A Cry in the Wilderness Part 45

"It's taking rather a mean advantage of a woman, I own, to ask her on the spur of the moment to share a man's political and sociological views--but I want you to share mine, and enlightenment is your due."

"And in the meantime am I to keep on the gloves?"

He laughed again. "Yes; keep them on and help me out of this sc.r.a.pe--I have never felt so humiliated in my life as I have taking this money.

Now I 'll be rational. You see, smallpox roams at times through Canada. This money has been stored in stockings, instead of banks, after having been h.o.a.rded, handled, greased, soiled by a generation or more. You 'll find dates of issue on these notes that are a good deal older than you, and silver minted in the early sixties. Now I want your help in counting over--auditing, we 'll call it--this ma.s.s of corruption. And I don't intend you shall run any risk in handling even a small part of it--hence the gloves and the fresh air. After we 're through with it, we will pack the filthy lucre in the box and express it to a Montreal bank. It is n't mine--at least I do not consider it so."

"Why not?"

"Because I am going to apply these half-yearly rents in reducing the interest on the money I am loaning these farmers, in order to enable them to buy the best implements and cultivate their land more intelligently. This I may say to you, but to no one else."

"You are going to sell them the land?"

"The greater part of it. The forest I keep, because I love that work and hope in time to make a sufficient income from it, in case of actual need. In fact, I 've been working all the week with the notary to get the deeds in order."

"So that was their 'bonnes nouvelles'?"

"You heard them?"

"Yes. They looked so happy--"

"Oh, I am glad; glad too, that you could see something of their pleasure in this special work of mine. Do you know,"--he leaned towards me over the table,--"that I have asked you to help me with this as a matter of pure sentiment?"

His eyes sought mine, but I am sure they found only an enquiring turn of mind in them, for I could not imagine where the sentiment was in evidence.

"I see I 'll have to explain," he said smiling. "I want you, an American with all the free inheritance of the American, to share with me in this last rite of mediaevalism, in order that in the future we may look back to it--and mark our own progress."

Oh, that word "our"! Used so freely, it rejoiced me. He intended this affair to mark some epoch in his life and mine. I waited for him to say something further. But, instead, he turned to the business in hand and we set to work. To be sure the "auditing" on my part was a mere farce; for not only did Mr. Ewart do most of the counting, and making into bundles of a hundred, but he insisted on my not bending close over the currency to watch him. As I told him, "After asking me to help you, you keep me at arm's distance."

Whereupon he smiled in an amused way, and said engagingly, but firmly:

"There is no question of my keeping you at a distance. Don't mind my crotchets, Miss Farrell, I have a fancy to have you here with me at the obsequies of all this sixteenth-in-the-twentieth century nonsense. At forty-six, I still have my dreams. You 'll be good enough to indulge me, won't you?"

"If that's all, I think I can indulge you. But is there nothing I can do to be of some real help?"

"Nothing but to lend me your companionship during this trying ordeal.

You might fill out some labels--you 'll find them in that handy-box on the desk--with the words 'hundred' and 'fifty', and I 'll gum them on to these slips for the money rolls."

For a few minutes I busied myself with the labels. After that, I watched his swift counting of bills and silver, and his ordering them into neat packages and rolls. Before long, however, I took matters into my own gloved hand and, without so much as "by your leave", began the recount, labelling as I went on. Within an hour the work was finished and a smaller tin box packed.

"How much did you make it?" he asked, before locking the box.

"Three thousand four hundred and twenty-two, just."

"The rate of interest I charge them is two per cent, and this amount will reduce that greatly."

"Do you mean that you are letting them have the land, supplying money to help them cultivate it, and charging only two per cent interest?"

"Why should I charge more? They are the ones who are doing the land good. You see, the use of this rent-acc.u.mulation to reduce their interest rate for the first year or two, is a part of my general scheme. They are to apply their half-yearly rents as purchase money for their land; this is in the deeds. Within a comparatively short period, this a.s.sures to each of them a freehold. The valuation I have put on their land is regulated by the amount of work they have put out on it, and the time they have lived on it.

"Take old Mere Guillardeau, for instance. She has an 'arpent' now of her very own. She, and her father, and her father's father have lived on these seigniory lands for nearly two hundred years. I value that land by discounting the value of the service rendered to it in four generations. Her little 'cabane' is her own, having been built by her father. The land is worth to her all the acc.u.mulated value of those generations of toil; to me, who have never done anything for it, neither I nor my fathers, it is worth exactly ten dollars--now, don't laugh!--her yearly rent."

"And that buys it!" I exclaimed, wondering what kind of finance this might be, frenzied or sane.

"It is hers--and I have the pleasure of knowing it is hers while I am living. She and her old daughter of seventy drove out here the other day in Farmer Boucher's cart, and when she went home she carried the deed with her to have it registered. Old Andre's sister is a hundred years old in January--a hundred years, the product of one piece of land, for, practically they have lived from it with a yearly pig, a cow, a few hens and a garden. Ninety years of toil she has spent upon it. Would you, in the circ.u.mstances, have dared to make the time of purchase one year, six months even, and she nearly a centenarian?"

"No." I was beginning to understand.

"And take old Jo Latour. You know him well, for I hear from him how many times you have been there on snow-shoes to take him something 'comforting and warming', as he says. Jo has rheumatism, the kind that catches him when he is sitting in his chair or stooping, and prevents his getting up; and at last, when he manages to stand upright, it won't let him bend or sit down again until after painful effort. What can he do? Boil maple syrup once a year, or chop a cord or two of wood at a dollar a cord? He is seventy-two and has no family as you know. What is he going to do when the pinch becomes too hard? He has a small woodlot, a little garden, a patch of tobacco--is happy all day long with his dog and pipe, despite that rheumatic crippling. I have valued his lot at twenty dollars, and a year's rent will pay for it--with the help of this," he added, touching the box.

"I am learning how to take hold of the matter by the handle. Enlighten me some more, please."

"I could go on for hours into more detail, but I am going to mention only two other families, to show how my plan works. There are Dominique Montferrand and Maxime Longeman, men of thirty or thereabouts, fine strong men with their broods of six and eight. They marry young; work hard and faithfully; shun the cabarets; save their surplus earnings. They were born on the land; they love it and give it of their best toil; it responds to good treatment. Their dairy is one of the best; their stock superior. They have seventy-five acres each.

I asked them to value it themselves. They showed they appreciated the worth of the land by the price they set: four thousand dollars--four thousand 'pieces'. They would not cheapen it--not even for the sake of getting it more quickly. A man appreciates that spirit. I have set the period for half-yearly payments at ten years--and I will help out with improved farm implements at the rate of interest I mentioned.

"In less than ten years, if the crops are good, it is theirs. If the crops are poor, they can still pay for it in the period set. They are young. They have something to work for during the best years of their lives."

"But how do you feel about parting with all this land that was your ancestors? Are n't you, too, bound to it by ties of value given?"

"Me? My ancestors!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get that idea? Who told you that this was ancestral land of mine?"

"Mrs. Macleod, or Jamie, intimated it was yours by inheritance."

"Hm--I must undeceive them. But _you_ are not to harbor such a thought for a moment."

"I won't if you say so--but I would like to know how things stand." I grew bold to ask, at the thought of his expressed confidence in me.

"Why, it's all so simple--"

"More simple, I hope, than all that matter of seigniorial rights and transferences I read upon, in the Library before I came--and was no wiser than before."

"And you thought-- Oh, this is rich!" he said, thoroughly amused.

I nodded. "Yes; I thought you were a seignior. I dreamed dreams, before coming here of course, of retainers and ancestral halls, and then--I was met by Cale at the boat landing!"

Mr. Ewart fairly shouted as he sensed my disappointment on the romantic side upon discovering Cale.

"And the first thing you did, poor girl, was to lay a rag carpet strip in the pa.s.sageway for my seigniorial boots--spurred, of course, in your imagination--to make wet snow tracks on! Oh, go on, go on; tell me some more. I would n't miss this for anything."

Before I could speak there was a decided rap on the door.

"That's Jamie," I said; "he has come for the fun."

"Come in," cried Mr. Ewart. Jamie intruded his head; his rueful face caused an outburst on my part.

"I say, Ewart, is it playing fair to a man to have all this unwonted hilarity in business hours, and keep me out?"

"No more it is n't, mon vieux. Come in and hear about Miss Farrell's seigniorial romancing."