by Henry James
“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told him you were here.”
And then Lord Lambeth, touching his hat a little, shook hands with Bessie. “Fancy your being here!” he said. He was blushing and smiling; he looked very handsome, and he had a kind of splendor that he had not had in America. Bessie Alden’s imagination, as we know, was just then in exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there looking down at her, had the benefit of it. “He is handsomer and more splendid than anything I have ever seen,” she said to herself. And then she remembered that he was a marquis, and she thought he looked like a marquis.
“I say, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a man know you were here!”
“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“Doesn’t all the world know it?” asked Bessie, smiling.
“I assure you I didn’t know it!” cried Lord Lambeth. “Upon my honor I hadn’t heard of it. Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?”
“Well, I think you are rather a humbug,” said Willie Woodley.
“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lordship. “You don’t believe I’m a humbug, eh?”
“No,” said Bessie, “I don’t.”
“You are too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate observed. “You are only tolerable when you sit down. Be so good as to get a chair.”
He found a chair and placed it sidewise, close to the two ladies. “If I hadn’t met Woodley I should never have found you,” he went on. “Should I, Woodley?”
“Well, I guess not,” said the young American.
“Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. Westgate.
“Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this evening. I was awfully kind of you to write.”
“So I said to Bessie,” observed Mrs. Westgate.
“Did she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth inquired. “I daresay you have been here a month.”
“We have been here three,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“Have you been here three months?” the young man asked again of Bessie.
“It seems a long time,” Bessie answered.
“I say, after that you had better not call me a humbug!” cried Lord Lambeth. “I have only been in town three weeks; but you must have been hiding away; I haven’t seen you anywhere.”
“Where should you have seen us—where should we have gone?” asked Mrs. Westgate.
“You should have gone to Hurlingham,” said Willie Woodley.
“No; let Lord Lambeth tell us,” Mrs. Westgate insisted.
“There are plenty of places to go to,” said Lord Lambeth; “each one stupider than the other. I mean people’s houses; they send you cards.”
“No one has sent us cards,” said Bessie.
“We are very quiet,” her sister declared. “We are here as travelers.”
“We have been to Madame Tussaud’s,” Bessie pursued.
“Oh, I say!” cried Lord Lambeth.
“We thought we should find your image there,” said Mrs. Westgate—”yours and Mr. Beaumont’s.”
“In the Chamber of Horrors?” laughed the young man.
“It did duty very well for a party,” said Mrs. Westgate. “All the women were decolletes, and many of the figures looked as if they could speak if they tried.”
“Upon my word,” Lord Lambeth rejoined, “you see people at London parties that look as if they couldn’t speak if they tried.”
“Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?” asked Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth stared and looked round him. “I daresay he could. Beaumont often comes here. Don’t you think you could find him, Woodley? Make a dive into the crowd.”
“Thank you; I have had enough diving,” said Willie Woodley. “I will wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface.”
“I will bring him to see you,” said Lord Lambeth; “where are you staying?”
“You will find the address in my letter—Jones’s Hotel.”
“Oh, one of those places just out of Piccadilly? Beastly hole, isn’t it?” Lord Lambeth inquired.
“I believe it’s the best hotel in London,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“But they give you awful rubbish to eat, don’t they?” his lordship went on.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“I always feel so sorry for the people that come up to town and go to live in those places,” continued the young man. “They eat nothing but filth.”
“Oh, I say!” cried Willie Woodley.
“Well, how do you like London, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth asked, unperturbed by this ejaculation.
“I think it’s grand,” said Bessie Alden.
“My sister likes it, in spite of the ‘filth’!” Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.
“I hope you are going to stay a long time.”
“As long as I can,” said Bessie.
“And where is Mr. Westgate?” asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman’s wife.
“He’s where he always is—in that tiresome New York.”
“He must be tremendously clever,” said the young man.
“I suppose he is,” said Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth sat for nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not our purpose to relate their conversation in full. He addressed a great many remarks to Bessie Alden, and finally turned toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley entertained Mrs. Westgate. Bessie herself said very little; she was on her guard, thinking of what her sister had said to her at lunch. Little by little, however, she interested herself in Lord Lambeth again, as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her that here he might become more interesting. He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness, of England; and poor Bessie Alden, like many a Yankee maiden, was terribly at the mercy of picturesqueness.
“I have often wished I were at Newport again,” said the young man. “Those days I spent at your sister’s were awfully jolly.”
“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father is better.”
“Oh, dear, yes. When I got to England, he was out grouse shooting. It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud. My mother had got nervous. My three weeks at Newport seemed like a happy dream.”
“America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie.
“I hope you like England better, eh?” Lord Lambeth rejoined almost persuasively.
“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country.”
Her companion looked at her for a moment. “You mean it’s a matter of course?”
“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would certainly seem to me a matter of course that everyone should be a good patriot.”
“Oh, dear, yes, patriotism is everything,” said Lord Lambeth, not quite following, but very contented. “Now, what are you going to do here?”
“On Thursday I am going to the Tower.”
“The Tower?”
“The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?”
“Oh, yes, I have been there,” said Lord Lambeth. “I was taken there by my governess when I was six years old. It’s a rum idea, your going there.”
“Do give me a few more rum ideas,” said Bessie. “I want to see everything of that sort. I am going to Hampton Court, and to Windsor, and to the Dulwich Gallery.”
Lord Lambeth seemed greatly amused. “I wonder you don’t go to the Rosherville Gardens.”
“Are they interesting?” asked Bessie.
“Oh, wonderful.”
“Are they very old? That’s all I care for,” said Bessie.
“They are tremendously old; they are all falling to ruins.”
“I think there is nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden,” said the young girl. “We must certainly go there.”
Lord Lambeth broke out into merriment. “I say, Woodley,” he cried, “here’s Miss Alden wants to go to the Rosherville Ga
rdens!”
Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact of ignorance of an apparently conspicuous feature of London life. But in a moment he turned it off. “Very well,” he said, “I’ll write for a permit.”
Lord Lambeth’s exhilaration increased. “Gad, I believe you Americans would go anywhere!” he cried.
“We wish to go to Parliament,” said Bessie. “That’s one of the first things.”
“Oh, it would bore you to death!” cried the young man.
“We wish to hear you speak.”
“I never speak—except to young ladies,” said Lord Lambeth, smiling.
Bessie Alden looked at him a while, smiling, too, in the shadow of her parasol. “You are very strange,” she murmured. “I don’t think I approve of you.”
“Ah, now, don’t be severe, Miss Alden,” said Lord Lambeth, smiling still more. “Please don’t be severe. I want you to like me—awfully.”
“To like you awfully? You must not laugh at me, then, when I make mistakes. I consider it my right—as a freeborn American—to make as many mistakes as I choose.”
“Upon my word, I didn’t laugh at you,” said Lord Lambeth.
“And not only that,” Bessie went on; “but I hold that all my mistakes shall be set down to my credit. You must think the better of me for them.”
“I can’t think better of you than I do,” the young man declared.
Bessie Alden looked at him a moment again. “You certainly speak very well to young ladies. But why don’t you address the House?— isn’t that what they call it?”
“Because I have nothing to say,” said Lord Lambeth.
“Haven’t you a great position?” asked Bessie Alden.
He looked a moment at the back of his glove. “I’ll set that down,” he said, “as one of your mistakes—to your credit.” And as if he disliked talking about his position, he changed the subject. “I wish you would let me go with you to the Tower, and to Hampton Court, and to all those other places.”
“We shall be most happy,” said Bessie.
“And of course I shall be delighted to show you the House of Lords— some day that suits you. There are a lot of things I want to do for you. I want to make you have a good time. And I should like very much to present some of my friends to you, if it wouldn’t bore you. Then it would be awfully kind of you to come down to Branches.”
“We are much obliged to you, Lord Lambeth,” said Bessie. “What is Branches?”
“It’s a house in the country. I think you might like it.”
Willie Woodley and Mrs. Westgate at this moment were sitting in silence, and the young man’s ear caught these last words of Lord Lambeth’s. “He’s inviting Miss Bessie to one of his castles,” he murmured to his companion.
Mrs. Westgate, foreseeing what she mentally called “complications,” immediately got up; and the two ladies, taking leave of Lord Lambeth, returned, under Mr. Woodley’s conduct, to Jones’s Hotel.
Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing Percy Beaumont with him—the latter having instantly declared his intention of neglecting none of the usual offices of civility. This declaration, however, when his kinsman informed him of the advent of their American friends, had been preceded by another remark.
“Here they are, then, and you are in for it.”
“What am I in for?” demanded Lord Lambeth.
“I will let your mother give it a name. With all respect to whom,” added Percy Beaumont, “I must decline on this occasion to do any more police duty. Her Grace must look after you herself.”
“I will give her a chance,” said her Grace’s son, a trifle grimly. “I shall make her go and see them.”
“She won’t do it, my boy.”
“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord Lambeth.
But if Percy Beaumont took a somber view of the arrival of the two ladies at Jones’s Hotel, he was sufficiently a man of the world to offer them a smiling countenance. He fell into animated conversation—conversation, at least, that was animated on her side—with Mrs. Westgate, while his companion made himself agreeable to the younger lady. Mrs. Westgate began confessing and protesting, declaring and expounding.
“I must say London is a great deal brighter and prettier just now than it was when I was here last—in the month of November. There is evidently a great deal going on, and you seem to have a good many flowers. I have no doubt it is very charming for all you people, and that you amuse yourselves immensely. It is very good of you to let Bessie and me come and sit and look at you. I suppose you will think I am very satirical, but I must confess that that’s the feeling I have in London.”
“I am afraid I don’t quite understand to what feeling you allude,” said Percy Beaumont.
“The feeling that it’s all very well for you English people. Everything is beautifully arranged for you.”
“It seems to me it is very well for some Americans, sometimes,” rejoined Beaumont.
“For some of them, yes—if they like to be patronized. But I must say I don’t like to be patronized. I may be very eccentric, and undisciplined, and outrageous, but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that’s a peculiar taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something else—Heaven knows what! I am afraid you will think I am very ungrateful, for I certainly have received a great deal of attention. The last time I was here, a lady sent me a message that I was at liberty to come and see her.”
“Dear me! I hope you didn’t go,” observed Percy Beaumont.
“You are deliciously naive, I must say that for you!” Mrs. Westgate exclaimed. “It must be a great advantage to you here in London. I suppose that if I myself had a little more naivete, I should enjoy it more. I should be content to sit on a chair in the park, and see the people pass, and be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk, and that is the Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privilege of beholding them. I daresay it is very wicked and critical of me to ask for anything else. But I was always critical, and I freely confess to the sin of being fastidious. I am told there is some remarkably superior second-rate society provided here for strangers. Merci! I don’t want any superior second-rate society. I want the society that I have been accustomed to.”
“I hope you don’t call Lambeth and me second rate,” Beaumont interposed.
“Oh, I am accustomed to you,” said Mrs. Westgate. “Do you know that you English sometimes make the most wonderful speeches? The first time I came to London I went out to dine—as I told you, I have received a great deal of attention. After dinner, in the drawing room, I had some conversation with an old lady; I assure you I had. I forget what we talked about, but she presently said, in allusion to something we were discussing, ‘Oh, you know, the aristocracy do so-and-so; but in one’s own class of life it is very different.’ In one’s own class of life! What is a poor unprotected American woman to do in a country where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to her?”
“You seem to get hold of some very queer old ladies; I compliment you on your acquaintance!” Percy Beaumont exclaimed. “If you are trying to bring me to admit that London is an odious place, you’ll not succeed. I’m extremely fond of it, and I think it the jolliest place in the world.”
“Pour vous autres. I never said the contrary,” Mrs. Westgate retorted. I make use of this expression, because both interlocutors had begun to raise their voices. Percy Beaumont naturally did not like to hear his country abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less naturally, did not like a stubborn debater.
“Hallo!” said Lord Lambeth; “what are they up to now?” And he came away from the window, where he had been standing with Bessie Alden.
“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of mine,” Mrs. Westgate continued with charming ardor, though with imperfect relevancy. She smiled at the two gentlemen for a moment with terrible brightness, as if to toss at their feet—upon their native
heath—the gauntlet of defiance. “For me, there are only two social positions worth speaking of— that of an American lady and that of the Emperor of Russia.”
“And what do you do with the American gentlemen?” asked Lord Lambeth.
“She leaves them in America!” said Percy Beaumont.
On the departure of their visitors, Bessie Alden told her sister that Lord Lambeth would come the next day, to go with them to the Tower, and that he had kindly offered to bring his “trap” and drive them thither. Mrs. Westgate listened in silence to this communication, and for some time afterward she said nothing. But at last, “If you had not requested me the other day not to mention it,” she began, “there is something I should venture to ask you.” Bessie frowned a little; her dark blue eyes were more dark than blue. But her sister went on. “As it is, I will take the risk. You are not in love with Lord Lambeth: I believe it, perfectly. Very good. But is there, by chance, any danger of your becoming so? It’s a very simple question; don’t take offense. I have a particular reason,” said Mrs. Westgate, “for wanting to know.”