"Poor Pierre!" was the natural burden of the conversation round the Misses Stanley's supper table that night.
"Did not think it was in him," said Considine. "A quiet, fat, soft-eyed, soft-spoken boy--just like some of my mulatto table-niggers at home, in the old time. Never struck me there was man in him at all."
"He struck out splendidly," cried Gerald. "Straight from the shoulder--just one almighty drive, and the rowdy fell in his tracks--felled like an ox--without a struggle. Hope, for Pierre's sake, he has not killed him. He had not moved up to the time we left the ground. There could not have been a prettier stroke. We must not let him get into trouble about it. It would have gone roughly with me if he had not run in just then. One on either side, and I dared not hit out at the one, for laying myself open to the other."
"You did very well, Gerald. Your own man was not at all badly floored, though he recovered more quickly than the other. 'Pon honour, I felt my old blood warming at sight of the fray. I should have been at your side in another instant, when I saw that ruffian get on his feet again, with musket clubbed--walking stick, I should say--a rather ridiculous object, I fear; but the old war-horse, you know"--and he turned to Matilda as if he had made a happy quotation from the poets, and she responded with an approving smile as in duty bound--"pricks up his ears at the noise of battle. However, the policeman appeared, and saved me from making a show of myself. That is one of the troubles of getting old. A man is more likely to get laughed at for showing his mettle than admired."
"Nobody would have laughed, Mr. Considine," said Matilda. "It was kind of you to mean it. But about Pierre. I can think of nothing but poor Pierre being taken up for trying to protect Muriel from a gang of ruffians. How came he to be there? He might have dropped from the clouds, I was so surprised."
"There were some beef cattle at the farm," said Miss Penelope. "Pierre drove them into town. He was here in the afternoon. I gave him money to stay in town overnight and go home by the cars to-morrow. So that is explained."
"Mr. Considine, may we commission you to engage the very best advice for Pierre?" said Matilda. "Being our servant we should feel bound to help him out of a difficulty in any case; but when he was assisting to protect Muriel, we must do more still. Spare no expense. See Mr. Jordan, or whomever you think the best. We would have sent word to Mr. Jordan by Randolph to act for us, but Randolph has not come back here. He will have walked home with Miss Rouget, I dare say. They seemed to enjoy each other's company immensely, which rather surprised me. Adèline is a nice girl, but rather inanimate, and Randolph is a lazy fellow, who prefers to sit still and let a lady amuse him. So they struck me, when they went off together, as being not a well-assorted pair, and yet they seemed to hit it off together uncommonly well. In fact, I have quite come to the conclusion that in such cases one never knows."
"Jean Bruneau will be anxious about his boy if he does not get home by to-morrow evening," said Penelope; "but how to send him word? I need not write, for he never goes to the post-office, and a letter to him would lie there till the postmaster happened to see him in the village. Telegraphing is the same; the message might lie a week at the post-office."
"We are going home to-morrow, Betsey and I," said Mrs. Bunce. "Can we assist you, Miss Stanley?"
"Indeed you can, Mrs. Bunce; if it is not too much trouble. If you would walk out to Bruneau's cottage and explain to them the detention of their boy. Tell them how well he has behaved, how indebted we feel to him, and how willingly we will go to every expense to send him home as soon as possible. You will indeed do us a favour. We will write you to-morrow, after Mr. Considine has spoken to the magistrate, so as to give the very latest news."
The Rev. Dionysius had eaten his morning rasher, and was consuming his second plateful of buckwheat cakes and maple syrup--there is nothing like a copious breakfast for enabling one to resist the cold--and was basking in his regained domesticity. He had been dwelling alone for three or four weeks, and though at first he had plunged with enthusiasm into his books, secure of freedom from interruption, he soon found the unbroken stillness grow oppressive. He wanted to speak, but there was no one to listen. He had felt himself, like the psalmist's solitary sparrow on the housetop, desolate and forlorn, and now he enjoyed even his wife's wordy narrations with a zest which surprised himself as much as it gratified her.
She was pouring forth a continuous stream of ecclesiastical tittle tattle, about curates, choirs, congregations and preferments, which would have been idle talk and a sinful waste of time in her serious eyes if it had related to politics or the public offices, but seeing it was not the State which it remotely touched on, but the Church, she believed it both important and improving; for with her, Church, like charity, covered anything, and transmuted even back-biting into holiness.
Dionysius listened and ate his cakes. Human speech of any sort was much, after three whole weeks of silence, broken only by the heavy foot of his domestic, or the clatter of delf-breaking in the kitchen. Judith, again, was a good woman, he knew, and it was his duty to bear with her infirmities--and bear up under them, too, at times, which was a heavier task. Perhaps she was not in all respects as much to be admired and respected as he had persuaded himself when he married her, but at least he knew that she admired and respectedhim, which was much more important, and very soothing.
Miss Betsey had breakfasted, and being in haste to divulge her experiences of travel, gaiety, andbeaux, had walked along the village street to the post-office in hopes of meeting a gossip. She now returned with the family letters.
"Here you are, uncle! Four letters for you, and one of them registered--that means money. And here is one for you, auntie; everybody is in luck but me."
"Did you expect a letter, my dear?"
"Well--yes, I kind of thought I should have heard;" and her colour deepened. Two nights before she had striven so hard to impress her address on the memory of her cavalier of the tobogganing. They had parted such good friends--on her side at least--that she had been promising herself a letter from him all the day before. It would come, however, sooner or later, she told herself, and thereby found strength to possess her soul in patience.
"My letter is from Penelope Stanley," said Mrs. Bunce. "Dionysius, can you drive me out to the Miss Stanley's place, in the cutter[1]to-day? She asked me to deliver a message to their man, and he should get it to-day."
"I was not going in that direction to-day, but it does not matter. I will take you; but you must arrange either to stay a few minutes only, or else to wait a few hours, as I have an appointment elsewhere."
"Here is Bruneau's wife coming down the hill, auntie; carrying a fat goose and a pair of ducks. Be sure you make a trade with her for the ducks; I believe in roast duck."
"Abraceof ducks, my dear,"
"A pair of ducks, uncle. They're farmyard ducks. Think I went to Ellora Female College for nothing?"
"Call her in, Betsey, and let us take your erudition for granted."
"She won't come, auntie. Remember we're heretics. She wouldn't let herself be seen coming into a Protestant parson's house."
"Oh, yes, she will, if you ask her the price of her ducks. Money can do anything."
Annette Bruneau was called in as she passed; and came, looking distrustfully to light and left. The parson beat a retreat, which augmented her confidence somewhat, but still she seemed not much at her ease. A question as to the price of ducks, however, reassured her. Ducks were food for Christians, and it was the souls of men and the flesh of little children on which the nameless person she dreaded to see was believed to subsist. What price for the ducks? Oh, yes, she was herself at once, and did a very fair stroke of business, too, extracting some twelve or twenty cents more from the misbelievers than she would have had the assurance to ask from the storekeeper for whom they had been destined.
"I have a letter from Miss Stanley this morning," said Mrs. Bunce.
"Ah oui, madame?I hope she goes well."
"She is so pleased with your boy Pierre. Feels really indebted to him, and says he has behaved so well."
"But yes, madame? And is it upon the affairs of Mees Stanlee zat he is not of the return?"
"He was taken up by the police. He behaved--oh! remarkably well. Miss Stanley feels under the greatest obligations to him, and will do her very utmost to have him well defended and brought off."
"Police, madame? My Pierrechezze police!--à la prison?But vy? Is it as he havecassé la tête de personne?Ah!le pauvre garcon," and she wiped her eyes.
"I feel deeply indebted to him myself--under the very greatest obligations--which will console you, I hope. Mr. Bunce has many friends in town, and I shall make him use his influence with them; so calm yourself, my poor woman. I owe it to your boy and also to myself to console you. Take comfort. Your son has behaved extremely well. Indeed, he has shown himself a fine manly youth; you may be proud of him, you may indeed, Mrs. Bruneau; and who knows but his arrest--the man he knocked down was still unconscious when Miss Stanley wrote. The inquiry was adjourned yesterday in case it should involve a charge of manslaughter. He must have struck a fearful blow!"
"Manslaughter? Meurtre,assassinat?Incroyable!--MyPierre?" The tears ran down her quivering face, and she clasped her hands. "But perhaps I do notcomprend, ze English isdificille. Say it again."
"Be comforted, my poor woman?" and Judith wiped her own eyes--she was sympathetic and even kind, after a sort, notwithstanding her absurdity. "We must submit, you know, to the dispensations of Providence; and who knows but, after all, your son's confinement may prove a precious blessing in disguise. He may have opportunities of coming in contact with the truth there. The jail chaplain is an admirable man, and I am sure will do his utmost to bring him to an appreciation of doctrinal truth, especially if Mr. Bunce were to write to him, as I shall see that he does. With a blessing that might induce the sweetest uses of adversity, as the hymn says--though, to be sure, you cannot be expected to understand that just yet--and when I come to think of it, the lad will be confined in the police cells at present, not the jail. However, I shall always feel bound to say a good word for your son, after his manly assistance to my nephew; and Gerald's father--Mr. Herkimer, you know--is bound to exert himself, and he has a great deal of influence. No; there can nothing happen to your son worse than a short detention. Keep up your heart, my friend," and she patted her gingerly on the shoulder.
"But I do notcomprend, madame; you say Mistaire Herkimaire and M. Gerald--I know him--vat say you of dem?"
"Why, you know--but, to be sure, you don't know, I have not had time to tell you anything yet. These interruptions make it so difficult for me to tell my story. You must know that two nights ago Mr. Gerald, my nephew, was attacked by a number of ruffians, and your son came gallantly to his assistance, and helped him to beat them off."
"Ah! mon brave. Ze good Pierre!"
"And one of the roughs seems to have been hurt; he was taken to the hospital, and is still unconscious. The police interfered, and I suppose it was necessary to make arrests. The roughs made their escape; it was proper to take some one into custody, so they took your son to found a prosecution upon, as I am told the proceedings they mean to institute are called. They will found their prosecution, and then the truth will be found out--you see? Ingenious, is it not? and I have no hesitation in saying your son will he honourably acquitted; acquitted and, perhaps, even complimented by the bench. Think of that. What an honour!"
"Ze bench? I do not know him. He vill not know my poor Pierre. But M. Gerald? Is he also arrest?"
"He gave his card, and he promised to appear."
"All! and my poor Pierre have not ze carte. But he give ze promesse, and he keep it."
"It could not be taken, unfortunately. You see the others had run away, and the law must be vindicated. What else are the police for?"
"Ah!--La loi!She take ze poor vich have not ze carte, ze richesechappent. It is not but ze good God who have pity on ze poor," and she sat down rocking herself in hopeless woe.
"You must bear up, my good woman. There is really no ground for despondency. Miss Stanley has engaged the very best lawyers in Montreal to see that the young man is brought safely through his difficulty. She feels most grateful to him."
"Mees Stanley is ver good. I have say so always. But it was to M. Gerald Pierre bring zesecours. Does he notting? Go all his money to buyla carte?"--with a shrug which rather outraged Mrs. Bunce, who claimed much deference from the lower orders.
"My nephew will see your son comes to no harm," she said. Just a little loftily. "Set your mind at rest as to that; but Miss Stanley insists on bearing all the expense. She looks on your son as having got into difficulty through defending her niece; and indeed the young man himself, as he was being led away, said he would have done far more than that for the sake of Miss Muriel. We talked about him all through supper, when they got home--I did not go to the tobogganing myself--and we all said it was so nice of him. Depend on it, he will be no loser in the end----"
"For Mees Muriel? Always Mees Muriel! My Pierre shut up forher!Sainte Vierge! Have pity on a wife and mothermalheureuse!--ah!--And was it me who brought her there!Serpenteau! Que tu m'as broui les yeux par ta vue! Que tu as niaisé le cœur de ton frère légitime!"
"Speak English, my good woman. What is it you say? You seem to have some ground of complaint against Miss Stanley's niece."
"She is not niece of Mees Stanley. She isenfante trouvée."
"What sort of an infant? But why do you say she is not Miss Stanley's niece? She is the daughter of Miss Stanley's brother. Surely a lady like Miss Stanley must know who are members of her own family. Why! Mr. Bunce is her first cousin."
"Vous vous trompez, madame. Vous vous l'imaginez la niece----"
"Speak English, please."
"You imagine yourself the niece----"
"I do nothing of the kind. Betsey! I think this poor soul is losing her wits with grief for her boy. What shall we do?--Call your uncle."
"Not a bit of it, auntie. She is as peart as you or I; but she knows something about Muriel, and we'd better hear it. Designing little monkey! It is just scandalous the way that girl goes on with Gerald and all the young fellows who will mind her. I have long suspected there was something, and Uncle Dionysius always said he never knew that the Stanleys had had a brother at all, till he was shown this daughter."
"Surely that was sufficient."
"I don't know. Let's hear her, any way," and she drew her chair forward, smirking and nodding her head by way of introduction to the French woman.
"Vous avez raison, Mademoiselle."
"I told you so, auntie. She says I have reason. That means sense, of course, and I believe her; though some people"--and she sighed--"don't seem to see it. She is evidently a person of penetration and sagacity, this--a superior person. We'd better hear what she has to say. Wee, wee, ma bong fam," turning to the stranger; "but speak English. Parley Onglay, you know, we haven't much French here."
Annette knitted her dark brows and coughed determinedly; and then she stopped, and as another thought seemed to strike her, the frown cleared itself away before the propitiatory smile which she turned on her interviewers, as the night police cast the gleam of their bull's-eye on those who accost them.
"Since madame and mademoiselle are of ze parents of Mees Stanley, it is of their right, it is able to be of their advantage to know."
"Parents? Betsey. Penelope must be every day as old as I am. I told you the poor creature's wits were unsettled."
"Tush! auntie. Be quiet. Wee, wee; but speak English, Mrs. Bruneau. To be sure we wish to hear something to our advantage. Go on."
"But madame and mademoiselle must promesse not never to say zat theconnaissancehave come from me. My man vould lose hisemploi chezMees Stanley for sure."
"We'll promise you," cried Betsey, in eager curiosity. "Go ahead."
"Cela étant----"
"No French now, please. Take your time, but put it all into English."
Annette settled herself in her chair, clasping her hands in her lap with a long breath; while her eyes rolled abstractedly in her head in search, no doubt, of the English words to convey her meaning. "Madame ismariéeas me. She will knowla jalousie, which carries ze good vife forson époux."
"Auntie!" cried Betsey in uncontrollable hilarity. "Were you ever so jealous of Uncle Dionysius that you had to carry him about with you? It would be more likely to be the other way. It is you, I should say, would want watching. He! he!"
"Betsey," said Aunt Judy austerely, for in truth her sense of propriety was outraged, "you surprise me. No! Mrs. Bruneau, I am not jealous. I have no occasion."
"Madame eesheureuse; but me--l'épousewho loves as me, vill havedes doutesfrom time in time. Zere arrive von night--it was a hot night of summer, ven ze vindow ver leff open, and I do not sleep well, and zen soundau dessous de la fenêtre--"
"Say window, and go on."
"I hear ze cry of abébé, I raise myself and go down, and behold! on ze stoop it were laid. Andla jalousieshe demand of me 'pour-quoiat ze door of my Jean Bruneau?' And Iréponds qu'oui, it is too evident. And I say in myself that no! It shall not be that theenfante d'autruishall eat thecroûteofmes enfants; and for Jean Bruneau, he shall of it never know. And then I carry to theporteof Mees Stanley, and I sound, and hide myself till I shall see it carried in ze house. And now, behold, the reward of mybienfaisance!Pierre,à la prison!And he has loffe her since long time.Peut-être sa sœur!Oh! My boy so innocent, in sin so mortal, and not to know! But how to hinder?"
"And the child is no relation to them at all? Well--I call itoudacious. Auntie, did you ever hear anything like it? A brat like Muriel, not a drop's blood to them in the world, to be pampered up there in sealskin and velvet, while I, their own cousin, am glad to dress myself in a suit of homespun."
"Yes, my dear, it seems wrong. I wonder at a correct person like Penelope Stanley compromising herself in a thing so contrary to all rule. But then, Matilda is flighty; I always thought her flighty. Beware of flightiness, Betsey, and yielding to the momentary impulses of an ill-regulated mind. It never answers. In the touching language of--of--the Psalmist, I suppose--and be sure your impulses will find you out! No, that isn't just it, but it might be; that is the intention of it. But, Mrs. Bruneau, I feel for you"--she rose as she said so, to intimate that the interview was ended--"I feel for you deeply. Be sure of my kindest consideration. When we hear further about your son, we will let you know, and all my influence I promise you to exert on his behalf. Good morning. You may rely on our not making an improper use of what you have told us."
"Madame have give her promesse to be silent. I confide;" and she curtsied herself out, with a confidence which was fast wearing into a misgiving that she would have done more wisely to hold her tongue. A secret shared with two others, who have no interest in maintaining it, has ceased almost to be a secret at all.
The mines brought a rush of trade to St. Euphrase. The drowsy little place, of late years, under the patronage of the railway, had been growing into a sort of sequestered rustic suburb, or at least a rural outlet for dust-stifled townspeople during the dog days, where such as could buy a house might pick their own strawberries, or cut their melon with the dew still on it, for breakfast. It was now breaking into the "live-village" stage of growth, raising its own dust in most respectable clouds, exhaling its own smoke--the villagers had burnt only wood in their golden age, and their atmosphere had been pure--with brawling navvies at the lane corners to disturb the night, and the glare of illuminated saloons, now for the first time able to outface the disapproval of M. le Curé, who hitherto had been able to fend off such dangerous allurements from his simple flock.
As spring advanced things progressed with a rush, and everybody in the district expected to make his fortune forthwith. The cautioushabitants, who would not risk their savings in a bank (remembering how once upon a time a bank had broke, and a grandfather had lost some dollars), but hid them away in crannies below the roof or underneath the oven, took courage now, and bought shares. Were not the mines there? visible to the naked eye. Did not Baptiste and Jean earn wages there? paid regularly every Saturday night. The whistle of their steam engine could be heard for miles around, and clouds of smoke drifted across the country, dropping flakes of soot on the linen hung out to dry. It was very real, this--definite and tangible. Had it not raised even the price of hay, which now could be sold at home, for the mine teams, at more than could be got for it in Montreal?
The rustics crowded into town to buy shares, and the price rose higher and higher, till they became so valuable that no one would sell. Still, however, shares were to be got, with exertion, and at a good price, at the offices of the company, which were also those of the Messrs. Herkimer, whose senior partner was president of the company.
The board of directors was so composed as to conciliate the local interests of St. Euphrase--M. Podevin the hotelkeeper, Joseph Webb, Esquire--Esquire meaning J.P.--Farmer Belmore, and Stinson, Ralph's favourite clerk. These met periodically to accept five dollars apiece for their attendance, sanction such proposals as their president might make, and sign the minutes. None of them had an opinion upon the matters to be considered, and even if they had had one, they would have felt it to be indelicate to question the decisions of the city magnate who was making their fortunes; but that mattered little; it was pleasant to sit upon a board, and be paid for sitting, especially when their decision upon the points on which they came to be consulted was already framed, to save them the trouble of consideration, and required only a mute assent. They found their consequence vastly augmented among their neighbours, who all prayed them for advice and private information; which, not having, they found it difficult to give, and had to fall back on their habit, learned at the "board," of looking as wise and saying as little as possible.
It was delightful, for the time being, thus to play at Lord Burleigh, and be thought only the wiser the more they held their tongues; but they little imagined the responsibility they were building up for themselves, when issues of stock unregistered in the company's books, funds not accounted for, and other irregularities had to be explained to infuriated shareholders. The storm was yet in the future, for the present the heavens were shining.
That year both Herkimer and Jordan removed their families to St. Euphrase quite early in the spring, instead of waiting for the summer heats. It was a demonstration of the importance they attached to the mining operations, and their desire to be on the spot. Directly, it was whispered among their acquaintance that fresh discoveries were being made, and cultured persons, who combined science with money-making, hastened to bespeak a summer residence in the favoured village, whence they might scour the neighbourhood on holidays, hammer in hand, rummaging for minerals, and picking up information about the remarkable find already made at La Hache. Every house, and even every shanty, to be let, was secured for the hot months, and some impatient prospectors, unwilling to wait so long, arrived at once, and established themselves with the Père Podevin, whose house had never been so full before, and who, feeling that his fortune was as good as made, began to prepare his family to adorn the great position they were about to fill, withdrew his eldest daughter from the kitchen, where she had been wont to assist, and sent her off to the celebrated convent of St. Cecilia, at Quebec, that she might learn to play the piano, and be turned into a lady.
The influx of city men had scarcely become apparent--it was the middle of May now--when a new phenomenon met the explorer's eye. A board fence was of a sudden run up around the property of the mining company, and watchers were stationed at intervals to see that no inquisitive stranger should scale the barrier. Excitement among the speculators grew intense. It was immediately inferred that silver, or perhaps even gold, had been found, else why this jealousy? and the crowds who came from town to scour the adjacent lands were so great that the Père Podevin had to use his stable and poultry house as sleeping quarters, and sold permission to two gentlemen to sleep on the floor under his billiard table on the same terms as he had been wont to charge for an entire chamber.
There was constant hurry in the offices in the Rue des Borgnes, by gaslight as well as by day. The jaded clerks seemed always at work, save when they crept home at night to sum up the endless figure columns over again in their sleep, and hurry back to business next morning. The president seemed as hardly driven as his servants. The street--where hitherto he had been a prominent figure, notebook in hand, making bargains, picking up information, and distributing it in passing, because it could be done so much more quickly than on 'Change, where some contrive to make a little business go so far in the way of talk and time-killing--the street knew him no more, and he was beset by people all day long, in his office, on every imaginable errand.
Hitherto he had been so cool, and so quick, and so strong--a very steam engine for doing business--so confident and so clear, perceiving all the bearings of a question at once--deciding on his course and completing an agreement in a few incisive sentences, while another man would still be figuring up with pencil and paper the preliminary calculations. Now there were signs of fatigue in the robust figure, a stoop of the shoulders, a flush about the temples. His temper, too--in time past he had had no temper, or at least it had been impossible to ruffle it, except where anger was made to serve a business end--his temper had grown irritable, as the luckless clerks too frequently found out, and he suffered from sensations of faintness which led to his withdrawing momentarily into his dressing-room, where there now stood a decanter of sherry, a thing which theretofore he would have scorned to permit on his premises. His habit till then had been to drink a couple of glasses of sherry at the club by way of luncheon, but the idea of keeping a "pick-me-up" at his elbow, to be referred to at uncertain intervals, had never occurred to him, because, till then, he had found his own strength sufficient for the day's work.
That may have been because things had gone well always, and there is no tonic in the pharmacopœia like a habit of succeeding; but now there were so many things, mines of copper, plumbago, phosphate, a railway, a suburb, and a bank, besides--besides everything else; for Ralph's greed grew with his success, the more he secured the more he still desired, and he could not see an opportunity go by without wishing to have a fling at it. A few months before, when money was flowing in for copper shares, there had seemed to be an opportunity in railways on New York market, and Ralph went in. It fretted him to see money lie idle when work could be found for it. He went in, but the unforeseen had happened, as it always will some time, and h found he could not come out again without loss, such as was not to be thought of, and therefore he must go in deeper still.
His own railway, too, the St. Lawrence, Gattineau, and Hudson's Bay had been suffering a check in the shape of a swamp it had to cross, in which it went on burying itself as fast as it could be built above the morass. A contractor had already failed. No other would undertake the work. The company was compelled to do it itself, under pain of being cut in two, with sections built to the south and north, and this gap in the middle, which made both ends useless. Ralph was largely interested in the road, which indeed he had both projected and promoted, to connect his plumbago mines and his phosphate lands with "the front,"i.e., with civilization and a market.
The plumbago mines were at work, gangs of men digging into the ground and dragging out riches which were barrelled up to await transport; but, until that swamp could be bridged over, of no more present value to the owners than so many tons of gravel. The workmen could not eat it, and would not accept it in payment of their wages; and to haul it to market over distances of corduroy road was to end by disposing of it for something less than it had cost to bring it there.
The public were aware of the trouble, and the shares would not sell. The bank, of course, could be brought to the rescue up to a certain point, but that, he began to realize, was nearly reached. There were signs of failing confidence at the board meetings, whisperings, and averted glances betokening incipient opposition, though mistrustful as yet of strength to declare itself, which in time past, when he could defy it, he would easily have browbeaten into submission; but now he dared not attempt to browbeat, the consequences of unsuccess would have been too serious. He tried to conciliate and persuade, where he had been wont to command, and when the master tries to conciliate the pupil, it is a sign the whip has gone from him, and the subject divines that he has a master no longer than he cares to accept one.
Again, the success of St. Hypolite Suburb was hanging fire. The suburb had been a tract of waste ground some years before, when Ralph picked it up on easy terms, as being unfit for agriculture and useless for anything else, and his scheme was to build on it a new and improved quarter of the town. He had sunk great sums in draining, levelling, and filling up. He had laid out a park, with a fountain, overlooked by semi-detached villas, and approached by residence streets of a superior kind. A few houses had become tenanted the year before, and a great sale of houses in June of the current year had been written up in a series of ingenious paragraphs in the local newspapers; when, on the arrival of warm weather, a visitation of ague and typhoid fever fell upon the pioneer settlers in the district, and frightened the public out of all the interest which it had cost so much money and pains to instil into its mind. The sale came off as advertised, but the half-dozen dwellings first offered--"replete with every modern improvement and convenience"--fetching barely enough to pay the advances of the Proletarian Loan and Mortgage Company, the rest were withdrawn for the present.
In a house of cards, though one card may be in doubtful equilibrium, if those other cards it leans against are moderately steady, it may stand. Nay, it may even contribute a measure of support to its supporters; but if all are shakey at the same time, it is a task of infinite dexterity to balance the several weaknesses each upon each. Even then the balance is but temporary; a flutter in the surrounding air will disturb the equipoise, and, when that befalls, the structure holding together only by weaknesses which balance each other will tumble to the ground a heap of ruin. And this was the fate Ralph saw impending. He was in so many ventures, and up to his full strength in each. If only one of them had weakened he could have propped it with the others in such wise as he had done before, but when everything grew shakey at the same time, it seemed as if the pillars of the universe itself were giving way; and worse, he felt the giving way within himself, a nodding to that frightful fall which was approaching, a yielding such as he had never known before. Hitherto each difficulty had called out latent strength to overcome it, but now there seemed a torpor in himself which would not be thrown off. His mind would, not, as hitherto, answer to his call with new expedients to circumvent each new check; he felt benumbed, and sought to that decanter--in his dressing-room for the strength, ingenuity, and courage he had theretofore found within himself.
It was a morning in the beginning of July--Ralph had remained in town overnight, not so much for the sake of doing anything as merely to be beside his business. In time past, when his affairs flourished, he had rather prided himself on the determination with which he could dismiss "shop" from his mind at five minutes past four, when he walked out of his office, and his promptitude in resuming it, exactly where he had left off, at a quarter before ten next morning. But now, when it would have been a relief to his jaded mind to lay cares by for a time, they clung to him all the while, disturbing sleep, even, with confused and harassing visions. To be away from business aggravated his anxiety--filled him with doubts as to what might occur in his absence, and he found his mind easier in the office than anywhere else. Even so the mother of a sick child will sit by the bed for hours, though the child be in sleep the most undisturbed, and she can do nothing more. There is assurance in being present, if she were away she would imagine things were happening, and be miserable.
After the hot night in town, with its unrefreshing sleep, and the untasted breakfast which followed, Ralph sat in his office listless and limp, with nothing to brace him but that hateful sherry in the dressing-room. It was ten o'clock. The train from St. Euphrase must have arrived, but his son had not yet appeared, when Jordan hurried in, closing the door behind him, and fastening it.
"You were not on the train this morning, Herkimer. Were you trying to give a man the slip?--and unload before any one else knew?"
"Unload? Slip? I remained in town last night. What do you mean? Is anything wrong?"
"Podevin tells me he heard some of the men, who were drinking in his bar, talking. They were telling each other that our lode was no true vein, that every bit of metal would be out in three months' time, and they would all be thrown idle. They were the only people in the place at the time; Podevin took them in hand, and made them promise to hold their tongues; but it's all coming out, can only be a question of a day or two. He came to me in a d--l of a funk--says he will be ruined, as everything he has is in it. To tell you the truth, I shall be hard hit myself--have never sold a share, and I have been buying. I do think you might have given me a hint."
"My dear sir, I am a heavier holder than you and Podevin both put together. The price has been going up so steadily I did not care to sell; it might have injured the property for the rest of you; and this is the first I have heard of a threatening collapse. We must sell at once, that is all."
"Too late, I fear, though I am now on my way to my broker. You will be selling, too? Wish I had known enough to hold my tongue till after I had unloaded," he added with a nervous pretence of hilarity. "Well! I'm off."
"Don't be a fool, Jordan. Of course I don't blame you for wishing to save yourself, I do the same; but perhaps it is just as well you came in and told me first. I mean those shares to go higher yet before I sell. I have all along known there was a possibility of what you tell me coming to pass, though I had hoped to get shut of the thing before it took place, and I would have preferred to slip out quietly. There will be a row, now, perhaps; but what of that? If it must be, we can weather it, so long as we save our money. It was to provide against such a contingency that I had that fence built round the operations, to keep prying fools on the outside; and you know how well that has answered. I see by theJournalthey have been finding indications of silver; if we inclose another hundred acres it will be taken to indicate gold and diamonds. But no, that would be too slow, and some one would blab in the meantime. I must telegraph the superintendent to work over-time, and contrive that the men do not go into the village. I shall telegraph to the directors, too, and hold a board meeting. It is handy having men so easily within call, and yet so innocent of business. You had better be present as solicitor, and convince yourself that we are not stealing a march.And then----"
"You wish me, then, not to offer my stock to-day?" said Jordan dubiously. The saw tells us there is honour among thieves, and perhaps there sometimes is, but there is seldom confidence among the over-sharp.
"As to that," cried Ralph scornfully, "you can please yourself. Go to your brokers, by all means, if you think well. Or, if you would like to save brokerage, you can just speak to Stinson as you go out. Tell him what you want to sell, and I shall buy at yesterday's quotation;" and he lay back in his chair with a cheerful smile, and twiddled his gold chain exactly like the prosperous millionaire his neighbours thought him.
Jordan looked and hesitated, and bit his nails, and then his brow cleared, and he drew a long sigh of supreme relief. "Well!" he said, smiling effusively, "you know more about it than I do. I'll trust your advice, and hold on till to-morrow."
"I gave you no advice whatever, sir. Please to remember that;" and he sat up in his chair with a suggestion of dignified offence on his features which made Jordan feel contrite and ashamed, and thoroughly satisfied that he had better not disturb his shares for the next twenty-four hours at any rate. "You can tell Stinson about your shares if you have a mind to; but whatever you do, I must beg that you will not only not circulate, but that you will put down any foolish report such as that you have just mentioned."
"You may depend on me for that, old fellow," cried Jordan, nodding adieu, and walking out with a sense of disburdenment from the cares he had been carrying, which made his middle-aged gait positively elastic.
Ralph rose, and watched through a convenient chink his retreating figure off the premises, and then he drew a breath, and stretched himself with a sardonic twitch of the eyebrows. "There's nothing like bluff after all! Yet where should I have been if he had concluded to take my offer? A fine rumpus those white-livered directors next door would have raised over the cheque. However,that'sweathered. Now for the mines," and he sat down and wrote his telegrams. He felt better and stronger than he had done for weeks. There was something to do now, action, work, combat with circumstances. He was a man once more with a fund of strength within, which needed only to be drawn on to come forth. The sherry decanter diffused its topaz radiance in vain all that day, for never once came Ralph within sight of the seductive lustre. He had something to do and think of, and in doing he found the best tonic for his system. It is waiting and looking forward to uncertain evil, distant as yet, and impossible to be struggled with, which racks the nerves to pieces with its strain, and drives the victim to artificial supports, which they from whose coarser construction a nervous system seems to have been omitted, and who cannot comprehend such needs, brand as intemperance and dissipation.
It was not yet eight o'clock on a summer morning at the little railway station of St. Euphrase. The sweetness from the dew on the ripening hay fields still hung on the drowsy breezes which came laggingly athwart the dusty platform, growing fainter each moment in the waxing heat.
Farmer Belmore was the earliest intending passenger to appear on the platform. The ticket office was not yet open, and he flopped about impatiently in his clean linen coat, mopping his brow with a vast handkerchief drawn from the crown of his broad-leafed Panama hat. His grand-daughter had arranged a poppy and a branch of southern-wood in his button-hole by way of embellishment, his cravat was of the fiercest blue, fastened with a gold horse-shoe of the largest size. He felt himself, as director in a great company, to be a man of mark, appropriately and becomingly arrayed on the present occasion, and it disappointed him that none of the general public should be there to see him.
Joe Webb appeared ere long; compact, well knit, athletic; an example of the very satisfactory result to be looked for by-and-by, when the Teutonic and Gallic stocks shall have joined and blended to form the specialized type of a new nationality; swarthy and black-eyed, with the nose short, but prominent and aquiline, marking affinity to the high-spirited and vivacious French, while the level eyebrows and forward balancing of the head showed equal kinship with the reflective Saxon.
"Ha!" cried both men simultaneously. "For town? Board meeting?" Simultaneously, too, they answered, as if there could be any doubt. "Yes. Thought I might as well go this morning as another, and be present at the meeting. And draw my five dollars," added Belmore. "This special meeting will be just so much pure gain, if we do not do too much business, as I hope we shall not, and make the next regular meeting unnecessary. But to be sure the monthly meetings are obliged to be held, according to the bye-laws, or the charter, or something--so Mr. Stinson tells me--therefore, this is quite an extry five dollars to the good, and better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. You think so, too, squire, I guess."
The distant whistle of the approaching train was now heard, and the opening of the ticket office with a bang. There were only three or four other intending passengers, and all had soon bought their tickets, and stood awaiting the train.
"What can have come to old Podevin?" said Webb. "If he waits for the train at 9.30 he may miss the meeting altogether, and his fee. He will have been watching to see the president go by before starting himself for the station, and the president stayed in Montreal last night. I happen to know that. Podevin will miss his train."
"So much the better for us. There will be the more for you and me. I'd love to finger a dollar that should have been coming to Podevin more'n fifty of my own. He's that near, it's like drawing teeth to get asouout of him. He hain't paid me yet for the cord-wood that kept him warm last winter, and now he wants me to take out the price in white Yankee beans. 'No, sir,' says I; but I let him show me the truck, and, squire, if you'll believe me, the weevils were that thick, you could see them quarrelling together who was to get the next sound bean, and they were that big you could see them looking out of their holes at the buyer, and warning him like, against the trade."
The brother directors, however, were mistaken in supposing Podevin was minded to forego or endanger the emoluments of his directorship. He was in waiting, though they did not see him, behind a convenient cattle-car on the siding, anxious only to avoid speech with them till all were in presence of the president, that his own misgivings might be resolved without prejudice; for he dreaded that hisconfrèresmight elicit something from him before he had learned the right way to view or state it himself, and so his undigested words might get abroad and do him harm. Wherefore he waited till he saw the couple step on the train, and then clambered quietly into the carriage behind, avoiding the platform and the ticket office, and paying his fare to the conductor on the train, who charged him ten cents extra, wringing his heart with the thought that two per cent of his director's fee was thereby lost to himself and his heirs for ever.
The board of directors of the Mining Association of St. Euphrase assembled at the appointed place and time. The president was in the chair, and Jordan, the company's solicitor, sat by his side. Podevin sat beside Stinson, whispering anxiously, and striving to draw support and encouragement from the involuntary exclamations of the man he was alarming with his tales and forebodings, while Belmore and Webb awaited the opening of the proceedings in the placid tranquillity of perfect ignorance. Nothing disturbing had as yet come into their knowledge, or even their dreams, and they sat by the leather-covered table contemplating the minute book and the inkstand, and wondering how long it would be before they should sign their names, draw their fee, and take their departure.
The president tapped the table with his ruler. Stinson read the minutes of the previous meeting, and the board was in session and ready to proceed to business. The president stated that he had been made the recipient of singular information affecting the value and prospects of their property only the day before, and he had lost no time in calling them together, that the matter might be inquired into. "And our worthy solicitor, Mr. Jordan, will now kindly repeat to the board the statements he has already made to me in private."
"I know nothing, gentlemen," said Jordan, "but what was mentioned to me by one of your own number, here present. He is now, I doubt not, ready to repeat his statements at length for your united consideration. I allude to my respected friend, Mr. Podevin."
The Père Podevin coughed behind his hand, looking disgust from under his eyelids for a solicitor who could thus betray a confidential conversation. "Was the man a fool or a rogue?" he asked himself. If he had not actually paid him a fee on addressing him, had he not given information worth thousands, if properly used?--given it freely for the sake of consulting him--and Jordan had promised advice in the morning--the morning now come--and here, instead of a friendly hint how he might save himself, the treacherous adviser, having already had twenty-four hours' exclusive use of the news, was calling on him to divulge everything before the whole board, giving an equal start to the others with himself in the race to save something, or rather letting himself be ruined with the rest. However, all eyes were on him now, and there was no escape.
"It was on yesterday," he said, "zat I hear of ze men to say, versecrètementto ze ozers, as they have dig out all zecuivreof ze mine. I £five zose men to drink in retirement from ze rest, and I ask, and zey confirm zat of zecuivreis no more.Mon Dieu!Misterre Herkimair--to tink of ze moneys to nourish myvieillesse, and zedotsof my daughtairsinnocentes!All sunk in ze mines----"
"Well?" asked Ralph a little testily; "and pray who did it? Who sunk your money? You are of lawful age, Mr. Podevin, and believed to be of sound mind. You are privileged to act for yourself, and you must bear the consequences of your own acts. If your shares had risen to double the price you paid for them, you would have taken the profit as the reward of your own smartness; if it turns out the other way, why should you come grumbling to me?Idid not make you risk your money or throw it away."
"You say, Misterre Herkimair, zere were fortunes in ze rocks of La Hache svamp, and I believe zericheMisterre Herkimair, and I give ze littleboursemade upsoubysouin all zese year vit so much of care----"
"Yes, and thought to make your fortune, Mr. Podevin? and now you think you are going to lose it--the chance every man is liable to who speculates or plays poker. You throw a sprat expecting to catch a herring, and at times the herring isnotcaught, and the sprat is thrown away. You must accept the chances of the game, or else you should not play. Look at me! Think of the thousands I stand to lose if our enterprise miscarries! What are your few hundreds compared to that? Yet I make no lament."
"M'sieur ees soricheanddistingué!He vill not see a poor man lose ze sparings of his life," and he bowed cringingly to the chair.
Farmer Belmore vied with him in a gaze of pathetic sweetness and tremulous hungry adoration before the great man who had brought his savings into jeopardy and who yet, if any one could, could bring them safely out. The disclosure made by Podevin had been as unexpected by him as it was sudden. He had fancied himself growing rich, and now to be told that he was stripped of his savings! He would have been furious had he dared--talked of fraud, trickery, and the law; but when he saw Podevin prostrate himself in spirit before the chair, and cry for succour from the hand which had inaugurated the ill, he controlled himself and lay back in his chair, constraining his lips into sugar-coated smiles which the doubtful and hungry gleaning of his eyes deprived of any seductiveness they might otherwise have carried.
"This is simply, gentlemen," said the president, coughing and raising his voice, "one of those circumstances to which every enterprise--especially every enterprise dealing with minerals--is liable. As business men you calculated the risks and counted the cost before you embarked your money. The likelihood of profit appeared sufficient to us all to warrant our running the risk."
"M'sieur did not mention risks ven he so kindly undertook to improve my fortunes. I confide my case to ze generoussouvenirsof m'sieur. He vill not permit to suffer ze man who placeconfianceand dollars in hisrecommande."
Ralph snorted. "Let us talk business, gentlemen," he cried. "We are not here to scold like old women, or to lament like children. You are men of understanding, who would not have dropped your money but where you saw good promise of a large return. Whether you gain or lose, therefore, you have only yourselves to thank. You know as well as I do that where money is to be made it is also to be lost. If it were not so, all the world would crowd in to make its fortune every time, and there would be nothing for anybody. Therefore, I object to expressions such as have fallen from my friend, Podevin. He regrets them already himself, I am sure, now I mention it, and he brings his clear good sense to bear on the point. Gentlemen! we went in to win. Of course we did! It goes without saying. But, if we have to lose, let us behave like men of business and common sense; let us not cry over spilt milk, but let us make the best of it. And first, let us look the matter in the face. What is it that has happened to us?----"
"Zecuivreis not zere!" cried Podevin, eager to rally his self-respect and preen the rumpled plumage on which Ralph had sat down so unceremoniously. If his plea for help and relief must be set aside, at least a partial satisfaction might be taken out in scolding, and there seemed an opening here.
"To put it shortly, gentlemen," said Ralph with a shrug, "that would appear to be about the state of the case just at this moment; but I would recommend you not to say it that way out of doors, unless you want to write off every cent you have invested in the undertaking as dead loss. That would not be all either, gentlemen. You, the directors, conjointly and severally, would be liable to suit by each individual stockholder for misrepresenting the value of the property. Is that not so, Jordan?"
"Clearly, they might claim to have their subscribed stock made good. Whether they would secure a verdict, would depend a good deal, of course, on the management of the case on both sides. But that is not all. It is possible that a criminal information might be laid for obtaining money under false pretences, and when commercial miscarriages are fresh in the public mind, there is a proneness in juries to find against the defendants. It is really a serious consideration--a penetentiary offence."
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Podevin with folded hands, gazing at the ceiling with eyes whose watery sorrow threatened momentarily to overflow. Belmore pulled the posy from his button-hole and flung it on the ground, its festive hue and fragrance irritated his senses in the gloom which had fallen on him. If he could but have cast his speculation from him as easily, or hurled the man before him, who had led him into it, to the ground in like fashion, how good it would have been!
"But, gentlemen," cried Ralph, pleased at the impression which his words had made, "things have not come to that pass yet, nor will they, if I can help it. There is always life for a living man; that is, if he is willing and able to use it sensibly for his own preservation. What is this which has fallen on us after all? It may prove to be nothing but a fault in the lode. Such things occur frequently, and the recovered vein, when it is found again deeper down, is generally richer than it was before. It is true that what we have been working on may prove to be mere pockets of the metal, unconnected with other deposits, but we cannot say for certain until we have carefully examined, and that will require time. Meanwhile, idle tales may get abroad, which would shake public confidence, injure and discredit the property, and destroy the value of the stock. We must forestall mischievous rumours, gentlemen, and I now propose--Stinson! enter on the minutes, 'proposed and carriednem. con. that this board now declare a dividend of one dollar per share.'"
"That will be five per cent on the paid-up capital?" said Joe Webb. "All the earnings, so far, have gone in working expenses. It seems a big dividend to declare out of nothing."
"--sh!" muttered Belmore, pulling his sleeve. "--sh, man! It will be so much saved out of all that has gone to the dogs."
"But, Mr. President," Webb continued, "where is the money to come from to pay the dividend?"
"Never fear for that, squire. Declare your dividend, and up go your shares. We have still stock which has not been issued yet. We can sell it then at the advanced price, and shall be in plenty of funds to pay anything."
"But is that right? Mr. Herkimer. Is it honest?"
"Right? Honest? Sir! What do you mean? Your words require explanation," and Ralph pushed out his chest, making the diamond studs flash scornful fire on the farmer's inexpensive raiment, while his brow gloomed and his cheeks grew purple like an angry gobbler.
"Mr. Webb is more familiar with the procedure at quarter sessions, and the operations of agriculture, I suspect, than with the practice of the financial world," observed Jordan soothingly. He loved to lift his placid head, like Neptune, above the troubled waves, and still a rising storm. He used his smoothest, oil-pouring tones, enjoying them himself, and calming those who heard him. "I feel confident he had no intention of reflecting on our worthy president, who, on my thus explaining--with Mr. Webb's manifest concurrence--will refrain from viewing as unfriendly any unadvised expression he may have used. And, my dear Mr. Webb, you will permit me to say that the impulse which unadvisedly prompted still does you infinite honour. It would be well for our commercial community if the noble sentiments which flourish in the rural districts were to obtain in the busy marts of trade. In the present instance, however, my young friend will perhaps permit me to say that his scruples appear to be--well, to be just, a little over-strained. As Mr. Webb states the case, it may indeed be said that there is a seeming impropriety in the time chosen for declaring this dividend."
"It is not the time, it is the dividend I object to. It has not been earned, and it is to be paid out of the subscriptions of the new shareholders."
"My good man," cried Ralph, "can you make a better of it? You would not throw up the sponge--stop the workings--before it has been proved whether it is not merely a temporary check we are suffering. You do not want to lose all the money you have put in, and perhaps be sued by disappointed shareholders besides, till you are stripped bare of every cent you have in the world?"
"I do not want to take the money of misled subscribers, and divide it among ourselves on pretence of a dividend which we have not earned."
"That is a question of book-keeping, sir, allow me to tell you. Certain debit entries are merely deferred, to be charged later on, leaving a present surplus. It is easily done. Besides, you must admit that we--that the present shareholders--actuallyhaveearned the premiums at which the stock stands, or may stand hereafter. That is a profit which the company and the older proprietors have fairly earned by holding the stock in time past, before it grew popular, and the price rose. Trust the management, Mr. Webb. The rest of us are more deeply interested even than you are in things going right."
"I don't like it. It does not seem to be the honest thing to do."
"Mr. Webb, Mr. Webb, you are letting yourself grow warm again, are you not?" said Jordan. "What other method would you propose? This one will give time for examining the property and striking the vein again, and, if we cannot do that, we shall have time to sell out and wash our hands of the whole operation without loss, or even at a small profit."
"But how, as honest men, could we sell property, knowing it to be worthless, at the same price as if it were of real value?"
"Caveat emptor, my dear sir, to quote a legal maxim. The buyers are business men, well able to take care of themselves, and they will do it, you may rest assured. They will satisfy themselves that they are not paying too dear. Your scruples are honourable, no doubt, but do you not think they must be over-strained, seeing they run counter to the general practice? I can assure you it is nothing unusual which has been proposed--nothing but what has frequently taken place in most respectably managed concerns. There was the Porpoise and Dolphin Oil Company, Limited, for instance--since gone into liquidation, but that is neither here nor there--its management was in the hands of a body of directors, than whom no gentlemen in the community stand higher, among others the Rev. Mr. Demas, of Little Bethel, in the Rue des Borgnes--you will have heard him preach, no doubt--a most evangelical man, and surely you will not take upon you to find fault with proceedings such ashehas sanctioned by participating in."
"I really could not bring myself to declare a dividend, that is, as I understand it, to profess that we have earned money when I know for a fact that we have not earned it at all."
"Tush, man!" whispered Belmore; "sit down. Let's get through, sign the minutes, and draw our pay. I have coal oil to buy, and nails, and I shall miss my train if you do not sit down and let us finish up."
"Proposed," cried Ralph, "that the board declare a dividend of one dollar per share, payable on the first of next month. Gentlemen in favour of the motion will hold up their hands. Carried!nem. con."
"Gentlemen!" began Webb, in a faltering voice, which was overborne and drowned in the rush and stream of the president's words, which grew loud and rapid at this point, and who went on as though unconscious of interruption. "Any other business to bring forward, Stinson? No? Then this meeting stands adjourned to the second Monday of next month. Sign the minutes, gentlemen, and draw your honorarium."
Webb requested Stinson to record his dissent from the vote in the minutes, but was informed that the meeting was closed, and nothing could be added to its proceedings. He then demurred to signing, but Belmore, heated up to the point of speaking out in meeting for once, declared that he must, or he should not have his dollars--that himself and Podevin earned them by signing their names, and Webb must do likewise.
"The dollars may slide!" cried Joe, growing indignant, and tossing on his hat.
"But, Mr. Webb," said Stinson, speaking most respectfully, "will you sign the minutes to show that I have done my duty, and they are correct. You have been present, and the law says so;" and poor Joe Webb, unable to bear up against a city man's polite address, though he would have maintained his point against all the blustering farmers in his township, yielded, and placed himself under the same moral condemnation with the rest, as sanctioning for stock-jobbing purposes a fraudulent dividend to be paid out of capital.