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.”