A Business Offer
A fortnight slipped away. August had come in, with lengthening
nights, which sometimes had a touch of Arctic cold in them. But it
was glorious summer still, and although in those uncultivated
wastes there was little harvest from the land, the harvest of the
sea went merrily on. Mary Selincourt was out and about again,
limping a little at first, and leaning on a stick, but soon gaining
strength enough to go about as usual; only now, made wise by
experience, she took good care to avoid places of danger like the
tideholes.
Since that evening of confidential talk with Katherine, Mary had
honestly striven for the grace of self-forgetfulness; but the
virtue is not learned in one lesson, nor yet in two, and she would
probably have given up striving, through disgust at her own
failures, if her pride had not been deeply stirred, and the
obstinate part of her nature brought into full play.
Pleading hard work as an excuse, Katherine avoided her after that
evening, from a secret dread of any more confidences. This was
easier than it otherwise would have been, owing to Mrs. Burton
having taken the twins over to Fort Garry to spend a week with Mrs.
M'Crawney, which left Katherine with the burden of housekeeping on
her shoulders in addition to the business of the store.
Jervis Ferrars came up sometimes in the evening to sit and talk
with the invalid on every subject under the sun, from lunar
rainbows to earthquakes, but he got little chance of speech with
Katherine, who was always feverishly busy over some task which
absorbed her whole attention.
The day after Mrs. Burton came back from Fort Garry another vessel
arrived from Liverpool to anchor off Seal Cove. Only one more boat
would be likely to get in before winter came again, and when an
occasion is so rare it is likely to be made much of. The captain
held a sort of reception on board, to which everyone in Seal Cove
was invited. The M'Krees came down from the second portage with
all their babies; Mrs. Jenkin appeared in finery which no one even
dreamed she possessed; and Oily Dave was magnificent in a
frock-coat of shiny black cloth, worn over a football sweater of
outrageous pattern.
Katherine and her father were the only stay-at-homes, but 'Duke
Radford was not fit for excursions of that sort, and if Katherine
had gone Miles must have stayed at home, which would have been
rather hard on a boy as fond of ships as he was. But although
everyone went to the reception, some of them did not stay long, and
one of the first to leave was Mr. Selincourt, who had himself rowed
up river and landed at the store to ask Katherine if she would give
him a cup of tea.
"With great pleasure. Please go in and talk to Father; I shall be
free in a few minutes, and then I will come and make tea for you
both," Katherine answered, holding open the door between house and
store, while she smiled upon the visitor, who was more welcome than
he knew. She was serving an Indian squaw, who demanded bright
calico, 'bacco, and as much of anything else as she could get, for
fourteen beaver skins partly dressed, and as soft as velvet.
Beaver, even in that district, was becoming very scarce. Indeed,
Katherine was sure that these skins must have come a long distance,
probably seventy or eighty miles, from some part of unknown
Keewatin, where no foot of white man ever trod, and where even the
red man only went at trapping time. She bought the skins, of
course, adding to the purchase price a box of chocolates with a
picture on the lid, a treasure which set the red woman in a state
of the most complacent satisfaction.
When the squaw had departed, Katherine carefully locked away the
skins before going in to make tea, for the Indians were adepts at
roguery, and if by any means the woman could have stolen them, she
would probably have returned to the store to offer them in barter
again within the next hour. Katherine had been caught like that
often enough to have become exceedingly careful. She was talking
about the exceeding beauty of the skins as she watched the kettle
beginning to boil, and Mr. Selincourt immediately said that he
should like to see them.
"Will you wait until to-morrow or the next day? Then I will show
you all that we have got. But it is rather dirty work pulling them
out and unrolling them, and I have just put on a clean frock,"
Katherine said, laughing at the idea of putting a possible customer
off in such a fashion.
"I will wait certainly, and if the day after tomorrow will suit
you, I will come then and see if you have anything which Mary might
like me to buy for her. By the way, my men are behind with the
mail this time, a week late, and I am still uncertain whether or no
we shall have to go down to Montreal for the winter," Mr.
Selincourt said, as he helped Katherine to put cups and saucers on
the table.
"If they had come in time, would you have left by this boat?"
Katherine asked. The question of winter quarters had been
constantly talked of during the last week or two, but nothing had
as yet been decided upon, owing to the delay in the coming of the
two men with the expected mail.
"No, this boat will go straight to Liverpool. The next will come
round from Quebec, and return there before going to England; and
that must be our way south, I think, unless we decide to return as
we came, by river and trail."
"We shall all miss you very much," Katherine said regretfully; for
the pleasant, kindly man whom she had feared so greatly at first
had been such a good neighbour that his absence would be keenly
felt.
"I should not like it if I were not missed; but I am not going for
long, remember. With the opening of the waters I shall be back
again, to settle for good, I hope. England is a fine country to be
born in, but Canada is the land of my choice, and I have never yet
seen a part of it that I like better than these Keewatin wilds; it
is unspoiled nature here," Mr. Selincourt said, rubbing his hands
with great enthusiasm.
"Wait until you have tried a winter here, before speaking too
positively about it; you may find the isolation too dreadful to be
borne. We who are used to it do not mind so much, but a person
accustomed to daily papers and frequent posts would seem entirely
out of the world," she said, thinking of the long, long nights,
when the wolves howled in the woods, and the silent weeks when the
falls were frozen; and she wondered how this man, who had been
brought up in cities, could bear to think of such a life.
He laughed in a cheery, unconvinced fashion. "I have thought of
all that: but I can live without daily papers, or letters either,
if need be; although, if Roaring Water Portage develops as I
believe it is going to do, without doubt we shall get a regular
postal service of a sort. If it can't be done any other way, I
will do it myself. Only I must have a bigger house, for in winter
we should be very much cramped in that little hut over the river."
Katherine nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, you would want a big room for
giving parties and entertainments. Mary would make a lovely
hostess, and the fisher folk would feel as if they were living in a
new world. Oily Dave's dreadful whisky would have no chance at all
against the attractions offered by your big house."
Mr. Selincourt frowned. "That drink-selling of his is the thorn
among my roses of content, and I don't see how to put it down just
at present. I can't, from sheer decency, send the man packing,
just after he has helped to save my daughter from a dreadful death.
Of course I know that he only helped, and that you could and would
have done it without him if he had not been there, still, he was
there, and I must remember it in his favour, although he has
charged pretty heavily for his services."
"That is my fault, I fear," Katherine said in laughing apology.
"But I know what Oily Dave is, and that the one thing to move him
is money; so when Mrs. Jenkin told me he was the only man about, I
told her to say to him he must come at once, for there was money in
the work."
"You were quite right, and if you had promised him a hundred
dollars I would cheerfully have paid it," Mr. Selincourt replied;
and then he turned to talk to 'Duke Radford, who had been sitting
all this time with his head resting on his hand, and taking no
notice at all of what the others were talking about.
But when the tea-things were cleared away, and Katherine had gone
back to the store again, Mr. Selincourt followed her and commenced
talking afresh of what he meant and hoped to make of that
particular part of the world in the course of the next two or three
years. He had a special purpose in coming up river that afternoon,
for he wanted to consult Katherine on a business point, and did not
feel very sure of his ground.
Being a straightforward man in all things, however, he stated
bluntly what he had to say. "I want to buy your land, if I can,
Miss Katherine, and I am prepared to pay you any price in reason
that you like to ask me for it. I understand that your father owns
the river frontage for about a mile on this side of the water,
which is practically from here to the swamps, and it is land that I
should very much like to possess."
"But it is not mine to sell," she said blankly, too much taken by
surprise to know whether she felt pleased or offended by the
suggestion.
"I know it is not. But your father cannot be approached on any
question of buying or selling, so I had to come to you to see how
you felt about it, and I want you to think the matter over," Mr.
Selincourt replied.
"All the thinking in the world cannot alter the position so far as
I am concerned," said Katherine, with a little gesture of
weariness. "Our father is apparently a hopeless invalid, afflicted
more in mind than in body, yet no really qualified doctor has seen
him, to certify his unfitness for managing his own affairs. We,
his children, are all under age, except Nellie. By the way, why
did you not go to her?--she is the eldest. Though, even if you
had, she could only have spoken as I have done."
"I came to you because you stand in your father's place, carrying
on business in his name," Mr. Selincourt said quietly. "And if you
felt that it would be for the good of yourself and the others to
have some easier life than this, it would be very much my pleasure
to help you in realizing your wishes."
"But how?" asked Katherine, who failed to see how her father's
property could be disposed of without consulting him, while he was
in life, and they, his children, were all under age save one.
Mr. Selincourt smiled. "Things can mostly be managed when one
wants them to be done. If you and the others believed it would be
for the good of the family to sell your father's property, we could
bring a doctor up here to certify to his unfitness for business.
Your sister would have to be made acting trustee for the rest of
you, and so the thing would be done."
Katherine shook her head in a dubious fashion, saying: "I will talk
to the others about it if you wish, but I do not think it will make
any difference; we must just go on as we are doing, and make the
best of things as they are. Of course I don't know much about
business, except what I have picked up anyhow, for my profession is
teaching; but we have done very well since the work has been dumped
into our hands, and our profits this year are in excess of any
preceding one's."
"That is very encouraging. But then you would succeed in anything
you undertook, because you put your whole heart into it, and that
is the secret of success," Mr. Selincourt said warmly. After a
momentary hesitation he went on: "Mind you, this is a business
offer that I am making you, and even though I might give you double
or treble what your land would fetch in the open market at the
present time, I should still look to get a fifty-per-cent return on
my invested capital, although I suppose it is very unbusinesslike
of me to tell you so."
"But how would you do it?" demanded Katherine.
"My dear young lady, I believe there is a fortune in every acre of
ground on either side of the river," said Mr. Selincourt excitedly.
"Mary is keen on geology, as you know, and I have studied minerals
pretty closely. We have found abundant traces of iron, of copper,
and of coal. Now, the last is more important than the other two,
for without it they would be practically useless, so far from
civilization; but with it they may be worked to immense advantage."
"Would not the working be rather costly at the first?" Katherine
asked, with a sensation as if her breath were being taken away.
"Doubtless! It has already been proved, over and over again, that
if you want to get a fortune from under the earth you must first
put a fortune in it," he replied.
"But suppose, after you had put it in, you found yourself
disappointed in your returns--discovered, perhaps, that there was
no fortune awaiting you in the ground after all? What would you do
then?--for of course you could not get back what you had spent,"
said Katherine, with an air of amusement, for to her the statement
of there being a fortune in every acre of that barren ground
sounded like fiction pure and simple.
"In that case I should probably have to take off my coat, roll up
my sleeves, and go to work to earn a living for myself and Mary;
but I am not afraid of having to do it just yet," he answered,
laughing. Then as a customer entered the store he went off to talk
to 'Duke Radford, who was sitting outside in the sun, and Katherine
did not see him again that evening.
As in duty bound, she decided to take counsel with the others,
although her own mind was fully made up with regard to Mr.
Selincourt's offer. Life in some other more civilized place would
probably be easier and pleasanter for herself. Such work as she
had to do now was labour for men, and by no means suitable for
women or girls. But it was not herself she had to think of first
in this case; Miles and Phil were the ones to be considered here,
and she determined that the light in which Miles regarded the
question should be the standpoint from which she would view it too.
By this time she was quite satisfied in her own mind of her ability
to keep the business working in a profitable manner; but if she
were to venture upon earning a living for the six who were
dependent upon her efforts in some other way, she would not be so
sure of herself, and to doubt might be to fail.
It was not easy to get time to confer all together in that busy
household, but by good fortune a chance occurred that very evening,
and Katherine took it thankfully enough, knowing that it might be
long before such an opportunity came again. Her father had gone to
bed, tired out with his day of sitting and walking in the sunshine,
and was sleeping peacefully. The twins had also been put to rest,
and were droning themselves to sleep in a drowsy sing-song duet
with which they always filled the house before subsiding into their
nightly slumber.
"Don't go to bed for a few minutes, Phil; I want to talk to you.
We have got to have a family conclave," said Katherine, as Phil,
with a mighty yawn, was turning his steps to the ladder which led
to the loft.
"What's a conclave? And it is no use going on at me about that
bucket of water I tilted over down the ladder on to Nick Jones; it
stood so handy, and wanted such a little push, that I just could
not help doing it," the boy answered in a sullen tone. He had been
in mischief on board the steamer, escaping with a warning from the
captain and a lecture from Mrs. Burton; but he was by no means
repentant yet, although perhaps a trifle apprehensive of the form
of reprisal which Nick Jones might choose to take.
Katherine laughed. She had been in mischief herself too often when
at Phil's age not to feel sympathy with him on the score of the
prank he had played that afternoon. It was this same sympathetic
understanding of their moods and actions which gave her so much
influence with the boys, enabling her to twist them round her
little finger, as Miles expressed it.
"A conclave is a talk, discussion, or argument, but it has nothing
to do with your getting into mischief, Phil. It was a great
temptation, as you say, and I expect that in your place I should
have longed to do the same. Only there is another side from which
to view the business, and that is the side of Nick Jones. No doubt
he feels a bit ruffled, and if he thrashes you for your impudence,
or ducks you in the river, why, you will just have to take it lying
down."
"He has got to catch me first," said Phil, with that disposition to
swagger in which he delighted to indulge. Then he burst out
eagerly, as he slid his arm round her waist and leaned his head
back against her arm: "It was truly lovely, Katherine, and you
would have laughed until you choked if you had been there. Nick
was just setting his foot on the bottom of the ladder, and his face
was all smuts and smudges, so that he looked as if he had not
washed for a fortnight; he had got his mouth open too, wide open,
and I guess that was the first mouthful of clean water that he has
swallowed for a good long while past."
"You are really a shocking boy, and if you get a ducking it will be
only what you deserve," said Katherine, who was laughing at this
picture of the discomfiture of Nick Jones. "But sit down here and
let us get our business settled, because we are all tired and
longing for bed."
"I'm not tired," said Miles, shutting the book he had been reading
with a sigh. It always seemed to be time to go to bed when he
wanted to sit up, just as it was always morning and time to get up
when he was in the full enjoyment of being in bed.
"But you will be tired to-morrow, and no one who is weary can do
the best that is in him," said Katherine gently.