Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales

“Don’t you mean to write to—to any one?”

“I wrote this morning to Captain Littledale,” Mrs. Westgate replied.

“But Mr. Woodley believes Captain Littledale away in India.”

“He said he thought he had heard so; he knows nothing about it.”

For a moment Bessie said nothing more; then at last, “And don’t you intend to write to—to Mr. Beaumont?” she inquired.

Her sister waited with a look at her.  “You mean to Lord Lambeth.”

“I said Mr. Beaumont because he was—at Newport—so good a friend of yours.”

Mrs. Westgate prolonged the attitude of sisterly truth.  “I don’t really care two straws for Mr. Beaumont.”

“You were certainly very nice to him.”

“I’m very nice to every one,” said Mrs. Westgate simply.

Nothing indeed could have been simpler save perhaps the way Bessie smiled back: “To every one but me.”

Her sister continued to look at her.  “Are you in love with Lord Lambeth?”

Our young woman stared a moment, and the question was too unattended with any train even to make her shy.  “Not that I know of.”

“Because if you are,” Mrs. Westgate went on, “I shall certainly not send for him.”

“That proves what I said,” Bessie gaily insisted—“that you’re not really nice to me.”

“It would be a poor service, my dear child,” said her sister.

“In what sense?  There’s nothing against Lord Lambeth that I know of.”

Mrs. Westgate seemed to cover much country in a few moments.  “You are in love with him then?”

Bessie stared again, but this time blushing a little.  “Ah, if you’ll not be serious we won’t mention him again.”

For some minutes accordingly Lord Lambeth was shrouded in silence, and it was Mrs. Westgate who, at the end of this period, removed the ban.  “Of course I shall let him know we’re here.  I think he’d be hurt—justly enough—if we should go away without seeing him.  It’s fair to give him a chance to come and thank me for the kindness we showed him.  But I don’t want to seem eager.”

“Neither do I,” said Bessie very simply.

“Though I confess,” her companion added, “that I’m curious to see how he’ll behave.”

“He behaved very well at Newport.”

“Newport isn’t London.  At Newport he could do as he liked; but here it’s another affair.  He has to have an eye to consequences.”

“If he had more freedom then at Newport,” argued Bessie, “it’s the more to his credit that he behaved well; and if he has to be so careful here it’s possible he’ll behave even better.”

“Better, better?” echoed her sister a little impatiently.  “My dear child, what do you mean by better and what’s your point of view?”

Bessie wondered.  “What do you mean by my point of view?”

“Don’t you care for Lord Lambeth—a tiny speck?” Mrs. Westgate demanded.

This time Bessie Alden took it with still deeper reserve.  She slowly got up from table, turning her face away.  “You’ll oblige me by not talking so.”

Mrs. Westgate sat watching her for some moments as she moved slowly about the room and went and stood at the window.  “I’ll write to him this afternoon,” she said at last.

“Do as you please!” Bessie answered; after which she turned round.  “I’m not afraid to say I like Lord Lambeth.  I like him very much.”

Mrs. Westgate bethought herself.  “He’s not clever.”

“Well, there have been clever people whom I’ve disliked,” the girl said; “so I suppose I may like a stupid one.  Besides, Lord Lambeth’s no stupider than any one else.”

“No stupider than he gives you warning of,” her sister smiled.

“If I were in love with him as you said just now,” Bessie returned, “it would be bad policy on your part to abuse him.”

“My dear child, don’t give me lessons in policy!” cried Mrs. Westgate.  “The policy I mean to follow is very deep.”

The girl began once more to walk about; then she stopped before her companion.  “I’ve never heard in the course of five minutes so many hints and innuendoes.  I wish you’d tell me in plain English what you mean.”

“I mean you may be much annoyed.”

“That’s still only a hint,” said Bessie.

Her sister just hesitated.  “It will be said of you that you’ve come after him—that you followed him.”

Bessie threw back her pretty head much as a startled hind, and a look flashed into her face that made Mrs. Westgate get up.  “Who says such things as that?”

“People here.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You’ve a very convenient faculty of doubt.  But my policy will be, as I say, very deep.  I shall leave you to find out as many things as possible for yourself.”

Bessie fixed her eyes on her sister, and Mrs. Westgate could have believed there were tears in them.  “Do they talk that way here?”

“You’ll see.  I shall let you alone.”

“Don’t let me alone,” said Bessie Alden.  “Take me away.”

“No; I want to see what you make of it,” her sister continued.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ll understand after Lord Lambeth has come,” said Mrs. Westgate with a persistence of private amusement.

The two ladies had arranged that on this afternoon Willie Woodley should go with them to Hyde Park, where Bessie expected it would prove a rich passage to have sat on a little green chair under the great trees and beside Rotten Row.  The want of a suitable escort had hitherto hampered this adventure; but no escort, now, for such an expedition, could have been more suitable than their devoted young countryman, whose mission in life, it might almost be said, was to find chairs for ladies and who appeared on the stroke of half-past five adorned with every superficial grace that could qualify him for the scene.

“I’ve written to Lord Lambeth, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate mentioned on coming into the room where Bessie, drawing on long grey gloves, had given their visitor the impression that she was particularly attuned.  Bessie said nothing, but Willie Woodley exclaimed that his lordship was in town; he had seen his name in the Morning Post.  “Do you read the Morning Post?” Mrs. Westgate thereupon asked.

“Oh yes; it’s great fun.”  Mr. Woodley almost spoke as if the pleasure were attended with physical risk.

“I want so to see it,” said Bessie, “there’s so much about it in Thackeray.”

“I’ll send it to you every morning!” cried the young man with elation.

He found them what Bessie thought excellent places under the great trees and beside the famous avenue the humours of which had been made familiar to the girl’s childhood by the pictures in Punch.  The day was bright and warm and the crowd of riders and spectators, as well as the great procession of carriages, proportionately dense and many-coloured.  The scene bore the stamp of the London social pressure at its highest, and it made our young woman think of more things than she could easily express to her companions.  She sat silent, under her parasol, while her imagination, according to its wont, kept pace with the deep strong tide of the exhibition.  Old impressions and preconceptions became living things before the show, and she found herself, amid the crowd of images, fitting a history to this person and a theory to that, and making a place for them all in her small private museum of types.  But if she said little her sister on one side and Willie Woodley on the other delivered themselves in lively alternation.

“Look at that green dress with blue flounces.  Quelle toilette!” said Mrs. Westgate.

“That’s the Marquis of Blackborough,” the young man was able to contribute—“the one in the queer white coat.  I heard him speak the other night in the House of Lords; it was something about ramrods; he called them wamwods.  He’s an awful swell.”

“Did you ever see anything like the way they’re pinned back?” Mrs. Westgate resumed.  “They never know where to stop.”

“They do nothing but stop,” said Willie Woodley.  “It prevents them from walking.  Here comes a great celebrity—Lady Beatrice Bellevue.  She’s awfully fast; see what little steps she takes.”

“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Westgate pursued to Bessie, “I hope you’re getting some ideas for your couturière?”

“I’m getting plenty of ideas,” said Bessie, “but I don’t know that my couturière would particularly appreciate them.”

Their companion presently perceived a mounted friend who drew up beside the barrier of the Row and beckoned to him.  He went forward and the crowd of pedestrians closed about him, so that for some minutes he was hidden from sight.  At last he reappeared, bringing a gentleman with him—a gentleman whom Bessie at first supposed to be his friend dismounted.  But at a second glance she found herself looking at Lord Lambeth, who was shaking hands with her sister.

“I found him over there,” said Willie Woodley, “and I told him you were here.”

And then Lord Lambeth, raising his hat afresh, shook hands with Bessie—“Fancy your being here!”  He was blushing and smiling; he looked very handsome and he had a note of splendour he had not had in America.  The girl’s free fancy, as we know, was just then in marked exercise; so that the tall young Englishman, as he stood there looking down at her, had the benefit of it.  “He’s handsomer and more splendid than anything I’ve ever seen,” she said to herself.  And then she remembered he was a Marquis and she thought he somehow looked a Marquis.

“Really, you know,” he cried, “you ought to have let a fellow know you’ve come!”

“I wrote to you an hour ago,” said Mrs. Westgate.

“Doesn’t all the world know it?” smiled Bessie.

“I assure you I didn’t know it!” he insisted.  “Upon my honour I hadn’t heard of it.  Ask Woodley now; had I, Woodley?”

“Well, I think you’re rather a humbug,” this gentleman brought forth.

“You don’t believe that—do you, Miss Alden?” asked his lordship.  “You don’t believe I’m rather a humbug, eh?”

“No,” said Bessie after an instant, but choosing and conferring a grace on the literal—“I don’t.”

“You’re too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth,” Mrs. Westgate pronounced.  “You approach the normal only when you sit down.  Be so good as to get a chair.”

He found one 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.

“Not even with my letter?” asked Mrs. Westgate.

“Ah, well, I haven’t got your letter yet; I suppose I shall get it this evening.  It was awfully kind of you to write.”

“So I said to Bessie,” the elder lady observed.

“Did she say so, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth a little pointlessly inquired.  “I daresay you’ve been here a month.”

“We’ve been here three,” mocked Mrs. Westgate.

“Have you been here three months?” the young man asked again of Bessie.

“It seems a long time,” Bessie answered.

He had but a brief wonder—he found something.  “I say, after that you had better not call me a humbug!  I’ve only been in town three weeks, but you must have been hiding away.  I haven’t seen you anywhere.”

“Where should you have seen us—where should we have gone?” Mrs. Westgate fairly put to him.

It found Willie Woodley at least ready.  “You should have gone to Hurlingham.”

“No, let Lord Lambeth tell us,” Mrs. Westgate insisted.

“There are plenty of places to go to,” he said—“each one stupider than the other.  I mean people’s houses.  They send you cards.”

“No one has sent us a scrap of a card,” Bessie laughed.

Mrs. Westgate attenuated.  “We’re very quiet.  We’re here as travellers.”

“We’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s,” Bessie further mentioned.

“Oh I say!” cried Lord Lambeth.

“We thought we should find your image there,” said Mrs. Westgate—“yours and Mr. Beaumont’s.”

“In the Chamber of Horrors?” laughed the young man.

“It did duty very well for a party,” said Mrs. Westgate.  “All the women were décolletées, and many of the figures looked as if they could almost speak.”

“Upon my word,” his lordship returned, “you see people at London parties who look a long way from that!”

“Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?” asked the elder of the ladies.

He stared and looked about.  “I daresay he could.  Percy sometimes comes here.  Don’t you think you could find him, Woodley?  Make a dive or a dash for it.”

“Thank you; I’ve had enough of violent movement,” said Willie Woodley.  “I’ll wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface.”

“I’ll bring him to see you,” said Lord Lambeth.  “Where are you staying?”

“You’ll find the address in my letter—Jones’s Hotel.”

“Oh, one of those places just out of Piccadilly?  Beastly hole, isn’t it?” Lord Lambeth inquired.

“I believe it’s the best hotel in London,” said Mrs. Westgate.

“But they give you awful rubbish to eat, don’t they?” his lordship went on.

Mrs. Westgate practised the same serenity.  “Awful.”

“I always feel so sorry for people who come up to town and go to live in those dens,” continued the young man.  “They eat nothing but filth.”

“Oh I say!” cried Willie Woodley.

“Well, and how do you like London, Miss Alden?” Lord Lambeth asked, unperturbed by this ejaculation.

The girl was prompt.  “I think it grand.”

“My sister likes it, in spite of the ‘filth’!” Mrs. Westgate recorded.

“I hope then you’re going to stop a long time.”

“As long as I can,” Bessie replied.

“And where’s wonderful Mr. Westgate?” asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman’s wife.

“He’s where he always is—in that tiresome New York.”

“He must have staying power,” said the young man.

She appeared to consider.  “Well, he stays ahead of every one else.”

Lord Lambeth sat nearly an hour with his American friends; but it is not our purpose to relate their conversation in full.  He addressed a great many remarks to the younger lady and finally turned toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley wasted a certain amount of effort to regale Mrs. Westgate.  Bessie herself was sparing of effusion; she thought, on her guard, of what her sister had said to her at luncheon.  Little by little, however, she interested herself again in her English friend very much as she had done at Newport; only it seemed to her he might here become more interesting.  He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness, the picturesqueness of England; of all of which things poor Bessie Alden, like most familiars of the overciphered tabula rasa, was terribly at the mercy.

“I’ve often wished I were back at Newport,” the young man candidly stated.  “Those days I spent at your sister’s were awfully jolly.”

“We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father’s better.”

“Oh dear yes.  When I got to England the old humbug was out grouse-shooting.  It was what you call in America a gigantic fraud.  My mother had got nervous.  My three weeks at Newport seemed a happy dream.”

“America certainly is very different from England,” said Bessie.

“I hope you like England better, eh?” he returned almost persuasively.

“No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country.”

He turned his cheerful brown eyes on her.  “You mean it’s a matter of course?”

“If I were English,” said Bessie, “it would certainly seem to me a matter of course that every one should be a good patriot.”

“Oh dear, yes; patriotism’s everything.”  He appeared not quite to follow, but was clearly contented.  “Now what are you going to do here?”

“On Thursday I’m going to the Tower.”

“The Tower?”

“The Tower of London.  Did you never hear of it?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been there,” said Lord Lambeth.  “I was taken there by my governess when I was six years old.  It’s a rum idea your going there.”

“Do give me a few more rum ideas then.  I want to see everything of that sort.  I’m going to Hampton Court and to Windsor and to the Dulwich Gallery.”

He seemed greatly amused.  “I wonder you don’t go to Rosherville Gardens.”

Bessie yearned.  “Are they interesting?”

“Oh wonderful!”

“Are they weirdly old?  That’s all I care for,” she said.

“They’re tremendously old; they’re all falling to ruins.”

The girl rose to it.  “I think there’s nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden.  We must certainly go there.”

Her friend broke out into mirth.  “I say, Woodley, here’s Miss Alden wants to go down to Rosherville Gardens!  Hang it, they are ‘weird’!”

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.”

Lord Lambeth’s exhilaration increased.  “‘Gad, I believe that, to get your money’s worth over here, you Americans would go anywhere!”

“We wish to go to Parliament,” said Bessie.  “That’s one of the first things.”

“Ah, it would bore you to death!” he returned.

“We wish to hear you speak.”

“I never speak—except to young ladies.”

She looked at him from under the shade of her parasol.  “You’re very strange,” she then quietly concluded.  “I don’t think I approve of you.”

“Ah, now don’t be severe, Miss Alden!” he cried with the note of sincerity.  “Please don’t be severe.  I want you to like me—awfully.”

“To like you awfully?  You mustn’t laugh at me then when I make mistakes.  I regard it as my right—as a free-born American—to make as many mistakes as I choose.”

“Upon my word I didn’t laugh at you,” the young man pleaded.

“And not only that,” Bessie went on; “but I hold that all my mistakes should be set down to my credit.  You must think the better of me for them.”

“I can’t think better of you than I do,” he declared.

Again, shadily, she took him in.  “You certainly speak very well to young ladies.  But why don’t you address the House?—isn’t that what they call it?”

“Because I’ve nothing to say.”

“Haven’t you a great position?” she demanded.

He looked a moment at the back of his glove.  “I’ll set that down as one of your mistakes—to your credit.”  And as if he disliked talking about his position he changed the subject.  “I wish you’d let me go with you to the Tower and to Hampton Court and to all those other places.”

“We shall be most happy,” said Bessie.

“And of course I shall be delighted to show you the Houses of Parliament—some day that suits you.  There are a lot of things I want to do for you.  I want you to have a good time.  And I should like very much to present some of my friends to you if it wouldn’t bore you.  Then it would be awfully kind of you to come down to Branches.”

“We’re much obliged to you, Lord Lambeth,” said Bessie.  “And what may Branches be?”

“It’s a house in the country.  I think you might like it.”

Willie Woodley and Mrs. Westgate were at this moment sitting in silence, and the young man’s ear caught these last words of the other pair.  “He’s inviting Miss Bessie to one of his castles,” he murmured to his companion.

Mrs. Westgate hereupon, foreseeing what she mentally called “complications,” immediately got up; and the two ladies, taking leave of their English friend, returned, under conduct of their American, to Jones’s Hotel.

V

Lord Lambeth came to see them on the morrow, bringing Percy Beaumont with him—the latter having at once declared his intention of neglecting none of the usual offices of civility.  This declaration, however, on his kinsman’s informing him of the advent of the two ladies, had been preceded by another exchange.

“Here they are then and you’re in for it.”

“And what am I in for?” the younger man had inquired.

“I’ll let your mother give it a name.  With all respect to whom,” Percy had added, “I must decline on this occasion to do any more police duty.  The Duchess must look after you herself.”

“I’ll give her a chance,” the Duchess’s son had returned a trifle grimly.  “I shall make her go and see them.”

“She won’t do it, my boy.”

“We’ll see if she doesn’t,” said Lord Lambeth.

But if Mr. Beaumont took a subtle view of the arrival of the fair strangers at Jones’s Hotel he was sufficiently capable of a still deeper refinement to offer them a smiling countenance.  He fell into animated conversation—conversation animated at least on her side—with Mrs. Westgate, while his companion appealed more confusedly to the younger lady.  Mrs. Westgate began confessing and protesting, declaring and discriminating.

“I must say London’s a great deal brighter and prettier just now than it was when I was here last—in the month of November.  There’s evidently a great deal going on, and you seem to have a good many flowers.  I’ve no doubt it’s very charming for all you people and that you amuse yourselves immensely.  It’s very good of you to let Bessie and me come and sit and look at you.  I suppose you’ll think I’m very satirical, but I must confess that that’s the feeling I have in London.”

“I’m 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’s beautifully arranged for you.”

“It seems to me it’s very well arranged here for some Americans sometimes,” Percy plucked up spirit to answer.

“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—really I can’t make out quite what.  I’m afraid you’ll think I’m very ungrateful, for I certainly have received in one way and another 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 pay her my respects.”

“Dear me, I hope you didn’t go,” Mr. Beaumont cried.

“You’re deliciously naïf, I must say that for you!” Mrs. Westgate promptly pursued.  “It must be a great advantage to you here in London.  I suppose that if I myself had a little more naïveté—of your blessed national lack of any approach to a sense for shades—I should enjoy it more.  I should be content to sit on a chair in the Park and see the people pass, to be told that this is the Duchess of Suffolk and that the Lord Chamberlain, and that I must be thankful for the privilege of beholding them.  I daresay it’s very peevish and critical of me to ask for anything else.  But I was always critical—it’s the joy of my life—and I freely confess to the sin of being fastidious.  I’m told there’s some remarkably superior second-rate society provided here for strangers.  Merci!  I don’t want any superior second-rate society.  I want the society I’ve been accustomed to.”

Percy mustered a rueful gaiety.  “I hope you don’t call Lambeth and me second-rate!”

“Oh I’m accustomed to you!” said Mrs. Westgate.  “Do you know 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’ve received a great deal of attention.  After dinner, in the drawing-room, I had some conversation with an old lady—no, you mustn’t look that way: 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’s very different.’  In one’s own class of life!  What’s a poor unprotected American woman to do in a country where she is liable to have that sort of thing said to her?”

“I should say she’s not to mind, not a rap—though you seem to get hold of some very queer old ladies.  I compliment you on your acquaintance!” Percy pursued.  “If you’re trying to bring me to admit that London’s an odious place you’ll not succeed.  I’m extremely fond of it and think it the jolliest place in the world.”

“Pour vous autres—I never said the contrary,” Mrs. Westgate retorted—an expression made use of, this last, because both interlocutors had begun to raise their voices.  Mr. Beaumont naturally didn’t like to hear the seat of his existence abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less naturally, didn’t 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.

“I quite agree with a very clever countrywoman of mine,” the elder lady continued with charming ardour even if 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.”