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"Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired."
The Countess still remained behind, so that Isabel requested the footman to go into the Coliseum
and tell her they were waiting. He presently returned with the announcement that the Signora
Contessa begged them not to wait--she would come home in a cab!
About a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted themselves with Mr. Rosier, Isabel,
going rather late to dress for dinner, found Pansy sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been
awaiting her; she got up from her low chair. "Pardon my taking the liberty," she said in a small
voice. "It will be the last--for some time."
Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited, frightened look. "You're not
going away!" Isabel exclaimed.
"I'm going to the convent."
"To the convent?"
Pansy drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round Isabel and rest her head on her
shoulder. She stood this way a moment, perfectly still; but her companion could feel her tremble.
The quiver of her little body expressed everything she was unable to say. Isabel nevertheless
pressed her. "Why are you going to the convent?"
"Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better, every now and then, for making a little
retreat. He says the world, always the world, is very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a
little seclusion--a little reflexion." Pansy spoke in short detached sentences, as if she could scarce
trust herself; and then she added with a triumph of self-control: "I think papa's right; I've been so
much in the world this winter."
Her announcement had a strange effect on Isabel; it seemed to carry a larger meaning than the girl
herself knew. "When was this decided?" she asked. "I've heard nothing of it."
"Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't be too much talked about in
advance. Madame Catherine's to come for me at a quarter past seven, and I'm only to take two
frocks. It's only for a few weeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who used
to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being educated. I'm very fond of little
girls," said Pansy with an effect of diminutive grandeur. "And I'm also very fond of Mother
Catherine. I shall be very quiet and think a great deal."
Isabel listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck. "Think of ME sometimes."
"Ah, come and see me soon!" cried Pansy; and the cry was very different from the heroic remarks
of which she had just delivered herself.
Isabel could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how little she yet knew her
husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long, tender kiss.
Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had arrived in a cab and had
departed again with the signorina. On going to the drawing-room before dinner she found the
Countess Gemini alone, and this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful
toss of the head, "En voila, ma chere, une pose!" But if it was an affectation she was at a loss to see
what her husband affected. She could only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she
supposed. It had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him that, strange as it may
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appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after he had come in, to allude to his daughter's sudden
departure: she spoke of it only after they were seated at table. But she had forbidden herself ever to
ask Osmond a question. All she could do was to make a declaration, and there was one that came
very naturally. "I shall miss Pansy very much."
He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of flowers in the middle of the table.
"Ah yes," he said at last, "I had thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too
often. I dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I can make you
understand. It doesn't matter; don't trouble yourself about it. That's why I had not spoken of it. I
didn't believe you would enter into it. But I've always had the idea; I've always thought it a part of
the education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and fair; she should be innocent
and gentle. With the manners of the present time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled.
Pansy's a little dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This bustling, pushing
rabble that calls itself society--one should take her out of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet,
very convenient, very salutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under the arcade,
among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born; several of them are
noble. She will have her books and her drawing, she will have her piano. I've made the most liberal
arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there's just to be a certain little sense of sequestration.
She'll have time to think, and there's something I want her to think about." Osmond spoke
deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at the basket of
flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so much offering an explanation as putting a
thing into words--almost into pictures--to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while
the picture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he went on: "The Catholics
are very wise after all. The convent is a great institution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to
an essential need in families, in society. It's a school of good manners; it's a school of repose. Oh, I
don't want to detach my daughter from the world," he added; "I don't want to make her fix her
thoughts on any other. This one's very well, as SHE should take it, and she may think of it as much
as she likes. Only she must think of it in the right way."
Isabel gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found it indeed intensely interesting. It
seemed to show her how far her husband's desire to be effective was capable of going--to the point
of playing theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not understand his
purpose, no--not wholly; but she understood it better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she
was convinced that the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to herself and
destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do something sudden and arbitrary,
something unexpected and refined; to mark the difference between his sympathies and her own,
and show that if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural he should be
more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he wished to be effective he had succeeded;
the incident struck a chill into Isabel's heart. Pansy had known the convent in her childhood and
had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who were very fond of her, and
there was therefore for the moment no definite hardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had
taken fright; the impression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough. The old
Protestant tradition had never faded from Isabel's imagination, and as her thoughts attached
themselves to this striking example of her husband's genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket
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of flowers--poor little Pansy became the heroine of a tragedy. Osmond wished it to be known that
he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain
relief presently, in hearing the high, strained voice of her sister-in-law. The Countess too,
apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a different conclusion from Isabel.
"It's very absurd, my dear Osmond," she said, "to invent so many pretty reasons for poor Pansy's
banishment. Why, don't you say at once that you want to get her out of my way? Haven't you
discovered that I think very well of Mr. Rosier? I do indeed; he seems to me simpaticissimo. He
has made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you've made up your mind that
with those convictions I'm dreadful company for Pansy."
Osmond took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured. "My dear Amy," he
answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece of gallantry, "I don't know anything about your
convictions, but if I suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to banish
YOU."
CHAPTER LI
The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure of her brother's hospitality.
A week after this incident Isabel received a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and
bearing the stamp of Mrs. Touchett's authorship. "Ralph cannot last many days," it ran, "and if
convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only if you've not other
duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it
was; shall be curious to see whether you've found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there's no other
company." Isabel was prepared for this news, having received from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed
account of her journey to England with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than
alive, but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed, which,
as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She added that she had really had
two patients on her hands instead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Goodwood, who had been of no earthly
use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she had
been obliged to surrender the field to Mrs. Touchett, who had just returned from America and had
promptly given her to understand that she didn't wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel had
written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting her know of his critical condition and
suggesting that she should lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Touchett had telegraphed an
acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel received from her was the
second telegram I have just quoted.
Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it into her pocket, she went
straight to the door of her husband's study. Here she again paused an instant, after which she
opened the door and went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume
before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of small coloured
plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A
box of water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of
immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he
recognised his wife without looking round.
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"Excuse me for disturbing you," she said.
"When I come to your room I always knock," he answered, going on with his work.
"I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying."
"Ah, I don't believe that," said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a magnifying glass. "He
was dying when we married; he'll outlive us all."
Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism of this declaration; she
simply went on quickly, full of her own intention "My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to
Gardencourt."
"Why must you go to Gardencourt?" Osmond asked in the tone of impartial curiosity.
"To see Ralph before he dies."
To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his chief attention to his work,
which was of a sort that would brook no negligence. "I don't see the need of it," he said at last. "He
came to see you here. I didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake. But I tolerated
it because it was to be the last time you should see him. Now you tell me it's not to have been the
last. Ah, you're not grateful!"
"What am I to be grateful for?"
Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from his drawing, slowly got
up, and for the first time looked at his wife. "For my not having interfered while he was here."
"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you didn't like it. I was very
glad when he went away."
"Leave him alone then. Don't run after him."
Isabel turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing. "I must go to England,"
she said, with a full consciousness that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly
obstinate.
"I shall not like it if you do," Osmond remarked.
"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing I do or don't do. You
pretend to think I lie."
Osmond turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. "That's why you must go then? Not to see your
cousin, but to take a revenge on me."
"I know nothing about revenge."
"I do," said Osmond. "Don't give me an occasion."
"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit some folly."
"I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me."
"If I disobeyed you?" said Isabel in a low tone which had the effect of mildness.
"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the most deliberate, the most
calculated, opposition."
"How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but three minutes ago."
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"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why we should prolong our
discussion; you know my wish." And he stood there as if he expected to see her withdraw.
But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; she still wished to justify herself;
he had the power, in an extraordinary degree, of making her feel this need. There was something in
her imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. "You've no reason for such a
wish," said Isabel, "and I've every reason for going. I can't tell you how unjust you seem to me.
But I think you know. It's your own opposition that's calculated. It's malignant."
She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the sensation of hearing it was
evidently new to Osmond. But he showed no surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that
he had believed his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to draw
her out. "It's all the more intense then," he answered. And he added almost as if he were giving her
a friendly counsel: "This is a very important matter." She recognised that; she was fully conscious
of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity
made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on. "You say I've no reason? I have the very best. I
dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It's dishonourable; it's indelicate; it's
indecent. Your cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to make concessions
to him. I've already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he was here, kept
me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week I expected him to go. I've
never liked him and he has never liked me. That's why you like him--because he hates me," said
Osmond with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. "I've an ideal of what my wife should do
and should not do. She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to
sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us. You smile most
expressively when I talk about US, but I assure you that WE, WE, Mrs. Osmond, is all I know. I
take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that
we're divorced or separated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than any
human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable proximity; it's one, at any rate, of
our own deliberate making. You don't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly
willing, because--because--" And he paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say
which would be very much to the point. "Because I think we should accept the consequences of
our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!"
He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped out of his tone. It had a
gravity which checked his wife's quick emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the
room found itself caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command, they
constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on his part could
only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the
sign of the cross or the flag of one's country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and
precious--the observance of a magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two
disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Isabel had not changed;
her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her
husband's blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the
victory. It came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that
this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of irreflective
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action--a joy to which she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to
slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Osmond's touch. If she must renounce, however,
she would let him know she was a victim rather than a dupe. "I know you're a master of the art of
mockery," she said. "How can you speak of an indissoluble union --how can you speak of your
being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity? Where's your contentment
when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in your heart?"
"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks."
"We don't live decently together!" cried Isabel.
"Indeed we don't if you go to England."
"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more."
He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long enough in Italy to catch
this trick. "Ah, if you've come to threaten me I prefer my drawing." And he walked back to his
table, where he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it.
"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back," said Isabel.
He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was not designed. He looked at
her a little, and then, "Are you out of your mind?" he enquired.
"How can it be anything but a rupture?" she went on; "especially if all you say is true?" She was
unable to see how it could be anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it
might be.
He sat down before his table. "I really can't argue with you on the hypothesis of your defying me,"
he said. And he took up one of his little brushes again.
She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye his whole deliberately
indifferent yet most expressive figure; after which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her
energy, her passion, were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly
encompassed her. Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting any weakness. On her
way back to her room she found the Countess Gemini standing in the open doorway of a little
parlour in which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Countess had
an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a page which failed to
strike her as interesting. At the sound of Isabel's step she raised her head.
"Ah my dear," she said, "you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing book to read!
Everything here's of a dreariness--! Do you think this would do me any good?"
Isabel glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without reading or understanding it. "I'm
afraid I can't advise you. I've had bad news. My cousin, Ralph Touchett, is dying."
The Countess threw down her book. "Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully sorry for you."
"You would be sorrier still if you knew."
"What is there to know? You look very badly," the Countess added. "You must have been with
Osmond."
Half an hour before Isabel would have listened very coldly to an intimation that she should ever
feel a desire for the sympathy of her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present
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embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady's fluttering attention. "I've been
with Osmond," she said, while the Countess's bright eyes glittered at her.
"I'm sure then he has been odious!" the Countess cried. "Did he say he was glad poor Mr.
Touchett's dying?"
"He said it's impossible I should go to England."
The Countess's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she already foresaw the
extinction of any further brightness in her visit to Rome. Ralph Touchett would die, Isabel would
go into mourning, and then there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a
moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid, picturesque play of feature was
her only tribute to disappointment. After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she
had already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for Isabel's trouble to forget her
own, and she saw that Isabel's trouble was deep.
It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Countess had no hesitation in connecting
her exasperating brother with the expression of her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat with an
almost joyous expectation, for if she had wished to see Osmond overtopped the conditions looked
favourable now. Of course if Isabel should go to England she herself would immediately leave
Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce her to remain there with Osmond. Nevertheless she felt
an immense desire to hear that Isabel would go to England. "Nothing's impossible for you, my
dear," she said caressingly. "Why else are you rich and clever and good?"
"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak."
"Why does Osmond say it's impossible?" the Countess asked in a tone which sufficiently declared
that she couldn't imagine.
From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Isabel drew back; she disengaged her
hand, which the Countess had affectionately taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank
bitterness. "Because we're so happy together that we can't separate even for a fortnight."
"Ah," cried the Countess while Isabel turned away, "when I want to make a journey my husband
simply tells me I can have no money!"
Isabel went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It may appear to some
readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is certain that for a woman of a high spirit she
