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

the great lone northern lands between Quebec and the Pacific, it will be the American farmer and the American capitalist who will reap the benefit. They approach us today with all the arts of peace, commercial missionaries to the ungathered harvests of neglected territories; but the day may come when they will menace our coasts to protect their markets--unless, by firm, resolved, whole-hearted action now, we keep our opportunities for our own people."

They cheered him promptly, and a gathered intensity came into his face at the note of praise.

"Nothing on earth can hold him now," said Bingham, as he crossed his arms upon a breast seething with practical politics, and waited for the worst.

"The question of the hour for us," said Lorne Murchison to his fellow-townsmen, curbing the strenuous note in his voice, "is deeper than any balance of trade can indicate, wider than any department of statistics can prove. We cannot calculate it in terms of pig-iron, or reduce it to any formula of consumption. The question that underlies this decision for Canada is that of the whole stamp and character of her future existence. Is that stamp and character to be impressed by the American Republic effacing"--he smiled a little--"the old Queen's head and the new King's oath? Or is it to be our own stamp and character, acquired in the rugged discipline of our colonial youth, and developed in the national usage of the British Empire?"...

Dr Drummond clapped alone; everybody else was listening.

"It is ours," he told them, "in this greater half of the continent, to evolve a nobler ideal. The Americans from the beginning went in a spirit of revolt; the seed of disaffection was in every Puritan bosom. We from the beginning went in a spirit of amity, forgetting nothing, disavowing nothing, to plant the flag with our fortunes. We took our very Constitution, our very chart of national life, from England--her laws, her liberty, her equity were good enough for us. We have lived by them, some of us have died by them...and, thank God, we were long poor...

"And this Republic," he went on hotly, "this Republic that menaces our national life with commercial extinction, what past has she that is comparable? The daughter who left the old stock to be the light woman among nations, welcoming all comers, mingling her pure blood, polluting her lofty ideals until it is hard indeed to recognize the features and the aims of her honourable youth..."

Allowance will be made for the intemperance of his figure. He believed himself, you see, at the bar for the life of a nation.

"...Let us not hesitate to announce ourselves for the Empire, to throw all we are and all we have into the balance for that great decision. The seers of political economy tell us that if the stars continue to be propitious, it is certain that a day will come which will usher in a union of the Anglo-Saxon nations of the world. As between England and the United States the predominant partner in that firm will be the one that brings Canada. So that the imperial movement of the hour may mean even more than the future of the motherland, may reach even farther than the boundaries of Great Britain..."

Again he paused, and his eye ranged over their listening faces. He had them all with him, his words were vivid in their minds; the truth of them stood about him like an atmosphere. Even Bingham looked at him without reproach. But he had done.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, his voice dropping, with a hint of tiredness, to another level, "I have the honour to stand for your suffrages as candidate in the Liberal interest for the riding of South Fox in the Dominion House of Commons the day after tomorrow. I solicit your support, and I hereby pledge myself to justify it by every means in my power. But it would be idle to disguise from you that while I attach all importance to the immediate interests in charge of the Liberal party, and if elected shall use my best efforts to further them, the great task before that party, in my opinion, the overshadowing task to which, I shall hope, in my place and degree to stand committed from the beginning, is the one which I have endeavoured to bring before your consideration this evening."

They gave him a great appreciation, and Mr Cruickshank, following, spoke in complimentary terms of the eloquent appeal made by the "young and vigorous protagonist" of the imperial cause, but proceeded to a number of quite other and apparently more important grounds why he should be elected. The Hon. Mr Tellier's speech--the Minister was always kept to the last--was a defence of the recent dramatic development of the Government's railway policy, and a reminder of the generous treatment Elgin was receiving in the Estimates for the following year--thirty thousand dollars for a new Drill Hall, and fifteen thousand for improvements to the post-office. It was a telling speech, with the chink of hard cash in every sentence, a kind of audit by a chartered accountant of the Liberal books of South Fox, showing good sound reason why the Liberal candidate should be returned on Thursday, if only to keep the balance right. The audience listened with practical satisfaction. "That's Tellier all over," they said to one another...

The effect in committee of what, in spite of the Hon. Mr Tellier's participation, I must continue to call the speech of the evening, may be gathered from a brief colloquy between Mr Bingham and Mr Williams, in the act of separating at the door of the opera house.

"I don't know what it was worth to preference trade," said Bingham, "but it wasn't worth a hill o' beans to his own election."

"He had as soft a snap," returned Horace Williams, on the brink of tears--"as soft a snap as anybody ever had in this town. And he's monkeyed it all away. All away."

Both the local papers published the speech in full the following day. "If there's anything in Manchester or Birmingham that Mr Lorne Murchison would like," commented the Mercury editorially, "we understand he has only to call for it."


CHAPTER XXX

The Milburns' doorbell rang very early the morning of the election. The family and Alfred Hesketh were just sitting down to breakfast. Mr Hesketh was again the guest of the house. He had taken a run out to Vancouver with Mr Milburn's partner, who had gone to settle a point or two in connection with the establishment of a branch there. The points had been settled and Hesketh, having learned more than ever, had returned to Elgin.

The maid came back into the room with a conscious air, and said something in a low voice to Dora, who flushed and frowned a little, and asked to be excused. As she left the room a glance of intelligence passed between her and her mother. While Miss Milburn was generally thought to be "most like" her father both in appearance and disposition, there were points upon which she could count on an excellent understanding with her other parent.

"Oh, Lorne," she said, having carefully closed the drawing-room door, "what in the world have you come here for? Today of all days! Did anybody see you?"

The young man, standing tall and broad-shouldered before the mantelpiece, had yet a look of expecting reproach.

"I don't know," he said humbly.

"I don't think Father would like it," Dora told him, "if he knew you were here. Why, we're having an early breakfast on purpose to let him get out and work for Winter. I never saw him so excited over an election. To think of your coming today!"

He made a step toward her. "I came because it is today," he said. "Only for a minute, dear. It's a great day for me, you know--whether we win or lose. I wanted you to be in it. I wanted you to wish me good luck."

"But you know I always do," she objected.

"Yes, I know. But a fellow likes to hear it, Dora--on the day, you know. And I've seen so little of you lately."

She looked at him measuringly. "You're looking awfully thin," she exclaimed, with sudden compunction. "I wish you had never gone into this horrid campaign. I wish they had nominated somebody else."

Lorne smiled half-bitterly. "I shouldn't wonder if a few other people wished the same thing," he said. "But I'm afraid they'll have to make the best of it now."

Dora had not sanctioned his visit by sitting down; and as he came nearer to her she drew a step away, moving by instinct from the capture of the lover. But he had made little of that, and almost as he spoke was at her side. She had to yield her hands to him.

"Well, you'll win it for them if anybody could," she assured him.

"Say 'win it for us,' dear."

She shook her head. "I'm not a Liberal--yet," she said, laughing.

"It's only a question of time."

"I'll never be converted to Grit politics."

"No, but you'll be converted to me," he told her, and drew her nearer. "I'm going now, Dora. I dare say I shouldn't have come. Every minute counts today. Good-bye."

She could not withhold her face from his asking lips, and he had bent to take his privilege when a step in the hall threatened and divided them.

"It's only Mr Hesketh going upstairs," said Dora, with relief. "I thought it was Father. Oh, Lorne--fly!"

"Hesketh!" Young Murchison's face clouded. "Is he working for Winter, too?"

"Lorne! What a thing to ask when you know he believes in your ideas. But he's a Conservative at home, you see, so he says he's in an awkward position, and he has been taking perfectly neutral ground lately. He hasn't a vote, anyway."

"No," said Lorne. "He's of no consequence."

The familiar easy step in the house of his beloved, the house he was being entreated to leave with all speed, struck upon his heart and his nerves. She, with her dull surface to the more delicate vibrations of things, failed to perceive this, or perhaps she would have thought it worth while to find some word to bring back his peace. She disliked seeing people unhappy. When she was five years old and her kitten broke its leg, she had given it to a servant to drown.

He took his hat, making no further attempt to caress her, and opened the door. "I hope you WILL win, Lorne," she said, half-resentfully, and he, with forced cheerfulness, replied, "Oh, we'll have a shot at it." Then with a little silent nod at her which, notwithstanding her provocations, conveyed his love and trust, he went out into the struggle of the day.

In spite of Squire Ormiston's confident prediction, it was known that the fight would be hottest, among the townships, in Moneida Reservation. Elgin itself, of course, would lead the van for excitement, would be the real theatre for the arts of practical politics; but things would be pretty warm in Moneida, too. It was for that reason that Bingham and the rest strongly advised Lorne not to spend too much of the day in the town, but to get out to Moneida early, and drive around with Ormiston--stick to him like a fly to poison-paper.

"You leave Elgin to your friends," said Bingham. "Just show your face here and there wearing a smile of triumph, to encourage the crowd; but don't worry about the details--we'll attend to them."

"We can't have