The Imperialist

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

  “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 some one 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 eye 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 t
o 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 Mr. 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.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “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 any one 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 necktie. 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 business men.”

  “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. Consid eration 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; th
e 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” stronghold, 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 bye-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.