Produced by Judith Boss
AN INTERNATIONAL EPISODE
By Henry James
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 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.