conduct--that is of their own--would have much in common. He had given due consideration toIsabel's intimacy with her eminent friend, having long since made up his mind that he could not,without opposition, keep his cousin to himself; and he made the best of it, as he had done of worsethings. He believed it would take care of itself; it wouldn't last forever. Neither of these twosuperior persons knew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had made an importantdiscovery or two there would be, if not a rupture, at least a relaxation. Meanwhile he was quitewilling to admit that the conversation of the elder lady was an advantage to the younger, who had agreat deal to learn and would doubtless learn it better from Madame Merle than from some otherinstructors of the young. It was not probable that Isabel would be injured.CHAPTER XXIVIt would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise to her from the visit she presentlypaid to Mr. Osmond's hill-top. Nothing could have been more charming than this occasion--a softafternoon in the full maturity of the Tuscan spring. The companions drove out of the Roman Gate,第 171 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网beneath the enormous blank superstructure which crowns the fine clear arch of that portal andmakes it nakedly impressive, and wound between high-walled lanes into which the wealth ofblossoming orchards over-drooped and flung a fragrance, until they reached the small superurbanpiazza, of crooked shape, where the long brown wall of the villa occupied in part by Mr. Osmondformed a principal, or at least a very imposing, object. Isabel went with her friend through a wide,high court, where a clear shadow rested below and a pair of light-arched galleries, facing eachother above, caught the upper sunshine upon their slim columns and the flowering plants in whichthey were dressed. There was something grave and strong in the place; it looked somehow as if,once you were in, you would need an act of energy to get out. For Isabel, however, there was ofcourse as yet no thought of getting out, but only of advancing. Mr. Osmond met her in the coldante-chamber--it was cold even in the month of May--and ushered her, with her conductress, intothe apartment to which we have already been introduced. Madame Merle was in front, and whileIsabel lingered a little, talking with him, she went forward familiarly and greeted two persons whowere seated in the saloon. One of these was little Pansy, on whom she bestowed a kiss; the otherwas a lady whom Mr. Osmond indicated to Isabel as his sister, the Countess Gemini. "And that'smy little girl," he said, "who has just come out of her convent."Pansy had on a scant white dress, and her fair hair was neatly arranged in a net; she wore her smallshoes tied sandal-fashion about her ankles. She made Isabel a little conventual curtsey and thencame to be kissed. The Countess Gemini simply nodded without getting up: Isabel could see shewas a woman of high fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having features thatsuggested some tropical bird--a long beak-like nose, small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth andchin that receded extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various intensities of emphasisand wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and, as regards her appearance, it was plain sheunderstood herself and made the most of her points. Her attire, voluminous and delicate, bristlingwith elegance, had the look of shimmering plumage, and her attitudes were as light and sudden asthose of a creature who perched upon twigs. She had a great deal of manner; Isabel, who had neverknown any one with so much manner, immediately classed her as the most affected of women. Sheremembered that Ralph had not recommended her as an acquaintance; but she was ready toacknowledge that to a casual view the Countess Gemini revealed no depths. Her demonstrationssuggested the violent waving of some flag of general truce--white silk with fluttering streamers."You'll believe I'm glad to see you when I tell you it's only because I knew you were to be herethat I came myself. I don't come and see my brother--I make him come and see me. This hill of hisis impossible--I don't see what possesses him. Really, Osmond, you'll be the ruin of my horsessome day, and if it hurts them you'll have to give me another pair. I heard them wheezing to-day; Iassure you I did. It's very disagreeable to hear one's horses wheezing when one's sitting in thecarriage; it sounds too as if they weren't what they should be. But I've always had good horses;whatever else I may have lacked I've always managed that. My husband doesn't know much, but Ithink he knows a horse. In general Italians don't, but my husband goes in, according to his poorlight, for everything English. My horses are English--so it's all the greater pity they should beruined. I must tell you," she went on, directly addressing Isabel, "that Osmond doesn't often inviteme; I don't think he likes to have me. It was quite my own idea, coming to-day. I like to see new第 172 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网people, and I'm sure you're very new. But don't sit there; that chair's not what it looks. There aresome very good seats here, but there are also some horrors."These remarks were delivered with a series of little jerks and pecks, of roulades of shrillness, andin an accent that was as some fond recall of good English, or rather of good American, inadversity."I don't like to have you, my dear?" said her brother. "I'm sure you're invaluable.""I don't see any horrors anywhere," Isabel returned, looking about her. "Everything seems to mebeautiful and precious.""I've a few good things," Mr. Osmond allowed; "indeed I've nothing very bad. But I've not what Ishould have liked."He stood there a little awkwardly, smiling and glancing about; his manner was an odd mixture ofthe detached and the involved. He seemed to hint that nothing but the right "values" was of anyconsequence. Isabel made a rapid induction: perfect simplicity was not the badge of his family.Even the little girl from the convent, who, in her prim white dress, with her small submissive faceand her hands locked before her, stood there as if she were about to partake of her firstcommunion, even Mr. Osmond's diminutive daughter had a kind of finish that was not entirelyartless."You'd have liked a few things from the Uffzi and the Pitti-- that's what you'd have liked," saidMadame Merle."Poor Osmond, with his old curtains and crucifixes!" the Countess Gemini exclaimed: sheappeared to call her brother only by his family-name. Her ejaculation had no particular object; shesmiled at Isabel as she made it and looked at her from head to foot.Her brother had not heard her; he seemed to be thinking what he could say to Isabel. "Won't youhave some tea?--you must be very tired," he at last bethought himself of remarking."No indeed, I'm not tired; what have I done to tire me?" Isabel felt a certain need of being verydirect, of pretending to nothing; there was something in the air, in her general impression ofthings--she could hardly have said what it was--that deprived her of all disposition to put herselfforward. The place, the occasion, the combination of people, signified more than lay on thesurface; she would try to understand--she would not simply utter graceful platitudes. Poor Isabelwas doubtless not aware that many women would have uttered graceful platitudes to cover theworking of their observation. It must be confessed that her pride was a trifle alarmed. A man shehad heard spoken of in terms that excited interest and who was evidently capable of distinguishinghimself, had invited her, a young lady not lavish of her favours, to come to his house. Now that shehad done so the burden of the entertainment rested naturally on his wit. Isabel was not renderedless observant, and for the moment, we judge, she was not rendered more indulgent, by perceivingthat Mr. Osmond carried his burden less complacently than might have been expected. "What afool I was to have let myself so needlessly in--!" she could fancy his exclaiming to himself."You'll be tired when you go home, if he shows you all his bibelots and gives you a lecture oneach," said the Countess Gemini."I'm not afraid of that; but if I'm tired I shall at least have learned something."第 173 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"Very little, I suspect. But my sister's dreadfully afraid of learning anything," said Mr. Osmond."Oh, I confess to that; I don't want to know anything more--I know too much already. The moreyou know the more unhappy you are.""You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who has not finished her education,"Madame Merle interposed with a smile. "Pansy will never know any harm," said the child's father."Pansy's a little convent-flower.""Oh, the convents, the convents!" cried the Countess with a flutter of her ruffles. "Speak to me ofthe convents! You may learn anything there; I'm a convent-flower myself. I don't pretend to begood, but the nuns do. Don't you see what I mean?" she went on, appealing to Isabel.Isabel was not sure she saw, and she answered that she was very bad at following arguments. TheCountess then declared that she herself detested arguments, but that this was her brother's taste --hewould always discuss. "For me," she said, "one should like a thing or one shouldn't; one can't likeeverything, of course. But one shouldn't attempt to reason it out--you never know where it maylead you. There are some very good feelings that may have bad reasons, don't you know? And thenthere are very bad feelings, sometimes, that have good reasons. Don't you see what I mean? I don'tcare anything about reasons, but I know what I like.""Ah, that's the great thing," said Isabel, smiling and suspecting that her acquaintance with thislightly flitting personage would not lead to intellectual repose. If the Countess objected toargument Isabel at this moment had as little taste for it, and she put out her hand to Pansy with apleasant sense that such a gesture committed her to nothing that would admit of a divergence ofviews. Gilbert Osmond apparently took a rather hopeless view of his sister's tone; he turned theconversation to another topic. He presently sat down on the other side of his daughter, who hadshyly brushed Isabel's fingers with her own; but he ended by drawing her out of her chair andmaking her stand between his knees, leaning against him while he passed his arm round herslimness. The child fixed her eyes on Isabel with a still, disinterested gaze which seemed void ofan intention, yet conscious of an attraction. Mr. Osmond talked of many things; Madame Merlehad said he could be agreeable when he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only tohave chosen but to have determined. Madame Merle and the Countess Gemini sat a little apart,conversing in the effortless manner of persons who knew each other well enough to take their ease;but every now and then Isabel heard the Countess, at something said by her companion, plungeinto the latter's lucidity as a poodle splashes after a thrown stick. It was as if Madame Merle wereseeing how far she would go. Mr. Osmond talked of Florence, of Italy, of the pleasure of living inthat country and of the abatements to the pleasure. There were both satisfactions and drawbacks;the drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see such a world as all romantic. It metthe case soothingly for the human, for the social failure--by which he meant the people whocouldn't "realise," as they said, on their sensibility: they could keep it about them there, in theirpoverty, without ridicule, as you might keep an heirloom or an inconvenient entailed place thatbrought you in nothing. Thus there were advantages in living in the country which contained thegreatest sum of beauty. Certain impressions you could get only there. Others, favourable to life,you never got, and you got some that were very bad. But from time to time you got one of a qualitythat made up for everything. Italy, all the same, had spoiled a great many people; he was even第 174 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网fatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have been a better man if he had spentless of his life there. It made one idle and dilettantish and second-rate; it had no discipline for thecharacter, didn't cultivate in you, otherwise expressed, the successful social and other "cheek" thatflourished in Paris and London. "We're sweetly provincial," said Mr. Osmond, "and I'm perfectlyaware that I myself am as rusty as a key that has no lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little to talkwith you--not that I venture to pretend I can turn that very complicated lock I suspect your intellectof being! But you'll be going away before I've seen you three times, and I shall perhaps never seeyou after that. That's what it is to live in a country that people come to. When they're disagreeablehere it's bad enough; when they're agreeable it's still worse. As soon as you like them they're offagain! I've been deceived too often; I've ceased to form attachments, to permit myself to feelattractions. You mean to stay--to settle? That would be really comfortable. Ah yes, your aunt's asort of guarantee; I believe she may be depended on. Oh, she's an old Florentine; I mean literallyan old one; not a modern outsider. She's a contemporary of the Medici; she must have been presentat the burning of Savonarola, and I'm not sure she didn't throw a handful of chips into the flame.Her face is very much like some faces in the early pictures; little, dry, definite faces that must havehad a good deal of expression, but almost always the same one. Indeed I can show you her portraitin a fresco of Ghirlandaio's. I hope you don't object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? I'vean idea you don't. Perhaps you think that's even worse. I assure you there's no want of respect in it,to either of you. You know I'm a particular admirer of Mrs. Touchett."While Isabel's host exerted himself to entertain her in this somewhat confidential fashion shelooked occasionally at Madame Merle, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in which, onthis occasion, there was no infelicitous intimation that our heroine appeared to advantage. MadameMerle eventually proposed to the Countess Gemini that they should go into the garden, and theCountess, rising and shaking out her feathers, began to rustle toward the door. "Poor Miss Archer!"she exclaimed, surveying the other group with expressive compassion. "She has been brought quiteinto the family.""Miss Archer can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a family to which you belong," Mr.Osmond answered, with a laugh which, though it had something of a mocking ring, had also afiner patience."I don't know what you mean by that! I'm sure she'll see no harm in me but what you tell her. I'mbetter than he says, Miss Archer," the Countess went on. "I'm only rather an idiot and a bore. Isthat all he has said? Ah then, you keep him in good-humour. Has he opened on one of his favouritesubjects? I give you notice that there are two or three that he treats a fond. In that case you hadbetter take off your bonnet.""I don't think I know what Mr. Osmond's favourite subjects are," said Isabel, who had risen to herfeet.The Countess assumed for an instant an attitude of intense meditation, pressing one of her hands,with the finger-tips gathered together, to her forehead. "I'll tell you in a moment. One'sMachiavelli; the other's Vittoria Colonna; the next is Metastasio.""Ah, with me," said Madame Merle, passing her arm into the Countess Gemini's as if to guide hercourse to the garden, "Mr. Osmond's never so historical."第 175 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"Oh you," the Countess answered as they moved away, "you yourself are Machiavelli--youyourself are Vittoria Colonna!""We shall hear next that poor Madame Merle is Metastasio!" Gilbert Osmond resignedly sighed.Isabel had got up on the assumption that they too were to go into the garden; but her host stoodthere with no apparent inclination to leave the room, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and hisdaughter, who had now locked her arm into one of his own, clinging to him and looking up whileher eyes moved from his own face to Isabel's. Isabel waited, with a certain unutteredcontentedness, to have her movements directed; she liked Mr. Osmond's talk, his company: shehad what always gave her a very private thrill, the consciousness of a new relation. Through theopen doors of the great room she saw Madame Merle and the Countess stroll across the fine grassof the garden; then she turned, and her eyes wandered over the things scattered about her. Theunderstanding had been that Mr. Osmond should show her his treasures; his pictures and cabinetsall looked like treasures. Isabel after a moment went toward one of the pictures to see it better; butjust as she had done so he said to her abruptly: "Miss Archer, what do you think of my sister?"She faced him with some surprise. "Ah, don't ask me that--I've seen your sister too little.""Yes, you've seen her very little; but you must have observed that there is not a great deal of her tosee. What do you think of our family tone?" he went on with his cool smile. "I should like to knowhow it strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind. I know what you're going to say--you've had almost noobservation of it. Of course this is only a glimpse. But just take notice, in future, if you have achance. I sometimes think we've got into a rather bad way, living off here among things and peoplenot our own, without responsibilities or attachments, with nothing to hold us together or keep usup; marrying foreigners, forming artificial tastes, playing tricks with our natural mission. Let meadd, though, that I say that much more for myself than for my sister. She's a very honest lady-moreso than she seems. She's rather unhappy, and as she's not of a serious turn she doesn't tend toshow it tragically: she shows it comically instead. She has got a horrid husband, though I'm notsure she makes the best of him. Of course, however, a horrid husband's an awkward thing.Madame Merle gives her excellent advice, but it's a good deal like giving a child a dictionary tolearn a language with. He can look out the words, but he can't put them together. My sister needs agrammar, but unfortunately she's not grammatical. Pardon my troubling you with these details; mysister was very right in saying you've been taken into the family. Let me take down that picture;you want more light."He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some curious facts about it. Shelooked at the other works of art, and he gave her such further information as might appear mostacceptable to a young lady making a call on a summer afternoon. His pictures, his medallions andtapestries were interesting; but after a while Isabel felt the owner much more so, and independentlyof them, thickly as they seemed to overhang him. He resembled no one she had ever seen; most ofthe people she knew might be divided into groups of half a dozen specimens. There were one ortwo exceptions to this; she could think for instance of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia.There were other people who were, relatively speaking, original-- original, as one might say, bycourtesy such as Mr. Goodwood, as her cousin Ralph, as Henrietta Stackpole, as Lord Warburton,as Madame Merle. But in essentials, when one came to look at them, these individuals belonged to第 176 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网types already present to her mind. Her mind contained no class offering a natural place to Mr.Osmond--he was a specimen apart. It was not that she recognised all these truths at the hour, butthey were falling into order before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this "newrelation" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished. Madame Merle had had that note ofrarity, but what quite other power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not somuch what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of thosesigns of the highly curious that he was showing her on the underside of old plates and in the cornerof sixteenth-century drawings: he indulged in no striking deflections from common usage, he wasan original without being an eccentric. She had never met a person of so fine a grain. Thepeculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to impalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair,his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the veryevenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness of structure which made themovement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture--these personalpoints struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises ofinterest. He was certainly fastidious and critical; he was probably irritable. His sensibility hadgoverned him--possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of vulgar troubles andhad led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted, arranged world, thinking about art and beautyand history. He had consulted his taste in everything--his taste alone perhaps, as a sick manconsciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer: that was what made him so different fromevery one else. Ralph had something of this same quality, this appearance of thinking that life wasa matter of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous excrescence,whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it. She wascertainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It washard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side--which was exactly theside she would have taken him most to lack. Was it a harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? orwas it the last refinement of high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be veryinteresting to learn. If it was provincial to have that harmony, what then was the finish of thecapital? And she could put this question in spite of so feeling her host a shy personage; since suchshyness as his--the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine perceptions--was perfectly consistent withthe best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and touchstones other than the vulgar:he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance,who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as wellas of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a ratherironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not grosslyconceited. If he had not been shy he wouldn't have effected that gradual, subtle, successfulconversion of it to which she owed both what pleased her in him and what mystified her. If he hadsuddenly asked her what she thought of the Countess Gemini, that was doubtless a proof that hewas interested in her; it could scarcely be as a help to knowledge of his own sister. That he shouldbe so interested showed an enquiring mind; but it was a little singular he should sacrifice hisfraternal feeling to his curiosity. This was the most eccentric thing he had done.There were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she had been received, equally full ofromantic objects, and in these apartments Isabel spent a quarter of an hour. Everything was in the第 177 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网last degree curious and precious, and Mr. Osmond continued to be the kindest of ciceroni as he ledher from one fine piece to another and still held his little girl by the hand. His kindness almostsurprised our young friend, who wondered why he should take so much trouble for her; and shewas oppressed at last with the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which she found herselfintroduced. There was enough for the present; she had ceased to attend to what he said; shelistened to him with attentive eyes, but was not thinking of what he told her. He probably thoughther quicker, cleverer in every way, more prepared, than she was. Madame Merle would havepleasantly exaggerated; which was a pity, because in the end he would be sure to find out, and thenperhaps even her real intelligence wouldn't reconcile him to his mistake. A part of Isabel's fatiguecame from the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed Madame Merle had described her, andfrom the fear (very unusual with her) of exposing--not her ignorance; for that she caredcomparatively little--but her possible grossness of perception. It would have annoyed her toexpress a liking for something he, in his superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like;or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would arrest itself. She had no wish tofall into that grotesqueness-- in which she had seen women (and it was a warning) serenely, yetignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to what she said, as to what she noticed orfailed to notice; more careful than she had ever been before.They came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had been served; but as the two otherladies were still on the terrace, and as Isabel had not yet been made acquainted with the view, theparamount distinction of the place, Mr. Osmond directed her steps into the garden without moredelay. Madame Merle and the Countess had had chairs brought out, and as the afternoon waslovely the Countess proposed they should take their tea in the open air. Pansy therefore was sent tobid the servant bring out the preparations. The sun had got low, the golden light took a deeper tone,and on the mountains and the plain that stretched beneath them the masses of purple shadowglowed as richly as the places that were still exposed. The scene had an extraordinary charm. Theair was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with its garden-like cultureand nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and delicately-fretted hills, its peculiarly human-looking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace. "You seem so wellpleased that I think you can be trusted to come back," Osmond said as he led his companion to oneof the angles of the terrace."I shall certainly come back," she returned, "in spite of what you say about its being bad to live inItaly. What was that you said about one's natural mission? I wonder if I should forsake my naturalmission if I were to settle in Florence.""A woman's natural mission is to be where she's most appreciated.""The point's to find out where that is.""Very true--she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry. People ought to make it very plain