贵妇人画像The Portrait of a Lady-15

the windows of the dining-room to let in the air he heard the slow creak of the boots of a loneconstable. His own step, in the empty place, seemed loud and sonorous; some of the carpets hadbeen raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in one of thearmchairs; the big dark dining table twinkled here and there in the small candle-light; the pictureson the wall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a ghostly presence asof dinners long since digested, of table-talk that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernaturalperhaps had something to do with the fact that his imagination took a flight and that he remained inhis chair a long time beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed; doing nothing, not evenreading the evening paper. I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the factthat he thought at these moments of Isabel. To think of Isabel could only be for him an idle pursuit,leading to nothing and profiting little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to him so第 97 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网charming as during these days spent in sounding, tourist-fashion, the deeps and shallows of themetropolitan element. Isabel was full of premises, conclusions, emotions; if she had come insearch of local colour she found it everywhere. She asked more questions than he could answer,and launched brave theories, as to historic cause and social effect, that he was equally unable toaccept or to refute. The party went more than once to the British Museum and to that brighterpalace of art which reclaims for antique variety so large an area of a monotonous suburb; theyspent a morning in the Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower; they looked at picturesboth in public and private collections and sat on various occasions beneath the great trees inKensington Gardens. Henrietta proved an indestructible sight-seer and a more lenient judge thanRalph had ventured to hope. She had indeed many disappointments, and London at large sufferedfrom her vivid remembrance of the strong points of the American civic idea; but she made the bestof its dingy dignities and only heaved an occasional sigh and uttered a desultory "Well!" which ledno further and lost itself in retrospect. The truth was that, as she said herself, she was not in herelement. "I've not a sympathy with inanimate objects," she remarked to Isabel at the NationalGallery; and she continued to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse that had as yet beenvouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes by Turner and Assyrian bulls were a poor substitutefor the literary dinner-parties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown of GreatBritain."Where are your public men, where are your men and women of intellect?" she enquired of Ralph,standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square as if she had supposed this to be a place where shewould naturally meet a few. "That's one of them on the top of the column, you say--Lord Nelson.Was he a lord too? Wasn't he high enough, that they had to stick him a hundred feet in the air?That's the past--I don't care about the past; I want to see some of the leading minds of the present. Iwon't say of the future, because I don't believe much in your future." Poor Ralph had few leadingminds among his acquaintance and rarely enjoyed the pleasure of buttonholing a celebrity; a stateof things which appeared to Miss Stackpole to indicate a deplorable want of enterprise. "If I wereon the other side I should call," she said, "and tell the gentleman, whoever he might be, that I hadheard a great deal about him and had come to see for myself. But I gather from what you say thatthis is not the custom here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of thosethat would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall have to give up the socialside altogether;" and Henrietta, though she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote aletter to the Interviewer about the Tower (in which she described the execution of Lady JaneGrey), had a sad sense of falling below her mission.The incident that had preceded Isabel's departure from Gardencourt left a painful trace in ouryoung woman's mind: when she felt again in her face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath ofher last suitor's surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could not havedone less than what she did; this was certainly true. But her necessity, all the same, had been asgraceless as some physical act in a strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for herconduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride, nevertheless, was a feeling of freedom which in itselfwas sweet and which, as she wandered through the great city with her ill-matched companions,occasionally throbbed into odd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens shestopped the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the grass; she asked第 98 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网them their names and gave them sixpence and, when they were pretty, kissed them. Ralph noticedthese quaint charities; he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions mightpass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had the house set in order asmuch as possible for their visit. There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an oldfriend of Ralph's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with MissStackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr. Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling manof forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughedimmoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her societythe bric-a-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the hostproposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fete-champetre, walked round thelimited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded responsive--aswith a positive passion for argument--to her remarks upon the inner life."Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there's not much going onthere when there's such a lot of illness about. Touchett's very bad, you know; the doctors haveforbidden his being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The oldman, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter with him. They call it gout, but to my certainknowledge he has organic disease so developed that you may depend upon it he'll go, some daysoon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing makes a dreadfully dull house; I wonder they havepeople when they can do so little for them. Then I believe Mr. Touchett's always squabbling withhis wife; she lives away from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American way ofyours. If you want a house where there's always something going on, I recommend you to go downand stay with my sister, Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. I'll write to her to-morrow and I'm sure she'llbe delighted to ask you. I know just what you want-- you want a house where they go in fortheatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My sister's just that sort of woman; she's alwaysgetting up something or other and she's always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I'msure she'll ask you down by return of post: she's tremendously fond of distinguished people andwriters. She writes herself, you know; but I haven't read everything she has written. It's usuallypoetry, and I don't go in much for poetry--unless it's Byron. I suppose you think a great deal ofByron in America," Mr. Bantling continued, expanding in the stimulating air of Miss Stackpole'sattention, bringing up his sequences promptly and changing his topic with an easy turn of hand.Yet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to Henrietta, of her going to staywith Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. "I understand what you want; you want to see some genuineEnglish sport. The Touchetts aren't English at all, you know; they have their own habits, their ownlanguage, their own food--some odd religion even, I believe, of their own. The old man thinks it'swicked to hunt, I'm told. You must get down to my sister's in time for the theatricals, and I'm sureshe'll be glad to give you a part. I'm sure you act well; I know you're very clever. My sister's fortyyears old and has seven children, but she's going to play the principal part. Plain as she is shemakes up awfully well--I will say for her. Of course you needn't act if you don't want to."In this manner Mr. Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over the grass in WinchesterSquare, which, although it had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to linger.Henrietta thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine meritand his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity he第 99 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网offered her. "I don't know but I would go, if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty.What do you call her name?""Pensil. It's an odd name, but it isn't a bad one.""I think one name's as good as another. But what's her rank?"."Oh, she's a baron's wife; a convenient sort of rank. You're fine enough and you're not too fine.""I don't know but what she'd be too fine for me. What do you call the place she lives in-Bedfordshire?""She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome country, but I dare say you won't mindit. I'll try and run down while you're there."All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be obliged to separate fromLady Pensil's obliging brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly,some friends whom she had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington,Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now preparing to re-embark.Henrietta had had a long interview with them on the Piccadilly pavement, and though the threeladies all talked at once they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore thatHenrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o'clock on themorrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. She prepared to start for JermynStreet, taking leave first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in another partof the enclosure, were occupied--if the term may be used--with an exchange of amenities lesspointed than the practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr. Bantling. When it had been settledbetween Isabel and her friend that they should be reunited at some reputable hour at Pratt's Hotel,Ralph remarked that the latter must have a cab. She couldn't walk all the way to Jermyn Street."I suppose you mean it's improper for me to walk alone!" Henrietta exclaimed. "Merciful powers,have I come to this?""There's not the slightest need of your walking alone," Mr. Bantling gaily interposed. "I should begreatly pleased to go with you.""I simply meant that you'd be late for dinner," Ralph returned. "Those poor ladies may easilybelieve that we refuse, at the last, to spare you.""You had better have a hansom, Henrietta," said Isabel."I'll get you a hansom if you'll trust me," Mr. Bantling went on."We might walk a little till we meet one.""I don't see why I shouldn't trust him, do you?" Henrietta enquired of Isabel."I don't see what Mr. Bantling could do to you," Isabel obligingly answered; "but, if you like, we'llwalk with you till you find your cab.""Never mind; we'll go alone. Come on, Mr. Bantling, and take care you get me a good one."Mr. Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their departure, leaving the girl and hercousin together in the square, over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. Itwas perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the windows,where the shutters and blinds were closed; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and, putting aside第 100 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网two small children from a neighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animationin the interior, poked their faces between the rusty rails of the enclosure, the most vivid objectwithin sight was the big red pillar-post on the southeast corner."Henrietta will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn Street," Ralph observed. Healways spoke of Miss Stackpole as Henrietta."Very possibly," said his companion."Or rather, no, she won't," he went on. "But Bantling will ask leave to get in.""Very likely again. I'm glad very they're such good friends.""She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may go far," said Ralph.Isabel was briefly silent. "I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman, but I don't think it will go far.They would never really know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, and she hasno just comprehension of Mr. Bantling.""There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding. But it ought not to be sodifficult to understand Bob Bantling," Ralph added. "He is a very simple organism.""Yes, but Henrietta's a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I to do?" Isabel asked, looking abouther through the fading light, in which the limited landscape-gardening of the square took on a largeand effective appearance. "I don't imagine that you'll propose that you and I, for our amusement,shall drive about London in a hansom.""There's no reason we shouldn't stay here--if you don't dislike it. It's very warm; there will he halfan hour yet before dark; and if you permit it I'll light a cigarette.""You may do what you please," said Isabel, "if you'll amuse me till seven o'clock. I propose at thathour to go back and partake of a simple and solitary repast--two poached eggs and a muffin-- atPratt's Hotel.""Mayn't I dine with you?" Ralph asked."No, you'll dine at your club."They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square again, and Ralph had lighted hiscigarette. It would have given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest littlefeast she had sketched; but in default of this he liked even being forbidden. For the moment,however, he liked immensely being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the centre of themultitudinous town; it made her seem to depend upon him and to be in his power. This power hecould exert but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to accept her decisions submissively whichindeed there was already an emotion in doing. "Why won't you let me dine with you?" hedemanded after a pause."Because I don't care for it.""I suppose you're tired of me.""I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of foreknowledge.""Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile," said Ralph.第 101 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网But he said nothing more, and as she made no rejoinder they sat some time in a stillness whichseemed to contradict his promise of entertainment. It seemed to him she was preoccupied, and hewondered what she was thinking about; there were two or three very possible subjects. At last hespoke again. "Is your objection to my society this evening caused by your expectation of anothervisitor?"She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. "Another visitor? What visitor should Ihave?"He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself silly as well as brutal. "You've agreat many friends that I don't know. You've a whole past from which I was perversely excluded.""You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past is over there across the water.There's none of it here in London.""Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital thing to have your future sohandy." And Ralph lighted another cigarette and reflected that Isabel probably meant she hadreceived news that Mr. Caspar Goodwood had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarettehe puffed it a while, and then he resumed. "I promised just now to be very amusing; but you see Idon't come up to the mark, and the fact is there's a good deal of temerity in one's undertaking toamuse a person like you. What do you care for my feeble attempts? You've grand ideas--you've ahigh standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring in a band of music or a company ofmountebanks.""One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in another ten minutes I shallbegin to laugh.""I assure you I'm very serious," said Ralph. "You do really ask a great deal.""I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing.""You accept nothing," said Ralph. She coloured, and now suddenly it seemed to her that sheguessed his meaning. But why should he speak to her of such things? He hesitated a little and thenhe continued: "There's something I should like very much to say to you. It's a question I wish toask. It seems to me I've a right to ask it, because I've a kind of interest in the answer.""Ask what you will," Isabel replied gently, "and I'll try to satisfy you.""Well then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Warburton has told me of something that haspassed between you."Isabel suppressed a start; she sat looking at her open fan. "Very good; I suppose it was natural heshould tell you.""I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some hope still," said Ralph."Still?""He had it a few days ago.""I don't believe he has any now," said the girl."I'm very sorry for him then; he's such an honest man.""Pray, did he ask you to talk to me?"第 102 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"No, not that. But he told me because he couldn't help it. We're old friends, and he was greatlydisappointed. He sent me a line asking me to come and see him, and I drove over to Lockleigh theday before he and his sister lunched with us. He was very heavy-hearted; he had just got a letterfrom you.""Did he show you the letter?" asked Isabel with momentary loftiness."By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I was very sorry for him," Ralph repeated.For some moments Isabel said nothing; then at last, "Do you know how often he had seen me?"she enquired. "Five or six times.""That's to your glory.""It's not for that I say it.""What then do you say it for. Not to prove that poor Warburton's state of mind's superficial,because I'm pretty sure you don't think that."Isabel certainly was unable to say she thought it; but presently she said something else. "If you'venot been requested by Lord Warburton to argue with me, then you're doing it disinterestedly --orfor the love of argument.""I've no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you alone. I'm simply greatly interestedin your own sentiments.""I'm greatly obliged to you!" cried Isabel with a slightly nervous laugh."Of course you mean that I'm meddling in what doesn't concern me. But why shouldn't I speak toyou of this matter without annoying you or embarrassing myself? What's the use of being yourcousin if I can't have a few privileges? What's the use of adoring you without hope of a reward if Ican't have a few compensations? What's the use of being ill and disabled and restricted to merespectatorship at the game of life if I really can't see the show when I've paid so much for myticket? Tell me this," Ralph went on while she listened to him with quickened attention. "What hadyou in mind when you refused Lord Warburton?""What had I in mind?""What was the logic--the view of your situation--that dictated so remarkable an act?""I didn't wish to marry him--if that's logic.""No, that's not logic--and I knew that before. It's really nothing, you know. What was it you said toyourself? You certainly said more than that."Isabel reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her own. "Why do you call it aremarkable act? That's what your mother thinks too.""Warburton's such a thorough good sort; as a man, I consider he has hardly a fault. And then he'swhat they call here no end of a swell. He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thoughta superior being. He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic advantages."Isabel watched her cousin as to see how far he would go. "I refused him because he was too perfectthen. I'm not perfect myself, and he's too good for me. Besides, his perfection would irritate me."第 103 页 共 391 页原版英语阅读网"That's ingenious rather than candid," said Ralph. "As a fact you think nothing in the world tooperfect for you.""Do you think I'm so good?""No, but you're exacting, all the same, without the excuse of thinking yourself good. Nineteenwomen out of twenty, however, even of the most exacting sort, would have managed to do withWarburton. Perhaps you don't know how he has been stalked.""I don't wish to know. But it seems to me," said Isabel, "that one day when we talked of him youmentioned odd things in him." Ralph smokingly considered. "I hope that what I said then had noweight with you; for they were not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply peculiarities ofhis position. If I had known he wished to marry you I'd never have alluded to them. I think I saidthat as regards that position he was rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make hima believer.""I think not. I don't understand the matter, and I'm not conscious of any mission of that sort. You'reevidently disappointed," Isabel added, looking at her cousin with rueful gentleness. "You'd haveliked me to make such a marriage.""Not in the least. I'm absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don't pretend to advise you, and Icontent myself with watching you--with the deepest interest."She gave rather a conscious sigh. "I wish I could be as interesting to myself as I am to you!""There you're not candid again; you're extremely interesting to yourself. Do you know, however,"said Ralph, "that if you've really given Warburton his final answer I'm rather glad it has been whatit was. I don't mean I'm glad for you, and still less of course for him. I'm glad for myself."