by Henry James
“I’m very sure of that; but it isn’t so simple—one’s being an American,” Mrs. Freer rejoined with a small philosophic sigh.
“It’s whatever one chooses to make it.”
“Well, you’ll make it what no one has done yet if you take that young lady to America and make her happy there.”
“Do you think our country, then, such a very dreadful place?”
His hostess had a pause. “It’s not a question of what I think, but of what she will.”
Jackson rose from his chair and took up his hat and stick. He had actually turned a little pale with the force of his emotion; there was a pang of wrath for him in this fact that his marriage to Lady Barberina might be looked at as too high a flight. He stood a moment leaning against the mantelpiece and very much tempted to say to Mrs. Freer that she was a vulgar-minded old woman. But he said something that was really more to the point. “You forget that she’ll have her consolations.”
“Don’t go away or I shall think I’ve offended you. You can’t console an injured noblewoman.”
“How will she be injured? People will be charming to her.”
“They’ll be charming to her—charming to her!” These words fell from the lips of Dexter Freer, who had opened the door of the room and stood with the knob in his hand, putting himself into relation to his wife’s talk with their visitor. This harmony was achieved in an instant. “Of course I know whom you mean,” he said while he exchanged greetings with Jackson. “My wife and I—naturally we’re great busybodies—have talked of your affair and we differ about it completely. She sees only the dangers, while I see all the advantages.”
“By the advantages he means the fun for us,” Mrs. Freer explained, settling her sofa-cushions.
Jackson looked with a certain sharp blankness from one of these disinterested judges to the other; even yet they scarce saw how their misdirected freedom wrought on him. It was hardly more agreeable to him to know that the husband wished to see Lady Barb in America than to know that the wife waved away such a vision. There was that in Dexter Freer’s face which seemed to forecast the affair as taking place somehow for the benefit of the spectators. “I think you both see too much—a great deal too much—in the whole thing,” he rather coldly returned.
“My dear young man, at my age I may take certain liberties,” said Dexter Freer. “Do what you’ve planned—I beseech you to do it; it has never been done before.” And then as if Jackson’s glance had challenged this last assertion he went on: “Never, I assure you, this particular thing. Young female members of the British aristocracy have married coachmen and fishmongers and all that sort of thing; but they’ve never married you and me.”
“They certainly haven’t married the ‘likes’ of either of you!” said Mrs. Freer.
“I’m much obliged to you for your advice.” It may be thought that Jackson Lemon took himself rather seriously, and indeed I’m afraid that if he hadn’t done so there would have been no occasion even for this summary report of him. But it made him almost sick to hear his engagement spoken of as a curious and ambiguous phenomenon. He might have his own ideas about it—one always had about one’s engagement; but the ideas that appeared to have peopled the imagination of his friends ended by kindling a small hot expanse in each of his cheeks. “I’d rather not talk any more about my little plans,” he added to his host. “I’ve been saying all sorts of absurd things to Mrs. Freer.”
“They’ve been most interesting and most infuriating,” that lady declared. “You’ve been very stupidly treated.”
“May she tell me when you go?” her husband asked of the young man.
“I’m going now—she may tell you whatever she likes.”
“I’m afraid we’ve displeased you,” she went on; “I’ve said too much what I think. You must pardon me—it’s all for your mother.”
“It’s she whom I want Lady Barb to see!” Jackson exclaimed with the inconsequence of filial affection.
“Deary me!” Mrs. Freer gently wailed.
“We shall go back to America to see how you get on,” her husband said; “and if you succeed it will be a great precedent.”
“Oh I shall succeed!” And with this he took his departure. He walked away with the quick step of a man labouring under a certain excitement; walked up to Piccadilly and down past Hyde Park Corner. It relieved him to measure these distances, for he was thinking hard, under the influence of irritation, and it was as if his movement phrased his passion. Certain lights flashed on him in the last half-hour turned to fire in him; the more that they had a representative value and were an echo of the common voice. If his prospects wore that face to Mrs. Freer they would probably wear it to others; so he felt a strong sharp need to show such others that they took a mean measure of his position. He walked and walked till he found himself on the highway of Hammersmith. I have represented him as a young man with a stiff back, and I may appear to undermine this plea when I note that he wrote that evening to his solicitor that Mr. Hardman was to be informed he would agree to any proposals for settlements that this worthy should make. Jackson’s stiff back was shown in his deciding to marry Lady Barberina on any terms. It had come over him through the action of this desire to prove he wasn’t afraid—so odious was the imputation—that terms of any kind were very superficial things. What was fundamental and of the essence of the matter would be to secure the grand girl and then carry everything out.
V
ON SUNDAYS now you might be at home,” he said to his wife in the following month of March—more than six months after his marriage.
“Are the people any nicer on Sundays than they are on other days?” Lady Barb asked from the depths of her chair and without looking up from a stiff little book.
He waited ever so briefly before answering. “I don’t know whether they are, but I think you might be.”
“I’m as nice as I know how to be. You must take me as I am. You knew when you married me that I wasn’t American.”
Jackson stood before the fire toward which his wife’s face was turned and her feet extended; stood there some time with his hands behind him and his eyes dropped a little obliquely on Lady Barb’s bent head and richly-draped figure. It may be said without delay that he was sore of soul, and it may be added that he had a double cause. He knew himself on the verge of the first crisis that had occurred between himself and his wife—the reader will note that it had occurred rather promptly—and he was annoyed at his annoyance. A glimpse of his state of mind before his marriage has been given the reader, who will remember that at that period our young man had believed himself lifted above possibilities of irritation. When one was strong one wasn’t fidgety, and a union with a species of calm goddess would of course be a source of repose. Lady Barb was a calm, was an even calmer goddess still, and he had a much more intimate view of her divinity than on the day he had led her to the altar; but I’m not sure he felt either as firm or as easy.
“How do you know what people are?” he said in a moment. “You’ve seen so few; you’re perpetually denying yourself. If you should leave New York to-morrow you’d know wonderfully little about it.”
“It’s all just the same,” she pleaded. “The people are all exactly alike. There’s only one sort.”
“How can you tell? You never see them.”
“Didn’t I go out every night for the first two months we were here?”
“It was only to about a dozen houses—those, I agree, always the same; people, moreover, you had already met in London. You’ve got no general impressions.”
She raised her beautiful blank face. “That’s just what I have got; I had them before I came. I see no difference whatever. They’ve just the same names—just the same manners.”
Again for an instant Jackson hung fire; then he said with that practised flat candour of which mention has already been made and which he sometimes used in London during his courtship: “Don’t you like it over here?”
Lady Barb had returned to her
book, but she looked up again. “Did you expect me to like it?”
“I hoped you would, of course. I think I told you so.”
“I don’t remember. You said very little about it; you seemed to make a kind of mystery. I knew of course you expected me to live here, but I didn’t know you expected me to like it.”
“You thought I asked of you the sacrifice, as it were.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Lady Barb. She got up from her chair and tossed her unconsolatory volume into the empty seat. “I recommend you to read that book,” she added.
“Is it interesting?”
“It’s an American novel.”
“I never read novels.”
“You had really better look at that one. It will show you the kind of people you want me to know.”
“I’ve no doubt it’s very vulgar,” Jackson said. “I don’t see why you read it.”
“What else can I do? I can’t always be riding in the Park. I hate the Park,” she quite rang out.
“It’s just as good as your own,” said her husband.
She glanced at him with a certain quickness, her eyebrows slightly lifted. “Do you mean the park at Pasterns?”
“No; I mean the park in London.”
“Oh I don’t care about London. One was only in London a few weeks.” She had a horrible lovely ease.
Yet he but wanted to help her to turn round. “I suppose you miss the country,” he suggested. It was his idea of life that he shouldn’t be afraid of anything, not be afraid, in any situation, of knowing the worst that was to be known about it; and the demon of a courage with which discretion was not properly commingled prompted him to take soundings that were perhaps not absolutely necessary for safety and yet that revealed unmistakable rocks. It was useless to know about rocks if he couldn’t avoid them; the only thing was to trust to the wind.
“I don’t know what I miss. I think I miss everything!” This was his wife’s answer to his too-curious inquiry. It wasn’t peevish, for that wasn’t the tone of a calm goddess; but it expressed a good deal—a good deal more than Lady Barb, who was rarely eloquent, had expressed before. Nevertheless, though his question had been precipitate, Jackson said to himself that he might take his time to think over what her fewness of words enclosed; he couldn’t help seeing that the future would give him plenty of chance. He was in no hurry to ask himself whether poor Mrs. Freer, in Jermyn Street, mightn’t after all have been right in saying that when it came to marrying an English caste-product it wasn’t so simple to be an American doctor—it might avail little even in such a case to be the heir of all the ages. The transition was complicated, but in his bright mind it was rapid, from the brush of a momentary contact with such ideas to certain considerations which led him to go on after an instant: “Should you like to go down into Connecticut?”
“Into Connecticut?”
“That’s one of our States. It’s about as large as Ireland. I’ll take you there if you like.”
“What does one do there?”
“We can try and get some hunting.”
“You and I alone?”
“Perhaps we can get a party to join us.”
“The people in the State?”
“Yes—we might propose it to them.”
“The tradespeople in the towns?”
“Very true—they’ll have to mind their shops,” Jackson said. “But we might hunt alone.”
“Are there any foxes?”
“No, but there are a few old cows.”
Lady Barb had already noted that her husband sought the relief of a laugh at her expense, and she was aware that this present opportunity was neither worse nor better than some others. She didn’t mind that trick in him particularly now, though in England it would have disgusted her; she had the consciousness of virtue, an immense comfort, and flattered herself she had learned the lesson of an altered standard of fitness—besides which there were so many more disagreeable things in America than being laughed at by one’s husband. But she pretended not to like it because this made him stop, and above all checked discussion, which with Jackson was habitually so facetious and consequently so tiresome. “I only want to be left alone,” she said in answer—though indeed it hadn’t the style of an answer—to his speech about the cows. With this she wandered away to one of the windows that looked out on the Fifth Avenue. She was very fond of these windows and had taken a great fancy to the Fifth Avenue, which, in the high-pitched winter weather, when everything sparkled, was bright and funny and foreign. It will be seen that she was not wholly unjust to her adoptive country: she found it delightful to look out of the window. This was a pleasure she had enjoyed in London only in the most furtive manner; it wasn’t the kind of thing that girls in England did. Besides, in London, in Hill Street, there was nothing particular to see; whereas in the Fifth Avenue everything and every one went by, and observation was made consistent with dignity by the quantities of brocade and lace dressing the embrasure, which somehow wouldn’t have been tidy in England and which made an ambush without concealing the brilliant day. Hundreds of women—the queer women of New York, who were unlike any that Lady Barb had hitherto seen—passed the house every hour; and her ladyship was infinitely entertained and mystified by the sight of their clothes. She spent more time than she was aware of in this recreation, and had she been addicted to returning upon herself, to asking herself for an account of her conduct—an inquiry she didn’t indeed completely neglect, but made no great form of—she must have had a wan smile for this proof of what she appeared mainly to have come to America for, conscious though she was that her tastes were very simple and that so long as she didn’t hunt it didn’t much matter what she did.
Her husband turned about to the fire, giving a push with his foot to a log that had fallen out of its place. Then he said—and the connexion with the words she had just uttered was direct enough—“You really must manage to be at home on Sundays, you know. I used to like that so much in London. All the best women here do it. You had better begin to-day. I’m going to see my mother. If I meet any one I’ll tell them to come.”
“Tell them not to talk so much,” said Lady Barb among her lace curtains.
“Ah, my dear,” Jackson returned, “it isn’t every one who has your concision.” And he went and stood behind her in the window, putting his arm round her waist. It was as much of a satisfaction to him as it had been six months before, at the time the solicitors were settling the matter, that this flower of an ancient stem should be worn upon his own breast; he still thought its fragrance a thing quite apart, and it was as clear as day to him that his wife was the handsomest woman in New York. He had begun, after their arrival, by telling her this very often; but the assurance brought no colour to her cheek, no light to her eyes: to be the handsomest woman in New York, now that she was acquainted with that city, plainly failed to strike her as a position in life. The reader may, moreover, be informed that, oddly enough, Lady Barb didn’t particularly believe this assertion. There were some very pretty women in New York, and without in the least wishing to be like them—she had seen no woman in America whom she desired to resemble—she envied them some of their peculiar little freshnesses. It’s probable that her own finest points were those of which she was most unconscious. But Jackson was intensely aware of all of them; nothing could exceed the minuteness of his appreciation of his wife. It was a sign of this that after he had stood behind her a moment he kissed her very tenderly. “Have you any message for my mother?” he asked.
“Please give her my love. And you might take her that book.”
“What book?”
“That nasty one I’ve been reading.”
“Oh bother your books!” he cried with a certain irritation as he went out of the room.
There had been a good many things in her life in New York that cost her an effort, but sending her love to her mother-in-law was not one of these. She liked Mrs. Lemon better than any one she had seen in America; she was the onl
y person who seemed to Lady Barb really simple, as she herself understood that quality. Many people had struck her as homely and rustic and many others as pretentious and vulgar; but in Jackson’s mother she had found the golden mean of a discretion, of a native felicity and modesty and decency, which, as she would have said, were really nice. Her sister, Lady Agatha, was even fonder of Mrs. Lemon; but then Lady Agatha had taken the most extraordinary fancy to every one and everything, and talked as if America were the most delightful country in the world. She was having a lovely time—she already spoke the most beautiful American—and had been, during the bright winter just drawing to a close, the most prominent girl in New York. She had gone out at first with her elder; but for some weeks past Lady Barb had let so many occasions pass that Agatha threw herself into the arms of Mrs. Lemon, who found her unsurpassably quaint and amusing and was delighted to take her into society. Mrs. Lemon, as an old woman, had given up such vanities; but she only wanted a motive, and in her good nature she ordered a dozen new caps and sat smiling against the wall while her little English maid, on polished floors, to the sound of music, cultivated the American step as well as the American tone. There was no trouble in New York about going out, and the winter wasn’t half over before the little English maid found herself an accomplished diner, finding her way without any chaperon at all to feasts where she could count on a bouquet at her plate. She had had a great deal of correspondence with her own female parent on this point, and Lady Canterville had at last withdrawn her protest, which in the meantime had been perfectly useless. It was ultimately Lady Canterville’s feeling that if she had married the handsomest of her daughters to an American doctor she might let another become a professional raconteuse—Agatha had written to her that she was expected to talk so much—strange as such a destiny seemed for a girl of nineteen. Mrs. Lemon had even a higher simplicity than Lady Barb imputed to her; for she hadn’t noticed that Lady Agatha danced much oftener with Herman Longstraw than with any one else. Jackson himself, though he went little to balls, had discovered this truth, and he looked slightly preoccupied when, after he had sat five minutes with his mother on the Sunday afternoon through which I have invited the reader to trace so much more than—I am afraid—is easily apparent of the progress of this simple story, he learned that his sister-in-law was entertaining Mr. Longstraw in the library. That young man had called half an hour before, and she had taken him into the other room to show him the seal of the Cantervilles, which she had fastened to one of her numerous trinkets—she was adorned with a hundred bangles and chains—and the proper exhibition of which required a taper and a stick of wax. Apparently he was examining it very carefully, for they had been absent a good while. Mrs. Lemon’s simplicity was further shown by the fact that she had not measured their absence; it was only when Jackson questioned her that she remembered.