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

“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.”