The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

“You’ll do so only by disappointing yourself and that will go hard with you!”

To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it that would bear consideration. At last she said abruptly: “I don’t see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don’t want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.”

“There’s nothing she can do so well. But you’re of course so many-sided.”

“If one’s two-sided it’s enough,” said Isabel.

“You’re the most charming of polygons!” her companion broke out. At a glance from his companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it went on: “You want to see life—you’ll be hanged if you don’t, as the young men say.”

“I don’t think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I do want to look about me.”

“You want to drain the cup of experience.”

“No, I don’t wish to touch the cup of experience. It’s a poisoned drink! I only want to see for myself.”

“You want to see, but not to feel,” Ralph remarked.

“I don’t think that if one’s a sentient being one can make the distinction. I’m a good deal like Henrietta. The other day when I asked her if she wished to marry she said: ‘Not till I’ve seen Europe!’ I too don’t wish to marry till I’ve seen Europe.”

“You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you.”

“No, that would be worse than marrying Lord Warburton. But it’s getting very dark,” Isabel continued, “and I must go home.” She rose from her place, but Ralph only sat still and looked at her. As he remained there she stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that was full on either side, but especially on Ralph’s, of utterances too vague for words.

“You’ve answered my question,” he said at last. “You’ve told me what I wanted. I’m greatly obliged to you.”

“It seems to me I’ve told you very little.”

“You’ve told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that you want to throw yourself into it.”

Her silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. “I never said that.”

“I think you meant it. Don’t repudiate it. It’s so fine!”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to fasten upon me, for I’m not in the least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men.”

Ralph slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of the square. “No,” he said; “women rarely boast of their courage. Men do so with a certain frequency.”

“Men have it to boast of!”

“Women have it too. You’ve a great deal.”

“Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt’s Hotel, but not more.”

Ralph unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it. “We’ll find your cab,” he said; and as they turned toward a neighbouring street in which this quest might avail he asked her again if he mightn’t see her safely to the inn.

“By no means,” she answered; “you’re very tired; you must go home and go to bed.”

The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment at the door. “When people forget I’m a poor creature I’m often incommoded,” he said. “But it’s worse when they remember it!”

CHAPTER XVI

She had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home; it simply struck her that for some days past she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of the American girl whom extravagance of aid places in an attitude that she ends by finding “affected” had made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of solitude, which since her arrival in England had been but meagrely met. It was a luxury she could always command at home and she had wittingly missed it. That evening, however, an incident occurred which—had there been a critic to note it—would have taken all colour from the theory that the wish to be quite by herself had caused her to dispense with her cousin’s attendance. Seated toward nine o’clock in the dim illumination of Pratt’s Hotel and trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, she succeeded only to the extent of reading other words than those printed on the page—words that Ralph had spoken to her that afternoon. Suddenly the well-muffed knuckle of the waiter was applied to the door, which presently gave way to his exhibition, even as a glorious trophy, of the card of a visitor. When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the name of Mr. Caspar Goodwood she let the man stand before her without signifying her wishes.

“Shall I show the gentleman up, ma’am?” he asked with a slightly encouraging inflexion.

Isabel hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the mirror. “He may come in,” she said at last; and waited for him not so much smoothing her hair as girding her spirit.

Caspar Goodwood was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her, but saying nothing till the servant had left the room. “Why didn’t you answer my letter?” he then asked in a quick, full, slightly peremptory tone—the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who was capable of much insistence.

She answered by a ready question, “How did you know I was here?”

“Miss Stackpole let me know,” said Caspar Goodwood. “She told me you would probably be at home alone this evening and would be willing to see me.”

“Where did she see you—to tell you that?”

“She didn’t see me; she wrote to me.”

Isabel was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with an air of defiance, or at least of contention. “Henrietta never told me she was writing to you,” she said at last. “This is not kind of her.”

“Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?” asked the young man.

“I didn’t expect it. I don’t like such surprises.”

“But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet.”

“Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn’t see you. In so big a place as London it seemed very possible.”

“It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me,” her visitor went on.

Isabel made no reply; the sense of Henrietta Stackpole’s treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, was strong within her. “Henrietta’s certainly not a model of all the delicacies!” she exclaimed with bitterness. “It was a great liberty to take.”

“I suppose I’m not a model either—of those virtues or of any others. The fault’s mine as much as hers.”

As Isabel looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been more square. This might have displeased her, but she took a different turn. “No, it’s not your fault so much as hers. What you’ve done was inevitable, I suppose, for you.”

“It was indeed!” cried Caspar Goodwood with a voluntary laugh.

“And now that I’ve come, at any rate, mayn’t I stay?”

“You may sit down, certainly.”

She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place that offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay little thought to that sort of furtherance. “I’ve been hoping every day for an answer to my letter. You might have written me a few lines.”

“It wasn’t the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily have written you four pages as one. But my silence was an intention,” Isabel said. “I thought it the best thing.”

He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his face she could enjoy being able to say “You know you oughtn’t to have written to me yourself!” and to say it with an air of triumph.

Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to shine through the vizard of a helmet. He had a strong sense of justice and was ready any day in the year—over and above this—to argue the question of his rights. “You said you hoped never to hear from me again; I know that. But I never accepted any such rule as my own. I warned you that you should hear very soon.”