She had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home; it simply struck her that for some days past she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of the American girl whom extravagance of aid places in an attitude that she ends by finding “affected” had made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of solitude, which since her arrival in England had been but meagrely met. It was a luxury she could always command at home and she had wittingly missed it. That evening, however, an incident occurred which—had there been a critic to note it—would have taken all colour from the theory that the wish to be quite by herself had caused her to dispense with her cousin’s attendance. Seated toward nine o’clock in the dim illumination of Pratt’s Hotel and trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, she succeeded only to the extent of reading other words than those printed on the page—words that Ralph had spoken to her that afternoon. Suddenly the well-muffed knuckle of the waiter was applied to the door, which presently gave way to his exhibition, even as a glorious trophy, of the card of a visitor. When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the name of Mr. Caspar Goodwood she let the man stand before her without signifying her wishes.
“Shall I show the gentleman up, ma’am?” he asked with a slightly encouraging inflexion.
Isabel hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the mirror. “He may come in,” she said at last; and waited for him not so much smoothing her hair as girding her spirit.
Caspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her, but saying nothing till the servant had left the room. “Why didn’t you answer my letter?” he then asked in a quick, full, slightly peremptory tone—the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who was capable of much insistence.
She answered by a ready question, “How did you know I was here?”
“Miss Stackpole let me know,” said Caspar Goodwood. “She told me you would probably be at home alone this evening and would be willing to see me.”
“Where did she see you—to tell you that?”
“She didn’t see me; she wrote to me.”
Isabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with an air of defiance, or at least of contention. “Henrietta never told me she was writing to you,” she said at last. “This is not kind of her.”
“Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?” asked the young man.
“I didn’t expect it. I don’t like such surprises.”
“But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet.”
“Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn’t see you. In so big a place as London it seemed very possible.”
“It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me,” her visitor went on.
Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole’s treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, was strong within her. “Henrietta’s certainly not a model of all the delicacies!” she exclaimed with bitterness. “It was a great liberty to take.”
“I suppose I’m not a model either—of those virtues or of any others. The fault’s mine as much as hers.”
As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been more square. This might have displeased her, but she took a different turn. “No, it’s not your fault so much as hers. What you’ve done was inevitable, I suppose, for you.”
“It was indeed!” cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.
“And now that I’ve come, at any rate, mayn’t I stay?”
“You may sit down, certainly.”
She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place that offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay little thought to that sort of furtherance. “I’ve been hoping every day for an answer to my letter. You might have written me a few lines.”
“It wasn’t the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily have written you four pages as one. But my silence was an intention,” Isabel said. “I thought it the best thing.”
He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his face she could enjoy being able to say “You know you oughtn’t to have written to me yourself!” and to say it with an air of triumph.
Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to shine through the vizard of a helmet. He had a strong sense of justice and was ready any day in the year—over and above this—to argue the question of his rights. “You said you hoped never to hear from me again; I know that. But I never accepted any such rule as my own. I warned you that you should hear very soon.”
“I didn’t say I hoped never to hear from you,” said Isabel.
“Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It’s the same thing.”
“Do you find it so? It seems to me there’s a great difference. I can imagine that at the end of ten years we might have a very pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epistolary style.”
She looked away while she spoke these words, knowing them of so much less earnest a cast than the countenance of her listener. Her eyes, however, at last came back to him, just as he said very irrelevantly; “Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle?”
“Very much indeed.” She dropped, but then she broke out. “What good do you expect to get by insisting?”
“The good of not losing you.”
“You’ve no right to talk of losing what’s not yours. And even from your own point of view,” Isabel added, “you ought to know when to let one alone.”
“I disgust you very much,” said Caspar Goodwood gloomily; not as if to provoke her to compassion for a man conscious of this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so that he might endeavour to act with his eyes on it.
“Yes, you don’t at all delight me, you don’t fit in, not in any way, just now, and the worst is that your putting it to the proof in this manner is quite unnecessary.” It wasn’t certainly as if his nature had been soft, so that pin-pricks would draw blood from it; and from the first of her acquaintance with him, and of her having to defend herself against a certain air that he had of knowing better what was good for her than she knew herself, she had recognised the fact that perfect frankness was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility or to escape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man who had barred the way less sturdily—this, in dealing with Caspar Goodwood, who would grasp at everything of every sort that one might give him, was wasted agility. It was not that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive surface, as well as his active, was large and hard, and he might always be trusted to dress his wounds, so far as they required it, himself. She came back, even for her measure of possible pangs and aches in him, to her old sense that he was naturally plated and steeled, armed essentially for aggression.
“I can’t reconcile myself to that,” he simply said. There was a dangerous liberality about it; for she felt how open it was to him to make the point that he had not always disgusted her.
“I can’t reconcile myself to it either, and it’s not the state of things that ought to exist between us. If you’d only try to banish me from your mind for a few months we should be on good terms again.”
“I see. If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely is more than I ask. It’s more even than I should like.”
“You know that what you ask is impossible,” said the young man, taking his adjective for granted in a manner she found irritating.
“Aren’t you capable of making a calculated effort?” she demanded. “You’re strong for everything else; why shouldn’t you be strong for that?”
“An effort calculated for what?” And then as she hung fire, “I’m capable of nothing with regard to you,” he went on, “but just of being infernally in love with you. If one’s strong one loves only the more strongly.”
“There’s a good deal in that;” and indeed our young lady felt the force of it—felt it thrown off, into the vast of truth and poetry, as practically a bait to her imagination. But she promptly came round. “Think of me or not, as you find most possible; only leave me alone.”
“Until when?”
“Well, for a year or two.”
“Which do you mean? Between one year and two there’s all the difference in the world.”
“Call it two then,” said Isabel with a studied effect of eagerness.
“And what shall I gain by that?” her friend asked with no sign of wincing.
“You’ll have obliged me greatly.”
“And what will be my reward?”
“Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?”
“Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice.”
“There’s no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don’t understand such things. If you make the sacrifice you’ll have all my admiration.”
“I don’t care a cent for your admiration—not one straw, with nothing to show for it. When will you marry me? That’s the only question.”
“Never—if you go on making me feel only as I feel at present.”
“What do I gain then by not trying to make you feel otherwise?”
“You’ll gain quite as much as by worrying me to death!” Caspar Goodwood bent his eyes again and gazed a while into the crown of his hat. A deep flush overspread his face; she could see her sharpness had at last penetrated. This immediately had a value—classic, romantic, redeeming, what did she know? for her; “the strong man in pain” was one of the categories of the human appeal, little charm as he might exert in the given case. “Why do you make me say such things to you?” she cried in a trembling voice. “I only want to be gentle—to be thoroughly kind. It’s not delightful to me to feel people care for me and yet to have to try and reason them out of it. I think others also ought to be considerate; we have each to judge for ourselves. I know you’re considerate, as much as you can be; you’ve good reasons for what you do. But I really don’t want to marry, or to talk about it at all now. I shall probably never do it—no, never. I’ve a perfect right to feel that way, and it’s no kindness to a woman to press her so hard, to urge her against her will. If I give you pain I can only say I’m very sorry. It’s not my fault; I can’t marry you simply to please you. I won’t say that I shall always remain your friend, because when women say that, in these situations, it passes, I believe, for a sort of mockery. But try me some day.”
Caspar Goodwood, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed upon the name of his hatter, and it was not until some time after she had ceased speaking that he raised them. When he did so the sight of a rosy, lovely eagerness in Isabel’s face threw some confusion into his attempt to analyse her words. “I’ll go home—I’ll go to-morrow—I’ll leave you alone,” he brought out at last. “Only,” he heavily said, “I hate to lose sight of you!”
“Never fear. I shall do no harm.”
“You’ll marry some one else, as sure as I sit here,” Caspar Goodwood declared.
“Do you think that a generous charge?”
“Why not? Plenty of men will try to make you.”
“I told you just now that I don’t wish to marry and that I almost certainly never shall.”
“I know you did, and I like your ‘almost certainly’! I put no faith in what you say.”
“Thank you very much. Do you accuse me of lying to shake you off? You say very delicate things.”
“Why should I not say that? You’ve given me no pledge of anything at all.”
“No, that’s all that would be wanting!”
“You may perhaps even believe you’re safe—from wishing to be. But you’re not,” the young man went on as if preparing himself for the worst.
“Very well then. We’ll put it that I’m not safe. Have it as you please.”
“I don’t know, however,” said Caspar Goodwood, “that my keeping you in sight would prevent it.”
“Don’t you indeed? I’m after all very much afraid of you. Do you think I’m so very easily pleased?” she asked suddenly, changing her tone.
“No—I don’t; I shall try to console myself with that. But there are a certain number of very dazzling men in the world, no doubt; and if there were only one it would be enough. The most dazzling of all will make straight for you. You’ll be sure to take no one who isn’t dazzling.”
“If you mean by dazzling brilliantly clever,” Isabel said—“and I can’t imagine what else you mean—I don’t need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.”
“Find out how to live alone? I wish that, when you have, you’d teach me!”
She looked at him a moment; then with a quick smile, “Oh, you ought to marry!” she said.
He might be pardoned if for an instant this exclamation seemed to him to sound the infernal note, and it is not on record that her motive for discharging such a shaft had been of the clearest. He oughtn’t to stride about lean and hungry, however—she certainly felt that for him. “God forgive you!” he murmured between his teeth as he turned away.
Her accent had put her slightly in the wrong, and after a moment she felt the need to right herself. The easiest way to do it was to place him where she had been. “You do me great injustice—you say what you don’t know!” she broke out. “I shouldn’t be an easy victim—I’ve proved it.”
“Oh, to me, perfectly.”
“I’ve proved it to others as well.” And she paused a moment. “I refused a proposal of marriage last week; what they call—no doubt—a dazzling one.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the young man gravely.
“It was a proposal many girls would have accepted; it had everything to recommend it.” Isabel had not proposed to herself to tell this story, but, now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking it out and doing herself justice took possession of her. “I was offered a great position and a great fortune—by a person whom I like extremely.”
Caspar watched her with intense interest. “Is he an Englishman?”
“He’s an English nobleman,” said Isabel.
Her visitor received this announcement at first in silence, but at last said: “I’m glad he’s disappointed.”
“Well then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the best of it.”
“I don’t call him a companion,” said Casper grimly.
“Why not—since I declined his offer absolutely?”
“That doesn’t make him my companion. Besides, he’s an Englishman.”
“And pray isn’t an Englishman a human being?” Isabel asked.
“Oh, those people? They’re not of my humanity, and I don’t care what becomes of them.”
“You’re very angry,” said the girl. “We’ve discussed this matter quite enough.”
“Oh yes, I’m very angry. I plead guilty to that!”
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.
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.
“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.
“I’ve judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew Hope, first,” Ralph said; “by great good luck he’s in town. He’s to see me at half-past twelve, and I shall make sure of his coming down to Gardencourt—which he will do the more readily as he has already seen my father several times, both there and in London. There’s an express at two-forty-five, which I shall take; and you’ll come back with me or remain here a few days longer, exactly as you prefer.”
“I shall certainly go with you,” Isabel returned. “I don’t suppose I can be of any use to my uncle, but if he’s ill I shall like to be near him.”
“I think you’re fond of him,” said Ralph with a certain shy pleasure in his face. “You appreciate him, which all the world hasn’t done. The quality’s too fine.”
“I quite adore him,” Isabel after a moment said.
“That’s very well. After his son he’s your greatest admirer.” She welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a small sigh of relief at the thought that Mr. Touchett was one of those admirers who couldn’t propose to marry her. This, however, was not what she spoke; she went on to inform Ralph that there were other reasons for her not remaining in London. She was tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Henrietta was going away—going to stay in Bedfordshire.
“In Bedfordshire?”
“With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Bantling, who has answered for an invitation.”
Ralph was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. Suddenly, none the less, his gravity returned. “Bantling’s a man of courage. But if the invitation should get lost on the way?”
“I thought the British post-office was impeccable.”
“The good Homer sometimes nods,” said Ralph. “However,” he went on more brightly, “the good Bantling never does, and, whatever happens, he’ll take care of Henrietta.”
Ralph went to keep his appointment with Sir Matthew Hope, and Isabel made her arrangements for quitting Pratt’s Hotel. Her uncle’s danger touched her nearly, and while she stood before her open trunk, looking about her vaguely for what she should put into it, the tears suddenly rose to her eyes. It was perhaps for this reason that when Ralph came back at two o’clock to take her to the station she was not yet ready. He found Miss Stackpole, however, in the sitting-room, where she had just risen from her luncheon, and this lady immediately expressed her regret at his father’s illness.
“He’s a grand old man,” she said; “he’s faithful to the last. If it’s really to be the last—pardon my alluding to it, but you must often have thought of the possibility—I’m sorry that I shall not be at Gardencourt.”
“You’ll amuse yourself much more in Bedfordshire.”
“I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time,” said Henrietta with much propriety. But she immediately added: “I should like so to commemorate the closing scene.”
“My father may live a long time,” said Ralph simply. Then, adverting to topics more cheerful, he interrogated Miss Stackpole as to her own future.
Now that Ralph was in trouble she addressed him in a tone of larger allowance and told him that she was much indebted to him for having made her acquainted with Mr. Bantling. “He has told me just the things I want to know,” she said; “all the society items and all about the royal family. I can’t make out that what he tells me about the royal family is much to their credit; but he says that’s only my peculiar way of looking at it. Well, all I want is that he should give me the facts; I can put them together quick enough, once I’ve got them.” And she added that Mr. Bantling had been so good as to promise to come and take her out that afternoon.
“To take you where?” Ralph ventured to enquire.
“To Buckingham Palace. He’s going to show me over it, so that I may get some idea how they live.”
“Ah,” said Ralph, “we leave you in good hands. The first thing we shall hear is that you’re invited to Windsor Castle.”
“If they ask me, I shall certainly go. Once I get started I’m not afraid. But for all that,” Henrietta added in a moment, “I’m not satisfied; I’m not at peace about Isabel.”
“What is her last misdemeanour?”
“Well, I’ve told you before, and I suppose there’s no harm in my going on. I always finish a subject that I take up. Mr. Goodwood was here last night.”
Ralph opened his eyes; he even blushed a little—his blush being the sign of an emotion somewhat acute. He remembered that Isabel, in separating from him in Winchester Square, had repudiated his suggestion that her motive in doing so was the expectation of a visitor at Pratt’s Hotel, and it was a new pang to him to have to suspect her of duplicity. On the other hand, he quickly said to himself, what concern was it of his that she should have made an appointment with a lover? Had it not been thought graceful in every age that young ladies should make a mystery of such appointments? Ralph gave Miss Stackpole a diplomatic answer. “I should have thought that, with the views you expressed to me the other day, this would satisfy you perfectly.”
“That he should come to see her? That was very well, as far as it went. It was a little plot of mine; I let him know that we were in London, and when it had been arranged that I should spend the evening out I sent him a word—the word we just utter to the ‘wise.’ I hoped he would find her alone; I won’t pretend I didn’t hope that you’d be out of the way. He came to see her, but he might as well have stayed away.”
“Isabel was cruel?”—and Ralph’s face lighted with the relief of his cousin’s not having shown duplicity.
“I don’t exactly know what passed between them. But she gave him no satisfaction—she sent him back to America.”
“Poor Mr. Goodwood!” Ralph sighed.
“Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him,” Henrietta went on.
“Poor Mr. Goodwood!” Ralph repeated. The exclamation, it must be confessed, was automatic; it failed exactly to express his thoughts, which were taking another line.
“You don’t say that as if you felt it. I don’t believe you care.”
“Ah,” said Ralph, “you must remember that I don’t know this interesting young man—that I’ve never seen him.”
“Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. If I didn’t believe Isabel would come round,” Miss Stackpole added—“well, I’d give up myself. I mean I’d give her up!”