“Not I. I love the barn-dance. I do it well, and I dress for it. Consequently, my dear boy, I’m not going to miss it. You needn’t kick up your heels unless you like, but I warn you I’m going to disport myself. Come along, and take me down-stairs. There now! you’ve ruffled my hair again.”
“Come along, then,” said Fairfax. “You can knock over my worst prejudices. I’ll dance two barn-dances with you if I get the opportunity.”
CHAPTER V.
BIMETALLISM.
It was late in the evening when Patrick Onslow again found himself en tête-à-tête with his host. There had been people in to dinner at the house in Park Lane, but these had gone, and Mrs. Shelf and Amy Rivers followed them to Lady Latchford’s dance. Mrs. Shelf had wished to carry Onslow also in her train, but that person stayed behind by a request which he could not very well refuse. “You will favor me very much by remaining here for the rest of the evening, Mr. Onslow,” Shelf had said in his pompous way. “I have matters of the greatest moment which I wish to discuss with you.”
“I hardly know how to begin,” Shelf confessed uneasily, when they were alone.
“Then let me make a suggestion,” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Come to the point at once. Let’s have the plot without any introductory chapters. You’ve told me you’ve got a scheme on hand for turning my discovery into currency, and you’ve rather hinted that it’s a dirty scheme. The only question is, how dirty? Thanks to pressure of circumstances, I’m not an over-particular person; but on points I’m very squeamish; or, in other words, I draw the line somewhere. Unless I’m very vastly mistaken, your plan will involve one in downright knavery, which is a thing all sensible men avoid if possible. Now, in my ignorance, I fancied the find might be turned to account without climbing down to that.”
“Oh,” said Shelf, eagerly, “then you had a scheme in your head before you came to me?”
The other shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigar. “Just a dim outline, nothing more. You see, the interior of the Everglades is absolutely untouched, by the white man’s weapons. It was vaguely supposed to be one vast lake, with oases of slime and mangroves. The lake was reported as too shallow for boats, and abounding with fevers, agues, and mosquitoes. Consequently it remained unexplored, and on the end of the Florida peninsula to-day no white man (barring myself and one or two others) has ever got further than five or eight miles in from the coast. Now, as I’ve told you, I was lucky enough to hit upon a fine deep ship-channel going in as far as the center line, and I don’t know how far beyond inside. There is good fertile country, a healthy climate and the best game-preserve on this earth. For the first comers, that interior will be just a sportsman’s paradise. My idea is two-wise. First sell the cream off the sport. Some men will give anything for shooting, and in this case there will also be the glamour of being pioneers. Each one will start determined to write a book of his opinions and doings when he gets back. By chartering a steamer and treating them well on board, they would have sporting de luxe, and one ought to get quite five-and-twenty chaps at five hundred guineas apiece. That gives the first crop. For the second, buy up an enormous tract of the land, which can be got for half nothing—say ten or fifteen cents an acre—boom it, and resell it in lots to Jugginses. They’ll fancy they’ll grow oranges, as all Englishmen do who try Florida. Perhaps they may grow them: who knows, if they keep off whisky and put in work? But that won’t be the promoters’ concern. They don’t advertise that the land will produce oranges; they only guarantee that it would if it was given a chance; and that’s all correct. Perhaps this is rough on the Jugginses; but as they crowd these British Islands in droves, and are always on the look-out for some one to shear them, I don’t see why an Everglades Company shouldn’t have their fleeces as well as anybody else. They’re mostly wasters, and wouldn’t do any mortal good anywhere; and it’s a patriotic deed to cart them over our boundary ditch away from local mischief. Besides, even if the worst comes to the worst, and the orange industry of Florida still refuses to make headway, the would-be growers needn’t starve; nor need they even do what they’ll probably hate more—and that’s work. There’s always sweet potatoes and mullet and tobacco to be got, and if that diet doesn’t cloy, a man can have it there for mighty little exertion. Come, now. That’s the pemmican of the plan. What do you think of it?”
“Much capital would be needed.”