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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Louisa Pallant, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Louisa Pallant
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8081]
+Posting Date: July 24, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOUISA PALLANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LOUISA PALLANT
+
+By Henry James
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Never say you know the last words about any human heart! I was once
+treated to a revelation which startled and touched me in the nature of a
+person with whom I had been acquainted--well, as I supposed--for years,
+whose character I had had good reasons, heaven knows, to appreciate and
+in regard to whom I flattered myself I had nothing more to learn.
+
+It was on the terrace of the Kursaal at Homburg, nearly ten years ago,
+one beautiful night toward the end of July. I had come to the place that
+day from Frankfort, with vague intentions, and was mainly occupied in
+waiting for my young nephew, the only son of my sister, who had been
+entrusted to my care by a very fond mother for the summer--I was
+expected to show him Europe, only the very best of it--and was on his
+way from Paris to join me. The excellent band discoursed music not too
+abstruse, while the air was filled besides with the murmur of different
+languages, the smoke of many cigars, the creak on the gravel of the
+gardens of strolling shoes and the thick tinkle of beer-glasses. There
+were a hundred people walking about, there were some in clusters at
+little tables and many on benches and rows of chairs, watching
+the others as if they had paid for the privilege and were rather
+disappointed. I was among these last; I sat by myself, smoking my cigar
+and thinking of nothing very particular while families and couples
+passed and repassed me.
+
+I scarce know how long I had sat when I became aware of a recognition
+which made my meditations definite. It was on my own part, and the
+object of it was a lady who moved to and fro, unconscious of my
+observation, with a young girl at her side. I hadn't seen her for ten
+years, and what first struck me was the fact not that she was Mrs. Henry
+Pallant, but that the girl who was with her was remarkably pretty--or
+rather first of all that every one who passed appeared extremely to
+admire. This led me also to notice the young lady myself, and her
+charming face diverted my attention for some time from that of her
+companion. The latter, moreover, though it was night, wore a thin light
+veil which made her features vague. The couple slowly walked and
+walked, but though they were very quiet and decorous, and also very well
+dressed, they seemed to have no friends. Every one observed but no
+one addressed them; they appeared even themselves to exchange very few
+words. Moreover they bore with marked composure and as if they were
+thoroughly used to it the attention they excited. I am afraid it
+occurred to me to take for granted that they were of an artful intention
+and that if they hadn't been the elder lady would have handed the
+younger over a little less to public valuation and not have sought so to
+conceal her own face. Perhaps this question came into my mind too easily
+just then--in view of my prospective mentorship to my nephew. If I was
+to show him only the best of Europe I should have to be very careful
+about the people he should meet--especially the ladies--and the
+relations he should form. I suspected him of great innocence and was
+uneasy about my office. Was I completely relieved and reassured when
+I became aware that I simply had Louisa Pallant before me and that the
+girl was her daughter Linda, whom I had known as a child--Linda grown up
+to charming beauty?
+
+The question was delicate and the proof that I was not very sure is
+perhaps that I forbore to speak to my pair at once. I watched them a
+while--I wondered what they would do. No great harm assuredly; but I was
+anxious to see if they were really isolated. Homburg was then a great
+resort of the English--the London season took up its tale there toward
+the first of August--and I had an idea that in such a company as that
+Louisa would naturally know people. It was my impression that she
+"cultivated" the English, that she had been much in London and would
+be likely to have views in regard to a permanent settlement there. This
+supposition was quickened by the sight of Linda's beauty, for I knew
+there is no country in which such attractions are more appreciated. You
+will see what time I took, and I confess that as I finished my cigar I
+thought it all over. There was no good reason in fact why I should have
+rushed into Mrs. Pallant's arms. She had not treated me well and we had
+never really made it up. Somehow even the circumstance that--after the
+first soreness--I was glad to have lost her had never put us quite right
+with each other; nor, for herself, had it made her less ashamed of her
+heartless behaviour that poor Pallant proved finally no great catch. I
+had forgiven her; I hadn't felt it anything but an escape not to have
+married a girl who had in her to take back her given word and break
+a fellow's heart for mere flesh-pots--or the shallow promise, as it
+pitifully turned out, of flesh-pots. Moreover we had met since then--on
+the occasion of my former visit to Europe; had looked each other in the
+eyes, had pretended to be easy friends and had talked of the wickedness
+of the world as composedly as if we were the only just, the only pure.
+I knew by that time what she had given out--that I had driven her off by
+my insane jealousy before she ever thought of Henry Pallant, before
+she had ever seen him. This hadn't been before and couldn't be to-day
+a ground of real reunion, especially if you add to it that she knew
+perfectly what I thought of her. It seldom ministers to friendship, I
+believe, that your friend shall know your real opinion, for he knows it
+mainly when it's unfavourable, and this is especially the case if--let
+the solecism pass!--he be a woman. I hadn't followed Mrs. Pallant's
+fortunes; the years went by for me in my own country, whereas she led
+her life, which I vaguely believed to be difficult after her husband's
+death--virtually that of a bankrupt--in foreign lands. I heard of
+her from time to time; always as "established" somewhere, but on each
+occasion in a different place. She drifted from country to country, and
+if she had been of a hard composition at the beginning it could never
+occur to me that her struggle with society, as it might be called, would
+have softened the paste. Whenever I heard a woman spoken of as "horribly
+worldly" I thought immediately of the object of my early passion. I
+imagined she had debts, and when I now at last made up my mind to recall
+myself to her it was present to me that she might ask me to lend her
+money. More than anything else, however, at this time of day, I was
+sorry for her, so that such an idea didn't operate as a deterrent.
+
+She pretended afterwards that she hadn't noticed me--expressing as
+we stood face to face great surprise and wishing to know where I had
+dropped from; but I think the corner of her eye had taken me in and she
+had been waiting to see what I would do. She had ended by sitting down
+with her girl on the same row of chairs with myself, and after a little,
+the seat next to her becoming vacant, I had gone and stood before
+her. She had then looked up at me a moment, staring as if she couldn't
+imagine who I was or what I wanted; after which, smiling and extending
+her hands, she had broken out: "Ah my dear old friend--what a delight!"
+If she had waited to see what I would do in order to choose her own line
+she thus at least carried out this line with the utmost grace. She was
+cordial, friendly, artless, interested, and indeed I'm sure she was very
+glad to see me. I may as well say immediately, none the less, that she
+gave me neither then nor later any sign of a desire to contract a loan.
+She had scant means--that I learned--yet seemed for the moment able to
+pay her way. I took the empty chair and we remained in talk for an hour.
+After a while she made me sit at her other side, next her daughter, whom
+she wished to know me--to love me--as one of their oldest friends. "It
+goes back, back, back, doesn't it?" said Mrs. Pallant; "and of course
+she remembers you as a child." Linda smiled all sweetly and blankly, and
+I saw she remembered me not a whit. When her mother threw out that they
+had often talked about me she failed to take it up, though she looked
+extremely nice. Looking nice was her strong point; she was prettier even
+than her mother had been. She was such a little lady that she made me
+ashamed of having doubted, however vaguely and for a moment, of her
+position in the scale of propriety. Her appearance seemed to say that
+if she had no acquaintances it was because she didn't want them--because
+nobody there struck her as attractive: there wasn't the slightest
+difficulty about her choosing her friends. Linda Pallant, young as
+she was, and fresh and fair and charming, gentle and sufficiently shy,
+looked somehow exclusive--as if the dust of the common world had never
+been meant to besprinkle her. She was of thinner consistency than her
+mother and clearly not a young woman of professions--except in so far as
+she was committed to an interest in you by her bright pure candid smile.
+No girl who had such a lovely way of parting her lips could pass for
+designing.
+
+As I sat between the pair I felt I had been taken possession of and that
+for better or worse my stay at Homburg would be intimately associated
+with theirs. We gave each other a great deal of news and expressed
+unlimited interest in each other's history since our last meeting. I
+mightn't judge of what Mrs. Pallant kept back, but for myself I quite
+overflowed. She let me see at any rate that her life had been a good
+deal what I supposed, though the terms she employed to describe it were
+less crude than those of my thought. She confessed they had drifted,
+she and her daughter, and were drifting still. Her narrative rambled
+and took a wrong turn, a false flight, or two, as I thought Linda
+noted, while she sat watching the passers, in a manner that betrayed no
+consciousness of their attention, without coming to her mother's aid.
+Once or twice Mrs. Pallant made me rather feel a cross-questioner, which
+I had had no intention of being. I took it that if the girl never put in
+a word it was because she had perfect confidence in her parent's ability
+to come out straight. It was suggested to me, I scarcely knew how, that
+this confidence between the two ladies went to a great length; that
+their union of thought, their system of reciprocal divination, was
+remarkable, and that they probably seldom needed to resort to the clumsy
+and in some cases dangerous expedient of communicating by sound. I
+suppose I made this reflexion not all at once--it was not wholly the
+result of that first meeting. I was with them constantly for the next
+several days and my impressions had time to clarify.
+
+I do remember, however, that it was on this first evening that Archie's
+name came up. She attributed her own stay at Homburg to no refined nor
+exalted motive--didn't put it that she was there from force of habit or
+because a high medical authority had ordered her to drink the waters;
+she frankly admitted the reason of her visit to have been simply that
+she didn't know where else to turn. But she appeared to assume that
+my behaviour rested on higher grounds and even that it required
+explanation, the place being frivolous and modern--devoid of that
+interest of antiquity which I had ever made so much of. "Don't you
+remember--ever so long ago--that you wouldn't look at anything in Europe
+that wasn't a thousand years old? Well, as we advance in life I suppose
+we don't think that quite such a charm." And when I mentioned that I had
+arrived because the place was as good as another for awaiting my nephew
+she exclaimed: "Your nephew--what nephew? He must have come up of
+late." I answered that his name was Archie Parker and that he was modern
+indeed; he was to attain legal manhood in a few months and was in Europe
+for the first time. My last news of him had been from Paris and I was
+expecting to hear further from one day to the other. His father was
+dead, and though a selfish bachelor, little versed in the care of
+children, I was considerably counted on by his mother to see that he
+didn't smoke nor flirt too much, nor yet tumble off an Alp.
+
+Mrs. Pallant immediately guessed that his mother was my sister
+Charlotte, whom she spoke of familiarly, though I knew she had scarce
+seen her. Then in a moment it came to her which of the Parkers Charlotte
+had married; she remembered the family perfectly from the old New York
+days--"that disgustingly rich set." She said it was very nice having the
+boy come out that way to my care; to which I replied that it was very
+nice for the boy. She pronounced the advantage rather mine--I ought to
+have had children; there was something so parental about me and I would
+have brought them up so well. She could make an allusion like that--to
+all that might have been and had not been--without a gleam of guilt
+in her eye; and I foresaw that before I left the place I should have
+confided to her that though I detested her and was very glad we had
+fallen out, yet our old relations had left me no heart for marrying
+another woman. If I had remained so single and so sterile the fault was
+nobody's but hers. She asked what I meant to do with my nephew--to which
+I replied that it was much more a question of what he would do with
+me. She wished to know if he were a nice young man and had brothers and
+sisters and any particular profession. I assured her I had really seen
+little of him; I believed him to be six feet high and of tolerable
+parts. He was an only son, but there was a little sister at home, a
+delicate, rather blighted child, demanding all the mother's care.
+
+"So that makes your responsibility greater, as it were, about the boy,
+doesn't it?" said Mrs. Pallant.
+
+"Greater? I'm sure I don't know."
+
+"Why if the girl's life's uncertain he may become, some moment, all the
+mother has. So that being in your hands--"
+
+"Oh I shall keep him alive, I suppose, if you mean that," I returned.
+
+"Well, WE won't kill him, shall we, Linda?" my friend went on with a
+laugh.
+
+"I don't know--perhaps we shall!" smiled the girl.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+I called on them the next at their lodgings, the modesty of which was
+enhanced by a hundred pretty feminine devices--flowers and photographs
+and portable knick-knacks and a hired piano and morsels of old brocade
+flung over angular sofas. I took them to drive; I met them again at
+the Kursaal; I arranged that we should dine together, after the Homburg
+fashion, at the same table d'hote; and during several days this
+revived familiar intercourse continued, imitating intimacy if not quite
+achieving it. I was pleased, as my companions passed the time for me
+and the conditions of our life were soothing--the feeling of summer and
+shade and music and leisure in the German gardens and woods, where we
+strolled and sat and gossiped; to which may be added a vague sociable
+sense that among people whose challenge to the curiosity was mainly not
+irresistible we kept quite to ourselves. We were on the footing of old
+friends who still had in regard to each other discoveries to make. We
+knew each other's nature but didn't know each other's experience; so
+that when Mrs. Pallant related to me what she had been "up to," as I
+called it, for so many years, the former knowledge attached a hundred
+interpretative footnotes--as if I had been editing an author who
+presented difficulties--to the interesting page. There was nothing new
+to me in the fact that I didn't esteem her, but there was relief in my
+finding that this wasn't necessary at Homburg and that I could like her
+in spite of it. She struck me, in the oddest way, as both improved
+and degenerate; the two processes, in her nature, might have gone on
+together. She was battered and world-worn and, spiritually speaking,
+vulgarised; something fresh had rubbed off her--it even included the
+vivacity of her early desire to do the best thing for herself--and
+something rather stale had rubbed on. At the same time she betrayed
+a scepticism, and that was rather becoming, for it had quenched the
+eagerness of her prime, the mercenary principle I had so suffered from.
+She had grown weary and detached, and since she affected me as more
+impressed with the evil of the world than with the good, this was a
+gain; in other words her accretion of indifference, if not of cynicism,
+showed a softer surface than that of her old ambitions. Furthermore
+I had to recognise that her devotion to her daughter was a kind of
+religion; she had done the very best possible for Linda.
+
+Linda was curious, Linda was interesting; I've seen girls I liked
+better--charming as this one might be--but have never seen one who for
+the hour you were with her (the impression passed somehow when she
+was out of sight) occupied you so completely. I can best describe the
+attention she provoked by saying that she struck you above all things
+as a felicitous FINAL product--after the fashion of some plant or some
+fruit, some waxen orchid or some perfect peach. She was clearly the
+result of a process of calculation, a process patiently educative, a
+pressure exerted, and all artfully, so that she should reach a high
+point.
+
+This high point had been the star of her mother's heaven--it hung
+before her so unquenchably--and had shed the only light (in default of a
+better) that was to shine on the poor lady's path. It stood her instead
+of every other ideal. The very most and the very best--that was what the
+girl had been led on to achieve; I mean of course, since no real miracle
+had been wrought, the most and the best she was capable of. She was as
+pretty, as graceful, as intelligent, as well-bred, as well-informed,
+as well-dressed, as could have been conceived for her; her music, her
+singing, her German, her French, her English, her step, her tone, her
+glance, her manner, everything in her person and movement, from the
+shade and twist of her hair to the way you saw her finger-nails were
+pink when she raised her hand, had been carried so far that one found
+one's self accepting them as the very measure of young grace. I regarded
+her thus as a model, yet it was a part of her perfection that she had
+none of the stiffness of a pattern. If she held the observation it was
+because you wondered where and when she would break down; but she never
+broke down, either in her French accent or in her role of educated
+angel.
+
+After Archie had come the ladies were manifestly his greatest resource,
+and all the world knows why a party of four is more convenient than a
+party of three. My nephew had kept me waiting a week, with a serenity
+all his own; but this very coolness was a help to harmony--so long, that
+is, as I didn't lose my temper with it. I didn't, for the most part,
+because my young man's unperturbed acceptance of the most various forms
+of good fortune had more than anything else the effect of amusing me. I
+had seen little of him for the last three or four years; I wondered what
+his impending majority would have made of him--he didn't at all carry
+himself as if the wind of his fortune were rising--and I watched
+him with a solicitude that usually ended in a joke. He was a tall
+fresh-coloured youth, with a candid circular countenance and a love
+of cigarettes, horses and boats which had not been sacrificed to more
+strenuous studies. He was reassuringly natural, in a supercivilised age,
+and I soon made up my mind that the formula of his character was in the
+clearing of the inward scene by his so preordained lack of imagination.
+If he was serene this was still further simplifying. After that I had
+time to meditate on the line that divides the serene from the inane, the
+simple from the silly. He wasn't clever; the fonder theory quite defied
+our cultivation, though Mrs. Pallant tried it once or twice; but on
+the other hand it struck me his want of wit might be a good defensive
+weapon. It wasn't the sort of density that would let him in, but
+the sort that would keep him out. By which I don't mean that he had
+shortsighted suspicions, but that on the contrary imagination would
+never be needed to save him, since she would never put him in danger.
+He was in short a well-grown well-washed muscular young American, whose
+extreme salubrity might have made him pass for conceited. If he looked
+pleased with himself it was only because he was pleased with life--as
+well he might be, with the fortune that awaited the stroke of his
+twenty-first year--and his big healthy independent person was
+an inevitable part of that. I am bound to add that he was
+accommodating--for which I was grateful. His habits were active, but
+he didn't insist on my adopting them and he made numerous and generous
+sacrifices for my society. When I say he made them for mine I must duly
+remember that mine and that of Mrs. Pallant and Linda were now very
+much the same thing. He was willing to sit and smoke for hours under the
+trees or, adapting his long legs to the pace of his three companions,
+stroll through the nearer woods of the charming little hill-range of the
+Taunus to those rustic Wirthschaften where coffee might be drunk under
+a trellis. Mrs. Pallant took a great interest in him; she made him, with
+his easy uncle, a subject of discourse; she pronounced him a delightful
+specimen, as a young gentleman of his period and country. She even
+asked me the sort of "figure" his fortune might really amount to, and
+professed a rage of envy when I told her what I supposed it to be. While
+we were so occupied Archie, on his side, couldn't do less than converse
+with Linda, nor to tell the truth did he betray the least inclination
+for any different exercise. They strolled away together while their
+elders rested; two or three times, in the evening, when the ballroom of
+the Kursaal was lighted and dance-music played, they whirled over the
+smooth floor in a waltz that stirred my memory. Whether it had the
+same effect on Mrs. Pallant's I know not: she held her peace. We had on
+certain occasions our moments, almost our half-hours, of unembarrassed
+silence while our young companions disported themselves. But if at other
+times her enquiries and comments were numerous on this article of my
+ingenuous charge, that might very well have passed for a courteous
+recognition of the frequent admiration I expressed for Linda--an
+admiration that drew from her, I noticed, but scant direct response.
+I was struck thus with her reserve when I spoke of her daughter--my
+remarks produced so little of a maternal flutter. Her detachment, her
+air of having no fatuous illusions and not being blinded by prejudice,
+seemed to me at times to savour of affectation. Either she answered me
+with a vague and impatient sigh and changed the subject, or else she
+said before doing so: "Oh yes, yes, she's a very brilliant creature.
+She ought to be: God knows what I've done for her!" The reader will have
+noted my fondness, in all cases, for the explanations of things; as an
+example of which I had my theory here that she was disappointed in the
+girl. Where then had her special calculation failed? As she couldn't
+possibly have wished her prettier or more pleasing, the pang must have
+been for her not having made a successful use of her gifts. Had she
+expected her to "land" a prince the day after leaving the schoolroom?
+There was after all plenty of time for this, with Linda but
+two-and-twenty. It didn't occur to me to wonder if the source of her
+mother's tepidity was that the young lady had not turned out so nice a
+nature as she had hoped, because in the first place Linda struck me
+as perfectly innocent, and because in the second I wasn't paid, in
+the French phrase, for supposing Louisa Pallant much concerned on that
+score. The last hypothesis I should have invoked was that of private
+despair at bad moral symptoms. And in relation to Linda's nature I had
+before me the daily spectacle of her manner with my nephew. It was as
+charming as it could be without betrayal of a desire to lead him on. She
+was as familiar as a cousin, but as a distant one--a cousin who had been
+brought up to observe degrees. She was so much cleverer than Archie
+that she couldn't help laughing at him, but she didn't laugh enough to
+exclude variety, being well aware, no doubt, that a woman's cleverness
+most shines in contrast with a man's stupidity when she pretends to take
+that stupidity for her law. Linda Pallant moreover was not a chatterbox;
+as she knew the value of many things she knew the value of intervals.
+There were a good many in the conversation of these young persons;
+my nephew's own speech, to say nothing of his thought, abounding in
+comfortable lapses; so that I sometimes wondered how their association
+was kept at that pitch of continuity of which it gave the impression.
+It was friendly enough, evidently, when Archie sat near her--near
+enough for low murmurs, had such risen to his lips--and watched her with
+interested eyes and with freedom not to try too hard to make himself
+agreeable. She had always something in hand--a flower in her tapestry
+to finish, the leaves of a magazine to cut, a button to sew on her glove
+(she carried a little work-bag in her pocket and was a person of the
+daintiest habits), a pencil to ply ever so neatly in a sketchbook
+which she rested on her knee. When we were indoors--mainly then at her
+mother's modest rooms--she had always the resource of her piano, of
+which she was of course a perfect mistress.
+
+These pursuits supported her, they helped her to an assurance under
+such narrow inspection--I ended by rebuking Archie for it; I told him he
+stared the poor girl out of countenance--and she sought further relief
+in smiling all over the place. When my young man's eyes shone at her
+those of Miss Pallant addressed themselves brightly to the trees and
+clouds and other surrounding objects, including her mother and me.
+Sometimes she broke into a sudden embarrassed happy pointless laugh.
+When she wandered off with him she looked back at us in a manner that
+promised it wasn't for long and that she was with us still in spirit.
+If I liked her I had therefore my good reason: it was many a day since a
+pretty girl had had the air of taking me so much into account. Sometimes
+when they were so far away as not to disturb us she read aloud a little
+to Mr. Archie. I don't know where she got her books--I never provided
+them, and certainly he didn't. He was no reader and I fear he often
+dozed.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+I remember the first time--it was at the end of about ten days of
+this--that Mrs. Pallant remarked to me: "My dear friend, you're quite
+AMAZING! You behave for all the world as if you were perfectly ready to
+accept certain consequences." She nodded in the direction of our young
+companions, but I nevertheless put her at the pains of saying
+what consequences she meant. "What consequences? Why the very same
+consequences that ensued when you and I first became acquainted."
+
+I hesitated, but then, looking her in the eyes, said: "Do you mean she'd
+throw him over?"
+
+"You're not kind, you're not generous," she replied with a quick colour.
+"I'm giving you a warning."
+
+"You mean that my boy may fall in love with your girl?"
+
+"Certainly. It looks even as if the harm might be already done."
+
+"Then your warning comes too late," I significantly smiled. "But why do
+you call it a harm?"
+
+"Haven't you any sense of the rigour of your office?" she asked. "Is
+that what his mother has sent him out to you for: that you shall find
+him the first wife you can pick up, that you shall let him put his head
+into the noose the day after his arrival?"
+
+"Heaven forbid I should do anything of the kind! I know moreover that
+his mother doesn't want him to marry young. She holds it the worst of
+mistakes, she feels that at that age a man never really chooses. He
+doesn't choose till he has lived a while, till he has looked about and
+compared."
+
+"And what do you think then yourself?"
+
+"I should like to say I regard the fact of falling in love, at whatever
+age, as in itself an act of selection. But my being as I am at this time
+of day would contradict me too much."
+
+"Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place
+tomorrow."
+
+"So as not to see Archie fall--?"
+
+"You ought to fish him out now--from where he HAS fallen--and take him
+straight away."
+
+I wondered a little. "Do you think he's in very far?"
+
+"If I were his mother I know what I should think. I can put myself in
+her place--I'm not narrow-minded. I know perfectly well how she must
+regard such a question."
+
+"And don't you know," I returned, "that in America that's not thought
+important--the way the mother regards it?"
+
+Mrs. Pallant had a pause--as if I mystified or vexed her. "Well, we're
+not in America. We happen to be here."
+
+"No; my poor sister's up to her neck in New York."
+
+"I'm almost capable of writing to her to come out," said Mrs. Pallant.
+
+"You ARE warning me," I cried, "but I hardly know of what! It seems
+to me my responsibility would begin only at the moment your daughter
+herself should seem in danger."
+
+"Oh you needn't mind that--I'll take care of Linda."
+
+But I went on. "If you think she's in danger already I'll carry him off
+to-morrow."
+
+"It would be the best thing you could do."
+
+"I don't know--I should be very sorry to act on a false alarm. I'm very
+well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it
+doesn't strike me that--on her side--there's any real symptom."
+
+She looked at me with an air I had never seen in her face, and if I
+had puzzled her she repaid me in kind. "You're very annoying. You don't
+deserve what I'd fain do for you."
+
+What she'd fain do for me she didn't tell me that day, but we took up
+the subject again. I remarked that I failed to see why we should
+assume that a girl like Linda--brilliant enough to make one of the
+greatest--would fall so very easily into my nephew's arms. Might
+I enquire if her mother had won a confession from her, if she had
+stammered out her secret? Mrs. Pallant made me, on this, the point
+that they had no need to tell each other such things--they hadn't lived
+together twenty years in such intimacy for nothing. To which I returned
+that I had guessed as much, but that there might be an exception for
+a great occasion like the present. If Linda had shown nothing it was a
+sign that for HER the occasion wasn't great; and I mentioned that Archie
+had spoken to me of the young lady only to remark casually and rather
+patronisingly, after his first encounter with her, that she was a
+regular little flower. (The little flower was nearly three years older
+than himself.) Apart from this he hadn't alluded to her and had taken
+up no allusion of mine. Mrs. Pallant informed me again--for which I
+was prepared--that I was quite too primitive; after which she said: "We
+needn't discuss the case if you don't wish to, but I happen to know--how
+I obtained my knowledge isn't important--that the moment Mr. Parker
+should propose to my daughter she'd gobble him down. Surely it's a
+detail worth mentioning to you."
+
+I sought to defer then to her judgement. "Very good. I'll sound him.
+I'll look into the matter tonight."
+
+"Don't, don't; you'll spoil everything!" She spoke as with some finer
+view. "Remove him quickly--that's the only thing."
+
+I didn't at all like the idea of removing him quickly; it seemed too
+summary, too extravagant, even if presented to him on specious grounds;
+and moreover, as I had told Mrs. Pallant, I really had no wish to
+change my scene. It was no part of my promise to my sister that, with
+my middle-aged habits, I should duck and dodge about Europe. So
+I temporised. "Should you really object to the boy so much as a
+son-in-law? After all he's a good fellow and a gentleman."
+
+"My poor friend, you're incredibly superficial!" she made answer with an
+assurance that struck me.
+
+The contempt in it so nettled me in fact that I exclaimed: "Possibly!
+But it seems odd that a lesson in consistency should come from YOU."
+
+I had no retort from her on this, rather to my surprise, and when she
+spoke again it was all quietly. "I think Linda and I had best withdraw.
+We've been here a month--it will have served our purpose."
+
+"Mercy on us, that will be a bore!" I protested; and for the rest of
+the evening, till we separated--our conversation had taken place after
+dinner at the Kursaal--she said little, preserving a subdued and almost
+injured air. This somehow didn't appeal to me, since it was absurd that
+Louisa Pallant, of all women, should propose to put me in the wrong. If
+ever a woman had been in the wrong herself--! I had even no need to go
+into that. Archie and I, at all events, usually attended the ladies back
+to their own door--they lived in a street of minor accommodation at a
+certain distance from the Rooms--where we parted for the night late,
+on the big cobblestones, in the little sleeping German town, under
+the closed windows of which, suggesting stuffy interiors, our cheerful
+English partings resounded. On this occasion indeed they rather
+languished; the question that had come up for me with Mrs. Pallant
+appeared--and by no intention of mine--to have brushed the young couple
+with its chill. Archie and Linda too struck me as conscious and dumb.
+
+As I walked back to our hotel with my nephew I passed my hand into his
+arm and put to him, by no roundabout approach, the question of whether
+he were in serious peril of love.
+
+"I don't know, I don't know--really, uncle, I don't know!" was, however,
+all the satisfaction I could extract from the youth, who hadn't the
+smallest vein of introspection. He mightn't know, but before we reached
+the inn--we had a few more words on the subject--it seemed to me that
+_I_ did. His mind wasn't formed to accommodate at one time many subjects
+of thought, but Linda Pallant certainly constituted for the moment its
+principal furniture. She pervaded his consciousness, she solicited
+his curiosity, she associated herself, in a manner as yet informal and
+undefined, with his future. I could see that she held, that she beguiled
+him as no one had ever done. I didn't betray to him, however, that
+perception, and I spent my night a prey to the consciousness that, after
+all, it had been none of my business to provide him with the sense of
+being captivated. To put him in relation with a young enchantress was
+the last thing his mother had expected of me or that I had expected of
+myself. Moreover it was quite my opinion that he himself was too young
+to be a judge of enchantresses. Mrs. Pallant was right and I had given
+high proof of levity in regarding her, with her beautiful daughter, as
+a "resource." There were other resources--one of which WOULD be most
+decidedly to clear out. What did I know after all about the girl except
+that I rejoiced to have escaped from marrying her mother? That mother,
+it was true, was a singular person, and it was strange her conscience
+should have begun to fidget in advance of my own. It was strange she
+should so soon have felt Archie's peril, and even stranger that she
+should have then wished to "save" him. The ways of women were infinitely
+subtle, and it was no novelty to me that one never knew where they would
+turn up. As I haven't hesitated in this report to expose the irritable
+side of my own nature I shall confess that I even wondered if my old
+friend's solicitude hadn't been a deeper artifice. Wasn't it possibly a
+plan of her own for making sure of my young man--though I didn't quite
+see the logic of it? If she regarded him, which she might in view of his
+large fortune, as a great catch, mightn't she have arranged this little
+comedy, in their personal interest, with the girl?
+
+That possibility at any rate only made it a happier thought that I
+should win my companion to some curiosity about other places. There were
+many of course much more worth his attention than Homburg. In the course
+of the morning--it was after our early luncheon--I walked round to Mrs.
+Pallant's to let her know I was ready to take action; but even while I
+went I again felt the unlikelihood of the part attributed by my fears
+and by the mother's own, so far as they had been roused, to Linda.
+Certainly if she was such a girl as these fears represented her she
+would fly at higher game. It was with an eye to high game, Mrs. Pallant
+had frankly admitted to me, that she had been trained, and such an
+education, to say nothing of such a performer, justified a hope of
+greater returns. A young American, the fruit of scant "modelling," who
+could give her nothing but pocket-money, was a very moderate prize,
+and if she had been prepared to marry for ambition--there was no such
+hardness in her face or tone, but then there never is--her mark would
+be inevitably a "personage" quelconque. I was received at my friend's
+lodging with the announcement that she had left Homburg with her
+daughter half an hour before. The good woman who had entertained the
+pair professed to know nothing of their movements beyond the fact that
+they had gone to Frankfort, where, however, it was her belief that they
+didn't intend to remain. They were evidently travelling beyond. Sudden,
+their decision to move? Oh yes, the matter of a moment. They must have
+spent the night in packing, they had so many things and such pretty
+ones; and their poor maid, all the morning, had scarce had time to
+swallow her coffee. But they clearly were ladies accustomed to come and
+go. It didn't matter--with such rooms as hers she never wanted: there
+was a new family coming in at three.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+This piece of strategy left me staring and made me, I must confess,
+quite furious. My only consolation was that Archie, when I told him,
+looked as blank as myself, and that the trick touched him more nearly,
+for I was not now in love with Louisa. We agreed that we required an
+explanation and we pretended to expect one the next day in the shape of
+a letter satisfactory even to the point of being apologetic. When I say
+"we" pretended I mean that I did, for my suspicion that he knew what had
+been on foot--through an arrangement with Linda--lasted only a moment.
+If his resentment was less than my own his surprise was equally great.
+I had been willing to bolt, but I felt slighted by the ease with which
+Mrs. Pallant had shown she could part with us. Archie professed no
+sense of a grievance, because in the first place he was shy about it and
+because in the second it was evidently not definite to him that he had
+been encouraged--equipped as he was, I think, with no very particular
+idea of what constituted encouragement. He was fresh from the wonderful
+country in which there may between the ingenuous young be so little
+question of "intentions." He was but dimly conscious of his own and
+could by no means have told me whether he had been challenged or been
+jilted. I didn't want to exasperate him, but when at the end of three
+days more we were still without news of our late companions I observed
+that it was very simple:--they must have been just hiding from us; they
+thought us dangerous; they wished to avoid entanglements. They had found
+us too attentive and wished not to raise false hopes. He appeared to
+accept this explanation and even had the air--so at least I inferred
+from his asking me no questions--of judging the matter might be delicate
+for myself. The poor youth was altogether much mystified, and I smiled
+at the image in his mind of Mrs. Pallant fleeing from his uncle's
+importunities. We decided to leave Homburg, but if we didn't pursue our
+fugitives it wasn't simply that we were ignorant of where they were. I
+could have found that out with a little trouble, but I was deterred by
+the reflexion that this would be Louisa's reasoning. She was a dreadful
+humbug and her departure had been a provocation--I fear it was in that
+stupid conviction that I made out a little independent itinerary with
+Archie. I even believed we should learn where they were quite soon
+enough, and that our patience--even my young man's--would be longer than
+theirs. Therefore I uttered a small private cry of triumph when three
+weeks later--we happened to be at Interlaken--he reported to me that he
+had received a note from Miss Pallant. The form of this confidence was
+his enquiring if there were particular reasons why we should longer
+delay our projected visit to the Italian lakes. Mightn't the fear of the
+hot weather, which was moreover at that season our native temperature,
+cease to operate, the middle of September having arrived? I answered
+that we would start on the morrow if he liked, and then, pleased
+apparently that I was so easy to deal with, he revealed his little
+secret. He showed me his letter, which was a graceful natural
+document--it covered with a few flowing strokes but a single page of
+note-paper--not at all compromising to the young lady. If, however, it
+was almost the apology I had looked for--save that this should have come
+from the mother--it was not ostensibly in the least an invitation. It
+mentioned casually--the mention was mainly in the words at the head
+of her paper--that they were on the Lago Maggiore, at Baveno; but it
+consisted mainly of the expression of a regret that they had had so
+abruptly to leave Homburg. Linda failed to say under what necessity they
+had found themselves; she only hoped we hadn't judged them too harshly
+and would accept "this hasty line" as a substitute for the omitted
+good-bye. She also hoped our days were passing pleasantly and with the
+same lovely weather that prevailed south of the Alps; and she remained
+very sincerely and with the kindest remembrances--!
+
+The note contained no message from her mother, and it was open to me to
+suppose, as I should prefer, either that Mrs. Pallant hadn't known she
+was writing or that they wished to make us think she hadn't known. The
+letter might pass as a common civility of the girl's to a person with
+whom she had been on easy terms. It was, however, for something more
+than this that my nephew took it; so at least I gathered from the
+touching candour of his determination to go to Baveno. I judged it idle
+to drag him another way; he had money in his own pocket and was quite
+capable of giving me the slip. Yet--such are the sweet incongruities of
+youth--when I asked him to what tune he had been thinking of Linda since
+they left us in the lurch he replied: "Oh I haven't been thinking at
+all! Why should I?" This fib was accompanied by an exorbitant blush.
+Since he was to obey his young woman's signal I must equally make out
+where it would take him, and one splendid morning we started over the
+Simplon in a post-chaise.
+
+I represented to him successfully that it would be in much better taste
+for us to alight at Stresa, which as every one knows is a resort
+of tourists, also on the shore of the major lake, at about a mile's
+distance from Baveno. If we stayed at the latter place we should have to
+inhabit the same hotel as our friends, and this might be awkward in view
+of a strained relation with them. Nothing would be easier than to go and
+come between the two points, especially by the water, which would give
+Archie a chance for unlimited paddling. His face lighted up at the
+vision of a pair of oars; he pretended to take my plea for discretion
+very seriously, and I could see that he had at once begun to calculate
+opportunities for navigation with Linda. Our post-chaise--I had insisted
+on easy stages and we were three days on the way--deposited us at Stresa
+toward the middle of the afternoon, and it was within an amazingly short
+time that I found myself in a small boat with my nephew, who pulled us
+over to Baveno with vigorous strokes. I remember the sweetness of the
+whole impression. I had had it before, but to my companion it was new,
+and he thought it as pretty as the opera: the enchanting beauty of the
+place and, hour, the stillness of the air and water, with the romantic
+fantastic Borromean Islands set as great jewels in a crystal globe. We
+disembarked at the steps by the garden-foot of the hotel, and somehow
+it seemed a perfectly natural part of the lovely situation that I should
+immediately become conscious of Mrs. Pallant and her daughter seated on
+the terrace and quietly watching us. They had the air of expectation,
+which I think we had counted on. I hadn't even asked Archie if he had
+answered Linda's note; this was between themselves and in the way of
+supervision I had done enough in coming with him.
+
+There is no doubt our present address, all round, lacked a little the
+easiest grace--or at least Louisa's and mine did. I felt too much the
+appeal of her exhibition to notice closely the style of encounter of the
+young people. I couldn't get it out of my head, as I have sufficiently
+indicated, that Mrs. Pallant was playing a game, and I'm afraid she saw
+in my face that this suspicion had been the motive of my journey. I had
+come there to find her out. The knowledge of my purpose couldn't help
+her to make me very welcome, and that's why I speak of our meeting
+constrainedly. We observed none the less all the forms, and the
+admirable scene left us plenty to talk about. I made no reference before
+Linda to the retreat from Homburg. This young woman looked even prettier
+than she had done on the eve of that manoeuvre and gave no sign of an
+awkward consciousness. She again so struck me as a charming clever girl
+that I was freshly puzzled to know why we should get--or should have
+got--into a tangle about her. People had to want to complicate a
+situation to do it on so simple a pretext as that Linda was in every way
+beautiful. This was the clear fact: so why shouldn't the presumptions
+be in favour of every result of it? One of the effects of that cause,
+on the spot, was that at the end of a very short time Archie proposed to
+her to take a turn with him in his boat, which awaited us at the foot of
+the steps. She looked at her mother with a smiling "May I, mamma?" and
+Mrs. Pallant answered "Certainly, darling, if you're not afraid." At
+this--I scarcely knew why--I sought the relief of laughter: it must have
+affected me as comic that the girl's general competence should suffer
+the imputation of that particular flaw. She gave me a quick slightly
+sharp look as she turned away with my nephew; it appeared to challenge
+me a little--"Pray what's the matter with YOU?" It was the first
+expression of the kind I had ever seen in her face. Mrs. Pallant's
+attention, on the other hand, rather strayed from me; after we had been
+left there together she sat silent, not heeding me, looking at the lake
+and mountains--at the snowy crests crowned with the flush of evening.
+She seemed not even to follow our young companions as they got into
+their boat and pushed off. For some minutes I respected her mood; I
+walked slowly up and down the terrace and lighted a cigar, as she had
+always permitted me to do at Homburg. I found in her, it was true,
+rather a new air of weariness; her fine cold well-bred face was pale;
+I noted in it new lines of fatigue, almost of age. At last I stopped in
+front of her and--since she looked so sad--asked if she had been having
+bad news.
+
+"The only bad news was when I learned--through your nephew's note to
+Linda--that you were coming to us."
+
+"Ah then he wrote?"
+
+"Certainly he wrote."
+
+"You take it all harder than I do," I returned as I sat down beside her.
+And then I added, smiling: "Have you written to his mother?"
+
+Slowly at last, and more directly, she faced me. "Take care, take care,
+or you'll have been more brutal than you'll afterwards like," she said
+with an air of patience before the inevitable.
+
+"Never, never! Unless you think me brutal if I ask whether you knew when
+Linda wrote."
+
+She had an hesitation. "Yes, she showed me her letter. She wouldn't have
+done anything else. I let it go because I didn't know what course was
+best. I'm afraid to oppose her to her face."
+
+"Afraid, my dear friend, with that girl?"
+
+"That girl? Much you know about her! It didn't follow you'd come. I
+didn't take that for granted."
+
+"I'm like you," I said--"I too am afraid of my nephew. I don't venture
+to oppose him to his face. The only thing I could do--once he wished
+it--was to come with him."
+
+"I see. Well, there are grounds, after all, on which I'm glad," she
+rather inscrutably added.
+
+"Oh I was conscientious about that! But I've no authority; I can neither
+drive him nor stay him--I can use no force," I explained. "Look at the
+way he's pulling that boat and see if you can fancy me."
+
+"You could tell him she's a bad hard girl--one who'd poison any good
+man's life!" my companion broke out with a passion that startled me.
+
+At first I could only gape. "Dear lady, what do you mean?"
+
+She bent her face into her hands, covering it over with them, and so
+remained a minute; then she continued a little differently, though as
+if she hadn't heard my question: "I hoped you were too disgusted with
+us--after the way we left you planted."
+
+"It was disconcerting assuredly, and it might have served if Linda
+hadn't written. That patched it up," I gaily professed. But my gaiety
+was thin, for I was still amazed at her violence of a moment before. "Do
+you really mean that she won't do?" I added.
+
+She made no direct answer; she only said after a little that it didn't
+matter whether the crisis should come a few weeks sooner or a few weeks
+later, since it was destined to come at the first chance, the favouring
+moment. Linda had marked my young man--and when Linda had marked a
+thing!
+
+"Bless my soul--how very grim--" But I didn't understand. "Do you mean
+she's in love with him?"
+
+"It's enough if she makes him think so--though even that isn't
+essential."
+
+Still I was at sea. "If she makes him think so? Dear old friend, what's
+your idea? I've observed her, I've watched her, and when all's said what
+has she done? She has been civil and pleasant to him, but it would have
+been much more marked if she hadn't. She has really shown him, with her
+youth and her natural charm, nothing more than common friendliness. Her
+note was nothing; he let me see it."
+
+"I don't think you've heard every word she has said to him," Mrs.
+Pallant returned with an emphasis that still struck me as perverse.
+
+"No more have you, I take it!" I promptly cried. She evidently meant
+more than she said; but if this excited my curiosity it also moved, in a
+different connexion, my indulgence.
+
+"No, but I know my own daughter. She's a most remarkable young woman."
+
+"You've an extraordinary tone about her," I declared "such a tone as
+I think I've never before heard on a mother's lips. I've had the same
+impression from you--that of a disposition to 'give her away,' but never
+yet so strong."
+
+At this Mrs. Pallant got up; she stood there looking down at me. "You
+make my reparation--my expiation--difficult!" And leaving me still more
+astonished she moved along the terrace.
+
+I overtook her presently and repeated her words. "Your reparation--your
+expiation? What on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"You know perfectly what I mean--it's too magnanimous of you to pretend
+you don't."
+
+"Well, at any rate," I said, "I don't see what good it does me, or what
+it makes up to me for, that you should abuse your daughter."
+
+"Oh I don't care; I shall save him!" she cried as we went, and with an
+extravagance, as I felt, of sincerity. At the same moment two ladies,
+apparently English, came toward us--scattered groups had been sitting
+there and the inmates of the hotel were moving to and fro--and I
+observed the immediate charming transition, the fruit of such years
+of social practice, by which, as they greeted us, her tension and her
+impatience dropped to recognition and pleasure. They stopped to speak
+to her and she enquired with sweet propriety as to the "continued
+improvement" of their sister. I strolled on and she presently rejoined
+me; after which she had a peremptory note. "Come away from this--come
+down into the garden." We descended to that blander scene, strolled
+through it and paused on the border of the lake.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The charm of the evening had deepened, the stillness was like a solemn
+expression on a beautiful face and the whole air of the place divine.
+In the fading light my nephew's boat was too far out to be perceived.
+I looked for it a little and then, as I gave it up, remarked that from
+such an excursion as that, on such a lake and at such an hour, a young
+man and a young woman of common sensibility could only come back doubly
+pledged to each other.
+
+To this observation Mrs. Pallant's answer was, superficially at least,
+irrelevant; she said after a pause: "With you, my dear man, one has
+certainly to dot one's 'i's.' Haven't you discovered, and didn't I tell
+you at Homburg, that we're miserably poor?"
+
+"Isn't 'miserably' rather too much--living as you are at an expensive
+hotel?"
+
+Well, she promptly met this. "They take us en pension, for ever so
+little a day. I've been knocking about Europe long enough to learn all
+sorts of horrid arts. Besides, don't speak of hotels; we've spent half
+our life in them and Linda told me only last night that she hoped never
+to put her foot into one again. She feels that when she comes to such a
+place as this she ought, if things were decently right, to find a villa
+of her own."
+
+"Then her companion there's perfectly competent to give her one. Don't
+think I've the least desire to push them into each other's arms--I only
+ask to wash my hands of them. But I should like to know why you want, as
+you said just now, to save him. When you speak as if your daughter were
+a monster I take it you're not serious."
+
+She was facing me in the rich short twilight, and to describe herself as
+immeasurably more serious perhaps than she had ever been in her life she
+had only to look at me without protestation. "It's Linda's standard. God
+knows I myself could get on! She's ambitious, luxurious, determined to
+have what she wants--more 'on the make' than any one I've ever seen.
+Of course it's open to you to tell me it's my own fault, that I was
+so before her and have made her so. But does that make me like it any
+better?"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Pallant, you're wonderful, you're terrible," I could only
+stammer, lost in the desert of my thoughts.
+
+"Oh yes, you've made up your mind about me; you see me in a certain way
+and don't like the trouble of changing. Votre siege est fait. But you'll
+HAVE to change--if you've any generosity!" Her eyes shone in the summer
+dusk and the beauty of her youth came back to her.
+
+"Is this a part of the reparation, of the expiation?" I demanded. "I
+don't see what you ever did to Archie."
+
+"It's enough that he belongs to you. But it isn't for you I do it--it's
+for myself," she strangely went on.
+
+"Doubtless you've your own reasons--which I can't penetrate. But can't
+you sacrifice something else? Must you sacrifice your only child?"
+
+"My only child's my punishment, my only child's my stigma!" she cried in
+her exaltation.
+
+"It seems to me rather that you're hers."
+
+"Hers? What does SHE know of such things?--what can she ever feel? She's
+cased in steel; she has a heart of marble. It's true--it's true," said
+Louisa Pallant. "She appals me!"
+
+I laid my hand on my poor friend's; I uttered, with the intention of
+checking and soothing her, the first incoherent words that came into my
+head and I drew her toward a bench a few steps away. She dropped upon
+it; I placed myself near her and besought her to consider well what she
+said. She owed me nothing and I wished no one injured, no one denounced
+or exposed for my sake.
+
+"For your sake? Oh I'm not thinking of you!" she answered; and indeed
+the next moment I thought my words rather fatuous. "It's a satisfaction
+to my own conscience--for I HAVE one, little as you may think I've a
+right to speak of it. I've been punished by my sin itself. I've been
+hideously worldly, I've thought only of that, and I've taught her to be
+so--to do the same. That's the only instruction I've ever given her, and
+she has learned the lesson so well that now I see it stamped there in
+all her nature, on all her spirit and on all her form, I'm horrified at
+my work. For years we've lived that way; we've thought of nothing else.
+She has profited so well by my beautiful influence that she has gone far
+beyond the great original. I say I'm horrified," Mrs. Pallant dreadfully
+wound up, "because she's horrible."
+
+"My poor extravagant friend," I pleaded, "isn't it still more so to hear
+a mother say such things?"
+
+"Why so, if they're abominably true? Besides, I don't care what I say if
+I save him."
+
+I could only gape again at this least expected of all my adventures. "Do
+you expect me then to repeat to him--?"
+
+"Not in the least," she broke in; "I'll do it myself." At this I uttered
+some strong inarticulate protest, but she went on with the grimmest
+simplicity: "I was very glad at first, but it would have been better if
+we hadn't met."
+
+"I don't agree to that, for you interest me," I rather ruefully
+professed, "immensely."
+
+"I don't care if I do--so I interest HIM."
+
+"You must reflect then that your denunciation can only strike me as,
+for all its violence, vague and unconvincing. Never had a girl less the
+appearance of bearing such charges out. You know how I've admired her."
+
+"You know nothing about her! _I_ do, you see, for she's the work of my
+hand!" And Mrs. Pallant laughed for bitterness. "I've watched her for
+years, and little by little, for the last two or three, it has come over
+me. There's not a tender spot in her whole composition. To arrive at a
+brilliant social position, if it were necessary, she would see me drown
+in this lake without lifting a finger, she would stand there and see
+it--she would push me in--and never feel a pang. That's my young lady!"
+Her lucidity chilled me to the soul--it seemed to shine so flawless. "To
+climb up to the top and be splendid and envied there," she went on--"to
+do that at any cost or by any meanness and cruelty is the only thing she
+has a heart for. She'd lie for it, she'd steal for it, she'd kill for
+it!" My companion brought out these words with a cold confidence that
+had evidently behind it some occult past process of growth. I watched
+her pale face and glowing eyes; she held me breathless and frowning, but
+her strange vindictive, or at least retributive, passion irresistibly
+imposed itself. I found myself at last believing her, pitying her more
+than I pitied the subject of her dreadful analysis. It was as if she had
+held her tongue for longer than she could bear, suffering more and more
+the importunity of the truth. It relieved her thus to drag that to the
+light, and still she kept up the high and most unholy sacrifice. "God
+in his mercy has let me see it in time, but his ways are strange that he
+has let me see it in my daughter. It's myself he has let me see--myself
+as I was for years. But she's worse--she IS, I assure you; she's worse
+than I intended or dreamed." Her hands were clasped tightly together in
+her lap; her low voice quavered and her breath came short; she looked up
+at the southern stars as if THEY would understand.
+
+"Have you ever spoken to her as you speak to me?" I finally asked. "Have
+you ever put before her this terrible arraignment?"
+
+"Put it before her? How can I put it before her when all she would have
+to say would be: 'You, YOU, you base one, who made me--?'"
+
+"Then why do you want to play her a trick?"
+
+"I'm not bound to tell you, and you wouldn't see my point if I did. I
+should play that boy a far worse one if I were to stay my hand."
+
+Oh I had my view of this. "If he loves her he won't believe a word you
+say."
+
+"Very possibly, but I shall have done my duty."
+
+"And shall you say to him," I asked, "simply what you've said to me?"
+
+"Never mind what I shall say to him. It will be something that will
+perhaps helpfully affect him. Only," she added with her proud decision,
+"I must lose no time."
+
+"If you're so bent on gaining time," I said, "why did you let her go out
+in the boat with him?"
+
+"Let her? how could I prevent it?"
+
+"But she asked your permission."
+
+"Ah that," she cried, "is all a part of all the comedy!"
+
+It fairly hushed me to silence, and for a moment more she said nothing.
+"Then she doesn't know you hate her?" I resumed.
+
+"I don't know what she knows. She has depths and depths, and all of them
+bad. Besides, I don't hate her in the least; I just pity her for what
+I've made of her. But I pity still more the man who may find himself
+married to her."
+
+"There's not much danger of there being any such person," I wailed, "at
+the rate you go on."
+
+"I beg your pardon--there's a perfect possibility," said my companion.
+"She'll marry--she'll marry 'well.' She'll marry a title as well as a
+fortune.
+
+"It's a pity my nephew hasn't a title," I attempted the grimace of
+suggesting.
+
+She seemed to wonder. "I see you think I want that, and that I'm acting
+a part. God forgive you! Your suspicion's perfectly natural. How can any
+one TELL," asked Louisa Pallant--"with people like us?"
+
+Her utterance of these words brought tears to my eyes. I laid my hand
+on her arm, holding her a while, and we looked at each other through the
+dusk. "You couldn't do more if he were my son."
+
+"Oh if he had been your son he'd have kept out of it! I like him for
+himself. He's simple and sane and honest--he needs affection."
+
+"He would have quite the most remarkable of mothers-in-law!" I
+commented.
+
+Mrs. Pallant gave a small dry laugh--she wasn't joking. We lingered
+by the lake while I thought over what she had said to me and while she
+herself apparently thought. I confess that even close at her side and
+under the strong impression of her sincerity, her indifference to the
+conventional graces, my imagination, my constitutional scepticism began
+to range. Queer ideas came into my head. Was the comedy on HER side and
+not on the girl's, and was she posturing as a magnanimous woman at
+poor Linda's expense? Was she determined, in spite of the young lady's
+preference, to keep her daughter for a grander personage than a young
+American whose dollars were not numerous enough--numerous as they
+were--to make up for his want of high relationships, and had she
+invented at once the boldest and the subtlest of games in order to keep
+the case in her hands? If she was prepared really to address herself to
+Archie she would have to go very far to overcome the mistrust he would
+be sure to feel at a proceeding superficially so sinister? Was she
+prepared to go far enough? The answer to these doubts was simply the way
+I had been touched--it came back to me the next moment--when she used
+the words "people like us." Their effect was to wring my heart. She
+seemed to kneel in the dust, and I felt in a manner ashamed that I had
+let her sink to it. She said to me at last that I must wait no longer, I
+must go away before the young people came back. They were staying long,
+too long; all the more reason then she should deal with my nephew that
+night. I must drive back to Stresa, or if I liked I could go on foot:
+it wasn't far--for an active man. She disposed of me freely, she was so
+full of her purpose; and after we had quitted the garden and returned to
+the terrace above she seemed almost to push me to leave her--I felt her
+fine consecrated hands fairly quiver on my shoulders. I was ready to do
+as she prescribed; she affected me painfully, she had given me a "turn,"
+and I wanted to get away from her. But before I went I asked her why
+Linda should regard my young man as such a parti; it didn't square after
+all with her account of the girl's fierce ambitions. By that account
+these favours to one so graceless were a woeful waste of time.
+
+"Oh she has worked it all out; she has regarded the question in every
+light," said Mrs. Pallant. "If she has made up her mind it's because she
+sees what she can do."
+
+"Do you mean that she has talked it over with you?"
+
+My friend's wonderful face pitied my simplicity. "Lord! for what do you
+take us? We don't talk things over to-day. We know each other's point of
+view and only have to act. We observe the highest proprieties of speech.
+We never for a moment name anything ugly--we only just go at it. We can
+take definitions, which are awkward things, for granted."
+
+"But in this case," I nevertheless urged, "the poor thing can't possibly
+be aware of your point of view."
+
+"No," she conceded--"that's because I haven't played fair. Of course she
+couldn't expect I'd cheat. There ought to be honour among thieves. But
+it was open to her to do the same."
+
+"What do you mean by the same?"
+
+"She might have fallen in love with a poor man. Then I should have been
+'done.'"
+
+"A rich one's better; he can do more," I replied with conviction.
+
+At this she appeared to have, in the oddest way, a momentary revulsion.
+"So you'd have reason to know if you had led the life that we have!
+Never to have had really enough--I mean to do just the few simple things
+we've wanted; never to have had the sinews of war, I suppose you'd call
+them, the funds for a campaign; to have felt every day and every hour
+the hard eternal pinch and found the question of dollars and cents--and
+so horridly few of them--mixed up with every experience, with every
+impulse: that DOES make one mercenary, does make money seem a good
+beyond all others; which it's quite natural it should! And it's why
+Linda's of the opinion that a fortune's always a fortune. She knows all
+about that of your nephew, how it's invested, how it may be expected to
+increase, exactly on what sort of footing it would enable her to live.
+She has decided that it's enough, and enough is as good as a feast. She
+thinks she could lead him by the nose, and I dare say she could. She'll
+of course make him live in these countries; she hasn't the slightest
+intention of casting her pearls--but basta!" said my friend. "I think
+she has views upon London, because in England he can hunt and shoot, and
+that will make him leave her more or less to herself."
+
+"I don't know about his leaving her to herself, but it strikes me that
+he would like the rest of that matter very much," I returned. "That's
+not at all a bad programme even from Archie's point of view."
+
+"It's no use thinking of princes," she pursued as if she hadn't heard
+me. "They're most of them more in want of money even than we. Therefore
+'greatness' is out of the question--we really recognised that at an
+early stage. Your nephew's exactly the sort of young man we've always
+built upon--if he wasn't, so impossibly, your nephew. From head to foot
+he was made on purpose. Dear Linda was her mother's own daughter when
+she recognised him on the spot! One's enough of a prince to-day when
+one's the right American: such a wonderful price is set on one's
+not being the wrong! It does as well as anything and it's a great
+simplification. If you don't believe me go to London and see." She had
+come with me out to the road. I had said I would walk back to Stresa and
+we stood there in the sweet dark warmth. As I took her hand, bidding
+her good-night, I couldn't but exhale a compassion. "Poor Linda, poor
+Linda!"
+
+"Oh she'll live to do better," said Mrs. Pallant.
+
+"How can she do better--since you've described all she finds Archie as
+perfection?"
+
+She knew quite what she meant. "Ah better for HIM!"
+
+I still had her hand--I still sought her eyes. "How came it you could
+throw me over--such a woman as you?"
+
+"Well, my friend, if I hadn't thrown you over how could I do this for
+you?" On which, disengaging herself, she turned quickly away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+I don't know how deeply she flushed as she made, in the form of her
+question, this avowal, which was a retraction of a former denial and
+the real truth, as I permitted myself to believe; but was aware of the
+colour of my own cheeks while I took my way to Stresa--a walk of half an
+hour--in the attenuating night. The new and singular character in which
+she had appeared to me produced in me an emotion that would have made
+sitting still in a carriage impossible. This same stress kept me up
+after I had reached my hotel; as I knew I shouldn't sleep it was useless
+to go to bed. Long, however, as I deferred this ceremony, Archie had
+not reappeared when the inn-lights began here and there to be dispensed
+with. I felt even slightly anxious for him, wondering at possible
+mischances. Then I reflected that in case of an accident on the lake,
+that is of his continued absence from Baveno--Mrs. Pallant would already
+have dispatched me a messenger. It was foolish moreover to suppose
+anything could have happened to him after putting off from Baveno by
+water to rejoin me, for the evening was absolutely windless and more
+than sufficiently clear and the lake as calm as glass. Besides I had
+unlimited confidence in his power to take care of himself in a much
+tighter place. I went to my room at last; his own was at some distance,
+the people of the hotel not having been able--it was the height of
+the autumn season--to make us contiguous. Before I went to bed I had
+occasion to ring for a servant, and I then learned by a chance enquiry
+that my nephew had returned an hour before and had gone straight to
+his own quarters. I hadn't supposed he could come in without my seeing
+him--I was wandering about the saloons and terraces--and it had not
+occurred to me to knock at his door. I had half a mind to do so now--I
+was so anxious as to how I should find him; but I checked myself, for
+evidently he had wanted to dodge me. This didn't diminish my curiosity,
+and I slept even less than I had expected. His so markedly shirking our
+encounter--for if he hadn't perceived me downstairs he might have looked
+for me in my room--was a sign that Mrs. Pallant's interview with him
+would really have come off. What had she said to him? What strong
+measures had she taken? That almost morbid resolution I still seemed to
+hear the ring of pointed to conceivable extremities that I shrank from
+considering. She had spoken of these things while we parted there as
+something she would do for me; but I had made the mental comment in
+walking away from her that she hadn't done it yet. It wouldn't truly be
+done till Archie had truly backed out. Perhaps it was done by this time;
+his avoiding me seemed almost a proof. That was what I thought of most
+of the night. I spent a considerable part of it at my window, looking
+out to the couchant Alps. HAD he thought better of it?--was he making up
+his mind to think better of it? There was a strange contradiction in the
+matter; there were in fact more contradictions than ever. I had taken
+from Louisa what she told me of Linda, and yet that other idea made me
+ashamed of my nephew. I was sorry for the girl; I regretted her loss of
+a great chance, if loss it was to be; and yet I hoped her mother's grand
+treachery--I didn't know what to call it--had been at least, to her
+lover, thoroughgoing. It would need strong action in that lady to
+justify his retreat. For him too I was sorry--if she had made on him the
+impression she desired. Once or twice I was on the point of getting into
+my dressing-gown and going forth to condole with him. I was sure he
+too had jumped up from his bed and was looking out of his window at the
+everlasting hills.
+
+But I am bound to say that when we met in the morning for breakfast he
+showed few traces of ravage. Youth is strange; it has resources that
+later experience seems only to undermine. One of these is the masterly
+resource of beautiful blankness. As we grow older and cleverer we think
+that too simple, too crude; we dissimulate more elaborately, but with an
+effect much less baffling. My young man looked not in the least as if he
+had lain awake or had something on his mind; and when I asked him what
+he had done after my premature departure--I explained this by saying I
+had been tired of waiting for him; fagged with my journey I had wanted
+to go to bed--he replied: "Oh nothing in particular. I hung about the
+place; I like it better than this one. We had an awfully jolly time
+on the water. _I_ wasn't in the least fagged." I didn't worry him with
+questions; it struck me as gross to try to probe his secret. The only
+indication he gave was on my saying after breakfast that I should go
+over again to see our friends and my appearing to take for granted he
+would be glad to come too. Then he let fall that he'd stop at Stresa--he
+had paid them such a tremendous visit; also that he had arrears of
+letters. There was a freshness in his scruples about the length of his
+visits, and I knew something about his correspondence, which consisted
+entirely of twenty pages every week from his mother. But he soothed my
+anxiety so little that it was really this yearning that carried me back
+to Baveno. This time I ordered a conveyance, and as I got into it he
+stood watching me from the porch of the hotel with his hands in his
+pockets. Then it was for the first time that I saw in the poor youth's
+face the expression of a person slightly dazed, slightly foolish even,
+to whom something disagreeable has happened. Our eyes met as I observed
+him, and I was on the point of saying "You had really better come with
+me" when he turned away. He went into the house as to escape my call. I
+said to myself that he had been indeed warned off, but that it wouldn't
+take much to bring him back.
+
+The servant to whom I spoke at Baveno described my friends as in a
+summer-house in the garden, to which he led the way. The place at large
+had an empty air; most of the inmates of the hotel were dispersed on
+the lake, on the hills, in picnics, excursions, visits to the
+Borromean Islands. My guide was so far right as that Linda was in
+the summer-house, but she was there alone. On finding this the case
+I stopped short, rather awkwardly--I might have been, from the way I
+suddenly felt, an unmasked hypocrite, a proved conspirator against her
+security and honour. But there was no embarrassment in lovely Linda; she
+looked up with a cry of pleasure from the book she was reading and held
+out her hand with engaging frankness. I felt again as if I had no right
+to that favour, which I pretended not to have noticed. This gave no
+chill, however, to her pretty manner; she moved a roll of tapestry
+off the bench so that I might sit down; she praised the place as a
+delightful shady corner. She had never been fresher, fairer, kinder; she
+made her mother's awful talk about her a hideous dream. She told me
+her mother was coming to join her; she had remained indoors to write
+a letter. One couldn't write out there, though it was so nice in other
+respects: the table refused to stand firm. They too then had pretexts
+of letters between them--I judged this a token that the situation was
+tense. It was the only one nevertheless that Linda gave: like Archie she
+was young enough to carry it off. She had been used to seeing us always
+together, yet she made no comment on my having come over without him. I
+waited in vain for her to speak of this--it would only be natural; her
+omission couldn't but have a sense. At last I remarked that my nephew
+was very unsociable that morning; I had expected him to join me, but he
+hadn't seemed to see the attraction.
+
+"I'm very glad. You can tell him that if you like," said Linda Pallant.
+
+I wondered at her. "If I tell him he'll come at once."
+
+"Then don't tell him; I don't want him to come. He stayed too long last
+night," she went on, "and kept me out on the water till I don't know
+what o'clock. That sort of thing isn't done here, you know, and every
+one was shocked when we came back--or rather, you see, when we didn't! I
+begged him to bring me in, but he wouldn't. When we did return--I almost
+had to take the oars myself--I felt as if every one had been sitting up
+to time us, to stare at us. It was awfully awkward."
+
+These words much impressed me; and as I have treated the reader to
+most of the reflexions--some of them perhaps rather morbid--in which I
+indulged on the subject of this young lady and her mother, I may as
+well complete the record and let him know that I now wondered whether
+Linda--candid and accomplished maiden--entertained the graceful thought
+of strengthening her hold of Archie by attempting to prove he had
+"compromised" her. "Ah no doubt that was the reason he had a bad
+conscience last evening!" I made answer. "When he came back to Stresa he
+sneaked off to his room; he wouldn't look me in the face."
+
+But my young lady was not to be ruffled. "Mamma was so vexed that she
+took him apart and gave him a scolding. And to punish ME she sent me
+straight to bed. She has very old-fashioned ideas--haven't you, mamma?"
+she added, looking over my head at Mrs. Pallant, who had just come in
+behind me.
+
+I forget how her mother met Linda's appeal; Louisa stood there with two
+letters, sealed and addressed, in her hand. She greeted me gaily and
+then asked her daughter if she were possessed of postage-stamps.
+Linda consulted a well-worn little pocket-book and confessed herself
+destitute; whereupon her mother gave her the letters with the request
+that she would go into the hotel, buy the proper stamps at the office,
+carefully affix them and put the letters into the box. She was to pay
+for the stamps, not have them put on the bill--a preference for which
+Mrs. Pallant gave reasons. I had bought some at Stresa that morning and
+was on the point of offering them when, apparently having guessed my
+intention, the elder lady silenced me with a look. Linda announced
+without reserve that she hadn't money and Louisa then fumbled for a
+franc. When she had found and bestowed it the girl kissed her before
+going off with the letters.
+
+"Darling mother, you haven't any too many of them, have you?" she
+murmured; and she gave me, sidelong, as she left us, the prettiest
+half-comical, half-pitiful smile.
+
+"She's amazing--she's amazing," said Mrs. Pallant as we looked at each
+other.
+
+"Does she know what you've done?"
+
+"She knows I've done something and she's making up her mind what it is.
+She'll satisfy herself in the course of the next twenty-four hours--if
+your nephew doesn't come back. I think I can promise you he won't."
+
+"And won't she ask you?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Shan't you tell her? Can you sit down together in this summer-house,
+this divine day, with such a dreadful thing as that between you?"
+
+My question found my friend quite ready. "Don't you remember what I
+told you about our relations--that everything was implied between us
+and nothing expressed? The ideas we have had in common--our perpetual
+worldliness, our always looking out for chances--are not the sort of
+thing that can be uttered conveniently between persons who like to keep
+up forms, as we both do: so that, always, if we've understood each other
+it has been enough. We shall understand each other now, as we've always
+done, and nothing will be changed. There has always been something
+between us that couldn't be talked about."
+
+"Certainly, she's amazing--she's amazing," I repeated; "but so are you."
+And then I asked her what she had said to my boy.
+
+She seemed surprised. "Hasn't he told you?"
+
+"No, and he never will."
+
+"I'm glad of that," she answered simply.
+
+"But I'm not sure he won't come back. He didn't this morning, but he had
+already half a mind to."
+
+"That's your imagination," my companion said with her fine authority.
+"If you knew what I told him you'd be sure."
+
+"And you won't let me know?"
+
+"Never, dear friend."
+
+"And did he believe you?"
+
+"Time will show--but I think so."
+
+"And how did you make it plausible to him that you should take so
+unnatural a course?"
+
+For a moment she said nothing, only looking at me. Then at last: "I told
+him the truth."
+
+"The truth?"
+
+"Take him away--take him away!" she broke out. "That's why I got rid of
+Linda, to tell you you mustn't stay--you must leave Stresa to-morrow.
+This time it's you who must do it. I can't fly from you again--it costs
+too much!" And she smiled strangely.
+
+"Don't be afraid; don't be afraid. We'll break camp again to-morrow--ah
+me! But I want to go myself," I added. I took her hand in farewell, but
+spoke again while I held it. "The way you put it, about Linda, was very
+bad?"
+
+"It was horrible."
+
+I turned away--I felt indeed that I couldn't stay. She kept me from
+going to the hotel, as I might meet Linda coming back, which I was far
+from wishing to do, and showed me another way into the road. Then she
+turned round to meet her daughter and spend the rest of the morning
+there with her, spend it before the bright blue lake and the snowy
+crests of the Alps. When I reached Stresa again I found my young man
+had gone off to Milan--to see the cathedral, the servant said--leaving a
+message for me to the effect that, as he shouldn't be back for a day or
+two, though there were numerous trains, he had taken a few clothes. The
+next day I received telegram-notice that he had determined to go on to
+Venice and begged I would forward the rest of his luggage. "Please don't
+come after me," this missive added; "I want to be alone; I shall do no
+harm." That sounded pathetic to me, in the light of what I knew, and I
+was glad to leave him to his own devices. He proceeded to Venice and I
+re-crossed the Alps. For several weeks after this I expected to discover
+that he had rejoined Mrs. Pallant; but when we met that November in
+Paris I saw he had nothing to hide from me save indeed the secret of
+what our extraordinary friend had said to him. This he concealed from
+me then and has concealed ever since. He returned to America before
+Christmas--when I felt the crisis over. I've never again seen the
+wronger of my youth. About a year after our more recent adventure her
+daughter Linda married, in London, a young Englishman the heir to a
+large fortune, a fortune acquired by his father in some prosaic but
+flourishing industry. Mrs. Gimingham's admired photographs--such is
+Linda's present name--may be obtained from the principal stationers. I
+am convinced her mother was sincere. My nephew has not even yet changed
+his state, my sister at last thinks it high time. I put before her as
+soon as I next saw her the incidents here recorded, and--such is the
+inconsequence of women--nothing can exceed her reprobation of Louisa
+Pallant.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Louisa Pallant, by Henry James
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