



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