Collected Stories

  ‘There he is again!’ said Mr Freer, following with his eyes a young man who passed along the Row, riding slowly. ‘That’s a beautiful thoroughbred!’

  Mrs Freer asked idle questions only when she wished for time to think. At present she had simply to look and see who it was her husband meant. ‘The horse is too big,’ she remarked, in a moment.

  ‘You mean that the rider is too small,’ her husband rejoined; ‘he is mounted on his millions.’

  ‘Is it really millions?’

  ‘Seven or eight, they tell me.’

  ‘How disgusting!’ It was in this manner that Mrs Freer usually spoke of the large fortunes of the day. ‘I wish he would see us,’ she added.

  ‘He does see us, but he doesn’t like to look at us. He is too conscious; he isn’t easy.’

  ‘Too conscious of his big horse?’

  ‘Yes, and of his big fortune; he is rather ashamed of it.’

  ‘This is an odd place to come, then,’ said Mrs Freer.

  ‘I am not sure of that. He will find people here richer than himself, and other big horses in plenty, and that will cheer him up. Perhaps, too, he is looking for that girl.’

  ‘The one we heard about? He can’t be such a fool.’

  ‘He isn’t a fool,’ said Dexter Freer. ‘If he is thinking of her, he has some good reason.’

  ‘I wonder what Mary Lemon would say.’

  ‘She would say it was right, if he should do it. She thinks he can do no wrong. He is exceedingly fond of her.’

  ‘I shan’t be sure of that if he takes home a wife who will despise her.’

  ‘Why should the girl despise her? She is a delightful woman.’

  ‘The girl will never know it – and if she should, it would make no difference; she will despise everything.’

  ‘I don’t believe it, my dear; she will like some things very much. Every one will be very nice to her.’

  ‘She will despise them all the more. But we are speaking as if it were all arranged; I don’t believe in it at all,’ said Mrs Freer.

  ‘Well, something of the sort – in this case or in some other – is sure to happen sooner or later,’ her husband replied, turning round a little toward the part of the delta which is formed, near the entrance to the Park, by the divergence of the two great vistas of the Drive and the Row.

  Our friends had turned their backs, as I have said, to the solemn revolution of wheels and the densely-packed mass of spectators who had chosen that part of the show. These spectators were now agitated by a unanimous impulse: the pushing back of chairs, the shuffle of feet, the rustle of garments and the deepening murmur of voices sufficiently expressed it. Royalty was approaching – royalty was passing – royalty had passed. Freer turned his head and his ear a little; but he failed to alter his position further, and his wife took no notice of the flurry. They had seen royalty pass, all over Europe, and they knew that it passed very quickly. Sometimes it came back; sometimes it didn’t; for more than once they had seen it pass for the last time. They were veteran tourists, and they knew perfectly when to get up and when to remain seated. Mr Freer went on with his proposition: ‘Some young fellow is certain to do it, and one of these girls is certain to take the risk. They must take risks, over here, more and more.’

  ‘The girls, I have no doubt, will be glad enough; they have had very little chance as yet. But I don’t want Jackson to begin.’

  ‘Do you know I rather think I do?’ said Dexter Freer; ‘It will be very amusing.’

  ‘For us, perhaps, but not for him; he will repent of it, and be wretched. He is too good for that.’

  ‘Wretched, never! He has no capacity for wretchedness; and that’s why he can afford to risk it.’

  ‘He will have to make great concessions,’ Mrs Freer remarked.

  ‘He won’t make one.’

  ‘I should like to see.’

  ‘You admit, then, that it will be amusing, which is all I contend for. But, as you say, we are talking as if it were settled, whereas there is probably nothing in it, after all. The best stories always turn out false. I shall be sorry in this case.’

  They relapsed into silence, while people passed and repassed them – continuous, successive, mechanical, with strange sequences of faces. They looked at the people, but no one looked at them, though every one was there so admittedly to see what was to be seen. It was all striking, all pictorial, and it made a great composition. The wide, long area of the Row, its red-brown surface dotted with bounding figures, stretched away into the distance and became suffused and misty in the bright, thick air. The deep, dark English verdure that bordered and overhung it, looked rich and old, revived and refreshed though it was by the breath of June. The mild blue of the sky was spotted with great silvery clouds, and the light drizzled down in heavenly shafts over the quieter spaces of the Park, as one saw them beyond the Row. All this, however, was only a background, for the scene was before everything personal; superbly so, and full of the gloss and lustre, the contrasted tones, of a thousand polished surfaces. Certain things were salient, pervasive – the shining flanks of the perfect horses, the twinkle of bits and spurs, the smoothness of fine cloth adjusted to shoulders and limbs, the sheen of hats and boots, the freshness of complexions, the expression of smiling, talking faces, the flash and flutter of rapid gallops. Faces were everywhere, and they were the great effect; above all, the fair faces of women on tall horses, flushed a little under their stiff black hats, with figures stiffened, in spite of much definition of curve, by their tight-fitting habits. Their hard little helmets; their neat, compact heads; their straight necks; their firm, tailor-made armour; their blooming, competent physique, made them look doubly like amazons about to ride a charge. The men, with their eyes before them, with hats of undulating brim, good profiles, high collars, white flowers on their chests, long legs and long feet, had an air more elaboratively decorative, as they jolted beside the ladies, always out of step. These were youthful types; but it was not all youth, for many a saddle was surmounted by a richer rotundity; and ruddy faces, with short white whiskers or with matronly chins, looked down comfortably from an equilibrium which was moral and social as well as physical. The walkers differed from the riders only in being on foot, and in looking at the riders more than these looked at them; for they would have done as well in the saddle and ridden as the others ride. The women had tight little bonnets and still tighter little knots of hair; their round chins rested on a close swathing of lace, or, in some cases, of silver chains and circlets. They had flat backs and small waists; they walked slowly, with their elbows out, carrying vast parasols, and turning their heads very little to the right or the left. They were amazons unmounted, quite ready to spring into the saddle. There was a great deal of beauty and a general look of successful development, which came from clear, quiet eyes, and from well-cut lips, on which syllables were liquid and sentences brief. Some of the young men, as well as the women, had the happiest proportions and oval faces, in which line and colour were pure and fresh and the idea of the moment was not very intense.

  ‘They are very good-looking,’ said Mr Freer, at the end of ten minutes; ‘they are the finest whites.’

  ‘So long as they remain white they do very well; but when they venture upon colour!’ his wife replied. She sat with her eyes on a level with the skirts of the ladies who passed her; and she had been following the progress of a green velvet robe, enriched with ornaments of steel and much gathered up in the hands of its wearer, who, herself apparently in her teens, was accompanied by a young lady draped in scanty pink muslin, embroidered, aesthetically, with flowers that simulated the iris.

  ‘All the same, in a crowd, they are wonderfully well turned out,’ Dexter Freer went on; ‘take the men, and women, and horses together. Look at that big fellow on the light chestnut: what could be more perfect? By the way, it’s Lord Canterville,’ he added in a moment, as if the fact were of some importance.

  Mrs Freer recognised its importance to the degree of
raising her glass to look at Lord Canterville. ‘How do you know it’s he?’ she asked, with her glass still up.

  ‘I heard him say something the night I went to the House of Lords. It was very few words, but I remember him. A man who was near me told me who he was.’

  ‘He is not so handsome as you,’ said Mrs Freer, dropping her glass.

  ‘Ah, you’re too difficult!’ her husband murmured. ‘What a pity the girl isn’t with him,’ he went on; ‘we might see something.’

  It appeared in a moment that the girl was with him. The nobleman designated had ridden slowly forward from the start, but just opposite our friends he pulled up to look behind him, as if he had been waiting for some one. At the same moment a gentleman in the Walk engaged his attention, so that he advanced to the barrier which protects the pedestrians, and halted there, bending a little from his saddle and talking with his friend, who leaned against the rail. Lord Canterville was indeed perfect, as his American admirer had said. Upwards of sixty, and of great stature and great presence, he was really a splendid apparition. In exquisite preservation, he had the freshness of middle life, and would have been young to the eye if the lapse of years were not needed to account for his considerable girth. He was clad from head to foot in garments of a radiant grey, and his fine florid countenance was surmounted with a white hat, of which the majestic curves were a triumph of good form. Over his mighty chest was spread a beard of the richest growth, and of a colour, in spite of a few streaks, vaguely grizzled, to which the coat of his admirable horse appeared to be a perfect match. It left no opportunity, in his uppermost button-hole, for the customary gardenia; but this was of comparatively little consequence, as the vegetation of the beard itself was tropical. Astride his great steed, with his big fist, gloved in pearl-grey, on his swelling thigh, his face lighted up with good-humoured indifference, and all his magnificent surface reflecting the mild sunshine, he was a very imposing man indeed, and visibly, incontestably, a personage. People almost lingered to look at him as they passed. His halt was brief, however, for he was almost immediately joined by two handsome girls, who were as well turned out, in Dexter Freer’s phrase, as himself. They had been detained a moment at the entrance to the Row, and now advanced side by side, their groom close behind them. One was taller and older than the other, and it was apparent at a glance that they were sisters. Between them, with their charming shoulders, contracted waists, and skirts that hung without a wrinkle, like a plate of zinc, they represented in a singularly complete form the pretty English girl in the position in which she is prettiest.

  ‘Of course they are his daughters,’ said Dexter Freer, as they rode away with Lord Canterville; ‘and in that case one of them must be Jackson Lemon’s sweetheart. Probably the bigger; they said it was the eldest. She is evidently a fine creature.’

  ‘She would hate it over there,’ Mrs Freer remarked, for all answer to this cluster of inductions.

  ‘You know I don’t admit that. But granting she should, it would do her good to have to accommodate herself.’

  ‘She wouldn’t accommodate herself.’

  ‘She looks so confoundedly fortunate, perched up on that saddle,’ Dexter Freer pursued, without heeding his wife’s rejoinder.

  ‘Aren’t they supposed to be very poor?’

  ‘Yes, they look it!’ And his eyes followed the distinguished trio, as, with the groom, as distinguished in his way as any of them, they started on a canter.

  The air was full of sound, but it was low and diffused; and when, near our friends, it became articulate, the words were simple and few.

  ‘It’s as good as the circus, isn’t it, Mrs Freer?’ These words correspond to that description, but they pierced the air more effectually than any our friends had lately heard. They were uttered by a young man who had stopped short in the path, absorbed by the sight of his compatriots. He was short and stout, he had a round, kind face, and short, stiff-looking hair, which was reproduced in a small bristling beard. He wore a double-breasted walking-coat, which was not, however, buttoned, and on the summit of his round head was perched a hat of exceeding smallness, and of the so-called ‘pot’ category. It evidently fitted him, but a hatter himself would not have known why. His hands were encased in new gloves, of a dark-brown colour, and they hung with an air of unaccustomed inaction at his sides. He sported neither umbrella nor stick. He extended one of his hands, almost with eagerness, to Mrs Freer, blushing a little as he became aware that he had been eager.

  ‘Oh, Doctor Feeder!’ she said, smiling at him. Then she repeated to her husband, ‘Doctor Feeder, my dear!’ and her husband said, ‘Oh, Doctor, how d’ye do?’ I have spoken of the composition of his appearance; but the items were not perceived by these two. They saw only one thing, his delightful face, which was both simple and clever, and unreservedly good. They had lately made the voyage from New York in his company, and it was plain that he would be very genial at sea. After he had stood in front of them a moment, a chair beside Mrs Freer became vacant, on which he took possession of it, and sat there telling her what he thought of the Park and how he liked London. As she knew every one she had known many of his people at home; and while she listened to him she remembered how large their contribution had been to the virtue and culture of Cincinnati. Mrs Freer’s social horizon included even that city; she had been on terms almost familiar with several families from Ohio, and was acquainted with the position of the Feeders there. This family, very numerous, was interwoven into an enormous cousinship. She herself was quite out of such a system, but she could have told you whom Doctor Feeder’s great-grandfather had married. Every one, indeed, had heard of the good deeds of the descendants of this worthy, who were generally physicians, excellent ones, and whose name expressed not inaptly their numerous acts of charity. Sidney Feeder, who had several cousins of this name established in the same line at Cincinnati, had transferred himself and his ambition to New York, where his practice, at the end of three years, had begun to grow. He had studied his profession at Vienna, and was impregnated with German science; indeed, if he had only worn spectacles, he might perfectly, as he sat there watching the riders in Rotten Row as if their proceedings were a successful demonstration, have passed for a young German of distinction. He had come over to London to attend a medical congress which met this year in the British capital; for his interest in the healing art was by no means limited to the cure of his patients; it embraced every form of experiment, and the expression of his honest eyes would almost have reconciled you to vivisection. It was the first time he had come to the Park; for social experiments he had little leisure. Being aware, however, that it was a very typical, and as it were symptomatic, sight, he had conscientiously reserved an afternoon, and had dressed himself carefully for the occasion. ‘It’s quite a brilliant show,’ he said to Mrs Freer; ‘it makes me wish I had a mount.’ Little as he resembled Lord Canterville, he rode very well.