"If Vittie dies------"

"He won't. That sort of man never does. I'm sorry for the aunt of course. She seemed a quiet, respectable sort of woman and, curiously enough, very fond of Vittie. I told her that I'd do anything I conscientiously could to lull off Vittie, but that I had my duty to perform. And I have, you know. I'm clearing the air."

"It wants it badly. McMeekin told me two days ago he had forty cases and there are evidently a lot more now."

"I'm not talking about microbes," said Lalage. "What I'm talking about is the moral 'at'."

I thought for a moment.

--"t.i.tude?" I ventured to suggest.

"No," said Lalage, "--mosphere. It wants it far worse than the other air. I had no idea till I took on this job that politics are such utter sinks as they are. What you tell me now about Vittie is just another example of what I mean. I dare say now it will turn out that he went to bed in the hope of escaping my exposure of the way he's been telling lies."

"t.i.therington hinted," I said, "that he did it in the hope of influencing McMeekin's vote. Fees, you know."

"That's worse."

"A great deal worse."

"Funk," said Lalage, "which is what I did suspect him of, is comparatively honest, but a stratagem of the kind you suggest, is as bad as felony. I shall certainly have at him for that."

"t.i.therington will be tremendously pleased if you do."

"I'm not trying to please t.i.thers. I'm acting in the interests of public morality."

"Still," I said, "there's no harm in pleasing t.i.thers incidentally."

"I have a big meeting on to-night. Hilda takes the chair, and I'll rub it in about Vittie shamming sick. I never heard anything more disgraceful. Can t.i.thers be playing the same game, do you think?"

"I don't know," I said. "Hilda will be able to tell us that when she comes back."

Hilda came back so soon that I think she must have run part of the way at least. Probably she ran back, when the nurse was not with her.

"He won't send you the key," she said, "but he wants you to send him the bag."

"Is he shamming?" said Lalage, "or has he really got it?"

"I don't know. I didn't see him."

"If you didn't see him," I said hopefully, "you may be wrong after all about his wanting the bag. He can't be so selfish."

"Who did you see?" said Lalage.

"Mrs. t.i.therington," said Hilda. "She----"

"Fancy there being a Mrs. t.i.thers," said Lalage. "How frightfully funny!

What was she like to look at?"

"Never mind that for the present, Hilda," I said. "Just tell me about the key."

"She took your message up to him," said Hilda, "and came down again in a minute looking very red in the face."

"t.i.therington must have sworn at her," I said. "What a brute that man is!"

"You'd better take him round the bag at once," said Lalage. "Where is it?"

"He shan't have the bag," I said. "There are only eight bottles left and I want them myself."

"Bottles of what?"

"Champagne, of course."

"His or yours?" asked Lalage.

"They were his at first. They're mine now, for he gave them to me, and I'm going to keep them."

"I don't see what all the fuss is about," said Lalage. "Do you, Hilda? I suppose you and t.i.thers can both afford to buy a few more bottles if you want them."

"You don't understand," I said. "I'm quite ready to give a sovereign a bottle if necessary, and I'm sure that t.i.therington would, too. The point is that my nurse won't let me have any, and I don't suppose t.i.therington's wife will let him. That a.s.s McMeekin insists on poisoning me with barley water, and t.i.therington's doctor, whoever he is, is most likely doing the same."

"I see," said Lalage. "This just bears out what I've been saying all along about the utter want of common honesty in political life. Here are you and t.i.thers actually quarrelling about which of you is to be allowed to lie continuously. You are deliberately deceiving your doctor and nurse. t.i.thers wants to deceive his wife, which is, if anything, a shade worse. Hilda, find that bag."

"Lalage," I said, "you're not going to give it to t.i.therington, are you?

It wouldn't be good for him, it wouldn't really."

"Make your mind quite easy about that," said Lalage. "I'm not going to give it to either of you. Hilda, look under the bed. That's just the idiotic sort of place t.i.thers would hide a thing."

I heard Hilda grovelling about on the floor. A minute later she was dragging the bag out.

"What are you going to do with it, Lalage?"

"Take it away and keep it myself till you're both well."

"We never shall be," I said. "We shall die. Please, Lalage, please don't."

"It's the only honest course," said Lalage.

I made an effort to a.s.sert myself, though I knew it was useless.

"There is such a thing," I said, "as carrying honesty too far. All extremes are wrong. There are lots of occasions on which it isn't at all right to tell the literal truth."

"None," said Lalage.

"Suppose a robber was robbing you, and you had a five-pound note inside your sock and suppose he said to you, 'Have you any more money?'"

"That has nothing to do with the way you and t.i.thers have conspired together to deceive the very people who are trying to do you good."

"Lalage," I said, "I've subscribed liberally to the funds of the society. I'll subscribe again. I did my best for you at the time of the bishop row. I don't think you ought to turn on me now because I'm adopting the only means in my power of resisting a frightful tyranny.

You might just as well call it dishonest of a prisoner to try to escape because he doesn't tell the gaoler beforehand how he's going to do it."