Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (35 page)

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BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 201
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 talked a great deal about him and thought him a delightful specimen, as a young gentleman of his period and country. She even asked me the sort of figure that his fortune might really amount to and expressed the most hungry envy when I told her what I supposed it to be. While we talked together Archie, on his side, could not do less than converse with Linda, nor to tell the truth did he manifest 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 made me remember. Whether it had the same effect on Mrs. Pallant I know not, for 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 inquiries and comments were numerous on the subject of my ingenuous kinsman this might very well have passed for a courteous recognition of the frequent admiration that I expressed for Lindaan admiration to which I noticed that she was apt to give but a small direct response. I was struck with something anomalous in her way of taking my remarks about her daughterthey 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 amount to an affectation. Either she answered me with a vague, slightly 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 have done for her!
The reader will have perceived that I am fond of looking at the explanations of things, and in regard to this I had my theory that she was disappointed in the girl. What had been her particular disappointment? As she could not possibly have wished her prettier or more pleasing it could only be that Linda had not made a successful use of her gifts. Had she expected her to capture a prince the day after she left the schoolroom? After all there was plenty of time for this, as
 
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Linda was only two and twenty. It did not occur to me to wonder whether 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 in the second I was not paid, as the French say, for thinking that Louisa Pallant would much mind whether she were or not. The last hypothesis I should have resorted to 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 the smallest indication of a desire to lead him on. She was as familiar as a cousin, but as a distant onea cousin who had been brought up to observe degrees. She was so much cleverer than Archie that she could not help laughing at him, but she did not 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 wisdom. Linda Pallant moreover was not a chatter-box; 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, being not exempt from periods of repose; so that I sometimes wondered how their association was kept at that pitch of friendliness of which it certainly bore the stamp.
It was friendly enough, evidently, when Archie sat near hernear enough for low murmurs, if they had risen to his lipsand watched her with interested eyes and with liberty not to try too hard to make himself agreeable. She was always doing somethingfinishing a flower in a piece of tapestry, cutting the leaves of a magazine, sewing a button on her glove (she carried a little work-bag in her pocket and was a person of the daintiest habits), or plying her pencil in a sketchbook which she rested on her knee. When we were indoors, at her mother's house, she had always the resource of her piano, of which she was of course a perfect mistress. These avocations enabled her to bear such close inspection with composure (I ended by rebuking Archie for itI told him he stared at the poor girl too much), and she sought further relief in smiling all over the place. When my young man's eyes shone at her
 
Page 203
those of Miss Pallant addressed themselves brightly to the trees and clouds and other surrounding objects, including her mother and me. Sometimes she broke out into a sudden embarrassed, happy, pointless laugh. When she wandered away from us she looked back at us in a manner which said that it was not for longthat she was with us still in spirit. If I was pleased with her it was for a good reason: it was many a day since any 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 booksI never provided them, and certainly he did not. He was no reader and I daresay he went to sleep.
III
I remember well the first timeit was at the end of about ten days of thisthat Mrs. Pallant remarked to me: My dear friend, you are 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? she repeated. Why, the consequences that ensued when you and I first became acquainted.
I hesitated a moment and then, looking her in the eyes, I said, Do you mean that she would throw him over?
You are not kind, you are not generous, she replied, colouring quickly. I am giving you a warning.
You mean that my boy may fall in love with her?
Certainly. It looks even as if the harm might be already done.
Then your warning is too late, I said, smiling. But why do you call it a harm?
Haven't you any sense of responsibility? she asked. Is that what his mother sent him out to you forthat you should find him a wifelet him put his head into a 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.
 
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She thinks it's a mistake and that at that age a man never really chooses. He doesn't choose till he has lived awhiletill he has looked about and compared.
And what do you think yourself?
I should like to say I consider that love itself, however young, is a sufficient choice. But my being a bachelor at this time of day would contradict me too much.
Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place to-morrow.
So as not to see Archie tumble in?
You ought to fish him out now and take him with you.
Do you think he is in very far? I inquired.
If I were his mother I know what I should think. I can put myself in her placeI am not narrowI know perfectly well how she must regard such a question.
And don't you know that in America that's not thought importantthe way the mother regards it?
Mrs. Pallant was silent a moment, as if I partly mystified and partly vexed her. Well, we are not in America; we happen to be here.
No; my poor sister is up to her neck in New York.
I am almost capable of writing to her to come out, said Mrs. Pallant.
You
are
warning me, I exclaimed, but I hardly know of what. It seems to me that my responsibility would begin only at the moment when it should appear that your daughter herself was in danger.
Oh, you needn't mind that; I'll take care of her.
If you think she is in danger already I'll take him away to-morrow, I went on.
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 am very well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it doesn't strike me thaton her sidethere is anything.
She looked at me with an expression that I had never seen in her face, and if I had puzzled her she repaid me in kind. You are very annoying; you don't deserve what I would do for you.
 
Page 205
What she would do for me she did not tell me that day, but we took up the subject again. I said to her that I did not really see why we should assume that a girl like Lindabrilliant enough to make one of the greatest matcheswould fall into my nephew's arms. Might I inquire whether her mother had won a confession from herwhether she had stammered out her secret? Mrs. Pallant answered that they did not need to tell each other such thingsthey had not lived together twenty years in such intimacy for nothing. To this I rejoined 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 was not great; and I mentioned that Archie had not once spoken to me of the young lady, save 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 had not 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; and then she said: We needn't discuss the matter if you don't wish to, but I happen to knowhow I obtained my knowledge is not importantthat the moment Mr. Pringle should propose to my daughter she would gobble him down. Surely it's a detail worth mentioning to you.
Very good. I will sound him. I will look into the matter to-night.
Don't, don't; you will spoil everything! she murmured, in a peculiar tone of discouragement. Take him offthat's the only thing.
I did not at all like the idea of taking him off; it seemed too summary, unnecessarily violent, even if presented to him on specious grounds; and, moreover, as I had told Mrs. Pallant, I really had no wish to move. I did not consider it a part of my bargain with my sister that, with my middle-aged habits, I should duck and dodge about Europe. So I said: 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 are too superficialtoo frivolous, Mrs Pallant rejoined, with considerable bitterness.
 
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There was a vibration of contempt in this which nettled me, so that I exclaimed, Possibly; but it seems odd that a lesson in consistency should come from you.
I had no retort from her; but at last she said, quietly: I think Linda and I had better go away. We have been here a monththat's enough.
Dear me, that will be a bore! I ejaculated; and for the rest of the evening, until we separated (our conversation had taken place after dinner, at the Kursaal), she remained almost silent, with a subdued, injured air. This, somehow, did not soothe me, as it ought to have done, for it was too 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_____! Archie and I usually attended the ladies back to their own doorthey lived in a street of minor accommodation, at a certain distance from the Roomsand we parted for the night late, on the big cobble-stones, in the little sleeping German town, under the closed windows of which, suggesting stuffy interiors, our English farewells sounded gay. On this occasion however they were not gay, for the difficulty that had come up, for me, with Mrs. Pallant appeared to have extended by a mysterious sympathy to the young couple. They too were rather conscious and dumb.
As I walked back to our hotel with my nephew I passed my hand into his arm and asked him, by no roundabout approach to the question, whether he were in serious peril of love.
I don't know, I don't knowreally, uncle, I don't know!this was all the satisfaction I could extract from the youth, who had not the smallest vein of introspection. He might not 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 was not made to contain many objects at once, but Linda Pallant for the moment certainly constituted its principal furniture. She pervaded his consciousness, she solicited his curiosity, she associated herself, in a manner as yet undefined and unformulated, with his future. I could see that she was the first intensely agreeable impression of his life. I did not betray to him, however, how much I saw, and I slept not particularly well, for thinking that, after all, it had been none of my business to provide him with intensely agreeable

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