initial commit of ebook 5301HEADmain

1 files changed, 10957 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/5301.txt b/5301.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df12849
--- /dev/null
+++ b/5301.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10957 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Imperialist, by 
+(a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Imperialist
+
+Author: (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
+
+Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5301]
+Posting Date: April 21, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IMPERIALIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gardner Buchanan
+
+
+
+
+
+THE IMPERIALIST
+
+
+By Sara Jeannette Duncan, 1861-1922 (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
+
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+It would have been idle to inquire into the antecedents, or even the
+circumstances, of old Mother Beggarlegs. She would never tell; the
+children, at all events, were convinced of that; and it was only the
+children, perhaps, who had the time and the inclination to speculate.
+Her occupation was clear; she presided like a venerable stooping hawk,
+over a stall in the covered part of the Elgin market-place, where she
+sold gingerbread horses and large round gingerbread cookies, and brown
+sticky squares of what was known in all circles in Elgin as taffy. She
+came, it was understood, with the dawn; with the night she vanished,
+spending the interval on a not improbable broomstick. Her gingerbread
+was better than anybody's; but there was no comfort in standing, first
+on one foot and then on the other, while you made up your mind--the
+horses were spirited and you could eat them a leg at a time, but there
+was more in the cookies--she bent such a look on you, so fierce and
+intolerant of vacillation. She belonged to the group of odd characters,
+rarer now than they used to be, etched upon the vague consciousness of
+small towns as in a way mysterious and uncanny; some said that Mother
+Beggarlegs was connected with the aristocracy and some that she had been
+"let off" being hanged. The alternative was allowed full swing, but in
+any case it was clear that such persons contributed little to the common
+good and, being reticent, were not entertaining. So you bought your
+gingerbread, concealing, as it were, your weapons, paying your copper
+coins with a neutral nervous eye, and made off to a safe distance,
+whence you turned to shout insultingly, if you were an untrounced young
+male of Elgin, "Old Mother Beggarlegs! Old Mother Beggarlegs!" And why
+"Beggarlegs" nobody in the world could tell you. It might have been
+a dateless waggery, or it might have been a corruption of some more
+dignified surname, but it was all she ever got. Serious, meticulous
+persons called her "Mrs" Beggarlegs, slightly lowering their voices and
+slurring it, however, it must be admitted. The name invested her with
+a graceless, anatomical interest, it penetrated her wizened black and
+derisively exposed her; her name went far indeed to make her dramatic.
+Lorne Murchison, when he was quite a little boy was affected by this
+and by the unfairness of the way it singled her out. Moved partly by
+the oppression of the feeling and partly by a desire for information
+he asked her sociably one day, in the act of purchase, why the gilt was
+generally off her gingerbread. He had been looking long, as a matter
+of fact, for gingerbread with the gilt on it, being accustomed to the
+phrase on the lips of his father in connection with small profits.
+Mother Beggarlegs, so unaccustomed to politeness that she could not
+instantly recognize it, answered him with an imprecation at which he,
+no doubt, retreated, suddenly thrown on the defensive hurling the usual
+taunt. One prefers to hope he didn't, with the invincible optimism one
+has for the behaviour of lovable people; but whether or not his kind
+attempt at colloquy is the first indication I can find of that active
+sympathy with the disabilities of his fellow-beings which stamped him
+later so intelligent a meliorist. Even in his boy's beginning he had a
+heart for the work; and Mother Beggarlegs, but for a hasty conclusion,
+might have made him a friend.
+
+It is hard to invest Mother Beggarlegs with importance, but the date
+helps me--the date I mean, of this chapter about Elgin; she was a person
+to be reckoned with on the twenty-fourth of May. I will say at once, for
+the reminder to persons living in England that the twenty-fourth of May
+was the Queen's Birthday. Nobody in Elgin can possibly have forgotten
+it. The Elgin children had a rhyme about it--
+
+   The twenty-fourth of May
+      Is the Queen's Birthday;
+   If you don't give us a holiday,
+      We'll all run away.
+
+But Elgin was in Canada. In Canada the twenty-fourth of May WAS the
+Queen's Birthday; and these were times and regions far removed from the
+prescription that the anniversary "should be observed" on any of those
+various outlying dates which by now, must have produced in her immediate
+people such indecision as to the date upon which Her Majesty really
+did come into the world. That day, and that only, was the observed, the
+celebrated, a day with an essence in it, dawning more gloriously than
+other days and ending more regretfully, unless, indeed, it fell on a
+Sunday when it was "kept" on the Monday, with a slightly clouded feeling
+that it wasn't exactly the same thing. Travelled persons, who had spent
+the anniversary there, were apt to come back with a poor opinion of
+its celebration in "the old country"--a pleasant relish to the
+more-than-ever appreciated advantages of the new, the advantages
+that came out so by contrast. More space such persons indicated, more
+enterprise they boasted, and even more loyalty they would flourish,
+all with an affectionate reminiscent smile at the little ways of a
+grandmother. A "Bank" holiday, indeed! Here it was a real holiday, that
+woke you with bells and cannon--who has forgotten the time the ancient
+piece of ordnance in "the Square" blew out all the windows in the
+Methodist church?--and went on with squibs and crackers till you didn't
+know where to step on the sidewalks, and ended up splendidly with
+rockets and fire-balloons and drunken Indians vociferous on their way to
+the lock-up. Such a day for the hotels, with teams hitched three abreast
+in front of their aromatic barrooms; such a day for the circus, with
+half the farmers of Fox County agape before the posters--with all their
+chic and shock they cannot produce such posters nowadays, nor are there
+any vacant lots to form attractive backgrounds--such a day for Mother
+Beggarlegs! The hotels, and the shops and stalls for eating and
+drinking, were the only places in which business was done; the public
+sentiment put universal shutters up, but the public appetite insisted
+upon excepting the means to carnival. An air of ceremonial festivity
+those fastened shutters gave; the sunny little town sat round them,
+important and significant, and nobody was ever known to forget that they
+were up, and go on a fool's errand. No doubt they had an impressiveness
+for the young countryfolk that strolled up and down Main Street in their
+honest best, turning into Snow's for ice-cream when a youth was disposed
+to treat. (Gallantry exacted ten-cent dishes, but for young ladies
+alone, or family parties, Mrs Snow would bring five-cent quantities
+almost without asking, and for very small boys one dish and the
+requisite number of spoons.) There was discrimination, there was choice,
+in this matter of treating. A happy excitement accompanied it, which you
+could read in the way Corydon clapped his soft felt hat on his head as
+he pocketed the change. To be treated--to ten-cent dishes--three times
+in the course of the day by the same young man gave matter for private
+reflection and for public entertainment, expressed in the broad grins of
+less reckless people. I speak of a soft felt hat, but it might be more
+than that: it might be a dark green one, with a feather in it; and here
+was distinction, for such a hat indicated that its owner belonged to the
+Independent Order of Foresters, who Would leave their spring wheat for
+forty miles round to meet in Elgin and march in procession, wearing
+their hats, and dazzlingly scatter upon Main Street. They gave the day
+its touch of imagination, those green cocked hats; they were lyrical
+upon the highways; along the prosaic sidewalks by twos and threes they
+sang together. It is no great thing, a hat of any quality; but a small
+thing may ring dramatic on the right metal, and in the vivid idea of
+Lorne Murchison and his sister Advena a Robin Hood walked in every
+Independent Forester, especially in the procession. Which shows the
+risks you run if you, a person of honest livelihood and solicited vote,
+adopt any portion of a habit not familiar to you, and go marching about
+with a banner and a band. Two children may be standing at the first
+street corner, to whom your respectability and your property may at once
+become illusion and your outlawry the delightful fact.
+
+A cheap trip brought the Order of Green Hats to Elgin; and there were
+cheap trips on this great day to persuade other persons to leave it. The
+Grand Trunk had even then an idea of encouraging social combination for
+change of scene, and it was quite a common thing for the operatives of
+the Milburn Boiler Company to arrange to get themselves carried to the
+lakeside or "the Falls" at half a dollar a head. The "hands" got it up
+themselves and it was a question in Elgin whether one might sink one's
+dignity and go as a hand for the sake of the fifty-cent opportunity,
+a question usually decided in the negative. The social distinctions of
+Elgin may not be easily appreciated by people accustomed to the rough
+and ready standards of a world at the other end of the Grand Trunk; but
+it will be clear at a glance that nobody whose occupation prescribed a
+clean face could be expected to travel cheek by jowl, as a privilege,
+with persons who were habitually seen with smutty ones, barefaced smut,
+streaming out at the polite afternoon hour of six, jangling an empty
+dinner pail. So much we may decide, and leave it, reflecting as we go
+how simple and satisfactory, after all, are the prejudices which can
+hold up such obvious justification. There was recently to be pointed
+out in England the heir to a dukedom who loved stoking, and got his
+face smutty by preference. He would have been deplorably subversive of
+accepted conventions in Elgin; but, happily or otherwise, such persons
+and such places have at present little more than an imaginative
+acquaintance, vaguely cordial on the one side, vaguely critical on the
+other, and of no importance in the sum.
+
+Polite society, to return to it, preferred the alternative of staying
+at home and mowing the lawn or drinking raspberry vinegar on its own
+beflagged verandah; looking forward in the afternoon to the lacrosse
+match. There was nearly always a lacrosse match on the Queen's Birthday,
+and it was the part of elegance to attend and encourage the home team,
+as well as that of small boys, with broken straw hats, who sneaked an
+entrance, and were more enthusiastic than anyone. It was "a quarter" to
+get in, so the spectators were naturally composed of persons who could
+afford the quarter, and persons like the young Flannigans and Finnigans,
+who absolutely couldn't, but who had to be there all the same. Lorne and
+Advena Murchison never had the quarter, so they witnessed few lacrosse
+matches, though they seldom failed to refresh themselves by a sight
+of the players after the game when, crimson and perspiring, but still
+glorious in striped jerseys, their lacrosses and running shoes slung
+over one shoulder, these heroes left the field.
+
+The Birthday I am thinking of, with Mrs Murchison as a central figure in
+the kitchen, peeling potatoes for dinner, there was a lacrosse match of
+some importance for the Fox County Championship and the Fox County Cup
+as presented by the Member for the South Riding. Mrs Murchison remains
+the central figure, nevertheless, with her family radiating from her,
+gathered to help or to hinder in one of those domestic crises which
+arose when the Murchisons were temporarily deprived of a "girl."
+Everybody was subject to them in Elgin, everybody had to acknowledge and
+face them. Let a new mill be opened, and it didn't matter what you paid
+her or how comfortable you made her, off she would go, and you might
+think yourself lucky if she gave a week's warning. Hard times shut down
+the mills and brought her back again; but periods of prosperity were
+very apt to find the ladies of Elgin where I am compelled to introduce
+Mrs Murchison--in the kitchen. "You'd better get up--the girl's gone,"
+Lorne had stuck his head into his sister's room to announce, while
+yet the bells were ringing and the rifles of the local volunteers were
+spitting out the feu de joie. "I've lit the fire an' swep' out the
+dining-room. You tell mother. Queen's Birthday, too--I guess Lobelia's
+about as mean as they're made!" And the Murchisons had descended to face
+the situation. Lorne had by then done his part, and gone out into the
+chromatic possibilities of the day; but the sense of injury he had
+communicated to Advena in her bed remained and expanded. Lobelia, it was
+felt, had scurvily manipulated the situation--her situation, it might
+have been put, if any Murchison had been in the temper for jesting.
+She had taken unjustifiable means to do a more unjustifiable thing,
+to secure for herself an improper and unlawful share of the day's
+excitements, transferring her work, by the force of circumstances, to
+the shoulders of other people since, as Mrs Murchison remarked, somebody
+had to do it. Nor had she her mistress testified the excuse of fearing
+unreasonable confinement. "I told her she might go when she had done her
+dishes after dinner," said Mrs Murchison, "and then she had only to come
+back at six and get tea--what's getting tea? I advised her to finish her
+ironing yesterday, so as to be free of it today; and she said she would
+be very glad to. Now, I wonder if she DID finish it!" and Mrs Murchison
+put down her pan of potatoes with a thump to look in the family clothes
+basket. "Not she! Five shirts and ALL the coloured things. I call it
+downright deceit!"
+
+"I believe I know the reason she'll SAY," said Advena. "She objects to
+rag carpet in her bedroom. She told me so."
+
+"Rag carpet--upon my word!" Mrs Murchison dropped her knife to exclaim.
+"It's what her betters have to do with! I've known the day when that
+very piece of rag carpet--sixty balls there were in it and every one I
+sewed with my own fingers--was the best I had for my spare room, with
+a bit of ingrain in the middle. Dear me!" she went on with a smile that
+lightened the whole situation, "how proud I was of that performance! She
+didn't tell ME she objected to rag carpet!"
+
+"No, Mother," Advena agreed, "she knew better."
+
+They were all there in the kitchen, supporting their mother, and it
+seems an opportunity to name them. Advena, the eldest, stood by the long
+kitchen table washing the breakfast cups in "soft" soap and hot water.
+The soft soap--Mrs Murchison had a barrelful boiled every spring in
+the back yard, an old colonial economy she hated to resign--made a
+fascinating brown lather with iridescent bubbles. Advena poured cupfuls
+of it from on high to see the foam rise, till her mother told her for
+mercy's sake to get on with those dishes. She stood before a long low
+window, looking out into the garden and the light, filtering through
+apple branches on her face showed her strongly featured and intelligent
+for fourteen. Advena was named after one grandmother; when the next
+girl came Mrs Murchison, to make an end of the matter, named it Abigail,
+after the other. She thought both names outlandish and acted under
+protest, but hoped that now everybody would be satisfied. Lorne came
+after Advena, at the period of a naive fashion of christening the young
+sons of Canada in the name of her Governor-General. It was a simple
+way of attesting a loyal spirit, but with Mrs Murchison more particular
+motives operated. The Marquis of Lorne was not only the deputy of the
+throne, he was the son-in-law of a good woman of whom Mrs Murchison
+thought more, and often said it, for being the woman she was than for
+being twenty times a Queen; and he had made a metrical translation of
+the Psalms, several of which were included in the revised psalter for
+the use of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, from which the whole
+of Knox Church sang to the praise of God every Sunday. These were
+circumstances that weighed with Mrs Murchison, and she called her son
+after the Royal representative, feeling that she was doing well for him
+in a sense beyond the mere bestowal of a distinguished and a euphonious
+name, though that, as she would have willingly acknowledged, was "well
+enough in its place."
+
+We must take this matter of names seriously; the Murchisons always did.
+Indeed, from the arrival of a new baby until the important Sunday of
+the christening, nothing was discussed with such eager zest and such
+sustained interest as the name he should get--there was a fascinating
+list at the back of the dictionary--and to the last minute it was
+problematical. In Stella's case, Mrs Murchison actually changed her mind
+on the way to church; and Abby, who had sat through the sermon
+expecting Dorothy Maud, which she thought lovely, publicly cried with
+disappointment. Stella was the youngest, and Mrs Murchison was thankful
+to have a girl at last whom she could name without regard to her own
+relations or anybody else's. I have skipped about a good deal, but I
+have only left out two, the boys who came between Abby and Stella. In
+their names the contemporary observer need not be too acute to discover
+both an avowal and to some extent an enforcement of Mr Murchison's
+political views; neither an Alexander Mackenzie nor an Oliver Mowat
+could very well grow up into anything but a sound Liberal in that part
+of the world without feeling himself an unendurable paradox. To christen
+a baby like that was, in a manner, a challenge to public attention; the
+faint relaxation about the lips of Dr Drummond--the best of the
+Liberals himself, though he made a great show of keeping it out of
+the pulpit--recognized this, and the just perceptible stir of the
+congregation proved it. Sonorously he said it. "Oliver Mowat, I baptize
+thee in the Name of the Father--" The compliment should have all the
+impressiveness the rite could give it, while the Murchison brothers and
+sisters, a-row in the family pew, stood on one foot with excitement as
+to how Oliver Mowat would take the drops that defined him. The verdict
+was, on the way home, that he behaved splendidly. Alexander Mackenzie,
+the year before, had roared.
+
+He was weeping now, at the age of seven, silently, but very copiously,
+behind the woodpile. His father had finally cuffed him for importunity;
+and the world was no place for a just boy, who asked nothing but
+his rights. Only the woodpile, friendly mossy logs unsplit, stood
+inconscient and irresponsible for any share in his black circumstances;
+and his tears fell among the lichens of the stump he was bowed on till,
+observing them, he began to wonder whether he could cry enough to make a
+pond there, and was presently disappointed to find the source exhausted.
+The Murchisons were all imaginative.
+
+The others, Oliver and Abby and Stella, still "tormented." Poor Alec's
+rights--to a present of pocket-money on the Queen's Birthday--were
+common ones, and almost statutory. How their father, sitting comfortably
+with his pipe in the flickering May shadows under the golden pippin,
+reading the Toronto paper, could evade his liability in the matter was
+unfathomable to the Murchisons; it was certainly illiberal; they had a
+feeling that it was illegal. A little teasing was generally necessary,
+but the resistance today had begun to look ominous and Alec, as we know,
+too temerarious, had retired in disorder to the woodpile.
+
+Oliver was wiping Advena's dishes. He exercised himself ostentatiously
+upon a plate, standing in the door to be within earshot of his father.
+
+"Eph Wheeler," he informed his family, "Eph Wheeler, he's got
+twenty-five cents, an' a English sixpence, an' a Yankee nickel. An' Mr
+Wheeler's only a common working man, a lot poorer'n we are."
+
+Mr Murchison removed his pipe from his lips in order, apparently, to
+follow unimpeded the trend of the Dominion's leading article. Oliver
+eyed him anxiously. "Do, Father," he continued in logical sequence. "Aw
+do."
+
+"Make him, Mother," said Abby indignantly. "It's the Queen's BIRTHDAY!"
+
+"Time enough when the butter bill's paid," said Mrs Murchison.
+
+"Oh the BUTTER bill! Say, Father, aren't you going to?"
+
+"What?" asked John Murchison, and again took out his pipe, as if this
+were the first he had heard of the matter.
+
+"Give us our fifteen cents each to celebrate with. You can't do it under
+that," Oliver added firmly. "Crackers are eight cents a packet this
+year, the small size."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mr Murchison. The reply was definite and final, and its
+ambiguity was merely due to the fact that their father disliked giving
+a plump refusal. "Nonsense" was easier to say, if not to hear than "No."
+Oliver considered for a moment, drew Abby to colloquy by the pump, and
+sought his brother behind the woodpile. Then he returned to the charge.
+
+"Look here, Father," he said, "CASH DOWN, we'll take ten."
+
+John Murchison was a man of few words, but they were usually impregnated
+with meaning, especially in anger. "No more of this," he said.
+"Celebrate fiddlesticks! Go and make yourselves of some use. You'll get
+nothing from me, for I haven't got it." So saying, he went through the
+kitchen with a step that forbade him to be followed. His eldest son,
+arriving over the backyard fence in a state of heat, was just in time
+to hear him. Lorne's apprehension of the situation was instant, and his
+face fell, but the depression plainly covered such splendid spirits that
+his brother asked resentfully, "Well, what's the matter with YOU?"
+
+"Matter? Oh, not much. I'm going to see the Cayugas beat the Wanderers,
+that's all; an' Abe Mackinnon's mother said he could ask me to come back
+to tea with them. Can I, Mother?"
+
+"There's no objection that I know of," said Mrs Murchison, shaking her
+apron free of stray potato-parings, "but you won't get money for the
+lacrosse match or anything else from your father today, _I_ can assure
+you. They didn't do five dollars worth of business at the store all day
+yesterday, and he's as cross as two sticks."
+
+"Oh, that's all right." Lorne jingled his pocket and Oliver took
+a fascinated step toward him. "I made thirty cents this morning,
+delivering papers for Fisher. His boy's sick. I did the North Ward--took
+me over'n hour. Guess I can go all right, can't I?"
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose you can," said his mother. The others were dumb.
+Oliver hunched his shoulders and kicked at the nearest thing that had
+paint on it. Abby clung to the pump handle and sobbed aloud. Lorne
+looked gloomily about him and went out. Making once more for the back
+fence, he encountered Alexander in the recognized family retreat. "Oh,
+my goodness!" he said, and stopped. In a very few minutes he was back
+in the kitchen, followed sheepishly by Alexander, whose grimy face
+expressed the hope that beat behind his little waistcoat.
+
+"Say, you kids," he announced, "Alec's got four cents, an' he says he'll
+join up. This family's going to celebrate all right. Come on down town."
+
+No one could say that the Murchisons were demonstrative. They said
+nothing, but they got their hats. Mrs Murchison looked up from her
+occupation.
+
+"Alec," she said, "out of this house you don't go till you've washed
+your face. Lorne, come here," she added in a lower voice, producing a
+bunch of keys. "If you look in the right-hand corner of the top small
+drawer in my bureau you'll find about twenty cents. Say nothing about
+it, and mind you don't meddle with anything else. I guess the Queen
+isn't going to owe it all to you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"We've seen changes, Mr Murchison. Aye. We've seen changes."
+
+Dr Drummond and Mr Murchison stood together in the store door, over
+which the sign "John Murchison: Hardware," had explained thirty years of
+varying commercial fortune. They had pretty well begun life together in
+Elgin. John Murchison was one of those who had listened to Mr Drummond's
+trial sermon, and had given his vote to "call" him to the charge. Since
+then there had been few Sundays when, morning and evening, Mr Murchison
+had not been in his place at the top of his pew, where his dignified
+and intelligent head appeared with the isolated significance of a strong
+individuality. People looked twice at John Murchison in a crowd; so did
+his own children at home. Hearing some discussion of the selection of a
+premier, Alec, looking earnestly at him once said, "Why don't they tell
+Father to be it?" The young minister looked twice at him that morning
+of the trial sermon, and asked afterward who he was. A Scotchman, Mr
+Drummond was told, not very long from the old country, who had bought
+the Playfair business on Main Street, and settled in the "Plummer
+Place," which already had a quarter of a century's standing in the
+annals of the town. The Playfair business was a respectable business to
+buy; the Plummer Place, though it stood in an unfashionable outskirt,
+was a respectable place to settle in; and the minister, in casting his
+lot in Elgin, envisaged John Murchison as part of it, thought of him
+confidently as a "dependance," saw him among the future elders and
+office-bearers of the congregation, a man who would be punctual with his
+pew-rent, sage in his judgements, and whose views upon church attendance
+would be extended to his family.
+
+So the two came, contemporaries, to add their labour and their lives
+to the building of this little outpost of Empire. It was the frankest
+transfer, without thought of return; they were there to spend and be
+spent within the circumference of the spot they had chosen, with no
+ambition beyond. In the course of nature, even their bones and their
+memories would enter into the fabric. The new country filled their eyes;
+the new town was their opportunity, its destiny their fate. They were
+altogether occupied with its affairs, and the affairs of the growing
+Dominion, yet obscure in the heart of each of them ran the undercurrent
+of the old allegiance. They had gone the length of their tether, but the
+tether was always there. Thus, before a congregation that always stood
+in the early days, had the minister every Sunday morning for thirty
+years besought the Almighty, with ardour and humility, on behalf of the
+Royal Family. It came in the long prayer, about the middle. Not in the
+perfunctory words of a ritual, but in the language of his choice, which
+varied according to what he believed to be the spiritual needs of the
+reigning House, and was at one period, touching certain of its members,
+though respectful, extremely candid. The General Assembly of the Church
+of Scotland, "now in session," also--was it ever forgotten once? And
+even the Prime Minister, "and those who sit in council with him," with
+just a hint of extra commendation if it happened to be Mr Gladstone. The
+minister of Knox Church, Elgin, Ontario, Canada, kept his eye on them
+all. Remote as he was, and concerned with affairs of which they could
+know little, his sphere of duty could never revolve too far westward to
+embrace them, nor could his influence, under any circumstances, cease
+to be at their disposal. It was noted by some that after Mr Drummond had
+got his D.D. from an American University he also prayed occasionally
+for the President of the neighbouring republic; but this was rebutted
+by others, who pointed out that it happened only on the occurrence of
+assassinations, and held it reasonable enough. The cavillers mostly
+belonged to the congregation of St Andrew's, "Established"--a glum,
+old-fashioned lot indeed--who now and then dropped in of a Sunday
+evening to hear Mr Drummond preach. (There wasn't much to be said for
+the preaching at St Andrew's.) The Established folk went on calling the
+minister of Knox Church "Mr" Drummond long after he was "Doctor" to his
+own congregation, on account of what they chose to consider the dubious
+source of the dignity; but the Knox Church people had their own theory
+to explain this hypercriticism, and would promptly turn the conversation
+to the merits of the sermon.
+
+Twenty-five years it was, in point, this Monday morning when the
+Doctor--not being Established we need not hesitate, besides by this time
+nobody did--stood with Mr Murchison in the store door and talked about
+having seen changes. He had preached his anniversary sermon the night
+before to a full church when, laying his hand upon his people's
+heart, he had himself to repress tears. He was aware of another
+strand completed in their mutual bond: the sermon had been a moral,
+an emotional, and an oratorical success; and in the expansion of the
+following morning Dr Drummond had remembered that he had promised his
+housekeeper a new gas cooking-range, and that it was high time he should
+drop into Murchison's to inquire about it. Mrs Forsyth had mentioned at
+breakfast that they had ranges with exactly the improvement she wanted
+at Thompson's, but the minister was deaf to the hint. Thompson was a
+Congregationalist and, improvement or no improvement, it wasn't likely
+that Dr Drummond was going "outside the congregation" for anything he
+required. It would have been on a par with a wandering tendency in his
+flock, upon which he systematically frowned. He was as great an autocrat
+in this as the rector of any country parish in England undermined by
+Dissent; but his sense of obligation worked unfailingly both ways.
+
+John Murchison had not said much about the sermon; it wasn't his way,
+and Dr Drummond knew it. "You gave us a good sermon last night, Doctor";
+not much more than that, and "I noticed the Milburns there; we don't
+often get Episcopalians"; and again, "The Wilcoxes"--Thomas Wilcox,
+wholesale grocer, was the chief prop of St Andrew's--"were sitting just
+in front of us. We overtook them going home, and Wilcox explained how
+much they liked the music. 'Glad to see you,' I said. 'Glad to see you
+for any reason,'" Mr Murchison's eye twinkled. "But they had a
+great deal to say about 'the music.'" It was not an effusive form of
+felicitation; the minister would have liked it less if it had been,
+felt less justified, perhaps, in remembering about the range on that
+particular morning. As it was, he was able to take it with perfect
+dignity and good humour, and to enjoy the point against the Wilcoxes
+with that laugh of his that did everybody good to hear; so hearty it
+was, so rich in the grain of the voice, so full of the zest and flavour
+of the joke. The range had been selected, and their talk of changes had
+begun with it, Mr Murchison pointing out the new idea in the boiler and
+Dr Drummond remembering his first kitchen stove that burned wood and
+stood on its four legs, with nothing behind but the stove pipe, and if
+you wanted a boiler you took off the front lids and put it on, and how
+remarkable even that had seemed to his eyes, fresh from the conservative
+kitchen notions of the old country. He had come, unhappily, a widower
+to the domestic improvements on the other side of the Atlantic. "Often
+I used to think," he said to Mr Murchison, "if my poor wife could have
+seen that stove how delighted she would have been! But I doubt this
+would have been too much for her altogether!"
+
+"That stove!" answered Mr Murchison. "Well I remember it. I sold it
+myself to your predecessor, Mr Wishart, for thirty dollars--the last
+purchase he ever made, poor man. It was great business for me--I
+had only two others in the store like it. One of them old Milburn
+bought--the father of this man, d'ye mind him?--the other stayed by me a
+matter of seven years. I carried a light stock in those days."
+
+It was no longer a light stock. The two men involuntarily glanced round
+them for the satisfaction of the contrast Murchison evoked, though
+neither of them, from motives of vague delicacy, felt inclined to dwell
+upon it. John Murchison had the shyness of an artist in his commercial
+success, and the minister possibly felt that his relation toward
+the prosperity of a member had in some degree the embarrassment of a
+tax-gatherer's. The stock was indeed heavy now. You had to go upstairs
+to see the ranges, where they stood in rows, and every one of them
+bore somewhere upon it, in raised black letters, John Murchison's name.
+Through the windows came the iterating ring on the iron from the foundry
+in Chestnut Street which fed the shop, with an overflow that found its
+way from one end of the country to the other. Finicking visitors to
+Elgin found this wearing, but to John Murchison it was the music that
+honours the conqueror of circumstances. The ground floor was given up
+to the small wares of the business, chiefly imported; two or three
+young men, steady and knowledgeable-looking, moved about in their shirt
+sleeves among shelves and packing-cases. One of them was our friend
+Alec; our other friend Oliver looked after the books at the foundry.
+Their father did everything deliberately; but presently, in his own good
+time, his commercial letter paper would be headed, with regard to these
+two, "John Murchison and Sons." It had long announced that the business
+was "Wholesale and Retail."
+
+Dr Drummond and Mr Murchison, considering the changes in Elgin from the
+store door, did it at their leisure, the merchant with his thumbs thrust
+comfortably in the armholes of his waistcoat, the minister, with that
+familiar trick of his, balancing on one foot and suddenly throwing his
+slight weight forward on the other. "A bundle of nerves," people called
+the Doctor: to stand still would have been a penance to him; even as
+he swayed backward and forward in talking, his hand must be busy at the
+seals on his watch chain and his shrewd glance travelling over a dozen
+things you would never dream so clever a man would take notice of. It
+was a prospect of moderate commercial activity they looked out upon,
+a street of mellow shopfronts on both sides, of varying height and
+importance, wearing that air of marking a period, a definite stop
+in growth, that so often coexists with quite a reasonable degree of
+activity and independence in colonial towns. One could almost say,
+standing there in the door at Murchison's, where the line of legitimate
+enterprise had been overpassed and where its intention had been none
+too sanguine--on the one hand in the faded, and pretentious red brick
+building with the false third storey, occupied by Cleary which must have
+been let at a loss to dry-goods or anything else; on the other hand
+in the solid "Gregory block," opposite the market, where rents were as
+certain as the dividends of the Bank of British North America.
+
+Main Street expressed the idea that, for the purpose of growing and
+doing business, it had always found the days long enough. Drays passed
+through it to the Grand Trunk station, but they passed one at a time; a
+certain number of people went up and down about their affairs, but they
+were never in a hurry; a street car jogged by every ten minutes or so,
+but nobody ran after it. There was a decent procedure; and it was felt
+that Bofield--he was dry-goods, too--in putting in an elevator was just
+a little unnecessarily in advance of the times. Bofield had only two
+storeys, like everybody else, and a very easy staircase, up which people
+often declared they preferred to walk rather than wait in the elevator
+for a young man to finish serving and work it. These, of course, were
+the sophisticated people of Elgin; countryfolk, on a market day, would
+wait a quarter of an hour for the young man and think nothing of it;
+and I imagine Bofield found his account in the elevator, though he
+did complain sometimes that such persons went up and down on frivolous
+pretexts or to amuse the baby. As a matter of fact, Elgin had begun
+as the centre of "trading" for the farmers of Fox County, and had soon
+over-supplied that limit in demand; so that when other interests added
+themselves to the activity of the town there was still plenty of room
+for the business they brought. Main Street was really, therefore, not a
+fair index; nobody in Elgin would have admitted it. Its appearance and
+demeanour would never have suggested that it was now the chief artery
+of a thriving manufacturing town, with a collegiate institute, eleven
+churches, two newspapers, and an asylum for the deaf and dumb, to
+say nothing of a fire department unsurpassed for organization and
+achievement in the Province of Ontario. Only at twelve noon it might be
+partly realized when the prolonged "toots" of seven factory whistles at
+once let off, so to speak, the hour. Elgin liked the demonstration; it
+was held to be cheerful and unmistakable, an indication of "go-ahead"
+proclivities which spoke for itself. It occurred while yet Dr Drummond
+and Mr Murchison stood together in the store door.
+
+"I must be getting on," said the minister, looking at his watch. "And
+what news have you of Lorne?"
+
+"Well, he seems to have got through all right."
+
+"What--you've heard already, then?"
+
+"He telegraphed from Toronto on Saturday night." Mr Murchison stroked
+his chin, the better to retain his satisfaction. "Waste of money--the
+post would have brought it this morning--but it pleased his mother. Yes,
+he's through his Law Schools examination, and at the top, too, as far as
+I can make out."
+
+"Dear me, and you never mentioned it!" Dr Drummond spoke with the
+resigned impatience of a familiar grievance. It was certainly a trying
+characteristic of John Murchison that he never cared about communicating
+anything that might seem to ask for congratulation. "Well, well! I'm
+very glad to hear it."
+
+"It slipped my mind," said Mr Murchison. "Yes, he's full-fledged
+'barrister and solicitor' now; he can plead your case or draw you up a
+deed with the best of them. Lorne's made a fair record, so far. We've no
+reason to be ashamed of him."
+
+"That you have not." Personal sentiments between these two Scotchmen
+were indicated rather than indulged. "He's going in with Fulke and
+Warner, I suppose--you've got that fixed up?"
+
+"Pretty well. Old man Warner was in this morning to talk it over. He
+says they look to Lorne to bring them in touch with the new generation.
+It's a pity he lost that son of his."
+
+"Oh, a great pity. But since they had to go outside the firm they
+couldn't have done better; they couldn't have done better. I hope Lorne
+will bring them a bit of Knox Church business too; there's no reason why
+Bob Mackintosh should have it all. They'll be glad to see him back at
+the Hampden Debating Society. He's a great light there, is Lorne; and
+the Young Liberals, I hear are wanting him for chairman this year."
+
+"There's some talk of it. But time enough--time enough for that! He'll
+do first-rate if he gets the law to practise, let alone the making of
+it."
+
+"Maybe so; he's young yet. Well, good morning to you. I'll just step
+over the way to the Express office and get a proof out of them of
+that sermon of mine. I noticed their reporter fellow--what's his
+name?--Rawlins, with his pencil out last night, and I've no faith in
+Rawlins."
+
+"Better cast an eye over it," responded Mr Murchison cordially, and
+stood for a moment or two longer in the door watching the crisp,
+significant little figure of the minister as he stepped briskly over the
+crossing to the newspaper office. There Dr Drummond sat down, before he
+explained his errand, and wrote a paragraph.
+
+"We are pleased to learn," it ran "that Mr Lorne Murchison, eldest son
+of Mr John Murchison, of this town, has passed at the capital of the
+Province his final examination in Law, distinguishing himself by coming
+out at the top of the list. It will be remembered that Mr Murchison,
+upon entering the Law Schools, also carried off a valuable scholarship.
+We are glad to be able to announce that Mr Murchison, Junior, will
+embark upon his profession in his native town, where he will enter the
+well-known firm of Fulke and Warner."
+
+The editor, Mr Horace Williams, had gone to dinner, and Rawlins was out
+so Dr Drummond had to leave it with the press foreman. Mr Williams read
+it appreciatively on his return, and sent it down with the following
+addition:
+
+"This is doing it as well as it can be done. Elgin congratulates Mr L.
+Murchison upon having produced these results, and herself upon having
+produced Mr L. Murchison."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+From the day she stepped into it Mrs Murchison knew that the Plummer
+Place was going to be the bane of her existence. This may have been
+partly because Mr Murchison had bought it, since a circumstance welded
+like that into one's life is very apt to assume the character of a bane,
+unless one's temperament leads one to philosophy, which Mrs Murchison's
+didn't. But there were other reasons more difficult to traverse: it was
+plainly true that the place did require a tremendous amount of "looking
+after," as such things were measured in Elgin, far more looking after
+than the Murchisons could afford to give it. They could never have
+afforded, in the beginning, to possess it had it not been sold, under
+mortgage, at a dramatic sacrifice. The house was a dignified old affair,
+built of wood and painted white, with wide green verandahs compassing
+the four sides of it, as they often did in days when the builder had
+only to turn his hand to the forest. It stood on the very edge of
+the town; wheatfields in the summer billowed up to its fences, and
+corn-stacks in the autumn camped around it like a besieging army. The
+plank sidewalk finished there; after that you took the road or, if you
+were so inclined, the river, into which you could throw a stone from
+the orchard of the Plummer Place. The house stood roomily and shadily in
+ornamental grounds, with a lawn in front of it and a shrubbery at each
+side, an orchard behind, and a vegetable garden, the whole intersected
+by winding gravel walks, of which Mrs Murchison was wont to say that
+a man might do nothing but weed them and have his hands full. In the
+middle of the lawn was a fountain, an empty basin with a plaster Triton,
+most difficult to keep looking respectable and pathetic in his frayed
+air of exile from some garden of Italy sloping to the sea. There was
+also a barn with stabling, a loft, and big carriage doors opening on a
+lane to the street. The originating Plummer, Mrs Murchison often said,
+must have been a person of large ideas, and she hoped he had the money
+to live up to them. The Murchisons at one time kept a cow in the barn,
+till a succession of "girls" left on account of the milking, and the
+lane was useful as an approach to the backyard by the teams that brought
+the cordwood in the winter. It was trying enough for a person with
+the instinct of order to find herself surrounded by out-of-door
+circumstances which she simply could not control but Mrs Murchison often
+declared that she could put up with the grounds if it had stopped there.
+It did not stop there. Though I was compelled to introduce Mrs Murchison
+in the kitchen, she had a drawing-room in which she might have received
+the Lieutenant-Governor, with French windows and a cut-glass chandelier,
+and a library with an Italian marble mantelpiece. She had an icehouse
+and a wine cellar, and a string of bells in the kitchen that connected
+with every room in the house; it was a negligible misfortune that not
+one of them was in order. She had far too much, as she declared, for
+any one pair of hands and a growing family, and if the ceiling was not
+dropping in the drawing-room, the cornice was cracked in the library
+or the gas was leaking in the dining-room, or the verandah wanted
+reflooring if anyone coming to the house was not to put his foot through
+it; and as to the barn, if it was dropping to pieces it would just
+have to drop. The barn was definitely outside the radius of possible
+amelioration--it passed gradually, visibly, into decrepitude, and Mrs
+Murchison often wished she could afford to pull it down.
+
+It may be realized that in spite of its air of being impossible
+to "overtake"--I must, in this connection, continue to quote its
+mistress--there was an attractiveness about the dwelling of the
+Murchisons the attractiveness of the large ideas upon which it had
+been built and designed, no doubt by one of those gentlefolk of reduced
+income who wander out to the colonies with a nebulous view to economy
+and occupation, to perish of the readjustment. The case of such persons,
+when they arrive, is at once felt to be pathetic; there is a tacit local
+understanding that they have made a mistake. They may be entitled
+to respect, but nothing can save them from the isolation of their
+difference and their misapprehension. It was like that with the house.
+The house was admired--without enthusiasm--but it was not copied. It
+was felt to be outside the general need, misjudged, adventitious; and it
+wore its superiority in the popular view like a folly. It was in Elgin,
+but not of it: it represented a different tradition; and Elgin made the
+same allowance for its bedroom bells and its old-fashioned dignities
+as was conceded to its original master's habit of a six-o'clock dinner,
+with wine.
+
+The architectural expression of the town was on a different scale,
+beginning with "frame," rising through the semidetached, culminating
+expensively in Mansard roofs, cupolas and modern conveniences, and
+blossoming, in extreme instances, into Moorish fretwork and silk
+portieres for interior decoration. The Murchison house gained by force
+of contrast: one felt, stepping into it, under influences of less
+expediency and more dignity, wider scope and more leisured intention;
+its shabby spaces had a redundancy the pleasanter and its yellow plaster
+cornices a charm the greater for the numerous close-set examples of
+contemporary taste in red brick which made, surrounded by geranium beds,
+so creditable an appearance in the West Ward. John Murchison in taking
+possession of the house had felt in it these satisfactions, had been
+definitely penetrated and soothed by them, the more perhaps because he
+brought to them a capacity for feeling the worthier things of life which
+circumstances had not previously developed. He seized the place with a
+sense of opportunity leaping sharp and conscious out of early years
+in the grey "wynds" of a northern Scottish town; and its personality
+sustained him, very privately but none the less effectively, through
+the worry and expense of it for years. He would take his pipe and walk
+silently for long together about the untidy shrubberies in the evening,
+for the acute pleasure of seeing the big horse chestnuts in flower; and
+he never opened the hall door without a feeling of gratification in
+its weight as it swung under his hand. In so far as he could, he
+supplemented the idiosyncrasies he found. The drawing-room walls, though
+mostly bare in their old-fashioned French paper--lavender and gilt, a
+grape-vine pattern--held a few good engravings; the library was reduced
+to contain a single bookcase, but it was filled with English classics.
+John Murchison had been made a careful man, not by nature, by the
+discipline of circumstances; but he would buy books. He bought them
+between long periods of abstinence, during which he would scout the
+expenditure of an unnecessary dollar, coming home with a parcel under
+his arm for which he vouchsafed no explanation, and which would disclose
+itself to be Lockhart, or Sterne, or Borrow, or Defoe. Mrs Murchison
+kept a discouraging eye upon such purchases; and when her husband
+brought home Chambers's Dictionary of English Literature, after shortly
+and definitely repulsing her demand that he should get himself a new
+winter overcoat, she declared that it was beyond all endurance. Mrs
+Murchison was surrounded, indeed, by more of "that sort of thing"
+than she could find use or excuse for; since, though books made but a
+sporadic appearance, current literature, daily, weekly, and monthly,
+was perpetually under her feet. The Toronto paper came as a matter of
+course, as the London daily takes its morning flight into the provinces,
+the local organ as simply indispensable, the Westminster as the
+corollary of church membership and for Sunday reading. These were
+constant, but there were also mutables--Once a Week, Good Words for
+the Young, Blackwood's, and the Cornhill they used to be; years of back
+numbers Mrs Murchison had packed away in the attic, where Advena
+on rainy days came into the inheritance of them, and made an early
+acquaintance with fiction in Ready Money Mortiboy and Verner's Pride,
+while Lorne, flat on his stomach beside her, had glorious hours on The
+Back of the North Wind. Their father considered such publications and
+their successors essential, like tobacco and tea. He was also an easy
+prey to the subscription agent, for works published in parts and
+paid for in instalments, a custom which Mrs Murchison regarded with
+abhorrence. So much so that when John put his name down for Masterpieces
+of the World's Art, which was to cost twenty dollars by the time it was
+complete, he thought it advisable to let the numbers accumulate at the
+store.
+
+Whatever the place represented to their parents, it was pure joy to the
+young Murchisons. It offered a margin and a mystery to life. They saw
+it far larger than it was; they invested it, arguing purely by its
+difference from other habitations, with a romantic past. "I guess
+when the Prince of Wales came to Elgin, Mother, he stayed here," Lorne
+remarked, as a little boy. Secretly he and Advena took up boards in more
+than one unused room, and rapped on more than one thick wall to find a
+hollow chamber; the house revealed so much that was interesting, it was
+apparent to the meanest understanding that it must hide even more.
+It was never half lighted, and there was a passage in which fear
+dwelt--wild were the gallopades from attic to cellar in the early
+nightfall, when every young Murchison tore after every other, possessed,
+like cats, by a demoniac ecstasy of the gloaming. And the garden, with
+the autumn moon coming over the apple trees and the neglected asparagus
+thick for ambush, and a casual untrimmed boy or two with the delicious
+recommendation of being utterly without credentials, to join in the rout
+and be trusted to make for the back fence without further hint at the
+voice of Mrs Murchison--these were joys of the very fibre, things to
+push ideas and envisage life with an attraction that made it worth while
+to grow up.
+
+And they had all achieved it--all six. They had grown up sturdily,
+emerging into sobriety and decorum by much the same degrees as the old
+house, under John Murchison's improving fortunes, grew cared for and
+presentable. The new roof went on, slate replacing shingles, the year
+Abby put her hair up; the bathroom was contemporary with Oliver's
+leaving school; the electric light was actually turned on for the
+first time in honour of Lorne's return from Toronto, a barrister and
+solicitor; several rooms had been done up for Abby's wedding. Abby had
+married, early and satisfactorily, Dr Harry Johnson, who had placidly
+settled down to await the gradual succession of his father's practice;
+"Dr Harry and Dr Henry" they were called. Dr Harry lived next door to
+Dr Henry, and had a good deal of the old man's popular manner. It was
+an unacknowledged partnership, which often provided two opinions for the
+same price; the town prophesied well of it. That left only five at
+home, but they always had Abby over in the West Ward, where Abby's
+housekeeping made an interest and Abby's baby a point of pilgrimage.
+These considerations almost consoled Mrs Murchison declaring, as she
+did, that all of them might have gone but Abby, who alone knew how to be
+"any comfort or any dependence" in the house; who could be left with a
+day's preserving; and I tell you that to be left by Mrs Murchison with a
+day's preserving, be it cherries or strawberries, damsons or pears, was
+a mark of confidence not easy to obtain. Advena never had it; Advena,
+indeed, might have married and removed no prop of the family economy.
+Mrs Murchison would have been "sorry for the man"--she maintained
+a candour toward and about those belonging to her that permitted no
+illusions--but she would have stood cheerfully out of the way on her
+own account. When you have seen your daughter reach and pass the age
+of twenty-five without having learned properly to make her own bed, you
+know without being told that she will never be fit for the management of
+a house--don't you? Very well then. And for ever and for ever, no matter
+what there was to do, with a book in her hand--Mrs Murchison would put
+an emphasis on the "book" which scarcely concealed a contempt for such
+absorption. And if, at the end of your patience, you told her for any
+sake to put it down and attend to matters, obeying in a kind of dream
+that generally drove you to take the thing out of her hands and do it
+yourself, rather than jump out of your skin watching her.
+
+Sincerely Mrs Murchison would have been sorry for the man if he had
+arrived, but he had not arrived. Advena justified her existence by
+taking the university course for women at Toronto, and afterward
+teaching the English branches to the junior forms in the Collegiate
+Institute, which placed her arbitrarily outside the sphere of domestic
+criticism. Mrs Murchison was thankful to have her there--outside--where
+little more could reasonably be expected of her than that she should
+be down in time for breakfast. It is so irritating to be justified
+in expecting more than seems likely to come. Mrs Murchison's ideas
+circulated strictly in the orbit of equity and reason; she expected
+nothing from anybody that she did not expect from herself; indeed, she
+would spare others in far larger proportion. But the sense of obligation
+which led her to offer herself up to the last volt of her energy made
+her miserable when she considered that she was not fairly done by in
+return. Pressed down and running over were the services she offered to
+the general good, and it was on the ground of the merest justice that
+she required from her daughters "some sort of interest" in domestic
+affairs. From her eldest she got no sort of interest, and it was
+like the removal of a grievance from the hearth when Advena took up
+employment which ranged her definitely beyond the necessity of being
+of any earthly use in the house. Advena's occupation to some extent
+absorbed her shortcomings, which was much better than having to
+attribute them to her being naturally "through-other," or naturally
+clever, according to the bias of the moment. Mrs Murchison no longer
+excused or complained of her daughter; but she still pitied the man.
+
+"The boys," of course, were too young to think of matrimony. They were
+still the boys, the Murchison boys; they would be the boys at forty if
+they remained under their father's roof. In the mother country, men in
+short jackets and round collars emerge from the preparatory schools; in
+the daughter lands boys in tailcoats conduct serious affairs. Alec
+and Oliver, in the business, were frivolous enough as to the feminine
+interest. For all Dr Drummond's expressed and widely known views upon
+the subject, it was a common thing for one or both of these young men
+to stray from the family pew on Sunday evenings to the services of other
+communions, thereafter to walk home in the dusk under the maples with
+some attractive young person, and be sedately invited to finish the
+evening on her father's verandah. Neither of them was guiltless of silk
+ties knitted or handkerchiefs initialled by certain fingers; without
+repeating scandal, one might say by various fingers. For while the
+ultimate import of these matters was not denied in Elgin, there was
+a general feeling against giving too much meaning to them, probably
+originating in a reluctance among heads of families to add to their
+responsibilities. These early spring indications were belittled and
+laughed at; so much so that the young people them selves hardly
+took them seriously, but regarded them as a form of amusement almost
+conventional. Nothing would have surprised or embarrassed them more
+than to learn that their predilections had an imperative corollary,
+that anything should, of necessity, "come of it." Something, of course,
+occasionally did come of it; and, usually after years of "attention," a
+young man of Elgin found himself mated to a young woman, but never under
+circumstances that could be called precipitate or rash. The cautious
+blood and far sight of the early settlers, who had much to reckon with,
+were still preponderant social characteristics of the town they cleared
+the site for. Meanwhile, however, flowers were gathered, and all sorts
+of evanescent idylls came and went in the relations of young men and
+maidens. Alec and Oliver Murchison were already in the full tide of
+them.
+
+From this point of view they did not know what to make of Lorne. It was
+not as if their brother were in any way ill calculated to attract that
+interest which gave to youthful existence in Elgin almost the only
+flavour that it had. Looks are looks, and Lorne had plenty of them;
+taller by an inch than Alec, broader by two than Oliver, with a fine
+square head and blue eyes in it, and features which conveyed purpose and
+humour, lighted by a certain simplicity of soul that pleased even when
+it was not understood. "Open," people said he was, and "frank"--so he
+was, frank and open, with horizons and intentions; you could see them in
+his face. Perhaps it was more conscious of them than he was. Ambition,
+definitely shining goals, adorn the perspectives of young men in new
+countries less often than is commonly supposed. Lorne meant to be a good
+lawyer, squarely proposed to himself that the country should hold no
+better; and as to more selective usefulness, he hoped to do a little
+stumping for the right side when Frank Jennings ran for the Ontario
+House in the fall. It wouldn't be his first electioneering: from the day
+he became chairman of the Young Liberals the party had an eye on him,
+and when occasion arose, winter or summer, by bobsleigh or buggy,
+weatherbeaten local bosses would convey him to country schoolhouses for
+miles about to keep a district sound on railway policy, or education,
+or tariff reform. He came home smiling with the triumphs of these
+occasions, and offered them, with the slow, good-humoured, capable drawl
+that inspired such confidence in him, to his family at breakfast, who
+said "Great!" or "Good for you, Lorne!" John Murchison oftenest said
+nothing, but would glance significantly at his wife, frowning and
+pursing his lips when she, who had most spirit of them all, would
+exclaim, "You'll be Premier yet, Lorne!" It was no part of the Murchison
+policy to draw against future balances: they might believe everything,
+they would express nothing; and I doubt whether Lorne himself had any
+map of the country he meant to travel over in that vague future, already
+defining in local approbation, and law business coming freely in with
+a special eye on the junior partner. But the tract was there,
+subconscious, plain in the wider glance, the alerter manner; plain even
+in the grasp and stride which marked him in a crowd; plain, too, in the
+preoccupation with other issues, were it only turning over a leader
+in the morning's Dominion, that carried him along indifferent to the
+allurements I have described. The family had a bond of union in their
+respect for Lorne, and this absence of nugatory inclinations in him
+was among its elements. Even Stella who, being just fourteen, was the
+natural mouthpiece of family sentiment, would declare that Lorne had
+something better to do than go hanging about after girls, and for her
+part she thought all the more of him for it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"I am requested to announce," said Dr Drummond after the singing of the
+last hymn, "the death, yesterday morning, of James Archibald Ramsay,
+for fifteen years an adherent and for twenty-five years a member of this
+church. The funeral will take place from the residence of the deceased,
+on Court House Street, tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock. Friends and
+acquaintances are respectfully--invited--to attend."
+
+The minister's voice changed with the character of its affairs. Still
+vibrating with the delivery of his sermon, it was now charged with the
+official business of the interment. In its inflections it expressed both
+elegy and eulogy; and in the brief pause before and after "invited" and
+the fall of "attend" there was the last word of comment upon the mortal
+term. A crispation of interest passed over the congregation; every chin
+was raised. Dr Drummond's voice had a wonderful claiming power, but he
+often said he wished his congregation would pay as undivided attention
+to the sermon as they did to the announcements.
+
+"The usual weekly prayer meeting will be held in the basement of the
+church on Wednesday evening." Then almost in a tone of colloquy, and
+with just a hint of satire about his long upper lip--
+
+"I should be glad to see a better attendance of the young people at
+these gatherings. Time was when the prayer meeting counted among our
+young men and women as an occasion not to be lightly passed over. In
+these days it would seem that there is too much business to be done, or
+too much pleasure to be enjoyed, for the oncoming generation to remember
+their weekly engagement with the Lord. This is not as it should be; and
+I rely upon the fathers and mothers of this congregation, who brought
+these children in their arms to the baptismal font, there to be admitted
+to the good hopes and great privileges of the Church of God--I rely upon
+them to see that there shall be no departure from the good old rule, and
+that time is found for the weekly prayer meeting."
+
+Mrs Murchison nudged Stella, who returned the attention, looking
+elaborately uninterested, with her foot. Alec and Oliver smiled
+consciously; their father, with an expression of severe gravity, backed
+up the minister who, after an instant's pause, continued--
+
+"On Tuesday afternoon next, God willing, I shall visit the following
+families in the East Ward--Mr Peterson, Mr Macormack, Mrs Samuel Smith,
+and Mr John Flint. On Thursday afternoon in the South Ward, Mrs Reid,
+Mr P. C. Cameron, and Mr Murchison. We will close by singing the Third
+Doxology: Blessed, blessed be Jehovah, Israel's God to all eternity--"
+
+The congregation trooped out; the Murchisons walked home in a clan, Mr
+and Mrs Murchison, with Stella skirting the edge of the sidewalk beside
+them, the two young men behind. Abby, when she married Harry, had "gone
+over" to the Church of England. The wife must worship with the husband;
+even Dr Drummond recognized the necessity, though he professed small
+opinion of the sway of the spouse who, with Presbyterian traditions
+behind her, could not achieve union the other way about; and Abby's
+sanctioned defection was a matter of rather shame-faced reference by her
+family. Advena and Lorne had fallen into the degenerate modern habit of
+preferring the evening service.
+
+"So we're to have the Doctor on Thursday," said Mrs Murchison, plainly
+not displeased. "Well, I hope the dining-room carpet will be down."
+
+"I expect he'll be wanting his tea," replied Mr Murchison. "He's got you
+in the right place on the list for that, Mother--as usual."
+
+"I'd just like to see him go anywhere else for his tea the day he was
+coming to our house," declared Stella. "But he GENERALLY has too much
+sense."
+
+"You boys," said Mrs Murchison, turning back to her sons, "will see that
+you're on hand that evening. And I hope the Doctor will rub it in about
+the prayer meeting." Mrs Murchison chuckled. "I saw it went home to both
+of you, and well it might. Yes, I think I may as well expect him to tea.
+He enjoys my scalloped oysters, if I do say it myself."
+
+"We'll get Abby over," said Mr Murchison. "That'll please the Doctor."
+
+"I must say," remarked Stella, "he seems to think a lot more of Abby now
+that she's Mrs Episcopal Johnson."
+
+"Yes, Abby and Harry must come," said Mrs Murchison, "and I was thinking
+of inviting Mr and Mrs Horace Williams. We've been there till I'm
+ashamed to look them in the face. And I've pretty well decided," she
+added autocratically, "to have chicken salad. So if Dr Drummond has made
+up his mouth for scalloped oysters he'll be disappointed."
+
+"Mother," announced Stella, "I'm perfectly certain you'll have both."
+
+"I'll consider it," replied her mother. "Meanwhile we would be better
+employed in thinking of what we have been hearing. That's the third
+sermon from the Book of Job in six weeks. I must say, with the whole of
+the two Testaments to select from, I don't see why the Doctor should be
+so taken up with Job."
+
+Stella was vindicated; Mrs Murchison did have both. The chicken salad
+gleamed at one end of the table and the scalloped oysters smoked
+delicious at the other. Lorne had charge of the cold tongue and Advena
+was entrusted with the pickled pears. The rest of the family were
+expected to think about the tea biscuits and the cake, for Lobelia had
+never yet had a successor that was any hand with company. Mrs Murchison
+had enough to do to pour out the tea. It was a table to do anybody
+credit, with its glossy damask and the old-fashioned silver and
+best china that Mrs Murchison had brought as a bride to her
+housekeeping--for, thank goodness, her mother had known what was what
+in such matters--a generous attractive table that you took some
+satisfaction in looking at. Mrs Murchison came of a family of noted
+housekeepers; where she got her charm I don't know. Six-o'clock tea, and
+that the last meal in the day, was the rule in Elgin, and a good enough
+rule for Mrs Murchison, who had no patience with the innovation of a
+late dinner recently adopted by some people who could keep neither
+their servants nor their digestions in consequence. It had been a crisp
+October day; as Mr Murchison remarked, the fall evenings were beginning
+to draw in early; everybody was glad of the fire in the grate and the
+closed curtains. Dr Drummond had come about five, and the inquiries and
+comments upon family matters that the occasion made incumbent had been
+briskly exchanged, with just the word that marked the pastoral visit
+and the practical interest that relieved it. And he had thought, on the
+whole, that he might manage to stay to tea, at which Mrs Murchison's
+eyes twinkled as she said affectionately--
+
+"Now, Doctor, you know we could never let you off."
+
+Then Abby had arrived and her husband, and finally Mr and Mrs Williams,
+just a trifle late for etiquette, but well knowing that it mustn't be
+enough to spoil the biscuits. Dr Drummond in the place of honour,
+had asked the blessing, and that brief reminder of the semiofficial
+character of the occasion having been delivered, was in the best of
+humours. The Murchisons were not far wrong in the happy divination
+that he liked coming to their house. Its atmosphere appealed to him; he
+expanded in its humour, its irregularity, its sense of temperament. They
+were doubtful allurements, from the point of view of a minister of the
+Gospel, but it would not occur to Dr Drummond to analyse them. So far
+as he was aware, John Murchison was just a decent, prosperous, Christian
+man, on whose word and will you might depend, and Mrs Murchison a
+stirring, independent little woman, who could be very good company when
+she felt inclined. As to their sons and daughters, in so far as they
+were a credit, he was as proud of them as their parents could possibly
+be, regarding himself as in a much higher degree responsible for the
+formation of their characters and the promise of their talents. And
+indeed, since every one of them had "sat under" Dr Drummond from the
+day he or she was capable of sitting under anybody, Mr and Mrs Murchison
+would have been the last to dispute this. It was not one of those houses
+where a pastor could always be sure of leaving some spiritual benefit
+behind; but then he came away himself with a pleasant sense of nervous
+stimulus which was apt to take his mind off the matter. It is not given
+to all of us to receive or to extend the communion of the saints; Mr
+and Mrs Murchison were indubitably of the elect, but he was singularly
+close-mouthed about it, and she had an extraordinary way of seeing the
+humorous side--altogether it was paralysing, and the conversation would
+wonderfully soon slip round to some robust secular subject, public or
+domestic. I have mentioned Dr Drummond's long upper lip; all sorts
+of racial virtues resided there, but his mouth was also wide and much
+frequented by a critical, humorous, philosophical smile which revealed
+a view of life at once kindly and trenchant. His shrewd grey eyes were
+encased in wrinkles, and when he laughed his hearty laugh they almost
+disappeared in a merry line. He had a fund of Scotch stories, and one
+or two he was very fond of, at the expense of the Methodists, that were
+known up and down the Dominion, and nobody enjoyed them more than he
+did himself. He had once worn his hair in a high curl on his scholarly
+forehead, and a silvering tuft remained brushed upright; he took the
+old-fashioned precaution of putting cotton wool in his ears, which
+gave him more than ever the look of something highly concentrated and
+conserved but in no way detracted from his dignity. St Andrew's folk
+accused him of vanity because of the diamond he wore on his little
+finger. He was by no means handsome, but he was intensely individual;
+perhaps he had vanity; his people would have forgiven him worse things.
+And at Mrs Murchison's tea party he was certainly, as John Murchison
+afterward said, "in fine feather."
+
+An absorbing topic held them, a local topic, a topic involving loss and
+crime and reprisals. The Federal Bank had sustained a robbery of five
+thousand dollars, and in the course of a few days had placed their
+cashier under arrest for suspected complicity. Their cashier was Walter
+Ormiston, the only son of old Squire Ormiston, of Moneida Reservation,
+ten miles out of Elgin, who had administered the affairs of the Indians
+there for more years than the Federal Bank had existed. Mr Williams
+brought the latest news, as was to be expected; news flowed in rivulets
+to Mr Williams all day long; he paid for it, dealt in it, could spread
+or suppress it.
+
+"They've admitted the bail," Mr Williams announced, with an air of
+self-surveillance. Rawlins had brought the intelligence in too late for
+the current issue, and Mr Williams was divided between his human desire
+to communicate and his journalistic sense that the item would be the
+main feature of the next afternoon's Express.
+
+"I'm glad of that. I'm glad of that," repeated Dr Drummond. "Thank you,
+Mrs Murchison, I'll send my cup. And did you learn, Williams, for what
+amount?"
+
+Mr Williams ran his hand through his hair in the effort to remember, and
+decided that he might as well let it all go. The Mercury couldn't fail
+to get it by tomorrow anyhow.
+
+"Three thousand," he said. "Milburn and Dr Henry Johnson."
+
+"I thought Father was bound to be in it," remarked Dr Harry.
+
+"Half and half?" asked John Murchison.
+
+"No," contributed Mrs Williams. "Mr Milburn two and Dr Henry one. Mr
+Milburn is Walter's uncle, you know."
+
+Mr Williams fastened an outraged glance on his wife, who looked another
+way. Whatever he thought proper to do, it was absolutely understood that
+she was to reveal nothing of what "came in," and was even carefully to
+conserve anything she heard outside with a view to bringing it in. Mrs
+Williams was too prone to indiscretion in the matter of letting news
+slip prematurely; and as to its capture, her husband would often
+confess, with private humour, that Minnie wasn't much of a mouser.
+
+"Well, that's something to be thankful for," said Mrs Murchison. "I lay
+awake for two hours last night thinking of that boy in jail, and his
+poor old father, seventy-nine years of age, and such a fine old man, so
+thoroughly respected."
+
+"I don't know the young fellow," said Dr Drummond, "but they say he's
+of good character, not over-solid, but bears a clean reputation. They're
+all Tories together, of course, the Ormistons."
+
+"It's an old U. E. Loyalist family," remarked Advena. "Mr Ormiston has
+one or two rather interesting Revolutionary trophies at his house out
+there."
+
+"None the worse for that. None the worse for that," said Dr Drummond.
+
+"Old Ormiston's father," contributed the editor of the Express, "had a
+Crown grant of the whole of Moneida Reservation at one time. Government
+actually bought it back from him to settle the Indians there. He was a
+well-known Family Compact man, and fought tooth and nail for the Clergy
+Reserves in 'fifty."
+
+"Well, well," said Dr Drummond, with a twinkle. "We'll hope young
+Ormiston is innocent, nevertheless."
+
+"Nasty business for the Federal Bank if he is," Mr Williams went on.
+"They're a pretty unpopular bunch as it is."
+
+"Of course he's innocent," contributed Stella, with indignant eyes; "and
+when they prove it, what can he do to the bank for taking him up? That's
+what I want to know."
+
+Her elders smiled indulgently. "A lot you know about it, kiddie," said
+Oliver. It was the only remark he made during the meal. Alec passed
+the butter assiduously, but said nothing at all. Adolescence was
+inarticulate in Elgin on occasions of ceremony.
+
+"I hear they've piled up some big evidence," said Mr Williams. "Young
+Ormiston's been fool enough to do some race-betting lately. Minnie,
+I wish you'd get Mrs Murchison to show you how to pickle pears. Of
+course," he added, "they're keeping it up their sleeve."
+
+"It's a hard place to keep evidence," said Lorne Murchison at last with
+a smile which seemed to throw light on the matter. They had all been
+waiting, more or less consciously, for what Lorne would have to say.
+
+"Lorne, you've got it!" divined his mother instantly.
+
+"Got what, Mother?"
+
+"The case! I've suspected it from the minute the subject was mentioned!
+That case came in today!"
+
+"And you sitting there like a bump on a log, and never telling us!"
+exclaimed Stella, with reproach.
+
+"Stella, you have a great deal too much to say," replied her brother.
+"Suppose you try sitting like a bump on a log. We won't complain. Yes,
+the Squire seems to have made up his mind about the defence, and my
+seniors haven't done much else today."
+
+"Rawlins saw him hitched up in front of your place for about two hours
+this morning," said Mr Williams. "I told him I thought that was good
+enough, but we didn't say anything, Rawlins having heard it was to be
+Flynn from Toronto. And I hadn't forgotten the Grand Trunk case we put
+down to you last week without exactly askin'. Your old man was as mad as
+a hornet--wanted to stop his subscription; Rawlins had no end of a time
+to get round him. Little things like that will creep in when you've got
+to trust to one man to run the whole local show. But I didn't want the
+Mercury to have another horse on us."
+
+"Do you think you'll get a look in, Lorne?" asked Dr Harry.
+
+"Oh, not a chance of it. The old man's as keen as a razor on the case,
+and you'd think Warner never had one before! If I get a bit of grubbing
+to do, under supervision, they'll consider I ought to be pleased." It
+was the sunniest possible tone of grumbling; it enlisted your sympathy
+by its very acknowledgement that it had not a leg to stand on.
+
+"They're pretty wild about it out Moneida way," said Dr Harry. "My
+father says the township would put down the bail three times over."
+
+"They swear by the Squire out there," said Mr Horace Williams, liberally
+applying his napkin to his moustache. "He treated some of them more than
+square when the fall wheat failed three years running, about ten years
+back; do you remember, Mr Murchison? Lent them money at about half the
+bank rate, and wasn't in an awful sweat about getting it in at that
+either."
+
+"And wasn't there something about his rebuilding the school-house at his
+own expense not so long ago?" asked Dr Drummond.
+
+"Just what he did. I wanted to send Rawlins out and make a story of
+it--we'd have given it a column, with full heads; but the old man didn't
+like it. It's hard to know what some people will like. But it was my own
+foolishness for asking. A thing like that is public property."
+
+"There's a good deal of feeling," said Lorne. "So much that I understand
+the bank is moving for change of venue."
+
+"I hope they won't get it," said Dr Drummond sharply. "A strong local
+feeling is valuable evidence in a case like this. I don't half approve
+this notion that a community can't manage its own justice when it
+happens to take an interest in the case. I've no more acquaintance with
+the Squire than 'How d'ye do?' and I don't know his son from Adam; but
+I'd serve on the jury tomorrow if the Crown asked it, and there's many
+more like me."
+
+Mr Williams, who had made a brief note on his shirt cuff, restored his
+pencil to his waistcoat pocket. "I shall oppose a change of venue," said
+he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+It was confidently expected by the Murchison family that when Stella was
+old enough she would be a good deal in society. Stella, without doubt,
+was well equipped for society; she had exactly those qualities which
+appealed to it in Elgin, among which I will mention two--the quality
+of being able to suggest that she was quite as good as anybody without
+saying so, and the even more important quality of not being any better.
+Other things being equal--those common worldly standards that prevailed
+in Elgin as well as anywhere else in their degree--other things being
+equal, this second simple quality was perhaps the most important of all.
+Mr and Mrs Murchison made no claim and small attempt upon society. One
+doubts whether, with children coming fast and hard times long at the
+door, they gave the subject much consideration; but if they did, it is
+highly unlikely to have occurred to them that they were too good
+for their environment. Yet in a manner they were. It was a matter of
+quality, of spiritual and mental fabric; they were hardly aware that
+they had it, but it marked them with a difference, and a difference is
+the one thing a small community, accustomed comfortably to scan its own
+intelligible averages, will not tolerate. The unusual may take on
+an exaggeration of these; an excess of money, an excess of piety, is
+understood; but idiosyncrasy susceptible to no common translation is
+regarded with the hostility earned by the white crow, modified among
+law-abiding humans into tacit repudiation. It is a sound enough social
+principle to distrust that which is not understood, like the strain of
+temperament inarticulate but vaguely manifest in the Murchisons. Such
+a strain may any day produce an eccentric or a genius, emancipated from
+the common interests, possibly inimical to the general good; and when,
+later on, your genius takes flight or your eccentric sells all that he
+has and gives it to the poor, his fellow townsmen exchange shrewd nods
+before the vindicating fact.
+
+Nobody knew it at all in Elgin, but this was the Murchisons' case. They
+had produced nothing abnormal, but they had to prove that they weren't
+going to, and Stella was the last and most convincing demonstration.
+Advena, bookish and unconventional, was regarded with dubiety. She was
+out of the type; she had queer satisfactions and enthusiasms. Once as a
+little girl she had taken a papoose from a drunken squaw and brought it
+home for her mother to adopt. Mrs Murchison's reception of the suggested
+duty may be imagined, also the comments of acquaintances--a trick like
+that! The inevitable hour arrived when she should be instructed on
+the piano, and the second time the music teacher came her pupil was
+discovered on the roof of the house, with the ladder drawn up after
+her. She did not wish to learn the piano, and from that point of vantage
+informed her family that it was a waste of money. She would hide in
+the hayloft with a novel; she would be off by herself in a canoe at
+six o'clock in the morning; she would go for walks in the rain of windy
+October twilights and be met kicking the wet leaves along in front of
+her "in a dream." No one could dream with impunity in Elgin, except
+in bed. Mothers of daughters sympathized in good set terms with Mrs
+Murchison. "If that girl were mine--" they would say, and leave you with
+a stimulated notion of the value of corporal punishment. When she took
+to passing examinations and teaching, Elgin considered that her parents
+ought to be thankful in the probability that she had escaped some
+dramatic end. But her occupation further removed her from intercourse
+with the town's more exclusive circles: she had taken a definite line,
+and she pursued it, preoccupied. If she was a brand snatched from the
+burning, she sent up a little curl of reflection in a safe place, where
+she was not further interrupted.
+
+Abby, inheriting all these prejudices, had nevertheless not done so
+badly; she had taken no time at all to establish herself; she had almost
+immediately married. In the social estimates of Elgin the Johnsons were
+"nice people," Dr Henry was a fine old figure in the town, and Abby's
+chances were good enough. At all events, when she opened her doors as
+a bride, receiving for three afternoons in her wedding dress, everybody
+had "called." It was very distinctly understood, of course, that this
+was a civility that need not lead to anything whatever, a kind of bowing
+recognition, to be formally returned and quite possibly to end there.
+With Abby, in a good many cases, it hadn't ended there; she was doing
+very well, and as she often said with private satisfaction, if she went
+out anywhere she was just as likely as not to meet her brothers. Elgin
+society, shaping itself, I suppose, to ultimate increase and prosperity,
+had this peculiarity, that the females of a family, in general
+acceptance, were apt to lag far behind the males. Alec and Oliver
+enjoyed a good deal of popularity, and it was Stella's boast that if
+Lorne didn't go out much it needn't be supposed he wasn't asked. It was
+an accepted state of things in Elgin that young men might be invited
+without their sisters, implying an imperturbability greater than
+London's, since London may not be aware of the existence of sisters,
+while Elgin knew all sorts of more interesting things about them. The
+young men were more desirable than the young women; they forged ahead,
+carrying the family fortunes, and the "nicest" of them were the young
+men in the banks. Others might be more substantial, but there was an
+allure about a young man in a bank as difficult to define as to resist.
+To say of a certain party-giver that she had "about every bank clerk
+in town" was to announce the success of her entertainment in ultimate
+terms. These things are not always penetrable, but no doubt his
+gentlemanly form of labour and its abridgement in the afternoons, when
+other young men toiled on till the stroke of six, had something to do
+with this apotheosis of the bank clerk, as well as his invariable taste
+in tailoring, and the fact that some local family influence was probably
+represented in his appointment. Privilege has always its last little
+stronghold, and it still operates to admiration on the office stools of
+minor finance in towns like Elgin. At all events, the sprouting tellers
+and cashiers held unquestioned sway--young doctors and lawyers simply
+didn't think of competing; and since this sort of thing carries its own
+penalty, the designation which they shared with so many distinguished
+persons in history became a byword on the lips of envious persons
+and small boys, by which they wished to express effeminacy and the
+substantive of the "stuck-up." "D'ye take me fur a bank clurk?" was
+a form of repudiation among corner loafers as forcible as it was
+unjustifiable.
+
+I seem to have embarked, by way of getting to the Milburns' party--there
+is a party at the Milburns' and some of us are going--upon an analysis
+of social principles in Elgin, an adventure of difficulty, as I have
+once or twice hinted, but one from which I cannot well extricate myself
+without at least leaving a clue or two more for the use of the curious.
+No doubt these rules had their nucleus in the half-dozen families, among
+whom we may count the shadowy Plummers, who took upon themselves for
+Fox County, by the King's pleasure, the administration of justice, the
+practice of medicine and of the law, and the performance of the charges
+of the Church of England a long time ago. Such persons would bring their
+lines of demarcation with them, and in their new milieu of backwoods
+settlers and small traders would find no difficulty in drawing them
+again. But it was a very long time ago. The little knot of gentry-folk
+soon found the limitations of their new conditions; years went by in
+decades, aggrandizing none of them. They took, perforce, to the ways
+of the country, and soon nobody kept a groom but the Doctor, and nobody
+dined late but the Judge. There came a time when the Sheriff's whist
+club and the Archdeacon's port became a tradition to the oldest
+inhabitant. Trade flourished, education improved, politics changed. Her
+Majesty removed her troops--the Dominion wouldn't pay, a poor-spirited
+business--and a bulwark went with the regiment. The original dignified
+group broke, dissolved, scattered. Prosperous traders foreclosed them,
+the spirit of the times defeated them, young Liberals succeeded them in
+office. Their grandsons married the daughters of well-to-do persons who
+came from the north of Ireland, the east of Scotland, and the Lord knows
+where. It was a sorry tale of disintegration with a cheerful sequel of
+rebuilding, leading to a little unavoidable confusion as the edifice
+went up. Any process of blending implies confusion to begin with; we are
+here at the making of a nation.
+
+This large consideration must dispose of small anomalies, such as the
+acceptance, without cant, of certain forms of the shop, euphemized as
+the store, but containing the same old vertebral counter. Not all forms.
+Dry-goods were held in respect and chemists in comparative esteem; house
+furnishings and hardware made an appreciable claim, and quite a leading
+family was occupied with seed grains. Groceries, on the other hand, were
+harder to swallow, possibly on account of the apron, though the grocer's
+apron, being of linen, had several degrees more consideration than
+the shoemaker's, which was of leather; smaller trades made smaller
+pretensions; Mrs Milburn could tell you where to draw the line.
+They were all hard-working folk together, but they had their little
+prejudices: the dentist was known as "Doc," but he was not considered
+quite on a medical level; it was doubtful whether you bowed to the
+piano-tuner, and quite a curious and unreasonable contempt was bound up
+in the word "veterinary." Anything "wholesale" or manufacturing stood,
+of course, on its own feet; there was nothing ridiculous in molasses,
+nothing objectionable in a tannery, nothing amusing in soap. Such airs
+and graces were far from Elgin, too fundamentally occupied with the
+amount of capital invested, and too profoundly aware how hard it was to
+come by. The valuable part of it all was a certain bright freedom, and
+this was of the essence. Trade was a decent communal way of making a
+living, rooted in independence and the general need; it had none of
+the meaner aspects. Your bow was negligible to the piano-tuner, and
+everything veterinary held up its head. And all this again qualified,
+as everywhere, by the presence or absence of the social faculty, that
+magnetic capacity for coming, as Mrs Murchison would say, "to the fore,"
+which makes little of disadvantages that might seem insuperable and, in
+default, renders null and void the most unquestionable claims. Anyone
+would think of the Delarues. Mr Delarue had in the dim past married his
+milliner, yet the Delarues were now very much indeed to the fore. And,
+on the other hand, the Leverets of the saw mills, rich and benevolent;
+the Leverets were not in society simply, if you analysed it, because
+they did not appear to expect to be in it. Certainly it was well not to
+be too modest; assuredly, as Mrs Murchison said, you put your own ticket
+on, though that dear soul never marked herself in very plain figures,
+not knowing, perhaps for one thing, quite how much she was worth. On the
+other hand, "Scarce of company, welcome trumpery," Mrs Murchison always
+emphatically declared to be no part of her social philosophy. The upshot
+was that the Murchisons were confined to a few old friends and looked,
+as we know, half-humorously, half-ironically, for more brilliant
+excursions, to Stella and "the boys."
+
+It was only, however, the pleasure of Mr Lorne Murchison's company that
+was requested at the Milburns' dance. Almost alone among those who had
+slipped into wider and more promiscuous circles with the widening of the
+stream, the Milburns had made something like an effort to hold out.
+The resisting power was not thought to reside in Mr Milburn, who was
+personally aware of no special ground for it, but in Mrs Milburn and her
+sister, Miss Filkin, who seemed to have inherited the strongest ideas.
+in the phrase of the place, about keeping themselves to themselves.
+A strain of this kind is sometimes constant, even so far from the
+fountainhead, with its pleasing proof that such views were once the most
+general and the most sacred defence of middle-class firesides, and
+that Thackeray had, after all, a good deal to excuse him. Crossing
+the Atlantic they doubtless suffered some dilution; but all that was
+possible to conserve them under very adverse conditions Mrs Milburn
+and Miss Filkin made it their duty to do. Nor were these ideas opposed,
+contested, or much traversed in Elgin. It was recognized that there was
+"something about" Mrs Milburn and her sister--vaguely felt--that you did
+not come upon that thinness of nostril, and slope of shoulder, and set
+of elbow at every corner. They must have got it somewhere. A Filkin
+tradition prevailed, said to have originated in Nova Scotia: the Filkins
+never had been accessible, but if they wanted to keep to themselves, let
+them. In this respect Dora Milburn, the only child, was said to be her
+mother's own daughter. The shoulders, at all events, testified to it;
+and the young lady had been taught to speak, like Mrs Milburn, with what
+was known as an "English accent." The accent in general use in Elgin was
+borrowed--let us hope temporarily--from the other side of the line. It
+suffered local modifications and exaggerations, but it was clearly an
+American product. The English accent was thoroughly affected, especially
+the broad "a." The time may come when Elgin will be at considerable
+pains to teach itself the broad "a," but that is in the embroidery of
+the future, and in no way modifies the criticism of Dora Milburn.
+
+Lorne Murchison, however, was invited to the dance. The invitation
+reached him through the post: coming home from office early on Saturday
+he produced it from his pocket. Mrs Murchison and Abby sat on the
+verandah enjoying the Indian summer afternoon; the horse chestnuts
+dropped crashing among the fallen leaves, the roadside maples blazed,
+the quiet streets ran into smoky purple, and one belated robin hopped
+about the lawn. Mrs Murchison had just remarked that she didn't know
+why, at this time of year, you always felt as if you were waiting for
+something.
+
+"Well, I hope you feel honoured," remarked Abby. Not one of them
+would have thought that Lorne should feel especially honoured; but the
+insincerity was so obvious that it didn't matter. Mrs Murchison, cocking
+her head to read the card, tried hard not to look pleased.
+
+"Mrs Milburn. At Home," she read. "Dancing. Well she might be at home
+dancing, for all me! Why couldn't she just write you a little friendly
+note, or let Dora do it? It's that Ormiston case," she went on shrewdly.
+"They know you're taking a lot of trouble about it. And the least they
+could do, too."
+
+Lorne sat down on the edge of the verandah with his hands in his
+trousers pockets, and stuck his long legs out in front of him. "Oh, I
+don't know," he said. "They have the name of being nifty, but I haven't
+got anything against the Milburns."
+
+"Name!" ejaculated Mrs Murchison. "Now long ago was it the Episcopalians
+began that sewing-circle business for the destitute clergy of
+Saskatchewan?"
+
+"Mother!" put in Abby, with deprecation.
+
+"Well, I won't be certain about the clergy, but I tell you it had to do
+with Saskatchewan, for that I remember! And anyhow, the first meeting
+was held at the Milburns'--members lent their drawing-rooms. Well, Mrs
+Leveret and Mrs Delarue went to the meeting--they were very thick just
+then, the Leverets and the Delarues. They were so pleased to be going
+that they got there about five minutes too soon, and they were the first
+to come. Well, they rang the bell and in they went. The girl showed them
+into the front drawing-room and asked them to sit down. And there in the
+back drawing-room sat Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin, AND NEVER SPOKE TO
+THEM! Took not the smallest notice, any more than if they had been stray
+cats--not so much! Their own denomination, mind you, too! And there they
+might have been sitting still if Mrs Leveret hadn't had the spirit to
+get up and march out. No thank you. No Milburns for me."
+
+Lorne watched his mother with twinkling eyes till she finished.
+
+"Well, Mother, after that, if it was going to be a sewing circle I think
+I'd send an excuse," he said, "but maybe they won't be so mean at a
+dance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Octavius Milburn would not, I think, have objected to being considered,
+with relation to his own line in life, a representative man. He would
+have been wary to claim it, but if the stranger had arrived unaided
+at this view of him, he would have been inclined to think well of the
+stranger's power of induction. That is what he was--a man of averages,
+balances, the safe level, no more disposed to an extravagant opinion
+than to wear one side whisker longer than the other. You would take him
+any day, especially on Sunday in a silk hat, for the correct medium:
+by his careful walk with the spring in it, his shrewd glance with
+the caution in it, his look of being prepared to account for himself,
+categorically, from head to foot. He was fond of explaining, in
+connection with an offer once made him to embark his capital in Chicago,
+that he preferred a fair living under his own flag to a fortune under
+the Stars and Stripes. There we have the turn of his mind, convertible
+into the language of bookkeeping, a balance struck, with the profit on
+the side of the flag, the patriotic equivalent in good sound terms of
+dollars and cents. With this position understood, he was prepared to
+take you up on any point of comparison between the status and privileges
+of a subject and a citizen--the political MORALE of a monarchy and a
+republic--the advantage of life on this and the other side of the line.
+There was nothing he liked better to expatiate upon, with that
+valuable proof of his own sincerity always at hand for reference
+and illustration. His ideal was life in a practical, go-ahead,
+self-governing colony, far enough from England actually to be disabused
+of her inherited anachronisms and make your own tariff, near enough
+politically to keep your securities up by virtue of her protection. He
+was extremely satisfied with his own country; one saw in his talk the
+phenomenon of patriotism in double bloom, flower within flower. I have
+mentioned his side whiskers: he preserved that facial decoration of
+the Prince Consort; and the large steel engraving that represents Queen
+Victoria in a flowing habit and the Prince in a double-breasted frock
+coat and a stock, on horseback, hung over the mantelpiece in his
+drawing-room. If the outer patriotism was a little vague, the inner had
+vigour enough. Canada was a great place. Mr Milburn had been born in the
+country, and had never "gone over" to England; Canada was good enough
+for him. He was born, one might say, in the manufacturing interest, and
+inherited the complacent and Conservative political views of a tenderly
+nourished industry. Mr Milburn was of those who were building up the
+country; with sufficient protection he was prepared to go on doing it
+long and loyally; meanwhile he admired the structure from all points of
+view. As President of the Elgin Chamber of Commerce, he was enabled once
+a year to produce no end of gratifying figures; he was fond of wearing
+on such occasions the national emblem in a little enamelled maple leaf;
+and his portrait and biography occupied a full page in a sumptuous
+work entitled Canadians of Today, sold by subscription, where he was
+described as the "Father of the Elgin Boiler."
+
+Mr and Mrs Milburn were in the drawing-room to receive their young
+guests, a circumstance which alone imparted a distinction to the
+entertainment. At such parties the appearance of the heads of the house
+was by no means invariable; frequently they went to bed. The simple
+explanation was that the young people could stand late hours and be none
+the worse next day; their elders had to be more careful if they wanted
+to get down to business. Moreover, as in all new societies, between the
+older and the younger generation there was a great gulf fixed, across
+which intercourse was difficult. The sons and daughters, born to
+different circumstances, evolved their own conventions, the old people
+used the ways and manners of narrower days; one paralysed the other. It
+might be gathered from the slight tone of patronage in the address
+of youth to age that the advantage lay with the former; but
+polite conversation, at best, was sustained with discomfort. Such
+considerations, however, were far from operating with the Milburns.
+Mrs Milburn would have said that they were characteristic of quite a
+different class of people; and so they were.
+
+No one would have supposed, from the way in which the family disposed
+itself in the drawing-room, that Miss Filkin had only just finished
+making the claret cup, or that Dora had been cutting sandwiches till
+the last minute, or that Mrs Milburn had been obliged to have a distinct
+understanding with the maid--Mrs Milburn's servants were all "maids,"
+even the charwoman, who had buried three husbands--on the subject of
+wearing a cap when she answered the door. Mrs Milburn sat on a chair
+she had worked herself, occupied with something in the new stitch; Dora
+performed lightly at the piano; Miss Filkin dipped into Selections
+from the Poets of the Century, placed as remotely as possible from the
+others; Mr Milburn, with his legs crossed, turned and folded a Toronto
+evening paper. Mrs Milburn had somewhat objected to the evening paper
+in the drawing-room. "Won't you look at a magazine, Octavius?" she said;
+but Mr Milburn advanced the argument that it removed "any appearance
+of stiffness," and prevailed. It was impossible to imagine a group more
+disengaged from the absurd fuss that precedes a party among some classes
+of people; indeed, when Mr Lorne Murchison arrived--like the unfortunate
+Mrs Leveret and Mrs Delarue, he was the first--they looked almost
+surprised to see him.
+
+Lorne told his mother afterward that he thought, in that embarrassing
+circumstance, of Mrs Leveret and Mrs Delarue, and they laughed
+consumedly together over his discomforture; but what he felt at the
+moment was not the humour of the situation. To be the very first and
+solitary arrival is nowhere esteemed the happiest fortune, but in
+Elgin a kind of ridiculous humiliation attached to it, a greed for the
+entertainment, a painful unsophistication. A young man of Elgin
+would walk up and down in the snow for a quarter of an hour with the
+thermometer at zero to escape the ignominy of it; Lorne Murchison would
+have so walked. Our young man was potentially capable of not minding,
+by next morning he didn't mind; but immediately he was fast tied in the
+cobwebs of the common prescription, and he made his way to each of the
+points of the compass of the Milburns' drawing-room to shake hands,
+burning to the ears. Before he subsided into a chair near Mr Milburn he
+grasped the collar of his dress coat on each side and drew it forward,
+a trick he had with his gown in court, a nervous and mechanical
+action. Dora, who continued to play, watched him over the piano with
+an amusement not untinged with malice. She was a tall fair girl, with
+several kinds of cleverness. She did her hair quite beautifully, and she
+had a remarkable, effective, useful reticence. Her father declared
+that Dora took in a great deal more than she ever gave out--an
+accomplishment, in Mr Milburn's eyes, on the soundest basis. She looked
+remarkably pretty and had remarkably good style, and as she proceeded
+with her mazurka she was thinking, "He has never been asked here before:
+how perfectly silly he must feel coming so early!" Presently as Lorne
+grew absorbed in talk and forgot his unhappy chance, she further
+reflected, "I don't think I've ever seen him till now in evening
+dress; it does make him a good figure." This went on behind a faultless
+coiffure and an expression almost classical in its detachment; but if
+Miss Milburn could have thought on a level with her looks I, for one,
+would hesitate to take any liberty with her meditations.
+
+However, the bell began to ring with the briefest intermissions, the
+maid in the cap to make constant journeys. She opened the door with a
+welcoming smile, having practically no deportment to go with the cap:
+human nature does not freeze readily anywhere. Dora had to leave the
+piano: Miss Filkin decided that when fifteen had come she would change
+her chair. Fifteen soon came, the young ladies mostly in light silks
+or muslins cut square, not low, in the neck, with half-sleeves. This
+moderation was prescribed in Elgin, where evening dress was more a
+matter of material than of cut, a thing in itself symbolical if it were
+desirable to consider social evolution here. For middle-aged ladies high
+necks and long sleeves were usual; and Mrs Milburn might almost have
+been expected to appear thus, in a nicely made black broche, perhaps. It
+was recognized as like Mrs Milburn, in keeping with her unbending ideas,
+to wear a dress cut as square as any young lady's, with just a little
+lace let in, of a lavender stripe. The young men were nearly all in the
+tailor's convention for their sex the world over, with here and there
+a short coat that also went to church; but there some departures from
+orthodoxy in the matter of collars and ties, and where white bows were
+achieved, I fear none of the wearers would have dreamed of defending
+them from the charge of being ready-made.
+
+It was a clear, cold January night and everybody, as usual, walked to
+the party; the snow creaked and ground underfoot, one could hear the
+arriving steps in the drawing-room. They stamped and scraped to get rid
+of it in the porch, and hurried through the hall, muffled figures in
+overshoes, to emerge from an upstairs bedroom radiant, putting a last
+touch to hair and button hole, smelling of the fresh winter air. Such
+gatherings usually consisted entirely of bachelors and maidens, with
+one or two exceptions so recently yoked together that they had not yet
+changed the plane of existence; married people, by general consent,
+left these amusements to the unculled. They had, as I have hinted,
+more serious preoccupations, "something else to do"; nobody thought of
+inviting them. Nobody, that is, but Mrs Milburn and a few others of her
+way of thinking, who saw more elegance and more propriety in a mixture.
+On this occasion she had asked her own clergyman, the pleasant-faced
+rector of St Stephen's, and Mrs Emmett, who wore that pathetic
+expression of fragile wives and mothers who have also a congregation
+at their skirts. Walter Winter was there, too. Mr Winter had the
+distinction of having contested South Fox in the Conservative interest
+three time unsuccessfully. Undeterred, he went on contesting things:
+invariably beaten, he invariably came up smiling and ready to try
+again. His imperturbability was a valuable asset; he never lost heart or
+dreamed of retiring from the arena, nor did he ever cease to impress
+his party as being their most useful and acceptable representative.
+His business history was chequered and his exact financial equivalent
+uncertain, but he had tremendously the air of a man of affairs; as
+the phrase went, he was full of politics, the plain repository of deep
+things. He had a shrewd eye, a double chin, and a bluff, crisp, jovial
+manner of talking as he lay back in an armchair with his legs crossed
+and played with his watch chain, an important way of nodding assent,
+a weighty shake of denial. Voting on purely party lines, the town had
+later rewarded his invincible expectation by electing him Mayor, and
+then provided itself with unlimited entertainment by putting in a
+Liberal majority on his council, the reports of the weekly sittings
+being constantly considered as good as a cake walk. South Fox, as people
+said, was not a healthy locality for Conservatives. Yet Walter Winter
+wore a look of remarkable hardiness. He had also tremendously the air
+of a dark horse, the result both of natural selection and careful
+cultivation. Even his political enemies took it kindly when he "got in"
+for Mayor, and offered him amused congratulations. He made a personal
+claim on their cordiality, which was not the least of his political
+resources. Nature had fitted him to public uses; the impression
+overflowed the ranks of his own supporters and softened asperity among
+his opponents. Illustration lies, at this moment close to us. They had
+not been in the same room a quarter of an hour before he was in deep
+and affectionate converse with Lorne Murchison, whose party we know,
+and whose political weight was increasing, as this influence often does,
+with a rapidity out of proportion with his professional and general
+significance.
+
+"It's a pity now," said Mr Winter, with genial interest, "you can't get
+that Ormiston defence into your own hands. Very useful thing for you."
+
+The younger man shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat. It is one
+thing to entertain a private vision and another to see it materialized
+on other lips.
+
+"Oh I'd like it well enough," he said, "but it's out of the question, of
+course. I'm too small potatoes."
+
+"There's a lot of feeling for old Ormiston. Folks out there on the
+Reserve don't know how to show it enough."
+
+"They've shown it a great deal too much. We don't want to win on
+'feeling,' or have it said either. And we were as near as possible
+having to take the case to the Hamilton Assizes."
+
+"I guess you were--I guess you were." Mr Winter's suddenly increased
+gravity expressed his appreciation of the danger. "I saw Lister of the
+Bank the day they heard from Toronto--rule refused. Never saw a man more
+put out. Seems they considered the thing as good as settled. General
+opinion was it would go to Hamilton, sure. Well I don't know how you
+pulled it off, but it was a smart piece of work, sir."
+
+Lorne encountered Mr Winter's frank smile with an expression of crude
+and rather stolid discomfort. It had a base of indignation, corrected by
+a concession to the common idea that most events, with an issue pendent,
+were the result of a smart piece of work: a kind of awkward shrug was in
+it. He had no desire to be unpleasant to Walter Winter--on the contrary.
+Nevertheless, an uncompromising line came on each side of his mouth with
+his reply.
+
+"As far as I know," he said, "the application was dismissed on its
+demerits."
+
+"Of course it was," said Mr Winter good-humouredly. "You don't need to
+tell me that. Well, now, this looks like dancing. Miss Filkin, I see, is
+going to oblige on the piano. Now I wonder whether I'm going to get Miss
+Dora to give me a waltz or not."
+
+Chairs and table were in effect being pushed back, and folding doors
+opened which disclosed another room prepared for this relaxation. Miss
+Filkin began to oblige vigorously on the piano, Miss Dora granted Mr
+Winter's request, which he made with elaborate humour as an impudent old
+bachelor whom "the boys" would presently take outside and kill. Lorne
+watched him make it, envying him his assurance; and Miss Milburn was
+aware that he watched and aware that he envied. The room filled with
+gaiety and movement: Mr Milburn, sidling dramatically along the wall to
+escape the rotatory couples, admonished Mr Murchison to get a partner.
+He withdrew himself from the observation of Miss Dora and Mr Winter, and
+approached a young lady on a sofa, who said "With very great pleasure."
+When the dance was over he re-established the young lady on the sofa
+and fanned her with energy. Looking across the room, he saw that
+Walter Winter, seated beside Dora, was fanning himself. He thought
+it disgusting and, for some reason which he did not pause to explore,
+exactly like Winter. He had met Miss Milburn once or twice before
+without seeing her in any special way: here, at home, the centre of the
+little conventions that at once protected and revealed her, conventions
+bound up in the impressive figures of her mother and her aunt, she had
+a new interest, and all the attraction of that which is not easily come
+by. It is also possible that although Lorne had met her before, she
+had not met him; she was meeting him now for the first time, as she
+sat directly opposite and talked very gracefully to Walter Winter.
+Addressing Walter Winter, Lorne was the object of her pretty remarks.
+While Mr Winter had her superficial attention, he was the bland medium
+which handed her on. Her consciousness was fixed on young Mr Murchison,
+quite occupied with him: she could not imagine why they had not asked
+him long ago; he wasn't exactly "swell," but you could see he was
+somebody. So already she figured the potential distinction in the set
+of his shoulders and the carriage of his head. It might have been
+translated in simple terms of integrity and force by anyone who looked
+for those things. Miss Milburn was incapable of such detail, but she saw
+truly enough in the mass.
+
+Lorne, on the opposite sofa, looked at her across the town's traditions
+of Milburn exclusiveness. Oddly enough, at this moment when he might
+have considered that he had overcome them, they seemed to gather force,
+exactly in his line of vision. He had never before been so near Dora
+Milburn, and he had never before perceived her so remote. He had a sense
+of her distance beyond those few yards of carpet quite incompatible
+with the fact. It weighed upon him, but until she sent him a sudden
+unexpected smile he did not know how heavily. It was a dissipating
+smile; nothing remained before it. Lorne carefully restored his
+partner's fan, bowed before her, and went straight across the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+It is determined with something like humour that communities very young
+should occupy themselves almost altogether with matters of grave and
+serious import. The vision of life at that period is no doubt unimpeded
+and clear; its conditions offer themselves with a certain nakedness and
+force, both as to this world and to that which is to come. The town of
+Elgin thus knew two controlling interests--the interest of politics
+and the interest of religion. Both are terms we must nevertheless
+circumscribe. Politics wore a complexion strictly local, provincial,
+or Dominion. The last step of France in Siam, the disputed influence of
+Germany in the Persian Gulf, the struggle of the Powers in China were
+not matters greatly talked over in Elgin; the theatre of European
+diplomacy had no absorbed spectators here. Nor can I claim that interest
+in the affairs of Great Britain was in any way extravagant.
+
+A sentiment of affection for the reigning house certainly prevailed. It
+was arbitrary, rococo, unrelated to current conditions as a tradition
+sung down in a ballad, an anachronism of the heart, cherished through
+long rude lifetimes for the beauty and poetry of it--when you consider,
+beauty and poetry can be thought of in this. Here was no Court aiding
+the transmutation of the middle class, no King spending money; here
+were no picturesque contacts of Royalty and the people, no pageantry,
+no blazonry of the past, nothing to lift the heart but an occasional
+telegram from the monarch expressing, upon an event of public
+importance, a suitable emotion. Yet the common love for the throne
+amounted to a half-ashamed enthusiasm that burned with something like
+a sacred flame, and was among the things not ordinarily alluded to,
+because of the shyness that attaches to all feeling that cannot be
+justified in plain terms. A sentiment of affection for the reigning
+house certainly prevailed; but it was a thing by itself. The fall of
+a British Government would hardly fail to excite comment, and the
+retirement of a Prime Minister would induce both the Mercury and the
+Express to publish a biographical sketch of him, considerably shorter
+than the leader embodying the editor's views as to who should get
+the electric light contract. But the Government might become the sole
+employer of labour in those islands, Church and school might part
+company for ever, landlords might be deprived of all but compassionate
+allowances and, except for the degree of extravagance involved in these
+propositions, they would hardly be current in Elgin. The complications
+of England's foreign policy were less significant still. It was
+recognized dimly that England had a foreign policy, more or less had
+to have it, as they would have said in Elgin; it was part of the huge
+unnecessary scheme of things for which she was responsible--unnecessary
+from Elgin's point of view as a father's financial obligations might be
+to a child he had parted with at birth. It all lay outside the facts
+of life, far beyond the actual horizon, like the affairs of a distant
+relation from whom one has nothing to hope, not even personal contact,
+and of whose wealth and greatness one does not boast much, because of
+the irony involved. Information upon all these matters was duly put
+before Elgin every morning in the telegrams of the Toronto papers; the
+information came, until the other day, over cables to New York and was
+disseminated by American news agencies. It was, therefore, not devoid of
+bias; but if this was perceived it was by no means thought a matter
+for protesting measures, especially as they would be bound to involve
+expense. The injury was too vague, too remote, to be more than sturdily
+discounted by a mental attitude. Belief in England was in the blood,
+it would not yield to the temporary distortion of facts in the
+newspapers--at all events, it would not yield with a rush. Whether there
+was any chance of insidious sapping was precisely what the country was
+too indifferent to discover. Indifferent, apathetic, self-centred--until
+whenever, down the wind, across the Atlantic, came the faint far music
+of the call to arms. Then the old dog of war that has his kennel in
+every man rose and shook himself, and presently there would be a
+baying! The sense of kinship, lying too deep for the touch of ordinary
+circumstance, quickened to that; and in a moment "we" were fighting,
+"we" had lost or won.
+
+Apart, however, from the extraordinary, the politics of Elgin's daily
+absorption were those of the town, the Province, the Dominion. Centres
+of small circumference yield a quick swing; the concern of the average
+intelligent Englishman as to the consolidation of his country's
+interests in the Yangtse Valley would be a languid manifestation beside
+that of an Elgin elector in the chances of an appropriation for a
+new court house. The single mind is the most fervid: Elgin had few
+distractions from the question of the court house or the branch line
+to Clayfield. The arts conspired to be absent; letters resided at the
+nearest university city; science was imported as required, in practical
+improvements. There was nothing, indeed, to interfere with Elgin's
+attention to the immediate, the vital, the municipal: one might almost
+read this concentration of interest in the white dust of the rambling
+streets, and the shutters closed against it. Like other movements of the
+single mind, it had something of the ferocious, of the inflexible, of
+the unintelligent; but it proudly wore the character of the go-ahead
+and, as Walter Winter would have pointed out to you, it had granted
+eleven bonuses to "capture" sound commercial concerns in six years.
+
+In wholesome fear of mistake, one would hesitate to put church matters
+either before or after politics among the preoccupations of Elgin. It
+would be safer and more indisputable to say that nothing compared with
+religion but politics, and nothing compared with politics but religion.
+In offering this proposition also we must think of our dimensions. There
+is a religious fervour in Oxford, in Mecca, in Benares, and the sign
+for these ideas is the same; we have to apply ourselves to the
+interpretation. In Elgin religious fervour was not beautiful, or
+dramatic, or self-immolating; it was reasonable. You were perhaps
+your own first creditor; after that your debt was to your Maker. You
+discharged this obligation in a spirit of sturdy equity: if the children
+didn't go to Sunday school you knew the reason why. The habit of church
+attendance was not only a basis of respectability, but practically the
+only one: a person who was "never known to put his head inside a church
+door" could not be more severely reprobated, by Mrs Murchison at all
+events. It was the normal thing, the thing which formed the backbone of
+life, sustaining to the serious, impressive to the light, indispensable
+to the rest, and the thing that was more than any of these, which you
+can only know when you stand in the churches among the congregations.
+Within its prescribed limitations it was for many the intellectual
+exercise, for more the emotional lift, and for all the unfailing
+distraction of the week. The repressed magnetic excitement in gatherings
+of familiar faces, fellow-beings bound by the same convention to the
+same kind of behaviour, is precious in communities where the human
+interest is still thin and sparse. It is valuable in itself, and it
+produces an occasional detached sensation. There was the case, in Dr
+Drummond's church, of placid-faced, saintly old Sandy MacQuhot, the
+epileptic. It used to be a common regret with Lorne Murchison that as
+sure as he was allowed to stay away from church Sandy would have a
+fit. That was his little boy's honesty; the elders enjoyed the fit and
+deprecated the disturbance.
+
+There was a simple and definite family feeling within communions. "They
+come to our church" was the argument of first force whether for calling
+or for charity. It was impossible to feel toward a Congregationalist or
+an Episcopalian as you felt toward one who sang the same hymns and
+sat under the same admonition week by week, year in and year out, as
+yourself. "Wesleyans, are they?" a lady of Knox Church would remark of
+the newly arrived, in whom her interest was suggested. "Then let the
+Wesleyans look after them." A pew-holder had a distinct status; an
+"adherent" enjoyed friendly consideration, especially if he adhered
+faithfully; and stray attendants from other congregations were treated
+with punctilious hospitality, places being found for them in the Old
+Testament, as if they could hardly be expected to discover such things
+for themselves. The religious interest had also the strongest domestic
+character in quite another sense from that of the family prayers which
+Dr Drummond was always enjoying. "Set your own house in order and then
+your own church" was a wordless working precept in Elgin. Threadbare
+carpet in the aisles was almost as personal a reproach as a hole
+under the dining-room table; and self-respect was barely possible to a
+congregation that sat in faded pews. The minister's gown even was the
+subject of scrutiny as the years went on. It was an expensive thing to
+buy, but an oyster supper would do it and leave something over for the
+organ. Which brings us to the very core and centre of these activities,
+their pivot, their focus and, in a human sense, their inspiration--the
+minister himself.
+
+The minister was curiously special among a people so general; he was in
+a manner raised in life on weekdays as he was in the pulpit on Sundays.
+He had what one might call prestige; some form of authority still
+survived in his person, to which the spiritual democracy he presided
+over gave a humorous, voluntary assent. He was supposed to be a person
+of undetermined leisure--what was writing two sermons a week to earn
+your living by?--and he was probably the more reverend, or the more
+revered, from the fact that he was in the house all day. A particular
+importance attached to everything he said and did; he was a person whose
+life answered different springs, and was sustained on quite another
+principle than that of supply and demand. The province of public
+criticism was his; but his people made up for the meekness with which
+they sat under it by a generous use of the corresponding privilege in
+private. Comments upon the minister partook of hardiness; it was as
+if the members were determined to live up to the fact that the
+office-bearers could reduce his salary if they liked. Needless to say,
+they never did like. Congregations stood loyally by their pastors, and
+discussion was strictly intramural. If the Methodists handed theirs on
+at the end of three years with a breath of relief, they exhaled it
+among themselves; after all, for them it was a matter of luck. The
+Presbyterians, as in the case of old Mr Jamesion of St Andrew's, held
+on till death, pulling a long upper lip: election was not a thing to be
+trifled with in heaven or upon earth.
+
+It will be imagined whether Dr Drummond did not see in these conditions
+his natural and wholesome element, whether he did not fit exactly in.
+The God he loved to worship as Jehovah had made him a beneficent despot
+and given him, as it were, a commission. If the temporal power had
+charged him to rule an eastern province, he would have brought much the
+same qualities to the task. Knox Church, Elgin, was his dominion, its
+moral and material affairs his jealous interest, and its legitimate
+expansion his chief pride. In "anniversary" sermons, which he always
+announced the Sunday before, he seldom refrained from contrasting
+the number on the roll of church membership, then and now, with the
+particular increase in the year just closed. If the increase
+was satisfactory, he made little comment beyond the duty of
+thanksgiving--figures spoke for themselves. If it was otherwise Dr
+Drummond's displeasure was not a thing he would conceal. He would wing
+it eloquently on the shaft of his grief that the harvest had been so
+light; but he would more than hint the possibility that the labourers
+had been few. Most important among his statistics was the number of
+young communicants. Wanderers from other folds he admitted, with a
+not wholly satisfied eye upon their early theological training, and to
+persons duly accredited from Presbyterian churches elsewhere he gave the
+right hand of fellowship; but the young people of his own congregation
+were his chief concern always, and if a gratifying number of these had
+failed to "come forward" during the year, the responsibility must
+lie somewhere. Dr Drummond was willing to take his own share; "the
+ministrations of this pulpit" would be more than suspected of having
+come short, and the admission would enable him to tax the rest upon
+parents and Bible-class teachers with searching effect. The congregation
+would go gloomily home to dinner, and old Sandy MacQuhot would remark
+to his wife, "It's hard to say why will the Doctor get himself in sic
+a state aboot mere numbers. We're told 'where two or three are gathered
+together.' But the Doctor's all for a grand congregation."
+
+Knox Church, under such auspices could hardly fail to enlarge her
+borders; but Elgin enlarged hers faster. Almost before you knew where
+you were there spread out the district of East Elgin, all stacks of tall
+chimneys and rows of little houses. East Elgin was not an attractive
+locality; it suffered from inundation sometimes, when the river was in
+spring flood; it gave unresentful room to a tannery. It was the home of
+dubious practices at the polls, and the invariable hunting-ground for
+domestic servants. Nevertheless, in the view of Knox Church, it could
+not bear a character wholly degraded; too many Presbyterians, Scotch
+foremen, and others, had their respectable residence there. For these it
+was a far cry to Dr Drummond in bad weather, and there began to be talk
+of hiring the East Elgin schoolhouse for Sunday exercises if suitable
+persons could be got to come over from Knox Church and lead them. I do
+not know who was found to broach the matter to Dr Drummond; report says
+his relative and housekeeper, Mrs Forsyth, who perhaps might do it under
+circumstances of strategical advantage. Mrs Forsyth, or whoever it was,
+had her reply in the hidden terms of an equation--was it any farther for
+the people of East Elgin to walk to hear him preach than for him to walk
+to minister to the people of East Elgin, which he did quite once a week,
+and if so, how much? Mrs Forsyth, or whoever it was, might eliminate
+the unknown quantity. It cannot be said that Dr Drummond discouraged the
+project; he simply did not mention it and as it was known to have been
+communicated to him this represented effectively the policy of the
+closed door. He found himself even oftener in East Elgin, walking about
+on his pastoral errands with a fierce briskness of aspect and a sharp
+inquiring eye, before which one might say the proposition slunk
+away. Meanwhile, the Methodists who, it seemed, could tolerate
+decentralization, or anything short of round dances, opened a chapel
+with a cheerful sociable, and popularized the practice of backsliding
+among those for whom the position was theologically impossible. Good
+Presbyterians in East Elgin began to turn into makeshift Methodists. The
+Doctor missed certain occupants of the gallery seats and felt the logic
+of circumstances. Here we must all yield, and the minister concealed
+his discomfiture in a masterly initiative. The matter came up again at
+a meeting of the church managers, brought up by Dr Drummond, who had
+the satisfaction of hearing that a thing put into the Doctor's hands was
+already half done. In a very few weeks it was entirely done. The use
+of the schoolhouse was granted through Dr Drummond's influence with the
+Board free of charge; and to understand the triumph of this it should be
+taken into account that three of the trustees were Wesleyans. Services
+were held regularly, certain of Dr Drummond's elders officiating; and
+the conventicle in the schoolhouse speedily became known as Knox Church
+Mission. It grew and prospered. The first night "I to the hills will
+lift mine eyes" went up from East Elgin on the uplifting tune that
+belongs to it, the strayed came flocking back.
+
+This kind never go forth again; once they refind the ark of the covenant
+there they abide. In the course of time it became a question of a better
+one, and money was raised locally to build it. Dr Drummond pronounced
+the first benediction in Knox Mission Church, and waited, well knowing
+human nature in its Presbyterian aspect, for the next development. It
+came, and not later than he anticipated, in the form of a prayer to Knox
+Church for help to obtain the services of a regularly ordained minister.
+Dr Drummond had his guns ready: he opposed the application; where a
+regularly ordained minister was already at the disposal of those who
+chose to walk a mile and a half to hear him, the luxury of more locally
+consecrated services should be at the charge of the locality. He himself
+was willing to spend and be spent in the spiritual interests of East
+Elgin; that was abundantly proven; what he could not comfortably
+tolerate was the deviation of congregational funds, the very blood of
+the body of belief, into other than legitimate channels. He fought
+for his view with all his tactician's resources, putting up one
+office-bearer after another to endorse it but the matter was decided at
+the general yearly meeting of the congregation; and the occasion showed
+Knox Church in singular sympathy with its struggling offspring. Dr
+Drummond for the first time in his ministry, was defeated by his people.
+It was less a defeat than a defence, an unexpected rally round the
+corporate right to direct corporate activities; and the congregation was
+so anxious to wound the minister's feelings as little as possible that
+the grant in aid of the East Elgin Mission was embodied in a motion to
+increase Dr Drummond's salary by two hundred and fifty dollars a year.
+The Doctor with a wry joke, swallowed his gilded pill, but no coating
+could dissimulate its bitterness, and his chagrin was plain for long.
+The issue with which we are immediately concerned is that three months
+later Knox Church Mission called to minister to it the Reverend Hugh
+Finlay, a young man from Dumfriesshire and not long out. Dr Drummond had
+known beforehand what their choice would be. He had brought Mr Finlay to
+occupy Knox Church pulpit during his last July and August vacation,
+and Mrs Forsyth had reported that such midsummer congregations she
+had simply never worshipped with. Mrs Forsyth was an excellent hand at
+pressed tongue and a wonder at knitted counterpanes, but she had not
+acquired tact and never would.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The suggestion that the Reverend Hugh Finlay preached from the pulpit
+of Knox Church "better sermons" than its permanent occupant, would have
+been justly considered absurd, and nobody pronounced it. The church was
+full, as Mrs Forsyth observed, on these occasions; but there were many
+other ways of accounting for that. The Murchisons, as a family, would
+have been the last to make such an admission. The regular attendance
+might have been, as much as anything, out of deference to the wishes
+of the Doctor himself, who invariably and sternly hoped, in his last
+sermon, that no stranger occupying his place would have to preach to
+empty pews. He was thinking, of course, of old Mr Jamieson with whom he
+occasionally exchanged and whose effect on the attendance had not failed
+to reach him. With regard to Mr Jamieson he was compelled, in the end,
+to resort to tactics: he omitted to announce the Sunday before that his
+venerable neighbour would preach, and the congregation, outwitted,
+had no resource but to sustain the beard-wagging old gentleman through
+seventhly to the finish. There came a time when the dear human Doctor
+also omitted to announce that Mr Finlay would preach, but for other
+reasons, meanwhile, as Mrs Forsyth said, he had no difficulty in
+conjuring a vacation congregation for his young substitute. They
+came trooping, old and young. Mr and Mrs Murchison would survey their
+creditable family rank with a secret compunction, remembering its
+invariable gaps at other times, and then resolutely turn to the praise
+of God with the reflection that one means to righteousness was as
+blessed as another. They themselves never missed a Sunday, and as seldom
+failed to remark on the way back that it was all very interesting, but
+Mr Finlay couldn't drive it home like the Doctor. There were times,
+sparse and special occasions, when the Doctor himself made one of the
+congregation. Then he would lean back luxuriously in the corner of
+his own pew, his wiry little form half-lost in the upholstery his
+arms folded, his knees crossed, his face all humorous indulgence; yes,
+humorous. At the announcement of the text a twinkle would lodge in the
+shrewd grey eyes and a smile but half-suppressed would settle about the
+corners of the flexible mouth: he knew what the young fellow there would
+be at. And as the young fellow proceeded, his points would be weighed to
+the accompaniment of the Doctor's pendent foot, which moved perpetually,
+judiciously; while the smile sometimes deepened, sometimes lapsed, since
+there were moments when any young fellow had to be taken seriously.
+It was an attitude which only the Doctor was privileged to adopt thus
+outwardly; but in private it was imitated all up and down the aisles,
+where responsible heads of families sat considering the quality of the
+manna that was offered them. When it fell from the lips of Mr Finlay the
+verdict was, upon the whole, very favourable, as long as there was no
+question of comparison with the Doctor.
+
+There could be, indeed, very little question of such comparison. There
+was a generation between them and a school, and to that you had to add
+every set and cast of mind and body that can make men different. Dr
+Drummond, in faith and practice, moved with precision along formal and
+implicit lines; his orbit was established, and his operation within
+it as unquestionable as the simplest exhibit of nature. He took in a
+wonderful degree the stamp of the teaching of his adolescent period; not
+a line was missing nor a precept; nor was the mould defaced by a single
+wavering tendency of later date. Religious doctrine was to him a thing
+for ever accomplished, to be accepted or rejected as a whole. He taught
+eternal punishment and retribution, reconciling both with Divine love
+and mercy; he liked to defeat the infidel with the crashing question,
+"Who then was the architect of the Universe?" The celebrated among such
+persons he pursued to their deathbeds; Voltaire and Rousseau owed their
+reputation, with many persons in Knox Church, to their last moments and
+to Dr Drummond. He had a triumphant invective which drew the mind from
+chasms in logic, and a tender sense of poetic beauty which drew it, when
+he quoted great lines, from everything else. He loved the euphony of the
+Old Testament; his sonorous delivery would lift a chapter from Isaiah to
+the height of ritual, and every Psalm he read was a Magnificat whether
+he would or no. The warrior in him was happy among the Princes of
+Issachar; and the parallels he would find for modern events in the
+annals of Judah and of Israel were astounding. Yet he kept a sharp eye
+upon the daily paper, and his reference to current events would often
+give his listeners an audacious sense of up-to-dateness which might have
+been easily discounted by the argument they illustrated. The survivors
+of a convulsion of nature, for instance, might have learned from his
+lips the cause and kind of their disaster traced back forcibly to
+local acquiescence in iniquity, and drawn unflinchingly from the text,
+"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." The militant history
+of his Church was a passion with him; if ever he had to countenance
+canonization he would have led off with Jenny Geddes. "A tremendous
+Presbyterian" they called him in the town. To hear him give out a single
+psalm, and sing it with his people, would convince anybody of that.
+There was a choir, of course, but to the front pews, at all events, Dr
+Drummond's leading was more important than the choir's. It was a note
+of dauntless vigour, and it was plain by the regular forward jerk of his
+surpliced shoulder that his foot was keeping time:
+
+   Where the assemblies of the just
+   And congregations are.
+
+You could not help admiring, and you could not help respecting; you
+were compelled by his natural force and his unqualified conviction, his
+tireless energy and his sterling sort.
+
+It is possible to understand, however, that after sitting for
+twenty-five years under direction so unfailing and so uncompromising,
+the congregation of Knox Church might turn with a moderate curiosity
+to the spiritual indications of the Reverend Hugh Finlay. He was a
+passionate romantic, and his body had shot up into a fitting temple for
+such an inhabitant as his soul. He was a great long fellow, with a shock
+of black hair and deep dreams in his eyes; his head was what people
+called a type, a type I suppose of the simple motive and the noble
+intention, the detached point of view and the somewhat indifferent
+attitude to material things, as it may be humanly featured anywhere. His
+face bore a confusion of ideals; he had the brow of a Covenanter and
+the mouth of Adonais, the flame of religious ardour in his eyes and the
+composure of perceived philosophy on his lips. He was fettered by an
+impenetrable shyness; it was in the pulpit alone that he could expand,
+and then only upon written lines, with hardly a gesture, and the most
+perfunctory glances, at conscientious intervals, toward his hearers.
+A poor creature, indeed, in this respect, Dr Drummond thought him--Dr
+Drummond, who wore an untrammelled surplice which filled like an
+agitated sail in his quick tacks from right to left. "The man loses half
+his points," said Dr Drummond. I doubt whether he did, people followed
+so closely, though Sandy MacQuhot was of the general opinion when he
+said that it would do nobody any harm if Mr Finlay would lift his head
+oftener from the book.
+
+Advena Murchison thought him the probable antitype of an Oxford don. She
+had never seen an Oxford don, but Mr Finlay wore the characteristics
+these schoolmen were dressed in by novelists; and Advena noted with
+delight the ingenuity of fate in casting such a person into the pulpit
+of the Presbyterian Church in a young country. She had her perception of
+comedy in life; till Finlay came she had found nothing so interesting.
+With his arrival, however, other preoccupations fell into their proper
+places.
+
+Finlay, indeed, it may be confessed at once, he and not his message was
+her engrossment from the beginning. The message she took with reverent
+gentleness; but her passionate interest was for the nature upon which
+it travelled, and never for the briefest instant did she confuse these
+emotions. Those who write, we are told transcribe themselves in spite
+of themselves; it is more true of those who preach, for they are also
+candid by profession, and when they are not there is the eye and the
+voice to help to betray them. Hugh Finlay, in the pulpit, made himself
+manifest in all the things that matter to Advena Murchison in the pew;
+and from the pew to the pulpit her love went back with certainty, clear
+in its authority and worshipping the ground of its justification. When
+she bowed her head it was he whom she heard in the language of his
+invocations; his doctrine rode, for her, on a spirit of wide and sweet
+philosophy; in his contemplation of the Deity she saw the man. He had
+those lips at once mobile, governed and patient, upon which genius
+chooses oftenest to rest. As to this, Advena's convictions were so
+private as to be hidden from herself; she never admitted that she
+thought Finlay had it, and in the supreme difficulty of proving anything
+else we may wisely accept her view. But he had something, the subtle
+Celt; he had horizons, lifted lines beyond the common vision, and an eye
+rapt and a heart intrepid; and though for a long time he was unconscious
+of it, he must have adventured there with a happier confidence because
+of her companionship.
+
+From the first Advena knew no faltering or fluttering, none of the baser
+nervous betrayals. It was all one great delight to her, her discovery
+and her knowledge and her love for him. It came to her almost in a
+logical development; it found her grave, calm, and receptive. She had
+even a private formula of gratitude that the thing which happened to
+everybody, and happened to so many people irrelevantly, should arrive
+with her in such a glorious defensible, demonstrable sequence. Toward
+him it gave her a kind of glad secret advantage; he was loved and he was
+unaware. She watched his academic awkwardness in church with the inward
+tender smile of the eternal habile feminine, and when they met she could
+have laughed and wept over his straightened sentences and his difficult
+manner, knowing how little significant they were. With his eyes upon her
+and his words offered to her intelligence, she found herself treating
+his shy formality as the convention it was, a kind of make-believe which
+she would politely and kindly play up to until he should happily forget
+it and they could enter upon simpler relations. She had to play up to it
+for a long time, but her love made her wonderfully clever and patient;
+and of course the day came when she had her reward. Knowing him as she
+did, she remembered the day and the difference it made.
+
+It was toward the end of an afternoon in early April; the discoloured
+snow still lay huddled in the bleaker fence corners. Wide puddles stood
+along the roadsides, reflecting the twigs and branches of the naked
+maples; last year's leaves were thick and wet underfoot, and a soft damp
+wind was blowing. Advena was on her way home and Finlay overtook her.
+He passed her at first, with a hurried silent lifting of his hat; then
+perhaps the deserted street gave a suggestion of unfriendliness to his
+act, or some freshness in her voice stayed him. At all events, he
+waited and joined her, with a word or two about their going in the
+same direction; and they walked along together. He offered her his
+companionship, but he had nothing to say; the silence in which they
+pursued their way was no doubt to him just the embarrassing condition he
+usually had to contend with. To her it seemed pregnant, auspicious; it
+drew something from the low grey lights of the wet spring afternoon and
+the unbound heart-lifting wind; she had a passionate prevision that the
+steps they took together would lead somehow to freedom. They went on in
+that strange bound way, and the day drew away from them till they turned
+a sudden corner, when it lay all along the yellow sky across the river,
+behind a fringe of winter woods, stayed in the moment of its retreat on
+the edge of unvexed landscape. They stopped involuntarily to look, and
+she saw a smile come up from some depth in him.
+
+"Ah, well," he said, as if to himself, "it's something to be in a
+country where the sun still goes down with a thought of the primaeval."
+
+"I think I prefer the sophistication of chimney-pots," she replied.
+"I've always longed to see a sunset in London, with the fog breaking
+over Westminster."
+
+"Then you don't care about them for themselves, sunsets?" he asked, with
+the simplest absence of mind.
+
+"I never yet could see the sun go down, But I was angry in my heart,"
+she said, and this time he looked at her.
+
+"How does it go on?" he said.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Only those two lines stay with me. I feel it that
+way, too. It's the seal upon an act of violence, isn't it, a sunset?
+Something taken from us against our will. It's a hateful reminder, in
+the midst of our delightful volitions, of how arbitrary every condition
+of life is."
+
+"The conditions of business are always arbitrary. Life is a business--we
+have to work at ourselves till it is over. So much cut off and ended it
+is," he said, glancing at the sky again. "If space is the area of life
+and time is its opportunity, there goes a measure of opportunity."
+
+"I wonder," said Advena, "where it goes?"
+
+"Into the void behind time?" he suggested, smiling straight at her.
+
+"Into the texture of the future," she answered, smiling back.
+
+"We might bring it to bear very intelligently on the future, at any
+rate," he returned. "The world is wrapped in destiny, and but revolves
+to roll it out."
+
+"I don't remember that," she said curiously.
+
+"No you couldn't," he laughed outright. "I haven't thought it good
+enough to publish."
+
+"And it isn't the sort of thing," she ventured gaily, "you could put in
+a sermon."
+
+"No, it isn't." They came to a corner of the street which led to Mr
+Finlay's boarding-house. It stretched narrowly to the north and there
+was a good deal more snow on each side of it. They lingered together for
+a moment talking, seizing the new joy in it which was simply the joy of
+his sudden liberation with her consciously pushing away the moment of
+parting; and Finlay's eyes rested once again on the evening sky beyond
+the river.
+
+"I believe you are right and I am a moralizer," he said. "There IS
+pain over there. One thinks a sunset beautiful and impressive, but one
+doesn't look at it long."
+
+Then they separated, and he took the road to the north, which was still
+snowbound, while she went on into the chilly yellow west, with the odd
+sweet illusion that a summer day was dawning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The office of Messrs Fulke, Warner, & Murchison was in Market Street,
+exactly over Scott's drug store. Scott with his globular blue and red
+and green vessels in the window and his soda-water fountain inside; was
+on the ground floor; the passage leading upstairs separated him from
+Mickie, boots and shoes; and beyond Mickie, Elgin's leading tobacconist
+shared his place of business with a barber. The last two contributed
+most to the gaiety of Market Street: the barber with the ribanded pole,
+which stuck out at an angle; the tobacconist with a nobly featured squaw
+in chocolate effigy who held her draperies under her chin with one hand
+and outstretched a packet of cigars with the other.
+
+The passage staircase between Scott's and Mickie's had a hardened look,
+and bore witness to the habit of expectoration; ladies, going up to Dr
+Simmons, held their skirts up and the corners of their mouths down. Dr
+Simmons was the dentist: you turned to the right. The passage itself
+turned to the left, and after passing two doors bearing the law firm's
+designation in black letters on ground glass, it conducted you with
+abruptness to the office of a bicycle agent, and left you there.
+For greater emphasis the name of the firm of Messrs Fulke, Warner &
+Murchison was painted on the windows also; it could be seen from any
+part of the market square, which lay, with the town hall in the middle,
+immediately below. During four days in the week the market square was
+empty. Odds and ends of straw and paper blew about it; an occasional
+pedestrian crossed it diagonally for the short cut to the post-office;
+the town hall rose in the middle, and defied you to take your mind off
+the ugliness of municipal institutions. On the other days it was a scene
+of activity. Farmers' wagons, with the shafts turned in were ranged
+round three sides of it; on a big day they would form into parallel
+lanes and cut the square into sections as well. The produce of all Fox
+County filled the wagons, varying agreeably as the year went round.
+Bags of potatoes leaned against the sidewalk, apples brimmed in bushel
+measures, ducks dropped their twisted necks over the cart wheels; the
+town hall, in this play of colour, stood redeemed. The produce was
+mostly left to the women to sell. On the fourth side of the square
+loads of hay and cordwood demanded the master mind, but small matters of
+fruit, vegetables, and poultry submitted to feminine judgement. The men
+"unhitched," and went away on their own business; it was the wives you
+accosted, as they sat in the middle, with their knees drawn up and their
+skirts tucked close, vigilant in rusty bonnets, if you wished to buy.
+Among them circulated the housewives of Elgin, pricing and comparing and
+acquiring; you could see it all from Dr Simmons's window, sitting in
+his chair that screwed up and down. There was a little difficulty always
+about getting things home; only very ordinary people carried their own
+marketing. Trifling articles, like eggs or radishes, might be smuggled
+into a brown wicker basket with covers; but it did not consort with
+elegance to "trapes" home with anything that looked inconvenient or had
+legs sticking out of it. So that arrangements of mutual obligation had
+to be made: the good woman from whom Mrs Jones had bought her tomatoes
+would take charge of the spring chickens Mrs Jones had bought from
+another good woman just as soon as not, and deliver them at Mrs Jones's
+residence, as under any circumstances she was "going round that way."
+
+It was a scene of activity but not of excitement, or in any sense of
+joy. The matter was too hard an importance; it made too much difference
+on both sides whether potatoes were twelve or fifteen cents a peck.
+The dealers were laconic and the buyers anxious; country neighbours
+exchanged the time of day, but under the pressure of affairs. Now and
+then a lady of Elgin stopped to gossip with another; the countrywomen
+looked on, curious, grim, and a little contemptuous of so much
+demonstration and so many words. Life on an Elgin market day was a
+serious presentment even when the sun shone, and at times when it rained
+or snowed the aesthetic seemed a wholly unjustifiable point of view.
+It was not misery, it was even a difficult kind of prosperity, but the
+margin was small and the struggle plain. Plain, too, it was that here
+was no enterprise of yesterday, no fresh broken ground of dramatic
+promise, but a narrow inheritance of the opportunity to live which
+generations had grasped before. There were bones in the village
+graveyards of Fox County to father all these sharp features; Elgin
+market square, indeed, was the biography of Fox County and, in little,
+the history of the whole Province. The heart of it was there, the
+enduring heart of the new country already old in acquiescence. It was
+the deep root of the race in the land, twisted and unlovely, but holding
+the promise of all. Something like that Lorne Murchison felt about it as
+he stood for a moment in the passage I have mentioned and looked across
+the road. The spectacle never failed to cheer him; he was uniformly in
+gayer spirits, better satisfied with life and more consciously equal to
+what he had to do, on days when the square was full than on days when
+it was empty. This morning he had an elation of his own; it touched
+everything with more vivid reality. The familiar picture stirred a joy
+in him in tune with his private happiness; its undernote came to him
+with a pang as keen. The sense of kinship surged in his heart; these
+were his people, this his lot as well as theirs. For the first time he
+saw it in detachment. Till now he had regarded it with the friendly eyes
+of a participator who looked no further. Today he did look further: the
+whole world invited his eyes, offering him a great piece of luck to look
+through. The opportunity was in his hand which, if he could seize and
+hold, would lift and carry him on. He was as much aware of its potential
+significance as anyone could be, and what leapt in his veins till
+he could have laughed aloud was the splendid conviction of resource.
+Already in the door of the passage he had achieved, from that point he
+looked at the scene before him with an impulse of loyalty and devotion.
+A tenderness seized him for the farmers of Fox County, a throb of
+enthusiasm for the idea they represented, which had become for
+him suddenly moving and pictorial. At that moment his country came
+subjectively into his possession; great and helpless it came into his
+inheritance as it comes into the inheritance of every man who can take
+it, by deed of imagination and energy and love. He held this microcosm
+of it, as one might say, in his hand and looked at it ardently; then he
+took his way across the road.
+
+A tall thickly built young fellow detached himself from a group, smiling
+broadly at the sight of Murchison, and started to meet him.
+
+"Hello, Lorne," he said. He had smiled all the way anticipating the
+encounter. He was obviously in clothes which he did not put on every
+day, but the seriousness of this was counteracted by his hard felt hat,
+which he wore at an angle that disregarded convention.
+
+"Hello, Elmore! You back?"
+
+"That's about it."
+
+"You don't say! Back to stay?"
+
+"Far's I can see. Young Alf's made up his mind to learn the dentist
+business, and the old folks are backin' him; so I don't see but I've got
+to stop on and run the show. Father's gettin' up in years now."
+
+"Why, yes. I suppose he must be. It's a good while since you went West.
+Well, what sort of a country have they got out Swan River way? Booming
+right along?"
+
+"Boom nothing. I don't mean to say there's anything the matter with
+the country; there ain't; but you've got to get up just as early in
+the mornings out there as y'do anywhere, far's I noticed. An' it's a
+lonesome life. Now I AM back I don't know but little old Ontario's good
+enough for me. 'N I hear you've taken up the law, Lorne. Y'always had a
+partiality for it, d'y' remember, up there to the Collegiate? I used to
+think it'd be fine to travel with samples, those days. But you were dead
+gone on the law. 'N by all reports it pans out pretty well don't it?"
+
+The young men had taken their way among the shifting crowd together.
+Lorne Murchison, although there was something too large about him
+for the town's essential stamp, made by contrast, as he threaded the
+desultory groups of country people, a type of the conventional and the
+formed; his companion glanced at him now and then with admiration. The
+values of carriage and of clothes are relative: in Fifth Avenue Lorne
+would have looked countrified, in Piccadilly colonial. Districts are
+imaginable, perhaps not in this world, where the frequenters of even
+those fashionable thoroughfares would attract glances of curiosity
+by their failure to achieve the common standard in such things. Lorne
+Murchison, to dismiss the matter, was well up to the standard of Elgin,
+though he wore his straw hat quite on the back of his head and buried
+both hands in his trousers pockets. His eye was full of pleasant easy
+familiarity with the things he saw, and ready to see larger things; it
+had that beam of active inquiry, curious but never amazed that marks
+the man likely to expand his horizons. Meanwhile he was on capital terms
+with his little world, which seemed to take pleasure in hailing him by
+his Christian name; even morose Jim Webster, who had failed three times
+in groceries, said "Morning, Lorne" with a look of toleration. He moved
+alertly; the poise of his head was sanguine; the sun shone on him; the
+timidest soul came nearer to him. He and Elmore Crow, who walked beside
+him, had gone through the lower forms of the Elgin Collegiate Institute
+together, that really "public" kind of school which has so much to do
+with reassorting the classes of a new country. The Collegiate Institute
+took in raw material and turned out teachers, more teachers than
+anything. The teachers taught, chiefly in rural districts where they
+could save money, and with the money they saved changed themselves into
+doctors, Fellows of the University, mining engineers. The Collegiate
+Institute was a potential melting-pot: you went in as your simple
+opportunities had made you; how you shaped coming out depended upon what
+was hidden in the core of you. You could not in any case be the same
+as your father before you; education in a new country is too powerful
+a stimulant for that, working upon material too plastic and too
+hypothetical; it is not yet a normal force, with an operation to be
+reckoned on with confidence. It is indeed the touchstone for character
+in a new people, for character acquired as apart from that inherited;
+it sometimes reveals surprises. Neither Lorne Murchison nor Elmore Crow
+illustrates this point very nearly. Lorne would have gone into the law
+in any case, since his father was able to send him, and Elmore would
+inevitably have gone back to the crops since he was early defeated by
+any other possibility. Nevertheless, as they walk together in my mind
+along the Elgin market square, the Elgin Collegiate Institute rises
+infallibly behind them, a directing influence and a responsible parent.
+Lorne was telling his great news.
+
+"You don't say!" remarked Elmore in response to it. "Lumbago is it? Pa's
+subject to that too; gets an attack most springs. Mr Fulke'll have to
+lay right up--it's the only thing."
+
+"I'm afraid he will. And Warner never appeared in court in his life."
+
+"What d'ye keep Warner for, then?"
+
+"Oh, he does the conveyancing. He's a good conveyancer, but he isn't
+any pleader and doesn't pretend to be. And it's too late to transfer the
+case; nobody could get to the bottom of it as we have in the time. So it
+falls on me."
+
+"Caesar, his ghost! How d'ye feel about it, Lorne? I'd be scared green.
+Y'don't TALK nervous. Now I bet you get there with both feet."
+
+"I hope to get there," the young lawyer answered; and as he spoke a
+concentration came into his face which drove the elation and everything
+else that was boyish out of it. "It's bigger business than I could have
+expected for another five years. I'm sorry for the old man, though--HE'S
+nervous, if you like. They can hardly keep him in bed. Isn't that
+somebody beckoning to you?"
+
+Elmore looked everywhere except in the right direction among the carts.
+If you had been "to the Collegiate," relatives among the carts selling
+squashes were embarrassing.
+
+"There," his companion indicated.
+
+"It's Mother," replied Mr Crow, with elaborate unconcern; "but I don't
+suppose she's in anything of a hurry. I'll just go along with you far's
+the post-office." He kept his glance carefully from the spot at which
+he was signalled, and a hint of copper colour crawled up the back of his
+neck.
+
+"Oh, but she is. Come along, Elmore; I can go that way."
+
+"It'll be longer for you."
+
+"Not a bit." Lorne cast a shrewd glance at his companion. "And as we're
+passing, you might just introduce me to your mother; see?"
+
+"She won't expect it, Lorne."
+
+"That's all right, my son. She won't refuse to meet a friend of yours."
+He led the way as he spoke to the point of vantage occupied by Mrs Crow,
+followed, with plain reluctance, by her son. She was a frail-looking
+old woman, with a knitted shawl pinned tightly across her chest, and her
+bonnet, in the course of commercial activity, pushed so far back as to
+be almost falling off.
+
+"You might smarten yourself with that change, Elmore," she addressed
+him, ignoring his companion. "There's folks coming back for it.
+Two-dollar bill, wa'n't it? Fifty cents--seventy-five--dollar'n a half.
+That's a Yankee dime, an' you kin march straight back with it. They
+don't pass but for nine cents, as you're old enough to know. Keep
+twenty-five cents for your dinner--you'll get most for the money at the
+Barker House--an' bring me back another quarter. Better go an' get your
+victuals now--it's gone twelve--while they're hot."
+
+Elmore took his instructions without visible demur; and then, as
+Lorne had not seen fit to detach himself, performed the ceremony
+of introduction. As he performed it he drew one foot back and bowed
+himself, which seemed obscurely to facilitate it. The suspicion faded
+out of Mrs Crow's tired old sharp eyes under the formula, and she said
+she was pleased to make our friend's acquaintance.
+
+"Mr Murchison's changed some since the old days at the Collegiate,"
+Elmore explained, "but he ain't any different under his coat. He's
+practisin' the law."
+
+"Lawyers," Mrs Crow observed, "are folks I like to keep away from."
+
+"Quite right, too," responded Lorne, unabashed. "And so you've got my
+friend here back on the farm, Mrs Crow?"
+
+"Well, yes, he's back on the farm, an' when he's wore out his Winnipeg
+clothes and his big ideas, we're lookin' to make him some use." Mrs
+Crow's intention, though barbed, was humorous, and her son grinned
+broadly.
+
+"There's more money in the law," he remarked "once you get a start.
+Here's Mr Murchison goin' to run the Ormiston case; his old man's down
+sick, an' I guess it depends on Lorne now whether Ormiston gets off or
+goes to penitentiary."
+
+Mrs Crow's face tied itself up into criticism as she looked our young
+man up and down. "Depends upon you, does it?" she commented. "Well, all
+I've got to say is it's a mighty young dependence. Coming on next
+week, ain't it? You won't be much older by then. Yes'm," she turned to
+business, "I don't say but what it's high for rhubarb, but there ain't
+another bunch in the market, and won't be for a week yet."
+
+Under cover of this discussion Lorne bade the Crows good morning,
+retreating in the rear of the lady who found the rhubarb high. Mrs
+Crow's drop of acid combined with his saving sense of the humour of it
+to adjust all his courage and his confidence, and with a braver face
+than ever he involuntarily hastened his steps to keep pace with his
+happy chance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+In the wide stretches of a new country there is nothing to bound a local
+excitement, or to impede its transmission at full value. Elgin was a
+manufacturing town in southern Ontario, but they would have known every
+development of the Federal Bank case at the North Pole if there had been
+anybody there to learn. In Halifax they did know it, and in Vancouver,
+B.C., while every hundred miles nearer it warmed as a topic in
+proportion. In Montreal the papers gave it headlines; from Toronto they
+sent special reporters. Of course, it was most of all the opportunity of
+Mr Horace Williams, of the Elgin Express, and of Rawlins, who held all
+the cards in their hands, and played them, it must be said, admirably,
+reducing the Mercury to all sorts of futile expedients to score, which
+the Express would invariably explode with a guffaw of contradiction the
+following day. It was to the Express that the Toronto reporters came for
+details and local colour; and Mr Williams gave them just as much as he
+thought they ought to have and no more. It was the Express that managed,
+while elaborately abstaining from improper comment upon a matter sub
+judice, to feed and support the general conviction of young Ormiston's
+innocence, and thereby win for itself, though a "Grit" paper, wide
+reading in that hotbed of Toryism, Moneida Reservation, while the
+Conservative Mercury, with its reckless sympathy for an old party name,
+made itself criminally liable by reviewing cases of hard dealing by
+the bank among the farmers, and only escaped prosecution by the amplest
+retraction and the most contrite apology. As Mr Williams remarked, there
+was no use in dwelling on the unpopularity of the bank, that didn't need
+pointing out; folks down Moneida way could put any newspaper wise on the
+number of mortgages foreclosed and the rate for secondary loans exacted
+by the bank in those parts. That consideration, no doubt, human nature
+being what it is, contributed the active principle to the feeling so
+widely aroused by the case. We are not very readily the prey to
+emotions of faith in our fellows, especially, perhaps, if we live under
+conditions somewhat hard and narrow; the greater animosity behind is,
+at all events, valuable to give force and relief and staying power to
+a sentiment of generous conviction. But however we may depreciate its
+origin, the conviction was there, widespread in the townships: young
+Ormiston would "get clear"; the case for the defence might be heard over
+every bushel of oats in Elgin market-place.
+
+In Elgin itself opinion was more reserved. There was a general view
+that these bank clerks were fast fellows, and a tendency to contrast the
+habits and the pay of such dashing young men, an exercise which ended
+in a not unnatural query. As to the irritating caste feeling maintained
+among them, young Ormiston perhaps gave himself as few airs as any.
+He was generally conceded indeed by the judging sex to be "nice to
+everybody"; but was not that exactly the nature for which temptations
+were most easily spread? The town, moreover, had a sapience of its own.
+Was it likely that the bank would bring a case so publicly involving its
+character and management without knowing pretty well what it was about?
+The town would not be committed beyond the circle of young Ormiston's
+intimate friends, which was naturally small if you compared it with the
+public; the town wasn't going to be surprised at anything that might be
+proved. On the other hand, the town was much more vividly touched than
+the country by the accident which had made Lorne Murchison practically
+sole counsel for the defence, announced as it was by the Express with
+every appreciation of its dramatic value. Among what the Express called
+"the farming community" this, in so far as it had penetrated, was
+regarded as a simple misfortune, a dull blow to expectancy, which
+expectancy had some work to survive. Elgin, with its finer palate for
+sensation, saw in it heightened chances, both for Lorne and for the
+case; and if any ratepayer within its limits had remained indifferent to
+the suit, the fact that one side of it had been confided to so young and
+so "smart" a fellow townsman would have been bound to draw him into the
+circle of speculation. Youth in a young country is a symbol wearing
+all its value. It stands not only for what it is. The trick of augury
+invests it, at a glance, with the sum of its possibilities, the augurs
+all sincere, confident, and exulting. They have been justified so often;
+they know, in their wide fair fields of opportunity, just what qualities
+will produce what results. There is thus a complacence among adolescent
+peoples which is vaguely irritating to their elders; but the greybeards
+need not be over-captious; it is only a question of time, pathetically
+short-lived in the history of the race. Sanguine persons in Elgin were
+freely disposed to "bet on" Lorne Murchison, and there were none
+so despondent as to take the view that he would not come out of it,
+somehow; with an added personal significance. To make a spoon is a
+laudable achievement, but it may be no mean business to spoil a horn.
+
+As the Express put it, there was as little standing room for ladies and
+gentlemen in the courthouse the first day of the Spring Assizes as there
+was for horses in the Court House Square. The County Crown Attorney
+was unusually, oddly, reinforced by Cruickshank, of Toronto--the great
+Cruickshank, K.C., probably the most distinguished criminal lawyer in
+the Province. There were those who considered that Cruickshank should
+not have been brought down, that it argued undue influence on the
+part of the bank, and his retainer was a fierce fan to the feeling in
+Moneida; but there is no doubt that his appearance added all that was
+possible to the universal interest in the case. Henry Cruickshank was an
+able man and, what was rarer a fastidious politician. He had held office
+in the Dominion Cabinet, and had resigned it because of a difference
+with his colleagues in the application of a principle; they called him,
+after a British politician of lofty but abortive views, the Canadian
+Renfaire. He had that independence of personality, that intellectual
+candour, and that touch of magnetism which combine to make a man
+interesting in his public relations. Cruickshank's name alone would have
+filled the courthouse, and people would have gone away quoting him.
+
+From the first word of the case for the prosecution there was that in
+the leading counsel's manner--a gravity, a kindness, an inclination to
+neglect the commoner methods of scoring--that suggested, with the sudden
+chill of unexpectedly bad news, a foregone conclusion. The reality of
+his feeling reference to the painful position of the defendant's father,
+the sincerity of his regret on behalf of the bank, for the deplorable
+exigency under which proceedings had been instituted, spread a kind of
+blankness through the court; men frowned thoughtfully, and one or two
+ladies shed furtive tears. Even the counsel for the defence, it was
+afterward remembered, looked grave, sympathetic, and concerned, in
+response to the brief but significant and moving sentences with which
+his eminent opponent opened the case. It is not my duty to report the
+trial for any newspaper; I will therefore spare myself more than the
+most general references; but the facts undoubtedly were that a safe in
+the strong room of the bank had been opened between certain hours on a
+certain night and its contents abstracted; that young Ormiston, cashier
+of the bank, was sleeping, or supposed to be sleeping, upon the premises
+at this time, during the illness of the junior whose usual duty it was;
+and that the Crown was in possession of certain evidence which would be
+brought forward to prove collusion with the burglary on the part of
+the defendant, collusion to cover deficits for which he could be held
+responsible. In a strain almost apologetic, Mr Cruickshank explained
+to the jury the circumstances which led the directors to the suspicion
+which they now believed only too regrettably well founded. These
+consisted in the fact that the young man was known to be living beyond
+his means, and so to be constantly visited by the temptation to such
+a crime; the special facilities which he controlled for its commission
+and, in particular, the ease and confidence with which the actual
+operation had been carried out, arguing no fear of detection on the
+part of the burglars, no danger of interference from one who should have
+stood ready to defend with his life the property in his charge, but who
+would shortly be seen to have been toward it, first, a plunderer in his
+own person, and afterward the accomplice of plunderers to conceal
+his guilt. Examination showed the safe to have been opened with the
+dexterity that demands both time and coolness; and the ash from a pipe
+knocked out against the wall at the side of the passage offered ironical
+testimony to the comfort in which the business had been done.
+
+The lawyer gave these considerations their full weight, and it was
+in dramatic contrast with the last of them that he produced the first
+significant fragment of evidence against Ormiston. There had been, after
+all, some hurry of departure. It was shown by a sheet of paper bearing
+the mark of a dirty thumb and a hasty boot-heel, bearing also the
+combination formula for opening the safe.
+
+The public was familiar with that piece of evidence; it had gone
+through every kind of mill of opinion; it made no special sensation. The
+evidence of the caretaker who found the formula and of the witnesses who
+established it to be in young Ormiston's handwriting, produced little
+interest. Mr Cruickshank, in elaborating his theory as to why with the
+formula in their hands the depredators still found it necessary to pick
+the lock, offered nothing to speculations already current--the duplicate
+key with which they had doubtless been enabled to supply themselves
+was a clumsy copy and had failed them; that conclusion had been drawn
+commonly enough. The next scrap of paper produced by the prosecution was
+another matter. It was the mere torn end of a greasy sheet; upon it was
+written "Not less than 3,000 net," and it had been found in the turning
+out of Ormiston's dressing-table. It might have been anything--a number
+of people pursed their lips contemptuously--or it might have been,
+without doubt, the fragment of a disreputable transaction that the
+prosecuting counsel endeavoured to show it. Here, no doubt, was one of
+the pieces of evidence the prosecution was understood to have up its
+sleeve, and that portion of the prosecuting counsel's garment was
+watched with feverish interest for further disclosures. They came
+rapidly enough, but we must hurry them even more. The name of Miss
+Florence Belton, when it rose to the surface of the evidence, riveted
+every eye and ear. Miss Belton was one of those ambiguous ladies who
+sometimes drift out from the metropolitan vortex and circle restfully in
+backwaters for varying periods, appearing and disappearing irrelevantly.
+They dress beautifully; they are known to "paint" and thought to dye
+their hair. They establish no relations, being much too preoccupied.
+making exceptions only, as a rule, in favour of one or two young men, to
+whom they extend amenities based--it is the common talk--upon late
+hours and whiskey-and-soda. They seem superior to the little prevailing
+conventions; they excite an unlawful interest; though nobody knows them
+black nobody imagines them white; and when they appear upon Main Street
+in search of shoelaces or elastic heads are turned and nods, possibly
+nudges, exchanged. Miss Belton had come from New York to the Barker
+House, Elgin, and young Ormiston's intimacy with her was one of the
+things that counted against him in the general view. It was to so count
+more seriously in the particular instance. Witnesses were called to
+prove that he had spent the evening of the burglary with Miss Belton at
+her hotel, that he had remained with her until one o'clock, that he was
+in the habit of spending his evenings with Miss Belton.
+
+Rawlins of the Express did not overdo the sensation which was caused in
+the courtroom when the name of this lady herself was called to summon
+her to the witness box. It was indeed the despair of his whole career.
+He thought despondingly ever after of the thrill, to which he himself
+was not superior and which, if he had only been able to handle it
+adequately, might have led him straight up the ladder to a night
+editorship. Miss Belton appeared from some unsuspected seat near the
+door, throwing back a heavy veil, and walking as austerely as she could,
+considering the colour of her hair. She took her place without emotion
+and there she corroborated the evidence of the servants of the hotel.
+To the grave questions of the prosecution she fluently replied that the
+distraction of these evenings had been cards--cards played, certainly,
+for money, and that she, certainly, had won very considerable sums from
+the defendant from time to time. In Elgin the very mention of cards
+played for money will cause a hush of something deeper than disapproval;
+there was silence in the court at this. In producing several banknotes
+for Miss Belton's identification, Mr Cruickshank seemed to profit by the
+silence. Miss Belton identified them without hesitation, as she might
+easily, since they had been traced to her possession. Asked to account
+for them; she stated, without winking, that they had been paid to her by
+Mr Walter Ormiston at various times during the fortnight preceding the
+burglary, in satisfaction of debts at cards. She, Miss Belton, had left
+Elgin for Chicago the day after the burglary. Mr Ormiston knew that she
+was going. He had paid her the four fifty-dollar notes actually traced,
+the night before she left, and said. "You won't need to break these
+here, will you?" He seemed anxious that she should not, but it was
+the merest accident that she hadn't. In all, she had received from Mr
+Ormiston four hundred and fifty dollars. No, she had no suspicion that
+the young man might not be in a position to make such payments. She
+understood that Mr Ormiston's family was wealthy, and never thought
+twice about it.
+
+She spoke with a hard dignity, the lady, and a great effect of doing
+business, a kind of assertion of the legitimate. The farmers of Fox
+County told each other in chapfallen appreciation that she was about as
+level-headed as they make them. Lawyer Cruickshank, as they called him,
+brought forth from her detail after detail, and every detail fitted
+damningly with the last. The effect upon young Ormiston was so painful
+that many looked another way. His jaw was set and his features
+contorted to hold himself from the disgrace of tears. He was generally
+acknowledged to be overwhelmed by the unexpected demonstration of his
+guilt, but distress was so plain in him that there was not a soul in
+the place that was not sorry for him. In one or two resolute faces hope
+still glimmered, but it hardly survived the cross-examination of the
+Crown's chief witness by the counsel for the defence which, as far as
+it went, had a perfunctory air and contributed little to the evidence
+before the Court. It did not go all the way, however. The case having
+opened late, the defence was reserved till the following day, when
+proceedings would be resumed with the further cross-examination of Miss
+Belton.
+
+As the defendant's counsel went down the courthouse steps Rawlins came
+up to him to take note of his demeanour and anything else that might be
+going.
+
+"Pretty stiff row to hoe you've got there, Lorne," he said.
+
+"Pretty stiff," responded Lorne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Imagination, one gathers, is a quality dispensed with of necessity in
+the practice of most professions, being that of which nature is, for
+some reason, most niggardly. There is no such thing as passing in
+imagination for any department of public usefulness, even the government
+of Oriental races; the list of the known qualified would be exhausted,
+perhaps, in getting the papers set. Yet neither poet nor philosopher
+enjoys it in monopoly; the chemist may have it, and the inventor must;
+it has been proved the mainspring of the mathematician, and I have
+hinted it the property of at least two of the Murchisons. Lorne was
+indebted to it certainly for his constructive view of his client's
+situation, the view which came to him and stayed with him like a chapter
+in a novel, from the hour in which Ormiston had reluctantly accounted
+for himself upon the night of the burglary. It was a brilliant view,
+that perceived the young clerk the victim of the conspiracy he was
+charged with furthering; its justification lay back, dimly, among the
+intuitions about human nature which are part of the attribute I
+have quoted. I may shortly say that it was justified; another day's
+attendance at the Elgin Courthouse shall not be compulsory here,
+whatever it may have been there. Young Ormiston's commercial probity
+is really no special concern of ours; the thing which does matter, and
+considerably, is the special quality which Lorne Murchison brought to
+the task of its vindication, the quality that made new and striking
+appeal, through every channel of the great occasion, to those who heard
+him. It was that which reinforced and comforted every friend Ormiston
+had in the courtroom, before Lorne proceeded either to deal with the
+evidence of the other side, or to produce any jot or tittle of his own;
+and it was that which affected his distinguished opponent to the special
+interest which afterward showed itself so pleasantly superior to the
+sting of defeat. The fact that the defence was quite as extraordinarily
+indebted to circumstantial evidence as the prosecution in no way
+detracted from the character of Lorne's personal triumph; rather,
+indeed, in the popular view and Rawlins's, enhanced it. There was in
+it the primitive joy of seeing a ruffian knocked down with his own
+illegitimate weapons, from the moment the dropped formula was proved to
+be an old superseded one, and unexpected indication was produced that
+Ormiston's room, as well as the bank vault, had been entered the night
+of the robbery, to the more glorious excitement of establishing Miss
+Belton's connection--not to be quoted--with a cracksman at that moment
+being diligently inquired for by the New York police with reference to
+a dramatically bigger matter. You saw the plot at once as he constructed
+it; the pipe ash became explicable in the seduction of Miss Belton's
+charms. The cunning net unwove itself, delicately and deliberately, to
+tangle round the lady. There was in it that superiority in the art of
+legerdemain, of mere calm, astonishing manipulation, so applauded in
+regions where romance has not yet been quite trampled down by reason.
+Lorne scored; he scored in face of probability, expectation, fact; it
+was the very climax and coruscation of score. He scored not only by the
+cards he held but by the beautiful way he played them, if one may say
+so. His nature came into this, his gravity and gentleness, his sympathy,
+his young angry irony. To mention just one thing, there was the way he
+held Miss Belton up, after the exposure of her arts, as the lady for
+whom his client had so chivalric a regard that he had for some time
+refused to state his whereabouts at the hour the bank was entered in
+the fear of compromising her. For this, no doubt, his client could have
+strangled him, but it operated, of course, to raise the poor fellow
+in the estimation of every body, with the possible exception of his
+employers. When, after the unmistakable summing-up, the foreman returned
+in a quarter of an hour with the verdict of "Not guilty," people
+noticed that the young man walked out of court behind his father with
+as drooping a head as if he had gone under sentence; so much so that
+by common consent he was allowed to slip quietly away. Miss Belton
+departed, followed by the detective, whose services were promptly
+transferred to the prosecution, and by a proportion of those who scented
+further entertainment in her perfumed, perjured wake. But the majority
+hung back, leaving their places slowly; it was Lorne the crowd wanted
+to shake hands with to say just a word of congratulation to, Lorne's
+triumph that they desired to enhance by a hearty sentence, or at least
+an admiring glance. Walter Winter was among the most genial.
+
+"Young man," he said, "what did I tell you? Didn't I tell you you ought
+to take this case?" Mr Winter, with his chest thrust out, plumed and
+strutted in justifiable pride of prophecy. "Now, I'll tell you another
+thing: today's event will do more for you than it has for Ormiston. Mark
+my words!"
+
+They were all of that opinion, all the fine foretellers of the profit
+Lorne should draw from his spirited and conspicuous success; they
+stood about in knots discussing it; to some extent it eclipsed the main
+interest and issue of the day, at that moment driving out, free and
+disconsolate, between the snake fences of the South Riding to Moneida
+Reservation. The quick and friendly sense of opportunity was abroad on
+Lorne Murchison's behalf; friends and neighbours and Dr Drummond, and
+people who hardly knew the fellow, exchanged wise words about what his
+chance would do for him. What it would immediately do was present to
+nobody so clearly, however, as to Mr Henry Cruickshank, who decided that
+he would, after all, accept Dr Drummond's invitation to spend the night
+with him, and find out the little he didn't know already about this
+young man.
+
+That evening the Murchisons' doorbell rang twice. The first time it was
+to admit the Rev. Hugh Finlay, who had come to return Sordello, which he
+had borrowed from Advena, and to find out whether she thought with him
+about the interpretation of certain passages, and if not--there was
+always the possibility--wherein their divergence lay. The second time
+the door opened to Dr Drummond and Mr Cruickshank; and the electric
+light had to be turned on in the drawing-room, since the library was
+already occupied by Mr Finlay and Advena, Mr and Mrs Murchison never
+having got over their early habit of sitting in the dining-room after
+tea. Even then Mrs Murchison had to put away her workbasket, and John
+Murchison to knock the ashes out of his pipe, looking at one another
+with surprised inquiry when Eliza informed them of their visitors.
+Luckily, Mr Lorne was also in, and Eliza was sent to tell him, and
+Mr Lorne came down the stairs two at a time to join the party in the
+drawing-room, which was presently supplied by Eliza with a dignified
+service of cake and wine. The hall divided that room from the library,
+and both doors were shut. We cannot hesitate about which to open; we
+have only, indeed, to follow the recognized tradition of Elgin, which
+would never have entered the library. No vivid conclusion should be
+drawn, no serious situation may even be indicated. It would simply have
+been considered, in Elgin, stupid to go into the library.
+
+"It isn't a case for the High Commissioner for Canada," Mr Cruickshank
+was saying. "It's a case for direct representation of the interests
+concerned, and their view of the effect upon trade. That's the only
+voice to speak with if you want to get anything done. Conviction carries
+conviction. The High Commissioner is a very useful fellow to live
+in London and look after the ornamental, the sentimental, and
+immigration--nobody could do it better than Selkirk. And in England, of
+course, they like that kind of agency. It's the good old dignified
+way; but it won't do for everything. You don't find our friend Morgan
+operating through the American equivalent of a High Commissioner."
+
+"No, you don't," said John Murchison.
+
+"He goes over there as a principal, and the British Government, if he
+wants to deal with it, is only another principal. That's the way our
+deputation will go. We're practically all shippers, though of course the
+matter of tenders will come later. There is big business for them here,
+national business, and we propose to show it. The subsidy we want will
+come back to the country four times over in two years. Freights from
+Boston alone--"
+
+"It's the patriotic, imperial argument you'll have to press, I doubt,"
+said John Murchison. "They're not business people over there--the men in
+office are not. How should they be? The system draws them from the
+wrong class. They're gentlemen--noblemen, maybe--first, and they've no
+practical education. There's only one way of getting it, and that's to
+make your own living. How many of them have ever made tuppence? There's
+where the Americans beat them so badly--they've got the sixth sense,
+the business sense. No; you'll not find them responding greatly to what
+there is in it for trade--they'd like to well enough, but they just
+won't see it; and, by George! what a fine suspicion they'll have of ye!
+As to freights from Boston," he continued, as they all laughed, "I'm
+of opinion you'd better not mention them. What! steal the trade of a
+friendly power! Tut, tut!"
+
+It was a long speech for John Murchison, but they were all excited to a
+pitch beyond the usual. Henry Cruickshank had brought with him an
+event of extraordinary importance. It seemed to sit there with him,
+significant and propitious, in the middle of the sofa; they all looked
+at it in the pauses. Dr Drummond, lost in an armchair, alternately
+contemplated it and remembered to assert himself part of it. As head of
+a deputation from the United Chambers of Commerce of Canada shortly
+to wait on the British Government to press for the encouragement of
+improved communications within the Empire, Cruickshank had been asked
+to select a secretary. The appointment, in view of the desirability,
+for political reasons, of giving the widest publicity to the hopes
+and motives of the deputation, was an important one. The action of the
+Canadian Government, in extending conditional promises of support, had
+to be justified to the Canadian taxpayer; and that shy and weary person
+whose shoulders uphold the greatness of Britain, had also to receive
+such conciliation and reassurance as it was possible to administer to
+him, by way of nerving the administrative arm over there to an act of
+enterprise. Mr Cruickshank had had two or three young fellows, mostly
+newspaper men, in his mind's eye; but when Lorne came into his literal
+range of vision, the others had promptly been retired in our friend's
+favour. Young Mr Murchison, he had concluded, was the man they wanted;
+and if his office could spare him, it would probably do young Mr
+Murchison no harm in any sort of way to accompany the deputation to
+London and throw himself into the matter the deputation had at heart.
+
+"But it's the Empire!" said Lorne, with a sort of shy fire, when Mr
+Cruickshank enunciated this.
+
+We need not, perhaps, dwell upon the significance of his agreement. It
+was then not long since the maple leaf had been stained brighter than
+ever, not without honour, to maintain the word that fell from him. The
+three older men looked at him kindly; John Murchison, rubbing his chin
+as he considered the situation, slightly shook his head. One took it
+that in his view the Empire was not so readily envisaged.
+
+"That has a strong bearing," Mr Cruickshank assented.
+
+"It's the whole case--it seems to me," repeated young Murchison.
+
+"It should help to knit us up," said Dr Drummond. "I'll put my name down
+on the first passenger list, if Knox Church will let me off. See that
+you have special rates," he added, with a twinkle, "for ministers and
+missionaries."
+
+"And only ten days to get him ready in," said Mrs Murchison. "It will
+take some seeing to, I assure you; and I don't know how it's to be done
+in the time. For once, Lorne, I'll have to order you ready-made shirts,
+and you'll just have to put up with it. Nothing else could possibly get
+back from the wash."
+
+"I'll put up with it, Mother."
+
+They went into other details of Lorne's equipment while Mrs Murchison's
+eye still wandered over the necessities of his wardrobe. They arranged
+the date on which he was to meet the members of the deputation in
+Montreal, and Mr Cruickshank promised to send him all available
+documents and such presentation of the project as had been made in the
+newspapers.
+
+"You shall be put in immediate possession of the bones of the thing,"
+he said, "but what really matters," he added pleasantly, "I think you've
+got already."
+
+It took, of course, some discussion, and it was quite ten o'clock before
+everything was gone into, and the prospect was clear to them all. As
+they emerged into the hall together, the door of the room opposite also
+opened, and the Rev. Hugh Finlay found himself added to their group.
+They all made the best of the unexpected encounter. It was rather an
+elaborate best, very polite and entirely grave, except in the instance
+of Dr Drummond, who met his subaltern with a smile in which cordiality
+struggled in vain to overcome the delighted humour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+It was the talk of the town, the pride of the market-place, Lorne
+Murchison's having been selected to accompany what was known as the
+Cruickshank deputation to England. The general spirit of congratulation
+was corrected by a tendency to assert it another proof of sagacity on
+the chairman's part; Elgin wouldn't be too flattered; Lawyer Cruickshank
+couldn't have done better. You may be sure the Express was well
+ahead with it. "Honour to Our Young Fellow Townsman. A Well-Merited
+Compliment," and Rawlins was round promptly next morning to glean
+further particulars. He found only Mrs Murchison, on a stepladder tying
+up the clematis that climbed about the verandah, and she told him a
+little about clematis and a good deal about the inconvenience of having
+to abandon superintending the spring cleaning in order to get Lorne
+ready to go to the Old Country at such short notice, but nothing he
+could put in the paper. Lorne, sought at the office, was hardly more
+communicative. Mr Williams himself dropped in there. He said the Express
+would now have a personal interest in the object of the deputation, and
+proposed to strike out a broad line, a broader line than ever.
+
+"We've got into the way of taking it for granted," said Mr Williams,
+"that the subsidy idea is a kind of mediaeval idea. Raise a big enough
+shout and you get things taken for granted in economics for a long
+while. Conditions keep changing, right along, all the time, and
+presently you've got to reconsider. There ain't any sort of ultimate
+truth in the finest economic position, my son; not any at all."
+
+"We'll subsidize over here, right enough," said Lorne.
+
+"That's the idea--that's the prevailing idea, just now. But lots of
+people think different--more than you'd imagine. I was talking to
+old man Milburn just now--he's dead against it. 'Government has no
+business,' he said, 'to apply the taxes in the interests of any company.
+It oughtn't to know how to spell "subsidy." If the trade was there it
+would get itself carried,' he said."
+
+"Well, that surprises me," said Lorne.
+
+"Surprised me, too. But I was on the spot with him; just thought of it
+in time. 'Well, now, Mr Milburn,' I said, 'you've changed your mind.
+Thought that was a thing you Conservatives never did,' I said. 'We
+don't--I haven't,' he said. 'What d'ye mean? Twenty-five years ago,' I
+said, 'when you were considering whether you'd start the Milburn Boiler
+Works here or in Hamilton, Hamilton offered you a free site, and Elgin
+offered you a free site and a dam for your water power. You took the
+biggest subsidy an' came here,' I said."
+
+Lorne laughed: "What did he say to that?"
+
+"Hadn't a word. 'I guess it's up to me,' he said. Then he turned round
+and came back. 'Hold on, Williams; he said. 'You know so much already
+about my boiler works, it wouldn't be much trouble for you to write out
+an account of them from the beginning, would it? Working in the last
+quarter of a century of the town's progress, you know, and all that.
+Come round to the office tomorrow, and I'll give you some pointers.' And
+he fixed up a two-column ad right away. He was afraid I'd round on him,
+I suppose, if I caught him saying anything more about the immorality of
+subsidies."
+
+"He won't say anything more."
+
+"Probably not. Milburn hasn't got much of a political conscience, but
+he's got a sense of what's silly. Well, now, I expect you want all the
+time there is."
+
+Mr Williams removed himself from the edge of the table, which was strewn
+with maps and bluebooks, printed official, and typewritten demi-official
+papers.
+
+"Give 'em a notion of those Assiniboian wheat acres, my boy, and the
+ranch country we've got; tell 'em about the future of quick passage and
+cold storage. Get 'em a little ashamed to have made so many fortunes for
+Yankee beef combines; persuade 'em the cheapest market has a funny way
+of getting the dearest price in the end. Give it 'em, Lorne, hot and
+cold and fricasseed. The Express will back you up."
+
+He slapped his young friend's shoulder, who seemed occupied with
+matters that prevented his at once feeling the value of this assurance.
+"Bye-bye," said Mr Williams. "See you again before you start."
+
+"Oh, of course!" Lorne replied. "I'll--I'll come round. By the
+way, Williams, Mr Milburn didn't say anything--anything about me in
+connection with this business? Didn't mention, I suppose, what he
+thought about my going?"
+
+"Not a word, my boy! He was away up in abstract principles; he generally
+is. Bye-bye."
+
+"It's gone to his head a little bit--only natural," Horace reflected as
+he went down the stairs. "He's probably just feeding on what folks think
+of it. As if it mattered a pin's head what Octavius Milburn thinks or
+don't think!"
+
+Lorne, however, left alone with his customs returns and his immigration
+reports, sat still, attaching a weight quite out of comparison with a
+pin's head to Mr Milburn's opinion. He turned it over and over, instead
+of the tabulated figures that were his business: he had to show himself
+his way to the conclusion that such a thing could not matter seriously
+in the end, since Milburn hadn't a dollar involved--it would be
+different if he were a shareholder in the Maple Line. He wished
+heartily, nevertheless, that he could demonstrate a special advantage
+to boiler-makers in competitive freights with New York. What did they
+import, confound them! Pig-iron? Plates and rivets? Fortunately he was
+in a position to get at the facts, and he got at them with an interest
+of even greater intensity than he had shown to the whole question since
+ten that morning. Even now, the unprejudiced observer, turning up the
+literature connected with the Cruickshank deputation, may notice a
+stress laid upon the advantages to Canadian importers of ore in certain
+stages of manufacture which may strike him as slightly, very slightly,
+special. Of course there are a good many of them in the country. So
+that Mr Horace Williams was justified to some extent in his kindly
+observation upon the excusable egotism of youth. Two or three letters,
+however, came in while Lorne was considering the relation of plates and
+rivets to the objects of his deputation. They were all congratulatory;
+one was from the chairman of the Liberal Association at its headquarters
+in Toronto. Lorne glanced at them and stowed them away in his pocket.
+He would read them when he got home, when it would be a pleasure to hand
+them over to his mother. She was making a collection of them.
+
+He had a happy perception that same evening that Mr Milburn's position
+was not, after all, finally and invincibly taken against the deputation
+and everything--everybody--concerned with it. He met that gentleman at
+his own garden gate. Octavius paused in his exit, to hold it open for
+young Murchison, thus even assisting the act of entry, a thing which
+thrilled Lorne sweetly enough when he had time to ponder its possible
+significance. Alas! the significance that lovers find! Lorne read a
+world in the behaviour of Dora's father in holding the gate open. He
+saw political principle put aside in his favour, and social position
+forgotten in kindness to him. He saw the gravest, sincerest appreciation
+of his recent success, which he took as humbly as a dog will take a
+bone; he read a fatherly thought at which his pulses bounded in an
+arrogance of triumph, and his heart rose to ask its trust. And Octavius
+Milburn had held the gate open because it was more convenient to hold
+it open than to leave it open. He had not a political view in the world
+that was calculated to affect his attitude toward a practical matter;
+and his opinion of Lorne was quite uncomplicated: he thought him a very
+likely young fellow. Milburn himself, in the Elgin way, preferred to
+see no great significance of this sort anywhere. Young people were
+young people; it was natural enough that they should like each other's
+society. They, the Milburns, were very glad to see Mr Murchison, very
+glad indeed. It was frequent matter for veiled humorous reference at
+the table that he had been to call again, at which Dora would look very
+stiff and dignified, and have to be coaxed back into the conversation.
+As to anything serious, there was no hurry; plenty of time to think of
+that. Such matters dwelt under the horizon; there was no need to scan
+them closely; and Mr Milburn went his way, conscious of nothing more
+than a comfortable gratification that Dora, so far as the young men were
+concerned, seemed as popular as other girls.
+
+Dora was not in the drawing-room. Young ladies in Elgin had always to
+be summoned from somewhere. For all the Filkin instinct for the
+conservation of polite tradition, Dora was probably reading the
+Toronto society weekly--illustrated, with correspondents all over the
+Province--on the back verandah and, but for the irruption of a visitor,
+would probably not have entered the formal apartment of the house at
+all that evening. Drawing-rooms in Elgin had their prescribed uses--to
+receive in, to practise in, and for the last sad entertainment of the
+dead, when the furniture was disarranged to accommodate the trestles;
+but the common business of life went on outside them, even among
+prosperous people, the survival, perhaps, of a habit based upon thrift.
+The shutters were opened when Lorne entered, to let in the spring
+twilight, and the servant pulled a chair into its proper relation with
+the room as she went out.
+
+Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin both came in before Dora did. Lorne found
+their conversation enchanting, though it was mostly about the difficulty
+of keeping the lawn tidy; they had had so much rain. Mrs Milburn assured
+him kindly that there was not such another lawn as his father's in
+Elgin. How Mr Murchison managed to have it looking so nice always she
+could not think. Only yesterday she and Mr Milburn had stopped to admire
+it as they passed.
+
+"Spring is always a beautiful time in Elgin," she remarked. "There are
+so many pretty houses here, each standing in its own grounds. Nothing
+very grand, as I tell my friend, Miss Cham, from Buffalo where the
+residences are, of course, on quite a different scale; but grandeur
+isn't everything, is it?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Lorne.
+
+"But you will be leaving for Great Britain very soon now, Mr Murchison,"
+said Miss Filkin. "Leaving Elgin and all its beauties! And I dare say
+you won't think of them once again till you get back!"
+
+"I hope I shall not be so busy as that, Miss Filkin."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm sure Mr Murchison won't forget his native town altogether,"
+said Mrs Milburn, "though perhaps he won't like it so well after seeing
+dear old England!"
+
+"I expect," said Lorne simply, "to like it better."
+
+"Well, of course, we shall all be pleased if you say that, Mr
+Murchison," Mrs Milburn replied graciously. "We shall feel quite
+complimented. But I'm afraid you will find a great deal to criticize
+when you come back--that is, if you go at all into society over there. I
+always say there can be nothing like good English society."
+
+"I want to attend a sitting of the House," Lorne said. "I hope I shall
+have time for that. I want to see those fellows handling their public
+business. I don't believe I shall find our men so far behind, for point
+of view and grasp and dispatch. Of course there's always Wallingham to
+make a standard for us all. But they haven't got so many Wallinghams."
+
+"Wasn't it Wallingham, Louisa, that Mr Milburn was saying at breakfast
+was such a dangerous man? So able, he said, but dangerous. Something to
+do with the tariff."
+
+"Oh?" said Lorne, and he said no more, for at that moment Dora came
+in. She came in looking very straight and graceful and composed. Her
+personal note was carried out in her pretty clothes, which hung and
+"sat" upon her like the rhythm of verses; they could fall no other way.
+She had in every movement the definite accent of young ladyhood; she was
+very much aware of herself, of the situation, and of her value in it,
+a setting for herself she saw it, and saw it truly. No one, from the
+moment she entered the room, looked at anything else.
+
+"Oh, Mr Murchison," she said. "How do you do? Mother, do you mind if I
+open the window? It's quite warm out of doors--regular summer."
+
+Lorne sprang to open the window, while Miss Filkin, murmuring that it
+had been a beautiful day, moved a little farther from it.
+
+"Oh, please don't trouble, Mr Murchison; thank you very much!" Miss
+Milburn continued, and subsided on a sofa. "Have you been playing tennis
+this week?"
+
+Mr Murchison said that he had been able to get down to the club only
+once.
+
+"The courts aren't a bit in good order. They want about a week's
+rolling. The balls get up anywhere," said Dora.
+
+"Lawn tennis," Mrs Milburn asserted herself, "is a delightful exercise.
+I hope it will never go out of fashion; but that is what we used to say
+of croquet, and it has gone out and come in again."
+
+Lorne listened to this with deference; there was a hint of patience in
+the regard Dora turned upon her mother. Mrs Milburn continued to
+dilate upon lawn tennis, dealt lightly with badminton, and brought the
+conversation round with a graceful sweep to canoeing. Dora's attitude
+before she had done became slightly permissive, but Mrs Milburn held on
+till she had accomplished her conception of conduct for the occasion;
+then she remembered a meeting in the schoolhouse.
+
+"We are to have an address by an Indian bishop," she told them. "He is
+on his way to England by China and Japan, and is staying with our dear
+rector, Mr Murchison. Such a treat I expect it will be."
+
+"What I am dying to know," said Miss Filkin, in a sprightly way, "is
+whether he is black or white!"
+
+Mrs Milburn then left the room, and shortly afterward Miss Filkin
+thought she could not miss the bishop either, conveying the feeling
+that a bishop was a bishop, of whatever colour. She stayed three minutes
+longer than Mrs Milburn, but she went. The Filkin tradition, though
+strong, could not hold out entirely against the unwritten laws, the
+silently claimed privileges, of youth in Elgin. It made its pretence and
+vanished.
+
+Even as the door closed the two that were left looked at one another
+with a new significance. A simpler relation established itself between
+them and controlled all that surrounded them; the very twilight seemed
+conscious with it; the chairs and tables stood in attentive harmony.
+
+"You know," said Dora, "I hate your going, Lorne!"
+
+She did indeed seem moved, about the mouth, to discontent. There was
+some little injury in the way she swung her foot.
+
+"I was hoping Mr Fulke wouldn't get better in time; I was truly!"
+
+The gratitude in young Murchison's eyes should have been dear to her. I
+don't know whether she saw it; but she must have been aware that she was
+saying what touched him, making her point.
+
+"Oh, it's a good thing to go, Dora."
+
+"A good thing for you! And the regatta coming off the first week in
+June, and a whole crowd coming from Toronto for it. There isn't another
+person in town I care to canoe with, Lorne, you know perfectly well!"
+
+"I'm awfully sorry!" said Lorne. "I wish--"
+
+"Oh, I'm GOING, I believe. Stephen Stuart has written from Toronto, and
+asked me to sail with him. I haven't told Mother, but he's my second
+cousin, so I suppose she won't make a fuss."
+
+The young man's face clouded; seeing which she relented. "Oh, of course,
+I'm glad you're going, really," she assured him. "And we'll all be proud
+to be acquainted with such a distinguished gentleman when you get back.
+Do you think you'll see the King? You might, you know, in London."
+
+"I'll see him if he's visible," laughed Lorne. "That would be something
+to tell your mother, wouldn't it? But I'm afraid we won't be doing
+business with His Majesty."
+
+"I expect you'll have the loveliest time you ever had in all your life.
+Do you think you'll be asked out much, Lorne?"
+
+"I can't imagine who would ask me. We'll get off easy if the street boys
+don't shout: 'What price Canucks?' at us! But I'll see England, Dora;
+I'll feel England, eat and drink and sleep and live in England, for a
+little while. Isn't the very name great? I'll be a better man for going,
+till I die. We're all right out here, but we're young and thin and
+weedy. They didn't grow so fast in England, to begin with, and now
+they're rich with character and strong with conduct and hoary with
+ideals. I've been reading up the history of our political relations with
+England. It's astonishing what we've stuck to her through, but you can't
+help seeing why--it's for the moral advantage. Way down at the bottom,
+that's what it is. We have the sense to want all we can get of that
+sort of thing. They've developed the finest human product there is,
+the cleanest, the most disinterested, and we want to keep up the
+relationship--it's important. Their talk about the value of their
+protection doesn't take in the situation as it is now. Who would touch
+us if we were running our own show?"
+
+"I don't believe they are a bit better than we are," replied Miss
+Milburn. "I'm sure I haven't much opinion of the Englishmen that come
+out here. They don't think anything of getting into debt, and as often
+as not they drink, and they never know enough to--to come in out of the
+rain. But, Lorne--"
+
+"Yes, but we're very apt to get the failures. The fellows their folks
+give five or six hundred pounds to and tell them they're not expected
+back till they're making a living. The best men find their level
+somewhere else, along recognized channels. Lord knows we don't want
+them--this country's for immigrants. We're manufacturing our own
+gentlemen quite fast enough for the demand."
+
+"I should think we were! Why, Lorne, Canadians--nice Canadians are just
+as gentlemanly as they can be! They'll compare with anybody. Perhaps
+Americans have got more style:" she weighed the matter; "but Canadians
+are much better form, I think. But, Lorne, how perfectly dear of you to
+send me those roses. I wore them, and nobody there had such beauties.
+All the girls wanted to know where I got them, but I only told Lily,
+just to make her feel a pig for not having asked you--my very greatest
+friend! She just about apologized--told me she wanted to ask about
+twenty more people, but her mother wouldn't let her. They've lost an
+uncle or something lately, and if it hadn't been for Clara Sims staying
+with them they wouldn't have been giving anything."
+
+"I'll try to survive not having been asked. But I'm glad you wore the
+roses, Dora."
+
+"I dropped one, and Phil Carter wanted to keep it. He's so silly!"
+
+"Did you--did you let him keep it?"
+
+"Lorne Murchison! Do you think I'd let any man keep a rose I'd been
+wearing?"
+
+He looked at her, suddenly emboldened. "I don't know about roses, Dora,
+but pansies--those are awfully nice ones in your dress. I'm very fond
+of pansies; couldn't you spare me one? I wouldn't ask for a rose, but a
+pansy--"
+
+His eyes were more ardent than what he found to say. Beneath them Dora
+grew delicately pink. The pansies drooped a little; she put her slender
+fingers under one, and lifted its petals.
+
+"It's too faded for your buttonhole," she said.
+
+"It needn't stay in my buttonhole. I know lots of other places!" he
+begged.
+
+Dora considered the pansy again, then she pulled it slowly out, and the
+young man got up and went over to her, proffering the lapel of his coat.
+
+"It spoils the bunch," she said prettily. "If I give you this you will
+have to give me something to take its place."
+
+"I will," said Lorne.
+
+"I know it will be something better," said Dora, and there was a little
+effort in her composure. "You send people such beautiful flowers,
+Lorne."
+
+She rose beside him as she spoke, graceful and fair, to fasten it in;
+and it was his hand that shook.
+
+"Then may I choose it?" said Lorne. "And will you wear it?"
+
+"I suppose you may. Why are you--why do you--Oh, Lorne, stand still!"
+
+"I'll give you, you sweet girl, my whole heart!" he said in the vague
+tender knowledge that he offered her a garden, where she had but to
+walk, and smile, to bring about her unimaginable blooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+They sat talking on the verandah in the close of the May evening, Mr and
+Mrs Murchison. The Plummer Place was the Murchison Place in the town's
+mouth now, and that was only fair; the Murchisons had overstamped the
+Plummers. It lay about them like a map of their lives: the big horse
+chestnut stood again in flower to lighten the spring dusk for them,
+as it had done faithfully for thirty years. John was no longer in his
+shirt-sleeves; the growing authority of his family had long prescribed
+a black alpaca coat. He smoked his meerschaum with the same old
+deliberation, however, holding it by the bowl as considerately as he
+held its original, which lasted him fifteen years. A great deal of
+John Murchison's character was there, in the way he held his pipe, his
+gentleness and patience, even the justice and repose and quiet strength
+of his nature. He smoked and read the paper the unfailing double solace
+of his evenings. I should have said that it was Mrs Murchison who
+talked. She had the advantage of a free mind, only subconsciously
+occupied with her white wool and agile needles; and John had frequently
+to choose between her observations and the politics of the day.
+
+"You saw Lorne's letter this morning, Father?"
+
+John took his pipe out of his mouth. "Yes," he said.
+
+"He seems tremendously taken up with Wallingham. It was all Wallingham,
+from one end to the other."
+
+"It's not remarkable," said John Murchison, patiently.
+
+"You'd think he had nothing else to write about. There was that
+reception at Lord What-you-may-call-him's, the Canadian Commissioner's,
+when the Prince and Princess of Wales came, and brought their family.
+I'd like to have heard something more about that than just that he was
+there. He might have noticed what the children had on. Now that Abby's
+family is coming about her I seem to have my hands as full of children's
+clothes as ever I had. Abby seems to think there's nothing like my old
+patterns; I'm sure I'm sick of the sight of them!"
+
+Mr Murchison refolded his newspaper, took his pipe once more from his
+mouth, and said nothing.
+
+"John, put down that paper! I declare it's enough to drive anybody
+crazy! Now look at that boy walking across the lawn. He does it every
+night, delivering the Express, and you take no more notice! He's wearing
+a regular path!"
+
+"Sonny," said Mr Murchison, as the urchin approached, "you mustn't walk
+across the grass."
+
+"Much good that will do!" remarked Mrs Murchison. "I'd teach him to
+walk across the grass, if--if it were my business. Boy--isn't your name
+Willie Parker? Then it was your mother I promised the coat and the other
+things to, and you'll find them ready there, just inside the hall door.
+They'll make down very well for you, but you can tell her from me that
+she'd better double-seam them, for the stuff's apt to ravel. And attend
+to what Mr Murchison says; go out by the gravel--what do you suppose
+it's there for?"
+
+Mrs Murchison readjusted her glasses, and turned another row of the tiny
+sock. "I must say it's a pleasure to have the lawn neat and green,"
+she said, with a sigh. "Never did I expect to see the day it would be
+anything but chickweed and dandelions. We've a great deal to be thankful
+for, and all our children spared to us, too. John," she continued,
+casting a shrewd glance over her needles at nothing in particular; "do
+you suppose anything was settled between Lorne and Dora Milburn before
+he Started?"
+
+"He said nothing to me about it."
+
+"Oh, well, very likely he wouldn't. Young people keep such a tremendous
+lot to themselves nowadays. But it's my belief they've come to an
+understanding."
+
+"Lily might do worse," said John Murchison, judicially.
+
+"I should think Dora might do worse! I don't know where she's going to
+do better! The most promising young man in Elgin, well brought up, well
+educated, well started in a profession! There's not a young fellow in
+this town to compare with Lorne, and perfectly well you know it, John.
+Might do worse! But that's you all over. Belittle your own belongings!"
+
+Mr Murchison smiled in amused tolerance. "They've always got you to blow
+their trumpet, Mother," he replied.
+
+"And more than me. You ought to hear Dr Drummond about Lorne! He says
+that if the English Government starts that line of boats to Halifax the
+country will owe it to him, much more than to Cruickshank, or anybody
+else."
+
+"Dr Drummond likes to talk," said John Murchison.
+
+"Lorne's keeping his end up all right," remarked Stella, jumping off
+her bicycle in time to hear what her mother said. "It's great, that old
+Wallingham asking him to dinner. And haven't I just been spreading it!"
+
+"Where have you been, Stella?" asked Mrs Murchison.
+
+"Oh, only over to the Milburns'. Dora asked me to come and show her
+the new flower-stitch for table centres. Dora's suddenly taken to fancy
+work. She's started a lot--a lot too much!" Stella added gloomily.
+
+"If Dora likes to do fancy work I don't see why anybody should want to
+stop her," remarked Mrs Murchison, with a meaning glance at her husband.
+
+"I suppose she thinks she's going to get Lorne," said Stella. Her
+resentment was only half-serious, but the note was there.
+
+"What put that into your head?" asked her mother.
+
+"Oh, well, anybody can see that he's devoted to her, and has been
+for ages, and it isn't as if Lorne was one to HAVE girlfriends; she's
+absolutely the only thing he's ever looked at twice. She hasn't got a
+ring, that's true, but it would be just like her to want him to get it
+in England. And I know they correspond. She doesn't make any secret of
+it."
+
+"Oh, I dare say! Other people have eyes in their head as well as you,
+Stella," said Mrs Murchison, stooping for her ball. "But there's no need
+to take things for granted at such a rate. And, above all, you're not to
+go TALKING, remember!"
+
+"Well, if you think Dora Milburn's good enough," returned Lorne's
+youngest sister in threatening accents, "it's more than I do, that's
+all. Hello, Miss Murchison!" she continued, as Advena appeared. "You're
+looking 'xtremely dinky-dink. Expecting his reverence?"
+
+Advena made no further reply than a look of scornful amusement, which
+Stella, bicycling forth again, received in the back of her head.
+
+"Father," said Mrs Murchison, "if you had taken any share in the
+bringing up of this family, Stella ought to have her ears boxed this
+minute!"
+
+"We'll have to box them," said Mr Murchison, "when she comes back."
+Advena had retreated into the house. "IS she expecting his reverence?"
+asked her father with a twinkle.
+
+"Don't ask me! I'm sure it's more than I can tell you. It's a mystery
+to me, that matter, altogether. I've known him come three evenings in a
+week and not again for a month of Sundays. And when he does come there
+they sit, talking about their books and their authors; you'd think the
+world had nothing else in it! I know, for I've heard them, hard at it,
+there in the library. Books and authors won't keep their house or look
+after their family for them; I can tell them that, if it does come to
+anything, which I hope it won't."
+
+"Finlay's fine in the pulpit," said John Murchison cautiously.
+
+"Oh, the man's well enough; it's him I'm sorry for. I don't call Advena
+fitted to be a wife, and last of all a minister's. Abby was a treasure
+for any man to get, and Stella won't turn out at all badly; she's taking
+hold very well for her age. But Advena simply hasn't got it in her, and
+that's all there is to say about it." Mrs Murchison pulled her needles
+out right side out with finality. "I don't deny the girl's talented in
+her own way, but it's no way to marry on. She'd much better make up her
+mind just to be a happy independent old maid; any woman might do worse.
+And take no responsibilities."
+
+"There would always be you, Mother, for them to fall back on." It was as
+near as John Murchison ever got to flattery.
+
+"No thank you, then! I've brought up six of my own, as well as I was
+able, which isn't saying much, and a hard life I've had of it. Now I'm
+done with it; they'll have to find somebody else to fall back on. If
+they get themselves into such a mess"--Mrs Murchison stopped to laugh
+with sincere enjoyment--"they needn't look to me to get them out."
+
+"I guess you'd have a hand, Mother."
+
+"Not I. But the man isn't thinking of any such folly. What do you
+suppose his salary is?"
+
+"Eight hundred and fifty dollars a year. They raised it last month."
+
+"And how far would Advena be able to make that go, with servants getting
+the money they do and expecting the washing put out as a matter of
+course? Do you remember Eliza, John, that we had when we were first
+married? Seven dollars a month she got; she would split wood at a pinch,
+and I've never had one since that could do up shirts like her. Three
+years and a half she was with me, and did everything, everything I
+didn't do. But that was management, and Advena's no manager. It would
+be me that would tell him, if I had the chance. Then he couldn't say he
+hadn't been warned. But I don't think he has any such idea."
+
+"Advena," pronounced Mr Murchison, "might do worse."
+
+"Well, I don't know whether she might. The creature is well enough to
+preach before a congregation. But what she can see in him out of the
+pulpit is more than I know. A great gawk of a fellow, with eyes that
+always look as if he were in the middle of next week! He may be able
+to talk to Advena, but he's no hand at general conversation; I know
+he finds precious little to say to me. But he's got no such notion. He
+comes here because, being human, he's got to open his mouth some time or
+other, I suppose; but it's my opinion he has neither Advena nor anybody
+else in his mind's eye at present. He doesn't go the right way about
+it."
+
+"H'm!" said John Murchison.
+
+"He brought her a book the last time he came--what do you think the name
+of it was? The something or other of Plato! Do you call that a natural
+gift from a young man who is thinking seriously of a girl? Besides, if
+I know anything about Plato he was a Greek heathen, and no writer for
+a Presbyterian minister to go lending around. I'd Plato him to the
+rightabout if it was me!"
+
+"She might read worse than Plato," remarked John.
+
+"Oh, well, she read it fast enough. She's your own daughter for
+outlandish books. Mercy on us, here comes the man! We'll just say 'How
+d'ye do?' to him, and then start for Abby's, John. I'm not easy in my
+mind about the baby, and I haven't been over since the morning. Harry
+says it's nothing but stomach, but I think I know whooping-cough when I
+hear it. And if it is whooping-cough the boy will have to come here
+and rampage, I suppose, till they're clear of it. There's some use in
+grandmothers, if I do say it myself!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+If anyone had told Mr Hugh Finlay, while he was pursuing his rigorous
+path to the ideals of the University of Edinburgh, that the first
+notable interest of his life in the calling and the country to which
+even then he had given his future would lie in his relations with any
+woman, he would have treated the prediction as mere folly. To go far
+enough back in accounting for this one would arrive at the female sort,
+sterling and arid, that had presided over his childhood and represented
+the sex to his youth, the Aunt Lizzie, widowed and frugal and spare, who
+had brought him up; the Janet Wilson, who had washed and mended him from
+babyhood, good gaunt creature half-servant and half-friend--the mature
+respectable women and impossible blowsy girls of the Dumfriesshire
+village whence he came. With such as these relations, actual or
+imagined, could only be of the most practical kind, matters to be
+arranged on grounds of expediency, and certainly not of the first
+importance. The things of first importance--what you could do with your
+energy and your brains to beat out some microscopic good for the
+world, and what you could see and feel and realize in it of value to
+yourself--left little room for the feminine consideration in Finlay's
+eyes; it was not a thing, simply, that existed there with any
+significance. Woman in her more attractive presentment, was a daughter
+of the poets, with an esoteric, or perhaps only a symbolic, or perhaps
+a merely decorative function; in any case, a creature that required an
+initiation to perceive her--a process to which Finlay would have been
+as unwilling as he was unlikely to submit. Not that he was destitute
+of ideals about women--they would have formed in that case a strange
+exception to his general outlook--but he saw them on a plane detached
+and impersonal, concerned with the preservation of society the
+maintenance of the home, the noble devotions of motherhood. Women had
+been known, historically, to be capable of lofty sentiments and fine
+actions: he would have been the last to withhold their due from women.
+But they were removed from the scope of his imagination, partly by the
+accidents I have mentioned and partly, no doubt, by a simple lack in him
+of the inclination to seek and to know them.
+
+So that Christie Cameron, when she came to stay with his aunt in Bross
+during the few weeks after his ordination and before his departure for
+Canada, found a fair light for judgement and more than a reasonable
+disposition to acquiesce in the scale of her merits, as a woman, on the
+part of Hugh Finlay. He was familiar with the scale of her merits before
+she came; his Aunt Lizzie did little but run them up and down. When she
+arrived she answered to every item she was a good height, but not too
+tall; a nice figure of a woman, but not what you would call stout;
+a fresh-faced body whose excellent principles were written in every
+feature she had. She was five years older than Hugh, but even that he
+came to accept in Aunt Lizzie's skilful exhibition as something to the
+total of her advantages. A pleasant independent creature with a hundred
+a year of her own, sensible and vigorous and good-tempered, belonging as
+well to the pre-eminently right denomination. She had virtues that might
+have figured handsomely in an advertisement had Aunt Lizzie, in
+the plenitude of her good will, thought fit to take that measure on
+Christie's behalf. But nothing was farther from Aunt Lizzie's mind.
+We must, in fairness, add Christie Cameron to the sum of Finlay's
+acquaintance with the sex; but even then the total is slender, little to
+go upon.
+
+Yet the fact which Mr Finlay would in those days have considered so
+unimaginable remained; it had come into being and it remained. The chief
+interest of his life, the chief human interest, did lie in his relations
+with Advena Murchison. He might challenge it, but he could not move it;
+he might explain, but he could not alter it. And there had come no point
+at which it would have occurred to him to do either. When at last he
+had seen how simple and possible it was to enjoy Miss Murchison's
+companionship upon unoccupied evenings he had begun to do it with
+eagerness and zest, the greater because Elgin offered him practically no
+other. Dr Drummond lived, for purposes of intellectual contact, at the
+other end of the century, the other clergy and professional men of the
+town were separated from Finlay by all the mental predispositions that
+rose from the virgin soil. He was, as Mrs Murchison said, a great gawk
+of a fellow; he had little adaptability; he was not of those who spend
+a year or two in the New World and go back with a trans-Atlantic
+accent, either of tongue or of mind. Where he saw a lack of dignity,
+of consideration, or of restraint, he did not insensibly become less
+dignified or considerate or restrained to smooth out perceptible
+differences; nor was he constituted to absorb the qualities of those
+defects, and enrich his nature by the geniality, the shrewdness, the
+quick mental movement that stood on the other side of the account. He
+cherished in secret an admiration for the young men of Elgin, with their
+unappeasable energy and their indomitable optimism, but he could not
+translate it in any language of sympathy and but for Advena his soul
+would have gone uncomforted and alone.
+
+Advena, as we know, was his companion. Seeing herself just that,
+constantly content to be just that, she walked beside him closer than he
+knew. She had her woman's prescience and trusted it. Her own heart, all
+sweetly alive, counselled her to patience; her instincts laid her in
+bonds to concealment. She knew, she was sure; so sure that she could
+play sometimes, smiling, with her living heart--
+
+   The nightingale was not yet heard
+   For the rose was not yet blown,
+
+she could say of his; and what was that but play, and tender laughter,
+at the expense of her own? And then, perhaps, looking up from the same
+book, she would whisper, alone in her room--
+
+   Oh, speed the day, thou dear, dear May,
+
+and gaze humbly through tears at her own face in the glass loving it on
+his behalf. She took her passion with the weight of a thing ordained;
+she had come upon it where it waited for her, and they had gone on
+together, carrying the secret. There might be farther to go, but the way
+could never be long.
+
+Finlay said when he came in that the heat for May was extraordinary;
+and Advena reminded him that he was in a country where everything was
+accomplished quickly, even summer.
+
+"Except perhaps civilization." she added. They were both young enough to
+be pleased with cleverness for its specious self.
+
+"Oh, that is slow everywhere," he observed; "but how you can say so,
+with every modern improvement staring you in the face--"
+
+"Electric cars and telephones! Oh, I didn't say we hadn't the products,"
+and she laughed. "But the thing itself, the precious thing; that never
+comes just by wishing, does it? The art of indifference, the art of
+choice--"
+
+"If you had refinements in the beginning what would the end be?" he
+demanded. "Anaemia."
+
+"Oh, I don't quarrel with the logic of it. I only point out the fact.
+To do that is to acquiesce, really. I acquiesce; I have to. But one may
+long for the more delicate appreciations that seem to flower where life
+has gone on longer."
+
+"I imagine," Finlay said, "that to wish truly and ardently for such
+things is to possess them. If you didn't possess them you wouldn't
+desire them! As they say, as they say--"
+
+"As they say?"
+
+"About love. Some novelist does. To be conscious in any way toward it is
+to be fatally infected."
+
+"What novelist?" Advena asked, with shining interest.
+
+"Some novelist. I--I can't have invented it," he replied, somewhat
+confounded. He got up and walked to the window, where it stood open upon
+the verandah. "I don't write novels," he said.
+
+"Perhaps you live them," suggested Advena. "I mean, of course," she
+added, laughing, "the highest class of fiction."
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Why Heaven forbid? You are sensitive to life, and a great deal of it
+comes into your scope. You can't see a thing truly without feeling it;
+you can't feel it without living it. I don't write novels either, but I
+experience--whole publishers' lists."
+
+"That means," he said, smiling, "that your vision is up to date. You
+see the things, the kind of things that you read of next day. The modern
+moral sophistications--?"
+
+"Don't make me out boastful," she replied. "I often do."
+
+"Mine would be old-fashioned, I am afraid. Old stories of pain"--he
+looked out upon the lawn, white where the chestnut blossoms
+were dropping, and his eyes were just wistful enough to stir her
+adoration--"and of heroism that is quite dateless in the history of the
+human heart. At least one likes to hope so."
+
+"I somehow think," she ventured timidly, "that yours would be classic."
+
+Finlay withdrew his glance abruptly from the falling blossoms as if they
+had tempted him to an expansion he could not justify. He was impatient
+always of the personal note, and in his intercourse with Miss Murchison
+he seemed of late to be constantly sounding it.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said, almost irritably. "I only meant that I
+see the obvious things, while you seem to have an eye for the subtle.
+There's reward, I suppose, in seeing anything. But about those more
+delicate appreciations of societies longer evolved, I sometimes think
+that you don't half realize, in a country like this, how much there is
+to make up."
+
+"Is there anything really to make up?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, so much! Freedom from old habits, inherited problems: look at the
+absurd difficulty they have in England in handling such a matter as
+education! Here you can't even conceive it--the schools have been on
+logical lines from the beginning, or almost. Political activity over
+there is half-strangled at this moment by the secular arm of religion;
+here it doesn't even impede the circulation! Conceive any Church, or the
+united Churches, for the matter of that, asking a place in the conduct
+of the common schools of Ontario! How would the people take it? With
+anger, or with laughter, but certainly with sense. 'By all mean let the
+ministers serve education on the School Boards,' they would say, 'by
+election like other people'--an opportunity, by the way, which has just
+been offered to me. I'm nominated for East Elgin in place of Leverett,
+the tanner, who is leaving the town. I shall do my best to get in, too;
+there are several matters that want seeing to over there. The girls'
+playground, for one thing, is practically under water in the spring."
+
+"You should get in without the least difficulty. Oh, yes there is
+something in a fresh start: we're on the straight road as a nation,
+in most respects; we haven't any picturesque old prescribed lanes to
+travel. So you think that makes up?"
+
+"It's one thing. You might put down space--elbow-room."
+
+"An empty horizon," Advena murmured.
+
+"For faith and the future. An empty horizon is better than none. England
+has filled hers up. She has now--these," and he nodded at a window open
+to the yellow west. Advena looked with him.
+
+"Oh, if you have a creative imagination," she said "like Wallingham's.
+But even then your vision must be only political economic, material. You
+can't conceive the--flowers--that will come out of all that. And if you
+could it wouldn't be like having them."
+
+"And the scope of the individual, his chance of self-respect, unhampered
+by the traditions of class, which either deaden it or irritate it in
+England! His chance of significance and success! And the splendid,
+buoyant, unused air to breathe, and the simplicity of life, and the
+plenty of things!"
+
+"I am to be consoled because apples are cheap."
+
+"You are to be consoled for a hundred reasons. Doesn't it console you
+to feel under your very feet the forces that are working to the immense
+amelioration of a not altogether undeserving people?"
+
+"No," said Advena, rebelliously; and indeed he had been a trifle
+didactic to her grievance. They laughed together, and then with a look
+at her in which observation seemed suddenly to awake, Finlay said--
+
+"And those things aren't all, or nearly all. I sometimes think that the
+human spirit, as it is set free in these wide unblemished spaces, may be
+something more pure and sensitive, more sincerely curious about what is
+good and beautiful--"
+
+He broke off, still gazing at her, as if she had been an idea and no
+more. How much more she was she showed him by a vivid and beautiful
+blush.
+
+"I am glad you are so well satisfied," she said, and then, as if her
+words had carried beyond their intention, she blushed again.
+
+Upon which Hugh Finlay saw his idea incarnate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+If it were fair or adequate to so quote, I should be very much tempted
+to draw the history of Lorne Murchison's sojourn in England from his
+letters home. He put his whole heart into these, his discoveries and his
+recognitions and his young enthusiasm, all his claimed inheritance, all
+that he found to criticize and to love. His mother said, half-jealously
+when she read them, that he seemed tremendously taken up with the old
+country; and of course she expressed the thing exactly, as she always
+did: he was tremendously taken up with it. The old country fell into the
+lines of his imagination, from the towers of Westminster to the shops
+in the Strand; from the Right Hon. Fawcett Wallingham, who laid great
+issues before the public, to the man who sang melancholy hymns to the
+same public up and down the benevolent streets. It was naturally London
+that filled his view; his business was in London and his time was short;
+the country he saw from the train, whence it made a low cloudy frame for
+London, with decorations of hedges and sheep. How he saw London, how he
+carried away all he did in the time and under the circumstances, may
+be thought a mystery; there are doubtless people who would consider his
+opportunities too limited to gather anything essential. Cruickshank was
+the only one of the deputation who had been "over" before; and they all
+followed him unquestioningly to the temperance hotel of his preference
+in Bloomsbury, where bedrooms were three and six and tea was understood
+as a solid meal and the last in the day. Bates would have voted for the
+Metropole, and McGill had been advised that you saw a good deal of life
+at the Cecil, but they bowed to Cruickshank's experience. None of them
+were total abstainers, but neither had any of them the wine habit; they
+were not inconvenienced, therefore, in taking advantage of the cheapness
+with which total abstinence made itself attractive, and they took it,
+though they were substantial men. As one of them put it, they weren't
+over there to make a splash, a thing that was pretty hard to do in
+London, anyhow; and home comforts came before anything. The conviction
+about the splash was perhaps a little the teaching of circumstances.
+They were influential fellows at home, who had lived for years in the
+atmosphere of appreciation that surrounds success; their movements were
+observed in the newspapers; their names stood for wide interests, big
+concerns. They had known the satisfaction of a positive importance,
+not only in their community but in their country; and they had come to
+England invested as well with the weight that is attached to a public
+mission. It may very well be that they looked for some echo of what they
+were accustomed to, and were a little dashed not to find it--to find the
+merest published announcement of their arrival, and their introduction
+by Lord Selkirk to the Colonial Secretary; and no heads turned in the
+temperance hotel when they came into the dining-room. It may very well
+be. It is even more certain, however that they took the lesson as they
+found it, with the quick eye for things as they are which seems to
+come of looking at things as they will be, and with just that humorous
+comment about the splash. It would be misleading to say that they were
+humbled; I doubt whether they even felt their relativity, whether they
+ever dropped consciously, there in the Bloomsbury hotel, into their
+places in the great scale of London. Observing the scale, recognizing
+it, they held themselves unaffected by it; they kept, in a curious,
+positive way, the integrity of what they were and what they had come
+for; they maintained their point of view. So much must be conceded. The
+Empire produces a family resemblance, but here and there, when oceans
+intervene, a different mould of the spirit.
+
+Wallingham certainly invited them to dinner one Sunday, in a body, an
+occasion which gave one or two of them some anxiety until they found
+that it was not to be adorned by the ladies of the family. Tricorne
+was there, President of the Board of Trade, and Fleming, who held the
+purse-strings of the United Kingdom, two Ministers whom Wallingham had
+asked because they were supposed to have open minds--open, that is to
+say, for purposes of assimilation. Wallingham considered, and rightly,
+that he had done very well for the deputation in getting these two.
+There were other "colleagues" whose attendance he would have liked to
+compel; but one of them, deep in the country, was devoting his weekends
+to his new French motor, and the other to the proofs of a book upon
+Neglected Periods of Mahommedan History, and both were at the breaking
+strain with overwork. Wallingham asked the deputation to dinner. Lord
+Selkirk, who took them to Wallingham, dined them too, and invited them
+to one of those garden parties for the sumptuous scale of which he was
+so justly famed; the occasion we have already heard about, upon which
+royalty was present in two generations. They travelled to it by special
+train, a circumstance which made them grave, receptive, and even
+slightly ceremonious with one another. Lord Selkirk, with royalty on his
+hands, naturally could not give them much of his time, and they moved
+about in a cluster, avoiding the ladies' trains and advising one another
+that it was a good thing the High Commissioner was a man of large
+private means; it wasn't everybody that could afford to take the job.
+Yet they were not wholly detached from the occasion; they looked at it,
+after they had taken it in, with an air half-amused, half-proprietary.
+All this had, in a manner, come out of Canada, and Canada was theirs.
+One of them--Bates it was--responding to a lady who was effusive about
+the strawberries, even took the modestly depreciatory attitude of the
+host. "They're a fair size for this country, ma'am, but if you want
+berries with a flavour we'll do better for you in the Niagara district."
+
+It must be added that Cruickshank lunched with Wallingham at his club,
+and with Tricorne at his; and on both occasions the quiet and attentive
+young secretary went with him, for purposes of reference, his pocket
+bulging with memoranda. The young secretary felt a little embarrassed
+to justify his presence at Tricorne's lunch, as the Right Honourable
+gentleman seemed to have forgotten what his guests had come for beyond
+it, and talked exclusively and exhaustively about the new possibilities
+for fruit-farming in England. Cruickshank fairly shook himself into
+his overcoat with irritation afterward. "It's the sort of thing we must
+except," he said, as they merged upon Pall Mall. It was not the sort of
+thing Lorne expected; but we know him unsophisticated and a stranger
+to the heart of the Empire, which beats through such impediment
+of accumulated tissue. Nor was it the sort of thing they got from
+Wallingham, the keen-eyed and probing, whose skill in adjusting
+conflicting interests could astonish even their expectation, and whose
+vision of the essentials of the future could lift even their enthusiasm.
+One would like to linger over their touch with Wallingham, that fusion
+of energy with energy, that straight, satisfying, accomplishing dart.
+There is more drama here; no doubt, than in all the pages that are to
+come. But I am explaining now how little, not how much, the Cruickshank
+deputation, and especially Lorne Murchison, had the opportunity of
+feeling and learning in London, in order to show how wonderful it was
+that Lorne felt and learned so widely. That, what he absorbed and
+took back with him is, after all, what we have to do with; his actual
+adventures are of no great importance.
+
+The deputation to urge improved communications within the Empire had few
+points of contact with the great world, but its members were drawn
+into engagements of their own, more, indeed, than some of them could
+conveniently overtake. Mr Bates never saw his niece in the post-office,
+and regrets it to this day. The engagements arose partly out of business
+relations. Poulton who was a dyspeptic, complained that nothing could be
+got through in London without eating and drinking; for his part he would
+concede a point any time not to eat and drink, but you could not do it;
+you just had to suffer. Poulton was a principal in one of the railway
+companies that were competing to open up the country south of Hudson's
+Bay to the Pacific, but having dealt with that circumstance in the
+course of the day he desired only to be allowed to go to bed on bread
+and butter and a little stewed fruit. Bates, whose name was a nightmare
+to every other dry-goods man in Toronto, naturally had to see a good
+many of the wholesale people; he, too, complained of the number
+of courses and the variety of the wines, but only to disguise his
+gratification. McGill, of the Great Bear Line, had big proposals to
+make in connection with southern railway freights from Liverpool; and
+Cameron, for private reasons of magnitude, proposed to ascertain
+the real probability of a duty to foreigners on certain forms of
+manufactured leather--he turned out in Toronto a very good class of
+suitcase. Cruickshank had private connections to which they were all
+respectful. Nobody but Cruickshank found it expedient to look up the
+lost leader of the Canadian House of Commons, contributed to a cause
+still more completely lost in home politics; nobody but Cruickshank was
+likely to be asked to dine by a former Governor-General of the Dominion,
+an invitation which nobody but Cruickshank would be likely to refuse.
+
+"It used to be a 'command' in Ottawa," said Cruickshank, who had got on
+badly with his sovereign's representative there, "but here it's only a
+privilege. There's no business in it, and I haven't time for pleasure."
+
+The nobleman in question had, in effect, dropped back into the Lords. So
+far as the Empire was concerned, he was in the impressive rearguard, and
+this was a little company of fighting men.
+
+The entertainments arising out of business were usually on a scale more
+or less sumptuous. They took place in big, well-known restaurants, and
+included a look at many of the people who seem to lend themselves so
+willingly to the great buzzing show that anybody can pay for in London,
+their names in the paper in the morning, their faces at Prince's in the
+evening, their personalities no doubt advantageously exposed in various
+places during the day. But there were others, humbler ones in Earl's
+Court Road or Maida Vale, where the members of the deputation had
+relatives whom it was natural to hunt up. Long years and many billows
+had rolled between, and more effective separations had arisen in the
+whole difference of life; still, it was natural to hunt them up, to
+seek in their eyes and their hands the old subtle bond of kin, and
+perhaps--such is our vanity in the new lands--to show them what the
+stock had come to overseas. They tended to be depressing these visits:
+the married sister was living in a small way; the first cousin seemed to
+have got into a rut; the uncle and aunt were failing, with a stooping,
+trembling, old-fashioned kind of decrepitude, a rigidity of body and
+mind, which somehow one didn't see much over home.
+
+"England," said Poulton, the Canadian-born, "is a dangerous country to
+live in; you run such risks of growing old." They agreed, I fear, for
+more reasons than this that England was a good country to leave early;
+and you cannot blame them--there was not one of them who did not offer
+in his actual person proof of what he said. Their own dividing chance
+grew dramatic in their eyes.
+
+"I was offered a clerkship with the Cunards the day before I sailed,"
+said McGill. "Great Scott, if I'd taken that clerkship!" He saw all his
+glorious past, I suppose, in a suburban aspect.
+
+"I was kicked out," said Cameron, "and it was the kindest attention my
+father ever paid me;" and Bates remarked that it was worth coming out
+second-class, as he did, to go back in the best cabin in the ship.
+
+The appearance and opinions of those they had left behind them prompted
+them to this kind of congratulation, with just a thought of compunction
+at the back of it for their own better fortunes. In the further
+spectacle of England most of them saw the repository of singularly
+old-fashioned ideas the storehouse of a good deal of money; and the
+market for unlimited produce. They looked cautiously at imperial
+sentiment; they were full of the terms of their bargain and had, as they
+would have said, little use for schemes that did not commend themselves
+on a basis of common profit. Cruickshank was the biggest and the best of
+them; but even Cruickshank submitted the common formulas; submitted them
+and submitted to them.
+
+Only Lorne Murchison among them looked higher and further; only he was
+alive to the inrush of the essential; he only lifted up his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Lorne was thus an atom in the surge of London. The members of the
+deputation, as their business progressed, began to feel less like atoms
+and more like a body exerting an influence, however obscurely hid in
+a temperance hotel, upon the tide of international affairs; but their
+secretary had naturally no initiative that appeared, no importance that
+was taken account of. In these respects, no less than in the others, he
+justified Mr Cruickshank's selection. He did his work as unobtrusively
+as he did it admirably well; and for the rest he was just washed
+about, carried, hither and thither, generally on the tops of omnibuses,
+receptive, absorbent, mostly silent. He did try once or twice to talk to
+the bus drivers--he had been told it was a thing to do if you wanted
+to get hold of the point of view of a particular class; but the thick
+London idiom defeated him, and he found they grew surly when he asked
+them too often to repeat their replies. He felt a little surly himself
+after a while, when they asked him, as they nearly always did, if he
+wasn't an American. "Yes," he would say in the end, "but not the United
+States kind," resenting the necessity of explaining to the Briton beside
+him that there were other kinds. The imperial idea goes so quickly from
+the heart to the head. He felt compelled, nevertheless, to mitigate his
+denial to the bus drivers.
+
+"I expect it's the next best thing." he would say, "but it's only the
+next best."
+
+It was as if he felt charged to vindicate the race, the whole of
+Anglo-Saxondom, there in his supreme moment, his splendid position, on
+the top of an omnibus lumbering west out of Trafalgar Square.
+
+One introduction of his own he had. Mrs Milburn had got it for him from
+the rector, Mr Emmett, to his wife's brother, Mr Charles Chafe, who
+had interests in Chiswick and a house in Warwick Gardens. Lorne put off
+presenting the letter--did not know, indeed, quite how to present it,
+till his stay in London was half over. Finally he presented himself with
+it, as the quickest way, at the office of Mr Chafe's works at Chiswick.
+He was cordially received, both there and in Warwick Gardens, where he
+met Mrs Chafe and the family, when he also met Mr Alfred Hesketh. Lorne
+went several times to the house in Warwick Gardens, and Hesketh--a
+nephew--was there on the very first occasion. It was an encounter
+interesting on both sides. He--Hesketh--was a young man with a good
+public school and a university behind him, where his very moderate
+degree, however, failed to represent the activity of his mind or the
+capacity of his energy. He had a little money of his own, and no present
+occupation; he belonged to the surplus. He was not content to belong to
+it; he cast about him a good deal for something to do. There was always
+the Bar, but only the best fellows get on there, and he was not quite
+one of the best fellows; he knew that. He had not money enough for
+politics or interest enough for the higher departments of the public
+service, nor had he those ready arts of expression that lead naturally
+into journalism. Anything involving further examinations he rejected
+on that account; and the future of glassware, in view of what they were
+doing in Germany, did not entice him to join his uncle in Chiswick.
+Still he was aware of enterprise, convinced that he had loafed long
+enough.
+
+Lorne Murchison had never met anyone of Hesketh's age in Hesketh's
+condition before. Affluence and age he knew, in honourable retirement;
+poverty and youth he knew, embarked in the struggle; indolence and youth
+he also knew, as it cumbered the ground; but youth and a competence,
+equipped with education, industry, and vigour, searching vainly in
+fields empty of opportunity, was to him a new spectacle. He himself had
+intended to be a lawyer since he was fourteen. There never had been any
+impediment to his intention, any qualification to his desire. He was
+still under his father's roof, but that was for the general happiness;
+any time within the last eighteen months, if he had chosen to hurry
+fate, he might have selected another. He was younger than Hesketh by
+a year, yet we may say that he had arrived, while Hesketh was still
+fidgeting at the starting-point.
+
+"Why don't you farm?" he asked once.
+
+"Farming in England may pay in a quarter of a century, not before. I
+can't wait for it. Besides, why should I farm? Why didn't you?"
+
+"Well," said Lorne, "in your case it seems about the only thing left. I?
+Oh it doesn't attract us over there. We're getting away from it--leaving
+it to the newcomers from this side. Curious circle, that: I wonder when
+our place gets overcrowded, where we shall go to plough?"
+
+Hesketh's situation occupied them a good deal; but their great topic had
+a wider drift, embracing nothing less than the Empire, pausing nowhere
+short of the flag. The imperial idea was very much at the moment in the
+public mind; it hung heavily, like a banner, in every newspaper, it
+was filtering through the slow British consciousness, solidifying as it
+travelled. In the end it might be expected to arrive at a shape in which
+the British consciousness must either assimilate it or cast it forth.
+They were saying in the suburbs that they wanted it explained; at
+Hatfield they were saying, some of them, with folded arms, that it was
+self evident; other members of that great house, swinging their arms,
+called it blackness of darkness and ruin, so had a prophet divided it
+against itself. Wallingham, still in the Cabinet, was going up and down
+the country trying not to explain too much. There was division in
+the Cabinet, sore travail among private members. The conception being
+ministerial, the Opposition applied itself to the task of abortion,
+fearing the worst if it should be presented to the country fully
+formed and featured, the smiling offspring of progress and imagination.
+Travellers to Greater Britain returned waving joyous torches in the
+insular fog; they shed a brilliance and infectious enthusiasm, but there
+were not enough to do more than make the fog visible. Many persons found
+such torches irritating. They pointed out that as England had groped
+to her present greatness she might be trusted to feel her way further.
+"Free trade," they said, "has made us what we are. Put out these
+lights!"
+
+Mr Chafe was one of these. He was a cautious, heavy fellow, full of
+Burgundy and distrust. The basis of the imperial idea inspired him with
+suspicion and hostility. He could accept the American tariff on English
+manufactures; that was a plain position, simple damage, a blow full
+in the face, not to be dodged. But the offer of better business in the
+English colonies in exchange for a duty on the corn and meat of foreign
+countries--he could see too deep for that. The colonials might or might
+not be good customers; he knew how many decanters he sold in the United
+States, in spite of the tariff. He saw that the tax on food-stuffs was
+being commended to the working-man with the argument of higher wages.
+Higher wages, with the competition of foreign labour, spelt only one
+word to English manufacturers, and that was ruin. The bugbear of higher
+wages, immediate, threatening, near, the terror of the last thirty
+years, closed the prospect for Charles Chafe; he could see nothing
+beyond. He did not say so, but to him the prosperity of the British
+manufacturer was bound up in the indigence of the operative. Thriving
+workmen, doing well, and looking to do better, rose before him in terms
+of menace, though their prosperity might be rooted in his own. "Give
+them cheap food and keep them poor," was the sum of his advice. His
+opinions had the emphasis of the unexpected, the unnatural: he was one
+of the people whom Wallingham's scheme in its legitimate development of
+a tariff on foreign manufactures might be expected to enrich. This fact,
+which he constantly insisted on, did give them weight; it made him look
+like a cunning fellow not to be caught with chaff. He and his business
+had survived free trade--though he would not say this either--and he
+preferred to go on surviving it rather than take the chances of any
+zollverein. The name of the thing was enough for him, a word made in
+Germany, thick and mucky, like their tumblers. As to the colonies--Mr
+Chafe had been told of a certain spider who devoured her young ones. He
+reversed the figure and it stood, in the imperial connection, for all
+the argument he wanted.
+
+Alfred Hesketh had lived always in the hearing of such doctrine; it had
+stood to him for political gospel by mere force of repetition. But he
+was young, with the curiosity and enterprise and impatience of dogma
+of youth; he belonged by temperament and situation to those plastic
+thousands in whom Wallingham hoped to find the leaven that should leaven
+the whole lump. His own blood stirred with the desire to accomplish, to
+carry further; and as the scope of the philanthropist did not attract
+him, he was vaguely conscious of having been born too late in England.
+The new political appeal of the colonies, clashing suddenly upon old
+insular harmonies, brought him a sense of wider fields and chances; his
+own case he freely translated into his country's, and offered an open
+mind to politics that would help either of them. He looked at the new
+countries with interest, an interest evoked by their sudden dramatic
+leap into the forefront of public concern. He looked at them with what
+nature intended to be the eye of a practical businessman. He looked
+at Lorne Murchison, too, and listened to him, with steady critical
+attention. Lorne seemed in a way to sum it all up in his person, all the
+better opportunity a man had out there; and he handled large matters of
+the future with a confidence and a grip that quickened the circulation.
+Hesketh's open mind gradually became filled with the imperial view as
+he had the capacity to take it; and we need not be surprised if Lorne
+Murchison, gazing in the same direction, supposed that they saw the same
+thing.
+
+Hesketh confessed, declared, that Murchison had brought him round; and
+Lorne surveyed this achievement with a thrill of the happiest triumph.
+Hesketh stood, to him, a product of that best which he was so occupied
+in admiring and pursuing. Perhaps he more properly represented the
+second best; but we must allow something for the confusion of early
+impressions. Hesketh had lived always in the presence of ideals
+disengaged in England as nowhere else in the world; in Oxford, Lorne
+knew, they clustered thick. There is no doubt that his manners were
+good, and his ideas unimpeachable in the letter; the young Canadian read
+the rest into him and loved him for what he might have been.
+
+"As an Englishman," said Hesketh one evening as they walked together
+back from the Chafes' along Knightsbridge, talking of the policy urged
+by the Colonial representatives at the last Conference, "I could wish
+the idea were more our own--that we were pressing it on the colonies
+instead of the colonies pressing it on us."
+
+"Doesn't there come a time in the history of most families," Lorne
+replied, "when the old folks look to the sons and daughters to keep them
+in touch with the times? Why shouldn't a vigorous policy of Empire be
+conceived by its younger nations--who have the ultimate resources to
+carry it out? We've got them and we know it--the iron and the coal
+and the gold, and the wheat-bearing areas. I dare say it makes us seem
+cheeky, but I tell you the last argument lies in the soil and what you
+can get out of it. What has this country got in comparison? A market of
+forty million people, whom she can't feed and is less and less able to
+find work for. Do you call that a resource? I call it an impediment--a
+penalty. It's something to exploit, for the immediate profit in it,
+something to bargain with; but even as a market it can't preponderate
+always, and I can't see why it should make such tremendous claims."
+
+"England isn't superannuated yet, Murchison."
+
+"Not yet. Please God she never will be. But she isn't as young as she
+was, and it does seem to me--"
+
+"What seems to you?"
+
+"Well, I'm no economist, and I don't know how far to trust my
+impressions, and you needn't tell me I'm a rank outsider, for I know
+that; but coming here as an outsider, it does seem to me that it's from
+the outside that any sort of helpful change in the conditions of this
+country has got to come. England still has military initiative, though
+it's hard to see how she's going to keep that unless she does something
+to stop the degeneration of the class she draws her army from; but
+what other kind do we hear about? Company-promoting, bee-keeping,
+asparagus-growing, poultry-farming for ladies, the opening of a new
+Oriental Tea-Pot in Regent Street, with samisen-players between four
+and six, and Japanese attendants who take the change on their hands and
+knees. London's one great stomach--how many eating places have we passed
+in the last ten minutes? The place seems all taken up with inventing new
+ways of making rich people more comfortable and better-amused--I'm fed
+up with the sight of shiny carriages with cockaded flunkeys on 'em,
+wooden-smart, rolling about with an elderly woman and a parasol and a
+dog. England seems to have fallen back on itself, got content to spend
+the money there is in the country already; and about the only line
+of commercial activity the stranger sees is the onslaught on that
+accumulation. London isn't the headquarters for big new developing
+enterprises any more. If you take out Westminster and Wallingham, London
+is a collection of traditions and great houses, and newspaper offices,
+and shops. That sort of thing can't go on for ever. Already capital
+is drawing away to conditions it can find a profit in--steel works in
+Canada, woollen factories in Australia, jute mills in India. Do you
+know where the boots came from that shod the troops in South Africa?
+Cawnpore. The money will go, you know, and that's a fact; the money will
+go, and the people will go, anyhow. It's only a case of whether England
+sends them with blessing and profit and greater glory, or whether she
+lets them slip away in spite of her."
+
+"I dare say it will," replied Hesketh; "I've got precious little, but
+what there is I'd take out fast enough, if I saw a decent chance of
+investing it. I sometimes think of trying my luck in the States. Two or
+three fellows in my year went over there and aren't making half a bad
+thing of it."
+
+"Oh, come," said Lorne, half-swinging round upon the other, with his
+hands in his pockets, "it isn't exactly the time, is it, to talk about
+chucking the Empire?"
+
+"Well, no, it isn't," Hesketh admitted. "One might do better to wait,
+I dare say. At all events, till we see what the country says to
+Wallingham."
+
+They walked on for a moment or two in silence; then Lorne broke out
+again.
+
+"I suppose it's unreasonable, but there's nothing I hate so much as to
+hear Englishmen talk of settling in the United States."
+
+"It's risky, I admit. And I've never heard anybody yet say it was
+comfortable."
+
+"In a few years, fifty maybe, it won't matter. Things will have taken
+their direction by then; but now it's a question of the lead. The
+Americans think they've got it, and unless we get imperial federation
+of course they have. It's their plain intention to capture England
+commercially."
+
+"We're a long way from that," said Hesketh.
+
+"Yes, but it's in the line of fate. Industrial energy is deserting this
+country; and you have no large movement, no counter-advance, to make
+against the increasing forces that are driving this way from over
+there--nothing to oppose to assault. England is in a state of siege, and
+doesn't seem to know it. She's so great--Hesketh, it's pathetic!--she
+offers an undefended shore to attack, and a stupid confidence, a kindly
+blindness, above all to Americans, whom she patronizes in the gate."
+
+"I believe we do patronize them," said Hesketh. "It's rotten bad form."
+
+"Oh, form! I may be mad, but one seems to see in politics over here a
+lack of definition and purpose, a tendency to cling to the abstract and
+to precedent--'the mainstay of the mandarin' one of the papers calls
+it; that's a good word--that give one the feeling that this kingdom is
+beginning to be aware of some influence stronger than its own. It lies,
+of course, in the great West, where the corn and the cattle grow; and
+between Winnipeg and Chicago choose quickly, England!"
+
+His companion laughed. "Oh, I'm with you," he said, "but you take a
+pessimistic view of this country, Murchison."
+
+"It depends on what you call pessimism," Lorne rejoined. "I see England
+down the future the heart of the Empire, the conscience of the world.
+and the Mecca of the race."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The Cruickshank deputation returned across that North Atlantic which it
+was their desire to see so much more than ever the track of the flag,
+toward the middle of July. The shiny carriages were still rolling about
+in great numbers when they left; London's air of luxury had thickened
+with the advancing season and hung heavily in the streets; people had
+begun to picnic in the Park on Sundays. They had been from the beginning
+a source of wonder and of depression to Lorne Murchison, the people
+in the Park, those, I mean, who walked and sat and stood there for the
+refreshment of their lives, for whom the place has a lyrical value
+as real as it is unconscious. He noted them ranged on formal benches,
+quiet, respectable, absorptive, or gathered heavily, shoulder to
+shoulder, docile under the tutelage of policemen, listening to anyone
+who would lift a voice to speak to them. London, beating on all borders,
+hemmed them in; England outside seemed hardly to contain for them a
+wider space. Lorne, with his soul full of free airs and forest
+depths, never failed to respond to a note in the Park that left him
+heavy-hearted, longing for an automatic distributing system for the
+Empire. When he saw them bring their spirit-lamps and kettles and
+sit down in little companies on four square yards of turf, under
+the blackened branches, in the roar of the traffic, he went back to
+Bloomsbury to pack his trunk, glad that it was not his lot to live with
+that enduring spectacle.
+
+They were all glad, every one of them, to turn their faces to the West
+again. The unready conception of things, the political concentration
+upon parish affairs, the cumbrous social machinery, oppressed them
+with its dull anachronism in a marching world; the problems of sluggish
+overpopulation clouded their eager outlook. These conditions might have
+been their inheritance. Perhaps Lorne Murchison was the only one who
+thanked Heaven consciously that it was not so; but there was no man
+among them whose pulse did not mark a heart rejoiced as he paced the
+deck of the Allan liner the first morning out of Liverpool, because he
+had leave to refuse them. None dreamed of staying, of "settling," though
+such a course was practicable to any of them except Lorne. They were
+all rich enough to take the advantages that money brings in England, the
+comfort, the importance, the state; they had only to add their wealth
+to the sumptuous side of the dramatic contrast. I doubt whether the idea
+even presented itself. It is the American who takes up his appreciative
+residence in England. He comes as a foreigner, observant, amused, having
+disclaimed responsibility for a hundred years. His detachment is as
+complete as it would be in Italy, with the added pleasure of easy
+comprehension. But homecomers from Greater Britain have never been
+cut off, still feel their uneasy share in all that is, and draw a long
+breath of relief as they turn again to their life in the lands where
+they found wider scope and different opportunities, and that new quality
+in the blood which made them different men.
+
+The deputation had accomplished a good deal; less, Cruickshank said,
+than he had hoped, but more than he had expected. They had obtained
+the promise of concessions for Atlantic services, both mail and certain
+classes of freight, by being able to demonstrate a generous policy on
+their own side. Pacific communications the home Government was more
+chary of; there were matters to be fought out with Australia. The
+Pacific was further away, as Cruickshank said, and you naturally can't
+get fellows who have never been there to see the country under the
+Selkirks and south of the Bay--any of them except Wallingham, who had
+never been there either, but whose imagination took views of the falcon.
+They were reinforced by news of a shipping combination in Montreal to
+lower freights to South Africa against the Americans; it wasn't news to
+them, some of them were in it; but it was to the public, and it helped
+the sentiment of their aim, the feather on the arrow. They had secured
+something, both financially and morally; what best pleased them,
+perhaps, was the extent to which they got their scheme discussed. Here
+Lorne had been invaluable; Murchison had done more with the newspapers,
+they agreed, than any of them with Cabinet Ministers. The journalist
+everywhere is perhaps more accessible to ideas, more susceptible to
+enthusiasm, than his fellows, and Lorne was charged with the object of
+his deputation in its most communicable, most captivating form. At all
+events, he came to excellent understanding, whether of agreement or
+opposition, with the newspapermen he met--Cruickshank knew a good
+many of them and these occasions were more fruitful than the official
+ones--and there is no doubt that the guarded approval of certain leading
+columns had fewer ifs and buts and other qualifications in consequence,
+while the disapproval of others was marked by a kind of unwilling
+sympathy and a freely accorded respect. Lorne found London editors
+surprisingly unbiased, London newspapers surprisingly untrammelled.
+They seemed to him to suffer from no dictated views, no interests in the
+background or special local circumstances. They had open minds, most of
+them, and when a cloud appeared it was seldom more than a prejudice. It
+was only his impression, and perhaps it would not stand cynical inquiry;
+but he had a grateful conviction that the English Press occupied in the
+main a lofty and impartial ground of opinion, from which it desired only
+a view of the facts in their true proportion. On his return he confided
+it to Horace Williams, who scoffed and ran the national politics of the
+Express in the local interests of Fox County as hard as ever; but it had
+fallen in with Lorne's beautiful beliefs about England, and he clung to
+it for years.
+
+The Williamses had come over the second evening following Lorne's
+arrival, after tea. Rawlins had gone to the station, just to see that
+the Express would make no mistake in announcing that Mr L. Murchison had
+"Returned to the Paternal Roof," and the Express had announced it,
+with due congratulation. Family feeling demanded that for the first
+twenty-four hours he should be left to his immediate circle, but people
+had been dropping in all the next day at the office, and now came the
+Williamses "trapesing," as Mrs Murchison said, across the grass, though
+she was too content to make it more than a private grievance, to where
+they all sat on the verandah.
+
+"What I don't understand," Horace Williams said to Mr Murchison, "was
+why you didn't give him a blow on the whistle. You and Milburn and a few
+others might have got up quite a toot. You don't get the secretary to a
+deputation for tying up the Empire home every day."
+
+"You did that for him in the Express," said John Murchison, smiling as
+he pressed down, with an accustomed thumb, the tobacco into his pipe.
+
+"Oh, we said nothing at all! Wait till he's returned for South Fox,"
+Williams responded jocularly.
+
+"Why not the Imperial Council--of the future--at Westminster while
+you're about it?" remarked Lorne, flipping a pebble back upon the gravel
+path.
+
+"That will keep, my son. But one of these days, you mark my words, Mr
+L. Murchison will travel to Elgin Station with flags on his engine and
+he'll be very much surprised to find the band there, and a large number
+of his fellow-citizens, all able-bodied shouting men, and every factory
+whistle in Elgin let off at once, to say nothing of kids with tin ones.
+And if the Murchison Stove and Furnace Works siren stands out of that
+occasion I'll break in and pull it myself."
+
+"It won't stand out," Stella assured him. "I'll attend to it. Don't you
+worry."
+
+"I suppose you had a lovely time, Mr Murchison?" said Mrs Williams,
+gently tilting to and fro in a rocking-chair, with her pretty feet
+in their American shoes well in evidence. It is a fact, or perhaps
+a parable, that should be interesting to political economists, the
+adaptability of Canadian feet to American shoes; but fortunately it is
+not our present business. Though I must add that the "rocker" was also
+American; and the hammock in which Stella reposed came from New York;
+and upon John Murchison's knee, with the local journal, lay a pink
+evening paper published in Buffalo.
+
+"Better than I can tell you, Mrs Williams, in all sorts of ways. But
+it's good to be back, too. Very good!" Lorne threw up his head and drew
+in the pleasant evening air of midsummer with infinite relish while his
+eye travelled contentedly past the chestnuts on the lawn, down the vista
+of the quiet tree-bordered street. It lay empty in the solace of
+the evening, a blue hill crossed it in the distance, and gave it an
+unfettered look, the wind stirred in the maples. A pair of schoolgirls
+strolled up and down bareheaded; now and then a buggy passed.
+
+"There's room here," he said.
+
+"Find it kind of crowded up over there?" asked Mr Williams. "Worse than
+New York?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Crowded in a patient sort of way--it's enough to break your
+heart--that you don't see in New York! The poor of New York--well,
+they've got the idea of not being poor. In England they're resigned,
+they've got callous. My goodness! the fellows out of work over
+there--you can SEE they're used to it, see it in the way they slope
+along and the look in their eyes, poor dumb dogs. They don't understand
+it, but they've just got to take it! Crowded? Rather!"
+
+"We don't say 'rather' in this country, mister," observed Stella.
+
+"Well, you can say it now, kiddie."
+
+They laughed at the little passage--the traveller's importation of one
+or two Britishisms had been the subject of skirmish before--but silence
+fell among them for a moment afterward. They all had in the blood the
+remembrance of what Lorne had seen.
+
+"Well, you've been doing big business," said Horace Williams.
+
+Lorne shook his head. "We haven't done any harm," he said, "but our
+scheme's away out of sight now. At least it ought to be."
+
+"Lost in the bigger issue." said Williams, and Lorne nodded.
+
+The bigger issue had indeed in the meantime obscured the political
+horizon, and was widely spreading. A mere colonial project might
+well disappear in it. England was absorbed in a single contemplation.
+Wallingham, though he still supported the disabilities of a right
+honourable evangelist with a gospel of his own, was making astonishing
+conversions; the edifice of the national economic creed seemed coming
+over at the top. It was a question of the resistance of the base, and
+the world was watching.
+
+"Cruickshank says if the main question had been sprung a month ago we
+wouldn't have gone over. As it is, on several points we've got to wait.
+If they reject the preferential trade idea over there we shall have done
+a little good, for any government would be disposed to try to patch up
+something to take the place of imperial union in that case; and a few
+thousands more for shipping subsidies and cheap cablegrams would have
+a great look of strengthening the ties with the colonies. But if they
+commit themselves to a zollverein with us and the rest of the family
+you won't hear much more about the need to foster communications.
+Communications will foster themselves."
+
+"Just so," remarked John Murchison. "They'll save their money."
+
+"I wouldn't think so before--I couldn't," Lorne went on, "but I'm afraid
+it's rather futile, the kind of thing we've been trying to do. It's
+fiddling at a superstructure without a foundation. What we want is the
+common interest. Common interest, common taxation for defence, common
+representation, domestic management of domestic affairs, and you've got
+a working Empire."
+
+"Just as easy as slippin' off a log," remarked Horace Williams.
+
+"Common interest, yes," said his father; "common taxation, no, for
+defence or any other purpose. The colonies will never send money to be
+squandered by the London War Office. We'll defend ourselves, as soon
+as we can manage it, and buy our own guns and our own cruisers. We're
+better business people than they are, and we know it."
+
+"I guess that's right, Mr Murchison," said Horace Williams. "Our own
+army and navy--in the sweet bye-and-bye. And let 'em understand they'll
+be welcome to the use of it, but quite in a family way--no sort of
+compulsion."
+
+"Well," said Lorne, "that's compatible enough."
+
+"And your domestic affairs must include the tariff," Mr Murchison went
+on. "There's no such possibility as a tariff that will go round. And
+tariffs are kittle cattle to shoo behind."
+
+"Has anybody got a Scotch dictionary?" inquired Stella. "This
+conversation is making me tired."
+
+"Suppose you run away and play with your hoop," suggested her brother.
+"I can't see that as an insuperable difficulty, Father. Tariffs could
+be made adaptable, relative to the common interest as well as to the
+individual one. We could do it if we liked."
+
+"Your adaptability might easily lead to other things. What's to prevent
+retaliation among ourselves? There's a slump in textiles, and the
+home Government is forced to let in foreign wool cheaper. Up goes the
+Australian tax on the output of every mill in Lancashire. The last state
+of the Empire might be worse than the first."
+
+"It wouldn't be serious. If I pinched Stella's leg as I'm going to in a
+minute, she will no doubt kick me; and her instincts are such that she
+will probably kick me with the leg I pinched, but that won't prevent our
+going to the football match together tomorrow and presenting a united
+front to the world."
+
+They all laughed, and Stella pulled down her lengthening petticoats with
+an air of great offence, but John Murchison shook his head.
+
+"If they manage it, they will be clever," he said.
+
+"Talking of Lancashire," said Williams, "there are some funny fellows
+over there writing in the Press against a tax on foreign cotton because
+it's going to ruin Lancashire. And at this very minute thousands of
+looms are shut down in Lancashire because of the high price of cotton
+produced by an American combine--and worse coming, sevenpence a pound
+I hear they're going to have it, against the fourpence ha'penny they've
+got it up to already. That's the sort of thing they're afraid to
+discourage by a duty."
+
+"Would a duty discourage it?" asked John Murchison.
+
+"Why not--if they let British-grown cotton in free? They won't
+discourage the combine much--that form of enterprise has got to be
+tackled where it grows; but the Yankee isn't the only person in the
+world that can get to understand it. What's to prevent preferential
+conditions creating British combines, to compete with the American
+article, and what's to prevent Lancashire getting cheaper cotton in
+consequence? Two combines are better than one monopoly any day."
+
+"May be so. It would want looking into. We won't see a duty on cotton
+though, or wool either for that matter. The manufacturers would be
+pleased enough to get it on the stuff they make, but there would be a
+fine outcry against taxing the stuff they use."
+
+"Did you see much of the aristocracy, Mr Murchison?" asked Mrs Williams.
+
+"No," replied Lorne, "but I saw Wallingham."
+
+"You saw the whole House of Lords," interposed Stella, "and you were
+introduced to three."
+
+"Well, yes, that's so. Fine-looking set of old chaps they are, too.
+We're a little too funny over here about the Lords--we haven't had to
+make any."
+
+"What were they doing the day you were there, Lorne?" asked Williams.
+
+"Motorcar legislation," replied Lorne. "Considerably excited about it,
+too. One of them had had three dogs killed on his estate. I saw his
+letter about it in the Times."
+
+"I don't see anything to laugh at in that," declared Stella. "Dogs are
+dogs."
+
+"They are, sister, especially in England."
+
+"Laundresses aren't washerwomen there," observed Mrs Murchison. "I'd
+like you to see the colour of the things he's brought home with him, Mrs
+Williams. Clean or dirty, to the laundry they go--weeks it will take to
+get them right again--ingrained London smut and nothing else."
+
+"In this preference business they've got to lead the way," Williams
+reverted. "We're not so grown up but what grandma's got to march in
+front. Now, from your exhaustive observation of Great Britain, extending
+over a period of six weeks, is she going to?"
+
+"My exhaustive observation," said Lorne, smiling, "enables me to tell
+you one thing with absolute accuracy; and that is that nobody knows.
+They adore Wallingham over there--he's pretty nearly a god--and
+they'd like to do as he tells them, and they're dead sick of theoretic
+politics; but they're afraid--oh, they're afraid!"
+
+"They'll do well to ca' canny," said John Murchison.
+
+"There's two things in the way, at a glance," Lorne went on. "The
+conservatism of the people--it isn't a name, it's a fact--the hostility
+and suspicion; natural enough: they know they're stupid, and they half
+suspect they're fair game. I suppose the Americans have taught them
+that. Slow--oh, slow! More interested in the back-garden fence than
+anything else. Pick up a paper, at the moment when things are being
+done, mind, all over the world, done against them--when their shipping
+is being captured, and their industries destroyed, and their goods
+undersold beneath their very noses--and the thing they want to know
+is--Why Are the Swallows Late? I read it myself, in a ha'penny morning
+paper, too--that they think rather dangerously go-ahead--a whole column,
+headed, to inquire what's the matter with the swallows. The Times the
+same week had a useful leader on Alterations in the Church Service, and
+a special contribution on Prayers for the Dead. Lord, they need 'em!
+Those are the things they THINK about! The session's nearly over, and
+there's two Church Discipline Bills, and five Church Bills--bishoprics
+and benefices, and Lord knows what--still to get through. Lot of anxiety
+about 'em, apparently! As to a business view of politics, I expect the
+climate's against it. They'll see over a thing--they're fond of doing
+that--or under it, or round one side of it, but they don't seem to
+have any way of seeing THROUGH it. What they just love is a good round
+catchword; they've only got to hear themselves say it often enough, and
+they'll take it for gospel. They're convinced out of their own mouths.
+There was the driver of a bus I used to ride on pretty often, and if he
+felt like talking, he'd always begin, 'As I was a-saying of yesterday--'
+Well, that's the general idea--to repeat what they were a-sayin' of
+yesterday; and it doesn't matter two cents that the rest of the world
+has changed the subject. They've been a-sayin' a long time that they
+object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won't get them to
+SEE the business in changing. If they do this it won't be because they
+want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to."
+
+"I guess that's so," said Williams. "And if Wallingham gets them to he
+ought to have a statue in every capital in the Empire. He will, too.
+Good cigar this, Lorne! Where'd you get it?"
+
+"They are Indian cheroots--'Planters,' they call 'em--made in Madras.
+I got some through a man named Hesketh, who has friends out there, at a
+price you wouldn't believe for as decent a smoke. You can't buy 'em in
+London; but you will all right, and here, too, as soon as we've got the
+sense to favour British-grown tobacco."
+
+"Lorne appreciates his family better than he did before," remarked his
+youngest sister, "because we're British grown."
+
+"You were saying you noticed two things specially in the way?" said his
+father.
+
+"Oh, the other's of course the awful poverty--the twelve millions that
+haven't got enough to do with. I expect it's an outside figure and it
+covers all sorts of qualifying circumstances; but it's the one the Free
+Fooders quote, and it's the one Wallingham will have to handle. They've
+muddled along until they've GOT twelve million people in that condition,
+and now they have to carry on with the handicap. We ask them to put a
+tax on foreign food to develop our wheat areas and cattle ranges.
+We say, 'Give us a chance and we'll feed you and take your surplus
+population.' What is to be done with the twelve million while we are
+growing the wheat? The colonies offer to create prosperity for everybody
+concerned at a certain outlay--we've got the raw materials--and they
+can't afford the investment because of the twelve millions, and what may
+happen meanwhile. They can't face the meanwhile--that's what it comes
+to."
+
+"Fine old crop of catchwords in that situation," Mr Williams remarked;
+and his eye had the spark of the practical politician. "Can't you hear
+'em at it, eh?"
+
+"It scares them out of everything but hand-to-mouth politics. Any other
+remedy is too heroic. They go on pointing out and contemplating and
+grieving, with their percentages of misery and degeneration; and they go
+on poulticing the cancer with benevolence--there are people over there
+who want the State to feed the schoolchildren! Oh, they're kind, good,
+big-hearted people; and they've got the idea that if they can only give
+enough away everything will come right. I was talking with a man one
+day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class justified
+governing a great country on the principle of an almshouse. He asked
+me who the almsgivers ought to be, in any country. Of course it was
+tampering with my figure--in an almshouse there aren't any; but that's
+the way it presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow was
+frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food--he nearly cried--but would
+be very glad to see the Government do more to assist emigration to the
+colonies. I tried to show him it would be better to make it profitable
+to emigrate first, but I couldn't make him see it.
+
+"Oh, and there's the old thing against them, of course--the handling of
+imperial and local affairs by one body. Anybody's good enough to attend
+to the Baghdad Railway, and nobody's too good to attend to the town
+pump. Is it any wonder the Germans beat them in their own shops and
+Russia walks into Thibet? The eternal marvel is that they stand where
+they do."
+
+"At the top," said Mr Williams.
+
+"Oh--at the top! Think of what you mean when you say 'England.'"
+
+"I see that the demand for a tariff on manufactured goods is growing,"
+Williams remarked, "even the anti-food-tax organs are beginning to shout
+for that."
+
+"If they had put it on twenty years ago," said Lorne, "there would be no
+twelve million people making a problem for want of work, and it would be
+a good deal easier to do imperial business today."
+
+"You'll find," said John Murchison, removing his pipe, "that
+protection'll have to come first over there. They'll put up a fence
+and save their trade--in their own good time, not next week or next
+year--and when they've done that they'll talk to us about our big
+ideas--not before. And if Wallingham hadn't frightened them with the
+imperial job, he never would have got them to take up the other. It's
+just his way of getting both done."
+
+"I hope you're right, Father," said Lorne, with a covert glance at his
+watch. "Horace--Mrs Williams--I'll have to get you to excuse me. I have
+an engagement at eight."
+
+He left them with a happy spring in his step, left them looking after
+him, talking of him, with pride and congratulation. Only Stella, with
+a severe lip and a disapproving eye, noted the direction he took as he
+left the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Peter Macfarlane had carried the big Bible up the pulpit steps of Knox
+Church, and arranged the glass of water and the notices to be given out
+beside it, twice every Sunday for twenty years. He was a small spare
+man, with thin grey hair that fell back from the narrow dome of his
+forehead to his coat collar, decent and severe. He ascended the pulpit
+exactly three minutes before the minister did; and the dignity with
+which he put one foot before the other made his appearance a ceremonious
+feature of the service and a thing quoted. "I was there before Peter"
+was a triumphant evidence of punctuality. Dr Drummond would have liked
+to make it a test. It seemed to him no great thing to expect the people
+of Knox Church to be there before Peter.
+
+Macfarlane was also in attendance in the vestry to help the minister off
+with his gown and hang it up. Dr Drummond's gown needed neither helping
+nor hanging; the Doctor was deftness and neatness and impatience itself,
+and would have it on the hook with his own hands, and never a fold
+crooked. After Mr Finlay, on the contrary, Peter would have to pick up
+and smooth out--ten to one the garment would be flung on a chair. Still,
+he was invariably standing by to see it flung, and to hand Mr Finlay his
+hat and stick. He was surprised and put about to find himself one Sunday
+evening too late for this attendance. The vestry was empty, the gown
+was on the floor. Peter gathered it up with as perturbed an air as if Mr
+Finlay had omitted a point of church observance. "I doubt they get into
+slack ways in these missions," said Peter. He had been unable, with Dr
+Drummond, to see the necessity for such extensions.
+
+Meanwhile Hugh Finlay, in secular attire, had left the church by the
+vestry door, and was rapidly overtaking groups of his hearers as they
+walked homeward. He was unusually aware of his change of dress because
+of a letter in the inside pocket of his coat. The letter, in that
+intimate place, spread a region of consciousness round it which hastened
+his blood and his step. There was purpose in his whole bearing; Advena
+Murchison, looking back at some suggestion of Lorne's, caught it, and
+lost for a moment the meaning of what she said. When he overtook them,
+with plain intention, she walked beside the two men, withdrawn and
+silent, like a child. It was unexpected and overwhelming, his joining
+them after the service, accompanying them, as it were, in the flesh
+after having led them so far in the spirit; he had never done it before.
+She felt her heart confronted with a new, an immediate issue, and
+suddenly afraid. It shrank from the charge for which it longed, and
+would have fled; yet, paralysed with delight, it kept time with her
+sauntering feet.
+
+They talked of the sermon, which had been strongly tinged with the issue
+of the day. Dreamer as he was by temperament, Finlay held to the wisdom
+of informing great public questions with the religious idea, vigorously
+disclaimed that it was anywhere inadmissible.
+
+"You'll have to settle with the Doctor, Mr Finlay," Lorne warned him
+gaily, "if you talk politics in Knox Church. He thinks he never does."
+
+"Do you think," said Finlay, "that he would object to--to one's going as
+far afield as I did tonight?"
+
+"He oughtn't to," said Lorne. "You should have heard him when old Sir
+John Macdonald gerrymandered the electoral districts and gave votes to
+the Moneida Indians. The way he put it, the Tories in the congregation
+couldn't say a word, but it was a treat for his fellow Grits."
+
+Finlay smiled gravely. "Political convictions are a man's birthright,"
+he said. "Any man or any minister is a poor creature without them. But
+of course there are limits beyond which pulpit influence should not go,
+and I am sure Dr Drummond has the clearest perception of them. He seems
+to have been a wonderful fellow, Macdonald, a man with extraordinary
+power of imaginative enterprise. I wonder whether he would have seen his
+way to linking up the Empire as he linked up your Provinces here?"
+
+"He'd have hated uncommonly to be in opposition, but I don't see how
+he could have helped it," Lorne said. "He was the godfather of Canadian
+manufacturers, you know--the Tories have always been the industrial
+party. He couldn't have gone for letting English stuff in free, or
+cheap; and yet he was genuinely loyal and attached to England. He would
+discriminate against Manchester with tears in his eyes! Imperialist in
+his time spelled Conservative, now it spells Liberal. The Conservatives
+have always talked the loudest about the British bond, but when it
+lately came to doing we're on record on the right side, and they're on
+record on the wrong. But it must make the old man's ghost sick to see--"
+
+"To see his court suit stolen," Advena finished for him. "As Disraeli
+said--wasn't it Disraeli?" She heard, and hated the note of constraint
+in her voice. "Am I reduced," she thought, indignantly, "to falsetto?"
+and chose, since she must choose, the betrayal of silence.
+
+"It did one good to hear the question discussed on the higher level,"
+said Lorne. "You would think, to read the papers, that all its merits
+could be put into dollars and cents."
+
+"I've noticed some of them in terms of sentiment--affection for the
+mother country--"
+
+"Yes, that's lugged in. But it doesn't cover the moral aspect," Lorne
+returned. "It's too easy and obvious, as well; it gives the enemy cause
+to offend."
+
+"Well, there's a tremendous moral aspect," Finlay said, "tremendous
+moral potentialities hidden in the issue. England has more to lose than
+she dreams."
+
+"That's just where I felt, as a practical politician, a little restless
+while you were preaching," said Lorne, laughing. "You seemed to think
+the advantage of imperialism was all with England. You mustn't press
+that view on us, you know. We shall get harder to bargain with. Besides,
+from the point of your sermon, it's all the other way."
+
+"Oh, I don't agree! The younger nations can work out their own salvation
+unaided; but can England alone? Isn't she too heavily weighted?"
+
+"Oh, materially, very likely! But morally, no," said Lorne, stoutly.
+"There, if you like, she has accumulations that won't depreciate. Money
+isn't the only capital the colonies offer investment for."
+
+"I'm afraid I see it in the shadow of the degeneration of age and
+poverty," said Finlay, smiling--"or age and wealth, if you prefer it."
+
+"And we in the disadvantage of youth and easy success," Lorne retorted.
+"We're all very well, but we're not the men our fathers were: we need a
+lot of licking into shape. Look at that disgraceful business of ours in
+the Ontario legislature the other day, and look at that fellow of
+yours walking out of office at Westminster last session because of a
+disastrous business connection which he was morally as clear of as
+you or I! I tell you we've got to hang on to the things that make us
+ashamed; and I guess we've got sense enough to know it. But this is my
+corner. I am going to look in at the Milburns', Advena. Good night, Mr
+Finlay."
+
+Advena, walking on with Finlay, became suddenly aware that he had not
+once addressed her. She had the quick impression that Lorne left him
+bereft of a refuge; his plight heartened her.
+
+"If the politicians on both sides were only as mutually appreciative,"
+she said, "the Empire would soon be knit."
+
+For a moment he did not answer. "I am afraid the economic situation is
+not quite analogous," he said, stiffly and absently, when the moment had
+passed.
+
+"Why does your brother always call me 'Mr' Finlay?" he demanded
+presently. "It isn't friendly."
+
+The note of irritation in his voice puzzled her. "I think the form is
+commoner with us," she said, "even among men who know each other fairly
+well." Her secret glance flashed over the gulf that nevertheless divided
+Finlay and her brother, that would always divide them. She saw it with
+something like pain, which struggled through her pride in both. "And
+then, you know--your calling--"
+
+"I suppose it is that," he replied, ill content.
+
+"I've noticed Dr Drummond's way," she told him, with rising spirits.
+"It's delightful. He drops the 'Mr' with fellow-ministers of his own
+denomination only--never with Wesleyans or Baptists, for a moment. He
+always comes back very genial from the General Assembly, and full of
+stories. 'I said to Grant,' or 'Macdonald said to me'--and he always
+calls you 'Finlay,'" she added shyly. "By the way, I suppose you know
+he's to be the new Moderator?"
+
+"Is he, indeed? Yes--yes, of course, I knew! We couldn't have a better."
+
+They walked on through the early autumn night. It was just not raining.
+The damp air was cool and pungent with the smell of fallen leaves, which
+lay thick under their feet. Advena speared the dropped horse chestnut
+husks with the point of her umbrella as they went along. She had picked
+up half a dozen when he spoke again. "I want to tell you--I have to tell
+you--something--about myself, Miss Murchison."
+
+"I should like," said Advena steadily, "to hear."
+
+"It is a matter that has, I am ashamed to confess, curiously gone out
+of my mind of late--I should say until lately. There was little until
+lately--I am so poor a letter writer--to remind me of it. I am engaged
+to be married!"
+
+"But how interesting!" exclaimed Advena.
+
+He looked at her taken aback. His own mood was heavy; it failed to
+answer this lightness from her. It is hard to know what he expected,
+what his unconscious blood expected for him; but it was not this. If
+he had little wisdom about the hearts of women, he had less about their
+behaviour. She said nothing more, but inclined her head in an angle of
+deference and expectation toward what he should further communicate.
+
+"I don't know that I have ever told you much about my life in Scotland,"
+he went on. "It has always seemed to me so remote and--disconnected with
+everything here. I could not suppose it would interest anyone. I was
+cared for and educated by my father's only sister, a good woman. It was
+as if she had whole charge of the part of my life that was not absorbed
+in work. I don't know that I can make you understand. She was identified
+with all the rest--I left it to her. Shortly before I sailed for Canada
+she spoke to me of marriage in connection with my work and--welfare, and
+with--a niece of her husband's who was staying with us at the time,
+a person suitable in every way. Apart from my aunt, I do not
+know--However, I owed everything to her, and I--took her advice in the
+matter. I left it to her. She is a managing woman; but she can nearly
+always prove herself right. Her mind ran a great deal, a little too
+much perhaps, upon creature comforts, and I suppose she thought that in
+emigrating a man might do well to companion himself."
+
+"That was prudent of her," said Advena.
+
+He turned a look upon her. "You are not--making a mock of it?" he said.
+
+"I am not making a mock of it."
+
+"My aunt now writes to me that Miss Christie's home has been broken
+up by the death of her mother, and that if it can be arranged she is
+willing to come to me here. My aunt talks of bringing her. I am to
+write."
+
+He said the last words slowly, as if he weighed them. They had passed
+the turning to the Murchisons', walking on with the single consciousness
+of a path under them, and space before them. Once or twice before that
+had happened, but Advena had always been aware. This time she did not
+know.
+
+"You are to write," she said. She sought in vain for more words; he
+also, throwing back his head, appeared to search the firmament for
+phrases without result. Silence seemed enforced between them, and walked
+with them, on into the murky landscape, over the fallen leaves. Passing
+a streetlamp, they quickened their steps, looking furtively at the
+light, which seemed leagued against them with silence.
+
+"It seems so extraordinarily--far away," said Hugh Finlay, of Bross,
+Dumfries, at length.
+
+"But it will come near," Advena replied.
+
+"I don't think it ever can."
+
+She looked at him with a sudden leap of the heart, a wild, sweet dismay.
+
+"They, of course, will come. But the life of which they are a part, and
+the man whom I remember to have been me--there is a gulf fixed--"
+
+"It is only the Atlantic," Advena said. She had recovered her vision; in
+spite of the stone in her breast she could look. The weight and the hurt
+she would reckon with later. What was there, after all, to do? Meanwhile
+she could look, and already she saw with passion what had only begun to
+form itself in his consciousness, his strange, ironical, pitiful plight.
+
+He shook his head. "It is not marked in any geography," he said, and
+gave her a troubled smile. "How can I make it clear to you? I have come
+here into a new world, of interests unknown and scope unguessed before.
+I know what you would say, but you have no way of learning the beauty
+and charm of mere vitality--you have always been so alive. One finds a
+physical freedom in which one's very soul seems to expand; one hears the
+happiest calls of fancy. And the most wonderful, most delightful thing
+of all is to discover that one is oneself, strangely enough, able to
+respond--"
+
+The words reached the woman beside him like some cool dropping balm,
+healing, inconceivably precious. She knew her share in all this that he
+recounted. He might not dream of it, might well confound her with the
+general pulse; but she knew the sweet and separate subcurrent that her
+life had been in his, felt herself underlying all these new joys of his,
+could tell him how dear she was. But it seemed that he must not guess.
+
+It came to her with force that his dim perception of his case was
+grotesque, that it humiliated him. She had a quick desire that he should
+at least know that civilized, sentient beings did not lend themselves to
+such outrageous comedies as this which he had confessed; it had somehow
+the air of a confession. She could not let him fall so lamentably short
+of man's dignity, of man's estate, for his own sake.
+
+"It is a curious history," she said. "You are right in thinking I should
+not find it quite easy to understand. We make those--arrangements--so
+much more for ourselves over here. Perhaps we think them more important
+than they are."
+
+"But they are of the highest importance." He stopped short, confounded.
+
+"I shall try to consecrate my marriage," he said presently, more to
+himself than to Advena.
+
+Her thought told him bitterly: "I am afraid it is the only thing you can
+do with it," but something else came to her lips.
+
+"I have not congratulated you. I am not sure," she went on, with
+astonishing candour, "whether I can. But I wish you happiness with all
+my heart. Are you happy now?"
+
+He turned his great dark eyes on her. "I am as happy, I dare say, as I
+have any need to be."
+
+"But you are happier since your letter came?"
+
+"No," he said. The simple word fell on her heart, and she forbore.
+
+They went on again in silence until they arrived at a place from which
+they saw the gleam of the river and the line of the hills beyond. Advena
+stopped.
+
+"We came here once before together--in the spring. Do you remember?" she
+asked.
+
+"I remember very well." She had turned, and he with her. They stood
+together with darkness about them, through which they could just see
+each other's faces.
+
+"It was spring then, and I went back alone. You are still living up that
+street? Good night, then, please. I wish again--to go back--alone."
+
+He looked at her for an instant in dumb bewilderment, though her words
+were simple enough. Then as she made a step away from him he caught her
+hand.
+
+"Advena," he faltered, "what has happened to us? This time I cannot let
+you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"Lorne," said Dora Milburn, in her most animated manner, "who do you
+think is coming to Elgin? Your London friend, Mr Hesketh! He's going to
+stay with the Emmetts, and Mrs Emmett is perfectly distracted; she says
+he's accustomed to so much, she doesn't know how he will put up with
+their plain way of living. Though what she means by that, with late
+dinner and afternoon tea every day of her life, is more than I know."
+
+"Why, that's splendid!" replied Lorne. "Good old Hesketh! I knew he
+thought of coming across this fall, but the brute hasn't written to
+me. We'll have to get him over to our place. When he gets tired of
+the Emmetts' plain ways he can try ours--they're plainer. You'll like
+Hesketh; he's a good fellow, and more go-ahead than most of them."
+
+"I don't think I should ask him to stay if I were you, Lorne. Your
+mother will never consent to change her hours for meals. I wouldn't
+dream of asking an Englishman to stay if I couldn't give him late
+dinner; they think so much of it. It's the trial of Mother's life that
+Father will not submit to it. As a girl she was used to nothing else.
+Afternoon tea we do have, he can't prevent that, but Father kicks at
+anything but one o'clock dinner and meat tea at six, and I suppose he
+always will."
+
+"Doesn't one tea spoil the other?" Lorne inquired. "I find it does
+when I go to your minister's and peck at a cress sandwich at five. You
+haven't any appetite for a reasonable meal at six. But I guess it won't
+matter to Hesketh; he's got a lot of sense about things of that sort.
+Why he served out in South Africa--volunteered. Mrs Emmett needn't
+worry. And if we find him pining for afternoon tea we can send him over
+here."
+
+"Well, if he's nice. But I suppose he's pretty sure to be nice. Any
+friend of the Emmetts--What is he like, Lorne?"
+
+"Oh, he's just a young man with a moustache! You seem to see a good many
+over there. They're all alike while they're at school in round coats,
+and after they leave school they get moustaches, and then they're all
+alike again."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't tease. How tall is he? Is he fair or dark? What
+colour are his eyes?"
+
+Lorne buried his head in his hands in a pretended agony of recollection.
+
+"So far as I remember, not exactly tall, but you wouldn't call him
+short. Complexion--well, don't you know?--that kind of middling
+complexion. Colour of his eyes--does anybody ever notice a thing like
+that? You needn't take my word for it, but I should say they were a kind
+of average coloured eyes."
+
+"Lorne! You ARE--I suppose I'll just have to wait till I see him. But
+the girls are wild to know, and I said I'd ask you. He'll be here in
+about two weeks anyhow, and I dare say we won't find him so much to make
+a fuss about. The best sort of Englishmen don't come over such a very
+great deal, as you say. I expect they have a better time at home."
+
+"Hesketh's a very good sort of Englishman," said Lorne.
+
+"He's awfully well off, isn't he?"
+
+"According to our ideas I suppose he is," said Lorne. "Not according to
+English ideas."
+
+"Still less according to New York ones, then," asserted Dora. "They
+wouldn't think much of it there even if he passed for rich in England."
+It was a little as if she resented Lorne's comparison of standards, and
+claimed the American one as at least cis-Atlantic.
+
+"He has a settled income," said Lorne, "and he's never had to work for
+it, whatever luck there is in that. That's all I know. Dora--"
+
+"Now, Lorne, you're not to be troublesome."
+
+"Your mother hasn't come in at all this evening. Don't you think it's a
+good sign?"
+
+"She isn't quite so silly as she was," remarked Dora. "Why I should
+not have the same freedom as other girls in entertaining my gentleman
+friends I never could quite see."
+
+"I believe if we told her we had made up our minds it would be all
+right," he pleaded.
+
+"I'm not so sure Lorne. Mother's so deep. You can't always tell just by
+what she DOES. She thinks Stephen Stuart likes me--it's too perfectly
+idiotic; we are the merest friends--and when it's any question of you
+and Stephen--well, she doesn't say anything, but she lets me see! She
+thinks such a lot of the Stuarts because Stephen's father was Ontario
+Premier once, and got knighted."
+
+"I might try for that myself if you think it would please her," said the
+lover.
+
+"Please her! And I should be Lady Murchison!" she let fall upon his
+ravished ears. "Why, Lorne, she'd just worship us both! But you'll never
+do it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Dora looked at him with pretty speculation. She had reasons for
+supposing that she did admire the young man.
+
+"You're too nice," she said.
+
+"That isn't good enough," he responded, and drew her nearer.
+
+"Then why did you ask me?--No, Lorne, you are not to. Suppose Father
+came in?"
+
+"I shouldn't mind--Father's on my side, I think."
+
+"Father isn't on anybody's side," said his daughter, wisely.
+
+"Dora, let me speak to him!"
+
+Miss Milburn gave a clever imitation of a little scream of horror.
+
+"INDEED I won't! Lorne, you are never, NEVER to do that! As if we were
+in a ridiculous English novel!"
+
+"That's the part of an English novel I always like," said Lorne. "The
+going and asking. It must about scare the hero out of a year's growth;
+but it's a glorious thing to do--it would be next day, anyhow."
+
+"It's just the sort of thing to please Mother," Dora meditated, "but she
+can't be indulged all the time. No, Lorne, you'll have to leave it to
+me--when there's anything to tell."
+
+"There's everything to tell now," said he, who had indeed nothing to
+keep back.
+
+"But you know what Mother is, Lorne. Suppose they hadn't any objection,
+she would never keep it to herself! She'd want to go announcing it all
+over the place; she'd think it was the proper thing to do."
+
+"But, Dora, why not? If you knew how I want to announce it! I should
+like to publish it in the sunrise--and the wind--so that I couldn't go
+out of doors without seeing it myself."
+
+"I shouldn't mind having it in Toronto Society, when the time comes.
+But not yet, Lorne--not for ages. I'm only twenty-two--nobody thinks of
+settling down nowadays before she's twenty-five at the very earliest.
+I don't know a single girl in this town that has--among my friends,
+anyway. That's three years off, and you CAN'T expect me to be engaged
+for three years."
+
+"No." said Lorne, "engaged six months, married the rest of the time. Or
+the periods might run concurrently if you preferred--I shouldn't mind."
+
+"An engaged girl has the very worst time. She gets hardly any attention,
+and as to dances--well, it's a good thing for her if the person she's
+engaged to CAN dance," she added, teasingly.
+
+Lorne coloured. "You said I was improving, Dora," he said, and then
+laughed at the childish claim. "But that isn't really a thing that
+counts, is it? If our lives only keep step it won't matter much about
+the 'Washington Post.' And so far as attention goes, you'll get it as
+long as you live, you little princess. Besides, isn't it better to wear
+the love of one man than the admiration of half a dozen?"
+
+"And be teased and worried half out of your life by everybody you meet?
+Now, Lorne, you're getting serious and sentimental, and you know I hate
+that. It isn't any good either--Mother always used to say it made me
+more stubborn to appeal to me. Horrid nature to have, isn't it?"
+
+Lorne's hand went to his waistcoat pocket and came back with a tiny
+packet. "It's come, Dora--by this morning's English mail."
+
+Her eyes sparkled, and then rested with guarded excitement upon the
+little case. "Oh, Lorne!"
+
+She said nothing more, but watched intently while he found the spring,
+and disclosed the ring within. Then she drew a long breath. "Lorne
+Murchison, what a lovely one!"
+
+"Doesn't it look," said he, "just a little serious and sentimental?"
+
+"But SUCH good style, too," he declared, bending over it. "And quite
+new--I haven't seen anything a bit like it. I do love a design when it's
+graceful. Solitaires are so old-fashioned."
+
+He kept his eyes upon her face, feeding upon the delight in it.
+Exultation rose up in him: he knew the primitive guile of man,
+indifferent to such things, alluring with them the other creature. He
+did not stop to condone her weakness; rather he seized it in ecstasy;
+it was all part of the glad scheme to help the lover. He turned the
+diamonds so that they flashed and flashed again before her. Then,
+trusting his happy instinct, he sought for her hand. But she held that
+back. "I want to SEE it," she declared, and he was obliged to let her
+take the ring in her own way and examine it, and place it in every
+light, and compare it with others worn by her friends, and make little
+tentative charges of extravagance in his purchase of it, while he sat
+elated and adoring, the simple fellow.
+
+Reluctantly at last she gave up her hand. "But it's only trying on--not
+putting on," she told him. He said nothing till it flashed upon her
+finger, and in her eyes he saw a spark from below of that instinctive
+cupidity toward jewels that man can never recognize as it deserves in
+woman, because of his desire to gratify it.
+
+"You'll wear it, Dora?" he pleaded.
+
+"Lorne, you are the dearest fellow! But how could I? Everybody would
+guess!"
+
+Her gaze, nevertheless, rested fascinated on the ring, which she posed
+as it pleased her.
+
+"Let them guess! I'd rather they knew, but--it does look well on your
+finger, dear."
+
+She held it up once more to the light, then slipped it decisively off
+and gave it back to him. "I can't, you know, Lorne. I didn't really say
+you might get it; and now you'll have to keep it till--till the time
+comes. But this much I will say--it's the sweetest thing, and you've
+shown the loveliest taste, and if it weren't such a dreadful give-away
+I'd like to wear it awfully."
+
+They discussed it with argument, with endearment, with humour, and
+reproach, but her inflexible basis soon showed through their talk: she
+would not wear the ring. So far he prevailed, that it was she, not
+he, who kept it. Her insistence that he should take it back brought
+something like anger out of him; and in the surprise of this she yielded
+so much. She did it unwillingly at the time, but afterward, when she
+tried on the thing again in the privacy of her own room; she was rather
+satisfied to have it, safe under lock and key, a flashing, smiling
+mystery to visit when she liked and reveal when she would.
+
+"Lorne could never get me such a beauty again if he lost it," she
+advised herself, "and he's awfully careless. And I'm not sure that I
+won't tell Eva Delarue, just to show it to her. She's as close as wax."
+
+One feels a certain sorrow for the lover on his homeward way, squaring
+his shoulders against the foolish perversity of the feminine mind,
+resolutely guarding his heart from any hint of real reprobation. Through
+the sweetness of her lips and the affection of her pretty eyes, through
+all his half-possession of all her charms and graces, must have come
+dully the sense of his great occasion manque, that dear day of love when
+it leaves the mark of its claim. And in one's regret there is perhaps
+some alloy of pity, that less respectful thing. We know him elsewhere
+capable of essaying heights, yet we seem to look down upon the drama of
+his heart. It may be well to remember that the level is not everything
+in love. He who carefully adjusts an intellectual machine may descry a
+higher mark; he can construct nothing in a mistress; he is, therefore,
+able to see the facts and to discriminate the desirable. But Lorne loved
+with all his imagination. This way dares the imitation of the gods by
+which it improves the quality of the passion, so that such a love stands
+by itself to be considered, apart from the object, one may say. A strong
+and beautiful wave lifted Lorne Murchison along to his destiny, since it
+was the pulse of his own life, though Dora Milburn played moon to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Alfred Hesketh had, after all, written to young Murchison about his
+immediate intention of sailing for Canada and visiting Elgin; the letter
+arrived a day or two later. It was brief and businesslike, but it gave
+Lorne to understand that since his departure the imperial idea had been
+steadily fermenting, not only in the national mind, but particularly in
+Hesketh's; that it produced in his case a condition only to be properly
+treated by personal experience. Hesketh was coming over to prove
+whatever advantage there was in seeing for yourself. That he was coming
+with the right bias Lorne might infer, he said, from the fact that he
+had waited a fortnight to get his passage by the only big line to
+New York that stood out for our mercantile supremacy against American
+combination.
+
+"He needn't bother to bring any bias," Lorne remarked when he had read
+this, "but he'll have to pay a lot of extra luggage on the one he takes
+back with him."
+
+He felt a little irritation at being offered the testimony of the Cunard
+ticket. Back on his native soil, its independence ran again like sap
+in him: nobody wanted a present of good will; the matter stood on its
+merits.
+
+He was glad, nevertheless, that Hesketh was coming, gratified that it
+would now be his turn to show prospects, and turn figures into facts,
+and make plain the imperial profit from the further side. Hesketh was
+such an intelligent fellow, there would be the keenest sort of pleasure
+in demonstrating things, big things, to him, little things, too, ways
+of living, differences of habit. Already in the happy exercise of his
+hospitable instinct he saw how Hesketh would get on with his mother,
+with Stella, with Dr Drummond. He saw Hesketh interested, domiciled,
+remaining--the ranch life this side of the Rockies, Lorne thought, would
+tempt him, or something new and sound in Winnipeg. He kept his eye
+open for chances, and noted one or two likely things. "We want labour
+mostly," he said to Advena, "but nobody is refused leave to land because
+he has a little money."
+
+"I should think not, indeed," remarked Mrs Murchison, who was present.
+"I often wish your father and I had had a little more when we began.
+That whole Gregory block was going for three thousand dollars then. I
+wonder what it's worth now?"
+
+"Yes, but you and Father are worth more, too," remarked Stella acutely.
+
+"In fact, all the elder members of the family have approximated in
+value, Stella," said her brother, "and you may too, in time."
+
+"I'll take my chance with the country," she retorted. They were all
+permeated with the question of the day; even Stella, after holding
+haughtily aloof for some time, had been obliged to get into step, as
+she described it, with the silly old Empire. Whatever it was in England,
+here it was a family affair; I mean in the town of Elgin, in the shops
+and the offices, up and down the tree-bordered streets as men went
+to and from their business, atomic creatures building the reef of
+the future, but conscious, and wanting to know what they were about.
+Political parties had long declared themselves, the Hampden Debating
+Society had had several grand field nights. Prospective lifelong
+friendships, male and female in every form of "the Collegiate," had been
+put to this touchstone, sometimes with shattering effect. If you would
+not serve with Wallingham the greatness of Britain you were held to
+favour going over to the United States; there was no middle course.
+It became a personal matter in the ward schools and small boys pursued
+small boys with hateful cries of "Annexationist!" The subject even
+trickled about the apple-barrels and potato-bags of the market square.
+Here it should have raged, pregnant as it was with bucolic blessing; but
+our agricultural friends expect nothing readily except adverse weather,
+least of all a measure of economic benefit to themselves. Those of Fox
+County thought it looked very well, but it was pretty sure to work out
+some other way. Elmore Crow failed heavily to catch a light even from
+Lorne Murchison.
+
+"You keep your hair on, Lorne," he advised. "We ain't going to get such
+big changes yet. An' if we do the blooming syndicates 'll spoil 'em for
+us."
+
+There were even dissentients among the farmers. The voice of one was
+raised who had lived laborious years, and many of them in the hope of
+seeing his butter and cheese go unimpeded across the American line. It
+must be said, however, that still less attention was paid to him, and it
+was generally conceded that he would die without the sight.
+
+It was the great topic. The day Wallingham went his defiant furthest
+in the House and every colonial newspaper set it up in acclaiming
+headlines, Horace Williams, enterprising fellow, remembered that Lorne
+had seen the great man under circumstances that would probably pan out,
+and send round Rawlins. Rawlins was to get something that would do to
+call "Wallingham in the Bosom of his Family," and as much as Lorne
+cared to pour into him about his own view of the probable issue. Rawlins
+failed to get the interview, came back to say that Lorne didn't seem
+to think himself a big enough boy for that, but he did not return
+empty-handed. Mr Murchison sent Mr Williams the promise of some
+contributions upon the question of the hour, which he had no objection
+to sign and which Horace should have for the good of the cause. Horace
+duly had them, the Express duly published them, and they were copied in
+full by the Dominion and several other leading journals, with an amount
+of comment which everyone but Mrs Murchison thought remarkable.
+
+"I don't pretend to understand it," she said, "but anybody can see
+that he knows what he's talking about." John Murchison read them with a
+critical eye and a pursed-out lip.
+
+"He takes too much for granted."
+
+"What does he take for granted?" asked Mrs Murchison.
+
+"Other folks being like himself," said the father.
+
+That, no doubt, was succinct and true; nevertheless, the articles
+had competence as well as confidence. The writer treated facts with
+restraint and conditions with sympathy. He summoned ideas from the
+obscurity of men's minds, and marshalled them in the light, so that many
+recognized what they had been trying to think. He wrote with homeliness
+as well as force, wishing much more to make the issue recognizable than
+to create fine phrases, with the result that one or two of his sentences
+passed into the language of the discussion which, as any of its
+standard-bearers would have told you, had little use for rhetoric. The
+articles were competent: if you listened to Horace Williams you would
+have been obliged to accept them as the last, or latest, word of
+economic truth, though it must be left to history to endorse Mr
+Williams. It was their enthusiasm, however, that gave them the wing on
+which they travelled. People naturally took different views, even of
+this quality. "Young Murchison's working the imperial idea for all it's
+worth," was Walter Winter's; and Octavius Milburn humorously summed up
+the series as "tall talk."
+
+Alfred Hesketh came, it was felt, rather opportunely into the midst of
+this. Plenty of people, the whole of Market Square and East Elgin, a
+good part, too, probably, of the Town Ward, were unaware of his arrival;
+but for the little world he penetrated he was clothed with all the
+interest of the great contingency. His decorous head in the Emmetts'
+pew on Sunday morning stood for a symbol as well as for a stranger.
+The nation was on the eve of a great far-reaching transaction with the
+mother country, and thrilling with the terms of the bargain. Hesketh
+was regarded by people in Elgin who knew who he was with the mingled
+cordiality and distrust that might have met a principal. They did not
+perhaps say it, but it was in their minds. "There's one of them," was
+what they thought when they met him in the street. At any other time he
+would have been just an Englishman; now he was invested with the very
+romance of destiny. The perception was obscure, but it was there.
+Hesketh, on the other hand, found these good people a very well-dressed,
+well-conditioned, decent lot, rather sallower than he expected, perhaps,
+who seemed to live in a fair-sized town in a great deal of comfort, and
+was wholly unconscious of anything special in his relation to them or
+theirs to him.
+
+He met Lorne just outside the office of Warner, Fulke, and Murchison the
+following day. They greeted heartily. "Now this IS good!" said Lorne,
+and he thought so. Hesketh confided his first impression. "It's not
+unlike an English country town," he said, "only the streets are wider,
+and the people don't look so much in earnest."
+
+"Oh, they're just as much in earnest some of the time," Lorne laughed,
+"but maybe not all the time!"
+
+The sun shone crisply round them; there was a brisk October market; on
+the other side of the road Elmore Crow dangled his long legs over a cart
+flap and chewed a cheroot. Elgin was abroad, doing business on its wide
+margin of opportunity. Lorne cast a backward glance at conditions he had
+seen.
+
+"I know what you mean," he said. "Sharp of you to spot it so soon, old
+chap! You're staying with the English Church minister, aren't you--Mr
+Emmett? Some connection of yours, aren't they?"
+
+"Mrs Emmett is Chafe's sister--Mrs Chafe, you know, is my aunt," Hesketh
+reminded him. "I say, Murchison, I left old Chafe wilder than ever.
+Wallingham's committee keep sending him leaflets and things. They take
+it for granted he's on the right side, since his interests are. The
+other day they asked him for a subscription! The old boy sent his reply
+to the Daily News and carried it about for a week. I think that gave him
+real satisfaction; but he hates the things by post."
+
+Lorne laughed delightedly. "I expect he's snowed under with them. I sent
+him my own valuable views last week."
+
+"I'm afraid they'll only stiffen him. That got to be his great argument
+after you left, the fact that you fellows over here want it. He doesn't
+approve of a bargain if the other side sees a profit. Curiously enough,
+his foremen and people out in Chiswick are all for it. I was talking to
+one of them just before I left--'Stands to reason, sir,' he said, 'we
+don't want to pay more for a loaf than we do now. But we'll do it, sir,
+if it means downing them Germans; he said."
+
+Lorne's eyebrows half-perceptibly twitched. "They do 'sir' you a lot
+over there, don't they?" he said. "It was as much as I could do to get
+at what a fellow of that sort meant, tumbling over the 'sirs' he propped
+it up with. Well, all kinds of people, all kinds of argument, I suppose,
+when it comes to trying to get 'em solid! But I was going to say we are
+all hoping you'll give us a part of your time while you're in Elgin.
+My family are looking forward to meeting you. Come along and let me
+introduce you to my father now--he's only round the corner."
+
+"By all means!" said Hesketh, and they fell into step together. As Lorne
+said, it was only a short distance, but far enough to communicate a
+briskness, an alertness, from the step of one young man to that of the
+other. "I wish it were five miles," Hesketh said, all his stall-fed
+muscles responding to the new call of his heart and lungs. "Any good
+walks about here? I asked Emmett, but he didn't know--supposed you could
+walk to Clayfield if you didn't take the car. He seems to have lost his
+legs. I suppose parsons do."
+
+"Not all of them," said Lorne. "There's a fellow that has a church over
+in East Elgin, Finlay his name is, that beats the record of anything
+around here. He just about ranges the county in the course of a week."
+
+"The place is too big for one parish, no doubt," Hesketh remarked.
+
+"Oh, he's a Presbyterian! The Episcopalians haven't got any hold to
+speak of over there. Here we are," said Lorne, and turned in at the
+door. The old wooden sign was long gone. "John Murchison and Sons"
+glittered instead in the plate-glass windows, but Hesketh did not see
+it.
+
+"Why do you think he'll be in here?" he asked, on young Murchison's
+heels.
+
+"Because he always is when he isn't over at the shop," replied Lorne.
+"It's his place of business--his store, you know. There he is! Hard
+luck--he's got a customer. We'll have to wait."
+
+He went on ahead with his impetuous step; he did not perceive the
+instant's paralysis that seemed to overtake Hesketh's, whose foot
+dragged, however, no longer than that. It was an initiation; he had
+been told he might expect some. He checked his impulse to be amused, and
+guarded his look round, not to show unseemly curiosity. His face,
+when he was introduced to Alec, who was sorting some odd dozens of
+tablespoons, was neutral and pleasant. He reflected afterward that he
+had been quite equal to the occasion. He thought, too, that he had shown
+some adaptability. Alec was not a person of fluent discourse, and when
+he had inquired whether Hesketh was going to make a long stay, the
+conversation might have languished but for this.
+
+"Is that Birmingham?" he asked, nodding kindly at the spoons.
+
+"Came to us through a house in Liverpool," Alec responded. "I expect you
+had a stormy crossing, Mr Hesketh."
+
+"It was a bit choppy. We had the fiddles on most of the time," Hesketh
+replied. "Most of the time. Now, how do you find the bicycle trade over
+here? Languishing, as it is with us?"
+
+"Oh, it keeps up pretty well," said Alec, "but we sell more spoons. 'N'
+what do you think of this country, far as you've seen it?"
+
+"Oh, come now, it's a little soon to ask, isn't it? Yes--I suppose
+bicycles go out of fashion, and spoons never do. I was thinking," added
+Hesketh, casting his eyes over a serried rank, "of buying a bicycle."
+
+Alec had turned to put the spoons in their place on the shelves. "Better
+take your friend across to Cox's," he advised Lorne over his shoulder.
+"He'll be able to get a motorbike there," a suggestion which gave Mr
+Hesketh to reflect later that if that was the general idea of doing
+business it must be an easy country to make money in.
+
+The customer was satisfied at last, and Mr Murchison walked sociably to
+the door with him; it was the secretary of the local Oddfellows' Lodge,
+who had come in about a furnace.
+
+"Now's our chance," said Lorne. "Father, this is Mr Hesketh, from
+London--my father, Hesketh. He can tell you all you want to know about
+Canada--this part of it, anyway. Over thirty years, isn't it, Father,
+since you came out?"
+
+"Glad to meet you," said John Murchison, "glad to meet you, Mr Hesketh.
+We've heard much about you."
+
+"You must have been quite among the pioneers of Elgin, Mr Murchison,"
+said Hesketh as they shook hands. Alec hadn't seemed to think of that;
+Hesketh put it down to the counter.
+
+"Not quite," said John. "We'll say among the early arrivals."
+
+"Have you ever been back in your native Scotland?" asked Hesketh.
+
+"Aye, twice."
+
+"But you prefer the land of your adoption?"
+
+"I do. But I think by now it'll be kin," said Mr Murchison. "It was good
+to see the heather again, but a man lives best where he's taken root."
+
+"Yes, yes. You seem to do a large business here, Mr Murchison."
+
+"Pretty well for the size of the place. You must get Lorne to take you
+over Elgin. It's a fair sample of our rising manufacturing towns."
+
+"I hope he will. I understand you manufacture to some extent yourself?"
+
+"We make our own stoves and a few odd things."
+
+"You don't send any across the Atlantic yet?" queried Hesketh jocularly.
+
+"Not yet. No, sir!"
+
+Then did Mr Hesketh show himself in true sympathy with the novel and
+independent conditions of the commonwealth he found himself in.
+
+"I beg you won't use that form with me," he said, "I know it isn't the
+custom of the country, and I am a friend of your son's, you see."
+
+The iron merchant looked at him, just an instant's regard, in which
+astonishment struggled with the usual deliberation. Then his considering
+hand went to his chin.
+
+"I see. I must remember," he said.
+
+The son, Lorne, glanced in the pause beyond John Murchison's broad
+shoulders, through the store door and out into the moderate commerce of
+Main Street, which had carried the significance and the success of his
+father's life. His eye came back and moved over the contents of the
+place, taking stock of it, one might say, and adjusting the balance with
+pride. He had said very little since they had been in the store. Now he
+turned to Hesketh quietly.
+
+"I wouldn't bother about that if I were you," he said. "My father spoke
+quite--colloquially."
+
+"Oh!" said Hesketh.
+
+They parted on the pavement outside. "I hope you understand," said
+Lorne, with an effort at heartiness, "how glad my parents will be to
+have you if you find yourself able to spare us any of your time?"
+
+"Thanks very much," said Hesketh; "I shall certainly give myself the
+pleasure of calling as soon as possible."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+"Dear me!" said Dr Drummond. "Dear me! Well! And what does Advena
+Murchison say to all this?"
+
+He and Hugh Finlay were sitting in the Doctor's study, the pleasantest
+room in the house. It was lined with standard religious philosophy,
+standard poets, standard fiction, all that was standard, and nothing
+that was not; and the shelves included several volumes of the Doctor's
+own sermons, published in black morocco through a local firm that did
+business by the subscription method, with "Drummond" in gold letters
+on the back. There were more copies of these, perhaps, than it would be
+quite thoughtful to count, though a good many were annually disposed of
+at the church bazaar, where the Doctor presented them with a generous
+hand. A sumptuous desk, and luxurious leather-covered armchairs
+furnished the room; a beautiful little Parian copy of a famous Cupid and
+Psyche decorated the mantelpiece, and betrayed the touch of pagan in
+the Presbyterian. A bright fire burned in the grate, and there was not a
+speck of dust anywhere.
+
+Dr Drummond, lost in his chair, with one knee dropped on the other,
+joined his fingers at the tips, and drew his forehead into a web of
+wrinkles. Over it his militant grey crest curled up; under it his eyes
+darted two shrewd points of interrogation.
+
+"What does Miss Murchison say to it?" he repeated with craft and
+courage, as Finlay's eyes dropped and his face slowly flushed under
+the question. It was in this room that Dr Drummond examined "intending
+communicants" and cases likely to come before the Session; he never
+shirked a leading question. "Miss Murchison," said Finlay, after a
+moment, "was good enough to say that she thought her father's house
+would be open to Miss--to my friends when they arrived; but I thought it
+would be more suitable to ask your hospitality, sir."
+
+"Did she so?" asked Dr Drummond gravely. It was more a comment than an
+inquiry. "Did she so?" Infinite kindness was in it.
+
+The young man assented with an awkward gesture, half-bend, half-nod, and
+neither for a moment spoke again. It was one of those silences with a
+character, conscious, tentative. Half-veiled, disavowed thoughts rose up
+in it, awakened by Advena's name, turning away their heads. The ticking
+of the Doctor's old-fashioned watch came through it from his waistcoat
+pocket. It was he who spoke first.
+
+"I christened Advena Murchison," he said. "Her father was one of those
+who called me, as a young man, to this ministry. The names of both her
+parents are on my first communion roll. Aye!"...
+
+The fire snapped and the watch went on ticking.
+
+"So Advena thought well of it all. Did she so?"
+
+The young man raised his heavy eyes and looked unflinchingly at Dr
+Drummond.
+
+"Miss Murchison," he said, "is the only other person to whom I have
+confided the matter. I have written, fixing that date, with her
+approval--at her desire. Not immediately. I took time to--think it over.
+Then it seemed better to arrange for the ladies reception first, so
+before posting I have come to you."
+
+"Then the letter has not gone?"
+
+"It is in my pocket."
+
+"Finlay, you will have a cigar? I don't smoke myself; my throat won't
+stand it; but I understand these are passable. Grant left them here.
+He's a chimney, that man Grant. At it day and night."
+
+This was a sacrifice. Dr Drummond hated tobacco, the smell of it, the
+ash of it, the time consumed in it. There was no need at all to offer
+Finlay one of the Reverend Grant's cigars. Propitiation must indeed be
+desired when the incense is abhorred. But Finlay declined to smoke.
+The Doctor, with his hands buried deep in his trousers pockets, where
+something metallic clinked in them, began to pace and turn. His mouth
+had the set it wore when he handled a difficult motion in the General
+Assembly.
+
+"I'm surprised to hear that, Finlay; though it may be well not to be
+surprised at what a woman will say--or won't say."
+
+"Surprised?" said the younger man confusedly. "Why should anyone be
+surprised?"
+
+"I know her well. I've watched her grow up. I remember her mother's
+trouble because she would scratch the paint on the pew in front of her
+with the nails in her little boots. John Murchison sang in the choir in
+those days. He had a fine bass voice; he has it still. And Mrs Murchison
+had to keep the family in order by herself. It was sometimes as much as
+she could do, poor woman. They sat near the front, and many a good
+hard look I used to give them while I was preaching. Knox Church was a
+different place then. The choir sat in the back gallery, and we had a
+precentor, a fine fellow--he lost an arm at Ridgway in the Fenian raid.
+Well I mind him and the frown he would put on when he took up the fork.
+But, for that matter, every man Jack in the choir had a frown on in the
+singing, though the bass fellows would be the fiercest. We've been twice
+enlarged since, and the organist has long been a salaried professional.
+But I doubt whether the praise of God is any heartier than it was when
+it followed Peter Craig's tuning-fork. Aye. You'd always hear John
+Murchison's note in the finish."
+
+Finlay was listening with the look of a charmed animal. Dr Drummond's
+voice was never more vibrant, more moving, more compelling than when he
+called up the past; and here to Finlay the past was itself enchanted.
+
+"She always had those wonderful dark eyes. She's pale enough now, but
+as a child she was rosy. Taking her place of a winter evening, with the
+snow on her fur cap and her hair, I often thought her a picture. I liked
+to have her attention while I was preaching, even as a child; and when
+she was absent I missed her. It was through my ministrations that she
+saw her way to professing the Church of Christ, and under my heartfelt
+benediction that she first broke bread in her Father's house. I hold the
+girl in great affection, Finlay; and I grieve to hear this."
+
+The other drew a long breath, and his hand tightened on the arm of his
+chair. He was, as we know, blind to many of the world's aspects, even to
+those in which he himself figured; and Dr Drummond's plain hypothesis of
+his relations with Advena came before him in forced illumination, flash
+by tragic flash. This kind of revelation is more discomforting than
+darkness, since it carries the surprise of assault, and Finlay groped in
+it, helpless and silent.
+
+"You are grieved, sir?" he said mechanically.
+
+"Man, she loves you!" exclaimed the Doctor, in a tone that would no
+longer forbear.
+
+Hugh Finlay seemed to take the words just where they were levelled, in
+his breast. He half leaped from his chair; the lower part of his face
+had the rigidity of iron.
+
+"I am not obliged to discuss such a matter as that," he said hoarsely,
+"with you or with any man."
+
+He looked confusedly about him for his hat, which he had left in the
+hall; and Dr Drummond profited by the instant. He stepped across and
+laid a hand on the younger man's shoulder. Had they both been standing
+the gesture would have been impossible to Dr Drummond with dignity;
+as it was, it had not only that, but benignance, a kind of tender good
+will, rare in expression with the minister, rare, for that matter, in
+feeling with him too, though the chord was always there to be sounded.
+
+"Finlay," he said; "Finlay!"
+
+Between two such temperaments the touch and the tone together made an
+extraordinary demonstration. Finlay, with an obvious effort, let it lie
+upon him. The tension of his body relaxed, that of his soul he covered,
+leaning forward and burying his head in his hands.
+
+"Will you say I have no claim to speak?" asked Dr Drummond, and met
+silence. "It is upon my lips to beg you not to send that letter,
+Finlay." He took his hand from the young man's shoulder, inserted a
+thumb in each of his waistcoat pockets, and resumed his walk.
+
+"On my own account I must send it," said Finlay. "On Miss
+Murchison's--she bids me to. We have gone into the matter together."
+
+"I can imagine what you made of it together. There's a good deal of her
+father in Advena. He would be the last man to say a word for himself.
+You told her this tale you have told me, and she told you to get Miss
+Christie out and marry her without delay, eh? And what would you expect
+her to tell you--a girl of that spirit?"
+
+"I cannot see why pride should influence her."
+
+"Then you know little about women. It was pride, pure and simple,
+Finlay, that made her tell you that--and she'll be a sorry woman if you
+act on it."
+
+"No," said Finlay, suddenly looking up, "I may know little about women,
+but I know more about Advena Murchison than that. She advised me in the
+sense she thought right and honourable, and her advice was sincere. And,
+Dr Drummond, deeply as I feel the bearing of Miss Murchison's view of
+the matter, I could not, in any case, allow my decision to rest upon it.
+It must stand by itself."
+
+"You mean that your decision to marry to oblige your aunt should not be
+influenced by the fact that it means the wrecking of your own happiness
+and that of another person. I can't agree, Finlay. I spoke first of
+Advena Murchison because her part and lot in it are most upon my heart.
+I feel, too, that someone should put her case. Her own father would
+never open his lips. If you're to be hauled over the coals about this
+I'm the only man to do it. And I'm going to."
+
+A look of sharp determination came into the minister's eyes; he had the
+momentary air of a small Scotch terrier with a bidding. Finlay looked at
+him in startled recognition of another possible phase of his dilemma; he
+thought he knew it in every wretched aspect. It was a bold reference
+of Dr Drummond's; it threw down the last possibility of withdrawal for
+Finlay; they must have it out now, man to man, with a little, perhaps,
+even in that unlikely place, of penitent to confessor. It was an
+exigency, it helped Finlay to pull himself together, and there was
+something in his voice, when he spoke, like the vibration of relief.
+
+"I am pained and distressed more than I have any way of telling you,
+sir," he said, "that--the state of feeling--between Miss Murchison and
+myself should have been so plain to you. It is incomprehensible to
+me that it should be so, since it is only very lately that I have
+understood it truly myself. I hope you will believe that it was the
+strangest, most unexpected, most sudden revelation."
+
+He paused and looked timidly at the Doctor; he, the great fellow, in
+straining bondage to his heart, leaning forward with embarrassed tension
+in every muscle, Dr Drummond alert, poised, critical, balancing his
+little figure on the hearthrug.
+
+"I preach faith in miracles," he said. "I dare say between you and her
+it would be just that."
+
+"I have been deeply culpable. Common sense, common knowledge of men and
+women should have warned me that there might be danger. But I looked
+upon the matter as our own--as between us only. I confess that I have
+not till now thought of that part of it, but surely--You cannot mean
+to tell me that what I have always supposed my sincere and devoted
+friendship for Miss Murchison has been in any way prejudicial--"
+
+"To her in the ordinary sense? To her prospects of marriage and her
+standing in the eyes of the community? No, Finlay. No. I have not heard
+the matter much referred to. You seem to have taken none of the ordinary
+means--you have not distinguished her in the eyes of gossip. If you had
+it would be by no means the gravest thing to consider. Such tokens are
+quickly forgotten, especially here, where attentions of the kind often,
+I've noticed, lead to nothing. It is the fact, and not the appearance of
+it, that I speak of--that I am concerned with."
+
+"The fact is beyond mending," said Finlay, dully.
+
+"Aye, the fact is beyond mending. It is beyond mending that Advena
+Murchison belongs to you and you to her in no common sense. It's beyond
+mending that you cannot now be separated without such injury to you both
+as I would not like to look upon. It's beyond mending, Finlay, because
+it is one of those things that God has made. But it is not beyond
+marring, and I charge you to look well what you are about in connection
+with it."
+
+A flash of happiness, of simple delight, lit the young man's sombre eyes
+as the phrases fell. To the minister they were mere forcible words;
+to Finlay they were soft rain in a famished land. Then he looked again
+heavily at the pattern of the carpet.
+
+"Would you have me marry Advena Murchison?" he said, with a kind of
+shamed yielding to the words.
+
+"I would--and no other. Man, I saw it from the beginning!" exclaimed the
+Doctor. "I don't say it isn't an awkward business. But at least there'll
+be no heartbreak in Scotland. I gather you never said a word to the
+Bross lady on the subject, and very few on any other. You tell me you
+left it all with that good woman, your aunt, to arrange after you left.
+Do you think a creature of any sentiment would have accepted you on
+those terms? Not she. So far as I can make out, Miss Cameron is just a
+sensible, wise woman that would be the first to see the folly in this
+business if she knew the rights of it. Come, Finlay, you're not such a
+great man with the ladies--you can't pretend she has any affection for
+you."
+
+The note of raillery in the Doctor's voice drew Finlay's brows together.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "whether I have to think of her affections, but
+I do know I have to think of her dignity, her confidence, and her belief
+in the honourable dealing of a man whom she met under the sanction of a
+trusted roof. The matter may look light here; it is serious there. She
+has her circle of friends; they are acquainted with her engagement. She
+has made all her arrangements to carry it out; she has disposed of her
+life. I cannot ask her to reconsider her lot because I have found a
+happier adjustment for mine."
+
+"Finlay," said Dr Drummond, "you will not be known in Bross or anywhere
+else as a man who has jilted a woman. Is that it?"
+
+"I will not be a man who has jilted a woman."
+
+"There is no sophist like pride. Look at the case on its merits. On the
+one side a disappointment for Miss Cameron. I don't doubt she's counting
+on coming, but at worst a worldly disappointment. And the very grievous
+humiliation for you of writing to tell her that you have made a mistake.
+You deserve that, Finlay. If you wouldn't be a man who has jilted a
+woman you have no business to lend yourself to such matters with the
+capacity of a blind kitten. That is the damage on the one side. On the
+other--"
+
+"I know all that there is to be said," interrupted Finlay, "on the
+other."
+
+"Then face it, man. Go home and write the whole truth to Bross. I'll do
+it for you--no, I won't, either. Stand up to it yourself. You must hurt
+one of two women; choose the one that will suffer only in her vanity. I
+tell you that Scotch entanglement of yours is pure cardboard farce--it
+won't stand examination. It's appalling to think that out of an
+extravagant, hypersensitive conception of honour, egged on by that poor
+girl, you could be capable of turning it into the reality of your life."
+
+"I've taken all these points of view, sir, and I can't throw the woman
+over. The objection to it isn't in reason--it's somehow in the past and
+the blood. It would mean the sacrifice of all that I hold most valuable
+in myself. I should expect myself after that to stick at nothing--why
+should I?"
+
+"There is one point of view that perhaps you have not taken," said Dr
+Drummond, in his gravest manner. "You are settled here in your charge.
+In all human probability you will remain here in East Elgin, as I have
+remained here, building and fortifying the place you have won for the
+Lord in the hearts of the people. Advena Murchison's life will also go
+on here--there is nothing to take it away. You have both strong natures.
+Are you prepared for that?"
+
+"We are both prepared for it. We shall both be equal to it. I count upon
+her, and she counts upon me, to furnish in our friendship the greater
+part of whatever happiness life may have in store for us."
+
+"Then you must be a pair of born lunatics!" said Dr Drummond, his jaw
+grim, his eyes snapping. "What you propose is little less than a crime,
+Finlay. It can come to nothing but grief, if no worse. And your wife,
+poor woman, whatever she deserves, it is better than that! My word, if
+she could choose her prospect, think you she would hesitate? Finlay, I
+entreat you as a matter of ordinary prudence, go home and break it
+off. Leave Advena out of it--you have no business to make this marriage
+whether or no. Leave other considerations to God and to the future. I
+beseech you, bring it to an end!"
+
+Finlay got up and held out his hand. "I tell you from my heart it is
+impossible," he said.
+
+"I can't move you?" said Dr Drummond. "Then let us see if the Lord can.
+You will not object, Finlay, to bring the matter before Him, here and
+now, in a few words of prayer? I should find it hard to let you go
+without them."
+
+They went down upon their knees where they stood; and Dr Drummond did
+little less than order Divine interference; but the prayer that was
+inaudible was to the opposite purpose.
+
+Ten minutes later the minister himself opened the door to let Finlay out
+into the night. "You will remember," he said as they shook hands,
+"that what I think of your position in this matter makes no difference
+whatever to the question of your aunt's coming here with Miss Cameron
+when they arrive. You will bring them to this house as a matter of
+course. I wish you could be guided to a different conclusion but, after
+all, it is your own conscience that must be satisfied. They will be
+better here than at the Murchisons'," he added with a last shaft of
+reproach, "and they will be very welcome."
+
+It said much for Dr Drummond that Finlay was able to fall in with the
+arrangement. He went back to his boarding-house, and added a postscript
+embodying it to his letter to Bross. Then he walked out upon the
+midnight two feverish miles to the town, and posted the letter. The way
+back was longer and colder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+"Well, Winter," said Octavius Milburn, "I expect there's business in
+this for you."
+
+Mr Milburn and Mr Winter had met in the act of unlocking their boxes at
+the post-office. Elgin had enjoyed postal delivery for several years,
+but not so much as to induce men of business to abandon the post-office
+box that had been the great convenience succeeding window inquiry.
+In time the boxes would go, but the habit of dropping in for your own
+noonday mail on the way home to dinner was deep-rooted, and undoubtedly
+you got it earlier. Moreover, it takes time to engender confidence in
+a postman when he is drawn from your midst, and when you know perfectly
+well that he would otherwise be driving the mere watering-cart, or
+delivering the mere ice, as he was last year.
+
+"Looks like it," responded Mr Winter, cheerfully. "The boys have been
+round as usual. I told them they'd better try another shop this time,
+but they seemed to think the old reliable was good enough to go on
+with."
+
+This exchange, to anyone in Elgin, would have been patently simple. On
+that day there was only one serious topic in Elgin, and there could have
+been only one reference to business for Walter Winter. The Dominion had
+come up the day before with the announcement that Mr Robert Farquharson
+who, for an aggregate of eleven years, had represented the Liberals of
+South Fox in the Canadian House of Commons, had been compelled under
+medical advice to withdraw from public life. The news was unexpected,
+and there was rather a feeling among Mr Farquharson's local support in
+Elgin that it shouldn't have come from Toronto. It will be gathered
+that Horace Williams, as he himself acknowledged, was wild. The general
+feeling, and to some extent Mr Williams's, was appeased by the further
+information that Mr Farquharson had been obliged to go to Toronto to
+see a specialist, whose report he had naturally enough taken to party
+headquarters, whence the Dominion would get it, as Mr Williams said, by
+telephone or any quicker way there was. Williams, it should be added,
+was well ahead with the details, as considerate as was consistent with
+public enterprise, of the retiring member's malady, its duration,
+the date of the earliest symptoms, and the growth of anxiety in Mrs
+Farquharson, who had finally insisted--and how right she was!--on the
+visit to the specialist, upon which she had accompanied Mr Farquharson.
+He sent round Rawlins. So that Elgin was in possession of all the facts,
+and Walter Winter, who had every pretension to contest the seat again
+and every satisfaction that it wouldn't be against Farquharson,
+might naturally be expected to be taken up with them sufficiently to
+understand a man who slapped him on the shoulder in the post-office with
+the remark I have quoted.
+
+"I guess they know what they're about," returned Mr Milburn. "It's a bad
+knock for the Grits, old Farquharson having to drop out. He's getting up
+in years, but he's got a great hold here. He'll be a dead loss in votes
+to his party. I always said our side wouldn't have a chance till the old
+man was out of the way."
+
+Mr Winter twisted the watch-chain across his protuberant waistcoat, and
+his chin sank in reflective folds above his neck-tie. Above that again
+his nose drooped over his moustache, and his eyelids over his eyes,
+which sought the floor. Altogether he looked sunk, like an overfed bird,
+in deferential contemplation of what Mr Milburn was saying.
+
+"They've nobody to touch him, certainly in either ability or
+experience," he replied, looking up to do it, with a handsome air of
+concession. "Now that Martin's dead, and Jim Fawkes come that howler
+over Pink River, they'll have their work cut out for them to find a man.
+I hear Fawkes takes it hard, after all he's done for 'em, not to get the
+nomination, but they won't hear of it. Quite right, too; he's let too
+many people in over that concession of his to be popular, even among his
+friends."
+
+"I suppose he has. Dropped anything there yourself?--No? Nor I. When a
+thing gets to the boom stage I say let it alone, even if there's gold in
+it and you've got a School of Mines man to tell you so. Fawkes came out
+of it at the small end himself, I expect, but that doesn't help him any
+in the eyes of businessmen."
+
+"I hear," said Walter Winter, stroking his nose, "that old man Parsons
+has come right over since the bosses at Ottawa have put so much money
+on preference trade with the old country. He says he was a Liberal once,
+and may be a Liberal again, but he doesn't see his way to voting to give
+his customers blankets cheaper than he can make them, and he'll wait
+till the clouds roll by."
+
+"He won't be the only one, either," said Milburn. "Take my word for
+it, they'll be dead sick and sorry over this imperial craze in a year's
+time, every Government that's taken it up. The people won't have it. The
+Empire looks nice on the map, but when it comes to practical politics
+their bread and butter's in the home industries. There's a great
+principle at stake, Winter; I must say I envy you standing up for it
+under such favourable conditions. Liberals like Young and Windle may
+talk big, but when it comes to the ballot-box you'll have the whole
+manufacturing interest of the place behind you, and nobody the wiser.
+It's a great thing to carry the standard on an issue above and beyond
+party politics--it's a purer air, my boy."
+
+Walter Winter's nod confirmed the sagacity of this, and appreciated the
+highmindedness. It was a parting nod; Mr Winter had too much on hand
+that morning to waste time upon Octavius Milburn; but it was full of the
+qualities that ensure the success of a man's relation with his fellows.
+Consideration was in it, and understanding, and that kind of geniality
+that offers itself on a plain business footing, a commercial heartiness
+that has no nonsense about it. He had half a dozen casual chats like
+this with Mr Milburn on his way up Main Street, and his manner expanded
+in cordiality and respect with each, as if his growing confidence in
+himself increased his confidence in his fellow-men. The same assurance
+greeted him several times over. Every friend wanted to remind him of
+the enemy's exigency, and to assure him that the enemy's new policy was
+enough by itself to bring him romping in at last; and to every assurance
+he presented the same acceptable attitude of desiring for particular
+reasons to take special note of such valuable views. At the end he
+had neither elicited nor imparted a single opinion of any importance;
+nevertheless, he was quite entitled to his glow of satisfaction.
+
+Among Mr Winter's qualifications for political life was his capacity
+to arrive at an estimate of the position of the enemy. He was never
+persuaded to his own advantage; he never stepped ahead of the facts.
+It was one of the things that made him popular with the other side,
+his readiness to do justice to their equipment, to acknowledge their
+chances. There is gratification of a special sort in hearing your points
+of vantage confessed by the foe; the vanity is soothed by his open
+admission that you are worthy of his steel. It makes you a little less
+keen somehow, about defeating him. It may be that Mr Winter had an
+instinct for this, or perhaps he thought such discourse more profitable,
+if less pleasant, than derisive talk in the opposite sense. At all
+events, he gained something and lost nothing by it, even in his own
+camp, where swagger might be expected to breed admiration. He was
+thought a level-headed fellow who didn't expect miracles; his forecast
+in most matters was quoted, and his defeats at the polls had been to
+some extent neutralized by his sagacity in computing the returns in
+advance.
+
+So that we may safely follow Mr Winter to the conclusion that the
+Liberals of South Fox were somewhat put to it to select a successor to
+Robert Farquharson who could be depended upon to keep the party credit
+exactly where he found it. The need was unexpected, and the two men
+who would have stepped most naturally into Farquharson's shoes were
+disqualified as Winter described. The retirement came at a calculating
+moment. South Fox still declared itself with pride an unhealthy division
+for Conservatives; but new considerations had thrust themselves among
+Liberal counsels, and nobody yet knew what the country would say to
+them. The place was a "Grit" strong-hold, but its steady growth as an
+industrial centre would give a new significance to the figures of the
+next returns. The Conservative was the manufacturers' party, and had
+been ever since the veteran Sir John Macdonald declared for a protective
+"National Policy," and placed the plain issue before the country which
+divided the industrial and the agricultural interests. A certain number
+of millowners--Mr Milburn mentioned Young and Windle--belonged to the
+Liberals, as if to illustrate the fact that you inherit your party in
+Canada as you inherit your "denomination," or your nose; it accompanies
+you, simply, to the grave. But they were exceptions, and there was no
+doubt that the other side had been considerably strengthened by the
+addition of two or three thriving and highly capitalized concerns during
+the past five years. Upon the top of this had come the possibility of a
+great and dramatic change of trade relations with Great Britain, which
+the Liberal Government at Ottawa had given every sign of willingness
+to adopt--had, indeed, initiated, and were bound by word and letter to
+follow up. Though the moment had not yet come, might never come, for
+its acceptance or rejection by the country as a whole, there could be
+no doubt that every by-election would be concerned with the policy
+involved, and that every Liberal candidate must be prepared to stand by
+it in so far as the leaders had conceived and pushed it. Party feeling
+was by no means unanimous in favour of the change; many Liberals saw
+commercial salvation closer in improved trade relations with the United
+States. On the other hand, the new policy, clothed as it was in the
+attractive sentiment of loyalty, and making for the solidarity of the
+British race, might be depended upon to capture votes which had been
+hitherto Conservative mainly because these professions were supposed
+to be an indissoluble part of Conservatism. It was a thing to split the
+vote sufficiently to bring an unusual amount of anxiety and calculation
+into Liberal counsels. The other side were in no doubt or difficulty:
+Walter Winter was good enough for them, and it was their cheerful
+conviction that Walter Winter would put a large number of people wise
+on the subject of preference trade bye-and-bye, who at present only knew
+enough to vote for it.
+
+The great question was the practicability of the new idea and how much
+further it could safely be carried in a loyal Dominion which was just
+getting on its industrial legs. It was debated with anxiety at Ottawa,
+and made the subject of special instruction to South Fox, where the
+by-election would have all the importance of an early test. "It's a
+clear issue," wrote an influential person at Ottawa to the local party
+leaders at Elgin, "we don't want any tendency to hedge or double.
+It's straight business with us, the thing we want, and it will be till
+Wallingham either gets it through over there, or finds he can't deal
+with us. Meanwhile it might be as well to ascertain just how much there
+is in it for platform purposes in a safe spot like South Fox, and how
+much the fresh opposition will cost us where we can afford it. We can't
+lose the seat, and the returns will be worth anything in their bearing
+on the General Election next year. The objection to Carter is that he's
+only half-convinced; he couldn't talk straight if he wanted to, and
+that lecture tour of his in the United States ten years ago pushing
+reciprocity with the Americans would make awkward literature."
+
+The rejection of Carter practically exhausted the list of men available
+whose standing in the town and experience of its suffrages brought them
+naturally into the field of selection; and at this point Cruickshank
+wrote to Farquharson suggesting the dramatic departure involved in the
+name of Lorne Murchison. Cruickshank wrote judiciously, leaving the main
+arguments in Lorne's favour to form themselves in Farquharson's mind,
+but countering the objections that would rise there by the suggestion
+that after a long period of confidence and steady going, in fact of
+the orthodox and expected, the party should profit by the swing of
+the pendulum toward novelty and tentative, rather than bring forward a
+candidate who would represent, possibly misrepresent, the same beliefs
+and intentions on a lower personal level. As there was no first-rate
+man of the same sort to succeed Farquharson, Cruickshank suggested the
+undesirability of a second-rate man; and he did it so adroitly that the
+old fellow found himself in a good deal of sympathy with the idea. He
+had small opinion of the lot that was left for selection, and smaller
+relish for the prospect of turning his honourable activity over to any
+one of them. Force of habit and training made him smile at Cruickshank's
+proposition as impracticable, but he felt its attraction, even while
+he dismissed it to an inside pocket. Young Murchison's name would be so
+unlooked-for that if he, Farquharson, could succeed in imposing it
+upon the party it would be almost like making a personal choice of his
+successor, a grateful idea in abdication. Farquharson wished regretfully
+that Lorne had another five years to his credit in the Liberal record of
+South Fox. By the time the young fellow had earned them he, the retiring
+member, would be quite on the shelf, if in no completer oblivion; he
+could not expect much of a voice in any nomination five years hence. He
+sighed to think of it.
+
+It was at that point of his meditations that Mr Farquharson met
+Squire Ormiston on the steps of the Bank of British North America, an
+old-fashioned building with an appearance of dignity and probity, a look
+of having been founded long ago upon principles which raised it above
+fluctuation, exactly the place in which Mr Farquharson and Squire
+Ormiston might be expected to meet. The two men, though politically
+opposed, were excellent friends; they greeted cordially.
+
+"So you're ordered out of politics, Farquharson?" said the squire.
+"We're all sorry for that, you know."
+
+"I'm afraid so; I'm afraid so. Thanks for your letter--very friendly of
+you, squire. I don't like it--no use pretending I do--but it seems I've
+got to take a rest if I want to be known as a going concern."
+
+"A fellow with so much influence in committee ought to have more control
+of his nerve centres," Ormiston told him. The squire belonged to that
+order of elderly gentlemen who will have their little joke. "Well, have
+you and Bingham and Horace Williams made up your minds who's to have the
+seat?"
+
+Farquharson shook his head. "I only know what I see in the papers," he
+said. "The Dominion is away out with Fawkes, and the Express is about as
+lukewarm with Carter as he is with federated trade."
+
+"Your Government won't be obliged to you for Carter," said Mr Ormiston;
+"a more slack-kneed, double-jointed scoundrel was never offered a
+commission in a respectable cause. He'll be the first to rat if things
+begin to look queer for this new policy of yours and Wallingham's."
+
+"He hasn't got it yet," Farquharson admitted, "and he won't with my good
+will. So you're with us for preference trade, Ormiston?"
+
+"It's a thing I'd like to see. It's a thing I'm sorry we're not in a
+position to take up practically ourselves. But you won't get it, you
+know. You'll be defeated by the senior partner. It's too much of a
+doctrine for the people of England. They're listening to Wallingham
+just now because they admire him, but they won't listen to you. I doubt
+whether it will ever come to an issue over there. This time next year
+Wallingham will be sucking his thumbs and thinking of something else.
+No, it's not a thing to worry about politically, for it won't come
+through."
+
+The squire's words suggested so much relief in that conviction that
+Farquharson, sharp on the flair of the experienced nose for waverers,
+looked at him observantly.
+
+"I'm not so sure It's a doctrine with a fine practical application for
+them as well as for us, if they can be got to see it, and they're bound
+to see it in time. It's a thing I never expected to live to believe,
+never thought would be practicable until lately, but now I think there's
+a very good chance of it. And, hang it all," he added, "it may be
+unreasonable, but the more I notice the Yankees making propositions to
+get us away from it, the more I want to see it come through."
+
+"I have very much the same feeling," the squire acknowledged. "I've been
+turning the matter over a good deal since that last Conference showed
+which way the wind was blowing. And the fellows in your Government gave
+them a fine lead. But such a proposition was bound to come from your
+side. The whole political history of the country shows it. We're pledged
+to take care of the damned industries."
+
+Farquharson smiled at the note of depression. "Well, we want a bigger
+market somewhere," he said with detachment "and it looks as if we could
+get it now Uncle Sam has had a fright. If the question comes to be
+fought out at the polls, I don't see how your party could do better
+than go in for a wide scheme of reciprocity with the Americans--in raw
+products, of course with a tariff to match theirs on manufactured goods.
+That would shut a pretty tight door on British connection though."
+
+"They'll not get my vote if they do," said the squire, thrusting his
+hands fiercely into his breeches pockets.
+
+"As you say, it's most important to put up a man who will show the
+constituency all the credit and benefit there is in it, anyhow,"
+Farquharson observed. "I've had a letter this morning," he added,
+laughing, "from a fellow--one of the bosses, too--who wants us to
+nominate young Murchison."
+
+"The lawyer?"
+
+"That's the man. He's too young, of course--not thirty. But he's well
+known in the country districts; I don't know a man of his age with a
+more useful service record. He's got a lot of friends, and he's come a
+good deal to the front lately through that inter-imperial communications
+business--we might do worse. And upon my word, we're in such a hole--"
+
+"Farquharson," said old Squire Ormiston, the red creeping over features
+that had not lost in three generations the lines of the old breed, "I've
+voted in the Conservative interest for forty years, and my father before
+me. We were Whigs when we settled in Massachusetts, and Whigs when we
+pulled up stakes and came North rather than take up arms against the
+King; but it seemed decent to support the Government that gave us a
+chance again under the flag, and my grandfather changed his politics.
+Now, confound it! the flag seems to be with the Whigs again, for
+fighting purposes, anyhow; and I don't seem to have any choice. I've
+been debating the thing for some time now, and your talk of making
+that fine young fellow your candidate settles it. If you can get your
+committee to accept young Murchison, you can count on my vote, and I
+don't want to brag, but I think you can count on Moneida too, though
+it's never sent in a Grit majority yet."
+
+The men were standing on the steps of the bank, and the crisp air
+of autumn brought them both an agreeable tingle of enterprise.
+Farquharson's buggy was tied to the nearest maple.
+
+"I'm going over to East Elgin to look at my brick-kilns," he said. "Get
+in with me, will you?"
+
+As they drove up Main Street they encountered Walter Winter, who looked
+after them with a deeply considering eye.
+
+"Old Ormiston always had the Imperial bee in his bonnet," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Alfred Hesketh was among the first to hear of Lorne's nomination to
+represent the constituency of South Fox in the Dominion Parliament. The
+Milburns told him; it was Dora who actually made the communication. The
+occasion was high tea; Miss Milburn's apprehension about Englishmen and
+late dinner had been dissipated in great amusement. Mr Hesketh liked
+nothing better than high tea, liked nothing so much. He came often to
+the Milburns' after Mrs Milburn said she hoped he would, and pleased her
+extremely by the alacrity with which he accepted her first invitation to
+stay to what she described as their very simple and unconventional meal.
+Later he won her approval entirely by saying boldly that he hoped he was
+going to be allowed to stay. It was only in good English society,
+Mrs Milburn declared, that you found such freedom and confidence; it
+reminded her of Mrs Emmett's saying that her sister-in-law in London
+was always at home to lunch. Mrs Milburn considered a vague project of
+informing a select number of her acquaintances that she was always
+at home to high tea, but on reflection dismissed it, in case an
+inconvenient number should come at once. She would never have gone into
+detail, but since a tin of sardines will only hold so many, I may say
+for her that it was the part of wisdom.
+
+Mr Hesketh, however, wore the safe and attractive aspect of a single
+exceptional instance; there were always sardines enough for him. It
+will be imagined what pleasure Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin took in his
+visits, how he propped up their standard of behaviour in all things
+unessential, which was too likely to be growing limp, so far from
+approved examples. I think it was a real aesthetic satisfaction; I know
+they would talk of it afterward for hours, with sighing comparisons of
+the "form" of the young men of Elgin, which they called beside Hesketh's
+quite outre. It was a favourite word with Mrs Milburn--outre. She used
+it like a lorgnette, and felt her familiarity with it a differentiating
+mark. Mr Milburn, never so susceptible to delicate distinctions, looked
+upon the young Englishman with benevolent neutrality. Dora wished it
+to be understood that she reserved her opinion. He might be all that he
+seemed, and again he might not. Englishmen were so deep. They might have
+nice manners, but they didn't always act up to them, so far as she had
+noticed. There was that Honourable Somebody, who was in jail even
+then for trying to borrow money under false pretences from the
+Governor-General. Lorne, when she expressed these views to him,
+reassured her, but she continued to maintain a guarded attitude upon Mr
+Hesketh, to everybody except Mr Hesketh himself.
+
+It was Dora, as I have said, who imparted the news. Lorne had come over
+with it in the afternoon, still a little dazed and unbelieving in the
+face of his tremendous luck, helped by finding her so readily credulous
+to thinking it reasonably possible himself. He could not have done
+better than come to Dora for a correction of any undue exaltation that
+he might have felt, however. She supplied it in ten minutes by reminding
+him of their wisdom in keeping the secret of their relations. His
+engagement to the daughter of a prominent Conservative would not indeed
+have told in his favour with his party, to say nothing of the anomaly
+of Mr Milburn's unyielding opposition to the new policy. "I never knew
+Father so nearly bitter about anything," Dora said, a statement which
+left her lover thoughtful, but undaunted.
+
+"We'll bring him round," said Lorne, "when he sees that the British
+manufacturer can't possibly get the better of men on the spot, who know
+to a nut the local requirements."
+
+To which she had responded, "Oh, Lorne, don't begin THAT again," and he
+had gone away hot-foot for the first step of preparation.
+
+"It's exactly what I should have expected," said Hesketh, when she told
+him. "Murchison is the very man they want. He's cut out for a political
+success. I saw that when he was in England."
+
+"You haven't been very long in the country, Mr Hesketh, or we shouldn't
+hear you saying that," said Mr Milburn, amicably. "It's a very
+remarkable thing with us, a political party putting forward so young a
+man. Now with you I expect a young fellow might get in on his rank
+or his wealth--your principle of nonpayment of members confines your
+selection more or less. I don't say you're not right, but over here we
+do pay, you see, and it makes a lot of difference in the competition. It
+isn't a greater honour, but it's more sought for. I expect there'll be a
+good many sore heads over this business."
+
+"It's all the more creditable to Murchison," said Hesketh.
+
+"Of course it is--a great feather in his cap. Oh, I don't say young
+Murchison isn't a rising fellow, but it's foolishness for his party--I
+can't think who is responsible for it. However, they've got a pretty
+foolish platform just now--they couldn't win this seat on it with any
+man. A lesson will be good for them."
+
+"Father, don't you think Lorne will get in?" asked Dora, in a tone of
+injury and slight resentment.
+
+"Not by a handful," said her father. "Mr Walter Winter will represent
+South Fox in the next session of Parliament, if you ask my opinion."
+
+"But, Father," returned his daughter with an outraged inflection,
+"you'll vote for Lorne?"
+
+A smile went round the table, discreetest in Mrs Milburn.
+
+"I'm afraid not," said Mr Milburn, "I'm afraid not. Sorry to disoblige,
+but principles are principles."
+
+Dora perceptibly pouted. Mrs Milburn created a diversion with green-gage
+preserves. Under cover of it Hesketh asked, "Is he a great friend of
+yours?"
+
+"One of my very greatest," Dora replied. "I know he'll expect Father to
+vote for him. It makes it awfully embarrassing for me."
+
+"Oh, I fancy he'll understand!" said Hesketh, easily. "Political
+convictions are serious things, you know. Friendship isn't supposed to
+interfere with them. I wonder," he went on, meditatively, "whether I
+could be of any use to Murchison. Now that I've made up my mind to
+stop till after Christmas I'll be on hand for the fight. I've had some
+experience. I used to canvass now and then from Oxford; it was always a
+tremendous lark."
+
+"Oh, Mr Hesketh, DO! Really and truly he is one of my oldest friends,
+and I should love to see him get in. I know his sister, too. They're
+a very clever family. Quite self-made, you know, but highly respected.
+Promise me you will."
+
+"I promise with pleasure. And I wish it were something it would give me
+more trouble to perform. I like Murchison," said Hesketh.
+
+All this transpiring while they were supposed to be eating green-gage
+preserves, and Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin endeavoured to engage the
+head of the house in the kind of easy allusion to affairs of the moment
+to which Mr Hesketh would be accustomed as a form of conversation--the
+accident to the German Empress, the marriage of one of the Rothschilds.
+The ladies were compelled to supply most of the facts and all of the
+interest but they kept up a gallant line of attack; and the young man,
+taking gratified possession of Dora's eyes, was extremely obliged to
+them.
+
+Hesketh lost no time in communicating his willingness to be of use to
+Murchison, and Lorne felt all his old friendliness rise up in him as he
+cordially accepted the offer. It was made with British heartiness, it
+was thoroughly meant. Lorne was half-ashamed in his recognition of its
+quality. A certain aloofness had grown in him against his will since
+Hesketh had prolonged his stay in the town, difficult to justify,
+impossible to define. Hesketh as Hesketh was worthily admirable as ever,
+wholesome and agreeable, as well turned out by his conscience as he was
+by his tailor; it was Hesketh in his relation to his new environment
+that seemed vaguely to come short. This in spite of an enthusiasm which
+was genuine enough; he found plenty of things to like about the country.
+It was perhaps in some manifestation of sensitiveness that he failed;
+he had the adaptability of the pioneer among rugged conditions, but he
+could not mingle quite immediately with the essence of them; he did not
+perceive the genius loci. Lorne had been conscious of this as a kind of
+undefined grievance; now he specified it and put it down to Hesketh's
+isolation among ways that were different from the ways he knew. You were
+bound to notice that Hesketh as a stranger had his own point of view,
+his own training to retreat upon.
+
+"I certainly liked him better over there," Lorne told Advena, "but then
+he was a part of it--he wasn't separated out as he is here. He was just
+one sort of fellow that you admired, and there were lots of sorts that
+you admired more. Over here you seem to see round him somehow."
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it difficult," said his sister.
+
+"Besides," Lorne confessed, "I expect it was easier to like him when
+you were inclined to like everybody. A person feels more critical of
+a visitor, especially when he's had advantages," he added honestly.
+"I expect we don't care about having to acknowledge 'em so very
+much--that's what it comes to."
+
+"I don't see them," said Advena. "Mr Hesketh seems well enough in his
+way, fairly intelligent and anxious to be pleasant. But I can't say I
+find him a specially interesting or valuable type."
+
+"Interesting, you wouldn't. But valuable--well, you see, you haven't
+been in England--you haven't seen them over there, crowds of 'em, piling
+up the national character. Hesketh's an average, and for an average he's
+high. Oh, he's a good sort--and he just SMELLS of England."
+
+"He seems all right in his politics," said John Murchison, filling
+his pipe from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece. "But I doubt whether
+you'll find him much assistance the way he talks of. Folks over here
+know their own business--they've had to learn it. I doubt if they'll
+take showing from Hesketh."
+
+"They might be a good deal worse advised."
+
+"That may be," said Mr Murchison, and settled down in his armchair
+behind the Dominion.
+
+"I agree with Father," said Advena. "He won't be any good, Lorne."
+
+"Advena prefers Scotch," remarked Stella.
+
+"I don't know. He's full of the subject," said Lorne. "He can present it
+from the other side."
+
+"The side of the British exporter?" inquired his father, looking over
+the top of the Dominion with unexpected humour.
+
+"No, sir. Though there are places where we might talk cheap overcoats
+and tablecloths and a few odds and ends like that. The side of the
+all-British loaf and the lot of people there are to eat it," said Lorne.
+"That ought to make a friendly feeling. And if there's anything in the
+sentiment of the scheme," he added, "it shouldn't do any harm to have a
+good specimen of the English people advocating it. Hesketh ought to be
+an object-lesson."
+
+"I wouldn't put too much faith in the object-lesson," said John
+Murchison.
+
+"Neither would I," said Stella emphatically. "Mister Alfred Hesketh may
+pass in an English crowd, but over here he's just an ignorant young
+man, and you'd better not have him talking with his mouth at any of your
+meetings. Tell him to go and play with Walter Winter."
+
+"I heard he was asking at Volunteer Headquarters the other night,"
+remarked Alec, "how long it would be before a man like himself, if he
+threw in his lot with the country, could expect to get nominated for a
+provincial seat."
+
+"What did they tell him?" asked Mr Murchison, when they had finished
+their laugh.
+
+"I heard they said it would depend a good deal on the size of the lot."
+
+"And a little on the size of the man," remarked Advena.
+
+"He said he would be willing to take a seat in a Legislature and work
+up," Alec went on. "Ontario for choice, because he thought the people of
+this Province more advanced."
+
+"There's a representative committee being formed to give the inhabitants
+of the poor-house a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day," said Advena. "He
+might begin with that."
+
+"I dare say he would if anybody told him. He's just dying to be taken
+into the public service," Alec said. "He's in dead earnest about it. He
+thinks this country's a great place because it gives a man the chance of
+a public career."
+
+"Why is it," asked Advena "that when people have no capacity for private
+usefulness they should be so anxious to serve the public?"
+
+"Oh, come," said Lorne, "Hesketh has an income of his own. Why should
+he sweat for his living? We needn't pride ourselves on being so taken up
+with getting ours. A man like that is in a position to do some good, and
+I hope Hesketh will get a chance if he stays over here. We'll soon
+see how he speaks. He's going to follow Farquharson at Jordanville on
+Thursday week."
+
+"I wonder at Farquharson," said his father.
+
+By this time the candidature of Mr Lorne Murchison was well in the
+public eye. The Express announced it in a burst of beaming headlines,
+with a biographical sketch and a "cut" of its young fellow-townsman.
+Horace Williams, whose hand was plain in every line apologized for the
+brevity of the biography--quality rather than quantity, he said; it
+was all good, and time would make it better. This did not prevent the
+Mercury observing the next evening that the Liberal organ had omitted to
+state the age at which the new candidate was weaned. The Toronto papers
+commented according to their party bias, but so far as the candidate
+was concerned there was lack of the material of criticism. If he had
+achieved little for praise he had achieved nothing for detraction.
+There was no inconsistent public utterance, no doubtful transaction, no
+scandalous paper to bring forward to his detriment. When the fact that
+he was but twenty-eight years of age had been exhausted in elaborate
+ridicule, little more was available. The policy he championed, however,
+lent itself to the widest discussion, and it was instructive to note how
+the Opposition press, while continuing to approve the great principle
+involved, found material for gravest criticism in the Government's
+projected application of it. Interest increased in the South Fox
+by-election as its first touchstone, and gathered almost romantically
+about Lorne Murchison as its spirited advocate. It was commonly said
+that whether he was returned or not on this occasion, his political
+future was assured; and his name was carried up and down the Dominion
+with every new wind of imperial doctrine that blew across the Atlantic.
+He himself felt splendidly that he rode upon the crest of a wave of
+history. However the event appeared which was hidden beyond the horizon,
+the great luck of that buoyant emotion, of that thrilling suspense,
+would be his in a very special way. He was exhilarated by the sense of
+crisis, and among all the conferences and calculations that armed him
+for his personal struggle, he would now and then breathe in his private
+soul, "Choose quickly, England," like a prayer.
+
+Elgin rose to its liking for the fellow, and even his political enemies
+felt a half-humorous pride that the town had produced a candidate whose
+natural parts were held to eclipse the age and experience of party
+hacks. Plenty of them were found to declare that Lorne Murchison would
+poll more votes for the Grits than any other man they could lay their
+hands on, with the saving clause that neither he nor any other man could
+poll quite enough this time. They professed to be content to let the
+issue have it; meanwhile they congratulated Lorne on his chance, telling
+him that a knock or two wouldn't do him any harm at his age. Walter
+Winter, who hadn't been on speaking terms with Farquharson, made a point
+of shaking hands with Murchison in the publicity of the post-office, and
+assuring him that he, Winter, never went into a contest more confident
+of the straight thing on the part of the other side. Such cavilling
+as there was came from the organized support of his own party and had
+little importance because it did. The grumblers fell into line almost
+as soon as Horace Williams said they would; a little oil, one small
+appointment wrung from the Ontario Government--Fawkes, I believe,
+got it--and the machine was again in good working order. Lorne even
+profited, in the opinion of many, by the fact of his youth, with its
+promise of energy and initiative, since Mr Farquharson had lately been
+showing the defects as well as the qualities of age and experience, and
+the charge of servile timidity was already in the mouths of his critics.
+
+The agricultural community took it, as usual, with phlegm; but there was
+a distinct tendency in the bar at Barker's, on market-days, to lay money
+on the colt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Mr Farquharson was to retain his seat until the early spring, for the
+double purpose of maintaining his influence upon an important commission
+of which he was chairman until the work should be done, and of giving
+the imperial departure championed by his successor as good a chance as
+possible of becoming understood in the constituency. It was understood
+that the new writ would issue for a date in March; Elgin referred all
+interest to that point, and prophesied for itself a lively winter.
+Another event, of importance less general, was arranged for the end of
+February--the arrival of Miss Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon from Scotland.
+Finlay had proposed an earlier date, but matters of business connected
+with her mother's estate would delay Miss Cameron's departure. Her
+arrival would be the decisive point of another campaign. He and Advena
+faced it without misgiving, but there were moments when Finlay greatly
+wished the moment past.
+
+Their intimacy had never been conspicuous, and their determination to
+make no change in it could be carried out without attracting attention.
+It was very dear to them, that determination. They saw it as a test, as
+an ideal. Last of all, perhaps, as an alleviation. They were both too
+much encumbered with ideas to move simply, quickly, on the impulse
+of passion. They looked at it through the wrong end of the glass, and
+thought they put it farther away. They believed that their relation
+comprised, would always comprise, the best of life. It was matter for
+discussion singularly attractive; they allowed themselves upon it wide
+scope in theory. They could speak of it in the heroic temper, without
+sadness or bitterness; the thing was to tear away the veil and look fate
+in the face. The great thing, perhaps, was to speak of it while still
+they could give themselves leave; a day would arrive, they acknowledged
+with averted eyes, when dumbness would be more becoming. Meanwhile, Mrs
+Murchison would have found it hard to sustain her charge against them
+that they talked of nothing but books and authors; the philosophy of
+life, as they were intensely creating it, was more entrancing than
+any book or any author. Simply and definitely, and to their own
+satisfaction, they had abandoned the natural demands of their state;
+they lived in its exaltation and were far from accidents. Deep in both
+of them was a kind of protective nobility; I will not say it cost them
+nothing, but it turned the scenes between them into comedy of the better
+sort, the kind that deserves the relief of stone or bronze. Advena,
+had she heard it, would have repelled Dr Drummond's warning with
+indignation. If it were so possible to keep their friendship on an
+unfaltering level then, with the latitude they had, what danger could
+attend them later, when the social law would support them, divide them,
+protect them? Dr Drummond, suspecting all, looked grimly on, and from
+November to March found no need to invite Mr Finlay to occupy the pulpit
+of Knox Church.
+
+They had come to full knowledge that night of their long walk in the
+dark together; but even then, in the rush and shock and glory of
+it, they had held apart; and their broken avowals had crossed with
+difficulty from one to the other. The whole fabric of circumstance was
+between them, to realize and to explore; later surveys, as we know,
+had not reduced it. They gave it great credit as a barrier; I suppose
+because it kept them out of each other's arms. It had done that.
+
+It was Advena, I fear, who insisted most that they should continue upon
+terms of happy debt to one another, the balance always changing, the
+account never closed and rendered. She no doubt felt that she might
+impose the terms; she had unconsciously the sense of greater sacrifice,
+and knew that she had been mistress of the situation long before he
+was aware of it. He agreed with joy and with misgiving; he saw with
+enthusiasm her high conception of their alliance, but sometimes
+wondered, poor fellow, whether he was right in letting it cover him.
+He came to the house as he had done before, as often as he could, and
+reproached himself that he could not, after all, come very often.
+
+That they should discuss their relation as candidly as they sustained it
+was perhaps a little peculiar to them, so I have laid stress on it; but
+it was not by any means their sole preoccupation. They talked like
+tried friends of their every-day affairs. Indeed, after the trouble and
+intoxication of their great understanding had spent itself, it was the
+small practical interests of life that seemed to hold them most. One
+might think that Nature, having made them her invitation upon the higher
+plane, abandoned them in the very scorn of her success to the warm human
+commonplaces that do her work well enough with the common type. Mrs
+Murchison would have thought better of them if she had chanced again to
+overhear.
+
+"I wouldn't advise you to have it lined with fur," Advena was saying.
+The winter had sharply announced itself, and Finlay, to her reproach
+about his light overcoat, had declared his intention of ordering a
+buffalo-skin the following day. "And the buffaloes are all gone, you
+know--thirty years ago," she laughed. "You really are not modern in
+practical matters. Does it ever surprise you that you get no pemmican
+for dinner, and hardly ever meet an Indian in his feathers?"
+
+He looked at her with delight in his sombre eyes. It was a new
+discovery, her capacity for happily chaffing him, only revealed since
+she had come out of her bonds to love; it was hard to say which of them
+took the greater pleasure in it.
+
+"What is the use of living in Canada if you can't have fur on your
+clothes?" he demanded.
+
+"You may have a little--astrakhan, I would--on the collar and cuffs,"
+she said. "A fur lining is too hot if there happens to be a thaw, and
+then you would leave it off and take cold. You have all the look," she
+added, with a gravely considering glance at him, "of a person who ought
+to take care of his chest."
+
+He withdrew his eyes hurriedly, and fixed them instead on his pipe. He
+always brought it with him, by her order, and Advena usually sewed. He
+thought as he watched her that it made the silences enjoyable.
+
+"And expensive, I dare say, too," he said.
+
+"Yes, more or less. Alec paid fifty dollars for his, and never liked
+it."
+
+"Fifty dollars--ten pounds! No vair for me!" he declared. "By the way,
+Mrs Firmin is threatening to turn me out of house and home. A married
+daughter is coming to live with her, and she wants my rooms."
+
+"When does she come--the married daughter?"
+
+"Oh, not till the early spring! There's no immediate despair," said
+Finlay, "but it is dislocating. My books and I had just succeeded in
+making room for one another."
+
+"But you will have to move, in any case, in the early spring."
+
+"I suppose I will. I had--I might have remembered that."
+
+"Have you found a house yet?" Advena asked him.
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you been looking?" It was a gentle, sensible reminder.
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't." He moved in his chair as if in physical
+discomfort. "Do you think I ought--so soon? There are always plenty
+of--houses, aren't there?"
+
+"Not plenty of desirable ones. Do you think you must live in East
+Elgin?"
+
+"It would be rather more convenient."
+
+"Because there are two semidetached in River Street, just finished, that
+look very pretty and roomy. I thought when I saw them that one of them
+might be what you would like."
+
+"Thank you," he said, and tried not to say it curtly.
+
+"They belong to White, the grocer. River Street isn't East Elgin, but it
+is that way, and it would be a great deal pleasanter for--for her."
+
+"I must consider that, of course. You haven't been in them? I should
+hope for a bright sitting-room, and a very private study."
+
+If Advena was aware of any unconscious implication, the pair of eyes she
+turned upon him showed no trace of satisfaction in it.
+
+"No, I haven't. But if I could be of any use I should be very glad to go
+over them with you, and--"
+
+She stopped involuntarily, checked by the embarrassment in his face,
+though she had to wait for his words to explain it.
+
+"I should be most grateful. But--but might it not be misunderstood?"
+
+She bent her head over her work, and one of those instants passed
+between them which he had learned to dread. They were so completely
+the human pair as they sat together, withdrawn in comfort and shelter,
+absorbed in homely matters and in each other; it was easy to forget that
+they were only a picture, a sham, and that the reality lay further on,
+in the early spring. It must have been hard for him to hear without
+resentment that she was ready to help him to make a home for that
+reality. He was fast growing instructed in women, although by a
+post-graduate course.
+
+Advena looked up. "Possibly," she said, calmly, and their agitation
+lay still between them. He was silently angry; the thing that stirred
+without their leave had been sweet.
+
+"No," said Advena, "I can't go, I suppose. I'm sorry. I should have
+liked so much to be of use." She looked up at him appealingly, and
+sudden tears came and stood in her eyes, and would perhaps have undone
+his hurt but that he was staring into the fire.
+
+"How can you be of use," he said, almost irritably, "in such ways as
+those? They are not important, and I am not sure that for us they are
+legitimate. If you were about to be--married"--he seemed to plunge at
+the word--"I should not wish either to hasten you or to house you. I
+should turn my back on it all. You should have nothing from me," he went
+on, with a forced smile, "but my blessing, delivered over my shoulder."
+
+"I am sure they are not important," she said humbly--privately all
+unwilling to give up her martyrdom, "but surely they are legitimate. I
+would like to help you in every little way I can. Don't you like me in
+your life? You have said that I may stay."
+
+"I believe you think that by taking strong measures one can exorcise
+things," he said. "That if we could only write out this history of ours
+in our hearts' blood it would somehow vanish."
+
+"No," she said, "but I should like to do it all the same."
+
+"You must bear with me if I refuse the heroic in little. It is even
+harder than the other." He broke off, leaning back and looking at
+her from under his shading hand as if that might protect him from too
+complete a vision. The firelight was warm on her cheek and hair, her
+needle once again completed the dear delusion: she sat there, his wife.
+This was an aspect he forbade, but it would return; here it was again.
+
+"It is good to have you in my life," he said. "It is also good to
+recognize one's possibilities."
+
+"How can you definitely lose me?" she asked, and he shook his head.
+
+"I don't know. Now that I have found you it is as if you and I had been
+rocked together on the tide of that inconceivable ocean that casts us
+half-awake upon life," he said dreamily. "It isn't friendship of ideas,
+it's a friendship of spirit. Indeed, I hope and pray never wholly to
+lose that."
+
+"You never will," she told him. "How many worlds one lives in as the day
+goes by with the different people one cares for--one beyond the other,
+concentric, ringing from the heart! Yours comprises all the others; it
+lies the farthest out--and alas! at present, the closest in," she added
+irresistibly to the asking of his eyes.
+
+"But," she hurried on, taking high ground to remedy her indiscretion,
+"I look forward to the time when this--other feeling of ours will become
+just an idea, as it is now just an emotion, at which we should try to
+smile. It is the attitude of the gods."
+
+"And therefore not becoming to men. Why should we, not being gods.
+borrow their attitude?" said Finlay.
+
+"I could never kill it," she put her work in her lap to say, "by any
+sudden act of violence. It would seem a kind of suicide. While it rules
+it is like one's life--absolute. But to isolate it--to place it beyond
+the currents from the heart--to look at it, and realize it, and conquer
+it for what it is--I don't think it need take so very long. And then our
+friendship will be beautiful without reproach."
+
+"I sometimes fear there may not be time enough in life," he said. "And
+if I find that I must simply go--to British Columbia, I think--those
+mining missions would give a man his chance against himself. There is
+splendid work to be done there, of a rough-and-ready kind that would
+make it puerile to spend time in self-questioning."
+
+She smiled as if at a violent boy. "We can do it. We can do it here,"
+she said. "May I quote another religion to you? 'From purification there
+arises in the Yogi a thorough discernment of the cause and nature of the
+body, whereupon he loses that regard which others have for the bodily
+form.' Then, if he loves, he loves in spirit and in truth. I look
+forward to the time," she went on calmly, "when the best that I can give
+you or you can give me will ride upon a glance."
+
+"I used to feel more drawn to the ascetic achievement and its rewards,"
+he remarked thoughtfully, "than I do now."
+
+"If I were not a Presbyterian in Canada," she told him, "I would be a
+Buddhist in Burma. But I have inherited the Shorter Catechism; I must
+remain without the Law."
+
+Finlay smiled. "They are the simple," he said. "Our Law makes wise the
+simple."
+
+Advena looked for a moment into the fire. She was listening, with
+admiration, to her heart; she would not be led to consider esoteric
+contrasts of East and West.
+
+"Isn't there something that appeals to you," she said, "in the thought
+of just leaving it, all unsaid and all undone, a dear and tender
+projection upon the future that faded--a lovely thing we turned away
+from, until one day it was no longer there?"
+
+"Charming," he said, averting his eyes so that she should not see the
+hunger in them. "Charming--literature!"
+
+She smiled and sighed, and he wrenched his mind to the consideration
+of the Buddhism of Browning. She followed him obediently, but the lines
+they wanted did not come easily; they were compelled to search and
+verify. Something lately seemed lost to them of that kind of glad
+activity; he was more aware of it than she, since he was less occupied
+in the aesthetic ecstasy of self-torture. In the old time before the sun
+rose they had been so conscious of realms of idea lying just beyond
+the achievement of thought, approachable, visible by phrases, brokenly,
+realms which they could see closer when they essayed together. He
+constantly struggled to reach those enchanted areas again, but they
+seemed to have gone down behind the horizon; and the only inspiration
+that carried them far drew its impetus from the poetry of their plight.
+They looked for verses to prove that Browning's imagination carried him
+bravely through lives and lives to come, and found them to speculate
+whether in such chances they might hope to meet again.
+
+And the talk came back to his difficulties with his Board of Management,
+and to her choice of a frame for the etching he had given her, by his
+friend the Glasgow impressionist, and to their opinion of a common
+acquaintance, and to Lorne and his prospects. He told her how little
+she resembled her brother, and where they diverged, and how; and she
+listened with submission and delight, enchanted to feel his hand upon
+her intimate nature. She lingered in the hall while he got into his
+overcoat, and saw that a glove was the worse for wear. "Would it be the
+heroic-in-little," she begged, "to let me mend that?"
+
+As he went out alone into the winter streets he too drew upon a pagan
+for his admonition. "'What then art thou doing here, O imagination?'" he
+groaned in his private heart. "'Go away, I entreat thee by the gods, for
+I want thee not. But thou art come again according to thy old fashion. I
+am not angry with thee, only go away!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Miss Milburn pressed her contention that the suspicion of his desire
+would be bad for her lover's political prospects till she made him feel
+his honest passion almost a form of treachery to his party. She also
+hinted that, for the time being, it did not make particularly for her
+own comfort in the family circle, Mr Milburn having grown by this time
+quite bitter. She herself drew the excitement of intrigue from the
+situation, which she hid behind her pretty, pale, decorous features, and
+never betrayed by the least of her graceful gestures. She told herself
+that she had never been so right about anything as about that affair of
+the ring--imagine, for an instant, if she had been wearing it now! She
+would have banished Lorne altogether if she could. As he insisted on
+an occasional meeting, she clothed it in mystery, appointing it for an
+evening when her mother and aunt were out, and answering his ring at the
+door herself. To her family she remarked with detachment that you saw
+hardly anything of Lorne Murchison now, he was so taken up with his
+old election; and to Hesketh she confided her fear that politics did
+interfere with friendship, whatever he might say. He said a good deal,
+he cited lofty examples; but the only agreement he could get from her
+was the hope that the estrangement wouldn't be permanent.
+
+"But you are going to say something, Lorne," she insisted, talking of
+the Jordanville meeting.
+
+"Not much," he told her. "It's the safest district we've got, and they
+adore old Farquharson. He'll do most of the talking--they wouldn't
+thank me for taking up the time. Farquharson is going to tell them I'm a
+first-class man, and they couldn't do better, and I've practically only
+to show my face and tell them I think so too."
+
+"But Mr Hesketh will speak?"
+
+"Yes; we thought it would be a good chance of testing him. He may
+interest them, and he can't do much harm, anyhow."
+
+"Lorne, I should simply love to go. It's your first meeting."
+
+"I'll take you."
+
+"Mr Murchison, HAVE you taken leave of your senses? Really, you are--"
+
+"All right, I'll send you. Farquharson and I are going out to the
+Crow place to supper, but Hesketh is driving straight there. He'll be
+delighted to bring you--who wouldn't?"
+
+"I shouldn't be allowed to go with him alone," said Dora, thoughtfully.
+
+"Well, no. I don't know that I'd approve of that myself," laughed the
+confident young man. "Hesketh is driving Mrs Farquharson, and the cutter
+will easily hold three. Isn't it lucky there's sleighing?"
+
+"Mother couldn't object to that," said Dora. "Lorne, I always said you
+were the dearest fellow! I'll wear a thick veil, and not a soul will
+know me."
+
+"Not a soul would in any case," said Lorne. "It'll be a Jordanville
+crowd, you know--nobody from Elgin."
+
+"We don't visit much in Jordanville, certainly. Well, Mother mayn't
+object. She has a great idea of Mrs Farquharson, because she
+has attended eleven Drawing-Rooms at Ottawa, and one of them was
+given--held, I should say--by the Princess Louise."
+
+"I won't promise you eleven," said Lorne, "but there seems to be a
+pretty fair chance of one or two."
+
+At this she had a tale for him which charmed his ears. "I didn't know
+where to look," she said. "Aunt Emmie, you know, has a very bad trick
+of coming into my room without knocking. Well, in she walked last night,
+and found me before the glass PRACTISING MY CURTSEY! I could have killed
+her. Pretended she thought I was out."
+
+"Dora, would you like ME to promise something?" he asked, with a
+mischievous look.
+
+"Of course, I would. I don't care how much YOU promise. What?"
+
+But already he repented of his daring, and sat beside her suddenly
+conscious and abashed. Nor could any teasing prevail to draw from him
+what had been on his audacious lips to say.
+
+Social precedents are easily established in the country. The accident
+that sent the first Liberal canvasser for Jordanville votes to the Crow
+place for his supper would be hard to discover now; the fact remains
+that he has been going there ever since. It made a greater occasion than
+Mrs Crow would ever have dreamed of acknowledging. She saw to it that
+they had a good meal of victuals, and affected indifference to the
+rest; they must say their say, she supposed. If the occasion had one
+satisfaction which she came nearer to confessing than another, it was
+that the two or three substantial neighbours who usually came to meet
+the politicians left their wives at home, and that she herself, to avoid
+giving any offence on this score, never sat down with the men. Quite
+enough to do it was, she would explain later, for her and the hired girl
+to wait on them and to clear up after them. She and Bella had their
+bite afterward when the men had hitched up, and when they could exchange
+comments of proud congratulation upon the inroads on the johnny-cake or
+the pies. So there was no ill feeling, and Mrs Crow, having vindicated
+her dignity by shaking hands with the guests of the evening in the
+parlour, solaced it further by maintaining the masculine state of the
+occasion, in spite of protests or entreaties. To sit down opposite Mr
+Crow would have made it ordinary "company"; she passed the plates and
+turned it into a function.
+
+She was waiting for them on the parlour sofa when Crow brought them in
+out of the nipping early dark of December, Elmore staying behind in the
+yard with the horses. She sat on the sofa in her best black dress with
+the bead trimming on the neck and sleeves, a good deal pushed up
+and wrinkled across the bosom, which had done all that would ever be
+required of it when it gave Elmore and Abe their start in life. Her wiry
+hands were crossed in her lap in the moment of waiting: you could tell
+by the look of them that they were not often crossed there. They were
+strenuous hands; the whole worn figure was strenuous, and the narrow set
+mouth, and the eyes which had looked after so many matters for so long,
+and even the way the hair was drawn back into a knot in a fashion that
+would have given a phrenologist his opportunity. It was a different Mrs
+Crow from the one that sat in the midst of her poultry and garden-stuff
+in the Elgin market square; but it was even more the same Mrs Crow, the
+sum of a certain measure of opportunity and service, an imperial figure
+in her bead trimming, if the truth were known.
+
+The room was heated to express the geniality that was harder to put in
+words. The window was shut; there was a smell of varnish and whatever
+was inside the "suite" of which Mrs Crow occupied the sofa. Enlarged
+photographs--very much enlarged--of Mr and Mrs Crow hung upon the walls,
+and one other of a young girl done in that process which tells you at
+once that she was an only daughter and that she is dead. There had been
+other bereavements; they were written upon the silver coffin-plates
+which, framed and glazed, also contributed to the decoration of the
+room; but you would have had to look close, and you might feel a
+delicacy.
+
+Mrs Crow made her greetings with precision, and sat down again upon the
+sofa for a few minutes' conversation.
+
+"I'm telling them," said her husband, "that the sleighin's just held
+out for them. If it 'ud been tomorrow they'd have had to come on wheels.
+Pretty soft travellin' as it was, some places, I guess."
+
+"Snow's come early this year," said Mrs Crow. "It was an open fall,
+too."
+
+"It has certainly," Mr Farquharson backed her up. "About as early as I
+remember it. I don't know how much you got out here; we had a good foot
+in Elgin."
+
+"'Bout the same, 'bout the same," Mr Crow deliberated, "but it's been
+layin' light all along over Clayfield way--ain't had a pair of runners
+out, them folks."
+
+"Makes a more cheerful winter, Mrs Crow, don't you think, when it comes
+early?" remarked Lorne. "Or would you rather not get it till after
+Christmas?"
+
+"I don't know as it matters much, out here in the country. We don't get
+a great many folks passin', best of times. An' it's more of a job to
+take care of the stock."
+
+"That's so," Mr Crow told them. "Chores come heavier when there's snow
+on the ground, a great sight, especially if there's drifts."
+
+And for an instant, with his knotted hands hanging between his knees
+he pondered this unvarying aspect of his yearly experience. They all
+pondered it, sympathetic.
+
+"Well, now, Mr Farquharson," Mrs Crow turned to him. "An' how reely
+BE ye? We've heard better, an' worse, an' middlin'--there's ben such
+contradictory reports."
+
+"Oh, very well, Mrs Crow. Never better. I'm going to give a lot more
+trouble yet. I can't do it in politics, that's the worst of it. But
+here's the man that's going to do it for me. Here's the man!"
+
+The Crows looked at the pretendant, as in duty bound, but not any longer
+than they could help.
+
+"Why, I guess you were at school with Elmore?" said Crow, as if the idea
+had just struck him.
+
+"He may be right peart, for all that," said Elmore's mother, and Elmore,
+himself, entering with two leading Liberals of Jordanville, effected a
+diversion, under cover of which Mrs Crow escaped, to superintend, with
+Bella, the last touches to the supper in the kitchen.
+
+Politics in and about Jordanville were accepted as a purely masculine
+interest. If you had asked Mrs Crow to take a hand in them she would
+have thanked you with sarcasm, and said she thought she had about enough
+to do as it was. The school-house, on the night of such a meeting as
+this, was recognized to be no place for ladies. It was a man's affair,
+left to the men, and the appearance there of the other sex would
+have been greeted with remark and levity. Elgin, as we know, was more
+sophisticated in every way, plenty of ladies attended political meetings
+in the Drill Shed, where seats as likely as not would be reserved for
+them; plenty of handkerchiefs waved there for the encouragement of the
+hero of the evening. They did not kiss him; British phlegm, so far, had
+stayed that demonstration at the southern border.
+
+The ladies of Elgin, however, drew the line somewhere, drew it at
+country meetings. Mrs Farquharson went with her husband because, since
+his state of health had handed him over to her more than ever, she saw
+it a part of her wifely duty. His retirement had been decided upon for
+the spring, but she would be on hand to retire him at any earlier moment
+should the necessity arise. "We'll be the only female creatures there,
+my dear," she had said to Dora on the way out, and Hesketh had praised
+them both for public spirit. He didn't know, he said, how anybody would
+get elected in England without the ladies, especially in the villages,
+where the people were obliged to listen respectfully.
+
+"I wonder you can afford to throw away all the influence you get in
+the rural districts with soup and blankets," he said; "but this is an
+extravagant country in many ways." Dora kept silence, not being sure of
+the social prestige bound up with the distribution of soup and blankets,
+but Mrs Farquharson set him sharply right.
+
+"I guess we'd rather do without our influence if it came to that," she
+said.
+
+Hesketh listened with deference to her account of the rural district
+which had as yet produced no Ladies Bountiful, made mental notes
+of several points, and placed her privately as a woman of more than
+ordinary intelligence. I have always claimed for Hesketh an open mind;
+he was filling it now, to its capacity, with care and satisfaction.
+
+The schoolroom was full and waiting when they arrived. Jordanville had
+been well billed, and the posters held, in addition to the conspicuous
+names of Farquharson and Murchison, that of Mr Alfred Hesketh (of
+London, England). There was a "send-off" to give to the retiring member,
+there was a critical inspection to make of the new candidate, and
+there was Mr Alfred Hesketh, of London, England, and whatever he
+might signify. They were big, quiet, expectant fellows, with less
+sophistication and polemic than their American counterparts, less stolid
+aggressiveness than their parallels in England, if they have parallels
+there. They stood, indeed, for the development between the two; they
+came of the new country but not of the new light; they were democrats
+who had never thrown off the monarch--what harm did he do there
+overseas? They had the air of being prosperous, but not prosperous
+enough for theories and doctrines. The Liberal vote of South Fox had
+yet to be split by Socialism or Labour. Life was a decent rough business
+that required all their attention; there was time enough for sleep
+but not much for speculation. They sat leaning forward with their
+hats dropped between their knees, more with the air of big schoolboys
+expecting an entertainment than responsible electors come together to
+approve their party's choice. They had the uncomplaining bucolic look,
+but they wore it with a difference; the difference, by this time, was
+enough to mark them of another nation. Most of them had driven to the
+meeting; it was not an adjournment from the public house. Nor did the
+air hold any hint of beer. Where it had an alcoholic drift the flavour
+was of whisky; but the stimulant of the occasion had been tea or cider,
+and the room was full of patient good will.
+
+The preliminaries were gone through with promptness; the Chair had
+supped with the speakers, and Mr Crow had given him a friendly hint that
+the boys wouldn't be expecting much in the way of trimmings from HIM.
+Stamping and clapping from the back benches greeted Mr Farquharson.
+It diminished, grew more subdued, as it reached the front. The young
+fellows were mostly at the back, and the power of demonstration had
+somehow ebbed in the old ones. The retiring member addressed his
+constituents for half an hour. He was standing before them as their
+representative for the last time, and it was natural to look back and
+note the milestones behind, the changes for the better with which he
+could fairly claim association. They were matters of Federal business
+chiefly, beyond the immediate horizon of Jordanville, but Farquharson
+made them a personal interest for that hour at all events, and there
+were one or two points of educational policy which he could illustrate
+by their own schoolhouse. He approached them, as he had always done on
+the level of mutual friendly interest, and in the hope of doing mutual
+friendly business. "You know and I know," he said more than once; they
+and he knew a number of things together.
+
+He was afraid, he said, that if the doctors hadn't chased him out of
+politics, he never would have gone. Now, however, that they gave him no
+choice, he was glad to think that though times had been pretty good for
+the farmers of South Fox all through the eleven years of his appearance
+in the political arena, he was leaving it at a moment when they promised
+to be better still. Already, he was sure, they were familiar with the
+main heads of that attractive prospect and, agreeable as the subject,
+great as the policy was to him, he would leave it to be further unfolded
+by the gentleman whom they all hoped to enlist in the cause, as his
+successor for this constituency, Mr Lorne Murchison, and by his friend
+from the old country, Mr Alfred Hesketh. He, Farquharson, would not take
+the words out of the mouths of these gentlemen, much as he envied them
+the opportunity of uttering them. The French Academy, he told them, that
+illustrious body of literary and scientific men, had a custom, on the
+death of a member and the selection of his successor, of appointing one
+of their number to eulogize the newcomer. The person upon whom the task
+would most appropriately fall, did circumstances permit, would be the
+departing academician. In this case, he was happy to say, circumstances
+did permit--his political funeral was still far enough off to enable him
+to express his profound confidence in and his hearty admiration of the
+young and vigorous political heir whom the Liberals of South Fox had
+selected to stand in his shoes. Mr Farquharson proceeded to give his
+grounds for this confidence and admiration, reminding the Jordanville
+electors that they had met Mr Murchison as a Liberal standard-bearer in
+the last general election, when he, Farquharson, had to acknowledge
+very valuable services on Mr Murchison's part. The retiring member then
+thanked his audience for the kind attention and support they had given
+him for so many years, made a final cheerful joke about a Pagan divinity
+known as Anno Domini, and took his seat.
+
+They applauded him, and it was plain that they regretted him, the tried
+friend, the man there was never any doubt about, whose convictions they
+had repeated, and whose speeches in Parliament they had read with a kind
+of proprietorship for so long. The Chair had to wait, before introducing
+Mr Alfred Hesketh, until the backbenchers had got through with a double
+rendering of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," which bolder spirits sent
+lustily forth from the anteroom where the little girls kept their hats
+and comforters, interspersed with whoops. Hesketh, it had been arranged,
+should speak next, and Lorne last.
+
+Mr Hesketh left his wooden chair with smiling ease, the ease which is
+intended to level distinctions and put everybody concerned on the
+best of terms. He said that though he was no stranger to the work
+of political campaigns, this was the first time that he had had the
+privilege of addressing a colonial audience. "I consider," said he
+handsomely, "that it is a privilege." He clasped his hands behind his
+back and threw out his chest.
+
+"Opinions have differed in England as to the value of the colonies, and
+the consequence of colonials. I say here with pride that I have
+ever been among those who insist that the value is very high and the
+consequence very great. The fault is common to humanity, but we are, I
+fear, in England, too prone to be led away by appearances, and to forget
+that under a rough unpolished exterior may beat virtues which are the
+brightest ornaments of civilization, that in the virgin fields of the
+possessions which the good swords of our ancestors wrung for us from
+the Algonquins and the--and the other savages--may be hidden the most
+glorious period of the British race."
+
+Mr Hesketh paused and coughed. His audience neglected the opportunity
+for applause, but he had their undivided attention. They were looking at
+him and listening to him, these Canadian farmers, with curious interest
+in his attitude, his appearance, his inflection, his whole personality
+as it offered itself to them--it was a thing new and strange. Far out
+in the Northwest, where the emigrant trains had been unloading all
+the summer, Hesketh's would have been a voice from home; but here, in
+long-settled Ontario, men had forgotten the sound of it, with many other
+things. They listened in silence, weighing with folded arms, appraising
+with chin in hand; they were slow, equitable men.
+
+"If we in England," Hesketh proceeded, "required a lesson--as perhaps we
+did--in the importance of the colonies, we had it; need I remind you? in
+the course of the late protracted campaign in South Africa. Then did
+the mother country indeed prove the loyalty and devotion of her colonial
+sons. Then were envious nations compelled to see the spectacle of
+Canadians and Australians rallying about the common flag, eager to
+attest their affection for it with their life-blood, and to demonstrate
+that they, too, were worthy to add deeds to British traditions and
+victories to the British cause."
+
+Still no mark of appreciation. Hesketh began to think them an unhandsome
+lot. He stood bravely, however, by the note he had sounded. He dilated
+on the pleasure and satisfaction it had been to the people of England
+to receive this mark of attachment from far-away dominions and
+dependencies, on the cementing of the bonds of brotherhood by the blood
+of the fallen, on the impossibility that the mother country should ever
+forget such voluntary sacrifices for her sake, when, unexpectedly and
+irrelevantly, from the direction of the cloakroom, came the expressive
+comment "Yah!"
+
+Though brief, nothing could have been more to the purpose, and Hesketh
+sacrificed several effective points to hurry to the quotation--
+
+   What should they know of England
+   Who only England know?
+
+which he could not, perhaps, have been expected to forbear. His
+audience, however, were plainly not in the vein for compliment. The same
+voice from the anteroom inquired ironically, "That so?" and the speaker
+felt advised to turn to more immediate considerations.
+
+He said he had had the great pleasure on his arrival in this country
+to find a political party, the party in power, their Canadian Liberal
+party, taking initiative in a cause which he was sure they all had
+at heart--the strengthening of the bonds between the colonies and the
+mother country. He congratulated the Liberal party warmly upon having
+shown themselves capable of this great function--a point at which he was
+again interrupted; and he recapitulated some of the familiar arguments
+about the desirability of closer union from the point of view of the
+army, of the Admiralty, and from one which would come home, he knew, to
+all of them, the necessity of a dependable food supply for the mother
+country in time of war. Here he quoted a noble lord. He said that he
+believed no definite proposals had been made, and he did not understand
+how any definite proposals could be made; for his part, if the new
+arrangement was to be in the nature of a bargain, he would prefer to
+have nothing to do with it.
+
+"England," he said, loftily, "has no wish to buy the loyalty of her
+colonies, nor, I hope, has any colony the desire to offer her allegiance
+at the price of preference in British markets. Even proposals for mutual
+commercial benefit may be underpinned, I am glad to say, by loftier
+principles than those of the market-place and the counting-house."
+
+At this one of his hearers, unacquainted with the higher commercial
+plane, exclaimed, "How be ye goin' to get 'em kept to, then?"
+
+Hesketh took up the question. He said a friend in the audience asked
+how they were to ensure that such arrangements would be adhered to. His
+answer was in the words of the Duke of Dartmoor, "By the mutual esteem,
+the inherent integrity, and the willing compromise of the British race."
+
+Here someone on the back benches, impatient, doubtless, at his own
+incapacity to follow this high doctrine, exclaimed intemperately, "Oh,
+shut up!" and the gathering, remembering that this, after all, was
+not what it had come for, began to hint that it had had enough in
+intermittent stamps and uncompromising shouts for "Murchison!"
+
+Hesketh kept on his legs, however, a few minutes longer. He had a
+trenchant sentence to repeat to them which he thought they would take as
+a direct message from the distinguished nobleman who had uttered it.
+The Marquis of Aldeburgh was the father of the pithy thing, which he had
+presented, as it happened, to Hesketh himself. The audience received
+it with respect--Hesketh's own respect was so marked--but with
+misapprehension; there had been too many allusions to the nobility for a
+community so far removed from its soothing influence. "Had ye no friends
+among the commoners?" suddenly spoke up a dry old fellow, stroking a
+long white beard; and the roar that greeted this showed the sense of the
+meeting. Hesketh closed with assurances of the admiration and confidence
+he felt toward the candidate proposed to their suffrages by the
+Liberal party that were quite inaudible, and sought his yellow pinewood
+schoolroom chair with rather a forced smile. It had been used once
+before that day to isolate conspicuous stupidity.
+
+They were at bottom a good-natured and a loyal crowd, and they had not,
+after all, come there to make trouble, or Mr Alfred Hesketh might have
+carried away a worse opinion of them. As it was, young Murchison,
+whose address occupied the rest of the evening, succeeded in making
+an impression upon them distinct enough, happily for his personal
+influence, to efface that of his friend. He did it by the simple
+expedient of talking business, and as high prices for produce and low
+ones for agricultural implements would be more interesting there than
+here, I will not report him. He and Mr Farquharson waited, after the
+meeting, for a personal word with a good many of those present, but it
+was suggested to Hesketh that the ladies might be tired, and that he had
+better get them home without unnecessary delay. Mrs Farquharson had less
+comment to offer during the drive home than Hesketh thought might be
+expected from a woman of her intelligence, but Miss Milburn was very
+enthusiastic. She said he had made a lovely speech, and she wished her
+father could have heard it.
+
+A personal impression, during a time of political excitement, travels
+unexpectedly far. A week later Mr Hesketh was concernedly accosted in
+Main Street by a boy on a bicycle.
+
+"Say, mister, how's the dook?"
+
+"What duke?" asked Hesketh, puzzled.
+
+"Oh, any dook," responded the boy, and bicycled cheerfully, away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Christmas came and went. Dr Drummond had long accepted the innovation
+of a service on Christmas Day, as he agreed to the anthem while the
+collection was being taken up, to flowers about the pulpit, and to
+the habit of sitting at prayer. He was a progressive by his business
+instinct, in everything but theology, where perhaps his business
+instinct also operated the other way, in favour of the sure thing. The
+Christmas Day service soon became one of those "special" occasions so
+dear to his heart, which made a demand upon him out of the ordinary way.
+He rose to these on the wing of the eagle, and his congregation never
+lacked the lesson that could be most dramatically drawn from them. His
+Christmas Day discourse gathered everything into it that could emphasize
+the anniversary, including a vigorous attack upon the saints' days and
+ceremonies of the Church of England calculated to correct the concession
+of the service, and pull up sharply any who thought that Presbyterianism
+was giving way to the spurious attractions of sentimentality or ritual.
+The special Easter service, with every appropriate feature of hymn and
+invocation, was apt to be marked by an unsparing denunciation of
+the pageants and practices of the Church of Rome. Balance was thus
+preserved, and principle relentlessly indicated.
+
+Dr Drummond loved, as I have said, all that asked for notable comment;
+the poet and the tragedian in him caught at the opportunity, and
+revelled in it. Public events carried him far, especially if they were
+disastrous, but what he most profited by was the dealing of Providence
+with members of his own congregation. Of all the occasions that inspired
+him, the funeral sermon was his happiest opportunity, nor was it, in his
+hands, by any means unstinted eulogy. Candid was his summing-up, behind
+the decent veil, the accepted apology of death; he was not afraid to
+refer to the follies of youth or the weaknesses of age in terms as
+unmistakable as they were kindly.
+
+"Grace," he said once, of an estimable plain spinster who had passed
+away, "did more for her than ever nature had done." He repeated it, too.
+"She was far more indebted, I say, to grace, than to nature," and before
+his sharp earnestness none were seen to smile. Nor could you forget
+the note in his voice when the loss he deplored was that of a youth of
+virtue and promise, or that of a personal friend. His very text would be
+a blow upon the heart; the eyes filled from the beginning. People would
+often say that they were "sorry for the family," sitting through Dr
+Drummond's celebration of their bereavement; and the sympathy was
+probably well founded. But how fine he was when he paid the last tribute
+to that upright man, his elder and office-bearer, David Davidson! How
+his words marched, sorrowing to the close! "Much I have said of him,
+and more than he would have had me say." Will it not stay with those who
+heard it till the very end, the trenchant, mournful fall of that "more
+than he would have had me say"?
+
+It was a thing that Hugh Finlay could not abide in Dr Drummond.
+
+As the winter passed, the little Doctor was hard put to it to keep his
+hands off the great political issue of the year, bound up as it was in
+the tenets of his own politics, which he held only less uncompromisingly
+than those of the Shorter Catechism. It was, unfortunately for him,
+a gradual and peaceful progress of opinion, marked by no dramatic
+incidents; and analogy was hard to find in either Testament for a change
+of fiscal policy based on imperial advantage. Dr Drummond liked a pretty
+definite parallel; he had small opinion of the practice of drawing a
+pint out of a thimble, as he considered Finlay must have done when he
+preached the gospel of imperialism from Deuteronomy XXX, 14. "But the
+word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou
+mayest do it." Moreover, to preach politics in Knox Church was a liberty
+in Finlay.
+
+The fact that Finlay had been beforehand with him operated perhaps to
+reconcile the Doctor to his difficulty; and the candidature of one of
+his own members in what was practically the imperial interest no doubt
+increased his embarrassment. Nevertheless, he would not lose sight of
+the matter for more than two or three weeks together. Many an odd blow
+he delivered for its furtherance by way of illustrating higher things,
+and he kept it always, so to speak, in the practical politics of the
+long prayer.
+
+It was Sunday evening, and Abby and her husband, as usual, had come to
+tea. The family was complete with the exception of Lorne, who had driven
+out to Clayfield with Horace Williams, to talk over some urgent matters
+with persons whom he would meet at supper at the Metropole Hotel
+at Clayfield. It was a thing Mrs Murchison thought little short of
+scandalous--supper to talk business on the Sabbath day, and in a hotel,
+a place of which the smell about the door was enough to knock you down,
+even on a weekday. Mrs Murchison considered, and did not scruple to say
+so, that politics should be left alone on Sundays. Clayfield votes
+might be very important, but there were such things as commandments,
+she supposed. "It'll bring no blessing," she declared severely, eyeing
+Lorne's empty place.
+
+The talk about the lamplit table was, nevertheless, all of the election,
+blessed or unblessed. It was not in human nature that it shouldn't be,
+as Mrs Murchison would have very quickly told you if you had found her
+inconsistent. There was reason in all things, as she frequently said.
+
+"I hear," Alec had told them, "that Octavius Milburn is going around
+bragging he's got the Elgin Chamber of Commerce consolidated this time."
+
+"Against us?" exclaimed Stella; and her brother said, "Of course!"
+
+"Those Milburns," remarked Mrs Murchison, "are enough to make one's
+blood boil. I met Mrs Milburn in the market yesterday; she'd been
+pricing Mrs Crow's ducks, and they were just five cents too dear for
+her, and she stopped--wonderful thing for her--and had SUCH an amount
+to say about Lorne, and the honour it was, and the dear only knows what!
+Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth--and Octavius Milburn doing all
+he knew against him the whole time! That's the Milburns! I cut her
+remarkably short," Mrs Murchison added, with satisfaction, "and when
+she'd made up her mind she'd have to give that extra five cents for
+the ducks because there weren't any others to be had, she went back and
+found I'd bought them."
+
+"Well done, Mother!" said Alec, and Oliver remarked that if those were
+today's ducks they were too good for the Milburn crowd, a lot.
+
+"I expect she wanted them, too," remarked Stella. "They've got the only
+Mr Hesketh staying with them now. Miss Filkin's in a great state of
+excitement."
+
+"I guess we can spare them Hesketh," said John Murchison.
+
+"He's a lobster," said Stella with fervour.
+
+"He seems to bring a frost where he goes," continued Abby's husband,
+"in politics, anyhow. I hear Lorne wants to make a present of him to the
+other side, for use wherever they'll let him speak longest. Is it true
+he began his speech out at Jordanville--'Gentlemen--and those of you who
+are not gentlemen'?"
+
+"Could he have meant Mrs Farquharson and Miss Milburn?" asked Mr
+Murchison quietly, when the derision subsided; and they laughed again.
+
+"He told me," said Advena, "that he proposed to convert Mr Milburn to
+the imperial policy."
+
+"He'll have his job cut out for him," said her father.
+
+"For my part," Abby told them, "I think the Milburns are beneath
+contempt. You don't know exactly what it is, but there's something ABOUT
+them--not that we ever come in contact with them," she continued with
+dignity. "I believe they used to be patients of Dr Henry's till he got
+up in years, but they don't call in Harry."
+
+"Maybe that's what there is about them," said Mr Murchison, innocently.
+
+"Father's made up his mind," announced Dr Harry, and they waited,
+breathless. There could be only one point upon which Dr Henry could be
+dubitating at that moment.
+
+"He's going to vote for Lorne."
+
+"He's a lovely old darling!" cried Stella. "Good for Dr Henry Johnson! I
+knew he would."
+
+The rest were silent with independence and gratification. Dr Henry's
+Conservatism had been supposed to be invincible. Dr Harry they thought
+a fair prey to Murchison influence, and he had capitulated early, but he
+had never promised to answer for his father.
+
+"Yes, he's taken his time about it, and he's consulted about all the
+known authorities," said his son, humorously. "Went right back to the
+Manchester school to begin with--sat out on the verandah reading Cobden
+and Bright the whole summer; if anybody came for advice sent 'em in to
+me. I did a trade, I tell you! He thought they talked an awful lot of
+sense, those fellows--from the English point of view. 'D'ye mean to tell
+me,' he'd say, 'that a generation born and bred in political doctrine
+of that sort is going to hold on to the colonies at a sacrifice? They'd
+rather let 'em go at a sacrifice!' Well, then he got to reading the
+other side of the question, and old Ormiston lent him Parkin, and he
+lent old Ormiston Goldwin Smith, and then he subscribed to the Times for
+six months--the bill must have nearly bust him; and then the squire went
+over without waiting for him and without any assistance from the Times
+either; and finally--well, he says that if it's good enough business for
+the people of England it's good enough business for him. Only he keeps
+on worrying about the people of England, and whether they'll make enough
+by it to keep them contented, till he can't next month all right, he
+wants it to be distinctly understood that family connection has nothing
+to do with it."
+
+"Of course it hasn't," Advena said.
+
+"But we're just as much obliged," remarked Stella.
+
+"A lot of our church people are going to stay at home election day,"
+declared Abby; "they won't vote for Lorne, and they won't vote against
+imperialism, so they'll just sulk. Silly, I call it."
+
+"Good enough business for us," said Alec.
+
+"Well, what I want to know is," said Mrs Murchison, "whether you are
+coming to the church you were born and brought up in, Abby, or not,
+tonight? There's the first bell."
+
+"I'm not going to any church." said Abby. "I went this morning. I'm
+going home to my baby."
+
+"Your father and mother," said Mrs Murchison, "can go twice a day, and
+be none the worse for it. By the way, Father, did you know old Mrs Parr
+was dead? Died this morning at four o'clock. They telephoned for Dr
+Drummond, and I think they had little to do, for he had been up with her
+half the night already, Mrs Forsyth told me."
+
+"Did he go?" asked Mr Murchison.
+
+"He did not, for the very good reason that he knew nothing about it. Mrs
+Forsyth answered the telephone, and told them he hadn't been two hours
+in his bed, and she wouldn't get him out again for an unconscious
+deathbed, and him with bronchitis on him and two sermons to preach
+today."
+
+"I'll warrant Mrs Forsyth caught it in the morning," said John
+Murchison.
+
+"That she did. The doctor was as cross as two sticks that she hadn't had
+him out to answer the phone. 'I just spoke up,' she said, 'and told him
+I didn't see how he was going to do any good to the pour soul over a
+telephone wire.' 'It isn't that,' he said, 'but I might have put them
+on to Peter Fratch for the funeral. We've never had an undertaker in the
+church before,' he said; 'he's just come, and he ought to be supported.
+Now I expect it's too late, they'll have gone to Liscombe.' He rang them
+up right away, but they had."
+
+"Dr Drummond can't stand Liscombe," said Alec, as they all laughed a
+little at the Doctor's foible, all except Advena, who laughed a
+great deal. She laughed wildly, then weakly. "I wouldn't--think it a
+pleasure--to be buried by Liscombe myself!" she cried hysterically, and
+then laughed again until the tears ran down her face, and she lay back
+in her chair and moaned, still laughing.
+
+Mr and Mrs Murchison, Alec, Stella, and Advena made up the family party;
+Oliver, for reasons of his own, would attend the River Avenue Methodist
+Church that evening. They slipped out presently into a crisp white
+winter night. The snow was banked on both sides of the street. Spreading
+garden fir trees huddled together weighted down with it; ragged icicles
+hung from the eaves or lay in long broken fingers on the trodden paths.
+The snow snapped and tore under their feet; there was a glorious moon
+that observed every tattered weed sticking up through the whiteness, and
+etched it with its shadow. The town lay under the moon almost dramatic,
+almost mysterious, so withdrawn it was out of the cold, so turned in
+upon its own soul of the fireplace. It might have stood, in the snow and
+the silence, for a shell and a symbol of the humanity within, for angels
+or other strangers to mark with curiosity. Mr and Mrs Murchison were
+neither angels nor strangers; they looked at it and saw that the
+Peterson place was still standing empty, and that old Mr Fisher hadn't
+finished his new porch before zero weather came to stop him.
+
+The young people were well ahead; Mrs Murchison, on her husband's arm,
+stepped along with the spring of an impetus undisclosed.
+
+"Is it to be the Doctor tonight?" asked John Murchison. "He was so
+hoarse this morning I wouldn't be surprised to see Finlay in the pulpit.
+They're getting only morning services in East Elgin just now, while
+they're changing the lighting arrangements."
+
+"Are they, indeed? Well, I hope they'll change them and be done with
+it, for I can't say I'm anxious for too much of their Mr Finlay in Knox
+Church."
+
+"Oh, you like the man well enough for a change, Mother!" John assured
+her.
+
+"I've nothing to say against his preaching. It's the fellow himself. And
+I hope we won't get him tonight for, the way I feel now, if I see him
+gawking up the pulpit steps it'll be as much as I can do to keep in my
+seat, and so I just tell you, John."
+
+"You're a little out of patience with him, I see," said Mr Murchison.
+
+"And it would be a good thing if more than me were out of patience with
+him. There's such a thing as too much patience, I've noticed."
+
+"I dare say," replied her husband, cheerfully.
+
+"If Advena were any daughter of mine she'd have less patience with him."
+
+"She's not much like you," assented the father.
+
+"I must say I like a girl to have a little spirit if a man has none. And
+before I'd have him coming to the house week after week the way he has,
+I'd see him far enough."
+
+"He might as well come there as anywhere," Mr Murchison replied,
+ambiguously. "I suppose he has now and then time on his hands?"
+
+"Well, he won't have it on his hands much longer."
+
+"He won't, eh?"
+
+"No, he won't," Mrs Murchison almost shook the arm she was attached to.
+"John, I think you might show a little interest! The man's going to be
+married."
+
+"You don't say that?" John Murchison's tone expressed not only
+astonishment but concern. Mrs Murchison was almost mollified.
+
+"But I do say it. His future wife is coming here to Elgin next month,
+she and her aunt, or her grandmother, or somebody, and they're to stay
+at Dr Drummond's and be married as soon as possible."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mr Murchison, which was his way of expressing simple
+astonishment.
+
+"There's no nonsense about it. Advena told me herself this afternoon."
+
+"Did she seem put out about it?"
+
+"She's not a girl to show it," Mrs Murchison hedged, "if she was. I just
+looked at her. 'Well,' I said, 'that's a piece of news. When did you
+hear it?' I said. 'Oh, I've known it all the winter!' says my lady. What
+I wanted to say was that for an engaged man he had been pretty liberal
+with his visits, but she had such a queer look in her eyes I couldn't
+express myself, somehow."
+
+"It was just as well left unsaid," her husband told her, thoughtfully.
+
+"I'm not so sure," Mrs Murchison retorted. "You're a great man, John,
+for letting everything alone. When he's been coming here regularly for
+more than a year, putting ideas into the girl's head--"
+
+"He seems to have told her how things were."
+
+"That's all very well--if he had kept himself to himself at the same
+time."
+
+"Well, Mother, you know you never thought much of the prospect."
+
+"No, I didn't," Mrs Murchison said. "It wouldn't be me that would be
+married to him, and I've always said so. But I'd got more or less used
+to it," she confessed. "The man's well enough in some ways. Dear knows
+there would be a pair of them--one's as much of a muddler as the other!
+And anybody can see with half an eye that Advena likes him. It hasn't
+turned out as I expected, that's a fact, John, and I'm just very much
+annoyed."
+
+"I'm not best pleased about it myself," said John Murchison, expressing,
+as usual, a very small proportion of the regret that he felt, "but I
+suppose they know their own business."
+
+Thus, in their different ways, did these elder ones also acknowledge
+their helplessness before the advancing event. They could talk of it in
+private and express their dissatisfaction with it, and that was all they
+could do. It would not be a matter much further turned over between
+them at best. They would be shy of any affair of sentiment in terms of
+speech, and from one that affected a member of the family, self-respect
+would help to pull them the other way. Mrs Murchison might remember it
+in the list of things which roused her vain indignation; John Murchison
+would put it away in the limbo of irremediables that were better
+forgotten. For the present they had reached the church door.
+
+Mrs Murchison saw with relief that Dr Drummond occupied his own pulpit,
+but if her glance had gone the length of three pews behind her she
+would have discovered that Hugh Finlay made one of the congregation.
+Fortunately, perhaps, for her enjoyment of the service, she did not
+look round. Dr Drummond was more observing, but his was a position
+of advantage. In the accustomed sea of faces two, heavy shadowed and
+obstinately facing fate, swam together before Dr Drummond, and after he
+had lifted his hands and closed his eyes for the long prayer he saw them
+still. So that these words occurred, near the end, in the long prayer--
+
+"O Thou Searcher of hearts, who hast known man from the beginning, to
+whom his highest desires and his loftiest intentions are but as
+the desires and intentions of a little child, look with Thine own
+compassion, we beseech Thee, upon souls before Thee in any peculiar
+difficulty. Our mortal life is full of sin, it is also full of the
+misconception of virtue. Do Thou clear the understanding, O Lord, of
+such as would interpret Thy will to their own undoing; do Thou teach
+them that as happiness may reside in chastening, so chastening may
+reside in happiness. And though such stand fast to their hurt, do Thou
+grant to them in Thine own way, which may not be our way, a safe issue
+out of the dangers that beset them."
+
+Dr Drummond had his own method of reconciling foreordination and free
+will. To Advena his supplication came with that mysterious double
+emphasis of chance words that fit. Her thought played upon them all
+through the sermon, rejecting and rejecting again their application
+and their argument and the spring of hope in them. She, too, knew that
+Finlay was in church and, half timidly, she looked back for him, as the
+congregation filed out again into the winter streets. But he, furious,
+and more resolved than ever, had gone home by another way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Octavius Milburn was not far beyond the facts when he said that the
+Elgin Chamber of Commerce was practically solid this time against the
+Liberal platform, though to what extent this state of things was due
+to his personal influence might be a matter of opinion. Mr Milburn was
+President of the Chamber of Commerce, and his name stood for one of
+the most thriving of Elgin's industries, but he was not a person of
+influence except as it might be represented in a draft on the Bank of
+British North America. He had never converted anybody to anything, and
+never would, possibly because the governing principle of his life was
+the terror of being converted to anything himself. If an important
+nonentity is an imaginable thing, perhaps it would stand for Mr Milburn;
+and he found it a more valuable combination than it may appear, since
+his importance gave him position and opportunity, and his nonentity
+saved him from their risks. Certainly he had not imposed his view upon
+his fellow-members--they would have blown it off like a feather--yet
+they found themselves much of his mind. Most of them were manufacturing
+men of the Conservative party, whose factories had been nursed by high
+duties upon the goods of outsiders, and few even of the Liberals among
+them felt inclined to abandon this immediate safeguard for a benefit
+more or less remote, and more or less disputable. John Murchison
+thought otherwise, and put it in few words as usual. He said he was more
+concerned to see big prices in British markets for Canadian crops than
+he was to put big prices on ironware he couldn't sell. He was more
+afraid of hard times among the farmers of Canada than he was of
+competition by the manufacturers of England. That is what he said when
+he was asked if it didn't go against the grain a little to have to
+support a son who advocated low duties on British ranges; and when he
+was not asked he said nothing, disliking the discount that was naturally
+put upon his opinion. Parsons, of the Blanket Mills, bolted at the first
+hint of the new policy and justified it by reminding people that he
+always said he would if it ever looked like business.
+
+"We give their woollen goods a pull of a third as it is," he said,
+"which is just a third more than I approve of. I don't propose to vote
+to make it any bigger--can't afford it."
+
+He had some followers, but there were also some, like Young, of the
+Plough Works, and Windle, who made bicycles, who announced that there
+was no need to change their politics to defeat a measure that had no
+existence, and never would have. What sickened them, they declared, was
+to see young Murchison allowed to give it so much prominence as Liberal
+doctrine. The party had been strong enough to hold South Fox for the
+best part of the last twenty years on the old principles, and this
+British boot-licking feature wasn't going to do it any good. It was fool
+politics in the opinion of Mr Young and Mr Windle.
+
+Then remained the retail trades, the professions, and the farmers. Both
+sides could leave out of their counsels the interests of the leisured
+class, since the leisured class in Elgin consisted almost entirely of
+persons who were too old to work, and therefore not influential. The
+landed proprietors were the farmers, when they weren't, alas! the banks.
+As to the retail men, the prosperity of the stores of Main Street and
+Market Street was bound up about equally with that of Fox County and
+the Elgin factories. The lawyers and doctors, the odd surveyors and
+engineers, were inclined, by their greater detachment, to theories and
+prejudices, delightful luxuries where a certain rigidity of opinion
+is dictated by considerations of bread and butter. They made a factor
+debatable, but small. The farmers had everything to win, nothing to
+lose. The prospect offered them more for what they had to sell, and less
+for what they had to buy, and most of them were Liberals already; but
+the rest had to be convinced, and a political change of heart in a bosom
+of South Fox was as difficult as any other. Industrial, commercial,
+professional, agricultural, Lorne Murchison scanned them all hopefully,
+but Walter Winter felt them his garnered sheaves.
+
+It will be imagined how Mr Winter, as a practical politician, rejoiced
+in the aspect of things. The fundamental change, with its incalculable
+chances to play upon, the opening of the gate to admit plain detriment
+in the first instance for the sake of benefit, easily beclouded, in the
+second, the effective arm, in the hands of a satirist, of sentiment in
+politics--and if there was a weapon Mr Winter owned a weakness for it
+was satire--the whole situation, as he often confessed, suited him
+down to the ground. He professed himself, though no optimist under any
+circumstances very well pleased. Only in one other place, he declared,
+would he have preferred to conduct a campaign at the present moment on
+the issue involved, though he would have to change his politics to do
+it there, and that place was England. He cast an envious eye across
+the ocean at the trenchant argument of the dear loaf; he had no such
+straight road to the public stomach and grand arbitrator of the fate of
+empires. If the Liberals in England failed to turn out the Government
+over this business, they would lose in his eyes all the respect he ever
+had for them, which wasn't much, he acknowledged. When his opponents
+twitted him with discrepancy here, since a bargain so bad for one side
+could hardly fail to favour the other, he poured all his contempt on the
+scheme as concocted by damned enthusiasts for the ruin of businessmen of
+both countries. Such persons, Mr Winter said, if they could have their
+way, would be happy and satisfied; but in his opinion neither England
+nor the colonies could afford to please them as much as that. He
+professed loud contempt for the opinions of the Conservative party
+organs at Toronto, and stood boldly for his own views. That was what
+would happen, he declared, in every manufacturing division in the
+country, if the issue came to be fought in a general election. He was
+against the scheme, root and branch.
+
+Mr Winter was skilled, practised, and indefatigable. We need not follow
+him in all his ways and works; a good many of his arguments, I fear,
+must also escape us. The Elgin Mercury, if consulted, would produce
+them in daily disclosure; so would the Clayfield Standard. One of these
+offered a good deal of sympathy to Mayor Winter, the veteran of so many
+good fights, in being asked to contest South Fox with an opponent who
+had not so much as a village reeveship to his public credit. If the
+Conservative candidate felt the damage to his dignity, however, he
+concealed it.
+
+In Elgin and Clayfield, where factory chimneys had also begun to point
+the way to enterprise, Winter had a clear field. Official reports gave
+him figures to prove the great and increasing prosperity of the country,
+astonishing figures of capital coming in, of emigrants landing, of new
+lands broken, new mineral regions exploited, new railways projected, of
+stocks and shares normal safe, assured. He could ask the manufacturers
+of Elgin to look no further than themselves, which they were quite
+willing to do, for illustration of the plenty and the promise which
+reigned in the land from one end to the other. He could tell them that
+in their own Province more than one hundred new industries had been
+established in the last year. He could ask them, and he did ask them,
+whether this was a state of things to disturb with an inrush from
+British looms and rolling mills, and they told him with applause that it
+was not.
+
+Country audiences were not open to arguments like these; they were
+slow in the country, as the Mercury complained, to understand that
+agricultural prospects were bound up with the prosperity of the towns
+and cities; they had been especially slow in the country in England, as
+the Express ironically pointed out, to understand it. So Winter and
+his supporters asked the farmers of South Fox if they were prepared to
+believe all they heard of the good will of England to the colonies, with
+the flattering assumption that they were by no means prepared to believe
+it. Was it a likely thing, Mr Winter inquired, that the people of Great
+Britain were going to pay more for their flour and their bacon, their
+butter and their cheese, than they had any need to do, simply out of a
+desire to benefit countries which most of them had never seen, and never
+would see? No, said Mr Winter, they might take it from him, that was not
+the idea. But Mr Winter thought there was an idea, and that they and he
+together would not have much trouble in deciphering it. He did not claim
+to be longer-sighted in politics than any other man, but he thought the
+present British idea was pretty plain. It was, in two words, to secure
+the Canadian market for British goods, and a handsome contribution from
+the Canadian taxpayer toward the expense of the British army and navy,
+in return for the offer of favours to food supplies from Canada. But
+this, as they all knew, was not the first time favours had been offered
+by the British Government to food supplies from Canada. Just sixty years
+ago the British Government had felt one of these spasms of benevolence
+to Canada, and there were men sitting before him who could remember the
+good will and the gratitude, the hope and the confidence, that greeted
+Stanley's bill of that year, which admitted Canadian wheat and flour at
+a nominal duty. Some could remember, and those who could not remember
+could read; how the farmers and the millers of Ontario took heart and
+laid out capital, and how money was easy and enterprise was everywhere,
+and how agricultural towns such as Elgin was at that time sent up
+streets of shops to accommodate the trade that was to pour in under
+the new and generous "preference" granted to the Dominion by the mother
+country. And how long, Mr Winter demanded, swinging round in that
+pivotal manner which seems assisted by thumbs in the armholes of the
+waistcoat, how long did the golden illusion last? Precisely three
+years. In precisely three years the British nation compelled the British
+Government to adopt the Free Trade Act of '46. The wheat of the world
+flowed into every port in England, and the hopes of Canada, especially
+the hopes of Ontario, based then, as now, on "preferential" treatment,
+were blasted to the root. Enterprise was laid flat, mortgages were
+foreclosed, shops were left empty, the milling and forwarding interests
+were temporarily ruined, and the Governor-General actually wrote to
+the Secretary of State in England that things were so bad that not a
+shilling could be raised on the credit of the Province.
+
+Now Mr Winter did not blame the people of England for insisting on free
+food. It was the policy that suited their interests, and they had just
+as good a right to look after their interests, he conceded handsomely,
+as anybody else. But he did blame the British Government for holding out
+hopes, for making definite pledges, to a young and struggling nation,
+which they must have known they would not be able to redeem. He blamed
+their action then, and he would blame it now, if the opportunity were
+given to them to repeat it, for the opportunity would pass and the
+pledge would pass into the happy hunting ground of unrealizable
+politics, but not--and Mr Winter asked his listeners to mark this very
+carefully--not until Canada was committed to such relations of trade
+and taxes with the Imperial Government as would require the most heroic
+efforts--it might run to a war--to extricate herself from. In plain
+words, Mr Winter assured his country audiences, Great Britain had sold
+them before, and she would sell them again. He stood there before them
+as loyal to British connection as any man. He addressed a public as
+loyal to British connection as any public. BUT--once bitten twice shy.
+
+Horace Williams might riddle such arguments from end to end in the next
+day's Express, but if there is a thing that we enjoy in the country, it
+is having the dodges of Government shown up with ignominy, and Mr Winter
+found his account in this historic parallel.
+
+Nothing could have been more serious in public than his line of defence
+against the danger that menaced, but in friendly ears Mr Winter derided
+it as a practical possibility, like the Liberals, Young and Windle.
+
+"It seems to me," he said, talking to Octavius Milburn, "that the
+important thing at present is the party attitude to the disposition
+of Crown lands and to Government-made railways. As for this racket
+of Wallingham's, it has about as much in it as an empty bun-bag. He's
+running round taking a lot of satisfaction blowing it out just now, and
+the swells over there are clapping like anything, but the first knock
+will show that it's just a bun-bag, with a hole in it."
+
+"Folks in the old country are solid on the buns, though," said Milburn
+as they parted, and Alfred Hesketh, who was walking with his host,
+said--"It's bound in the end to get down to that, isn't it?"
+
+Presently Hesketh came back to it.
+
+"Quaint idea, that--describing Wallingham's policy as a bun-bag," he
+said, and laughed. "Winter is an amusing fellow."
+
+"Wallingham's policy won't even be a bun-bag much longer," said Milburn.
+"It won't be anything at all. Imperial union is very nice to talk about,
+but when you come down to hard fact it's Australia for the Australians,
+Canada for the Canadians, Africa for the Africans, every time."
+
+"Each for himself, and devil take the hindmost," said Hesketh; "and when
+the hindmost is England, as our friend Murchison declares it will be--"
+
+"So much the worse for England," said Milburn, amiably. "But we should
+all be sorry to see it and, for my part, I don't believe such a thing
+is at all likely. And you may be certain of one thing," he continued,
+impressively: "No flag but the Union Jack will ever wave over Canada."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure of that!" Hesketh responded. "Since I have heard more of
+your side of the question I am quite convinced that loyalty to England
+and complete commercial independence--I might say even commercial
+antagonism--may exist together in the colonies. It seems paradoxical,
+but it is true."
+
+Mr Hesketh had naturally been hearing a good deal more of Mr Milburn's
+side of the question, staying as he was under Mr Milburn's hospitable
+roof. It had taken the least persuasion in the world to induce him to
+make the Milburns a visit. He found them delightful people. He described
+them in his letters home as the most typically Canadian family he had
+met, quite simple and unconventional, but thoroughly warm-hearted, and
+touchingly devoted to far-away England. Politically he could not see eye
+to eye with Mr Milburn, but he could quite perceive Mr Milburn's grounds
+for the view he held. One thing, he explained to his correspondents, you
+learned at once by visiting the colonies, and that was to make allowance
+for local conditions, both social and economic.
+
+He and Mr Milburn had long serious discussions, staying behind in the
+dining-room to have them after tea, when the ladies took their fancy
+work into the drawing-room, and Dora's light touch was heard upon the
+piano. It may be supposed that Hesketh brought every argument forward
+in favour of the great departure that had been conceived in England; he
+certainly succeeded in interesting his host very deeply in the English
+point of view. He had, however, to encounter one that was made in
+Canada--it resided in Mr Milburn as a stone might reside in a bag
+of wool. Mr Milburn wouldn't say that this preference trade idea, if
+practicable, might not work out for the benefit of the Empire as a
+whole. That was a thing he didn't pretend to know. But it wouldn't
+work out for his benefit that was a thing he did know. When a man was
+confronted with a big political change the question he naturally asked
+himself was, "Is it going to be worth my while?" and he acted on the
+answer to that question. He was able to explain to Hesketh, by a variety
+of facts and figures, of fascinating interest to the inquiring mind,
+just how and where such a concern as the Milburn Boiler Company would be
+"hit" by the new policy, after which he asked his guest fairly, "Now,
+if you were in my shoes, would you see your way to voting for any such
+thing?"
+
+"If I were in your shoes," said Hesketh, thoughtfully, "I can't say I
+would."
+
+On grounds of sentiment, Octavius assured him, they were absolutely
+at one, but in practical matters a man had to proceed on business
+principles. He went about at this time expressing great esteem for
+Hesketh's capacity to assimilate facts. His opportunity to assimilate
+them was not curtailed by any further demand for his services in the
+South Fox campaign. He was as willing as ever, he told Lorne Murchison,
+to enlist under the flag, and not for the first time; but Murchison and
+Farquharson, and that lot, while grateful for the offer, seemed never
+quite able to avail themselves of it: the fact was all the dates were
+pretty well taken up. No doubt, Hesketh acknowledged, the work could be
+done best by men familiar with the local conditions, but he could not
+avoid the conviction that this attitude toward proffered help was very
+like dangerous trifling. Possibly these circumstances gave him an
+added impartiality for Mr Milburn's facts. As the winter advanced his
+enthusiasm for the country increased with his intelligent appreciation
+of the possibilities of the Elgin boiler. The Elgin boiler was his
+object-lesson in the development of the colonies; he paid, several
+visits to the works to study it, and several times he thanked Mr Milburn
+for the opportunity of familiarizing himself with such an important and
+promising branch of Canadian industry.
+
+"It looks," said Octavius one evening in early February, "as if the
+Grits were getting a little anxious about South Fox--high time, too.
+I see Cruickshank is down to speak at Clayfield on the seventh, and
+Tellier is to be here for the big meeting at the opera house on the
+eleventh."
+
+"Tellier is Minister of Public Works, isn't he?" asked Hesketh.
+
+"Yes--and Cruickshank is an ex-Minister," replied Mr Milburn. "Looks
+pretty shaky when they've got to take men like that away from their work
+in the middle of the session."
+
+"I shall be glad," remarked his daughter Dora, "when this horrid
+election is over. It spoils everything."
+
+She spoke a little fretfully. The election and the matters it involved
+did interfere a good deal with her interest in life. As an occupation
+it absorbed Lorne Murchison even more completely than she occasionally
+desired; and as a topic it took up a larger share of the attention of Mr
+Alfred Hesketh than she thought either reasonable or pleasing. Between
+politics and boilers Miss Milburn almost felt at times that the world
+held a second place for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+The progress of Mrs Kilbannon and Miss Christie Cameron up the river
+to Montreal, and so west to Elgin, was one series of surprises, most of
+them pleasant and instructive to such a pair of intelligent Scotchwomen,
+if we leave out the number of Roman Catholic churches that lift their
+special symbol along the banks of the St Lawrence and the fact that Hugh
+Finlay was not in Elgin to meet them upon their arrival. Dr Drummond, of
+course, was there at the station to explain. Finlay had been obliged to
+leave for Winnipeg only the day before, to attend a mission conference
+in place of a delegate who had been suddenly laid aside by serious
+illness. Finlay, he said, had been very loath to go, but there were many
+reasons why it was imperative that he should; Dr Drummond explained them
+all. "I insisted on it," he assured them, frankly. "I told him I would
+take the responsibility."
+
+He seemed very capable of taking it, both the ladies must have thought,
+with his quick orders about the luggage and his waiting cab. Mrs
+Kilbannon said so. "I'm sure," she told him, "we are better off with you
+than with Hugh. He was always a daft dependence at a railway station."
+
+They both--Mrs Kilbannon and Dr Drummond--looked out of the corners of
+their eyes, so to speak, at Christie, the only one who might be expected
+to show any sensitiveness; but Miss Cameron accepted the explanation
+with readiness. Indeed, she said, she would have been real vexed if Mr
+Finlay had stayed behind on her account--she showed herself well aware
+of the importance of a nomination, and the desirability of responding to
+it.
+
+"It will just give me an opportunity of seeing the town," she said,
+looking at it through the cab windows as they drove; and Dr Drummond had
+to admit that she seemed a sensible creature. Other things being
+equal, Finlay might be doing very well for himself. As they talked of
+Scotland--it transpired that Dr Drummond knew all the braes about Bross
+as a boy--he found himself more than ever annoyed with Finlay about the
+inequality of other things; and when they passed Knox Church and Miss
+Cameron told him she hadn't realized it was so imposing an edifice, he
+felt downright sorry for the woman.
+
+Dr Drummond had persuaded Finlay to go to Winnipeg with a vague hope
+that something in the fortnight's grace thus provided, might be
+induced to happen. The form it oftenest took to his imagination was Miss
+Christie's announcement, when she set foot upon the station platform,
+that she had become engaged, on the way over, to somebody else, some
+fellow-traveller. Such things, Dr Drummond knew, did come about, usually
+bringing distress and discomfiture in their train. Why, then, should
+they not happen when all the consequences would be rejoiceful?
+
+It was plain enough, however, that nothing of the kind had come to pass.
+Miss Christie had arrived in Elgin, bringing her affections intact;
+they might have been in any one of her portmanteaux. She had come with
+definite calm intention, precisely in the guise in which she should have
+been expected. At the very hour, in the very clothes, she was there.
+Robust and pleasant, with a practical eye on her promising future, she
+had arrived, the fulfilment of despair. Dr Drummond looked at her with
+acquiescence, half-cowed, half-comic, wondering at his own folly in
+dreaming of anything else. Miss Cameron brought the situation, as it
+were, with her; it had to be faced, and Dr Drummond faced it like a
+philosopher. She was the material necessity, the fact in the case, the
+substantiation of her own legend; and Dr Drummond promptly gave her all
+the consideration she demanded in this aspect. Already he heard himself
+pronouncing a blessing over the pair--and they would make the best of
+it. With characteristic dispatch he decided that the marriage should
+take place the first Monday after Finlay's return. That would give them
+time to take a day or two in Toronto, perhaps, and get back for Finlay's
+Wednesday prayer meeting. "Or I could take it off his hands," said Dr
+Drummond to himself. "That would free them till the end of the week."
+Solicitude increased in him that the best should be made of it; after
+all, for a long time they had been making the worst. Mrs Forsyth, whom
+it had been necessary to inform when Mrs Kilbannon and Miss Cameron
+became actually imminent, saw plainly that the future Mrs Finlay
+had made a very good impression on the Doctor; and as nature, in Mrs
+Forsyth's case, was more powerful than grace, she became critical
+accordingly. Still, she was an honest soul: she found more fault with
+what she called Miss Cameron's "shirt-waists" than with Miss Cameron
+herself, whom she didn't doubt to be a good woman though she would
+never see thirty-five again. Time and observation would no doubt mend or
+remodel the shirt-waists; and meanwhile both they and Miss Cameron
+would do very well for East Elgin, Mrs Forsyth avowed. Mrs Kilbannon,
+definitely given over to caps and curls as they still wear them in
+Bross, Mrs Forsyth at once formed a great opinion of. She might be
+something, Mrs Forsyth thought, out of a novel by Mr Crockett, and made
+you long to go to Scotland, where presumably everyone was like her. On
+the whole the ladies from Bross profited rather than lost by the new
+frame they stepped into in the house of Dr Drummond, of Elgin, Ontario.
+Their special virtues, of dignity and solidity and frugality, stood out
+saliently against the ease and unconstraint about them; in the profusion
+of the table it was little less than edifying to hear Mrs Kilbannon,
+invited to preserves, say, "Thank you, I have butter." It was the
+pleasantest spectacle, happily common enough, of the world's greatest
+inheritance. We see it in immigrants of all degrees, and we may perceive
+it in Miss Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon. They come in couples and in
+companies from those little imperial islands, bringing the crusted
+qualities of the old blood bottled there so long, and sink with grateful
+absorption into the wide bountiful stretches of the further countries.
+They have much to take, but they give themselves; and so it comes about
+that the Empire is summed up in the race, and the flag flies for its
+ideals.
+
+Mrs Forsyth had been told of the approaching event; but neither Dr
+Drummond, who was not fond of making communications he did not approve
+of, nor the Murchisons, who were shy of the matter as a queer business
+which Advena seemed too much mixed up with, had mentioned it to anyone
+else. Finlay himself had no intimates, and moved into his new house in
+River Street under little comment. His doings excited small surprise,
+because the town knew too little about him to expect him to do one
+thing more than another. He was very significant among his people, very
+important in their lives but not, somehow, at any expense to his private
+self. He knew them, but they did not know him; and it is high praise of
+him that this was no grievance among them. They would tell you without
+resentment that the minister was a "very reserved" man; there might
+be even a touch of proper pride in it. The worshippers of Knox Church
+mission were rather a reserved lot themselves. It was different with the
+Methodists; plenty of expansion there.
+
+Elgin, therefore, knew nothing, beyond the fact that Dr Drummond had
+two ladies from the old country staying with him, about whom particular
+curiosity would hardly be expected outside of Knox Church. In view of
+Finlay's absence, Dr Drummond, consulting with Mrs Kilbannon, decided
+that for the present Elgin need not be further informed. There was no
+need, they agreed, to give people occasion to talk; and it would just be
+a nuisance to have to make so many explanations. Both Mrs Kilbannon and
+her niece belonged to the race that takes great satisfaction in keeping
+its own counsel. Their situation gained for them the further interest
+that nothing need be said about it; and the added importance of caution
+was plainly to be discerned in their bearing, even toward one another.
+It was a portentous business, this of marrying a minister, under the
+most ordinary circumstances, not to be lightly dealt with, and even
+more of an undertaking in a far new country where the very wind blew
+differently, and the extraordinary freedom of conversation made it more
+than ever necessary to take heed to what you were saying. So far as Miss
+Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon were aware, the matter had not been "spoken
+of" elsewhere at all. Dr Drummond, remembering Advena Murchison's
+acquaintance with it, had felt the weight of a complication, and had
+discreetly held his tongue. Mrs Kilbannon approved her nephew in
+this connection. "Hugh," she said, "was never one to let on more than
+necessary." It was a fine secret between Hugh, in Winnipeg, whence
+he had written all that was lawful or desirable, and themselves at Dr
+Drummond's. Miss Cameron said it would give her more freedom to look
+about her.
+
+In the midst of all this security, and on the very first day after their
+arrival, it was disconcerting to be told that a lady, whose name
+they had never heard before, had called to see Miss Cameron and Mrs
+Kilbannon. They had not even appeared at church, as they told one
+another with dubious glances. They had no reason whatever to expect
+visitors. Dr Drummond was in the cemetery burying a member; Mrs Forsyth
+was also abroad. "Now who in the world," asked Mrs Kilbannon of Miss
+Cameron, "is Miss Murchison?"
+
+"They come to our church," said Sarah, in the door. "They've got the
+foundry. It's the oldest one. She teaches."
+
+Sarah in the door was even more disconcerting than an unexpected
+visitor. Sarah invariably took them off their guard, in the door or
+anywhere. She freely invited their criticism, but they would not have
+known how to mend her. They looked at her now helplessly, and Mrs
+Kilbannon said, "Very well. We will be down directly."
+
+"It may be just some friendly body," she said, as they descended the
+stairs together, "or it may be common curiosity. In that case we'll
+disappoint it."
+
+Whatever they expected, therefore, it was not Advena. It was not a tall
+young woman with expressive eyes, a manner which was at once abrupt and
+easy, and rather a lounging way of occupying the corner of a sofa. "When
+she sat down," as Mrs Kilbannon said afterward, "she seemed to untie and
+fling herself as you might a parcel." Neither Mrs Kilbannon nor Christie
+Cameron could possibly be untied or flung, so perhaps they gave this
+capacity in Advena more importance than it had. But it was only a part
+of what was to them a new human demonstration, something to inspect very
+carefully and accept very cautiously--the product, like themselves, yet
+so suspiciously different, of these free airs and these astonishingly
+large ideas. In some ways, as she sat there in her graceful dress and
+careless attitude, asking them direct smiling questions about their
+voyage, she imposed herself as of the class whom both these ladies of
+Bross would acknowledge unquestioningly to be "above" them; in others
+she seemed to be of no class at all; so far she came short of small
+standards of speech and behaviour. The ladies from Bross, more and more
+confused, grew more and more reticent, when suddenly, out of a simple
+remark of Miss Cameron's about missing in the train the hot-water cans
+they gave you "to your feet" in Scotland, reticence descended upon Miss
+Murchison also. She sat in an odd silence, looking at Miss Cameron,
+absorbed apparently in the need of looking at her, finding nothing to
+say, her flow of pleasant inquiry dried up, and all her soul at work,
+instead, to perceive the woman. Mrs Kilbannon was beginning to think
+better of her--it was so much more natural to be a little backward with
+strangers--when the moment passed. Their visitor drew herself out of it
+with almost a perceptible effort, and seemed to glance consideringly
+at them in their aloofness, their incommunicativeness, their plain odds
+with her. I don't know what she expected; but we may assume that she was
+there simply to offer herself up, and the impulse of sacrifice seldom
+considers whether or not it may be understood. It was to her a normal,
+natural thing that a friend of Hugh Finlay's should bring an early
+welcome to his bride; and to do the normal, natural thing at keen
+personal cost was to sound that depth, or rise to that height of the
+spirit where pain sustains. We know of Advena that she was prone to
+this form of exaltation. Those who feel themselves capable may pronounce
+whether she would have been better at home crying in her bedroom.
+
+She decided badly--how could she decide well?--on what she would say to
+explain herself.
+
+"I am so sorry," she told them, "that Mr Finlay is obliged to be away."
+
+It was quite wrong; it assumed too much, her knowledge and their
+confidence, and the propriety of discussing Mr Finlay's absence. There
+was even an unconscious hint of another kind of assumption in it--a
+suggestion of apology for Mr Finlay. Advena was aware of it even as it
+left her lips, and the perception covered her with a damning blush. She
+had a sudden terrified misgiving that her role was too high for her,
+that she had already cracked her mask. But she looked quietly at Miss
+Cameron and smiled across the tide that surged in her as she added, "He
+was very distressed at having to go."
+
+They looked at her in an instant's blank astonishment. Miss Cameron
+opened her lips and closed them again, glancing at Mrs Kilbannon. They
+fell back together, but not in disorder. This was something much more
+formidable than common curiosity. Just what it was they would consider
+later; meanwhile Mrs Kilbannon responded with what she would have called
+cool civility.
+
+"Perhaps you have heard that Mr Finlay is my nephew?" she said.
+
+"Indeed I have. Mr Finlay has told me a great deal about you, Mrs
+Kilbannon, and about his life at Bross," Advena replied. "And he has
+told me about you, too," she went on, turning to Christie Cameron.
+
+"Indeed?" said she.
+
+"Oh, a long time ago. He has been looking forward to your arrival for
+some months, hasn't he?"
+
+"We took our passages in December," said Miss Cameron.
+
+"And you are to be married almost immediately, are you not?" Miss
+Murchison continued, pleasantly.
+
+Mrs Kilbannon had an inspiration. "Could he by any means have had the
+banns cried?" she demanded of Christie, who looked piercingly at their
+visitor for the answer.
+
+"Oh, no," Advena laughed softly. "Presbyterians haven't that custom over
+here--does it still exist anywhere? Mr Finlay told me himself."
+
+"Has he informed all his acquaintances?" asked Mrs Kilbannon. "We
+thought maybe his elders would be expecting to hear, or his Board of
+Management. Or he might have just dropped a word to his Sessions Clerk.
+But--"
+
+Advena shook her head. "I think it unlikely," she said.
+
+"Then why would he be telling you?" inquired the elder lady, bluntly.
+
+"He told me, I suppose, because I have the honour to be a friend of
+his," Advena said, smiling. "But he is not a man, is he, who makes many
+friends? It is possible, I dare say, that he has mentioned it to no one
+else."
+
+Poor Advena! She had indeed uttered her ideal to unsympathetic
+ears--brought her pig, as her father would have said, to the wrong
+market. She sat before the ladies from Bross, Hugh Finlay's only
+confidante. She sat handsome and upheld and not altogether penetrable, a
+kind of gipsy to their understanding, though indeed the Romany strain in
+her was beyond any divining of theirs. They, on their part, reposed in
+their clothes with all their bristles out--what else could have been
+expected of them?--convinced in their own minds that they had come not
+only to a growing but to a forward country.
+
+Mrs Kilbannon was perhaps a little severe. "I wonder that we have not
+heard of you, Miss Murchison," said she, "but we are happy to make the
+acquaintance of any of my nephew's friends. You will have heard him
+preach, perhaps?"
+
+"Often," said Advena, rising. "We have no one here who can compare with
+him in preaching. There was very little reason why you should have heard
+of me. I am--of no importance." She hesitated and fought for an instant
+with a trembling of the lip. "But now that you have been persuaded to be
+a part of our life here," she said to Christie, "I thought I would
+like to come and offer you my friendship because it is his already. I
+hope--so much--that you will be happy here. It is a nice little place.
+And I want you to let me help you--about your house, and in every way
+that is possible. I am sure I can be of use." She paused and looked at
+their still half-hostile faces. "I hope," she faltered, "you don't mind
+my--having come?"
+
+"Not at all," said Christie, and Mrs Kilbannon added, "I'm sure you mean
+it very kindly."
+
+A flash of the comedy of it shot up in Advena's eyes. "Yes," she said,
+"I do. Good-bye."
+
+If they had followed her departure they would have been further
+confounded to see her walk not quite steadily away; shaken with
+fantastic laughter. They looked instead at one another, as if to find
+the solution of the mystery where indeed it lay, in themselves.
+
+"She doesn't even belong to his congregation," said Christie. "Just a
+friend, she said."
+
+"I expect the friendship's mostly upon her side," remarked Mrs
+Kilbannon. "She seemed frank enough about it. But I would see no
+necessity for encouraging her friendship on my own account, if I were in
+your place, Christie."
+
+"I think I'll manage without it," said Christie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+The South Fox fight was almost over. Three days only remained before the
+polling booths would be open, and the voters of the towns of Elgin and
+Clayfield and the surrounding townships would once again be invited to
+make their choice between a Liberal and a Conservative representative of
+the district in the Dominion House of Commons. The ground had never been
+more completely covered, every inch of advantage more stubbornly held,
+by either side, in the political history of the riding. There was no
+doubt of the hope that sat behind the deprecation in Walter Winter's
+eye, nor of the anxiety that showed through the confidence freely
+expressed by the Liberal leaders. The issue would be no foregone
+conclusion, as it had been practically any time within the last eleven
+years; and as Horace Williams remarked to the select lot that met pretty
+frequently at the Express office for consultation and rally, they had
+"no use for any sort of carelessness."
+
+It was undeniably felt that the new idea, the great idea whose putative
+fatherhood in Canada certainly lay at the door of the Liberal party,
+had drawn in fewer supporters than might have been expected. In England
+Wallingham, wearing it like a medal, seemed to be courting political
+excommunication with it, except that Wallingham was so hard to
+effectively curse. The ex-Minister deserved, clearly, any ban that could
+be put upon him. No sort of remonstrance could hold him from going
+about openly and persistently exhorting people to "think imperially," a
+liberty which, as is well known, the Holy Cobdenite Church, supreme in
+those islands, expressly forbids. Wallingham appeared to think that
+by teaching and explaining he could help his fellow-islanders to see
+further than the length of their fists, and exorcise from them
+the spirit, only a century and a quarter older and a trifle more
+sophisticated, that lost them the American colonies. But so far little
+had transpired to show that Wallingham was stronger than nature and
+destiny. There had been Wallingham meetings of remarkable enthusiasm;
+his supporters called them epoch-making, as if epochs were made of
+cheers. But the workingman of Great Britain was declaring stolidly in
+the by-elections against any favour to colonial produce at his expense,
+thereby showing himself one of those humble instruments that Providence
+uses for the downfall of arrogant empires. It will be thus, no doubt,
+that the workingman will explain in the future his eminent usefulness
+to the government of his country, and it will be in these terms that
+the cost of educating him by means of the ballot will be demonstrated.
+Meanwhile we may look on and cultivate philosophy; or we may make war
+upon the gods with Mr Wallingham which is, perhaps, the better part.
+
+That, to turn from recrimination, was what they saw in Canada looking
+across--the queerest thing of all was the recalcitrance of the farm
+labourer; they could only stare at that--and it may be that the
+spectacle was depressing to hopeful initiative. At all events, it was
+plain that the new policy was suffering from a certain flatness on the
+further side. As a ballon d'essai it lacked buoyancy; and no doubt
+Mr Farquharson was right in declaring that above all things it lacked
+actuality, business--the proposition, in good set terms, for men to turn
+over, to accept or reject. Nothing could be done with it, Mr Farquharson
+averred, as a mere prospect; it was useful only to its enemies. We of
+the young countries must be invited to deeds, not theories, of which we
+have a restless impatience; and this particular theory, though of golden
+promise, was beginning to recoil to some extent, upon the cause which
+had been confident enough to adopt it before it could be translated into
+action and its hard equivalent. The Elgin Mercury probably overstated
+the matter when it said that the Grits were dead sick of the preference
+they would never get; but Horace Williams was quite within the mark
+when he advised Lorne to stick to old Reform principles--clean
+administration, generous railway policy, sympathetic labour legislation,
+and freeze himself a little on imperial love and attachment.
+
+"They're not so sweet on it in Ottawa as they were, by a long chalk,"
+he said. "Look at the Premier's speech to the Chambers of Commerce
+in Montreal. Pretty plain statement that, of a few things the British
+Government needn't expect."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Lorne. "He was talking to manufacturers, you
+know, a pretty skittish lot anywhere. It sounded independent, but if you
+look into it you won't find it gave the cause away any."
+
+"The old man's got to think of Quebec, where his fat little majority
+lives," remarked Bingham, chairman of the most difficult subdivision in
+the town. "The Premier of this country drives a team, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Lorne, "but he drives it tandem, and Johnny Francois is the
+second horse."
+
+"Maybe so," returned Mr Williams, "but the organ's singing pretty small,
+too. Look at this." He picked up the Dominion from the office table and
+read aloud: "'If Great Britain wishes to do a deal with the colonies
+she will find them willing to meet her in a spirit of fairness and
+enthusiasm. But it is for her to decide, and Canada would be the last
+to force her bread down the throat of the British labourer at a higher
+price than he can afford to pay for it.' What's that, my boy? Is it
+high-mindedness? No, sir, it's lukewarmness."
+
+"The Dominion makes me sick," said young Murchison. "It's so scared of
+the Tory source of the scheme in England that it's handing the whole
+boom of the biggest chance this country ever had over to the Tories
+here. If anything will help us to lose it that will. No Conservative
+Government in Canada can put through a cent of preference on English
+goods when it comes to the touch, and they know it. They're full of
+loyalty just now--baying the moon--but if anybody opens a window they'll
+turn tail fast enough."
+
+"I guess the Dominion knows it, too," said Mr Williams. "When Great
+Britain is quite sure she's ready to do business on preference lines
+it's the Liberal party on this side she'll have to talk to. No use
+showing ourselves too anxious, you know. Besides, it might do harm over
+there. We're all right; we're on record. Wallingham knows as well as we
+do the lines we're open on--he's heard them from Canadian Liberals more
+than once. When they get good and ready they can let us know."
+
+"Jolly them up with it at your meetings by all means," advised Bingham,
+"but use it as a kind of superfluous taffy; don't make it your main
+lay-out."
+
+The Reform Association of South Fox had no more energetic officer than
+Bingham, though as he sat on the edge of the editorial table chewing
+portions of the margin of that afternoon's Express, and drawling out
+maxims to the Liberal candidate, you might not have thought so. He was
+explaining that he had been in this business for years, and had never
+had a job that gave him so much trouble.
+
+"We'll win out," he said, "but the canvass isn't any Christmas joy--not
+this time. There's Jim Whelan," he told them. "We all know what Jim
+is--a Tory from way back, where they make 'em so they last, and a soaker
+from way back, too; one day on his job and two days sleepin' off his
+whiskey. Now we don't need Jim Whelan's vote, never did need it, but
+the boys have generally been able to see that one of those two days was
+election day. There's no necessity for Jim's putting in his paper--a
+character like that--no necessity at all--he'd much better be
+comfortable in bed. This time, I'm darned if the old boozer hasn't sworn
+off! Tells the boys he's on to their game, and there's no liquor in this
+town that's good enough to get him to lose his vote--wouldn't get drunk
+on champagne. He's held out for ten days already, and it looks like
+Winter'd take his cross all right on Thursday."
+
+"I guess I'd let him have it, Bingham," said Lorne Murchison with a kind
+of tolerant deprecation, void of offence, the only manner in which
+he knew how to convey disapproval to the older man. "The boys in your
+division are a pretty tough lot, anyhow. We don't want the other side
+getting hold of any monkey tricks."
+
+"It's necessary to win this election, young man," said Bingham,
+"lawfully. You won't have any trouble with my bunch."
+
+It was not, as will be imagined, the first discussion, so late in
+the day, of the value of the preference trade argument to the Liberal
+campaign. They had all realized, after the first few weeks, that their
+young candidate was a trifle overbitten with it, though remonstrance
+had been a good deal curbed by Murchison's treatment of it. When he
+had brought it forward at the late fall fairs and in the lonely country
+schoolhouses, his talk had been so trenchant, so vivid and pictorial,
+that the gathered farmers listened with open mouths, like children,
+pathetically used with life, to a grown-up fairy tale. As Horace
+Williams said, if a dead horse could be made to go this one would have
+brought Murchison romping in. And Lorne had taken heed to the counsel of
+his party leaders. At joint meetings, which offered the enemy his best
+opportunity for travesty and derision, he had left it in the background
+of debate, devoting himself to arguments of more immediate utility. In
+the literature of the campaign it glowed with prospective benefit, but
+vaguely, like a halo of Liberal conception and possible achievement,
+waiting for the word from overseas. The Express still approved it, but
+not in headlines, and wished the fact to be widely understood that while
+the imperial idea was a very big idea, the Liberals of South Fox were
+going to win this election without any assistance from it.
+
+Lorne submitted. After all, victory was the thing. There could be no
+conquest for the idea without the party triumph first. He submitted,
+but his heart rebelled. He looked over the subdivisional reports with
+Williams and Farquharson, and gave ear to their warning interpretations;
+but his heart was an optimist, and turned always to the splendid
+projection upon the future that was so incomparably the title to success
+of those who would unite to further it. His mind accepted the old
+working formulas for dealing with an average electorate, but to his
+eager apprehending heart it seemed unbelievable that the great imperial
+possibility, the dramatic chance for the race that hung even now, in
+the history of the world, between the rising and the setting of the sun,
+should fail to be perceived and acknowledged as the paramount issue, the
+contingency which made the by-election of South Fox an extraordinary and
+momentous affair. He believed in the Idea; he saw it, with Wallingham,
+not only a glorious prospect, but an educative force; and never had he
+a moment of such despondency that it confounded him upon his horizon in
+the faded colours of some old Elizabethan mirage.
+
+The opera house, the night of Mr Murchison's final address to the
+electors of South Fox, was packed from floor to ceiling, and a large
+and patient overflow made the best of the hearing accommodation of the
+corridors and the foyer. A Minister was to speak, Sir Matthew Tellier,
+who held the portfolio of Public Works; and for drawing a crowd in Elgin
+there was nothing to compare with a member of the Government. He was
+the sum of all ambition and the centre of all importance; he was held
+to have achieved in the loftiest sense, and probably because he deserved
+to; a kind of afflatus sat upon him. They paid him real deference and
+they flocked to hear him. Cruickshank was a second attraction; and
+Lorne himself, even at this stage of the proceedings, "drew" without
+abatement. They knew young Murchison well enough; he had gone in and out
+among them all his life; yet since he had come before them in this new
+capacity a curious interest had gathered about him. People looked at him
+as if he had developed something they did not understand, and perhaps
+he had; he was in touch with the Idea. They listened with an intense
+personal interest in him which, no doubt, went to obscure what he
+said: perhaps a less absorbing personality would have carried the Idea
+further. However, they did look and listen--that was the main point, and
+on their last opportunity they were in the opera house in great numbers.
+
+Lorne faced them with an enviable security; the friendliness of the
+meeting was in the air. The gathering was almost entirely of one
+political complexion: the Conservatives of the town would have been glad
+enough to turn out to hear Minister Tellier; but the Liberals were of no
+mind to gratify them at the cost of having to stand themselves, and were
+on hand early to assert a prior moral claim to chairs. In the seated
+throng Lorne could pick out the fine head of his father, and his
+mother's face, bright with anticipation, beside. Advena was there,
+too, and Stella; and the boys would have a perch, not too conspicuous,
+somewhere in the gallery. Dr Drummond was in the second row, and a
+couple of strange ladies with him: he was chuckling with uncommon
+humour at some remark of the younger one when Lorne noted him. Old Sandy
+MacQuhot was in a good place; had been since six o'clock, and Peter
+Macfarlane, too, for that matter, though Peter sat away back as beseemed
+a modest functionary whose business was with the book and the bell.
+Altogether, as Horace Williams leaned over to tell him, it was like a
+Knox Church sociable--he could feel completely at home; and though the
+audience was by no means confined to Knox Church, Lorne did feel at
+home. Dora Milburn's countenance he might perhaps have missed, but Dora
+was absent by arrangement. Mr Milburn, as the fight went on, had shown
+himself so increasingly bitter, to the point of writing letters in the
+Mercury attacking Wallingham and the Liberal leaders of South Fox, that
+his daughter felt an insurmountable delicacy in attending even Lorne's
+"big meeting." Alfred Hesketh meant to have gone, but it was ten by the
+Milburns' drawing-room clock before he remembered. Miss Filkin actually
+did go, and brought home a great report of it. Miss Filkin would no more
+have missed a Minister than she would a bishop; but she was the only
+one.
+
+Lorne had prepared for this occasion for a long time. It was certain
+to come, the day of the supreme effort, when he should make his final
+appeal under the most favourable circumstances that could be devised,
+when the harassing work of the campaign would be behind him, and nothing
+would remain but the luxury of one last strenuous call to arms. The
+glory of that anticipation had been with him from the beginning; and in
+the beginning he saw his great moment only in one character. For weeks,
+while he plodded through the details of the benefits South Fox had
+received and might expect to receive at the hands of the Liberal party,
+he privately stored argument on argument, piled phrase on phrase, still
+further to advance and defend the imperial unity of his vision on this
+certain and special opportunity. His jihad it would be, for the faith
+and purpose of his race; so he scanned it and heard it, with conviction
+hot in him, and impulse strong, and intention noble. Then uneasiness had
+arisen, as we know; and under steady pressure he had daily drawn himself
+from these high intentions, persuaded by Bingham and the rest that
+they were not yet "in shape" to talk about. So that his address on this
+memorable evening would have a different stamp from the one he designed
+in the early burning hours of his candidature. He had postponed
+those matters, under advice, to the hour of practical dealing, when a
+Government which it would be his privilege to support would consider and
+carry them. He put the notes of his original speech away in his office
+desk with solicitude--it was indeed very thorough, a grand marshalling
+of the facts and review of the principles involved--and pigeonholed
+it in the chambers of his mind, with the good hope to bring it forth
+another day. Then he devoted his attention to the history of Liberalism
+in Fox County--both ridings were solid--and it was upon the history of
+Liberalism in Fox County, its triumphs and its fruits, that he embarked
+so easily and so assuredly, when he opened his address in the opera
+house that Tuesday night.
+
+Who knows at what suggestion, or even precisely at what moment,
+the fabric of his sincere intention fell away? Bingham does not; Mr
+Farquharson has the vaguest idea; Dr Drummond declares that he expected
+it from the beginning, but is totally unable to say why. I can get
+nothing more out of them, though they were all there, though they all
+saw him, indeed a dramatic figure, standing for the youth and energy
+of the old blood, and heard him, as he slipped away into his great
+preoccupation, as he made what Bingham called his "bad break." His
+very confidence may have accounted for it; he was off guard against the
+enemy, and the more completely off guard against himself. The history
+of Liberalism in Fox County offered, no doubt, some inlet to the rush
+of the Idea; for suddenly, Mr Farquharson says, he was "off." Mr
+Farquharson was on the platform, and "I can tell you," said he, "I
+pricked up my ears." They all did; the Idea came in upon such a personal
+note.
+
+"I claim it my great good fortune," the young man was suddenly telling
+them, in a note of curious gravity and concentration, "and however the
+fight goes, I shall always claim it my great good fortune to have been
+identified, at a critical moment, with the political principles that are
+ennobled in this country by the imperialistic aim. An intention, a great
+purpose in the endless construction and reconstruction of the world,
+will choose its own agency; and the imperial design in Canada has chosen
+the Liberal party, because the Liberal party in this country is the
+party of the soil, the land, the nation as it springs from that which
+makes it a nation; and imperialism is intensely and supremely a national
+affair. Ours is the policy of the fields. We stand for the wheat-belt
+and the stockyard, the forest and the mine, as the basic interests of
+the country. We stand for the principles that make for nation-building
+by the slow sweet processes of the earth, cultivating the individual
+rooted man who draws his essence and his tissues from the soil and so,
+by unhurried, natural, healthy growth, labour sweating his vices out
+of him, forms the character of the commonwealth, the foundation of the
+State. So the imperial idea seeks its Canadian home in Liberal councils.
+The imperial idea is far-sighted. England has outlived her own body.
+Apart from her heart and her history, England is an area where certain
+trades are carried on--still carried on. In the scrolls of the future it
+is already written that the centre of the Empire must shift--and where,
+if not to Canada?"
+
+There was a half-comprehending burst of applause, Dr Drummond's the
+first clap. It was a curious change from the simple colloquial manner
+in which young Murchison had begun and to which the audience were
+accustomed; and on this account probably they stamped the harder.
+They applauded Lorne himself; something from him infected them; they
+applauded being made to feel like that. They would clap first and
+consider afterward. John Murchison smiled with pleasure, but shook his
+head. Bingham, doubled up and clapping like a repeating rifle, groaned
+aloud under cover of it to Horace Williams: "Oh, the darned kid!"
+
+"A certain Liberal peer of blessed political memory," Lorne continued,
+with a humorous twist of his mouth, "on one of those graceful, elegant,
+academic occasions which offer political peers such happy opportunities
+of getting in their work over there, had lately a vision which he
+described to his university audience of what might have happened if the
+American colonies had remained faithful to Great Britain--a vision of
+monarch and Ministers, Government and Parliament, departing solemnly
+for the other hemisphere. They did not so remain; so the noble peer may
+conjure up his vision or dismiss his nightmare as he chooses; and it is
+safe to prophesy that no port of the United States will see that entry.
+But, remembering that the greater half of the continent did remain
+faithful, the northern and strenuous half, destined to move with sure
+steps and steady mind to greater growth and higher place among the
+nations than any of us can now imagine--would it be as safe to
+prophesy that such a momentous sailing-day will never be more than the
+after-dinner fantasy of aristocratic rhetoric? Is it not at least as
+easy to imagine that even now, while the people of England send their
+viceroys to the ends of the earth, and vote careless millions for a
+reconstructed army, and sit in the wrecks of Cabinets disputing whether
+they will eat our bread or the stranger's, the sails may be filling,
+in the far harbour of time which will bear their descendants to a
+representative share of the duties and responsibilities of Empire in the
+capital of the Dominion of Canada?"
+
+It was the boldest proposition, and the Liberal voters of the town of
+Elgin blinked a little, looking at it. Still they applauded, hurriedly,
+to get it over and hear what more might be coming. Bingham, on the
+platform, laughed heartily and conspicuously, as if anybody could see
+that it was all an excellent joke. Lorne half-turned to him with a
+gesture of protest. Then he went on--
+
+"If that transport ever left the shores of England we would go far, some
+of us, to meet it; but for all the purposes that matter most it sailed
+long ago. British statesmen could bring us nothing better than the
+ideals of British government; and those we have had since we levied our
+first tax and made our first law. That precious cargo was our heritage,
+and we never threw it overboard, but chose rather to render what impost
+it brought; and there are those who say that the impost has been heavy,
+though never a dollar was paid."
+
+He paused for an instant and seemed to review and take account of what
+he had said. He was hopelessly adrift from the subject he had proposed
+to himself, launched for better or for worse upon the theme that was
+subliminal in him and had flowed up, on which he was launched, and
+almost rudderless, without construction and without control. The speech
+of his first intention, orderly, developed, was as far from him as the
+history of Liberalism in Fox County. For an instant he hesitated; and
+then, under the suggestion, no doubt, of that ancient misbehaviour in
+Boston Harbour at which he had hinted, he took up another argument. I
+will quote him a little.
+
+"Let us hold," he said simply, "to the Empire. Let us keep this
+patrimony that has been ours for three hundred years. Let us not
+forget the flag. We believe ourselves, at this moment, in no danger of
+forgetting it. The day after Paardeburg, that still winter day, did
+not our hearts rise within us to see it shaken out with its message
+everywhere, shaken out against the snow? How it spoke to us, and lifted
+us, the silent flag in the new fallen snow! Theirs--and ours... That was
+but a little while ago, and there is not a man here who will not bear me
+out in saying that we were never more loyal, in word and deed, than we
+are now. And that very state of things has created for us an undermining
+alternative...
+
+"So long as no force appeared to improve the trade relations between
+England and this country Canada sought in vain to make commercial
+bargains with the United States. They would have none of us or our
+produce; they kept their wall just as high against us as against the
+rest of the world: not a pine plank or a bushel of barley could we get
+over under a reciprocal arrangement. But the imperial trade idea has
+changed the attitude of our friends to the south. They have small
+liking for any scheme which will improve trade between Great Britain and
+Canada, because trade between Great Britain and Canada must be improved
+at their expense. And now you cannot take up an American paper without
+finding the report of some commercial association demanding closer trade
+relations with Canada, or an American magazine in which some far-sighted
+economist is not urging the same thing. They see us thinking about
+keeping the business in the family; with that hard American common sense
+that has made them what they are, they accept the situation; and at this
+moment they are ready to offer us better terms to keep our trade."
+
+Bingham, Horace Williams, and Mr Farquharson applauded loudly. Their
+young man frowned a little and squared his chin. He was past hints of
+that kind.
+
+"And that," he went on to say, "is, on the surface, a very satisfactory
+state of things. No doubt a bargain between the Americans and ourselves
+could be devised which would be a very good bargain on both sides. In
+the absence of certain pressing family affairs, it might be as well
+worth our consideration as we used to think it before we were invited
+to the family council. But if anyone imagines that any degree of
+reciprocity with the United States could be entered upon without killing
+the idea of British preference trade for all time, let him consider what
+Canada's attitude toward that idea would be today if the Americans had
+consented to our proposals twenty-five years ago, and we were invited to
+make an imperial sacrifice of the American trade that had prospered, as
+it would have prospered, for a quarter of a century! I doubt whether the
+proposition would even be made to us...
+
+"But the alternative before Canada is not a mere choice of markets; we
+are confronted with a much graver issue. In this matter of dealing
+with our neighbour our very existence is involved. If we would preserve
+ourselves as a nation, it has become our business, not only to reject
+American overtures in favour of the overtures of our own great England,
+but to keenly watch and actively resist American influence, as it
+already threatens us through the common channels of life and energy. We
+often say that we fear no invasion from the south, but the armies of
+the south have already crossed the border. American enterprise, American
+capital, is taking rapid possession of our mines and our water power,
+our oil areas and our timber limits. In today's Dominion, one paper
+alone, you may read of charters granted to five industrial concerns
+with headquarters in the United States. The trades unions of the two
+countries are already international. American settlers are pouring into
+the wheat-belt of the Northwest, and when the Dominion of Canada has
+paid the hundred million dollars she has just voted for a railway to
+open up the great lone northern lands between Quebec and the Pacific,
+it will be the American farmer and the American capitalist who will
+reap the benefit. They approach us today with all the arts of peace,
+commercial missionaries to the ungathered harvests of neglected
+territories; but the day may come when they will menace our coasts to
+protect their markets--unless, by firm, resolved, whole-hearted action
+now, we keep our opportunities for our own people."
+
+They cheered him promptly, and a gathered intensity came into his face
+at the note of praise.
+
+"Nothing on earth can hold him now," said Bingham, as he crossed his
+arms upon a breast seething with practical politics, and waited for the
+worst.
+
+"The question of the hour for us," said Lorne Murchison to his
+fellow-townsmen, curbing the strenuous note in his voice, "is deeper
+than any balance of trade can indicate, wider than any department of
+statistics can prove. We cannot calculate it in terms of pig-iron, or
+reduce it to any formula of consumption. The question that underlies
+this decision for Canada is that of the whole stamp and character of
+her future existence. Is that stamp and character to be impressed by the
+American Republic effacing"--he smiled a little--"the old Queen's head
+and the new King's oath? Or is it to be our own stamp and character,
+acquired in the rugged discipline of our colonial youth, and developed
+in the national usage of the British Empire?"...
+
+Dr Drummond clapped alone; everybody else was listening.
+
+"It is ours," he told them, "in this greater half of the continent, to
+evolve a nobler ideal. The Americans from the beginning went in a spirit
+of revolt; the seed of disaffection was in every Puritan bosom. We from
+the beginning went in a spirit of amity, forgetting nothing, disavowing
+nothing, to plant the flag with our fortunes. We took our very
+Constitution, our very chart of national life, from England--her laws,
+her liberty, her equity were good enough for us. We have lived by them,
+some of us have died by them...and, thank God, we were long poor...
+
+"And this Republic," he went on hotly, "this Republic that menaces our
+national life with commercial extinction, what past has she that is
+comparable? The daughter who left the old stock to be the light woman
+among nations, welcoming all comers, mingling her pure blood, polluting
+her lofty ideals until it is hard indeed to recognize the features and
+the aims of her honourable youth..."
+
+Allowance will be made for the intemperance of his figure. He believed
+himself, you see, at the bar for the life of a nation.
+
+"...Let us not hesitate to announce ourselves for the Empire, to throw
+all we are and all we have into the balance for that great decision.
+The seers of political economy tell us that if the stars continue to
+be propitious, it is certain that a day will come which will usher in
+a union of the Anglo-Saxon nations of the world. As between England and
+the United States the predominant partner in that firm will be the one
+that brings Canada. So that the imperial movement of the hour may mean
+even more than the future of the motherland, may reach even farther than
+the boundaries of Great Britain..."
+
+Again he paused, and his eye ranged over their listening faces. He had
+them all with him, his words were vivid in their minds; the truth of
+them stood about him like an atmosphere. Even Bingham looked at him
+without reproach. But he had done.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, his voice dropping, with a hint of
+tiredness, to another level, "I have the honour to stand for your
+suffrages as candidate in the Liberal interest for the riding of South
+Fox in the Dominion House of Commons the day after tomorrow. I solicit
+your support, and I hereby pledge myself to justify it by every means in
+my power. But it would be idle to disguise from you that while I attach
+all importance to the immediate interests in charge of the Liberal
+party, and if elected shall use my best efforts to further them, the
+great task before that party, in my opinion, the overshadowing task to
+which, I shall hope, in my place and degree to stand committed from
+the beginning, is the one which I have endeavoured to bring before your
+consideration this evening."
+
+They gave him a great appreciation, and Mr Cruickshank, following, spoke
+in complimentary terms of the eloquent appeal made by the "young and
+vigorous protagonist" of the imperial cause, but proceeded to a number
+of quite other and apparently more important grounds why he should be
+elected. The Hon. Mr Tellier's speech--the Minister was always kept
+to the last--was a defence of the recent dramatic development of the
+Government's railway policy, and a reminder of the generous treatment
+Elgin was receiving in the Estimates for the following year--thirty
+thousand dollars for a new Drill Hall, and fifteen thousand for
+improvements to the post-office. It was a telling speech, with the
+chink of hard cash in every sentence, a kind of audit by a chartered
+accountant of the Liberal books of South Fox, showing good sound reason
+why the Liberal candidate should be returned on Thursday, if only
+to keep the balance right. The audience listened with practical
+satisfaction. "That's Tellier all over," they said to one another...
+
+The effect in committee of what, in spite of the Hon. Mr Tellier's
+participation, I must continue to call the speech of the evening, may
+be gathered from a brief colloquy between Mr Bingham and Mr Williams, in
+the act of separating at the door of the opera house.
+
+"I don't know what it was worth to preference trade," said Bingham, "but
+it wasn't worth a hill o' beans to his own election."
+
+"He had as soft a snap," returned Horace Williams, on the brink of
+tears--"as soft a snap as anybody ever had in this town. And he's
+monkeyed it all away. All away."
+
+Both the local papers published the speech in full the following day.
+"If there's anything in Manchester or Birmingham that Mr Lorne Murchison
+would like," commented the Mercury editorially, "we understand he has
+only to call for it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+The Milburns' doorbell rang very early the morning of the election.
+The family and Alfred Hesketh were just sitting down to breakfast. Mr
+Hesketh was again the guest of the house. He had taken a run out to
+Vancouver with Mr Milburn's partner, who had gone to settle a point or
+two in connection with the establishment of a branch there. The points
+had been settled and Hesketh, having learned more than ever, had
+returned to Elgin.
+
+The maid came back into the room with a conscious air, and said
+something in a low voice to Dora, who flushed and frowned a little,
+and asked to be excused. As she left the room a glance of intelligence
+passed between her and her mother. While Miss Milburn was generally
+thought to be "most like" her father both in appearance and disposition,
+there were points upon which she could count on an excellent
+understanding with her other parent.
+
+"Oh, Lorne," she said, having carefully closed the drawing-room door,
+"what in the world have you come here for? Today of all days! Did
+anybody see you?"
+
+The young man, standing tall and broad-shouldered before the
+mantelpiece, had yet a look of expecting reproach.
+
+"I don't know," he said humbly.
+
+"I don't think Father would like it," Dora told him, "if he knew you
+were here. Why, we're having an early breakfast on purpose to let
+him get out and work for Winter. I never saw him so excited over an
+election. To think of your coming today!"
+
+He made a step toward her. "I came because it is today," he said. "Only
+for a minute, dear. It's a great day for me, you know--whether we win or
+lose. I wanted you to be in it. I wanted you to wish me good luck."
+
+"But you know I always do," she objected.
+
+"Yes, I know. But a fellow likes to hear it, Dora--on the day, you know.
+And I've seen so little of you lately."
+
+She looked at him measuringly. "You're looking awfully thin," she
+exclaimed, with sudden compunction. "I wish you had never gone into this
+horrid campaign. I wish they had nominated somebody else."
+
+Lorne smiled half-bitterly. "I shouldn't wonder if a few other people
+wished the same thing," he said. "But I'm afraid they'll have to make
+the best of it now."
+
+Dora had not sanctioned his visit by sitting down; and as he came nearer
+to her she drew a step away, moving by instinct from the capture of the
+lover. But he had made little of that, and almost as he spoke was at her
+side. She had to yield her hands to him.
+
+"Well, you'll win it for them if anybody could," she assured him.
+
+"Say 'win it for us,' dear."
+
+She shook her head. "I'm not a Liberal--yet," she said, laughing.
+
+"It's only a question of time."
+
+"I'll never be converted to Grit politics."
+
+"No, but you'll be converted to me," he told her, and drew her nearer.
+"I'm going now, Dora. I dare say I shouldn't have come. Every minute
+counts today. Good-bye."
+
+She could not withhold her face from his asking lips, and he had bent to
+take his privilege when a step in the hall threatened and divided them.
+
+"It's only Mr Hesketh going upstairs," said Dora, with relief. "I
+thought it was Father. Oh, Lorne--fly!"
+
+"Hesketh!" Young Murchison's face clouded. "Is he working for Winter,
+too?"
+
+"Lorne! What a thing to ask when you know he believes in your ideas.
+But he's a Conservative at home, you see, so he says he's in an awkward
+position, and he has been taking perfectly neutral ground lately. He
+hasn't a vote, anyway."
+
+"No," said Lorne. "He's of no consequence."
+
+The familiar easy step in the house of his beloved, the house he was
+being entreated to leave with all speed, struck upon his heart and his
+nerves. She, with her dull surface to the more delicate vibrations of
+things, failed to perceive this, or perhaps she would have thought it
+worth while to find some word to bring back his peace. She disliked
+seeing people unhappy. When she was five years old and her kitten broke
+its leg, she had given it to a servant to drown.
+
+He took his hat, making no further attempt to caress her, and opened the
+door. "I hope you WILL win, Lorne," she said, half-resentfully, and he,
+with forced cheerfulness, replied, "Oh, we'll have a shot at it." Then
+with a little silent nod at her which, notwithstanding her provocations,
+conveyed his love and trust, he went out into the struggle of the day.
+
+In spite of Squire Ormiston's confident prediction, it was known that
+the fight would be hottest, among the townships, in Moneida Reservation.
+Elgin itself, of course, would lead the van for excitement, would be
+the real theatre for the arts of practical politics; but things would be
+pretty warm in Moneida, too. It was for that reason that Bingham and
+the rest strongly advised Lorne not to spend too much of the day in
+the town, but to get out to Moneida early, and drive around with
+Ormiston--stick to him like a fly to poison-paper.
+
+"You leave Elgin to your friends," said Bingham. "Just show your face
+here and there wearing a smile of triumph, to encourage the crowd; but
+don't worry about the details--we'll attend to them."
+
+"We can't have him upsettin' his own election by any interference with
+the boys," said Bingham to Horace Williams. "He's got too long a nose
+for all kinds of things to be comfortable in town today. He'll do a
+great deal less harm trotting round the Reserve braced up against old
+Ormiston."
+
+So Elgin was left to the capable hands of the boys, for the furtherance
+of the Liberal interest and the sacred cause of imperialism. Mr
+Farquharson, whose experience was longer and whose nose presumably
+shorter than the candidate's, never abandoned the Town Ward. Bingham
+skirmished between the polling-booths and the committee room. Horace
+Williams was out all day--Rawlins edited the paper. The returns wouldn't
+be ready in time for anything but an extra anyhow, and the "Stand to
+Arms, South Fox," leader had been written two days ago. The rest was
+millinery, or might be for all anybody would read of it. The other side
+had a better idea of the value of their candidate than to send him into
+the country. Walter Winter remained where he was most effective and most
+at home. He had a neat little livery outfit, and he seemed to spend the
+whole day in it accompanied by intimate personal friends who had never
+spoken to him, much less driven with him, before. Two or three strangers
+arrived the previous night at the leading hotels. Their business was
+various, but they had one point in common: they were very solicitous
+about their personal luggage. I should be sorry to assign their
+politics, and none of them seemed to know much about the merits of
+the candidates, so they are not perhaps very pertinent, except for the
+curiosity shown by the public at the spectacle of gentlemen carrying
+their own bags when there were porters to do it.
+
+It was a day long remembered and long quoted. The weather was
+spring-like, sun after a week's thaw; it was pleasant to be abroad in
+the relaxed air and the drying streets, that here and there sent
+up threads of steam after the winter house-cleaning of their wooden
+sidewalks. Voting was a privilege never unappreciated in Elgin; and
+today the weather brought out every soul to the polls; the ladies of
+his family waiting, in many instances, on the verandah, with shawls over
+their heads, to hear the report of how the fight was going. Abby saw Dr
+Harry back in his consulting room, and Dr Henry safely off to vote, and
+then took the two children and went over to her father's house because
+she simply could not endure the suspense anywhere else. The adventurous
+Stella picketed herself at a corner near the empty grocery which served
+as a polling-booth for Subdivision Eleven, one of the most doubtful, but
+was forced to retire at the sight of the first carryall full of men from
+the Milburn Boiler Company flaunting a banner inscribed "We are Solid
+for W.W." Met in the hall by her sister, she protested that she hadn't
+cried till she got inside the gate, anyhow. Abby lectured her soundly
+on her want of proper pride: she was much too big a girl to be "seen
+around" on a day when her brother was "running," if it were only for
+school trustee. The other ladies of the family, having acquired proper
+pride kept in the back of the house so as not to be tempted to look out
+of the front windows. Mrs Murchison assumed a stoical demeanour and
+made a pudding; though there was no reason to help Eliza, who was
+sufficiently lacking in proper pride to ask the milkman whether Mr Lorne
+wasn't sure to be elected down there now. The milkman said he guessed
+the best man 'ud get in, but in a manner which roused general suspicion
+as to which he had himself favoured.
+
+"We'll finish the month," said Mrs Murchison, "and then not another
+quart do we take from HIM--a gentleman that's so uncertain when he's
+asked a simple question."
+
+The butcher came, and brought a jovial report without being asked for
+it; said he was the first man to hand in a paper at his place, but they
+were piling up there in great shape for Mr Murchison when he left.
+
+"If he gets in, he gets in," said Mrs Murchison. "And if he doesn't
+it won't be because of not deserving to. Those were real nice cutlets
+yesterday, Mr Price, and you had better send us a sirloin for tomorrow,
+about six pounds; but it doesn't matter to an ounce. And you can save us
+sweetbreads for Sunday; I like yours better than Luff's."
+
+John Murchison, Alec, and Oliver came shortly up to dinner, bringing
+stirring tales from the field. There was the personator in Subdivision
+Six of a dead man--a dead Grit--wanted by the bloodhounds of the other
+side and tracked to the Reform committee room, where he was ostensibly
+and publicly taking refuge.
+
+"Why did he go there?" asked Stella, breathlessly.
+
+"Why, to make it look like a put-up job of ours, of course, "said her
+brother. "And it was a put-up job, a good old Tory fake. But they didn't
+calculate on Bingham and Bingham's memory. Bingham happened to be in the
+committee room, and he recognized this fellow for a regular political
+tough from up Muskoka way, where they get six for a bottle of Canadian
+and ten if it's Scotch. 'Why, good morning,' says Bingham, 'thought you
+were in jail,' and just then he catches sight of a couple of trailers
+from the window. Well, Bingham isn't just lightning smart, but then he
+isn't SLOW, you know. 'Well,' he says, 'you can't stop here,' and in
+another second he was throwing the fellow out. Threw him out pretty
+hard, too. I guess; right down the stairs, and Bingham on top. Met
+Winter's men at the door. 'The next time you want information from
+the headquarters of this association, gentlemen,' Bingham said, 'send
+somebody respectable.' Bingham thought the man was just any kind of low
+spy at first, but when they claimed him for personation, Bingham just
+laughed. 'Don't be so hard on your friends; he said. I don't think we'll
+hear much more about that little racket."
+
+"Can't anything be done to any of them?" asked Stella. "Not today, of
+course, but when there's time."
+
+"We'll have to see about it, Stella," said Alec. "When there's time."
+
+"Talking about Bingham," Oliver told them; "you know Bingham's story
+about Jim Whelan keeping sober for two weeks, for the first time in
+twenty years, to vote for Winter? Wouldn't touch a thing--no, he was
+going to do it this time, if he died for it; it was disagreeable to
+refuse drinks, but it was going to be worth his while. Been boasting
+about the post-office janitorship Winter was to give him if he got in.
+Well, in he came to Number Eleven this morning all dressed up, with a
+clean collar, looking thirstier than any man you ever saw, and gets
+his paper. Young Charlie Bingham is deputy returning officer at Number
+Eleven. In a second back comes Whelan. 'This ballot's marked; he says;
+'you don't fool me.' 'Is it?' says Charlie, taking it out of his hand.
+'That's very wrong, Jim; you shouldn't have marked it,' and drops it
+into the ballot-box. Oh, Jim was wild! The paper had gone in blank, you
+see, and he'd lost all those good drunks and his vote too! He was going
+to have Charlie's blood right away. But there it was--done. He'd handed
+in his ballot--he couldn't have another."
+
+They all laughed, I fear, at the unfortunate plight of the too
+suspicious Whelan. "Why did he think the ballot was marked?" asked
+Advena.
+
+"Oh, there was a little smudge on it--a fly-spot or something, Charlie
+says. But you couldn't fool Whelan."
+
+"I hope," said Stella meditatively, "that Lorne will get in by more than
+one. He wouldn't like to owe his election to a low-down trick like that"
+
+"Don't you be at all alarmed, you little girlish thing," replied her
+brother. "Lorne will get in by five hundred."
+
+John Murchison had listened to their excited talk, mostly in silence,
+going on with his dinner as if that and nothing else were the important
+matter of the moment. Mrs Murchison had had this idiosyncrasy of his
+"to put up with" for over thirty years. She bore it now as long as she
+could.
+
+"FATHER!" she exploded at last. "Do you think Lorne will get in by five
+hundred?"
+
+Mr Murchison shook his head, and bestowed his whole attention upon the
+paring of an apple. If he kept his hopes to himself, he also kept his
+doubts. "That remains to be seen," he said.
+
+"Well, considering it's your own son, I think you might show a little
+more confidence," said Mrs Murchison. "No thank you; no dessert for
+me. With a member of the family being elected--or not--for a seat in
+Parliament, I'm not the one to want dessert."
+
+Between Mr Murchison and the milkman that morning, Mrs Murchison felt
+almost too much tried by the superior capacity for reticence.
+
+It was seven in the evening before the ballot-boxes were all in the
+hands of the sheriff, and nine before that officer found it necessary to
+let the town know that it had piled up a majority of three hundred for
+Walter Winter. He was not a supporter of Walter Winter, and he preferred
+to wait until the returns began to come in from Clayfield and the
+townships, in the hope that they would make the serious difference that
+was required of them. The results were flashed one after the other
+to the total from the windows of the Express and the Mercury upon the
+cheering crowd that gathered in Market Square. There were moments of
+wild elation, moments of deep suspense upon both sides, but when the
+final addition and subtraction was made the enthusiastic voters of South
+Fox, including Jim Whelan, who had neglected no further opportunity,
+read, with yells and groans, hurrahs and catcalls, that they had elected
+Mr Lorne Murchison to the Dominion House of Commons by a majority of
+seventy.
+
+Then the band began to play and all the tin whistles to rejoice. Young
+and Windle had the grace to blow their sirens, and across the excited
+darkness of the town came the long familiar boom of the Murchison Stove
+Works. Every Liberal in Elgin who had any means of making a noise
+made it. From the window of the Association committee room their young
+fellow-townsman thanked them for the honour they had done him, while
+his mother sat in the cab he had brought her down in and applauded
+vigorously between tears, and his father took congratulations from a
+hundred friendly hands. They all went home in a torchlight procession,
+the band always playing, the tin whistles always performing; and it was
+two in the morning before the occasion could in any sense be said to be
+over.
+
+Lights burned quite as late, however, in the Conservative committee
+room, where matters were being arranged to bark threateningly at the
+heels of victory next day. Victory looked like something that might
+be made to turn and parley. A majority of seventy was too small for
+finality. Her attention was called without twenty-four hours' delay to
+a paragraph in the Elgin Mercury, plainly authoritative, to the effect
+that the election of Mr Murchison would be immediately challenged, on
+the ground of the infringement in the electoral district of Moneida of
+certain provisions of the Ontario Elections Act with the knowledge and
+consent of the candidate, whose claim to the contested seat, it was
+confidently expected, would be rendered within a very short time null
+and void.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"You can never trust an Indian," said Mrs Murchison at the anxious
+family council. "Well do I remember them when you were a little thing,
+Advena, hanging round the town on a market-day; and the squaws coming
+to the back door with their tin pails of raspberries to sell, and just
+knowing English enough to ask a big price for them. But it was on the
+squaws we depended in those days, or go without raspberry preserves for
+the winter. Slovenly-looking things they were with their three or four
+coloured petticoats and their papooses on their backs. And for dirt--!
+But I thought they were all gone long ago."
+
+"There are enough of them left to make trouble all right," said Alec.
+"They don't dress up like they used to, and I guess they send the
+papooses to kindergarten now; but you'll find plenty of them lying
+around any time there's nothing to do but vote and get drunk."
+
+Allowing for the natural exaggeration of partisanship, the facts about
+the remaining red man of Moneida were much as Alec described them.
+On market-days he slid easily, unless you looked twice, into what the
+Express continues to call the farming community. Invariably, if you did
+look twice, you would note that his stiff felt hat was an inch taller
+in the crown than those worn generally by the farming community, the
+pathetic assertion, perhaps, of an old sovereignty; invariably, too
+his coat and trousers betrayed a form within, which, in the effort at
+adaptation, had become high-shouldered and lank of leg. And the brown
+skin was there to be noticed, though you might pass it by, and the high
+cheek-bones and the liquidly muddy eye. He had taken on the signs of
+civilization at the level which he occupied; the farming community
+had lent him its look of shrewdness in small bargains and its rakish
+sophistication in garments, nor could you always assume with certainty,
+except at Fox County fairs and elections, that he was intoxicated. So
+much Government had done for him in Fox County, where the "Reservation,"
+nursing the dying fragment of his race, testified that there is such a
+thing as political compunction. Out in the wide spaces of the West he
+still protects his savagery; they know an Indian there today as far as
+they can see him, without a second glance.
+
+And in Moneida, upon polling-days, he still, as Alec said, "made
+trouble." Perhaps it would be more to the fact to say that he presented
+the elements of which trouble is made. Civilization had given him a
+vote, not with his coat and trousers, but shortly after; and he had not
+yet learned to keep it anywhere but in his pocket, whence the transfer
+was easy, and could be made in different ways. The law contemplated only
+one, the straight drop into the ballot-box; but the "boys" had other
+views. The law represented one level of political sentiment, the boys
+represented another; both parties represented the law, both parties were
+represented by the boys; and on the occasion of the South Fox election
+the boys had been active in Moneida. There are, as we know, two kinds
+of activity on these occasions, one being set to observe the other;
+and Walter Winter's boys, while presumably neglecting no legitimate
+opportunity of their own, claimed to have been highly successful in
+detecting the methods of the other side.
+
+The Indians owed their holdings, their allowances, their school, and
+their protecting superintendent, Squire Ormiston, to a Conservative
+Government. It made a grateful bond of which a later Conservative
+Government was not, perhaps, unaware, when it added the ballot to
+its previous benefits. The Indians, therefore, on election-days, were
+supposed to "go solid" for the candidate in whom they had been taught
+to see good will. If they did not go quite solid, the other side might
+point to the evolution of the political idea in every dissentient--a
+gladdening spectacle, indeed, on which, however, the other side seldom
+showed any desire to dwell.
+
+Hitherto the desires and intentions of the "Reserve" had been
+exemplified in its superintendent. Squire Ormiston had never led his
+wards to the polls--there were strong reasons against that. But the
+squire made no secret of his politics, either before or, unluckily,
+after he changed them. The Indians had always known that they were
+voting on the same side as "de boss." They were likely, the friends
+of Mr Winter thought, to know now that they were voting on a different
+side. This was the secret of Mr Winter's friends' unusual diligence on
+voting-day in Moneida. The mere indication of a wish on the part of the
+superintendent would constitute undue influence in the eye of the law.
+The squire was not the most discreet of men--often before it had been
+the joke of Conservative councils how near the old man had come to
+making a case for the Grits in connection with this chief or that. I
+will not say that he was acquainted with the famous letter from Queen
+Victoria, affectionately bidding her Indian children to vote for the
+Conservative candidate. But perhaps he had not adhered to the strictest
+interpretation of the law which gave him fatherly influence in
+everything pertaining to his red-skinned charges' interests temporal and
+spiritual, excepting only their sacred privilege of the ballot. He may
+even have held it in some genial derision, their sacred privilege; it
+would be natural, he had been there among them in unquestioned authority
+so long. Now it had assumed an importance. The squire looked at it with
+the ardour of a converted eye. When he told Mr Farquharson that he could
+bring Moneida with him to a Liberal victory, he thought and spoke of the
+farmers of the township not of his wards of the Reserve. Yet as the day
+approached these would infallibly become voters in his eyes, to swell or
+to diminish the sum of Moneida's loyalty to the Empire. They remembered
+all this in the committee room of his old party. "The squire," they said
+to one another, "will give himself away this time if ever he did." Then
+young Murchison hadn't known any better than to spend the best part of
+the day out there, and there were a dozen witnesses to swear that old
+Ormiston introduced him to three or four of the chiefs. That was basis
+enough for the boys detailed to watch Moneida, basis enough in the end
+for a petition constructed to travel to the High Court at Toronto
+for the purpose of rendering null and void the election of Mr Lorne
+Murchison, and transferring the South Fox seat to the candidate of the
+opposite party.
+
+That possibility had been promptly frustrated by a cross petition. There
+was enough evidence in Subdivision Eleven, according to Bingham, to
+void the Tory returns on six different counts; but the house-cat sold by
+Peter Finnigan to Mr Winter for five dollars would answer all practical
+purposes. It was a first-rate mouser, Bingham said, and it would settle
+Winter. They would have plenty of other charges "good and ready" if
+Finnigan's cat should fail them, but Bingham didn't think the court
+would get to anything else; he had great confidence in the cat.
+
+The petitions had been lodged with promptness. "Evidence," as Mr Winter
+remarked, "is like a good many other things--better when it's hot,
+especially the kind you get on the Reserve." To which, when he heard it,
+Bingham observed sarcastically that the cat would keep. The necessary
+thousand dollars were ready on each side the day after the election,
+lodged in court the next. Counsel were as promptly engaged--the Liberals
+selected Cruickshank--and the suit against the elected candidate,
+beginning with charges against his agents in the town, was shortly in
+full hearing before the judges sent from Toronto to try it. Meanwhile
+the Elgin Mercury had shown enterprise in getting hold of Moneida
+evidence, and foolhardiness, as the Express pointed out, in publishing
+it before the matter was reached in court. There was no foolhardiness
+in printing what the Express knew about Finnigan's cat; it was just
+a common cat, and Walter Winter paid five dollars for it, Finnigan
+declaring that if Mr Winter hadn't filled him up with bad whiskey before
+the bargain, he wouldn't have let her go under ten, he was that fond
+of the creature. The Express pointed out that this was grasping of
+Finnigan, as the cat had never left him, and Mr Winter showed no
+intention of taking her away; but there was nothing sub judice about the
+cat. Finnigan, before he sobered up, had let her completely out of the
+bag. It was otherwise with the charges that were to be made, according
+to the Mercury, on the evidence of Chief Joseph Fry and another member
+of his tribe, to the effect that he and his Conservative friends had
+been instructed by Squire Ormiston and Mr Murchison to vote on this
+occasion for both the candidates, thereby producing, when the box was
+opened, eleven ballot-papers inscribed with two crosses instead of one,
+and valueless. Here, should the charges against a distinguished and
+highly respected Government official fail, as in the opinion of the
+Express they undoubtedly would fail of substantiation was a big
+libel case all dressed and ready and looking for the Mercury office.
+"Foolish--foolish," wrote Mr Williams at the close of his editorial
+comments. "Very ill-advised."
+
+"They've made no case so far," Mr Murchison assured the family. "I saw
+Williams on my way up, and he says the evidence of that corner grocery
+fellow--what's his name?--went all to pieces this morning. Oliver was in
+court. He says one of the judges--Hooke--lost his patience altogether."
+
+"They won't do anything with the town charges," Alec said, "and they
+know it. They're saving themselves for Moneida and old man Ormiston."
+
+"Well, I heartily wish," said Mrs Murchison, in a tone of grievance with
+the world at large, and if you were not responsible you might keep out
+of the way--"I heartily wish that Lorne had stayed at home that day and
+not got mixed up with old man Ormiston."
+
+"They'll find it pretty hard to fix anything on Lorne," said Alec. "But
+I guess the Squire did go off his head a little."
+
+"Have they anything more than Indian evidence?" asked Advena.
+
+"We don't know what they've got," said her brother darkly "and we won't
+till Wednesday, when they expect to get round to it."
+
+"Indian evidence will be a poor dependence in Cruickshank's hands," Mr
+Murchison told them, with a chuckle. "They say this Chief Joseph Fry is
+going about complaining that he always got three dollars for one vote
+before, and this time he expected six for two, and got nothing!"
+
+"Chief Joseph Fry!" exclaimed Alec. "They make me tired with their Chief
+Josephs and Chief Henrys! White Clam Shell--that was the name he got
+when he wasn't christened."
+
+"That's the name," remarked Advena, "that he probably votes under."
+
+"Well," said Mrs Murchison, "it was very kind of Squire Ormiston to
+give Lorne his support, but it seems to me that as far as Moneida is
+concerned he would have done better alone."
+
+"No, I guess he wouldn't, Mother," said Alec. "Moneida came right round
+with the Squire, outside the Reserve. If it hadn't been for the majority
+there we would have lost the election. The old man worked hard, and
+Lorne is grateful to him, and so he ought to be."
+
+"If they carry the case against Lorne," said Stella, "he'll be
+disqualified for seven years."
+
+"Only if they prove him personally mixed up in it," said the father.
+"And that," he added with a concentration of family sentiment in the
+emphasis of it, "they'll not do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+It was late afternoon when the train from the West deposited Hugh Finlay
+upon the Elgin platform, the close of one of those wide, wet, uncertain
+February days when the call of spring is on the wind though spring
+is weeks away. The lights of the town flashed and glimmered down the
+streets under the bare swaying maple branches. The early evening was
+full of soft bluster; the air was conscious with an appeal of nature,
+vague yet poignant. The young man caught at the strange sympathy that
+seemed to be abroad for his spirit. He walked to his house, courting it,
+troubled by it. They were expecting him that evening at Dr Drummond's,
+and there it was his intention to go. But on his way he would call for
+a moment to see Advena Murchison. He had something to tell her. It would
+be news of interest at Dr Drummond's also; but it was of no consequence,
+within an hour or so, when they should receive it there, while it was
+of great consequence that Advena should hear it at the earliest
+opportunity, and from him. There is no weighing or analysing the burden
+of such a necessity as this. It simply is important: it makes its own
+weight; and those whom it concerns must put aside other matters until
+it has been accomplished. He would tell her: they would accept it for a
+moment together, a moment during which he would also ascertain whether
+she was well and strong, with a good chance of happiness--God protect
+her--in the future that he should not know. Then he would go on to Dr
+Drummond's.
+
+The wind had risen when he went out again; it blew a longer blast,
+and the trees made a steady sonorous rhythm in it. The sky was full of
+clouds that dashed upon the track of a failing moon; there was portent
+everywhere, and a hint of tumult at the end of the street. No two ways
+led from Finlay's house to his first destination. River Street made
+an angle with that on which the Murchisons lived--half a mile to the
+corner, and three-quarters the other way. Drops drove in his face as he
+strode along against the wind, stilling his unquiet heart, that leaped
+before him to that brief interview. As he took the single turning he
+came into the full blast of the veering, irresolute storm. The street
+was solitary and full of the sound of the blown trees, wild and
+uplifting. Far down the figure of a woman wavered before the wind across
+the zone of a blurred lamp-post. She was coming toward him. He bent his
+head and lowered his umbrella and lost sight of her as they approached,
+she with the storm behind her, driven with hardly more resistance than
+the last year's blackened leaves that blew with her, he assailed by it
+and making the best way he could. Certainly the wind was taking her part
+and his, when in another moment her skirt whipped against him and he saw
+her face glimmer out. A mere wreck of lines and shadows it seemed in the
+livid light, with suddenly perceiving eyes and lips that cried his name.
+She had on a hat and a cloak, but carried no umbrella, and her hands
+were bare and wet. Pitifully the storm blew her into his arms, a tossed
+and straying thing that could not speak for sobs; pitifully and with a
+rough incoherent sound he gathered and held her in that refuge. A rising
+fear and a great solicitude laid a finger upon his craving embrace of
+her; he had a sense of something strangely different in her, of the
+unknown irremediable. Yet she was there, in his arms, as she had never
+been before; her plight but made her in a manner sweeter; the storm that
+brought her barricaded them in the empty spaces of the street with a
+divinely entreating solitude. He had been prepared to meet her in the
+lighted decorum of her father's house and he knew what he should say.
+He was not prepared to take her out of the tempest, helpless and weeping
+and lost for the harbour of his heart, and nothing could he say. He
+locked his lips against all that came murmuring to them. But his arms
+tightened about her and he drew her into the shelter of a wall that
+jutted out in the irregular street; and there they stood and clung
+together in a long, close, broken silence that covered the downfall of
+her spirit. It was the moment of their great experience of one another;
+never again, in whatever crisis, could either know so deep, so wonderful
+a fathoming of the other soul. Once as it passed, Advena put up her hand
+and touched his cheek: There were tears on it, and she trembled, and
+wound her arm about his neck, and held up her face to his. "No," he
+muttered, and crushed it against his breast. There without complaint
+she let it lie; she was all submission to him: his blood leaped and his
+spirit groaned with the knowledge of it.
+
+"Why did you come out? Why did you come, dear?" he said at last.
+
+"I don't know. There was such a wind. I could not stay in the house."
+
+She spoke timidly, in a voice that should have been new to him, but that
+it was, above all, her voice.
+
+"I was on my way to you."
+
+"I know. I thought you might perhaps come. If you had not--I think I was
+on my way to you."
+
+It seemed not unnatural.
+
+"Did you find--any message from me when you came?" she asked presently,
+in a quieted, almost a contented tone.
+
+It shot--the message--before his eyes, though he had seen it no message,
+in the preoccupation of his arrival.
+
+"I found a rose on my dressing-table," he told her; and the rose stood
+for him in a wonder of tenderness, looking back.
+
+"I smuggled it in," she confessed, "I knew your old servant--she used
+to be with us. The others--from Dr Drummond's--have been there all day
+making it warm and comfortable for you. I had no right to do anything
+like that, but I had the right, hadn't I, to bring the rose?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered her, hard-pressed, "how we are to bear
+this."
+
+She shrank away from him a little, as if at a glimpse of a surgeon's
+knife.
+
+"We are not to bear it," she said eagerly. "The rose is to tell you
+that. I didn't mean it, when I left it, to be anything more--more than a
+rose; but now I do. I didn't even know when I came out tonight. But
+now I do. We aren't to bear it, Hugh. I don't want it so--now. I
+can't--can't have it so."
+
+She came nearer to him again and caught with her two hands the lapels
+of his coat. He closed his own over them and looked down at her in that
+half-detachment, which still claimed and held her.
+
+"Advena," he whispered, out of the sudden clamour in his mind, "she
+can't be--she isn't--nothing has happened to her?"
+
+She smiled faintly, but her eyes were again full of fear at his
+implication of the only way.
+
+"Oh, no!" she said. "But you have been away, and she has come. I have
+seen her; and oh! she won't care, Hugh--she won't care."
+
+Her asking, straining face seemed to gather and reflect all the light
+there was in the shifting night about them. The rain had stopped, but
+the wind still hurtled past, whirling the leaves from one darkness to
+another. They were as isolated, as outlawed there in the wild wet wind
+as they were in the confusion of their own souls.
+
+"We must care," he said helplessly, clinging to the sound and form of
+the words.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried. "No, no! Indeed I know now what is possible and
+what is not!"
+
+For an instant her eyes searched the rigid lines of his face in
+astonishment. In their struggle to establish the impossible she had been
+so far ahead, so greatly the more confident and daring, had tempted him
+to such heights, scorning every dizzy verge, that now, when she turned
+quite back from their adventure, humbly confessing it too hard, she
+could not understand how he should continue to set himself doggedly
+toward it. Perhaps, too, she trusted unconsciously in her prerogative.
+He loved her, and she him: before she would not, now she would. Before
+she had preferred an ideal to the desire of her heart; now it lay about
+her; her strenuous heart had pulled it down to foolish ruin, and how
+should she lie abased with it and see him still erect and full of the
+deed they had to do?
+
+"Come," he said, "let me take you home, dear," and at that and some
+accent in it that struck again at hope, she sank at his feet in a
+torrent of weeping, clasping them and entreating him, "Oh send her away!
+Send her away!"
+
+He lifted her, and was obliged literally to support her. Her hat had
+fallen off; he stroked her hair and murmured such comfort to her as we
+have for children in their extremity, of which the burden is chiefly
+love and "Don't cry." She grew gradually quieter, drawing one knows not
+what restitution from the intrinsic in him; but there was no pride in
+her, and when she said "Let me go home now," it was the broken word of
+hapless defeat. They struggled together out into the boisterous street,
+and once or twice she failed and had to stop and turn. Then she would
+cling to a wall or a tree, putting his help aside with a gesture in
+which there was again some pitiful trace of renunciation. They went
+almost without a word, each treading upon the heart of the other toward
+the gulf that was to come. They reached it at the Murchisons' gate, and
+there they paused, as briefly as possible, since pause was torture, and
+he told her what he could not tell her before.
+
+"I have accepted the charge of the White Water Mission Station in
+Alberta," he said. "I, too, learned very soon after I left you what was
+possible and what was not. I go as soon as--things can be set in order
+here. Good-bye, my dear love, and may God help us both."
+
+She looked at him with a pitiful effort at a steady lip. "I must try
+to believe it," she said. "And afterward, when it comes true for you,
+remember this--I was ashamed."
+
+Then he saw her pass into her father's house, and he took the road to
+his duty and Dr Drummond's.
+
+His extremity was very great. Through it lines came to him from the
+beautiful archaic inheritance of his Church. He strode along hearing
+them again and again in the dying storm.
+
+   So, I do stretch my hands
+      To Thee my help alone;
+   Thou only understands
+      All my complaint and moan.
+
+He listened to the prayer on the wind, which seemed to offer it for him,
+listened and was gravely touched. But he himself was far from the throes
+of supplication. He was looking for the forces of his soul; and by the
+time he reached Dr Drummond's door we may suppose that he had found
+them.
+
+Sarah who let him in, cried, "How wet you are, Mr Finlay!" and took his
+overcoat to dry in the kitchen. The Scotch ladies, she told him, and
+Mrs Forsyth, had gone out to tea, but they would be back right away, and
+meanwhile "the Doctor" was expecting him in the study--he knew the way.
+
+Finlay did know the way but, as a matter of fact, there had been time
+for him to forget it; he had not crossed Dr Drummond's threshold since
+the night on which the Doctor had done all, as he would have said, that
+was humanly possible to bring him, Finlay, to reason upon the matter of
+his incredible entanglement in Bross. The door at the end of the passage
+was ajar however, as if impatient; and Dr Drummond himself, standing in
+it, heightened that appearance, with his "Come you in, Finlay. Come you
+in!"
+
+The Doctor looked at the young man in a manner even more acute, more
+shrewd, and more kindly than was his wont. His eye searched Finlay
+thoroughly, and his smile seemed to broaden as his glance travelled.
+
+"Man," he said, "you're shivering," and rolled him an armchair near the
+fire. ("The fellow came into the room," he would say, when he told the
+story afterward to the person most concerned, "as if he were going to
+the stake!") "This is extraordinary weather we are having, but I think
+the storm is passing over."
+
+"I hope," said Finlay, "that my aunt and Miss Cameron are well. I
+understand they are out."
+
+"Oh, very well--finely. They're out at present, but you'll see them
+bye-and-bye. An excellent voyage over they had--just the eight days. But
+we'll be doing it in less than that when the new fast line is running to
+Halifax. But four days of actual ocean travelling they say now it will
+take. Four days from imperial shore to shore! That should incorporate
+us--that should bring them out and take us home."
+
+The Doctor had not taken a seat himself, but was pacing the study, his
+thumbs in his waistcoat pockets; and a touch of embarrassment seemed
+added to the inveterate habit.
+
+"I hear the ladies had pleasant weather." Finlay remarked.
+
+"Capital--capital! You won't smoke? I know nothing about these cigars;
+they're some Grant left behind him--a chimney, that man Grant. Well,
+Finlay"--he threw himself into the arm-chair on the other side of the
+hearth--"I don't know what to say to you."
+
+"Surely," said Finlay restively, "it has all been said, sir."
+
+"No, it has not all been said," Dr Drummond retorted. "No, it has
+not. There's more to be said, and you must hear it, Finlay, with such
+patience as you have. But I speak the truth when I say that I don't know
+how to begin."
+
+The young man gave him opportunity, gazing silently into the fire.
+He was hardly aware that Dr Drummond had again left his seat when he
+started violently at a clap on the shoulder.
+
+"Finlay!" exclaimed the Doctor. "You won't be offended? No--you couldn't
+be offended!"
+
+It was half-jocular, half-anxious, wholly inexplicable.
+
+"At what," asked Hugh Finlay, "should I be offended?"
+
+Again, with a deep sigh, the Doctor dropped into his chair. "I see
+I must begin at the beginning," he said. But Finlay, with sudden
+intuition, had risen and stood before him trembling, with a hand against
+the mantelpiece.
+
+"No," he said, "if you have anything to tell me of importance, for God's
+sake begin at the end."
+
+Some vibration in his voice went straight to the heart of the Doctor,
+banishing as it travelled, every irrelevant thing that it encountered.
+
+"Then the end is this, Finlay," he said. "The young woman, Miss Christie
+Cameron, whom you were so wilfully bound and determined to marry, has
+thrown you over--that is, if you will give her back her word--has jilted
+you--that is, if you'll let her away. Has thought entirely better of the
+matter."
+
+("He stared out of his great sockets of eyes as if the sky had fallen,"
+Dr Drummond would say, recounting it.)
+
+"For--for what reason?" asked Finlay, hardly yet able to distinguish
+between the sound of disaster and the sense that lay beneath.
+
+"May I begin at the beginning?" asked the Doctor, and Hugh silently
+nodded.
+
+("He sat there and never took his eyes off me, twisting his fingers. I
+might have been in a confession-box," Dr Drummond would explain to her.)
+
+"She came here, Miss Cameron, with that good woman, Mrs Kilbannon, it
+will be three weeks next Monday," he said, with all the air of beginning
+a story that would be well worth hearing. "And I wasn't very well
+pleased to see her, for reasons that you know. However, that's neither
+here nor there. I met them both at the station, and I own to you that
+I thought when I made Miss Cameron's acquaintance that you were getting
+better than you deserved in the circumstances. You were a thousand miles
+away--now that was a fortunate thing!--and she and Mrs Kilbannon just
+stayed here and made themselves as comfortable as they could. And that
+was so comfortable that anyone could see with half an eye"--the Doctor's
+own eye twinkled--"so far as Miss Cameron was concerned, that she wasn't
+pining in any sense of the word. But I wasn't sorry for you, Finlay, on
+that account." He stopped to laugh enjoyingly, and Finlay blushed like a
+girl.
+
+"I just let matters bide and went about my own business. Though
+after poor Mrs Forsyth here--a good woman enough, but the brains of a
+rabbit--it was pleasant to find these intelligent ladies at every meal,
+and wonderful how quick they were at picking up the differences between
+the points of Church administration here and at home. That was a thing I
+noticed particularly in Miss Cameron.
+
+"Matters went smoothly enough--smoothly enough--till one afternoon that
+foolish creature Advena Murchison"--Finlay started--"came here to pay
+a call on Miss Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon. It was well and kindly meant,
+but it was not a wise-like thing to do. I didn't exactly make it out,
+but it seems that she came all because of you and on account of you; and
+the ladies didn't understand it, and Mrs Kilbannon came to me. My word,
+but there was a woman to deal with! Who was this young lady, and what
+was she to you that she should go anywhere or do anything in your name?
+Without doubt"--he put up a staying hand--"it was foolish of Advena. And
+what sort of freedom, and how far, and why, and what way, and I tell you
+it was no easy matter, to quiet her. 'Is Miss Cameron distressed about
+it?' said I. 'Not a bit,' said she, 'but I am, and I must have the
+rights of this matter,' said she, 'if I have to put it to my nephew
+himself.'
+
+"It was at that point, Finlay, that the idea--just then that the thought
+came into my mind--well I won't say absolutely, but practically for the
+first time--Why can't this matter be arranged on a basis to suit
+all parties? So I said to her, 'Mrs Kilbannon,' I said, 'if you had
+reasonable grounds for it, do you think you could persuade your niece
+not to marry Hugh Finlay?' Wait--patience!" He held up his hand, and
+Finlay gripped the arm of his chair again.
+
+"She just stared at me. 'Are you gone clean daft, Dr Drummond?' she
+said. 'There could be no grounds serious enough for that. I will not
+believe that Hugh Finlay has compromised himself in any way.' I had
+to stop her; I was obliged to tell her there was nothing of the
+kind--nothing of the kind; and later on I'll have to settle with my
+conscience about that. 'I meant,' I said, the reasonable grounds of an
+alternative: 'An alternative?' said she. To cut a long story short,"
+continued the Doctor, leaning forward, always with the finger in his
+waistcoat pocket to emphasize what he said, "I represented to Mrs
+Kilbannon that Miss Cameron was not in sentimental relations toward you,
+that she had some reason to suspect you of having placed your affections
+elsewhere, and that I myself was very much taken up with what I had seen
+of Miss Cameron. In brief, I said to Mrs Kilbannon that if Miss Cameron
+saw no objection to altering the arrangements to admit of it, I should
+be pleased to marry her myself. The thing was much more suitable in
+every way. I was fifty-three years of age last week, I told her, 'but'
+I said, 'Miss Cameron is thirty-six or seven, if she's a day, and Finlay
+there would be like nothing but a grown-up son to her. I can offer her
+a good home and the minister's pew in a church that any woman might be
+proud of--and though far be it from me,' I said, 'to depreciate mission
+work, either home or foreign, Miss Cameron in that field would be little
+less than thrown away. Think it over,' I said.
+
+"Well, she was pleased, I could see that. But she didn't half like the
+idea of changing the original notion. It was leaving you to your own
+devices that weighed most with her against it; she'd set her heart on
+seeing you married with her approval. So I said to her, to make an end
+of it, 'Well, Mrs Kilbannon,' I said, 'suppose we say no more about it
+for the present. I think I see the finger of Providence in this matter;
+but you'll talk it over with Miss Cameron, and we'll all just make it,
+for the next few days, the subject of quiet and sober reflection. Maybe
+at the end of that time I'll think better of it myself, though that is
+not my expectation.'
+
+"'I think,' she said, 'we'll just leave it to Christie.'"
+
+As the Doctor went on with his tale, relaxation had stolen dumbly about
+Finlay's brow and lips. He dropped from the plane of his own absorption
+to the humorous common sense of the recital: it claimed and held him
+with infinite solace. His eyes had something like the light of laughter
+in them, flashing behind a cloud, as he fixed them on Dr Drummond, and
+said, "And did you?"
+
+"We did," said Dr Drummond, getting up once more from his chair, and
+playing complacently with his watch-charms as he took another turn about
+the study. "We left it to Miss Cameron, and the result is"--the Doctor
+stopped sharply and wheeled round upon Finlay--"the result is--why, the
+upshot seems to be that I've cut you out, man!"
+
+Finlay measured the little Doctor standing there twisting his
+watch-chain, beaming with achieved satisfaction, in a consuming desire
+to know how far chance had been kind to him, and how far he had to be
+simply, unspeakably, grateful. He stared in silence, occupied with his
+great debt; it was like him that that, and not his liberty, should be
+first in his mind. We who have not his opportunity may find it more
+difficult to decide; but from our private knowledge of Dr Drummond we
+may remember what poor Finlay probably forgot at the moment, that
+even when pitted against Providence, the Doctor was a man of great
+determination.
+
+The young fellow got up, still speechless, and confronted Dr Drummond.
+He was troubled for something to say; the chambers of his brain seemed
+empty or reiterating foolish sounds. He pressed the hand the minister
+offered him and his lips quivered. Then a light came into his face, and
+he picked up his hat.
+
+"And I'll say this for myself," chuckled Dr Drummond. "It was no hard
+matter."
+
+Finlay looked at him and smiled. "It would not be, sir," he said lamely.
+Dr Drummond cast a shrewd glance at him and dropped the tone of banter.
+
+"Aye--I know! It's no joking matter," he said, and with a hand behind
+the young man's elbow, he half pushed him to the door and took out his
+watch. He must always be starting somebody, something, in the right
+direction, the Doctor. "It's not much after half-past nine, Finlay," he
+said. "I notice the stars are out."
+
+It had the feeling of a colloquial benediction, and Finlay carried it
+with him all the way.
+
+It was nevertheless nearly ten when he reached her father's house,
+so late that the family had dispersed for the night. Yet he had the
+hardihood to ring, and the hour blessed them both, for Advena on the
+stair, catching who knows what of presage out of the sound, turned, and
+found him at the threshold herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+"I understand how you must feel in the matter, Murchison, said Henry
+Cruickshank. "It's the most natural thing in the world that you should
+want to clear yourself definitely, especially as you say, since the
+charges have been given such wide publicity. On the other hand, I think
+it quite possible that you exaggerate the inference that will be drawn
+from our consenting to saw off with the other side on the two principal
+counts."
+
+"The inference will be," said Lorne "that there's not a pin to choose
+between Winter's political honesty and my own. I'm no Pharisee, but
+I don't think I can sit down under that. I can't impair my possible
+usefulness by accepting a slur upon my reputation at the very
+beginning."
+
+"Politics are very impersonal. It wouldn't be remembered a year."
+
+"Winter of course," said young Murchison moodily, "doesn't want to take
+any chances. He knows he's done for if we go on. Seven years for him
+would put him pretty well out of politics. And it would suit him down to
+the ground to fight it over again. There's nothing he would like better
+to see than another writ for South Fox."
+
+"That's all right," the lawyer responded, "but Moneida doesn't look
+altogether pleasant, you know. We may have good grounds for supposing
+that the court will find you clear of that business; but Ormiston, so
+far as I can make out, was playing the fool down there for a week before
+polling-day, and there are three or four Yellow Dogs and Red Feathers
+only too anxious to pay back a grudge on him. We'll have to fight again,
+there's no doubt about that. The only question is whether we'll ruin
+Ormiston first or not. Have you seen Bingham?"
+
+"I know what Bingham thinks," said Lorne, impatiently. "The Squire's
+position is a different consideration. I don't see how I can--However,
+I'll go across to the committee room now and talk it over."
+
+It is doubtful whether young Murchison knew all that Bingham thought;
+Bingham so seldom told it all. There were matters in the back of
+Bingham's mind that prompted him to urge the course that Cruickshank had
+been empowered by the opposing counsel to suggest--party considerations
+that it would serve no useful purpose to talk over with Murchison.
+Bingham put it darkly when he said he had quite as much hay on his
+fork as he cared to tackle already, implying that the defence
+of indiscretions in Moneida was quite an unnecessary addition.
+Contingencies seemed probable, arising out of the Moneida charges that
+might affect the central organization of the party in South Fox to an
+extent wholly out of proportion with the mere necessity of a second
+election. Bingham talked it over with Horace Williams, and both of
+them with Farquharson; they were all there to urge the desirability of
+"sawing off" upon Lorne when he found them at headquarters. Their most
+potent argument was, of course, the Squire and the immediate dismissal
+that awaited him under the law if undue influence were proved against
+him. Other considerations found the newly elected member for South
+Fox obstinate and troublesome, but to that he was bound to listen, and
+before that he finally withdrew his objections. The election would
+come on again, as happened commonly enough. Bingham could point to
+the opening, in a few days, of a big flour-milling industry across
+the river, which would help; operations on the Drill Hall and
+the Post-Office would be hurried on at once, and the local party
+organization would be thoroughly overhauled. Bingham had good reason for
+believing that they could entirely regain their lost ground, and at the
+same time dissipate the dangerous impression that South Fox was being
+undermined. Their candidate gave a reluctant ear to it all, and in the
+end agreed to everything.
+
+So that Chief Joseph Fry--the White Clam Shell of his own lost
+fires--was never allowed the chance of making good the election losses
+of that year, as he had confidently expected to do when the charge came
+on; nor was it given to any of the Yellow Dogs and Red Feathers of Mr
+Cruickshank's citation to boast at the tribal dog-feasts of the future,
+of the occasion on which they had bested "de boss." Neither was any
+further part in public affairs, except by way of jocular reference,
+assigned to Finnigan's cat. The proceedings of the court abruptly
+terminated, the judges reported the desirability of a second contest,
+and the public accepted with a wink. The wink in any form was hateful to
+Lorne Murchison, but he had not to encounter it long.
+
+The young man had changed in none of the aspects he presented to his
+fellow-citizens since the beginning of the campaign. In the public eye
+he wore the same virtues as he wore the same clothes; he summed up even
+a greater measure of success; his popularity was unimpaired. He went as
+keenly about the business of life, handling its details with the same
+capable old drawl. Only his mother, with the divination of mothers,
+declared that since the night of the opera house meeting Lorne had
+been "all worked up." She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was
+solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be
+safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent,
+unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night
+of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office
+work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked
+of a few days' rest when they had settled Winter. He could think of
+nothing but the points he had forgotten when he had his great chance.
+"The flag should have come in at the end," he would say to himself,
+trying vainly to remember where it did come in. He was ill pleased with
+the issue of that occasion; and it was small compensation to be told by
+Stella that his speech gave her shivers up and down her back.
+
+Meanwhile the theory of Empire coursed in his blood, fed by the
+revelation of the future of his country in every newspaper, by the
+calculated prophecies of American onlookers, and by the telegrams which
+repeated the trumpet notes of Wallingham's war upon the mandarinate of
+Great Britain. It occupied him so that he began to measure and limit
+what he had to say about it, and to probe the casual eye for sympathy
+before he would give an inch of rope to his enthusiasm. He found it as
+hard as ever to understand that the public interest should be otherwise
+preoccupied, as it plainly was, that the party organ, terrified of
+Quebec, should shuffle away from the subject with perfunctory and
+noncommittal reference, that among the men he met in the street,
+nobody's blood seemed stirred, whatever the day's news was from England.
+He subscribed to the Toronto Post, the leading organ of the Tories,
+because of its fuller reports and more sympathetic treatment of the
+Idea, due to the fact that the Idea originated in a brain temporarily
+affiliated to the Conservative party. If the departure to imperial
+preference had any damage in it for Canadian interests, it would be
+for those which the Post made its special care; but the spirit of party
+draws the breath of expediency, and the Post flaunting the Union Jack
+every other day, put secondary manufactures aside for future discussion,
+and tickled the wheat-growers with the two-shilling advantage they were
+coming into at the hands of the English Conservatives, until Liberal
+leaders began to be a little anxious about a possible loss of
+wheat-growing votes. It was, as John Murchison said, a queer position
+for everybody concerned; queer enough, no doubt, to admit a Tory journal
+into the house on sufferance and as a special matter; but he had a
+disapproving look for it as it lay on the hall floor, and seldom was the
+first to open it.
+
+Nevertheless Lorne found more satisfaction in talking imperialism with
+his father than with anyone else. While the practical half of John
+Murchison was characteristically alive to the difficulties involved,
+the sentimental half of him was ready at any time to give out cautious
+sparks of sympathy with the splendour of Wallingham's scheme; and he
+liked the feeling that a son of his should hark back in his allegiance
+to the old land. There was a kind of chivalry in the placing of certain
+forms of beauty--political honour and public devotion, which blossomed
+best, it seemed, over there--above the material ease and margin of the
+new country, and even above the grand chance it offered for a man to
+make his mark. Mr Murchison was susceptible to this in anyone, and
+responsive to it in his son.
+
+As to the local party leaders, they had little more than a shrug for the
+subject. So far as they were concerned, there was no Empire and no Idea;
+Wallingham might as well not have been born. It seemed to Lorne that
+they maintained toward him personally a special reticence about it.
+Reticence indeed characterized their behaviour generally during the
+period between the abandonment of the suits and the arrangement of the
+second Liberal convention. They had little advice for him about his
+political attitude, little advice about anything. He noticed that his
+presence on one or two occasions seemed to embarrass them, and that his
+arrival would sometimes have a disintegrating effect upon a group in the
+post-office or at a street corner. He added it, without thinking, to his
+general heaviness; they held it a good deal against him, he supposed, to
+have reduced their proud standing majority to a beggarly two figures; he
+didn't blame them.
+
+I cannot think that the sum of these depressions alone would have
+been enough to overshadow so buoyant a soul as Lorne Murchison's.
+The characteristics of him I have tried to convey were grafted on an
+excellent fund of common sense. He was well aware of the proportions of
+things; he had no despair of the Idea, nor would he despair should the
+Idea etherealize and fly away. Neither had he, for his personal honour,
+any morbid desires toward White Clam Shell or Finnigan's cat. His luck
+had been a good deal better than it might have been; he recognized that
+as fully as any sensible young man could, and as for the Great Chance,
+and the queer grip it had on him, he would have argued that too if
+anyone had approached him curiously about it. There I think we might
+doubt his conclusions. There is nothing subtler, more elusive to trace
+than the intercurrents of the emotions. Politics and love are thought
+of at opposite poles, and Wallingham perhaps would have laughed to know
+that he owed an exalted allegiance in part to a half-broken heart. Yet
+the impulse that is beyond our calculation, the thing we know potential
+in the blood but not to be summoned or conditioned, lies always in the
+shadow of the ideal; and who can analyse that, and say, "Of this class
+is the will to believe in the integrity of the beloved and false;
+of that is the desire to lift a nation to the level of its
+mountain-ranges"? Both dispositions have a tendency to overwork the
+heart; and it is easy to imagine that they might interact. Lorne
+Murchison's wish, which was indeed a burning longing and necessity,
+to believe in the Dora Milburn of his passion, had been under a strain
+since the night on which he brought her the pledge which she refused
+to wear. He had hardly been conscious of it in the beginning, but by
+constant suggestion it had grown into his knowledge, and for weeks he
+had taken poignant account of it. His election had brought him no nearer
+a settlement with her objection to letting the world know of their
+relations. The immediate announcement that it was to be disputed gave
+Dora another chance, and once again postponed the assurance that he
+longed for with a fever which was his own condemnation of her, if he
+could have read that sign. For months he had seen so little of her, had
+so altered his constant habit of going to the Milburns', that his family
+talked of it, wondering among themselves; and Stella indulged in hopeful
+speculations. They did not wonder or speculate at the Milburns'. It was
+an axiom there that it is well to do nothing rashly.
+
+Lorne, in the office on Market Street, had been replying to Mr Fulke to
+the effect that the convention could hardly be much longer postponed,
+but that as yet he had no word of the date of it when the telephone bell
+rang and Mr Farquharson's voice at the other end asked him to come over
+to the committee room. "They've decided about it now, I imagine,"
+he told his senior, putting on his hat; and something of the wonted
+fighting elation came upon him as he went down the stairs. He was right
+in his supposition. They had decided about it, and they were waiting,
+in a group that made every effort to look casual, to tell him when he
+arrived.
+
+They had delegated what Horace Williams called "the job" to Mr
+Farquharson, and he was actually struggling with the preliminaries of
+it, when Bingham, uncomfortable under the curious quietude of the young
+fellow's attention, burst out with the whole thing.
+
+"The fact is, Murchison, you can't poll the vote. There's no man in the
+Riding we'd be better pleased to send to the House; but we've got to win
+this election, and we can't win it with you."
+
+"You think you can't?" said Lorne.
+
+"You see, old man," Horace Williams put in, "you didn't get rid of that
+save-the-Empire-or-die scheme of yours soon enough. People got to think
+you meant something by it."
+
+"I shall never get rid of it," Lorne returned simply, and the others
+looked at one another.
+
+"The popular idea seems to be," said Mr Farquharson judicially, "that
+you would not hesitate to put Canada to some material loss, or at least
+to postpone her development in various important directions, for the
+sake of the imperial connection."
+
+"Wasn't that," Lorne asked him, "what, six months ago, you were all
+prepared to do?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Bingham, with the air of repudiating for everybody
+concerned. "Not for a cent. We were willing at one time to work it
+for what is was worth, but it never was worth that, and if you'd had a
+little more experience, Murchison, you'd have realized it."
+
+"That's right, Lorne," contributed Horace Williams. "Experience--that's
+all you want. You've got everything else, and a darned sight more. We'll
+get you there, all in good time. But this time--"
+
+"You want me to step down and out," said Lorne.
+
+"That's for you to say," Bingham told him. "We can nominate you again
+all right, but we're afraid we can't get you the convention. Young and
+Windle have been working like moles for the past ten days--"
+
+"For Carter?" interrupted Lorne: "Carter, of course."
+
+They nodded. Carter stood the admitted fact.
+
+"I'm sorry it's Carter," said Lorne thoughtfully. "However--" And he
+dropped, staring before him, into silence. The others eyed him from
+serious, underhung faces. Horace Williams, with an obvious effort, got
+up and clapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Brace up, old chap," he said. "You made a blame good fight for us, and
+we'll do the same for you another day."
+
+"However, gentlemen," the young man gathered himself up to say, "I
+believe I understand the situation. You are my friends and this is your
+advice. We must save the seat. I'll see Carter. If I can get anything
+out of him to make me think he'll go straight on the scheme to save the
+Empire"--he smiled faintly--"when it comes to a vote, I'll withdraw in
+his favour at the convention. Horace here will think up something for
+me--any old lie will do, I suppose? In any case, of course, I withdraw."
+
+He took his hat, and they all got up, startled a little at the quick
+and simple close of the difficult scene they had anticipated. Horace
+Williams offered his hand.
+
+"Shake, Lorne," he said, and the other two, coming nearer, followed his
+example.
+
+"Why, yes," said Lorne.
+
+He left them with a brief excuse, and they stood together in a moment's
+silence, three practical politicians who had delivered themselves from a
+dangerous network involving higher things.
+
+"Dash these heart-to-heart talks," said Bingham irritably, "it's the
+only thing to do, but why the devil didn't he want something out of it?
+I had that Registrarship in my inside pocket."
+
+"If anybody likes to kick me round the room," remarked Horace Williams
+with depression, "I have no very strong objection."
+
+"And now," Mr Farquharson said with a sigh, "we understand it's got
+to be Carter. I suppose I'm too old a man to do jockey for a
+three-year-old, but I own I've enjoyed the ride."
+
+Lorne Murchison went out into the companionship of Main Street, the new
+check in his fortunes hanging before him. We may imagine that it hung
+heavily; we may suppose that it cut off the view. As Bingham would have
+said, he was "up against it" and that, when one is confidently treading
+the straight path to accomplishment, is a dazing experience. He was
+up against it, yet already he had recoiled far enough to consider it;
+already he was adapting his heart, his nerves, and his future to it.
+His heart took it greatly, told him he had not yet force enough for the
+business he had aspired to, but gave him a secret assurance. Another
+time he would find more strength and show more cunning; he would not
+disdain the tools of diplomacy and desirability, he would dream no more
+of short cuts in great political departures. His heart bowed to its
+sorry education and took counsel with him, bidding him be of good
+courage and push on. He was up against it, but he would get round it,
+and there on the other side lay the same wide prospect, with the
+Idea shining high. At one point he faltered, but that was a matter of
+expediency rather than of courage. He searched and selected, as he went
+along the street, among phrases that would convey his disaster to Dora
+Milburn.
+
+Just at that point, the turning to his own office, he felt it hard luck
+that Alfred Hesketh should meet and want a word with him. Hesketh had
+become tolerable only when other things were equal. Lorne had not seen
+him since the night of his election, when his felicitations had seemed
+to stand for very little one way or another. His manner now was more
+important charged with other considerations. Lorne waited on the
+word, uncomfortably putting off the necessity of coming out with his
+misfortune.
+
+"I haven't come across you, Murchison, but you've had my sympathy, I
+needn't say, all this time. A man can't go into politics with gloves
+on, there's no doubt about that. Though mind you, I never for a moment
+believed that you let yourself in personally. I mean, I've held you all
+through, above the faintest suspicion."
+
+"Have you?" said Lorne. "Well, I suppose I ought to be grateful."
+
+"Oh, I have--I assure you! But give me a disputed election for the
+revelation of a rotten state of things--eh?"
+
+"It does show up pretty low, doesn't it?"
+
+"However, upon my word, I don't know whether it's any better in England.
+At bottom we've got a lower class to deal with, you know. I'm
+beginning to have a great respect for the electorate of this country,
+Murchison--not necessarily the methods, but the rank and file of the
+people. They know what they want, and they're going to have it."
+
+"Yes," said Lorne, "I guess they are."
+
+"And that brings me to my news, old man. I've given the matter a lot of
+time and a lot of consideration, and I've decided that I can't do better
+than drive in a stake for myself in this new country of yours."
+
+"It isn't so very new," Lorne told him, in rather dull response, "but I
+expect that's a pretty good line to take. Why, yes--first rate."
+
+"As to the line," Hesketh went on, weightily, leading the way through
+an encumbering group of farmers at a corner, "I've selected that, too.
+Traction-engines. Milburn has never built them yet, but he says the
+opportunity is ripe--"
+
+"Milburn!" Lorne wheeled sharply.
+
+"My future partner. He was planning extensions just as I came along, a
+fortunate moment, I hope it will prove, for us both. I'd like to go
+into it with you, some time when you have leisure--it's a scheme of
+extraordinary promise. By the way, there's an idea in it that ought to
+appeal to you--driving the force that's to subdue this wilderness of
+yours."
+
+"When you've lived here for a while," said Lorne, painfully preoccupied,
+"you'll think it quite civilized. So you're going in with Milburn?"
+
+"Oh, I'm proud of it already! I shall make a good Canadian, I trust. And
+as good an imperialist," he added, "as is consistent with the claims of
+my adopted country."
+
+"That seems to be the popular view," said Lorne.
+
+"And a very reasonable view, too. But I'm not going to embark on that
+with you, old fellow--you shan't draw me in. I know where you are on
+that subject."
+
+"So do I--I'm stranded. But it's all right--the subject isn't," Lorne
+said quietly; and Hesketh's exclamations and inquiries brought out the
+morning's reverse. The young Englishman was cordially sorry, full
+of concern and personal disappointment, abandoning his own absorbing
+affairs, and devoting his whole attention to the unfortunate exigency
+which Lorne dragged out of his breast, in pure manfulness, to lay before
+him.
+
+However, they came to the end of it, arriving at the same time at
+the door which led up the stairs to the office of Fulke, Warner, and
+Murchison.
+
+"Thank you," said Lorne. '"Thank you. Oh, I dare say it will come all
+right in the course of time. You return to England, I suppose--or do
+you?--before you go in with Milburn?"
+
+"I sail next week," said Hesketh, and a great relief shot into the face
+of his companion. "I have a good deal to see to over there. I shan't
+get back much before June, I fancy. And--I must tell you--I am doing the
+thing very thoroughly. This business of naturalizing myself, I mean. I
+am going to marry that very charming girl--a great friend of yours, by
+the way, I know her to be--Miss Milburn."
+
+For accepting the strokes of fate we have curiously trivial
+demonstrations. Lorne met Hesketh's eye with the steadiness of a lion's
+in his own; the unusual thing he did was to take his hands out of his
+pockets and let his arms hang loosely by his side. It was as tragic a
+gesture of helplessness as if he had flung them above his head.
+
+"Dora is going to marry you?"
+
+"I believe she will do me that honour. And I consider it an honour.
+Miss Milburn will compare with any English girl I ever met. But I
+half expected you to congratulate me. I know she wrote to you this
+morning--you were one of the first."
+
+"I shall probably find the letter," said Lorne mechanically, "when I go
+home."
+
+He still eyed Hesketh narrowly, as if he had somewhere concealed about
+him the explanation of this final bitter circumstance. He had a desire
+not to leave him, to stand and parley--to go upstairs to the office
+would be to plunge into the gulf. He held back from that and leaned
+against the door frame, crossing his arms and looking over into the
+market-place for subjects to postpone Hesketh's departure. They talked
+of various matters in sight, Hesketh showing the zest of his newly
+determined citizenship in every observation--the extension of the
+electric tramway, the pulling down of the old Fire Hall. In one
+consciousness Lorne made concise and relevant remarks; in another he sat
+in a spinning dark world and waited for the crash.
+
+It seemed to come when Hesketh said, preparing to go, "I'll tell Miss
+Milburn I saw you. I suppose this change in your political prospects
+won't affect your professional plans in any way you'll stick on here, at
+the Bar?"
+
+It was the very shock of calamity, and for the instant he could see
+nothing in the night of it but one far avenue of escape, a possibility
+he had never thought of seriously until that moment. The conception
+seemed to form itself on his lips, to be involuntary.
+
+"I don't know. A college friend has been pressing me for some time to
+join him in Milwaukee. He offers me plenty of work, and I am thinking
+seriously of closing with him."
+
+"Go over to the United States? You can't mean that!"
+
+"Oh yes--it's the next best thing!"
+
+Hesketh's face assumed a gravity, a look of feeling and of remonstrance.
+He came a step nearer and put a hand on his companion's arm.
+
+"Come now, Murchison," he said, "I ask you--is this a time to be
+thinking of chucking the Empire?"
+
+Lorne moved farther into the passage with an abruptness which left his
+interlocutor staring. He stood there for a moment in silence, and then
+turned to mount the stair with a reply which a passing dray happily
+prevented from reaching Hesketh's ears.
+
+"No, damn you," he said. "It's not!"
+
+I cannot let him finish on that uncontrolled phrase, though it will be
+acknowledged that his provocation was great. Nor must we leave him in
+heavy captivity to the thought of oblivion in the unregarding welter
+of the near republic, of plunging into more strenuous activities and
+abandoning his ideal, in queer inverted analogy to the refuging of weak
+women in a convent. We know that his ideal was strong enough to reassert
+itself, under a keen irony of suggestion, in the very depth of his
+overwhelming: and the thing that could rise in him at that black moment
+may be trusted, perhaps, to reclaim his fortitude and reconsecrate his
+energy when these things come again into the full current of his life.
+The illness that, after two or three lagging days, brought him its
+merciful physical distraction was laid in the general understanding
+at the door of his political disappointment; and, among a crowd
+of sympathizers confined to no party, Horace Williams, as his wife
+expressed it, was pretty nearly wild during its progress. The power of
+the press is regrettably small in such emergencies, but what restoration
+it had Horace anxiously administered; the Express published a daily
+bulletin. The second election passed only half-noticed by the Murchison
+family; Carter very nearly re-established the Liberal majority. The
+Dominion dwelt upon this repeated demonstration of the strength of
+Reform principles in South Fox, and Mrs Murchison said they were welcome
+to Carter.
+
+Many will sympathize with Mrs Murchison at this point, I hope, and
+regret to abandon her in such equivocal approval of the circumstances
+which have arisen round her. Too anxiously occupied at home to take her
+share in the general pleasant sensation of Dr Drummond's marriage, she
+was compelled to give it a hurried consideration and a sanction which
+was practically wrested from her. She could not be clear as to the
+course of events that led to it, nor entirely satisfied, as she said,
+about the ins and outs of the affair; this although she felt she could
+be clearer, and possibly had better grounds for being satisfied, than
+other people. As to Advena's simple statement that Miss Cameron had
+made a second choice of the Doctor, changing her mind, as far as Mrs
+Murchison could see, without rhyme or reason, that Mrs Murchison took
+leave to find a very poor explanation. Advena's own behaviour toward
+the rejection is one of the things which her mother declares, probably
+truly, that she never will understand. To pick up a man in the actual
+fling of being thrown over, will never, in Mrs Murchison's eyes,
+constitute a decorous proceeding. I suppose she thinks the creature
+might have been made to wait at least until he had found his feet. She
+professes to cherish no antagonism to her future son-in-law on this
+account, although, as she says, it's a queer way to come into a family;
+and she makes no secret of her belief that Miss Cameron showed excellent
+judgement in doing as she did, however that far-seeing woman came to
+have the opportunity.
+
+Hesketh had sailed before Lorne left his room, to return in June to
+those privileges and prospects of citizenship which he so eminently
+deserves to enjoy. When her brother's convalescence and departure for
+Florida had untied her tongue, Stella widely proclaimed her opinion that
+Mr Hesketh's engagement to Miss Milburn was the most suitable thing that
+could be imagined or desired. We know the youngest Miss Murchison to be
+inclined to impulsive views; but it would be safe, I think, to follow
+her here. Now that the question no longer circles in the actual vortex
+of Elgin politics Mr Octavius Milburn's attitude toward the
+conditions of imperial connection has become almost as mellow as
+ever. Circumstances may arise any day, however, to stir up that latent
+bitterness which is so potential in him: and then I fear there will be
+no restraining him from again attacking Wallingham in the papers.
+
+Henry Cruickshank, growing old in his eminence and less secure, perhaps,
+in the increasing conflict of loud voices, of his own grasp of the
+ultimate best, fearing too, no doubt, the approach of that cynicism
+which, moral or immoral, is the real hoar of age, wrote to young
+Murchison while he was still examining the problems of the United States
+with the half-heart of the alien, and offered him a partnership. The
+terms were so simple and advantageous as only to be explicable on the
+grounds I have mentioned, though no phrase suggested them in the brief
+formulas of the letter, in which one is tempted to find the individual
+parallel of certain propositions of a great government also growing old.
+The offer was accepted, not without emotion, and there, too, it would
+be good to trace the parallel, were we permitted; but for that it is too
+soon, or perhaps it is too late. Here, for Lorne and for his country,
+we lose the thread of destiny. The shuttles fly, weaving the will of the
+nations, with a skein for ever dipped again; and he goes forth to his
+share in the task among those by whose hand and direction the pattern
+and the colours will be made.
+
+
+END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Imperialist, by 
+(a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IMPERIALIST ***
+
+***** This file should be named 5301.txt or 5301.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/0/5301/
+
+Produced by Gardner Buchanan
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.