Books: Louisa Pallant
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Henry James >> Louisa Pallant
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."