Elgin, therefore, knew nothing, beyond the fact that Dr. Drummond had two ladies from the old country staying with him, about whom particular curiosity would hardly be expected outside of Knox Church. In view of Finlay’s absence, Dr. Drummond, consulting with Mrs. Kilbannon, decided that for the present Elgin need not be further informed. There was no need, they agreed, to give people occasion to talk; and it would just be a nuisance to have to make so many explanations. Both Mrs. Kilbannon and her niece belonged to the race that takes great satisfaction in keeping its own counsel. Their situation gained for them the further interest that nothing need be said about it; and the added importance of caution was plainly to be discerned in their bearing, even toward one another. It was a portentous business, this of marrying a minister, under the most ordinary circumstances, not to be lightly dealt with, and even more of an undertaking in a far new country where the very wind blew differently, and the extraordinary freedom of conversation made it more than ever necessary to take heed to what you were saying. So far as Miss Cameron and Mrs. Kilbannon were aware, the matter had not been “spoken of” elsewhere at all. Dr. Drummond, remembering Advena Murchison’s acquaintance with it, had felt the weight of a complication, and had discreetly held his tongue. Mrs. Kilbannon approved her nephew in this connection. “Hugh,” she said, “was never one to let on more than necessary.” It was a fine secret between Hugh, in Winnipeg, whence he had written all that was lawful or desirable, and themselves at Dr. Drummond’s. Miss Cameron said it would give her more freedom to look about her.
In the midst of all this security, and on the very first day after their arrival, it was disconcerting to be told that a lady, whose name they had never heard before, had called to see Miss Cameron and Mrs. Kilbannon. They had not even appeared at church, as they told one another with dubious glances. They had no reason whatever to expect visitors. Dr. Drummond was in the cemetery burying a member; Mrs. Forsyth was also abroad. “Now who in the world,” asked Mrs. Kilbannon of Miss Cameron, “is Miss Murchison?”
“They come to our church,” said Sarah, in the door. “They’ve got the foundry. It’s the oldest one. She teaches.”
Sarah in the door was even more disconcerting than an unexpected visitor. Sarah invariably took them off their guard, in the door or anywhere. She freely invited their criticism, but they would not have known how to mend her. They looked at her now helplessly, and Mrs. Kilbannon said, “Very well. We will be down directly.”
“It may be just some friendly body,” she said, as they descended the stairs together, “or it may be common curiosity. In that case we’ll disappoint it.”
Whatever they expected, therefore, it was not Advena. It was not a tall young woman with expressive eyes, a manner which was at once abrupt and easy, and rather a lounging way of occupying the corner of a sofa. “When she sat down,” as Mrs. Kilbannon said afterward, “she seemed to untie and fling herself as you might a parcel.” Neither Mrs. Kilbannon nor Christie Cameron could possibly be untied or flung, so perhaps they gave this capacity in Advena more importance than it had. But it was only a part of what was to them a new human demonstration, something to inspect very carefully and accept very cautiously – the product, like themselves, yet so suspiciously different, of these free airs and these astonishingly large ideas. In some ways, as she sat there in her graceful dress and careless attitude, asking them direct smiling questions about their voyage, she imposed herself as of the class whom both these ladies of Bross would acknowledge unquestioningly to be “above” them; in others she seemed to be of no class at all; so far she came short of small standards of speech and behaviour. The ladies from Bross, more and more confused, grew more and more reticent, when suddenly, out of a simple remark of Miss Cameron’s about missing in the train the hot-water cans they gave you “to your feet” in Scotland, reticence descended upon Miss Murchison also. She sat in an odd silence, looking at Miss Cameron, absorbed apparently in the need of looking at her, finding nothing to say, her flow of pleasant inquiry dried up, and all her soul at work, instead, to perceive the woman. Mrs. Kilbannon was beginning to think better of her – it was so much more natural to be a little backward with strangers – when the moment passed. Their visitor drew herself out of it with almost a perceptible effort, and seemed to glance consideringly at them in their aloofness, their incommunicativeness, their plain odds with her. I don’t know what she expected; but we may assume that she was there simply to offer herself up, and the impulse of sacrifice seldom considers whether or not it may be understood. It was to her a normal, natural thing that a friend of Hugh Finlay’s should bring an early welcome to his bride; and to do the normal, natural thing at keen personal cost was to sound that depth, or rise to that height of the spirit where pain sustains. We know of Advena that she was prone to this form of exaltation. Those who feel themselves capable may pronounce whether she would have been better at home crying in her bedroom.
She decided badly – how could she decide well? – on what she would say to explain herself.
“I am so sorry,” she told them, “that Mr. Finlay is obliged to be away.”
It was quite wrong; it assumed too much, her knowledge and their confidence, and the propriety of discussing Mr. Finlay’s absence. There was even an unconscious hint of another kind of assumption in it – a suggestion of apology for Mr. Finlay. Advena was aware of it even as it left her lips, and the perception covered her with a damning blush. She had a sudden terrified misgiving that her rôle was too high for her, that she had already cracked her mask. But she looked quietly at Miss Cameron and smiled across the tide that surged in her as she added, “He was very distressed at having to go.”
They looked at her in an instant’s blank astonishment. Miss Cameron opened her lips and closed them again, glancing at Mrs. Kilbannon. They fell back together, but not in disorder. This was something much more formidable than common curiosity. Just what it was they would consider later; meanwhile Mrs. Kilbannon responded with what she would have called cool civility.
“Perhaps you have heard that Mr. Finlay is my nephew?” she said.
“Indeed I have. Mr. Finlay has told me a great deal about you, Mrs. Kilbannon, and about his life at Bross,” Advena replied. “And he has told me about you, too,” she went on, turning to Christie Cameron.
“Indeed?” said she.
“Oh, a long time ago. He has been looking forward to your arrival for some months, hasn’t he?”
“We took our passages in December,” said Miss Cameron.
“And you are to be married almost immediately, are you not?” Miss Murchison continued, pleasantly.
Mrs. Kilbannon had an inspiration. “Could he by any means have had the banns cried?” she demanded of Christie, who looked piercingly at their visitor for the answer.
“Oh, no,” Advena laughed softly. “Presbyterians haven’t that custom over here – does it still exist anywhere? Mr. Finlay told me himself.”
“Has he informed all his acquaintances?” asked Mrs. Kilbannon. “We thought maybe his elders would be expecting to hear, or his Board of Management. Or he might have just dropped a word to his Sessions Clerk. But –”
Advena shook her head. “I think it unlikely,” she said.
“Then why would he be telling you?” inquired the elder lady, bluntly.
“He told me, I suppose, because I have the honour to be a friend of his,” Advena said, smiling. “But he is not a man, is he? who makes many friends. It is possible, I dare say, that he has mentioned it to no one else.”
Poor Advena! She had indeed uttered her ideal to unsympathetic ears – brought her pig, as her father would have said, to the wrong market. She sat before the ladies from Bross, Hugh Finlay’s only confidante. She sat handsome and upheld and not altogether penetrable, a kind of gipsy to their understanding, though indeed the Romany strain in her was beyond any divining of theirs. They, on their part, reposed in their clothes with all their bristles out – what else could have been expected of them? �
�� convinced in their own minds that they had come not only to a growing but to a forward country.
Mrs. Kilbannon was perhaps a little severe. “I wonder that we have not heard of you, Miss Murchison,” said she, “but we are happy to make the acquaintance of any of my nephew’s friends. You will have heard him preach, perhaps?”
“Often,” said Advena, rising. “We have no one here who can compare with him in preaching. There was very little reason why you should have heard of me. I am – of no importance.” She hesitated and fought for an instant with a trembling of the lip. “But now that you have been persuaded to be a part of our life here,” she said to Christie, “I thought I would like to come and offer you my friendship because it is his already. I hope – so much – that you will be happy here. It is a nice little place. And I want you to let me help you – about your house, and in every way that is possible. I am sure I can be of use.” She paused and looked at their still half-hostile faces. “I hope,” she faltered, “you don’t mind my – having come?”
“Not at all,” said Christie, and Mrs. Kilbannon added, “I’m sure you mean it very kindly.”
A flash of the comedy of it shot up in Advena’s eyes. “Yes,” she said, “I do. Good-bye.”
If they had followed her departure they would have been further confounded to see her walk not quite steadily away, shaken with fantastic laughter. They looked instead at one another, as if to find the solution of the mystery where indeed it lay, in themselves.
“She doesn’t even belong to his congregation,” said Christie. “Just a friend, she said.”
“I expect the friendship’s mostly upon her side,” remarked Mrs. Kilbannon. “She seemed frank enough about it. But I would see no necessity for encouraging her friendship on my own account, if I were in your place, Christie.”
“I think I’ll manage without it,” said Christie.
TWENTY-NINE
The South Fox fight was almost over. Three days only remained before the polling booths would be open, and the voters of the towns of Elgin and Clayfield and the surrounding townships would once again be invited to make their choice between a Liberal and a Conservative representative of the district in the Dominion House of Commons. The ground had never been more completely covered, every inch of advantage more stubbornly held, by either side, in the political history of the riding. There was no doubt of the hope that sat behind the deprecation in Walter Winter’s eye, nor of the anxiety that showed through the confidence freely expressed by the Liberal leaders. The issue would be no foregone conclusion, as it had been practically any time within the last eleven years; and as Horace Williams remarked to the select lot that met pretty frequently at the Express office for consultation and rally, they had “no use for any sort of carelessness.”
It was undeniably felt that the new idea, the great idea whose putative fatherhood in Canada certainly lay at the door of the Liberal party, had drawn in fewer supporters than might have been expected. In England Wallingham, wearing it like a medal, seemed to be courting political excommunication with it, except that Wallingham was so hard to effectively curse. The ex-Minister deserved, clearly, any ban that could be put upon him. No sort of remonstrance could hold him from going about openly and persistently exhorting people to “think imperially,” a liberty which, as is well known, the Holy Cobdenite Church, supreme in those islands, expressly forbids. Wallingham appeared to think that by teaching and explaining he could help his fellow islanders to see further than the length of their fists, and exorcise from them the spirit, only a century and a quarter older and a trifle more sophisticated, that lost them the American colonies. But so far little had transpired to show that Wallingham was stronger than nature and destiny. There had been Wallingham meetings of remarkable enthusiasm; his supporters called them epoch-making, as if epochs were made of cheers. But the working man of Great Britain was declaring stolidly in the bye-elections against any favour to colonial produce at his expense, thereby showing himself one of those humble instruments that Providence uses for the downfall of arrogant empires. It will be thus, no doubt, that the working man will explain in the future his eminent usefulness to the Government of his country, and it will be in these terms that the cost of educating him by means of the ballot will be demonstrated. Meanwhile we may look on and cultivate philosophy; or we may make war upon the gods with Mr. Wallingham, which is, perhaps, the better part.
That, to turn from recrimination, was what they saw in Canada looking across; – the queerest thing of all was the recalcitrance of the farm labourer; they could only stare at that – and it may be that the spectacle was depressing to hopeful initiative. At all events, it was plain that the new policy was suffering from a certain flatness on the further side. As a ballon d’essai it lacked buoyancy; and no doubt Mr. Farquharson was right in declaring that above all things it lacked actuality, business – the proposition, in good set terms, for men to turn over, to accept or reject. Nothing could be done with it, Mr. Farquharson averred, as a mere prospect; it was useful only to its enemies. We of the young countries must be invited to deeds, not theories, of which we have a restless impatience; and this particular theory, though of golden promise, was beginning to recoil to some extent, upon the cause which had been confident enough to adopt it before it could be translated into action and its hard equivalent. The Elgin Mercury probably overstated the matter when it said that the Grits were dead sick of the preference they would never get; but Horace Williams was quite within the mark when he advised Lorne to stick to old Reform principles – clean administration, generous railway policy, sympathetic labour legislation, and freeze himself a little on imperial love and attachment.
“They’re not so sweet on it in Ottawa as they were, by a long chalk,” he said. “Look at the Premier’s speech to the Chambers of Commerce in Montreal. Pretty plain statement that, of a few things the British Government needn’t expect.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lorne. “He was talking to manufacturers, you know, a pretty skittish lot anywhere. It sounded independent, but if you look into it you won’t find it gave the cause away any.”
“The old man’s got to think of Quebec, where his fat little majority lives,” remarked Bingham, chairman of the most difficult subdivision in the town. “The Premier of this country drives a team, you know.”
“Yes,” said Lorne, “but he drives it tandem, and Johnny François is the second horse.”
“Maybe so,” returned Mr. Williams, “but the organ’s singing pretty small, too. Look at this.” He picked up the Dominion from the office table and read aloud: “‘If Great Britain wishes to do a deal with the colonies she will find them willing to meet her in a spirit of fairness and enthusiasm. But it is for her to decide, and Canada would be the last to force her bread down the throat of the British labourer at a higher price than he can afford to pay for it.’ What’s that, my boy? Is it high-mindedness? No, sir, it’s luke-warmness.”
“The Dominion makes me sick,” said young Murchison. “It’s so scared of the Tory source of the scheme in England that it’s handing the whole boom of the biggest chance this country ever had over to the Tories here. If anything will help us to lose it that will. No Conservative Government in Canada can put through a cent of preference on English goods when it comes to the touch, and they know it. They’re full of loyalty just now – baying the moon – but if anybody opens a window they’ll turn tail fast enough.”
“I guess the Dominion knows it, too,” said Mr. Williams. “When Great Britain is quite sure she’s ready to do business on preference lines it’s the Liberal party on this side she’ll have to talk to. No use showing ourselves too anxious, you know. Besides, it might do harm over there. We’re all right; we’re on record. Wallingham knows as well as we do the lines we’re open on – he’s heard them from Canadian Liberals more than once. When they get good and ready they can let us know.”
“Jolly them up with it at your meetings by all means,” advised Bingham, “but use it as a k
ind of superfluous taffy; don’t make it your main lay-out.”
The Reform Association of South Fox had no more energetic officer than Bingham, though as he sat on the edge of the editorial table chewing portions of the margin of that afternoon’s Express, and drawling out maxims to the Liberal candidate, you might not have thought so. He was explaining that he had been in this business for years, and had never had a job that gave him so much trouble.
“We’ll win out,” he said, “but the canvass isn’t any Christmas joy – not this time. There’s Jim Whelan,” he told them. “We all know what Jim is – a Tory from way back, where they make ’em so they last, and a soaker from way back, too, one day on his job and two days sleepin’ off his whisky. Now we don’t need Jim Whelan’s vote, never did need it, but the boys have generally been able to see that one of those two days was election day. There’s no necessity for Jim’s putting in his paper – a character like that – no necessity at all – he’d much better be comfortable in bed. This time, I’m darned if the old boozer hasn’t sworn off! Tells the boys he’s on to their game, and there’s no liquor in this town that’s good enough to get him to lose his vote – wouldn’t get drunk on champagne. He’s held out for ten days already, and it looks like Winter’d take his cross all right on Thursday.”
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