The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

  ‘‘I thank you very much. What colours will they be?’’ Pansy demanded, with interest.

  Madame Merle meditated a moment.

  ‘‘Useful colours.’’

  ‘‘But will they be pretty?’’

  ‘‘Are you fond of pretty things?’’

  ‘‘Yes; but—but not too fond,’’ said Pansy, with a trace of asceticism.

  ‘‘Well, they will not be too pretty,’’ Madame Merle answered, with a laugh. She took the child’s other hand, and drew her nearer; and then, looking at her a moment—‘‘Shall you miss Mother Catherine?’’

  ‘‘Yes—when I think of her.’’

  ‘‘Try, then, not to think of her. Perhaps some day,’’ added Madame Merle, ‘‘you will have another mother.’’

  ‘‘I don’t think that is necessary,’’ Pansy said, repeating her little soft, conciliatory sigh. ‘‘I had more than thirty mothers at the convent.’’

  Her father’s step sounded again in the ante-chamber, and Madame Merle got up, releasing the child. Mr. Osmond came in and closed the door; then, without looking at Madame Merle, he pushed one or two chairs back into their places.

  His visitor waited a moment for him to speak, watching him as he moved about. Then at last she said—‘‘I hoped you would have come to Rome. I thought it possible you would have come to fetch Pansy away.’’

  ‘‘That was a natural supposition; but I am afraid it is not the first time I have acted in defiance of your calculations.’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ said Madame Merle, ‘‘I think you are very perverse.’’

  Mr. Osmond busied himself for a moment in the room—there was plenty of space in it to move about— in the fashion of a man mechanically seeking pretexts for not giving an attention which may be embarrassing. Presently, however, he had exhausted his pretexts; there was nothing left for him—unless he took up a book— but to stand with his hands behind him, looking at Pansy. ‘‘Why didn’t you come and see the last of Mamman Catherine?’’ he asked of her abruptly, in French.

  Pansy hesitated a moment, glancing at Madame Merle. ‘‘I asked her to stay with me,’’ said this lady, who had seated herself again in another place.

  ‘‘Ah, that was better,’’ said Osmond. Then, at last, he dropped into a chair, and sat looking at Madame Merle; leaning forward a little, with his elbows on the edge of the arms and his hands interlocked.

  ‘‘She is going to give me some gloves,’’ said Pansy.

  ‘‘You needn’t tell that to every one, my dear,’’ Madame Merle observed.

  ‘‘You are very kind to her,’’ said Osmond. ‘‘She is supposed to have everything she needs.’’

  ‘‘I should think she had had enough of the nuns.’’

  ‘‘If we are going to discuss that matter, she had better go out of the room.’’

  ‘‘Let her stay,’’ said Madame Merle. ‘‘We will talk of something else.’’

  ‘‘If you like, I won’t listen,’’ Pansy suggested, with an appearance of candour which imposed conviction.

  ‘‘You may listen, charming child, because you won’t understand,’’ her father replied. The child sat down deferentially, near the open door, within sight of the garden, into which she directed her innocent, wistful eyes; and Mr. Osmond went on, irrelevantly, addressing himself to his other companion. ‘‘You are looking particularly well.’’

  ‘‘I think I always look the same,’’ said Madame Merle.

  ‘‘You always are the same. You don’t vary. You are a wonderful woman.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I think I am.’’

  ‘‘You sometimes change your mind, however. You told me on your return from England that you would not leave Rome again for the present.’’

  ‘‘I am pleased that you remember so well what I say. That was my intention. But I have come to Florence to meet some friends who have lately arrived, and as to whose movements I was at that time uncertain.’’

  ‘‘That reason is characteristic. You are always doing something for your friends.’’

  Madame Merle looked straight at her interlocutor, smiling. ‘‘It is less characteristic than your comment upon it—which is perfectly insincere. I don’t, however, make a crime of that,’’ she added, ‘‘because if you don’t believe what you say there is no reason why you should. I don’t ruin myself for my friends; I don’t deserve your praise. I care greatly for myself.’’

  ‘‘Exactly; but yourself includes so many other selves— so much of everything. I never knew a person whose life touched so many other lives.’’

  ‘‘What do you call one’s life?’’ asked Madame Merle. ‘‘One’s appearance, one’s movements, one’s engagements, one’s society?’’

  ‘‘I call your life—your ambitions,’’ said Osmond.

  Madame Merle looked a moment at Pansy. ‘‘I wonder whether she understands that,’’ she murmured.

  ‘‘You see she can’t stay with us!’’ And Pansy’s father gave a rather joyless smile. ‘‘Go into the garden, ma bonne, and pluck a flower or two for Madame Merle,’’ he went on, in French.

  ‘‘That’s just what I wanted to do,’’ Pansy exclaimed, rising with promptness and noiselessly departing. Her father followed her to the open door, stood a moment watching her, and then came back, but remained standing, or rather strolling to and fro, as if to cultivate a sense of freedom which in another attitude might be wanting.

  ‘‘My ambitions are principally for you,’’ said Madame Merle, looking up at him with a certain nobleness of expression.

  ‘‘That comes back to what I say. I am part of your life—I and a thousand others. You are not selfish—I can’t admit that. If you were selfish, what should I be? What epithet would properly describe me?’’

  ‘‘You are indolent. For me that is your worst fault.’’

  ‘‘I am afraid it is really my best.’’

  ‘‘You don’t care,’’ said Madame Merle, gravely.

  ‘‘No; I don’t think I care much. What sort of a fault do you call that? My indolence, at any rate, was one of the reasons I didn’t go to Rome. But it was only one of them.’’

  ‘‘It is not of importance—to me at least—that you didn’t go; though I should have been glad to see you. I am glad that you are not in Rome now—which you might be, would probably be, if you had gone there a month ago. There is something I should like you to do at present in Florence.’’

  ‘‘Please remember my indolence,’’ said Osmond.

  ‘‘I will remember it; but I beg you to forget it. In that way you will have both the virtue and the reward. This is not a great labour, and it may prove a great pleasure. How long is it since you made a new acquaintance?’’

  ‘‘I don’t think I have made any since I made yours.’’

  ‘‘It is time you should make another, then. There is a friend of mine I want you to know.’’

  Mr. Osmond, in his walk, had gone back to the open door again, and was looking at his daughter, as she moved about in the intense sunshine. ‘‘What good will it do me?’’ he asked, with a sort of genial crudity.

  Madame Merle reflected a moment. ‘‘It will amuse you.’’ There was nothing crude in this rejoinder; it had been thoroughly well considered.

  ‘‘If you say that, I believe it,’’ said Osmond, coming toward her. ‘‘There are some points in which my confidence in you is complete. I am perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad.’’

  ‘‘Society is all bad.’’

  ‘‘Excuse me. That isn’t a common sort of wisdom. You have gained it in the right way—experimentally; you have compared an immense number of people with each other.’’

  ‘‘Well, I invite you to profit by my knowledge.’’

  ‘‘To profit? Are you very sure that I shall?’’

  ‘‘It’s what I hope. It will depend upon yourself. If I could only induce you to make an effort!’’

  ‘‘Ah, there you are! I knew something tireso
me was coming. What in the world—that is likely to turn up here—is worth an effort?’’

  Madame Merle flushed a little, and her eye betrayed vexation. ‘‘Don’t be foolish, Osmond. There is no one knows better than you that there are many things worth an effort.’’

  ‘‘Many things, I admit. But they are none of them probable things.’’

  ‘‘It is the effort that makes them probable,’’ said Madame Merle.

  ‘‘There’s something in that. Who is your friend?’’

  ‘‘The person I came to Florence to see. She is a niece of Mrs. Touchett, whom you will not have forgotten.’’

  ‘‘A niece? The word niece suggests youth. I see what you are coming to.’’

  ‘‘Yes, she is young—twenty-two years old. She is a great friend of mine. I met her for the first time in England, several months ago, and we took a great fancy to each other. I like her immensely, and I do what I don’t do every day—I admire her. You will do the same.’’

  ‘‘Not if I can help it.’’

  ‘‘Precisely. But you won’t be able to help it.’’

  ‘‘Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and unprecedentedly virtuous? It is only on those conditions that I care to make her acquaintance. You know I asked you some time ago never to speak to me of any one who should not correspond to that description. I know plenty of dingy people; I don’t want to know any more.’’

  ‘‘Miss Archer is not dingy; she’s as bright as the morning. She corresponds to your description; it is for that I wish you to know her. She fills all your requirements.’’

  ‘‘More or less, of course.’’

  ‘‘No; quite literally. She is beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for an American, well-born. She is also very clever and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune.’’

  Mr. Osmond listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his mind, with his eyes on his informant. ‘‘What do you want to do with her?’’ he asked, at last.

  ‘‘What you see. Put her in your way.’’

  ‘‘Isn’t she meant for something better than that?’’

  ‘‘I don’t pretend to know what people are meant for,’’ said Madame Merle. ‘‘I only know what I can do with them.’’

  ‘‘I am sorry for Miss Archer!’’ Osmond declared.

  Madame Merle got up. ‘‘If that is a beginning of interest in her, I take note of it.’’

  The two stood there, face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so.

  ‘‘You are looking very well,’’ Osmond repeated, still more irrelevantly than before. ‘‘You have got some idea. You are never as well as when you have got an idea; they are always becoming to you.’’

  In the manner of these two persons, on first meeting on any occasion, and especially when they met in the presence of others, there was something indirect and circumspect, which showed itself in glance and tone. They approached each other obliquely, as it were, and they addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an embarrassing degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Merle of course carried off such embarrassments better than her friend; but even Madame Merle had not on this occasion the manner she would have liked to have—the perfect self-possession she would have wished to exhibit to her host. The point I wish to make is, however, that at a certain moment the obstruction, whatever it was, always levelled itself, and left them more closely face to face than either of them ever was with any one else. This was what had happened now. They stood there, knowing each other well, and each of them on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing, as a compensation for the inconvenience—whatever it might be—of being known.

  ‘‘I wish very much you were not so heartless,’’ said Madame Merle, quietly. ‘‘It has always been against you, and it will be against you now.’’

  ‘‘I am not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches me—as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for me. I don’t understand it; I don’t see how or why they should be. But it touches me, all the same.’’

  ‘‘You will probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some things you will never understand. There is no particular need that you should.’’

  ‘‘You, after all, are the most remarkable woman,’’ said Osmond. ‘‘You have more in you than almost any one. I don’t see why you think Mrs. Touchett’s niece should matter very much to me, when—when—’’ And he paused a moment.

  ‘‘When I myself have mattered so little?’’

  ‘‘That of course is not what I meant to say. When I have known and appreciated such a woman as you.’’

  ‘‘Isabel Archer is better than I,’’ said Madame Merle.

  Her companion gave a laugh. ‘‘How little you must think of her to say that!’’

  ‘‘Do you suppose I am capable of jealousy? Please answer me that.’’

  ‘‘With regard to me? No; on the whole I don’t.’’

  ‘‘Come and see me, then, two days hence. I am staying at Mrs. Touchett’s—the Palazzo Crescentini—and the girl will be there.’’

  ‘‘Why didn’t you ask me that at first, simply, without speaking of the girl?’’ said Osmond. ‘‘You could have had her there at any rate.’’

  Madame Merle looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question that he could ask would find unprepared. ‘‘Do you wish to know why? Because I have spoken of you to her.’’

  Osmond frowned and turned away. ‘‘I would rather not know that.’’ Then, in a moment, he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour drawing. ‘‘Have you seen that—my last?’’

  Madame Merle drew near and looked at it a moment. ‘‘Is it the Venetian Alps—one of your last year’s sketches?’’

  ‘‘Yes—but how you guess everything!’’

  Madame Merle looked for a moment longer; then she turned away. ‘‘You know I don’t care for your drawings.’’

  ‘‘I know it, yet I am always surprised at it. They are really so much better than most people’s.’’

  ‘‘That may very well be. But as the only thing you do, it’s so little. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were my ambitions.’’

  ‘‘Yes; you have told me many times—things that were impossible.’’

  ‘‘Things that were impossible,’’ said Madame Merle. And then, in quite a different tone—‘‘In itself your little picture is very good.’’ She looked about the room—at the old cabinets, the pictures, the tapestries, the surfaces of faded silk. ‘‘Your rooms, at least, are perfect,’’ she went on. ‘‘I am struck with that afresh, whenever I come back; I know none better anywhere. You understand this sort of thing as no one else does.’’

  ‘‘I am very sick of it,’’ said Osmond.

  ‘‘You must let Miss Archer come and see all this. I have told her about it.’’

  ‘‘I don’t object to showing my things—when people are not idiots.’’

  ‘‘You do it delightfully. As a cicerone in your own museum you appear to particular advantage.’’

  Mr. Osmond, in return for this compliment, simply turned upon his companion an eye expressive of perfect clairvoyance.

  ‘‘Did you say she was rich?’’ he asked in a moment.

  ‘‘She has seventy thousand pounds.’’

  ‘‘En écus bien comptés?’’

  ‘‘There is no doubt whatever about her fortune. I have seen it, as I may say.’’

  ‘‘Satisfactory woman!—I mean you. And if I go to see her, shall I see the mother?’’

  ‘‘The mother? She has none—nor father either.’’

  ‘‘The aunt then; whom did you say?—Mrs. Touchett.’’

  ‘‘I can easily keep her out of the way.’’

  ‘‘I don’t object to her,’’ said Osmond; ‘‘I rather like Mrs. Touchett. She has a sort of old-fashioned chara
cter that is passing away—a vivid identity. But that long jackanapes, the son—is he about the place?’’

  ‘‘He is there, but he won’t trouble you.’’

  ‘‘He’s an awful ass.’’

  ‘‘I think you are mistaken. He is a very clever man. But he is not fond of being about when I am there, because he doesn’t like me.’’

  ‘‘What could be more asinine than that? Did you say that she was pretty?’’ Osmond went on.

  ‘‘Yes; but I won’t say it again, lest you should be disappointed. Come and make a beginning; that is all I ask of you.’’

  ‘‘A beginning of what?’’

  Madame Merle was silent a moment. ‘‘I want you of course to marry her.’’

  ‘‘The beginning of the end! Well, I will see for myself. Have you told her that?’’

  ‘‘For what do you take me? She is a very delicate piece of machinery.’’

  ‘‘Really,’’ said Osmond, after some meditation, ‘‘I don’t understand your ambitions.’’

  ‘‘I think you will understand this one after you have seen Miss Archer. Suspend your judgement till then.’’ Madame Merle, as she spoke, had drawn near the open door of the garden, where she stood a moment, looking out. ‘‘Pansy has grown pretty,’’ she presently added.

  ‘‘So it seemed to me.’’

  ‘‘But she has had enough of the convent.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Osmond. ‘‘I like what they have made of her. It’s very charming.’’

  ‘‘That’s not the convent. It’s the child’s nature.’’

  ‘‘It’s the combination, I think. She’s as pure as a pearl.’’

  ‘‘Why doesn’t she come back with my flowers, then?’’ Madame Merle asked. ‘‘She is not in a hurry.’’

  ‘‘We will go and get them,’’ said her companion.

  ‘‘She doesn’t like me,’’ murmured Madame Merle, as she raised her parasol, and they passed into the garden.

  23

  MADAME MERLE, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Touchett’s arrival at the invitation of this lady—Mrs. Touchett offering her for a month the hospitality of the Palazzo Crescentini—the judicious Madame Merle spoke to Isabel afresh about Gilbert Osmond, and expressed the wish that she should know him; but made no such point of the matter as we have seen her do in recommending the girl herself to Mr. Osmond’s attention. The reason of this was perhaps that Isabel offered no resistance whatever to Madame Merle’s proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude of friends, both among the natives of the country and its heterogeneous visitors. She had mentioned to Isabel most of the people the girl would find it well to know—of course, she said, Isabel could know whomever she would—and she had placed Mr. Osmond near the top of the list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these ten years; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men it was possible to meet. He was altogether above the respectable average; quite another affair. He was not perfect—far from it; the effect he produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves and his spirits. If he were not in the right mood he could be very unsatisfactory—like most people, after all; but when he chose to exert himself no man could do it to better purpose. He had his peculiarities—which indeed Isabel would find to be the case with all the men really worth knowing—and he did not cause his light to shine equally for all persons. Madame Merle, however, thought she could undertake that for Isabel he would be brilliant. He was easily bored—too easily, and dull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl like Isabel would give him a stimulus which was too absent from his life. At any rate, he was a person to know. One should not attempt to live in Italy without making a friend of Gilbert Osmond, who knew more about the country than any one except two or three German professors. And if they had more knowledge than he, he had infinitely more taste; he had a taste which was quite by itself. Isabel remembered that her friend had spoken of him during their multifarious colloquies at Gardencourt, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tie that united them. She was inclined to imagine that Madame Merle’s ties were peculiar, and such a possibility was a part of the interest created by this suggestive woman. As regards her relations with Mr. Osmond, however, Madame Merle hinted at nothing but a long-established and tranquil friendship. Isabel said that she should be happy to know a person who had enjoyed her friend’s confidence for so many years. ‘‘You ought to see a great many men,’’ Madame Merle remarked; ‘‘you ought to see as many as possible, so as to get used to them.’’