“I understand how you must feel in the matter, Murchison, said Henry
Cruickshank. “It’s the most natural thing in the world that you should
want to clear yourself definitely, especially as you say, since the
charges have been given such wide publicity. On the other hand, I think
it quite possible that you exaggerate the inference that will be drawn
from our consenting to saw off with the other side on the two principal
counts.”
“The inference will be,” said Lorne “that there’s not a pin to choose
between Winter’s political honesty and my own. I’m no Pharisee, but
I don’t think I can sit down under that. I can’t impair my possible
usefulness by accepting a slur upon my reputation at the very
beginning.”
“Politics are very impersonal. It wouldn’t be remembered a year.”
“Winter of course,” said young Murchison moodily, “doesn’t want to take
any chances. He knows he’s done for if we go on. Seven years for him
would put him pretty well out of politics. And it would suit him down to
the ground to fight it over again. There’s nothing he would like better
to see than another writ for South Fox.”
“That’s all right,” the lawyer responded, “but Moneida doesn’t look
altogether pleasant, you know. We may have good grounds for supposing
that the court will find you clear of that business; but Ormiston, so
far as I can make out, was playing the fool down there for a week before
polling-day, and there are three or four Yellow Dogs and Red Feathers
only too anxious to pay back a grudge on him. We’ll have to fight again,
there’s no doubt about that. The only question is whether we’ll ruin
Ormiston first or not. Have you seen Bingham?”
“I know what Bingham thinks,” said Lorne, impatiently. “The Squire’s
position is a different consideration. I don’t see how I can--However,
I’ll go across to the committee room now and talk it over.”
It is doubtful whether young Murchison knew all that Bingham thought;
Bingham so seldom told it all. There were matters in the back of
Bingham’s mind that prompted him to urge the course that Cruickshank had
been empowered by the opposing counsel to suggest--party considerations
that it would serve no useful purpose to talk over with Murchison.
Bingham put it darkly when he said he had quite as much hay on his
fork as he cared to tackle already, implying that the defence
of indiscretions in Moneida was quite an unnecessary addition.
Contingencies seemed probable, arising out of the Moneida charges that
might affect the central organization of the party in South Fox to an
extent wholly out of proportion with the mere necessity of a second
election. Bingham talked it over with Horace Williams, and both of
them with Farquharson; they were all there to urge the desirability of
“sawing off” upon Lorne when he found them at headquarters. Their most
potent argument was, of course, the Squire and the immediate dismissal
that awaited him under the law if undue influence were proved against
him. Other considerations found the newly elected member for South
Fox obstinate and troublesome, but to that he was bound to listen, and
before that he finally withdrew his objections. The election would
come on again, as happened commonly enough. Bingham could point to
the opening, in a few days, of a big flour-milling industry across
the river, which would help; operations on the Drill Hall and
the Post-Office would be hurried on at once, and the local party
organization would be thoroughly overhauled. Bingham had good reason for
believing that they could entirely regain their lost ground, and at the
same time dissipate the dangerous impression that South Fox was being
undermined. Their candidate gave a reluctant ear to it all, and in the
end agreed to everything.
So that Chief Joseph Fry--the White Clam Shell of his own lost
fires--was never allowed the chance of making good the election losses
of that year, as he had confidently expected to do when the charge came
on; nor was it given to any of the Yellow Dogs and Red Feathers of Mr
Cruickshank’s citation to boast at the tribal dog-feasts of the future,
of the occasion on which they had bested “de boss.” Neither was any
further part in public affairs, except by way of jocular reference,
assigned to Finnigan’s cat. The proceedings of the court abruptly
terminated, the judges reported the desirability of a second contest,
and the public accepted with a wink. The wink in any form was hateful to
Lorne Murchison, but he had not to encounter it long.
The young man had changed in none of the aspects he presented to his
fellow-citizens since the beginning of the campaign. In the public eye
he wore the same virtues as he wore the same clothes; he summed up even
a greater measure of success; his popularity was unimpaired. He went as
keenly about the business of life, handling its details with the same
capable old drawl. Only his mother, with the divination of mothers,
declared that since the night of the opera house meeting Lorne had
been “all worked up.” She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was
solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be
safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent,
unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night
of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office
work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked
of a few days’ rest when they had settled Winter. He could think of
nothing but the points he had forgotten when he had his great chance.
“The flag should have come in at the end,” he would say to himself,
trying vainly to remember where it did come in. He was ill pleased with
the issue of that occasion; and it was small compensation to be told by
Stella that his speech gave her shivers up and down her back.
Meanwhile the theory of Empire coursed in his blood, fed by the
revelation of the future of his country in every newspaper, by the
calculated prophecies of American onlookers, and by the telegrams which
repeated the trumpet notes of Wallingham’s war upon the mandarinate of
Great Britain. It occupied him so that he began to measure and limit
what he had to say about it, and to probe the casual eye for sympathy
before he would give an inch of rope to his enthusiasm. He found it as
hard as ever to understand that the public interest should be otherwise
preoccupied, as it plainly was, that the party organ, terrified of
Quebec, should shuffle away from the subject with perfunctory and
noncommittal reference, that among the men he met in the street,
nobody’s blood seemed stirred, whatever the day’s news was from England.
He subscribed to the Toronto Post, the leading organ of the Tories,
because of its fuller reports and more sympathetic treatment of the
Idea, due to the fact that the Idea originated in a brain temporarily
affiliated to the Conservative party. If the departure to imperial
preference had any damage in it for Canadian interests, it would be
for those which the Post made its special care; but the spirit of party
draws the breath of expediency, and the Post flaunting the Union Jack
every other day, put secondary manufactures aside for future discussion,
and tickled the wheat-growers with the two-shilling advantage they were
coming into at the hands of the English Conservatives, until Liberal
leaders began to be a little anxious about a possible loss of
wheat-growing votes. It was, as John Murchison said, a queer position
for everybody concerned; queer enough, no doubt, to admit a Tory journal
into the house on sufferance and as a special matter; but he had a
disapproving look for it as it lay on the hall floor, and seldom was the
first to open it.
Nevertheless Lorne found more satisfaction in talking imperialism with
his father than with anyone else. While the practical half of John
Murchison was characteristically alive to the difficulties involved,
the sentimental half of him was ready at any time to give out cautious
sparks of sympathy with the splendour of Wallingham’s scheme; and he
liked the feeling that a son of his should hark back in his allegiance
to the old land. There was a kind of chivalry in the placing of certain
forms of beauty--political honour and public devotion, which blossomed
best, it seemed, over there--above the material ease and margin of the
new country, and even above the grand chance it offered for a man to
make his mark. Mr Murchison was susceptible to this in anyone, and
responsive to it in his son.
As to the local party leaders, they had little more than a shrug for the
subject. So far as they were concerned, there was no Empire and no Idea;
Wallingham might as well not have been born. It seemed to Lorne that
they maintained toward him personally a special reticence about it.
Reticence indeed characterized their behaviour generally during the
period between the abandonment of the suits and the arrangement of the
second Liberal convention. They had little advice for him about his
political attitude, little advice about anything. He noticed that his
presence on one or two occasions seemed to embarrass them, and that his
arrival would sometimes have a disintegrating effect upon a group in the
post-office or at a street corner. He added it, without thinking, to his
general heaviness; they held it a good deal against him, he supposed, to
have reduced their proud standing majority to a beggarly two figures; he
didn’t blame them.
I cannot think that the sum of these depressions alone would have
been enough to overshadow so buoyant a soul as Lorne Murchison’s.
The characteristics of him I have tried to convey were grafted on an
excellent fund of common sense. He was well aware of the proportions of
things; he had no despair of the Idea, nor would he despair should the
Idea etherealize and fly away. Neither had he, for his personal honour,
any morbid desires toward White Clam Shell or Finnigan’s cat. His luck
had been a good deal better than it might have been; he recognized that
as fully as any sensible young man could, and as for the Great Chance,
and the queer grip it had on him, he would have argued that too if
anyone had approached him curiously about it. There I think we might
doubt his conclusions. There is nothing subtler, more elusive to trace
than the intercurrents of the emotions. Politics and love are thought
of at opposite poles, and Wallingham perhaps would have laughed to know
that he owed an exalted allegiance in part to a half-broken heart. Yet
the impulse that is beyond our calculation, the thing we know potential
in the blood but not to be summoned or conditioned, lies always in the
shadow of the ideal; and who can analyse that, and say, “Of this class
is the will to believe in the integrity of the beloved and false;
of that is the desire to lift a nation to the level of its
mountain-ranges”? Both dispositions have a tendency to overwork the
heart; and it is easy to imagine that they might interact. Lorne
Murchison’s wish, which was indeed a burning longing and necessity,
to believe in the Dora Milburn of his passion, had been under a strain
since the night on which he brought her the pledge which she refused
to wear. He had hardly been conscious of it in the beginning, but by
constant suggestion it had grown into his knowledge, and for weeks he
had taken poignant account of it. His election had brought him no nearer
a settlement with her objection to letting the world know of their
relations. The immediate announcement that it was to be disputed gave
Dora another chance, and once again postponed the assurance that he
longed for with a fever which was his own condemnation of her, if he
could have read that sign. For months he had seen so little of her, had
so altered his constant habit of going to the Milburns’, that his family
talked of it, wondering among themselves; and Stella indulged in hopeful
speculations. They did not wonder or speculate at the Milburns’. It was
an axiom there that it is well to do nothing rashly.
Lorne, in the office on Market Street, had been replying to Mr Fulke to
the effect that the convention could hardly be much longer postponed,
but that as yet he had no word of the date of it when the telephone bell
rang and Mr Farquharson’s voice at the other end asked him to come over
to the committee room. “They’ve decided about it now, I imagine,”
he told his senior, putting on his hat; and something of the wonted
fighting elation came upon him as he went down the stairs. He was right
in his supposition. They had decided about it, and they were waiting,
in a group that made every effort to look casual, to tell him when he
arrived.
They had delegated what Horace Williams called “the job” to Mr
Farquharson, and he was actually struggling with the preliminaries of
it, when Bingham, uncomfortable under the curious quietude of the young
fellow’s attention, burst out with the whole thing.
“The fact is, Murchison, you can’t poll the vote. There’s no man in the
Riding we’d be better pleased to send to the House; but we’ve got to win
this election, and we can’t win it with you.”
“You think you can’t?” said Lorne.
“You see, old man,” Horace Williams put in, “you didn’t get rid of that
save-the-Empire-or-die scheme of yours soon enough. People got to think
you meant something by it.”
“I shall never get rid of it,” Lorne returned simply, and the others
looked at one another.
“The popular idea seems to be,” said Mr Farquharson judicially, “that
you would not hesitate to put Canada to some material loss, or at least
to postpone her development in various important directions, for the
sake of the imperial connection.”
“Wasn’t that,” Lorne asked him, “what, six months ago, you were all
prepared to do?”
“Oh, no,” said Bingham, with the air of repudiating for everybody
concerned. “Not for a cent. We were willing at one time to work it
for what is was worth, but it never was worth that, and if you’d had a
little more experience, Murchison, you’d have realized it.”
“That’s right, Lorne,” contributed Horace Williams. “Experience--that’s
all you want. You’ve got everything else, and a darned sight more. We’ll
get you there, all in good time. But this time--”
“You want me to step down and out,” said Lorne.
“That’s for you to say,” Bingham told him. “We can nominate you again
all right, but we’re afraid we can’t get you the convention. Young and
Windle have been working like moles for the past ten days--”
“For Carter?” interrupted Lorne: “Carter, of course.”
They nodded. Carter stood the admitted fact.
“I’m sorry it’s Carter,” said Lorne thoughtfully. “However--” And he
dropped, staring before him, into silence. The others eyed him from
serious, underhung faces. Horace Williams, with an obvious effort, got
up and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Brace up, old chap,” he said. “You made a blame good fight for us, and
we’ll do the same for you another day.”
“However, gentlemen,” the young man gathered himself up to say, “I
believe I understand the situation. You are my friends and this is your
advice. We must save the seat. I’ll see Carter. If I can get anything
out of him to make me think he’ll go straight on the scheme to save the
Empire”--he smiled faintly--“when it comes to a vote, I’ll withdraw in
his favour at the convention. Horace here will think up something for
me--any old lie will do, I suppose? In any case, of course, I withdraw.”
He took his hat, and they all got up, startled a little at the quick
and simple close of the difficult scene they had anticipated. Horace
Williams offered his hand.
“Shake, Lorne,” he said, and the other two, coming nearer, followed his
example.
“Why, yes,” said Lorne.
He left them with a brief excuse, and they stood together in a moment’s
silence, three practical politicians who had delivered themselves from a
dangerous network involving higher things.
“Dash these heart-to-heart talks,” said Bingham irritably, “it’s the
only thing to do, but why the devil didn’t he want something out of it?
I had that Registrarship in my inside pocket.”
“If anybody likes to kick me round the room,” remarked Horace Williams
with depression, “I have no very strong objection.”
“And now,” Mr Farquharson said with a sigh, “we understand it’s got
to be Carter. I suppose I’m too old a man to do jockey for a
three-year-old, but I own I’ve enjoyed the ride.”
Lorne Murchison went out into the companionship of Main Street, the new
check in his fortunes hanging before him. We may imagine that it hung
heavily; we may suppose that it cut off the view. As Bingham would have
said, he was “up against it” and that, when one is confidently treading
the straight path to accomplishment, is a dazing experience. He was
up against it, yet already he had recoiled far enough to consider it;
already he was adapting his heart, his nerves, and his future to it.
His heart took it greatly, told him he had not yet force enough for the
business he had aspired to, but gave him a secret assurance. Another
time he would find more strength and show more cunning; he would not
disdain the tools of diplomacy and desirability, he would dream no more
of short cuts in great political departures. His heart bowed to its
sorry education and took counsel with him, bidding him be of good
courage and push on. He was up against it, but he would get round it,
and there on the other side lay the same wide prospect, with the
Idea shining high. At one point he faltered, but that was a matter of
expediency rather than of courage. He searched and selected, as he went
along the street, among phrases that would convey his disaster to Dora
Milburn.
Just at that point, the turning to his own office, he felt it hard luck
that Alfred Hesketh should meet and want a word with him. Hesketh had
become tolerable only when other things were equal. Lorne had not seen
him since the night of his election, when his felicitations had seemed
to stand for very little one way or another. His manner now was more
important charged with other considerations. Lorne waited on the
word, uncomfortably putting off the necessity of coming out with his
misfortune.
“I haven’t come across you, Murchison, but you’ve had my sympathy, I
needn’t say, all this time. A man can’t go into politics with gloves
on, there’s no doubt about that. Though mind you, I never for a moment
believed that you let yourself in personally. I mean, I’ve held you all
through, above the faintest suspicion.”
“Have you?” said Lorne. “Well, I suppose I ought to be grateful.”
“Oh, I have--I assure you! But give me a disputed election for the
revelation of a rotten state of things--eh?”
“It does show up pretty low, doesn’t it?”
“However, upon my word, I don’t know whether it’s any better in England.
At bottom we’ve got a lower class to deal with, you know. I’m
beginning to have a great respect for the electorate of this country,
Murchison--not necessarily the methods, but the rank and file of the
people. They know what they want, and they’re going to have it.”
“Yes,” said Lorne, “I guess they are.”
“And that brings me to my news, old man. I’ve given the matter a lot of
time and a lot of consideration, and I’ve decided that I can’t do better
than drive in a stake for myself in this new country of yours.”
“It isn’t so very new,” Lorne told him, in rather dull response, “but I
expect that’s a pretty good line to take. Why, yes--first rate.”
“As to the line,” Hesketh went on, weightily, leading the way through
an encumbering group of farmers at a corner, “I’ve selected that, too.
Traction-engines. Milburn has never built them yet, but he says the
opportunity is ripe--”
“Milburn!” Lorne wheeled sharply.
“My future partner. He was planning extensions just as I came along, a
fortunate moment, I hope it will prove, for us both. I’d like to go
into it with you, some time when you have leisure--it’s a scheme of
extraordinary promise. By the way, there’s an idea in it that ought to
appeal to you--driving the force that’s to subdue this wilderness of
yours.”
“When you’ve lived here for a while,” said Lorne, painfully preoccupied,
“you’ll think it quite civilized. So you’re going in with Milburn?”
“Oh, I’m proud of it already! I shall make a good Canadian, I trust. And
as good an imperialist,” he added, “as is consistent with the claims of
my adopted country.”
“That seems to be the popular view,” said Lorne.
“And a very reasonable view, too. But I’m not going to embark on that
with you, old fellow--you shan’t draw me in. I know where you are on
that subject.”
“So do I--I’m stranded. But it’s all right--the subject isn’t,” Lorne
said quietly; and Hesketh’s exclamations and inquiries brought out the
morning’s reverse. The young Englishman was cordially sorry, full
of concern and personal disappointment, abandoning his own absorbing
affairs, and devoting his whole attention to the unfortunate exigency
which Lorne dragged out of his breast, in pure manfulness, to lay before
him.
However, they came to the end of it, arriving at the same time at
the door which led up the stairs to the office of Fulke, Warner, and
Murchison.
“Thank you,” said Lorne. ‘“Thank you. Oh, I dare say it will come all
right in the course of time. You return to England, I suppose--or do
you?--before you go in with Milburn?”
“I sail next week,” said Hesketh, and a great relief shot into the face
of his companion. “I have a good deal to see to over there. I shan’t
get back much before June, I fancy. And--I must tell you--I am doing the
thing very thoroughly. This business of naturalizing myself, I mean. I
am going to marry that very charming girl--a great friend of yours, by
the way, I know her to be--Miss Milburn.”
For accepting the strokes of fate we have curiously trivial
demonstrations. Lorne met Hesketh’s eye with the steadiness of a lion’s
in his own; the unusual thing he did was to take his hands out of his
pockets and let his arms hang loosely by his side. It was as tragic a
gesture of helplessness as if he had flung them above his head.
“Dora is going to marry you?”
“I believe she will do me that honour. And I consider it an honour.
Miss Milburn will compare with any English girl I ever met. But I
half expected you to congratulate me. I know she wrote to you this
morning--you were one of the first.”
“I shall probably find the letter,” said Lorne mechanically, “when I go
home.”
He still eyed Hesketh narrowly, as if he had somewhere concealed about
him the explanation of this final bitter circumstance. He had a desire
not to leave him, to stand and parley--to go upstairs to the office
would be to plunge into the gulf. He held back from that and leaned
against the door frame, crossing his arms and looking over into the
market-place for subjects to postpone Hesketh’s departure. They talked
of various matters in sight, Hesketh showing the zest of his newly
determined citizenship in every observation--the extension of the
electric tramway, the pulling down of the old Fire Hall. In one
consciousness Lorne made concise and relevant remarks; in another he sat
in a spinning dark world and waited for the crash.
It seemed to come when Hesketh said, preparing to go, “I’ll tell Miss
Milburn I saw you. I suppose this change in your political prospects
won’t affect your professional plans in any way you’ll stick on here, at
the Bar?”
It was the very shock of calamity, and for the instant he could see
nothing in the night of it but one far avenue of escape, a possibility
he had never thought of seriously until that moment. The conception
seemed to form itself on his lips, to be involuntary.
“I don’t know. A college friend has been pressing me for some time to
join him in Milwaukee. He offers me plenty of work, and I am thinking
seriously of closing with him.”
“Go over to the United States? You can’t mean that!”
“Oh yes--it’s the next best thing!”
Hesketh’s face assumed a gravity, a look of feeling and of remonstrance.
He came a step nearer and put a hand on his companion’s arm.
“Come now, Murchison,” he said, “I ask you--is this a time to be
thinking of chucking the Empire?”
Lorne moved farther into the passage with an abruptness which left his
interlocutor staring. He stood there for a moment in silence, and then
turned to mount the stair with a reply which a passing dray happily
prevented from reaching Hesketh’s ears.
“No, damn you,” he said. “It’s not!”
I cannot let him finish on that uncontrolled phrase, though it will be
acknowledged that his provocation was great. Nor must we leave him in
heavy captivity to the thought of oblivion in the unregarding welter
of the near republic, of plunging into more strenuous activities and
abandoning his ideal, in queer inverted analogy to the refuging of weak
women in a convent. We know that his ideal was strong enough to reassert
itself, under a keen irony of suggestion, in the very depth of his
overwhelming: and the thing that could rise in him at that black moment
may be trusted, perhaps, to reclaim his fortitude and reconsecrate his
energy when these things come again into the full current of his life.
The illness that, after two or three lagging days, brought him its
merciful physical distraction was laid in the general understanding
at the door of his political disappointment; and, among a crowd
of sympathizers confined to no party, Horace Williams, as his wife
expressed it, was pretty nearly wild during its progress. The power of
the press is regrettably small in such emergencies, but what restoration
it had Horace anxiously administered; the Express published a daily
bulletin. The second election passed only half-noticed by the Murchison
family; Carter very nearly re-established the Liberal majority. The
Dominion dwelt upon this repeated demonstration of the strength of
Reform principles in South Fox, and Mrs Murchison said they were welcome
to Carter.
Many will sympathize with Mrs Murchison at this point, I hope, and
regret to abandon her in such equivocal approval of the circumstances
which have arisen round her. Too anxiously occupied at home to take her
share in the general pleasant sensation of Dr Drummond’s marriage, she
was compelled to give it a hurried consideration and a sanction which
was practically wrested from her. She could not be clear as to the
course of events that led to it, nor entirely satisfied, as she said,
about the ins and outs of the affair; this although she felt she could
be clearer, and possibly had better grounds for being satisfied, than
other people. As to Advena’s simple statement that Miss Cameron had
made a second choice of the Doctor, changing her mind, as far as Mrs
Murchison could see, without rhyme or reason, that Mrs Murchison took
leave to find a very poor explanation. Advena’s own behaviour toward
the rejection is one of the things which her mother declares, probably
truly, that she never will understand. To pick up a man in the actual
fling of being thrown over, will never, in Mrs Murchison’s eyes,
constitute a decorous proceeding. I suppose she thinks the creature
might have been made to wait at least until he had found his feet. She
professes to cherish no antagonism to her future son-in-law on this
account, although, as she says, it’s a queer way to come into a family;
and she makes no secret of her belief that Miss Cameron showed excellent
judgement in doing as she did, however that far-seeing woman came to
have the opportunity.
Hesketh had sailed before Lorne left his room, to return in June to
those privileges and prospects of citizenship which he so eminently
deserves to enjoy. When her brother’s convalescence and departure for
Florida had untied her tongue, Stella widely proclaimed her opinion that
Mr Hesketh’s engagement to Miss Milburn was the most suitable thing that
could be imagined or desired. We know the youngest Miss Murchison to be
inclined to impulsive views; but it would be safe, I think, to follow
her here. Now that the question no longer circles in the actual vortex
of Elgin politics Mr Octavius Milburn’s attitude toward the
conditions of imperial connection has become almost as mellow as
ever. Circumstances may arise any day, however, to stir up that latent
bitterness which is so potential in him: and then I fear there will be
no restraining him from again attacking Wallingham in the papers.
Henry Cruickshank, growing old in his eminence and less secure, perhaps,
in the increasing conflict of loud voices, of his own grasp of the
ultimate best, fearing too, no doubt, the approach of that cynicism
which, moral or immoral, is the real hoar of age, wrote to young
Murchison while he was still examining the problems of the United States
with the half-heart of the alien, and offered him a partnership. The
terms were so simple and advantageous as only to be explicable on the
grounds I have mentioned, though no phrase suggested them in the brief
formulas of the letter, in which one is tempted to find the individual
parallel of certain propositions of a great government also growing old.
The offer was accepted, not without emotion, and there, too, it would
be good to trace the parallel, were we permitted; but for that it is too
soon, or perhaps it is too late. Here, for Lorne and for his country,
we lose the thread of destiny. The shuttles fly, weaving the will of the
nations, with a skein for ever dipped again; and he goes forth to his
share in the task among those by whose hand and direction the pattern
and the colours will be made.
END