Mrs. Pratt was racked by indecision. She was faced by a stupendous problem. She could not determine whether to invite the young girls who had so frankly snubbed “Mod” to drive home in her limousine, or whether to honour herself by cringing before a group of elderly notables. She had not possessed a motor long enough to understand that people to whom driving would be a boon, do not expect to be invited, and that only those who own cars, themselves, or are perfectly able to hire taxis, should be asked to enjoy the convenience of a motor.
So she made the mistake of offering to drop Miss Lily Tyrrell at her remote apartment, and prodded Maude into urging the Carmichael sisters to be driven home.
“We could easily take a couple more,” she announced from the doorway, rather as a barker tries to fill up his sight-seeing car. “No trouble at all!” But as couples were slow in stepping forward, she strode off with the persons already captured.
There was silence for a space after Mrs. Pratt had telephoned directions to her chauffeur. A sensitive stranger would have suspected that each member of the party was waiting for the other to throw the first stone. But such was not precisely the case. The unpleasanttimbrein the atmosphere was due to the fact that between each individual there existed a definite sense of animosity which was clothed with the filmiest cloak. Each seemed to be waiting an opportunity to step into the open and club the others into sensibility of her own importance.
Mrs. Pratt looked at the ears of her chauffeur. Miss Tyrrell turned her head towards the window and thanked Heaven she would soon be able to take off her shoes. The Carmichaels maintained a series of signals by kicking one another beneath the lap robes, and Maude stared into her folded hands, wondering vaguely why people were born at all. Chickens and dogs and cats seemed so much more worth while.
“Where doyoulive?” asked Miss Tyrrell, with just the proper shade of patronage. She wished to make very clear to the Carmichael sisters that there existed no intimacy between Mrs. Pratt and herself.
The former plunged into a minute description of the improvements she had effected in the Tillington place, and warned Miss Tyrrell that she would scarcely recognise it, now.
“I suppose in its day, it was considered all right,” she said, “but it was quite impossible when I took it over. You must see it . . . Of course, youwill! With a husband in Parliament, I shall have to do a lot of entertaining. Do you like to dance?” she asked Mona, suddenly.
“I adore it,” returned the girl, with elaborate indifference. “You don’t, do you?” she demanded of Maude.
“Oh, yes, I love dancing.”
“Really? I never see you, anywhere.”
“Mod is just home from school,” said Mrs. Pratt. “I don’t believe in a girl carrying all her brains in her feet. She went out rather more than was good for her in Montreal . . . not being vurry strong. That’s why I can’t let her go to the University, as she wants.”
“What a pity,” murmured the sisters, in a tone that made Miss Tyrrell bite her lips to keep from laughing.
The moment they were alone, Mrs. Pratt wheeled upon her daughter. “Whatever will I do with you, Mod?” she scolded. “Aren’t you ever going to learn to say anything for yourself?”
“I don’t like those girls,” muttered Mod.
“I should hope not! But is that any reason why you shouldn’t make friends with them?”
“I don’t want to have friends that I don’t like.”
Mrs. Pratt was struck speechless by such philosophy. It had never occurred to her that anyone could hold views at variance with her own, least of all, her daughter. She found herself at a loss for an argument, a retort, indeed. The girl might just as well have said she didn’t like having two hands.
“But everybody has!” exclaimed Mrs. Pratt. “There’s no getting around it! Look at your father . . . look at me!”
Maude looked.
“You don’t suppose I went to that Dilling imbecile’s tea because Ilikedher—or any of the people there, for the matter of that—do you?”
“Then why did you go?” asked Maude, sullenly.
“Why—why—how absurd you are! I went, and you will have to go because other people do—because it’s the way of Society, because, whether you like it or not, it’s THE THING!”
They found Mr. Rufus Sullivan enjoying the fruits of the cellar when they reached home.
“Blame Gus, not me!” he cried. “Heaven knows I’ve tried to take myself off half a dozen times. Is this your girl?”
“Yep,” answered Pratt, his harsh voice softening. “This is our baby.”
“Too big for me to kiss, I suppose,” said Sullivan, secretly congratulating himself that this was so. Maude bore a striking resemblance to her mother.
Mrs. Pratt acknowledged this witticism with a dry cackle, and invited the Hon. Member to stay and takepot-pourriwith them. She slurred over the words cautiously, never quite certain as to the correct application of the phrase. Some people, she knew, said pot luck, but this had, to her way of thinking, a vulgar sound.
“That’s the stuff,” cried Gus. “We can go back to the House together after a bite of supper.”
“Dinner,” corrected his wife, coldly. “You’re quite all right as you are, Mr. Sullivan. None of us will dress.”
“I should hope not,” breathed the irrepressible Pratt, and drained his glass with a smack. “Sullivan’s no party.”
As it had been this gentleman’s intention to stay and talk with Mrs. Pratt, he demurred politely, calling himself an inconsiderate nuisance and other equally applicable terms. But in the end he allowed himself to be persuaded, and settled down to accomplish the object of his coming.
“It’s a great pleasure to meet a woman with so keen a sense for politics,” he remarked, speaking to Pratt but indicating his wife. Mr. Sullivan was one of the few men who could eat and talk at the same time, without seeming to give undue preference to either operation. “Our Canadian women take shockingly little interest in the life of the country.”
“Don’t blame ’em,” mumbled Pratt, struggling with a very hot potato.
“Augustus!” Between telegraphing reproach to her husband, and directing the maid in what she conceived to be the correct serving of a meal, Mrs. Pratt’s heavy eyebrows attained a bewildering flexibility. “He pretends not to take his position seriously, but leave him to me, Mr. Sullivan, leave him to me!”
“With confidence, Madam,” returned the Hon. Member, gallantly. “Would that I had half so much in the other women of the Party. Is it not curious,” he went on, “that a politician’s wife rarely appreciates the extent of her influence in shaping her husband’s career? The parson’s lady identifies herself with his interests; the doctor’s wife realises that she can attract or repel patients; and only the other day, the wife of a small-town banker confided to me that she never misses an opportunity for doing a stroke of business on her husband’s behalf. As a matter of fact, I understand that she was largely responsible for the rival institution closing its doors, and leaving the field. Yet, a politician’s wife as a rule, seems to take pride in holding herself aloof from politics.”
“Dirty business for a woman,” commented Pratt, stroking Maude’s hand underneath the table.
“Not a whit dirtier than Society, my dear fellow, and there she likes to wallow. Am I not right, Mrs. Pratt? As a woman of the world, I feel sure you will agree with me.”
Mrs. Pratt, who desired above all else to be a woman of the world, agreed with him, darkly. In this coalition, they seemed to form a vague but tacit compact from which the recently-elected Member for Ottawa was excluded.
“What, in your opinion, is the vurry best way for a woman to help her husband, politically?” she enquired, as they rose from the table.
Sullivan managed to assume an arch expression as he pressed her arm, and answered,
“How can you ask such a question of a mere man?”
“I can ask anything of anybody when there’s something I want to find out,” was the blunt retort. “Gus—Augustus—hasgotto make good.”
“He will! We have the utmost faith in him . . . and may I add, in you. You’ll be a tower of strength to Gus, Mrs. Pratt, with your keen sense for politics. Only the other evening, I was making this statement to my little friend, Mrs. Dilling.”
“Mrs. Dilling?”
“Yes. Wife of the Member for Pinto Plains. You should know her, Mrs. Pratt. A creature of rare beauty and charm.”
Mrs. Pratt confessed to a slight acquaintance in a tone calculated to chill her guest’s enthusiasm. “She gave a big tea, this afternoon. Mod and I were there.”
“Really? I am glad to hear it. You two ought to be great friends—with interests that are so nearly identical.” As Mrs. Pratt said nothing, the Hon. Member continued—somewhat more easily, noting that his host and Maude had left the room—“I’m so fond of her . . . almosttoofond, I’m afraid! She’s a wonderful little woman, Mrs. Pratt—and I’ve known a good many in my day. Do you realise that Marjorie could simplymakeher husband, if she had a tithe of your political sense . . . if she only knew how!”
“You surprise me,” said Mrs. Pratt, and in her tone the Hon. Member was gratified to detect the ring of truth.
“Well, it’s a fact. Dilling’s a marvel, my dear lady. Even the Opposition concede him the respect due a powerful antagonist.”
“He’s not a bad speaker,” admitted Mrs. Pratt.
“There isn’t a man in the House who can touch him! Now, is there?”
Mrs. Pratt hedged by suggesting that the country looked for something more than forensic eloquence.
“A profound remark!” Mr. Sullivan could not restrain his admiration. He beamed and stroked his knees, deriving from the performance, apparently, much satisfaction. “Trust you to dig right down to the root of the matter! Not that he hasn’t principles, dear lady, and also the courage necessary to express them. We mustn’t overlook that. Moreover, it’s almost impossible to defeat him in argument . . . Such disconcerting agility of mind, you know. He lets the other fellow expend himself in an offensive, and then, without apparent effort, stabs and thrusts until his opponents fall in regular—er—regular—”
“Windrows,” suggested Mrs. Pratt, whose unacknowledged relatives were honest farming people.
“Windrows, a capital comparison! They fall in regular windrows before him. Why, he can prove that black is white any day in the week.”
“Men are fools!” was the lady’s oracular remark.
“Unfortunately for them . . . us, I really ought to say. I, myself, have felt the force of that young man’s power, and I’ve been absolutely putty in his hands.”
Mrs. Pratt drew her lips into a thin, straight line, and forbore to comment on this weakness.
“The trouble is—as, of course, you are aware—he has been trained in a bad school, and it may take some time to undo the effect of early education. Then, naturally, he’s only human and the wine of success is a heady beverage. He’s somewhat determined—”
“Mule-ish,” amended Mrs. Pratt.
“No, no, I protest,” cried the Hon. Member, playfully. “You must not be too hard on the fellow. All he needs is a little guidance—perhaps even a shade more definite opposition. For example, this elevator and freight idea of his . . .”
“G’aranteed to plunge the whole country into roon,” interrupted Mrs. Pratt, whose investments were centred strictly to the East.
“I anticipated you would take the view of the better minds,” returned Mr. Sullivan, perceiving that the time had come for him to discard the subtler implements of finesse, and employ the rough, but honest trowel. “But when all’s said and done, it may be better to support a man with whose policies we are not in accord than to split into groups, and eventually be forced from our seats into the benches on the opposite side of the house.”
Mrs. Pratt watched her guest with unmistakable bewilderment in her hard blue eyes.
“I see that you agree with me,” he went on, “and you are probably wondering, just as I am, how soon the need will come for us to prove our Party loyalty. It can’t be far away, dear lady. I have ten dollars in my pocket that says there’ll be a Cabinet vacancy before the spring.”
“And Dilling will get the portfolio!” barked Mrs. Pratt, thrown completely off her guard.
“What a head you have!” cried Sullivan. “I’ll wager there aren’t a dozen men who have suspected it! But he needs support . . . he must have it. We must stand solidly behind him, for no matter how divergent may be our views upon this question of western freight, we’ve got to train up a man—a good strong fellow—who will sweep the country and be able to step into the shoes of the Prime Minister, some day!”
“Prime Minister!” gasped Mrs. Pratt, and fell to preening herself in order that she might hide the trembling of her hands.
She hated the Dillings—Raymond for his reputed genius, the clear, cold brilliance that would not be eclipsed, and Marjorie for her childish friendliness and ingratiating ways. The meek might inherit the Kingdom of Heaven without provoking her envy, but that they should also inherit the earth was a contingency that aroused her cold fury.
She saw them sought after, deferred to, taking precedence over everyone save the representative of the King! Her thoughts fell into narrower channels and she pictured Marjorie opening bazaars, lending her patronage to this or that gathering of Society’s choicest blossoms, arriving at the state where she would be unstirred by invitations to Government House!
Under the turquoise velvet, her bosom rose and fell, heavily. At the moment she hated her husband no less fiercely than she hated the man whom she chose to consider his rival. What could Augustus carve in the way of a career? How could he ever hope to triumph over this aggressive man from the West? Where would she be when Marjorie Dilling had become the wife of Canada’s young Prime Minister?
The suave voice of Rufus Sullivan fashioned itself into words. The first ones she failed to catch, but the last pierced her like the point of a white-hot rapier.
“. . . and then, naturally, a title. And how graciously she will wear it, eh?”
A title . . . Mrs. Pratt felt suffocated. A portfolio was bad enough; the Premiership was a possibility that she could not consider without a cataclysm of emotion, but a title . . . the pinnacle of human desire, the social and political apogee . . .
Sir Raymond and Lady Dilling . . . Lady Dilling . . .
She rose abruptly and strode to the door. Pratt avoided a collision with difficulty. He was just coming in.
“No more time for philandering,” he cried, with vulgar geniality. “On to Pretoria! Nelson expects every man to do his duty!”
Mrs. Pratt watched their departure with contradictory sensations. The Hon. Member for Morroway was not the man to spoil a good impression by an inartistic exit. He made a graceful adieu, managing to convey the idea that, although now and again he might be the bearer of news that was disturbing, on the whole he was a man who could be mulct by a woman of astuteness, of the most intimate and useful information.
Augustus Pratt, M.P., arrived home on the stroke of midnight to find his wife and daughter in the midst of a litter of stationery, calling lists, telephone and Blue Books.
“What’s up now?” he demanded, picking his way across the floor as one hops over a brook by means of stepping stones.
“Look at that,” cried his wife, and pointed to the evening paper.
Pratt gave his attention to the item indicated. It headed the Personal column, and read,
“The following ladies and gentlemen had the honour of dining at Government House last evening . . . and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Dilling.”
“Well,” he yawned, “there’s nothing very startling about that! I don’t see the answer.”
“No! Naturally you wouldn’t!” Mrs. Pratt pounded a stamp on an envelope.
The M.P. turned to his daughter. “Tell her old dad what it means, little Maudie.”
“Mother’s giving a big dinner party, on the seventeenth.”
“Oh, my God!” sighed Augustus. Then, “I’ve got to go to Montreal on that date, Minnie—honest, I have!”
“You dare! And listen, Gus, while I think of it; if I ever hear that you’ve given one atom of support to that Dilling, I’ll have my trunks packed and the house closed, before you can get home! Now, don’t forget!”
“Dear, dear!” Pratt assumed an air of panic. “What’s the poor beggar been up to now?”
“He’s up to getting himself into the Cabinet, if men like you don’t want the job, yourselves—that’s what he’s up to. And once in the Cabinet, you know where he’ll land next.”
“Where?”
“In the Prime Minister’s seat,” returned Mrs. Pratt, sourly.
“In the Senate, you mean,” laughed Augustus, and pinched Maude’s ear.
“Your idea of jokes is sickening,” Mrs. Pratt declared. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother with you. Now, Mod, read out the names on those envelopes down there!”
Dutifully, Maude complied . . . “Mr. and Mrs. Chesley . . .”
“Like enough they won’t come,” interrupted her mother. “We’ve never called.”
“. . . Mr. and Mrs. Long! Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hudson . . .”
“There’s another hateful snob. This afternoon I could have strangled her!”
“Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Truman . . .”
“They say she only goes to Government House,” mused Mrs. Pratt. “However, I took a chance. It only cost two cents—and you never know.”
“You bet you’ll never know,” said the Member. “Minnie, you’re plain crazy asking all these swells that you don’t even know when you see ’em! Why don’t we have anyrealfriends, nowadays?”
Mrs. Pratt answered with a baleful glance that was more eloquent than words. Then, assured that there would be no further interference from her husband, directed Maude to finish her work.
“. . . Sir Eric and Lady Denby . . .”
“They ought to come, anyhow,” she groaned, hopefully, “seeing it’s the Party. The Fanshawes, the Howarths, Sullivan and Azalea Deane . . . she’s sure to come . . . that makes twenty-nine. There’s one more envelope, Mod!”
“Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Dilling,” read the girl.
“Dilling?” echoed her father.
“Of course, Augustus. Don’t gape at me in that way!”
“But you just told me—I thought you had your knife into the Dillings.”
“So I have, you fool!”
“Then why the hell do you ask them to your party?”
Mrs. Pratt so forgot herself as to stamp her foot. “Can’t you see,” she cried, “that they’re getting on?”
For a time, Dilling was entertained by the visits he received from ladies of varying ages and mixed intentions. He found their vapoury subterfuges or engaging candour equally amusing. But presently, this type of diversion, so eagerly welcomed by many of his confrères, began to pall, and he developed amazing ingenuity in the avoidance of such callers.
He had grown suspicious of “deserving cases,” and “ancient grievances”; he found himself totally unsympathetic towards the erection of monuments commemorating the questionable valour of somebody’s obscure progenitors; he could sit absolutely unmoved and listen to schemes which were being projected “at considerable personal inconvenience,” in order that he might attain immortality. The measures he was asked to father in the House ranged from the segregation of the feeble-minded to prohibition of philandering.
“He’s a cold fish,” complained more than one lady, after failing to elicit the smallest response, either to her project or her personal charms.
It was true that Dilling’s emotional reactions were slight, but it was equally true that had they been vehement, he would have forced himself to a course of conduct commensurate with what he conceived to be the demands of national welfare. He never could accept the idea that the Government Service was an institution in which hundreds of persons—like Mr. Deane—might find a comfortable escape from the storm and stress of a fruitful life, and render in return but a tithe of the work that even their small abilities could fairly perform. He never could sympathise with the attitude of those who looked upon the public funds as private means, and he opposed, in so far as he was able, every effort to tap the Dominion Treasury for individual gain.
There were times when he thought with discouragement about these things; times when he was oppressed with the basic insincerity of public life. It was so vastly different from what he had imagined! He felt himself eternally struggling against the malefic urge of partisanship—and partisanship was not always, he found, an expression of high principle.
And he saw also that, as his success gathered head, petty jealousies—and great—sprang up on every hand. The very persons who assisted in his rise would be the first, he knew, to herald his downfall. He used to think that because a man was prominent, he possessed universal good-will, but now he knew that the exact reverse obtains.
“I am the most unpopular man in the House,” he said to Azalea, one evening. “On the floor, they cheer and applaud me, but in private or social life, I am shunned.”
Another woman would have contradicted him. Such a course did not occur to Azalea.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
He considered a moment.
“I’m not sure. It seems to me that the popular Members don’tdoanything. They’re too busy being popular . . . too busy being agreeable to a herd of tireless parasites.”
“Which is quite out of your line, is it not?”
“Well, whyshouldI snivel and crawl?” he defended. “One respects a man or one doesn’t. Popularity is, after all, only an expression of mob psychology; as you know, it is unstable—having either the vaguest of excuses, or palpable insincerity behind it.”
“You mean the insincerity of the person who is popular?”
“Of course! What man feels genuine friendliness towards enough people to make him ‘popular’?”
Azalea shook her head in the characteristic way that implied her resentment against accepting the inevitable.
“But don’t you feel that a certain amount of studied affability is—let us say—necessary to the attainment of success in public affairs?”
“No! I believe with Lincoln that the conduct of a statesman—and that is my high ambition, if it be God’s will that I attain to it—should be moulded upon three principles; ‘malice towards none, charity for all, firmness on the right’. These principles are not compatible with the flatteries and lightly-regarded mendacities of a popular idol. A statesman ought to be less of a man and more of an ethical inspiration. It’s not an easy ideal to live up to,” he concluded, “but at least it’s a clean one, and I think the only one that history justifies.”
“Yes,” repeated Azalea, as though careful that her voice should not betray her true opinion, “it’s a very clean one.”
Recalling that conversation, Dilling found himself musing rather pleasantly about Azalea. What a curious little creature she was! What a stimulating companion! He could not, for the life of him, visualise her features, but he could bring to mind many an illuminating twist of her thoughts. Times without number, he realised, he had invoked her extraordinary intuitive powers and transmuted them in the crucible of his logic, into what Sullivan was pleased to designate as invincibility in debate.
“She’s more than half responsible,” he told himself. “I couldn’t have achieved my present position by any process of reasoning alone.”
He looked over his crowded desk with a sensation of helplessness. How could any man, single-handed, clear that accumulation away? He wondered if other Members allowed their business to get into such a distressing tangle, and if they had better luck than he when a stenographer came in for a few hours, to reduce the congestion?
“It’s this eternal speech-making,” he reflected. “That’s what takes so much of my time. I wish . . .”
He left his chair and began to pace about the room, surrendering to an access of restlessness that was quite foreign to him. Azalea Deane . . . there was the solution! Why not? Why should she not come to him as a permanent assistant . . . a sort of private secretary?
“She could relieve me of a myriad minor duties,” he thought. “Foreign press . . . correspondence . . . research work . . . She’s amazingly accurate . . .” He smiled as he caught himself suppressing the familiar corollary, “for a woman!”
Yes, that was the solution! He would ask Azalea Deane to work with him. “We’ll get on famously together,” he thought. “She’s so quick to catch the drift of my intention. She really understands me.”
He sat down again, amused at the recollection of an original view expressed by Azalea in answer to Marjorie, who complained of Ottawa’s persistent misunderstanding.
“There’s no cause for distress in being misunderstood,” she had said. “It’s the opposite condition that we should dread! Imagine one’s stupidity, covetousness and smallness of spirit being laid bare! Unthinkable, isn’t it? You mustn’t forget, my dear Marjorie, that being misunderstood works both ways, and through imperfect understanding we are frequently credited with motives and qualities that are quite as flattering as we could wish. Heaven forfend that I should ever be thoroughly understood!”
Dilling applauded her and reminded his wife that if men were compelled to write their thoughts and wear them as phylacteries on their foreheads, few, indeed, would carry themselves bravely in public.
“And why should they do that, dear?” Marjorie enquired, her pansy eyes clouded with perplexity.
“He is only trying to be clever,” explained Azalea. “He is subtly suggesting that if the very best of us proclaimed our thoughts upon our foreheads, there would be jolly few who didn’t pull their hats low above their brows.”
Azalea did not wear her thoughts upon her forehead, Dilling reflected, and he smiled at his conceit in thinking that if she did, they would probably be written in a language that was difficult to read! It suddenly occurred to him that he knew very little of what was passing in Azalea’s mind. His endeavour had been directed to an opposite course—assisting her to understand what was in his thoughts.
“She’s a curious creature,” he repeated, “a problem. But she has rare intelligence and imagination. I need her . . . She is necessary for the advancement of my work. I can’t concentrate in this hopeless muddle . . .”
The idea excited him more than he realised. In planning a schedule for their day’s routine, he did not recognise his keen desire for a closer intimacy with the girl’s mind, the assurance of her esteem, the stimulus of knowing that she expected him to conquer unconquerable things. He began to wear down her arguments, to win her from possible disinclination. She must agree! She must come!
He pictured a scene with her tiresome old father, when he should ask not for her hand but for her brain. How insensately stubborn the old antiquarian would be! How damnably unreasonable!
He consulted his book of appointments . . . not a minute Wednesday . . . nor Thursday . . . Ah! Mrs. Pratt’s dinner party . . . Good! He would ask her then . . .
A thin smile touched his features as he said to himself,
“If I can move the Opposition in the House, surely I can override the objections of Grenville Deane!”
Mr. Deane would have swelled with pride had he known that his daughter was engaging the attention of more than one Parliamentary Member that day. In a room above that occupied by Raymond Dilling, the thoughts of three other gentlemen bent themselves fleetingly upon her.
“The fellow’s not only clever,” grumbled Turner, “but he’s too damned careful. We’ll have some trouble in pinning anything on him.”
Sullivan sipped his whisky reflectively. “The trouble is that he never meets the right sort of people.”
“God knows they go out enough,” protested Howarth. “According to the Personals which I’ve read conscientiously for several weeks past, they go pretty much everywhere.”
“Because he’s become the vogue, in a manner of speaking,” said Sullivan. “But that won’t do us any good. It won’t last long enough. Socially, they are failures and always will be . . . Mark my words, the time will come when they will be asked only because their political position requires recognition, not for their personal charm. Church-workers and unambitious obscurities will be their particular friends . . . her particular friends, perhaps I should say. He won’t have any.”
“Still, he’ll meet some interesting women,” objected Turner.
“I grant it, but not deliberately interesting,” returned Sullivan, with a wink. “In other words, he won’t stumble into a trap. He’ll have to be led into it.”
“Why won’t he stumble?” Howarth asked. “Other men do.”
“His temperament is a safeguard, for one thing. He is not sufficiently attracted by women to go exploring, and only those who wander into unfamiliar places get caught in traps.”
Howarth remarked that his wife had reported a warm friendship between the Dillings and the Deane girl.
“Yes,” said Sullivan, “I’ve been watching that. Mrs. D. tells me that he admires the girl intensely.”
“Humph!” commented Turner.
“I’ve never met the lady,” said Howarth, “but judging from her looks I should think that a man’s intensity of feeling for her could not be much more than a mild passion of the imagination.”
Sullivan laughed. “That’s not bad for you, Billy. I’ll go even further and opine that Dilling’s intensity of feeling for anyone will be like the passion of a fried sole! However, the Deane girl won’t do.”
“What about de Latour’s daughter?” suggested Howarth. “She looks clever, and might help, ‘for the sake of the Party,’ as our estimable Lady Denby says.”
“Good God, Billy,” groaned Sullivan. “We don’t want anyone wholooksclever! Don’t you know me better than that?”
“Well, the sweet young thing should be easy to find,” said Turner.
“No good, either. In the first place, it’s hard to find one with any sense, and in the second, he gets that type as a daily diet.”
“Those Carmichael girls seem to be consistent winners,” suggested Turner, once more. “Some brains, and good looks . . .”
“Too young,” said the old campaigner. “Undependable! Kids are apt to lose their heads and weaken, when it comes to using the scalping knife. First thing we know, they’d give the whole show away. No,” he went on, reflectively, “what we want is a regular stunner, who’ll stick right at the game until she has his scalp at her belt . . . a woman of the world, you know, chock full of horse sense and able to handle men with as little difficulty as an expert trainer handles cats.”
There was a short silence.
“I can’t think of anybody,” Turner’s tone was sodden with discouragement.
“Nor I,” said Howarth. “Haven’t you got anybody up your sleeve, Sullivan?”
The Hon. Member for Morroway modestly admitted that there was a lady of his acquaintance who combined all these alluring vices.
“Either of you ever heard of Mrs. Barrington?” he enquired.
Turner thumped his approval. Howarth took his satisfaction more cautiously.
“I’ve seen the dame. Kind of flashy, eh?”
“Tastes differ,” replied his friend.
“Just moved here lately, hasn’t she?”
Sullivan nodded.
“Hangs round the House a good deal, trying to put something over for her husband, I’ve heard.”
“You’re remarkably well informed, Billy,” mocked the older man.
“Did you ever know her before?” asked the unabashed Howarth.
Sullivan confessed to a previous acquaintance. “Her mother’s first husband was my sister’s brother-in-law. So, you see, she’s a sort of relation.”
“Not too close to be interesting,” observed Turner, who had his private opinion about Sullivan’s relations. “Has she been sounded? Do you think she’ll take on the job?”
The Member for Morroway was hopeful, “provided,” he said, “she is not absorbed in any other emotional adventure. They are chronic.”
“Is that the only provision?” Howarth wanted to know.
“Well—er—as you, yourself, remarked, she seems to be determined to get Barrington a nice, cushioned berth in which he will be well protected against the rigours of enervating toil. I understand that she fancies the Chairmanship of the Improvement Commission.”
William Howarth, M.P., expressed relief, and the opinion that this was “pie”.
“We’ll just put little Augustus Pratt on the job,” he said. “How soon could we see the lady?”
Sullivan didn’t doubt that she was somewhere in the House at the moment.
“You trot along and find her, then,” urged the other. “Bring her up here and let’s hold a friendly little conference. The sooner we get her started on this escapade, the sooner our young friend will lose his head!”
Alight but insistent tapping put an end to Dilling’s reflections.
“Come in!” he called, impatiently, and turned towards the window as if intent upon the landscape.
There was a slight pause, and then, like a well-timed bit of stage business, a woman stood framed in the open door.
Dilling appreciated the dramatic note even while he resented it. On general principles he despised the theatrical.
“Oh, Iamlucky!” cried his visitor, in a well-disciplined contralto. “I scarcely dared hope to find you alone. Every atom of courage I possessed oozed out of my finger-tips at the thought of interrupting a secret caucus, or some other of the dark conspiracies that are supposed to occupy our Members’ time!”
She advanced and extended an ungloved hand. Dilling touched her fingers without speaking.
“My name is Hebe Barrington,” she went on, “Mrs. Arthur, on my calling cards, you know . . . and I’m here on a desperately serious mission. Its success means everything to me, and you, yourself, Mr. Dilling, have buoyed me up with the hope that I shall not fail.”
She shifted her position slightly, contriving to draw her skirt close about her long, slender limbs like a sheath.
But Dilling was not looking. He had taken a penknife from his pocket, and was giving First Aid to an untutored finger-nail.
“How shall I begin?” she went on, watching him from beneath her lashes. It was one of her prettiest gestures.
“Perhaps, if you made some notes and sent them to me—”
“Oh, please!” she protested. “That’s heartless of you. Anddosit down! I can’t think while you wear that ‘Time’s up’ expression. It drives every idea from my head. I tell you frankly, Mr. Dilling, I expected you would be much more kind.”
She flung him a smile that had dazzled many another man. Dilling received it with indifference, in a wholly unprecedented manner. Mrs. Barrington found the experience somewhat disconcerting.
In his expression there was no appreciation of her loveliness. Neither was there the disapproval that betokens a recognition of it, or a sign of that wariness by which man betrays his knowledge of its danger. There was nothing.
In the abstract, Dilling saw men as trees, walking, but women he saw scarcely at all. Emotionally, he was vestigial. Artistically, he was numb. Beauty in any form registered only through his outward eye. He missed the inner vision that should have quickened his soul.
Mrs. Barrington was not an unfamiliar figure to him, although he had never been sufficiently interested to ask her name. Frequently, of late, he had seen her in the restaurant, or in the corridors, sometimes surrounded by a group of Parliamentary gallants, and sometimes in earnest tete-a-tete with just one man. If he thought of her at all, it was to conclude that like other women who haunt the House, she was engaged in the popular occupation known as lobbying, and he felt an instinctive opposition to whatever request she might be about to make.
On her part, Mrs. Barrington felt the disappointment of one who has been unexpectedly repulsed at the first line of attack, and sees the necessity for finer strategy. She laid aside the ineffectual weapon of physical charm, and took up the subtler blade of flattery.
“I have come to you,” she said, “because you are not only essentially, but so patently, sincere. Not your speeches alone, but your whole manner, proclaim it. I suppose that is a good deal to say of a politician, is it not?”
“By no means!”
“There is little evidence to the contrary! Most of them rant about a loftier patriotism, service for the public weal that knows no respite and the realisation of a higher idealism for Twentieth Century Canada, but their actual performances are not marked with the large disinterestedness they profess. You are different. Perhaps you won’t like my saying so, Mr. Dilling, but as you sit in the House, surrounded by your colleagues, yours is a noticeably solitary figure. I felt it the instant I saw you, and the impression has grown steadily stronger . . . with reason. You have brought a different element into politics, Mr. Dilling. Like Disraeli, you are on the side of the angels! You have brought what I call practical spirituality, a force that can and will defeat materialism, if—if—you do not get discouraged, and tired of struggling on, alone.”
“Aren’t you rather disheartening?”
The question was asked with such utter unconcern that Mrs. Barrington could not deceive herself into thinking she had made an impression. Had Dilling taken her seriously, or accorded her half the sincerity she professed to impute to him, he would have been unconscionably embarrassed. As matters stood, her words, like her beauty, failed to touch him. He heard them as he heard agreeable music, without annoyance, but without pleasure. It was said of him, that once, in Pinto Plains, when asked if he enjoyed piano playing he had answered, “Oh, I don’t mind it!” and he could aptly have applied the same phrase to this woman’s conversation.
He didn’t mind it! He was listening without giving particular heed to what she said. He knew that she had come to ask a favour, and he was not sufficiently amenable to feminine wiles to lose sight of the methods of a shrewd campaigner.
“I may be disheartening,” he heard her say, “but I am sincere. Would you have me pretend—tell you how popular you are, and how certain to become the idol of the people? Do you not remember that the Cæsars and Lincolns of history have been slandered and slain by their friends and compatriots, and can you hope to escape a similar fate at the hands of our people—even though despotism is not tempered with assassination here, as it was a hundred years ago in Russia?”
Dilling was conscious of a flicker of interest. It was curious, he reflected, that this woman should have come to him and given expression to the very thoughts that had been uppermost in his mind. He wondered whether she had been talking to Azalea.
“And what has all this to do with your mission?” he asked, closing his penknife with a snap.
“Everything!” she cried, vehemently. “Everything depends upon the honesty behind your protestations, upon the fact that you are not merely content to talk about idealism, but will work to see it blossom throughout the country. Moreover, I have counted on your vision, your ability to see the benefit of what, to others, may look like an impractical measure. Any other type of man would laugh at me,” she added.
She stopped and waited for him to speak. But he made no comment.
He was not insensible to the cleverness with which she assembled her points. There was about her address a climacteric quality that compelled his admiration. But her speech fell flat because he failed to pick up his cues. The obvious retort that she must have anticipated, was never spoken; so each pause was pregnant with the suggestion of finality, of failure.
“I felt as though I were being driven, blindfold, along a crooked passage,” she said, later, in describing the interview to Sullivan. “Each time I turned a corner, some one rose and struck me in the face, so that I reeled and lost my bearings and had to wait a bit in order to recover myself and my sense of direction.”
Dilling half suspected this. He did not, however, assume a difficult and disinterested manner, deliberately, nor did he act with conscious rudeness. He simply felt no curiosity in Mrs. Barrington nor in the object of her visit, and no obligation to pretend that he did.
“I have come to you,” she said, again, “because you are the embodiment of all the qualities I have mentioned. Your sympathy, I take for granted, for the reason that the cause I plead is a spiritual cause, Mr. Dilling. I am asking for the development of a nation’s soul.”
“Oh!”
This response, though almost imperceptible, affected the woman as applause breaking suddenly over an unfriendly house, stimulates an actor to greater achievement. She left her chair and stood before him, a vision of aggressive beauty. She nearly lost herself in the part she was playing, and allowed impulse rather than design to dominate the moment.
“We admit that in the fierce struggle for existence, a young country must concern itself primarily with material problems, and that the song of the spirit is often stifled by the cry of hungry children. But has not the day arrived for us when our thought, and at least a small part of our resources, should be devoted to providing nourishment for the Canadian soul? I know that this sounds like the spell-binder’s affluence of speech, but, believe me, Mr. Dilling, I have a practical proposition behind it.”
“Well?” said Dilling, without enthusiasm.
She pointed to the Little Theatre movement, to various literary and dramatic organisations that have sprung up throughout the Dominion, as a proof that we are seeking a means of artistic expression, for spiritual development, that we are feeling a reaction from the wave of materialism which, in these times, holds the land in thrall. “In a word,” she said, “we are looking for happiness, only just realising that we have striven without it all these years. We are not a happy nation, Mr. Dilling.”
“Show me a more prosperous one,” he cried.
“Ah! But there’s our trouble. Prosperity and happiness may lie at opposite poles. The one is of the earth and its fulness, the other of the spirit, and in our pursuit of the former, we too frequently forget the needs of the latter. Happiness depends upon the emotions, Mr. Dilling, and Canadians have almost suffocated theirs.”
Obviously, the spark of interest she had ignited had turned to ashes. He was silent, so she hurried on.
“We need Art—the medium through which spirituality flows into the life of man. We want to hear the symphonies of our composers, the songs of our poets, as well as the throb and thunder of motor factories and power plants. I would ask the Government to recognise the organisations that are endeavouring to promote artistic creation, and to give financial assistance to the conspicuously talented artists throughout the Dominion!”
“Hold on!” cried Dilling, stung into repelling this premeditated attack upon the National Treasury. “We maintain a big Gallery out at the Museum. We subsidise Art.”
“Yes,” she countered, quickly, “but not the artist. What you do only goes to swell the pay-roll of the Civil Service . . . You don’t go far enough! Hasn’t the Government helped to build up the industries of this country? Has it not pap-fed factories and commercial enterprises of various kinds? You know it has! If I should want a water-power for some silly little saw-mill, shall I not have it from my Province, for the asking? There’s not a doubt of it! Yet, no one thinks of providing a greater power and one whereby this growing unrest can be composed. We are making a great point of conserving our natural resources, but who thinks of conserving ourspiritualresources, Mr. Dilling? We need the one no less than the other. Men are reaching out towards Art!”
“Government is organised to legislate for peace and order in the community.”
“Aristotle said that Government was organised to make people happy. I scarcely think we have made good along his principles, do you?”
“You can’t legislate people into happiness.”
“No! But you can provide the things that will create that state of mind. I should like to see a National Theatre, Mr. Dilling, in which the struggles and triumphs of Canada might be told by her own sons and daughters. Love of our common country can be fostered in no happier way. Let us have annual prizes for excelling talent in the Arts, and Science, and Literature!”
“Have we any poets worth recognising?” interrupted Dilling.
“Ah, I knew you would make that objection!” cried Hebe Barrington. “I knew that your thoughts would fly at once to Milton, and Keats, and Shelley . . . and the greatest of them all, Shakespeare. You immediately compare us with the immortals, and feel that we lose by the comparison. I don’t profess to offer you a Homer or a Sappho. But there were lesser poets in Athens whom Pericles favoured at the expense of the people’s purse. It’s harder for poetry and the Arts to flourish to-day, than two thousand years ago—Oh, don’t you see,weneed a National Theatre?”
“It’s an idea,” conceded Dilling, with caution.
Hebe Barrington was clever. She did not press her slight advantage but prepared to beat a strategic retreat.
“I knew that you would see it,” she cried. “How else can we make idealism real save by expressing it first through Art and then weaving it into our practical experiences? How else can we keep alive the traditions that have given us our Empire? How teach them to the young? I am full of schemes for working this thing out. May I come to see you again—or better still,” she amended, watching him intently with her great, soft eyes, “will you come to me, say this day week?”
“If you like,” he said, opening the door.
Presently, he opened the window, too. The room was close with a heavy, sweetish odour that offended him.
He looked down the river, past the Mint and the Archives. Catching sight of the smoke-clouded roof of Earnscliffe—once the stately residence of Sir John Macdonald—he fell to wondering what the Grand Old Man would have said to such a proposition . . .
A National Theatre!
The Greeks, he remembered, spared neither time nor money on their dramatic temple, which was free! On the other hand, the Canadian theatre was almost prohibitive in point of admission fee, and far from being the object of Governmental support, it was controlled by a group of Semitic gentlemen whose habitat was Broadway and whose taste reflected anything but a Canadian National spirit. In Rome, Mommens had taught him, there were fewer occupations more lucrative than those of actor and dancer—Roscius, one of the former, receiving the equivalent of $30,000 as his annual income, and Dionysia, a fairy-footed maid, $10,000 yearly—more than twice the amount of his Parliamentary indemnity!
Why should Canada not have her theatre?
He had dreamed of leisure to write—a drama of the West. Often he had pictured its theme unfolding in a mighty spectacle that would rival those of Ancient Rome, when six hundred mules passed in review across the stage of a military pageant, and whole armies were in requisition to give verisimilitude to a production.
He saw vast herds of buffalo and cattle; he heard the thunder of their flying hoofs and the yells of the pursuing Red Men. From the south and east, troops of devil-may-care cowboys burst upon the scene. The whirr of arrows, the snap of rifles, beat across his consciousness. And as the play progressed, over the flaming prairie there crawled a slow, white streak, coming to a halt at last in what looked like the heart of infinity. And presently, there appeared a tiny farm.
Deep in moonlit gorges, Dilling saw fur traders, whiskey smugglers, Indians, and cattle thieves, threading a cautious way. Then came the flash of scarlet coats and diminishing disorder.
And along the trails made by the thirsty buffalo, followed by wary Red Men, rediscovered by ambitious young surveyors who found that wisdom was born in brute, and even in primeval man, before it made its way to books, the railway flung its slender arms across an infant nation; and settlers came hard upon the heels of construction crews, a strange assortment who spoke their parts in the music of unfamiliar, polyglot tongues.
And on the site of some forgotten Indian encampment, where patient squaws pounded out their corn, there grew a field of wheat which gave way to a small settlement, and then a town where gigantic storehouses now husbanded the grain!
Ah, God, the glamour of the West—his West! Suddenly, it sang in his blood, it shone in his eyes, it dazzled him and provoked emotions that no woman had ever stirred.
A National Theatre? Well, it certainly was an idea, but he must not be intrigued by it; there was no hurry. The proposition needed thinking . . . Dilling crossed the room, took the receiver from its hook and called up Azalea. He was unaccountably disappointed to learn that she was out.
He realised with a sense of shock that she was the only friend he had made since coming to the Capital. At the moment, he felt that she was more than a friend . . . that she was a necessity. But he resisted this weakness as he would have resisted dependence upon a stimulant or sedative. Dilling liked to believe in his self-sufficiency, his detachment from all human ties. He could not deny, however, that Azalea fed him intellectually—food convenient for him.
“She feeds my mind,” he repeated, surprised that this should be so. “Isn’t it curious that she should possess this power . . .” It was all he asked of God.
His feeling was one that did honour to Platonism and now, as he sat reflecting upon it, Raymond Dilling wondered just what Azalea thought of him. Did she think his standards worthy of his calling? Had she faith in his singleness of purpose, and did she commend his policy for its wisdom? Or could she have misunderstood him, read into his unashamed confessions, the easy cant of him who makes a profession of sincerity?
He had taken for granted that she was in accord with his political creed, that she appreciated his native worth; but never before had he asked himself the question . . . did she like him? He had no assurance that she did. Admitting her acceptance of him upon his own terms, so to speak, might she not feel for him as we so often feel towards estimable persons whose blameless characters inspire us with nothing but respectful tolerance? On the other hand, suppose she did not regard him as a worthy figure, would she dislike him? Are there not natures to whom an impostor presents a personality unreasonably appealing? Has not the world had its Casanovas and Cagliostros?
What manner of man did Azalea like? What type stirred her rich imagination?
These unanswerable questions provoked him to an unwonted consideration of the girl, but he failed to recollect an occasion when she had revealed her inner thoughts and aspirations to him. What heart throbs, he asked himself, pulsed beneath that strange, drab exterior? What spirit wounds were covered with the cuirass of her whimsical satire? What was her philosophy of life, and what did she really think of him?
He had no idea, but he did know that he wished to be her friend.
Dilling couldn’t recall ever formulating a definite opinion on the subject of friendship, and he was not at all sure what Azalea might require of him. Sympathy, he mused, might be helpful in times of strain, but he was not prepared to admit that friendships were vital. A man could—perhaps should—be independent of their fetters, unseeking and unsought. Friendship had its rise in the emotions according to philosophers, and was therefore a weakness. Yet, was it? History showed that great men transmuted it into strength.
Which would it be for him, a weakness or a source of strength? And if the latter, how best could he convert its power into fuel for his energy?
He looked at his watch. Almost time for lunch. Azalea should be at home now, he thought. Again, he turned to the telephone.
In the room above, Mrs. Barrington was eagerly accepting a whisky and soda from the hospitable Member for Morroway.
“You look as though a little stimulant would do you no harm,” observed Howarth, busily attentive with the cigarettes.
“Without it, I shan’t last till sundown,” returned the woman. “Never have I spent such a half hour . . . and never again!”
“Difficult, eh?” asked Sullivan.
“Impossible! Why, Uncle Rufus, that man’s not human! Heaven knows, I’m not a vain woman,” she declared, “but for all the notice he took of me, he might have been a graven image, or I might have been one of the shrieking sisterhood! There wasn’t a smile . . . there wasn’t a flicker of response! I kept thinking all the time of Congreve, and hisLady Wishforttrying to captivate that stupid ass, oldMirabell!” Her full voice trembled with excitement and anger. Into her cheeks flooded a wave of natural colour, beneath their expertly applied rouge. “I’m through . . . I’m through,” she cried. “He made me think of a eunuch contemplating a statue of Venus!”
Mrs. Pratt stood in the hard glitter of too many electric lights, in a hard, encrusted green gown, and greeted her guests with a hard, set smile that froze any budding sense of enjoyment they may have brought with them. Maude was silent and sullen. She had caught the backwash of her mother’s ill-temper throughout two trying weeks, and the party had become a nightmare to her. Augustus, miserable in his evening clothes, and perspiring under the weight of admonitions that warred with his sense of hospitality, watched her in a passion of sympathy. After a succession of violent scenes, he was dolorously conscious that he and Maude together, were no match for the determined woman whom he had meekly followed to the altar.
“She’s got too damned much gulp,” he thought to himself, wondering how to reduce this hampering characteristic in his daughter.
A vigorous jab in the side reminded him that something was amiss. “Eh, my dear?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Take your hands out of your pockets, Augustus,” hissed Mrs. Pratt, “and don’t you dare to call Dr. Prendergast, ‘Doc’!”
“Doctor and Missus Bzen-an-Bza-a!” announced Cr’ymer, from the door.
Cr’ymer was a very recent acquisition to the Pratt ménage. Mrs. Pratt would have preferred a Japanese but for once she was overruled by her husband, who harboured the malicious belief that every man of foreign birth, especially negroes and Orientals, look upon the women of our race with lascivious eyes. So when Cr’ymer applied, and upheld his cleverly-forged reference with a plausible story, Mrs. Pratt engaged him—bibulous mien and Cockney accent, notwithstanding.
Having been but a few weeks in the city, and most of that time comfortably soothed by vinous refreshment, Cr’ymer was not conversant with the names of social Ottawa, and even had he been, it is doubtful that those of Mrs. Pratt’s guests would have been familiar to him.
“How d’ye do?” asked Mrs. Prendergast, annoyed to find that no one else had arrived. There was a suggestion of over-eagerness in being early.
“How do yuh do?” returned Mrs. Pratt, wishing that she was Lady Elton or someone worth while. “Sit down, won’t you? I think you’ll find any of my chairs comfortable, and there’s no need for you to stand because we have to . . . The others can’t be long, now.”
“They can if they choose,” remarked Dr. Prendergast, who liked his dinner in the middle of the day and a substantial supper at six o’clock. “Never saw anything to beat the people, to-day. They don’t start out till it’s time for decent folks to be in bed. Things get later and later. Shouldn’t be surprised to see the hour for dinner set at eleven o’clock . . . Outrageous!”
“Well, with so many engagements to crowd in of an afternoon, and with the House sitting till six o’clock, it’s vurry difficult to dine much earlier than seven o’clock,” argued Mrs. Pratt. “Oh, here are the Leeds. How do yuh do? Augustus, meet Mrs. Leeds!”
“How do?” mumbled Augustus, and prayed for the coming of the cocktails, which, as an antidote for the concoctions of an atrocious cook, he had made extra strong.
Mrs. Pratt aspired to a good cook, by which she meant a person who could disguise the most familiar comestibles so that recognition was impossible. Personally, she liked plain and wholesome cooking. Most people do. But she laboured under the misapprehension that members of the aristocracy ate strange and undistinguishable dishes; moreover, that the degree of exaltation which one had attained, was evident by the kind of food one ate. For example, she could not conceive of His Majesty enjoying a rasher of liver and bacon, nor a Duke sitting down to the staple pork and beans so familiar to the humble farming class. Long hours she pondered the question of food, rising gradually through the ragouts and rissoles, ramakins and casseroles, to ravioli, caviare, canapes and the bewilderingauxanda la’sthat make a wholesome menu so picturesque and indigestible.
The cook that Mrs. Pratt had in mind, was one who had served at least an Earl, and had titillated the palates of his class. But at that time—now half a decade past—social distinctions were drawn quite as finely in the kitchen as the drawing-room, and the woman who would exchange her culinary gifts and aristocratic associations for the wages of a mistress not even an Honourable in her own right, had not been found.
The hour set for dinner had past. In the drawing-room, a noticeable chill tempered the atmosphere. Mrs. Pratt was not an easy hostess. The word “entertaining” was, for her, the most perfect euphemism, and in ordinary circumstances, she would have taken satisfaction rather than pleasure by gathering people at her home. On this occasion, she was denied satisfaction, and a rising resentment gave her far from gracious manner an added acerbity. Conversation lost all semblance to spontaneity, and every eye seemed to be fixed upon Mrs. Pratt, who sat stiffly on a Louis Quinze chair and hoped that Rufus Sullivan was sensible of her displeasure.
She blamed him for this contretemps. It was he who had asked her to invite the Barringtons, laying delicate emphasis upon their social importance no less than upon their importance to the Party.
“Strangers,” he said, “but excellently connected and frightfully smart—rather too smart for parochial Ottawa, I fear, dear lady! However, they’re well worth cultivating, and a clever woman could make no little use of Hebe Barrington.”
Certainly, she was not difficult to know. Her acceptance of Mrs. Pratt’s laboured and formal invitation—delivered for lack of time by telephone—was so casual as to startle that good lady. This was not her conception of the manners of the elect.
And now they were quite fifteen minutes late. Mrs. Pratt’s anger rose.
She had just decided to proceed to the dining-room without them, when there was a furious ring at the bell, a hurried step on the stair, and Cr’ymer signalled her that they had arrived.
“My dear Mrs. Pratt,” cried Hebe, sweeping forward, “isthere an apology profound enough to touch the hearts of your guests—not to mention your husband and yourself? How do you do, Mr. Pratt? And your daughter . . . why, you dear child, kiss me! Fortune has indeed smiled upon this family . . . Mr. Dilling? What a delightful surprise . . . Mrs. Pratt,” she went on, bowing and smiling impartially, drawing everyone about her, if not actually, at least by suggestion, “dotell me that I am to sit next to Mr. Dilling, and—” with an arch glance at her host, “not too far from Mr. Pratt!”
“Mr. Dilling is to take you in to dinner,” replied the hostess, tartly.
The cocktails, supplementing Mrs. Barrington’s entrance, infused new life into the party. Most of those present walked from the drawing-room in a pleasant frame of mind.
“They say that society is divided into two classes,” said Hebe, as they took their places at the table, “those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. I don’t know that I should confess it, but I belong to the latter class. I’m always ready for a meal . . . Ah, what a charming room this is!”
With one or two exceptions, the guests were unpleasantly impressed by this expression of frank admiration. According to their canons of etiquette, personal remarks were not The Thing. But if the impulse to make one proved utterly irresistible, then it should be prefaced by some such phrase as,
“If I may be pardoned for saying so, that is a beautiful . . .” or, “I hope you won’t be offended if I pass a remark on your . . .”
Even Mrs. Pratt was only slightly mollified. The personnel of her dinner party differed radically from what she had designed. Indeed, of the eleven guests who took their places at the table, there were but three whose names had figured on her original list of invitations. Besides, she was not conscious of the instinctive liking for Mrs. Barrington that Sullivan had predicted. Quite the contrary! In the first place, she disapproved of her gown—a shimmering sheath of opalescent sequins infinitely more striking than that which Mrs. Pratt herself was wearing. In the second place, she did not like a(nother) woman to monopolise the conversation. In the third place, she objected to the manner in which Augustus was being captivated right under her very eyes, and these were but a few of the items that she set down upon her mental score. But that Mrs. Barrington was smart could not be denied; and as illustrious names slipped artfully into the recital of her experiences and associations, most of the assembled company found themselves giving her a grudging respect. There were four exceptions—the Dillings, Sullivan and Azalea.