Alfred Hesketh had, after all, written to young Murchison about his
immediate intention of sailing for Canada and visiting Elgin; the letter
arrived a day or two later. It was brief and businesslike, but it gave
Lorne to understand that since his departure the imperial idea had been
steadily fermenting, not only in the national mind, but particularly in
Hesketh’s; that it produced in his case a condition only to be properly
treated by personal experience. Hesketh was coming over to prove
whatever advantage there was in seeing for yourself. That he was coming
with the right bias Lorne might infer, he said, from the fact that he
had waited a fortnight to get his passage by the only big line to
New York that stood out for our mercantile supremacy against American
combination.
“He needn’t bother to bring any bias,” Lorne remarked when he had read
this, “but he’ll have to pay a lot of extra luggage on the one he takes
back with him.”
He felt a little irritation at being offered the testimony of the Cunard
ticket. Back on his native soil, its independence ran again like sap
in him: nobody wanted a present of good will; the matter stood on its
merits.
He was glad, nevertheless, that Hesketh was coming, gratified that it
would now be his turn to show prospects, and turn figures into facts,
and make plain the imperial profit from the further side. Hesketh was
such an intelligent fellow, there would be the keenest sort of pleasure
in demonstrating things, big things, to him, little things, too, ways
of living, differences of habit. Already in the happy exercise of his
hospitable instinct he saw how Hesketh would get on with his mother,
with Stella, with Dr Drummond. He saw Hesketh interested, domiciled,
remaining--the ranch life this side of the Rockies, Lorne thought, would
tempt him, or something new and sound in Winnipeg. He kept his eye
open for chances, and noted one or two likely things. “We want labour
mostly,” he said to Advena, “but nobody is refused leave to land because
he has a little money.”
“I should think not, indeed,” remarked Mrs Murchison, who was present.
“I often wish your father and I had had a little more when we began.
That whole Gregory block was going for three thousand dollars then. I
wonder what it’s worth now?”
“Yes, but you and Father are worth more, too,” remarked Stella acutely.
“In fact, all the elder members of the family have approximated in
value, Stella,” said her brother, “and you may too, in time.”
“I’ll take my chance with the country,” she retorted. They were all
permeated with the question of the day; even Stella, after holding
haughtily aloof for some time, had been obliged to get into step, as
she described it, with the silly old Empire. Whatever it was in England,
here it was a family affair; I mean in the town of Elgin, in the shops
and the offices, up and down the tree-bordered streets as men went
to and from their business, atomic creatures building the reef of
the future, but conscious, and wanting to know what they were about.
Political parties had long declared themselves, the Hampden Debating
Society had had several grand field nights. Prospective lifelong
friendships, male and female in every form of “the Collegiate,” had been
put to this touchstone, sometimes with shattering effect. If you would
not serve with Wallingham the greatness of Britain you were held to
favour going over to the United States; there was no middle course.
It became a personal matter in the ward schools and small boys pursued
small boys with hateful cries of “Annexationist!” The subject even
trickled about the apple-barrels and potato-bags of the market square.
Here it should have raged, pregnant as it was with bucolic blessing; but
our agricultural friends expect nothing readily except adverse weather,
least of all a measure of economic benefit to themselves. Those of Fox
County thought it looked very well, but it was pretty sure to work out
some other way. Elmore Crow failed heavily to catch a light even from
Lorne Murchison.
“You keep your hair on, Lorne,” he advised. “We ain’t going to get such
big changes yet. An’ if we do the blooming syndicates ‘ll spoil ‘em for
us.”
There were even dissentients among the farmers. The voice of one was
raised who had lived laborious years, and many of them in the hope of
seeing his butter and cheese go unimpeded across the American line. It
must be said, however, that still less attention was paid to him, and it
was generally conceded that he would die without the sight.
It was the great topic. The day Wallingham went his defiant furthest
in the House and every colonial newspaper set it up in acclaiming
headlines, Horace Williams, enterprising fellow, remembered that Lorne
had seen the great man under circumstances that would probably pan out,
and send round Rawlins. Rawlins was to get something that would do to
call “Wallingham in the Bosom of his Family,” and as much as Lorne
cared to pour into him about his own view of the probable issue. Rawlins
failed to get the interview, came back to say that Lorne didn’t seem
to think himself a big enough boy for that, but he did not return
empty-handed. Mr Murchison sent Mr Williams the promise of some
contributions upon the question of the hour, which he had no objection
to sign and which Horace should have for the good of the cause. Horace
duly had them, the Express duly published them, and they were copied in
full by the Dominion and several other leading journals, with an amount
of comment which everyone but Mrs Murchison thought remarkable.
“I don’t pretend to understand it,” she said, “but anybody can see
that he knows what he’s talking about.” John Murchison read them with a
critical eye and a pursed-out lip.
“He takes too much for granted.”
“What does he take for granted?” asked Mrs Murchison.
“Other folks being like himself,” said the father.
That, no doubt, was succinct and true; nevertheless, the articles
had competence as well as confidence. The writer treated facts with
restraint and conditions with sympathy. He summoned ideas from the
obscurity of men’s minds, and marshalled them in the light, so that many
recognized what they had been trying to think. He wrote with homeliness
as well as force, wishing much more to make the issue recognizable than
to create fine phrases, with the result that one or two of his sentences
passed into the language of the discussion which, as any of its
standard-bearers would have told you, had little use for rhetoric. The
articles were competent: if you listened to Horace Williams you would
have been obliged to accept them as the last, or latest, word of
economic truth, though it must be left to history to endorse Mr
Williams. It was their enthusiasm, however, that gave them the wing on
which they travelled. People naturally took different views, even of
this quality. “Young Murchison’s working the imperial idea for all it’s
worth,” was Walter Winter’s; and Octavius Milburn humorously summed up
the series as “tall talk.”
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 sees 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 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 understand,” said
Lorne, with an effort at 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.”