The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]

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"Do you want to change her back again?"

"Of course I do, and I want you to help me."

"Ah," said Ralph, "I'm only Caliban; I'm not Prospero."

"You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You've
acted on Isabel Archer since she came here, Mr. Touchett."

"I, my dear Miss Stackpole? Never in the world. Isabel Archer has
acted on me--yes; she acts on every one. But I've been absolutely
passive."

"You're too passive then. You had better stir yourself and be
careful. Isabel's changing every day; she's drifting away--
right out to sea. I've watched her and I can see it. She's not
the bright American girl she was. She's taking different views, a
different colour, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to
save those ideals, Mr. Touchett, and that's where you come in."

"Not surely as an ideal?"

"Well, I hope not," Henrietta replied promptly. "I've got a
fear in my heart that she's going to marry one of these fell
Europeans, and I want to prevent it.

"Ah, I see," cried Ralph; "and to prevent it you want me to step
in and marry her?"

"Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for
you're the typical, the fell European from whom I wish to
rescue her. No; I wish you to take an interest in another person--
a young man to whom she once gave great encouragement and whom she
now doesn't seem to think good enough. He's a thoroughly grand
man and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you
would invite him to pay a visit here."

Ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to
the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at
first in the simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous
air, and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything
in the world could really be as candid as this request of Miss
Stackpole's appeared. That a young woman should demand that a
gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should be
furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to another
young woman, a young woman whose attention had wandered and whose
charms were greater--this was an anomaly which for the moment
challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between
the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that
Miss Stackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on her
own account was the sign not so much of a vulgar as of an
embarrassed mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, however,
Ralph was saved, and saved by a force that I can only speak of as
inspiration. With no more outward light on the subject than he
already possessed he suddenly acquired the conviction that it
would be a sovereign injustice to the correspondent of the
Interviewer to assign a dishonourable motive to any act of hers.
This conviction passed into his mind with extreme rapidity; it was
perhaps kindled by the pure radiance of the young lady's
imperturbable gaze. He returned this challenge a moment,
consciously, resisting an inclination to frown as one frowns in
the presence of larger luminaries. "Who's the gentleman you speak
of?"

"Mr. Caspar Goodwood--of Boston. He has been extremely attentive
to Isabel--just as devoted to her as he can live. He has
followed her out here and he's at present in London. I don't know
his address, but I guess I can obtain it."

"I've never heard of him," said Ralph.

"Well, I suppose you haven't heard of every one. I don't believe
he has ever heard of you; but that's no reason why
Isabel shouldn't marry him."

Ralph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. "What a rage you have for
marrying people! Do you remember how you wanted to marry me the
other day?"

"I've got over that. You don't know how to take such ideas. Mr.
Goodwood does, however; and that's what I like about him. He's
a splendid man and a perfect gentleman, and Isabel knows it."

"Is she very fond of him?"

"If she isn't she ought to be. He's simply wrapped up in her."

"And you wish me to ask him here," said Ralph reflectively.

"It would be an act of true hospitality."

"Caspar Goodwood," Ralph continued--"it's rather a striking
name."

"I don't care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel
Jenkins, and I should say the same. He's the only man I have
ever seen whom I think worthy of Isabel."

"You're a very devoted friend," said Ralph.

"Of course I am. If you say that to pour scorn on me I don't
care."

"I don't say it to pour scorn on you; I'm very much struck with
it."

"You're more satiric than ever, but I advise you not to laugh at
Mr. Goodwood."

"I assure you I'm very serious; you ought to understand that,"
said Ralph.

In a moment his companion understood it. "I believe you are;
now you're too serious."

"You're difficult to please."

"Oh, you're very serious indeed. You won't invite Mr. Goodwood."

"I don't know," said Ralph. "I'm capable of strange things. Tell
me a little about Mr. Goodwood. What's he like?"

"He's just the opposite of you. He's at the head of a
cotton-factory; a very fine one."

"Has he pleasant manners?" asked Ralph.

"Splendid manners--in the American style."

"Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?"

"I don't think he'd care much about our little circle. He'd
concentrate on Isabel."

"And how would my cousin like that?"

"Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It will
call back her thoughts."

"Call them back--from where?"

"From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three months
ago she gave Mr. Goodwood every reason to suppose he was
acceptable to her, and it's not worthy of Isabel to go back on a
real friend simply because she has changed the scene. I've
changed the scene too, and the effect of it has been to make me
care more for my old associations than ever. It's my belief that
the sooner Isabel changes it back again the better. I know her
well enough to know that she would never be truly happy over
here, and I wish her to form some strong American tie that will
act as a preservative."

"Aren't you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?" Ralph
enquired. "Don't you think you ought to give her more of a chance
in poor old England?"

"A chance to ruin her bright young life? One's never too much in
a hurry to save a precious human creature from drowning."

"As I understand it then," said Ralph, "you wish me to push Mr.
Goodwood overboard after her. Do you know," he added, "that I've
never heard her mention his name?"

Henrietta gave a brilliant smile. "I'm delighted to hear that; it
proves how much she thinks of him."

Ralph appeared to allow that there was a good deal in this, and
he surrendered to thought while his companion watched him askance.
"If I should invite Mr. Goodwood," he finally said, "it would be
to quarrel with him."

"Don't do that; he'd prove the better man."

"You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! I really
don't think I can ask him. I should be afraid of being rude to
him."

"It's just as you please," Henrietta returned. "I had no idea you
were in love with her yourself."

"Do you really believe that?" the young man asked with lifted
eyebrows.

"That's the most natural speech I've ever heard you make! Of
course I believe it," Miss Stackpole ingeniously said.

"Well," Ralph concluded, "to prove to you that you're wrong I'll
invite him. It must be of course as a friend of yours."

"It will not be as a friend of mine that he'll come; and it will
not be to prove to me that I'm wrong that you'll ask him--but to
prove it to yourself!"

These last words of Miss Stackpole's (on which the two presently
separated) contained an amount of truth which Ralph Touchett was
obliged to recognise; but it so far took the edge from too sharp
a recognition that, in spite of his suspecting it would be rather
more indiscreet to keep than to break his promise, he wrote Mr.
Goodwood a note of six lines, expressing the pleasure it would
give Mr. Touchett the elder that he should join a little party at
Gardencourt, of which Miss Stackpole was a valued member. Having
sent his letter (to the care of a banker whom Henrietta
suggested) he waited in some suspense. He had heard this fresh
formidable figure named for the first time; for when his mother
had mentioned on her arrival that there was a story about the
girl's having an "admirer" at home, the idea had seemed deficient
in reality and he had taken no pains to ask questions the answers
to which would involve only the vague or the disagreeable. Now,
however, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object
had become more concrete; it took the form of a young man who had
followed her to London, who was interested in a cotton-mill and
had manners in the most splendid of the American styles. Ralph
had two theories about this intervenes. Either his passion was a
sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole's (there was always a sort
of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the
sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other),
in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not
accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and
in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand
further consideration. The latter clause of Ralph's argument
might have seemed incoherent; but it embodied his conviction that
if Mr. Goodwood were interested in Isabel in the serious manner
described by Miss Stackpole he would not care to present himself
at Gardencourt on a summons from the latter lady. "On this
supposition," said Ralph, "he must regard her as a thorn on the
stem of his rose; as an intercessor he must find her wanting in
tact."

Two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very
short note from Caspar Goodwood, thanking him for it, regretting
that other engagements made a visit to Gardencourt impossible and
presenting many compliments to Miss Stackpole. Ralph handed the
note to Henrietta, who, when she had read it, exclaimed: "Well,
I never have heard of anything so stiff!"

"I'm afraid he doesn't care so much about my cousin as you
suppose," Ralph observed.

"No, it's not that; it's some subtler motive. His nature's very
deep. But I'm determined to fathom it, and I shall write to him
to know what he means."

His refusal of Ralph's overtures was vaguely disconcerting; from
the moment he declined to come to Gardencourt our friend began to
think him of importance. He asked himself what it signified to
him whether Isabel's admirers should be desperadoes or laggards;
they were not rivals of his and were perfectly welcome to act out
their genius. Nevertheless he felt much curiosity as to the
result of Miss Stackpole's promised enquiry into the causes of
Mr. Goodwood's stiffness--a curiosity for the present ungratified,
inasmuch as when he asked her three days later if she had written
to London she was obliged to confess she had written in vain. Mr.
Goodwood had not replied.

"I suppose he's thinking it over," she said; "he thinks
everything over; he's not really at all impetuous. But I'm
accustomed to having my letters answered the same day." She
presently proposed to Isabel, at all events, that they should
make an excursion to London together. "If I must tell the truth,"
she observed, "I'm not seeing much at this place, and I shouldn't
think you were either. I've not even seen that aristocrat--
what's his name?--Lord Washburton. He seems to let you severely
alone."

"Lord Warburton's coming to-morrow, I happen to know," replied
her friend, who had received a note from the master of Lockleigh
in answer to her own letter. "You'll have every opportunity of
turning him inside out."

"Well, he may do for one letter, but what's one letter when you
want to write fifty? I've described all the scenery in this
vicinity and raved about all the old women and donkeys. You
may say what you please, scenery doesn't make a vital letter. I
must go back to London and get some impressions of real life. I
was there but three days before I came away, and that's hardly
time to get in touch."

As Isabel, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had seen
even less of the British capital than this, it appeared a
happy suggestion of Henrietta's that the two should go thither on
a visit of pleasure. The idea struck Isabel as charming; he was
curious of the thick detail of London, which had always loomed
large and rich to her. They turned over their schemes together
and indulged in visions of romantic hours. They would stay at
some picturesque old inn--one of the inns described by Dickens--
and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. Henrietta
was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a literary
woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything. They
would dine at a coffee-house and go afterwards to the play; they
would frequent the Abbey and the British Museum and find out
where Doctor Johnson had lived, and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel
grew eager and presently unveiled the bright vision to Ralph, who
burst into a fit of laughter which scarce expressed the sympathy
she had desired.

"It's a delightful plan," he said. "I advise you to go to the
Duke's Head in Covent Garden, an easy, informal, old-fashioned
place, and I'll have you put down at my club."

"Do you mean it's improper?" Isabel asked. "Dear me, isn't
anything proper here? With Henrietta surely I may go anywhere;
she isn't hampered in that way. She has travelled over the whole
American continent and can at least find her way about this
minute island."

"Ah then," said Ralph, "let me take advantage of her protection
to go up to town as well. I may never have a chance to
travel so safely!"

CHAPTER XIV

Miss Stackpole would have prepared to start immediately; but
Isabel, as we have seen, had been notified that Lord Warburton
would come again to Gardencourt, and she believed it her duty to
remain there and see him. For four or five days he had made no
response to her letter; then he had written, very briefly, to say
he would come to luncheon two days later. There was something in
these delays and postponements that touched the girl and renewed
her sense of his desire to be considerate and patient, not to
appear to urge her too grossly; a consideration the more studied
that she was so sure he "really liked" her. Isabel told her uncle
she had written to him, mentioning also his intention of coming;
and the old man, in consequence, left his room earlier than usual
and made his appearance at the two o'clock repast. This was by no
means an act of vigilance on his part, but the fruit of a
benevolent belief that his being of the company might help to
cover any conjoined straying away in case Isabel should give
their noble visitor another hearing. That personage drove over
from Lockleigh and brought the elder of his sisters with him, a
measure presumably dictated by reflexions of the same order as
Mr. Touchett's. The two visitors were introduced to Miss
Stackpole, who, at luncheon, occupied a seat adjoining Lord
Warburton's. Isabel, who was nervous and had no relish for the
prospect of again arguing the question he had so prematurely
opened, could not help admiring his good-humoured self-possession,
which quite disguised the symptoms of that preoccupation with her
presence it was natural she should suppose him to feel. He
neither looked at her nor spoke to her, and the only sign of his
emotion was that he avoided meeting her eyes. He had plenty of
talk for the others, however, and he appeared to eat his luncheon
with discrimination and appetite. Miss Molyneux, who had a
smooth, nun-like forehead and wore a large silver cross
suspended from her neck, was evidently preoccupied with Henrietta
Stackpole, upon whom her eyes constantly rested in a manner
suggesting a conflict between deep alienation and yearning
wonder. Of the two ladies from Lockleigh she was the one Isabel
had liked best; there was such a world of hereditary quiet in
her. Isabel was sure moreover that her mild forehead and silver
cross referred to some weird Anglican mystery--some delightful
reinstitution perhaps of the quaint office of the canoness. She
wondered what Miss Molyneux would think of her if she knew Miss
Archer had refused her brother; and then she felt sure that Miss
Molyneux would never know--that Lord Warburton never told her
such things. He was fond of her and kind to her, but on the whole
he told her little. Such, at least, was Isabel's theory; when, at
table, she was not occupied in conversation she was usually
occupied in forming theories about her neighbours. According to
Isabel, if Miss Molyneux should ever learn what had passed
between Miss Archer and Lord Warburton she would probably be
shocked at such a girl's failure to rise; or no, rather (this was
our heroine's last position) she would impute to the young
American but a due consciousness of inequality.

Whatever Isabel might have made of her opportunities, at all
events, Henrietta Stackpole was by no means disposed to neglect
those in which she now found herself immersed. "Do you know
you're the first lord I've ever seen?" she said very promptly to
her neighbour. "I suppose you think I'm awfully benighted."

"You've escaped seeing some very ugly men," Lord Warburton
answered, looking a trifle absently about the table.

"Are they very ugly? They try to make us believe in America that
they're all handsome and magnificent and that they wear wonderful
robes and crowns."

"Ah, the robes and crowns are gone out of fashion," said Lord
Warburton, "like your tomahawks and revolvers."

"I'm sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be
splendid," Henrietta declared. "If it's not that, what is it?"

"Oh, you know, it isn't much, at the best," her neighbour
allowed. "Won't you have a potato?"

"I don't care much for these European potatoes. I shouldn't know
you from an ordinary American gentleman."

"Do talk to me as if I were one," said Lord Warburton. "I don't
see how you manage to get on without potatoes; you must find so
few things to eat over here."

Henrietta was silent a little; there was a chance he was not
sincere. "I've had hardly any appetite since I've been here," she
went on at last; "so it doesn't much matter. I don't approve of
you, you know; I feel as if I ought to tell you that."

"Don't approve of me?"

"Yes; I don't suppose any one ever said such a thing to you
before, did they? I don't approve of lords as an institution. I
think the world has got beyond them--far beyond."

"Oh, so do I. I don't approve of myself in the least. Sometimes
it comes over me--how I should object to myself if I were not
myself, don't you know? But that's rather good, by the way--not
to be vainglorious."

"Why don't you give it up then?" Miss Stackpole enquired.

"Give up--a--?" asked Lord Warburton, meeting her harsh inflexion
with a very mellow one.

"Give up being a lord."

"Oh, I'm so little of one! One would really forget all about it
if you wretched Americans were not constantly reminding one.
However, I do think of giving it up, the little there is left of
it, one of these days."

"I should like to see you do it!" Henrietta exclaimed rather
grimly.

"I'll invite you to the ceremony; we'll have a supper and a
dance."

"Well," said Miss Stackpole, "I like to see all sides. I don't
approve of a privileged class, but I like to hear what they have
to say for themselves."

"Mighty little, as you see!"

"I should like to draw you out a little more," Henrietta
continued. "But you're always looking away. You're afraid of
meeting my eye. I see you want to escape me."

"No, I'm only looking for those despised potatoes."

"Please explain about that young lady--your sister--then. I don't
understand about her. Is she a Lady?"

"She's a capital good girl."

"I don't like the way you say that--as if you wanted to change
the subject. Is her position inferior to yours?"

"We neither of us have any position to speak of; but she's better
off than I, because she has none of the bother."

"Yes, she doesn't look as if she had much bother. I wish I had as
little bother as that. You do produce quiet people over here,
whatever else you may do."

"Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole," said Lord
Warburton. "And then you know we're very dull. Ah, we can be dull
when we try!"

"I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn't know what
to talk to your sister about; she looks so different. Is that
silver cross a badge?"

"A badge?"

"A sign of rank."

Lord Warburton's glance had wandered a good deal, but at this it
met the gaze of his neighbour. "Oh yes," he answered in a moment;
"the women go in for those things. The silver cross is worn by
the eldest daughters of Viscounts." Which was his harmless
revenge for having occasionally had his credulity too easily
engaged in America. After luncheon he proposed to Isabel to come
into the gallery and look at the pictures; and though she knew he
had seen the pictures twenty times she complied without
criticising this pretext. Her conscience now was very easy; ever
since she sent him her letter she had felt particularly light of
spirit. He walked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at
its contents and saying nothing; and then he suddenly broke out:
"I hoped you wouldn't write to me that way."

"It was the only way, Lord Warburton," said the girl. "Do try and
believe that."

"If I could believe it of course I should let you alone. But we
can't believe by willing it; and I confess I don't understand. I
could understand your disliking me; that I could understand well.
But that you should admit you do--"

"What have I admitted?" Isabel interrupted, turning slightly
pale.

"That you think me a good fellow; isn't that it?" She said
nothing, and he went on: "You don't seem to have any reason, and
that gives me a sense of injustice."

"I have a reason, Lord Warburton." She said it in a tone that
made his heart contract.

"I should like very much to know it."

"I'll tell you some day when there's more to show for it."

"Excuse my saying that in the mean time I must doubt of it."

"You make me very unhappy," said Isabel.

"I'm not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I feel. Will
you kindly answer me a question?" Isabel made no audible assent,
but he apparently saw in her eyes something that gave him courage
to go on. "Do you prefer some one else?"

"That's a question I'd rather not answer."

"Ah, you do then!" her suitor murmured with bitterness.

The bitterness touched her, and she cried out: "You're mistaken!
I don't."

He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a man in
trouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the
floor. "I can't even be glad of that," he said at last, throwing
himself back against the wall; "for that would be an excuse."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "An excuse? Must I excuse
myself?"

He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had
come into his head. "Is it my political opinions? Do you think I
go too far?"

"I can't object to your political opinions, because I don't
understand them."

"You don't care what I think!" he cried, getting up. "It's all
the same to you."

Isabel walked to the other side of the gallery and stood there
showing him her charming back, her light slim figure, the length
of her white neck as she bent her head, and the density of her
dark braids. She stopped in front of a small picture as if for
the purpose of examining it; and there was something so young and
free in her movement that her very pliancy seemed to mock at him.
Her eyes, however, saw nothing; they had suddenly been suffused
with tears. In a moment he followed her, and by this time she had
brushed her tears away; but when she turned round her face was
pale and the expression of her eyes strange. "That reason that I
wouldn't tell you--I'll tell it you after all. It's that I can't
escape my fate."

"Your fate?"

"I should try to escape it if I were to marry you."

"I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate as well as
anything else?"

"Because it's not," said Isabel femininely. "I know it's not.
It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be."

Poor Lord Warburton stared, an interrogative point in either eye.
"Do you call marrying me giving up?"

"Not in the usual sense. It's getting--getting--getting a great
deal. But it's giving up other chances."

"Other chances for what?"

"I don't mean chances to marry," said Isabel, her colour quickly
coming back to her. And then she stopped, looking down with a
deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her meaning
clear.

"I don't think it presumptuous in me to suggest that you'll gain
more than you'll lose," her companion observed.

"I can't escape unhappiness," said Isabel. "In marrying you I
shall be trying to."

"I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that
I must in candour admit!" he exclaimed with an anxious laugh.

"I mustn't--I can't!" cried the girl.

"Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you
should make me so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for
you, it has none for me."

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