She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and half surprised at her coolness.
“They told me you were out here,” said Lord Warburton; “and as there was no one in the drawing-room and it’s really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado.”
Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. “I was just going indoors.”
“Please don’t do that; it’s much jollier here; I’ve ridden over from Lockleigh; it’s a lovely day.” His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl’s first impression of him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.
“We’ll walk about a little then,” said Isabel, who could not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity about it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days in analysing them and had succeeded in separating the pleasant part of the idea of Lord Warburton’s “making up” to her from the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from such a source carrying with it really more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong impression of his being a “personage,” and she had occupied herself in examining the image so conveyed. At the risk of adding to the evidence of her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been moments when this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage; there had been no personages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at all in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit—of what one might like in a gentleman’s mind and in his talk. She herself was a character—she couldn’t help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely with moral images—things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation—an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to demand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist—murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things besides—things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be very interesting to see something of his system from his own point of view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour, and that even in the whole there was something stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there was a young man lately come from America who had no system at all, but who had a character of which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been light. The letter she carried in her pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who debated whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered himself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute almost a direct appeal to charity.
Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, assuredly—as we have touched on the point, we may return to it for a moment again—the English are the most romantic people in the world and Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this—the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations.
“I hope you had a pleasant ride,” said Isabel, who observed her companion’s hesitancy.
“It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me here.”
“Are you so fond of Gardencourt?” the girl asked, more and more sure that he meant to make some appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by a “great” (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from the outside.
“I care nothing for Gardencourt,” said her companion. “I care only for you.”
“You’ve known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I can’t believe you’re serious.”
These words of Isabel’s were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he himself was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he had just uttered would have excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton was not a loose thinker had been needed to convince her, the tone in which he replied would quite have served the purpose.
“One’s right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer; it’s measured by the feeling itself. If I were to wait three months it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I’ve seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that’s not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don’t know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid—mentally speaking I mean—the greatest possible attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the other day—or rather when you went away—I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it over and to question myself narrowly. I’ve done so; all these days I’ve done nothing else. I don’t make mistakes about such things; I’m a very judicious animal. I don’t go off easily, but when I’m touched, it’s for life. It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life,” Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion—the heat, the violence, the unreason—and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place.
By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and he took her hand. “Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me!” Isabel said very gently. Gently too she drew her hand away.
“Don’t taunt me with that; that I don’t know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it’s all my loss. But that’s what I want, and it seems to me I’m taking the best way. If you’ll be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you’ll not be able to say it’s from ignorance.”
“If you know me little I know you even less,” said Isabel.
“You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that’s very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do like me rather, don’t you?”
“I like you very much, Lord Warburton,” she answered; and at this moment she liked him immensely.
“I thank you for saying that; it shows you don’t regard me as a stranger. I really believe I’ve filled all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t fill this one—in which I offer myself to you—seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well; I’ve friends who’ll speak for me.”
“I don’t need the recommendation of your friends,” said Isabel.
“Ah now, that’s delightful of you. You believe in me yourself.”
“Completely,” Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the pleasure of feeling she did.
The light in her companion’s eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy. “If you’re mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I possess!”
She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he didn’t. He was thinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say something if possible not less kind than what he had said to her. His words had carried perfect conviction with them; she felt she did, all so mysteriously, matter to him. “I thank you more than I can say for your offer,” she returned at last. “It does me great honour.”
“Ah, don’t say that!” he broke out. “I was afraid you’d say something like that. I don’t see what you’ve to do with that sort of thing. I don’t see why you should thank me—it’s I who ought to thank you for listening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such a thumper! Of course it’s a great question; I must tell you that I’d rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you’ve listened—or at least your having listened at all—gives me some hope.”
“Don’t hope too much,” Isabel said.
“Oh Miss Archer!” her companion murmured, smiling again, in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits, the exuberance of elation.
“Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?” Isabel asked.
“Surprised? I don’t know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn’t be that; it would be a feeling very much worse.”
Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. “I’m very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I’m by no means sure that you wouldn’t be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty; it’s perfectly sincere.”
“I’m willing to risk it, Miss Archer,” her companion replied.
“It’s a great question, as you say. It’s a very difficult question.”
“I don’t expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting I’ll gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends on your answer.”
“I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense,” said Isabel.
“Oh, don’t mind. I’d much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one to-day.”
“But it’s very probable that even six months hence I shouldn’t be able to give you one that you’d think good.”
“Why not, since you really like me?”
“Ah, you must never doubt that,” said Isabel.
“Well then, I don’t see what more you ask!”
“It’s not what I ask; it’s what I can give. I don’t think I should suit you; I really don’t think I should.”
“You needn’t worry about that. That’s my affair. You needn’t be a better royalist than the king.”
“It’s not only that,” said Isabel; “but I’m not sure I wish to marry any one.”
“Very likely you don’t. I’ve no doubt a great many women begin that way,” said his lordship, who, be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. “But they’re frequently persuaded.”
“Ah, that’s because they want to be!” And Isabel lightly laughed. Her suitor’s countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence. “I’m afraid it’s my being an Englishman that makes you hesitate,” he said presently. “I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own country.”
Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. “Has he told you that?”
“I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans generally.”
“He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England.” Isabel spoke in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle’s outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view.
It gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: “Ah, my dear Miss Archer, old England’s a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we’ve furbished it up a little.”
“Oh, don’t furbish it, Lord Warburton—, leave it alone. I like it this way.”
“Well then, if you like it, I’m more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose.”
“I’m afraid I can’t make you understand.”
“You ought at least to try. I’ve a fair intelligence. Are you afraid—afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over.”
These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms—that was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: “Lord Warburton, it’s impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty.” But though she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. The “splendid” security so offered her was not the greatest she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was something very different—something that deferred the need of really facing her crisis. “Don’t think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day.”
“Certainly, certainly!” her companion cried. “I wouldn’t bore you for the world.”
“You’ve given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it justice.”
“That’s all I ask of you, of course—and that you’ll remember how absolutely my happiness is in your hands.”
Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute: “I must tell you that what I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible—letting you know it without making you miserable.”
“There’s no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won’t say that if you refuse me you’ll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose.”
“You’ll live to marry a better woman than I.”
“Don’t say that, please,” said Lord Warburton very gravely. “That’s fair to neither of us.”
“To marry a worse one then.”
“If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That’s all I can say,” he went on with the same earnestness. “There’s no accounting for tastes.”
His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. “I’ll speak to you myself—very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you.”
“At your convenience, yes,” he replied. “Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that.”
“I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a little.”
He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. “Do you know I’m very much afraid of it—of that remarkable mind of yours?”
Our heroine’s biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion, “So am I, my lord!” she oddly exclaimed.
His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty of pity was needed at home. “Ah! be merciful, be merciful,” he murmured.
“I think you had better go,” said Isabel. “I’ll write to you.”
“Very good; but whatever you write I’ll come and see you, you know.” And then he stood reflecting, his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having understood all that had been said and of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots of an ancient oak. “There’s one thing more,” he went on. “You know, if you don’t like Lockleigh—if you think it’s damp or anything of that sort—you need never go within fifty miles of it. It’s not damp, by the way; I’ve had the house thoroughly examined; it’s perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn’t fancy it you needn’t dream of living in it. There’s no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I’d just mention it; some people don’t like a moat, you know. Good-bye.”
“I adore a moat,” said Isabel. “Good-bye.”
He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment—a moment long enough for him to bend his handsome bared head and kiss it. Then, still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently much upset.
Isabel herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility, a great difficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no choice in the question. She couldn’t marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour of the free exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must convince him, and that duty was comparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a magnificent “chance.” With whatever qualifications one would, Lord Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the situation might have discomforts, might contain oppressive, might contain narrowing elements, might prove really but a stupefying anodyne; but she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of twenty would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then upon her also should it not irresistibly impose itself? Who was she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be larger than these large these fabulous occasions? If she wouldn’t do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor Isabel found ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a bêtise was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition—as he saw it—even though she mightn’t put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.
It was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice—she had no desire whatever for that—that led her to speak to her uncle of what had taken place. She wished to speak to some one; she should feel more natural, more human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt or her friend Henrietta. Her cousin of course was a possible confidant; but she would have had to do herself violence to air this special secret to Ralph. So the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. Isabel had quite taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, included the old man’s son, his physician, his personal servant, and even Miss Stackpole. Mrs. Touchett did not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the less to Isabel’s finding her host alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the open window of his room, looking westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent expectation.
She approached her point directly. “I think I ought to let you know that Lord Warburton has asked me to marry him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first.”
The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence she showed him. “Do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?” he then enquired.
“I’ve not answered him definitely yet; I’ve taken a little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall not accept him.”
Mr. Touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that, whatever interest he might take in the matter from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it. “Well, I told you you’d be a success over here. Americans are highly appreciated.”
“Very highly indeed,” said Isabel. “But at the cost of seeming both tasteless and ungrateful, I don’t think I can marry Lord Warburton.”
“Well,” her uncle went on, “of course an old man can’t judge for a young lady. I’m glad you didn’t ask me before you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you,” he added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, “that I’ve known all about it these three days.”
“About Lord Warburton’s state of mind?”
“About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to see his letter?” the old man obligingly asked.
“Thank you; I don’t think I care about that. But I’m glad he wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was right.”
“Ah well, I guess you do like him!” Mr. Touchett declared. “You needn’t pretend you don’t.”
“I like him extremely; I’m very free to admit that. But I don’t wish to marry any one just now.”
“You think some one may come along whom you may like better. Well, that’s very likely,” said Mr. Touchett, who appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.
“I don’t care if I don’t meet any one else. I like Lord Warburton quite well enough.” she fell into that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased her interlocutors.
Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these impressions. “He’s a very fine man,” he resumed in a tone which might have passed for that of encouragement. “His letter was one of the pleasantest I’ve received for some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that is all except the part that was about himself. I suppose he told you all that.”
“He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,” Isabel said.
“But you didn’t feel curious?”
“My curiosity would have been idle—once I had determined to decline his offer.”
“You didn’t find it sufficiently attractive?” Mr. Touchett enquired.
She was silent a little. “I suppose it was that,” she presently admitted. “But I don’t know why.”
“Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons,” said her uncle. “There’s a great deal that’s attractive about such an idea; but I don’t see why the English should want to entice us away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them over there, but that’s because our population is insufficient. Here, you know, they’re rather crowded. However, I presume there’s room for charming young ladies everywhere.”
“There seems to have been room here for you,” said Isabel, whose eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the park.
Mr. Touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. “There’s room everywhere, my dear, if you’ll pay for it. I sometimes think I’ve paid too much for this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too much.”
“Perhaps I might,” the girl replied.
That suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this association of her uncle’s mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed to prove that she was concerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life and not altogether a victim to intellectual eagerness and vague ambitions—ambitions reaching beyond Lord Warburton’s beautiful appeal, reaching to something indefinable and possibly not commendable. In so far as the indefinable had an influence upon Isabel’s behaviour at this juncture, it was not the conception, even unformulated, of a union with Caspar Goodwood; for however she might have resisted conquest at her English suitor’s large quiet hands she was at least as far removed from the disposition to let the young man from Boston take positive possession of her. The sentiment in which she sought refuge after reading his letter was a critical view of his having come abroad; for it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of freedom. There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her. She had been haunted at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and had wondered—a consideration she had never paid in equal degree to any one else—whether he would like what she did. The difficulty was that more than any man she had ever known, more than poor Lord Warburton (she had begun now to give his lordship the benefit of this epithet), Caspar Goodwood expressed for her an energy—and she had already felt it as a power that was of his very nature. It was in no degree a matter of his “advantages”—it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his clear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window. She might like it or not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force: even in one’s usual contact with him one had to reckon with that. The idea of a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to her at present, since she had just given a sort of personal accent to her independence by looking so straight at Lord Warburton’s big bribe and yet turning away from it. Sometimes Caspar Goodwood had seemed to range himself on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might evade him for a time, but that she must make terms with him at last—terms which would be certain to be favourable to himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of the things that helped her to resist such an obligation; and this impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her aunt’s invitation, which had come to her at an hour when she expected from day to day to see Mr. Goodwood and when she was glad to have an answer ready for something she was sure he would say to her. When she had told him at Albany, on the evening of Mrs. Touchett’s visit, that she couldn’t then discuss difficult questions, dazzled as she was by the great immediate opening of her aunt’s offer of “Europe,” he declared that this was no answer at all; and it was now to obtain a better one that he was following her across the sea. To say to herself that he was a kind of grim fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who was able to take much for granted in him; but the reader has a right to a nearer and a clearer view.
He was the son of a proprietor of well-known cotton-mills in Massachusetts—a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Caspar at present managed the works, and with a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept their prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part of his education at Harvard College, where, however, he had gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner of more dispersed knowledge. Later on he had learned that the finer intelligence too could vault and pull and strain—might even, breaking the record, treat itself to rare exploits. He had thus discovered in himself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics, and had invented an improvement in the cotton-spinning process which was now largely used and was known by his name. You might have seen it in the newspapers in connection with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he had given to Isabel by showing her in the columns of the New York Interviewer an exhaustive article on the Goodwood patent—an article not prepared by Miss Stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental interests. There were intricate, bristling things he rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men—which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. It struck those who knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters. But it was as if something large and confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement. It pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging steed, the whirlwind of a great war—a war like the Civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious childhood and his ripening youth.
She liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a mover of men—liked it much better than some other points in his nature and aspect. She cared nothing for his cotton-mill—the Goodwood patent left her imagination absolutely cold. She wished him no ounce less of his manhood, but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if he looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too square and set and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of easy consonance with the deeper rhythms of life. Then she viewed with reserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. But they all seemed of the same piece; the figure, the stuff, was so drearily usual. She had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a person of his importance; and then she had amended the rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection only if she were in love with him. She was not in love with him and therefore might criticise his small defects as well as his great—which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of his being so, since one could never be, but certainly of his seeming so. He showed his appetites and designs too simply and artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other people were present he talked too little about anything. And yet he was of supremely strong, clean make—which was so much she saw the different fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits, the different fitted parts of armoured warriors—in plates of steel handsomely inlaid with gold. It was very strange: where, ever, was any tangible link between her impression and her act? Caspar Goodwood had never corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed that this was why he left her so harshly critical. When, however, Lord Warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to the term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied. It was certainly strange.
The sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering Mr. Goodwood’s letter, and Isabel determined to leave it a while unhonoured. If he had determined to persecute her he must take the consequences; foremost among which was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her that he should come down to Gardencourt. She was already liable to the incursions of one suitor at this place, and though it might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in entertaining two such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where the entertainment should consist of dismissing them. She made no reply to Mr. Goodwood; but at the end of three days she wrote to Lord Warburton, and the letter belongs to our history.
Dear Lord Warburton—A great deal of earnest thought has not led me to change my mind about the suggestion you were so kind as to make me the other day. I am not, I am really and truly not, able to regard you in the light of a companion for life; or to think of your home—your various homes—as the settled seat of my existence. These things cannot be reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat you not to return to the subject we discussed so exhaustively. We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us; and I shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly let this suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given your proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves. It is with this very great regard that I remain sincerely yours,
Isabel Archer.
While the author of this missive was making up her mind to dispatch it Henrietta Stackpole formed a resolve which was accompanied by no demur. She invited Ralph Touchett to take a walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of him. It may be admitted that at this information the young man flinched; for we know that Miss Stackpole had struck him as apt to push an advantage. The alarm was unreasoned, however; for he was clear about the area of her indiscretion as little as advised of its vertical depth, and he made a very civil profession of the desire to serve her. He was afraid of her and presently told her so. “When you look at me in a certain way my knees knock together, my faculties desert me; I’m filled with trepidation and I ask only for strength to execute your commands. You’ve an address that I’ve never encountered in any woman.”
“Well,” Henrietta replied good-humouredly, “if I had not known before that you were trying somehow to abash me I should know it now. Of course I’m easy game—I was brought up with such different customs and ideas. I’m not used to your arbitrary standards, and I’ve never been spoken to in America as you have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing with me over there were to speak to me like that I shouldn’t know what to make of it. We take everything more naturally over there, and, after all, we’re a great deal more simple. I admit that; I’m very simple myself. Of course if you choose to laugh at me for it you’re very welcome; but I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I’m quite content to be myself; I don’t want to change. There are plenty of people that appreciate me just as I am. It’s true they’re nice fresh free-born Americans!” Henrietta had lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence and large concession. “I want you to assist me a little,” she went on. “I don’t care in the least whether I amuse you while you do so; or, rather, I’m perfectly willing your amusement should be your reward. I want you to help me about Isabel.”
“Has she injured you?” Ralph asked.
“If she had I shouldn’t mind, and I should never tell you. What I’m afraid of is that she’ll injure herself.”
“I think that’s very possible,” said Ralph.
His companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him perhaps the very gaze that unnerved him. “That too would amuse you, I suppose. The way you do say things! I never heard any one so indifferent.”
“To Isabel? Ah, not that!”
“Well, you’re not in love with her, I hope.”
“How can that be, when I’m in love with Another?”
“You’re in love with yourself, that’s the Other!” Miss Stackpole declared. “Much good may it do you! But if you wish to be serious once in your life here’s a chance; and if you really care for your cousin here’s an opportunity to prove it. I don’t expect you to understand her; that’s too much to ask. But you needn’t do that to grant my favour. I’ll supply the necessary intelligence.”
“I shall enjoy that immensely!” Ralph exclaimed. “I’ll be Caliban and you shall be Ariel.”
“You’re not at all like Caliban, because you’re sophisticated, and Caliban was not. But I’m not talking about imaginary characters; I’m talking about Isabel. Isabel’s intensely real. What I wish to tell you is that I find her fearfully changed.”
“Since you came, do you mean?”
“Since I came and before I came. She’s not the same as she once so beautifully was.”
“As she was in America?”
“Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can’t help it, but she does.”
“Do you want to change her back again?”
“Of course I do, and I want you to help me.”
“Ah,” said Ralph, “I’m only Caliban; I’m not Prospero.”
“You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You’ve acted on Isabel Archer since she came here, Mr. Touchett.”
“I, my dear Miss Stackpole? Never in the world. Isabel Archer has acted on me—yes; she acts on every one. But I’ve been absolutely passive.”
“You’re too passive then. You had better stir yourself and be careful. Isabel’s changing every day; she’s drifting away—right out to sea. I’ve watched her and I can see it. She’s not the bright American girl she was. She’s taking different views, a different colour, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save those ideals, Mr. Touchett, and that’s where you come in.”
“Not surely as an ideal?”
“Well, I hope not,” Henrietta replied promptly. “I’ve got a fear in my heart that she’s going to marry one of these fell Europeans, and I want to prevent it.
“Ah, I see,” cried Ralph; “and to prevent it you want me to step in and marry her?”
“Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for you’re the typical, the fell European from whom I wish to rescue her. No; I wish you to take an interest in another person—a young man to whom she once gave great encouragement and whom she now doesn’t seem to think good enough. He’s a thoroughly grand man and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here.”
Ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at first in the simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Stackpole’s appeared. That a young woman should demand that a gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to another young woman, a young woman whose attention had wandered and whose charms were greater—this was an anomaly which for the moment challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that Miss Stackpole wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on her own account was the sign not so much of a vulgar as of an embarrassed mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, however, Ralph was saved, and saved by a force that I can only speak of as inspiration. With no more outward light on the subject than he already possessed he suddenly acquired the conviction that it would be a sovereign injustice to the correspondent of the Interviewer to assign a dishonourable motive to any act of hers. This conviction passed into his mind with extreme rapidity; it was perhaps kindled by the pure radiance of the young lady’s imperturbable gaze. He returned this challenge a moment, consciously, resisting an inclination to frown as one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries. “Who’s the gentleman you speak of?”
“Mr. Caspar Goodwood—of Boston. He has been extremely attentive to Isabel—just as devoted to her as he can live. He has followed her out here and he’s at present in London. I don’t know his address, but I guess I can obtain it.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” said Ralph.
“Well, I suppose you haven’t heard of every one. I don’t believe he has ever heard of you; but that’s no reason why Isabel shouldn’t marry him.”
Ralph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. “What a rage you have for marrying people! Do you remember how you wanted to marry me the other day?”
“I’ve got over that. You don’t know how to take such ideas. Mr. Goodwood does, however; and that’s what I like about him. He’s a splendid man and a perfect gentleman, and Isabel knows it.”
“Is she very fond of him?”
“If she isn’t she ought to be. He’s simply wrapped up in her.”
“And you wish me to ask him here,” said Ralph reflectively.
“It would be an act of true hospitality.”
“Caspar Goodwood,” Ralph continued—“it’s rather a striking name.”
“I don’t care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel Jenkins, and I should say the same. He’s the only man I have ever seen whom I think worthy of Isabel.”
“You’re a very devoted friend,” said Ralph.
“Of course I am. If you say that to pour scorn on me I don’t care.”
“I don’t say it to pour scorn on you; I’m very much struck with it.”
“You’re more satiric than ever, but I advise you not to laugh at Mr. Goodwood.”
“I assure you I’m very serious; you ought to understand that,” said Ralph.
In a moment his companion understood it. “I believe you are; now you’re too serious.”
“You’re difficult to please.”
“Oh, you’re very serious indeed. You won’t invite Mr. Goodwood.”
“I don’t know,” said Ralph. “I’m capable of strange things. Tell me a little about Mr. Goodwood. What’s he like?”
“He’s just the opposite of you. He’s at the head of a cotton-factory; a very fine one.”
“Has he pleasant manners?” asked Ralph.
“Splendid manners—in the American style.”
“Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?”
“I don’t think he’d care much about our little circle. He’d concentrate on Isabel.”
“And how would my cousin like that?”
“Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It will call back her thoughts.”
“Call them back—from where?”
“From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three months ago she gave Mr. Goodwood every reason to suppose he was acceptable to her, and it’s not worthy of Isabel to go back on a real friend simply because she has changed the scene. I’ve changed the scene too, and the effect of it has been to make me care more for my old associations than ever. It’s my belief that the sooner Isabel changes it back again the better. I know her well enough to know that she would never be truly happy over here, and I wish her to form some strong American tie that will act as a preservative.”
“Aren’t you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?” Ralph enquired. “Don’t you think you ought to give her more of a chance in poor old England?”
“A chance to ruin her bright young life? One’s never too much in a hurry to save a precious human creature from drowning.”
“As I understand it then,” said Ralph, “you wish me to push Mr. Goodwood overboard after her. Do you know,” he added, “that I’ve never heard her mention his name?”
Henrietta gave a brilliant smile. “I’m delighted to hear that; it proves how much she thinks of him.”
Ralph appeared to allow that there was a good deal in this, and he surrendered to thought while his companion watched him askance. “If I should invite Mr. Goodwood,” he finally said, “it would be to quarrel with him.”
“Don’t do that; he’d prove the better man.”
“You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! I really don’t think I can ask him. I should be afraid of being rude to him.”
“It’s just as you please,” Henrietta returned. “I had no idea you were in love with her yourself.”
“Do you really believe that?” the young man asked with lifted eyebrows.
“That’s the most natural speech I’ve ever heard you make! Of course I believe it,” Miss Stackpole ingeniously said.
“Well,” Ralph concluded, “to prove to you that you’re wrong I’ll invite him. It must be of course as a friend of yours.”
“It will not be as a friend of mine that he’ll come; and it will not be to prove to me that I’m wrong that you’ll ask him—but to prove it to yourself!”
These last words of Miss Stackpole’s (on which the two presently separated) contained an amount of truth which Ralph Touchett was obliged to recognise; but it so far took the edge from too sharp a recognition that, in spite of his suspecting it would be rather more indiscreet to keep than to break his promise, he wrote Mr. Goodwood a note of six lines, expressing the pleasure it would give Mr. Touchett the elder that he should join a little party at Gardencourt, of which Miss Stackpole was a valued member. Having sent his letter (to the care of a banker whom Henrietta suggested) he waited in some suspense. He had heard this fresh formidable figure named for the first time; for when his mother had mentioned on her arrival that there was a story about the girl’s having an “admirer” at home, the idea had seemed deficient in reality and he had taken no pains to ask questions the answers to which would involve only the vague or the disagreeable. Now, however, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object had become more concrete; it took the form of a young man who had followed her to London, who was interested in a cotton-mill and had manners in the most splendid of the American styles. Ralph had two theories about this intervenes. Either his passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Stackpole’s (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration. The latter clause of Ralph’s argument might have seemed incoherent; but it embodied his conviction that if Mr. Goodwood were interested in Isabel in the serious manner described by Miss Stackpole he would not care to present himself at Gardencourt on a summons from the latter lady. “On this supposition,” said Ralph, “he must regard her as a thorn on the stem of his rose; as an intercessor he must find her wanting in tact.”
Two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very short note from Caspar Goodwood, thanking him for it, regretting that other engagements made a visit to Gardencourt impossible and presenting many compliments to Miss Stackpole. Ralph handed the note to Henrietta, who, when she had read it, exclaimed: “Well, I never have heard of anything so stiff!”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t care so much about my cousin as you suppose,” Ralph observed.
“No, it’s not that; it’s some subtler motive. His nature’s very deep. But I’m determined to fathom it, and I shall write to him to know what he means.”
His refusal of Ralph’s overtures was vaguely disconcerting; from the moment he declined to come to Gardencourt our friend began to think him of importance. He asked himself what it signified to him whether Isabel’s admirers should be desperadoes or laggards; they were not rivals of his and were perfectly welcome to act out their genius. Nevertheless he felt much curiosity as to the result of Miss Stackpole’s promised enquiry into the causes of Mr. Goodwood’s stiffness—a curiosity for the present ungratified, inasmuch as when he asked her three days later if she had written to London she was obliged to confess she had written in vain. Mr. Goodwood had not replied.
“I suppose he’s thinking it over,” she said; “he thinks everything over; he’s not really at all impetuous. But I’m accustomed to having my letters answered the same day.” She presently proposed to Isabel, at all events, that they should make an excursion to London together. “If I must tell the truth,” she observed, “I’m not seeing much at this place, and I shouldn’t think you were either. I’ve not even seen that aristocrat—what’s his name?—Lord Washburton. He seems to let you severely alone.”
“Lord Warburton’s coming to-morrow, I happen to know,” replied her friend, who had received a note from the master of Lockleigh in answer to her own letter. “You’ll have every opportunity of turning him inside out.”
“Well, he may do for one letter, but what’s one letter when you want to write fifty? I’ve described all the scenery in this vicinity and raved about all the old women and donkeys. You may say what you please, scenery doesn’t make a vital letter. I must go back to London and get some impressions of real life. I was there but three days before I came away, and that’s hardly time to get in touch.”
As Isabel, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had seen even less of the British capital than this, it appeared a happy suggestion of Henrietta’s that the two should go thither on a visit of pleasure. The idea struck Isabel as charming; she was curious of the thick detail of London, which had always loomed large and rich to her. They turned over their schemes together and indulged in visions of romantic hours. They would stay at some picturesque old inn—one of the inns described by Dickens—and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. Henrietta was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything. They would dine at a coffee-house and go afterwards to the play; they would frequent the Abbey and the British Museum and find out where Doctor Johnson had lived, and Goldsmith and Addison. Isabel grew eager and presently unveiled the bright vision to Ralph, who burst into a fit of laughter which scarce expressed the sympathy she had desired.
“It’s a delightful plan,” he said. “I advise you to go to the Duke’s Head in Covent Garden, an easy, informal, old-fashioned place, and I’ll have you put down at my club.”
“Do you mean it’s improper?” Isabel asked. “Dear me, isn’t anything proper here? With Henrietta surely I may go anywhere; she isn’t hampered in that way. She has travelled over the whole American continent and can at least find her way about this minute island.”
“Ah then,” said Ralph, “let me take advantage of her protection to go up to town as well. I may never have a chance to travel so safely!”