod from Ross, passed the decanter around the table.
“I don’t doubt you’ll pardon the liberty, gentlemen. We’ve sat around this table as equals, and we’re equal partners in the venture. Nay, though I’m the poorest, my share stands biggest in the general pool for my reputation’s there as well as my fifty guineas. So here’s a toast. Wheal Leisure.”
The others rose and clinked their glasses.
“Wheal Leisure!”
“Wheal Leisure.”
“Wheal Leisure!”
They drained their glasses.
In the kitchen Jud, who had been whittling a piece of wood and humming his favorite tune, raised his head and spat expertly across the table into the fire.
“Something’s moving at last. Dang me if it don’t sound like they’re going to open the blatherin’ mine after all.”
“Dirty ole black worm,” said Prudie. “You nearly spit in the stew pot that time.”