第25章
"I don't know what's the matter with you," she observed to him once;"but I suspect you're a great humbug."
"That's your privilege," Ralph answered, who had not been used to being so crudely addressed.
"I don't know what you care for; I don't think you care for anything.You don't really care for England when you praise it; you don't care for America even when you pretend to abuse it.""I care for nothing but you, dear cousin," said Ralph.
"If I could believe even that, I should be very glad.""Ah well, I should hope so!" the young man exclaimed.
Isabel might have believed it and not have been far from the truth.He thought a great deal about her; she was constantly present to his mind.At a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her sudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and something to fly for.Poor Ralph had been for many weeks steeped in melancholy; his outlook, habitually sombre, lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud.He had grown anxious about his father, whose gout, hitherto confined to his legs, had begun to ascend into regions more vital.The old man had been gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered to Ralph that another attack would be less easy to deal with.Just now he appeared disburdened of pain, but Ralph could not rid himself of a suspicion that this was a subterfuge of the enemy, who was waiting to take him off his guard.If the manoeuvre should succeed there would be little hope of any great resistance.Ralph had always taken for granted that his father would survive him- that his own name would be the first grimly called.The father and son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business.At the prospect of losing his great motive Ralph lost indeed his one inspiration.If they might die at the same time it would be all very well; but without the encouragement of his father's society he should barely have patience to await his own turn.He had not the incentive of feeling that he was indispensable to his mother; it was a rule with his mother to have no regrets.He bethought himself of course that it had been a small kindness to his father to wish that, of the two, the active rather than the passive party should know the felt wound; he remembered that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an early end as a clever fallacy, which he should be delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first.But of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of being which, with all abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to hope the latter might be vouchsafed to Mr.Touchett.
These were nice questions, but Isabel's arrival put a stop to his puzzling over them.It even suggested there might be a compensation for the intolerable ennui of surviving his genial sire.He wondered whether he were harbouring "love" for this spontaneous young woman from Albany; but he judged that on the whole he was not.After he had known her for a week he quite made up his mind to this, and every day he felt a little more sure.Lord Warburton had been right about her; she was a really interesting little figure.Ralph wondered how their neighbour had found it out so soon; and then he said it was only another proof of his friend's high abilities, which he had always greatly admired.If his cousin were to be nothing more than an entertainment to him, Ralph was conscious she was an entertainment of a high order."A character like that," he said to himself,- "a real little passionate force to see at play is the finest thing in nature." It's finer than the finest work of art- than a Greek bas-relief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic cathedral.It's very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least looked for it.Ihad never been more blue, more bored, than for a week before she came;I had never expected less that anything pleasant would happen.
Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to hang on my wall- a Greek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece.The key of a beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand, and I'm told to walk in and admire.My poor boy, you've been sadly ungrateful, and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble again." The sentiment of these reflexions was very just; but it was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key put into his hand.His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would take, as he said, a good deal of knowing;but she needed the knowing, and his attitude with regard to her, though it was contemplative and critical, was not judicial.He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions equally fair.But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the roof.The door was fastened, and though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit.She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself? This question was irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it.Most women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny.Isabel's originality was that she gave one an impression of having intentions of her own."Whenever she executes them," said Ralph, "may I be there to see!"It devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place.Mr.