The young Englishmen emerged from their cabin and amused themselves with wandering about the immense labyrinthine ship, which struck them as a monstrous floating hotel or even as a semi-submerged kindergarten. It was densely crowded with passengers, the larger number of whom appeared to be ladies and very young children; and in the big saloons, ornamented in white and gold, which followed each other in surprising succession, beneath the swinging gas-lights and among the small side-passages where the negro domestics of both sexes assembled with an air of amused criticism, every one was moving to and fro and exchanging loud and familiar observations. Eventually, at the instance of a blackamoor more closely related to the scene than his companions, our friends went and had “supper” in a wonderful place arranged like a theatre, where, from a gilded gallery upon which little boxes appeared to open, a large orchestra played operatic selections and, below, people handed about bills of fare in the manner of programmes. All this was sufficiently curious; but the agreeable thing, later, was to sit out on one of the great white decks in the warm breezy darkness and, the vague starlight aiding, make out the line of low mysterious coast. Our travellers tried American cigars — those of Mr. Westgate — and conversed, as they usually conversed, with many odd silences, lapses of logic and incongruities of transition; like a pair who have grown old together and learned to guess each other’s sense; or, more especially, like persons so conscious of a common point of view that missing links and broken lights and loose ends, the unexpressed and the understood, could do the office of talk.
“We really seem to be going out to sea,” Percy Beaumont observed. “Upon my honour we’re going back to England. He has shipped us off again. I call that ‘real mean.’”
“I daresay it’s all right,” said Lord Lambeth. “I want to see those pretty girls at Newport. You know he told us the place was an island, and aren’t all islands in the sea?”
“Well,” resumed the elder traveller after a while, “if his house is as good as his cigars I guess we shall muddle through.”
“I fancy he’s awfully ‘prominent,’ you know, and I rather liked him,” Lord Lambeth pursued as if this appreciation of Mr. Westgate had but just glimmered on him.
His comrade, however, engaged in another thought, didn’t so much as appear to catch it. “I say, I guess we had better remain at the inn. I don’t think I like the way he spoke of his house. I rather object to turning in with such a tremendous lot of women.”
“Oh I don’t mind,” said Lord Lambeth. And then they smoked a while in silence. “Fancy his thinking we do no work in England!” the young man resumed.
But it didn’t rouse his friend, who only replied: “I daresay he didn’t really a bit think so.”
“Well, I guess they don’t know much about England over here!” his lordship humorously sighed. After which there was another long pause. “He has got us out of a hole,” observed the young nobleman.
Percy Beaumont genially assented. “Nobody certainly could have been more civil.”
“Littledale said his wife was great fun,” Lord Lambeth then contributed.
“Whose wife — Littledale’s?”
“Our benefactor’s. Mrs. Westgate. What’s his name? J. L. It ‘kind of’ sounds like a number. But I guess it’s a high number,” he continued with freshened gaiety.
The same influences appeared, however, with Mr. Beaumont to make rather for anxiety. “What was fun to Littledale,” he said at last a little sententiously, “may be death to us.”
“What do you mean by that?” his companion asked. “I’m as good a man as Littledale.”
“My dear boy, I hope you won’t begin to flirt,” said the elder man.
His friend smoked acutely. “Well, I daresay I shan’t begin.”
“With a married woman, if she’s bent upon it, it’s all very well,” Mr. Beaumont allowed. “But our friend mentioned a young lady — a sister, a sister-inlaw. For God’s sake keep free of her.”
“How do you mean, ‘free’?”
“Depend upon it she’ll try to land you.”
“Oh rot!” said Lord Lambeth.
“American girls are very ‘cute,’” the other urged.
“So much the better,” said the young man.
“I fancy they’re always up to some wily game,” Mr. Beaumont developed.
“They can’t be worse than they are in England,” said Lord Lambeth judicially.
“Ah, but in England you’ve got your natural protectors. You’ve got your mother and sisters.”
“My mother and sisters —!” the youth began with a certain energy. But he stopped in time, puffing at his cigar.
“Your mother spoke to me about it with tears in her eyes,” said his monitor. “She said she felt very nervous. I promised to keep you out of mischief.”
“You had better take care of yourself!” cried Mr. Beaumont’s charge.
“Ah,” the responsible party returned, “I haven’t the expectation of — whatever it is you expect. Not to mention other attractions.”
“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, “don’t cry out before you’re hurt!”
It was certainly very much cooler at Newport, where the travellers found themselves assigned to a couple of diminutive bedrooms in a far-away angle of an immense hotel. They had gone ashore in the early summer twilight and had very promptly put themselves to bed; thanks to which circumstance and to their having, during the previous hours, in their commodious cabin, slept the sleep of youth and health, they began to feel, towards eleven o’clock, very alert and inquisitive. They looked out of their windows across a row of small green fields, bordered with low stone dykes of rude construction, and saw a deep blue ocean lying beneath a deep blue sky and flecked now and then with scintillating patches of foam. A strong fresh breeze came in through the curtainless apertures and prompted our young men to observe generously that it didn’t seem half a bad climate. They made other observations after they had emerged from their rooms in pursuit of breakfast — a meal of which they partook in a huge bare hall where a hundred negroes in white jackets shuffled about on an uncarpeted floor; where the flies were superabundant and the tables and dishes covered over with a strange voluminous integument of coarse blue gauze; and where several little boys and girls, who had risen late, were seated in fastidious solitude at the morning repast. These young persons had not the morning paper before them, but were engaged in languid perusal of the bill of fare.
This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, on reflecting that its bewildering categories took account of breakfast alone, had the uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner-list. They found copious diversion at their inn, an enormous wooden structure for the erection of which it struck them the virgin forests of the West must have been quite laid waste. It was perforated from end to end with immense bare corridors, through which a strong draught freely blew, bearing along wonderful figures of ladies in white morning-dresses and clouds of Valenciennes lace, who floated down the endless vistas on expanded furbelows very much as angels spread their wings. In front was a gigantic verandah on which an army might have encamped — a vast wooden terrace with a roof as high as the nave of a cathedral. Here our young men enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpse of American society, which was distributed over the measureless expanse in a variety of sedentary attitudes and appeared to consist largely of pretty young girls, dressed as for a fête champêtre, swaying to and fro in rocking-chairs, fanning themselves with large straw fans and enjoying an enviable exemption from social cares. Lord Lambeth had a theory, which it might be interesting to trace to its origin, that it would be not only agreeable, but easily possible, to enter into relations with one of these young ladies; and his companion found occasion to check his social yearning.
“You had better take care — else you’ll have an offended father or brother pulling out a bowie-knife.”
“I assure you it’s all right,” Lord Lambeth replied. “You know the Americans come to these big hotels to make acquaintances.”
“I know nothing about it, and neither do you,” said his comrade, who, like a clever man, had begun to see that the observation of American society demanded a readjustment of their standard.
“Hang it, then, let’s find out!” he cried with some impatience. “You know I don’t want to miss anything.”
“We will find out,” said Percy Beaumont very reasonably. “We’ll go and see Mrs. Westgate and make all the proper inquiries.”
And so the inquiring pair, who had this lady’s address inscribed in her husband’s hand on a card, descended from the verandah of the big hotel and took their way, according to direction, along a large straight road, past a series of fresh-looking villas, embosomed in shrubs and flowers and enclosed in an ingenious variety of wooden palings. The morning shone and fluttered, the villas stood up bravely in their smartness, and the walk of the young travellers turned all to confidence. Everything looked as if it had received a coat of fresh paint the day before — the red roofs, the green shutters, the clean bright browns and buffs of the house-fronts. The flower-beds on the little lawns sparkled in the radiant air and the gravel in the short carriage-sweeps flashed and twinkled. Along the road came a hundred little basket-phaetons in which, almost always, a couple of ladies were sitting — ladies in white dresses and long white gloves, holding the reins and looking at the two Englishmen, whose nationality was not elusive, through fine blue veils, tied tightly about their faces as if to guard their complexions. At last the visitors came within sight of the sea again, and then, having interrogated a gardener over the paling of a villa, turned into an open gate. Here they found themselves face to face with the ocean and with a many-pointed much-balconied structure, resembling a magnified chalet, perched on a green embankment just above it. The house had a verandah of extraordinary width all round, and a great many doors and windows standing open to the verandah. These various apertures had, together, such an accessible hospitable air, such a breezy flutter, within, of light curtains, such expansive thresholds and reassuring interiors, that our friends hardly knew which was the regular entrance and, after hesitating a moment, presented themselves at one of the windows. The room within was indistinct, but in a moment a graceful figure vaguely shaped itself in the rich-looking gloom — a lady came to meet them. Then they saw she had been seated at a table writing, and that, hearing them, she had got up. She stepped out into the light; she wore a frank charming smile, with which she held out her hand to Percy Beaumont.
“Oh you must be Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont. I’ve heard from my husband that you were coming. I make you warmly welcome.” And she shook hands with each of her guests. Her guests were a little shy, but they made a gallant effort; they responded with smiles and exclamations, they apologised for not knowing the front door. The lady returned with vivacity that when she wanted to see people very much she didn’t insist on those distinctions, and that Mr. Westgate had written to her of his English friends in terms that made her really anxious. “He says you’re so terribly prostrated,” she reported.
“Oh you mean by the heat?”— Percy Beaumont rose to it. “We were rather knocked up, but we feel wonderfully better. We had such a jolly — a — voyage down here. It’s so very good of you to mind.”
“Yes, it’s so very kind of you,” murmured Lord Lambeth.
Mrs. Westgate stood smiling; Mrs. Westgate was pretty. “Well, I did mind, and I thought of sending for you this morning to the Ocean House. I’m very glad you’re better, and I’m charmed you’re really with us. You must come round to the other sid............