The Root of All Evil

by J. S. Fletcher

"I should want to know a lot about that before I put money into it," affirmed Jeckie. "I'm not the sort to throw money away."

"Neither am I!" laughed Mortimer. He rose in his characteristically abrupt fashion. "Well!" he said. "You'll see Scholes?—at once! Get hold of his forty acres, and then—then we can move. And in five years—ah!"

"What?" demanded Jeckie as she followed him to the door.

"You'll be mistress of a grand country house and a town mansion in Mayfair!" answered Mortimer, showing his teeth. "Wealth! Look beneath your very boots! it's just waiting there to be torn out of the earth."

Jeckie put Mortimer's cheque away in her safe, and went to bed, her avaricious spirit more excited than ever. Like all the folk in that neighbourhood, she knew how the coal-fields of that part of Yorkshire had been developed and extended of late; she had heard too, of the riches which men of humble origin had amassed by their fortunate possession of a bit of land under which lay rich seams of coal. There was Mr. Revis, of Heronshawe Main, three miles the other side of Sicaster, who, originally a market gardener, was now, they said, a millionaire, all because he had happened to find out that coal lay under an unpromising, black-surfaced piece of damp land by the river side, which his father had left him, and had then seemed almost valueless. There was Mr. Graveson, of the Duke of York's Colliery, on the other side of the town—he, they said, had been a small tradesman to begin with, but had a sharp enough nose to smell coal at a particular place, and wit enough to buy the land which covered it—he, too, rolled in money. And, after all, the stranger from London had shown his belief by putting five hundred pounds in her hands—it would cost her nothing if she made the venture. And if there was coal beneath Ben Scholes's forty acres, why not try for the fortune which its successful getting would represent?

After her one o'clock dinner next day, Jeckie, who by that time had a capable manager and three assistants in her shop, assumed her best attire and went out. She turned her face towards the Savilestowe Leys, a desolate stretch of land at the lower end of the village, and from the hedgerow which bordered it, looked long and speculatively across its flat, unpromising surface. She was wondering how men like Mortimer knew that coal lay underneath such land—all that she saw was coarse grass, marsh marigolds, clumps of sedge and bramble, and a couple of starved-looking cows, Scholes's property, trying to find a mouthful of food among the prevalent poverty of the vegetation. That land, for agistment purposes, was not worth sixpence an acre, said Jeckie to herself; it seemed little short of amazing to think that wealth, possibly enormous in quantity, should be beneath it. But she remembered Mortimer's enthusiasm and his testimonials, and his cheque, and she turned and walked through the village to Ben Scholes's farm.

There was a circumstance of which Jeckie was aware that she had not mentioned to Mortimer when they discussed the question of buying Ben Scholes's bit of bad land. Ben Scholes, who was only a little better off than her own father had been in the old days at Applecroft, owed her money. Jeckie, as time went on, had begun to give credit; she found that it was almost necessary to do so. And that year she had let Ben Scholes and his wife get fairly deep into her books, knowing very well that when harvest time came round Ben would have money, and would pay up—he was an honest, if a poor man. What with groceries and horse-corn and hardware—for Jeckie had begun to deal in small goods of that sort, forks, rakes, hoes and the like, since years before—Scholes owed her nearly a hundred pounds. She remembered that, as she walked up the street, and she busied herself in thinking how she could turn this fact to advantage. Yet, she was not going to put the screw on her debtor; in her time she had learnt how to be diplomatic and tactful, how to gain her ends by other means than force. And it was not the face of the stern creditor which she showed when she knocked at the open door of Scholes's little farmstead.

It was then three o'clock, and Scholes and his wife were following the usual Savilestowe custom of having an early cup of tea. They looked up from the table at which they sat by the fire, and the wife rose in surprise and with alacrity.

"Eh, why, if it isn't Miss Farnish!" she exclaimed. "Come your ways in, Miss Farnish, and sit you down. Happen, now you'll be tempted to take a cup o' tea? it's fresh made, within this last five minutes, and good and strong—your own tea, you know, and I couldn't say no more. Now do!"

"Why, thank you," responded Jeckie. "I don't mind if I do, as you're so kind. I just walked up to have a word or two with Ben there."