A few days later the Gaddesdens were in town, settled in a house in
Portman Square. Philip was increasingly ill, and moreover shrouded in a
bitterness of spirit which wrung his mother's heart. She suspected a new
cause for it in the fancy that he had lately taken for Alice Lucas, the
girl in the white chiffon, who had piped to Mariette in vain. Not that
he ever now wanted to see her. He had passed into a phase indeed of
refusing all society--except that of George Anderson. A floor of the
Portman Square house was given up to him. Various treatments were being
tried, and as soon as he was strong enough his mother was to take him to
the South. Meanwhile his only pleasure seemed to lie in Anderson's
visits, which however could not be frequent, for the business of the
Conference was heavy, and after the daily sittings were over, the
interviews and correspondence connected with them took much time.
On these occasions, whether early in the morning before the business of
the day began, or in the hour before dinner--sometimes even late at
night--Anderson after his chat with the invalid would descend from
Philip's room to the drawing-room below, only allowing himself a few
minutes, and glancing always with a quickening of the pulse through the
shadows of the large room, to see whether it held two persons or one.
Mrs. Gaddesden was invariably there; a small, faded woman in trailing
lace dresses, who would sit waiting for him, her embroidery on her knee,
and when he appeared would hurry across the floor to meet him, dropping
silks, scissors, handkerchief on the way. This dropping of all her
incidental possessions--a performance repeated night after night, and
followed always by her soft fluttering apologies--soon came to be
symbolic, in Anderson's eyes. She moved on the impulse of the moment,
without thinking what she might scatter by the way. Yet the impulse was
always a loving impulse--and the regrets were sincere.
As to the relation to Anderson, Philip was here the pivot of the
situation exactly as he had been in Canada. Just as his physical
weakness, and the demands he founded upon it had bound the Canadian to
their chariot wheels in the Rockies, so now--_mutatis mutandis_--in
London. Mrs. Gaddesden before a week was over had become pitifully
dependent upon him, simply because Philip was pleased to desire his
society, and showed a flicker of cheerfulness whenever he appeared. She
was torn indeed between her memory of Elizabeth's sobbing, and her
hunger to give Philip the moon out of the sky, should he happen to want
it. Sons must come first, daughters second; such has been the philosophy
of mothers from the beginning. She feared--desperately feared--that
Elizabeth had given her heart away. And as she agreed with Philip that
it would not be a seemly or tolerable marriage for Elizabeth, she would,
in the natural course of things, both for Elizabeth's sake and the
family's, have tried to keep the unseemly suitor at a distance. But here
he was, planted somehow in the very midst of their life, and she, making
feeble efforts day after day to induce him to root himself there still
more firmly. Sometimes indeed she would try to press alternatives on
Philip. But Philip would not have them. What with the physical and moral
force that seemed to radiate from Anderson, and bring stimulus with them
to the weaker life--and what with the lad's sick alienation for the
moment from his ordinary friends and occupations, Anderson reigned
supreme, often clearly to his own trouble and embarrassment. Had it not
been for Philip, Portman Square would have seen him but seldom. That
Elizabeth knew with a sharp certainty, dim though it might be to her
mother. But as it was, the boy's tragic clinging to his new friend
governed all else, simply because at the bottom of each heart,
unrecognised and unexpressed, lurked the same foreboding, the same
fear of fears.
The tragic clinging was also, alack, a tragic selfishness. Philip had a
substantial share of that quick perception which in Elizabeth became
something exquisite and impersonal, the source of all high emotions.
When Delaine had first suggested to him "an attachment" between Anderson
and his sister, a hundred impressions of his own had emerged to verify
the statement and aggravate his wrath; and when Anderson had said "a man
of my history is not going to ask your sister to marry him," Philip
perfectly understood that but for the history the attempt would have
been made. Anderson was therefore--most unreasonably and
presumptuously--in love with Elizabeth; and as to Elizabeth, the
indications here also were not lost upon Philip. It was all very
amazing, and he wished, to use his phrase to his mother, that it would
"work off." But whether or no, he could not do without Anderson--if
Anderson was to be had. He threw him and Elizabeth together, recklessly;
trusting to Anderson's word, and unable to resist his own craving for
comfort and distraction.
The days passed on, days so charged with feeling for Elizabeth that they
could only be met at all by a kind of resolute stillness and
self-control. Philip was very dependent on the gossip his mother and
sister brought him from the world outside. Elizabeth therefore, to
please him, went into society as usual, and forgot her heartaches, for
her brother and for herself, as best she could. Outwardly she was much
occupied in doing all that could be done--socially and even
politically--for Anderson and Mariette. She had power and she used it.
The two friends found themselves the object of one of those sudden
cordialities that open all doors, even the most difficult, and run like
a warm wave through London society. Mariette remained throughout the
ironic spectator--friendly on his own terms, but entirely rejecting,
often, the terms offered him tacitly or openly, by his English
acquaintance.
"Your ways are not mine--your ideals are not mine, God forbid they
should be!"--he seemed to be constantly saying. "But we happen to be
oxen bound under the same yoke, and dragging the same plough. No gush,
please--but at the same time no ill-will! Loyal?--to your loyalties? Oh
yes--quite sufficiently--so long as you don't ask us to let it interfere
with our loyalty to our own! Don't be such fools as to expect us to take
much interest in your Imperial orgies. But we're all right! Only let us
alone--we're all right!"
Such seemed to be the voice of this queer, kindly, satiric personality.
London generally falls into the arms of those who flout her; and
Mariette, with his militant Catholicism, and his contempt for our
governing ideals, became the fashion. As for Anderson, the contact with
English Ministers and men of affairs had but carried on the generous
process of development that Nature had designed for a strong man.
Whereas in Mariette the vigorous, self-confident English world--based on
the Protestant idea--produced a bitter and profound irritation, Anderson
seemed to find in that world something ripening and favouring that
brought out all the powers--the intellectual powers at least--of his
nature. He did his work admirably; left the impression of a "coming man"
on a great many leading persons interested in the relations between
England and Canada; and when as often happened Elizabeth and he found
themselves at the same dinner-table, she would watch the changes in him
that a larger experience was bringing about, with a heart half proud,
half miserable. As for his story, which was very commonly known, in
general society, it only added to his attractions. Mothers who were
under no anxieties lest he might want to marry their daughters, murmured
the facts of his unlucky _provenance_ to each other, and then the more
eagerly asked him to dinner.
Meanwhile, for Elizabeth life was one long debate, which left her often
at night exhausted and spiritless. The shock of their first meeting at
Martindale, when all her pent-up yearning and vague expectation had been
met and crushed by the silent force of the man's unaltered will, had
passed away. She understood him better. The woman who is beloved
penetrates to the fact through all the disguises that a lover may
attempt. Elizabeth knew well that Anderson had tones and expressions for
her that no other woman could win from him; and looking back to their
conversation at the Glacier House, she realised, night after night, in
the silence of wakeful hours, the fulness of his confession, together
with the strength of his recoil from any pretension to marry her.
Yes, he loved her, and his mere anxiety--now, and as things stood--to
avoid any extension or even repetition of their short-lived intimacy,
only betrayed the fact the more eloquently. Moreover, he had reason,
good reason, to think, as she often passionately reminded herself, that
he had touched her heart, and that had the course been clear, he might
have won her.
But--the course was not clear. From many signs, she understood how
deeply the humiliation of the scene at Sicamous had entered into a proud
man's blood. Others might forget; he remembered. Moreover, that sense of
responsibility--partial responsibility at least--for his father's guilt
and degradation, of which he had spoken to her at Glacier, had, she
perceived, gone deep with him. It had strengthened a stern and
melancholy view of life, inclining him to turn away from personal joy,
to an exclusive concern with public duties and responsibilities.
And this whole temper had no doubt been increased by his perception of
the Gaddesdens' place in English society. He dared not--he would
not--ask a woman so reared in the best that England had to give, now
that he understood what that best might be, to renounce it all in favour
of what he had to offer. He realised that there was a generous weakness
in her own heart on which he might have played. But he would not play;
his fixed intention was to disappear as soon as possible from her life;
and it was his honest hope that she would marry in her own world and
forget him. In fact he was the prey of a kind of moral terror that here
also, as in the case of his father, he might make some ghastly mistake,
pursuing his own will under the guise of love, as he had once pursued it
under the guise of retribution--to Elizabeth's hurt and his own remorse.
All this Elizabeth understood, more or less plainly. Then came the
question--granted the situation, how was she to deal with it? Just as he
surmised that he could win her if he would, she too believed that were
she merely to set herself to prove her own love and evoke his, she could
probably break down his resistance. A woman knows her own power.
Feverishly, Elizabeth was sometimes on the point of putting it out, of
so provoking and appealing to the passion she divined, as to bring him,
whether he would or no, to her feet.
But she hesitated. She too felt the responsibility of his life, as of
hers. Could she really do this thing--not only begin it, but carry it
through without repentance, and without recoil?
She made herself look steadily at this English spectacle with its
luxurious complexity, its concentration within a small space of all the
delicacies of sense and soul, its command of a rich European tradition,
in which art and literature are living streams springing from
fathomless depths of life. Could she, whose every fibre responded so
perfectly to the stimulus of this environment, who up till now--but for
moments of revolt--had been so happy and at ease in it, could she wrench
herself from it--put it behind her--and adapt herself to quite another,
without, so to speak, losing herself, and half her value, whatever that
might be, as a human being?
As we know, she had already asked herself the question in some fashion,
under the shadow of the Rockies. But to handle it in London was a more
pressing and poignant affair. It was partly the characteristic question
of the modern woman, jealous, as women have never been before in the
world's history, on behalf of her own individuality. But Elizabeth put
it still more in the interests of her pure and passionate feeling for
Anderson. He must not--he should not--run any risks in loving her!
On a certain night early in December, Elizabeth had been dining at one
of the great houses of London. Anderson too had been there. The dinner
party, held in a famous room panelled with full-length Vandycks, had
been of the kind that only London can show; since only in England is
society at once homogeneous enough and open enough to provide it. In
this house, also, the best traditions of an older regime still
prevailed, and its gatherings recalled--not without some conscious
effort on the part of the hostess--the days of Holland House, and Lady
Palmerston. To its smaller dinner parties, which were the object of so
many social ambitions, nobody was admitted who could not bring a
personal contribution. Dukes had no more claim than other people, but as
most of the twenty-eight were blood-relations of the house, and some
Dukes are agreeable, they took their turn. Cabinet Ministers, Viceroys,
Ambassadors, mingled with the men of letters and affairs. There was
indeed a certain old-fashioned measure in it all. To be merely
notorious--even though you were amusing--was not passport enough. The
hostess--a beautiful tall woman, with the brow of a child, a quick
intellect, and an amazing experience of life--created round her an
atmosphere that was really the expression of her own personality;
fastidious, and yet eager; cold, and yet steeped in intellectual
curiosities and passions. Under the mingled stimulus and restraint of
it, men and women brought out the best that was in them. The talk was
good, and nothing--neither the last violinist, nor the latest
_danseuse_--was allowed to interfere with it. And while the dress and
jewels of the women were generally what a luxurious capital expects and
provides, you might often find some little girl in a dyed frock--with
courage, charm and breeding--the centre of the scene.
Elizabeth in white, and wearing some fine jewels which had been her
mother's, had found herself placed on the left of her host, with an
ex-Viceroy of India on her other hand. Anderson, who was on the opposite
side of the table, watched her animation, and the homage that was
eagerly paid her by the men around her. Those indeed who had known her
of old were of opinion that whereas she had always been an agreeable
companion, Lady Merton had now for some mysterious reason blossomed into
a beauty. Some kindling change had passed over the small features.
Delicacy and reserve were still there, but interfused now with a
shimmering and transforming brightness, as though some flame within
leapt intermittently to sight.
Elizabeth more than held her own with the ex-Viceroy, who was a person
of brilliant parts, accustomed to be flattered by women. She did not
flatter him, and he was reduced in the end to making those efforts for
himself, which he generally expected other people to make for him.
Elizabeth's success with him drew the attention of several other persons
at the table besides Anderson. The ex-Viceroy was a bachelor, and one
of the great _partis_ of the day. What could be more fitting than that
Elizabeth Merton should carry him off, to the discomfiture of
innumerable intriguers?
After dinner, Elizabeth waited for Anderson in the magnificent gallery
upstairs where the guests of the evening party were beginning to gather,
and the musicians were arriving. When he came she played her usual fairy
godmother's part; introducing him to this person and that, creating an
interest in him and in his work, wherever it might be useful to him. It
was understood that she had met him in Canada, and that he had been
useful to the poor delicate brother. No other idea entered in. That she
could have any interest in him for herself would have seemed incredible
to this world looking on.
"I must slip away," said Anderson, presently, in her ear; "I promised to
look in on Philip if possible. And to-morrow I fear I shall be
too busy."
And he went on to tell her his own news of the day--that the Conference
would be over sooner than he supposed, and that he must get back to
Ottawa without delay to report to the Canadian Ministry. That afternoon
he had written to take his passage for the following week.
It seemed to her that he faltered in telling her; and, as for her, the
crowd of uniformed or jewelled figures around them became to her, as he
spoke, a mere meaningless confusion. She was only conscious of him, and
of the emotion which at last he could not hide.
She quietly said that she would soon follow him to Portman Square, and
he went away. A few minutes afterwards, Elizabeth said good-night to her
hostess, and emerged upon the gallery running round the fine Italianate
hall which occupied the centre of the house. Hundreds of people were
hanging over the balustrading of the gallery, watching the guests coming
and going on the marble staircase which occupied the centre of the hall.
Elizabeth's slight figure slowly descended.
"Pretty creature!" said one old General, looking down upon her. "You
remember--she was a Gaddesden of Martindale. She has been a widow a long
time now. Why doesn't someone carry her off?"
Meanwhile Elizabeth, as she went down, dreamily, from step to step, her
eyes bent apparrently upon the crowd which filled all the spaces of the
great pictorial house, was conscious of one of those transforming
impressions which represent the sudden uprush and consummation in the
mind of some obscure and long-continued process.
One moment, she saw the restless scene below her, the diamonds, the
uniforms, the blaze of electric light, the tapestries on the walls, the
handsome faces of men and women; the next, it had been wiped out; the
prairies unrolled before her; she beheld a green, boundless land invaded
by a mirage of sunny water; scattered through it, the white farms; above
it, a vast dome of sky, with summer clouds in glistening ranks climbing
the steep of blue; and at the horizon's edge, a line of snow-peaks. Her
soul leapt within her. It was as though she felt the freshness of the
prairie wind upon her cheek, while the call of that distant
land--Anderson's country--its simpler life, its undetermined fates, beat
through her heart.
And as she answered to it, there was no sense of renunciation. She was
denying no old affection, deserting no ancient loyalty. Old and new; she
seemed to be the child of both--gathering them both to her breast.
Yet, practically, what was going to happen to her, she did not know. She
did not say to herself, "It is all clear, and I am going to marry George
Anderson!" But what she knew at last was that there was no dull
hindrance in herself, no cowardice in her own will; she was ready, when
life and Anderson should call her.
At the foot of the stairs Mariette's gaunt and spectacled face broke in
upon her trance. He had just arrived as she was departing.
"You are off--so early?" he asked her, reproachfully.
"I want to see Philip before he settles for the night."
"Anderson, too, meant to look in upon your brother."
"Yes?" said Elizabeth vaguely, conscious of her own reddening, and of
Mariette's glance.
"You have heard his news?" He drew her a little apart into the shelter
of a stand of flowers. "We both go next week. You--Lady Merton--have
been our good angel--our providence. Has he been saying that to you? All
the same--_ma collégue_--I am disappointed in you!"
Elizabeth's eye wavered under his.
"We agreed, did we not--at Glacier--on what was to be done next to our
friend? Oh! don't dispute! I laid it down--and you accepted it. As for
me, I have done nothing but pursue that object ever since--in my own
way. And you, Madam?"
As he stood over her, a lean Don Quixotish figure, his long arms akimbo,
Elizabeth's fluttering laugh broke out.
"Inquisitor! Good night!"
"Good night--but--just a word! Anderson has done well here. Your public
men say agreeable things of him. He will play your English game--your
English Imperialist game--which I can't play. But only, if he is
happy--if the fire in him is fed. Consider! Is it not a patriotic duty
to feed it?"
And grasping her hand, he looked at her with a gentle mockery that
passed immediately into that sudden seriousness--that unconscious air of
command--of which the man of interior life holds the secret. In his
jests even, he is still, by natural gift, the confessor, the director,
since he sees everything as the mystic sees it, _sub specie
æternitatis_.
Elizabeth's soft colour came and went. But she made no reply--except it
were through an imperceptible pressure of the hand holding her own.
At that moment the ex-Viceroy, resplendent in his ribbon of the Garter,
who was passing through the hall, perceived her, pounced upon her, and
insisted on seeing her to her carriage. Mariette, as he mounted the
staircase, watched the two figures disappear--smiling to himself.
But on the way home the cloud of sisterly grief descended on
Elizabeth. How could she think of herself--when Philip was
ill--suffering--threatened? And how would he bear the news of
Anderson's hastened departure?
As soon as she reached home, she was told by the sleepy butler that Mrs.
Gaddesden was in the drawing-room, and that Mr. Anderson was still
upstairs with Philip.
As she entered the drawing-room, her mother came running towards her
with a stifled cry:
"Oh, Lisa, Lisa!"
In terror, Elizabeth caught her mother in her arms.
"Mother--is he worse?"
"No! At least Barnett declares to me there is no real change. But he has
made up his mind, to-day, that he will never get better. He told me so
this evening, just after you had gone; and Barnett could not satisfy
him. He has sent for Mr. Robson." Robson was the family lawyer.
The two women looked at one another in a pale despair. They had reached
the moment when, in dealing with a sick man, the fictions of love drop
away, and the inexorable appears.
"And now he'll break his heart over Mr. Anderson's going!" murmured the
mother, in an anguish. "I didn't want him to see Philip to-night--but
Philip heard his ring--and sent down for him."
They sat looking at each other, hand in hand--waiting--and listening.
Mrs. Gaddesden murmured a broken report of the few words of conversation
which rose now, like a blank wall, between all the past, and this
present; and Elizabeth listened, the diamonds in her hair and the folds
of her satin dress glistening among the shadows of the half-lit room,
the slow tears on her cheeks.
At last a step descended. Anderson entered the room.
"He wants you," he said, to Elizabeth, as the two women rose. "I am
afraid you must go to him."
The electric light immediately above him showed his frowning, shaken
look.
"He is so distressed by your going?" asked Elizabeth, trembling.
Anderson did not answer, except to repeat insistently--
"You must go to him. I don't myself think he is any worse--but--"
Elizabeth hurried away. Anderson sat down beside Mrs. Gaddesden, and
began to talk to her.
When his sister entered his room, Philip was sitting up in an arm-chair
near the fire; looking so hectic, so death-doomed, so young, that his
sister ran to him in an agony--"Darling Philip--my precious Philip--why
did you want me? Why aren't you asleep?"
She bent over him and kissed his forehead, and then taking his hand she
laid it against her cheek, caressing it tenderly.
"I'm not asleep--because I've had to think of a great many things," said
the boy in a firm tone. "Sit down, please, Elizabeth. For a few days
past, I've been pretty certain about myself--and to-night I screwed it
out of Barnett. I haven't said anything to you and mother, but--well,
the long and short of it is, Lisa, I'm not going to recover--that's all
nonsense--my heart's too dicky--I'm going to die."
She protested with tears, but he impatiently asked her to be calm. "I've
got to say something--something important--and don't you make it harder,
Elizabeth! I'm not going to get well, I tell you--and though I'm not of
age--legally--yet I do represent father--I am the head of the
family--and I have a right to think for you and mother. Haven't I?"
The contrast between the authoritative voice, the echo of things in him,
ancestral and instinctive, and the poor lad's tremulous fragility, was
moving indeed. But he would not let her caress him.
"Well, these last weeks, I've been thinking a great deal, I can tell
you, and I wasn't going to say anything to you and mother till I'd got
it straight. But now, all of a sudden, Anderson comes and says that
he's going back. Look here, Elizabeth--I've just been speaking to
Anderson. You know that he's in love with you--of course you do!"
With a great effort, Elizabeth controlled herself. She lifted her face
to her brother's as she sat on a low chair beside him. "Yes, dear
Philip, I know."
"And did you know too that he had promised me not to ask you to marry
him?"
Elizabeth started.
"No--not exactly. But perhaps--I guessed."
"He did then!" said Philip, wearily. "Of course I told him what I
thought of his wanting to marry you, in the Rockies; and he behaved
awfully decently. He'd never have said a word, I think, without my
leave. Well--now I've changed my mind!"
Elizabeth could not help smiling through her tears. With what merry
scorn would she have met this assertion of the _patria potestas_ from
the mouth of a sound brother! Her poor Philip!
"Dear old boy!--what have you been saying to Mr. Anderson?"
"Well!"--the boy choked a little--"I've been telling him that--well,
never mind!--he knows what I think about him. Perhaps if I'd known him
years ago--I'd have been different. That don't matter. But I want to
settle things up for you and him. Because you know, Elizabeth, you're
pretty gone on him, too!"
Elizabeth hid her face against his knee--without speaking. The boy
resumed:
"And so I've been telling him that now I thought differently--I hoped he
would ask you to marry him--and I knew that you cared for him--but
that he mustn't dream of taking you to Canada. That was all
nonsense--couldn't be thought of! He must settle here. You've lots of
money--and--well, when I'm gone--you'll have more. Of course Martindale
will go away from us, and I know he will look after mother as well
as you."
There was silence--till Elizabeth murmured--"And what did he say?"
The lad drew himself away from her with an angry movement.
"He refused!"
Elizabeth lifted herself, a gleam of something splendid and passionate
lighting up her small face.
"And what else, dear Philip, did you expect?"
"I expected him to look at it reasonably!" cried the boy. "How can he
ask a woman like you to go and live with him on the prairies? It's
ridiculous! He can go into English politics, if he wants politics. Why
shouldn't he live on your money? Everybody does it!"
"Did you really understand what you were asking him to do, Philip?"
"Of course I did! Why, what's Canada compared to England? Jolly good
thing for him. Why he might be anything here! And as if I wouldn't
rather be a dustman in England than a--"
"Philip, my dear boy! do rest--do go to bed," cried his mother
imploringly, coming into the room with her soft hurrying step. "It's
going on for one o'clock. Elizabeth mustn't keep you talking like this!"
She smiled at him with uplifted finger, trying to hide from him all
traces of emotion.
But her son looked at her steadily.
"Mother, is Anderson gone?"
"No," said Mrs. Gaddesden, with hesitation. "But he doesn't want you to
talk any more to-night--he begs you not. Please--Philip!"
"Ask him to come here!" said Philip, peremptorily. "I want to talk to
him and Elizabeth."
Mrs. Gaddesden protested in vain. The mother and daughter looked at each
other with flushed faces, holding a kind of mute dialogue. Then
Elizabeth rose from her seat by the fire.
"I will call Mr. Anderson, Philip. But if we convince you that what you
ask is quite impossible, will you promise to go quietly to bed and try
to sleep? It breaks mother's heart, you know, to see you straining
yourself like this."
Philip nodded--a crimson spot in each cheek, his frail hands twining and
untwining as he tried to compose himself.
Elizabeth went half-way down the stairs and called. Anderson hurried out
of the drawing-room, and saw her bending to him from the shadows, very
white and calm.
"Will you come back to Philip a moment?" she said, gently. "Philip has
told me what he proposed to you."
Anderson could not find a word to say. In a blind tumult of feeling he
caught her hand, and pressed his lips to it, as though appealing to her
dumbly to understand him.
She smiled at him.
"It will be all right," she whispered. "My poor Philip!" and she led him
back to the sick room.
"George--I wanted you to come back, to talk this thing out," said
Philip, turning to him as he entered, with the tyranny of weakness.
"There's no time to waste. You know--everybody knows--I may get
worse--and there'll be nothing settled. It's my duty to settle--"
Elizabeth interrupted him.
"Philip darling!--"
She was hanging over his chair, while Anderson stood a few feet away,
leaning against the mantelpiece, his face turned from the brother and
sister. The intimacy--solemnity almost--of the sick-room, the midnight
hour, seemed to strike through Elizabeth's being, deepening and yet
liberating emotion.
"Dear Philip! It is not for Mr. Anderson to answer you--it is for me. If
he could give up his country--for happiness--even for love--I should
never marry him--for--I should not love him any more."
Anderson turned to look at her. She had moved, and was now standing in
front of Philip, her head thrown back a little, her hands lightly
clasped in front of her. Her youth, her dress, her diamonds, combined
strangely with the touch of high passion in her shining eyes, her
resolute voice.
"You see, dear Philip, I love George Anderson--"
Anderson gave a low cry--and, moving to her side, he grasped her hand.
She gave it to him, smiling--and went on:
"I love him--partly--because he is so true to his own people--because I
saw him first--and knew him first--among them. No! dear Philip, he has
his work to do in Canada--in that great, great nation that is to be. He
has been trained for it--no one else can do it but he--and neither you
nor I must tempt him from it."
The eyes of the brother and sister met. Elizabeth tried for a lighter
tone.
"But as neither of us _could_ tempt him from it--it is no use
talking--is it?"
Philip looked from her to Anderson in a frowning silence. No one spoke
for a little while. Then it seemed to them as though the young man
recognised that his effort had failed, and his physical weakness shrank
from renewing it. But he still resisted his mother's attempt to put an
end to the scene.
"That's all very well, Lisa," he said at last, "but what are you going
to do?"
Elizabeth withdrew her hand from Anderson's.
"What am I going to do? _Wait_--just that!"
But her lip trembled. And to hide it she sank down again in the low
chair in front of her brother, propping her face in both hands.
"Wait?" repeated Philip, scornfully--"and what for?"
"Till you and mother--come to my way of thinking--and"--she
faltered--"till Mr. Anderson--"
Her voice failed her a moment. Anderson stood motionless, bending
towards her, hanging upon her every gesture and tone.
"Till Mr. Anderson--" she resumed, "is--well!--is brave enough
to--trust a woman! and--oh! good Heavens!"--she dashed the tears from
her eyes, half laughing, as her self-control broke down--"clever enough
to save her from proposing to him in this abominable way!"
She sprang to her feet impatiently. Anderson would have caught her in
his arms; but with a flashing look, she put him aside. A wail broke from
Mrs. Gaddesden:
"Lisa--you won't leave us!"
"Never, darling--unless you send me!--or come with me! And now, don't
you think, Philip dearest, you might let us all go to bed? You are
really not worse, you know; and Mother and I are going to carry you off
south--very, very soon."
She bent to him and kissed his brow. Philip's face gradually changed
beneath her look, from the tension and gloom with which he had begun the
scene to a kind of boyish relief--a touch of pleasure--of mischief even.
His high, majestical pretensions vanished away; a light and volatile
mind thought no more of them; and he turned eagerly to another idea.
"Elizabeth, do you know that you have proposed to Anderson?"
"If I have, it was your fault."
"He hasn't said Yes?"
Elizabeth was silent. Anderson came forward--but Philip stopped him
with a gesture.
"He can't say Yes--till I give him back his promise," said the boy,
triumphantly. "Well, George, I do give it you back--on one
condition--that you put off going for a week, and that you come back as
soon as you can. By Jove, I think you owe me that!"
Anderson's difficult smile answered him.
"And now you've got rid of your beastly Conference, you can come in, and
talk business with me to-morrow--next day--every day!" Philip resumed,
"can't he, Elizabeth? If you're going to be my brother, I'll jolly well
get you to tackle the lawyers instead of me--boring old idiots! I
say--I'm going to take it easy now!"
He settled himself in his chair with a long breath, and his eyelids
fell. He was speaking, as they all knew, of the making of his will. Mrs.
Gaddesden stooped piteously and kissed him. Elizabeth's face quivered.
She put her arm round her mother and led her away. Anderson went to
summon Philip's servant.
A little later Anderson again descended the dark staircase, leaving
Philip in high spirits and apparently much better.
In the doorway of the drawing-room, stood a white form. Then the man's
passion, so long dyked and barriered, had its way. He sprang towards
her. She retreated, catching her breath; and in the shadows of the empty
room she sank into his arms. In the crucible of that embrace all things
melted and changed. His hesitations and doubts, all that hampered his
free will and purpose, whether it were the sorrows and humiliations of
the past--or the compunctions and demurs of the present--dropped away
from him, as unworthy not of himself, but of Elizabeth. She had made him
master of herself, and her fate; and he boldly and loyally took up the
part. He had refused to become the mere appanage of her life, because he
was already pledged to that great idea he called his country. She loved
him the more for it; and now he had only to abound in the same sense, in
order to hold and keep the nature which had answered so finely to his
own. He had so borne himself as to wipe out all the social and external
inequalities between them. What she had given him, she had had to sue
him to take. But now that he had taken it, she knew herself a weak woman
on his breast, and she realised with a happy tremor that he would make
her no more apologies for his love, or for his story. Rather, he stood
upon that dignity she herself had given him--her lover, and the captain
of her life!
EPILOGUE
About nine months later than the events told in the last chapter, the
August sun, as it descended upon a lake in that middle region of the
northern Rockies which is known as yet only to the Indian trapper,
and--on certain tracks--to a handful of white explorers, shone on a boat
containing two persons--Anderson and Elizabeth. It was but twenty-four
hours since they had reached the lake, in the course of a long camping
expedition involving the company of two guides, a couple of half-breed
_voyageurs_, and a string of sixteen horses. No white foot had ever
before trodden the slender beaches of the lake; its beauty of forest and
water, of peak and crag, of sun and shadow, the terror of its storms,
the loveliness of its summer--only some stray Indian hunter, once or
twice in a century perhaps, throughout all the æons of human history,
had ever beheld them.
But now, here were Anderson and Elizabeth!--first invaders of an
inviolate nature, pioneers of a long future line of travellers and
worshippers.
They had spent the day of summer sunshine in canoeing on the broad
waters, exploring the green bays, and venturing a long way up a
beautiful winding arm which seemed to lose itself in the bosom of superb
forest-skirted mountains, whence glaciers descended, and cataracts leapt
sheer into the glistening water. Now they were floating slowly towards
the little promontory where their two guides had raised a couple of
white tents, and the smoke of a fire was rising into the evening air.
Sunset was on the jagged and snow-clad heights that shut in the lake to
the eastward. The rose of the sky had been caught by the water and
interwoven with its own lustrous browns and cool blues; while
fathom-deep beneath the shining web of colour gleamed the reflected
snows and the forest slopes sliding downwards to infinity. A few
bird-notes were in the air--the scream of an eagle, the note of a
whip-poor-will, and far away across the lake a dense flight of wild duck
rose above a reedy river-mouth, black against a pale band of sky.
They were close now to the shore, and to a spot where lightning and
storm had ravaged the pines and left a few open spaces for the sun to
work. Elizabeth, in delight, pointed to the beds of wild strawberries
crimsoning the slopes, intermingled with stretches of bilberry, and
streaks of blue and purple asters. But a wilder life was there. Far
away the antlers of a swimming moose could be seen above the quiet lake.
Anderson, sweeping the side with his field glass, pointed to the ripped
tree-trunks, which showed where the brown bear or the grizzly had been,
and to the tracks of lynx or fox on the firm yellow sand. And as they
rounded the point of a little cove they came upon a group of deer that
had come down to drink.
The gentle creatures were not alarmed at their approach; they raised
their heads in the red light, seeing man perhaps for the first time, but
they did not fly. Anderson stayed the boat--and he and Elizabeth watched
them with enchantment--their slender bodies and proud necks, the bright
sand at their feet, the brown water in front, the forest behind.
Elizabeth drew a long breath of joy--looking back again at the dying
glory of the lake, and the great thunder-clouds piled above the forest.
"Where are we exactly?" she said. "Give me our bearings."
"We are about seventy miles north of the main line of the C.P.R., and
about forty or fifty miles from the projected line of the Grand Trunk
Pacific," said Anderson. "Make haste, dearest, and name your lake!--for
where we come, others will follow."
So Elizabeth named it--Lake George--after her husband; seeing that it
was his topographical divination, his tracking of the lake through the
ingenious unravelling of a score of Indian clues which had led them at
last to that Pisgah height whence the silver splendour of it had first
been seen. But the name was so hotly repudiated by Anderson on the
ground of there being already a famous and an historical Lake George on
the American continent, that the probability is, when that noble sheet
of water comes to be generally visited of mankind, it will be known
rather as Lake Elizabeth; and so those early ambitions of Elizabeth
which she had expressed to Philip in the first days of her Canadian
journeying, will be fulfilled.
[Illustration: "LAKE ELIZABETH"]
Alas!--poor Philip! Elizabeth's black serge dress, and the black ribbon
on her white sun-hat were the outward tokens of a grief, cherished deep
in her protesting, pitiful heart. Her brother had lived for some four
months after her engagement to Anderson; always, in spite of encouraging
doctors, under the same sharp premonition of death which had dictated
his sudden change of attitude towards his Canadian friend. In the
January of the new year, Anderson had joined them at Bordighera, and
there, after many alternating hopes and fears, a sudden attack of
pneumonia had slit the thin-spun life. A few weeks later, at Mrs.
Gaddesden's urgent desire, and while she was in the care of a younger
sister to whom she was tenderly attached, there had been a quiet wedding
at Genoa, and a very pale and sad Elizabeth had been carried by her
Anderson to some of the beloved Italian towns, where for so long she had
reaped a yearly harvest of delight. In Rome, Florence, and Venice she
must needs rouse herself, if only to show the keen novice eyes, beside
her what to look at, and to grapple with the unexpected remarks which
the spectacle evoked from Anderson. He looked in respectful silence at
Bellini and Tintoret; but the industrial growth of the north, the
strikes of _braccianti_ on the central plains, and the poverty of Sicily
and the south--in these problems he was soon deeply plunged, teaching
himself Italian in order to understand them.
Then they had returned to Mrs. Gaddesden, and to the surrender of
Martindale to its new master. For the estate went to a cousin, and when
the beauty and the burden of it were finally gone, Philip's gentle
ineffectual mother departed with relief to the moss-grown dower-house
beside Bassenthwaite lake, there to sorrow for her only son, and to find
in the expansion of Elizabeth's life, in Elizabeth's letters, and the
prospects of Elizabeth's visits, the chief means left of courage and
resignation. Philip's love for Anderson, his actual death in those
strong arms, had strengthened immeasurably the latter's claim upon her;
and in March she parted with him and Elizabeth, promising them boldly
that she would come to them in the fall, and spend a Canadian winter
with them.
Then Anderson and Elizabeth journeyed West in hot haste to face a
general election. Anderson was returned, and during three or four months
at Ottawa, Elizabeth was introduced to Canadian politics, and to the
swing and beat of those young interests and developing national hopes
which, even after London, and for the Londoner, lend romance and
significance to the simpler life of Canada's nascent capital. But
through it all both she and Anderson pined for the West, and when
Parliament rose in early July, they fled first to their rising
farm-buildings on one of the tributaries of the Saskatchewan, and then,
till the homestead was ready, and the fall ploughing in sight, they had
gone to the Rockies, in order that they might gratify a passionate wish
of Elizabeth's--to get for once beyond beaten tracks, and surprise the
unknown. She pleaded for it as their real honeymoon. It might never be
possible again; for the toils of life would soon have snared them.
And so, after a month's wandering beyond all reach of civilisation,
they were here in the wild heart of Manitou's wild land, and the red and
white of Elizabeth's cheek, the fire in her eyes showed how the god's
spell had worked....
* * * * *
The evening came. Their frugal meal, prepared by one of the Indian
half-breeds, and eaten in a merry community among beds of orchids and
vetch, was soon done; and the husband and wife pushed off again in the
boat--for the densely wooded shores of the lake were impassable on
foot--to watch the moon rise on this mysterious land.
And as they floated there, often hand in hand, talking a little, but
dreaming more--Anderson's secret thoughts reviewed the past year, and
the incredible fortune which had given him Elizabeth.
Deep in his nature was still the old pessimism, the old sadness. Could
he make her happy? In the close contact of marriage he realised all that
had gone to the making of her subtle and delicate being--the influences
of a culture and tradition of which he was mostly ignorant, though her
love was opening many gates to him. He felt himself in many respects her
inferior--and there were dark moments when it seemed to him inevitable
that she must tire of him. But whenever they overshadowed him, the
natural reaction of a vigorous manhood was not far off. Patriotism and
passion--a profound and simple pride--stood up and wrestled with his
doubt. She was not less, but more, than he had imagined her. What was in
truth his safeguard and hers, was the fact that, at the very root of
her, Elizabeth was a poet! She had seen Canada and Anderson from the
beginning in the light of imagination; and that light was not going to
fail her now. For it sprang from the truth and glow of her own nature;
by the help of it she _made_ her world; and Canada and Anderson moved
under it, nobly seen and nobly felt.
This he half shrinkingly understood, and he repaid her with adoration,
and a wisely yielding mind. For her sake he was ready to do a hundred
things he had never yet thought of, reading, inquiring, observing, in
wider circles and over an ampler range. For as the New World, through
Anderson, worked on Elizabeth--so Europe, through Elizabeth, worked on
Anderson. And thus, from life to life, goes on the great
interpenetrating, intermingling flux of things!
It seemed as though the golden light could not die from the lake, though
midsummer was long past. And presently up into its midst floated the
moon, and as they watched the changing of the light upon the northern
snow-peaks, they talked of the vast undiscovered regions beyond, of the
valleys and lakes that no survey has ever mapped, and the rivers that
from the beginning of time have spread their pageant of beauty for the
heavens alone; then, of that sudden stir and uproar of human
life--prospectors, navvies, lumbermen--that is now beginning to be heard
along that narrow strip where the new line of the Grand Trunk Pacific is
soon to pierce the wilderness--yet another link in the girdling of the
world. And further yet, their fancy followed, ever northward--solitude
beyond solitude, desert beyond desert--till, in the Yukon, it lit upon
gold-seeking man, dominating, at last, a terrible and hostile earth,
which had starved and tortured and slain him in his thousands, before he
could tame her to his will.
And last--by happy reaction--it was the prairies again--their fruitful
infinity--and the emigrant rush from East and South.
"When we are old"--said Elizabeth softly, slipping her hand into
Anderson's--"will all this courage die out of us? Now--nothing of all
this vastness, this mystery frightens me. I feel a kind of insolent,
superhuman strength!--as if I--even I--could guide a plough, reap corn,
shoot rapids, 'catch a wild goat by the hair--and hurl my lances at
the sun!'"
"With this hand?" said Anderson, looking at it with a face of
amusement. But Elizabeth took no heed--except to slip the other hand
after it--both into the same shelter.
She pursued her thought, murmuring the words, the white lids falling
over her eyes:
"But when one is feeble and dying, will it all grow awful to me?
Suddenly--shall I long to creep into some old, old corner of England or
Italy--and feel round me close walls, and dim small rooms, and dear,
stuffy, familiar streets that thousands and thousands of feet have worn
before mine?"
Anderson smiled at her. He had guided their boat into a green cove where
there was a little strip of open ground between the water and the
forest. They made fast the boat, and Anderson found a mossy seat under a
tall pine from which the lightning of a recent storm had stripped a
great limb, leaving a crimson gash in the trunk. And there Elizabeth
nestled to him, and he with his arm about her, and the intoxication of
her slender beauty mastering his senses, tried to answer her as a plain
man may. The commonplaces of passion--its foolish promises--its blind
confidence--its trembling joy--there is no other path for love to travel
by, and Elizabeth and Anderson trod it like their fellows.
Six months later on a clear winter evening Elizabeth was standing in
the sitting-room of a Saskatchewan farmhouse. She looked out upon a
dazzling world of snow, lying thinly under a pale greenish sky in which
the sunset clouds were just beginning to gather. The land before her
sloped to a broad frozen river up which a wagon and a team of horses was
plodding its way--the steam rising in clouds round the bodies of the
horses and men. On a track leading to the river a sledge was
running--the bells jingling in the still, light air. To her left were
the great barns of the homestead, and beyond, the long low cowshed, with
a group of Shorthorns and Herefords standing beside the open door. Her
eyes delighted in the whiteness of the snow, or the touches of orange
and scarlet in the clumps of bush, in a note of crimson here and there,
among the withered reeds pushing through the snow, or in the thin
background of a few taller trees--the "shelter-belt" of the farm--rising
brown and sharp against the blue.
Within the farmhouse sitting-room flamed a great wood fire, which shed
its glow on the white walls, on the prints and photographs and books
which were still Elizabeth's companions in the heart of the prairies, as
they had been at Martindale. The room was simplicity itself, yet full
of charm, with its blue druggetting, its pale green chairs and
hangings. At its further end, a curtain half drawn aside showed another
room, a dining-room, also firelit--with a long table spread for tea, a
bare floor of polished woodblocks, and a few prints on the walls.
The wagon she had seen on the river approached the homestead. The man
who was driving it--a strong-limbed, fair-haired fellow--lifted his cap
when he saw Elizabeth at the window. She nodded and smiled at him. He
was Edward Tyson, one of the two engine-drivers who had taken her and
Philip through the Kicking Horse Pass. His friend also could be seen
standing among the cattle gathered in the farmyard. They had become
Anderson's foremen and partners on his farm of twelve hundred acres, of
which only some three hundred acres had been as yet brought under
plough. The rest was still virgin prairie, pasturing a large mixed herd
of cattle and horses. The two North-Countrymen had been managing it all
in Anderson's Parliamentary absences, and were quite as determined as he
to make it a centre of science and progress for a still remote and
sparely peopled district. One of the kinsmen was married, and lived in a
small frame house, a stone's throw from the main buildings of the farm.
The other was the head of the "bothy" or boarding-house for hired men,
a long low building, with cheerful white-curtained windows, which could
be seen just beyond the cow-house.
As she looked over the broad whiteness of the farmlands, above which the
sunset clouds were now tossing in climbing lines of crimson and gold,
rising steeply to a zenith of splendour, and opening here and there,
amid their tumult, to show a further heaven of untroubled
blue--Elizabeth thought with lamentation that their days on the farm
were almost done. The following week could see them at Ottawa for the
opening of the session. Anderson was full of Parliamentary projects;
important work for the Province had been entrusted to him; and in the
general labour policy of the Dominion he would find himself driven to
take a prominent part. But all the while his heart and Elizabeth's were
in the land and its problems; for them the true, the entrancing Canada
was in the wilds. And for Anderson, who through so many years, as an
explorer and engineer, had met Nature face to face, his will against
hers, in a direct and simple conflict, the tedious and tortuous methods
of modern politics were not easy to learn. He must indeed learn them--he
was learning them; and the future had probably great things in store for
him, as a politician. But he came back to the Saskatchewan farm with
joy, and he would leave it reluctantly.
"If only I wasn't so rich!" thought Elizabeth, with compunction. For she
often looked with envy on her neighbours who had gone through the real
hardships of the country; who had bought their Canadian citizenship with
the toil and frugality of years. It seemed to her sometimes that she was
step-child rather than daughter of the dear new land, in spite of her
yearning towards it.
And yet money had brought its own romance. It had enabled Anderson to
embark on this ample farm of nearly two square miles, to staff it with
the best labour to be got, on a basis of copartnership, to bring herds
of magnificent cattle into these park-like prairies, to set up
horse-breeding, and to establish on the borders of the farm a large
creamery which was already proving an attraction for settlers. It was
going to put into Elizabeth's hands the power of helping the young
University of Strathcona just across the Albertan border, and perhaps of
founding in their own provincial capital of Regina a training college
for farm-students--girls and boys--which might reproduce for the West
the college of St. Anne's, that wonderful home of all the useful arts,
which an ever-generous wealth has given to the Province of Quebec.
Already she had in her mind a cottage hospital--sorely wanted--for the
little town of Donaldminster, wherein the weaklings of this great
emigrant army now pouring into the country might find help.
Her heart, indeed, was full of schemes for help. Here she was, a woman
of high education, and much wealth, in the midst of this nascent
community. Her thoughts pondered the life of these scattered farms--of
the hard-working women in them--the lively rosy-cheeked children. It was
her ambition so to live among them that they might love her--trust
her--use her.
Meanwhile their own home was a "temple of industrious peace." Elizabeth
was a prairie housewife like her neighbours. She had indeed brought out
with her from Cumberland one of the Martindale gardeners and his young
wife and sister; and the two North-Country women shared with the farm
mistress the work of the house, till such time as Anderson should help
the husband to a quarter-section of his own, and take someone else to
train in his place. But the atmosphere of the house was one of friendly
equality. Elizabeth--who had herself gone into training for a few weeks
at St. Anne's--prided herself on her dairy, her bread, her poultry. One
might have seen her, on this winter afternoon, in her black serge dress
with white cap and apron, slipping into the kitchen behind the
dining-room, testing the scones in the oven, looking to the preparations
for dinner, putting away stores, and chatting to the two clear-eyed
women who loved her, and would not for the world have let her try her
strength too much! For she who was so eagerly planning the help of
others must now be guarded and cherished herself--lest ill befall!
But now she was at the window watching for Anderson.
The trail from Donaldminster to Battleford passed in front of the house,
dividing the farm. Presently there came slowly along it a covered wagon
drawn by a pair of sorry horses and piled at the back with household
possessions. In front sat a man of slouching carriage, and in the
interior of the wagon another figure could be dimly seen. The whole
turn-out gave an impression of poverty and misfortune; and Elizabeth
looked at it curiously.
Suddenly, the wagon drew up with a jerk at the gate of the farm, and the
man descended, with difficulty, his limbs being evidently numb
with cold.
Elizabeth caught up a fur cloak and ran to the door.
"Could you give us a bit of shelter for the night?" said the man
sheepishly. "We'd thought of getting on to Battleford, but the little
un's bad--and the missus perished with cold. We'd give you no trouble if
we might warm ourselves a bit."
And he looked under his eyebrows at Elizabeth, at the bright fire behind
her, and all the comfort of the new farmhouse. Yet under his shuffling
manner there was a certain note of confidence. He was appealing to that
Homeric hospitality which prevails throughout the farms of the
Northwest.
And in five minutes, the horses were in the barn, the man sitting by the
kitchen fire, while Elizabeth was ministering to the woman and child.
The new-comers made a forlorn trio. They came from a district some fifty
miles further south, and were travelling north in order to take shelter
for a time with relations. The mother was a girl of twenty, worn with
hardship and privation. The father, an English labourer, had taken up
free land, but in spite of much help from a paternal Government, had not
been able to fulfil his statutory obligation, and had now forfeited his
farm. There was a history of typhoid fever, and as Elizabeth soon
suspected, an incipient history of drink. In the first two years of his
Canadian life the man worked for a farmer during the summer, and loafed
in Winnipeg during the winter. There demoralisation had begun, and as
Elizabeth listened, the shadow of the Old World seemed to be creeping
across the radiant Canadian landscape. The same woes?--the same
weaknesses?--the same problems of an unsound urban life?
Her heart sank for a moment--only to provoke an instant reaction of
cheerfulness. No!--in Canada the human will has still room to work, and
is not yet choked by a jungle growth of interests.
She waited for Anderson to come in, and meanwhile she warmed and
comforted the mother. The poor girl looked round her in amazement at the
pretty spacious room, as she spread her hands, knotted and coarsened by
work, to the blaze. Elizabeth held her sickly babe, rocking it and
crooning to it, while upstairs one of kind-eyed Cumberland women was
getting a warm bath ready, and lighting a fire in the guest-room.
"How old is it?" she asked.
"Thirteen months."
"You ought to give up nursing it. It would be better for you both."
"I tried giving it a bit o' what we had ourselves," said the mother,
dully--"But I nearly lost her."
"I should think so!" laughed Elizabeth indignantly; and she began to
preach rational ways of feeding and caring for the child, while the
mother sat by, despondent, and too crushed and hopeless to take much
notice. Presently Elizabeth gave her back the babe, and went to fetch
hot tea and bread and butter.
"Shall I come and get it in the kitchen?" said the woman, rising.
"No, no--stay where you are!" cried Elizabeth. And she was just carrying
back a laden tray from the dining-room when Anderson caught her.
"Darling!--that's too heavy for you!--what are you about?"
"There's a woman in there who's got to be fed--and there's a man in
there"--she pointed to the kitchen--"who's got to be talked to. Hopeless
case!--so you'd better go and see about it!"
She laughed happily in his face, and he snatched a kiss from her as he
carried off the tray.
The woman by the fire rose again in amazement as she saw the
broad-shouldered handsome man who was bringing in the tea. Anderson had
been tramping through the thin-lying snow all day, inquiring into the
water-supply of a distant portion of the farm. He was ruddy with
exercise, and the physical strength that seemed to radiate from him
intimidated the wanderer.
"Where are you bound to?" he said kindly, as he put down the tea beside
her.
The woman, falteringly, told her story. Anderson frowned a little.
"Well, I'd better go and talk to your husband. Mrs. Anderson will look
after you."
And Elizabeth held the baby, while the woman fed languidly--too tired
and spiritless indeed to eat.
When she could be coaxed no further, Elizabeth took her and the babe
upstairs.
"I never saw anything like this in these parts!" cried the girl, looking
round her at the white-tiled bathroom.
"Oh, they're getting quite common!" laughed Elizabeth. "See how nice and
warm the water is! Shall we bathe the baby?" And presently the child lay
warm and swaddled in its mother's arms, dressed in some baby-clothes
produced by Elizabeth from a kind of travellers' cupboard at the top of
the stairs. Then the mother was induced to try a bath for herself, while
Elizabeth tried her hand at spoon-feeding the baby; and in half an hour
she had them both in bed, in the bright spare-room--the young mother's
reddish hair unbound lying a splendid mass on the white pillows, and a
strange expression--as of some long tension giving way--on her
pinched face.
"We'll not know how to thank you"--she said brokenly. "We were just at
the last. Tom wouldn't ask no one to help us before. But we'd only a
few shillings left--we thought at Battleford, we'd sell our bits of
things--perhaps that'd take us through." She looked piteously at
Elizabeth, the tears gathering in her eyes.
"Oh! well, we'll see about that!" said Elizabeth, as she tucked the
blankets round her. "Nobody need starve in this country! Mr. Anderson'll
be able perhaps to think of something. Now you go to sleep, and we'll
look after your husband."
Anderson joined his wife in the sitting-room, with a perplexed
countenance. The man was a poor creature--and the beginnings of the
drink-craving were evident.
"Give him a chance," said Elizabeth. "You want one more man in the
bothy."
She sat down beside him, while Anderson pondered, his legs stretched to
the fire. A train of thought ran through his mind, embittered by the
memory of his father.
He was roused from it by the perception that Elizabeth was looking
tired. Instantly he was all tenderness, and anxious misgiving. He made
her lie down on the sofa by the fire, and brought her some important
letters from Ottawa to read, and the English newspapers.
From the elementary human need with which their minds had just been
busy, their talk passed on to National and Imperial affairs. They
discussed them as equals and comrades, each bringing their own
contribution.
"In a fortnight we shall be in Ottawa!" sighed Elizabeth, at last.
Anderson smiled at her plaintive voice.
"Darling!--is it such a tragedy?"
"No, I shall be as keen as anybody else when we get there. But--we are
so happy here!"
"Is that really, really true?" asked Anderson, taking her hand and
pressing it to his lips.
"Yes"--she murmured--"yes--but it will be truer still next year!"
They looked at each other tenderly. Anderson stooped and kissed her,
long and closely.
He was called away to give some directions to his men, and Elizabeth lay
dreaming in the firelight of the past and the future, her hands clasped
on her breast, her eyes filling with soft tears. Upstairs, in the room
above her, the emigrant mother and baby lay sleeping in the warmth and
shelter gathered round them by Elizabeth. But in tending them, she had
been also feeding her own yearning, quickening her own hope. She had
given herself to a man whom she adored, and she carried his child on her
heart. Many and various strands would have gone to the weaving of that
little soul; she trembled sometimes to think of them. But no fear with
her lasted long. It was soon lost in the deep poetic faith that
Anderson's child in her arms would be the heir of two worlds, the pledge
of a sympathy, a union, begun long before her marriage in the depths of
the spirit, when her heart first went out to Canada--to the beauty of
the Canadian land, and the freedom of the Canadian life.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Merton, Colonist, by Mrs. Humphry Ward