Lalage's Lovers Part 20

The mention of Lalage reminded me that the meeting was the occasion of her first speech.

I found myself beginning to take a slight interest in what t.i.therington was saying. It did not really matter to me how things had gone, for I knew that I was going to die almost at once. But even with that prospect before me I wanted to hear how Lalage's maiden speech had been received.

"Did Miss Beresford speak at the meeting?" I asked.

The nurse came over to my bed and insisted on slipping her thermometer under my arm. It was a useless and insulting thing to do, but I bore it in silence because I wanted to hear about Lalage's speech. t.i.therington did not answer at once, and when he did it was in an unsatisfactory way.

"Oh, she spoke all right," he said.

"You may just as well tell me the truth."

"The speech was a good speech, I'll not deny that, a thundering good speech."

The nurse came at me again and retrieved her abominable thermometer.

She twisted it about in the light of the lamp and then whispered to t.i.therington.

"Don't shuffle," I said to him. "I can see perfectly well that you're keeping something back from me. Did McMeekin insult Miss Beresford in any way? For if he did----"

"Not at all," said t.i.therington. "But I've been talking long enough.

I'll tell you all the rest to-morrow."

Without giving me a chance of protesting he left the room. I felt that I was going to break down again; but I restrained myself and told the nurse plainly what I thought of her.

"I don't know," I said, "whether it is in accordance with the etiquette of your profession to thwart the wishes of a dying man, but that's what you've just done. You know perfectly well that I shall not be alive to-morrow morning and you could see that the only thing I really wanted was to hear something about the meeting. Even a murderer is given some indulgence on the morning of his execution. But just because I have, through no fault of my own, contracted a disease which neither you nor McMeekin know how to cure, I am not allowed to ask a simple question.

You may think, I have no doubt you do think, that you have acted with firmness and tact. In reality you have been guilty of blood-curdling cruelty of a kind probably unmatched in the annals of the Spanish Inquisition."

I think my words produced a good deal of effect on her. She did not attempt to make any answer; but she covered up my shoulder with the bedclothes. I shook them off again at once and scowled at her with such bitterness that she left my bedside and sat down near the fire. I saw that she was watching me, so again pretended to go to sleep.

McMeekin came to see me next morning, and had the effrontery to repeat the statement that I was better. I was not, and I told him so distinctly. After he was gone t.i.therington came with a large bag in his hand. He sent the nurse out of the room and unpacked the bag. He took out of it a dozen small bottles of champagne. He locked the door and then we drank one of the bottles between us. t.i.therington used my medicine gla.s.s. I had the tumbler off the wash-hand-stand. The nurse knocked at the door before we had finished. But t.i.therington, with a rudeness which made me really like him, again told her to go away because we were talking business. After I had drunk the champagne I began to feel that McMeekin might have been right after all. I was slightly better. t.i.therington put the empty bottle in the pocket of his overcoat and packed up the eleven full bottles in the bag again. He locked the bag and then pushed it as far as he could under my bed with his foot. He knew, just as well as I did, that either the nurse or McMeekin would steal the champagne if they saw it lying about.

"Now," he said, "you're not feeling so chippy."

"No, I'm not. Tell me about Miss Beresford's speech."

"It began well," said t.i.therington. "It began infernally well. She stood up and, without by your leave or with your leave, said that all politicians were d.a.m.ned liars."

"d.a.m.ned?"

"Well, b.l.o.o.d.y," said t.i.therington, with the air of a man who makes a concession.

"Was Hilda there?"

"She was, cheering like mad, the same as the rest of us."

"I'm sorry for that. Hilda is, or was, a nice, innocent girl. Her mother won't like her hearing that sort of language."

"b.l.o.o.d.y wasn't the word she used," said t.i.therington, "but she gave us all the impression that it was what she meant!"

"Go on."

"Of course I thought, in fact we all thought, that she was referring to Vittie and O'Donoghue, especially Vittie. The boys at the back of the hall, who hate Vittie worse than the devil, nearly raised the roof off with the way they shouted. I could see that McMeekin didn't half like it. He's rather given himself away by supporting Vittie. Well, as long as the cheering went on Miss Beresford stood and smiled at them. She's a remarkably well set up girl so the boys went on cheering just for the pleasure of looking at her. When they couldn't cheer any more she started off to prove what she said. She began with O'Donoghue and she got in on him. She had a list as long as your arm of the whoppers he and the rest of that pack of blackguards are perpetually ramming down people's throats. Home Rule, you know, and all that sort of blasted rot.

Then she took the skin off Vittie for about ten minutes. Man, but it would have done you good to hear her. The most innocent sort of remark Vittie ever made in his life she got a twist on it so that it came out a regular howling lie. She finished him off by saying that Ananias and Sapphira were a gentleman and a lady compared to the ordinary Liberal, because they had the decency to drop down dead when they'd finished, whereas Vittie's friends simply went on and told more. By that time there wasn't one in the hall could do more than croak, they'd got so hoa.r.s.e with all the cheering. I might have been in a bath myself with the way the sweat was running off me, hot sweat."

t.i.therington paused, for the nurse knocked at the door again. This time he got up and let her in. Then he went on with his story.

"The next minute," he said, "it was frozen on me."

"The sweat?"

t.i.therington nodded.

"Go on," I said.

"She went on all right. You'll hardly believe it, but when she'd finished with O'Donoghue and Vittie she went on to----"

"Me, I suppose."

"No. Me," said t.i.therington. "She said she didn't blame you in the least because she didn't think you had sense enough to lie like a real politician, and that those two letters about the Temperance Question----"

"She'd got ahold of those?"

"They were in the papers, of course, and she said I'd written them.

Well, for just half a minute I wasn't quite sure whether the boys were going to rush the platform or not. There wouldn't have been much left of Miss Beresford if they had. But she's a d.a.m.ned good-looking girl. That saved her. Instead of mobbing her every man in the place started to laugh. I tell you there were fellows there with st.i.tches in their sides from laughing so that they'd have given a five-pound note to be able to stop. But they couldn't. Every time they looked at me and saw me sitting there with a kind of a cast-iron grin on my face--and every time they looked at the two temperance secretaries who were gaping like stuck pigs, they started off laughing again. Charlie Sanderson, the butcher, who's a stoutish kind of man, tumbled off his chair and might have broken his neck. I never saw such a scene in my life."

I saw the nurse poking about to find her thermometer. t.i.therington saw her too and knew what was coming.

"It was all well enough for once," he said, "but we can't have it again."

"How do you propose to stop it?" I asked.

"My idea," said t.i.therington, "is that you should see her and explain to her that we've had enough of that sort of thing and that for the future she'd better stick entirely to Vittie."

I am always glad to see Lalage. Nothing, even in my miserable condition, would have pleased me better than a visit from her, But I am not prepared at any time to explain things to her, especially when the explanation is meant to influence her action. I am particularly unfitted for the task when I am in a state of convalescence. I interrupted t.i.therington.

"Nurse," I said, "have you got that thermometer? I'm nearly sure my temperature is up again."

t.i.therington scowled, but he knew he was helpless. As he left the room he stopped for a moment and turned to me. "What beats me about the whole performance," he said, "is that she never said a single word about woman's suffrage from start to finish. I never met one of that lot before who could keep off the subject for as much as ten minutes at a time even in private conversation."

CHAPTER XIII

I entered next day on what proved to be the most disagreeable stage of my illness. McMeekin called on me in the morning. He performed some silly tricks with a stethoscope and felt my pulse with an air of rapt attention which did not in the least deceive me. Then he intimated that I might sit up for an hour or two after luncheon. The way he made this announcement was irritating enough. Instead of saying straightforwardly, "You can get out of bed if you like," or words to that effect, he smirked at the nurse and said to her, "I think we may be allowed to sit up in a nice comfortable armchair for our afternoon tea to-day." But the permission itself was far worse than the manner in which it was given. I did not in the least want to get up. Bed was beginning to feel tolerably comfortable. I hated the thought of an armchair. I hated still more bitterly the idea of having to walk across the floor. I suppose McMeekin saw by my face that I did not want to get up. He tried, after his own foolish fas.h.i.+on, to cheer and encourage me.

"Poor Vittie's got it too," he said. "I was called in to see him last night."

"Influenza?"