He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk; it was all
pitched in a key of expression and emphasis rather new to him. Every one
present, the cool maidens not least, personally addressed him, and seemed
to make a particular point of doing so by the friendly repetition of his
name. Three or four other persons came in, and there was a shifting of
seats, a changing of places; the gentlemen took, individually, an
interest in the visitors, putting somehow more imagination and more “high
comedy” into this effort than the latter had ever seen displayed save in
a play or a story. These well-wishers feared the two Britons mightn’t be
comfortable at their hotel—it being, as one of them said, “not so private
as those dear little English inns of yours.” This last gentleman added
that as yet perhaps, alas, privacy wasn’t quite so easily obtained in
America as might be desired; still, he continued, you could generally get
it by paying for it; in fact you could get everything in America nowadays
by paying for it. The life was really growing more private; it was
growing greatly to resemble European—which wasn’t to be wondered at when
two-thirds of the people leading it were so awfully much at home in
Europe. Europe, in the course of this conversation, was indeed, as Lord
Lambeth afterwards remarked to his compatriot, rather bewilderingly
rubbed into them: did they pretend to be European, and when had they ever
been entered under that head? Everything at Newport, at all events, was
described to them as thoroughly private; they would probably find
themselves, when all was said, a good deal struck with that. It was also
represented to the strangers that it mattered very little whether their
hotel was agreeable, as every one would want them to “visit round,” as
somebody called it: they would stay with other people and in any case
would be constantly at Mrs. Westgate’s. They would find that charming;
it was the pleasantest house in Newport. It was only a pity Mr. Westgate
was never there—he being a tremendously fine man, one of the finest they
had. He worked like a horse and left his wife to play the social part.
Well, she played it all right, if that was all he wanted. He liked her
to enjoy herself, and she did know how. She was highly cultivated and a
splendid converser—the sort of converser people would come miles to hear.
But some preferred her sister, who was in a different style altogether.
Some even thought her prettier, but decidedly Miss Alden wasn’t so smart.
She was more in the Boston style—the quiet Boston; she had lived a great
deal there and was very highly educated. Boston girls, it was intimated,
were more on the English model.
Lord Lambeth had presently a chance to test the truth of this last
proposition; for, the company rising in compliance with a suggestion from
their hostess that they should walk down to the rocks and look at the
sea, the young Englishman again found himself, as they strolled across
the grass, in proximity to Mrs. Westgate’s sister. Though Miss Alden was
but a girl of twenty she appeared conscious of the weight of
expectation—unless she quite wantonly took on duties she might have let
alone; and this was perhaps the more to be noticed as she seemed by habit
rather grave and backward, perhaps even proud, with little of the other’s
free fraternising. She might have been thought too deadly thin, not to
say also too deadly pale; but while she moved over the grass, her arms
hanging at her sides, and, seriously or absently, forgot expectations,
though again brightly to remember them and to look at the summer sea, as
if that was what she really cared for, her companion judged her at least
as pretty as Mrs. Westgate and reflected that if this was the Boston
style, “the quiet Boston,” it would do very well. He could fancy her
very clever, highly educated and all the rest of it; but clearly also
there were ways in which she could spare a fellow—could ease him; she
wouldn’t keep him so long on the stretch at once. For all her
cleverness, moreover, he felt she had to think a little what to say; she
didn’t say the first thing that came into her head: he had come from a
different part of the world, from a different society, and she was trying
to adapt her conversation. The others were scattered about the rocks;
Mrs. Westgate had charge of Percy Beaumont.
“Very jolly place for this sort of thing,” Lord Lambeth said. “It must
do beautifully to sit.”
“It does indeed; there are cosy nooks and there are breezy ones, which I
often try—as if they had been made on purpose.”
“Ah I suppose you’ve had a lot made,” he fell in.
She seemed to wonder. “Oh no, we’ve had nothing made. It’s all pure
nature.”
“I should think you’d have a few little benches—rustic seats and that
sort of thing. It might really be so jolly to ‘develop’ the place,” he
suggested.
It made her thoughtful—even a little rueful. “I’m afraid we haven’t so
many of those things as you.”
“Ah well, if you go in for pure nature, as you were saying, there’s
nothing like that. Nature, over here, must be awfully grand.” And Lord
Lambeth looked about him.
The little coast-line that contributed to the view melted away, but it
too much lacked presence and character—a fact Miss Alden appeared to rise
to a perception of. “I’m afraid it seems to you very rough. It’s not
like the coast-scenery in Kingsley’s novels.”
He wouldn’t let her, however, undervalue it. “Ah, the novels always
overdo everything, you know. You mustn’t go by the novels.”
They wandered a little on the rocks; they stopped to look into a narrow
chasm where the rising tide made a curious bellowing sound. It was loud
enough to prevent their hearing each other, and they stood for some
moments in silence. The girl’s eyes took in her companion, observing him
attentively but covertly, as those of women even in blinking youth know
how to do. Lord Lambeth repaid contemplation; tall straight and strong,
he was handsome as certain young Englishmen, and certain young Englishmen
almost alone, are handsome; with a perfect finish of feature and a
visible repose of mind, an inaccessibility to questions, somehow stamped
in by the same strong die and pressure that nature, designing a precious
medal, had selected and applied. It was not that he looked stupid; it
was only, we assume, that his perceptions didn’t show in his face for
restless or his imagination for irritable. He was not, as he would
himself have said, tremendously clever; but, though there was rather a
constant appeal for delay in his waiting, his perfectly patient eye, this
registered simplicity had its beauty as well and, whatever it might have
appeared to plead for, didn’t plead in the name of indifference or
inaction. This most searching of his new friends thought him the
handsomest young man she had ever seen; and Bessie Alden’s imagination,
unlike that of her companion, was irritable. He, however, had already
made up his mind, quite originally and without aid, that she had a grace
exceedingly her own.
“I daresay it’s very gay here—that you’ve lots of balls and parties,” he
said; since, though not tremendously clever, he rather prided himself on
having with women a strict sufficiency of conversation.
“Oh yes, there’s a great deal going on. There are not so many balls, but
there are a good many other pleasant things,” Bessie Alden explained.
“You’ll see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.”
“It will be very kind of you to let us see. But I thought you Americans
were always dancing.”
“I suppose we dance a good deal, though I’ve never seen much of it. We
don’t do it much, at any rate in summer. And I’m sure,” she said, “that
we haven’t as many balls as you in England.”
He wondered—these so many prompt assumptions about his own country made
him gape a little. “Ah, in England it all depends, you know.”
“You’ll not think much of our gaieties,” she said—though she seemed to
settle it for him with a quaver of interrogation. The interrogation
sounded earnest indeed and the decision arch; the mixture, at any rate,
was charming. “Those things with us are much less splendid than in
England.”
“I fancy you don’t really mean that,” her companion laughed.
“I assure you I really mean everything I say,” she returned. “Certainly
from what I’ve read about English society it is very different.”
“Ah well, you know,” said Lord Lambeth, who appeared to cling to this
general theory, “those things are often described by fellows who know
nothing about them. You mustn’t mind what you read.”
“Ah, what a blasphemous speech—I _must_ mind what I read!” our young
woman protested. “When I read Thackeray and George Eliot how can I help
minding?”
“Oh well, Thackeray and George Eliot”—and her friend pleasantly bethought
himself. “I’m afraid I haven’t read much of them.”
“Don’t you suppose they knew about society?” asked Bessie Alden.
“Oh I daresay they knew; they must have got up their subject. Good
writers do, don’t they? But those fashionable novels are mostly awful
rot, you know.”
His companion rested on him a moment her dark blue eyes; after which she
looked down into the chasm where the water was tumbling about. “Do you
mean Catherine Grace Gore, for instance?” she then more aspiringly asked.
But at this he broke down—he coloured, laughed, gave up. “I’m afraid I
haven’t read that either. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m not very
intellectual.”
“Reading Mrs. Gore is no proof of intellect. But I like reading
everything about English life—even poor books. I’m so curious about it,”
said Bessie Alden.
“Aren’t ladies curious about everything?” he asked with continued
hilarity.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re enough so—that we care about many
things. So it’s all the more of a compliment,” she added, “that I should
want to know so much about England.”
The logic here seemed a little close; but Lord Lambeth, advised of a
compliment, found his natural modesty close at hand. “I’m sure you know
a great deal more than I do.”
“I really think I know a great deal—for a person who has never been
there.”
“Have you really never been there?” cried he. “Fancy!”
“Never—except in imagination. And I _have_ been to Paris,” she admitted.
“Fancy,” he repeated with gaiety—“fancy taking those brutes first! But
you _will_ come soon?”
“It’s the dream of my life!” Bessie Alden brightly professed.
“Your sister at any rate seems to know a tremendous lot about us,” Lord
Lambeth went on.
She appeared to take her view of this. “My sister and I are two very
different persons. She has been a great deal in Europe. She has been in
England a little—not intimately. But she has met English people in other
countries, and she arrives very quickly at conclusions.”
“Ah, I guess she does,” he laughed. “But you must have known some too.”
“No—I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to one before. You’re the first
Englishman that—to my knowledge—I’ve ever talked with.”
Bessie Alden made this statement with a certain gravity—almost, as it
seemed to the young man, an impressiveness. The impressive always made
him feel awkward, and he now began to laugh and swing his stick. “Ah,
you’d have been sure to know!” And then he added after an instant: “I’m
sorry I’m not a better specimen.”
The girl looked away, but taking it more gaily. “You must remember
you’re only a beginning.” Then she retraced her steps, leading the way
back to the lawn, where they saw Mrs. Westgate come toward them with
Percy Beaumont still at her side. “Perhaps I shall go to England next
year,” Miss Alden continued; “I want to immensely. My sister expects to
cross about then, and she has asked me to go with her. If I do I shall
make her stay as long as possible in London.”
“Ah, you must come early in July,” said Lord Lambeth. “That’s the time
when there’s most going on.”
“I don’t think I can wait even till early in July,” his friend returned.
“By the first of May I shall be very impatient.” They had gone further,
and Mrs. Westgate and her companion were near. “Kitty,” said the younger
sister, “I’ve given out that we go to London next May. So please to
conduct yourself accordingly.”
Percy Beaumont wore a somewhat animated—even a slightly irritated—air.
He was by no means of so handsome an effect as his comrade, though in the
latter’s absence he might, with his manly stature and his fair dense
beard, his fresh clean skin and his quiet outlook, have pleased by a due
affirmation of the best British points. Just now Beaumont’s clear eyes
had a rather troubled light, which, after glancing at Bessie Alden while
she spoke, he turned with some intensity on Lord Lambeth. Mrs.
Westgate’s beautiful radiance of interest and dissent fell meanwhile
impartially everywhere.
“You had better wait till the time comes,” she said to her sister.
“Perhaps next May you won’t care so much for London. Mr. Beaumont and
I,” she went on, smiling at her companion, “have had a tremendous
discussion. We don’t agree about anything. It’s perfectly delightful.”
“Oh I say, Percy!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth.
“I disagree,” said Beaumont, raising his eyebrows and stroking down his
back hair, “even to the point of thinking it _not_ delightful.”
“Ah, you _must_ have been getting it!” cried his friend.
“I don’t see anything delightful in my disagreeing with Mrs. Westgate,”
said Percy Beaumont.
“Well, I do!” Mrs. Westgate declared as she turned again to her sister.
“You know you’ve to go to town. There must be something at the door for
you. You had better take Lord Lambeth.”
Mr. Beaumont, at this point, looked straight at his comrade, trying to
catch his eye. But Lord Lambeth wouldn’t look at him; his own eyes were
better occupied. “I shall be very happy”—Bessie Alden rose straight to
their hostess’s suggestion. “I’m only going to some shops. But I’ll
drive you about and show you the place.”
“An American woman who respects herself,” said Mrs. Westgate, turning to
the elder man with her bright expository air, “must buy something every
day of her life. If she can’t do it herself she must send out some
member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfil my
mission.”
The girl had walked away with Lord Lambeth by her side, to whom she was
talking still; and Percy Beaumont watched them as they passed toward the
house. “She fulfils her own mission,” he presently said; “that of being
very attractive.”
But even here Mrs. Westgate discriminated. “I don’t know that I should
precisely say attractive. She’s not so much that as she’s charming when
you really know her. She’s very shy.”
“Oh indeed?” said Percy Beaumont with evident wonder. And then as if to
alternate with a certain grace the note of scepticism: “I guess your
shyness, in that case, is different from ours.”
“Everything of ours is different from yours,” Mrs. Westgate instantly
returned. “But my poor sister’s given over, I hold, to a fine Boston
_gaucherie_ that has rubbed off on her by being there so much. She’s a
dear good girl, however; she’s a charming type of girl. She is not in
the least a flirt; that isn’t at all her line; she doesn’t know the
alphabet of any such vulgarity. She’s very simple, very serious, very
_true_. She has lived, however, rather too much in Boston with another
sister of mine, the eldest of us, who married a Bostonian. Bessie’s very
cultivated, not at all like me—I’m not in the least cultivated and am
called so only by those who don’t know what true culture is. But Bessie
does; she has studied Greek; she has read everything; she’s what they
call in Boston ‘thoughtful.’”
“Ah well, it only depends on what one thinks _about_,” said Mr. Beaumont,
who appeared to find her zeal for distinctions catching.
“I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate pursued, “that the most charming girl
in the world is a Boston superstructure on a New York _fond_, or perhaps
a New York superstructure on a Boston _fond_. At any rate it’s the
mixture,” she declared, continuing to supply her guest with information
and to do him the honours of the American world with a zeal that left
nothing to be desired.
Lord Lambeth got into a light low pony-cart with Bessie Alden, and she
drove him down the long Avenue, whose extent he had measured on foot a
couple of hours before, into the ancient town, as it was called in that
part of the world, of Newport. The ancient town was a curious affair—a
collection of fresh-looking little wooden houses, painted white,
scattered over a hill-side and clustering about a long straight street
paved with huge old cobbles. There were plenty of shops, a large
allowance of which appeared those of fruit-vendors, with piles of huge
water-melons and pumpkins stacked in front of them; while, drawn up
before the shops or bumping about on the round stones, were innumerable
other like or different carts freighted with ladies of high fashion who
greeted each other from vehicle to vehicle and conversed on the edge of
the pavement in a manner that struck Lord Lambeth as of the last
effusiveness: with a great many “Oh my dears” and little quick sounds and
motions—obscure native words, shibboleths and signs. His companion went
into seventeen shops—he amused himself with counting them—and accumulated
at the bottom of the trap a pile of bundles that hardly left the young
Englishman a place for his feet. As she had no other attendant he sat in
the phaeton to hold the pony; where, though not a particularly acute
observer, he saw much harmlessly to divert him—especially the ladies just
mentioned, who wandered up and down with an aimless intentness, as if
looking for something to buy, and who, tripping in and out of their
vehicles, displayed remarkably pretty feet. It all seemed to Lord
Lambeth very odd and bright and gay. And he felt by the time they got
back to the villa that he had made a stride in intimacy with Miss Alden.
The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole of many
successive days in the cultivation, right and left, far and near, of this
celerity of social progress. They agreed that it was all extremely
jolly—that they had never known anything more agreeable. It is not
proposed to report the detail of their sojourn on this charming shore;
though were it convenient I might present a record of impressions none
the less soothing that they were not exhaustively analysed. Many of them
still linger in the minds of our travellers, attended by a train of
harmonious images—images of early breezy shining hours on lawns and
piazzas that overlooked the sea; of innumerable pretty girls saying
innumerable quaint and familiar things; of infinite lounging and talking
and laughing and flirting and lunching and dining; of a confidence that
broke down, of a freedom that pulled up, nowhere; of an idyllic ease that
was somehow too ordered for a primitive social consciousness and too
innocent for a developed; of occasions on which they so knew every one
and everything that they almost ached with reciprocity; of drives and
rides in the late afternoon, over gleaming beaches, on long sea-roads,
beneath a sky lighted up by marvellous sunsets; of tea-tables, on the
return, informal, irregular, agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on
the perpetual verandahs, in the summer starlight, above the warm Atlantic
and amid irrelevant outbursts of clever minstrelsy. The young Englishmen
were introduced to everybody, entertained by everybody, intimate with
everybody, and it was all the book of life, of American life, at least;
with the chapter of “complications” bodily omitted. At the end of three
days they had removed their luggage from the hotel and had gone to stay
with Mrs. Westgate—a step as to which Percy Beaumont at first took up an
attitude of mistrust apparently founded on some odd and just a little
barbaric talk forced on him, he would have been tempted to say, and very
soon after their advent, by Miss Alden. He had indeed been aware of her
occasional approach or appeal, since she wasn’t literally always in
conversation with Lord Lambeth. He had meditated on Mrs. Westgate’s
account of her sister and discovered for himself that the young lady was
“sharp” (Percy’s critical categories remained few and simple) and
appeared to have read a great deal. She seemed perfectly well-bred,
though he couldn’t make out that, as Mrs. Westgate funnily insisted, she
was shy. If she was shy she carried it off with an ease—!
“Mr. Beaumont,” she had said, “please tell me something about Lord
Lambeth’s family. How would you say it in England?—his position.”
“His position?” Percy’s instinct was to speak as if he had never heard
of such a matter.
“His rank—or whatever you call it. Unfortunately we haven’t got a
‘Peerage,’ like the people in Thackeray.”
“That’s a great pity,” Percy pleaded. “You’d find the whole matter in
black and white, and upon my honour I know very little about it.”
The girl seemed to wonder at this innocence. “You know at least whether
he’s what they call a great noble.”
“Oh yes, he’s in that line.”
“Is he a ‘peer of the realm’?”
“Well, as yet—very nearly.”
“And has he any other title than Lord Lambeth?”
“His title’s the Marquis of Lambeth.” With which the fountain of
Bessie’s information appeared to run a little dry. She looked at him,
however, with such interest that he presently added: “He’s the son of the
Duke of Bayswater.”
“The eldest—?”
“The only one.”
“And are his parents living?”
“Naturally—as to his father. If _he_ weren’t living Lambeth would be a
duke.”
“So that when ‘the old lord’ dies”—and the girl smiled with more
simplicity than might have been expected in one so “sharp”—“he’ll become
Duke of Bayswater?”
“Of course,” said their common friend. “But his father’s in excellent
health.”
“And his mother?”
Percy seemed amused. “The Duchess is built to last!”
“And has he any sisters?”
“Yes, there are two.”
“And what are they called?”
“One of them’s married. She’s the Countess of Pimlico.”
“And the other?”
“The other’s unmarried—she’s plain Lady Julia.”
Bessie entered into it all. “Is she very plain?”
He began to laugh again. “You wouldn’t find her so handsome as her
brother,” he said; and it was after this that he attempted to dissuade
the heir of the Duke of Bayswater from accepting Mrs. Westgate’s
invitation. “Depend upon it,” he said, “that girl means to have a go at
you.”
“It seems to me you’re doing your best to make a fool of me,” the modest
young nobleman answered.
“She has been asking me,” his friend imperturbably pursued, “all about
your people and your possessions.”
“I’m sure it’s very good of her!” Lord Lambeth returned.
“Well, then,” said Percy, “if you go straight into it, if you hurl
yourself bang upon the spears, you do so with your eyes open.”
“Damn my eyes!” the young man pronounced. “If one’s to be a dozen times
a day at the house it’s a great deal more convenient to sleep there. I’m
sick of travelling up and down this beastly Avenue.”
Since he had determined to go Percy would of course have been very sorry
to allow him to go alone; he was a man of many scruples—in the direction
in which he had any at all—and he remembered his promise to the Duchess.
It was obviously the memory of this promise that made Mr. Beaumont say to
his companion a couple of days later that he rather wondered he should be
so fond of such a girl.
“In the first place how do you know how fond I am?” asked Lord Lambeth.
“And in the second why shouldn’t I be fond of her?”
“I shouldn’t think she’d be in your line.”
“What do you call my ‘line’? You don’t set her down, I suppose, as
‘fast’?”
“Exactly so. Mrs. Westgate tells me that there’s no such thing as the
fast girl in America; that it’s an English invention altogether and that
the term has no meaning here.”
“All the better. It’s an animal I detest,” said Lord Lambeth.
“You prefer, then, rather a priggish American _précieuse_?”
Lord Lambeth took his time. “Do you call Miss Alden all that?”
“Her sister tells me,” said Percy Beaumont, “that she’s tremendously
literary.”
“Well, why shouldn’t she be? She’s certainly very clever and has every
appearance of a well-stored mind.”
Percy for an instant watched his young friend, who had turned away. “I
should rather have supposed you’d find her stores oppressive.”
The young man, after this, faced him again. “Why, do you think me such a
dunce?” And then as his friend but vaguely protested: “The girl’s all
right,” he said—and quite as if this judgement covered all the ground.
It wasn’t that there was no ground—but he knew what he was about.
Percy, for a while further, and a little uncomfortably flushed with the
sense of his false position—that of presenting culture in a “mean” light,
as they said at Newport—Percy kept his peace; but on August 10th he wrote
to the Duchess of Bayswater. His conception of certain special duties
and decencies, as I have said, was strong, and this step wholly fell in
with it. His companion meanwhile was having much talk with Miss Alden—on
the red sea-rocks beyond the lawn; in the course of long island rides,
with a slow return in the glowing twilight; on the deep verandah, late in
the evening. Lord Lambeth, who had stayed at many houses, had never
stayed at one in which it was possible for a young man to converse so
freely and frequently with a young lady. This young lady no longer
applied to their other guest for information concerning his lordship.
She addressed herself directly to the young nobleman. She asked him a
great many questions, some of which did, according to Mr. Beaumont’s
term, a little oppress him; for he took no pleasure in talking about
himself.
“Lord Lambeth”—this had been one of them—“are you an hereditary
legislator?”
“Oh I say,” he returned, “don’t make me call myself such names as that.”
“But you’re natural members of Parliament.”
“I don’t like the sound of that either.”
“Doesn’t your father sit in the House of Lords?” Bessie Alden went on.
“Very seldom,” said Lord Lambeth.
“Is it a very august position?” she asked.
“Oh dear no,” Lord Lambeth smiled.
“I should think it would be very grand”—she serenely kept it up, as the
female American, he judged, would always keep anything up—“to possess
simply by an accident of birth the right to make laws for a great
nation.”
“Ah, but one doesn’t make laws. There’s a lot of humbug about it.”
“I don’t believe that,” the girl unconfusedly declared. “It must be a
great privilege, and I should think that if one thought of it in the
right way—from a high point of view—it would be very inspiring.”
“The less one thinks of it the better, I guess!” Lord Lambeth after a
moment returned.
“I think it’s tremendous”—this at least she kept up; and on another
occasion she asked him if he had any tenantry. Hereupon it was that, as
I have said, he felt a little the burden of her earnestness.
But he took it good-humouredly. “Do you want to buy up their leases?”
“Well—have you got any ‘livings’?” she demanded as if the word were rich
and rare.
“Oh I say!” he cried. “Have _you_ got a pet clergyman looking out?” But
she made him plead guilty to his having, in prospect, a castle; he
confessed to but one. It was the place in which he had been born and
brought up, and, as he had an old-time liking for it, he was beguiled
into a few pleasant facts about it and into pronouncing it really very
jolly. Bessie listened with great interest, declaring she would give the
world to see such a place. To which he charmingly made answer: “It would
be awfully kind of you to come and stay there, you know.” It was not
inconvenient to him meanwhile that Percy Beaumont hadn’t happened to hear
him make this genial remark.
Mr. Westgate, all this time, hadn’t, as they said at Newport, “come on.”
His wife more than once announced that she expected him on the morrow;
but on the morrow she wandered about a little, with a telegram in her
jewelled fingers, pronouncing it too “fiendish” he should let his
business so dreadfully absorb him that he could but platonically hope, as
she expressed it, his two Englishmen were having a good time. “I must
say,” said Mrs. Westgate, “that it’s no thanks to him if you are!” And
she went on to explain, while she kept up that slow-paced circulation
which enabled her well-adjusted skirts to display themselves so
advantageously, that unfortunately in America there was no leisure-class
and that the universal passionate surrender of the men to
business-questions and business-questions only, as if they were the all
in all of life, was a tide that would have to be stemmed. It was Lord
Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young men were together,
that Percy was having a very good time with Mrs. Westgate and that under
the pretext of meeting for the purpose of animated discussion they were
indulging in practices that imparted a shade of hypocrisy to the lady’s
regret for her husband’s absence.
“I assure you we’re always discussing and differing,” Mr. Beaumont
however asseverated. “She’s awfully argumentative. American ladies
certainly don’t mind contradicting you flat. Upon my word I don’t think
I was ever treated so by a woman before. We have ours ever so much more
in hand. She’s so devilish positive.”
The superlative degree so variously affirmed, however, was evidently a
source of attraction in Mrs. Westgate, for the elder man was constantly
at his hostess’s side. He detached himself one day to the extent of
going to New York to talk over the Tennessee Central with her husband;
but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which, with that
gentleman’s assistance, he completely settled this piece of business.
“They know how to put things—and put people—‘through’ in New York,” he
subsequently and quite breathlessly observed to his comrade; and he added
that Mr. Westgate had seemed markedly to fear his wife might suffer for
loss of her guest—he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to
her. “I’m afraid you’ll never come up to an American husband—if that’s
what the wives expect,” he said to Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment
with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. August
had still a part of its course to run when his lordship received from his
mother the disconcerting news that his father had been taken ill and that
he had best at once come home. The young nobleman concealed his chagrin
with no great success. “I left the Duke but the other day absolutely all
right—so what the deuce does it mean?” he asked of his comrade. “What’s
a fellow to do?”
Percy Beaumont was scarce less annoyed; he had deemed it his duty, as we
know, to report faithfully to the Duchess, but had not expected this
distinguished woman to act so promptly on his hint. “It means,” he said,
“that your father is somehow, and rather suddenly, laid up. I don’t
suppose it’s anything serious, but you’ve no option. Take the first
steamer, but take it without alarm.”
This really struck Lord Lambeth as meaning that he essentially needn’t
take it, since alarm would have been his only good motive; yet he
nevertheless, after an hour of intenser irritation than he could quite
have explained to himself, made his farewells; in the course of which he
exchanged a few last words with Bessie Alden that are the only ones
making good their place in our record. “Of course I needn’t assure you
that if you should come to England next year I expect to be the very
first person notified of it.”
She looked at him in that way she had which never quite struck him as
straight and clear, yet which always struck him as kind and true. “Oh,
if we come to London I should think you’d sufficiently hear of it.”
Percy Beaumont felt it his duty also to embark, and this same rigour
compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to his
friend that he suspected the Duchess’s telegram to have been in part the
result of something he himself had written her. “I wrote her—as I
distinctly warned you I had promised in general to do—that you were
extremely interested in a little American girl.”
The young man, much upset by this avowal, indulged for some moments in
the strong and simple language of resentment. But if I have described
him as inclined to candour and to reason I can give no better proof of it
than the fact of his being ready to face the truth by the end of half an
hour. “You were quite right after all. I’m very much interested in her.
Only, to be fair,” he added, “you should have told my mother also that
she’s not—at all seriously—interested in poor me.”
Mr. Beaumont gave the rein to mirth and mockery. “There’s nothing so
charming as modesty in a young man in the position of ‘poor’ you. That
speech settles for me the question of what’s the matter with you.”
Lord Lambeth’s handsome eyes turned rueful and queer. “Is anything so
flagrantly the matter with me?”
“Everything, my dear boy,” laughed his companion, passing a hand into his
arm for a walk.
“Well, _she_ isn’t interested—she isn’t!” the young man insisted.
“My poor friend,” said Percy Beaumont rather gravely, “you’re very far
gone!”