“Oh you mean by the heat?”—Percy Beaumont rose to it. “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; Mrs. Westgate was pretty. “Well, I did mind, and I thought of sendingfor you this morning to the Ocean House. I’m very glad you’re better, and I’m charmed you’re really with us. 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 and tumbling along the base of the low cliffs whose level tops intervened in lawnlike smoothness, formed a charming complement to the drawing-room. As such it was in course of employment at the present hour; 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 the more guarded of our couple declined it, though he was very hot. Presently, however, everything turned to ease; the breeze from the sea was delicious and the view charming; the people sitting about looked fresh and fair. Several of the younger ladies were clearly girls, and the gentlemen slim bright youths such as our friends had seen the day before in New York. The ladies were working on bands of tapestry, and one of the young men had an open book in his lap. Percy afterwards learned from a lady that this young man had been reading aloud—that he was from Boston and was very fond of reading aloud.Percy pronounced it a great pity they had interrupted him; he should like so much (from all he had heard) to listen to a Bostonian read. Couldn’t the young man be induced to go on?
“Oh no,” said this informant very freely; “he wouldn’t be able to get the young ladies to attend to him now.”
There was something very friendly, Beaumont saw, in the attitude of the company; they looked at their new recruits with an air of animated sympathy and interest; they smiled, brightly and unanimously, at everything that dropped from either. Lord Lambeth and his companion felt they were indeed made cordially welcome. Mrs. Westgate seated herself between them, and while she talked continuously to each they had occasion to observe that she came up to their friend Littledale’s promise. She was thirty years old, with the eyes and the smile of a girl of seventeen, and was light and graceful—elegant, exquisite. Mrs. Westgate was, further, what she had occasion to describe some person, among her many winged words, as being, all spontaneity. Frank and demonstrative, she appeared always—while she looked at you delightedly with her beautiful young eyes—to be making sudden confessions and concessions, breaking out after momentary wonders.
“We shall expect to see a great deal of you,” she said to Lord Lambeth with her bland intensity. “We’re very fond of Englishmen here; that is, there are a great many we’ve been fond of. After a day or two you must come and stay with us; we hope you’ll stay a nice long while. Newport’s quite attractive 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 theyalways like it, and I must say I should think they would. They receive particular attention—I must say I think they sometimes get spoiled; but I’m sure you and Mr. Beaumont are proof against that. My husband tells me you’re friends of Captain Littledale’s; he was such a charming man. He made himself so agreeable here that I wonder he didn’t stay. That would have carried out his system. It couldn’t have been pleasanter for him in his own country. Though I suppose it’s very pleasant in England too—for English people. I don’t know myself; I’ve been there very little. I’ve been a great deal abroad, but I always cling to 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?—it was said by a great wit. I mean the good Americans; but we’re 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’ll 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 à l’anglaise; and I must say that’s a talent I never possessed. In Paris they’ll 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’ve always supposed that in other things everything was different. I mean according to the people—according to the classes and all that. I’m afraid you’ll think I don’t take a very favourable view; but you know you can’t take a very favourable view in Dover Street and themonth 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 every one 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 at the right season; I guess I’ll 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 they take things as a matter of course—things that are done for them. Now naturally anything’s a matter of course only when the Englishmen are very nice. But you’ll say—oh yes you will, or you would if some of you ever did say much!—they’re almost always very nice. You can’t expect this to be nearly such an interesting country as England; there are not nearly so many things to see, and we haven’t your country life. I’ve never seen anything of your country life; when I’m in Europe I’m always on the Continent. But I’ve heard a great deal about it; I know that when you’re among yourselves in the country you have the most beautiful time. Of course we’ve nothing of that sort, we’ve nothing on that scale. I don’t apologise, Lord Lambeth; some Americans are always apologising; you must have noticed that. We’ve the reputation of always boasting and ‘blowing’ and waving the American flag; but I must say that what strikes me is that we’re 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 a tablecloth the worse for wear. Why should we apologise? The English never apologise—do they? No, I must say I never apologise. You must take us as we come—withall 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—though I don’t really know anything about them, because when I go over I always cling to the Continent. But if we haven’t I should think you might find it a pleasant change—I think any country’s 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. Perhaps that was only a part of his pleasant manners. I suppose at any rate that in England promotion—and all that sort of thing—is fearfully slow. With us, you know, it’s a great deal too quick. You see I admit our drawbacks. But I must confess I think Newport 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 much more refined 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’ll find American society—at least the Newport phase quite unique. I wish very much Mr. Westgate were here; but he’s dreadfully confined to New York. I suppose you think that’s very strange—for a gentleman. Only you see we haven’t any leisure-class.”
Mrs. Westgate’s discourse was delivered with a mild merciless monotony, a paucity of intonation, an impartial flatness that suggested a flowery meadscrupulously “done over” by a steam roller that had reduced its texture to that of a drawing-room carpet. Lord Lambeth listened to her with, it must be confessed, a rather ineffectual attention, though he summoned to his aid such a show as he might of discriminating motions and murmurs. He had no great faculty for apprehending generalisations. There were some three or four indeed which, in the play of his own intelligence, he had originated and which had sometimes appeared to meet the case—any case; yet he felt he had never known such a case as Mrs. Westgate or as her presentation of her cases. But at the present time he could hardly have been said to follow this exponent as she darted fish-like through the sea of speculation. Fortunately she asked for no special rejoinder, since she looked about at the rest of the company as well and smiled at Mr. Beaumont on the other side of her as if he too must understand her and agree with her. He was measurably 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 person with dark hair and blue eyes. This was the situation of Lord Lambeth, to whom it occurred after a while that the young person with blue eyes and dark hair might be the pretty sister of whom Mrs. Westgate had spoken. She presently turned to him with a remark establishing 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 on such days as these.”
“Oh yes—it’s very stuffy,” said Lord Lambeth.
“It must be dreadful there,” said the pretty sister.
“I daresay he’s immensely taken up,” the young man returned with a sense of conscientiously yearning toward American realities.
“The gentlemen in America work too much,” his friend went on.
“Oh do they? Well, I daresay they like it,” he hopefully threw out.
“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?” the blue eyes and dark hair went on.
“Oh I don’t know. I just came over for the joke of it. I haven’t got long.” Then occurred a pause, after which he began again. “But he will turn up here, won’t he?”
“I certainly hope he will. He must help to entertain you and Mr. Beaumont.”
Lord Lambeth looked at her from handsome eyes that were brown. “Do you suppose he’d have come down with us if we had pressed it?”
The pretty girl treated this as rather an easy conundrum. “I daresay he would,” she smiled.
“Really!” said the young Englishman. “Well, he was no end civil.”
His young woman seemed much amused; this at least was in her eyes, which freely met Lord Lambeth’s. “He would be. He’s a perfect husband. But all Americans are that,” she confidently continued.
“Really!” Lord Lambeth exclaimed again; and wondered whether all American ladies had such a passion for generalising as these two.
He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk; it was all pitched in a key of expression and emphasis rather new to him. Every one present, the cool maidens not least, personally addressed him, and seemed to make a particular point of doing so by the friendly repetition of his name. Three or four other persons came in, and there was a shifting of seats, a changing of places; the gentlemen took, individually, an interest in the visitors, putting somehow more imagination and more “high comedy” into this effort than the latter had ever seen displayed save in a play or a story. These well-wishers feared the two Britons mightn’t be comfortable at their hotel—it being, as one of them said, “not so private as those dear little English inns of yours.” This last gentleman added that as yet perhaps, alas, privacy wasn’t 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. The life was really growing more private; it was growing greatly to resemble European—which wasn’t to be wondered at when two-thirds of the people leading it were so awfully much at home in Europe. Europe, in the course of this conversation, was indeed, as Lord Lambeth afterwards remarked to his compatriot, rather bewilderingly rubbed into them: did theypretend to be European, and when had they ever been entered under that head? Everything at Newport, at all events, was described to them as thoroughly private; they would probably find themselves, when all was said, a good deal struck with that. It was also represented to the strangers that it mattered very little whether their hotel was agreeable, as every one would want them to “visit round,” as somebody called it: they would stay with other people and in any case would be constantly at Mrs. Westgate’s. They would find that charming; it was the pleasantest house in Newport. It was only a pity Mr. Westgate was never there—he being a tremendously fine man, one of the finest they had. He worked like a horse and left his wife to play the social part. Well, she played it all right, if that was all he wanted. He liked her to enjoy herself, and she did know how. She was highly cultivated and a splendid converser—the sort of converser people would come miles to hear. But some preferred her sister, who was in a different style altogether. Some even thought her prettier, but decidedly Miss Alden wasn’t so smart. She was more in the Boston style—the quiet Boston; she had lived a great deal there and was very highly educated. Boston girls, it was intimated, were more on the English model.
Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this last proposition; for, 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 Miss Alden was but a girl of twenty she appeared conscious of the weight of expectation—unless she quite wantonly took on duties she might have let alone; and this was perhaps the more to be noticed as she seemed by habit rathergrave and backward, perhaps even proud, with little of the other’s free fraternising. She might have been thought too deadly thin, not to say also too deadly pale; but while she moved over the grass, her arms hanging at her sides, and, seriously or absently, forgot expectations, though again brightly to remember them and to look at the summer sea, as if that was what she really cared for, her companion judged her at least as pretty as Mrs. Westgate and reflected that if this was the Boston style, “the quiet Boston,” it would do very well. He could fancy her very clever, highly educated and all the rest of it; but clearly also there were ways in which she could spare a fellow—could ease him; she wouldn’t keep him so long on the stretch at once. For all her cleverness, moreover, he felt 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, from a different society, and she was trying to adapt her conversation. The others were scattered about the rocks; Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.
“Very jolly place for this sort of thing,” Lord Lambeth said. “It must do beautifully to sit.”
“It does indeed; there are cosy nooks and there are breezy ones, which I often try—as if they had been made on purpose.”
“Ah I suppose you’ve had a lot made,” he fell in.
She seemed to wonder. “Oh no, we’ve had nothing made. It’s all pure nature.”
“I should think you’d have a few little benches—rustic seats and that sort of thing. It might really be so jolly to ‘develop’ the place,” he suggested.
It made her thoughtful—even a little rueful. “I’m afraid we haven’t so many of those things as you.”
“Ah well, if you go in for pure nature, as you were saying, there’s nothing like that. Nature, over here,must be awfully grand.” And Lord Lambeth looked about him.
The little coast-line that contributed to the view melted away, but it too much lacked presence and character—a fact Miss Alden appeared to rise to a perception of. “I’m afraid it seems to you very rough. It’s not like the coast-scenery in Kingsley’s novels.”
He wouldn’t let her, however, undervalue it. “Ah, the novels always overdo everything, you know. You mustn’t go by the novels.”
They wandered a little on the rocks; they stopped to look 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 for some moments in silence. The girl’s eyes took in her companion, observing him attentively but covertly, as those of women even in blinking youth know how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid contemplation; 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 visible repose of mind, an inaccessibility to questions, somehow stamped in by the same strong die and pressure that nature, designing a precious medal, had selected and applied. It was not that he looked stupid; it was only, we assume, that his perceptions didn’t show in his face for restless or his imagination for irritable. He was not, as he would himself have said, tremendously clever; but, though there was rather a constant appeal for delay in his waiting, his perfectly patient eye, this registered simplicity had its beauty as well and, whatever it might have appeared to plead for, didn’t plead in the name of indifference or inaction. This most searching of his new friends thought him the handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden’simagination, unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, had already made up his mind, quite originally and without aid, that she had a grace exceedingly her own.
“I daresay it’s very gay here—that you’ve lots of balls and parties,” he said; since, though not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on having with women a strict sufficiency of conversation.
“Oh yes, there’s a great deal going on. There are not so many balls, but there are a good many other pleasant things,” Bessie Alden explained. “You’ll see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.”
“It will be very kind of you to let us see. But I thought you Americans were always dancing.”
“I suppose we dance a good deal, though I’ve never seen much of it. We don’t do it much, at any rate in summer. And I’m sure,” she said, “that we haven’t as many balls as you in England.”
He wondered—these so many prompt assumptions about his own country made him gape a little. “Ah, in England it all depends, you know.”
“You’ll not think much of our gaieties,” she said—though she seemed to settle it for him with a quaver of interrogation. The interrogation sounded earnest indeed and the decision arch; the mixture, at any rate, was charming. “Those things with us are much less splendid than in England.”
“I fancy you don’t really mean that,” her companion laughed.
“I assure you I really mean everything I say,” she returned. “Certainly from what I’ve read about English society it is very different.”
“Ah well, you know,” said Lord Lambeth, who appeared to cling to this general theory, “those things are often described by fellows who know nothing about them. You mustn’t mind what you read.”
“Ah, what a blasphemous speech—Imustmindwhat I read!” our young woman protested. “When I read Thackeray and George Eliot how can I help minding?”
“Oh well, Thackeray and George Eliot”—and her friend pleasantly bethought himself. “I’m afraid I haven’t read much of them.”
“Don’t you suppose they knew about society?” asked Bessie Alden.
“Oh I daresay they knew; they must have got up their subject. Good writers do, don’t they? But those fashionable novels are mostly awful rot, you know.”
His companion rested on him a moment her dark blue eyes; after which she looked down into the chasm where the water was tumbling about. “Do you mean Catherine Grace Gore, for instance?” she then more aspiringly asked.
But at this he broke down—he coloured, laughed, gave up. “I’m afraid I haven’t read that either. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m not very intellectual.”
“Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I like reading everything about English life—even poor books. I’m so curious about it,” said Bessie Alden.
“Aren’t ladies curious about everything?” he asked with continued hilarity.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re 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, advised of a compliment, found his natural modesty close at hand. “I’m 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 he. “Fancy!”
“Never—except in imagination. And Ihavebeen to Paris,” she admitted.
“Fancy,” he repeated with gaiety—“fancy taking those brutes first! But youwillcome soon?”
“It’s the dream of my life!” Bessie Alden brightly professed.
“Your sister at any rate seems to know a tremendous lot about us,” Lord Lambeth went on.
She appeared to take her view of this. “My sister and I are two very different persons. She has been a great deal in Europe. She has been in England a little—not intimately. But she has met English people in other countries, and she arrives very quickly at conclusions.”
“Ah, I guess she does,” he laughed. “But you must have known some too.”
“No—I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to one before. You’re the first Englishman that—to my knowledge—I’ve ever talked with.”
Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain gravity—almost, as it seemed to the young man, an impressiveness. The impressive always made him feel awkward, and he now began to laugh and swing his stick. “Ah, you’d have been sure to know!” And then he added after an instant: “I’m sorry I’m not a better specimen.”
The girl looked away, but taking it more gaily. “You must remember you’re only a beginning.” 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 expects to cross about then, and she has asked me to go with her. If I do I shall make her stay as long as possible in London.”
“Ah, you must come early in July,” said LordLambeth. “That’s the time when there’s most going on.”
“I don’t think I can wait even till early in July,” his friend returned. “By the first of May I shall be very impatient.” They had gone further, and Mrs. Westgate and her companion were near. “Kitty,” said the younger sister, “I’ve given out that we go 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 of so handsome an effect as his comrade, though in the latter’s absence he might, with his manly stature and his fair dense beard, his fresh clean skin and his quiet outlook, have pleased by a due affirmation of the best British points. Just now Beaumont’s clear eyes had a rather troubled light, which, after glancing at Bessie Alden while she spoke, he turned with some intensity on Lord Lambeth. Mrs. Westgate’s beautiful radiance of interest and dissent fell meanwhile impartially everywhere.
“You had better wait till the time comes,” she said to her sister. “Perhaps next May you won’t care so much for 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, raising his eyebrows and stroking down his back hair, “even to the point of thinking itnotdelightful.”
“Ah, youmusthave been getting it!” cried his friend.
“I don’t see anything delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs. Westgate,” said Percy Beaumont.
“Well, I do!” Mrs. Westgate declared as she turned again to her sister. “You know you’ve to goto town. There must be something at the door for you. You had better take Lord Lambeth.”
Mr. Beaumont, at this point, looked straight at his comrade, trying to catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth wouldn’t look at him; his own eyes were better occupied. “I shall be very happy”—Bessie Alden rose straight to their hostess’s suggestion. “I’m only going to some shops. But I’ll drive you about and show you the place.”
“An American woman who respects herself,” said Mrs. Westgate, turning to the elder man with her bright expository air, “must buy something every day of her life. If she can’t do it herself she must send out some member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfil my mission.”
The 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 fulfils her own mission,” he presently said; “that of being very attractive.”
But even here Mrs. Westgate discriminated. “I don’t know that I should precisely say attractive. She’s not so much that as she’s charming when you really know her. She’s very shy.”
“Oh indeed?” said Percy Beaumont with evident wonder. And then as if to alternate with a certain grace the note of scepticism: “I guess your shyness, in that case, is different from ours.”
“Everything of ours is different from yours,” Mrs. Westgate instantly returned. “But my poor sister’s given over, I hold, to a fine Bostongaucheriethat has rubbed off on her by being there so much. She’s a dear good girl, however; she’s a charming type of girl. She is not in the least a flirt; that isn’t at all her line; she doesn’t know the alphabet of any such vulgarity. She’s very simple, very serious, verytrue. She has lived, however, rather too much in Bostonwith another sister of mine, the eldest of us, who married a Bostonian. Bessie’s very cultivated, not at all like me—I’m not in the least cultivated and am called so only by those who don’t know what true culture is. But Bessie does; she has studied Greek; she has read everything; she’s what they call in Boston ‘thoughtful.’”
“Ah well, it only depends on what one thinksabout,” said Mr. Beaumont, who appeared to find her zeal for distinctions catching.
“I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, “that the most charming girl in the world is a Boston superstructure on a New Yorkfond, or perhaps a New York superstructure on a Bostonfond. At any rate it’s the mixture,” she declared, continuing to supply her guest with information and to do him the honours of the American world with a zeal that left nothing to be desired.
Lord Lambeth got into a light low pony-cart 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 hill-side and clustering about a long straight street paved with huge old cobbles. There were plenty of shops, a large allowance of which appeared those of fruit-vendors, with piles of huge water-melons and pumpkins stacked in front of them; while, drawn up before the shops or bumping about on the round stones, were innumerable other like or different carts 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 of the last effusiveness: with a great many “Oh my dears” and little quick sounds andmotions—obscure native words, shibboleths and signs. His companion went into seventeen shops—he amused himself with counting them—and accumulated at the bottom of the trap a pile of bundles that hardly left the young Englishman a place for his feet. As she had no other attendant he sat in the phaeton to hold the pony; where, though not a particularly acute observer, he saw much harmlessly to divert him—especially the ladies just mentioned, who wandered up and down with an aimless intentness, as if 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. And he felt by the time they got back to the villa that he had made a stride in intimacy with Miss Alden.
The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole of many successive days in the cultivation, right and left, far and near, of this celerity of social progress. They agreed that it was all extremely jolly—that they had never known anything more agreeable. It is not proposed to report the detail of their sojourn on this charming shore; though were it convenient I might present a record of impressions none the less soothing that they were not exhaustively analysed. Many of them still linger in the minds of our travellers, attended by a train of harmonious images—images of early breezy shining hours on lawns and piazzas that overlooked the sea; of innumerable pretty girls saying innumerable quaint and familiar things; of infinite lounging and talking and laughing and flirting and lunching and dining; of a confidence that broke down, of a freedom that pulled up, nowhere; of an idyllic ease that was somehow too ordered for a primitive social consciousness and too innocent for a developed; of occasions on which they so knew every one and everything that they almostached with reciprocity; of drives and rides in the late afternoon, over gleaming beaches, on long sea-roads, beneath a sky lighted up by marvellous sunsets; of tea-tables, on the return, informal, irregular, agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on the perpetual verandahs, in the summer starlight, above the warm Atlantic and amid irrelevant outbursts of clever minstrelsy. The young Englishmen were introduced to everybody, entertained by everybody, intimate with everybody, and it was all the book of life, of American life, at least; with the chapter of “complications” bodily omitted. At the end of three days they had removed their luggage from the hotel and had gone to stay with Mrs. Westgate—a step as to which Percy Beaumont at first took up an attitude of mistrust apparently founded on some odd and just a little barbaric talk forced on him, he would have been tempted to say, and very soon after their advent, by Miss Alden. He had indeed been aware of her occasional approach or appeal, since she wasn’t literally always in conversation with Lord Lambeth. He had meditated on Mrs. Westgate’s account of her sister and discovered for himself that the young lady was “sharp” (Percy’s critical categories remained few and simple) and appeared to have read a great deal. She seemed perfectly well-bred, though he couldn’t make out that, as Mrs. Westgate funnily insisted, she was shy. If she was shy she carried it off with an ease—!
“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’s instinct was to speak as if he had never heard of such a matter.
“His rank—or whatever you call it. Unfortunately we haven’t got a ‘Peerage,’ like the people in Thackeray.”
“That’s a great pity,” Percy pleaded. “You’d find the whole matter in black and white, and upon my honour I know very little about it.”
The girl seemed to wonder at this innocence. “You know at least whether he’s what they call a great noble.”
“Oh yes, he’s in that line.”
“Is he a ‘peer of the realm’?”
“Well, as yet—very nearly.”
“And has he any other title than Lord Lambeth?”
“His title’s the Marquis of Lambeth.” With which the fountain of Bessie’s information appeared to run a little dry. She looked at him, however, with such interest that he presently added: “He’s the son of the Duke of Bayswater.”
“The eldest—?”
“The only one.”
“And are his parents living?”
“Naturally—as to his father. Ifheweren’t living Lambeth would be a duke.”
“So that when ‘the old lord’ dies”—and the girl smiled with more simplicity than might have been expected in one so “sharp”—“he’ll become Duke of Bayswater?”
“Of course,” said their common friend. “But his father’s in excellent health.”
“And his mother?”
Percy seemed amused. “The Duchess is built to last!”
“And has he any sisters?”
“Yes, there are two.”
“And what are they called?”
“One of them’s married. She’s the Countess of Pimlico.”
“And the other?”
“The other’s unmarried—she’s plain Lady Julia.”
Bessie entered into it all. “Is she very plain?”
He began to laugh again. “You wouldn’t 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 have a go at you.”
“It seems to me you’re doing your best to make a fool of me,” the modest young nobleman answered.
“She has been asking me,” his friend imperturbably pursued, “all about your people and your possessions.”
“I’m sure it’s very good of her!” Lord Lambeth returned.
“Well, then,” said Percy, “if you go straight into it, if you hurl yourself bang upon the spears, you do so with your eyes open.”
“Damn my eyes!” the young man pronounced. “If one’s to be a dozen times a day at the house it’s a great deal more convenient to sleep there. I’m sick of travelling up and down this beastly Avenue.”
Since he had determined to go Percy would of course have been very sorry to allow him to go alone; he was a man of many scruples—in the direction in which he had any at all—and he remembered his promise to the Duchess. It was obviously the memory of this promise that made Mr. Beaumont say to his companion a couple of days later that he rather wondered he should be so fond of such a girl.
“In the first place how do you know how fond I am?” asked Lord Lambeth. “And in the second why shouldn’t I be fond of her?”
“I shouldn’t think she’d be in your line.”
“What do you call my ‘line’? You don’t set her down, I suppose, as ‘fast’?”
“Exactly so. Mrs. Westgate tells me that there’s no such thing as the fast girl in America; that it’san English invention altogether and that the term has no meaning here.”
“All the better. It’s an animal I detest,” said Lord Lambeth.
“You prefer, then, rather a priggish Americanprécieuse?”
Lord Lambeth took his time. “Do you call Miss Alden all that?”
“Her sister tells me,” said Percy Beaumont, “that she’s tremendously literary.”
“Well, why shouldn’t she be? She’s certainly very clever and has every appearance of a well-stored mind.”
Percy for an instant watched his young friend, who had turned away. “I should rather have supposed you’d find her stores oppressive.”
The young man, after this, faced him again. “Why, do you think me such a dunce?” And then as his friend but vaguely protested: “The girl’s all right,” he said—and quite as if this judgement covered all the ground. It wasn’t that there was no ground—but he knew what he was about.
Percy, for a while further, and a little uncomfortably flushed with the sense of his false position—that of presenting culture in a “mean” light, as they said at Newport—Percy kept his peace; but on August 10th he wrote to the Duchess of Bayswater. His conception of certain special duties and decencies, as I have said, was strong, and this step wholly fell in with it. His companion meanwhile was having much talk with Miss 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 verandah, late in the evening. Lord Lambeth, who had stayed at many houses, had never stayed at one in which it was possible for a young man to converse so freely and frequently with a young lady. Thisyoung lady no longer applied to their other guest for information concerning his lordship. She addressed herself directly to the young nobleman. She asked him a great many questions, some of which did, according to Mr. Beaumont’s term, a little oppress him; for he took no pleasure in talking about himself.
“Lord Lambeth”—this had been one of them—“are you an hereditary legislator?”
“Oh I say,” he returned, “don’t make me call myself such names as that.”
“But you’re natural members of Parliament.”
“I don’t like the sound of that either.”
“Doesn’t your father sit in the House of Lords?” Bessie Alden went on.
“Very seldom,” said Lord Lambeth.
“Is it a very august position?” she asked.
“Oh dear no,” Lord Lambeth smiled.
“I should think it would be very grand”—she serenely kept it up, as the female American, he judged, would always keep anything up—“to possess simply by an accident of birth the right to make laws for a great nation.”
“Ah, but one doesn’t make laws. There’s a lot of humbug about it.”
“I don’t believe that,” the girl unconfusedly 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, I guess!” Lord Lambeth after a moment returned.
“I think it’s tremendous”—this at least she kept up; and on another occasion she asked him if he had any tenantry. Hereupon it was that, as I have said, he felt a little the burden of her earnestness.
But he took it good-humouredly. “Do you want to buy up their leases?”
“Well—have you got any ‘livings’?” she demanded as if the word were rich and rare.
“Oh I say!” he cried. “Haveyougot a pet clergyman looking out?” But she made him plead guilty to his having, in prospect, 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 a few pleasant facts about it and into pronouncing it really very jolly. Bessie listened with great interest, declaring she would give the world to see such a place. To which he charmingly made answer: “It would be awfully kind of you to come and stay there, you know.” It was not inconvenient to him meanwhile that Percy Beaumont hadn’t happened to hear him make this genial remark.
Mr. Westgate, all this time, hadn’t, 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 jewelled fingers, pronouncing it too “fiendish” he should let his business so dreadfully absorb him that he could but platonically hope, as she expressed it, his two Englishmen were having a good time. “I must say,” said Mrs. Westgate, “that it’s no thanks to him if you are!” And she went on to explain, while she kept up that slow-paced circulation which enabled her well-adjusted skirts to display themselves so advantageously, that unfortunately in America there was no leisure-class and that the universal passionate surrender of the men to business-questions and business-questions only, as if they were the all in all of life, was a tide that would have to be stemmed. It was Lord Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young men were together, that Percy was having a very good time with Mrs. Westgate and that under the pretext of meeting for the purpose of animated discussion they wereindulging in practices that imparted a shade of hypocrisy to the lady’s regret for her husband’s absence.
“I assure you we’re always discussing and differing,” Mr. Beaumont however asseverated. “She’s awfully argumentative. American ladies certainly don’t mind contradicting you flat. Upon my word I don’t think I was ever treated so by a woman before. We have ours ever so much more in hand. She’s so devilish positive.”
The superlative degree so variously affirmed, however, was evidently a source of attraction in Mrs. Westgate, for the elder man 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 her husband; but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which, with that gentleman’s assistance, he completely settled this piece of business. “They know how to put things—and put people—‘through’ in New York,” he subsequently and quite breathlessly observed to his comrade; and he added that Mr. Westgate had seemed markedly to fear his wife might suffer for loss of her guest—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. August had still a part of its course to run when his lordship received from his mother the disconcerting news that his father had been taken ill and that he had best at once come home. The young nobleman concealed his chagrin with no great success. “I left the Duke but the other day absolutely all right—so what the deuce does it mean?” he asked of his comrade. “What’s a fellow to do?”
Percy Beaumont was scarce less annoyed; he had deemed it his duty, as we know, to report faithfully to the Duchess, but had not expected this distinguished woman to act so promptly on his hint. “It means,” he said, “that your father is somehow, and rather suddenly, laid up. I don’t suppose it’s anything serious, but you’ve no option. Take the first steamer, but take it without alarm.”
This really struck Lord Lambeth as meaning that he essentially needn’t take it, since alarm would have been his only good motive; yet he nevertheless, after an hour of intenser irritation than he could quite have explained to himself, made his farewells; in the course of which he exchanged a few last words with Bessie Alden that are the only ones making good their place in our record. “Of course I needn’t assure you that if you should come to England next year I expect to be the very first person notified of it.”
She looked at him in that way she had which never quite struck him as straight and clear, yet which always struck him as kind and true. “Oh, if we come to London I should think you’d sufficiently hear of it.”
Percy Beaumont felt it his duty also to embark, and this same rigour compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to his friend that he suspected the Duchess’s telegram to have been in part the result of something he himself had written her. “I wrote her—as I distinctly warned you I had promised in general to do—that you were extremely interested in a little American girl.”
The young man, much upset by this avowal, indulged for some moments in the strong and simple language of resentment. But if I have described him as inclined to candour and to reason I can give no better proof of it than the fact of his being ready to face the truth by the end of half an hour. “You werequite right after all. I’m very much interested in her. Only, to be fair,” he added, “you should have told my mother also that she’s not—at all seriously—interested in poor me.”
Mr. Beaumont gave the rein to mirth and mockery. “There’s nothing so charming as modesty in a young man in the position of ‘poor’ you. That speech settles for me the question of what’s the matter with you.”
Lord Lambeth’s handsome eyes turned rueful and queer. “Is anything so flagrantly the matter with me?”
“Everything, my dear boy,” laughed his companion, passing a hand into his arm for a walk.
“Well,sheisn’t interested—she isn’t!” the young man insisted.
“My poor friend,” said Percy Beaumont rather gravely, “you’re very far gone!”
In point of fact, as the latter would have said, Mrs. Westgate disembarked by the next mid-May on the British coast. She was accompanied by her sister, but unattended by any other member of her family. To the lost comfort of a husband respectably to produce, as she phrased it, she was now habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to Europe under this drawback of looking ill-temperedly separated and yet of being thanklessly enslaved, and she still decently accounted for her spurious singleness to wondering friends on this side of the Atlantic by formulating the grim truth—the only grimness indeed in all her view—that in America there is 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 carry her away and counted on the joy of treating her eyes and her imagination to all the things she had read of in poets and historians. She was very fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past, of associations, of relics and reverberations of greatness; so that on coming into the great English world, where strangeness and familiarity would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a swarm of fresh emotions. They began verypromptly—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 hedge-rows, as she looked at them from the window of the train; with the spires of the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted tree-tops; with the oak-studded, deer-peopled parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy light, the speech, the manners, all the significant differences. Mrs. Westgate’s response was of course less quick and less extravagant, and she gave but a wandering attention to her sister’s ejaculations and rhapsodies.
“You know my enjoyment of England’s 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’s not intellectual I can’t say it’s in the least sensual. 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 London and perhaps in other parts of the celebrated island on their way to the Continent, they of course exchanged a good many allusions to their English acquaintance.
“It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,” was a remark that had one day dropped from Bessie while she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer, at her sister’s feet, from under which spread conveniently a large soft rug.
“Whom do you mean by friends?” Mrs. Westgate had then invited the girl to say.
“All those English gentlemen you’ve known and entertained. Captain Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,” the girl further mentioned.
“Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?”
She reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to fine reflexion. “Well—to be nice.”
“My poor sweet child!” murmured her sister.
“What have I said that’s so silly?” Bessie asked.
“You’re a little too simple; just a little. It’s very becoming, but it pleases people at your expense.”
“I’m certainly too simple to understand you,” said our young lady.
Mrs. Westgate had an ominous pause. “Shall I tell you a story?”
“If you’d be so good. That’s what’s frequently done to amuse simple people.”
Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory while her companion sat at gaze of 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’s meant to illustrate that of some other people,” said Mrs. Westgate. “The Duke of Green-Erin’s 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’ve heard at least of the Butterworths.Bien. They did everything in the world for him—the poor Butterworths—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 travelling-suit, but some one 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 intown 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’s 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—where they meet him face to face. He stares a moment and then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, taking something from his pocket-book—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. Good-bye, 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 tell me you don’t think it interesting!” her sister replied.
“I don’t think I believe it,” said the girl.
“Ah, then,” cried Mrs. Westgate, “mademoiselle isn’t of such an unspottedcandeur! Believe it or not as you like. There’s at any rate 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, for the simple reason that I shall never give them the opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that case, they can’t be very disobliging.”
Our young lady for a time said nothing. “I don’t see what makes you talk that way,” she then resumed. “The English are a great people.”
“Exactly; and that’s just the way they’ve grown great—by dropping you when you’ve ceased to beuseful. People say they aren’t clever, but I find them prodigiously clever.”
“You know you’ve liked them—all the Englishmen you’ve seen,” Bessie brought up.
“They’ve likedme,” her sister returned; “so I think I’d rather put it. And of course one likes that.”
Bessie pursued 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 wound up, “Lord Lambeth doesn’t 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 numerous purchases, and their opportunities for inquiry and comment were only those supplied by the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving from the station, felt to intensity the many-voiced appeal of the capital of the race from which she had sprung, and, at the risk of exhibiting her as a person of vulgar tastes, it must be recorded that for many days she desired no higher pleasure than to roll about the crowded streets in the public conveyances. They presented to her attentive eyes strange pictures and figures, and it’s at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents in which the imagination of this simple young lady from Boston lost itself. 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 desired they should, at whatever cost to convenience, be driven home by way of Westminster Abbey. She had begun by asking if it wouldn’t be possible to take the Toweren routeto their lodgings; but it happened that at a more primitive stage of her culture Mrs. Westgatehad paid a visit to this venerable relic, which she spoke of ever afterwards, vaguely, as a dreadful disappointment. She thus expressed the liveliest disapproval of any attempt to combine historical researches with the purchase of hair-brushes and notepaper. The most she would consent to do in the line of backward brooding was to spend half an hour at Madame Tussaud’s, where she saw several dusty wax effigies of members of the Royal Family. It was made clear to Bessie that if she wished to go to the Tower she must get some one else to take her. Bessie expressed hereupon an earnest disposition to go alone; but in respect to this proposal as well Mrs. Westgate had the cold sense of complications.
“Remember,” she said, “that you’re not in your innocent little Boston. It’s not a question of walking up and down Beacon Street.” With which she went on to explain that there were two classes of American girls in Europe—those who walked about alone and those who didn’t. “You happen to belong, my dear,” she said to her sister, “to the class that doesn’t.”
“It’s only,” laughed Bessie, though all yearningly, “because you happen quite arbitrarily to place 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. So was familiarly designated a young American who had sailed from New York a few days after their own departure and who, enjoying some freedom of acquaintance 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 justinstalled at the Charing Cross Hotel. He was a slight, mild youth, without high colour but with many elegant forms, famous for the authority with which he led the “German” in New York. He was indeed, by the young ladies who habitually figured in such evolutions, reckoned “the best dancer in the world”; it was in those terms he was always spoken of and his pleasant identity indicated. He was the most convenient gentle young man, for almost any casual light purpose, it was possible to meet; he was beautifully dressed—“in the English style”—and 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 never addressed but as “Miss Bessie.” She immediately arranged with him, in the presence of her sister, that he should guide her to the scene of Lady Jane Grey’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 wild young men.”
“Miss Bessie has waltzed with me so often—not to call it so wildly,” the young man returned, “that she can surely go out with me in a jog-trot cab.”
“I consider public waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the most innocent, because the most guarded and regulated, pleasure of our time.”
“It’s a jolly compliment to our time!” Mr. Woodley cried with a laugh of the most candid significance.
“I don’t see why I should regard what’s done here,” Bessie pursued. “Why should I suffer the restrictions of a society of which I enjoy none of the privileges?”
“That’s very good—very good,” her friend applauded.
“Oh, go to the Tower and feel the axe if you like!”said Mrs. Westgate. “I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I wouldn’t let you go with an Englishman.”
“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an Englishman!” Mr. Woodley declared with an asperity doubtless not unnatural in a young man who, dressing in a 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; while an ingenious mind might perhaps have traced a connexion between the girl’s reference to her lack of social privilege or festal initiation and a question she asked on the morrow as she sat with her sister at luncheon.
“Don’t you mean to write to—to any one?”
“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate replied.
“But Mr. Woodley believes Captain Littledale away in India.”
“He said he thought he had heard so; he knows nothing about it.”
For a moment Bessie said nothing more; then at last, “And don’t you intend to write to—to Mr. Beaumont?” she inquired.
Her sister waited with a look at her. “You mean to Lord Lambeth.”
“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was—at Newport—so good a friend of yours.”
Mrs. Westgate prolonged the attitude of sisterly truth. “I don’t really care two straws for Mr. Beaumont.”
“You were certainly very nice to him.”
“I’m very nice to every one,” said Mrs. Westgate simply.
Nothing indeed could have been simpler save perhaps the way Bessie smiled back: “To every one but me.”
Her sister continued to look at her. “Are you in love with Lord Lambeth?”
Our young woman stared a moment, and the question was too unattended with any train even to make her shy. “Not that I know of.”
“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, “I shall certainly not send for him.”
“That proves what I said,” Bessie gaily insisted—“that you’re not really nice to me.”
“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said her sister.
“In what sense? There’s nothingagainstLord Lambeth that I know of.”
Mrs. Westgate seemed to cover much country in a few moments. “Youarein love with him then?”
Bessie stared again, but this time blushing a little. “Ah, if you’ll not be serious we won’t mention him again.”
For some minutes accordingly Lord Lambeth was shrouded in silence, and it was Mrs. Westgate who, at the end of this period, removed the ban. “Of course I shall let him know we’re here. I think he’d be hurt—justly enough—if we should go away without seeing him. It’s 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 very simply.
“Though I confess,” her companion added, “that I’m curious to see how he’ll behave.”
“He behaved very well at Newport.”
“Newport isn’t London. At Newport he could do as he liked; but here it’s another affair. He has to have an eye to consequences.”
“If he had more freedom then at Newport,” argued Bessie, “it’s the more to his credit that he behaved well; and if he has to be so careful here it’s possible he’ll behave even better.”
“Better, better?” echoed her sister a little impatiently. “My dear child, what do you mean by better and what’s your point of view?”
Bessie wondered. “What doyoumean by my point of view?”
“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth—a tiny speck?” Mrs. Westgate demanded.
This time Bessie Alden took it with still deeper reserve. She slowly got up from table, turning her face away. “You’ll oblige me by not talking so.”
Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she moved slowly about the room and went and stood at the window. “I’ll write to him this afternoon,” she said at last.
“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; after which she turned round. “I’m not afraid to say I like Lord Lambeth. I like him very much.”
Mrs. Westgate bethought herself. “He’s not clever.”
“Well, there have been clever people whom I’ve disliked,” the girl said; “so I suppose I may like a stupid one. Besides, Lord Lambeth’s no stupider than any one else.”
“No stupider than he gives you warning of,” her sister smiled.
“If I were in love with him as you said just now,” Bessie returned, “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 girl began once more to walk about; then she stopped before her companion. “I’ve never heard in the course of five minutes so many hints and innuendoes. I wish you’d tell me in plain English what you mean.”
“I mean you may be much annoyed.”
“That’s still only a hint,” said Bessie.
Her sister just hesitated. “It will be said of you that you’ve come after him—that you followed him.”
Bessie threw back her pretty head much as a startled hind, and a look flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate get up. “Who says such things as that?”
“People here.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You’ve a very convenient faculty of doubt. But my policy will be, as I say, very deep. I shall leave you to find out as many things as possible for yourself.”
Bessie fixed her eyes on her sister, and Mrs. Westgate could have believed there were tears in them. “Do they talk that way here?”
“You’ll see. I shall let you alone.”
“Don’t let 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’ll understand after Lord Lambeth has come,” said Mrs. Westgate with a persistence of private amusement.
The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie Woodley should go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie expected it would prove a rich passage to have sat on a little green chair under the great trees and beside Rotten Row. The want of a suitable escort had hitherto hampered this adventure; 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 adorned with every superficial grace that could qualify him for the scene.
“I’ve written to Lord Lambeth, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate mentioned on coming into the room where Bessie, drawing on long grey gloves, had given their visitor the impression that she was particularly attuned. Bessie said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was in town; he had seen his name in theMorning Post. “Do you read theMorning Post?” Mrs. Westgate thereupon asked.