James Jennings - "The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire"

Charles Darwin - "More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I"

Josiah Quincy - "Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams."

Marcel Proust - "A L'Ombre Des Jeunes Filles en Fleur, Volume 2"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]

H >> Henry James >> The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]




"Never mind; we'll go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, and take care
you get me a good one."

Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their
departure, leaving the girl and her cousin together in the
square, over which a clear September twilight had now begun to
gather. It was perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky
houses showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters
and blinds were closed; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and,
putting aside two small children from a neighbouring slum, who,
attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior,
poked their faces between the rusty rails of the enclosure, the
most vivid object within sight was the big red pillar-post on the
southeast corner.

"Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to
Jermyn Street," Ralph observed. He always spoke of Miss Stackpole
as Henrietta.

"Very possibly," said his companion.

"Or rather, no, she won't," he went on. "But Bantling will ask
leave to get in."

"Very likely again. I'm glad very they're such good friends."

"She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may
go far," said Ralph.

Isabel was briefly silent. "I call Henrietta a very brilliant
woman, but I don't think it will go far. They would never really
know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is,
and she has no just comprehension of Mr. Bantling."

"There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual
misunderstanding. But it ought not to be so difficult to
understand Bob Bantling," Ralph added. "He is a very simple
organism."

"Yes, but Henrietta's a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I
to do?" Isabel asked, looking about her through the fading light,
in which the limited landscape-gardening of the square took on a
large and effective appearance. "I don't imagine that you'll
propose that you and I, for our amusement, shall drive about
London in a hansom."

"There's no reason we shouldn't stay here--if you don't dislike
it. It's very warm; there will he half an hour yet before dark;
and if you permit it I'll light a cigarette."

"You may do what you please," said Isabel, "if you'll amuse me
till seven o'clock. I propose at that hour to go back and partake
of a simple and solitary repast--two poached eggs and a muffin--
at Pratt's Hotel."

"Mayn't I dine with you?" Ralph asked.

"No, you'll dine at your club."

They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the
square again, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette. It would have
given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest
little feast she had sketched; but in default of this he liked
even being forbidden. For the moment, however, he liked immensely
being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the centre of
the multitudinous town; it made her seem to depend upon him and
to be in his power. This power he could exert but vaguely; the
best exercise of it was to accept her decisions submissively
which indeed there was already an emotion in doing. "Why won't
you let me dine with you?" he demanded after a pause.

"Because I don't care for it."

"I suppose you're tired of me."

"I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of
foreknowledge."

"Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile," said Ralph.

But he said nothing more, and as she made no rejoinder they sat
some time in a stillness which seemed to contradict his promise
of entertainment. It seemed to him she was preoccupied, and he
wondered what she was thinking about; there were two or three
very possible subjects. At last he spoke again. "Is your
objection to my society this evening caused by your
expectation of another visitor?"

She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes.
"Another visitor? What visitor should I have?"

He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself
silly as well as brutal. "You've a great many friends that I
don't know. You've a whole past from which I was perversely
excluded."

"You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past
is over there across the water. There's none of it here in
London."

"Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital
thing to have your future so handy." And Ralph lighted another
cigarette and reflected that Isabel probably meant she had
received news that Mr. Caspar Goodwood had crossed to Paris.
After he had lighted his cigarette he puffed it a while, and then
he resumed. "I promised just now to be very amusing; but you see
I don't come up to the mark, and the fact is there's a good deal
of temerity in one's undertaking to amuse a person like you. What
do you care for my feeble attempts? You've grand ideas--you've a
high standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring in a
band of music or a company of mountebanks."

"One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and
in another ten minutes I shall begin to laugh."

"I assure you I'm very serious," said Ralph. "You do really ask a
great deal."

"I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing."

"You accept nothing," said Ralph. She coloured, and now suddenly
it seemed to her that she guessed his meaning. But why should he
speak to her of such things? He hesitated a little and then he
continued: "There's something I should like very much to say to
you. It's a question I wish to ask. It seems to me I've a right
to ask it, because I've a kind of interest in the answer."

"Ask what you will," Isabel replied gently, "and I'll try to
satisfy you."

"Well then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Warburton has
told me of something that has passed between you."

Isabel suppressed a start; she sat looking at her open fan. "Very
good; I suppose it was natural he should tell you."

"I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some
hope still," said Ralph.

"Still?"

"He had it a few days ago."

"I don't believe he has any now," said the girl.

"I'm very sorry for him then; he's such an honest man."

"Pray, did he ask you to talk to me?"

"No, not that. But he told me because he couldn't help it. We're
old friends, and he was greatly disappointed. He sent me a line
asking me to come and see him, and I drove over to Lockleigh the
day before he and his sister lunched with us. He was very
heavy-hearted; he had just got a letter from you."

"Did he show you the letter?" asked Isabel with momentary
loftiness.

"By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I was very
sorry for him," Ralph repeated.

For some moments Isabel said nothing; then at last, "Do you know
how often he had seen me?" she enquired. "Five or six times."

"That's to your glory."

"It's not for that I say it."

"What then do you say it for. Not to prove that poor Warburton's
state of mind's superficial, because I'm pretty sure you don't
think that."

Isabel certainly was unable to say she thought it; but presently
she said something else. "If you've not been requested by Lord
Warburton to argue with me, then you're doing it disinterestedly
--or for the love of argument."

"I've no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you
alone. I'm simply greatly interested in your own sentiments."

"I'm greatly obliged to you!" cried Isabel with a slightly
nervous laugh.

"Of course you mean that I'm meddling in what doesn't concern me.
But why shouldn't I speak to you of this matter without annoying
you or embarrassing myself? What's the use of being your cousin
if I can't have a few privileges? What's the use of adoring you
without hope of a reward if I can't have a few compensations?
What's the use of being ill and disabled and restricted to mere
spectatorship at the game of life if I really can't see the show
when I've paid so much for my ticket? Tell me this," Ralph went
on while she listened to him with quickened attention. "What had
you in mind when you refused Lord Warburton?"

"What had I in mind?"

"What was the logic--the view of your situation--that dictated so
remarkable an act?"

"I didn't wish to marry him--if that's logic."

"No, that's not logic--and I knew that before. It's really
nothing, you know. What was it you said to yourself? You
certainly said more than that."

Isabel reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her
own. "Why do you call it a remarkable act? That's what your
mother thinks too."

"Warburton's such a thorough good sort; as a man, I consider he
has hardly a fault. And then he's what they call here no end of a
swell. He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought
a superior being. He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic
advantages."

Isabel watched her cousin as to see how far he would go. "I
refused him because he was too perfect then. I'm not perfect
myself, and he's too good for me. Besides, his perfection would
irritate me."

"That's ingenious rather than candid," said Ralph. "As a fact you
think nothing in the world too perfect for you."

"Do you think I'm so good?"

"No, but you're exacting, all the same, without the excuse of
thinking yourself good. Nineteen women out of twenty, however,
even of the most exacting sort, would have managed to do with
Warburton. Perhaps you don't know how he has been stalked."

"I don't wish to know. But it seems to me," said Isabel, "that one
day when we talked of him you mentioned odd things in him."
Ralph smokingly considered. "I hope that what I said then had no
weight with you; for they were not faults, the things I spoke of:
they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had known he
wished to marry you I'd never have alluded to them. I think I
said that as regards that position he was rather a sceptic. It
would have been in your power to make him a believer."

"I think not. I don't understand the matter, and I'm not
conscious of any mission of that sort. You're evidently
disappointed," Isabel added, looking at her cousin with rueful
gentleness. "You'd have liked me to make such a marriage."

"Not in the least. I'm absolutely without a wish on the subject.
I don't pretend to advise you, and I content myself with watching
you--with the deepest interest."

She gave rather a conscious sigh. "I wish I could be as
interesting to myself as I am to you!"

"There you're not candid again; you're extremely interesting to
yourself. Do you know, however," said Ralph, "that if you've
really given Warburton his final answer I'm rather glad it has
been what it was. I don't mean I'm glad for you, and still less
of course for him. I'm glad for myself."

"Are you thinking of proposing to me?"

"By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be
fatal; I should kill the goose that supplies me with the material
of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my
insane illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of
seeing what a young lady does who won't marry Lord Warburton."

"That's what your mother counts upon too," said Isabel.

"Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the
rest of your career. I shall not see all of it, but I shall
probably see the most interesting years. Of course if you were to
marry our friend you'd still have a career--a very decent, in
fact a very brilliant one. But relatively speaking it would be a
little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in advance; it
would be wanting in the unexpected. You know I'm extremely fond
of the unexpected, and now that you've kept the game in your
hands I depend on your giving us some grand example of it."

"I don't understand you very well," said Isabel, "but I do so
well enough to be able to say that if you look for grand examples
of anything from me I shall disappoint you."

"You'll do so only by disappointing yourself and that will go
hard with you!"

To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in
it that would bear consideration. At last she said abruptly: "I
don't see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I
don't want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a
woman can do."

"There's nothing she can do so well. But you're of course so
many-sided."

"If one's two-sided it's enough," said Isabel.

"You're the most charming of polygons!" her companion broke out.
At a glance from his companion, however, he became grave, and to
prove it went on: "You want to see life--you'll be hanged if you
don't, as the young men say."

"I don't think I want to see it as the young men want to see it.
But I do want to look about me."

"You want to drain the cup of experience."

"No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned
drink! I only want to see for myself."

"You want to see, but not to feel," Ralph remarked.

"I don't think that if one's a sentient being one can make the
distinction. I'm a good deal like Henrietta. The other day when I
asked her if she wished to marry she said: 'Not till I've seen
Europe!' I too don't wish to marry till I've seen Europe."

"You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you."

"No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. But it's
getting very dark," Isabel continued, "and I must go home." She
rose from her place, but Ralph only sat still and looked at her.
As he remained there she stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that
was full on either side, but especially on Ralph's, of utterances
too vague for words.

"You've answered my question," he said at last. "You've told me
what I wanted. I'm greatly obliged to you."

"It seems to me I've told you very little."

"You've told me the great thing: that the world interests you and
that you want to throw yourself into it."

Her silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. "I never said that."
"I think you meant it. Don't repudiate it. It's so fine!"

"I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not
in the least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men."

Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the
gate of the square. "No," he said; "women rarely boast of their
courage. Men do so with a certain frequency."

"Men have it to boast of!"

"Women have it too. You've a great deal."

"Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel, but not more."

Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he
fastened it. "We'll find your cab," he said; and as they turned
toward a neighbouring street in which this quest might avail he
asked her again if he mightn't see her safely to the inn.

"By no means," she answered; "you're very tired; you must go home
and go to bed."

The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment
at the door. "When people forget I'm a poor creature I'm often
incommoded," he said. "But it's worse when they remember it!"



CHAPTER XVI

She had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home;
it simply struck her that for some days past she had consumed an
inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of
the American girl whom extravagance of aid places in an attitude
that she ends by finding "affected" had made her decide that for
these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had moreover a
great fondness for intervals of solitude, which since her arrival
in England had been but meagrely met. It was a luxury she could
always command at home and she had wittingly missed it. That
evening, however, an incident occurred which--had there been a
critic to note it--would have taken all colour from the theory
that the wish to be quite by herself had caused her to dispense
with her cousin's attendance. Seated toward nine o'clock in the
dim illumination of Pratt's Hotel and trying with the aid of two
tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had brought from
Gardencourt, she succeeded only to the extent of reading other
words than those printed on the page--words that Ralph had spoken
to her that afternoon. Suddenly the well-muffed knuckle of the
waiter was applied to the door, which presently gave way to his
exhibition, even as a glorious trophy, of the card of a visitor.
When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the name of Mr.
Caspar Goodwood she let the man stand before her without
signifying her wishes.

"Shall I show the gentleman up, ma'am?" he asked with a slightly
encouraging inflexion.

Isabel hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the
mirror. "He may come in," she said at last; and waited for him
not so much smoothing her hair as girding her spirit.

Caspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands
with her, but saying nothing till the servant had left the room.
"Why didn't you answer my letter?" he then asked in a quick,
full, slightly peremptory tone--the tone of a man whose questions
were habitually pointed and who was capable of much insistence.

She answered by a ready question, "How did you know I was here?"

"Miss Stackpole let me know," said Caspar Goodwood. "She told me
you would probably be at home alone this evening and would be
willing to see me."

"Where did she see you--to tell you that?"

"She didn't see me; she wrote to me."

Isabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with
an air of defiance, or at least of contention. "Henrietta never
told me she was writing to you," she said at last. "This is not
kind of her."

"Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?" asked the young man.

"I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises."

"But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet."

"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big
a place as London it seemed very possible."

"It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me," her
visitor went on.

Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole's
treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, was strong within
her. "Henrietta's certainly not a model of all the delicacies!"
she exclaimed with bitterness. "It was a great liberty to take."

"I suppose I'm not a model either--of those virtues or of any
others. The fault's mine as much as hers."

As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never
been more square. This might have displeased her, but she took a
different turn. "No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What
you've done was inevitable, I suppose, for you."

"It was indeed!" cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.

"And now that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?"

"You may sit down, certainly."

She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the
first place that offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay
little thought to that sort of furtherance. "I've been hoping
every day for an answer to my letter. You might have written me a
few lines."

"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as
easily have written you four pages as one. But my silence was an
intention," Isabel said. "I thought it the best thing."

He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he
lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet as
if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he
ought. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough
to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would
only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was
not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over a person
of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his
face she could enjoy being able to say "You know you oughtn't to
have written to me yourself!" and to say it with an air of
triumph.

Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to
shine through the vizard of a helmet. He had a strong sense of
justice and was ready any day in the year--over and above this--
to argue the question of his rights. "You said you hoped never to
hear from me again; I know that. But I never accepted any such
rule as my own. I warned you that you should hear very soon."

"I didn't say I hoped NEVER to hear from you," said Isabel.

"Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It's the
same thing."

"Do you find it so? It seems to me there's a great difference. I
can imagine that at the end of ten years we might have a very
pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epistolary
style."

She looked away while she spoke these words, knowing them of so
much less earnest a cast than the countenance of her listener.
Her eyes, however, at last came back to him, just as he said very
irrelevantly; "Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle?"

"Very much indeed." She dropped, but then she broke out. "What
good do you expect to get by insisting?"

"The good of not losing you."

"You've no right to talk of losing what's not yours. And even
from your own point of view," Isabel added, "you ought to know
when to let one alone."

"I disgust you very much," said Caspar Goodwood gloomily; not as
if to provoke her to compassion for a man conscious of this
blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so that
he might endeavour to act with his eyes on it.

"Yes, you don't at all delight me, you don't fit in, not in any
way, just now, and the worst is that your putting it to the proof
in this manner is quite unnecessary." It wasn't certainly as if
his nature had been soft, so that pin-pricks would draw blood
from it; and from the first of her acquaintance with him, and of
her having to defend herself against a certain air that he had of
knowing better what was good for her than she knew herself, she
had recognised the fact that perfect frankness was her best
weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility or to escape from him
edgewise, as one might do from a man who had barred the way less
sturdily--this, in dealing with Caspar Goodwood, who would grasp
at everything of every sort that one might give him, was wasted
agility. It was not that he had not susceptibilities, but his
passive surface, as well as his active, was large and hard, and
he might always be trusted to dress his wounds, so far as they
required it, himself. She came back, even for her measure of
possible pangs and aches in him, to her old sense that he was
naturally plated and steeled, armed essentially for aggression.

"I can't reconcile myself to that," he simply said. There was a
dangerous liberality about it; for she felt how open it was to
him to make the point that he had not always disgusted her.

"I can't reconcile myself to it either, and it's not the state of
things that ought to exist between us. If you'd only try to
banish me from your mind for a few months we should be on good
terms again."

"I see. If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed
time, I should find I could keep it up indefinitely."

"Indefinitely is more than I ask. It's more even than I should
like."

"You know that what you ask is impossible," said the young man,
taking his adjective for granted in a manner she found
irritating.

"Aren't you capable of making a calculated effort?" she demanded.
"You're strong for everything else; why shouldn't you be strong
for that?"

"An effort calculated for what?" And then as she hung fire, "I'm
capable of nothing with regard to you," he went on, "but just of
being infernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only
the more strongly."

"There's a good deal in that;" and indeed our young lady felt the
force of it--felt it thrown off, into the vast of truth and
poetry, as practically a bait to her imagination. But she
promptly came round. "Think of me or not, as you find most
possible; only leave me alone."

"Until when?"

"Well, for a year or two."

"Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the
difference in the world."

"Call it two then," said Isabel with a studied effect of
eagerness.

"And what shall I gain by that?" her friend asked with no sign of
wincing.

"You'll have obliged me greatly."

"And what will be my reward?"

"Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?"

"Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice."

"There's no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don't
understand such things. If you make the sacrifice you'll have all
my admiration."

"I don't care a cent for your admiration--not one straw, with
nothing to show for it. When will you marry me? That's the only
question."

"Never--if you go on making me feel only as I feel at present."

"What do I gain then by not trying to make you feel otherwise?"

"You'll gain quite as much as by worrying me to death!" Caspar
Goodwood bent his eyes again and gazed a while into the crown of
his hat. A deep flush overspread his face; she could see her
sharpness had at last penetrated. This immediately had a value
--classic, romantic, redeeming, what did she know? for her; "the
strong man in pain" was one of the categories of the human
appeal, little charm as he might exert in the given case. "Why do
you make me say such things to you?" she cried in a trembling
voice. "I only want to be gentle--to be thoroughly kind. It's not
delightful to me to feel people care for me and yet to have to
try and reason them out of it. I think others also ought to be
considerate; we have each to judge for ourselves. I know you're
considerate, as much as you can be; you've good reasons for what
you do. But I really don't want to marry, or to talk about it at
all now. I shall probably never do it--no, never. I've a perfect
right to feel that way, and it's no kindness to a woman to press
her so hard, to urge her against her will. If I give you pain I
can only say I'm very sorry. It's not my fault; I can't marry you
simply to please you. I won't say that I shall always remain your
friend, because when women say that, in these situations, it
passes, I believe, for a sort of mockery. But try me some day."

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.