The Portrait of a Lady, vol 2 | Page 7

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 easy-- that is had
been rapid--only 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 "parts"--to show somehow or
other--had 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 identified--as
from the hand of a great master--by 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 can't 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 Peter's. 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 morrow's 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 you'll come back; but who knows?" Gilbert Osmond said.
"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round the
world. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly
what you choose; you can roam through space."
"Well, Italy's a part of space," Isabel answered. "I can take it on the
way."
"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a
parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you on
your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to see
you when you're 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. You've no respect for my travels-- you 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 because-- because it has
been put into