The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

The incident that had preceded Isabel’s departure from Gardencourt left a painful trace in our young woman’s mind: when she felt again in her face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last suitor’s surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could not have done less than what she did; this was certainly true. But her necessity, all the same, had been as graceless as some physical act in a strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for her conduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride, nevertheless, was a feeling of freedom which in itself was sweet and which, as she wandered through the great city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally throbbed into odd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the grass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when they were pretty, kissed them. Ralph noticed these quaint charities; he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might pass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had the house set in order as much as possible for their visit. There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of Ralph’s who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr. Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her society the bric-à-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fête-champetre, walked round the limited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded responsive—as with a positive passion for argument—to her remarks upon the inner life.

“Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there’s not much going on there when there’s such a lot of illness about. Touchett’s very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter with him. They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he has organic disease so developed that you may depend upon it he’ll go, some day soon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing makes a dreadfully dull house; I wonder they have people when they can do so little for them. Then I believe Mr. Touchett’s always squabbling with his wife; she lives away from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American way of yours. If you want a house where there’s always something going on, I recommend you to go down and stay with my sister, Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. I’ll write to her to-morrow and I’m sure she’ll be delighted to ask you. I know just what you want—you want a house where they go in for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My sister’s just that sort of woman; she’s always getting up something or other and she’s always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I’m sure she’ll ask you down by return of post: she’s tremendously fond of distinguished people and writers. She writes herself, you know; but I haven’t read everything she has written. It’s usually poetry, and I don’t go in much for poetry—unless it’s Byron. I suppose you think a great deal of Byron in America,” Mr. Bantling continued, expanding in the stimulating air of Miss Stackpole’s attention, bringing up his sequences promptly and changing his topic with an easy turn of hand. Yet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to Henrietta, of her going to stay with Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. “I understand what you want; you want to see some genuine English sport. The Touchetts aren’t English at all, you know; they have their own habits, their own language, their own food—some odd religion even, I believe, of their own. The old man thinks it’s wicked to hunt, I’m told. You must get down to my sister’s in time for the theatricals, and I’m sure she’ll be glad to give you a part. I’m sure you act well; I know you’re very clever. My sister’s forty years old and has seven children, but she’s going to play the principal part. Plain as she is she makes up awfully well—I will say for her. Of course you needn’t act if you don’t want to.”

In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine merit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity he offered her. “I don’t know but I would go, if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you call her name?”

“Pensil. It’s an odd name, but it isn’t a bad one.”

“I think one name’s as good as another. But what’s her rank?”.

“Oh, she’s a baron’s wife; a convenient sort of rank. You’re fine enough and you’re not too fine.”

“I don’t know but what she’d be too fine for me. What do you call the place she lives in—Bedfordshire?”

“She lives away in the northern corner of it. It’s a tiresome country, but I dare say you won’t mind it. I’ll try and run down while you’re there.”

All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be obliged to separate from Lady Pensil’s obliging brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now preparing to re-embark. Henrietta had had a long interview with them on the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that Henrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o’clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in another part of the enclosure, were occupied—if the term may be used—with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settled between Isabel and her friend that they should be reunited at some reputable hour at Pratt’s Hotel, Ralph remarked that the latter must have a cab. She couldn’t walk all the way to Jermyn Street.

“I suppose you mean it’s improper for me to walk alone!” Henrietta exclaimed. “Merciful powers, have I come to this?”

“There’s not the slightest need of your walking alone,” Mr. Bantling gaily interposed. “I should be greatly pleased to go with you.”

“I simply meant that you’d be late for dinner,” Ralph returned. “Those poor ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare you.”

“You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,” said Isabel.

“I’ll get you a hansom if you’ll trust me,” Mr. Bantling went on.

“We might walk a little till we meet one.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t trust him, do you?” Henrietta enquired of Isabel.

“I don’t see what Mr. Bantling could do to you,” Isabel obligingly answered; “but, if you like, we’ll walk with you till you find your cab.”

“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 am very glad they are 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 be 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.