Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales

“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 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 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?”

“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 we do know 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 a good 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 bountifully cried.  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 told them?”

“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 she would be 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 it is true?” 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 the kudos.  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.

II

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 somehow more to 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 so long 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 you shouldn’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 serious indeed 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 the next 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 the first 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 Lady Beauchemin.  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.