by Basil King
CHAPTER III
"He attacked my country. I think I could forgive him everything butthat."
It was an hour after Mr. and Mrs. Brokenshire had left me. I was halfcrying by this time--that is, half crying in the way one cries fromrage, and yet laughing nervously, in flashes, at the same time. From theweakness of sheer excitement I had dropped to one of the steps leadingdown to the Cliff Walk, while Larry Strangways leaned on the stone post.I had met him there as I was going out and he was coming toward thehouse. We couldn't but stop to exchange a word, especially with hisknowledge of the situation. He took what I had to say with the light,gleaming, non-committal smile which he brought to bear on everything. Iwas glad of that because it kept him detached. I didn't want him anynearer to me than he was.
"Attacked your country? Do you mean England?"
"No; Canada. England is my grandmother; but Canada's my mother. He saidyou all despised her."
"Oh no, we don't. He was trying to put something over on you."
"Your 'No, we don't' lacks conviction; but I don't mind you. I shouldn'tmind him if I hadn't seen so much of it."
"So much of what?"
"Being looked down upon geographically. Of all the ways of being proud,"I declared, indignantly, "that which depends on your merely accidentalposition with regard to land and water strikes me as the mostpoor-spirited. I can't imagine any one dragging himself down to it whohad another rag of a reason for self-respect. As a matter of fact, Idon't believe any one ever does. The people I've heard expressthemselves on the subject--well, I'll give you an illustration: Therewas a woman at Gibraltar--a major's wife, a big, red-faced woman. Hername was Arbuthnot--her father was a dean or something--a big, red-facedwoman, with one of those screechy, twangy English voices that cut youlike a saw--you know there are some--a good many--and they don't knowit. Well, she was saying something sneering about Canadians. I wassitting opposite--it was at a dinner-party--and so I leaned across thetable and asked her why she didn't like them. She said colonials weresuch dreadful form. I held her with my eye"--I showed him how--"and mademyself small and demure as I said, 'But, dear lady, how clever of you!Who would ever have supposed that you'd know that?' My sister Vicpitched into me about it after we got home. She said the Arbuthnotperson didn't understand what I meant--nor any one else at the table,they're so awfully thick-skinned--and that it's better to let themalone. But that's the kind of person who--"
He tried to comfort me. "They'll come round in time. One of these daysEngland will see what she owes to her colonists and do them justice."
"Never!" I declared, vehemently. "It will be always the same--till weknock the Empire to pieces. Then they'll respect us. Look at the BoerWar. Didn't our men sacrifice everything to go out that longdistance--and win battles--and lay down their lives--only to have theEnglish say afterward--especially the army people--that they were moretrouble than they were worth? It will be always the same. When we'vegiven our last penny and shed our last drop of blood they'll still tellus we've been nothing but a nuisance. You may live to see it andremember that I said so. If when Shakespeare wrote that it's sharperthan a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child he'd gone on to addthat it's the very dickens to have a picturesque, self-satisfied oldgrandmother who thinks her children's children should give hereverything and take kicks instead of ha'pence for their pay, he'd havebeen up to date. Mind you, we don't object to giving our last penny andshedding our last drop of blood; we only hate being abused and sneeredat for doing it."
I warmed to my subject as I dabbed fiercely at my eyes.
"I'll tell you what the typical John Bull is like. He's like thosemen--big, flabby men they generally are--who'll be brutes to you so longas you're civil to them, but will climb down the minute you begin to hitback. Look at the way they treat you Americans! They can't do enough foryou--because you snap your fingers in their faces and show them youdon't care a hang about them. They come over here, and give youlectures, and marry your girls, and pocket your money, and adopt yourbad form as delightful originality--and respect you. Now that earls'daughters are beginning to cast an eye on your millionaires--Mrs.Rossiter told me that--they won't leave you a rag to your back. But withus who've been faithful and loyal they're all the other way. I canhardly tell you the small pin-pricking indignities to which my sistersand I have been subjected for being Canadians. And they'll never change.It will never be otherwise, no matter what we do, no matter what webecome, no matter if we give our bodies to be burned, as the Bible says.It will never be otherwise--not till we imitate you and strike them inthe face. _Then_ you'll see how they'll come round."[1]
He still smiled, with an aloofness in which there was a beam ofsweetness. "I had no idea that you were such a little rebel."
"I'm not a rebel. I'm loyal to the King. That is, I'm loyal to the greatAnglo-Saxon ideal of which the King is the symbol--and I suppose he's asgood a symbol as any other, especially as he's already there. TheEnglish are only partly Anglo-Saxon. 'Saxon and Norman and Dane arethey'--didn't Tennyson say that? Well, there's a lot that's Norman, anda lot that's Dane, and a lot that's Scotch and Irish and rag-tag inthem. But they're saved by the pure Anglo-Saxon ideal in so far as theyhold to it--just as you'll be, with all your mixed bloods--and just aswe shall be ourselves. It's like salt in the meat, it's like grace inthe Christian religion--it's the thing that saves, and I'm loyal tothat. My father used to say that it's the fact that English andCanadians and Australians are all devoted to the same principle thatholds us together as an Empire, and not the subservience of distantlands to a Parliament sitting at Westminster. And so it is. We don'talways like each other; but that doesn't matter. What does matter isthat we should betray the fact that we don't like each other tooutsiders--and so give them a handle against us."
"You mean that J. Howard should be in a position to side with theEnglish in looking down on you as a Canadian?"
"Yes, and that the English should give him that position. He's anAmerican and an enemy--every American is an enemy to England _au fond_.Oh yes, he is! You needn't deny it! It's something fundamental, deeperdown than anything you understand. Even those of you who like Englandare hostile to her at heart and would be glad to see her in trouble. So,I say, he's an American and an enemy, and yet they hand me, their childand their friend, over to him to be trampled on. He's had opportunitiesof judging how Canadians are regarded in England, he says--and heassures me it's nothing to be proud of. That's it. I've hadopportunities too--and I have to admit that he's right. Don't you see?That's what enrages me. As far as their liking us and our not likingthem is concerned, why, it's all in the family. So long as it's kept inthe family it's like the pick that Louise and Vic have always had on me.I'm the youngest and the plainest--"
"Oh, you're the plainest, are you? What on earth are they like?"
"They're quite good-looking, and they're awfully chic. But that's inparentheses. What I mean is that they're always hectoring me because I'mnot attractive--"
"Really?"
"I'm not fishing for compliments. I'm too busy and too angry for that. Iwant to go on talking about what we're talking about."
"But I want to know why they said you were unattractive."
"Well, perhaps they didn't say it. What they have said is this, and it'swhat Mrs. Rossiter says--she said it to-day--that I'm only attractive toone man in five hundred--"
"But very attractive to him?"
"No; she didn't say that. She merely admitted that her brother Hugh wasthat man--"
He interrupted with something I wished at the time he hadn't said, andwhich I tried to ignore:
"He's the man in that five hundred--and I know another in another fivehundred, which makes two in a thousand. You'd soon get up to a highpercentage, when you think of all the men there are in the world."
As he had never hinted at anything of the kind before, it gave me--howshall I put it?--I can only think of the word fright--it gave me alittle fright. It made me uneasy. It was nothing, really. It was spokenwith that gle
aming smile of his which seemed to put distance between himand me--between him and everything else that was serious--and yetsubconsciously I felt as one feels on hearing the first few notes, in anopera or a symphony, of that arresting phrase which is to work up into agreat motive. I tried to get back to my original theme, rising to moveon as I did so.
"Good gracious!" I cried. "Isn't the world big enough for us all? Whyshould we go about saying unkind and untrue things of one other, wheneach of us is an essential part of a composite whole? Isn't it the footsaying to the hand I have no need of thee, and the eye saying the samething to the nose? We've got something you haven't got, and you've gotsomething we haven't got. Why shouldn't we be appreciative toward eachother, and make our exchange with mutual respect as we do with tradecommodities?"
It was probably to urge me on to talk that he said, with a challengingsmile: "What have you Canadians got that we haven't? Why, we could buyand sell you."
"Oh no, you couldn't; because our special contribution toward thecivilization of the American continent isn't a thing for sale. It can begiven; it can be inherited; it can be caught; but it can't bepurchased."
"Indeed? What is this elusive endowment?"
I answered frankly enough: "I don't know. It's there--and I can't tellyou what it is. Ever since I've been living among you I've felt how muchwe resemble each other--what a difference. I think--mind you, I onlythink--that what it consists in is a sense of the _comme il faut_. We'resimpler than you; and less intellectual; and poorer, of course; andless, much less, self-analytical; and yet we've got a knowledge ofwhat's what that you couldn't command with money. None of theBrokenshires have it at all, and, as far as I can see, none of theirfriends. They command it with money, and the difference is like having acopy of a work of art instead of the original. It gives them the air ofbeing--I'm using Mrs. Rossiter's word--of being produced. Now weCanadians are not produced. We just come--but we come the rightway--without any hooting or tooting or beating of tin pans orself-advertisement. We just are--and we say nothing about it. Let memake an example of what Mrs. Rossiter was discussing this morning. Thereare lots of pretty girls in my country--as many to the hundred as youhave here--but we don't make a fuss about them or talk as if we'dordered a special brand from the Creator. We grow them as you growflowers in a garden, at the mercy of the air and sunshine. You growyours like plants in a hothouse, to be exhibited in horticultural shows.Please don't think I'm bragging--"
He laughed aloud. "Oh no!"
"Well, I'm not," I insisted. "You asked me a question and I'm trying toanswer it--and incidentally to justify my own existence, which J. Howardhas called into question. You've got lots to offer us, and many of uscome and take it thankfully. What we can offer to you is a simpler andhealthier and less self-conscious standard of life, with a great dealless talk about it--with no talk about it at all, if you could getyourselves down to that--and a willingness to be instead of aneverlasting striving to become. You won't recognize it or take it, ofcourse. No one ever does. Nations seem to me insane, and ruled by insanegovernments. Don't the English need the Germans, and the Germans theFrench, and the French the Austrians, and the Austrians the Russians,and so on? Why on earth should the foot be jealous of the nose? Butthere! You're simply making me say things--and laughing at me all thewhile--so I'm off to take my walk. We'll get even with J. Howard and allthe first-class powers some day, and till then--_au revoir_."
I had waved my hand to him and gone some paces into the fog that hadbegun to blow in when he called to me.
"Wait a minute. I've something to tell you."
I turned, without going back.
"I'm--I'm leaving."
I was so amazed that I retraced a step or two toward him. "What?"
His smile underwent a change. It grew frozen and steely instead of beingbright with a continuous play suggesting summer lightning, which hadbeen its usual quality.
"My time is up at the end of the month--and I've asked Mr. Rossiter notto expect me to go on."
I was looking for something of the sort sooner or later, but now that ithad come I saw how lonely I should be.
"Oh! Where are you going? Have you got anything in particular?"
"I'm going as secretary to Stacy Grainger."
"I've some connection with that name," I said, absently, "though I can'tremember what it is."
"You've probably heard of him. He's a good deal in the public eye."
"Have you known him long?" I asked, for the sake of speaking, though Iwas only thinking of myself.
"Never knew him at all." He came nearer to me. "I've a confession tomake, though it won't be of interest to you. All the while I've beenhere, playing with little Broke Rossiter, I've been--don't laugh--I'vebeen contributing to the press--_moi qui vous parle_!"
"What about?"
"Oh, politics and finance and foreign policy and public things ingeneral. Always had a taste that way. Now it seems that something Iwrote for the _Providence Express_--people read it a good deal--hasattracted the attention of the great Stacy. Yes, he's great, too--J.Howard's big rival for--"
I began to recall something I had heard. "Wasn't there a story about himand Mr. Brokenshire and Mrs. Brokenshire?"
"That's the man. Well, he's noticed my stuff, and written to theeditor--and to me, and I'm to go to him."
I was still thinking of myself and the loss of his _camaraderie_. "Ihope he's going to pay you well."
"Oh, for me it will be wealth."
"It will probably be more than that. It will be the first long step up."
He nodded confidently. "I hope so."
I had again begun to move away when he stopped me the second time.
"Miss Adare, what's your first name? Mine's Lawrence, as you know."
If I laughed a little it was to conceal my discomfort at this abruptapproach to the intimate.
"I'm rather sorry for my name," I said, apologetically. "You see myfather was one of those poetically loyal Canadians who rather overdo thething. My eldest sister should have been Victoria, because Victoria wasthe queen. But the Duchess of Argyll was in Canada at that time--andvery nice to father and mother--and so the first of us had to be Louise.He couldn't begin on the queens till there was a second one. That's poorVic; while I'm--I know you'll shout--I'm Alexandra. If there'd been afourth she'd have been a Mary; but poor mother died and the seriesstopped."
He shook hands rather gravely. "Then I shall think of you as Alexandra."
"If you are going to think of me at all," I managed to say, with alittle _moue_, "put me down as Alix. That's what I've always beencalled."
[Footnote 1: This was said before the Great War. It is now supposed thatwhen peace is made there will be a change in English opinion. With myknowledge of my country--the British Empire--I permit myself to doubtit. There is a proverb which begins, "When the devil was sick." I shall,however, be glad if I am proved wrong.--Alexandra Adare.]