Chapter 51

The Countess was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure of her brother’s hospitality. A week after this incident Isabel received a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of Mrs Touchett’s authorship. ‘Ralph cannot last many days,’ it ran, ‘and if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only if you’ve not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious to see whether you’ve found it out. Ralph is really dying, and there’s no other company.’ Isabel was prepared for this news, having received from Henrietta Stackpole a detailed account of her journey to England with her appreciative patient. Ralph had arrived more dead than alive, but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed, which, as Miss Stackpole wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands instead of one, inasmuch as Mr Goodwood, who had been of no earthly use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr Touchett. Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to Mrs Touchett, who had just returned from America and had promptly given her to understand that she didn’t wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. Isabel had written to her aunt shortly after Ralph came to Rome, letting her know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs Touchett had telegraphed an acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Isabel received from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.

Isabel stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband’s study. Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went in. Osmond was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of small coloured plates, and Isabel presently saw that he had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognized his wife without looking round.

‘Excuse me for disturbing you,’ she said.

‘When I come to your room I always knock,’ he answered, going on with his work.

‘I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin’s dying.’

‘Ah, I don’t believe that,’ said Osmond, looking at his drawing through a magnifying glass. ‘He was dying when we married; he’ll outlive us all.’

Isabel gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own intention: ‘My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.’

‘Why must you go to Gardencourt?’ Osmond asked in the tone of impartial curiosity.

‘To see Ralph before he dies.’

To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no negligence. ‘I don’t see the need of it,’ he said at last. ‘He came to see you here. I didn’t like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him. Now you tell me it’s not to have been the last. Ah, you’re not grateful!’

‘What am I to be grateful for?’

Gilbert Osmond laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his wife. ‘For my not having interfered while he was here.’

‘Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you didn’t like it. I was very glad when he went away.’