The Failure

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Failure

BELIEVE (said the owner of the expensive big red motor-car) that nearly all respectable families take a pride in owning a family skeleton, but ours was the exception that proves the rule.

My father was first baronet by his own exertions. My mother got well Into the country set within a year of our getting a second house besides the one in Manchester. My brother Albert, who was to succeed to the title, took a First in Modern History Tripos at. Cambridge, and rowed seven in the Hall boat. He was made a director of the business the day it was turned into a limited company although, of course, he always intended to go in for Parliament, and said quite openly that before he had done he intended to turn the baronetcy into a peerage. And my sister, of course, married Lord Mounclement. That’s a pretty good record, as I’m sure you’ll agree, for one family, and I may tell you, too, that I have three paternal uncles, and they were all doing well for themselves and their groups in this world, and as well as they knew how for the next. My mother’s only brother, George William Tordoff, was the only blot on the family pride. Not only among ourselves in Manchester but to his race as well we called tinele George William “The Failure.” Of course, he had his points. Knocking about the world, probably, had rubbed the angles off him, and, personally, this struck me very clearly. My father, of course, prided himself on being a Sturdy Lancashire lad, and if we of the younger end did not exactly take a delight in our accent and mannerisms, we were quite conscious of having them all the same. George William’s Distinctions. Now George William hadn’t any Accent. He talked just plain King’s English, without frills to it, and any mannerisms he had were those one sees in good London clubs. Also he was a judge of pictures, horses, caviare, grouse moors, steam-yachts, and wine. We had all these, and he hadn’t. But it is an unpleasant fact that he vvas an expert, where the whole gang of us were frankly amateurs. That writing-fellow, R. L. Stevenson, makes a distinction between experts and connoisseurs, and I don't know where it conies in. But, anyway, George William was both. Take port, for instance. He could tell you the vintage every time by just sniffing it, and the shipper three times out of four. I regret to say that on occasion he drank more port than was good for him. But then none of the rest of us had palate enough ever to want to do such a thing. So far as one can hit off anybody In a phrase, I should say Uncle George William could best be described as a man of high imagination. If he had possessed the gift of spelling he might have become a famous novelist. As it was, he always tried to turn his gift to commercial uses. His first company was formed to fish up the treasure sunk in an Armada galleon off the Mull of Cantire, and he always held that if the thing had not been under-capital-ised they would have got the booty. He organised buried-treasure hunts in Trinidad and the Cocos Islands, about which the less said the better. Then he was struck by a brilliant idea of one big combine for all the steamlaundry businesses in Lancashire. Cutthroat competition would be stopped automatically, and big dividends were inevitable. The thing was as safe as Consols —on paper. My father, who had no belief in the treasure hunts, and all the other preceding ventures, saw legitimate business in this laundry combine, and went in heavily, and Was lured on to the board. He lost a pot of money over it, and was sore to the day of his death over the way the papers commented on his resignation from the directorate. And there were other ventures. I will not go through the melancholy list Some of you know them as well as I do, and can guarantee that they were bne and all failures. In fact, if ninetenths of his acquaintances were asked to describe G. W. Tordoff they would jut him down as an unsuccessful and ®Wnewhat shady company promoter.

time, reporting want of progress, but as I did not wish to make myself unpopular by letting on I was in correspondence with the poor old failure, I lay low and said nothing about it. He’d got bitten this time by mining fever, and was on the track of soft things in Alta. California, in Cripple Creek, in Alaska, in an Arizonian -desert, and then in Mexico.. But it was Mexico that really held him. Mexico, according to himwas the richest country that ever was, and only waiting to be discov ered. Denounce a claim anywhere along the Sierra Madre, put in a bit of capital, and in a year’s time you could buy up three Rand millionaires before breakfast. How I used to laugh over those InHorc Af Hmnc

The Family Shuddered. Still, in spite of all this, I can’t help owning up that I liked him. The balance of the family frankly shuddered when they saw his name on a prospectus. I'm afraid I had the impudence to be rather sorry for him. But then, of course; I was the younger son, and of no special account. There was no chance at that time of the baronetcy ever coming my way. Now I hope you haven’t been bored by all this, but it was necessary for those of you who didn’t know the man personally to have some idea of his previous record before you could understand exactly what followed. The family generally hadn’t heard of, or from, George William for upwards of two years, and openly rejoiced. I’d had letters from time to

letters. At times he was so enthusiastic as to be almost convincing—if one hadn’t known him. But finally he wrote he’d found Golconda, and he’d settled down once for all till he was a millionaire. It wasn’t going to take him long. The mine was there, full to the grass roots with silver-gold ore, that ran £CO to the ton, and only needed working. He’d a partner, a house, a delightful garden, and plenty of capital to develop the mine. Incidentally, the partner had a daughter. “I’d give a lot,” George William wrote, “if I’d married early, and had a girl like Mary. When you come out to see me I expect you’ll fall in love with Mary. All the youngsters round here do. But, of course, she’s a heap too good for any of them.” He wanted me to come out at once and pay them a long visit. • I replied to that, congratulating him on his success, and he was so pleased with my letter that he sent me a box of aveceites and papaias, and other choice fruits from his garden, that arrived in a state of advanced decay. The mine was panning out even better than he had dared to hope and Mary was being measured by correspondence, and buying a new frock from Paris. I showed that letter to father, who prophesied that the mine shaft would tumble in, and who hoped that George William would be at the bottom when it did. I did not hand on this unpleasant wish, but (perhaps because Mary interested me) wrote back from time to time as the whim moved me. George William, on his part, sent lumps of ore from the mine which looked to me like road metal, but which (from the assays pasted on to them, contained fabulous percentages of precious metals. News of the Mine. He also sent sub-tropical fruits of Mary’s picking, which must have caused anguish among those postal officials through whose hands they passed. But he did not renew his original invitation to come out and see things for myself. “I- want you just to wait a bit longer till we’ve got the Esperanza developed up to the producing stage and the ore-buyers are-' sitting outside this office quarrelling as

By

to which shall have the pleasure of writing us the biggest cheque. We’re a bit bothered with water in the shaft at present. Our Cameron sinker-pump broke down the other day, and, although we’ve baled with a valve bucket, the water gained on us. You see, it’s the wet season just now—nothing out of the ordinary — rain arriving on scheduled time, and dry season ticked off ahead to the minute on the almanac, though, of course, it’s annoying for the moment. However, Dalkeith doesn’t grumble, and as he’s really doing the development work, I mustn’t grumble, either.” From this I deduced that Mr. Dalkeith was the man who was paying for things, and Mary was Mary Dalkeith. I looked at the wrecks of the fruit consignments, and pictured her in white

clothes and elbow sleeves gathering the delicacies of her garden for an unknown in whom she had not the smallest interest. And I hoped that Dalkeith’s dollars would be spun out thriftily on George William’s mine, and that a decent time would elapse before the poor old Failure’s-wanderings began afresh. He lived on the mine—the Esperanza, he called it —six months before the expected happened; but it came then all right. The tidings arrived iu a big fat linen envelope stuck all. over with 25 centavo stamps, sealed in four places, and obtrusively registered. I grinned when I recognised George William's fist in the address. Inside were three longwiuded reports “respectfully submitted” by gentlemen whose spelling was weak and whose names I didn’t know. Also there was a stack of blue prints which I’m afraid conveyed remarkably little impression to me. They gave various views of sundry adits, shafts, winzes, and stopes. Also, what was most vehemently insisted on, was a thing called an ore-chute, which, was represented by dotted lines as running between the second level and the fourth, and which one was askqd to carry downwards (in the imagination) to unknown profundities. On the assay sheets the most opulent “values per ton” were scattered about in generous profusion, and the most clamorous italics insisted that one should carry in mind the great axiom that “in this camp values always increase with depth.” I have a taste for figures, and worked up some of those that George William’s experts provided. At a conservative estimate (according to the surveys and values) the Esperanza must -.live carried within its limits gold and silver bullion to the tune of over three hundred and- fifty million sterling; and even allowing a big margin above the “cost of extraction” figures which they so confidently gave, there was a sure £170,000,000. “Really,” I said to my father when I handed him the papers and the letter which accompanied them—“really there might be a little something in it." His reply wasn’t even civil, but I admit its pungency. r . “There is a further point,” I went on. “Uncle, as you see, says he gives

C. J. CUTCLIFFE-HYNE

An absorbing story of mining in Mexico, by the author of “Captain Kettle." Exclusive to The Dominion.

you the first chance of financing the thing. If you don’t snap at the offer he’ll come to England himself and raise the wind elsewhere.” A Peerage at Stake. It was here that Albert put in his word. “We must head him off. Father, you must pay. We can’t have that disreputable Failure coming over here to stir up more dirty water just now. It would be just pie to the other side if he did, and the Government would see in that an excuse for not giving you the peerage.” Father slowly drew a coronet on his blotting-paper. “And all our hard work and outlay as good as wasted,” he said, thoughtfully. Politically, of course, neither Father nor Albert believed in the House of

Lords, but you can bet that privately they knew what was what as well as other people. And if ever they were inclined to forge t —well, I guess that Mother was always on hand to keep them up to a full sense of the duty they owed the family. “I've earned a reward if ever a man did,” said Father, elaborating his sketch: “but the party is very ungratefuL” “Once you get into the Upper House,” said Albert, “you can take your choice as to which set of benches you sit on.’’ By the way he said it, there was not the least doubt as to what he meant, and I looked to Father to see him flare up, or faint, or frown, or at least do something. But, except that he went on

drawing, he did nothing. Sb I whistled, and Albert turned on me sharply enough. “Don’t be a hypo crite. We’re talking among ourselves here and we needn’t pretend. What did Father send me to Uppingham and Trinity Hall for? Do you think he didn’t foresee a time when we should change from the old groove and move up among better people?” “We aren’t there yet,” I suggested. “No, and shan’t be if we let that Failure come back and start floating another of his shady companies. There’s nothing that pulls a rising man back like disreputable relations. Father, you must take up the tin pot shares he offers you.” “I never invested in a mine yet, and I don’t intend to begin. Besides, if a tiling like that got out it would damage even our credit.” “You can't afford,” said Albert, doggedly, “to ignore Uncle till you are safely in the Upper House.” “I am not going to ignore him. Nor am I going to invest iu his name. I am going to pension hhn off.” Albert looked at' him in frank admiration. “Well, Father,” he said, “I beg your pardon for thinking you were a bit slow. I did not know that you had as fine a scheme as that at the back of your head. And so exit the Failure from our plan of existence.” “Two hundred pounds a year, paid quarterly,” Father announced, “.co long as he stays away from England and creates no fresh scandal. You,” he said to me, “are due to go to New Orleans next week to gee our cotton-buyers. You must travel on to this place in Mexico with the unpronounceable name and see the fellow yourself. You’ll find that he’ll snap at the offer fast enough. But get his acceptance down in black and white, and have it witnessed. As for these papers”—my father took the reports and blue prints and tore them viciously—“you can say that they have received proper attention.” I do not know that I started out with any very firm intention to carry out these instructions to the foot of the letter. I had announced my Impending arrival in a communication that was, to say the least of it, noncommital, and at the St. Charles at New Orleans found an invitation wait-

ing for me which began, “My dearest boy,” and ended “Your affectionate old uncle.” Somehow I had never looked upon him as much my senior before, but this letter showed me that he was both elderly and in bad health. He had sent me a snapshot photographic group to prove that he was neither, and which proved just the reverse. The photograph also contained what I very badly wanted to see, and that was a picture of Mary Dalkeith. I propped it up against the waffle dish, and sat there and stared at her. and just drank her in. She was simply wonderful. She was—well, I must take this yarn in proper order, or it will get tangled up. I’m not a clear-headed man like father.

I’m afraid I didn’t think very much about poor partner Dalkeith. That wretched Cameron sinker-pump (what-e’-or it might be) had given him trouble again, and Dalkeith had gone down the shaft to put it right, and the beastly thing had broken adrift and pinned him down in the bottom of the sump, and ignominiously drowned him. Perhaps you’ll think it was brutal to me to dismiss poor Dalkeith like that. But I am only telling you facts, and you must remember that I had barely given the man a thought before. It was

the daughter who had interested me. Still, I also made up my mind at that point to let Uncle George down very gently. Quisamochie (which I didn’t know how to pronounce at first) is in the State of Sonora, and hard to get at. One went down by railroad to She-wa-wa (which they spell Chl-hua-hua) first of all, and then got on board a thing called a coach and travelled along a river-bed which was the local equivalent of road. When the riverbed gave way to the simple precipice, one took to a horse which, if one could judge from by its highly developed climbing gear, had a strong cross of monkey in it. Quisamochie Cathedral, which is of amber-coloured stone, and which would hold 3,000 people comfortably, one can see 40 miles away. Quisamochie City is built of mud, but does not need further notice. Uncle George was in one of the best houses in the place, and Mary’s garden had its irrigating water drawn up from the well by a tin windmill on a tall derrick which always squeaked when the wind blew. I found Uncle George ill —in fact, a good deal more ill than he seemed to think. He had omitted to mention that when Dalkeith came by that accident in the shaft, he had been there too, and had broken four ribs and a leg in the effort to save him, and in fact had been supposed to be as dead as his partner when the pair of them were hauled out to daylight. Of course it was just like the silly old ass to say nothing about it, but if e had only had the sense to let me know what a mess he was in, I could have hurried uj instead of messing about so long with the boys on New Orleans cotton exchange. It was pretty rough luck on Mary, too, being left alone in charge, and if she hadn’t been so tremendously capable I can’t imagine how even she could have seen it through.

But to hear him talk you’d have thought his own smash up was the smallest of troubles. The Esperanza was the only thing he wanted to yarn about, and he bored mo with its glories and its opulence from morning to night. To start with, it was an antigua—that is, a mine that had been worked by the Spaniards in the old days just after the conquest of Mexico. Enormous sums had been drawn from it, among other things the cathedral had been built out of the proceeds; and two great families of grandees still strut in Spain to-day on fortunes originally quarried from the Esperanza in Quisamochic. Thereafter camo .revolutions and an inroad of Yaqui Indians. All shades of political opinion robbed the property of all the ready cash they could lay hands on, and when the industry by this means was stopped, and the town was unable to pay any more taxes, no one seemed to think that it was worth guarding any more. So down came the Indians and killed out the remaining whites, and sat down in undisturbed possession of the whole city and district till the year of grace 1905. At that date a rdgiment of President Poriflrio Diaz’s rurales visited • the place on a matter of arrears of taxes, collected what was due, made “good Indians” of all conscientious objectors, and George William rode in on the heels of. the. mineral tract “open to denunciation” proclamations. He seemed to have grinned affably round the plaza for a day, and then made friends with an Indian who kept a pulqueria—one Domingo Guquit. Did Don Domingo know of a valuable mine that one could denounce in the neighbourhood? Don Domingo did not. If a dollar for dulces for the children would assist memory, and the Senor Don Domingo would allow the ninons to accept such an infinitesimal trifle? The Senor Gringo was most munificent. And by a happy thought there was the old Esperanza mine that nobody bad paid taxes on these 50 years, if the senor cared for it. Yes, those would be the dumps up yonder beside that barranca, though all covered with mesquite scrub these days. The arrastra was lower down the hillside. Poor Uncle chuckled mightily over that small piece of outlay. “It cost me no prospecting at all,” he told me a dozen times. “Just for a couple of shillings scrambled among the youngsters the pub-keeper took me right on to the spot, and before a week was out I’d found four levels with their faces still in good ore. I saw at the end of

three days I’d got hold of the biggest silver-gold proposition in Mexico, and I fetched back Mary and her father when I rode down to make my denouncement and pay the fees at the mine office. A ten pertenencia take would have covered the lot, but I put In for 30, because acreage looks well if ever you want to float Of course you’ll say the obvious retort to all this was, if the mine was so tremendously valuable, why didn’t it pay straight away? Well, being a sort of mining man myself now, I may say mines don’t exude dividends till money has been put into them for development as a rule. However, like yourself, T didn’t know that then. But I did understand poor old George William, who'd never made a penny in his life, and I didn’t ask any inconvenient questions. I helped to dress Uncle when he got up in the morning, and worked his stiff leg and his hurt arm, and housemaided round generally. Mary said that was the way I could make myself useful the best. Obviously the mine was in pretty bad condition when Dalkeith and Uncle George first sat down to tackle it seriously. There wasn’t a straight shaft on the whole place. There were lots of those snake-shafts With chickenladders in them, up which the Indians in the old days used to bring the stuff In skin bags. And there were caved adits that had run in on the vein pretty nearly as thick as the teeth of a rake. They had left pillars in their stopes, but the stulls were all rotted away and the ground was so shaky that the upper workings were best left alone. But this didn’t matter. The yeln was richer than ever where the bld Spaniards had left off at the 300 ft. level. The only trouble was that according to their scheme of engineering one went down an incline shaft to a 50ft. level, then a quarter of a mile along that then down a dozen chickenladders and along another level, then flown a winze by sticking your feet in the sides, till it took half a day to get down to the bottom workings, and the air there was so bad that the oldtime Indians must have had specially Constructed lungs to breathe it So there was nothing for it but to jhake a fresh working shaft slap through to the 300 ft. level, and you’ll feay. there was nothing In that.

But old George William, with his genius for failure, of course must needs use bits of the old shafts as far as they would go, and these caved In on them time after time, till their money for wages was nearly all frittered away. Then as a climax they tapped some old workings that were* full of water, and the new shaft flooded. By this time Uncle and Mr. Dalkeith were working as their own shift bosses, and I expect .they were pretty incompetent for the job. Anyway, they finished up with a bad accident, 1 as I have told you already, and the one of them got killed and the other ■ badly smashed.

Of course, as you may guess, I said nothing about Father’s pension scheme when I got down to Quisamochic. And I am afraid that (when I got more chummy with Mary) I twisted Father’s financial intentions pretty badly. You see, Juaquatitlan, when you were actually there, living in a ’dobe house, and eating tasajo and tortillas and frijoles, and talking your best Spanish to the moso, seemed a powerful long distance, from Manchester, and things that looked important at home seemed trifles in Mexico. So when, after some skirmishing around, Uncle asked me point-blank what father was going to do I just lied. You see, he’d had a pretty bad night of pain, and was looking all crumped up, and I couldn’t be brute enough to tell him the plain truth. Besides, Mary was looking on. So I just said I’d been sent out to investigate, and in the meanwhile what small amount of cash I had in my pocket could go towards current development.

“Well,” said Uncle George, “I’m glad to hear Old Piety is doing the decent thing at last. He owes me a good turn after the way he crabbed that laundry combine”—(ye gods! here was a new view of it). “Oh, it’s quite true, though I suppose you’re too young to remember. He saw it was a nailing good thing, so he spread rumours about the unsoundness of the business till he could buy in the £1 shares at about 45., and so get control cheap. The trouble was he overdid IL People got scared when the slump set in, and wouldn’t send their washing. Afraid the combine would steal their shirts, I suppose. And so he got landed like everyone else. Naturally he was sore. I’m glad he's seen the error of his ways, and come into this new.deal I’m able to offer him. I’ll take darned good care he doesn’t crab

this, though. You see, it strikes me I’m getting a bit old, and a bit sick, and I can’t hunt round after soft things like I could. The Esperanza’s simply got to provide my pile—and Mary’s. Did I tell you Dalkeith left Mary without a captavo? Fact. Sank every copper he could raise in the Esperanza. So naturally I've made her my heiress.” I said a small swear to myself then, that I’d keep that heiress provided with a decent income for life whether she married me or she didn’t. I’d have given four teeth and my right foot -for pluck enough to propose to her, but couldn't work up to it.

Some girls, I believe, when you’re courting them like you to give them flowers,, and others you take for motor rides, and so on; but Mary’s form of amusement was getting work done’on the Esperanza to please George William. She soon twigged I didn’t believe in it. As you know, she’s far too sharp a young woman for a silly ass like me to fool for many minutes together. But her idea of dissipation was to wheedle another week’s costs out of me, and I can tell you it was just pie for me to hear her do the persuading. Sometimes I'd even get her to spin it out over a whole afternoon.

I hadn’t much of an income then. You see, father prided himself on paying by results, and as he never thought I was much good at the business in Manchester he didn’t see the force of giving me more salary than I could get rid of pretty handily. But wages in Juaquatitlan weren’t like Manchester. We got out drill men for a dollar Mex, a day (which is about 2s. Id.), and muckers never ran above 75 centavos, so that really I found a couple of sovereigns a week went a long way in pleasing Mary. All this time you are to understand poor old Uncle George had been steadily growing weaker. I didn’t know definitely what was the matter, and the doctor didn’t know either, though he used long names and looked as wise as his squint would let him. But uncle presently began to know he was booked (although he’d never say so), and his anxiety to see that mine strike bonanza was pretty hard to look on nt. That as much as Mary's asking presently began to loosen my purse-strings for the weekly pay-sheet. We had chucked the shaft by this. There was no unwatering it except with a big new. Cameron sinking-pump and a new boiler, which I absolutely.

couldn’t run to. But the foreman in fossicking around through the mesquitebushes had come across another old adit low down the mountain side that he thought would tap the 300 ft. level, and presently we were at work cleaning out the caves in this, retimbering the soft places, and then getting two rounds of shot per day into the face. This occupation of digging holes in the Sierra Madre didn’t amuse me in the least, but when a man you're very fond of and who’s dying by inches before your face asks you to do it, you’ve no way out, especially if the girl you’re badly in love with backs him up.

There were three other ragged mining men in Quisamochic,’ and most evenings they would drop in and talk mining shop with Uncle George, while the tin windmill that watered the garden squeaked in the night breeze. They were all three (to hear them) the owners of untold wealth, though to the Manchester eye they were all stone broke, and I doubt if any one of them had had a square meal for a month. The only thing they were always down on me for was for looking at mining as at all speculative. Mining (according to them) was a plain business proposition ; you had so much stuff in the ground at so much value per ton; the only problem was to get it out and convert it into bullion at the lowest possible rate. When I first came out Uncle used to watch me listening to all this stuff, and I used to see the sly laugh leaking out at the corners of his lips. But as the days went on he took less interest in the talk; he’d sit looking at the low-hanging stars beyond the horizon, about a million miles away; and I got the idea that soon he’d shut his eyes and not open them again.

I was beginning to have a bit of trouble of my own, too, about this time. Development work on the Esperanza had mopped up all my ready cash, and I cabled for more.

Father cabled back, not in code, either, “Have you fixed up Failure’s pension? Wire clearly.”

I didn’t W’ire. To start with, I’d nothing I cared to say, as Father's view • would be I’d merely failed to carry out instructions. Also, cables cost two and a penny a word, and I was beginning to count my remaining coppers. It wasn’t that I believed in the mine, you know, but there seemed a chance of Uncle lasting another day or two, and I’d just-got to keep Mm amused.

And so, perhaps, I’d better skip the details of, how Mary and I pinched and squeezed, and sacked the moso, and. sold her'garden truck to the Inditing in the Plaza, and sold my watch and spare clothes to that infernal scoundrel the jefe politico, and jump on to thei time when we made the strike. For; make it we did, with practically thei last round of shots I could afford to; pay for.

It was just the head of an ore-chute sticking up in the floor of the drift, but in places it was two-thirds pure silver with high gold values, and in. 25 ton lots it ran about one thousand four hundred pounds a ton. Of course, it was a lenticular deposit, which widened for a bit and then drew together, but we did not know that then, and the ore-buyers came crowding into Quisamochic like turkey buzzards over £t dead pig.

But even that couldn't keep Uncle alive. He just drifted out. He died in his chair on the piazza the evening after we had got into bonanza,, looking at those far-off stars and listening to the squeak of the windmill. I was for clearing out then. My usefulness seemed to have ended, and, you see, Mary was a great heiress. But she wouldn’t have it. She was awfully decent about it. So we were married by a Bishop in the great ambercoloured cathedral, with incense and acolytes and all the rest of it, and I’m afraid the chapel in Manchester groaned over me as a backslider when they saw the news in the paper. z Of course, the Esperanza did not go on to the tune of fourteen hundred pounds a ton, but we bagged eighty thousand pounds before we cleared out of that lense of ore, and had got a pukka engineer on the job, and had done a lot of development work, and a twenty-stamp mill put up, all out of revenue, and had a good steady three-pound-a-ton milling ore from twenty other faces rolling in as fast as we wanted it before the original chute finally pinched. In fact, it is the Esperanza I keep up the baronetcy on now. The cotton business, as you know, soon dropped after Albert and my father died; and, privately, I always consider I whs the Failure of the family, and not George William. You see, I always was a silly ass at business.