Thurston of Orchard Valley

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ULTIMATUM

Winter creeping down from the high peaks held the whole valley fast in its icy grip when Mrs. Thomas Savine, who was seldom daunted by the elements, went up from Vancouver to persuade her niece to seek sheltered quarters on the sunny coast until spring. Her visit was, however, in this respect a failure, for Julius Savine insisted upon remaining within touch of the reclamation works. Though seldom able to reach them, he looked eagerly forward to Geoffrey's brief visits, which alone seemed to arouse him from his lethargy.

Mrs. Savine and Helen sat in the general living-room at the ranch one day when her brother-in-law came in leaning heavily upon his partner's arm. Geoffrey had set his carpenters to build a sleigh, and from one hill shoulder bare of timber it was possible, with good glasses, to see what went on in the cañon. Savine was listening with evident satisfaction to the tall, frost-bronzed man who led him towards the room that he delighted to call his office, and Mrs. Savine, noticing it, smiled gratefully upon Geoffrey. Worn by anxious watching, Helen was possibly a little out of humor that afternoon, and the sight awoke within her a certain jealousy. She had done her best, and had done it very patiently, but she had failed to arouse her father to the animation he showed in Geoffrey's presence.

"I haven't felt so well since I saw you last," observed Savine, oblivious for the moment of his daughter. "You won't fail to come back as soon as ever you can – say the day after to-morrow?"

Geoffrey glanced towards Helen, who made no sign, and Mrs. Savine noticed that for a moment his face clouded. Then, as he turned towards his partner, he seemed to make an effort, and his expression was confident again.

"I am afraid I cannot leave the works quite so often. Yes – we are progressing at least as well as anyone could expect," he said. "I will come and consult you whenever I can. In fact, there are several points I want your advice upon."

"Come soon," urged Savine, with a sigh. "It does me good to talk to you – after the life I've lived, this everlasting loafing comes mighty hard to me. I believe once I knew we were victorious I could let go everything and die happy."

Helen heard, and, overwrought as she was by nights of assiduous care, the speech both pained and angered her. Geoffrey's answer was not audible, as they passed on. He came back alone, off his guard for a moment, looking worn and weary, and Mrs. Savine said:

"You are tired, Geoffrey, and if you don't appear more lively next time I will attend to you. No – don't get scared. It is not physic I'm going to prescribe now. Take this lounge and just sit here where it's cosy. Talk to Helen and me until supper's ready."

Thurston had been crawling over ice-crusted rocks and wading knee-deep in water most of the preceding night. The chair stood temptingly between the two ladies and near the stove. He glanced towards it and Helen longingly. Some impulse tempted the girl to say:

"Mr. Thurston has usually so little time to spare that it would be almost too much to hope that he could devote an hour to us."

The tone was ironical, and Geoffrey, excusing himself, went out. He sighed as he floundered down the snow-cumbered trail. There was indignation in the elder lady's voice as she declared:

"I am ashamed of you, Helen. The poor man came in too late, for dinner, and he must be starving. If you had just seen how he looked at you! You'd feel mean and sorry if they found him to-morrow frozen hard in the snow."

Helen could not fancy Geoffrey overcome by such a journey because he had missed two meals, and she smiled at her aunt's dismal picture, answering her with a flippancy which increased the elder lady's indignation, "Mr. Thurston is not a cannibal, auntie."

"I can't figure why you are fooling with that man if you don't want him," said Mrs. Savine. "Oh, yes; you're going to sit here and listen to some straight talking. Isn't he good enough for you?"

Helen's face was flushed with angry color. "You speak with unpleasant frankness, but I will endeavor to answer you," she responded. "I have told Mr. Thurston – that is, I have tried to warn him that he was expecting the impossible, and what more could I do? He is my father's partner, and I cannot refuse to see him. I – "

Mrs. Savine, leaning forward, took her niece's hands in her own, saying gravely, "Are you certain it is quite impossible?"

For a moment Helen looked startled, and her eyes fell. Then, raising her head, she answered: "Have I not told you so? I have been anxious about my father lately and do not feel myself to-day. Surely you have no wish further to torment me."

"No, but I mean to finish what I have to say. Do you know all that man is doing for you? He has – " But Mrs. Savine ceased abruptly, remembering she had in return for her husband's confidence promised secrecy.

"Yes. I think I know everything," replied Helen, with something suspiciously like a sob, while her aunt broke her pledge to the extent of shaking her head with a gesture of negation. "It – it makes it worse for me. I dare not bid him go away, and I grow horribly ashamed because – because it hurts one to be conscious of so heavy a debt. Besides, he is consoling himself with Mrs. Leslie!"

"Geoffrey Thurston would be the last man to consider you owed him anything, and as to Mrs. Leslie – pshaw! It's as sure as death, Geoffrey doesn't care two bits for her. He would never let you feel that debt, my dear, but the debt is there. From what Tom has told me he has declined offer after offer, and you know that, if he carries this last scheme through, the credit and most of the money will fall to your father."

"I know." The moisture gathered in Helen's eyes. "I am grateful, very grateful – as I said, ashamed, too; but my father comes first. I tried to warn Geoffrey, but he would not take no. I feel almost frightened sometimes lest he will force me to yield against my will, but you know that would be a wrong to him – and what can I do?"

Helen, unclasping her hands from her aunt's, looked straight before her, and Mrs. Savine answered gently: "Not that. No – if you can't like him it would not be fair to him. Only try to be kind, and make quite sure it is impossible. It might have been better for poor Geoffrey if he had never mixed himself up with us. You, with all your good points, are mighty proud, my dear, but I have seen proud women find out their mistake when it was too late to set things straight. Wait, and without the help of a meddlesome old woman, it will perhaps all come right some day."

"Auntie," said Helen, looking down, some minutes later. "Though you meant it in kindness, I am almost vexed with you. I have never spoken of these things to anyone before, and though it has comforted me, you won't remind me – will you?"

"No." The older woman smiled upon the girl. "Of course not! But you are pale and worried, and I believe that there is nothing that would fix you better than a few drops of the elixir. I think I sent you a new bottle."

Then, though her eyes were misty, Helen laughed outright, as she replied:

"It was very kind of you, but I fear I lost the bottle, and have wasted too much time over my troubles. What can I tempt my father with for supper?"

When Geoffrey returned to camp, Halliday, who had arrived that day from Vancouver, had much to tell him.

"I've sold your English property, and the value lies to your credit in the B. O. M. agency. All you have to do is to draw upon your account," he said. "As you intend to sink the money in these works I can only wish you the best of good luck. Now, I'm starting for home to-morrow, and there's the other question – how to protect the interests of Mrs. Leslie. Anthony Thurston made a just will, and her share, while enough to maintain her, is not a large one, but I don't see yet just how it's to be handled. It was the testator's special wish that you should join the trustees, and that her husband should not lay his hands upon a dollar. From careful inquiries made in Vancouver, I judge he's a distinctly bad lot. Anyway, you'll have to help us in the meantime, Geoffrey, and in opening a small bank account I made your signature necessary on every check."

"It's a confoundedly unpleasant position under the circumstances. What on earth could my kinsman have been thinking of when he forced it upon me of all men?" Geoffrey responded with a rueful face. "Still, I owe him a good deal, and suppose that I must cheerfully acquiesce to his wishes."

"I cannot take upon myself to determine what the testator thought," was the dry answer. "He said the estimable Mr. Leslie might either shoot or drink himself to death some day. The late Anthony Thurston was a tenacious person, and you must draw your own conclusions."

"If there was one thing which more than another tempted me to refuse you every scrap of assistance it was the conclusion I arrived at," said Geoffrey. "However, I'll try to keep faith with the dead man, and Heaven send me sense sufficient to steer clear of difficulties."

"I can trust your honesty any way," remarked Halliday. "There's a heavy load off my mind at last. You are a good fellow, Geoffrey, and, excuse the frankness, even in questions beyond your usual scope not so simple as you sometimes look."

A day or two before this conversation took place, Henry Leslie, sitting at his writing-table in the villa above the inlet, laid down his pen and looked up gratefully at his wife, who placed a strip of stamped paper before him. Millicent both smiled and frowned as she noticed how greedily his fingers fastened upon it.

"It is really very good of you. You don't know how much this draft means to me," he said. "I wish I needn't take it, but I am forced to. It's practically the whole of the first dole your skinflint trustee made you, isn't it?"

"It is a large share," was the answer. "Almost a year's allowance, and I'm going to pay off our most pressing debts with the rest. But I am glad to give it to you, Harry, and we must try to be better friends, and keep on the safe side after this."

"I hope we shall," replied the man, who was touched for once. "It's tolerably hard for folks like us, who must go when the devil drives, to be virtuous, but I got hold of a few mining shares, which promise to pay well now, for almost nothing; and if they turn up trumps, I'd feel greatly tempted to throw over the Company and start afresh."

He hurriedly scribbled a little note, and Millicent turned away with a smile that was not far from a sigh. She had returned from England in a repentant mood, and her husband, whose affairs had gone smoothly, was almost considerate, so that, following a reconciliation, there were times when she cherished an uncertain hope that they might struggle back to their former level. It was on one of the occasions when their relations were not altogether inharmonious that she had promised to give him a draft to redeem the loan Director Shackleby held like a whip lash over him. Had Leslie been a bolder man, it is possible that his wife's aspirations might have been realized, for Millicent was not impervious to good influences.

Unfortunately for her, however, a free-spoken man called Shackleby, who said that he had been sent by his colleagues who managed the Industrial Enterprise Company, called upon Thurston and Savine together in their city offices. He came straight to the point after the fashion of Western business men.

"Julius Savine has rather too big a stake in the Orchard Valley for any one man," he said. "It's ancient history that if, as usual with such concerns as ours, we hadn't been a day or two too slow, we would have held the concessions instead of him. Neither need I tell you about the mineral indications in both the reefs and alluvial. Now we saw our way to rake a good many dollars out of that valley, but when Savine got in ahead we just sat tight and watched him, ready to act if he found the undertaking too big for him. It seems to me that has happened, which explains my visit to-day. We might be open to buy some of those conditional lands from you."

"They may never be ours to sell, though I hope for the contrary," Geoffrey replied.

"Exactly," said the other. "That is why we're only ready to offer you out-district virgin forest value for the portions colored blue in this plan. In other words, we speculate by advancing you money on very uncertain security."

Geoffrey laughed after a glance at the plan. "You have a pretty taste! After giving you all the best for a tithe of its future value, where do we come in?"

"On the rest," declared Shackleby, coolly. "We would pay down the money now, and advance you enough on interest to place you beyond all risks in completing operations. Though you might get more for the land, without this assistance, you might get nothing, and it will be a pretty heavy check. I suppose I needn't say it was not until lately that we decided to meet you this way."

"By your leave!" broke in Thomas Savine, who had been scribbling figures on a scrap of paper, which he passed to Geoffrey. It bore a few lines scrawled across the foot of it: "Value absurdly low, but it might be a good way to hedge against total loss, and we could level up the average on the rest. What do you think?"

Geoffrey grasped a pen, and the paper went back with the brief answer, "That it would be a willful sacrifice of Miss Savine's future."

"Suppose we refuse?" he asked, and Shackleby stroked his mustache meditatively before he made answer:

"Don't you think that would be foolish? You see, we were not unanimous by a long way on this policy, and several of our leaders agree with me that we had better stick to our former one. It's a big scheme, and accidents will happen, however careful one may be. Then there's the risk of new conditions being imposed upon you by the authorities. Besides, you have a time limit to finish in, and mightn't do it, especially without the assistance we could in several ways render you. You can't have a great many dollars left either – see?"

"I do," said Geoffrey, with an ominous glitter in his eyes. "You needn't speak more plainly. Accidents, no doubt of the kind you refer to, have happened already. They have not, however, stopped us yet, and are not going to. I, of course, appreciate your delicate reference to your former policy; I conclude it was your policy individually. I don't like threats, even veiled ones, and nobody ever succeeded in coercing me. Accordingly, when we have drained it, we'll sell you all the land you want at its market value. You can't have an acre at anything like the price you offer now."