I had luncheon in the club and then, without waiting even for a cup of coffee and a cigarette, went back to my hotel. I felt that I must make the most perfect possible arrangements for my tea party. The violence of my invitations would naturally raise Lalage’s expectations to the highest pitch. I sent for the head waiter, who had struck me as an able and intelligent man.
“I am expecting some ladies this afternoon,” I said, “and I shall have tea in my sitting room at five o’clock. I want everything to be as nice as possible, fresh flowers and that kind of thing.”
The man nodded sympathetically and gave me the impression that long practice had familiarized him with the procedure of tea parties for ladies.
“These ladies are young,” I said, “quite young, and so the cakes must be of the most sumptuous possible kind, not ordinary slices cut off large cakes, but small creations, each complete in itself and wrapped in a little paper frill. Do you understand what I mean?”
He said he did, thoroughly.
“I need scarcely say,” I added, “that many if not all of the cakes must be coated with sugar. Some ought to be filled with whipped cream. The others should contain or be contained by almond icing.”
The head waiter asked for information about the size of the party.
“There are only two ladies,” I said, “but they are bringing a young man with them. We may, as he is not here, describe him as a boy. Therefore there must be a large number of cakes, say four dozen.”
The head waiter’s eyebrows went up slightly. It was the first sign of emotion he had shown.
“I sha’n’t eat more than two myself,” I said, “so four dozen ought to be enough. I also want ices, twelve ices.”
This time the head waiter gasped. It was a cold, a remarkably cold, day, with an east wind and a feeling in the air as if snow was imminent.
“You mustn’t understand from that,” I said, “that the fire is to be allowed to go out. Quite the contrary. I want a particularly good fire. When the others are eating ices I shall feel the need of it.”
The head waiter asked if I had a preference for any particular kind of ice.
“Strawberry,” I said, “vanilla, and coffee. Three of each, and three neapolitan. That will make up the dozen. I shall want a whole box of wafers. The ices can be brought in after tea, say at twenty minutes past five. It wouldn’t do to have them melting while we were at the cakes, and I insist on a good fire.”
The head waiter recapitulated my orders to make sure that he had got them right and then left me.
At twenty minutes to five Lalage and Hilda arrived. They looked very hot, which pleased me. I had been feeling a little nervous about the ices. They explained breathlessly that they were sorry for being late. I reassured them.
“So far from being late,” I said “you’re twenty minutes too early. I’m delighted to see you, but it’s only twenty minutes to five.”
“There now, Hilda,” said Lalage, “I told you that your old chronometer had most likely darted on again. I should have had lots and lots of time to do my hair. Hilda’s watch,” she explained to me, “was left to her in her grandmother’s will, so of course it goes too fast. It often gains as much as two hours in the course of the morning.”
“I wonder you trust it,” I said.
“We don’t. When we got your first ‘gram in the Elizabethan we looked at the clock and saw that we had heaps of time. When your second came—Selby-Harrison sent it over from number 175—we began to think that Hilda’s watch might be right after all and that the college clock had stopped. We went backventre à terreon the top of a tram to Trinity Hall and found your third ‘gram waiting for us. That made us dead certain that we were late. So we slung on any rags that came handy and simply flew. We didn’t even stay to hook up Hilda’s back. I jabbed three pins into it in the train.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “that you troubled to change your frocks. I didn’t expect that you’d have to do that.”
“Of course we had. Didn’t you know we were in for an exam this morning?”
“I did know that; but I thought you’d have had on your very best so as to soften the Puffin’s heart.”
“The poor old Puffin,” said Lalage, “wouldn’t be any the wiser if we turned up in our night dresses. He thinks of nothing but parallaxes. Does he, Hilda?”
Hilda did not answer. She was wriggling her shoulders about, and was sitting bolt upright in her chair. She leaned back once and when she did so a spasm of acute pain distorted her face. It occurred to me that one of the three pins might have been jabbed in too far or not precisely in the right direction. Lalage could not fairly be blamed, for it must be difficult to regulate a pin thrust when a tram is in rapid motion. I did not like the idea of watching Hilda’s sufferings during tea, so I cast about for the most delicate way of suggesting that she should be relieved. Lalage was beforehand with me.
“Turn round, Hilda,” she said, “and I’ll hook you up.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “I’d better ring and get a housemaid.”
“What for?” said Lalage.
“I thought perhaps that Hilda might prefer to go to a bedroom. I don’t matter, of course, but Selby-Harrison may be here at any moment.”
“Selby-Harrison isn’t coming. Turn round, Hilda, and do stand still.”
A waiter came in just then with the tea, I regret to say that he grinned. I turned my back on him and looked out of the window.
“Selby-Harrison,” said Lalage, “is on Trinity 3rd A., inside left, and there’s a cup match on to-day, so of course he couldn’t come.”
“This,” I said, “is a great disappointment to me. I’ve been looking forward for years to making Selby-Harrison’s acquaintance, and every time I seem to be anywhere near it, something comes and snatches him away. I’m beginning to think that there isn’t really any such person as Selby-Harrison.”
Hilda giggled thickly. She seemed to be quite comfortable again. Lalage snubbed me severely.
“I must say for you,” she said, “that when you choose to go in for pretending to be an ass you can be more funerally idiotic than any one I ever met. No wonder the Archdeacon said you’d be beaten in your election.”
“Did he say that?”
“Yes. We were talking to him this morning, Hilda and I and Selby-Harrison, outside the exam hall. We told him we were going down to make speeches for you.”
“Was it before or after you told him that he said I’d be beaten?”
“Before,” said Lalage firmly.
“Oh, Lalage! How can you? You know——”
I interrupted Hilda because I did not want to have the harmony of my party destroyed by recrimination and argument.
“Suppose,” I said, “that we have tea.”
“I must say,” said Lalage, “that you’ve collected a middling good show of cakes, hasn’t he, Hilda?”
Hilda looked critically at the tea table. She was evidently an expert in cakes.
“You can’t have got all those out of one shop,” she said. “There isn’t a place in Dublin that has so many varieties!”
“I’m glad you like the look of them. Which of you will pour out the tea?”
“Hilda’s birthday was last month,” said Lalage. “Mine isn’t till July.”
This settled the point of precedence. Hilda took her seat opposite the teapot.
“There are ices coming,” I said a few minutes later, “twelve of them. I mention it in case——”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Lalage. “We shall be able to manage the ices. There isn’t really much in these cakes.”
If Selby-Harrison had come there would, I think, have been cakes enough; but there would not have been any to spare. I only ate two myself. When we had finished the ices we gave ourselves to conversation.
“That Tithers man,” said Lalage, “seems to be a fairly good sort.”
“Is Tithers another name for the Puffin?”
“No,” said Lalage. “Tithers is Joey P.”
“He signed his letter Joseph P.,” said Hilda, “so at first we called him that.”
Titherington usually signs himself Joseph P. I inferred that he was Tithers.
“You liked him?” I said.
“In some ways he’s rather an ass,” said Lalage, “‘and just at first I thought he was inclined to have too good an opinion of himself. But that was only his manner. In the end he turned out to be a fairly good sort. I thought he was going to kick up a bit when I asked him to sign the agreement, but he did it all right when I explained to him that he’d have to.”
“Lalage,” I said, “I’d like very much to see that agreement.”
“Hilda has it. Hilda, trot out the agreement.” Hilda trotted it out of a small bag which she carried attached to her waist by a chain. I opened it and read aloud:
“Memorandum of an agreement made this tenth day of February between the Members of the A.S.P.L., hereinafter called the Speakers, of the one part, and Joseph P. Titherington, election agent, of the other.”
“I call that rather good,” said Lalage.
“Very,” I said, “Selby-Harrison did it, I suppose?”
“Of course,” said Lalage.
“(1) The Speakers are to deliver for the said election agent . . . speeches before the tenth of March.”
“I told Tithers to fill in the number of speeches he wanted,” said Lalage, “but he seems to have forgotten.”
“(2) The Speakers hereby agree to assign to the said election agent, his successors and assigns, and the said election agent hereby agrees to enjoy, the sole benefit of the above speeches in the British Empire.
“(3) When the demand for such speeches has evidently ceased the said election agent shall be at liberty——”
I paused. There was something which struck me as familiar about the wording of this agreement. I recollected suddenly that the Archdeacon had once consulted me about an agreement which ran very much on the same lines. It came from the office of a well-known publisher. The Archdeacon was at that time bringing out his “Lectures to Confirmation Candidates.”
“Has Selby-Harrison,” I asked, “been publishing a book?”
“No,” said Lalage, “but his father has.” “Ah,” I said, “that accounts for this agreement form.” “Quite so,” said Lalage, “he copied it from that, making the necessary changes. Rather piffle, I call that part about enjoying the speeches in the British Empire. It isn’t likely that Tithers would want to enjoy them anywhere else. But there’s a good bit coming. Skip on to number eight.” I skipped and then read again.
“(8) The Speakers agree that the said speeches shall be in no way a violation of existing copyright and the said agent agrees to hold harmless the said speakers from all suits, claims, and proceedings which may be taken on the ground that the said speeches contain anything libellous.”
“That’s important,” said Lalage.
“It is,” I said, “very. I notice that Selby-Harrison has a note at the bottom of the page to the effect that a penny stamp is required if the amount is over two pounds. He seems rather fond of that. I recollect he had it in the agreement he drew up for me.”
“It wasn’t in the original,” said Lalage. “He put it in because we all thought it would be safer.”
“You were right. After the narrow shave you had with the bishops you can’t be too careful. And the amount is almost certain to be over two pounds. Even Vittie’s character must be worth more than that.”
“Vittie,” said Lalage, “appears to be the very kind of man we want to get at. I’ve been reading his speeches.”
“I expect,” I said, “that you’ll enjoy O’Donoghue too. But Vittie is to be your chief prey. I wonder Mr. Titherington didn’t insist on inserting a clause to that effect in the agreement.”
“Tithers hated signing it. I was obliged to keep prodding him on or he wouldn’t have done it. Selby-Harrison said that either you or he must, so of course it had to be him. We couldn’t go for you in any way because we’d promised to respect your scruples.”
I recollected the telegram I had received just before leaving Lisbon.
“I wish,” I said, “that I felt sure you had respected my scruples. What about Selby-Harrison’s father? Has he been consulted?”
“Selby-Harrison isn’t coming, only me and Hilda.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one thing he’s in the Divinity School now.”
“That needn’t stop him,” I said. “My constituency is full of parsons, priests, and Presbyterian ministers, all rampant. Selby-Harrison will be in good company. But how did he get into the Divinity School? I thought the Provost said he must take up medicine on account of that trouble with the bishops.”
“Oh, that’s all blown over long ago. And being a divinity student wasn’t his only reason for not coming. The fact is his father lives down there.”
“Ah,” I said, “That’s more serious.”
“He wrote to his father and told him to be sure to vote for you. That was as far as he cared to go in the matter.”
“It was very good of him to do so much. And now about your mother, Hilda. Has she given her consent?”
“Not quite,” said Hilda. “But she hasn’t forbidden me.
“We haven’t told her,” said Lalage.
“Lalage, you haven’t respected my scruples and you promised you would. You promised in the most solemn way in a telegram which must have cost you twopence a word.”
“We have respected them,” said Lalage.
“You have not. My chief scruple was Hilda’s mother.”
“My point is that you haven’t had anything to do with the business. We arranged it all with Tithers and you weren’t even asked to give your consent. I don’t see what more could have been done for your scruples.”
“Hilda’s mother might have been asked.”
“I can’t stop here arguing with you all afternoon,” said Lalage. “Come on, Hilda.”
“Don’t go just yet. I promise not to mention Hilda’s mother again.”
“We can’t possibly stay, can we, Hilda? We have our viva to-morrow.”
“Viva!”
“Voce,” said Lalage. “You must know what that means. The kind of exam you don’t write.”
I got viva into its natural connection with voce and grasped at Lalage’s meaning.
“Part of the Jun. Soph. Ord.?” I said.
“Of course,” said Lalage. “What else could it be?”
“In that case I mustn’t keep you. You’ll be wanting to look up your astronomy. But you must allow me to parcel up the rest of the cakes for you. I should like you to have them and you’re sure to be hungry again before bedtime.”
“Won’t you want them yourself?”
“No, I won’t. And even if I did I wouldn’t eat them. It would hardly be fair to Mr. Titherington. He’s doing his best for me and he’ll naturally expect me to keep as fit as possible.”
“Very well,” said Lalage, “rather than to leave them here to rot or be eaten by mice we’ll take them. Hilda, pack them up in that biscuit tin and take care that the creamy ones don’t get squashed.”
Hilda tried to pack them up, but the biscuit tin would not hold them all. We had not finished the wafers which it originally contained. I rang for the waiter and made him bring us a cardboard box. We laid the cakes in it very tenderly. We tied on the lid with string and then made a loop in the string for Hilda’s hand. It was she who carried both the box and the biscuit tin.
“Good-bye,” said Lalage. “We’ll meet again on the twenty-first.”
It was not until after they were gone that I understood why we should meet again on the twenty-first. That was the day of my first meeting in East Connor, and Lalage had promised to speak at it. I felt very uneasy. It was utterly impossible to guess at what might happen when Lalage appeared in the constituency. I sat down and wrote a letter to Canon Beresford. I did not expect him to do anything, but it relieved my mind to write. After all, it was his business, not mine, to look after Lalage. Three days later I got an answer from him, which said:
“I shall not be at all surprised, if Lalage turns out to be a good platform speaker. She has, I understand, had a good deal of practice in some college debating society and has acquired a certain fluency of utterance. She always had something to say, even as a child. I wish I could run up to County Down and hear her, but it is a long journey and the weather is miserably cold. The Archdeacon told me yesterday that you meant to employ her in this election of yours. He seemed to dislike the idea very much and wanted me to ‘put my foot down.’ (The phrase, I need scarcely say, is his.) I explained to him that if I put my foot down Lalage would immediately tread on it, which would hurt me and not even trip her. Besides, I do not see why I should. If Lalage finds that kind of thing amusing she ought to be allowed to enjoy it. You have my best wishes for your success with theturba Quiritium. I am glad, very, that it is you who have to face them, not I. I do not know anything in the world that I should dislike more.”
Titherington took rooms for me in the better of the two hotels in Ballygore and I went down there on the day on which he told me I ought to go. I had as travelling companion a very pleasant man, the only other occupant of the compartment in which I was. He was chatty and agreeable at first and did not so much as mention the general election. After we passed Drogheda his manner changed. He became silent, and when I spoke to him answered snappily. His face got more and more flushed. At last he asked me to shut the window beside me, which I did, although I wanted to keep it open. I noticed that he was wriggling in a curious way which reminded me of Hilda when her dress was fastened on with pins. He fumbled about a good deal with one of his hands which he had thrust inside his waistcoat. I watched him with great curiosity and discovered at last that he was taking his temperature with a clinical thermometer. Each time he took it he sighed and became more restless and miserable looking than before.
On the 19th of February I developed a sharp attack of influenza. Titherington flew to my side at once, which was the thing, of all possible things, that I most wanted him not to do. He aggravated my sufferings greatly by speaking as if my condition were my own fault. I was too feverish to argue coherently. All I could do was to swear at him occasionally. No man has any right to be as stupid as Titherington is. It is utterly ridiculous to suppose that I should undergo racking pains in my limbs, a violent headache and extreme general discomfort if I could possibly avoid it. Titherington ought to have seen this for himself. He did not. He scolded me and would, I am sure, have gone on scolding me until I cried if what he took for a brilliant idea had not suddenly occurred to him.
“It’s an ill wind,” he said cheerfully, “which can’t be made to blow any good. I think I see my way to getting something out of this miserable collapse of yours. I’ll call in McMeekin.”
“If McMeekin is a doctor, get him. He may not be able to do me any good, but he’ll give orders that I’m to be left quiet and that’s all I want.”
“McMeekin’s no damned use as a doctor; but he’ll——”
“Then get some one else. Surely he’s not the only one there is.”
“There are two others, but they’re both sure to support you in any case, whereas McMeekin——”
The way Titherington was discussing my illness annoyed me. I interrupted him and tried my best to insult him.
“I don’t want to be supported. I want to be cured. Not that any of them can do that. I simply can’t and won’t have another blithering idiot let loose at me. One’s enough.”
I thought that would outrage Titherington and drive him from my room. But he made allowances for my condition and refused to take offence.
“McMeekin,” he said, “sets up to be a blasted Radical, and is Vittie’s strongest supporter.”
“In that case send for him at once. He’ll probably poison me on purpose and then this will be over.”
“He’s not such an idiot as to do that. He knows that if anything happened to you we’d get another candidate.”
Titherington’s tone suggested that the other candidate would certainly be my superior and that Vittie’s chances against me were better than they would be against any one else. I turned round with a groan and lay with my face to the wall. Titherington went on talking.
“If you give McMeekin a good fee,” he said, “say a couple of guineas, he’ll think twice about taking the chair at Vittie’s meeting on the twenty-fourth. I don’t see why he shouldn’t pay you a visit every day from this to the election, and that, at two guineas a time, ought to shut his mouth if it doesn’t actually secure his vote.”
I twisted my neck round and scowled at Titherington. He left the room without shutting the door. I spent the next hour in hoping vehemently that he would get the influenza himself. I would have gone on hoping this if I had not been interrupted by the arrival of McMeekin. He did all the usual things with stethoscopes and thermometers and he asked me all the usual offensive questions. It seemed to me that he spent far more than the usual time over this revolting ritual. I kept as firm a grip on my temper as I could and as soon as he had finished asked him in a perfectly calm and reasonable tone to be kind enough to put me out of my misery at once with prussic acid. Instead of doing what I asked or making any kind of sane excuse for refusing, he said he would telegraph to Dublin for a nurse. She could not, he seemed to think, arrive until the next day, so he said he would take a bed in the hotel and look after me himself during the night. This was more than I, or any one else, could stand. I saw the necessity for making a determined effort.
“I am,” I said, “perfectly well. Except for a slight cold in the head which makes me a bit stupid there’s nothing the matter with me. I intend to get up at once and go out canvassing. Would you mind ringing the bell and asking for some hot water?”
McMeekin rang the bell, muttering as he did so something about a temperature of 104 degrees. A redheaded maid with a freckled face answered the summons. Before I could say anything to her McMeekin gave orders that a second bed should be brought into my room and that she, the red-haired, freckled girl, should sit beside me and not take her eyes off me for a moment while he went home to get his bag. I forgot all about Titherington then and concentrated my remaining strength on a hope that McMeekin would get the influenza. It is one of the few diseases which doctors do get. I planned that when he got it I would search Ireland for red-headed girls with freckled faces, and pay hundreds of them, all I could collect in the four provinces, to sit beside him and not take their eyes off him while I went to get a bag. My bag, as I arranged, would be fetched by long sea from Tasmania.
That evening McMeekin and Titherington both settled down in my bedroom. I was so angry with them that I could not take in what they said to each other, though I was dimly conscious that they were discussing the election. I learned afterward that McMeekin promised to be present at my meeting on the 21st in order to hear Lalage speak. I suppose that the amount of torture he inflicted on me induced a mood of joyous intoxication in which he would have promised anything. I lay in bed and did my best, by breathing hard, to shoot germs from my lungs across the room at Titherington and McMeekin. Their talk, which must have lasted about eighteen hours, was interrupted at last by a tap at the door. The red-haired girl with a freckled face came in, carrying a loathsome looking bowl and a spoon which I felt certain was filthy dirty. McMeekin took them from her hands and approached me. In spite of my absolutely sickening disgust, I felt with a ferocious joy that my opportunity had at last come. McMeekin tried to persuade me to eat some sticky yellow liquid out of the bowl. I refused, of course. As I had foreseen, he began to shovel the stuff into my mouth with the spoon. Titherington came over to my bedside. He pretended that he came to hold me up while McMeekin fed me. In reality he came to gloat. But I had my revenge. I pawed McMeekin with my hands and breathed full into his face. I also clutched Titherington’s coat and pawed him. After that I felt easier, for I began to hope that I had thoroughly infected them both. My recollections of the next day are confused. Titherington and McMeekin were constantly passing in and out of the room and at some time or other a strange woman arrived who paid a deference which struck me as perfectly ridiculous to McMeekin. To me she made herself most offensive. I found out afterward that she was the nurse whom McMeekin had summoned by telegraph. What she said to McMeekin or what he said to her I cannot remember. Of my own actions during the day I can say nothing certainly except this: I asked McMeekin, not once or twice, but every time I saw him, how long it took for influenza to develop its full strength in a man who had thoroughly imbibed the infection. McMeekin either would not or could not answer this simple question. He talked vague nonsense about periods of incubation, whereas I wanted to know the earliest date at which I might expect to see him and Titherington stricken down, I hated McMeekin worse than ever for his dogged stupidity.
The next day McMeekin said I was better, which showed me that Titherington was right in saying that he was no damned use as a doctor. I was very distinctly worse. I was, in fact, so bad that when the nurse insisted on arranging the bedclothes I burst into tears and sobbed afterward for many hours. That ought to have shown her that arranging bedclothes was particularly bad for me. But she was an utterly callous woman. She arranged them again at about eight o’clock and told me to go to sleep. I had not slept at all since I got the influenza and I could not sleep then, but I thought it better to pretend to sleep and I lay as still as I could. After I had been pretending for a long while, at some hour in the very middle of the night, Titherington burst into my room in a noisy way. He was in evening dress and his shirt front had a broad wrinkle across it. I have never seen a more unutterably abhorrent sight than Titherington in evening dress. The nurse rebuked him for having wakened me, which showed me that she was a fool as well as a wantonly cruel woman. I had not been asleep and any nurse who knew her business would have seen that I was only pretending. Titherington took no notice of her. He was bubbling over with something he wanted to say, and twenty nurses would not have stopped him.
“We had a great meeting,” he said. “The hall was absolutely packed and the boys at the back nearly killed a man who wanted to ask questions.”
“McMeekin, I hope,” I said feebly.
“No. McMeekin was on the platform—mind that now—on the platform. I gave him a hint beforehand that we were thinking of calling in another man if you didn’t improve. He simply bounded on to the platform after that. It’ll be an uncommonly nasty jar for Vittie. The speaking wasn’t up to much, most of it; but I wish you’d heard the cheers when I apologized for your absence and told them you were ill in bed. It would have done you good. I wouldn’t give tuppence for Vittie’s chances of getting a dozen votes in this part of the division. We had two temperance secretaries, damned asses, to propose votes of thanks.”
“For my influenza?”
“You’re getting better,” said Titherington, “not a doubt of it. I’ll send you round a dozen of champagne to-morrow, proper stuff, and by the time you’ve swallowed it you’ll be chirrupping like a grasshopper.”
“I’m not getting better, and that brute McMeekin wouldn’t let me look at champagne. He gives me gruel and a vile slop he calls beef tea.”
“If he doesn’t give you something to buck you up,” said Titherington, “I’ll set Miss Beresford on him. She’ll make him hop.”
The mention of Lalage reminded me that the meeting was the occasion of her first speech.
I found myself beginning to take a slight interest in what Titherington was saying. It did not really matter to me how things had gone, for I knew that I was going to die almost at once. But even with that prospect before me I wanted to hear how Lalage’s maiden speech had been received.
“Did Miss Beresford speak at the meeting?” I asked.
The nurse came over to my bed and insisted on slipping her thermometer under my arm. It was a useless and insulting thing to do, but I bore it in silence because I wanted to hear about Lalage’s speech. Titherington did not answer at once, and when he did it was in an unsatisfactory way.
“Oh, she spoke all right,” he said.
“You may just as well tell me the truth.”
“The speech was a good speech, I’ll not deny that, a thundering good speech.”
The nurse came at me again and retrieved her abominable thermometer. She twisted it about in the light of the lamp and then whispered to Titherington.
“Don’t shuffle,” I said to him. “I can see perfectly well that you’re keeping something back from me. Did McMeekin insult Miss Beresford in any way? For if he did——”
“Not at all,” said Titherington. “But I’ve been talking long enough. I’ll tell you all the rest to-morrow.”
Without giving me a chance of protesting he left the room. I felt that I was going to break down again; but I restrained myself and told the nurse plainly what I thought of her.
“I don’t know,” I said, “whether it is in accordance with the etiquette of your profession to thwart the wishes of a dying man, but that’s what you’ve just done. You know perfectly well that I shall not be alive to-morrow morning and you could see that the only thing I really wanted was to hear something about the meeting. Even a murderer is given some indulgence on the morning of his execution. But just because I have, through no fault of my own, contracted a disease which neither you nor McMeekin know how to cure, I am not allowed to ask a simple question. You may think, I have no doubt you do think, that you have acted with firmness and tact. In reality you have been guilty of blood-curdling cruelty of a kind probably unmatched in the annals of the Spanish Inquisition.”
I think my words produced a good deal of effect on her. She did not attempt to make any answer; but she covered up my shoulder with the bedclothes. I shook them off again at once and scowled at her with such bitterness that she left my bedside and sat down near the fire. I saw that she was watching me, so again pretended to go to sleep.
McMeekin came to see me next morning, and had the effrontery to repeat the statement that I was better. I was not, and I told him so distinctly. After he was gone Titherington came with a large bag in his hand. He sent the nurse out of the room and unpacked the bag. He took out of it a dozen small bottles of champagne. He locked the door and then we drank one of the bottles between us. Titherington used my medicine glass. I had the tumbler off the wash-hand-stand. The nurse knocked at the door before we had finished. But Titherington, with a rudeness which made me really like him, again told her to go away because we were talking business. After I had drunk the champagne I began to feel that McMeekin might have been right after all. I was slightly better. Titherington put the empty bottle in the pocket of his overcoat and packed up the eleven full bottles in the bag again. He locked the bag and then pushed it as far as he could under my bed with his foot. He knew, just as well as I did, that either the nurse or McMeekin would steal the champagne if they saw it lying about.
“Now,” he said, “you’re not feeling so chippy.”
“No, I’m not. Tell me about Miss Beresford’s speech.”
“It began well,” said Titherington. “It began infernally well. She stood up and, without by your leave or with your leave, said that all politicians were damned liars.”
“Damned?”
“Well, bloody,” said Titherington, with the air of a man who makes a concession.
“Was Hilda there?”
“She was, cheering like mad, the same as the rest of us.”
“I’m sorry for that. Hilda is, or was, a nice, innocent girl. Her mother won’t like her hearing that sort of language.”
“Bloody wasn’t the word she used,” said Titherington, “but she gave us all the impression that it was what she meant!”
“Go on.”
“Of course I thought, in fact we all thought, that she was referring to Vittie and O’Donoghue, especially Vittie. The boys at the back of the hall, who hate Vittie worse than the devil, nearly raised the roof off with the way they shouted. I could see that McMeekin didn’t half like it. He’s rather given himself away by supporting Vittie. Well, as long as the cheering went on Miss Beresford stood and smiled at them. She’s a remarkably well set up girl so the boys went on cheering just for the pleasure of looking at her. When they couldn’t cheer any more she started off to prove what she said. She began with O’Donoghue and she got in on him. She had a list as long as your arm of the whoppers he and the rest of that pack of blackguards are perpetually ramming down people’s throats. Home Rule, you know, and all that sort of blasted rot. Then she took the skin off Vittie for about ten minutes. Man, but it would have done you good to hear her. The most innocent sort of remark Vittie ever made in his life she got a twist on it so that it came out a regular howling lie. She finished him off by saying that Ananias and Sapphira were a gentleman and a lady compared to the ordinary Liberal, because they had the decency to drop down dead when they’d finished, whereas Vittie’s friends simply went on and told more. By that time there wasn’t one in the hall could do more than croak, they’d got so hoarse with all the cheering. I might have been in a bath myself with the way the sweat was running off me, hot sweat.”
Titherington paused, for the nurse knocked at the door again. This time he got up and let her in. Then he went on with his story.
“The next minute,” he said, “it was frozen on me.”
“The sweat?”
Titherington nodded.
“Go on,” I said.
“She went on all right. You’ll hardly believe it, but when she’d finished with O’Donoghue and Vittie she went on to——”
“Me, I suppose.”
“No. Me,” said Titherington. “She said she didn’t blame you in the least because she didn’t think you had sense enough to lie like a real politician, and that those two letters about the Temperance Question——”
“She’d got ahold of those?”
“They were in the papers, of course, and she said I’d written them. Well, for just half a minute I wasn’t quite sure whether the boys were going to rush the platform or not. There wouldn’t have been much left of Miss Beresford if they had. But she’s a damned good-looking girl. That saved her. Instead of mobbing her every man in the place started to laugh. I tell you there were fellows there with stitches in their sides from laughing so that they’d have given a five-pound note to be able to stop. But they couldn’t. Every time they looked at me and saw me sitting there with a kind of a cast-iron grin on my face—and every time they looked at the two temperance secretaries who were gaping like stuck pigs, they started off laughing again. Charlie Sanderson, the butcher, who’s a stoutish kind of man, tumbled off his chair and might have broken his neck. I never saw such a scene in my life.”
I saw the nurse poking about to find her thermometer. Titherington saw her too and knew what was coming.
“It was all well enough for once,” he said, “but we can’t have it again.”
“How do you propose to stop it?” I asked.
“My idea,” said Titherington, “is that you should see her and explain to her that we’ve had enough of that sort of thing and that for the future she’d better stick entirely to Vittie.”
I am always glad to see Lalage. Nothing, even in my miserable condition, would have pleased me better than a visit from her. But I am not prepared at any time to explain things to her, especially when the explanation is meant to influence her action. I am particularly unfitted for the task when I am in a state of convalescence. I interrupted Titherington.
“Nurse,” I said, “have you got that thermometer? I’m nearly sure my temperature is up again.”
Titherington scowled, but he knew he was helpless. As he left the room he stopped for a moment and turned to me. “What beats me about the whole performance,” he said, “is that she never said a single word about woman’s suffrage from start to finish. I never met one of that lot before who could keep off the subject for as much as ten minutes at a time even in private conversation.”
I entered next day on what proved to be the most disagreeable stage of my illness. McMeekin called on me in the morning. He performed some silly tricks with a stethoscope and felt my pulse with an air of rapt attention which did not in the least deceive me. Then he intimated that I might sit up for an hour or two after luncheon. The way he made this announcement was irritating enough. Instead of saying straightforwardly, “You can get out of bed if you like,” or words to that effect, he smirked at the nurse and said to her, “I think we may be allowed to sit up in a nice comfortable armchair for our afternoon tea to-day.” But the permission itself was far worse than the manner in which it was given. I did not in the least want to get up. Bed was beginning to feel tolerably comfortable. I hated the thought of an armchair. I hated still more bitterly the idea of having to walk across the floor. I suppose McMeekin saw by my face that I did not want to get up. He tried, after his own foolish fashion, to cheer and encourage me.
“Poor Vittie’s got it too,” he said. “I was called in to see him last night.”
“Influenza?”
“Yes. It’s becoming a perfect epidemic in the district. I have forty cases on my list.”
“If Vittie’s got it,” I said, “there’s no reason in the world why I should get up.”
McMeekin is a singularly stupid man. He did not see what I meant. I had to explain myself.
“The only object I should have in getting up,” I said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, “would be to prevent Vittie going round the constituency when I couldn’t be after him. Now that he’s down himself he can’t do anything more than I can; so I may just as well stay where I am.”
Even then McMeekin failed to catch my point.
“You’ll have to get up some time or other,” he said. “You may just as well start to-day.”
When he had left the room I appealed to the nurse.
“Did you ever,” I said, “hear a more inane remark than that? In the first place I have pretty well made up my mind never to get up again. It isn’t worth while for all the good I ever get by being up. In the second place it’s ridiculous to say that because one has to do a thing sometime one may as well do it at once. You have to be buried sometime, but you wouldn’t like it if McMeekin told you that you might just as well be buried to-day.”
I hold that this was a perfectly sound argument which knocked the bottom out of McMeekin’s absurd statement, but it did not convince the nurse. As I might have known beforehand she was in league with McMeekin. Instead of agreeing with me that the man was a fool, she smiled at me in that particularly trying way called bright and cheery.
“But wouldn’t it be nice to sit up for a little?” she said.
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“It would be a change for you, and you’d sleep better afterward.”
“I’ve got on capitally without sleep for nearly a week and I don’t see any use in reacquiring a habit, a wasteful habit, which I’ve succeeded in breaking.”
She said something about the doctor’s orders.
“The doctor,” I replied, “did not give any orders. He gave permission, which is a very different thing.”
I spent some time in explaining the difference between an order and a permission. I used simple illustrations and made my meaning so plain that no one could possibly have missed it. The nurse, instead of admitting that I had convinced her, went out of the room. She came back again with a cupful of beef tea which she offered me with another bright smile. If I were not a man with a very high sense of the courtesy due to women I should have taken the cup and thrown it at her head. It is, I think, very much to my credit that I drank the beef tea and then did nothing worse than turn my face to the wall.
At two o’clock she got my dressing gown and somewhat ostentatiously spread it out on a chair in front of the fire. I lay still and said nothing, though I saw that she still clung to the idea of getting me out of bed. Then she rang the bell and made the red-haired girl bring a dilapidated armchair into the room. She pummelled its cushions with her fists for some time and then put a pillow on it. This showed me that she fully expected to succeed in making me sit up. I was perfectly determined to stay where I was. I pretended to go to sleep and even went the length of snoring in a long-drawn, satisfied kind of way. She came over and looked at me. I very slightly opened the corner of one eye and saw by the expression of her face that she did not believe I was really asleep. I prepared for the final struggle by gripping the bedclothes tightly with both hands and poking my feet between the bars at the bottom of the bed.
At three o’clock she had me seated in the armchair, clothed in my dressing gown, with a rug wrapped round my legs. I was tingling with suppressed rage and flushed with a feeling of degradation. I intended, as soon as I regained my self control, to say some really nasty things to her. Before I had made up my mind which of several possible remarks she would dislike most, Titherington came into the room. The nurse does not like Titherington. She has never liked him since the day that he kept her outside the door while we drank champagne. She always smoothes her apron with both hands when she sees him, which is a sign that she would like to do him a bodily injury if she could. On this occasion, alter smoothing her apron and shoving a protruding hair pin into the back of her hair, she marched out of the room.
“McMeekin tells me,” I said to Titherington, “that Vittie has got the influenza. Is it true?”
“He says he has,” said Titherington, with strong emphasis on the word “says.”
“Then I wish you’d go round and offer him the use of my nurse. I don’t want her.”
“He has two aunts, and besides——”
I was not going to allow Vittie’s aunts to stand in my way. I interrupted Titherington with an argument which I felt sure he would appreciate.
“He may have twenty aunts,” I said; “that’s not my point. What I’m thinking of is the excellent effect it will produce in the constituency if I publicly sacrifice myself by handing over my nurse to my political opponent. The amount of electioneering capital which could be made out of an act of heroism of that kind—why, it would catch the popular imagination more than if I jumped into a mill race to save Vittie from a runaway horse, and everybody knows that if you can bring off a spoof of that sort an election is as good as won.”
Titherington growled.
“All the papers would have it,” I said. “Even the Nationalists would be obliged to admit that I’d done a particularly noble thing.” “I don’t believe Vittie has the influenza.”
“McMeekin said so.”
“It would be just like Vittie,” said Titherington, “to pretend he had it so as to get an excuse for calling in McMeekin. He knows McMeekin has been wobbling ever since you got ill.”
This silenced me. If Vittie is crafty enough to devise such a complicated scheme for bribing McMeekin without bringing himself within the meshes of the Corrupt Practices Act he is certainly too wise to allow himself to be subjected to my nurse.
“Anyway,” said Titherington, “it’s not Vittie’s influenza I came here to talk about.”
“Have you got the key of your bag with you?”
Titherington was in a bad temper, but he allowed himself to grin. He went down on his hands and knees and dragged the bag from its hiding place under the bed.
We opened two half bottles, but although Titherington drank a great deal more than his share he remained morose.
“That girl,” he said, “is playing old hookey with the constituency. I won’t be answerable for the consequences unless she’s stopped at once.”
“I suppose you’re speaking about Miss Beresford?”
“Instead of talking rot about woman’s suffrage,” said Titherington savagely, “and ragging Vittie, which is what we brought her here for, she’s going round calling everybody a liar. And it won’t do. I tell you it won’t do at all.”
“You said it was a good speech,” I reminded him.
“I shouldn’t have minded that speech. It’s what she’s been at since then. She spent all day yesterday and the whole of this morning going round from house to house gassing about the way nobody in political life ever speaks the truth. She has a lot of young fools worked up to such a state that I can scarcely show my face in the streets, and I hear that they mobbed a man up at the railway station who came down to support O’Donoghue. He deserved it, of course, but it’s impossible to say who they’ll attack next. Half the town is going about with yards of white ribbon pinned on to them.”
“What on earth for?”
“Some foolery. It’s the badge of some blasted society she’s started. There’s A.S.P.L. on the ribbons.”
“I told you at the start,” I said, “that the letters A.S.P.L. couldn’t stand for votes for women, but you would have it that they did.”
“She has the whole town placarded with notices of a meeting she’s going to hold to-morrow night. We can’t possibly have that, you know.”
“Well, why don’t you stop her?”
“Stop her! I’ve done every damned thing I could to stop her. I went round to her this morning and told her you’d sign any pledge she liked about woman’s suffrage if she’d only clear out of this and go to Belfast. She as good as told me to my face that she wouldn’t give a tinker’s curse for any pledge I had a hand in giving. My own impression is that she doesn’t care if she never got a vote, or any other woman either. All she wants is to turn the place into a bear garden and spoil the whole election. I’ve come here to tell you plain that if you don’t interfere I’ll wash my hands of the whole affair.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Think of the position I’d be in if you deserted me.”
“Then stop her.”
“I would. I would stop her at once if I hadn’t got the influenza. You see yourself the state I’m in. The nurse wouldn’t let me do it even if McMeekin agreed.”
“Damn the nurse!”
“I quite agree; and if you’d do as I suggest and cart her off to Vittie——”
“Look here,” said Titherington. “It’s all very well you’re talking like that, but this is serious. The whole election’s becoming a farce. Miss Beresford——”
“It’s a well-known fact that there is nothing so uncontrollable as a tiger once it has got the taste of human blood, and Miss Beresford, having found out how nice it is to call you and Vittie and O’Donoghue liars, isn’t likely to be persuaded——”
“What are you going to do?” said Titherington truculently.
“I? I’m going back to bed as soon as I can, and when once back I’m going to stay there.”
Titherington looked so angry that I began to feel afraid. I was quite helpless and I did not want him to revenge himself on me by carrying off the champagne or sending for a second nurse.
“There’s just one idea which occurs to me,” I said. “I doubt whether it will be much use, but you might try it if you’re regularly stuck. Write to Hilda’s mother.”
“Who the devil’s Hilda’s mother?”
“I don’t know, but you might find out. She strongly disapproves of Hilda’s making speeches, and if she knew what is going on here I expect she’d stop it. She’d stop Hilda anyhow.”
“Is Hilda the other one.”
“Yes,” I said. “The minor one.”
Titherington got out a note book and a pencil.
“What’s her address?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Never mind. I’ll hunt all the directories till I find her. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s the girl’s name? I suppose the mother’s is the same unless she’s married again.”
“Hilda,” I said. “I’ve told you that three or four times.”
“Hilda what?”
“I don’t know. I never heard her called anything but Hilda.”
Titherington shut his note book and swore. Then he dropped his pencil on the floor. I felt quite sorry for him. If I had known Hilda’s surname I should have told it to him at once.
“It’s just possible,” I said, “that Selby-Harrison’s father might know. He lives down in these parts somewhere. Perhaps you’ve met him.”
“There’s only one Selby-Harrison here. He’s on your committee, a warm supporter of yours.”
“That’s the man. Selby-Harrison, the son I mean, said he’d write to the old gentleman and tell him to vote for me. I expect he went on my committee after that.”
“And you think he can get at this young woman’s mother?”
“No. I don’t think anything of the sort. All I say is that he may possibly know the name of Hilda’s mother.”
“Can’t I get at Miss Beresford’s mother?”
“No, you can’t. She’s been dead for twenty years.”
“A good job for her,” said Titherington.
“The Archdeacon would agree with you there.”
“What Archdeacon?”
I saw that I had made an unfortunate admission. Titherington, in his present mood, would be quite capable of bringing the Archdeacon down on us here. I would almost rather have a second nurse. I hastened to cover my mistake.
“Any Archdeacon,” I said. “You know what Archdeacons are. There isn’t one of them belonging to any church who wouldn’t disapprove strongly of Miss Beresford.”
Titherington grunted.
“If I thought an Archdeacon would be any use,” he said, “I’d get a dozen if I had to pay them fifty pounds apiece.”
“They wouldn’t help in the slightest. Miss Beresford and Hilda have libelled twenty-three bishops in their day. They’d simply laugh at your Archdeacons.”
“Well,” said Titherington, “I suppose that’s all I am to get out of you.”
“That’s all. If there was anything else I could suggest——”
Titherington picked up his pencil again.
“I’ll try Selby-Harrison,” he said, “and if he knows the name——”
“If he doesn’t, get him to wire to his son for it. He certainly knows.”
“I will.”
“I needn’t tell you,” I added, “that the telegram must be cautiously worded.”
“What do you mean?”
“Merely that if Selby-Harrison, the son, suspects that you and the father want to worry Hilda or Miss Beresford in any way he’ll lie low and not answer the telegram. He’s on the committee of the A.S.P.L., so of course he won’t want the work of the society to be interfered with.”
“If he doesn’t answer, I’ll go up to Dublin to-night and drag it out of the young pup by force. It’ll be a comfort anyhow to be dealing with somebody I can kick. These girls are the very devil.”
“No. 175 Trinity College is the address,” I said. “J is the initial. If he’s not in his rooms when you call just ask where the 3rd A. happens to be playing.”
“The what?”
“It’s a hockey eleven and it’s called the 3rd A. Miss Beresford told me so and I think we may rely on it that she, at least, speaks the truth. Selby-Harrison sometimes plays halfback and sometimes inside left, but anybody would point him out to you.”
Titherington took several careful notes in his book.
“It’s not much of a chance,” I said, “but it will keep you busy for a while and anything is better than sitting still and repining.”
“In the infernal fix we’re in,” said Titherington, “anything is worth trying.”