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PART I
Four years ago--in 1874--two
young Englishmen had occasion to go to the United States.
They crossed the ocean at midsummer, and, arriving in New
York on the first day of August, were much struck with
the fervid temperature of that city. Disembarking upon
the wharf, they climbed into one of those huge high-hung
coaches which convey passengers to the hotels, and with a
great deal of bouncing and bumping, took their course
through Broadway. The midsummer aspect of New York is not,
perhaps, the most favorable one; still, it is not without
its picturesque and even brilliant side. Nothing could
well resemble less a typical English street than the
interminable avenue, rich in incongruities, through which
our two travelers advanced--looking out on each side of
them at the comfortable animation of the sidewalks, the
high-colored, heterogeneous architecture, the huge white
marble facades glittering in the strong, crude light, and
bedizened with gilded lettering, the multifarious awnings,
banners, and streamers, the extraordinary number of
omnibuses, horsecars, and other democratic vehicles, the
vendors of cooling fluids, the white trousers and big
straw hats of the policemen, the tripping gait of the
modish young persons on the pavement, the general
brightness, newness, juvenility, both of people and
things. The young men had exchanged few observations; but
in crossing Union Square, in front of the monument to
Washington-- in the very shadow, indeed, projected by the
image of the <i pater patriae>--one of them
remarked to the other, "It seems a rum-looking place."
"Ah, very odd, very
odd," said the other, who was the clever man of the
two.
"Pity it's so beastly
hot," resumed the first speaker after a pause.
"You know we are in a
low latitude," said his friend.
"I daresay,"
remarked the other.
"I wonder," said
the second speaker presently, "if they can give one
a bath?"
"I daresay not,"
rejoined the other.
"Oh, I say!"
cried his comrade.
This animated discussion
was checked by their arrival at the hotel, which had been
recommended to them by an American gentleman whose
acquaintance they made--with whom, indeed, they became
very intimate--on the steamer, and who had proposed to
accompany them to the inn and introduce them, in a
friendly way, to the proprietor. This plan, however, had
been defeated by their friend's finding that his "partner"
was awaiting him on the wharf and that his commercial
associate desired him instantly to come and give his
attention to certain telegrams received from St. Louis.
But the two Englishmen, with nothing but their national
prestige and personal graces to recommend them, were very
well received at the hotel, which had an air of capacious
hospitality. They found that a bath was not unattainable,
and were indeed struck with the facilities for prolonged
and reiterated immersion with which their apartment was
supplied. After bathing a good deal--more, indeed, than
they had ever done before on a single occasion--they made
their way into the dining room of the hotel, which was a
spacious restaurant, with a fountain in the middle, a
great many tall plants in ornamental tubs, and an array
of French waiters. The first dinner on land, after a sea
voyage, is, under any circumstances, a delightful
occasion, and there was something particularly agreeable
in the circumstances in which our young Englishmen found
themselves. They were extremely good natured young men;
they were more observant than they appeared; in a sort of
inarticulate, accidentally dissimulative fashion, they
were highly appreciative. This was, perhaps, especially
the case with the elder, who was also, as I have said,
the man of talent. They sat down at a little table, which
was a very different affair from the great clattering
seesaw in the saloon of the steamer. The wide doors and
windows of the restaurant stood open, beneath large
awnings, to a wide pavement, where there were other
plants in tubs, and rows of spreading trees, and beyond
which there was a large shady square, without any palings,
and with marble-paved walks. And above the vivid verdure
rose other facades of white marble and of pale chocolate-colored
stone, squaring themselves against the deep blue sky.
Here, outside, in the light and the shade and the heat,
there was a great tinkling of the bells of innumerable
streetcars, and a constant strolling and shuffling and
rustling of many pedestrians, a large proportion of whom
were young women in Pompadour-looking dresses. Within,
the place was cool and vaguely lighted, with the plash of
water, the odor of flowers, and the flitting of French
waiters, as I have said, upon soundless carpets.
"It's rather like
Paris, you know," said the younger of our two
travelers."
"It's like Paris--only
more so," his companion rejoined.
"I suppose it's the
French waiters," said the first speaker. "Why
don't they have French waiters in London?"
"Fancy a French waiter
at a club," said his friend.
The young Englishman
started a little, as if he could not fancy it. "In
Paris I'm very apt to dine at a place where there's an
English waiter. Don't you know what's-his-name's, close
to the thingumbob? They always set an English waiter at
me. I suppose they think I can't speak French."
"Well, you can't."
And the elder of the young Englishmen unfolded his napkin.
His companion took no
notice whatever of this declaration. "I say,"
he resumed in a moment, "I suppose we must learn to
speak American. I suppose we must take lessons."
"I can't understand
them," said the clever man.
"What the deuce is HE
saying?" asked his comrade, appealing from the
French waiter.
"He is recommending
some soft-shell crabs," said the clever man.
And so, in desultory
observation of the idiosyncrasies of the new society in
which they found themselves, the young Englishmen
proceeded to dine-- going in largely, as the phrase is,
for cooling draughts and dishes, of which their attendant
offered them a very long list. After dinner they went out
and slowly walked about the neighboring streets. The
early dusk of waning summer was coming on, but the heat
was still very great. The pavements were hot even to the
stout boot soles of the British travelers, and the trees
along the curbstone emitted strange exotic odors. The
young men wandered through the adjoining square--that
queer place without palings, and with marble walks
arranged in black and white lozenges. There were a great
many benches, crowded with shabby-looking people, and the
travelers remarked, very justly, that it was not much
like Belgrave Square. On one side was an enormous hotel,
lifting up into the hot darkness an immense array of open,
brightly lighted windows. At the base of this populous
structure was an eternal jangle of horsecars, and all
round it, in the upper dusk, was a sinister hum of
mosquitoes. The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a
huge transparent cage, flinging a wide glare of gaslight
into the street, of which it formed a sort of public
adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby
promiscuously. The young Englishmen went in with everyone
else, from curiosity, and saw a couple of hundred men
sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor,
with their legs stretched out, together with several
dozen more standing in a queue, as at the ticket office
of a railway station, before a brilliantly illuminated
counter of vast extent. These latter persons, who carried
portmanteaus in their hands, had a dejected, exhausted
look; their garments were not very fresh, and they seemed
to be rendering some mysterious tribute to a magnificent
young man with a waxed mustache, and a shirtfront adorned
with diamond buttons, who every now and then dropped an
absent glance over their multitudinous patience. They
were American citizens doing homage to a hotel clerk.
"I'm glad he didn't
tell us to go there," said one of our Englishmen,
alluding to their friend on the steamer, who had told
them so many things. They walked up the Fifth Avenue,
where, for instance, he had told them that all the first
families lived. But the first families were out of town,
and our young travelers had only the satisfaction of
seeing some of the second--or perhaps even the third--
taking the evening air upon balconies and high flights of
doorsteps, in the streets which radiate from the more
ornamental thoroughfare. They went a little way down one
of these side streets, and they saw young ladies in white
dresses--charming-looking persons-- seated in graceful
attitudes on the chocolate-colored steps. In one or two
places these young ladies were conversing across the
street with other young ladies seated in similar postures
and costumes in front of the opposite houses, and in the
warm night air their colloquial tones sounded strange in
the ears of the young Englishmen. One of our friends,
nevertheless--the younger one--intimated that he felt a
disposition to interrupt a few of these soft
familiarities; but his companion observed, pertinently
enough, that he had better be careful. "We must not
begin with making mistakes," said his companion.
"But he told us, you
know--he told us," urged the young man, alluding
again to the friend on the steamer.
"Never mind what he
told us!" answered his comrade, who, if he had
greater talents, was also apparently more of a moralist.
By bedtime--in their
impatience to taste of a terrestrial couch again our
seafarers went to bed early--it was still insufferably
hot, and the buzz of the mosquitoes at the open windows
might have passed for an audible crepitation of the
temperature. "We can't stand this, you know,"
the young Englishmen said to each other; and they tossed
about all night more boisterously than they had tossed
upon the Atlantic billows. On the morrow, their first
thought was that they would re-embark that day for
England; and then it occured to them that they might find
an asylum nearer at hand. The cave of Aeolus became their
ideal of comfort, and they wondered where the Americans
went when they wished to cool off. They had not the least
idea, and they determined to apply for information to Mr.
J. L. Westgate. This was the name inscribed in a bold
hand on the back of a letter carefully preserved in the
pocketbook of our junior traveler. Beneath the address,
in the left-hand corner of the envelope, were the words,
"Introducing Lord Lambeth and Percy Beaumont, Esq."
The letter had been given to the two Englishmen by a good
friend of theirs in London, who had been in America two
years previously, and had singled out Mr. J. L. Westgate
from the many friends he had left there as the consignee,
as it were, of his compatriots. "He is a capital
fellow," the Englishman in London had said, "and
he has got an awfully pretty wife. He's tremendously
hospitable-- he will do everything in the world for you;
and as he knows everyone over there, it is quite needless
I should give you any other introduction. He will make
you see everyone; trust to him for putting you into
circulation. He has got a tremendously pretty wife."
It was natural that in the hour of tribulation Lord
Lambeth and Mr. Percy Beaumont should have bethought
themselves of a gentleman whose attractions had been thus
vividly depicted; all the more so that he lived in the
Fifth Avenue, and that the Fifth Avenue, as they had
ascertained the night before, was contiguous to their
hotel. "Ten to one he'll be out of town," said
Percy Beaumont; "but we can at least find out where
he has gone, and we can immediately start in pursuit. He
can't possibly have gone to a hotter place, you know."
"Oh, there's only one
hotter place," said Lord Lambeth, "and I hope
he hasn't gone there."
They strolled along the
shady side of the street to the number indicated upon the
precious letter. The house presented an imposing
chocolate-colored expanse, relieved by facings and window
cornices of florid sculpture, and by a couple of dusty
rose trees which clambered over the balconies and the
portico. This last-mentioned feature was approached by a
monumental flight of steps.
"Rather better than a
London house," said Lord Lambeth, looking down from
this altitude, after they had rung the bell.
"It depends upon what
London house you mean," replied his companion.
"You have a tremendous chance to get wet between the
house door and your carriage."
"Well," said Lord
Lambeth, glancing at the burning heavens, "I 'guess'
it doesn't rain so much here!"
The door was opened by a
long Negro in a white jacket, who grinned familiarly when
Lord Lambeth asked for Mr. Westgate.
"He ain't at home, sah;
he's downtown at his o'fice."
"Oh, at his office?"
said the visitors. "And when will he be at home?"
"Well, sah, when he
goes out dis way in de mo'ning, he ain't liable to come
home all day."
This was discouraging; but
the address of Mr. Westgate's office was freely imparted
by the intelligent black and was taken down by Percy
Beaumont in his pocketbook. The two gentlemen then
returned, languidly, to their hotel, and sent for a
hackney coach, and in this commodious vehicle they rolled
comfortably downtown. They measured the whole length of
Broadway again and found it a path of fire; and then,
deflecting to the left, they were deposited by their
conductor before a fresh, light, ornamental structure,
ten stories high, in a street crowded with keen-faced,
light-limbed young men, who were running about very
quickly and stopping each other eagerly at corners and in
doorways. Passing into this brilliant building, they were
introduced by one of the keen-faced young men-- he was a
charming fellow, in wonderful cream-colored garments and
a hat with a blue ribbon, who had evidently perceived
them to be aliens and helpless--to a very snug hydraulic
elevator, in which they took their place with many other
persons, and which, shooting upward in its vertical
socket, presently projected them into the seventh
horizontal compartment of the edifice. Here, after brief
delay, they found themselves face to face with the friend
of their friend in London. His office was composed of
several different rooms, and they waited very silently in
one of them after they had sent in their letter and their
cards. The letter was not one which it would take Mr.
Westgate very long to read, but he came out to speak to
them more instantly than they could have expected; he had
evidently jumped up from his work. He was a tall, lean
personage and was dressed all in fresh white linen; he
had a thin, sharp, familiar face, with an expression that
was at one and the same time sociable and businesslike, a
quick, intelligent eye, and a large brown mustache, which
concealed his mouth and made his chin, beneath it, look
small. Lord Lambeth thought he looked tremendously clever.
"How do you do, Lord
Lambeth--how do you do, sir?" he said, holding the
open letter in his hand. "I'm very glad to see you;
I hope you're very well. You had better come in here; I
think it's cooler," and he led the way into another
room, where there were law books and papers, and windows
wide open beneath striped awning. Just opposite one of
the windows, on a line with his eyes, Lord Lambeth
observed the weathervane of a church steeple. The uproar
of the street sounded infinitely far below, and Lord
Lambeth felt very high in the air. "I say it's
cooler," pursued their host, "but everything is
relative. How do you stand the heat?"
"I can't say we like
it," said Lord Lambeth; "but Beaumont likes it
better than I."
"Well, it won't last,"
Mr. Westgate very cheerfully declared; "nothing
unpleasant lasts over here. It was very hot when Captain
Littledale was here; he did nothing but drink sherry
cobblers. He expressed some doubt in his letter whether I
will remember him-- as if I didn't remember making six
sherry cobblers for him one day in about twenty minutes.
I hope you left him well, two years having elapsed since
then."
"Oh, yes, he's all
right," said Lord Lambeth.
"I am always very glad
to see your countrymen," Mr. Westgate pursued.
"I thought it would be time some of you should be
coming along. A friend of mine was saying to me only a
day or two ago, 'It's time for the watermelons and the
Englishmen."
"The Englishmen and
the watermelons just now are about the same thing,"
Percy Beaumont observed, wiping his dripping forehead.
"Ah, well, we'll put
you on ice, as we do the melons. You must go down to
Newport."
"We'll go anywhere,"
said Lord Lambeth.
"Yes, you want to go
to Newport; that's what you want to do," Mr.
Westgate affirmed. "But let's see--when did you get
here?"
"Only yesterday,"
said Percy Beaumont.
"Ah, yes, by the
Russia. Where are you staying?"
"At the Hanover, I
think they call it."
"Pretty comfortable?"
inquired Mr. Westgate.
"It seems a capital
place, but I can't say we like the gnats," said Lord
Lambeth.
Mr. Westgate stared and
laughed. "Oh, no, of course you don't like the gnats.
We shall expect you to like a good many things over here,
but we shan't insist upon your liking the gnats; though
certainly you'll admit that, as gnats, they are fine, eh?
But you oughtn't to remain in the city."
"So we think,"
said Lord Lambeth. "If you would kindly suggest
something--"
"Suggest something, my
dear sir?" and Mr. Westgate looked at him, narrowing
his eyelids. "Open your mouth and shut your eyes!
Leave it to me, and I'll put you through. It's a matter
of national pride with me that all Englishmen should have
a good time; and as I have had considerable practice, I
have learned to minister to their wants. I find they
generally want the right thing. So just please to
consider yourselves my property; and if anyone should try
to appropriate you, please to say, 'Hands off; too late
for the market.' But let's see," continued the
American, in his slow, humorous voice, with a
distinctness of utterance which appeared to his visitors
to be part of a humorous intention-- a strangely
leisurely, speculative voice for a man evidently so busy
and, as they felt, so professional--"let's see; are
you going to make something of a stay, Lord Lambeth?"
"Oh, dear, no,"
said the young Englishman; "my cousin was coming
over on some business, so I just came across, at an hour's
notice, for the lark."
"Is it your first
visit to the United States?"
"Oh, dear, yes."
"I was obliged to come
on some business," said Percy Beaumont, "and I
brought Lambeth along."
"And YOU have been
here before, sir?"
"Never--never."
"I thought, from your
referring to business--" said Mr. Westgate.
"Oh, you see I'm by
way of being a barrister," Percy Beaumont answered.
"I know some people that think of bringing a suit
against one of your railways, and they asked me to come
over and take measures accordingly."
"What's your railroad?"
he asked.
"The Tennessee Central."
The American tilted back
his chair a little and poised it an instant. "Well,
I'm sorry you want to attack one of our institutions,"
he said, smiling. "But I guess you had better enjoy
yourself FIRST!"
"I'm certainly rather
afraid I can't work in this weather," the young
barrister confessed.
"Leave that to the
natives," said Mr. Westgate. "Leave the
Tennessee Central to me, Mr. Beaumont. Some day we'll
talk it over, and I guess I can make it square. But I
didn't know you Englishmen ever did any work, in the
upper classes."
"Oh, we do a lot of
work; don't we, Lambeth?" asked Percy Beaumont.
"I must certainly be
at home by the 19th of September," said the younger
Englishman, irrelevantly but gently.
"For the shooting, eh?
or is it the hunting, or the fishing?" inquired his
entertainer.
"Oh, I must be in
Scotland," said Lord Lambeth, blushing a little.
"Well, then,"
rejoined Mr. Westgate, "you had better amuse
yourself first, also. You must go down and see Mrs.
Westgate."
"We should be so happy,
if you would kindly tell us the train," said Percy
Beaumont.
"It isn't a train--it's
a boat."
"Oh, I see. And what
is the name of--a-- the--a-- town?"
"It isn't a town,"
said Mr. Westgate, laughing. "It's a--well, what
shall I call it? It's a watering place. In short, it's
Newport. You'll see what it is. It's cool; that's the
principal thing. You will greatly oblige me by going down
there and putting yourself into the hands of Mrs.
Westgate. It isn't perhaps for me to say it, but you
couldn't be in better hands. Also in those of her sister,
who is staying with her. She is very fond of Englishmen.
She thinks there is nothing like them."
"Mrs. Westgate or--a--
her sister?" asked Percy Beaumont modestly, yet in
the tone of an inquiring traveler.
"Oh, I mean my wife,"
said Mr. Westgate. "I don't suppose my sister-in-law
knows much about them. She has always led a very quiet
life; she has lived in Boston."
Percy Beaumont listened
with interest. "That, I believe," he said,
"is the most--a-- intellectual town?"
"I believe it is very
intellectual. I don't go there much," responded his
host.
"I say, we ought to go
there," said Lord Lambeth to his companion.
"Oh, Lord Lambeth,
wait till the great heat is over," Mr. Westgate
interposed. "Boston in this weather would be very
trying; it's not the temperature for intellectual
exertion. At Boston, you know, you have to pass an
examination at the city limits; and when you come away
they give you a kind of degree."
Lord Lambeth stared,
blushing a little; and Percy Beaumont stared a little
also--but only with his fine natural complexion--
glancing aside after a moment to see that his companion
was not looking too credulous, for he had heard a great
deal of American humor. "I daresay it is very jolly,"
said the younger gentleman.
"I daresay it is,"
said Mr. Westgate. "Only I must impress upon you
that at present--tomorrow morning, at an early hour-- you
will be expected at Newport. We have a house there; half
the people in New York go there for the summer. I am not
sure that at this very moment my wife can take you in;
she has got a lot of people staying with her; I don't
know who they all are; only she may have no room. But you
can begin with the hotel, and meanwhile you can live at
my house. In that way--simply sleeping at the hotel-- you
will find it tolerable. For the rest, you must make
yourself at home at my place. You mustn't be shy, you
know; if you are only here for a month that will be a
great waste of time. Mrs. Westgate won't neglect you, and
you had better not try to resist her. I know something
about that. I expect you'll find some pretty girls on the
premises. I shall write to my wife by this afternoon's
mail, and tomorrow morning she and Miss Alden will look
out for you. Just walk right in and make yourself
comfortable. Your steamer leaves from this part of the
city, and I will immediately send out and get you a cabin.
Then, at half past four o'clock, just call for me here,
and I will go with you and put you on board. It's a big
boat; you might get lost. A few days hence, at the end of
the week, I will come down to Newport and see how you are
getting on."
The two young Englishmen
inaugurated the policy of not resisting Mrs. Westgate by
submitting, with great docility and thankfulness, to her
husband. He was evidently a very good fellow, and he made
an impression upon his visitors; his hospitality seemed
to recommend itself consciously-- with a friendly wink,
as it were--as if it hinted, judicially, that you could
not possibly make a better bargain. Lord Lambeth and his
cousin left their entertainer to his labors and returned
to their hotel, where they spent three or four hours in
their respective shower baths. Percy Beaumont had
suggested that they ought to see something of the town;
but "Oh, damn the town!" his noble kinsman had
rejoined. They returned to Mr. Westgate's office in a
carriage, with their luggage, very punctually; but it
must be reluctantly recorded that, this time, he kept
them waiting so long that they felt themselves missing
the steamer, and were deterred only by an amiable modesty
from dispensing with his attendance and starting on a
hasty scramble to the wharf. But when at last he appeared,
and the carriage plunged into the purlieus of Broadway,
they jolted and jostled to such good purpose that they
reached the huge white vessel while the bell for
departure was still ringing and the absorption of
passengers still active. It was indeed, as Mr. Westgate
had said, a big boat, and his leadership in the
innumerable and interminable corridors and cabins, with
which he seemed perfectly acquainted, and of which anyone
and everyone appeared to have the entree, was very
grateful to the slightly bewildered voyagers. He showed
them their stateroom--a spacious apartment, embellished
with gas lamps, mirrors en pied, and sculptured furniture--and
then, long after they had been intimately convinced that
the steamer was in motion and launched upon the unknown
stream that they were about to navigate, he bade them a
sociable farewell.
"Well, goodbye, Lord
Lambeth," he said; "goodbye, Mr. Percy Beaumont.
I hope you'll have a good time. Just let them do what
they want with you. I'll come down by-and-by and look
after you."
The young Englishmen
emerged from their cabin and amused themselves with
wandering about the immense labyrinthine steamer, which
struck them as an extraordinary mixture of a ship and a
hotel. It was densely crowded with passengers, the larger
number of whom appeared to be ladies and very young
children; and in the big saloons, ornamented in white and
gold, which followed each other in surprising succession,
beneath the swinging gaslight, and among the small side
passages where the Negro domestics of both sexes
assembled with an air of philosophic leisure, everyone
was moving to and fro and exchanging loud and familiar
observations. Eventually, at the instance of a
discriminating black, our young men went and had some
"supper" in a wonderful place arranged like a
theater, where, in a gilded gallery, upon which little
boxes appeared to open, a large orchestra was playing
operatic selections, and, below, people were handing
about bills of fare, as if they had been programs. All
this was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing,
later, was to sit out on one of the great white decks of
the steamer, in the warm breezy darkness, and, in the
vague starlight, to make out the line of low, mysterious
coast. The young Englishmen tried American cigars--those
of Mr. Westgate-- and talked together as they usually
talked, with many odd silences, lapses of logic, and
incongruities of transition; like people who have grown
old together and learned to supply each other's missing
phrases; or, more especially, like people thoroughly
conscious of a common point of view, so that a style of
conversation superficially lacking in finish might
suffice for reference to a fund of associations in the
light of which everything was all right.
"We really seem to be
going out to sea," Percy Beaumont observed. "Upon
my word, we are going back to England. He has shipped us
off again. I call that 'real mean.'"
"I suppose it's all
right," said Lord Lambeth. "I want to see those
pretty girls at Newport. You know, he told us the place
was an island; and aren't all islands in the sea?"
"Well," resumed
the elder traveler after a while, "if his house is
as good as his cigars, we shall do very well."
"He seems a very good
fellow," said Lord Lambeth, as if this idea had just
occurred to him.
"I say, we had better
remain at the inn," rejoined his companion presently.
"I don't think I like the way he spoke of his house.
I don't like stopping in the house with such a tremendous
lot of women."
"Oh, I don't mind,"
said Lord Lambeth. And then they smoked a while in
silence. "Fancy his thinking we do no work in
England!" the young man resumed.
"I daresay he didn't
really think so," said Percy Beaumont.
"Well, I guess they
don't know much about England over here!" declared
Lord Lambeth humorously. And then there was another long
pause. "He was devilish civil," observed the
young nobleman.
"Nothing, certainly,
could have been more civil," rejoined his companion.
"Littledale said his
wife was great fun," said Lord Lambeth.
"Whose wife--Littledale's?"
"This American's--Mrs.
Westgate. What's his name? J.L."
Beaumont was silent a
moment. "What was fun to Littledale," he said
at last, rather sententiously, "may be death to us."
"What do you mean by
that?" asked his kinsman. "I am as good a man
as Littledale."
"My dear boy, I hope
you won't begin to flirt," said Percy Beaumont.
"I don't care. I
daresay I shan't begin."
"With a married woman,
if she's bent upon it, it's all very well," Beaumont
expounded. "But our friend mentioned a young lady--a
sister, a sister-in-law. For God's sake, don't get
entangled with her!"
"How do you mean
entangled?"
"Depend upon it she
will try to hook you."
"Oh, bother!"
said Lord Lambeth.
"American girls are
very clever," urged his companion.
"So much the better,"
the young man declared.
"I fancy they are
always up to some game of that sort," Beaumont
continued.
"They can't be worse
than they are in England," said Lord Lambeth
judicially.
"Ah, but in England,"
replied Beaumont, "you have got your natural
protectors. You have got your mother and sisters."
"My mother and sisters--"
began the young nobleman with a certain energy. But he
stopped in time, puffing at his cigar.
"Your mother spoke to
me about it, with tears in her eyes," said Percy
Beaumont. "She said she felt very nervous. I
promised to keep you out of mischief."
"You had better take
care of yourself," said the object of maternal and
ducal solicitude.
"Ah," rejoined
the young barrister, "I haven't the expectation of a
hundred thousand a year, not to mention other attractions."
"Well," said Lord
Lambeth, "don't cry out before you're hurt!"
It was certainly very much
cooler at Newport, where our travelers found themselves
assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a faraway
angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the
early summer twilight and had very promptly put
themselves to bed; thanks to which circumstance and to
their having, during the previous hours, in their
commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youth and health,
they began to feel, toward eleven o'clock, very alert and
inquisitive. They looked out of their windows across a
row of small green fields, bordered with low stone walls
of rude construction, and saw a deep blue ocean lying
beneath a deep blue sky, and flecked now and then with
scintillating patches of foam. A strong, fresh breeze
came in through the curtainless casements and prompted
our young men to observe, generally, that it didn't seem
half a bad climate. They made other observations after
they had emerged from their rooms in pursuit of breakfast--a
meal of which they partook in a huge bare hall, where a
hundred Negroes, in white jackets, were shuffling about
upon an uncarpeted floor; where the flies were
superabundant, and the tables and dishes covered over
with a strange, voluminous integument of coarse blue
gauze; and where several little boys and girls, who had
risen late, were seated in fastidious solitude at the
morning repast. These young persons had not the morning
paper before them, but they were engaged in languid
perusal of the bill of fare.
This latter document was a
great puzzle to our friends, who, on reflecting that its
bewildering categories had relation to breakfast alone,
had an uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner list.
They found a great deal of entertainment at the hotel, an
enormous wooden structure, for the erection of which it
seemed to them that the virgin forests of the West must
have been terribly deflowered. It was perforated from end
to end with immense bare corridors, through which a
strong draught was blowing--bearing along wonderful
figures of ladies in white morning dresses and clouds of
Valenciennes lace, who seemed to float down the long
vistas with expanded furbelows, like angels spreading
their wings. In front was a gigantic veranda, upon which
an army might have encamped-- a vast wooden terrace, with
a roof as lofty as the nave of a cathedral. Here our
young Englishmen enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpse of
American society, which was distributed over the
measureless expanse in a variety of sedentary attitudes,
and appeared to consist largely of pretty young girls,
dressed as if for a fete champetre, swaying to and fro in
rocking chairs, fanning themselves with large straw fans,
and enjoying an enviable exemption from social cares.
Lord Lambeth had a theory, which it might be interesting
to trace to its origin, that it would be not only
agreeable, but easily possible, to enter into relations
with one of these young ladies; and his companion (as he
had done a couple of days before) found occasion to check
the young nobleman's colloquial impulses.
"You had better take
care," said Percy Beaumont, "or you will have
an offended father or brother pulling out a bowie knife."
"I assure you it is
all right," Lord Lambeth replied. "You know the
Americans come to these big hotels to make acquaintances."
"I know nothing about
it, and neither do you," said his kinsman, who, like
a clever man, had begun to perceive that the observation
of American society demanded a readjustment of one's
standard.
"Hang it, then let's
find out!" cried Lord Lambeth with some impatience.
"You know I don't want to miss anything."
"We will find out,"
said Percy Beaumont very reasonably. "We will go and
see Mrs. Westgate and make all proper inquiries."
And so the two inquiring
Englishmen, who had this lady's address inscribed in her
husband's hand upon a card, descended from the veranda of
the big hotel and took their way, according to direction,
along a large straight road, past a series of fresh-looking
villas embosomed in shrubs and flowers and enclosed in an
ingenious variety of wooden palings. The morning was
brilliant and cool, the villas were smart and snug, and
the walk of the young travelers was very entertaining.
Everything looked as if it had received a coat of fresh
paint the day before--the red roofs, the green shutters,
the clean, bright browns and buffs of the housefronts.
The flower beds on the little lawns seemed to sparkle in
the radiant air, and the gravel in the short carriage
sweeps to flash and twinkle. Along the road came a
hundred little basket phaetons, in which, almost always,
a couple of ladies were sitting--ladies in white dresses
and long white gloves, holding the reins and looking at
the two Englishmen, whose nationality was not elusive,
through thick blue veils tied tightly about their faces
as if to guard their complexions. At last the young men
came within sight of the sea again, and then, having
interrogated a gardener over the paling of a villa, they
turned into an open gate. Here they found themselves face
to face with the ocean and with a very picturesque
structure, resembling a magnified chalet, which was
perched upon a green embankment just above it. The house
had a veranda of extraordinary width all around it and a
great many doors and windows standing open to the veranda.
These various apertures had, in common, such an
accessible, hospitable air, such a breezy flutter within
of light curtains, such expansive thresholds and
reassuring interiors, that our friends hardly knew which
was the regular entrance, and, after hesitating a moment,
presented themselves at one of the windows. The room
within was dark, but in a moment a graceful figure
vaguely shaped itself in the rich-looking gloom, and a
lady came to meet them. Then they saw that she had been
seated at a table writing, and that she had heard them
and had got up. She stepped out into the light; she wore
a frank, charming smile, with which she held out her hand
to Percy Beaumont.
"Oh, you must be Lord
Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont," she said. "I have
heard from my husband that you would come. I am extremely
glad to see you." And she shook hands with each of
her visitors. Her visitors were a little shy, but they
had very good manners; they responded with smiles and
exclamations, and they apologized for not knowing the
front door. The lady rejoined, with vivacity, that when
she wanted to see people very much she did not insist
upon those distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had
written to her of his English friends in terms that made
her really anxious. "He said you were so terribly
prostrated," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Oh, you mean by the
heat?" replied Percy Beaumont. "We were rather
knocked up, but we feel wonderfully better. We had such a
jolly--a-- voyage down here. It's so very good of you to
mind."
"Yes, it's so very
kind of you," murmured Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate stood smiling;
she was extremely pretty. "Well, I did mind,"
she said; "and I thought of sending for you this
morning to the Ocean House. I am very glad you are better,
and I am charmed you have arrived. You must come round to
the other side of the piazza." And she led the way,
with a light, smooth step, looking back at the young men
and smiling.
The other side of the
piazza was, as Lord Lambeth presently remarked, a very
jolly place. It was of the most liberal proportions, and
with its awnings, its fanciful chairs, its cushions and
rugs, its view of the ocean, close at hand, tumbling
along the base of the low cliffs whose level tops
intervened in lawnlike smoothness, it formed a charming
complement to the drawing room. As such it was in course
of use at the present moment; it was occupied by a social
circle. There were several ladies and two or three
gentlemen, to whom Mrs. Westgate proceeded to introduce
the distinguished strangers. She mentioned a great many
names very freely and distinctly; the young Englishmen,
shuffling about and bowing, were rather bewildered. But
at last they were provided with chairs--low, wicker
chairs, gilded, and tied with a great many ribbons--and
one of the ladies (a very young person, with a little
snub nose and several dimples) offered Percy Beaumont a
fan. The fan was also adorned with pink love knots; but
Percy Beaumont declined it, although he was very hot.
Presently, however, it became cooler; the breeze from the
sea was delicious, the view was charming, and the people
sitting there looked exceedingly fresh and comfortable.
Several of the ladies seemed to be young girls, and the
gentlemen were slim, fair youths, such as our friends had
seen the day before in New York. The ladies were working
upon bands of tapestry, and one of the young men had an
open book in his lap. Beaumont afterward learned from one
of the ladies that this young man had been reading aloud,
that he was from Boston and was very fond of reading
aloud. Beaumont said it was a great pity that they had
interrupted him; he should like so much (from all he had
heard) to hear a Bostonian read. Couldn't the young man
be induced to go on?
"Oh no," said his
informant very freely; "he wouldn't be able to get
the young ladies to attend to him now."
There was something very
friendly, Beaumont perceived, in the attitude of the
company; they looked at the young Englishmen with an air
of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly
and unanimously, at everything either of the visitors
said. Lord Lambeth and his companion felt that they were
being made very welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself
between them, and, talking a great deal to each, they had
occasion to observe that she was as pretty as their
friend Littledale had promised. She was thirty years old,
with the eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, and
she was extremely light and graceful, elegant, exquisite.
Mrs. Westgate was extremely spontaneous. She was very
frank and demonstrative and appeared always-- while she
looked at you delightedly with her beautiful young eyes--to
be making sudden confessions and concessions, after
momentary hesitations.
"We shall expect to
see a great deal of you," she said to Lord Lambeth
with a kind of joyous earnestness. "We are very fond
of Englishmen here; that is, there are a great many we
have been fond of. After a day or two you must come and
stay with us; we hope you will stay a long time. Newport's
a very nice place when you come really to know it, when
you know plenty of people. Of course you and Mr. Beaumont
will have no difficulty about that. Englishmen are very
well received here; there are almost always two or three
of them about. I think they always like it, and I must
say I should think they would. They receive ever so much
attention. I must say I think they sometimes get spoiled;
but I am sure you and Mr. Beaumont are proof against that.
My husband tells me you are a friend of Captain
Littledale; he was such a charming man. He made himself
most agreeable here, and I am sure I wonder he didn't
stay. It couldn't have been pleasanter for him in his own
country, though, I suppose, it is very pleasant in
England, for English people. I don't know myself; I have
been there very little. I have been a great deal abroad,
but I am always on the Continent. I must say I'm
extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans always are;
we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that before?
That was said by a great wit, I mean the good Americans;
but we are all good; you'll see that for yourself. All I
know of England is London, and all I know of London is
that place on that little corner, you know, where you buy
jackets-- jackets with that coarse braid and those big
buttons. They make very good jackets in London, I will do
you the justice to say that. And some people like the
hats; but about the hats I was always a heretic; I always
got my hats in Paris. You can't wear an English hat--at
least I never could--unless you dress your hair a l'Anglaise;
and I must say that is a talent I have never possessed.
In Paris they will make things to suit your peculiarities;
but in England I think you like much more to have--how
shall I say it?--one thing for everybody. I mean as
regards dress. I don't know about other things; but I
have always supposed that in other things everything was
different. I mean according to the people--according to
the classes, and all that. I am afraid you will think
that I don't take a very favorable view; but you know you
can't take a very favorable view in Dover Street in the
month of November. That has always been my fate. Do you
know Jones's Hotel in Dover Street? That's all I know of
England. Of course everyone admits that the English
hotels are your weak point. There was always the most
frightful fog; I couldn't see to try my things on. When I
got over to America--into the light-- I usually found
they were twice too big. The next time I mean to go in
the season; I think I shall go next year. I want very
much to take my sister; she has never been to England. I
don't know whether you know what I mean by saying that
the Englishmen who come here sometimes get spoiled. I
mean that they take things as a matter of course-- things
that are done for them. Now, naturally, they are only a
matter of course when the Englishmen are very nice. But,
of course, they are almost always very nice. Of course
this isn't nearly such an interesting country as England;
there are not nearly so many things to see, and we haven't
your country life. I have never seen anything of your
country life; when I am in Europe I am always on the
Continent. But I have heard a great deal about it; I know
that when you are among yourselves in the country you
have the most beautiful time. Of course we have nothing
of that sort, we have nothing on that scale. I don't
apologize, Lord Lambeth; some Americans are always
apologizing; you must have noticed that. We have the
reputation of always boasting and bragging and waving the
American flag; but I must say that what strikes me is
that we are perpetually making excuses and trying to
smooth things over. The American flag has quite gone out
of fashion; it's very carefully folded up, like an old
tablecloth. Why should we apologize? The English never
apologize-- do they? No; I must say I never apologize.
You must take us as we come--with all our imperfections
on our heads. Of course we haven't your country life, and
your old ruins, and your great estates, and your leisure
class, and all that. But if we haven't, I should think
you might find it a pleasant change-- I think any country
is pleasant where they have pleasant manners. Captain
Littledale told me he had never seen such pleasant
manners as at Newport, and he had been a great deal in
European society. Hadn't he been in the diplomatic
service? He told me the dream of his life was to get
appointed to a diplomatic post in Washington. But he
doesn't seem to have succeeded. I suppose that in England
promotion--and all that sort of thing-- is fearfully slow.
With us, you know, it's a great deal too fast. You see, I
admit our drawbacks. But I must confess I think Newport
is an ideal place. I don't know anything like it anywhere.
Captain Littledale told me he didn't know anything like
it anywhere. It's entirely different from most watering
places; it's a most charming life. I must say I think
that when one goes to a foreign country one ought to
enjoy the differences. Of course there are differences,
otherwise what did one come abroad for? Look for your
pleasure in the differences, Lord Lambeth; that's the way
to do it; and then I am sure you will find American
society--at least Newport society-- most charming and
most interesting. I wish very much my husband were here;
but he's dreadfully confined to New York. I suppose you
think that is very strange--for a gentleman. But you see
we haven't any leisure class."
Mrs. Westgate's discourse,
delivered in a soft, sweet voice, flowed on like a
miniature torrent, and was interrupted by a hundred
little smiles, glances, and gestures, which might have
figured the irregularities and obstructions of such a
stream. Lord Lambeth listened to her with, it must be
confessed, a rather ineffectual attention, although he
indulged in a good many little murmurs and ejaculations
of assent and deprecation. He had no great faculty for
apprehending generalizations. There were some three or
four indeed which, in the play of his own intelligence,
he had originated, and which had seemed convenient at the
moment; but at the present time he could hardly have been
said to follow Mrs. Westgate as she darted gracefully
about in the sea of speculation. Fortunately she asked
for no especial rejoinder, for she looked about at the
rest of the company as well, and smiled at Percy Beaumont,
on the other side of her, as if he too much understand
her and agree with her. He was rather more successful
than his companion; for besides being, as we know,
cleverer, his attention was not vaguely distracted by
close vicinity to a remarkably interesting young girl,
with dark hair and blue eyes. This was the case with Lord
Lambeth, to whom it occurred after a while that the young
girl with blue eyes and dark hair was the pretty sister
of whom Mrs. Westgate had spoken. She presently turned to
him with a remark which established her identity.
"It's a great pity you
couldn't have brought my brother-in-law with you. It's a
great shame he should be in New York in these days."
"Oh, yes; it's so very
hot," said Lord Lambeth.
"It must be dreadful,"
said the young girl.
"I daresay he is very
busy," Lord Lambeth observed.
"The gentlemen in
America work too much," the young girl went on.
"Oh, do they? I
daresay they like it," said her interlocutor.
"I don't like it. One
never sees them."
"Don't you, really?"
asked Lord Lambeth. "I shouldn't have fancied that."
"Have you come to
study American manners?" asked the young girl.
"Oh, I don't know. I
just came over for a lark. I haven't got long." Here
there was a pause, and Lord Lambeth began again. "But
Mr. Westgate will come down here, will not he?"
"I certainly hope he
will. He must help to entertain you and Mr. Beaumont."
Lord Lambeth looked at her
a little with his handsome brown eyes. "Do you
suppose he would have come down with us if we had urged
him?"
Mr. Westgate's sister-in-law
was silent a moment, and then, "I daresay he would,"
she answered.
"Really!" said
the young Englishman. "He was immensely civil to
Beaumont and me," he added.
"He is a dear good
fellow," the young lady rejoined, "and he is a
perfect husband. But all Americans are that," she
continued, smiling.
"Really!" Lord
Lambeth exclaimed again and wondered whether all American
ladies had such a passion for generalizing as these two.
He sat there a good while:
there was a great deal of talk; it was all very friendly
and lively and jolly. Everyone present, sooner or later,
said something to him, and seemed to make a particular
point of addressing him by name. Two or three other
persons came in, and there was a shifting of seats and
changing of places; the gentlemen all entered into
intimate conversation with the two Englishmen, made them
urgent offers of hospitality, and hoped they might
frequently be of service to them. They were afraid Lord
Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont were not very comfortable at
their hotel; that it was not, as one of them said, "so
private as those dear little English inns of yours."
This last gentleman went on to say that unfortunately, as
yet, perhaps, privacy was not quite so easily obtained in
America as might be desired; still, he continued, you
could generally get it by paying for it; in fact, you
could get everything in America nowadays by paying for it.
American life was certainly growing a great deal more
private; it was growing very much like England.
Everything at Newport, for instance, was thoroughly
private; Lord Lambeth would probably be struck with that.
It was also represented to the strangers that it mattered
very little whether their hotel was agreeable, as
everyone would want them to make visits; they would stay
with other people, and, in any case, they would be a
great deal at Mrs. Westgate's. They would find that very
charming; it was the pleasantest house in Newport. It was
a pity Mr. Westgate was always away; he was a man of the
highest ability--very acute, very acute. He worked like a
horse, and he left his wife--well, to do about as she
liked. He liked her to enjoy herself, and she seemed to
know how. She was extremely brilliant and a splendid
talker. Some people preferred her sister; but Miss Alden
was very different; she was in a different style
altogether. Some people even thought her prettier, and,
certainly, she was not so sharp. She was more in the
Boston style; she had lived a great deal in Boston, and
she was very highly educated. Boston girls, it was
propounded, were more like English young ladies.
Lord Lambeth had presently
a chance to test the truth of this proposition, for on
the company rising in compliance with a suggestion from
their hostess that they should walk down to the rocks and
look at the sea, the young Englishman again found himself,
as they strolled across the grass, in proximity to Mrs.
Westgate's sister. Though she was but a girl of twenty,
she appeared to feel the obligation to exert an active
hospitality; and this was, perhaps, the more to be
noticed as she seemed by nature a reserved and retiring
person, and had little of her sister's fraternizing
quality. She was perhaps rather too thin, and she was a
little pale; but as she moved slowly over the grass, with
her arms hanging at her sides, looking gravely for a
moment at the sea and then brightly, for all her gravity,
at him, Lord Lambeth thought her at least as pretty as
Mrs. Westgate, and reflected that if this was the Boston
style the Boston style was very charming. He thought she
looked very clever; he could imagine that she was highly
educated; but at the same time she seemed gentle and
graceful. For all her cleverness, however, he felt that
she had to think a little what to say; she didn't say the
first thing that came into her head; he had come from a
different part of the world and from a different society,
and she was trying to adapt her conversation. The others
were scattering themselves near the rocks; Mrs. Westgate
had charge of Percy Beaumont.
"Very jolly place, isn't
it?" said Lord Lambeth. "It's a very jolly
place to sit."
"Very charming,"
said the young girl. "I often sit here; there are
all kinds of cozy corners--as if they had been made on
purpose."
"Ah! I suppose you
have had some of them made," said the young man.
Miss Alden looked at him a
moment. "Oh no, we have had nothing made. It's pure
nature."
"I should think you
would have a few little benches--rustic seats and that
sort of thing. It might be so jolly to sit here, you know,"
Lord Lambeth went on.
"I am afraid we haven't
so many of those things as you," said the young girl
thoughtfully.
"I daresay you go in
for pure nature, as you were saying. Nature over here
must be so grand, you know." And Lord Lambeth looked
about him.
The little coast line
hereabouts was very pretty, but it was not at all grand,
and Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of this
fact. "I am afraid it seems to you very rough,"
she said. "It's not like the coast scenery in
Kingsley's novels."
"Ah, the novels always
overdo it, you know," Lord Lambeth rejoined. "You
must not go by the novels."
They were wandering about a
little on the rocks, and they stopped and looked down
into a narrow chasm where the rising tide made a curious
bellowing sound. It was loud enough to prevent their
hearing each other, and they stood there for some moments
in silence. The young girl looked at her companion,
observing him attentively, but covertly, as women, even
when very young, know how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid
observation; tall, straight, and strong, he was handsome
as certain young Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen
almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of
feature and a look of intellectual repose and gentle good
temper which seemed somehow to be consequent upon his
well-cut nose and chin. And to speak of Lord Lambeth's
expression of intellectual repose is not simply a civil
way of saying that he looked stupid. He was evidently not
a young man of an irritable imagination; he was not, as
he would himself have said, tremendously clever; but
though there was a kind of appealing dullness in his eye,
he looked thoroughly reasonable and competent, and his
appearance proclaimed that to be a nobleman, an athlete,
and an excellent fellow was a sufficiently brilliant
combination of qualities. The young girl beside him, it
may be attested without further delay, thought him the
handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden's
imagination, unlike that of her companion, was irritable.
He, however, was also making up his mind that she was
uncommonly pretty.
"I daresay it's very
gay here, that you have lots of balls and parties,"
he said; for, if he was not tremendously clever, he
rather prided himself on having, with women, a
sufficiency of conversation.
"Oh, yes, there is a
great deal going on," Bessie Alden replied. "There
are not so many balls, but there are a good many other
things. You will see for yourself; we live rather in the
midst of it."
"It's very kind of you
to say that. But I thought you Americans were always
dancing."
"I suppose we dance a
good deal; but I have never seen much of it. We don't do
it much, at any rate, in summer. And I am sure,"
said Bessie Alden, "that we don't have so many balls
as you have in England."
"Really!"
exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "Ah, in England it all
depends, you know."
"You will not think
much of our gaieties," said the young girl, looking
at him with a little mixture of interrogation and
decision which was peculiar to her. The interrogation
seemed earnest and the decision seemed arch; but the
mixture, at any rate, was charming. "Those things,
with us, are much less splendid than in England."
"I fancy you don't
mean that," said Lord Lambeth, laughing.
"I assure you I mean
everything I say," the young girl declared. "Certainly,
from what I have read about English society, it is very
different."
"Ah well, you know,"
said her companion, "those things are often
described by fellows who know nothing about them. You
mustn't mind what you read."
"Oh, I SHALL mind what
I read!" Bessie Alden rejoined. "When I read
Thackeray and George Eliot, how can I help minding them?"
"Ah well, Thackeray,
and George Eliot," said the young nobleman; "I
haven't read much of them."
"Don't you suppose
they know about society?" asked Bessie Alden.
"Oh, I daresay they
know; they were so very clever. But these fashionable
novels," said Lord Lambeth, "they are awful rot,
you know."
His companion looked at him
a moment with her dark blue eyes, and then she looked
down in the chasm where the water was tumbling about.
"Do you mean Mrs. Gore, for instance?" she said
presently, raising her eyes.
"I am afraid I haven't
read that, either," was the young man's rejoinder,
laughing a little and blushing. "I am afraid you'll
think I am not very intellectual."
"Reading Mrs. Gore is
no proof of intellect. But I like reading everything
about English life--even poor books. I am so curious
about it."
"Aren't ladies always
curious?" asked the young man jestingly.
But Bessie Alden appeared
to desire to answer his question seriously. "I don't
think so--I don't think we are enough so--that we care
about many things. So it's all the more of a compliment,"
she added, "that I should want to know so much about
England."
The logic here seemed a
little close; but Lord Lambeth, made conscious of a
compliment, found his natural modesty just at hand.
"I am sure you know a great deal more than I do."
"I really think I know
a great deal--for a person who has never been there."
"Have you really never
been there?" cried Lord Lambeth. "Fancy!"
"Never--except in
imagination," said the young girl.
"Fancy!" repeated
her companion. "But I daresay you'll go soon, won't
you?"
"It's the dream of my
life!" declared Bessie Alden, smiling.
"But your sister seems
to know a tremendous lot about London," Lord Lambeth
went on.
The young girl was silent a
moment. "My sister and I are two very different
persons," she presently said. "She has been a
great deal in Europe. She has been in England several
times. She has known a great many English people."
"But you must have
known some, too," said Lord Lambeth.
"I don't think that I
have ever spoken to one before. You are the first
Englishman that--to my knowledge-- I have ever talked
with."
Bessie Alden made this
statement with a certain gravity-- almost, as it seemed
to Lord Lambeth, an impressiveness. Attempts at
impressiveness always made him feel awkward, and he now
began to laugh and swing his stick. "Ah, you would
have been sure to know!" he said. And then he added,
after an instant, "I'm sorry I am not a better
specimen."
The young girl looked away;
but she smiled, laying aside her impressiveness. "You
must remember that you are only a beginning," she
said. Then she retraced her steps, leading the way back
to the lawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward
them with Percy Beaumont still at her side. "Perhaps
I shall go to England next year," Miss Alden
continued; "I want to, immensely. My sister is going
to Europe, and she has asked me to go with her. If we go,
I shall make her stay as long as possible in London."
"Ah, you must come in
July," said Lord Lambeth. "That's the time when
there is most going on."
"I don't think I can
wait till July," the young girl rejoined. "By
the first of May I shall be very impatient." They
had gone further, and Mrs. Westgate and her companion
were near them. "Kitty," said Miss Alden,
"I have given out that we are going to London next
May. So please to conduct yourself accordingly."
Percy Beaumont wore a
somewhat animated--even a slightly irritated--air. He was
by no means so handsome a man as his cousin, although in
his cousin's absence he might have passed for a striking
specimen of the tall, muscular, fair-bearded, clear-eyed
Englishman. Just now Beaumont's clear eyes, which were
small and of a pale gray color, had a rather troubled
light, and, after glancing at Bessie Alden while she
spoke, he rested them upon his kinsman. Mrs. Westgate
meanwhile, with her superfluously pretty gaze, looked at
everyone alike.
"You had better wait
till the time comes," she said to her sister. "Perhaps
next May you won't care so much about London. Mr.
Beaumont and I," she went on, smiling at her
companion, "have had a tremendous discussion. We don't
agree about anything. It's perfectly delightful."
"Oh, I say, Percy!"
exclaimed Lord Lambeth.
"I disagree,"
said Beaumont, stroking down his back hair, "even to
the point of not thinking it delightful."
"Oh, I say!"
cried Lord Lambeth again.
"I don't see anything
delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs. Westgate,"
said Percy Beaumont.
"Well, I do!" Mrs.
Westgate declared; and she turned to her sister. "You
know you have to go to town. The phaeton is there. You
had better take Lord Lambeth."
At this point Percy
Beaumont certainly looked straight at his kinsman; he
tried to catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth would not look
at him; his own eyes were better occupied. "I shall
be very happy," cried Bessie Alden. "I am only
going to some shops. But I will drive you about and show
you the place."
"An American woman who
respects herself," said Mrs. Westgate, turning to
Beaumont with her bright expository air, "must buy
something every day of her life. If she can not do it
herself, she must send out some member of her family for
the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfill my mission."
The young girl had walked
away, with Lord Lambeth by her side, to whom she was
talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched them as they
passed toward the house. "She fulfills her own
mission," he presently said; "that of being a
very attractive young lady."
"I don't know that I
should say very attractive," Mrs. Westgate rejoined.
"She is not so much that as she is charming when you
really know her. She is very shy."
"Oh, indeed!"
said Percy Beaumont.
"Extremely shy,"
Mrs. Westgate repeated. "But she is a dear good girl;
she is a charming species of girl. She is not in the
least a flirt; that isn't at all her line; she doesn't
know the alphabet of that sort of thing. She is very
simple, very serious. She has lived a great deal in
Boston, with another sister of mine--the eldest of us--who
married a Bostonian. She is very cultivated, not at all
like me; I am not in the least cultivated. She has
studied immensely and read everything; she is what they
call in Boston 'thoughtful.'"
"A rum sort of girl
for Lambeth to get hold of!" his lordship's kinsman
privately reflected.
"I really believe,"
Mrs. Westgate continued, "that the most charming
girl in the world is a Boston superstructure upon a New
York fonds; or perhaps a New York superstructure upon a
Boston fonds. At any rate, it's the mixture," said
Mrs. Westgate, who continued to give Percy Beaumont a
great deal of information.
Lord Lambeth got into a
little basket phaeton with Bessie Alden, and she drove
him down the long avenue, whose extent he had measured on
foot a couple of hours before, into the ancient town, as
it was called in that part of the world, of Newport. The
ancient town was a curious affair--a collection of fresh-looking
little wooden houses, painted white, scattered over a
hillside and clustered about a long straight street paved
with enormous cobblestones. There were plenty of shops--a
large proportion of which appeared to be those of fruit
vendors, with piles of huge watermelons and pumpkins
stacked in front of them; and, drawn up before the shops,
or bumping about on the cobblestones, were innumerable
other basket phaetons freighted with ladies of high
fashion, who greeted each other from vehicle to vehicle
and conversed on the edge of the pavement in a manner
that struck Lord Lambeth as demonstrative, with a great
many "Oh, my dears," and little quick
exclamations and caresses. His companion went into
seventeen shops--he amused himself with counting them--and
accumulated at the bottom of the phaeton a pile of
bundles that hardly left the young Englishman a place for
his feet. As she had no groom nor footman, he sat in the
phaeton to hold the ponies, where, although he was not a
particularly acute observer, he saw much to entertain him--especially
the ladies just mentioned, who wandered up and down with
the appearance of a kind of aimless intentness, as if
they were looking for something to buy, and who, tripping
in and out of their vehicles, displayed remarkably pretty
feet. It all seemed to Lord Lambeth very odd, and bright,
and gay. Of course, before they got back to the villa, he
had had a great deal of desultory conversation with
Bessie Alden.
The young Englishmen spent
the whole of that day and the whole of many successive
days in what the French call the intimite of their new
friends. They agreed that it was extremely jolly, that
they had never known anything more agreeable. It is not
proposed to narrate minutely the incidents of their
sojourn on this charming shore; though if it were
convenient I might present a record of impressions
nonetheless delectable that they were not exhaustively
analyzed. Many of them still linger in the minds of our
travelers, attended by a train of harmonious images--images
of brilliant mornings on lawns and piazzas that
overlooked the sea; of innumerable pretty girls; of
infinite lounging and talking and laughing and flirting
and lunching and dining; of universal friendliness and
frankness; of occasions on which they knew everyone and
everything and had an extraordinary sense of ease; of
drives and rides in the late afternoon over gleaming
beaches, on long sea roads, beneath a sky lighted up by
marvelous sunsets; of suppers, on the return, informal,
irregular, agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on
the perpetual verandas, in the summer starlight, above
the warm Atlantic. The young Englishmen were introduced
to everybody, entertained by everybody, intimate with
everybody. At the end of three days they had removed
their luggage from the hotel and had gone to stay with
Mrs. Westgate--a step to which Percy Beaumont at first
offered some conscientious opposition. I call his
opposition conscientious, because it was founded upon
some talk that he had had, on the second day, with Bessie
Alden. He had indeed had a good deal of talk with her,
for she was not literally always in conversation with
Lord Lambeth. He had meditated upon Mrs. Westgate's
account of her sister, and he discovered for himself that
the young lady was clever, and appeared to have read a
great deal. She seemed very nice, though he could not
make out, as Mrs. Westgate had said, she was shy. If she
was shy, she carried it off very well.
"Mr. Beaumont,"
she had said, "please tell me something about Lord
Lambeth's family. How would you say it in England--his
position?"
"His position?"
Percy Beaumont repeated.
"His rank, or whatever
you call it. Unfortunately we haven't got a PEERAGE, like
the people in Thackeray."
"That's a great pity,"
said Beaumont. "You would find it all set forth
there so much better than I can do it."
"He is a peer, then?"
"Oh, yes, he is a peer."
"And has he any other
title than Lord Lambeth?"
"His title is the
Marquis of Lambeth," said Beaumont; and then he was
silent. Bessie Alden appeared to be looking at him with
interest. "He is the son of the Duke of Bayswater,"
he added presently.
"The eldest son?"
"The only son."
"And are his parents
living?"
"Oh yes; if his father
were not living he would be a duke."
"So that when his
father dies," pursued Bessie Alden with more
simplicity than might have been expected in a clever girl,
"he will become Duke of Bayswater?"
"Of course," said
Percy Beaumont. "But his father is in excellent
health."
"And his mother?"
Beaumont smiled a little.
"The duchess is uncommonly robust."
"And has he any
sisters?"
"Yes, there are two."
"And what are they
called?"
"One of them is
married. She is the Countess of Pimlico."
"And the other?"
"The other is
unmarried; she is plain Lady Julia."
Bessie Alden looked at him
a moment. "Is she very plain?"
Beaumont began to laugh
again. "You would not find her so handsome as her
brother," he said; and it was after this that he
attempted to dissuade the heir of the Duke of Bayswater
from accepting Mrs. Westgate's invitation. "Depend
upon it," he said, "that girl means to try for
you."
"It seems to me you
are doing your best to make a fool of me," the
modest young nobleman answered.
"She has been asking
me," said Beaumont, "all about your people and
your possessions."
"I am sure it is very
good of her!" Lord Lambeth rejoined.
"Well, then,"
observed his companion, "if you go, you go with your
eyes open."
"Damn my eyes!"
exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "If one is to be a dozen
times a day at the house, it is a great deal more
convenient to sleep there. I am sick of traveling up and
down this beastly avenue."
Since he had determined to
go, Percy Beaumont would, of course, have been very sorry
to allow him to go alone; he was a man of conscience, and
he remembered his promise to the duchess. It was
obviously the memory of this promise that made him say to
his companion a couple of days later that he rather
wondered he should be so fond of that girl.
"In the first place,
how do you know how fond I am of her?" asked Lord
Lambeth. "And, in the second place, why shouldn't I
be fond of her?"
"I shouldn't think she
would be in your line."
"What do you call my 'line'?
You don't set her down as 'fast'?"
"Exactly so. Mrs.
Westgate tells me that there is no such thing as the 'fast
girl' in America; that it's an English invention, and
that the term has no meaning here."
"All the better. It's
an animal I detest."
"You prefer a
bluestocking."
"Is that what you call
Miss Alden?"
"Her sister tells me,"
said Percy Beaumont, "that she is tremendously
literary."
"I don't know anything
about that. She is certainly very clever."
"Well," said
Beaumont, "I should have supposed you would have
found that sort of thing awfully slow."
"In point of fact,"
Lord Lambeth rejoined, "I find it uncommonly lively."
After this, Percy Beaumont
held his tongue; but on the 10th of August he wrote to
the Duchess of Bayswater. He was, as I have said, a man
of conscience, and he had a strong, incorruptible sense
of the proprieties of life. His kinsman, meanwhile, was
having a great deal of talk with Bessie Alden--on the red
sea rocks beyond the lawn; in the course of long island
rides, with a slow return in the glowing twilight; on the
deep veranda late in the evening. Lord Lambeth, who had
stayed at many houses, had never stayed at a house in
which it was possible for a young man to converse so
frequently with a young lady. This young lady no longer
applied to Percy Beaumont for information concerning his
lordship. She addressed herself directly to the young
nobleman. She asked him a great many questions, some of
which bored him a little; for he took no pleasure in
talking about himself.
"Lord Lambeth,"
said Bessie Alden, "are you a hereditary legislator?"
"Oh, I say!"
cried Lord Lambeth, "don't make me call myself such
names as that."
"But you are a member
of Parliament," said the young girl.
"I don't like the
sound of that, either."
"Don't you sit in the
House of Lords?" Bessie Alden went on.
"Very seldom,"
said Lord Lambeth.
"Is it an important
position?" she asked.
"Oh, dear, no,"
said Lord Lambeth.
"I should think it
would be very grand," said Bessie Alden, "to
possess, simply by an accident of birth, the right to
make laws for a great nation."
"Ah, but one doesn't
make laws. It's a great humbug."
"I don't believe that,"
the young girl declared. "It must be a great
privilege, and I should think that if one thought of it
in the right way--from a high point of view-- it would be
very inspiring."
"The less one thinks
of it, the better," Lord Lambeth affirmed.
"I think it's
tremendous," said Bessie Alden; and on another
occasion she asked him if he had any tenantry. Hereupon
it was that, as I have said, he was a little bored.
"Do you want to buy up
their leases?" he asked.
"Well, have you got
any livings?" she demanded.
"Oh, I say!" he
cried. "Have you got a clergyman that is looking out?"
But she made him tell her that he had a castle; he
confessed to but one. It was the place in which he had
been born and brought up, and, as he had an old-time
liking for it, he was beguiled into describing it a
little and saying it was really very jolly. Bessie Alden
listened with great interest and declared that she would
give the world to see such a place. Whereupon--"It
would be awfully kind of you to come and stay there,"
said Lord Lambeth. He took a vague satisfaction in the
circumstance that Percy Beaumont had not heard him make
the remark I have just recorded.
Mr. Westgate all this time
had not, as they said at Newport, "come on."
His wife more than once announced that she expected him
on the morrow; but on the morrow she wandered about a
little, with a telegram in her jeweled fingers, declaring
it was very tiresome that his business detained him in
New York; that he could only hope the Englishmen were
having a good time. "I must say," said Mrs.
Westgate, "that it is no thanks to him if you are."
And she went on to explain, while she continued that slow-paced
promenade which enabled her well-adjusted skirts to
display themselves so advantageously, that unfortunately
in America there was no leisure class. It was Lord
Lambeth's theory, freely propounded when the young men
were together, that Percy Beaumont was having a very good
time with Mrs. Westgate, and that, under the pretext of
meeting for the purpose of animated discussion, they were
indulging in practices that imparted a shade of hypocrisy
to the lady's regret for her husband's absence.
"I assure you we are
always discussing and differing," said Percy
Beaumont. "She is awfully argumentative. American
ladies certainly don't mind contradicting you. Upon my
word I don't think I was ever treated so by a woman
before. She's so devilish positive."
Mrs. Westgate's positive
quality, however, evidently had its attractions, for
Beaumont was constantly at his hostess's side. He
detached himself one day to the extent of going to New
York to talk over the Tennessee Central with Mr. Westgate;
but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which,
with Mr. Westgate's assistance, he completely settled
this piece of business. "They certainly do things
quickly in New York," he observed to his cousin; and
he added that Mr. Westgate had seemed very uneasy lest
his wife should miss her visitor-- he had been in such an
awful hurry to send him back to her. "I'm afraid you'll
never come up to an American husband, if that's what the
wives expect," he said to Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate, however, was
not to enjoy much longer the entertainment with which an
indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. On
the 21st of August Lord Lambeth received a telegram from
his mother, requesting him to return immediately to
England; his father had been taken ill, and it was his
filial duty to come to him.
The young Englishman was
visibly annoyed. "What the deuce does it mean?"
he asked of his kinsman. "What am I to do?"
Percy Beaumont was annoyed
as well; he had deemed it his duty, as I have narrated,
to write to the duchess, but he had not expected that
this distinguished woman would act so promptly upon his
hint. "It means," he said, "that your
father is laid up. I don't suppose it's anything serious;
but you have no option. Take the first steamer; but don't
be alarmed.
Lord Lambeth made his
farewells; but the few last words that he exchanged with
Bessie Alden are the only ones that have a place in our
record. "Of course I needn't assure you," he
said, "that if you should come to England next year,
I expect to be the first person that you inform of it."
Bessie Alden looked at him
a little, and she smiled. "Oh, if we come to London,"
she answered, "I should think you would hear of it."
Percy Beaumont returned
with his cousin, and his sense of duty compelled him, one
windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to Lord
Lambeth that he suspected that the duchess's telegram was
in part the result of something he himself had written to
her. "I wrote to her--as I explicitly notified you I
had promised to do-- that you were extremely interested
in a little American girl."
Lord Lambeth was extremely
angry, and he indulged for some moments in the simple
language of indignation. But I have said that he was a
reasonable young man, and I can give no better proof of
it than the fact that he remarked to his companion at the
end of half an hour, "You were quite right, after
all. I am very much interested in her. Only, to be fair,"
he added, "you should have told my mother also that
she is not--seriously--interested in me."
Percy Beaumont gave a
little laugh. "There is nothing so charming as
modesty in a young man in your position. That speech is a
capital proof that you are sweet on her."
"She is not interested--she
is not!" Lord Lambeth repeated.
"My dear fellow,"
said his companion, "you are very far gone."
PART II
In point of fact, as Percy
Beaumont would have said, Mrs. Westgate disembarked on
the 18th of May on the British coast. She was accompanied
by her sister, but she was not attended by any other
member of her family. To the deprivation of her husband's
society Mrs. Westgate was, however, habituated; she had
made half a dozen journeys to Europe without him, and she
now accounted for his absence, to interrogative friends
on this side of the Atlantic, by allusion to the
regrettable but conspicuous fact that in America there
was no leisure class. The two ladies came up to London
and alighted at Jones's Hotel, where Mrs. Westgate, who
had made on former occasions the most agreeable
impression at this establishment, received an obsequious
greeting. Bessie Alden had felt much excited about coming
to England; she had expected the "associations"
would be very charming, that it would be an infinite
pleasure to rest her eyes upon the things she had read
about in the poets and historians. She was very fond of
the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past,
of retrospect, of mementos and reverberations of
greatness; so that on coming into the English world,
where strangeness and familiarity would go hand in hand,
she was prepared for a multitude of fresh emotions. They
began very promptly--these tender, fluttering sensations;
they began with the sight of the beautiful English
landscape, whose dark richness was quickened and
brightened by the season; with the carpeted fields and
flowering hedgerows, as she looked at them from the
window of the train; with the spires of the rural
churches peeping above the rook-haunted treetops; with
the oak-studded parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy
light, the speech, the manners, the thousand differences.
Mrs. Westgate's impressions had, of course, much less
novelty and keenness, and she gave but a wandering
attention to her sister's ejaculations and rhapsodies.
"You know my enjoyment
of England is not so intellectual as Bessie's," she
said to several of her friends in the course of her visit
to this country. "And yet if it is not intellectual,
I can't say it is physical. I don't think I can quite say
what it is, my enjoyment of England." When once it
was settled that the two ladies should come abroad and
should spend a few weeks in England on their way to the
Continent, they of course exchanged a good many allusions
to their London acquaintance.
"It will certainly be
much nicer having friends there," Bessie Alden had
said one day as she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer
at her sister's feet on a large blue rug.
"Whom do you mean by
friends?" Mrs. Westgate asked.
"All those English
gentlemen whom you have known and entertained. Captain
Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr.
Beaumont," added Bessie Alden.
"Do you expect them to
give us a very grand reception?"
Bessie reflected a moment;
she was addicted, as we know, to reflection. "Well,
yes."
"My poor, sweet child,"
murmured her sister.
"What have I said that
is so silly?" asked Bessie.
"You are a little too
simple; just a little. It is very becoming, but it
pleases people at your expense."
"I am certainly too
simple to understand you," said Bessie.
"Shall I tell you a
story?" asked her sister.
"If you would be so
good. That is what they do to amuse simple people."
Mrs. Westgate consulted her
memory, while her companion sat gazing at the shining sea.
"Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?"
"I think not,"
said Bessie.
"Well, it's no matter,"
her sister went on.
"It's a proof of my
simplicity."
"My story is meant to
illustrate that of some other people," said Mrs.
Westgate. "The Duke of Green-Erin is what they call
in England a great swell, and some five years ago he came
to America. He spent most of his time in New York, and in
New York he spent his days and his nights at the
Butterworths'. You have heard, at least, of the
Butterworths. Bien. They did everything in the world for
him-- they turned themselves inside out. They gave him a
dozen dinner parties and balls and were the means of his
being invited to fifty more. At first he used to come
into Mrs. Butterworth's box at the opera in a tweed
traveling suit; but someone stopped that. At any rate, he
had a beautiful time, and they parted the best friends in
the world. Two years elapse, and the Butterworths come
abroad and go to London. The first thing they see in all
the papers--in England those things are in the most
prominent place--is that the Duke of Green-Erin has
arrived in town for the Season. They wait a little, and
then Mr. Butterworth--as polite as ever--goes and leaves
a card. They wait a little more; the visit is not
returned; they wait three weeks--silence de mort--the
Duke gives no sign. The Butterworths see a lot of other
people, put down the Duke of Green-Erin as a rude,
ungrateful man, and forget all about him. One fine day
they go to Ascot Races, and there they meet him face to
face. He stares a moment and then comes up to Mr.
Butterworth, taking something from his pocketbook--something
which proves to be a banknote. 'I'm glad to see you, Mr.
Butterworth,' he says, 'so that I can pay you that ten
pounds I lost to you in New York. I saw the other day you
remembered our bet; here are the ten pounds, Mr.
Butterworth. Goodbye, Mr. Butterworth.' And off he goes,
and that's the last they see of the Duke of Green-Erin."
"Is that your story?"
asked Bessie Alden.
"Don't you think it's
interesting?" her sister replied.
"I don't believe it,"
said the young girl.
"Ah," cried Mrs.
Westgate, "you are not so simple after all! Believe
it or not, as you please; there is no smoke without fire."
"Is that the way,"
asked Bessie after a moment, "that you expect your
friends to treat you?"
"I defy them to treat
me very ill, because I shall not give them the
opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that
case they can't be very offensive."
Bessie Alden was silent a
moment. "I don't see what makes you talk that way,"
she said. "The English are a great people."
"Exactly; and that is
just the way they have grown great-- by dropping you when
you have ceased to be useful. People say they are not
clever; but I think they are very clever."
"You know you have
liked them--all the Englishmen you have seen," said
Bessie.
"They have liked me,"
her sister rejoined; "it would be more correct to
say that. And, of course, one likes that."
Bessie Alden resumed for
some moments her studies in sea green. "Well,"
she said, "whether they like me or not, I mean to
like them. And happily," she added, "Lord
Lambeth does not owe me ten pounds."
During the first few days
after their arrival at Jones's Hotel our charming
Americans were much occupied with what they would have
called looking about them. They found occasion to make a
large number of purchases, and their opportunities for
conversation were such only as were offered by the
deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving
from the station, took an immense fancy to the British
metropolis, and at the risk of exhibiting her as a young
woman of vulgar tastes it must be recorded that for a
considerable period she desired no higher pleasure than
to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab. To
her attentive eyes they were full of a strange
picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity
of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and
incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found
so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however,
that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and
Regent Street, she was about to return with her sister to
Jones's Hotel, she made an earnest request that they
should be driven home by way of Westminster Abbey. She
had begun by asking whether it would not be possible to
take the Tower on the way to their lodgings; but it
happened that at a more primitive stage of her culture
Mrs. Westgate had paid a visit to this venerable monument,
which she spoke of ever afterward vaguely as a dreadful
disappointment; so that she expressed the liveliest
disapproval of any attempt to combine historical
researches with the purchase of hairbrushes and notepaper.
The most she would consent to do in this line was to
spend half an hour at Madame Tussaud's, where she saw
several dusty wax effigies of members of the royal family.
She told Bessie that if she wished to go to the Tower she
must get someone else to take her. Bessie expressed
hereupon an earnest disposition to go alone; but upon
this proposal as well Mrs. Westgate sprinkled cold water.
"Remember," she
said, "that you are not in your innocent little
Boston. It is not a question of walking up and down
Beacon Street." Then she went on to explain that
there were two classes of American girls in Europe--those
that walked about alone and those that did not. "You
happen to belong, my dear," she said to her sister,
"to the class that does not."
"It is only,"
answered Bessie, laughing, "because you happen to
prevent me." And she devoted much private meditation
to this question of effecting a visit to the Tower of
London.
Suddenly it seemed as if
the problem might be solved; the two ladies at Jones's
Hotel received a visit from Willie Woodley. Such was the
social appellation of a young American who had sailed
from New York a few days after their own departure, and
who, having the privilege of intimacy with them in that
city, had lost no time, on his arrival in London, in
coming to pay them his respects. He had, in fact, gone to
see them directly after going to see his tailor, than
which there can be no greater exhibition of promptitude
on the part of a young American who has just alighted at
the Charing Cross Hotel. He was a slim, pale youth, of
the most amiable disposition, famous for the skill with
which he led the "German" in New York. Indeed,
by the young ladies who habitually figured in this
Terpsichorean revel he was believed to be "the best
dancer in the world"; it was in these terms that he
was always spoken of, and that his identity was indicated.
He was the gentlest, softest young man it was possible to
meet; he was beautifully dressed--"in the English
style"--and he knew an immense deal about London. He
had been at Newport during the previous summer, at the
time of our young Englishmen's visit, and he took extreme
pleasure in the society of Bessie Alden, whom he always
addressed as "Miss Bessie." She immediately
arranged with him, in the presence of her sister, that he
should conduct her to the scene of Anne Boleyn's
execution.
"You may do as you
please," said Mrs. Westgate. "Only--if you
desire the information--it is not the custom here for
young ladies to knock about London with young men."
"Miss Bessie has
waltzed with me so often," observed Willie Woodley;
"she can surely go out with me in a hansom."
"I consider waltzing,"
said Mrs. Westgate, "the most innocent pleasure of
our time."
"It's a compliment to
our time!" exclaimed the young man with a little
laugh, in spite of himself.
"I don't see why I
should regard what is done here," said Bessie Alden.
"Why should I suffer the restrictions of a society
of which I enjoy none of the privileges?"
"That's very good--very
good," murmured Willie Woodley.
"Oh, go to the Tower,
and feel the ax, if you like," said Mrs. Westgate.
"I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I
should not let you go with an Englishman."
"Miss Bessie wouldn't
care to go with an Englishman!" Mr. Woodley declared
with a faint asperity that was, perhaps, not unnatural in
a young man, who, dressing in the manner that I have
indicated and knowing a great deal, as I have said, about
London, saw no reason for drawing these sharp
distinctions. He agreed upon a day with Miss Bessie--a
day of that same week.
An ingenious mind might,
perhaps, trace a connection between the young girl's
allusion to her destitution of social privileges and a
question she asked on the morrow as she sat with her
sister at lunch.
"Don't you mean to
write to--to anyone?" said Bessie.
"I wrote this morning
to Captain Littledale," Mrs. Westgate replied.
"But Mr. Woodley said
that Captain Littledale had gone to India."
"He said he thought he
had heard so; he knew nothing about it."
For a moment Bessie Alden
said nothing more; then, at last, "And don't you
intend to write to--to Mr. Beaumont?" she inquired.
"You mean to Lord
Lambeth," said her sister.
"I said Mr. Beaumont
because he was so good a friend of yours."
Mrs. Westgate looked at the
young girl with sisterly candor. "I don't care two
straws for Mr. Beaumont."
"You were certainly
very nice to him."
"I am nice to everyone,"
said Mrs. Westgate simply.
"To everyone but me,"
rejoined Bessie, smiling.
Her sister continued to
look at her; then, at last, "Are you in love with
Lord Lambeth?" she asked.
The young girl stared a
moment, and the question was apparently too humorous even
to make her blush. "Not that I know of," she
answered.
"Because if you are,"
Mrs. Westgate went on, "I shall certainly not send
for him."
"That proves what I
said," declared Bessie, smiling--"that you are
not nice to me."
"It would be a poor
service, my dear child," said her sister.
"In what sense? There
is nothing against Lord Lambeth that I know of."
Mrs. Westgate was silent a
moment. "You ARE in love with him then?"
Bessie stared again; but
this time she blushed a little. "Ah! if you won't be
serious," she answered, "we will not mention
him again."
For some moments Lord
Lambeth was not mentioned again, and it was Mrs. Westgate
who, at the end of this period, reverted to him. "Of
course I will let him know we are here, because I think
he would be hurt--justly enough--if we should go away
without seeing him. It is fair to give him a chance to
come and thank me for the kindness we showed him. But I
don't want to seem eager."
"Neither do I,"
said Bessie with a little laugh.
"Though I confess,"
added her sister, "that I am curious to see how he
will behave."
"He behaved very well
at Newport."
"Newport is not London.
At Newport he could do as he liked; but here it is
another affair. He has to have an eye to consequences."
"If he had more
freedom, then, at Newport," argued Bessie, "it
is the more to his credit that he behaved well; and if he
has to be so careful here, it is possible he will behave
even better."
"Better--better,"
repeated her sister. "My dear child, what is your
point of view?"
"How do you mean--my
point of view?"
"Don't you care for
Lord Lambeth--a little?"
This time Bessie Alden was
displeased; she slowly got up from the table, turning her
face away from her sister. "You will oblige me by
not talking so," she said.
Mrs. Westgate sat watching
her for some moments as she moved slowly about the room
and went and stood at the window. "I will write to
him this afternoon," she said at last.
"Do as you please!"
Bessie answered; and presently she turned round. "I
am not afraid to say that I like Lord Lambeth. I like him
very much."
"He is not clever,"
Mrs. Westgate declared.
"Well, there have been
clever people whom I have disliked," said Bessie
Alden; "so that I suppose I may like a stupid one.
Besides, Lord Lambeth is not stupid."
"Not so stupid as he
looks!" exclaimed her sister, smiling.
"If I were in love
with Lord Lambeth, as you said just now, it would be bad
policy on your part to abuse him."
"My dear child, don't
give me lessons in policy!" cried Mrs. Westgate.
"The policy I mean to follow is very deep."
The young girl began to
walk about the room again; then she stopped before her
sister. "I have never heard in the course of five
minutes," she said, "so many hints and
innuendoes. I wish you would tell me in plain English
what you mean."
"I mean that you may
be much annoyed."
"That is still only a
hint," said Bessie.
Her sister looked at her,
hesitating an instant. "It will be said of you that
you have come after Lord Lambeth-- that you followed him."
Bessie Alden threw back her
pretty head like a startled hind, and a look flashed into
her face that made Mrs. Westgate rise from her chair.
"Who says such things as that?" she demanded.
"People here."
"I don't believe it,"
said Bessie.
"You have a very
convenient faculty of doubt. But my policy will be, as I
say, very deep. I shall leave you to find out this kind
of thing for yourself."
Bessie fixed her eyes upon
her sister, and Mrs. Westgate thought for a moment there
were tears in them. "Do they talk that way here?"
she asked.
"You will see. I shall
leave you alone."
"Don't leave me alone,"
said Bessie Alden. "Take me away."
"No; I want to see
what you make of it," her sister continued.
"I don't understand."
"You will understand
after Lord Lambeth has come," said Mrs. Westgate
with a little laugh.
The two ladies had arranged
that on this afternoon Willie Woodley should go with them
to Hyde Park, where Bessie Alden expected to derive much
entertainment from sitting on a little green chair, under
the great trees, beside Rotten Row. The want of a
suitable escort had hitherto rendered this pleasure
inaccessible; but no escort now, for such an expedition,
could have been more suitable than their devoted young
countryman, whose mission in life, it might almost be
said, was to find chairs for ladies, and who appeared on
the stroke of half-past five with a white camellia in his
buttonhole.
"I have written to
Lord Lambeth, my dear," said Mrs. Westgate to her
sister, on coming into the room where Bessie Alden,
drawing on her long gray gloves, was entertaining their
visitor.
Bessie said nothing, but
Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was in town;
he had seen his name in the Morning Post.
"Do you read the
Morning Post?" asked Mrs. Westgate.
"Oh, yes; it's great
fun," Willie Woodley affirmed.
"I want so to see it,"
said Bessie; "there is so much about it in Thackeray."
"I will send it to you
every morning," said Willie Woodley.
He found them what Bessie
Alden thought excellent places, under the great trees,
beside the famous avenue whose humors had been made
familiar to the young girl's childhood by the pictures in
Punch. The day was bright and warm, and the crowd of
riders and spectators, and the great procession of
carriages, were proportionately dense and brilliant. The
scene bore the stamp of the London Season at its height,
and Bessie Alden found more entertainment in it than she
was able to express to her companions. She sat silent,
under her parasol, and her imagination, according to its
wont, let itself loose into the great changing assemblage
of striking and suggestive figures. They stirred up a
host of old impressions and preconceptions, and she found
herself fitting a history to this person and a theory to
that, and making a place for them all in her little
private museum of types. But if she said little, her
sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other
expressed themselves in lively alternation.
"Look at that green
dress with blue flounces," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Quelle toilette!"
"That's the Marquis of
Blackborough," said the young man--"the one in
the white coat. I heard him speak the other night in the
House of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called
them 'wamwods.' He's an awful swell."
"Did you ever see
anything like the way they are pinned back?" Mrs.
Westgate resumed. "They never know where to stop."
"They do nothing but
stop," said Willie Woodley. "It prevents them
from walking. Here comes a great celebrity--Lady Beatrice
Bellevue. She's awfully fast; see what little steps she
takes."
"Well, my dear,"
Mrs. Westgate pursued, "I hope you are getting some
ideas for your couturiere?"
"I am getting plenty
of ideas," said Bessie, "but I don't know that
my couturiere would appreciate them."
Willie Woodley presently
perceived a friend on horseback, who drove up beside the
barrier of the Row and beckoned to him. He went forward,
and the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that
for some ten minutes he was hidden from sight. At last he
reappeared, bringing a gentleman with him--a gentleman
whom Bessie at first supposed to be his friend dismounted.
But at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord
Lambeth, who was shaking hands with her sister.
"I found him over
there," said Willie Woodley, "and I told him
you were here."
And then Lord Lambeth,
touching his hat a little, shook hands with Bessie.
"Fancy your being here!" he said. He was
blushing and smiling; he looked very handsome, and he had
a kind of splendor that he had not had in America. Bessie
Alden's imagination, as we know, was just then in
exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood
there looking down at her, had the benefit of it. "He
is handsomer and more splendid than anything I have ever
seen," she said to herself. And then she remembered
that he was a marquis, and she thought he looked like a
marquis.
"I say, you know,"
he cried, "you ought to have let a man know you were
here!"
"I wrote to you an
hour ago," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Doesn't all the world
know it?" asked Bessie, smiling.
"I assure you I didn't
know it!" cried Lord Lambeth. "Upon my honor I
hadn't heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?"
"Well, I think you are
rather a humbug," said Willie Woodley.
"You don't believe
that--do you, Miss Alden?" asked his lordship.
"You don't believe I'm a humbug, eh?"
"No," said Bessie,
"I don't."
"You are too tall to
stand up, Lord Lambeth," Mrs. Westgate observed.
"You are only tolerable when you sit down. Be so
good as to get a chair."
He found a chair and placed
it sidewise, close to the two ladies. "If I hadn't
met Woodley I should never have found you," he went
on. "Should I, Woodley?"
"Well, I guess not,"
said the young American.
"Not even with my
letter?" asked Mrs. Westgate.
"Ah, well, I haven't
got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this
evening. I was awfully kind of you to write."
"So I said to Bessie,"
observed Mrs. Westgate.
"Did she say so, Miss
Alden?" Lord Lambeth inquired. "I daresay you
have been here a month."
"We have been here
three," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Have you been here
three months?" the young man asked again of Bessie.
"It seems a long time,"
Bessie answered.
"I say, after that you
had better not call me a humbug!" cried Lord Lambeth.
"I have only been in town three weeks; but you must
have been hiding away; I haven't seen you anywhere."
"Where should you have
seen us--where should we have gone?" asked Mrs.
Westgate.
"You should have gone
to Hurlingham," said Willie Woodley.
"No; let Lord Lambeth
tell us," Mrs. Westgate insisted.
"There are plenty of
places to go to," said Lord Lambeth; "each one
stupider than the other. I mean people's houses; they
send you cards."
"No one has sent us
cards," said Bessie.
"We are very quiet,"
her sister declared. "We are here as travelers."
"We have been to
Madame Tussaud's," Bessie pursued.
"Oh, I say!"
cried Lord Lambeth.
"We thought we should
find your image there," said Mrs. Westgate--"yours
and Mr. Beaumont's."
"In the Chamber of
Horrors?" laughed the young man.
"It did duty very well
for a party," said Mrs. Westgate. "All the
women were decolletes, and many of the figures looked as
if they could speak if they tried."
"Upon my word,"
Lord Lambeth rejoined, "you see people at London
parties that look as if they couldn't speak if they tried."
"Do you think Mr.
Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?" asked Mrs.
Westgate.
Lord Lambeth stared and
looked round him. "I daresay he could. Beaumont
often comes here. Don't you think you could find him,
Woodley? Make a dive into the crowd."
"Thank you; I have had
enough diving," said Willie Woodley. "I will
wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface."
"I will bring him to
see you," said Lord Lambeth; "where are you
staying?"
"You will find the
address in my letter--Jones's Hotel."
"Oh, one of those
places just out of Piccadilly? Beastly hole, isn't it?"
Lord Lambeth inquired.
"I believe it's the
best hotel in London," said Mrs. Westgate.
"But they give you
awful rubbish to eat, don't they?" his lordship went
on.
"Yes," said Mrs.
Westgate.
"I always feel so
sorry for the people that come up to town and go to live
in those places," continued the young man. "They
eat nothing but filth."
"Oh, I say!"
cried Willie Woodley.
"Well, how do you like
London, Miss Alden?" Lord Lambeth asked, unperturbed
by this ejaculation.
"I think it's grand,"
said Bessie Alden.
"My sister likes it,
in spite of the 'filth'!" Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.
"I hope you are going
to stay a long time."
"As long as I can,"
said Bessie.
"And where is Mr.
Westgate?" asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman's
wife.
"He's where he always
is--in that tiresome New York."
"He must be
tremendously clever," said the young man.
"I suppose he is,"
said Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth sat for nearly
an hour with his American friends; but it is not our
purpose to relate their conversation in full. He
addressed a great many remarks to Bessie Alden, and
finally turned toward her altogether, while Willie
Woodley entertained Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself said
very little; she was on her guard, thinking of what her
sister had said to her at lunch. Little by little,
however, she interested herself in Lord Lambeth again, as
she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her that here
he might become more interesting. He would be an
unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness,
the picturesqueness, of England; and poor Bessie Alden,
like many a Yankee maiden, was terribly at the mercy of
picturesqueness.
"I have often wished I
were at Newport again," said the young man. "Those
days I spent at your sister's were awfully jolly."
"We enjoyed them very
much; I hope your father is better."
"Oh, dear, yes. When I
got to England, he was out grouse shooting. It was what
you call in America a gigantic fraud. My mother had got
nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed like a happy
dream."
"America certainly is
very different from England," said Bessie.
"I hope you like
England better, eh?" Lord Lambeth rejoined almost
persuasively.
"No Englishman can ask
that seriously of a person of another country."
Her companion looked at her
for a moment. "You mean it's a matter of course?"
"If I were English,"
said Bessie, "it would certainly seem to me a matter
of course that everyone should be a good patriot."
"Oh, dear, yes,
patriotism is everything," said Lord Lambeth, not
quite following, but very contented. "Now, what are
you going to do here?"
"On Thursday I am
going to the Tower."
"The Tower?"
"The Tower of London.
Did you never hear of it?"
"Oh, yes, I have been
there," said Lord Lambeth. "I was taken there
by my governess when I was six years old. It's a rum idea,
your going there."
"Do give me a few more
rum ideas," said Bessie. "I want to see
everything of that sort. I am going to Hampton Court, and
to Windsor, and to the Dulwich Gallery."
Lord Lambeth seemed greatly
amused. "I wonder you don't go to the Rosherville
Gardens."
"Are they interesting?"
asked Bessie.
"Oh, wonderful."
"Are they very old?
That's all I care for," said Bessie.
"They are tremendously
old; they are all falling to ruins."
"I think there is
nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden," said
the young girl. "We must certainly go there."
Lord Lambeth broke out into
merriment. "I say, Woodley," he cried, "here's
Miss Alden wants to go to the Rosherville Gardens!"
Willie Woodley looked a
little blank; he was caught in the fact of ignorance of
an apparently conspicuous feature of London life. But in
a moment he turned it off. "Very well," he said,
"I'll write for a permit."
Lord Lambeth's exhilaration
increased. "Gad, I believe you Americans would go
anywhere!" he cried.
"We wish to go to
Parliament," said Bessie. "That's one of the
first things."
"Oh, it would bore you
to death!" cried the young man.
"We wish to hear you
speak."
"I never speak--except
to young ladies," said Lord Lambeth, smiling.
Bessie Alden looked at him
a while, smiling, too, in the shadow of her parasol.
"You are very strange," she murmured. "I
don't think I approve of you."
"Ah, now, don't be
severe, Miss Alden," said Lord Lambeth, smiling
still more. "Please don't be severe. I want you to
like me--awfully."
"To like you awfully?
You must not laugh at me, then, when I make mistakes. I
consider it my right--as a freeborn American--to make as
many mistakes as I choose."
"Upon my word, I didn't
laugh at you," said Lord Lambeth.
"And not only that,"
Bessie went on; "but I hold that all my mistakes
shall be set down to my credit. You must think the better
of me for them."
"I can't think better
of you than I do," the young man declared.
Bessie Alden looked at him
a moment again. "You certainly speak very well to
young ladies. But why don't you address the House?-- isn't
that what they call it?"
"Because I have
nothing to say," said Lord Lambeth.
"Haven't you a great
position?" asked Bessie Alden.
He looked a moment at the
back of his glove. "I'll set that down," he
said, "as one of your mistakes--to your credit."
And as if he disliked talking about his position, he
changed the subject. "I wish you would let me go
with you to the Tower, and to Hampton Court, and to all
those other places."
"We shall be most
happy," said Bessie.
"And of course I shall
be delighted to show you the House of Lords-- some day
that suits you. There are a lot of things I want to do
for you. I want to make you have a good time. And I
should like very much to present some of my friends to
you, if it wouldn't bore you. Then it would be awfully
kind of you to come down to Branches."
"We are much obliged
to you, Lord Lambeth," said Bessie. "What is
Branches?"
"It's a house in the
country. I think you might like it."
Willie Woodley and Mrs.
Westgate at this moment were sitting in silence, and the
young man's ear caught these last words of Lord Lambeth's.
"He's inviting Miss Bessie to one of his castles,"
he murmured to his companion.
Mrs. Westgate, foreseeing
what she mentally called "complications,"
immediately got up; and the two ladies, taking leave of
Lord Lambeth, returned, under Mr. Woodley's conduct, to
Jones's Hotel.
Lord Lambeth came to see
them on the morrow, bringing Percy Beaumont with him--the
latter having instantly declared his intention of
neglecting none of the usual offices of civility. This
declaration, however, when his kinsman informed him of
the advent of their American friends, had been preceded
by another remark.
"Here they are, then,
and you are in for it."
"What am I in for?"
demanded Lord Lambeth.
"I will let your
mother give it a name. With all respect to whom,"
added Percy Beaumont, "I must decline on this
occasion to do any more police duty. Her Grace must look
after you herself."
"I will give her a
chance," said her Grace's son, a trifle grimly.
"I shall make her go and see them."
"She won't do it, my
boy."
"We'll see if she
doesn't," said Lord Lambeth.
But if Percy Beaumont took
a somber view of the arrival of the two ladies at Jones's
Hotel, he was sufficiently a man of the world to offer
them a smiling countenance. He fell into animated
conversation--conversation, at least, that was animated
on her side--with Mrs. Westgate, while his companion made
himself agreeable to the younger lady. Mrs. Westgate
began confessing and protesting, declaring and expounding.
"I must say London is
a great deal brighter and prettier just now than it was
when I was here last--in the month of November. There is
evidently a great deal going on, and you seem to have a
good many flowers. I have no doubt it is very charming
for all you people, and that you amuse yourselves
immensely. It is very good of you to let Bessie and me
come and sit and look at you. I suppose you will think I
am very satirical, but I must confess that that's the
feeling I have in London."
"I am afraid I don't
quite understand to what feeling you allude," said
Percy Beaumont.
"The feeling that it's
all very well for you English people. Everything is
beautifully arranged for you."
"It seems to me it is
very well for some Americans, sometimes," rejoined
Beaumont.
"For some of them, yes--if
they like to be patronized. But I must say I don't like
to be patronized. I may be very eccentric, and
undisciplined, and outrageous, but I confess I never was
fond of patronage. I like to associate with people on the
same terms as I do in my own country; that's a peculiar
taste that I have. But here people seem to expect
something else--Heaven knows what! I am afraid you will
think I am very ungrateful, for I certainly have received
a great deal of attention. The last time I was here, a
lady sent me a message that I was at liberty to come and
see her."
"Dear me! I hope you
didn't go," observed Percy Beaumont.
"You are deliciously
naive, I must say that for you!" Mrs. Westgate
exclaimed. "It must be a great advantage to you here
in London. I suppose that if I myself had a little more
naivete, I should enjoy it more. I should be content to
sit on a chair in the park, and see the people pass, and
be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk, and that is
the Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the
privilege of beholding them. I daresay it is very wicked
and critical of me to ask for anything else. But I was
always critical, and I freely confess to the sin of being
fastidious. I am told there is some remarkably superior
second-rate society provided here for strangers. Merci! I
don't want any superior second-rate society. I want the
society that I have been accustomed to."
"I hope you don't call
Lambeth and me second rate," Beaumont interposed.
"Oh, I am accustomed
to you," said Mrs. Westgate. "Do you know that
you English sometimes make the most wonderful speeches?
The first time I came to London I went out to dine--as I
told you, I have received a great deal of attention.
After dinner, in the drawing room, I had some
conversation with an old lady; I assure you I had. I
forget what we talked about, but she presently said, in
allusion to something we were discussing, 'Oh, you know,
the aristocracy do so-and-so; but in one's own class of
life it is very different.' In one's own class of life!
What is a poor unprotected American woman to do in a
country where she is liable to have that sort of thing
said to her?"
"You seem to get hold
of some very queer old ladies; I compliment you on your
acquaintance!" Percy Beaumont exclaimed. "If
you are trying to bring me to admit that London is an
odious place, you'll not succeed. I'm extremely fond of
it, and I think it the jolliest place in the world."
"Pour vous autres. I
never said the contrary," Mrs. Westgate retorted. I
make use of this expression, because both interlocutors
had begun to raise their voices. Percy Beaumont naturally
did not like to hear his country abused, and Mrs.
Westgate, no less naturally, did not like a stubborn
debater.
"Hallo!" said
Lord Lambeth; "what are they up to now?" And he
came away from the window, where he had been standing
with Bessie Alden.
"I quite agree with a
very clever countrywoman of mine," Mrs. Westgate
continued with charming ardor, though with imperfect
relevancy. She smiled at the two gentlemen for a moment
with terrible brightness, as if to toss at their feet--upon
their native heath--the gauntlet of defiance. "For
me, there are only two social positions worth speaking of--
that of an American lady and that of the Emperor of
Russia."
"And what do you do
with the American gentlemen?" asked Lord Lambeth.
"She leaves them in
America!" said Percy Beaumont.
On the departure of their
visitors, Bessie Alden told her sister that Lord Lambeth
would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower,
and that he had kindly offered to bring his "trap"
and drive them thither. Mrs. Westgate listened in silence
to this communication, and for some time afterward she
said nothing. But at last, "If you had not requested
me the other day not to mention it," she began,
"there is something I should venture to ask you."
Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes were more
dark than blue. But her sister went on. "As it is, I
will take the risk. You are not in love with Lord Lambeth:
I believe it, perfectly. Very good. But is there, by
chance, any danger of your becoming so? It's a very
simple question; don't take offense. I have a particular
reason," said Mrs. Westgate, "for wanting to
know."
Bessie Alden for some
moments said nothing; she only looked displeased. "No;
there is no danger," she answered at last, curtly.
"Then I should like to
frighten them," declared Mrs. Westgate, clasping her
jeweled hands.
"To frighten whom?"
"All these people;
Lord Lambeth's family and friends."
"How should you
frighten them?" asked the young girl.
"It wouldn't be I--it
would be you. It would frighten them to think that you
should absorb his lordship's young affections."
Bessie Alden, with her
clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows,
continued to interrogate. "Why should that frighten
them?"
Mrs. Westgate poised her
answer with a smile before delivering it. "Because
they think you are not good enough. You are a charming
girl, beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and
as bien-elevee as it is possible to be; but you are not a
fit match for Lord Lambeth."
Bessie Alden was decidedly
disgusted. "Where do you get such extraordinary
ideas?" she asked. "You have said some such
strange things lately. My dear Kitty, where do you
collect them?"
Kitty was evidently
enamored of her idea. "Yes, it would put them on
pins and needles, and it wouldn't hurt you. Mr. Beaumont
is already most uneasy; I could soon see that."
The young girl meditated a
moment. "Do you mean that they spy upon him-- that
they interfere with him?"
"I don't know what
power they have to interfere, but I know that a British
mama may worry her son's life out."
It has been intimated that,
as regards certain disagreeable things, Bessie Alden had
a fund of skepticism. She abstained on the present
occasion from expressing disbelief, for she wished not to
irritate her sister. But she said to herself that Kitty
had been misinformed--that this was a traveler's tale.
Though she was a girl of a lively imagination, there
could in the nature of things be, to her sense, no
reality in the idea of her belonging to a vulgar category.
What she said aloud was, "I must say that in that
case I am very sorry for Lord Lambeth."
Mrs. Westgate, more and
more exhilarated by her scheme, was smiling at her again.
"If I could only believe it was safe!" she
exclaimed. "When you begin to pity him, I, on my
side, am afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Of your pitying him
too much."
Bessie Alden turned away
impatiently; but at the end of a minute she turned back.
"What if I should pity him too much?" she asked.
Mrs. Westgate hereupon
turned away, but after a moment's reflection she also
faced her sister again. "It would come, after all,
to the same thing," she said.
Lord Lambeth came the next
day with his trap, and the two ladies, attended by Willie
Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance, and were
conveyed eastward, through some of the duskier portions
of the metropolis, to the great turreted donjon which
overlooks the London shipping. They all descended from
their vehicle and entered the famous inclosure; and they
secured the services of a venerable beefeater, who,
though there were many other claimants for legendary
information, made a fine exclusive party of them and
marched them through courts and corridors, through
armories and prisons. He delivered his usual peripatetic
discourse, and they stopped and stared, and peeped and
stooped, according to the official admonitions. Bessie
Alden asked the old man in the crimson doublet a great
many questions; she thought it a most fascinating place.
Lord Lambeth was in high good humor; he was constantly
laughing; he enjoyed what he would have called the lark.
Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping
the walls with the knuckle of a pearl-gray glove; and Mrs.
Westgate, asking at frequent intervals to be allowed to
sit down and wait till they came back, was as frequently
informed that they would never come back. To a great many
of Bessie's questions--chiefly on collateral points of
English history--the ancient warder was naturally unable
to reply; whereupon she always appealed to Lord Lambeth.
But his lordship was very ignorant. He declared that he
knew nothing about that sort of thing, and he seemed
greatly diverted at being treated as an authority.
"You can't expect
everyone to know as much as you," he said.
"I should expect you
to know a great deal more," declared Bessie Alden.
"Women always know
more than men about names and dates and that sort of
thing," Lord Lambeth rejoined. "There was Lady
Jane Grey we have just been hearing about, who went in
for Latin and Greek and all the learning of her age."
"YOU have no right to
be ignorant, at all events," said Bessie.
"Why haven't I as good
a right as anyone else?"
"Because you have
lived in the midst of all these things."
"What things do you
mean? Axes, and blocks, and thumbscrews?"
"All these historical
things. You belong to a historical family."
"Bessie is really too
historical," said Mrs. Westgate, catching a word of
this dialogue.
"Yes, you are too
historical," said Lord Lambeth, laughing, but
thankful for a formula. "Upon my honor, you are too
historical!"
He went with the ladies a
couple of days later to Hampton Court, Willie Woodley
being also of the party. The afternoon was charming, the
famous horse chestnuts were in blossom, and Lord Lambeth,
who quite entered into the spirit of the cockney
excursionist, declared that it was a jolly old place.
Bessie Alden was in ecstasies; she went about murmuring
and exclaiming.
"It's too lovely,"
said the young girl; "it's too enchanting; it's too
exactly what it ought to be!"
At Hampton Court the little
flocks of visitors are not provided with an official
bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion upon the
local antiquities. It happened in this manner that, in
default of another informant, Bessie Alden, who on
doubtful questions was able to suggest a great many
alternatives, found herself again applying for
intellectual assistance to Lord Lambeth. But he again
assured her that he was utterly helpless in such matters--
that his education had been sadly neglected.
"And I am sorry it
makes you unhappy," he added in a moment.
"You are very
disappointing, Lord Lambeth," she said.
"Ah, now don't say
that," he cried. "That's the worst thing you
could possibly say."
"No," she
rejoined, "it is not so bad as to say that I had
expected nothing of you."
"I don't know. Give me
a notion of the sort of thing you expected."
"Well," said
Bessie Alden, "that you would be more what I should
like to be-- what I should try to be--in your place."
"Ah, my place!"
exclaimed Lord Lambeth. "You are always talking
about my place.!"
The young girl looked at
him; he thought she colored a little; and for a moment
she made no rejoinder.
"Does it strike you
that I am always talking about your place?" she
asked.
"I am sure you do it a
great honor," he said, fearing he had been uncivil.
"I have often thought
about it," she went on after a moment. "I have
often thought about your being a hereditary legislator. A
hereditary legislator ought to know a great many things."
"Not if he doesn't
legislate."
"But you do legislate;
it's absurd your saying you don't. You are very much
looked up to here--I am assured of that."
"I don't know that I
ever noticed it."
"It is because you are
used to it, then. You ought to fill the place."
"How do you mean to
fill it?" asked Lord Lambeth.
"You ought to be very
clever and brilliant, and to know almost everything."
Lord Lambeth looked at her
a moment. "Shall I tell you something?" he
asked. "A young man in my position, as you call it--"
"I didn't invent the
term," interposed Bessie Alden. "I have seen it
in a great many books."
"Hang it! you are
always at your books. A fellow in my position, then, does
very well whatever he does. That's about what I mean to
say."
"Well, if your own
people are content with you," said Bessie Alden,
laughing, "it is not for me to complain. But I shall
always think that, properly, you should have been a great
mind--a great character."
"Ah, that's very
theoretic," Lord Lambeth declared. "Depend upon
it, that's a Yankee prejudice."
"Happy the country,"
said Bessie Alden, "where even people's prejudices
are so elevated!"
"Well, after all,"
observed Lord Lambeth, "I don't know that I am such
a fool as you are trying to make me out."
"I said nothing so
rude as that; but I must repeat that you are
disappointing."
"My dear Miss Alden,"
exclaimed the young man, "I am the best fellow in
the world!"
"Ah, if it were not
for that!" said Bessie Alden with a smile.
Mrs. Westgate had a good
many more friends in London than she pretended, and
before long she had renewed acquaintance with most of
them. Their hospitality was extreme, so that, one thing
leading to another, she began, as the phrase is, to go
out. Bessie Alden, in this way, saw something of what she
found it a great satisfaction to call to herself English
society. She went to balls and danced, she went to
dinners and talked, she went to concerts and listened (at
concerts Bessie always listened), she went to exhibitions
and wondered. Her enjoyment was keen and her curiosity
insatiable, and, grateful in general for all her
opportunities, she especially prized the privilege of
meeting certain celebrated persons-- authors and artists,
philosophers and statesmen--of whose renown she had been
a humble and distant beholder, and who now, as a part of
the habitual furniture of London drawing rooms, struck
her as stars fallen from the firmament and become
palpable-- revealing also sometimes, on contact,
qualities not to have been predicted of sidereal bodies.
Bessie, who knew so many of her contemporaries by
reputation, had a good many personal disappointments; but,
on the other hand, she had innumerable satisfactions and
enthusiasms, and she communicated the emotions of either
class to a dear friend, of her own sex, in Boston, with
whom she was in voluminous correspondence. Some of her
reflections, indeed, she attempted to impart to Lord
Lambeth, who came almost every day to Jones's Hotel, and
whom Mrs. Westgate admitted to be really devoted. Captain
Littledale, it appeared, had gone to India; and of
several others of Mrs. Westgate's ex-pensioners--gentlemen
who, as she said, had made, in New York, a clubhouse of
her drawing room-- no tidings were to be obtained; but
Lord Lambeth was certainly attentive enough to make up
for the accidental absences, the short memories, all the
other irregularities of everyone else. He drove them in
the park, he took them to visit private collections of
pictures, and, having a house of his own, invited them to
dinner. Mrs. Westgate, following the fashion of many of
her compatriots, caused herself and her sister to be
presented at the English court by her diplomatic
representative--for it was in this manner that she
alluded to the American minister to England, inquiring
what on earth he was put there for, if not to make the
proper arrangements for one's going to a Drawing Room.
Lord Lambeth declared that
he hated Drawing Rooms, but he participated in the
ceremony on the day on which the two ladies at Jones's
Hotel repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coach
which his lordship had sent to fetch them. He had on a
gorgeous uniform, and Bessie Alden was particularly
struck with his appearance--especially when on her asking
him, rather foolishly as she felt, if he were a loyal
subject, he replied that he was a loyal subject to HER.
This declaration was emphasized by his dancing with her
at a royal ball to which the two ladies afterward went,
and was not impaired by the fact that she thought he
danced very ill. He seemed to her wonderfully kind; she
asked herself, with growing vivacity, why he should be so
kind. It was his disposition--that seemed the natural
answer. She had told her sister that she liked him very
much, and now that she liked him more she wondered why.
She liked him for his disposition; to this question as
well that seemed the natural answer. When once the
impressions of London life began to crowd thickly upon
her, she completely forgot her sister's warning about the
cynicism of public opinion. It had given her great pain
at the moment, but there was no particular reason why she
should remember it; it corresponded too little with any
sensible reality; and it was disagreeable to Bessie to
remember disagreeable things. So she was not haunted with
the sense of a vulgar imputation. She was not in love
with Lord Lambeth--she assured herself of that. It will
immediately be observed that when such assurances become
necessary the state of a young lady's affections is
already ambiguous; and, indeed, Bessie Alden made no
attempt to dissimulate--to herself, of course--a certain
tenderness that she felt for the young nobleman. She said
to herself that she liked the type to which he belonged--
the simple, candid, manly, healthy English temperament.
She spoke to herself of him as women speak of young men
they like-- alluded to his bravery (which she had never
in the least seen tested), to his honesty and
gentlemanliness, and was not silent upon the subject of
his good looks. She was perfectly conscious, moreover,
that she liked to think of his more adventitious merits;
that her imagination was excited and gratified by the
sight of a handsome young man endowed with such large
opportunities-- opportunities she hardly knew for what,
but, as she supposed, for doing great things--for setting
an example, for exerting an influence, for conferring
happiness, for encouraging the arts. She had a kind of
ideal of conduct for a young man who should find himself
in this magnificent position, and she tried to adapt it
to Lord Lambeth's deportment as you might attempt to fit
a silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projected upon a
wall. But Bessie Alden's silhouette refused to coincide
with his lordship's image, and this want of harmony
sometimes vexed her more than she thought reasonable.
When he was absent it was, of course, less striking; then
he seemed to her a sufficiently graceful combination of
high responsibilities and amiable qualities. But when he
sat there within sight, laughing and talking with his
customary good humor and simplicity, she measured it more
accurately, and she felt acutely that if Lord Lambeth's
position was heroic, there was but little of the hero in
the young man himself. Then her imagination wandered away
from him--very far away; for it was an incontestable fact
that at such moments he seemed distinctly dull. I am
afraid that while Bessie's imagination was thus
invidiously roaming, she cannot have been herself a very
lively companion; but it may well have been that these
occasional fits of indifference seemed to Lord Lambeth a
part of the young girl's personal charm. It had been a
part of this charm from the first that he felt that she
judged him and measured him more freely and irresponsibly--
more at her ease and her leisure, as it were--than
several young ladies with whom he had been on the whole
about as intimate. To feel this, and yet to feel that she
also liked him, was very agreeable to Lord Lambeth. He
fancied he had compassed that gratification so desirable
to young men of title and fortune--being liked for
himself. It is true that a cynical counselor might have
whispered to him, "Liked for yourself? Yes; but not
so very much!" He had, at any rate, the constant
hope of being liked more.
It may seem, perhaps, a
trifle singular--but it is nevertheless true-- that
Bessie Alden, when he struck her as dull, devoted some
time, on grounds of conscience, to trying to like him
more. I say on grounds of conscience because she felt
that he had been extremely "nice" to her sister,
and because she reflected that it was no more than fair
that she should think as well of him as he thought of her.
This effort was possibly sometimes not so successful as
it might have been, for the result of it was occasionally
a vague irritation, which expressed itself in hostile
criticism of several British institutions. Bessie Alden
went to some entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth;
but she went to others at which his lordship was neither
actually nor potentially present; and it was chiefly on
these latter occasions that she encountered those
literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has
been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a
principle. If Lord Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was
a symbol that there would be no poets and philosophers;
and in consequence-- for it was almost a strict
consequence--she used to enumerate to the young man these
objects of her admiration.
"You seem to be
awfully fond of those sort of people," said Lord
Lambeth one day, as if the idea had just occurred to him.
"They are the people
in England I am most curious to see," Bessie Alden
replied.
"I suppose that's
because you have read so much," said Lord Lambeth
gallantly.
"I have not read so
much. It is because we think so much of them at home."
"Oh, I see,"
observed the young nobleman. "In Boston."
"Not only in Boston;
everywhere," said Bessie. "We hold them in
great honor; they go to the best dinner parties."
"I daresay you are
right. I can't say I know many of them."
"It's a pity you don't,"
Bessie Alden declared. "It would do you good."
"I daresay it would,"
said Lord Lambeth very humbly. "But I must say I don't
like the looks of some of them."
"Neither do I--of some
of them. But there are all kinds, and many of them are
charming."
"I have talked with
two or three of them," the young man went on, "and
I thought they had a kind of fawning manner."
"Why should they fawn?"
Bessie Alden demanded.
"I'm sure I don't know.
Why, indeed?"
"Perhaps you only
thought so," said Bessie.
"Well, of course,"
rejoined her companion, "that's a kind of thing that
can't be proved."
"In America they don't
fawn," said Bessie.
"Ah, well, then, they
must be better company."
Bessie was silent a moment.
"That is one of the things I don't like about
England," she said; "your keeping the
distinguished people apart."
"How do you mean apart?"
"Why, letting them
come only to certain places. You never see them."
Lord Lambeth looked at her
a moment. "What people do you mean?"
"The eminent people--the
authors and artists--the clever people."
"Oh, there are other
eminent people besides those," said Lord Lambeth.
"Well, you certainly
keep them apart," repeated the young girl.
"And there are other
clever people," added Lord Lambeth simply.
Bessie Alden looked at him,
and she gave a light laugh. "Not many," she
said.
On another occasion--just
after a dinner party--she told him that there was
something else in England she did not like.
"Oh, I say!" he
cried, "haven't you abused us enough?"
"I have never abused
you at all," said Bessie; "but I don't like
your PRECEDENCE."
"It isn't my
precedence!" Lord Lambeth declared, laughing.
"Yes, it is yours--just
exactly yours; and I think it's odious," said Bessie.
"I never saw such a
young lady for discussing things! Has someone had the
impudence to go before you?" asked his lordship.
"It is not the going
before me that I object to," said Bessie; "it
is their thinking that they have a right to do it--<i
a right that I recognize>."
"I never saw such a
young lady as you are for not 'recognizing.' I have no
doubt the thing is BEASTLY, but it saves a lot of trouble."
"It makes a lot of
trouble. It's horrid," said Bessie.
"But how would you
have the first people go?" asked Lord Lambeth.
"They can't go last."
"Whom do you mean by
the first people?"
"Ah, if you mean to
question first principles!" said Lord Lambeth.
"If those are your
first principles, no wonder some of your arrangements are
horrid," observed Bessie Alden with a very pretty
ferocity. "I am a young girl, so of course I go last;
but imagine what Kitty must feel on being informed that
she is not at liberty to budge until certain other ladies
have passed out."
"Oh, I say, she is not
'informed!'" cried Lord Lambeth. "No one would
do such a thing as that."
"She is made to feel
it," the young girl insisted--"as if they were
afraid she would make a rush for the door. No; you have a
lovely country," said Bessie Alden, "but your
precedence is horrid."
"I certainly shouldn't
think your sister would like it," rejoined Lord
Lambeth with even exaggerated gravity. But Bessie Alden
could induce him to enter no formal protest against this
repulsive custom, which he seemed to think an extreme
convenience.
Percy Beaumont all this
time had been a very much less frequent visitor at Jones's
Hotel than his noble kinsman; he had, in fact, called but
twice upon the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who
often saw him, reproached him with his neglect and
declared that, although Mrs. Westgate had said nothing
about it, he was sure that she was secretly wounded by it.
"She suffers too much to speak," said Lord
Lambeth.
"That's all gammon,"
said Percy Beaumont; "there's a limit to what people
can suffer!" And, though sending no apologies to
Jones's Hotel, he undertook in a manner to explain his
absence. "You are always there," he said,
"and that's reason enough for my not going."
"I don't see why.
There is enough for both of us."
"I don't care to be a
witness of your--your reckless passion," said Percy
Beaumont.
Lord Lambeth looked at him
with a cold eye and for a moment said nothing. "It's
not so obvious as you might suppose," he rejoined
dryly, "considering what a demonstrative beggar I am."
"I don't want to know
anything about it--nothing whatever," said Beaumont.
"Your mother asks me everytime she sees me whether I
believe you are really lost--and Lady Pimlico does the
same. I prefer to be able to answer that I know nothing
about it-- that I never go there. I stay away for
consistency's sake. As I said the other day, they must
look after you themselves."
"You are devilish
considerate," said Lord Lambeth. "They never
question me."
"They are afraid of
you. They are afraid of irritating you and making you
worse. So they go to work very cautiously, and, somewhere
or other, they get their information. They know a great
deal about you. They know that you have been with those
ladies to the dome of St. Paul's and-- where was the
other place?--to the Thames Tunnel."
"If all their
knowledge is as accurate as that, it must be very
valuable," said Lord Lambeth.
"Well, at any rate,
they know that you have been visiting the 'sights of the
metropolis.' They think--very naturally, as it seems to
me--that when you take to visiting the sights of the
metropolis with a little American girl, there is serious
cause for alarm." Lord Lambeth responded to this
intimation by scornful laughter, and his companion
continued, after a pause: "I said just now I didn't
want to know anything about the affair; but I will
confess that I am curious to learn whether you propose to
marry Miss Bessie Alden."
On this point Lord Lambeth
gave his interlocutor no immediate satisfaction; he was
musing, with a frown. "By Jove," he said,
"they go rather too far. They SHALL find me
dangerous--I promise them."
Percy Beaumont began to
laugh. "You don't redeem your promises. You said the
other day you would make your mother call."
Lord Lambeth continued to
meditate. "I asked her to call," he said simply.
"And she declined?"
"Yes; but she shall do
it yet."
"Upon my word,"
said Percy Beaumont, "if she gets much more
frightened I believe she will." Lord Lambeth looked
at him, and he went on. "She will go to the girl
herself."
"How do you mean she
will go to her?"
"She will beg her off,
or she will bribe her. She will take strong measures."
Lord Lambeth turned away in
silence, and his companion watched him take twenty steps
and then slowly return. "I have invited Mrs.
Westgate and Miss Alden to Branches," he said,
"and this evening I shall name a day."
"And shall you invite
your mother and your sisters to meet them?"
"Explicitly!"
"That will set the
duchess off," said Percy Beaumont. "I suspect
she will come."
"She may do as she
pleases."
Beaumont looked at Lord
Lambeth. "You do really propose to marry the little
sister, then?"
"I like the way you
talk about it!" cried the young man. "She won't
gobble me down; don't be afraid."
"She won't leave you
on your knees," said Percy Beaumont. "What IS
the inducement?"
"You talk about
proposing: wait till I HAVE proposed," Lord Lambeth
went on.
"That's right, my dear
fellow; think about it," said Percy Beaumont.
"She's a charming girl,"
pursued his lordship.
"Of course she's a
charming girl. I don't know a girl more charming,
intrinsically. But there are other charming girls nearer
home."
"I like her spirit,"
observed Lord Lambeth, almost as if he were trying to
torment his cousin.
"What's the
peculiarity of her spirit?"
"She's not afraid, and
she says things out, and she thinks herself as good as
anyone. She is the only girl I have ever seen that was
not dying to marry me."
"How do you know that,
if you haven't asked her?"
"I don't know how; but
I know it."
"I am sure she asked
me questions enough about your property and your titles,"
said Beaumont.
"She has asked me
questions, too; no end of them," Lord Lambeth
admitted. "But she asked for information, don't you
know."
"Information? Aye, I'll
warrant she wanted it. Depend upon it that she is dying
to marry you just as much and just as little as all the
rest of them."
"I shouldn't like her
to refuse me--I shouldn't like that."
"If the thing would be
so disagreeable, then, both to you and to her, in Heaven's
name leave it alone," said Percy Beaumont.
Mrs. Westgate, on her side,
had plenty to say to her sister about the rarity of Mr.
Beaumont's visits and the nonappearance of the Duchess of
Bayswater. She professed, however, to derive more
satisfaction from this latter circumstance than she could
have done from the most lavish attentions on the part of
this great lady. "It is most marked," she said--"most
marked. It is a delicious proof that we have made them
miserable. The day we dined with Lord Lambeth I was
really sorry for the poor fellow." It will have been
gathered that the entertainment offered by Lord Lambeth
to his American friends had not been graced by the
presence of his anxious mother. He had invited several
choice spirits to meet them; but the ladies of his
immediate family were to Mrs. Westgate's sense-- a sense
possibly morbidly acute--conspicuous by their absence.
"I don't want to
express myself in a manner that you dislike," said
Bessie Alden; "but I don't know why you should have
so many theories about Lord Lambeth's poor mother. You
know a great many young men in New York without knowing
their mothers."
Mrs. Westgate looked at her
sister and then turned away. "My dear Bessie, you
are superb!" she said.
"One thing is certain,"
the young girl continued. "If I believed I were a
cause of annoyance--however unwitting-- to Lord Lambeth's
family, I should insist--"
"Insist upon my
leaving England," said Mrs. Westgate.
"No, not that. I want
to go to the National Gallery again; I want to see
Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I should
insist upon his coming to see us no more."
"That would be very
modest and very pretty of you; but you wouldn't do it now."
"Why do you say 'now'?"
asked Bessie Alden. "Have I ceased to be modest?"
"You care for him too
much. A month ago, when you said you didn't, I believe it
was quite true. But at present, my dear child," said
Mrs. Westgate, "you wouldn't find it quite so simple
a matter never to see Lord Lambeth again. I have seen it
coming on."
"You are mistaken,"
said Bessie. "You don't understand."
"My dear child, don't
be perverse," rejoined her sister.
"I know him better,
certainly, if you mean that," said Bessie. "And
I like him very much. But I don't like him enough to make
trouble for him with his family. However, I don't believe
in that."
"I like the way you
say 'however,'" Mrs. Westgate exclaimed. "Come;
you would not marry him?"
"Oh, no," said
the young girl.
Mrs. Westgate for a moment
seemed vexed. "Why not, pray?" she demanded.
"Because I don't care
to," said Bessie Alden.
The morning after Lord
Lambeth had had, with Percy Beaumont, that exchange of
ideas which has just been narrated, the ladies at Jones's
Hotel received from his lordship a written invitation to
pay their projected visit to Branches Castle on the
following Tuesday. "I think I have made up a very
pleasant party," the young nobleman said. "Several
people whom you know, and my mother and sisters, who have
so long been regrettably prevented from making your
acquaintance." Bessie Alden lost no time in calling
her sister's attention to the injustice she had done the
Duchess of Bayswater, whose hostility was now proved to
be a vain illusion.
"Wait till you see if
she comes," said Mrs. Westgate. "And if she is
to meet us at her son's house the obligation was all the
greater for her to call upon us."
Bessie had not to wait long,
and it appeared that Lord Lambeth's mother now accepted
Mrs. Westgate's view of her duties. On the morrow, early
in the afternoon, two cards were brought to the apartment
of the American ladies--one of them bearing the name of
the Duchess of Bayswater and the other that of the
Countess of Pimlico. Mrs. Westgate glanced at the clock.
"It is not yet four," she said; "they have
come early; they wish to see us. We will receive them."
And she gave orders that her visitors should be admitted.
A few moments later they were introduced, and there was a
solemn exchange of amenities. The duchess was a large
lady, with a fine fresh color; the Countess of Pimlico
was very pretty and elegant.
The duchess looked about
her as she sat down--looked not especially at Mrs.
Westgate. "I daresay my son has told you that I have
been wanting to come and see you," she observed.
"You are very kind,"
said Mrs. Westgate, vaguely--her conscience not allowing
her to assent to this proposition--and, indeed, not
permitting her to enunciate her own with any appreciable
emphasis.
"He says you were so
kind to him in America," said the duchess.
"We are very glad,"
Mrs. Westgate replied, "to have been able to make
him a little more--a little less--a little more
comfortable."
"I think he stayed at
your house," remarked the Duchess of Bayswater,
looking at Bessie Alden.
"A very short time,"
said Mrs. Westgate.
"Oh!" said the
duchess; and she continued to look at Bessie, who was
engaged in conversation with her daughter.
"Do you like London?"
Lady Pimlico had asked of Bessie, after looking at her a
good deal--at her face and her hands, her dress and her
hair.
"Very much indeed,"
said Bessie.
"Do you like this
hotel?"
"It is very
comfortable," said Bessie.
"Do you like stopping
at hotels?" inquired Lady Pimlico after a pause.
"I am very fond of
traveling," Bessie answered, "and I suppose
hotels are a necessary part of it. But they are not the
part I am fondest of."
"Oh, I hate traveling,"
said the Countess of Pimlico and transferred her
attention to Mrs. Westgate.
"My son tells me you
are going to Branches," the duchess presently
resumed.
"Lord Lambeth has been
so good as to ask us," said Mrs. Westgate, who
perceived that her visitor had now begun to look at her,
and who had her customary happy consciousness of a
distinguished appearance. The only mitigation of her
felicity on this point was that, having inspected her
visitor's own costume, she said to herself, "She won't
know how well I am dressed!"
"He has asked me to go,
but I am not sure I shall be able," murmured the
duchess.
"He had offered us the
p--prospect of meeting you," said Mrs. Westgate.
"I hate the country at
this season," responded the duchess.
Mrs. Westgate gave a little
shrug. "I think it is pleasanter than London."
But the duchess's eyes were
absent again; she was looking very fixedly at Bessie. In
a moment she slowly rose, walked to a chair that stood
empty at the young girl's right hand, and silently seated
herself. As she was a majestic, voluminous woman, this
little transaction had, inevitably, an air of somewhat
impressive intention. It diffused a certain awkwardness,
which Lady Pimlico, as a sympathetic daughter, perhaps
desired to rectify in turning to Mrs. Westgate.
"I daresay you go out
a great deal," she observed.
"No, very little. We
are strangers, and we didn't come here for society."
"I see," said
Lady Pimlico. "It's rather nice in town just now."
"It's charming,"
said Mrs. Westgate. "But we only go to see a few
people-- whom we like."
"Of course one can't
like everyone," said Lady Pimlico.
"It depends upon one's
society," Mrs. Westgate rejoined.
The Duchess meanwhile had
addressed herself to Bessie. "My son tells me the
young ladies in America are so clever."
"I am glad they made
so good an impression on him," said Bessie, smiling.
The Duchess was not smiling;
her large fresh face was very tranquil. "He is very
susceptible," she said. "He thinks everyone
clever, and sometimes they are."
"Sometimes,"
Bessie assented, smiling still.
The duchess looked at her a
little and then went on; "Lambeth is very
susceptible, but he is very volatile, too."
"Volatile?" asked
Bessie.
"He is very inconstant.
It won't do to depend on him."
"Ah," said Bessie,
"I don't recognize that description. We have
depended on him greatly--my sister and I--and he has
never disappointed us."
"He will disappoint
you yet," said the duchess.
Bessie gave a little laugh,
as if she were amused at the duchess's persistency.
"I suppose it will depend on what we expect of him."
"The less you expect,
the better," Lord Lambeth's mother declared.
"Well," said
Bessie, "we expect nothing unreasonable."
The duchess for a moment
was silent, though she appeared to have more to say.
"Lambeth says he has seen so much of you," she
presently began.
"He has been to see us
very often; he has been very kind," said Bessie
Alden.
"I daresay you are
used to that. I am told there is a great deal of that in
America."
"A great deal of
kindness?" the young girl inquired, smiling.
"Is that what you call
it? I know you have different expressions."
"We certainly don't
always understand each other," said Mrs. Westgate,
the termination of whose interview with Lady Pimlico
allowed her to give her attention to their elder visitor.
"I am speaking of the
young men calling so much upon the young ladies,"
the duchess explained.
"But surely in England,"
said Mrs. Westgate, "the young ladies don't call
upon the young men?"
"Some of them do--almost!"
Lady Pimlico declared. "What the young men are a
great parti."
"Bessie, you must make
a note of that," said Mrs. Westgate. "My sister,"
she added, "is a model traveler. She writes down all
the curious facts she hears in a little book she keeps
for the purpose."
The duchess was a little
flushed; she looked all about the room, while her
daughter turned to Bessie. "My brother told us you
were wonderfully clever," said Lady Pimlico.
"He should have said
my sister," Bessie answered--"when she says
such things as that."
"Shall you be long at
Branches?" the duchess asked, abruptly, of the young
girl.
"Lord Lambeth has
asked us for three days," said Bessie.
"I shall go," the
duchess declared, "and my daughter, too."
"That will be charming!"
Bessie rejoined.
"Delightful!"
murmured Mrs. Westgate.
"I shall expect to see
a great deal of you," the duchess continued. "When
I go to Branches I monopolize my son's guests."
"They must be most
happy," said Mrs. Westgate very graciously.
"I want immensely to
see it--to see the castle," said Bessie to the
duchess. "I have never seen one--in England, at
least; and you know we have none in America."
"Ah, you are fond of
castles?" inquired her Grace.
"Immensely!"
replied the young girl. "It has been the dream of my
life to live in one."
The duchess looked at her a
moment, as if she hardly knew how to take this assurance,
which, from her Grace's point of view, was either very
artless or very audacious. "Well," she said,
rising, "I will show you Branches myself." And
upon this the two great ladies took their departure.
"What did they mean by
it?" asked Mrs. Westgate, when they were gone.
"They meant to be
polite," said Bessie, "because we are going to
meet them."
"It is too late to be
polite," Mrs. Westgate replied almost grimly. "They
meant to overawe us by their fine manners and their
grandeur, and to make you lacher prise."
"Lacher prise? What
strange things you say!" murmured Bessie Alden.
"They meant to snub us,
so that we shouldn't dare to go to Branches," Mrs.
Westgate continued.
"On the contrary,"
said Bessie, "the duchess offered to show me the
place herself."
"Yes, you may depend
upon it she won't let you out of her sight. She will show
you the place from morning till night."
"You have a theory for
everything," said Bessie.
"And you apparently
have none for anything."
"I saw no attempt to 'overawe'
us," said the young girl. "Their manners were
not fine."
"They were not even
good!" Mrs. Westgate declared.
Bessie was silent a while,
but in a few moments she observed that she had a very
good theory. "They came to look at me," she
said, as if this had been a very ingenious hypothesis.
Mrs. Westgate did it justice; she greeted it with a smile
and pronounced it most brilliant, while, in reality, she
felt that the young girl's skepticism, or her charity, or,
as she had sometimes called it appropriately, her
idealism, was proof against irony. Bessie, however,
remained meditative all the rest of that day and well on
into the morrow.
On the morrow, before lunch,
Mrs. Westgate had occasion to go out for an hour, and
left her sister writing a letter. When she came back she
met Lord Lambeth at the door of the hotel, coming away.
She thought he looked slightly embarrassed; he was
certainly very grave. "I am sorry to have missed you.
Won't you come back?" she asked.
"No," said the
young man, "I can't. I have seen your sister. I can
never come back." Then he looked at her a moment and
took her hand. "Goodbye, Mrs. Westgate," he
said. "You have been very kind to me." And with
what she thought a strange, sad look in his handsome
young face, he turned away.
She went in, and she found
Bessie still writing her letter; that is, Mrs. Westgate
perceived she was sitting at the table with the pen in
her hand and not writing. "Lord Lambeth has been
here," said the elder lady at last.
Then Bessie got up and
showed her a pale, serious face. She bent this face upon
her sister for some time, confessing silently and a
little pleading. "I told him," she said at last,
"that we could not go to Branches."
Mrs. Westgate displayed
just a spark of irritation. "He might have waited,"
she said with a smile, "till one had seen the castle."
Later, an hour afterward, she said, "Dear Bessie, I
wish you might have accepted him."
"I couldn't,"
said Bessie gently.
"He is an excellent
fellow," said Mrs. Westgate.
"I couldn't,"
Bessie repeated.
"If it is only,"
her sister added, "because those women will think
that they succeeded--that they paralyzed us!"
Bessie Alden turned away;
but presently she added, "They were interesting; I
should have liked to see them again."
"So should I!"
cried Mrs. Westgate significantly.
"And I should have
liked to see the castle," said Bessie. "But now
we must leave England," she added.
Her sister looked at her.
"You will not wait to go to the National Gallery?"
"Not now."
"Nor to Canterbury
Cathedral?"
Bessie reflected a moment.
"We can stop there on our way to Paris," she
said.
Lord Lambeth did not tell
Percy Beaumont that the contingency he was not prepared
at all to like had occurred; but Percy Beaumont, on
hearing that the two ladies had left London, wondered
with some intensity what had happened; wondered, that is,
until the Duchess of Bayswater came a little to his
assistance. The two ladies went to Paris, and Mrs.
Westgate beguiled the journey to that city by repeating
several times-- "That's what I regret; they will
think they petrified us." But Bessie Alden seemed to
regret nothing. End of An International
Episode