Читать книгу Mine Inheritance - Frederick Niven - Страница 33

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When that meeting ended a weight was assuredly off the Governor’s mind and the ex-soldier could tell himself, I thought, that as a statesman, a diplomat, he had done none too badly. After one or two more amicable discussions he put his signature to a reciprocal agreement, much on the lines that Bras Croché suggested that day, beside those of McDonald of Garth and Duncan Cameron who subscribed himself, “Captain, Voyageur Corps, Commanding Officer, Red River.”

Then a little while and Captain Macdonell realised how a statesman or politician may be criticised. He had to suffer the rebukes, the contumely of Hudson’s Bay officers from Red River to Hudson Bay. It was balm to him to hear that neither Hillier nor John McLeod in their distant and far-severed posts had turned against him but defended his decision instead of scoffing that he had given an order and weakened in its enforcement, as many did. At York Factory, Superintendent Auld was disgusted when he heard of the terms agreed upon, declared that no oatmeal could be spared, and added that if Captain Macdonell wished to have a treaty with the North-Westers by which, in return for sales to him of pemican, they might have meal he had better make haste and have it to provide from the Settlement. The Governor was even criticised by some Hudson’s Bay men for allowing a surgeon of the Settlement to go to Fort Gibraltar to attend to the dying John Willis there.

Macdonell was well able, indeed, to sympathise with John Pritchard, who had been in charge at la Souris, over the attacks made upon him by his own Company. Many of us believed that Duncan Cameron had advised those in charge of North-West posts to act much as Pritchard had acted when Spencer took the pemican, towards adding to the impression of the North-West as injured party should these affairs be brought to a law court. Be that as it may, when the matter was thus apparently settled through the diplomacy of Bras Croché, John Pritchard was so painfully censored by the Montreal and Fort William partners of his Company, and by Cameron and cousin Alexander also, for permitting the taking of the pemican without fight, that he retired from the service and purchased a parcel of land at the Red River Colony. He was far from being a coward, as coming events were to show, and their innuendos of cowardice made him wish to be done with them as associates.

And McDonald of Garth, Bras Croché, though he was brother-in-law of McGillivray, was set upon violently for what he had done by the chiefs in Montreal on his return to the east. He should have crushed the Governor of Selkirk’s Settlement, they told him there. His action, they declared, had been tantamount to admission of Macdonell’s right to establish an embargo. His record, already made, prevented any calling him a coward but they called him, jeeringly, the peace-maker.

Depression came upon Miles Macdonell. He seemed to me to be a sick man. Under all the criticism to which he was subjected his mental power of resistance flagged. He even wrote to Auld that, with so much hostility against him, he felt it advisable to tender his resignation to Lord Selkirk and explain that there were too many different interests to reconcile.

Promptly came a reply from the inspector that he read with a deepening frown: You may be assured I will use my utmost endeavours to satisfy the Noble Earl of the Propriety and Necessity of his accepting cheerfully your resignation by which you thus give a most feeling mark, of your devotion to his interests while you follow the only road to your own true happiness.

He gave me that letter and as I read it said he: “Mr. Auld is too eager to aid me to depart; but I have had enough of it.”

He had made up his mind. His resignation was written. But I consoled myself with the thought of the great distances between him and his employer and the realisation that he would have to remain with us until he received acknowledgment of his resignation and the appointment of a successor—with a sort of rider of a hope that the earl would prevail upon him to reconsider his decision and stay where he was.