Lalage, Hilda, and I went for a drive
in one of the attractive carriages which ply for hire
in the Lisbon streets. We drove up one side of
the Avenida de Liberdade and down the other.
I did the duty of a good cicerone by pointing out
the fountains, trees and other objects of interest
which Lalage and Hilda were sure to see for themselves.
When we had exhausted the Avenida I suggested going
on to Belem. Lalage did not seem pleased.
She said that driving was not her idea of pleasure.
She wanted something more active and exciting.
I agreed.
“We’ll go in a tram,” I said.
“Where to?”
“Belem.”
“Belem’s a church, isn’t it, Hilda?”
Hilda and I both admitted that it was.
“Then we can’t go there,” said Lalage
decidedly.
“Why not?” I ventured to ask.
“You said yourself that it wouldn’t be
decent.”
“Oh!” I said, “you’re
thinking of those poor bishops; but you haven’t
done anything to the Portuguese patriarch yet.
Besides, only half of Belem is a church. The
other half is a school, quite secular.”
“The only things I really want
to see,” said Lalage, “are the dead Portuguese
kings in glass cases.”
“The what?”
“The dead kings. Stuffed,
I suppose. Do you mean to say you’ve been
here nearly four years and don’t yet know the
way they keep their kings, like natural history specimens
in a museum? Why, that was the very first thing
Hilda found out in the guide book.”
“I didn’t,” said Hilda. “It
was you.”
“Let’s credit Selby-Harrison
with the discovery,” I said soothingly.
“I remember now about those kings. But
the exhibition has been closed to the public now for
some years. We shan’t be able to get in.”
“What’s the use of being
an ambassador,” said Lalage, “if you can’t
step in to see a dead king whenever you like?”
An ambassador may be able to claim
audiences with deceased royalties, but I was not an
ambassador. I offered Lalage as an alternative
the nearest thing at my command to dead kings.
“The English cemetery,”
I said, “is considered one of the sights of
Lisbon. If you are really interested in corpses
we might go there.”
“I hate Englishmen,” said Lalage.
“All Englishmen.”
“That’s why I suggested
their cemetery. It will be immensely gratifying
to you to realize what a lot of them have died.
The place is nearly full and there are lots of yew
trees.”
Lalage did me the honour of laughing.
Hilda, after a minute’s consideration, also
laughed. But they were not to be distracted from
the dead kings.
“We’ll go back to the
hotel,” said Lalage, “and rout out poor
Pussy. She’ll be wanting more food by this
time. You can go and call on the present King
or the Queen Mother, or whoever it is who keep the
key of that mausoleum and then come back for us.
By the way, before you go, just tell me the Portuguese
for an ice. It’s desperately hot.”
I told her and then got out of the
carriage. I did not call upon either the King
or his mother. They were in Cintra, so I should
not have had time to get at them even if I had wished.
I saw my chief, and, with the fear of Lalage before
my eyes, worried him until he gave me a letter to
a high official. From him I obtained with great
difficulty the permission I wanted. I returned
to the hotel. Miss Battersby, though recovering
rapidly, was still too feeble to accompany us; so Lalage,
Hilda, and I set off without her.
The dead kings were a disappointment.
Hilda’s nerve failed her on the doorstep and
she declined to go in. Lalage and I went through
the exhibition alone. I observed, without surprise,
that Lalage turned her eyes away from the objects
she had come to inspect. I ventured, when we
got out, to suggest that we might perhaps have spent
a pleasanter afternoon at Belem. Lalage snubbed
me sharply.
“Certainly not,” she said.
“I’m going in for the Vice-Chancellor’s
prize for English verse next year and the subject
is mortality. I shall simply knock spots out
of the other competitors when I work in those kings.
“’Sceptre and
crown
Must tumble down,’
You know the sort of thing I mean.”
“That’s not original,”
I said. “I remember it distinctly in the
’Golden Treasury,’ though I have forgotten
the author’s name.”
“It wasn’t meant to be
original. I quoted it simply as an indication
of the sort of line I mean to take in my poem.”
“You’ll win the prize
to a certainty. When you publish the poem afterward
with notes I hope you’ll mention my name.
Without me you wouldn’t have got at those kings.”
“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.”
“I’m sorry to say,”
said Lalage, “that we go home to-morrow.
The steamer sails at 11 a.m.”
“Surely there can be no real
need for such hurry. Now that we have Miss Battersby
among us the Archdeacon and Hilda’s mother will
be quite satisfied.”
“It’s not that in the
least,” said Lalage. “Is it, Hilda?”
Hilda said something about return
tickets, but Lalage snubbed her. I gathered that
there was reason for precipitancy more serious than
the by-laws of the steamboat company.
“I am confident,” I said,
“that Selby-Harrison is capable of carrying on
the work of exterminating bishops.”
“It’s not that either,”
said Lalage. “The fact is that we have come
to Lisbon on business, not for pleasure. You’ve
probably guessed that already.”
“I feared it. Of the two
reasons you gave me this morning for coming here ”
“I haven’t told you any reason yet,”
said Lalage.
“Excuse me, but when we first
met this morning you said distinctly that you had
come to see me. I hardly flattered myself that
could really be true.”
“It was,” said Lalage. “Quite
true.”
“It’s very kind of you
to say so and of course I quite believe you, but then
you afterward gave me to understand that your real
object was to work up the emotion caused by the appearance
of a dead king with a view to utilizing it to add
intensity to a prize poem. That, of course, is
business of a very serious kind. That’s
why I meant to say a minute ago that of the two reasons
you gave me for coming here the second was the more
urgent.”
“Don’t ramble in that
way,” said Lalage. “It wastes time.
Hilda, explain the scheme which we have in mind at
present.”
Hilda threw away the greater part
of a cigarette and sat up in her beehive. I do
not think that Hilda enjoys smoking cigarettes.
She probably does it to impress the public with the
genuine devotion to principle of the A.T.R.S.
“The society,” said Hilda
“has met with difficulties. Its objects ”
“He knows the objects,” said Lalage.
“Don’t you?”
“To expose in the public press ”
I began.
“That’s just where we’re stuck,”
said Lalage.
“Do you mean to tell me that
the Irish newspapers have been so incredibly stupid
as not to publish the articles sent by you, Hilda,
and Selby-Harrison?”
“Not a single one of them,” said Lalage.
“And the bishops,” I said,
“still wear their purple stocks, their aprons,
and their gaiters; and still talk tommyrot through
the length and breadth of the land.”
“But we’re not the least inclined to give
in,” said Lalage.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Keep on pelting the editors with articles.
Some day one of them will be away from home and an
inexperienced subordinate ”
“That would be no use,” said Hilda.
“What we have determined to
do,” said Lalage, “is to start a paper
of our own.”
“It ought,” I said, “to be a huge
success.”
“I’m glad you agree with
us there,” said Lalage. “We’ve
gone into the matter minutely. Selby-Harrison
worked it out and we don’t see how we could
possibly make less than 12 per cent. Not that
we want to make money out of it. Our efforts
are purely what’s that word, Hilda?
You found it in a book, but I always forget it.”
“Altruistic,” said Hilda.
“You understand that, I suppose?” said
Lalage to me.
“Yes,” I said, “I
do. But I wasn’t thinking of the financial
side of the enterprise when I spoke of its being an
immense success. What I had in mind ”
“Finance,” said Lalage severely, “cannot
possibly be ignored.”
“All we want,” said Hilda,
“is some one to guarantee the working expenses
for the first three months.”
“And I said,” added Lalage,
“that you’d do it if we came out here and
asked you.”
I recollected hearing of an Englishman
who started a daily paper which afterward failed and
it was said that he lost L300,000 by the venture.
I hesitated.
“What we ask,” said Lalage,
“is not money, but a guarantee, and we are willing
to pay 8 per cent, to whoever does it. The difference
between a guarantee and actual money is that in the
one case you will probably never have to pay at all,
while in the other you will have to fork out at once.”
“Am I,” I asked, “to
get 8 per cent, on what I don’t give, but merely
promise?”
“That’s what it comes
to,” said Lalage. “I call it a good
offer.”
“It’s one of the most
generous I ever heard,” I said. “May
I ask if Selby-Harrison ?”
“It was his suggestion,”
said Hilda. “Neither Lalage nor I are any
good at sums, specially decimals.”
“And,” said Lalage, “you’ll
get a copy of each number post free just the same
as if you were a regular subscriber!”
“We’ve got one advertiser already,”
said Hilda.
“And,” said Lalage, “advertisments
pay the whole cost of newspapers nowadays. Any
one who knows anything about the business side of the
press knows that. Selby-Harrison met a man the
other day who reports football matches and he said
so.”
“Is it cocoa,” I asked, “or soap,
or hair restorer?”
“No. It’s a man who
wants to buy second-hand feather beds. I can’t
imagine what he means to do with them when he gets
them, but that’s his business. We needn’t
worry ourselves so long as he pays us.”
“Lalage,” I said, “and
Hilda, I am so thoroughly convinced of your energy
and enterprise, I feel so sure of Selby-Harrison’s
financial ability and I am so deeply in sympathy with
the objects of your, may I say our, society, that
if I possessed L300,000 you should have it to-morrow;
but, owing to, recent legislation affecting Irish land,
the ever-increasing burden of income tax and the death
duties ”
“Don’t start rambling
again,” said Lalage. “It isn’t
in the least funny, and we’re both beginning
to get sleepy. Nobody wants L300,000.”
“It takes that,” I said, “to run
a newspaper.”
“What we want,” said Lalage,
“is thirty pounds, guaranteed ten
pounds a month for three months. All you have
to do is to sign a paper ”
“Did Selby-Harrison draw up the paper?”
“Yes. And Hilda has it upstairs in her
trunk.”
“That’s enough,”
I said. “Anything Selby-Harrison has drawn
up I’ll sign. Perhaps, Hilda, you’ll
be good enough I wouldn’t trouble
you if I knew where to find it myself.”
“Get it, Hilda,” said Lalage.
Hilda struggled out of her beehive
and immediately stumbled into a bed of stocks.
It had become very dark while we talked, but I think
the scent of the flowers might have warned her of
her danger. I picked her up carefully and set
her on the path.
“Perhaps,” I said, “you
won’t mind taking off your shoes as you cross
the hall outside the drawing-room. Mr. and Mrs.
Dodds must have found out about Miss Battersby’s
bridge by this time.”
I think Hilda winked. I did not
actually see her wink. It was too dark to see
anything; but there was a feeling in the air as if
somebody winked and Lalage had nothing to wink about.
“If,” I added, “they
rush out and catch you, they will certainly ask you
where I am. You must be prepared for that.
Would you very much mind exaggerating a little, just
for once?”
This time Hilda giggled audibly.
“You might say that Lalage and
I had gone for a long walk and that you do not know
when we will be back.”
“That wouldn’t be true,”
said Lalage, “so of course it can’t be
said.”
“We can easily make it true,”
I said. “I don’t want to go for a
walk at this time of night and I’m sure you
don’t, after the exhausting day you’ve
had but rather than put Hilda in an awkward
position and set her conscience gnawing at her during
the night we might start at once, not telling Hilda
when we’ll be back.”
“All right,” said Lalage.
“Pussy will fuss afterward of course. But ”
“I entirely forgot Miss Battersby,”
I said. “She would fuss to a certainty.
She might write to the Archdeacon. After all,
Hilda, you’ll have to chance it with your shoes
off. But for goodness’ sake don’t
sneeze or fall or anything of that sort just outside
the door.”
Hilda returned in about ten minutes.
She told us that she whistled “Annie Laurie”
on her way upstairs so as to give any one who might
hear her the impression that she was the boy employed
by the hotel proprietor to clean boots. The ruse,
a brilliantly original one, was entirely successful.
The bridge party, as I learned next day, including
Miss Battersby, had gone to bed early. They did
not play very much bridge. Hilda brought Selby-Harrison’s
form of guarantee with her. It was written on
a sheet of blue foolscap paper and ornamented with
a penny stamp, necessary, so a footnote informed me,
because the sum of money involved was more than two
pounds. I signed it with a fountain pen by the
light of a wax match which Lalage struck on the sole
of her shoe and obligingly held so that it did not
quite burn my hair.