Lalage's Lovers

by George A. Birmingham

“In the meanwhile,” said Lalage, “I could do with some tea and another ice. Couldn’t you, Hilda?”

Hilda could and did. I took them to an excellent shop in the Rua Aurea, where Hilda had three ices and Lalage four, after tea. I only had one. Lalage twitted me with my want of appetite.

“I can’t eat any more.” I said. “The thought of poor Miss Battersby sitting alone in that stuffy hotel has spoiled my appetite.”

“The hotel is stuffy,” said Lalage. “Where are you stopping?”

I mentioned Mont ‘Estoril and Lalage at once proposed to move her whole party out there.

There were difficulties with the Lisbon hotel keeper, who wanted to be paid for the beds which Lalage and Hilda had not slept in as well as for that which Miss Battersby had enjoyed during the afternoon. Lalage argued with him in French, which he understood very imperfectly, and she boasted afterward that she had convinced him of the unreasonableness of his demand. I, privately, paid his bill.

There were also difficulties with Miss Battersby. She had, so Hilda told me, the strongest possible objection to putting on her clothes again. But Lalage was determined. In less than an hour after our return to the hotel I was sitting opposite to Miss Battersby, who was swathed rather than dressed, in a railway carriage, speeding along the northern shore of the Tagus estuary.

I had, early in the summer, made friends with a Mr. and Mrs Dodds, who were living in my hotel. Mr. Dodds was a Glasgow merchant and was conducting the Portuguese side of his firm’s business. Mrs. Dodds was a native of Paisley. They were both very fond of bridge, and I had got into the habit of playing with them every evening. We depended on chance for a fourth member of our party, and just at the time of Lalage’s visit were particularly fortunate in securing a young English engineer who was installing a service of electric light somewhere in the neighbourhood. The Doddses were friendly people and I had gradually come to entertain a warm regard for them in spite of the extreme severity of their bridge and Mrs. Dodds’s habit of speaking plainly about my mistakes. I would not, except under great pressure, cause any inconvenience or annoyance to the Doddses. But Lalage is great pressure. When she said that I was to spend the evening talking to her I saw at once that the bridge must be sacrificed. My plan was to apologize profusely to the Doddses, and leave them condemned for one evening to sit bridgeless till bedtime. But Lalage would not hear of this. She wanted, so she said, to talk confidentially to me. Miss Battersby was an obstacle in her way, and so she ordered me to introduce Miss Battersby as my substitute at the bridge table.

If Miss Battersby had acted reasonably and gone to bed either before or immediately after dinner this would have been unnecessary. But she did not. She became immoderately cheerful and was most anxious to enjoy herself. I set her down at the card table and then, as quickly as possible, fled. Miss Battersby’s bridge is of the most rudimentary and irritating kind and she has a conscientious objection to paying for the small stakes which usually gave a brightness to our game. It was necessary for me to get out of earshot of the Doddses and the engineer before they discovered these two facts about Miss Battersby. I thought it probable that I should have to go to a new hotel next day in order to escape the reproaches of my friends. But I did not want to move that night, so I went into the hotel garden, hustling Hilda before me. There was no need to hustle Lalage. She understood the need for haste even better than I did. I knew Miss Battersby’s capacity for bridge, having occasionally played with her in my uncle’s house. Lalage understood how acutely the pain brought on by Miss Battersby’s bridge would be aggravated by the deprecating sweetness of Miss Battersby’s manner. In the hotel garden there were a number of chairs made, I expect, by a man whose regular business in life was the manufacture of the old-fashioned straw beehives. When forced by the introduction of the new wooden hives to turn his hand to making chairs, he failed to shake himself free of the tradition of his proper art. His chairs were as like beehives as it is possible for chairs to be and anybody who sits back in one of them is surrounded on all sides by walls and overshadowed by a hood of woven wicker-work. When Lalage sat down I could see no more of her than the glowing end of her cigarette and the toes of her shoes. Hilda was to the same extent invisible. I was annoyed by this at first, for Lalage is very pretty to look at and the night was not so dark when we sat down but that I could, had she been in any ordinary chair, have traced the outline of her figure. Later on, when our conversation reached its most interesting point, I was thankful to recollect that I also was in obscurity. I am not, owing to my training as a diplomatist, an easy man to startle, but Lalage gave me a severe shock. I prefer to keep my face in the shadow when I am moved to unexpected emotion.

“To-morrow,” I said pleasantly, by way of opening the conversation, “we shall have another long day’s sight-seeing, mitigated with ices.”