by Henry James
She turned away from him, walked to the open window and stood a moment looking into the dusky void of the street, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social animation. For some time neither of these young persons spoke; Caspar lingered near the chimney-piece with eyes gloomily attached. She had virtually requested him to go—he knew that; but at the risk of making himself odious he kept his ground. She was far too dear to him to be easily renounced, and he had crossed the sea all to wring from her some scrap of a vow. Presently she left the window and stood again before him. “You do me very little justice— after my telling you what I told you just now. I’m sorry I told you—since it matters so little to you.”
“Ah,” cried the young man, “if you were thinking of ME when you did it!” And then he paused with the fear that she might contradict so happy a thought.
“I was thinking of you a little,” said Isabel.
“A little? I don’t understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you had any weight with you at all, calling it a ‘little’ is a poor account of it.”
Isabel shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. “I’ve refused a most kind, noble gentleman. Make the most of that.”
“I thank you then,” said Caspar Goodwood gravely. “I thank you immensely.”
“And now you had better go home.”
“May I not see you again?” he asked.
“I think it’s better not. You’ll be sure to talk of this, and you see it leads to nothing.”
“I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.”
Isabel reflected and then answered: “I return in a day or two to my uncle’s, and I can’t propose to you to come there. It would be too inconsistent.”
Caspar Goodwood, on his side, considered. “You must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle’s more than a week ago, and I declined it.”
She betrayed surprise. “From whom was your invitation?”
“From Mr. Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorisation to accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole.”
“It certainly never did from me. Henrietta really goes very far,” Isabel added.
“Don’t be too hard on her—that touches ME.”
“No; if you declined you did quite right, and I thank you for it.” And she gave a little shudder of dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr. Goodwood might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward for Lord Warburton.
“When you leave your uncle where do you go?” her companion asked.
“I go abroad with my aunt—to Florence and other places.”
The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man’s heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his questions. “And when shall you come back to America?”
“Perhaps not for a long time. I’m very happy here.”
“Do you mean to give up your country?”
“Don’t be an infant!”
“Well, you’ll be out of my sight indeed!” said Caspar Goodwood.
“I don’t know,” she answered rather grandly. “The world—with all these places so arranged and so touching each other—comes to strike one as rather small.”
“It’s a sight too big for ME!” Caspar exclaimed with a simplicity our young lady might have found touching if her face had not been set against concessions.
This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment: “Don’t think me unkind if I say it’s just THAT—being out of your sight— that I like. If you were in the same place I should feel you were watching me, and I don’t like that—I like my liberty too much. If there’s a thing in the world I’m fond of,” she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur, “it’s my personal independence.”
But whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved Caspar Goodwood’s admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the large air of it. He had never supposed she hadn’t wings and the need of beautiful free movements—he wasn’t, with his own long arms and strides, afraid of any force in her. Isabel’s words, if they had been meant to shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the sense that here was common ground. “Who would wish less to curtail your liberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent—doing whatever you like? It’s to make you independent that I want to marry you.”
“That’s a beautiful sophism,” said the girl with a smile more beautiful still.
“An unmarried woman—a girl of your age—isn’t independent. There are all sorts of things she can’t do. She’s hampered at every step.”
“That’s as she looks at the question,” Isabel answered with much spirit. “I’m not in my first youth—I can do what I choose—I belong quite to the independent class. I’ve neither father nor mother; I’m poor and of a serious disposition; I’m not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and conventional; indeed I can’t afford such luxuries. Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. I don’t wish to be a mere sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me.” She paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently on the point of doing so when she went on: “Let me say this to you, Mr. Goodwood. You’re so kind as to speak of being afraid of my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I’m on the point of doing so—girls are liable to have such things said about them—remember what I have told you about my love of liberty and venture to doubt it.”
There was something passionately positive in the tone in which she gave him this advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped him to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you might have perceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly: “You want simply to travel for two years? I’m quite willing to wait two years, and you may do what you like in the interval. If that’s all you want, pray say so. I don’t want you to be conventional; do I strike you as conventional myself? Do you want to improve your mind? Your mind’s quite good enough for me; but if it interests you to wander about a while and see different countries I shall be delighted to help you in any way in my power.”
“You’re very generous; that’s nothing new to me. The best way to help me will be to put as many hundred miles of sea between us as possible.”
“One would think you were going to commit some atrocity!” said Caspar Goodwood.
“Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that if the fancy takes me.”
“Well then,” he said slowly, “I’ll go home.” And he put out his hand, trying to look contented and confident.
Isabel’s confidence in him, however, was greater than any he could feel in her. Not that he thought her capable of committing an atrocity; but, turn it over as he would, there was something ominous in the way she reserved her option. As she took his hand she felt a great respect for him; she knew how much he cared for her and she thought him magnanimous. They stood so for a moment, looking at each other, united by a hand-clasp which was not merely passive on her side. “That’s right,” she said very kindly, almost tenderly. “You’ll lose nothing by being a reasonable man.”
“But I’ll come back, wherever you are, two years hence,” he returned with characteristic grimness.
We have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at this she suddenly changed her note. “Ah, remember, I promise nothing— absolutely nothing!” Then more softly, as if to help him to leave her: “And remember too that I shall not be an easy victim!”
“You’ll get very sick of your independence.”
“Perhaps I shall; it’s even very probable. When that day comes I shall be very glad to see you.”
She had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into her room, and she waited a moment to see whether her visitor would not take his departure. But he appeared unable to move; there was still an immense unwillingness in his attitude and a sore remonstrance in his eyes. “I must leave you now,” said Isabel; and she opened the door and passed into the other room.
This apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by a vague radiance sent up through the window from the court of the hotel, and Isabel could make out the masses of the furniture, the dim shining of the mirror and the looming of the big four-posted bed. She stood still a moment, listening, and at last she heard Caspar Goodwood walk out of the sitting-room and close the door behind him. She stood still a little longer, and then, by an irresistible impulse, dropped on her knees before her bed and hid her face in her arms.
CHAPTER 17
She was not praying; she was trembling—trembling all over. Vibration was easy to her, was in fact too constant with her, and she found herself now humming like a smitten harp. She only asked, however, to put on the cover, to case herself again in brown holland, but she wished to resist her excitement, and the attitude of devotion, which she kept for some time, seemed to help her to be still. She intensely rejoiced that Caspar Goodwood was gone; there was something in having thus got rid of him that was like the payment, for a stamped receipt, of some debt too long on her mind. As she felt the glad relief she bowed her head a little lower; the sense was there, throbbing in her heart; it was part of her emotion, but it was a thing to be ashamed of—it was profane and out of place. It was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and even when she came back to the sitting-room her tremor had not quite subsided. It had had, verily, two causes: part of it was to be accounted for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might be feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair again and took up her book, but without going through the form of opening the volume. She leaned back, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often uttered her response to accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent suitors in a fortnight. That love of liberty of which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a sketch was as yet almost exclusively theoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it appeared to her she had done something; she had tasted of the delight, if not of battle, at least of victory; she had done what was truest to her plan. In the glow of this consciousness the image of Mr. Goodwood taking his sad walk homeward through the dingy town presented itself with a certain reproachful force; so that, as at the same moment the door of the room was opened, she rose with an apprehension that he had come back. But it was only Henrietta Stackpole returning from her dinner.
Miss Stackpole immediately saw that our young lady had been “through” something, and indeed the discovery demanded no great penetration. She went straight up to her friend, who received her without a greeting. Isabel’s elation in having sent Caspar Goodwood back to America presupposed her being in a manner glad he had come to see her; but at the same time she perfectly remembered Henrietta had had no right to set a trap for her. “Has he been here, dear?” the latter yearningly asked.
Isabel turned away and for some moments answered nothing. “You acted very wrongly,” she declared at last.
“I acted for the best. I only hope you acted as well.”
“You’re not the judge. I can’t trust you,” said Isabel.
This declaration was unflattering, but Henrietta was much too unselfish to heed the charge it conveyed; she cared only for what it intimated with regard to her friend. “Isabel Archer,” she observed with equal abruptness and solemnity, “if you marry one of these people I’ll never speak to you again!”
“Before making so terrible a threat you had better wait till I’m asked,” Isabel replied. Never having said a word to Miss Stackpole about Lord Warburton’s overtures, she had now no impulse whatever to justify herself to Henrietta by telling her that she had refused that nobleman.
“Oh, you’ll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the Continent. Annie Climber was asked three times in Italy—poor plain little Annie.”
“Well, if Annie Climber wasn’t captured why should I be?”
“I don’t believe Annie was pressed; but you’ll be.”
“That’s a flattering conviction,” said Isabel without alarm.
“I don’t flatter you, Isabel, I tell you the truth!” cried her friend. “I hope you don’t mean to tell me that you didn’t give Mr. Goodwood some hope.”
“I don’t see why I should tell you anything; as I said to you just now, I can’t trust you. But since you’re so much interested in Mr. Goodwood I won’t conceal from you that he returns immediately to America.”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve sent him off?” Henrietta almost shrieked.
“I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, Henrietta.” Miss Stackpole glittered for an instant with dismay, and then passed to the mirror over the chimney-piece and took off her bonnet. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your dinner,” Isabel went on.
But her companion was not to be diverted by frivolous propositions. “Do you know where you’re going, Isabel Archer?”
“Just now I’m going to bed,” said Isabel with persistent frivolity.
“Do you know where you’re drifting?” Henrietta pursued, holding out her bonnet delicately.
“No, I haven’t the least idea, and I find it very pleasant not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see—that’s my idea of happiness.”
“Mr. Goodwood certainly didn’t teach you to say such things as that—like the heroine of an immoral novel,” said Miss Stackpole. “You’re drifting to some great mistake.”
Isabel was irritated by her friend’s interference, yet she still tried to think what truth this declaration could represent. She could think of nothing that diverted her from saying: “You must be very fond of me, Henrietta, to be willing to be so aggressive.”
“I love you intensely, Isabel,” said Miss Stackpole with feeling,
“Well, if you love me intensely let me as intensely alone. I asked that of Mr. Goodwood, and I must also ask it of you.”
“Take care you’re not let alone too much.”
“That’s what Mr. Goodwood said to me. I told him I must take the risks.”
“You’re a creature of risks—you make me shudder!” cried Henrietta. “When does Mr. Goodwood return to America?”
“I don’t know—he didn’t tell me.”
“Perhaps you didn’t enquire,” said Henrietta with the note of righteous irony.
“I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask questions of him.”
This assertion seemed to Miss Stackpole for a moment to bid defiance to comment; but at last she exclaimed: “Well, Isabel, if I didn’t know you I might think you were heartless!”
“Take care,” said Isabel; “you’re spoiling me.”
“I’m afraid I’ve done that already. I hope, at least,” Miss Stackpole added, “that he may cross with Annie Climber!”
Isabel learned from her the next morning that she had determined not to return to Gardencourt (where old Mr. Touchett had promised her a renewed welcome), but to await in London the arrival of the invitation that Mr. Bantling had promised her from his sister Lady Pensil. Miss Stackpole related very freely her conversation with Ralph Touchett’s sociable friend and declared to Isabel that she really believed she had now got hold of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of Lady Pensil’s letter—Mr. Bantling had virtually guaranteed the arrival of this document—she would immediately depart for Bedfordshire, and if Isabel cared to look out for her impressions in the Interviewer she would certainly find them. Henrietta was evidently going to see something of the inner life this time.
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�Do you know where you’re drifting, Henrietta Stackpole?” Isabel asked, imitating the tone in which her friend had spoken the night before.
“I’m drifting to a big position—that of the Queen of American Journalism. If my next letter isn’t copied all over the West I’ll swallow my penwiper!”
She had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the young lady of the continental offers, that they should go together to make those purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber’s farewell to a hemisphere in which she at least had been appreciated; and she presently repaired to Jermyn Street to pick up her companion. Shortly after her departure Ralph Touchett was announced, and as soon as he came in Isabel saw he had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his confidence. He had received from his mother a telegram to the effect that his father had had a sharp attack of his old malady, that she was much alarmed and that she begged he would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occasion at least Mrs. Touchett’s devotion to the electric wire was not open to criticism.