The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 2

“Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about poor Mr. Touchett,” Madame Merle added. “Have you reason to believe that he’s really at his last?”

“I’ve no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a probability.”

“I’m going to ask you a strange question,” said Madame Merle. “Are you very fond of your cousin?” And she gave a smile as strange as her utterance.

“Yes, I’m very fond of him. But I don’t understand you.”

She just hung fire. “It’s rather hard to explain. Something has occurred to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never guessed it?”

“He has done me many services.”

“Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.”

“He made me—?”

Madame Merle appearing to see herself successful, she went on more triumphantly: “He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it’s him you’ve to thank.” She stopped; there was something in Isabel’s eyes.

“I don’t understand you. It was my uncle’s money.”

“Yes; it was your uncle’s money, but it was your cousin’s idea. He brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!”

Isabel stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by lurid flashes. “I don’t know why you say such things. I don’t know what you know.”

“I know nothing but what I’ve guessed. But I’ve guessed that.”

Isabel went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment with her hand on the latch. Then she said—it was her only revenge: “I believed it was you I had to thank!”

Madame Merle dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud penance. “You’re very unhappy, I know. But I’m more so.”

“Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.”

Madame Merle raised her eyes. “I shall go to America,” she quietly remarked while Isabel passed out.

CHAPTER LIII

It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Isabel descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the arms, as it were—or at any rate into the hands—of Henrietta Stackpole. She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not definitely said to herself that Henrietta would meet her, she had felt her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their course through other countries—strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed, a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind. Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of memory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity of a shiver. She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that they had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after all, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of use to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more—this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.

She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures couched upon the receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret now—that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of her repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had been so—well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped, from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been. Whatever it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an impression that she should never again see Madame Merle. This impression carried her into the future, of which from time to time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who had her life to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of the present hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away, further away than little grey-green England, but this privilege was evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul—deeper than any appetite for renunciation—was the sense that life would be her business for a long time to come. And at moments there was something inspiring, almost enlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof of strength—it was a proof she should some day be happy again. It couldn’t be she was to live only to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn’t all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn’t it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It involved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but Isabel recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end. Then the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of her indifference closed her in.

Henrietta kissed her, as Henrietta usually kissed, as if she were afraid she should be caught doing it; and then Isabel stood there in the crowd, looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she wished to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped. She rejoiced Henrietta had come; there was something terrible in an arrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station, the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her with a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her friend’s. She remembered she had once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle in which there was something that touched her. She remembered how she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded streets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the incident came before her as the deed of another person.

“It’s too beautiful that you should have come,” said Henrietta, looking at her as if she thought Isabel might be prepared to challenge the proposition. “If you hadn’t—if you hadn’t; well, I don’t know,” remarked Miss Stackpole, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.

Isabel looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment she recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Bantling. He stood a little apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about him to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken—that of abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their embraces.

“There’s Mr. Bantling,” said Isabel, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely caring much now whether she should find her maid or not.

“Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Bantling!” Henrietta exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile—a smile tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. “Isn’t it lovely she has come?” Henrietta asked. “He knows all about it,” she added; “we had quite a discussion. He said you wouldn’t, I said you would.”

“I thought you always agreed,” Isabel smiled in return. She felt she could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Bantling’s brave eyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to remember he was an old friend of her cousin—that he understood, that it was all right. Isabel gave him her hand; she thought of him, extravagantly, as a beautiful blameless knight.

“Oh, I always agree,” said Mr. Bantling. “But she doesn’t, you know.”

“Didn’t I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?” Henrietta enquired. “Your young lady has probably remained at Calais.”

“I don’t care,” said Isabel, looking at Mr. Bantling, whom she had never found so interesting.

“Stay with her while I go and see,” Henrietta commanded, leaving the two for a moment together.

They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Bantling asked Isabel how it had been on the Channel.

“Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,” she said, to her companion’s obvious surprise. After which she added: “You’ve been to Gardencourt, I know.”

“Now how do you know that?”

“I can’t tell you—except that you look like a person who has been to Gardencourt.”

“Do you think I look awfully sad? It’s awfully sad there, you know.”

“I don’t believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,” said Isabel with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she should never again feel a superficial embarrassment.

Poor Mr. Bantling, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue, and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. “You can ask Miss Stackpole, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.”

“Did you see my cousin?”

“Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Warburton had been there the day before. Ralph was just the same as usual, except that he was in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can’t speak,” Mr. Bantling pursued. “He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He was just as clever as ever. It’s awfully wretched.”

Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. “Was that late in the day?”

“Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you’d like to know.”

“I’m greatly obliged to you. Can I go down to-night?”

“Ah, I don’t think she’ll let you go,” said Mr. Bantling. “She wants you to stop with her. I made Touchett’s man promise to telegraph me to-day, and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. ‘Quiet and easy,’ that’s what it says, and it’s dated two o’clock. So you see you can wait till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired.”

“Yes, I’m awfully tired. And I thank you again.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Bantling, “We were certain you would like the last news.” On which Isabel vaguely noted that he and Henrietta seemed after all to agree. Miss Stackpole came back with Isabel’s maid, whom she had caught in the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of losing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress’s luggage, so that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station. “You know you’re not to think of going to the country to-night,” Henrietta remarked to her. “It doesn’t matter whether there’s a train or not. You’re to come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn’t a corner to be had in London, but I’ve got you one all the same. It isn’t a Roman palace, but it will do for a night.”

“I’ll do whatever you wish,” Isabel said.

“You’ll come and answer a few questions; that’s what I wish.”

“She doesn’t say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Osmond?” Mr. Bantling enquired jocosely.

Henrietta fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. “I see you’re in a great hurry to get your own. You’ll be at the Paddington Station to-morrow morning at ten.”

“Don’t come for my sake, Mr. Bantling,” said Isabel.