“The only thing you did not try,” I said, “was what the Archdeacon recommended, a firm hand.”
“The Archdeacon never married,” said the Canon. “I’m often sorry he didn’t. He wouldn’t say things like that if he had a child of his own.”
CHAPTER XVII
There was a great deal of angry feeling in Ballygore and indeed all through the constituency when Lalage went home. It was generally believed that O’Donoghue, Vittie, and I had somehow driven her away, but this was quite unjust to us and we all three felt it. We felt it particularly when, one night at about twelve o’clock, a large crowd visited us in turn and groaned under our windows. O’Donoghue and Vittie, with a view to ingratiating themselves with the electors, wrote letters to the papers solemnly declaring that they sincerely wished Lalage to return. Nobody believed them. Lalage’s teaching had sunk so deep into the popular mind that nobody would have believed anything O’Donoghue and Vittie said even if they had sworn its truth. Titherington, who was beginning to recover, published a counter blast to their letters. He was always quick to seize opportunities and he hoped to increase my popularity by associating me closely with Lalage. He said that I had originally brought her to Ballygore and he left it to be understood that I was an ardent member of the Association for the Suppression of Public Lying. Unfortunately nobody believed him. Lalage’s crusade had produced an extraordinary effect. Nobody any longer believed anything, not even the advertisements. My nurse, among others, became affected with the prevailing feeling of scepticism and refused to accept my word for it that I was still seriously ill. Even when I succeeded, by placing it against the hot water bottle in the bottom of my bed, in running up her thermometer to 103 degrees, she merely smiled. And yet a temperature of that kind ought to have convinced her that I really had violent pains somewhere.
The election itself showed unmistakably the popular hatred of public lying. There were just over four thousand electors in the division, but only 530 of them recorded their votes. A good many more, nearly a thousand more, went to the polling booths and deliberately spoiled their voting papers. The returning officer, who kindly came round to my hotel to announce the result, told me that he had never seen so many spoiled votes at any election. The usual way of invalidating the voting paper was to bracket the three names and write “All of them liars” across the paper. Sometimes the word “liars” was qualified by a profane adjective. Sometimes distinctions were made between the candidates and one of us was declared to be a more skilful or determined liar than the other two. O’Donoghue was sometimes placed in the position of the superlative degree of comparison. So was I. But Vittie suffered most frequently in this way. Lalage had always displayed a special virulence in dealing with Vittie’s public utterances. The remaining voters, 2470 of them or thereabouts, made a silent protest against our deceitfulness by staying away from the polling booths altogether.
O’Donoghue was elected. He secured 262 of the votes which were not spoiled. I ran him very close, having 260 votes to my credit. Vittie came a bad third, with only eight votes. Vittie, as Titherington told me from the first, never had a chance of success. He was only nominated in the hope that he might take some votes away from me. I hope his friends were satisfied with the result. Three of his eight votes would have given me a majority. Titherington wrote me a long letter some time afterward, as soon, in fact, as he was well enough to do sums. He said that originally, before Lalage came on the scene, I had 1800 firm and reliable supporters, men who would have walked miles through snowstorms to cast their votes for me. O’Donoghue had about the same number who would have acted with equal self-denial on his behalf. Vittie was tolerably sure of two hundred voters and there were about two hundred others who hesitated between Vittie and me, but would rather cut off their right hands than vote for O’Donoghue. I ought, therefore, to have been elected, and I would have been elected, if Lalage had not turned the minds of the voters away from serious political thought. “I do not know,” Titherington wrote in a sort of parenthesis, “whether these women hope to advance their cause by tactics of this kind. If they do they are making a bad mistake. No right-thinking man will ever consent to the enfranchisement of a sex capable of treating political life with the levity displayed here by Miss Beresford.” It is very curious how hard Titherington finds it to believe that he has made a mistake. He will probably go down to his grave maintaining that the letters A.S.P.L. stand for woman’s suffrage, although I pointed out to him more than once that they do not.
The latter part of Titherington’s letter was devoted to a carefully reasoned explanation of the actual victory of O’Donoghue. He accounted for it in two ways. O’Donoghue’s supporters, being inferior in education and general intelligence to mine, were less likely to be affected by new and heretical doctrines such as Lalage’s. A certain amount of mental activity is required in order to go wrong. Also, Lalage’s professed admiration for truth made its strongest appeal to my supporters, because O’Donoghue’s friends were naturally addicted to lying and loved falsehood for its own sake. My side was, in fact, beaten—I have noticed that this is the case in many elections—because it was intellectually and morally the better side. This theory would have been very consoling to me if I had wanted consolation. I did not. I was far from grudging O’Donoghue his victory. He, so far as I can learn, is just the man to enjoy hearing other people make long speeches. I have never developed a taste for that form of amusement.
The day after the declaration of the result of the election a really serious misfortune befell me. McMeekin himself took influenza. There was a time when I wished very much to hear that he was writhing in the grip of the disease. But those feelings had long passed away from my mind. I no longer wished any ill to McMeekin. I valued him highly as a medical attendant, and I particularly needed his skill just when he was snatched away from me, because my nurse was becoming restive. She hinted at first, and then roundly asserted that I was perfectly well. Nothing but McMeekin’s determined diagnosis of obscure affections of my heart, lungs, and viscera kept her to her duties. She made more than one attempt to take me out for a drive. I resisted her, knowing that a drive would, in the end, take me to the railway station and from that home to be embroiled in the contest between Lalage and the Diocesan Synod. I had a letter from my mother urging me to return home at once and hinting at the possibility of unpleasantness over the election of the new bishop. This made me the more determined to stay where I was, and so McMeekin’s illness was a very serious blow to me.
I satisfied myself by inquiry that he was not likely to get well immediately and then I sent for another doctor. This man turned out to be one of my original supporters and I think his feelings must have been hurt by my calling in McMeekin. He had also, I could see, been greatly influenced by Lalage. He told me, with insulting directness of speech, that there was nothing the matter with me. I could not remember the names of the diseases which McMeekin said I had or might develop. The nurse, who could have remembered them if she liked, would not. The new doctor, an aggressive, red-faced young man, repeated his statement that I was perfectly well. He emphasized it by refusing to take a fee. My nurse, with evident delight, packed her box and left by the next train. After that there was nothing for me but to go home.