The Portrait of A Lady (28 page)

‘‘That he should come to see her? That was very well, as far as it went. It was a little plot of mine; I let him know that we were in London, and when it had been arranged that I should spend the evening out, I just sent him a word—a word to the wise. I hoped he would find her alone; I won't pretend I didn't hope that you would be out of the way. He came to see her; but he might as well have stayed away.''

‘‘Isabel was cruel?'' Ralph inquired, smiling, and relieved at learning that his cousin had not deceived him.

‘‘I don't exactly know what passed between them. But she gave him no satisfaction—she sent him back to America.''

‘‘Poor Mr. Goodwood!'' Ralph exclaimed.

‘‘Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him,'' Henrietta went on.

‘‘Poor Mr. Goodwood!'' repeated Ralph. The exclamation, it must be confessed, was somewhat mechanical. It failed exactly to express his thoughts, which were taking another line.

‘‘You don't say that as if you felt it; I don't believe you care.''

‘‘Ah,'' said Ralph, ‘‘you must remember that I don't know this interesting young man—that I have never seen him.''

‘‘Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. If I didn't believe Isabel would come round,'' said Miss Stackpole, ‘‘—well, I'd give her up myself!''

18

IT had occurred to Ralph that under the circumstances Isabel's parting with Miss Stackpole might be of a slightly embarrassed nature, and he went down to the door of the hotel in advance of his cousin, who after a slight delay followed, with the traces of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he thought, in her eye. The two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no better news to give them of Mr. Touchett—a fact which caused Ralph to congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's having promised to come down in the five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs. Touchett, he learned, on reaching home, had been constantly with the old man, and was with him at that moment; and this fact made Ralph say to himself that, after all, what his mother wanted was simply opportunity. The finest natures were those that shone on large occasions. Isabel went to her own room, noting, throughout the house, that perceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs in search of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She went into the library, but Mrs. Touchett was not there, and as the weather, which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, it was not probable that she had gone for her usual walk in the grounds. Isabel was on the point of ringing to send an inquiry to her room, when her attention was taken by an unexpected sound—the sound of low music proceeding apparently from the drawing-room. She knew that her aunt never touched the piano, and the musician was therefore probably Ralph, who played for his own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at the present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his father had been relieved; so that Isabel took her way to the drawing-room with much alertness. The drawing-room at Gardencourt was an apartment of great distances, and as the piano was placed at the end of it furthest removed from the door at which Isabel entered, her arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the instrument. This person was neither Ralph nor his mother; it was a lady whom Isabel immediately saw to be a stranger to herself, although her back was presented to the door. This back—an ample and well-dressed one— Isabel contemplated for some moments in surprise. The lady was of course a visitor who had arrived during her absence, and who had not been mentioned by either of the servants—one of them her aunt's maid—of whom she had had speech since her return. Isabel had already learned, however, that the British domestic is not effusive, and she was particularly conscious of having been treated with dryness by her aunt's maid, whose offered assistance the young lady from Albany—versed, as young ladies are in Albany, in the very metaphysics of the toilet—had perhaps made too light of. The arrival of a visitor was far from disagreeable to Isabel; she had not yet divested herself of a youthful impression that each new acquaintance would exert some momentous influence upon her life. By the time she had made these reflections she became aware that the lady at the piano played remarkably well. She was playing something of Beethoven's—Isabel knew not what, but she recognized Beethoven—and she touched the piano softly and discreetly, but with evident skill. Her touch was that of an artist; Isabel sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and waited till the end of the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong desire to thank the player, and rose from her seat to do so, while at the same time the lady at the piano turned quickly round, as if she had become aware of her presence.

‘‘That is very beautiful, and your playing makes it more beautiful still,'' said Isabel, with all the young radiance with which she usually uttered a truthful rapture.

‘‘You don't think I disturbed Mr. Touchett, then?'' the musician answered, as sweetly as this compliment deserved. ‘‘The house is so large, and his room so far away, that I thought I might venture—especially as I played just—just
du dout des doigts.
''

‘‘She is a Frenchwoman,'' Isabel said to herself; ‘‘she says that as if she were French.'' And this supposition made the stranger more interesting to our speculative heroine. ‘‘I hope my uncle is doing well,'' Isabel added. ‘‘I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better.''

The lady gave a discriminating smile.

‘‘I am afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst moments.''

‘‘I am not in that state now,'' said Isabel. ‘‘On the contrary, I should be so glad if you would play something more.''

‘‘If it will give you pleasure—most willingly.'' And this obliging person took her place again, and struck a few chords, while Isabel sat down nearer the instrument. Suddenly the stranger stopped, with her hands on the keys, half turning and looking over her shoulder at the girl. She was forty years old, and she was not pretty; but she had a delightful expression. ‘‘Excuse me,'' she said; ‘‘but are you the niece—the young American?''

‘‘I am my aunt's niece,'' said Isabel, with
naïveté.

The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, looking over her shoulder with her charming smile.

‘‘That's very well,'' she said; ‘‘we are compatriots.''

And then she began to play.

‘‘Ah, then she is not French,'' Isabel murmured; and as the opposite supposition had made her interesting, it might have seemed that this revelation would have diminished her effectiveness. But such was not the fact; for Isabel, as she listened to the music, found much stimulus to conjecture in the fact that an American should so strongly resemble a foreign woman.

Her companion played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and while she played the shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Isabel could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn, and the wind shaking the great trees. At last, when the music had ceased, the lady got up, and, coming to her auditor, smiling, before Isabel had time to thank her again, said: ‘‘I am very glad you have come back; I have heard a great deal about you.''

Isabel thought her a very attractive person; but she nevertheless said, with a certain abruptness, in answer to this speech: ‘‘From whom have you heard about me?''

The stranger hesitated a single moment, and then— ‘‘From your uncle,'' she answered. ‘‘I have been here three days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in his room. Then he talked constantly of you.''

‘‘As you didn't know me, that must have bored you.''

‘‘It made me want to know you. All the more that since then—your aunt being so much with Mr. Touchett—I have been quite alone, and have got rather tired of my own society. I have not chosen a good moment for my visit.''

A servant had come in with lamps, and was presently followed by another, bearing the tea-tray. Of the appearance of this repast Mrs. Touchett had apparently been notified, for she now arrived and addressed herself to the tea-pot. Her greeting to her niece did not differ materially from her manner of raising the lid of this receptacle in order to glance at the contents: in neither act was it becoming to make a show of avidity. Questioned about her husband, she was unable to say that he was better; but the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected from this gentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope.

‘‘I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance?'' she said. ‘‘If you have not, I recommend you to do so; for so long as we continue—Ralph and I—to cluster about Mr. Touchett's bed, you are not likely to have much society but each other.''

‘‘I know nothing about you but that you are a great musician,'' Isabel said to the visitor.

‘‘There is a good deal more than that to know,'' Mrs. Touchett affirmed, in her little dry tone.

‘‘A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer!'' the lady exclaimed, with a light laugh. ‘‘I am an old friend of your aunt's—I have lived much in Florence—I am Madame Merle.''

She made this last announcement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct identity.

For Isabel, however, it represented but little; she could only continue to feel that Madame Merle had a charming manner.

‘‘She is not a foreigner, in spite of her name,'' said Mrs. Touchett. ‘‘She was born—I always forget where you were born.''

‘‘It is hardly worth-while I should tell you then.''

‘‘On the contrary,'' said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; ‘‘if I remembered, your telling me would be quite superfluous.''

Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a fine, frank smile.

‘‘I was born under the shadow of the national banner.''

‘‘She is too fond of mystery,'' said Mrs. Touchett; ‘‘that is her great fault.''

‘‘Ah,'' exclaimed Madame Merle, ‘‘I have great faults, but I don't think that is one of them; it certainly is not the greatest. I came into the world in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. My father was a high officer in the United States Navy, and had a post—a post of responsibility—in that establishment at the time. I suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate it. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land; the great thing is to love something.''

Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of Mrs. Touchett's characterization of her visitor, who had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the sort which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposition. It was a face that told of a rich nature and of quick and liberal impulses, and though it had no regular beauty was in the highest degree agreeable to contemplate.

Madame Merle was a tall, fair, plump woman; everything in her person was round and replete, though without those accumulations which minister to indolence. Her features were thick, but there was a graceful harmony among them, and her complexion had a healthy clearness. She had a small grey eye, with a great deal of light in it—an eye incapable of dullness, and, according to some people, incapable of tears; and a wide, firm mouth, which, when she smiled, drew itself upward to the left side, in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very affected, and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range herself in the last category. Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, which was arranged with picturesque simplicity, and a large white hand, of a perfect shape—a shape so perfect that its owner, preferring to leave it unadorned, wore no rings. Isabel had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman; but extended observation led her to say to herself that Madame Merle might be a German—a German of rank, a countess, a princess. Isabel would never have supposed that she had been born in Brooklyn—though she could doubtless not have justified her assumption that the air of distinction, possessed by Madame Merle in so eminent a degree, was inconsistent with such a birth. It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over the spot of the lady's nativity, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude which she then and there took towards life. And yet Madame Merle had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her deportment expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of ardent impulses, kept in admirable order. What an ideal combination! thought Isabel.

She made these reflections while the three ladies sat at their tea; but this ceremony was interrupted before long by the arrival of the great doctor from London, who had been immediately ushered into the drawing-room. Mrs. Touchett took him off to the library, to confer with him in private; and then Madame Merle and Isabel parted, to meet again at dinner. The idea of seeing more of this interesting woman did much to mitigate Isabel's perception of the melancholy that now hung over Gardencourt.

When she came into the drawing-room before dinner she found the place empty; but in the course of a moment Ralph arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened; Sir Matthew Hope's view of his condition was less sombre than Ralph's had been. The doctor recommended that the nurse alone should remain with the old man for the next three or four hours; so that Ralph, his mother, and the great physician himself were free to dine at table. Mrs. Touchett and Sir Matthew came in; Madame Merle was the last to appear.