原版英语阅读网
There was no doubt she had great merits--she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated.
More than this (for it had not been Isabel's ill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her
own sex several persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior and
preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from being
vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew how to think--an accomplishment rare in
women; and she had thought to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Isabel
couldn't have spent a week with her without being sure of that. This was indeed Madame Merle's
great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her; she had felt it strongly, and it was part of
the satisfaction to be taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was pleased to call
serious matters this lady understood her so easily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with
her rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks to having been
rather violently tapped at one period, didn't flow quite so freely as of yore. She proposed
moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little
mad, and now she pretended to be perfectly sane.
"I judge more than I used to," she said to Isabel, "but it seems to me one has earned the right. One
can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too
ignorant. I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty. But every gain's a loss of
some kind; I often think that after forty one can't really feel. The freshness, the quickness have
certainly gone. You'll keep them longer than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me to
see you some years hence. I want to see what life makes of you. One thing's certain--it can't spoil
you. It may pull you about horribly, but I defy it to break you up."
Isabel received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting from a slight skirmish in which he
has come off with honour, might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such a
recognition of merit it seemed to come with authority. How could the lightest word do less on the
part of a person who was prepared to say, of almost everything Isabel told her, "Oh, I've been in
that, my dear; it passes, like everything else." On many of her interlocutors Madame Merle might
have produced an irritating effect; it was disconcertingly difficult to surprise her. But Isabel,
though by no means incapable of desiring to be effective, had not at present this impulse. She was
too sincere, too interested in her judicious companion. And then moreover Madame Merle never
said such things in the tone of triumph or of boastfulness; they dropped from her like cold
confessions.
A period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days grew shorter and there was an end
to the pretty tea-parties on the lawn. But our young woman had long indoor conversations with her
fellow visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies often sallied forth for a walk, equipped with
the defensive apparatus which the English climate and the English genius have between them
brought to such perfection. Madame Merle liked almost everything, including the English rain.
"There's always a little of it and never too much at once," she said; "and it never wets you and it
always smells good." She declared that in England the pleasures of smell were great--that in this
inimitable island there was a certain mixture of fog and beer and soot which, however odd it might
sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to the nostril; and she used to lift the
sleeve of her British overcoat and bury her nose in it, inhaling the clear, fine scent of the wool.
Poor Ralph Touchett, as soon as the autumn had begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner;
第 130 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
in bad weather he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes to stand at one of the
windows with his hands in his pockets and, from a countenance half-rueful, half-critical, watch
Isabel and Madame Merle as they walked down the avenue under a pair of umbrellas. The roads
about Gardencourt were so firm, even in the worst weather, that the two ladies always came back
with a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their neat, stout boots and declaring that
their walk had done them inexpressible good. Before luncheon, always, Madame Merle was
engaged; Isabel admired and envied her rigid possession of her morning. Our heroine had always
passed for a person of resources and had taken a certain pride in being one; but she wandered, as
by the wrong side of the wall of a private garden, round the enclosed talents, accomplishments,
aptitudes of Madame Merle. She found herself desiring to emulate them, and in twenty such ways
this lady presented herself as a model. "I should like awfully to be so!" Isabel secretly exclaimed,
more than once, as one after another of her friend's fine aspects caught the light, and before long
she knew that she had learned a lesson from a high authority. It took no great time indeed for her to
feel herself, as the phrase is, under an influence. "What's the harm," she wondered, "so long as it's
a good one? The more one's under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as
we take them--to understand them as we go. That, no doubt, I shall always do. I needn't be afraid
of becoming too pliable; isn't it my fault that I'm not pliable enough?" It is said that imitation is the
sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was sometimes moved to gape at her friend aspiringly and
despairingly it was not so much because she desired herself to shine as because she wished to hold
up the lamp for Madame Merle. She liked her extremely, but was even more dazzled than
attracted. She sometimes asked herself what Henrietta Stackpole would say to her thinking so
much of this perverted product of their common soil, and had a conviction that it would be
severely judged. Henrietta would not at all subscribe to Madame Merle; for reasons she could not
have defined this truth came home to the girl. On the other hand she was equally sure that, should
the occasion offer, her new friend would strike off some happy view of her old: Madame Merle
was too humorous, too observant, not to do justice to Henrietta, and on becoming acquainted with
her would probably give the measure of a tact which Miss Stackpole couldn't hope to emulate. She
appeared to have in her experience a touchstone for everything, and somewhere in the capacious
pocket of her genial memory she would find the key to Henrietta's value. "That's the great thing,"
Isabel solemnly pondered; "that's the supreme good fortune: to be in a better position for
appreciating people than they are for appreciating you." And she added that such, when one
considered it, was simply the essence of the aristocratic situation. In this light, if in none other, one
should aim at the aristocratic situation.
I may not count over all the links in the chain which led Isabel to think of Madame Merle's
situation as aristocratic--a view of it never expressed in any reference made to it by that lady
herself. She had known great things and great people, but she had never played a great part. She
was one of the small ones of the earth; she had not been born to honours; she knew the world too
well to nourish fatuous illusions on the article of her own place in it. She had encountered many of
the fortunate few and was perfectly aware of those points at which their fortune differed from hers.
But if by her informed measure she was no figure for a high scene, she had yet to Isabel's
imagination a sort of greatness. To be so cultivated and civilised, so wise and so easy, and still
make so light of it--that was really to be a great lady, especially when one so carried and presented
第 131 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
one's self. It was as if somehow she had all society under contribution, and all the arts and graces it
practised--or was the effect rather that of charming uses found for her, even from a distance, subtle
service rendered by her to a clamorous world wherever she might be? After breakfast she wrote a
succession of letters, as those arriving for her appeared innumerable: her correspondence was a
source of surprise to Isabel when they sometimes walked together to the village post-office to
deposit Madame Merle's offering to the mail. She knew more people, as she told Isabel, than she
knew what to do with, and something was always turning up to be written about. Of painting she
was devotedly fond, and made no more of brushing in a sketch than of pulling off her gloves. At
Gardencourt she was perpetually taking advantage of an hour's sunshine to go out with a camp-
stool and a box of water-colours. That she was a brave musician we have already perceived, and it
was evidence of the fact that when she seated herself at the piano, as she always did in the evening,
her listeners resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the grace of her talk. Isabel, since she
had known her, felt ashamed of her own facility, which she now looked upon as basely inferior;
and indeed, though she had been thought rather a prodigy at home, the loss to society when, in
taking her place upon the music-stool, she turned her back to the room, was usually deemed
greater than the gain. When Madame Merle was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the
piano, she was usually employed upon wonderful tasks of rich embroidery, cushions, curtains,
decorations for the chimneypiece; an art in which her bold, free invention was as noted as the
agility of her needle. She was never idle, for when engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned
she was either reading (she appeared to Isabel to read "everything important"), or walking out, or
playing patience with the cards, or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all this she had
always the social quality, was never rudely absent and yet never too seated. She laid down her
pastimes as easily as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to
impute scant worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and tapestries; she rose from
the piano or remained there, according to the convenience of her auditors, which she always
unerringly divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable, amenable person to live
with. If for Isabel she had a fault it was that she was not natural; by which the girl meant, not that
she was either affected or pretentious, since from these vulgar vices no woman could have been
more exempt, but that her nature had been too much overlaid by custom and her angles too much
rubbed away. She had become too flexible, too useful, was too ripe and too final. She was in a
word too perfectly the social animal that man and woman are supposed to have been intended to
be; and she had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness which we may assume to have
belonged even to the most amiable persons in the ages before country-house life was the fashion.
Isabel found it difficult to think of her in any detachment or privacy, she existed only in her
relations, direct or indirect, with her fellow mortals. One might wonder what commerce she could
possibly hold with her own spirit. One always ended, however, by feeling that a charming surface
doesn't necessarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in which, in one's youth, one had but
just escaped being nourished. Madame Merle was not superficial--not she. She was deep, and her
nature spoke none the less in her behaviour because it spoke a conventional tongue. "What's
language at all but a convention?" said Isabel. "She has the good taste not to pretend, like some
people I've met, to express herself by original signs."
第 132 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
"I'm afraid you've suffered much," she once found occasion to say to her friend in response to
some allusion that had appeared to reach far.
"What makes you think that?" Madame Merle asked with the amused smile of a person seated at a
game of guesses. "I hope I haven't too much the droop of the misunderstood."
"No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always been happy wouldn't have
found out."
"I haven't always been happy," said Madame Merle, smiling still, but with a mock gravity, as if she
were telling a child a secret. "Such a wonderful thing!"
But Isabel rose to the irony. "A great many people give me the impression of never having for a
moment felt anything."
"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it
that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole
somewhere. I flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I've been
shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I've been cleverly mended;
and I try to remain in the cupboard--the quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale
spices--as much as I can. But when I've to come out and into a strong light--then, my dear, I'm a
horror!"
I know not whether it was on this occasion or on some other that the conversation had taken the
turn I have just indicated she said to Isabel that she would some day a tale unfold. Isabel assured
her she should delight to listen to one, and reminded her more than once of this engagement.
Madame Merle, however, begged repeatedly for a respite, and at last frankly told her young
companion that they must wait till they knew each other better. This would be sure to happen, a
long friendship so visibly lay before them. Isabel assented, but at the same time enquired if she
mightn't be trusted--if she appeared capable of a betrayal of confidence.
"It's not that I'm afraid of your repeating what I say," her fellow visitor answered; "I'm afraid, on
the contrary, of your taking it too much to yourself. You'd judge me too harshly; you're of the cruel
age." She preferred for the present to talk to Isabel of Isabel, and exhibited the greatest interest in
our heroine's history, sentiments, opinions, prospects. She made her chatter and listened to her
chatter with infinite good nature. This flattered and quickened the girl, who was struck with all the
distinguished people her friend had known and with her having lived, as Mrs. Touchett said, in the
best company in Europe. Isabel thought the better of herself for enjoying the favour of a person
who had so large a field of comparison; and it was perhaps partly to gratify the sense of profiting
by comparison that she often appealed to these stores of reminiscence. Madame Merle had been a
dweller in many lands and had social ties in a dozen different countries. "I don't pretend to be
educated," she would say, "but I think I know my Europe;" and she spoke one day of going to
Sweden to stay with an old friend, and another of proceeding to Malta to follow up a new
acquaintance. With England, where she had often dwelt, she was thoroughly familiar, and for
Isabel's benefit threw a great deal of light upon the customs of the country and the character of the
people, who "after all," as she was fond of saying, were the most convenient in the world to live
with.
第 133 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
"You mustn't think it strange her remaining here at such a time as this, when Mr. Touchett's
passing away," that gentleman's wife remarked to her niece. "She is incapable of a mistake; she's
the most tactful woman I know. It's a favour to me that she stays; she's putting off a lot of visits at
great houses," said Mrs. Touchett, who never forgot that when she herself was in England her
social value sank two or three degrees in the scale. "She has her pick of places; she's not in want of
a shelter. But I've asked her to put in this time because I wish you to know her. I think it will be a
good thing for you. Serena Merle hasn't a fault."
"If I didn't already like her very much that description might alarm me," Isabel returned.
"She's never the least little bit 'off.' I've brought you out here and I wish to do the best for you.
Your sister Lily told me she hoped I would give you plenty of opportunities. I give you one in
putting you in relation with Madame Merle. She's one of the most brilliant women in Europe."
"I like her better than I like your description of her," Isabel persisted in saying.
"Do you flatter yourself that you'll ever feel her open to criticism? I hope you'll let me know when
you do."
"That will be cruel--to you," said Isabel.
"You needn't mind me. You won't discover a fault in her."
"Perhaps not. But I dare say I shan't miss it."
"She knows absolutely everything on earth there is to know," said Mrs. Touchett.
Isabel after this observed to their companion that she hoped she knew Mrs. Touchett considered
she hadn't a speck on her perfection. On which "I'm obliged to you," Madame Merle replied, "but
I'm afraid your aunt imagines, or at least alludes to, no aberrations that the clock-face doesn't
register."
"So that you mean you've a wild side that's unknown to her?"
"Ah no, I fear my darkest sides are my tamest. I mean that having no faults, for your aunt, means
that one's never late for dinner --that is for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other day,
when you came back from London; the clock was just at eight when I came into the drawing-room:
it was the rest of you that were before the time. It means that one answers a letter the day one gets
it and that when one comes to stay with her one doesn't bring too much luggage and is careful not
to be taken ill. For Mrs. Touchett those things constitute virtue; it's a blessing to be able to reduce
it to its elements."
Madame Merle's own conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched with bold, free touches of
criticism, which, even when they had a restrictive effect, never struck Isabel as ill-natured. It
couldn't occur to the girl for instance that Mrs. Touchett's accomplished guest was abusing her; and
this for very good reasons. In the first place Isabel rose eagerly to the sense of her shades; in the
second Madame Merle implied that there was a great deal more to say; and it was clear in the third
that for a person to speak to one without ceremony of one's near relations was an agreeable sign of
that person's intimacy with one's self. These signs of deep communion multiplied as the days
elapsed, and there was none of which Isabel was more sensible than of her companion's preference
for making Miss Archer herself a topic. Though she referred frequently to the incidents of her own
career she never lingered upon them; she was as little of a gross egotist as she was of a flat gossip.
第 134 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
"I'm old and stale and faded," she said more than once; "I'm of no more interest than last week's
newspaper. You're young and fresh and of to-day; you've the great thing--you've actuality. I once
had it--we all have it for an hour. You, however, will have it for longer. Let us talk about you then;
you can say nothing I shall not care to hear. It's a sign that I'm growing old--that I like to talk with
younger people. I think it's a very pretty compensation. If we can't have youth within us we can
have it outside, and I really think we see it and feel it better that way. Of course we must be in
sympathy with it--that I shall always be. I don't know that I shall ever be ill-natured with old
people--I hope not; there are certainly some old people I adore. But I shall never be anything but
abject with the young; they touch me and appeal to me too much. I give you carte blanche then;
you can even be impertinent if you like; I shall let it pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I
were a hundred years old, you say? Well, I am, if you please; I was born before the French
Revolution. Ah, my dear, je viens de loin; I belong to the old, old world. But it's not of that I want
to talk; I want to talk about the new. You must tell me more about America; you never tell me
enough. Here I've been since I was brought here as a helpless child, and it's ridiculous, or rather it's
scandalous, how little I know about that splendid, dreadful, funny country-- surely the greatest and
drollest of them all. There are a great many of us like that in these parts, and I must say I think
we're a wretched set of people. You should live in your own land; whatever it may be you have
your natural place there. If we're not good Americans we're certainly poor Europeans; we've no
natural place here. We're mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven't our feet in the soil.
At least one can know it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems
to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface
and, more or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you're horrified? you declare you'll never crawl?
It's very true that I don't see you crawling; you stand more upright than a good many poor
creatures. Very good; on the whole, I don't think you'll crawl. But the men, the Americans; je vous
demande un peu, what do they make of it over here? I don't envy them trying to arrange
themselves. Look at poor Ralph Touchett: what sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has
a consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do. His consumption's his
carriere it's a kind of position. You can say: 'Oh, Mr. Touchett, he takes care of his lungs, he knows
a great deal about climates.' But without that who would he be, what would he represent? 'Mr.
Ralph Touchett: an American who lives in Europe.' That signifies absolutely nothing--it's
impossible anything should signify less. 'He's very cultivated,' they say: 'he has a very pretty
collection of old snuff-boxes.' The collection is all that's wanted to make it pitiful. I'm tired of the
sound of the word; I think it's grotesque. With the poor old father it's different; he has his identity,
and it's rather a massive one. He represents a great financial house, and that, in our day, is as good
as anything else. For an American, at any rate, that will do very well. But I persist in thinking your
cousin very lucky to have a chronic malady so long as he doesn't die of it. It's much better than the
snuffboxes. If he weren't ill, you say, he'd do something?--he'd take his father's place in the house.
My poor child, I doubt it; I don't think he's at all fond of the house. However, you know him better
than I, though I used to know him rather well, and he may have the benefit of the doubt. The worst
case, I think, is a friend of mine, a countryman of ours, who lives in Italy (where he also was
brought before he knew better), and who is one of the most delightful men I know. Some day you
must know him. I'll bring you together and then you'll see what I mean. He's Gilbert Osmond--he
lives in Italy; that's all one can say about him or make of him. He's exceedingly clever, a man
第 135 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
made to be distinguished; but, as I tell you, you exhaust the description when you say he's Mr.
Osmond who lives tout betement in Italy. No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no
future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please--paints in water-colours; like me, only better
than I. His painting's pretty bad; on the whole I'm rather glad of that. Fortunately he's very
indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a sort of position. He can say, 'Oh, I do nothing; I'm too
deadly lazy. You can do nothing to-day unless you get up at five o'clock in the morning.' In that
way he becomes a sort of exception; you feel he might do something if he'd only rise early. He
never speaks of his painting to people at large; he's too clever for that. But he has a little girl--a
dear little girl; he does speak of her. He's devoted to her, and if it were a career to be an excellent
father he'd be very distinguished. But I'm afraid that's no better than the snuff-boxes; perhaps not
even so good. Tell me what they do in America," pursued Madame Merle, who, it must be
observed parenthetically, did not deliver herself all at once of these reflexions, which are presented
in a cluster for the convenience of the reader. She talked of Florence, where Mr. Osmond lived and
where Mrs. Touchett occupied a medieval palace; she talked of Rome, where she herself had a
little pied-a-terre with some rather good old damask. She talked of places, of people and even, as
the phrase is, of "subjects"; and from time to time she talked of their kind old host and of the
prospect of his recovery. From the first she had thought this prospect small, and Isabel had been
struck with the positive, discriminating, competent way in which she took the measure of his
remainder of life. One evening she announced definitely that he wouldn't live.
"Sir Matthew Hope told me so as plainly as was proper," she said; "standing there, near the fire,
before dinner. He makes himself very agreeable, the great doctor. I don't mean his saying that has
anything to do with it. But he says such things with great tact. I had told him I felt ill at my ease,
staying here at such a time; it seemed to me so indiscreet--it wasn't as if I could nurse. 'You must
remain, you must remain,' he answered; 'your office will come later.' Wasn't that a very delicate
way of saying both that poor Mr. Touchett would go and that I might be of some use as a consoler?
In fact, however, I shall not be of the slightest use. Your aunt will console herself; she, and she
alone, knows just how much consolation she'll require. It would be a very delicate matter for
another person to undertake to administer the dose. With your cousin it will be different; he'll miss
his father immensely. But I should never presume to condole with Mr. Ralph; we're not on those
terms." Madame Merle had alluded more than once to some undefined incongruity in her relations
with Ralph Touchett; so Isabel took this occasion of asking her if they were not good friends.
"Perfectly, but he doesn't like me."
"What have you done to him?"
"Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for that."
"For not liking you? I think one has need of a very good reason."
"You're very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the day you begin."
"Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin."
"I hope not; because if you do you'll never end. That's the way with your cousin; he doesn't get
over it. It's an antipathy of nature--if I can call it that when it's all on his side. I've nothing
whatever against him and don't bear him the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is
第 136 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
all I want. However, one feels that he's a gentleman and would never say anything underhand
about one. Cartes sur table," Madame Merle subjoined in a moment, "I'm not afraid of him."
"I hope not indeed," said Isabel, who added something about his being the kindest creature living.
She remembered, however, that on her first asking him about Madame Merle he had answered her
in a manner which this lady might have thought injurious without being explicit. There was
something between them, Isabel said to herself, but she said nothing more than this. If it were
something of importance it should inspire respect; if it were not it was not worth her curiosity.
With all her love of knowledge she had a natural shrinking from raising curtains and looking into
unlighted corners. The love of knowledge coexisted in her mind with the finest capacity for
ignorance.
But Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, made her raise her clear eyebrows at
the time and think of the words afterwards. "I'd give a great deal to be your age again," she broke
out once with a bitterness which, though diluted in her customary amplitude of ease, was
imperfectly disguised by it. "If I could only begin again--if I could have my life before me!"
"Your life's before you yet," Isabel answered gently, for she was vaguely awe-struck.
"No; the best part's gone, and gone for nothing."
"Surely not for nothing," said Isabel.
"Why not--what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of
a beauty that I never had."
"You have many friends, dear lady."
"I'm not so sure!" cried Madame Merle.
