第70章

The lady played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and while she played the shadows deepened in the room.The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Isabel could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking the great trees.At last, when the music had ceased, her companion got up and, coming nearer with a smile, before Isabel had time to thank her again, said: "I'm very glad you've come back; I've heard a great deal about you."Isabel thought her a very attractive person, but nevertheless spoke with a certain abruptness in reply to this speech."From whom have you heard about me?"The stranger hesitated a single moment and then, "From your uncle," she answered."I've been here three days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in his room.Then he talked constantly of you.""As you didn't know me that must rather have bored you.""It made me want to know you.All the more that since then- your aunt being so much with Mr.Touchett- I've been quite alone and have got rather tired of my own society.I've not chosen a good moment for my visit."A servant had come in with lamps and was presently followed by another bearing the tea-tray.On the appearance of this repast Mrs.

Touchett had apparently been notified, for she now arrived and addressed herself to the tea-pot.Her greeting to her niece did not differ materially from her manner of raising the lid of this receptacle in order to glance at the contents: in neither act was it becoming to make a show of avidity.Questioned about her husband she was unable to say he was better; but the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected from this gentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope.

"I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance," she pursued.

"If you haven't I recommend you to do so; for so long as we continue- Ralph and I- to cluster about Mr.Touchett's bed you're not likely to have much society but each other.""I know nothing about you but that you're a great musician,"Isabel said to the visitor.

"There's a good deal more than that to know," Mrs.Touchett affirmed in her little dry tone.

"A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Archer!" the lady exclaimed with a light laugh."I'm an old friend of your aunt's.

I've lived much in Florence.I'm Madame Merle." She made this last announcement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct identity.For Isabel, however, it represented little; she could only continue to feel that Madame Merle had as charming a manner as any she had ever encountered.

"She's not a foreigner in spite of her name," said Mrs.Touchett.

"She was born- I always forget where you were born.""It's hardly worth while then I should tell you.""On the contrary," said Mrs.Touchett, who rarely missed a logical point; "if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous."Madame Merle glanced at Isabel with a sort of world-wide smile, a thing that over-reached frontiers."I was born under the shadow of the national banner.""She's too fond of mystery," said Mrs.Touchett; "that's her great fault.""Ah," exclaimed Madame Merle, "I've great faults, but I don't think that's one of them; it certainly isn't the greatest.I came into the world in the Brooklyn navy-yard.My father was a high officer in the United States Navy, and had a post- a post of responsibility- in that establishment at the time.I suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate it.That's why I don't return to America.I love the land;the great thing is to love something."

Isabel, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of Mrs.Touchett's characterization of her visitor, who had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the sort which, to Isabel's mind, suggested a secretive disposition.It was a face that told of an amplitude of nature and of quick and free motions and, though it had no regular beauty, was in the highest degree engaging and attaching.Madame Merle was a tall, fair, smooth woman;everything in her person was round and replete, though without those accumulations which suggest heaviness.Her features were thick but in perfect proportion and harmony, and her complexion had a healthy clearness.Her grey eyes were small but full of light and incapable of stupidity- incapable, according to some people, even of tears; she had a liberal, full-rimmed mouth which when she smiled drew itself upward to the left side in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very affected and a few very graceful.Isabel inclined to range herself in the last category.Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow "classically" and as if she were a Bust, Isabel judged- a Juno or a Niobe; and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect that their possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no jewelled rings.Isabel had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman; but extended observation might have ranked her as a German- a German of high degree, perhaps an Austrian, a baroness, a countess, a princess.It would never have been supposed she had come into the world in Brooklyn- though one could doubtless not have carried through any argument that the air of distinction marking her in so eminent a degree was inconsistent with such a birth.It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over her cradle, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude she there took towards life.And yet she had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience.Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple.She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in admirable order.This commended itself to Isabel as an ideal combination.