Lady Barbarina Part 39

It may not seem to fit in-but the truth was strange-that Bessie Alden, when he struck her as "deficient," found herself aspiring by that very reason to some finer way of liking him. This was fairly indeed on grounds of conscience-because she felt he had been thoroughly "nice" to her sister and so deemed it no more than fair that she should think as well of him as he thought of her. The effort in question was possibly sometimes not so successful as it might have been, the result being at moments an irritation, which, though consciously vague, was yet, with inconsequence, acute enough to express itself in hostile criticism of several British inst.i.tutions. Bessie went to entertainments at which she met Lord Lambeth, but also to others at which he was neither actually nor imaginably present; and it was chiefly at these latter that she encountered those literary and artistic celebrities of whom mention has been made. After a while she reduced the matter to a principle. If he should appear anywhere she might take it for a flat sign that there would be neither poets nor philosophers; and as a result-for it was almost a direct result-she used to enumerate to the young man these objects of her admiration.

"You seem to be awfully fond of that sort of people," he said one day as if the idea had just occurred to him.

"They're the people in England I'm most curious to see," she promptly replied.

"I suppose that's because you've read so much," Lord Lambeth gallantly threw off.

"I've _not_ read so much. It's because we think so much of them at home."

"Oh I see! In your so awfully clever Boston."

"Not only in our awfully clever Boston, but in our just commonly clever everywhere. We hold them in great honour," said Bessie. "It's they who go to the best dinner-parties."

"I daresay you're right. I can't say I know many of them."

"It's a pity you don't," she returned. "It would do you some good."

"I daresay it would," said the young man very humbly. "But I must say I don't like the looks of some of them."

"Neither do I-of some of them. But there are all kinds, and many of them are charming."

"I've talked with two or three of them," Lord Lambeth went on, "and I thought they had a kind of fawning manner."

"Why should they fawn?" Bessie demanded.

"I'm sure I don't know. Why indeed?"

"Perhaps you only thought so," she suggested.

"Well, of course," her companion allowed, "that's a kind of thing that can't be proved."

"In America they don't fawn," she went on.

"Don't they? Ah, well, then they must be better company."

She had a pause. "That's one of the few things I don't like about England-your keeping the distinguished people apart."

"How do you mean, apart?"

"Why, letting them come only to certain places. You never see them."

All his pleasant face wondered-he seemed to take it as another of her rather stiff riddles. "What people do you mean?"

"The eminent people; the authors and artists; the clever people."

"Oh there are other eminent people besides those!" said Lord Lambeth.

"Well, you certainly keep them apart," Bessie earnestly contended.

"And there are plenty of other clever people."

It was spoken with a fine simple faith, yet the tone of it made her laugh. "'Plenty'? How many?"

On another occasion-just after a dinner-party-she mentioned something else in England she didn't like.

"Oh I say!" he cried; "haven't you abused us enough?"

"I've never abused you at all," said Bessie; "but I don't like your 'precedence.'"

She was to feel relieved at his not taking it solemnly. "It isn't _my_ precedence!"

"Yes, it's yours-just exactly yours; and I think it's odious," she insisted.

"I never saw such a young lady for discussing things! Has some one had the impudence to go before you?" Lord Lambeth asked.

"It's not the going before me I object to," said Bessie; "it's their pretending they've a right to do it-a right I should grovellingly recognise."

"I never saw such a person, either, for not 'recognising,' let alone for not 'grovelling.' Every one here has to grovel to somebody or to something-and no doubt it's all beastly. But one takes the thick with the thin, and it saves a lot of trouble."

"It _makes_ a lot of trouble, by which I mean a lot of ugliness. It's horrid!" Bessie maintained.

"But how would you have the first people go?" the young man asked. "They can't go last, you know."

"Whom do you mean by the first people?"

"Ah, if you mean to question first principles!" said Lord Lambeth.

"If those are your first principles no wonder some of your arrangements are horrid!" she cried, with a charming but not wholly sincere ferocity.

"I'm a silly chit, no doubt, so of course I go last; but imagine what Kitty must feel on being informed that she's not at liberty to budge till certain other ladies have pa.s.sed out!"

"Oh I say, she's not 'informed'!" he protested. "No one would do such a thing as that."

"She's made to feel it-as if they were afraid she'd make a rush for the door. No, you've a lovely country"-she clung as for consistency to her discrimination-"but your precedence is horrid."

"I certainly shouldn't think your sister would like it," Lord Lambeth said, with even exaggerated gravity. But she couldn't induce him-amused as he almost always was at the effect of giving her, as he called it, her head-to join her in more formal reprobation of this repulsive custom, which he spoke of as a convenience she would destroy without offering a better in its place.

VI

Percy Beaumont had all this time been a very much less frequent visitor at Jones's Hotel than his former fellow traveller; he had in fact called but twice on the two American ladies. Lord Lambeth, who often saw him, reproached him with his neglect and declared that though Mrs. Westgate had said nothing about it he made no doubt she was secretly wounded by it. "She suffers too much to speak," said his comrade.

"That's all gammon," Percy returned; "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. "You're always there yourself, confound you, and that's reason enough for my not going."

"I don't see why. There's enough for both of us."

"Well, I don't care to be a witness of your reckless pa.s.sion," said Percy Beaumont.