These words were uttered with a tender eagerness which went to Isabel’s heart, and she would have given her little finger at that moment, to feel, strongly and simply, the impulse to answer, ‘‘Lord Warburton, it is impossible for a woman to do better in this world than to commit herself to your loyalty.’’ But though she could conceive the impulse, she could not let it operate; her imagination was charmed, but it was not led captive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was something very different—something which altogether deferred the need of answering. ‘‘Don’t think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day.’’
‘‘Certainly, certainly!’’ cried Lord Warburton. ‘‘I wouldn’t bore you for the world.’’
‘‘You have given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you I will do it justice.’’
‘‘That’s all I ask of you, of course—and that you will remember that my happiness is in your hands.’’
Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute—‘‘I must tell you that what I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible, without making you miserable.’’
‘‘There is no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won’t say that, if you refuse me, you will kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose.’’
‘‘You will live to marry a better woman than I.’’
‘‘Don’t say that, please,’’ said Lord Warburton, very gravely. ‘‘That is fair to neither of us.’’
‘‘To marry a worse one, then.’’
‘‘If there are better women than you, then I prefer the bad ones; that’s all I can say,’’ he went on, with the same gravity. ‘‘There is no accounting for tastes.’’
His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. ‘‘I will speak to you myself, very soon,’’ she said. ‘‘Perhaps I shall write to you.’’
‘‘At your convenience, yes,’’ he answered. ‘‘Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that.’’
‘‘I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a little.’’
He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-whip. ‘‘Do you know I am very much afraid of it—of that mind of yours?’’
Our heroine’s biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then, with a note in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion—‘‘So am I, my lord!’’ she exclaimed.
His compassion was not stirred, however; all that he possessed of the faculty of pity was needed at home. ‘‘Ah! Be merciful, be merciful,’’ he murmured.
‘‘I think you had better go,’’ said Isabel. ‘‘I will write to you.’’
‘‘Very good; but whatever you write, I will come and see you.’’ And then he stood reflecting, with his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having understood all that had been said, and of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots of an ancient beech. ‘‘There is one thing more,’’ said Lord Warburton. ‘‘You know, if you don’t like Lockleigh—if you think it’s damp, or anything of that sort—you need never go within fifty miles of it. It is not damp, by the way; I have had the house thoroughly examined; it is perfectly sanitary. But if you shouldn’t fancy it, you needn’t dream of living in it. There is no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I would just mention it; some people don’t like a moat, you know. Good-bye.’’
‘‘I delight in a moat,’’ said Isabel. ‘‘Good-bye.’’
He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment—a moment long enough for him to bend his head and kiss it. Then, shaking his hunting-whip with little quick strokes, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently very nervous.
Isabel herself was nervous, but she was not affected as she would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility, a great difficulty of choice; for it appeared to her that there was no choice in the question. She could not marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to correspond to any vision of happiness that she had hitherto entertained, or was now capable of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must convince him, and this duty was comparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a great opportunity. With whatever qualifications one would, Lord Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the situation might have discomforts, might contain elements that would displease her, but she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of twenty would accommodate themselves to it with extreme zeal. Why then upon her also should it not impose itself? Who was she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be larger than this large occasion? If she would not do this, then she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor Isabel found occasion to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger; for the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it were pride that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton, it was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was not. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the point; something told her that she should not be satisfied, and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticize would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him that she would consider his proposal, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her, and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her word. But this was not the case; she was wondering whether she were not a cold, hard girl; and when at last she got up and rather quickly went back to the house, it was because, as she had said to Lord Warburton, she was really frightened at herself.
13
IT was this feeling, and not the wish to ask advice—she had no desire whatever for that—that led her to speak to her uncle of what Lord Warburton had said to her. She wished to speak to some one; she should feel more natural, more human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin, of course, was a possible confidant; but it would have been disagreeable to her to confide this particular matter to Ralph. So, the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon; but he received his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. Isabel had quite taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, included the old man’s son, his physician, his personal servant, and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett did not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the less to Isabel’s finding her uncle alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the open window of his room, looking westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent expectation.
Isabel approached her point very directly. ‘‘I think I ought to let you know that Lord Warburton has asked me to marry him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first.’’
The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence she showed him. ‘‘Do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?’’ he added.
‘‘I have not answered him definitely yet; I have taken a little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall not accept him.’’
Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that whatever
interest he might take in the matter from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it. ‘‘Well, I told you you would be a success over here. Americans are highly appreciated.’’
‘‘Very highly indeed,’’ said Isabel. ‘‘But at the cost of seeming ungrateful, I don’t think I can marry Lord Warburton.’’
‘‘Well,’’ her uncle went on, ‘‘of course an old man can’t judge for a young lady. I am glad you didn’t ask me before you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you,’’ he added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, ‘‘that I have known all about it these three days.’’
‘‘About Lord Warburton’s state of mind?’’
‘‘About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to see it?’’ the old man asked, obligingly.
‘‘Thank you; I don’t think I care about that. But I am glad he wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was right.’’
‘‘Ah, well, I guess you do like him!’’ Mr. Touchett declared. ‘‘You needn’t pretend you don’t.’’
‘‘I like him extremely; I am very free to admit that. But I don’t wish to marry any one just now.’’
‘‘You think some one may come along whom you may like better. Well, that’s very likely,’’ said Mr. Touchett, who appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.
‘‘I don’t care if I don’t meet any one else; I like Lord Warburton quite well enough,’’ said Isabel, with that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased her interlocutors.
Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these sensations.
‘‘He’s a very fine man,’’ he resumed, in a tone which might have passed for that of encouragement. ‘‘His letter was one of the pleasantest letters I have received in some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that is, all except the part which was about himself. I suppose he told you all that.’’
‘‘He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,’’ Isabel said.
‘‘But you didn’t feel curious?’’
‘‘My curiosity would have been idle—once I had determined to decline his offer.’’
‘‘You didn’t find it sufficiently attractive?’’ Mr. Touchett inquired.
The girl was silent a moment.
‘‘I suppose it was that,’’ she presently admitted. ‘‘But I don’t know why.’’
‘‘Fortunately, ladies are not obliged to give reasons,’’ said her uncle. ‘‘There’s a great deal that’s attractive about such an idea; but I don’t see why the English should want to entice us away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them over there; but that’s because our population is insufficient. Here, you know, they are rather crowded. However, I suppose there is room for charming young ladies everywhere.’’
‘‘There seems to have been room here for you,’’ said Isabel, whose eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the park.
Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile.
‘‘There is room everywhere, my dear, if you will pay for it. I sometimes think I have paid too much for this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too much.’’
‘‘Perhaps I might,’’ the girl replied.
This suggestion gave her something more definite to rest upon than she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of her uncle’s genial shrewdness being associated with her dilemma seemed to prove to her that she was concerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life, and not altogether a victim to intellectual eagerness and vague ambitions—ambitions reaching beyond Lord Warburton’s handsome offer to something indefinable and possibly not commendable. In so far as the indefinable had an influence upon Isabel’s behaviour at this juncture, it was not the conception, however unformulated, of a union with Caspar Goodwood; for however little she might have felt warranted in lending a receptive ear to her English suitor, she was at least as far removed from the disposition to let the young man from Boston take complete possession of her. The sentiment in which she ultimately took refuge, after reading his letter, was a critical view of his having come abroad; for it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to take from her the sense of freedom. There was something too forcible, something oppressive and restrictive, in the manner in which he presented himself. She had been haunted at moments by the image of his disapproval, and she had wondered—a consideration she had never paid in one equal degree to any one else—whether he would like what she did. The difficulty was that more than any man she had ever known, more than poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his lordship the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood gave her an impression of energy. She might like it or not, but at any rate there was something very strong about him; even in one’s usual contact with him one had to reckon with it. The idea of a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to Isabel at present, because it seemed to her that she had just given a sort of personal accent to her independence by making up her mind to refuse Lord Warburton. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had seemed to range himself on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might evade him for a time, but that she must make terms with him at last— terms which would be certain to be favourable to himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of the things that helped her to resist such an obligation; and this impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her aunt’s invitation, which had come to her at a time when she expected from day to day to see Mr. Goodwood, and when she was glad to have an answer ready for something she was sure he would say to her. When she had told him at Albany, on the evening of Mrs. Touchett’s visit, that she could not now discuss difficult questions, because she was preoccupied with the idea of going to Europe with her aunt, he declared that this was no answer at all; and it was to obtain a better one that he followed her across the seas. To say to herself that he was a kind of fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who was able to take much for granted in him; but the reader has a right to demand a description less metaphysical.
He was the son of a proprietor of certain well-known cotton-mills in Massachusetts—a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar now managed the establishment, with a judgement and a brilliancy which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept its prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part of his education at Harvard University, where, however, he had gained more renown as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a votary of culture. Later, he had become reconciled to culture, and though he was still fond of sport, he was capable of showing an excellent understanding of other matters. He had a remarkable aptitude for mechanics, and had invented an improvement in the cotton-spinning process, which was now largely used and was known by his name. You might have seen his name in the papers in connexion with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he had given to Isabel by showing her in the columns of the New York Interviewer an exhaustive article on the Goodwood patent—an article not prepared by Miss Stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental interests. He had great talent for business, for administration, and for making people execute his purpose and carry out his views—for managing men, as the phrase was; and to give its complete value to this faculty, he had an insatiable, an almost fierce, ambition. It always struck people who knew him that he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends took for granted that he would not always content himself with that. He had once said to Isabel that, if the United States were only not such a confoundedly peaceful nation, he would find his proper place in the army. He keenly regretted that the Civil War should have terminated just as he ha
d grown old enough to wear shoulder-straps, and was sure that if something of the same kind would only occur again, he would make a display of striking military talent. It pleased Isabel to believe that he had the qualities of a famous captain, and she answered that, if it would help him on, she shouldn’t object to a war—a speech which ranked among the three or four most encouraging ones he had elicited from her, and of which the value was not diminished by her subsequent regret at having said anything so heartless, inasmuch as she never communicated this regret to him. She liked at any rate this idea of his being potentially a commander of men—liked it much better than some other points in his character and appearance. She cared nothing about his cotton-mill, and the Goodwood patent left her imagination absolutely cold. She wished him not an inch less a man than he was; but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if he looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too square and grim, and his figure too straight and stiff; these things suggested a want of easy adaptability to some of the occasions of life. Then she regarded with disfavour a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. But they all seemed to be made of the same piece; the pattern, the cut, was in every case identical. She had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a man of Mr. Goodwood’s importance; and then she had amended the rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection if she were in love with him. She was not in love with him, and therefore she might criticize his small defects as well as his great ones—which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of his being too serious, for one could never be that, but of his seeming so. He showed his seriousness too simply, too artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other people were present he talked too little about anything. And yet he was the strongest man she had ever known, and she believed that at bottom he was the cleverest. It was very strange; she was far from understanding the contradictions among her own impressions. Caspar Goodwood had never corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed that this was why he was so unsatisfactory. When, however, Lord Warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to the term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied. It was certainly strange.