CHAPTER XVI
My trip abroad had a very widening influence upon me, and I saw many things in a different light from that in which they had appeared to me before my visit to London. Muriel and our children looked different to me, and my duty to render a strict account of my life to them came home to me. I realised that I did not belong to myself. Hitherto I had been living by my feelings and instincts, as most people do, like a chip upon a stream, driven hither and thither by current, counter-current, and by every breeze. I perceived that I was not a chip, but a ship, my brains in control of the rudder. These ideas came late to me, and I made but poor use of them; but I tried.
I was now in as much need of the immediate dollar as I had ever been, and I returned to my regular beat on St. James Street, to do such work as offered, from a deal in real estate, down to gathering in an insignificant commission on a small fire policy. I loathed the life; but I had to provide. I discovered that I could scribble things that newspapers and magazines would pay for. The first five-dollar bill I received for this work, I felt to be the biggest and cleanest money I had ever earned. While struggling thus once more with necessity, I gave much thought to the future. A new light on things, as it seemed, had come to me; had I been religiously inclined, it would have led me to believe I was experiencing a change of heart, being born again, or undergoing some such mysteriousprocess, as that through which certain kinds of people go. But this was not so. I was learning to think; and to take myself more seriously. I had children growing up, to whom I owed more than I could ever pay. I had accomplished nothing and arrived nowhere. In this condition of mind I bethought me of Muriel’s cousin Rex. Rex was a lawyer and a politician high up in the councils of a political party. He was the cunning and wise counsellor, and the “right bower” of a Minister of the Crown. Rex’s father had been a plain, hard-working man. In a little unpretentious place he had lived by making shirts to order. An artist in shirts, he knew his work and loved it, and he made good shirts. He raised Rex, his first-born, and educated him and several other children on shirts, and died poor.
Rex was different. He was ambitious. He cared nothing for using his hands, and he despised shirt-making. He never made anything but peace or trouble, whichever paid the better, for he was a lawyer and a schemer. He became a clever politician, able and resourceful, and some day he will be a millionaire, as he deserves—for having had the perspicacity to observe that it does not pay to make useful things with one’s hands.
Withal, I doubt if he has had the satisfaction out of life that his father got out of making shirts.
Through Rex I became a political worker for the Minister to whom he was adviser. As it will be necessary to speak of several Ministers of the Crown, who must be nameless, I will call this Minister “One.” An election was about to fall upon the country with all the disorganising influences of a great storm. The wind of political excitement was just beginning to blowin fitful gusts, now from one direction, now from another, and the powers of the two great parties were beginning to line up and count heads. Workers of all kinds were wanted—writers, good liars, common touts, organisers, poseurs, talkers, walkers and mockers. For Minister One I checked lists of people, made calls at offices, talked to working men at noon hour, and even made my way into private houses in the evenings, and did many other things as I was bid, and learned all the mysteries of what is known as “the dirty work” of an election. I was well paid; but I did not work for pay alone. I was serving my apprenticeship in the way Rex thought necessary, before I could be made a Civil servant.
During the weeks I spent at this work I had beautiful dreams of a near future, when I would assume the cowl and retire from the world into the seclusion of the Civil Service, where I would enjoy peace and leisure, with time to think, study, and write for magazines, teach music and follow my bent. I had very hazy ideas regarding the Civil Service. I thought, as many think, that it was a collection of highly fortunate and cultivated gentlemen, who enjoyed ridiculous salaries for services of a very light kind; that being a Civil servant gave one a social standing of some importance, next, at least, to that of gentlemen of the black robe and collar buttoned behind. I was to live and discover how exceedingly foolish were these ideas.
The election being over, to the satisfaction of one party and the discomfiture of another, Minister One being re-established in his position of Minister of Ways and Means, where he had been before the election, I called upon him; my movements, of course, being advised by Rex. Calling on a Minister is by no meansa simple process. Minister One had several offices in several cities, two of them being in Montreal—one in the post office, the other in the offices of a newspaper. He was never anywhere for a long time, and was always busy and surrounded by watchful bodyguards and lieutenants, who protected him from the protesting, begging and demanding mob. However, I camped upon his trail and finally tracked him to his lair.
Minister One was a little nervous man of wonderful energy, with unbounded faith in himself and his destiny. He was very amusing in some of his aspects, but the comical side of his character was a side he never recognised in himself. He received me as kindly and condescendingly as he could—he being only five foot seven and a Minister of the Crown; and I being six foot and one of his jackals, who knew that his election had not been made with prayers. Compliments being exchanged, I came at once to the point.
“Mr. Minister,” I said, “I would exceedingly like a Government position.”
“What?” exclaimed One, pretending to be surprised. “Government position at your age? In the name of high Heaven, why?” And he took a turn about the room with his head thrown forward on his chest, and his hands clasped behind his back.
“Because,” I replied, “I have had enough; I want peace and a reliable source of income.”
“Peace! ha, ha!” said One laughing. “You want peace while still young and able to fight? What is the use of peace? Givemewar.”
“Every one to his taste,” I said; “war for you, peace for me. War I know something about. I have fought a bitter fight, and am tired. War I give you, but peace is a thing I have yet to experience. Iwould like to taste it, and so I want a Government position.”
“Oh, very well,” said One, and he waved his arms in disgust. He waved his arms about his head in everything. “To go into the Civil Service is not to achieve peace, it is to die. Go to Rex and tell him I say you are to be placed.”
“I come from Rex to ask you to place me,” I said.
“Well, go back to him and say that it is all right, and I will see him about it. Good-morning, good-bye, and good luck,” he said, in a tone which indicated that he would have been delighted to add, “go to hell,” or something like it.
I went immediately to Rex, who pitied me as one of the many kinds of jackasses who fail to take advantage of the great opportunities offering to ride on the other fellow’s back. I gave him Minister One’s message, and said things to him relative to my wishes, hopes, desires and condition. He looked at me sorrowfully.
I was a large, bare-faced man with long hair; neither ordinary or commonplace to look upon. To wear my hair a little long is my taste and Muriel’s. Rex wore his hair cropped like a pork butcher and the beard upon his face trimmed to a pattern. “Chacun à son goût.” He was like a great many other people in thinking that matters of taste are matters of fact, and that style and gait not of this or that type must necessarily be bad taste.
“John,” he said, “get your hair cut, and you shall have the position you desire.”
“Consider it cut,” I said. “If thy hair offend thy protector, cut if off; it will grow again.” And we both laughed.
We were both mere boys under forty. It flatteredhim to be referred to as my protector. Not only in the matter of hair did we disagree. We looked with different eyes on all subjects; yet we were friends, and I had his sympathy and help, which he gave me as if I were his brother.
I had what used to be considered as claims upon a position in the Civil Service, to wit:
Item: I had worked for the Minister of Ways and Means.
Item: I was the only Red in a Blue family, the little leaven, which might in time leaven the whole.
Item: My wife was related to a man who had arrived politically.
Item: My father-in-law had been a big gun, and an intimate friend of Sir ——, who had been a Prime Minister.
These were considered good and sufficient claims, and counted very high in the game. We do still count them, but not so highly as in the year Thirty-Six.