Chapter Chapter 42 · Chapter XLII

She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before

her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them

that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust

herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and

closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still

further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation.

A servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh

candles and then go to bed. Osmond had told her to think of what he had

said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion

from another that she had a definite influence on Lord Warburton--this

had given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it

true that there was something still between them that might be a handle

to make him declare himself to Pansy--a susceptibility, on his part, to

approval, a desire to do what would please her? Isabel had hitherto not

asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now

that it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer

frightened her. Yes, there was something--something on Lord Warburton’s

part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link that united

them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had been

reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair,

but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For herself

nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always thought;

it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in fact a

better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she might

be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the memory

of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed?

Isabel knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But

what were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they

mingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Pansy? Was

he in love with Gilbert Osmond’s wife, and if so what comfort did he

expect to derive from it? If he was in love with Pansy he was not in

love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother

he was not in love with Pansy. Was she to cultivate the advantage she

possessed in order to make him commit himself to Pansy, knowing he would

do so for her sake and not for the small creature’s own--was this the

service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty

with which she found herself confronted--from the moment she admitted to

herself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for

her society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive

one. She asked herself with dismay whether Lord Warburton were

pretending to be in love with Pansy in order to cultivate another

satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement

of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him

in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Pansy were a delusion

this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Isabel wandered

among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way;

some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then

she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that her

imagination surely did her little honour and that her husband’s did him

even less. Lord Warburton was as disinterested as he need be, and she

was no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till

the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical

intimation of Osmond’s.

Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace,

for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of

thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set

them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange

impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband’s being in

more direct communication with Madame Merle than she suspected. That

impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it

had never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Osmond

half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making

everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he

looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty;

the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a

presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his

presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in

himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This

mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf

had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes

that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It

was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an

opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of

contempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no

deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the

first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found

the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley

with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of

happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one

could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and

choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of

restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier

and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the

feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was

what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not

so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time

and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual

perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active condition; it was

not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of

speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself

that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,--that no one

suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she

thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually--it was not till the first

year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed

that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it

was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights

out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could

still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again

it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect

that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from

her own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be

just and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were

a kind of creation and consequence, of her husband’s very presence. They

were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that

is but of one thing, which was _not_ a crime. She knew of no wrong he had

done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated

her. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was

precisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have

found redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was

not what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first

he could change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like.

But she was, after all, herself--she couldn’t help that; and now there

was no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and

had made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension

he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort.

He would if possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the

wrong. Isabel, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he

would have the better of her there. She would give him many pretexts,

she would often put herself in the wrong. There were times when she

almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she

understood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced

herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, pretending

there was less of her than there really was. It was because she had been

under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to

put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the

year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his

nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked

by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the

whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free

field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.

Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it

was there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Osmond

delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love

to her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he

had succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never

occurred to her now to deny him that. He admired her--he had told her

why: because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might

very well have been true; for during those months she had imagined

a world of things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous

vision of him, fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred

fancy!--she had not read him right. A certain combination of features

had touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of figures.

That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was

what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There

had been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in his mind,

in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and

ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness

which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager

strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet

not putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her occasion. She

would launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; it would be

a good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anxiously

and yet so ardently given herself--a good deal for what she found in

him, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich

the gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she

perceived in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who

felt that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But

for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then

her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Touchett, sleeping under English turf,

the beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact.

At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which

was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other

conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her

own conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with the

best taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital

there would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was

no charitable institution in which she had been as much interested as

in Gilbert Osmond. He would use her fortune in a way that would make her

think better of it and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good

luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate

in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr.

Touchett’s leaving them to her. But to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring

him such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well.

There would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and

if he loved her he wouldn’t object to her being rich. Had he not had the

courage to say he was glad she was rich?

Isabel’s cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married

on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with

her money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was

only half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of

her--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in

his personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme

conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still

remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The

finest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever

known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but

to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of

devotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she

knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived _in_

it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been

captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps

had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated,

more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was

this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself

in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of _his_ deception.

It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn’t hate her more.

She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been

like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of

their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that

she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their

marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only

afterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had

really meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in

the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then

appeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to

have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had

too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than

she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she

_had_ been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas

for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with

some one else. One couldn’t pluck them up by the roots, though of course

one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been

this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She

had no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in

the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant

had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she

judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not

known until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it

were--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at

life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least

it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that

she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so

different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly

that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn’t he assured her that he had

no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their

freshness? Hadn’t he all the appearance of a man living in the open air

of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth

and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look

for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least

some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional;

but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that

sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the

stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had

contained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she

had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own

habitation, then, _then_ she had seen where she really was.

She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she

had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had

lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life.

It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of

suffocation. Osmond’s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air;

Osmond’s beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high

window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering;

for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come

and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took

himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture,

his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his

knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank

of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so

seriously as that. How could she--especially when she had known him

better? She was to think of him as he thought of himself--as the first

gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him at first, and

that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to

see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she

had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every

one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for

everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was very

well; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for

he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life,

opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance

of mankind, that she had been properly impressed with the infinite

vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one’s self unspotted by

it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was after all what one

was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one’s eye, in order

not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some

recognition of one’s own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable,

but on the other it afforded a standard. Osmond had talked to Isabel

about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he

dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to

her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite

independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities;

she had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself,

avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her

fellow creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing,

however, to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of

a personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her

believe it was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and

the thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society as

Osmond cared for it.

He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really

done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared

to be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to

have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in

such different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity

and propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he

deemed himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never

lapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame

of doing so. That again was very well; here too she would have agreed;

but they attached such different ideas, such different associations and

desires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was

simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge

would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But

for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated

attitude. He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted;

so was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an

immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that the best thing

in the world was to have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not

to have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he

meant by this that she hadn’t it, but that he was better off; though

from what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He

had a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain,

and after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in

accordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for her.

Isabel had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than

their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but

she nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march

to the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her

husband’s past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory,

so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There were certain

things they must do, a certain posture they must take, certain people

they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about

her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness

and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her; she

seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of

course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the

situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had

pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for

the aspect and denomination of their life--the cause of other instincts

and longings, of quite another ideal.

Then it was that her husband’s personality, touched as it never had

been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were

answered only by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed

of her. What did he think of her--that she was base, vulgar, ignoble?

He at least knew now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his

prevision of things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments

were worthy of a radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real

offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her

own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small

garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the

flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay.

It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already

far-reaching. He didn’t wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was

because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her

intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from

desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would

be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for

him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and

Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the

part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so

tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To

begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the

Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and

even as decency. It would appear that Osmond was far from doing anything

of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did

all women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their

price? Were there only three or four that didn’t deceive their husbands?

When Isabel heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for

the gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in

a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her

husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied,

and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was

enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond’s traditions--it was

enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn

of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He

had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well

furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon

his own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.

He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to

it; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his

discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one

that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.

She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first

had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and

comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he

had had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If

to herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a

kind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might

it not be expected to have had upon _him_? It was very simple; he

despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a

Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand

Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for

a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before

them? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought _she_

to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn’t hate

him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate

wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt

afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she

had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all

events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely

spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out

fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph

Touchett’s staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her

cousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to

him at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Ralph’s invalid

state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had

to contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Isabel read all this

as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly

aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband’s

rage as if Osmond had locked her into her room--which she was sure was

what he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she

was not defiant, but she certainly couldn’t pretend to be indifferent to

Ralph. She believed he was dying at last and that she should never see

him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never

known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be

a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There

was an everlasting weight on her heart--there was a livid light on

everything. But Ralph’s little visit was a lamp in the darkness; for the

hour that she sat with him her ache for herself became somehow her ache

for _him_. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never

had a brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were dying,

he would be dear to her as Ralph was. Ah yes, if Gilbert was jealous of

her there was perhaps some reason; it didn’t make Gilbert look better to

sit for half an hour with Ralph. It was not that they talked of him--it

was not that she complained. His name was never uttered between them. It

was simply that Ralph was generous and that her husband was not. There

was something in Ralph’s talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his

being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more

spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her feel what

might have been. He was after all as intelligent as Osmond--quite apart

from his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion

to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she

was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and before her

again--it lived before her again,--it had never had time to die--that

morning in the garden at Florence when he had warned her against Osmond.

She had only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to

feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery,

what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Gilbert? He was much more

intelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Gilbert had never

been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from her at least he

should never know if he was right; and this was what she was taking

care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion, exaltation,

religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange

exercises, and Isabel at present, in playing a part before her cousin,

had an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a

kindness perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was,

the kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had

once wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but

that, as she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge

and even considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face.

Ralph smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary

form of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She

didn’t wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was

the great thing, and it didn’t matter that such knowledge would rather

have righted him.

For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire

had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in

a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but

her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a

state of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to

her there, where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a

mockery of rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and

what could be a better proof of it than that she should linger there

half the night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why

Pansy shouldn’t be married as you would put a letter in the post-office?

When the clock struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for

the lamp had long since gone out and the candles burned down to their

sockets. But even then she stopped again in the middle of the room

and stood there gazing at a remembered vision--that of her husband and

Madame Merle unconsciously and familiarly associated.