The Portrait of A Lady (79 page)

‘‘When I fatigue myself it's for you. I have given you an interest; that's a great gift.''

‘‘Do you call it an interest?'' Osmond inquired, languidly.

‘‘Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.''

‘‘The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.''

‘‘You have never looked better; you have never been so agreeable, so brilliant!''

‘‘Damn my brilliancy!'' Osmond murmured, thoughtfully. ‘‘How little, after all, you know me!''

‘‘If I don't know you, I know nothing,'' said Madame Merle, smiling. ‘‘You have the feeling of complete success.''

‘‘No, I shall not have that till I have made you stop judging me.''

‘‘I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express yourself more, too.''

Osmond hesitated a moment. ‘‘I wish you would express yourself less!''

‘‘You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I have never been a chatterbox. At any rate, there are three or four things that I should like to say to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to do with herself,'' she went on, with a change of tone.

‘‘Excuse me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply marked out. She means to carry out her ideas.''

‘‘Her ideas, to-day, must be remarkable.''

‘‘Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.''

‘‘She was unable to show me any this morning,'' said Madame Merle. ‘‘She seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was completely bewildered.''

‘‘You had better say at once that she was pathetic.''

‘‘Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much.''

Osmond still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. ‘‘I should like to know what is the matter with you,'' he said, at last.

‘‘The matter—the matter—'' And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went on, with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a clear sky—‘‘The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to weep, and that I can't!''

‘‘What good would it do you to weep?''

‘‘It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.''

‘‘If I have dried your tears, that's something. But I have seen you shed them.''

‘‘Oh, I believe you will make me cry still. I have a great hope of that. I was vile this morning; I was horrid,'' said Madame Merle.

‘‘If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention, she probably didn't perceive it,'' Osmond answered.

‘‘It was precisely my devilry that stupefied her. I couldn't help it; I was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don't know. You have not only dried up my tears; you have dried up my soul.''

‘‘It is not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition,'' Osmond said. ‘‘It is pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your influence upon her. Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle? How can it suffer alteration?''

‘‘I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it can perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which was a very good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it. You are very bad,'' Madame Merle added, gravely.

‘‘Is this the way we are to end?'' Osmond asked, with the same studied coldness.

‘‘I don't know how we are to end. I wish I did! How do bad people end? You have made me bad.''

‘‘I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,'' said Osmond, his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.

Madame Merle's self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the pleasure of meeting her. Her eye brightened, even flashed; her smile betrayed a painful effort. ‘‘Good enough for anything that I have done with myself? I suppose that's what you mean.''

‘‘Good enough to be always charming!'' Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.

‘‘Oh God!'' his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture that she had provoked on Isabel's part in the morning; she bent her face and covered it with her hands.

‘‘Are you going to weep, after all?'' Osmond asked; and on her remaining motionless he went on—‘‘Have I ever complained to you?''

She dropped her hands quickly. ‘‘No, you have taken your revenge otherwise—you have taken it on
her
.''

Osmond threw back his head further; he looked awhile at the ceiling, and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the heavenly powers. ‘‘Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.''

‘‘Of course you haven't complained. You have enjoyed your triumph too much.''

‘‘I am rather curious to know what you call my triumph.''

‘‘You have made your wife afraid of you.''

Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking awhile at a beautiful old Persian rug, at his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse with. ‘‘Isabel is not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish,'' he said at last. ‘‘To what do you wish to provoke me when you say such things as that?''

‘‘I have thought over all the harm you can do me,'' Madame Merle answered. ‘‘Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you she feared.''

‘‘You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I am not responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at all; you are capable of acting without her. I have not made you afraid of me, that I can see,'' Osmond went on; ‘‘how then should I have made her? You are at least as brave. I can't think where you have picked up such rubbish; one might suppose you knew me by this time.'' He got up, as he spoke, and walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he continued: ‘‘You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you lose sight of the real. I am much simpler than you think.''

‘‘I think you are very simple.'' And Madame Merle kept her eye upon her cup. ‘‘I have come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it is only since your marriage that I have understood you. I have seen better what you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please be very careful of that precious object.''

‘‘It already has a small crack,'' said Osmond dryly, as he put it down. ‘‘If you didn't understand me before I married, it was cruelly rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked that she should like me.''

‘‘That she should like you so much!''

‘‘So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.''

‘‘I never adored you,'' said Madame Merle.

‘‘Ah, but you pretended to!''

‘‘It is true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,'' Madame Merle went on.

‘‘My wife has declined—declined to do anything of the sort,'' said Osmond. ‘‘If you are determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy is hardly for her.''

‘‘The tragedy is for me!'' Madame Merle exclaimed, rising, with a long low sigh, but giving a glance at the same time at the contents of her mantel-shelf. ‘‘It appears that I am to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false position.''

‘‘You express yourself like a sentence in a copy-book. We must look for our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven't a fault to find with her.''

‘‘Ah,'' said Madame Merle, softly, ‘‘if I had a child—''

Osmond hesitated a moment; and then, with a little formal air—‘‘The children of others may be a great interest!'' he announced.

‘‘You are more like a copy-book than I. There is something, after all, that holds us together.''

‘‘Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?'' Osmond asked.

‘‘No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It is that,'' said Madame Merle, ‘‘that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be
my
work,'' she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing into its usual social expression.

Osmond took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff—‘‘On the whole, I think,'' he said, ‘‘you had better leave it to me.''

After he had left her, Madame Merle went and lifted from the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. ‘‘Have I been so vile all for nothing?'' she murmured to herself.

50

AS the Countess Gemini was not acquainted with the ancient monuments, Isabel occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Countess, who professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they had been mounds of modern drapery. She was not an antiquarian; but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus, if it had been a condition of her remaining at the Palazzo Roccanera. Isabel, however, was not a severe
cicerone
; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they offered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs of the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary of offering information. It must be added that during these visits the Countess was not very active; her preference was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most interesting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who—with all the respect that she owed her—could not see why she should not descend from the vehicle and enter the building. Pansy had so little chance to ramble that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her aunt might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the Countess announced her willingness to undertake this feat—a mild afternoon in March, when the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Isabel left her companions to wander over the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause, and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary, and preferred to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission, too, for the Countess often asked more from one's attention than she gave in return; and Isabel believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the dust gather for a moment upon the ancient scandals of Florence. She remained below, therefore, while Pansy guided her undiscriminating aunt to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half in shadow; the western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks of travertine—the latent colour which is the only living element in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where in the clear stillness a multitude of swallows kept circling and plunging. Isabel presently became aware that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had turned his attention to her own person, and was looking at her with a certain little poise of the head, which she had some weeks before perceived to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose. Such an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Edward Rosier; and this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of speaking to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied he drew near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters she would perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She replied that her stepdaughter was close at hand and she could only give him five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon a broken block.

‘‘It's very soon told,'' said Edward Rosier. ‘‘I have sold all my
bibelots
!''

Isabel gave, instinctively, an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had told her he had had all his teeth drawn.

‘‘I have sold them by auction at the Hôtel Drouot,'' he went on. ‘‘The sale took place three days ago, and they have telegraphed me the result. It's magnificent.''

‘‘I am glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.''

‘‘I have the money instead—forty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Osmond think me rich enough now?''

‘‘Is it for that you did it?'' Isabel asked, gently.

‘‘For what else in the world could it be? That is the only thing I think of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't stop for the sale; I couldn't have seen them going off; I think it would have killed me. But I put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I should tell you I have kept my enamels. Now I have got the money in my pocket, and he can't say I'm poor!'' the young man exclaimed, defiantly.