



Produced by Gardner Buchanan





THE IMPERIALIST


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


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
acquaint