A light but insistent tapping put an end to Dilling’s reflections.
“Come in!” he called, impatiently, and turned towards the window as if
intent upon the landscape.
There was a slight pause, and then, like a well-timed bit of stage
business, a woman stood framed in the open door.
Dilling appreciated the dramatic note even while he resented it. On
general principles he despised the theatrical.
“Oh, I _am_ lucky!” cried his visitor, in a well-disciplined contralto.
“I scarcely dared hope to find you alone. Every atom of courage I
possessed oozed out of my finger-tips at the thought of interrupting a
secret caucus, or some other of the dark conspiracies that are supposed
to occupy our Members’ time!”
She advanced and extended an ungloved hand. Dilling touched her fingers
without speaking.
“My name is Hebe Barrington,” she went on, “Mrs. Arthur, on my calling
cards, you know . . . and I’m here on a desperately serious mission. Its
success means everything to me, and you, yourself, Mr. Dilling, have
buoyed me up with the hope that I shall not fail.”
She shifted her position slightly, contriving to draw her skirt close
about her long, slender limbs like a sheath.
But Dilling was not looking. He had taken a penknife from his pocket,
and was giving First Aid to an untutored finger-nail.
“How shall I begin?” she went on, watching him from beneath her lashes.
It was one of her prettiest gestures.
“Perhaps, if you made some notes and sent them to me—”
“Oh, please!” she protested. “That’s heartless of you. And _do_ sit
down! I can’t think while you wear that ‘Time’s up’ expression. It
drives every idea from my head. I tell you frankly, Mr. Dilling, I
expected you would be much more kind.”
She flung him a smile that had dazzled many another man. Dilling
received it with indifference, in a wholly unprecedented manner. Mrs.
Barrington found the experience somewhat disconcerting.
In his expression there was no appreciation of her loveliness. Neither
was there the disapproval that betokens a recognition of it, or a sign
of that wariness by which man betrays his knowledge of its danger. There
was nothing.
In the abstract, Dilling saw men as trees, walking, but women he saw
scarcely at all. Emotionally, he was vestigial. Artistically, he was
numb. Beauty in any form registered only through his outward eye. He
missed the inner vision that should have quickened his soul.
Mrs. Barrington was not an unfamiliar figure to him, although he had
never been sufficiently interested to ask her name. Frequently, of late,
he had seen her in the restaurant, or in the corridors, sometimes
surrounded by a group of Parliamentary gallants, and sometimes in
earnest tete-a-tete with just one man. If he thought of her at all, it
was to conclude that like other women who haunt the House, she was
engaged in the popular occupation known as lobbying, and he felt an
instinctive opposition to whatever request she might be about to make.
On her part, Mrs. Barrington felt the disappointment of one who has been
unexpectedly repulsed at the first line of attack, and sees the
necessity for finer strategy. She laid aside the ineffectual weapon of
physical charm, and took up the subtler blade of flattery.
“I have come to you,” she said, “because you are not only essentially,
but so patently, sincere. Not your speeches alone, but your whole
manner, proclaim it. I suppose that is a good deal to say of a
politician, is it not?”
“By no means!”
“There is little evidence to the contrary! Most of them rant about a
loftier patriotism, service for the public weal that knows no respite
and the realisation of a higher idealism for Twentieth Century Canada,
but their actual performances are not marked with the large
disinterestedness they profess. You are different. Perhaps you won’t
like my saying so, Mr. Dilling, but as you sit in the House, surrounded
by your colleagues, yours is a noticeably solitary figure. I felt it the
instant I saw you, and the impression has grown steadily stronger . . .
with reason. You have brought a different element into politics, Mr.
Dilling. Like Disraeli, you are on the side of the angels! You have
brought what I call practical spirituality, a force that can and will
defeat materialism, if—if—you do not get discouraged, and tired of
struggling on, alone.”
“Aren’t you rather disheartening?”
The question was asked with such utter unconcern that Mrs. Barrington
could not deceive herself into thinking she had made an impression. Had
Dilling taken her seriously, or accorded her half the sincerity she
professed to impute to him, he would have been unconscionably
embarrassed. As matters stood, her words, like her beauty, failed to
touch him. He heard them as he heard agreeable music, without annoyance,
but without pleasure. It was said of him, that once, in Pinto Plains,
when asked if he enjoyed piano playing he had answered, “Oh, I don’t
mind it!” and he could aptly have applied the same phrase to this
woman’s conversation.
He didn’t mind it! He was listening without giving particular heed to
what she said. He knew that she had come to ask a favour, and he was not
sufficiently amenable to feminine wiles to lose sight of the methods of
a shrewd campaigner.
“I may be disheartening,” he heard her say, “but I am sincere. Would you
have me pretend—tell you how popular you are, and how certain to become
the idol of the people? Do you not remember that the Cæsars and Lincolns
of history have been slandered and slain by their friends and
compatriots, and can you hope to escape a similar fate at the hands of
our people—even though despotism is not tempered with assassination
here, as it was a hundred years ago in Russia?”
Dilling was conscious of a flicker of interest. It was curious, he
reflected, that this woman should have come to him and given expression
to the very thoughts that had been uppermost in his mind. He wondered
whether she had been talking to Azalea.
“And what has all this to do with your mission?” he asked, closing his
penknife with a snap.
“Everything!” she cried, vehemently. “Everything depends upon the
honesty behind your protestations, upon the fact that you are not merely
content to talk about idealism, but will work to see it blossom
throughout the country. Moreover, I have counted on your vision, your
ability to see the benefit of what, to others, may look like an
impractical measure. Any other type of man would laugh at me,” she
added.
She stopped and waited for him to speak. But he made no comment.
He was not insensible to the cleverness with which she assembled her
points. There was about her address a climacteric quality that compelled
his admiration. But her speech fell flat because he failed to pick up
his cues. The obvious retort that she must have anticipated, was never
spoken; so each pause was pregnant with the suggestion of finality, of
failure.
“I felt as though I were being driven, blindfold, along a crooked
passage,” she said, later, in describing the interview to Sullivan.
“Each time I turned a corner, some one rose and struck me in the face,
so that I reeled and lost my bearings and had to wait a bit in order to
recover myself and my sense of direction.”
Dilling half suspected this. He did not, however, assume a difficult and
disinterested manner, deliberately, nor did he act with conscious
rudeness. He simply felt no curiosity in Mrs. Barrington nor in the
object of her visit, and no obligation to pretend that he did.
“I have come to you,” she said, again, “because you are the embodiment
of all the qualities I have mentioned. Your sympathy, I take for
granted, for the reason that the cause I plead is a spiritual cause, Mr.
Dilling. I am asking for the development of a nation’s soul.”
“Oh!”
This response, though almost imperceptible, affected the woman as
applause breaking suddenly over an unfriendly house, stimulates an actor
to greater achievement. She left her chair and stood before him, a
vision of aggressive beauty. She nearly lost herself in the part she was
playing, and allowed impulse rather than design to dominate the moment.
“We admit that in the fierce struggle for existence, a young country
must concern itself primarily with material problems, and that the song
of the spirit is often stifled by the cry of hungry children. But has
not the day arrived for us when our thought, and at least a small part
of our resources, should be devoted to providing nourishment for the
Canadian soul? I know that this sounds like the spell-binder’s affluence
of speech, but, believe me, Mr. Dilling, I have a practical proposition
behind it.”
“Well?” said Dilling, without enthusiasm.
She pointed to the Little Theatre movement, to various literary and
dramatic organisations that have sprung up throughout the Dominion, as a
proof that we are seeking a means of artistic expression, for spiritual
development, that we are feeling a reaction from the wave of materialism
which, in these times, holds the land in thrall. “In a word,” she said,
“we are looking for happiness, only just realising that we have striven
without it all these years. We are not a happy nation, Mr. Dilling.”
“Show me a more prosperous one,” he cried.
“Ah! But there’s our trouble. Prosperity and happiness may lie at
opposite poles. The one is of the earth and its fulness, the other of
the spirit, and in our pursuit of the former, we too frequently forget
the needs of the latter. Happiness depends upon the emotions, Mr.
Dilling, and Canadians have almost suffocated theirs.”
Obviously, the spark of interest she had ignited had turned to ashes. He
was silent, so she hurried on.
“We need Art—the medium through which spirituality flows into the life
of man. We want to hear the symphonies of our composers, the songs of
our poets, as well as the throb and thunder of motor factories and power
plants. I would ask the Government to recognise the organisations that
are endeavouring to promote artistic creation, and to give financial
assistance to the conspicuously talented artists throughout the
Dominion!”
“Hold on!” cried Dilling, stung into repelling this premeditated attack
upon the National Treasury. “We maintain a big Gallery out at the
Museum. We subsidise Art.”
“Yes,” she countered, quickly, “but not the artist. What you do only
goes to swell the pay-roll of the Civil Service . . . You don’t go far
enough! Hasn’t the Government helped to build up the industries of this
country? Has it not pap-fed factories and commercial enterprises of
various kinds? You know it has! If I should want a water-power for some
silly little saw-mill, shall I not have it from my Province, for the
asking? There’s not a doubt of it! Yet, no one thinks of providing a
greater power and one whereby this growing unrest can be composed. We
are making a great point of conserving our natural resources, but who
thinks of conserving our _spiritual_ resources, Mr. Dilling? We need the
one no less than the other. Men are reaching out towards Art!”
“Government is organised to legislate for peace and order in the
community.”
“Aristotle said that Government was organised to make people happy. I
scarcely think we have made good along his principles, do you?”
“You can’t legislate people into happiness.”
“No! But you can provide the things that will create that state of mind.
I should like to see a National Theatre, Mr. Dilling, in which the
struggles and triumphs of Canada might be told by her own sons and
daughters. Love of our common country can be fostered in no happier way.
Let us have annual prizes for excelling talent in the Arts, and Science,
and Literature!”
“Have we any poets worth recognising?” interrupted Dilling.
“Ah, I knew you would make that objection!” cried Hebe Barrington. “I
knew that your thoughts would fly at once to Milton, and Keats, and
Shelley . . . and the greatest of them all, Shakespeare. You immediately
compare us with the immortals, and feel that we lose by the comparison.
I don’t profess to offer you a Homer or a Sappho. But there were lesser
poets in Athens whom Pericles favoured at the expense of the people’s
purse. It’s harder for poetry and the Arts to flourish to-day, than two
thousand years ago—Oh, don’t you see, _we_ need a National Theatre?”
“It’s an idea,” conceded Dilling, with caution.
Hebe Barrington was clever. She did not press her slight advantage but
prepared to beat a strategic retreat.
“I knew that you would see it,” she cried. “How else can we make
idealism real save by expressing it first through Art and then weaving
it into our practical experiences? How else can we keep alive the
traditions that have given us our Empire? How teach them to the young? I
am full of schemes for working this thing out. May I come to see you
again—or better still,” she amended, watching him intently with her
great, soft eyes, “will you come to me, say this day week?”
“If you like,” he said, opening the door.
Presently, he opened the window, too. The room was close with a heavy,
sweetish odour that offended him.
He looked down the river, past the Mint and the Archives. Catching sight
of the smoke-clouded roof of Earnscliffe—once the stately residence of
Sir John Macdonald—he fell to wondering what the Grand Old Man would
have said to such a proposition . . .
A National Theatre!
The Greeks, he remembered, spared neither time nor money on their
dramatic temple, which was free! On the other hand, the Canadian theatre
was almost prohibitive in point of admission fee, and far from being the
object of Governmental support, it was controlled by a group of Semitic
gentlemen whose habitat was Broadway and whose taste reflected anything
but a Canadian National spirit. In Rome, Mommens had taught him, there
were fewer occupations more lucrative than those of actor and
dancer—Roscius, one of the former, receiving the equivalent of $30,000
as his annual income, and Dionysia, a fairy-footed maid, $10,000
yearly—more than twice the amount of his Parliamentary indemnity!
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.
His feeling was one that did honour to Platonism and now, as he sat
reflecting upon it, Raymond Dilling wondered just what Azalea thought of
him. Did she think his standards worthy of his calling? Had she faith in
his singleness of purpose, and did she commend his policy for its
wisdom? Or could she have misunderstood him, read into his unashamed
confessions, the easy cant of him who makes a profession of sincerity?
He had taken for granted that she was in accord with his political
creed, that she appreciated his native worth; but never before had he
asked himself the question . . . did she like him? He had no assurance
that she did. Admitting her acceptance of him upon his own terms, so to
speak, might she not feel for him as we so often feel towards estimable
persons whose blameless characters inspire us with nothing but
respectful tolerance? On the other hand, suppose she did not regard him
as a worthy figure, would she dislike him? Are there not natures to whom
an impostor presents a personality unreasonably appealing? Has not the
world had its Casanovas and Cagliostros?
What manner of man did Azalea like? What type stirred her rich
imagination?
These unanswerable questions provoked him to an unwonted consideration
of the girl, but he failed to recollect an occasion when she had
revealed her inner thoughts and aspirations to him. What heart throbs,
he asked himself, pulsed beneath that strange, drab exterior? What
spirit wounds were covered with the cuirass of her whimsical satire?
What was her philosophy of life, and what did she really think of him?
He had no idea, but he did know that he wished to be her friend.
Dilling couldn’t recall ever formulating a definite opinion on the
subject of friendship, and he was not at all sure what Azalea might
require of him. Sympathy, he mused, might be helpful in times of strain,
but he was not prepared to admit that friendships were vital. A man
could—perhaps should—be independent of their fetters, unseeking and
unsought. Friendship had its rise in the emotions according to
philosophers, and was therefore a weakness. Yet, was it? History showed
that great men transmuted it into strength.
Which would it be for him, a weakness or a source of strength? And if
the latter, how best could he convert its power into fuel for his
energy?
He looked at his watch. Almost time for lunch. Azalea should be at home
now, he thought. Again, he turned to the telephone.
* * * * *
In the room above, Mrs. Barrington was eagerly accepting a whisky and
soda from the hospitable Member for Morroway.
“You look as though a little stimulant would do you no harm,” observed
Howarth, busily attentive with the cigarettes.
“Without it, I shan’t last till sundown,” returned the woman. “Never
have I spent such a half hour . . . and never again!”
“Difficult, eh?” asked Sullivan.
“Impossible! Why, Uncle Rufus, that man’s not human! Heaven knows, I’m
not a vain woman,” she declared, “but for all the notice he took of me,
he might have been a graven image, or I might have been one of the
shrieking sisterhood! There wasn’t a smile . . . there wasn’t a flicker
of response! I kept thinking all the time of Congreve, and his _Lady
Wishfort_ trying to captivate that stupid ass, old _Mirabell_!” Her full
voice trembled with excitement and anger. Into her cheeks flooded a wave
of natural colour, beneath their expertly applied rouge. “I’m through
. . . I’m through,” she cried. “He made me think of a eunuch
contemplating a statue of Venus!”