“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.
“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.
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.