The Portrait of A Lady (68 page)

This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him somewhere before.

‘‘It's the young man I have told you about, who is in love with Pansy,'' said Isabel.

‘‘Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.''

‘‘He has reason. My husband won't listen to him.''

‘‘What's the matter with him?'' Lord Warburton inquired. ‘‘He seems very harmless.''

‘‘He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever.''

Lord Warburton listened with interest; he seemed struck with this account of Edward Rosier. ‘‘Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young fellow.''

‘‘So he is, but my husband is very particular.''

‘‘Oh, I see.'' And Lord Warburton paused a moment. ‘‘How much money has he got?'' he then ventured to ask.

‘‘Some forty thousand francs a year.''

‘‘Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know.''

‘‘So I think. But my husband has larger ideas.''

‘‘Yes; I have noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really an idiot, the young man?''

‘‘An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve years old I myself was in love with him.''

‘‘He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day,'' Lord Warburton rejoined, vaguely, looking about him. Then, with more point—‘‘Don't you think we might sit here?'' he asked.

‘‘Wherever you please.'' The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as our friends came in. ‘‘It's very kind of you to take such an interest in Mr. Rosier,'' Isabel said.

‘‘He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long; I wondered what ailed him.''

‘‘You are a just man,'' said Isabel. ‘‘You have a kind thought even for a rival.''

Lord Warburton turned, suddenly, with a stare. ‘‘A rival! Do you call him my rival?''

‘‘Surely—if you both wish to marry the same person.''

‘‘Yes—but since he has no chance!''

‘‘All the same, I like you for putting yourself in his place. It shows imagination.''

‘‘You like me for it?'' And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain eye. ‘‘I think you mean that you are laughing at me for it.''

‘‘Yes, I am laughing at you, a little. But I like you, too.''

‘‘Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you suppose one could do for him?''

‘‘Since I have been praising your imagination, I will leave you to imagine that yourself,'' Isabel said. ‘‘Pansy, too, would like you for that.''

‘‘Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.''

‘‘Very much, I think.''

He hesitated a little; he was still questioning her face. ‘‘Well, then, I don't understand you. You don't mean that she cares for him?''

‘‘Surely I have told you that I thought she did.''

A sudden blush sprung to his face. ‘‘You told me that she would have no wish apart from her father's, and as I have gathered that he would favour me—'' He paused a little, and then he added—‘‘Don't you see?'' suggestively, through his blush.

‘‘Yes, I told you that she had an immense wish to please her father, and that it would probably take her very far.''

‘‘That seems to me a very proper feeling,'' said Lord Warburton.

‘‘Certainly; it's a very proper feeling.'' Isabel remained silent for some moments; the room continued to be empty; the sound of the music reached them with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she said— ‘‘But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man would wish to be indebted for a wife.''

‘‘I don't know; if the wife is a good one, and he thinks she does well!''

‘‘Yes, of course you must think that.''

‘‘I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course.''

‘‘No, I don't. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don't know who should know it better than you. But you are not in love.''

‘‘Ah, yes, I am, Mrs. Osmond!''

Isabel shook her head. ‘‘You like to think you are, while you sit here with me. But that's not how you strike me.''

‘‘I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could anything in the world be more charming than Miss Osmond?''

‘‘Nothing, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.''

‘‘I don't agree with you. I am delighted to have good reasons.''

‘‘Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw for them.''

‘‘Ah, really in love—really in love!'' Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding his arms, leaning back his head, and stretching himself a little. ‘‘You must remember that I am forty years old. I won't pretend that I am as I once was.''

‘‘Well, if you are sure,'' said Isabel, ‘‘it's all right.''

He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his companion. ‘‘Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?''

She met his eye, and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be satisfied, she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his eye the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account—that she was perhaps even frightened. It expressed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it was it told her what she wished to know. Not for an instant should he suspect that she detected in his wish to marry her stepdaughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or that if she did detect it she thought it alarming or compromising. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.

‘‘My dear Lord Warburton,'' she said, smiling, ‘‘you may do, as far as I am concerned, whatever comes into your head.''

And with this she got up, and wandered into the adjoining room, where she encountered several acquaintances. While she talked with them she found herself regretting that she had moved; it looked a little like running away—all the more as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however, and, at any rate, she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again.

‘‘You did right not to go away. I have got some comfort for you.''

‘‘I need it,'' the young man murmured, ‘‘when I see you so awfully thick with
him
!''

‘‘Don't speak of him. I will do what I can for you. I am afraid it won't be much, but what I can I will do.''

He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. ‘‘What has suddenly brought you round?''

‘‘The sense that you are an inconvenience in the doorways!'' she answered, smiling, as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing guests, waited awhile for their carriage. Just as it approached, Lord Warburton came out of the house, and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured gently— ‘‘Don't forget to send your letter to her father!''

44

THE Countess Gemini was often extremely bored— bored, in her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a city where, to carry it off, his dullness needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not a habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed to go there; it scarcely made the matter better that there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say. Or rather, not all; but all she said she could say. In fact, she had much more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of St. Peter's. They are reasons, however, which do not closely concern us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City, and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening-parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least one had heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly increased; she was so sure that his wife had a more brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual enough to do justice to Rome—not to the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the church-ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law, and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the hospitality of the Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the first winter of her brother's marriage; but she had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn't want her—that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn't care two straws about Osmond. But her husband wouldn't let her, and the money question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel's personal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with clever women than with silly ones, like herself; the silly ones could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones—the really clever ones—always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that, different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she had a patch of common ground somewhere, which they would set their feet upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they would both know it when once they touched it. And then she lived, with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was constantly expecting that Isabel would ‘‘look down'' upon her, and she as constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would begin; not that she cared much; but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law regarded her with none but level glances, and expressed for the poor Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality, Isabel would as soon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband's sister, however; she was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she was like a bright shell, with a polished surface, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle was apparently the Countess's spiritual principle; a little loose nut that tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species—a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it all away—in small pieces, like a wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the Countess's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history has now to deal, she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at the Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it, I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious thoughts—if any of the Countess's thoughts were serious—of putting her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at measurements; but it seemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see Osmond overtopped.

Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the card of a visitor—a card with the simple superscription, ‘‘Henrietta C. Stackpole.'' The Countess pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she did not remember to have known any such Henrietta as that. The servant then remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the Countess should not recognize her name, she would know her well enough on seeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact reminded herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Touchett's; the only woman of letters she had ever encountered. That is, the only modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognized Miss Stackpole immediately; the more so that Miss Stackpole seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Countess, who was thoroughly good-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that sort of distinction. She wondered whether Miss Stackpole had come on account of her mother—whether she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother was not at all like Isabel's friend; the Countess could see at a glance that this lady was much more modern; and she received an impression of the improvements that were taking place— chiefly in distant countries—in the character (the professional character) of literary ladies. Her mother used to wear a Roman scarf thrown over a pair of bare shoulders, and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of glossy ringlets. She spoke softly and vaguely, with a kind of Southern accent; she sighed a great deal, and was not at all enterprising. But Henrietta, the Countess could see, was always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something brisk and business-like in her appearance, and her manner was almost conscientiously familiar. The Countess could not but feel that the correspondent of the
Interviewer
was much more efficient than the American Corinne.