"Ah, you're wrong. You have memories, graces, talents--"
But Madame Merle interrupted her. "What have my talents brought me? Nothing but the need of
using them still, to get through the hours, the years, to cheat myself with some pretence of
movement, of unconsciousness. As for my graces and memories the less said about them the
better. You'll be my friend till you find a better use for your friendship."
"It will be for you to see that I don't then," said Isabel.
"Yes; I would make an effort to keep you." And her companion looked at her gravely. "When I say
I should like to be your age I mean with your qualities--frank, generous, sincere like you. In that
case I should have made something better of my life."
"What should you have liked to do that you've not done?"
Madame Merle took a sheet of music--she was seated at the piano and had abruptly wheeled about
on the stool when she first spoke --and mechanically turned the leaves. "I'm very ambitious!" she
at last replied.
"And your ambitions have not been satisfied? They must have been great."
"They WERE great. I should make myself ridiculous by talking of them."
Isabel wondered what they could have been--whether Madame Merle had aspired to wear a crown.
"I don't know what your idea of success may be, but you seem to me to have been successful. To
me indeed you're a vivid image of success."
第 137 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
Madame Merle tossed away the music with a smile. "What's YOUR idea of success?"
"You evidently think it must be a very tame one. It's to see some dream of one's youth come true."
"Ah," Madame Merle exclaimed, "that I've never seen! But my dreams were so great--so
preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I'm dreaming now!" And she turned back to the piano and began
grandly to play. On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of success had been very
pretty, yet frightfully sad. Measured in that way, who had ever succeeded? The dreams of one's
youth, why they were enchanting, they were divine! Who had ever seen such things come to pass?
"I myself--a few of them," Isabel ventured to answer.
"Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday."
"I began to dream very young," Isabel smiled.
"Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood--that of having a pink sash and a doll that could
close her eyes."
"No, I don't mean that."
"Or a young man with a fine moustache going down on his knees to you."
"No, nor that either," Isabel declared with still more emphasis.
Madame Merle appeared to note this eagerness. "I suspect that's what you do mean. We've all had
the young man with the moustache. He's the inevitable young man; he doesn't count."
Isabel was silent a little but then spoke with extreme and characteristic inconsequence. "Why
shouldn't he count? There are young men and young men."
"And yours was a paragon--is that what you mean?" asked her friend with a laugh. "If you've had
the identical young man you dreamed of, then that was success, and I congratulate you with all my
heart. Only in that case why didn't you fly with him to his castle in the Apennines?"
"He has no castle in the Apennines."
"What has he? An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street? Don't tell me that; I refuse to recognise that
as an ideal."
"I don't care anything about his house," said Isabel.
"That's very crude of you. When you've lived as long as I you'll see that every human being has his
shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of
circumstances. There's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us made up of
some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our 'self'? Where does it begin? where does it
end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us--and then it flows back again. I know a large
part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I've a great respect for THINGS! One's self-- for
other people--is one's expression of one's self; and one's house, one's furniture, one's garments, the
books one reads, the company one keeps--these things are all expressive."
This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several observations Madame Merle had
already made. Isabel was fond of metaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this
bold analysis of the human personality. "I don't agree with you. I think just the other way. I don't
know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing
that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a
第 138 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me;
and heaven forbid they should!"
"You dress very well," Madame Merle lightly interposed.
"Possibly; but I don't care to be judged by that. My clothes may express the dressmaker, but they
don't express me. To begin with it's not my own choice that I wear them; they're imposed upon me
by society."
"Should you prefer to go without them?" Madame Merle enquired in a tone which virtually
terminated the discussion.
I am bound to confess, though it may cast some discredit on the sketch I have given of the youthful
loyalty practised by our heroine toward this accomplished woman, that Isabel had said nothing
whatever to her about Lord Warburton and had been equally reticent on the subject of Caspar
Goodwood. She had not, however, concealed the fact that she had had opportunities of marrying
and had even let her friend know of how advantageous a kind they had been. Lord Warburton had
left Lockleigh and was gone to Scotland, taking his sisters with him; and though he had written to
Ralph more than once to ask about Mr. Touchett's health the girl was not liable to the
embarrassment of such enquiries as, had he still been in the neighbourhood, he would probably
have felt bound to make in person. He had excellent ways, but she felt sure that if he had come to
Gardencourt he would have seen Madame Merle, and that if he had seen her he would have liked
her and betrayed to her that he was in love with her young friend. It so happened that during this
lady's previous visits to Gardencourt-- each of them much shorter than the present--he had either
not been at Lockleigh or had not called at Mr. Touchett's. Therefore, though she knew him by
name as the great man of that county, she had no cause to suspect him as a suitor of Mrs.
Touchett's freshly-imported niece.
"You've plenty of time," she had said to Isabel in return for the mutilated confidences which our
young woman made her and which didn't pretend to be perfect, though we have seen that at
moments the girl had compunctions at having said so much. "I'm glad you've done nothing yet-that
you have it still to do. It's a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers--so
long of course as they are not the best she's likely to have. Pardon me if my tone seems horribly
corrupt; one must take the worldly view sometimes. Only don't keep on refusing for the sake of
refusing. It's a pleasant exercise of power; but accepting's after all an exercise of power as well.
There's always the danger of refusing once too often. It was not the one I fell into--I didn't refuse
often enough. You're an exquisite creature, and I should like to see you married to a prime
minister. But speaking strictly, you know, you're not what is technically called a parti. You're
extremely good-looking and extremely clever; in yourself you're quite exceptional. You appear to
have the vaguest ideas about your earthly possessions; but from what I can make out you're not
embarrassed with an income. I wish you had a little money."
"I wish I had!" said Isabel, simply, apparently forgetting for the moment that her poverty had been
a venial fault for two gallant gentlemen.
In spite of Sir Matthew Hope's benevolent recommendation Madame Merle did not remain to the
end, as the issue of poor Mr. Touchett's malady had now come frankly to be designated. She was
under pledges to other people which had at last to be redeemed, and she left Gardencourt with the
第 139 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
understanding that she should in any event see Mrs. Touchett there again, or else in town, before
quitting England. Her parting with Isabel was even more like the beginning of a friendship than
their meeting had been. "I'm going to six places in succession, but I shall see no one I like so well
as you. They'll all be old friends, however; one doesn't make new friends at my age. I've made a
great exception for you. You must remember that and must think as well of me as possible. You
must reward me by believing in me."
By way of answer Isabel kissed her, and, though some women kiss with facility, there are kisses
and kisses, and this embrace was satisfactory to Madame Merle. Our young lady, after this, was
much alone; she saw her aunt and cousin only at meals, and discovered that of the hours during
which Mrs. Touchett was invisible only a minor portion was now devoted to nursing her husband.
She spent the rest in her own apartments, to which access was not allowed even to her niece,
apparently occupied there with mysterious and inscrutable exercises. At table she was grave and
silent; but her solemnity was not an attitude--Isabel could see it was a conviction. She wondered if
her aunt repented of having taken her own way so much; but there was no visible evidence of this-no
tears, no sighs, no exaggeration of a zeal always to its own sense adequate. Mrs. Touchett
seemed simply to feel the need of thinking things over and summing them up; she had a little
moral account-book--with columns unerringly ruled and a sharp steel clasp--which she kept with
exemplary neatness. Uttered reflection had with her ever, at any rate, a practical ring. "If I had
foreseen this I'd not have proposed your coming abroad now," she said to Isabel after Madame
Merle had left the house. "I'd have waited and sent for you next year."
"So that perhaps I should never have known my uncle? It's a great happiness to me to have come
now."
"That's very well. But it was not that you might know your uncle that I brought you to Europe." A
perfectly veracious speech; but, as Isabel thought, not as perfectly timed. She had leisure to think
of this and other matters. She took a solitary walk every day and spent vague hours in turning over
books in the library. Among the subjects that engaged her attention were the adventures of her
friend Miss Stackpole, with whom she was in regular correspondence. Isabel liked her friend's
private epistolary style better than her public; that is she felt her public letters would have been
excellent if they had not been printed. Henrietta's career, however, was not so successful as might
have been wished even in the interest of her private felicity; that view of the inner life of Great
Britain which she was so eager to take appeared to dance before her like an ignis fatuus. The
invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling
himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the
part of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to
heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. "He says he
should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta wrote; "and as he thinks of going there
himself I suppose his advice is sincere. He wants to know why I don't take a view of French life;
and it's a fact that I want very much to see the new Republic. Mr. Bantling doesn't care much about
the Republic, but he thinks of going over to Paris anyway. I must say he's quite as attentive as I
could wish, and at least I shall have seen one polite Englishman. I keep telling Mr. Bantling that he
ought to have been an American, and you should see how that pleases him. Whenever I say so he
always breaks out with the same exclamation-- 'Ah, but really, come now!" A few days later she
第 140 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
wrote that she had decided to go to Paris at the end of the week and that Mr. Banding had promised
to see her off--perhaps even would go as far as Dover with her. She would wait in Paris till Isabel
should arrive, Henrietta added; speaking quite as if Isabel were to start on her continental journey
alone and making no allusion to Mrs. Touchett. Bearing in mind his interest in their late
companion, our heroine communicated several passages from this correspondence to Ralph, who
followed with an emotion akin to suspense the career of the representative of the Interviewer.
"It seems to me she's doing very well," he said, "going over to Paris with an ex-Lancer! If she
wants something to write about she has only to describe that episode."
"It's not conventional, certainly," Isabel answered; "but if you mean that--as far as Henrietta is
concerned--it's not perfectly innocent, you're very much mistaken. You'll never understand
Henrietta."
"Pardon me, I understand her perfectly. I didn't at all at first, but now I've the point of view. I'm
afraid, however, that Bantling hasn't; he may have some surprises. Oh, I understand Henrietta as
well as if I had made her!"
Isabel was by no means sure of this, but she abstained from expressing further doubt, for she was
disposed in these days to extend a great charity to her cousin. One afternoon less than a week after
Madame Merle's departure she was seated in the library with a volume to which her attention was
not fastened. She had placed herself in a deep window-bench, from which she looked out into the
dull, damp park; and as the library stood at right angles to the entrance-front of the house she could
see the doctor's brougham, which had been waiting for the last two hours before the door. She was
struck with his remaining so long, but at last she saw him appear in the portico, stand a moment
slowly drawing on his gloves and looking at the knees of his horse, and then get into the vehicle
and roll away. Isabel kept her place for half an hour; there was a great stillness in the house. It was
so great that when she at last heard a soft, slow step on the deep carpet of the room she was almost
startled by the sound. She turned quickly away from the window and saw Ralph Touchett standing
there with his hands still in his pockets, but with a face absolutely void of its usual latent smile.
She got up and her movement and glance were a question.
"It's all over," said Ralph.
"Do you mean that my uncle...?" And Isabel stopped.
"My dear father died an hour ago."
"Ah, my poor Ralph!" she gently wailed, putting out her two hands to him.
CHAPTER XX
Some fortnight after this Madame Merle drove up in a hansom cab to the house in Winchester
Square. As she descended from her vehicle she observed, suspended between the dining-room
windows, a large, neat, wooden tablet, on whose fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint
the words--"This noble freehold mansion to be sold"; with the name of the agent to whom
application should be made. "They certainly lose no time," said the visitor as, after sounding the
big brass knocker, she waited to be admitted; "it's a practical country!" And within the house, as
she ascended to the drawing-room, she perceived numerous signs of abdication; pictures removed
第 141 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped and floors laid bare. Mrs. Touchett
presently received her and intimated in a few words that condolences might be taken for granted.
"I know what you're going to say--he was a very good man. But I know it better than any one,
because I gave him more chance to show it. In that I think I was a good wife." Mrs. Touchett
added that at the end her husband apparently recognised this fact. "He has treated me most
liberally," she said; "I won't say more liberally than I expected, because I didn't expect. You know
that as a general thing I don't expect. But he chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though I
lived much abroad and mingled-- you may say freely--in foreign life, I never exhibited the smallest
preference for any one else."
"For any one but yourself," Madame Merle mentally observed; but the reflexion was perfectly
inaudible.
"I never sacrificed my husband to another," Mrs. Touchett continued with her stout curtness.
"Oh no," thought Madame Merle; "you never did anything for another!"
There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so
as they are not in accord either with the view--somewhat superficial perhaps--that we have hitherto
enjoyed of Madame Merle's character or with the literal facts of Mrs. Touchett's history; the more
so, too, as Madame Merle had a well-founded conviction that her friend's last remark was not in
the least to be construed as a side-thrust at herself. The truth is that the moment she had crossed the
threshold she received an impression that Mr. Touchett's death had had subtle consequences and
that these consequences had been profitable to a little circle of persons among whom she was not
numbered. Of course it was an event which would naturally have consequences; her imagination
had more than once rested upon this fact during her stay at Gardencourt. But it had been one thing
to foresee such a matter mentally and another to stand among its massive records. The idea of a
distribution of property--she would almost have said of spoils--just now pressed upon her senses
and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am far from wishing to picture her as one of the
hungry mouths or envious hearts of the general herd, but we have already learned of her having
desires that had never been satisfied. If she had been questioned, she would of course have
admitted--with a fine proud smile--that she had not the faintest claim to a share in Mr. Touchett's
relics. "There was never anything in the world between us," she would have said. "There was never
that, poor man!"--with a fillip of her thumb and her third finger. I hasten to add, moreover, that if
she couldn't at the present moment keep from quite perversely yearning she was careful not to
betray herself. She had after all as much sympathy for Mrs. Touchett's gains as for her losses.
"He has left me this house," the newly-made widow said; "but of course I shall not live in it; I've a
much better one in Florence. The will was opened only three days since, but I've already offered
the house for sale. I've also a share in the bank; but I don't yet understand if I'm obliged to leave it
there. If not I shall certainly take it out. Ralph, of course, has Gardencourt; but I'm not sure that
he'll have means to keep up the place. He's naturally left very well off, but his father has given
away an immense deal of money; there are bequests to a string of third cousins in Vermont. Ralph,
however, is very fond of Gardencourt and would be quite capable of living there--in summer--with
a maid-of-all-work and a gardener's boy. There's one remarkable clause in my husband's will,"
Mrs. Touchett added. "He has left my niece a fortune."
第 142 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
"A fortune!" Madame Merle softly repeated.
"Isabel steps into something like seventy thousand pounds." Madame Merle's hands were clasped
in her lap; at this she raised them, still clasped, and held them a moment against her bosom while
her eyes, a little dilated, fixed themselves on those of her friend. "Ah," she cried, "the clever
creature!"
Mrs. Touchett gave her a quick look. "What do you mean by that?"
For an instant Madame Merle's colour rose and she dropped her eyes. "It certainly is clever to
achieve such results--without an effort!"
"There assuredly was no effort. Don't call it an achievement."
Madame Merle was seldom guilty of the awkwardness of retracting what she had said; her wisdom
was shown rather in maintaining it and placing it in a favourable light. "My dear friend, Isabel
would certainly not have had seventy thousand pounds left her if she had not been the most
charming girl in the world. Her charm includes great cleverness."
"She never dreamed, I'm sure, of my husband's doing anything for her; and I never dreamed of it
either, for he never spoke to me of his intention," Mrs. Touchett said. "She had no claim upon him
whatever; it was no great recommendation to him that she was my niece. Whatever she achieved
she achieved unconsciously."
"Ah," rejoined Madame Merle, "those are the greatest strokes!" Mrs. Touchett reserved her
opinion. "The girl's fortunate; I don't deny that. But for the present she's simply stupefied."
"Do you mean that she doesn't know what to do with the money?"
"That, I think, she has hardly considered. She doesn't know what to think about the matter at all. It
has been as if a big gun were suddenly fired off behind her; she's feeling herself to see if she be
hurt. It's but three days since she received a visit from the principal executor, who came in person,
very gallantly, to notify her. He told me afterwards that when he had made his little speech she
suddenly burst into tears. The money's to remain in the affairs of the bank, and she's to draw the
interest."
Madame Merle shook her head with a wise and now quite benignant smile. "How very delicious!
After she has done that two or three times she'll get used to it." Then after a silence, "What does
your son think of it?" she abruptly asked.
"He left England before the will was read--used up by his fatigue and anxiety and hurrying off to
the south. He's on his way to the Riviera and I've not yet heard from him. But it's not likely he'll
ever object to anything done by his father."
"Didn't you say his own share had been cut down?"
"Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do something for the people in America. He's
not in the least addicted to looking after number one."
"It depends upon whom he regards as number one!" said Madame Merle. And she remained
thoughtful a moment, her eyes bent on the floor.
"Am I not to see your happy niece?" she asked at last as she raised them.
第 143 页 共 391 页
原版英语阅读网
"You may see her; but you'll not be struck with her being happy. She has looked as solemn, these
three days, as a Cimabue Madonna!" And Mrs. Touchett rang for a servant.
Isabel came in shortly after the footman had been sent to call her; and Madame Merle thought, as
she appeared, that Mrs. Touchett's comparison had its force. The girl was pale and grave --an
effect not mitigated by her deeper mourning; but the smile of her brightest moments came into her
face as she saw Madame Merle, who went forward, laid her hand on our heroine's shoulder and,
after looking at her a moment, kissed her as if she were returning the kiss she had received from
her at Gardencourt. This was the only allusion the visitor, in her great good taste, made for the
present to her young friend's inheritance.
