Lady Merton, Colonist Part 26

"He won't accept it."

Anderson shook his head. "I think he must."

Elizabeth looked at him in despair.

"Oh! no. You oughtn't to do this--indeed, indeed you oughtn't. It is cowardly--forgive me!--unworthy of you. Oh! can't you see how the sympathy of everybody who knows--everybody whose opinion you care for--"

She stopped a moment, colouring deeply, checked indeed by the thought of a conversation between herself and Philip of the night before. Anderson interrupted her:

"The sympathy of one person," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "is very precious to me. But even for her--"

She held out her hands to him again imploringly--

"Even for her?--"

But instead of taking the hands he rose and went out on the balcony a moment, as though to look at the great view. Then he returned, and stood over her.

"Lady Merton, I am afraid--it's no use. We are not--we can't be--friends."

"Not friends?" she said, her lip quivering. "I thought I--"

He looked down steadily on her upturned face. His own spoke eloquently enough. Turning her head away, with fluttering breath, she began to speak fast and brokenly:

"I, too, have been very lonely. I want a friend whom I might help--who would help me. Why should you refuse? We are not either of us quite young; what we undertook we could carry through. Since my husband's death I--I have been playing at life. I have always been hungry, dissatisfied, discontented. There were such splendid things going on in the world, and I--I was just marking time. Nothing to do!--as much money as I could possibly want--society of course--travelling--and visiting--and amusing myself--but oh! so tired all the time. And somehow Canada has been a great revelation of real, strong, living things--this great Northwest--and you, who seemed to explain it to me--"

"Dear Lady Merton!" His tone was low and full of emotion. And this time it was he who stooped and took her unresisting hands in his. She went on in the same soft, pleading tone--

"I felt what it might be--to help in the building up a better human life--in this vast new country. G.o.d has given to you this task--such a n.o.ble task!--and through your friendship, I too seemed to have a little part in it, if only by sympathy. Oh, no! you mustn't turn back--you mustn't shrink--because of what has happened to you. And let me, from a distance, watch and help. It will enn.o.ble my life, too. Let me!"--she smiled--"I shall make a good friend, you'll see. I shall write very often. I shall argue--and criticise--and want a great deal of explaining. And you'll come over to us, and do splendid work, and make many English friends. Your strength will all come back to you."

He pressed the hands he held more closely.

"It is like you to say all this--but--don't let us deceive ourselves. I could not be your friend, Lady Merton. I must not come and see you."

She was silent, very pale, her eyes on his--and he went on:

"It is strange to say it in this way, at such a moment; but it seems as though I had better say it. I have had the audacity, you see--to fall in love with you. And if it was audacity a week ago, you can guess what it is now--now when--Ask your mother and brother what they would think of it!" he said abruptly, almost fiercely.

There was a moment's silence. All consciousness, all feeling in each of these two human beings had come to be--with the irrevocable swiftness of love--a consciousness of the other. Under the sombre renouncing pa.s.sion of his look, her own eyes filled slowly--beautifully--with tears. And through all his perplexity and pain there shot a thrill of joy, of triumph even, sharp and wonderful. He understood. All this might have been his--this delicate beauty, this quick will, this rare intelligence--and yet the surrender in her aspect was not the simple surrender of love; he knew before she spoke that she did not pretend to ignore the obstacles between them; that she was not going to throw herself upon his renunciation, trying vehemently to break it down, in a mere blind girlish impulsiveness. He realised at once her heart, and her common sense; and was grateful to her for both.

Gently she drew herself away, drawing a long breath. "My mother and brother would not decide those things for me--oh, _never_!--I should decide them for myself. But we are not going to talk of them to-day. We are not going to make any--any rash promises to each other. It is you we must think for--your future--your life. And then--if you won't give me a friend's right to speak--you will be unkind--and I shall respect you less."

She threw back her little head with vivacity. In the gesture he saw the strength of her will and his own wavered.

"How can it be unkind?" he protested. "You ought not to be troubled with me any more."

"Let me be judge of that. If you will persist in giving up this appointment, promise me at least to come to England. That will break this spell of this--this terrible thing, and give you courage--again.

Promise me!"

"No, no!--you are too good to me--too good;--let it end here. It is much, much better so."

Then she broke down a little.

She looked round her, like some hurt creature seeking a means of escape.

Her lips trembled. She gave a low cry. "And I have loved Canada so! I have been so happy here."

"And now I have hurt you?--I have spoilt everything?"

"It is your unhappiness does that--and that you will spoil your life.

Promise me only this one thing--to come to England! Promise me!"

He sat down in a quiet despair that she would urge him so. A long argument followed between them, and at last she wore him down. She dared say nothing more of the Commissionership; but he promised her to come to England some time in the following winter; and with that she had to be content.

Then she gave him breakfast. During their conversation, which Elizabeth guided as far as possible to indifferent topics, the name of Mariette was mentioned. He was still, it seemed, at Vancouver. Elizabeth gave Anderson a sudden look, and casually, without his noticing, she possessed herself of the name of Mariette's hotel.

At breakfast also she described, with a smile and sigh, her brother's first and last attempt to shoot wild goat in the Rockies, an expedition which had ended in a wetting and a chill--"luckily nothing much; but poor Philip won't be out of his room to-day."

"I will go and see him," said Anderson, rising.

Elizabeth looked up, her colour fluttering.

"Mr. Anderson, Philip is only a boy, and sometimes a foolish boy--"

"I understand," said Anderson quietly, after a moment. "Philip thinks his sister has been running risks. Who warned him?"

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders without replying. He saw a touch of scorn in her face that was new to him.

"I think I guess," he said. "Why not? It was the natural thing. So Mr.

Delaine is still here?"

"Till to-morrow."

"I am glad. I shall like to a.s.sure him that his name was not mentioned--he was not involved at all!"

Elizabeth's lip curled a little, but she said nothing. During the preceding forty-eight hours there had been pa.s.sages between herself and Delaine that she did not intend Anderson to know anything about. In his finical repugnance to soiling his hands with matters so distasteful, Delaine had carried out the emba.s.sy which Anderson had perforce entrusted to him in such a manner as to rouse in Elizabeth a maximum of pride on her own account, and of indignation on Anderson's. She was not even sorry for him any more; being, of course, therein a little unjust to him, as was natural to a high-spirited and warm-hearted woman.

Anderson, meanwhile, went off to knock at Philip's door, and Philip's sister was left behind to wonder nervously how Philip would behave and what he would say. She was still smarting under the boy's furious outburst of the night before when, through a calculated indiscretion of Delaine's, the notion that Anderson had presumed and might still presume to set his ambitions on Elizabeth had been presented to him for the first time.

"My sister marry a mining engineer!--with a drunken old robber for a father! By Jove! Anybody talking nonsense of that kind will jolly well have to reckon with me! Elizabeth!--you may say what you like, but I am the head of the family!"

Anderson found the head of the family in bed, surrounded by novels, and a dozen books on big-game shooting in the Rockies. Philip received him with an evident and ungracious embarra.s.sment.

"I am awfully sorry--beastly business. Hard lines on you, of course--very. Hope they'll get the men."

"Thank you. They are doing their best."

Anderson sat down beside the lad. The fragility of his look struck him painfully, and the pathetic contrast between it and the fretting spirit--the books of travel and adventure heaped round him.

"Have you been ill again?" he asked in his kind, deep voice.