“Is she in need of help?” he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.
“Most women always are,” said Henrietta, with conscientious evasiveness and generalising less hopefully than usual. “If you go to Rome,” she added, “I hope you’ll be a true friend — not a selfish one!” And she turned off and began to look at the pictures.
Caspar Goodwood let her go and stood watching her while she wandered round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. “You’ve heard something about her here,” he then resumed. “I should like to know what you’ve heard.”
Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. “Yes, I’ve heard,” she answered; “but as I don’t want you to go to Rome I won’t tell you.”
“Just as you please. I shall see for myself,” he said. Then inconsistently, for him, “You’ve heard she’s unhappy!” he added.
“Oh, you won’t see that!” Henrietta exclaimed.
“I hope not. When do you start?”
“To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?”
Goodwood hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss Stackpole’s company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the same character as Gilbert Osmond’s, but it had at this moment an equal distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Stackpole’s virtues than a reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss Stackpole didn’t take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Osmond; she had done so when they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to allude to Mrs. Osmond; he was not always thinking of her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least colloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn’t care so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections — which show how widely different, in effect, his ill-humour was from Gilbert Osmond’s. He desired to go immediately to Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the European railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found one’s self objecting with all the added vehemence of one’s wish to have the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But he couldn’t take a night-train when Miss Stackpole was starting in the morning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait longer than he had patience for. It wouldn’t do to start the next day. She worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in a European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to put himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry but in a tone of extreme distinctness, “Of course if you’re going to-morrow I’ll go too, as I may be of assistance to you.”
“Well, Mr. Goodwood, I should hope so!” Henrietta returned imperturbably.
CHAPTER XLV
I have already had reason to say that Isabel knew her husband to be displeased by the continuance of Ralph’s visit to Rome. That knowledge was very present to her as she went to her cousin’s hotel the day after she had invited Lord Warburton to give a tangible proof of his sincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient perception of the sources of Osmond’s opposition. He wished her to have no freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Ralph was an apostle of freedom. It was just because he was this, Isabel said to herself, that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband’s aversion to it, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was her appointed and inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled her with shame as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband’s intentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the less, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back something she had solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Osmond would do nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her to the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to call upon Ralph; but she felt sure that unless Ralph should very soon depart this prohibition would come. How could poor Ralph depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband’s wish for the event; she didn’t, to be just, see how he could like her to be with her cousin. Ralph never said a word against him, but Osmond’s sore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to decide, and that wouldn’t be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rupture, she found herself wishing Ralph would start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she loved Ralph less, but that almost anything seemed preferable to repudiating the most serious act — the single sacred act — of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous. To break with Osmond once would be to break for ever; any open acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there was no conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Isabel went to the Hôtel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure of propriety was in the canon of taste, and there couldn’t have been a better proof that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest appreciation. Isabel’s application of that measure had been particularly free to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn’t leave Ralph to die alone she had something important to ask of him. This indeed was Gilbert’s business as well as her own.
She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. “I want you to answer me a question. It’s about Lord Warburton.”
“I think I guess your question,” Ralph answered from his arm-chair, out of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.
“Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it.”
“Oh, I don’t say I can do that.”