The Imperialist (13 page)

That evening the Murchisons’ doorbell rang twice. The first time it was to admit the Rev. Hugh Finlay, who had come to return
Sordello
, which he had borrowed from Advena, and to find out whether she thought with him about the interpretation of certain passages, and if not – there was always the possibility – wherein their divergence lay. The second time the door opened to Dr. Drummond and Mr. Cruickshank; and the electric light had to be turned on in the drawing-room, since the library was already occupied by Mr. Finlay and Advena, Mr. and Mrs. Murchison never having got over their early habit of sitting in the dining-room after tea. Even then Mrs. Murchison had to put away her work-basket, and John Murchison to knock the ashes out of his pipe, looking at one another with surprised inquiry when Eliza informed them of their visitors. Luckily, Mr. Lorne was also in, and Eliza was
sent to tell him, and Mr. Lorne came down the stairs two at a time to join the party in the drawing-room, which was presently supplied by Eliza with a dignified service of cake and wine. The hall divided that room from the library, and both doors were shut. We cannot hesitate about which to open; we have only, indeed, to follow the recognized tradition of Elgin, which would never have entered the library. No vivid conclusion should be drawn, no serious situation may even be indicated. It would simply have been considered, in Elgin, stupid to go into the library.

“It isn’t a case for the High Commissioner for Canada,” Mr. Cruickshank was saying. “It’s a case for direct representation of the interests concerned, and their view of the effect upon trade. That’s the only voice to speak with if you want to get anything done. Conviction carries conviction. The High Commissioner is a very useful fellow to live in London and look after the ornamental, the sentimental, and immigration – nobody could do it better than Selkirk. And in England, of course, they like that kind of agency. It’s the good old dignified way; but it won’t do for everything. You don’t find our friend Morgan operating through the American equivalent of a High Commissioner.”

“No, you don’t,” said John Murchison.

“He goes over there as a principal, and the British Government, if he wants to deal with it, is only another principal. That’s the way our deputation will go. We’re practically all shippers, though of course the matter of tenders will come later. There is big business for them here, national business, and we propose to show it. The subsidy we want will come back to the country four times over in two years. Freights from Boston alone –”

“It’s the patriotic, imperial argument you’ll have to press, I doubt,” said John Murchison. “They’re not business people over there – the men in office are not. How should they be? The system draws them from the wrong class. They’re gentlemen – noblemen, maybe – first, and they’ve no practical education. There’s only one way of getting it, and that’s to make your own living. How many of them have ever made tuppence? There’s where the Americans beat them so badly – they’ve got the sixth sense, the business sense. No; you’ll not find them responding greatly to what there is in it for trade – they’d like to well enough, but they just won’t see it; and, by George! what a fine suspicion they’ll have of ye! As to freights from Boston,” he continued, as they all laughed, “I’m of opinion you’d better not mention them. What! steal the trade of a friendly Power! Tut, tut!”

It was a long speech for John Murchison, but they were all excited to a pitch beyond the usual. Henry Cruickshank had brought with him an event of extraordinary importance. It seemed to sit there with him, significant and propitious, in the middle of the sofa; they all looked at it in the pauses. Dr. Drummond, lost in an armchair, alternately contemplated it and remembered to assert himself part of it. As head of a deputation from the United Chambers of Commerce of Canada shortly to wait on the British Government to press for the encouragement of improved communications within the Empire, Cruickshank had been asked to select a secretary. The appointment, in view of the desirability, for political reasons, of giving the widest publicity to the hopes and motives of the deputation, was an important one. The action of the Canadian Government, in extending conditional promises of support, had to be justified to the Canadian taxpayer; and that
shy and weary person whose shoulders uphold the greatness of Britain, had also to receive such conciliation and reassurance as it was possible to administer to him, by way of nerving the administrative arm over there to an act of enterprise. Mr. Cruickshank had had two or three young fellows, mostly newspaper men, in his mind’s eye; but when Lorne came into his literal range of vision, the others had promptly been retired in our friend’s favour. Young Mr. Murchison, he had concluded, was the man they wanted; and if his office could spare him, it would probably do young Mr. Murchison no harm in any sort of way to accompany the deputation to London and throw himself into the matter the deputation had at heart.

“But it’s the Empire!” said Lorne, with a sort of shy fire, when Mr. Cruickshank enunciated this.

We need not, perhaps, dwell upon the significance of his agreement. It was then not long since the maple leaf had been stained brighter than ever, not without honour, to maintain the word that fell from him. The three older men looked at him kindly; John Murchison, rubbing his chin as he considered the situation, slightly shook his head. One took it that in his view the Empire was not so readily envisaged.

“That has a strong bearing,” Mr. Cruickshank assented.

“It’s the whole case – it seems to me,” repeated young Murchison.

“It should help to knit us up,” said Dr. Drummond. “I’ll put my name down on the first passenger list, if Knox Church will let me off. See that you have special rates,” he added, with a twinkle, “for ministers and missionaries.”

“And only ten days to get him ready in,” said Mrs. Murchison. “It will take some seeing to, I assure you; and I don’t know how it’s to be done in the time. For once, Lorne, I’ll have to order you ready-made shirts, and you’ll just have
to put up with it. Nothing else could possibly get back from the wash.”

“I’ll put up with it, mother.”

They went into other details of Lorne’s equipment while Mrs. Murchison’s eye still wandered over the necessities of his wardrobe. They arranged the date on which he was to meet the members of the deputation in Montreal, and Mr. Cruickshank promised to send him all available documents, and such presentation of the project as had been made in the newspapers.

“You shall be put in immediate possession of the bones of the thing,” he said, “but what really matters,” he added, pleasantly, “I think you’ve got already.”

It took, of course, some discussion, and it was quite ten o’clock before everything was gone into, and the prospect was clear to them all. As they emerged into the hall together, the door of the room opposite also opened, and the Rev. Hugh Finlay found himself added to their group. They all made the best of the unexpected encounter. It was rather an elaborate best, very polite and entirely grave, except in the instance of Dr. Drummond, who met his subaltern with a smile in which cordiality struggled in vain to overcome the delighted humour.

I
t was the talk of the town, the pride of the market-place, Lorne Murchison’s having been selected to accompany what was known as the Cruickshank deputation to England. The general spirit of congratulation was corrected by a tendency to assert it another proof of sagacity on the chairman’s part; Elgin wouldn’t be too flattered; Lawyer Cruickshank couldn’t have done better. You may be sure the
Express
was well ahead with it. “Honour to Our Young Fellow Townsman. A Well-Merited Compliment,” and Rawlins was round promptly next morning to glean further particulars. He found only Mrs. Murchison, on a step-ladder tying up the clematis that climbed about the verandah, and she told him a little about clematis and a good deal about the inconvenience of having to abandon superintending the spring cleaning in order to get Lorne ready to go to the old country at such short notice, but nothing he could put in the paper. Lorne, sought at the office, was hardly more communicative. Mr. Williams himself dropped in there. He said the
Express
would now have a personal interest in the object of the deputation, and proposed to strike out a broad line, a broader line than ever.

“We’ve got into the way of taking it for granted,” said Mr. Williams, “that the subsidy idea is a kind of mediaeval idea. Raise a big enough shout and you get things taken for granted in economics for a long while. Conditions keep changing, right along, all the time, and presently you’ve got to reconsider. There ain’t any sort of ultimate truth in the finest economic position, my son; not any at all.”

“We’ll subsidize over here, right enough,” said Lorne.

“That’s the idea – that’s the prevailing idea, just now. But lots of people think different – more than you’d imagine. I was talking to old man Milburn just now – he’s dead against it. ‘Government has no business,’ he said, ‘to apply the taxes in the interests of any company. It oughtn’t to know how to spell “subsidy.” If the trade was there it would get itself carried,’ he said.”

“Well, that surprises me,” said Lorne.

“Surprised me, too. But I was on the spot with him; just thought of it in time. ‘Well, now, Mr. Milburn,’ I said, ‘you’ve changed your mind. Thought that was a thing you Conservatives never did,’ I said. ‘We don’t – I haven’t,’ he said. ‘What d’ye mean?’ ‘Twenty-five years ago,’ I said, ‘when you were considering whether you’d start the Milburn Boiler Works here or in Hamilton, Hamilton offered you a free site, and Elgin offered you a free site and a dam for your water power. You took the biggest subsidy an’ came here,’ I said.”

Lorne laughed: “What did he say to that?”

“Hadn’t a word. ‘I guess it’s up to me,’ he said. Then he turned round and came back. ‘Hold on, Williams,’ he said. ‘You know so much already about my boiler works, it wouldn’t be much trouble for you to write out an account of them from the beginning, would it? Working in the last quarter of a century of the town’s progress, you know, and all that. Come
round to the office to-morrow, and I’ll give you some pointers.’ And he fixed up a two-column ad. right away. He was afraid I’d round on him, I suppose, if I caught him saying anything more about the immorality of subsidies.”

“He won’t say anything more.”

“Probably not. Milburn hasn’t got much of a political conscience, but he’s got a sense of what’s silly. Well, now, I expect you want all the time there is.”

Mr. Williams removed himself from the edge of the table, which was strewn with maps and bluebooks, printed official, and typewritten demi-official papers.

“Give ’em a notion of those Assiniboian wheat acres, my boy, and the ranch country we’ve got; tell ’em about the future of quick passage and cold storage. Get ’em a little ashamed to have made so many fortunes for Yankee beef combines; persuade ’em the cheapest market has a funny way of getting the dearest price in the end. Give it ’em, Lorne, hot and cold and fricasseed. The
Express
will back you up.”

He slapped his young friend’s shoulder, who seemed occupied with matters that prevented his at once feeling the value of this assurance. “Bye-bye,” said Mr. Williams. “See you again before you start.”

“Oh, of course!” Lorne replied. “I’ll – I’ll come round. By the way, Williams, Mr. Milburn didn’t say anything – about me in connection with this business? Didn’t mention, I suppose, what he thought about my going.”

“Not a word, my boy! He was away up in abstract principles; he generally is. Bye-bye.”

“It’s gone to his head a little bit – only natural,” Horace reflected as he went down the stairs. “He’s probably just feeding on what folks think of it. As if it mattered a pin’s head what Octavius Milburn thinks or don’t think!”

Lorne, however, left alone with his customs returns and his immigration reports, sat still, attaching a weight quite out of comparison with a pin’s head to Mr. Milburn’s opinion. He turned it over and over, instead of the tabulated figures that were his business: he had to show himself his way to the conclusion that such a thing could not matter seriously in the end, since Milburn hadn’t a dollar involved – it would be different if he were a shareholder in the Maple Line. He wished heartily, nevertheless, that he could demonstrate a special advantage to boiler-makers in competitive freights with New York. What did they import, confound them! Pig-iron? Plates and rivets? Fortunately he was in a position to get at the facts, and he got at them with an interest of even greater intensity than he had shown to the whole question since ten that morning. Even now, the unprejudiced observer, turning up the literature connected with the Cruickshank deputation, may notice a stress laid upon the advantages to Canadian importers of ore in certain stages of manufacture which may strike him as slightly, very slightly, special. Of course there are a good many of them in the country. So that Mr. Horace Williams was justified to some extent in his kindly observation upon the excusable egotism of youth. Two or three letters, however, came in while Lorne was considering the relation of plates and rivets to the objects of his deputation. They were all congratulatory; one was from the chairman of the Liberal Association at its headquarters in Toronto. Lorne glanced at them and stowed them away in his pocket. He would read them when he got home, when it would be a pleasure to hand them over to his mother. She was making a collection of them.

He had a happy perception that same evening that Mr. Milburn’s position was not, after all, finally and invincibly taken against the deputation and everything – everybody –
concerned with it. He met that gentleman at his own garden gate. Octavius paused in his exit, to hold it open for young Murchison, thus even assisting the act of entry, a thing which thrilled Lorne sweetly enough when he had time to ponder its possible significance. Alas! the significance that lovers find! Lorne read a world in the behaviour of Dora’s father in holding the gate open. He saw political principle put aside in his favour, and social position forgotten in kindness to him. He saw the gravest, sincerest appreciation of his recent success, which he took as humbly as a dog will take a bone; he read a fatherly thought at which his pulses bounded in an arrogance of triumph, and his heart rose to ask its trust. And Octavius Milburn had held the gate open because it was more convenient to hold it open than to leave it open. He had not a political view in the world that was calculated to affect his attitude toward a practical matter; and his opinion of Lorne was quite uncomplicated: he thought him a very likely young fellow. Milburn himself, in the Elgin way, preferred to see no great significance of this sort anywhere. Young people were young people; it was natural enough that they should like each other’s society. They, the Milburns, were very glad to see Mr. Murchison, very glad indeed. It was frequent matter for veiled humorous reference at the table that he had been to call again, at which Dora would look very stiff and dignified, and have to be coaxed back into the conversation. As to anything serious, there was no hurry; plenty of time to think of that. Such matters dwelt under the horizon; there was no need to scan them closely; and Mr. Milburn went his way, conscious of nothing more than a comfortable gratification that Dora, so far as the young men were concerned, seemed as popular as other girls.