Chapter Chapter 29 · Chapter XXIX

Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly

qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert Osmond’s personal

merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of

that gentleman’s conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond

spent a portion of each day with Isabel and her companions, and ended

by affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn’t have

seen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which

perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial

sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel’s invidious kinsman was

obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His

good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his

production of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of

a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man

could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost

applausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would

never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a

knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what

he called random ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too

precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she

had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as

smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he

was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing

days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow

irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the

small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with

everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at

once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening,

going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to

which he prefixed the title of “Rome Revisited.” A day or two later he

showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining

to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of

life by a tribute to the muse.

He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have

admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the

fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his

spirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever

been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was

simply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human

heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the

irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded

himself. “Ah no, I’ve not been spoiled; certainly I’ve not been

spoiled,” he used inwardly to repeat. “If I do succeed before I die

I shall thoroughly have earned it.” He was too apt to reason as if

“earning” this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and

might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his

career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here

and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were,

some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had

been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that

is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional

effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The

desire to have something or other to show for his “parts”--to show

somehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went

on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected

him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs

of beer to advertise what one could “stand.” If an anonymous drawing on

a museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this

peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as

from the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact of

style. His “style” was what the girl had discovered with a little help;

and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world

without his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing _for_ him,

and he would not have waited in vain.

Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young

lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: “Leave

Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other

views. But can’t wait if you dawdle in Rome.” The dawdling in Rome was

very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know

she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had

done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as

his winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the

cool shadow of Saint Peter’s. He would not return to Florence for ten

days more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio.

It might be months in this case before he should see her again. This

exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our

friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was

to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found the

girl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightful

American family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable

staircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in

travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages

several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making

arrangements for the morrow’s journey, and Isabel sat alone in a

wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange;

the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the

pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and

painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly

to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar,

bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere,

presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in

her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient

to pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink

tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale

rosiness over the scene.

“You say you’ll come back; but who knows?” Gilbert Osmond said.

“I think you’re much more likely to start on your voyage round the

world. You’re under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what

you choose; you can roam through space.”

“Well, Italy’s a part of space,” Isabel answered. “I can take it on the

way.”

“On the way round the world? No, don’t do that. Don’t put us in a

parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don’t want to see you on

your travels. I’d rather see you when they’re over. I should like to see

you when you’re tired and satiated,” Osmond added in a moment. “I shall

prefer you in that state.”

Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. “You turn

things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think,

without intending it. You’ve no respect for my travels--you think them

ridiculous.”

“Where do you find that?”

She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the

paper-knife. “You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about

as if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been put

into my power to do so. You don’t think a woman ought to do that. You

think it bold and ungraceful.”

“I think it beautiful,” said Osmond. “You know my opinions--I’ve treated

you to enough of them. Don’t you remember my telling you that one ought

to make one’s life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first;

but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be

trying to do with your own.”

She looked up from her book. “What you despise most in the world is bad,

is stupid art.”

“Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.”

“If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,” she went

on.

Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their

conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had

seen it before. “You have one!”

“That’s exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.”

“I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it’s one of the countries

I want most to see. Can’t you believe that, with my taste for old

lacquer?”

“I haven’t a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,” said Isabel.

“You’ve a better excuse--the means of going. You’re quite wrong in

your theory that I laugh at you. I don’t know what has put it into your

head.”

“It wouldn’t be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should

have the means to travel when you’ve not; for you know everything and I

know nothing.”

“The more reason why you should travel and learn,” smiled Osmond.

“Besides,” he added as if it were a point to be made, “I don’t know

everything.”

Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she

was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleased

her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have

likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress

overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages

or historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. That

most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a

reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done

the point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were

a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be

as well. Happy things don’t repeat themselves, and her adventure wore

already the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from

which, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the

breeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--this

strange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better

not to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the

greater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a

pang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her

silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. “Go

everywhere,” he said at last, in a low, kind voice; “do everything; get

everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant.”

“What do you mean by being triumphant?”

“Well, doing what you like.”

“To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things

one likes is often very tiresome.”

“Exactly,” said Osmond with his quiet quickness. “As I intimated just

now, you’ll be tired some day.” He paused a moment and then he went on:

“I don’t know whether I had better not wait till then for something I

want to say to you.”

“Ah, I can’t advise you without knowing what it is. But I’m horrid when

I’m tired,” Isabel added with due inconsequence.

“I don’t believe that. You’re angry, sometimes--that I can believe,

though I’ve never seen it. But I’m sure you’re never ‘cross.’”

“Not even when I lose my temper?”

“You don’t lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful.” Osmond

spoke with a noble earnestness. “They must be great moments to see.”

“If I could only find it now!” Isabel nervously cried.

“I’m not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I’m speaking very

seriously.” He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he

bent his eyes on the floor. “What I wish to say to you,” he went on at

last, looking up, “is that I find I’m in love with you.”

She instantly rose. “Ah, keep that till I am tired!”

“Tired of hearing it from others?” He sat there raising his eyes to her.

“No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must

say it now.” She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped

herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this

situation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the

critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply

respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. “I’m

absolutely in love with you.”

He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal

discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke

for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time

they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow

the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn’t have said

which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful

and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,

morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she

had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. “Oh don’t say

that, please,” she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread

of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread

great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have

banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,

that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there

like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to

begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.

“I haven’t the idea that it will matter much to you,” said Osmond. “I’ve

too little to offer you. What I have--it’s enough for me; but it’s not

enough for you. I’ve neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages

of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it

can’t offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It

gives me pleasure, I assure you,” he went on, standing there before her,

considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken

up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of

awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm,

refined, slightly ravaged face. “It gives me no pain, because it’s

perfectly simple. For me you’ll always be the most important woman in

the world.”

Isabel looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinking

she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an

expression of any such complacency. “You don’t offend me; but you

ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded,

troubled.” “Incommoded,” she heard herself saying that, and it struck

her as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.

“I remember perfectly. Of course you’re surprised and startled. But

if it’s nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave

something that I may not be ashamed of.”

“I don’t know what it may leave. You see at all events that I’m not

overwhelmed,” said Isabel with rather a pale smile. “I’m not too

troubled to think. And I think that I’m glad I leave Rome to-morrow.”

“Of course I don’t agree with you there.”

“I don’t at all _know_ you,” she added abruptly; and then she coloured as

she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord

Warburton.

“If you were not going away you’d know me better.”

“I shall do that some other time.”

“I hope so. I’m very easy to know.”

“No, no,” she emphatically answered--“there you’re not sincere. You’re

not easy to know; no one could be less so.”

“Well,” he laughed, “I said that because I know myself. It may be a

boast, but I do.”

“Very likely; but you’re very wise.”

“So are you, Miss Archer!” Osmond exclaimed.

“I don’t feel so just now. Still, I’m wise enough to think you had

better go. Good-night.”

“God bless you!” said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed

to surrender. After which he added: “If we meet again you’ll find me as

you leave me. If we don’t I shall be so all the same.”

“Thank you very much. Good-bye.”

There was something quietly firm about Isabel’s visitor; he might go of

his own movement, but wouldn’t be dismissed. “There’s one thing more.

I haven’t asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; you

must do me that justice. But there’s a little service I should like to

ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome’s delightful, and

it’s a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you’re sorry

to leave it; but you’re right to do what your aunt wishes.”

“She doesn’t even wish it!” Isabel broke out strangely.

Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match

these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: “Ah well, it’s

proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that’s proper;

I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don’t

know me, but when you do you’ll discover what a worship I have for

propriety.”

“You’re not conventional?” Isabel gravely asked.

“I like the way you utter that word! No, I’m not conventional: I’m

convention itself. You don’t understand that?” And he paused a moment,

smiling. “I should like to explain it.” Then with a sudden, quick,

bright naturalness, “Do come back again,” he pleaded. “There are so many

things we might talk about.”

She stood there with lowered eyes. “What service did you speak of just

now?”

“Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She’s alone at

the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn’t at all my

ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,” said Gilbert

Osmond gently.

“It will be a great pleasure to me to go,” Isabel answered. “I’ll tell

her what you say. Once more good-bye.”

On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood

a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of

deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with

folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had not

diminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was something

that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but

here, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke

down. The working of this young lady’s spirit was strange, and I can

only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether

natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last

vague space it couldn’t cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which looked

ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the

winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.