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.”
“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.