The Major Part 50

"Here is Elfie's letter," he said. "Perhaps Mrs. Wakeham would like to see it." Miss Wakeham was busy at the wheel and gave no sign of having heard or seen. So her father reached over and took the letter from him.

"Do you know," said Larry gravely, "I do not think it is quite so hot as it was. I almost fancy I feel a chill."

"A chill?" said Mr. Wakeham anxiously. "What do you mean?"

Miss Wakeham bit her lip, broke into a smile and then into a laugh. "Oh, he's a clever thing, he is," she said. "I hope you may have a real good roast this afternoon."

"I hope you will call next Sat.u.r.day," said Larry earnestly. "It is sure to be hot."

"You don't deserve it or anything else that is good."

"Except your pity. Think what I am missing."

"Get in out of the heat," she cried as the car slipped away.

For some blocks Miss Wakeham was busy getting her car through the crush of the traffic, but as she swung into the Park Road she remarked, "That young man takes himself too seriously. You would think the business belonged to him."

"I wish to G.o.d I had more men in my office," said her father, "who thought the same thing. Do you know, young lady, why it is that so many greyheads are holding clerk's jobs? Because clerks do not feel that the business is their own. The careless among them are working for five o'clock, and the keen among them are out for number one. Do you know if that boy keeps on thinking that the business is his he will own a big slice of it or something better before he quits. I confess I was greatly pleased that you failed to move him."

"All the same, he is awfully stubborn," said his daughter.

"You can't bully him as you do your old dad, eh?"

"I had counted on him for our dinner party to-night. I particularly want to have him meet Professor Schaefer, and now we will have a girl too many. It just throws things out."

They rolled on in silence for some time through the park when suddenly her father said, "He may be finished by six o'clock, and Michael could run in for him."

At six o'clock Miss Wakeham called Larry on the 'phone. "Are you still at it?" she enquired. "And when will you be finished?"

"An hour, I think, will see me through," he replied.

"Then," said Miss Wakeham, "a little before seven o'clock the car will be waiting at your office door."

"Hooray!" cried Larry. "You are an angel. I will be through."

At a quarter of seven Larry was standing on the pavement, which was still radiating heat, and so absorbed in watching for the Wakehams' big car that he failed to notice a little Mercer approaching till it drew up at his side.

"What, you, Miss Rowena?" he cried. "Your own self? How very lovely of you, and through all this heat!"

"Me," replied the girl, "only me. I thought it might still be hot and a little cool breeze would be acceptable. But jump in."

"Cool breeze, I should say so!" exclaimed Larry. "A lovely, cool, sweet spring breeze over crocuses and violets! But, I say, I must go to my room for my clothes."

"No evening clothes to-night," exclaimed Rowena.

"Ah, but I have a new, lovely, cool suit that I have been hoping to display at Birchwood. These old things would hardly do at your dinner table."

"We'll go around for it. Do get in. Do you know, I left my party to come for you, partly because I was rather nasty this afternoon?"

"You were indeed," said Larry. "You almost broke my heart, but this wipes all out; my heart is singing again. That awfully jolly letter of Elfie's this week made me quite homesick for the open and for the breezes of the Alberta foothills."

"Tell me what she said," said Rowena, not because she wanted so much to hear Elfie's news but because she loved to hear him talk, and upon no subject could Larry wax so eloquent as upon the foothill country of Alberta. Long after they had secured Larry's new suit and gone on their way through park and boulevard, Larry continued to expatiate upon the glories of Alberta hills and valleys, upon its cool breezes, its flowing rivers and limpid lakes, and always the western rampart of the eternal snow-clad peaks.

"And how is the mine doing?" inquired Rowena, for Larry had fallen silent.

"The mine? Oh, there's trouble there, I am afraid. Switzer--you have heard of Switzer?"

"Oh, yes, I know all about him and his tragic disappointment. He's the manager, isn't he?"

"The manager? No, he's the secretary, but in this case it means the same thing, for he runs the mine. Well, Switzer wants to sell his stock. He and his father hold about twenty-five thousand dollars between them. He means to resign. And to make matters worse, the manager left last week.

They are both pulling out, and it makes it all the worse, for they had just gone in for rather important extensions. I am anxious a bit. You see they are rather hard up for money, and father raised all he could on his ranch and on his mining stock."

"How much is involved?" inquired Rowena.

"Oh, not so much money as you people count it, but for us it is all we have. He raised some fifty thousand dollars. While the mine goes on and pays it is safe enough, but if the mine quits then it is all up with us. There is no reason for anxiety at present as far as the mine is concerned, however. It is doing splendidly and promises better every day. But Switzer's going will embarra.s.s them terribly. He was a perfect marvel for work and he could handle the miners as no one else could.

Most of them, you know, are his own people."

"I see you are worrying," said Rowena, glancing at his face, which she thought unusually pale.

"Not a bit. At least, not very much. Jack is a levelheaded chap--Jack Romayne, I mean--my brother-in-law. By the way, I had a wire to say that young Jack had safely arrived."

"Young Jack? Oh, I understand. Then you are Uncle Larry."

"I am. How ancient I feel! And what a lot of responsibility it lays upon me!"

"I hope your sister is quite well."

"Everything fine, so I am informed. But what was I saying? Oh, yes, Jack is a level-headed chap and his brother-in-law, Waring-Gaunt, who is treasurer of the company, is very solid. So I think there's no doubt but that they will be able to make all necessary arrangements."

"Well, don't worry to-night," said Rowena. "I want you to have a good time. I am particularly anxious that you should meet and like Professor Schaefer."

"A German, eh?" said Larry.

"Yes--that is, a German-American. He is a metallurgist, quite wonderful, I believe. He does a lot of work for father, and you will doubtless have a good deal to do with him yourself. And he spoke so highly of Canada and of Canadians that I felt sure you would be glad to meet him. He is really a very charming man, musical and all that, but chiefly he is a man of high intelligence and quite at the top of his profession. He asked to bring a friend of his with him, a Mr. Meyer, whom I do not know at all; but he is sure to be interesting if he is a friend of Professor Schaefer's. We have some nice girls, too, so we hope to have an interesting evening."

The company was sufficiently varied to forbid monotony, and sufficiently intellectual to be stimulating, and there was always the background of Big Business. Larry was conscious that he was moving amid large ideas and far-reaching interests, and that though he himself was a small element, he was playing a part not altogether insignificant, with a promise of bigger things in the future. Professor Schaefer became easily the centre of interest in the party. He turned out to be a man of the world. He knew great cities and great men. He was a connoisseur in art and something more than an amateur in music. His piano playing, indeed, was far beyond that of the amateur. But above everything he was a man of his work. He knew metals and their qualities as perhaps few men in America, and he was enthusiastic in his devotion to his profession.

After dinner, with apologies to the ladies, he discoursed from full and accurate knowledge of the problems to be met within his daily work and their solutions. He was frequently highly technical, but to everything he touched he lent a charm that captivated his audience. To Larry he was especially gracious. He was interested in Canada. He apparently had a minute knowledge of its mineral history, its great deposits in metals, in coal, and oil, which he declared to be among the richest in the world. The mining operations, however, carried out in Canada, he dismissed as being unworthy of consideration. He deplored the lack of scientific knowledge and the absence of organisation.

"We should do that better in our country. Ah, if only our Government would take hold of these deposits," he exclaimed, "the whole world should hear of them." The nickel mining industry alone in the Sudbury district he considered worthy of respect. Here he became enthusiastic.

"If only my country had such a magnificent bit of ore!" he cried. "But such bungling, such childish trifling with one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, mining industries in the world! To think that the Government of Canada actually allows the refining of that ore to be done outside of its own country! Folly, folly, criminal folly! But it is all the same in this country, too. The mining work in America is unscientific, slovenly, unorganised, wasteful. I am sorry to say," he continued, turning suddenly upon Larry, "in your western coal fields you waste more in the smoke of your c.o.ke ovens than you make out of your coal mines. Ah, if only those wonderful, wonderful coal fields were under the organised and scientific direction of my country! Then you would see--ah, what would you not see!"

"Your country?" said Hugo Raeder, smiling. "I understood you were an American, Professor Schaefer."

"An American? Surely! I have been eighteen years in this country."

"You are a citizen, I presume?" said Mr. Wakeham.

"A citizen? Yes. I neglected that matter till recently; but I love my Fatherland."