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.”