Part 12 (1/2)
Delaine forced a smile.
”Poor Old World! I wonder if you will ever be fair to it again, or--or to the people bound up with it!”
She looked at him, a little discomposed, and said, smiling:
”Wait till you meet me next in Rome!”
”Shall I ever meet you again in Rome?” he replied, under his breath, as though involuntarily.
As he spoke he made a determined pause, a stone's throw from the rippling stream that marks the watershed; and Elizabeth must needs pause with him. Beyond the stream, Philip sat lounging among rugs and cus.h.i.+ons brought from the car, Anderson and the American beside him. Anderson's fair, uncovered head and broad shoulders were strongly thrown out against the glistening snows of the background. Upon the three typical figures--the frail English boy--the Canadian--the spare New Yorker--there shone an indescribable brilliance of light. The energy of the mountain suns.h.i.+ne and the mountain air seemed to throb and quiver through the persons talking--through Anderson's face, and his eyes fixed upon Elizabeth--through the sunlit water--the sparkling gra.s.ses--the s.h.i.+mmering spectacle of mountain and summer cloud that begirt them.
”Dear Mr. Arthur, of course we shall meet again in Rome!” said Elizabeth, rosy, and not knowing in truth what to say. ”This place has turned my head a little!”--she looked round her, raising her hand to the spectacle as though in pretty appeal to him to share her own exhilaration--”but it will be all over so soon--and you _know_ I don't forget old friends--or old pleasures.”
Her voice wavered a little. He looked at her, with parted lips, and a rather hostile, heated expression; then drew back, alarmed at his own temerity.
”Of course I know it! You must forgive a bookworm his grumble. Shall I help you over the stream?”
But she stepped across the tiny streamlet without giving him her hand.
As they later rejoined the party, Morton, the Chief Justice, and Mariette returned from a saunter in the course of which they too had been chatting to the engine-drivers.
”I know the part of the country those men want,” the American was saying. ”I was all over Alberta last fall--part of it in a motor car. We jumped about those stubble-fields in a way to make a leopard jealous!
Every bone in my body was sore for weeks afterwards. But it was worth while. That's a country!”--he threw up his hands. ”I was at Edmonton on the day when the last Government lands, the odd numbers, were thrown open. I saw the siege of the land offices, the rush of the new population. Ah, well, of course, we're used to such scenes in the States. There's a great trek going on now in our own Southwest. But when that's over, our free land is done. Canada will have the handling of the last batch on this planet.”
”If Canada by that time is not America,” said Mariette, drily.
The American digested the remark.
”Well,” he said, at last, with a smile, ”if I were a Canadian, perhaps I should be a bit nervous.”
Thereupon, Mariette with great animation developed his theme of the ”American invasion.” Winnipeg was one danger spot, British Columbia another. The ”peaceful penetration,” both of men and capital, was going on so rapidly that a movement for annexation, were it once started in certain districts of Canada, might be irresistible. The harsh and powerful face of the speaker became transfigured; one divined in him some hidden motive which was driving him to contest and belittle the main currents and sympathies about him. He spoke as a prophet, but the faith which envenomed the prophecy lay far out of sight.
Anderson took it quietly. The Chief Justice smiled.
”It might have been,” he said, ”it might have been! This railroad has made the difference.” He stretched out his hand towards the line and the pa.s.s. ”Twenty years ago, I came over this ground with the first party that ever pushed through Rogers Pa.s.s and down the Illecillewaet Valley to the Pacific. We camped just about here for the night. And in the evening I was sitting by myself on the slopes of that mountain opposite”--he raised his hand--”looking at the railway camps below me, and the first rough line that had been cut through the forests. And I thought of the day when the trains would be going backwards and forwards, and these nameless valleys and peaks would become the playground of Canada and America. But what I didn't see was the shade of England looking on!--England, whose greater destiny was being decided by those gangs of workmen below me, and the thousands of workmen behind me, busy night and day in bridging the gap between east and west. Traffic from north and south”--he turned towards the American--”that meant, for _your_ Northwest, fusion with _our_ Northwest; traffic from east to west--that meant England, and the English Sisterhood of States! And that, for the moment, I didn't see.”
”Shall I quote you something I found in an Edmonton paper the other day?” said Anderson, raising his head from where he lay, looking down into the gra.s.s. And with his smiling, intent gaze fixed on the American, he recited:
Land of the sweeping eagle, your goal is not our goal!
For the ages have taught that the North and the South breed difference of soul.
We toiled for years in the snow and the night, because we believed in the spring, And the mother who cheered us first, shall be first at the banquetting!
The grey old mother, the dear old mother, who taught us the note we sing!
The American laughed.
”A bit raw, like some of your prairie towns; but it hits the nail. I dare say we have missed our bargain. What matter! Our own chunk is as big as we can chew.”
There was a moment's silence. Elizabeth's eyes were s.h.i.+ning; even Philip sat open-mouthed and dumb, staring at Anderson.
In the background Delaine waited, grudgingly expectant, for the turn of Elizabeth's head, and the spark of consciousness pa.s.sing between the two faces which he had learnt to watch. It came--a flash of some high sympathy--involuntary, lasting but a moment. Then Mariette threw out: