MY DEAR MISS ARCHER—I don’t know whether you will have heard of my coming to England, but even if you have not, it will scarcely be a surprise to you. You will remember that when you gave me my dismissal at Albany three months ago, I did not accept it. I protested against it. You in fact appeared to accept my protest, and to admit that I had the right on my side. I had come to see you with the hope that you would let me bring you over to my conviction; my reasons for entertaining this hope had been of the best. But you disappointed it; I found you changed and you were able to give me no reason for the change. You admitted that you were unreasonable, and it was the only concession you would make; but it was a very cheap one, because you are not unreasonable. No, you are not, and you never will be. Therefore it is that I believe you will let me see you again. You told me that I am not disagreeable to you, and I believe it; for I don’t see why that should be. I shall always think of you; I shall never think of any one else. I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn’t stay at home after you had gone; I hated the country because you were not in it. If I like this country at present, it is only because you are here. I have been to England before, but I have never enjoyed it much. May I not come and see you for half an hour? This at present is the dearest wish of, yours faithfully,
CASPAR GOODWOOD.
Isabel read Mr. Goodwood’s letter with such profound attention that she had not perceived an approaching tread on the soft grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded the paper, she saw Lord Warburton standing before her.
12
SHE put the letter into her pocket, and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure, and half surprised at her self-possession.
‘‘They told me you were out here,’’ said Lord Warburton; ‘‘and as there was no one in the drawing-room, and it is really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado.’’
Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. ‘‘I was just going indoors,’’ she said.
‘‘Please don’t do that; it is much pleasanter here; I have ridden over from Lockleigh; it’s a lovely day.’’ His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of good feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl’s first impression of him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.
‘‘We will walk about a little, then,’’ said Isabel, who could not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her visitor, and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity regarding it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days in analysing them, and had succeeded in separating the pleasant part of this idea of Lord Warburton’s making love to her from the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was smitten with her charms; because a declaration from such a source would point to more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong impression of Lord Warburton’s being a personage, and she had occupied herself in examining the idea. At the risk of making the reader smile, it must be said that there had been moments when the intimation that she was admired by a ‘‘personage’’ struck her as an aggression which she would rather have been spared. She had never known a personage before; there were no personages in her native land. When she had thought of such matters as this, she had done so on the basis of character—of what one liked in a gentleman’s mind and in his talk. She herself was a character—she could not help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed life had concerned themselves largely with moral images— things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation—an appreciation which the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt that she lacked the patience to bestow. Of course, there would be a short cut to it, and as Lord Warburton was evidently a very fine fellow, it would probably also be a safe cut. Isabel was able to say all this to herself, but she was unable to feel the force of it. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist—it murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things besides—things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man as Lord Warburton, and that it would be very interesting to see something of his system from his own point of view; that, on the other hand, however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should regard only as an encumbrance, and that even in the whole there was something heavy and rigid which would make it unacceptable. Furthermore, there was a young man lately come from America who had no system at all; but who had a character of which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been light. The letter that she carried in her pocket sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young lady from Albany, who debated whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered himself, and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom, those who judge her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute almost a direct appeal to charity.
Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit, or to do anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, assuredly—as we have touched on the point, we may return to it for a moment again—the English are the most romantic people in the world, and Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which, superficially, had nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the sea, which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations, were very vague to his mind, except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they revealed themselves with a certain vividness. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this—the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quickly judging half of it; he had looked these things well in the face, and then he had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his button-hole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations.
‘‘I hope you had a pleasant ride,’’ said Isabel, who observed her companion’s hesitancy.
‘‘It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me here,’’ Lord Warburton answered.
‘‘Are you so fond of Gardencourt?’’ the girl aske
d; more and more sure that he meant to make some demand of her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks ago she would have deemed deeply romantic; the park of an old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by a local nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But if she were now the heroine of the situation, she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from the outside.
‘‘I care nothing for Gardencourt,’’ said Lord Warburton; ‘‘I care only for you.’’
‘‘You have known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I cannot believe you are serious.’’
These words of Isabel’s were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he was serious. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he himself had just uttered would have excited surprise on the part of the public at large. And, moreover, if anything beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton was not a frivolous person had been needed to convince her, the tone in which he replied to her would quite have served the purpose.
‘‘One’s right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer; it is measured by the feeling itself. If I were to wait three months, it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I have seen you very little; but my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time; I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that is not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels forevermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don’t know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid—mentally speaking, I mean—the greatest possible attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the other day—or rather, when you went away—I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless, I made up my mind to think it over, and to question myself narrowly. I have done so; all these days I have thought of nothing else. I don’t make mistakes about such things; I am a very judicious fellow. I don’t go off easily, but when I am touched, it’s for life. It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life,’’ Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes that shone with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion—the heat, the violence, the unreason— and which burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place.
By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped, and he took her hand.
‘‘Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me!’’ Isabel said, very gently; gently, too, she drew her hand away.
‘‘Don’t taunt me with that; that I don’t know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it’s all my loss. But that is what I want, and it seems to me I am taking the best way. If you will be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you, you will not be able to say it is from ignorance.’’
‘‘If you know me little, I know you even less,’’ said Isabel.
‘‘You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course, that is very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do like me rather, don’t you?’’
‘‘I like you very much, Lord Warburton,’’ the girl answered; and at this moment she liked him immensely.
‘‘I thank you for saying that; it shows you don’t regard me as a stranger. I really believe I have filled all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don’t see why I should not fill this one—in which I offer myself to you—seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well; I have friends who will speak for me.’’
‘‘I don’t need the recommendation of your friends,’’ said Isabel.
‘‘Ah now, that is delightful of you. You believe in me yourself.’’
‘‘Completely,’’ Isabel declared; and it was the truth.
The light in her companion’s eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy.
‘‘If you are mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I possess!’’
She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he did not. He was sinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say something as nearly as possible as kind as what he had said to her. His words had carried perfect conviction with them; she felt that he loved her.
‘‘I thank you more than I can say for your offer,’’ she rejoined at last; ‘‘it does me great honour.’’
‘‘Ah, don’t say that!’’ Lord Warburton broke out. ‘‘I was afraid you would say something like that. I don’t see what you have to do with that sort of thing. I don’t see why you should thank me—it is I who ought to thank you, for listening to me; a man whom you know so little, coming down on you with such a thumper! Of course it’s a great question; I must tell you that I would rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you have listened—or at least your having listened at all— gives me some hope.’’
‘‘Don’t hope too much,’’ Isabel said.
‘‘Oh, Miss Archer!’’ her companion murmured, smiling again in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits—the coquetry of elation.
‘‘Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?’’ Isabel asked.
‘‘Surprised? I don’t know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn’t be that; it would be a feeling very much worse.’’
Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes.
‘‘I am very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I am by no means sure that you would not be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty; it is perfectly sincere.’’
‘‘I am willing to risk it, Miss Archer,’’ her companion answered.
‘‘It’s a great question, as you say; it’s a very difficult question.’’
‘‘I don’t expect you, of course, to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting, I will gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends upon your answer.’’
‘‘I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense,’’ said Isabel.
‘‘Oh, don’t mind. I would much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one to-day.’’
‘‘But it is very probable that even six months hence I should not be able to give you one that you would think good.’’
‘‘Why not, since you really like me?’’
‘‘Ah, you must never doubt of that,’’ said Isabel.
‘‘Well, then, I don’t see what more you ask!’’
‘‘It is not what I ask; it is what I can give. I don’t think I should suit you; I really don’t think I should.’’
‘‘You needn’t bother about that; that’s my affair. You needn’t be a better royalist than the king.’’
‘‘It is not only that,’’ said Isabel; ‘‘but I am not sure I wish to marry any one.’’
‘‘Very likely you don’t. I have no doubt a great many women begin that way,’’ said his lordship, who, be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. ‘‘But they are frequently persuaded.’’
‘‘Ah, that is bec
ause they want to be!’’
And Isabel lightly laughed.
Her suitor’s countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence.
‘‘I’m afraid it’s my being an Englishman that makes you hesitate,’’ he said, presently. ‘‘I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own country.’’
Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton.
‘‘Has he told you that?’’ she asked.
‘‘I remember his making the remark; he spoke perhaps of Americans generally.’’
‘‘He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England,’’ said Isabel, in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle’s pictorial circumstances and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view.
It gave her companion hope, and he immediately exclaimed, warmly: ‘‘Ah, my dear Miss Archer, old England is a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we have furbished it up a little.’’
‘‘Oh, don’t furbish it, Lord Warburton; leave it alone; I like it this way.’’
‘‘Well, then, if you like it, I am more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose.’’
‘‘I am afraid I can’t make you understand.’’
‘‘You ought at least to try; I have got a fair intelligence. Are you afraid—afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over.’’