第 十 章 · Chapter X

The day after her visit to Lockleigh she received a note from her friend

Miss Stackpole--a note of which the envelope, exhibiting in conjunction

the postmark of Liverpool and the neat calligraphy of the quick-fingered

Henrietta, caused her some liveliness of emotion. “Here I am, my lovely

friend,” Miss Stackpole wrote; “I managed to get off at last. I decided

only the night before I left New York--the _Interviewer_ having come round

to my figure. I put a few things into a bag, like a veteran journalist,

and came down to the steamer in a street-car. Where are you and where

can we meet? I suppose you’re visiting at some castle or other and have

already acquired the correct accent. Perhaps even you have married a

lord; I almost hope you have, for I want some introductions to the first

people and shall count on you for a few. The _Interviewer_ wants some

light on the nobility. My first impressions (of the people at large) are

not rose-coloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, and you know

that, whatever I am, at least I’m not superficial. I’ve also something

very particular to tell you. Do appoint a meeting as quickly as you can;

come to London (I should like so much to visit the sights with you) or

else let me come to you, wherever you are. I will do so with pleasure;

for you know everything interests me and I wish to see as much as

possible of the inner life.”

Isabel judged best not to show this letter to her uncle; but she

acquainted him with its purport, and, as she expected, he begged her

instantly to assure Miss Stackpole, in his name, that he should be

delighted to receive her at Gardencourt. “Though she’s a literary lady,”

he said, “I suppose that, being an American, she won’t show me up, as

that other one did. She has seen others like me.”

“She has seen no other so delightful!” Isabel answered; but she was

not altogether at ease about Henrietta’s reproductive instincts, which

belonged to that side of her friend’s character which she regarded with

least complacency. She wrote to Miss Stackpole, however, that she would

be very welcome under Mr. Touchett’s roof; and this alert young woman

lost no time in announcing her prompt approach. She had gone up to

London, and it was from that centre that she took the train for the

station nearest to Gardencourt, where Isabel and Ralph were in waiting

to receive her.

“Shall I love her or shall I hate her?” Ralph asked while they moved

along the platform.

“Whichever you do will matter very little to her,” said Isabel. “She

doesn’t care a straw what men think of her.”

“As a man I’m bound to dislike her then. She must be a kind of monster.

Is she very ugly?”

“No, she’s decidedly pretty.”

“A female interviewer--a reporter in petticoats? I’m very curious to see

her,” Ralph conceded.

“It’s very easy to laugh at her but it is not easy to be as brave as

she.”

“I should think not; crimes of violence and attacks on the person

require more or less pluck. Do you suppose she’ll interview me?”

“Never in the world. She’ll not think you of enough importance.”

“You’ll see,” said Ralph. “She’ll send a description of us all,

including Bunchie, to her newspaper.”

“I shall ask her not to,” Isabel answered.

“You think she’s capable of it then?”

“Perfectly.”

“And yet you’ve made her your bosom-friend?”

“I’ve not made her my bosom-friend; but I like her in spite of her

faults.”

“Ah well,” said Ralph, “I’m afraid I shall dislike her in spite of her

merits.”

“You’ll probably fall in love with her at the end of three days.”

“And have my love-letters published in the _Interviewer_? Never!” cried

the young man.

The train presently arrived, and Miss Stackpole, promptly descending,

proved, as Isabel had promised, quite delicately, even though rather

provincially, fair. She was a neat, plump person, of medium stature,

with a round face, a small mouth, a delicate complexion, a bunch of

light brown ringlets at the back of her head and a peculiarly open,

surprised-looking eye. The most striking point in her appearance was the

remarkable fixedness of this organ, which rested without impudence or

defiance, but as if in conscientious exercise of a natural right, upon

every object it happened to encounter. It rested in this manner upon

Ralph himself, a little arrested by Miss Stackpole’s gracious and

comfortable aspect, which hinted that it wouldn’t be so easy as he had

assumed to disapprove of her. She rustled, she shimmered, in fresh,

dove-coloured draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that she was as crisp

and new and comprehensive as a first issue before the folding. From top

to toe she had probably no misprint. She spoke in a clear, high voice--a

voice not rich but loud; yet after she had taken her place with her

companions in Mr. Touchett’s carriage she struck him as not all in the

large type, the type of horrid “headings,” that he had expected. She

answered the enquiries made of her by Isabel, however, and in which the

young man ventured to join, with copious lucidity; and later, in the

library at Gardencourt, when she had made the acquaintance of Mr.

Touchett (his wife not having thought it necessary to appear) did more

to give the measure of her confidence in her powers.

“Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American

or English,” she broke out. “If once I knew I could talk to you

accordingly.”

“Talk to us anyhow and we shall be thankful,” Ralph liberally answered.

She fixed her eyes on him, and there was something in their character

that reminded him of large polished buttons--buttons that might have

fixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see the

reflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a

button is not usually deemed human, but there was something in Miss

Stackpole’s gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely

embarrassed--less inviolate, more dishonoured, than he liked. This

sensation, it must be added, after he had spent a day or two in her

company, sensibly diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. “I don’t

suppose that you’re going to undertake to persuade me that you’re an

American,” she said.

“To please you I’ll be an Englishman, I’ll be a Turk!”

“Well, if you can change about that way you’re very welcome,” Miss

Stackpole returned.

“I’m sure you understand everything and that differences of nationality

are no barrier to you,” Ralph went on.

Miss Stackpole gazed at him still. “Do you mean the foreign languages?”

“The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit--the genius.”

“I’m not sure that I understand you,” said the correspondent of the

_Interviewer_; “but I expect I shall before I leave.”

“He’s what’s called a cosmopolite,” Isabel suggested.

“That means he’s a little of everything and not much of any. I must say

I think patriotism is like charity--it begins at home.”

“Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole?” Ralph enquired.

“I don’t know where it begins, but I know where it ends. It ended a long

time before I got here.”

“Don’t you like it over here?” asked Mr. Touchett with his aged,

innocent voice.

“Well, sir, I haven’t quite made up my mind what ground I shall take.

I feel a good deal cramped. I felt it on the journey from Liverpool to

London.”

“Perhaps you were in a crowded carriage,” Ralph suggested.

“Yes, but it was crowded with friends--party of Americans whose

acquaintance I had made upon the steamer; a lovely group from Little

Rock, Arkansas. In spite of that I felt cramped--I felt something

pressing upon me; I couldn’t tell what it was. I felt at the very

commencement as if I were not going to accord with the atmosphere. But

I suppose I shall make my own atmosphere. That’s the true way--then you

can breathe. Your surroundings seem very attractive.”

“Ah, we too are a lovely group!” said Ralph. “Wait a little and you’ll

see.”

Miss Stackpole showed every disposition to wait and evidently was

prepared to make a considerable stay at Gardencourt. She occupied

herself in the mornings with literary labour; but in spite of this

Isabel spent many hours with her friend, who, once her daily task

performed, deprecated, in fact defied, isolation. Isabel speedily found

occasion to desire her to desist from celebrating the charms of their

common sojourn in print, having discovered, on the second morning

of Miss Stackpole’s visit, that she was engaged on a letter to the

_Interviewer_, of which the title, in her exquisitely neat and legible

hand (exactly that of the copybooks which our heroine remembered at

school) was “Americans and Tudors--Glimpses of Gardencourt.” Miss

Stackpole, with the best conscience in the world, offered to read her

letter to Isabel, who immediately put in her protest.

“I don’t think you ought to do that. I don’t think you ought to describe

the place.”

Henrietta gazed at her as usual. “Why, it’s just what the people want,

and it’s a lovely place.”

“It’s too lovely to be put in the newspapers, and it’s not what my uncle

wants.”

“Don’t you believe that!” cried Henrietta. “They’re always delighted

afterwards.”

“My uncle won’t be delighted--nor my cousin either. They’ll consider it

a breach of hospitality.”

Miss Stackpole showed no sense of confusion; she simply wiped her pen,

very neatly, upon an elegant little implement which she kept for the

purpose, and put away her manuscript. “Of course if you don’t approve I

won’t do it; but I sacrifice a beautiful subject.”

“There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all round you.

We’ll take some drives; I’ll show you some charming scenery.”

“Scenery’s not my department; I always need a human interest. You know

I’m deeply human, Isabel; I always was,” Miss Stackpole rejoined. “I was

going to bring in your cousin--the alienated American. There’s a

great demand just now for the alienated American, and your cousin’s a

beautiful specimen. I should have handled him severely.”

“He would have died of it!” Isabel exclaimed. “Not of the severity, but

of the publicity.”

“Well, I should have liked to kill him a little. And I should have

delighted to do your uncle, who seems to me a much nobler type--the

American faithful still. He’s a grand old man; I don’t see how he can

object to my paying him honour.”

Isabel looked at her companion in much wonderment; it struck her as

strange that a nature in which she found so much to esteem should break

down so in spots. “My poor Henrietta,” she said, “you’ve no sense of

privacy.”

Henrietta coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes were

suffused, while Isabel found her more than ever inconsequent. “You do me

great injustice,” said Miss Stackpole with dignity. “I’ve never written

a word about myself!”

“I’m very sure of that; but it seems to me one should be modest for

others also!”

“Ah, that’s very good!” cried Henrietta, seizing her pen again. “Just

let me make a note of it and I’ll put it in somewhere.” she was a

thoroughly good-natured woman, and half an hour later she was in as

cheerful a mood as should have been looked for in a newspaper-lady

in want of matter. “I’ve promised to do the social side,” she said to

Isabel; “and how can I do it unless I get ideas? If I can’t describe

this place don’t you know some place I can describe?” Isabel promised

she would bethink herself, and the next day, in conversation with her

friend, she happened to mention her visit to Lord Warburton’s ancient

house. “Ah, you must take me there--that’s just the place for me!” Miss

Stackpole cried. “I must get a glimpse of the nobility.”

“I can’t take you,” said Isabel; “but Lord Warburton’s coming here, and

you’ll have a chance to see him and observe him. Only if you intend to

repeat his conversation I shall certainly give him warning.”

“Don’t do that,” her companion pleaded; “I want him to be natural.”

“An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue,”

Isabel declared.

It was not apparent, at the end of three days, that her cousin had,

according to her prophecy, lost his heart to their visitor, though he

had spent a good deal of time in her society. They strolled about the

park together and sat under the trees, and in the afternoon, when it was

delightful to float along the Thames, Miss Stackpole occupied a place

in the boat in which hitherto Ralph had had but a single companion. Her

presence proved somehow less irreducible to soft particles than Ralph

had expected in the natural perturbation of his sense of the perfect

solubility of that of his cousin; for the correspondent of the

_Interviewer_ prompted mirth in him, and he had long since decided that

the crescendo of mirth should be the flower of his declining days.

Henrietta, on her side, failed a little to justify Isabel’s declaration

with regard to her indifference to masculine opinion; for poor Ralph

appeared to have presented himself to her as an irritating problem,

which it would be almost immoral not to work out.

“What does he do for a living?” she asked of Isabel the evening of her

arrival. “Does he go round all day with his hands in his pockets?”

“He does nothing,” smiled Isabel; “he’s a gentleman of large leisure.”

“Well, I call that a shame--when I have to work like a car-conductor,”

Miss Stackpole replied. “I should like to show him up.”

“He’s in wretched health; he’s quite unfit for work,” Isabel urged.

“Pshaw! don’t you believe it. I work when I’m sick,” cried her friend.

Later, when she stepped into the boat on joining the water-party, she

remarked to Ralph that she supposed he hated her and would like to drown

her.

“Ah no,” said Ralph, “I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you’d

be such an interesting one!”

“Well, you do torture me; I may say that. But I shock all your

prejudices; that’s one comfort.”

“My prejudices? I haven’t a prejudice to bless myself with. There’s

intellectual poverty for you.”

“The more shame to you; I’ve some delicious ones. Of course I spoil your

flirtation, or whatever it is you call it, with your cousin; but I don’t

care for that, as I render her the service of drawing you out. She’ll

see how thin you are.”

“Ah, do draw me out!” Ralph exclaimed. “So few people will take the

trouble.”

Miss Stackpole, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from no effort;

resorting largely, whenever the opportunity offered, to the natural

expedient of interrogation. On the following day the weather was

bad, and in the afternoon the young man, by way of providing indoor

amusement, offered to show her the pictures. Henrietta strolled through

the long gallery in his society, while he pointed out its principal

ornaments and mentioned the painters and subjects. Miss Stackpole looked

at the pictures in perfect silence, committing herself to no opinion,

and Ralph was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none

of the little ready-made ejaculations of delight of which the visitors

to Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This young lady indeed, to do

her justice, was but little addicted to the use of conventional terms;

there was something earnest and inventive in her tone, which at times,

in its strained deliberation, suggested a person of high culture

speaking a foreign language. Ralph Touchett subsequently learned that

she had at one time officiated as art critic to a journal of the other

world; but she appeared, in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket

none of the small change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had

called her attention to a charming Constable, she turned and looked at

him as if he himself had been a picture.

“Do you always spend your time like this?” she demanded.

“I seldom spend it so agreeably.”

“Well, you know what I mean--without any regular occupation.”

“Ah,” said Ralph, “I’m the idlest man living.”

Miss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph

bespoke her attention for a small Lancret hanging near it, which

represented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and a ruff, leaning

against the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a garden and playing

the guitar to two ladies seated on the grass. “That’s my ideal of a

regular occupation,” he said.

Miss Stackpole turned to him again, and, though her eyes had rested

upon the picture, he saw she had missed the subject. She was thinking

of something much more serious. “I don’t see how you can reconcile it to

your conscience.”

“My dear lady, I have no conscience!”

“Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You’ll need it the next time you

go to America.”

“I shall probably never go again.”

“Are you ashamed to show yourself?”

Ralph meditated with a mild smile. “I suppose that if one has no

conscience one has no shame.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty of assurance,” Henrietta declared. “Do you

consider it right to give up your country?”

“Ah, one doesn’t give up one’s country any more than one gives _up_

one’s grandmother. They’re both antecedent to choice--elements of one’s

composition that are not to be eliminated.”

“I suppose that means that you’ve tried and been worsted. What do they

think of you over here?”

“They delight in me.”

“That’s because you truckle to them.”

“Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm!” Ralph sighed.

“I don’t know anything about your natural charm. If you’ve got any charm

it’s quite unnatural. It’s wholly acquired--or at least you’ve tried

hard to acquire it, living over here. I don’t say you’ve succeeded. It’s

a charm that I don’t appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some

way, and then we’ll talk about it.” “Well, now, tell me what I shall

do,” said Ralph.

“Go right home, to begin with.”

“Yes, I see. And then?”

“Take right hold of something.”

“Well, now, what sort of thing?”

“Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new idea, some big

work.”

“Is it very difficult to take hold?” Ralph enquired.

“Not if you put your heart into it.”

“Ah, my heart,” said Ralph. “If it depends upon my heart--!”

“Haven’t you got a heart?”

“I had one a few days ago, but I’ve lost it since.”

“You’re not serious,” Miss Stackpole remarked; “that’s what’s the matter

with you.” But for all this, in a day or two, she again permitted him to

fix her attention and on the later occasion assigned a different cause

to her mysterious perversity. “I know what’s the matter with you, Mr.

Touchett,” she said. “You think you’re too good to get married.”

“I thought so till I knew you, Miss Stackpole,” Ralph answered; “and

then I suddenly changed my mind.”

“Oh pshaw!” Henrietta groaned.

“Then it seemed to me,” said Ralph, “that I was not good enough.”

“It would improve you. Besides, it’s your duty.”

“Ah,” cried the young man, “one has so many duties! Is that a duty too?”

“Of course it is--did you never know that before? It’s every one’s duty

to get married.”

Ralph meditated a moment; he was disappointed. There was something in

Miss Stackpole he had begun to like; it seemed to him that if she

was not a charming woman she was at least a very good “sort.” She was

wanting in distinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave: she went

into cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had

not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words

struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges

matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of

her conduct is not the altruistic impulse.

“Ah, well now, there’s a good deal to be said about that,” Ralph

rejoined.

“There may be, but that’s the principal thing. I must say I think it

looks very exclusive, going round all alone, as if you thought no woman

was good enough for you. Do you think you’re better than any one else in

the world? In America it’s usual for people to marry.”

“If it’s my duty,” Ralph asked, “is it not, by analogy, yours as well?”

Miss Stackpole’s ocular surfaces unwinkingly caught the sun. “Have you

the fond hope of finding a flaw in my reasoning? Of course I’ve as good

a right to marry as any one else.”

“Well then,” said Ralph, “I won’t say it vexes me to see you single. It

delights me rather.”

“You’re not serious yet. You never will be.”

“Shall you not believe me to be so on the day I tell you I desire to

give up the practice of going round alone?”

Miss Stackpole looked at him for a moment in a manner which seemed to

announce a reply that might technically be called encouraging. But to

his great surprise this expression suddenly resolved itself into an

appearance of alarm and even of resentment. “No, not even then,” she

answered dryly. After which she walked away.

“I’ve not conceived a passion for your friend,” Ralph said that evening

to Isabel, “though we talked some time this morning about it.”

“And you said something she didn’t like,” the girl replied.

Ralph stared. “Has she complained of me?”

“She told me she thinks there’s something very low in the tone of

Europeans towards women.”

“Does she call me a European?”

“One of the worst. She told me you had said to her something that an

American never would have said. But she didn’t repeat it.”

Ralph treated himself to a luxury of laughter. “She’s an extraordinary

combination. Did she think I was making love to her?”

“No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently thought you

mistook the intention of something she had said, and put an unkind

construction on it.”

“I thought she was proposing marriage to me and I accepted her. Was that

unkind?”

Isabel smiled. “It was unkind to me. I don’t want you to marry.”

“My dear cousin, what’s one to do among you all?” Ralph demanded. “Miss

Stackpole tells me it’s my bounden duty, and that it’s hers, in general,

to see I do mine!”

“She has a great sense of duty,” said Isabel gravely. “She has indeed,

and it’s the motive of everything she says. That’s what I like her for.

She thinks it’s unworthy of you to keep so many things to yourself.

That’s what she wanted to express. If you thought she was trying to--to

attract you, you were very wrong.”

“It’s true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying to attract

me. Forgive my depravity.”

“You’re very conceited. She had no interested views, and never supposed

you would think she had.”

“One must be very modest then to talk with such women,” Ralph said

humbly. “But it’s a very strange type. She’s too personal--considering

that she expects other people not to be. She walks in without knocking

at the door.”

“Yes,” Isabel admitted, “she doesn’t sufficiently recognise the

existence of knockers; and indeed I’m not sure that she doesn’t think

them rather a pretentious ornament. She thinks one’s door should stand

ajar. But I persist in liking her.”

“I persist in thinking her too familiar,” Ralph rejoined, naturally

somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having been doubly deceived in

Miss Stackpole.

“Well,” said Isabel, smiling, “I’m afraid it’s because she’s rather

vulgar that I like her.”

“She would be flattered by your reason!”

“If I should tell her I wouldn’t express it in that way. I should say

it’s because there’s something of the ‘people’ in her.”

“What do you know about the people? and what does she, for that matter?”

“She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she’s a kind

of emanation of the great democracy--of the continent, the country, the

nation. I don’t say that she sums it all up, that would be too much to

ask of her. But she suggests it; she vividly figures it.”

“You like her then for patriotic reasons. I’m afraid it is on those very

grounds I object to her.”

“Ah,” said Isabel with a kind of joyous sigh, “I like so many things! If

a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don’t want to

swagger, but I suppose I’m rather versatile. I like people to be totally

different from Henrietta--in the style of Lord Warburton’s sisters for

instance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me

to answer a kind of ideal. Then Henrietta presents herself, and I’m

straightway convinced by her; not so much in respect to herself as in

respect to what masses behind her.”

“Ah, you mean the back view of her,” Ralph suggested.

“What she says is true,” his cousin answered; “you’ll never be serious.

I like the great country stretching away beyond the rivers and across

the prairies, blooming and smiling and spreading till it stops at the

green Pacific! A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it,

and Henrietta--pardon my simile--has something of that odour in her

garments.”

Isabel blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the blush,

together with the momentary ardour she had thrown into it, was so

becoming to her that Ralph stood smiling at her for a moment after she

had ceased speaking. “I’m not sure the Pacific’s so green as that,” he

said; “but you’re a young woman of imagination. Henrietta, however, does

smell of the Future--it almost knocks one down!”