CHAPTER 19.
Everybody now called upon Marjorie. Even the A.D.C.’s from Government House were to be found at her receptions on Monday afternoons. Invitations poured in upon her. She was an integral part of Canada’s official life, and her presence was deemed necessary at all public assemblages. Socially, she was accounted of importance, and her attendance at private affairs lent to them that subtle odour of distinction which—with a fine disregard for principle—democracy loves to inhale. Tradespeople solicited her custom, agents waited upon her pleasure and her patronage was sought for a bewildering variety of functions.
She found herself in the hands of exploiters, who called at all hours, with slight excuse or no excuse, to crave favours or heap them upon her, with high hope that she would liquidate the debt in social currency, and Marjorie never learned to deny herself to these people. She was more embarrassed than flattered by their ambiguous attentions, and was positively distressed at having to take precedence over those who, but yesterday, had snubbed her.
Life became a round of perplexing complications, and she yearned for the peace and quiet that used to be hers at home.
Then, too, she was worried by the fierce light of publicity that played upon her. Interviewers distorted her timid utterances in half a dozen metropolitan papers. Illustrated weeklies requested her photograph for publication. Local reporters took a sudden and absorbing interest in her gowns, and the gatherings at which she was expected to wear them—gatherings, which, under other conditions, would not have attracted the Press by so much as a line.
“The Sweet Arbutus Club enjoyed the distinction of entertaining Mrs. Raymond Dilling at its annual supper on Thursday evening. The President of the Club, Mrs. Horatio Gullep, received the members, and little Miss Ermyntrude Polduggan presented the distinguished guest with a shower bouquet of white carnations. The Secretary, Mrs. (Dr.) Deitrich, and the Treasurer, Miss Emmeline Crogganthorpe, presided at the supper table, while the following young ladies assisted . . . Throughout the evening several delightful selections were rendered by the Club Orchestra, consisting of the Messrs. . . . and the Misses . . . Mrs. (Rev.) Muldoon charmed her audience with three recitations, and the programme was brought to a close with a chorus sung by seven dainty little maidens all under the age of seven . . .”
This was the sort of thing that Mrs. Long claimed not to have read and that drove Lady Denby to a state closely akin to frenzy.
“I never saw anyone so intractable,” she cried to Azalea. “You would think that she actually preferred those awful people!”
“I believe they are ardent workers in the church,” murmured Azalea.
“Even so! Church work should be encouraged, and I admire her for undertaking so much of it. But you know as well as I do, Azalea, that a Minister’s wife has her own peculiar duties to perform, and they are not fundamentally concerned with—”
“Church workers,” suggested the girl.
“Well, I mean to say that she needn’t be afraid we will contaminate her. There are Christians outside the Church.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so, Lady Denby! There certainly aren’t many in it.”
“Child! How can you think of such things?”
“You flatter me,” returned Azalea. “It’s not original. Nietzsche gave me the idea. He said there was but one Christian, and Him they crucified.”
Lady Denby was outraged by this blasphemy. She was not the only person who thought Azalea Deane had developed an unpleasant emancipation since the death of her father, and she took this occasion to mention her feeling in the matter.
“I have nothing to say against the Civil Service,” she concluded, “but I have noticed that so many of the women who enter it acquire an air of independence that is unbecoming to a lady. I am speaking as a friend, and for your own good, my dear, so I trust that you will give heed to what I say.”
“Thank you, Lady Denby,” murmured Azalea. “Now to return to the Dillings—”
“You must make her see that these parochial affairs should not claim her attention.”
“I have tried to make her see that, but it is difficult. You will remember that her creed is a literal acceptance of the golden rule. Indeed, she is literal in everything.”
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. Of the two I almost incline towards the latter. At least, she would give some tone to the Party.”
“I grant it.”
“Don’t misunderstand me, Azalea! You know well enough what I mean. She has a manner . . . On the other hand, here is a young couple, qualified in many respects to adorn not only the Party but the Dominion. Heaven knows we need his brains. Except for a few of the older men, notably my husband, the country can’t muster enough to fill a good-sized thimble! But what do they make of their gifts! Nothing! Less than nothing! They ignore advice, scorn convention and, unless they suffer a radical change of heart, they will undermine the foundations of the very structure which has made them, by refusing to adapt themselves to the exigencies of their official position. Can you imagine him a Prime Minister, representing Canada abroad—for example, at an Imperial Conference?”
“Yes, I can!” flared Azalea. “And furthermore, I can imagine that in a broader field, associating with bigger people, Raymond Dilling would be accepted at his genuine worth. Proportions would be adjusted, and the gifts he undoubtedly possesses would shine with a brilliance undimmed by the shadow of his humble origin. I mean to say,” she went on, “a shadow that is formed, locally, by petty insistence upon a matter that is of no importance. Here, in this trivial atmosphere, heavy with a spurious culture, most of us regard the position as less significant than the man. We expect him to adorn his office, and the manner in which he wears his mantle means more to us than the manner in which he administers his public duty.”
“Fine feathers . . .” began Lady Denby.
“Moreover,” continued Azalea, unheeding the interruption, “we are impressed with his personality first and his political integrity later. People of a different calibre would relegate the mantle to its proper place, and Dilling, the orator, the statesman, would come into his own. Do you suppose,” she cried, with more heat than she realised, “that the men who mould our Imperial policies are influenced in their estimate of Raymond Dilling’s usefulness to Canada—to the Empire, indeed—by considerations of his talents and inflexibility of purpose, or by his adherence to custom in wearing a black tie or a white?”
“Now you are being stupid, Azalea,” pronounced Lady Denby. “Conventions cannot be broken without harming both the offender and the cause he represents. There never has been a telling argument in favour of conventionality, yet it persists. My charwoman may be gauche and amuse me, but similar behavior on the part of Lady Elton, for example, would disgust me and kill my respect.”
“But the Dillings are not gauche,” Azalea defended. “I know few words that could be more inaptly applied to them. Mrs. Pratt is gauche, for if she followed her instincts she would do the clumsy, cruel and vulgar thing. The Dillings, on the other hand, do the orderly, kind and decent thing. They make no pretence, use no lacquer or veneer. If they err at all, it is not due to gaucherie, but utter simplicity. They do not think that it becomes them to ape or assume the manner of the great. They even go so far as to be logical, which is the last attribute that one should have to be socially presentable. Oh, why, Lady Denby,” she cried, “why can’t people let them alone, stop this carping criticism, and applaud, if they won’t follow, the fine example that is being set them? As a man thinketh . . .”
They parted in some constraint, Lady Denby unpleasantly stirred by the truth behind Azalea’s championship, and Azalea quivering with indignation at the unreasonableness of such attacks upon the Dillings. Never had she hated her townsfolk more bitterly than at this moment. “They are like a swarm of vicious wasps,” was her thought, as she raced along through the mild spring night, “stinging a lovely and unoffending body until its sweetness is absorbed and its beauty marred.”
And Azalea was alive to another sensation. Above the clamour of her directed thinking, Lady Denby’s words rushed unbidden into her mind, and would not be dislodged.
“You would have made him a good wife, Azalea!”
“God,” she thought, “why must life be so cruel? Why is it that some of us are denied not only the privilege of having, but even that of giving? I could give him so much . . . so much . . .”
A verse filtered through her memory. It was the cry of Ibsen’s Agnes, and it spoke to her own heavy heart:
“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 . . .”