‘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 patronised. But I must say I don’t like to be patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined and unreasonable; 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 naïf, 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 naïveté, 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 ardour, 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 afterwards 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 offence. I have a particular reason,’ said Mrs Westgate, ‘for wanting to know.’
Bessie Alden for some moments said nothing; she only looked displeased. ‘No; there is no danger,’ she answered at last, curtly.
‘Then I should like to frighten them,’ declared Mrs Westgate, clasping her jewelled hands.
‘To frighten whom?’
‘All these people; Lord Lambeth’s family and friends.’
‘How should you frighten them?’ asked the young girl.
‘It wouldn’t be I – it would be you. It would frighten them to think that you should absorb his lordship’s young affections.’
Bessie Alden, with her clear eyes still overshadowed by her dark brows, continued to interrogate. ‘Why should that frighten them?’
Mrs Westgate poised her answer with a smile before delivering it. ‘Because they think you are not good enough. You are a charming girl, beautiful and amiable, intelligent and clever, and as bien-élevée as it is possible to be; but you are not a fit match for Lord Lambeth.’
Bessie Alden was immensely disgusted. ‘Where do you get such extraordinary ideas?’ she asked. ‘You have said some such strange things lately. My dear Kitty, where do you collect them?’
Kitty was evidently enamoured of her idea. ‘Yes, it would put them on pins and needles, and it wouldn’t hurt you. Mr Beaumont is already most uneasy; I could soon see that.’
The young girl meditated a moment. ‘Do you mean that they spy upon him – that they interfere with him?’
‘I don’t know what power they have to interfere, but I know that a British mamma may worry her son’s life out.’
It has been intimated that, as regards certain disagreeable things, Bessie Alden had a fund of scepticism. She abstained on the present occasion from expressing disbelief, for she wished not to irritate her sister. But she said to herself that Kitty had been misinformed – that this was a traveller’s tale. Though she was a girl of a lively imagination, there could in the nature of things be, to her sense, no reality in the idea of her belonging to a vulgar category. What she said aloud was – ‘I must say that in that case I am very sorry for Lord Lambeth.’
Mrs Westgate, more and more exhilarated by her scheme, was smiling at her again. ‘If I could only believe it was safe!’ she exclaimed. ‘When you begin to pity him, I, on my side, am afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘Of your pitying him too much.’
Bessie Alden turned away impatiently; but at the end of a minute she turned back. ‘What if I should pity him too much?’ she asked.
Mrs Westgate hereupon turned away, but after a moment’s reflection she also faced her sister again. ‘It would come, after all, to the same thing,’ she said.
Lord Lambeth came the next day with his trap, and the two ladies, attended by Willie Woodley, placed themselves under his guidance and were conveyed eastward, through some of the duskier portions of the metropolis, to the great turreted donjon which overlooks the London shipping. They all descended from their vehicle and entered the famous enclosure; and they secured the services of a venerable beefeater, who, though there were many other claimants for legendary information, made a fine exclusive party of them and marched them through courts and corridors, through armouries and prisons. He delivered his usual peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared, and peeped and stopped, according to the official admonitions. Bessie Alden asked the old man in the crimson doublet a great many questions; she thought it a most fascinating place. Lord Lambeth was in high good-humour; he was constantly laughing; he enjoyed what he would have called the lark. Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and ta
pping the walls with the knuckle of a pearl-grey glove; and Mrs Westgate, asking at frequent intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they came back, was as frequently informed that they would never come back. To a great many of Bessie’s questions – chiefly on collateral points of English history – the ancient warder was naturally unable to reply; whereupon she always appealed to Lord Lambeth. But his lordship was very ignorant. He declared that he knew nothing about that sort of thing, and he seemed greatly diverted at being treated as an authority.
‘You can’t expect every one to know as much as you,’ he said.
‘I should expect you to know a great deal more,’ declared Bessie Alden.
‘Women always know more than men about names and dates, and that sort of thing,’ Lord Lambeth rejoined. ‘There was Lady Jane Grey we have just been hearing about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning of her age.’
‘You have no right to be ignorant, at all events,’ said Bessie.
‘Why haven’t I as good a right as any one else?’
‘Because you have lived in the midst of all these things.’
‘What things do you mean? Axes and blocks and thumbscrews?’
‘All these historical things. You belong to an historical family.’
‘Bessie is really too historical,’ said Mrs Westgate, catching a word of this dialogue.
‘Yes, you are too historical,’ said Lord Lambeth, laughing, but thankful for a formula. ‘Upon my honour, you are too historical!’
He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton Court, Willie Woodley being also of the party. The afternoon was charming, the famous horse-chestnuts were in blossom, and Lord Lambeth, who quite entered into the spirit of the cockney excursionist, declared that it was a jolly old place. Bessie Alden was in ecstasies; she went about murmuring and exclaiming.
‘It’s too lovely,’ said the young girl, ‘it’s too enchanting; it’s too exactly what it ought to be!’
At Hampton Court the little flocks of visitors are not provided with an official bellwether, but are left to browse at discretion upon the local antiquities. It happened in this manner that, in default of another informant, Bessie Alden, who on doubtful questions was able to suggest a great many alternatives, found herself again applying for intellectual assistance to Lord Lambeth. But he again assured her that he was utterly helpless in such matters – that his education had been sadly neglected.
‘And I am sorry it makes you unhappy,’ he added in a moment.
‘You are very disappointing, Lord Lambeth,’ she said.
‘Ah, now, don’t say that!’ he cried. ‘That’s the worst thing you could possibly say.’
‘No,’ she rejoined; ‘it is not so bad as to say that I had expected nothing of you.’
‘I don’t know. Give me a notion of the sort of thing you expected.’
‘Well,’ said Bessie Alden, ‘that you would be more what I should like to be – what I should try to be – in your place.’
‘Ah, my place!’ exclaimed Lord Lambeth; ‘you are always talking about my place.’
The young girl looked at him; he thought she coloured a little; and for a moment she made no rejoinder.
‘Does it strike you that I am always talking about your place?’ she asked.
‘I am sure you do it a great honour,’ he said, fearing he had been uncivil.
‘I have often thought about it,’ she went on after a moment. ‘I have often thought about your being an hereditary legislator. An hereditary legislator ought to know a great many things.’
‘Not if he doesn’t legislate.’
‘But you will legislate; it’s absurd your saying you won’t. You are very much looked up to here – I am assured of that.’
‘I don’t know that I ever noticed it.’
‘It is because you are used to it, then. You ought to fill the place.’
‘How do you mean, to fill it?’ asked Lord Lambeth.
‘You ought to be very clever and brilliant, and to know almost everything.’
Lord Lambeth looked at her a moment. ‘Shall I tell you something?’ he asked. ‘A young man in my position, as you call it—’
‘I didn’t invent the term,’ interposed Bessie Alden. ‘I have seen it in a great many books.’
‘Hang it, you are always at your books! A fellow in my position, then, does very well, whatever he does. That’s about what I mean to say.’
‘Well, if your own people are content with you,’ said Bessie Alden, laughing, ‘it is not for me to complain. But I shall always think that, properly, you should have a great mind – a great character.’
‘Ah, that’s very theoretic!’ Lord Lambeth declared. ‘Depend upon it, that’s a Yankee prejudice.’
‘Happy the country,’ said Bessie Alden, ‘where even people’s prejudices are so elevated!’
‘Well, after all,’ observed Lord Lambeth, ‘I don’t know that I am such a fool as you are trying to make me out.’
‘I said nothing so rude as that; but I must repeat that you are 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 bodies sidereal. 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 club-house 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 every one 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 emphasised by his dancing with her at a royal ball to which the two ladies afterwards 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 humour 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 counsellor 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.