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Books: The Imperialist

S >> Sara Jeannette Duncan >> The Imperialist



This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.





Sara Jeannette Duncan, 1861-1922 (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

The Imperialist

1904




Chapter I

It would have been idle to inquire into the antecedents,
or even the circumstances, of old Mother Beggarlegs. She
would never tell; the children, at all events, were
convinced of that; and it was only the children, perhaps,
who had the time and the inclination to speculate. Her
occupation was clear; she presided like a venerable
stooping hawk, over a stall in the covered part of the
Elgin market-place, where she sold gingerbread horses
and large round gingerbread cookies, and brown sticky
squares of what was known in all circles in Elgin as
taffy. She came, it was understood, with the dawn; with
the night she vanished, spending the interval on a not
improbable broomstick. Her gingerbread was better than
anybody's; but there was no comfort in standing, first
on one foot and then on the other, while you made up your
mind--the horses were spirited and you could eat them a
leg at a time, but there was more in the cookies--she
bent such a look on you, so fierce and intolerant of
vacillation. She belonged to the group of odd characters,
rarer now than they used to be, etched upon the vague
consciousness of small towns as in a way mysterious and
uncanny; some said that Mother Beggarlegs was connected
with the aristocracy and some that she had been "let off"
being hanged. The alternative was allowed full swing,
but in any case it was clear that such persons contributed
little to the common good and, being reticent, were not
entertaining. So you bought your gingerbread, concealing,
as it were, your weapons, paying your copper coins with
a neutral nervous eye, and made off to a safe distance,
whence you turned to shout insultingly, if you were an
untrounced young male of Elgin, "Old Mother Beggarlegs!
Old Mother Beggarlegs!" And why "Beggarlegs" nobody in
the world could tell you. It might have been a dateless
waggery, or it might have been a corruption of some more
dignified surname, but it was all she ever got. Serious,
meticulous persons called her "Mrs" Beggarlegs, slightly
lowering their voices and slurring it, however, it must
be admitted. The name invested her with a graceless,
anatomical interest, it penetrated her wizened black and
derisively exposed her; her name went far indeed to make
her dramatic. Lorne Murchison, when he was quite a little
boy was affected by this and by the unfairness of the
way it singled her out. Moved partly by the oppression
of the feeling and partly by a desire for information he
asked her sociably one day, in the act of purchase, why
the gilt was generally off her gingerbread. He had been
looking long, as a matter of fact, for gingerbread with
the gilt on it, being accustomed to the phrase on the
lips of his father in connection with small profits.
Mother Beggarlegs, so unaccustomed to politeness that
she could not instantly recognize it, answered him with
an imprecation at which he, no doubt, retreated, suddenly
thrown on the defensive hurling the usual taunt. One
prefers to hope he didn't, with the invincible optimism
one has for the behaviour of lovable people; but whether
or not his kind attempt at colloquy is the first indication
I can find of that active sympathy with the disabilities
of his fellow-beings which stamped him later so intelligent
a meliorist. Even in his boy's beginning he had a heart
for the work; and Mother Beggarlegs, but for a hasty
conclusion, might have made him a friend.

It is hard to invest Mother Beggarlegs with importance,
but the date helps me--the date I mean, of this chapter
about Elgin; she was a person to be reckoned with on the
twenty-fourth of May. I will say at once, for the reminder
to persons living in England that the twenty-fourth of
May was the Queen's Birthday. Nobody in Elgin can possibly
have forgotten it. The Elgin children had a rhyme about
it--

The twenty-fourth of May
Is the Queen's Birthday;
If you don't give us a holiday,
We'll all run away.

But Elgin was in Canada. In Canada the twenty-fourth of
May WAS the Queen's Birthday; and these were times and
regions far removed from the prescription that the
anniversary "should be observed" on any of those various
outlying dates which by now, must have produced in her
immediate people such indecision as to the date upon
which Her Majesty really did come into the world. That
day, and that only, was the observed, the celebrated, a
day with an essence in it, dawning more gloriously than
other days and ending more regretfully, unless, indeed,
it fell on a Sunday when it was "kept" on the Monday,
with a slightly clouded feeling that it wasn't exactly
the same thing. Travelled persons, who had spent the
anniversary there, were apt to come back with a poor
opinion of its celebration in "the old country"--a pleasant
relish to the more-than-ever appreciated advantages of
the new, the advantages that came out so by contrast.
More space such persons indicated, more enterprise they
boasted, and even more loyalty they would flourish, all
with an affectionate reminiscent smile at the little ways
of a grandmother. A "Bank" holiday, indeed! Here it was
a real holiday, that woke you with bells and cannon--who
has forgotten the time the ancient piece of ordnance in
"the Square" blew out all the windows in the Methodist
church?--and went on with squibs and crackers till you
didn't know where to step on the sidewalks, and ended up
splendidly with rockets and fire-balloons and drunken
Indians vociferous on their way to the lock-up. Such a
day for the hotels, with teams hitched three abreast in
front of their aromatic barrooms; such a day for the
circus, with half the farmers of Fox County agape before
the posters--with all their chic and shock they cannot
produce such posters nowadays, nor are there any vacant
lots to form attractive backgrounds--such a day for Mother
Beggarlegs! The hotels, and the shops and stalls for
eating and drinking, were the only places in which business
was done; the public sentiment put universal shutters
up, but the public appetite insisted upon excepting the
means to carnival. An air of ceremonial festivity those
fastened shutters gave; the sunny little town sat round
them, important and significant, and nobody was ever
known to forget that they were up, and go on a fool's
errand. No doubt they had an impressiveness for the young
countryfolk that strolled up and down Main Street in
their honest best, turning into Snow's for ice-cream when
a youth was disposed to treat. (Gallantry exacted ten-cent
dishes, but for young ladies alone, or family parties,
Mrs Snow would bring five-cent quantities almost without
asking, and for very small boys one dish and the requisite
number of spoons.) There was discrimination, there was
choice, in this matter of treating. A happy excitement
accompanied it, which you could read in the way Corydon
clapped his soft felt hat on his head as he pocketed the
change. To be treated--to ten-cent dishes--three times
in the course of the day by the same young man gave matter
for private reflection and for public entertainment,
expressed in the broad grins of less reckless people. I
speak of a soft felt hat, but it might be more than that:
it might be a dark green one, with a feather in it; and
here was distinction, for such a hat indicated that its
owner belonged to the Independent Order of Foresters,
who Would leave their spring wheat for forty miles round
to meet in Elgin and march in procession, wearing their
hats, and dazzlingly scatter upon Main Street. They gave
the day its touch of imagination, those green cocked
hats; they were lyrical upon the highways; along the
prosaic sidewalks by twos and threes they sang together.
It is no great thing, a hat of any quality; but a small
thing may ring dramatic on the right metal, and in the
vivid idea of Lorne Murchison and his sister Advena a
Robin Hood walked in every Independent Forester, especially
in the procession. Which shows the risks you run if you,
a person of honest livelihood and solicited vote, adopt
any portion of a habit not familiar to you. and go marching
about with a banner and a band. Two children may be
standing at the first street corner, to whom your
respectability and your property may at once become
illusion and your outlawry the delightful fact.

A cheap trip brought the Order of Green Hats to Elgin;
and there were cheap trips on this great day to persuade
other persons to leave it. The Grand Trunk had even then
an idea of encouraging social combination for change of
scene, and it was quite a common thing for the operatives
of the Milburn Boiler Company to arrange to get themselves
carried to the lakeside or "the Falls" at half a dollar
a head. The "hands" got it up themselves and it was a
question in Elgin whether one might sink one's dignity
and go as a hand for the sake of the fifty-cent opportunity,
a question usually decided in the negative. The social
distinctions of Elgin may not be easily appreciated by
people accustomed to the rough and ready standards of a
world at the other end of the Grand Trunk; but it will
be clear at a glance that nobody whose occupation prescribed
a clean face could be expected to travel cheek by jowl,
as a privilege, with persons who were habitually seen
with smutty ones, barefaced smut, streaming out at the
polite afternoon hour of six, jangling an empty dinner
pail. So much we may decide, and leave it, reflecting as
we go how simple and satisfactory, after all, are the
prejudices which can hold up such obvious justification.
There was recently to be pointed out in England the heir
to a dukedom who loved stoking, and got his face smutty
by preference. He would have been deplorably subversive
of accepted conventions in Elgin; but, happily or otherwise,
such persons and such places have at present little more
than an imaginative acquaintance, vaguely cordial on the
one side, vaguely critical on the other, and of no
importance in the sum.

Polite society, to return to it, preferred the alternative
of staying at home and mowing the lawn or drinking
raspberry vinegar on its own beflagged verandah; looking
forward in the afternoon to the lacrosse match. There
was nearly always a lacrosse match on the Queen's Birthday,
and it was the part of elegance to attend and encourage
the home team, as well as that of small boys, with broken
straw hats, who sneaked an entrance, and were more
enthusiastic than anyone. It was "a quarter" to get in,
so the spectators were naturally composed of persons who
could afford the quarter, and persons like the young
Flannigans and Finnigans, who absolutely couldn't, but
who had to be there all the same. Lorne and Advena
Murchison never had the quarter, so they witnessed few
lacrosse matches, though they seldom failed to refresh
themselves by a sight of the players after the game when,
crimson and perspiring, but still glorious in striped
jerseys, their lacrosses and running shoes slung over
one shoulder, these heroes left the field.

The Birthday I am thinking of, with Mrs Murchison as a
central figure in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for
dinner, there was a lacrosse match of some importance
for the Fox County Championship and the Fox County Cup
as presented by the Member for the South Riding. Mrs
Murchison remains the central figure, nevertheless, with
her family radiating from her, gathered to help or to
hinder in one of those domestic crises which arose when
the Murchisons were temporarily deprived of a "girl."
Everybody was subject to them in Elgin, everybody had to
acknowledge and face them. Let a new mill be opened, and
it didn't matter what you paid her or how comfortable
you made her, off she would go, and you might think
yourself lucky if she gave a week's warning. Hard times
shut down the mills and brought her back again; but
periods of prosperity were very apt to find the ladies
of Elgin where I am compelled to introduce Mrs Murchison
--in the kitchen. "You'd better get up--the girl's gone,"
Lorne had stuck his head into his sister's room to
announce, while yet the bells were ringing and the rifles
of the local volunteers were spitting out the feu de
joie. "I've lit the fire an' swep' out the dining-room.
You tell mother. Queen's Birthday, too--I guess Lobelia's
about as mean as they're made!" And the Murchisons had
descended to face the situation. Lorne had by then done
his part, and gone out into the chromatic possibilities
of the day; but the sense of injury he had communicated
to Advena in her bed remained and expanded. Lobelia, it
was felt. had scurvily manipulated the situation--her
situation, it might have been put, if any Murchison had
been in the temper for jesting. She had taken unjustifiable
means to do a more unjustifiable thing, to secure for
herself an improper and unlawful share of the day's
excitements, transferring her work, by the force of
circumstances, to the shoulders of other people since,
as Mrs Murchison remarked, somebody had to do it. Nor
had she her mistress testified the excuse of fearing
unreasonable confinement. "I told her she might go when
she had done her dishes after dinner," said Mrs Murchison,
"and then she had only to come back at six and get
tea--what's getting tea? I advised her to finish her
ironing yesterday, so as to be free of it today; and she
said she would be very glad to. Now, I wonder if she DID
finish it!" and Mrs Murchison put down her pan of potatoes
with a thump to look in the family clothes basket. "Not
she! Five shirts and ALL the coloured things. I call it
downright deceit!"

"I believe I know the reason she'll SAY," said Advena.
"She objects to rag carpet in her bedroom. She told me so."

"Rag carpet--upon my word!" Mrs Murchison dropped her
knife to exclaim. "It's what her betters have to do with!
I've known the day when that very piece of rag carpet--
sixty balls there were in it and every one I sewed with
my own fingers--was the best I had for my spare room,
with a bit of ingrain in the middle. Dear me!" she went
on with a smile that lightened the whole situation, "how
proud I was of that performance! She didn't tell ME she
objected to rag carpet!"

"No, Mother," Advena agreed, "she knew better."

They were all there in the kitchen, supporting their
mother, and it seems an opportunity to name them. Advena,
the eldest, stood by the long kitchen table washing the
breakfast cups in "soft" soap and hot water. The soft
soap--Mrs Murchison had a barrelful boiled every spring
in the back yard, an old colonial economy she hated to
resign--made a fascinating brown lather with iridescent
bubbles. Advena poured cupfuls of it from on high to see
the foam rise, till her mother told her for mercy's sake
to get on with those dishes. She stood before a long low
window, looking out into the garden and the light,
filtering through apple branches on her face showed her
strongly featured and intelligent for fourteen. Advena
was named after one grandmother; when the next girl came
Mrs Murchison, to make an end of the matter, named it
Abigail, after the other. She thought both names outlandish
and acted under protest, but hoped that now everybody
would be satisfied. Lorne came after Advena, at the period
of a naive fashion of christening the young sons of Canada
in the name of her Governor-General. It was a simple way
of attesting a loyal spirit, but with Mrs Murchison more
particular motives operated. The Marquis of Lorne was
not only the deputy of the throne, he was the son-in-law
of a good woman of whom Mrs Murchison thought more, and
often said it, for being the woman she was than for being
twenty times a Queen; and he had made a metrical translation
of the Psalms, several of which were included in the
revised psalter for the use of the Presbyterian Church
in Canada, from which the whole of Knox Church sang to
the praise of God every Sunday. These were circumstances
that weighed with Mrs Murchison, and she called her son
after the Royal representative, feeling that she was
doing well for him in a sense beyond the mere bestowal
of a distinguished and a euphonious name, though that,
as she would have willingly acknowledged, was "well enough
in its place."

We must take this matter of names seriously; the Murchisons
always did. Indeed, from the arrival of a new baby until
the important Sunday of the christening. nothing was
discussed with such eager zest and such sustained interest
as the name he should get--there was a fascinating list
at the back of the dictionary--and to the last minute it
was problematical. In Stella's case, Mrs Murchison actually
changed her mind on the way to church; and Abby, who had
sat through the sermon expecting Dorothy Maud, which she
thought lovely, publicly cried with disappointment. Stella
was the youngest, and Mrs Murchison was thankful to have
a girl at last whom she could name without regard to her
own relations or anybody else's. I have skipped about a
good deal, but I have only left out two, the boys who
came between Abby and Stella. In their names the
contemporary observer need not be too acute to discover
both an avowal and to some extent an enforcement of Mr
Murchison's political views; neither an Alexander Mackenzie
nor an Oliver Mowat could very well grow up into anything
but a sound Liberal in that part of the world without
feeling himself an unendurable paradox. To christen a
baby like that was, in a manner, a challenge to public
attention; the faint relaxation about the lips of Dr
Drummond--the best of the Liberals himself, though he
made a great show of keeping it out of the pulpit--
recognized this, and the just perceptible stir of the
congregation proved it. Sonorously he said it. "Oliver
Mowat, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father--" The
compliment should have all the impressiveness the rite
could give it, while the Murchison brothers and sisters,
a-row in the family pew, stood on one foot with excitement
as to how Oliver Mowat would take the drops that defined
him. The verdict was, on the way home, that he behaved
splendidly. Alexander Mackenzie, the year before, had
roared.

He was weeping now, at the age of seven, silently, but
very copiously, behind the woodpile. His father had
finally cuffed him for importunity; and the world was no
place for a just boy, who asked nothing but his rights.
Only the woodpile, friendly mossy logs unsplit, stood
inconscient and irresponsible for any share in his black
circumstances; and his tears fell among the lichens of
the stump he was bowed on till, observing them, he began
to wonder whether he could cry enough to make a pond
there, and was presently disappointed to find the source
exhausted. The Murchisons were all imaginative.

The others, Oliver and Abby and Stella, still "tormented."
Poor Alec's rights--to a present of pocket-money on the
Queen's Birthday--were common ones, and almost statutory.
How their father, sitting comfortably with his pipe in
the flickering May shadows under the golden pippin,
reading the Toronto paper, could evade his liability in
the matter was unfathomable to the Murchisons; it was
certainly illiberal; they had a feeling that it was
illegal. A little teasing was generally necessary, but
the resistance today had begun to look ominous and Alec,
as we know, too temerarious, had retired in disorder to
the woodpile.

Oliver was wiping Advena's dishes. He exercised himself
ostentatiously upon a plate, standing in the door to be
within earshot of his father.

"Eph Wheeler," he informed his family, "Eph Wheeler, he's
got twenty-five cents, an' a English sixpence, an' a
Yankee nickel. An' Mr Wheeler's only a common working
man, a lot poorer'n we are."

Mr Murchison removed his pipe from his lips in order,
apparently, to follow unimpeded the trend of the Dominion's
leading article. Oliver eyed him anxiously. "Do, Father,"
he continued in logical sequence. "Aw do."

"Make him, Mother," said Abby indignantly. "It's the
Queen's BIRTHDAY!"

"Time enough when the butter bill's paid," said Mrs
Murchison.

"Oh the BUTTER bill! Say, Father, aren't you going to?"

"What?" asked John Murchison, and again took out his
pipe, as if this were the first he had heard of the
matter.

"Give us our fifteen cents each to celebrate with. You
can't do it under that," Oliver added firmly. "Crackers
are eight cents a packet this year, the small size."

"Nonsense," said Mr Murchison. The reply was definite
and final, and its ambiguity was merely due to the fact
that their father disliked giving a plump refusal.
"Nonsense" was easier to say, if not to hear than "No."
Oliver considered for a moment, drew Abby to colloquy by
the pump, and sought his brother behind the woodpile.
Then he returned to the charge.

"Look here, Father," he said, "CASH DOWN, we'll take
ten."

John Murchison was a man of few words, but they were
usually impregnated with meaning, especially in anger.
"No more of this," he said. "Celebrate fiddlesticks! Go
and make yourselves of some use. You'll get nothing from
me, for I haven't got it." So saying, he went through
the kitchen with a step that forbade him to be followed.
His eldest son, arriving over the backyard fence in a
state of heat, was just in time to hear him. Lorne's
apprehension of the situation was instant, and his face
fell, but the depression plainly covered such splendid
spirits that his brother asked resentfully, "Well, what's
the matter with YOU?"

"Matter? Oh, not much. I'm going to see the Cayugas beat
the Wanderers, that's all; an' Abe Mackinnon's mother
said he could ask me to come back to tea with them. Can
I, Mother?"

"There's no objection that I know of," said Mrs Murchison,
shaking her apron free of stray potato-parings, "but you
won't get money for the lacrosse match or anything else
from your father today, _I_ can assure you. They didn't
do five dollars worth of business at the store all day
yesterday, and he's as cross as two sticks."

"Oh, that's all right." Lorne jingled his pocket and
Oliver took a fascinated step toward him. "I made thirty
cents this morning, delivering papers for Fisher. His
boy's sick. I did the North Ward--took me over'n hour.
Guess I can go all right, can't I?"

"Why, yes, I suppose you can," said his mother. The others
were dumb. Oliver hunched his shoulders and kicked at
the nearest thing that had paint on it. Abby clung to
the pump handle and sobbed aloud. Lorne looked gloomily
about him and went out. Making once more for the back
fence, he encountered Alexander in the recognized family
retreat. "Oh, my goodness!" he said, and stopped. In a
very few minutes he was back in the kitchen, followed
sheepishly by Alexander, whose grimy face expressed the
hope that beat behind his little waistcoat.

"Say, you kids," he announced, "Alec's got four cents,
an' he says he'll join up. This family's going to celebrate
all right. Come on down town."

No one could say that the Murchisons were demonstrative.
They said nothing, but they got their hats. Mrs Murchison
looked up from her occupation.

"Alec," she said, "out of this house you don't go till
you've washed your face. Lorne, come here," she added in
a lower voice, producing a bunch of keys. "If you look
in the right-hand corner of the top small drawer in my
bureau you'll find about twenty cents. Say nothing about
it, and mind you don't meddle with anything else. I guess
the Queen isn't going to owe it all to you."




Chapter II

"We've seen changes, Mr Murchison. Aye. We've seen
changes."

Dr Drummond and Mr Murchison stood together in the store
door, over which the sign "John Murchison: Hardware,"
had explained thirty years of varying commercial fortune.
They had pretty well begun life together in Elgin. John
Murchison was one of those who had listened to Mr Drummond's
trial sermon, and had given his vote to "call" him to
the charge. Since then there had been few Sundays when,
morning and evening, Mr Murchison had not been in his
place at the top of his pew, where his dignified and
intelligent head appeared with the isolated significance
of a strong individuality. People looked twice at John
Murchison in a crowd; so did his own children at home.
Hearing some discussion of the selection of a premier,
Alec, looking earnestly at him once said, "Why don't they
tell Father to be it?" The young minister looked twice
at him that morning of the trial sermon, and asked
afterward who he was. A Scotchman, Mr Drummond was told,
not very long from the old country, who had bought the
Playfair business on Main Street, and settled in the
"Plummer Place," which already had a quarter of a century's
standing in the annals of the town. The Playfair business
was a respectable business to buy; the Plummer Place,
though it stood in an unfashionable outskirt, was a
respectable place to settle in; and the minister, in
casting his lot in Elgin, envisaged John Murchison as
part of it, thought of him confidently as a "dependance,"
saw him among the future elders and office-bearers of
the congregation, a man who would be punctual with his
pew-rent, sage in his judgements, and whose views upon
church attendance would be extended to his family.