The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

by Henry James

  CHAPTER IV

  Mrs. Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was usually thoughtthe most sensible; the classification being in general that Lilianwas the practical one, Edith the beauty and Isabel the "intellectual"superior. Mrs. Keyes, the second of the group, was the wife of anofficer of the United States Engineers, and as our history is notfurther concerned with her it will suffice that she was indeed verypretty and that she formed the ornament of those various militarystations, chiefly in the unfashionable West, to which, to her deepchagrin, her husband was successively relegated. Lilian had married aNew York lawyer, a young man with a loud voice and an enthusiasm forhis profession the match was not brilliant, any more than Edith's, butLilian had occasionally been spoken of as a young woman who might bethankful to marry at all--she was so much plainer than her sisters.She was, however, very happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptorylittle boys and the mistress of a wedge of brown stone violently driveninto Fifty-third Street, seemed to exult in her condition as in a boldescape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was questioned,but she was conceded presence, though not majesty; she had moreover, aspeople said, improved since her marriage, and the two things in lifeof which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband's force inargument and her sister Isabel's originality. "I've never kept up withIsabel--it would have taken all my time," she had often remarked;in spite of which, however, she held her rather wistfully in sight;watching her as a motherly spaniel might watch a free greyhound. "I wantto see her safely married--that's what I want to see," she frequentlynoted to her husband.

  "Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her,"Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer in an extremely audible tone.

  "I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground.I don't see what you've against her except that she's so original."

  "Well, I don't like originals; I like translations," Mr. Ludlow had morethan once replied. "Isabel's written in a foreign tongue. I can't makeher out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a Portuguese."

  "That's just what I'm afraid she'll do!" cried Lilian, who thoughtIsabel capable of anything.

  She listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs.Touchett's appearance and in the evening prepared to comply with theiraunt's commands. Of what Isabel then said no report has remained, buther sister's words had doubtless prompted a word spoken to her husbandas the two were making ready for their visit. "I do hope immenselyshe'll do something handsome for Isabel; she has evidently taken a greatfancy to her."

  "What is it you wish her to do?" Edmund Ludlow asked. "Make her a bigpresent?"

  "No indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her--sympathisewith her. She's evidently just the sort of person to appreciate her. Shehas lived so much in foreign society; she told Isabel all about it. Youknow you've always thought Isabel rather foreign."

  "You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? Don't you thinkshe gets enough at home?"

  "Well, she ought to go abroad," said Mrs. Ludlow. "She's just the personto go abroad."

  "And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?"

  "She has offered to take her--she's dying to have Isabel go. But whatI want her to do when she gets her there is to give her all theadvantages. I'm sure all we've got to do," said Mrs. Ludlow, "is to giveher a chance."

  "A chance for what?"

  "A chance to develop."

  "Oh Moses!" Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. "I hope she isn't going to developany more!"

  "If I were not sure you only said that for argument I should feel verybadly," his wife replied. "But you know you love her."

  "Do you know I love you?" the young man said, jocosely, to Isabel alittle later, while he brushed his hat.

  "I'm sure I don't care whether you do or not!" exclaimed the girl; whosevoice and smile, however, were less haughty than her words.

  "Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Touchett's visit," said her sister.

  But Isabel challenged this assertion with a good deal of seriousness."You must not say that, Lily. I don't feel grand at all."

  "I'm sure there's no harm," said the conciliatory Lily.

  "Ah, but there's nothing in Mrs. Touchett's visit to make one feelgrand."

  "Oh," exclaimed Ludlow, "she's grander than ever!"

  "Whenever I feel grand," said the girl, "it will be for a betterreason."

  Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt different, as ifsomething had happened to her. Left to herself for the evening she sata while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual avocations unheeded.Then she rose and moved about the room, and from one room to another,preferring the places where the vague lamplight expired. She wasrestless and even agitated; at moments she trembled a little. Theimportance of what had happened was out of proportion to its appearance;there had really been a change in her life. What it would bring with itwas as yet extremely indefinite; but Isabel was in a situation that gavea value to any change. She had a desire to leave the past behind herand, as she said to herself, to begin afresh. This desire indeed was nota birth of the present occasion it was as familiar as the sound of therain upon the window and it had led to her beginning afresh a great manytimes. She closed her eyes as she sat in one of the dusky corners of thequiet parlour; but it was not with a desire for dozing forgetfulness. Itwas on the contrary because she felt too wide-eyed and wished to checkthe sense of seeing too many things at once. Her imagination was byhabit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out ofthe window. She was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts; andat important moments, when she would have been thankful to make useof her judgement alone, she paid the penalty of having given undueencouragement to the faculty of seeing without judging. At present, withher sense that the note of change had been struck, came gradually a hostof images of the things she was leaving behind her. The years and hoursof her life came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness brokenonly by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she passed them inreview. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very fortunateperson--this was the truth that seemed to emerge most vividly. She hadhad the best of everything, and in a world in which the circumstancesof so many people made them unenviable it was an advantage never to haveknown anything particularly unpleasant. It appeared to Isabel that theunpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she hadgathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often asource of interest and even of instruction. Her father had kept itaway from her--her handsome, much loved father, who always had suchan aversion to it. It was a great felicity to have been his daughter;Isabel rose even to pride in her parentage. Since his death she hadseemed to see him as turning his braver side to his children and asnot having managed to ignore the ugly quite so much in practice as inaspiration. But this only made her tenderness for him greater; itwas scarcely even painful to have to suppose him too generous, toogood-natured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many personshad held that he carried this indifference too far, especially the largenumber of those to whom he owed money. Of their opinions Isabel wasnever very definitely informed; but it may interest the reader to knowthat, while they had recognised in the late Mr. Archer a remarkablyhandsome head and a very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said,he was always taking something), they had declared that he was making avery poor use of his life. He had squandered a substantial fortune, hehad been deplorably convivial, he was known to have gambled freely.A few very harsh critics went so far as to say that he had not evenbrought up his daughters. They had had no regular education and nopermanent home; they had been at once spoiled and neglected; they hadlived with nursemaids and governesses (usually very bad ones) or hadbeen sent to superficial schools, kept by the French, from which, at theend of a month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the matterwould have excited Isabel's indignation, for to her own sense heropportunities had been large. Even when her father had left hisdaughters for three months at
Neufchatel with a French bonne who hadeloped with a Russian nobleman staying at the same hotel--even in thisirregular situation (an incident of the girl's eleventh year) she hadbeen neither frightened nor ashamed, but had thought it a romanticepisode in a liberal education. Her father had a large way of looking atlife, of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherencyof conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even aschildren, to see as much of the world as possible; and it was for thispurpose that, before Isabel was fourteen, he had transported them threetimes across the Atlantic, giving them on each occasion, however, but afew months' view of the subject proposed: a course which had whettedour heroine's curiosity without enabling her to satisfy it. She ought tohave been a partisan of her father, for she was the member of his triowho most "made up" to him for the disagreeables he didn't mention. Inhis last days his general willingness to take leave of a world in whichthe difficulty of doing as one liked appeared to increase as one grewolder had been sensibly modified by the pain of separation from hisclever, his superior, his remarkable girl. Later, when the journeys toEurope ceased, he still had shown his children all sorts of indulgence,and if he had been troubled about money-matters nothing ever disturbedtheir irreflective consciousness of many possessions. Isabel, though shedanced very well, had not the recollection of having been in New York asuccessful member of the choreographic circle; her sister Edith was,as every one said, so very much more fetching. Edith was so strikingan example of success that Isabel could have no illusions as to whatconstituted this advantage, or as to the limits of her own power tofrisk and jump and shriek--above all with rightness of effect. Nineteenpersons out of twenty (including the younger sister herself) pronouncedEdith infinitely the prettier of the two; but the twentieth, besidesreversing this judgement, had the entertainment of thinking all theothers aesthetic vulgarians. Isabel had in the depths of her nature aneven more unquenchable desire to please than Edith; but the depths ofthis young lady's nature were a very out-of-the-way place, between whichand the surface communication was interrupted by a dozen capriciousforces. She saw the young men who came in large numbers to see hersister; but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had abelief that some special preparation was required for talking with her.Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudyenvelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficultquestions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The poorgirl liked to be thought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish;she used to read in secret and, though her memory was excellent, toabstain from showy reference. She had a great desire for knowledge, butshe really preferred almost any source of information to the printedpage; she had an immense curiosity about life and was constantly staringand wondering. She carried within herself a great fund of life, and herdeepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements ofher own soul and the agitations of the world. For this reason she wasfond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of readingabout revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures--a classof efforts as to which she had often committed the conscious solecism offorgiving them much bad painting for the sake of the subject. While theCivil War went on she was still a very young girl; but she passed monthsof this long period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in whichshe felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirredalmost indiscriminately by the valour of either army. Of course thecircumspection of suspicious swains had never gone the length of makingher a social proscript; for the number of those whose hearts, as theyapproached her, beat only just fast enough to remind them they had headsas well, had kept her unacquainted with the supreme disciplines ofher sex and age. She had had everything a girl could have: kindness,admiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of theprivileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing,plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, the latest publications,the music of Gounod, the poetry of Browning, the prose of George Eliot.

  These things now, as memory played over them, resolved themselves into amultitude of scenes and figures. Forgotten things came back to her; manyothers, which she had lately thought of great moment, dropped out ofsight. The result was kaleidoscopic, but the movement of the instrumentwas checked at last by the servant's coming in with the name of agentleman. The name of the gentleman was Caspar Goodwood; he was astraight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Archer for the lasttwelvemonth and who, thinking her the most beautiful young woman of hertime, had pronounced the time, according to the rule I have hinted at,a foolish period of history. He sometimes wrote to her and had within aweek or two written from New York. She had thought it very possible hewould come in--had indeed all the rainy day been vaguely expecting him.Now that she learned he was there, nevertheless, she felt no eagernessto receive him. He was the finest young man she had ever seen, wasindeed quite a splendid young man; he inspired her with a sentiment ofhigh, of rare respect. She had never felt equally moved to it by anyother person. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marryher, but this of course was between themselves. It at least may beaffirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany expressly to seeher; having learned in the former city, where he was spending a fewdays and where he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the Statecapital. Isabel delayed for some minutes to go to him; she moved aboutthe room with a new sense of complications. But at last she presentedherself and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong andsomewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He was not romantically, hewas much rather obscurely, handsome; but his physiognomy had an air ofrequesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charm youfound in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexionother than his own, and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould which issupposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespokeresolution to-night; in spite of which, in half an hour, CasparGoodwood, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his way backto his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. He was not, it may beadded, a man weakly to accept defeat.