the young ladies in America are so clever.”
“I am glad they made so good an impression on him,” said Bessie,
smiling.
The Duchess was not smiling; her large fresh face was very tranquil.
“He is very susceptible,” she said. “He thinks everyone clever, and
sometimes they are.”
“Sometimes,” Bessie assented, smiling still.
The duchess looked at her a little and then went on; “Lambeth is very
susceptible, but he is very volatile, too.”
“Volatile?” asked Bessie.
“He is very inconstant. It won’t do to depend on him.”
“Ah,” said Bessie, “I don’t recognize that description. We have depended
on him greatly--my sister and I--and he has never disappointed us.”
“He will disappoint you yet,” said the duchess.
Bessie gave a little laugh, as if she were amused at the duchess’s
persistency. “I suppose it will depend on what we expect of him.”
“The less you expect, the better,” Lord Lambeth’s mother declared.
“Well,” said Bessie, “we expect nothing unreasonable.”
The duchess for a moment was silent, though she appeared to have more to
say. “Lambeth says he has seen so much of you,” she presently began.
“He has been to see us very often; he has been very kind,” said Bessie
Alden.
“I daresay you are used to that. I am told there is a great deal of that
in America.”
“A great deal of kindness?” the young girl inquired, smiling.
“Is that what you call it? I know you have different expressions.”
“We certainly don’t always understand each other,” said Mrs. Westgate,
the termination of whose interview with Lady Pimlico allowed her to give
her attention to their elder visitor.
“I am speaking of the young men calling so much upon the young ladies,”
the duchess explained.
“But surely in England,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the young ladies don’t
call upon the young men?”
“Some of them do--almost!” Lady Pimlico declared. “When the young men
are a great PARTI.”
“Bessie, you must make a note of that,” said Mrs. Westgate. “My sister,”
she added, “is a model traveler. She writes down all the curious facts
she hears in a little book she keeps for the purpose.”
The duchess was a little flushed; she looked all about the room, while
her daughter turned to Bessie. “My brother told us you were wonderfully
clever,” said Lady Pimlico.
“He should have said my sister,” Bessie answered--“when she says such
things as that.”
“Shall you be long at Branches?” the duchess asked, abruptly, of the
young girl.
“Lord Lambeth has asked us for three days,” said Bessie.
“I shall go,” the duchess declared, “and my daughter, too.”
“That will be charming!” Bessie rejoined.
“Delightful!” murmured Mrs. Westgate.
“I shall expect to see a great deal of you,” the duchess continued.
“When I go to Branches I monopolize my son’s guests.”
“They must be most happy,” said Mrs. Westgate very graciously.
“I want immensely to see it--to see the castle,” said Bessie to the
duchess. “I have never seen one--in England, at least; and you know we
have none in America.”
“Ah, you are fond of castles?” inquired her Grace.
“Immensely!” replied the young girl. “It has been the dream of my life
to live in one.”
The duchess looked at her a moment, as if she hardly knew how to take
this assurance, which, from her Grace’s point of view, was either very
artless or very audacious. “Well,” she said, rising, “I will show
you Branches myself.” And upon this the two great ladies took their
departure.
“What did they mean by it?” asked Mrs. Westgate, when they were gone.
“They meant to be polite,” said Bessie, “because we are going to meet
them.”
“It is too late to be polite,” Mrs. Westgate replied almost grimly.
“They meant to overawe us by their fine manners and their grandeur, and
to make you LACHER PRISE.”
“LACHER PRISE? What strange things you say!” murmured Bessie Alden.
“They meant to snub us, so that we shouldn’t dare to go to Branches,”
Mrs. Westgate continued.
“On the contrary,” said Bessie, “the duchess offered to show me the
place herself.”
“Yes, you may depend upon it she won’t let you out of her sight. She
will show you the place from morning till night.”
“You have a theory for everything,” said Bessie.
“And you apparently have none for anything.”
“I saw no attempt to ‘overawe’ us,” said the young girl. “Their manners
were not fine.”
“They were not even good!” Mrs. Westgate declared.
Bessie was silent a while, but in a few moments she observed that she
had a very good theory. “They came to look at me,” she said, as if this
had been a very ingenious hypothesis. Mrs. Westgate did it justice;
she greeted it with a smile and pronounced it most brilliant, while, in
reality, she felt that the young girl’s skepticism, or her charity, or,
as she had sometimes called it appropriately, her idealism, was proof
against irony. Bessie, however, remained meditative all the rest of that
day and well on into the morrow.
On the morrow, before lunch, Mrs. Westgate had occasion to go out for an
hour, and left her sister writing a letter. When she came back she
met Lord Lambeth at the door of the hotel, coming away. She thought he
looked slightly embarrassed; he was certainly very grave. “I am sorry to
have missed you. Won’t you come back?” she asked.
“No,” said the young man, “I can’t. I have seen your sister. I can never
come back.” Then he looked at her a moment and took her hand. “Goodbye,
Mrs. Westgate,” he said. “You have been very kind to me.” And with what
she thought a strange, sad look in his handsome young face, he turned
away.
She went in, and she found Bessie still writing her letter; that is,
Mrs. Westgate perceived she was sitting at the table with the pen in her
hand and not writing. “Lord Lambeth has been here,” said the elder lady
at last.
Then Bessie got up and showed her a pale, serious face. She bent this
face upon her sister for some time, confessing silently and a little
pleading. “I told him,” she said at last, “that we could not go to
Branches.”
Mrs. Westgate displayed just a spark of irritation. “He might have
waited,” she said with a smile, “till one had seen the castle.” Later,
an hour afterward, she said, “Dear Bessie, I wish you might have
accepted him.”
“I couldn’t,” said Bessie gently.
“He is an excellent fellow,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“I couldn’t,” Bessie repeated.
“If it is only,” her sister added, “because those women will think that
they succeeded--that they paralyzed us!”
Bessie Alden turned away; but presently she added, “They were
interesting; I should have liked to see them again.”
“So should I!” cried Mrs. Westgate significantly.
“And I should have liked to see the castle,” said Bessie. “But now we
must leave England,” she added.
Her sister looked at her. “You will not wait to go to the National
Gallery?”
“Not now.”
“Nor to Canterbury Cathedral?”
Bessie reflected a moment. “We can stop there on our way to Paris,” she
said.
Lord Lambeth did not tell Percy Beaumont that the contingency he was
not prepared at all to like had occurred; but Percy Beaumont, on hearing
that the two ladies had left London, wondered with some intensity what
had happened; wondered, that is, until the Duchess of Bayswater came
a little to his assistance. The two ladies went to Paris, and Mrs.
Westgate beguiled the journey to that city by repeating several
times--“That’s what I regret; they will think they petrified us.” But
Bessie Alden seemed to regret nothing.