The Root of All Evil

by J. S. Fletcher

"Do you think I don't know that?" she said. "Why, of course! And I've made provision for it, though I thought we'd time enough. But now—before ever this lot can get to work—we'll start. We'll have our men in our own hands—on our own property."

"But how?" inquired Lucilla.

"I never told anybody until now," answered Jeckie, "but I have some land in Savilestowe that I bought years before I got that land of Ben Scholes's. There's about thirty acres of it—I bought it from James Tukeby's widow for next to naught, on the condition that she was to have the rent of it till she died. It was all properly conveyed to me, and, of course, I can do what I like with it. Now then, we'll build three or four rows of cottages on that—of course, as the land's mine, it's value'll have to be reckoned in our partnership account—and we'll let 'em to our own miners, d'you see? I'll have none of our men livin' in model villages under the squire and the parson—it's all finicking nonsense. We'll have our chaps close to their work! Good, substantial, brick cottages—bricks are cheap enough about here—with a good water supply; that's all that's wanted. Model villages!—they'll be wantin' to house workin' fellers i' palaces next!"

"It'll cost a lot of money," observed Lucilla. She had never considered the housing of the small army of miners which would troop into Savilestowe at the opening of the new pit. "And you know what we're already laying out!"

"We shall get it all back in rents," said Jeckie. She pulled some papers out of the old reticule. "See," she continued, "I've worked it out—cost and everything; I got an estimate from Arkstone, the builder, at Sicaster, yesterday. There's no need to employ an architect for places like they'll be—just five roomed cottages. Come here, and I'll show you what it'll cost, and what it'll bring in."

Lucilla was always an easy prey to Jeckie, and being already deeply involved, was only too ready to assent to all the plans and projects which her senior partner proposed. Moreover, Albert, when the two women condescended to call him into counsel, invariably agreed with his one-time sweetheart; he had the conviction that whatever Jeckie took in hand must certainly succeed. He himself was so full of the whole scheme that he had long since given up his daily visit to Sicaster. Ever since the beginning of active sinking work at the pit, he had driven Lucilla over to Savilestowe every morning after breakfast, and there they had remained most of the day, watching operations; in time Albert came to believe that he himself was really a sort of ex-officio manager of the whole thing, and in this belief Jeckie humoured him. And so it was easy to gain Lucilla's consent to the cottage-building scheme (which eventually developed into one that included the construction of houses of the villa type for the more important officials), and once more the two partners paid visits to solicitors and bankers.

The money was rushing away like water out of a broken reservoir. As in most similar cases, the expenditure, when it came to it, was greater than the spenders had reckoned for. More than once Lucilla drew back appalled at the sums which had to be laid out; more than once the bankers upon whom the partners were always drawing heavy cheques, took Jeckie aside and talked seriously to her about the prospects of the venture; Jeckie invariably replied by exhibiting the opinions of the experts and the professor of geology, and by declaring that if she had to mortgage her whole future, she was going on. She would point out, too, that the work had gone on successfully and smoothly; there had been nothing to alarm; nothing to stay the steady progress.

"I'll see it through to success!" she declared. "Cost what it may, I'm going to put all I have into it. I've never failed yet—and I won't!"

The work in her forty acres and in the land where the rows of ugly cottages were being built came to fascinate her. She began to neglect her shop, leaving all its vastly increased business to a manager and several sorely-taxed assistants, and to spend all her time with the engineers and contractors, until she came to know almost as much about their labours as they themselves knew. She would wander from one of the two shafts to the other a dozen times in a day; she kept an eye on the builders of the cottages and on the men who were making the road that would lead from the pit to the main street of the village; she had a good deal to say about the construction of the short stretch of railway which would connect it with the line that ran behind the woods, whereon she hoped to send her coal all over the country. In her imagination she saw it going north and south, east and west, truck upon truck of it—to return in good gold.

But meanwhile the money went. More than once she and Lucilla had to increase their original capital. A time came when still more money was needed, and when Lucilla could do no more. But Jeckie's resources were by no means exhausted, and one day, after a sleepless night during which she thought as she had never thought in her life, she went into Sicaster, determined on doing what she had once vowed she never would do. The shop must go.