though she, Madame Merle, had known Gilbert Osmond and his little Pansy very well, betteralmost than any one, she was not after all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she neverspoke of their affairs till she was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was wanted; she had adread of seeming to meddle. Madame Merle was as candid as we know, and one day she candidlyexpressed this dread to Isabel.第 268 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"I MUST be on my guard," she said; "I might so easily, without suspecting it, offend you. Youwould be right to be offended, even if my intention should have been of the purest. I must notforget that I knew your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you were asilly woman you might be jealous. You're not a silly woman; I know that perfectly. But neither amI; therefore I'm determined not to get into trouble. A little harm's very soon done; a mistake's madebefore one knows it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your husband I had ten years to doit in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't likely I shall begin to-day, when I'm so much less attractivethan I was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn't belong to me, youwouldn't make that reflection; you'd simply say I was forgetting certain differences. I'mdetermined not to forget them. Certainly a good friend isn't always thinking of that; one doesn'tsuspect one's friends of injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in the least; but I suspect humannature. Don't think I make myself uncomfortable; I'm not always watching myself. I think Isufficiently prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however, that if you were tobe jealous--that's the form it would take--I should be sure to think it was a little my fault. Itcertainly wouldn't be your husband's."Isabel had had three years to think over Mrs. Touchett's theory that Madame Merle had madeGilbert Osmond's marriage. We know how she had at first received it. Madame Merle might havemade Gilbert Osmond's marriage, but she certainly had not made Isabel Archer's. That was thework of--Isabel scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery ofthings. It was true her aunt's complaint had been not so much of Madame Merle's activity as of herduplicity: she had brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guiltwould not have been great, to Isabel's mind; she couldn't make a crime of Madame Merle's havingbeen the producing cause of the most important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurredto her just before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a time when she wasstill capable of that large inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian, to herscant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it hadbeen a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she hadnever concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that herhusband took a less convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk, thisroundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. "Don't you like Madame Merle?" Isabel hadonce said to him. "She thinks a great deal of you.""I'll tell you once for all," Osmond had answered. "I liked her once better than I do to-day. I'm tiredof her, and I'm rather ashamed of it. She's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy; itmakes for relaxation--for a sort of moral detente. Don't talk of her too much; it seems to bring herback. She'll come back in plenty of time."Madame Merle, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too late, I mean, to recover whateveradvantage she might have lost. But meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Isabel'sfeelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as acute as of old, butit was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want ofreasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Merle's having had a handin Gilbert Osmond's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to consideration; it might have beenwritten, after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and第 269 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网less, and Isabel once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would not have been.That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an immediate horror at having made it."Whatever happens to me let me not be unjust," she said; "let me bear my burdens myself and notshift them upon others!" This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for herpresent conduct which Madame Merle saw fit to make and of which I have given a sketch; forthere was something irritating-- there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat discriminationsand clear convictions. In Isabel's mind to-day there was nothing clear; there was a confusion ofregrets, a complication of fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had justmade the statements I have quoted: Madame Merle knew so little what she was thinking of! Shewas herself moreover so unable to explain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Gilbert? The ideajust then suggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible; it would havemade in a manner for refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner one of the symptoms of happiness?Madame Merle, however, was wise, so wise that she might have been pretending to know Isabelbetter than Isabel knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in resolutions --any ofthem of an elevated character; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy of her heart)more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been summedup in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. Herpoor winged spirit had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriouslydiscouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice--not to pay itself by petty revenges. Toassociate Madame Merle with its disappointment would be a petty revenge--especially as thepleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed her sense of bitterness,but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyesopen; if ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free agent; butthe sole source of her mistake had been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she hadlooked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only oneway to repair it--just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly wasenough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this vowof reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Isabel going; but Madame Merle had beenright, for all that, in taking her precautions.One day about a month after Ralph Touchett's arrival in Rome Isabel came back from a walk withPansy. It was not only a part of her general determination to be just that she was at present verythankful for Pansy--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure and weak. Pansywas dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that had the rightness of the young creature'sattachment or the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft presence--like a smallhand in her own; on Pansy's part it was more than an affection--it was a kind of ardent coercivefaith. On her own side her sense of the girl's dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated as adefinite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said to herself that we must take ourduty where we find it, and that we must look for it as much as possible. Pansy's sympathy was adirect admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent perhaps, butunmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Isabel could hardly have said; in general, to be morefor the child than the child was able to be for herself. Isabel could have smiled, in these days, toremember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she now perceived that Pansy's第 270 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网ambiguities were simply her own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe any onecould care so much--so extraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this delicatefaculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It was the whole creature--it was a sortof genius. Pansy had no pride to interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending herconquests she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs. Osmond was rarelyseen without her stepdaughter. Isabel liked her company; it had the effect of one's carrying anosegay composed all of the same flower. And then not to neglect Pansy, not under anyprovocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion. The young girl had everyappearance of being happier in Isabel's society than in that of any one save her father,--whom sheadmired with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite pleasure to GilbertOsmond, he had always been luxuriously mild. Isabel knew how Pansy liked to be with her andhow she studied the means of pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her wasnegative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which certainly could have had noreference to trouble already existing. She was therefore ingeniously passive and almostimaginatively docile; she was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented toIsabel's propositions and which might have implied that she could have thought otherwise. Shenever interrupted, never asked social questions, and though she delighted in approbation, to thepoint of turning pale when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked toward itwistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the world. Whenduring the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, ata reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Osmond should be tired, was the first to propose departure. Isabelappreciated the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a passionatepleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy. Society,moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome parts--the heat of ball-rooms, thedulness of dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, inthis vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative posture, bending forwardand faintly smiling, as if she had been taken to drive for the first time.On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of the city and at the end of halfan hour had left the carriage to await them by the roadside while they walked away over the shortgrass of the Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. Thiswas almost a daily habit with Isabel, who was fond of a walk and had a swift length of step, thoughnot so swift a one as on her first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Pansyloved best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter undulationbeside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferencesby making the circuit of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowersin a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo Roccanera she wentstraight to her room, to put them into water. Isabel passed into the drawing-room, the one sheherself usually occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was entered fromthe staircase and in which even Gilbert Osmond's rich devices had not been able to correct a lookof rather grand nudity. Just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the reasonfor her doing so being that she had received an impression. The impression had, in strictness,nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her第 271 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网time to take in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Merle was there in her bonnet, andGilbert Osmond was talking to her; for a minute they were unaware she had come in. Isabel hadoften seen that before, certainly; but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was thattheir colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which sheinstantly perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Merle was standing on the rug, alittle way from the fire; Osmond was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her headwas erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck Isabel first was that he was sittingwhile Madame Merle stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived thatthey had arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, withthe freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There wasnothing to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only amoment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze, struckher as something detected. But it was all over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Merlehad seen her and had welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had instantlyjumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a walk and, after having asked theirvisitor to excuse him, left the room."I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I waited for you,"Madame Merle said."Didn't he ask you to sit down?" Isabel asked with a smile.Madame Merle looked about her. "Ah, it's very true; I was going away.""You must stay now.""Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind.""I've told you that before," Isabel said--"that it takes something extraordinary to bring you to thishouse.""And you know what I've told YOU; that whether I come or whether I stay away, I've always thesame motive--the affection I bear you.""Yes, you've told me that.""You look just now as if you didn't believe it," said Madame Merle."Ah," Isabel answered, "the profundity of your motives, that's the last thing I doubt!""You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words."Isabel shook her head gravely. "I know you've always been kind to me.""As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one has to let you alone. It's not todo you a kindness, however, that I've come to-day; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of atrouble of my own--to make it over to you. I've been talking to your husband about it.""I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles.""Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I suppose. At any rate, whetheryou do or not, you must help me. It's about poor Mr. Rosier.""Ah," said Isabel reflectively, "it's his trouble then, not yours."第 272 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a week, to talk aboutPansy.""Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it."Madame Merle hesitated. "I gathered from your husband that perhaps you didn't.""How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the matter.""It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it.""It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at fault.""Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think. To-day he doesn't.""Haven't you been telling him?" Isabel asked.Madame Merle gave a bright, voluntary smile. "Do you know you're a little dry?""Yes; I can't help it. Mr. Rosier has also talked to me.""In that there's some reason. You're so near the child.""Ah," said Isabel, "for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me dry, I wonder what HEthinks.""I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.""I can do nothing.""You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious connection he may havediscovered between me and Pansy; but he came to me from the first, as if I held his fortune in myhand. Now he keeps coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out hisfeelings.""He's very much in love," said Isabel."Very much--for him.""Very much for Pansy, you might say as well."Madame Merle dropped her eyes a moment. "Don't you think she's attractive?""The dearest little person possible--but very limited.""She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Rosier to love. Mr. Rosier's not unlimited.""No," said Isabel, "he has about the extent of one's pocket-handkerchief--the small ones with laceborders." Her humour had lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamedof exercising it on so innocent an object as Pansy's suitor. "He's very kind, very honest," shepresently added; "and he's not such a fool as he seems.""He assures me that she delights in him," said Madame Merle."I don't know; I've not asked her.""You've never sounded her a little?""It's not my place; it's her father's.""Ah, you're too literal!" said Madame Merle."I must judge for myself."第 273 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网Madame Merle gave her smile again. "It isn't easy to help you.""To help me?" said Isabel very seriously. "What do you mean?""It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be careful? I notify you, at any rate, as Inotified Osmond, that I wash my hands of the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier.Je n'y peux rien, moi! I can't talk to Pansy about him. Especially," added Madame Merle, "as Idon't think him a paragon of husbands."Isabel reflected a little; after which, with a smile, "You don't wash your hands then!" she said.After which again she added in another tone: "You can't--you're too much interested."Madame Merle slowly rose; she had given Isabel a look as rapid as the intimation that had gleamedbefore our heroine a few moments before. Only this time the latter saw nothing. "Ask him the nexttime, and you'll see.""I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Gilbert has let him know that he's notwelcome.""Ah yes," said Madame Merle, "I forgot that--though it's the burden of his lamentation. He saysOsmond has insulted him. All the same," she went on, "Osmond doesn't dislike him so much as hethinks." She had got up as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her, and hadevidently more to say. Isabel perceived this and even saw the point she had in view; but Isabel alsohad her own reasons for not opening the way."That must have pleased him, if you've told him," she answered, smiling."Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've preached patience, have saidthat his case isn't desperate if he'll only hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken itinto his head to be jealous.""Jealous?""Jealous of Lord Warburton, who, he says, is always here."Isabel, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose. "Ah!" she exclaimed simply,moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame Merle observed her as she passed and while she stood amoment before the mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair."Poor Mr. Rosier keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Lord Warburton's falling in love withPansy," Madame Merle went on. Isabel was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. "It'strue--there's nothing impossible," she returned at last, gravely and more gently."So I've had to admit to Mr. Rosier. So, too, your husband thinks.""That I don't know.""Ask him and you'll see.""I shall not ask him," said Isabel."Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course," Madame Merle added, "you've hadinfinitely more observation of Lord Warburton's behaviour than I.""I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my stepdaughter very much."Madame Merle gave one of her quick looks again. "Likes her, you mean--as Mr. Rosier means?"第 274 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"I don't know how Mr. Rosier means; but Lord Warburton has let me know that he's charmed withPansy.""And you've never told Osmond?" This observation was immediate, precipitate; it almost burstfrom Madame Merle's lips.Isabel's eyes rested on her. "I suppose he'll know in time; Lord Warburton has a tongue and knowshow to express himself."Madame Merle instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly than usual, and thereflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave the treacherous impulse time to subside andthen said as if she had been thinking it over a little: "That would be better than marrying poor Mr.Rosier.""Much better, I think.""It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really very kind of him.""Very kind of him?""To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.""I don't see that.""It's very good of you. But after all, Pansy Osmond--""After all, Pansy Osmond's the most attractive person he has ever known!" Isabel exclaimed.Madame Merle stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. "Ah, a moment ago I thought youseemed rather to disparage her.""I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Lord Warburton.""So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Pansy deserves, all the better. But if shefixes her affections on Mr. Rosier I won't admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.""Mr. Rosier's a nuisance!" Isabel cried abruptly."I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not expected to feed his flame. For thefuture, when he calls on me, my door shall be closed to him." And gathering her mantle togetherMadame Merle prepared to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by aninconsequent request from Isabel.