Kitabı oku: «The Squire's Daughter», sayfa 18

Unconsciously William himself became shy and reserved when Ruth was about. The fear that she mistrusted him made him mistrustful of himself. He felt as though he had done a mean thing, and had been found out. If by chance he caught her looking at him, he fancied there was reproach in her eyes, and so he avoided looking at her as much as possible.

All this tended to deepen the reserve that had grown up between them. Neither understood the other, and William had not the courage to have the matter out with her. A few plain questions and a few plain answers would have solved the difficulty and made two people as happy as mortals could ever hope to be; but, as often happens in this world, the questions were not asked and the unspoken fear grew and intensified until it became absolute conviction.

Ruth did not join her brother and William in the laboratory. She sat near the fire with a lamp by her side and some unfinished work in her lap. She caught up her work every now and then, and plied a few vigorous stitches; then her hands would relax again, and a dreamy, far-away look would come into her eyes.

Now and then a low murmur of voices would come through from the little shed at the back, but she could distinguish nothing that was said. One thing she was conscious of, there was no note of mirth or merriment, no suggestion of laughter, in the sounds that fell on her ear. The hours were so big with Fate, so much was trembling in the balance, that there was no place for anything but the most serious talk.

"Nothing seems of much importance to men but business," she said to herself, with a wistful look in her eyes. "Life consists in the abundance of the things which they possess. They get their joy out of conflict – battle. We women live a life apart, and dream dreams with which they have no sympathy, and see visions which they never see."

The evening wore away unconsciously. The men talked, the woman dreamed, but neither the talk nor the dreams brought much satisfaction.

Ruth stirred herself at length and got supper ready for three, but William would not stay. He had remained much too long already, and had no idea it was so late.

Ruth did not press him, she left that to her brother. Once or twice William looked towards her, but she avoided his glance. Like all women, she was proud at heart. William was conscious that Ruth's invitation was coldly formal. If he remained he would be very uncomfortable.

"No, I must get back," he said decidedly, without again looking at Ruth; and with a hasty good-evening he went out into the dark.

For a few minutes he walked rapidly, then he slackened his pace.

"She grows colder than ever," he said to himself. "She intends me to see without any mistake that if I expected to win her love by favours, I'm hugely mistaken. Well, well!" and he sighed audibly. "To-morrow morning we shall know, I expect, whether it is failure or fortune," he went on, after a long pause. "It's a tremendous risk we are running, and yet I would rather win Ruth Penlogan than all the wealth there is in Cornwall."

William did not sleep well that night. Neither did Ralph nor Ruth. They were all intensely anxious for what the morrow should bring.

CHAPTER XXXVI
THE PENALTY OF PROSPERITY

By the evening of the following day all St. Goram had heard the news; by the end of the week it was the talk of the county. The discovery of a new tin lode was a matter of considerable importance, not only to the few people directly interested, but to the entire community. It would mean more work for the miner, more trade for the shopkeeper, and more traffic for the railway.

The "out-of-works" straggled into St. Goram by the dozen. Mining experts came to see and report. Newspaper men appeared on the scene at all hours of the day, and wrote astonishing articles for the weekly press. Ralph found himself bombarded on every side. Speculators, financiers, company promotors, editors, reporters, photographers, miners, and out-of-works generally made his life a burden. He would have kept out of sight if he could, and turned William Menire on the crowd. But William was busy winding up his own business. Moreover, his mother was ill, and never seemed happy if he was off the premises.

Ralph almost wished sometimes that he had never discovered the lode. Men came to him for employment who scarcely knew how to handle a shovel, and he often had to take off his coat and show them the way. He was like a beggar who had found a diamond and did not know what to do with it. On all hands people spoke of his good fortune, but after a few weeks he began to be in doubt. Difficulties and worries and vexations began to gather like snowflakes in a winter's storm. Lord St. Goram put in a claim for a certain right of way. The District Council threatened legal proceedings if he interfered with a particular watercourse. Sir John Hamblyn's legal adviser raised a technical point on the question of transfer. The Chancellor of the Duchy sent a formidable list of questions relating to Crown rights, while Farmer Jenkins wanted compensation for the destruction of crops which had never been destroyed.

"I've raised a perfect hornets' nest," Ralph said to William Menire one evening, in his little room at the back of the shop. "Everybody seems to consider me fair game. There isn't a man in the neighbourhood with any real or fancied right who has not put in some trumpery claim or other. The number of lawyers' letters I have received is enough to turn my hair grey."

"Oh, never mind," William said cheerfully, "things will come out right in the end! I am sorry you have to face the music alone, but I'm as fast here as a thief in a mill."

"I know you are," Ralph said sympathetically. "But to tell you the candid truth, I am not so sure that things will come out right."

"Why not?"

"Because everybody is up in arms against us."

"Not everybody."

"Everybody who thinks he can get something out of us. Our little dominion is surrounded by hostile tribes. I never realised till the last few days how completely we are hemmed in. On two sides the Hamblyn estates block our passage, on the third side Lord St. Goram's land abuts, and on the fourth side old Beecham has his fence and his barbed wire, and all these people have struck up a threatening attitude. Sir John is naturally as mad as a hatter that he sold the farm at all. Lord St. Goram is angry that a couple of plebeians should own land in what he regards as his parish; while old Beecham, who regards himself as an aristocrat, sides with his own class, and so between them our fate promises to be that of the pipkin between the iron pots."

"But we need not go beyond the bounds of our own property," William said.

"There you are mistaken," Ralph answered quickly. "Our small empire is not self-contained. There is no public road through it or even to it. Lord St. Goram threatens to block up the only entrance. And you know what going to law with a landed magnate means."

William looked grave.

"Then we must have a 'dressing floor' somewhere," Ralph went on, "and the only convenient place is Dingley Bottom. Water is abundant there. But though God gave it, man owns it, and the owner, like an angry dog, snarls when he is approached."

"Very good," William said, after a pause, "but don't you see we are still masters of the situation?"

"No, I can't say that I do. We are only two very small and very obscure men with a very limited amount of cash. As a matter of fact, I have got to the end of mine. In a battle with these Titans of wealth, what can we do?"

"Sit tight!"

"Easier said than done. Your business life in St. Goram has been terminated. At the present time I am earning nothing. In order to sit tight, we must have something to sit on."

"We can farm Hillside, and live on vegetables."

"Jenkins does not go out till March, and in the meanwhile he is claiming compensation for damages."

"We can easily deal with him. He won't go to law; he is too poor, and has too genuine a horror of lawyers. So he will submit his claim to arbitration."

"But even with Jenkins out of the way, and ourselves installed as farmers, we are still in a very awkward plight. Suppose St. Goram really contests this right of way – which was never hinted at till now – he can virtually ruin us with law costs."

"He would never be so mean as to attempt it."

Ralph laughed bitterly.

"My dear fellow," he said, "I can see clearly enough there is going to be an organised attempt to crush us. As for the question of meanness, that will never be considered for a moment. We are regarded as interlopers who have been guilty of sharp practice. Hence, we must not only be checkmated, but ground into powder."

"They haven't done it yet," William said, with a cheerful smile, "and I'm not going to say die till I'm dead."

Ralph laughed again, and a little less bitterly than before. William's hopefulness was not without its influence upon him.

For a while there was silence, then William spoke again.

"Look here, Ralph," he said; "strength will have to be met with strength. The strong too often know nothing of either mercy or justice. One does not like to say such a thing, or even think it, but this is no time for sentiment."

"Well?"

"You know our hope has been to work the lode ourselves; to increase our plant, as we have made a little money; to employ only St. Goram men, and give each one a share in the concern. It was a benevolent idea, but it is clear we are not to be allowed to carry it out."

"Well?"

"Two courses are still open to us. The first is to fill in the prospecting pits and let the lode lie undeveloped. The second is to let the financiers come in and form a company that shall be strong enough to meet Lord St. Goram and his class on their own ground."

Ralph was silent.

"I know you do not like either alternative," William went on, "but we are pushed up into a corner."

"The first alternative will fail for the reason I mentioned just now," Ralph interposed. "St. Goram will dispute the right of way."

"And he knows we cannot afford to go to law with him."

"Exactly."

"Then we are thrown back on the second alternative, and our little dream of a benevolent autocracy is at an end. Strangers must come in. People who have no interest in St. Goram will find the money. A board of directors will manage the concern, and you and I will be lost in the crowd."

Ralph raised his eyes for a moment, but did not reply.

"Such a plan has its advantages," William went on. "If we had been allowed to carry out our plan, developments would be very slow."

"Not so slow. You must remember that the lode is very rich."

"It would necessarily be slow at the start," William replied. "By letting the financiers come in, the thing will be started right away on a big scale. Every man out of work will have a job, and money will begin to circulate in St. Goram at once."

"That is no doubt true, but – well, it knocks on the head much I had hoped for."

"I know it does; but living in our little corner here, our view may be narrow and prejudiced. There is honest company promoting as well as dishonest. Combination of capital need not be any more wrong than combination of labour. No single man could build a railway from London to Penzance, and stock it; and if he could, it is better that a company should own it, and work it, than a single individual. You prefer a democracy to an autocracy, surely?"

Ralph's face brightened, but he remained silent.

"Suppose you and I had been able to carry out our idea," William went on. "We should have been absolute rulers. Are we either of us wise enough to rule? We might have become, in our own way, more powerful than Lord St. Goram and all the other county magnates rolled into one. Should we have grace enough to use our power justly? We have benevolent intentions, but who knows how money and power might corrupt? They nearly always do corrupt. We complain of the way the strong use their strength; perhaps it is a mercy the temptation is not put in our way."

"Perhaps you are right, William," Ralph said at length, "though I confess I distrust the whole gang of company promoters that have been buzzing about me for the last month."

"Why not consult Sir John Liskeard? He is our member; he is interested in the place. He knows most people, and he would at least bring an unprejudiced mind to bear on the question."

Ralph gave a little gasp. To see Sir John he would have to go to London. If he went to London, he might see Dorothy Hamblyn.

He did not speak for a moment. The sudden vision of Dorothy's face blotted out everything. It was curious how she dominated him still; how his heart turned to her constantly as the needle to the pole; how her face came up before him in the most unexpected places, and at the most unexpected times; how the thought of her lay at the back of all his enterprises and all his hopes.

"It means money going to London," he said at length.

"We must sow if we would reap," William replied, "and our balance at the bank is not quite exhausted yet. Don't forget that we are partners in this enterprise, and in any case we could sell the farm for a great deal more than we gave for it."

"We may be compelled to sell it yet," Ralph said ruefully.

"But not until we are compelled," was the cheerful reply. "No, no; if we don't win this time, it will not be for want of trying."

"My experience has not been encouraging," Ralph answered. "In every struggle so far, I have gone under. The strong have triumphed. Right and justice have been set aside."

"You have gone under only to come to the top again," William laughed.

"But think of father and mother."

"Martyrs in the sacred cause of freedom," William answered. "The rights of the people are not won in a day."

Ralph was silent for a while, then he looked up with a smile.

"Your judgment is sounder than mine," he said. "I will go to London to-morrow."

He had no difficulty in getting an interview with Sir John. The member for the St. Hilary division of the county had his eye on the next election. Moreover, he was keenly interested in the new discovery, and was not without hope that he might be able to identify himself with the concern. He manifested distinct pleasure when Ralph was announced, and gave all his attention to him at once.

Ralph put the whole case before him from start to finish. Liskeard listened attentively with scarcely an interruption. He smiled now and then as Ralph explained his own hope and purpose – his benevolent autocracy, as William called it – and how he had been foiled by the ring of strong men – strong in wealth and social influence – who threatened to strangle all his hopes and schemes.

It took Ralph a long time to tell his story, for he was anxious to leave no point obscure. Sir John listened without the least trace of weariness or impatience. He was too keenly interested to notice how rapidly time was flying.

"I think your partner has the true business instinct," he said at length. "It is almost impossible to carry out great schemes by private enterprise."

"Then you approve of forming a company?"

"Most certainly. I have been expecting to see in the papers for weeks past that such a company had been formed."

"I mistrust the whole lot of them," Ralph said, with a touch of vehemence in his tone. "Everybody appears to be on the make."

"It is of very little use quarrelling with human nature," Sir John said, with a smile. "We must take men as we find them, and be careful to keep our eyes open all the time."

"If someone stronger than yourself ties you to a tree and robs you, I don't see much use in keeping your eyes open," Ralph answered bluntly. "Indeed, it might be a prudent thing to keep your eyes shut."

Liskeard lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.

"I see where you are," he said at length. "Still, there is a soul of honour alive in the world even among business men. Don't forget that our great world of commerce is built on trust. There are blacklegs, of course, but in the main men are honest."

"I am glad to hear it," Ralph answered dubiously. "But now to get to the main point. Will you help us in this thing? William Menire and myself are both inexperienced, both ignorant, both mistrustful of ourselves, and particularly of other people."

"Can you trust me?" Liskeard questioned, with a laugh.

"Yes, we can, or I should not have come to you."

"Then I think I may say I can put the thing through for you."

"It's a good thing," Ralph said warmly. "There is not a lode a quarter so rich in the three parishes. I question if there is anything equal to it in the whole county."

"I have read the assayer's report," Sir John answered.

"And because it is so good," Ralph went on, "I'd like St. Goram to have the first claim, if you understand. If there are any preferences, let them go to the people at home."

"And your share?"

"William and I will leave our interests in your hands. You are a lawyer. All we want is justice and fair play."

"I understand. If you will dine with me at the House to-morrow night I think we shall be able to advance the case a step further."

Ralph got into an omnibus in Fleet Street, and alighted at Westminster. Thence he made his way into St. James's Park. The weather was raw and cold, the trees bare, the paths muddy and deserted. He wandered up and down for the best part of an hour – it was too cold to sit down – then he made his way across Hyde Park Corner and struck Rotten Row.

A few schoolgirls, accompanied by riding masters, were trotting up and down. A few closed carriages rolled by on the macadam road, a few pedestrians sauntered listlessly along under the bare trees.

A few soldiers might be seen talking to giggling nursemaids, but the one face he hungered to see did not reveal itself. He walked almost to Kensington Palace and back again, by which time night had begun to fall. Then with a little sigh he got into a 'bus, and was soon rolling down Piccadilly.

London seemed a lonely place in the summer time; it was lonelier than ever in the winter.

CHAPTER XXXVII
LIGHT AND SHADOW

By the end of the following May, Great St. Goram Mine was in full working order. Ralph was installed as managing director; William was made a director and secretary to the company. Lord St. Goram was in Scotland at the time, and when he applied for shares he was too late. His chagrin knew no bounds. He had imagined that he had Ralph and William in the hollow of his hand. That two country bumpkins, as he was pleased to call them, would be able to float a company had not occurred to him. He knew the project that first occupied their thoughts. He knew that he could make it impossible for them to carry their ideas into effect.

His agent had hinted to William that his lordship would be willing to take the farm off their hands at a price; hence, he believed that by applying gentle pressure, and waiting, he would be able in a very short time to get the whole thing into his hands.

For a few weeks he threatened the company with all sorts of pains and penalties, but the company was not to be bluffed. Private interest had to give way before public convenience. Where the welfare of a whole community was at stake, no petty and niggling contention about right of way was allowed to stand. The company made its own right of way, and was prepared to pay any reasonable damage.

With the company at his back, Ralph laughed in the consciousness of his strength. He had never felt strong before. It was a new experience, and a most delightful sensation. He had never lacked courage or will power, but he had been made to feel that environment or destiny – or whatever name people liked to give it – was too strong for him. Strength is relative, and in comparison with the forces arrayed against him, he had felt weaker than an infant.

When his father was driven from his home, he had bowed his head with the rest in helpless submission. When he was arrested on a false and ridiculous charge, he submitted without protest. When he saw his mother dying in a workhouse hospital, he could only groan in bitterness of spirit. When the Brick, Tile, and Clay Company gave him notice to suspend operations, he had tamely to submit. In fact, submission had been the order of his life. It had been given to others to rule; it had been his to obey.

This would not have been irksome if the rule of the strong had been wise and just. But when justice was thrust aside or trampled under foot, as if it had no place in the social order, when equity was only the shuttlecock and plaything of interested people, when the weak were denied their rights simply because they were weak, and the reward of merit was to be cuffed by the tyrant, then his soul revolted and he grew bitter and cynical in spite of himself.

Now, however, the tables had been turned. For the first time in his life he felt himself among the strong. He need no longer sit down tamely under an injustice, or submit to insults in silence. Success was power. Money was power. Combination was power.

He pulled himself up suddenly at length with a feeling almost of terror. He was in danger of becoming what he had condemned so much in others. The force and subtlety of the temptation stood revealed as in a blinding flash. It was so splendid to have strength, to be able to stalk across the land like a giant, to do just what pleased him to do, to consult no one in the doing of it. It was just in that the temptation and the danger lay. It was so easy to forget the weak, to overlook the insignificant, to treat the feeble as of no account. Strength did not constitute right.

That was a truth that tyrants never learned and that Governments too frequently shut their eyes to. God would hold him responsible for his strength. If he had the strength of ten thousand men, he still had no right to do wrong.

So at length he got to see things in their true proportion and perspective. The strength that had come to him was only an adventitious kind of strength, after all. Unless he had another and a better kind of strength to balance it, it might prove his destruction. What he needed most was moral strength, strength to use wisely and justly his opportunities, strength to hold the balance evenly, strength to do the right, whatever it might cost him, to suffer loss for conscience' sake, to do to others what he would they should do to him.

If he ever forgot the pit out of which he had been digged, success would be a failure in the most direful sense.

He trembled when he saw the danger, and prayed God to help him. He was walking on the edge of a precipice and knew it; a precipice over which thousands of so-called successful men had fallen.

"Ruth," he said to his sister one evening, with a grave look in his eyes, "if you ever see me growing proud, remind me that my mother died in a workhouse."

"Ralph?" she questioned, with a look of surprise on her face.

"I am not joking," he said solemnly. "I was never in more sober earnest. I have stood in slippery places many times before, but never in one so slippery as this."

"Are not things going well at the mine?" she asked, in alarm.

"Too well," he answered. "The shareholders will get twenty per cent. on their money the first year."

"And you are a large shareholder," she said, with a look of elation in her eyes.

"Besides which, there are the dues to the landlord, as well as the salary of the manager. Do you not see, Ruth, that this sudden change of fortune is a perilous thing?"

"To some people it might be, Ralph."

"It is to me. It came to me this afternoon as I walked across the 'floors' and men touched their caps to me."

"But you can never forget the past," she said.

"But men do forget the past," he answered. "Would you ever imagine for a moment that Lord Probus, for instance, was not to the manner born?"

"I have seen him only two or three times," she answered; "but it seems to me that he is always trying to be a lord, which proves – "

"Which proves what?"

"Well, you see, a man who is really a gentleman does not try to be one. He is one, and there's an end of it; he hasn't to try."

"Oh, I see. Then forgetting the past is all a pretence?"

"A man may forget his poverty, but I do not think he can forget his parents. You need not remember where mother died, but how she and father lived; their goodness is our greatest fortune."

He did not make any further reply then, and a little later he put on his hat and said —

"I am going along to see William. He went home poorly this morning."

"Poorly?"

"Caught a chill, I fancy. The weather has been very changeable, you know."

Ruth felt a sudden tightening of the strings about her heart, and when Ralph had disappeared she sat down by the window and looked with unseeing eyes out across the garden.

She was back again in the old home, the home in which she had spent so many happy and peaceful years, and from which she had been exiled so long. She was very happy, on the whole, and yet she realised in a very poignant sense that Hillside could never be again what it had been.

It was bound to be something more or something less. Nothing could restore the past, nothing could give back what had been taken away.

The twilight was deepening rapidly across the landscape, the tender green of spring was vanishing into a sombre black. From over the low hill came fitfully the rattle of stamps which had been erected in Dingley Bottom, and occasionally the creak of winding gear could be faintly heard.

From the front windows of the house there was no change in the landscape, but from the kitchen and dairy windows the engine-house, with its tall, clumsy stack, loomed painfully near. Ralph had planted a double line of young trees along the ridge, which in time would shut off that part of the farm given over to mining operations, but at present they were only just breaking into leaf.

It was at first a very real grief to Ruth that the mine so disfigured the farm. She recalled the years of ungrudging toil given by her father to bring the waste land under cultivation, and now the fields were being turned into a desert once more. She soon, however, got reconciled to the change. The best of the fields remained unharmed, and the man and boy who looked after the farm had quite as much as they could attend to. Ralph did not mind so long as there was a bowl of clotted cream on the table at every meal. Beyond that his interest in the farm ceased.

But the mine was a never-failing source of pleasure to him. Tin was not the only product of those mysterious veins that threaded their way through the solid earth. There were nameless ores that hitherto had been treated as of no account because no use had been found for them.

Ralph began making experiments at once. His laboratory grew more rapidly than any other department. His early passion for chemistry received fresh stimulus, and had room for full play, with the result that he made his salary twice over by what he saved out of the waste.

William Menire's interest in the mine was purely commercial, and in that respect he was of great value. He laboured quietly and unceasingly, finding in work the best antidote to loneliness and disappointment. His mother was no longer with him. She had joined the silent procession of the dead. He was thankful for some things that she did not live to see the winding up of his little business – for it seemed little to him now in contrast with the wider and vaster interests of the company with which he was connected. She had been very proud of the shop, particularly proud of the great plate-glass window her son had put in at his own expense.

The edict of Lord St. Goram to restore the house to its original position had been a great blow to her. She had adored the aristocracy – they were not as other men, mean and petty and revengeful – hence the demand of his lordship shattered into fragments one of her most cherished illusions.

She did not live to hear the click and ring of the trowel, telling her that a brick wall was taking the place of the plate glass. On the very last day of her life she heard as usual the tinkle of the shop bell and the murmur of voices below.

When William had laid her to rest in the churchyard he disposed of his stock as rapidly as possible, restored the house to its original condition as far as it was possible to do it, and then turned his back upon St. Goram.

The little village of Veryan was much nearer the mine, much nearer the Penlogans, and just then seemed much nearer heaven. So he got rooms with a garrulous but godly old couple, and settled down to bachelordom with as much cheerfulness as possible.

That he felt lonely – shockingly lonely at times – it was of no use denying. He missed the late customers, the "siding up" when the shutters were closed, the final entries in his day-book and ledger. Big and wealthy and important as the Great St. Goram Tin Mining Company was, and exacting as his labour was in the daytime, he was left with little or nothing to do after nightfall. The evenings hung on his hands. Books were scarce and entertainments few, and sometimes he smoked more than was good for him.

He went to see Ralph as often as he could find a reasonable excuse, and always received the heartiest welcome, but for some reason the cloud of Ruth's reserve never lifted. She was sweet and gentle and hospitable, but the old light had gone out of her eyes and the old warmth from her speech. She rarely looked straight into his face, and rarely remained long in his company.

He puzzled himself constantly to find out the reason, and had not the courage to ask. He wanted to be her friend, to be taken into her confidence, to be treated as a second brother. Anything more than that he never dared hope for. That she might love him was a dream too foolish to be entertained. He was getting old – at any rate he was much nearer forty than thirty, while she was in the very flower of her youth. So he wondered and speculated, and got no nearer a solution of the problem.

Ralph was so engrossed in his own affairs that he never noticed any change, and never guessed that Ruth was the light of William's eyes.