Chapter 4

Mrs Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was usually thought the most sensible; the classification being in general that Lilian was the practical one, Edith the beauty and Isabel the ‘intellectual’ superior. Mrs Keyes, the second of the group, was the wife of an officer of the United States Engineers, and as our history is not further concerned with her it will suffice that she was indeed very pretty and that she formed the ornament of those various military stations, chiefly in the unfashionable West, to which, to her deep chagrin, her husband was successively relegated. Lilian had married a New York lawyer, a young man with a loud voice and an enthusiasm for his profession; the match was not brilliant, any more than Edith’s, but Lilian had occasionally been spoken of as a young woman who might be thankful to marry at all—she was so much plainer than her sisters. She was, however, very happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory little boys and the mistress of a wedge of brown stone violently driven into Fifty-third Street, seemed to exult in her condition as in a bold escape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was questioned, but she was conceded presence, though not majesty; she had moreover, as people said, improved since her marriage, and the two things in life of which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband’s force in argument and her sister Isabel’s originality. ‘I’ve never kept up with Isabel—it would have taken all my time,’ she had often remarked; in spite of which, however, she held her rather wistfully in sight; watching her as a motherly spaniel might watch a free greyhound. ‘I want to see her safely married—that’s what I want to see,’ she frequently noted to her husband.

‘Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her,’ Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer in an extremely audible tone.

‘I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground. I don’t see what you’ve against her except that she’s so original.’

‘Well, I don’t like originals; I like translations,’ Mr Ludlow had more than once replied. ‘Isabel’s written in a foreign tongue. I can’t make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a Portuguese.’

‘That’s just what I’m afraid she’ll do!’ cried Lilian, who thought Isabel capable of anything.

She listened with great interest to the girl’s account of Mrs Touchett’s appearance and in the evening prepared to comply with their aunt’s commands. Of what Isabel then said no report has remained, but her sister’s words had doubtless prompted a word spoken to her husband as the two were making ready for their visit. ‘I do hope immensely she’ll do something handsome for Isabel; she has evidently taken a great fancy to her.’

‘What is it you wish her to do?’ Edmund Ludlow asked. ‘Make her a big present?’

‘No indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her—sympathize with her. She’s evidently just the sort of person to appreciate her. She has lived so much in foreign society; she told Isabel all about it. You know you’ve always thought Isabel rather foreign.’

‘You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? Don’t you think she gets enough at home?’

‘Well, she ought to go abroad,’ said Mrs Ludlow. ‘She’s just the person to go abroad.’

‘And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?’

‘She has offered to take her—she’s dying to have Isabel go. But what I want her to do when she gets her there is to give her all the advantages. I’m sure all we’ve got to do,’ said Mrs Ludlow, ‘is to give her a chance.’

‘A chance for what?’

‘A chance to develop.’

‘Oh Moses!’ Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. ‘I hope she isn’t going to develop any more!’