The Portrait of A Lady (34 page)

Mrs. Touchett rarely changed her plans, and having intended before her husband's death to spend a part of the winter in Paris she saw no reason to deprive herself—still less to deprive her companion—of this advantage. Though they would live in great retirement, she might still present her niece, informally, to the little circle of her fellow-countrymen dwelling upon the skirts of the Champs Élysées. With many of these amiable colonists Mrs. Touchett was intimate; she shared their expatriation, their convictions, their pastimes, their
ennui.
Isabel saw them come with a good deal of assiduity to her aunt's hotel, and judged them with a trenchancy which is doubtless to be accounted for by the temporary exaltation of her sense of human duty. She made up her mind that their manner of life was superficial, and incurred some disfavour by expressing this view on bright Sunday afternoons, when the American absentees were engaged in calling upon each other. Though her listeners were the most good-natured people in the world, two or three of them thought her cleverness, which was generally admitted, only a dangerous variation of impertinence.

‘‘You all live here this way, but what does it all lead to?'' she was pleased to ask. ‘‘It doesn't seem to lead to anything, and I should think you would get very tired of it.''

Mrs. Touchett thought the question worthy of Henrietta Stackpole. The two ladies had found Henrietta in Paris, and Isabel constantly saw her; so that Mrs. Touchett had some reason for saying to herself that if her niece were not clever enough to originate almost anything, she might be suspected of having borrowed that style of remark from her journalistic friend. The first occasion on which Isabel had spoken was that of a visit paid by the two ladies to Mrs. Luce, an old friend of Mrs. Touchett's, and the only person in Paris she now went to see. Mrs. Luce had been living in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe; she used to say jocosely that she was one of the generation of 1830—a joke of which the point was not always taken. When it failed Mrs. Luce used always to explain—‘‘Oh yes, I am one of the romantics''; her French had never become very perfect. She was always at home on Sunday afternoons, and surrounded by sympathetic compatriots, usually the same. In fact she was at home at all times, and led in her well-cushioned little corner of the brilliant city as quiet and domestic a life as she might have led in her native Baltimore. The existence of Mr. Luce, her worthy husband, was somewhat more inscrutable. Superficially indeed, there was no mystery about it; the mystery lay deeper, and resided in the wonder of his supporting existence at all. He was the most unoccupied man in Europe, for he not only had no duties, but he had no pleasures. Habits certainly he had, but they were few in number, and had been worn threadbare by forty years of use. Mr. Luce was a tall, lean, grizzled, well-brushed gentleman, who wore a gold eye-glass and carried his hat a little too much on the back of his head. He went every day to the American banker's, where there was a post office which was almost as sociable and colloquial an institution as that of an American country town. He passed an hour (in fine weather) in a chair in the Champs Élysées, and he dined uncommonly well at his own table, seated above a waxed floor, which it was Mrs. Luce's happiness to believe had a finer polish than any other in Paris. Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Café Anglais, where his talent for ordering a dinner was a source of felicity to his companions and an object of admiration even to the head-waiter of the establishment. These were his only known avocations, but they had beguiled his hours for upwards of half a century, and they doubtless justified his frequent declaration that there was no place like Paris. In no other place, on these terms, could Mr. Luce flatter himself that he was enjoying life. There was nothing like Paris, but it must be confessed that Mr. Luce thought less highly of the French capital than in earlier days. In the list of his occupations his political reveries should not be omitted, for they were doubtless the animating principle of many hours that superficially seemed vacant. Like many of his fellow colonists, Mr. Luce was a high—or rather a deep—conservative, and gave no countenance to the government recently established in France. He had no faith in its duration, and would assure you from year to year that its end was close at hand. ‘‘They want to be kept down, sir, to be kept down; nothing but the strong hand—the iron heel—will do for them,'' he would frequently say of the French people; and his ideal of a fine government was that of the lately abolished Empire. ‘‘Paris is much less attractive than in the days of the Emperor; he knew how to make a city pleasant,'' Mr. Luce had often remarked to Mrs. Touchett, who was quite of his own way of thinking, and wished to know what one had crossed that odious Atlantic for but to get away from republics.

‘‘Why, madam, sitting in the Champs Élysées, opposite to the Palace of Industry, I have seen the court-carriages from the Tuileries pass up and down as many as seven times a day. I remember one occasion when they went as high as nine times. What do you see now? It's no use talking, the style's all gone. Napoleon knew what the French people want, and there'll be a cloud over Paris till they get the Empire back again.''

Among Mrs. Luce's visitors on Sunday afternoon was a young man with whom Isabel had had a good deal of conversation, and whom she found full of valuable knowledge. Mr. Edward Rosier—Ned Rosier, as he was called—was a native of New York, and had been brought up in Paris, living there under the eye of his father, who, as it happened, had been an old and intimate friend of the late Mr. Archer. Edward Rosier remembered Isabel as a little girl; it had been his father who came to the rescue of the little Archers at the inn at Neufchâtel (he was travelling that way with the boy, and stopped at the hotel by chance), after their
bonne
had gone off with the Russian prince and when Mr. Archer's whereabouts remained for some days a mystery. Isabel remembered perfectly the neat little male child, whose hair smelt of a delicious cosmetic, and who had a
bonne
of his own, warranted to lose sight of him under no provocation. Isabel took a walk with the pair beside the lake, and thought little Edward as pretty as an angel—a comparison by no means conventional in her mind, for she had a very definite conception of a type of features which she supposed to be angelic, and which her new friend perfectly illustrated. A small pink face, surmounted by a blue velvet bonnet and set off by a stiff embroidered collar, became the countenance of her childish dreams; and she firmly believed for some time afterwards that the heavenly hosts conversed among themselves in a queer little dialect of French-English, expressing the properest sentiments, as when Edward told her that he was ‘‘defended'' by his
bonne
to go near the edge of the lake, and that one must always obey to one's
bonne.
Ned Rosier's English had improved; at least it exhibited in a less degree the French variation. His father was dead and his
bonne
was dismissed, but the young man still conformed to the spirit of their teaching—he never went to the edge of the lake. There was still something agreeable to the nostril about him, and something not offensive to nobler organs. He was a very gentle and gracious youth, with what are called cultivated tastes—an acquaintance with old china, with good wine, with the bindings of books, with the
Almanach de Gotha,
with the best shops, the best hotels, the hours of railway trains. He could order a dinner almost as well as Mr. Luce, and it was probable that as his experience accumulated he would be a worthy successor to that gentleman, whose rather grim politics he also advocated, in a soft and innocent voice. He had some charming rooms in Paris, decorated with old Spanish altar-lace, the envy of his female friends, who declared that his chimney-piece was better draped than many a duchess. He usually, however, spent a part of every winter at Pau, and had once passed a couple of months in the United States.

He took a great interest in Isabel, and remembered perfectly the walk at Neufchâtel, when she would persist in going so near the edge. He seemed to recognize this same tendency in the subversive inquiry that I quoted a moment ago, and set himself to answer our heroine's question with greater urbanity than it perhaps deserved. ‘‘What does it lead to, Miss Archer? Why Paris leads everywhere. You can't go anywhere unless you come here first. Every one that comes to Europe has got to pass through. You don't mean it in that sense so much? You mean what good it does you? Well, how can you penetrate futurity? How can you tell what lies ahead? If it's a pleasant road I don't care where it leads. I like the road, Miss Archer; I like the dear old asphalt. You can't get tired of it—you can't if you try. You think you would, but you wouldn't; there's always something new and fresh. Take the Hôtel Drouot, now; they sometimes have three and four sales a week. Where can you get such things as you can here? In spite of all they say, I maintain they are cheaper too, if you know the right places. I know plenty of places, but I keep them to myself. I'll tell you, if you like, as a particular favour; only you must not tell any one else. Don't you go anywhere without asking me first; I want you to promise me that. As a general thing avoid the boulevards; there is very little to be done on the boulevards. Speaking conscientiously—
sans blague
—I don't believe any one knows Paris better than I. You and Mrs. Touchett must come and breakfast with me some day, and I'll show you my things;
je ne vous dis que ça!
There has been a great deal of talk about London of late; it's the fashion to cry up London. But there is nothing in it—you can't do anything in London. No Louis Quinze—nothing of the First Empire; nothing but their eternal Queen Anne. It's good for one's bedroom, Queen Anne—for one's washing-room; but it isn't proper for a
salon.
Do I spend my life at the auctioneers?'' Mr. Rosier pursued, in answer to another question of Isabel's. ‘‘Oh, no; I haven't the means. I wish I had. You think I'm a mere trifler; I can tell by the expression of your face—you have got a wonderfully expressive face. I hope you don't mind my saying that; I mean it as a kind of warning. You think I ought to do something, and so do I, so long as you leave it vague. But when you come to the point, you see you have to stop. I can't go home and be a shopkeeper. You think I am very well fitted? Ah, Miss Archer, you overrate me. I can buy very well, but I can't sell; you should see when I sometimes try to get rid of my things. It takes much more ability to make other people buy than to buy yourself. When I think how clever they must be, the people who make
me
buy! Ah, no; I couldn't be a shopkeeper. I can't be a doctor; it's a repulsive business. I can't be a clergyman. I haven't got convictions. And then I can't pronounce the names right in the Bible. They are very difficult, in the Old Testament particularly. I can't be a lawyer; I don't understand—how do you call it?—the American
procédure.
Is there anything else? There is nothing for a gentleman to do in America. I should like to be a diplomatist; but American diplomacy—that is not for gentlemen either. I am sure if you had seen the last min—''

Henrietta Stackpole, who was often with her friend when Mr. Rosier, coming to pay his compliments, late in the afternoon, expressed himself after the fashion I have sketched, usually interrupted the young man at this point and read him a lecture on the duties of the American citizen. She thought him most unnatural; he was worse than Mr. Ralph Touchett. Henrietta, however, was at this time more than ever addicted to fine criticism, for her conscience had been freshly alarmed as regards Isabel. She had not congratulated this young lady on her accession of fortune, and begged to be excused from doing so.

‘‘If Mr. Touchett had consulted me about leaving you the money,'' she frankly said, ‘‘I would have said to him, ‘Never!' ''

‘‘I see,'' Isabel had answered. ‘‘You think it will prove a curse in disguise. Perhaps it will.''

‘‘Leave it to some one you care less for—that's what I should have said.''

‘‘To yourself, for instance?'' Isabel suggested, jocosely. And then—‘‘Do you really believe it will ruin me?'' she asked, in quite another tone.

‘‘I hope it won't ruin you; but it will certainly confirm your dangerous tendencies.''

‘‘Do you mean the love of luxury—of extravagance?''

‘‘No, no,'' said Henrietta; ‘‘I mean your moral tendencies. I approve of luxury; I think we ought to be as elegant as possible. Look at the luxury of our Western cities; I have seen nothing over here to compare with it. I hope you will never become sensual; but I am not afraid of that. The peril for you is that you live too much in the world of your own dreams—you are not enough in contact with reality—with the toiling, striving, suffering, I may even say sinning, world that surrounds you. You are too fastidious; you have too many graceful illusions. Your newly acquired thousands will shut you up more and more to the society of a few selfish and heartless people, who will be interested in keeping up those illusions.''

Isabel's eyes expanded as she gazed upon this vivid but dusky picture of the future. ‘‘What are my illusions?'' she asked. ‘‘I try so hard not to have any.''

‘‘Well,'' said Henrietta, ‘‘you think that you can lead a romantic life, that you can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing others. You will find you are mistaken. Whatever life you lead, you must put your soul into it— to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you; it becomes reality! And you can't always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you are very ready to do; but there is another thing that is still more important—you must often
dis
please others. You must always be ready for that—you must never shrink from it. That doesn't suit you at all—you are too fond of admiration; you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views—that is your great illusion, my dear. But we can't. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all—not even yourself.''