She knew that he did not, never could, love Hebe Barrington. Jealousy was far removed from her considerations. But a slow, cold fear crawled through her as she thought of another contingency. Dilling’s balance had shifted. He had become conscious of new and disturbing emotions. He was like an instrument tuned by a gentle hand and therefore prepared to respond even to the coarsest touch. Would not the very fact of his awakened love for her, make him an easier victim of Hebe’s seductive beleaguerment?
The thought racked her throughout the afternoon. She could not keep her mind on her work. She spent herself in a sort of helpless passion of protection, feeling that she would give her very life to save him from the toils of the other woman. She had set him on a lofty pedestal, high above the ruck of mud and slime. Her pride in him was renunciatory, fiercely maternal. She wanted to keep him fair and pure for himself . . . not in the slightest sense for her.
She had grown strong in a fanatical belief that one of the chief elements of Britain’s power is the moral weight behind it; that her statesmen are clean, straight-forward and honourable, on the whole, and that intrigue and deception are alien to their nature. Furthermore, she felt that now, in the Empire’s hour of supreme trial, it was upon the power and pressure of this conviction throughout the world, that the future of England must depend.
CHAPTER 24.
The Premier’s health had been sadly broken by the War. This pandemic scourge had come into being while Canada was still in her nonage, and what she needed most in leadership throughout the conflict, was what he had most to give, namely, a fine obstinacy of purpose. Possessing this, the lack of dramatic picturesqueness was forgiven him by a spectacle-loving people.
But inflexibility is always a target and a challenge for assault, and when not engaged in repelling his foes on Mr. Speaker’s Left, Sir Robert was called upon to reckon with the mutiny of his colleagues whose sense of honour was not inconveniently high. Throughout the actual ordeal of battle, the edge of the weapons of menace found him adamant. But towards the end of the four years’ darkness, the strain became too heavy, and several months before the world settled to enjoy the hostility of peace, rumours of his impending resignation drifted along the currents of the House.
The break came later—after he had gone to France to sign the Treaty of Versailles on our behalf—a glorious mission, truly, and significant of Canada’s entry into the Council of the Nations. It was then that the burden of his great labour and achievement levied a heavier toll than he could pay. Atropos threatened him with her shears. He sank into the relaxation of a profound collapse, and offered his resignation as Prime Minister. Holding the Rudder of the Ship of State with a world in arms, had broken him, as it broke the great Commoner, Pitt. That the parallel was not completed by his death, was a matter of national rejoicing, and he lived to know that his purity of conduct, his strength of purpose and his courage in the supreme crisis of civilisation, marked him as one of the real forces in history.
And so it happened that in Canada there was no man like Lloyd George who held his position unchallenged throughout the duration of the War. Political and military scandals had their ugly day. Heroes were exalted and overthrown almost within the same hour.
Dilling offered the closest analogy, perhaps, to the great British statesman. He retained not only his own portfolio, but undertook the directing of several others, while an interregnum occurred and there had been discovered no incumbent to fill the office. He had “acted” as Prime Minister on more than one occasion, and when these resignation rumours began to float about, his name was mentioned as a possible successor.
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.