Alfred Hesketh came, it was felt, rather opportunely into the midst of this. Plenty of people, the whole of Market Square and East Elgin, a good part, too, probably, of the Town Ward, were unaware of his arrival; but for the little world he penetrated he was clothed with all the interest of the great contingency. His decorous head in the Emmetts’ pew on Sunday morning stood for a symbol as well as for a stranger. The nation was on the eve of a great far-reaching transaction with the mother country, and thrilling with the terms of the bargain. Hesketh was regarded by people in Elgin who knew who he was with the mingled cordiality and distrust that might have met a principal. They did not perhaps say it, but it was in their minds. “There’s one of them,” was what they thought when they met him in the street. At any other time he would have been just an Englishman; now he was invested with the very romance of destiny. The perception was obscure, but it was there. Hesketh, on the other hand, found these good people a very well-dressed, well-conditioned, decent lot, rather sallower than he expected, perhaps, who seemed to live in a fair-sized town in a great deal of comfort, and was wholly unconscious of anything special in his relation to them or theirs to him.
He met Lorne just outside the office of Warner, Fulke, and Murchison the following day. They greeted heartily. “Now this is good!” said Lorne, and he thought so. Hesketh confided his first impression. “It’s not unlike an English country town,” he said, “only the streets are wider, and the people don’t look so much in earnest.”
“Oh, they’re just as much in earnest some of the time,” Lorne laughed, “but maybe not all the time!”
The sun shone crisply round them; there was a brisk October market; on the other side of the road Elmore Crow dangled his long legs over a cart flap and chewed a cheroot. Elgin was abroad, doing business on its wide margin of opportunity. Lorne cast a backward glance at conditions he had seen.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “Sharp of you to spot it so soon, old chap! You’re staying with the English Church minister, aren’t you – Mr. Emmett? Some connection of yours, aren’t they?”
“Mrs. Emmett is Chafe’s sister – Mrs. Chafe, you know, is my aunt,” Hesketh reminded him. “I say, Murchison, I left old Chafe wilder than ever. Wallingham’s committee keep sending him leaflets and things. They take it for granted he’s on the right side, since his interests are. The other day they asked him for a subscription! The old boy sent his reply to the Daily News and carried it about for a week. I think that gave him real satisfaction; but he hates the things by post.”
Lorne laughed delightedly. “I expect he’s snowed under with them. I sent him my own valuable views last week.”
“I’m afraid they’ll only stiffen him. That got to be his great argument after you left, the fact that you fellows over here want it. He doesn’t approve of a bargain if the other side see a profit. Curiously enough, his foremen and people out in Chiswick are all for it. I was talking to one of them just before I left – ‘Stands to reason, sir,’ he said, ‘we don’t want to pay more for a loaf than we do now. But we’ll do it, sir, if it means downing them Germans,’ he said.”
Lorne’s eyebrows half perceptibly twitched. “They do ‘sir’ you a lot over there, don’t they?” he said. “It was as much as I could do to get at what a fellow of that sort meant, tumbling over the ‘sirs’ he propped it up with. Well, all kinds of people, all kinds of argument, I suppose, when it comes to trying to get ’em solid! But I was going to say we are all hoping you’ll give us a part of your time while you’re in Elgin. My family are looking forward to meeting you. Come along and let me introduce you to my father now – he’s only round the corner.”
“By all means!” said Hesketh, and they fell into step together. As Lorne said, it was only a short distance, but far enough to communicate a briskness, an alertness, from the step of one young man to that of the other. “I wish it were five miles,” Hesketh said, all his stall-fed muscles responding to the new call of his heart and lungs. “Any good walks about here? I asked Emmett, but he didn’t know – supposed you could walk to Clayfield if you didn’t take the car. He seems to have lost his legs. I suppose parsons do.”
“Not all of them,” said Lorne. “There’s a fellow that has a church over in East Elgin, Finlay his name is, that beats the record of anything around here. He just about ranges the county in the course of a week.”
“The place is too big for one parish, no doubt,” Hesketh remarked.
“Oh, he’s a Presbyterian! The Episcopalians haven’t got any hold to speak of over there. Here we are,” said Lorne, and turned in at the door. The old wooden sign was long gone. “John Murchison and Sons” glittered instead in the plate-glass windows, but Hesketh did not see it.
“Why do you think he’ll be in here?” he asked, on young Murchison’s heels.
“Because he always is when he isn’t over at the shop,” replied Lorne. “It’s his place of business – his store, you know. There he is! Hard luck – he’s got a customer. We’ll have to wait.”
He went on ahead with his impetuous step; he did not perceive the instant’s paralysis that seemed to overtake Hesketh’s, whose foot dragged, however, no longer than that. It was an initiation; he had been told he might expect some. He checked his impulse to be amused, and guarded his look round, not to show unseemly curiosity. His face, when he was introduced to Alec, who was sorting some odd dozens of tablespoons, was neutral and pleasant. He reflected afterward that he had been quite equal to the occasion. He thought, too, that he had shown some adaptability. Alec was not a person of fluent discourse, and when he had inquired whether Hesketh was going to make a long stay, the conversation might have languished but for this.
“Is that Birmingham?” he asked, nodding kindly at the spoons.
“Came to us through a house in Liverpool,” Alec responded. “I expect you had a stormy crossing, Mr. Hesketh.”
“It was a bit choppy. We had the fiddles on most of the time,” Hesketh replied. “Most of the time. Now, how do you find the bicycle trade over here? Languishing, as it is with us?”
“Oh, it keeps up pretty well,” said Alec, “but we sell more spoons. N’ what do you think of this country, far as you’ve seen it?”
“Oh, come now, it’s a little soon to ask, isn’t it? Yes – I suppose bicycles go out of fashion, and spoons never do. I was thinking,” added Hesketh, casting his eyes over a serried rank, “of buying a bicycle.”
Alec had turned to put the spoons in their place on the shelves. “Better take your friend across to Cox’s,” he advised Lorne over his shoulder. “He’ll be able to get a motorbike there,” a suggestion which gave Mr. Hesketh to reflect later that if that was the general idea of doing business it must be an easy country to make money in.
The customer was satisfied at last, and Mr. Murchison walked sociably to the door with him; it was the secretary of the local Oddfellows’ Lodge, who had come in about a furnace.
“Now’s our chance,” said Lorne. “Father, this is Mr. Hesketh, from London – my father, Hesketh. He can tell you all you want to know about Canada – this part of it, anyway. Over thirty years, isn’t it, father, since you came out?”
“Glad to meet you,” said John Murchison, “glad to meet you, Mr. Hesketh. We’ve heard much about you.”
“You must have been quite among the pioneers of Elgin, Mr. Murchison,” said Hesketh as they shook hands. Alec hadn’t seemed to think of that; Hesketh put it down to the counter.
“Not quite,” said John. “We’ll say among the early arrivals.”
“Have you ever been back in your native Scotland?” asked Hesketh.
“Aye, twice.”
“But you prefer the land of your adoption?”
“I do. But I think by now it’ll be kin,” said Mr. Murchison. “It was good to see the heather again, but a man lives best where he’s taken root.”
“Yes, yes. You seem to do a large business here, Mr. Murchison.”
“Pretty well for the size of
the place. You must get Lorne here to take you over Elgin. It’s a fair sample of our rising manufacturing towns.”
“I hope he will. I understand you manufacture to some extent yourself?”
“We make our own stoves and a few odd things.”
“You don’t send any across the Atlantic yet?” queried Hesketh jocularly.
“Not yet. No, sir!”
Then did Mr. Hesketh show himself in true sympathy with the novel and independent conditions of the commonwealth he found himself in.
“I beg you won’t use that form with me,” he said, “I know it isn’t the custom of the country, and I am a friend of your son’s, you see.”
The iron merchant looked at him, just an instant’s regard, in which astonishment struggled with the usual deliberation. Then his considering hand went to his chin.
“I see. I must remember,” he said.
The son, Lorne, glanced in the pause beyond John Murchison’s broad shoulders, through the store door and out into the moderate commerce of Main Street, which had carried the significance and the success of his father’s life. His eye came back and moved over the contents of the place, taking stock of it, one might say, and adjusting the balance with pride. He had said very little since they had been in the store. Now he turned to Hesketh quietly.
“I wouldn’t bother about that if I were you,” he said. “My father spoke quite – colloquially.”
“Oh!” said Hesketh.
They parted on the pavement outside. “I hope you under stand,” said Lorne, with an effort of heartiness, “how glad my parents will be to have you if you find yourself able to spare us any of your time?”
“Thanks very much,” said Hesketh; “I shall certainly give myself the pleasure of calling as soon as possible.”
TWENTY-ONE
“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 any one 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!” excla
imed 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?”
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