CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XIX

I

Saturday, October 20, 1900.

Dear Judy: I have what two weeks ago would have been mighty good news for you and for us all. Uncle Phineas got home this afternoon with $45,000 marked in his bank book. That is, you understand, he had deposited a check for $45,000 in the Portland bank.

When he went prospecting down into Malheur County last June, he went into the old placer-mining region. He located a quartz mine there. He came home in August, and went straight on to Portland to try to interest some Eastern capitalists, who were there at that time, in the mine. He succeeded. And, finally, in late September, he got two big bugs to go down to Malheur County with him to inspect the property.

They were coming out, on their way back to Portland to draw up the papers and close the deal, when Uncle Phineas heard what had happened here on Monday night, October the eighth. He came straight home, as you know. But he made an engagement to meet the men in Portland, toward the end of the week. This is his reason for going back to the city this last time. Everything went through without a hitch. Uncle Phineas banked the $45,000.

So, you see, all is smooth sailing from now on. With that amount, we can bring the ranch through with flying banners, or I am a fool. Yes, I know. But I am not a fool where ranching, and nothing else, is concerned. Though when I realize what Father could have done, if he’d had half such an opportunity as this, it makes me meek. Also, it makes me pretty sore at Uncle Phineas. If it hadn’t been for his darn foolishness, I’d have had a chance to know something, at least, about how Father would have planned to go ahead with such an amount of capital: how he would have expended it; saved it; what mortgages he would have paid. As it is, I am in the dark with a case of cold feet at the notion of so much money to be handled.

On the square, Judy, I hated this doggone secrecy of Uncle Phineas’s from the beginning. When he came home last summer, he told me about the location of the mine, what the ore had assayed, the accessibility to the railroad and to water. It sounded so good that, in spite of myself, and in spite of past experiences and even—shall I say—in spite of Uncle Phineas, I had to believe in the future of the thing.

I was strong for telling the rest of the family, or at least some of the rest of them, right then. He would not have it. He had used me as a safety valve, because he had to confide or explode; but he would not tell another soul. He insisted, rightly enough, on the difference between locating a gold mine and getting a red cent out of it. On the score of not building up the family’s hopes, only to dash them, he did have a fair excuse for keeping quiet and for requiring that I should. But I knew, and he knew, that at any other time in the history of Q 2 Ranch, he would have come shouting in with the big news, and allowed us all to have what fun we could out of the hoping and planning—you know how it has always been. No, sir, it was not fear of disappointing the family that made Uncle Phineas swear me to secrecy.

It is a crumby thing to say, but, from the night she came here, Uncle Phineas has hated Irene. He always liked Chris better than he liked any of us, you know; so a mixture of Mother, Beatrice, and Griselda would not have satisfied him for his precious boy. Admittedly, Irene possessed no such combination of perfections. He was—and is, I suppose—convinced that Irene had roped his cloyingly innocent nephew by foul means. He thought all he had to do was to free Chris from the lasso of propinquity, and then the infatuation would instantly end. He tried to toll him off to Nome. When he had to give over that plan, he decided that Irene, if she saw no chance of getting away from Q 2 with Chris, would pick up some day and leave without him. He never for a moment believed that Chris would sell the place. His point, all along, was to save Chris. Mine, when I got mixed up with some mucky ideas of the same sort, was to save the ranch.

Well, Uncle Phineas has saved the ranch. So I guess it is rotten of me to start quibbling about his methods. If he did make rather a bad mistake, he was more than paid out for it by the fiddle-de-dee effect of his triumph this evening. His announcement, with his display of the bank book, was the forlornest victory I have ever witnessed.

We are a sentimental herd, and there is no getting away from it. When Uncle Phineas flashed the $45,000 on us, there wasn’t one of us, except Irene, I suppose, who thought of anything but what that money, or a tenth of it, would have meant to Father these last few years.

He sprang it on us just after we’d sat down to supper. We received it as we might have received an announcement that he had had his photograph taken; and we passed the bank book from hand to hand as we might have passed the picture, though rather more quietly.

Of course, I had been more or less expecting it. Though I was not prepared for any such sum as that. He had told me he was going to hold out for $45,000; but I had $15,000 fixed in my mind as the highest figure. One does, you know, always divide by at least three when it comes to Uncle Phineas and his affairs. Still, since I had been primed, I don’t know why I should have been so dumb. I might have sounded forth a glad cry or two, it would seem, but I did not.

Lucy was the first to speak. She remarked: “Dear me! An enormous amount of money. Money was bothering all of us—wasn’t it—only a few weeks ago?”

Chris replied by shoving back his chair, rising, and walking out of the room. Irene ran after him. Olympe burst into real tears. Aunt Gracia ran to Grandfather and put her arm around his shoulders.

“Don’t you understand, Father,” she said, “Uncle Phineas has brought us a fortune? All our money worries are over now. You must be glad, dear. You must be glad!”

So take the “good news,” Judy. In spite of the neat blue figures in the little leather book, I think none of us has quite got hold of the idea as yet. Except—funny, how often I have to make this exception—except, then, Irene. She has got Chris at their packing already—but a far from sunny, rather new Christopher, who snaps at one, and is surly, and who says that he will pack, if she likes her things put away in trunks, but that he is not leaving Q 2 for a while.

Olympe is having a difficult time. She is torn between remorse for having accused Uncle Phineas of iniquities, widely assorted from neglect to infidelity, and anger at him for having kept the secret from her for so long a time.

Poor Aunt Gracia seems to be in a trance. When you consider how hard it is to think up excuses and decent motives for mere mortals, you can imagine what a task it must be to have to find them for Omnipotence. You understand? If Father had to die, on the very night of October eighth, death would have been so much easier for him if he could have known that he was leaving us all, and Q 2, safe. So, until Aunt Gracia’s faith reconciles this seeming brutality with some obscure justice, she is bound, I fear, to have a bad few days.

Grandfather has received the glad tidings by going straight to his bed. Aunt Gracia seems seriously concerned about him. But I know Grandfather, by this time. After weathering the past twelve days, as he has, he won’t allow what, after all, is good fortune, to down him now.

Uncle Phineas put my name in the pot when he made this deposit. In the future, I am to write checks with the elders. I’ll celebrate by making my first one out to you, and enclosing it in this letter. Thank the Lord you can stop worrying about expenses. If you haven’t plenty of room for Lucy, where you and Greg are now, find a larger, more comfortable place. Or, if there is anything at all that will make you happier—get it.

Your loving brother, Neal.