A Cry in the Wilderness Part 46

"Go on, Marcia," said Jamie, sitting down by me.

"You 've misled me, Jamie. Did n't you, or Mrs. Macleod, tell me when I first came that this Seigniory of Lamoral was Mr. Ewart's by inheritance?"

"Well, it was in a way, was n't it, Gordon? It was a Ewart's?"

"Not in a way, even. I never thought enough about your view of the matter to speak of it. Let's have a cigar, if Miss Farrell does n't object, and I 'll tell what there is to tell--there 's so little!"

Jamie looked at me when Mr. Ewart rose to get the cigars--and looked unutterable things. I read his thought: "Now is our time to find out the truth of things heard and rumored."

"I was born in Canada, Miss Farrell," he said, between puffs, "as Jamie knows, and educated in England. My mother's great-uncle, on her mother's side, was a Ewart of Stoke Charity, a little place in the south of England. While I was there, I was much with this great-uncle; I bear his name. He owned this estate of Lamoral in Canada, that is, two-thirds of the original seigniory; the other third belongs to the present seignior and seignioress in Richelieu-en-Bas. He purchased it from a Culbertson who inherited it from his grandfather, an officer of prominence in the French and Indian wars. At that time, many of the old French seigniories fell into the conqueror's hands, and, by the power of a might that makes right, were allotted to various English officers for distinguished services. The original Culbertson never lived here. His grandson, my great-uncle's friend, never cared enough for it to manage it himself; he left all to an agent and found it paid him but little--so little that he was willing enough to sell two-thirds of it, the neglected two-thirds, to my great-uncle.

"On my great-uncle's death, his grandson, my contemporary, inherited it. I bought it of him ten years ago; but I have used it only as a camping-place when I have been over from England or the Island Continent. I paid for it with a part of what I earned on my sheep ranch in Australia--so linking two parts of the Empire in my small way--and I have never regretted it. That's all there is to tell of the 'inheritance' romance, Miss Farrell."

"Gordon--" Jamie stopped short; blew the smoke vigorously from his lips, and began again. "Would you mind telling me how you came to want to settle here?"

"Why? Because I am a Canadian, not an Englishman."

"Why do you always take pains to make that distinction?"

"That's easy to explain. Because a Canadian is never an Englishman; he is Canadian heart and soul. You can't make him over into an Englishman, no matter if you plant him in Oxford and train him in Australia. I 've been enough in England to know that we are looked upon for what we are--colonials, Canadians, just the other side of the English pale although within the bounds of the British Empire. You feel it in the air, social, political and economic. No drawing-room in England accepts me as an Englishman--and I enter no drawing-room with any wish to be other than a Canadian of the purest brand. We 're not even English in our political rights over there. We are English only in the law, as is the pariah of India. We want to be just Canadians, inheritors of a land unequalled in its possibilities for human growth, for human progress, for the carrying out of just, wise laws, for a far-reaching economical largesse undreamed of in other lands--not excepting yours," he said, turning to me.

"And would you mind telling me," I asked, emboldened by Jamie's personal question, "how it has come about that you look upon your special land owners.h.i.+p with such a broad human outlook?"

"And this really interests you?" He asked me in some surprise.

"It really interests me--why should n't it when I have my own livelihood to earn? The economic question, so-called, seems to me to resolve itself into the question: How are we, I and my brothers and sisters, who work in one way and another, going to feed and clothe ourselves--and yet not live by bread alone? But, I don't suppose you know that side of it, only theoretically?"

"Yes, and no. I got all my inspiration about this land question in England."

"In England!" Jamie repeated, showing his surprise. "That would seem the last place for the advancement of such theories about land as I have heard you explain more than once."

"In this way. The object lesson came from England--but was upside down on my national retina. I had to re-adjust it in Canada. It's just here; the condition of England is this--I have seen it with both bodily and spiritual eyes:--That snug little, tight little island is what you might call in athletic parlance 'muscle bound'. I 'll explain. For more than a century she has colonized. What is left now? Her land owned by the few; her population, that which is left, rapidly pauperizing. England, with a land for the sustenance of millions, is powerless to help, to succor her own. She has too much unused land, as the muscle-bound athlete has too much muscle. It handicaps her in all progress. Her cla.s.ses are now two: the very poor, and the poor who have no land; the rich who have practically all the land. In this condition of things her economical and political system is drained of it best.

"Scotch, English, Irish--the clearest brains, the best muscle, the highest hearts, are coming over here to Canada. This land is the great free land for the many. In settling here, I wanted to add my quota of effort in the right direction. And I cannot see but that this little piece of earth, three thousand acres in all, on which, for two hundred years, men, women and children have succeeded one another, multiplying as generation after generation, have gone on caring for the land, living from it,--but never owning a foot of it,--is the best kind of an experiment station for working out my principles. I am about to apply the result of my English object lesson here in Lamoral. I have been telling Miss Farrell about the disposition I intend to make of it, gradually, of course. Perhaps you would like to hear sometime."

"Will you tell me about it in detail?" Jamie asked eagerly.

"I am only too pleased to find a listener, an interested one. Miss Farrell has proven a good one--I've kept you already two hours." He rose.

"Is it possible!" I was genuinely surprised. "The time had seemed so short. I must go now and help Angelique with her new cake recipe--a cake we eat only in the States, and a good object lesson on the economic side." I rose and laid the gloves on the table. I had kept them on just a little longer than was necessary--because they were his!

Foolish? Oh, yes, I knew it to be; but it was such a pleasure to indulge myself in foolishness that concerned n.o.body's pleasure but my own.

"Sometime I want to ask you a few questions, Miss Farrell," said Mr.

Ewart, as I turned to the door.

"What about?" I was a little on the defensive.

"I want to know how you came to have any such economic ideas in your thinking-box?"

I turned again from the door to face him. "Have you ever lived in New York?"

"No."

"Have you ever been there?" There was a moment's hesitancy before he replied, thoughtfully:

"Yes; I have been through it several times."

"Then you must know something of the economic conditions of those four millions?"

"Yes."

"Do I answer you, when I tell you I was one four-millionth for seven years? That I struggled for my daily bread with the other four millions; that after seven years I found myself going under in the struggle, poor, alone, ill, with just twenty-two dollars to show for the seven years of work? Can you wonder that I am interested in your work after _my_ object lesson?"

For a moment there was silence in the office. I broke it.

"My two friends," I said lightly, "I have upstairs in my purse a little sum of fourteen dollars that I received from Mrs. Macleod when I was in New York; that was my pa.s.sage money to Lamoral. I was too proud to owe anything to any one unknown to me, so took fourteen dollars of my twenty-two--all I possessed after the seven years' struggle--and paid my own pa.s.sage. I 've wondered again and again to whom I should return this money. I have never had the courage to ask. Will you tell me now?"

"I knew nothing of the money, Miss Farrell, or of you." Mr. Ewart spoke at last in a steady, but strained voice. Jamie's eyes were reddened. He held out his hand and I put mine into it.

"That was n't friendly of you, Marcia--you should have told us."

"Whose money is it, Jamie?"

"It's the Doctor's."

"His own?"

"His very own; he told me. Why?"

"Because I am so thankful to know that it is not from that acc.u.mulated sum; you know what he said. I would not like to touch it, coming from such an unknown source, besides--"

"Pardon me," said Mr. Ewart rising abruptly. Going to the side door he called to Cale who was pa.s.sing round the house. "I have to speak with Cale."

He left the room, and Jamie and I stared at each other, an interrogation point in the eyes of each.

The tin box still stood on the table.

"What's in that?" Jamie demanded.

"Filthy lucre," I said, turning for the second time to leave the room.

"Well, if Ewart's queer sometimes, as witness his abrupt departure, you 're queerer with your ideas of money."

I laughed back at him as I went out of the office:

"I can pay the Doctor now, Jamie. I 'm rich, you know."