In point of fact, as Percy Beaumont would have said, Mrs. Westgate disembarked on the 18th of May on the British coast. She was accompanied by her sister, but she was not attended by any other member of her family.
To the deprivation of her husband's society Mrs. Westgate was, however, habituated; she had made half a dozen journeys to Europe without him, and she now accounted for his absence, to interrogative friends on this side of the Atlantic, by allusion to the regrettable but conspicuous fact that in America there was no leisure class. The two ladies came up to London and alighted at Jones's Hotel, where Mrs. Westgate, who had made on former occasions the most agreeable impression at this establishment, received an obsequious greeting.
Bessie Alden had felt much excited about coming to England;she had expected the "associations" would be very charming, that it would be an infinite pleasure to rest her eyes upon the things she had read about in the poets and historians.
She was very fond of the poets and historians, of the picturesque, of the past, of retrospect, of mementos and reverberations of greatness; so that on coming into the English world, where strangeness and familiarity would go hand in hand, she was prepared for a multitude of fresh emotions.
They began very promptly--these tender, fluttering sensations;they began with the sight of the beautiful English landscape, whose dark richness was quickened and brightened by the season;with the carpeted fields and flowering hedgerows, as she looked at them from the window of the train; with the spires of the rural churches peeping above the rook-haunted treetops;with the oak-studded parks, the ancient homes, the cloudy light, the speech, the manners, the thousand differences.
Mrs. Westgate's impressions had, of course, much less novelty and keenness, and she gave but a wandering attention to her sister's ejaculations and rhapsodies.
"You know my enjoyment of England is not so intellectual as Bessie's," she said to several of her friends in the course of her visit to this country.
"And yet if it is not intellectual, I can't say it is physical.
I don't think I can quite say what it is, my enjoyment of England."When once it was settled that the two ladies should come abroad and should spend a few weeks in England on their way to the Continent, they of course exchanged a good many allusions to their London acquaintance.
"It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,"Bessie Alden had said one day as she sat on the sunny deck of the steamer at her sister's feet on a large blue rug.
"Whom do you mean by friends?" Mrs. Westgate asked.
"All those English gentlemen whom you have known and entertained.
Captain Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,"added Bessie Alden.
"Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?"Bessie reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know, to reflection. "Well, yes.""My poor, sweet child," murmured her sister.
"What have I said that is so silly?" asked Bessie.
"You are a little too simple; just a little. It is very becoming, but it pleases people at your expense.""I am certainly too simple to understand you," said Bessie.
"Shall I tell you a story?" asked her sister.
"If you would be so good. That is what they do to amuse simple people."Mrs. Westgate consulted her memory, while her companion sat gazing at the shining sea. "Did you ever hear of the Duke of Green-Erin?""I think not," said Bessie.
"Well, it's no matter," her sister went on.
"It's a proof of my simplicity."
"My story is meant to illustrate that of some other people,"said Mrs. Westgate. "The Duke of Green-Erin is what they call in England a great swell, and some five years ago he came to America.
He spent most of his time in New York, and in New York he spent his days and his nights at the Butterworths'. You have heard, at least, of the Butterworths. Bien. They did everything in the world for him--they turned themselves inside out. They gave him a dozen dinner parties and balls and were the means of his being invited to fifty more.
At first he used to come into Mrs. Butterworth's box at the opera in a tweed traveling suit; but someone stopped that. At any rate, he had a beautiful time, and they parted the best friends in the world.
Two years elapse, and the Butterworths come abroad and go to London.
The first thing they see in all the papers--in England those things are in the most prominent place--is that the Duke of Green-Erin has arrived in town for the Season. They wait a little, and then Mr. Butterworth--as polite as ever--goes and leaves a card.
They wait a little more; the visit is not returned; they wait three weeks--silence de mort--the Duke gives no sign.
The Butterworths see a lot of other people, put down the Duke of Green-Erin as a rude, ungrateful man, and forget all about him.
One fine day they go to Ascot Races, and there they meet him face to face. He stares a moment and then comes up to Mr. Butterworth, taking something from his pocketbook--something which proves to be a banknote. 'I'm glad to see you, Mr. 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!