There was a great deal of angry feeling in Ballygore and indeed all through the constituency when Lalage went home. It was generally believed that O’Donoghue, Vittie, and I had somehow driven her away, but this was quite unjust to us and we all three felt it. We felt it particularly when, one night at about twelve o’clock, a large crowd visited us in turn and groaned under our windows. O’Donoghue and Vittie, with a view to ingratiating themselves with the electors, wrote letters to the papers solemnly declaring that they sincerely wished Lalage to return. Nobody believed them. Lalage’s teaching had sunk so deep into the popular mind that nobody would have believed anything O’Donoghue and Vittie said even if they had sworn its truth. Titherington, who was beginning to recover, published a counter blast to their letters. He was always quick to seize opportunities and he hoped to increase my popularity by associating me closely with Lalage. He said that I had originally brought her to Ballygore and he left it to be understood that I was an ardent member of the Association for the Suppression of Public Lying. Unfortunately nobody believed him. Lalage’s crusade had produced an extraordinary effect. Nobody any longer believed anything, not even the advertisements. My nurse, among others, became affected with the prevailing feeling of scepticism and refused to accept my word for it that I was still seriously ill. Even when I succeeded, by placing it against the hot water bottle in the bottom of my bed, in running up her thermometer to 103 degrees, she merely smiled. And yet a temperature of that kind ought to have convinced her that I really had violent pains somewhere.
The election itself showed unmistakably the popular hatred of public lying. There were just over four thousand electors in the division, but only 530 of them recorded their votes. A good many more, nearly a thousand more, went to the polling booths and deliberately spoiled their voting papers. The returning officer, who kindly came round to my hotel to announce the result, told me that he had never seen so many spoiled votes at any election. The usual way of invalidating the voting paper was to bracket the three names and write “All of them liars” across the paper. Sometimes the word “liars” was qualified by a profane adjective. Sometimes distinctions were made between the candidates and one of us was declared to be a more skilful or determined liar than the other two. O’Donoghue was sometimes placed in the position of the superlative degree of comparison. So was I. But Vittie suffered most frequently in this way. Lalage had always displayed a special virulence in dealing with Vittie’s public utterances. The remaining voters, 2470 of them or thereabouts, made a silent protest against our deceitfulness by staying away from the polling booths altogether.
O’Donoghue was elected. He secured 262 of the votes which were not spoiled. I ran him very close, having 260 votes to my credit. Vittie came a bad third, with only eight votes. Vittie, as Titherington told me from the first, never had a chance of success. He was only nominated in the hope that he might take some votes away from me. I hope his friends were satisfied with the result. Three of his eight votes would have given me a majority. Titherington wrote me a long letter some time afterward, as soon, in fact, as he was well enough to do sums. He said that originally, before Lalage came on the scene, I had 1800 firm and reliable supporters, men who would have walked miles through snowstorms to cast their votes for me. O’Donoghue had about the same number who would have acted with equal self-denial on his behalf. Vittie was tolerably sure of two hundred voters and there were about two hundred others who hesitated between Vittie and me, but would rather cut off their right hands than vote for O’Donoghue. I ought, therefore, to have been elected, and I would have been elected, if Lalage had not turned the minds of the voters away from serious political thought. “I do not know,” Titherington wrote in a sort of parenthesis, “whether these women hope to advance their cause by tactics of this kind. If they do they are making a bad mistake. No right-thinking man will ever consent to the enfranchisement of a sex capable of treating political life with the levity displayed here by Miss Beresford.” It is very curious how hard Titherington finds it to believe that he has made a mistake. He will probably go down to his grave maintaining that the letters A.S.P.L. stand for woman’s suffrage, although I pointed out to him more than once that they do not.
The latter part of Titherington’s letter was devoted to a carefully reasoned explanation of the actual victory of O’Donoghue. He accounted for it in two ways. O’Donoghue’s supporters, being inferior in education and general intelligence to mine, were less likely to be affected by new and heretical doctrines such as Lalage’s. A certain amount of mental activity is required in order to go wrong. Also, Lalage’s professed admiration for truth made its strongest appeal to my supporters, because O’Donoghue’s friends were naturally addicted to lying and loved falsehood for its own sake. My side was, in fact, beaten—I have noticed that this is the case in many elections—because it was intellectually and morally the better side. This theory would have been very consoling to me if I had wanted consolation. I did not. I was far from grudging O’Donoghue his victory. He, so far as I can learn, is just the man to enjoy hearing other people make long speeches. I have never developed a taste for that form of amusement.
The day after the declaration of the result of the election a really serious misfortune befell me. McMeekin himself took influenza. There was a time when I wished very much to hear that he was writhing in the grip of the disease. But those feelings had long passed away from my mind. I no longer wished any ill to McMeekin. I valued him highly as a medical attendant, and I particularly needed his skill just when he was snatched away from me, because my nurse was becoming restive. She hinted at first, and then roundly asserted that I was perfectly well. Nothing but McMeekin’s determined diagnosis of obscure affections of my heart, lungs, and viscera kept her to her duties. She made more than one attempt to take me out for a drive. I resisted her, knowing that a drive would, in the end, take me to the railway station and from that home to be embroiled in the contest between Lalage and the Diocesan Synod. I had a letter from my mother urging me to return home at once and hinting at the possibility of unpleasantness over the election of the new bishop. This made me the more determined to stay where I was, and so McMeekin’s illness was a very serious blow to me.
I satisfied myself by inquiry that he was not likely to get well immediately and then I sent for another doctor. This man turned out to be one of my original supporters and I think his feelings must have been hurt by my calling in McMeekin. He had also, I could see, been greatly influenced by Lalage. He told me, with insulting directness of speech, that there was nothing the matter with me. I could not remember the names of the diseases which McMeekin said I had or might develop. The nurse, who could have remembered them if she liked, would not. The new doctor, an aggressive, red-faced young man, repeated his statement that I was perfectly well. He emphasized it by refusing to take a fee. My nurse, with evident delight, packed her box and left by the next train. After that there was nothing for me but to go home.
My mother must have been disappointed at the result of the East Connor election. She believed, I fear she still believes, that I am fitted to make laws and would be happy in the work. But she has great tact. She did not, by either word or glance, condole with me over my defeat.
I also possess a little tact, so I did not exult or express any gratification in her presence. We neither of us mentioned the subject of the election. My uncle Thormanby, on the other hand, has no tact at all. He came over to luncheon the day after I arrived home. We had scarcely sat down at table when he began to jeer.
“Well,” he said, speaking in his usual hearty full-throated way, “better luck next time.”
“I am not sure,” I said, with dignified coolness, “that there will be a next time.”
“Oh, yes, there will. ‘He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.’”
I did not see how the proverb applied to me.
“Do you mean the influenza?” I said. “That was scarcely my fault. My temperature was 104.”
“All the same,” said Thormanby, “you didn’t exactly stand up to her, did you?”
I understood then that he was thinking about Lalage.
“Nor did O’Donoghue,” I said. “And Vittie really was shamming. Titherington told me so.”
“Influenza or no influenza, I shouldn’t have sat down under the things that girl was saying about you.”
“What would you have done?”
“I should have put her in her place pretty quick. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
As a matter of fact Thormanby had taken very good care not to be there. He had washed his hands and put the whole responsibility on the shoulders of Miss Battersby and Miss Pettigrew. I felt it my duty to bring this home to his conscience.
“Why didn’t you come?” I asked. “We’d have been very pleased to see you.”
“Peers,” he replied, “are not allowed to interfere in elections.”
This, of course, was a mere subterfuge. I was not inclined to let Thormanby escape.
“You’ll have every opportunity,” I said, “of putting her in her place without running your head against the British constitution. She means to take an active part in electing the new bishop.”
“Nonsense. There’s no part for her to take. That’s a matter for the synod of the diocese and she won’t be allowed into its meetings.”
“All the same she’ll manage to get in. But of course that won’t matter. You’ll put her in her place pretty quick.”
Thormanby’s tone was distinctly less confident when he next spoke.
“Do you happen to know,” he asked, “what she means to do?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Could you possibly find out? She might tell you if you asked her.”
“I don’t intend to ask her. I have washed my hands of the whole affair.”
My mother came into the conversation at this point.
“Lalage hasn’t confided in me,” she said, “but she has told Miss Battersby——”
“Ah!” I said, “Miss Battersby is so wonderfully sympathetic. Anybody would confide in her.”
“She told Miss Battersby,” my mother went on, “that she was studying the situation and looking into the law of the matter.”
“Let her stick to that,” said Thormanby.
“Are Hilda and Selby-Harrison down here?” I asked.
“Hilda is,” said my mother. “I don’t know about the other. Who is he or she?”
“He,” I said, “is the third member of the committee of the Episcopal Election Guild. He’s particularly good at drawing up agreements. I expect the Archdeacon will have to sign one. By the way, I suppose he’s the proper man to vote for?”
“I’m supporting him,” said Thormanby, “so I suppose you will.” I do not like being hustled in this way. “I shall study the situation,” I said, “before I make up my mind. I am a life member of the Episcopal Election Guild and I must allow myself to be guided to some extent by the decision of the committee.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Thormanby, “that you’ve given that girl money again?”
“Not again. My original subscription carries me on from one society to another. Selby-Harrison arranged about that.”
“I should have thought,” said Thormanby sulkily, “that you’d had warnings enough. You will never learn sense even if you live to be a hundred.”
I saw the Archdeacon next day. He tackled the subject of my defeat in East Connor without hesitation. He has even less tact than Thormanby.
“I’m sorry for you, my dear boy,” he said, wringing my hand, “more sorry than I can tell you. These disappointments are very hard to bear at your age. When you are as old as I am and know how many of them life has in store for all of us, you will not feel them nearly so acutely.”
“I’m trying to bear up,” I said.
“Your defeat is a public loss. I feel that very strongly. After your diplomatic experience and with your knowledge of foreign affairs your advice would have been invaluable in all questions of imperial policy.”
“I’m greatly gratified to hear you say that. I was afraid you thought I had taken to drink.”
“My dear boy,” said the Archdeacon with pained surprise, “what can have put such an idea into your head?”
“I couldn’t help knowing what was in your mind that day in Dublin when I spoke to you about Lalage’s Jun. Soph. Ord.”
I could see that the Archdeacon was uncomfortable. He had certainly entertained suspicions when we parted in St. Stephen’s Green, though he might now pretend to have forgotten them.
“You thought so then,” I went on, “though it was quite early in the day.”
“Not at all. I happened to be in a hurry. That is all. I knew perfectly well it was only your manner.”
“I don’t blame you in the least. Anybody might have thought just as you did.”
“But I didn’t. I knew you were upset at the time. You were anxious about Lalage Beresford. She’s a charming girl, with a very good heart, but——”
The Archdeacon hesitated.
“But——” I said, encouraging him to go on.
“Did you hear,” he said, anxiously, “that she intends to take part in the episcopal election? A rumour to that effect has reached me.”
“I have it on the best authority that she does.”
“Tut, tut,” said the Archdeacon. “Do you tell me so? Tut, tut. But that is quite impossible and most undesirable, for her own sake most undesirable.”
“We’re all relying on you to prevent scandal.”
“Your uncle, Lord Thormanby——”
“He’ll put her in her place. He’s promised to do so. And that will be all right as far as it goes. But the question is will she stay there. That’s where you come in, Archdeacon. Once she’s in her place it will be your business, as Archdeacon, to keep her there.”
“I’ll speak to her father about it,” said the Archdeacon. “Beresford must put his foot down.”
“He’s going to Brazil. He told me so.”
“We can’t have that. He must stay here. It’s perfectly impossible for him to leave the country at present. I’ll see him this evening.”
I told my mother that night that I had studied the situation long enough and was fully determined to cast my vote for the Archdeacon.
“He is thoroughly well fitted to be a bishop,” I said. “He told me to-day that my knowledge of foreign affairs would be most valuable to the government whenever questions of imperial policy turned up.”
My mother seemed a little puzzled.
“What has that got to do with the bishopric?” she asked.
“The remark,” I said, “shows me the kind of man the Archdeacon is. No one who was not full of suave dignity and sympathetic diplomacy could have said a thing like that. What more do you want in a bishop?”
“A great deal more,” said my mother, who takes these church questions seriously.
“He also undertook,” I said, “to keep Lalage in her place once she is put there.”
“If he does that——”
“I quite agree with you. If he does that he ought to be a bishop, or a Metropolitan, if not a Patriarch. That’s why I’m going to vote for him.”
My mother appeared to think that I had grown lazy since I recovered from my attack of influenza. She continually pressed me to take exercise and invented a hundred different excuses for getting me out of doors. When I saw that her heart was really set on seeing me walk I did what I could to gratify her. I promised to go over to the rectory after luncheon on the very next fine day. There seemed no prospect of a fine day for at least a month, and so I felt tolerably safe in making the promise. But there is nothing so unreliable as weather, especially Irish weather. I had no sooner made my promise than the clouds began to break. At twelve o’clock it stopped raining. At one the sun was shining with provoking brilliancy. I tried to ignore the change and at luncheon complained bitterly of the cold. My mother, by way of reply, remarked on the cheerful brightness of the sunshine. She did not, in so many words, ask me to redeem my promise, but I knew what was in her mind.
“All right,” I said, “I’m going. I shall put on a pair of thick boots. I should prefer driving, but of course——”
“Walking will be much better for you.” “That’s just what I was going to say, I shall run a certain amount of risk, of course. I may drop down exhausted. I am still very weak; weaker than I look. Or I may get overheated. Or I may get too cold.”
My mother, curiously enough, for she was very fond of me, did not seem frightened.
“McMeekin told me,” I went on, “that a relapse after influenza is nearly always fatal. However, I have made my will and I fully intend to walk.”
I did walk as far as the gate lodge and about a hundred yards beyond it. It was not in any way my fault that I got no farther. I was actually beginning to like walking and should certainly have gone on if Lalage had not stopped me. She and Hilda were in the Canon’s pony trap, driving furiously. Lalage held the reins. Hilda clung with both hands to the side of the trap. The pony was galloping hard and foaming at the mouth. I stepped aside when I saw them coming and climbed more than halfway up a large wooden gate which happened to be near me at the time. The road was very muddy and I did not want to be splashed from head to foot. Besides, there was a risk of being run over. When Lalage caught sight of me she pulled up the pony with a jerk.
“We were just going to see you,” she said. “It’s great luck catching you like this. What’s simony?”
I climbed down from the gate, slowly, so as to get time to think. The question surprised me and I was not prepared to give, offhand, a definition of simony.
“I don’t know,” I said at last, “but I think, in fact I’m nearly sure, that it is some kind of ecclesiastical offence, perhaps a heresy. Were you coming to see me in order to find out?”
“Yes, That’s the reason we were in such a terrific hurry.”
“Quite so,” I said. “I was a little surprised at first to see you galloping, but now I understand.”
“Would it,” said Lalage, “be simony to cheek an Archdeacon?”
“It might. It very well might. Is that what you’ve done, Hilda?”
“I didn’t,” said Hilda.
“You did, just as much as me,” said Lalage, “and it was to you he said it, so he evidently meant you. Not that either of us did cheek him really.”
“Why didn’t you ask your father?” I said. “He’s a Canon and he’d be almost sure to know.”
“I didn’t like to speak to him about it until I knew what it was. It might turn out to be something that I wouldn’t care to talk to him about, something—you know the kind of thing I mean.”
“Improper?”
“Not quite so bad as that, but the same sort.”
“Risqué? But surely the Archdeacon wouldn’t say anything the least——”
“You never know,” said Lalage.
“And if it had been that Hilda would never have done it.”
“I didn’t,” said Hilda.
“Of course if it’s nothing worse than ordinary cheek,” said Lalage, “I shouldn’t have minded talking to father about it in the least. But I don’t see how it could be that, for we didn’t cheek him. Did we, Hilda?”
“I didn’t,” said Hilda.
“If there’d been anything of the other sort about it—and it sounds rather like that, doesn’t it?”
“Very,” I said; “but you can’t trust sounds.”
“Anyhow, we thought it safer to come to you,” said Lalage.
“That was nice of you both.”
“I don’t see anything nice about it one way or the other,” said Lalage. “We simply thought that if it was anything—anything not quite ladylike, you’d be sure to know all about it.”
I do not know why Lalage should saddle me with a reputation of this kind. I have never done anything to deserve it. My feelings were hurt.
“As it turns out not to be improper,” I said, “there’s no use coming to me.”
I spoke severely, in cold tones, with great stiffness of manner. Lalage was not in the least snubbed.
“Have you any book in the house that would tell you?” she asked.
“I have a dictionary.”
“Stupid of me,” said Lalage, “not to have thought of a dictionary, and frightfully stupid of you, Hilda. You ought to have thought of it. You were always fonder of dictionaries than I was. There are two or three of them in the rectory. We might have gone straight there and looked it out. We’ll go now.”
“If it’s a really pressing matter,” I said, “you’ll save a few minutes by coming back with me. You’re fully a quarter of a mile from the rectory this minute.”
“Right,” said Lalage. “Let down the back of the trap and hop up. We’ll drive you.”
I let down the seat and then hopped. I hopped quite a long way before I succeeded in getting up. For Lalage started before I was nearly ready and urged the pony to a gallop at once. When we reached the house I sent the unfortunate animal round to the stable yard, with orders that he was to be carefully rubbed down and then walked about until he was cool. Lalage, followed by Hilda and afterward by me, went into the library.
“Now,” she said, “trot out your best dictionary.”
I collected five, one of them an immense work in four volumes, and laid them in a row on the table.
“Hilda,” said Lalage, “look it out.”
Hilda chose, the largest dictionary and after a short hesitation picked up the volume labelled “Jab to Sli.” She stared at the word without speaking for some time after she found it. Lalage and I looked over her shoulder and, when we saw the definition, stared too. It was Lalage who read it out in the end:
“Simony from Simon Magus, Acts VIII. The crime of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferment or the corrupt presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice for money or reward.”
I own that I was puzzled. Lalage is a person of great originality and daring, but I did not see how even she could possibly have committed simony. She and Hilda looked at each other. There was an expression of genuine astonishment on their faces.
“Do you think,” said Lalage at last, “that the Archdeacon could by any chance have gone suddenly dotty in the head?”
“He was quite sane the day before yesterday,” I said. “I was talking to him.”
“Well, then, I don’t understand it. Whatever else we did we didn’t do that or anything like it. Did we, Hilda?”
“I didn’t,” said Hilda, who seemed as unwilling as ever to answer for Lalage.
“For one thing,” said Lalage, “we hadn’t got any ecclesiastical preferments to sell and we hadn’t any money to buy them, so we couldn’t have simonied even if we’d wanted to. But he certainly said we had. Just tell exactly what he did say, Hilda. It was to you he said it.”
Hilda, with a very fair imitation of the Archdeacon’s manner, repeated his words:
“‘Young lady, are you aware that this is the sin of simony?’”
I took the dictionary in my hand.
“There’s a bit more,” I said, “that you didn’t read. Perhaps there is some secondary meaning in the word. I’ll go on: ‘By stat: 31 Elizabeth C. VII. Severe penalties are enacted against this crime. In the church of Scotland simonaical practices——’ Well, we’re not in Scotland anyhow, so we needn’t go into that. I wonder if stat: 31 Elizabeth C. VII runs in this country. Some don’t; but it sounds to me rather as if it would. If it does, you’re in a nasty fix, Lalage; you and Hilda. Severe penalties can hardly mean less than imprisonment with hard labour.
“But we didn’t do it,” said Lalage.
“The Archdeacon appears to think you did,” I said, “both of you, especially Hilda. You must have done something. You’d better tell me exactly what occurred from the beginning of the interview until the end. I’ll try and pick out what struck the Archdeacon as simonaical. I don’t want to see either of you run in for severe penalties if we can help it. I expect the best thing will be to repent and apologize at once.”
“Repent of what?” said Lalage.
“That’s what I want to find out. Begin at the beginning now and give me the whole story.”
“We drove over this morning,” said Lalage, “to see the Archdeacon. I didn’t want to go a bit, for the Archdeacon is particularly horrid when he’s nice, as he is just at present. But Selby-Harrison said we ought.”
“Is Selby-Harrison here?”
“No. He wrote from Dublin. He’s been looking up the subject of bishops in the college library so that we’d know exactly what we ought to do.”
“He should have looked up simony first thing. I can’t forgive Selby-Harrison for letting you in for those severe penalties.”
“There wasn’t a bit of harm in what he said. It was nearly all out of the Bible and the ancient Fathers of the Church and Councils and things. It couldn’t have been simony. You have his letter, haven’t you, Hilda? Read it out.”
Hilda opened the small bag she always carries and took out the letter. It looked to me a very long one.
“I don’t know,” I said, “that Selby-Harrison’s letter really matters unless you read it out to the Archdeacon.”
“We didn’t get the chance,” said Lalage, “although we meant to.”
“Then you needn’t read it to me.”
“We must. Otherwise you won’t know why we went to see the Archdeacon.”
“Couldn’t you give me in a few words a general idea of the contents of the letter?”
“You do that, Hilda,” said Lalage.
“It was nothing,” said Hilda, “but a list of the things a bishop ought to be.”
“Qualifications for the office,” said Lalage.
“And you went over to the Archdeacon to find out whether he came up to the standard. I’m beginning to understand.”
“I thought at the time,” said Hilda, “that it was rather cheek.”
“It was,” I said, “but it doesn’t seem to me, so far, to amount to actual simony.”
“It was a perfectly natural and straightforward thing to do,” said Lalage. “How could we possibly support the Archdeacon in the election unless we’d satisfied ourselves that he had the proper qualifications?”
“Anyhow,” I said, “whether the Archdeacon mistook it for cheek or not—and I can quite understand that he might—it wasn’t simony.”
“That’s just what bothers us,” said Lalage. “Do you think that dictionary of yours could possibly be wrong?”
“It might,” I said. “Let’s try another.”
Hilda tried three others. The wording of their definitions varied, but they were all in substantial agreement with the first.
“There must,” I said, “have been something in the questions which you put to the Archdeacon which suggested simony to his mind. What did you ask him?”
“I didn’t ask him anything. I intended to but I hadn’t time. He was on top of us with his old simony before I opened my mouth.”
“You did say one thing,” said Hilda.
“Then that must have been it,” I said.
“It wasn’t in the least simonious,” said Lalage. “In fact it wasn’t anything at all. It was merely a polite way of beginning the conversation.”
“All the same,” I said. “It was simony. It must have been, for there was nothing else. What was it?”
“It wasn’t of any importance,” said Lalage. “I simply said—just in the way you might say you hoped his cold was better without meaning anything in particular—that I supposed if he was elected bishop he’d make father archdeacon.”
“Ah!” I said.
“He flew out at that straight away. Rather ridiculous of him, wasn’t it? He can’t be both bishop and archdeacon, so he needn’t try. He must give up the second job to some one or other. I’d have thought he’d have seen that at once.”
I referred to the dictionary.
“‘Or the corrupt presentation of any one to an eccelesiastical benefice for money or reward.’ That’s where he has you, Lalage. You were offering to present him——”
“I wasn’t. How could I?”
“He thought you were, any how. And the reward in this case evidently was that your father should be made into an archdeacon.”
“That’s the greatest nonsense I ever heard. It wouldn’t be a reward. Father would simply hate it.”
“The Archdeacon couldn’t be expected to understand that. Having held the office for so long himself he naturally regards it as highly desirable.”
“What about the penalties?” said Hilda nervously.
“By far the best thing you can do,” I said, “is to grovel profusely. If you both cast ashes on your heads and let the tears run down your cheeks——”
“If the Archdeacon is such a fool as you’re trying to make out,” said Lalage, “I shall simply write to him and say that nothing on earth would induce me to allow my father to parade the country dressed up in an apron and a pair of tight black gaiters.”
“If you say things like that to him,” I said, “he’ll exact the penalties. See stat: 31 Elizabeth C. VII. You may not mind, but Hilda’s mother will.”
“Yes,” said Hilda, “she’ll be frightfully angry.”
At this moment my mother came into the library.
“Thank goodness,” said Lalage, “we have some one at last who can talk sense.”
My mother looked questioningly at me. I offered her an explanation of the position in the smallest possible number of words.
“The Archdeacon,” I said, “is going to put Lalage and Hilda into prison for simony.”
“He can’t,” said Lalage, “for we didn’t do it.”
“They did,” I said, “both of them. They offered to present the Archdeacon corruptly to an ecclesiastical benefice for a reward.”
“It wasn’t a reward.”
“Lalage,” said my mother, “have you been meddling with this bishopric election?”
“I simply tried,” said Lalage, “to find out whether he was properly qualified.”
“You did more than that,” I said; “you tried to get a reward.”
“If you take my advice——” said my mother.
“I will,” said Lalage, “and so will Hilda.”
That threatening statute of Queen Elizabeth’s must have frightened Lalage. I never before knew her so meek.
“Then leave the question of the Archdeacon’s qualifications,” said my mother, “to those who have to elect him.”
“Not to me,” I said hurriedly. “I couldn’t work through that list of Selby-Harrison’s. Try my uncle. Try Lord Thormanby. He’ll like it.”
“There’s one thing——” said Lalage.
“Leave it to the synod,” said my mother.
“Or to Lord Thormanby,” I said.
“Very well,” said Lalage. “I will. But perhaps he won’t care to go into it, and if he doesn’t I shall have to act myself.”
“He will,” I said. “He has a perfectly tremendous sense of responsibility.”
“And now,” said my mother, “come along, all of you, to the drawing-room and have tea.”
“Is it all right?” said Hilda anxiously to me as we left the room.
“Quite,” I said; “there’ll be no prosecution. My mother can do anything she likes with the Archdeacon, just as she does with Lalage. He’ll not enforce a single penalty.”
“She’s wonderful,” said Hilda.
I quite agreed. She is. Even Miss Pettigrew could not do as much. It was more by good luck than anything else that she succeeded in luring Lalage away from Ballygore.
I congratulated my mother that night on her success in dealing with Lalage.
“Your combination,” I said, “of tact, firmness, sympathy, and reasonableness was most masterly.”
My mother smiled gently. I somehow gathered from her way of smiling that she thought my congratulations premature.
“Surely,” I said, “you don’t think she’ll break out again. She made you a definite promise.”
“She’ll keep her promise to the letter,” said my mother, still smiling in the same way.
“If she does,” I said, “she can’t do anything very bad.”
It turned out—it always does—that my mother was right and I was wrong. The next morning at breakfast a note was handed to me by the footman. He said it had been brought over from Thormanby Park by a groom on horseback. It was marked “Urgent” in red ink.
Thormanby acts at times in a violent and impulsive manner. If I were his uncle, and so qualified by relationship to give him the advice he frequently gives me, I should recommend him to cultivate repose of manner and leisurely dignity of action. He is a peer of this realm, and has, besides, been selected by his fellow peers to represent them in the House of Lords. He ought not to send grooms scouring the country at breakfast time, carrying letters which look, on the outside, as if they announced the discovery of dangerous conspiracies. I said this and more to my mother before opening the envelope, and she seemed to agree with me that the political and social decay of our aristocracy is to some extent to be traced to their excitability and lack of self-control. By way of demonstrating my own calm, I laid the envelope down beside my plate and refrained from opening it until I had finished the kidney I was eating at the time. The letter, when I did read it, turned out to be quite as hysterical as the manner of its arrival. Thormanby summoned me to his presence—there is no other way of describing the style in which he wrote—and ordered me to start immediately.
“I can’t imagine what has gone wrong,” I said. “Do you think that Miss Battersby can have gone suddenly mad and assaulted one of the girls with a battle axe?”
“It is far more likely that Lalage has done something,” said my mother.
“After her promise to you what could she have done?”
“She might have kept it.”
I thought this over and got a grip on the meaning by degrees.
“You mean,” I said, “that she has appealed to my uncle on some point about the Archdeacon’s qualifications.”
“Exactly.”
“But that wouldn’t upset him so much.”
“It depends on what the point is.”
“She’s extraordinarily ingenious,” I said. “Perhaps I’d better go over to Thormanby Park and see.”
“Finish your breakfast,” said my mother. “I’ll order the trap for you.”
I arrived at Thormanby Park shortly after ten o’clock. The door was opened to me by Miss Battersby. She confessed that she had been watching for me from the window of the morning room which looks out over the drive. She squeezed my hand when greeting me and held it so long that I was sure she was suffering from some acute anxiety. She also spoke breathlessly, in a sort of gasping whisper, as if she had been running hard. She had not, of course, run at all. The gasps were due to excitement and agony.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I knew you would. Lord Thormanby is waiting for you in the library. I do hope you won’t say anything to make it worse. You’ll try not to, won’t you?”
I gathered from this that it, whatever it was, must be very bad already.
“Lalage?” I said.
Miss Battersby nodded solemnly.
“My mother told me it must be that, before I started.”
“If you could,” said Miss Battersby persuasively, “and if you would——”
“I can and will,” I said. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t bear to think of poor little Lalage bearing all the blame.”
“I can’t well take the blame,” I said, “although I’m perfectly willing to do so, unless I can find out what it is she’s done.”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. There was a letter from her this morning to Lord Thormanby, but he didn’t show it to me.”
“If it’s in her handwriting,” I said, “there’s no use my saying I wrote it. He wouldn’t believe me. But if it’s typewritten and not signed, I’ll say it’s mine.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t ask you to do so much as that. Besides, it wouldn’t be true.”
“It won’t be true in any case,” I said, “if I take even part of the blame.”
“But you mustn’t say what isn’t true.”
Miss Battersby is unreasonable, though she means well. It is clearly impossible for me to be strictly truthful and at the same time to claim, as my own, misdeeds of which I do not even know the nature. I walked across the hall in the direction of the library door. Miss Battersby followed me with her hand on my arm.
“Do your best for her,” she whispered pleadingly.
Thormanby was certainly in a very bad temper. He was sitting at the far side of a large writing table when I entered the room. He did not rise or shake hands with me. He simply pushed a letter across the table toward me with the end of a paper knife. His action gave me the impression that the letter was highly infectious.
“Look at that,” he said.
I looked and saw at once that it was in Lalage’s handwriting. I was obliged to give up the idea of claiming it as mine.
“Why don’t you read it?” said Thormanby.
“I didn’t know you wanted me to. Do you?”
“How the deuce are you to know what’s in it if you don’t read it?”
“It’s quite safe, I suppose?”
“Safe? Safe? What do you mean?”
“When I saw you poking at it with that paper knife I thought it might be poisoned.”
Thormanby growled and I took up the letter. Lalage has a courteous but perfectly lucid style. I read:
“Dear Lord Thormanby, as a member of the Diocesan Synod you are, I feel sure, quite as anxious as I am that only a really suitable man should be elected bishop. I therefore enclose a carefully drawn list of the necessary and desirable qualifications for that office.”
“You have the list?” I said.
“Yes. She sent the thing. She has cheek enough for anything.”
“Selby-Harrison drew it up, so if there’s anything objectionable in it he’s the person you ought to blame, not Lalage.”
I felt that I was keeping my promise to Miss Battersby. I had succeeded in implicating another culprit. Not more than half the blame was now Lalage’s.
“Thesine qua nons,” the letter went on, “are marked with red crosses, thedesideratain black.”
“I’m glad,” I said, “that she got one plural right. By the way, I wonder what the plural of that phrase really is. It can’t besines qua non, and yetsine quibussounds pedantic.”
I said this in the hope of mitigating Thormanby’s wrath by turning his thoughts into another channel.
I failed. He merely growled again. I went on reading the letter:
“You will observe at once that the Archdeacon, whom we should all like to have as our new bishop, possesses every requirement for the office except one, number fifteen on the enclosed list, marked for convenience of reference, with a violet asterisk.”
“What is the missingsine qua?” I asked. “Don’t tell me if it’s private.”
“It’s—it’s—damn it all, look for yourself.” He flung a typewritten sheet of foolscap at me. I picked my way carefully among the red and black crosses until I came to the violet asterisk.
“No. 15. ‘A bishop must be the husband of one wife’—I Tim: III.”
“That’s rather a poser,” I said, “if true. It seems to me to put the Archdeacon out of the running straight off.”
“No. It doesn’t,” said Thormanby. “That’s where the girl’s infernal insolence comes in.”
I read:
“This obstacle, though under the present circumstances an absolute bar, is fortunately remedial.”
“I wish Lalage would be more careful,” I said, “she ought to have written ‘remediable.’ However her meaning is quite plain.”
“It gets plainer further on,” said Thormanby grinning.
This was the first time I had seen him grin since I came into the room. I took it for an encouraging sign.
Lalage’s letter went on:
“The suggestion of the obvious remedy, must be made by some one, for the Archdeacon has evidently not thought of it himself. It would come particularly well from you, occupying as you do a leading position in the diocese. Unfortunately the time at our disposal is very short, and it will hardly do to leave the Archdeacon without some practical suggestion for the immediate remedying of the sad defect. What you will have to offer him is a scheme thoroughly worked out and perfect in every detail. The name of Miss Battersby will probably occur to you at once. I need not remind you of her sweet and lovable disposition. You have been long acquainted with her, and will recognize in her a lady peculiarly well suited to share an episcopal throne.”
Thormanby became almost purple in the face as I read out the final sentences of the letter. I saw that he was struggling with some strong emotion and suspected that he wanted very much to laugh. If he did he suppressed the desire manfully. His forehead was actually furrowed with a frown when I had finished. I laid the letter down on the table and tapped it impressively with my forefinger.
“That,” I said, “strikes me as a remarkably good suggestion.”
Thormanby exploded.
“Of all the damned idiots I’ve ever met,” he said, “you’re the worst. Do you mean to say that you expect me to drag Miss Battersby over to the Archdeacon’s house and dump her down there in a white satin dress with a wedding ring tied round her neck by a ribbon and a stodgy cake tucked under her arm?”
“I haven’t actually worked out all the details,” I said. “I am thinking more of the plan in its broad outlines. After all, the Archdeacon isn’t married. We can’t get over that. If that text of First Timothy is really binding—I don’t myself know whether it is or not, but I’m inclined to take Selby-Harrison’s word for it that it is. He’s in the Divinity School and has been making a special study of the subject. If he’s right, there’s no use our electing the Archdeacon and then having the Local Government Board coming down on us afterward for appointing an unqualified man. You remember the fuss they made when the Urban District Council took on a cookery instructress who hadn’t got her diploma.”
“That wasn’t the Local Government Board. It was the Department of Agriculture. But in any case neither the one nor the other of them has anything in the world to do with bishops.”
“Don’t you be too sure of that. I expect you’ll find they have if you appoint a man who isn’t properly qualified, and the law on the subject is perfectly plain.”
“Rot! Lots of bishops aren’t married. Texts of that sort never mean what they seem to mean.”
“What’s the good of running risks,” I said, “when the remedy is in our own hands? I don’t see that the Archdeacon could do better than Miss Battersby. She’s wonderfully sympathetic.”
“You’d better go and tell him so yourself.”
“I would, I’d go like a shot, only most unluckily he’s got it into his head that I’ve taken to drink. He might think, just at first, that I wasn’t quite myself if I went to him with a suggestion of that sort.”
“There’d be some excuse for him if he did,” said Thormanby.
“Whereas, if you, who have always been strictly temperate——”
“I didn’t send for you,” said Thormanby, “to stand there talking like a born fool. What I want you to do——”
He paused and blew his nose with some violence.
“Yes?” I said.
“Is to go and put a muzzle on that girl of Beresford’s.”
“If you’re offering me a choice,” I said, “I’d a great deal rather drag Miss Battersby over to the Archdeacon’s house and dump her down there in a wedding ring with a white satin dress tied round her neck by a ribbon. I might manage that, but I’m constitutionally unfitted to deal with Lalage. It was you who said you would put her in her place. I told the Archdeacon he could count on you.”
“I’ll see Beresford to-day, anyhow.”
“Not the least use. He’s going to one of the South American republics where there’s no extradition.”
“I’ll speak to your mother about it.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “Lalage is acting strictly in accordance with my mother’s instructions in referring this matter to you. Why not try Miss Pettigrew?”
“I will. Who is she?”
“She used to be Lalage’s schoolmistress.”
“Does she use the cane?”
“This,” I said, “is entirely your affair. I’ve washed my hands of it so I’m not even offering advice, but if I were you I’d be careful about anything in the way of physical violence. Remember that Lalage has Selby-Harrison behind her and he knows the law. You can see for yourself by the way he ferreted out that text of First Timothy that he has the brain of a first-rate solicitor.”
I left the room after that. In the hall Miss Battersby waylaid me again.
“Is it all right?” she asked anxiously.
“Not quite. My uncle is writing to Miss Pettigrew.”
“She won’t come. I’m sure she won’t. She told me herself when we were in Ballygore that for the future she intends to watch Lalage’s performances from a distance.”
“She may make an exception in this case,” I said. “If my uncle states it at all fully in his letter it can scarcely fail to make an appeal to her.”
Miss Battersby sighed. She was evidently not hopeful.
“Lalage is such a dear girl,” she said. “It is a sad pity that she will——”
“She’s always trying to do right.”
“Always,” said Miss Battersby fervently.
“That’s why it’s generally so difficult for other people.”
“The world,” said Miss Battersby, “is very hard.”
“And desperately wicked. If it were even moderately straightforward and honest Lalage would have been canonized long ago.”
“She’s a little foolish sometimes.”
“All great reformers,” I said, “appear foolish to the people of their own generation. It’s only afterward that their worth is recognized.”
Miss Battersby sighed again. Then she shook hands with me.
“I must go to Lord Thormanby,” she said, “He’ll want me to write his letters for him.”
“He won’t want you to write that one to Miss Pettigrew. He has his faults of temper, but he’s essentially a gentleman, and he wouldn’t dream of asking you to write that particular letter for him. I don’t think you need go to him yet. Stay and talk to me about Lalage and the hardness of the world.”
“If he doesn’t want me,” she said, “I ought to settle the flowers.”
It really is a pity that Thormanby will not persuade the Archdeacon to marry Miss Battersby. Besides being sweet and lovable, as Lalage pointed out, she has a strong sense of duty which would be quite invaluable in the diocese. Very few people after an agitating morning would go straight off to settle flowers.