"I beg your pardon!" said Anderson, smiling, but a trifle paler than before. "I'm not troubled with nerves for myself, but—"

He did not complete the sentence, and Elizabeth, could find nothing to say.

"Why, Elizabeth's not afraid!" cried Philip, scornfully.

"This is Roger's Pass, and here we are at the top of the Selkirks," said Anderson, rising. "The train will wait here some twenty minutes. Perhaps you would like to walk about."

They descended, all but Philip, who grumbled at the cold, wrapped himself in a rug inside the car, and summoned Yerkes to bring him a cup of coffee.

On this height indeed, and beneath the precipices of Mount Macdonald, which rise some five thousand feet perpendicularly above the railway, the air was chill and the clouds had gathered. On the right, ran a line of glacier-laden peaks, calling to their fellows across the pass. The ravine itself, darkly magnificent, made a gulf of shadow out of which rose glacier and snow slope, now veiled and now revealed by scudding cloud. Heavy rain had not long since fallen on the pass; the small stream, winding and looping through the narrow strip of desolate ground which marks the summit, roared in flood through marshy growths of dank weed and stunted shrub; and the noise reverberated from the mountain walls, pressing straight and close on either hand.

"Hark!" cried Elizabeth, standing still, her face and her light dress beaten by the wind.

A sound which was neither thunder nor the voice of the stream rose and swelled and filled the pass. Another followed it. Anderson pointed to the snowy crags of Mount Macdonald, and there, leaping from ledge to ledge, they saw the summer avalanches descend, roaring as they came, till they sank engulfed in a vaporous whirl of snow.

Delaine tried to persuade Elizabeth to return to the car—in vain. He himself returned thither for a warmer coat, and she and Anderson walked on alone.

"The Rockies were fine!—but the Selkirks are superb!"

She smiled at him as she spoke, as though she thanked him personally for the grandeur round them. Her slender form seemed to have grown in stature and in energy. The mountain rain was on her fresh cheek and her hair; a blue veil eddying round her head and face framed the brilliance of her eyes. Those who had known Elizabeth in Europe would hardly have recognised her here. The spirit of earth's wild and virgin places had mingled with her spirit, and as she had grown in sympathy, so also she had grown in beauty. Anderson looked at her from time to time in enchantment, grudging every minute that passed. The temptation strengthened to tell her his trouble. But how, or when?

As he turned to her he saw that she, too, was gazing at him with an anxious, wistful expression, her lips parted as though to speak.

He bent over her.

"What was that?" exclaimed Elizabeth, looking round her.

They had passed beyond the station where the train was at rest. But the sound of shouts pursued them. Anderson distinguished his own name. A couple of railway officials had left the station and were hurrying towards them.

A sudden thought struck Anderson. He held up his hand with a gesture as though to ask Lady Merton not to follow, and himself ran back to the station.

Elizabeth, from where she stood, saw the passengers all pouring out of the train on to the platform. Even Philip emerged and waved to her. She slowly returned, and meanwhile Anderson had disappeared.

She found an excited crowd of travellers and a babel of noise. Delaine hurried to her.

It appeared that an extraordinary thing had happened. The train immediately in front of them, carrying mail and express cars but no passengers, had been "held up" by a gang of train-robbers, at a spot between Sicamous junction and Kamloops. In order to break open the mail van the robbers had employed a charge of dynamite, which had wrecked the car and caused some damage to the line; enough to block the permanent way for some hours.

"And Philip has just opened this telegram for you."

Delaine handed it to her. It was from the District Superintendent, expressing great regret for the interruption to their journey, and suggesting that they should spend the night at the hotel at Glacier.

"Which I understand is only four miles off, the other side of the pass," said Delaine. "Was there ever anything more annoying!"

Elizabeth's face expressed an utter bewilderment.

"A train held up in Canada—and on the C.P.R.—impossible!"

An elderly man in front of her heard what she said, and turned upon her a face purple with wrath.

"You may well say that, madam! We are a law-abiding nation. We don't put up with the pranks they play in Montana. They say the scoundrels have got off. If we don't catch them, Canada's disgraced."

"I say, Elizabeth," cried Philip, pushing his way to her through the crowd, "there's been a lot of shooting. There's some Mounted Police here, we picked up at Revelstoke, on their way to help catch these fellows. I've been talking to them. The police from Kamloops came upon them just as they were making off with a pretty pile—boxes full of money for some of the banks in Vancouver. The police fired, so did the robbers. One of the police was killed, and one of the thieves. Then the rest got off. I say, let's go and help hunt them!"

The boy's eyes danced with the joy of adventure.

"If they've any sense they'll send bloodhounds after them," said the elderly man, fiercely. "I helped catch a murderer with my own hands that way, last summer, near the Arrow Lakes."

"Where is Mr. Anderson?"

The question escaped Elizabeth involuntarily. She had not meant to put it. But it was curious that he should have left them in the lurch at this particular moment.

"Take your seats!" cried the station-master, making his way through the crowded platform. "This train goes as far as Sicamous Junction only. Any passenger who wishes to break his journey will find accommodation at Glacier—next station."

The English travellers were hurried back into their car. Still no sign of Anderson. Yerkes was only able to tell them that he had seen Anderson go into the station-master's private room with a couple of the Mounted Police. He might have come out again, or he might not. Yerkes had been too well occupied in exciting gossip with all his many acquaintances in the train and the station to notice.

The conductor went along through the train. Yerkes, standing on the inside platform, called to him:

"Have you seen Mr. Anderson?"

The man shook his head, but another standing by, evidently an official of some kind, looked round and ran up to the car.

"I'm sorry, madam," he said, addressing Elizabeth, who was standing in the doorway, "but Mr. Anderson isn't at liberty just now. He'll be travelling with the police."

And as he spoke a door in the station building opened, and Anderson came out, accompanied by two constables of the Mounted Police and two or three officials. They walked hurriedly along the train and got into an empty compartment together. Immediately afterwards the train moved off.

"Well, I wonder what's up now!" said Philip in astonishment. "Do you suppose Anderson's got some clue to the men?"

Delaine looked uncomfortably at Elizabeth. As an old adviser and servant of the railway, extensively acquainted moreover with the population—settled or occasional—of the district it was very natural that Anderson should be consulted on such an event. And yet—Delaine had caught a glimpse of his aspect on his way along the platform, and had noticed that he never looked towards the car. Some odd conjectures ran through his mind.

Elizabeth sat silent, looking back on the grim defile the train was just leaving. It was evident that they had passed the water-shed, and the train was descending. In a few minutes they would be at Glacier.

She roused herself to hold a rapid consultation over plans.

They must of course do as they were advised, and spend the night at Glacier.

* * * * *

The train drew up.

"Well, of all the nuisances!"—cried Philip, disgusted, as they prepared to leave the car.

Yerkes, like the showman that he was, began to descant volubly on the advantages and charms of the hotel, its Swiss guides, and the distinguished travellers who stayed there; dragging rugs and bags meanwhile out of the car. Nobody listened to him. Everybody in the little party, as they stood forlornly on the platform, was in truth searching for Anderson.

And at last he came—hurrying along towards them. His face, set, strained, and colourless, bore the stamp of calamity. But he gave them no time to question him.

"I am going on," he said hastily to Elizabeth; "they will look after you here. I will arrange everything for you as soon as possible, and if we don't meet before, perhaps—in Vancouver—"

"I say, are you going to hunt the robbers?" asked Philip, catching his arm.

Anderson made no reply. He turned to Delaine, drew him aside a moment, and put a letter into his hand.

"My father was one of them," he said, without emotion, "and is dead. I have asked you to tell Lady Merton."

There was a call for him. The train was already moving. He jumped into it, and was gone.



CHAPTER XII

The station and hotel at Sicamous Junction, overlooking the lovely Mara lake, were full of people—busy officials of different kinds, or excited on-lookers—when Anderson reached them. The long summer day was just passing into a night that was rather twilight than darkness, and in the lower country the heat was great. Far away to the north stretched the wide and straggling waters of another and larger lake. Woods of poplar and cottonwood grew along its swampy shore, and hills, forest clad, held it in a shallow cup flooded with the mingled light of sunset and moonlight.

Anderson was met by a district superintendent, of the name of Dixon, as he descended from the train. The young man, with whom he was slightly acquainted, looked at him with excitement.

"This is a precious bad business! If you can throw any light upon it, Mr. Anderson, we shall be uncommonly obliged to you—"

Anderson interrupted him.

"Is the inquest to be held here?"

"Certainly. The bodies were brought in a few hours ago."

His companion pointed to a shed beyond the station. They walked thither, the Superintendent describing in detail the attack on the train and the measures taken for the capture of the marauders, Anderson listening in silence. The affair had taken place early that morning, but the telegraph wires had been cut in several places on both sides of the damaged line, so that no precise news of what had happened had reached either Vancouver on the west, or Golden on the east, till the afternoon. The whole countryside was now in movement, and a vigorous man-hunt was proceeding on both sides of the line.

"There is no doubt the whole thing was planned by a couple of men from Montana, one of whom was certainly concerned in the hold-up there a few months ago and got clean away. But there were six or seven of them altogether and most of the rest—we suspect—from this side of the boundary. The old man who was killed"—Anderson raised his eyes abruptly to the speaker—"seems to have come from Nevada. There were some cuttings from a Nevada newspaper found upon him, besides the envelope addressed to you, of which I sent you word at Roger's Pass. Could you recognise anything in my description of the man? There was one thing I forgot to say. He had evidently been in the doctor's hands lately. There is a surgical bandage on the right ankle."

"Was there nothing in the envelope?" asked Anderson, putting the question aside, in spite of the evident eagerness of the questioner.

"Nothing."

"And where is it?"

"It was given to the Kamloops coroner, who has just arrived." Anderson said nothing more. They had reached the shed, which his companion unlocked. Inside were two rough tables on trestles and lying on them two sheeted forms.

Dixon uncovered the first, and Anderson looked steadily down at the face underneath. Death had wrought its strange ironic miracle once more, and out of the face of an outcast had made the face of a sage. There was little disfigurement; the eyes were closed with dignity; the mouth seemed to have unlearnt its coarseness. Silently the tension of Anderson's inner being gave way; he was conscious of a passionate acceptance of the mere stillness and dumbness of death.

"Where was the wound?" he asked, stooping over the body.

"Ah, that was the strange thing! He didn't die of his wound at all! It was a mere graze on the arm." The Superintendent pointed to a rent on the coat-sleeve. "He died of something quite different—perhaps excitement and a weak heart. There may have to be a post-mortem."

"I doubt whether that will be necessary," said Anderson.

The other looked at him with undisguised curiosity.

"Then you do recognise him?"

"I will tell the coroner what I know."

Anderson drew back from his close examination of the dead face, and began in his turn to question the Superintendent. Was it certain that this man had been himself concerned in the hold-up and in the struggle with the police?

Dixon could not see how there could be any doubt of it. The constables who had rushed in upon the gang while they were still looting the express car—the brakesman having managed to get away and convey the alarm to Kamloops—remembered seeing an old man with white hair, apparently lame, at the rear of the more active thieves, and posted as sentinel. He had been the first to give warning of the police approach, and had levelled his revolver at the foremost constable but had missed his shot. In the free firing which had followed nobody exactly knew what had happened. One of the attacking force, Constable Brown, had fallen, and while his comrades were attempting to save him, the thieves had dropped down the steep bank of the river close by, into a boat waiting for them, and got off. The constable was left dead upon the ground, and not far from him lay the old man, also lifeless. But when they came to examine the bodies, while the constable was shot through the head, the other had received nothing but the trifling wound Dixon had already pointed out.

Anderson listened to the story in silence. Then with a last long look at the rigid features below him, he replaced the covering. Passing on to the other table, he raised the sheet from the face of a splendid young Englishman, whom he had last seen the week before at Regina; an English public-school boy of the manliest type, full of hope for himself, and of enthusiasm, both for Canada and for the fine body of men in which he had been just promoted. For the first time a stifled groan escaped from Anderson's lips. What hand had done this murder?

They left the shed. Anderson inquired what doctor had been sent for. He recognised the name given as that of a Kamloops man whom he knew and respected; and he went on to look for him at the hotel.

For some time he and the doctor paced a trail beside the line together. Among other facts that Anderson got from this conversation, he learnt that the American authorities had been telegraphed to, and that a couple of deputy sheriffs were coming to assist the Canadian police. They were expected the following morning, when also the coroner's inquest would be held.

As to Anderson's own share in the interview, when the two men parted, with a silent grasp of the hand, the Doctor had nothing to say to the bystanders, except that Mr. Anderson would have some evidence to give on the morrow, and that, for himself, he was not at liberty to divulge what had passed between them.

It was by this time late. Anderson shut himself up in his room at the hotel; but among the groups lounging at the bar or in the neighbourhood of the station excitement and discussion ran high. The envelope addressed to Anderson, Anderson's own demeanour since his arrival on the scene—with the meaning of both conjecture was busy.

* * * * *

Towards midnight a train arrived from Field. A messenger from the station knocked at Anderson's door with a train letter. Anderson locked the door again behind the man who had brought it, and stood looking at it a moment in silence. It was from Lady Merton. He opened it slowly, took it to the small deal table, which held a paraffin lamp, and sat down to read it.

"Dear Mr. Anderson—Mr. Delaine has given me your message and read me some of your letter to him. He has also told me what he knew before this happened—we understood that you wished it. Oh! I cannot say how very sorry we are, Philip and I, for your great trouble. It makes me sore at heart to think that all the time you have been looking after us so kindly, taking this infinite pains for us, you have had this heavy anxiety on your mind. Oh, why didn't you tell me! I thought we were to be friends. And now this tragedy! It is terrible—terrible! Your father has been his own worst enemy—and at last death has come,—and he has escaped himself. Is there not some comfort in that? And you tried to save him. I can imagine all that you have been doing and planning for him. It is not lost, dear Mr. Anderson. No love and pity are ever lost. They are undying—for they are God's life in us. They are the pledge—the sign—to which He is eternally bound. He will surely, surely, redeem—and fulfil.

"I write incoherently, for they are waiting for my letter. I want you to write to me, if you will. And when will you come back to us? We shall, I think, be two or three days here, for Philip has made friends with a man we have met here—a surveyor, who has been camping high up, and shooting wild goat. He is determined to go for an expedition with him, and I had to telegraph to the Lieutenant-Governor to ask him not to expect us till Thursday. So if you were to come back here before then you would still find us. I don't know that I could be of any use to you, or any consolation to you. But, indeed, I would try.

"To-morrow I am told will be the inquest. My thoughts will be with you constantly. By now you will have determined on your line of action. I only know that it will be noble and upright—like yourself.

"I remain, yours most sincerely"

"ELIZABETH MERTON."

Anderson pressed the letter to his lips. Its tender philosophising found no echo in his own mind. But it soothed, because it came from her.

He lay dressed and wakeful on his bed through the night, and at nine next morning the inquest opened, in the coffee-room of the hotel.

The body of the young constable was first identified. As to the hand which had fired the shot that killed him, there was no certain evidence; one of the police had seen the lame man with the white hair level his revolver again after the first miss; but there was much shooting going on, and no one could be sure from what quarter the fatal bullet had come.

The court then proceeded to the identification of the dead robber. The coroner, a rancher who bred the best horses in the district, called first upon two strangers in plain clothes, who had arrived by the first train from the South that morning. They proved to be the two officers from Nevada. They had already examined the body, and they gave clear and unhesitating evidence, identifying the old man as one Alexander McEwen, well known to the police of the silver-mining State as a lawless and dangerous character. He had been twice in jail, and had been the associate of the notorious Bill Symonds in one or two criminal affairs connected with "faked" claims and the like. The elder of the two officers in particular drew a vivid and damning picture of the man's life and personality, of the cunning with which he had evaded the law, and the ruthlessness with which he had avenged one or two private grudges.

"We have reason to suppose," said the American officer finally, "that McEwen was not originally a native of the States. We believe that he came from Dawson City or the neighbourhood about ten years ago, and that he crossed the border in consequence of a mysterious affair—which has never been cleared up—in which a rich German gentleman, Baron von Aeschenbach, disappeared, and has not been heard of since. Of that, however, we have no proof, and we cannot supply the court with any information as to the man's real origin and early history. But we are prepared to swear that the body we have seen this morning is that of Alexander McEwen, who for some years past has been well known to us, now in one camp, now in another, of the Comstock district."

The American police officer resumed his seat. George Anderson, who was to the right of the coroner, had sat, all through this witness's evidence, bending forward, his eyes on the ground, his hands clasped between his knees. There was something in the rigidity of his attitude, which gradually compelled the attention of the onlookers, as though the perception gained ground that here—in that stillness—those bowed shoulders—lay the real interest of this sordid outrage, which had so affronted the pride of Canada's great railway.

The coroner rose. He briefly expressed the thanks of the court to the Nevada State authorities for having so promptly supplied the information in their possession in regard to this man McEwen. He would now ask Mr. George Anderson, of the C.P.R., whether he could in any way assist the court in this investigation. An empty envelope, fully addressed to Mr. George Anderson, Ginnell's Boarding House, Laggan, Alberta, had, strangely enough, been found in McEwen's pocket. Could Mr. Anderson throw any light upon the matter?

Anderson stood up as the coroner handed him the envelope. He took it, looked at it, and slowly put it down on the table before him. He was perfectly composed, but there was that in his aspect which instantly hushed all sounds in the crowded room, and drew the eyes of everybody in it upon him. The Kamloops doctor looked at him from a distance with a sudden twitching smile—the smile of a reticent man in whom strong feeling must somehow find a physical expression. Dixon, the young Superintendent, bent forward eagerly. At the back of the room a group of Japanese railway workers, with their round, yellow faces and half-opened eyes stared impassively at the tall figure of the fair-haired Canadian; and through windows and doors, thrown open to the heat, shimmered lake and forest, the eternal background of Canada.

"Mr. Coroner," said Anderson, straightening himself to his full height, "the name of the man into whose death you are inquiring is not Alexander McEwen. He came from Scotland to Manitoba in 1869. His real name was Robert Anderson, and I—am his son."

The coroner gave an involuntary "Ah!" of amazement, which was echoed, it seemed, throughout the room.

On one of the small deal tables belonging to the coffee-room, which had been pushed aside to make room for the sitting of the court, lay the newspapers of the morning—the Vancouver Sentinel and the Montreal Star. Both contained short and flattering articles on the important Commission entrusted to Mr. George Anderson by the Prime Minister. "A great compliment to so young a man," said the Star, "but one amply deserved by Mr. Anderson's record. We look forward on his behalf to a brilliant career, honourable both to himself and to Canada."

Several persons had already knocked at Anderson's door early that morning in order to congratulate him; but without finding him. And this honoured and fortunate person—?

Men pushed each other forward in their eagerness not to lose a word, or a shade of expression on the pale face which confronted them.

Anderson, after a short pause, as though to collect himself, gave the outlines of his father's early history, of the farm in Manitoba, the fire and its consequences, the breach between Robert Anderson and his sons. He described the struggle of the three boys on the farm, their migration to Montreal in search of education, and his own later sojourn in the Yukon, with the evidence which had convinced him of his father's death.

"Then, only a fortnight ago, he appeared at Laggan and made himself known to me, having followed me apparently from Winnipeg. He seemed to be in great poverty, and in bad health. If he had wished it, I was prepared to acknowledge him; but he seemed not to wish it; there were no doubt reasons why he preferred to keep his assumed name. I did what I could for him, and arrangements had been made to put him with decent people at Vancouver. But last Wednesday night he disappeared from the boarding house where he and I were both lodging, and various persons here will know"—he glanced at one or two faces in the ring before him—"that I have been making inquiries since, with no result. As to what or who led him into this horrible business, I know nothing. The Nevada deputies have told you that he was acquainted with Symonds—a fact unknown to me—and I noticed on one or two occasions that he seemed to have acquaintances among the men tramping west to the Kootenay district. I can only imagine that after his success in Montana last year, Symonds made up his mind to try the same game on the C.P.R., and that during the last fortnight he came somehow into communication with my father. My father must have been aware of Symonds's plans—and may have been unable at the last to resist the temptation to join in the scheme. As to all that I am entirely in the dark."

He paused, and then, looking down, he added, under his breath, as though involuntarily—"I pray—that he may not have been concerned in the murder of poor Brown. But there is—I think—no evidence to connect him with it. I shall be glad to answer to the best of my power any questions that the court may wish to put."

He sat down heavily, very pale, but entirely collected. The room watched him a moment, and then a friendly, encouraging murmur seemed to rise from the crowd—to pass from them to Anderson.

The coroner, who was an old friend of Anderson's, fidgeted a little and in silence. He took off his glasses and put them on again. His tanned face, long and slightly twisted, with square harsh brows, and powerful jaw set in a white fringe of whisker, showed an unusual amount of disturbance. At last he said, clearing his throat: "We are much obliged to you, Mr. Anderson, for your frankness towards this court. There's not a man here that don't feel for you, and don't wish to offer you his respectful sympathy. We know you—and I reckon we know what to think about you. Gentlemen," he spoke with nasal deliberation, looking round the court, "I think that's so?"

A shout of consent—the shout of men deeply moved—went up. Anderson, who had resumed his former attitude, appeared to take no notice, and the coroner resumed.

"I will now call on Mrs. Ginnell to give her evidence."

The Irishwoman rose with alacrity—what she had to say held the audience. The surly yet good-hearted creature was divided between her wish to do justice to the demerits of McEwen, whom she had detested, and her fear of hurting Anderson's feelings in public. Beneath her rough exterior, she carried some of the delicacies of Celtic feeling, and she had no sooner given some fact that showed the coarse dishonesty of the father, than she veered off in haste to describe the pathetic efforts of the son. Her homely talk told; the picture grew.

Meanwhile Anderson sat impatient or benumbed, annoyed with Mrs. Ginnell's garrulity, and longing for the whole thing to end. He had a letter to write to Ottawa before post-time.

When the verdicts had been given, the doctor and he walked away from the court together. The necessary formalities were carried through, a coffin ordered, and provision made for the burial of Robert Anderson. As the two men passed once or twice through the groups now lounging and smoking as before outside the hotel, all conversation ceased, and all eyes followed Anderson. Sincere pity was felt for him; and at the same time men asked each other anxiously how the revelation would affect his political and other chances.

Late in the same evening the burial of McEwen took place. A congregational minister at the graveside said a prayer for mercy on the sinner. Anderson had not asked him to do it, and felt a dull resentment of the man's officiousness, and the unctious length of his prayer. Half an hour later he was on the platform, waiting for the train to Glacier.

He arrived there in the first glorious dawn of a summer morning. Over the vast Illecillowaet glacier rosy feather-clouds were floating in a crystal air, beneath a dome of pale blue. Light mists rose from the forests and the course of the river, and above them shone the dazzling snows, the hanging glaciers, and glistening rock faces, ledge piled on ledge, of the Selkirk giants—Hermit and Tupper, Avalanche and Sir Donald—with that cleft of the pass between.

The pleasant hotel, built to offer as much shelter and comfort as possible to the tired traveller and climber, was scarcely awake. A sleepy-eyed Japanese showed Anderson to his room. He threw himself on the bed, longing for sleep, yet incapable of it. He was once more under the same roof with Elizabeth Merton—and for the last time! He longed for her presence, her look, her touch; and yet with equal intensity he shrank from seeing her. That very morning through the length of Canada and the States would go out the news of the train-robbery on the main line of the C.P.R., and with it the "dramatic" story of himself and his father, made more dramatic by a score of reporters. And as the news of his appointment, in the papers of the day before, had made him a public person, and had been no doubt telegraphed to London and Europe, so also would it be with the news of the "hold-up," and his own connection with it; partly because it had happened on the C.P.R.; still more because of the prominence given to his name the day before.

He felt himself a disgraced man; and he had already put from him all thought of a public career. Yet he wondered, not without self-contempt, as he lay there in the broadening light, what it was in truth that made the enormous difference between this Monday and the Monday before. His father was dead, and had died in the very commission of a criminal act. But all or nearly all that Anderson knew now about his character he had known before this happened. The details given by the Nevada officers were indeed new to him; but he had shrewdly suspected all along that the record, did he know it, would be something like that. If such a parentage in itself involves stain and degradation, the stain and degradation had been always there, and the situation, looked at philosophically, was no worse for the catastrophe which had intervened between this week and last.

And yet it was of course immeasurably worse! Such is the "bubble reputation"—the difference between the known and the unknown.

At nine o'clock a note was brought to his room:

"Will you breakfast with me in half an hour? You will find me alone.

"E.M."

Before the clock struck the half-hour, Elizabeth was already waiting for her guest, listening for every sound. She too had been awake half the night.

When he came in she went up to him, with her quick-tripping step, holding out both her hands; and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"I am so—so sorry!" was all she could say. He looked into her eyes, and as her hands lay in his he stooped suddenly and kissed them. There was a great piteousness in his expression, and she felt through every nerve the humiliation and the moral weariness which oppressed him. Suddenly she recalled that first moment of intimacy between them when he had so brusquely warned her about Philip, and she had been wounded by his mere strength and fearlessness; and it hurt her to realise the contrast between that strength and this weakness.

She made him sit down beside her in the broad window of her little sitting-room, which over-looked the winding valley with the famous loops of the descending railway, and the moving light and shade on the forest; and very gently and tenderly she made him tell her all the story from first to last.

His shrinking passed away, soothed by her sweetness, her restrained emotion, and after a little he talked with freedom, gradually recovering his normal steadiness and clearness of mind.

At the same time she perceived some great change in him. The hidden spring of melancholy in his nature, which, amid all his practical energies and activities, she had always discerned, seemed to have overleaped its barriers, and to be invading the landmarks of character.

At the end of his narrative he said something in a hurried, low voice which gave her a clue.

"I did what I could to help him—but my father hated me. He died hating me. Nothing I could do altered him. Had he reason? When my brother and I in our anger thought we were avenging our mother's death, were we in truth destroying him also—driving him into wickedness beyond hope? Were we—was I—for I was the eldest—responsible? Does his death, moral and physical, lie at my door?"

He raised his eyes to her—his tired appealing eyes—and Elizabeth realised sharply how deep a hold such questionings take on such a man. She tried to argue with and comfort him—and he seemed to absorb, to listen—but in the middle of it, he said abruptly, as though to change the subject:

"And I confess the publicity has hit me hard. It may be cowardly, but I can't face it for a while. I think I told you I owned some land in Saskatchewan. I shall go and settle down on it at once."

"And give up your appointment—your public life?" she cried in dismay.

He smiled at her faintly, as though trying to console her.

"Yes; I shan't be missed, and I shall do better by myself. I understand the wheat and the land. They are friends that don't fail one."

Elizabeth flushed.

"Mr. Anderson!—you mustn't give up your work. Canada asks it of you."

"I shall only be changing my work. A man can do nothing better for Canada than break up land."

"You can do that—and other things besides. Please—please—do nothing rash!"

She bent over to him, her brown eyes full of entreaty, her hand laid gently, timidly on his.

He could not bear to distress her—but he must.

"I sent in my resignation yesterday to the Prime Minister."

The delicate face beside him clouded.

"He won't accept it."

Anderson shook his head. "I think he must."

Elizabeth looked at him in despair.

"Oh! no. You oughtn't to do this—indeed, indeed you oughtn't. It is cowardly—forgive me!—unworthy of you. Oh! can't you see how the sympathy of everybody who knows—everybody whose opinion you care for—"

She stopped a moment, colouring deeply, checked indeed by the thought of a conversation between herself and Philip of the night before. Anderson interrupted her:

"The sympathy of one person," he said hoarsely, "is very precious to me. But even for her—"

She held out her hands to him again imploringly—

"Even for her?—"

But instead of taking the hands he rose and went out on the balcony a moment, as though to look at the great view. Then he returned, and stood over her.

"Lady Merton, I am afraid—it's no use. We are not—we can't be—friends."

"Not friends?" she said, her lip quivering. "I thought I—"

He looked down steadily on her upturned face. His own spoke eloquently enough. Turning her head away, with fluttering breath, she began to speak fast and brokenly:

"I, too, have been very lonely. I want a friend whom I might help—who would help me. Why should you refuse? We are not either of us quite young; what we undertook we could carry through. Since my husband's death I—I have been playing at life. I have always been hungry, dissatisfied, discontented. There were such splendid things going on in the world, and I—I was just marking time. Nothing to do!—as much money as I could possibly want—society of course—travelling—and visiting—and amusing myself—but oh! so tired all the time. And somehow Canada has been a great revelation of real, strong, living things—this great Northwest—and you, who seemed to explain it to me—"

"Dear Lady Merton!" His tone was low and full of emotion. And this time it was he who stooped and took her unresisting hands in his. She went on in the same soft, pleading tone—

"I felt what it might be—to help in the building up a better human life—in this vast new country. God has given to you this task—such a noble task!—and through your friendship, I too seemed to have a little part in it, if only by sympathy. Oh, no! you mustn't turn back—you mustn't shrink—because of what has happened to you. And let me, from a distance, watch and help. It will ennoble my life, too. Let me!"—she smiled—"I shall make a good friend, you'll see. I shall write very often. I shall argue—and criticise—and want a great deal of explaining. And you'll come over to us, and do splendid work, and make many English friends. Your strength will all come back to you."

He pressed the hands he held more closely.

"It is like you to say all this—but—don't let us deceive ourselves. I could not be your friend, Lady Merton. I must not come and see you."

She was silent, very pale, her eyes on his—and he went on:

"It is strange to say it in this way, at such a moment; but it seems as though I had better say it. I have had the audacity, you see—to fall in love with you. And if it was audacity a week ago, you can guess what it is now—now when—Ask your mother and brother what they would think of it!" he said abruptly, almost fiercely.

There was a moment's silence. All consciousness, all feeling in each of these two human beings had come to be—with the irrevocable swiftness of love—a consciousness of the other. Under the sombre renouncing passion of his look, her own eyes filled slowly—beautifully—with tears. And through all his perplexity and pain there shot a thrill of joy, of triumph even, sharp and wonderful. He understood. All this might have been his—this delicate beauty, this quick will, this rare intelligence—and yet the surrender in her aspect was not the simple surrender of love; he knew before she spoke that she did not pretend to ignore the obstacles between them; that she was not going to throw herself upon his renunciation, trying vehemently to break it down, in a mere blind girlish impulsiveness. He realised at once her heart, and her common sense; and was grateful to her for both.

Gently she drew herself away, drawing a long breath. "My mother and brother would not decide those things for me—oh, never!—I should decide them for myself. But we are not going to talk of them to-day. We are not going to make any—any rash promises to each other. It is you we must think for—your future—your life. And then—if you won't give me a friend's right to speak—you will be unkind—and I shall respect you less."

She threw back her little head with vivacity. In the gesture he saw the strength of her will and his own wavered.

"How can it be unkind?" he protested. "You ought not to be troubled with me any more."

"Let me be judge of that. If you will persist in giving up this appointment, promise me at least to come to England. That will break this spell of this—this terrible thing, and give you courage—again. Promise me!"

"No, no!—you are too good to me—too good;—let it end here. It is much, much better so."

Then she broke down a little.

She looked round her, like some hurt creature seeking a means of escape. Her lips trembled. She gave a low cry. "And I have loved Canada so! I have been so happy here."

"And now I have hurt you?—I have spoilt everything?"

"It is your unhappiness does that—and that you will spoil your life. Promise me only this one thing—to come to England! Promise me!"

He sat down in a quiet despair that she would urge him so. A long argument followed between them, and at last she wore him down. She dared say nothing more of the Commissionership; but he promised her to come to England some time in the following winter; and with that she had to be content.

Then she gave him breakfast. During their conversation, which Elizabeth guided as far as possible to indifferent topics, the name of Mariette was mentioned. He was still, it seemed, at Vancouver. Elizabeth gave Anderson a sudden look, and casually, without his noticing, she possessed herself of the name of Mariette's hotel.

At breakfast also she described, with a smile and sigh, her brother's first and last attempt to shoot wild goat in the Rockies, an expedition which had ended in a wetting and a chill—"luckily nothing much; but poor Philip won't be out of his room to-day."

"I will go and see him," said Anderson, rising.

Elizabeth looked up, her colour fluttering.

"Mr. Anderson, Philip is only a boy, and sometimes a foolish boy—"

"I understand," said Anderson quietly, after a moment. "Philip thinks his sister has been running risks. Who warned him?"

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders without replying. He saw a touch of scorn in her face that was new to him.

"I think I guess," he said. "Why not? It was the natural thing. So Mr. Delaine is still here?"

"Till to-morrow."

"I am glad. I shall like to assure him that his name was not mentioned—he was not involved at all!"

Elizabeth's lip curled a little, but she said nothing. During the preceding forty-eight hours there had been passages between herself and Delaine that she did not intend Anderson to know anything about. In his finical repugnance to soiling his hands with matters so distasteful, Delaine had carried out the embassy which Anderson had perforce entrusted to him in such a manner as to rouse in Elizabeth a maximum of pride on her own account, and of indignation on Anderson's. She was not even sorry for him any more; being, of course, therein a little unjust to him, as was natural to a high-spirited and warm-hearted woman.

Anderson, meanwhile, went off to knock at Philip's door, and Philip's sister was left behind to wonder nervously how Philip would behave and what he would say. She was still smarting under the boy's furious outburst of the night before when, through a calculated indiscretion of Delaine's, the notion that Anderson had presumed and might still presume to set his ambitions on Elizabeth had been presented to him for the first time.

"My sister marry a mining engineer!—with a drunken old robber for a father! By Jove! Anybody talking nonsense of that kind will jolly well have to reckon with me! Elizabeth!—you may say what you like, but I am the head of the family!"

Anderson found the head of the family in bed, surrounded by novels, and a dozen books on big-game shooting in the Rockies. Philip received him with an evident and ungracious embarrassment.

"I am awfully sorry—beastly business. Hard lines on you, of course—very. Hope they'll get the men."

"Thank you. They are doing their best."

Anderson sat down beside the lad. The fragility of his look struck him painfully, and the pathetic contrast between it and the fretting spirit—the books of travel and adventure heaped round him.

"Have you been ill again?" he asked in his kind, deep voice.

"Oh, just a beastly chill. Elizabeth would make me take too many wraps. Everyone knows you oughtn't to get overheated walking."

"Do you want to stay on here longer?"

"Not I! What do I care about glaciers and mountains and that sort of stuff if I can't hunt? But Elizabeth's got at the doctor somehow, and he won't let me go for three or four days unless I kick over the traces. I daresay I shall."

"No you won't—for your sister's sake. I'll see all arrangements are made."

Philip made no direct reply. He lay staring at the ceiling—till at last he said—

"Delaine's going. He's going to-morrow. He gets on Elizabeth's nerves."

"Did he say anything to you about me?" said Anderson.

Philip flushed.

"Well, I daresay he did."

"Make your mind easy, Gaddesden. A man with my story is not going to ask your sister to marry him."

Philip looked up. Anderson sat composedly erect, the traces of his nights of sleeplessness and revolt marked on every feature, but as much master of himself and his life—so Gaddesden intuitively felt—as he had ever been. A movement of remorse and affection stirred in the young man mingled with the strength of other inherited things.

"Awfully sorry, you know," he said clumsily, but this time sincerely. "I don't suppose it makes any difference to you that your father—well, I'd better not talk about it. But you see—Elizabeth might marry anybody. She might have married heaps of times since Merton died, if she hadn't been such an icicle. She's got lots of money, and—well, I don't want to be snobbish—but at home—we—our family—"

"I understand," said Anderson, perhaps a little impatiently—"you are great people. I understood that all along."

Family pride cried out in Philip. "Then why the deuce—" But he said aloud in some confusion, "I suppose that sounded disgusting"—then floundering deeper—"but you see—well, I'm very fond of Elizabeth!"

Anderson rose and walked to the window which commanded a view of the railway line.

"I see the car outside. I'll go and have a few words with Yerkes."

The boy let him go in silence—conscious on the one hand that he had himself played a mean part in their conversation, and on the other that Anderson, under this onset of sordid misfortune, was somehow more of a hero in his eyes, and no doubt in other people's, than ever.

On his way downstairs Anderson ran into Delaine, who was ascending with an armful of books and pamphlets.

"Oh, how do you do? Had only just heard you were here. May I have a word with you?"

Anderson remounted the stairs in silence, and the two men paused, seeing no one in sight, in the corridor beyond.

"I have just read the report of the inquest, and should like to offer you my sincere sympathy and congratulations on your very straightforward behaviour—" Anderson made a movement. Delaine went on hurriedly—

"I should like also to thank you for having kept my name out of it."

"There was no need to bring it in," said Anderson coldly.

"No of course not—of course not! I have also seen the news of your appointment. I trust nothing will interfere with that."

Anderson turned towards the stairs again. He was conscious of a keen antipathy—the antipathy of tired nerves—to the speaker's mere aspect, his long hair, his too picturesque dress, the antique on his little finger, the effeminate stammer in his voice.

"Are you going to-day? What train?" he said, in a careless voice as he moved away.

Delaine drew back, made a curt reply, and the two men parted.

"Oh, he'll get over it; there will very likely be nothing to get over," Delaine reflected tartly, as he made his way to his room. "A new country like this can't be too particular." He was thankful, at any rate, that he would have an opportunity before long—for he was going straight home and to Cumberland—of putting Mrs. Gaddesden on her guard. "I may be thought officious; Lady Merton let me see very plainly that she thinks me so—but I shall do my duty nevertheless."

And as he stood over his packing, bewildering his valet with a number of precise and old-maidish directions, his sore mind ran alternately on the fiasco of his own journey and on the incredible folly of nice women.

Delaine departed; and for two days Elizabeth ministered to Anderson. She herself went strangely through it, feeling between them, as it were, the bared sword of his ascetic will—no less than her own terrors and hesitations. But she set herself to lift him from the depths; and as they walked about the mountains and the forests, in a glory of summer sunshine, the sanity and sweetness of her nature made for him a spiritual atmosphere akin in its healing power to the influence of pine and glacier upon his physical weariness.

On the second evening, Mariette walked into the hotel. Anderson, who had just concluded all arrangements for the departure of the car with its party within forty-eight hours, received him with astonishment.

"What brings you here?"

Mariette's harsh face smiled at him gravely.

"The conviction that if I didn't come, you would be committing a folly."

"What do you mean?"

"Giving up your Commissionership, or some nonsense of that sort."

"I have given it up."

"H'm! Anything from Ottawa yet?"

It was impossible, Anderson pointed out, that there should be any letter for another three days. But he had written finally and did not mean to be over-persuaded.

Mariette at once carried him off for a walk and attacked him vigorously. "Your private affairs have nothing whatever to do with your public work. Canada wants you—you must go."

"Canada can easily get hold of a Commissioner who would do her more credit," was the bitter reply. "A man's personal circumstances are part of his equipment. They must not be such as to injure his mission."

Mariette argued in vain.

As they were both dining in the evening with Elizabeth and Philip, a telegram was brought in for Anderson from the Prime Minister. It contained a peremptory and flattering refusal to accept his resignation. "Nothing has occurred which affects your public or private character. My confidence quite unchanged. Work is best for yourself, and the public expects it of you. Take time to consider, and wire me in two days."

Anderson thrust it into his pocket, and was only with difficulty persuaded to show it to Mariette.

But in the course of the evening many letters arrived—letters of sympathy from old friends in Quebec and Manitoba, from colleagues and officials, from navvies and railwaymen, even, on the C.P.R., from his future constituents in Saskatchewan—drawn out by the newspaper reports of the inquest and of Anderson's evidence. For once the world rallied to a good man in distress! and Anderson was strangely touched and overwhelmed by it.

He passed an almost sleepless night, and in the morning as he met Elizabeth on her balcony he said to her, half reproachfully, pointing to Mariette below—

"It was you sent for him."

Elizabeth smiled.

"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 assaulted 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 passed—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 passionate 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 finishing the last beat, ma'am. Shall I bring in tea?"

Mrs. Gaddesden assented, 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 Mass 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 assure 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!"

And with that—great readiness to talk about everything except just what Mrs. Gaddesden most wanted to know. Elizabeth sitting on her mother's bed at night, crooning about Canada—her soft brown hair over her shoulders, and her eyes sparkling with patriotic enthusiasm, was a charming figure. But let Mrs. Gaddesden attempt to probe and penetrate beyond a certain point, and the way was resolutely barred. Elizabeth would kiss her mother tenderly—it was as though her own reticence hurt her—but would say nothing. Mrs. Gaddesden could only feel sorely that a great change had come over the being she loved best in the world, and that she was not to know the whys and wherefores of it.

And Philip—alack! had been of very little use to her in the matter!

"Don't you bother your head, Mother! Anderson's an awfully good chap—but he's not going to marry Elizabeth. Told me he knew he wasn't the kind. And of course he isn't—must draw the line somewhere—hang it! But he's an awfully decent fellow. He's not going to push himself in where he isn't wanted. You let Elizabeth alone, Mummy—it'll work off. And of course we must be civil to him when he comes over—I should jolly well think we must—considering he saved my life!"

Certainly they must be civil! News of Anderson's sailing and arrival had been anxiously looked for. He had reached London three days before this date, had presented his credentials at the Board of Trade and the Colonial Office, and after various preliminary interviews with ministers, was now coming down to Martindale for a week-end before the assembling of the small conference of English and colonial representatives to which he had been sent.

Mrs. Gaddesden saw from the various notices of his arrival in the English papers that even in England, among the initiated he was understood to be a man of mark. She was all impatience to see him, and had shown it outwardly much more plainly than Elizabeth. How quiet Elizabeth had been these last days! moving about the house so silently, with vaguely smiling eyes, like one husbanding her strength before an ordeal.

What was going to happen? Mrs. Gaddesden was conscious in her own mind of a strained hush of expectation. But she had never ventured to say a word to Elizabeth. In half an hour—or less—he would be here. A motor had been sent to meet the express train at the country town fifteen miles off. Mrs. Gaddesden looked round her in the warm dusk, as though trying to forecast how Martindale and its inmates would look to the new-comer. She saw a room of medium size, which from the end of the sixteenth century had been known as the Red Drawing Room—a room panelled in stamped Cordovan leather, and filled with rare and beautiful things; with ebony cabinets, and fine lacquer; with the rarest of oriental carpets, with carved chairs, and luxurious sofas. Set here and there, sparingly, among the shadows, as though in scorn of any vulgar profusion, the eye caught the gleam of old silver, or rock crystal, or agate; bibelots collected a hundred and fifty years ago by a Gaddesden of taste, and still in their original places. Overhead, the uneven stucco ceiling showed a pattern of Tudor roses; opposite to Mrs. Gaddesden the wall was divided between a round mirror, in whose depths she saw herself reflected and a fine Holbein portrait of a man, in a flat velvet hat on a green background. Over the carved mantelpiece with its date of 1586, there reigned a Romney portrait—one of the most famous in existence—of a young girl in black. Elizabeth Merton bore a curious resemblance to it. Chrysanthemums, white, yellow and purple, gleamed amid the richness of the room; while the light of the solitary lamp beside which Mrs. Gaddesden had been sitting with her embroidery, blended with the orange glow from outside now streaming in through the unshuttered windows, to deepen a colour effect of extraordinary beauty, produced partly by time, partly by the conscious effort of a dozen generations.

And from the window, under the winter sunset, Mrs. Gaddesden could see, at right angles to her on either side, the northern and southern wings of the great house; the sloping lawns; the river winding through the park; the ivy-grown church among the trees; the distant woods and plantations; the purple outlines of the fells. Just as in the room within, so the scene without was fused into a perfect harmony and keeping by the mellowing light. There was in it not a jarring note, a ragged line—age and dignity, wealth and undisputed place: Martindale expressed them all. The Gaddesdens had twice refused a peerage; and with contempt. In their belief, to be Mr. Gaddesden of Martindale was enough; a dukedom could not have bettered it. And the whole country-side in which they had been rooted for centuries agreed with them. There had even been a certain disapproval of the financial successes of Philip Gaddesden's father. It was true that the Gaddesden rents had gone down. But the country, however commercialised itself, looked with jealousy on any intrusion of "commercialism" into the guarded and venerable precincts of Martindale.

The little lady who was now, till Philip's majority and marriage, mistress of Martindale, was a small, soft, tremulous person, without the intelligence of her daughter, but by no means without character. Secretly she had often felt oppressed by her surroundings. Whenever Philip married, she would find it no hardship at all to retire to the dower house at the edge of the park. Meanwhile she did her best to uphold the ancient ways. But if she sometimes found Martindale oppressive—too old, too large, too rich, too perfect—how was it going to strike a young Canadian, fresh from the prairies, who had never been in England before?

A sudden sound of many footsteps in the hall. The drawing-room door was thrown open by Philip, and a troop of men entered. A fresh-coloured man with grizzled hair led the van.

"Well, Mrs. Gaddesden, here we all are. Philip has given us a capital day!"

A group of men followed him; the agent of the property, two small neighbouring squires, a broad-browed burly man in knickerbockers, who was apparently a clergyman, to judge from his white tie, the adjutant of the local regiment, and a couple of good-looking youths, Etonian friends of Philip. Elizabeth and Mariette came in from the garden, and a young cousin of the Gaddesdens, a Miss Lucas, slipped into the room under Elizabeth's wing. She was a pretty girl, dressed in an elaborate demi-toilette of white chiffon, and the younger men of the party in their shooting dress—with Philip at their head—were presently clustered thick about her, like bees after pollen. It was clear, indeed, that Philip was paying her considerable attention, and as he laughed and sparred with her, the transient colour that exercise had given him disappeared, and a pale look of excitement took its place.

Mariette glanced from one to another with a scarcely disguised curiosity. This was only his third visit to England and he felt himself in a foreign country. That was a pasteur he supposed, in the gaiters—grotesque! And why was the young lady in evening dress, while Lady Merton, now that she had thrown off her furs, appeared in the severest of tweed coats and skirts? The rosy old fellow beside Mrs. Gaddesden was, he understood from Lady Merton, the Lord Lieutenant of the county.

But at that moment his hostess laid hands upon him to present him to her neighbour. "Monsieur Mariette—Lord Waynflete."

"Delighted to see you," said the great man affably, holding out his hand. "What a fine place Canada is getting! I am thinking of sending my third son there."

Mariette bowed.

"There will be room for him."

"I am afraid he hasn't brains enough to do much here—but perhaps in a new country—"

"He will not require them? Yes, it is a common opinion," said Mariette, with composure. Lord Waynflete stared a little, and returned to his hostess. Mariette betook himself to Elizabeth for tea, and she introduced him to the girl in white, who looked at him with enthusiasm, and at once threw over her bevy of young men, in favour of the spectacled and lean-faced stranger.

"You are a Catholic, Monsieur?" she asked him, fervently. "How I envy you! I adore the Oratory! When we are in town I always go there to Benediction—unless Mamma wants me at home to pour out tea. Do you know Cardinal C——?"

She named a Cardinal Archbishop, then presiding over the diocese of Westminster.

"Yes, mademoiselle, I know him quite well. I have just been staying with him."

She clasped her hands eagerly.

"How very interesting! I know him a little. Isn't he nice?"

"No," said Mariette resolutely. "He is magnificent—a saint—a scholar—everything—but not nice!"

The girl looked a little puzzled, then angry, and after a few minutes' more conversation she returned to her young men, conspicuously turning her back on Mariette.

He threw a deprecating, half-penitent look at Elizabeth, whose faced twitched with amusement, and sat down in a corner behind her that he might observe without talking. His quick intelligence sorted the people about him almost at once—the two yeoman-squires, who were not quite at home in Mrs. Gaddesden's drawing-room, were awkward with their tea-cups, and talked to each other in subdued voices, till Elizabeth found them out, summoned them to her side, and made them happy; the agent who was helping Lady Merton with tea, making himself generally useful; Philip and another gilded youth, the son, he understood, of a neighbouring peer, who were flirting with the girl in white; and yet a third fastidious Etonian, who was clearly bored by the ladies, and was amusing himself with the adjutant and a cigarette in a distant corner. His eyes came back at last to the pasteur. An able face after all; cool, shrewd, and not unspiritual. Very soon, he, the parson—whose name was Everett—and Elizabeth were drawn into conversation, and Marietta under Everett's good-humoured glance found himself observed as well as observer.

"You are trying to decipher us?" said Everett, at last, with a smile. "Well, we are not easy."

"Could you be a great nation if you were?"

"Perhaps not. England just now is a palimpsest—the new writing everywhere on top of the old. Yet it is the same parchment, and the old is there. Now you are writing on a fresh skin."

"But with the old ideas!" said Mariette, a flash in his dark eyes. "Church—State—family!—there is nothing else to write with."

The two men drew closer together, and plunged into conversation. Elizabeth was left solitary a moment, behind the tea-things. The buzz of the room, the hearty laugh of the Lord Lieutenant, reached the outer ear. But every deeper sense was strained to catch a voice—a step—that must soon be here. And presently across the room, her eyes met her mother's, and their two expectancies touched.

"Mother!—here is Mr. Anderson!"

Philip entered joyously, escorting his guest.

To Anderson's half-dazzled sight, the room, which was now fully lit by lamplight and fire, seemed crowded. He found himself greeted by a gentle grey-haired lady of fifty-five, with a strong likeness to a face he knew; and then his hand touched Elizabeth's. Various commonplaces passed between him and her, as to his journey, the new motor which had brought him to the house, the frosty evening. Mariette gave him a nod and smile, and he was introduced to various men who bowed without any change of expression, and to a girl, who smiled carelessly, and turned immediately towards Philip, hanging over the back of her chair.

Elizabeth pointed to a seat beside her, and gave him tea. They talked of London a little, and his first impressions. All the time he was trying to grasp the identity of the woman speaking with the woman he had parted from in Canada. Something surely had gone? This restrained and rather cold person was not the Elizabeth of the Rockies. He watched her when she turned from him to her other guests; her light impersonal manner towards the younger men, with its occasional touch of satire; the friendly relation between her and the parson; the kindly deference she showed the old Lord Lieutenant. Evidently she was mistress here, much more than her mother. Everything seemed to be referred to her, to circle round her.

Presently there was a stir in the room. Lord Waynflete asked for his carriage.

"Don't forget, my dear lady, that you open the new Town Hall next Wednesday," he said, as he made his way to Elizabeth.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"But you make the speech!"

"Not at all. They only want to hear you. And there'll be a great crowd."

"Elizabeth can't speak worth a cent!" said Philip, with brotherly candour. "Can you, Lisa?"

"I don't believe it," said Lord Waynflete, "but it don't matter. All they want is that a Gaddesden should say something. Ah, Mrs. Gaddesden—how glorious the Romney looks to-night!" He turned to the fireplace, admiring the illuminated picture, his hands on his sides.

"Is it an ancestress?" Mariette addressed the question to Elizabeth.

"Yes. She had three husbands, and is supposed to have murdered the fourth," said Elizabeth drily.

"All the same she's an extremely handsome woman," put in Lord Waynflete. "And as you're the image of her, Lady Merton, you'd better not run her down." Elizabeth joined in the laugh against herself and the speaker turned to Anderson.

"You'll find this place a perfect treasure-house, Mr. Anderson, and I advise you to study it—for the Radicals won't leave any of us anything, before many years are out. You're from Manitoba? Ah, you're not troubled with any of these Socialist fellows yet! But you'll get 'em—you'll get 'em—like rats in the corn. They'll pull the old flag down if they can. But you'll help us to keep it flying. The Colonies are our hope—we look to the Colonies!"

The handsome old man raised an oratorical hand, and looked round on his audience, like one to whom public speaking was second nature.

Anderson made a gesture of assent; he was not really expected to say anything. Mariette in the background observed the speaker with an amused and critical detachment.

"Your carriage will be round directly, Lord Waynflete," said Philip, "but I don't see why you should go."

"My dear fellow—I have to catch the night train. There is a most important debate in the House of Lords to-morrow." He turned to the Canadian politely. "Of course you know there is an autumn session on. With these Radical Governments we shall soon have one every year."

"What! the Education Bill again to-morrow?" said Everett. "What are you going to do with it?"

Lord Waynflete looked at the speaker with some distaste. He did not much approve of sporting parsons, and Everett's opinions were too Liberal to please him. But he let himself be drawn, and soon the whole room was in eager debate on some of the old hot issues between Church and Dissent. Lord Waynflete ceased to be merely fatuous and kindly. His talk became shrewd, statesmanlike even; he was the typical English aristocrat and Anglican Churchman, discussing topics with which he had been familiar from his cradle, and in a manner and tone which every man in the room—save the two Canadians—accepted without question. He was the natural leader of these men of the land-owning or military class; they liked to hear him harangue; and harangue he did, till the striking of a clock suddenly checked him.

"I must be off! Well, Mrs. Gaddesden, it's the Church—the Church we have to think of!—the Church we have to fight for! What would England be without the Church—let's ask ourselves that. Good-bye—good-bye!"

"Is he talking of the Anglican establishment?" muttered Mariette. "Quel drole de vieillard!"

The parson heard him, and, with a twinkle in his eyes, turned and proposed to show the French Canadian the famous library of the house.

The party melted away. Even Elizabeth had been summoned for some last word with Lord Waynflete on the subject of the opening of the Town Hall. Anderson was left alone.

He looked around him, at the room, the pictures, the panelled walls, and then moving to the window which was still unshuttered, he gazed out into the starlit dusk, and the dim, stately landscape. There were lights in the church showing the stained glass of the perpendicular windows, and a flight of rooks was circling round the old tower.

As he stood there, somebody came back into the room. It was the adjutant, looking for his hat.

"Jolly old place, isn't it?" said the young man civilly, seeing that the stranger was studying the view. "It's to be hoped that Philip will keep it up properly."

"He seems fond of it," said Anderson.

"Oh, yes! But you've got to be a big man to fill the position. However, there's money enough. They're all rich—and they marry money."

Anderson murmured something inaudible, and the young man departed.

A little later Anderson and Elizabeth were seated together in the Red Drawing Room. Mrs. Gaddesden, after a little perfunctory conversation with the new-comer, had disappeared on the plea of letters to write. The girl in white, the centre of a large party in the hall, was flirting to her heart's content. Philip would have dearly liked to stay and flirt with her himself; but his mother, terrified by his pallor and fatigue after the exertion of the shoot, had hurried him off to take a warm bath and rest before dinner. So that Anderson and Elizabeth were alone.

Conversation between them did not move easily. Elizabeth was conscious of an oppression against which it seemed vain to fight. Up to the moment of his sailing from Canada his letters had been frank and full, the letters of a deeply attached friend, though with no trace in them of the language of love. What change was it that the touch of English ground—the sight of Martindale—had wrought? He talked with some readiness of the early stages of his mission—of the kindness shown to him by English public men, and the impressions of a first night in the House of Commons. But his manner was constrained; anything that he said might have been heard by all the world; and as their talk progressed, Elizabeth felt a miserable paralysis descending on her own will. She grew whiter and whiter. This old house in which they sat, with its splendours and treasures, this environment of the past all about them seemed to engulf and entomb them both. She had looked forward with a girlish pleasure—and yet with a certain tremor—to showing Anderson her old home, the things she loved and had inherited. And now it was as though she were vulgarly conscious of wealth and ancestry as dividing her from him. The wildness within her which found its scope and its voice in Canada was here like an imprisoned stream, chafing in caverns underground. Ah! it had been easy to defy the Old World in Canada, its myriad voices and claims—the many-fingered magic with which an old society plays on those born into it!

"I shall be here perhaps a month," said Anderson, "but then I shall be wanted at Ottawa."

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 noble country, with its superb rivers, its shining 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 Pass. 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 balustrading—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 passage, 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 passed 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. Mrs. Gaddesden was invariably there; a small, faded woman in trailing lace dresses, who would sit waiting for him, her embroidery on her knee, and when he appeared would hurry across the floor to meet him, dropping silks, scissors, handkerchief on the way. This dropping of all her incidental possessions—a performance repeated night after night, and followed always by her soft fluttering apologies—soon came to be symbolic, in Anderson's eyes. She moved on the impulse of the moment, without thinking what she might scatter by the way. Yet the impulse was always a loving impulse—and the regrets were sincere.