The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]

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These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like
the embrace of strong arms--that was like the fragrance straight
in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not
what strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her
little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the
impulse to answer: "Lord Warburton, it's impossible for me to do
better in this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very
gratefully, to your loyalty." But though she was lost in
admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the
deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast
cage. The "splendid" security so offered her was not the greatest
she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying
was something very different--something that deferred the need of
really facing her crisis. "Don't think me unkind if I ask you to
say no more about this to-day."

"Certainly, certainly!" her companion cried. "I wouldn't bore you
for the world."

"You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you
to do it justice."

"That's all I ask of you, of course--and that you'll remember how
absolutely my happiness is in your hands."

Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she
said after a minute: "I must tell you that what I shall think
about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is
impossible--letting you know it without making you miserable."

"There's no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that if you
refuse me you'll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do
worse; I shall live to no purpose."

"You'll live to marry a better woman than I."

"Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton very gravely.
"That's fair to neither of us."

"To marry a worse one then."

"If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's
all I can say," he went on with the same earnestness. "There's no
accounting for tastes."

His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by
again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. "I'll
speak to you myself--very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you."

"At your convenience, yes," he replied. "Whatever time you take,
it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of
that."

"I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind
a little."

He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with
his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his
hunting-crop. "Do you know I'm very much afraid of it--of that
remarkable mind of yours?"

Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question
made her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She
returned his look a moment, and then with a note in her voice
that might almost have appealed to his compassion, "So am I, my
lord!" she oddly exclaimed.

His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the
faculty of pity was needed at home. "Ah! be merciful, be
merciful," he murmured.

"I think you had better go," said Isabel. "I'll write to you."

"Very good; but whatever you write I'll come and see you, you
know." And then he stood reflecting, his eyes fixed on the
observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having
understood all that had been said and of pretending to carry off
the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots
of an ancient oak. "There's one thing more," he went on. "You
know, if you don't like Lockleigh--if you think it's damp or
anything of that sort--you need never go within fifty miles of
it. It's not damp, by the way; I've had the house thoroughly
examined; it's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't
fancy it you needn't dream of living in it. There's no difficulty
whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I'd
just mention it; some people don't like a moat, you know.
Good-bye."

"I adore a moat," said Isabel. "Good-bye."

He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment--a moment
long enough for him to bend his handsome bared head and kiss it.
Then, still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of
the chase, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently much upset.

Isabel herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she
would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility,
a great difficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no
choice in the question. She couldn't marry Lord Warburton; the idea
failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour of the free
exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now
capable of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must
convince him, and that duty was comparatively simple. But what
disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was
this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a magnificent
"chance." With whatever qualifications one would, Lord Warburton
had offered her a great opportunity; the situation might have
discomforts, might contain oppressive, might contain narrowing
elements, might prove really but a stupefying anodyne; but she did
her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of twenty
would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then
upon her also should it not irresistibly impose itself? Who was
she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view
of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had
she that pretended to be larger than these large these fabulous
occasions? If she wouldn't do such a thing as that then she must do
great things, she must do something greater. Poor Isabel found
ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too
proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be
delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of pride
had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride
that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a betise
was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him
that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and
the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry
him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy
somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition--as he saw it--
even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it;
and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a
tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She
had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after
he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found
her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she
was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering
if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last
getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she
had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.

CHAPTER XIII

It was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice--she had no
desire whatever for that--that led her to speak to her uncle of
what had taken place. She wished to speak to some one; she should
feel more natural, more human, and her uncle, for this purpose,
presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt
or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin of course was a possible
confidant; but she would have had to do herself violence to air
this special secret to Ralph. So the next day, after breakfast,
she sought her occasion. Her uncle never left his apartment till
the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said, in his
dressing-room. Isabel had quite taken her place in the class so
designated, which, for the rest, included the old man's son, his
physician, his personal servant, and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs.
Touchett did not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the
less to Isabel's finding her host alone. He sat in a complicated
mechanical chair, at the open window of his room, looking
westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and
letters piled up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely
made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent
expectation.

She approached her point directly. "I think I ought to let you
know that Lord Warburton has asked me to marry him. I suppose I
ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first."

The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the
confidence she showed him. "Do you mind telling me whether you
accepted him?" he then enquired.

"I've not answered him definitely yet; I've taken a little time
to think of it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall
not accept him."

Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of
thinking that, whatever interest he might take in the matter from
the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it.
"Well, I told you you'd be a success over here. Americans are
highly appreciated."

"Very highly indeed," said Isabel. "But at the cost of seeming
both tasteless and ungrateful, I don't think I can marry Lord
Warburton."

"Well," her uncle went on, "of course an old man can't judge for
a young lady. I'm glad you didn't ask me before you made up your
mind. I suppose I ought to tell you," he added slowly, but as if
it were not of much consequence, "that I've known all about it
these three days."

"About Lord Warburton's state of mind?"

"About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very
pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to
see his letter?" the old man obligingly asked.

"Thank you; I don't think I care about that. But I'm glad he
wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be
certain to do what was right."

"Ah well, I guess you do like him!" Mr. Touchett declared. "You
needn't pretend you don't."

"I like him extremely; I'm very free to admit that. But I don't
wish to marry any one just now."

"You think some one may come along whom you may like better.
Well, that's very likely," said Mr. Touchett, who appeared to
wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision,
as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.

"I don't care if I don't meet any one else. I like Lord Warburton
quite well enough." she fell into that appearance of a sudden
change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and
even displeased her interlocutors.

Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these
impressions. "He's a very fine man," he resumed in a tone which
might have passed for that of encouragement. "His letter was one
of the pleasantest I've received for some weeks. I suppose one of
the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that is all
except the part that was about himself. I suppose he told you all
that."

"He would have told me everything I wished to ask him," Isabel
said.

"But you didn't feel curious?"

"My curiosity would have been idle--once I had determined to
decline his offer."

"You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?" Mr. Touchett
enquired.

She was silent a little. "I suppose it was that," she presently
admitted. "But I don't know why."

"Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons," said her
uncle. "There's a great deal that's attractive about such an
idea; but I don't see why the English should want to entice us
away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them
over there, but that's because our population is insufficient.
Here, you know, they're rather crowded. However, I presume
there's room for charming young ladies everywhere."

"There seems to have been room here for you," said Isabel, whose
eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the
park.

Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. "There's room
everywhere, my dear, if you'll pay for it. I sometimes think I've
paid too much for this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too
much."

"Perhaps I might," the girl replied.

That suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than
she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this
association of her uncle's mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed
to prove that she was concerned with the natural and reasonable
emotions of life and not altogether a victim to intellectual
eagerness and vague ambitions--ambitions reaching beyond Lord
Warburton's beautiful appeal, reaching to something indefinable
and possibly not commendable. In so far as the indefinable had an
influence upon Isabel's behaviour at this juncture, it was not
the conception, even unformulated, of a union with Caspar
Goodwood; for however she might have resisted conquest at her
English suitor's large quiet hands she was at least as far
removed from the disposition to let the young man from Boston
take positive possession of her. The sentiment in which
She sought refuge after reading his letter was a critical view of
his having come abroad; for it was part of the influence he had
upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of freedom.
There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of
presence, in his way of rising before her. She had been haunted
at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and
had wondered--a consideration she had never paid in equal degree
to any one else--whether he would like what she did. The
difficulty was that more than any man she had ever known,
more than poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his
lordship the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood expressed
for her an energy--and she had already felt it as a power that was
of his very nature. It was in no degree a matter of his
"advantages"--it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his
clear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window. She
might like it or not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole
weight and force: even in one's usual contact with him one had to
reckon with that. The idea of a diminished liberty was
particularly disagreeable to her at present, since she had just
given a sort of personal accent to her independence by
looking so straight at Lord Warburton's big bribe and yet turning
away from it. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had seemed to range
himself on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact
she knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might
evade him for a time, but that she must make terms with him at
last--terms which would be certain to be favourable to himself.
Her impulse had been to avail herself of the things that helped
her to resist such an obligation; and this impulse had
been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her aunt's
invitation, which had come to her at an hour when she expected
from day to day to see Mr. Goodwood and when she was glad to have
an answer ready for something she was sure he would say to her.
When she had told him at Albany, on the evening of Mrs.
Touchett's visit, that she couldn't then discuss difficult
questions, dazzled as she was by the great immediate opening of
her aunt's offer of "Europe," he declared that this was no answer
at all; and it was now to obtain a better one that he was
following her across the sea. To say to herself that he was a
kind of grim fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who
was able to take much for granted in him; but the reader has a
right to a nearer and a clearer view.

He was the son of a proprietor of well-known cotton-mills in
Massachusetts--a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable
fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar at present
managed the works, and with a judgement and a temper which,
in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept their
prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part of his
education at Harvard College, where, however, he had gained
renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner of
more dispersed knowledge. Later on he had learned that the finer
intelligence too could vault and pull and strain--might even,
breaking the record, treat itself to rare exploits. He had thus
discovered in himself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics,
and had invented an improvement in the cotton-spinning process
which was now largely used and was known by his name. You might
have seen it in the newspapers in connection with this fruitful
contrivance; assurance of which he had given to Isabel by showing
her in the columns of the New York Interviewer an exhaustive
article on the Goodwood patent--an article not prepared by Miss
Stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself to his more
sentimental interests. There were intricate, bristling things he
rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he
could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him
and justify him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men
--which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding
ambition. It struck those who knew him well that he might do
greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing
cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends took for granted
that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger
letters. But it was as if something large and confused, something
dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all
in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of
things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement. It
pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a
plunging steed, the whirlwind of a great war--a war like the
Civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious childhood
and his ripening youth.

She liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in
fact a mover of men--liked it much better than some other points
in his nature and aspect. She cared nothing for his cotton-mill--
the Goodwood patent left her imagination absolutely cold. She
wished him no ounce less of his manhood, but she sometimes
thought he would be rather nicer if he looked, for instance, a
little differently. His jaw was too square and set and his figure
too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of easy
consonance with the deeper rhythms of life. Then she viewed with
reserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it
was not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually,
for, on the contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather
too new. But they all seemed of the same piece; the figure, the
stuff, was so drearily usual. She had reminded herself more than
once that this was a frivolous objection to a person of his
importance; and then she had amended the rebuke by saying that it
would be a frivolous objection only if she were in love with him.
She was not in love with him and therefore might criticise his
small defects as well as his great--which latter consisted in the
collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of
his being so, since one could never be, but certainly of his
seeming so. He showed his appetites and designs too simply and
artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about
the same subject, and when other people were present he talked
too little about anything. And yet he was of supremely strong,
clean make--which was so much she saw the different fitted parts
of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits, the different
fitted parts of armoured warriors--in plates of steel handsomely
inlaid with gold. It was very strange: where, ever, was any
tangible link between her impression and her act? Caspar Goodwood
had never corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and
she supposed that this was why he left her so harshly critical.
When, however, Lord Warburton, who not only did correspond with
it, but gave an extension to the term, appealed to her approval,
she found herself still unsatisfied. It was certainly strange.

The sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering Mr.
Goodwood's letter, and Isabel determined to leave it a while
unhonoured. If he had determined to persecute her he must take
the consequences; foremost among which was his being left to
perceive how little it charmed her that he should come down to
Gardencourt. She was already liable to the incursions of one
suitor at this place, and though it might be pleasant to be
appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in
entertaining two such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case
where the entertainment should consist of dismissing them. She
made no reply to Mr. Goodwood; but at the end of three days she
wrote to Lord Warburton, and the letter belongs to our history.

DEAR LORD WARBURTON--A great deal of earnest thought has not led
me to change my mind about the suggestion you were so kind as to
make me the other day. I am not, I am really and truly not, able
to regard you in the light of a companion for life; or to think
of your home--your various homes--as the settled seat of my
existence. These things cannot be reasoned about, and I very
earnestly entreat you not to return to the subject we discussed
so exhaustively. We see our lives from our own point of view;
that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us; and I
shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed.
Kindly let this suffice you, and do me the justice to believe
that I have given your proposal the deeply respectful
consideration it deserves. It is with this very great regard that
I remain sincerely yours,

ISABEL ARCHER.

While the author of this missive was making up her mind to
dispatch it Henrietta Stackpole formed a resolve which was
accompanied by no demur. She invited Ralph Touchett to take a
walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented with that
alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high
expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of
him. It may be admitted that at this information the young man
flinched; for we know that Miss Stackpole had struck him as apt
to push an advantage. The alarm was unreasoned, however; for he
was clear about the area of her indiscretion as little as advised
of its vertical depth, and he made a very civil profession of the
desire to serve her. He was afraid of her and presently told
her so. "When you look at me in a certain way my knees knock
together, my faculties desert me; I'm filled with trepidation
and I ask only for strength to execute your commands. You've an
address that I've never encountered in any woman."

"Well," Henrietta replied good-humouredly, "if I had not known
before that you were trying somehow to abash me I should know it
now. Of course I'm easy game--I was brought up with such
different customs and ideas. I'm not used to your arbitrary
standards, and I've never been spoken to in America as you have
spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing with me over there were
to speak to me like that I shouldn't know what to make of it. We
take everything more naturally over there, and, after all, we're
a great deal more simple. I admit that; I'm very simple
myself. Of course if you choose to laugh at me for it you're very
welcome; but I think on the whole I would rather be myself than
you. I'm quite content to be myself; I don't want to change.
There are plenty of people that appreciate me just as I am. It's
true they're nice fresh free-born Americans!" Henrietta had
lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence and large
concession. "I want you to assist me a little," she went on. "I
don't care in the least whether I amuse you while you do so; or,
rather, I'm perfectly willing your amusement should be your
reward. I want you to help me about Isabel."

"Has she injured you?" Ralph asked.

"If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. What
I'm afraid of is that she'll injure herself."

"I think that's very possible," said Ralph.

His companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him perhaps
the very gaze that unnerved him. "That too would amuse you, I
suppose. The way you do say things! I never heard any one so
indifferent."

"To Isabel? Ah, not that!"

"Well, you're not in love with her, I hope."

"How can that be, when I'm in love with Another?"

"You're in love with yourself, that's the Other!" Miss Stackpole
declared. "Much good may it do you! But if you wish to be serious
once in your life here's a chance; and if you really care for
your cousin here's an opportunity to prove it. I don't expect you
to understand her; that's too much to ask. But you needn't do
that to grant my favour. I'll supply the necessary intelligence."

"I shall enjoy that immensely!" Ralph exclaimed. "I'll be Caliban
and you shall be Ariel."

"You're not at all like Caliban, because you're sophisticated,
and Caliban was not. But I'm not talking about imaginary
characters; I'm talking about Isabel. Isabel's intensely real.
What I wish to tell you is that I find her fearfully changed."

"Since you came, do you mean?"

"Since I came and before I came. She's not the same as she once
so beautifully was."

"As she was in America?"

"Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She
can't help it, but she does."

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