贵妇人画像The Portrait of a Lady-32

at the idea of taking advantage of the little girl--it was of this she would have accused herself--andof exhaling into that air where he might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmedstate. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She rose quickly from themusic-stool; even then, however, she lingered a moment, still holding her small companion,drawing the child's sweet slimness closer and looking down at her almost in envy. She was obligedto confess it to herself--she would have taken a passionate pleasure in talking of Gilbert Osmond tothis innocent, diminutive creature who was so near him. But she said no other word; she onlykissed Pansy once again. They went together through the vestibule, to the door that opened on thecourt; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather wistfully beyond. "I may go no further.I've promised papa not to pass this door.""You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything unreasonable.""I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?""Not for a long time, I'm afraid.""As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl," said Pansy, "but I shall always expect you." Andthe small figure stood in the high, dark doorway, watching Isabel cross the clear, grey court anddisappear into the brightness beyond the big portone, which gave a wider dazzle as it opened.CHAPTER XXXIIsabel came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval sufficiently replete withincident. It is not, however, during this interval that we are closely concerned with her; ourattention is engaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return toPalazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents just narrated. She was alone on this第 213 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网occasion, in one of the smaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Touchett to social uses,and there was that in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that she wasexpecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green shutters were partly drawn thebright air of the garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with warmthand perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her hands clasped behind her; shegazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle.Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should pass into thehouse, since the entrance to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and privacyalways reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture, and to judgeby the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, andpositively more weighted, as by the experience of the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing theworld. She had ranged, she would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, andwas therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from the frivolous young woman fromAlbany who had begun to take the measure of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of yearsbefore. She flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal more of life thanthis light-minded creature had even suspected. If her thoughts just now had inclined themselves toretrospect, instead of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would have evoked amultitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have been the more numerous. With several of the images thatmight have been projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for instancethe conciliatory Lily, our heroine's sister and Edmund Ludlow's wife, who had come out from NewYork to spend five months with her relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had broughther children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and tenderness the part ofmaiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensictriumphs and, crossing the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies inParis before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even from the American point ofview, reached the proper tourist-age; so that while her sister was with her Isabel had confined hermovements to a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in the month ofJuly, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an Alpine valley where the flowers werethick in the meadows and the shade of great chestnuts made a resting-place for such upwardwanderings as might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They hadafterwards reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with costly ceremonies, by Lily,but thought of as noisily vacant by Isabel, who in these days made use of her memory of Rome asshe might have done, in a hot and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in herhandkerchief.Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and wonderments not allayed at that altar;and after her husband had joined her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into thesespeculations. They all had Isabel for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as he had always done before,declined to be surprised, or distressed, or mystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law mighthave done or have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently various. At onemoment she thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come home and take a housein New York--the Rossiters', for instance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round第 214 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网the corner from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the girl's not marryingsome member of one of the great aristocracies. On the whole, as I have said, she had fallen fromhigh communion with the probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Isabel's accession offortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the propersetting for her sister's slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent figure. Isabel had developedless, however, than Lily had thought likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being somehowmysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties. Intellectually, doubtless, she hadmade immense strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of whichMrs. Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's conception of such achievements wasextremely vague; but this was exactly what she had expected of Isabel--to give it form and body.Isabel could have done as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to herhusband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe which the society of thatcity might not offer her. We know ourselves that Isabel had made conquests--whether inferior ornot to those she might have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to decide; andit is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that I again mention that she had not renderedthese honourable victories public. She had not told her sister the history of Lord Warburton, norhad she given her a hint of Mr. Osmond's state of mind; and she had had no better reason for hersilence than that she didn't wish to speak. It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep,in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she would have been toclose that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing of these discriminations, and could onlypronounce her sister's career a strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact thatIsabel's silence about Mr. Osmond, for instance, was in direct proportion to the frequency withwhich he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs.Ludlow that she had lost her courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident asinheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it added to her general sense thatIsabel was not at all like other people.Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its height after herrelations had gone home. She could imagine braver things than spending the winter in Paris--Parishad sides by which it so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose--and her closecorrespondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She had never had akeener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she turnedaway from the platform at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after thedeparture of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to their ship atLiverpool. It had been good for her to regale; she was very conscious of that; she was veryobservant, as we know, of what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find somethingthat was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment she had made thejourney from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have accompanied them to Liverpoolas well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety andshe asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away; she kissed her hand tothe elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously far out of thewindow of the carriage and made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walkedback into the foggy London street. The world lay before her--she could do whatever she chose.第 215 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chosesimply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon hadalready closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our heroine wasunattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journeywith a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get moresensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again. Shewas so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in theLondon streets-- the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, thedark, shining dampness of everything. That evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Merle thatshe should start in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching atFlorence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona. Sheaccomplished this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her naturalprotectors were not now on the ground. Ralph Touchett was spending the winter at Corfu, andMiss Stackpole, in the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from theInterviewer. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a fresher field for her genius than themouldering cities of Europe, and Henrietta was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr.Bantling that he would soon come over to see her. Isabel wrote to Mrs. Touchett to apologise fornot presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough.Apologies, Mrs. Touchett intimated, were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herselfnever dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one "would" have donebelonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Herletter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs. Touchett) not so frank as it pretended. She easilyforgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she took it for a sign that Gilbert Osmondwas less in question there than formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find apretext for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had not been guilty ofan absence. Isabel, on her side, had not been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed to MadameMerle that they should make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Merle remarked that herfriend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been consumed with the desire tovisit Athens and Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, andspent three months in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Isabel found much to interest her in thesecountries, though Madame Merle continued to remark that even among the most classic sites, thescenes most calculated to suggest repose and reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her.Isabel travelled rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup after cup.Madame Merle meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess circulating incognita, panted a little inher rear. It was on Isabel's invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl'suncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have been expected of her,effacing herself and accepting the position of a companion whose expenses were profusely paid.The situation, however, had no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking pairon their travels would not have been able to tell you which was patroness and which client. To saythat Madame Merle improved on acquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on herfriend, who had found her from the first so ample and so easy. At the end of an intimacy of threemonths Isabel felt she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and the admirable womanhad also at last redeemed her promise of relating her history from her own point of view--a第 216 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网consummation the more desirable as Isabel had already heard it related from the point of view ofothers. This history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M. Merle, a positiveadventurer, she might say, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage, years before,of her youth and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who knew her only now would find itdifficult to believe); it abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents that her companionwondered a person so eprouvee could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Intothis freshness of Madame Merle's she obtained a considerable insight; she seemed to see it asprofessional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, orblanketed and bridled like the "favourite" of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but therewas a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after all somethingof a public performer, condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once saidthat she came from a distance, that she belonged to the "old, old" world, and Isabel never lost theimpression that she was the product of a different moral or social clime from her own, that she hadgrown up under other stars.She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course the morality of civilisedpersons has always much in common; but our young woman had a sense in her of values gonewrong or, as they said at the shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth,that a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this conviction was an aid todetecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of aperson who had raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the narrowways of deception. Her conception of human motives might, in certain lights, have been acquiredat the court of some kingdom in decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroinehad not even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain; and there were evidentlythings in the world of which it was not advantageous to hear. She had once or twice had a positivescare; since it so affected her to have to exclaim, of her friend, "Heaven forgive her, she doesn'tunderstand me!" Absurd as it may seem this discovery operated as a shock, left her with a vaguedismay in which there was even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in thelight of some sudden proof of Madame Merle's remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a highwater-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Merle had once declared her belief thatwhen a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline--there being no point ofequilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, wasimpossible--it must move one way or the other. However that might be, the girl had in these days athousand uses for her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been. I do notallude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in the course of an excursion fromCairo, or as she stood among the broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon thepoint designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these emotions hadremained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt and Greece and made another stay inRome. A few days after her arrival Gilbert Osmond descended from Florence and remained threeweeks, during which the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Merle, in whose house shehad gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he should see her every day. When the last ofApril came she wrote to Mrs. Touchett that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation givenlong before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Merle on this occasion第 217 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Ralph, however, wasexpected in Florence from day to day, and Isabel, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, wasprepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.CHAPTER XXXIIIt was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood at the window near which wefound her a while ago, and it was not of any of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was notturned to the past, but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene, and shewas not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she should say to her visitor; this questionhad already been answered. What he would say to her-- that was the interesting issue. It could benothing in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction doubtless showed in thecloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all clearness reigned in her; she had put away hermourning and she walked in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older-- ever so much,and as if she were "worth more" for it, like some curious piece in an antiquary's collection. Shewas not at any rate left indefinitely to her apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her witha card on his tray. "Let the gentleman come in," she said, and continued to gaze out of the windowafter the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard the door close behind the person whopresently entered that she looked round.Caspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to foot, the bright, drygaze with which she rather withheld than offered a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity hadkept pace with Isabel's we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to hercritical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong and hard, there was nothingin his appearance that spoke positively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence norweakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same voluntary cast as in earlierdays; but a crisis like the present had in it of course something grim. He had the air of a man whohad travelled hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This gave Isabel time tomake a reflexion: "Poor fellow, what great things he's capable of, and what a pity he should wasteso dreadfully his splendid force! What a pity too that one can't satisfy everybody!" It gave her timeto do more to say at the end of a minute: "I can't tell you how I hoped you wouldn't come!""I've no doubt of that." And he looked about him for a seat. Not only had he come, but he meant tosettle."You must be very tired," said Isabel, seating herself, and generously, as she thought, to give himhis opportunity."No, I'm not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?""Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?""Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express. These Italian trains go at aboutthe rate of an American funeral.""That's in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury me!" And she forced a smileof encouragement to an easy view of their situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, makingit perfectly clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all this she was afraid of第 218 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she was devoutly thankful there was nothing else tobe ashamed of. He looked at her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such awant of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on her as a physical weight."No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I could!" he candidly declared."I thank you immensely.""I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.""That's very selfish of you!" she returned with the ardour of a real conviction. "If you're not happyyourself others have yet a right to be.""Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so. I don't mind anything you cansay now--I don't feel it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. Afterwhat you've done I shall never feel anything-- I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all mylife."Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness, in his hard, slow Americantone, which flung no atmospheric colour over propositions intrinsically crude. The tone madeIsabel angry rather than touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave hera further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of this control that she became,after a little, irrelevant. "When did you leave New York?"He threw up his head as if calculating. "Seventeen days ago.""You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.""I came as fast as I could. I'd have come five days ago if I had been able.""It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood," she coldly smiled."Not to you--no. But to me.""You gain nothing that I see.""That's for me to judge!""Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself." And then, to change the subject, sheasked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole. He looked as if he had not come from Boston toFlorence to talk of Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young ladyhad been with him just before he left America. "She came to see you?" Isabel then demanded."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 do that. She'll hear it quick enough; shehears everything.""I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me," Isabel declared, trying to smileagain.Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. "I guess she'll come right out," he said."On purpose to scold me?""I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly."第 219 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"I'm 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 sheknow Mr. Osmond?" he enquired."A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry to please Henrietta," she added. Itwould have been better for poor Caspar if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; buthe didn't say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To which she madeanswer that she didn't know yet. "I can only say it will be soon. I've told no one but yourself andone other person--an old friend of Mr. Osmond's.""Is it a marriage your friends won't like?" he demanded."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, doing it quite withoutdelicacy. "Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert Osmond?""Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable man. He's not inbusiness," said Isabel. "He's not rich; he's not known for anything in particular."She disliked Mr. Goodwood's questions, but she said to herself that she owed it to him to satisfyhim as far as possible. The satisfaction poor Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat veryupright, gazing at her. "Where does he come from? Where does he belong?"She had never been so little pleased with the way he said "belawng." "He comes from nowhere. Hehas spent most of his life in Italy.""You said in your letter he was 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 all 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's very quiet and very simple--he contents himself with Italy.""With Italy and with you," said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and no appearance of tryingto make an epigram. "What has he ever done?" he added abruptly."That I should marry him? Nothing at all," Isabel replied while her patience helped itself byturning a little to hardness. "If he had done great things would you forgive me any better? Give meup, Mr. Goodwood; I'm marrying a perfect nonentity. Don't try to take an interest in him. Youcan't.""I can't appreciate him; that's what you mean. And you don't mean in the least that he's a perfect