An International Episode | Page 8

immediately send out and get you a cabin.
Then, at half past four o'clock, just call for me here, and I will go with
you and put you on board. It's a big boat; you might get lost. A few
days hence, at the end of the week, I will come down to Newport and
see how you are getting on."
The two young Englishmen inaugurated the policy of not resisting Mrs.
Westgate by submitting, with great docility and thankfulness, to her
husband. He was evidently a very good fellow, and he made an
impression upon his visitors; his hospitality seemed to recommend
itself consciously-- with a friendly wink, as it were--as if it hinted,
judicially, that you could not possibly make a better bargain. Lord
Lambeth and his cousin left their entertainer to his labors and returned
to their hotel, where they spent three or four hours in their respective

shower baths. Percy Beaumont had suggested that they ought to see
something of the town; but "Oh, damn the town!" his noble kinsman
had rejoined. They returned to Mr. Westgate's office in a carriage, with
their luggage, very punctually; but it must be reluctantly recorded that,
this time, he kept them waiting so long that they felt themselves
missing the steamer, and were deterred only by an amiable modesty
from dispensing with his attendance and starting on a hasty scramble to
the wharf. But when at last he appeared, and the carriage plunged into
the purlieus of Broadway, they jolted and jostled to such good purpose
that they reached the huge white vessel while the bell for departure was
still ringing and the absorption of passengers still active. It was indeed,
as Mr. Westgate had said, a big boat, and his leadership in the
innumerable and interminable corridors and cabins, with which he
seemed perfectly acquainted, and of which anyone and everyone
appeared to have the entree, was very grateful to the slightly
bewildered voyagers. He showed them their stateroom--a spacious
apartment, embellished with gas lamps, mirrors en pied, and sculptured
furniture--and then, long after they had been intimately convinced that
the steamer was in motion and launched upon the unknown stream that
they were about to navigate, he bade them a sociable farewell.
"Well, goodbye, Lord Lambeth," he said; "goodbye, Mr. Percy
Beaumont. I hope you'll have a good time. Just let them do what they
want with you. I'll come down by-and-by and look after you."
The young Englishmen emerged from their cabin and amused
themselves with wandering about the immense labyrinthine steamer,
which struck them as an extraordinary mixture of a ship and a hotel. 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 gaslight, and among the small side
passages where the Negro domestics of both sexes assembled with an
air of philosophic leisure, everyone was moving to and fro and
exchanging loud and familiar observations. Eventually, at the instance
of a discriminating black, our young men went and had some "supper"
in a wonderful place arranged like a theater, where, in a gilded gallery,

upon which little boxes appeared to open, a large orchestra was playing
operatic selections, and, below, people were handing about bills of fare,
as if they had been programs. All this was sufficiently curious; but the
agreeable thing, later, was to sit out on one of the great white decks of
the steamer, in the warm breezy darkness, and, in the vague starlight, to
make out the line of low, mysterious coast. The young Englishmen
tried American cigars--those of Mr. Westgate-- and talked together as
they usually talked, with many odd silences, lapses of logic, and
incongruities of transition; like people who have grown old together
and learned to supply each other's missing phrases; or, more especially,
like people thoroughly conscious of a common point of view, so that a
style of conversation superficially lacking in finish might suffice for
reference to a fund of associations in the light of which everything was
all right.
"We really seem to be going out to sea," Percy Beaumont observed.
"Upon my word, we are going back to England. He has shipped us off
again. I call that 'real mean.'"
"I suppose 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 traveler after a while, "if his house is as good
as his cigars, we shall do very well."
"He seems a very good fellow," said Lord Lambeth, as if this idea had
just occurred to him.
"I