if you take that young lady to America and make her happy there.”
“Do you think our country, then, such a very dreadful place?”
His hostess had a pause. “It’s not a question of what I think, but of what she will.”
Jackson rose from his chair and took up his hat and stick. He had actually turned a little pale with the force of his emotion; there was a pang of wrath for him in this fact that his marriage to Lady Barbarina might be looked at as too high a flight. He stood a moment leaning against the mantelpiece and very much tempted to say to Mrs. Freer that she was a vulgar-minded old woman. But he said something that was really more to the point. “You forget that she’ll have her consolations.”
“Don’t go away or I shall think I’ve offended you. You can’t console an injured noblewoman.”
“How will she be injured? People will be charming to her.”
“They’ll be charming to her—charming to her!” These words fell from the lips of Dexter Freer, who had opened the door of the room and stood with the knob in his hand, putting himself into relation to his wife’s talk with their visitor. This harmony was achieved in an instant. “Of course I know whom you mean,” he said while he exchanged greetings with Jackson. “My wife and I—naturally we’re great busybodies—have talked of your affair and we differ about it completely. She sees only the dangers, while I see all the advantages.”
“By the advantages he means the fun for us,” Mrs. Freer explained, settling her sofa-cushions.
Jackson looked with a certain sharp blankness from one of these disinterested judges to the other; even yet they scarce saw how their misdirected freedom wrought on him. It was hardly more agreeable to him to know that the husband wished to see Lady Barb in America than to know that the wife waved away such a vision. There was that in Dexter Freer’s face which seemed to forecast the affair as taking place somehow for the benefit of the spectators. “I think you both see too much—a great deal too much—in the whole thing,” he rather coldly returned.
“My dear young man, at my age I may take certain liberties,” said Dexter Freer. “Do what you’ve planned—I beseech you to do it; it has never been done before.” And then as if Jackson’s glance had challenged this last assertion he went on: “Never, I assure you, this particular thing. Young female members of the British aristocracy have married coachmen and fishmongers and all that sort of thing; but they’ve never married you and me.”
“They certainly haven’t married the ‘likes’ of either of you!” said Mrs. Freer.
“I’m much obliged to you for your advice.” It may be thought that Jackson Lemon took himself rather seriously, and indeed I’m afraid that if he hadn’t done so there would have been no occasion even for this summary report of him. But it made him almost sick to hear his engagement spoken of as a curious and ambiguous phenomenon. He might have his own ideas about it—one always had about one’s engagement; but the ideas that appeared to have peopled the imagination of his friends ended by kindling a small hot expanse in each of his cheeks. “I’d rather not talk any more about my little plans,” he added to his host. “I’ve been saying all sorts of absurd things to Mrs. Freer.”
“They’ve been most interesting and most infuriating,” that lady declared. “You’ve been very stupidly treated.”
“May she tell me when you go?” her husband asked of the young man.
“I’m going now—she may tell you whatever she likes.”
“I’m afraid we’ve displeased you,” she went on; “I’ve said too much what I think. You must pardon me—it’s all for your mother.”
“It’s she whom I want Lady Barb to see!” Jackson exclaimed with the inconsequence of filial affection.
“Deary me!” Mrs. Freer gently wailed.
“We shall go back to America to see how you get on,” her husband said; “and if you succeed it will be a great precedent.”
“Oh I shall succeed!” And with this he took his departure. He walked away with the quick step of a man labouring under a certain excitement; walked up to Piccadilly and down past Hyde Park Corner. It relieved him to measure these distances, for he was thinking hard, under the influence of irritation, and it was as if his movement phrased his passion. Certain lights flashed on him in the last half-hour turned to fire in him; the more that they had a representative value and were an echo of the common voice. If his prospects wore that face to Mrs. Freer they would probably wear it to others; so he felt a strong sharp need to show such others that they took a mean measure of his position. He walked and walked till he found himself on the highway of Hammersmith. I have represented him as a young man with a stiff back, and I may appear to undermine this plea when I note that he wrote that evening to his solicitor that Mr. Hardman was to be informed he would agree to any proposals for settlements that this worthy should make. Jackson’s stiff back was shown in his deciding to marry Lady Barbarina on any terms. It had come over him through the action of this desire to prove he wasn’t afraid—so odious was the imputation—that terms of any kind were very superficial things. What was fundamental and of the essence of the matter would be to secure the grand girl and then carry everything out.
V
“On Sundays now you might be at home,” he said to his wife in the following month of March—more than six months after his marriage.
“Are the people any nicer on Sundays than they are on other days?” Lady Barb asked from the depths of her chair and without looking up from a stiff little book.
He waited ever so briefly before answering. “I don’t know whether they are, but I think you might be.”
“I’m as nice as I know how to be. You must take me as I am. You knew when you married me that I wasn’t American.”
Jackson stood before the fire toward which his wife’s face was turned and her feet extended; stood there some time with his hands behind him and his eyes dropped a little obliquely on Lady Barb’s bent head and richly-draped figure. It may be said without delay that he was sore of soul, and it may be added that he had a double cause. He knew himself on the verge of the first crisis that had occurred between himself and his wife—the reader will note that it had occurred rather promptly—and he was annoyed at his annoyance. A glimpse of his state of mind before his marriage has been given the reader, who will remember that at that period our young man had believed himself lifted above possibilities of irritation. When one was strong one wasn’t fidgety, and a union with a species of calm goddess would of course be a source of repose. Lady Barb was a calm, was an even calmer goddess still, and he had a much more intimate view of her divinity than on the day he had led her to the altar; but I’m not sure he felt either as firm or as easy.
“How do you know what people are?” he said in a moment. “You’ve seen so few; you’re perpetually denying yourself. If you should leave New York to-morrow you’d know wonderfully little about it.”
“It’s all just the same,” she pleaded. “The people are all exactly alike. There’s only one sort.”
“How can you tell? You never see them.”
“Didn’t I go out every night for the first two months we were here?”
“It was only to about a dozen
