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

"frank"--so he was, frank and open, with horizons and intentions; you could see them in his face. Perhaps it was more conscious of them than he was. Ambition, definitely shining goals, adorn the perspectives of young men in new countries less often than is commonly supposed. Lorne meant to be a good lawyer, squarely proposed to himself that the country should hold no better; and as to more selective usefulness, he hoped to do a little stumping for the right side when Frank Jennings ran for the Ontario House in the fall. It wouldn't be his first electioneering: from the day he became chairman of the Young Liberals the party had an eye on him, and when occasion arose, winter or summer, by bobsleigh or buggy, weatherbeaten local bosses would convey him to country schoolhouses for miles about to keep a district sound on railway policy, or education, or tariff reform. He came home smiling with the triumphs of these occasions, and offered them, with the slow, good-humoured, capable drawl that inspired such confidence in him, to his family at breakfast, who said "Great!" or "Good for you, Lorne!" John Murchison oftenest said nothing, but would glance significantly at his wife, frowning and pursing his lips when she, who had most spirit of them all, would exclaim, "You'll be Premier yet, Lorne!" It was no part of the Murchison policy to draw against future balances: they might believe everything, they would express nothing; and I doubt whether Lorne himself had any map of the country he meant to travel over in that vague future, already defining in local approbation, and law business coming freely in with a special eye on the junior partner. But the tract was there, subconscious, plain in the wider glance, the alerter manner; plain even in the grasp and stride which marked him in a crowd; plain, too, in the preoccupation with other issues, were it only turning over a leader in the morning's Dominion, that carried him along indifferent to the allurements I have described. The family had a bond of union in their respect for Lorne, and this absence of nugatory inclinations in him was among its elements. Even Stella who, being just fourteen, was the natural mouthpiece of family sentiment, would declare that Lorne had something better to do than go hanging about after girls, and for her part she thought all the more of him for it.


CHAPTER IV

"I am requested to announce," said Dr Drummond after the singing of the last hymn, "the death, yesterday morning, of James Archibald Ramsay, for fifteen years an adherent and for twenty-five years a member of this church. The funeral will take place from the residence of the deceased, on Court House Street, tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock. Friends and acquaintances are respectfully--invited--to attend."

The minister's voice changed with the character of its affairs. Still vibrating with the delivery of his sermon, it was now charged with the official business of the interment. In its inflections it expressed both elegy and eulogy; and in the brief pause before and after "invited" and the fall of "attend" there was the last word of comment upon the mortal term. A crispation of interest passed over the congregation; every chin was raised. Dr Drummond's voice had a wonderful claiming power, but he often said he wished his congregation would pay as undivided attention to the sermon as they did to the announcements.

"The usual weekly prayer meeting will be held in the basement of the church on Wednesday evening." Then almost in a tone of colloquy, and with just a hint of satire about his long upper lip--

"I should be glad to see a better attendance of the young people at these gatherings. Time was when the prayer meeting counted among our young men and women as an occasion not to be lightly passed over. In these days it would seem that there is too much business to be done, or too much pleasure to be enjoyed, for the oncoming generation to remember their weekly engagement with the Lord. This is not as it should be; and I rely upon the fathers and mothers of this congregation, who brought these children in their arms to the baptismal font, there to be admitted to the good hopes and great privileges of the Church of God--I rely upon them to see that there shall be no departure from the good old rule, and that time is found for the weekly prayer meeting."

Mrs Murchison nudged Stella, who returned the attention, looking elaborately uninterested, with her foot. Alec and Oliver smiled consciously; their father, with an expression of severe gravity, backed up the minister who, after an instant's pause, continued--

"On Tuesday afternoon next, God willing, I shall visit the following families in the East Ward--Mr Peterson, Mr Macormack, Mrs Samuel Smith, and Mr John Flint. On Thursday afternoon in the South Ward, Mrs Reid, Mr P. C. Cameron, and Mr Murchison. We will close by singing the Third Doxology: Blessed, blessed be Jehovah, Israel's God to all eternity--"

The congregation trooped out; the Murchisons walked home in a clan, Mr and Mrs Murchison, with Stella skirting the edge of the sidewalk beside them, the two young men behind. Abby, when she married Harry, had "gone over" to the Church of England. The wife must worship with the husband; even Dr Drummond recognized the necessity, though he professed small opinion of the sway of the spouse who, with Presbyterian traditions behind her, could not achieve union the other way about; and Abby's sanctioned defection was a matter of rather shame-faced reference by her family. Advena and Lorne had fallen into the degenerate modern habit of preferring the evening service.

"So we're to have the Doctor on Thursday," said Mrs Murchison, plainly not displeased. "Well, I hope the dining-room carpet will be down."

"I expect he'll be wanting his tea," replied Mr Murchison. "He's got you in the right place on the list for that, Mother--as usual."

"I'd just like to see him go anywhere else for his tea the day he was coming to our house," declared Stella. "But he GENERALLY has too much sense."

"You boys," said Mrs Murchison, turning back to her sons, "will see that you're on hand that evening. And I hope the Doctor will rub it in about the prayer meeting." Mrs Murchison chuckled. "I saw it went home to both of you, and well it might. Yes, I think I may as well expect him to tea. He enjoys my scalloped oysters, if I do say it myself."

"We'll get Abby over," said Mr Murchison. "That'll please the Doctor."

"I must say," remarked Stella, "he seems to think a lot more of Abby now that she's Mrs Episcopal Johnson."

"Yes, Abby and Harry must come," said Mrs Murchison, "and I was thinking of inviting Mr and Mrs Horace Williams. We've been there till I'm ashamed to look them in the face. And I've pretty well decided," she added autocratically, "to have chicken salad. So if Dr Drummond has made up his mouth for scalloped oysters he'll be disappointed."

"Mother," announced Stella, "I'm perfectly certain you'll have both."

"I'll consider it," replied her mother. "Meanwhile we would be better employed in thinking of what we have been hearing. That's the third sermon from the Book of Job in six weeks. I must say, with the whole of the two Testaments to select from, I don't see why the Doctor should be so taken up with Job."

Stella was vindicated; Mrs Murchison did have both. The chicken salad gleamed at one end of the table and the scalloped oysters smoked delicious at the other. Lorne had charge of the cold tongue and Advena was entrusted with the pickled pears. The rest of the family were expected to think about the tea biscuits and the cake, for Lobelia had never yet had a successor that was any hand with company. Mrs Murchison had enough to do to pour out the tea. It was a table to do anybody credit, with its glossy damask and the old-fashioned silver and best china that Mrs Murchison had brought as a bride to her housekeeping--for, thank goodness, her mother had known what was what in such matters--a generous attractive table that you took some satisfaction in looking at. Mrs Murchison came of a family of noted housekeepers; where she got her charm I don't know. Six-o'clock tea, and that the last meal in the day, was the rule in Elgin, and a good enough rule for Mrs Murchison, who had no patience with the innovation of a late dinner recently adopted by some people who could keep neither their servants nor their digestions in consequence. It had been a crisp October day; as Mr Murchison remarked, the fall evenings were beginning to draw in early; everybody was glad of the fire in the grate and the closed curtains. Dr Drummond had come about five, and the inquiries and comments upon family matters that the occasion made incumbent had been briskly exchanged, with just the word that marked the pastoral visit and the practical interest that relieved it. And he had thought, on the whole, that he might manage to stay to tea, at which Mrs Murchison's eyes twinkled as she said affectionately--

"Now, Doctor, you know we could never let you off."

Then Abby had arrived and her husband, and finally Mr and Mrs Williams, just a trifle late for etiquette, but well knowing that it mustn't be enough to spoil the biscuits. Dr Drummond in the place of honour, had asked the blessing, and that brief reminder of the semiofficial character of the occasion having been delivered, was in the best of humours. The Murchisons were not far wrong in the happy divination that he liked coming to their house. Its atmosphere appealed to him; he expanded in its humour, its irregularity, its sense of temperament. They were doubtful allurements, from the point of view of a minister of the Gospel, but it would not occur to Dr Drummond to analyse them. So far as he was aware, John Murchison was just a decent, prosperous, Christian man, on whose word and will you might depend, and Mrs Murchison a stirring, independent little woman, who could be very good company when she felt inclined. As to their sons and daughters, in so far as they were a credit, he was as proud of them as their parents could possibly be, regarding himself as in a much higher degree responsible for the formation of their characters and the promise of their talents. And indeed, since every one of them had "sat under" Dr Drummond from the day he or she was capable of sitting under anybody, Mr and Mrs Murchison would have been the last to dispute this. It was not one of those houses where a pastor could always be sure of leaving some spiritual benefit behind; but then he came away himself with a pleasant sense of nervous stimulus which was apt to take his mind off the matter. It is not given to all of us to receive or to extend the communion of the saints; Mr and Mrs Murchison were indubitably of the elect, but he was singularly close-mouthed about it, and she had an extraordinary way of seeing the humorous side--altogether it was paralysing, and the conversation would wonderfully soon slip round to some robust secular subject, public or domestic. I have mentioned Dr Drummond's long upper lip; all sorts of racial virtues resided there, but his mouth was also wide and much frequented by a critical, humorous, philosophical smile which revealed a view of life at once kindly and trenchant. His shrewd grey eyes were encased in wrinkles, and when he laughed his hearty