贵妇人画像The Portrait of a Lady-5

spoiled and neglected; they had lived with nursemaids and governesses (usually very bad ones) orhad been sent to superficial schools, kept by the French, from which, at the end of a month, theyhad been removed in tears. This view of the matter would have excited Isabel's indignation, for toher own sense her opportunities had been large. Even when her father had left his daughters forthree months at Neufchatel with a French bonne who had eloped with a Russian nobleman stayingat the same hotel-- even in this irregular situation (an incident of the girl's eleventh year) she hadbeen neither frightened nor ashamed, but had thought it a romantic episode in a liberal education.Her father had a large way of looking at life, of which his restlessness and even his occasional第 29 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网incoherency of conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even as children, to see asmuch of the world as possible; and it was for this purpose that, before Isabel was fourteen, he hadtransported them three times across the Atlantic, giving them on each occasion, however, but a fewmonths' view of the subject proposed: a course which had whetted our heroine's curiosity withoutenabling her to satisfy it. She ought to have been a partisan of her father, for she was the memberof his trio who most "made up" to him for the disagreeables he didn't mention. In his last days hisgeneral willingness to take leave of a world in which the difficulty of doing as one liked appearedto increase as one grew older had been sensibly modified by the pain of separation from his clever,his superior, his remarkable girl. Later, when the journeys to Europe ceased, he still had shown hischildren all sorts of indulgence, and if he had been troubled about money-matters nothing everdisturbed their irreflective consciousness of many possessions. Isabel, though she danced verywell, had not the recollection of having been in New York a successful member of thechoreographic circle; her sister Edith was, as every one said, so very much more fetching. Edithwas so striking an example of success that Isabel could have no illusions as to what constituted thisadvantage, or as to the limits of her own power to frisk and jump and shriek--above all withrightness of effect. Nineteen persons out of twenty (including the younger sister herself)pronounced Edith infinitely the prettier of the two; but the twentieth, besides reversing thisjudgement, had the entertainment of thinking all the others aesthetic vulgarians. Isabel had in thedepths of her nature an even more unquenchable desire to please than Edith; but the depths of thisyoung lady's nature were a very out-of-the-way place, between which and the surfacecommunication was interrupted by a dozen capricious forces. She saw the young men who came inlarge numbers to see her sister; but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had a belief thatsome special preparation was required for talking with her. Her reputation of reading a great dealhung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engenderdifficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The poor girl liked to bethought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish; she used to read in secret and, though hermemory was excellent, to abstain from showy reference. She had a great desire for knowledge, butshe really preferred almost any source of information to the printed page; she had an immensecuriosity about life and was constantly staring and wondering. She carried within herself a greatfund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of herown soul and the agitations of the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds andlarge stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures-aclass of efforts as to which she had often committed the conscious solecism of forgiving themmuch bad painting for the sake of the subject. While the Civil War went on she was still a veryyoung girl; but she passed months of this long period in a state of almost passionate excitement, inwhich she felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirred almost indiscriminately by thevalour of either army. Of course the circumspection of suspicious swains had never gone thelength of making her a social proscript; for the number of those whose hearts, as they approachedher, beat only just fast enough to remind them they had heads as well, had kept her unacquaintedwith the supreme disciplines of her sex and age. She had had everything a girl could have:kindness, admiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of theworld she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator,the latest publications, the music of Gounod, the poetry of Browning, the prose of George Eliot.第 30 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网These things now, as memory played over them, resolved themselves into a multitude of scenesand figures. Forgotten things came back to her; many others, which she had lately thought of greatmoment, dropped out of sight. The result was kaleidoscopic, but the movement of the instrumentwas checked at last by the servant's coming in with the name of a gentleman. The name of thegentleman was Caspar Goodwood; he was a straight young man from Boston, who had knownMiss Archer for the last twelvemonth and who, thinking her the most beautiful young woman ofher time, had pronounced the time, according to the rule I have hinted at, a foolish period ofhistory. He sometimes wrote to her and had within a week or two written from New York. She hadthought it very possible he would come in--had indeed all the rainy day been vaguely expectinghim. Now that she learned he was there, nevertheless, she felt no eagerness to receive him. He wasthe finest young man she had ever seen, was indeed quite a splendid young man; he inspired herwith a sentiment of high, of rare respect. She had never felt equally moved to it by any otherperson. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marry her, but this of course wasbetween themselves. It at least may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albanyexpressly to see her; having learned in the former city, where he was spending a few days andwhere he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the State capital. Isabel delayed for someminutes to go to him; she moved about the room with a new sense of complications. But at last shepresented herself and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong and somewhat stiff; hewas also lean and brown. He was not romantically, he was much rather obscurely, handsome; buthis physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charmyou found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexion other than his own, anda jaw of the somewhat angular mould which is supposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel said toherself that it bespoke resolution to-night; in spite of which, in half an hour, Caspar Goodwood,who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his way back to his lodging with the feeling of aman defeated. He was not, it may be added, a man weakly to accept defeat.CHAPTER VRalph Touchett was a philosopher, but nevertheless he knocked at his mother's door (at a quarter toseven) with a good deal of eagerness. Even philosophers have their preferences, and it must beadmitted that of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filialdependence. His father, as he had often said to himself, was the more motherly; his mother, on theother hand, was paternal, and even, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial. She wasnevertheless very fond of her only child and had always insisted on his spending three months ofthe year with her. Ralph rendered perfect justice to her affection and knew that in her thoughts andher thoroughly arranged and servanted life his turn always came after the other nearest subjects ofher solicitude, the various punctualities of performance of the workers of her will. He found hercompletely dressed for dinner, but she embraced her boy with her gloved hands and made him siton the sofa beside her. She enquired scrupulously about her husband's health and about the youngman's own, and, receiving no very brilliant account of either, remarked that she was more thanever convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English climate. In this case she alsomight have given way. Ralph smiled at the idea of his mother's giving way, but made no point of第 31 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网reminding her that his own infirmity was not the result of the English climate, from which heabsented himself for a considerable part of each year.He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Touchett, a native of Rutland, in theState of Vermont, came to England as subordinate partner in a banking-house where some tenyears later he gained preponderant control. Daniel Touchett saw before him a life-long residence inhis adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a simple, sane and accommodating view.But, as he said to himself, he had no intention of disamericanising, nor had he a desire to teach hisonly son any such subtle art. It had been for himself so very soluble a problem to live in Englandassimilated yet unconverted that it seemed to him equally simple his lawful heir should after hisdeath carry on the grey old bank in the white American light. He was at pains to intensify thislight, however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ralph spent several terms at anAmerican school and took a degree at an American university, after which, as he struck his fatheron his return as even redundantly native, he was placed for some three years in residence atOxford. Oxford swallowed up Harvard, and Ralph became at last English enough. His outwardconformity to the manners that surrounded him was none the less the mask of a mind that greatlyenjoyed its independence, on which nothing long imposed itself, and which, naturally inclined toadventure and irony, indulged in a boundless liberty of appreciation. He began with being a youngman of promise; at Oxford he distinguished himself, to his father's ineffable satisfaction, and thepeople about him said it was a thousand pities so clever a fellow should be shut out from a career.He might have had a career by returning to his own country (though this point is shrouded inuncertainty) and even if Mr. Touchett had been willing to part with him (which was not the case) itwould have gone hard with him to put a watery waste permanently between himself and the oldman whom he regarded as his best friend. Ralph was not only fond of his father, he admired him-heenjoyed the opportunity of observing him. Daniel Touchett, to his perception, was a man ofgenius, and though he himself had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learningenough of it to measure the great figure his father had played. It was not this, however, he mainlyrelished; it was the fine ivory surface, polished as by the English air, that the old man had opposedto possibilities of penetration. Daniel Touchett had been neither at Harvard nor at Oxford, and itwas his own fault if he had placed in his son's hands the key to modern criticism. Ralph, whosehead was full of ideas which his father had never guessed, had a high esteem for the latter'soriginality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, are commended for the ease with which they adaptthemselves to foreign conditions; but Mr. Touchett had made of the very limits of his pliancy halfthe ground of his general success. He had retained in their freshness most of his marks of primarypressure; his tone, as his son always noted with pleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts ofNew England. At the end of his life he had become, on his own ground, as mellow as he was rich;he combined consummate shrewdness with the disposition superficially to fraternise, and his"social position," on which he had never wasted a care, had the firm perfection of an unthumbedfruit. It was perhaps his want of imagination and of what is called the historic consciousness; but tomany of the impressions usually made by English life upon the cultivated stranger his sense wascompletely closed. There were certain differences he had never perceived, certain habits he hadnever formed, certain obscurities he had never sounded. As regards these latter, on the day he hadsounded them his son would have thought less well of him.第 32 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网Ralph, on leaving Oxford, had spent a couple of years in travelling; after which he had foundhimself perched on a high stool in his father's bank. The responsibility and honour of suchpositions is not, I believe, measured by the height of the stool, which depends upon otherconsiderations: Ralph, indeed, who had very long legs, was fond of standing, and even of walkingabout, at his work. To this exercise, however, he was obliged to devote but a limited period, for atthe end of some eighteen months he had become aware of his being seriously out of health. He hadcaught a violent cold, which fixed itself on his lungs and threw them into dire confusion. He had togive up work and apply, to the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of himself. At first heslighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least he was taking care of, but anuninteresting and uninterested person with whom he had nothing in common. This person,however, improved on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging tolerance,even an undemonstrative respect, for him. Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, and our youngman, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter-- it usually struck him as his reputationfor ordinary wit-- devoted to his graceless charge an amount of attention of which note was dulytaken and which had at least the effect of keeping the poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began toheal, the other promised to follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather a dozenwinters if he would betake himself to those climates in which consumptives chiefly congregate. Ashe had grown extremely fond of London, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time thathe cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ grateful even for grimfavours, he conferred them with a lighter hand. He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in thesun, stopped at home when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when ithad snowed overnight, almost never got up again.A secret hoard of indifference--like a thick cake a fond old nurse might have slipped into his firstschool outfit--came to his aid and helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was tooill for aught but that arduous game. As he said to himself, there was really nothing he had wantedvery much to do, so that he had at least not renounced the field of valour. At present, however, thefragrance of forbidden fruit seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest ofpleasures is the rush of action. Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poortranslation--a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellentlinguist. He had good winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes thesport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this vision was dispelled some three years before theoccurrence of the incidents with which this history opens: he had on that occasion remained laterthan usual in England and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers. He arrivedmore dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between life and death. His convalescencewas a miracle, but the first use he made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen butonce. He said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to keep his eyes upon it,yet that it was also open to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent with sucha preoccupation. With the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became anexquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had never been sounded. He was farfrom the time when he had found it hard that he should be obliged to give up the idea ofdistinguishing himself; an idea none the less importunate for being vague and none the lessdelightful for having had to struggle in the same breast with bursts of inspiring self-criticism. His第 33 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网friends at present judged him more cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they shooktheir heads knowingly, that he would recover his health. His serenity was but the array of wildflowers niched in his ruin.It was very probably this sweet-tasting property of the observed thing in itself that was mainlyconcerned in Ralph's quickly-stirred interest in the advent of a young lady who was evidently notinsipid. If he was consideringly disposed, something told him, here was occupation enough for asuccession of days. It may be added, in summary fashion, that the imagination of loving--asdistinguished from that of being loved --had still a place in his reduced sketch. He had onlyforbidden himself the riot of expression. However, he shouldn't inspire his cousin with a passion,nor would she be able, even should she try, to help him to one. "And now tell me about the younglady," he said to his mother. "What do you mean to do with her?"Mrs. Touchett was prompt. "I mean to ask your father to invite her to stay three or four weeks atGardencourt.""You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that," said Ralph. "My father will ask her as a matterof course.""I don't know about that. She's my niece; she's not his.""Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property! That's all the more reason for his asking her.But after that--I mean after three months (for its absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for threeor four paltry weeks)--what do you mean to do with her?""I mean to take her to Paris. I mean to get her clothing.""Ah yes, that's of course. But independently of that?""I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence.""You don't rise above detail, dear mother," said Ralph. "I should like to know what you mean to dowith her in a general way.""My duty!" Mrs. Touchett declared. "I suppose you pity her very much," she added."No, I don't think I pity her. She doesn't strike me as inviting compassion. I think I envy her.Before being sure, however, give me a hint of where you see your duty.""In showing her four European countries--I shall leave her the choice of two of them--and ingiving her the opportunity of perfecting herself in French, which she already knows very well."Ralph frowned a little. "That sounds rather dry--even allowing her the choice of two of thecountries.""If it's dry," said his mother with a laugh, "you can leave Isabel alone to water it! She is as good asa summer rain, any day.""Do you mean she's a gifted being?""I don't know whether she's a gifted being, but she's a clever girl--with a strong will and a hightemper. She has no idea of being bored.""I can imagine that," said Ralph; and then he added abruptly: "How do you two get on?"第 34 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"Do you mean by that that I'm a bore? I don't think she finds me one. Some girls might, I know;but Isabel's too clever for that. I think I greatly amuse her. We get on because I understand her, Iknow the sort of girl she is. She's very frank, and I'm very frank: we know just what to expect ofeach other.""Ah, dear mother," Ralph exclaimed, "one always knows what to expect of you! You've neversurprised me but once, and that's to-day--in presenting me with a pretty cousin whose existence Ihad never suspected.""Do you think her so very pretty?""Very pretty indeed; but I don't insist upon that. It's her general air of being some one in particularthat strikes me. Who is this rare creature, and what is she? Where did you find her, and how didyou make her acquaintance?""I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary room on a rainy day, reading a heavybook and boring herself to death. She didn't know she was bored, but when I left her no doubt of itshe seemed very grateful for the service. You may say I shouldn't have enlightened he--I shouldhave let her alone. There's a good deal in that, but I acted conscientiously; I thought she was meantfor something better. It occurred to me that it would be a kindness to take her about and introduceher to the world. She thinks she knows a great deal of it--like most American girls; but like mostAmerican girls she's ridiculously mistaken. If you want to know, I thought she would do me credit.I like to be well thought of, and for a woman of my age there's no greater convenience, in someways, than an attractive niece. You know I had seen nothing of my sister's children for years; Idisapproved entirely of the father. But I always meant to do something for them when he shouldhave gone to his reward. I ascertained where they were to be found and, without any preliminaries,went and introduced myself. There are two others of them, both of whom are married; but I sawonly the elder, who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose name is Lily, jumpedat the idea of my taking an interest in Isabel; she said it was just what her sister needed--that someone should take an interest in her. She spoke of her as you might speak of some young person ofgenius-- in want of encouragement and patronage. It may be that Isabel's a genius; but in that caseI've not yet learned her special line. Mrs. Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her toEurope; they all regard Europe over there as a land of emigration, of rescue, a refuge for theirsuperfluous population. Isabel herself seemed very glad to come, and the thing was easilyarranged. There was a little difficulty about the money-question, as she seemed averse to beingunder pecuniary obligations. But she has a small income and she supposes herself to be travellingat her own expense."Ralph had listened attentively to this judicious report, by which his interest in the subject of it wasnot impaired. "Ah, if she's a genius," he said, "we must find out her special line. Is it by chance forflirting?""I don't think so. You may suspect that at first, but you'll be wrong. You won't, I think, in anyway,be easily right about her.""Warburton's wrong then!" Ralph rejoicingly exclaimed. "He flatters himself he has made thatdiscovery."His mother shook her head. "Lord Warburton won't understand her. He needn't try."第 35 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"He's very intelligent," said Ralph; "but it's right he should be puzzled once in a while.""Isabel will enjoy puzzling a lord," Mrs. Touchett remarked.Her son frowned a little. What does she know about lords?""Nothing at all: that will puzzle him all the more."Ralph greeted these words with a laugh and looked out of the window. Then, "Are you not goingdown to see my father?" he asked."At a quarter to eight," said Mrs. Touchett.Her son looked at his watch. "You've another quarter of an hour then. Tell me some more aboutIsabel." After which, as Mrs. Touchett declined his invitation, declaring that he must find out forhimself, "Well," he pursued, "she'll certainly do you credit. But won't she also give you trouble?""I hope not; but if she does I shall not shrink from it. I never do that.""She strikes me as very natural," said Ralph."Natural people are not the most trouble.""No," said Ralph; "you yourself are a proof of that. You're extremely natural, and I'm sure youhave never troubled any one. It takes trouble to do that. But tell me this; it just occurs to me. IsIsabel capable of making herself disagreeable?""Ah," cried his mother, "you ask too many questions! Find that out for yourself."His questions, however, were not exhausted. "All this time," he said, "you've not told me what youintend to do with her.""Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I shall do absolutely nothing with her, andshe herself will do everything she chooses. She gave me notice of that.""What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her character's independent.""I never know what I mean in my telegrams--especially those I send from America. Clearness istoo expensive. Come down to your father.""It's not yet a quarter to eight," said Ralph."I must allow for his impatience," Mrs. Touchett answered. Ralph knew what to think of hisfather's impatience; but, making no rejoinder, he offered his mother his arm. This put it in hispower, as they descended together, to stop her a moment on the middle landing of the staircase-thebroad, low, wide-armed staircase of time-blackened oak which was one of the most strikingfeatures of Gardencourt. "You've no plan of marrying her?" he smiled."Marrying her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart from that, she's perfectly ableto marry herself. She has every facility.""Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out?""I don't know about a husband, but there's a young man in Boston--!"Ralph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston. "As my father says,they're always engaged!"第 36 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网