He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too oftenhe would have admitted thattoo sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his spirit. But at present he was happyhappier than he had perhaps ever been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was simply the sense of successthe most agreeable emotion of the human heart. Osmond had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded himself. Ah no, Ive not been spoiled; certainly Ive not been spoiled, he used inwardly to repeat. If I do succeed before I die I shall thoroughly have earned it. He was too apt to reason as if earning this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were, some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easythat is had been rapidonly because he had made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The desire to have something or other to show for his partsto show somehow or otherhad been the dream of his youth; but as the years went on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of beer to advertise what one could stand. If an anonymous drawing on a museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identifiedas from the hand of a great masterby the so high and so unnoticed fact of style. His style was what the girl had discovered with a little help; and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world without his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing for him, and he would not have waited in vain.
Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But cant wait if you dawdle in Rome. The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow of Saint Peters. He would not return to Florence for ten days more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio. It might be months in this case before he should see her again. This exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Ralph Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had contracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages several that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making arrangements for the morrows journey, and Isabel sat alone in a wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Osmond the place was ugly to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar, bragging, lying talk. Isabel had taken in hand a volume of Ampere, presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale rosiness over the scene.
You say youll come back; but who knows? Gilbert Osmond said.
I think youre much more likely to start on your voyage round the world. Youre under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what you choose; you can roam through space.
Well, Italys a part of space, Isabel answered. I can take it on the way.
On the way round the world? No, dont do that. Dont put us in a parenthesisgive us a chapter to ourselves. I dont want to see you on your travels. Id rather see you when theyre over. I should like to see you when youre tired and satiated, Osmond added in a moment. I shall prefer you in that state.
Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. You turn things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think, without intending it. Youve no respect for my travelsyou think them ridiculous.
Where do you find that?
She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the paper-knife. You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about as if the world belonged to me, simply becausebecause it has been put into my power to do so. You dont think a woman ought to do that. You think it bold and ungraceful.
I think it beautiful, said Osmond. You know my opinionsIve treated you to enough of them. Dont you remember my telling you that one ought to make ones life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first; but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be trying to do with your own.
She looked up from her book. What you despise most in the world is bad, is stupid art.
Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.
If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me, she went on.
Osmond gave a smilea keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her solemnity; he had seen it before. You have one!
Thats exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.
I would give my little finger to go to Japan; its one of the countries I want most to see. Cant you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?
I havent a taste for old lacquer to excuse me, said Isabel.
Youve a better excusethe means of going. Youre quite wrong in your theory that I laugh at you. I dont know what has put it into your head.
It wouldnt be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should have the means to travel when youve not; for you know everything and I know nothing.
The more reason why you should travel and learn, smiled Osmond. Besides, he added as if it were a point to be made, I dont know everything.
Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her lifeso it pleased her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages or historians to hold upthat this felicity was coming to an end. That most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be as well. Happy things dont repeat themselves, and her adventure wore already the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from which, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the breeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him differentthis strange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a pang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her silent, and Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. Go everywhere, he said at last, in a low, kind voice; do everything; get everything out of life. Be happy,be triumphant.
What do you mean by being triumphant?
Well, doing what you like.
To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things one likes is often very tiresome.
Exactly, said Osmond with his quiet quickness. As I intimated just now, youll be tired some day. He paused a moment and then he went on: I dont know whether I had better not wait till then for something I want to say to you.
Ah, I cant advise you without knowing what it is. But Im horrid when Im tired, Isabel added with due inconsequence.
I dont believe that. Youre angry, sometimesthat I can believe, though Ive never seen it. But Im sure youre never cross.
Not even when I lose my temper?
You dont lose ityou find it, and that must be beautiful. Osmond spoke with a noble earnestness. They must be great moments to see.
If I could only find it now! Isabel nervously cried.
Im not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. Im speaking very seriously. He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he bent his eyes on the floor. What I wish to say to you, he went on at last, looking up, is that I find Im in love with you.
She instantly rose. Ah, keep that till I am tired!
Tired of hearing it from others? He sat there raising his eyes to her. No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must say it now. She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this situation, exchanging a long lookthe large, conscious look of the critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. Im absolutely in love with you.
He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow the slipping of a fine boltbackward, forward, she couldnt have said which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but, morally speaking, she retreated before themfacing him stillas she had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. Oh dont say that, please, she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have banished all dreadthe sense of something within herself, deep down, that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there like a large sum stored in a bankwhich there was a terror in having to begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.
I havent the idea that it will matter much to you, said Osmond. Ive too little to offer you. What I haveits enough for me; but its not enough for you. Ive neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it cant offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It gives me pleasure, I assure you, he went on, standing there before her, considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm, refined, slightly ravaged face. It gives me no pain, because its perfectly simple. For me youll always be the most important woman in the world.
Isabel looked at herself in this characterlooked intently, thinking she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an expression of any such complacency. You dont offend me; but you ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded, troubled. Incommoded, she heard herself saying that, and it struck her as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.
I remember perfectly. Of course youre surprised and startled. But if its nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave something that I may not be ashamed of.
I dont know what it may leave. You see at all events that Im not overwhelmed, said Isabel with rather a pale smile. Im not too troubled to think. And I think that Im glad I leave Rome to-morrow.
Of course I dont agree with you there.
I dont at all know you, she added abruptly; and then she coloured as she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Lord Warburton.
If you were not going away youd know me better.
I shall do that some other time.
I hope so. Im very easy to know.
No, no, she emphatically answeredthere youre not sincere. Youre not easy to know; no one could be less so.
Well, he laughed, I said that because I know myself. It may be a boast, but I do.
Very likely; but youre very wise.
So are you, Miss Archer! Osmond exclaimed.
I dont feel so just now. Still, Im wise enough to think you had better go. Good-night.
God bless you! said Gilbert Osmond, taking the hand which she failed to surrender. After which he added: If we meet again youll find me as you leave me. If we dont I shall be so all the same.
Thank you very much. Good-bye.
There was something quietly firm about Isabels visitor; he might go of his own movement, but wouldnt be dismissed. Theres one thing more. I havent asked anything of younot even a thought in the future; you must do me that justice. But theres a little service I should like to ask. I shall not return home for several days; Romes delightful, and its a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know youre sorry to leave it; but youre right to do what your aunt wishes.
She doesnt even wish it! Isabel broke out strangely.
Osmond was apparently on the point of saying something that would match these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: Ah well, its proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything thats proper; I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you dont know me, but when you do youll discover what a worship I have for propriety.
Youre not conventional? Isabel gravely asked.
I like the way you utter that word! No, Im not conventional: Im convention itself. You dont understand that? And he paused a moment, smiling. I should like to explain it. Then with a sudden, quick, bright naturalness, Do come back again, he pleaded. There are so many things we might talk about.
She stood there with lowered eyes. What service did you speak of just now?
Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. Shes alone at the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasnt at all my ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much, said Gilbert Osmond gently.
It will be a great pleasure to me to go, Isabel answered. Ill tell her what you say. Once more good-bye.
On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitationfor it had not diminishedwas very still, very deep. What had happened was something that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but here, when it came, she stoppedthat sublime principle somehow broke down. The working of this young ladys spirit was strange, and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last vague space it couldnt crossa dusky, uncertain tract which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.