The Imperialist

CHAPTER XXI

“Dear me!” said Dr Drummond. “Dear me! Well! And what does Advena Murchison say to all this?”

He and Hugh Finlay were sitting in the Doctor’s study, the pleasantest room in the house. It was lined with standard religious philosophy, standard poets, standard fiction, all that was standard, and nothing that was not; and the shelves included several volumes of the Doctor’s own sermons, published in black morocco through a local firm that did business by the subscription method, with “Drummond” in gold letters on the back. There were more copies of these, perhaps, than it would be quite thoughtful to count, though a good many were annually disposed of at the church bazaar, where the Doctor presented them with a generous hand. A sumptuous desk, and luxurious leather-covered armchairs furnished the room; a beautiful little Parian copy of a famous Cupid and Psyche decorated the mantelpiece, and betrayed the touch of pagan in the Presbyterian. A bright fire burned in the grate, and there was not a speck of dust anywhere.

Dr Drummond, lost in his chair, with one knee dropped on the other, joined his fingers at the tips, and drew his forehead into a web of wrinkles. Over it his militant grey crest curled up; under it his eyes darted two shrewd points of interrogation.

“What does Miss Murchison say to it?” he repeated with craft and courage, as Finlay’s eyes dropped and his face slowly flushed under the question. It was in this room that Dr Drummond examined “intending communicants” and cases likely to come before the Session; he never shirked a leading question. “Miss Murchison,” said Finlay, after a moment, “was good enough to say that she thought her father’s house would be open to Miss—to my friends when they arrived; but I thought it would be more suitable to ask your hospitality, sir.”

“Did she so?” asked Dr Drummond gravely. It was more a comment than an inquiry. “Did she so?” Infinite kindness was in it.

The young man assented with an awkward gesture, half-bend, half-nod, and neither for a moment spoke again. It was one of those silences with a character, conscious, tentative. Half-veiled, disavowed thoughts rose up in it, awakened by Advena’s name, turning away their heads. The ticking of the Doctor’s old-fashioned watch came through it from his waistcoat pocket. It was he who spoke first.

“I christened Advena Murchison,” he said. “Her father was one of those who called me, as a young man, to this ministry. The names of both her parents are on my first communion roll. Aye!”...

The fire snapped and the watch went on ticking.

“So Advena thought well of it all. Did she so?”

The young man raised his heavy eyes and looked unflinchingly at Dr Drummond.

“Miss Murchison,” he said, “is the only other person to whom I have confided the matter. I have written, fixing that date, with her approval—at her desire. Not immediately. I took time to—think it over. Then it seemed better to arrange for the ladies reception first, so before posting I have come to you.”

“Then the letter has not gone?”

“It is in my pocket.”

“Finlay, you will have a cigar? I don’t smoke myself; my throat won’t stand it; but I understand these are passable. Grant left them here. He’s a chimney, that man Grant. At it day and night.”

This was a sacrifice. Dr Drummond hated tobacco, the smell of it, the ash of it, the time consumed in it. There was no need at all to offer Finlay one of the Reverend Grant’s cigars. Propitiation must indeed be desired when the incense is abhorred. But Finlay declined to smoke. The Doctor, with his hands buried deep in his trousers pockets, where something metallic clinked in them, began to pace and turn. His mouth had the set it wore when he handled a difficult motion in the General Assembly.

“I’m surprised to hear that, Finlay; though it may be well not to be surprised at what a woman will say—or won’t say.”

“Surprised?” said the younger man confusedly. “Why should anyone be surprised?”

“I know her well. I’ve watched her grow up. I remember her mother’s trouble because she would scratch the paint on the pew in front of her with the nails in her little boots. John Murchison sang in the choir in those days. He had a fine bass voice; he has it still. And Mrs Murchison had to keep the family in order by herself. It was sometimes as much as she could do, poor woman. They sat near the front, and many a good hard look I used to give them while I was preaching. Knox Church was a different place then. The choir sat in the back gallery, and we had a precentor, a fine fellow—he lost an arm at Ridgway in the Fenian raid. Well I mind him and the frown he would put on when he took up the fork. But, for that matter, every man Jack in the choir had a frown on in the singing, though the bass fellows would be the fiercest. We’ve been twice enlarged since, and the organist has long been a salaried professional. But I doubt whether the praise of God is any heartier than it was when it followed Peter Craig’s tuning-fork. Aye. You’d always hear John Murchison’s note in the finish.”

Finlay was listening with the look of a charmed animal. Dr Drummond’s voice was never more vibrant, more moving, more compelling than when he called up the past; and here to Finlay the past was itself enchanted.

“She always had those wonderful dark eyes. She’s pale enough now, but as a child she was rosy. Taking her place of a winter evening, with the snow on her fur cap and her hair, I often thought her a picture. I liked to have her attention while I was preaching, even as a child; and when she was absent I missed her. It was through my ministrations that she saw her way to professing the Church of Christ, and under my heartfelt benediction that she first broke bread in her Father’s house. I hold the girl in great affection, Finlay; and I grieve to hear this.”

The other drew a long breath, and his hand tightened on the arm of his chair. He was, as we know, blind to many of the world’s aspects, even to those in which he himself figured; and Dr Drummond’s plain hypothesis of his relations with Advena came before him in forced illumination, flash by tragic flash. This kind of revelation is more discomforting than darkness, since it carries the surprise of assault, and Finlay groped in it, helpless and silent.

“You are grieved, sir?” he said mechanically.

“Man, she loves you!” exclaimed the Doctor, in a tone that would no longer forbear.

Hugh Finlay seemed to take the words just where they were levelled, in his breast. He half leaped from his chair; the lower part of his face had the rigidity of iron.

“I am not obliged to discuss such a matter as that,” he said hoarsely, “with you or with any man.”

He looked confusedly about him for his hat, which he had left in the hall; and Dr Drummond profited by the instant. He stepped across and laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. Had they both been standing the gesture would have been impossible to Dr Drummond with dignity; as it was, it had not only that, but benignance, a kind of tender good will, rare in expression with the minister, rare, for that matter, in feeling with him too, though the chord was always there to be sounded.

“Finlay,” he said; “Finlay!”

Between two such temperaments the touch and the tone together made an extraordinary demonstration. Finlay, with an obvious effort, let it lie upon him. The tension of his body relaxed, that of his soul he covered, leaning forward and burying his head in his hands.

“Will you say I have no claim to speak?” asked Dr Drummond, and met silence. “It is upon my lips to beg you not to send that letter, Finlay.” He took his hand from the young man’s shoulder, inserted a thumb in each of his waistcoat pockets, and resumed his walk.

“On my own account I must send it,” said Finlay. “On Miss Murchison’s—she bids me to. We have gone into the matter together.”

“I can imagine what you made of it together. There’s a good deal of her father in Advena. He would be the last man to say a word for himself. You told her this tale you have told me, and she told you to get Miss Christie out and marry her without delay, eh? And what would you expect her to tell you—a girl of that spirit?”

“I cannot see why pride should influence her.”

“Then you know little about women. It was pride, pure and simple, Finlay, that made her tell you that—and she’ll be a sorry woman if you act on it.”

“No,” said Finlay, suddenly looking up, “I may know little about women, but I know more about Advena Murchison than that. She advised me in the sense she thought right and honourable, and her advice was sincere. And, Dr Drummond, deeply as I feel the bearing of Miss Murchison’s view of the matter, I could not, in any case, allow my decision to rest upon it. It must stand by itself.”

“You mean that your decision to marry to oblige your aunt should not be influenced by the fact that it means the wrecking of your own happiness and that of another person. I can’t agree, Finlay. I spoke first of Advena Murchison because her part and lot in it are most upon my heart. I feel, too, that someone should put her case. Her own father would never open his lips. If you’re to be hauled over the coals about this I’m the only man to do it. And I’m going to.”

A look of sharp determination came into the minister’s eyes; he had the momentary air of a small Scotch terrier with a bidding. Finlay looked at him in startled recognition of another possible phase of his dilemma; he thought he knew it in every wretched aspect. It was a bold reference of Dr Drummond’s; it threw down the last possibility of withdrawal for Finlay; they must have it out now, man to man, with a little, perhaps, even in that unlikely place, of penitent to confessor. It was an exigency, it helped Finlay to pull himself together, and there was something in his voice, when he spoke, like the vibration of relief.

“I am pained and distressed more than I have any way of telling you, sir,” he said, “that—the state of feeling—between Miss Murchison and myself should have been so plain to you. It is incomprehensible to me that it should be so, since it is only very lately that I have understood it truly myself. I hope you will believe that it was the strangest, most unexpected, most sudden revelation.”

He paused and looked timidly at the Doctor; he, the great fellow, in straining bondage to his heart, leaning forward with embarrassed tension in every muscle, Dr Drummond alert, poised, critical, balancing his little figure on the hearthrug.

“I preach faith in miracles,” he said. “I dare say between you and her it would be just that.”

“I have been deeply culpable. Common sense, common knowledge of men and women should have warned me that there might be danger. But I looked upon the matter as our own—as between us only. I confess that I have not till now thought of that part of it, but surely—You cannot mean to tell me that what I have always supposed my sincere and devoted friendship for Miss Murchison has been in any way prejudicial—”

“To her in the ordinary sense? To her prospects of marriage and her standing in the eyes of the community? No, Finlay. No. I have not heard the matter much referred to. You seem to have taken none of the ordinary means—you have not distinguished her in the eyes of gossip. If you had it would be by no means the gravest thing to consider. Such tokens are quickly forgotten, especially here, where attentions of the kind often, I’ve noticed, lead to nothing. It is the fact, and not the appearance of it, that I speak of—that I am concerned with.”

“The fact is beyond mending,” said Finlay, dully.

“Aye, the fact is beyond mending. It is beyond mending that Advena Murchison belongs to you and you to her in no common sense. It’s beyond mending that you cannot now be separated without such injury to you both as I would not like to look upon. It’s beyond mending, Finlay, because it is one of those things that God has made. But it is not beyond marring, and I charge you to look well what you are about in connection with it.”

A flash of happiness, of simple delight, lit the young man’s sombre eyes as the phrases fell. To the minister they were mere forcible words; to Finlay they were soft rain in a famished land. Then he looked again heavily at the pattern of the carpet.

“Would you have me marry Advena Murchison?” he said, with a kind of shamed yielding to the words.

“I would—and no other. Man, I saw it from the beginning!” exclaimed the Doctor. “I don’t say it isn’t an awkward business. But at least there’ll be no heartbreak in Scotland. I gather you never said a word to the Bross lady on the subject, and very few on any other. You tell me you left it all with that good woman, your aunt, to arrange after you left. Do you think a creature of any sentiment would have accepted you on those terms? Not she. So far as I can make out, Miss Cameron is just a sensible, wise woman that would be the first to see the folly in this business if she knew the rights of it. Come, Finlay, you’re not such a great man with the ladies—you can’t pretend she has any affection for you.”

The note of raillery in the Doctor’s voice drew Finlay’s brows together.

“I don’t know,” he said, “whether I have to think of her affections, but I do know I have to think of her dignity, her confidence, and her belief in the honourable dealing of a man whom she met under the sanction of a trusted roof. The matter may look light here; it is serious there. She has her circle of friends; they are acquainted with her engagement. She has made all her arrangements to carry it out; she has disposed of her life. I cannot ask her to reconsider her lot because I have found a happier adjustment for mine.”

“Finlay,” said Dr Drummond, “you will not be known in Bross or anywhere else as a man who has jilted a woman. Is that it?”

“I will not be a man who has jilted a woman.”

“There is no sophist like pride. Look at the case on its merits. On the one side a disappointment for Miss Cameron. I don’t doubt she’s counting on coming, but at worst a worldly disappointment. And the very grievous humiliation for you of writing to tell her that you have made a mistake. You deserve that, Finlay. If you wouldn’t be a man who has jilted a woman you have no business to lend yourself to such matters with the capacity of a blind kitten. That is the damage on the one side. On the other—”

“I know all that there is to be said,” interrupted Finlay, “on the other.”

“Then face it, man. Go home and write the whole truth to Bross. I’ll do it for you—no, I won’t, either. Stand up to it yourself. You must hurt one of two women; choose the one that will suffer only in her vanity. I tell you that Scotch entanglement of yours is pure cardboard farce—it won’t stand examination. It’s appalling to think that out of an extravagant, hypersensitive conception of honour, egged on by that poor girl, you could be capable of turning it into the reality of your life.”

“I’ve taken all these points of view, sir, and I can’t throw the woman over. The objection to it isn’t in reason—it’s somehow in the past and the blood. It would mean the sacrifice of all that I hold most valuable in myself. I should expect myself after that to stick at nothing—why should I?”

“There is one point of view that perhaps you have not taken,” said Dr Drummond, in his gravest manner. “You are settled here in your charge. In all human probability you will remain here in East Elgin, as I have remained here, building and fortifying the place you have won for the Lord in the hearts of the people. Advena Murchison’s life will also go on here—there is nothing to take it away. You have both strong natures. Are you prepared for that?”

“We are both prepared for it. We shall both be equal to it. I count upon her, and she counts upon me, to furnish in our friendship the greater part of whatever happiness life may have in store for us.”

“Then you must be a pair of born lunatics!” said Dr Drummond, his jaw grim, his eyes snapping. “What you propose is little less than a crime, Finlay. It can come to nothing but grief, if no worse. And your wife, poor woman, whatever she deserves, it is better than that! My word, if she could choose her prospect, think you she would hesitate? Finlay, I entreat you as a matter of ordinary prudence, go home and break it off. Leave Advena out of it—you have no business to make this marriage whether or no. Leave other considerations to God and to the future. I beseech you, bring it to an end!”

Finlay got up and held out his hand. “I tell you from my heart it is impossible,” he said.

“I can’t move you?” said Dr Drummond. “Then let us see if the Lord can. You will not object, Finlay, to bring the matter before Him, here and now, in a few words of prayer? I should find it hard to let you go without them.”

They went down upon their knees where they stood; and Dr Drummond did little less than order Divine interference; but the prayer that was inaudible was to the opposite purpose.

Ten minutes later the minister himself opened the door to let Finlay out into the night. “You will remember,” he said as they shook hands, “that what I think of your position in this matter makes no difference whatever to the question of your aunt’s coming here with Miss Cameron when they arrive. You will bring them to this house as a matter of course. I wish you could be guided to a different conclusion but, after all, it is your own conscience that must be satisfied. They will be better here than at the Murchisons’,” he added with a last shaft of reproach, “and they will be very welcome.”

It said much for Dr Drummond that Finlay was able to fall in with the arrangement. He went back to his boarding-house, and added a postscript embodying it to his letter to Bross. Then he walked out upon the midnight two feverish miles to the town, and posted the letter. The way back was longer and colder.