Worthington reflected."You are going down to Stornham to-morrow?""That is my plan.When I write to you on my arrival, Iwill tell you if I encountered the horror." Then, with a swift change of subject and a lifting of her slender, velvet line of eyebrow, "I am only deploring that I have not time to visit the Tower."Mrs.Worthington was betrayed into a momentary glance of uncertainty, almost verging in its significance on a gasp.
"The Tower? Of London? Dear Betty!"
Bettina's laugh was mellow with revelation.
"Ah!" she said."You don't know my point of view; it's plain enough.You see, when I delight in these things, I think I delight most in my delight in them.It means that I am almost having the kind of feeling the fresh American souls had who landed here thirty years ago and revelled in the resemblance to Dickens's characters they met with in the streets, and were historically thrilled by the places where people's heads were chopped off.Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered--`Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones in the slightest disguise.""You don't mean to say----" Mrs.Worthington was vaguely awakening to the situation.
"That the charm of my visit, to myself, is that I realise that I am rather like that.I have positively preserved something because I have kept away.You have been here so often and know things so well, and you were even so sophisticated when you began, that you have never really had the flavours and emotions.I am sophisticated, too, sophisticated enough to have cherished my flavours as a gourmet tries to save the bouquet of old wine.You think that the Tower is the pleasure of housemaids on a Bank Holiday.But it quite makes me quiver to think of it," laughing again."That Ilaugh, is the sign that I am not as beautifully, freshly capable of enjoyment as those genuine first Americans were, and in a way I am sorry for it."Mrs.Worthington laughed also, and with an enjoyment.
"You are very clever, Betty," she said.
"No, no," answered Bettina, "or, if I am, almost everybody is clever in these days.We are nearly all of us comparatively intelligent.""You are very interesting at all events, and the Anstruthers will exult in you.If they are dull in the country, you will save them.""I am very interested, at all events," said Bettina, "and interest like mine is quite passe.A clever American who lives in England, and is the pet of duchesses, once said to me (he always speaks of Americans as if they were a distant and recently discovered species), `When they first came over they were a novelty.Their enthusiasm amused people, but now, you see, it has become vieux jeu.Young women, whose specialty was to be excited by the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, are not novelties any longer.In fact, it's been done, and it's done FOR as a specialty.' And I am excited about the Tower of London.I may be able to restrain my feelings at the sight of the Beef Eaters, but they will upset me a little, and I must brace myself, I must indeed.""Truly, Betty?" said Mrs.Worthington, regarding her with curiosity, arising from a faint doubt of her entire seriousness,mingled with a fainter doubt of her entire levity.
Betty flung out her hands in a slight, but very involuntary-looking, gesture, and shook her head.
"Ah!" she said, "it was all TRUE, you know.They were all horribly real--the things that were shuddered over and sentimentalised about.Sophistication, combined with imagination, makes them materialise again, to me, at least, now Iam here.The gulf between a historical figure and a man or woman who could bleed and cry out in human words was broad when one was at school.Lady Jane Grey, for instance, how nebulous she was and how little one cared.She seemed invented merely to add a detail to one's lesson in English history.But, as we drove across Waterloo Bridge, I caught a glimpse of the Tower, and what do you suppose I began to think of? It was monstrous.I saw a door in the Tower and the stone steps, and the square space, and in the chill clear, early morning a little slender, helpless girl led out, a little, fair, real thing like Rosy, all alone--everyone she belonged to far away, not a man near who dared utter a word of pity when she turned her awful, meek, young, desperate eyes upon him.She was a pious child, and, no doubt, she lifted her eyes to the sky.I wonder if it was blue and its blueness broke her heart, because it looked as if it might have pitied such a young, patient girl thing led out in the fair morning to walk to the hacked block and give her trembling pardon to the black-visored man with the axe, and then `commending her soul to God' to stretch her sweet slim neck out upon it.""Oh, Betty, dear!" Mrs.Worthington expostulated.
Bettina sprang to her and took her hand in pretty appeal.
"I beg pardon! I beg pardon, I really do," she exclaimed.
"I did not intend deliberately to be painful.But that--beneath the sophistication--is something of what I bring to England."