Gilbert Knox

“ In her domestic activities she was perfectly at ease, hanging damp garments on radiators to dry, wiping tear stains from ruddy cheeks, and even arranging a juvenile tea-party in a corner of the room.
She chattered happily all the while, never for a moment realising that in the Upper Social Circles, the last task in the world a woman should undertake cheerfully is the care of her children; that even allowing them to stay in the same room and breathe the rarified air with which the exalted adults have finished, is a confession of eccentricity, if not bourgeoisisme. ”

“ For years Marjorie had pictured Ottawa much as she had pictured Bagdad—The City of Mystery and a Thousand Delights—a place of gracious boulevards and noble architecture, where highly intelligent people occupied themselves with the performance of inspired tasks. And she thought of it as the Heart of the Great Dominion, as necessary to the national body as the human heart is essential to the physical body, transmitting the tide of national life to the very finger-tips of civilisation. ”

“ 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 and see?” 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Dilling saw none of these things. He was fighting the oppression of this curious lassitude and striving to recapture his ardour for work. The effect was not noticeably successful. He felt tired, stupid, drugged, as though some vital part of him was imprisoned and inert. He longed to be free, to abandon himself to a riot of emotion, to feel as acutely with his body as with his mind. He longed to overcome this numbness, this nostalgia of the senses, and to taste the fruits that gave to life its pungent tang and flavour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just why the words had stung, it was beyond Marjorie Dilling to explain. Orderly thinking and systematic juxtaposition of facts found their substitute in flashes of intuition which, throughout the ages, have stood for women in the place of reason. But she knew, without knowing how she knew, that Azalea would rather have impressed Raymond with her incomparable womanhood, than the fact that she was the possessor of a brain that should have functioned in the body of a man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is true that I love you, but I love the big You, the public man, the orator, the statesman, and I have a supreme longing to see you attain greater honours and bring greater glory to Canada. To achieve this, I am firmly convinced that a closed door in your nature must be opened. You are like a man working in artificial light. He can see, yes—but he attains results through greater strain than is immediately apparent and, therefore, his season of usefulness is lessened. There is sunshine, Raymond, and in its radiance, much of what was work becomes play. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Over there, the spirit of the young nation was responding magnificently to a supreme test of its fineness. Here at home, within the very walls of the buildings dedicated to the purpose of moulding and directing the welfare of the nation, men of mature years were not ashamed, by plot and intrigue, to make of Canada a scorn and a byword. A man of the highest instincts for public service was being tempted by his political associates to foreswear his ideals by a sordid bargaining for power. ”

“ None knows it better. Education is only a matter of knowing what is right and then having the courage to do it.”
He objected almost petulantly, supposing that he lacked the necessary courage. Azalea smiled, and there was pride behind the gesture.
“That, above all others, is the virtue you possess. It is the foundation upon which all the rest are built. It is that which helps them to endure . . .”
Dilling listened to the quiet confident voice with an emotion so profound that it was like a deep-bosomed bell ringing in his soul. ”

“ No one really knew Azalea—least of all, her family. Perhaps, no one ever really knows anyone else, a phase of ignorance which, personally, I am not inclined to deplore. Souls should be clad no less than bodies. They should be gowned with decency, and in so far as possible, loveliness; and if, now and again, the garment slips or wears thin, then should the beholder turn his eyes away, nor seek to pry into anything that may be so terrible or so sublime.
Outwardly, as Lady Denby had said, Azalea was a plain little person. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It quite took Marjorie’s breath away to learn that Lady Denby considered women important in politics, and that they might sway their husbands for or against a fellow member was an idea that had never entered her mind. Neither could she understand how her own popularity could be a factor in Raymond’s success, and that it was dependent upon maintaining a position she would not afford, instead of living according to her means and simplicity of requirement—was an attitude of mind that she never completely grasped. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This distressed her, for, according to the ethics of Pinto Plains, a man impressed his attentions only upon the woman who encouraged him, and Marjorie felt that something in her manner must have been very misleading. She resented his pursuit less than she felt ashamed of herself for inspiring it, and was inexpressibly relieved when he finally left the room.
The terrible disorder of the pavilion sickened her housekeeper’s soul, and she turned to Azalea, impetuously.
“Just look at this place! Isn’t it disgusting to expect any human being to clean it up?” ”

“ Sullivan continued, sententiously. “I have a theory—shared by very few people, it is true, but convincing to me, nevertheless—that Beauty wields a more powerful influence than Fear. What do you think?”
“Never thought about it at all,” confessed Howarth, bluntly. “But what has all this to do with Dilling’s price?”
“Oh, nothing, my dear fellow,” said Sullivan, airily, “nothing at all! I was merely indulging in a moment’s reflection, inspired, as it were, by Mrs. Dilling’s loveliness. You must meet her . . . We must see to it that Ottawa treats her with cordiality and friendliness.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ As it was, he heard the evocation of Destiny for higher things, read law as an avenue to what seemed to him the primrose path of politics, and grasped the hand of opportunity before it was definitely thrust towards him. He lived in the West during its most provocative period—provocative, that is, for a man of imagination—but he never caught the true spirit of the land, he never felt his soul respond to the lure of its fecundity, its spaciousness, its poignant beauty. The sun always set for him behind the grain elevators, and it never occurred to him to lift his eyes to the eternal hills . ”

“ If a man is revolted by the corruptness of his Party, he can not lead it with spirit, nor can he justify it as a medium for serving the State. It is sadly true that rather to his imperfections than to the fineness of his qualities is the success of the statesman due.
On the other hand, public men of genius, in these days, are not excused for their dulcia vitia as they used to be. “I would be damned,” he reflected, “for the frailties that seemed to endear Pitt to the populace. So long as a leader is chaste and sober, he may be unscrupulous with impunity.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She saw them sought after, deferred to, taking precedence over everyone save the representative of the King! Her thoughts fell into narrower channels and she pictured Marjorie opening bazaars, lending her patronage to this or that gathering of Society’s choicest blossoms, arriving at the state where she would be unstirred by invitations to Government House!
Under the turquoise velvet, her bosom rose and fell, heavily. At the moment she hated her husband no less fiercely than she hated the man whom she chose to consider his rival. What could Augustus carve in the way of a career? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sullivan was so nearly right. Must not a statesman possess flexibility of mind as well as rigidity of principle? Must not he be able to adapt himself to the exigencies of the time? Dilling required none to remind him that the whole fabric of Canada’s political life was changed, that the policy in ante-bellum days was, in many cases, inimical to the public good, to-day. He saw, clearly, that concentration of the Dominion’s resources upon Returned Soldiers and their re-establishment was an inevitable consequence of War. He knew that Freight, Elevator and Railway projects must be postponed. ”

“ Lady Denby sighed. “Well, keep on trying. Upon my word, I think the world is turning upside down! Where are the nice young people, nowadays? Why couldn’t she have been like Helena Chesley or Eva Leeds, or the Angus-McCallums, or—er—even you? You would have made him a very good wife, Azalea!”
Azalea turned a painful scarlet, but Lady Denby was too deeply immersed in her own trend of thought to notice her companion’s confusion or to read its meaning.
“There seem to be but two types of young woman,” she complained, “hers, and the one represented by that terrible Barrington person. ”

“ The world talks of men compromising women, but that’s a difficult task compared with the ease with which women compromise men. What’s the matter? Are your weapons rusty with disuse? It seems to me that only just before you came up here I heard rumours of . . . Oh, but let that pass! The point is now, that there must be no further dallying. Before’s there’s any possibility of his obtaining any hold on the country, Dilling must go, must hang himself, must dig his own grave and bury himself! It’s up to you!”
Hebe avoided his glance, and, as he regarded her, a change came over him. ”