The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

by Henry James

  CHAPTER III

  Mrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which herbehaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was anoticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, andthis is the simplest description of a character which, although by nomeans without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impressionof suavity. Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but shenever pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was notintrinsically offensive--it was just unmistakeably distinguished fromthe ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut thatfor susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect. That hardfineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her returnfrom America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed thather first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husbandand son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she deemed excellent, alwaysretired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing themore sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dresswith a completeness which had the less reason to be of high importanceas neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plain-facedold woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with anextreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explainthese--when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a casethey proved totally different from those that had been attributed toher. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she appeared toperceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become clear, at anearly stage of their community, that they should never desire the samething at the same moment, and this appearance had prompted her to rescuedisagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she couldto erect it into a law--a much more edifying aspect of it--by going tolive in Florence, where she bought a house and established herself; andby leaving her husband to take care of the English branch of his bank.This arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite.It struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in London,where it was at times the most definite fact he discerned; but hewould have preferred that such unnatural things should have a greatervagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort; he was ready toagree to almost anything but that, and saw no reason why either assentor dissent should be so terribly consistent. Mrs. Touchett indulged inno regrets nor speculations, and usually came once a year to spend amonth with her husband, a period during which she apparently took painsto convince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not fondof the English style of life, and had three or four reasons for it towhich she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of that ancientorder, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non-residence. Shedetested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poulticeand tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer byher maid-servants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs.Touchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was nota mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her owncountry; but this last had been longer than any of its predecessors.

  She had taken up her niece--there was little doubt of that. One wetafternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence lately narrated,this young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say she was sooccupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for herlove of knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination wasstrong. There was at this time, however, a want of fresh taste inher situation which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much tocorrect. The visitor had not been announced; the girl heard her at lastwalking about the adjoining room. It was in an old house at Albany, alarge, square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of oneof the lower apartments. There were two entrances, one of which hadlong been out of use but had never been removed. They were exactlyalike--large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side-lights,perched upon little "stoops" of red stone, which descended sidewiseto the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed asingle dwelling, the party-wall having been removed and the rooms placedin communication. These rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous,and were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which hadgrown sallow with time. On the third floor there was a sort of archedpassage, connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and hersisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though itwas short and well lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange andlonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house,at different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother livedthere. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a returnto Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer,had exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a largehospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeksunder her roof--weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. Themanner of life was different from that of her own home--larger, moreplentiful, practically more festal; the discipline of the nursery wasdelightfully vague and the opportunity of listening to the conversationof one's elders (which with Isabel was a highly-valued pleasure) almostunbounded. There was a constant coming and going; her grandmother'ssons and daughters and their children appeared to be in the enjoyment ofstanding invitations to arrive and remain, so that the house offered toa certain extent the appearance of a bustling provincial inn kept by agentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill.Isabel of course knew nothing about bills; but even as a child shethought her grandmother's home romantic. There was a covered piazzabehind it, furnished with a swing which was a source of tremulousinterest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping down to the stableand containing peach-trees of barely credible familiarity. Isabel hadstayed with her grandmother at various seasons, but somehow all hervisits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, across the street,was an old house that was called the Dutch House--a peculiar structuredating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had beenpainted yellow, crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers,defended by a rickety wooden paling and standing sidewise to the street.It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, keptor rather let go, by a demonstrative lady of whom Isabel's chiefrecollection was that her hair was fastened with strange bedroomy combsat the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence.The little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foundationof knowledge in this establishment; but having spent a single day in it,she had protested against its laws and had been allowed to stay at home,where, in the September days, when the windows of the Dutch Housewere open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating themultiplication table--an incident in which the elation of liberty andthe pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. The foundationof her knowledge was really laid in the idleness of her grandmother'shouse, where, as most of the other inmates were not reading people,she had uncontrolled use of a library full of books with frontispieces,which she used to climb upon a chair to take down. When she had foundone to her taste--she was guided in the selection chiefly by thefrontispiece--she carried it into a mysterious apartment which laybeyond the library and which was called, traditionally, no one knewwhy, the office. Whose office it had been and at what period it hadflourished, she never learned; it was enough for her that it containedan echo and a pleasant musty smell and that it was a chamber of disgracefor old pieces of furniture whose infirmities were not always apparent(so that the disgrace seemed unmerited and rendered them victimsof injustice) and with which, in the manner of children, she hadestablished relations almost human, certainly dramatic. There was an oldhaircloth sofa in especial, to which she had confided a hundred childishsorrows. The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the factthat it was properly entered from the second door of the house, thedoor that had been condemned, and that it was secured by bolts which aparticularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. Sheknew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if thesidelights had not bee
n filled with green paper she might have lookedout upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. Butshe had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with hertheory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a placewhich became to the child's imagination, according to its differentmoods, a region of delight or of terror.

  It was in the "office" still that Isabel was sitting on that melancholyafternoon of early spring which I have just mentioned. At this timeshe might have had the whole house to choose from, and the room she hadselected was the most depressed of its scenes. She had never opened thebolted door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) fromits sidelights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street laybeyond. A crude, cold rain fell heavily; the spring-time was indeed anappeal--and it seemed a cynical, insincere appeal--to patience. Isabel,however, gave as little heed as possible to cosmic treacheries; she kepther eyes on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurredto her that her mind was a good deal of a vagabond, and she had spentmuch ingenuity in training it to a military step and teaching itto advance, to halt, to retreat, to perform even more complicatedmanoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now she had given it marchingorders and it had been trudging over the sandy plains of a history ofGerman Thought. Suddenly she became aware of a step very different fromher own intellectual pace; she listened a little and perceived that someone was moving in the library, which communicated with the office. Itstruck her first as the step of a person from whom she was looking for avisit, then almost immediately announced itself as the tread of awoman and a stranger--her possible visitor being neither. It had aninquisitive, experimental quality which suggested that it would not stopshort of the threshold of the office; and in fact the doorway of thisapartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there and lookedvery hard at our heroine. She was a plain, elderly woman, dressed ina comprehensive waterproof mantle; she had a face with a good deal ofrather violent point.

  "Oh," she began, "is that where you usually sit?" She looked about atthe heterogeneous chairs and tables.

  "Not when I have visitors," said Isabel, getting up to receive theintruder.

  She directed their course back to the library while the visitorcontinued to look about her. "You seem to have plenty of other rooms;they're in rather better condition. But everything's immensely worn."

  "Have you come to look at the house?" Isabel asked. "The servant willshow it to you."

  "Send her away; I don't want to buy it. She has probably gone tolook for you and is wandering about upstairs; she didn't seem at allintelligent. You had better tell her it's no matter." And then, sincethe girl stood there hesitating and wondering, this unexpected criticsaid to her abruptly: "I suppose you're one of the daughters?"

  Isabel thought she had very strange manners. "It depends upon whosedaughters you mean."

  "The late Mr. Archer's--and my poor sister's."

  "Ah," said Isabel slowly, "you must be our crazy Aunt Lydia!"

  "Is that what your father told you to call me? I'm your Aunt Lydia, butI'm not at all crazy: I haven't a delusion! And which of the daughtersare you?"

  "I'm the youngest of the three, and my name's Isabel."

  "Yes; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you the prettiest?"

  "I haven't the least idea," said the girl.

  "I think you must be." And in this way the aunt and the niece madefriends. The aunt had quarrelled years before with her brother-in-law,after the death of her sister, taking him to task for the manner inwhich he brought up his three girls. Being a high-tempered man he hadrequested her to mind her own business, and she had taken him at hisword. For many years she held no communication with him and after hisdeath had addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred inthat disrespectful view of her which we have just seen Isabel betray.Mrs. Touchett's behaviour was, as usual, perfectly deliberate. Sheintended to go to America to look after her investments (with which herhusband, in spite of his great financial position, had nothing todo) and would take advantage of this opportunity to enquire into thecondition of her nieces. There was no need of writing, for she shouldattach no importance to any account of them she should elicit by letter;she believed, always, in seeing for one's self. Isabel found, however,that she knew a good deal about them, and knew about the marriage of thetwo elder girls; knew that their poor father had left very little money,but that the house in Albany, which had passed into his hands, was tobe sold for their benefit; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow,Lilian's husband, had taken upon himself to attend to this matter, inconsideration of which the young couple, who had come to Albany duringMr. Archer's illness, were remaining there for the present and, as wellas Isabel herself, occupying the old place.

  "How much money do you expect for it?" Mrs. Touchett asked of hercompanion, who had brought her to sit in the front parlour, which shehad inspected without enthusiasm.

  "I haven't the least idea," said the girl.

  "That's the second time you have said that to me," her aunt rejoined."And yet you don't look at all stupid."

  "I'm not stupid; but I don't know anything about money."

  "Yes, that's the way you were brought up--as if you were to inherit amillion. What have you in point of fact inherited?"

  "I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; they'll beback in half an hour."

  "In Florence we should call it a very bad house," said Mrs. Touchett;"but here, I dare say, it will bring a high price. It ought to makea considerable sum for each of you. In addition to that you must havesomething else; it's most extraordinary your not knowing. The position'sof value, and they'll probably pull it down and make a row of shops.I wonder you don't do that yourself; you might let the shops to greatadvantage."

  Isabel stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. "I hope theywon't pull it down," she said; "I'm extremely fond of it."

  "I don't see what makes you fond of it; your father died here."

  "Yes; but I don't dislike it for that," the girl rather strangelyreturned. "I like places in which things have happened--even if they'resad things. A great many people have died here; the place has been fullof life."

  "Is that what you call being full of life?"

  "I mean full of experience--of people's feelings and sorrows. And not oftheir sorrows only, for I've been very happy here as a child."

  "You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things havehappened--especially deaths. I live in an old palace in which threepeople have been murdered; three that were known and I don't know howmany more besides."

  "In an old palace?" Isabel repeated.

  "Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is verybourgeois."

  Isabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly of hergrandmother's house. But the emotion was of a kind which led her to say:"I should like very much to go to Florence."

  "Well, if you'll be very good, and do everything I tell you I'll takeyou there," Mrs. Touchett declared.

  Our young woman's emotion deepened; she flushed a little and smiled ather aunt in silence. "Do everything you tell me? I don't think I canpromise that."

  "No, you don't look like a person of that sort. You're fond of your ownway; but it's not for me to blame you."

  "And yet, to go to Florence," the girl exclaimed in a moment, "I'dpromise almost anything!"

  Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Touchett had anhour's uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her a strange andinteresting figure: a figure essentially--almost the first she had evermet. She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed; and hitherto,whenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she hadthought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggestedto her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it amatter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herselfif the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been asinteresting. No one certainly had on any occasion so held her as thislittle thin-
lipped, bright-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who retrieved aninsignificant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there ina well-worn waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courtsof Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs. Touchett, but sherecognised no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earthin a way that spoke of this, enjoyed the consciousness of makingan impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Isabel at first hadanswered a good many questions, and it was from her answers apparentlythat Mrs. Touchett derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But afterthis she had asked a good many, and her aunt's answers, whatever turnthey took, struck her as food for deep reflexion. Mrs. Touchett waitedfor the return of her other niece as long as she thought reasonable, butas at six o'clock Mrs. Ludlow had not come in she prepared to take herdeparture.

  "Your sister must be a great gossip. Is she accustomed to staying out somany hours?"

  "You've been out almost as long as she," Isabel replied; "she can haveleft the house but a short time before you came in."

  Mrs. Touchett looked at the girl without resentment; she appeared toenjoy a bold retort and to be disposed to be gracious. "Perhaps shehasn't had so good an excuse as I. Tell her at any rate that she mustcome and see me this evening at that horrid hotel. She may bring herhusband if she likes, but she needn't bring you. I shall see plenty ofyou later."