Lady Merton, Colonist Part 14

A step beside her startled her, and she looked up to see Delaine approaching.

"Out already, Mr. Arthur! But _I_ have had breakfast!"

"So have I. What a place!"

Elizabeth did not answer, but her smiling eyes swept the glorious circle of the lake.

"How soon will it all be spoilt and vulgarised?" said Delaine, with a shrug. "Next year, I suppose, a funicular, to the top of the glacier."

Elizabeth cried out.

"Why not?" he asked her, as he rather coolly and deliberately took his seat beside her. "You applaud telephones on the prairies; why not funiculars here?"

"The one serves, the other spoils," said Elizabeth eagerly.

"Serves whom? Spoils what?" The voice was cold. "All travellers are not like yourself."

"I am not afraid. The Canadians will guard their heritage."

"How dull England will seem to you when you go back to it!" he said to her, after a moment. His tone had an under-note of bitterness which Elizabeth uncomfortably recognised.

"Oh! I have a way of liking what I must like," she said, hurriedly.

"Just now, certainly, I am in love with deserts--flat or mountainous--tempered by a private car."

He laughed perfunctorily. And suddenly it seemed to her that he had come out to seek her with a purpose, and that a critical moment might be approaching. Her cheeks flushed, and to hide them she leant over the water's edge and began to trail her finger in its clear wave.

He, however, sat in hesitation, looking at her, the prey of thoughts to which she had no clue. He could not make up his mind, though he had just spent an almost sleepless night on the attempt to do it.

The silence became embarra.s.sing. Then, if he still groped, she seemed to see her way, and took it.

"It was very good of you to come out and join our wanderings," she said suddenly. Her voice was clear and kind. He started.

"You know I could ask for nothing better," was his slow reply, not without dignity. "It has been an immense privilege to see you like this, day by day."

Elizabeth's pulse quickened.

"How can I manage it?" she desperately thought. "But I must--"

"That's very sweet of you," she said aloud, "when I have bored you so with my raptures. And now it's coming to an end, like all nice things.

Philip and I think of staying a little in Vancouver. And the Governor has asked us to go over to Victoria for a few days. You, I suppose, will be doing the proper round, and going back by Seattle and San Francisco?"

Delaine received the blow--and understood it. There had been no definite plans ahead. Tacitly, it had been a.s.sumed, he thought, that he was to return with them to Montreal and England. This gentle question, then, was Elizabeth's way of telling him that his hopes were vain and his journey fruitless.

He had not often been crossed in his life, and a flood of resentment surged up in a very perplexed mind.

"Thank you. Yes--I shall go home by San Francisco."

The touch of haughtiness in his manner, the manner of one accustomed all his life to be a prominent and considered person in the world, did not disguise from Elizabeth the soreness underneath. It was hard to hurt her old friend. But she could only sit as though she felt nothing--meant nothing--of any importance.

And she achieved it to perfection. Delaine, through all his tumult of feeling, was sharply conscious of her grace, her reticence, her soft dignity. They were exactly what he coveted in a wife--what he hoped he had captured in Elizabeth. How was it they had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from him?

He turned blindly on the obstacle that had risen in his path, and the secret he had not yet decided how to handle began to run away with him.

He bent forward, with a slightly heightened colour.

"Lady Merton--we might not have another opportunity--will you allow me a few frank words with you--the privilege of an old friend?"

Elizabeth turned her face to him, and a pair of startled eyes that tried not to waver.

"Of course, Mr. Arthur," she said smiling. "Have I been doing anything dreadful?"

"May I ask what you personally know of this Mr. Anderson?"

He saw--or thought he saw--her brace herself under the sudden surprise of the name, and her momentary discomfiture pleased him.

"What I know of Mr. Anderson?" she repeated wondering. "Why, no more than we all know. What do you mean, Mr. Arthur? Ah, yes, I remember, you first met him in Winnipeg; _we_ made acquaintance with him the day before."

"For the first time? But you are now seeing a great deal of him. Are you quite sure--forgive me if I seem impertinent--that he is--quite the person to be admitted to your daily companionship?"

He spoke slowly and harshly. The effort required before a naturally amiable and nervous man could bring himself to put such an uncomfortable question made it appear particularly offensive.

"Our daily companionship?" repeated Elizabeth in bewilderment. "What can you mean, Mr. Arthur? What is wrong with Mr. Anderson? You saw that everybody at Winnipeg seemed to know him and respect him; people like the Chief Justice, and the Senator--what was his name?--and Monsieur Mariette. I don't understand why you ask me such a thing. Why should we suppose there are any mysteries about Mr. Anderson?"

Unconsciously her slight figure had stiffened, her voice had changed.

Delaine felt an admonitory qualm. He would have drawn back; but it was too late. He went on doggedly--

"Were not all these persons you named acquainted with Mr. Anderson in his public capacity? His success in the strike of last year brought him a great notoriety. But his private history--his family and antecedents--have you gathered anything at all about them?"

Something that he could not decipher flashed through Elizabeth's expression. It was a strange and thrilling sense that what she had gathered she would not reveal for--a kingdom!

"Monsieur Mariette told me all that anyone need want to know!" she cried, breathing quick. "Ask him what he thinks--what he feels! But if you ask _me_, I think Mr. Anderson carries his history in his face."

Delaine pondered a moment, while Elizabeth waited, challenging, expectant, her brown eyes all vivacity.

"Well--some facts have come to my knowledge," he said, at last, "which have made me ask you these questions. My only object--you must, you will admit that!--is to save you possible pain--a possible shock."

"Mr. Arthur!" the voice was peremptory--"If you have learned anything about Mr. Anderson's private history--by chance--without his knowledge--that perhaps he would rather we did not know--I beg you will not tell me--indeed--please--I forbid you to tell me. We owe him much kindness these last few weeks. I cannot gossip about him behind his back."

All her fine slenderness of form, her small delicacy of feature, seemed to him tense and vibrating, like some precise and perfect instrument strained to express a human feeling or intention. But what feeling?

While he divined it, was she herself unconscious of it? His bitterness grew.

"Dear Lady Merton--can you not trust an old friend?"

She did not soften.

"I do trust him. But"--her smile flashed--"even new acquaintances have their rights."

"You will not understand," he said, earnestly. "What is in my mind came to me, through no wish or will of mine. You cannot suppose that I have been prying into Mr. Anderson's affairs! But now that the information is mine, I feel a great responsibility towards you."