I know not how Lord Canterville may have judged his young friend, but Jackson Lemon had been told more than once in his life that he would have been all right if he hadn’t been so literal. After he had lighted a cigarette in his lordship’s “den,” a large brown apartment on the ground-floor, which partook at once of the nature of an office and of that of a harness-room—it couldn’t have been called in any degree a library or even a study—he went straight to the point in these terms: “Well now, Lord Canterville, I feel I ought to let you know without more delay that I’m in love with Lady Barb and that I should like to make her my wife.” So he spoke, puffing his cigarette, with his conscious but unextenuating eyes fixed on his host.
No man, as I have intimated, bore better being looked at than this noble personage; he seemed to bloom in the envious warmth of human contemplation and never appeared so faultless as when most exposed. “My dear fellow, my dear fellow,” he murmured almost in disparagement, stroking his ambrosial beard from before the empty fireplace. He lifted his eyebrows, but looked perfectly good-natured.
“Are you surprised, sir?” Jackson asked.
“Why I suppose a fellow’s surprised at any one’s wanting one of his children. He sometimes feels the weight of that sort of thing so much, you know. He wonders what use on earth another man can make of them.” And Lord Canterville laughed pleasantly through the copious fringe of his lips.
“I only want one of them,” said his guest, laughing too, but with a lighter organ.
“Polygamy would be rather good for the parents. However, Luke told me the other night she knew you to be looking the way you speak of.”
“Yes, I mentioned to Lady Beauchemin that I love Lady Barb, and she seemed to think it natural.”
“Oh I suppose there’s no want of nature in it! But, my dear fellow, I really don’t know what to say,” his lordship added.
“Of course you’ll have to think of it.” In saying which Jackson felt himself make the most liberal concession to the point of view of his interlocutor; being perfectly aware that in his own country it wasn’t left much to the parents to think of.
“I shall have to talk it over with my wife.”