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

ridiculous English novel!"

"That's the part of an English novel I always like," said Lorne. "The going and asking. It must about scare the hero out of a year's growth; but it's a glorious thing to do--it would be next day, anyhow."

"It's just the sort of thing to please Mother," Dora meditated, "but she can't be indulged all the time. No, Lorne, you'll have to leave it to me--when there's anything to tell."

"There's everything to tell now," said he, who had indeed nothing to keep back.

"But you know what Mother is, Lorne. Suppose they hadn't any objection, she would never keep it to herself! She'd want to go announcing it all over the place; she'd think it was the proper thing to do."

"But, Dora, why not? If you knew how I want to announce it! I should like to publish it in the sunrise--and the wind--so that I couldn't go out of doors without seeing it myself."

"I shouldn't mind having it in Toronto Society, when the time comes. But not yet, Lorne--not for ages. I'm only twenty-two--nobody thinks of settling down nowadays before she's twenty-five at the very earliest. I don't know a single girl in this town that has--among my friends, anyway. That's three years off, and you CAN'T expect me to be engaged for three years."

"No." said Lorne, "engaged six months, married the rest of the time. Or the periods might run concurrently if you preferred--I shouldn't mind."

"An engaged girl has the very worst time. She gets hardly any attention, and as to dances--well, it's a good thing for her if the person she's engaged to CAN dance," she added, teasingly.

Lorne coloured. "You said I was improving, Dora," he said, and then laughed at the childish claim. "But that isn't really a thing that counts, is it? If our lives only keep step it won't matter much about the 'Washington Post.' And so far as attention goes, you'll get it as long as you live, you little princess. Besides, isn't it better to wear the love of one man than the admiration of half a dozen?"

"And be teased and worried half out of your life by everybody you meet? Now, Lorne, you're getting serious and sentimental, and you know I hate that. It isn't any good either--Mother always used to say it made me more stubborn to appeal to me. Horrid nature to have, isn't it?"

Lorne's hand went to his waistcoat pocket and came back with a tiny packet. "It's come, Dora--by this morning's English mail."

Her eyes sparkled, and then rested with guarded excitement upon the little case. "Oh, Lorne!"

She said nothing more, but watched intently while he found the spring, and disclosed the ring within. Then she drew a long breath. "Lorne Murchison, what a lovely one!"

"Doesn't it look," said he, "just a little serious and sentimental?"

"But SUCH good style, too," he declared, bending over it. "And quite new--I haven't seen anything a bit like it. I do love a design when it's graceful. Solitaires are so old-fashioned."

He kept his eyes upon her face, feeding upon the delight in it. Exultation rose up in him: he knew the primitive guile of man, indifferent to such things, alluring with them the other creature. He did not stop to condone her weakness; rather he seized it in ecstasy; it was all part of the glad scheme to help the lover. He turned the diamonds so that they flashed and flashed again before her. Then, trusting his happy instinct, he sought for her hand. But she held that back. "I want to SEE it," she declared, and he was obliged to let her take the ring in her own way and examine it, and place it in every light, and compare it with others worn by her friends, and make little tentative charges of extravagance in his purchase of it, while he sat elated and adoring, the simple fellow.

Reluctantly at last she gave up her hand. "But it's only trying on--not putting on," she told him. He said nothing till it flashed upon her finger, and in her eyes he saw a spark from below of that instinctive cupidity toward jewels that man can never recognize as it deserves in woman, because of his desire to gratify it.

"You'll wear it, Dora?" he pleaded.

"Lorne, you are the dearest fellow! But how could I? Everybody would guess!"

Her gaze, nevertheless, rested fascinated on the ring, which she posed as it pleased her.

"Let them guess! I'd rather they knew, but--it does look well on your finger, dear."

She held it up once more to the light, then slipped it decisively off and gave it back to him. "I can't, you know, Lorne. I didn't really say you might get it; and now you'll have to keep it till--till the time comes. But this much I will say--it's the sweetest thing, and you've shown the loveliest taste, and if it weren't such a dreadful give-away I'd like to wear it awfully."

They discussed it with argument, with endearment, with humour, and reproach, but her inflexible basis soon showed through their talk: she would not wear the ring. So far he prevailed, that it was she, not he, who kept it. Her insistence that he should take it back brought something like anger out of him; and in the surprise of this she yielded so much. She did it unwillingly at the time, but afterward, when she tried on the thing again in the privacy of her own room; she was rather satisfied to have it, safe under lock and key, a flashing, smiling mystery to visit when she liked and reveal when she would.

"Lorne could never get me such a beauty again if he lost it," she advised herself, "and he's awfully careless. And I'm not sure that I won't tell Eva Delarue, just to show it to her. She's as close as wax."

One feels a certain sorrow for the lover on his homeward way, squaring his shoulders against the foolish perversity of the feminine mind, resolutely guarding his heart from any hint of real reprobation. Through the sweetness of her lips and the affection of her pretty eyes, through all his half-possession of all her charms and graces, must have come dully the sense of his great occasion manque, that dear day of love when it leaves the mark of its claim. And in one's regret there is perhaps some alloy of pity, that less respectful thing. We know him elsewhere capable of essaying heights, yet we seem to look down upon the drama of his heart. It may be well to remember that the level is not everything in love. He who carefully adjusts an intellectual machine may descry a higher mark; he can construct nothing in a mistress; he is, therefore, able to see the facts and to discriminate the desirable. But Lorne loved with all his imagination. This way dares the imitation of the gods by which it improves the quality of the passion, so that such a love stands by itself to be considered, apart from the object, one may say. A strong and beautiful wave lifted Lorne Murchison along to his destiny, since it was the pulse of his own life, though Dora Milburn played moon to it.


CHAPTER XX

Alfred Hesketh had, after all, written to young Murchison about his immediate intention of sailing for Canada and visiting Elgin; the letter arrived a day or two later. It was brief and businesslike, but it gave Lorne to understand that since his departure the imperial idea had been steadily fermenting, not only in the national mind, but particularly in Hesketh's; that it produced in his case a condition only to be properly treated by personal experience. Hesketh was coming over to prove whatever advantage there was in seeing for yourself. That he was coming with the right bias Lorne might infer, he said, from the fact that he had waited a fortnight to get his passage by the only big line to New York that stood out for our mercantile supremacy against American combination.

"He needn't bother to bring any bias," Lorne remarked when he had read this, "but he'll have to pay a lot of extra luggage on the one he takes back with him."

He felt a little irritation at being offered the testimony of the Cunard ticket. Back on his native soil, its independence ran again like sap in him: nobody wanted a present of good will; the matter stood on its merits.

He was glad, nevertheless, that Hesketh was coming, gratified that it would now be his turn to show prospects, and turn figures into facts, and make plain the imperial profit from the further side. Hesketh was such an intelligent fellow, there would be the keenest sort of pleasure in demonstrating things, big things, to him, little things, too, ways of living, differences of habit. Already in the happy exercise of his hospitable instinct he saw how Hesketh would get on with his mother, with Stella, with Dr Drummond. He saw Hesketh interested, domiciled, remaining--the ranch life this side of the Rockies, Lorne thought, would tempt him, or something new and sound in Winnipeg. He kept his eye open for chances, and noted one or two likely things. "We want labour mostly," he said to Advena, "but nobody is refused leave to land because he has a little money."

"I should think not, indeed," remarked Mrs Murchison, who was present. "I often wish your father and I had had a little more when we began. That whole Gregory block was going for three thousand dollars then. I wonder what it's worth now?"

"Yes, but you and Father are worth more, too," remarked Stella acutely.

"In fact, all the elder members of the family have approximated in value, Stella," said her brother, "and you may too, in time."

"I'll take my chance with the country," she retorted. They were all permeated with the question of the day; even Stella, after holding haughtily aloof for some time, had been obliged to get into step, as she described it, with the silly old Empire. Whatever it was in England, here it was a family affair; I mean in the town of Elgin, in the shops and the offices, up and down the tree-bordered streets as men went to and from their business, atomic creatures building the reef of the future, but conscious, and wanting to know what they were about. Political parties had long declared themselves, the Hampden Debating Society had had several grand field nights. Prospective lifelong friendships, male and female in every form of "the Collegiate," had been put to this touchstone, sometimes with shattering effect. If you would not serve with Wallingham the greatness of Britain you were held to favour going over to the United States; there was no middle course. It became a personal matter in the ward schools and small boys pursued small boys with hateful cries of "Annexationist!" The subject even trickled about the apple-barrels and potato-bags of the market square. Here it should have raged, pregnant as it was with bucolic blessing; but our agricultural friends expect nothing readily except adverse weather, least of all a measure of economic benefit to themselves. Those of Fox County thought it looked very well, but it was pretty sure to work out some other way. Elmore Crow failed heavily to catch a light even from Lorne Murchison.

"You keep your hair on, Lorne," he advised. "We ain't going to get such big changes yet. An' if we do the blooming syndicates 'll spoil 'em for us."

There were even dissentients among the farmers.