"Yes, you are too historical," said Lord Lambeth, laughing, but thankful for a formula. "Upon my honor, 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 colored 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 honor," 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 a hereditary legislator.
A hereditary legislator ought to know a great many things.""Not if he doesn't legislate."
"But you do legislate; it's absurd your saying you don'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 been 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 sidereal bodies. 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 ***, 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 clubhouse 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 everyone 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.
