The Imperialist (26 page)

“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 bye-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.

M
r. 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. Mean while, 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 everyday 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 hap pens 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.”