"I'm not bored," said Goodwood. "I've plenty to think about and to say to myself."
"More than to say to others!" Osmond exclaimed with a light laugh. "Where shall you go next? I
mean after you've consigned Touchett to his natural caretakers--I believe his mother's at last
coming back to look after him. That little lady's superb; she neglects her duties with a finish--!
Perhaps you'll spend the summer in England?"
"I don't know. I've no plans."
"Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free."
"Oh yes, I'm very free."
"Free to come back to Rome I hope," said Osmond as he saw a group of new visitors enter the
room. "Remember that when you do come we count on you!"
Goodwood had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without his having a chance to
speak to Isabel otherwise than as one of several associated interlocutors. There was something
perverse in the inveteracy with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an
intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was absolutely no appearance of
one. She met his eyes with her clear hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would
come and help her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he opposed but
a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked to the few people he knew, who found
him for the first time rather self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Caspar Goodwood,
though he often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera, and it was
usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to contain himself; but toward the end,
when he saw the people beginning to go, he drew near to Isabel and asked her in a low tone if he
might not speak to her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured himself was empty.
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She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found her self absolutely prevented. "I'm afraid it's
impossible. People are saying good-night, and I must be where they can see me."
"I shall wait till they are all gone then."
She hesitated a moment. "Ah, that will be delightful!" she exclaimed.
And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several people, at the end, who seemed
tethered to the carpet. The Countess Gemini, who was never herself till midnight, as she said,
displayed no consciousness that the entertainment was over; she had still a little circle of
gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke into a united laugh. Osmond had
disappeared--he never bade good-bye to people; and as the Countess was extending her range,
according to her custom at this period of the evening, Isabel had sent Pansy to bed. Isabel sat a
little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law would sound a lower note and let the last
loiterers depart in peace.
"May I not say a word to you now?" Goodwood presently asked her. She got up immediately,
smiling. "Certainly, we'll go somewhere else if you like." They went together, leaving the
Countess with her little circle, and for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of
them spoke. Isabel would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room slowly fanning herself;
she had for him the same familiar grace. She seemed to wait for him to speak. Now that he was
alone with her all the passion he had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes and
made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and blurred, and through the
heaving veil he felt her hover before him with gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen more
distinctly he would have perceived her smile was fixed and a trifle forced--that she was frightened
at what she saw in his own face. "I suppose you wish to bid me goodbye?" she said.
"Yes--but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome," he answered with almost plaintive honesty.
"I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell you how kind I think you."
For a moment more he said nothing. "With a few words like that you make me go."
"You must come back some day," she brightly returned.
"Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible."
"Oh no; I don't mean all that."
"What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and I'll go," Goodwood added.
"Come back whenever you like," said Isabel with attempted lightness.
"I don't care a straw for your cousin!" Caspar broke out.
"Is that what you wished to tell me?"
"No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you--" he paused a moment, and
then--"what have you really made of your life?" he said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as
if for an answer; but she said nothing, and he went on: "I can't understand, I can't penetrate you!
What am I to believe-- what do you want me to think?" Still she said nothing; she only stood
looking at him, now quite without pretending to ease. "I'm told you're unhappy, and if you are I
should like to know it. That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and
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you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed. You conceal everything;
I haven't really come near you."
"You come very near," Isabel said gently, but in a tone of warning.
"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done well?"
"You ask a great deal."
"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I shall never know if you can
help it. And then it's none of my business." He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself,
to give a considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that it was his last
chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool whatever he should say,
suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. "You're perfectly
inscrutable, and that's what makes me think you've something to hide. I tell you I don't care a straw
for your cousin, but I don't mean that I don't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I
go away with him. I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If you should ask me
I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to leave the place? You must have some reason
for that; if you were as contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather know the
truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing. That isn't what I came for.
I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any
more. I haven't thought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go away. But if I
must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single moment, is there? If you're really
hurt--if HE hurts you--nothing I say will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I
came for. I thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't say it if I didn't believe
I should never see you again. It's the last time--let me pluck a single flower! I've no right to say
that, I know; and you've no right to listen. But you don't listen; you never listen, you're always
thinking of something else. After this I must go, of course; so I shall at least have a reason. Your
asking me is no reason, not a real one. I can't judge by your husband," he went on irrelevantly,
almost incoherently; "I don't understand him; he tells me you adore each other. Why does he tell
me that? What business is it of mine? When I say that to you, you look strange. But you always
look strange. Yes, you've something to hide. It's none of my business --very true. But I love you,"
said Caspar Goodwood.
As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which they had entered and
raised her fan as if in warning.
"You've behaved so well; don't spoil it," she uttered softly.
"No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I love you as I've never loved
you."
"I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go."
"You can't help it--of course not. You would if you could, but you can't, unfortunately.
Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothing --nothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole
satisfaction:--that you tell me--that you tell me--!"
"That I tell you what?"
"Whether I may pity you."
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"Should you like that?" Isabel asked, trying to smile again.
"To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something. I'd give my life to it."
She raised her fan to her face, which it covered all except her eyes. They rested a moment on his.
"Don't give your life to it; but give a thought to it every now and then." And with that she went
back to the Countess Gemini.
CHAPTER XLIX
Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the evening of that
Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents, and Isabel, though she observed her
absence, was not surprised by it. Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to
sociability, and to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been mentioned that
Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord Warburton had left Rome, and that on her
first meeting with Isabel (whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first utterance
had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman, for whom she appeared to hold her
dear friend accountable.
"Please don't talk of him," said Isabel for answer; "we've heard so much of him of late."
Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and smiled at the left corner of her
mouth. "You've heard, yes. But you must remember that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find him
here and to be able to congratulate Pansy."
"You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton."
"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?" Madame Merle asked with a great
deal of spirit, but still with the intonation of good-humour.
Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too. "You shouldn't have
gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to watch the affair."
"I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?"
"You had better ask Pansy," said Isabel.
"I shall ask her what you've said to her."
These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused on Isabel's part by her
perceiving that her visitor's attitude was a critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very
discreet hitherto; she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling. But
apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since she now had a dangerous
quickness in her eye and an air of irritation which even her admirable ease was not able to
transmute. She had suffered a disappointment which excited Isabel's surprise--our heroine having
no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy's marriage; and she betrayed it in a manner which
quickened Mrs. Osmond's alarm. More clearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice
proceed from she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright,
strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the personal, the immediate, was
a powerful agent in her destiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her
nearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The sense of accident indeed
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had died within her that day when she happened to be struck with the manner in which the
wonderful lady and her own husband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet taken
its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a different eye, to have been led to
reflect that there was more intention in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah
yes, there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to herself; and she seemed to
wake from a long pernicious dream. What was it that brought home to her that Madame Merle's
intention had not been good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which
married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's challenge on behalf of poor
Pansy. There was something in this challenge which had at the very outset excited an answering
defiance; a nameless vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend's professions
of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to interfere, certainly, but only so long
as there was nothing to interfere with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in
casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several years of good offices. She
moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame
Merle's interest was identical with Osmond's: that was enough. "I think Pansy will tell you nothing
that will make you more angry," she said in answer to her companion's last remark.
"I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the situation. Do you consider that
Warburton has left us for ever?"
"I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please let it rest. Osmond has talked to me a
great deal about it, and I've nothing more to say or to hear. I've no doubt," Isabel added, "that he'll
be very happy to discuss the subject with you."
"I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening."
"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't apply to me for
information."
"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my heart on that marriage; the idea
did what so few things do-- it satisfied the imagination."
"Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned."
"You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not directly. But when one's such
an old friend one can't help having something at stake. You forget how long I've known Pansy.
You mean, of course," Madame Merle added, "that YOU are one of the persons concerned."
"No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all."
Madame Merle hesitated a little. "Ah yes, your work's done."
"Take care what you say," said Isabel very gravely.
"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your husband judges you
severely."
Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with bitterness. It was not the
insolence of Madame Merle's informing her that Osmond had been taking her into his confidence
as against his wife that struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was meant for
insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only when it was exactly right. It was not
right now, or at least it was not right yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an
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open wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as well as in his
thoughts. "Should you like to know how I judge HIM?" she asked at last.
"No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me to know."
There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel thought Madame Merle
disagreeable. She wished she would leave her. "Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don't
despair," she said abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.
But Madame Merle's expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only gathered her mantle
about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the air a faint, agreeable fragrance. "I don't
despair; I feel encouraged. And I didn't come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I
know you'll tell it if I ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that one can count upon that. No,
you won't believe what a comfort I take in it."
"What truth do you speak of?" Isabel asked, wondering.
"Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own movement or because you
recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to please you. Think of the confidence I must still
have in you, in spite of having lost a little of it," Madame Merle continued with a smile, "to ask
such a question as that!" She sat looking at her friend, to judge the effect of her words, and then
went on: "Now don't be heroic, don't be unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you
an honour in speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven't the least
idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And don't you see how well it is that your
husband should know it? It's true that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to
extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't alter the fact that it would
make a difference in his view of his daughter's prospects to know distinctly what really occurred.
If Lord Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's a pity. If he gave her
up to please you it's another. That's a pity too, but in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you'd
perhaps resign yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter married. Let him
off--let us have him!"
Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and apparently thinking
she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in
her lap. It was not that her visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was not
what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. "Who are you--what are you?" Isabel
murmured. "What have you to do with my husband?" It was strange that for the moment she drew
as near to him as if she had loved him.
"Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think, however, that I shall do so."
"What have you to do with me?" Isabel went on.
Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes from Isabel's face.
"Everything!" she answered.
Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a prayer to be enlightened.
But the light of this woman's eyes seemed only a darkness. "Oh misery!" she murmured at last; and
she fell back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave that
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Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married her. Before she uncovered her face again that
lady had left the room.
Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under the sky, where she could
descend from her carriage and tread upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into
her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural
catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet still were
upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern
quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter's
day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of
its smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of
the human lot easily carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, tenderly
acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it
chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to her in the starved churches,
where the marble columns, transferred from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in
endurance and the musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was no
gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altar-
pictures or clustered candles, could not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these
objects nor have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy, as we know,
was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had
lent brilliancy to their equipage; but she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her
mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several resorts; the most accessible
of which perhaps was a seat on the low parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high,
cold front of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the far-trailing outline
of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain, between, which is still so full of all that has passed
from it. After the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than usual; she
carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the other. Even when Pansy and the Countess
were with her she felt the touch of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome
behind, rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the
hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, while she strolled further and
further over the flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and gazed through
the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the
far gradations and soft confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills
where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.
On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution not to think of Madame
Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this lady's image hovered constantly before her. She
asked herself, with an almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate friend of
several years the great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied. She knew the idea only by
the Bible and other literary works; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance
with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in spite of her having
flattered herself that she cultivated it with some success this elementary privilege had been denied
her. Perhaps it was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that was what
Madame Merle had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel's Aunt Lydia had made this discovery
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long before, and had mentioned it to her niece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that she
had a much richer view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own career and the nobleness
of her own interpretations, than poor stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done
what she wanted; she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which could not
fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much have desired such an event. There were
people who had the match-making passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle,
great artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of marriage, too ill even of
life; she had desired that particular marriage but had not desired others. She had therefore had a
conception of gain, and Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her naturally a
long time to discover, and even then her discovery was imperfect. It came back to her that Madame
Merle, though she had seemed to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly
affectionate after Mr. Touchett's death and after learning that her young friend had been subject to
the good old man's charity. She had found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money,
but in the more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young woman's fresh and
ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough
to Isabel that Gilbert occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with the
conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the least sordid had married
her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money. Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if
she had thought a good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular injury. This
was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying to herself that the worst was still to
come. A man might marry a woman for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at
least he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her money, her money
would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let her go Ah, if Mr. Touchett's great charity
would but help her to-day it would be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if
Madame Merle had wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the boon must have lost
