The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

Her accent had put her slightly in the wrong, and after a moment she felt the need to right herself. The easiest way to do it was to place him where she had been. “You do me great injustice—you say what you don’t know!” she broke out. “I shouldn’t be an easy victim—I’ve proved it.”

“Oh, to me, perfectly.”

“I’ve proved it to others as well.” And she paused a moment. “I refused a proposal of marriage last week; what they call—no doubt—a dazzling one.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the young man gravely.

“It was a proposal many girls would have accepted; it had everything to recommend it.” Isabel had not proposed to herself to tell this story, but, now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking it out and doing herself justice took possession of her. “I was offered a great position and a great fortune—by a person whom I like extremely.”

Caspar watched her with intense interest. “Is he an Englishman?”

“He’s an English nobleman,” said Isabel.

Her visitor received this announcement at first in silence, but at last said: “I’m glad he’s disappointed.”

“Well then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the best of it.”

“I don’t call him a companion,” said Casper grimly.

“Why not—since I declined his offer absolutely?”

“That doesn’t make him my companion. Besides, he’s an Englishman.”

“And pray isn’t an Englishman a human being?” Isabel asked.

“Oh, those people? They’re not of my humanity, and I don’t care what becomes of them.”

“You’re very angry,” said the girl. “We’ve discussed this matter quite enough.”

“Oh yes, I’m very angry. I plead guilty to that!”

She turned away from him, walked to the open window and stood a moment looking into the dusky void of the street, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social animation. For some time neither of these young persons spoke; Caspar lingered near the chimney-piece with eyes gloomily attached. She had virtually requested him to go—he knew that; but at the risk of making himself odious he kept his ground. She was far too dear to him to be easily renounced, and he had crossed the sea all to wring from her some scrap of a vow. Presently she left the window and stood again before him. “You do me very little justice—after my telling you what I told you just now. I’m sorry I told you—since it matters so little to you.”

“Ah,” cried the young man, “if you were thinking of me when you did it!” And then he paused with the fear that she might contradict so happy a thought.

“I was thinking of you a little,” said Isabel.

“A little? I don’t understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you had any weight with you at all, calling it a ‘little’ is a poor account of it.”

Isabel shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. “I’ve refused a most kind, noble gentleman. Make the most of that.”

“I thank you then,” said Caspar Goodwood gravely. “I thank you immensely.”

“And now you had better go home.”

“May I not see you again?” he asked.

“I think it’s better not. You’ll be sure to talk of this, and you see it leads to nothing.”

“I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.”

Isabel reflected and then answered: “I return in a day or two to my uncle’s, and I can’t propose to you to come there. It would be too inconsistent.”

Caspar Goodwood, on his side, considered. “You must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle’s more than a week ago, and I declined it.”

She betrayed surprise. “From whom was your invitation?”

“From Mr. Ralph Touchett, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorisation to accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Touchett should invite me appeared to have come from Miss Stackpole.”

“It certainly never did from me. Henrietta really goes very far,” Isabel added.

“Don’t be too hard on her—that touches me.”

“No; if you declined you did quite right, and I thank you for it.” And she gave a little shudder of dismay at the thought that Lord Warburton and Mr. Goodwood might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward for Lord Warburton.

“When you leave your uncle where do you go?” her companion asked.

“I go abroad with my aunt—to Florence and other places.”

The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man’s heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his questions. “And when shall you come back to America?”

“Perhaps not for a long time. I’m very happy here.”

“Do you mean to give up your country?”

“Don’t be an infant!”

“Well, you’ll be out of my sight indeed!” said Caspar Goodwood.

“I don’t know,” she answered rather grandly. “The world—with all these places so arranged and so touching each other—comes to strike one as rather small.”

“It’s a sight too big for me!” Caspar exclaimed with a simplicity our young lady might have found touching if her face had not been set against concessions.

This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment: “Don’t think me unkind if I say it’s just that—being out of your sight—that I like. If you were in the same place I should feel you were watching me, and I don’t like that—I like my liberty too much. If there’s a thing in the world I’m fond of,” she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur, “it’s my personal independence.”

But whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved Caspar Goodwood’s admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the large air of it. He had never supposed she hadn’t wings and the need of beautiful free movements—he wasn’t, with his own long arms and strides, afraid of any force in her. Isabel’s words, if they had been meant to shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the sense that here was common ground. “Who would wish less to curtail your liberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent—doing whatever you like? It’s to make you independent that I want to marry you.”

“That’s a beautiful sophism,” said the girl with a smile more beautiful still.

“An unmarried woman—a girl of your age—isn’t independent. There are all sorts of things she can’t do. She’s hampered at every step.”

“That’s as she looks at the question,” Isabel answered with much spirit. “I’m not in my first youth—I can do what I choose—I belong quite to the independent class. I’ve neither father nor mother; I’m poor and of a serious disposition; I’m not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and conventional; indeed I can’t afford such luxuries. Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. I don’t wish to be a mere sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me.” She paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently on the point of doing so when she went on: “Let me say this to you, Mr. Goodwood. You’re so kind as to speak of being afraid of my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I’m on the point of doing so—girls are liable to have such things said about them—remember what I have told you about my love of liberty and venture to doubt it.”

There was something passionately positive in the tone in which she gave him this advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped him to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you might have perceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly: “You want simply to travel for two years? I’m quite willing to wait two years, and you may do what you like in the interval. If that’s all you want, pray say so. I don’t want you to be conventional; do I strike you as conventional myself? Do you want to improve your mind? Your mind’s quite good enough for me; but if it interests you to wander about a while and see different countries I shall be delighted to help you in any way in my power.”

“You’re very generous; that’s nothing new to me. The best way to help me will be to put as many hundred miles of sea between us as possible.”

“One would think you were going to commit some atrocity!” said Caspar Goodwood.