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?"