by Henry James
“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, you are a 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 almost committed 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.
III
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, in his 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 business was 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 straite
ned 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 said without 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 solution had 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, all gaily, 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 be together.” 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 to give 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 her simply because he wanted her. Lady Canterville smiled, but she seemed to have another thought.