Lalage's Lovers

by George A. Birmingham

I thought that would outrage Titherington and drive him from my room. But he made allowances for my condition and refused to take offence.

“McMeekin,” he said, “sets up to be a blasted Radical, and is Vittie’s strongest supporter.”

“In that case send for him at once. He’ll probably poison me on purpose and then this will be over.”

“He’s not such an idiot as to do that. He knows that if anything happened to you we’d get another candidate.”

Titherington’s tone suggested that the other candidate would certainly be my superior and that Vittie’s chances against me were better than they would be against any one else. I turned round with a groan and lay with my face to the wall. Titherington went on talking.

“If you give McMeekin a good fee,” he said, “say a couple of guineas, he’ll think twice about taking the chair at Vittie’s meeting on the twenty-fourth. I don’t see why he shouldn’t pay you a visit every day from this to the election, and that, at two guineas a time, ought to shut his mouth if it doesn’t actually secure his vote.”

I twisted my neck round and scowled at Titherington. He left the room without shutting the door. I spent the next hour in hoping vehemently that he would get the influenza himself. I would have gone on hoping this if I had not been interrupted by the arrival of McMeekin. He did all the usual things with stethoscopes and thermometers and he asked me all the usual offensive questions. It seemed to me that he spent far more than the usual time over this revolting ritual. I kept as firm a grip on my temper as I could and as soon as he had finished asked him in a perfectly calm and reasonable tone to be kind enough to put me out of my misery at once with prussic acid. Instead of doing what I asked or making any kind of sane excuse for refusing, he said he would telegraph to Dublin for a nurse. She could not, he seemed to think, arrive until the next day, so he said he would take a bed in the hotel and look after me himself during the night. This was more than I, or any one else, could stand. I saw the necessity for making a determined effort.

“I am,” I said, “perfectly well. Except for a slight cold in the head which makes me a bit stupid there’s nothing the matter with me. I intend to get up at once and go out canvassing. Would you mind ringing the bell and asking for some hot water?”

McMeekin rang the bell, muttering as he did so something about a temperature of 104 degrees. A redheaded maid with a freckled face answered the summons. Before I could say anything to her McMeekin gave orders that a second bed should be brought into my room and that she, the red-haired, freckled girl, should sit beside me and not take her eyes off me for a moment while he went home to get his bag. I forgot all about Titherington then and concentrated my remaining strength on a hope that McMeekin would get the influenza. It is one of the few diseases which doctors do get. I planned that when he got it I would search Ireland for red-headed girls with freckled faces, and pay hundreds of them, all I could collect in the four provinces, to sit beside him and not take their eyes off him while I went to get a bag. My bag, as I arranged, would be fetched by long sea from Tasmania.

That evening McMeekin and Titherington both settled down in my bedroom. I was so angry with them that I could not take in what they said to each other, though I was dimly conscious that they were discussing the election. I learned afterward that McMeekin promised to be present at my meeting on the 21st in order to hear Lalage speak. I suppose that the amount of torture he inflicted on me induced a mood of joyous intoxication in which he would have promised anything. I lay in bed and did my best, by breathing hard, to shoot germs from my lungs across the room at Titherington and McMeekin. Their talk, which must have lasted about eighteen hours, was interrupted at last by a tap at the door. The red-haired girl with a freckled face came in, carrying a loathsome looking bowl and a spoon which I felt certain was filthy dirty. McMeekin took them from her hands and approached me. In spite of my absolutely sickening disgust, I felt with a ferocious joy that my opportunity had at last come. McMeekin tried to persuade me to eat some sticky yellow liquid out of the bowl. I refused, of course. As I had foreseen, he began to shovel the stuff into my mouth with the spoon. Titherington came over to my bedside. He pretended that he came to hold me up while McMeekin fed me. In reality he came to gloat. But I had my revenge. I pawed McMeekin with my hands and breathed full into his face. I also clutched Titherington’s coat and pawed him. After that I felt easier, for I began to hope that I had thoroughly infected them both. My recollections of the next day are confused. Titherington and McMeekin were constantly passing in and out of the room and at some time or other a strange woman arrived who paid a deference which struck me as perfectly ridiculous to McMeekin. To me she made herself most offensive. I found out afterward that she was the nurse whom McMeekin had summoned by telegraph. What she said to McMeekin or what he said to her I cannot remember. Of my own actions during the day I can say nothing certainly except this: I asked McMeekin, not once or twice, but every time I saw him, how long it took for influenza to develop its full strength in a man who had thoroughly imbibed the infection. McMeekin either would not or could not answer this simple question. He talked vague nonsense about periods of incubation, whereas I wanted to know the earliest date at which I might expect to see him and Titherington stricken down, I hated McMeekin worse than ever for his dogged stupidity.