Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Tragic Muse & Daisy Miller (4 Books in One Edition). Henry Foss James
occasion of asking her if they were not good friends.
“Perfectly, but he doesn’t like me.”
“What have you done to him?”
“Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for that.”
“For not liking you? I think one has need of a very good reason.”
“You’re very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the day you begin.”
“Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin.”
“I hope not; because if you do you’ll never end. That’s the way with your cousin; he doesn’t get over it. It’s an antipathy of nature — if I can call it that when it’s all on his side. I’ve nothing whatever against him and don’t bear him the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I want. However, one feels that he’s a gentleman and would never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table,” Madame Merle subjoined in a moment, “I’m not afraid of him.”
“I hope not indeed,” said Isabel, who added something about his being the kindest creature living. She remembered, however, that on her first asking him about Madame Merle he had answered her in a manner which this lady might have thought injurious without being explicit. There was something between them, Isabel said to herself, but she said nothing more than this. If it were something of importance it should inspire respect; if it were not it was not worth her curiosity. With all her love of knowledge she had a natural shrinking from raising curtains and looking into unlighted corners. The love of knowledge coexisted in her mind with the finest capacity for ignorance.
But Madame Merle sometimes said things that startled her, made her raise her clear eyebrows at the time and think of the words afterwards. “I’d give a great deal to be your age again,” she broke out once with a bitterness which, though diluted in her customary amplitude of ease, was imperfectly disguised by it. “If I could only begin again — if I could have my life before me!”
“Your life’s before you yet,” Isabel answered gently, for she was vaguely awe-struck.
“No; the best part’s gone, and gone for nothing.”
“Surely not for nothing,” said Isabel.
“Why not — what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of a beauty that I never had.”
“You have many friends, dear lady.”
“I’m not so sure!” cried Madame Merle.
“Ah, you’re wrong. You have memories, graces, talents —”
But Madame Merle interrupted her. “What have my talents brought me? Nothing but the need of using them still, to get through the hours, the years, to cheat myself with some pretence of movement, of unconsciousness. As for my graces and memories the less said about them the better. You’ll be my friend till you find a better use for your friendship.”
“It will be for you to see that I don’t then,” said Isabel.
“Yes; I would make an effort to keep you.” And her companion looked at her gravely. “When I say I should like to be your age I mean with your qualities — frank, generous, sincere like you. In that case I should have made something better of my life.”
“What should you have liked to do that you’ve not done?”
Madame Merle took a sheet of music — she was seated at the piano and had abruptly wheeled about on the stool when she first spoke — and mechanically turned the leaves. “I’m very ambitious!” she at last replied.
“And your ambitions have not been satisfied? They must have been great.”
“They WERE great. I should make myself ridiculous by talking of them.”
Isabel wondered what they could have been — whether Madame Merle had aspired to wear a crown. “I don’t know what your idea of success may be, but you seem to me to have been successful. To me indeed you’re a vivid image of success.”
Madame Merle tossed away the music with a smile. “What’s YOUR idea of success?”
“You evidently think it must be a very tame one. It’s to see some dream of one’s youth come true.”
“Ah,” Madame Merle exclaimed, “that I’ve never seen! But my dreams were so great — so preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I’m dreaming now!” And she turned back to the piano and began grandly to play. On the morrow she said to Isabel that her definition of success had been very pretty, yet frightfully sad. Measured in that way, who had ever succeeded? The dreams of one’s youth, why they were enchanting, they were divine! Who had ever seen such things come to pass?
“I myself — a few of them,” Isabel ventured to answer.
“Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday.”
“I began to dream very young,” Isabel smiled.
“Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood — that of having a pink sash and a doll that could close her eyes.”
“No, I don’t mean that.”
“Or a young man with a fine moustache going down on his knees to you.”
“No, nor that either,” Isabel declared with still more emphasis.
Madame Merle appeared to note this eagerness. “I suspect that’s what you do mean. We’ve all had the young man with the moustache. He’s the inevitable young man; he doesn’t count.”
Isabel was silent a little but then spoke with extreme and characteristic inconsequence. “Why shouldn’t he count? There are young men and young men.”
“And yours was a paragon — is that what you mean?” asked her friend with a laugh. “If you’ve had the identical young man you dreamed of, then that was success, and I congratulate you with all my heart. Only in that case why didn’t you fly with him to his castle in the Apennines?”
“He has no castle in the Apennines.”
“What has he? An ugly brick house in Fortieth Street? Don’t tell me that; I refuse to recognise that as an ideal.”
“I don’t care anything about his house,” said Isabel.
“That’s very crude of you. When you’ve lived as long as I you’ll see that every human being has his shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There’s no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we’re each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our ‘self’? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us — and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I’ve a great respect for THINGS! One’s self — for other people — is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s furniture, one’s garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps — these things are all expressive.”
This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several observations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel was fond of metaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this bold analysis of the human personality. “I don’t agree with you. I think just the other way. I don’t know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything’s on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don’t express me; and heaven forbid they should!”
“You dress very well,” Madame Merle lightly interposed.
“Possibly; but I don’t care to be judged by that. My clothes may express the dressmaker, but they don’t express me. To begin with it’s not my own choice that I wear them; they’re imposed upon me by society.”
“Should