by Henry James
“I like your specimen English gentleman very much,” Isabel said to Ralph after Lord Warburton had gone.
“I like him too—I love him well,” Ralph returned. “But I pity him more.”
Isabel looked at him askance. “Why, that seems to me his only fault—that one can’t pity him a little. He appears to have everything, to know everything, to be everything.”
“Oh, he’s in a bad way!” Ralph insisted.
“I suppose you don’t mean in health?”
“No, as to that he’s detestably sound. What I mean is that he’s a man with a great position who’s playing all sorts of tricks with it. He doesn’t take himself seriously.”
“Does he regard himself as a joke?”
“Much worse; he regards himself as an imposition—as an abuse.”
“Well, perhaps he is,” said Isabel.
“Perhaps he is—though on the whole I don’t think so. But in that case what’s more pitiable than a sentient, self-conscious abuse planted by other hands, deeply rooted but aching with a sense of its injustice? For me, in his place, I could be as solemn as a statue of Buddha. He occupies a position that appeals to my imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, great consideration, great wealth, great power, a natural share in the public affairs of a great country. But he’s all in a muddle about himself, his position, his power, and indeed about everything in the world. He’s the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn’t know what to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful Philistine; he says I don’t understand my time. I understand it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as an institution.”
“He doesn’t look very wretched,” Isabel observed.
“Possibly not; though, being a man of a good deal of charming taste, I think he often has uncomfortable hours. But what is it to say of a being of his opportunities that he’s not miserable? Besides, I believe he is.”
“I don’t,” said Isabel.
“Well,” her cousin rejoined, “if he isn’t he ought to be!”
In the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the lawn, where the old man sat, as usual, with his shawl over his legs and his large cup of diluted tea in his hands. In the course of conversation he asked her what she thought of their late visitor.
Isabel was prompt. “I think he’s charming.”
“He’s a nice person,” said Mr. Touchett, “but I don’t recommend you to fall in love with him.”
“I shall not do it then; I shall never fall in love but on your recommendation. Moreover,” Isabel added, “my cousin gives me rather a sad account of Lord Warburton.”
“Oh, indeed? I don’t know what there may be to say, but you must remember that Ralph must talk.”
“He thinks your friend’s too subversive—or not subversive enough! I don’t quite understand which,” said Isabel.
The old man shook his head slowly, smiled and put down his cup. “I don’t know which either. He goes very far, but it’s quite possible he doesn’t go far enough. He seems to want to do away with a good many things, but he seems to want to remain himself. I suppose that’s natural, but it’s rather inconsistent.”
“Oh, I hope he’ll remain himself,” said Isabel. “If he were to be done away with his friends would miss him sadly.”
“Well,” said the old man, “I guess he’ll stay and amuse his friends. I should certainly miss him very much here at Gardencourt. He always amuses me when he comes over, and I think he amuses himself as well. There’s a considerable number like him, round in society; they’re very fashionable just now. I don’t know what they’re trying to do—whether they’re trying to get up a revolution. I hope at any rate they’ll put it off till after I’m gone. You see they want to disestablish everything; but I’m a pretty big landowner here, and I don’t want to be disestablished. I wouldn’t have come over if I had thought they were going to behave like that,” Mr. Touchett went on with expanding hilarity. “I came over because I thought England was a safe country. I call it a regular fraud if they are going to introduce any considerable changes; there’ll be a large number disappointed in that case.”
“Oh, I do hope they’ll make a revolution!” Isabel exclaimed. “I should delight in seeing a revolution.”
“Let me see,” said her uncle, with a humorous intention; “I forget whether you’re on the side of the old or on the side of the new. I’ve heard you take such opposite views.”
“I’m on the side of both. I guess I’m a little on the side of everything. In a revolution—after it was well begun—I think I should be a high, proud loyalist. One sympathises more with them, and they’ve a chance to behave so exquisitely. I mean so picturesquely.”
“I don’t know that I understand what you mean by behaving picturesquely, but it seems to me that you do that always, my dear.”
“Oh, you lovely man, if I could believe that!” the girl interrupted.
“I’m afraid, after all, you won’t have the pleasure of going gracefully to the guillotine here just now,” Mr. Touchett went on. “If you want to see a big outbreak you must pay us a long visit. You see, when you come to the point it wouldn’t suit them to be taken at their word.”
“Of whom are you speaking?”
“Well, I mean Lord Warburton and his friends—the radicals of the upper class. Of course I only know the way it strikes me. They talk about the changes, but I don’t think they quite realise. You and I, you know, we know what it is to have lived under democratic institutions: I always thought them very comfortable, but I was used to them from the first. And then I ain’t a lord; you’re a lady, my dear, but I ain’t a lord. Now over here I don’t think it quite comes home to them. It’s a matter of every day and every hour, and I don’t think many of them would find it as pleasant as what they’ve got. Of course if they want to try, it’s their own business; but I expect they won’t try very hard.”
“Don’t you think they’re sincere?” Isabel asked.
“Well, they want to FEEL earnest,” Mr. Touchett allowed; “but it seems as if they took it out in theories mostly. Their radical views are a kind of amusement; they’ve got to have some amusement, and they might have coarser tastes than that. You see they’re very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are about their biggest luxury. They make them feel moral and yet don’t damage their position. They think a great deal of their position; don’t let one of them ever persuade you he doesn’t, for if you were to proceed on that basis you’d be pulled up very short.”
Isabel followed her uncle’s argument, which he unfolded with his quaint distinctness, most attentively, and though she was unacquainted with the British aristocracy she found it in harmony with her general impressions of human nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Lord Warburton’s behalf. “I don’t believe Lord Warburton’s a humbug; I don’t care what the others are. I should like to see Lord Warburton put to the test.”
“Heaven deliver me from my friends!” Mr. Touchett answered. “Lord Warburton’s a very amiable young man—a very fine young man. He has a hundred thousand a year. He owns fifty thousand acres of the soil of this little island and ever so many other things besides. He has half a dozen houses to live in. He has a seat in Parliament as I have one at my own dinner-table. He has elegant tastes—cares for literature, for art, for science, for charming young ladies. The most elegant is his taste for the new views. It affords him a great deal of pleasure—more perhaps than anything else, except the young ladies. His old house over there—what does he call it, Lockleigh?—is very attractive; but I don’t think it’s as pleasant as this. That doesn’t matter, however—he has so many others. His views don’t hurt any one as far as I can see; they certainly don’t hurt himself. And if there were to be a revolution he would come off very easily. They wouldn’t touch him, the
y’d leave him as he is: he’s too much liked.”
“Ah, he couldn’t be a martyr even if he wished!” Isabel sighed. “That’s a very poor position.”
“He’ll never be a martyr unless you make him one,” said the old man.
Isabel shook her head; there might have been something laughable in the fact that she did it with a touch of melancholy. “I shall never make any one a martyr.”
“You’ll never be one, I hope.”
“I hope not. But you don’t pity Lord Warburton then as Ralph does?”
Her uncle looked at her a while with genial acuteness. “Yes, I do, after all!”
CHAPTER 9
The two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman’s sisters, came presently to call upon her, and Isabel took a fancy to the young ladies, who appeared to her to show a most original stamp. It is true that when she described them to her cousin by that term he declared that no epithet could be less applicable than this to the two Misses Molyneux, since there were fifty thousand young women in England who exactly resembled them. Deprived of this advantage, however, Isabel’s visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanour, and of having, as she thought, eyes like the balanced basins, the circles of “ornamental water,” set, in parterres, among the geraniums.
“They’re not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are,” our heroine said to herself; and she deemed this a great charm, for two or three of the friends of her girlhood had been regrettably open to the charge (they would have been so nice without it), to say nothing of Isabel’s having occasionally suspected it as a tendency of her own. The Misses Molyneux were not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh complexions and something of the smile of childhood. Yes, their eyes, which Isabel admired, were round, quiet and contented, and their figures, also of a generous roundness, were encased in sealskin jackets. Their friendliness was great, so great that they were almost embarrassed to show it; they seemed somewhat afraid of the young lady from the other side of the world and rather looked than spoke their good wishes. But they made it clear to her that they hoped she would come to luncheon at Lockleigh, where they lived with their brother, and then they might see her very, very often. They wondered if she wouldn’t come over some day, and sleep: they were expecting some people on the twenty-ninth, so perhaps she would come while the people were there.
“I’m afraid it isn’t any one very remarkable,” said the elder sister; “but I dare say you’ll take us as you find us.”
“I shall find you delightful; I think you’re enchanting just as you are,” replied Isabel, who often praised profusely.
Her visitors flushed, and her cousin told her, after they were gone, that if she said such things to those poor girls they would think she was in some wild, free manner practising on them: he was sure it was the first time they had been called enchanting.
“I can’t help it,” Isabel answered. “I think it’s lovely to be so quiet and reasonable and satisfied. I should like to be like that.”
“Heaven forbid!” cried Ralph with ardour.
“I mean to try and imitate them,” said Isabel. “I want very much to see them at home.”
She had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Ralph and his mother, she drove over to Lockleigh. She found the Misses Molyneux sitting in a vast drawing-room (she perceived afterwards it was one of several) in a wilderness of faded chintz; they were dressed on this occasion in black velveteen. Isabel liked them even better at home than she had done at Gardencourt, and was more than ever struck with the fact that they were not morbid. It had seemed to her before that if they had a fault it was a want of play of mind; but she presently saw they were capable of deep emotion. Before luncheon she was alone with them for some time, on one side of the room, while Lord Warburton, at a distance, talked to Mrs. Touchett.
“Is it true your brother’s such a great radical?” Isabel asked. She knew it was true, but we have seen that her interest in human nature was keen, and she had a desire to draw the Misses Molyneux out.
“Oh dear, yes; he’s immensely advanced,” said Mildred, the younger sister.
“At the same time Warburton’s very reasonable,” Miss Molyneux observed.
Isabel watched him a moment at the other side of the room; he was clearly trying hard to make himself agreeable to Mrs. Touchett. Ralph had met the frank advances of one of the dogs before the fire that the temperature of an English August, in the ancient expanses, had not made an impertinence. “Do you suppose your brother’s sincere?” Isabel enquired with a smile.