CHAPTER 14.
Two months had passed since Azalea had undertaken her secretarial duties. She felt that she had entered into a new life, that a wonderful renascence was hers. Never in all her imaginings, had she dreamed of days so replete with happiness.
A sense of deference to the dead prompted Mrs. Deane to protest against her daughter’s accepting the appointment. They talked at one another across an abyss that widened daily and separated them.
“You shouldn’t do it, Azalea,” she cried. “It doesn’t seem right. You’re disobeying your father when he’s scarcely cold in the grave . . . It isn’t as though you didn’t know that . . . I mean, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if he had been dead a long time . . .”
“Disobedience is a matter of principle, not time, mother!” returned the girl. “Don’t you see that I have no choice? We can’t live without the equivalent of father’s superannuation allowance!”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know what to do,” Mrs. Deane whimpered, “Business is so difficult for a woman to grasp . . . Oh, Azalea, if he knows it, he will be so dreadfully annoyed! Isn’t there some other way? If you had only been married . . .”
“Please, mother, let’s not go into that! I’m sorry to have disappointed you, but for myself, I haven’t a single regret. I don’t look upon marriage as the only solution of a woman’s financial problems, you know.”
“It’s a convenient one,” argued Mrs. Deane, rather more pertinently than usual. “There are the girls . . . they don’t have to work.”
“If they don’t, then they are cheating their husbands,” cried Azalea, purposely misunderstanding. “And too many married women who don’t cheat their husbands are being cheated—like you,” she nearly ended.
“Oh, my child!”
“I can’t look upon marriage as a refuge from the dangers that beset a female traveller on the Sea of Life. To me it is a tricky craft that may play you false as it operates between the two inescapable ports of Birth and Death.”
“And you are our baby, too,” sighed Mrs. Deane, as irrelevantly as Mrs. Nickleby.
“A baby who has grown up at last, and thanks God for the opportunity that has come disguised as a necessity; a baby, dear mother, who does not look upon congenial work as a test of courage, but as a divine privilege.”
Curiously enough, once she was established in her new position, unreserved approval was expressed among her friends. Many of them attributed the move to some suggestion of their own. Lady Denby and Mrs. Hudson both remembered having advised Azalea to take some such step years ago. Lady Elton thought she had shown her good sense at last, but hoped that Mr. Dilling would not be too exacting. Entertaining was a bore under the best of conditions. She simply could not imagine getting along without Azalea’s assistance. Mrs. Long saw an opportunity for picking up odd bits of political gossip that eluded the ordinary reporter, and making a neat little income on the side.
“You’re clever enough to do it, my dear,” she said. “Now, don’t be thin-skinned. Spice is what the people want—any of them who bother to read the papers.”
As for Dilling, he felt himself infused with new zest and enthusiasm. He was conscious of a greater capacity for work, an accession of power. His brain seemed to function tirelessly and with amazing clearness. He developed a veritable rapacity for what appeared to be ineluctable problems, and he who had been a model of industry became a miracle of inexhaustible energy.
It was about this time that men began to look to him as the most able exponent of their political creeds; it was upon him that they called to master such questions as Newfoundland’s entrance into the Dominion, trade with the West Indies, reciprocity with the United States, and upon his slender shoulders fell the burden of carrying on the most contentious debate of latter times—Canada’s Naval Policy. In short, it was to him that his Party turned, as the only man capable of grasping those knotty issues of international importance and presenting Canada’s case in a masterly way before the Council of the Nations.
“I’ve been invited to join the Golf Club,” he announced one morning, as Azalea came into the office.
“I’m glad! You’re not hesitating about it, are you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think you are becoming no end of a social lion,” she replied, smiling, “and that soon you will be roaring as lustily in drawing-rooms as on the floor of the House. Seriously, I think you should accept. It will be good for Marjorie.”
“I’m not so sure. She hasn’t many friends among that crowd. However, I think I see what you mean.”
Azalea hoped he did. She was desperately anxious for him to realise that in the Capital success is regarded from only one angle, the Social. Professional, literary, political, all these are but feeders to the main issue.
“I spent the afternoon with your exceptionally brilliant Dr. Aldrich,” said Sir Paul Pollock, the eminent British anthropologist, during the course of a dinner the Chesleys had given in his honour.
“Aldrich?” echoed the company. “Who’s he?”
Sir Paul did not take the question seriously. “I don’t blame you,” he laughed. “Two scientists at the same party would be excessively heavy wheeling.”
“But who is he?” insisted Miss Mabel Angus-McCallum. “I never heard of him.”
“Nor I . . .”
“Nor I . . .”
“Well—ah—ha—if you are not pulling my leg,” answered the amazed guest, “perhaps you will be interested in knowing that he is one of the most famous biologists living. But—ah—ha—! I expect you are just stringing me.”
It was gradually borne in upon him that they were not, that they had no desire to cultivate the men and women whose lives are devoted to the advancement of their race, that even the names of such people were unfamiliar to them and that prominence in their especial sphere was clouded by a total eclipse of the social solar system.
It was this latter point that Azalea ardently wished to make Dilling recognise. He was so immersed in his public life that there was little time for the consideration of any other question, and Marjorie had not sufficient astuteness to make the most of her advantage or profit by experiences.
She seemed incapable of keeping step with her husband, of acquiring a broader vision than that which was hers in Pinto Plains. In her eyes, a thousand dollars was always a staggering sum, five hundred an immense concourse of people.
“But, dearest Marjorie,” cried Azalea, in affectionate exasperation one day, “you must learn to see beyond a home-made dress and a parish tea-party!”
“If my clothes and my food mean more to people than I do, myself,” argued Marjorie, “then I don’t want to have anything more to do with them. We’re just plain Canadians, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise!”
“Yes, but—but—” Azalea often found herself at a loss for illustrations that would co-ordinate with her friend’s code of ethics, “conforming to certain conventions isn’t exactly pretence. You might look upon it as a ceremony, ritual, something that is an adjunct to a position.”
“A lady is a lady anywhere,” murmured Marjorie conscious, herself, that she was not precisely strengthening her argument.
“So is a clergyman,” replied Azalea, “but you would not like to see him conduct a Service in a pair of tennis flannels or a bathing suit.”
“Oh!” The point had gone home. “What have I done that’s wrong?”
“Nothing so very wrong, you dear lamb,” said the older girl, kissing Marjorie’s troubled mouth, “but try not to be so humble. Humility is a splendid virtue, sometimes—but not when we’re heading for the Cabinet!”
“It frightens me to think of it.”
“But you must overcome that, and feel perfectly at ease with Mrs. Blaine, Mrs. Carmichael, Lady Denby and the others. You must make them your friends.”
“I can’t be friends with people if they don’t want me!”
Azalea tried to explain that in public life friendship and association are more or less interchangeable terms. “You were not friends with all your classmates at school,” she said, “but you associated with them, especially on formal occasions. It was then that your status was fixed by your class. It is exactly the same with your position as Mr. Dilling’s wife. You must feel yourself worthy of belonging to the highest class—the class which has been reached by a very prominent man, who will be known in history as one of the greatest statesmen of his country.”
“What must I do?” asked Marjorie, as Mrs. Deane might have said it.
“Learn and observe social distinctions. Everyone else does. Show that you respect your husband’s achievements and others will follow your lead. Why, the Society Columns are read to better advantage by the tradespeople, the gas inspector, the telephone operators, the very cab drivers, than you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Marjorie, very close to tears.
“I mean that those people almost unerringly place the rest of us in our proper class. They observe the rules of precedence, which you don’t. If there happened to be but one cab at a stand, and both you and Mrs. Blaine wanted it, which one of you would get the thing?”
Marjorie did not answer.
“Mrs. Blaine! You know it! Why? Because she goes to Church regularly on Sundays, pays her bills promptly, refuses to gossip and slander her neighbours? Not a bit of it! Because she puts a value on herself that is compatible with her husband’s position . . . at least, that’s near enough the mark to serve my purpose in scolding you!”
“All right,” sighed Marjorie, “I’ll try to be stiff with people, if that’s the way to help Raymond. I don’t believe it, you know, Azalea, but I think I see what you mean.”
Azalea, however, was not so sanguine.
“Do you play golf?” she asked Dilling.
“Oh, I’ve handled the clubs once or twice. But I won’t have any time to devote to the game.”
“You must make time. It will do you a world of good. All play and no work will make you an ideal politician,” she teased.
“You will come out with us to dinner, the first night we go?”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “You must take someone infinitely more distinguished. You must shine and let your light be seen before men. If I might make a suggestion, give a very exclusive dinner party and invite the Chief.”
“But you must come, too!”
“We’ll see. In the meantime, hadn’t we better tackle this formidable mail? It seems to grow larger every morning.”
Towards the middle of the afternoon, a spare, thin-lipped little man came into the room.
“Howdy, Raymond?” he greeted. “Been tryin’ to run you down to your hole this last half hour. Got kinder twisted in this big buildin’.”
“How are you, Sam?” said Dilling, shaking hands. “It’s good to see someone from home. Just get in?”
“Just about. How’s the Missus and the kids?”
Dilling assured his visitor that their health was good.
“We’ve had an awful lot of sickness this winter. First, the baby was taken with swollen glands, and we’d no sooner got her up an’ about when Sammy came down with grippe, and on top o’ that, the wife had to be operated on for appendicitis. Makes me creep to think what the doctor’s bill is goin’ to be.”
“Don’t worry about that, Sam. Halsey is the soul of consideration and patience.”
“Still, he’s got to be paid. Swell office, you’ve got, Raymond.”
Dilling smiled.
“An improvement on my old one, but modest as offices go.”
“This all there is of it?” queried the stranger.
“This is all. We don’t have suites, you know, until we get to be Deputies or Commissioners, perhaps. It’s plenty large enough.”
“Sure. I was only wonderin’ where we could have a little talk—a kinduv private confab, as you might say,” returned the other, nodding at Azalea’s industrious back.
“We can have it right here,” said Dilling, promptly. “This is my confidential secretary, Miss Deane. Mr. Sam Dunlop, of Pinto Plains. Miss Deane. He’s an old friend and worked hard at the time of my election. Go ahead, Sam. What is it?”
“Well—er—” began Mr. Dunlop, in some embarrassment, “it’s about that block of ours out home. You mind when we four bought it from them Winnipeg fellows, the idea was that they would start in putting improvements all around us?”
“In the centre of the town,” supplemented Dilling. “I remember very well. There was some talk of street cars. What of it?”
“They’re a bunch of shysters, that’s what! They haven’t spent a dollar on First or Second Streets, they only pulled down a couple of buildings on the Avenue, and they’re investin’ every dollar they can raise to develop Pond Park and turn it into a summer resort. And business is trailin’ ’em right out that way.”
Dilling looked grave.
“Has anyone actually moved off First Street?”
“Bowers is moving in the spring. Jennings got an option on the corner of Cedar and the Avenue which takes the two biggest merchants away. After that, all the little fellows will go.”
“And the hotel they talked about?”
“If they build, it’ll be out the other way. Oh, there ain’t a bit of use in you settin’ there thinkin’ that we’ve got a chance,” cried Mr. Dunlop. “We’ve studied this thing till it’s a wonder we didn’t get brain fever. Says Lewis, ‘We four went into this here deal as friends and we’ll stick together. You go down to Ottawa and see Raymond. He’ll look after us, same as we’ve been tryin’ to look after his interests.’ Mumford’s the hardest hit—next to me, that is! But none of us, outside of yourself, can afford to hold that property an’ pay taxes while the town grows in the other direction.”
“And what do you think I can do?” asked Dilling, in a hard voice.
“You can recommend the sale of our block to the Government, boy, that’s where you come in!” Mr. Dunlop dragged his chair closer and poured forth his proposition in a rapid whisper.
“But Pinto Plains doesn’t need another Post Office,” argued Raymond Dilling. “The Liberals spent fifty thousand dollars for the one we have only a few years ago, and you were the first to denounce it, Sam. Everyone agreed that the town wouldn’t grow up to it in a hundred years.”
“But, damn it all, Raymond, can’t you see that this is different? Can’t you get it through your head that we’ll be ruined unless we can sell that property and sell it quick? All of us—of course, exceptin’ you—all of us have got to raise interest on the money we borrowed to put into it, and Lord knows where mine is coming from. What’s a dinky little Post Office to the Government? Lewis says it ought to be a cinch to put it through, for he can condemn the other one, easy! How long do you figger it’ll take to get the matter settled, son?”
“It’s settled right now, so far as I’m concerned.”
“How do you mean?”
“I can’t undertake such a job.”
“You . . . what?”
“You’re asking me to betray the confidence of the country, Sam; to rob the Treasury. That’s the proposition in plain English, isn’t it?”
Mr. Dunlop denied this accusation eloquently, if irrationally. He cajoled, he stormed, he pleaded, he threatened. He reminded Dilling that during his election campaign, support had been based on friendship, not a strict adherence to truthfulness, and that the boys had not stopped to consider every lie that was told on his behalf.
“Runnin’ the country ain’t the same as runnin’ a Sunday School,” he added, in justification.
“The governing principles should be the same,” answered Dilling. “No, Sam, I can’t do it. Argument is useless. When you and the boys think it over, you will agree that the man who would have carried out your proposition is not the type that you would have to mould the policy of the Nation. I hope that Pinto Plains will never send a chap like that to Parliament! You’ll come down to the house, of course, won’t you?”
But Mr. Dunlop did not hear the invitation. He was so absorbed in expressing his opinion of the man he had sent to Parliament, that he failed to recognise Sir Robert Borden whom he passed in the corridor, and ran violently into Sir Eric and Lady Denby without uttering a word of apology.
“We’ll fix him,” he muttered under his breath. “We’ll fix him!”
In the office there was silence save for the sibilent fluttering of papers on Azalea’s desk. Presently, Dilling spoke.
“I’m too indignant at the moment to be sorry for them!” he said. “And it’s something of a shock to find that they held me in no higher esteem than to think I would be a party to such jobbery.”
“I doubt that they looked at the matter in just that way. Isn’t it merely another example of the common practice of bringing your white elephant to feed at the Dominion crib?”
“It’s another example of perverted ethics,” growled Dilling, and he went angrily off to lunch.
Azalea sat on, thinking. What, she asked herself, would be the outcome of Raymond Dilling’s uncompromising attitude with men of Dunlop’s calibre? Would he, like Marjorie, persistently close his eyes to the advantage of temporising in matters that affected his political career? Would he never learn that a gentle lie turneth away enquiry and that as Dunlop had so truly said, the country was not run like a Sunday School? She had heard him reject more than one proposition made by men of his own Party who never could be brought to see the criminous side of misappropriation of public funds. She had known him to ignore the Patronage system by refusing positions to incompetents, as bluntly as he had discarded Dunlop’s scheme. And a little compromising, or even temporising, would have accomplished his object without loss of good will.
“Custom,” he once said in answer to her remonstrance, “can never in my opinion sanctify piracy or brigandage. I don’t believe in Patronage and never shall. Incompetency should be treated and overcome if possible, but not rewarded.”
Rejoicing, as she did, in this fine adherence both to the letter and spirit of his political creed, yet she could not but feel apprehensive for his political future. As a lamp unto his feet were the rules of the Independence of Parliament, but he was rapidly making enemies when by the employment of a little diplomacy he might have had hosts of friends. Scarcely a week passed without bringing forth some public attack upon him, and the mere fact that he championed a cause was sufficient to win for it a mob of fanatical obstructionists.
Yet Azalea realised that anything less than this unswerving rectitude would have been for Dilling ignominious surrender, and she prayed that he might uphold his ideals at all costs, that he might achieve a spiritual triumph even at the price of material defeat. She wondered how it would all end.