Lalage's Lovers Part 25

"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 t.i.therington. Lalage's proceedings must be stopped at once.

CHAPTER XV

I wrote the first page of a letter to the Archdeacon and expressed myself, so far as I could in that limited s.p.a.ce, strongly. I gave him to understand that Lalage must be either enticed or forced to leave Bally-gore. I intended to go onto a description of the sort of things Lalage had been doing, of t.i.therington'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 ca.n.a.ls. 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 a.s.saults 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, t.i.therington 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.

t.i.therington, 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 t.i.therington'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 pa.s.sing 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 Bra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 "G.o.d 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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 pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuencies 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 hara.s.sed, 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 _loc.u.m 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."