Kabanata Kabanata 32 · Chapter XXXII

It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood

at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any

of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past,

but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene,

and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she

should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What

he would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing

in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction

doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all

clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked

in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much,

and as if she were “worth more” for it, like some curious piece in an

antiquary’s collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her

apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his

tray. “Let the gentleman come in,” she said, and continued to gaze out

of the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had

heard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she

looked round.

Caspar Goodwood stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to

foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered

a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Isabel’s

we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to

her critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight,

strong and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke

positively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor

weakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same

voluntary cast as in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in

it of course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled

hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This

gave Isabel time to make a reflexion: “Poor fellow, what great things

he’s capable of, and what a pity he should waste so dreadfully his

splendid force! What a pity too that one can’t satisfy everybody!” It

gave her time to do more to say at the end of a minute: “I can’t tell

you how I hoped you wouldn’t come!”

“I’ve no doubt of that.” And he looked about him for a seat. Not only

had he come, but he meant to settle.

“You must be very tired,” said Isabel, seating herself, and generously,

as she thought, to give him his opportunity.

“No, I’m not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?”

“Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?”

“Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express.

These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.”

“That’s in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury

me!” And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their

situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly

clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all

this she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she

was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked

at her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such

a want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on

her as a physical weight.

“No, I didn’t feel that; I couldn’t think of you as dead. I wish I

could!” he candidly declared.

“I thank you immensely.”

“I’d rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.”

“That’s very selfish of you!” she returned with the ardour of a real

conviction. “If you’re not happy yourself others have yet a right to

be.”

“Very likely it’s selfish; but I don’t in the least mind your saying so.

I don’t mind anything you can say now--I don’t feel it. The cruellest

things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you’ve

done I shall never feel anything--I mean anything but that. That I shall

feel all my life.”

Mr. Goodwood made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness,

in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over

propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Isabel angry rather than

touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave

her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure

of this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. “When did

you leave New York?”

He threw up his head as if calculating. “Seventeen days ago.”

“You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.”

“I came as fast as I could. I’d have come five days ago if I had been

able.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, Mr. Goodwood,” she coldly smiled.

“Not to you--no. But to me.”

“You gain nothing that I see.”

“That’s for me to judge!”

“Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.” And then, to

change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Henrietta Stackpole.

He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of

Henrietta Stackpole; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young

lady had been with him just before he left America. “She came to see

you?” Isabel then demanded.

“Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I

had got your letter.”

“Did you tell her?” Isabel asked with a certain anxiety.

“Oh no,” said Caspar Goodwood simply; “I didn’t want to do that. She’ll

hear it quick enough; she hears everything.”

“I shall write to her, and then she’ll write to me and scold me,” Isabel

declared, trying to smile again.

Caspar, however, remained sternly grave. “I guess she’ll come right

out,” he said.

“On purpose to scold me?”

“I don’t know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.”

“I’m glad you tell me that,” Isabel said. “I must prepare for her.”

Mr. Goodwood fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last,

raising them, “Does she know Mr. Osmond?” he enquired.

“A little. And she doesn’t like him. But of course I don’t marry to

please Henrietta,” she added. It would have been better for poor Caspar

if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Stackpole; but he didn’t

say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To

which she made answer that she didn’t know yet. “I can only say it will

be soon. I’ve told no one but yourself and one other person--an old

friend of Mr. Osmond’s.”

“Is it a marriage your friends won’t like?” he demanded.

“I really haven’t an idea. As I say, I don’t marry for my friends.”

He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions,

doing it quite without delicacy. “Who and what then is Mr. Gilbert

Osmond?”

“Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable

man. He’s not in business,” said Isabel. “He’s not rich; he’s not known

for anything in particular.”

She disliked Mr. Goodwood’s questions, but she said to herself that she

owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor

Caspar exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at

her. “Where does he come from? Where does he belong?”

She had never been so little pleased with the way he said “belawng.” “He

comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.”

“You said in your letter he was American. Hasn’t he a native place?”

“Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.”

“Has he never gone back?”

“Why should he go back?” Isabel asked, flushing all defensively. “He has

no profession.”

“He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn’t he like the United

States?”

“He doesn’t know them. Then he’s very quiet and very simple--he contents

himself with Italy.”

“With Italy and with you,” said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and

no appearance of trying to make an epigram. “What has he ever done?” he

added abruptly.

“That I should marry him? Nothing at all,” Isabel replied while her

patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. “If he had done

great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Goodwood;

I’m marrying a perfect nonentity. Don’t try to take an interest in him.

You can’t.”

“I can’t appreciate him; that’s what you mean. And you don’t mean in

the least that he’s a perfect nonentity. You think he’s grand, you think

he’s great, though no one else thinks so.”

Isabel’s colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion,

and it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render

perceptions she had never taken for fine. “Why do you always come back

to what others think? I can’t discuss Mr. Osmond with you.”

“Of course not,” said Caspar reasonably. And he sat there with his air

of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were

nothing else that they might discuss.

“You see how little you gain,” she accordingly broke out--“how little

comfort or satisfaction I can give you.”

“I didn’t expect you to give me much.”

“I don’t understand then why you came.”

“I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you are.”

“I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later

we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been

pleasanter for each of us than this.”

“Waited till after you’re married? That’s just what I didn’t want to do.

You’ll be different then.”

“Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You’ll see.”

“That will make it all the worse,” said Mr. Goodwood grimly.

“Ah, you’re unaccommodating! I can’t promise to dislike you in order to

help you to resign yourself.”

“I shouldn’t care if you did!”

Isabel got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the

window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round

her visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again

and stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just

quitted. “Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That’s better for

you perhaps than for me.”

“I wished to hear the sound of your voice,” he said.

“You’ve heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.”

“It gives me pleasure, all the same.” And with this he got up. She had

felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in

Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She

had been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his

messenger that he might come when he would. She had not been better

pleased when she saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy

implications. It implied things she could never assent to--rights,

reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change

her purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed;

and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor’s

remarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that

irritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart

beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself

that she was angry in the way a woman is angry when she has been in the

wrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness

to swallow; but, all the same, she wished he would denounce her a

little. She had wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no

propriety; yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden

horror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give her an

opportunity to defend herself more than she had done in writing to him

a month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her

engagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why should she desire

to defend herself? It was an excess of generosity on Isabel’s part to

desire that Mr. Goodwood should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile

held himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone in which

she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused

her: “I’ve not deceived you! I was perfectly free!”

“Yes, I know that,” said Caspar.

“I gave you full warning that I’d do as I chose.”

“You said you’d probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner

that I pretty well believed it.”

She considered this an instant. “No one can be more surprised than

myself at my present intention.”

“You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe

it,” Caspar went on. “I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I

remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and

that’s partly why I came.”

“If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that’s soon done. There’s

no mistake whatever.”

“I saw that as soon as I came into the room.”

“What good would it do you that I shouldn’t marry?” she asked with a

certain fierceness.

“I should like it better than this.”

“You’re very selfish, as I said before.”

“I know that. I’m selfish as iron.”

“Even iron sometimes melts! If you’ll be reasonable I’ll see you again.”

“Don’t you call me reasonable now?”

“I don’t know what to say to you,” she answered with sudden humility.

“I shan’t trouble you for a long time,” the young man went on. He made

a step towards the door, but he stopped. “Another reason why I came was

that I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having

changed your mind.”

Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. “In explanation? Do you think

I’m bound to explain?”

He gave her one of his long dumb looks. “You were very positive. I did

believe it.”

“So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?”

“No, I suppose not. Well,” he added, “I’ve done what I wished. I’ve seen

you.”

“How little you make of these terrible journeys,” she felt the poverty

of her presently replying.

“If you’re afraid I’m knocked up--in any such way as that--you may be

at your ease about it.” He turned away, this time in earnest, and no

hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.

At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. “I shall leave

Florence to-morrow,” he said without a quaver.

“I’m delighted to hear it!” she answered passionately. Five minutes

after he had gone out she burst into tears.