“Sometimes I wake and say, ‘I love him!’And sometimes, ‘He loves me!’But whichever way it isThe day is filled with a finer purpose.”
“Sometimes I wake and say, ‘I love him!’And sometimes, ‘He loves me!’But whichever way it isThe day is filled with a finer purpose.”
“Sometimes I wake and say, ‘I love him!’And sometimes, ‘He loves me!’But whichever way it isThe day is filled with a finer purpose.”
“Sometimes I wake and say, ‘I love him!’
And sometimes, ‘He loves me!’
But whichever way it is
The day is filled with a finer purpose.”
“Azalea, let me kneel at your feet!”
“No, no! Kiss me . . . Oh, my dear love, kiss me . . .”
For a time, they clung to one another, and when at last she withdrew from him, the room was plunged in utter darkness.
Of the five men who were left in Mr. Sullivan’s office, the Hon. Member for Morroway was not the least abashed. He had never confronted a moral quality like this in his whole experience. After all, he thought, recalling the sheer fineness of the man, men are something more than a mere merchantable commodity in the market of politics. Possibly, there are others who, like Dilling, disproved Walpole’smot, that every man has his price . . .
It was not, however, on the knees of the gods that Mr. Sullivan should be diverted from his purpose by considerations such as these. He felt that Dilling was the only man to play the lead in the interesting drama he desired to stage, that he must win him beyond all doubt, and soon. Nothing but a refusal could be expected if so lofty and withal so astute a mind had time for reflection.
Dilling had just finished a solitary dinner—Marjorie served in a canteen every Wednesday evening—when his visitor was announced. The Hon. Member for Morroway was conscious of a change in him; there was the rapture of a seer in his eyes, and a bearing of victory—a jocund note of heroism in him.
“Why did you follow me, Mr. Sullivan?” were his words of greeting. “I thought I said I needed time for my decision.”
“Indeed, you did, Mr. Dilling. But it is important that I should have your answer at once, and besides, you gave me no chance to persuade you that you would be right in accepting the Premiership at this juncture in our history. Will you consent to hear what I would like to say?”
Dilling led the way into his study and motioned the Hon. Member to a chair. He stood.
“Proceed, Mr. Sullivan. I shall need much encouragement if I am to meet your views.”
“Hang it all, Dilling, let’s get off our high horses and down to brass tacks—if you will allow me to mix my metaphors! You left us before I had a chance to show you, as I had intended, that the interests of Canada imperatively demand that no more money be spent at this time in facilitating the marketing of wheat—for that is what your Elevator and Railway policy means in the last analysis. First and foremost the Returned Soldiers are to be considered if we are to shut off Bolshevism from rearing its ugly head here. Are you in accord with me, so far?”
“Quite,” returned Dilling. “What then?”
“The inevitable. The Governmental money bags will be kept lean for some years in meeting the just demands of the returned men, and the sentiment of the whole community will be behind them. Not only will the bankers of Eastern Canada put a spoke in your wheel—for they are spiteful over losing so much money in the West—but you will find it difficult to borrow money in the States when the people recognise that an extension of Canadian railroads means hostility to the pet scheme of many of their financiers.”
“Financiers are traditionally hostile,” said Dilling.
“True, but the situation here is particularly acute, for these men to whom I refer have sought to obtain the sanction of this country to a greater utilisation of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence waterways for transportation. They can scarcely be expected to lend money for a diverting project . . . and you can wring blood from a turnip as easily as you can borrow money in England!”
“I’m afraid your last observation is only too true, Mr. Sullivan.”
“I’m sure of it. I don’t think I need elaborate the national argument in favour of your change of front, I’ve said enough on that head. Coming to the more personal side of things, every statesman from Julius Cæsar to George Washington has had to compromise. You can’t be stiff in your adherence to principle even in appointments to government posts! Sir John Macdonald, Laurier—all of them—have had to appoint incompetent persons to the Civil Service over the heads of men thoroughly qualified in ability and character to serve the State in the finest way . . . a matter of expediency . . . expediency . . .”
Dilling said nothing, so Sullivan went on.
“What’s the use of quoting Lincoln as a model of probity in dispensing offices—Lincoln was the only man in the world who could be prophet, priest and king in politics at one and the same time—andhecouldn’t save his face, to-day!”
Somewhere, a door closed, and the treble of childish voices blended in happy confusion.
“Think of your wife and children, Dilling . . . Marjorie . . . I use her Christian name by right of a deep and esteemed friendship . . . Marjorie has suffered greatly from the snobocracy of Ottawa. She has confided much to me, that out of respect for your busy life, has been withheld from—er—her natural confidant, and it is only to be expected that you should seize the opportunity to furnish her the pleasure of playing a supreme stellar role in the social life of the nation. Moreover . . .”
“Stop, Mr. Sullivan! You have said enough . . . more than enough! You have offended me by the casuistry of your argument on behalf of the public need for my desertion of the policies I have proclaimed. Your appeal on the personal side is a gross insult to me. However I may have seemed to waver until this moment, I now unhesitatingly and absolutely decline to accept your overtures. More than that, you have persuaded me that I must leave public life. No, I beg of you, say nothing further! Let me bid you good night, Mr. Sullivan—but do not leave me without the conviction that you have done me a real service.”
Sullivan lowered his head as he left the room. A curious aching had taken possession of his throat. He had been accustomed to swear after unsuccessful interviews with politicians . . . Just now, profanity refused to rise at his command.
Marjorie’s tired voice roused him.
“It’s very late, dearie,” she said. “Won’t you try to get some rest?”
“Presently. I’ve something to tell you, first. Will you come in and sit down?”
With unaccustomed gentleness, he arranged a chair for her. She dropped into it as though suddenly bereft of the power to stand. Her eyes were feverishly bright, and fixed upon him with apprehension that amounted almost to fear.
Dilling was conscious of intense pity for her. How unequal she was to the demand he—his life—imposed! How gamely she had borne the strain!
He hated her appearance to-night. Evidently, she had returned from the canteen only in time to dress for some more brilliant function. She wore a peach-coloured satin, covered with a sort of iridescent lace—a hideously sophisticated dress, too low and too light; it bedizened her, overlaid all her native simplicity. Dilling was, as a rule, oblivious to the details of women’s clothes, but to-night his perceptions were sharpened, and he examined his wife critically.
As he did so, a horrid thought took possession of his mind. He saw her dress, her manner—her barricade of behavior—as something degrading, detestable, utterly foreign to her. A more imaginative man would have fallen back upon the fancy that the pure gold of her nature was being covered with the whitewash of social pretense. So deeply did it offend him.
“I have been offered the Premiership,” he announced.
“Oh!”
That was all she could say. Months ago she had arrived at the point where she stood on guard over every act and utterance, fearing to proceed lest she should violate some sacred creed and call forth criticism and disdain. And now, when she wanted to speak, she could not. Inarticulate and frightened, she sat, like a person paralysed by nightmare.
“Yes, this afternoon,” Dilling continued, and then as he had told Azalea, “they have given me until to-morrow morning to decide.”
“It’s splendid,” said Marjorie. “It’s wonderful . . . but then you deserve it, dearie. You’ve worked so hard!”
“So have you, Marjorie!”
“Exactly what will it mean?” she questioned, timidly. “Will we have to move again, and do more entertaining?”
“You take it for granted that I’ll accept?”
“Oh! Youcan’trefuse?”
“Why not?”
“Well—well—” Mr. Sullivan’s promptings eluded her entirely. “The premiership? . . . Oh, Raymond, you mustn’t refuse!”
She began to argue, falteringly, but with a desperate earnestness that betrayed her own lack of conviction. And as he listened, an odious suspicion crept into Dilling’s mind.
“Who’s been putting you up to this?” he demanded. “You are voicing arguments that are not your own. Tell me, Marjorie, who has been putting words into your mouth?”
Marjorie refused to meet his eyes, but her lips framed the name “Sullivan”.
It was her manner more than her speech that caused the dawn of a slow horror. Dilling recalled evidences of the man’s frequent visits—books, flowers, chocolates, games for the children—Yes, he remembered now, that the children called him “Uncle Rufus” . . . and hadn’t Sullivan, himself, hinted at an unsuspected intimacy? Had he not boasted of being Marjorie’s close confidant?
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, pursuing his own line of thought.
“Ever since we first came,” whispered his wife, failing wholly to follow him.
“You don’t meanyears?”
She bowed her head.
“Why did I never know?” He put the query more to himself than to her.
“I never tried to keep it from you, Raymond!” she was stung into making a defence. “The very first night . . . you were right in the house. No, not this house—the other one. I should think you would have heard us coming downstairs . . . Always, I have tried not to bother you!”
“Coming downstairs?” he echoed. “My God . . . my God!”
A sudden blackness enshrouded him. He was swallowed up in the wreckage of a too-long life, lived in too short a span. His career had been swept away his love was denied him, and now he had lost his wife . . .
“My God,” he said again—elemental words wrung by elemental anguish.
A cry, low and terrible, penetrated his misery. Marjorie flung herself at his feet, and gasped,
“No—no—notthat, Raymond . . . Are you listening to me? Notthat!”
“What, then?” he muttered.
“Oh, how could you, Raymond? You couldn’t think I would do a thing like that?”
“Then what do you mean?”
The story of her association with the Hon. Member for Morroway fell in broken sentences, often misleading, by reason of the very shame she felt in its avowal. As he listened to the innocent little tale, Dilling’s heart was torn with pity, and more clearly than before he saw the futility of attempting to mould their simplicity to the form of conduct required by their position. He thought of the West—his West—of a rugged people who were still alive to the practical advancement of idealism, divorced from stultifying subservience to convention. He felt an overpowering urge to return, to identify himself once again with those sturdy people, whom, he believed, would answer the guidance of his hand. He was theirs. They were his. The West was his kingdom, and there he would be content to reign.
A crushing weight seemed lifted from his spirit. Shackles fell away.
“Would you like to go home,” he asked Marjorie, “to go home for good and all, I mean?”
The light in her face answered him. It is abundantly true that experiences realised, are a glorified incarnation of dead wishes. The promised return to Pinto Plains was, for Marjorie, a dream that was coming true. She knew the exquisite pain of seeing the complete fulfilment of a passionate desire. No words could translate her feeling.
And so, with gratulation that was void of all regret, they went back to happy mediocrity, far from The Land of Afternoon.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.Book name and author have been added to the original book cover. The resulting cover is placed in the public domain.
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.
Book name and author have been added to the original book cover. The resulting cover is placed in the public domain.