I wrote the first page of a letter to the Archdeacon and expressed
myself, so far as I could in that limited space, strongly. I gave him
to understand that Lalage must be either enticed or forced to leave
Ballygore. I intended to go onto a description of the sort of things
Lalage had been doing, of Titherington’s helplessness and Vittie’s
peril. But I was brought up short at the end of the first page by the
want of blotting paper. The nurse brought me two pens, a good sized
bottle of ink, several quires of paper and about fifty envelopes. Then
she went out for her afternoon walk, and I did not discover until after
she had gone that I had no blotting paper. The only course open to me
was to wait, as patiently as I could, until the first page of the letter
dried. It took a long time to dry, because I was very angry when I began
to write and had pressed heavily on the pen. The crosses of my t’s were
like short broad canals. The loops of the e’s, Fs and such letters were
deep pools, and I had underlined one word with some vigour. I waved the
sheet to and fro in the air. When I got tired of waving it I propped it
up against the fender and let the heat of the fire play on it.
While I was waiting my anger gradually cooled and I began to see that
Lalage was perfectly right in saying that I should suffer most if the
Archdeacon came to our rescue. The story of the champagne in the bag
would leak out at once. The Archdeacon, as I recollected, already
suspected me of intemperance. When he heard that I was drinking secretly
and keeping a private supply of wine he would be greatly shocked and
would probably feel that it was his duty to act firmly. He would, almost
certainly, hold a consultation with McMeekin. McMeekin is just the sort
of man to resent anything in the way of a professional slight from
one of his patients. Goaded on by the Archdeacon he would invent
some horrible punishment for me. In mediaeval times, so I am given to
understand, the clergy tortured people, in cells, for the good of their
souls, and any one who had a private enemy denounced him to the Grand
Inquisitor. Faith has nowadays given way before the assaults of science
and it is the doctors who possess the powers of the rack. Instead of
being suspected of heresy a man is now accused of having an abscess on
his appendix. His doom is much the same, to have his stomach cut open
with knives, though the name given to it is different. It is now
called an operation. The older term, rather more expressive, was
disembowelling. Four hundred years ago McMeekin, if he had a grievance
against me, would have denounced me to the Archdeacon. Now, things have
changed so far that it is the Archdeacon who denounces me to McMeekin.
The result for me is much the same. I do not suppose that my case would
either then or now be one for extreme penalties. I am not the stuff of
which obstinate heretics are made, nor have I any heroic tumour which
would render me liable to the knife. Slow starvation, a diet of barley
water, beef tea, and milk puddings, would meet the requirements of my
case. But I did not want any more barley water and beef tea. I have
always, from my childhood up, hated milk puddings. I thought over my
position carefully and by the time the first sheet of my letter to the
Archdeacon was dry, I had arrived at the conclusion that I had better
not go on with it. I burned it.
Lalage’s meeting, held that night, was an immense success. The town hall
was packed to its utmost capacity and I am told that Lalage spoke very
well indeed. She certainly had a good subject and a fine opportunity.
Vittie, O’Donoghue, and I were all in bed. Our chief supporters,
Titherington and the others, were helpless, with temperatures ranging
from 102 to 105 degrees. But even if we had all been quite well and
in full possession of our fighting powers we could not have made any
effective defence against Lalage. She had an astonishingly good case.
Titherington, for instance, might have talked his best, but he could not
have produced even a plausible explanation of those two letters of ours
on the temperance question. O’Donoghue was in a worse case. He had
made statements about budgets and things of that kind which Lalage’s
favourite word only feebly describes. Vittie, apart altogether from
any question of the genuineness of his influenza, was in the narrowest
straits of us all. He appears to have lied with an abandon and a
recklessness far superior to O’Donoghue’s or mine. Lalage, so I heard
afterward, spent an hour and a half denouncing us and devoted about
two-thirds of the time to Vittie. His aunts must have had a trying
time with him that night unless McMeekin came to their rescue with an
unusually powerful sleeping draught.
What Lalage said did not keep me awake; but the immediate results of her
meeting broke in upon a sleep which I needed very badly. My nurse left
me for the night and I dropped off into a pleasant doze. I dreamed, I
recollect, that the Archdeacon was bringing me bottles of whiskey in
Titherington’s bag and that Hilda was standing beside me with the key. I
was roused, just as I was about to open the bag, by a terrific noise
of bands in the streets. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and even during
elections, bands at that hour are unusual. Besides, the bands which I
heard were playing more confusedly than even the most excited bands do.
It occurred to me that there might possibly be a riot going on and that
the musicians were urging forward the combatants. I crawled out of bed
and stumbled across the room. I was just in time to see a torchlight
procession passing my hotel. The night was windy and the torches flared
most successfully, giving quite enough light to make everything plainly
visible.
At the head of the procession were two bands a good deal mixed up
together. I at once recognized the uniform of the Loyal True Blue Fife
and Drums, whose members were my supporters to a man, and who possess
many more drums than fifes. The bright-green peaked caps of the other
players told me that they were the Wolfe Tone Invincible Brass Band.
It usually played tunes favourable to O’Donoghue. Vittie did not own
a band. If his supporters had been musical, and if there had been any
tunes in the world which expressed their political convictions, there
would, no doubt, have been three bands in the procession. The True Blues
and the Wolfe Tones were, when they passed me, playing different tunes.
In every other respect the utmost harmony prevailed between them. The
chief drummer of the True Blues and the cornet player of the Wolfe
Tones stopped just under my windows to exchange instruments, an act of
courtesy which must be unparalleled in Irish history. I was not able
to hear distinctly what sort of attempt my supporter made at the cornet
part of “God Save Ireland.” But O’Donoghue’s friend beat time to
“The Protestant Boys” on the drum with an accuracy quite surprising
considering that he cannot often have practised the tune. Behind the
bands closely surrounded by torch bearers came a confused crowd of men
dragging and pushing a wagonette, from which the horses had been taken.
In the wagonette were Lalage and Hilda. Lalage was standing up in the
driver’s seat, a most perilous position. She had in one hand a large
roll of white ribbon, the now well-known symbol of the Association
for the Suppression of Public Lying, and in her other hand a pair of
scissors. She snipped off bits of the ribbon and allowed them to go
fluttering away from her in the wind. The crowd scrambled eagerly for
them, and it was plain that the association was enrolling members in
hundreds. Hilda seemed less happy. She was crouching in the body of the
wagonette and looked frightened. Perhaps she was thinking of her mother.
I crept back to bed when the procession had passed and felt deeply
thankful that I was laid up with influenza. Lalage’s meeting was,
without doubt, an unqualified success.
Newspapers are, as a rule, busy enough about what happens even in quite
obscure constituencies during by-elections. If ours had been one of
those occasional contests the subject of public lying, Lalage’s portrait
and the story of the two bands men would have been quite familiar to
all readers. During a general election very few details of particular
campaigns can be printed. Editors are kept busy enough chronicling the
results and keeping up to date the various clocks, ladders, kites and
other devices with which they inform their readers of the state
of parties. I was therefore quite hopeful that our performances in
Ballygore would escape notice. They did not. Some miserably efficient
and enterprising reporter strayed into the town on the very evening of
Lalage’s meeting and wrote an account of her torchlight procession. The
whole thing appeared next morning in the paper which he represented.
Other papers copied his paragraphs, and very soon hundreds of them in
all parts of the three kingdoms were making merry over the plight of the
candidates who lay in bed groaning while a piratical young woman took
away their characters. I did not in the least mind being laughed at.
I have always laughed at myself and am quite pleased that other people
should share my amusement. But I greatly feared that complications of
various kinds would follow the publicity which was given to our affairs.
Vittie almost certainly, O’Donoghue probably, would resent being made
to look ridiculous. Hilda’s mother and the Archdeacon might not care for
the way in which Lalage emphasized the joke.
My fellow candidates were the first to object. I received letters from
them both, written by secretaries and signed very shakily, asking me
to cooperate with them in suppressing Lalage. O’Donoghue, who was
apparently not quite so ill as Vittie was, also suggested that we should
publish, over our three names, a dignified rejoinder to the mirth of the
press. He enclosed a rough draft of the dignified rejoinder and invited
criticism and amendment from me. My proper course of action was obvious
enough. I made my nurse reply with a bulletin, dictated by me, signed by
her and McMeekin, to the effect that I was too ill to read letters and
totally incapable of answering them. I gave McMeekin twenty-five pounds
for medical attendance up to date, just before I asked him to sign the
bulletin. I also presented the nurse with a brooch of gold filagree
work, which I had brought home with me from Portugal, intending to give
it to my mother. It would have been churlish of them, afterward, to
refuse to sign my bulletin.
This disposed of Vittie and O’Donoghue for the time. But I knew that
there was more trouble before me. I was scarcely surprised when Canon
Beresford walked into my room one evening at about nine o’clock. He
looked harassed, shaken, and nervous. I asked him at once if he were an
influenza convalescent.
“No,” he said, “I’m not. I wish I were.”
“There are worse things than influenza. I used not to think so at first,
but now I know there are. Why don’t you get it? I suppose you’ve come to
see me in hope of infection.”
“No. I came to warn you. We’ve just this moment arrived and you may
expect us on you to-morrow morning.”
“You and the Archdeacon?”
“No. Thank goodness, nothing so bad as that. The Archdeacon is at home.”
“I wonder at that. I fully expected he’d have been here.”
“He would have been if he could. He wanted to come, but of course it was
impossible. You heard I suppose, that the bishop is dead.”
“No, I didn’t hear. Influenza?”
“Pneumonia, and that ties the Archdeacon.”
“What a providential thing! But you said ‘we.’ Is Thormanby here?”
“No, Thormanby told me yesterday that he’d washed his hands of the whole
affair.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve done,” I said. “It’s by far the most sensible
thing to do. I wonder you didn’t.”
“I tried to,” said the Canon piteously. “I did my best. I have engaged
a berth on a steamer going to Brazil, one that hasn’t got a wireless
telegraphic installation, and I’ve secured a _locum tenens_ for the
parish. But I shan’t be able to go. You can guess why.”
“The Archdeacon?”
The Canon nodded sadly. I did not care to make more inquiries about the
Archdeacon.
“Well,” I said, “if neither he nor Thormanby is with you, who is?”
“Miss Battersby for one. She volunteered.”
I felt relieved. Miss Battersby is never formidable.
“She won’t matter,” I said. “Lalage and Hilda will put her to bed and
keep her there. That’s what they did with her on the way to Lisbon.”
“And Miss Pettigrew,” said the Canon.
“How on earth does she come to be mixed up in it?”
“Your mother telegraphed to her and begged her to come down with us
to see what she could do. She’s supposed to have some influence with
Lalage.”
“What sort of woman is she? I don’t know her personally. Lalage says
she’s the kind of person that you hate and yet can’t help rather loving,
although you’re afraid of her. Is that your impression of her?”
“She has a strongly developed sense of humour,” said the Canon, “and I’m
afraid she’s rather determined.”
“What do you expect to do?”
“I don’t myself expect to do anything,” said the Canon.
“I meant to say what is the ostensible object of the expedition?”
“The Archdeacon spoke of our rescuing Lalage from an equivocal position.”
“You ought to make that man bishop,” I said.
“Miss Battersby kept on assuring us all the way down in the train that
Lalage is a most lovable child, very gentle and tractable if taken the
right way, but high spirited.”
“That won’t help her much, because she’s no nearer now than she was ten
years ago to finding out what is the right way to take Lalage. What are
Miss Pettigrew’s views?”
“She varies,” said the Canon, “between chuckling over your position and
wishing that Lalage was safely married with some babies to look after.
She says there’ll be no peace in Ireland until that happens.”
“That’s an utterly silly scheme. There’s nobody here to marry her except
Vittie, and I’m perfectly certain his aunts wouldn’t let him. He has two
aunts. If that is all Miss Pettigrew has to suggest she might as well
have stopped at home.”
The Canon sighed.
“I’m afraid I must be going,” he said, “I promised Miss Pettigrew that
I’d be back in half an hour. We’re going to see Lalage at once.”
“Lalage will be in bed by the time you get there; if she’s not
organizing another torchlight procession. You’d far better stop where
you are.”
“I’d like to, but----”
“You can get a bed here and send over for your things. Your two ladies
are in the other hotel, I suppose.”
“Yes. We knew you were here and Miss Battersby seemed a little afraid of
catching influenza, so we went to the other.”
“That’s all right. You’ll be quite safe for the night if you stop here.”
“I wish I could, but----”
“You’ll not do any good by talking to Lalage. You know that.”
“I know that of course; but----”
“It won’t be at all pleasant for you when Miss Pettigrew comes out with
that plan of hers for marrying Lalage to Vittie. There’ll be a horrid
row. From what I know of Lalage I feel sure that she’ll resent the
suggestion. There’ll be immense scope for language in the argument which
follows and they’ll all feel freer to speak out if there isn’t a church
dignitary standing there listening.”
“I know all that, but still----”
“You don’t surely mean to say that you _want_ to go and wrangle with
Lalage?”
“Of course not. I hate that kind of thing and always did; but----”
“Out with it, Canon. You stick at that ‘but’ every time.”
“I promised Miss Pettigrew I’d go back.”
“Is that all?”
“Not quite. The fact is--you don’t know Miss Pettigrew, so you won’t
understand.”
“You’re afraid of her?” I said.
“Well, yes, I am. Besides, the Archdeacon said some stiff things to me
before we started, uncommonly stiff things. Stiff isn’t the word I want,
but you’ll probably know what I mean.”
“Prickly,” I suggested.
“Yes, prickly. Prickly things about the responsibility of fatherhood and
the authority of parents. I really must go.”
“Very well. If you must, you must, of course. But don’t drag me into
it. Remember that I’ve got influenza and if Miss Pettigrew and Miss
Battersby come here I’ll infect them. I rely on you to nip in the bud
any suggestion that I’ve anything to do with the affair one way or
the other. I tell you plainly that I’d rather see Lalage heading a
torchlight procession every day in the week than married to Vittie.”
“The Archdeacon says that you are the person chiefly responsible for
what he calls Lalage’s compromising position.”
“The Archdeacon may say what he likes. I’m not responsible. Good
heavens, Canon, how can you suppose for an instant that anybody could,
be responsible for Lalage?”
“I didn’t suppose it. I was only quoting the Archdeacon.”
“I wish to goodness the Archdeacon would mind his own business!”
“That’s what he’s doing,” said the Canon. “If he wasn’t he’d be here
now. He wanted to come. If the poor old bishop had held out another week
he would have come.”
The Canon left me after that.