CHAPTER XXIII
Madame Merle, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett's arrival atthe invitation of this lady--Mrs. Touchett offering her for a month thehospitality of Palazzo Crescentini--the judicious Madame Merle spoke toIsabel afresh about Gilbert Osmond and expressed the hope she might knowhim; making, however, no such point of the matter as we have seen her doin recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond's attention. The reasonof this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance whatever to MadameMerle's proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude offriends, both among the natives of the country and its heterogeneousvisitors. She had mentioned to Isabel most of the people the girl wouldfind it well to ”meet”--of course, she said, Isabel could know whomeverin the wide world she would--and had placed Mr. Osmond near the top ofthe list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these dozenyears; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men--well, inEurope simply. He was altogether above the respectable average; quiteanother affair. He wasn't a professional charmer--far from it, and theeffect he produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves andhis spirits. When not in the right mood he could fall as low as any one,saved only by his looking at such hours rather like a demoralised princein exile. But if he cared or was interested or rightly challenged--justexactly rightly it had to be--then one felt his cleverness and hisdistinction. Those qualities didn't depend, in him, as in so manypeople, on his not committing or exposing himself. He had hisperversities--which indeed Isabel would find to be the case with all themen really worth knowing--and didn't cause his light to shine equallyfor all persons. Madame Merle, however, thought she could undertake thatfor Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored, too easily, anddull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl likeIsabel would give him a stimulus which was too absent from his life. Atany rate he was a person not to miss. One shouldn't attempt to live inItaly without making a friend of Gilbert Osmond, who knew more about thecountry than any one except two or three German professors. And ifthey had more knowledge than he it was he who had most perception andtaste--being artistic through and through. Isabel remembered that herfriend had spoken of him during their plunge, at Gardencourt, into thedeeps of talk, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tiebinding these superior spirits. She felt that Madame Merle's ties alwayssomehow had histories, and such an impression was part of the interestcreated by this inordinate woman. As regards her relations with Mr.Osmond, however, she hinted at nothing but a long-established calmfriendship. Isabel said she should be happy to know a person who hadenjoyed so high a confidence for so many years. ”You ought to see agreat many men,” Madame Merle remarked; ”you ought to see as many aspossible, so as to get used to them.”
”Used to them?” Isabel repeated with that solemn stare which sometimesseemed to proclaim her deficient in the sense of comedy. ”Why, I'm notafraid of them--I'm as used to them as the cook to the butcher-boys.”
”Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That's what one comes towith most of them. You'll pick out, for your society, the few whom youdon't despise.”
This was a note of cynicism that Madame Merle didn't often allow herselfto sound; but Isabel was not alarmed, for she had never supposed thatas one saw more of the world the sentiment of respect became themost active of one's emotions. It was excited, none the less, by thebeautiful city of Florence, which pleased her not less than Madame Merlehad promised; and if her unassisted perception had not been able togauge its charms she had clever companions as priests to the mystery.She was--in no want indeed of esthetic illumination, for Ralph found ita joy that renewed his own early passion to act as cicerone to hiseager young kinswoman. Madame Merle remained at home; she had seen thetreasures of Florence again and again and had always something elseto do. But she talked of all things with remarkable vividness ofmemory--she recalled the right-hand corner of the large Perugino and theposition of the hands of the Saint Elizabeth in the picture next to it.She had her opinions as to the character of many famous works of art,differing often from Ralph with great sharpness and defending herinterpretations with as much ingenuity as good-humour. Isabel listenedto the discussions taking place between the two with a sense thatshe might derive much benefit from them and that they were among theadvantages she couldn't have enjoyed for instance in Albany. In theclear May mornings before the formal breakfast--this repast at Mrs.Touchett's was served at twelve o'clock--she wandered with her cousinthrough the narrow and sombre Florentine streets, resting a while inthe thicker dusk of some historic church or the vaulted chambers of somedispeopled convent. She went to the galleries and palaces; she looked atthe pictures and statues that had hitherto been great names to her,and exchanged for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation apresentiment which proved usually to have been a blank. She performedall those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit toItaly, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beatin the presence of immortal genius and knew the sweetness of risingtears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim. Butthe return, every day, was even pleasanter than the going forth; thereturn into the wide, monumental court of the great house in which Mrs.Touchett, many years before, had established herself, and into thehigh, cool rooms where the carven rafters and pompous frescoes of thesixteenth century looked down on the familiar commodities of the age ofadvertisement. Mrs. Touchett inhabited an historic building in a narrowstreet whose very name recalled the strife of medieval factions; andfound compensation for the darkness of her frontage in the modicity ofher rent and the brightness of a garden where nature itself looked asarchaic as the rugged architecture of the palace and which clearedand scented the rooms in regular use. To live in such a place was, forIsabel, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. Thisvague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.
Gilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented him to the younglady lurking at the other side of the room. Isabel took on this occasionlittle part in the talk; she scarcely even smiled when the others turnedto her invitingly; she sat there as if she had been at the play and hadpaid even a large sum for her place. Mrs. Touchett was not present, andthese two had it, for the effect of brilliancy, all their own way. Theytalked of the Florentine, the Roman, the cosmopolite world, and mighthave been distinguished performers figuring for a charity. It all hadthe rich readiness that would have come from rehearsal. Madame Merleappealed to her as if she had been on the stage, but she could ignoreany learnt cue without spoiling the scene--though of course she thus putdreadfully in the wrong the friend who had told Mr. Osmond she could bedepended on. This was no matter for once; even if more had been involvedshe could have made no attempt to shine. There was something inthe visitor that checked her and held her in suspense--made it moreimportant she should get an impression of him than that she shouldproduce one herself. Besides, she had little skill in producing animpression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, ingeneral, than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness toglitter by arrangement. Mr. Osmond, to do him justice, had a well-bredair of expecting nothing, a quiet ease that covered everything, even thefirst show of his own wit. This was the more grateful as his face, hishead, was sensitive; he was not handsome, but he was fine, as fine asone of the drawings in the long gallery above the bridge of theUffizi. And his very voice was fine--the more strangely that, with itsclearness, it yet somehow wasn't sweet. This had had really to do withmaking her abstain from interference. His utterance was the vibrationof glass, and if she had put out her finger she might have changed thepitch and spoiled the concert. Yet before he went she had to speak.
”Madame Merle,” he said, ”consents to come up to my hill-top some daynext week and drink tea in my garden. It would give me much pleasure ifyou would come with her. It's thought rather pretty--there's what theycall a general view. My daughter too would be so glad--or rather, forshe's too young to have strong emotions, I should be so glad--so veryglad.” And Mr. Osmond paused with a slight air of embarrassment, leavinghis sentence unfinished. ”I should be so happy if you could know mydaughter,” he went on a moment afterwards.
Isabel replied that she should be delighted to see Miss Osmond and thatif Madame Merle would show her the way to the hill-top she should bevery grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave; afterwhich Isabel fully expected her friend would scold her for having beenso stupid. But to her surprise that lady, who indeed never fell into themere matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments,
”You were charming, my dear; you were just as one would have wished you.You're never disappointing.”
A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much moreprobable that Isabel would have taken it in good part; but, strangeto say, the words that Madame Merle actually used caused her the firstfeeling of displeasure she had known this ally to excite. ”That's morethan I intended,” she answered coldly. ”I'm under no obligation that Iknow of to charm Mr. Osmond.”
Madame Merle perceptibly flushed, but we know it was not her habit toretract. ”My dear child, I didn't speak for him, poor man; I spoke foryourself. It's not of course a question as to his liking you; it matterslittle whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked HIM.”
”I did,” said Isabel honestly. ”But I don't see what that matterseither.”
”Everything that concerns you matters to me,” Madame Merle returnedwith her weary nobleness; ”especially when at the same time another oldfriend's concerned.”
Whatever Isabel's obligations may have been to Mr. Osmond, it must beadmitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to put to Ralphsundry questions about him. She thought Ralph's judgements distorted byhis trials, but she flattered herself she had learned to make allowancefor that.
”Do I know him?” said her cousin. ”Oh, yes, I 'know' him; not well,but on the whole enough. I've never cultivated his society, and heapparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who ishe, what is he? He's a vague, unexplained American who has been livingthese thirty years, or less, in Italy. Why do I call him unexplained?Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don't know his antecedents, hisfamily, his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; herather looks like one, by the way--like a prince who has abdicated in afit of fastidiousness and has been in a state of disgust ever since. Heused to live in Rome; but of late years he has taken up his abode here;I remember hearing him say that Rome has grown vulgar. He has a greatdread of vulgarity; that's his special line; he hasn't any other that Iknow of. He lives on his income, which I suspect of not being vulgarlylarge. He's a poor but honest gentleman that's what he calls himself.He married young and lost his wife, and I believe he has a daughter. Healso has a sister, who's married to some small Count or other, of theseparts; I remember meeting her of old. She's nicer than he, I shouldthink, but rather impossible. I remember there used to be some storiesabout her. I don't think I recommend you to know her. But why don't youask Madame Merle about these people? She knows them all much better thanI.”
”I ask you because I want your opinion as well as hers,” said Isabel.
”A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Osmond what will youcare for that?”
”Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The moreinformation one has about one's dangers the better.”
”I don't agree to that--it may make them dangers. We know too much aboutpeople in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths,are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything any one tells youabout any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”
”That's what I try to do,” said Isabel ”but when you do that people callyou conceited.”
”You're not to mind them--that's precisely my argument; not to mind whatthey say about yourself any more than what they say about your friend oryour enemy.”
Isabel considered. ”I think you're right; but there are some things Ican't help minding: for instance when my friend's attacked or when Imyself am praised.”
”Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people ascritics, however,” Ralph added, ”and you'll condemn them all!”
”I shall see Mr. Osmond for myself,” said Isabel. ”I've promised to payhim a visit.”
”To pay him a visit?”
”To go and see his view, his pictures, his daughter--I don't knowexactly what. Madame Merle's to take me; she tells me a great manyladies call on him.”
”Ah, with Madame Merle you may go anywhere, de confiance,” said Ralph.”She knows none but the best people.”
Isabel said no more about Mr. Osmond, but she presently remarked to hercousin that she was not satisfied with his tone about Madame Merle. ”Itseems to me you insinuate things about her. I don't know what you mean,but if you've any grounds for disliking her I think you should eithermention them frankly or else say nothing at all.”
Ralph, however, resented this charge with more apparent earnestness thanhe commonly used. ”I speak of Madame Merle exactly as I speak to her:with an even exaggerated respect.”
”Exaggerated, precisely. That's what I complain of.”
”I do so because Madame Merle's merits are exaggerated.”
”By whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service.”
”No, no; by herself.”
”Ah, I protest!” Isabel earnestly cried. ”If ever there was a woman whomade small claims--!”
”You put your finger on it,” Ralph interrupted. ”Her modesty'sexaggerated. She has no business with small claims--she has a perfectright to make large ones.”
”Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself.”
”Her merits are immense,” said Ralph. ”She's indescribably blameless; apathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one achance.”
”A chance for what?”
”Well, say to call her a fool! She's the only woman I know who has butthat one little fault.”
Isabel turned away with impatience. ”I don't understand you; you're tooparadoxical for my plain mind.”
”Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don't mean it in thevulgar sense--that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account ofherself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection toofar--that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She's too good, tookind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She'stoo complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves andthat I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian feltabout Aristides the Just.”
Isabel looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurkedin his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. ”Do youwish Madame Merle to be banished?”
”By no means. She's much too good company. I delight in Madame Merle,”said Ralph Touchett simply.
”You're very odious, sir!” Isabel exclaimed. And then she asked him ifhe knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.
”Nothing whatever. Don't you see that's just what I mean? On thecharacter of every one else you may find some little black speck; ifI were to take half an hour to it, some day, I've no doubt I should beable to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I'm spotted like aleopard. But on Madame Merle's nothing, nothing, nothing!”
”That's just what I think!” said Isabel with a toss of her head. ”Thatis why I like her so much.”
”She's a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the worldyou couldn't have a better guide.”
”I suppose you mean by that that she's worldly?”
”Worldly? No,” said Ralph, ”she's the great round world itself!”
It had certainly not, as Isabel for the moment took it into her head tobelieve, been a refinement of malice in him to say that he delighted inMadame Merle. Ralph Touchett took his refreshment wherever he could findit, and he would not have forgiven himself if he had been left whollyunbeguiled by such a mistress of the social art. There are deep-lyingsympathies and antipathies, and it may have been that, in spite of theadministered justice she enjoyed at his hands, her absence from hismother's house would not have made life barren to him. But RalphTouchett had learned more or less inscrutably to attend, and there couldhave been nothing so ”sustained” to attend to as the general performanceof Madame Merle. He tasted her in sips, he let her stand, with anopportuneness she herself could not have surpassed. There were momentswhen he felt almost sorry for her; and these, oddly enough, were themoments when his kindness was least demonstrative. He was sure she hadbeen yearningly ambitious and that what she had visibly accomplished wasfar below her secret measure. She had got herself into perfect training,but had won none of the prizes. She was always plain Madame Merle,the widow of a Swiss negociant, with a small income and a largeacquaintance, who stayed with people a great deal and was almost asuniversally ”liked” as some new volume of smooth twaddle. The contrastbetween this position and any one of some half-dozen others that hesupposed to have at various moments engaged her hope had an element ofthe tragical. His mother thought he got on beautifully with their genialguest; to Mrs. Touchett's sense two persons who dealt so largely intoo-ingenious theories of conduct--that is of their own--would have muchin common. He had given due consideration to Isabel's intimacy with hereminent friend, having long since made up his mind that he could not,without opposition, keep his cousin to himself; and he made the best ofit, as he had done of worse things. He believed it would take care ofitself; it wouldn't last forever. Neither of these two superior personsknew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had made animportant discovery or two there would be, if not a rupture, at leasta relaxation. Meanwhile he was quite willing to admit that theconversation of the elder lady was an advantage to the younger, who hada great deal to learn and would doubtless learn it better from MadameMerle than from some other instructors of the young. It was not probablethat Isabel would be injured.