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 that 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 honour; 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 some one 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 should recognise.’
‘I never saw such a young lady as you are for not “recognising”. 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.
VI
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 every time 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; h
e 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 any one. 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? Ay, 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 non-appearance 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 colour; 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 o
f 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 travelling,’ Bessie answered, ‘and I suppose hotels are a necessary part of it. But they are not the part I am fondest of.’