The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning (1 volume, London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1888)/Louisa Pallant/Chapter 5

by Henry James (1843-1916)

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, I remarked that from such an excursion as that, on such a lake, at such an hour, a young man and a young woman of ordinary 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 sir, one has certainly to dot one's "i's." Haven't you discovered, and didn't I tell you at Homburg, that we are miserably poor?'

'Isn't "miserably" rather too much, when you are living at an expensive hotel?'

'They take us en pension, for ever so little a day. I have been knocking about Europe long enough to learn there are certain ways of doing things. Besides, don't speak of hotels; we have 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 thinks that when she comes to such a place as this it's the least that she should find a villa of her own.'

'Well, her companion there is perfectly competent to give her one. Don't think I have 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 that you are not serious.'

She was facing me there in the twilight, and to let me know that she was more serious perhaps than she had ever been in her life she had only to look at me awhile without protestation. 'It's Linda's standard. God knows I myself could get on! She is ambitious, luxurious, determined to have what she wants, more than any one I have ever seen. Of course it's open to you to tell me that it's my 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 are most extraordinary,' I stammered, infinitely surprised and not a little pained.

'Oh yes, you have made up your mind about me; you see me in a certain way and you don't like the trouble of changing. Votre siège est fait. But you will have to change—if you have any generosity!' Her eyes shone in the summer dusk and she looked remarkably handsome.

'Is this a part of the reparation, of the expiation?' I inquired. 'I don't see what you ever did to Archie.'

'It's enough that he belongs to you. But it isn't for you that I do it; it's for myself,' she went on.

'Doubtless you have your own reasons, which I can't penetrate. But can't you sacrifice something else?—must you sacrifice your child?'

'She's my punishment and she's my stigma!' cried Louisa Pallant, with veritable exaltation.

'It seems to me rather that you are 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. She appals me!'

I laid my hand upon the poor lady'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 which I perceived a few yards away. She dropped upon it; I placed myself near her and besought her to consider well what she was saying. She owed me nothing and I wished no one injured, no one denounced or exposed for my sake.

'For your sake? Oh, I am 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 think I have a right to speak of it. I have been punished by my sin itself. I have been hideously worldly, I have thought only of that, and I have taught her to be so—to do the same. That's the only instruction I have ever given her, and she has learned the lesson so well that now that I see it printed there in all her nature I am horrified at my work. For years we have lived that way; we have thought of nothing else. She has learned it so well that she has gone far beyond me. I say I am horrified, because she is horrible.'

'My poor extravagant friend,' I pleaded, 'isn't it still more so to hear a mother say such things?'

'Why so, if they are abominably true? Besides, I don't care what I say, if I save him.'

'Do you expect me to repeat to him———?'

'Not in the least,' she broke in; 'I will do it myself.' At this I uttered some strong inarticulate protest, and she went on with a sort of 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 immensely.'

'I don't care for that—if I can interest him.'

'You must remember then that your charges are strangely vague, considering how violent they are. Never had a girl a more innocent appearance. You know how I have admired it.'

'You know nothing about her. I do, for she is the work of my hand!' Mrs. Pallant declared, with a bitter laugh. I have watched her for years and little by little, for the last two or three, it has come over me. There is 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! To climb up to the top and be splendid and envied there—to do it at any cost or by any meanness and cruelty, is the only thing she has a heart for. She would lie for it, she would steal for it, she would kill for it!' My companion brought out these words with a tremendous low distinctness and an air of sincerity that was really solemn. I watched her pale face and glowing eyes; she held me in a kind of stupor, but her strange, almost vindictive earnestness imposed itself. I found myself believing her, pitying her more than I pitied the girl. It was as if she had been bottled up for longer than she could bear, suffering more and more from the ferment of her knowledge. It relieved her to warn and denounce and expose. 'God has let me see it in time, in his mercy,' she continued; 'but his ways are strange, that he has let me see it in my daughter. It is myself that 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 ever 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 faint stars with religious perversity.

'Have you ever spoken to her as you speak to me?' I asked. 'Have you ever admonished her, reproached her?'

'Reproached her? How can I? 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 understand if I did. I should play that boy a far worse trick if I were to hold my tongue.'

'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 simply what you have said to me?'

'Never mind what I shall say to him. It will be something that will perhaps affect him, if I lose no time.'

'If you are 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.'

'That's a part of all the comedy!'

We were silent a moment, after which I resumed: 'Then she doesn't know you hate her?'

'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 pity her simply, for what I have 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, at the rate you go on.'

'Oh, perfectly; she'll marry some one. She'll marry a title as well as a fortune.'

'It's a pity my nephew hasn't a title,' I murmured, smiling.

She hesitated a moment. 'I see you think I want that and that I am acting a part. God forgive you! Your suspicion is perfectly natural: how can any one tell, with people like us?'

The way she uttered these last words brought tears to my eyes. I laid my hand on her arm, holding her awhile, and we looked at each other through the dusk. 'You couldn't do more if he were my son,' I said at last.

'Oh, if he had been your son he would have kept out of it! I like him for himself; he's simple and honest—he needs affection.'

'He would have an admirable, a devoted, mother-in-law,' I went on.

Mrs. Pallant gave a little impatient sigh and replied that she was not joking. We sat there some time longer, while I thought over what she had said to me and she apparently did the same. I confess that even close at her side, with the echo of her passionate, broken voice still in the air, some 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 brought forth these cruel imputations to help her to her end? If she was prepared really to denounce the girl to Archie she would have to go very far to overcome the suspicion he would be sure to feel at so unnatural a proceeding. 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.' The effect of them was poignant. She made herself humble indeed and I felt in a manner ashamed, on my own side, that I saw her in the dust. 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 very long, too long; all the more reason that she should deal with Archie that evening. I must drive back to Stresa or, if I liked, I could go on foot: it was not far—for a 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 of the hotel she seemed almost to push me to leave her—I felt her fine hands, quivering a little, on my shoulders. I was ready to do what she liked: she affected me painfully and I wanted to get away from her. Before I went I asked her why Linda should regard my young man as such a parti; it did not square after all with her account of the girl's fierce ambitions. By that picture it would seem that a reigning prince was the least she would look at.

'Oh, she has reflected well; she has regarded the question in every light,' said Mrs. Pallant. 'If she has made up her mind it is because she sees what she can do.'

'Do you mean that she has talked it over with you?'

'Lord! for what do you take us? We don't talk over things to-day. We know each other's point of view and we only have to act. We can take reasons, which are awkward things, for granted.'

'But in this case she certainly doesn't know your point of view, poor thing.'

'No—that's because I haven't played fair. Of course she couldn't expect I would cheat. There ought to be honour among thieves. But it was open to her to do the same.'

'How do you mean, to do the same?'

'She might have fallen in love with a poor man; then I should have been done.'

'A rich one is better; he can do more, I replied, with conviction. So you would 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 have wanted; never to have had the sinews of war, I suppose you would call them—the funds for a campaign; to have felt every day and every hour the hard, monotonous 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, it does make money seem a good beyond all others, and it's quite natural it should. That is why Linda is of the opinion that a fortune is 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 daresay she could. She will make him live here: she has not the least intention of settling in America. I think she has views upon London, because in England he can hunt and shoot, and that will make him let her alone.'

'It strikes me that he would like that very much,' I interposed; 'that's not at all a bad programme, even from Archie's point of view.'

'It's no use of talking about princes,' Mrs. Pallant pursued, as if she had not heard me. 'Yes, they are most of them more in want of money even than we are. Therefore a title is out of the question, and we recognised that at an early stage. Your nephew is exactly the sort of young man we had constructed in advance—he was made on purpose. Dear Linda was her mother's own daughter when she recognised him on the spot! It's enough of a title to-day to be an American—with the way they have come up. 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 complete evening. As I took her hand, bidding her good-night, I exclaimed, 'Poor Linda—poor Linda!'

'Oh, she'll live to do better,' said Mrs. Pallant.

'How can she do better, since you have described this as perfection?'

She hesitated a moment. 'I mean better for Mr. Pringle.'

I still had her hand—I remained looking at her. 'How came it that you could throw me over—such a woman as you?'

'Ah, my friend, if I hadn't thrown you over I couldn't do this for you?' And disengaging herself she turned away quickly and went back to the hotel.