Henry James

“ The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a huge transparent cage, flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a sort of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously. The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and saw a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor, with their legs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing in a queue, as at the ticket office of a railway station, before a brilliantly illuminated counter of vast extent. ”

“ But the duchess’s eyes were absent again; she was looking very fixedly at Bessie. In a moment she slowly rose, walked to a chair that stood empty at the young girl’s right hand, and silently seated herself. As she was a majestic, voluminous woman, this little transaction had, inevitably, an air of somewhat impressive intention. It diffused a certain awkwardness, which Lady Pimlico, as a sympathetic daughter, perhaps desired to rectify in turning to Mrs. Westgate.
“I daresay you go out a great deal,” she observed.
“No, very little. We are strangers, and we didn’t come here for society.” ”

“ Lord Lambeth rejoined, “I find it uncommonly lively.”
After this, Percy Beaumont held his tongue; but on the 10th of August he wrote to the Duchess of Bayswater. He was, as I have said, a man of conscience, and he had a strong, incorruptible sense of the proprieties of life. His kinsman, meanwhile, was having a great deal of talk with Bessie 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 veranda late in the evening. ”

“ Mr. Westgate’s sister-in-law was silent a moment, and then, “I daresay he would,” she answered.
“Really!” said the young Englishman. “He was immensely civil to Beaumont and me,” he added.
“He is a dear good fellow,” the young lady rejoined, “and he is a perfect husband. But all Americans are that,” she continued, smiling.
“Really!” Lord Lambeth exclaimed again and wondered whether all American ladies had such a passion for generalizing as these two.
He sat there a good while: there was a great deal of talk; it was all very friendly and lively and jolly. ”

“ Captain Littledale told me he didn’t know anything like it anywhere. It’s entirely different from most watering places; it’s a most charming life. I must say I think that when one goes to a foreign country one ought to enjoy the differences. Of course there are differences, otherwise what did one come abroad for? Look for your pleasure in the differences, Lord Lambeth; that’s the way to do it; and then I am sure you will find American society—at least Newport society—most charming and most interesting. I wish very much my husband were here; but he’s dreadfully confined to New York. ”

“ I have been a great deal abroad, but I am always on the Continent. I must say I’m extremely fond of Paris; you know we Americans always are; we go there when we die. Did you ever hear that before? That was said by a great wit, I mean the good Americans; but we are all good; you’ll see that for yourself. All I know of England is London, and all I know of London is that place on that little corner, you know, where you buy jackets—jackets with that coarse braid and those big buttons. They make very good jackets in London, I will do you the justice to say that. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been intimated that, as regards certain disagreeable things, Bessie Alden had a fund of skepticism. 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 traveler’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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Butterworth,’ 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. Butterworth. Goodbye, Mr. Butterworth.’ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ She has lived a great deal in Boston, with another sister of mine—the eldest of us—who married a Bostonian. She is very cultivated, not at all like me; I am not in the least cultivated. She has studied immensely and read everything; she is what they call in Boston ‘thoughtful.’”
“A rum sort of girl for Lambeth to get hold of!” his lordship’s kinsman privately reflected.
“I really believe,” Mrs. Westgate continued, “that the most charming girl in the world is a Boston superstructure upon a New York fonds; or perhaps a New York superstructure upon a Boston fonds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Gardens!”
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.” ”

“ American life was certainly growing a great deal more private; it was growing very much like England. Everything at Newport, for instance, was thoroughly private; Lord Lambeth would probably be struck with that. It was also represented to the strangers that it mattered very little whether their hotel was agreeable, as everyone would want them to make visits; they would stay with other people, and, in any case, they would be a great deal at Mrs. Westgate’s. They would find that very charming; it was the pleasantest house in Newport. It was a pity Mr. Westgate was always away ”

“ Westgate had spoken. She presently turned to him with a remark which established her identity.
“It’s a great pity you couldn’t have brought my brother-in-law with you. It’s a great shame he should be in New York in these days.”
“Oh, yes; it’s so very hot,” said Lord Lambeth.
“It must be dreadful,” said the young girl.
“I daresay he is very busy,” Lord Lambeth observed.
“The gentlemen in America work too much,” the young girl went on.
“Oh, do they? I daresay they like it,” said her interlocutor.
“I don’t like it. One never sees them.”
“Don’t you, really?” asked Lord Lambeth. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The young Englishmen were introduced to everybody, entertained by everybody, intimate with everybody. At the end of three days they had removed their luggage from the hotel and had gone to stay with Mrs. Westgate—a step to which Percy Beaumont at first offered some conscientious opposition. I call his opposition conscientious, because it was founded upon some talk that he had had, on the second day, with Bessie Alden. He had indeed had a good deal of talk with her, for she was not literally always in conversation with Lord Lambeth. ”

“ 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 sidereal bodies. ”

“ Westgate’s office in a carriage, with their luggage, very punctually; but it must be reluctantly recorded that, this time, he kept them waiting so long that they felt themselves missing the steamer, and were deterred only by an amiable modesty from dispensing with his attendance and starting on a hasty scramble to the wharf. But when at last he appeared, and the carriage plunged into the purlieus of Broadway, they jolted and jostled to such good purpose that they reached the huge white vessel while the bell for departure was still ringing and the absorption of passengers still active. ”

“ You will see for yourself; we live rather in the midst of it.”
“It’s very kind of you to say that. But I thought you Americans were always dancing.”
“I suppose we dance a good deal; but I have never seen much of it. We don’t do it much, at any rate, in summer. And I am sure,” said Bessie Alden, “that we don’t have so many balls as you have in England.”
“Really!” exclaimed Lord Lambeth. “Ah, in England it all depends, you know.”
“You will not think much of our gaieties,” said the young girl, looking at him with a little mixture of interrogation and decision which was peculiar to her. ”

“ It was Lord Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young men were together, that Percy Beaumont 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 are always discussing and differing,” said Percy Beaumont. “She is awfully argumentative. American ladies certainly don’t mind contradicting you. Upon my word I don’t think I was ever treated so by a woman before. ”

“ Westgate, turning to Beaumont with her bright expository air, “must buy something every day of her life. If she can not do it herself, she must send out some member of her family for the purpose. So Bessie goes forth to fulfill my mission.”
The young 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 fulfills her own mission,” he presently said; “that of being a very attractive young lady.” ”

“ 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.” ”