Lady Merton, Colonist Part 12

Delaine forced a smile.

"Poor Old World! I wonder if you will ever be fair to it again, or--or to the people bound up with it!"

She looked at him, a little discomposed, and said, smiling:

"Wait till you meet me next in Rome!"

"Shall I ever meet you again in Rome?" he replied, under his breath, as though involuntarily.

As he spoke he made a determined pause, a stone's throw from the rippling stream that marks the watershed; and Elizabeth must needs pause with him. Beyond the stream, Philip sat lounging among rugs and cushions brought from the car, Anderson and the American beside him. Anderson's fair, uncovered head and broad shoulders were strongly thrown out against the glistening snows of the background. Upon the three typical figures--the frail English boy--the Canadian--the spare New Yorker--there shone an indescribable brilliance of light. The energy of the mountain sunshine and the mountain air seemed to throb and quiver through the persons talking--through Anderson's face, and his eyes fixed upon Elizabeth--through the sunlit water--the sparkling gra.s.ses--the shimmering spectacle of mountain and summer cloud that begirt them.

"Dear Mr. Arthur, of course we shall meet again in Rome!" said Elizabeth, rosy, and not knowing in truth what to say. "This place has turned my head a little!"--she looked round her, raising her hand to the spectacle as though in pretty appeal to him to share her own exhilaration--"but it will be all over so soon--and you _know_ I don't forget old friends--or old pleasures."

Her voice wavered a little. He looked at her, with parted lips, and a rather hostile, heated expression; then drew back, alarmed at his own temerity.

"Of course I know it! You must forgive a bookworm his grumble. Shall I help you over the stream?"

But she stepped across the tiny streamlet without giving him her hand.

As they later rejoined the party, Morton, the Chief Justice, and Mariette returned from a saunter in the course of which they too had been chatting to the engine-drivers.

"I know the part of the country those men want," the American was saying. "I was all over Alberta last fall--part of it in a motor car. We jumped about those stubble-fields in a way to make a leopard jealous!

Every bone in my body was sore for weeks afterwards. But it was worth while. That's a country!"--he threw up his hands. "I was at Edmonton on the day when the last Government lands, the odd numbers, were thrown open. I saw the siege of the land offices, the rush of the new population. Ah, well, of course, we're used to such scenes in the States. There's a great trek going on now in our own Southwest. But when that's over, our free land is done. Canada will have the handling of the last batch on this planet."

"If Canada by that time is not America," said Mariette, drily.

The American digested the remark.

"Well," he said, at last, with a smile, "if I were a Canadian, perhaps I should be a bit nervous."

Thereupon, Mariette with great animation developed his theme of the "American invasion." Winnipeg was one danger spot, British Columbia another. The "peaceful penetration," both of men and capital, was going on so rapidly that a movement for annexation, were it once started in certain districts of Canada, might be irresistible. The harsh and powerful face of the speaker became transfigured; one divined in him some hidden motive which was driving him to contest and belittle the main currents and sympathies about him. He spoke as a prophet, but the faith which envenomed the prophecy lay far out of sight.

Anderson took it quietly. The Chief Justice smiled.

"It might have been," he said, "it might have been! This railroad has made the difference." He stretched out his hand towards the line and the pa.s.s. "Twenty years ago, I came over this ground with the first party that ever pushed through Rogers Pa.s.s and down the Illecillewaet Valley to the Pacific. We camped just about here for the night. And in the evening I was sitting by myself on the slopes of that mountain opposite"--he raised his hand--"looking at the railway camps below me, and the first rough line that had been cut through the forests. And I thought of the day when the trains would be going backwards and forwards, and these nameless valleys and peaks would become the playground of Canada and America. But what I didn't see was the shade of England looking on!--England, whose greater destiny was being decided by those gangs of workmen below me, and the thousands of workmen behind me, busy night and day in bridging the gap between east and west. Traffic from north and south"--he turned towards the American--"that meant, for _your_ Northwest, fusion with _our_ Northwest; traffic from east to west--that meant England, and the English Sisterhood of States! And that, for the moment, I didn't see."

"Shall I quote you something I found in an Edmonton paper the other day?" said Anderson, raising his head from where he lay, looking down into the gra.s.s. And with his smiling, intent gaze fixed on the American, he recited:

Land of the sweeping eagle, your goal is not our goal!

For the ages have taught that the North and the South breed difference of soul.

We toiled for years in the snow and the night, because we believed in the spring, And the mother who cheered us first, shall be first at the banquetting!

The grey old mother, the dear old mother, who taught us the note we sing!

The American laughed.

"A bit raw, like some of your prairie towns; but it hits the nail. I dare say we have missed our bargain. What matter! Our own chunk is as big as we can chew."

There was a moment's silence. Elizabeth's eyes were shining; even Philip sat open-mouthed and dumb, staring at Anderson.

In the background Delaine waited, grudgingly expectant, for the turn of Elizabeth's head, and the spark of consciousness pa.s.sing between the two faces which he had learnt to watch. It came--a flash of some high sympathy--involuntary, lasting but a moment. Then Mariette threw out:

"And in the end, what are you going to make of it? A replica of Europe, or America?--a money-grubbing civilisation with no faith but the dollar? If so, we shall have had the great chance of history--and lost it!"

"We shan't lose it," said Anderson, "unless the G.o.ds mock us."

"Why not?" said Mariette sombrely. "Nations have gone mad before now."

"Ah!--prophesy, prophesy!" said the Chief Justice sadly. "All very well for you young men, but for us, who are pa.s.sing away! Here we are at the birth. Shall we never, in any state of being, know the end? I have never felt so bitterly as I do now the limitations of our knowledge and our life."

No one answered him. But Elizabeth looking up saw the aspect of Mariette--the aspect of a thinker and a mystic--slowly relax. Its harshness became serenity, its bitterness peace. And with her quick feeling she guessed that the lament of the Chief Justice had only awakened in the religious mind the typical religious cry, "_Thou_, Lord, art the Eternal, and Thy years shall not fail."

At Field, where a most friendly inn shelters under the great shoulders of Mount Stephen, they left the car a while, took tea in the hotel, and wandered through the woods below it. All the afternoon, Elizabeth had shown a most delicate and friendly consideration for Delaine. She had turned the conversation often in his direction and on his subjects, had placed him by her side at tea, and in general had more than done her duty by him. To no purpose. Delaine saw himself as the condemned man to whom indulgences are granted before execution. She would probably have done none of these things if there had been any real chance for him.

But in the walk after tea, Anderson and Lady Merton drifted together.

There had been so far a curious effort on both their parts to avoid each other's company. But now the Chief Justice and Delaine had foregathered; Philip was lounging and smoking on the balcony of the hotel with a visitor there, an old Etonian fishing and climbing in the Rockies for health, whom they had chanced upon at tea. Mariette, after one glance at the company, especially at Elizabeth and Anderson, had turned aside into the woods by himself.

They crossed the river and strolled up the road to Emerald Lake. Over the superb valley to their left hung the great snowy ma.s.s, glistening and sunlit, of Mount Stephen; far to the West the jagged peaks of the Van Home range shot up into the golden air; on the flat beside the river vivid patches of some crimson flower, new to Elizabeth's eyes, caught the sloping light; and the voice of a swollen river pursued them.

They began to talk, this time of England. Anderson asked many questions as to English politics and personalities. And she, to please him, chattered of great people and events, of scenes and leaders in Parliament, of diplomats and royalties; all the gossip of the moment, in fact, fluttering round the princ.i.p.al figures of English and European politics. It was the talk most natural to her; the talk of the world she knew best; and as Elizabeth was full of shrewdness and natural salt, without a trace of malice, no more at least than a woman should have--to borrow the saying about Wilkes and his squint--her chatter was generally in request, and she knew it.

But Anderson, though he had led up to it, did not apparently enjoy it; on the contrary, she felt him gradually withdrawing and cooling, becoming a little dry and caustic, even satirical, as on the first afternoon of their acquaintance. So that after a while her gossip flagged; since the game wants two to play it. Then Anderson walked on with a furrowed brow, and raised colour; and she could not imagine what had been done or said to annoy him.

She could only try to lead him back to Canada. But she got little or no response.

"Our politics must seem to you splashes in a water-b.u.t.t," he said impatiently, "after London and Europe."

"A pretty big water-b.u.t.t!"

"Size makes no difference." Elizabeth's lips twitched as she remembered Arthur Delaine's similar protests; but she kept her countenance, and merely worked the harder to pull her companion out of this odd pit of ill-humour into which he had fallen. And in the end she succeeded; he repented, and let her manage him as she would. And whether it was the influence of this hidden action and reaction between their minds, or of the perfumed June day breathing on them from the pines, or of the giant splendour of Mount Burgess, rising sheer in front of them out of the dark avenue of the forest, cannot be told; but, at least, they became more intimate than they had yet been, more deeply interesting each to the other. In his thoughts and ideals she found increasing fascination; her curiosity, her friendly and womanly curiosity, grew with satisfaction. His view of life was often harsh or melancholy; but there was never a false nor a mean note.

Yet before the walk was done he had startled her. As they turned back towards Field, and were in the shadows of the pines, he said, with abrupt decision:

"Will you forgive me if I say something?"

She looked up surprised.

"Don't let your brother drink so much champagne!"

The colour rushed into Elizabeth's face. She drew herself up, conscious of sharp pain, but also of anger. A stranger, who had not yet known them ten days! But she met an expression on his face, timid and yet pa.s.sionately resolved, which arrested her.

"I really don't know what you mean, Mr. Anderson!" she said proudly.

"I thought I had seen you anxious. I should be anxious if I were you,"

he went on hurriedly. "He has been ill, and is not quite master of himself. That is always the critical moment. He is a charming fellow--you must be devoted to him. For G.o.d's sake, don't let him ruin himself body and soul!"

Elizabeth was dumbfounded. The tears rushed into her eyes, her voice choked in her throat. She must, she would defend her brother. Then she thought of the dinner of the night before, and the night before that--of the wine bill at Winnipeg and Toronto. Her colour faded away; her heart sank; but it still seemed to her an outrage that he should have dared to speak of it. He spoke, however, before she could.

"Forgive me," he said, recovering his self-control. "I know it must seem mere insolence on my part. But I can't help it--I can't look on at such a thing, silently. May I explain? Please permit me! I told you"--his voice changed--"my mother and sisters had been burnt to death.

I adored my mother. She was everything to me. She brought us up with infinite courage, though she was a very frail woman. In those days a farm in Manitoba was a much harder struggle than it is now. Yet she never complained; she was always cheerful; always at work. But--my father drank! It came upon him as a young man--after an illness. It got worse as he grew older. Every bit of prosperity that came to us, he drank away; he would have ruined us again and again, but for my mother.