Kabanata Kabanata 49 · Chapter XLIX

Madame Merle had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the

evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents,

and Isabel, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it.

Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability,

and to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been

mentioned that Madame Merle returned from Naples shortly after Lord

Warburton had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Isabel

(whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first

utterance had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman,

for whom she appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.

“Please don’t talk of him,” said Isabel for answer; “we’ve heard so much

of him of late.”

Madame Merle bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and

smiled at the left corner of her mouth. “You’ve heard, yes. But you must

remember that I’ve not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be

able to congratulate Pansy.”

“You may congratulate Pansy still; but not on marrying Lord Warburton.”

“How you say that! Don’t you know I had set my heart on it?” Madame

Merle asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation

of good-humour.

Isabel was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too.

“You shouldn’t have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to

watch the affair.”

“I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it’s too late?”

“You had better ask Pansy,” said Isabel.

“I shall ask her what you’ve said to her.”

These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused

on Isabel’s part by her perceiving that her visitor’s attitude was a

critical one. Madame Merle, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto;

she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling.

But apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since

she now had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation

which even her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had

suffered a disappointment which excited Isabel’s surprise--our heroine

having no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy’s marriage; and

she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Osmond’s alarm. More

clearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from

she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare

that this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of

the practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her

destiny. She was nearer to her than Isabel had yet discovered, and her

nearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The

sense of accident indeed had died within her that day when she happened

to be struck with the manner in which the wonderful lady and her own

husband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet

taken its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a

different eye, to have been led to reflect that there was more intention

in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes,

there had been intention, there had been intention, Isabel said to

herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was

it that brought home to her that Madame Merle’s intention had not been

good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which

married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor’s

challenge on behalf of poor Pansy. There was something in this challenge

which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless

vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend’s

professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Merle had been unwilling to

interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere

with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Isabel went fast in

casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several

years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a

strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Merle’s interest was

identical with Osmond’s: that was enough. “I think Pansy will tell

you nothing that will make you more angry,” she said in answer to her

companion’s last remark.

“I’m not in the least angry. I’ve only a great desire to retrieve the

situation. Do you consider that Warburton has left us for ever?”

“I can’t tell you; I don’t understand you. It’s all over; please let it

rest. Osmond has talked to me a great deal about it, and I’ve nothing

more to say or to hear. I’ve no doubt,” Isabel added, “that he’ll be

very happy to discuss the subject with you.”

“I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.”

“As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn’t

apply to me for information.”

“It isn’t information I want. At bottom it’s sympathy. I had set my

heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--it satisfied

the imagination.”

“Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.”

“You mean by that of course that I’m not concerned. Of course not

directly. But when one’s such an old friend one can’t help having

something at stake. You forget how long I’ve known Pansy. You mean,

of course,” Madame Merle added, “that _you_ are one of the persons

concerned.”

“No; that’s the last thing I mean. I’m very weary of it all.”

Madame Merle hesitated a little. “Ah yes, your work’s done.”

“Take care what you say,” said Isabel very gravely.

“Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your

husband judges you severely.”

Isabel made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with

bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Merle’s informing her

that Osmond had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife

that struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was

meant for insolence. Madame Merle was very rarely insolent, and only

when it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not

right yet. What touched Isabel like a drop of corrosive acid upon an

open wound was the knowledge that Osmond dishonoured her in his words as

well as in his thoughts. “Should you like to know how I judge _him_?” she

asked at last.

“No, because you’d never tell me. And it would be painful for me to

know.”

There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Isabel

thought Madame Merle disagreeable. She wished she would leave her.

“Remember how attractive Pansy is, and don’t despair,” she said

abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.

But Madame Merle’s expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only

gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the

air a faint, agreeable fragrance. “I don’t despair; I feel encouraged.

And I didn’t come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I

know you’ll tell it if I ask you. It’s an immense blessing with you that

one can count upon that. No, you won’t believe what a comfort I take in

it.”

“What truth do you speak of?” Isabel asked, wondering.

“Just this: whether Lord Warburton changed his mind quite of his own

movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to

please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite

of having lost a little of it,” Madame Merle continued with a smile, “to

ask such a question as that!” She sat looking at her friend, to judge

the effect of her words, and then went on: “Now don’t be heroic, don’t

be unreasonable, don’t take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour

in speaking so. I don’t know another woman to whom I would do it. I

haven’t the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And

don’t you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It’s

true that he doesn’t appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to

extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn’t

alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his

daughter’s prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Lord

Warburton simply got tired of the poor child, that’s one thing, and it’s

a pity. If he gave her up to please you it’s another. That’s a pity too,

but in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you’d perhaps resign

yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter

married. Let him off--let us have him!”

Madame Merle had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and

apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Isabel grew

pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her

visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this

was not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. “Who

are you--what are you?” Isabel murmured. “What have you to do with my

husband?” It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as

if she had loved him.

“Ah then, you take it heroically! I’m very sorry. Don’t think, however,

that I shall do so.”

“What have you to do with me?” Isabel went on.

Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes

from Isabel’s face. “Everything!” she answered.

Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost

a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman’s eyes seemed

only a darkness. “Oh misery!” she murmured at last; and she fell

back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a

high-surging wave that Mrs. Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married

her. Before she uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.

Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away,

under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread

upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her

confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a

less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that

had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her

secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern

quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a

sun-warmed angle on a winter’s day, or stood in a mouldy church to which

no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness.

Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the

continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the

greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it

interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it

chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to

her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from

pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the

musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was

no gentler nor less consistent heretic than Isabel; the firmest of

worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, could

not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor

have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Pansy,

as we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Countess

Gemini, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage;

but she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her

mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several

resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low

parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front

of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the

far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain,

between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After

the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than

usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the

other. Even when Pansy and the Countess were with her she felt the touch

of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind,

rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to

tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where

the fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the

flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and

gazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness

of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft

confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the

hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.

On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution

not to think of Madame Merle; but the resolution proved vain, and this

lady’s image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an

almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate

friend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were

to be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary

works; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance

with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life,

and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with

some success this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it

was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that

was what Madame Merle had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Isabel’s Aunt

Lydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her

niece; but Isabel had flattered herself at this time that she had a much

richer view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own

career and the nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor

stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Touchett. Madame Merle had done what she wanted;

she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which

could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much

have desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making

passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Merle, great

artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of

marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage

but had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain,

and Isabel asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her

naturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was

imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Merle, though she had seemed

to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly

affectionate after Mr. Touchett’s death and after learning that her

young friend had been subject to the good old man’s charity. She had

found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in

the more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young

woman’s fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her

closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Isabel that Gilbert

occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with

the conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the

least sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money.

Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought

a good deal of harm of Osmond she had not done him this particular

injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying

to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman

for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least

he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her

money, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let

her go. Ah, if Mr. Touchett’s great charity would but help her to-day it

would be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame

Merle had wished to do Gilbert a service his recognition to her of the

boon must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in

regard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must they

have found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but

a characteristic, fact that before Isabel returned from her silent drive

she had broken its silence by the soft exclamation: “Poor, poor Madame

Merle!”

Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same

afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of

time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the

lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which

we once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Rosier. In that

apartment, towards six o’clock, Gilbert Osmond was seated, and his

hostess stood before him as Isabel had seen her stand on an occasion

commemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to

its apparent as to its real importance.

“I don’t believe you’re unhappy; I believe you like it,” said Madame

Merle.

“Did I say I was unhappy?” Osmond asked with a face grave enough to

suggest that he might have been.

“No, but you don’t say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.”

“Don’t talk about gratitude,” he returned dryly. “And don’t aggravate

me,” he added in a moment.

Madame Merle slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white

hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were,

to the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. “On

your side, don’t try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my

thoughts.”

“I trouble about them no more than I can help. I’ve quite enough of my

own.”

“That’s because they’re so delightful.”

Osmond rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at

his companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an

expression of fatigue. “You do aggravate me,” he remarked in a moment.

“I’m very tired.”

“_Eh moi donc!_” cried Madame Merle.

“With you it’s because you fatigue yourself. With me it’s not my own

fault.”

“When I fatigue myself it’s for you. I’ve given you an interest. That’s

a great gift.”

“Do you call it an interest?” Osmond enquired with detachment.

“Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.”

“The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.”

“You’ve never looked better; you’ve never been so agreeable, so

brilliant.”

“Damn my brilliancy!” he thoughtfully murmured. “How little, after all,

you know me!”

“If I don’t know you I know nothing,” smiled Madame Merle. “You’ve the

feeling of complete success.”

“No, I shall not have that till I’ve made you stop judging me.”

“I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express

yourself more too.”

Osmond just hung fire. “I wish you’d express yourself less!”

“You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I’ve never been a

chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to

say to you first. Your wife doesn’t know what to do with herself,” she

went on with a change of tone.

“Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means

to carry out her ideas.”

“Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.”

“Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.”

“She was unable to show me any this morning,” said Madame Merle. “She

seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was

completely bewildered.”

“You had better say at once that she was pathetic.”

“Ah no, I don’t want to encourage you too much.”

He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one

foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. “I should like to

know what’s the matter with you,” he said at last.

“The matter--the matter--!” And here Madame Merle stopped. Then she went

on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a

clear sky: “The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to

weep, and that I can’t!”

“What good would it do you to weep?”

“It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.”

“If I’ve dried your tears, that’s something. But I’ve seen you shed

them.”

“Oh, I believe you’ll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a

wolf. I’ve a great hope, I’ve a great need, of that. I was vile this

morning; I was horrid,” she said.

“If Isabel was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably

didn’t perceive it,” Osmond answered.

“It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn’t help it; I

was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don’t know.

You’ve not only dried up my tears; you’ve dried up my soul.”

“It’s not I then that am responsible for my wife’s condition,” Osmond

said. “It’s pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your

influence upon her. Don’t you know the soul is an immortal principle?

How can it suffer alteration?”

“I don’t believe at all that it’s an immortal principle. I believe it

can perfectly be destroyed. That’s what has happened to mine, which

was a very good one to start with; and it’s you I have to thank for it.

You’re _very_ bad,” she added with gravity in her emphasis.

“Is this the way we’re to end?” Osmond asked with the same studied

coldness.

“I don’t know how we’re to end. I wish I did--How do bad people

end?--especially as to their _common_ crimes. You have made me as bad as

yourself.”

“I don’t understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,” said Osmond,

his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.

Madame Merle’s self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and

she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the

pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile

betrayed a painful effort. “Good enough for anything that I’ve done with

myself? I suppose that’s what you mean.”

“Good enough to be always charming!” Osmond exclaimed, smiling too.

“Oh God!” his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe

freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on

Isabel’s part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her

hands.

“Are you going to weep after all?” Osmond asked; and on her remaining

motionless he went on: “Have I ever complained to you?”

She dropped her hands quickly. “No, you’ve taken your revenge

otherwise--you have taken it on _her_.”

Osmond threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling

and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the

heavenly powers. “Oh, the imagination of women! It’s always vulgar, at

bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.”

“Of course you haven’t complained. You’ve enjoyed your triumph too

much.”

“I’m rather curious to know what you call my triumph.”

“You’ve made your wife afraid of you.”

Osmond changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on

his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at

his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one’s valuation

of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a

peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse

with. “Isabel’s not afraid of me, and it’s not what I wish,” he said

at last. “To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as

that?”

“I’ve thought over all the harm you can do me,” Madame Merle answered.

“Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you

she feared.”

“You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I’m not

responsible for that. I didn’t see the use of your going to see her at

all: you’re capable of acting without her. I’ve not made you afraid of

me that I can see,” he went on; “how then should I have made her? You’re

at least as brave. I can’t think where you’ve picked up such rubbish;

one might suppose you knew me by this time.” He got up as he spoke and

walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if

he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare

porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it

in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel,

he pursued: “You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you

lose sight of the real. I’m much simpler than you think.”

“I think you’re very simple.” And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup.

“I’ve come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it’s

only since your marriage that I’ve understood you. I’ve seen better what

you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please

be very careful of that precious object.”

“It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,” said Osmond dryly as he put

it down. “If you didn’t understand me before I married it was cruelly

rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box

myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I

only asked that she should like me.”

“That she should like you so much!”

“So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she

should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.”

“I never adored you,” said Madame Merle.

“Ah, but you pretended to!”

“It’s true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,” Madame

Merle went on.

“My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort,” said

Osmond. “If you’re determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy’s

hardly for her.”

“The tragedy’s for me!” Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long

low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her

mantel-shelf.

“It appears that I’m to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false

position.”

“You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for

our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn’t like me, at least

my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I

haven’t a fault to find with her.”

“Ah,” she said softly, “if I had a child--!”

Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, “The children of

others may be a great interest!” he announced.

“You’re more like a copy-book than I. There’s something after all that

holds us together.”

“Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?” Osmond asked.

“No; it’s the idea of the good I may do for you. It’s that,” Madame

Merle pursued, “that made me so jealous of Isabel. I want it to be

_my_ work,” she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter,

relaxing to its habit of smoothness.

Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the

former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, “On the whole, I

think,” he said, “you had better leave it to me.”

After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the

mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the

existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. “Have I

been so vile all for nothing?” she vaguely wailed.