Part 28 (1/2)
”A woman knows her limitations! It is harder to refuse two than one.”
For twenty-four hours the issue remained uncertain. Letters continued to pour in; Mariette applied the plain-spoken, half-scornful arguments natural to a man holding a purely spiritual standard of life; and Elizabeth pleaded more by look and manner than by words.
Anderson held out as long as he could. He was a.s.saulted by that dark midway hour of manhood, that distrust of life and his own powers, which disables so many of the world's best men in these heightened, hurrying days. But in the end his two friends saved him--as by fire.
Mariette himself dictated the telegram to the Prime Minister in which Anderson withdrew his resignation; and then, while Anderson, with a fallen countenance, carried it to the post, the French Canadian and Elizabeth looked at each other--in a common exhaustion and relief.
”I feel a wreck,” said Elizabeth. ”Monsieur, you are an excellent ally.” And she held out her hand to her colleague. Mariette took it, and bowed over it with the air of a _grand seigneur_ of 1680.
”The next step must be yours, madam--if you really take an interest in our friend.”
Elizabeth rather nervously inquired what it might be.
”Find him a wife!--a good wife. He was not made to live alone.”
His penetrating eyes in his ugly well-bred face searched the features of his companion. Elizabeth bore it smiling, without flinching.
A fortnight pa.s.sed--and Elizabeth and Philip were on their way home through the heat of July. Once more the railway which had become their kind familiar friend sped them through the prairies, already whitening to the harvest, through the Ontarian forests and the Ottawa valley. The wheat was standing thick on the illimitable earth; the plains in their green or golden dress seemed to laugh and sing under the hot dome of sky. Again the great Canadian spectacle unrolled itself from west to east, and the heart Elizabeth brought to it was no longer the heart of a stranger. The teeming Canadian life had become interwoven with her life; and when Anderson came to bid her a hurried farewell on the platform at Regina, she carried the pa.s.sionate memory of his face with her, as the embodiment and symbol of all that she had seen and felt.
Then her thoughts turned to England, and the struggle before her. She braced herself against the Old World as against an enemy. But her spirit failed her when she remembered that in Anderson himself she was like to find her chiefest foe.
CHAPTER XIII
”What about the shooters, Wilson? I suppose they'll be in directly?”
”They're just finis.h.i.+ng the last beat, ma'am. Shall I bring in tea?”
Mrs. Gaddesden a.s.sented, and then leaving her seat by the fire she moved to the window to see if she could discover any signs in the wintry landscape outside of Philip and his shooting party. As she did so she heard a rattle of distant shots coming from a point to her right beyond the girdling trees of the garden. But she saw none of the shooters--only two persons, walking up and down the stone terrace outside, in the glow of the November sunset. One was Elizabeth, the other a tall, ungainly, yet remarkable figure, was a Canadian friend of Elizabeth's, who had only arrived that forenoon--M. Felix Mariette, of Quebec. According to Elizabeth, he had come over to attend a Catholic Congress in London.
Mrs. Gaddesden understood that he was an Ultramontane, and that she was not to mention to him the word ”Empire.” She knew also that Elizabeth had made arrangements with a neighbouring landowner, who was also a Catholic, that he should be motored fifteen miles to Ma.s.s on the following morning, which was Sunday; and her own easy-going Anglican temper, which carried her to the parish church about twelve times a year, had been thereby a good deal impressed.
How well those furs became Elizabeth! It was a chill frosty evening, and Elizabeth's slight form was wrapped in the sables which had been one of poor Merton's earliest gifts to her. The mother's eye dwelt with an habitual pride on the daughter's grace of movement and carriage. ”She is always so distinguished,” she thought, and then checked herself by the remembrance that she was applying to Elizabeth an adjective that Elizabeth particularly disliked. Nevertheless, Mrs. Gaddesden knew very well what she herself meant by it. She meant something--some quality in Elizabeth, which was always provoking in her mother's mind despairing comparisons between what she might make of her life and what she was actually making, or threatening to make of it.
Alas, for that Canadian journey--that disastrous Canadian journey! Mrs.
Gaddesden's thoughts, as she watched the two strollers outside, were carried back to the moment in early August when Arthur Delaine had reappeared in her drawing-room, three weeks before Elizabeth's return, and she had gathered from his cautious and stammering revelations what kind of man it was who seemed to have established this strange hold on her daughter. Delaine, she thought, had spoken most generously of Elizabeth and his own disappointment, and most kindly of this Mr. Anderson.
”I know nothing against him personally--nothing! No doubt a very estimable young fellow, with just the kind of ability that will help him in Canada. Lady Merton, I imagine, will have told you of the sad events in which we found him involved?”
Mrs. Gaddesden had replied that certainly Elizabeth had told her the whole story, so far as it concerned Mr. Anderson. She pointed to the letters beside her.
”But you cannot suppose,” had been her further indignant remark, ”that Elizabeth would ever dream of marrying him!”
”That, my dear old friend, is for her mother to find out,” Delaine had replied, not without a touch of venom. ”I can certainly a.s.sure you that Lady Merton is deeply interested in this young man, and he in her.”
”Elizabeth--exiling herself in Canada--burying herself on the prairies--when she might have everything here--the best of everything--at her feet. It is inconceivable!”
Delaine had agreed that it was inconceivable, and they had mourned together over the grotesque possibilities of life. ”But you will save her,” he had said at last. ”You will save her! You will point out to her all she would be giving up--the absurdity, the really criminal waste of it!”
On which he had gloomily taken his departure for an archaeological congress at Berlin, and an autumn in Italy; and a few weeks later she had recovered her darling Elizabeth, paler and thinner than before--and quite, quite incomprehensible!
As for ”saving” her, Mrs. Gaddesden had not been allowed to attempt it.
In the first place, Elizabeth had stoutly denied that there was anything to save her from. ”Don't believe anything at all, dear Mummy, that Arthur Delaine may have said to you! I have made a great friend--of a very interesting man; and I am going to correspond with him. He is coming to London in November, and I have asked him to stay here. And you must be _very_ kind to him, darling--just as kind as you can be--for he has had a hard time--he saved Philip's life--and he is an uncommonly fine fellow!”