The Portrait of a Lady

“He’s in wretched health; he’s quite unfit for work,” Isabel urged.

“Pshaw! don’t you believe it. I work when I’m sick,” cried her friend. Later, when she stepped into the boat on joining the water-party, she remarked to Ralph that she supposed he hated her and would like to drown her.

“Ah no,” said Ralph, “I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you’d be such an interesting one!”

“Well, you do torture me; I may say that. But I shock all your prejudices; that’s one comfort.”

“My prejudices? I haven’t a prejudice to bless myself with. There’s intellectual poverty for you.”

“The more shame to you; I’ve some delicious ones. Of course I spoil your flirtation, or whatever it is you call it, with your cousin; but I don’t care for that, as I render her the service of drawing you out. She’ll see how thin you are.”

“Ah, do draw me out!” Ralph exclaimed. “So few people will take the trouble.”

Miss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from no effort; resorting largely, whenever the opportunity offered, to the natural expedient of interrogation. On the following day the weather was bad, and in the afternoon the young man, by way of providing indoor amusement, offered to show her the pictures. Henrietta strolled through the long gallery in his society, while he pointed out its principal ornaments and mentioned the painters and subjects. Miss Stackpole looked at the pictures in perfect silence, committing herself to no opinion, and Ralph was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none of the little ready-made ejaculations of delight of which the visitors to Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This young lady indeed, to do her justice, was but little addicted to the use of conventional terms; there was something earnest and inventive in her tone, which at times, in its strained deliberation, suggested a person of high culture speaking a foreign language. Ralph Touchett subsequently learned that she had at one time officiated as art critic to a journal of the other world; but she appeared, in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket none of the small change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had called her attention to a charming Constable, she turned and looked at him as if he himself had been a picture.

“Do you always spend your time like this?” she demanded.

“I seldom spend it so agreeably.”

“Well, you know what I mean—without any regular occupation.”

“Ah,” said Ralph, “I’m the idlest man living.”

Miss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph bespoke her attention for a small Lancret hanging near it, which represented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and a ruff, leaning against the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a garden and playing the guitar to two ladies seated on the grass. “That’s my ideal of a regular occupation,” he said.

Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and, though her eyes had rested upon the picture, he saw she had missed the subject. She was thinking of something much more serious. “I don’t see how you can reconcile it to your conscience.”

“My dear lady, I have no conscience!”

“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.”