Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales. Генри Джеймс
this produced impression concern him probably more than any one else in the house. Tall, dazzling, indifferent, looking about her as if she saw very little, Lady Barb was certainly a figure round which a young man’s fancy might revolve. Very rare, yet very quiet and very simple, she had little manner and little movement; but her detachment was not a vulgar art. She appeared to efface herself, to wait till, in the natural course, she should be attended to; and in this there was evidently no exaggeration, for she was too proud not to have perfect confidence. Her sister, quite another affair, with a little surprised smile which seemed to say that in her extreme innocence she was still prepared for anything, having heard, indirectly, such extraordinary things about society, was much more impatient and more expressive, and had always projected across a threshold the pretty radiance of her eyes and teeth before her mother’s name was announced. Lady Canterville was by many persons more admired and more championed than her daughters; she had kept even more beauty than she had given them, and it was a beauty which had been called intellectual. She had extraordinary sweetness, without any definite professions; her manner was mild almost to tenderness; there was even in it a degree of thoughtful pity, of human comprehension. Moreover her features were perfect, and nothing could be more gently gracious than a way she had of speaking, or rather of listening, to people with her head inclined a little to one side. Jackson liked her without trepidation, and she had certainly been “awfully nice” to him. He approached Lady Barb as soon as he could do so without an appearance of rushing up; he remarked to her that he hoped very much she wouldn’t dance. He was a master of the art which flourishes in New York above every other, and had guided her through a dozen waltzes with a skill which, as she felt, left absolutely nothing to be desired. But dancing was not his business to-night. She smiled without scorn at the expression of his hope.
“That’s what mamma has brought us here for,” she said; “she doesn’t like it if we don’t dance.”
“How does she know whether she likes it or not? You always have danced.”
“Oh, once there was a place where I didn’t,” said Lady Barb.
He told her he would at any rate settle it with her mother, and persuaded her to wander with him into the conservatory, where coloured lights were suspended among the plants and a vault of verdure arched above. In comparison with the other rooms this retreat was far and strange. But they were not alone; half a-dozen other couples appeared to have had reasons as good as theirs. The gloom, none the less, was rosy with the slopes of azalea and suffused with mitigated music, which made it possible to talk without consideration of one’s neighbours. In spite of this, though it was only in looking back on the scene later that Lady Barb noted the fact, these dispersed couples were talking very softly. She didn’t look at them; she seemed to take it that virtually she was alone with the young American. She said something about the flowers, about the fragrance of the air; for all answer to which he asked her, as he stood there before her, a question that might have startled her by its suddenness.
“How do people who marry in England ever know each other before marriage? They have no chance.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she returned. “I never was married.”
“It’s very different in my country. There a man may see much of a girl; he may freely call on her, he may be constantly alone with her. I wish you allowed that over here.”
Lady Barb began to examine the less ornamental side of her fan as if it had never invited her before. “It must be so very odd, America,” she then concluded.
“Well, I guess in that matter we’re right. Over here it’s a leap in the dark.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she again made answer. She had folded her fan; she stretched out her arm mechanically and plucked a sprig of azalea.
“I guess it doesn’t signify after all,” Jackson however proceeded. “Don’t you know they say that love’s blind at the best?” His keen young face was bent upon hers; his thumbs were in the pockets of his trousers; he smiled with a slight strain, showing his fine teeth. She said nothing, only pulling her azalea to pieces. She was usually so quiet that this small movement was striking.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you in the least without a lot of people,” he went on.
“Yes, it’s very tiresome.”
“I’ve been sick of it. I didn’t want even to come here to-night.”
She hadn’t met his eyes, though she knew they were seeking her own. But now she looked at him straight. She had never objected to his appearance, and in this respect had no repugnance to surmount. She liked a man to be tall and handsome, and Jackson Lemon was neither; but when she was sixteen, and as tall herself as she was to be at twenty, she had been in love—for three weeks—with one of her cousins, a little fellow in the Hussars, who was shorter even than the American, was of inches markedly fewer than her own. This proved that distinction might be independent of stature—not that she had ever reasoned it out. Doctor Lemon’s facial spareness and his bright ocular attention, which had a fine edge and a marked scale, unfolded and applied rule-fashion, affected her as original, and she thought of them as rather formidable to a good many people, which would do very well in a husband of hers. As she made this reflexion it of course never occurred to her that she herself might suffer true measurement, for she was not a sacrificial lamb. She felt sure his features expressed a mind—a mind immensely useful, like a good hack or whatever, and that he knew how to employ. She would never have supposed him a doctor; though indeed when all was said this was very negative and didn’t account for the way he imposed himself.
“Why, then, did you come?” she asked in answer to his last speech.
“Because it seems to me after all better to see you this way than not to see you at all. I want to know you better.”
“I don’t think I ought to stay here,” she said as she looked round her.
“Don’t go till I’ve told you I love you,” the young man distinctly replied.
She made no exclamation, indulged in no start; he couldn’t see even that she changed colour. She took his request with a noble simplicity, her head erect and her eyes lowered. “I don’t think you’ve quite a right to tell me that.”
“Why not?” Jackson demanded. “I want to claim the right. I want you to give it to me.”
“I can’t—I don’t know you. You’ve said that yourself.”
“Can’t you have a little faith?” he at once asked, speaking as fast as if he were not even a little afraid to urge the pace. “That will help us to know each other better. It’s disgusting, the want of opportunity; even at Pasterns I could scarcely get a walk with you. But I’ve the most absolute trust of you. I know I love you, and I couldn’t do more than that at the end of six months. I love your beauty, I love your nature, I love you from head to foot. Don’t move, please don’t move.” He lowered his tone now, but it went straight to her ear and we must believe conveyed a certain eloquence. For himself, after he had heard himself say these words, all his being was in a glow. It was a luxury to speak to her of her beauty; it brought him nearer to her than he had ever been. But the colour had come into her face and seemed to remind him that her beauty wasn’t all. “Everything about you is true and sweet and grand,” he went on; “everything’s dear to me. I’m sure you’re good. I don’t know what you think of me; I asked Lady Beauchemin to tell me, and she told me to judge for myself. Well, then, I judge you like me. Haven’t I a right to assume that till the contrary’s proved? May I speak to your father? That’s what I want to know. I’ve been waiting, but now what should I wait for longer? I want to be able to tell him you’ve given me hope. I suppose I ought to speak to him first. I meant to, to-morrow, but meanwhile, to-night, I thought I’d just put this in. In my country it wouldn’t matter particularly. You must see all that over there for yourself. If you should tell me not to speak to your father I wouldn’t—I’d wait. But I like better to ask your leave to speak to him than ask his to speak to you.”
His