The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 2

Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett’s theory that Madame Merle had made Gilbert Osmond’s marriage. We know how she had at first received it. Madame Merle might have made Gilbert Osmond’s marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer’s. That was the work of—Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery of things. It was true her aunt’s complaint had been not so much of Madame Merle’s activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been great, to Isabel’s mind; she couldn’t make a crime of Madame Merle’s having been the producing cause of the most important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to her just before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a time when she was still capable of that large inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. “Don’t you like Madame Merle?” Isabel had once said to him. “She thinks a great deal of you.”

“I’ll tell you once for all,” Osmond had answered. “I liked her once better than I do to-day. I’m tired of her, and I’m rather ashamed of it. She’s so almost unnaturally good! I’m glad she’s not in Italy; it makes for relaxation—for a sort of moral detente. Don’t talk of her too much; it seems to bring her back. She’ll come back in plenty of time.”

Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late—too late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel’s feelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle’s having had a hand in Gilbert Osmond’s marriage ceased to be one of her titles to consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an immediate horror at having made it. “Whatever happens to me let me not be unjust,” she said; “let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them upon others!” This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for her present conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make and of which I have given a sketch; for there was something irritating—there was almost an air of mockery—in her neat discriminations and clear convictions. In Isabel’s mind to-day there was nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had just made the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little what she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so unable to explain. Jealous of her—jealous of her with Gilbert? The idea just then suggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible; it would have made in a manner for refreshment. Wasn’t it in a manner one of the symptoms of happiness? Madame Merle, however, was wise, so wise that she might have been pretending to know Isabel better than Isabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in resolutions—any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriously discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice—not to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Merle with its disappointment would be a petty revenge—especially as the pleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to repair it—just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had been right, for all that, in taking her precautions.

One day about a month after Ralph Touchett’s arrival in Rome Isabel came back from a walk with Pansy. It was not only a part of her general determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for Pansy—it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure and weak. Pansy was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that had the rightness of the young creature’s attachment or the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft presence—like a small hand in her own; on Pansy’s part it was more than an affection—it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side her sense of the girl’s dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated as a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said to herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we must look for it as much as possible. Pansy’s sympathy was a direct admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child was able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, to remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she now perceived that Pansy’s ambiguities were simply her own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much—so extraordinarily much—to please. But since then she had seen this delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It was the whole creature—it was a sort of genius. Pansy had no pride to interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs. Osmond was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her company; it had the effect of one’s carrying a nosegay composed all of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under any provocation to neglect her—this she had made an article of religion. The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Isabel’s society than in that of any one save her father,—whom she admired with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite pleasure to Gilbert Osmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be with her and how she studied the means of pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble—a conviction which certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She was therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to Isabel’s propositions and which might have implied that she could have thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions, and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked toward it wistfully—an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to propose departure. Isabel appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome parts—the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken to drive for the first time.

On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of the city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await them by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This was almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansy loved best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter undulation beside her father’s wife, who afterwards, on their return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was entered from the staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond’s rich devices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the reason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her bonnet, and Gilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were unaware she had come in. Isabel had often seen that before, certainly; but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, a little way from the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel first was that he was sitting while Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. But it was all over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Merle had seen her and had welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had instantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a walk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse him, left the room.

“I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn’t I waited for you,” Madame Merle said.

“Didn’t he ask you to sit down?” Isabel asked with a smile.

Madame Merle looked about her. “Ah, it’s very true; I was going away.”

“You must stay now.”

“Certainly. I came for a reason; I’ve something on my mind.”

“I’ve told you that before,” Isabel said—“that it takes something extraordinary to bring you to this house.”

“And you know what I’ve told you; that whether I come or whether I stay away, I’ve always the same motive—the affection I bear you.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that.”

“You look just now as if you didn’t believe it,” said Madame Merle.

“Ah,” Isabel answered, “the profundity of your motives, that’s the last thing I doubt!”

“You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.”

Isabel shook her head gravely. “I know you’ve always been kind to me.”

“As often as you would let me. You don’t always take it; then one has to let you alone. It’s not to do you a kindness, however, that I’ve come to-day; it’s quite another affair. I’ve come to get rid of a trouble of my own—to make it over to you. I’ve been talking to your husband about it.”

“I’m surprised at that; he doesn’t like troubles.”

“Especially other people’s; I know very well. But neither do you, I suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It’s about poor Mr. Rosier.”

“Ah,” said Isabel reflectively, “it’s his trouble then, not yours.”

“He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a week, to talk about Pansy.”

“Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.”

Madame Merle hesitated. “I gathered from your husband that perhaps you didn’t.”

“How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the matter.”

“It’s probably because he doesn’t know how to speak of it.”

“It’s nevertheless the sort of question in which he’s rarely at fault.”

“Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think. To-day he doesn’t.”

“Haven’t you been telling him?” Isabel asked.

Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. “Do you know you’re a little dry?”

“Yes; I can’t help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.”

“In that there’s some reason. You’re so near the child.”

“Ah,” said Isabel, “for all the comfort I’ve given him! If you think me dry, I wonder what he thinks.”

“I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.”

“I can do nothing.”

“You can do more at least than I. I don’t know what mysterious connection he may have discovered between me and Pansy; but he came to me from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his feelings.”

“He’s very much in love,” said Isabel.

“Very much—for him.”

“Very much for Pansy, you might say as well.”

Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. “Don’t you think she’s attractive?”

“The dearest little person possible—but very limited.”

“She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier’s not unlimited.”

“No,” said Isabel, “he has about the extent of one’s pocket-handkerchief—the small ones with lace borders.” Her humour had lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed of exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy’s suitor. “He’s very kind, very honest,” she presently added; “and he’s not such a fool as he seems.”

“He assures me that she delights in him,” said Madame Merle.

“I don’t know; I’ve not asked her.”

“You’ve never sounded her a little?”

“It’s not my place; it’s her father’s.”

“Ah, you’re too literal!” said Madame Merle.

“I must judge for myself.”

Madame Merle gave her smile again. “It isn’t easy to help you.”

“To help me?” said Isabel very seriously. “What do you mean?”

“It’s easy to displease you. Don’t you see how wise I am to be careful? I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. Je n’y peux rien, moi! I can’t talk to Pansy about him. Especially,” added Madame Merle, “as I don’t think him a paragon of husbands.”

Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, “You don’t wash your hands then!” she said. After which again she added in another tone: “You can’t—you’re too much interested.”

Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before. Only this time the latter saw nothing. “Ask him the next time, and you’ll see.”

“I can’t ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let him know that he’s not welcome.”

“Ah yes,” said Madame Merle, “I forgot that—though it’s the burden of his lamentation. He says Osmond has insulted him. All the same,” she went on, “Osmond doesn’t dislike him so much as he thinks.” She had got up as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her, and had evidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the point she had in view; but Isabel also had her own reasons for not opening the way.

“That must have pleased him, if you’ve told him,” she answered, smiling.

“Certainly I’ve told him; as far as that goes I’ve encouraged him. I’ve preached patience, have said that his case isn’t desperate if he’ll only hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his head to be jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here.”

Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose. “Ah!” she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame Merle observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.

“Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there’s nothing impossible in Lord Warburton’s falling in love with Pansy,” Madame Merle went on. Isabel was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. “It’s true—there’s nothing impossible,” she returned at last, gravely and more gently.

“So I’ve had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.”

“That I don’t know.”

“Ask him and you’ll see.”

“I shall not ask him,” said Isabel.

“Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,” Madame Merle added, “you’ve had infinitely more observation of Lord Warburton’s behaviour than I.”

“I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you that he likes my stepdaughter very much.”

Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. “Likes her, you mean—as Mr. Rosier means?”

“I don’t know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know that he’s charmed with Pansy.”

“And you’ve never told Osmond?” This observation was immediate, precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Merle’s lips.

Isabel’s eyes rested on her. “I suppose he’ll know in time; Lord Warburton has a tongue and knows how to express himself.”

Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been thinking it over a little: “That would be better than marrying poor Mr. Rosier.”

“Much better, I think.”

“It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It’s really very kind of him.”

“Very kind of him?”

“To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.”

“I don’t see that.”

“It’s very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond—”

“After all, Pansy Osmond’s the most attractive person he has ever known!” Isabel exclaimed.

Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. “Ah, a moment ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.”

“I said she was limited. And so she is. And so’s Lord Warburton.”

“So are we all, if you come to that. If it’s no more than Pansy deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Rosier I won’t admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.”

“Mr. Rosier’s a nuisance!” Isabel cried abruptly.

“I quite agree with you, and I’m delighted to know that I’m not expected to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be closed to him.” And gathering her mantle together Madame Merle prepared to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an inconsequent request from Isabel.

“All the same, you know, be kind to him.”

She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend. “I don’t understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan’t be kind to him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Lord Warburton.”

“You had better wait till he asks her.”

“If what you say’s true, he’ll ask her. Especially,” said Madame Merle in a moment, “if you make him.”

“If I make him?”

“It’s quite in your power. You’ve great influence with him.”

Isabel frowned a little. “Where did you learn that?”

“Mrs. Touchett told me. Not you—never!” said Madame Merle, smiling.

“I certainly never told you anything of the sort.”

“You might have done so—so far as opportunity went—when we were by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very little; I’ve often thought so since.”

Isabel had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But she didn’t admit it now—perhaps because she wished not to appear to exult in it. “You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,” she simply returned.

“She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Lord Warburton, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject. Of course I think you’ve done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn’t marry Lord Warburton yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to marry some one else.”

Isabel listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting the bright expressiveness of Madame Merle’s. But in a moment she said, reasonably and gently enough: “I should be very glad indeed if, as regards Pansy, it could be arranged.” Upon which her companion, who seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.

CHAPTER XLI

Osmond touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had spent the evening at home, and Pansy had gone to bed; he himself had been sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged his books and which he called his study. At ten o’clock Lord Warburton had come in, as he always did when he knew from Isabel that she was to be at home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour. Isabel, after asking him for news of Ralph, said very little to him, on purpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to read; she even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if she mightn’t leave the room. She had come little by little to think well of the idea of Pansy’s becoming the wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to excite her enthusiasm. Madame Merle, that afternoon, had applied the match to an accumulation of inflammable material. When Isabel was unhappy she always looked about her—partly from impulse and partly by theory—for some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease—of suffering as opposed to doing. To “do”—it hardly mattered what—would therefore be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to convince herself that she had done everything possible to content her husband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife’s limpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Pansy married to an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was so sound a character. It seemed to Isabel that if she could make it her duty to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely, and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to Lord Warburton, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming girl. It was a little “weird” he should—being what he was; but there was no accounting for such impressions. Pansy might captivate any one—any one at least but Lord Warburton. Isabel would have thought her too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when they saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more unaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for her it might seem odd he should care for Pansy, who was so different; but he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had, he had completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Isabel, but it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, however, that Edward Rosier had crossed their path!