His wife more than once announced that she expected him on the morrow;
but on the morrow she wandered about a little, with a telegram in
her jeweled fingers, declaring it was very tiresome that his business
detained him in New York; that he could only hope the Englishmen were
having a good time. “I must say,” said Mrs. Westgate, “that it is
no thanks to him if you are.” And she went on to explain, while she
continued that slow-paced promenade which enabled her well-adjusted
skirts to display themselves so advantageously, that unfortunately in
America there was no leisure class. It was Lord Lambeth’s theory, freely
propounded when the young men were together, that Percy Beaumont was
having a very good time with Mrs. Westgate, and that, under the pretext
of meeting for the purpose of animated discussion, they were indulging
in practices that imparted a shade of hypocrisy to the lady’s regret for
her husband’s absence.
“I assure you we are always discussing and differing,” said Percy
Beaumont. “She is awfully argumentative. American ladies certainly don’t
mind contradicting you. Upon my word I don’t think I was ever treated so
by a woman before. She’s so devilish positive.”
Mrs. Westgate’s positive quality, however, evidently had its
attractions, for Beaumont was constantly at his hostess’s side. He
detached himself one day to the extent of going to New York to talk
over the Tennessee Central with Mr. Westgate; but he was absent only
forty-eight hours, during which, with Mr. Westgate’s assistance, he
completely settled this piece of business. “They certainly do things
quickly in New York,” he observed to his cousin; and he added that
Mr. Westgate had seemed very uneasy lest his wife should miss her
visitor--he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to her.
“I’m afraid you’ll never come up to an American husband, if that’s what
the wives expect,” he said to Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment
with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. On
the 21st of August Lord Lambeth received a telegram from his mother,
requesting him to return immediately to England; his father had been
taken ill, and it was his filial duty to come to him.
The young Englishman was visibly annoyed. “What the deuce does it mean?”
he asked of his kinsman. “What am I to do?”
Percy Beaumont was annoyed as well; he had deemed it his duty, as I have
narrated, to write to the duchess, but he had not expected that this
distinguished woman would act so promptly upon his hint. “It means,”
he said, “that your father is laid up. I don’t suppose it’s anything
serious; but you have no option. Take the first steamer; but don’t be
alarmed.”
Lord Lambeth made his farewells; but the few last words that he
exchanged with Bessie Alden are the only ones that have a place in our
record. “Of course I needn’t assure you,” he said, “that if you should
come to England next year, I expect to be the first person that you
inform of it.”
Bessie Alden looked at him a little, and she smiled. “Oh, if we come to
London,” she answered, “I should think you would hear of it.”
Percy Beaumont returned with his cousin, and his sense of duty compelled
him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to Lord Lambeth
that he suspected that the duchess’s telegram was in part the result
of something he himself had written to her. “I wrote to her--as I
explicitly notified you I had promised to do--that you were extremely
interested in a little American girl.”
Lord Lambeth was extremely angry, and he indulged for some moments
in the simple language of indignation. But I have said that he was a
reasonable young man, and I can give no better proof of it than the fact
that he remarked to his companion at the end of half an hour, “You were
quite right, after all. I am very much interested in her. Only, to
be fair,” he added, “you should have told my mother also that she is
not--seriously--interested in me.”
Percy Beaumont gave a little laugh. “There is nothing so charming as
modesty in a young man in your position. That speech is a capital proof
that you are sweet on her.”
“She is not interested--she is not!” Lord Lambeth repeated.
“My dear fellow,” said his companion, “you are very far gone.”
PART II
In point of fact, as Percy Beaumont would have said, Mrs. Westgate
disembarked on the 18th of May on the British coast. She was accompanied
by her sister, but she was not attended by any other member of her
family. To the deprivation of her husband’s society Mrs. Westgate
was, however, habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to Europe
without him, and she now accounted for his absence, to interrogative
friends on this side of the Atlantic, by allusion to the regrettable
but conspicuous fact that in America there was no leisure class. The
two ladies came up to London and alighted at Jones’s Hotel, where Mrs.
Westgate, who had made on former occasions the most agreeable impression
at this establishment, received an obsequious greeting. Bessie Alden
had felt much excited about coming to England; she had expected the
“associations” would be very charming, that it would be an infinite
pleasure to rest her eyes upon the things she had read about in the
poets and historians. She was very fond of the poets and historians,
of the picturesque, of the past, of retrospect, of mementos and
reverberations of greatness; so that on coming into the English world,
where strangeness and familiarity would go hand in hand, she
was prepared for a multitude of fresh emotions. They began very
promptly--these tender, fluttering sensations; they began with the sight
of the beautiful English landscape, whose dark richness was quickened
and brightened by the season; with the carpeted fields and flowering
hedgerows, as she looked at them from the window of the train; with the
spires of the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted treetops;
with the oak-studded parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy light,
the speech, the manners, the thousand differences. Mrs. Westgate’s
impressions had, of course, much less novelty and keenness, and she gave
but a wandering attention to her sister’s ejaculations and rhapsodies.
“You know my enjoyment of England is not so intellectual as Bessie’s,”
she said to several of her friends in the course of her visit to this
country. “And yet if it is not intellectual, I can’t say it is physical.
I don’t think I can quite say what it is, my enjoyment of England.” When
once it was settled that the two ladies should come abroad and should
spend a few weeks in England on their way to the Continent, they of
course exchanged a good many allusions to their London acquaintance.
“It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,” Bessie Alden had
said one day as she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer at her sister’s
feet on a large blue rug.
“Whom do you mean by friends?” Mrs. Westgate asked.
“All those English gentlemen whom you have known and entertained.
Captain Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,”
added Bessie Alden.
“Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?”
Bessie reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to reflection.
“Well, yes.”
“My poor, sweet child,” murmured her sister.
“What have I said that is so silly?” asked Bessie.
“You are a little too simple; just a little. It is very becoming, but it
pleases people at your expense.”
“I am certainly too simple to understand you,” said Bessie.
“Shall I tell you a story?” asked her sister.
“If you would be so good. That is what they do to amuse simple people.”
Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory, while her companion sat gazing at
the shining sea. “Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?”
“I think not,” said Bessie.
“Well, it’s no matter,” her sister went on.
“It’s a proof of my simplicity.”
“My story is meant to illustrate that of some other people,” said Mrs.
Westgate. “The Duke of Green-Erin is what they call in England a great
swell, and some five years ago he came to America. He spent most of his
time in New York, and in New York he spent his days and his nights at
the Butterworths’. You have heard, at least, of the Butterworths. BIEN.
They did everything in the world for him--they turned themselves inside
out. They gave him a dozen dinner parties and balls and were the means
of his being invited to fifty more. At first he used to come into Mrs.
Butterworth’s box at the opera in a tweed traveling suit; but someone
stopped that. At any rate, he had a beautiful time, and they parted the
best friends in the world. Two years elapse, and the Butterworths come
abroad and go to London. The first thing they see in all the papers--in
England those things are in the most prominent place--is that the Duke
of Green-Erin has arrived in town for the Season. They wait a little,
and then Mr. Butterworth--as polite as ever--goes and leaves a card.
They wait a little more; the visit is not returned; they wait three
weeks--silence de mort--the Duke gives no sign. The Butterworths see
a lot of other people, put down the Duke of Green-Erin as a rude,
ungrateful man, and forget all about him. One fine day they go to Ascot
Races, and there they meet him face to face. He stares a moment and
then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, taking something from his
pocketbook--something which proves to be a banknote. ‘I’m glad to see
you, Mr. Butterworth,’ he says, ‘so that I can pay you that ten pounds
I lost to you in New York. I saw the other day you remembered our bet;
here are the ten pounds, Mr. Butterworth. Goodbye, Mr. Butterworth.’ And
off he goes, and that’s the last they see of the Duke of Green-Erin.”
“Is that your story?” asked Bessie Alden.
“Don’t you think it’s interesting?” her sister replied.
“I don’t believe it,” said the young girl.
“Ah,” cried Mrs. Westgate, “you are not so simple after all! Believe it
or not, as you please; there is no smoke without fire.”
“Is that the way,” asked Bessie after a moment, “that you expect your
friends to treat you?”
“I defy them to treat me very ill, because I shall not give them the
opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that case they can’t be
very offensive.”
Bessie Alden was silent a moment. “I don’t see what makes you talk that
way,” she said. “The English are a great people.”
“Exactly; and that is just the way they have grown great--by dropping
you when you have ceased to be useful. People say they are not clever;
but I think they are very clever.”
“You know you have liked them--all the Englishmen you have seen,” said
Bessie.
“They have liked me,” her sister rejoined; “it would be more correct to
say that. And, of course, one likes that.”
Bessie Alden resumed for some moments her studies in sea green. “Well,”
she said, “whether they like me or not, I mean to like them. And
happily,” she added, “Lord Lambeth does not owe me ten pounds.”
During the first few days after their arrival at Jones’s Hotel our
charming Americans were much occupied with what they would have called
looking about them. They found occasion to make a large number of
purchases, and their opportunities for conversation were such only as
were offered by the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even
in driving from the station, took an immense fancy to the British
metropolis, and at the risk of exhibiting her as a young woman of vulgar
tastes it must be recorded that for a considerable period she desired no
higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab.
To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and
it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the
trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston
found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that
whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent Street,
she was about to return with her sister to Jones’s Hotel, she made an
earnest request that they should be driven home by way of Westminster
Abbey. She had begun by asking whether it would not be possible to take
the Tower on the way to their lodgings; but it happened that at a more
primitive stage of her culture Mrs. Westgate had paid a visit to this
venerable monument, which she spoke of ever afterward vaguely as a
dreadful disappointment; so that she expressed the liveliest disapproval
of any attempt to combine historical researches with the purchase of
hairbrushes and notepaper. The most she would consent to do in this line
was to spend half an hour at Madame Tussaud’s, where she saw several
dusty wax effigies of members of the royal family. She told Bessie that
if she wished to go to the Tower she must get someone else to take her.
Bessie expressed hereupon an earnest disposition to go alone; but upon
this proposal as well Mrs. Westgate sprinkled cold water.
“Remember,” she said, “that you are not in your innocent little Boston.
It is not a question of walking up and down Beacon Street.” Then she
went on to explain that there were two classes of American girls in
Europe--those that walked about alone and those that did not. “You
happen to belong, my dear,” she said to her sister, “to the class that
does not.”
“It is only,” answered Bessie, laughing, “because you happen to prevent
me.” And she devoted much private meditation to this question of
effecting a visit to the Tower of London.
Suddenly it seemed as if the problem might be solved; the two ladies at
Jones’s Hotel received a visit from Willie Woodley. Such was the social
appellation of a young American who had sailed from New York a few days
after their own departure, and who, having the privilege of intimacy
with them in that city, had lost no time, on his arrival in London,
in coming to pay them his respects. He had, in fact, gone to see them
directly after going to see his tailor, than which there can be no
greater exhibition of promptitude on the part of a young American who
has just alighted at the Charing Cross Hotel. He was a slim, pale youth,
of the most amiable disposition, famous for the skill with which he led
the “German” in New York. Indeed, by the young ladies who habitually
figured in this Terpsichorean revel he was believed to be “the best
dancer in the world”; it was in these terms that he was always spoken
of, and that his identity was indicated. He was the gentlest, softest
young man it was possible to meet; he was beautifully dressed--“in the
English style”--and he knew an immense deal about London. He had been
at Newport during the previous summer, at the time of our young
Englishmen’s visit, and he took extreme pleasure in the society of
Bessie Alden, whom he always addressed as “Miss Bessie.” She immediately
arranged with him, in the presence of her sister, that he should conduct
her to the scene of Anne Boleyn’s execution.
“You may do as you please,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Only--if you desire the
information--it is not the custom here for young ladies to knock about
London with young men.”
“Miss Bessie has waltzed with me so often,” observed Willie Woodley;
“she can surely go out with me in a hansom.”
“I consider waltzing,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the most innocent pleasure
of our time.”
“It’s a compliment to our time!” exclaimed the young man with a little
laugh, in spite of himself.
“I don’t see why I should regard what is done here,” said Bessie Alden.
“Why should I suffer the restrictions of a society of which I enjoy none
of the privileges?”
“That’s very good--very good,” murmured Willie Woodley.
“Oh, go to the Tower, and feel the ax, if you like,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“I consent to your going with Mr. Woodley; but I should not let you go
with an Englishman.”
“Miss Bessie wouldn’t care to go with an Englishman!” Mr. Woodley
declared with a faint asperity that was, perhaps, not unnatural in a
young man, who, dressing in the manner that I have indicated and knowing
a great deal, as I have said, about London, saw no reason for drawing
these sharp distinctions. He agreed upon a day with Miss Bessie--a day
of that same week.
An ingenious mind might, perhaps, trace a connection between the young
girl’s allusion to her destitution of social privileges and a question
she asked on the morrow as she sat with her sister at lunch.
“Don’t you mean to write to--to anyone?” said Bessie.
“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate replied.
“But Mr. Woodley said that Captain Littledale had gone to India.”
“He said he thought he had heard so; he knew nothing about it.”
For a moment Bessie Alden said nothing more; then, at last, “And don’t
you intend to write to--to Mr. Beaumont?” she inquired.
“You mean to Lord Lambeth,” said her sister.
“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was so good a friend of yours.”
Mrs. Westgate looked at the young girl with sisterly candor. “I don’t
care two straws for Mr. Beaumont.”
“You were certainly very nice to him.”
“I am nice to everyone,” said Mrs. Westgate simply.
“To everyone but me,” rejoined Bessie, smiling.
Her sister continued to look at her; then, at last, “Are you in love
with Lord Lambeth?” she asked.
The young girl stared a moment, and the question was apparently too
humorous even to make her blush. “Not that I know of,” she answered.
“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, “I shall certainly not send
for him.”
“That proves what I said,” declared Bessie, smiling--“that you are not
nice to me.”
“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said her sister.
“In what sense? There is nothing against Lord Lambeth that I know of.”
Mrs. Westgate was silent a moment. “You ARE in love with him then?”
Bessie stared again; but this time she blushed a little. “Ah! if you
won’t be serious,” she answered, “we will not mention him again.”
For some moments Lord Lambeth was not mentioned again, and it was Mrs.
Westgate who, at the end of this period, reverted to him. “Of course I
will let him know we are here, because I think he would be hurt--justly
enough--if we should go away without seeing him. It is fair to give
him a chance to come and thank me for the kindness we showed him. But I
don’t want to seem eager.”
“Neither do I,” said Bessie with a little laugh.
“Though I confess,” added her sister, “that I am curious to see how he
will behave.”
“He behaved very well at Newport.”
“Newport is not London. At Newport he could do as he liked; but here it
is another affair. He has to have an eye to consequences.”
“If he had more freedom, then, at Newport,” argued Bessie, “it is the
more to his credit that he behaved well; and if he has to be so careful
here, it is possible he will behave even better.”
“Better--better,” repeated her sister. “My dear child, what is your
point of view?”
“How do you mean--my point of view?”
“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth--a little?”
This time Bessie Alden was displeased; she slowly got up from the
table, turning her face away from her sister. “You will oblige me by not
talking so,” she said.
Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she moved slowly
about the room and went and stood at the window. “I will write to him
this afternoon,” she said at last.
“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; and presently she turned round. “I
am not afraid to say that I like Lord Lambeth. I like him very much.”
“He is not clever,” Mrs. Westgate declared.
“Well, there have been clever people whom I have disliked,” said Bessie
Alden; “so that I suppose I may like a stupid one. Besides, Lord Lambeth
is not stupid.”
“Not so stupid as he looks!” exclaimed her sister, smiling.
“If I were in love with Lord Lambeth, as you said just now, it would be
bad policy on your part to abuse him.”
“My dear child, don’t give me lessons in policy!” cried Mrs. Westgate.
“The policy I mean to follow is very deep.”
The young girl began to walk about the room again; then she stopped
before her sister. “I have never heard in the course of five minutes,”
she said, “so many hints and innuendoes. I wish you would tell me in
plain English what you mean.”
“I mean that you may be much annoyed.”
“That is still only a hint,” said Bessie.
Her sister looked at her, hesitating an instant. “It will be said of you
that you have come after Lord Lambeth--that you followed him.”
Bessie Alden threw back her pretty head like a startled hind, and a look
flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate rise from her chair. “Who
says such things as that?” she demanded.
“People here.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Bessie.
“You have a very convenient faculty of doubt. But my policy will be, as
I say, very deep. I shall leave you to find out this kind of thing for
yourself.”
Bessie fixed her eyes upon her sister, and Mrs. Westgate thought for
a moment there were tears in them. “Do they talk that way here?” she
asked.
“You will see. I shall leave you alone.”
“Don’t leave me alone,” said Bessie Alden. “Take me away.”
“No; I want to see what you make of it,” her sister continued.
“I don’t understand.”
“You will understand after Lord Lambeth has come,” said Mrs. Westgate
with a little laugh.
The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie Woodley should
go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie Alden expected to derive much
entertainment from sitting on a little green chair, under the great
trees, beside Rotten Row. The want of a suitable escort had hitherto
rendered this pleasure inaccessible; but no escort now, for such an
expedition, could have been more suitable than their devoted young
countryman, whose mission in life, it might almost be said, was to find
chairs for ladies, and who appeared on the stroke of half-past five with
a white camellia in his buttonhole.
“I have written to Lord Lambeth, my dear,” said Mrs. Westgate to her
sister, on coming into the room where Bessie Alden, drawing on her long
gray gloves, was entertaining their visitor.
Bessie said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was
in town; he had seen his name in the Morning Post.
“Do you read the Morning Post?” asked Mrs. Westgate.
“Oh, yes; it’s great fun,” Willie Woodley affirmed.
“I want so to see it,” said Bessie; “there is so much about it in
Thackeray.”
“I will send it to you every morning,” said Willie Woodley.
He found them what Bessie Alden thought excellent places, under the
great trees, beside the famous avenue whose humors had been made
familiar to the young girl’s childhood by the pictures in Punch. The
day was bright and warm, and the crowd of riders and spectators, and the
great procession of carriages, were proportionately dense and brilliant.
The scene bore the stamp of the London Season at its height, and Bessie
Alden found more entertainment in it than she was able to express to
her companions. She sat silent, under her parasol, and her imagination,
according to its wont, let itself loose into the great changing
assemblage of striking and suggestive figures. They stirred up a host
of old impressions and preconceptions, and she found herself fitting a
history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place for them
all in her little private museum of types. But if she said little, her
sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other expressed themselves
in lively alternation.
“Look at that green dress with blue flounces,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“Quelle toilette!”
“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” said the young man--“the one in
the white coat. I heard him speak the other night in the House of Lords;
it was something about ramrods; he called them ‘wamwods.’ He’s an awful
swell.”
“Did you ever see anything like the way they are pinned back?” Mrs.
Westgate resumed. “They never know where to stop.”
“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie Woodley. “It prevents them from
walking. Here comes a great celebrity--Lady Beatrice Bellevue. She’s
awfully fast; see what little steps she takes.”
“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, “I hope you are getting some
ideas for your couturiere?”
“I am getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know that my
couturiere would appreciate them.”