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. G.o.d 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, pa.s.sion irresistibly imposed itself. I found myself at last believing her, pitying her more than I pitied the subject of her dreadful a.n.a.lysis. 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. "G.o.d 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 a.s.sure 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."