The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 2

by Henry James

  CHAPTER XLVII

  It was from Henrietta Stackpole that she learned how Caspar Goodwood hadcome to Rome; an event that took place three days after Lord Warburton'sdeparture. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of someimportance to Isabel--the temporary absence, once again, of MadameMerle, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessorof a villa at Posilippo. Madame Merle had ceased to minister to Isabel'shappiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet ofwomen might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, atnight, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and herfriend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed toher that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve.Isabel's imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, butevery now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that whenthe charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousnessof respite. She had already learned from Miss Stackpole that CasparGoodwood was in Europe, Henrietta having written to make it known toher immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote toIsabel, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible hemight not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage,had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she rememberedrightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her. Since thenhe had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time--the onlyone in fact with which a permanent pain was associated. He had left herthat morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was likea collision between vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist,no hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steerwide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on thetiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the lighter vessel astrain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. Ithad been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harmthat (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the onlyperson with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, shecouldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had criedwith rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she tried tothink it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her withhis unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his bestto darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent,and yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been aviolence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in herown fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lastedthree or four days.

  The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all thefirst year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was athankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to thinkof a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet donothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able todoubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of LordWarburton's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive,uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She couldnever say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, asshe was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faithin Mr. Goodwood's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factorywas not a compensation for anything--least of all for having failedto marry Isabel Archer. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew whathe had--save of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsicenough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. Ifhe extended his business--that, to the best of her belief, was theonly form exertion could take with him--it would be because it was anenterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least becausehe might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind ofbareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memoryor in apprehension a peculiar concussion it was deficient in the socialdrapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness ofhuman contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she neverheard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened thisimpression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, fromtime to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination wasall bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Isabel hadthought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had morethan once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husbandabout him--never let Osmond know of his visits to her in Florence; areserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidencein Osmond, but simply by the consideration that the young man'sdisappointment was not her secret but his own. It would be wrong of her,she had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. Goodwood's affairscould have, after all, little interest for Gilbert. When it had cometo the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that,considering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone.Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him.It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him;even after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to herthat particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not hadthe assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in trouble hehad become a member of that circle of things with which she wished toset herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feelthat her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault.She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peacewith the world--to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back toher from time to time that there was an account still to be settledwith Caspar, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-dayon terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he wascoming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable forhim than for any one else to make out--since he WOULD make it out, asover a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort--the intimatedisarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he hadinvested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested onlya part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal herstress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for hespent several days without coming to see her.

  Henrietta Stackpole, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, andIsabel was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threwherself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keepingher conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not beensuperficial--the more so as the years, in their flight, had ratherenriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorouslycriticised by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were stillmarked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism. Henrietta was askeen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Herremarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, hadput up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, heropinions none of their national reference. She was by no means quiteunchanged, however it struck Isabel she had grown vague. Of old she hadnever been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she hadmanaged to be entire and pointed about each. She had a reason foreverything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly, whenshe came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, havingalready seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn't for a moment pretendthat the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to dowith her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of herindependence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations toit. "It's nothing to come to Europe," she said to Isabel; "it doesn'tseem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stayat home; this is much more important." It was not therefore with a senseof doing anything very important that she treated herself to anotherpilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefullyinspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of herknowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else tobe there. This was all very well, and Henrietta was restless; she had aperfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But she had afterall a better reason for coming to Rome tha
n that she cared for it solittle. Her friend easily recognised it, and with it the worth of theother's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter becauseshe had guessed that Isabel was sad. Henrietta guessed a great deal, butshe had never guessed so happily as that. Isabel's satisfactions justnow were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would stillhave been something of individual joy in her sense of being justifiedin having always thought highly of Henrietta. She had made largeconcessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with allabatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however,that she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to thisconfidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was notin the least at her ease. Henrietta had herself approached this pointwith the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face ofbeing wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Ralph,nor Lord Warburton, nor Caspar Goodwood, and Isabel could speak.

  "Yes, I'm wretched," she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself sayit; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.

  "What does he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she wereenquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.

  "He does nothing. But he doesn't like me."

  "He's very hard to please!" cried Miss Stackpole. "Why don't you leavehim?"

  "I can't change that way," Isabel said.

  "Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made amistake. You're too proud."

  "I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. Idon't think that's decent. I'd much rather die."

  "You won't think so always," said Henrietta.

  "I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems tome I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's deeds. I marriedhim before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to doanything more deliberate. One can't change that way," Isabel repeated.

  "You HAVE changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don't meanto say you like him."

  Isabel debated. "No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because I'm wearyof my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on the housetops."

  Henrietta gave a laugh. "Don't you think you're rather too considerate?"

  "It's not of him that I'm considerate--it's of myself!" Isabel answered.

  It was not surprising Gilbert Osmond should not have taken comfort inMiss Stackpole; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to ayoung lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugalroof. When she arrived in Rome he had said to Isabel that he hoped shewould leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Isabel had answeredthat he at least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Henriettathat as Osmond didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, butthey could easily see each other in other ways. Isabel received MissStackpole freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly todrive, face to face with Pansy, who, bending a little forward, on theopposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated authoress with arespectful attention which Henrietta occasionally found irritating. Shecomplained to Isabel that Miss Osmond had a little look as if she shouldremember everything one said. "I don't want to be remembered that way,"Miss Stackpole declared; "I consider that my conversation refers onlyto the moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sitsthere, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bringthem out some day against me." She could not teach herself to thinkfavourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, ofpersonal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and evenuncanny. Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge alittle the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her,so that he might appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediateacceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being ineffect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannotenjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Osmond heldto his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which wereelements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been thatMiss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice,so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) shemight judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From themoment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there wasnothing for Osmond but to wish the lady from New York would take herselfoff. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife'sfriends; he took occasion to call Isabel's attention to it.

  "You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might makea new collection," he said to her one morning in reference to nothingvisible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprivedthe remark of all brutal abruptness. "It's as if you had taken thetrouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in commonwith. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides hisbeing the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferablytiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account ofhis health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives himprivileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there'sonly one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can'tsay much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it,the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes andlooks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he triesthe door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls andalmost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up alease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; hedoesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for apiano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in thepoor little apartment for nothing. Miss Stackpole, however, is your mostwonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn'ta nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I neverhave admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Ofa new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steelpen writes; aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinksand moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say thatshe doesn't hurt me, inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see her, but Ihear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can't getrid of it. I know exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tonein which she says it. She says charming things about me, and they giveyou great comfort. I don't like at all to think she talks about me--Ifeel as I should feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat."

  Henrietta talked about Gilbert Osmond, as his wife assured him, ratherless than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two ofwhich the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She lether friend know that Caspar Goodwood had discovered for himself thatshe was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest whatcomfort he hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not callingon her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appearance ofseeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of looking straightin front of him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time.Isabel could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it musthave been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs.Touchett's door at the close of their last interview. He was dressedjust as he had been dressed on that day, Isabel remembered the colourof his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was astrangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afreshto be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger andmore overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reachedhigh enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked backafter him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face likea February sky.

  Miss Stackpole's other topic was very different; she gave Isabel thelatest news about Mr. Bantling. He had been out in the United Statesthe year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show himconsiderable attention. She didn't know how much he had enjoyed it, butshe would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn
't the same manwhen he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes andshown him that England wasn't everything. He had been very much liked inmost places, and thought extremely simple--more simple than the Englishwere commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought himaffected; she didn't know whether they meant that his simplicity was anaffectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought allthe chambermaids were farmers' daughters--or all the farmers' daughterswere chambermaids--she couldn't exactly remember which. He hadn't seemedable to grasp the great school system; it had been really too muchfor him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much ofeverything--as if he could only take in a small part. The part he hadchosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemedreally fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every onehe had visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest;he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelledtogether from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interestingcities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had wantedto know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea ofgeography--had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and wasperpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared neverto have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and wasunprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged toconfess at last that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spentsome pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-creamfrom the coloured man. He could never get used to that idea--that youcould get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn't, nor fans,nor candy, nor anything in the English cars! He found the heat quiteoverwhelming, and she had told him she indeed expected it wasthe biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England,hunting--"hunting round" Henrietta called it. These amusements werethose of the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, thepleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in Englandthat we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more inkeeping with English habits. Mr. Bantling would not have time to joinher in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to comeover. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond ofthe ancient regime. They didn't agree about that, but that was what sheliked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had beenswept away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she rememberedon the contrary one day when there were five American families, walkingall round. Mr. Bantling was very anxious that she should take up thesubject of England again, and he thought she might get on better with itnow; England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He wasdetermined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, LadyPensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight.The mystery about that other one had never been explained.

  Caspar Goodwood came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Isabela note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would beat home at six o'clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering whathe was coming for--what good he expected to get of it. He had presentedhimself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, whowould take what he had asked for or take nothing. Isabel's hospitality,however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty inappearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction atleast that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he hadbeen misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he was notdisappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have been; he hadnot come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what hehad come for; he offered her no explanation there could be none but thevery simple one that he wanted to see her. In other words he had comefor his amusement. Isabel followed up this induction with a good deal ofeagerness, and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay theghost of this gentleman's ancient grievance. If he had come to Romefor his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he caredfor amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got over hisheartache everything was as it should be and her responsibilities wereat an end. It was true that he took his recreation a little stiffly, buthe had never been loose and easy and she had every reason to believehe was satisfied with what he saw. Henrietta was not in his confidence,though he was in hers, and Isabel consequently received no side-lightupon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on generaltopics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years before,"Mr. Goodwood speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk." He spoke a gooddeal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that is,how much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not calculatedto simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr. Osmond didn'tlike her friends Mr. Goodwood had no claim upon his attention save ashaving been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to sayof him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesisexhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Gilbert;it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursdayevenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her husbandstill held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of notinviting them.

  To the Thursdays Mr. Goodwood came regularly, solemnly, rather early;he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Isabel everynow and then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal abouthim; she thought he might know that she didn't know what to do with him.But she couldn't call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he wasonly extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man verydifferent from most people; one had to be almost equally honest withHIM. She made this latter reflection at the very time she was flatteringherself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted ofwomen. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her anypersonal questions. He got on much better with Osmond than had seemedprobable. Osmond had a great dislike to being counted on in such a casehe had an irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue ofthis principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancyto a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treatwith coldness. He asked Isabel if Mr. Goodwood also had wanted to marryher, and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It wouldhave been an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry whichwould strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air.He declared he liked to talk with the great Goodwood; it wasn't easy atfirst, you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to thetop of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view and felt alittle fresh breeze. Osmond, as we know, had delightful qualities, andhe gave Caspar Goodwood the benefit of them all. Isabel could see thatMr. Goodwood thought better of her husband than he had ever wishedto; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of beinginaccessible to a good impression. Gilbert asked him repeatedly todinner, and Mr. Goodwood smoked a cigar with him afterwards and evendesired to be shown his collections. Gilbert said to Isabel that he wasvery original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an Englishportmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wearout, and a capital patent lock. Caspar Goodwood took to riding on theCampagna and devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainlyin the evening that Isabel saw him. She bethought herself of saying tohim one day that if he were willing he could render her a service. Andthen she added smiling:

  "I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you."

  "You're the person in the world who has most right," he answered. "I'vegiven you assurances that I've never given any one else."

  The service was that he should go and see her cousin Ralph, who was illat the Hotel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr.Goodwood had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellowwas; if she was not mistaken Ralph had once invited him to Gardencourt.Caspar remembered the invitation perfectly, and, though he was notsupposed to be a man of imagination, had enough to put himself in theplace of a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at theHotel de Paris and, on bei
ng shown into the presence of the master ofGardencourt, found Miss Stackpole sitting beside his sofa. A singularchange had in fact occurred in this lady's relations with RalphTouchett. She had not been asked by Isabel to go and see him, but onhearing that he was too ill to come out had immediately gone of herown motion. After this she had paid him a daily visit--always underthe conviction that they were great enemies. "Oh yes, we're intimateenemies," Ralph used to say; and he accused her freely--as freely as thehumour of it would allow--of coming to worry him to death. In realitythey became excellent friends, Henrietta much wondering that she shouldnever have liked him before. Ralph liked her exactly as much as he hadalways done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an excellentfellow. They talked about everything and always differed; abouteverything, that is, but Isabel--a topic as to which Ralph always hada thin forefinger on his lips. Mr. Bantling on the other hand proveda great resource; Ralph was capable of discussing Mr. Bantling withHenrietta for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by theirinevitable difference of view--Ralph having amused himself with takingthe ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli.Caspar Goodwood could contribute nothing to such a debate; but afterhe had been left alone with his host he found there were various othermatters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who hadjust gone out was not one of these; Caspar granted all Miss Stackpole'smerits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither,after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Osmond--atheme in which Goodwood perceived as many dangers as Ralph. He felt verysorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasantman, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done.There was always something to be done, for Goodwood, and he did it inthis case by repeating several times his visit to the Hotel de Paris.It seemed to Isabel that she had been very clever; she had artfullydisposed of the superfluous Caspar. She had given him an occupation shehad converted him into a caretaker of Ralph. She had a plan of makinghim travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weathershould allow it. Lord Warburton had brought Ralph to Rome and Mr.Goodwood should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this,and she was now intensely eager that Ralph should depart. She had aconstant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of theoccurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarelyentered. Ralph must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, inone of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy wouldcluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Isabelin these days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the pastwas more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she hadspent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as Isay, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster;for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. TheCountess Gemini arrived from Florence--arrived with her trunks, herdresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, theunholy legend of the number of her lovers. Edward Rosier, who had beenaway somewhere,--no one, not even Pansy, knew where,--reappeared in Romeand began to write her long letters, which she never answered. MadameMerle returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: "Whaton earth did you do with Lord Warburton?" As if it were any business ofhers!