الفصل الفصل 5 · Chapter V

Ralph Touchett was a philosopher, but nevertheless he knocked at his

mother’s door (at a quarter to seven) with a good deal of eagerness.

Even philosophers have their preferences, and it must be admitted

that of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the

sweetness of filial dependence. His father, as he had often said to

himself, was the more motherly; his mother, on the other hand, was

paternal, and even, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial.

She was nevertheless very fond of her only child and had always insisted

on his spending three months of the year with her. Ralph rendered

perfect justice to her affection and knew that in her thoughts and her

thoroughly arranged and servanted life his turn always came after the

other nearest subjects of her solicitude, the various punctualities of

performance of the workers of her will. He found her completely dressed

for dinner, but she embraced her boy with her gloved hands and made

him sit on the sofa beside her. She enquired scrupulously about her

husband’s health and about the young man’s own, and, receiving no

very brilliant account of either, remarked that she was more than ever

convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English climate.

In this case she also might have given way. Ralph smiled at the idea of

his mother’s giving way, but made no point of reminding her that his

own infirmity was not the result of the English climate, from which he

absented himself for a considerable part of each year.

He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Touchett,

a native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont, came to England as

subordinate partner in a banking-house where some ten years later he

gained preponderant control. Daniel Touchett saw before him a life-long

residence in his adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a

simple, sane and accommodating view. But, as he said to himself, he had

no intention of disamericanising, nor had he a desire to teach his

only son any such subtle art. It had been for himself so very soluble a

problem to live in England assimilated yet unconverted that it seemed to

him equally simple his lawful heir should after his death carry on the

grey old bank in the white American light. He was at pains to intensify

this light, however, by sending the boy home for his education. Ralph

spent several terms at an American school and took a degree at an

American university, after which, as he struck his father on his return

as even redundantly native, he was placed for some three years in

residence at Oxford. Oxford swallowed up Harvard, and Ralph became

at last English enough. His outward conformity to the manners that

surrounded him was none the less the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed

its independence, on which nothing long imposed itself, and which,

naturally inclined to adventure and irony, indulged in a boundless

liberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of promise; at

Oxford he distinguished himself, to his father’s ineffable satisfaction,

and the people about him said it was a thousand pities so clever a

fellow should be shut out from a career. He might have had a career

by returning to his own country (though this point is shrouded in

uncertainty) and even if Mr. Touchett had been willing to part with

him (which was not the case) it would have gone hard with him to put

a watery waste permanently between himself and the old man whom he

regarded as his best friend. Ralph was not only fond of his father,

he admired him--he enjoyed the opportunity of observing him. Daniel

Touchett, to his perception, was a man of genius, and though he himself

had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning

enough of it to measure the great figure his father had played. It was

not this, however, he mainly relished; it was the fine ivory surface,

polished as by the English air, that the old man had opposed to

possibilities of penetration. Daniel Touchett had been neither at

Harvard nor at Oxford, and it was his own fault if he had placed in his

son’s hands the key to modern criticism. Ralph, whose head was full

of ideas which his father had never guessed, had a high esteem for the

latter’s originality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, are commended for

the ease with which they adapt themselves to foreign conditions; but Mr.

Touchett had made of the very limits of his pliancy half the ground

of his general success. He had retained in their freshness most of

his marks of primary pressure; his tone, as his son always noted with

pleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts of New England. At the

end of his life he had become, on his own ground, as mellow as he

was rich; he combined consummate shrewdness with the disposition

superficially to fraternise, and his “social position,” on which he had

never wasted a care, had the firm perfection of an unthumbed fruit. It

was perhaps his want of imagination and of what is called the historic

consciousness; but to many of the impressions usually made by English

life upon the cultivated stranger his sense was completely closed. There

were certain differences he had never perceived, certain habits he had

never formed, certain obscurities he had never sounded. As regards these

latter, on the day he had sounded them his son would have thought less

well of him.

Ralph, on leaving Oxford, had spent a couple of years in travelling;

after which he had found himself perched on a high stool in his father’s

bank. The responsibility and honour of such positions is not, I

believe, measured by the height of the stool, which depends upon other

considerations: Ralph, indeed, who had very long legs, was fond of

standing, and even of walking about, at his work. To this exercise,

however, he was obliged to devote but a limited period, for at the end

of some eighteen months he had become aware of his being seriously out

of health. He had caught a violent cold, which fixed itself on his lungs

and threw them into dire confusion. He had to give up work and apply,

to the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of himself. At first he

slighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least

he was taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person

with whom he had nothing in common. This person, however, improved

on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging

tolerance, even an undemonstrative respect, for him. Misfortune makes

strange bedfellows, and our young man, feeling that he had something

at stake in the matter--it usually struck him as his reputation for

ordinary wit--devoted to his graceless charge an amount of attention of

which note was duly taken and which had at least the effect of keeping

the poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began to heal, the other

promised to follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather

a dozen winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which

consumptives chiefly congregate. As he had grown extremely fond of

London, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time that he

cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ

grateful even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter hand.

He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped at home

when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when

it had snowed overnight, almost never got up again.

A secret hoard of indifference--like a thick cake a fond old nurse might

have slipped into his first school outfit--came to his aid and helped to

reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for aught

but that arduous game. As he said to himself, there was really nothing

he had wanted very much to do, so that he had at least not renounced the

field of valour. At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit

seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of

pleasures is the rush of action. Living as he now lived was like reading

a good book in a poor translation--a meagre entertainment for a young

man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good

winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes

the sport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this vision was dispelled

some three years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this

history opens: he had on that occasion remained later than usual in

England and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers.

He arrived more dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between

life and death. His convalescence was a miracle, but the first use he

made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once. He

said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to

keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to him to spend the

interval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation.

With the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became

an exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had

never been sounded. He was far from the time when he had found it hard

that he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing himself;

an idea none the less importunate for being vague and none the less

delightful for having had to struggle in the same breast with bursts

of inspiring self-criticism. His friends at present judged him more

cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they shook their

heads knowingly, that he would recover his health. His serenity was but

the array of wild flowers niched in his ruin.

It was very probably this sweet-tasting property of the observed thing

in itself that was mainly concerned in Ralph’s quickly-stirred interest

in the advent of a young lady who was evidently not insipid. If he was

consideringly disposed, something told him, here was occupation enough

for a succession of days. It may be added, in summary fashion, that the

imagination of loving--as distinguished from that of being loved--had

still a place in his reduced sketch. He had only forbidden himself the

riot of expression. However, he shouldn’t inspire his cousin with a

passion, nor would she be able, even should she try, to help him to one.

“And now tell me about the young lady,” he said to his mother. “What do

you mean to do with her?”

Mrs. Touchett was prompt. “I mean to ask your father to invite her to

stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt.”

“You needn’t stand on any such ceremony as that,” said Ralph. “My father

will ask her as a matter of course.”

“I don’t know about that. She’s my niece; she’s not his.”

“Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property! That’s all the more

reason for his asking her. But after that--I mean after three months

(for its absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for three or four

paltry weeks)--what do you mean to do with her?”

“I mean to take her to Paris. I mean to get her clothing.”

“Ah yes, that’s of course. But independently of that?”

“I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence.”

“You don’t rise above detail, dear mother,” said Ralph. “I should like

to know what you mean to do with her in a general way.”

“My duty!” Mrs. Touchett declared. “I suppose you pity her very much,”

she added.

“No, I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as inviting

compassion. I think I envy her. Before being sure, however, give me a

hint of where you see your duty.”

“In showing her four European countries--I shall leave her the choice of

two of them--and in giving her the opportunity of perfecting herself in

French, which she already knows very well.”

Ralph frowned a little. “That sounds rather dry--even allowing her the

choice of two of the countries.”

“If it’s dry,” said his mother with a laugh, “you can leave Isabel alone

to water it! She is as good as a summer rain, any day.”

“Do you mean she’s a gifted being?”

“I don’t know whether she’s a gifted being, but she’s a clever

girl--with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being

bored.”

“I can imagine that,” said Ralph; and then he added abruptly: “How do

you two get on?”

“Do you mean by that that I’m a bore? I don’t think she finds me one.

Some girls might, I know; but Isabel’s too clever for that. I think I

greatly amuse her. We get on because I understand her, I know the sort

of girl she is. She’s very frank, and I’m very frank: we know just what

to expect of each other.”

“Ah, dear mother,” Ralph exclaimed, “one always knows what to expect

of you! You’ve never surprised me but once, and that’s to-day--in

presenting me with a pretty cousin whose existence I had never

suspected.”

“Do you think her so very pretty?”

“Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general

air of being some one in particular that strikes me. Who is this rare

creature, and what is she? Where did you find her, and how did you make

her acquaintance?”

“I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary room on a

rainy day, reading a heavy book and boring herself to death. She didn’t

know she was bored, but when I left her no doubt of it she seemed very

grateful for the service. You may say I shouldn’t have enlightened her--I

should have let her alone. There’s a good deal in that, but I acted

conscientiously; I thought she was meant for something better. It

occurred to me that it would be a kindness to take her about and

introduce her to the world. She thinks she knows a great deal of

it--like most American girls; but like most American girls she’s

ridiculously mistaken. If you want to know, I thought she would do me

credit. I like to be well thought of, and for a woman of my age there’s

no greater convenience, in some ways, than an attractive niece. You

know I had seen nothing of my sister’s children for years; I disapproved

entirely of the father. But I always meant to do something for them when

he should have gone to his reward. I ascertained where they were to be

found and, without any preliminaries, went and introduced myself. There

are two others of them, both of whom are married; but I saw only the

elder, who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose name

is Lily, jumped at the idea of my taking an interest in Isabel; she

said it was just what her sister needed--that some one should take

an interest in her. She spoke of her as you might speak of some young

person of genius--in want of encouragement and patronage. It may be that

Isabel’s a genius; but in that case I’ve not yet learned her special

line. Mrs. Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe;

they all regard Europe over there as a land of emigration, of rescue, a

refuge for their superfluous population. Isabel herself seemed very

glad to come, and the thing was easily arranged. There was a little

difficulty about the money-question, as she seemed averse to being

under pecuniary obligations. But she has a small income and she supposes

herself to be travelling at her own expense.”

Ralph had listened attentively to this judicious report, by which his

interest in the subject of it was not impaired. “Ah, if she’s a genius,”

he said, “we must find out her special line. Is it by chance for

flirting?”

“I don’t think so. You may suspect that at first, but you’ll be wrong.

You won’t, I think, in any way, be easily right about her.”

“Warburton’s wrong then!” Ralph rejoicingly exclaimed. “He flatters

himself he has made that discovery.”

His mother shook her head. “Lord Warburton won’t understand her. He

needn’t try.”

“He’s very intelligent,” said Ralph; “but it’s right he should be

puzzled once in a while.”

“Isabel will enjoy puzzling a lord,” Mrs. Touchett remarked.

Her son frowned a little. “What does she know about lords?”

“Nothing at all: that will puzzle him all the more.”

Ralph greeted these words with a laugh and looked out of the window.

Then, “Are you not going down to see my father?” he asked.

“At a quarter to eight,” said Mrs. Touchett.

Her son looked at his watch. “You’ve another quarter of an hour then.

Tell me some more about Isabel.” After which, as Mrs. Touchett declined

his invitation, declaring that he must find out for himself, “Well,” he

pursued, “she’ll certainly do you credit. But won’t she also give you

trouble?”

“I hope not; but if she does I shall not shrink from it. I never do

that.”

“She strikes me as very natural,” said Ralph.

“Natural people are not the most trouble.”

“No,” said Ralph; “you yourself are a proof of that. You’re extremely

natural, and I’m sure you have never troubled any one. It takes trouble

to do that. But tell me this; it just occurs to me. Is Isabel capable of

making herself disagreeable?”

“Ah,” cried his mother, “you ask too many questions! Find that out for

yourself.”

His questions, however, were not exhausted. “All this time,” he said,

“you’ve not told me what you intend to do with her.”

“Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I shall do

absolutely nothing with her, and she herself will do everything she

chooses. She gave me notice of that.”

“What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her character’s

independent.”

“I never know what I mean in my telegrams--especially those I send from

America. Clearness is too expensive. Come down to your father.”

“It’s not yet a quarter to eight,” said Ralph.

“I must allow for his impatience,” Mrs. Touchett answered. Ralph knew

what to think of his father’s impatience; but, making no rejoinder, he

offered his mother his arm. This put it in his power, as they

descended together, to stop her a moment on the middle landing of the

staircase--the broad, low, wide-armed staircase of time-blackened oak

which was one of the most striking features of Gardencourt. “You’ve no

plan of marrying her?” he smiled.

“Marrying her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart

from that, she’s perfectly able to marry herself. She has every

facility.”

“Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out?”

“I don’t know about a husband, but there’s a young man in Boston--!”

Ralph went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston.

“As my father says, they’re always engaged!”

His mother had told him that he must satisfy his curiosity at the

source, and it soon became evident he should not want for occasion. He

had a good deal of talk with his young kinswoman when the two had been

left together in the drawing-room. Lord Warburton, who had ridden over

from his own house, some ten miles distant, remounted and took his

departure before dinner; and an hour after this meal was ended Mr. and

Mrs. Touchett, who appeared to have quite emptied the measure of their

forms, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their respective

apartments. The young man spent an hour with his cousin; though she had

been travelling half the day she appeared in no degree spent. She was

really tired; she knew it, and knew she should pay for it on the morrow;

but it was her habit at this period to carry exhaustion to the furthest

point and confess to it only when dissimulation broke down. A fine

hypocrisy was for the present possible; she was interested; she was, as

she said to herself, floated. She asked Ralph to show her the pictures;

there were a great many in the house, most of them of his own choosing.

The best were arranged in an oaken gallery, of charming proportions,

which had a sitting-room at either end of it and which in the evening

was usually lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures

to advantage, and the visit might have stood over to the morrow.

This suggestion Ralph had ventured to make; but Isabel looked

disappointed--smiling still, however--and said: “If you please I should

like to see them just a little.” She was eager, she knew she was eager

and now seemed so; she couldn’t help it. “She doesn’t take suggestions,”

Ralph said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her pressure

amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at intervals,

and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague

squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of heavy frames; it made

a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Ralph took a candlestick

and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Isabel, inclining to

one picture after another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs.

She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with

that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there;

she lifted it high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the

middle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures

than on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering

glances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art.

She was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when

people had wished to distinguish her from the other two Miss Archers

they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark

even to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light

grey eyes, a little too firm perhaps in her graver moments, had an

enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of the

gallery and down the other, and then she said: “Well, now I know more

than I did when I began!”

“You apparently have a great passion for knowledge,” her cousin

returned.

“I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant.”

“You strike me as different from most girls.”

“Ah, some of them would--but the way they’re talked to!” murmured

Isabel, who preferred not to dilate just yet on herself. Then in a

moment, to change the subject, “Please tell me--isn’t there a ghost?”

she went on.

“A ghost?”

“A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in

America.”

“So we do here, when we see them.”

“You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house.”

“It’s not a romantic old house,” said Ralph. “You’ll be disappointed if

you count on that. It’s a dismally prosaic one; there’s no romance here

but what you may have brought with you.”

“I’ve brought a great deal; but it seems to me I’ve brought it to the

right place.”

“To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here,

between my father and me.”

Isabel looked at him a moment. “Is there never any one here but your

father and you?”

“My mother, of course.”

“Oh, I know your mother; she’s not romantic. Haven’t you other people?”

“Very few.”

“I’m sorry for that; I like so much to see people.”

“Oh, we’ll invite all the county to amuse you,” said Ralph.

“Now you’re making fun of me,” the girl answered rather gravely. “Who

was the gentleman on the lawn when I arrived?”

“A county neighbour; he doesn’t come very often.”

“I’m sorry for that; I liked him,” said Isabel.

“Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,” Ralph objected.

“Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father too,

immensely.”

“You can’t do better than that. He’s the dearest of the dear.”

“I’m so sorry he is ill,” said Isabel.

“You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse.”

“I don’t think I am; I’ve been told I’m not; I’m said to have too many

theories. But you haven’t told me about the ghost,” she added.

Ralph, however, gave no heed to this observation. “You like my father

and you like Lord Warburton. I infer also that you like my mother.”

“I like your mother very much, because--because--” And Isabel found

herself attempting to assign a reason for her affection for Mrs.

Touchett.

“Ah, we never know why!” said her companion, laughing.

“I always know why,” the girl answered. “It’s because she doesn’t expect

one to like her. She doesn’t care whether one does or not.”

“So you adore her--out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my

mother,” said Ralph.

“I don’t believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try

to make them do it.”

“Good heavens, how you see through one!” he cried with a dismay that was

not altogether jocular.

“But I like you all the same,” his cousin went on. “The way to clinch

the matter will be to show me the ghost.”

Ralph shook his head sadly. “I might show it to you, but you’d never see

it. The privilege isn’t given to every one; it’s not enviable. It has

never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must

have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable

knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago,”

said Ralph.

“I told you just now I’m very fond of knowledge,” Isabel answered.

“Yes, of happy knowledge--of pleasant knowledge. But you haven’t

suffered, and you’re not made to suffer. I hope you’ll never see the

ghost!”

She had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, but with

a certain gravity in her eyes. Charming as he found her, she had struck

him as rather presumptuous--indeed it was a part of her charm; and he

wondered what she would say. “I’m not afraid, you know,” she said: which

seemed quite presumptuous enough.

“You’re not afraid of suffering?”

“Yes, I’m afraid of suffering. But I’m not afraid of ghosts. And I think

people suffer too easily,” she added.

“I don’t believe you do,” said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in

his pockets.

“I don’t think that’s a fault,” she answered. “It’s not absolutely

necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.”

“You were not, certainly.”

“I’m not speaking of myself.” And she wandered off a little.

“No, it isn’t a fault,” said her cousin. “It’s a merit to be strong.”

“Only, if you don’t suffer they call you hard,” Isabel remarked.

They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had

returned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the

staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bedroom candle,

which he had taken from a niche. “Never mind what they call you. When

you do suffer they call you an idiot. The great point’s to be as happy

as possible.”

She looked at him a little; she had taken her candle and placed her foot

on the oaken stair. “Well,” she said, “that’s what I came to Europe for,

to be as happy as possible. Good-night.”

“Good-night! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad to

contribute to it!”

She turned away, and he watched her as she slowly ascended. Then, with

his hands always in his pockets, he went back to the empty drawing-room.