Lady Merton, Colonist Part 9

"And my sister to a lunatic asylum!" said Philip, exasperated. "I say, why doesn't that man Anderson come and see us?"

"He promised to come in and lunch."

"He's an awfully decent kind of fellow," said the boy warmly.

Elizabeth opened her eyes.

"I didn't know you had taken any notice of him, Philip."

"No more I did," was the candid reply. "But did you see what he brought me this morning?" He pointed to the seat behind him, littered with novels, which Elizabeth recognized as new additions to their travelling store. "He begged or borrowed them somewhere from his friends or people in the hotel; told me frankly he knew I should be bored to-day, and might want them. Rather 'cute of him, wasn't it?"

Elizabeth was touched. Philip had certainly shown rather scant civility to Mr. Anderson, and this trait of thoughtfulness for a sickly and capricious traveller appealed to her.

"I suppose Delaine will be here directly?" Philip went on.

"I suppose so."

Philip let himself down into the seat beside her.

"Look here, Elizabeth," lowering his voice; "I don't think Delaine is any more excited about Canada than I am. He told me last night he thought the country about Winnipeg perfectly hideous."

"_Oh_!" cried Elizabeth, as though someone had flipped her.

"You'll have to pay him for this journey, Elizabeth. Why did you ask him to come?"

"I _didn't_ ask him, Philip. He asked himself."

"Ah! but you let him come," said the youth shrewdly. "I think, Elizabeth, you're not behaving quite nicely."

"How am I not behaving nicely?"

"Well, you don't pay any attention to him. Do you know what he was doing while you were looking at the cows yesterday?"

Elizabeth reluctantly confessed that she had no idea.

"Well, he was sitting by a lake--a kind of swamp--at the back of the house, reading a book." Philip went off into a fit of laughter.

"Poor Mr. Delaine!" cried Elizabeth, though she too laughed. "It was probably Greek," she added pensively.

"Well, that's funnier still. You know, Elizabeth, he could read Greek at home. It's because you were neglecting him."

"Don't rub it in, Philip," said Elizabeth, flushing. Then she moved up to him and laid a coaxing hand on his arm. "Do you know that I have been awake half the night?"

"All along of Delaine? Shall I tell him?"

"Philip, I just want you to be a dear, and hold your tongue," said Lady Merton entreatingly. "When there's anything to tell, I'll tell you. And if I have--"

"Have what?"

"Behaved like a fool, you'll have to stand by me." An expression of pain pa.s.sed over her face.

"Oh, I'll stand by you. I don't know that I want Mr. Arthur for an extra bear-leader, if that's what you mean. You and mother are quite enough.

Hullo! Here he is."

A little later Delaine and Elizabeth were sitting side by side on the garden chairs, four of which could just be fitted into the little railed platform at the rear of the car. Elizabeth was making herself agreeable, and doing it, for a time, with energy. Nothing also could have been more energetic than Delaine's attempts to meet her. He had been studying Baedeker, and he made intelligent travellers' remarks on the subject of Southern Saskatchewan. He discussed the American "trek" into the province from the adjoining States. He understood the new public buildings of Regina were to be really fine, only to be surpa.s.sed by those at Edmonton. He admired the effects of light and shadow on the wide expanse; and noticed the peculiarities of the alkaline lakes.

Meanwhile, as he became more expansive, Elizabeth contracted. One would have thought soon that Canada had ceased to interest her at all. She led him slyly on to other topics, and presently the real Arthur Delaine emerged. Had she heard of the most recent Etruscan excavations at Grosseto? Wonderful! A whole host of new clues! Boni--Lanciani--the whole learned world in commotion. A fragment of what might very possibly turn out to be a bi-lingual inscription was the last find. Were we at last on the brink of solving the old, the eternal enigma?

He threw himself back in his chair, transformed once more into the talkative, agreeable person that Europe knew. His black and grizzled hair, falling perpetually forward in strong waves, made a fine frame for his grey eyes and large, well-cut features. He had a slight stammer, which increased when he was animated, and a trick of forever pushing back the troublesome front locks of hair.

Elizabeth listened for a long, long time, and at last--could have cried like a baby because she was missing so much! There was a chance, she knew, all along this portion of the line, of seeing antelope and coyotes, if only one kept one's eyes open; not to speak of the gophers--enchanting little fellows, quite new to such travellers as she--who seemed to choose the very railway line itself, by preference, for their burrowings and their social gatherings. Then, as she saw, the wheat country was nearly done; a great change was in progress; her curiosity sprang to meet it. Droves of horses and cattle began to appear at rare intervals on the vast expanse. No white, tree-sheltered farms here, like the farms in Manitoba; but scattered at long distances, near the railway or on the horizon, the first primitive dwellings of the new settlers--the rude "shack" of the first year--beginnings of villages--sketches of towns.

"I have always thought the Etruscan problem the most fascinating in the whole world," cried Delaine, with pleasant enthusiasm. "When you consider all its bearings, linguistic and historical--"

"Oh! _do_ you see," exclaimed Elizabeth, pointing--"_do_ you see all those lines and posts, far out to the horizon? Do you know that all these lonely farms are connected with each other and the railway by _telephones_? Mr. Anderson told me so; that some farmers actually make their fences into telephone lines, and that from that little hut over there you can speak to Montreal when you please? And just before I left London I was staying in a big country house, thirty miles from Hyde Park Corner, and you couldn't telephone to London except by driving five miles to the nearest town!"

"I wonder why that should strike you so much--the telephones, I mean?"

Delaine's tone was stiff. He had thrown himself back in his chair with folded arms, and a slight look of patience. "After all, you know, it may only be one dull person telephoning to another dull person--on subjects that don't matter!"

Elizabeth laughed and coloured.

"Oh! it isn't telephones in themselves. It's--" She hesitated, and began again, trying to express herself. "When one thinks of all the haphazard of history--how nations have tumbled up, or been dragged up, through centuries of blind horror and mistake, how wonderful to see a nation made consciously!--before your eyes--by science and intelligence--everything thought of, everything foreseen! First of all, this wonderful railway, driven across these deserts, against opposition, against unbelief, by a handful of men, who risked everything, and have--perhaps--changed the face of the world!"

She stopped smiling. In truth, her new capacity for dithyramb was no less surprising to herself than to Delaine.

"I return to my point"--he made it not without tartness--"will the new men be adequate to the new state?"

"Won't they?" He fancied a certain pride in her bearing. "They explained to me the other day at Winnipeg what the Government do for the emigrants--how they guide and help them--take care of them in sickness and in trouble, through the first years--protect them, really, even from themselves. And one thinks how Governments have taxed, and tortured, and robbed, and fleeced--Oh, surely, surely, the world improves!" She clasped her hands tightly on her knee, as though trying by the physical action to restrain the feeling within. "And to see here the actual foundations of a great state laid under your eyes, deep and strong, by men who know what it is they are doing--to see history begun on a blank page, by men who know what they are writing--isn't it wonderful, _wonderful_!"

"Dear lady!" said Delaine, smiling, "America has been dealing with emigrants for generations; and there are people who say that corruption is rife in Canada."

But Elizabeth would not be quenched.

"We come after America--we climb on her great shoulders to see the way.

But is there anything in America to equal the suddenness of this? Twelve years ago even--in all this Northwest--practically nothing. And then G.o.d said: 'Let there be a nation!'--and there was a nation--in a night and a morning." She waved her hand towards the great expanse of prairie. "And as for corruption--"

"Well?" He waited maliciously.

"There is no great brew without a sc.u.m," she said laughing. "But find me a brew anywhere in the world, of such power, with so little."

"Mr. Anderson would, I think, be pleased with you," said Delaine, drily.

Elizabeth frowned a little.

"Do you think I learnt it from him? I a.s.sure you he never rhapsodises."

"No; but he gives you the material for rhapsodies."