‘‘Dear me, who is that strange woman?’’ Mr. Touchett had asked.
‘‘Perhaps it is Mrs. Touchett’s niece—the independent young lady,’’ Lord Warburton suggested. ‘‘I think she must be, from the way she handles the dog.’’
The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, and he trotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly setting his tail in motion as he went.
‘‘But where is my wife, then?’’ murmured the old man.
‘‘I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere: that’s a part of the independence.’’
The girl spoke to Ralph, smiling, while she still held up the terrier. ‘‘Is this your little dog, sir?’’
‘‘He was mine a moment ago; but you have suddenly acquired a remarkable air of property in him.’’
‘‘Couldn’t we share him?’’ asked the girl. ‘‘He’s such a little darling.’’
Ralph looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. ‘‘You may have him altogether,’’ he said.
The young lady seemed to have a great deal of confidence, both in herself and in others; but this abrupt generosity made her blush. ‘‘I ought to tell you that I am probably your cousin,’’ she murmured, putting down the dog. ‘‘And here’s another!’’ she added quickly, as the collie came up.
‘‘Probably?’’ the young man exclaimed, laughing. ‘‘I supposed it was quite settled! Have you come with my mother?’’
‘‘Yes, half an hour ago.’’
‘‘And has she deposited you and departed again?’’
‘‘No, she went straight to her room; and she told me that, if I should see you, I was to say to you that you must come to her there at a quarter to seven.’’
The young man looked at his watch. ‘‘Thank you very much; I shall be punctual.’’ And then he looked at his cousin. ‘‘You are very welcome here,’’ he went on. ‘‘I am delighted to see you.’’
She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted quick perception—at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded her. ‘‘I have never seen anything so lovely as this place,’’ she said. ‘‘I have been all over the house; it’s too enchanting.’’
‘‘I am sorry you should have been here so long without our knowing it.’’
‘‘Your mother told me that in England people arrived very quietly; so I thought it was all right. Is one of those gentlemen your father?’’
‘‘Yes, the elder one—the one sitting down,’’ said Ralph.
The young girl gave a laugh. ‘‘I don’t suppose it’s the other. Who is the other?’’
‘‘He is a friend of ours—Lord Warburton.’’
‘‘Oh, I hoped there would be a lord; it’s just like a novel!’’ And then—‘‘Oh you adorable creature!’’ she suddenly cried, stooping down and picking up the little terrier again.
She remained standing where they had met, making no offer to advance or to speak to Mr. Touchett, and while she lingered in the doorway, slim and charming, her interlocutor wondered whether she expected the old man to come and pay her his respects. American girls were used to a great deal of deference, and it had been intimated that this one had a high spirit. Indeed, Ralph could see that in her face.
‘‘Won’t you come and make acquaintance with my father?’’ he nevertheless ventured to ask. ‘‘He is old and infirm—he doesn’t leave his chair.’’
‘‘Ah, poor man, I am very sorry!’’ the girl exclaimed, immediately moving forward. ‘‘I got the impression from your mother that he was rather—rather strong.’’
Ralph Touchett was silent a moment.
‘‘She has not seen him for a year.’’
‘‘Well, he has got a lovely place to sit. Come along, little dogs.’’
‘‘It’s a dear old place,’’ said the young man, looking sidewise at his neighbour.
‘‘What’s his name?’’ she asked, her attention having reverted to the terrier again.
‘‘My father’s name?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ said the young lady, humorously; ‘‘but don’t tell him I asked you.’’
They had come by this time to where old Mr. Touchett was sitting, and he slowly got up from his chair to introduce himself.
‘‘My mother has arrived,’’ said Ralph, ‘‘and this is Miss Archer.’’
The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked at her a moment with extreme benevolence, and then gallantly kissed her.
‘‘It is a great pleasure to me to see you here; but I wish you had given us a chance to receive you.’’
‘‘Oh, we were received,’’ said the girl. ‘‘There were about a dozen servants in the hall. And there was an old woman curtsying at the gate.’’
‘‘We can do better than that—if we have notice!’’ And the old man stood there, smiling, rubbing his hands, and slowly shaking his head at her. ‘‘But Mrs. Touchett doesn’t like receptions.’’
‘‘She went straight to her room.’’
‘‘Yes—and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I shall see her next week.’’ And Mrs. Touchett’s husband slowly resumed his former posture.
‘‘Before that,’’ said Miss Archer. ‘‘She is coming down to dinner—at eight o’clock. Don’t you forget a quarter to seven,’’ she added, turning with a smile to Ralph.
‘‘What is to happen at a quarter to seven?’’
‘‘I am to see my mother,’’ said Ralph.
‘‘Ah, happy boy!’’ the old man murmured. ‘‘You must sit down—you must have some tea,’’ he went on, addressing his wife’s niece.
‘‘They gave me some tea in my room the moment I arrived,’’ this young lady answered. ‘‘I am sorry you are out of health,’’ she added, resting her eyes upon her venerable host.
‘‘Oh, I’m an old man, my dear; it’s time for me to be old. But I shall be the better for having you here.’’
She had been looking all round her again—at the lawn, the great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; and while engaged in this survey, she had also narrowly scrutinized her companions; a comprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself, and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye brilliant, her flexible figure turned itself lightly this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. ‘‘I have never seen anything so beautiful as this,’’ she declared.
‘‘It’s looking very well,’’ said Mr. Touchett. ‘‘I know the way it strikes you. I have been through all that. But you are very beautiful yourself,’’ he added with a politeness by no means crudely jocular, and with the happy consciousness that his advanced age gave him the privilege of saying such things—even to young girls who might possibly take alarm at them.
What degree of alarm this young girl took need not be exactly measured; she instantly rose, however, with a blush which was not a refutation.
‘‘Oh yes, of course, I’m lovely!’’ she exclaimed quickly, with a little laugh. ‘‘How old is your house? Is it Elizabethan?’’
‘‘It’s early Tudor,’’ said Ralph Touchett.
She turned toward him, watching his face a little. ‘‘Early Tudor? How very delightful! And I suppose there are a great many others.’’
‘‘There are many much better ones.’’
‘‘Don’t say that, my son!’’ the old man protested. ‘‘There is nothing better than this.’’
‘‘I have got a very good one; I think in some respects it’s rather better,’’ said Lord Warburton, who as yet had not spoken but who had kept an attentive eye upon Miss Archer. He bent towards her a little, smiling; he had an excellent manner with women. The gi
rl appreciated it in an instant; she had not forgotten that this was Lord Warburton. ‘‘I should like very much to show it to you,’’ he added.
‘‘Don’t believe him,’’ cried the old man; ‘‘don’t look at it! It’s a wretched old barrack—not to be compared with this.’’
‘‘I don’t know—I can’t judge,’’ said the girl, smiling at Lord Warburton.
In this discussion, Ralph Touchett took no interest whatever; he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking greatly as if he should like to renew his conversation with his newfound cousin.
‘‘Are you very fond of dogs?’’ he inquired, by way of beginning; and it was an awkward beginning for a clever man.
‘‘Very fond of them indeed.’’
‘‘You must keep the terrier, you know,’’ he went on, still awkwardly.
‘‘I will keep him while I am here, with pleasure.’’
‘‘That will be for a long time, I hope.’’
‘‘You are very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settle that.’’
‘‘I will settle it with her—at a quarter to seven.’’ And Ralph looked at his watch again.
‘‘I am glad to be here at all,’’ said the girl.
‘‘I don’t believe you allow things to be settled for you.’’
‘‘Oh yes; if they are settled as I like them.’’
‘‘I shall settle this as I like it,’’ said Ralph. ‘‘It’s most unaccountable that we should never have known you.’’
‘‘I was there—you had only to come and see me.’’
‘‘There? Where do you mean?’’
‘‘In the United States: in New York, and Albany, and other places.’’
‘‘I have been there—all over, but I never saw you. I can’t make it out.’’
Miss Archer hesitated a moment.
‘‘It was because there had been some disagreement between your mother and my father, after my mother’s death, which took place when I was a child. In consequence of it, we never expected to see you.’’
‘‘Ah, but I don’t embrace all my mother’s quarrels— Heaven forbid!’’ the young man cried. ‘‘You have lately lost your father?’’ he went on, more gravely.
‘‘Yes; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very kind to me; she came to see me, and proposed that I should come to Europe.’’
‘‘I see,’’ said Ralph. ‘‘She has adopted you.’’
‘‘Adopted me?’’ The girl stared, and her blush came back to her, together with a momentary look of pain, which gave her interlocutor some alarm. He had underestimated the effect of his words. Lord Warburton, who appeared constantly desirous of a nearer view of Miss Archer, strolled toward the two cousins at the moment, and as he did so, she rested her startled eyes upon him. ‘‘Oh, no; she has not adopted me,’’ she said. ‘‘I am not a candidate for adoption.’’
‘‘I beg a thousand pardons,’’ Ralph murmured. ‘‘I meant—I meant—’’ He hardly knew what he meant.
‘‘You meant she has taken me up. Yes; she likes to take people up. She has been very kind to me; but,’’ she added, with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, ‘‘I am very fond of my liberty.’’
‘‘Are you talking about Mrs. Touchett?’’ the old man called out from his chair. ‘‘Come here, my dear, and tell me about her. I am always thankful for information.’’
The girl hesitated a moment, smiling.
‘‘She is really very benevolent,’’ she answered; and then she went over to her uncle, whose mirth was excited by her words.
Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to whom in a moment he said: ‘‘You wished awhile ago to see my idea of an interesting woman. There it is!’’
3
MRS. TOUCHETT was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband’s house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although it was by no means without benevolence, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of softness. Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive—it was simply very sharply distinguished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a wounding effect. This purity of outline was visible in her deportment during the first hours of her return from America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing the more sentimental ceremony until she had achieved a toilet which had the less reason to be of high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plain-faced old woman, without coquetry and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explain these—when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they proved totally different from those that had been attributed to her. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she appeared to perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become apparent, at an early stage of their relations, that they should never desire the same thing at the same moment, and this fact had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it into a law—a much more edifying aspect of it—by going to live in Florence, where she bought a house and established herself; leaving her husband in England to take care of his bank. This arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so extremely 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 he would have preferred that discomfort should have a greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort; he was ready to agree to almost anything but that, and saw no reason why either assent or dissent should be so terribly consistent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor speculations, and usually came once a year to spend a month with her husband, a period during which she apparently took pains to convince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not fond of England, and had three or four reasons for it to which she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of British civilization, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non-residence. She detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poultice and tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by her maidservants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs. Touchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not a mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own country; but this last one had been longer than any of its predecessors.
She had taken up her niece—there was little doubt of that. One wet afternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence lately narrated, this young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel. The visitor had not been announced; the girl heard her at last walking about the adjoining room. It was an old house at Albany—a large, square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of the parlour. There were two entrances, one of which had long been out of use, but had never been removed. They were exactly alike—large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side-lights, perched upon little ‘‘stoops’’ of red stone, which descended sidewise to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed a single dwelling, the party-wall having been removed and the rooms placed in communication. These rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous, and were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish-white which had grown sallow with time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage, connecting the
two sides of the house, which Isabel and her sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel, and which, though it was short and well-lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house, at different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother lived there. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her father’s death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer, had exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks under her roof—weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The manner of life was different from that of her own home—larger, more plentiful, more sociable; the discipline of the nursery was delightfully vague, and the opportunity of listening to the conversation of one’s elders (which with Isabel was a highly valued pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and going; her grandmother’s sons and daughters, and their children, appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing invitations to stay with her, so that the house offered, to a certain extent, the appearance of a bustling provincial inn, kept by a gentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill. Isabel, of course, knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she thought her grandmother’s dwelling picturesque. There was a covered piazza behind it, furnished with a swing, which was a source of tremulous interest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping down to the stable, and containing certain capital peach-trees. Isabel had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons; but, somehow, all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, opposite, across the street, was an old house that was called the Dutch House—a peculiar structure, dating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted 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, kept in an amateurish manner by a demonstrative lady, of whom Isabel’s chief recollection was that her hair was puffed out very much at the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence. The little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foundation of knowledge in this establishment; but having spent a single day in it, she had expressed great disgust with the place, and had been allowed to stay at home, where in the September days, when the windows of the Dutch House were open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating the multiplication table—an incident in which the elation of liberty and the pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. The foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness of her grandmother’s house, 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 found one to her taste—she was guided in a selection chiefly by the frontispiece—she carried it into a mysterious apartment which lay beyond the library, and which was called, traditionally, no one knew why, the office. Whose office it had been, and at what period it had flourished, she never learned; it was enough for her that it contained an echo and a pleasant musty smell, and that it was a chamber of disgrace for old pieces of furniture, whose infirmities were not always apparent (so that the disgrace seemed unmerited, and rendered them victims of injustice), and with which, in the manner of children, she had established relations almost human, or dramatic. There was an old haircloth sofa, in especial, to which she had confided a hundred childish sorrows. The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was properly entered from the second door of the house, the door that had been condemned, and that was fastened by bolts which a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the side-lights had not been filled with green paper, she might have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side—a place which became, to the child’s imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or of terror.