Mr. Westgate, all this time, hadn’t, as they said at Newport, “come on.” His wife more than once announced that she expected him on the morrow; but on the morrow she wandered about a little, with a telegram in her jewelled fingers, pronouncing it too “fiendish” he should let his business so dreadfully absorb him that he could but platonically hope, as she expressed it, his two Englishmen were having a good time. “I must say,” said Mrs. Westgate, “that it’s no thanks to him if you are!” And she went on to explain, while she kept up that slow-paced circulation which enabled her well-adjusted skirts to display themselves so advantageously, that unfortunately in America there was no leisure-class and that the universal passionate surrender of the men to business-questions and business-questions only, as if they were the all in all of life, was a tide that would have to be stemmed. It was Lord Lambeth’s theory, freely propounded when the young men were together, that Percy 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’re always discussing and differing,” Mr. Beaumont however asseverated. “She’s awfully argumentative. American ladies certainly don’t mind contradicting you flat. Upon my word I don’t think I was ever treated so by a woman before. We have ours ever so much more in hand. She’s so devilish positive.”
The superlative degree so variously affirmed, however, was evidently a source of attraction in Mrs. Westgate, for the elder man was constantly at his hostess’s side. He detached himself one day to the extent of going to New York to talk over the Tennessee Central with her husband; but he was absent only forty-eight hours, during which, with that gentleman’s assistance, he completely settled this piece of business. “They know how to put things—and put people—‘through’ in New York,” he subsequently and quite breathlessly observed to his comrade; and he added that Mr. Westgate had seemed markedly to fear his wife might suffer for loss of her guest—he had been in such an awful hurry to send him back to her. “I’m afraid you’ll never come up to an American husband—if that’s what the wives expect,” he said to Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate, however, was not to enjoy much longer the entertainment with which an indulgent husband had desired to keep her provided. August had still a part of its course to run when his lordship received from his mother the disconcerting news that his father had been taken ill and that he had best at once come home. The young nobleman concealed his chagrin with no great success. “I left the Duke but the other day absolutely all right—so what the deuce does it mean?” he asked of his comrade. “What’s a fellow to do?”
Percy Beaumont was scarce less annoyed; he had deemed it his duty, as we know, to report faithfully to the Duchess, but had not expected this distinguished woman to act so promptly on his hint. “It means,” he said, “that your father is somehow, and rather suddenly, laid up. I don’t suppose it’s anything serious, but you’ve no option. Take the first steamer, but take it without alarm.”
This really struck Lord Lambeth as meaning that he essentially needn’t take it, since alarm would have been his only good motive; yet he nevertheless, after an hour of intenser irritation than he could quite have explained to himself, made his farewells; in the course of which he exchanged a few last words with Bessie Alden that are the only ones making good their place in our record. “Of course I needn’t assure you that if you should come to England next year I expect to be the very first person notified of it.”
She looked at him in that way she had which never quite struck him as straight and clear, yet which always struck him as kind and true. “Oh, if we come to London I should think you’d sufficiently hear of it.”
Percy Beaumont felt it his duty also to embark, and this same rigour compelled him, one windless afternoon, in mid-Atlantic, to say to his friend that he suspected the Duchess’s telegram to have been in part the result of something he himself had written her. “I wrote her—as I distinctly warned you I had promised in general to do—that you were extremely interested in a little American girl.”
The young man, much upset by this avowal, indulged for some moments in the strong and simple language of resentment. But if I have described him as inclined to candour and to reason I can give no better proof of it than the fact of his being ready to face the truth by the end of half an hour. “You were quite right after all. I’m very much interested in her. Only, to be fair,” he added, “you should have told my mother also that she’s not—at all seriously—interested in poor me.”
Mr. Beaumont gave the rein to mirth and mockery. “There’s nothing so charming as modesty in a young man in the position of ‘poor’ you. That speech settles for me the question of what’s the matter with you.”