The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 2]

H >> Henry James >> The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 2]

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Isabel noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people,
and she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it
now promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that
Ralph was not pleased with her engagement; but she was not
prepared, in spite of her affection for him, to let this fact
spoil the situation. She was not even prepared, or so she thought,
to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his privilege--it
would be indeed his natural line--to find fault with any step she
might take toward marriage. One's cousin always pretended to hate
one's husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a part of
one's cousin's always pretending to adore one. Ralph was nothing
if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things
being equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to
please any one, it would be absurd to regard as important that
her choice should square with his views. What were his views
after all? He had pretended to believe she had better have
married Lord Warburton; but this was only because she had refused
that excellent man. If she had accepted him Ralph would certainly
have taken another tone; he always took the opposite. You could
criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be
open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only give her
mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had other
employment, however, and Ralph was welcome to relieve her of the
care. Isabel was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent.
He must have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should
say nothing. After three days had elapsed without his speaking
our young woman wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he
might at least go through the form. We, who know more about poor
Ralph than his cousin, may easily believe that during the hours
that followed his arrival at Palazzo Crescentini he had privately
gone through many forms. His mother had literally greeted him
with the great news, which had been even more sensibly chilling
than Mrs. Touchett's maternal kiss. Ralph was shocked and
humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the
world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about
the house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in
the garden of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs
extended, his head thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes.
He felt cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less.
What could he do, what could he say? If the girl were
irreclaimable could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim
her was permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To try to
persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the man to whose
deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only in the
event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have
damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought
and to dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor
protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that
the affianced pair were daily renewing their mutual vows. Osmond
at this moment showed himself little at Palazzo Crescentini; but
Isabel met him every day elsewhere, as she was free to do after
their engagement had been made public. She had taken a carriage
by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt for the means
of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved, and she
drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness,
during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young
lady, joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him
a while through the grey Italian shade and listened to the
nightingales.

CHAPTER XXIV

One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before
luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and,
instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court,
passed beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter
spot at this moment could not have been imagined. The stillness
of noontide hung over it, and the warm shade, enclosed and still,
made bowers like spacious caves. Ralph was sitting there in the
clear gloom, at the base of a statue of Terpsichore--a dancing
nymph with taper fingers and inflated draperies in the manner of
Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his attitude suggested at
first to Isabel that he was asleep. Her light footstep on the
grass had not roused him, and before turning away she stood for a
moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his eyes;
upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his
own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference
she was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to
brood over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the
languor of his increased weakness, partly by worries connected
with the property inherited from his father--the fruit of
eccentric arrangements of which Mrs. Touchett disapproved and
which, as she had told Isabel, now encountered opposition from the
other partners in the bank. He ought to have gone to England, his
mother said, instead of coming to Florence; he had not been there for
months, and took no more interest in the bank than in the state of
Patagonia.

"I'm sorry I waked you," Isabel said; "you look too tired."

"I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you."

"Are you tired of that?"

"Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never
arrive."

"What do you wish to arrive at?" she put to him, closing her
parasol.

"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of
your engagement."

"Don't think too much of it," she lightly returned.

"Do you mean that it's none of my business?"

"Beyond a certain point, yes."

"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found
me wanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you."

"Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent."

"There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now," Ralph
said. He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat
looking at her. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini,
his head against his marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either
side of him, his hands laid upon the rests of his wide chair. He
looked awkward, uncomfortable; he hesitated long. Isabel said
nothing; when people were embarrassed she was usually sorry for
them, but she was determined not to help Ralph to utter a word
that should not be to the honour of her high decision. "I
think I've hardly got over my surprise," he went on at last. "You
were the last person I expected to see caught."

"I don't know why you call it caught."

"Because you're going to be put into a cage."

"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you," she answered.

"That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of."

"If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm
satisfied that I'm doing well."

"You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your
liberty beyond everything. You wanted only to see life."

"I've seen it," said Isabel. "It doesn't look to me now, I admit,
such an inviting expanse."

"I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial
view of it and wanted to survey the whole field."

"I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose
a corner and cultivate that."

"That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as
possible. I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful
letters, that you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and
your silence put me off my guard."

"It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides,
I knew nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had
been on your guard, however," Isabel asked, "what would you have
done?"

"I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'"

"Wait for what?"

"Well, for a little more light," said Ralph with rather an absurd
smile, while his hands found their way into his pockets.

"Where should my light have come from? From you?"

"I might have struck a spark or two."

Isabel had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay
upon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for
her expression was not conciliatory. "You're beating about the
bush, Ralph. You wish to say you don't like Mr. Osmond, and yet
you're afraid."

"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I'm willing to
wound HIM, yes--but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of
him. If you marry him it won't be a fortunate way for me to have
spoken."

"IF I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?"

"Of course that seems to you too fatuous."

"No," said Isabel after a little; "it seems to me too touching."

"That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity
me."

She stroked out her long gloves again. "I know you've a great
affection for me. I can't get rid of that."

"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will
convince you how intensely I want you to do well."

"And how little you trust me!"

There was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen.
"I trust you, but I don't trust him," said Ralph.

She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. "You've said
it now, and I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by
it."

"Not if you're just."

"I'm very just," said Isabel. "What better proof of it can there
be than that I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the
matter with me, but I'm not. I was when you began, but it has
passed away. Perhaps I ought to be angry, but Mr. Osmond wouldn't
think so. He wants me to know everything; that's what I like him
for. You've nothing to gain, I know that. I've never been so nice
to you, as a girl, that you should have much reason for wishing me
to remain one. You give very good advice; you've often done so.
No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your wisdom," she went
on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of
contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; it
touched Ralph to the heart, affected him like a caress from a
creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her;
for a moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted
what he had said. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having
caught a glimpse, as she thought, of the heroic line and desiring
to advance in that direction. "I see you've some special idea; I
should like very much to hear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I
feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue about, and of course
I ought to tell you definitely that if you expect to dissuade me
you may give it up. You'll not move me an inch; it's too late. As
you say, I'm caught. Certainly it won't be pleasant for you to
remember this, but your pain will be in your own thoughts. I shall
never reproach you."

"I don't think you ever will," said Ralph. "It's not in the least
the sort of marriage I thought you'd make."

"What sort of marriage was that, pray?"

"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it,
but I had a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for--well, for
that type."

"What's the matter with Mr. Osmond's type, if it be one? His being
so independent, so individual, is what I most see in him," the
girl declared. "What do you know against him? You know him
scarcely at all."

"Yes," Ralph said, "I know him very little, and I confess I
haven't facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I
can't help feeling that you're running a grave risk."

"Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as
mine."

"That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to
God he would."

Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while
at her cousin. "I don't think I understand you," she said at last
coldly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I believed you'd marry a man of more importance."

Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame
leaped into her face. "Of more importance to whom? It seems to me
enough that one's husband should be of importance to one's self!"

Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically
speaking he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then
leaned forward, resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on
the ground; he had an air of the most respectful deliberation.

"I'll tell you in a moment what I mean," he presently said. He
felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the
discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to
be superlatively gentle.

Isabel waited a little--then she went on with majesty. "In
everything that makes one care for people Mr. Osmond is
pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I've never had the
pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Osmond's is the finest I know; he's
good enough for me, and interesting enough, and clever enough. I'm
far more struck with what he has and what he represents than with
what he may lack."

"I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future," Ralph
observed without answering this; "I had amused myself with
planning out a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of
this sort in it. You were not to come down so easily or so soon."

"Come down, you say?"

"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You
seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in
the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses
up a faded rosebud--a missile that should never have reached
you--and straight you drop to the ground. It hurts me," said Ralph
audaciously, "hurts me as if I had fallen myself!"

The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's
face. "I don't understand you in the least," she repeated. "You
say you amused yourself with a project for my career--I don't
understand that. Don't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think
you're doing it at my expense."

Ralph shook his head. "I'm not afraid of your not believing that
I've had great ideas for you."

"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?" she pursued.

"I've never moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now.
There's nothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she
likes," said poor Isabel, wandering into the didactic.

"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to
criticise, my dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you
would have been a more active, larger, freer sort of nature."
Ralph hesitated, then added: "I can't get over the sense that
Osmond is somehow--well, small." He had uttered the last word with
no great assurance; he was afraid she would flash out again. But
to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of considering.

"Small?" She made it sound immense.

"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!"

"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that,"
said Isabel. "It makes one more sure to respect others."

Ralph for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.

"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation
to things--to others. I don't think Mr. Osmond does that."

"I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's
excellent."

"He's the incarnation of taste," Ralph went on, thinking hard how
he could best express Gilbert Osmond's sinister attributes without
putting himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely.
He wished to describe him impersonally, scientifically. "He judges
and measures, approves and condemns, altogether by that."

"It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite."

"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his
bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite
one--ruffled?"

"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my
husband's."

At these words a sudden passion leaped to Ralph's lips. "Ah,
that's wilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be
measured in that way--you were meant for something better than to
keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!"

Isabel rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a
moment looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or
an insult. But "You go too far," she simply breathed.

"I've said what I had on my mind--and I've said it because I love
you!"

Isabel turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a
sudden wish to strike him off. "Ah then, you're not disinterested!"

"I love you, but I love without hope," said Ralph quickly, forcing
a smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed
more than he intended.

Isabel moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of
the garden; but after a little she turned back to him. "I'm afraid
your talk then is the wildness of despair! I don't understand it
--but it doesn't matter. I'm not arguing with you; it's impossible
I should; I've only tried to listen to you. I'm much obliged to
you for attempting to explain," she said gently, as if the anger
with which she had just sprung up had already subsided. "It's very
good of you to try to warn me, if you're really alarmed; but I
won't promise to think of what you've said: I shall forget it as
soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you've done your
duty, and no man can do more. I can't explain to you what I feel,
what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could." She paused a moment
and then went on with an inconsequence that Ralph observed even in
the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession.
"I can't enter into your idea of Mr. Osmond; I can't do it
justice, because I see him in quite another way. He's not
important--no, he's not important; he's a man to whom importance
is supremely indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call
him 'small,' then he's as small as you please. I call that
large--it's the largest thing I know. I won't pretend to argue
with you about a person I'm going to marry," Isabel repeated.
"I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr. Osmond; he's not so
weak as to need my defence. I should think it would seem strange
even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and coldly,
as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any
one but you; and you, after what you've said--I may just answer
you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary
marriage--what they call a marriage of ambition? I've only one
ambition--to be free to follow out a good feeling. I had others
once, but they've passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Osmond
because he's not rich? That's just what I like him for. I've
fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful for it as
to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and
kneel down by your father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing
than he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a
man who has borne his poverty with such dignity, with such
indifference. Mr. Osmond has never scrambled nor struggled--he
has cared for no worldly prize. If that's to be narrow, if that's
to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm not frightened by such
words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry that you should
make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm surprised that
you should. You might know a gentleman when you see one--you
might know a fine mind. Mr. Osmond makes no mistakes! He knows
everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest,
gentlest, highest spirit. You've got hold of some false idea.
It's a pity, but I can't help it; it regards you more than me."
Isabel paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye
illumined by a sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness
of her manner--a mingled sentiment, to which the angry pain
excited by his words and the wounded pride of having needed to
justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness and purity,
equally contributed. Though she paused Ralph said nothing; he saw
she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly
solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion.
"What sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?" she
asked suddenly. "You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if
one marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings
and needs, one has a heart in one's bosom, and one must marry a
particular individual. Your mother has never forgiven me for not
having come to a better understanding with Lord Warburton, and
she's horrified at my contenting myself with a person who has
none of his great advantages--no property, no title, no honours,
no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant
belongings of any sort. It's the total absence of all these
things that pleases me. Mr. Osmond's simply a very lonely, a very
cultivated and a very honest man--he's not a prodigious
proprietor."

Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said
merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking
of the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating
himself to the weight of his total impression--the impression of
her ardent good faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was
deluded, but she was dismally consistent. It was wonderfully
characteristic of her that, having invented a fine theory, about
Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not for what he really possessed,
but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Ralph
remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it
into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He
had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury.
Poor Ralph felt sick; he felt ashamed. Isabel had uttered her
last words with a low solemnity of conviction which virtually
terminated the discussion, and she closed it formally by turning
away and walking back to the house. Ralph walked beside her, and
they passed into the court together and reached the big
staircase. Here he stopped and Isabel paused, turning on him a
face of elation--absolutely and perversely of gratitude. His
opposition had made her own conception of her conduct clearer to
her. "Shall you not come up to breakfast?" she asked.

"No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry."

"You ought to eat," said the girl; "you live on air."

"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take
another mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you
last year that if you were to get into trouble I should feel
terribly sold. That's how I feel to-day."

"Do you think I'm in trouble?"

"One's in trouble when one's in error."

"Very well," said Isabel; "I shall never complain of my trouble
to you!" And she moved up the staircase.

Ralph, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her
with his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court
struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden
to breakfast on the Florentine sunshine.

CHAPTER XXXV

Isabel, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no
impulse to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo
Crescentini. The discreet opposition offered to her marriage by
her aunt and her cousin made on the whole no great impression upon
her; the moral of it was simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond.
This dislike was not alarming to Isabel; she scarcely even
regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into higher relief the
fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to please
herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this
for a more personal satisfaction; and Isabel's satisfaction was
confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Gilbert Osmond
was in love, and he had never deserved less than during these
still, bright days, each of them numbered, which preceded the
fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by
Ralph Touchett. The chief impression produced on Isabel's spirit
by this criticism was that the passion of love separated its
victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt
herself disjoined from every one she had ever known before--from
her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she
would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not
having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation
of anecdote; from Henrietta, who, she was sure, would come out,
too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from Lord Warburton, who
would certainly console himself, and from Caspar Goodwood, who
perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas
about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her
contempt; and from Ralph, whose talk about having great views for
her was surely but a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment.
Ralph apparently wished her not to marry at all--that was what it
really meant--because he was amused with the spectacle of her
adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made him say
angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Isabel
flattered herself that she believed Ralph had been angry. It was
the more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had
now little free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and
accepted as an incident, in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot
the idea that to prefer Gilbert Osmond as she preferred him was
perforce to break all other ties. She tasted of the sweets of
this preference, and they made her conscious, almost with awe, of
the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed and
possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and
imputed virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of
happiness; one's right was always made of the wrong of some one
else.

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