His mother had told him that he must satisfy his curiosity at the source, and it soon became evident
he should not want for occasion. He had a good deal of talk with his young kinswoman when the
two had been left together in the drawing-room. Lord Warburton, who had ridden over from his
own house, some ten miles distant, remounted and took his departure before dinner; and an hour
after this meal was ended Mr. and Mrs. Touchett, who appeared to have quite emptied the measure
of their forms, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their respective apartments. The
young man spent an hour with his cousin; though she had been travelling half the day she appeared
in no degree spent. She was really tired; she knew it, and knew she should pay for it on the
morrow; but it was her habit at this period to carry exhaustion to the furthest point and confess to it
only when dissimulation broke down. A fine hypocrisy was for the present possible; she was
interested; she was, as she said to herself, floated. She asked Ralph to show her the pictures; there
were a great many in the house, most of them of his own choosing. The best were arranged in an
oaken gallery, of charming proportions, which had a sitting-room at either end of it and which in
the evening was usually lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures to advantage, and
the visit might have stood over to the morrow. This suggestion Ralph had ventured to make; but
Isabel looked disappointed--smiling still, however--and said: "If you please I should like to see
them just a little." She was eager, she knew she was eager and now seemed so; she couldn't help it.
"She doesn't take suggestions," Ralph said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her pressure
amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at intervals, and if the light was
imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of
heavy frames; it made a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick and
moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to one picture after another,
indulged in little exclamations and murmurs. She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he
was struck with that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there; she lifted it
high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the middle of the place and bending his eyes
much less upon the pictures than on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering
glances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art. She was undeniably spare, and
ponderably light, and proveably tall; when people had wished to distinguish her from the other two
Miss Archers they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark even to
blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light grey eyes, a little too firm perhaps
in her graver moments, had an enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of
the gallery and down the other, and then she said: "Well, now I know more than I did when I
began!"
"You apparently have a great passion for knowledge," her cousin returned.
"I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant."
"You strike me as different from most girls."
"Ah, some of them would--but the way they're talked to!" murmured Isabel, who preferred not to
dilate just yet on herself. Then in a moment, to change the subject, "Please tell me--isn't there a
ghost?" she went on.
"A ghost?"
"A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in America."
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"So we do here, when we see them."
"You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house."
"It's not a romantic old house," said Ralph. "You'll be disappointed if you count on that. It's a
dismally prosaic one; there's no romance here but what you may have brought with you."
"I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the right place."
"To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here, between my father and me."
Isabel looked at him a moment. "Is there never any one here but your father and you?"
"My mother, of course."
"Oh, I know your mother; she's not romantic. Haven't you other people?"
"Very few."
"I'm sorry for that; I like so much to see people."
"Oh, we'll invite all the county to amuse you," said Ralph.
"Now you're making fun of me," the girl answered rather gravely. "Who was the gentleman on the
lawn when I arrived?"
"A county neighbour; he doesn't come very often."
"I'm sorry for that; I liked him," said Isabel.
"Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him," Ralph objected.
"Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father too, immensely."
"You can't do better than that. He's the dearest of the dear."
"I'm so sorry he is ill," said Isabel.
"You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse."
"I don't think I am; I've been told I'm not; I'm said to have too many theories. But you haven't told
me about the ghost," she added.
Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. "You like my father and you like Lord
Warburton. I infer also that you like my mother."
"I like your mother very much, because--because--" And Isabel found herself attempting to assign
a reason for her affection for Mrs. Touchett.
"Ah, we never know why!" said her companion, laughing.
"I always know why," the girl answered. "It's because she doesn't expect one to like her. She
doesn't care whether one does or not."
"So you adore her--out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my mother," said Ralph.
"I don't believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try to make them do it."
"Good heavens, how you see through one!" he cried with a dismay that was not altogether jocular.
"But I like you all the same," his cousin went on. "The way to clinch the matter will be to show me
the ghost."
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Ralph shook his head sadly. "I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't
given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person
like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable
knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago," said Ralph.
"I told you just now I'm very fond of knowledge," Isabel answered.
"Yes, of happy knowledge--of pleasant knowledge. But you haven't suffered, and you're not made
to suffer. I hope you'll never see the ghost!"
She had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, but with a certain gravity in her eyes.
Charming as he found her, she had struck him as rather presumptuous--indeed it was a part of her
charm; and he wondered what she would say. "I'm not afraid, you know," she said: which seemed
quite presumptuous enough.
"You're not afraid of suffering?"
"Yes, I'm afraid of suffering. But I'm not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily," she
added.
"I don't believe you do," said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.
"I don't think that's a fault," she answered. "It's not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not
made for that."
"You were not, certainly."
"I'm not speaking of myself." And she wandered off a little.
"No, it isn't a fault," said her cousin. "It's a merit to be strong."
"Only, if you don't suffer they call you hard," Isabel remarked.
They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had returned from the gallery, and
paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her
bedroom candle, which he had taken from a niche. "Never mind what they call you. When you do
suffer they call you an idiot. The great point's to be as happy as possible."
She looked at him a little; she had taken her candle and placed her foot on the oaken stair. "Well,"
she said, "that's what I came to Europe for, to be as happy as possible. Good-night."
"Good-night! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad to contribute to it!"
She turned away, and he watched her as she slowly ascended. Then, with his hands always in his
pockets, he went back to the empty drawing-room.
CHAPTER VI
Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had
been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to
have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the
unfamiliar. It is true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young woman of
extraordinary profundity; for these excellent people never withheld their admiration from a reach
of intellect of which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel as a prodigy of
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learning, a creature reported to have read the classic authors --in translations. Her paternal aunt,
Mrs. Varian, once spread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book--Mrs. Varian having a
reverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Varian
thought highly of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of
privation. Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated
ceilings, was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of printed volumes contained nothing but
half a dozen novels in paper on a shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Varians. Practically,
Mrs. Varian's acquaintance with literature was confined to The New York Interviewer; as she very
justly said, after you had read the Interviewer you had lost all faith in culture. Her tendency, with
this, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of her daughters; she was determined to
bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Her impression with regard to Isabel's labours
was quite illusory; the girl had never attempted to write a book and had no desire for the laurels of
authorship. She had no talent for expression and too little of the consciousness of genius; she only
had a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior.
Whether or no she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they thought her so; for it
seemed to her often that her mind moved more quickly than theirs, and this encouraged an
impatience that might easily be confounded with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay that
Isabel was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the
field of her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was
right; she treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were
frequently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity of his subject must shrink from
specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines which had never been corrected by the
judgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own way, and
it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. At moments she discovered she was grotesquely
wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head
higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of
herself. She had a theory that it was only under this provision life was worth living; that one should
be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (she couldn't help knowing her
organisation was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of
inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self as to
cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one's own best friend and to give one's
self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which
rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in
thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the
world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be
detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do anything
wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the
discovery always made her tremble as if she had escaped from a trap which might have caught her
and smothered her) that the chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon another person, presented
only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That always struck her as the
worst thing that could happen to her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about
the things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but when she fixed them hard she
recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel; she had seen very
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little of the evil of the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other.
Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed indecent not to scorn them. Of course
the danger of a high spirit was the danger of inconsistency--the danger of keeping up the flag after
the place has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almost a dishonour to the flag.
But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts of artillery to which young women are exposed, flattered
herself that such contradictions would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life should always
be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she should produce; she would be what she
appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she
might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as
heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her
confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture
of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be
if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate,
desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy
victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse
more tender and more purely expectant.
It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortunate in being independent, and that she
ought to make some very enlightened use of that state. She never called it the state of solitude,
much less of singleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sister Lily
constantly urged her to come and abide. She had a friend whose acquaintance she had made shortly
before her father's death, who offered so high an example of useful activity that Isabel always
thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the advantage of an admired ability; she was
thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer, from Washington, Newport,
the White Mountains and other places, were universally quoted. Isabel pronounced them with
confidence "ephemeral," but she esteemed the courage, energy and good-humour of the writer,
who, without parents and without property, had adopted three of the children of an infirm and
widowed sister and was paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour.
Henrietta was in the van of progress and had clear-cut views on most subjects; her cherished desire
had long been to come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer from the radical
point of view--an enterprise the less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions
would be and to how many objections most European institutions lay open. When she heard that
Isabel was coming she wished to start at once; thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the
two should travel together. She had been obliged, however, to postpone this enterprise. She
thought Isabel a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertly in some of her letters, though
she never mentioned the fact to her friend, who would not have taken pleasure in it and was not a
regular student of the Interviewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof that a woman might
suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were of the obvious kind; but even if one had not the
journalistic talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going to want,
one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and
resign one's self to being frivolous and hollow. Isabel was stoutly determined not to be hollow. If
one should wait with the right patience one would find some happy work to one's hand. Of course,
among her theories, this young lady was not without a collection of views on the subject of
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marriage. The first on the list was a conviction of the vulgarity of thinking too much of it. From
lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might be delivered; she held that a
woman ought to be able to live to herself, in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it was
perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of
another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there
was in her--something cold and dry an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have
called it--had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the article of possible
husbands. Few of the men she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to
think that one of them should present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience.
Deep in her soul--it was the deepest thing there--lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she
could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive.
Isabel's thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a little it ended in
alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her
colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her
development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature had, in her conceit, a
certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and
lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air,
and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful
of roses. But she was often reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those of her
remarkable soul, and that there were moreover a great many places which were not gardens at all-only
dusky pestiferous tracts, planted thick with ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid
curiosity on which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to this beautiful old
England and might carry her much further still, she often checked herself with the thought of the
thousands of people who were less happy than herself--a thought which for the moment made her
fine, full consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do with the misery of the
world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? It must be confessed that this question never held
her long. She was too young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She always
returned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one thought clever should begin
by getting a general impression of life. This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and
after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject of special
attention.
England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime. In her
infantine excursions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery
window; Paris, not London, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his
children had naturally not entered. The images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote,
and the old-world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her
uncle's house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Isabel; the
rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low rooms,
with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light
on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of
well-ordered privacy in the centre of a "property"--a place where sounds were felicitously
accidental, where the tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction
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dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk--these things were much to the taste of our
young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship
with her uncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to the lawn. He passed
hours in the open air, sitting with folded hands like a placid, homely household god, a god of
service, who had done his work and received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and
months made up only of off-days. Isabel amused him more than she suspected--the effect she
produced upon people was often different from what she supposed--and he frequently gave himself
the pleasure of making her chatter. It was by this term that he qualified her conversation, which
had much of the "point" observable in that of the young ladies of her country, to whom the ear of
the world is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands. Like the mass of American
girls Isabel had been encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attended to; she had
been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender
value, many of her emotions passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her
the habit of seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover to her words when she
was really moved that prompt vividness which so many people had regarded as a sign of
superiority. Mr. Touchett used to think that she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her
teens. It was because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak--so many
characteristics of her niece--that he had fallen in love with Mrs. Touchett. He never expressed this
analogy to the girl herself, however; for if Mrs. Touchett had once been like Isabel, Isabel was not
at all like Mrs. Touchett. The old man was full of kindness for her; it was a long time, as he said,
since they had had any young life in the house; and our rustling, quickly-moving, clear-voiced
heroine was as agreeable to his sense as the sound of flowing water. He wanted to do something
for her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing but questions; it is true that of
these she asked a quantity. Her uncle had a great fund of answers, though her pressure sometimes
came in forms that puzzled him. She questioned him immensely about England, about the British
constitution, the English character, the state of politics, the manners and customs of the royal
family, the peculiarities of the aristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neighbours; and in
begging to be enlightened on these points she usually enquired whether they corresponded with the
descriptions in the books. The old man always looked at her a little with his fine dry smile while he
smoothed down the shawl spread across his legs.
"The books?" he once said; "well, I don't know much about the books. You must ask Ralph about
that. I've always ascertained for myself--got my information in the natural form. I never asked
many questions even; I just kept quiet and took notice. Of course I've had very good
opportunities--better than what a young lady would naturally have. I'm of an inquisitive
disposition, though you mightn't think it if you were to watch me: however much you might watch
me I should be watching you more. I've been watching these people for upwards of thirty-five
years, and I don't hesitate to say that I've acquired considerable information. It's a very fine country
on the whole--finer perhaps than what we give it credit for on the other side. Several improvements
I should like to see introduced; but the necessity of them doesn't seem to be generally felt as yet.
When the necessity of a thing is generally felt they usually manage to accomplish it; but they seem
to feel pretty comfortable about waiting till then. I certainly feel more at home among them than I
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expected to when I first came over; I suppose it's because I've had a considerable degree of
success. When you're successful you naturally feel more at home."
"Do you suppose that if I'm successful I shall feel at home?" Isabel asked.
"I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be successful. They like American young
ladies very much over here; they show them a great deal of kindness. But you mustn't feel too
much at home, you know."
"Oh, I'm by no means sure it will satisfy me," Isabel judicially emphasised. "I like the place very
much, but I'm not sure I shall like the people."
"The people are very good people; especially if you like them."
"I've no doubt they're good," Isabel rejoined; "but are they pleasant in society? They won't rob me
nor beat me; but will they make themselves agreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I
don't hesitate to say so, because I always appreciate it. I don't believe they're very nice to girls;
they're not nice to them in the novels."
"I don't know about the novels," said Mr. Touchett. "I believe the novels have a great deal but I
don't suppose they're very accurate. We once had a lady who wrote novels staying here; she was a
friend of Ralph's and he asked her down. She was very positive, quite up to everything; but she
was not the sort of person you could depend on for evidence. Too free a fancy--I suppose that was
it. She afterwards published a work of fiction in which she was understood to have given a
representation-- something in the nature of a caricature, as you might say--of my unworthy self. I
didn't read it, but Ralph just handed me the book with the principal passages marked. It was
understood to be a description of my conversation; American peculiarities, nasal twang, Yankee
notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate; she couldn't have listened very
