Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. On the 21st of August Lord Lambeth received a telegram from his mother, requesting him to return immediately to England; his father had been taken ill, and it was his filial duty to come to him.
The young Englishman was visibly annoyed. "What the deuce does it mean?"
he asked of his kinsman. "What am I to do?"
Percy Beaumont was annoyed as well; he had deemed it his duty, as I have narrated, to write to the d.u.c.h.ess, but he had not expected that this distinguished woman would act so promptly upon his hint. "It means,"
he said, "that your father is laid up. I don"t suppose it"s anything serious; but you have no option. Take the first steamer; but don"t be alarmed."
Lord Lambeth made his farewells; but the few last words that he exchanged with Bessie Alden are the only ones that have a place in our record. "Of course I needn"t a.s.sure you," he said, "that if you should come to England next year, I expect to be the first person that you inform of it."
Bessie Alden looked at him a little, and she smiled. "Oh, if we come to London," she answered, "I should think you would hear of it."
Percy Beaumont returned with his cousin, and his sense of duty compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to Lord Lambeth that he suspected that the d.u.c.h.ess"s telegram was in part the result of something he himself had written to her. "I wrote to her--as I explicitly notified you I had promised to do--that you were extremely interested in a little American girl."
Lord Lambeth was extremely angry, and he indulged for some moments in the simple language of indignation. But I have said that he was a reasonable young man, and I can give no better proof of it than the fact that he remarked to his companion at the end of half an hour, "You were quite right, after all. I am very much interested in her. Only, to be fair," he added, "you should have told my mother also that she is not--seriously--interested in me."
Percy Beaumont gave a little laugh. "There is nothing so charming as modesty in a young man in your position. That speech is a capital proof that you are sweet on her."
"She is not interested--she is not!" Lord Lambeth repeated.
"My dear fellow," said his companion, "you are very far gone."
PART II
In point of fact, as Percy Beaumont would have said, Mrs. Westgate disembarked on the 18th of May on the British coast. She was accompanied by her sister, but she was not attended by any other member of her family. To the deprivation of her husband"s society Mrs. Westgate was, however, habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to Europe without him, and she now accounted for his absence, to interrogative friends on this side of the Atlantic, by allusion to the regrettable but conspicuous fact that in America there was no leisure cla.s.s. The two ladies came up to London and alighted at Jones"s Hotel, where Mrs.
Westgate, who had made on former occasions the most agreeable impression at this establishment, received an obsequious greeting. Bessie Alden had felt much excited about coming to England; she had expected the "a.s.sociations" would be very charming, that it would be an infinite pleasure to rest her eyes upon the things she had read about in the poets and historians. She was very fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past, of retrospect, of mementos and reverberations of greatness; so that on coming into the English world, where strangeness and familiarity would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a mult.i.tude of fresh emotions. They began very promptly--these tender, fluttering sensations; they began with the sight of the beautiful English landscape, whose dark richness was quickened and brightened by the season; with the carpeted fields and flowering hedgerows, as she looked at them from the window of the train; with the spires of the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted treetops; with the oak-studded parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy light, the speech, the manners, the thousand differences. Mrs. Westgate"s impressions had, of course, much less novelty and keenness, and she gave but a wandering attention to her sister"s e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and rhapsodies.
"You know my enjoyment of England is not so intellectual as Bessie"s,"
she said to several of her friends in the course of her visit to this country. "And yet if it is not intellectual, I can"t say it is physical.
I don"t think I can quite say what it is, my enjoyment of England." When once it was settled that the two ladies should come abroad and should spend a few weeks in England on their way to the Continent, they of course exchanged a good many allusions to their London acquaintance.
"It will certainly be much nicer having friends there," Bessie Alden had said one day as she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer at her sister"s feet on a large blue rug.
"Whom do you mean by friends?" Mrs. Westgate asked.
"All those English gentlemen whom you have known and entertained.
Captain Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,"
added Bessie Alden.
"Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?"
Bessie reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to reflection.
"Well, yes."
"My poor, sweet child," murmured her sister.
"What have I said that is so silly?" asked Bessie.
"You are a little too simple; just a little. It is very becoming, but it pleases people at your expense."
"I am certainly too simple to understand you," said Bessie.
"Shall I tell you a story?" asked her sister.
"If you would be so good. That is what they do to amuse simple people."
Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory, while her companion sat gazing at the shining sea. "Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?"
"I think not," said Bessie.
"Well, it"s no matter," her sister went on.
"It"s a proof of my simplicity."
"My story is meant to ill.u.s.trate that of some other people," said Mrs.
Westgate. "The Duke of Green-Erin is what they call in England a great swell, and some five years ago he came to America. He spent most of his time in New York, and in New York he spent his days and his nights at the b.u.t.terworths". You have heard, at least, of the b.u.t.terworths. BIEN.
They did everything in the world for him--they turned themselves inside out. They gave him a dozen dinner parties and b.a.l.l.s and were the means of his being invited to fifty more. At first he used to come into Mrs.
b.u.t.terworth"s box at the opera in a tweed traveling suit; but someone stopped that. At any rate, he had a beautiful time, and they parted the best friends in the world. Two years elapse, and the b.u.t.terworths come abroad and go to London. The first thing they see in all the papers--in England those things are in the most prominent place--is that the Duke of Green-Erin has arrived in town for the Season. They wait a little, and then Mr. b.u.t.terworth--as polite as ever--goes and leaves a card.
They wait a little more; the visit is not returned; they wait three weeks--silence de mort--the Duke gives no sign. The b.u.t.terworths see a lot of other people, put down the Duke of Green-Erin as a rude, ungrateful man, and forget all about him. One fine day they go to Ascot Races, and there they meet him face to face. He stares a moment and then comes up to Mr. b.u.t.terworth, taking something from his pocketbook--something which proves to be a banknote. "I"m glad to see you, Mr. b.u.t.terworth," he says, "so that I can pay you that ten pounds I lost to you in New York. I saw the other day you remembered our bet; here are the ten pounds, Mr. b.u.t.terworth. Goodbye, Mr. b.u.t.terworth." And off he goes, and that"s the last they see of the Duke of Green-Erin."
"Is that your story?" asked Bessie Alden.
"Don"t you think it"s interesting?" her sister replied.
"I don"t believe it," said the young girl.
"Ah," cried Mrs. Westgate, "you are not so simple after all! Believe it or not, as you please; there is no smoke without fire."
"Is that the way," asked Bessie after a moment, "that you expect your friends to treat you?"
"I defy them to treat me very ill, because I shall not give them the opportunity. With the best will in the world, in that case they can"t be very offensive."
Bessie Alden was silent a moment. "I don"t see what makes you talk that way," she said. "The English are a great people."
"Exactly; and that is just the way they have grown great--by dropping you when you have ceased to be useful. People say they are not clever; but I think they are very clever."
"You know you have liked them--all the Englishmen you have seen," said Bessie.
"They have liked me," her sister rejoined; "it would be more correct to say that. And, of course, one likes that."
Bessie Alden resumed for some moments her studies in sea green. "Well,"
she said, "whether they like me or not, I mean to like them. And happily," she added, "Lord Lambeth does not owe me ten pounds."
During the first few days after their arrival at Jones"s Hotel our charming Americans were much occupied with what they would have called looking about them. They found occasion to make a large number of purchases, and their opportunities for conversation were such only as were offered by the deferential London shopmen. Bessie Alden, even in driving from the station, took an immense fancy to the British metropolis, and at the risk of exhibiting her as a young woman of vulgar tastes it must be recorded that for a considerable period she desired no higher pleasure than to drive about the crowded streets in a hansom cab.
To her attentive eyes they were full of a strange picturesque life, and it is at least beneath the dignity of our historic muse to enumerate the trivial objects and incidents which this simple young lady from Boston found so entertaining. It may be freely mentioned, however, that whenever, after a round of visits in Bond Street and Regent Street, she was about to return with her sister to Jones"s Hotel, she made an earnest request that they should be driven home by way of Westminster Abbey. She had begun by asking whether it would not be possible to take the Tower on the way to their lodgings; but it happened that at a more primitive stage of her culture Mrs. Westgate had paid a visit to this venerable monument, which she spoke of ever afterward vaguely as a dreadful disappointment; so that she expressed the liveliest disapproval of any attempt to combine historical researches with the purchase of hairbrushes and notepaper. The most she would consent to do in this line was to spend half an hour at Madame Tussaud"s, where she saw several dusty wax effigies of members of the royal family. She told Bessie that if she wished to go to the Tower she must get someone else to take her.