The Imperialist - Sara Jeannette Duncan (general ebook reader .txt) 📗

for Canada," Mr Cruickshank was saying. "It's a case for direct representation of the interests concerned, and their view of the effect upon trade. That's the only voice to speak with if you want to get anything done. Conviction carries conviction. The High Commissioner is a very useful fellow to live in London and look after the ornamental, the sentimental, and immigration--nobody could do it better than Selkirk. And in England, of course, they like that kind of agency. It's the good old dignified way; but it won't do for everything. You don't find our friend Morgan operating through the American equivalent of a High Commissioner."

"No, you don't," said John Murchison.

"He goes over there as a principal, and the British Government, if he wants to deal with it, is only another principal. That's the way our deputation will go. We're practically all shippers, though of course the matter of tenders will come later. There is big business for them here, national business, and we propose to show it. The subsidy we want will come back to the country four times over in two years. Freights from Boston alone--"

"It's the patriotic, imperial argument you'll have to press, I doubt," said John Murchison. "They're not business people over there--the men in office are not. How should they be? The system draws them from the wrong class. They're gentlemen--noblemen, maybe--first, and they've no practical education. There's only one way of getting it, and that's to make your own living. How many of them have ever made tuppence? There's where the Americans beat them so badly--they've got the sixth sense, the business sense. No; you'll not find them responding greatly to what there is in it for trade--they'd like to well enough, but they just won't see it; and, by George! what a fine suspicion they'll have of ye! As to freights from Boston," he continued, as they all laughed, "I'm of opinion you'd better not mention them. What! steal the trade of a friendly power! Tut, tut!"

It was a long speech for John Murchison, but they were all excited to a pitch beyond the usual. Henry Cruickshank had brought with him an event of extraordinary importance. It seemed to sit there with him, significant and propitious, in the middle of the sofa; they all looked at it in the pauses. Dr Drummond, lost in an armchair, alternately contemplated it and remembered to assert himself part of it. As head of a deputation from the United Chambers of Commerce of Canada shortly to wait on the British Government to press for the encouragement of improved communications within the Empire, Cruickshank had been asked to select a secretary. The appointment, in view of the desirability, for political reasons, of giving the widest publicity to the hopes and motives of the deputation, was an important one. The action of the Canadian Government, in extending conditional promises of support, had to be justified to the Canadian taxpayer; and that shy and weary person whose shoulders uphold the greatness of Britain, had also to receive such conciliation and reassurance as it was possible to administer to him, by way of nerving the administrative arm over there to an act of enterprise. Mr Cruickshank had had two or three young fellows, mostly newspaper men, in his mind's eye; but when Lorne came into his literal range of vision, the others had promptly been retired in our friend's favour. Young Mr Murchison, he had concluded, was the man they wanted; and if his office could spare him, it would probably do young Mr Murchison no harm in any sort of way to accompany the deputation to London and throw himself into the matter the deputation had at heart.

"But it's the Empire!" said Lorne, with a sort of shy fire, when Mr Cruickshank enunciated this.

We need not, perhaps, dwell upon the significance of his agreement. It was then not long since the maple leaf had been stained brighter than ever, not without honour, to maintain the word that fell from him. The three older men looked at him kindly; John Murchison, rubbing his chin as he considered the situation, slightly shook his head. One took it that in his view the Empire was not so readily envisaged.

"That has a strong bearing," Mr Cruickshank assented.

"It's the whole case--it seems to me," repeated young Murchison.

"It should help to knit us up," said Dr Drummond. "I'll put my name down on the first passenger list, if Knox Church will let me off. See that you have special rates," he added, with a twinkle, "for ministers and missionaries."

"And only ten days to get him ready in," said Mrs Murchison. "It will take some seeing to, I assure you; and I don't know how it's to be done in the time. For once, Lorne, I'll have to order you ready-made shirts, and you'll just have to put up with it. Nothing else could possibly get back from the wash."

"I'll put up with it, Mother."

They went into other details of Lorne's equipment while Mrs Murchison's eye still wandered over the necessities of his wardrobe. They arranged the date on which he was to meet the members of the deputation in Montreal, and Mr Cruickshank promised to send him all available documents and such presentation of the project as had been made in the newspapers.

"You shall be put in immediate possession of the bones of the thing," he said, "but what really matters," he added pleasantly, "I think you've got already."

It took, of course, some discussion, and it was quite ten o'clock before everything was gone into, and the prospect was clear to them all. As they emerged into the hall together, the door of the room opposite also opened, and the Rev. Hugh Finlay found himself added to their group. They all made the best of the unexpected encounter. It was rather an elaborate best, very polite and entirely grave, except in the instance of Dr Drummond, who met his subaltern with a smile in which cordiality struggled in vain to overcome the delighted humour.


CHAPTER XII

It was the talk of the town, the pride of the market-place, Lorne Murchison's having been selected to accompany what was known as the Cruickshank deputation to England. The general spirit of congratulation was corrected by a tendency to assert it another proof of sagacity on the chairman's part; Elgin wouldn't be too flattered; Lawyer Cruickshank couldn't have done better. You may be sure the Express was well ahead with it. "Honour to Our Young Fellow Townsman. A Well-Merited Compliment," and Rawlins was round promptly next morning to glean further particulars. He found only Mrs Murchison, on a stepladder tying up the clematis that climbed about the verandah, and she told him a little about clematis and a good deal about the inconvenience of having to abandon superintending the spring cleaning in order to get Lorne ready to go to the Old Country at such short notice, but nothing he could put in the paper. Lorne, sought at the office, was hardly more communicative. Mr Williams himself dropped in there. He said the Express would now have a personal interest in the object of the deputation, and proposed to strike out a broad line, a broader line than ever.

"We've got into the way of taking it for granted," said Mr Williams, "that the subsidy idea is a kind of mediaeval idea. Raise a big enough shout and you get things taken for granted in economics for a long while. Conditions keep changing, right along, all the time, and presently you've got to reconsider. There ain't any sort of ultimate truth in the finest economic position, my son; not any at all."

"We'll subsidize over here, right enough," said Lorne.

"That's the idea--that's the prevailing idea, just now. But lots of people think different--more than you'd imagine. I was talking to old man Milburn just now--he's dead against it. 'Government has no business,' he said, 'to apply the taxes in the interests of any company. It oughtn't to know how to spell "subsidy." If the trade was there it would get itself carried,' he said."

"Well, that surprises me," said Lorne.

"Surprised me, too. But I was on the spot with him; just thought of it in time. 'Well, now, Mr Milburn,' I said, 'you've changed your mind. Thought that was a thing you Conservatives never did,' I said. 'We don't--I haven't,' he said. 'What d'ye mean? Twenty-five years ago,' I said, 'when you were considering whether you'd start the Milburn Boiler Works here or in Hamilton, Hamilton offered you a free site, and Elgin offered you a free site and a dam for your water power. You took the biggest subsidy an' came here,' I said."

Lorne laughed: "What did he say to that?"

"Hadn't a word. 'I guess it's up to me,' he said. Then he turned round and came back. 'Hold on, Williams; he said. 'You know so much already about my boiler works, it wouldn't be much trouble for you to write out an account of them from the beginning, would it? Working in the last quarter of a century of the town's progress, you know, and all that. Come round to the office tomorrow, and I'll give you some pointers.' And he fixed up a two-column ad right away. He was afraid I'd round on him, I suppose, if I caught him saying anything more about the immorality of subsidies."

"He won't say anything more."

"Probably not. Milburn hasn't got much of a political conscience, but he's got a sense of what's silly. Well, now, I expect you want all the time there is."

Mr Williams removed himself from the edge of the table, which was strewn with maps and bluebooks, printed official, and typewritten demi-official papers.

"Give 'em a notion of those Assiniboian wheat acres, my boy, and the ranch country we've got; tell 'em about the future of quick passage and cold storage. Get 'em a little ashamed to have made so many fortunes for Yankee beef combines; persuade 'em the cheapest market has a funny way of getting the dearest price in the end. Give it 'em, Lorne, hot and cold and fricasseed. The Express will back you up."

He slapped his young friend's shoulder, who seemed occupied with matters that prevented his at once feeling the value of this assurance. "Bye-bye," said Mr Williams. "See you again before you start."

"Oh, of course!" Lorne replied. "I'll--I'll come round. By the way, Williams, Mr Milburn didn't say anything--anything about me in connection with this business? Didn't mention, I suppose, what he thought about my going?"

"Not a word, my boy! He was away up in abstract principles; he generally is. Bye-bye."

"It's gone to his head a little bit--only natural," Horace reflected as he went down the stairs. "He's probably just feeding on what folks think of it. As if it mattered a pin's head what Octavius Milburn thinks or don't think!"

Lorne, however, left alone with his customs returns and his immigration reports, sat still, attaching a weight quite out of comparison with a pin's head to Mr Milburn's opinion. He turned it over and over, instead of the tabulated figures that were his business: he had to show himself his way to the conclusion that such a thing could not matter seriously in the end, since Milburn hadn't a dollar involved--it would be different if he were a shareholder in the Maple Line. He wished heartily, nevertheless, that he could demonstrate a special advantage to boiler-makers in competitive freights with New York. What did they import, confound them! Pig-iron? Plates and rivets? Fortunately he was in a position to get at the facts,