Great Short Novels of Henry James

by Henry James

  “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 good parti. 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 and his wife 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 used to 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 for any titles,” 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 and had 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.

  “It seems to me it’s a question for the solicitors to discuss,” Lady Canterville suggested.

  “They may discuss it as much as they please”—the young man showed amusement. He thought he saw his solicitors discussing it! He had indeed his own ideas. He opened the door for his hostess and the three passed out of the room together, walking into the hall in a silence that expressed a considerable awkwardness. A note had been struck which grated and scratched a little. A pair of shining footmen, at their approach, rose from a bench to a great altitude and stood there like sentinels presenting arms. Jackson stopped, looking for a moment into the interior of his hat, which he had in his hand. Then raising his keen eyes he fixed them a moment on those of Lady Canterville, addressing her instinctively rather than his other critic. “I guess you and Lord Canterville had better leave it to me!”

  “We have our traditions, Mr. Lemon,” said her ladyship with a firm grace. “I imagine you don’t know—!” she gravely breathed.

  Lord Canterville laid his hand on their visitor’s shoulder. “My dear boy, those fellows will settle it in three minutes.”

  “Very likely they will!” said Jackson Lemon. Then he asked of Lady Canterville when he might see Lady Barb.

  She turned it spaciously over. “I’ll write you a note.”

  One of the tall footmen at the end of the impressive vista had opened wide the portals, as if even he were aware of the dignity to which the small strange gentleman had virtually been raised. But Jackson lingered; he was visibly unsatisfied, though apparently so little conscious he was unsatisfying. “I don’t think you understand me.”

  “Your ideas are certainly different,” said Lady Canterville.

  His lordship, however, made comparatively light of it. “If the girl understands you that’s enough!”

  “Mayn’t she write to me?” Jackson asked of her mother. “I certainly must write to her, you know, if you won’t let me see her.”

  “Oh yes, you may write to her, Mr. Lemon.”

  There was a point, for a moment, in the look he returned on this, while he said to himself that if necessary he would transmit his appeal through the old lady at Roehampton. “All right—good-bye. You know what I want at any rate.” Then as he was going he turned and added: “You needn’t be afraid I won�
�t always bring her over in the hot weather!”

  “In the hot weather?” Lady Canterville murmured with vague visions of the torrid zone. Jackson however quitted the house with the sense he had made great concessions.

  His host and hostess passed into a small morning-room and—Lord Canterville having taken up his hat and stick to go out again—stood there a moment, face to face. Then his lordship spoke in a summary manner. “It’s clear enough he wants her.”

  “There’s something so odd about him,” Lady Canterville answered. “Fancy his speaking so about settlements!”

  “You had better give him his head. He’ll go much quieter.”

  “He’s so obstinate—very obstinate; it’s easy to see that. And he seems to think,” she went on, “that a girl in your daughter’s position can be married from one day to the other—with a ring and a new frock—like a housemaid.”

  “Well that, of course, over there is the kind of thing. But he seems really to have a most extraordinary fortune, and every one does say they give their women carte blanche.”

  “Carte blanche is not what Barb wants; she wants a settlement. She wants a definite income,” said Lady Canterville; “she wants to be safe.”

  He looked at her rather straight. “Has she told you so? I thought you said—” And then he stopped. “I beg your pardon,” he added.

  She didn’t explain her inconsequence; she only remarked that American fortunes were notoriously insecure; one heard of nothing else; they melted away like smoke. It was their own duty to their child to demand that something should be fixed.

  Well, he met this in his way. “He has a million and a half sterling. I can’t make out what he does with it.”

  She rose to it without a flutter. “Our child should have, then, something very handsome.”

  “I agree, my dear; but you must manage it; you must consider it; you must send for Hardman. Only take care you don’t put him off; it may be a very good opening, you know. There’s a great deal to be done out there; I believe in all that,” Lord Canterville went on in the tone of a conscientious parent.

  “There’s no doubt that he is a doctor—in some awful place,” his wife brooded.

  “He may be a pedlar for all I care.”

  “If they should go out I think Agatha might go with them,” her ladyship continued in the same tone, but a little disconnectedly.

  “You may send them all out if you like. Goodbye!”

  The pair embraced, but her hand detained him a moment. “Don’t you think he’s greatly in love?”

  “Oh yes, he’s very bad—but he’s a sharp little beggar.”

  “She certainly quite likes him,” Lady Canterville stated rather formally as they separated.

  PART II

  IV

  JACKSON LEMON had said to Dr. Feeder in the Park that he would call on Mr. and Mrs. Freer; but three weeks were to elapse before he knocked at their door in Jermyn Street. In the meantime he had met them at dinner and Mrs. Freer had told him how much she hoped he would find time to come and see her. She had not reproached him nor shaken her finger at him, and her clemency, which was calculated and very characteristic of her, touched him so much—for he was in fault, she was one of his mother’s oldest and best friends—that he very soon presented himself. It was on a fine Sunday afternoon, rather late, and the region of Jermyn Street looked forsaken and inanimate; the native dulness of the brick scenery reigned undisputed. Mrs. Freer, however, was at home, resting on a lodging-house sofa—an angular couch draped in faded chintz—before she went to dress for dinner. She made the young man very welcome; she told him again how much she had been thinking of him; she had longed so for a chance to talk with him. He immediately guessed what she had in her mind, and he then remembered that Sidney Feeder had named to him what it was this pair took upon themselves to say. This had provoked him at the time, but he had forgotten it afterward; partly because he became aware that same night of his wanting to make the “young marchioness” his own and partly because since then he had suffered much greater annoyance. Yes, the poor young man, so conscious of liberal intentions, of a large way of looking at the future, had had much to irritate and disgust him. He had seen the mistress of his affections but three or four times, and had received a letter from Mr. Hardman, Lord Canterville’s solicitor, asking him, in terms the most obsequious it was true, to designate some gentleman of the law with whom the preliminaries of his marriage to Lady Barberina Clement might be arranged. He had given Mr. Hardman the name of such a functionary, but he had written by the same post to his own solicitor—for whose services in other matters he had had much occasion, Jackson Lemon being distinctly contentious—instructing him that he was at liberty to meet that gentleman, but not at liberty to entertain any proposals as to the odious English idea of a settlement. If marrying Jackson Lemon wasn’t settlement enough the house of Canterville had but to alter their point of view. It was quite out of the question he should alter his. It would perhaps be difficult to explain the strong dislike he entertained to the introduction into his prospective union of this harsh diplomatic element; it was as if they mistrusted him and suspected him; as if his hands were to be tied so that he shouldn’t be able to handle his own fortune as he thought best. It wasn’t the idea of parting with his money that displeased him, for he flattered himself he had plans of expenditure for his wife beyond even the imagination of her distinguished parents. It struck him even that they were fools not to have felt subtly sure they should make a much better thing of it by leaving him perfectly free. This intervention of the solicitor was a nasty little English tradition—totally at variance with the large spirit of American habits—to which he wouldn’t submit. It wasn’t his way to submit when he disapproved: why should he change his way on this occasion when the matter lay so near him?

  These reflexions and a hundred more had flowed freely through his mind for several days before his call in Jermyn Street, and they had engendered a lively indignation and a bitter sense of wrong. They had even introduced, as may be imagined, a certain awkwardness into his relations with the house of Canterville, of which indeed it may be said that these amenities were for the moment virtually suspended. His first interview with Lady Barb after his conference with the old couple, as he called her august elders, had been as frank, had been as sweet, as he could have desired. Lady Canterville had at the end of three days sent him an invitation—five words on a card—asking him to dine with them on the morrow quite en famille. This had been the only formal intimation that his engagement to her daughter was recognised; for even at the family banquet, which included half a dozen guests of pleasant address but vague affiliation, there had been no reference on the part either of his host or his hostess to the subject of their converse in Lord Canterville’s den. The only allusion was a wandering ray, once or twice, in Lady Barb’s own fine eyes. When, however, after dinner, she strolled away with him into the music-room, which was lighted and empty, to play for him something out of Carmen, of which he had spoken at table, and when the young couple were allowed to enjoy for upwards of an hour, unmolested, the comparative privacy of that elegant refuge, he felt Lady Canterville definitely to count on him. She didn’t believe in any serious difficulties. Neither did he then; and that was why it was not to be condoned that there should be a vain appearance of them. The arrangements, he supposed her ladyship would have said, were pending, and indeed they were; for he had already given orders in Bond Street for the setting of an extraordinary number of diamonds. Lady Barb, at any rate, during that hour he spent with her, had had nothing to say about arrangements; and it had been an hour of pure satisfaction. She had seated herself at the piano and had played perpetually, in a soft incoherent manner, while he leaned over the instrument, very close to her, and said everything that came into his head. She was braver and handsomer than ever and looked at him as if she liked him out and out.

  This was all he expected of her, for it didn’t belong to the cast of her beauty to betray a vulgar infatuati
on. That beauty was clearly all he had believed it from the first, and with something now thrown in, something ever so touching and stirring, which seemed to stamp her from that moment as his precious possession. He felt more than ever her intimate value and the great social outlay it had taken to produce such a mixture. Simple and girlish as she was, and not particularly quick in the give and take of conversation, she seemed to him to have a part of the history of England in her blood; she was the fine flower of generations of privileged people and of centuries of rich country-life. Between these two of course was no glance at the question which had been put into the hands of Mr. Hardman, and the last thing that occurred to Jackson was that Lady Barb had views as to his settling a fortune upon her before their marriage. It may appear odd, but he hadn’t asked himself whether his money operated on her in any degree as a bribe; and this was because, instinctively, he felt such a speculation idle—the point was essentially not to be ascertained—and because he was quite ready to take it for agreeable to her to continue to live in luxury. It was eminently agreeable to him to have means to enable her to do so. He was acquainted with the mingled character of human motives and glad he was rich enough to pretend to the hand of a young woman who, for the best of reasons, would be very expensive. After the good passage in the music-room he had ridden with her twice, but hadn’t found her otherwise accessible. She had let him know the second time they rode that Lady Canterville had directed her to make, for the moment, no further appointment with him; and on his presenting himself more than once at the house he had been told that neither the mother nor the daughter was at home: it had been added that Lady Barb was staying at Roehampton. In touching on that restriction she had launched at him just a distinguishable mute reproach—there was always a certain superior dumbness in her eyes—as if he were exposing her to an annoyance she ought to be spared, or taking an eccentric line on a question that all well-bred people treated in the conventional way.