Collected Stories

  Linda was curious – Linda was interesting; I have seen girls I liked better (charming as she was), but I have never seen one who for the time I was with her (the impression passed, somehow, when she was out of sight) occupied me more. I can best describe the sort of attention that she excited by saying that she struck one above all things as a final product – just as some plant or fruit does, some waxen orchid or some perfect peach. More than any girl I ever saw she was the result of a process of calculation; a process patiently educative; a pressure exerted in order that she should reach a high point. This high point had been the star of her mother’s heaven (it hung before her so definitely), and had been the source of the only light – in default of a better – that shone upon the poor lady’s path. It stood her in stead of every other religion. The very most and the very best – that was what the girl had been led on to achieve; I mean, of course (for no real miracle had been wrought), the most and the best that she was capable of. She was as pretty, as graceful, as intelligent, as well-bred, as well-informed, as well-dressed, as it would have been possible for her to be; her music, her singing, her German, her French, her English, her step, her tone, her glance, her manner, and 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 a kind of standard. I regarded her as a model, and 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 one wondered where and when she would break down; but she never did, either in her French accent or in her rôle of educated angel.

  After Archie had come the ladies were manifestly a great resource to him, and all the world knows that a party of four is more convenient than a party of three. My nephew kept me waiting a week, with a placidity all his own; but this same placidity was an element of success in our personal relations – so long, that is, as I did not lose my temper with it. I did not, for the most part, because my young man’s unsurprised 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 knew not what his impending majority would have made of him (he did not look himself in the least as if the wind were rising), and I watched him with a solicitude which 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 transcendent studies. He was refreshingly natural, in a supercivilised age, and I soon made up my mind that the formula of his character was a certain simplifying serenity. After that I had time to meditate on the line which divides the serene from the inane and simplification from death. Archie was not clever – that theory it was not possible to maintain, though Mrs Pallant tried it once or twice; but on the other hand it seemed to me that his want of wit was a good defensive weapon. It was not 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 on the contrary that imagination would never be needed to save him, because she would never put him in danger. In short he was a well-grown, well-washed, muscular young American, whose extreme good-nature 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 money he was on the point of stepping into), 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 own habits were active, but he did not insist on my adopting them and he made noteworthy sacrifices for the sake of my society. When I say for the sake of mine I must of course 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, regulating 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 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 Linda – an 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 daughter – they 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 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 one – a 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 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, 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 her – near enough for low murmurs, if they had risen to his lips – and watched her with interested eyes and with liberty not to try too hard to make himself agreeable. She was always doing something – finishing 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 mistr
ess. These avocations enabled her to bear such close inspection with composure (I ended by rebuking Archie for it – I 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 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 long – that 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 books – I 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 time – it was at the end of about ten days of this – that 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 for – that you should find him a wife – let 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. She thinks it’s a mistake and that at that age a man never really chooses. He doesn’t choose till he has lived awhile – till 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 place – I am not narrow – I know perfectly well how she must regard such a question.’

  ‘And don’t you know that in America that’s not thought important – the 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 that – on her side – there 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.’

  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 Linda – brilliant enough to make one of the greatest matches – would fall into my nephew’s arms. Might I inquire whether her mother had won a confession from her – whether she had stammered out her secret? Mrs Pallant answered that they did not need to tell each other such things – they 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 know – how I obtained my knowledge is not important – that 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 off – that’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 superficial – too frivolous,’ Mrs Pallant rejoined, with considerable bitterness.

  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 month – that’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 door – they lived in a street of minor accommodation, at a certain distance from the Rooms – and 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 know – really, 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 impressions. To find him a wife was the last thing that 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 wives. Mrs Pallant was right and I had been strangely superficial in regarding her, with her beautiful daughter, as a ‘resource’. There were other resources and one of them would be most decidedly to go away. What did I know after all about the girl except that I was very glad to have escaped from marrying her mother? That mother, it was true, was a singular person, and it was strange that her conscience should have begun to fidget before my own did and that she was more anxious on my nephew’s behalf than I was. The ways of women were mysterious and it was not a novelty to me that one never knew where one would find them. As I have not hesitated in this narrative to reveal the irritable side of my own nature I will confess that I even wondered whether Mrs Pallant’s solicitude had not been a deeper artifice. Was it not possibly a plan of her own for making sure of my young man – though I did not quite see the logic of it? If she regarded him, as she might in view of his large fortune, as a great catch, might she not have arranged this little comedy, in their personal interest, with the girl?