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

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      “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 СКАЧАТЬ