Lalage’s departure from our midst took place early in September and happened on a Wednesday, the day of the Drumbo Petty Sessions. Our list of malefactors that week was a particularly short one and I was able to leave the court house in good time to see Lalage off at the railway station. I was in fact, in very good time and arrived half an hour before the train was advertised to leave. Canon Beresford and Lalage were there before me. The Canon, when I came upon them, was pressing Lalage to help herself to chocolate creams from a large box which he held open in his hand. He greeted me with an apologetic quotation:
“Nunc vino peilite curasCras ingens iterabimus sequor.”
“When you come home for the Christmas holidays, Lalage,” I said, “you’ll be able to translate that. In the meanwhile I may as well tell you that it means——”
“You needn’t,” said Lalage. “Father has told me four times already. He has been saying it over and over ever since breakfast. It means that I may as well eat as much as I can now because I shall be sick to-morrow any way. But that’s all humbug, of course. I shouldn’t be sick if I ate the whole box. Last Christmas I ate three boxes as well as plum pudding.”
I felt snubbed. So, I think, did the Canon. Lalage smiled at us, but more in pity than in balm.
“I call this rather a scoop for me,” said Lalage.
“I’m glad of that,” I said, “for I’ve brought a bottle of French plums from my mother and a box of Turkish Delight which I bought out of my own money.”
“Thanks,” said Lalage. “But it wasn’t the chocolates I was thinking of. The scoop I mean is going to school. It’s a jolly sight better than rotting about here with a beastly governess.”
“You can’t expect any governess to enjoy being robbed of her glycerine and cucumber,” I said. “You wouldn’t like it yourself.”
“That wasn’t the real reason,” said Lalage. “Even Cattersby had more sense than that.”
“She means,” said the Canon, “that it didn’t begin there.”
“No,” I said, “it began with the character of Mary.”
“It didn’t,” said Lalage. “She’d forgotten all about that and so had I. What really began it was my birthday. For three weeks I had suggested a holiday for that day from the tyrant. Her answer had ever been: ‘A half will do you nicely.’ If pressed: ‘You are very ungrateful. I may not give you even that.’ So I acted boldly. It was breakfast time and we were eating fish——”
“Trout,” said the Canon. “I remember the morning perfectly. Tom Kitterick caught them the day before. I took him out with me. The Archdeacon had been over to see me.”
“Laying down my fork,” Lalage went on, “I said to no one in particular——”
“Excuse me, Lalage,” I said, “but is this a quotation from the last number of theAnti-Cat?”
“It is. I had an article about it. How did you guess?”
“There was something in the style of the narrative, a certain quite appreciable literary flavour which suggested theAnti-Cat; but please go on and keep to the words of the article as far as possible. You had just got to where you spoke to no one in particular.”
“Laying down my fork, I said to no one in particular: ‘Of course I get a holiday for my birthday.’ ‘I think a half——’ began she. ‘Of course,’ said father loudly, ‘a holiday on such a great occasion.’ Her face fell. Her scowl deepened. To hide her rage she blew her nose. There was a revengeful glitter in her eye.”
Lalage paused.
“I need scarcely tell you,” said the Canon, “that I had no idea when I spoke that there had been any previous discussion of the subject.”
“The article ends there, I suppose,” I said.
“Yes,” said Lalage. “She had it in for me after that worse than ever, knowing that I had jolly well scored off her.”
“And in the end she broke out over your effort to improve Tom Kitterick’s complexion?”
“She sneaked,” said Lalage; “sneaked to father. I wrote an article about that. It’s in my box if you’d like to see it.”
The Canon’s eyes met mine. Then we both looked at our watches. We had still ten minutes before the train started.
“It’s about halfway down,” said Lalage, “on the left-hand side.”
“I think we might——” I said.
“Yes,” said the Canon. “In fact we must.”
We moved together across the platform toward the porter’s barrow, on which Lalage’s trunk lay.
“I should like to see the article,” I said, fumbling with the strap.
“It isn’t so much that,” said the Canon. “Somebody is sure to unpack her box for her to-night, and if Miss Pettigrew came on the thing and read it——”
“She would be prejudiced against Lalage.”
“I’d like the poor child to start fair, anyhow,” said the Canon, “whatever happens later on.”
We unpacked a good many of Lalage’s clothes and came on the second number of theAnti-Cat. Lalage took possession of it and turned over the pages, while the Canon and I refolded a blue serge dress and wedged it into its place with boots.
“Here you are,” said Lalage, when I had finished tugging at the straps. “‘Sneaking, Second Example. The Latest Move of Cattersby. Such a move! A disgrace to any properly run society, a further disgrace to the already disgraceful tactics of the Cat! How even that base enemy could do such a thing is more than we honourable citizens can understand.’”
“The other honourable citizen,” I said, “is Tom Kitterick, I suppose.”
“No,” said Lalage. “There was only me, but that’s the way editors always talk. Father told me so once.—‘Yet she did it. She sneaked. Yes, sneaked to the grown-up society, complained, as the now extinct Tommy used to do.”
“The allusion,” I said, “escapes me. Who was the now extinct Tommy?”
“The one before the Cat,” said Lalage.
“Her name,” said the Canon feebly, “was Miss Thomas. She did complain a good deal about Lalage during the six weeks she was with us.”
“Is that the whole of the article?” I asked. “It’s very short.”
“There was nothing more to say,” said Lalage; “so what was the good of going on?”
“I thought,” I said, “and hoped that there might have been something in it about the effect the stuff had on Tom Kitterick. I have never been able to find out anything about that.”
“It didn’t do much to Tom Kitterick,” said Lalage. “He was just as turkey eggy afterward as he was before. It didn’t even smart, though I rubbed it in for nearly half an hour, and Tom Kitterick said I’d have the skin off his face, which just shows the silly sort of stuff it was. Not that I’d expect the Cat to have anything else except silly stuff. That’s the kind she is. Anybody would know it by simply looking at her. Father, I don’t believe you’ve got my ticket. Hadn’t you better go and see about it?”
The Canon went in search of the station master and found him at last digging potatoes in a plot of ground beyond the signal box. It took some time to persuade him to part with anything so valuable as a ticket to Dublin.
“Lalage,” I said, while the Canon was arguing with the station master, “I want you to write to me from school and tell me how you are getting on.”
“I have a lot of letters to write,” she said. “I’m not sure I can write to you.”
“Try. I particularly want to know what Miss Pettigrew thinks of your English composition. I should mark you high for it myself.”
“I have to write to father every week, and I’ve promised to answer Tom Kitterick when he lets me know how the new pigs are getting on.”
“Still you might manage a line to me in between. If you do I’ll send you a long answer or a picture postcard, whichever you like.”
“I can’t read your writing,” said Lalage, “so I’d rather have the postcard.”
The Canon returned just as the train steamed in. We put Lalage into a second-class compartment. Then I slipped away and gave the guard half a crown, charging him to look after Lalage and to see that no mischief happened to her on the way to Dublin. To my surprise he was unwilling to receive the tip. He told me that the Canon had already given him two shillings and he seemed to think that he was being overpaid for a simple, not very onerous, duty. I pressed my half crown into his hand and assured him that before he got to Dublin he would, if he really looked after Lalage, have earned more than four and sixpence.
“In fact,” I said, “four and sixpence won’t be nearly enough to compensate you for the amount of worry and anxiety you will go through. You must allow me to add another half crown and make seven shillings of it.’”
The man was a good deal surprised and seemed inclined to protest.
“You needn’t hesitate,” I said. “I wouldn’t take on the job myself for double the money.”
“It could be,” said the guard pocketing my second half crown, “that the young lady might be for getting out at the wrong station. There’s some of them does.”
“Nothing so simple as that,” I said. “Any ordinary young lady would get out at a wrong station, and a couple of shillings would be plenty to offer you for chasing her in again. This one——”
I hesitated, for I really did not know what Lalage was likely to do.
“I’ll lock the door on her, anyway,” said the guard.
“You may, but don’t flatter yourself that you’ll have her safe then. The only thing you can calculate on in the case of this particular young lady is that whatever she does will be something that you couldn’t possibly guess beforehand. Not that there’s any real harm in her. She’s simply possessed of an adventurous spirit and striking originality. Good-bye.”
I had just time to shake hands with Lalage before the train started. She waved her pocket handkerchief cheerily to us as we stood together on the platform. I caught a glimpse of the guard’s face while his van swept past us. It wore a set expression, like that of a man determined in the cause of duty to go steadily forward into the unknown facing dread things bravely. I was satisfied that I had made a deep impression on him and I felt sorry that I had not made up his tip to an even half sovereign.
The Canon was depressed as we drove home together. I felt it my duty to cheer him up as much as I could.
“After all,” I said, “you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with. Miss Battersby has got another situation. She’ll be far happier at Thormanby’s than she ever could have been with you. His girls are thoroughly well brought up.”
“She was very fond of Lalage,” said the Canon.
“Still, they didn’t suit each other. Miss Battersby will get over any feeling of regret she may have at first. She’ll be far more at home with quiet, well-tamed girls like Thormanby’s.”
The Canon was not listening to me. I judged from this that it was not anxiety about Miss Battersby’s future that was preying on his mind. I tried again.
“If it’s the thought of that bottle of glycerine and cucumber which is worrying you,” I said, “don’t let it. Send her another. Send her two. Make Tom Kitterick carry them over to Thormanby Park and present them on bended knee, clad only in his shirt and with a halter round his neck.”
The Canon’s gloom merely deepened.
“I don’t think,” I said, “that you need fret about Miss Pettigrew. After all, it’s her job. She must meet plenty of high-spirited girls.”
“I wasn’t thinking of her,” said the Canon.
Then he began to murmur to himself and I was barely able, by leaning over toward him, to catch the quotation.
“Miserarum est neque amori dare ludem. . . .”
He saw that I was listening and lapsed into English. “There’s a translation of that ode,” he said, “into something quite like the original metre”:
“‘How unhappy is the maiden who with Cupid may not play,And who may not touch the wine cup, but must listen all the dayTo an uncle and the scourging of his tongue’”
“Come now, Canon,” I said, “Lalage is a precocious child, I know. But she won’t feel those particular deprivations yet awhile. She didn’t try to flirt with Tom Kitterick, did she?”
“It’s all the same thing really,” said the Canon. “The confinement and discipline will be just as severe on her as they were on that girl of Horace’s, though, of course, they will take a different form. She’s been accustomed to a good deal of freedom and independence.”
“According to the Archdeacon,” I said, “to more than was good for her.”
“I couldn’t help that.”
“No, you couldn’t. Nobody could. My mother thinks Miss Pettigrew may, but I don’t believe it myself. Lalage will break out all right as soon as she gets a chance.”
For the first time since we left the station the Canon smiled and seemed a little more cheerful.
“If I thought that——” he said.
“You may be perfectly sure of it, but I don’t think you ought actually to hope it. The Archdeacon is a very wise man and I’m sure that, if he contemplates the possibility at all, he fears it.”
“I suppose so,” said the Canon, sighing again. “It will all be a great change for Lalage, whatever happens.”
I feared at first that Lalage was not going to write to me. Nearly three weeks passed before I got a letter from her and I was inclined to blame her for neglect of an old friend. When the letter did arrive I understood that I had no right to be angry. Lalage was better than I had dared to hope. She kept a kind of irregular diary in an exercise book and sent it to me. It was, like all diaries, in disconnected paragraphs, evidently written down when the mood for recording experiences was on Lalage. There were no dates attached, but the first entry must, I think, embody the result of a very early series of impressions. One, at least, of the opinions expressed in it was modified later on:
“When I arrived I was hustled into a room by a small fat lady dressed in purple; not the old Pet, which is what we call Miss Pettigrew. I waited for ten minutes. Then I was hustled upstairs by the same purple-clothed lady, and shown a locker, Number 73. There I stayed for about five minutes and then was driven down again by the purple-clothed lady and pushed into the same room as I had been before. Again I was herded off (after about five minutes), needless to say by the purple-robed woman, and shoved into a waiting-room.”
Lalage’s patience must by this time have been wearing thin. It is noticeable that the “lady” had become a mere “woman” in the last sentence.
“There I stayed twenty minutes, a long twenty minutes, and lo! there came the purple-dressed woman unto me and bore me away to be examined. She slung me at the mercy of a mistress who gave me a desk (with a chair clamped to the ground) paper, pen and examination papers. Could you answer the following: Who succeeded (a) Stephen, (b) John, (c) Edward III? I said to the old Pet, ‘This is all rotten.’ (By the way, I had been sent off to her when I had done.) And she replied, ‘Oh, that’s not at all a nice word for a young lady to use. We can’t have that here.’ She’s rather an ass.
“I was made to feel exactly like Lady Macbeth to-day at algebra. When Miss Campbell turned her back, another girl dared me to put my pen in Miss Campbell’s red ink. (This is strictly against the law.) So of course I did. But instead of mopping it straight off like a fool I displayed it with pride. Consequently it fell all over my hands. Miss Campbell was just coming up so I had to hide them murmuring ‘Out, damned spot!’ etc. Luckily she didn’t see, for she’s just the sort that would report you like a shot.”
“The names of suburban houses are awfully funny.”
This entry evidently followed one of Lalage’s first outings. I felt acutely the contrast between the pleasant chestnut tree, the fragrant sty, and the paved footways along which she is now condemned to tramp.
“An awful, staring, backgardenly looking house, with muslin curtains, frilly and a jumpy looking pattern on the side is called ‘Sans Souci!’ One ass calls his stable Cliftonville, although I bet he’s never seen Clifton. Ardenbough and Honeysuckle Arbour are common.
“To-day we heard a frightful row in the corridor, laughing, talking, and trampling. Miss Campbell half rose and said: ‘I must put a stop to this.’ Before she could, the door was flung open and in bounced—the old Pet and three visitors! After a moment’s conversation with Miss Campbell she retired, banging the door in a way she’d expel any one else for.
“This letterislasting on. Hilda gets sixpence every time she is top, threepence second, and twopence third, but does not get any regular pocket money. She’s very rich at present, as she’s been top three times running. How I’d like to play Rugby football. It looks enticing to be let knock a person down. Itisa pity girls can’t, only lucky boys. I wonder why I feel poorer here than at home and yet have more money.”
The Canon had, I am sure, provided Lalage with a suitable amount of pocket money. I myself gave her five shillings the day before she left home. She ought not to feel poor. Compared to Hilda, who has one-and-sixpence, earned in the sweat of her brow, Lalage must seem a millionaire.
“Do you know the kind of person who you hate and yet can’t help loving although you are afraid of her? That is the sort the old Pet is. As I was going into school to-day she was standing at the door. The beast promptly spotted the fact that I had no hair ribbon, and remarked in awe-inspiring tones, ‘Lalage, where is your hair ribbon?’ ‘Forgot it,’ said I, and took a lecture with a polite grin. The old Pet may be a beast, but isnotan ass. I hope the weather will improve soon.
“There is no doubt that I am of a persevering nature or I would not continue to write this letter. I fear it is so long that you’ll never get through it, though I did not know it until now. I know a girl who is learning Greek. She’s awful, and so clever. She is in my Latin class and prime favourite with Carpy.
“Your affect.
“Lalage.”
Carpy cannot be the real name of the lady who teaches Latin to Lalage and Greek to the awful girl. I have tried to reconstruct her name from its corruption, but have hitherto failed to satisfy myself. She may be a Miss Chartres. Perhaps she is the purple-gowned woman who hustled, pushed, herded and slung Lalage on the day of her arrival. She cannot, in any case, be identified with the mathematician who uses red ink. No ingenuity in nicknaming could extract Carpy from Campbell.
There was, in spite of its great length, a postscript to Lalage’s letter. There was also an enclosure.
“P.S. What does ‘flippant’ mean? The old Pet said my comp. was flippant, and I don’t know what that is. It was my first comp.”
I unfolded the “comp.” and read it carefully:
Composition on Politeness by Lalage Beresford
Politeness is a very difficult art to acquire. It is altogether an acquired art, for no one is polite when he is born. Some sorts of politeness are sensible and they are comparatively easy to learn. Begging a person’s pardon when we tread on their toes is polite and is a reasonable thing to do. But there are many silly things to learn before we become really polite. For instance, a boy must learn to open the door for ladies and walk after them always. This does the ladies no good and is sometimes very inconvenient for the boy. He may be in a hurry. It is not polite for a girl to sit with her legs crossed and her head leaning aback on her hands. This is a position which does no one any harm, so it is absurd that it should be considered unpolite. In old days politeness was carried to much greater extremities than it is now. In the days when they used to fight duels, when two gentlemen felt really annoyed, instead of one of them saying to the other, “Go and get your sword and let me kill you,” and the other replying, “All right, I shall be delighted to kill a man whom I detest,” they demanded “satisfaction” of each other in most polite tones and parted with low bows and polite, though sneering, smiles. Politeness is a very good thing in moderation, but not if carried too far.
Skeat traces the word “flippant” back through “flip” and the old Northumbrian present participle ending “an” to the Icelandic “fleipa,” which means to prattle—I found this out in a dictionary and copied it down for Lalage. Miss Pettigrew was not, I think, justified in applying the word, supposing that she used it in its strict etymological sense, to Lalage’s composition. There was more in the essay than mere prattle. But Miss Pettigrew may have had reasons of her own, reasons which I can only guess, for wishing to depreciate this particular essay. It is quite possible that she was herself the person who told Lalage that it is rude for a girl to sit with her lees crossed. My mother, to whom I showed the composition when I consulted her about the probable meaning of flippant, refused to entertain this suggestion. She knows Miss Pettigrew and does not think she is the kind of person who would attach excessive importance to the position of Lalage’s legs. She thinks that the maxim referred to by Lalage—there evidently was a maxim in her mind when she wrote—must have fallen from the lips of Miss Campbell, the mathematician, Carpy, or the purple-gowned woman. If she is right, I can only suppose that Miss Pettigrew in using the word flippant meant to support the authority of her subordinates and to snub Lalage for attempting to rebel against time-honoured tradition.
I walked across to the rectory after luncheon, intending to show my letter and the composition on politeness to the Canon. I found him seriously upset. He had received a letter from Lalage, and he had also enjoyed a visit from the Archdeacon. He was ill-advised in showing the letter to the Archdeacon. I should have had more sense. I suppose he thought that, dealing as it did almost entirely with religious subjects, it was likely to interest the Archdeacon. It did interest him. It interested him excessively, to an extent which occasioned a good deal of trouble.
“Dear Father: I have read nearly the whole of the ‘Earthly Paradise’ since I came here. It is an awfully jolly book. (‘Little Folks’ is Miss Campbell’s idea of literature for the young; but that’s all rot of course.) Who wrote the Litany? If you do not know please ask the Archdeacon when you see him. I’ve come to the conclusion that some of it is very well written.”
“I did ask the Archdeacon,” said the Canon, looking up from the letter, “and he said he’d hunt up the point when he went home.”
“Lalage,” I said, “has quite a remarkable feeling for style. See the way she writes about the ‘Earthly Paradise.’ It must be the way you brought her up on quotations from Horace. Miss Campbell hardly appreciates her, I’m afraid. But of course you can’t expect a mathematician to rise much above ‘Little Folks’ in the way of literature. I suppose the Archdeacon was greatly pleased with that conundrum about the Litany.”
“It was what followed,” said the Canon, “which excited him.”
He began to read again:
“There is a clergyman who comes once a week to give us a scripture lesson. He is only a curate and looks very shy. We had a most exciting time with him yesterday. We all shied paper wads, and he moved nearly every one up and sent one girl out of the room.”
“He can’t,” I said, “have been as shy as he looked. But I’m beginning to understand why the Archdeacon was shocked.”
“He didn’t mind that,” said the Canon; “at least not much.”
Lalage’s letter went on:
“I was glad, that it wasn’t me, who was just as bad, that he didn’t what he calls ‘make an example of.’ Even that didn’t calm the excited class and he said, ‘Next person who laughs will be reported to Miss Pettigrew.’ It was not me, but the girl next me, Eileen Fraser. I was the innocent cause of the offence. (A mere wink at Hilda when I had my belt round her neck.) She was not, however, reported, even to Carpy.”
“By the way,” I said, “who is Carpy? She comes into my letter too.”
The Canon did not know and seemed uninterested in the point. He went on reading:
“Another day he committed an unforgivable offence. He said to us, ‘You must stand up when quoting the words of the Bible.’”
“Isn’t that always considered essential?” I asked. “The unforgivable offence,” said the Canon, “is in the next sentence.”
“Buthesat with his feet on the fender, the pig. I do hate that sort. Even when Hilda said that Ananias told a lie and was turned into a pillar of salt he did not laugh. He said he’d turn one girl out of the room to-day for nothing but dropping her pen.”
“The Archdeacon,” I said, “could of course sympathize with that curate.”
“It wasn’t that which made him really angry,” said the Canon, “although he didn’t like it.”
“There must be something pretty bad coming, if it’s worse than that.”
The Canon sighed heavily and went on reading
“Hilda taught me the two-step at rec. Another girl (also in my class and jolly nice) played them.”
The Canon looked up with a puzzled expression. I explained as well as I could.
“The two-step,” I said, “is a dance. What the jolly, nice girl played is a little obscure, but I think it must have been tunes suitable to the performance of the two-step. ‘Rec.’ is a shortened form of recreation. Lalage is fond of these contractions. She writes to me about her comp.”
The canon read: “On the other days, the old Pet takes us herself at Scrip: We were at Genesis, and she read out, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven, and the earth.’ ‘But of course you all know He didn’t. Modern science teaches us——’ Then she went on with a lot of rot about gases and forces and nebulous things.”
“The Archdeacon,” said the Canon, “is going to write to the Archbishop of Dublin about it. He says that kind of teaching ought not to be allowed.”
“We must head him off somehow,” I said, “if he really means it. But he hardly can. I don’t expect he’ll run into extremes. He certainly won’t without taking advice. The Archdeacon isn’t a man to do anything definite in a hurry. He’s told me over and over again that he deprecates precipitancy of action.”
“He feels very strongly about the Higher Criticism. Very strongly indeed. He says it’s poisoning the wells of religion in the home.”
“Last time he lunched with us he said it was sapping the foundations. Still I scarcely think he’ll want to institute a heresy prosecution against Miss Pettigrew.”
“I’m very much afraid—he seemed most determined——”
“We must switch him off on to some other track,” I said. “If you funk tackling him——”
“I did my best.”
“I suppose that I’d better try him. It’s a nuisance. I hate arguing with archdeacons; but of course we can’t have Lalage put into a witness box and ballyragged by archbishops and people of that kind, and she’d be the only available witness. Hilda can’t be in a position to give a clear account of what happened, considering that she was half strangled by Lalage’s belt at the time.”
“It was at the curate’s class that the belt incident occurred,” said the Canon, “just after they had been throwing paper wads.”
“So it was. All the same I don’t think Hilda would be much use as a witness. The memory of that choking would be constantly with her and would render every scripture lesson a confused nightmare for months afterward. The other girls would probably lose their heads. It’s all well enough to pelt curates with paper wads. Any one could do that. It’s quite a different thing to stand up before an ecclesiastical court and answer a string of questions about nebulous things. That Archbishop will find himself relying entirely on Lalage to prove the Archdeacon’s case, which won’t be a nice position for her. I’ll go home now and drive over at once to see the Archdeacon.”
“Do,” said the Canon. “I’d go with you only I hate this kind of fuss. Some men like it. The Archdeacon, for instance. Curious, isn’t it, how differently we’re made, though we all look very much alike from the outside. ‘Sunt quos cumculo——‘” I did not wait to hear the end of the quotation.
I approached the Archdeacon hopefully, relying, I confess, less on the intrinsic weight of the arguments I meant to use than on the respect which I knew the Archdeacon entertained for my position in the county. My mother is the sister of the present Lord Thormanby, a fact which by itself predisposes the Archdeacon in my favour. My father was a distinguished soldier. My grandfather was a still more distinguished soldier, and there are pictures of his most successful battle hanging in my dining-room. The Archdeacon has often seen them and I am sure appreciates them. I am also, for an Irish landlord, a well-off man. I might, so I believed, have trusted entirely to these facts to persuade the Archdeacon to give up the idea of communicating Miss Pettigrew’s lapse into heterodoxy to the Archbishop. But I worked out a couple of sound arguments as well, and I was greatly surprised to find that I produced no effect whatever on the Archdeacon. He bluntly refused to modify his plan of action.
I quoted to him the proverb which warns us to let sleeping dogs lie. Under any ordinary circumstances this would have appealed strongly to the Archdeacon. It was just the kind of wisdom by which he guides his life. I was taken aback when he replied that Miss Pettigrew, so far from being a sleeping dog, was a roaring lion. A moment later he called her a ravenous evening wolf; so I gave up my proverb as useless. I then reminded him that Lalage was evidently quite unaffected by the teaching which she received, had in fact described modern science as a lot of rot. The Archdeacon replied that, though Lalage escaped, others might be affected; and that he was not quite sure even about Lalage, because insidious poisons are most to be feared when they lie dormant in the system for a time.
This brought me to the end of my two arguments and I had to invent another on the spot. I am always rather ashamed to think of the one I actually used, but I was driven against the wall and the position seemed almost desperate. I suggested that Lalage’s account of the scripture lesson was in all probability quite unreliable.
“You know, Archdeacon,” I said, “that all little girls are horrid liars.”
The insinuation that Lalage ever spoke anything but the truth was treacherous and abominable. She has her faults; but I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that her description of Miss Pettigrew’s scripture lesson was a perfectly honest account of the impression it produced on her mind. The Archdeacon hesitated, and, hoping for the best, I plunged deeper.
“Lalage in particular,” I said, “is absolutely reckless about the truth.”
The Archdeacon shook his head mournfully.
“I wish I could think so,” he said. “I should be glad, indeed, if I could take your view of the matter; but in these days when the Higher Criticism is invading our pulpits and our school rooms——”
His voice faded away into the melancholy silence and he continued shaking his head.
This shows how much more important dogmatic truth is than the ordinary everyday correspondence between statement and fact. To the Archdeacon a lie of Lalage’s would have been a minor evil in every way preferable, if it came to a choice between the two, to Miss Pettigrew’s unorthodox interpretation of the Mosaic narrative. I could argue the matter no more and fell back upon a last plan.
“Archdeacon,” I said, “come out and dine with us to-night. Talk the whole business over with my mother before you take any definite action.”
The Archdeacon agreed to do this. I went home at once and prepared my mother for the conflict.
“You must use all your influence,” I said. “It is a most serious business.”
“My dear boy,” said my mother, “it’s quite the most ridiculous storm in a tea cup of which I’ve ever heard.”
“No,” I said solemnly, “it’s not. If the Archdeacon makes his charge formally the Archbishop will be obliged to take it up. Miss Pettigrew will be hauled up before him——”
“Miss Pettigrew,” said my mother, “would simply laugh. She’s not in the very least the sort of woman——”
“I know. She’s one of those people that you hate awfully and yet can’t help loving though you are rather afraid of her. It’s for her sake more than Lalage’s that I’m asking you to interfere.”
“If I interfere at all it will be for the Archdeacon’s sake. It’s a pity to allow him to make a fool of himself.”
I do not know what line my mother actually took with the Archdeacon. I left them together after dinner and when the time came for saying good-night I found that the Archdeacon had been persuaded not to attempt a formal protest against Miss Pettigrew’s teaching. He has never, however, trusted her since then and he still shakes his head doubtfully at the mention of her name.
I wrote to Lalage next day and told her not to send home any more accounts of scripture lessons. English compositions, I said, we should be glad to receive. Latin exercises would always be welcome, and algebra sums, especially if worked in Miss Campbell’s red ink, would be regarded as treasured possessions.
“All letters,” I added, “suspected of containing ecclesiastical news of any kind will be returned to you unopened.”
I also called on the Canon and spoke plainly to him about the danger and folly of showing letters to the Archdeacon.
“I was wrong,” said the Canon apologetically. “I can see now that I was wrong, but I thought at the time that he’d enjoy the joke.”
“You ought,” said I severely, “to have had more sense. The Archdeacon expects to be a bishop some day. He can’t afford to enjoy jokes of that kind. By the way, did he tell you who wrote the Litany?”
It must have been about three weeks after the pacification of the Archdeacon by my mother that a crisis occurred in my affairs. I am not a person of any importance, although I shall be, I fear, some day; and my affairs up to the present are not particularly interesting even to myself. I record the crisis because it explains the fact that I lost touch with Lalage for nearly four years and know little or nothing about her development during that time. I wish I knew more. Some day, when I have a little leisure, I mean to have a long talk with Miss Pettigrew. She saw more of Lalage in those days than any one else did, and I think she must have some very interesting, perhaps exciting, things to tell. To a sympathetic listener Miss Pettigrew would talk freely. She has a sense of humour, and like all people who are capable of laughing themselves, takes a pleasure in telling good stories.
It was my uncle, Lord Thormanby, who was mainly responsible for my private crisis. My mother, I daresay, goaded him on; but he has always taken the credit for arranging that I should join the British embassy in Lisbon as a kind of unpaid attaché. My uncle used his private and political influence to secure this desirable post for me. I do not know exactly whom he worried. Perhaps it was a sympathetic Prime Minister, perhaps the Ambassador himself, a nobleman distantly connected with Lady Thormanby. At all events, the thing was done and Thormanby was enormously proud of the achievement. He gave me a short lecture by way of a send-off, in which he dwelt a good deal on his own interest in my future and told me that my appointment might lead on to something big. It has not done so, up to the present, but that I daresay is my own fault.
The Canon, who seemed sorry to say good-bye to me, gave me a present of an English translation of the works of the philosopher Epictetus, with several passages, favourites of his own, marked in red ink. One of these I used frequently to read and still think about occasionally, not because I have the slightest intention of trying to live in the spirit of it, but because it always reminds me of the Canon himself, and so makes me smile. “Is a little of your oil spilt, or a little wine stolen?” said this philosopher. “Then say to yourself: ‘For so much peace is bought. This is the price of tranquillity.’ For nothing can be gained without paying for it.” It is by this wisdom that the man who happened to be Lalage’s father was able to live without worrying himself into frequent fevers.
The Archdeacon dined with us a short time before I left home and gave me a very fine valedictory address. He said that I was about to follow the example of my ancestors and devote myself to the service of my country. He had every hope that I would acquit myself as nobly as they did. This was a very affecting thing to say, particularly in our dining-room, with the pictures of my grandfather’s battles hanging round the walls. I looked at them while he spoke, but I did not venture to look at my mother. Her eyes have a way of twinkling when the Archdeacon is at his best which always upsets me. The Archdeacon, his face still raised toward the large battle picture, added that there is nothing finer than the service of one’s country, nothing more inspiring for a man and nothing more likely to lead to fame. I felt at the time that this is very likely to be true in the case of any one who has a country to serve. I, unfortunately, have none. The recent developments of Irish life, the revivals of various kinds, the books which people keep on writing, and the general atmosphere of the country have robbed me and others like me of the belief, held comfortably by our fathers, that we are Englishmen. On the other hand, nobody, least of all the patriotic politicians who make speeches, will admit that we are Irish. We are thus, without any fault of our own, left poised in a state of quivering uncertainty like the poor Samaritans whom the Jews despised as Gentiles and the Gentiles did not like because they seemed to be Jews. I found it difficult, while I listened to the Archdeacon, to decide what country had a claim on me for service. Perhaps Portugal—I was going to Lisbon—would mark me for her own.
For more than three years I saw nothing of Lalage. My holidays, snatched with difficulty from a press of ridiculously unimportant duties, never corresponded with hers. I heard very little of her. The Canon never wrote to me at all about Lalage or anything else. My mother merely chronicled her scholastic successes, which included several prizes for English composition.
The one really interesting piece of information which I got about her came, curiously enough, from the Archdeacon. He wrote to me for a subscription to a fund for something, rebuilding the bishop’s palace I think. At the end of his letter he mentioned an incident in Lalage’s career which he described as deplorable. It appeared that a clergyman, a man of some eminence according to the Archdeacon and so, presumably, not the original curate had set an examination paper intended to test the religious knowledge of Lalage and others. In it he quoted some words from one of St Paul’s epistles: “I keep my body under and have it in subjection,” and asked what they meant. Lalage submitted a novel interpretation. “St. Paul,” she wrote, “is here speaking of that mystical body which is the Church. It ought always to be kept under and had in subjection.”
As a diplomatist—I suppose I am a diplomatist of a minor kind—whose lot is cast among the Latin peoples, I am inclined to think that Lalage’s interpretation may one day be universally accepted as the true one and so honoured with the crown of orthodoxy. It would even to-day strike a Portuguese journalist as a simple statement of an obvious truth. The Archdeacon regarded it as deplorable, and I understood from his letter that the old charge of flippancy had been revived against Lalage. She must, I suppose, have disliked the man who set the examination paper. I cannot otherwise account for the viciously anti-clerical spirit of her answer.
The next important news I got of Lalage reached me in the spring of the fourth year I spent in the service of somebody else’s country. It came in a letter from Lalage herself, written on paper headed by the letters A.T.R.S. embossed in red. She wrote:
“You’ll be glad to hear that I entered Trinity College last October and since then have been enjoying ‘the spacious times of great Elizabeth.’ Our society, girls, is called the Elizabethan. That’s the point of the quotation.”
I glanced at the head of the paper, but failed to see how A.T.R.S. could possibly stand for Elizabethan Society. Lalage’s letter continued:
“There is nothing equal to a university life for broadening out the mind and enlarging one’s horizon. I have just founded a new society called the A.T.R.S., and the committee (Hilda, myself, and a boy called Selby-Harrison, who got a junior ex: and isveryclever) is on the lookout for members, subscription—a year, paid in advance, or life members one pound. Our object is to check by every legitimate means the spread of tommyrot in this country and the world generally. There is a great deal too much of it and something ought to be done to make people jolly well ashamed of themselves before it is too late. If the matter is not taken in hand vigorously the country will be submerged and all sensible people will die.”
I began to get at the meaning of the red letters. T.R. S. plainly stood for Tommy Rot Society. The preliminary “A” could indicate nothing else but the particle anti. The prospect before us, if Lalage is anything of a judge, and I suppose she must be, is sufficiently serious to justify the existence of the society.
“Each member of the committee is pledged to expose in the press by means of scathing articles, and thus hound out of public life any man, whatever his position, who is caught talking tommyrot. This will be done anonymously, so as to establish a reign of terror under which no man of any eminence will feel safe. The committee intends to begin with bishops of all denominations. I thought this would interest you now that you are an ambassador and engaged in fostering international complications.”
I read this with a feeling of discomfort similar to that of the gentleman who set the examination paper on St. Paul’s epistles. There, seemed to me to be a veiled threat in the last sentence. The committee intended to begin with bishops, but there cannot be above sixty or seventy bishops in Ireland altogether, even including the ex-moderators of the Presbyterian General Assembly, not more than a hundred. An energetic committee would certainly be able to deal with them in less than three months. Whose turn would come next? Quite possibly the diplomatists. I do not particularly object to the prospect of being hounded out of public life by means of scathing articles; but I feel that I should not be the only victim. Some of the others would certainly resent Lalage’s action and then there would be a fuss. I have always hated fuss of any kind.
“Only members of the committee are expected to take part in the active propaganda of the society. Ordinary members merely subscribe. I am sending this appeal to father, Lord Thormanby, Miss Battersby, who is still there, and the Archdeacon, as well as to you.”
I breathed a sigh of great relief. Lalage was not threatening my colleagues with exposure in the press.
She was merely asking for a subscription. I wrote at once, warmly commending the objects and methods of the society. I enclosed a cheque for five pounds with a request that I should be enrolled as five ordinary life members. I underlined the word ordinary, and added a postscript in which I expressly refused to act on the committee even if elected. Lalage did not answer this letter or acknowledge the cheque. I suppose the bishops kept her very busy.
In August that year I met Lalage again for the first time since I had seen her off to school from the station at Drumbo. I did not recognize her at first. Four years make a great difference in a girl when she is passing from the age of fourteen onward. Besides, I was not in the least expecting to see her.
Mont ‘Estoril is a watering place near the mouth of the Tagus. In spite of the fact that some misguided people advertise its attractions and call it the Riviera of Portugal, it is a pleasant spot to live in when Lisbon is very hot. There are several excellent hotels there and I have found it a good plan to migrate from the capital and settle down in Mont ‘Estoril for June, July and August. I have to go into Lisbon every day, but this is no great hardship, for there is a convenient train service. I usually catch what the Portuguese call a train of “great velocity” and arrive at the Caes da Sodre railway station a few minutes after eleven o’clock. From that I go, partly on foot, partly in a tram, to the embassy and spend my time there in the usual way.
One morning—I have kept a note of the date; it was the ninth of August—I saw a large crowd of people, plainly tourists, standing together on the footpath, waiting for a tram. The sight was common enough. Every ten days or so an enterprising steamboat company lands a bevy of these worthy people in Lisbon. This crowd was a little larger than usual. It was kept together by three guides who were in charge of the party and who galloped, barking furiously, along the outskirts of the herd whenever a wild or frightened tourist made any attempt to break away. On the opposite side of the road were two young girls. One of them, very prettily dressed in bright blue, was adjusting a hand camera with the intention of photographing the tourists and attendant watchdog guides. She did not succeed, because one of the guides recognized her as a member of his flock and crossed the road to where she stood. I know the man slightly. He is a cosmopolitan, a linguist of great skill, who speaks good English, with Portuguese suavity of manner, in times of calm, but bad English, with French excitability of gesture, when he is annoyed. He reasoned, most politely I’m sure, with the two girls. He wanted them to cross the road and take their places among the other tourists. The girl in blue handed the camera to her companion, took the cosmopolitan guide by the shoulders, pushed him across the road and posed him in a picturesque attitude on the outskirts of the crowd. Then she went back to take her picture. The guide, of course, followed her, and I could see by the vehemence of his shrugs and gesticulations that his temper had given way. I guessed that his English must have been almost unintelligible. The scene interested me and I stood still to see how it would end. The girl in the blue dress changed her intention and tried to photograph the excited interpreter while he gesticulated. I sympathized with her wish. His attitudes were all well worth preserving. If she had been armed with phonograph as well as a camera she might have secured a really valuable record. The man, to my knowledge, speaks eight languages, all equally badly, and when he mixes them he is well worth listening to. In order to get him into focus the girl in the blue dress kept backing away from him, holding the camera level and gazing into the view finder. The man, gesticulating more wildly than ever, followed her. She moved more and more rapidly away from him until at last she was proceeding backward along the street at a rapid trot. In the end she bumped against me. I staggered and clutched at my hat. She turned, and, without appearing in the least put out, began to apologize. Then her face lit with a sudden smile of recognition.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s you?”
I recognized the voice and then the face. I also retained my presence of mind.
“Begging a person’s pardon,” I said, “when we tread on their toes is a polite and reasonable thing to do.”
Lalage may have recognized the quotation, although I do not think I had it quite right. She certainly smiled agreeably. But she had no time to waste on exchanging reminiscences.
“Just make that idiot stand where he is for a moment,” she said, “till I get him photographed. I wouldn’t miss him for pounds. He’s quite unique.”
The interpreter protested volubly in Portuguese mixed with Spanish and French. He was, so he told me, placed in charge of the tourists by the steamboat company which had brought them to Lisbon. If one of them got lost he would have to answer for it, answer for it with his head, and the senora, the two exceedingly headstrong senoras, would get lost unless they could be penned in with the rest of his flock.
I glanced at Lalage several times while the interpreter harangued us, and noticed that she had grown into an extremely pretty girl. She, it seemed, was also taking stock of me.
“You’ve improved,” she said. “Your moustache has broadened out. If that monkey on a stick won’t be photographed I wish you’d hunt him away out of this. I don’t know any Portuguese swears or I’d do it myself.”
I explained to the interpreter that he need be under no anxiety about the headstrong senoras. I myself would be responsible for them, and would, if necessary, answer for their safety with my head. He departed, doubtful and ill content. He was probably satisfied that I was capable of looking after Lalage, but he dreaded the effect of her example on the rest of his flock. They too might escape.
“This,” said Lalage, leading me up to the other girl, who wore a pink dress, “is Hilda. You’ve heard of Hilda.”
Hilda’s name was printed on my memory. She is one of the three members of the committee of the A.T.R.S. I shook hands with her and asked for Selby-Harrison.
“You haven’t surely,” I said, “come without Selby-Harrison, who won the junior ex.? The committee ought to hold together.”
“We intended to bring him,” said Lalage, “but there were difficulties. The Archdeacon heard about it——”
“That Archdeacon again!” I said.
“And told father that it wouldn’t do at all. Did you ever hear such nonsense? I shouldn’t have minded that, but Hilda’s mother struck too. It ended in our having to bring poor old Pussy with us as chaperon.”
“Pussy?”
“Yes, The original Cat, Miss Battersby. You can’t have forgotten her, surely? It happened that she was getting her holidays just as we had arranged to start, so we took her instead of Selby-Harrison, which satisfied the Archdeacon and Hilda’s mother.”
“I am so glad to hear you call her ‘Pussy’ now,” I said. “I always hoped you would.”
“She’s really not a bad sort,” said Lalage, “when you get to know her. She did us very little harm on the steamer. She was sick the whole way out, so we just put her in the top berth of our cabin and left her there.”
“Is she there still?”
Hilda giggled. Lalage looked slightly annoyed.
“Of course not,” she said. “We aren’t cruel. We hauled her out this morning and dressed her. It was rather a job but we did it. We took her ashore with us—each holding one arm, for she was frightfully staggery at first—and made her smuggle our cigarettes for us through the custom-house. No one would suspect her of having cigarettes. By the way, she has them still. They’re in a large pocket which I sewed on the inside of her petticoat. She’s over there in the crowd. Would you very much mind getting——?”
“I couldn’t possibly,” I said hastily. “She’d be almost certain to object, especially with all those people standing round. You must wait till you get to an hotel and then undress her again yourselves.”
“Don’t be an ass,” said Lalage. “I don’t want you to get the cigarettes. I want you to rescue Pussy herself. It wouldn’t be at all fair to allow her to be swept away in that crowd. We’d never see her again.”
I did not much care for undertaking this task either, though it was certainly easier than the other. The polyglot guide would, I felt sure, deeply resent the rape of another of his charges.
“Couldn’t Hilda do that?” I said. “After all, she’s a member of the committee. I’m not. And you told me distinctly that ordinary members were not expected to do anything except subscribe.”
“Go on, Hilda,” said Lalage.
I suppose Lalage must be president of the A.T.R.S. and be possessed of autocratic powers. Hilda crossed the road without a murmur. Selby-Harrison, I have no doubt, would have acted in the same way if he had been here.
“And now, Lalage,” I said, “you must tell me what brings you to Portugal.”
“To see you,” said Lalage promptly.
“It’s very nice of you to say that,” I said, “and I feel greatly flattered.”
“Hilda was all for Oberammergau, and Selby-Harrison wanted Normandy. He said there were churches and things there but I think churches are rather rot, don’t you?”
“Besides,” I said, “after the way the society has been treating bishops it would hardly be decent to accept their hospitality by wandering about through their churches. Any bishop, especially if he’d been driven out of public life by a series of scathing articles, published anonymously, would have a genuine grievance if you——”
“It was really that which decided us on coming here,” said Lalage.
“Quite right. There is a most superior kind of bishop here, a Patriarch, and I am sure that anything you publish about him in the Portuguese papers——”
“You don’t understand what I mean. You’re getting stupid, I think. I’m not talking about bishops. I’m talking about you.”
“Don’t bother about taking up my case until you’ve quite finished the bishops. I am a young man still, with years and years before me in which I shall no doubt talk a lot of tommyrot. It would be a pity to drive me out of public life before I’ve said anything which you can really scathe.”
“We thought,” said Lalage, “that as it didn’t much matter to us where we went we might as well come out to see you. You were the only person who gave a decent ‘sub’ to the society. I’ll explain our new idea to you later on.”
“I’m very glad I did,” I said. “If another fiver would bring Selby-Harrison by the next steamer—Hullo! Here’s Hilda back with Miss Battersby. I hardly thought she’d have succeeded in getting her. How do you do, Miss Battersby? I’m delighted to welcome you to Lisbon, and I must do my best for you now you’re here. I’m quite at your disposal for the day.”
Miss Battersby smiled feebly. She had not yet recovered from the effects of the sea voyage.
“First,” said Lalage, “we’ll go to an hotel.”
“Of course,” I said, “to get the cigarettes.”
“No,” said Lalage; “to let Miss Battersby get to bed. She wants to get to bed, doesn’t she, Hilda?”
Hilda, who was supporting Miss Battersby, and so in a position to judge of her condition, nodded.
“She’s frightfully weak,” said Lalage to me, “on account of not having eaten anything except two water biscuits and an apple for nearly a week.”
“In that case,” I said, “a little luncheon——”
“Could you eat luncheon?” said Lalage to Miss Battersby.
Miss Battersby seemed to wish to try.
“Could she, Hilda?” said Lalage. “It’s a long time since she has.”
“She must make a beginning some day,” I said.
“I still think she’d be better in bed,” said Lalage.
“After lunch,” I said firmly. “You ought not to be vindictive, Lalage. It’s a long time since that trouble about the character of Mary.”
“I’m not thinking of that,” said Lalage.
“And she’s not a bishop. Why should you starve her?”
“Very well,” said Lalage. “Do whatever you like, but don’t blame me afterward if she’s—— she was, on the steamer, horribly.”
We fed Miss Battersby on some soup, a fragment of fried fish and a glass of light wine. She evidently wanted to eat an omelette as well, but Lalage forbade this. Whether she was actually put to bed afterward or merely laid down I do not know. She must have been at least partially undressed, for Lalage and Hilda were plentifully supplied with cigarettes during the afternoon.