The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 2

by Henry James

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Ralph Touchettshould have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had donebefore that event--an event of which he took such a view as could hardlyprove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as weknow, and after this had held his peace, Isabel not having invited himto resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. Thatdiscussion had made a difference--the difference he feared rather thanthe one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out herengagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship.No reference was ever again made between them to Ralph's opinion ofGilbert Osmond, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence theymanaged to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was adifference, as Ralph often said to himself--there was a difference. Shehad not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he hadgained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care;and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictionsrepresented a certain reality. But whether or no the event shouldjustify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong wasof the sort that women remember best. As Osmond's wife she could neveragain be his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicityshe expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who hadattempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on theother hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that heshould never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to makeher hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followedhis cousin's marriage, Ralph's prevision of the future; and if hismeditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloomof health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed)beautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which Isabel was unitedto Mr. Osmond, and which was performed in Florence in the month ofJune. He learned from his mother that Isabel at first had thought ofcelebrating her nuptials in her native land, but that as simplicity waswhat she chiefly desired to secure she had finally decided, in spiteof Osmond's professed willingness to make a journey of any length, thatthis characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by thenearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done therefore atthe little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence only ofMrs. Touchett and her son, of Pansy Osmond and the Countess Gemini. Thatseverity in the proceedings of which I just spoke was in part the resultof the absence of two persons who might have been looked for on theoccasion and who would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Merlehad been invited, but Madame Merle, who was unable to leave Rome, hadwritten a gracious letter of excuses. Henrietta Stackpole had not beeninvited, as her departure from America, announced to Isabel by Mr.Goodwood, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession butshe had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Merle's, intimatingthat, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have beenpresent not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe hadtaken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Isabelin the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle toofreely--her critical genius. Poor Osmond, who was chiefly the subjectof it, had protested so sharply that Henrietta was obliged to declare toIsabel that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. "Itisn't in the least that you've married--it is that you have marriedHIM," she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen,much more with Ralph Touchett than she suspected, though she had few ofhis hesitations and compunctions. Henrietta's second visit to Europe,however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at themoment when Osmond had declared to Isabel that he really must object tothat newspaper-woman, and Isabel had answered that it seemed to her hetook Henrietta too hard, the good Mr. Bantling had appeared uponthe scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain.Henrietta's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable shehad yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from theAlhambra and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed forher masterpiece. Isabel had been secretly disappointed at her husband'snot seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She evenwondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his senseof humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she herselflooked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothingto grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond had thought theiralliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had incommon. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow tourist was simply the mostvulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned.Against this latter clause of the verdict Isabel had appealed with anardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of hiswife's tastes. Isabel could explain it only by saying that she liked toknow people who were as different as possible from herself. "Whythen don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?" Osmondhad enquired; to which Isabel had answered that she was afraid herwasherwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Henrietta cared so much.

  Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years thathad followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of herresidence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had beenjoined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with himto England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation shecouldn't induce him to perform. Ralph had taken a lease of his house atSan Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; butlate in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome.It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to facewith Isabel; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. Shehad written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothinghe wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she was making of herlife, and his mother had simply answered that she supposed she wasmaking the best of it. Mrs. Touchett had not the imagination thatcommunes with the unseen, and she now pretended to no intimacy withher niece, whom she rarely encountered. This young woman appeared tobe living in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Touchett stillremained of the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. Ithad given her no pleasure to think of Isabel's establishment, which shewas sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in Florence, sherubbed against the Countess Gemini, doing her best always to minimisethe contact; and the Countess reminded her of Osmond, who made herthink of Isabel. The Countess was less talked of in these days; but Mrs.Touchett augured no good of that: it only proved how she had been talkedof before. There was a more direct suggestion of Isabel in the personof Madame Merle; but Madame Merle's relations with Mrs. Touchett hadundergone a perceptible change. Isabel's aunt had told her, withoutcircumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and MadameMerle, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no oneworth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less,for several years with Mrs. Touchett and showing no symptom ofirritation--Madame Merle now took a very high tone and declared thatthis was an accusation from which she couldn't stoop to defend herself.She added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been onlytoo simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw Isabelwas not eager to marry and Osmond not eager to please (his repeatedvisits had been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-topand he came merely for amusement). Isabel had kept her sentiments toherself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually throwndust in her companion's eyes. Madame Merle accepted the event--she wasunprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had played any partin it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudlyprotested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Touchett's attitude,and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charmingseasons, that Madame Merle had, after this, chosen to pass many monthsin England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Touchett haddone her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven. ButMadame Merle suffered in silence; there was always something exquisitein her dignity.

 
; Ralph, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged inthis pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put thegirl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost thegame. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she wouldalways wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight inher union, so that later, when, as Ralph phrased it, the bottom shouldfall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that hehad been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose inorder to know Isabel's real situation. At present, however, she neithertaunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence wasjustified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face. There wassomething fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this wasnot an expression, Ralph said--it was a representation, it was even anadvertisement. She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was asorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than shecould say to Ralph. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurredsix months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning.She appeared to be leading the life of the world; Ralph heard her spokenof as having a "charming position." He observed that she produced theimpression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, amongmany people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house was not opento every one, and she had an evening in the week to which peoplewere not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certainmagnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceiveit; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing evento admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond. Ralph, inall this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Isabel hadno faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him as havinga great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of long rides, offatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be interested, even to bebored, to make acquaintances, to see people who were talked about, toexplore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certainof the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there wasmuch less discrimination than in that desire for comprehensiveness ofdevelopment on which he had been used to exercise his wit. There wasa kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of herexperiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she evenspoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage.Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she who used to care somuch for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delightin good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never lookedso charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received acrushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), sheappeared now to think there was nothing worth people's either differingabout or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she wasindifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity wasgreater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she hadgained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and abrilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolenceto her beauty. Poor human-hearted Isabel, what perversity had bittenher? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligenthead sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had becomequite another person what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed torepresent something. What did Isabel represent? Ralph asked himself;and he could only answer by saying that she represented Gilbert Osmond."Good heavens, what a function!" he then woefully exclaimed. He was lostin wonder at the mystery of things.

  He recognised Osmond, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. Hesaw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated,animated their manner of life. Osmond was in his element; at last he hadmaterial to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effectswere deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but themotive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interiorwith a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a senseof exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from everyother, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a coldoriginality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whomIsabel had attributed a superior morality. "He works with superiormaterial," Ralph said to himself; "it's rich abundance compared with hisformer resources." Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never--to hisown sense--been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under theguise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively forthe world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he wasits very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his onlymeasure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night,and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everythinghe did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on thelookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who livedso much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, hisaccomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life onhis hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. Hissolitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, hisbad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly presentto him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition wasnot to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world'scuriosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great,ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life mostdirectly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in thiscase indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel,who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course founda fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he hadsuffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this littlesketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth.It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to histheory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at thisperiod the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not inthe least as an enemy.

  For Gilbert Osmond Ralph had not now that importance. It was not that hehad the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all.He was Isabel's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was onthis basis that Osmond treated with him. He made the proper enquiries,asked about his health, about Mrs. Touchett, about his opinion of winterclimates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, onthe few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary;but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success inthe presence of conscious failure. For all this, Ralph had had, towardthe end, a sharp inward vision of Osmond's making it of small ease tohis wife that she should continue to receive Mr. Touchett. He was notjealous--he had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Ralph. Buthe made Isabel pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much wasstill left; and as Ralph had no idea of her paying too much, so when hissuspicion had become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so hehad deprived Isabel of a very interesting occupation: she had beenconstantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive. She haddecided that it was his love of conversation his conversation had beenbetter than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorousstroller. He sat all day in a chair--almost any chair would serve, andwas so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talkbeen highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. Thereader already knows more about him than Isabel was ever to know, andthe reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What keptRalph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough ofthe person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yetsatisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to losethat. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband--or what herhusband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, andhe was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had heldgood; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time ofhis return to Rome with Lord Warburton. It had given him indeed such anair of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Touchett, though moreaccessible to confusions of
thought in the matter of this strange,unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever beenbefore, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distantland. If Ralph had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good dealof the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state sheshould find him--that Isabel mounted to his apartment the day after LordWarburton had notified her of his arrival in Rome.

  She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. GilbertOsmond called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage forhim Ralph came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed,at the end of which Ralph announced to Lord Warburton that he thoughtafter all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining togetherafter a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They hadleft the table, and Warburton, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar,which he instantly removed from his lips.

  "Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?"

  "Well, I guess I won't go anywhere," said Ralph, from the sofa, allshamelessly.

  "Do you mean you'll return to England?"

  "Oh dear no; I'll stay in Rome."

  "Rome won't do for you. Rome's not warm enough."

  "It will have to do. I'll make it do. See how well I've been."

  Lord Warburton looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if tryingto see it. "You've been better than you were on the journey, certainly.I wonder how you lived through that. But I don't understand yourcondition. I recommend you to try Sicily."

  "I can't try," said poor Ralph. "I've done trying. I can't move further.I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! Idon't want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be snatched away, likeProserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades."

  "What the deuce then did you come for?" his lordship enquired.

  "Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn'tmatter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies, I've swallowedall climates. As I'm here I'll stay. I haven't a single cousin inSicily--much less a married one."

  "Your cousin's certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?"

  "I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Osmondwill bury me. But I shall not die here."

  "I hope not." Lord Warburton continued to smoke reflectively. "Well,I must say," he resumed, "for myself I'm very glad you don't insist onSicily. I had a horror of that journey."

  "Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of dragging youin my train."

  "I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone."

  "My dear Warburton, I never expected you to come further than this,"Ralph cried.

  "I should have gone with you and seen you settled," said Lord Warburton.

  "You're a very good Christian. You're a very kind man."

  "Then I should have come back here."

  "And then you'd have gone to England."

  "No, no; I should have stayed."

  "Well," said Ralph, "if that's what we are both up to, I don't see whereSicily comes in!"

  His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, lookingup, "I say, tell me this," he broke out; "did you really mean to go toSicily when we started?"

  "Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did you comewith me quite--platonically?"

  "I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad."

  "I suspect we've each been playing our little game."

  "Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be herea while."

  "Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of ForeignAffairs."

  "I've seen him three times. He's very amusing."

  "I think you've forgotten what you came for," said Ralph.

  "Perhaps I have," his companion answered rather gravely.

  These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by theabsence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Romewithout an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each.There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost itsrecognised place in their attention, and even after their arrivalin Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the samehalf-diffident, half-confident silence.

  "I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same," LordWarburton went on, abruptly, after an interval.

  "The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can helpit."

  "What then does Mrs. Osmond think?" Ralph's friend demanded. "I've nottold her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to gowith me to Catania. She's capable of that."

  "In your place I should like it."

  "Her husband won't like it."

  "Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound tomind his likings. They're his affair."

  "I don't want to make any more trouble between them," said Ralph.

  "Is there so much already?"

  "There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would makethe explosion. Osmond isn't fond of his wife's cousin."

  "Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you stophere?"

  "That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, andthen I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stopand defend her."

  "My dear Touchett, your defensive powers--!" Lord Warburton began witha smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him."Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question," heobserved instead.

  Ralph for a short time answered nothing. "It's true that my defensivepowers are small," he returned at last; "but as my aggressive ones arestill smaller Osmond may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. Atany rate," he added, "there are things I'm curious to see."

  "You're sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?"

  "I'm not much interested in my health, and I'm deeply interested in Mrs.Osmond."

  "So am I. But not as I once was," Lord Warburton added quickly. This wasone of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.

  "Does she strike you as very happy?" Ralph enquired, emboldened by thisconfidence.

  "Well, I don't know; I've hardly thought. She told me the other nightshe was happy."

  "Ah, she told YOU, of course," Ralph exclaimed, smiling.

  "I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person shemight have complained to."

  "Complained? She'll never complain. She has done it--what she HASdone--and she knows it. She'll complain to you least of all. She's verycareful."

  "She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again."

  "I'm delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of YOUR duty."

  "Ah no," said Lord Warburton gravely; "none!"

  "Permit me to ask," Ralph went on, "whether it's to bring out the factthat you don't mean to make love to her that you're so very civil to thelittle girl?"

  Lord Warburton gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire,looking at it hard. "Does that strike you as very ridiculous?"

  "Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her."

  "I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl ofthat age has pleased me more."

  "She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine."

  "Of course there's the difference in our ages--more than twenty years."

  "My dear Warburton," said Ralph, "are you serious?"

  "Perfectly serious--as far as I've got."

  "I'm very glad. And, heaven help us," cried Ralph, "how cheered-up oldOsmond will be!"

  His companion frowned. "I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't propose forhis daughter to please HIM."

  "He'll have the perversity to be pleased all the same."

  "He's not so fond of me as that," said his lordship.

  "As that? My dear Warburton, the drawback of your position is thatpeople needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you.Now, w
ith me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence thatthey loved me."

  Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to generalaxioms--he was thinking of a special case. "Do you judge she'll bepleased?"

  "The girl herself? Delighted, surely."

  "No, no; I mean Mrs. Osmond."

  Ralph looked at him a moment. "My dear fellow, what has she to do withit?"

  "Whatever she chooses. She's very fond of Pansy."

  "Very true--very true." And Ralph slowly got up. "It's an interestingquestion--how far her fondness for Pansy will carry her." He stood therea moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. "Ihope, you know, that you're very--very sure. The deuce!" he broke off."I don't know how to say it."

  "Yes, you do; you know how to say everything."

  "Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Osmond's meritsher being--a--so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?"

  "Good heavens, Touchett!" cried Lord Warburton angrily, "for what do youtake me?"