An International Episode. Генри Джеймс
he told us, you know—he told us,” urged the young man, alluding again to the friend on the steamer.
“Never mind what he told us!” answered his comrade, who, if he had greater talents, was also apparently more of a moralist.
By bedtime—in their impatience to taste of a terrestrial couch again our seafarers went to bed early—it was still insufferably hot, and the buzz of the mosquitoes at the open windows might have passed for an audible crepitation of the temperature. “We can’t stand this, you know,” the young Englishmen said to each other; and they tossed about all night more boisterously than they had tossed upon the Atlantic billows. On the morrow, their first thought was that they would re-embark that day for England; and then it occured to them that they might find an asylum nearer at hand. The cave of Aeolus became their ideal of comfort, and they wondered where the Americans went when they wished to cool off. They had not the least idea, and they determined to apply for information to Mr. J. L. Westgate. This was the name inscribed in a bold hand on the back of a letter carefully preserved in the pocketbook of our junior traveler. Beneath the address, in the left-hand corner of the envelope, were the words, “Introducing Lord Lambeth and Percy Beaumont, Esq.” The letter had been given to the two Englishmen by a good friend of theirs in London, who had been in America two years previously, and had singled out Mr. J. L. Westgate from the many friends he had left there as the consignee, as it were, of his compatriots. “He is a capital fellow,” the Englishman in London had said, “and he has got an awfully pretty wife. He’s tremendously hospitable—he will do everything in the world for you; and as he knows everyone over there, it is quite needless I should give you any other introduction. He will make you see everyone; trust to him for putting you into circulation. He has got a tremendously pretty wife.” It was natural that in the hour of tribulation Lord Lambeth and Mr. Percy Beaumont should have bethought themselves of a gentleman whose attractions had been thus vividly depicted; all the more so that he lived in the Fifth Avenue, and that the Fifth Avenue, as they had ascertained the night before, was contiguous to their hotel. “Ten to one he’ll be out of town,” said Percy Beaumont; “but we can at least find out where he has gone, and we can immediately start in pursuit. He can’t possibly have gone to a hotter place, you know.”
“Oh, there’s only one hotter place,” said Lord Lambeth, “and I hope he hasn’t gone there.”
They strolled along the shady side of the street to the number indicated upon the precious letter. The house presented an imposing chocolate-colored expanse, relieved by facings and window cornices of florid sculpture, and by a couple of dusty rose trees which clambered over the balconies and the portico. This last-mentioned feature was approached by a monumental flight of steps.
“Rather better than a London house,” said Lord Lambeth, looking down from this altitude, after they had rung the bell.
“It depends upon what London house you mean,” replied his companion. “You have a tremendous chance to get wet between the house door and your carriage.”
“Well,” said Lord Lambeth, glancing at the burning heavens, “I ‘guess’ it doesn’t rain so much here!”
The door was opened by a long Negro in a white jacket, who grinned familiarly when Lord Lambeth asked for Mr. Westgate.
“He ain’t at home, sah; he’s downtown at his o’fice.”
“Oh, at his office?” said the visitors. “And when will he be at home?”
“Well, sah, when he goes out dis way in de mo’ning, he ain’t liable to come home all day.”
This was discouraging; but the address of Mr. Westgate’s office was freely imparted by the intelligent black and was taken down by Percy Beaumont in his pocketbook. The two gentlemen then returned, languidly, to their hotel, and sent for a hackney coach, and in this commodious vehicle they rolled comfortably downtown. They measured the whole length of Broadway again and found it a path of fire; and then, deflecting to the left, they were deposited by their conductor before a fresh, light, ornamental structure, ten stories high, in a street crowded with keen-faced, light-limbed young men, who were running about very quickly and stopping each other eagerly at corners and in doorways. Passing into this brilliant building, they were introduced by one of the keen-faced young men—he was a charming fellow, in wonderful cream-colored garments and a hat with a blue ribbon, who had evidently perceived them to be aliens and helpless—to a very snug hydraulic elevator, in which they took their place with many other persons, and which, shooting upward in its vertical socket, presently projected them into the seventh horizontal compartment of the edifice. Here, after brief delay, they found themselves face to face with the friend of their friend in London. His office was composed of several different rooms, and they waited very silently in one of them after they had sent in their letter and their cards. The letter was not one which it would take Mr. Westgate very long to read, but he came out to speak to them more instantly than they could have expected; he had evidently jumped up from his work. He was a tall, lean personage and was dressed all in fresh white linen; he had a thin, sharp, familiar face, with an expression that was at one and the same time sociable and businesslike, a quick, intelligent eye, and a large brown mustache, which concealed his mouth and made his chin, beneath it, look small. Lord Lambeth thought he looked tremendously clever.
“How do you do, Lord Lambeth—how do you do, sir?” he said, holding the open letter in his hand. “I’m very glad to see you; I hope you’re very well. You had better come in here; I think it’s cooler,” and he led the way into another room, where there were law books and papers, and windows wide open beneath striped awning. Just opposite one of the windows, on a line with his eyes, Lord Lambeth observed the weathervane of a church steeple. The uproar of the street sounded infinitely far below, and Lord Lambeth felt very high in the air. “I say it’s cooler,” pursued their host, “but everything is relative. How do you stand the heat?”
“I can’t say we like it,” said Lord Lambeth; “but Beaumont likes it better than I.”
“Well, it won’t last,” Mr. Westgate very cheerfully declared; “nothing unpleasant lasts over here. It was very hot when Captain Littledale was here; he did nothing but drink sherry cobblers. He expressed some doubt in his letter whether I will remember him—as if I didn’t remember making six sherry cobblers for him one day in about twenty minutes. I hope you left him well, two years having elapsed since then.”
“Oh, yes, he’s all right,” said Lord Lambeth.
“I am always very glad to see your countrymen,” Mr. Westgate pursued. “I thought it would be time some of you should be coming along. A friend of mine was saying to me only a day or two ago, ‘It’s time for the watermelons and the Englishmen.”
“The Englishmen and the watermelons just now are about the same thing,” Percy Beaumont observed, wiping his dripping forehead.
“Ah, well, we’ll put you on ice, as we do the melons. You must go down to Newport.”
“We’ll go anywhere,” said Lord Lambeth.
“Yes, you want to go to Newport; that’s what you want to do,” Mr. Westgate affirmed. “But let’s see—when did you get here?”
“Only yesterday,” said Percy Beaumont.
“Ah, yes, by the Russia. Where are you staying?”
“At the Hanover, I think they call it.”
“Pretty comfortable?” inquired Mr. Westgate.
“It seems a capital place, but I can’t say we like the gnats,” said Lord Lambeth.
Mr. Westgate stared and laughed. “Oh, no, of course you don’t like the gnats. We shall expect you to like a good many things over here, but we shan’t insist upon your liking the gnats; though certainly you’ll admit that, as gnats, they are fine, eh? But you oughtn’t to remain in the city.”
“So we think,” said Lord Lambeth. “If you would kindly suggest something—”
“Suggest something, my dear sir?” and Mr. Westgate looked at him, narrowing his eyelids. “Open your mouth and shut your eyes! Leave it to me, and I’ll put you through.