Lady Merton, Colonist

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

The recital of these things stirred Elizabeth's pulses. But why did she never hear them from himself? Surely he had offered her friendship, and the rights of friendship. How else could he justify the scene at Field, when he had so brusquely probed her secret anxieties for Philip? Her pride rebelled when she thought of it, when she recalled her wet eyes, her outstretched hand. Mere humiliation!--in the case of a casual or indifferent acquaintance. No; on that day, certainly, he had claimed the utmost privileges, had even strained the rights, of a friend, a real friend. But his behaviour since had almost revived her first natural resentment.

Thoughts like these ran in her mind, and occasionally affected her manner when they did meet. Anderson found her more reserved, and noticed that she did not so often ask him for small services as of old. He suffered under the change; but it was, he knew, his own doing, and he did not alter his course.

Whenever he did come, he sat mostly with Philip, over whom he had gradually established a remarkable influence, not by any definite acts or speeches, but rather by the stoicism of his own mode of life, coupled with a proud or laughing contempt for certain vices and self-indulgences to which it was evident that he himself felt no temptation. As soon as Philip felt himself sufficiently at home with the Canadian to begin to jibe at his teetotalism, Anderson seldom took the trouble to defend himself; yet the passion of moral independence in his nature, of loathing for any habit that weakens and enslaves the will, infected the English lad whether he would or no. "There's lots of things he's stick-stock mad on," Philip would say impatiently to his sister. But the madness told. And the madman was all the while consolingly rich in other, and, to Philip, more attractive kinds of madness--the follies of the hunter and climber, of the man who holds his neck as dross in comparison with the satisfaction of certain wild instincts that the Rockies excite in him. Anderson had enjoyed his full share of adventures with goat and bear. Such things are the customary amusements, it seemed, of a young engineer in the Rockies. Beside them, English covert-shooting is a sport for babes; and Philip ceased to boast of his own prowess in that direction. He would listen, indeed, open-mouthed, to Anderson's yarns, lying on his long chair on the verandah--a graceful languid figure--with a coyote rug heaped about him. It was clear to Elizabeth that Anderson on his side had become very fond of the boy. There was no trouble he would not take for him. And gradually, silently, proudly, she allowed him to take less and less for herself.

Once or twice Arthur Delaine's clumsy hints occurred to her. Was there, indeed, some private matter weighing on the young man's mind? She would not allow herself to speculate upon it; though she could not help watching the relation between the two men with some curiosity. It was polite enough; but there was certainly no cordiality in it; and once or twice she suspected a hidden understanding.

Delaine meanwhile felt a kind of dull satisfaction in the turn of events. The intimacy between Anderson and Lady Merton had clearly been checked, or was at least not advancing. Whether it was due to his own hints to Elizabeth, or to Anderson's chivalrous feeling, he did not know. But he wrote every mail to Mrs. Gaddesden, discreetly, yet not without giving her some significant information; he did whatever small services were possible in the case of a man who went about Canada as a Johnny Head-in-air, with his mind in another hemisphere; and it was understood that he was to leave them at Vancouver. In the forced association of their walks and rides, Elizabeth showed herself gay, kind, companionable; although often, and generally for no reason that he could discover, something sharp and icy in her would momentarily make itself felt, and he would find himself driven back within bounds that he had perhaps been tempted to transgress. And the result of it all was that he fell day by day more tormentingly in love with her. Those placid matrimonial ambitions with which he had left England had been all swept away; and as he followed her--she on pony-back, he on foot--along the mountain trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled, introspective person; concentrating upon himself and his disagreeable plight the attention he had hitherto given to a delightful outer world, sown with the caches of antiquity, in order to amuse him.

Meanwhile the situation in the cabin at Laggan appeared to be steadily improving. McEwen had abruptly ceased to be a rebellious and difficult patient. The doctor's orders had been obeyed; the leg had healed rapidly; and he no longer threatened or cajoled Mrs. Ginnell on the subject of liquor. As far as Anderson was concerned, he was generally sulky and uncommunicative. But Anderson got enough out of him by degrees to be able to form a fairly complete idea of his father's course of life since the false report of his death in the Yukon. He realised an existence on the fringe of civilisation, with its strokes of luck neutralised by drink, and its desperate, and probably criminal, moments. And as soon as his father got well enough to limp along the trails of the Laggan valley, the son noticed incidents which appeared to show that the old man, while playing the part of the helpless stranger, was by no means without acquaintance among the motley host of workmen that were constantly passing through. The links of international trades unionism no doubt accounted for it. But in McEwen's case, the fraternity to which he belonged seemed to apply only to the looser and more disreputable elements among the emigrant throng.

But at the same time he had shown surprising docility in the matter of Anderson's counsels. All talk of the Idaho mine had dropped between them, as though by common consent. Anderson had laid hands upon a young man, a Salvation Army officer in Vancouver, with whom his father consented to lodge for the next six weeks; and further arrangements were to be postponed till the end of that period. Anderson hoped, indeed, to get his father settled there before Lady Merton moved from Lake Louise. For in a few days now, the private car was to return from the coast, in order to take up the English party.

McEwen's unexpected complaisance led to a great softening in Anderson's feeling towards his father. All those inner compunctions that haunt a just and scrupulous nature came freely into play. And his evangelical religion--for he was a devout though liberal-minded Presbyterian--also entered in. Was it possible that he might be the agent of his father's redemption? The idea, the hope, produced in him occasional hidden exaltations--flights of prayer--mystical memories of his mother--which lightened what was otherwise a time of bitter renunciation, and determined wrestling with himself.

During the latter days of this fortnight, indeed, he could not do enough for his father. He had made all the Vancouver arrangements; he had supplied him amply with clothes and other personal necessaries; and he came home early at night in order to sit and smoke with him. Mrs. Ginnell, looking in of an evening, beheld what seemed to her a touching sight, though one far beyond the deserts of such creatures as McEwen--the son reading the newspaper aloud, or playing dominoes with his father, or just smoking and chatting. Her hard common sense as a working-woman suggested to her that Anderson was nursing illusions; and she scornfully though silently hoped that the "old rip" would soon, one way or another, be off his shoulders.

But the illusions, for the moment, were Anderson's sustenance. His imagination, denied a more personal and passionate food, gave itself with fire to the redeeming of an outlaw, and the paying of a spiritual debt.