by Henry James
“They’re often very good-looking,” said Mr. Freer at the end of ten minutes. “They’re on the whole the finest whites.”
“So long as they remain white they do very well; but when they venture upon colour!” his wife replied. She sat with her eyes at the level of the skirts of the ladies who passed her, and she had been following the progress of a green velvet robe enriched with ornaments of steel and much gathered up in the hands of its wearer, who, herself apparently in her teens, was accompanied by a young lady draped in scant pink muslin, a tissue embroidered esthetically with flowers that simulated the iris.
“All the same, in a crowd, they’re wonderfully well turned out,” Dexter Freer went on—“lumping men and women and horses and dogs together. Look at that big fellow on the light chestnut: what could be more perfect? By the way, it’s Lord Canterville,” he added in a moment and as if the fact were of some importance.
Mrs. Freer recognised its importance to the degree of raising her glass to look at Lord Canterville. “How do you know it’s he?” she asked with that implement still up.
“I heard him say something the night I went to the House of Lords. It was very few words, but I remember him. A man near me mentioned who he was.”
“He’s not so handsome as you,” said Mrs. Freer, dropping her glass.
“Ah, you’re too difficult!” her husband murmured. “What a pity the girl isn’t with him,” he went on. “We might see something.”
It appeared in a moment, however, that the girl was with him. The nobleman designated had ridden slowly forward from the start, then just opposite our friends had pulled up to look back as if waiting for some one. At the same moment a gentleman in the Walk engaged his attention, so that he advanced to the barrier which protects the pedestrians and halted there, bending a little from his saddle and talking with his friend, who leaned against the rail. Lord Canterville was indeed perfect, as his American admirer had said. Upwards of sixty and of great stature and great presence, he was a thoroughly splendid apparition. In capital preservation he had the freshness of middle life—he would have been young indeed to the eye if his large harmonious spread hadn’t spoken of the lapse of years. He was clad from head to foot in garments of a radiant grey, and his fine florid countenance was surmounted with a white hat of which the majestic curves were a triumph of good form. Over his mighty chest disposed itself a beard of the richest growth and of a colour, in spite of a few streaks vaguely grizzled, to which the coat of his admirable horse appeared to be a perfect match. It left no opportunity in his uppermost button-hole for the customary orchid; but this was of comparatively little consequence, since the vegetation of the beard itself was tropical. Astride his great steed, with his big fist, gloved in pearl-grey, on his swelling thigh, his face lighted up with good-humoured indifference and all his magnificent surface reflecting the mild sunshine, he was, strikingly, a founded and builded figure, such as could only represent to the public gaze some Institution, some Exhibition or some Industry, in a word some unquenchable Interest. People quite lingered to look up at him as they passed. His halt was brief, however, for he was almost immediately joined by two handsome girls, who were as well turned-out, in Dexter Freer’s phrase, as himself. They had been detained a moment at the entrance to the Row and now advanced side by side, their groom close behind them. One was noticeably taller and older than the other, and it was plain at a glance that they were sisters. Between them, with their charming shoulders, their contracted waists and their skirts that hung without a wrinkle, like plates of zinc, they represented in a singularly complete form the pretty English girl in the position in which she is prettiest.
“Of course they’re his daughters,” said Dexter Freer as these young ladies rode away with Lord Canterville; “and in that case one of them must be Jackson Lemon’s sweetheart. Probably the bigger; they said it was the eldest. She’s evidently a fine creature.”
“She’d hate it over there,” Mrs. Freer returned for all answer to this cluster of inductions.
“You know I don’t admit that. But granting she should, it would do her good to have to accommodate herself.”
“She wouldn’t accommodate herself.”
“She looks so confoundedly fortunate, perched up on that saddle,” he went on without heed of his wife’s speech.
“Aren’t they supposed to be very poor?”
“Yes, they look it!” And his eyes followed the eminent trio while, with the groom, as eminent in his way as any of them, they started on a canter.
The air was full of sound, was low and economised; and when, near our friends, it became articulate the words were simple and few. “It’s as good as the circus, isn’t it, Mrs. Freer?” These words correspond to that description, but they pierced the dense medium more effectually than any our friends had lately heard. They were uttered by a young man who had stopped short in the path, absorbed by the sight of his compatriots. He was short and stout, he had a round kind face and short stiff-looking hair, which was reproduced in a small bristling beard. He wore a double-breasted walking-coat, which was not, however, buttoned, and on the summit of his round head was perched a hat of exceeding smallness and of the so-called “pot” category. It evidently fitted him, but a hatter himself wouldn’t have known why. His hands were encased in new gloves of a dark-brown colour, and these masquerading members hung consciously, quite ruefully, at his sides. He sported neither umbrella nor stick. He offered one of his stuffed gloves almost with eagerness to Mrs. Freer, blushing a little as he measured his precipitation.
“Oh Doctor Feeder!”—she smiled at him. Then she repeated to her husband, “Doctor Feeder, my dear!” and her husband said, “Oh Doctor, how d’ye do?” I have spoken of the composition of the young man’s appearance, but the items were not perceived by these two. They saw but one thing, his delightful face, which was both simple and clever and, as if this weren’t enough, showed a really tasteless overheaping of the cardinal virtues. They had lately made the voyage from New York in his company, and he was clearly a person who would shine at sea with an almost intolerable blandness. After he had stood in front of them a moment a chair beside Mrs. Freer became vacant; on which he took possession of it and sat there telling her what he thought of the Park and how he liked London. As she knew every one she had known many of his people at home, and while she listened to him she remembered how large their contribution had been to the moral worth of Cincinnati. Mrs. Freer’s social horizon included even that city; she had had occasion to exercise an amused recognition of several families from Ohio and was acquainted with the position of the Feeders there. This family, very numerous, was interwoven into an enormous cousinship. She stood off herself from any Western promiscuity, but she could have told you whom Doctor Feeder’s great-grandfather had married. Every one indeed had heard of the good deeds of the descendants of this worthy, who were generally physicians, excellent ones, and whose name expressed not inaptly their numerous acts of charity. Sidney Feeder, who had several cousins of this name established in the same line at Cincinnati, had transferred himself and his ambition to New York, where his practice had at the end of three years begun to grow. He had studied his profession at Vienna and was saturated with German science; had he only worn spectacles he might indeed perfectly, while he watched the performers in Rotten Row as if their proceedings were a successful demonstration, have passed for some famously “materialistic” young German. He had come over to London to attend a medical congress which met this year in the British capital, for his interest in the healing art was by no means limited to the cure of his patients. It embraced every form of experiment, and the expression of his honest eyes would almost have reconciled you to vivisection. This was his first time of looking into the Park; for social experiments he had little leisure. Being aware, however, that it was a very typical and, as might be, symptomatic sight, he had conscientiously reserved an afternoon and dressed himself carefully for the occasion. “It’s quite a brilliant show,” he said to Mrs. Freer;
“it makes me wish I had a mount.” Little as he resembled Lord Canterville he rode, as he would have gaily said, first-rate.
“Wait till Jackson Lemon passes again and you can stop him and make him let you take a turn.” This was the jocular suggestion of Dexter Freer.
“Why, is he here? I’ve been looking out for him and should like to see him.”
“Doesn’t he go to your medical congress?” asked Mrs. Freer.
“Well yes, he attends—but isn’t very regular. I guess he goes out a good deal.”
“I guess he does,” said Mr. Freer; “and if he isn’t very regular I guess he has a good reason. A beautiful reason, a charming reason,” he went on, bending forward to look down toward the beginning of the Row. “Dear me, what a lovely reason!”
Doctor Feeder followed the direction of his eyes and after a moment understood his allusion. Little Jackson Lemon passed, on his big horse, along the avenue again, riding beside one of the bright creatures who had come that way shortly before under escort of Lord Canterville. His lordship followed in conversation with the other, his younger daughter. As they advanced Jackson Lemon turned his eyes to the multitude under the trees, and it so happened that they rested on the Dexter Freers. He smiled, he raised his hat with all possible friendliness, and his three companions turned to see whom he so frankly greeted. As he settled his hat on his head he espied the young man from Cincinnati, whom he had at first overlooked; whereupon he laughed for the luck of it and waved Sidney Feeder an airy salutation with his hand, reining in a little at the same time just for an instant, as if he half-expected this apparition to come and speak to him. Seeing him with strangers, none the less, Sidney Feeder hung back, staring a little as he rode away.
It is open to us to know that at this moment the young lady by whose side he was riding put him the free question: “Who are those people you bowed to?”
“Some old friends of mine—Americans,” said Jackson Lemon.
“Of course they’re Americans; there’s nothing anywhere but Americans now.”
“Oh yes, our turn’s coming round!” laughed the young man.
“But that doesn’t say who they are,” his companion continued. “It’s so difficult to say who Americans are,” she added before he had time to answer her.
“Dexter Freer and his wife—there’s nothing difficult about that. Every one knows them,” Jackson explained.
“I never heard of them,” said the English girl.
“Ah, that’s your fault and your misfortune. I assure you everybody knows them.”
“And does everybody know the little man with the fat face to whom you kissed your hand?”
“I didn’t kiss my hand, but I would if I had thought of it. He’s a great chum of mine—a fellow-student at Vienna.”
“And what’s his name?”
“Doctor Feeder.”
Jackson Lemon’s companion had a dandling pause. “Are all your friends doctors?”
“No—some of them are in other businesses.”
“Are they all in some business?”
“Most of them—save two or three like Dexter Freer.”
“‘Dexter’ Freer? I thought you said Doctor Freer.”
The young man gave a laugh. “You heard me wrong. You’ve got doctors on the brain, Lady Barb.”
“I’m rather glad,” said Lady Barb, giving the rein to her horse, who bounded away.
“Well yes, she’s very handsome, the reason,” Doctor Feeder remarked as he sat under the trees.
“Is he going to marry her?” Mrs. Freer inquired.
“Marry her? I hope not.”
“Why do you hope not?”
“Because I know nothing about her. I want to know something about the woman that man marries.”
“I suppose you’d like him to marry in Cincinnati,” Mrs. Freer not unadventurously threw out.
“Well, I’m not particular where it is; but I want to know her first.” Doctor Feeder was very sturdy.
“We were in hopes you’d know all about it,” said his other entertainer.
“No, I haven’t kept up with him there.”
“We’ve heard from a dozen people that he has been always with her for the last month—and that kind of thing, in England, is supposed to mean something. Hasn’t he spoken of her when you’ve seen him?”
“No, he has only talked about the new treatment of spinal meningitis. He’s very much interested in spinal meningitis.”
“I wonder if he talks about it to Lady Barb,” said Mrs. Freer.
“Who is she anyway?” the young man wanted to know.
Well, his companions both let him. “Lady Barb Clement.”
“And who’s Lady Barb Clement?”
“The daughter of Lord Canterville.”
“And who’s Lord Canterville?”
“Dexter must tell you that,” said Mrs. Freer.
And Dexter accordingly told him that the Marquis of Canterville had been in his day a great sporting nobleman and an ornament to English society, and had held more than once a high post in her Majesty’s household. Dexter Freer knew all these things—how his lordship had married a daughter of Lord Treherne, a very serious intelligent and beautiful woman who had redeemed him from the extravagance of his youth and presented him in rapid succession with a dozen little tenants for the nurseries at Pasterns—this being, as Mr. Freer also knew, the name of the principal seat of the Cantervilles. The head of that house was a Tory, but not a particular dunce for a Tory, and very popular in society at large; good-natured, good-looking, knowing how to be rather remarkably free and yet remain a grand seigneur, clever enough to make an occasional telling speech and much associated with the fine old English pursuits as well as with many of the new improvements—the purification of the Turf, the opening of the museums on Sunday, the propagation of coffee-taverns, the latest ideas on sanitary reform. He disapproved of the extension of the suffrage but had positively drainage on the brain. It had been said of him at least once—and, if this historian is not mistaken, in print—that he was just the man to convey to the popular mind the impression that the British aristocracy is still a living force. He was unfortunately not very rich—for a man who had to exemplify such truths—and of his twelve children no less than seven were daughters. Lady Barb, Jackson Lemon’s friend, was the second; the eldest had married Lord Beauchemin. Mr. Freer had caught quite the right pronunciation of this name, which he successfully sounded as Bitumen. Lady Lucretia had done very well, for her husband was rich and she had brought him nothing to speak of; but it was hardly to be expected they would all achieve such flights. Happily the younger girls were still in the schoolroom, and before they had come up, Lady Canterville, who was a woman of bold resource, would have worked off the two that were out. It was Lady Agatha’s first season; she wasn’t so pretty as her sister, but was thought to be cleverer. Half-a-dozen people had spoken to him of Jackson Lemon’s being a great deal at the Cantervilles. He was supposed to be enormously rich.
“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 sl
eeves 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 done this!” 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’t she got 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?”