‘‘I don’t agree with you,’’ she said. ‘‘I think just the other way. I don’t know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; on the contrary, it’s a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly, the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don’t express me; and heaven forbid they should!’’
‘‘You dress very well,’’ interposed Madame Merle, skilfully.
‘‘Possibly; but I don’t care to be judged by that. My clothes may express the dress-maker, but they don’t express me. To begin with, it’s not my own choice that I wear them; they are imposed upon me by society.’’
‘‘Should you prefer to go without them?’’ Madame Merle inquired, in a tone which virtually terminated the discussion.
I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit upon the sketch I have given of the youthful loyalty which our heroine practised towards this accomplished woman, that Isabel had said nothing whatever to her about Lord Warburton, and had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar Goodwood. Isabel had not concealed from her, however, that she had had opportunities of marrying, and had even let her know that they were of a highly advantageous kind. Lord Warburton had left Lockleigh, and was gone to Scotland, taking his sisters with him; and though he had written to Ralph more than once, to ask about Mr. Touchett’s health, the girl was not liable to the embarrassment of such inquiries as, had he still been in the neighbourhood, he would probably have felt bound to make in person. He had admirable self-control, but she felt sure that if he had come to Gardencourt he would have seen Madame Merle, and that if he had seen her he would have liked her, and betrayed to her that he was in love with her young friend.
It so happened that during Madame Merle’s previous visits to Gardencourt—each of them much shorter than the present one—he had either not been at Lockleigh or had not called at Mr. Touchett’s. Therefore, though she knew him by name as the great man of that county, she had no cause to suspect him of being a suitor of Mrs. Touchett’s freshly imported niece.
‘‘You have plenty of time,’’ she had said to Isabel, in return for the mutilated confidences which Isabel made her, and which did not pretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at moments the girl had compunctions at having said so much. ‘‘I am glad you have done nothing yet—that you have it still to do. It is a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers—so long, of course, as they are not the best she is likely to have. Excuse me if my tone seems horribly worldly; one must take that view sometimes. Only don’t keep on refusing for the sake of refusing. It’s a pleasant exercise of power; but accepting is after all an exercise of power as well. There is always the danger of refusing once too often. It was not the one I fell into—I didn’t refuse often enough. You are an exquisite creature, and I should like to see you married to a prime minister. But speaking strictly, you know you are not what is technically called a parti. You are extremely good-looking, and extremely clever; in yourself you are quite exceptional. You appear to have the vaguest ideas about your earthly possessions; but from what I can make out, you are not embarrassed with an income. I wish you had a little money.’’
‘‘I wish I had!’’ said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting for the moment that her poverty had been a venial fault for two gallant gentlemen.
In spite of Sir Matthew Hope’s benevolent recommendation, Madame Merle did not remain to the end, as the issue of poor Mr. Touchett’s malady had now come frankly to be designated. She was under pledges to other people which had at last to be redeemed, and she left Gardencourt with the understanding that she should in any event see Mrs. Touchett there again, or in town, before quitting England. Her parting with Isabel was even more like the beginning of a friendship than their meeting had been.
‘‘I am going to six places in succession,’’ she said, ‘‘but I shall see no one I like so well as you. They will all be old friends, however; one doesn’t make new friends at my age. I have made a great exception for you. You must remember that, and you must think well of me. You must reward me by believing in me.’’
By way of answer, Isabel kissed her, and though some women kiss with facility, there are kisses and kisses, and this embrace was satisfactory to Madame Merle.
Isabel, after this, was much alone; she saw her aunt and cousin only at meals, and discovered that of the hours that Mrs. Touchett was invisible, only a minor portion was now devoted to nursing her husband. She spent the rest in her own apartments, to which access was not allowed even to her niece, in mysterious and inscrutable exercises. At table she was grave and silent; but her solemnity was not an attitude—Isabel could see that it was a conviction. She wondered whether her aunt repented of having taken her own way so much; but there was no visible evidence of this—no tears, no sighs, no exaggeration of a zeal which had always deemed itself sufficient. Mrs. Touchett seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over and summing them up; she had a little moral account-book—with columns unerringly ruled, and a sharp steel clasp—which she kept with exemplary neatness.
‘‘If I had foreseen this I would not have proposed your coming abroad now,’’ she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had left the house. ‘‘I would have waited and sent for you next year.’’
Her remarks had usually a practical ring.
‘‘So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle? It’s a great happiness to me to have come now.’’
‘‘That’s very well. But it was not that you might know your uncle that I brought you to Europe.’’ A perfectly veracious speech; but, as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed.
She had leisure to think of this and other matters. She took a solitary walk every day, and spent much time in turning over the books in the library. Among the subjects that engaged her attention were the adventures of her friend Miss Stackpole, with whom she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked her friend’s private epistolary style better than her public; that is, she thought her public letters would have been excellent if they had not been printed. Henrietta’s career, however, was not so successful as might have been wished even in the interest of her private felicity; that view of the inner life of Great Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. Mr. Bantling, however, had evidently taken Henrietta’s affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. ‘‘He says he should think I would go to the Continent,’’ Henrietta wrote; ‘‘and as he thinks of going there himself, I suppose his advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don’t take a view of French life; and it is a fact that I want very much to see the new Republic. Mr. Bantling doesn’t care much about the Republic, but he thinks of going over to Paris anyway. I must say he is quite as attentive as I could wish, and at any rate I shall have seen one polite Englishman. I keep telling Mr. Bantling that he ought to have been an American; and you ought to see how it pleases him. Whenever I say so, he always breaks out with the same exclamation—‘Ah, but really, come now!’ ’’ A few days later she wrote that she had decided to go to Paris at the end of the week, and that Mr. Bantling had promised to see her off—perhaps even he would go as far as Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should arrive, Henrietta added; speaking quite as if Isabel were to start on her continental journey alone, and making no allusion to Mrs. Touchett. Bearing in mind his interest in their late companion, our heroine communicated several passages from Miss Stackpole’s letters to Ralph, who followed with an emotion akin to suspense the career of the correspondent of the Interviewer.
‘‘It seems to me that she is doing very well,’’ he said, ‘‘going over to Paris with an ex-guardsman! If she wants somethi
ng to write about, she has only to describe that episode.’’
‘‘It is not conventional, certainly,’’ Isabel answered; ‘‘but if you mean that—as far as Henrietta is concerned—it is not perfectly innocent, you are very much mistaken. You will never understand Henrietta.’’
‘‘Excuse me; I understand her perfectly. I didn’t at all at first; but now I have got the point of view. I am afraid, however, that Bantling has not; he may have some surprises. Oh, I understand Henrietta as well as if I had made her!’’
Isabel was by no means sure of this; but she abstained from expressing further doubt, for she was disposed in these days to extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon, less than a week after Madame Merle’s departure, she was seated in the library with a volume to which her attention was not fastened. She had placed herself in a deep window-bench, from which she looked out into the dull, damp park; and as the library stood at right angles to the entrance-front of the house, she could see the doctor’s dog-cart, which had been waiting for the last two hours before the door. She was struck with the doctor’s remaining so long; but at last she saw him appear in the portico, stand a moment, slowly drawing on his gloves and looking at the knees of his horse, and then get into the vehicle and drive away. Isabel kept her place for half an hour; there was a great stillness in the house. It was so great that when she at last heard a soft, slow step on the deep carpet of the room, she was almost startled by the sound. She turned quickly away from the window, and saw Ralph Touchett standing there, with his hands still in his pockets, but with a face absolutely void of its usual latent smile. She got up, and her movement and glance were a question.
‘‘It’s all over,’’ said Ralph.
‘‘Do you mean that my uncle—?’’ And Isabel stopped.
‘‘My father died an hour ago.’’
‘‘Ah, my poor Ralph!’’ the girl murmured, putting out her hand to him.
20
SOME FORTNIGHT after this incident Madame Merle drove up in a hansom cab to the house in Winchester Square. As she descended from her vehicle she observed, suspended between the dining-room windows, a large, neat, wooden tablet, on whose fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint the words—‘‘This noble freehold mansion to be sold’’; with the name of the agent to whom application should be made. ‘‘They certainly lose no time,’’ said the visitor, as, after sounding the big brass knocker, she waited to be admitted; ‘‘it’s a practical country!’’ And within the house, as she ascended to the drawing-room, she perceived numerous signs of abdication; pictures removed from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped and floors laid bare. Mrs. Touchett presently received her, and intimated in a few words that condolences might be taken for granted.
‘‘I know what you are going to say—he was a very good man. But I know it better than any one, because I gave him more chance to show it. In that I think I was a good wife.’’ Mrs. Touchett added that at the end her husband apparently recognized this fact. ‘‘He has treated me liberally,’’ she said; ‘‘I won’t say more liberally than I expected, because I didn’t expect. You know that as a general thing I don’t expect. But he chose, I presume, to recognize the fact that though I lived much abroad, and mingled—you may say freely—in foreign life, I never exhibited the smallest preference for any one else.’’
‘‘For any one but yourself,’’ Madame Merle mentally observed; but the reflection was perfectly inaudible.
‘‘I never sacrificed my husband to another,’’ Mrs. Touchett continued, with her stout curtness.
‘‘Oh no,’’ thought Madame Merle; ‘‘you never did anything for another!’’
There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so as they are not in accord either with the view—somewhat superficial perhaps—that we have hitherto enjoyed of Madame Merle’s character, or with the literal facts of Mrs. Touchett’s history; the more so, too, as Madame Merle had a well-founded conviction that her friend’s last remark was not in the least to be construed as a side-thrust at herself. The truth is, that the moment she had crossed the threshold she received a subtle impression that Mr. Touchett’s death had had consequences, and that these consequences had been profitable to a little circle of persons among whom she was not numbered. Of course it was an event which would naturally have consequences; her imagination had more than once rested upon this fact during her stay at Gardencourt. But it had been one thing to foresee it mentally, and it was another to behold it actually. The idea of a distribution of property—she would almost have said of spoils—just now pressed upon her senses and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am far from wishing to say that Madame Merle was one of the hungry ones of the world; but we have already perceived that she had desires which had never been satisfied. If she had been questioned, she would of course have admitted—with a most becoming smile— that she had not the faintest claim to a share in Mr. Touchett’s relics. ‘‘There was never anything in the world between us,’’ she would have said. ‘‘There was never that, poor man!’’—with a fillip of her thumb and her third finger. I hasten to add, moreover, that if her private attitude at the present moment was somewhat incongruously invidious, she was very careful not to betray herself. She had, after all, as much sympathy for Mrs. Touchett’s gains as for her losses.
‘‘He has left me this house,’’ the newly made widow said; ‘‘but of course I shall not live in it; I have a much better house in Florence. The will was opened only three days since, but I have already offered the house for sale. I have also a share in the bank; but I don’t yet understand whether I am obliged to leave it there. If not, I shall certainly take it out. Ralph, of course, has Gardencourt; but I am not sure that he will have means to keep up the place. He is of course left very well off, but his father has given away an immense deal of money; there are bequests to a string of third cousins in Vermont. Ralph, however, is very fond of Gardencourt, and would be quite capable of living there—in summer— with a maid-of-all-work and a gardener’s boy. There is one remarkable clause in my husband’s will,’’ Mrs. Touchett added. ‘‘He has left my niece a fortune.’’
‘‘A fortune!’’ Madame Merle repeated, softly.
‘‘Isabel steps into something like seventy thousand pounds.’’
Madame Merle’s hands were clasped in her lap; at this she raised them, still clasped, and held them a moment against her bosom, while her eyes, a little dilated, fixed themselves on those of her friend. ‘‘Ah,’’ she cried, ‘‘the clever creature!’’
Mrs. Touchett gave her a quick look. ‘‘What do you mean by that?’’
For an instant Madame Merle’s colour rose, and she dropped her eyes. ‘‘It certainly is clever to achieve such results—without an effort!’’
‘‘There certainly was no effort; don’t call it an achievement.’’
Madame Merle was rarely guilty of the awkwardness of retracting what she had said; her wisdom was shown rather in maintaining it and placing it in a favourable light. ‘‘My dear friend, Isabel would certainly not have had seventy thousand pounds left her if she had not been the most charming girl in the world. Her charm includes great cleverness.’’
‘‘She never dreamed, I am sure, of my husband’s doing anything for her; and I never dreamed of it either, for he never spoke to me of his intention,’’ Mrs. Touchett said. ‘‘She had no claim upon him whatever; it was no great recommendation to him that she was my niece. Whatever she achieved she achieved unconsciously.’’
‘‘Ah,’’ rejoined Madame Merle, ‘‘those are the greatest strokes!’’
Mrs. Touchett gave a shrug. ‘‘The girl is fortunate; I don’t deny that. But for the present she is simply stupefied.’’
‘‘Do you mean that she doesn’t know what to do with the money?’’
‘‘That, I think, she has hardly considered. She doesn’t know what to think about the matter at all. It has been as if a big gun were suddenly fire
d off behind her; she is feeling herself, to see if she be hurt. It is but three days since she received a visit from the principal executor, who came in person, very gallantly, to notify her. He told me afterwards that when he had made his little speech she suddenly burst into tears. The money is to remain in the bank, and she is to draw the interest.’’
Madame Merle shook her head, with a wise, and now quite benignant, smile. ‘‘After she has done that two or three times she will get used to it.’’ Then after a silence— ‘‘What does your son think of it?’’ she abruptly asked.
‘‘He left England just before it came out—used up by his fatigue and anxiety, and hurrying off to the south. He is on his way to the Riviera, and I have not yet heard from him. But it is not likely he will ever object to anything done by his father.’’
‘‘Didn’t you say his own share had been cut down?’’
‘‘Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do something for the people in America. He is not in the least addicted to looking after number one.’’
‘‘It depends upon whom he regards as number one!’’ said Madame Merle. And she remained thoughtful a moment, with her eyes bent upon the floor. ‘‘Am I not to see your happy niece?’’ she asked at last, looking up.
‘‘You may see her; but you will not be struck with her being happy. She has looked as solemn, these three days, as a Cimabue Madonna!’’ And Mrs. Touchett rang for a servant.
Isabel came in shortly after the footman had been sent to call her; and Madame Merle thought, as she appeared, that Mrs. Touchett’s comparison had its force. The girl was pale and grave—an effect not mitigated by her deeper mourning; but the smile of her brightest moments came into her face as she saw Madame Merle, who went forward, laid her hand on our heroine’s shoulder, and after looking at her a moment, kissed her as if she were returning the kiss that she had received from Isabel at Gardencourt. This was the only allusion that Madame Merle, in her great good taste, made for the present to her young friend’s inheritance.