CHAPTER 3.
Dilling adapted himself to his new environment much more readily than did his wife. He had not anticipated that the House of Commons would be a glorified Municipal Council such as he had left in Pinto Plains, and that his associations and activities would be virtually the same save on a magnificent scale; whereas Marjorie had deluded herself—subconsciously, it may be—with the thought that Ottawa would be an idealised prairie town, and that she would live a beatified extension of her old life, there. Differences in customs, in social and moral codes, ever remained for her a hopeless enigma, just as Euclid’s problems evade solution for some people. She never could master them because she never could understand them. Black was black and white was white, and neither sunshine nor shadow could convert either into gray. No leopard ever possessed more changeless spots.
While, therefore, her husband was joyously engrossed in his work, finding novelty and stimulation in every smallest detail, remodelling himself to fit the mantle he had been called upon to adorn, Marjorie was confronted with unexpected obstacles, bewildered by inexplicable ways, homesick for familiar standards and people, and groping for something stable to which she could cling and upon which she could build her present life.
Of the nature of Dilling’s work, she had but the sketchiest idea. His conversation was becoming almost unintelligible to her, try as she would to follow it. When, in the old days, they sat at the table or drew their chairs around the fire, and he told her of Jimmy Woodside’s stupidity or Elvira Mumford’s high average, she could take a vital interest in his daily pursuits, but now, when he referred to Motions, and Amendments, and Divisions, she had no idea of what he was talking about. He was seldom at home, and upon those rare occasions he fortressed himself behind a palisade of Blue Books and Financial Returns.
He abandoned himself to reading almost as a man abandons himself to physical debauch, and Marjorie, furtively watching him, could scarcely believe that the stranger occupying that frail, familiar shell was, in reality, her husband. There was about him a suggestion of emotional pleasure, an expression of ecstacy, as when a man gazes deep into his beloved’s eyes.
“Ah,” he would murmur, “three thousand, six hundred and forty-two . . . annually! Seventy-nine thousand less than . . . well, well!”
His cheeks would flush, his breathing would thicken, his forehead would gleam with a crown of moisture, and he would lose his temper shockingly if the children spoke to him or played noisily in the room.
Long afterwards, a rural wag observed that Prohibition touched few persons less than Raymond Dilling, who could get drunk on Blue Books and Trade Journals, any day in the year!
Marjorie got into the way of keeping the little ones shut up in the kitchen with her. The house was too small to allow Dilling the privacy of a library or study, and the three bedrooms were cold and cheerless. So he appropriated the tiny drawing-room and converted it into what seemed to her, a literary rubbish heap. Books, pamphlets, Hansards, and more books . . . she was nearly crazy with them!
She had never been to the House of Commons save once, when Raymond took the entire family on a tour of inspection. She had never seen Parliament in Session, and had no idea that many of the women who accompanied their husbands to Ottawa, spent all the time they could spare from bridge, in the Gallery; not profiting by the progress of the Debates, but carrying on mimic battles amongst themselves. Here was the cockpit, from which arose the causes of bitter though bloodless conflicts—conflicts which embroiled both the innocent and the guilty, and formed the base of continuous social warfare.