Portrait of a Lady

Isabel Archer.

While the author of this missive was making up her mind to dispatch it Henrietta Stackpole formed a resolve which was accompanied by no demur. She invited Ralph Touchett to take a walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of him. It may be admitted that at this information the young man flinched; for we know that Miss Stackpole had struck him as apt to push an advantage. The alarm was unreasoned, however; for he was clear about the area of her indiscretion as little as advised of its vertical depth, and he made a very civil profession of the desire to serve her. He was afraid of her and presently told her so. “When you look at me in a certain way my knees knock together, my faculties desert me; I'm filled with trepidation and I ask only for strength to execute your commands. You've an address that I've never encountered in any woman.”

“Well,” Henrietta replied good-humouredly, “if I had not known before that you were trying somehow to abash me I should know it now. Of course I'm easy game – I was brought up with such different customs and ideas. I'm not used to your arbitrary standards, and I've never been spoken to in America as you have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing with me over there were to speak to me like that I shouldn't know what to make of it. We take everything more naturally over there, and, after all, we're a great deal more simple. I admit that; I'm very simple myself. Of course if you choose to laugh at me for it you're very welcome; but I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I'm quite content to be myself; I don't want to change. There are plenty of people that appreciate me just as I am. It's true they're nice fresh free-born Americans!” Henrietta had lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence and large concession. “I want you to assist me a little,” she went on. “I don't care in the least whether I amuse you while you do so; or, rather, I'm perfectly willing your amusement should be your reward. I want you to help me about Isabel.”

“Has she injured you?” Ralph asked.

“If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. What I'm afraid of is that she'll injure herself.”

“I think that's very possible,” said Ralph.

His companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him perhaps the very gaze that unnerved him. “That too would amuse you, I suppose. The way you do say things! I never heard any one so indifferent.”

“To Isabel? Ah, not that!”

“Well, you're not in love with her, I hope.”

“How can that be, when I'm in love with Another?”

“You're in love with yourself, that's the Other!” Miss Stackpole declared. “Much good may it do you! But if you wish to be serious once in your life here's a chance; and if you really care for your cousin here's an opportunity to prove it. I don't expect you to understand her; that's too much to ask. But you needn't do that to grant my favour. I'll supply the necessary intelligence.”

“I shall enjoy that immensely!” Ralph exclaimed. “I'll be Caliban and you shall be Ariel.”

“You're not at all like Caliban, because you're sophisticated, and Caliban was not. But I'm not talking about imaginary characters; I'm talking about Isabel. Isabel's intensely real. What I wish to tell you is that I find her fearfully changed.”

“Since you came, do you mean?”

“Since I came and before I came. She's not the same as she once so beautifully was.”

“As she was in America?”

“Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can't help it, but she does.”

“Do you want to change her back again?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Not surely as an ideal?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I've never heard of him,” said Ralph.

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

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

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

“Is she very fond of him?”

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

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

“It would be an act of true hospitality.”

“Caspar Goodwood,” Ralph continued – “it's rather a striking name.”

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

“You're a very devoted friend,” said Ralph.

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

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

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

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

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

“You're difficult to please.”

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

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

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

“Has he pleasant manners?” asked Ralph.

“Splendid manners – in the American style.”

“Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?”

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

“And how would my cousin like that?”

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

“Call them back – from where?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter XIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don't approve of me?”

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

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

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

“Give up – a —?” asked Lord Warburton, meeting her harsh inflexion with a very mellow one.

“Give up being a lord.”

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

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

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

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

“Mighty little, as you see!”

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

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

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

“She's a capital good girl.”

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

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

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

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

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

“A badge?”

“A sign of rank.”

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