Lady Barbarina Part 8

"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_ t.i.tles,"

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 G.o.dmother," 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 a.s.sumptions. "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 cla.s.s, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. He thought he saw his solicitors discussing it! He had indeed his own ideas. He opened the door for his hostess and the three pa.s.sed 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 alt.i.tude 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 s.p.a.ciously 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 pa.s.sed 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.

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 Barbarina 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?