chapter xiii

it was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice — she had no desire whatever for that — that led her to speak to her uncle of what had taken place. she wished to speak to some one; she should feel more natural, more human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt or her friend henrietta. her cousin of course was a possible confidant; but she would have had to do herself violence to air this special secret to ralph. so the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. her uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. isabel had quite taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, included the old man’s son, his physician, his personal servant, and even miss stackpole. mrs. touchett did not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the less to isabel’s finding her host alone. he sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the open window of his room, looking westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent expectation.

she approached her point directly. “i think i ought to let you know that lord warburton has asked me to marry him. i suppose i ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first.”

the old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence she showed him. “do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?” he then enquired.

“i’ve not answered him definitely yet; i’ve taken a little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. but i shall not accept him.”

mr. touchett made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that, whatever interest he might take in the matter from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it. “well, i told you you’d be a success over here. americans are highly appreciated.”

“very highly indeed,” said isabel. “but at the cost of seeming both tasteless and ungrateful, i don’t think i can marry lord warburton.”

“well,” her uncle went on, “of course an old man can’t judge for a young lady. i’m glad you didn’t ask me before you made up your mind. i suppose i ought to tell you,” he added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, “that i’ve known all about it these three days.”

“about lord warburton’s state of mind?”

“about his intentions, as they say here. he wrote me a very pleasant letter, telling me all about them. should you like to see his letter?” the old man obligingly asked.

“thank you; i don’t think i care about that. but i’m glad he wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was right.”

“ah well, i guess you do like him!” mr. touchett declared. “you needn’t pretend you don’t.”

“i like him extremely; i’m very free to admit that. but i don’t wish to marry any one just now.”

“you think some one may come along whom you may like better. well, that’s very likely,” said mr. touchett, who appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.

“i don’t care if i don’t meet any one else. i like lord warburton quite well enough.” she fell into that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased her interlocutors.

her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these impressions. “he’s a very fine man,” he resumed in a tone which might have passed for that of encouragement. “his letter was one of the pleasantest i’ve received for some weeks. i suppose one of the reasons i liked it was that it was all about you; that is all except the part that was about himself. i suppose he told you all that.”

“he would have told me everything i wished to ask him,” isabel said.

“but you didn’t feel curious?”

“my curiosity would have been idle — once i had determined to decline his offer.”

“you didn’t find it sufficiently attractive?” mr. touchett enquired.

she was silent a little. “i suppose it was that,” she presently admitted. “but i don’t know why.”

“fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons,” said her uncle. “there’s a great deal that’s attractive about such an idea; but i don’t see why the english should want to entice us away from our native land. i know that we try to attract them over there, but that’s because our population is insufficient. here, you know, they’re rather crowded. however, i presume there’s room for charming young ladies everywhere.”

“there seems to have been room here for you,” said isabel, whose eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the park.

mr. touchett gave a shrewd, conscious smile. “there’s room everywhere, my dear, if you’ll pay for it. i sometimes think i’ve paid too much for this. perhaps you also might have to pay too much.”

“perhaps i might,” the girl replied.

that suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this association of her uncle’s mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed to prove that she was concerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life and not altogether a victim to intellectual eagerness and vague ambitions — ambitions reaching beyond lord warburton’s beautiful appeal, reaching to something indefinable and possibly not commendable. in so far as the indefinable had an influence upon isabel’s behaviour at this juncture, it was not the conception, even unformulated, of a union with caspar goodwood; for however she might have resisted conquest at her english suitor’s large quiet hands she was at least as far removed from the disposition to let the young man from boston take positive possession of her. the sentiment in which she sought refuge after reading his letter was a critical view of his having come abroad; for it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of freedom. there was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her. she had been haunted at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and had wondered — a consideration she had never paid in equal degree to any one else — whether he would like what she did. the difficulty was that more than any man she had ever known, more than poor lord warburton (she had begun now to give his lordship the benefit of this epithet), caspar goodwood expressed for her an energy — and she had already felt it as a power that was of his very nature. it was in no degree a matter of his “advantages”— it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his clear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window. she might like it or not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force: even in one’s usual contact with him one had to reckon with that. the idea of a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to her at present, since she had just given a sort of personal accent to her independence by looking so straight at lord warburton’s big bribe and yet turning away from it. sometimes caspar goodwood had seemed to range himself on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might evade him for a time, but that she must make terms with him at last — terms which would be certain to be favourable to himself. her impulse had been to avail herself of the things that helped her to resist such an obligation; and this impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her aunt’s invitation, which had come to her at an hour when she expected from day to day to see mr. goodwood and when she was glad to have an answer ready for something she was sure he would say to her. when she had told him at albany, on the evening of mrs. touchett’s visit, that she couldn’t then discuss difficult questions, dazzled as she was by the great immediate opening of her aunt’s offer of “europe,” he declared that this was no answer at all; and it was now to obtain a better one that he was following her across the sea. to say to herself that he was a kind of grim fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who was able to take much for granted in him; but the reader has a right to a nearer and a clearer view.

he was the son of a proprietor of well-known cotton-mills in massachusetts — a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. caspar at present managed the works, and with a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept their prosperity from dwindling. he had received the better part of his education at harvard college, where, however, he had gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner of more dispersed knowledge. later on he had learned that the finer intelligence too could vault and pull and strain — might even, breaking the record, treat itself to rare exploits. he had thus discovered in himself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics, and had invented an improvement in the cotton-spinning process which was now largely used and was known by his name. you might have seen it in the newspapers in connection with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he had given to isabel by showing her in the columns of the new york interviewer an exhaustive article on the goodwood patent — an article not prepared by miss stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental interests. there were intricate, bristling things he rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify him. this was the art, as they said, of managing men — which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. it struck those who knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about caspar goodwood, and his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters. but it was as if something large and confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement. it pleased isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging steed, the whirlwind of a great war — a war like the civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious childhood and his ripening youth.

she liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a mover of men — liked it much better than some other points in his nature and aspect. she cared nothing for his cotton-mill — the goodwood patent left her imagination absolutely cold. she wished him no ounce less of his manhood, but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if he looked, for instance, a little differently. his jaw was too square and set and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of easy consonance with the deeper rhythms of life. then she viewed with reserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. but they all seemed of the same piece; the figure, the stuff, was so drearily usual. she had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a person of his importance; and then she had amended the rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection only if she were in love with him. she was not in love with him and therefore might criticise his small defects as well as his great — which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of his being so, since one could never be, but certainly of his seeming so. he showed his appetites and designs too simply and artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other people were present he talked too little about anything. and yet he was of supremely strong, clean make — which was so much she saw the different fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits, the different fitted parts of armoured warriors — in plates of steel handsomely inlaid with gold. it was very strange: where, ever, was any tangible link between her impression and her act? caspar goodwood had never corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed that this was why he left her so harshly critical. when, however, lord warburton, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to the term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied. it was certainly strange.

the sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering mr. goodwood’s letter, and isabel determined to leave it a while unhonoured. if he had determined to persecute her he must take the consequences; foremost among which was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her that he should come down to gardencourt. she was already liable to the incursions of one suitor at this place, and though it might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in entertaining two such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where the entertainment should consist of dismissing them. she made no reply to mr. goodwood; but at the end of three days she wrote to lord warburton, and the letter belongs to our history.

dear lord warburton— a great deal of earnest thought has not led me to change my mind about the suggestion you were so kind as to make me the other day. i am not, i am really and truly not, able to regard you in the light of a companion for life; or to think of your home — your various homes — as the settled seat of my existence. these things cannot be reasoned about, and i very earnestly entreat you not to return to the subject we discussed so exhaustively. we see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us; and i shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed. kindly let this suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that i have given your proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves. it is with this very great regard that i remain sincerely yours,

isabel archer.

while the author of this missive was making up her mind to dispatch it henrietta stackpole formed a resolve which was accompanied by no demur. she invited ralph touchett to take a walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of him. it may be admitted that at this information the young man flinched; for we know that miss stackpole had struck him as apt to push an advantage. the alarm was unreasoned, however; for he was clear about the area of her indiscretion as little as advised of its vertical depth, and he made a very civil profession of the desire to serve her. he was afraid of her and presently told her so. “when you look at me in a certain way my knees knock together, my faculties desert me; i’m filled with trepidation and i ask only for strength to execute your commands. you’ve an address that i’ve never encountered in any woman.”

“well,” henrietta replied good-humouredly, “if i had not known before that you were trying somehow to abash me i should know it now. of course i’m easy game — i was brought up with such different customs and ideas. i’m not used to your arbitrary standards, and i’ve never been spoken to in america as you have spoken to me. if a gentleman conversing with me over there were to speak to me like that i shouldn’t know what to make of it. we take everything more naturally over there, and, after all, we’re a great deal more simple. i admit that; i’m very simple myself. of course if you choose to laugh at me for it you’re very welcome; but i think on the whole i would rather be myself than you. i’m quite content to be myself; i don’t want to change. there are plenty of people that appreciate me just as i am. it’s true they’re nice fresh free-born americans!” henrietta had lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence and large concession. “i want you to assist me a little,” she went on. “i don’t care in the least whether i amuse you while you do so; or, rather, i’m perfectly willing your amusement should be your reward. i want you to help me about isabel.”

“has she injured you?” ralph asked.

“if she had i shouldn’t mind, and i should never tell you. what i’m afraid of is that she’ll injure herself.”

“i think that’s very possible,” said ralph.

his companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him perhaps the very gaze that unnerved him. “that too would amuse you, i suppose. the way you do say things! i never heard any one so indifferent.”

“to isabel? ah, not that!”

“well, you’re not in love with her, i hope.”

“how can that be, when i’m in love with another?”

“you’re in love with yourself, that’s the other!” miss stackpole declared. “much good may it do you! but if you wish to be serious once in your life here’s a chance; and if you really care for your cousin here’s an opportunity to prove it. i don’t expect you to understand her; that’s too much to ask. but you needn’t do that to grant my favour. i’ll supply the necessary intelligence.”

“i shall enjoy that immensely!” ralph exclaimed. “i’ll be caliban and you shall be ariel.”

“you’re not at all like caliban, because you’re sophisticated, and caliban was not. but i’m not talking about imaginary characters; i’m talking about isabel. isabel’s intensely real. what i wish to tell you is that i find her fearfully changed.”

“since you came, do you mean?”

“since i came and before i came. she’s not the same as she once so beautifully was.”

“as she was in america?”

“yes, in america. i suppose you know she comes from there. she can’t help it, but she does.”

“do you want to change her back again?”

“of course i do, and i want you to help me.”

“ah,” said ralph, “i’m only caliban; i’m not prospero.”

“you were prospero enough to make her what she has become. you’ve acted on isabel archer since she came here, mr. touchett.”

“i, my dear miss stackpole? never in the world. isabel archer has acted on me — yes; she acts on every one. but i’ve been absolutely passive.”

“you’re too passive then. you had better stir yourself and be careful. isabel’s changing every day; she’s drifting away — right out to sea. i’ve watched her and i can see it. she’s not the bright american girl she was. she’s taking different views, a different colour, and turning away from her old ideals. i want to save those ideals, mr. touchett, and that’s where you come in.”

“not surely as an ideal?”

“well, i hope not,” henrietta replied promptly. “i’ve got a fear in my heart that she’s going to marry one of these fell europeans, and i want to prevent it.

“ah, i see,” cried ralph; “and to prevent it you want me to step in and marry her?”

“not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for you’re the typical, the fell european from whom i wish to rescue her. no; i wish you to take an interest in another person — a young man to whom she once gave great encouragement and whom she now doesn’t seem to think good enough. he’s a thoroughly grand man and a very dear friend of mine, and i wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here.”

ralph was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at first in the simplest light. it wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the world could really be as candid as this request of miss stackpole’s appeared. that a young woman should demand that a gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to another young woman, a young woman whose attention had wandered and whose charms were greater — this was an anomaly which for the moment challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. to read between the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that miss stackpole wished the gentleman invited to gardencourt on her own account was the sign not so much of a vulgar as of an embarrassed mind. even from this venial act of vulgarity, however, ralph was saved, and saved by a force that i can only speak of as inspiration. with no more outward light on the subject than he already possessed he suddenly acquired the conviction that it would be a sovereign injustice to the correspondent of the interviewer to assign a dishonourable motive to any act of hers. this conviction passed into his mind with extreme rapidity; it was perhaps kindled by the pure radiance of the young lady’s imperturbable gaze. he returned this challenge a moment, consciously, resisting an inclination to frown as one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries. “who’s the gentleman you speak of?”

“mr. caspar goodwood — of boston. he has been extremely attentive to isabel — just as devoted to her as he can live. he has followed her out here and he’s at present in london. i don’t know his address, but i guess i can obtain it.”

“i’ve never heard of him,” said ralph.

“well, i suppose you haven’t heard of every one. i don’t believe he has ever heard of you; but that’s no reason why isabel shouldn’t marry him.”

ralph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. “what a rage you have for marrying people! do you remember how you wanted to marry me the other day?”

“i’ve got over that. you don’t know how to take such ideas. mr. goodwood does, however; and that’s what i like about him. he’s a splendid man and a perfect gentleman, and isabel knows it.”

“is she very fond of him?”

“if she isn’t she ought to be. he’s simply wrapped up in her.”

“and you wish me to ask him here,” said ralph reflectively.

“it would be an act of true hospitality.”

“caspar goodwood,” ralph continued —“it’s rather a striking name.”

“i don’t care anything about his name. it might be ezekiel jenkins, and i should say the same. he’s the only man i have ever seen whom i think worthy of isabel.”

“you’re a very devoted friend,” said ralph.

“of course i am. if you say that to pour scorn on me i don’t care.”

“i don’t say it to pour scorn on you; i’m very much struck with it.”

“you’re more satiric than ever, but i advise you not to laugh at mr. goodwood.”

“i assure you i’m very serious; you ought to understand that,” said ralph.

in a moment his companion understood it. “i believe you are; now you’re too serious.”

“you’re difficult to please.”

“oh, you’re very serious indeed. you won’t invite mr. goodwood.”

“i don’t know,” said ralph. “i’m capable of strange things. tell me a little about mr. goodwood. what’s he like?”

“he’s just the opposite of you. he’s at the head of a cotton-factory; a very fine one.”

“has he pleasant manners?” asked ralph.

“splendid manners — in the american style.”

“would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?”

“i don’t think he’d care much about our little circle. he’d concentrate on isabel.”

“and how would my cousin like that?”

“very possibly not at all. but it will be good for her. it will call back her thoughts.”

“call them back — from where?”

“from foreign parts and other unnatural places. three months ago she gave mr. goodwood every reason to suppose he was acceptable to her, and it’s not worthy of isabel to go back on a real friend simply because she has changed the scene. i’ve changed the scene too, and the effect of it has been to make me care more for my old associations than ever. it’s my belief that the sooner isabel changes it back again the better. i know her well enough to know that she would never be truly happy over here, and i wish her to form some strong american tie that will act as a preservative.”

“aren’t you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?” ralph enquired. “don’t you think you ought to give her more of a chance in poor old england?”

“a chance to ruin her bright young life? one’s never too much in a hurry to save a precious human creature from drowning.”

“as i understand it then,” said ralph, “you wish me to push mr. goodwood overboard after her. do you know,” he added, “that i’ve never heard her mention his name?”

henrietta gave a brilliant smile. “i’m delighted to hear that; it proves how much she thinks of him.”

ralph appeared to allow that there was a good deal in this, and he surrendered to thought while his companion watched him askance. “if i should invite mr. goodwood,” he finally said, “it would be to quarrel with him.”

“don’t do that; he’d prove the better man.”

“you certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! i really don’t think i can ask him. i should be afraid of being rude to him.”

“it’s just as you please,” henrietta returned. “i had no idea you were in love with her yourself.”

“do you really believe that?” the young man asked with lifted eyebrows.

“that’s the most natural speech i’ve ever heard you make! of course i believe it,” miss stackpole ingeniously said.

“well,” ralph concluded, “to prove to you that you’re wrong i’ll invite him. it must be of course as a friend of yours.”

“it will not be as a friend of mine that he’ll come; and it will not be to prove to me that i’m wrong that you’ll ask him — but to prove it to yourself!”

these last words of miss stackpole’s (on which the two presently separated) contained an amount of truth which ralph touchett was obliged to recognise; but it so far took the edge from too sharp a recognition that, in spite of his suspecting it would be rather more indiscreet to keep than to break his promise, he wrote mr. goodwood a note of six lines, expressing the pleasure it would give mr. touchett the elder that he should join a little party at gardencourt, of which miss stackpole was a valued member. having sent his letter (to the care of a banker whom henrietta suggested) he waited in some suspense. he had heard this fresh formidable figure named for the first time; for when his mother had mentioned on her arrival that there was a story about the girl’s having an “admirer” at home, the idea had seemed deficient in reality and he had taken no pains to ask questions the answers to which would involve only the vague or the disagreeable. now, however, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object had become more concrete; it took the form of a young man who had followed her to london, who was interested in a cotton-mill and had manners in the most splendid of the american styles. ralph had two theories about this intervenes. either his passion was a sentimental fiction of miss stackpole’s (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration. the latter clause of ralph’s argument might have seemed incoherent; but it embodied his conviction that if mr. goodwood were interested in isabel in the serious manner described by miss stackpole he would not care to present himself at gardencourt on a summons from the latter lady. “on this supposition,” said ralph, “he must regard her as a thorn on the stem of his rose; as an intercessor he must find her wanting in tact.”

two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very short note from caspar goodwood, thanking him for it, regretting that other engagements made a visit to gardencourt impossible and presenting many compliments to miss stackpole. ralph handed the note to henrietta, who, when she had read it, exclaimed: “well, i never have heard of anything so stiff!”

“i’m afraid he doesn’t care so much about my cousin as you suppose,” ralph observed.

“no, it’s not that; it’s some subtler motive. his nature’s very deep. but i’m determined to fathom it, and i shall write to him to know what he means.”

his refusal of ralph’s overtures was vaguely disconcerting; from the moment he declined to come to gardencourt our friend began to think him of importance. he asked himself what it signified to him whether isabel’s admirers should be desperadoes or laggards; they were not rivals of his and were perfectly welcome to act out their genius. nevertheless he felt much curiosity as to the result of miss stackpole’s promised enquiry into the causes of mr. goodwood’s stiffness — a curiosity for the present ungratified, inasmuch as when he asked her three days later if she had written to london she was obliged to confess she had written in vain. mr. goodwood had not replied.

“i suppose he’s thinking it over,” she said; “he thinks everything over; he’s not really at all impetuous. but i’m accustomed to having my letters answered the same day.” she presently proposed to isabel, at all events, that they should make an excursion to london together. “if i must tell the truth,” she observed, “i’m not seeing much at this place, and i shouldn’t think you were either. i’ve not even seen that aristocrat — what’s his name? — lord washburton. he seems to let you severely alone.”

“lord warburton’s coming to-morrow, i happen to know,” replied her friend, who had received a note from the master of lockleigh in answer to her own letter. “you’ll have every opportunity of turning him inside out.”

“well, he may do for one letter, but what’s one letter when you want to write fifty? i’ve described all the scenery in this vicinity and raved about all the old women and donkeys. you may say what you please, scenery doesn’t make a vital letter. i must go back to london and get some impressions of real life. i was there but three days before i came away, and that’s hardly time to get in touch.”

as isabel, on her journey from new york to gardencourt, had seen even less of the british capital than this, it appeared a happy suggestion of henrietta’s that the two should go thither on a visit of pleasure. the idea struck isabel as charming; he was curious of the thick detail of london, which had always loomed large and rich to her. they turned over their schemes together and indulged in visions of romantic hours. they would stay at some picturesque old inn — one of the inns described by dickens — and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. henrietta was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything. they would dine at a coffee-house and go afterwards to the play; they would frequent the abbey and the british museum and find out where doctor johnson had lived, and goldsmith and addison. isabel grew eager and presently unveiled the bright vision to ralph, who burst into a fit of laughter which scarce expressed the sympathy she had desired.

“it’s a delightful plan,” he said. “i advise you to go to the duke’s head in covent garden, an easy, informal, old-fashioned place, and i’ll have you put down at my club.”

“do you mean it’s improper?” isabel asked. “dear me, isn’t anything proper here? with henrietta surely i may go anywhere; she isn’t hampered in that way. she has travelled over the whole american continent and can at least find her way about this minute island.”

“ah then,” said ralph, “let me take advantage of her protection to go up to town as well. i may never have a chance to travel so safely!”