The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “Ah yes, if she isn’t the rose she has lived near it.”

  She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete hilarity. “We all try to live as near it as we can,” he said after a moment’s hesitation.

  Isabel turned away; Pansy was about to be restored to her, and she welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Lord Warburton; she thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of nature. Yet for all that it didn’t suit her that he should be too near her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn’t. She felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to flash out and bid him keep his distance. Pansy came back to Isabel with another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the first and which she displayed to Isabel with serious eyes. There were too many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent that the resources of women are innumerable. Isabel devoted herself to Pansy’s desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way connected—a lively conjecture as to whether Lord Warburton might be trying to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was what she thought about while she pinned up Pansy’s dress. If it were so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken account of his intention. But this made it none the more auspicious, made the situation none less impossible. The sooner he should get back into right relations with things the better. He immediately began to talk to Pansy—on whom it was certainly mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion. Pansy replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his robust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if she knew that he knew she liked him. Isabel left them together a little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked till the music of the following dance began, for which she knew Pansy to be also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered flush, and Isabel, who scrupulously took Osmond’s view of his daughter’s complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Pansy’s extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Osmond had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter’s duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think she obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.

  After Pansy had been led away, she found Lord Warburton drawing near her again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound his thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. “She has promised to dance with me later,” he said.

  “I’m glad of that. I suppose you’ve engaged her for the cotillion.”

  At this he looked a little awkward. “No, I didn’t ask her for that. It’s a quadrille.”

  “Ah, you’re not clever!” said Isabel almost angrily. “I told her to keep the cotillion in case you should ask for it.”

  “Poor little maid, fancy that!” And Lord Warburton laughed frankly. “Of course I will if you like.”

  “If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it—!”

  “I’m afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her book.”

  Isabel dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Lord Warburton stood there looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined to ask him to remove them. She didn’t do so, however; she only said to him, after a minute, with her own raised: “Please let me understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “You told me ten days ago that you’d like to marry my stepdaughter. You’ve not forgotten it!”

  “Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Osmond about it this morning.”

  “Ah,” said Isabel, “he didn’t mention to me that he had heard from you.”

  Lord Warburton stammered a little. “I—I didn’t send my letter.”

  “Perhaps you forgot THAT.”

  “No, I wasn’t satisfied with it. It’s an awkward sort of letter to write, you know. But I shall send it to-night.”

  “At three o’clock in the morning?”

  “I mean later, in the course of the day.”

  “Very good. You still wish then to marry her?”

  “Very much indeed.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll bore her?” And as her companion stared at this enquiry Isabel added: “If she can’t dance with you for half an hour how will she be able to dance with you for life?”

  “Ah,” said Lord Warburton readily, “I’ll let her dance with other people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you— that you—”

  “That I would do it with you? I told you I’d do nothing.”

  “Exactly; so that while it’s going on I might find some quiet corner where we may sit down and talk.”

  “Oh,” said Isabel gravely, “you’re much too considerate of me.”

  When the cotillion came Pansy was found to have engaged herself, thinking, in perfect humility, that Lord Warburton had no intentions. Isabel recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that he would dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite of the remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the ground that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to make an exception in Lord Warburton’s favour.

  “After all I don’t care to dance,” he said; “it’s a barbarous amusement: I’d much rather talk.” And he intimated that he had discovered exactly the corner he had been looking for—a quiet nook in one of the smaller rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere with conversation. Isabel had decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him, though she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his daughter. It was with his daughter’s pretendant, however; that would make it right for Osmond. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon Edward Rosier, who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking at the dance in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She stopped a moment and asked him if he were not dancing.

  “Certainly not, if I can’t dance with HER!” he answered.

  “You had better go away then,” said Isabel with the manner of good counsel.

  “I shall not go till she does!” And he let Lord Warburton pass without giving him a look.

  This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he asked Isabel who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him somewhere before.

  “It’s the young man I’ve told you about, who’s in love with Pansy.”

  “Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.”

  “He has reason. My husband won’t listen to him.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” Lord Warburton enquired. “He seems very harmless.”

  “He hasn’t money enough, and he isn’t very clever.”

  Lord Warburton listened with interest; h
e seemed struck with this account of Edward Rosier. “Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young fellow.”

  “So he is, but my husband’s very particular.”

  “Oh, I see.” And Lord Warburton paused a moment. “How much money has he got?” he then ventured to ask.

  “Some forty thousand francs a year.”

  “Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that’s very good, you know.”

  “So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.”

  “Yes; I’ve noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really an idiot, the young man?”

  “An idiot? Not in the least; he’s charming. When he was twelve years old I myself was in love with him.”

  “He doesn’t look much more than twelve to-day,” Lord Warburton rejoined vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, “Don’t you think we might sit here?” he asked.

  “Wherever you please.” The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as our friends came in. “It’s very kind of you to take such an interest in Mr. Rosier,” Isabel said.

  “He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I wondered what ailed him.”

  “You’re a just man,” said Isabel. “You’ve a kind thought even for a rival.”

  Lord Warburton suddenly turned with a stare. “A rival! Do you call him my rival?”

  “Surely—if you both wish to marry the same person.”

  “Yes—but since he has no chance!”

  “I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It shows imagination.”

  “You like me for it?” And Lord Warburton looked at her with an uncertain eye. “I think you mean you’re laughing at me for it.”

  “Yes, I’m laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh at.”

  “Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you suppose one could do for him?”

  “Since I have been praising your imagination I’ll leave you to imagine that yourself,” Isabel said. “Pansy too would like you for that.”

  “Miss Osmond? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.”

  “Very much, I think.”

  He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. “Well then, I don’t understand you. You don’t mean that she cares for him?”

  A quick blush sprang to his brow. “You told me she would have no wish apart from her father’s, and as I’ve gathered that he would favour me—!” He paused a little and then suggested “Don’t you see?” through his blush.

  “Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it would probably take her very far.”

  “That seems to me a very proper feeling,” said Lord Warburton.

  “Certainly; it’s a very proper feeling.” Isabel remained silent for some moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she said: “But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man would wish to be indebted for a wife.”

  “I don’t know; if the wife’s a good one and he thinks she does well!”

  “Yes, of course you must think that.”

  “I do; I can’t help it. You call that very British, of course.”

  “No, I don’t. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don’t know who should know it better than you. But you’re not in love.”

  “Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Osmond!”

  Isabel shook her head. “You like to think you are while you sit here with me. But that’s not how you strike me.”

  “I’m not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss Osmond?”

  “No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.”

  “I don’t agree with you. I’m delighted to have good reasons.”

  “Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn’t care a straw for them.”

  “Ah, really in love—really in love!” Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. “You must remember that I’m forty-two years old. I won’t pretend I’m as I once was.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” said Isabel, “it’s all right.”

  He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his friend. “Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?” She met his eyes, and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account—that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.

  “My dear Lord Warburton,” she said, smiling, “you may do, so far as I’m concerned, whatever comes into your head.”

  And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where, within her companion’s view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away—all the more as Lord Warburton didn’t follow her. She was glad of this, however, and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. “You did right not to go away. I’ve some comfort for you.”

  “I need it,” the young man softly wailed, “when I see you so awfully thick with him!”

  “Don’t speak of him; I’ll do what I can for you. I’m afraid it won’t be much, but what I can I’ll do.”

  He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. “What has suddenly brought you round?”

  “The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!” she answered, smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it approached Lord Warburton came out of the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured gently: “Don’t forget to send your letter to her father!”

  CHAPTER 44

  The Countess Gemini was often extremely bored—bored, in her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more explanation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all s
he could say. Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter’s. They are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The Countess apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one had heard of. Since her brother’s marriage her impatience had greatly increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as Isabel, but she was intellectual enough to do justice to Rome—not to the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Isabel was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the first winter of her brother’s marriage, but she had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Osmond didn’t want her—that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn’t care two straws about Osmond. It was her husband who wouldn’t let her, and the money question was always a trouble. Isabel had been very nice; the Countess, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Isabel’s personal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with clever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones—the really clever ones—always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that, different as they were in appearance and general style, Isabel and she had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived, with Mrs. Osmond, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was constantly expecting that Isabel would “look down” on her, and she as constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor Countess as little contempt as admiration. In reality Isabel would as soon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband’s sister, however; she was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her very extraordinary. The Countess seemed to her to have no soul; she was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably pink lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle was apparently the Countess’s spiritual principle, a little loose nut that tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous for comparisons. Isabel would have invited her again (there was no question of inviting the Count); but Osmond, after his marriage, had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species —a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it all away—in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the Countess’s going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Osmond himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the marriage she had been sorry for Isabel, so sorry as to have had serious thoughts—if any of the Countess’s thoughts were serious—of putting her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was reassured. Osmond was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an easy victim. The Countess was not very exact at measurements, but it seemed to her that if Isabel should draw herself up she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether Isabel had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see Osmond overtopped.