During the time that Titherington and I were thrown together I learned
to respect and admire him, but I never cared for him as a companion.
Only once, so far as I recollect, did I actually wish to see him. The
day after I gave him the hint about Hilda’s mother I waited for him
anxiously. I was full of curiosity. I wanted to know what Hilda’s
surname was, a matter long obscure to me, which Titherington, if any man
living, would find out. I also wanted to know how Hilda’s mother took
the news of her daughter’s political activity. I waited for him all day
but he did not visit me. Toward evening I came to the conclusion that
he must have found himself obliged to go up to Dublin in pursuit of
Selby-Harrison, junior. I spent a pleasant hour or two in picturing
to myself the interview between them. Titherington had spoken of using
violent means of persuasion, of dragging the surname of Hilda out of the
young man. He might, so I liked to think, chase Selby-Harrison round
the College Park with a drawn sword in his hand. Then there would
be complications. The Provost and senior fellows, not understanding
Titherington’s desperate plight, would resent his show of violence,
which would strike them as unseemly in their academic groves. Swift,
muscular porters would be sent in pursuit of Titherington, who would,
himself, still pursue Selby-Harrison. The great bell of the Campanile
would ring furious alarm peals. The Dublin metropolitan police would at
last be called in, for Titherington, when in a determined mood, would be
very difficult to overpower.
All this was pleasant to think about at first; but there came a
time when my mind was chiefly occupied in resenting Titherington’s
thoughtlessness. He had no right to go off on a long expedition without
leaving me the key of the bag in which we kept the champagne. I felt the
need of a stimulant so badly that I ventured to ask McMeekin, who
called just before I went to bed, to allow me half a glass of Burgundy.
Burgundy would not have been nearly as good for me as champagne, but it
would have been better than nothing. McMeekin sternly forbade anything
of the sort, and I heard him tell the nurse to give me barley water when
I asked for a drink. This is another proof that McMeekin ought to be
in an asylum for idiots. Barley water would depress me and make me
miserable even if I were in perfect health.
As a set-off against Titherington’s thoughtlessness and McMeekin’s
imbecility, I noticed that during the day the nurse became gradually
less obnoxious. I began to see that she had some good points and that
she meant well by me, though she still did things of which I could not
possibly approve. She insisted, for instance, that I should wash my
face, a wholly unnecessary exertion which exhausted me greatly and might
easily have given me cold. Still I disliked her less than I did before,
and felt, toward evening that she was becoming quite tolerable. I always
like to give praise to any one who deserves it, especially if I have
been obliged previously to speak in a different way. After I got
into bed I congratulated her on the improvement I had noticed in her
character and disposition. She replied that she was delighted to see
that I was beginning to pick up a little. The idea in her mind evidently
was that no change had taken place in her but that I was shaking off a
mood of irritable pessimism, one of the symptoms of my disease. I did
not argue with her though I knew that she was quite wrong. There really
was a change in her and I had all along kept a careful watch over my
temper.
The day after that, being, I believe, the eighth of my illness, I got up
at eleven o’clock and put on a pair of trousers under my dressing-gown.
McMeekin, backed by the nurse, insisted on my sending for a barber to
shave me. I did not like the barber, for, like all his tribe, he
was garrulous and I had to appeal to the nurse to stop him talking.
Afterward I was very glad I had endured him. Lalage and Hilda called
on me at two o’clock, and I should not have liked them to see me in
the state I was in before the barber came. They both looked fresh and
vigorous. Electioneering evidently agreed with them.
“We looked in,” said Lalage, “because we thought you might want to be
cheered up a bit. You can’t have many visitors now that poor Tithers is
gone.”
“Dead?”
“Oh, no, not yet at least, and we hope he won’t. Tithers means well and
I daresay it’s not his fault if he don’t speak the truth.”
“They’ve put him in prison, I suppose. I hardly thought they’d allow him
to chop up Selby-Harrison in the College Park.”
Hilda gaped at me. Lalage went over to the nurse and whispered something
in her ear. The nurse shook her head and said that my temperature was
normal.
“If you’re not raving,” said Lalage, “you’re deliberately talking
nonsense. I don’t know what you mean, nor does Hilda.”
“It ought to be fairly obvious,” I said, “that I’m alluding to
Mr. Titherington’s attempt to find out Hilda’s surname from young
Selby-Harrison.”
Hilda giggled convulsively. Then she got out her pocket handkerchief and
choked.
“Tithers,” said Lalage, “is past caring about anybody’s name. He’s got
influenza. It came on him the night before last at twelve o’clock. He’s
pretty bad.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I was afraid he might have been arrested in
Dublin. If it’s only influenza there’s no reason why he shouldn’t send
me the key of the bag. I suppose you’ll be going round to see him in the
course of the afternoon, Lalage.”
“We hadn’t thought of doing that,” said Lalage, “but of course we can if
you particularly want us to.”
“I wish you would, and tell him to send me the key of the bag at once.
You could bring it back with you.”
“Certainly,” said Lalage. “Is that all?”
“That’s all I want; but it would be civil to ask how he is.”
“There’s no use making a special, formal visit for a trifle like that.
Hilda will run round at once. It won’t take her ten minutes.”
Hilda hesitated.
“Run along, Hilda,” said Lalage.
Hilda still hesitated. It occurred to me that she might not know where
Titherington’s house was.
“Turn to the right,” I said, “as soon as you get out of the hotel.
Then go on to the end of the street. Mr. Titherington’s house is at
the corner and stands a little way back. It has ‘Sandringham’ in gilt
letters on the gate. You can’t miss it. In fact, you can see it from the
door of the hotel. Nurse will show it to you.”
Even then Hilda did not start.
“The key of what bag?” she asked.
“Is it any particular bag?” said Lalage.
“Of course it is,” I said. “What on earth would be the use----?”
“Will Tithers knows what bag you mean?” said Lalage.
“He will. Now that he has influenza himself he can’t help knowing.”
“Off with you, Hilda.”
This time Hilda started, slowly. The nurse, who evidently thought that
Hilda was being badly treated, went with her. She certainly took her as
far as the hotel door. She may have gone all the way to Titherington’s
house. Lalage sat down opposite me and lit a cigarette.
“We are having a high old time,” she said. “Now that Tithers is gone and
O’Donoghue, who appears to be rather an ass, professes to have a sore
throat----”
She winked at me.
“Do you suspect him of having influenza?” I asked.
“Of course, but he won’t own up if he can help it.”
“Vittie is only shamming,” I said. “Titherington told me so, he may
emerge at any moment.”
“It’s just like Tithers to say that. The one thing he cannot do is speak
the truth. As a matter of fact Vittie is in a dangerous condition. His
aunt told me so.”
“Have you been to see him.”
“No. The aunt came round to us this morning with tears in her eyes, and
begged us to spare Vittie.”
“I suppose the things you have been saying about him have made him
worse.”
“According to his aunt they keep him in such an excitable state that he
can’t sleep. I told her I was jolly glad to hear it. That just shows the
amount of good the A.S.P.L. is doing in the district. It’s making its
power felt in every direction.”
“If Vittie dies------”
“He won’t. That sort of man never does. I’m sorry for the aunt of
course. She seemed a quiet, respectable sort of woman and, curiously
enough, very fond of Vittie. I told her that I’d do anything I
conscientiously could to lull off Vittie, but that I had my duty to
perform. And I have, you know. I’m clearing the air.”
“It wants it badly. McMeekin told me two days ago he had forty cases and
there are evidently a lot more now.”
“I’m not talking about microbes,” said Lalage. “What I’m talking about
is the moral ‘at’.”
I thought for a moment.
--“titude?” I ventured to suggest.
“No,” said Lalage, “--mosphere. It wants it far worse than the other
air. I had no idea till I took on this job that politics are such utter
sinks as they are. What you tell me now about Vittie is just another
example of what I mean. I dare say now it will turn out that he went
to bed in the hope of escaping my exposure of the way he’s been telling
lies.”
“Titherington hinted,” I said, “that he did it in the hope of
influencing McMeekin’s vote. Fees, you know.”
“That’s worse.”
“A great deal worse.”
“Funk,” said Lalage, “which is what I did suspect him of, is
comparatively honest, but a stratagem of the kind you suggest, is as bad
as felony. I shall certainly have at him for that.”
“Titherington will be tremendously pleased if you do.”
“I’m not trying to please Tithers. I’m acting in the interests of public
morality.”
“Still,” I said, “there’s no harm in pleasing Tithers incidentally.”
“I have a big meeting on to-night. Hilda takes the chair, and I’ll
rub it in about Vittie shamming sick. I never heard anything more
disgraceful. Can Tithers be playing the same game, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Hilda will be able to tell us that when she
comes back.”
Hilda came back so soon that I think she must have run part of the way
at least. Probably she ran back, when the nurse was not with her.
“He won’t send you the key,” she said, “but he wants you to send him the
bag.”
“Is he shamming?” said Lalage, “or has he really got it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”
“If you didn’t see him,” I said hopefully, “you may be wrong after all
about his wanting the bag. He can’t be so selfish.”
“Who did you see?” said Lalage.
“Mrs. Titherington,” said Hilda. “She----”
“Fancy there being a Mrs. Tithers,” said Lalage. “How frightfully funny!
What was she like to look at?”
“Never mind that for the present, Hilda,” I said. “Just tell me about
the key.”
“She took your message up to him,” said Hilda, “and came down again in a
minute looking very red in the face.”
“Titherington must have sworn at her,” I said. “What a brute that man
is!”
“You’d better take him round the bag at once,” said Lalage. “Where is
it?”
“He shan’t have the bag,” I said. “There are only eight bottles left and
I want them myself.”
“Bottles of what?”
“Champagne, of course.”
“His or yours?” asked Lalage.
“They were his at first. They’re mine now, for he gave them to me, and
I’m going to keep them.”
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” said Lalage. “Do you, Hilda? I
suppose you and Tithers can both afford to buy a few more bottles if you
want them.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “I’m quite ready to give a sovereign
a bottle if necessary, and I’m sure that Titherington would, too. The
point is that my nurse won’t let me have any, and I don’t suppose
Titherington’s wife will let him. That ass McMeekin insists on poisoning
me with barley water, and Titherington’s doctor, whoever he is, is most
likely doing the same.”
“I see,” said Lalage. “This just bears out what I’ve been saying all
along about the utter want of common honesty in political life. Here are
you and Tithers actually quarrelling about which of you is to be allowed
to lie continuously. You are deliberately deceiving your doctor and
nurse. Tithers wants to deceive his wife, which is, if anything, a shade
worse. Hilda, find that bag.”
“Lalage,” I said, “you’re not going to give it to Titherington, are you?
It wouldn’t be good for him, it wouldn’t really.”
“Make your mind quite easy about that,” said Lalage. “I’m not going to
give it to either of you. Hilda, look under the bed. That’s just the
idiotic sort of place Tithers would hide a thing.”
I heard Hilda grovelling about on the floor. A minute later she was
dragging the bag out.
“What are you going to do with it, Lalage?”
“Take it away and keep it myself till you’re both well.”
“We never shall be,” I said. “We shall die. Please, Lalage, please
don’t.”
“It’s the only honest course,” said Lalage.
I made an effort to assert myself, though I knew it was useless.
“There is such a thing,” I said, “as carrying honesty too far. All
extremes are wrong. There are lots of occasions on which it isn’t at all
right to tell the literal truth.”
“None,” said Lalage.
“Suppose a robber was robbing you, and you had a five-pound note inside
your sock and suppose he said to you, ‘Have you any more money?’”
“That has nothing to do with the way you and Tithers have conspired
together to deceive the very people who are trying to do you good.”
“Lalage,” I said, “I’ve subscribed liberally to the funds of the
society. I’ll subscribe again. I did my best for you at the time of
the bishop row. I don’t think you ought to turn on me now because I’m
adopting the only means in my power of resisting a frightful tyranny.
You might just as well call it dishonest of a prisoner to try to escape
because he doesn’t tell the gaoler beforehand how he’s going to do it.”
“Hilda,” said Lalage, “collar that bag and come on.”
“Lalage,” I said sternly, “if you take that bag I’ll write straight to
the Archdeacon.”
Hilda was already outside the door. Lalage turned.
“It will be much more unpleasant for you than for me,” she said, “if you
bring the Archdeacon down here. I’m not afraid of him. You are.”
“I’ll write to Miss Battersby. I’ll write to the Provost, and to Miss
Pettigrew. I’ll write to Hilda’s mother. I’ll get Selby-Harrison to
write, too. I’ll----”
Lalage was gone. I rang the bell savagely and told the nurse to get my
pens, ink, and paper. I thoroughly agreed with Titherington. Lalage’s
proceedings must be stopped at once.