Wentworth had written to Kenyon that Mr. Smith absolutely refused to take
more than one-third of the profits of the mine. It was true that the
offer had been declined, but Wentworth never knew how much tempted the
Mistress of the Mine had been when he made it. Her one great desire was
to pay back the thirty thousand pounds to her father, and she wanted to
do it as speedily as possible. At the end of the second year her profits
from the mine, including the return of the five thousand pounds which had
been sent to Ottawa as working capital, was still about five thousand
pounds under the thirty thousand pounds. She looked forward eagerly to
the time when she would be able to pay the thirty thousand pounds to her
father. Old Mr. Longworth had never spoken a word to his daughter about
the money. She had expected he would ask her what she had done with it,
but he had never mentioned the subject. Her conscience troubled her very
frequently about the method she had taken to obtain that large amount.
She saw that her father had changed in his manner towards her since that
day. He had given her the money, but he had given it, as one might say,
almost under compulsion, and there was no doubt that, generous as he
was, he did not like being coerced into parting with his money. Edith
Longworth had paid more for the mine than the amount of cash she had
deposited in Ottawa. She had paid for it by being cut off from her
father's confidence. Now he never asked her advice about any of his
business ventures, and, for the first time in many years, he had taken a
long sea-voyage without inviting her to accompany him. All this made the
girl more and more anxious to obtain the money to pay back her
indebtedness, and, if Wentworth had made the same offer at the end of the
second year which he had made at the close of the first, she would have
accepted it. The offer, however, was not made, and Miss Longworth said
nothing, but took her share of the profits and put them into the bank.
The plan of placing all one's eggs into the same basket is a good
one--until something happens to the basket! It is said that lightning
never strikes twice in the same place, and, as the small boy remarked,
'it never needed to.' In Mr. Longworth's affairs lightning struck in
three places, and in each of those strokes it hit a large basket. A new
law had been passed in one part of the world that vitally affected great
interests he held there. In another part of the world, at the same time,
there occurred a revolution, and every business in that country stopped
for the time being. In still another part of the world there had been a
commercial crisis; and, in sympathy with all these financial disasters,
the money market in London was exceedingly stringent.
Everybody wanted to sell, and nobody wished to buy. This unfortunate
combination of circumstances hit old Mr. Longworth hard. It was not that
he did not believe all his investments were secure, could he only
weather the gale, but there was an immediate need of ready money which it
seemed absolutely impossible to obtain. Day by day his daughter saw him
ageing perceptibly. She knew worry was the cause of this, and she knew
the events that were happening in different parts of the world must
seriously embarrass her father. She longed to speak to him about his
business, but one attempt she made in this direction had been very rudely
rebuffed, and she was not a woman to tempt a second repulse of that kind.
So she kept silent, and saw with grief the havoc business troubles were
making with her father's health.
'The old man,' said young Longworth, 'seems to be in a corner.'
'I do not want you ever again to allude to my father as "the old
man"--remember that!' cried the girl indignantly.
Young Longworth shrugged his shoulders, and said:
'I don't think you can insist on my calling him a young man much longer.
If he isn't an old man, I should like to know who is?'
'That doesn't matter,' said Edith. 'You must not use such a phrase again
in my hearing. What do you mean by saying he is in a corner?'
'Well,' returned the young man, 'I don't know much about his business. He
does not take me into his confidence at all. In fact, the older he grows,
the closer he gets, and the chances are he will make some very bad
speculation before long, if he has not done so already. That is the way
with old men, begging your pardon for using the phrase. It is not
levelled against your father in this instance, but at old men as a class,
especially men who have been successful. They seem to resent anybody
giving them advice.'
One day Edith received a telegram, asking her to come to the office in
the City without delay. She was panic-stricken when she read the message,
feeling sure her father had been stricken down in his office, and was
probably dying--perhaps dead. She had feared some such result for a long
time, because of the intense anxiety to which he had been subjected, and
he was not a man who could be counselled to take care of himself on the
plea that he was getting old. He resented any intimation that he was not
as good a business man as he had ever been, and so it was extremely
difficult to get him to listen to reason, if anyone had the courage to
talk reason to him.
Edith, without a moment's delay, sprang lightly into a hansom, and went
to the District Railway without waiting for her carriage. From the
Mansion House Station another cab took her quickly to her father's
office.
She was immensely relieved, as she passed through, to see the clerks
working as if nothing particular had happened. On entering her father's
room, she found him pacing up and down the apartment, while her cousin
sat, apparently absorbed in his own affairs, at his desk. Her father was
evidently greatly excited.
'Edith,' he cried the moment she entered, 'where is that money I gave you
two years ago?'
'It is invested,' she answered, turning slightly pale.
Her father laughed--a hoarse, dry laugh.
'Just as I thought,' he sneered--'put in such shape that a person
cannot touch a penny of it, I suppose. In what is it invested? I must
have that money.'
'How soon do you need it, father?
'I want it just now, at this moment; if I don't have that money I am a
ruined man.'
'This moment. I suppose, means any time to-day, before the bank closes?'
Her father looked at her for a moment, then said:
'Yes that is what it means.
'I will try and get you the money before that time.'
'My dear girl,' he said bitterly, 'you don't know what you are talking
about. If you have that money invested, even if your investment is worth
three times now what it was then, you could not get a penny on it. Don't
you know the state of the London money market? Don't you know how close
money is? I thought perhaps you might have some portion of it yet, not
sunk in your silly investment, whatever it is. I have never asked you
what it was. You told me you would tell me, but you never have done so. I
looked on that money as lost. I look on it still as lost. If you can get
me a remnant of it, it will help me now more than the whole amount, or
double the amount, would have done at the time I gave it to you. What
have you done with the money? What is it invested in?'
'It is invested in a mine.'
'A mine. Of all things in the world in which to sink money, a mine is the
worst. Just what a woman or a fool would do! How do you expect to raise
money on a mine in the present state of the market? What, in the name of
wonder, made you put it into a mine? Whose mine did you buy?'
'I do not know whose it was, father, but I was willing to tell you all I
knew at the time you asked me and if you ask me now what mine I bought, I
will tell you.'
'Certainly I ask you. What mine did you buy?'
'I bought the mine for which John Kenyon was agent.'
The moment these words were said, her cousin sprang to his feet and
glared at her like a man demented.
'You bought that mine--you? Then Wentworth lied to me. He said a Mr.
Smith had given him the money.'
'I am the Mr. Smith, William.'
'You are the Mr. Smith! You are the one who has cheated me out of that
mine!'
'My dear cousin, the less we say about cheating, the better. I am talking
to my father just now, and I do not wish to be interrupted. Will you be
so kind as to leave the room until my interview with him is over?'
'So you bought the mica-mine, did you! Pretending to be friendly with me,
and knowing all the time that you were doing your best to cheat----'
'Come, come!' interrupted the old gentleman; 'William, none of this. If
anyone is to talk roughly to Edith, it will be me, not you. Come, sir,
leave the room, as she has asked you to do. Now, my daughter,' he
continued, in a much milder tone of voice, after young Longworth had left
the office, 'have you any ready money? It is no use saying the mine is
worth a hundred thousand pounds, or a million, just now, if you haven't
the ready money. Edith, my child,' he cried, 'sit down with me a moment,
and I will explain the whole situation to you. It seems to me that ever
since I stopped consulting you things have gone wrong. Perhaps, even if
you have the money, it is better not to risk it just now; but one pound
will do what two pounds will not do a year hence, or perhaps six months
from now, when this panic is over.'
Edith sat down beside her father and heard from him exactly how things
stood. Then she said:
'All you really need is about fifteen thousand pounds?'
'Yes, that would do; I'm sure that would carry me over. Can you get it
for me, my child?'
'Yes, and more. I will try to get you the whole amount. Wait for me here
twenty minutes or half an hour.'
George Wentworth was very much surprised when he saw Edith Longworth
enter his office. It had been many months since she was there before, and
he cordially held out his hand to the girl.
'Mr. Wentworth,' she began at once, 'have you any of the money the mica
mine has brought you?'
'Yes. I invested the first year's proceeds, but, since I got the last
amount, things have been so shaky in the City that it is still at the
bank.'
'Will you lend me--_can_ you lend me five thousand pounds of it?'
'Of, course I can, and will; and very glad I am to get the chance of
doing so.'
'Then, please write me out a cheque for it at once, and whatever papers
you want as security, make them out, and I will see that you are
secured.'
'Look here, Miss Longworth,' said the young man, placing his hands on his
hips and gazing at her, 'do you mean to insult me? Do you not know that
the reason I am able to write out a cheque for five thousand pounds, that
will be honoured, is entirely because you trusted your money to me and
Kenyon without security? Do you think I want security? Take back the
word, Miss Longworth.'
'I will--I will,' she said; 'but I am in a great hurry. Please write me
out the cheque, for I must have it before the bank closes.'
The cheque was promptly written out and handed to her.
'I am afraid,' she said, 'I am not very polite to-day, and rather abrupt;
but I will make up for it some other time.'
And so, bidding the young man good-bye, she drove to the bank, deposited
the cheque, drew her own for thirty thousand pounds, and carried it to
her father.
'There,' she said, 'is thirty thousand pounds, and I still own the mine,
or, at least, part of it. All the money is made from the cheque you gave
me, or, rather, two-thirds of it, because one-third was never touched.
Now, it seems to me, father, that, if I am a good enough business woman
to more than double my money in two years, I am a good enough business
woman to be consulted by my father whenever he needs a confidant. My dear
father, I want to take some of the burden off your shoulders.'
There were tears in her father's eyes as he put his arm round her waist
and whispered to her:
'There is no one in all London like you, my dear--no one, no one. I'll
have no more secrets from you, my own brave girl.'