Lady Merton, Colonist Part 27

"Oh, just a beastly chill. Elizabeth would make me take too many wraps.

Everyone knows you oughtn't to get overheated walking."

"Do you want to stay on here longer?"

"Not I! What do I care about glaciers and mountains and that sort of stuff if I can't hunt? But Elizabeth's got at the doctor somehow, and he won't let me go for three or four days unless I kick over the traces. I daresay I shall."

"No you won't--for your sister's sake. I'll see all arrangements are made."

Philip made no direct reply. He lay staring at the ceiling--till at last he said--

"Delaine's going. He's going to-morrow. He gets on Elizabeth's nerves."

"Did he say anything to you about me?" said Anderson.

Philip flushed.

"Well, I daresay he did."

"Make your mind easy, Gaddesden. A man with my story is not going to ask your sister to marry him."

Philip looked up. Anderson sat composedly erect, the traces of his nights of sleeplessness and revolt marked on every feature, but as much master of himself and his life--so Gaddesden intuitively felt--as he had ever been. A movement of remorse and affection stirred in the young man mingled with the strength of other inherited things.

"Awfully sorry, you know," he said clumsily, but this time sincerely. "I don't suppose it makes any difference to you that your father--well, I'd better not talk about it. But you see--Elizabeth might marry anybody.

She might have married heaps of times since Merton died, if she hadn't been such an icicle. She's got lots of money, and--well, I don't want to be sn.o.bbish--but at home--we--our family--"

"I understand," said Anderson, perhaps a little impatiently--"you are great people. I understood that all along."

Family pride cried out in Philip. "Then why the deuce--" But he said aloud in some confusion, "I suppose that sounded disgusting"--then floundering deeper--"but you see--well, I'm very fond of Elizabeth!"

Anderson rose and walked to the window which commanded a view of the railway line.

"I see the car outside. I'll go and have a few words with Yerkes."

The boy let him go in silence--conscious on the one hand that he had himself played a mean part in their conversation, and on the other that Anderson, under this onset of sordid misfortune, was somehow more of a hero in his eyes, and no doubt in other people's, than ever.

On his way downstairs Anderson ran into Delaine, who was ascending with an armful of books and pamphlets.

"Oh, how do you do? Had only just heard you were here. May I have a word with you?"

Anderson remounted the stairs in silence, and the two men paused, seeing no one in sight, in the corridor beyond.

"I have just read the report of the inquest, and should like to offer you my sincere sympathy and congratulations on your very straightforward behaviour--" Anderson made a movement. Delaine went on hurriedly--

"I should like also to thank you for having kept my name out of it."

"There was no need to bring it in," said Anderson coldly.

"No of course not--of course not! I have also seen the news of your appointment. I trust nothing will interfere with that."

Anderson turned towards the stairs again. He was conscious of a keen antipathy--the antipathy of tired nerves--to the speaker's mere aspect, his long hair, his too picturesque dress, the antique on his little finger, the effeminate stammer in his voice.

"Are you going to-day? What train?" he said, in a careless voice as he moved away.

Delaine drew back, made a curt reply, and the two men parted.

"Oh, he'll get over it; there will very likely be nothing to get over,"

Delaine reflected tartly, as he made his way to his room. "A new country like this can't be too particular." He was thankful, at any rate, that he would have an opportunity before long--for he was going straight home and to c.u.mberland--of putting Mrs. Gaddesden on her guard. "I may be thought officious; Lady Merton let me see very plainly that she thinks me so--but I shall do my duty nevertheless."

And as he stood over his packing, bewildering his valet with a number of precise and old-maidish directions, his sore mind ran alternately on the fiasco of his own journey and on the incredible folly of nice women.

Delaine departed; and for two days Elizabeth ministered to Anderson. She herself went strangely through it, feeling between them, as it were, the bared sword of his ascetic will--no less than her own terrors and hesitations. But she set herself to lift him from the depths; and as they walked about the mountains and the forests, in a glory of summer sunshine, the sanity and sweetness of her nature made for him a spiritual atmosphere akin in its healing power to the influence of pine and glacier upon his physical weariness.

On the second evening, Mariette walked into the hotel. Anderson, who had just concluded all arrangements for the departure of the car with its party within forty-eight hours, received him with astonishment.

"What brings you here?"

Mariette's harsh face smiled at him gravely.

"The conviction that if I didn't come, you would be committing a folly."

"What do you mean?"

"Giving up your Commissionership, or some nonsense of that sort."

"I have given it up."

"H'm! Anything from Ottawa yet?"

It was impossible, Anderson pointed out, that there should be any letter for another three days. But he had written finally and did not mean to be over-persuaded.

Mariette at once carried him off for a walk and attacked him vigorously. "Your private affairs have nothing whatever to do with your public work. Canada wants you--you must go."

"Canada can easily get hold of a Commissioner who would do her more credit," was the bitter reply. "A man's personal circ.u.mstances are part of his equipment. They must not be such as to injure his mission."

Mariette argued in vain.

As they were both dining in the evening with Elizabeth and Philip, a telegram was brought in for Anderson from the Prime Minister. It contained a peremptory and flattering refusal to accept his resignation.

"Nothing has occurred which affects your public or private character. My confidence quite unchanged. Work is best for yourself, and the public expects it of you. Take time to consider, and wire me in two days."

Anderson thrust it into his pocket, and was only with difficulty persuaded to show it to Mariette.

But in the course of the evening many letters arrived--letters of sympathy from old friends in Quebec and Manitoba, from colleagues and officials, from navvies and railwaymen, even, on the C.P.R., from his future const.i.tuents in Saskatchewan--drawn out by the newspaper reports of the inquest and of Anderson's evidence. For once the world rallied to a good man in distress! and Anderson was strangely touched and overwhelmed by it.

He pa.s.sed an almost sleepless night, and in the morning as he met Elizabeth on her balcony he said to her, half reproachfully, pointing to Mariette below--

"It was you sent for him."

Elizabeth smiled.