“Well, so he is,” said Sidney Feeder, who had listened to Mr. Freer’s report with attention, with eagerness even, but, for all its lucidity, with an air of imperfect apprehension.
“Yes, but not so rich as they probably think.”
“Do they want his money? Is that what they’re after?”
“You go straight to the point!” Mrs. Freer rang out.
“I haven’t the least idea,” said her husband. “He’s a very good sort in himself.”
“Yes, but he’s a doctor,” Mrs. Freer observed.
“What have they got against that?” asked Sidney Feeder.
“Why, over here, you know, they only call them in to prescribe,” said his other friend. “The profession isn’t—a—what you’d call aristocratic.”
“Well, I don’t know it, and I don’t know that I want to know it. How do you mean, aristocratic? What profession is? It would be rather a curious one. Professions are meant to do the work of professions; and what work’s done without your sleeves rolled up? Many of the gentlemen at the congress there are quite charming.”
“I like doctors very much,” said Mrs. Freer; “my father was a doctor. But they don’t marry the daughters of marquises.”
“I don’t believe Jackson wants to marry that one,” Sidney Feeder calmly argued.
“Very possibly not—people are such asses,” said Dexter Freer. “But he’ll have to decide. I wish you’d find out, by the way. You can if you will.”
“I’ll ask him—up at the congress; I can do that. I suppose he has got to marry some one.” The young man added in a moment: “And she may be a good thing.”
“She’s said to be charming.”
“Very well then, it won’t hurt him. I must say, however, I’m not sure I like all that about her family.”
“What I told you? It’s all to their honour and glory,” said Mr. Freer.
“Are they quite on the square? It’s like those people in Thackeray.”
“Oh if Thackeray could have donethis!” And Mrs. Freer yearned over the lost hand.
“You mean all this scene?” asked the young man.
“No; the marriage of a British noblewoman and an American doctor. It would have been a subject for a master of satire.”
“You see you do want it, my dear,” said her husband quietly.
“I want it as a story, but I don’t want it for Doctor Lemon.”
“Does he call himself ‘Doctor’ still?” Mr. Freer asked of young Feeder.
“I suppose he does—I call him so. Of course he doesn’t practise. But once a doctor always a doctor.”
“That’s doctrine for Lady Barb!”
Sidney Feeder wondered. “Hasn’tshegot a title too? What would she expect him to be? President of the United States? He’s a man of real ability—he might have stood at the head of his profession. When I think of that I want to swear. What did his father want to go and make all that money for?”
“It must certainly be odd to them to see a ‘medical man’ with six or eight millions,” Mr. Freer conceded.
“They use much the same term as the Choctaws,” said his wife.
“Why, some of their own physicians make immense fortunes,” Sidney Feeder remarked.
“Couldn’t he,” she went on, “be made a baronet by the Queen?”
“Yes, then he’d be aristocratic,” said the young man. “But I don’t see why he should want to marry over here; it seems to me to be going out of his way. However, if he’s happy I don’t care. I like him very much; he has ‘A1’ ability. If it hadn’t been for his father he’d have made a splendid doctor. But, as I say, he takes a great interest in medical science and I guess he means to promote it all he can—with his big fortune. He’ll be sure to keep up his interest in research. He thinks wedoknow something and is bound we shall know more. I hope she won’t lower him, the young marchioness—is that her rank? And I hope they’re really good people. He ought to be very useful. I should want to know a good deal about the foreign family I was going to marry into.”
“He looked to me, riding there, as if he knew agood deal about the Clements,” Dexter Freer said, getting to his feet as his wife suggested they ought to be going; “and he looked to me pleased with the knowledge. There they come down the other side. Will you walk away with us or will you stay?”
“Stop him and ask him, and then come and tell us—in Jermyn Street.” This was Mrs. Freer’s parting injunction to Sidney Feeder.
“He ought to come himself—tell him that,” her husband added.
“Well, I guess I’ll stay,” said the young man as his companions merged themselves in the crowd that now was tending toward the gates. He went and stood by the barrier and saw Doctor Lemon and his friends pull up at the entrance to the Row, where they apparently prepared to separate. The separation took some time and Jackson’s colleague became interested. Lord Canterville and his younger daughter lingered to talk with two gentlemen, also mounted, who looked a good deal at the legs of Lady Agatha’s horse. Doctor Lemon and Lady Barb were face to face, very near each other, and she, leaning forward a little, stroked the overlapping neck of his glossy bay. At a distance he appeared to be talking and she to be listening without response. “Oh yes, he’s making love to her,” thought Sidney Feeder. Suddenly her father and sister turned away to leave the Park, and she joined them and disappeared while Jackson came up on the left again as for a final gallop. He hadn’t gone far before he perceived his comrade, who awaited him at the rail; and he repeated the gesture Lady Barb had described as a kiss of the hand, though it had not to his friend’s eyes that full grace. When he came within hail he pulled up.
“If I had known you were coming here I’d have given you a mount,” he immediately and bountifullycried. There was not in his person that irradiation of wealth and distinction which made Lord Canterville glow like a picture; but as he sat there with his neat little legs stuck out he looked very bright and sharp and happy, wearing in his degree the aspect of one of Fortune’s favourites. He had a thin keen delicate face, a nose very carefully finished, a quick eye, a trifle hard in expression, and a fine dark moustache, a good deal cultivated. He was not striking, but he had his intensity, and it was easy to see that he had his purposes.
“How many horses have you got—about forty?” his compatriot inquired in response to his greeting.
“About five hundred,” said Jackson Lemon.
“Did you mount your friends—the three you were riding with?”
“Mount them? They’ve got the best horses in England.”
“Did they sell you this one?” Sidney Feeder continued in the same humorous strain.
“What do you think of him?” said his friend without heed of this question.
“Well, he’s an awful old screw. I wonder he can carry you.”
“Where did you get your hat?” Jackson asked both as a retort and as a relevant criticism.
“I got it in New York. What’s the matter with it?”
“It’s very beautiful. I wish I had brought over one like it.”
“The head’s the thing—not the hat. I don’t mean yours—I mean mine,” Sidney Feeder laughed. “There’s something very deep in your question. I must think it over.”
“Don’t—don’t,” said Jackson Lemon; “you’ll never get to the bottom of it. Are you having a good time?”
“A glorious time. Have you been up to-day?”
“Up among the doctors? No—I’ve had a lot of things to do,” Jackson was obliged to plead.
“Well”—and his friend richly recovered it—“we had a very interesting discussion. I made a few remarks.”
“You ought to have told me. What were they about?”
“About the intermarriage of races from the point of view—” And Sidney Feeder paused a moment, occupied with the attempt to scratch the nose of the beautiful horse.
“From the point of view of the progeny, I suppose?”
“Not at all. From the point of view of the old friends.”
“Damn the old friends!” Doctor Lemon exclaimed with jocular crudity.
“Is it true that you’re going to marry a young marchioness?”
The face of the speaker in the saddle became just a trifle rigid, and his firm eyes penetrated the other. “Who has played that on you?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Freer, whom I met just now.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Freer be hanged too. And who toldthem?”
“Ever so many fashionable people. I don’t know who.”
“Gad, how things are tattled!” cried Jackson Lemon with asperity.
“I can see it’s true by the way you say that,” his friend ingenuously stated.
“Do Freer and his wife believe it?” Jackson went on impatiently.
“They want you to go and see them. You can judge for yourself.”
“I’ll go and see them and tell them to mind their business.”
“In Jermyn Street; but I forget the number. I’m sorry the marchioness isn’t one of ours,” Doctor Feeder continued.
“If I should marry her shewouldbe quick enough. But I don’t see what difference it can make to you,” said Jackson.
“Why, she’ll look down on the profession, and I don’t like that from your wife.”
“That will touch me more than you.”
“Then itistrue?” Doctor Feeder cried with a finer appeal.
“She won’t look down. I’ll answer for that.”
“You won’t care. You’re out of it all now.”
“No, I’m not. I mean to do no end of work.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Sidney Feeder, who was by no means perfectly incredulous, but who thought it salutary to take that tone. “I’m not sure you’ve any right to work—you oughtn’t to have everything; you ought to leave the field to us, not take the bread out of our mouths and get thekudos. You must pay the penalty of being bloated. You’d have been celebrated if you had continued to practise—more celebrated than any one. But you won’t be now—you can’t be any way you fix it. Some one else is going to be in your place.”
Jackson Lemon listened to this, but without meeting the eyes of the prophet; not, however, as if he were avoiding them, but as if the long stretch of the Ride, now less and less obstructed, irresistibly drew him off again and made his companion’s talk retarding. Nevertheless he answered deliberately and kindly enough. “I hope it will be you, old boy.” And he bowed to a lady who rode past.
“Very likely it will. I hope I make you feel mean. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Oh awfully!” Jackson cried. “All the more that I’m not in the least engaged.”
“Well, that’s good. Won’t you come up to-morrow?” Doctor Feeder went on.
“I’ll try, my dear fellow. I can’t be sure. By-bye!”
“Oh you’re lost anyway!” sighed Sidney Feeder as the other started away.
It was Lady Marmaduke, wife of Sir Henry of that clan, who had introduced the amusing young American to Lady Beauchemin; after which Lady Beauchemin had made him acquainted with her mother and sisters. Lady Marmaduke too was of outland strain, remaining for her conjugal baronet the most ponderable consequence of a tour in the United States. At present, by the end of ten years, she knew her London as she had never known her New York, so that it had been easy for her to be, as she called herself, Jackson’s social godmother. She had views with regard to his career, and these views fitted into a scheme of high policy which, if our space permitted, I should be glad to lay before the reader in its magnitude. She wished to add an arch or two to the bridge on which she had effected her transit from America; and it was her belief that Doctor Lemon might furnish the materials. This bridge, as yet a somewhat sketchy and rickety structure, she saw—in the future—boldly stretch from one solid pier to another. It could but serve both ways, for reciprocity was the keynote of Lady Marmaduke’s plan. It was her belief that an ultimate fusion was inevitable and that those who were the first to understand the situation would enjoy the biggest returns from it. The first time the young man had dined with her he met Lady Beauchemin, who was her intimate friend.Lady Beauchemin was remarkably gracious, asking him to come and see her as if she really meant it. He in fact presented himself and in her drawing-room met her mother, who happened to be calling at the same moment. Lady Canterville, not less friendly than her daughter, invited him down to Pasterns for Eastertide, and before a month had passed it struck him that, though he was not what he would have called intimate at any house in London, the door of the house of Clement opened to him pretty often. This seemed no small good fortune, for it always opened upon a charming picture. The inmates were a blooming and beautiful race, and their interior had an aspect of the ripest comfort. It was not the splendour of New York—as New York had lately begun to appear to the young man—but an appearance and a set of conditions, of factors as he used to say, not to be set in motion in that city by any power of purchase. He himself had a great deal of money, and money was good even when it was new; but old money was somehowmoreto the shilling and the pound. Even after he learned that Lord Canterville’s fortune was less present than past it was still the positive golden glow that struck him. It was Lady Beauchemin who had told him her father wasn’t rich; having told him furthermore many surprising things—things both surprising in themselves and surprising on her lips. This was to come home to him afresh that evening—the day he met Sidney Feeder in the Park. He dined out in the company of Lady Beauchemin, and afterwards, as she was alone—her husband had gone down to listen to a debate—she offered to “take him on.” She was going to several places, at some of which he must be due. They compared notes, and it was settled they should proceed together to the Trumpingtons’, whither, it appeared at eleven o’clock,all the world was proceeding, with the approach to the house choked for half a mile with carriages. It was a close muggy night; Lady Beauchemin’s chariot, in its place in the rank, stood still for long periods. In his corner beside her, through the open window, Jackson Lemon, rather hot, rather oppressed, looked out on the moist greasy pavement, over which was flung, a considerable distance up and down, the flare of a public-house. Lady Beauchemin, however, was not impatient, for she had a purpose in her mind, and now she could say what she wished.
“Do you really love her?” That was the first thing she said.
“Well, I guess so,” Jackson Lemon answered as if he didn’t recognise the obligation to be serious.
She looked at him a moment in silence; he felt her gaze and, turning his eyes, saw her face, partly shadowed, with the aid of a street-lamp. She was not so pretty as Lady Barb; her features had a certain sharpness; her hair, very light in colour and wonderfully frizzled, almost covered her eyes, the expression of which, however, together with that of her pointed nose and the glitter of several diamonds, emerged from the gloom. What she next said seemed somehow to fall in with that. “You don’t seem to know. I never saw a man in so vague a state.”
“You push me a little too much; I must have time to think of it,” the young man returned. “You know in my country they allow us plenty of time.” He had several little oddities of expression, of which he was perfectly conscious and which he found convenient, for they guarded him in a society condemning a lonely New Yorker who proceeded by native inspiration to much exposure; they ensured him the profit corresponding with sundry sacrifices.He had no great assortment of vernacular drolleries, conscious or unconscious, to draw upon; but the occasional use of one, discreetly chosen, made him appear simpler than he really was, and reasons determined his desiring this result. He was not simple; he was subtle, circumspect, shrewd—perfectly aware that he might make mistakes. There was a danger of his making one now—a mistake that might gravely count. He was resolved only to succeed. It is true that for a great success he would take a certain risk; but the risk was to be considered, and he gained time while he multiplied his guesses and talked about his country.
“You may take ten years if you like,” said Lady Beauchemin. “I’m in no hurry whatever to make you my brother-in-law. Only you must remember that you spoke to me first.”
“What did I say?”
“You spoke to me of Barb as the finest girl you had seen in England.”
“Oh I’m willing to stand by that.” And he had another try, which would have been transparent to a compatriot. “I guess I like her type.”
“I should think you might!”
“I like her all round—with all her peculiarities.”
“What do you mean by her peculiarities?”
“Well, she has some peculiar ideas,” said Jackson Lemon in a tone of the sweetest reasonableness, “and she has a peculiar way of speaking.”
“Ah, you can’t expect us to speak so well as you!” cried Lady Beauchemin.
“I don’t see why not.” He was perfectly candid. “You do some things much better.”
“We’ve our own ways at any rate, and we think them the best in the world—as they mostly are!” laughed Lady Beauchemin. “One of them’s not to let a gentleman devote himself to a girl for solong a time without some sense of responsibility. If you don’t wish to marry my sister you ought to go away.”
“I ought never to have come,” said Jackson Lemon.
“I can scarcely agree to that,” her ladyship good-naturedly replied, “as in that case I should have lost the pleasure of knowing you.”
“It would have spared you this duty, which you dislike very much.”
“Asking you about your intentions? Oh I don’t dislike it at all!” she cried. “It amuses me extremely.”
“Should you like your sister to marry me?” asked Jackson with great simplicity.
If he expected to take her by surprise he was disappointed: she was perfectly prepared to commit herself. “I should like it particularly. I think English and American society ought to be but one. I mean the best of each. A great whole.”
“Will you allow me to ask whether Lady Marmaduke suggested that to you?” he at once inquired.
“We’ve often talked of it.”
“Oh yes, that’s her aim.”
“Well, it’s my aim too. I think there’s a lot to be done.”
“And you’d like me to do it?”
“To begin it, precisely. Don’t you think we ought to see more of each other? I mean,” she took the precaution to explain, “just the best in each country.”
Jackson Lemon appeared to weigh it. “I’m afraid I haven’t any general ideas. If I should marry an English girl it wouldn’t be for the good of the species.”
“Well, we want to be mixed a little. That I’m sure of,” Lady Beauchemin said.
“You certainly got that from Lady Marmaduke,” he commented.
“It’s too tiresome, your not consenting to be serious! But my father will make you so,” she went on with her pleasant assurance. “I may as well let you know that he intends in a day or two to ask you your intentions. That’s all I wished to say to you. I think you ought to be prepared.”
“I’m much obliged to you. Lord Canterville will do quite right,” the young man allowed.
There was to his companion something really unfathomable in this little American doctor whom she had taken up on grounds of large policy and who, though he was assumed to have sunk the medical character, was neither handsome nor distinguished, but only immensely rich and quite original—since he wasn’t strictly insignificant. It was unfathomable to begin with that a medical man should be so rich, or that so rich a man should be medical; it was even, to an eye always gratified by suitability and, for that matter, almost everywhere recognising it, rather irritating. Jackson Lemon himself could have explained the anomaly better than any one else, but this was an explanation one could scarcely ask for. There were other things: his cool acceptance of certain situations; his general indisposition to make comprehension easy, let alone to guess it, with all his guessing, so much hindered; his way of taking refuge in jokes which at times had not even the merit of being American; his way too of appearing to be a suitor without being an aspirant. Lady Beauchemin, however, was, like her puzzling friend himself, prepared to run a certain risk. His reserves made him slippery, but that was only when one pressed. She flattered herself she could handle people lightly. “My father will be sure to act with perfect tact,” she said; “though of course if youshouldn’t care to be questioned you can go out of town.” She had the air of really wishing to act with the most natural delicacy.
“I don’t want to go out of town; I’m enjoying it far too much here,” Jackson cried. “And wouldn’t your father have a right to ask me what I should mean by that?”
Lady Beauchemin thought—she really wondered. But in a moment she exclaimed: “He’s incapable of saying anything vulgar!”
She hadn’t definitely answered his inquiry, and he was conscious of this; but he was quite ready to say to her a little later, as he guided her steps from the brougham to the strip of carpet which, beneath a rickety border of striped cloth and between a double row of waiting footmen, policemen and dingy amateurs of both sexes, stretched from the curbstone to the portal of the Trumpingtons: “Of course I shan’t wait for Lord Canterville to speak to me.”
He had been expecting some such announcement as this from Lady Beauchemin and really judged her father would do no more than his duty. He felt he should be prepared with an answer to the high challenge so prefigured, and he wondered at himself for still not having come to the point. Sidney Feeder’s question in the Park had made him feel rather pointless; it was the first direct allusion as yet made to his possible marriage by any one but Lady Beauchemin. None of his own people were in London; he was perfectly independent, and even if his mother had been within reach he couldn’t quite have consulted her on the subject. He loved her dearly, better than any one; but she wasn’t a woman to consult, for she approved of whatever he did: the fact of his doing it settled the case for it. He had been careful not to be too serious when he talked with Lady Barb’s relative; but he was very seriousindeed as he thought over the matter within himself, which he did even among the diversions of the next half-hour, while he squeezed, obliquely and with tight arrests, through the crush in the Trumpingtons’ drawing-room. At the end of the half-hour he came away, and at the door he found Lady Beauchemin, from whom he had separated on entering the house and who, this time with a companion of her own sex, was awaiting her carriage and still “going on.” He gave her his arm to the street, and as she entered the vehicle she repeated that she hoped he’d just go out of town.
“Who then would tell me what to do?” he returned, looking at her through the window.
She might tell him what to do, but he felt free all the same; and he was determined this should continue. To prove it to himself he jumped into a hansom and drove back to Brook Street and to his hotel instead of proceeding to a bright-windowed house in Portland Place where he knew he should after midnight find Lady Canterville and her daughters. He recalled a reference to that chance during his ride with Lady Barb, who would probably expect him; but it made him taste his liberty not to go, and he liked to taste his liberty. He was aware that to taste it in perfection he ought to “turn in”; but he didn’t turn in, he didn’t even take off his hat. He walked up and down his sitting-room with his head surmounted by this ornament, a good deal tipped back, and with his hands in his pockets. There were various cards stuck into the frame of the mirror over his chimney-piece, and every time he passed the place he seemed to see what was written on one of them—the name of the mistress of the house in Portland Place, his own name and in the lower left-hand corner “A small Dance.” Of course, now, he must make up his mind; he’d make it up by thenext day: that was what he said to himself as he walked up and down; and according to his decision he’d speak to Lord Canterville or would take the night-express to Paris. It was better meanwhile he shouldn’t see Lady Barb. It was vivid to him, as he occasionally paused with fevered eyes on the card in the chimney-glass, that he had come pretty far; and he had come so far because he was under the spell—yes, he was under the spell, or whatever it was, of Lady Barb. There was no doubt whatever of this; he had a faculty for diagnosis and he knew perfectly what was the matter with him. He wasted no time in musing on the mystery of his state; in wondering if he mightn’t have escaped such a seizure by a little vigilance at first, or if it would abate should he go away. He accepted it frankly for the sake of the pleasure it gave him—the girl was the delight of most of his senses—and confined himself to considering how it would square with his general situation to marry her. The squaring wouldn’t at all necessarily follow from the fact that he was in love; too many other things would come in between. The most important of these was the change not only of the geographical but of the social standpoint for his wife, and a certain readjustment that it would involve in his own relation to things. He wasn’t inclined to readjustments, and there was no reason why he should be: his own position was in most respects so advantageous. But the girl tempted him almost irresistibly, satisfying his imagination both as a lover and as a student of the human organism; she was so blooming, so complete, of a type so rarely encountered in that degree of perfection. Jackson Lemon was no Anglomaniac, but he took peculiar pleasure in certain physical facts of the English—their complexion, their temperament, their tissue; and Lady Barb had affected him from thefirst as in flexible virginal form a wonderful compendium of these elements. There was something simple and robust in her beauty; it had the quietness of an old Greek statue, without the vulgarity of the modern simper or of contemporary prettiness. Her head was antique, and though her conversation was quite of the present period Jackson told himself that some primitive sincerity of soul couldn’t but match with the cast of her brow, of her bosom, of the back of her neck, and with the high carriage of her head, which was at once so noble and so easy. He saw her as she might be in the future, the beautiful mother of beautiful children in whom the appearance of “race” should be conspicuous. He should like his children to have the appearance of race as well as other signs of good stuff, and wasn’t unaware that he must take his precautions accordingly. A great many people in England had these indications, and it was a pleasure to him to see them, especially as no one had them so unmistakably as the second daughter of the Cantervilles. It would be a great luxury to call a creature so constituted one’s own; nothing could be more evident than that, because it made no difference that she wasn’t strikingly clever. Striking cleverness wasn’t one of the signs, nor a mark of the English complexion in general; it was associated with the modern simper, which was a result of modern nerves. If Jackson had wanted a wife all fiddlestrings of course he could have found her at home; but this tall fair girl, whose character, like her figure, appeared mainly to have been formed by riding across country, was differently put together. All the same would it suit his book, as they said in London, to marry her and transport her to New York? He came back to this question; came back to it with a persistency which, had she been admitted to a view of it, would have tried the patience of LadyBeauchemin. She had been irritated more than once at his appearing to attach himself so exclusively to that horn of the dilemma—as if it could possibly fail to be a good thing for a little American doctor to marry the daughter of an English peer. It would have been more becoming in her ladyship’s eyes that he should take this for granted a little more and take the consent of her ladyship’s—of their ladyships’—family a little less. They looked at the matter so differently! Jackson Lemon was conscious that if he should propose for the young woman who so strongly appealed to him it would be because it suited him, and not because it suited his possible sisters-in-law. He believed himself to act in all things by his own faculty of choice and volition, a feature of his outfit in which he had the highest confidence.
It would have seemed, indeed, that just now this part of his inward machine was not working very regularly, since, though he had come home to go to bed, the stroke of half-past twelve saw him jump not into his sheets but into a hansom which the whistle of the porter had summoned to the door of his hotel and in which he rattled off to Portland Place. Here he found—in a very large house—an assembly of five hundred persons and a band of music concealed in a bower of azaleas. Lady Canterville had not arrived; he wandered through the rooms and assured himself of that. He also discovered a very good conservatory, where there were banks and pyramids of azaleas. He watched the top of the staircase, but it was a long time before he saw what he was looking for, and his impatience grew at last extreme. The reward, however, when it came, was all he could have desired. It consisted of a clear smile from Lady Barb, who stood behind her mother while the latter extended vague finger-tips to the hostess. The entrance ofthis charming woman and her beautiful daughters—always a noticeable incident—was effected with a certain spread of commotion, and just now it was agreeable to Jackson to feel this produced impression concern him probably more than any one else in the house. Tall, dazzling, indifferent, looking about her as if she saw very little, Lady Barb was certainly a figure round which a young man’s fancy might revolve. Very rare, yet very quiet and very simple, she had little manner and little movement; but her detachment was not a vulgar art. She appeared to efface herself, to wait till, in the natural course, she should be attended to; and in this there was evidently no exaggeration, for she was too proud not to have perfect confidence. Her sister, quite another affair, with a little surprised smile which seemed to say that in her extreme innocence she was still prepared for anything, having heard, indirectly, such extraordinary things about society, was much more impatient and more expressive, and had always projected across a threshold the pretty radiance of her eyes and teeth before her mother’s name was announced. Lady Canterville was by many persons more admired and more championed than her daughters; she had kept even more beauty than she had given them, and it was a beauty which had been called intellectual. She had extraordinary sweetness, without any definite professions; her manner was mild almost to tenderness; there was even in it a degree of thoughtful pity, of human comprehension. Moreover her features were perfect, and nothing could be more gently gracious than a way she had of speaking, or rather of listening, to people with her head inclined a little to one side. Jackson liked her without trepidation, and she had certainly been “awfully nice” to him. He approached Lady Barb as soon as he could do so without anappearance of rushing up; he remarked to her that he hoped very much she wouldn’t dance. He was a master of the art which flourishes in New York above every other, and had guided her through a dozen waltzes with a skill which, as she felt, left absolutely nothing to be desired. But dancing was not his business to-night. She smiled without scorn at the expression of his hope.
“That’s what mamma has brought us here for,” she said; “she doesn’t like it if we don’t dance.”
“How does she know whether she likes it or not? You always have danced.”
“Oh, once there was a place where I didn’t,” said Lady Barb.
He told her he would at any rate settle it with her mother, and persuaded her to wander with him into the conservatory, where coloured lights were suspended among the plants and a vault of verdure arched above. In comparison with the other rooms this retreat was far and strange. But they were not alone; half a-dozen other couples appeared to have had reasons as good as theirs. The gloom, none the less, was rosy with the slopes of azalea and suffused with mitigated music, which made it possible to talk without consideration of one’s neighbours. In spite of this, though it was only in looking back on the scene later that Lady Barb noted the fact, these dispersed couples were talking very softly. She didn’t look at them; she seemed to take it that virtually she was alone with the young American. She said something about the flowers, about the fragrance of the air; for all answer to which he asked her, as he stood there before her, a question that might have startled her by its suddenness.
“How do people who marry in England ever know each other before marriage? They have no chance.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she returned. “I never was married.”
“It’s very different in my country. There a man may see much of a girl; he may freely call on her, he may be constantly alone with her. I wish you allowed that over here.”
Lady Barb began to examine the less ornamental side of her fan as if it had never invited her before. “It must be so very odd, America,” she then concluded.
“Well, I guess in that matter we’re right. Over here it’s a leap in the dark.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she again made answer. She had folded her fan; she stretched out her arm mechanically and plucked a sprig of azalea.
“I guess it doesn’t signify after all,” Jackson however proceeded. “Don’t you know they say that love’s blind at the best?” His keen young face was bent upon hers; his thumbs were in the pockets of his trousers; he smiled with a slight strain, showing his fine teeth. She said nothing, only pulling her azalea to pieces. She was usually so quiet that this small movement was striking.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you in the least without a lot of people,” he went on.
“Yes, it’s very tiresome.”
“I’ve been sick of it. I didn’t want even to come here to-night.”
She hadn’t met his eyes, though she knew they were seeking her own. But now she looked at him straight. She had never objected to his appearance, and in this respect had no repugnance to surmount. She liked a man to be tall and handsome, and Jackson Lemon was neither; but when she was sixteen, and as tall herself as she was to be at twenty, she had been in love—for three weeks—with one of her cousins, a little fellow in the Hussars, who was shorter eventhan the American, was of inches markedly fewer than her own. This proved that distinction might be independent of stature—not that she had ever reasoned it out. Doctor Lemon’s facial spareness and his bright ocular attention, which had a fine edge and a marked scale, unfolded and applied rule-fashion, affected her as original, and she thought of them as rather formidable to a good many people, which would do very well in a husband of hers. As she made this reflexion it of course never occurred to her that she herself might suffer true measurement, for she was not a sacrificial lamb. She felt sure his features expressed a mind—a mind immensely useful, like a good hack or whatever, and that he knew how to employ. She would never have supposed him a doctor; though indeed when all was said this was very negative and didn’t account for the way he imposed himself.
“Why, then, did you come?” she asked in answer to his last speech.
“Because it seems to me after all better to see you this way than not to see you at all. I want to know you better.”
“I don’t think I ought to stay here,” she said as she looked round her.
“Don’t go till I’ve told you I love you,” the young man distinctly replied.
She made no exclamation, indulged in no start; he couldn’t see even that she changed colour. She took his request with a noble simplicity, her head erect and her eyes lowered. “I don’t think you’ve quite a right to tell me that.”
“Why not?” Jackson demanded. “I want to claim the right. I want you to give it to me.”
“I can’t—I don’t know you. You’ve said that yourself.”
“Can’t you have a little faith?” he at once asked,speaking as fast as if he were not even a little afraid to urge the pace. “That will help us to know each other better. It’s disgusting, the want of opportunity; even at Pasterns I could scarcely get a walk with you. But I’ve the most absolute trust of you. IknowI love you, and I couldn’t do more than that at the end of six months. I love your beauty, I love your nature, I love you from head to foot. Don’t move, please don’t move.” He lowered his tone now, but it went straight to her ear and we must believe conveyed a certain eloquence. For himself, after he had heard himself say these words, all his being was in a glow. It was a luxury to speak to her of her beauty; it brought him nearer to her than he had ever been. But the colour had come into her face and seemed to remind him that her beauty wasn’t all. “Everything about you is true and sweet and grand,” he went on; “everything’s dear to me. I’m sure you’re good. I don’t know what you think of me; I asked Lady Beauchemin to tell me, and she told me to judge for myself. Well, then, I judge you like me. Haven’t I a right to assume that till the contrary’s proved? May I speak to your father? That’s what I want to know. I’ve been waiting, but now what should I wait for longer? I want to be able to tell him you’ve given me hope. I suppose I ought to speak to him first. I meant to, to-morrow, but meanwhile, to-night, I thought I’d just put this in. In my country it wouldn’t matter particularly. You must see all that over there for yourself. If you should tell me not to speak to your father I wouldn’t—I’d wait. But I like better to ask your leave to speak to him than ask his to speak to you.”
His voice had sunk almost to a whisper, but, though it trembled, the fact of his pleading gave it intensity. He had the same attitude, his thumbs in his trousers, his neat attentive young head, his smile,which was a matter of course; no one would have imagined what he was saying. She had listened without moving and at the end she raised her eyes. They rested on his own a moment, and he remembered for a long time the look, the clear effluence of splendid maidenhood, as deep as a surrender, that passed her lids.
Disconcertingly, however, there was no surrender in what she answered. “You may say anything you please to my father, but I don’t wish to hear any more. You’ve said too much, considering how little idea you’ve given me before.”
“I was watching you,” said Jackson Lemon.
She held her head higher, still looking straight at him. Then quite seriously, “I don’t like to be watched,” she returned.
“You shouldn’t be so beautiful then. Won’t you give me a word of hope?”
“I’ve never supposed I should marry a foreigner,” said Lady Barb.
“Do you call me a foreigner?”
“I think your ideas are very different and your country different. You’ve told me so yourself.”
“I should like to show it to you. I would make you like it.”
“I’m not sure what you’d make me do,” she went on very honestly.
“Nothing you don’t want.”
“I’m sure you’d try,” she smiled as for more accommodation.
“Well,” said Jackson Lemon, “I’m after all trying now.”
To this she returned that she must go to her mother, and he was obliged to lead her out of the place. Lady Canterville was not immediately found, so that he had time to keep it up a little as they went. “Now that I’ve spoken I’m very happy.”
“Perhaps you’re happy too soon.”
“Ah, don’t say that, Lady Barb,” he tenderly groaned.
“Of course I must think of it.”
“Of course you must!” Jackson abundantly concurred. “I’ll speak to your father to-morrow.”
“I can’t fancy what he’ll say.”
“How can he dislike me? But I guess he doesn’t!” the young man cried in a tone which Lady Beauchemin, had she heard him, would have felt connected with his general retreat upon the quaint. What Lady Beauchemin’s sister thought of it is not recorded; but there is perhaps a clue to her opinion in the answer she made him after a moment’s silence: “Really, you know, youarea foreigner!” With this she turned her back, for she was already in her mother’s hands. Jackson Lemon said a few words to Lady Canterville; they were chiefly about its being very hot. She gave him her vague sweet attention, as if he were saying something ingenious but of which she missed the point. He could see she was thinking of the ways of her daughter Agatha, whose attitude toward the contemporary young man was wanting in the perception of differences—a madness too much without method; she was evidently not occupied with Lady Barb, who was more to be depended on. This young woman never met her suitor’s eyes again; she let her own rest rather ostentatiously on other objects. At last he was going away without a glance from her. Her mother had asked him to luncheon for the morrow, and he had said he would come if she would promise him he should see his lordship. “I can’t pay you another visit till I’ve had some talk with him.”
“I don’t see why not, but if I speak to him I daresay he will be at home,” she returned.
“It will be worth his while!” At this he almostcommitted himself; and he left the house reflecting that as he had never proposed to a girl before he couldn’t be expected to know how women demean themselves in this emergency. He had heard indeed that Lady Barb had had no end of offers; and though he supposed the number probably overstated, as it always is, he had to infer that her way of appearing suddenly to have dropped him was but the usual behaviour for the occasion.
At her mother’s the next day she was absent from luncheon, and Lady Canterville mentioned to him—he didn’t ask—that she had gone to see a dear old great-aunt who was also her godmother and who lived at Roehampton. Lord Canterville was not present, but Jackson learned from his hostess that he had promised her he would come in exactly at three o’clock. Our young man lunched with her ladyship and the children, who appeared in force at this repast, all the younger girls being present, and two little boys, the juniors of the two sons who were in their teens. Doctor Lemon, who was fond of children and thought these absolutely the finest in the world—magnificent specimens of a magnificent brood, such as it would be so satisfactory in future days to see about his own knee—Doctor Lemon felt himself treated as one of the family, but was not frightened by what he read into the privilege of his admission. Lady Canterville showed no sense whatever of his having mooted the question of becoming her son-in-law, and he believed the absent object of his attentions hadn’t told her of their evening’s talk. This idea gave him pleasure; he liked to think Lady Barb was judging him for herself. Perhaps indeed she was taking counsel of the old lady at Roehampton: he saw himself the sort of lover of whom a godmother would approve. Godmothers, inhis mind, were mainly associated with fairy-tales—he had had no baptismal sponsors of his own; and that point of view would be favourable to a young man with a great deal of gold who had suddenly arrived from a foreign country—an apparition surely in a proper degree elfish. He made up his mind he should like Lady Canterville as a mother-in-law; she would be too well-bred to meddle. Her husband came in at three o’clock, just after they had risen, and observed that it was very good in him to have waited.
“I haven’t waited,” Jackson replied with his watch in his hand; “you’re punctual to the minute.”
I know not how Lord Canterville may have judged his young friend, but Jackson Lemon had been told more than once in his life that he would have been all right if he hadn’t been so literal. After he had lighted a cigarette in his lordship’s “den,” a large brown apartment on the ground-floor, which partook at once of the nature of an office and of that of a harness-room—it couldn’t have been called in any degree a library or even a study—he went straight to the point in these terms: “Well now, Lord Canterville, I feel I ought to let you know without more delay that I’m in love with Lady Barb and that I should like to make her my wife.” So he spoke, puffing his cigarette, with his conscious but unextenuating eyes fixed on his host.
No man, as I have intimated, bore better being looked at than this noble personage; he seemed to bloom in the envious warmth of human contemplation and never appeared so faultless as when most exposed. “My dear fellow, my dear fellow,” he murmured almost in disparagement, stroking his ambrosial beard from before the empty fireplace. He lifted his eyebrows, but looked perfectly good-natured.
“Are you surprised, sir?” Jackson asked.
“Why I suppose a fellow’s surprised at any one’s wanting one of his children. He sometimes feels the weight of that sort of thing so much, you know. He wonders what use on earth another man can make of them.” And Lord Canterville laughed pleasantly through the copious fringe of his lips.
“I only want one of them,” said his guest, laughing too, but with a lighter organ.
“Polygamy would be rather good for the parents. However, Luke told me the other night she knew you to be looking the way you speak of.”
“Yes, I mentioned to Lady Beauchemin that I love Lady Barb, and she seemed to think it natural.”
“Oh I suppose there’s no want of nature in it! But, my dear fellow, I really don’t know what to say,” his lordship added.
“Of course you’ll have to think of it.” In saying which Jackson felt himself make the most liberal concession to the point of view of his interlocutor; being perfectly aware that in his own country it wasn’t left much to the parents to think of.
“I shall have to talk it over with my wife.”
“Well, Lady Canterville has been very kind to me; I hope she’ll continue.”
Lord Canterville passed a large fair hand, as for inspiration, over his beard. “My dear fellow, we’re excellent friends. No one could appreciate you more than Lady Canterville. Of course we can only consider such a question on the—a—the highest grounds. You’d never want to marry without knowing—as it were—exactly what you’re doing. I, on my side, naturally, you know, am bound to do the best I can for my own poor child. At the same time, of course, we don’t want to spend our time in—a—walking round the horse. We want to get at the truth about him.” It was settled between them after a little that the truth about Lemon’s businesswas that he knew to a certainty the state of his affections and was in a position to pretend to the hand of a young lady who, Lord Canterville might say without undue swagger, had a right to expect to do as well as any girl about the place.
“I should think she had,” Doctor Lemon said. “She’s a very rare type.”
His entertainer had a pleasant blank look. “She’s a clever well-grown girl and she takes her fences like a grasshopper. Does she know all this, by the way?”
“Oh yes, I told her last night.”
Again Lord Canterville had the air, unusual with him, of sounding, at some expense of precious moments, the expression of face of a visitor so unacquainted with shyness. “I’m not sure you ought to have done that, you know.”
“I couldn’t have spoken to you first—I couldn’t,” said Jackson Lemon. “I meant to; but it stuck in my crop.”
“They don’t in your country, I guess,” his lordship amicably laughed.
“Well, not as a general thing. However, I find it very pleasant to have the whole thing out with you now.” And in truth it was very pleasant. Nothing could be easier, friendlier, more informal, than Lord Canterville’s manner, which implied all sorts of equality, especially that of age and fortune, and made our young man feel at the end of three minutes almost as if he too were a beautifully-preserved and somewhat straitened nobleman of sixty, with the views of a man of the world about his own marriage. Jackson perceived that Lord Canterville waived the point of his having spoken first to the girl herself, and saw in this indulgence a just concession to the ardour of young affection. For his lordship seemed perfectly to appreciate the sentimental side—at least so far as it was embodied in his visitor—when he saidwithout deprecation: “Did she give you any encouragement?”
“Well, she didn’t box my ears. She told me she’d think of it, but that I must speak to you. Naturally, however, I shouldn’t have said what I did if I hadn’t made up my mind during the last fortnight that I’m not disagreeable to her.”
“Ah, my dear young man, women are odd fish!” this parent exclaimed rather unexpectedly. “But of course you know all that,” he added in an instant; “you take the general risk.”
“I’m perfectly willing to take the general risk. The particular risk strikes me as small.”
“Well, upon my honour I don’t really know my girls. You see a man’s time in England is tremendously taken up; but I daresay it’s the same in your country. Their mother knows them—I think I had better send for their mother. If you don’t mind,” Lord Canterville wound up, “I’ll just suggest that she join us here.”
“I’m rather afraid of you both together, but if it will settle it any quicker—!” Jackson said. His companion rang the bell and, when a servant appeared, despatched him with a message to her ladyship. While they were waiting the young man remembered how easily he could give a more definite account of his pecuniary basis. He had simply stated before that he was abundantly able to marry; he shrank from putting himself forward as a monster of money. With his excellent taste he wished to appeal to Lord Canterville primarily as a gentleman. But now that he had to make a double impression he bethought himself of his millions, for millions were always impressive. “It strikes me as only fair to let you know that my fortune’s really considerable.”
“Yes, I daresay you’re beastly rich,” said Lord Canterville with a natural and visible faith.
“Well, I represent, all told, some seven millions.”
“Seven millions?”
“I count in dollars. Upwards of a million and a half sterling.”
Lord Canterville looked at him from head to foot, exhaling with great promptitude an air of cheerful resignation to a form of grossness threatening to become common. Then he said with a touch of that inconsequence of which he had already given a glimpse: “What the deuce in that case possessed you to turn doctor?”
Jackson Lemon coloured a little and demurred, but bethought himself of his best of reasons. “Why, my having simply the talent for it.”
“Of course I don’t for a moment doubt your ability. But don’t you,” his lordship candidly asked, “find it rather a bore?”
“I don’t practise much. I’m rather ashamed to say that.”
“Ah well, of course in your country it’s different. I daresay you’ve got a door-plate, eh?”
“Oh yes, and a tin sign tied to the balcony!” Jackson laughed.
Here the joke was beyond his friend, who but went on: “What on earth did your father say to it?”
“To my going into medicine? He said he’d be hanged if he’d take any of my doses. He didn’t think I should succeed; he wanted me to go into the house.”
“Into the House—a—?” Lord Canterville just wondered. “That would be into your Congress?”
“Ah no, not so bad as that. Into the store,” Jackson returned with that refinement of the ingenuous which he reserved for extreme cases.
His host stared, not venturing even for the moment to hazard an interpretation; and before a solutionhad presented itself Lady Canterville was on the scene.
“My dear, I thought we had better see you. Do you know he wants to marry our second girl?” It was in these simple and lucid terms that her husband acquainted her with the question.
She expressed neither surprise nor elation; she simply stood there smiling, her head a little inclined to the side and her beautiful benevolence well to the front. Her charming eyes rested on Doctor Lemon’s; and, though they showed a shade of anxiety for a matter of such importance, his own discovered in them none of the coldness of calculation. “Are you talking about dear Barb?” she asked in a moment and as if her thoughts had been far away.
Of course they were talking about dear Barb, and Jackson repeated to her what he had said to her noble spouse. He had thought it all over and his mind was quite made up. Moreover, he had spoken to the young woman.
“Did she tell you that, my dear?” his lordship asked while he lighted another cigar.
She gave no heed to this inquiry, which had been vague and accidental on the speaker’s part; she simply remarked to their visitor that the thing was very serious and that they had better sit down a moment. In an instant he was near her on the sofa on which she had placed herself and whence she still smiled up at her husband with her air of luxurious patience.
“Barb has told me nothing,” she dropped, however, after a little.
“That proves how much she cares for me!” Jackson declared with instant lucidity.
Lady Canterville looked as if she thought this really too ingenious, almost as professional as if their talk were a consultation; but her husband went, allgaily, straighter to the point. “Ah well, if she cares for you I don’t object.”
This was a little ambiguous; but before the young man had time to look into it his hostess put a bland question. “Should you expect her to live in America?”
“Oh yes. That’s my home, you know.”
“Shouldn’t you be living sometimes in England?”
“Oh yes—we’ll come over and see you.” He was in love, he wanted to marry, he wanted to be genial and to commend himself to the family; yet it was in his nature not to accept conditions save in so far as they met his taste, not to tie himself or, as they said in New York, give himself away. He preferred in any transaction his own terms to those of any one else, so that the moment Lady Canterville gave signs of wishing to extract a promise he was on his guard.
“She’ll find it very different; perhaps she won’t like it,” her ladyship suggested.
“If she likes me she’ll like my country,” Jackson Lemon returned with decision.
“He tells me he has a plate on his door,” Lord Canterville put in for the right pleasant tone.
“We must talk to her of course; we must understand how she feels”—and his wife looked, though still gracious, more nobly responsible.
“Please don’t discourage her, Lady Canterville,” Jackson firmly said; “and give me a chance to talk to her a little more myself. You haven’t given me much chance, you know.”
“We don’t offer our daughters to people, however amiable, Mr. Lemon.” Her charming grand manner rather quickened.
“She isn’t like some women in London, you know,” Lord Canterville helpfully explained; “you see we rather stave off the evil day: we like to betogether.” And Jackson certainly, if the idea had been presented to him, would have said that No, decidedly, Lady Barb hadn’t been thrown at him.
“Of course not,” he declared in answer to her mother’s remark. “But you know you mustn’t decline overtures too much either; you mustn’t make a poor fellow wait too long. I admire her, I love her, more than I can say; I give you my word of honour for that.”
“He seems to think that settles it,” said Lord Canterville, shining richly down at the young American from his place before the cold chimney-piece.
“Certainly that’s what we desire, Philip,” her ladyship returned with an equal grace.
“Lady Barb believes it; I’m sure she does!” Jackson exclaimed with spirit. “Why should I pretend to be in love with her if I’m not?”
Lady Canterville received this appeal in silence, and her husband, with just the least air in the world of repressed impatience, began to walk up and down the room. He was a man of many engagements, and he had been closeted for more than a quarter of an hour with the young American doctor. “Do you imagine you should come often to England?” Lady Canterville asked as if to think of everything.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that; of course we shall do whatever seems best.” He was prepared to suppose they should cross the Atlantic every summer—that prospect was by no means displeasing to him; but he wasn’t prepared to tie himself, as he would have said, up to it, nor up to anything in particular. It was in his mind not as an overt pretension but as a tacit implication that he should treat with the parents of his presumed bride on a footing of perfect equality; and there would somehow be nothing equal if he should begin to enter into engagements that didn’t belong to the essence of the matter. They were togive their daughter and he was to take her: in this arrangement there would be as much on one side as on the other. But beyond it he had nothing to ask of them; there was nothing he was calling on them to promise, and his own pledges therefore would have no equivalent. Whenever his wife should wish it she should come over and see her people. Her home was to be in New York; but he was tacitly conscious that on the question of absences he should be very liberal, and there was meanwhile something in the very grain of his character that forbade he should be eagerly yielding about times and dates.
Lady Canterville looked at her spouse, but he was now not attentive; he was taking a peep at his watch. In a moment, however, he threw out a remark to the effect that he thought it a capital thing the two countries should become more united, and there was nothing that would bring it about better than a few of the best people on both sides pairing-off together. The English indeed had begun it; a lot of fellows had brought over a lot of pretty girls, and it was quite fair play that the Americans should take their pick. They were all one race, after all; and why shouldn’t they make one society—the best of both sides, of course? Jackson Lemon smiled as he recognised Lady Marmaduke’s great doctrine, and he was pleased to think Lady Beauchemin had some influence with her father; for he was sure the great old boy, as he mentally designated his host, had got all this from her, though he expressed himself less happily than the cleverest of his daughters. Our hero had no objection to make to it, especially if there were aught in it that would really help his case. But it was not in the least on these high grounds he had sought the hand of Lady Barb. He wanted her not in order that her people and his—the best on both sides!—should make one society; he wanted hersimply because he wanted her. Lady Canterville smiled, but she seemed to have another thought.
“I quite appreciate what my husband says, but I don’t see why poor Barb should be the one to begin.”
“I daresay she’ll like it,” said his lordship as if he were attempting a short cut. “They say you spoil your women awfully.”
“She’s not one of their women yet,” Lady Canterville remarked in the sweetest tone in the world; and then she added without Jackson Lemon’s knowing exactly what she meant: “It seems so strange.”
He was slightly irritated, and these vague words perhaps added to the feeling. There had been no positive opposition to his suit, and both his entertainers were most kind; but he felt them hold back a little, and though he hadn’t expected them to throw themselves on his neck he was rather disappointed—his pride was touched. Why should they hesitate? He knew himself such a goodparti. It was not so much his noble host—it was Lady Canterville. As he saw her lord and master look covertly and a second time at his watch he could have believed him glad to settle the matter on the spot. Lady Canterville seemed to wish their aspirant to come forward more, to give certain assurances and pledges. He felt he was ready to say or do anything that was a matter of proper form, but he couldn’t take the tone of trying to purchase her ladyship’s assent, penetrated as he was with the conviction that such a man as he could be trusted to care for his wife rather more than an impecunious British peer andhiswife could be supposed—with the lights he had acquired on English society—to care even for the handsomest of a dozen children. It was a mistake on the old lady’s part not to recognise that. He humoured this to the extent of saying just a little dryly: “My wife shall certainly have everything she wants.”
“He tells me he’s disgustingly rich,” Lord Canterville added, pausing before their companion with his hands in his pockets.
“I’m glad to hear it; but it isn’t so much that,” she made answer, sinking back a little on her sofa. If it wasn’t that she didn’t say what it was, though she had looked for a moment as if she were going to. She only raised her eyes to her husband’s face, she asked for inspiration. I know not whether she found it, but in a moment she said to Jackson Lemon, seeming to imply that it was quite another point: “Do you expect to continue your profession?”
He had no such intention, so far as his profession meant getting up at three o’clock in the morning to assuage the ills of humanity; but here, as before, the touch of such a question instantly stiffened him. “Oh, my profession! I rather wince at that grand old name. I’ve neglected my work so scandalously that I scarce know on what terms with it I shall be—though hoping for the best when once I’m right there again.”
Lady Canterville received these remarks in silence, fixing her eyes once more upon her husband’s. But his countenance really rather failed her; still with his hands in his pockets, save when he needed to remove his cigar from his lips, he went and looked out of the window. “Of course we know you don’t practise, and when you’re a married man you’ll have less time even than now. But I should really like to know if they call you Doctor over there.”
“Oh yes, universally. We’re almost as fond of titles as your people.”
“I don’t call that a title,” her ladyship smiled.
“It’s not so good as duke or marquis, I admit; but we have to take what we’ve got.”
“Oh bother, what does it signify?” his lordship demanded from his place at the window. “I usedto have a horse named Doctor, and a jolly good one too.”
“Don’t you call bishops Doctors? Well, then, call me Bishop!” Jackson laughed.
Lady Canterville visibly didn’t follow. “I don’t care foranytitles,” she nevertheless observed. “I don’t see why a gentleman shouldn’t be called Mr.”
It suddenly appeared to her young friend that there was something helpless, confused and even slightly comical in her state. The impression was mollifying, and he too, like Lord Canterville, had begun to long for a short cut. He relaxed a moment and, leaning toward his hostess with a smile and his hands on his little knees, he said softly: “It seems to me a question of no importance. All I desire is that you should call me your son-in-law.”
She gave him her hand and he pressed it almost affectionately. Then she got up, remarking that before anything was decided she must see her child, must learn from her own lips the state of her feelings. “I don’t like at all her not having spoken to me already,” she added.
“Where has she gone—to Roehampton? I daresay she has told it all to her godmother,” said Lord Canterville.
“She won’t have much to tell, poor girl!” Jackson freely commented. “I must really insist on seeing with more freedom the person I wish to marry.”
“You shall have all the freedom you want in two or three days,” said Lady Canterville. She irradiated all her charity; she appeared to have accepted him and yet still to be making tacit assumptions. “Aren’t there certain things to be talked of first?”
“Certain things, dear lady?”
She looked at her husband, and though he was still at his window he felt it this time in her silence andhad to come away and speak. “Oh she means settlements and that kind of thing.” This was an allusion that came with a much better grace from the father.
Jackson turned from one of his companions to the other; he coloured a little and his self-control was perhaps a trifle strained. “Settlements? We don’t make them in my country. You may be sure I shall make a proper provision for my wife.”
“My dear fellow, over here—in our class, you know—it’s the custom,” said Lord Canterville with a truer ease in his face at the thought that the discussion was over.
“I’ve my own ideas,” Jackson returned with even greater confidence.