Portrait of a Lady

“Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You'll need it the next time you go to America.”

“I shall probably never go again.”

“Are you ashamed to show yourself?”

Ralph meditated with a mild smile. “I suppose that if one has no conscience one has no shame.”

“Well, you've got plenty of assurance,” Henrietta declared. “Do you consider it right to give up your country?”

“Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one gives up one's grandmother. They're both antecedent to choice – elements of one's composition that are not to be eliminated.”

“I suppose that means that you've tried and been worsted. What do they think of you over here?”

“They delight in me.”

“That's because you truckle to them.”

“Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm!” Ralph sighed.

“I don't know anything about your natural charm. If you've got any charm it's quite unnatural. It's wholly acquired – or at least you've tried hard to acquire it, living over here. I don't say you've succeeded. It's a charm that I don't appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some way, and then we'll talk about it.” “Well, now, tell me what I shall do,” said Ralph.

“Go right home, to begin with.”

“Yes, I see. And then?”

“Take right hold of something.”

“Well, now, what sort of thing?”

“Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new idea, some big work.”

“Is it very difficult to take hold?” Ralph enquired.

“Not if you put your heart into it.”

“Ah, my heart,” said Ralph. “If it depends upon my heart —!”

“Haven't you got a heart?”

“I had one a few days ago, but I've lost it since.”

“You're not serious,” Miss Stackpole remarked; “that's what's the matter with you.” But for all this, in a day or two, she again permitted him to fix her attention and on the later occasion assigned a different cause to her mysterious perversity. “I know what's the matter with you, Mr. Touchett,” she said. “You think you're too good to get married.”

“I thought so till I knew you, Miss Stackpole,” Ralph answered; “and then I suddenly changed my mind.”

“Oh pshaw!” Henrietta groaned.

“Then it seemed to me,” said Ralph, “that I was not good enough.”

“It would improve you. Besides, it's your duty.”

“Ah,” cried the young man, “one has so many duties! Is that a duty too?”

“Of course it is – did you never know that before? It's every one's duty to get married.”

Ralph meditated a moment; he was disappointed. There was something in Miss Stackpole he had begun to like; it seemed to him that if she was not a charming woman she was at least a very good “sort.” She was wanting in distinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave: she went into cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of her conduct is not the altruistic impulse.

“Ah, well now, there's a good deal to be said about that,” Ralph rejoined.

“There may be, but that's the principal thing. I must say I think it looks very exclusive, going round all alone, as if you thought no woman was good enough for you. Do you think you're better than any one else in the world? In America it's usual for people to marry.”

“If it's my duty,” Ralph asked, “is it not, by analogy, yours as well?”

Miss Stackpole's ocular surfaces unwinkingly caught the sun. “Have you the fond hope of finding a flaw in my reasoning? Of course I've as good a right to marry as any one else.”

“Well then,” said Ralph, “I won't say it vexes me to see you single. It delights me rather.”

“You're not serious yet. You never will be.”

“Shall you not believe me to be so on the day I tell you I desire to give up the practice of going round alone?”

Miss Stackpole looked at him for a moment in a manner which seemed to announce a reply that might technically be called encouraging. But to his great surprise this expression suddenly resolved itself into an appearance of alarm and even of resentment. “No, not even then,” she answered dryly. After which she walked away.

“I've not conceived a passion for your friend,” Ralph said that evening to Isabel, “though we talked some time this morning about it.”

“And you said something she didn't like,” the girl replied.

Ralph stared. “Has she complained of me?”

“She told me she thinks there's something very low in the tone of Europeans towards women.”

“Does she call me a European?”

“One of the worst. She told me you had said to her something that an American never would have said. But she didn't repeat it.”

Ralph treated himself to a luxury of laughter. “She's an extraordinary combination. Did she think I was making love to her?”

“No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently thought you mistook the intention of something she had said, and put an unkind construction on it.”

“I thought she was proposing marriage to me and I accepted her. Was that unkind?”

Isabel smiled. “It was unkind to me. I don't want you to marry.”

“My dear cousin, what's one to do among you all?” Ralph demanded. “Miss Stackpole tells me it's my bounden duty, and that it's hers, in general, to see I do mine!”

“She has a great sense of duty,” said Isabel gravely. “She has indeed, and it's the motive of everything she says. That's what I like her for. She thinks it's unworthy of you to keep so many things to yourself. That's what she wanted to express. If you thought she was trying to – to attract you, you were very wrong.”

“It's true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying to attract me. Forgive my depravity.”