Lalage, Hilda, and I went for a drive in one of the attractive carriages which ply for hire in the Lisbon streets. We drove up one side of the Avenida de Liberdade and down the other. I did the duty of a good cicerone by pointing out the fountains, trees and other objects of interest which Lalage and Hilda were sure to see for themselves. When we had exhausted the Avenida I suggested going on to Belem. Lalage did not seem pleased. She said that driving was not her idea of pleasure. She wanted something more active and exciting. I agreed.
“We’ll go in a tram,” I said.
“Where to?”
“Belem.”
“Belem’s a church, isn’t it, Hilda?”
Hilda and I both admitted that it was.
“Then we can’t go there,” said Lalage decidedly.
“Why not?” I ventured to ask.
“You said yourself that it wouldn’t be decent.”
“Oh!” I said, “you’re thinking of those poor bishops; but you haven’t done anything to the Portuguese patriarch yet. Besides, only half of Belem is a church. The other half is a school, quite secular.”
“The only things I really want to see,” said Lalage, “are the dead Portuguese kings in glass cases.”
“The what?”
“The dead kings. Stuffed, I suppose. Do you mean to say you’ve been here nearly four years and don’t yet know the way they keep their kings, like natural history specimens in a museum? Why, that was the very first thing Hilda found out in the guide book.”
“I didn’t,” said Hilda. “It was you.”
“Let’s credit Selby-Harrison with the discovery,” I said soothingly. “I remember now about those kings. But the exhibition has been closed to the public now for some years. We shan’t be able to get in.”
“What’s the use of being an ambassador,” said Lalage, “if you can’t step in to see a dead king whenever you like?”
An ambassador may be able to claim audiences with deceased royalties, but I was not an ambassador. I offered Lalage as an alternative the nearest thing at my command to dead kings.
“The English cemetery,” I said, “is considered one of the sights of Lisbon. If you are really interested in corpses we might go there.”
“I hate Englishmen,” said Lalage. “All Englishmen.”
“That’s why I suggested their cemetery. It will be immensely gratifying to you to realize what a lot of them have died. The place is nearly full and there are lots of yew trees.”
Lalage did me the honour of laughing. Hilda, after a minute’s consideration, also laughed. But they were not to be distracted from the dead kings.
“We’ll go back to the hotel,” said Lalage, “and rout out poor Pussy. She’ll be wanting more food by this time. You can go and call on the present King or the Queen Mother, or whoever it is who keep the key of that mausoleum and then come back for us. By the way, before you go, just tell me the Portuguese for an ice. It’s desperately hot.”
I told her and then got out of the carriage. I did not call upon either the King or his mother. They were in Cintra, so I should not have had time to get at them even if I had wished. I saw my chief, and, with the fear of Lalage before my eyes, worried him until he gave me a letter to a high official. From him I obtained with great difficulty the permission I wanted. I returned to the hotel. Miss Battersby, though recovering rapidly, was still too feeble to accompany us; so Lalage, Hilda, and I set off without her.
The dead kings were a disappointment. Hilda’s nerve failed her on the doorstep and she declined to go in. Lalage and I went through the exhibition alone. I observed, without surprise, that Lalage turned her eyes away from the objects she had come to inspect. I ventured, when we got out, to suggest that we might perhaps have spent a pleasanter afternoon at Belem. Lalage snubbed me sharply.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I’m going in for the Vice-Chancellor’s prize for English verse next year and the subject is mortality. I shall simply knock spots out of the other competitors when I work in those kings.
“‘Sceptre and crownMust tumble down,’
You know the sort of thing I mean.”
“That’s not original,” I said. “I remember it distinctly in the ‘Golden Treasury,’ though I have forgotten the author’s name.”
“It wasn’t meant to be original. I quoted it simply as an indication of the sort of line I mean to take in my poem.”
“You’ll win the prize to a certainty. When you publish the poem afterward with notes I hope you’ll mention my name. Without me you wouldn’t have got at those kings.”
“In the meanwhile,” said Lalage, “I could do with some tea and another ice. Couldn’t you, Hilda?”
Hilda could and did. I took them to an excellent shop in the Rua Aurea, where Hilda had three ices and Lalage four, after tea. I only had one. Lalage twitted me with my want of appetite.
“I can’t eat any more.” I said. “The thought of poor Miss Battersby sitting alone in that stuffy hotel has spoiled my appetite.”
“The hotel is stuffy,” said Lalage. “Where are you stopping?”
I mentioned Mont ‘Estoril and Lalage at once proposed to move her whole party out there.
There were difficulties with the Lisbon hotel keeper, who wanted to be paid for the beds which Lalage and Hilda had not slept in as well as for that which Miss Battersby had enjoyed during the afternoon. Lalage argued with him in French, which he understood very imperfectly, and she boasted afterward that she had convinced him of the unreasonableness of his demand. I, privately, paid his bill.
There were also difficulties with Miss Battersby. She had, so Hilda told me, the strongest possible objection to putting on her clothes again. But Lalage was determined. In less than an hour after our return to the hotel I was sitting opposite to Miss Battersby, who was swathed rather than dressed, in a railway carriage, speeding along the northern shore of the Tagus estuary.
I had, early in the summer, made friends with a Mr. and Mrs Dodds, who were living in my hotel. Mr. Dodds was a Glasgow merchant and was conducting the Portuguese side of his firm’s business. Mrs. Dodds was a native of Paisley. They were both very fond of bridge, and I had got into the habit of playing with them every evening. We depended on chance for a fourth member of our party, and just at the time of Lalage’s visit were particularly fortunate in securing a young English engineer who was installing a service of electric light somewhere in the neighbourhood. The Doddses were friendly people and I had gradually come to entertain a warm regard for them in spite of the extreme severity of their bridge and Mrs. Dodds’s habit of speaking plainly about my mistakes. I would not, except under great pressure, cause any inconvenience or annoyance to the Doddses. But Lalage is great pressure. When she said that I was to spend the evening talking to her I saw at once that the bridge must be sacrificed. My plan was to apologize profusely to the Doddses, and leave them condemned for one evening to sit bridgeless till bedtime. But Lalage would not hear of this. She wanted, so she said, to talk confidentially to me. Miss Battersby was an obstacle in her way, and so she ordered me to introduce Miss Battersby as my substitute at the bridge table.
If Miss Battersby had acted reasonably and gone to bed either before or immediately after dinner this would have been unnecessary. But she did not. She became immoderately cheerful and was most anxious to enjoy herself. I set her down at the card table and then, as quickly as possible, fled. Miss Battersby’s bridge is of the most rudimentary and irritating kind and she has a conscientious objection to paying for the small stakes which usually gave a brightness to our game. It was necessary for me to get out of earshot of the Doddses and the engineer before they discovered these two facts about Miss Battersby. I thought it probable that I should have to go to a new hotel next day in order to escape the reproaches of my friends. But I did not want to move that night, so I went into the hotel garden, hustling Hilda before me. There was no need to hustle Lalage. She understood the need for haste even better than I did. I knew Miss Battersby’s capacity for bridge, having occasionally played with her in my uncle’s house. Lalage understood how acutely the pain brought on by Miss Battersby’s bridge would be aggravated by the deprecating sweetness of Miss Battersby’s manner. In the hotel garden there were a number of chairs made, I expect, by a man whose regular business in life was the manufacture of the old-fashioned straw beehives. When forced by the introduction of the new wooden hives to turn his hand to making chairs, he failed to shake himself free of the tradition of his proper art. His chairs were as like beehives as it is possible for chairs to be and anybody who sits back in one of them is surrounded on all sides by walls and overshadowed by a hood of woven wicker-work. When Lalage sat down I could see no more of her than the glowing end of her cigarette and the toes of her shoes. Hilda was to the same extent invisible. I was annoyed by this at first, for Lalage is very pretty to look at and the night was not so dark when we sat down but that I could, had she been in any ordinary chair, have traced the outline of her figure. Later on, when our conversation reached its most interesting point, I was thankful to recollect that I also was in obscurity. I am not, owing to my training as a diplomatist, an easy man to startle, but Lalage gave me a severe shock. I prefer to keep my face in the shadow when I am moved to unexpected emotion.
“To-morrow,” I said pleasantly, by way of opening the conversation, “we shall have another long day’s sight-seeing, mitigated with ices.”
“I’m sorry to say,” said Lalage, “that we go home to-morrow. The steamer sails at 11 a.m.”
“Surely there can be no real need for such hurry. Now that we have Miss Battersby among us the Archdeacon and Hilda’s mother will be quite satisfied.”
“It’s not that in the least,” said Lalage. “Is it, Hilda?”
Hilda said something about return tickets, but Lalage snubbed her. I gathered that there was reason for precipitancy more serious than the by-laws of the steamboat company.
“I am confident,” I said, “that Selby-Harrison is capable of carrying on the work of exterminating bishops.”
“It’s not that either,” said Lalage. “The fact is that we have come to Lisbon on business, not for pleasure. You’ve probably guessed that already.”
“I feared it. Of the two reasons you gave me this morning for coming here——”
“I haven’t told you any reason yet,” said Lalage.
“Excuse me, but when we first met this morning you said distinctly that you had come to see me. I hardly flattered myself that could really be true.”
“It was,” said Lalage. “Quite true.”
“It’s very kind of you to say so and of course I quite believe you, but then you afterward gave me to understand that your real object was to work up the emotion caused by the appearance of a dead king with a view to utilizing it to add intensity to a prize poem. That, of course, is business of a very serious kind. That’s why I meant to say a minute ago that of the two reasons you gave me for coming here the second was the more urgent.”
“Don’t ramble in that way,” said Lalage. “It wastes time. Hilda, explain the scheme which we have in mind at present.”
Hilda threw away the greater part of a cigarette and sat up in her beehive. I do not think that Hilda enjoys smoking cigarettes. She probably does it to impress the public with the genuine devotion to principle of the A.T.R.S.
“The society,” said Hilda “has met with difficulties. Its objects——”
“He knows the objects,” said Lalage. “Don’t you?”
“To expose in the public press——” I began.
“That’s just where we’re stuck,” said Lalage.
“Do you mean to tell me that the Irish newspapers have been so incredibly stupid as not to publish the articles sent by you, Hilda, and Selby-Harrison?”
“Not a single one of them,” said Lalage.
“And the bishops,” I said, “still wear their purple stocks, their aprons, and their gaiters; and still talk tommyrot through the length and breadth of the land.”
“But we’re not the least inclined to give in,” said Lalage.
“Don’t,” I said. “Keep on pelting the editors with articles. Some day one of them will be away from home and an inexperienced subordinate——”
“That would be no use,” said Hilda.
“What we have determined to do,” said Lalage, “is to start a paper of our own.”
“It ought,” I said, “to be a huge success.”
“I’m glad you agree with us there,” said Lalage. “We’ve gone into the matter minutely. Selby-Harrison worked it out and we don’t see how we could possibly make less than 12 per cent. Not that we want to make money out of it. Our efforts are purely—what’s that word, Hilda? You found it in a book, but I always forget it.”
“Altruistic,” said Hilda.
“You understand that, I suppose?” said Lalage to me.
“Yes,” I said, “I do. But I wasn’t thinking of the financial side of the enterprise when I spoke of its being an immense success. What I had in mind——”
“Finance,” said Lalage severely, “cannot possibly be ignored.”
“All we want,” said Hilda, “is some one to guarantee the working expenses for the first three months.”
“And I said,” added Lalage, “that you’d do it if we came out here and asked you.”
I recollected hearing of an Englishman who started a daily paper which afterward failed and it was said that he lost £300,000 by the venture. I hesitated.
“What we ask,” said Lalage, “is not money, but a guarantee, and we are willing to pay 8 per cent, to whoever does it. The difference between a guarantee and actual money is that in the one case you will probably never have to pay at all, while in the other you will have to fork out at once.”
“Am I,” I asked, “to get 8 per cent, on what I don’t give, but merely promise?”
“That’s what it comes to,” said Lalage. “I call it a good offer.”
“It’s one of the most generous I ever heard,” I said. “May I ask if Selby-Harrison——?”
“It was his suggestion,” said Hilda. “Neither Lalage nor I are any good at sums, specially decimals.”
“And,” said Lalage, “you’ll get a copy of each number post free just the same as if you were a regular subscriber!”
“We’ve got one advertiser already,” said Hilda.
“And,” said Lalage, “advertisments pay the whole cost of newspapers nowadays. Any one who knows anything about the business side of the press knows that. Selby-Harrison met a man the other day who reports football matches and he said so.”
“Is it cocoa,” I asked, “or soap, or hair restorer?”
“No. It’s a man who wants to buy second-hand feather beds. I can’t imagine what he means to do with them when he gets them, but that’s his business. We needn’t worry ourselves so long as he pays us.”
“Lalage,” I said, “and Hilda, I am so thoroughly convinced of your energy and enterprise, I feel so sure of Selby-Harrison’s financial ability and I am so deeply in sympathy with the objects of your, may I say our, society, that if I possessed £300,000 you should have it to-morrow; but, owing to, recent legislation affecting Irish land, the ever-increasing burden of income tax and the death duties——”
“Don’t start rambling again,” said Lalage. “It isn’t in the least funny, and we’re both beginning to get sleepy. Nobody wants £300,000.”
“It takes that,” I said, “to run a newspaper.”
“What we want,” said Lalage, “is thirty pounds, guaranteed—ten pounds a month for three months. All you have to do is to sign a paper——”
“Did Selby-Harrison draw up the paper?”
“Yes. And Hilda has it upstairs in her trunk.”
“That’s enough,” I said. “Anything Selby-Harrison has drawn up I’ll sign. Perhaps, Hilda, you’ll be good enough—I wouldn’t trouble you if I knew where to find it myself.”
“Get it, Hilda,” said Lalage.
Hilda struggled out of her beehive and immediately stumbled into a bed of stocks. It had become very dark while we talked, but I think the scent of the flowers might have warned her of her danger. I picked her up carefully and set her on the path.
“Perhaps,” I said, “you won’t mind taking off your shoes as you cross the hall outside the drawing-room. Mr. and Mrs. Dodds must have found out about Miss Battersby’s bridge by this time.”
I think Hilda winked. I did not actually see her wink. It was too dark to see anything; but there was a feeling in the air as if somebody winked and Lalage had nothing to wink about.
“If,” I added, “they rush out and catch you, they will certainly ask you where I am. You must be prepared for that. Would you very much mind exaggerating a little, just for once?”
This time Hilda giggled audibly.
“You might say that Lalage and I had gone for a long walk and that you do not know when we will be back.”
“That wouldn’t be true,” said Lalage, “so of course it can’t be said.”
“We can easily make it true,” I said. “I don’t want to go for a walk at this time of night and I’m sure you don’t, after the exhausting day you’ve had—but rather than put Hilda in an awkward position and set her conscience gnawing at her during the night we might start at once, not telling Hilda when we’ll be back.”
“All right,” said Lalage. “Pussy will fuss afterward of course. But——”
“I entirely forgot Miss Battersby,” I said. “She would fuss to a certainty. She might write to the Archdeacon. After all, Hilda, you’ll have to chance it with your shoes off. But for goodness’ sake don’t sneeze or fall or anything of that sort just outside the door.”
Hilda returned in about ten minutes. She told us that she whistled “Annie Laurie” on her way upstairs so as to give any one who might hear her the impression that she was the boy employed by the hotel proprietor to clean boots. The ruse, a brilliantly original one, was entirely successful. The bridge party, as I learned next day, including Miss Battersby, had gone to bed early. They did not play very much bridge. Hilda brought Selby-Harrison’s form of guarantee with her. It was written on a sheet of blue foolscap paper and ornamented with a penny stamp, necessary, so a footnote informed me, because the sum of money involved was more than two pounds. I signed it with a fountain pen by the light of a wax match which Lalage struck on the sole of her shoe and obligingly held so that it did not quite burn my hair.
It is only very gradually that one comes to appreciate Lalage. I had known her since she was quite a small child. I even recollect her insisting upon my wheeling her perambulator once when I was a schoolboy, and naturally resented such an indignity. Yet I had failed to realize the earnestness and vigour of her character. I did not expect anything to come of the guarantee which I had signed for her. I might and ought to have known better; but I was in fact greatly surprised when I received by post the first copy of theAnti-Tommy-Rot Gazette. It was not a very large publication, but it contained more print than I should have thought obtainable for the sum of ten pounds. Besides the title of the magazine and a statement that this issue was Vol. I, No. I., there was a picture of a young lady, clothed like the goddess Diana in the illustrations of the classical dictionary, who was urging on several large dogs of most ferocious appearance. In the distance, evidently terrified by the dogs, were three animals of no recognized species, but very disgusting in appearance, which bore on their sides the words “Tommy Rot.” The huntress was remarkably like Hilda in appearance and the initials “L.B.” at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture told me that the artist was Lalage herself. One of the dogs was a highly idealized portrait of a curly haired retriever belonging to my mother. The objects of the chase I did not recognize as copies of any beasts known to me; though there was something in the attitude of the worst of them which reminded me slightly of the Archdeacon. I never heard what Hilda’s mother thought of this picture. If she is the kind of woman I imagine her to be she probably resented the publication of a portrait of her daughter dressed in a single garment only and that decidedly shorter than an ordinary night dress.
Opening the magazine at page one, I came upon an editorial article. The rapid increase of the habit of talking tommyrot was dwelt upon and the necessity for prompt action was emphasized. The objects of the society were set forth with a naked directness, likely, I feared, to cause offence. Then came a paragraph, most disquieting to me, in which the generous gentleman whose aid had rendered the publication of the magazine possible was subjected to a good deal of praise. His name was not actually mentioned, but he was described as a distinguished diplomatist well known in an important continental court. This made me uneasy. There are not very many distinguished diplomatists who would finance a magazine of the kind. I felt that suspicion would fasten almost at once upon me, in the event of there being any kind of public inquiry. Next to the editorial article came a page devoted on one side entirely to the advertisement of the gentleman who wanted second-hand feather beds. The other side of it was announced as “To Let,” and the attention of advertisers was called to the unique opportunity offered to them of making their wishes known to an intelligent and progressive public. After that came the bishops.
Each bishop had at least half a page to himself. Some had much more, the amount of space devoted to them being apparently regulated in accordance with the enormity of their offences. There was a note in italics at the end of each indictment which ran thus:
“All inquirers after the original sources of the information used in this article are requested to apply to J. Selby-Harrison, Esq., 175 Trinity College, Dublin, by whom the research in the columns of the daily papers has been conducted with much ability and disinterested discretion. P.S.—J. Selby-Harrison has in all cases preserved notes of the dates, etc., for purposes of verification.” The working up of the material thus collected was without doubt done by Lalage. I recognized her style. Hilda probably corrected the proof.
In the letter which Lalage wrote to me at the time of the founding of the A.T.R.S. she spoke of university life as broadening the mind and enlarging the horizon. Either Oxford in this respect is inferior to Trinity College, Dublin, or else my mind has narrowed again since I took my degree and my horizon has shrunk. I did not feel that the episcopal pronouncements quoted deserved the eminence to which Lalage promoted them. They struck me as being simply commonplace. I had grown quite accustomed to them and had come to regard them as proper and natural things for bishops to say. For instance, the very first paragraph in this pillory of Lalage’s was devoted to a bishop, I forget his name and territorial title, who had denounced Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe.” Some evil-minded person had put forward this novel as a suitable reading book for Irish boys and girls in secondary schools, and the bishop had objected strongly. Lalage was cheerfully contemptuous of him. Without myself sharing his feeling, I can quite understand that he may have found it his duty to protest against the deliberate encouragement of such dangerous reading; and it is seldom right to laugh at a man for doing his duty. I read “Ivanhoe” when I was a boy and I distinctly remember that at least one eminent ecclesiastic is presented in a most unfavourable light. If Irish boys and girls got into the way of thinking of twelfth-century priors as gay dogs, the step onward to actual disrespect for contemporary bishops would be quite a short one.
There was another bishop (he appeared a few pages further on in theGazette) who objected to the education of boys and girls under seven years of age in the same infant schools. He said that this mixing of the sexes would destroy the beautiful modesty of demeanour which distinguishes Irish girls from those of other nations. Lalage poked fun at this man for a page and a half. I hesitate to say that she was actually wrong. My own experience of infant schools is very small. I once went into one, but I did not stay there for more than five minutes, hardly long enough to form an opinion about the wholesomeness of the moral atmosphere. But in this case again I can enter into the feelings of the bishop. He probably knows, having once been six years old himself, that all boys of that age are horrid little beasts. He also knows—he distinctly says so in the pastoral quoted by Lalage—that the charm of maidenhood is a delicate thing, comparable to the bloom on a peach or the gloss on a butterfly’s wings. Even Miss Battersby, who must know more about girls than any bishop, felt that Lalage had lost something not to be regained when she became intimate enough with Tom Kitterick to rub glycerine and cucumber into his cheeks.
Lalage was, in my opinion, herself guilty of something very like the sin of tommyrot when she mocked another bishop for a sermon he had preached on “Empire Day.” He said that wherever the British flag flies there is liberty for subject peoples and several other obviously true things of the same kind. I do not see what else, under the circumstances, the poor man could say. Nor do I blame him in the least for boldly demanding more battleships to carry something—I think he said the Gospel—to still remoter lands. Lalage chose to pretend that liberty and subjection are contradictory terms, but this is plainly absurd. Lord Thormanby talked over this part of theGazettewith me some months later and gave it as his opinion that a man whom he knew in the club had put the case very well by saying that there are several quite distinct kinds of liberty.
I found myself still more puzzled by Lalage’s attitude toward another man who was not even, strictly speaking, a bishop. He was a moderator, or an ex-moderator, of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. He had made a speech in which he set forth reasons why he and others like him should have a recognized place in the vice-regal court. I am not myself passionately fond of vice-regal courts, but I know that many people regard them with great reverence, and I do not see why a man should be laughed at for wanting to walk through the state rooms in Dublin Castle in front of somebody else. It is a harmless, perhaps a laudable, ambition. Lalage chose to see something funny in it, and I am bound to say that when I had finished her article I too began to catch a glimpse of the amusing side of it.
I spent a long time over theGazette. The more I read it the greater my perplexity grew. Many things which I had accepted for years as solemn and necessary parts of the divine ordering of the world were suddenly seized, contorted, and made to grin like apes. I felt disquieted, inclined, and yet half afraid, to laugh. I was rendered acutely uncomfortable by an editorial note which followed the last jibe at the last bishop: “The next number of theAnti-Tommy-Rot Gazettewill deal with politicians and may be expected to be lively. Subscribe at once.—Ed.”
I was so profoundy distrustful of my own judgment in delicate matters that I determined to find out if I could what Dodds thought of Lalage’s opinions. Dodds is preeminently a man of the world, very sound, unemotional and full of common sense. I did not produce theGazetteor mention Lalage’s name, for Dodds has had a prejudice against her since the evening on which he played bridge with Miss Battersby. Nor did I make a special business of asking his advice. I waited until we sat down to bridge together after dinner and then I put a few typical cases before him in casual tones, as if they were occurring to me at the moment.
“Dodds,” I said, holding the cards in my hand, “supposing that a bishop for whom you always had a respect on account of the dignity of his office, were to say——”
“I wouldn’t have any respect for a bishop on account of his office,” said Dodds. “Why don’t you deal?”
“We’re Presbyterians,” said Mrs. Dodds.
“That needn’t prevent you considering this case, for the word bishop is here used—that is to say, I am using it—to mean any eminent ecclesiastic. All right, I’m dealing as fast as I can. Supposing that a man of that kind, call him a bishop or anything else you like, were to say that boys and girls ought not to read ‘Ivanhoe’ on account of the danger to their faith and morals contained in that book, would you or would you not say that he, the bishop, not ‘Ivanhoe,’ was talking what in ordinary slang is called tommyrot?”
I finished dealing and, after glancing rather inattentively at my cards, declared hearts.
Dodds, who was sitting on my left, picked up his hand and doubled my hearts. He did so in a tone that convinced me that I had been rash in my declaration. He paid no attention whatever to my question about the bishop and “Ivanhoe.” It turned out that he had a remarkably good hand and he scored thirty-two below the line, which of course gave him the game. Mrs. Dodds, who was my partner, seemed temporarily soured, and while Dodds was explaining to us how well he had played, she took up the question about the bishop.
“I’d be thinking,” she said, “that that bishop of yours had very little to do to be talking that way. I’d say he’d be the kind of man who’d declare hearts with no more than one honour on his hand and that the queen.”
This rather nettled me, for I quite realized that my hand did not justify a heart declaration. I had made it inadvertently my mind being occupied with more important matters.
“Of course,” I said, “you’re prejudiced in favour of Sir Walter Scott. You Scotch are all the same. A word against Sir Walter or Robbie Burns is enough for you. But I’ll put another case to you: Supposing a bishop—understanding the word as I’ve explained it—were to say that infant schools are a danger to public morality on account of the way that boys and girls are mixed up together in the same classrooms, would he, in your opinion——?”
Dodds has a horribly coarse mind. He stopped dealing and grinned. Then he winked at the young engineer who sat opposite to him. He, I was pleased to see, had the grace to look embarrassed. Mrs. Dodds, who of course knows how her husband revels in anything which can be twisted into impropriety, interrupted me with a question asked in a very biting tone.
“Is it chess you think you are playing the now, or is it bridge?”
I had to let the next deal pass without any further attempt to discover Dodds’s opinion about tommyrot. I was trying to think out what Mrs. Dodds meant by accusing me of wanting to play chess. It struck me as an entirely gratuitous and, using the word in its original sense, impertinent suggestion. Nothing I had said seemed in any way to imply that I was thinking of chess. As a matter of fact, I detest the game and never play it. I suppose I am slow-witted, but it did not occur to me for quite a long time, that, being a Scotch Presbyterian, the mention of bishops was more likely to call up to her mind the pieces which sidle obliquely across a chessboard than living men of lordly degree. I was not sure in the end that I had tracked her thought correctly, but I know that I made several bad mistakes during the next and the following hands.
When it worked round to my turn to deal again I gave out the cards very slowly and made another attempt to find out whether Dodds did or did not agree with Lalage about tommyrot.
“Supposing,” I said, “that a clergyman, an ordinary clergyman, not a bishop, the kind of clergyman whom you would perhaps describe as a minister, were to preach a sermon about the British Empire and were to say——”
“In our church,” said Mrs. Dodds snappily, “the ministers preach the Gospel.”
“I am convinced of that,” I said, “but you must surely admit that the great idea of the imperial expansion of the race, Greater Britain beyond the seas, and—the White Man’s Burden, and all that kind of thing, are not essentially anti-evangelical, when looked at from the proper point of view. Suppose, for instance, that our hypothetical clergyman were to take for his text——”
I laid down the last card in the pack on my own pile and looked triumphantly at Dodds. I had, at all events, not made a misdeal. Dodds put his hand down on his cards with a bang. He has large red hands, which swell out between the knuckles and at the wrists. I saw by the way his fingers were spread on the table that he was going to speak strongly. I recollected then, when it was too late, that Dodds is an advanced Radical and absolutely hates the idea of imperialism. I tried to diminish his wrath by slipping in an apologetic explanation before he found words to express his feelings.
“The clergyman I mean,” I said, “isn’t—he’s purely imaginary, but if he had any real existence he wouldn’t belong to your church. He’d be a bishop.”
“He’d better,” said Dodds grimly.
I felt so much depressed that I declared spades at once. I gathered from the tone in which he spoke that if the clergyman who preached imperialism came within the jurisdiction of Dodds, or for the matter of that of Mrs. Dodds, it would be the worse for him. By far his best chance of a peaceful life was to be a bishop and not to live in Scotland. This was a great deal worse than Lalage’s way of treating him. She merely sported, pursuing him with gay ridicule, mangling his pet quotations, smiling at his swelling rotundities. Dodds would have sent him to the stake without an opportunity for recantation.
I lost altogether seven shillings during the evening, which represents a considerable run of bad luck, for we never played for more than a shilling for each hundred points. Mrs. Dodds, of course, lost the same amount. I tried to make it up to her next day by sending her, anonymously, six pairs of gloves. She must have known that they came from me for she was very gracious and friendly next evening. But for a long time afterward Dodds used to annoy her by proposing to talk about bishops and infant schools whenever she happened to be my partner.
A week passed without my hearing anything from home about Lalage’sGazette. My mother’s weekly letter—she wrote regularly every Sunday afternoon—contained nothing but the usual chronicle of minor events. I had no other regular correspondent. The Archdeacon had written me eleven letters since I left home, all of them dealing with church finance and asking for subscriptions. Canon Beresford never wrote to me at all. I was beginning to hope that theAnti-Tommy-Rot Gazettehad failed to catch the eye—ought I to say the ear?—of the public. This would of course be a disappointment to Lalage, perhaps also to Hilda and Selby-Harrison, but it would be a great relief to me. The more I thought of it the more I disliked the idea of being identified with the generous gentleman whose timely aid had rendered the publication possible.
My hopes were shattered by the arrival of no less than six letters by one post. One of them was addressed in my mother’s writing, and I feared the worst when I saw it. It was quite the wrong day for a letter from her, and I knew that nothing except a serious disaster would induce her to break through her regular rule of Sunday writing. Another of the letters came from the Archdeacon. I knew his hand. Two of the other envelopes bore handwritings which I did not recognize. The addresses of the remaining two were typewritten. I turned them all over thoughtfully and decided to open my mother’s first. She made no attempt to soften the shock I suffered by breaking her news to me gradually.
“Lalage appears to have excelled herself in her latest escapade. I only heard about it this morning and have not had time to verify the details of the story; but I think it better to write to you at once in case you should hear an exaggerated version from some one else.”
My mother is very thoughtful and kind; but in this particular case, needlessly so. I was not in the least likely to hear an exaggerated version of Lalage’s performance from any source; because no one in the world, not even a politician, could exaggerate the truth about theAnti-Tommy-Rot Gazette.
My mother went on:
“You appear to be mixed up in the affair, and, on the whole, I advise you to get out of it at once if you can. Your uncle, who takes these matters very seriously, is greatly annoyed. Lalage appears to have published something, a pamphlet probably, but report says variously a book, a magazine, and a newspaper. I have not seen a copy myself, though I telegraphed to Dublin for one as soon as the news of its publication reached me. Your uncle, who heard about it at the club, says it is scurrilous. He sent out for a copy, but was informed by the news agent that the whole issue was sold out. The Archdeacon was the first to tell me about it. He had been in Dublin attending a meeting of the Church Representative Body and he says that the general opinion there is that it is blasphemous. Even the Canon is a good deal upset and has gone away for a holiday to the north of Scotland. I had a postcard from him to-day with a picture of the town hall at Wick on the back of it. He wrote nothing except the words, ‘Virtute mea me unvolvo.’ I have Latin enough to guess that this—is it a quotation from his favourite Horace?—is a description of his own attitude toward Lalage’s performance. Miss Pettigrew, who is greatly interested, and I think on the whole sympathetic with Lalage, writes that eighteen bishops have already begun actions for libel, and that three more are expected to do so as soon as they recover from fits of nervous prostration brought on by Lalage’s attacks on them. A postscript to her letter gets nearer than anything else I have come across to giving a coherent account of what has actually taken place. ‘Lalage,’ she writes, ‘has shown a positively diabolical ingenuity in picking out for the pillory all the most characteristically episcopal utterances for the last two years.’ You will understand better than I do what this means.”
I did understand what Miss Pettigrew meant, but I do not think that Lalage ought to be given the whole credit. Selby-Harrison did the research.
My mother went on:
“Father Maconchy, the P.P., stopped me on the road this afternoon to say that he hoped there was no truth in the report that you are mixed up in what he calls a disgraceful attempt at proselytizing. The Archdeacon tells me that in ecclesiastical circles (his, not Father Maconchy’s, ecclesiastical circles) you are credited with having urged Lalage on, and says he fears your reputation will suffer.”
I put the letter down at this point and swore. Extreme stupidity always makes me swear. It is almost the only thing in the world which does. The Archdeacon, who has been acquainted with Lalage since her birth, ought to have more sense than to suppose, or allow any one else to suppose, that she ever required urging on. Even Father Maconchy’s reading of the situation was intelligent compared to that.
“Miss Pettigrew says that the Trinity College authorities have taken the matter up and are strongly of opinion that you are financing the publication. Thormanby tells me that the same rumour is current in the club. He heard it from five or six different men, and says he has been written to about the matter since he came home by people who are most anxious about your connection with it. I do not know what to believe, and I do not want to press my opinion on you, but if, without making things worse for Lalage than they are at present, you can disclaim responsibility for the publication, whatever it is, it will probably be wise for you to do so.”
It did not seem to me to matter, after reading what my mother said, which of the other letters I took next. I tried one of the two which bore typewritten addresses, in the hope that it might be nothing worse than a bill. It was, as a matter of fact, a statement of accounts. The first sheet ran thus: