The Portrait of A Lady (43 page)

‘‘You may say what you please,'' said Madame Merle, who had listened to this quick outbreak none the less attentively, we may believe, because her eye wandered away from the speaker, and her hands busied themselves with adjusting the knots of ribbon on her dress. ‘‘You Osmonds are a fine race—your blood must flow from some very pure source. Your brother, like an intelligent man, has had the conviction of it, if he has not had the proofs. You are modest about it, but you yourself are extremely distinguished. What do you say about your niece? The child's a little duchess. Nevertheless,'' Madame Merle added, ‘‘it will not be an easy matter for Osmond to marry Miss Archer. But he can try.''

‘‘I hope she will refuse him. It will take him down a little.''

‘‘We must not forget that he is one of the cleverest of men.''

‘‘I have heard you say that before; but I haven't yet discovered what he has done.''

‘‘What he has done? He has done nothing that has had to be undone. And he has known how to wait.''

‘‘To wait for Miss Archer's money? How much of it is there?''

‘‘That's not what I mean,'' said Madame Merle. ‘‘Miss Archer has seventy thousand pounds.''

‘‘Well, it is a pity she is so nice,'' the Countess declared. ‘‘To be sacrificed, any girl would do. She needn't be superior.''

‘‘If she were not superior, your brother would never look at her. He must have the best.''

‘‘Yes,'' rejoined the Countess, as they went forward a little to meet the others, ‘‘he is very hard to please. That makes me fear for her happiness!''

26

GILBERT OSMOND came to see Isabel again; that is, he came to the Palazzo Crescentini. He had other friends there as well; and to Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle he was always impartially civil; but the former of these ladies noted the fact that in the course of a fortnight he called five times, and compared it with another fact that she found no difficulty in remembering. Two visits a year had hitherto constituted his regular tribute to Mrs. Touchett's charms, and she had never observed that he selected for such visits those moments, of almost periodical recurrence, when Madame Merle was under her roof. It was not for Madame Merle that he came; these two were old friends, and he never put himself out for her. He was not fond of Ralph—Ralph had told her so—and it was not supposable that Mr. Osmond had suddenly taken a fancy to her son. Ralph was imperturbable— Ralph had a kind of loose-fitting urbanity that wrapped him about like an ill-made overcoat, but of which he never divested himself; he thought Mr. Osmond very good company, and would have been willing at any time to take the hospitable view of his idiosyncracies. But he did not flatter himself that the desire to repair a past injustice was the motive of their visitor's calls; he read the situation more clearly. Isabel was the attraction, and in all conscience a sufficient one. Osmond was a critic, a student of the exquisite, and it was natural he should admire an admirable person. So when his mother said to him that it was very plain what Mr. Osmond was thinking of, Ralph replied that he was quite of her opinion. Mrs. Touchett had always liked Mr. Osmond; she thought him so much of a gentleman. As he had never been an importunate visitor he had had no chance to be offensive, and he was recommended to Mrs. Touchett by his appearance of being as well able to do without her as she was to do without him—a quality that always excited her esteem. It gave her no satisfaction, however, to think that he had taken it into his head to marry her niece. Such an alliance, on Isabel's part, would have an air of almost morbid perversity. Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the girl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady for whom Lord Warburton had not been up to the mark should content herself with an obscure American dilettante, a middle-aged widower with an overgrown daughter and an income of nothing—this answered to nothing in Mrs. Touchett's conception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the sentimental, but the political, view of matrimony—a view which has always had much to recommend it. ‘‘I trust she won't have the folly to listen to him,'' she said to her son; to which Ralph replied that Isabel's listening was one thing and her answering quite another. He knew that she had listened to others, but that she had made them listen to her in return; and he found much entertainment in the idea that, in these few months that he had known her, he should see a third suitor at her gate. She had wanted to see life, and fortune was serving her to her taste; a succession of gentlemen going down on their knees to her was by itself a respectable chapter of experience. Ralph looked forward to a fourth and a fifth
soupirant;
he had no conviction that she would stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar and open a parley; she would certainly not allow number three to come in. He expressed this view, somewhat after this fashion, to his mother, who looked at him as if he had been dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful, pictorial way of saying things that he might as well address her in the deaf-mute's alphabet.

‘‘I don't think I know what you mean,'' she said; ‘‘you use too many metaphors; I could never understand allegories. The two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No. If Isabel wants to marry Mr. Osmond, she will do so in spite of all your similes. Let her alone to find a favourable comparison for anything she undertakes. I know very little about the young man in America; I don't think she spends much of her time in thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for her. There is nothing in life to prevent her marrying Mr. Osmond, if she only looks at him in a certain way. That is all very well; no one approves more than I of one's pleasing one's self. But she takes her pleasure in such odd things; she is capable of marrying Mr. Osmond for his opinions. She wants to be disinterested: as if she were the only person who is in danger of not being so! Will he be so disinterested when he has the spending of her money? That was her idea before your father's death, and it has acquired new charms for her since. She ought to marry some one of whose disinterestedness she should be sure, herself; and there would be no such proof of that as his having a fortune of his own.''

‘‘My dear mother, I am not afraid,'' Ralph answered. ‘‘She is making fools of us all. She will please herself, of course; but she will do so by studying human nature and retaining her liberty. She has started on an exploring expedition, and I don't think she will change her course, at the outset, at a signal from Gilbert Osmond. She may have slackened speed for an hour, but before we know it she will be steaming away again. Excuse another metaphor.''

Mrs. Touchett excused it perhaps, but she was not so much reassured as to withhold from Madame Merle the expression of her fears. ‘‘You who know everything,'' she said, ‘‘you must know this: whether that man is making love to my niece.''

Madame Merle opened her expressive eyes, and with a brilliant smile—‘‘Heaven help us,'' she exclaimed, ‘‘that's an idea!''

‘‘Has it never occurred to you?''

‘‘You make me feel like a fool—but I confess it hasn't. I wonder,'' added Madame Merle, ‘‘whether it has occurred to her.''

‘‘I think I will ask her,'' said Mrs. Touchett.

Madame Merle reflected a moment. ‘‘Don't put it into her head. The thing would be to ask Mr. Osmond.''

‘‘I can't do that,'' said Mrs. Touchett; ‘‘it's none of my business.''

‘‘I will ask him myself,'' Madame Merle declared, bravely.

‘‘It's none of yours, either.''

‘‘That's precisely why I can afford to ask him; it is so much less my business than any one's else, that in me the question will not seem to him embarrassing.''

‘‘Pray let me know on the first day, then,'' said Mrs. Touchett. ‘‘If I can't speak to him, at least I can speak to her.''

‘‘Don't be too quick with her; don't inflame her imagination.''

‘‘I never did anything to any one's imagination. But I am always sure she will do something I don't like.''

‘‘You wouldn't like this,'' Madame Merle observed, without the point of interrogation.

‘‘Why should I, pray? Mr. Osmond has nothing to offer.''

Again Madame Merle was silent, while her thoughtful smile drew up her mouth more than usual toward the left corner. ‘‘Let us distinguish. Gilbert Osmond is certainly not the first comer. He is a man who under favourable circumstances might very well make an impression. He has made an impression, to my knowledge, more than once.''

‘‘Don't tell me about his love-affairs; they are nothing to me!'' Mrs. Touchett cried. ‘‘What you say is precisely why I wish he would cease his visits. He has nothing in the world that I know of but a dozen or two of early masters and a grown-up daughter.''

‘‘The early masters are worth a good deal of money,'' said Madame Merle, ‘‘and the daughter is a very young and very harmless person.''

‘‘In other words, she is an insipid schoolgirl. Is that what you mean? Having no fortune, she can't hope to marry, as they marry here; so that Isabel will have to furnish her either with a maintenance or with a dowry.''

‘‘Isabel probably would not object to being kind to her. I think she likes the child.''

‘‘Another reason for Mr. Osmond stopping at home! Otherwise, a week hence, we shall have Isabel arriving at the conviction that her mission in life is to prove that a stepmother may sacrifice herself—and that, to prove it, she must first become one.''

‘‘She would make a charming stepmother,'' said Madame Merle, smiling; ‘‘but I quite agree with you that she had better not decide upon her mission too hastily. Changing one's mission is often awkward! I will investigate and report to you.''

All this went on quite over Isabel's head; she had no suspicion that her relations with Mr. Osmond were being discussed. Madame Merle had said nothing to put her on her guard; she alluded no more pointedly to Mr. Osmond than to the other gentlemen of Florence, native and foreign, who came in considerable numbers to pay their respects to Miss Archer's aunt. Isabel thought him very pleasant; she liked to think of him. She had carried away an image from her visit to his hill-top which her subsequent knowledge of him did nothing to efface and which happened to take her fancy particularly—the image of a quiet, clever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown terrace above the sweet Val d'Arno, and holding by the hand a little girl whose sympathetic docility gave a new aspect to childhood. The picture was not brilliant, but she liked its lowness of tone, and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it. It seemed to tell a story—a story of the sort that touched her most easily; to speak of a serious choice, a choice between things of a shallow, and things of a deep, interest; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes ached to-day; a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; a care for beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that it had been the main occupation of a lifetime of which the arid places were watered with the sweet sense of a quaint, half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood. At the Palazzo Crescentini Mr. Osmond's manner remained the same; shy at first, and full of the effort (visible only to a sympathetic eye) to overcome this disadvantage; an effort which usually resulted in a great deal of easy, lively, very positive, rather aggressive, and always effective talk. Mr. Osmond's talk was not injured by the indication of an eagerness to shine; Isabel found no difficulty in believing that a person was sincere who had so many of the signs of strong conviction—as, for instance, an explicit and graceful appreciation of anything that might be said on his own side, said perhaps by Miss Archer in particular. What continued to please this young lady was his extraordinary subtlety. There was such a fine intellectual intention in what he said, and the movement of his wit was like that of a quick-flashing blade. One day he brought his little daughter with him, and Isabel was delighted to renew acquaintance with the child, who, as she presented her forehead to be kissed by every member of the circle, reminded her vividly of an
ingénue
in a French play. Isabel had never seen a young girl of this pattern; American girls were very different—different too were the daughters of England. This young lady was so neat, so complete in her manner; and yet in character, as one could see, so innocent and infantine. She sat on the sofa, by Isabel; she wore a small grenadine mantle and a pair of the useful gloves that Madame Merle had given her— little grey gloves, with a single button. She was like a sheet of blank paper—the ideal
jeune fille
of foreign fiction. Isabel hoped that so fair and smooth a page would be covered with an edifying text.

The Countess Gemini also came to call upon her, but the Countess was quite another affair. She was by no means a blank sheet; she had been written over in a variety of hands, and Mrs. Touchett, who felt by no means honoured by her visit, declared that a number of unmistakable blots were to be seen upon her surface. The Countess Gemini was indeed the occasion of a slight discussion between the mistress of the house and the visitor from Rome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing with them) availed herself humorously of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely as she practised it. Mrs. Touchett had pronounced it a piece of audacity that the Countess Gemini should have presented herself at this time of day at the door of a house in which she was esteemed so little as she must long have known herself to be at the Palazzo Crescentini. Isabel had been made acquainted with the estimate which prevailed under this roof; it represented Mr. Osmond's sister as a kind of flighty reprobate. She had been married by her mother—a heartless feather-head like herself, with an appreciation of foreign titles which the daughter, to do her justice, had probably by this time thrown off—to an Italian nobleman who had perhaps given her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness of neglect. The Countess, however, had consoled herself too well, and it was notorious in Florence that she had consoled others also. Mrs. Touchett had never consented to receive her, though the Countess had made overtures of old. Florence was not an austere city; but, as Mrs. Touchett said, she had to draw the line somewhere.