The Imperialist

CHAPTER XXIII

Alfred Hesketh was among the first to hear of Lorne’s nomination to represent the constituency of South Fox in the Dominion Parliament. The Milburns told him; it was Dora who actually made the communication. The occasion was high tea; Miss Milburn’s apprehension about Englishmen and late dinner had been dissipated in great amusement. Mr Hesketh liked nothing better than high tea, liked nothing so much. He came often to the Milburns’ after Mrs Milburn said she hoped he would, and pleased her extremely by the alacrity with which he accepted her first invitation to stay to what she described as their very simple and unconventional meal. Later he won her approval entirely by saying boldly that he hoped he was going to be allowed to stay. It was only in good English society, Mrs Milburn declared, that you found such freedom and confidence; it reminded her of Mrs Emmett’s saying that her sister-in-law in London was always at home to lunch. Mrs Milburn considered a vague project of informing a select number of her acquaintances that she was always at home to high tea, but on reflection dismissed it, in case an inconvenient number should come at once. She would never have gone into detail, but since a tin of sardines will only hold so many, I may say for her that it was the part of wisdom.

Mr Hesketh, however, wore the safe and attractive aspect of a single exceptional instance; there were always sardines enough for him. It will be imagined what pleasure Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin took in his visits, how he propped up their standard of behaviour in all things unessential, which was too likely to be growing limp, so far from approved examples. I think it was a real aesthetic satisfaction; I know they would talk of it afterward for hours, with sighing comparisons of the “form” of the young men of Elgin, which they called beside Hesketh’s quite outre. It was a favourite word with Mrs Milburn—outre. She used it like a lorgnette, and felt her familiarity with it a differentiating mark. Mr Milburn, never so susceptible to delicate distinctions, looked upon the young Englishman with benevolent neutrality. Dora wished it to be understood that she reserved her opinion. He might be all that he seemed, and again he might not. Englishmen were so deep. They might have nice manners, but they didn’t always act up to them, so far as she had noticed. There was that Honourable Somebody, who was in jail even then for trying to borrow money under false pretences from the Governor-General. Lorne, when she expressed these views to him, reassured her, but she continued to maintain a guarded attitude upon Mr Hesketh, to everybody except Mr Hesketh himself.

It was Dora, as I have said, who imparted the news. Lorne had come over with it in the afternoon, still a little dazed and unbelieving in the face of his tremendous luck, helped by finding her so readily credulous to thinking it reasonably possible himself. He could not have done better than come to Dora for a correction of any undue exaltation that he might have felt, however. She supplied it in ten minutes by reminding him of their wisdom in keeping the secret of their relations. His engagement to the daughter of a prominent Conservative would not indeed have told in his favour with his party, to say nothing of the anomaly of Mr Milburn’s unyielding opposition to the new policy. “I never knew Father so nearly bitter about anything,” Dora said, a statement which left her lover thoughtful, but undaunted.

“We’ll bring him round,” said Lorne, “when he sees that the British manufacturer can’t possibly get the better of men on the spot, who know to a nut the local requirements.”

To which she had responded, “Oh, Lorne, don’t begin THAT again,” and he had gone away hot-foot for the first step of preparation.

“It’s exactly what I should have expected,” said Hesketh, when she told him. “Murchison is the very man they want. He’s cut out for a political success. I saw that when he was in England.”

“You haven’t been very long in the country, Mr Hesketh, or we shouldn’t hear you saying that,” said Mr Milburn, amicably. “It’s a very remarkable thing with us, a political party putting forward so young a man. Now with you I expect a young fellow might get in on his rank or his wealth—your principle of nonpayment of members confines your selection more or less. I don’t say you’re not right, but over here we do pay, you see, and it makes a lot of difference in the competition. It isn’t a greater honour, but it’s more sought for. I expect there’ll be a good many sore heads over this business.”

“It’s all the more creditable to Murchison,” said Hesketh.

“Of course it is—a great feather in his cap. Oh, I don’t say young Murchison isn’t a rising fellow, but it’s foolishness for his party—I can’t think who is responsible for it. However, they’ve got a pretty foolish platform just now—they couldn’t win this seat on it with any man. A lesson will be good for them.”

“Father, don’t you think Lorne will get in?” asked Dora, in a tone of injury and slight resentment.

“Not by a handful,” said her father. “Mr Walter Winter will represent South Fox in the next session of Parliament, if you ask my opinion.”

“But, Father,” returned his daughter with an outraged inflection, “you’ll vote for Lorne?”

A smile went round the table, discreetest in Mrs Milburn.

“I’m afraid not,” said Mr Milburn, “I’m afraid not. Sorry to disoblige, but principles are principles.”

Dora perceptibly pouted. Mrs Milburn created a diversion with green-gage preserves. Under cover of it Hesketh asked, “Is he a great friend of yours?”

“One of my very greatest,” Dora replied. “I know he’ll expect Father to vote for him. It makes it awfully embarrassing for me.”

“Oh, I fancy he’ll understand!” said Hesketh, easily. “Political convictions are serious things, you know. Friendship isn’t supposed to interfere with them. I wonder,” he went on, meditatively, “whether I could be of any use to Murchison. Now that I’ve made up my mind to stop till after Christmas I’ll be on hand for the fight. I’ve had some experience. I used to canvass now and then from Oxford; it was always a tremendous lark.”

“Oh, Mr Hesketh, DO! Really and truly he is one of my oldest friends, and I should love to see him get in. I know his sister, too. They’re a very clever family. Quite self-made, you know, but highly respected. Promise me you will.”

“I promise with pleasure. And I wish it were something it would give me more trouble to perform. I like Murchison,” said Hesketh.

All this transpiring while they were supposed to be eating green-gage preserves, and Mrs Milburn and Miss Filkin endeavoured to engage the head of the house in the kind of easy allusion to affairs of the moment to which Mr Hesketh would be accustomed as a form of conversation—the accident to the German Empress, the marriage of one of the Rothschilds. The ladies were compelled to supply most of the facts and all of the interest but they kept up a gallant line of attack; and the young man, taking gratified possession of Dora’s eyes, was extremely obliged to them.

Hesketh lost no time in communicating his willingness to be of use to Murchison, and Lorne felt all his old friendliness rise up in him as he cordially accepted the offer. It was made with British heartiness, it was thoroughly meant. Lorne was half-ashamed in his recognition of its quality. A certain aloofness had grown in him against his will since Hesketh had prolonged his stay in the town, difficult to justify, impossible to define. Hesketh as Hesketh was worthily admirable as ever, wholesome and agreeable, as well turned out by his conscience as he was by his tailor; it was Hesketh in his relation to his new environment that seemed vaguely to come short. This in spite of an enthusiasm which was genuine enough; he found plenty of things to like about the country. It was perhaps in some manifestation of sensitiveness that he failed; he had the adaptability of the pioneer among rugged conditions, but he could not mingle quite immediately with the essence of them; he did not perceive the genius loci. Lorne had been conscious of this as a kind of undefined grievance; now he specified it and put it down to Hesketh’s isolation among ways that were different from the ways he knew. You were bound to notice that Hesketh as a stranger had his own point of view, his own training to retreat upon.

“I certainly liked him better over there,” Lorne told Advena, “but then he was a part of it—he wasn’t separated out as he is here. He was just one sort of fellow that you admired, and there were lots of sorts that you admired more. Over here you seem to see round him somehow.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it difficult,” said his sister.

“Besides,” Lorne confessed, “I expect it was easier to like him when you were inclined to like everybody. A person feels more critical of a visitor, especially when he’s had advantages,” he added honestly. “I expect we don’t care about having to acknowledge ‘em so very much—that’s what it comes to.”

“I don’t see them,” said Advena. “Mr Hesketh seems well enough in his way, fairly intelligent and anxious to be pleasant. But I can’t say I find him a specially interesting or valuable type.”

“Interesting, you wouldn’t. But valuable—well, you see, you haven’t been in England—you haven’t seen them over there, crowds of ‘em, piling up the national character. Hesketh’s an average, and for an average he’s high. Oh, he’s a good sort—and he just SMELLS of England.”

“He seems all right in his politics,” said John Murchison, filling his pipe from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece. “But I doubt whether you’ll find him much assistance the way he talks of. Folks over here know their own business—they’ve had to learn it. I doubt if they’ll take showing from Hesketh.”

“They might be a good deal worse advised.”

“That may be,” said Mr Murchison, and settled down in his armchair behind the Dominion.

“I agree with Father,” said Advena. “He won’t be any good, Lorne.”

“Advena prefers Scotch,” remarked Stella.

“I don’t know. He’s full of the subject,” said Lorne. “He can present it from the other side.”

“The side of the British exporter?” inquired his father, looking over the top of the Dominion with unexpected humour.

“No, sir. Though there are places where we might talk cheap overcoats and tablecloths and a few odds and ends like that. The side of the all-British loaf and the lot of people there are to eat it,” said Lorne. “That ought to make a friendly feeling. And if there’s anything in the sentiment of the scheme,” he added, “it shouldn’t do any harm to have a good specimen of the English people advocating it. Hesketh ought to be an object-lesson.”

“I wouldn’t put too much faith in the object-lesson,” said John Murchison.

“Neither would I,” said Stella emphatically. “Mister Alfred Hesketh may pass in an English crowd, but over here he’s just an ignorant young man, and you’d better not have him talking with his mouth at any of your meetings. Tell him to go and play with Walter Winter.”

“I heard he was asking at Volunteer Headquarters the other night,” remarked Alec, “how long it would be before a man like himself, if he threw in his lot with the country, could expect to get nominated for a provincial seat.”

“What did they tell him?” asked Mr Murchison, when they had finished their laugh.

“I heard they said it would depend a good deal on the size of the lot.”

“And a little on the size of the man,” remarked Advena.

“He said he would be willing to take a seat in a Legislature and work up,” Alec went on. “Ontario for choice, because he thought the people of this Province more advanced.”

“There’s a representative committee being formed to give the inhabitants of the poor-house a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day,” said Advena. “He might begin with that.”

“I dare say he would if anybody told him. He’s just dying to be taken into the public service,” Alec said. “He’s in dead earnest about it. He thinks this country’s a great place because it gives a man the chance of a public career.”

“Why is it,” asked Advena “that when people have no capacity for private usefulness they should be so anxious to serve the public?”

“Oh, come,” said Lorne, “Hesketh has an income of his own. Why should he sweat for his living? We needn’t pride ourselves on being so taken up with getting ours. A man like that is in a position to do some good, and I hope Hesketh will get a chance if he stays over here. We’ll soon see how he speaks. He’s going to follow Farquharson at Jordanville on Thursday week.”

“I wonder at Farquharson,” said his father.

By this time the candidature of Mr Lorne Murchison was well in the public eye. The Express announced it in a burst of beaming headlines, with a biographical sketch and a “cut” of its young fellow-townsman. Horace Williams, whose hand was plain in every line apologized for the brevity of the biography—quality rather than quantity, he said; it was all good, and time would make it better. This did not prevent the Mercury observing the next evening that the Liberal organ had omitted to state the age at which the new candidate was weaned. The Toronto papers commented according to their party bias, but so far as the candidate was concerned there was lack of the material of criticism. If he had achieved little for praise he had achieved nothing for detraction. There was no inconsistent public utterance, no doubtful transaction, no scandalous paper to bring forward to his detriment. When the fact that he was but twenty-eight years of age had been exhausted in elaborate ridicule, little more was available. The policy he championed, however, lent itself to the widest discussion, and it was instructive to note how the Opposition press, while continuing to approve the great principle involved, found material for gravest criticism in the Government’s projected application of it. Interest increased in the South Fox by-election as its first touchstone, and gathered almost romantically about Lorne Murchison as its spirited advocate. It was commonly said that whether he was returned or not on this occasion, his political future was assured; and his name was carried up and down the Dominion with every new wind of imperial doctrine that blew across the Atlantic. He himself felt splendidly that he rode upon the crest of a wave of history. However the event appeared which was hidden beyond the horizon, the great luck of that buoyant emotion, of that thrilling suspense, would be his in a very special way. He was exhilarated by the sense of crisis, and among all the conferences and calculations that armed him for his personal struggle, he would now and then breathe in his private soul, “Choose quickly, England,” like a prayer.

Elgin rose to its liking for the fellow, and even his political enemies felt a half-humorous pride that the town had produced a candidate whose natural parts were held to eclipse the age and experience of party hacks. Plenty of them were found to declare that Lorne Murchison would poll more votes for the Grits than any other man they could lay their hands on, with the saving clause that neither he nor any other man could poll quite enough this time. They professed to be content to let the issue have it; meanwhile they congratulated Lorne on his chance, telling him that a knock or two wouldn’t do him any harm at his age. Walter Winter, who hadn’t been on speaking terms with Farquharson, made a point of shaking hands with Murchison in the publicity of the post-office, and assuring him that he, Winter, never went into a contest more confident of the straight thing on the part of the other side. Such cavilling as there was came from the organized support of his own party and had little importance because it did. The grumblers fell into line almost as soon as Horace Williams said they would; a little oil, one small appointment wrung from the Ontario Government—Fawkes, I believe, got it—and the machine was again in good working order. Lorne even profited, in the opinion of many, by the fact of his youth, with its promise of energy and initiative, since Mr Farquharson had lately been showing the defects as well as the qualities of age and experience, and the charge of servile timidity was already in the mouths of his critics.

The agricultural community took it, as usual, with phlegm; but there was a distinct tendency in the bar at Barker’s, on market-days, to lay money on the colt.