Madame Merle’s Visit

Chapter XVIII

Gilbert Osmond was not particularly keen on the fact that his wife and daughter remained in England for six weeks but there was a certain lifting of the atmosphere without her presence at the Palazzo Roccanera, her company that Osmond stoically tolerated, with no subtleties regarding his attitude to her ideas, her activities or her state of mind but no outright antagonisms. For the most part he ignored her, it was that simple, other than what was expected for sociable intercourse.

His wife, he thought, detested him, but this he did not take seriously. He was used to her petulance and gave as good as he got. He did not hate her though she often said he did. That she had a penchant for martyrdom, was another opinion he’d formed about his wife, not without a certain scorn. He wished she would grow out of it. He did not hate her but she was a yoke around his neck with her weary round of duties, none of which she seemed to enjoy. Osmond believed in enjoyment even if there was little to be found in society these days. He could enjoy quite well on his own and wondered why his wife did not cultivate interests that would give pleasure. She was rich; what was the point of being unhappily engaged? Osmond thought it was not for him to entertain his wife. He failed to interest her in any way even though he made an effort when she returned home after their rupture. Now he let her be. She spent a great deal of time with Pansy - made Pansy happy and for that he was appreciative. He did not always approve of the places they went, but he had to admit his daughter needed to be treated in a manner that differed from a child or even a jeune fille. He also knew she needed to be married soon. She was almost twenty-one though young for her age. Osmond had this on his mind in her absence; he waited patiently, too patiently, he thought, for the return of his wife and daughter. He did not at all appreciate that they were away longer than he was given assurances of. His wife would answer to it, but he needed her good humor in the coming months and would not intentionally make waves. Isabel could fold up; become inaccessible to him. He had to keep her in a certain line, using a determined line.

Osmond was seeing much of Prince Viticonti since his request for Pansy’s hand. He could see his plan gliding smoothly to an eventual finish; to court the old Marchesa Viticonti who without knowing it, possessed a lost Correggio that she, as far as Osmond could ascertain, was unaware of. The prince could not be expected to know of its province and seemed indifferent to the artworks on the walls of the family castle. Osmond could not figure out what the prince did have an interest in besides horses or the most ornate, though tasteless snuffboxes. The prince did not seem interested in the history or the art of his country which Osmond thought somewhat appalling but typical. Though he seemed knowledgeable on Italy’s wine production and varietals and enjoyed a Vivaldi String Quartet when it was presented at the Palazzo Roccanera, he had both a wandering attention span and eye. Osmond had not as of yet found anything to reproach the prince for other than a lack of intellectual weight, not uncommon with the nobility or any milieu for that matter, having long ago taken the measure of his fellowman and found it wanting in almost all respects. He was glad he enjoyed his own company - there wasn’t much to most people encountered and he had long ago quit expecting any enlightenment from them. Occasionally he met a specimen such as the American Caspar Goodwood who amused him with his stiff back and utter lack of curiosity that nevertheless earned him a great fortune, but the man’s interest in Isabel put Osmond on his guard after noting the hangdog look her presence produced on Goodwood. Another of her conquests, he mused. Osmond couldn’t imagine that the American thought someone as imaginative as his wife would ever have given this genus a second thought but he suspected there had been something between them once. It was no matter now, the man had been killed in a fire in his cotton mill earlier in the year. Isabel received a telegram from Mrs. Bantling and relayed the news to Osmond with little emotional effect but who knew what was in the heart of Mrs. Osmond? Certainly not her husband who had given up that pursuit of knowledge.
“I trust you are not going to rush to Boston to grieve over him, are you?” he had said to her.
“No Gilbert. I have no aptitude for grieving these days. You’ve turned me as cold as yourself.”

Isabel somehow could not unbend but instead met his sarcasm with a gritty determined need to rebut forcefully when a light rejoinder would have served. It wasn’t true about her aptitude for coldness but her reply, given before temporizing, resonated with churlishness in the dull air between them. Whenever her husband made a remark that carried a lethal sarcasm she could still rise to the attack but otherwise she kept her own council and they did not, as a rule, trade barbs. It could be said that Mrs. Osmond was the one to lack a sense of humor as she once accused her husband of. If she had been told this, she would feel it was another way in which her marriage had changed her, and not for the better. Then she would vow to remedy this aspect of herself wanting no attribute of her husband to rub off on herself.

Osmond knew that his particular brand of sarcasm scratched his wife’s surface and in all fairness, he used in sparingly. In truth, he hoped to cajole her out of her perennial cheerless deportment that was a holdover from the first years of their marriage and subsequent adjustments. He had quite gotten over his own disappointment in their merger. He thought his wife clever when he met her but her charms had long vanished in his appraisal and her cleverness was overshadowed by her stubborn need to prevail, coupled with a streak of American rigidity that did not sit well in Italy nor anywhere on the Continent. He understood why she spent so much time with the Bantlings - simpletons without nuance, he said after the first dinner with them though when he noticed his wife’s immediate ire, relaxed his stance with a humorous take on both. I’m mellowing, he said to himself after she went to bed. He’s thoroughly odious, she thought to herself as she entered her rooms. And so the divide remained and the couple lived in a palazzo with plenty of space to separate them, the husband indifferent, the wife with a rigidity that her friends noted but Roman society took as only natural for someone with a fortune.

Osmond, it could be said looked forward to his wife’s return. He did not care to have Pansy away much longer while the prince so obviously vied for her company. A prince could forget the charms of his daughter if her absence was prolonged. She was a remarkable, untainted girl, he knew it best but what the prince actually thought was another matter though he spoke the correct words, expressed the proper form with regard to Pansy. As long as the prince felt he had a chance with his daughter, Osmond would be the recipient of frequent invitations from the old Marchesa and the continued observation of the lost Madonna of Albinea he hoped to make his own. He was maneuvering his way slowly to a possible opening for the negotiations to begin. His daughter’s presence was a necessity. The prince placed his eye on Pansy in the same way he himself had his on the lost Madonna and what Osmond knew to be absolute was that Pansy was the more valuable of the two - Isabel would settle a generous sum on her stepdaughter when she married and this, Osmond by subterranean method, had let be known. He could not fail to note and take pleasure in the effect this information had on the prince and his aunt.

During his daughter’s absence, he spent his time making inquiries into the character and prospects of the prince. Yes, he held a title, but the nobility did not have the cachet since the overthrow. He had asked Madame Merle, the new Mrs. Halpern, for help with his investigation but had not heard further from the lady. His impatience spread to include his former mistress; he was not used to being put off by her, he believed she would not let him down but he had not, as of yet, come to realize that his old friend was not the same friend he could once count on.

He sent a message to her hotel but had received no reply. This exasperated him and he was on the point of going to her in person when Higgins announced the lady’s presence in his own drawing room. She was shown into Osmond’s study immediately and there found a man agitated, wound up, smoking American cigarettes, pacing the length of the room. He was pale and slightly unkempt. This was the first thing Mrs. Halpern noticed. Osmond had always been scrupulously groomed, a point of honor in a mind that shunned the unclean, the slovenly, as a disease of contagion.

“Well, you have remembered the Palazzo Roccanera at last,” Osmond summarily greeted the grand lady.
“I told you I would be occupied. I am not at your service as I may have once been. I did not make promises.”
“You do not care about your daughter’s welfare then?”
“You keep referring to Pansy as my daughter but it was not so long ago that I was forbidden to regard her as such. You must be consistent if you wish my help.”
“Do not be obtuse, Serena. What have you learned?”
“Very little, I’m afraid. But you are right to question. The family is not destitute but they will not be able to keep up appearances forever. There have been family meetings to discuss how to proceed. They do own a vast tract of land in Tuscany as well as a large decrepit palazzo in Florence in dire need of refurbishment. They have borrowed money against it; they are hoping to produce wine and olive oil in the future but are not certain what it entails as the previous tenants on the land have let things slide. They have very little business acumen and are depending upon the prince to guide them. Meanwhile, it seems the prince owes quite a sum himself, lost in a Moroccan casino while shopping for a horse. The family is keeping that under wraps and billing him as a modern entrepreneurial prince, a new term and idea they picked up from relatives in France.”
“Are you implying he has a gambling problem?”
“I have no idea what problems the prince might or might not have. I only know what I was told privately from a fairly reliable source but you cannot believe everything you hear. Since the aristocracy has fallen from grace, there are those who wish nothing more than a complete collapse and are working toward it.”
“What is your opinion?”
“I have no opinion. I only met the prince briefly when you were present little over two months ago. Of course I have met his aunt on numerous occasions but she is as tightly secured as a vault. What does she tell you?”
“She tells me very little. She is maddening. At times she is shrewdly astute, at others like a dull old woman losing her bearings. She refuses to discuss her artworks, plays dumb on the subject but I’m quite certain she’s playing me.”
“Why don’t you just make an offer and see what she says? Why drag poor Pansy into it? She surely will respond to a sum of cash; no one is that proud these days.”
“Ah, the Viticontis are that exactly.”
“Well, they won’t be for much longer I suspect.”
“So you think it is bad for them?”
“I think they would take whatever cash they could lay hands on and yours is as good as any.”
“What I worry about is that they will call in a curator for appraisals if I show my hand.”
“You can’t predict what they will do.”
“I’m waiting for Pansy’s return. The prince has not spoken to her yet. It will make all the difference.”
“So you say. I’m not sure how or if that’s true.”
“I will be family, of sorts. I can proceed on a firmer footing.”
“What is the return date?”
“They are leaving England in two days.”
“Do you plan to go on with your scheme knowing that the prince may not be the innocent you thought?”
“I intend to learn exactly what it will take to obtain what I want.”
“Will you sacrifice our daughter?”
“Please, Serena. I’ve waited this long to relinquish her, it will not be to an impoverished man, even a prince.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that lest I must leap in to save my daughter.”
“And would you?”
“Leap in?”
“Save her?”

Mrs. Halpern did not answer but let the conversation slide as she took in the contents of the room, filled with artworks and objects de art, all recent acquisitions, collected since his move to Rome as the husband of a rich American. She did not comment on this but let her eye rest on a watercolour of Roman ruins with a row of cypress trees in the foreground placed on a small easel in the corner. “I see you still find time for sketching?”
“My time is my own and yes, on occasion. Yourself? Do you have time for the arts with a husband and I suspect a wider sociability?”
“I have not had much time for it. It seems like something from the past.”
“Of course you still play?”
“On occasion. Mostly for my husband. Classical music is something new for him, in fact, it is what attracted him to me. For that, my fingers will stay limber and my scales agile.”
“Lucky for him.”
“Yes, lucky for him.”
“And for yourself? Do you feel lucky?”
“Very much so. But I am not without my charms you know.”
“I know very well.”
“Yes, you know and yet do not know.”
“Always one for conundrums.”
“Yes, we did once go in for those. Some things do not change.”

The light was growing dim and Osmond ordered tea to be served as Mrs. Halpern showed no sign of taking her leave. She sat on a gilded chair in her fashionable costume, noting the teacups that had once been in a very fine collection of porcelain in a home she’d often visited. She had sipped from these very same cups but did not comment on it. The aristocracy had to sell and Mr. Osmond was now able to buy. The world changes. She found the things that they might have once talked about had ceased to interest her. She thought her former lover rather pitiable despite a more opulent lifestyle. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was wrong with him but the word redundant came to mind. How he was redundant she would have to think about later in her suite.

Her husband was once again traveling for business and she was alone with her thoughts and memories though she did not dwell on those. She was a woman with a future to contemplate. Tonight she would have plenty to think about, not least of which would be her daughter who could be bartered…no, she would not look upon it that way. She was being cynical. It was possible the prince would make a fine husband for Pansy. He was a beautiful young man, well-mannered, not at all redundant. This she told herself but then she remembered seeing Pansy in the hotel lobby and the look of rapture on her little face as she gazed into the eyes of Isabel’s nephew. Yes, she thought, Osmond might have more than a few barriers to obtaining his Correggio. Well, that was not her business. But was Pansy her business? That is what she would have to think about in the quiet of her rooms…she had much to think about these days, not the least of which was how much should or could be revealed.