“I’m sure I’ve heard of you, Dr. Prendergast,” she glowed at that gentleman. “But where, or from whom, I simply can’t remember. I have the most dreadful habit of forgetting names . . . if it weren’t for Toddles, there, I’d forget my own. He’s just as good at remembering as I am at forgetting, so we manage famously, eh, my fond love?”
Barrington hid a smile and mumbled something that passed for an answer. He was a delightful little man who had become accustomed to his wife’s brilliant impertinences, and rather enjoyed them when they were not carried too far.
He had not been taken into her confidence, of late, but suspected that she had some telling reason for imposing these curious people and this abominable dinner upon him. It was his nature to be amiable under trying circumstances, so he made himself agreeable to the ladies on either side, and tried to look upon the occasion as a bit of a lark. Mrs. Leeds was not lacking in charm—a pale little creature whose mouth had a discontented droop and who was ashamed or afraid to meet her husband’s eyes. She talked bridge throughout the evening, bewailing the sums she had lost because someone at the table had failed to bid or to play according to the rules of the game. It was quite distressing to hear her re-play hands that should have added to her score below the line, but which built the tower for her opponents.
“For example,” she said, under cover of Dr. Prendergast’s monologue, “only last night, the most unheard-of thing happened! I declared no trump. Though weak in spades I had every suit protected, and was perfectly justified in my declaration. The man on my left bid two spades. My partner passed, telling me he had no protection in that suit, but I felt safe in raising to two no trump, because, supposing that the bidder held ace, king to five,at least, I knew that my queen was sufficiently guarded by two little ones. Do you follow me?” she asked, anxiously.
“Perfectly,” lied Barrington. “And then what happened?”
“Well, the bidder led the seven of spades. My partner laid down his hand which only held the ten. Picture my horror when this woman—” she indicated an imaginary third player “—took the trick with the ace, and thenled the Jack through my Queen! Of course, my hand was shot absolutely to bits. They took five straight spade tricks and two in diamonds before I had a look in. Time after time, I am penalised just that way by playing with imbeciles who don’t know how to bid.”
“Rotten luck,” sympathised Barrington. “What the devil is this we are eating?”
Mrs. Prendergast was the simplest person to entertain. When not giving undivided attention to her husband, she was entrusting to her sympathetic partner a list of his outstanding virtues as a citizen, husband and father.
What “the Dawkter” thought and said provided her with an inexhaustible topic for conversation. Apparently she had no opinions of her own, but, as her husband was quite willing to listen to the echo of his oracles, they were an exceedingly happy couple.
The Doctor was a generous-waisted gentleman whose talents exercised themselves in the field of proprietary medicine.Prendergast’s Anti-Agony Alimentwas just beginning to fraternise with Best Wear Tires, Breakfast Foods and Theatrical Attractions on the bill boards. Presently, however, as a result of sapient advertising and the deplorable ignorance of English by the people who speak it, “aliment” merged into “ailment” andPrendergast’s Anti-Agony Ailmentbecame the popular specific for those to whom all advertising makes direct appeal.
And so carefully generalised was the nature of the disorder it was supposed to correct that the decoction was consumed indiscriminately by sufferers from rheumatism, chilblains, dyspepsy, sciatica, high blood pressure and sclerosis. According to the testimonials that made their way into the press it did many people . . . good.
The Doctor’s mind was full of human ills, and the value of advertising. To the latter he was a recent convert, and inevitably fanatical. Requiring several thousand dollars to carry on his campaign, he was doing his best to bring the others to his point of view.
With the exception of Mrs. Barrington, no one gave him any encouragement. Throughout three entire courses, she murmured, “Incredible! Amazing! It sounds like a fairy tale!” at moments when he might have given some one else an opportunity to speak, and started him off again with renewed zest and vigour. Under cover of his eloquence, she talked to Raymond Dilling.
Dilling was suffering acute mental and physical distress. Fastidious always about his food, he could not eat the dishes put before him, and the little bit he did manage to swallow was flavoured with the scent which Hebe Barrington perpetually exuded. Positively, he would have preferred the odour of moth balls.
He had never seen a woman so naked . . . not even his wife. Marjorie emphasised a characteristic which she called modesty and, having no curiosity whatever about the human form, Dilling respected her reserve.
He sat at the corner of the table, next to Mrs. Pratt, and found that he could not escape contact with the warm mundanity of Mrs. Barrington. Although the table was not crowded, she seemed to give him no room. Once or twice, he shuddered, and she mistaking his movement, smiled provocatively into his eyes.
“You haven’t forgotten about Monday afternoon?” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking of it all week.”
Dilling had forgotten.
“There’s really nothing to be gained by discussing the proposition yet,” he said. “We’ve been so busy in the House, I haven’t had time to think about it.”
“No matter. We can become friends,” she murmured, significantly. “Can’t we?”
A sudden silence relieved him of the necessity to answer. Dr. Prendergast had run down, and was looking at Mrs. Barrington.
“Positively the most interesting thing I ever heard,” she cried. “Toddles, I wishyoucould invent something other than tarradiddles.Dosend me an autographed bottle, Doctor! I haven’t a thing the matter with me, and don’t promise to use it. I’m so disgustingly healthy. But I’d love to have it to put on the shelf with my signed books and other treasures. Won’t it be nice, Toddles?”
Azalea bent her head above her plate and scarcely knew whether to be angry or amused. Sitting on the same side of the table as Mrs. Barrington, Dilling and the Doctor, neither she nor her partner, Leeds, could see exactly what was going on. But what she did not divine, was reflected in the varying expressions of Turner, who sat on Mrs. Pratt’s left, Eva Leeds and Marjorie. Even Pratt, who had fallen an instant and unresisting victim to Hebe Barrington’s charms, gave her more than inkling of the by-play at the other end of the table.
She was very much alive to the presence of Sullivan, who sat directly opposite and assumed towards Marjorie an air of offensive proprietorship. Prejudiced against him perhaps by the opinion of her friends, she had never felt for the man active dislike until this moment when every slanderous tale she had heard leaped into her mind. Although he had become a frequent visitor at the Dilling home, she had met him for the first time this evening, and had not the slightest desire to continue the acquaintance. Furthermore, she wondered if Marjorie could be persuaded to put an end to such a friendship.
“Are you having a good time, little woman?” she heard him whisper.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Marjorie, hoping that telling a polite lie would not be a sin.
“Not so good as though we were having dinner alone—without all these dull people?”
“No,” admitted Marjorie.
“When shall we have another party . . . of our own?”
“I don’t know just now. Perhaps next week.”
By the furious colour that surged into Marjorie’s cheeks, Azalea knew that Sullivan had caressed her under cover of the table.
“It’s always at this point that the liveliest dinner begins to grow dull,” cried Hebe Barrington. “Have you ever noticed it, Mrs. Pratt? No? Dear me,whatpartners you must have had! I believe therearesuper-women with whom men are never tiresome. How do you account for that, Doctor?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she went on, “I have a theory of my own regarding this slump in brilliancy and wit. It is simply a matter of being too well fed. The animal wants to stretch and sleep. What do you think?” she smiled at Augustus, who was so disturbed by this sudden attention that he interfered with Cr’ymer’s unsteady serving of the wine and between them they managed to upset the decanter.
“Oh, Mrs. Pratt!” Hebe turned in mock terror to her hostess. “I throw myself upon your protection. He is going to blame me! I’m sorry, but I’m innocent. Uneasy looks the face that wears a frown, Mr. Pratt! If you will only forgive me, I’ll promise not to speak to you again all evening.”
“Wish you’d get the missus to go that far,” retorted Augustus, avoiding his wife’s eye.
There was a laugh in which Mrs. Pratt did not join. Conversation dropped to a murmur between couples. Hebe repeated her question to Dilling and received from him a grudging affirmative. A ponderous hummock of doughy consistency was tasted and thrust aside, and the hostess rose from the table.
“Poor Augustus!” whispered Hebe, as she sank down beside Azalea in the drawing-room. “Won’t hell-fire be his when we’ve gone?”
“Perhaps if we’re especially nice to her, she will have forgotten by then.”
“Not a chance, my dear! I don’t know the individual, but I know the type. Death will be his only escape . . . But, tell me, just who are you?”
“Nobody in particular,” answered Azalea. “That’s why I’m here,” she added, with an unusual touch of malice.
Mrs. Barrington was startled at this thrust. Into her eyes there shone a budding respect for the girl.
“Yes, but whoareyou? What’s your name?”
Azalea told her.
“Deane? Oh! You’re a great friend of the Dillings, then?”
“You seem surprised.”
“I am,” confessed the other woman. “I’ve heard of you, but—er—” she ran an appraising look over the reconstructed gown that had adorned the person of Lady Elton for three years—“I thought you would be different.”
“A doubtful compliment,” suggested Azalea.
“As you like,” returned Hebe, and seated herself at the piano.
Somewhat to Azalea’s surprise, Mrs. Barrington made no effort to capture Dilling when the men re-joined them. She turned the battery of her fascinations upon Pratt with an occasional shot at the Doctor. Dilling made his way directly to Azalea and dropped on the chair beside her.
“How long do these things last?” he enquired, under his breath. “Can’t we go home?”
“In a few minutes. Wait until Mrs. Barrington stops singing. The bridge players will probably stay on.”
Dilling made a frank signal to his wife, then turned back to the girl. “Do you mind coming to the house with us?” he asked. “I will see you home. There is something particular I want to say.”
The song ended abruptly, and Azalea raised her eyes to meet those of Hebe Barrington. There was something in their expression that made her flush. And there was the same suggestiveness, the same mockery in her words at parting.
“If Miss Deane will wait until I have redeemed my promise to Mr. Pratt and sung him one more song, we will drop her at the door and save Mr. Dilling the trouble.”
“Cut him out of that pleasure,” amended Barrington, quickly.
“Even pleasures are troublesome, Toddles, dear,” said his wife, “look at me, for an illustration. However, there may be another time . . . You must all come and see me. They say my parties are rather fun. I’m usually at home on Friday evenings, and nearly every Sunday afternoon.”
Azalea did not speak for a moment after Dilling had made his proposition. She dared not trust her voice.
“You can’t be offended?” he asked, bluntly.
She shook her head.
“On the contrary, it gives me the most extraordinary sense of pleasure that you want me . . . that you think I can be of some real service to you.”
“Well?”
“Well . . . that’s all! It’s simply out of the question! I know my father will never hear of such a thing.”
“He must! I’ll see him to-morrow. I’ll show him that he’s wrong. I’ll say . . .”
“You’ll say,” interrupted Azalea, forcing a laugh, “ ‘Sir, I have come to make a formal request for your daughter’s . . . shorthand!’ And then, “I’m glad, for your sake, Mr. Dilling, we don’t own a dog!”
“You can’t discourage me,” cried Dilling. “I’ve made up my mind that we will work together, and if you consent I feel that the thing is as good as settled.”
It was. The following morning, when Azalea carried in her father’s breakfast tray, she found that he had passed out of life as he had passed through it, easily, and without toil or struggle.
Two months had passed since Azalea had undertaken her secretarial duties. She felt that she had entered into a new life, that a wonderful renascence was hers. Never in all her imaginings, had she dreamed of days so replete with happiness.
A sense of deference to the dead prompted Mrs. Deane to protest against her daughter’s accepting the appointment. They talked at one another across an abyss that widened daily and separated them.
“You shouldn’t do it, Azalea,” she cried. “It doesn’t seem right. You’re disobeying your father when he’s scarcely cold in the grave . . . It isn’t as though you didn’t know that . . . I mean, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if he had been dead a long time . . .”
“Disobedience is a matter of principle, not time, mother!” returned the girl. “Don’t you see that I have no choice? We can’t live without the equivalent of father’s superannuation allowance!”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Deane whimpered, “Business is so difficult for a woman to grasp . . . Oh, Azalea, if he knows it, he will be so dreadfully annoyed! Isn’t there some other way? If you had only been married . . .”
“Please, mother, let’s not go into that! I’m sorry to have disappointed you, but for myself, I haven’t a single regret. I don’t look upon marriage as the only solution of a woman’s financial problems, you know.”
“It’s a convenient one,” argued Mrs. Deane, rather more pertinently than usual. “There are the girls . . . they don’t have to work.”
“If they don’t, then they are cheating their husbands,” cried Azalea, purposely misunderstanding. “And too many married women who don’t cheat their husbands are being cheated—like you,” she nearly ended.
“Oh, my child!”
“I can’t look upon marriage as a refuge from the dangers that beset a female traveller on the Sea of Life. To me it is a tricky craft that may play you false as it operates between the two inescapable ports of Birth and Death.”
“And you are our baby, too,” sighed Mrs. Deane, as irrelevantly as Mrs. Nickleby.
“A baby who has grown up at last, and thanks God for the opportunity that has come disguised as a necessity; a baby, dear mother, who does not look upon congenial work as a test of courage, but as a divine privilege.”
Curiously enough, once she was established in her new position, unreserved approval was expressed among her friends. Many of them attributed the move to some suggestion of their own. Lady Denby and Mrs. Hudson both remembered having advised Azalea to take some such step years ago. Lady Elton thought she had shown her good sense at last, but hoped that Mr. Dilling would not be too exacting. Entertaining was a bore under the best of conditions. She simply could not imagine getting along without Azalea’s assistance. Mrs. Long saw an opportunity for picking up odd bits of political gossip that eluded the ordinary reporter, and making a neat little income on the side.
“You’re clever enough to do it, my dear,” she said. “Now, don’t be thin-skinned. Spice is what the people want—any of them who bother to read the papers.”
As for Dilling, he felt himself infused with new zest and enthusiasm. He was conscious of a greater capacity for work, an accession of power. His brain seemed to function tirelessly and with amazing clearness. He developed a veritable rapacity for what appeared to be ineluctable problems, and he who had been a model of industry became a miracle of inexhaustible energy.
It was about this time that men began to look to him as the most able exponent of their political creeds; it was upon him that they called to master such questions as Newfoundland’s entrance into the Dominion, trade with the West Indies, reciprocity with the United States, and upon his slender shoulders fell the burden of carrying on the most contentious debate of latter times—Canada’s Naval Policy. In short, it was to him that his Party turned, as the only man capable of grasping those knotty issues of international importance and presenting Canada’s case in a masterly way before the Council of the Nations.
“I’ve been invited to join the Golf Club,” he announced one morning, as Azalea came into the office.
“I’m glad! You’re not hesitating about it, are you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think you are becoming no end of a social lion,” she replied, smiling, “and that soon you will be roaring as lustily in drawing-rooms as on the floor of the House. Seriously, I think you should accept. It will be good for Marjorie.”
“I’m not so sure. She hasn’t many friends among that crowd. However, I think I see what you mean.”
Azalea hoped he did. She was desperately anxious for him to realise that in the Capital success is regarded from only one angle, the Social. Professional, literary, political, all these are but feeders to the main issue.
“I spent the afternoon with your exceptionally brilliant Dr. Aldrich,” said Sir Paul Pollock, the eminent British anthropologist, during the course of a dinner the Chesleys had given in his honour.
“Aldrich?” echoed the company. “Who’s he?”
Sir Paul did not take the question seriously. “I don’t blame you,” he laughed. “Two scientists at the same party would be excessively heavy wheeling.”
“But whoishe?” insisted Miss Mabel Angus-McCallum. “I never heard of him.”
“Nor I . . .”
“Nor I . . .”
“Well—ah—ha—if you are not pulling my leg,” answered the amazed guest, “perhaps you will be interested in knowing that he is one of the most famous biologists living. But—ah—ha—! I expect you are just stringing me.”
It was gradually borne in upon him that they were not, that they had no desire to cultivate the men and women whose lives are devoted to the advancement of their race, that even the names of such people were unfamiliar to them and that prominence in their especial sphere was clouded by a total eclipse of the social solar system.
It was this latter point that Azalea ardently wished to make Dilling recognise. He was so immersed in his public life that there was little time for the consideration of any other question, and Marjorie had not sufficient astuteness to make the most of her advantage or profit by experiences.
She seemed incapable of keeping step with her husband, of acquiring a broader vision than that which was hers in Pinto Plains. In her eyes, a thousand dollars was always a staggering sum, five hundred an immense concourse of people.
“But, dearest Marjorie,” cried Azalea, in affectionate exasperation one day, “youmustlearn to see beyond a home-made dress and a parish tea-party!”
“If my clothes and my food mean more to people than I do, myself,” argued Marjorie, “then I don’t want to have anything more to do with them. We’re just plain Canadians, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise!”
“Yes, but—but—” Azalea often found herself at a loss for illustrations that would co-ordinate with her friend’s code of ethics, “conforming to certain conventions isn’t exactly pretence. You might look upon it as a ceremony, ritual, something that is an adjunct to a position.”
“A lady is a lady anywhere,” murmured Marjorie conscious, herself, that she was not precisely strengthening her argument.
“So is a clergyman,” replied Azalea, “but you would not like to see him conduct a Service in a pair of tennis flannels or a bathing suit.”
“Oh!” The point had gone home. “What have I done that’s wrong?”
“Nothing so very wrong, you dear lamb,” said the older girl, kissing Marjorie’s troubled mouth, “but try not to be so humble. Humility is a splendid virtue, sometimes—but not when we’re heading for the Cabinet!”
“It frightens me to think of it.”
“But you must overcome that, and feel perfectly at ease with Mrs. Blaine, Mrs. Carmichael, Lady Denby and the others. You must make them your friends.”
“I can’t be friends with people if they don’t want me!”
Azalea tried to explain that in public life friendship and association are more or less interchangeable terms. “You were not friends with all your classmates at school,” she said, “but you associated with them, especially on formal occasions. It was then that your status was fixed by your class. It is exactly the same with your position as Mr. Dilling’s wife. You must feel yourself worthy of belonging to the highest class—the class which has been reached by a very prominent man, who will be known in history as one of the greatest statesmen of his country.”
“What must I do?” asked Marjorie, as Mrs. Deane might have said it.
“Learn and observe social distinctions. Everyone else does. Show that you respect your husband’s achievements and others will follow your lead. Why, the Society Columns are read to better advantage by the tradespeople, the gas inspector, the telephone operators, the very cab drivers, than you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Marjorie, very close to tears.
“I mean that those people almost unerringly place the rest of us in our proper class. They observe the rules of precedence, which you don’t. If there happened to be but one cab at a stand, and both you and Mrs. Blaine wanted it, which one of you would get the thing?”
Marjorie did not answer.
“Mrs. Blaine! You know it! Why? Because she goes to Church regularly on Sundays, pays her bills promptly, refuses to gossip and slander her neighbours? Not a bit of it! Because she puts a value on herself that is compatible with her husband’s position . . . at least, that’s near enough the mark to serve my purpose in scolding you!”
“All right,” sighed Marjorie, “I’ll try to be stiff with people, if that’s the way to help Raymond. I don’t believe it, you know, Azalea, but I think I see what you mean.”
Azalea, however, was not so sanguine.
“Do you play golf?” she asked Dilling.
“Oh, I’ve handled the clubs once or twice. But I won’t have any time to devote to the game.”
“You must make time. It will do you a world of good. All play and no work will make you an ideal politician,” she teased.
“You will come out with us to dinner, the first night we go?”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “You must take someone infinitely more distinguished. You must shine and let your light be seen before men. If I might make a suggestion, give a very exclusive dinner party and invite the Chief.”
“But you must come, too!”
“We’ll see. In the meantime, hadn’t we better tackle this formidable mail? It seems to grow larger every morning.”
Towards the middle of the afternoon, a spare, thin-lipped little man came into the room.
“Howdy, Raymond?” he greeted. “Been tryin’ to run you down to your hole this last half hour. Got kinder twisted in this big buildin’.”
“How are you, Sam?” said Dilling, shaking hands. “It’s good to see someone from home. Just get in?”
“Just about. How’s the Missus and the kids?”
Dilling assured his visitor that their health was good.
“We’ve had an awful lot of sickness this winter. First, the baby was taken with swollen glands, and we’d no sooner got her up an’ about when Sammy came down with grippe, and on top o’ that, the wife had to be operated on for appendicitis. Makes me creep to think what the doctor’s bill is goin’ to be.”
“Don’t worry about that, Sam. Halsey is the soul of consideration and patience.”
“Still, he’s got to be paid. Swell office, you’ve got, Raymond.”
Dilling smiled.
“An improvement on my old one, but modest as offices go.”
“This all there is of it?” queried the stranger.
“This is all. We don’t have suites, you know, until we get to be Deputies or Commissioners, perhaps. It’s plenty large enough.”
“Sure. I was only wonderin’ where we could have a little talk—a kinduv private confab, as you might say,” returned the other, nodding at Azalea’s industrious back.
“We can have it right here,” said Dilling, promptly. “This is my confidential secretary, Miss Deane. Mr. Sam Dunlop, of Pinto Plains. Miss Deane. He’s an old friend and worked hard at the time of my election. Go ahead, Sam. What is it?”
“Well—er—” began Mr. Dunlop, in some embarrassment, “it’s about that block of ours out home. You mind when we four bought it from them Winnipeg fellows, the idea was that they would start in putting improvements all around us?”
“In the centre of the town,” supplemented Dilling. “I remember very well. There was some talk of street cars. What of it?”
“They’re a bunch of shysters, that’s what! They haven’t spent a dollar on First or Second Streets, they only pulled down a couple of buildings on the Avenue, and they’re investin’ every dollar they can raise to develop Pond Park and turn it into a summer resort. And business is trailin’ ’em right out that way.”
Dilling looked grave.
“Has anyone actually moved off First Street?”
“Bowers is moving in the spring. Jennings got an option on the corner of Cedar and the Avenue which takes the two biggest merchants away. After that, all the little fellows will go.”
“And the hotel they talked about?”
“If they build, it’ll be out the other way. Oh, there ain’t a bit of use in you settin’ there thinkin’ that we’ve got a chance,” cried Mr. Dunlop. “We’ve studied this thing till it’s a wonder we didn’t get brain fever. Says Lewis, ‘We four went into this here deal as friends and we’ll stick together. You go down to Ottawa and see Raymond. He’ll look after us, same as we’ve been tryin’ to look after his interests.’ Mumford’s the hardest hit—next to me, that is! But none of us, outside of yourself, can afford to hold that property an’ pay taxes while the town grows in the other direction.”
“And what do you think I can do?” asked Dilling, in a hard voice.
“You can recommend the sale of our block to the Government, boy, that’s where you come in!” Mr. Dunlop dragged his chair closer and poured forth his proposition in a rapid whisper.
“But Pinto Plains doesn’t need another Post Office,” argued Raymond Dilling. “The Liberals spent fifty thousand dollars for the one we have only a few years ago, and you were the first to denounce it, Sam. Everyone agreed that the town wouldn’t grow up to it in a hundred years.”
“But, damn it all, Raymond, can’t you see that this is different? Can’t you get it through your head that we’ll be ruined unless we can sell that property and sell it quick? All of us—of course, exceptin’ you—all of us have got to raise interest on the money we borrowed to put into it, and Lord knows where mine is coming from. What’s a dinky little Post Office to the Government? Lewis says it ought to be a cinch to put it through, for he can condemn the other one, easy! How long do you figger it’ll take to get the matter settled, son?”
“It’s settled right now, so far as I’m concerned.”
“How do you mean?”
“I can’t undertake such a job.”
“You . . . what?”
“You’re asking me to betray the confidence of the country, Sam; to rob the Treasury. That’s the proposition in plain English, isn’t it?”
Mr. Dunlop denied this accusation eloquently, if irrationally. He cajoled, he stormed, he pleaded, he threatened. He reminded Dilling that during his election campaign, support had been based on friendship, not a strict adherence to truthfulness, and that the boys had not stopped to consider every lie that was told on his behalf.
“Runnin’ the country ain’t the same as runnin’ a Sunday School,” he added, in justification.
“The governing principles should be the same,” answered Dilling. “No, Sam, I can’t do it. Argument is useless. When you and the boys think it over, you will agree that the man who would have carried out your proposition is not the type that you would have to mould the policy of the Nation. I hope that Pinto Plains will never send a chap like that to Parliament! You’ll come down to the house, of course, won’t you?”
But Mr. Dunlop did not hear the invitation. He was so absorbed in expressing his opinion of the man he had sent to Parliament, that he failed to recognise Sir Robert Borden whom he passed in the corridor, and ran violently into Sir Eric and Lady Denby without uttering a word of apology.
“We’ll fix him,” he muttered under his breath. “We’ll fix him!”
In the office there was silence save for the sibilent fluttering of papers on Azalea’s desk. Presently, Dilling spoke.
“I’m too indignant at the moment to be sorry for them!” he said. “And it’s something of a shock to find that they held me in no higher esteem than to think I would be a party to such jobbery.”
“I doubt that they looked at the matter in just that way. Isn’t it merely another example of the common practice of bringing your white elephant to feed at the Dominion crib?”
“It’s another example of perverted ethics,” growled Dilling, and he went angrily off to lunch.
Azalea sat on, thinking. What, she asked herself, would be the outcome of Raymond Dilling’s uncompromising attitude with men of Dunlop’s calibre? Would he, like Marjorie, persistently close his eyes to the advantage of temporising in matters that affected his political career? Would he never learn that a gentle lie turneth away enquiry and that as Dunlop had so truly said, the country was not run like a Sunday School? She had heard him reject more than one proposition made by men of his own Party who never could be brought to see the criminous side of misappropriation of public funds. She had known him to ignore the Patronage system by refusing positions to incompetents, as bluntly as he had discarded Dunlop’s scheme. And a little compromising, or even temporising, would have accomplished his object without loss of good will.
“Custom,” he once said in answer to her remonstrance, “can never in my opinion sanctify piracy or brigandage. I don’t believe in Patronage and never shall. Incompetency should be treated and overcome if possible, but not rewarded.”
Rejoicing, as she did, in this fine adherence both to the letter and spirit of his political creed, yet she could not but feel apprehensive for his political future. As a lamp unto his feet were the rules of the Independence of Parliament, but he was rapidly making enemies when by the employment of a little diplomacy he might have had hosts of friends. Scarcely a week passed without bringing forth some public attack upon him, and the mere fact that he championed a cause was sufficient to win for it a mob of fanatical obstructionists.
Yet Azalea realised that anything less than this unswerving rectitude would have been for Dilling ignominious surrender, and she prayed that he might uphold his ideals at all costs, that he might achieve a spiritual triumph even at the price of material defeat. She wondered how it would all end.
“You had better go up to the House, to-night,” called Long, as he passed his wife’s door on his way to dress for dinner.
“What’s going on? I’m booked for bridge at the Blaine’s.”
“Dilling’s going to speak. I think you’ll be repaid for calling off your game.”
“All right. I’ll telephone,” said Mrs. Long, carefully adjusting a hair net. “Perhaps the others would like to go. Only two tables, I understand . . .”
The House was crowded by the time Mrs. Blaine and her party arrived. The “Ladies of the Cabinet” were shown, of course, into the front row of the Speaker’s Gallery, and those of lesser rank were distributed wherever space permitted.
Marjorie had been directed to a seat in the second row, immediately behind Mrs. Carmichael and next to Mrs. Long, beyond whom sat Eva Leeds, Pamela de Latour and Mrs. Chesley. Strictly speaking, none of them deserved a place in the Member’s Gallery, but in deference to Mrs. Blaine, whose guests they were, and also to their social status, they were thus happily privileged. The vacancy next Marjorie was presently filled by Mrs. Pratt, although Deputy Minister O’Neill’s wife sat several rows behind.
“Well, upon my word,” whispered Mrs. Carmichael to Mme. Valleau, wife of the Postmaster-General, “The Virginia Creeper will be clinging to us, next. How does she do it?”
There was no mystery. Mrs. Pratt’s superb lack of what her husband termed “gulp” was partially responsible; and, in addition, she knew how to wring one hundred per cent returns out of a five dollar bill. The doorkeeper, who was the object of her investment, was more affected by the frigidity of her reception than she was, herself.
“Good evening, Lady Denby . . . How d’yuh do, Mrs. Blaine? Mrs. Carmichael . . . Good evening, Madame Valleau . . .” She bowed right and left, murmuring names—prominent names—and creating the impression among those who didn’t know, that she was on pleasantly intimate terms with every one worth while. “Oh, Mrs. Dilling . . . I didn’t notice you!”
“Good evening,” returned Marjorie, with strained politeness.
She was determined to be just as stiff as Azalea could have wished. Not that she was converted to the belief that this attitude on her part would be in the least helpful to Raymond, but because she was, by nature, docile and amenable to discipline. Always for Marjorie the word “must” held an ineluctable obligation.
Therefore, when Azalea insisted that she must adopt a greater formality of manner, the time came when Marjorie surrendered.
“Who is that woman in the other Gallery?” asked Mrs. Long, from behind a jewelled lorgnette.
“Which one?” queried Pamela de Latour.
“There—in the front row. She seems to have forgotten her clothes, so far as her torso is concerned.”
“Oh,” cut in Mrs. Pratt, “that’s Mrs. Barrington. They’ve recently come to Ottawa. Her husband’s something or other on the Driveway Commission. I can’t akkerately say just what, although Mr. Pratt was largely instrumental in getting him appointed.”
“Barrington?” echoed Mrs. Chesley, “why, that’s the woman who’s rushing Raymond Dilling, isn’t it?”
“Sh—sh—sh—” warned Pamela, nodding in Marjorie’s direction.
“Well, isn’t it?” insisted the other.
“Hush! She’ll hear you.”
“I suppose that means it is. Does she know?”
“I don’t think so,” whispered Pamela. “Doesn’t see much beyond the kitchen cabinet and the drawing-room curtains, I fancy.”
“Lucky woman,” murmured Helena Chesley, thinking of her impressionable husband.
“Who’s speaking?” Mrs. Long was moved to ask. Until that moment, no one had given a glance at the House.
Mr. Sullivan, it seemed, had the floor. A few Members watched him languidly. Nobody listened.
Pamela de Latour turned attentive eyes upon him for a moment or two. Then,
“There’s really something intriguing about that man,” she murmured. “If only he would apply a little veneer to cover the knots once in a while, he would be accepted everywhere. No one minds what he does when you come to analyse things; only they mind what he does so openly. Does anyone happen to know the reigning favourite?”
“I hear she is a taffy-haired manicurist,” whispered Eva Leeds, wishing they had stayed at home and played Bridge. Her losses had been shocking of late, and she felt that the tide of bad luck would certainly have turned this evening. That was always the way, she never really had a chance! “But there’s no telling . . . That may be ancient history. I haven’t heard much about him, lately.”
“About whom?” demanded Madame Valleau, bending back her handsome head in order to see the speaker. She was supposed to be the best informed lady in the Cabinet—informed, that is to say, regarding the shadowy side of the Members’ private lives.
They told her.
“Oh, Sullivan,” she cried, in her fascinating broken English. “A delightful dog, hein? I wish there were more men like him in this dull town!”
Mrs. Carmichael, having two young daughters to whom she enjoyed applying the inappropriate word “innocent”, protested.
“Why, no woman is safe with him,” she said.
“A few,” argued Madame, allowing her eyes to travel slowly over the immediate group. “Besides, who wants to feel safe with any man? Not I, for one! If women had been safe with men, there would have been no need for cavaliers, for gallantry. Sullivan is charming.”
“I think he’s a conscienceless old reprobate,” declared Mrs. Carmichael, “and the National Council should make an example of him.”
Marjorie leaned forward. It required a good deal of courage on her part to push into this argument, but she felt that loyalty to an absent friend demanded it.
“You misjudge him, Mrs. Carmichael,” she defended. “I know him very well and I am certain the things people say about him are not true. He’s too kind to everybody, that’s his trouble! He is as kind to a—a—manicurist as he is to . . . well, to me! He’s always so ready to help people and to give them good advice!”
Mme. Valleau gave vent to a musical little scream that was heard by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and impelled him to shake a playful warning for silence at her.
“Don’t kill my enthusiasm for that man by telling me he is giving good advice!” she said. “He won’t be doing that for a long while, I’ll be bound.”
“Why not?” demanded Marjorie.
“Because it’s only when Sullivan is too old to give the bad example he will begin to give the good advice,” returned the Frenchwoman. “Mon Dieu, I hope that won’t be for many a long day.”
“I don’t think you are fair to him,” championed Marjorie.
“My child,” interrupted Lady Denby, “I should be greatly disturbed if I thought you were trying, seriously, to defend that man! Mme. Valleau has original ideas on every subject, including honour, but for you to express yourself favourably on Sullivan’s behalf, or admit friendship with him, would be little short of compromising. I know you too well to misunderstand, but these others might get a sadly erroneous impression.”
“But . . .” began Marjorie.
“Stop chattering,” cautioned Mrs. Long, who had only just stopped, herself. “Mr. Dilling is going to speak.”
The House filled rapidly. Members slipped into their seats and turned towards the slender young man who stood, hand on hip, in the very last row of back benches. In the Press Gallery there wasn’t a vacant chair. Representatives of the leading dailies jostled and crowded one another at the desk, and those men who could not obtain so convenient a position, drew sheaves of copy paper from their pockets and recorded Dilling’s speech on the surface offered by their neighbour’s backs. Pages flung themselves on the steps of the Speaker’s dais, and relaxed into an attitude that was almost inattentive. They had learned that while the Member for Pinto Plains was speaking, the House rested from its customary finger-snapping, and, like otiose diversions.
A cheer crashed through the silence. On the right of the Speaker, desks were thumped and feet beat upon the floor. A babel arose from the Opposition, and in the Galleries, visitors forgot that they were “strangers in the House,” and that, like the children of a bye-gone generation, they were supposed to be unheard.
“Or-r-der,” drawled the Speaker. And the clamour died.
“Bon!” chuckled Madame Valleau. “He has the courage to speak, that Dilling—and behind his words, there is the mind to think!”
“Very good,” pronounced the ladies surrounding Marjorie. “Most interesting! Quite excellent, indeed!”
“Thank you,” returned Marjorie, so stiffly that they looked at her in amazement, wondering if success had suddenly turned her head.
They wondered still more when a messenger approached her, delivered a note and said there would be an answer. Eyebrows were raised, and incredulity was telegraphed from one to the other of the group.
“What’s this?” asked Lady Denby, in what she conceived to be a playful tone. “Have we an admirer in the House?”
A furious blush and confused stammering was Marjorie’s reply. With one of those rare flashes of insight for which she could never account, she knew that in view of the recent discussion about Sullivan and her defence of him, he was suspected of being the writer of that letter. She didn’t blame the women in the least, for she suspected him, herself.
But she was mistaken. The scrawling signature of Hebe Barrington met her eye as she hastily turned the last page, and the body of the communication was an invitation to supper.
“I have persuaded Mr. Dilling to join us,” the letter announced, “and he asked me to say that we would meet in his room, at once. Please come!”
“Mrs. Barrington has invited me to supper,” Marjorie explained, with a noticeable moderation of stiffness. “I think I will say good night and hurry on.”
“What’s got into her?” asked the ladies. “Her naiveté was bad enough, but her snobbishness is insufferable!”
Marjorie had never seen a home just like the Barrington’s. It reminded her of the Ancient Chattellarium, and struck her as being a curious place in which to live. There weren’t two chairs that matched in the whole house, and the black rugs and hangings she found very depressing. Moreover, the rooms bore names as strange as their furnishings, and she had no idea what her hostess meant by the Cuddlery or the Tiffinaria.
Mrs. Barrington entertained easily. She did not stand in the centre of the drawing-room, beneath the chandelier, and greet her guests with flattering though repetitive phrases. In the first place, there wasn’t, properly speaking, a drawing-room. In the second, there was no chandelier. What light there was, came from half a dozen shaded sconces, and a pair of Roman lamps. There were no pictures on the wall. At least, Marjorie did not call them pictures. They were scratchy drawings representing Chinamen engaged in such profitless occupations as contemplating the tonsils of a large-mouthed dragon, or leaning thoughtfully upon a naked blade—naked, that is, save for the head that clothed the point of it. She had never seen their like, before, and thoroughly disapproved of them.
Mrs. Barrington did not stand in the drawing-room at all, but wandered about with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other, and seemed intensely surprised to see the people she was entertaining.
“Well,” she greeted more than one guest, “fancy your trotting away out here. Are you with anyone or did you come alone?”
With the exception of Mr. Sullivan and the Carmichael girls, they were strangers to Marjorie, as, indeed, many of them were to their hostess.
“Who is the young blood so effectively burgling the cellarette?” she would ask her husband. Or, “Toddles, tell me quickly, is that girl in blue some one I ought to know?”
Supper was spread in the Tiffinaria and eaten all over the house. Marjorie was inexpressibly shocked to hear a nice looking young man call to his partner,
“You wait upstairs, old dear, and I’ll bring up the victuals. We can mangle them on Hebe’s dressing table.”
“Peacherina!” answered the girl, throwing her slipper at him. “What’s on the menu, this evening?”
A recital of the contents of the table and buffet resulted in guarded approbation.
“Get a dab of everything,” called the girl, “and we’ll manage to find something we can digest.”
A Sheffield tray was dismantled and heaped with food sufficient to have served four persons. Added to this, the young man used as a centrepiece his partner’s slipper, into which he had poured a mould of chicken jelly.
The Hon. Member for Morroway was, as always, tenderly solicitous of Marjorie. He made several attempts to find a place in which they could sit to have their supper tete-a-tete, before he was successful.
“Somebody’s in the Cuddlery,” he announced, backing out of the door and guiding her hastily away. “Oh, excuse me,” he cried, to an unseen couple who were occupying a nook under the stairs. “Looks as though we’d have to try the pantry or the kitchen. Let’s see if we can find a corner on the floor above.”
“Oh, no!” protested Marjorie, “I shouldn’t care to do that. Why, can’t we go there—into the front room? I don’t mind others being about.”
“Dear little woman,” Sullivan whispered, and drew her close against him under the guise of protecting her from collision with a youth who carried an empty glass, “of course we don’t mind, but the ridiculous fact is thatthey do!” He sighed in his most elderly manner. “I do wish that Hebe would infuse some dignity into her parties. Perfectly innocent, you understand; not a hint of harm, but just naturally silly and boisterous. Look at young Creel, there, daring Mona Carmichael to stand on her head! By Jove,” he slapped his leg and burst into a laugh that seemed to be a spontaneous expression of hilarious amusement, “he’s got her by the ankles and she’s going to try!”
But, after being trundled about the room like a wheelbarrow, Mona decided that she didn’t want to stand on her head. “I tell you what,” she cried, “let’s dress up in Toddles’ clothes!”
With a whoop they raced for the stairs, half a dozen of them, leaving Marjorie and Sullivan in possession of the room. Shrieks and confused scamperings followed. Evidently, they were much at home, there.
“Who are all these people?” Marjorie wanted to know.
The girls, it seemed, were a dashing and exclusive group whose number, and conduct, had earned for them the sobriquet of “The Naughty Nine”. They were the envy of all those who stood without the golden circle drawn round them, and subsequently, by dint of heroic pressure that was brought to bear, their number was increased by three and they became “The Dirty Dozen”. The youths were the scions of Ottawa’s aristocracy.
“You don’t care for them?” asked Sullivan. “You wouldn’t like Althea to behave in that way?”
The bare suggestion produced physical pain. “But, she wouldn’t,” cried Marjorie. “Shecouldn’t, Mr. Sullivan! Not that they aren’t very—er—bright,” she added, seeking to say the kindly thing.
When they returned to the room, the girls were dressed in Mr. Barrington’s clothing—business suits, riding breeks, pyjamas and underwear, while the boys had costumed themselves in their hostess’s attire.
Marjorie kept telling herself that she was dreaming.
She longed to go home. She could neither enter into the revelry nor did she wish to separate herself from the crowd and stay alone with Sullivan. She had been very uncomfortable with him, lately. Sometimes, almost afraid. She refused to acknowledge this fear, even to herself, but she knew that it existed.
The conversation in the Gallery recurred to her with disturbing vividness—not that slander ever influenced her judgment—ever! The person who was swayed by unkind criticism was, in her opinion, no better than the person who uttered it. At the same time, there was something about the Hon. Member for Morroway from which she instinctively shrank, without suspecting that she was making, by her attitude, a confession of her secret impression of the man.
No amount of reasoning could correct this state of affairs. In vain did she tell herself that he was old enough to be her father, and that his frank affection for them all was merely the enthusiastic expression of a lonely man’s dependence upon a kindly household. In vain did she try to overcome a sensation of shame and personal impurity after she had been alone with him.
“My own mind must be evil,” she scourged herself, time and again. “He never has done or said a thing that Raymond couldn’t know. Whatdoesmake me feel so wicked when I’m alone with him?”
It may have been a sense of impotence that frightened her. She could never see the wheels of Mr. Sullivan’s mind in operation, she could never tell what he was going to do. He seemed to arrive at a goal magically, without progressing step by step, and he had such an uncanny way of divining what she was thinking.
She was not conscious of his footfall, nor of the opening of the doors that admitted him to a closer intimacy, but suddenly, he would stand before her, very near to the Inner Shrine of her Temple, catching her, as it were, unclad, or in the act of prayer, and she couldn’t put him out.
He was very quiet and respectful and walked as though aware that he was in a Holy place, but that didn’t alter the fact that he had passed through those obstructing doors without a sound of warning, and without her permission.
And he took such shocking liberties. For example, Marjorie couldn’t possibly have told how he had been allowed to contract the habit of kissing her. To be sure, it had begun in fun, one evening, when they were playing with the children. But she couldn’t explain why she found it impossible to deny him the privilege thereafter. It was very curious and disturbing.
Perhaps her difficulty lay in the artful naturalness with which he performed his acts of pretty gallantry, taking so much for granted and trading on her clean simplicity.
“I don’t want to behave so that he will think I have nasty notions,” she said to herself, and Sullivan knew it.
“You’re tired, dear,” he said to her, not wholly inattentive to the Vaudeville on the other side of the room. “Lean back against me. Raymond won’t be long, now!”
She felt his arm slip round her and moved away in sudden panic.
“Oh, Mr. Sullivan, not here, please!” she cried.
It wasn’t in the least what she should have said; but there was no opportunity for explanations or corrections then.
“You’re right, little woman,” he whispered, “this isnotthe place. I understand.”
It was only too obvious that he didn’t; that he misconstrued her gentle repulse of all familiarity into a prudish discouragement of this particular expression of it, and his manner suggested satisfaction that she should prefer to receive his caresses when they were alone. It was a case of another door being opened and one which resisted her efforts to close it.
“I’d like to go home,” she said. “Do you think you could find Raymond?”
The Hon. Member for Morroway knew his hostess too well to commit himself to a definite promise. But he murmured something hopeful and made his way with a good deal of bluster to the top of the house.
The door of the Eyrie was closed.
Meanwhile, Dilling had been an unwilling victim to Hebe Barrington’s charms.
“Your wife is coming home with me for a bite of supper,” she had written him, “and I want you, too. The bald truth is—I don’t trust Toddles with a pretty woman, so you must be on hand to see her home.”
But although he had signified his readiness to perform this happy task several times, she had made it impossible for him to break away.
“Don’t you love my little nest?” asked Hebe, closing the door and leading him by the arm to a deep couch, standing well beyond the faint light thrown by a winking oriental lantern.
“It’s very unusual,” said Dilling.
“Everything here has a history,” she told him, “but I won’t tell you about any of my treasures just now. You need only know that this room is called the Eyrie, and I want you to feel that it is your own. Any time, day or night, that you want to run away from the abominations of politics, this place is ready for you. You need not even share it with me—if you don’t wish.”
“Thank you,” muttered Dilling, seeing that she expected him to speak.
“And now, let’s talk about your speech. It was tremendous! How easy it seems to be for you to avoid the feeble word and choose those that thrill one with a sense of power. Every fibre of my being was alive with response to you, to-night. But why didn’t you look at me, Raymond?”
“I? Er—why—I didn’t know that you were there,” stammered the man who was supposed to avoid the trite and obvious.
“But why didn’t you look andsee?” insisted Hebe. “Is the admiration of mankind in general, and of woman in particular so unimportant? Does it give you no stimulation?”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” said Dilling.
He was very ill at ease. Admitting her intellectual attainments, yet he never enjoyed talking with Hebe Barrington as he enjoyed talking with Azalea. He was too conscious of her, too acutely aware of the fact that she sought to attach his scalp to her belt, his frail person to her chariot wheels. Instinctively, he was on his guard against a temptation to which he could not imagine himself surrendering.
“What is it, then?” she asked, passing her fingers through his thin hair.
As Marjorie recoiled from Sullivan, so Dilling tried to withdraw from the caresses of Mrs. Barrington. He had never received advances from women—decent women—and he was shocked, revolted. Even her use of his Christian name jarred unpleasantly upon him whose social standards decreed that although a man and woman might address one another familiarly before the marriage of either party, the instant they turned from the altar, rigid formality should be observed. To be called “Raymond” by a married woman whom he had known but a few weeks, smacked strongly of indecency.
“Is it possible that beneath your discomfiting iciness of manner,” Hebe continued, “you want to attract men, hold them and make them your friends? Do you feel the need of friends, Raymond Dilling?”
“I am only human,” he returned.
Suddenly he felt an overpowering urge to talk, an imperious need for candour. He wanted to open his heart, deplore his failures and the unfulfilment of his desires. He saw his inability to draw men to him, and surround them with a vivid atmosphere of comradeship in political endeavour and a common patriotic inspiration. He felt that men did not like him, that he would never be an adornment to their clubs, one upon whom the success of a social event depended. And, unaccountably, he realised that he cared—cared for himself, and for Marjorie, and for Azalea Deane. As though reading his thoughts, Hebe went on,
“You’ll never do it as you are, Raymond. You are suffering the result of the habit contracted, I have learned, in your college days, when you withdrew yourself from all but the few who recognised your talents and thrust themselves upon you for your worldly, and other-worldly behoof. A native shyness of strangers and an inherited reluctance to spend money on the amenities of life, moved you to live in cloistered exclusiveness, when you should have been expanding your soul in joyous contact with your fellow men. Am I not right?”
“I don’t think it was so bad as that,” said Dilling, fighting against the stupefying effect of the perfume he had learned to associate with her.
“But it was! You avoided human contact, and only by such means is life rid of its tendency to become set and small. Don’t you remember the French axiom, ‘L’esprit de l’homme n’est malleable que dans sa jeunesse’? You are still young, Raymond, but it is high time that you began remoulding. If you had only allowed yourself the Paganism of Youth, you would have spared yourself the Philistinism of Maturity.”
“It’s all very well to preach conviviality andbon camaraderie,” Dilling returned, stung into making what he afterwards felt to be an undignified defence, “but you must remember that I couldn’t afford to hold my own with the roisterers at college.” He moved, with a gesture of impatience, beyond the reach of her marauding fingers. “It was not so much inherited caution as immediate limitations that made my ‘exclusive cloistering’ necessary. I put myself through college, you know,” he added, with a touch of unconscious pride, “and I couldn’t afford to enjoy it.”
“But that’s the very point—the very point I’m driving at,” she triumphed. “If only youhadspent beyond your means—if only once you had overstepped your limitations! We all do, all of us who have souls. One way or another, the artist is always spending. The lover never counts the cost. You can’t—you shouldn’t want to—reduce emotions to blue prints and specifications, and that’s what you have done! Listen, Raymond, and forgive me if I offend you. There is a corner of your personality that lies fallow because its dull atmosphere refuses nourishment to artistic taste and sensuous beauty. In other words, you are afraid to spend, even now, lest the ultimate cost may prove to be something you think you can’t afford. You are afraid to let yourself go, for emotions lead one even farther than the tangible medium of exchange.” Her tone changed. “How you ever came to marry a pretty woman is something of a mystery to me—a frump would have answered just as well. Indeed, I ask myself, why did you ever marry at all. Will you tell me?”
“I don’t think there’s any mystery about it,” parried Dilling.
He was not prepared to confess that love had played a very small part in his relations with Marjorie, nor that his need of her was more that of an amiable associate than wife. With the simplicity that marked so many of his social adventurings, he believed that when he could support a wife and family he should marry; and he chose the least objectionable—and most desirable externally—woman of his acquaintanceship. There was the explanation in a nutshell.
“Have you ever felt the appeal of sensuous beauty?” Hebe Barrington persisted. “No! I am answered. The very phrase revolts you as I speak it. It is an evocation of the Seventh Commandment and a ruined household. Queer fellow! Your insensibility to beauty in line and colour, not only in Art but in life, proclaims you a Philistine.”
“You’ve called me that before.”
“And I call you so again. You had no ear for the cry from Paxos, ‘When you are come to Pallodes announce that the Great Pan is dead’,” she cried theatrically. “Little you understand how it was that Pan’s trumpet terrified and dispersed the Titans in their fight with the Olympian gods.”
“You have a harsh opinion of me,” said Dilling, a little nettled. “I thought I knew my classics.”
“You read them—you bathed in their sensuous beauty, but you never felt it, Raymond, even while imagining that you were mewing a mighty youth of the intellect. Deluded boy,” she murmured. “Blind boy!” Her hand fluttered over his face and rested upon his eyes. For the life of him he could not respond to this woman, but at the same time he made no definite resistance, judging that by so doing he would lay himself open to the charge of priggishness. Dilling had little dread of ridicule when he trod upon familiar ground, but of late he had realised how virginal he was in the social struggle. Quite still he sat, while Hebe Barrington’s hands moved softly about him. He did not know that to her his unresponsiveness was incredible; the web she was weaving was as apparent to him as his power to break it. “It is not too late,” she whispered, “to save yourself, to save your soul alive.”
“Am I to take that as encouragement?” he enquired, with intentional rudeness.
“As the body in its vigour renews itself every seven years, so it is possible for the spirit to open its doors periodically upon new realms of percipience and creative power. Set about your own rebirth, Raymond! Don’t imagine that you can achieve re-genesis by pondering the sources that gave the pagan Greek his apprehension, shall I say, of the joy of life. The Greek lived in a narrow time and in a narrow world, in spite of which he made living glorious. You, on the other hand, live in a big world where there is room for the coming of the superman. Oh, Raymond, lay hold of the sensuous beauty that lies within your very grasp. Come out of your barren cloister and inhale the warmth of the sun and perfume of the blossoming flowers! Mere intellect has never achieved perfect happiness for any man. He must develop his emotional nature in order to get the most life has to offer and in order that he may give her of his best,” she added, quickly. “He must learn to understand men and women, and to understand them he must—live!”
“You seem to be very certain that I am one of the unburied dead!”
“Exactly! Every man who doesn’t love is dead. Oh, don’t point to your wife and children as contradictory evidence. You love neither, Raymond, I mean, with the love that is like a great, engulfing tide, the love that haunts and tortures, and racks and exalts. I mean the love that is like a deep, ecstatic pain, that simultaneously is a feast and a cruel hunger.”
Her words poured over him like a warm scented flood. He was conscious of a curious desire to plunge his body into their deeps, to feel their heat and moisture. But the impression eluded him. He could not abandon himself to the enchantment Hebe Barrington was trying to cast over him. No glamorous mist blurred his vision. He saw with penetrating clarity, and his only sensation was one of distaste.
“I am of opinion that life can be useful without these exaggerated, emotional outbursts,” said Dilling, “that where so much energy is expended in one direction the drain is felt in other lines of endeavour.”
“But will you never open your eyes to the radiant truth that a great love is not a drain but a reservoir, a source of supply? It enlarges one’s power and stimulates creation. Did not every conspicuous figure in history have his feminine complement, and is not at least a part of his achievement credited to the stimulation of an overmastering love?”