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_ As Mrs. Touchett had foretold, Isabel and Madame Merle were
thrown much together during the illness of their host, so that if
they had not become intimate it would have been almost a breach
of good manners. Their manners were of the best, but in addition
to this they happened to please each other. It is perhaps too
much to say that they swore an eternal friendship, but tacitly at
least they called the future to witness. Isabel did so with a
perfectly good conscience, though she would have hesitated to
admit she was intimate with her new friend in the high sense she
privately attached to this term. She often wondered indeed if she
ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with any one. She had
an ideal of friendship as well as of several other sentiments,
which it failed to seem to her in this case--it had not seemed to
her in other cases--that the actual completely expressed. But she
often reminded herself that there were essential reasons why
one's ideal could never become concrete. It was a thing to believe
in, not to see--a matter of faith, not of experience. Experience,
however, might supply us with very creditable imitations of it,
and the part of wisdom was to make the best of these. Certainly,
on the whole, Isabel had never encountered a more agreeable and
interesting figure than Madame Merle; she had never met a person
having less of that fault which is the principal obstacle to
friendship--the air of reproducing the more tiresome, the stale,
the too-familiar parts of one's own character. The gates of the
girl's confidence were opened wider than they had ever been; she
said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet said
to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour: it was as if
she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of
jewels. These spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude
that Isabel possessed, but there was all the greater reason for
their being carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, she always
remembered that one should never regret a generous error and that
if Madame Merle had not the merits she attributed to her, so much
the worse for Madame Merle. There was no doubt she had great
merits--she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated.
More than this (for it had not been Isabel's ill-fortune to go
through life without meeting in her own sex several persons of
whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior and
preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and
Madame Merle was far from being vulgarly good-natured and
restlessly witty. She knew how to think--an accomplishment rare
in women; and she had thought to very good purpose. Of course,
too, she knew how to feel; Isabel couldn't have spent a week with
her without being sure of that. This was indeed Madame Merle's
great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her; she
had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction to be
taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was
pleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so
easily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her
rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fount of
passion, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at one
period, didn't flow quite so freely as of yore. She proposed
moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely
admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and now she
pretended to be perfectly sane.
"I judge more than I used to," she said to Isabel, "but it seems
to me one has earned the right. One can't judge till one's forty;
before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition
much too ignorant. I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time
before you're forty. But every gain's a loss of some kind; I
often think that after forty one can't really feel. The
freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You'll keep them
longer than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me to
see you some years hence. I want to see what life makes of you.
One thing's certain--it can't spoil you. It may pull you about
horribly, but I defy it to break you up."
Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting
from a slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour,
might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such a
recognition of merit it seemed to come with authority. How could
the lightest word do less on the part of a person who was
prepared to say, of almost everything Isabel told her, "Oh, I've
been in that, my dear; it passes, like everything else." On many
of her interlocutors Madame Merle might have produced an
irritating effect; it was disconcertingly difficult to surprise
her. But Isabel, though by no means incapable of desiring to be
effective, had not at present this impulse. She was too sincere,
too interested in her judicious companion. And then moreover
Madame Merle never said such things in the tone of triumph or of
boastfulness; they dropped from her like cold confessions.
A period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days
grew shorter and there was an end to the pretty tea-parties on
the lawn. But our young woman had long indoor conversations with
her fellow visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies often
sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive apparatus
which the English climate and the English genius have between
them brought to such perfection. Madame Merle liked almost
everything, including the English rain. "There's always a little
of it and never too much at once," she said; "and it never wets
you and it always smells good." She declared that in England the
pleasures of smell were great--that in this inimitable island
there was a certain mixture of fog and beer and soot which,
however odd it might sound, was the national aroma, and was most
agreeable to the nostril; and she used to lift the sleeve of her
British overcoat and bury her nose in it, inhaling the clear,
fine scent of the wool. Poor Ralph Touchett, as soon as the
autumn had begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner; in
bad weather he was unable to step out of the house, and he used
sometimes to stand at one of the windows with his hands in his
pockets and, from a countenance half-rueful, half-critical, watch
Isabel and Madame Merle as they walked down the avenue under a
pair of umbrellas. The roads about Gardencourt were so firm, even
in the worst weather, that the two ladies always came back with a
healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their neat,
stout boots and declaring that their walk had done them
inexpressible good. Before luncheon, always, Madame Merle was
engaged; Isabel admired and envied her rigid possession of her
morning. Our heroine had always passed for a person of resources
and had taken a certain pride in being one; but she wandered, as
by the wrong side of the wall of a private garden, round the
enclosed talents, accomplishments, aptitudes of Madame Merle. She
found herself desiring to emulate them, and in twenty such ways
this lady presented herself as a model. "I should like awfully to
be so!" Isabel secretly exclaimed, more than once, as one after
another of her friend's fine aspects caught the light, and before
long she knew that she had learned a lesson from a high authority.
It took no great time indeed for her to feel herself, as the
phrase is, under an influence. "What's the harm," she wondered,
"so long as it's a good one? The more one's under a good
influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as
we take them--to understand them as we go. That, no doubt, I
shall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable;
isn't it my fault that I'm not pliable enough?" It is said that
imitation is the sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was sometimes
moved to gape at her friend aspiringly and despairingly it was
not so much because she desired herself to shine as because she
wished to hold up the lamp for Madame Merle. She liked her
extremely, but was even more dazzled than attracted. She
sometimes asked herself what Henrietta Stackpole would say to her
thinking so much of this perverted product of their common soil,
and had a conviction that it would be severely judged. Henrietta
would not at all subscribe to Madame Merle; for reasons she could
not have defined this truth came home to the girl. On the other
hand she was equally sure that, should the occasion offer, her
new friend would strike off some happy view of her old: Madame
Merle was too humorous, too observant, not to do justice to
Henrietta, and on becoming acquainted with her would probably
give the measure of a tact which Miss Stackpole couldn't hope to
emulate. She appeared to have in her experience a touchstone for
everything, and somewhere in the capacious pocket of her genial
memory she would find the key to Henrietta's value. "That's the
great thing," Isabel solemnly pondered; "that's the supreme good
fortune: to be in a better position for appreciating people than
they are for appreciating you." And she added that such, when one
considered it, was simply the essence of the aristocratic
situation. In this light, if in none other, one should aim at the
aristocratic situation.
I may not count over all the links in the chain which led Isabel
to think of Madame Merle's situation as aristocratic--a view of
it never expressed in any reference made to it by that lady
herself. She had known great things and great people, but she had
never played a great part. She was one of the small ones of the
earth; she had not been born to honours; she knew the world too
well to nourish fatuous illusions on the article of her own place
in it. She had encountered many of the fortunate few and was
perfectly aware of those points at which their fortune differed
from hers. But if by her informed measure she was no figure for a
high scene, she had yet to Isabel's imagination a sort of
greatness. To be so cultivated and civilised, so wise and so
easy, and still make so light of it--that was really to be a
great lady, especially when one so carried and presented one's
self. It was as if somehow she had all society under
contribution, and all the arts and graces it practised--or was
the effect rather that of charming uses found for her, even from
a distance, subtle service rendered by her to a clamorous world
wherever she might be? After breakfast she wrote a succession of
letters, as those arriving for her appeared innumerable: her
correspondence was a source of surprise to Isabel when they
sometimes walked together to the village post-office to deposit
Madame Merle's offering to the mail. She knew more people, as she
told Isabel, than she knew what to do with, and something was
always turning up to be written about. Of painting she was
devotedly fond, and made no more of brushing in a sketch than of
pulling off her gloves. At Gardencourt she was perpetually taking
advantage of an hour's sunshine to go out with a camp-stool and a
box of water-colours. That she was a brave musician we have
already perceived, and it was evidence of the fact that when she
seated herself at the piano, as she always did in the evening,
her listeners resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the
grace of her talk. Isabel, since she had known her, felt ashamed
of her own facility, which she now looked upon as basely inferior;
and indeed, though she had been thought rather a prodigy at home,
the loss to society when, in taking her place upon the music-stool,
she turned her back to the room, was usually deemed greater than
the gain. When Madame Merle was neither writing, nor painting,
nor touching the piano, she was usually employed upon wonderful
tasks of rich embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the
chimneypiece; an art in which her bold, free invention was as
noted as the agility of her needle. She was never idle, for when
engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned she was either
reading (she appeared to Isabel to read "everything important"),
or walking out, or playing patience with the cards, or talking
with her fellow inmates. And with all this she had always the
social quality, was never rudely absent and yet never too seated.
She laid down her pastimes as easily as she took them up; she
worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to impute scant
worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and
tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained there, according
to the convenience of her auditors, which she always unerringly
divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable,
amenable person to live with. If for Isabel she had a fault it
was that she was not natural; by which the girl meant, not that
she was either affected or pretentious, since from these vulgar
vices no woman could have been more exempt, but that her nature
had been too much overlaid by custom and her angles too much
rubbed away. She had become too flexible, too useful, was too
ripe and too final. She was in a word too perfectly the social
animal that man and woman are supposed to have been intended to
be; and she had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic
wildness which we may assume to have belonged even to the most
amiable persons in the ages before country-house life was the
fashion. Isabel found it difficult to think of her in any
detachment or privacy, she existed only in her relations, direct
or indirect, with her fellow mortals. One might wonder what
commerce she could possibly hold with her own spirit. One always
ended, however, by feeling that a charming surface doesn't
necessarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in which,
in one's youth, one had but just escaped being nourished.
Madame Merle was not superficial--not she. She was deep, and her
nature spoke none the less in her behaviour because it spoke a
conventional tongue. "What's language at all but a convention?"
said Isabel. "She has the good taste not to pretend, like some
people I've met, to express herself by original signs."
"I'm afraid you've suffered much," she once found occasion to say
to her friend in response to some allusion that had appeared to
reach far.
"What makes you think that?" Madame Merle asked with the amused
smile of a person seated at a game of guesses. "I hope I haven't
too much the droop of the misunderstood."
"No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have
always been happy wouldn't have found out."
"I haven't always been happy," said Madame Merle, smiling still,
but with a mock gravity, as if she were telling a child a secret.
"Such a wonderful thing!"
But Isabel rose to the irony. "A great many people give me the
impression of never having for a moment felt anything."
"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than
porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some
mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little
hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I
must tell you the truth I've been shockingly chipped and
cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I've been
cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard--the quiet,
dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale spices--as much as
I can. But when I've to come out and into a strong light--then,
my dear, I'm a horror!"
I know not whether it was on this occasion or on some other that
the conversation had taken the turn I have just indicated
she said to Isabel that she would some day a tale unfold. Isabel
assured her she should delight to listen to one, and reminded her
more than once of this engagement. Madame Merle, however, begged
repeatedly for a respite, and at last frankly told her young
companion that they must wait till they knew each other better.
This would be sure to happen, a long friendship so visibly lay
before them. Isabel assented, but at the same time enquired if
she mightn't be trusted--if she appeared capable of a betrayal of
confidence.
"It's not that I'm afraid of your repeating what I say," her
fellow visitor answered; "I'm afraid, on the contrary, of your
taking it too much to yourself. You'd judge me too harshly;
you're of the cruel age." She preferred for the present to talk
to Isabel of Isabel, and exhibited the greatest interest in our
heroine's history, sentiments, opinions, prospects. She made her
chatter and listened to her chatter with infinite good nature.
This flattered and quickened the girl, who was struck with all
the distinguished people her friend had known and with her having
lived, as Mrs. Touchett said, in the best company in Europe.
Isabel thought the better of herself for enjoying the favour of a
person who had so large a field of comparison; and it was perhaps
partly to gratify the sense of profiting by comparison that she
often appealed to these stores of reminiscence. Madame Merle had
been a dweller in many lands and had social ties in a dozen
different countries. "I don't pretend to be educated," she would
say, "but I think I know my Europe;" and she spoke one day of
going to Sweden to stay with an old friend, and another of
proceeding to Malta to follow up a new acquaintance. With
England, where she had often dwelt, she was thoroughly familiar,
and for Isabel's benefit threw a great deal of light upon the
customs of the country and the character of the people, who
"after all," as she was fond of saying, were the most convenient
in the world to live with.
"You mustn't think it strange her remaining here at such a time
as this, when Mr. Touchett's passing away," that gentleman's wife
remarked to her niece. "She is incapable of a mistake; she's the
most tactful woman I know. It's a favour to me that she stays;
she's putting off a lot of visits at great houses," said Mrs.
Touchett, who never forgot that when she herself was in England
her social value sank two or three degrees in the scale. "She has
her pick of places; she's not in want of a shelter. But I've
asked her to put in this time because I wish you to know her. I
think it will be a good thing for you. Serena Merle hasn't a
fault."
"If I didn't already like her very much that description might
alarm me," Isabel returned.
"She's never the least little bit 'off.' I've brought you out
here and I wish to do the best for you. Your sister Lily told me
she hoped I would give you plenty of opportunities. I give you
one in putting you in relation with Madame Merle. She's one of
the most brilliant women in Europe."
"I like her better than I like your description of her," Isabel
persisted in saying.
"Do you flatter yourself that you'll ever feel her open to
criticism? I hope you'll let me know when you do."
"That will be cruel--to you," said Isabel.
"You needn't mind me. You won't discover a fault in her."
"Perhaps not. But I dare say I shan't miss it."
"She knows absolutely everything on earth there is to know," said
Mrs. Touchett.
Isabel after this observed to their companion that she hoped she
knew Mrs. Touchett considered she hadn't a speck on her
perfection. On which "I'm obliged to you," Madame Merle replied,
"but I'm afraid your aunt imagines, or at least alludes to, no
aberrations that the clock-face doesn't register."
"So that you mean you've a wild side that's unknown to her?"
"Ah no, I fear my darkest sides are my tamest. I mean that having
no faults, for your aunt, means that one's never late for dinner
--that is for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other
day, when you came back from London; the clock was just at eight
when I came into the drawing-room: it was the rest of you that
were before the time. It means that one answers a letter the day
one gets it and that when one comes to stay with her one doesn't
bring too much luggage and is careful not to be taken ill. For
Mrs. Touchett those things constitute virtue; it's a blessing to
be able to reduce it to its elements."
Madame Merle's own conversation, it will be perceived, was
enriched with bold, free touches of criticism, which, even when
they had a restrictive effect, never struck Isabel as
ill-natured. It couldn't occur to the girl for instance that Mrs.
Touchett's accomplished guest was abusing her; and this for very
good reasons. In the first place Isabel rose eagerly to the sense
of her shades; in the second Madame Merle implied that there was
a great deal more to say; and it was clear in the third that for
a person to speak to one without ceremony of one's near relations
was an agreeable sign of that person's intimacy with one's self.
These signs of deep communion multiplied as the days elapsed, and
there was none of which Isabel was more sensible than of her
companion's preference for making Miss Archer herself a topic.
Though she referred frequently to the incidents of her own career
she never lingered upon them; she was as little of a gross
egotist as she was of a flat gossip.
"I'm old and stale and faded," she said more than once; "I'm of
no more interest than last week's newspaper. You're young and
fresh and of to-day; you've the great thing--you've actuality. I
once had it--we all have it for an hour. You, however, will have
it for longer. Let us talk about you then; you can say nothing I
shall not care to hear. It's a sign that I'm growing old--that I
like to talk with younger people. I think it's a very pretty
compensation. If we can't have youth within us we can have it
outside, and I really think we see it and feel it better that
way. Of course we must be in sympathy with it--that I shall
always be. I don't know that I shall ever be ill-natured with old
people--I hope not; there are certainly some old people I adore.
But I shall never be anything but abject with the young; they
touch me and appeal to me too much. I give you carte blanche
then; you can even be impertinent if you like; I shall let it
pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I were a hundred years
old, you say? Well, I am, if you please; I was born before the
French Revolution. Ah, my dear, je viens de loin; I belong to the
old, old world. But it's not of that I want to talk; I want to
talk about the new. You must tell me more about America; you
never tell me enough. Here I've been since I was brought here as
a helpless child, and it's ridiculous, or rather it's scandalous,
how little I know about that splendid, dreadful, funny country--
surely the greatest and drollest of them all. There are a great
many of us like that in these parts, and I must say I think we're
a wretched set of people. You should live in your own land;
whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we're
not good Americans we're certainly poor Europeans; we've no
natural place here. We're mere parasites, crawling over the
surface; we haven't our feet in the soil. At least one can know
it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman,
it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds
herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to
crawl. You protest, my dear? you're horrified? you declare you'll
never crawl? It's very true that I don't see you crawling; you
stand more upright than a good many poor creatures. Very good; on
the whole, I don't think you'll crawl. But the men, the
Americans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over
here? I don't envy them trying to arrange themselves. Look at
poor Ralph Touchett: what sort of a figure do you call that?
Fortunately he has a consumption; I say fortunately, because it
gives him something to do. His consumption's his carriere it's a
kind of position. You can say: 'Oh, Mr. Touchett, he takes care
of his lungs, he knows a great deal about climates.' But without
that who would he be, what would he represent? 'Mr. Ralph
Touchett: an American who lives in Europe.' That signifies
absolutely nothing--it's impossible anything should signify less.
'He's very cultivated,' they say: 'he has a very pretty
collection of old snuff-boxes.' The collection is all that's
wanted to make it pitiful. I'm tired of the sound of the word; I
think it's grotesque. With the poor old father it's different; he
has his identity, and it's rather a massive one. He represents a
great financial house, and that, in our day, is as good as
anything else. For an American, at any rate, that will do very
well. But I persist in thinking your cousin very lucky to have a
chronic malady so long as he doesn't die of it. It's much better
than the snuffboxes. If he weren't ill, you say, he'd do
something?--he'd take his father's place in the house. My poor
child, I doubt it; I don't think he's at all fond of the house.
However, you know him better than I, though I used to know him
rather well, and he may have the benefit of the doubt. The worst
case, I think, is a friend of mine, a countryman of ours, who
lives in Italy (where he also was brought before he knew better),
and who is one of the most delightful men I know. Some day you
must know him. I'll bring you together and then you'll see what I
mean. He's Gilbert Osmond--he lives in Italy; that's all one can
say about him or make of him. He's exceedingly clever, a man made
to be distinguished; but, as I tell you, you exhaust the
description when you say he's Mr. Osmond who lives tout betement
in Italy. No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past,
no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please--paints
in water-colours; like me, only better than I. His painting's
pretty bad; on the whole I'm rather glad of that. Fortunately
he's very indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a sort of
position. He can say, 'Oh, I do nothing; I'm too deadly lazy. You
can do nothing to-day unless you get up at five o'clock in the
morning.' In that way he becomes a sort of exception; you feel he
might do something if he'd only rise early. He never speaks of
his painting to people at large; he's too clever for that. But he
has a little girl--a dear little girl; he does speak of her. He's
devoted to her, and if it were a career to be an excellent father
he'd be very distinguished. But I'm afraid that's no better than
the snuff-boxes; perhaps not even so good. Tell me what they do
in America," pursued Madame Merle, who, it must be observed
parenthetically, did not deliver herself all at once of these
reflexions, which are presented in a cluster for the convenience
of the reader. She talked of Florence, where Mr. Osmond lived and
where Mrs. Touchett occupied a medieval palace; she talked of
Rome, where she herself had a little pied-a-terre with some
rather good old damask. She talked of places, of people and even,
as the phrase is, of "subjects"; and from time to time she talked
of their kind old host and of the prospect of his recovery. From
the first she had thought this prospect small, and Isabel had
been struck with the positive, discriminating, competent way in
which she took the measure of his remainder of life. One evening
she announced definitely that he wouldn't live.
"Sir Matthew Hope told me so as plainly as was proper," she said;
"standing there, near the fire, before dinner. He makes himself
very agreeable, the great doctor. I don't mean his saying that
has anything to do with it. But he says such things with great
tact. I had told him I felt ill at my ease, staying here at
such a time; it seemed to me so indiscreet--it wasn't as if I
could nurse. 'You must remain, you must remain,' he answered;
'your office will come later.' Wasn't that a very delicate way of
saying both that poor Mr. Touchett would go and that I might be
of some use as a consoler? In fact, however, I shall not be of
the slightest use. Your aunt will console herself; she, and she
alone, knows just how much consolation she'll require. It would
be a very delicate matter for another person to undertake to
administer the dose. With your cousin it will be different; he'll
miss his father immensely. But I should never presume to condole
with Mr. Ralph; we're not on those terms." Madame Merle had
alluded more than once to some undefined incongruity in her
relations with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel took this occasion of
asking her if they were not good friends.
"Perfectly, but he doesn't like me."
"What have you done to him?"
"Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for that."
"For not liking you? I think one has need of a very good reason."
"You're very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the day you
begin."
"Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin."
"I hope not; because if you do you'll never end. That's the way
with your cousin; he doesn't get over it. It's an antipathy of
nature--if I can call it that when it's all on his side. I've
nothing whatever against him and don't bear him the least little
grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I want. However,
one feels that he's a gentleman and would never say anything
underhand about one. Cartes sur table," Madame Merle subjoined
in a moment, "I'm not afraid of him."
"I hope not indeed," said Isabel, who added something about his
being the kindest creature living. She remembered, however, that
on her first asking him about Madame Merle he had answered her in
a manner which this lady might have thought injurious without
being explicit. There was something between them, Isabel said to
herself, but she said nothing more than this. If it were something
of importance it should inspire respect; if it were not it was
not worth her curiosity. With all her love of knowledge she had a
natural shrinking from raising curtains and looking into unlighted
corners. The love of knowledge coexisted in her mind with the
finest capacity for ignorance.
But Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, made
her raise her clear eyebrows at the time and think of the words
afterwards. "I'd give a great deal to be your age again," she
broke out once with a bitterness which, though diluted in her
customary amplitude of ease, was imperfectly disguised by it. "If
I could only begin again--if I could have my life before me!"
"Your life's before you yet," Isabel answered gently, for she was
vaguely awe-struck.
"No; the best part's gone, and gone for nothing."
"Surely not for nothing," said Isabel.
"Why not--what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor
fortune, nor position, nor the traces of a beauty that I never
had."
"You have many friends, dear lady."
"I'm not so sure!" cried Madame Merle.
"Ah, you're wrong. You have memories, graces, talents--"
But Madame Merle interrupted her. "What have my talents brought
me? Nothing but the need of using them still, to get through the
hours, the years, to cheat myself with some pretence of movement,
of unconsciousness. As for my graces and memories the less said
about them the better. You'll be my friend till you find a better
use for your friendship."
"It will be for you to see that I don't then," said Isabel.
"Yes; I would make an effort to keep you." And her companion
looked at her gravely. "When I say I should like to be your age I
mean with your qualities--frank, generous, sincere like you. In
that case I should have made something better of my life."
"What should you have liked to do that you've not done?"
Madame Merle took a sheet of music--she was seated at the piano
and had abruptly wheeled about on the stool when she first spoke
--and mechanically turned the leaves. "I'm very ambitious!" she
at last replied.
"And your ambitions have not been satisfied? They must have been
great."
"They WERE great. I should make myself ridiculous by talking of
them."
Isabel wondered what they could have been--whether Madame Merle
had aspired to wear a crown. "I don't know what your idea of
success may be, but you seem to me to have been successful. To me
indeed you're a vivid image of success."
Madame Merle tossed away the music with a smile. "What's YOUR
idea of success?"
"You evidently think it must be a very tame one. It's to see some
dream of one's youth come true."
"Ah," Madame Merle exclaimed, "that I've never seen! But my
dreams were so great--so preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I'm
dreaming now!" And she turned back to the piano and began grandly
to play. On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of
success had been very pretty, yet frightfully sad. Measured in
that way, who had ever succeeded? The dreams of one's youth, why
they were enchanting, they were divine! Who had ever seen such
things come to pass?
"I myself--a few of them," Isabel ventured to answer.
"Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday."
"I began to dream very young," Isabel smiled.
"Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood--that of
having a pink sash and a doll that could close her eyes."
"No, I don't mean that."
"Or a young man with a fine moustache going down on his knees to
you."
"No, nor that either," Isabel declared with still more emphasis.
Madame Merle appeared to note this eagerness. "I suspect that's
what you do mean. We've all had the young man with the moustache.
He's the inevitable young man; he doesn't count."
Isabel was silent a little but then spoke with extreme and
characteristic inconsequence. "Why shouldn't he count? There are
young men and young men."
"And yours was a paragon--is that what you mean?" asked her
friend with a laugh. "If you've had the identical young man you
dreamed of, then that was success, and I congratulate you with
all my heart. Only in that case why didn't you fly with him to
his castle in the Apennines?"
"He has no castle in the Apennines."
"What has he? An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street? Don't tell
me that; I refuse to recognise that as an ideal."
"I don't care anything about his house," said Isabel.
"That's very crude of you. When you've lived as long as I you'll
see that every human being has his shell and that you must take
the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of
circumstances. There's no such thing as an isolated man or
woman; we're each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances.
What shall we call our 'self'? Where does it begin? where does it
end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us--and then it
flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes
I choose to wear. I've a great respect for THINGS! One's self--
for other people--is one's expression of one's self; and one's
house, one's furniture, one's garments, the books one reads, the
company one keeps--these things are all expressive."
This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several
observations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel was fond of
metaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this
bold analysis of the human personality. "I don't agree with you.
I think just the other way. I don't know whether I succeed in
expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me.
Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on
the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one.
Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't
express me; and heaven forbid they should!"
"You dress very well," Madame Merle lightly interposed.
"Possibly; but I don't care to be judged by that. My clothes may
express the dressmaker, but they don't express me. To begin with
it's not my own choice that I wear them; they're imposed upon me
by society."
"Should you prefer to go without them?" Madame Merle enquired in
a tone which virtually terminated the discussion.
I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit on the
sketch I have given of the youthful loyalty practised by our
heroine toward this accomplished woman, that Isabel had said
nothing whatever to her about Lord Warburton and had been equally
reticent on the subject of Caspar Goodwood. She had not, however,
concealed the fact that she had had opportunities of marrying and
had even let her friend know of how advantageous a kind they had
been. Lord Warburton had left Lockleigh and was gone to Scotland,
taking his sisters with him; and though he had written to Ralph
more than once to ask about Mr. Touchett's health the girl was
not liable to the embarrassment of such enquiries as, had he
still been in the neighbourhood, he would probably have felt
bound to make in person. He had excellent ways, but she felt sure
that if he had come to Gardencourt he would have seen Madame
Merle, and that if he had seen her he would have liked her and
betrayed to her that he was in love with her young friend. It so
happened that during this lady's previous visits to Gardencourt--
each of them much shorter than the present--he had either not
been at Lockleigh or had not called at Mr. Touchett's. Therefore,
though she knew him by name as the great man of that county, she
had no cause to suspect him as a suitor of Mrs. Touchett's
freshly-imported niece.
"You've plenty of time," she had said to Isabel in return for the
mutilated confidences which our young woman made her and which
didn't pretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at moments
the girl had compunctions at having said so much. "I'm glad
you've done nothing yet--that you have it still to do. It's a
very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers--so
long of course as they are not the best she's likely to have.
Pardon me if my tone seems horribly corrupt; one must take the
worldly view sometimes. Only don't keep on refusing for the sake
of refusing. It's a pleasant exercise of power; but accepting's
after all an exercise of power as well. There's always the danger
of refusing once too often. It was not the one I fell into--I
didn't refuse often enough. You're an exquisite creature, and I
should like to see you married to a prime minister. But speaking
strictly, you know, you're not what is technically called a parti.
You're extremely good-looking and extremely clever; in yourself
you're quite exceptional. You appear to have the vaguest ideas
about your earthly possessions; but from what I can make
out you're not embarrassed with an income. I wish you had a
little money."
"I wish I had!" said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting for
the moment that her poverty had been a venial fault for two
gallant gentlemen.
In spite of Sir Matthew Hope's benevolent recommendation Madame
Merle did not remain to the end, as the issue of poor Mr.
Touchett's malady had now come frankly to be designated. She was
under pledges to other people which had at last to be redeemed,
and she left Gardencourt with the understanding that she should
in any event see Mrs. Touchett there again, or else in town,
before quitting England. Her parting with Isabel was even more
like the beginning of a friendship than their meeting had been.
"I'm going to six places in succession, but I shall see no one I
like so well as you. They'll all be old friends, however; one
doesn't make new friends at my age. I've made a great exception
for you. You must remember that and must think as well of me as
possible. You must reward me by believing in me."
By way of answer Isabel kissed her, and, though some women kiss
with facility, there are kisses and kisses, and this embrace was
satisfactory to Madame Merle. Our young lady, after this, was
much alone; she saw her aunt and cousin only at meals, and
discovered that of the hours during which Mrs. Touchett was
invisible only a minor portion was now devoted to nursing her
husband. She spent the rest in her own apartments, to which
access was not allowed even to her niece, apparently occupied
there with mysterious and inscrutable exercises. At table she was
grave and silent; but her solemnity was not an attitude--Isabel
could see it was a conviction. She wondered if her aunt repented
of having taken her own way so much; but there was no visible
evidence of this--no tears, no sighs, no exaggeration of a zeal
always to its own sense adequate. Mrs. Touchett seemed simply to
feel the need of thinking things over and summing them up; she
had a little moral account-book--with columns unerringly ruled and
a sharp steel clasp--which she kept with exemplary neatness.
Uttered reflection had with her ever, at any rate, a practical
ring. "If I had foreseen this I'd not have proposed your coming
abroad now," she said to Isabel after Madame Merle had left the
house. "I'd have waited and sent for you next year."
"So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle? It's a great
happiness to me to have come now."
"That's very well. But it was not that you might know your uncle
that I brought you to Europe." A perfectly veracious speech; but,
as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed. She had leisure to
think of this and other matters. She took a solitary walk every
day and spent vague hours in turning over books in the library.
Among the subjects that engaged her attention were the adventures
of her friend Miss Stackpole, with whom she was in regular
correspondence. Isabel liked her friend's private epistolary
style better than her public; that is she felt her public letters
would have been excellent if they had not been printed.
Henrietta's career, however, was not so successful as might have
been wished even in the interest of her private felicity; that
view of the inner life of Great Britain which she was so eager to
take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus. The
invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never
arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly
ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on
the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had
evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed
that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire.
"He says he should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta
wrote; "and as he thinks of going there himself I suppose his
advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don't take a view of
French life; and it's a fact that I want very much to see the new
Republic. Mr. Bantling doesn't care much about the Republic, but
he thinks of going over to Paris anyway. I must say he's quite as
attentive as I could wish, and at least I shall have seen one
polite Englishman. I keep telling Mr. Bantling that he ought to
have been an American, and you should see how that pleases him.
Whenever I say so he always breaks out with the same exclamation--
'Ah, but really, come now!" A few days later she wrote that she
had decided to go to Paris at the end of the week and that Mr.
Banding had promised to see her off--perhaps even would go as far
as Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel should
arrive, Henrietta added; speaking quite as if Isabel were to start
on her continental journey alone and making no allusion to Mrs.
Touchett. Bearing in mind his interest in their late companion,
our heroine communicated several passages from this correspondence
to Ralph, who followed with an emotion akin to suspense the career
of the representative of the Interviewer.
"It seems to me she's doing very well," he said, "going over to
Paris with an ex-Lancer! If she wants something to write about
she has only to describe that episode."
"It's not conventional, certainly," Isabel answered; "but if you
mean that--as far as Henrietta is concerned--it's not perfectly
innocent, you're very much mistaken. You'll never understand
Henrietta."
"Pardon me, I understand her perfectly. I didn't at all at first,
but now I've the point of view. I'm afraid, however, that
Bantling hasn't; he may have some surprises. Oh, I understand
Henrietta as well as if I had made her!"
Isabel was by no means sure of this, but she abstained from
expressing further doubt, for she was disposed in these days to
extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon less than a
week after Madame Merle's departure she was seated in the library
with a volume to which her attention was not fastened. She had
placed herself in a deep window-bench, from which she looked out
into the dull, damp park; and as the library stood at right
angles to the entrance-front of the house she could see the
doctor's brougham, which had been waiting for the last two hours
before the door. She was struck with his remaining so long, but
at last she saw him appear in the portico, stand a moment slowly
drawing on his gloves and looking at the knees of his horse, and
then get into the vehicle and roll away. Isabel kept her place
for half an hour; there was a great stillness in the house. It
was so great that when she at last heard a soft, slow step on the
deep carpet of the room she was almost startled by the sound. She
turned quickly away from the window and saw Ralph Touchett
standing there with his hands still in his pockets, but with a
face absolutely void of its usual latent smile. She got up and
her movement and glance were a question.
"It's all over," said Ralph.
"Do you mean that my uncle...?" And Isabel stopped.
"My dear father died an hour ago."
"Ah, my poor Ralph!" she gently wailed, putting out her two hands
to him. _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER XX
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