Part 30 (1/2)

And he began to describe a new matter in which he had been lately engaged--a large development scheme applying to some of the great Peace River region north of Edmonton. And as he told her of his August journey through this n.o.ble country, with its superb rivers, its s.h.i.+ning lakes and forests, and its scattered settlers, waiting for a Government which was their servant and not their tyrant, to come and help their first steps in ordered civilisation; to bring steamers to their waters, railways to link their settlements, and fresh settlers to let loose the fertile forces of their earth--she suddenly saw in him his old self--the Anderson who had sat beside her in the crossing of the prairies, who had looked into her eyes the day of Roger's Pa.s.s. He had grown older and thinner; his hair was even lightly touched with grey. But the traces in him of endurance and of pain were like the weathering of a fine building; mellowing had come, and strength had not been lost.

Yet still no word of feeling, of intimacy even. Her soul cried out within her, but there was no answer. Then, when it was time to dress, and she led him through the hall, to the inlaid staircase with its famous bal.u.s.trading--early English ironwork of extraordinary delicacy--and through the endless corridors upstairs, old and dim, but crowded with portraits and fine furniture, Anderson looked round him in amazement.

”What a wonderful place!”

”It is too old!” cried Elizabeth, petulantly; then with a touch of repentance--”Yet of course we love it. We are not so stifled here as you would be.”

He smiled and did not reply.

”Confess you have been stifled--ever since you came to England.”

He drew a long breath, throwing back his head with a gesture which made Elizabeth smile. He smiled in return.

”It was you who warned me how small it would all seem. Such little fields--such little rivers--such tiny journeys! And these immense towns treading on each other's heels. Don't you feel crowded up?”

”You are home-sick already?”

He laughed--”No, no!” But the gleam in his eyes admitted it. And Elizabeth's heart sank--down and down.

A few more guests arrived for Sunday--a couple of politicians, a journalist, a poet, one or two agreeable women, a young Lord S., who had just succeeded to one of the oldest of English marquisates, and so on.

Elizabeth had chosen the party to give Anderson pleasure, and as a guest he did not disappoint her pride in him. He talked well and modestly, and the feeling towards Canada and the Canadians in English society had been of late years so friendly that although there was often colossal ignorance, there was no coolness in the atmosphere about him. Lord S.

confused Lake Superior with Lake Ontario, and was of opinion that the Mackenzie River flowed into the Ottawa. But he was kind enough to say that he would far sooner go to Canada than any of ”those beastly places abroad”--and as he was just a simple handsome youth, Anderson took to him, as he had taken to Philip at Lake Louise, and by the afternoon of Sunday was talking sport and big game in a manner to hold the smoking-room enthralled.

Only unfortunately Philip was not there to hear. He had been over-tired by the shoot, and had caught a chill beside. The doctor was in the house, and Mrs. Gaddesden had very little mind to give to her Sunday party. Elizabeth felt a thrill of something like comfort as she noticed how in the course of the day Anderson unconsciously slipped back into the old Canadian position; sitting with Philip, amusing him and ”chaffing” him; inducing him to obey his doctor; cheering his mother, and in general producing in Martindale itself the same impression of masculine help and support which he had produced on Elizabeth, five months before, in a Canadian hotel.

By Sunday evening Mrs. Gaddesden, instead of a watchful enemy, had become his firm friend; and in her timid, confused way she asked him to come for a walk with her in the November dusk. Then, to his astonishment, she poured out her heart to him about her son, whose health, together with his recklessness, his determination to live like other and sound men, was making the two women who loved him more and more anxious. Anderson was very sorry for the little lady, and genuinely alarmed himself with regard to Philip, whose physical condition seemed to him to have changed considerably for the worse since the Canadian journey. His kindness, his real concern, melted Mrs. Gaddesden's heart.

”I hope we shall find you in town when we come up!” she said, eagerly, as they turned back to the house, forgetting, in her maternal egotism, everything but her boy. ”Our man here wants a consultation. We shall go up next week for a short time before Christmas.”

Anderson hesitated a moment.

”Yes,” he said, slowly, but in a changed voice, ”Yes, I shall still be there.”

Whereupon, with perturbation, Mrs. Gaddesden at last remembered there were other lions in the path. They had not said a single word--however conventional--of Elizabeth. But she quickly consoled herself by the reflection that he must have seen by now, poor fellow, how hopeless it was; and that being so, what was there to be said against admitting him to their circle, as a real friend of all the family--Philip's friend, Elizabeth's, and her own?

That night Mrs. Gaddesden was awakened by her maid between twelve and one. Mr. Gaddesden wanted a certain medicine that he thought was in his mother's room. Mrs. Gaddesden threw on her dressing-gown and looked for it anxiously in vain. Perhaps Elizabeth might remember where it was last seen. She hurried to her. Elizabeth had a sitting-room and bedroom at the end of the corridor, and Mrs. Gaddesden went into the sitting-room first, as quietly as possible, so as not to startle her daughter.

She had hardly entered and closed the door behind her, guided by the light of a still flickering fire, when a sound from the inner room arrested her.

Elizabeth--Elizabeth in distress?

The mother stood rooted to the spot, in a sudden anguish.

Elizabeth--sobbing? Only once in her life had Mrs. Gaddesden heard that sound before--the night that the news of Francis Merton's death reached Martindale, and Elizabeth had wept, as her mother believed, more for what her young husband might have been to her, than for what he had been. Elizabeth's eyes filled readily with tears answering to pity or high feeling; but this fierce stifled emotion--this abandonment of pain!

Mrs. Gaddesden stood trembling and motionless, the tears on her own cheeks. Conjecture hurried through her mind. She seemed to be learning her daughter, her gay and tender Elizabeth, afresh. At last she turned and crept out of the room, noiselessly shutting the door. After lingering a while in the pa.s.sage, she knocked, with an uncertain hand, and waited till Elizabeth came--Elizabeth, hardly visible in the firelight, her brown hair falling like a veil round her face.

CHAPTER XIV

A few days later the Gaddesdens were in town, settled in a house in Portman Square. Philip was increasingly ill, and moreover shrouded in a bitterness of spirit which wrung his mother's heart. She suspected a new cause for it in the fancy that he had lately taken for Alice Lucas, the girl in the white chiffon, who had piped to Mariette in vain. Not that he ever now wanted to see her. He had pa.s.sed into a phase indeed of refusing all society--except that of George Anderson. A floor of the Portman Square house was given up to him. Various treatments were being tried, and as soon as he was strong enough his mother was to take him to the South. Meanwhile his only pleasure seemed to lie in Anderson's visits, which however could not be frequent, for the business of the Conference was heavy, and after the daily sittings were over, the interviews and correspondence connected with them took much time.

On these occasions, whether early in the morning before the business of the day began, or in the hour before dinner--sometimes even late at night--Anderson after his chat with the invalid would descend from Philip's room to the drawing-room below, only allowing himself a few minutes, and glancing always with a quickening of the pulse through the shadows of the large room, to see whether it held two persons or one.