Part 39 (2/2)
”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.
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