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

laugh they almost disappeared in a merry line. He had a fund of Scotch stories, and one or two he was very fond of, at the expense of the Methodists, that were known up and down the Dominion, and nobody enjoyed them more than he did himself. He had once worn his hair in a high curl on his scholarly forehead, and a silvering tuft remained brushed upright; he took the old-fashioned precaution of putting cotton wool in his ears, which gave him more than ever the look of something highly concentrated and conserved but in no way detracted from his dignity. St Andrew's folk accused him of vanity because of the diamond he wore on his little finger. He was by no means handsome, but he was intensely individual; perhaps he had vanity; his people would have forgiven him worse things. And at Mrs Murchison's tea party he was certainly, as John Murchison afterward said, "in fine feather."

An absorbing topic held them, a local topic, a topic involving loss and crime and reprisals. The Federal Bank had sustained a robbery of five thousand dollars, and in the course of a few days had placed their cashier under arrest for suspected complicity. Their cashier was Walter Ormiston, the only son of old Squire Ormiston, of Moneida Reservation, ten miles out of Elgin, who had administered the affairs of the Indians there for more years than the Federal Bank had existed. Mr Williams brought the latest news, as was to be expected; news flowed in rivulets to Mr Williams all day long; he paid for it, dealt in it, could spread or suppress it.

"They've admitted the bail," Mr Williams announced, with an air of self-surveillance. Rawlins had brought the intelligence in too late for the current issue, and Mr Williams was divided between his human desire to communicate and his journalistic sense that the item would be the main feature of the next afternoon's Express.

"I'm glad of that. I'm glad of that," repeated Dr Drummond. "Thank you, Mrs Murchison, I'll send my cup. And did you learn, Williams, for what amount?"

Mr Williams ran his hand through his hair in the effort to remember, and decided that he might as well let it all go. The Mercury couldn't fail to get it by tomorrow anyhow.

"Three thousand," he said. "Milburn and Dr Henry Johnson."

"I thought Father was bound to be in it," remarked Dr Harry.

"Half and half?" asked John Murchison.

"No," contributed Mrs Williams. "Mr Milburn two and Dr Henry one. Mr Milburn is Walter's uncle, you know."

Mr Williams fastened an outraged glance on his wife, who looked another way. Whatever he thought proper to do, it was absolutely understood that she was to reveal nothing of what "came in," and was even carefully to conserve anything she heard outside with a view to bringing it in. Mrs Williams was too prone to indiscretion in the matter of letting news slip prematurely; and as to its capture, her husband would often confess, with private humour, that Minnie wasn't much of a mouser.

"Well, that's something to be thankful for," said Mrs Murchison. "I lay awake for two hours last night thinking of that boy in jail, and his poor old father, seventy-nine years of age, and such a fine old man, so thoroughly respected."

"I don't know the young fellow," said Dr Drummond, "but they say he's of good character, not over-solid, but bears a clean reputation. They're all Tories together, of course, the Ormistons."

"It's an old U. E. Loyalist family," remarked Advena. "Mr Ormiston has one or two rather interesting Revolutionary trophies at his house out there."

"None the worse for that. None the worse for that," said Dr Drummond.

"Old Ormiston's father," contributed the editor of the Express, "had a Crown grant of the whole of Moneida Reservation at one time. Government actually bought it back from him to settle the Indians there. He was a well-known Family Compact man, and fought tooth and nail for the Clergy Reserves in 'fifty."

"Well, well," said Dr Drummond, with a twinkle. "We'll hope young Ormiston is innocent, nevertheless."

"Nasty business for the Federal Bank if he is," Mr Williams went on. "They're a pretty unpopular bunch as it is."

"Of course he's innocent," contributed Stella, with indignant eyes; "and when they prove it, what can he do to the bank for taking him up? That's what I want to know."

Her elders smiled indulgently. "A lot you know about it, kiddie," said Oliver. It was the only remark he made during the meal. Alec passed the butter assiduously, but said nothing at all. Adolescence was inarticulate in Elgin on occasions of ceremony.

"I hear they've piled up some big evidence," said Mr Williams. "Young Ormiston's been fool enough to do some race-betting lately. Minnie, I wish you'd get Mrs Murchison to show you how to pickle pears. Of course," he added, "they're keeping it up their sleeve."

"It's a hard place to keep evidence," said Lorne Murchison at last with a smile which seemed to throw light on the matter. They had all been waiting, more or less consciously, for what Lorne would have to say.

"Lorne, you've got it!" divined his mother instantly.

"Got what, Mother?"

"The case! I've suspected it from the minute the subject was mentioned! That case came in today!"

"And you sitting there like a bump on a log, and never telling us!" exclaimed Stella, with reproach.

"Stella, you have a great deal too much to say," replied her brother. "Suppose you try sitting like a bump on a log. We won't complain. Yes, the Squire seems to have made up his mind about the defence, and my seniors haven't done much else today."

"Rawlins saw him hitched up in front of your place for about two hours this morning," said Mr Williams. "I told him I thought that was good enough, but we didn't say anything, Rawlins having heard it was to be Flynn from Toronto. And I hadn't forgotten the Grand Trunk case we put down to you last week without exactly askin'. Your old man was as mad as a hornet--wanted to stop his subscription; Rawlins had no end of a time to get round him. Little things like that will creep in when you've got to trust to one man to run the whole local show. But I didn't want the Mercury to have another horse on us."

"Do you think you'll get a look in, Lorne?" asked Dr Harry.

"Oh, not a chance of it. The old man's as keen as a razor on the case, and you'd think Warner never had one before! If I get a bit of grubbing to do, under supervision, they'll consider I ought to be pleased." It was the sunniest possible tone of grumbling; it enlisted your sympathy by its very acknowledgement that it had not a leg to stand on.

"They're pretty wild about it out Moneida way," said Dr Harry. "My father says the township would put down the bail three times over."

"They swear by the Squire out there," said Mr Horace Williams, liberally applying his napkin to his moustache. "He treated some of them more than square when the fall wheat failed three years running, about ten years back; do you remember, Mr Murchison? Lent them money at about half the bank rate, and wasn't in an awful sweat about getting it in at that either."

"And wasn't there something about his rebuilding the school-house at his own expense not so long ago?" asked Dr Drummond.

"Just what he did. I wanted to send Rawlins out and make a story of it--we'd have given it a column, with full heads; but the old man didn't like it. It's hard to know what some people will like. But it was my own foolishness for asking. A thing like that is public property."

"There's a good deal of feeling," said Lorne. "So much that I understand the bank is moving for change of venue."

"I hope they won't get it," said Dr Drummond sharply. "A strong local feeling is valuable evidence in a case like this. I don't half approve this notion that a community can't manage its own justice when it happens to take an interest in the case. I've no more acquaintance with the Squire than 'How d'ye do?' and I don't know his son from Adam; but I'd serve on the jury tomorrow if the Crown asked it, and there's many more like me."

Mr Williams, who had made a brief note on his shirt cuff, restored his pencil to his waistcoat pocket. "I shall oppose a change of venue," said he.


CHAPTER V

It was confidently expected by the Murchison family that when Stella was old enough she would be a good deal in society. Stella, without doubt, was well equipped for society; she had exactly those qualities which appealed to it in Elgin, among which I will mention two--the quality of being able to suggest that she was quite as good as anybody without saying so, and the even more important quality of not being any better. Other things being equal--those common worldly standards that prevailed in Elgin as well as anywhere else in their degree--other things being equal, this second simple quality was perhaps the most important of all. Mr and Mrs Murchison made no claim and small attempt upon society. One doubts whether, with children coming fast and hard times long at the door, they gave the subject much consideration; but if they did, it is highly unlikely to have occurred to them that they were too good for their environment. Yet in a manner they were. It was a matter of quality, of spiritual and mental fabric; they were hardly aware that they had it, but it marked them with a difference, and a difference is the one thing a small community, accustomed comfortably to scan its own intelligible averages, will not tolerate. The unusual may take on an exaggeration of these; an excess of money, an excess of piety, is understood; but idiosyncrasy susceptible to no common translation is regarded with the hostility earned by the white crow, modified among law-abiding humans into tacit repudiation. It is a sound enough social principle to distrust that which is not understood, like the strain of temperament inarticulate but vaguely manifest in the Murchisons. Such a strain may any day produce an eccentric or a genius, emancipated from the common interests, possibly inimical to the general good; and when, later on, your genius takes flight or your eccentric sells all that he has and gives it to the poor, his fellow townsmen exchange shrewd nods before the vindicating fact.

Nobody knew it at all in Elgin, but this was the Murchisons' case. They had produced nothing abnormal, but they had to prove that they weren't going to, and Stella was the last and most convincing demonstration. Advena, bookish and unconventional, was regarded with dubiety. She was out of the type; she had queer satisfactions and enthusiasms. Once as a little girl she had taken a papoose from a drunken squaw and brought it home for her mother to adopt. Mrs Murchison's reception of the suggested duty may be imagined, also the comments of acquaintances--a trick like that! The inevitable hour arrived when she should be instructed on the piano, and the second time the music teacher came her pupil was discovered on the roof of the house, with the ladder drawn up after her. She did not wish to learn the piano, and from that point of vantage informed her family that it was a waste of money. She would hide