“Through the hours that drag so leaden,Think of me shut out of sightOf the struggle’s beacon-light;Think of me who cannot askAught beyond my petty task;Think of me beside the emberOf a silent hearthstone set,Where I dare not all rememberAnd I cannot all forget . . .”
“Through the hours that drag so leaden,Think of me shut out of sightOf the struggle’s beacon-light;Think of me who cannot askAught beyond my petty task;Think of me beside the emberOf a silent hearthstone set,Where I dare not all rememberAnd I cannot all forget . . .”
“Through the hours that drag so leaden,Think of me shut out of sightOf the struggle’s beacon-light;Think of me who cannot askAught beyond my petty task;Think of me beside the emberOf a silent hearthstone set,Where I dare not all rememberAnd I cannot all forget . . .”
“Through the hours that drag so leaden,
Think of me shut out of sight
Of the struggle’s beacon-light;
Think of me who cannot ask
Aught beyond my petty task;
Think of me beside the ember
Of a silent hearthstone set,
Where I dare not all remember
And I cannot all forget . . .”
Sleep eluded her. Wide awake, she lay on her back, staring into the tepid darkness and listening to the whisper of a thin, spring rain. Her thoughts were of Raymond Dilling.
Only at night, beyond the reach of prying eyes, did Azalea dare to open the doors of her soul’s concealment. Only then did she allow herself the freedom of the emotion that possessed her, and enjoy the warmth of a communion that no one could suspect. Her thoughts were like perfumed caresses . . . tender, delicate, and as they held him in sweet contact, she glowed with the reflection of their radiance, conscious that her entire being was suffused with a light—an ectoplasm—visible to the naked eye.
To-night, however, her thoughts were poisoned with acute bitterness. The world, as Lady Denby had said, was upside down. Clamouring for justice, it offered high reward for iniquity, nepotism and refined knavery of every colour.
“Give us Honour and Idealism,” cried the voice of the People, “but give them to us garbed in the motley of hypocrisy and alluring vice. If you must be good, disguise yourself, so that you are still a knave and a rattling good fellow!”
Would the Public—that vague, vast body, of which none of us acknowledges himself a member—never come to the realisation that in Raymond Dilling the country had the man for whom it sought, a man of magnificent honesty, courage and fidelity to high purpose; a man whose talents were devoted to more lasting matters than the wearing of a morning coat, and the sequence of forks at a dinner-table? Would the Public never see that to him these things were non-essentials? Beau Brummel, she reminded herself with angry vehemence, spent several hours daily conferring with his tailor, and doubtless both found the association profitable. A pilot, on the other hand, has time—during the pursuit of his calling—for no such recreation. That he guide his ship through shoal and reef, fog and other dangers of the sea, is all that is required of him. Nor is he adjudged a less worthy pilot because he appears unshaven to steer his vessel into port.
Which did Canada need—a Beau Brummel to lend her picturesqueness in the Council of the Nations, or a pilot to guide the destiny of her Ship of State through the reefs of ready disaster?
Into her mind came the story of a young man who climbing in the Alps, lost his footing and was hurled to his death in the glacier hundreds of feet below. One of his companions, a scientist, computed that at the end of so many years, the body would reappear as the glacier moved towards a certain outlet. On the date specified, a group of the youth’s friends gathered at the spot signified, to see if the computation would prove correct.
It did. There, before the company of old men, battered and scarred in their struggles against life, lay the body of the boy—fair and unsullied as on the day he had left them.
Azalea wondered whether Raymond Dilling, having climbed so far along the treacherous crags of politics, must lose his foothold and plunge into a glacier of oblivion; and she wondered, passionately, if such had to be, would he emerge after a lapse of years, beautiful and fair, to reproach the country that had rejected him.
Azalea was, perhaps, the only person who saw Dilling’s reaction to Public Opinion. Universally, he was supposed to be indifferent, a man of stone, impervious alike to enmity and friendship. But she could recall half a dozen instances when the lack of sympathy—more difficult to endure than active opposition—from men whose warm approbation he richly deserved, filled him with corroding discouragement. She knew that he felt his isolation keenly, and was depressed by it.
Her thoughts turned to this new appointment, and her happiness for him was dulled by the manner in which Ottawa had received it. There had been noticeably lacking the warmth of genuine congratulation that made formal expression of it acceptable. The Press of the Dominion and many foreign countries commented enthusiastically upon the Government’s action, and paid a worthy tribute to the young Minister, but the people amongst whom the Dillings lived, were lukewarm and perfunctory. Azalea knew that to Raymond, the honour—the cloak—was cold, and that he shivered as he wore it.
She wondered what he thought about the attitude of Rufus Sullivan. There was something altogether extraordinary in the support of the Hon. Member for Morroway. Azalea did not agree with certain organs of the Press that credited him with sinking private considerations in the interest of public weal. She did not believe in the sincerity of Mr. Sullivan’s vaunted Imperialism. Unable to find any proof for her suspicions, yet she came very near the truth in listening to the warning of her instinct.
Of Mr. Sullivan’s private affairs, she knew nothing. Nor of his ambitions. Amongst his friends—and he had friends!—he was not adjudged an ambitious man. He kept modestly out of the Press, and appeared in Hansard only often enough to satisfy his rather easygoing constituents. He never gave interviews. Interviews, he had observed, had an unpleasant way of rising to condemn one. It was safer not to espouse a cause, for then one could not be accused of inconstancy when one disavowed it.
This reticence on the part of Mr. Sullivan was variously regarded as humility towards those of superior wisdom, and an almost extinct distaste for publicity. There were many who thought that save for a certain moral obliquity, Mr. Sullivan was a very fine man!
But Azalea distrusted him. With the feminine shrewdness that is really a manifestation of Bergsonian intuition, she saw his modesty as caution, and naturally inferred that caution is only necessary when one has something to conceal. The fact that he never declared himself definitely upon any stand, made her suspicious of his enthusiastic support of Dilling. Azalea sensed treachery behind it.
Scattered bits of gossip, an odd suggestion dropped here and there, unremarked at the time, rose now to the surface of her mind, and strengthened her case against Rufus Sullivan. Besides, had not Lady Denby hinted that Sir Eric was not unqualifiedly pleased at the championship of the Hon. Member for Morroway? That, in itself, was cause for apprehension.
So far as Azalea knew, Mr. Sullivan had never denounced Eastlake and Donahue, nor had he uttered any anti-Imperialistic shibboleths, but she simply could not bring herself to accept his attitude as sincere, and something warned her that this sudden flare of patriotism served an ignoble end.
What, she asked herself, could he gain by putting Dilling in a position of honour and importance?
Bribery was unthinkable, but might it not be that he sought some higher honour for himself, some post which could be more easily acquired by a friend at court than by personal application?
“That’s stupid,” thought Azalea, “for the man has hosts of influential friends, who, though hesitating to introduce him to their wives and daughters, would exert no end of energy to gratify a political whim. There must be something else . . .”
She drew in her breath sharply.
What if animosity towards Dilling, and not friendship, or even self-interest, had prompted this extraordinary act of Mr. Sullivan’s!
Was it possible, she asked herself, that he had built his policy on the theory that Dilling would be self-defeated by the deficiencies which Lady Denby so persistently deplored? Did he rely on the Capital’s beguilement by a Beau Brummell, and its rejection of a pilot who placed the substance before the shadow? Sullivan was astute enough to aim at Dilling’s most vulnerable spot, realising that it was scarcely probable for him to be overthrown by a political misadventure.
A motive was not far to seek . . . Marjorie! Did Mr. Sullivan wish to cripple his antagonist beyond the chance of giving battle, and then himself reap the spoils? He was, she decided, quite capable of such infamy.
She required no complaints from Lady Denby to remind her of the Dillings’ social short-comings. Times without number, she had tried to convince Marjorie that in Ottawa—in any Capital, probably—Success demands that aspect of good breeding which may be described as a superficial adaptability to others. But neither Marjorie nor her husband would conform to the standards set by other people, when those standards were opposed to the principles on which they had been nurtured.
“It’s deceit,” said Marjorie.
“It’s duplicity,” said Raymond.
Success was not worth attaining unless it accompanied a cleanly heart.
In such small matters did they transgress against the rules of that great governing body called Society. In such stupid little things! It was immaterial to Dilling whether he appeared in black shoes or tan. Marjorie developed a perfect genius for wearing the wrong clothes. At a luncheon given to some distinguished visitor, she could see no reason for “dressing up”, while for an affair confined to the humbler members of the Sunday School, she would wear the best that her wardrobe afforded. Similarly, in entertaining, she would provide the simplest repast for a guest of high degree, and spread before the officers of the Sweet Arbutus Club, a dinner that was elaborate by comparison.
“People like Lady Sommerville and the Countess of Lynwood,” she argued, “have so much better than I could give them, they wouldn’t even notice any effort I could make. But with the others . . . it means something to them to be entertained in a Minister’s house. When I have them here, I am giving somebody real pleasure. Don’t you think it is worth a good deal of trouble?”
The caparisons of greatness would always remain for them non-essentials. All externalities were vain pomp and inglorious display. The things that counted lay within—within the heart and mind and soul of man, and these they pursued and cultivated ardently.
Azalea began to fear that without a drastic shifting of ideals, life would soon become quite insupportable for them in their Land of Afternoon.
The birds were stirring, and a sullen dawn was taking possession of the sky before she fell into a troubled doze. She was conscious of a disturbing dissonance, a harsh thumping that beat against her brain, and she awoke to the sound of Lady Denby’s voice crying,
“You would have made him a good wife, Azalea!”
Heavy-eyed, she entered the office in the morning.
“Hello,” cried Dilling. “You’re here, at last! I’d begun to fear that you were ill.”
The eagerness in his manner enraptured her. She drew it into her being, and was refreshed as from a draught of wine. She was conscious of a lifting of the weight that lay upon her spirit. He had been watching for her . . . he had been anxious . . . afraid that she was ill . . .
She looked at him, standing in the doorway, vibrant with unusual health and vigour, scarcely able to keep the glory of her happiness from shining through her eyes. “Here you are, at last,” he had said. It was wonderful but it was true.
Dilling relapsed into his accustomed matter-of-factness. He was utterly unconscious of his dependence upon this girl. At least, he was unconscious of the extent of his reliance. During the time he was waiting here, when his thoughts were definitely concerned with her, he was by no means wholly aware that she stood for him as an absorbing problem, intensifying mysteries and contrasts, pricking strange and sensitive spots in the sheath of his imagination. He only dimly suspected how much he owed her for the enlargement of his world and the discovery of new regions of thought and feeling.
He had looked at the clock, trying to summon a sense of irritation. Azalea had never been late before. Instead, he succumbed to anxiety. She must be ill . . . He tried to recall her appearance, yesterday, and failed. He was stupid, that way . . . intensely stupid. He never noticed people . . . Marjorie was very clever. She could have seen in an instant whether Azalea Deane was ill . . .
A curious thought cut athwart the woof of his reflection, a thought that had disturbed him more than once. Might she be tiring of her work? Did she find it—him—too exacting? Perhaps she wasn’t coming back at all!
He rose, opened the door and looked out into the corridor. She was not coming. Tired out, probably . . . sick of her job! How could he make the work more interesting, he wondered? How could he show her greater consideration?
He found it difficult not to drive Azalea. She encouraged him to overtax her strength. “If she’d only tell me when she’s had enough,” he thought guiltily. “But she won’t stop . . . won’t take advantage of the scheduled periods of rest!”
Dilling felt that he must put a stop to this sort of thing. For example, the girl must go out for lunch. He must see that she went. Anticipation of proposed tyranny sent an agreeable warmth over him. There were many Members who took their secretaries out to lunch . . . why should he not take Azalea?
A very sensible solution, so far as it went. He would see that she ate a proper meal in the middle of the day. He might take her at noon . . . if she would only come.
The sequence of his thoughts was shattered, and Dilling caught himself speculating upon a hitherto unconsidered problem—Azalea’s relations with other men. What were they? Had she any close friends? If so, which were the men, and if not, why? Had she ever been in love, and why had she not married?
Hastily, he discarded all the men he knew as unworthy of such a relationship, and then he fell to wondering how much she liked him. Was she capable of any depth of feeling, or was a sort of consistent cordiality, the expression of an intellectual glow that substituted for emotion?
But he made little headway. He found that the clear, cold reason that ate like an acid through the metal of ordinary barriers, was impotent to solve this subtler question . . . that he was slow and clumsy in considering the psychology of Romance.
Not that Dilling scented the least romantic element in his relationship with Azalea Deane. On the contrary! Never had he consciously admitted her femininity; never was he aware of the slightest exoteric appeal. Truly, did women say of him, “He’s a cold fish!” Azalea was, to him, a fine mind, a sort of disembodied intelligence, upon whose judgment he unconsciously leaned, and whose approbation he keenly desired.
As he drew the telephone towards him to put an end to his impatience, the door opened and she entered the room.
“One might judge from your cheerful aspect, that the House would prorogue before lunch,” she smiled at him.
“No such luck! Although, as a matter of fact, I believe the end’s in sight. The Budget should be down this week. There won’t be much more after that.”
“This week?” Azalea bent diligently over her desk, “Then it won’t be long before you start West, again.”
“Marjorie and the kids will probably go home. But I have no intention of accompanying them.”
“Well, what will you do?” asked Azalea, in surprise.
“I shall stay around Ottawa and become a golf addict. I played eighteen holes yesterday afternoon.”
Above the mad singing of her heart, she caught a strange note in his voice, a note she was at a loss to diagnose. “I shall stay in Ottawa . . .” he said calmly, but in a peculiar way.
She dared not trust herself to look at him. Eyes are responsible for more betrayals than are the lips. She wondered, nervously, whether he was looking at her. “I shall stay in Ottawa . . .” Surely, he had not meant . . . No, no! The thing was impossible! Never, by so much as a fleeting glance, had Raymond Dilling expressed anything more than friendliness towards her, and at that, it was the friendliness that man offers man. Had he not deplored the fact that she was born a woman? Hope that was as dear as it was unfounded, died under one smart blow of Reason and Azalea called herself a weak fool. She was ashamed.
“You are singularly uninterested in the affairs pertaining to your Minister,” Dilling teased. “Why don’t you ask me some intelligent questions?”
He looked at her with a sudden softening in his glance that was almost warm enough to be affectionate.
“Very well. Why are you going to stay in Ottawa?” she asked, looking squarely at him.
“Ah, that’s the wrong question. I can’t tell you at this moment. But you may make a note and refer to it, again.” The same curious sombreness crept into his voice. A new intensity shone in his face. “Later, I will remind you that Ihada reason! But ask another . . .”
“With whom did you play golf?”
“None other than His Royal Highness. Are you impressed?”
“Not a whit! I’m not even surprised.”
“What?”
“No! I’ve already seen it in the papers.”
“You’re joking!”
“Really! It’s the first item in the Social Column. Only the reporter neglected to mention the score.”
Dilling thanked heaven for that. The Duke, he thought, must be one of the best players in the United Kingdom. “He beat me”, he added. “Indeed, Pratt, who followed us round with fatuous insistence, called it a wallop.”
“Do you know,” said Azalea, “I can scarcely picture you being beaten. Somehow, one feels that you ought to do everything well.”
“Heaven forfend! You don’t understand me, Miss Deane! You think me always and inevitably serious—that my disposition will not permit me to do things by halves. Nothing is further from the truth.”
“But you don’t agree with Horace, do you? Remember, he said that it is pleasant to play the fool deliberately, and be silly now and then.”
“I do not! No one who recognises the thin line that divides sanity from its awful opposite, can ever willingly approach that line. On the other hand, however, I believe that it is an expedient of great psychonomic value to do things which one knows he does badly—or let us say inartistically—at times.”
“Golf certainly offers rare opportunities to many persons,” murmured Azalea.
“And dancing! Look at me . . . I dance as badly as I play golf, but candidly, I don’twantto do either of them well. My mind rests itself in the conviction that I am doing badly, and so I am refreshed.”
“What harm do you see in doing them well?”
“Speaking for myself—and myself alone, you understand—I should be ashamed of excelling in either of these arts, because excellence spells much long and arduous labour in acquiring perfection. You remember Herbert Spencer’s rebuke to the young man who beat him handily at billiards . . . ‘Your exceedingly great skill argues a mis-spent youth’, he said. That’s just it! Skill in trivial things is not worth while unless you are earning your bread thereby. For example, were I a golf pro. or a dancing master . . . No, Miss Deane, I despise the crack amateur.”
“Oh!”
“It’s true, and having said so much, you will be prepared to hear me add that I dispute the sonorous counsel, ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might’. Utter nonsense, I call it!”
“Alack, alack!” cried Azalea. “What shall we do for copybook mottoes?”
“I’ll give you a better one . . . ‘What’s only worth doing once in a while, should be forgotten until the next time!’ Now for the foreign papers. This parcel? Thank you.”
He glanced rapidly through half a dozen of them—English, French and German. Azalea, watching him, saw his expression darken into apprehension, the meaning of which she could not fathom. Nor was she able to interpret his increasing preoccupation until one August morning he called her to the telephone.
“I can tell you now why I stayed in Ottawa,” he said. “Despatches have just arrived . . . England has declared war on Germany . . . Canada will have to fight!”
PART THREEThey Conquered
Destiny seemed to be setting the stage for Armageddon, the last tragic scene in the play of human life. Pandora’s box had been opened and every mortal ill loosed to the bonds of hate. For more than three years, the sword of War had maimed the body of civilisation. It was a time when the vision of young men was carnage, and the dream of old men, despair. Prussian frightfulness was still exacting dreadful tribute from Celt and Anglo-Saxon battlefields that had lost all trace of old-time chivalry. The virtue of sheer sacrifice was confined to the English-speaking Dominions, the flower of whose youth had gone forth against a foe that had not directly challenged them; gone forth with joy to build their splendid bodies into ramparts that might be shattered but never stormed.
The Blond Beast was shaking the blood from his eyes and looking anxiously across the Atlantic. But America had not yet decided to step into the breach.
Thus with the men. Nor was the mettle of our women lacking in the hour of trial. Spartan mothers never sent their sons into battle with finer renunciation than did the mothers of the unconscripted youths who crowded the transports in the first two years of conflict. Women stepped into the gaping ranks of industry at home—into the farms and fields, and into factories originally designed for making ploughshares and pruning hooks, but now converted into plants for fashioning the panoplies of war. Thousands of these women clad themselves in the overalls of labour, and hundreds put on the uniform of the Red Cross. Life so lived was hard but it was intense, and “Carry on”, came to express one of the spiritual values of the ages.
This was one picture of the activities of women during the grim tourney of Might against Right. There was another, not so inspiring. It revealed the cocotte and the flapper. Birds of beautiful plumage, these, who thronged London, Paris, Ostend—God knows where they were not—and sang their siren songs into masculine ears echoing with the shriek of shot and shell . . . songs that offered forgetfulness, Nirvana, to men who came out of a stinking Hell where the form of Death stalked grinning at their side. These were they who filled the theatres, cabarets, and tea shops, providing fat profits for jewellers, modistes, motor liveries; the hotels and inconspicuous road-houses.
How swiftly in our own land came the changes wrought by war! One grew inured to bobbed hair, knee-length skirts, universal smoking, Einstein, trousered women, camouflage, expensive economy and economical extravagance, unashamed macquillage, weddings à la volée, War Babies, and appetency for divorce.
The social limousine, as it sped on the road of Hysteria, was not alone in its responsiveness to the influences of the time. The car of politics was jolted from its accustomed track. Union Government was formed under the leadership of Sir Robert Borden, and both the great parties lost their distinctiveness, not so much from the deliberate fusion as from the departure of the pick of capable men from each. To complete the debacle of the Liberal Party, Sir Wilfrid Laurier—the thaumaturge of Canada’s peaceful days of growth—passed away, stupefied by the alarms of war. The nation lost its beautiful Parliament House by fire, set it was generally thought, by the myrmidons of the Kaiser.
In the Dillings’ home, changes had also made their way. Marjorie found the top floor convenient as a meeting place for the dozen and one organisations over which she was asked to preside. Dilling had an office on the ground floor as well as at the Victoria Museum—whither the burnt-out Members of Parliament had been driven for refuge, and Azalea practically lived at the house.
Mr. Sullivan was by no means an infrequent visitor and Lord Ronald Melville, the A.D.C., found a curious respite from Society’s kaleidoscopic demands upon him in the prim ugliness of Marjorie’s drawing-room.
“I like him better than any man I ever knew,” she confided to Azalea, one evening as they sat waiting for the children to return from a masquerade at Government House. “He’s so old-fashioned.”
Azalea laughed. “In what way?”
“Ever so many ways! He doesn’t like women who smoke or swear, and he’s so fond of children.”
“Thatisold-fashioned!”
Marjorie nodded. “I don’t think he likes Ottawa very much. He said that the Society here was like a blurred and microscopic reflection of London life. Wasn’t that pretty strong, Azalea?”
“Well, it certainly is a definite view.”
“I find it easy to get on with him,” Marjorie continued. “All the things I like to talk about seem interesting to him. With other people, no matter what I say, it doesn’t sound quite right, but with Their Excellencies and Lord Ronald, there is such a different feeling!”
She sighed. Long ago, she had observed that famous people whose names she used to revere in Pinto Plains, neither talked nor acted like the sons of God; gradually, she discovered that age was not to be confused with sapience or high life with respectability. She realised that to succeed she must say daring things to people from whom she shrunk, and repeat the latest gossip freshened by a spraying of her own invention. She divined that in being kind to men and allowing them to talk frankly with her, she earned the enmity of their wives, and that if she held herself aloof, these same women considered her a stick and a fool. She could acquire neither the smart badinage of people of parts, nor the air of those who used ponderosity to cloak their native insipidities.
“You should be very grateful for being clever,” Marjorie said. “If I were only a little bit cleverer, I shouldn’t have found Ottawa half so—so—difficult.” She blushed. “Do you know, Azalea, I used to think that everybody here would be like Lord Ronald, good and kind and friendly. I used to think Society was exactly likethat!”
Azalea’s mouth grew hard. She knew, without being told, that some one had inflicted a hurt upon Marjorie’s tender spirit, and all her love rose up in revolt.
“Society!” she cried. “Can’t you see that what we dignify by that name is merely a mechanism devised to give a certain class of climbers and parasites the power to lead a comfortably otiose existence at the expense of the shrinking and the credulous?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand quite all of that,” confessed Marjorie. “But I know it’s clever. There are so many clever people, here. That is what makes me seem stupider than I really am, by comparison.”
“They are not clever,” contradicted Azalea. “They are simply experts in the art of pretence. They succeed by bluff.”
“You have to be clever to do that,” argued Marjorie. Then suddenly, “I hope you won’t mind my saying so, Azalea, but you know I’ve often thought how much better everything would have been for everybody if you had been married to Raymond!”
Azalea raised startled eyes to see Dilling standing in the doorway. That he had overheard Marjorie’s words was obvious. He stood regarding her with a strange interest as if studying her in the light of a sudden revelation. With an onrush of knowledge, he became conscious of his soul, for the first time. He knew its needs and how Azalea had met them during the months they had worked together. He saw Azalea as a woman . . . as the luminous source of all his inspiration.
A moment passed . . . a moment that held an eternity of understanding. Soul met soul, disdaining the barriers of sense. The room was filled with the sound of Marjorie’s knitting needles. The clock began to chime . . .
The pell-mell entrance of the children shattered the spell that gripped them. Baby, drunk with excitement, staggered to Marjorie and climbed, a crumpled heap of tarltan and tinsel, into her lap. Besser, proudly wearing a jester’s cap over one ear, retrieved from his pocket, three sticky lumps that had once been cake, and laid them on the table. Althea, infected by the snobbery in which she had so lately been a participant, flipped up her skirts at the back, and wriggled decorously upon a chair.
“Well, my treasures, and was the party boo-ti-fool?” demanded Marjorie.
A torrent of speech answered her.
“And were you dear, good children?” she asked. “What of my tomboy, Althea?”
“I was the goodest one at the party,” replied that young person. “Mind you, Mummie, I was theonly childwhat folded up my napkin!”
Dilling and Azalea met on the following morning, in all outward respects, exactly as they had met for nearly five years.
A third person watching them would have detected no change in their manner, no relaxing in their poise, no studied indifference. Neither was there discernible the strained control proclaiming a furtive curiosity—a hunger—to see how the other would behave.
“Good morning,” said Dilling, finding her engrossed with the mail. “I hope you are well.”
Azalea echoed this cliché and observed that their correspondence seemed to increase daily. It was the sort of thing they often said.
“I’ll be ready in just a moment,” he told her, and passed quickly behind the green baize door that gave into his private office.
All this was as it had been many times before.
Azalea caught her breath in two fluttering little sighs. That was over; and without any of the embarrassments she had dreaded. It had been quite easy—almost disappointingly easy—but altogether fine. That was what she had prayed that Dilling should remain; it was what she knew he would always remain—fine!
At the same time, she wondered how he felt, exactly what minute little thoughts had come to him since he stood between the dull, fringed portieres and stared at her, stunned, yet with the light of a sublime revelation dawning in his eyes. She wondered with a hot stab of pain, if he felt himself duped, humbugged, betrayed.
She visualised the brief and pregnant scene again, imagining—or was it divining?—the thought that must have come to him as his eyes held hers in that sudden bond of understanding. “This is a piece of staggering news to me,” he must have said. “I am taken at a disadvantage . . . emotionally naked . . . but you knew . . . you knew . . .”
And she saw herself mutely admitting the accusation, but with sadness, as a mother might have felt when some disturbing information could no longer be withheld from the child she loved. And she wondered if he suffered at losing the false serenity in which he had been living.
Did he resent the age-old wisdom that enabled her to see, while he groped and stumbled, fatuous in his blindness? Did he feel humiliation?
On her desk the buzzer sounded. His summons. For a moment, Azalea sat quite still, looking at the little instrument that had called her in exactly the same way countless times before. And yet, not quite the same. To-day, there was something different. No, it would never be the same again.
As she gathered up her notebook, pencil and a sheaf of papers, her heart ached for him.
“Why,” she asked herself, rebelliously, “why must the cup of knowledge be so bitter? Why must the coming of truth be so difficult and hard to bear?”
He did not raise his eyes when she entered the room, but presently, he seemed to know that she was seated and ready.
“Taking up the matter of the Quebec Bridge,” he began, “is the report down from Council, yet?” Then, without waiting for an answer, “But first, are there any Imperial despatches?”
The routine of the morning progressed as usual. Reports to Council, petitions from small centres demanding votes from the Public Treasury out of all proportion to their possible returns, eternal complaints and criticisms from malcontents, applications for pensions from War Widows, enquiries from distracted mothers—all the departmentalacta-diurnaof a ministerial incumbency that had to be cleared away before he was free to undertake the pressing matters that fell to his especial talents to perform.
And he compelled his brain to function along its accustomed channels, while some inner chamber of his mind carried on a separate trend of thought—separate, and, at the same time, veiled, like the thinking that is part of a dream.
He wondered how Azalea felt, sitting there so composedly; and beautiful, like Lamb’s divinely plainMiss Kelly. Was there an element of pity, even contempt beneath her consistent consideration, for the man who was insentient to the message of his own heart? Dilling recoiled from the mawkish flavour of the phrase. He despised all sentimentality, and had he been called upon to debate the subject would have denied the heart the conspicuous place universally accorded it, in emotional relations between the sexes. Imbeciles and sensualists “fell in love”, because the world refuses to countenance the cruder, if more honest, passion. Dilling had never been in love—neither with Marjorie nor any other woman. Even now he refused to connect the term with Azalea. He had suddenly become aware of joy in her companionship, of his dependence upon the mental stimulation she provided, of a hitherto unsuspected peace in their spiritual communion. In her, he had found the priceless thing for which men seek throughout their lives—Understanding.
“I couldn’t get along without her,” he said to himself. “She understands me.” And having thus spoken, he could say no more. It was the highest tribute he could pay—the highest tribute any man can pay to woman.
With Azalea, he felt himself the man he wished to be; not smug and stodgily content, but rejoicing in the struggle towards an ideal which he believed was one that she approved.
Sitting opposite her, apparently engrossed in matters of a widely divergent nature, Dilling examined himself, detachedly. He had no desire to touch her . . . to cry to her, “I love you!” But the thought of losing her companionship, mental contact with her, produced a pain so intolerable that it dismayed him.
And in that flash of utter wretchedness, he saw how completely he was wedded to Azalea; how sublime was this cold, pure marriage of the spirit. With Marjorie, mental companionship was absolutely non-existent. They were bound together by duty, habit, and the intimacies permitted those who have accepted man-made ritual as final . . . and Divine. They had no need of one another. Fondness expressed the extent of his emotion, and for several years, he had realised that a fierce maternalism on her part was substitute for the rarer ecstasy of love.
He was as free from connubial fetters as it is given man to be. Marjorie was never exacting, but even so, Dilling was conscious of restriction, bondage. He wanted to be free!
He thought of other married men, and saw for the first time how their wives crowded into their lives; they were like two snails trying to crowd into the same shell. Through no fault of hers, Marjorie often crowded him. Then his mind turned to Azalea, who never had provoked that sensation in all the years of their association. On the contrary, she always seemed to liberate his mind, to give him light and space and air. She was his mate, not his keeper or his charge.
He wondered when she first began to love him, and whether the knowledge had brought her pleasure or unrest. Had she felt humiliation at his unresponsiveness, perhaps? Had he ever hurt her? What a contrast between Azalea and Hebe Barrington! A gentle perspiration broke out on his brow, and he lost the trend of his thought for an instant. One was suggestive of the hot breath of the jungle; the other, the cool freshness of the open sea. Mentally, Dilling removed his sandals as he looked across the crowded desk, and reverently kneeled at Azalea’s feet.
“I’m glad I know . . .” he said to himself. “Not that it will make the slightest difference. We will go on exactly as before. Thank God, she is sensible—not like other women!”
It did not occur to him, however, that he was like other men—in one respect, at least; that this was a matter differing from any problem that had entered into his career. It would not be settled once and for all. It would not be laid away beyond the need of further consideration. He was soon to find that he could not ignore the insistency of this strange emotion that caught him at most unexpected, inconvenient moments. At first, such unaccustomed tyranny annoyed him. But gradually, he grew to like it, to seek the refreshment of it, as one who finds refreshment in the perfume of a flower.
Mechanically, he selected a letter from the wire basket under his hand, and dictated,
“Dear Mr. Jackson,
“(The Jackson case again. I’ll finish it this morning!) . . . I have just had your letter, dated 22nd ultimo—now a week overdue, here—by this morning’s mail. It does not occur to me that carelessness caused your delay in sending it off. I note that it was posted only four days ago.
“I am inclined to think that it was some evocation of your better judgment, I will even go so far as to say conscience, in this extremely unpleasant affair, that provoked a debate within yourself as to whether the letter should be mailed to me, at all.
“It is necessary at times to speak plainly to one’s friends, and a moment’s reflection will convince you, I am sure, that this is such a time. Frankly, your letter and its suggestion that I should use my political influence to forward the project of the Moccasin Realty Co. Ltd., which is only the business name cloaking that of yourself and your son-in-law, to sell the jerry-built Cameron Terrace to the Dominion Government at five times the price for which you built it two years since, is a stark offence to me. I will have no part or lot in such an unpleasant—I speak euphemistically—transaction, and I ask you to consider this answer final.
“The Terrace has twice been reported against by the Inspector of the Indian Department as quite unfit for the purpose of an Indian School. You, sir, are perfectly well aware that it is ill-drained and impossible to heat without being veneered, or stuccoed, at great additional cost.
“I shall say no more about the matter, but if my refusal to aid your attempt upon the Treasury of this overburdened country costs me the loss of your support—if it should cost me the loss of my entire constituency—I shall accept the situation in the knowledge that, at least, I have done my duty. It is only upon such a footing that I can remain in public life . . .”
He raised his eyes, hard and cold with anger, and asked,
“Do you think he’ll believe I’m sincere?”
Azalea shook her head. “He’ll complain, as so many of them do.”
“How’s that?”
“He will say when in power the Liberals forget their principles and the Conservatives, their friends.”
They both sighed.
The banging of doors and quivering of beaver-board partitions that had converted the spaciousness of the Victoria Memorial Museum into cubicles wherein Canada’s Parliamentarians might be temporarily housed, the scurrying along corridors and clang of the elevator gate, told Azalea that noon had come. When immersed in work, Dilling was utterly oblivious to the flight of time.
“What about lunch?” she asked, as soon as he paused. “The gun sounded some time ago.”
How often had she said exactly the same thing!
“Are you so hungry?” he asked, astonished to miss the playful effect he had intended to convey. Dropping into the still room, the silly words had almost a nervous note.
“Starving,” lied Azalea, easily, and knowing his unadmitted dependence upon food.
“Very well. I’ll go, too. But I’m coming back early, to-day. We must unearth that Hansard before I go to Council. It will never do to let Bedford get away with his want-of-confidence Motion on the British Preference, in this high-handed fashion! We must make him eat his words . . . and while I think of it. Miss Deane, please don’t let anyone—anyone—disturb me.”
Azalea lunched lightly, and then found herself an inconspicuous bench in the little park off Lewis Street. The sun was warm and golden; the air soft with the promise of approaching summer. The trees had already burst into leaf. Careless children had left their toys about on the moist walks. Gardeners, taking advantage of the dinner hour, had deserted the wire-fenced enclosures that would presently break into a melody of colour.
But Azalea saw none of these things. She was at variance with spring. More autumnal was her mood. She sat quite still, unfidgetting, yet with the air of one who is tense, who is waiting for the storm that is bound to break.
“How long can this go on?” she was thinking. “He won’t continue the pretence that things are the same. He is too honest. But what will he do, then?”
A wave of exultation surged over her. It wouldn’t be easy for him to find another secretary, she said. He would miss her in the office, to say the least. And not only in the office. His eyes had betrayed so much. Why could they not go on, she asked herself, with passionate vehemence?
They could. The whole thing rested upon her. The type of relationship that exists between men and women, always rests upon the determination of the woman. In this case, Azalea knew that she must keep Dilling from being too conscious of her. She must make none of the unspoken demands that even the least exacting woman makes upon the man who has confessed himself in love. Neither must she allow him to feel that a secret bond was held between them. Above all, she must keep his emotional temperature at its accustomed low ebb. Any suggestion of coquetry on her part, now, would disturb his tranquility, and remind him that he had violated the spirit of the narrow law governing his moral code.
Could she do all this? If so, she knew they could go on.
Azalea believed that love could exist between a man and a woman without emotional gratification and without expression save in the terms of friendship. She believed that it can be fed freely, by the mind and by the spirit, just as the body can be fed sanely without the bizarre concoctions demanded by self-encouraged neurasthenics. The secret lies in a woman’s power, and wish, to keep the association free from the tempering of passion. It is not enough to control it, argued Azalea. It must never be aroused. And this is rare, but not impossible.
She was not a vain woman. There was no conceit in her, and illusions had long since flown on the wings of dreams that were unfulfilled. She knew that she was plain, unlovely, unmagnetic; that never since adolescence had she awakened the readily distinguishable expression in man’s eyes that proclaims his discovery of the femaleness in his companion. But it was because she hadn’t tried!
According to her theory, the physical envelope matters comparatively little. The mysterious force that is called attraction, magnetism, passion, what you will, exists in plain and beautiful alike, and can be projected at will. Therefore, she possessed the female’s instinctual power to project this force—this beam that is like a shaft of light, and blinds the man upon whom it is thrown. He beholds the woman in a flame of radiance, unmindful of her lack of pulchritude. And not only is his physical sight impaired, but his mental eye loses its clarity of vision, and he invests this uncompanionable female with every quality he thinks desirable. He wants her. He starves for her. He will not be denied. And after marrying her, what happens?
The woman, having acquired the man upon whom she has fixed her choice, grows careless, indifferent, lazy. She no longer lights the shaft that dazzled him; she no longer projects it in his direction. He blinks, looks, and rubs his eyes; half the time, he doesn’t understand . . . Where is the woman he loved and married? Who is this creature, this unattractive stranger who pushes herself into his life, and tries to dominate, absorb it? There has been some hideous mistake . . . Steeped in the delusion that man is the determining factor in the mockery of emotional marriage, he takes the blame upon himself, persuaded that the fault is his. At first, he tries to hide his disenchantment. He says nothing . . . He determines to do nothing . . . just go on . . . They both go on . . . spiritually too far apart, physically too close together . . . bound by Church and State, and accustoming themselves to the functioning of two persons who live in that abominable intimacy—ironically termed the bonds of Holy Wedlock!
Azalea believed that the bond of wedlock could only be holy when it is not artificially constructed by predative females in search of economic ease, with a possible thrill or two, to boot. She agreed with the cynicism that marriage is man’s after-thought and woman’s first intention. She further believed that by continuing the rigid control of herself—control that neutralised and de-natured her—she and Dilling could maintain a relationship that not only was free from irregularity, but embarrassment.
Mingling with the stream of Civil Servants that flowed in and out of the Museum, Azalea’s mind was still concerned with the relationships between men and women, married and single. She thought of her sisters with something very like disgust; of Lady Elton, Eva Leeds, Mrs. Pratt, Mrs. Blaine, Mrs. Hudson, Mme. Valleau . . . what real comradeship did they offer their husbands? Swift’s words came to her as being especially applicable. “There would be fewer unhappy marriages in the world,” he said, “if women thought less of making nets, and more of making cages.”
She had never tried to make a net, not even for Raymond Dilling. She loved him too deeply to trap—to ensnare him. And if she longed to make a cage for him, it was as a means of protection, safety, refuge; not the terrible gilt-barred thing in which he would feel a sense of shame at his imprisonment.
She could hear him pacing about his little room, muttering fragmentary sentences now and then. The sound disturbed her. He was not, as a rule, stimulated to intensive thought by prowling. Was she already responsible for disorganising the methodical workings of his mind?
Poise, control, fell from her. She turned the pages of Hansard feverishly and without intelligence. She longed to go to him, to take his frail body in her arms, to soothe him in her self-effacing renunciatory way. She longed to whisper to him, “There, my dear, you needn’t dread me. You needn’t be afraid.”
Instead, she sat at her desk and fluttered the leaves of Hansard, and suffered the anguish of one who cannot take on the suffering of that beloved other . . .
A knock on the door startled her. She turned to see Hebe Barrington advancing into the room.
“Oh!Youare still here?” was her greeting.
“I find the work congenial,” returned Azalea.
The two women faced one another, understood one another. Neither made a pretence of concealing the animosity that had always existed between them. Azalea resented Hebe’s habit of establishing herself, taking complete possession of situations and people, and ordering the destiny of all with whom she came in contact. Hebe hated Azalea for the calm tenacity and cold superiority that had thwarted her so many times in the past. She had just returned from England, whither patriotic fervour and the personal attractions of a certain fulgid major had drawn her. The zest with which she had undertaken a particular form of War Work had strained even Toddles’ indulgence, until the only way they could live together was to live apart.
Hebe had abandoned her pursuit of Dilling, and renounced all complicity in Sullivan’s plans after a stormy interview with that gentleman. What she demanded, grandly, were his nugatory projects compared with the clarion call of Empire? He felt very bitterly towards her, blaming her for the miscarriage of his schemes. Had he foreseen the outbreak of the War, or Hebe’s defection, he never in the world would have assisted Dilling to a position of prominence where his public record commanded respectful admiration and where his private life was above reproach.
“Isn’t this a killing little hole?” Hebe observed, alert to every detail. “Sordid, undignified. You should see the quarters of the British politicians . . . and the War Offices . . .”
Tiny flames of anger gathered in Azalea’s eyes. There was something in the insolence of the other woman that suggested a personal criticism—as though she could have arranged the room more fittingly, prevented its sordidness, its displeasing atmosphere.
“A few flowers would make a difference,” she went on, appraising Azalea’s coat and hat that hung near the door.
“We don’t spend much money on flowers, now, merely for decorative purposes,” answered the other.
“What a pity! I always think that’s what they’re for. Is Raymond—Mr. Dilling—in there?”
“Yes, but he’s too busy to be disturbed.”
Their eyes met in open hostility.
“I object to the word ‘disturbed’,” said Hebe. “My visit is supposed to have exactly the opposite effect.” She smiled, a brilliantly ugly smile.
Azalea lifted her shoulders almost imperceptibly. “Mr. Dilling gave me definite instructions to allow no one to see him. I’m sorry, but I can’t make an exception, even in your favour.”
“What fidelity to duty,” mocked Hebe.
“You are very kind,” bowed Azalea, as though receiving a compliment.
“You know very well that your employer would not refuse to admit me,” cried Hebe. “Don’t you think I can see the vicious pleasure behind this rigid adherence to your instructions? Let me pass!”
“You are making a ridiculous scene,” said Azalea, white to the lips. “I am treating you just as I would treat anybody else—the Prime Minister, himself. You are not going to disturb—interrupt—Mr. Dilling!”
“How are you going to prevent me?” taunted Hebe. “Lay violent hands upon me and fling me to the floor?”
“I shan’t touch you,” retorted Azalea, her voice trembling with cold anger. “But I shall regard intrusion upon Mr. Dilling as a personal attack, and shall not have the slightest hesitation in ordering the policeman to protect his privacy.”
She stretched out her hand towards the telephone and held it ready for use.
Hebe burst into a peal of derisive laughter. She advanced with an air of high daring. Then an expression of cunning crept into her fire-shot eyes. Azalea had threatened to call a policeman. He would lay restraining hands upon her. She would struggle upon the very threshold of the young Minister’s office. She would scream. People would rush from their rooms into the corridor to see . . .
A splendid scene! Magnificent! There would be a glorious scandal . . . “Two women fight over the Hon. Mr. Dilling. Shocking episode in the temporary House of Parliament.” She laughed again. Uncle Rufus would be not only placated; he would be grateful.
“I’ve warned you,” said Azalea.
“You won’t dare!”
“Stop!”
“I’m going in, I tell you!”
Raising her hand to push open the door, Hebe found Azalea directly in her path. But it was too late to change her intention, and she struck the girl a smart blow in the face. Exactly at that moment, Dilling stepped into the room.
There was a painful silence. Of the three, the Minister felt the greatest embarrassment. He could readily guess what had happened.
Hebe spoke,
“In another moment, we should have been almost angry, Raymond,” she cried. “I couldn’t make this dear girl see that I was an exception to your iron-bound rule covering the ordinary visitor.”
“When did you come back?” asked Dilling, allowing his hand to lie limply between hers for an instant.
“Only this morning. Half past twelve, from Montreal. Landed yesterday, and here I am to pay my respects. And your faithful secretary wanted to turn me out. Scold her, Raymond,” she cried, archly. “Please do!”
“I’m afraid I haven’t time, just now,” replied Dilling. Then, as he passed the desk to which Azalea had returned with a fine show of absorption in Hansard, he said, “Can you stay after five? We must consult together as to my future policy following to-day’s eventful meeting.”
“We?” echoed Hebe, with a noticeable touch of derision. “La, la!Que c’est charmant!I’ve heard that a successful politician is merely a matter of having a clever secretary, but I never credited the statement until now.” She turned directly to Dilling. “You are going out?”
“Yes.”
“I will come with you—as far as you go.”
“Thank you,” said Dilling. “We meet in this building.”
He opened the door, started to pass through, then, remembering the conventions, waited for Hebe to precede him. Azalea did not raise her eyes, but she knew without looking that he did not glance behind him.
She sat motionless after they had gone, while her heart stilled its wild plunging, and the air cleared of crimson-hot vibrations. She did not think of herself or review the part she had played in the absurd drama of Hebe’s making. She did not ask herself whether her attitude had been convincing or ridiculous. Strangely enough, she did not think, “I might have said . . .” Her concern was for Raymond Dilling.
She knew that he did not, never could, love Hebe Barrington. Jealousy was far removed from her considerations. But a slow, cold fear crawled through her as she thought of another contingency. Dilling’s balance had shifted. He had become conscious of new and disturbing emotions. He was like an instrument tuned by a gentle hand and therefore prepared to respond even to the coarsest touch. Would not the very fact of his awakened love for her, make him an easier victim of Hebe’s seductive beleaguerment?
The thought racked her throughout the afternoon. She could not keep her mind on her work. She spent herself in a sort of helpless passion of protection, feeling that she would give her very life to save him from the toils of the other woman. She had set him on a lofty pedestal, high above the ruck of mud and slime. Her pride in him was renunciatory, fiercely maternal. She wanted to keep him fair and pure for himself . . . not in the slightest sense for her.
She had grown strong in a fanatical belief that one of the chief elements of Britain’s power is the moral weight behind it; that her statesmen are clean, straight-forward and honourable, on the whole, and that intrigue and deception are alien to their nature. Furthermore, she felt that now, in the Empire’s hour of supreme trial, it was upon the power and pressure of this conviction throughout the world, that the future of England must depend.
The Premier’s health had been sadly broken by the War. This pandemic scourge had come into being while Canada was still in her nonage, and what she needed most in leadership throughout the conflict, was what he had most to give, namely, a fine obstinacy of purpose. Possessing this, the lack of dramatic picturesqueness was forgiven him by a spectacle-loving people.
But inflexibility is always a target and a challenge for assault, and when not engaged in repelling his foes on Mr. Speaker’s Left, Sir Robert was called upon to reckon with the mutiny of his colleagues whose sense of honour was not inconveniently high. Throughout the actual ordeal of battle, the edge of the weapons of menace found him adamant. But towards the end of the four years’ darkness, the strain became too heavy, and several months before the world settled to enjoy the hostility of peace, rumours of his impending resignation drifted along the currents of the House.
The break came later—after he had gone to France to sign the Treaty of Versailles on our behalf—a glorious mission, truly, and significant of Canada’s entry into the Council of the Nations. It was then that the burden of his great labour and achievement levied a heavier toll than he could pay. Atropos threatened him with her shears. He sank into the relaxation of a profound collapse, and offered his resignation as Prime Minister. Holding the Rudder of the Ship of State with a world in arms, had broken him, as it broke the great Commoner, Pitt. That the parallel was not completed by his death, was a matter of national rejoicing, and he lived to know that his purity of conduct, his strength of purpose and his courage in the supreme crisis of civilisation, marked him as one of the real forces in history.
And so it happened that in Canada there was no man like Lloyd George who held his position unchallenged throughout the duration of the War. Political and military scandals had their ugly day. Heroes were exalted and overthrown almost within the same hour.
Dilling offered the closest analogy, perhaps, to the great British statesman. He retained not only his own portfolio, but undertook the directing of several others, while an interregnum occurred and there had been discovered no incumbent to fill the office. He had “acted” as Prime Minister on more than one occasion, and when these resignation rumours began to float about, his name was mentioned as a possible successor.
Public Works were paralyzed. The gargantuan ambitions of Eastlake and Donahue hung in abeyance. They dared not intrude their demands for further subsidies while war taxes bled the country white. Dilling turned his eyes from the elevators, and saw only the Empire’s present need. Grain moved heavily eastward, but the great driving power of the West was crippled. The hand that rocked her cradle was engaged in destroying the very manhood she had suckled at her prairie breast. Capable of producing food for more than half the world, she was starving for sustenance to keep herself alive.
Never had the Hon. Member for Morroway been so deeply engrossed in the business of politics. Never had he applied himself so sedulously to the successful culmination of his vast schemes and secret projects, or neglected for so lengthy a period the gentler pursuits that so intrigued him. It was rumoured in some quarters that he had reformed. The rumour was not received with universal satisfaction, for the penitent has only the applause of the devotee who reclaims him.
Howarth and Turner watched him with mingled concern and respect, and wondered as to the nature of his game. After the entry of the United States into the War, and when the outcome was a foregone conclusion, these two gentlemen became somewhat apprehensive as to the future of the Party (and incidentally their own place in the political sun). The rumours of Sir Robert’s resignation moved them profoundly.
“Of course,” said Turner, as the three sat in Mr. Sullivan’s cheerful office, “Sir Adrian Grant will be a candidate, but I don’t believe he has the ghost of a chance. It looks to me like a walk-over for Dilling. He’ll march to the seat of honour, terrible as an army with banners.”
“Yes,” agreed Howarth. “I don’t know who’s going to stop him. That damned silly boost of yours, Sullivan, has done us in the eye, if you ask me.”
Mr. Sullivan examined the contents of his glass against the pale spring twilight, and remarked that he was always glad to hear the opinions of his friends, even though he had not asked for them. In the present instance, however, he seemed to detect some thing monstrous and repetitive.
“Sure, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” announced Howarth, warmly. “What’s going to keep him from stepping into the P. M.’s shoes, if we have to go to the country? Hasn’t he made good! Don’t the people think he’s a little tin god? Hasn’t he got a lot of useful experience out of the last few years?”
“All because of this Minister business,” supplemented Turner. “Except for that, we could have kept him down. He wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“But now, as matters stand, he’ll walk in, put over the Elevator project, and . . .”
“. . . the E. D. Company will flourish like a green bay tree, and where will our little plans come in?” demanded Turner, bitterly. “If you want to eat honey in peace, say the Russians, you must first kill all the bees.”
Mr. Sullivan nodded, but preserved an inscrutable silence.
“Have you got something up your sleeve, old man?” asked Howarth, in a foolish, coaxing tone. “There’s no denying you’re a pretty shrewd lad in your own way, Rufus, and you don’t often make mistakes. Personally, I rely absolutely upon your judgment, and am ready to follow—oh,absolutely,” he insisted, conscious of a slight twitching at the corners of Mr. Sullivan’s full lips. “At the same time, there are occasions recorded in history, when the most astute persons have been misled, when the best-laid schemes have taken a most unprecedented and disastrous twist. If you have a plan, why not take us into your confidence, Rufus? Why not discuss your ideas . . . three heads, you know . . .”
“Reminiscent of Cerberus”, cut in Turner. “Pretty good watch dog, eh?”
“Sure,” assented Howarth. “Three heads . . . as I say. And besides, I’m just restless in my desire to help.”
But it was Marjorie who was the Hon. Member’s first confidante. She neither realised the importance of this, nor appreciated the honour that he did her.
He had begged for an uninterrupted moment—a moment clipped from her over-full days, when appointment followed appointment in a continuous, dizzying succession—and, because he had said it was urgent, she agreed to receive him one night at ten o’clock. An earlier release was impossible from the pandemonium advertised as a Patriotic Bazaar.
“The dear little woman looks tired,” he said, taking her hand. “Isn’t she trying to push a great heavy Mercedes up a very steep hill, with a Ford engine? Aren’t you doing far too much of this hysterical War Work, little Marjorie?”
“Wednesday is my worst day,” she told him, and tried to withdraw her hand . . . “not the actual work, but going to things. You see,” she explained, “it makes such a difference . . . I can’t understand it, really . . . If we go to these patriotic things . . . the Ministers’ wives, I mean. We don’t do anything but walk around, and have people introduced to us, and it’ssouseless and tiring!”
“My dear . . . my dear!” murmured the sympathetic Member.
“I don’t mind the work, a bit,” Marjorie continued, trying to force a note of weariness out of her voice. “The sewing and sorting of donations and that kind of thing. I feel as though—as though, well, I feel that I am really doing something for our boys over there, whereas walking around these bazaars and sitting idle at Executive meetings—” she shook her head and left the sentence unfinished. “But you wanted to see me about something in particular, you said.”
The Hon. Member for Morroway assumed his most charmingly avuncular air. Little by little, he overcame Marjorie’s instinctive resistance. She was always so eager to like people, to believe in them and find them good. He asked if she could keep a secret—even from her husband, and gaining a somewhat hesitant answer, whispered,
“How would you like to see him Prime Minister, my dear?”
Marjorie’s tired brain reeled. She couldn’t grasp the thought, at all. Prime Minister . . . Raymond . . . so soon to see the fulfilment of his heart’s desire? No, no! She shrunk away from the idea. There must be some mistake. They were so young, so inexperienced. They were not properly prepared, not sufficiently worthy. She felt an overwhelming pity for all those women whose lives were broken, and whose hearts were torn by the War. It shadowed the satisfaction, the joyousness she might have taken for herself. Prime Minister!
Sullivan sat quiet, watching her, and the changing expressions that sped across her haggard face. He read them as easily as though they had been printed there, and he waited.
“Do you want Raymond to be Prime Minister?” Marjorie finally whispered. “Do you think heoughtto be?”
“There is little doubt on either score.” Mr. Sullivan was soothing, reassuring. “As you know, I am only an inconspicuous cog in the political machine, but even the smallest cog can control the working of the whole. Just as it can obstruct,” he added, lightly. “Without meaning to boast, I believe that my influence is sufficient to secure him the Premiership—just as I was somewhat instrumental in putting him into the Cabinet.”
“Oh, Mr. Sullivan—Uncle Rufus, do you really mean to help?”
“With all my heart, little woman,” he replied, “and so must you.”
“I?” Her confused mind translated the assistance he suggested into a need for increasing “stiffness”.
“Of course! Why not?”
“What must I do?”