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"I'll let you know when I see you here to-morrow," said the boy; but Selwyn shook his head: "I'm not coming here to-morrow, Gerald"; and he walked leisurely into Neergard's office and seated himself. "So you have committed the firm to the Siowitha deal?" he inquired coolly. Neergard looked up and then past him: "No, not the firm.
Here's the situation in a grain of wheat! the Siowitha Club owns a thousand or so acres of oak scrub, pine scrub, sand and weeds, and controls four thousand more; that is to say the club pays the farmers' rents and fixes their fences and awards them odd jobs and prizes for the farm sustaining the biggest number of bevies.
Nina has asked Boots, too. Couldn't you fix it to come along with us?" "I don't know," said the boy in a low voice; "I'd like to." "Good business! That will be fine! What you and I need is a good stiff tramp across the moors, or a gallop, if you like. It's great for mental cobwebs, and my brain is disgracefully unswept. By the way, somebody said that you'd joined the Siowitha Club."
Also the club pays them to maintain the millet and buckwheat patches and to act as wardens. In return the farmers post their four thousand acres for the exclusive benefit of the club. Is that plain?" "Perfectly." "Very well, then. Now the Siowitha is largely composed of very rich men among them Bradley Harmon, Jack Ruthven, George Fane, Sanxon Orchil, the Hon.
Ruthven recently; for one thing, he was beginning to realise that he had made a vast mistake in mixing himself up in any transactions with Neergard. When he, at Neergard's cynical suggestion, had consented to exploit his own club the Siowitha and had consented to resign from it to do so, he had every reason to believe that Neergard meant to either mulct them heavily or buy them out.
Which was all very fine, and Mottly meant it at the time; but, outside of the asset of self-respect, there was too much money invested in the lands, plant, and buildings, in the streams, lakes, hatcheries, and forests of the Siowitha. The enormously wealthy seldom stand long upon dignity if that dignity is going to be very expensive. Only the poor can afford disastrous self-respect.
But, good heavens! he couldn't seem to understand that nobody in our family would receive him although he had a certain footing with the Fanes and Harmons and a few others like the Siowitha people or at least the men of those families. Don't you see, Philip?" "Yes, my boy, I see. Go on! When did he ask to be presented to your sister?" "W-who told you that?" asked the boy with an angry flush.
The Siowitha Club fully realises it, Captain Selwyn, and its members some of 'em thought that perhaps er you ah being the sort of man who can ah understand the sort of language we understand, it might not be amiss to to " "Why did you not call on Mr. Neergard?" asked Selwyn coolly.
It took Neergard all day to read that column before he folded it away and pigeonholed it among a lot of dusty documents uncollected claims, a memorandum of a deal with Ruthven, a note from an actress, and the papers in his case against the Siowitha Club which would never come to a suit he knew it now never amount to anything.
Man alive, do you suppose the Siowitha people would let him? They've only a few thousand acres; they've got to control that land. What good is their club without it? Do you imagine they'd let a town grow up on three sides of their precious game-preserve? And, besides, I'll bet you that half of their streams and lakes take rise on other people's property and that Neergard knows it the Dutch fox!"
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