The Portrait of A Lady (47 page)

‘‘What is the character of that gentleman?'' Osmond asked of Isabel, after the visitor had gone.

‘‘Irreproachable—don't you see it?''

‘‘He owns about half England; that's his character,'' Henrietta remarked. ‘‘That's what they call a free country!''

‘‘Ah, he is a great proprietor? Happy man!'' said Gilbert Osmond.

‘‘Do you call that happiness—the ownership of human beings?'' cried Miss Stackpole. ‘‘He owns his tenants, and he has thousands of them. It is pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me. I don't insist on flesh and blood, and minds and consciences.''

‘‘It seems to me you own a human being or two,'' Mr. Bantling suggested jocosely. ‘‘I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants about as you do me.''

‘‘Lord Warburton is a great radical,'' Isabel said. ‘‘He has very advanced opinions.''

‘‘He has very advanced stone walls. His park is enclosed by a gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round,'' Henrietta announced, for the information of Mr. Osmond. ‘‘I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston radicals.''

‘‘Don't they approve of iron fences?'' asked Mr. Bantling.

‘‘Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking to you over a fence!''

‘‘Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?'' Osmond went on, questioning Isabel.

‘‘Well enough.''

‘‘Do you like him?''

‘‘Very much.''

‘‘Is he a man of ability?''

‘‘Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.''

‘‘As good as he is good-looking do you mean? He is very good-looking. How detestably fortunate! To be a great English magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your favour! That's a man I could envy.''

Isabel gave a serious smile.

‘‘You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor Lord Warburton.''

‘‘My envy is not dangerous; it is very platonic. Why do you call him poor?''

‘‘Women usually pity men after they have hurt them; that is their great way of showing kindness,'' said Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time, with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.

‘‘Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?'' Isabel asked, raising her eyebrows, as if the idea were perfectly novel.

‘‘It serves him right if you have,'' said Henrietta, while the curtain rose for the ballet.

Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he was standing before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond was numbered, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of the rooms. Lord Warburton spoke to her with all his usual geniality, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery.

‘‘And I am leaving Rome,'' he added. ‘‘I should bid you good-bye.''

I shall not undertake to explain why, but Isabel was sorry to hear it. It was, perhaps, because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the point of saying she was sorry, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey.

He looked at her with a somewhat heavy eye.

‘‘I am afraid you think me rather inconsistent,'' he said. ‘‘I told you the other day that I wanted so much to stay awhile.''

‘‘Oh no; you could easily change your mind.''

‘‘That's what I have done.''

‘‘
Bon voyage,
then.''

‘‘You're in a great hurry to get rid of me,'' said his lordship, rather dismally.

‘‘Not in the least. But I hate partings.''

‘‘You don't care what I do,'' he went on pitifully.

Isabel looked at him for a moment.

‘‘Ah,'' she said, ‘‘you are not keeping your promise!''

He coloured like a boy of fifteen.

‘‘If I am not, then it's because I can't; and that's why I am going.''

‘‘Good-bye, then.''

‘‘Good-bye.'' He lingered still, however. ‘‘When shall I see you again?''

Isabel hesitated, and then, as if she had had a happy inspiration—‘‘Some day after you are married.''

‘‘That will never be. It will be after you are.''

‘‘That will do as well,'' said Isabel, smiling.

‘‘Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.''

They shook hands, and he left her alone in the beautiful room, among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the middle of the circle of statues, looking at them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude. It soothes and moderates the spirit; it purifies the imagination. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden sunshine mingles with them, the great stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them more perfectly human. Isabel sat there a long time, under the charm of their motionless grace, seeing life between their gazing eyelids and purpose in their marble lips. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater because she was glad, for the time, to be alone. At the last her thoughts wandered away from them, solicited by images of a vitality more complete. An occasional tourist came into the room, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled towards her slowly, with his hands behind him, and with his usual bright, inquiring, yet not appealing smile.

‘‘I am surprised to find you alone,'' he said. ‘‘I thought you had company.''

‘‘So I have—the best.'' And Isabel glanced at the circle of sculpture.

‘‘Do you call this better company than an English peer?''

‘‘Ah, my English peer left me some time ago,'' said Isabel, getting up. She spoke, with intention, a little dryly.

Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, but it did not prevent him from giving a laugh.

‘‘I am afraid that what I heard the other evening is true; you are rather cruel to that nobleman.''

Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator.

‘‘It is not true. I am scrupulously kind.''

‘‘That's exactly what I mean!'' Gilbert Osmond exclaimed, so humorously that his joke needs to be explained.

We knew that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior, the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects by rejecting the splendid offer of a British aristocrat. Gilbert Osmond had a high appreciation of the British aristocracy—he had never forgiven Providence for not making him an English duke—and could measure the unexpectedness of this conduct. It would be proper that the woman he should marry should have done something of that sort.

29

RALPH TOUCHETT, for reasons best known to himself, had seen fit to say that Gilbert Osmond was not a good fellow; but this assertion was not borne out by the gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. He spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and gave every indication of being an easy man to live with. It was impossible not to feel that he had excellent points, and indeed this is perhaps why Ralph Touchett made his want of good-fellowship a reproach to him. Even Ralph was obliged to admit that just now he was a delightful companion. His good humor was imperturbable, his knowledge universal, his manners were the gentlest in the world. His spirits were not visibly high; it was difficult to think of Gilbert Osmond as boisterous; he had a mortal dislike to loudness or eagerness. He thought Miss Archer sometimes too eager, too pronounced. It was a pity she had that fault; because if she had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as bright and soft as an April cloud. If Osmond was not loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he had a gaiety that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he prefixed the title of ‘‘Rome Revisited.'' A day or two later he showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the pleasant occasions of life by a tribute to the muse. In general Osmond took his pleasures singly; he was usually disgusted with something that seemed to him ugly or offensive; his mind was rarely visited with moods of comprehensive satisfaction. But at present he was happy—happier than he had perhaps ever been in his life; and the feeling had a large foundation. This was simply the sense of success—the most agreeable emotion of the human heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had never been spoiled; as he knew perfectly well and often reminded himself. ‘‘Ah no, I have not been spoiled; certainly I have not been spoiled,'' he used to repeat to himself. ‘‘If I do succeed before I die, I shall have earned it well.'' Absolutely void of success his career had not been; a very moderate amount of reflection would have assured him of this. But his triumphs were, some of them, now, too old; others had been too easy. The present one had been less difficult than might have been expected; but it had been easy—that is, it had been rapid—only because he had made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it was in him to make. The desire to succeed greatly—in something or other—had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went on, the conditions attached to success became so various and repulsive that the idea of making an effort gradually lost its charm. It was not dead, however; it only slept; it revived after he had made the acquaintance of Isabel Archer. Osmond had felt that any enterprise in which the chance of failure was at all considerable would never have an attraction for him; to fail would have been unspeakably odious, would have left an ineffaceable stain upon his life. Success was to seem in advance definitely certain—certain, that is, on this one condition, that the effort should be an agreeable one to make. That of exciting an interest on the part of Isabel Archer corresponded to this description, for the girl had pleased him from the first of his seeing her. We have seen that she thought him ‘‘fine''; and Gilbert Osmond returned the compliment. We have also seen (or heard) that he had a great dread of vulgarity, and on this score his mind was at rest with regard to our young lady. He was not afraid that she would disgust him or irritate him; he had no fear that she would even, in the more special sense of the word, displease him. If she was too eager, she could be taught to be less so; that was a fault which diminished with growing knowledge. She might defy him, she might anger him; this was another matter from displeasing him, and on the whole a less serious one. If a woman were ungraceful and common, her whole quality was vitiated, and one could take no precautions against that; one's own delicacy would avail little. If, however, she were only willful and high-tempered, the defect might be managed with comparative ease; for had one not a will of one's own that one had been keeping for years in the best condition—as pure and keen as a sword protected by its sheath?

Though I have tried to speak with extreme discretion, the reader may have gathered a suspicion that Gilbert Osmond was not untainted by selfishness. This is rather a coarse imputation to put upon a man of his refinement; and it behoves us at all times to remember the familiar proverb about those who live in glass houses. If Mr. Osmond was more selfish than most of his fellows, the fact will still establish itself. Lest it should fail to do so, I must decline to commit myself to an accusation so gross; the more especially as several of the items of our story would seem to point the other way. It is well known that there are few indications of selfishness more conclusive (on the part of a gentleman at least) than the preference for a single life. Gilbert Osmond, after having tasted of matrimony, had spent a succession of years in the full enjoyment of recovered singleness. He was familiar with the simplicity of purpose, the lonely liberties, of bachelorhood. He had reached that period of life when it is supposed to be doubly difficult to renounce these liberties, endeared as they are by long association; and yet he was prepared to make the generous sacrifice. It would seem that this might fairly be set down to the credit of the noblest of our qualities—the faculty of self-devotion. Certain it is that Osmond's desire to marry had been deep and distinct. It had not been notorious; he had not gone about asking people whether they knew a nice little girl with a little money. Money was an object; but this was not his manner of proceeding, and no one knew—or even greatly cared—whether he wished to marry or not. Madame Merle knew—that we have already perceived. It was not that he had told her; on the whole he would not have cared to tell her. But there were things of which she had no need to be told—things as to which she had a sort of creative intuition. She had recognized a truth that was none the less pertinent for being very subtle: the truth that there was something very imperfect in Osmond's situation as it stood. He was a failure, of course; that was an old story; to Madame Merle's perception he would always be a failure. But there were degrees of ineffectiveness, and there was no need of taking one of the highest. Success, for Gilbert Osmond, would be to make himself felt; that was the only success to which he could now pretend. It is not a kind of distinction that is officially recognized—unless indeed the operation be performed upon multitudes of men. Osmond's line would be to impress himself not largely but deeply; a distinction of the most private sort. A single character might offer the whole measure of it; the clear and sensitive nature of a generous girl would make space for the record. The record of course would be complete if the young lady should have a fortune, and Madame Merle would have taken no pains to make Mr. Osmond acquainted with Mrs. Touchett's niece if Isabel had been as scantily dowered as when first she met her. He had waited all these years because he wanted only the best, and a portionless bride naturally would not have been the best. He had waited so long in vain that he finally almost lost his interest in the subject—not having kept it up by venturesome experiments. It had become improbable that the best was now to be had, and if he wished to make himself felt, there was soft and supple little Pansy, who would evidently respond to the slightest pressure. When at last the best did present itself Osmond recognized it like a gentleman. There was therefore no incongruity in his wishing to marry—it was his own idea of success, as well as that which Madame Merle, with her old-time interest in his affairs, entertained for him. Let it not, however, be supposed that he was guilty of the error of believing that Isabel's character was of that passive sort which offers a free field for domination. He was sure that she would constantly act—act in the sense of enthusiastic concession.