Isabel’s gaiety, however—superficially speaking, at least—exhibited itself rather more after her sister had gone home. She could imagine something more poetic than spending the winter in Paris—Paris was like smart, neat prose—and her frequent correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such fancies. She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the Euston Station, on one of the latter days of November, after the departure of the train which was to convey poor Lily, her husband, and her children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to have them with her; she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something that was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment, she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her, as a favor, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety, and she asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away; she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy London street. The world lay before her—she could do whatever she chose. There was something exciting in the feeling, but for the present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick brown air, looked weak and red; our young lady was unattended, and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers, and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets— the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle that she should start in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching at Florence—having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Stackpole, in the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a fresher field for her talents than the mouldering cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr. Bantling that he would soon come over and see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologize for not coming just then to Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use than soap-bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn’t, and what one would have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) it was not so frank as it seemed. She easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she thought it was a sign that there was nothing going on with Gilbert Osmond. She watched, of course, to see whether Mr. Osmond would now go to Rome, and took some comfort in learning that he was not guilty of an absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Merle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that her friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in these countries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose and reflection, her restlessness prevailed. Isabel travelled rapidly, eagerly, audaciously; she was like a thirsty person draining cup after cup. Madame Merle, for the present, was a most efficient duenna. It was on Isabel’s invitation she had come and she imparted all necessary dignity to the girl’s uncountenanced condition. She played her part with the sagacity that might have been expected of her; she effaced herself; she accepted the position of a companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had no hardships, and people who met this graceful pair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which was the patroness and which the client. To say that Madame Merle improved on acquaintance would misrepresent the impression she made upon Isabel, who had thought her from the first a perfectly enlightened woman. At the end of an intimacy of three months Isabel felt that she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and Madame Merle had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her history from her own point of view—a consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M. Merle, an adventurer of the lowest class, who had taken advantage, years before, of her youth, and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents that Isabel wondered the poor lady had kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Merle’s she obtained a considerable insight; she saw that it was, after all, a tolerably artificial bloom. Isabel liked her as much as ever, but there was a certain corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if Madame Merle had remained after all a foreigner. She had once said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the old world, and Isabel never lost the impression that she was the product of a different clime from her own, that she had grown up under other stars. Isabel believed that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course the morality of civilized persons has always much in common; but Isabel suspected that her friend had esoteric views. She believed, with the presumption of youth, that a morality which differed from her own must be inferior to it; and this conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a woman who had raised delicate kindness to an art, and whose nature was too large for the narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives was different from Isabel’s, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had not even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain; and there were evidently things in the world of which it was not advantageous to hear. Once or twice Isabel had a sort of fright, but the reader will be amused at the cause of it. Madame Merle, as we know, comprehended, responded, sympathized, with wonderful readiness; yet it had nevertheless happened that her young friend mentally exclaimed— ‘‘Heaven forgive her, she doesn’t understand me!’’ Absurd as it may seem, this discovery operated as a shock; it left Isabel with a vague horror, in which there was even an element of foreboding. The horror of course subsided in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Merle’s remarkable intelligence; but it left a sort of high-water mark in the development of this delightful intimacy. Madame Merle had once said that, in her belief, when a friendship ceased to grow, it immediately began to decline—there was no point of equilibrium between liking a person more and liking him less. A stationary affection, in other words, was impossible—it must move one way or the other. Without estimating the value of this doctrine, I may say that if Isabel’s imagination, which had hitherto been so actively engaged on her friend’s behalf, began at last to languish, she enjoyed her society not a particle less than before. If their friendship had declined, it had declined to a very comfortable level. The truth is that in these days the girl had other uses for her imagination, which was better occupied than it had ever been. I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in the course of an excursion from Cairo,
or as she stood among the broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these emotions had been. She came back by the last of March from Egypt and Greece, and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond came down from Florence, and remained three weeks, during which the fact of her being with his old friend, Madame Merle, in whose house she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he should see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs. Touchett that she should now be very happy to accept an invitation given long before, and went to pay a visit at the Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on this occasion remaining in Rome. Isabel found her aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, was expected in Florence from day to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.
32
IT was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood at the window, where we found her a while ago, and it was not of any of the matters that I have just rapidly sketched. She was not thinking of the past, but of the future; of the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene, and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What he would say to her—that was the interesting speculation. It could be nothing agreeable; Isabel was convinced of this, and the conviction had something to do with her being rather paler than usual. For the rest, however, she wore her natural brightness of aspect; even deep grief, with this vivid young lady, would have had a certain soft effulgence. She had laid aside her mourning, but she was still very simply dressed, and as she felt a good deal older than she had done a year before, it is probable that to a certain extent she looked so. She was not left indefinitely to her apprehensions, for the servant at last came in and presented her a card.
‘‘Let the gentleman come in,’’ said Isabel, who continued to gaze out the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she looked round.
Caspar Goodwood stood there—stood and received a moment, from head to foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered a greeting. Whether on his side Mr. Goodwood felt himself older than on the first occasion of our meeting him is a point which we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to Isabel’s critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong, and fresh, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke positively either of youth or of age; he looked too deliberate, too serious to be young; and too eager, too active to be old. Old he would never be, and this would serve as a compensation for his never having known the age of chubbiness. Isabel perceived that his jaw had quite the same voluntary look that it had worn in earlier days; but she was prepared to admit that such a moment as the present was not a time for relaxation. He had the air of a man who had travelled hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This gave Isabel time to make a reflection. ‘‘Poor fellow,’’ she mentally murmured, ‘‘what great things he is capable of, and what a pity that he should waste his splendid force! What a pity, too, that one can’t satisfy everybody!’’ It gave her time to do more—to say at the end of a minute: ‘‘I can’t tell you how I hoped that you wouldn’t come.’’
‘‘I have no doubt of that.’’ And Casper Goodwood looked about him for a seat. Not only had he come, but he meant to stay a little.
‘‘You must be very tired,’’ said Isabel, seating herself, generously, as she thought, to give him his opportunity.
‘‘No, I am not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?’’
‘‘Never; I wish I had. When did you arrive here?’’
‘‘Last night, very late; in a kind of a snail-train they call the express. These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.’’
‘‘That is in keeping—you must have felt as if you were coming to a funeral,’’ Isabel said, forcing a smile, in order to offer such encouragement as she might to an easy treatment of their situation. She had reasoned out the matter elaborately; she had made it perfectly clear that she broke no faith, that she falsified no contract; but for all this she was afraid of him. She was ashamed of her fear; but she was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at her with his stiff persistency—a persistency in which there was almost a want of tact; especially as there was a dull dark beam in his eye which rested on her almost like a physical weight.
‘‘No, I didn’t feel that; because I couldn’t think of you as dead. I wish I could!’’ said Caspar Goodwood, plainly.
‘‘I thank you immensely.’’
‘‘I would rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.’’
‘‘That is very selfish of you!’’ Isabel cried, with the ardour of a real conviction. ‘‘If you are not happy yourself, others have a right to be.’’
‘‘Very likely it is selfish; but I don’t in the least mind your saying so. I don’t mind anything you can say now— I don’t feel it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you have done I shall never feel anything. I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all my life.’’
Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with a sort of dry deliberateness, in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of this control that she said, after a little, irrelevantly, by way of answer to Mr. Goodwood’s speech—‘‘When did you leave New York?’’
He threw up his head a moment, as if he were calculating. ‘‘Seventeen days ago.’’
‘‘You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.’’
‘‘I came as fast as I could. I would have come five days ago if I had been able.’’
‘‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,’’ said Isabel, smiling.
‘‘Not to you—no. But to me.’’
‘‘You gain nothing that I see.’’
‘‘That is for me to judge!’’
‘‘Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.’’ And then, to change the subject, Isabel asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole.
He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk about Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered distinctly enough, that this young lady had come to see him just before he left America.
‘‘She came to see you?’’
‘‘Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had got your letter.’’
‘‘Did you tell her?’’ Isabel asked, with a certain anxiety.
‘‘Oh no,’’ said Caspar Goodwood, simply; ‘‘I didn’t want to. She will hear it soon enough; she hears everything.’’
‘‘I shall write to her; and then she will write to me and scold me,’’ Isabel declared, trying to smile again.
Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. ‘‘I guess she’ll come out,’’ he said.
‘‘On purpose to scold me?’’
‘‘I don’t know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.’’
‘‘I am glad you tell me that,’’ Isabel said. ‘‘I must prepare for her.’’
Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last, raising them—‘‘Does she know Mr. Osmond?’’ he asked.
‘‘A little. And she doesn’t like him. But of course I don’t marry to please Henrietta,’’ Isabel added.
It would have been better for poor Caspar if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he did not say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place.
‘‘I don’t know yet. I can only say it will be soon. I ha
ve told no one but yourself and one other person— an old friend of Mr. Osmond’s.’’
‘‘It is a marriage your friends won’t like?’’ Caspar Goodwood asked.
‘‘I really haven’t an idea. As I say, I don’t marry for my friends.’’
He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions.
‘‘What is Mr. Osmond?’’
‘‘What is he? Nothing at all but a very good man. He is not in business,’’ said Isabel. ‘‘He is not rich; he is not known for anything in particular.’’
She disliked Mr. Goodwood’s questions, but she said to herself that she owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible.
The satisfaction poor Caspar exhibited was certainly small; he sat very upright, gazing at her.
‘‘Where does he come from?’’ he went on.
‘‘From nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.’’
‘‘You said in your letter that he was an American. Hasn’t he a native place?’’
‘‘Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.’’
‘‘Has he never gone back?’’
‘‘Why should he go back?’’ Isabel asked, flushing a little, and defensively. ‘‘He has no profession.’’
‘‘He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn’t he like the United States?’’
‘‘He doesn’t know them. Then he is very simple—he contents himself with Italy.’’
‘‘With Italy and with you,’’ said Mr. Goodwood, with gloomy plainness, and no appearance of trying to make an epigram. ‘‘What has he ever done?’’ he added, abruptly.