“You’ll be glad to hear that I entered Trinity College last October and since then have been enjoying ‘the spacious times of great Elizabeth.’ Our society, girls, is called the Elizabethan. That’s the point of the quotation.”
I glanced at the head of the paper, but failed to see how A.T.R.S. could possibly stand for Elizabethan Society. Lalage’s letter continued:
“There is nothing equal to a university life for broadening out the mind and enlarging one’s horizon. I have just founded a new society called the A.T.R.S., and the committee (Hilda, myself, and a boy called Selby-Harrison, who got a junior ex: and is very clever) is on the lookout for members, subscription—a year, paid in advance, or life members one pound. Our object is to check by every legitimate means the spread of tommyrot in this country and the world generally. There is a great deal too much of it and something ought to be done to make people jolly well ashamed of themselves before it is too late. If the matter is not taken in hand vigorously the country will be submerged and all sensible people will die.”
I began to get at the meaning of the red letters. T.R. S. plainly stood for Tommy Rot Society. The preliminary “A” could indicate nothing else but the particle anti. The prospect before us, if Lalage is anything of a judge, and I suppose she must be, is sufficiently serious to justify the existence of the society.
“Each member of the committee is pledged to expose in the press by means of scathing articles, and thus hound out of public life any man, whatever his position, who is caught talking tommyrot. This will be done anonymously, so as to establish a reign of terror under which no man of any eminence will feel safe. The committee intends to begin with bishops of all denominations. I thought this would interest you now that you are an ambassador and engaged in fostering international complications.”
I read this with a feeling of discomfort similar to that of the gentleman who set the examination paper on St. Paul’s epistles. There, seemed to me to be a veiled threat in the last sentence. The committee intended to begin with bishops, but there cannot be above sixty or seventy bishops in Ireland altogether, even including the ex-moderators of the Presbyterian General Assembly, not more than a hundred. An energetic committee would certainly be able to deal with them in less than three months. Whose turn would come next? Quite possibly the diplomatists. I do not particularly object to the prospect of being hounded out of public life by means of scathing articles; but I feel that I should not be the only victim. Some of the others would certainly resent Lalage’s action and then there would be a fuss. I have always hated fuss of any kind.
“Only members of the committee are expected to take part in the active propaganda of the society. Ordinary members merely subscribe. I am sending this appeal to father, Lord Thormanby, Miss Battersby, who is still there, and the Archdeacon, as well as to you.”
I breathed a sigh of great relief. Lalage was not threatening my colleagues with exposure in the press.
She was merely asking for a subscription. I wrote at once, warmly commending the objects and methods of the society. I enclosed a cheque for five pounds with a request that I should be enrolled as five ordinary life members. I underlined the word ordinary, and added a postscript in which I expressly refused to act on the committee even if elected. Lalage did not answer this letter or acknowledge the cheque. I suppose the bishops kept her very busy.
In August that year I met Lalage again for the first time since I had seen her off to school from the station at Drumbo. I did not recognize her at first. Four years make a great difference in a girl when she is passing from the age of fourteen onward. Besides, I was not in the least expecting to see her.