章节正文
under her parasol, and her imagination, according to its wont,
let itself loose into the great changing assemblage of striking
and suggestive figures. They stirred up a host of old
impressions and preconceptions, and she found herself fitting
a history to this person and a theory to that, and making
a place for them all in her little private museum of types.
But if she said little, her sister on one side and Willie Woodley
on the other expressed themselves in lively alternation.
"Look at that green dress with blue flounces," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Quelle toilette!"
"That's the Marquis of Blackborough," said the young man--"the one
in the 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 are 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, "I hope you are getting some ideas
for your couturiere?"
"I am getting plenty of ideas," said Bessie, "but I don't know
that my couturiere would appreciate them."
Willie Woodley presently perceived a friend on horseback,
who drove 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 ten 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, touching his hat a little, shook hands with Bessie.
"Fancy your being here!" he said. He was blushing and smiling;
he looked very handsome, and he had a kind of splendor that he had
not had in America. Bessie Alden's imagination, as we know,
was just then in exercise; so that the tall young Englishman,
as he stood there looking down at her, had the benefit of it.
"He is handsomer and more splendid than anything I have ever seen,"
she said to herself. And then she remembered that he was a marquis,
and she thought he looked like a marquis.
"I say, you know," he cried, "you ought to have let a man know
you were here!"
"I wrote to you an hour ago," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Doesn't all the world know it?" asked Bessie, smiling.
"I assure you I didn't know it!" cried Lord Lambeth.
"Upon my honor I hadn't heard of it. Ask Woodley now;
had I, Woodley?"
"Well, I think you are rather a humbug," said Willie Woodley.
"You don't believe that--do you, Miss Alden?" asked his lordship.
"You don't believe I'm a humbug, eh?"
"No," said Bessie, "I don't."
"You are too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth," Mrs. Westgate observed.
"You are only tolerable when you sit down. Be so good as to get a chair."
He found a chair 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. I was awfully kind of you to write."
"So I said to Bessie," observed Mrs. Westgate.
"Did she say so, Miss Alden?" Lord Lambeth inquired.
"I daresay you have been here a month."
"We have been here three," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Have you been here three months?" the young man asked again of Bessie.
"It seems a long time," Bessie answered.
"I say, after that you had better not call me a humbug!" cried Lord Lambeth.
"I have 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?"
asked Mrs. Westgate.
"You should have gone to Hurlingham," said Willie Woodley.
"No; let Lord Lambeth tell us," Mrs. Westgate insisted.
"There are plenty of places to go to," said Lord Lambeth;
"each one stupider than the other. I mean people's houses;
they send you cards."
"No one has sent us cards," said Bessie.
"We are very quiet," her sister declared. "We are here as travelers."
"We have been to Madame Tussaud's," Bessie pursued.
"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 decolletes, and many of the figures
looked as if they could speak if they tried."
"Upon my word," Lord Lambeth rejoined, "you see people at London
parties that look as if they couldn't speak if they tried."
"Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?"
asked Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth stared and looked round him. "I daresay he could.
Beaumont often comes here. Don't you think you could find him, Woodley?
Make a dive into the crowd."
"Thank you; I have had enough diving," said Willie Woodley.
"I will wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface."
"I will bring him to see you," said Lord Lambeth; "where are you staying?"
"You will 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.
"Yes," said Mrs. Westgate.
"I always feel so sorry for the people that come up to town
and go to live in those places," continued the young man.
"They eat nothing but filth."
"Oh, I say!" cried Willie Woodley.
"Well, how do you like London, Miss Alden?" Lord Lambeth asked,
unperturbed by this ejaculation.
"I think it's grand," said Bessie Alden.
"My sister likes it, in spite of the 'filth'!" Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.
"I hope you are going to stay a long time."
"As long as I can," said Bessie.
"And where is Mr. Westgate?" asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman's wife.
"He's where he always is--in that tiresome New York."
"He must be tremendously clever," said the young man.
"I suppose he is," said Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth sat for 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 Bessie Alden, and finally turned
toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley entertained Mrs. Westgate.
Bessie herself said very little; she was on her guard, thinking of
what her sister had said to her at lunch. Little by little, however,
she interested herself in Lord Lambeth again, as she had done at Newport;
only it seemed to her that here he might become more interesting.
He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness,
the picturesqueness, of England; and poor Bessie Alden, like many
a Yankee maiden, was terribly at the mercy of picturesqueness.
"I have often wished I were at Newport again," said the young man.
"Those days I spent at your sister's were awfully jolly."
"We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father is better."
"Oh, dear, yes. When I got to England, he 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 like a happy dream."
"America certainly is very different from England," said Bessie.
"I hope you like England better, eh?" Lord Lambeth
rejoined almost persuasively.
"No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country."
Her companion looked at her for a moment. "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 everyone should be a good patriot."
"Oh, dear, yes, patriotism is everything," said Lord Lambeth,
not quite following, but very contented. "Now, what are you
going to do here?"
"On Thursday I am going to the Tower."
"The Tower?"
"The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?"
"Oh, yes, I have 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," said Bessie. "I want
to see everything of that sort. I am going to Hampton Court,
and to Windsor, and to the Dulwich Gallery."
Lord Lambeth seemed greatly amused. "I wonder you don't go
to the Rosherville Gardens."
"Are they interesting?" asked Bessie.
"Oh, wonderful."
"Are they very old? That's all I care for," said Bessie.
"They are tremendously old; they are all falling to ruins."
"I think there is nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden,"
said the young girl. "We must certainly go there."
Lord Lambeth broke out into merriment. "I say, Woodley," he cried,
"here's Miss Alden wants to go to the Rosherville Gardens!"
Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact
of ignorance of an apparentlyconspicuous 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 you Americans would
go anywhere!" he cried.
"We wish to go to Parliament," said Bessie. "That's one of the first things."
"Oh, it would bore you to death!" cried the young man.
"We wish to hear you speak."
"I never speak--except to young ladies," said Lord Lambeth, smiling.
Bessie Alden looked at him a while, smiling, too, in the shadow
of her parasol. "You are very strange," she murmured.
"I don't think I approve of you."
"Ah, now, don't be severe, Miss Alden," said Lord Lambeth,
smiling still more. "Please don't be severe. I want you
to like me--awfully."
"To like you awfully? You must not laugh at me, then, when I make mistakes.
I consider it my right--as a freeborn American--to make as many mistakes
as I choose."
"Upon my word, I didn't laugh at you," said Lord Lambeth.
"And not only that," Bessie went on; "but I hold that all my mistakes shall
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," the young man declared.
Bessie Alden looked at him a moment again. "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 have nothing to say," said Lord Lambeth.
"Haven't you a great position?" asked Bessie Alden.
He looked a moment at the back of his glove. "I'll set that down,"
he said, "as one of your mistakes--to your credit." And as if
he disliked talking about his position, he changed the subject.
"I wish you would 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 House of Lords--
let itself loose into the great changing assemblage of striking
and suggestive figures. They stirred up a host of old
impressions and preconceptions, and she found herself fitting
a history to this person and a theory to that, and making
a place for them all in her little private museum of types.
But if she said little, her sister on one side and Willie Woodley
on the other expressed themselves in lively alternation.
"Look at that green dress with blue flounces," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Quelle toilette!"
"That's the Marquis of Blackborough," said the young man--"the one
in the 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 are 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, "I hope you are getting some ideas
for your couturiere?"
"I am getting plenty of ideas," said Bessie, "but I don't know
that my couturiere would appreciate them."
Willie Woodley presently perceived a friend on horseback,
who drove 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 ten 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, touching his hat a little, shook hands with Bessie.
"Fancy your being here!" he said. He was blushing and smiling;
he looked very handsome, and he had a kind of splendor that he had
not had in America. Bessie Alden's imagination, as we know,
was just then in exercise; so that the tall young Englishman,
as he stood there looking down at her, had the benefit of it.
"He is handsomer and more splendid than anything I have ever seen,"
she said to herself. And then she remembered that he was a marquis,
and she thought he looked like a marquis.
"I say, you know," he cried, "you ought to have let a man know
you were here!"
"I wrote to you an hour ago," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Doesn't all the world know it?" asked Bessie, smiling.
"I assure you I didn't know it!" cried Lord Lambeth.
"Upon my honor I hadn't heard of it. Ask Woodley now;
had I, Woodley?"
"Well, I think you are rather a humbug," said Willie Woodley.
"You don't believe that--do you, Miss Alden?" asked his lordship.
"You don't believe I'm a humbug, eh?"
"No," said Bessie, "I don't."
"You are too tall to stand up, Lord Lambeth," Mrs. Westgate observed.
"You are only tolerable when you sit down. Be so good as to get a chair."
He found a chair 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. I was awfully kind of you to write."
"So I said to Bessie," observed Mrs. Westgate.
"Did she say so, Miss Alden?" Lord Lambeth inquired.
"I daresay you have been here a month."
"We have been here three," said Mrs. Westgate.
"Have you been here three months?" the young man asked again of Bessie.
"It seems a long time," Bessie answered.
"I say, after that you had better not call me a humbug!" cried Lord Lambeth.
"I have 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?"
asked Mrs. Westgate.
"You should have gone to Hurlingham," said Willie Woodley.
"No; let Lord Lambeth tell us," Mrs. Westgate insisted.
"There are plenty of places to go to," said Lord Lambeth;
"each one stupider than the other. I mean people's houses;
they send you cards."
"No one has sent us cards," said Bessie.
"We are very quiet," her sister declared. "We are here as travelers."
"We have been to Madame Tussaud's," Bessie pursued.
"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 decolletes, and many of the figures
looked as if they could speak if they tried."
"Upon my word," Lord Lambeth rejoined, "you see people at London
parties that look as if they couldn't speak if they tried."
"Do you think Mr. Woodley could find us Mr. Beaumont?"
asked Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth stared and looked round him. "I daresay he could.
Beaumont often comes here. Don't you think you could find him, Woodley?
Make a dive into the crowd."
"Thank you; I have had enough diving," said Willie Woodley.
"I will wait till Mr. Beaumont comes to the surface."
"I will bring him to see you," said Lord Lambeth; "where are you staying?"
"You will 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.
"Yes," said Mrs. Westgate.
"I always feel so sorry for the people that come up to town
and go to live in those places," continued the young man.
"They eat nothing but filth."
"Oh, I say!" cried Willie Woodley.
"Well, how do you like London, Miss Alden?" Lord Lambeth asked,
unperturbed by this ejaculation.
"I think it's grand," said Bessie Alden.
"My sister likes it, in spite of the 'filth'!" Mrs. Westgate exclaimed.
"I hope you are going to stay a long time."
"As long as I can," said Bessie.
"And where is Mr. Westgate?" asked Lord Lambeth of this gentleman's wife.
"He's where he always is--in that tiresome New York."
"He must be tremendously clever," said the young man.
"I suppose he is," said Mrs. Westgate.
Lord Lambeth sat for 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 Bessie Alden, and finally turned
toward her altogether, while Willie Woodley entertained Mrs. Westgate.
Bessie herself said very little; she was on her guard, thinking of
what her sister had said to her at lunch. Little by little, however,
she interested herself in Lord Lambeth again, as she had done at Newport;
only it seemed to her that here he might become more interesting.
He would be an unconscious part of the antiquity, the impressiveness,
the picturesqueness, of England; and poor Bessie Alden, like many
a Yankee maiden, was terribly at the mercy of picturesqueness.
"I have often wished I were at Newport again," said the young man.
"Those days I spent at your sister's were awfully jolly."
"We enjoyed them very much; I hope your father is better."
"Oh, dear, yes. When I got to England, he 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 like a happy dream."
"America certainly is very different from England," said Bessie.
"I hope you like England better, eh?" Lord Lambeth
rejoined almost persuasively.
"No Englishman can ask that seriously of a person of another country."
Her companion looked at her for a moment. "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 everyone should be a good patriot."
"Oh, dear, yes, patriotism is everything," said Lord Lambeth,
not quite following, but very contented. "Now, what are you
going to do here?"
"On Thursday I am going to the Tower."
"The Tower?"
"The Tower of London. Did you never hear of it?"
"Oh, yes, I have 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," said Bessie. "I want
to see everything of that sort. I am going to Hampton Court,
and to Windsor, and to the Dulwich Gallery."
Lord Lambeth seemed greatly amused. "I wonder you don't go
to the Rosherville Gardens."
"Are they interesting?" asked Bessie.
"Oh, wonderful."
"Are they very old? That's all I care for," said Bessie.
"They are tremendously old; they are all falling to ruins."
"I think there is nothing so charming as an old ruinous garden,"
said the young girl. "We must certainly go there."
Lord Lambeth broke out into merriment. "I say, Woodley," he cried,
"here's Miss Alden wants to go to the Rosherville Gardens!"
Willie Woodley looked a little blank; he was caught in the fact
of ignorance of an apparentlyconspicuous 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 you Americans would
go anywhere!" he cried.
"We wish to go to Parliament," said Bessie. "That's one of the first things."
"Oh, it would bore you to death!" cried the young man.
"We wish to hear you speak."
"I never speak--except to young ladies," said Lord Lambeth, smiling.
Bessie Alden looked at him a while, smiling, too, in the shadow
of her parasol. "You are very strange," she murmured.
"I don't think I approve of you."
"Ah, now, don't be severe, Miss Alden," said Lord Lambeth,
smiling still more. "Please don't be severe. I want you
to like me--awfully."
"To like you awfully? You must not laugh at me, then, when I make mistakes.
I consider it my right--as a freeborn American--to make as many mistakes
as I choose."
"Upon my word, I didn't laugh at you," said Lord Lambeth.
"And not only that," Bessie went on; "but I hold that all my mistakes shall
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," the young man declared.
Bessie Alden looked at him a moment again. "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 have nothing to say," said Lord Lambeth.
"Haven't you a great position?" asked Bessie Alden.
He looked a moment at the back of his glove. "I'll set that down,"
he said, "as one of your mistakes--to your credit." And as if
he disliked talking about his position, he changed the subject.
"I wish you would 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 House of Lords--
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən]
n.想象(力) (初中英语单词) - lively [´laivli] a.活泼的；热烈的 (初中英语单词)
- appreciate [ə´pri:ʃieit] v.评价；珍惜；感激 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- supposed [sə´pəuzd] a.想象的；假定的 (初中英语单词)
- splendor [´splendə] n.壮丽 =splendour (初中英语单词)
- relate [ri´leit] v.阐明；使联系；涉及 (初中英语单词)
- altogether [,ɔ:ltə´geðə] ad.完全；总而言之 (初中英语单词)
- yankee [´jæŋki] n.美国佬；美国公民 (初中英语单词)
- maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
- terribly [´terəbli] ad.可怕地 (初中英语单词)
- seriously [´siəriəsli] ad.严肃；严重，重大 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- everyone [´evriwʌn] pron.=everybody 每人 (初中英语单词)
- charming [´tʃɑ:miŋ] a.可爱的；极好的 (初中英语单词)
- ignorance [´ignərəns] n.无知，愚昧 (初中英语单词)
- approve [ə´pru:v] v.赞成；同意；批准 (初中英语单词)
- severe [si´viə] a.严厉的；苛刻的 (初中英语单词)
- marquis [´mɑ:kwis] n.侯爵 (高中英语单词)
- awfully [´ɔ:fuli] ad.令人畏惧地 (高中英语单词)
- barrier [´bæriə] n.栅栏；屏障；障碍 (高中英语单词)
- chamber [´tʃeimbə] n.房间；议院；会议室 (高中英语单词)
- lordship [´lɔ:dʃip] n.贵族权力；阁下 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- gigantic [dʒai´gæntik] a.巨大的 (高中英语单词)
- contented [kən´tentid] a.满足的；心满意足的 (高中英语单词)
- apparently [ə´pærəntli] ad.显然，表面上地 (高中英语单词)
- conspicuous [kən´spikjuəs] a.显著的；出众的 (高中英语单词)
- touching [´tʌtʃiŋ] a.动人的 prep.提到 (英语四级单词)
- rubbish [´rʌbiʃ] n.垃圾；碎屑；废话 (英语四级单词)
- tiresome [´taiəsəm] a.令人厌倦的；讨厌的 (英语四级单词)
- tremendously [tri´mendəsli] ad.可怕地；极大地 (英语四级单词)
- antiquity [æn´tikwiti] n.太古；古代；古迹 (英语四级单词)
- grouse [graus] n.松鸡 vi.&n.抱怨 (英语四级单词)
- merriment [´merimənt] n.欢乐 (英语四级单词)
- delighted [di´laitid] a.高兴的；喜欢的 (英语四级单词)
- suggestive [sə´dʒestiv] a.暗示的；启发的 (英语六级单词)
- beastly [´bi:stli] a.残忍的；卑鄙的 (英语六级单词)
- governess [´gʌvənis] n.女家庭教师 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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