Why should Canada not have her theatre?
He had dreamed of leisure to write—a drama of the West. Often he had pictured its theme unfolding in a mighty spectacle that would rival those of Ancient Rome, when six hundred mules passed in review across the stage of a military pageant, and whole armies were in requisition to give verisimilitude to a production.
He saw vast herds of buffalo and cattle; he heard the thunder of their flying hoofs and the yells of the pursuing Red Men. From the south and east, troops of devil-may-care cowboys burst upon the scene. The whirr of arrows, the snap of rifles, beat across his consciousness. And as the play progressed, over the flaming prairie there crawled a slow, white streak, coming to a halt at last in what looked like the heart of infinity. And presently, there appeared a tiny farm.
Deep in moonlit gorges, Dilling saw fur traders, whiskey smugglers, Indians, and cattle thieves, threading a cautious way. Then came the flash of scarlet coats and diminishing disorder.
And along the trails made by the thirsty buffalo, followed by wary Red Men, rediscovered by ambitious young surveyors who found that wisdom was born in brute, and even in primeval man, before it made its way to books, the railway flung its slender arms across an infant nation; and settlers came hard upon the heels of construction crews, a strange assortment who spoke their parts in the music of unfamiliar, polyglot tongues.
And on the site of some forgotten Indian encampment, where patient squaws pounded out their corn, there grew a field of wheat which gave way to a small settlement, and then a town where gigantic storehouses now husbanded the grain!
Ah, God, the glamour of the West—his West! Suddenly, it sang in his blood, it shone in his eyes, it dazzled him and provoked emotions that no woman had ever stirred.
A National Theatre? Well, it certainly was an idea, but he must not be intrigued by it; there was no hurry. The proposition needed thinking . . . Dilling crossed the room, took the receiver from its hook and called up Azalea. He was unaccountably disappointed to learn that she was out.
He realised with a sense of shock that she was the only friend he had made since coming to the Capital. At the moment, he felt that she was more than a friend . . . that she was a necessity. But he resisted this weakness as he would have resisted dependence upon a stimulant or sedative. Dilling liked to believe in his self-sufficiency, his detachment from all human ties. He could not deny, however, that Azalea fed him intellectually—food convenient for him.
“She feeds my mind,” he repeated, surprised that this should be so. “Isn’t it curious that she should possess this power . . .” It was all he asked of God.