The Imperialist by Sara Jeannette Duncan (books to read to get smarter TXT) 📖

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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 role 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.


CHAPTER XXIX

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 workingman of Great Britain was declaring stolidly in the by-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 workingman 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