‘‘And now you had better go home.’’
‘‘May I not see you again?’’ he asked.
‘‘I think it is better not. You will be sure to talk of this, and you see it leads to nothing.’’
‘‘I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.’’
Isabel reflected a little, and then she said—‘‘I return in a day or two to my uncle’s, and I can’t propose to you to come there; it would be very inconsistent.’’
Caspar Goodwood, on his side, debated within himself. ‘‘You must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle’s more than a week ago, and I declined it.’’
‘‘From whom was your invitation?’’ Isabel asked, surprised.
‘‘From Mr. Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorization to accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole.’’
‘‘It certainly did not come from me. Henrietta certainly goes very far,’’ Isabel added.
‘‘Don’t be too hard on her—that touches me.’’
‘‘No; if you declined, that was very proper of you, and I thank you for it.’’ And Isabel gave a little shudder of dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr. Goodwood might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward for Lord Warburton!
‘‘When you leave your uncle, where are you going?’’ Caspar asked.
‘‘I shall go abroad with my aunt—to Florence and other places.’’
The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man’s heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his questions. ‘‘And when shall you come back to America?’’
‘‘Perhaps not for a long time; I am very happy here.’’
‘‘Do you mean to give up your country?’’
‘‘Don’t be an infant.’’
‘‘Well, you will be out of my sight indeed!’’ said Caspar Goodwood.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ she answered, rather grandly. ‘‘The world strikes me as small.’’
‘‘It is too large for me!’’ Caspar exclaimed, with a simplicity which our young lady might have found touching if her face had not been set against concessions.
This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment—‘‘Don’t think me unkind if I say that it’s just that—being out of your sight—that I like. If you were in the same place as I, I should feel as if you were watching me, and I don’t like that. I like my liberty too much. If there is a thing in the world that I am fond of,’’ Isabel went on, with a slight recurrence of the grandeur that had shown itself a moment before, ‘‘it is my personal independence.’’
But whatever there was of grandeur in this speech moved Caspar Goodwood’s admiration; there was nothing that displeased him in the sort of feeling it expressed. This feeling not only did no violence to his way of looking at the girl he wished to make his wife, but seemed a grace the more in so ardent a spirit. To his mind she had always had wings, and this was but the flutter of those stainless pinions. He was not afraid of having a wife with certain largeness of movement; he was a man of long steps himself. Isabel’s words, if they had been meant to shock him, failed of the mark, and only made him smile with the sense that here was common ground. ‘‘Who would wish less to curtail your liberty than I?’’ he asked. ‘‘What can give me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent—doing whatever you like? It is to make you independent that I want to marry you.’’
‘‘That’s a beautiful sophism,’’ said the girl, with a smile more beautiful still.
‘‘An unmarried woman—a girl of your age—is not independent. There are all sorts of things she can’t do. She is hampered at every step.’’
‘‘That’s as she looks at the question,’’ Isabel answered, with much spirit. ‘‘I am not in my first youth—I can do what I choose—I belong quite to the independent class. I have neither father nor mother; I am poor; I am of a serious disposition, and not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and conventional; indeed I can’t afford such luxuries. Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. I don’t wish to be a mere sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me.’’ She paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently on the point of doing so, when she went on— ‘‘Let me say this to you, Mr. Goodwood. You are so kind as to speak of being afraid of my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I am on the point of doing so—girls are liable to have such things said about them—remember what I have told you about my love of liberty, and venture to doubt it.’’
There was something almost passionately positive in the tone in which Isabel gave him this advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes which helped him to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you might have perceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly—‘‘You want simply to travel for two years? I am quite willing to wait two years, and you may do what you like in the interval. If that is all you want, pray say so. I don’t want you to be conventional; do I strike you as conventional myself? Do you want to improve your mind? Your mind is quite good enough for me; but if it interests you to wander about awhile and see different countries, I shall be delighted to help you, in any way in my power.’’
‘‘You are very generous; that is nothing new to me. The best way to help me will be to put as many hundred miles of sea between us as possible.’’
‘‘One would think you were going to commit a crime!’’ said Caspar Goodwood.
‘‘Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that, if the fancy takes me.’’
‘‘Well then,’’ he said, slowly, ‘‘I will go home.’’ And he put out his hand, trying to look contented and confident.
Isabel’s confidence in him, however, was greater than any he could feel in her. Not that he thought her capable of committing a crime; but, turn it over as he would, there was something ominous in the way she reserved her option. As Isabel took his hand, she felt a great respect for him; she knew how much he cared for her, and she thought him magnanimous. They stood so for a moment, looking at each other, united by a handclasp which was not merely passive on her side. ‘‘That’s right,’’ she said, very kindly, almost tenderly. ‘‘You will lose nothing by being a reasonable man.’’
‘‘But I will come back, wherever you are, two years hence,’’ he returned, with characteristic grimness.
We have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at this she suddenly changed her note. ‘‘Ah, remember, I promise nothing—absolutely nothing!’’ Then more softly, as if to help him to leave her, she added—‘‘And remember, too, that I shall not be an easy victim!’’
‘‘You will get very sick of your independence.’’
‘‘Perhaps I shall; it is even very probable. When that day comes I shall be very glad to see you.’’
She had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into her own room, and she waited a moment to see whether her visitor would not take his departure. But he appeared unable to move; there was still an immense unwillingness in his attitude—a deep remonstrance in his eyes.
‘‘I must leave you now,’’ said Isabel; and she opened the door, and passed into the other room.
This apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by a vague radiance sent up through the window from the court of the hotel, and Isabel could make out the masses of the furniture, the dim shining of the mirror, and the looming of the big four-postered bed. She stood still a moment, listening, and at last she heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of the sitting-room and close the door behind him. She stood still a moment longer, and then, by an irresistible impulse, she d
ropped on her knees before her bed, and hid her face in her arms.
17
SHE was not praying; she was trembling—trembling all over. She was an excitable creature, and now she was much excited; but she wished to resist her excitement, and the attitude of prayer, which she kept for some time, seemed to help her to be still. She was extremely glad Caspar Goodwood was gone; there was something exhilarating in having got rid of him. As Isabel became conscious of this feeling she bowed her head a little lower; the feeling was there, throbbing in her heart; it was a part of her emotion; but it was a thing to be ashamed of—it was profane and out of place. It was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and when she came back to the sitting-room she was still trembling a little. Her agitation had two causes; part of it was to be accounted for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might be feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair again, and took up her book, but without going through the form of opening the volume. She leaned back, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often expressed her gladness in accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially obvious, and gave herself up to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent suitors within a fortnight. That love of liberty of which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a sketch was as yet almost exclusively theoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it seemed to her that she had done something; she had tasted of the delight, if not of battle, at least of victory; she had done what she preferred. In the midst of this agreeable sensation the image of Mr. Goodwood taking his sad walk homeward through the dingy town presented itself with a certain reproachful force; so that, as at the same moment the door of the room was opened, she rose quickly with an apprehension that he had come back. But it was only Henrietta Stackpole returning from her dinner.
Miss Stackpole immediately saw that something had happened to Isabel, and indeed the discovery demanded no great penetration. Henrietta went straight up to her friend, who received her without a greeting. Isabel’s elation in having sent Caspar Goodwood back to America presupposed her being glad that he had come to see her; but at the same time she perfectly remembered that Henrietta had had no right to set a trap for her.
‘‘Has he been here, dear?’’ Miss Stackpole inquired, softly.
Isabel turned away, and for some moments answered nothing.
‘‘You acted very wrongly,’’ she said at last.
‘‘I acted for the best, dear. I only hope you acted as well.’’
‘‘You are not the judge. I can’t trust you,’’ said Isabel.
This declaration was unflattering, but Henrietta was much too unselfish to heed the charge it conveyed; she cared only for what it intimated with regard to her friend.
‘‘Isabel Archer,’’ she declared, with equal abruptness and solemnity, ‘‘if you marry one of these people, I will never speak to you again!’’
‘‘Before making so terrible a threat, you had better wait till I am asked,’’ Isabel replied. Never having said a word to Miss Stackpole about Lord Warburton’s overtures, she had now no impulse whatever to justify herself to Henrietta by telling her that she had refused that nobleman.
‘‘Oh, you’ll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the Continent. Annie Climber was asked three times in Italy—poor plain little Annie.’’
‘‘Well, if Annie Climber was not captured, why should I be?’’
‘‘I don’t believe Annie was pressed; but you’ll be.’’
‘‘That’s a flattering conviction,’’ said Isabel, with a laugh.
‘‘I don’t flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth!’’ cried her friend. ‘‘I hope you don’t mean to tell me that you didn’t give Mr. Goodwood some hope.’’
‘‘I don’t see why I should tell you anything; as I said to you just now, I can’t trust you. But since you are so much interested in Mr. Goodwood, I won’t conceal from you that he returns immediately to America.’’
‘‘You don’t mean to say you have sent him off?’’ Henrietta broke out in dismay.
‘‘I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, Henrietta.’’
Miss Stackpole stood there with expanded eyes, and then she went to the mirror over the chimney-piece and took off her bonnet.
‘‘I hope you have enjoyed your dinner,’’ Isabel remarked, slightly, as she did so.
But Miss Stackpole was not to be diverted by frivolous propositions, nor bribed by the offer of autobiographic opportunities.
‘‘Do you know where you are going, Isabel Archer?’’
‘‘Just now I am going to bed,’’ said Isabel, with persistent frivolity.
‘‘Do you know where you are drifting?’’ Henrietta went on, holding out her bonnet delicately.
‘‘No, I haven’t the least idea, and I find it very pleasant not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see—that’s my idea of happiness.’’
‘‘Mr. Goodwood certainly didn’t teach you to say such things as that—like the heroine of an immoral novel,’’ said Miss Stackpole. ‘‘You are drifting to some great mistake.’’
Isabel was irritated by her friend’s interference, but even in the midst of her irritation she tried to think what truth this declaration could represent. She could think of nothing that diverted her from saying—‘‘You must be very fond of me, Henrietta, to be willing to be so disagreeable to me.’’
‘‘I love you, Isabel,’’ said Miss Stackpole, with feeling.
‘‘Well, if you love me, let me alone. I asked that of Mr. Goodwood, and I must also ask it of you.’’
‘‘Take care you are not let alone too much.’’
‘‘That is what Mr. Goodwood said to me. I told him I must take the risks.’’
‘‘You are a creature of risks—you make me shudder!’’ cried Henrietta. ‘‘When does Mr. Goodwood return to America?’’
‘‘I don’t know—he didn’t tell me.’’
‘‘Perhaps you didn’t inquire,’’ said Henrietta, with the note of righteous irony.
‘‘I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask questions of him.’’
This assertion seemed to Miss Stackpole for a moment to bid defiance to comment; but at last she exclaimed— ‘‘Well, Isabel, if I didn’t know you, I might think you were heartless!’’
‘‘Take care,’’ said Isabel; ‘‘you are spoiling me.’’
‘‘I am afraid I have done that already. I hope, at least,’’ Miss Stackpole added, ‘‘that he may cross with Annie Climber!’’
Isabel learned from her the next morning that she had determined not to return to Gardencourt (where old Mr. Touchett had promised her a renewed welcome), but to await in London the arrival of the invitation that Mr. Bantling had promised her from his sister, Lady Pensil. Miss Stackpole related very freely her conversation with Ralph Touchett’s sociable friend, and declared to Isabel that she really believed she had now got hold of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of Lady Pensil’s letter—Mr. Bantling had virtually guaranteed the arrival of this document—she would immediately depart for Bedfordshire, and if Isabel cared to look out for her impressions in the Interviewer, she would certainly find them. Henrietta was evidently going to see something of the inner life this time.
‘‘Do you know where you are drifting, Henrietta Stackpole?’’ Isabel asked, imitating the tone in which her friend had spoken the night before.
‘‘I am drifting to a big position—that of queen of American journalism. If my next letter isn’t copied all over the West, I’ll swallow my penwiper!’’
She had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the young lady of the continental offers, that they should go together to make those purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber’s farewell to a hemisphere in which she at least had been appreciated; and she presently repaired to J
ermyn Street to pick up her companion. Shortly after her departure Ralph Touchett was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel saw that he had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his confidence. He had received a telegram from his mother, telling him that his father had had a sharp attack of his old malady, that she was much alarmed, and that she begged Ralph would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occasion, at least, Mrs. Touchett’s devotion to the electric wire had nothing incongruous.
‘‘I have judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew Hope, first,’’ Ralph said; ‘‘by great good luck he’s in town. He is to see me at half-past twelve, and I shall make sure of his coming down to Gardencourt— which he will do the more readily as he has already seen my father several times, both there and in London. There is an express at two-forty-five, which I shall take, and you will come back with me, or remain here a few days longer, exactly as you prefer.’’
‘‘I will go with you!’’ Isabel exclaimed. ‘‘I don’t suppose I can be of any use to my uncle, but if he is ill I should like to be near him.’’
‘‘I think you like him,’’ said Ralph, with a certain shy pleasure in his eye. ‘‘You appreciate him, which all the world hasn’t done. The quality is too fine.’’
‘‘I think I love him,’’ said Isabel, simply.
‘‘That’s very well. After his son, he is your greatest admirer.’’
Isabel welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a little sigh of relief at the thought that Mr. Touchett was one of those admirers who could not propose to marry her. This, however, was not what she said; she went on to inform Ralph that there were other reasons why she should not remain in London. She was tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta was going away—going to stay in Bedfordshire.
‘‘In Bedfordshire?’’ Ralph exclaimed, with surprise.
‘‘With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Bantling, who has answered for an invitation.’’
Ralph was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. Suddenly, however, he looked grave again. ‘‘Bantling is a man of courage. But if the invitation should get lost on the way?’’