Lalage's Lovers Part 13

"At the same time I am unwilling to proceed to extremities against her or either of the others. They are all young and will learn sense in due time. It occurs to me that perhaps the simplest way out of the difficulty will be for you to withdraw the guarantee of financial a.s.sistance which, as I understand, you have given. If you are prepared to support me in this way I may safely promise that no further notice of the absurd publication will be taken by the college authorities. There are rumours of libel actions pending, but I think we may disregard them.

No damages can be obtained from you beyond the amount of your original guarantee, which, I understand, did not amount to more than 30. All the other defendants are minors, dependent entirely on their parents for their support, so the aggrieved parties will probably not proceed far with their action. If you agree to stop supplies and so prevent the possibility of further publication, I shall use my influence to have the whole affair hushed up."

There remained only the fifth letter; the second of those which bore a typewritten address. I opened it and found that it came from Lalage. She wrote:

"We have only been able, to hire this typewriter for one week so I'm practising hard at it. That is why I'm typing this letter. Please excuse mistakes."

There were a good many mistakes but I excused them.

"Your copy of the _Anti-Tommy-Rot Gazette_ went to you first thing.

Hilda nearly forgot to post it, but didn't quite, which was lucky, for all the rest were seized from us, except nine, which Selby-Harrison gave to a news agent, who sold them but didn't pay us, though he may yet.

Hard Luck, I call that. Don't you? Some a.s.s sent a copy, marked, to the Prov. and the next thing we knew was that both offices were raided by college porters and our property stolen by force. We were furious, but before we could take any action--we were going to consult a lawyer, a K.C., whose son happens to be a friend of Selby-Harrison's on account of being captain of Trinity 3rd A (hockey), in which Selby-Harrison plays halfback--our doom was upon us and Selby-Harrison was sent for by the Prov. He came back shattered, like that telescope man who got caught by the Inquisition, having spent hours on the rack and nearly had his face eaten off as well. Our turn came next. We (Hilda and I) had just time to dart off on top of a tram to Trinity Hall (that's where we have our rooms), you know, of course, and jump into our best frocks before 1 P.M., the hour of our summons to the august presence. Hilda's is a tussore silk, frightfully sweet, and I had a blouse with a lot of Carrickmacross lace on it.

"Hilda was in a pea-blue funk when it came to the moment and kept pulling at her left glove until she tore the b.u.t.ton off. I was a bit jellyfishy myself down the back; but I needn't have been. The minute I got into the room I could see that the old Prov. was a perfect pet and didn't really mean anything, though he tried to look as if he did."

I have always disliked the modern system of co-education and after reading Lalage's letter I was strongly inclined to agree with the bishop who wants to stamp it out, beginning with the infant schools. I do not agree with his reasoning. My objection--it applies particularly to the admission of grown-up young women to universities--is that even-handed justice is never administered. The girls get off cheap. Some day, perhaps, we shall have a lady presiding as provost over one of our great universities. Then the inequalities of our present arrangements will be balanced by others. The Lalages and Hildas of those days will spend hours upon the rack. If they are fools enough to jump into tussore frocks and blouses with Carrickmacross lace on them before being admitted to the august presence, they will have their faces eaten off as well. On the other hand, the Selby-Harrisons, if reasonably good-looking young men, will find the Prov. a perfect pet, who doesn't really mean anything; who, perhaps, will not even try to look as if she does.

"He jawed a lot, of course, but we did not mind that a bit; at least I didn't, for I knew he only did it because he had to. In the end he asked us to promise not to annoy bishops any more. Hilda promised. Rather base of her, I call it; but by that time she had dragged the second b.u.t.ton off her glove and would have promised simply anything. I stuck on and said I wouldn't. He seemed a bit put out, and he'd been such a dear about the whole thing that I hated having to refuse him. You know the sort of way you feel when somebody, that you want frightfully to do things for, will clamour on for what you know is wrong. That's the way I was and at last I couldn't stand it any more, so I said I'd promise on condition that the bishops all undertook not to say any more silly things except in church. That was as far as I could well go and I thought the Prov. would have jumped at the offer. Instead of which he first scowled in a very peculiar way and then his face all wrinkled up and got quite red so that I thought he was going to get some kind of fit. Without saying another word he in a sort of way hustled us out of the room. That was the only really rude thing he did to us; but Selby-Harrison sticks to it that he was perfectly awful to him. We don't quite know what will happen next, but both the other two think that we'd better not have the college porters arrested for stealing the magazines.

I'd like to, but, of course, they are two to one. Selby-Harrison is looking like a sick turkey and is constantly sighing. He says he thinks he'll have to be a doctor now. He had meant to go into the Divinity School and be ordained but after what the Provost said to him he doesn't see how he can. Rather rough luck on him, having to fall back on the medical; but I don't think he'll mind much in the end, except that he doubts whether his father can afford the fees. That will be a difficulty, if true."

I wonder what the fees amount to. I am inclined to think that it is my duty to see Selby-Harrison through. I should not like to think of his whole career being wrecked. At the same time I am inclined to think that it would be waste to turn him into a doctor. He ought to make his mark as a chartered accountant if he gets a chance. I shall speak to my mother about him when I go home and see what she suggests.

"Hilda's mother has written saying that Hilda is not to spend next hols with me; which was all arranged before the fuss began. I can't see what objection she can possibly have. Anyhow it is frightful tyranny and of course we don't mean to stand it. Selby-Harrison says that perhaps if you wrote to her she would give in; but I don't want you to do this. I hate crawling, especially to Hilda's mother and people like that, but if you like to do it you can. Selby-Harrison says that your mother being an honourable, will make a lot of difference, though I don't see what that has to do with me. Still if you think it will be any use there's no reason why you shouldn't mention it. Hilda has cried buckets full since the letter came."

I am sorry for Hilda but I shall not write to her mother. I have enough on my hands without that. Besides, as Lalage says, I do not see the connection between my mother's position in society and Hilda's mother's schemes for her daughter's holidays.

"P.S. I hope you got your 8 per cent, all right. I told Selby-Harrison to send it. We were all three stony at the time and had to borrow it from another girl who is going in for logic honours, but she's quite rich, so it doesn't matter. Hilda didn't want to, and said she'd give her two gold safety pins, which she got last Christmas, if Selby-Harrison would p.a.w.n them for her. But he wouldn't, and I thought it was hardly worth while for the sake of one and fourpence, besides making her mother more furious than ever. We ought not to have had to borrow more than fourpence, for Selby-Harrison had a shilling the night before, but went and spent it on having a Turkish bath. Rather a rotten thing to do, I think, when we owed it. But he said he'd forgotten about the 8 per cent, and had to have the Turkish bath on account of the way the Prov. talked to him. That was yesterday, of course, not to-day."

I was glad when I read this that I had made out my cheque for the whole ten pounds. Selby-Harrison will be in a position to pay the other girl back. She may be quite rich, but she will not like being done out of her money. The fact that she is going in for logic honours shows me that she has a precise kind of mind and a good deal of quiet determination.

I should be surprised if she submitted meekly to the loss of one and fourpence.

"P.P.S. I always forget to tell you that p.u.s.s.y (Miss Battersby) says she left a hat pin with a silver swallow on the end of it in that first hotel in Lisbon. Would you mind going in the next day you are pa.s.sing and asking for it? I hate to bother you and I wouldn't, only that we don't any of us remember the name of the hotel and so can't write."

I rather shrank from asking that hotel keeper for a pin supposed to have been dropped in one of his bedrooms during the previous August. But Miss Battersby, at least, does not deserve to suffer. I spent a long afternoon going round the jewellers' shops in Lisbon and in the end secured a pin with two silver doves and a heart on it. I sent this to Miss Battersby and explained that it was the nearest thing to her original swallow which the hotel keeper had been able to find. She is, fortunately, quite an easy person to please. She wrote thanking me for the trouble I had taken.

CHAPTER IX

My friends were singularly successful in their negotiations on my behalf. Not a single bishop proceeded with his libel action against Lalage. Nor was I forced to buy any of them off by building even a small cathedral. I attribute our escape from their vengeance entirely to the Provost. His clear statement of the impossibility of obtaining damages by any legal process must have had its effect.

Gossip too died away with remarkable suddenness. I heard afterward that old Tollerton got rapidly worse and succ.u.mbed to his disease, whatever it was, very shortly after his last interview with my uncle. I have no doubt that his death had a good deal to do with the decay of public interest in the _Anti-Tommy-Rot Gazette_. The Archdeacon, who also was inclined to talk a good deal, had his mind distracted by other events.

The bishop of our diocese had a paralytic stroke. He was not one of those whom Lalage libelled, so the blame for his misfortune cannot be laid on us. The Archdeacon was, in consequence, very fully occupied in the management of diocesan affairs and forgot all about the _Gazette_.

Canon Beresford ventured back to his parish after a stay of six weeks in Wick. He would not have dared to return if there had been the slightest chance of the Archdeacon's reverting to the painful subject in conversation. Had there been even the slightest reference to it in the newspapers, Canon Beresford, instead of returning home, would have gone farther afield to an Orkney Island or the Shetland group, or, perhaps, to one of those called Faroe, which do not appear on ordinary maps but are believed by geographers to exist. Thus when my mother, in the course of one of her letters, mentioned casually that Canon Beresford had lunched with her, I knew, as Noah did when the dove no longer returned to him, that the flood had abated.

My uncle was also successful, too successful, in his effort. His definite denial of my connection with the _Anti-Tommy-Rot Gazette_ obtained credence with the Committee of the Conservative and Unionist Parliamentary a.s.sociation. My name retained its place on their books and they continued to put me forward as a candidate for the East Connor division of Down at the General Election.

I only found this fact out by degrees, for n.o.body seemed to think it worth while to tell me. My uncle said afterward that my ignorance, in which he found it very difficult to believe, was entirely my own fault.

I cannot deny this: though I still hold that I ought to have been plainly informed of my destiny and not left to infer it from the figures in the accounts which were sent to me from time to time. When I went to Portugal I left my money affairs very much in the hands of my mother and my uncle. I had what I wanted. They spent what they thought right in the management of my estate, in subscriptions and so forth. The accounts which they sent me, very different indeed from the spirited statements of Selby-Harrison, bored me, and I did not realize for some time that I was subscribing handsomely to a large number of local objects in places of which I had never even heard the names. I now know that they are towns and villages in the East Connor division of Down, and my uncle has told me that this kind of expenditure is called nursing the const.i.tuency.

The first definite news of my candidature came to me, curiously enough, from Lalage. She wrote me a letter during the Christmas holidays:

"There was a party (flappers, with dancing and a sit-down supper, not a Christmas tree) at Thormanby Park last night. I got a bit fed up with 'the dear girls' (Cattersby's expression) at about nine o'clock and slipped off with Hilda in hope of a cigarette. (Hilda's mother's cook got scarlatina, so she had to give in about Hilda coming here for the hols after all. Rather a climb down for her, I should say.) It was jolly lucky we did, as it turned out, though we didn't succeed in getting the whiff. Lord Thormanby and the Archdeacon were in the smoking room, so we pretended we'd come to look for Hilda's pocket snuffler. The Archdeacon came to the party with a niece, in a green dress, who's over from London, and stiff with sw.a.n.k, though what about I don't know, for she can't play hockey a bit, has only read the most rotten books, and isn't much to look at, though the green dress is rather sweet, with a lace yoke and sequins on the skirt. Why didn't you tell me you were going into Parliament? I'm frightfully keen on elections and mean to go and help you. So does Hilda now that she knows about it, and I wrote to Selby-Harrison this morning. We've changed the name of the society to the a.s.sociation for the Suppression of Public Lying (A.S.P.L.). Rather appropriate, isn't it, with a general election just coming on? Of course you're still a life member. The change of name isn't a const.i.tutional alteration. Selby-Harrison made sure of that before we did it, so it doesn't break up the continuity, which is most important for us all.

Lord Thormanby and the Archdeacon were jawing away like anything while we were searching about for the hanker, and took no notice of us, although the Archdeacon is frightfully polite now as a rule, quite different from what he used to be. They said the election was a soft thing for you unless somebody went and put up a third man. I rather hope they will, don't you? Dead certs are so rottenly unsporting. I'll have a meeting of the committee as soon as I get back to Dublin. This will be just the chance we want, for we haven't had any sort of a look in since they suppressed the _Gazette._"

I put this letter of Lalage's aside and did not answer it for some time.

I thought that she and Hilda might have misunderstood what my uncle and the Archdeacon were saying. I did not regard it as possible that an important matter of the kind should be settled without my knowing anything about it; and I expected that Lalage would find out her mistake for herself. It turned out in the end that she had not made a mistake.

Early in January I got three letters, all marked urgent. One was from my uncle, one from the secretary of the Conservative and Unionist a.s.sociation and one from a Mr. t.i.therington, who seemed to be a person of some importance in the East Connor division of County Down. They all three told me the same news. I had been unanimously chosen by the local a.s.sociation as Conservative candidate at the forthcoming general election. They all insisted that I should go home at once. I did so, but before starting I answered Lalage's letter. I foresaw that the active a.s.sistance of the a.s.sociation for the Suppression of Public Lying in the campaign before me might have very complicated results, and would almost certainly bring on worry. The local conservative a.s.sociation, for instance, might not care for Lalage. Hardly any local conservative a.s.sociation would. Mr. t.i.therington might not hit it off with Selby-Harrison, and I realized from the way he wrote, that Mr.

t.i.therington was a man of strong character. I worded my letter to Lalage very carefully. I did not want to hurt her feelings by refusing an offer which was kindly meant.

I wrote,

"I need scarcely tell you, how gladly I should welcome the a.s.sistance offered by the A.S.P.L., if I had nothing but my own feelings to consider. Speeches from you and Hilda would brighten up what threatens to be a dull affair. Selby-Harrison's advice would be invaluable. But I cannot, in fairness to others, accept the offer unconditionally.

Selby-Harrison's father ought to be consulted. He has already been put to great expense through his son's expulsion from the Divinity School, and I would not like, now that he has, I suppose, paid some, at least, of the fees for medical training, to put him to fresh expense by involving his son in an enterprise which may very well result in his being driven from the dissecting room. Then we must think of Hilda's mother. If she insisted on Miss Battersby accompanying her daughter to Portugal in the capacity of chaperon, she is almost certain to have prejudices against electioneering as a sport for young girls.

"Perhaps circ.u.mstances have altered since I last heard from you in such a way as to make the consultations I suggest unnecessary. Mr.

Selby-Harrison senior and Hilda's mother may both have died, prematurely worn out by great anxiety. In that case I do not press for any consideration of their wishes. But if they still linger on I should particularly wish to obtain their approval before definitely accepting the offer of the A.S.P.L."

I thought that a good letter. It was possible that Mr. Selby-Harrison had died, but I felt sure, judging from what I had heard of her, that Hilda's mother was a woman of vigour and determination who would live as long as was humanly possible. I was not even slightly disquieted by a telegram handed to me just before I left Lisbon.

"Letter received. Scruples strictly respected. Other arrangements in contemplation.

"Lalage."

I forgot all about the a.s.sociation for the Suppression of Public Lying and its offer of help when I arrived in Ireland. Mr. t.i.therington came up to Dublin to meet me and showed every sign of keeping me very busy indeed. He turned out to be a timber merchant by profession, who organized elections by way of recreation whenever opportunity offered. I was told in the office of the Conservative and Unionist a.s.sociation that no man living was more crafty in electioneering than Mr. t.i.therington, and that I should do well to trust myself entirely to his guidance. I made up my mind to do so. My uncle who also met me in Dublin, had been making inquiries of his own about Mr. t.i.therington and gave me the results of them in series of phrases which, I felt sure, he had picked up from somebody else. "t.i.therington," he said, "has his finger on the pulse of the const.i.tuency." "There isn't a trick of the trade but t.i.therington is thoroughly up to it." "For taking the wind out of the sails of the other side t.i.therington is absolutely A1." All this confirmed me in my determination to follow Mr. t.i.therington, blindfold.

The first time I met him he told me that we were going to have a sharp contest and gave me the impression that he was greatly pleased. A third candidate had taken the field, a man in himself despicable, whose election was an impossibility; but capable perhaps of detaching from me a number of votes sufficient to put the Nationalist in the majority.

"And O'Donoghue, let me tell you," said t.i.therington, "is a smart man and a right good speaker."

"I'm not," I said.

"I can see that."

I do not profess to know how he saw it. So far as I know, inability to make speeches does not show on a man's face, and t.i.therington had no other means of judging at that time except the appearance of my face. No one in fact, not even my mother, could have been sure then that I was a bad speaker. I had never spoken at a public meeting.

"But," said t.i.therington, "we'll pull you through all right. That blackguard Vittie can't poll more than a couple of hundred."

"Vittie," I said "is, I suppose, the tertium quid, not the Nationalist.

I'm sorry to trouble you with inquiries of this kind, but in case of accident it's better for me to know exactly who my opponents are."

"He calls himself a Liberal. He's going baldheaded for some temperance fad and is backed by a score or so of Presbyterian ministers. We'll have to call canny about temperance."

"If you want me to wear any kind of gla.s.s b.u.t.ton on the lapel of my coat, I'll do it; but I'm not going to sign a total abstinence pledge.

I'd rather not be elected."

t.i.therington was himself drinking whiskey and water while we talked. He grinned broadly and I felt rea.s.sured. We had dined together in my hotel, and t.i.therington had consumed the greater part of a bottle of champagne, a gla.s.s of port, and a liqueur with his coffee. It was after dinner that he demanded whiskey and water. It seemed unlikely that he would ask me even to wear a b.u.t.ton.

"As we're on the subject of temperance," he said, "you may as well sign a couple of letters. I have them ready for you and I can post them as I go home to-night." He picked up a despatch box which he had brought with him and kept beside him during dinner. It gave me a shock to see the box opened. It actually overflowed with papers and I felt sure that they all concerned my election. t.i.therington tossed several bundles of them aside, and came at last upon a small parcel kept together by an elastic band.