The Portrait of A Lady (38 page)

‘‘I will remember it; but I beg you to forget it. In that way you will have both the virtue and the reward. This is not a great labour, and it may prove a great pleasure. How long is it since you made a new acquaintance?''

‘‘I don't think I have made any since I made yours.''

‘‘It is time you should make another, then. There is a friend of mine I want you to know.''

Mr. Osmond, in his walk, had gone back to the open door again, and was looking at his daughter, as she moved about in the intense sunshine. ‘‘What good will it do me?'' he asked, with a sort of genial crudity.

Madame Merle reflected a moment. ‘‘It will amuse you.'' There was nothing crude in this rejoinder; it had been thoroughly well considered.

‘‘If you say that, I believe it,'' said Osmond, coming toward her. ‘‘There are some points in which my confidence in you is complete. I am perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad.''

‘‘Society is all bad.''

‘‘Excuse me. That isn't a common sort of wisdom. You have gained it in the right way—experimentally; you have compared an immense number of people with each other.''

‘‘Well, I invite you to profit by my knowledge.''

‘‘To profit? Are you very sure that I shall?''

‘‘It's what I hope. It will depend upon yourself. If I could only induce you to make an effort!''

‘‘Ah, there you are! I knew something tiresome was coming. What in the world—that is likely to turn up here—is worth an effort?''

Madame Merle flushed a little, and her eye betrayed vexation. ‘‘Don't be foolish, Osmond. There is no one knows better than you that there are many things worth an effort.''

‘‘Many things, I admit. But they are none of them probable things.''

‘‘It is the effort that makes them probable,'' said Madame Merle.

‘‘There's something in that. Who is your friend?''

‘‘The person I came to Florence to see. She is a niece of Mrs. Touchett, whom you will not have forgotten.''

‘‘A niece? The word niece suggests youth. I see what you are coming to.''

‘‘Yes, she is young—twenty-two years old. She is a great friend of mine. I met her for the first time in England, several months ago, and we took a great fancy to each other. I like her immensely, and I do what I don't do every day—I admire her. You will do the same.''

‘‘Not if I can help it.''

‘‘Precisely. But you won't be able to help it.''

‘‘Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and unprecedentedly virtuous? It is only on those conditions that I care to make her acquaintance. You know I asked you some time ago never to speak to me of any one who should not correspond to that description. I know plenty of dingy people; I don't want to know any more.''

‘‘Miss Archer is not dingy; she's as bright as the morning. She corresponds to your description; it is for that I wish you to know her. She fills all your requirements.''

‘‘More or less, of course.''

‘‘No; quite literally. She is beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for an American, well-born. She is also very clever and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune.''

Mr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his mind, with his eyes on his informant. ‘‘What do you want to do with her?'' he asked, at last.

‘‘What you see. Put her in your way.''

‘‘Isn't she meant for something better than that?''

‘‘I don't pretend to know what people are meant for,'' said Madame Merle. ‘‘I only know what I can do with them.''

‘‘I am sorry for Miss Archer!'' Osmond declared.

Madame Merle got up. ‘‘If that is a beginning of interest in her, I take note of it.''

The two stood there, face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so.

‘‘You are looking very well,'' Osmond repeated, still more irrelevantly than before. ‘‘You have got some idea. You are never as well as when you have got an idea; they are always becoming to you.''

In the manner of these two persons, on first meeting on any occasion, and especially when they met in the presence of others, there was something indirect and circumspect, which showed itself in glance and tone. They approached each other obliquely, as it were, and they addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an embarrassing degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off such embarrassments better than her friend; but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the manner she would have liked to have—the perfect self-possession she would have wished to exhibit to her host. The point I wish to make is, however, that at a certain moment the obstruction, whatever it was, always levelled itself, and left them more closely face to face than either of them ever was with any one else. This was what had happened now. They stood there, knowing each other well, and each of them on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing, as a compensation for the inconvenience—whatever it might be—of being known.

‘‘I wish very much you were not so heartless,'' said Madame Merle, quietly. ‘‘It has always been against you, and it will be against you now.''

‘‘I am not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches me—as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for me. I don't understand it; I don't see how or why they should be. But it touches me, all the same.''

‘‘You will probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some things you will never understand. There is no particular need that you should.''

‘‘You, after all, are the most remarkable woman,'' said Osmond. ‘‘You have more in you than almost any one. I don't see why you think Mrs. Touchett's niece should matter very much to me, when—when—'' And he paused a moment.

‘‘When I myself have mattered so little?''

‘‘That of course is not what I meant to say. When I have known and appreciated such a woman as you.''

‘‘Isabel Archer is better than I,'' said Madame Merle.

Her companion gave a laugh. ‘‘How little you must think of her to say that!''

‘‘Do you suppose I am capable of jealousy? Please answer me that.''

‘‘With regard to me? No; on the whole I don't.''

‘‘Come and see me, then, two days hence. I am staying at Mrs. Touchett's—the Palazzo Crescentini—and the girl will be there.''

‘‘Why didn't you ask me that at first, simply, without speaking of the girl?'' said Osmond. ‘‘You could have had her there at any rate.''

Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question that he could ask would find unprepared. ‘‘Do you wish to know why? Because I have spoken of you to her.''

Osmond frowned and turned away. ‘‘I would rather not know that.'' Then, in a moment, he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour drawing. ‘‘Have you seen that—my last?''

Madame Merle drew near and looked at it a moment. ‘‘Is it the Venetian Alps—one of your last year's sketches?''

‘‘Yes—but how you guess everything!''

Madame Merle looked for a moment longer; then she turned away. ‘‘You know I don't care for your drawings.''

‘‘I know it, yet I am always surprised at it. They are really so much better than most people's.''

‘‘That may very well be. But as the only thing you do, it's so little. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were my ambitions.''

‘‘Yes; you have told me many times—things that were impossible.''

‘‘Things that were impossible,'' said Madame Merle. And then, in quite a different tone—‘‘In itself your little picture is very good.'' She looked about the room—at the old cabinets, the pictures, the tapestries, the surfaces of faded silk. ‘‘Your rooms, at least, are perfect,'' she went on. ‘‘I am struck with that afresh, whenever I come back; I know none better anywhere. You understand this sort of thing as no one else does.''

‘‘I am very sick of it,'' said Osmond.

‘‘You must let Miss Archer come and see all this. I have told her about it.''

‘‘I don't object to showing my things—when people are not idiots.''

‘‘You do it delightfully. As a
cicerone
in your own museum you appear to particular advantage.''

Mr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply turned upon his companion an eye expressive of perfect clairvoyance.

‘‘Did you say she was rich?'' he asked in a moment.

‘‘She has seventy thousand pounds.''

‘‘There is no doubt whatever about her fortune. I have seen it, as I may say.''

‘‘Satisfactory woman!—I mean you. And if I go to see her, shall I see the mother?''

‘‘The mother? She has none—nor father either.''

‘‘The aunt then; whom did you say?—Mrs. Touchett.''

‘‘I can easily keep her out of the way.''

‘‘I don't object to her,'' said Osmond; ‘‘I rather like Mrs. Touchett. She has a sort of old-fashioned character that is passing away—a vivid identity. But that long jackanapes, the son—is he about the place?''

‘‘He is there, but he won't trouble you.''

‘‘He's an awful ass.''

‘‘I think you are mistaken. He is a very clever man. But he is not fond of being about when I am there, because he doesn't like me.''

‘‘What could be more asinine than that? Did you say that she was pretty?'' Osmond went on.

‘‘Yes; but I won't say it again, lest you should be disappointed. Come and make a beginning; that is all I ask of you.''

‘‘A beginning of what?''

Madame Merle was silent a moment. ‘‘I want you of course to marry her.''

‘‘The beginning of the end! Well, I will see for myself. Have you told her that?''

‘‘For what do you take me? She is a very delicate piece of machinery.''

‘‘Really,'' said Osmond, after some meditation, ‘‘I don't understand your ambitions.''

‘‘I think you will understand this one after you have seen Miss Archer. Suspend your judgement till then.'' Madame Merle, as she spoke, had drawn near the open door of the garden, where she stood a moment, looking out. ‘‘Pansy has grown pretty,'' she presently added.

‘‘So it seemed to me.''

‘‘But she has had enough of the convent.''

‘‘I don't know,'' said Osmond. ‘‘I like what they have made of her. It's very charming.''

‘‘That's not the convent. It's the child's nature.''

‘‘It's the combination, I think. She's as pure as a pearl.''

‘‘Why doesn't she come back with my flowers, then?'' Madame Merle asked. ‘‘She is not in a hurry.''

‘‘We will go and get them,'' said her companion.

‘‘She doesn't like me,'' murmured Madame Merle, as she raised her parasol, and they passed into the garden.

23

MADAME MERLE, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett's arrival at the invitation of this lady—Mrs. Touchett offering her for a month the hospitality of the Palazzo Crescentini—the judicious Madame Merle spoke to Isabel afresh about Gilbert Osmond, and expressed the wish that she should know him; but made no such point of the matter as we have seen her do in recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond's attention. The reason of this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance whatever to Madame Merle's proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude of friends, both among the natives of the country and its heterogeneous visitors. She had mentioned to Isabel most of the people the girl would find it well to know—of course, she said, Isabel could know whomever she would—and she had placed Mr. Osmond near the top of the list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these ten years; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men it was possible to meet. He was altogether above the respectable average; quite another affair. He was not perfect—far from it; the effect he produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves and his spirits. If he were not in the right mood he could be very unsatisfactory—like most people, after all; but when he chose to exert himself no man could do it to better purpose. He had his peculiarities—which indeed Isabel would find to be the case with all the men really worth knowing—and he did not cause his light to shine equally for all persons. Madame Merle, however, thought she could undertake that for Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored—too easily, and dull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl like Isabel would give him a stimulus which was too absent from his life. At any rate, he was a person to know. One should not attempt to live in Italy without making a friend of Gilbert Osmond, who knew more about the country than any one except two or three German professors. And if they had more knowledge than he, he had infinitely more taste; he had a taste which was quite by itself. Isabel remembered that her friend had spoken of him during their multifarious colloquies at Gardencourt, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tie that united them. She was inclined to imagine that Madame Merle's ties were peculiar, and such a possibility was a part of the interest created by this suggestive woman. As regards her relations with Mr. Osmond, however, Madame Merle hinted at nothing but a long-established and tranquil friendship. Isabel said that she should be happy to know a person who had enjoyed her friend's confidence for so many years. ‘‘You ought to see a great many men,'' Madame Merle remarked; ‘‘you ought to see as many as possible, so as to get used to them.''