CHAPTER 27.
It was only natural perhaps, that Dilling should suffer the full and terrible force of Sullivan’s temptation after he thought he had conquered it, for it was only then that he permitted himself the dangerous pleasure of examining its possibilities. In his silent office, surrounded by the hush of a building deserted now save by the Dominion Police who never relaxed their vigilance, he considered the might-have-beens, and wrestled with beasts that threatened to rise up and devour him.
Sullivan’s implications recurred in their most convincing aspect. 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. And he was in favour of postponing them. But Sullivan asked more. He asked that the very principles that had inspired his support be abandoned in exchange for a post of power.
Ambition’s seductive voice whispered of compromise. What else is diplomacy, indeed? Supreme issues have been won by a trick; statesmanship is permitted greater latitude than is allowed the private individual.
He had learned that a sensitive conscience is a disability in political life. 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.”
His spirit cried out in anguish, and he was tortured by the whirling orb of thought that compels great minds to suffer the perturbation of a common life-time in the space of a moment. He raised his eyes to the window, unconsciously seeking strength from the glory framed there. Suddenly, his soul was quickened; he became alive to the wonder of God in Nature . . . the sun was setting in amber dust . . . pale greenish streaks stretched overhead and dissolved in a pansy mist. Upon the horizon, masses of heavy cloud lay banked like a mountain range bathed in violet rain.
The words of the psalmist flashed across Dilling’s mind and he murmured, “ ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.’ If God can pour strength into a frail vessel, may He pour it generously into me.”
There was a light tap on the door, and Azalea entered the room.
Dilling stared at her without speaking. He had never attached much importance to coincidences. They were, he thought, significant only in the world of fiction. When they occurred in reality, they only emphasised the incoherency of the substance. But Azalea’s coming was like an answer to prayer. He could think of nothing to say.
“Marjorie told me you had not come home,” she began, “and I thought that perhaps the work—Why, what is it?” Her tone changed. “What is the matter?”
Briefly, he told her. “They have given me until to-morrow morning to make up my mind.”
“Perhaps I’d better go,” she said.
“No, no! Stay and help me. I don’t feel as if I could fight this thing out alone.”
Heavily, he threw himself into a chair. His thinness, his pallor, his general air of frailness, made Azalea faint with pity for him. Sitting in the half-tone of departing daylight, his hair seemed silvered with frost, his face was drawn, his body sagged like that of an old man.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked her.
“What you know is right.”
“But if I don’t know what is right?”
“Ah, but you must! 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. He was conscious of a curious sensation, as though his spirit had escaped a crushing weight—(a weight that still cramped his body)—as though it had been set free.
In a low voice, and in phrases that were disjointed and but half spoken, he began to talk about himself, his ambitions, his career; and Azalea listened feeling that part of him had died, and that she was hearing but the echo of his voice.
“It never occurred to me that my life was barren,” she heard him say, “barren and grim . . . just a brain . . . a machine that, given direction, could drive on with peculiar force and vanquish those of different constitution . . . Never felt the need of friends . . . nor the lack of them . . . Alone and grim . . . But I loved Canada!” A suggestion of warmth stole into his voice. “I loved the West . . . I asked for nothing better than to serve my country—it may be that some men serve women that way . . . I wanted to get into the heart of it, to feel the throb, the life-waves beating out across the land . . . Then the Capital . . . so different . . . The men, the administration . . . Bewildering to find that I could take my place with those upon whom I had looked as gods . . . Poor Marjorie! This would mean much to her . . .”
“When the facts are known, you will go down in history,” Azalea told him, “as a shining example of political integrity.”
“I’m not so sure. More likely, I will be held up to illustrate the failure of Success. My God,” he cried, suddenly, “why can’t I live . . . why can’t I live?”
His suffering was terrible for her to bear. Yet, she held herself in strict control. “Success has become an odious word to me,” she said, “a juggernaut to which Truth and Justice are too often sacrificed. You have achieved . . . there is achievement even in failure . . .”
Her words filled him with bleak despair. He had hoped that she would argue his decision, try to persuade him to alter it, show him that he was wrong. For a fleeting second, he was guilty of resentment, doubting that she divined his pain at relinquishing his career. But he looked into her face and was ashamed.
“Azalea!”
“Raymond!”
A flame of delight ran through his being. It was as though his whole body had been transfused with the ultimate beauty of life. “Do you think I have achieved?”
“Yes . . . the expression of a great spiritual truth,” she answered. “No compromise, no diplomacy—another name for deceit. That you have been misunderstood and defamed was only to have been expected. It is the price men pay for putting forth the truth. But you, who have been so fearless—you are not weakening now?”
“No,” he said. “I cannot weaken with you to help me. I will go back. There is no other way.”
“Go back?” she echoed. “Go back to the West?”
“Life would be intolerable here—especially for Marjorie.”
“You will leave Ottawa altogether?” The words were scarcely audible. She had not anticipated this.
“Not altogether. Part of me will remain. This is my soul’s graveyard, Azalea . . . They say a soul cannot die, but never was there a more soothing untruth spread abroad for the peace of the credulous. Mine died to-day—only a few hours after it was born.”
“My dear, my dear,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice free from the coldness of death that lay upon her own spirit.
They sat in silence a space, while waves of misery welled up about them. Then Azalea’s control broke. She covered her face with her hands.
“Don’t!” cried Dilling, sharply. “Don’t! Tell me the truth—do you want me to stay?”
“No!”
Suddenly, he left his chair and knelt beside her, burying his face in the folds of her dress, and groping for her hand. For a time, he could not speak, could not tell how much he loved her, could not articulate the thought that hers was the power to make vocative his life’s stern purpose. He could only cling to her and suffer.
“Azalea,” he cried, at last, “how can I go? I can’t live without you—I’m not even sure that I can die!”
She felt strangled and heard words falling from her lips without understanding how she spoke them. “Are you forgetting the needs of the West—the opportunity for your talents, there? Will you close your ears to the call of your ambition?”
He denied the existence of ambition. It had died when life was stricken from his soul.
She raised his head between her hands. They trembled and were cold.
“Raymond, do you love me?”
“You know it.”
“Then pick up the standard once more! Carry on! Respond to that inner voice that presently will cry out to you. Ambition is inspired by emotion rather than intellect. If you love me, don’t fling down the torch!”
“But I need you,” he protested. “You are the fount, the source of all my power. You are my torch. Without you, the world is plunged in darkness. I can see to do nothing.”
“There is an inextinguishable beam of friendship. More . . . When one achieves an understanding such as ours, one enters into a spiritual romance.”
He bowed his head against her breast. Gently, she encircled his body with her arms. Twilight quivered in the still room.
Presently, he looked up.
“And what of you, my dear? Yours is the harder part . . . Will you suffer very much, Azalea?”
She closed her eyes to hide from him her agony. “Emotions, even the most happy ones, are shot with pain,” she said.
“Yes, I’m learning that, myself, God pity me! But I don’t want you to suffer through my love. Oh, Azalea . . . woman . . . you have been my white angel, my guiding star, that I took for granted as naturally as that one, in the sky! You have been for me the Truth and the Light, the balm for which I cried in all my agony and strife. You have accepted me as I am, nor asked a profession of my love in any way that was not me. And I leave you, never having served you. What is there of me that can hold a place in your life?”
She thought a moment, then,
“Listen,” she whispered. “Here is my answer. I wrote it yesterday . . .
“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.