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

“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.