The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 2 Read online

  CHAPTER XXIX

  Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedlyqualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond's personalmerits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light ofthat gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmondspent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and endedby affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't haveseen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--whichperhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficialsociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman wasobliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. Hisgood humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, hisproduction of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker ofa match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a mancould be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almostapplausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he wouldnever, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as aknuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to whathe called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of tooprecipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if shehad not had it she would really have had none; she would have been assmooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If hewas not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closingdays of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slowirregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among thesmall sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased witheverything; he had never before been pleased with so many things atonce. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet towhich he prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later heshowed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explainingto her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions oflife by a tribute to the muse.

  He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would haveadmitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; thefertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on hisspirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps everbeen in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This wassimply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the humanheart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had theirritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often remindedhimself. "Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've not beenspoiled," he used inwardly to repeat. "If I do succeed before I dieI shall thoroughly have earned it." He was too apt to reason as if"earning" this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it andmight be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, hiscareer had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator hereand there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one hadbeen less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--thatis had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptionaleffort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. Thedesire to have something or other to show for his "parts"--to showsomehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years wenton the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affectedhim more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugsof beer to advertise what one could "stand." If an anonymous drawing ona museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known thispeculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--asfrom the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact ofstyle. His "style" was what the girl had discovered with a little help;and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the worldwithout his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing FOR him,and he would not have waited in vain.

  Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this younglady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "LeaveFlorence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not otherviews. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome wasvery pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt knowshe would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she haddone so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well ashis winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in thecool shadow of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for tendays more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio.It might be months in this case before he should see her again. Thisexchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by ourfriends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett wasto take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found thegirl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightfulAmerican family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminablestaircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, intravelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriagesseveral that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was makingarrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in awilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange;the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, thepictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted andpainted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was uglyto distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it inher lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatientto pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pinktissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange palerosiness over the scene.

  "You say you'll come back; but who knows?" Gilbert Osmond said.

  "I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round theworld. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly whatyou choose; you can roam through space."

  "Well, Italy's a part of space," Isabel answered. "I can take it on theway."

  "On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in aparenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you onyour travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to seeyou when you're tired and satiated," Osmond added in a moment. "I shallprefer you in that state."

  Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. "You turnthings into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,without intending it. You've no respect for my travels--you think themridiculous."

  "Where do you find that?"

  She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with thepaper-knife. "You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander aboutas if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been putinto my power to do so. You don't think a woman ought to do that. Youthink it bold and ungraceful."

  "I think it beautiful," said Osmond. "You know my opinions--I've treatedyou to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you that one oughtto make one's life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first;but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to betrying to do with your own."

  She looked up from her book. "What you despise most in the world is bad,is stupid art."

  "Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good."

  "If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me," she wenton.

  Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of theirconversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he hadseen it before. "You have one!"

  "That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd."

  "I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countriesI want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for oldlacquer?"

  "I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me," said Isabel.

  "You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong inyour theory that I laugh at you. I
don't know what has put it into yourhead."

  "It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I shouldhave the means to travel when you've not; for you know everything and Iknow nothing."

  "The more reason why you should travel and learn," smiled Osmond."Besides," he added as if it were a point to be made, "I don't knoweverything."

  Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; shewas thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleasedher to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly havelikened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dressovermuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pagesor historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. Thatmost of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was areflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already donethe point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there werea danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would beas well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her adventure worealready the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island fromwhich, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while thebreeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--thisstrange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be betternot to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come thegreater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment apang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept hersilent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. "Goeverywhere," he said at last, in a low, kind voice; "do everything; geteverything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant."

  "What do you mean by being triumphant?"

  "Well, doing what you like."

  "To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain thingsone likes is often very tiresome."

  "Exactly," said Osmond with his quiet quickness. "As I intimated justnow, you'll be tired some day." He paused a moment and then he went on:"I don't know whether I had better not wait till then for something Iwant to say to you."

  "Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid whenI'm tired," Isabel added with due inconsequence.

  "I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can believe,though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never 'cross.'"

  "Not even when I lose my temper?"

  "You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful." Osmondspoke with a noble earnestness. "They must be great moments to see."

  "If I could only find it now!" Isabel nervously cried.

  "I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking veryseriously." He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments hebent his eyes on the floor. "What I wish to say to you," he went on atlast, looking up, "is that I find I'm in love with you."

  She instantly rose. "Ah, keep that till I am tired!"

  "Tired of hearing it from others?" He sat there raising his eyes to her."No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I mustsay it now." She had turned away, but in the movement she had stoppedherself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in thissituation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of thecritical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeplyrespectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. "I'mabsolutely in love with you."

  He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonaldiscretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spokefor his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this timethey obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehowthe slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn't have saidwhich. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautifuland generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as shehad retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. "Oh don't saythat, please," she answered with an intensity that expressed the dreadof having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dreadgreat was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to havebanished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was therelike a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having tobegin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.

  "I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you," said Osmond. "I'vetoo little to offer you. What I have--it's enough for me; but it's notenough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantagesof any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think itcan't offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. Itgives me pleasure, I assure you," he went on, standing there before her,considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had takenup, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor ofawkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,refined, slightly ravaged face. "It gives me no pain, because it'sperfectly simple. For me you'll always be the most important woman inthe world."

  Isabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinkingshe filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not anexpression of any such complacency. "You don't offend me; but youought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,troubled." "Incommoded," she heard herself saying that, and it struckher as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.

  "I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled. Butif it's nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leavesomething that I may not be ashamed of."

  "I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm notoverwhelmed," said Isabel with rather a pale smile. "I'm not tootroubled to think. And I think that I'm glad I leave Rome to-morrow."

  "Of course I don't agree with you there."

  "I don't at all KNOW you," she added abruptly; and then she coloured asshe heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to LordWarburton.

  "If you were not going away you'd know me better."

  "I shall do that some other time."

  "I hope so. I'm very easy to know."

  "No, no," she emphatically answered--"there you're not sincere. You'renot easy to know; no one could be less so."

  "Well," he laughed, "I said that because I know myself. It may be aboast, but I do."

  "Very likely; but you're very wise."

  "So are you, Miss Archer!" Osmond exclaimed.

  "I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you hadbetter go. Good-night."

  "God bless you!" said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failedto surrender. After which he added: "If we meet again you'll find me asyou leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the same."

  "Thank you very much. Good-bye."

  There was something quietly firm about Isabel's visitor; he might go ofhis own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. "There's one thing more.I haven't asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; youmust do me that justice. But there's a little service I should like toask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, andit's a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorryto leave it; but you're right to do what your aunt wishes."

  "She doesn't even wish it!" Isabel broke out strangely.

  Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would matchthese words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: "Ah well, it'sproper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper;I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don'tknow me, but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have forpropriety."

  "You're not conventional?" Isabel gravely asked.

  "I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'mconvention itself. You don't understand that?" And he paused a moment,smiling. "I should like to explain it." Then with a sudden, quick,bright naturalness, "Do come back again," he pleaded. "There are so manythings we might talk about."
r />   She stood there with lowered eyes. "What service did you speak of justnow?"

  "Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone atthe villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all myideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much," said GilbertOsmond gently.

  "It will be a great pleasure to me to go," Isabel answered. "I'll tellher what you say. Once more good-bye."

  On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stooda moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air ofdeliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, withfolded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had notdiminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was somethingthat for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; buthere, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow brokedown. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I canonly give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogethernatural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a lastvague space it couldn't cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which lookedambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in thewinter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.