Mrs Forsyth had been told of the approaching event; but neither Dr Drummond, who was not fond of making communications he did not approve of, nor the Murchisons, who were shy of the matter as a queer business which Advena seemed too much mixed up with, had mentioned it to anyone else. Finlay himself had no intimates, and moved into his new house in River Street under little comment. His doings excited small surprise, because the town knew too little about him to expect him to do one thing more than another. He was very significant among his people, very important in their lives but not, somehow, at any expense to his private self. He knew them, but they did not know him; and it is high praise of him that this was no grievance among them. They would tell you without resentment that the minister was a “very reserved” man; there might be even a touch of proper pride in it. The worshippers of Knox Church mission were rather a reserved lot themselves. It was different with the Methodists; plenty of expansion there.
Elgin, therefore, knew nothing, beyond the fact that Dr Drummond had two ladies from the old country staying with him, about whom particular curiosity would hardly be expected outside of Knox Church. In view of Finlay’s absence, Dr Drummond, consulting with Mrs Kilbannon, decided that for the present Elgin need not be further informed. There was no need, they agreed, to give people occasion to talk; and it would just be a nuisance to have to make so many explanations. Both Mrs Kilbannon and her niece belonged to the race that takes great satisfaction in keeping its own counsel. Their situation gained for them the further interest that nothing need be said about it; and the added importance of caution was plainly to be discerned in their bearing, even toward one another. It was a portentous business, this of marrying a minister, under the most ordinary circumstances, not to be lightly dealt with, and even more of an undertaking in a far new country where the very wind blew differently, and the extraordinary freedom of conversation made it more than ever necessary to take heed to what you were saying. So far as Miss Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon were aware, the matter had not been “spoken of” elsewhere at all. Dr Drummond, remembering Advena Murchison’s acquaintance with it, had felt the weight of a complication, and had discreetly held his tongue. Mrs Kilbannon approved her nephew in this connection. “Hugh,” she said, “was never one to let on more than necessary.” It was a fine secret between Hugh, in Winnipeg, whence he had written all that was lawful or desirable, and themselves at Dr Drummond’s. Miss Cameron said it would give her more freedom to look about her.
In the midst of all this security, and on the very first day after their arrival, it was disconcerting to be told that a lady, whose name they had never heard before, had called to see Miss Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon. They had not even appeared at church, as they told one another with dubious glances. They had no reason whatever to expect visitors. Dr Drummond was in the cemetery burying a member; Mrs Forsyth was also abroad. “Now who in the world,” asked Mrs Kilbannon of Miss Cameron, “is Miss Murchison?”
“They come to our church,” said Sarah, in the door. “They’ve got the foundry. It’s the oldest one. She teaches.”
Sarah in the door was even more disconcerting than an unexpected visitor. Sarah invariably took them off their guard, in the door or anywhere. She freely invited their criticism, but they would not have known how to mend her. They looked at her now helplessly, and Mrs Kilbannon said, “Very well. We will be down directly.”
“It may be just some friendly body,” she said, as they descended the stairs together, “or it may be common curiosity. In that case we’ll disappoint it.”
Whatever they expected, therefore, it was not Advena. It was not a tall young woman with expressive eyes, a manner which was at once abrupt and easy, and rather a lounging way of occupying the corner of a sofa. “When she sat down,” as Mrs Kilbannon said afterward, “she seemed to untie and fling herself as you might a parcel.” Neither Mrs Kilbannon nor Christie Cameron could possibly be untied or flung, so perhaps they gave this capacity in Advena more importance than it had. But it was only a part of what was to them a new human demonstration, something to inspect very carefully and accept very cautiously—the product, like themselves, yet so suspiciously different, of these free airs and these astonishingly large ideas. In some ways, as she sat there in her graceful dress and careless attitude, asking them direct smiling questions about their voyage, she imposed herself as of the class whom both these ladies of Bross would acknowledge unquestioningly to be “above” them; in others she seemed to be of no class at all; so far she came short of small standards of speech and behaviour. The ladies from Bross, more and more confused, grew more and more reticent, when suddenly, out of a simple remark of Miss Cameron’s about missing in the train the hot-water cans they gave you “to your feet” in Scotland, reticence descended upon Miss Murchison also. She sat in an odd silence, looking at Miss Cameron, absorbed apparently in the need of looking at her, finding nothing to say, her flow of pleasant inquiry dried up, and all her soul at work, instead, to perceive the woman. Mrs Kilbannon was beginning to think better of her—it was so much more natural to be a little backward with strangers—when the moment passed. Their visitor drew herself out of it with almost a perceptible effort, and seemed to glance consideringly at them in their aloofness, their incommunicativeness, their plain odds with her. I don’t know what she expected; but we may assume that she was there simply to offer herself up, and the impulse of sacrifice seldom considers whether or not it may be understood. It was to her a normal, natural thing that a friend of Hugh Finlay’s should bring an early welcome to his bride; and to do the normal, natural thing at keen personal cost was to sound that depth, or rise to that height of the spirit where pain sustains. We know of Advena that she was prone to this form of exaltation. Those who feel themselves capable may pronounce whether she would have been better at home crying in her bedroom.
She decided badly—how could she decide well?—on what she would say to explain herself.
“I am so sorry,” she told them, “that Mr Finlay is obliged to be away.”
It was quite wrong; it assumed too much, her knowledge and their confidence, and the propriety of discussing Mr Finlay’s absence. There was even an unconscious hint of another kind of assumption in it—a suggestion of apology for Mr Finlay. Advena was aware of it even as it left her lips, and the perception covered her with a damning blush. She had a sudden terrified misgiving that her role was too high for her, that she had already cracked her mask. But she looked quietly at Miss Cameron and smiled across the tide that surged in her as she added, “He was very distressed at having to go.”