The station and hotel at Sicamous Junction, overlooking the lovely Mara lake, were full of people--busy officials of different kinds, or excited on-lookers--when Anderson reached them. The long summer day was just passing into a night that was rather twilight than darkness, and in the lower country the heat was great. Far away to the north stretched the wide and straggling waters of another and larger lake. Woods of poplar and cottonwood grew along its swampy shore, and hills, forest clad, held it in a shallow cup flooded with the mingled light of sunset and moonlight.
Anderson was met by a district superintendent, of the name of Dixon, as he descended from the train. The young man, with whom he was slightly acquainted, looked at him with excitement.
"This is a precious bad business! If you can throw any light upon it, Mr. Anderson, we shall be uncommonly obliged to you--"
Anderson interrupted him.
"Is the inquest to be held here?"
"Certainly. The bodies were brought in a few hours ago."
His companion pointed to a shed beyond the station. They walked thither, the Superintendent describing in detail the attack on the train and the measures taken for the capture of the marauders, Anderson listening in silence. The affair had taken place early that morning, but the telegraph wires had been cut in several places on both sides of the damaged line, so that no precise news of what had happened had reached either Vancouver on the west, or Golden on the east, till the afternoon. The whole countryside was now in movement, and a vigorous man-hunt was proceeding on both sides of the line.
"There is no doubt the whole thing was planned by a couple of men from Montana, one of whom was certainly concerned in the hold-up there a few months ago and got clean away. But there were six or seven of them altogether and most of the rest--we suspect--from this side of the boundary. The old man who was killed"--Anderson raised his eyes abruptly to the speaker--"seems to have come from Nevada. There were some cuttings from a Nevada newspaper found upon him, besides the envelope addressed to you, of which I sent you word at Roger's Pass. Could you recognise anything in my description of the man? There was one thing I forgot to say. He had evidently been in the doctor's hands lately. There is a surgical bandage on the right ankle."
"Was there nothing in the envelope?" asked Anderson, putting the question aside, in spite of the evident eagerness of the questioner.
"Nothing."
"And where is it?"
"It was given to the Kamloops coroner, who has just arrived." Anderson said nothing more. They had reached the shed, which his companion unlocked. Inside were two rough tables on trestles and lying on them two sheeted forms.
Dixon uncovered the first, and Anderson looked steadily down at the face underneath. Death had wrought its strange ironic miracle once more, and out of the face of an outcast had made the face of a sage. There was little disfigurement; the eyes were closed with dignity; the mouth seemed to have unlearnt its coarseness. Silently the tension of Anderson's inner being gave way; he was conscious of a passionate acceptance of the mere stillness and dumbness of death.
"Where was the wound?" he asked, stooping over the body.
"Ah, that was the strange thing! He didn't die of his wound at all! It was a mere graze on the arm." The Superintendent pointed to a rent on the coat-sleeve. "He died of something quite different--perhaps excitement and a weak heart. There may have to be a post-mortem."
"I doubt whether that will be necessary," said Anderson.
The other looked at him with undisguised curiosity.
"Then you do recognise him?"
"I will tell the coroner what I know."
Anderson drew back from his close examination of the dead face, and began in his turn to question the Superintendent. Was it certain that this man had been himself concerned in the hold-up and in the struggle with the police?
Dixon could not see how there could be any doubt of it. The constables who had rushed in upon the gang while they were still looting the express car--the brakesman having managed to get away and convey the alarm to Kamloops--remembered seeing an old man with white hair, apparently lame, at the rear of the more active thieves, and posted as sentinel. He had been the first to give warning of the police approach, and had levelled his revolver at the foremost constable but had missed his shot. In the free firing which had followed nobody exactly knew what had happened. One of the attacking force, Constable Brown, had fallen, and while his comrades were attempting to save him, the thieves had dropped down the steep bank of the river close by, into a boat waiting for them, and got off. The constable was left dead upon the ground, and not far from him lay the old man, also lifeless. But when they came to examine the bodies, while the constable was shot through the head, the other had received nothing but the trifling wound Dixon had already pointed out.
Anderson listened to the story in silence. Then with a last long look at the rigid features below him, he replaced the covering. Passing on to the other table, he raised the sheet from the face of a splendid young Englishman, whom he had last seen the week before at Regina; an English public-school boy of the manliest type, full of hope for himself, and of enthusiasm, both for Canada and for the fine body of men in which he had been just promoted. For the first time a stifled groan escaped from Anderson's lips. What hand had done this murder?
They left the shed. Anderson inquired what doctor had been sent for. He recognised the name given as that of a Kamloops man whom he knew and respected; and he went on to look for him at the hotel.
For some time he and the doctor paced a trail beside the line together. Among other facts that Anderson got from this conversation, he learnt that the American authorities had been telegraphed to, and that a couple of deputy sheriffs were coming to assist the Canadian police. They were expected the following morning, when also the coroner's inquest would be held.
As to Anderson's own share in the interview, when the two men parted, with a silent grasp of the hand, the Doctor had nothing to say to the bystanders, except that Mr. Anderson would have some evidence to give on the morrow, and that, for himself, he was not at liberty to divulge what had passed between them.
It was by this time late. Anderson shut himself up in his room at the hotel; but among the groups lounging at the bar or in the neighbourhood of the station excitement and discussion ran high. The envelope addressed to Anderson, Anderson's own demeanour since his arrival on the scene--with the meaning of both conjecture was busy.
Towards midnight a train arrived from Field. A messenger from the station knocked at Anderson's door with a train letter. Anderson locked the door again behind the man who had brought it, and stood looking at it a moment in silence. It was from Lady Merton. He opened it slowly, took it to the small deal table, which held a paraffin lamp, and sat down to read it.
"Dear Mr. Anderson--Mr. Delaine has given me your message and read me some of your letter to him. He has also told me what he knew before this happened--we understood that you wished it. Oh! I cannot say how very sorry we are, Philip and I, for your great trouble. It makes me sore at heart to think that all the time you have been looking after us so kindly, taking this infinite pains for us, you have had this heavy anxiety on your mind. Oh, why didn't you tell me! I thought we were to be friends. And now this tragedy! It is terrible--terrible! Your father has been his own worst enemy--and at last death has come,--and he has escaped himself. Is there not some comfort in that? And you tried to save him. I can imagine all that you have been doing and planning for him. It is not lost, dear Mr. Anderson. No love and pity are ever lost. They are undying--for they are God's life in us. They are the pledge--the sign--to which He is eternally bound. He will surely, surely, redeem--and fulfil."I write incoherently, for they are waiting for my letter. I want you to write to me, if you will. And when will you come back to us? We shall, I think, be two or three days here, for Philip has made friends with a man we have met here--a surveyor, who has been camping high up, and shooting wild goat. He is determined to go for an expedition with him, and I had to telegraph to the Lieutenant-Governor to ask him not to expect us till Thursday. So if you were to come back here before then you would still find us. I don't know that I could be of any use to you, or any consolation to you. But, indeed, I would try."To-morrow I am told will be the inquest. My thoughts will be with you constantly. By now you will have determined on your line of action. I only know that it will be noble and upright--like yourself."I remain, yours most sincerely""ELIZABETH MERTON."
Anderson pressed the letter to his lips. Its tender philosophising found no echo in his own mind. But it soothed, because it came from her.
He lay dressed and wakeful on his bed through the night, and at nine next morning the inquest opened, in the coffee-room of the hotel.
The body of the young constable was first identified. As to the hand which had fired the shot that killed him, there was no certain evidence; one of the police had seen the lame man with the white hair level his revolver again after the first miss; but there was much shooting going on, and no one could be sure from what quarter the fatal bullet had come.
The court then proceeded to the identification of the dead robber. The coroner, a rancher who bred the best horses in the district, called first upon two strangers in plain clothes, who had arrived by the first train from the South that morning. They proved to be the two officers from Nevada. They had already examined the body, and they gave clear and unhesitating evidence, identifying the old man as one Alexander McEwen, well known to the police of the silver-mining State as a lawless and dangerous character. He had been twice in jail, and had been the associate of the notorious Bill Symonds in one or two criminal affairs connected with "faked" claims and the like. The elder of the two officers in particular drew a vivid and damning picture of the man's life and personality, of the cunning with which he had evaded the law, and the ruthlessness with which he had avenged one or two private grudges.
"We have reason to suppose," said the American officer finally, "that McEwen was not originally a native of the States. We believe that he came from Dawson City or the neighbourhood about ten years ago, and that he crossed the border in consequence of a mysterious affair--which has never been cleared up--in which a rich German gentleman, Baron von Aeschenbach, disappeared, and has not been heard of since. Of that, however, we have no proof, and we cannot supply the court with any information as to the man's real origin and early history. But we are prepared to swear that the body we have seen this morning is that of Alexander McEwen, who for some years past has been well known to us, now in one camp, now in another, of the Comstock district."
The American police officer resumed his seat. George Anderson, who was to the right of the coroner, had sat, all through this witness's evidence, bending forward, his eyes on the ground, his hands clasped between his knees. There was something in the rigidity of his attitude, which gradually compelled the attention of the onlookers, as though the perception gained ground that here--in that stillness--those bowed shoulders--lay the real interest of this sordid outrage, which had so affronted the pride of Canada's great railway.
The coroner rose. He briefly expressed the thanks of the court to the Nevada State authorities for having so promptly supplied the information in their possession in regard to this man McEwen. He would now ask Mr. George Anderson, of the C.P.R., whether he could in any way assist the court in this investigation. An empty envelope, fully addressed to Mr. George Anderson, Ginnell's Boarding House, Laggan, Alberta, had, strangely enough, been found in McEwen's pocket. Could Mr. Anderson throw any light upon the matter?
Anderson stood up as the coroner handed him the envelope. He took it, looked at it, and slowly put it down on the table before him. He was perfectly composed, but there was that in his aspect which instantly hushed all sounds in the crowded room, and drew the eyes of everybody in it upon him. The Kamloops doctor looked at him from a distance with a sudden twitching smile--the smile of a reticent man in whom strong feeling must somehow find a physical expression. Dixon, the young Superintendent, bent forward eagerly. At the back of the room a group of Japanese railway workers, with their round, yellow faces and half-opened eyes stared impassively at the tall figure of the fair-haired Canadian; and through windows and doors, thrown open to the heat, shimmered lake and forest, the eternal background of Canada.
"Mr. Coroner," said Anderson, straightening himself to his full height, "the name of the man into whose death you are inquiring is not Alexander McEwen. He came from Scotland to Manitoba in 1869. His real name was Robert Anderson, and I--am his son."
The coroner gave an involuntary "Ah!" of amazement, which was echoed, it seemed, throughout the room.
On one of the small deal tables belonging to the coffee-room, which had been pushed aside to make room for the sitting of the court, lay the newspapers of the morning--theVancouver Sentineland theMontreal Star. Both contained short and flattering articles on the important Commission entrusted to Mr. George Anderson by the Prime Minister. "A great compliment to so young a man," said theStar, "but one amply deserved by Mr. Anderson's record. We look forward on his behalf to a brilliant career, honourable both to himself and to Canada."
Several persons had already knocked at Anderson's door early that morning in order to congratulate him; but without finding him. And this honoured and fortunate person--?
Men pushed each other forward in their eagerness not to lose a word, or a shade of expression on the pale face which confronted them.
Anderson, after a short pause, as though to collect himself, gave the outlines of his father's early history, of the farm in Manitoba, the fire and its consequences, the breach between Robert Anderson and his sons. He described the struggle of the three boys on the farm, their migration to Montreal in search of education, and his own later sojourn in the Yukon, with the evidence which had convinced him of his father's death.
"Then, only a fortnight ago, he appeared at Laggan and made himself known to me, having followed me apparently from Winnipeg. He seemed to be in great poverty, and in bad health. If he had wished it, I was prepared to acknowledge him; but he seemed not to wish it; there were no doubt reasons why he preferred to keep his assumed name. I did what I could for him, and arrangements had been made to put him with decent people at Vancouver. But last Wednesday night he disappeared from the boarding house where he and I were both lodging, and various persons here will know"--he glanced at one or two faces in the ring before him--"that I have been making inquiries since, with no result. As to what or who led him into this horrible business, I know nothing. The Nevada deputies have told you that he was acquainted with Symonds--a fact unknown to me--and I noticed on one or two occasions that he seemed to have acquaintances among the men tramping west to the Kootenay district. I can only imagine that after his success in Montana last year, Symonds made up his mind to try the same game on the C.P.R., and that during the last fortnight he came somehow into communication with my father. My father must have been aware of Symonds's plans--and may have been unable at the last to resist the temptation to join in the scheme. As to all that I am entirely in the dark."
He paused, and then, looking down, he added, under his breath, as though involuntarily--"I pray--that he may not have been concerned in the murder of poor Brown. But there is--I think--no evidence to connect him with it. I shall be glad to answer to the best of my power any questions that the court may wish to put."
He sat down heavily, very pale, but entirely collected. The room watched him a moment, and then a friendly, encouraging murmur seemed to rise from the crowd--to pass from them to Anderson.
The coroner, who was an old friend of Anderson's, fidgeted a little and in silence. He took off his glasses and put them on again. His tanned face, long and slightly twisted, with square harsh brows, and powerful jaw set in a white fringe of whisker, showed an unusual amount of disturbance. At last he said, clearing his throat: "We are much obliged to you, Mr. Anderson, for your frankness towards this court. There's not a man here that don't feel for you, and don't wish to offer you his respectful sympathy. We know you--and I reckon we know what to think about you. Gentlemen," he spoke with nasal deliberation, looking round the court, "I think that's so?"
A shout of consent--the shout of men deeply moved--went up. Anderson, who had resumed his former attitude, appeared to take no notice, and the coroner resumed.
"I will now call on Mrs. Ginnell to give her evidence."
The Irishwoman rose with alacrity--what she had to say held the audience. The surly yet good-hearted creature was divided between her wish to do justice to the demerits of McEwen, whom she had detested, and her fear of hurting Anderson's feelings in public. Beneath her rough exterior, she carried some of the delicacies of Celtic feeling, and she had no sooner given some fact that showed the coarse dishonesty of the father, than she veered off in haste to describe the pathetic efforts of the son. Her homely talk told; the picture grew.
Meanwhile Anderson sat impatient or benumbed, annoyed with Mrs. Ginnell's garrulity, and longing for the whole thing to end. He had a letter to write to Ottawa before post-time.
When the verdicts had been given, the doctor and he walked away from the court together. The necessary formalities were carried through, a coffin ordered, and provision made for the burial of Robert Anderson. As the two men passed once or twice through the groups now lounging and smoking as before outside the hotel, all conversation ceased, and all eyes followed Anderson. Sincere pity was felt for him; and at the same time men asked each other anxiously how the revelation would affect his political and other chances.
Late in the same evening the burial of McEwen took place. A congregational minister at the graveside said a prayer for mercy on the sinner. Anderson had not asked him to do it, and felt a dull resentment of the man's officiousness, and the unctious length of his prayer. Half an hour later he was on the platform, waiting for the train to Glacier.
He arrived there in the first glorious dawn of a summer morning. Over the vast Illecillowaet glacier rosy feather-clouds were floating in a crystal air, beneath a dome of pale blue. Light mists rose from the forests and the course of the river, and above them shone the dazzling snows, the hanging glaciers, and glistening rock faces, ledge piled on ledge, of the Selkirk giants--Hermit and Tupper, Avalanche and Sir Donald--with that cleft of the pass between.
The pleasant hotel, built to offer as much shelter and comfort as possible to the tired traveller and climber, was scarcely awake. A sleepy-eyed Japanese showed Anderson to his room. He threw himself on the bed, longing for sleep, yet incapable of it. He was once more under the same roof with Elizabeth Merton--and for the last time! He longed for her presence, her look, her touch; and yet with equal intensity he shrank from seeing her. That very morning through the length of Canada and the States would go out the news of the train-robbery on the main line of the C.P.R., and with it the "dramatic" story of himself and his father, made more dramatic by a score of reporters. And as the news of his appointment, in the papers of the day before, had made him a public person, and had been no doubt telegraphed to London and Europe, so also would it be with the news of the "hold-up," and his own connection with it; partly because it had happened on the C.P.R.; still more because of the prominence given to his name the day before.
He felt himself a disgraced man; and he had already put from him all thought of a public career. Yet he wondered, not without self-contempt, as he lay there in the broadening light, what it was in truth that made the enormous difference between this Monday and the Monday before. His father was dead, and had died in the very commission of a criminal act. But all or nearly all that Anderson knew now about his character he had known before this happened. The details given by the Nevada officers were indeed new to him; but he had shrewdly suspected all along that the record, did he know it, would be something like that. If such a parentage in itself involves stain and degradation, the stain and degradation had been always there, and the situation, looked at philosophically, was no worse for the catastrophe which had intervened between this week and last.
And yet it was of course immeasurably worse! Such is the "bubble reputation"--the difference between the known and the unknown.
At nine o'clock a note was brought to his room:
"Will you breakfast with me in half an hour? You will find me alone."E.M."
Before the clock struck the half-hour, Elizabeth was already waiting for her guest, listening for every sound. She too had been awake half the night.
When he came in she went up to him, with her quick-tripping step, holding out both her hands; and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
"I am so--so sorry!" was all she could say. He looked into her eyes, and as her hands lay in his he stooped suddenly and kissed them. There was a great piteousness in his expression, and she felt through every nerve the humiliation and the moral weariness which oppressed him. Suddenly she recalled that first moment of intimacy between them when he had so brusquely warned her about Philip, and she had been wounded by his mere strength and fearlessness; and it hurt her to realise the contrast between that strength and this weakness.
She made him sit down beside her in the broad window of her little sitting-room, which over-looked the winding valley with the famous loops of the descending railway, and the moving light and shade on the forest; and very gently and tenderly she made him tell her all the story from first to last.
His shrinking passed away, soothed by her sweetness, her restrained emotion, and after a little he talked with freedom, gradually recovering his normal steadiness and clearness of mind.
At the same time she perceived some great change in him. The hidden spring of melancholy in his nature, which, amid all his practical energies and activities, she had always discerned, seemed to have overleaped its barriers, and to be invading the landmarks of character.
At the end of his narrative he said something in a hurried, low voice which gave her a clue.
"I did what I could to help him--but my father hated me. He died hating me. Nothing I could do altered him. Had he reason? When my brother and I in our anger thought we were avenging our mother's death, were we in truth destroying him also--driving him into wickedness beyond hope? Were we--was I--for I was the eldest--responsible? Does his death, moral and physical, lie at my door?"
He raised his eyes to her--his tired appealing eyes--and Elizabeth realised sharply how deep a hold such questionings take on such a man. She tried to argue with and comfort him--and he seemed to absorb, to listen--but in the middle of it, he said abruptly, as though to change the subject:
"And I confess the publicity has hit me hard. It may be cowardly, but I can't face it for a while. I think I told you I owned some land in Saskatchewan. I shall go and settle down on it at once."
"And give up your appointment--your public life?" she cried in dismay.
He smiled at her faintly, as though trying to console her.
"Yes; I shan't be missed, and I shall do better by myself. I understand the wheat and the land. They are friends that don't fail one."
Elizabeth flushed.
"Mr. Anderson!--you mustn't give up your work. Canada asks it of you."
"I shall only be changing my work. A man can do nothing better for Canada than break up land."
"You can do that--and other things besides. Please--please--do nothing rash!"
She bent over to him, her brown eyes full of entreaty, her hand laid gently, timidly on his.
He could not bear to distress her--but he must.
"I sent in my resignation yesterday to the Prime Minister."
The delicate face beside him clouded.
"He won't accept it."
Anderson shook his head. "I think he must."
Elizabeth looked at him in despair.
"Oh! no. You oughtn't to do this--indeed, indeed you oughtn't. It is cowardly--forgive me!--unworthy of you. Oh! can't you see how the sympathy of everybody who knows--everybody whose opinion you care for--"
She stopped a moment, colouring deeply, checked indeed by the thought of a conversation between herself and Philip of the night before. Anderson interrupted her:
"The sympathy of one person," he said hoarsely, "is very precious to me. But even for her--"
She held out her hands to him again imploringly--
"Even for her?--"
But instead of taking the hands he rose and went out on the balcony a moment, as though to look at the great view. Then he returned, and stood over her.
"Lady Merton, I am afraid--it's no use. We are not--we can't be--friends."
"Not friends?" she said, her lip quivering. "I thought I--"
He looked down steadily on her upturned face. His own spoke eloquently enough. Turning her head away, with fluttering breath, she began to speak fast and brokenly:
"I, too, have been very lonely. I want a friend whom I might help--who would help me. Why should you refuse? We are not either of us quite young; what we undertook we could carry through. Since my husband's death I--I have been playing at life. I have always been hungry, dissatisfied, discontented. There were such splendid things going on in the world, and I--I was just marking time. Nothing to do!--as much money as I could possibly want--society of course--travelling--and visiting--and amusing myself--but oh! so tired all the time. And somehow Canada has been a great revelation of real, strong, living things--this great Northwest--and you, who seemed to explain it to me--"
"Dear Lady Merton!" His tone was low and full of emotion. And this time it was he who stooped and took her unresisting hands in his. She went on in the same soft, pleading tone--
"I felt what it might be--to help in the building up a better human life--in this vast new country. God has given to you this task--such a noble task!--and through your friendship, I too seemed to have a little part in it, if only by sympathy. Oh, no! you mustn't turn back--you mustn't shrink--because of what has happened to you. And let me, from a distance, watch and help. It will ennoble my life, too. Let me!"--she smiled--"I shall make a good friend, you'll see. I shall write very often. I shall argue--and criticise--and want a great deal of explaining. And you'll come over to us, and do splendid work, and make many English friends. Your strength will all come back to you."
He pressed the hands he held more closely.
"It is like you to say all this--but--don't let us deceive ourselves. I could not be your friend, Lady Merton. I must not come and see you."
She was silent, very pale, her eyes on his--and he went on:
"It is strange to say it in this way, at such a moment; but it seems as though I had better say it. I have had the audacity, you see--to fall in love with you. And if it was audacity a week ago, you can guess what it is now--now when--Ask your mother and brother what they would think of it!" he said abruptly, almost fiercely.
There was a moment's silence. All consciousness, all feeling in each of these two human beings had come to be--with the irrevocable swiftness of love--a consciousness of the other. Under the sombre renouncing passion of his look, her own eyes filled slowly--beautifully--with tears. And through all his perplexity and pain there shot a thrill of joy, of triumph even, sharp and wonderful. He understood. All this might have been his--this delicate beauty, this quick will, this rare intelligence--and yet the surrender in her aspect was not the simple surrender of love; he knew before she spoke that she did not pretend to ignore the obstacles between them; that she was not going to throw herself upon his renunciation, trying vehemently to break it down, in a mere blind girlish impulsiveness. He realised at once her heart, and her common sense; and was grateful to her for both.
Gently she drew herself away, drawing a long breath. "My mother and brother would not decide those things for me--oh,never!--I should decide them for myself. But we are not going to talk of them to-day. We are not going to make any--any rash promises to each other. It is you we must think for--your future--your life. And then--if you won't give me a friend's right to speak--you will be unkind--and I shall respect you less."
She threw back her little head with vivacity. In the gesture he saw the strength of her will and his own wavered.
"How can it be unkind?" he protested. "You ought not to be troubled with me any more."
"Let me be judge of that. If you will persist in giving up this appointment, promise me at least to come to England. That will break this spell of this--this terrible thing, and give you courage--again. Promise me!"
"No, no!--you are too good to me--too good;--let it end here. It is much, much better so."
Then she broke down a little.
She looked round her, like some hurt creature seeking a means of escape. Her lips trembled. She gave a low cry. "And I have loved Canada so! I have been so happy here."
"And now I have hurt you?--I have spoilt everything?"
"It is your unhappiness does that--and that you will spoil your life. Promise me only this one thing--to come to England! Promise me!"
He sat down in a quiet despair that she would urge him so. A long argument followed between them, and at last she wore him down. She dared say nothing more of the Commissionership; but he promised her to come to England some time in the following winter; and with that she had to be content.
Then she gave him breakfast. During their conversation, which Elizabeth guided as far as possible to indifferent topics, the name of Mariette was mentioned. He was still, it seemed, at Vancouver. Elizabeth gave Anderson a sudden look, and casually, without his noticing, she possessed herself of the name of Mariette's hotel.
At breakfast also she described, with a smile and sigh, her brother's first and last attempt to shoot wild goat in the Rockies, an expedition which had ended in a wetting and a chill--"luckily nothing much; but poor Philip won't be out of his room to-day."
"I will go and see him," said Anderson, rising.
Elizabeth looked up, her colour fluttering.
"Mr. Anderson, Philip is only a boy, and sometimes a foolish boy--"
"I understand," said Anderson quietly, after a moment. "Philip thinks his sister has been running risks. Who warned him?"
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders without replying. He saw a touch of scorn in her face that was new to him.
"I think I guess," he said. "Why not? It was the natural thing. So Mr. Delaine is still here?"
"Till to-morrow."
"I am glad. I shall like to assure him that his name was not mentioned--he was not involved at all!"
Elizabeth's lip curled a little, but she said nothing. During the preceding forty-eight hours there had been passages between herself and Delaine that she did not intend Anderson to know anything about. In his finical repugnance to soiling his hands with matters so distasteful, Delaine had carried out the embassy which Anderson had perforce entrusted to him in such a manner as to rouse in Elizabeth a maximum of pride on her own account, and of indignation on Anderson's. She was not even sorry for him any more; being, of course, therein a little unjust to him, as was natural to a high-spirited and warm-hearted woman.
Anderson, meanwhile, went off to knock at Philip's door, and Philip's sister was left behind to wonder nervously how Philip would behave and what he would say. She was still smarting under the boy's furious outburst of the night before when, through a calculated indiscretion of Delaine's, the notion that Anderson had presumed and might still presume to set his ambitions on Elizabeth had been presented to him for the first time.
"My sister marry a mining engineer!--with a drunken old robber for a father! By Jove! Anybody talking nonsense of that kind will jolly well have to reckon with me! Elizabeth!--you may say what you like, but I am the head of the family!"
Anderson found the head of the family in bed, surrounded by novels, and a dozen books on big-game shooting in the Rockies. Philip received him with an evident and ungracious embarrassment.
"I am awfully sorry--beastly business. Hard lines on you, of course--very. Hope they'll get the men."
"Thank you. They are doing their best."
Anderson sat down beside the lad. The fragility of his look struck him painfully, and the pathetic contrast between it and the fretting spirit--the books of travel and adventure heaped round him.
"Have you been ill again?" he asked in his kind, deep voice.
"Oh, just a beastly chill. Elizabeth would make me take too many wraps. Everyone knows you oughtn't to get overheated walking."
"Do you want to stay on here longer?"
"Not I! What do I care about glaciers and mountains and that sort of stuff if I can't hunt? But Elizabeth's got at the doctor somehow, and he won't let me go for three or four days unless I kick over the traces. I daresay I shall."
"No you won't--for your sister's sake. I'll see all arrangements are made."
Philip made no direct reply. He lay staring at the ceiling--till at last he said--
"Delaine's going. He's going to-morrow. He gets on Elizabeth's nerves."
"Did he say anything to you about me?" said Anderson.
Philip flushed.
"Well, I daresay he did."
"Make your mind easy, Gaddesden. A man with my story is not going to ask your sister to marry him."
Philip looked up. Anderson sat composedly erect, the traces of his nights of sleeplessness and revolt marked on every feature, but as much master of himself and his life--so Gaddesden intuitively felt--as he had ever been. A movement of remorse and affection stirred in the young man mingled with the strength of other inherited things.
"Awfully sorry, you know," he said clumsily, but this time sincerely. "I don't suppose it makes any difference to you that your father--well, I'd better not talk about it. But you see--Elizabeth might marry anybody. She might have married heaps of times since Merton died, if she hadn't been such an icicle. She's got lots of money, and--well, I don't want to be snobbish--but at home--we--our family--"
"I understand," said Anderson, perhaps a little impatiently--"you are great people. I understood that all along."
Family pride cried out in Philip. "Then why the deuce--" But he said aloud in some confusion, "I suppose that sounded disgusting"--then floundering deeper--"but you see--well, I'm very fond of Elizabeth!"
Anderson rose and walked to the window which commanded a view of the railway line.
"I see the car outside. I'll go and have a few words with Yerkes."
The boy let him go in silence--conscious on the one hand that he had himself played a mean part in their conversation, and on the other that Anderson, under this onset of sordid misfortune, was somehow more of a hero in his eyes, and no doubt in other people's, than ever.
On his way downstairs Anderson ran into Delaine, who was ascending with an armful of books and pamphlets.
"Oh, how do you do? Had only just heard you were here. May I have a word with you?"
Anderson remounted the stairs in silence, and the two men paused, seeing no one in sight, in the corridor beyond.
"I have just read the report of the inquest, and should like to offer you my sincere sympathy and congratulations on your very straightforward behaviour--" Anderson made a movement. Delaine went on hurriedly--
"I should like also to thank you for having kept my name out of it."
"There was no need to bring it in," said Anderson coldly.
"No of course not--of course not! I have also seen the news of your appointment. I trust nothing will interfere with that."
Anderson turned towards the stairs again. He was conscious of a keen antipathy--the antipathy of tired nerves--to the speaker's mere aspect, his long hair, his too picturesque dress, the antique on his little finger, the effeminate stammer in his voice.
"Are you going to-day? What train?" he said, in a careless voice as he moved away.
Delaine drew back, made a curt reply, and the two men parted.
"Oh, he'll get over it; there will very likely be nothing to get over," Delaine reflected tartly, as he made his way to his room. "A new country like this can't be too particular." He was thankful, at any rate, that he would have an opportunity before long--for he was going straight home and to Cumberland--of putting Mrs. Gaddesden on her guard. "I may be thought officious; Lady Merton let me see very plainly that she thinks me so--but I shall do my duty nevertheless."
And as he stood over his packing, bewildering his valet with a number of precise and old-maidish directions, his sore mind ran alternately on the fiasco of his own journey and on the incredible folly of nice women.
Delaine departed; and for two days Elizabeth ministered to Anderson. She herself went strangely through it, feeling between them, as it were, the bared sword of his ascetic will--no less than her own terrors and hesitations. But she set herself to lift him from the depths; and as they walked about the mountains and the forests, in a glory of summer sunshine, the sanity and sweetness of her nature made for him a spiritual atmosphere akin in its healing power to the influence of pine and glacier upon his physical weariness.
On the second evening, Mariette walked into the hotel. Anderson, who had just concluded all arrangements for the departure of the car with its party within forty-eight hours, received him with astonishment.
"What brings you here?"
Mariette's harsh face smiled at him gravely.
"The conviction that if I didn't come, you would be committing a folly."
"What do you mean?"
"Giving up your Commissionership, or some nonsense of that sort."
"I have given it up."
"H'm! Anything from Ottawa yet?"
It was impossible, Anderson pointed out, that there should be any letter for another three days. But he had written finally and did not mean to be over-persuaded.
Mariette at once carried him off for a walk and attacked him vigorously. "Your private affairs have nothing whatever to do with your public work. Canada wants you--you must go."
"Canada can easily get hold of a Commissioner who would do her more credit," was the bitter reply. "A man's personal circumstances are part of his equipment. They must not be such as to injure his mission."
Mariette argued in vain.
As they were both dining in the evening with Elizabeth and Philip, a telegram was brought in for Anderson from the Prime Minister. It contained a peremptory and flattering refusal to accept his resignation. "Nothing has occurred which affects your public or private character. My confidence quite unchanged. Work is best for yourself, and the public expects it of you. Take time to consider, and wire me in two days."
Anderson thrust it into his pocket, and was only with difficulty persuaded to show it to Mariette.
But in the course of the evening many letters arrived--letters of sympathy from old friends in Quebec and Manitoba, from colleagues and officials, from navvies and railwaymen, even, on the C.P.R., from his future constituents in Saskatchewan--drawn out by the newspaper reports of the inquest and of Anderson's evidence. For once the world rallied to a good man in distress! and Anderson was strangely touched and overwhelmed by it.
He passed an almost sleepless night, and in the morning as he met Elizabeth on her balcony he said to her, half reproachfully, pointing to Mariette below--
"It was you sent for him."
Elizabeth smiled.
"A woman knows her limitations! It is harder to refuse two than one."
For twenty-four hours the issue remained uncertain. Letters continued to pour in; Mariette applied the plain-spoken, half-scornful arguments natural to a man holding a purely spiritual standard of life; and Elizabeth pleaded more by look and manner than by words.
Anderson held out as long as he could. He was assaulted by that dark midway hour of manhood, that distrust of life and his own powers, which disables so many of the world's best men in these heightened, hurrying days. But in the end his two friends saved him--as by fire.
Mariette himself dictated the telegram to the Prime Minister in which Anderson withdrew his resignation; and then, while Anderson, with a fallen countenance, carried it to the post, the French Canadian and Elizabeth looked at each other--in a common exhaustion and relief.
"I feel a wreck," said Elizabeth. "Monsieur, you are an excellent ally." And she held out her hand to her colleague. Mariette took it, and bowed over it with the air of agrand seigneurof 1680.
"The next step must be yours, madam--if you really take an interest in our friend."
Elizabeth rather nervously inquired what it might be.
"Find him a wife!--a good wife. He was not made to live alone."
His penetrating eyes in his ugly well-bred face searched the features of his companion. Elizabeth bore it smiling, without flinching.
A fortnight passed--and Elizabeth and Philip were on their way home through the heat of July. Once more the railway which had become their kind familiar friend sped them through the prairies, already whitening to the harvest, through the Ontarian forests and the Ottawa valley. The wheat was standing thick on the illimitable earth; the plains in their green or golden dress seemed to laugh and sing under the hot dome of sky. Again the great Canadian spectacle unrolled itself from west to east, and the heart Elizabeth brought to it was no longer the heart of a stranger. The teeming Canadian life had become interwoven with her life; and when Anderson came to bid her a hurried farewell on the platform at Regina, she carried the passionate memory of his face with her, as the embodiment and symbol of all that she had seen and felt.
Then her thoughts turned to England, and the struggle before her. She braced herself against the Old World as against an enemy. But her spirit failed her when she remembered that in Anderson himself she was like to find her chiefest foe.