disappointing.”
“My dear Miss Alden,” exclaimed the young man, “I am the best fellow in
the world!”
“Ah, if it were not for that!” said Bessie Alden with a smile.
Mrs. Westgate had a good many more friends in London than she pretended,
and before long she had renewed acquaintance with most of them. Their
hospitality was extreme, so that, one thing leading to another, she
began, as the phrase is, to go out. Bessie Alden, in this way, saw
something of what she found it a great satisfaction to call to herself
English society. She went to balls and danced, she went to dinners and
talked, she went to concerts and listened (at concerts Bessie always
listened), she went to exhibitions and wondered. Her enjoyment was
keen and her curiosity insatiable, and, grateful in general for all her
opportunities, she especially prized the privilege of meeting certain
celebrated persons--authors and artists, philosophers and statesmen--of
whose renown she had been a humble and distant beholder, and who now, as
a part of the habitual furniture of London drawing rooms, struck her
as stars fallen from the firmament and become palpable--revealing also
sometimes, on contact, qualities not to have been predicted of sidereal
bodies. Bessie, who knew so many of her contemporaries by reputation,
had a good many personal disappointments; but, on the other hand, she
had innumerable satisfactions and enthusiasms, and she communicated the
emotions of either class to a dear friend, of her own sex, in Boston,
with whom she was in voluminous correspondence. Some of her reflections,
indeed, she attempted to impart to Lord Lambeth, who came almost every
day to Jones’s Hotel, and whom Mrs. Westgate admitted to be really
devoted. Captain Littledale, it appeared, had gone to India; and of
several others of Mrs. Westgate’s ex-pensioners--gentlemen who, as she
said, had made, in New York, a clubhouse of her drawing room--no tidings
were to be obtained; but Lord Lambeth was certainly attentive enough to
make up for the accidental absences, the short memories, all the other
irregularities of everyone else. He drove them in the park, he took them
to visit private collections of pictures, and, having a house of his
own, invited them to dinner. Mrs. Westgate, following the fashion of
many of her compatriots, caused herself and her sister to be presented
at the English court by her diplomatic representative--for it was
in this manner that she alluded to the American minister to England,
inquiring what on earth he was put there for, if not to make the proper
arrangements for one’s going to a Drawing Room.
Lord Lambeth declared that he hated Drawing Rooms, but he participated
in the ceremony on the day on which the two ladies at Jones’s Hotel
repaired to Buckingham Palace in a remarkable coach which his lordship
had sent to fetch them. He had on a gorgeous uniform, and Bessie Alden
was particularly struck with his appearance--especially when on her
asking him, rather foolishly as she felt, if he were a loyal subject,
he replied that he was a loyal subject to HER. This declaration was
emphasized by his dancing with her at a royal ball to which the two
ladies afterward went, and was not impaired by the fact that she
thought he danced very ill. He seemed to her wonderfully kind; she asked
herself, with growing vivacity, why he should be so kind. It was his
disposition--that seemed the natural answer. She had told her sister
that she liked him very much, and now that she liked him more she
wondered why. She liked him for his disposition; to this question as
well that seemed the natural answer. When once the impressions of London
life began to crowd thickly upon her, she completely forgot her sister’s
warning about the cynicism of public opinion. It had given her great
pain at the moment, but there was no particular reason why she should
remember it; it corresponded too little with any sensible reality; and
it was disagreeable to Bessie to remember disagreeable things. So she
was not haunted with the sense of a vulgar imputation. She was not in
love with Lord Lambeth--she assured herself of that. It will immediately
be observed that when such assurances become necessary the state of a
young lady’s affections is already ambiguous; and, indeed, Bessie
Alden made no attempt to dissimulate--to herself, of course--a certain
tenderness that she felt for the young nobleman. She said to herself
that she liked the type to which he belonged--the simple, candid, manly,
healthy English temperament. She spoke to herself of him as women speak
of young men they like--alluded to his bravery (which she had never in
the least seen tested), to his honesty and gentlemanliness, and was not
silent upon the subject of his good looks. She was perfectly conscious,
moreover, that she liked to think of his more adventitious merits; that
her imagination was excited and gratified by the sight of a handsome
young man endowed with such large opportunities--opportunities she
hardly knew for what, but, as she supposed, for doing great things--for
setting an example, for exerting an influence, for conferring happiness,
for encouraging the arts. She had a kind of ideal of conduct for a young
man who should find himself in this magnificent position, and she tried
to adapt it to Lord Lambeth’s deportment as you might attempt to fit a
silhouette in cut paper upon a shadow projected upon a wall. But Bessie
Alden’s silhouette refused to coincide with his lordship’s image,
and this want of harmony sometimes vexed her more than she thought
reasonable. When he was absent it was, of course, less striking; then
he seemed to her a sufficiently graceful combination of high
responsibilities and amiable qualities. But when he sat there
within sight, laughing and talking with his customary good humor and
simplicity, she measured it more accurately, and she felt acutely that
if Lord Lambeth’s position was heroic, there was but little of the
hero in the young man himself. Then her imagination wandered away
from him--very far away; for it was an incontestable fact that at such
moments he seemed distinctly dull. I am afraid that while Bessie’s
imagination was thus invidiously roaming, she cannot have been herself
a very lively companion; but it may well have been that these occasional
fits of indifference seemed to Lord Lambeth a part of the young girl’s
personal charm. It had been a part of this charm from the first that
he felt that she judged him and measured him more freely and
irresponsibly--more at her ease and her leisure, as it were--than
several young ladies with whom he had been on the whole about as
intimate. To feel this, and yet to feel that she also liked him,
was very agreeable to Lord Lambeth. He fancied he had compassed that
gratification so desirable to young men of title and fortune--being
liked for himself. It is true that a cynical counselor might have
whispered to him, “Liked for yourself? Yes; but not so very much!” He
had, at any rate, the constant hope of being liked more.
It may seem, perhaps, a trifle singular--but it is nevertheless
true--that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as dull, devoted some time,
on grounds of conscience, to trying to like him more. I say on grounds
of conscience because she felt that he had been extremely “nice” to her
sister, and because she reflected that it was no more than fair that
she should think as well of him as he thought of her. This effort was
possibly sometimes not so successful as it might have been, for the
result of it was occasionally a vague irritation, which expressed itself
in hostile criticism of several British institutions. Bessie Alden went
to some entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth; but she went
to others at which his lordship was neither actually nor potentially
present; and it was chiefly on these latter occasions that she
encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has
been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If Lord
Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was a symbol that there would be no
poets and philosophers; and in consequence--for it was almost a strict
consequence--she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her
admiration.
“You seem to be awfully fond of those sort of people,” said Lord Lambeth
one day, as if the idea had just occurred to him.
“They are the people in England I am most curious to see,” Bessie Alden
replied.
“I suppose that’s because you have read so much,” said Lord Lambeth
gallantly.
“I have not read so much. It is because we think so much of them at
home.”
“Oh, I see,” observed the young nobleman. “In Boston.”
“Not only in Boston; everywhere,” said Bessie. “We hold them in great
honor; they go to the best dinner parties.”
“I daresay you are right. I can’t say I know many of them.”
“It’s a pity you don’t,” Bessie Alden declared. “It would do you good.”
“I daresay it would,” said Lord Lambeth very humbly. “But I must say I
don’t like the looks of some of them.”
“Neither do I--of some of them. But there are all kinds, and many of
them are charming.”
“I have talked with two or three of them,” the young man went on, “and I
thought they had a kind of fawning manner.”
“Why should they fawn?” Bessie Alden demanded.
“I’m sure I don’t know. Why, indeed?”
“Perhaps you only thought so,” said Bessie.
“Well, of course,” rejoined her companion, “that’s a kind of thing that
can’t be proved.”
“In America they don’t fawn,” said Bessie.
“Ah, well, then, they must be better company.”
Bessie was silent a moment. “That is one of the things I don’t like
about England,” she said; “your keeping the distinguished people apart.”
“How do you mean apart?”
“Why, letting them come only to certain places. You never see them.”
Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. “What people do you mean?”
“The eminent people--the authors and artists--the clever people.”
“Oh, there are other eminent people besides those,” said Lord Lambeth.
“Well, you certainly keep them apart,” repeated the young girl.
“And there are other clever people,” added Lord Lambeth simply.
Bessie Alden looked at him, and she gave a light laugh. “Not many,” she
said.
On another occasion--just after a dinner party--she told him that there
was something else in England she did not like.
“Oh, I say!” he cried, “haven’t you abused us enough?”
“I have never abused you at all,” said Bessie; “but I don’t like your
PRECEDENCE.”
“It isn’t my precedence!” Lord Lambeth declared, laughing.
“Yes, it is yours--just exactly yours; and I think it’s odious,” said
Bessie.
“I never saw such a young lady for discussing things! Has someone had
the impudence to go before you?” asked his lordship.
“It is not the going before me that I object to,” said Bessie; “it
is their thinking that they have a right to do it--A RIGHT THAT I
RECOGNIZE.”
“I never saw such a young lady as you are for not ‘recognizing.’ I have
no doubt the thing is BEASTLY, but it saves a lot of trouble.”
“It makes a lot of trouble. It’s horrid,” said Bessie.
“But how would you have the first people go?” asked Lord Lambeth. “They
can’t go last.”
“Whom do you mean by the first people?”
“Ah, if you mean to question first principles!” said Lord Lambeth.
“If those are your first principles, no wonder some of your arrangements
are horrid,” observed Bessie Alden with a very pretty ferocity. “I am a
young girl, so of course I go last; but imagine what Kitty must feel on
being informed that she is not at liberty to budge until certain other
ladies have passed out.”
“Oh, I say, she is not ‘informed!’” cried Lord Lambeth. “No one would do
such a thing as that.”
“She is made to feel it,” the young girl insisted--“as if they were
afraid she would make a rush for the door. No; you have a lovely
country,” said Bessie Alden, “but your precedence is horrid.”
“I certainly shouldn’t think your sister would like it,” rejoined Lord
Lambeth with even exaggerated gravity. But Bessie Alden could induce
him to enter no formal protest against this repulsive custom, which he
seemed to think an extreme convenience.
Percy Beaumont all this time had been a very much less frequent visitor
at Jones’s Hotel than his noble kinsman; he had, in fact, called but
twice upon the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who often saw him,
reproached him with his neglect and declared that, although Mrs.
Westgate had said nothing about it, he was sure that she was secretly
wounded by it. “She suffers too much to speak,” said Lord Lambeth.
“That’s all gammon,” said Percy Beaumont; “there’s a limit to what
people can suffer!” And, though sending no apologies to Jones’s Hotel,
he undertook in a manner to explain his absence. “You are always there,”
he said, “and that’s reason enough for my not going.”
“I don’t see why. There is enough for both of us.”
“I don’t care to be a witness of your--your reckless passion,” said
Percy Beaumont.
Lord Lambeth looked at him with a cold eye and for a moment said
nothing. “It’s not so obvious as you might suppose,” he rejoined dryly,
“considering what a demonstrative beggar I am.”
“I don’t want to know anything about it--nothing whatever,” said
Beaumont. “Your mother asks me everytime she sees me whether I believe
you are really lost--and Lady Pimlico does the same. I prefer to be able
to answer that I know nothing about it--that I never go there. I stay
away for consistency’s sake. As I said the other day, they must look
after you themselves.”
“You are devilish considerate,” said Lord Lambeth. “They never question
me.”
“They are afraid of you. They are afraid of irritating you and making
you worse. So they go to work very cautiously, and, somewhere or other,
they get their information. They know a great deal about you. They
know that you have been with those ladies to the dome of St. Paul’s
and--where was the other place?--to the Thames Tunnel.”
“If all their knowledge is as accurate as that, it must be very
valuable,” said Lord Lambeth.
“Well, at any rate, they know that you have been visiting the ‘sights
of the metropolis.’ They think--very naturally, as it seems to me--that
when you take to visiting the sights of the metropolis with a little
American girl, there is serious cause for alarm.” Lord Lambeth responded
to this intimation by scornful laughter, and his companion continued,
after a pause: “I said just now I didn’t want to know anything about
the affair; but I will confess that I am curious to learn whether you
propose to marry Miss Bessie Alden.”
On this point Lord Lambeth gave his interlocutor no immediate
satisfaction; he was musing, with a frown. “By Jove,” he said, “they go
rather too far. They SHALL find me dangerous--I promise them.”
Percy Beaumont began to laugh. “You don’t redeem your promises. You said
the other day you would make your mother call.”
Lord Lambeth continued to meditate. “I asked her to call,” he said
simply.
“And she declined?”
“Yes; but she shall do it yet.”
“Upon my word,” said Percy Beaumont, “if she gets much more frightened I
believe she will.” Lord Lambeth looked at him, and he went on. “She will
go to the girl herself.”
“How do you mean she will go to her?”
“She will beg her off, or she will bribe her. She will take strong
measures.”
Lord Lambeth turned away in silence, and his companion watched him take
twenty steps and then slowly return. “I have invited Mrs. Westgate and
Miss Alden to Branches,” he said, “and this evening I shall name a day.”
“And shall you invite your mother and your sisters to meet them?”
“Explicitly!”
“That will set the duchess off,” said Percy Beaumont. “I suspect she
will come.”
“She may do as she pleases.”
Beaumont looked at Lord Lambeth. “You do really propose to marry the
little sister, then?”
“I like the way you talk about it!” cried the young man. “She won’t
gobble me down; don’t be afraid.”
“She won’t leave you on your knees,” said Percy Beaumont. “What IS the
inducement?”
“You talk about proposing: wait till I HAVE proposed,” Lord Lambeth went
on.
“That’s right, my dear fellow; think about it,” said Percy Beaumont.
“She’s a charming girl,” pursued his lordship.
“Of course she’s a charming girl. I don’t know a girl more charming,
intrinsically. But there are other charming girls nearer home.”
“I like her spirit,” observed Lord Lambeth, almost as if he were trying
to torment his cousin.
“What’s the peculiarity of her spirit?”
“She’s not afraid, and she says things out, and she thinks herself as
good as anyone. She is the only girl I have ever seen that was not dying
to marry me.”
“How do you know that, if you haven’t asked her?”
“I don’t know how; but I know it.”
“I am sure she asked me questions enough about your property and your
titles,” said Beaumont.
“She has asked me questions, too; no end of them,” Lord Lambeth
admitted. “But she asked for information, don’t you know.”
“Information? Aye, I’ll warrant she wanted it. Depend upon it that she
is dying to marry you just as much and just as little as all the rest of
them.”
“I shouldn’t like her to refuse me--I shouldn’t like that.”
“If the thing would be so disagreeable, then, both to you and to her, in
Heaven’s name leave it alone,” said Percy Beaumont.
Mrs. Westgate, on her side, had plenty to say to her sister about the
rarity of Mr. Beaumont’s visits and the nonappearance of the Duchess of
Bayswater. She professed, however, to derive more satisfaction from
this latter circumstance than she could have done from the most lavish
attentions on the part of this great lady. “It is most marked,” she
said--“most marked. It is a delicious proof that we have made them
miserable. The day we dined with Lord Lambeth I was really sorry for the
poor fellow.” It will have been gathered that the entertainment offered
by Lord Lambeth to his American friends had not been graced by the
presence of his anxious mother. He had invited several choice spirits
to meet them; but the ladies of his immediate family were to Mrs.
Westgate’s sense--a sense possibly morbidly acute--conspicuous by their
absence.
“I don’t want to express myself in a manner that you dislike,” said
Bessie Alden; “but I don’t know why you should have so many theories
about Lord Lambeth’s poor mother. You know a great many young men in New
York without knowing their mothers.”
Mrs. Westgate looked at her sister and then turned away. “My dear
Bessie, you are superb!” she said.
“One thing is certain,” the young girl continued. “If I believed I were
a cause of annoyance--however unwitting--to Lord Lambeth’s family, I
should insist--”
“Insist upon my leaving England,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“No, not that. I want to go to the National Gallery again; I want to see
Stratford-on-Avon and Canterbury Cathedral. But I should insist upon his
coming to see us no more.”
“That would be very modest and very pretty of you; but you wouldn’t do
it now.”
“Why do you say ‘now’?” asked Bessie Alden. “Have I ceased to be
modest?”
“You care for him too much. A month ago, when you said you didn’t, I
believe it was quite true. But at present, my dear child,” said Mrs.
Westgate, “you wouldn’t find it quite so simple a matter never to see
Lord Lambeth again. I have seen it coming on.”
“You are mistaken,” said Bessie. “You don’t understand.”
“My dear child, don’t be perverse,” rejoined her sister.
“I know him better, certainly, if you mean that,” said Bessie. “And I
like him very much. But I don’t like him enough to make trouble for him
with his family. However, I don’t believe in that.”
“I like the way you say ‘however,’” Mrs. Westgate exclaimed. “Come; you
would not marry him?”
“Oh, no,” said the young girl.
Mrs. Westgate for a moment seemed vexed. “Why not, pray?” she demanded.
“Because I don’t care to,” said Bessie Alden.
The morning after Lord Lambeth had had, with Percy Beaumont, that
exchange of ideas which has just been narrated, the ladies at Jones’s
Hotel received from his lordship a written invitation to pay their
projected visit to Branches Castle on the following Tuesday. “I think I
have made up a very pleasant party,” the young nobleman said. “Several
people whom you know, and my mother and sisters, who have so long been
regrettably prevented from making your acquaintance.” Bessie Alden lost
no time in calling her sister’s attention to the injustice she had done
the Duchess of Bayswater, whose hostility was now proved to be a vain
illusion.
“Wait till you see if she comes,” said Mrs. Westgate. “And if she is to
meet us at her son’s house the obligation was all the greater for her to
call upon us.”
Bessie had not to wait long, and it appeared that Lord Lambeth’s mother
now accepted Mrs. Westgate’s view of her duties. On the morrow, early in
the afternoon, two cards were brought to the apartment of the American
ladies--one of them bearing the name of the Duchess of Bayswater and
the other that of the Countess of Pimlico. Mrs. Westgate glanced at the
clock. “It is not yet four,” she said; “they have come early; they wish
to see us. We will receive them.” And she gave orders that her visitors
should be admitted. A few moments later they were introduced, and there
was a solemn exchange of amenities. The duchess was a large lady, with a
fine fresh color; the Countess of Pimlico was very pretty and elegant.
The duchess looked about her as she sat down--looked not especially at
Mrs. Westgate. “I daresay my son has told you that I have been wanting
to come and see you,” she observed.
“You are very kind,” said Mrs. Westgate, vaguely--her conscience not
allowing her to assent to this proposition--and, indeed, not permitting
her to enunciate her own with any appreciable emphasis.
“He says you were so kind to him in America,” said the duchess.
“We are very glad,” Mrs. Westgate replied, “to have been able to make
him a little more--a little less--a little more comfortable.”
“I think he stayed at your house,” remarked the Duchess of Bayswater,
looking at Bessie Alden.
“A very short time,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“Oh!” said the duchess; and she continued to look at Bessie, who was
engaged in conversation with her daughter.
“Do you like London?” Lady Pimlico had asked of Bessie, after looking at
her a good deal--at her face and her hands, her dress and her hair.
“Very much indeed,” said Bessie.
“Do you like this hotel?”
“It is very comfortable,” said Bessie.
“Do you like stopping at hotels?” inquired Lady Pimlico after a pause.
“I am very fond of traveling,” Bessie answered, “and I suppose hotels
are a necessary part of it. But they are not the part I am fondest of.”
“Oh, I hate traveling,” said the Countess of Pimlico and transferred her
attention to Mrs. Westgate.
“My son tells me you are going to Branches,” the duchess presently
resumed.
“Lord Lambeth has been so good as to ask us,” said Mrs. Westgate, who
perceived that her visitor had now begun to look at her, and who had her
customary happy consciousness of a distinguished appearance. The only
mitigation of her felicity on this point was that, having inspected her
visitor’s own costume, she said to herself, “She won’t know how well I
am dressed!”
“He has asked me to go, but I am not sure I shall be able,” murmured the
duchess.
“He had offered us the p--prospect of meeting you,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“I hate the country at this season,” responded the duchess.
Mrs. Westgate gave a little shrug. “I think it is pleasanter than
London.”
But the duchess’s eyes were absent again; she was looking very fixedly
at Bessie. In a moment she slowly rose, walked to a chair that stood
empty at the young girl’s right hand, and silently seated herself.
As she was a majestic, voluminous woman, this little transaction had,
inevitably, an air of somewhat impressive intention. It diffused a
certain awkwardness, which Lady Pimlico, as a sympathetic daughter,
perhaps desired to rectify in turning to Mrs. Westgate.
“I daresay you go out a great deal,” she observed.
“No, very little. We are strangers, and we didn’t come here for
society.”
“I see,” said Lady Pimlico. “It’s rather nice in town just now.”
“It’s charming,” said Mrs. Westgate. “But we only go to see a few
people--whom we like.”
“Of course one can’t like everyone,” said Lady Pimlico.
“It depends upon one’s society,” Mrs. Westgate rejoined.