The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning (1 volume, London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1888)/Louisa Pallant/Chapter 6
VI
I don't know whether she blushed as she made this avowal, which was a retraction of a former denial and the real truth, as I permitted myself to believe; but I did, while I took my way to Stresa—it is a walk of half an hour—in the darkness. The new and singular character in which she had appeared to me produced an effect of excitement which would have made it impossible for me to sit still in a carriage. This same agitation kept me up late after I had reached my hotel; as I knew that I should not sleep it was useless to go to bed. Long, however, as I deferred this ceremony Archie had not turned up when the lights in the hotel began to be put out. I felt even slightly nervous about him and wondered whether he had had an accident on the lake. I reflected that in this case—if he had not brought his companion back to Baveno—Mrs. Pallant would already have sent after me. It was foolish moreover to suppose that anything could have happened to him after putting off from Baveno by water to rejoin me, for the evening was absolutely windless and more than sufficiently clear and the lake as calm as glass. Besides I had unlimited confidence in his power to take care of himself in circumstances much more difficult. I went to my room at last; his own was at some distance, the people of the hotel not having been able—it was the height of the autumn season—to place us together. Before I went to bed I had occasion to ring for a servant, and then I learned by a chance inquiry that my nephew had returned an hour before and had gone straight to his own apartment. I had not supposed he could come in without my seeing him—I was wandering about the saloons and terraces—and it had not occurred to me to knock at his door. I had half a mind to do so then—I had such a curiosity as to how I should find him; but I checked myself, for evidently he had not wished to see me. This did not diminish my curiosity, and I slept even less than I had expected. His dodging me that way (for if he had not perceived me downstairs he might have looked for me in my room) was a sign that Mrs. Pallant's interview with him had really come off. What had she said to him? What strong measures had she taken? The impression of almost morbid eagerness of purpose that she had given me suggested possibilities that I was afraid to think of. She had spoken of these things as we parted there as something she would do for me; but I had made the mental comment, as I walked away from her, that she had not done it yet. It would not really be done till Archie had backed out. Perhaps it was done by this time; his avoiding me seemed almost a proof. That was what I thought of most of the night. I spent a considerable part of it at my window, looking out at the sleeping mountains. Had he backed out?—was he making up his mind to back out? There was a strange contradiction in it; there were in fact more contradictions than ever. I believed what Mrs. Pallant had told me about Linda, and yet that other idea made me ashamed of my nephew. I was sorry for the girl; I regretted her loss of a great chance, if loss it was to be; and yet I hoped that the manner in which her mother had betrayed her (there was no other word) to her lover had been thoroughgoing. It would need very radical measures on Mrs. Pallant's part to excuse Archie. For him too I was sorry, if she had made an impression on him—the impression she desired. Once or twice I was on the point of going in to condole with him, in my dressing-gown; I was sure he too had jumped up from his bed and was looking out of his window at the everlasting hills.
I am bound to say that he showed few symptoms when we met in the morning and breakfasted together. Youth is strange; it has resources that experience seems only to take away from us. One of these is simply (in the given case) to do nothing—to say nothing. As we grow older and cleverer we think that is too simple, too crude; we dissimulate more elaborately, but with an effect much less baffling. My young man looked not in the least as if he had lain awake or had something on his mind; and when I asked him what he had done after my premature departure (I explained this by saying I had been tired of waiting for him—I was weary with my journey and wanted to go to bed), he replied: 'Oh, nothing in particular. I hung about the place; I like it better than this. We had an awfully jolly time on the water. I wasn't in the least tired.' I did not worry him with questions; it seemed to me indelicate to try to probe his secret. The only indication he gave was on my saying after breakfast that I should go over again to see our friends and my appearing to take for granted that he would be glad to accompany me. Then he remarked that he would stop at Stresa—he had paid them such a tremendous visit; also he had some letters to write. There was a freshness in his scruples about the length of his visits, and I knew something about his correspondence, which consisted entirely of twenty pages every week from his mother. But he satisfied my curiosity so little that it was really this sentiment that carried me back to Baveno. This time I ordered a conveyance, and as I got into it he stood watching me in the porch of the hotel with his hands in his pockets. Then it was for the first time that I saw in this young man's face the expression of a person slightly dazed, slightly foolish even, to whom some thing disagreeable has happened. Our eyes met as I observed him, and I was on the point of saying, 'You had really better come with me,' when he turned away. He went into the house as if he wished to escape from my call. I said to myself that Mrs. Pallant had warned him off but that it would not take much to bring him back.
The servant to whom I spoke at Baveno told me that my friends were in a certain summer-house in the garden, to which he led the way. The place had an empty air; most of the inmates of the hotel were dispersed on the lake, on the hills, in picnics, excursions, visits to the Borromean Islands. My guide was so far right as that Linda was in the summer-house, but she was there alone. On finding this to be the case I stopped short, rather awkwardly, for I had a sudden sense of being an unmasked hypocrite—a conspirator against her security and honour. But there was no awkwardness about Linda Pallant; she looked up with a little cry of pleasure from the book she was reading and held out her hand with the most engaging frankness. I felt as if I had no right to touch her hand and I pretended not to see it. But this gave no chill to her pretty manner; she moved a roll of tapestry off the bench, so that I might sit down, and praised the place as a delightful shady corner. She had never been fresher, fairer, kinder; she made her mother's damning talk about her seem a hideous dream. She told me Mrs. Pallant was coming to join her; she had remained indoors to write a letter. One could not write out there, though it was so nice in other respects: the table was too rickety. They too then had pretexts between them in the way of letters: I judged this to be a token that the situation was tense. It was the only one however that Linda gave: like Archie she was young enough to carry it off. She had been used to seeing us always together and she made no comment on my having come over without him. I waited in vain for her to say something about it; this would only be natural—it was almost unfriendly to omit it. At last I observed that my nephew was very unsociable that morning; I had expected him to join me but he had left me to come alone.
'I am very glad,' she answered. 'You can tell him that if you like.'
'If I tell him that he will come immediately.'
'Then don't tell him; I don't want him to come. He stayed too long last night,' Linda went on, 'and kept me out on the water till the most dreadful hours. That isn't done here, you know, and every one was shocked when we came back—or rather when we didn't come back. I begged him to bring me in, but he wouldn't. When we did return—I almost had to take the oars myself—I felt as if every one had been sitting up to time us, to stare at us. It was very embarrassing.'
These words made an impression upon me; and as I have treated the reader to most of the reflections—some of them perhaps rather morbid—in which I indulged on the subject of this young lady and her mother I may as well complete the record and let him know that I now wondered whether Linda—candid and accomplished maiden—had conceived the fine idea of strengthening her hold of Archie by attempting to prove that he had 'compromised' her. 'Ah, no doubt that was the reason he had a bad conscience last evening!' I exclaimed. 'When he came back to Stresa he sneaked off to his room; he wouldn't look me in the face.'
'Mamma was so vexed that she took him apart and gave him a scolding,' the girl went on. 'And to punish me she sent me straight to bed. She has very old-fashioned ideas—haven't you, mamma?' she added, looking over my head at Mrs. Pallant, who had just come in behind me.
I forget what answer Mrs. Pallant made to Linda's appeal; she stood there with two letters, sealed and addressed, in her hand. She greeted me gaily and then asked her daughter if she had any postage-stamps. Linda consulted a somewhat shabby pocket-book and confessed that she was destitute; whereupon her mother gave her the letters, with the request that she would go into the hotel, buy the proper stamps at the office, carefully affix them and put the letters into the box. She was to pay for the stamps, not have them put on the bill—a preference for which Mrs. Pallant gave her reasons. I had bought some at Stresa that morning and I was on the point of offering them, when, apparently having guessed my intention, the elder lady silenced me with a look. Linda told her she had no money and she fumbled in her pocket for a franc. When she had found it and the girl had taken it Linda kissed her before going off with the letters.
'Darling mother, you haven't any too many of them, have you?' she murmured; and she gave me, sidelong, as she left us, the prettiest half comical, half pitiful smile.
'She's amazing—she's amazing,' said Mrs. Pallant, as we looked at each other.
'Does she know what you have done?'
'She knows I have done something and she is making up her mind what it is—or she will in the course of the next twenty-four hours, if your nephew doesn't come back. I think I can promise you he won't.'
'And won't she ask you?'
'Never!'
'Shall you not tell her? Can you sit down together in this summer-house, this divine day, with such a dreadful thing as that between you?'
'Don't you remember what I told you about our relations—that everything was implied between us and nothing expressed? The ideas we have had in common—our perpetual worldliness, our always looking out for chances—are not the sort of thing that can be uttered gracefully between persons who like to keep up forms, as we both do: so that if we understood each other it was enough. We shall understand each other now, as we have always done, and nothing will be changed, because there has always been something between us that couldn't be talked about.'
'Certainly, she is amazing—she is amazing,' I repeated; 'but so are you.' And then I asked her what she had said to my boy.
She seemed surprised. 'Hasn't he told you?'
'No, and he never will.'
'I am glad of that,' she said, simply.
'But I am not sure he won't come back. He didn't this morning, but he had already half a mind to.'
'That's your imagination,' said Mrs. Pallant, decisively. 'If you knew what I told him you would be sure.'
'And you won't let me know?'
'Never, my near friend.'
'And did he believe you?'
'Time will show; but I think so.'
'And how did you make it plausible to him that you should take so unnatural a course?'
For a moment she said nothing, only looking at me. Then at last—'I told him the truth.'
'The truth?' I repeated.
'Take him away—take him away!' she broke out. 'That's why I got rid of Linda, to tell you that you mustn't stay—you must leave Stresa tomorrow. This time it's you that must do it; I can't fly from you again—it costs too much!' And she smiled strangely.
'Don't be afraid; don't be afraid. We will leave to-morrow; I want to go myself.' I took her hand in farewell, and while I held it I said, 'The way you put it, about Linda, was very bad?'
'It was horrible.'
I turned away—I felt indeed that I wanted to leave the neighbourhood. She kept me from going to the hotel, as I might meet Linda coming back, which I was far from wishing to do, and showed me another way into the road. Then she turned round to meet her daughter and spend the rest of the morning in the summer-house with her, looking at the bright blue lake and the snowy crests of the Alps. When I reached Stresa again I found that Archie had gone off to Milan (to see the cathedral, the servant said), leaving a message for me to the effect that, as he should not be back for a day or two (though there were numerous trains), he had taken a small portmanteau with him. The next day I got a telegram from him notifying me that he had determined to go on to Venice and requesting me to forward the rest of his luggage. 'Please don't come after me,' this missive added; 'I want to be alone; I shall do no harm.' That sounded pathetic to me, in the light of what I knew, and I was glad to leave the poor boy to his own devices. He proceeded to Venice and I recrossed the Alps. For several weeks after this I expected to discover that he had rejoined Mrs. Pallant; but when we met in Paris, in November, I saw that he had nothing to hide from me, except indeed the secret of what that lady had told him. This he concealed from me then and has concealed ever since. He returned to America before Christmas and then I felt that the crisis had passed. I have never seen my old friend since. About a year after the time to which my story refers, Linda married, in London, a young Englishman, the possessor of a large fortune, a fortune acquired by his father in some useful industry. Mrs. Gimingham's photographs (such is her present name) may be obtained from the principal stationers. I am convinced her mother was sincere. My nephew has not changed his state yet, and now even my sister is beginning, for the first time, to desire it. I related to her as soon as I saw her the substance of the story I have written here, and (such is the inconsequence of women) nothing can exceed her reprobation of Louisa Pallant.