‘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,’8 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.’