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
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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!"
CHAPTER XVIII
It had occurred to Ralph that, in the conditions, Isabel's parting with her friend might be of a
slightly embarrassed nature, and he went down to the door of the hotel in advance of his cousin,
who, after a slight delay, followed with the traces of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he thought, in
her eyes. The two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken silence, and the servant
who met them at the station had no better news to give them of Mr. Touchett--a fact which caused
Ralph to congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's having promised to come down in the
five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs. Touchett, he learned, on reaching home, had been
constantly with the old man and was with him at that moment; and this fact made Ralph say to
himself that, after all, what his mother wanted was just easy occasion. The finer natures were those
that shone at the larger times. Isabel went to her own room, noting throughout the house that
perceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs in
search of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Touchett. She went into the library, but Mrs.
Touchett was not there, and as the weather, which had been damp and chill, was now altogether
spoiled, it was not probable she had gone for her usual walk in the grounds. Isabel was on the point
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of ringing to send a question to her room, when this purpose quickly yielded to an unexpected
sound-- the sound of low music proceeding apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never
touched the piano, and the musician was therefore probably Ralph, who played for his own
amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at the present time indicated apparently
that his anxiety about his father had been relieved; so that the girl took her way, almost with
restored cheer, toward the source of the harmony. The drawing-room at Gardencourt was an
apartment of great distances, and, as the piano was placed at the end of it furthest removed from
the door at which she entered, her arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the
instrument. This person was neither Ralph nor his mother; it was a lady whom Isabel immediately
saw to be a stranger to herself, though her back was presented to the door. This back--an ample
and well-dressed one--Isabel viewed for some moments with surprise. The lady was of course a
visitor who had arrived during her absence and who had not been mentioned by either of the
servants--one of them her aunt's maid--of whom she had had speech since her return. Isabel had
already learned, however, with what treasures of reserve the function of receiving orders may be
accompanied, and she was particularly conscious of having been treated with dryness by her aunt's
maid, through whose hands she had slipped perhaps a little too mistrustfully and with an effect of
plumage but the more lustrous. The advent of a guest was in itself far from disconcerting; she had
not yet divested herself of a young faith that each new acquaintance would exert some momentous
influence on her life. By the time she had made these reflexions she became aware that the lady at
the piano played remarkably well. She was playing something of Schubert's--Isabel knew not
what, but recognised Schubert--and she touched the piano with a discretion of her own. It showed
skill, it showed feeling; Isabel sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and waited till the end of
the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong desire to thank the player, and rose from her seat
to do so, while at the same time the stranger turned quickly round, as if but just aware of her
presence.
"That's very beautiful, and your playing makes it more beautiful still," said Isabel with all the
young radiance with which she usually uttered a truthful rapture.
"You don't think I disturbed Mr. Touchett then?" the musician answered as sweetly as this
compliment deserved. "The house is so large and his room so far away that I thought I might
venture, especially as I played just--just du bout des doigts."
"She's a Frenchwoman," Isabel said to herself; "she says that as if she were French." And this
supposition made the visitor more interesting to our speculative heroine. "I hope my uncle's doing
well," Isabel added. "I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him
feel better."
The lady smiled and discriminated. "I'm afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has
nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst."
"I'm not in that state now then," said Isabel. "On the contrary I should be so glad if you would play
something more."
"If it will give you pleasure--delighted." And this obliging person took her place again and struck a
few chords, while Isabel sat down nearer the instrument. Suddenly the new-comer stopped with
her hands on the keys, half-turning and looking over her shoulder. She was forty years old and not
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pretty, though her expression charmed. "Pardon me," she said; "but are you the niece --the young
American?"
"I'm my aunt's niece," Isabel replied with simplicity.
The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, casting her air of interest over her shoulder. "That's
very well; we're compatriots." And then she began to play.
"Ah then she's not French," Isabel murmured; and as the opposite supposition had made her
romantic it might have seemed that this revelation would have marked a drop. But such was not
the fact; rarer even than to be French seemed it to be American on such interesting terms.
The lady played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and while she played the
shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Isabel could
see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking
the great trees. At last, when the music had ceased, her companion got up and, coming nearer with
a smile, before Isabel had time to thank her again, said: "I'm very glad you've come back; I've
heard a great deal about you."
Isabel thought her a very attractive person, but nevertheless spoke with a certain abruptness in
reply to this speech. "From whom have you heard about me?"
The stranger hesitated a single moment and then, "From your uncle," she answered. "I've been here
three days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in his room. Then he talked
constantly of you."
"As you didn't know me that must rather have bored you."
"It made me want to know you. All the more that since then--your aunt being so much with Mr.
Touchett--I've been quite alone and have got rather tired of my own society. I've not chosen a good
moment for my visit."
A servant had come in with lamps and was presently followed by another bearing the tea-tray. On
the appearance of this repast Mrs. Touchett had apparently been notified, for she now arrived and
addressed herself to the tea-pot. Her greeting to her niece did not differ materially from her manner
of raising the lid of this receptacle in order to glance at the contents: in neither act was it becoming
to make a show of avidity. Questioned about her husband she was unable to say he was better; but
the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected from this gentleman's consultation
with Sir Matthew Hope.
"I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance," she pursued. "If you haven't I recommend you
to do so; for so long as we continue--Ralph and I--to cluster about Mr. Touchett's bed you're not
likely to have much society but each other."
"I know nothing about you but that you're a great musician," Isabel said to the visitor.
"There's a good deal more than that to know," Mrs. Touchett affirmed in her little dry tone.
"A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer!" the lady exclaimed with a light laugh.
"I'm an old friend of your aunt's. I've lived much in Florence. I'm Madame Merle." She made this
last announcement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct identity. For Isabel,
however, it represented little; she could only continue to feel that Madame Merle had as charming
a manner as any she had ever encountered.
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"She's not a foreigner in spite of her name," said Mrs. Touchett.
"She was born--I always forget where you were born."
"It's hardly worth while then I should tell you."
"On the contrary," said Mrs. Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; "if I remembered your
telling me would be quite superfluous."
Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a sort of world-wide smile, a thing that over-reached
frontiers. "I was born under the shadow of the national banner."
"She's too fond of mystery," said Mrs. Touchett; "that's her great fault."
"Ah," exclaimed Madame Merle, "I've great faults, but I don't think that's one of then; it certainly
isn't the greatest. I came into the world in the Brooklyn navy-yard. My father was a high officer in
the United States Navy, and had a post--a post of responsibility--in that establishment at the time. I
suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate it. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land;
the great thing is to love something."
Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of Mrs. Touchett'
characterisation of her visitor, who had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, (s) by no
means of the sort which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposition. It was a face that told
of an amplitude of nature and of quick and free motions and, though it had no regular beauty, was
in the highest degree engaging and attaching. Madame Merle was a tall, fair, smooth woman;
everything in her person was round and replete, though without those accumulations which suggest
heaviness. Her features were thick but in perfect proportion and harmony, and her complexion had
a healthy clearness. Her grey eyes were small but full of light and incapable of stupidity-incapable,
according to some people, even of tears; she had a liberal, full-rimmed mouth which
when she smiled drew itself upward to the left side in a manner that most people thought very odd,
some very affected and a few very graceful. Isabel inclined to range herself in the last category.
Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow "classically" and as if she were a Bust,
Isabel judged--a Juno or a Niobe; and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect that
their possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no jewelled rings. Isabel had taken her at
first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman; but extended observation might have ranked her as a
German--a German of high degree, perhaps an Austrian, a baroness, a countess, a princess. It
would never have been supposed she had come into the world in Brooklyn--though one could
doubtless not have carried through any argument that the air of distinction marking her in so
eminent a degree was inconsistent with such a birth. It was true that the national banner had floated
immediately over her cradle, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an
influence upon the attitude she there took towards life. And yet she had evidently nothing of the
fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and
confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her
youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong
impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Isabel as an ideal combination.
The girl made these reflexions while the three ladies sat at their tea, but that ceremony was
interrupted before long by the arrival of the great doctor from London, who had been immediately
ushered into the drawing-room. Mrs. Touchett took him off to the library for a private talk; and
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then Madame Merle and Isabel parted, to meet again at dinner. The idea of seeing more of this
interesting woman did much to mitigate Isabel's sense of the sadness now settling on Gardencourt.
When she came into the drawing-room before dinner she found the place empty; but in the course
of a moment Ralph arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened; Sir Matthew Hope's
view of his condition was less depressed than his own had been. The doctor recommended that the
nurse alone should remain with the old man for the next three or four hours; so that Ralph, his
mother and the great physician himself were free to dine at table. Mrs. Touchett and Sir Matthew
appeared; Madame Merle was the last.
Before she came Isabel spoke of her to Ralph, who was standing before the fireplace. "Pray who is
this Madame Merle?"
"The cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself," said Ralph.
"I thought she seemed very pleasant."
"I was sure you'd think her very pleasant."
"Is that why you invited her?"
"I didn't invite her, and when we came back from London I didn't know she was here. No one
invited her. She's a friend of my mother's, and just after you and I went to town my mother got a
note from her. She had arrived in England (she usually lives abroad, though she has first and last
spent a good deal of time here), and asked leave to come down for a few days. She's a woman who
can make such proposals with perfect confidence; she's so welcome wherever she goes. And with
my mother there could be no question of hesitating; she's the one person in the world whom my
mother very much admires. If she were not herself (which she after all much prefers), she would
like to be Madame Merle. It would indeed be a great change."
"Well, she's very charming," said Isabel. "And she plays beautifully."
"She does everything beautifully. She's complete."
Isabel looked at her cousin a moment. "You don't like her."
"On the contrary, I was once in love with her."
"And she didn't care for you, and that's why you don't like her."
"How can we have discussed such things? Monsieur Merle was then living."
"Is he dead now?"
"So she says."
"Don't you believe her?"
"Yes, because the statement agrees with the probabilities. The husband of Madame Merle would
be likely to pass away."
Isabel gazed at her cousin again. "I don't know what you mean. You mean something--that you
don't mean. What was Monsieur Merle?"
"The husband of Madame."
"You're very odious. Has she any children?"
"Not the least little child--fortunately."
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"Fortunately?"
"I mean fortunately for the child. She'd be sure to spoil it."
Isabel was apparently on the point of assuring her cousin for the third time that he was odious; but
the discussion was interrupted by the arrival of the lady who was the topic of it. She came rustling
in quickly, apologising for being late, fastening a bracelet, dressed in dark blue satin, which
exposed a white bosom that was ineffectually covered by a curious silver necklace. Ralph offered
her his arm with the exaggerated alertness of a man who was no longer a lover.
Even if this had still been his condition, however, Ralph had other things to think about. The great
doctor spent the night at Gardencourt and, returning to London on the morrow, after another
consultation with Mr. Touchett's own medical adviser, concurred in Ralph's desire that he should
see the patient again on the day following. On the day following Sir Matthew Hope reappeared at
Gardencourt, and now took a less encouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the
twenty-four hours. His feebleness was extreme, and to his son, who constantly sat by his bedside,
it often seemed that his end must be at hand. The local doctor, a very sagacious man, in whom
Ralph had secretly more confidence than in his distinguished colleague, was constantly in
attendance, and Sir Matthew Hope came back several times. Mr. Touchett was much of the time
unconscious; he slept a great deal; he rarely spoke. Isabel had a great desire to be useful to him and
was allowed to watch with him at hours when his other attendants (of whom Mrs. Touchett was
not the least regular) went to take rest. He never seemed to know her, and she always said to
herself "Suppose he should die while I'm sitting here;" an idea which excited her and kept her
awake. Once he opened his eyes for a while and fixed them upon her intelligently, but when she
went to him, hoping he would recognise her, he closed them and relapsed into stupor. The day
after this, however, he revived for a longer time; but on this occasion Ralph only was with him.
The old man began to talk, much to his son's satisfaction, who assured him that they should
presently have him sitting up.
"No, my boy," said Mr. Touchett, "not unless you bury me in a sitting posture, as some of the
ancients--was it the ancients?-- used to do."
"Ah, daddy, don't talk about that," Ralph murmured. "You mustn't deny that you're getting better."
"There will be no need of my denying it if you don't say it," the old man answered. "Why should
we prevaricate just at the last? We never prevaricated before. I've got to die some time, and it's
better to die when one's sick than when one's well. I'm very sick --as sick as I shall ever be. I hope
you don't want to prove that I shall ever be worse than this? That would be too bad. You don't?
Well then."
