The Portrait of a Lady

  ‘‘I thought you were going to say that!’’ Goodwood exclaimed, rather artlessly.

  ‘‘You have considered it, then?’’

  ‘‘Of course I have, very carefully. I have looked all round it. Otherwise I shouldn’t have come as far as this. That’s what I stayed in Paris two months for; I was thinking it over.’’

  ‘‘I am afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best, because you were so much attracted.’’

  ‘‘Best for whom, do you mean?’’ Goodwood inquired.

  ‘‘Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Osmond next.’’

  ‘‘Oh, it won’t do her any good! I don’t flatter myself that.’’

  ‘‘Won’t it do her harm?—that’s the question.’’

  ‘‘I don’t see what it will matter to her. I am nothing to Mrs. Osmond. But if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.’’

  ‘‘Yes, and that’s why you go.’’

  ‘‘Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?’’

  ‘‘How will it help you? That’s what I want to know,’’ said Miss Stackpole.

  ‘‘That’s just what I can’t tell you; it’s just what I was thinking about in Paris.’’

  ‘‘It will make you more discontented.’’

  ‘‘Why do you say more so?’’ Goodwood asked, rather sternly. ‘‘How do you know I am discontented?’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ said Henrietta, hesitating a little, ‘‘—you seem never to have cared for another.’’

  ‘‘How do you know what I care for?’’ he cried, with a big blush. ‘‘Just now I care to go to Rome.’’

  Henrietta looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression. ‘‘Well,’’ she observed, at last, ‘‘I only wanted to tell you what I think; I had it on my mind. Of course you think it’s none of my business. But nothing is any one’s business, on that principle.’’

  ‘‘It’s very kind of you; I am greatly obliged to you for your interest,’’ said Caspar Goodwood. ‘‘I shall go to Rome, and I shan’t hurt Mrs. Osmond.’’

  ‘‘You won’t hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?—that is the question.’’

  ‘‘Is she in need of help?’’ he asked, slowly, with a penetrating look.

  ‘‘Most women always are,’’ said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness, and generalizing less hopefully than usual. ‘‘If you go to Rome,’’ she added, ‘‘I hope you will be a true friend—not a selfish one!’’ And she turned away and began to look at the pictures.

  Caspar Goodwood let her go, and stood watching her while she wandered round the room; then, after a moment, he rejoined her. ‘‘You have heard something about her here,’’ he said in a moment. ‘‘I should like to know what you have heard.’’

  Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and though on this occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after a moment’s hesitation, to make no superficial exception. ‘‘Yes, I have heard,’’ she answered; ‘‘but as I don’t want you to go to Rome I won’t tell you.’’

  ‘‘Just as you please. I shall see for myself,’’ said Goodwood. Then, inconsistently—for him, ‘‘You have heard she is unhappy!’’ he added.

  ‘‘Oh, you won’t see that!’’ Henrietta exclaimed.

  ‘‘I hope not. When do you start?’’

  ‘‘To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?’’

  Goodwood hesitated; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss Stackpole’s company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the same character as Gilbert Osmond’s, but it had at this moment an equal distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole’s virtues than a reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. Lady-correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he supposed that they ministered somehow to social progress. But it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish that Miss Stackpole did not take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was not always thinking of her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least colloquial of men, and this inquiring authoress was constantly flashing her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn’t care so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections—which show how widely different, in effect, his ill humour was from Gilbert Osmond’s. He wished to go immediately to Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the European railway carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vice, knee to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found one’s self objecting with all the added vehemence of one’s wish to have the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon car. But he could not take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the morning; it seemed to him that this would be an insult to an unprotected woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone, unless he should wait longer than he had patience for. It would not do to start the next day. She worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in a European railway carriage with her offered a complication of irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to put himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some moments, and then he said, without any of the richness of gallantry, but in a tone of extreme distinctness— ‘‘Of course, if you are going to-morrow, I will go too, as I may be of assistance to you.’’

  ‘‘Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!’’ Henrietta remarked, serenely.

  45

  I HAVE already had reason to say that Isabel knew that her husband was displeased by the continuance of Ralph’s visit to Rome. This knowledge was very present to her as she went to her cousin’s hotel the day after she had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his sincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient perception of the sources of Osmond’s displeasure. He wished her to have no freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle of freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself, that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband’s disapproval; that is, she partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to Osmond’s wishes; he was her master; she gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled her with shame as well as with dread, for when she gave herself away she had lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband’s intentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, however, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back something that she had solemnly given. Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her. He had not yet formally forbidden her to go and see Ralph; but she felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband’s wish for the event; to be just, she didn’t see how he could like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him; but Osmond’s objections were none the less founded. If Osmond should positively interpose, then she should have to decide, and that would
not be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rupture with her husband, she found herself wishing that Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed preferable to repudiating the most serious act—the single sacred act—of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous. To break with Osmond once would be to break forever; any open acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was to have been exquisite. Once they missed it, nothing else would do; there is no substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel went to the Hôtel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure of expediency resided in her moral consciousness. It had been very liberal today, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn’t leave Ralph to die alone, she had something important to ask of him. This indeed was Gilbert’s business as well as her own.

  She came very soon to what she wished to speak of.

  ‘‘I want you to answer me a question,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s about Lord Warburton.’’

  ‘‘I think I know it,’’ Ralph answered from his armchair, out of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.

  ‘‘It’s very possible,’’ said Isabel. ‘‘Please then answer it.’’

  ‘‘Oh, I don’t say I can do that.’’

  ‘‘You are intimate with him,’’ said Isabel; ‘‘you have a great deal of observation of him.’’

  ‘‘Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!’’

  ‘‘Why should he dissimulate? That’s not his nature.’’

  ‘‘Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,’’ said Ralph, with an air of private amusement.

  ‘‘To a certain extent—yes. But is he really in love?’’

  ‘‘Very much, I think. I can make that out.’’

  ‘‘Ah!’’ said Isabel, with a certain dryness.

  Ralph looked at her a moment; a shade of perplexity mingled with his mild hilarity.

  ‘‘You said that as if you were disappointed.’’

  Isabel got up, slowly, smoothing her gloves, and eyeing them thoughtfully.

  ‘‘It’s after all no business of mine.’’

  ‘‘You are very philosophic,’’ said her cousin. And then in a moment—‘‘May I inquire what you are talking about?’’

  Isabel stared a little. ‘‘I thought you knew: Lord Warburton tells me he desires to marry Pansy. I have told you that before, without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?’’

  ‘‘Ah, for Pansy, no!’’ cried Ralph, very positively.

  ‘‘But you said just now that he did.’’

  Ralph hesitated a moment. ‘‘That he cared for you, Mrs. Osmond.’’

  Isabel shook her head, gravely. ‘‘That’s nonsense, you know.’’

  ‘‘Of course it is. But the nonsense is Warburton’s, not mine.’’

  ‘‘That would be very tiresome,’’ Isabel said, speaking, as she flattered herself, with much subtlety.

  ‘‘I ought to tell you indeed,’’ Ralph went on, ‘‘that to me he has denied it.’’

  ‘‘It’s very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you that he is in love with Pansy?’’

  ‘‘He has spoken very well of her—very properly. He has let me know, of course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.’’

  ‘‘Does he really think it?’’

  ‘‘Ah, what Warburton really thinks—!’’ said Ralph.

  Isabel fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves upon which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked up, and then: ‘‘Ah, Ralph, you give me no help!’’ she cried, abruptly, passionately.

  It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf between them had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a moment: ‘‘How unhappy you must be!’’

  He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him.

  ‘‘When I talk of your helping me, I talk great nonsense,’’ she said, with a quick smile. ‘‘The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments! The matter is very simple; Lord Warburton must get on by himself. I can’t undertake to help him.’’

  ‘‘He ought to succeed easily,’’ said Ralph.

  Isabel hesitated a moment. ‘‘Yes—but he has not always succeeded.’’

  ‘‘Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss Osmond capable of giving us a surprise?’’

  ‘‘It will come from him, rather. I suspect that after all he will let the matter drop.’’

  ‘‘He will do nothing dishonourable,’’ said Ralph.

  ‘‘I am very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to leave the poor child alone. She cares for some one else, and it is cruel to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.’’

  ‘‘Cruel to the other person perhaps—the one she cares for. But Warburton isn’t obliged to mind that.’’

  ‘‘No, cruel to her,’’ said Isabel. ‘‘She would be very unhappy if she were to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Rosier. That idea seems to amuse you; of course you are not in love with him. He has the merit of being in love with her. She can see at a glance that Lord Warburton is not.’’

  ‘‘He would be very good to her,’’ said Ralph.

  ‘‘He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with perfect propriety.’’

  ‘‘How would your husband like that?’’

  ‘‘Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain satisfaction himself.’’

  ‘‘Has he commissioned you to obtain it?’’ Ralph ventured to ask.

  ‘‘It was natural that as an old friend of Lord Warburton’s—an older friend, that is, than Osmond—I should take an interest in his intentions.’’

  ‘‘Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean.’’

  Isabel hesitated, frowning a little. ‘‘Let me understand. Are you pleading his cause?’’

  ‘‘Not in the least. I am very glad he should not become your stepdaughter’s husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!’’ said Ralph, smiling. ‘‘But I’m rather nervous lest your husband should think you haven’t pushed him enough.’’

  Isabel found herself able to smile as well as he.

  ‘‘He knows me well enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention of pushing, I presume. I am not afraid I shall not be able to justify myself!’’ she said, lightly.

  Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to Ralph’s infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural face, and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage desire to hear her complain of her husband—hear her say that she should be held accountable for Lord Warburton’s defection. Ralph was certain that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form that in such an event Osmond’s displeasure would take. It could only take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Isabel of it—to let her see at least that he knew it. It little mattered that Isabel would know it much better; it was for his own satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her that he was not deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Osmond; he felt cold-blooded, cruel, dis
honourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention? Why did she ask him his advice, if she gave him no liberty to answer her? How could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was bound to consider.

  ‘‘You will be decidedly at variance, all the same,’’ he said, in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarcely understood—‘‘You will find yourselves thinking very differently,’’ he continued.

  ‘‘That may easily happen, among the most united couples!’’ She took up her parasol; he saw that she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. ‘‘It’s a matter we can hardly quarrel about, however,’’ she added; ‘‘for almost all the interest is on his side. That is very natural. Pansy is after all his daughter—not mine.’’ And she put out her hand to wish him good-bye.

  Ralph took an inward resolution that she should not leave him without his letting her know that he knew everything; it seemed too great an opportunity to lose. ‘‘Do you know what his interest will make him say?’’ he asked, as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly—not discouragingly—and he went on. ‘‘It will make him say that your want of zeal is owing to jealousy.’’ He stopped a moment; her face made him afraid.

  ‘‘To jealousy?’’

  ‘‘To jealousy of his daughter.’’

  She blushed red and threw back her head.

  ‘‘You are not kind,’’ she said, in a voice that he had never heard on her lips.

  ‘‘Be frank with me, and you’ll see,’’ said Ralph.

  But she made no answer; she only shook her hand out of his own, which he tried still to hold, and rapidly went out of the room. She made up her mind to speak to Pansy, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to the young girl’s room before dinner. Pansy was already dressed; she was always in advance of the time; it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait. At present she was seated in her fresh array, before the bedroom fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up and which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in the Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Pansy’s virginal bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference to welcome Isabel, the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Isabel had a difficult task—the only thing was to perform it as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against betraying it to Pansy. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at least too stern; she was afraid of frightening her. But Pansy seemed to have guessed that she had come a little as a confessor; for after she had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the fire, and Isabel had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her stepmother’s knees. What Isabel wished to do was to hear from her own lips that her mind was not occupied with Lord Warburton; but if she desired the assurance, she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke it. The girl’s father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and indeed Isabel knew that if Pansy should display the smallest germ of a disposition to encourage Lord Warburton, her own duty was to hold her tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest; Pansy’s supreme simplicity, and innocence even more complete than Isabel had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative inquiry something of the effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague fire-light, with her pretty dress vaguely shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of the situation, she looked to Isabel like a childish martyr decked out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When Isabel said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might have been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire to leave her at liberty, Pansy bent forward, raised her face nearer and nearer to Isabel’s, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep longing, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak, and that she begged her to advise her now.