Lady Merton, Colonist | Page 4

expedition for
which he had eagerly offered himself. Out of the ten months of their
marriage, they had spent four together. Elizabeth was now
twenty-seven, and her married life had become to her an insubstantial
memory. She had been happy, but in the depths of the mind she knew
that she might not have been happy very long. Her husband's piteous
death had stamped upon her, indeed, a few sharp memories; she saw
him always,--as the report of a brother officer, present at his funeral,
had described him--wrapped in the Flag, and so lowered to his grave, in
a desert land. This image effaced everything else; the weaknesses she
knew, and those she had begun to guess at. But at the same time she
had not been crushed by the tragedy; she had often scourged herself in
secret for the rapidity with which, after it, life had once more become
agreeable to her. She knew that many people thought her incapable of
deep feeling. She supposed it must be true. And yet there were

moments when a self within herself surprised and startled her; not so
much, as yet, in connection with persons, as with ideas,
causes--oppressions, injustices, helpless suffering; or, as now, with a
new nation, visibly striking its "being into bounds."
During her widowhood she had lived much with her mother, and had
devoted herself particularly to this only brother, a delicate lad--lovable,
self-indulgent and provoking--for whom the unquestioning devotion of
two women had not been the best of schools. An attack of rheumatic
fever which had seized him on leaving Christchurch had scared both
mother and sister. He had recovered, but his health was not yet what it
had been; and as at home it was impossible to keep him from playing
golf all day, and bridge all night, the family doctor, in despair,
recommended travel, and Elizabeth had offered to take charge of him.
It was not an easy task, for although Philip was extremely fond of his
sister, as the male head of the family since his father's death he held
strong convictions with regard to the natural supremacy of man, and
would probably never "double Cape Turk." In another year's time, at
the age of four and twenty, he would inherit the family estate, and his
mother's guardianship would come to an end. He then intended to be
done with petticoat government, and to show these two dear women a
thing or two.
* * * * *
The dinner was good, as usual; in Elizabeth's eyes, monstrously good.
There was to her something repellent in such luxurious fare enjoyed by
strangers, on this tourist-flight through a country so eloquent of man's
hard wrestle with rock and soil, with winter and the wilderness. The
blinds of the car towards the next carriage were rigorously closed, that
no one might interfere with the privacy of the rich; but Elizabeth had
drawn up the blind beside her, and looked occasionally into the evening,
and that endless medley of rock and forest and lake which lay there
outside, under the sunset. Once she gazed out upon a great gorge,
through which ran a noble river, bathed in crimson light; on its way, no
doubt, to Lake Superior, the vast, crescent-shaped lake she had
dreamed of in her school-room days, over her geography lessons, and

was soon to see with her own eyes. She thought of the uncompanioned
beauty of the streams, as it would be when the thunder of the train had
gone by, of its distant sources in the wild, and the loneliness of its long,
long journey. A little shiver stole upon her, the old tremor of man in
presence of a nature not yet tamed to his needs, not yet identified with
his feelings, still full therefore of stealthy and hostile powers, creeping
unawares upon his life.
"This champagne is not nearly as good as last night," said Philip
discontentedly. "Yerkes must really try for something better at
Winnipeg. When do we arrive?"
"Oh, some time to-morrow evening."
"What a blessing we're going to bed!" said the boy, lighting his
cigarette. "You won't be able to bother me about lakes, Lisa."
But he smiled at her as he spoke, and Elizabeth was so enchanted to
notice the gradual passing away of the look of illness, the brightening
of the eye, and slight filling out of the face, that he might tease her as
he pleased.
Within an hour Philip Gaddesden was stretched on a comfortable bed
sound asleep. The two servants had made up berths in the dining-room;
Elizabeth's maid slept in the saloon. Elizabeth herself, wrapped in a
large cloak, sat awhile outside, waiting for the first sight of Lake
Superior.
It came at last. A gleam of silver on the left--a line of purple