LOUISA PALLANT
HENRY JAMES
I
Never say you know the last words about any human heart! I was once
treated to a revelation which startled and touched me in the nature of a
person with whom I had been acquainted--well, as I supposed--for years,
whose character I had had good reasons, heaven knows, to appreciate and
in regard to whom I flattered myself I had nothing more to learn.
It was on the terrace of the Kursaal at Homburg, nearly ten years ago,
one beautiful night toward the end of July. I had come to the place that
day from Frankfort, with vague intentions, and was mainly occupied in
waiting for my young nephew, the only son of my sister, who had been
entrusted to my care by a very fond mother for the summer--I was
expected to show him Europe, only the very best of it--and was on his
way from Paris to join me. The excellent band discoursed music not too
abstruse, while the air was filled besides with the murmur of different
languages, the smoke of many cigars, the creak on the gravel of the
gardens of strolling shoes and the thick tinkle of beer-glasses. There
were a hundred people walking about, there were some in clusters at
little tables and many on benches and rows of chairs, watching the
others as if they had paid for the privilege and were rather
disappointed. I was among these last; I sat by myself, smoking my cigar
and thinking of nothing very particular while families and couples
passed and repassed me.
I scarce know how long I had sat when I became aware of a recognition
which made my meditations definite. It was on my own part, and the
object of it was a lady who moved to and fro, unconscious of my
observation, with a young girl at her side. I hadn't seen her for ten
years, and what first struck me was the fact not that she was Mrs. Henry
Pallant, but that the girl who was with her was remarkably pretty--or
rather first of all that every one who passed appeared extremely to
admire. This led me also to notice the young lady myself, and her
charming face diverted my attention for some time from that of her
companion. The latter, moreover, though it was night, wore a thin light
veil which made her features vague. The couple slowly walked and walked,
but though they were very quiet and decorous, and also very well
dressed, they seemed to have no friends. Every one observed but no one
addressed them; they appeared even themselves to exchange very few
words. Moreover they bore with marked composure and as if they were
thoroughly used to it the attention they excited. I am afraid it
occurred to me to take for granted that they were of an artful intention
and that if they hadn't been the elder lady would have handed the
younger over a little less to public valuation and not have sought so to
conceal her own face. Perhaps this question came into my mind too easily
just then--in view of my prospective mentorship to my nephew. If I was
to show him only the best of Europe I should have to be very careful
about the people he should meet--especially the ladies--and the
relations he should form. I suspected him of great innocence and was
uneasy about my office. Was I completely relieved and reassured when I
became aware that I simply had Louisa Pallant before me and that the
girl was her daughter Linda, whom I had known as a child--Linda grown up
to charming beauty?
The question was delicate and the proof that I was not very sure is
perhaps that I forbore to speak to my pair at once. I watched them a
while--I wondered what they would do. No great harm assuredly; but I was
anxious to see if they were really isolated. Homburg was then a great
resort of the English--the London season took up its tale there toward
the first of August--and I had an idea that in such a company as that
Louisa would naturally know people. It was my impression that she
"cultivated" the English, that she had been much in London and would be
likely to have views in regard to a permanent settlement there. This
supposition was quickened by the sight of Linda's beauty, for I knew
there is no country in which such attractions are more appreciated. You
will see what time I took, and I confess that as I finished my cigar I
thought it all over. There was no good reason in fact why I should have
rushed into Mrs. Pallant's arms. She had not treated me well and we had
never really made it up. Somehow even the circumstance that--after the
first soreness--I was glad to have lost her had never put us quite right
with each other; nor, for herself, had it made her less ashamed of her
heartless behaviour that poor Pallant proved finally no great catch. I
had forgiven her; I hadn't felt it anything but an escape not to have
married a girl who had in her to take back her given word and break a
fellow's heart for mere flesh-pots--or the shallow promise, as it
pitifully turned out, of flesh-pots. Moreover we had met since then--on
the occasion of my former visit to Europe; had looked each other in the
eyes, had pretended to be easy friends and had talked of the wickedness
of the world as composedly as if we were the only just, the only pure. I
knew by that time what she had given out--that I had driven her off by
my insane jealousy before she ever thought of Henry Pallant, before she
had ever seen him. This hadn't been before and couldn't be to-day a
ground of real reunion, especially if you add to it that she knew
perfectly what I thought of her. It seldom ministers to friendship, I
believe, that your friend shall know your real opinion, for he knows it
mainly when it's unfavourable, and this is especially the case if--let
the solecism pass!--he be a woman. I hadn't followed Mrs. Pallant's
fortunes; the years went by for me in my own country, whereas she led
her life, which I vaguely believed to be difficult after her husband's
death--virtually that of a bankrupt--in foreign lands. I heard of her
from time to time; always as "established" somewhere, but on each
occasion in a different place. She drifted from country to country, and
if she had been of a hard composition at the beginning it could never
occur to me that her struggle with society, as it might be called, would
have softened the paste. Whenever I heard a woman spoken of as "horribly
worldly" I thought immediately of the object of my early passion. I
imagined she had debts, and when I now at last made up my mind to recall
myself to her it was present to me that she might ask me to lend her
money. More than anything else, however, at this time of day, I was
sorry for her, so that such an idea didn't operate as a deterrent.
She pretended afterwards that she hadn't noticed me--expressing as we
stood face to face great surprise and wishing to know where I had
dropped from; but I think the corner of her eye had taken me in and she
had been waiting to see what I would do. She had ended by sitting down
with her girl on the same row of chairs with myself, and after a little,
the seat next to her becoming vacant, I had gone and stood before her.
She had then looked up at me a moment, staring as if she couldn't
imagine who I was or what I wanted; after which, smiling and extending
her hands, she had broken out: "Ah my dear old friend--what a delight!"
If she had waited to see what I would do in order to choose her own line
she thus at least carried out this line with the utmost grace. She was
cordial, friendly, artless, interested, and indeed I'm sure she was very
glad to see me. I may as well say immediately, none the less, that she
gave me neither then nor later any sign of a desire to contract a loan.
She had scant means--that I learned--yet seemed for the moment able to
pay her way. I took the empty chair and we remained in talk for an hour.
After a while she made me sit at her other side, next her daughter, whom
she wished to know me--to love me--as one of their oldest friends. "It
goes back, back, back, doesn't it?" said Mrs. Pallant; "and of course
she remembers you as a child." Linda smiled all sweetly and blankly, and
I saw she remembered me not a whit. When her mother threw out that they
had often talked about me she failed to take it up, though she looked
extremely nice. Looking nice was her strong point; she was prettier even
than her mother had been. She was such a little lady that she made me
ashamed of having doubted, however vaguely and for a moment, of her
position in the scale of propriety. Her appearance seemed to say that if
she had no acquaintances it was because she didn't want them--because
nobody there struck her as attractive: there wasn't the slightest
difficulty about her choosing her friends. Linda Pallant, young as she
was, and fresh and fair and charming, gentle and sufficiently shy,
looked somehow exclusive--as if the dust of the common world had never
been meant to besprinkle her. She was of thinner consistency than her
mother and clearly not a young woman of professions--except in so far as
she was committed to an interest in you by her bright pure candid smile.
No girl who had such a lovely way of parting her lips could pass for
designing.
As I sat between the pair I felt I had been taken possession of and that
for better or worse my stay at Homburg would be intimately associated
with theirs. We gave each other a great deal of news and expressed
unlimited interest in each other's history since our last meeting. I
mightn't judge of what Mrs. Pallant kept back, but for myself I quite
overflowed. She let me see at any rate that her life had been a good
deal what I supposed, though the terms she employed to describe it were
less crude than those of my thought. She confessed they had drifted, she
and her daughter, and were drifting still. Her narrative rambled and
took a wrong turn, a false flight, or two, as I thought Linda noted,
while she sat watching the passers, in a manner that betrayed no
consciousness of their attention, without coming to her mother's aid.
Once or twice Mrs. Pallant made me rather feel a cross-questioner, which
I had had no intention of being. I took it that if the girl never put in
a word it was because she had perfect confidence in her parent's ability
to come out straight. It was suggested to me, I scarcely knew how, that
this confidence between the two ladies went to a great length; that
their union of thought, their system of reciprocal divination, was
remarkable, and that they probably seldom needed to resort to the clumsy
and in some cases dangerous expedient of communicating by sound. I
suppose I made this reflexion not all at once--it was not wholly the
result of that first meeting. I was with them constantly for the next
several days and my impressions had time to clarify.
I do remember, however, that it was on this first evening that Archie's
name came up. She attributed her own stay at Homburg to no refined nor
exalted motive--didn't put it that she was there from force of habit or
because a high medical authority had ordered her to drink the waters;
she frankly admitted the reason of her visit to have been simply that
she didn't know where else to turn. But she appeared to assume that my
behaviour rested on higher grounds and even that it required
explanation, the place being frivolous and modern--devoid of that
interest of antiquity which I had ever made so much of. "Don't you
remember--ever so long ago--that you wouldn't look at anything in Europe
that wasn't a thousand years old? Well, as we advance in life I suppose
we don't think that quite such a charm." And when I mentioned that I had
arrived because the place was as good as another for awaiting my nephew
she exclaimed: "Your nephew--what nephew? He must have come up of late."
I answered that his name was Archie Parker and that he was modern
indeed; he was to attain legal manhood in a few months and was in Europe
for the first time. My last news of him had been from Paris and I was
expecting to hear further from one day to the other. His father was
dead, and though a selfish bachelor, little versed in the care of
children, I was considerably counted on by his mother to see that he
didn't smoke nor flirt too much, nor yet tumble off an Alp.
Mrs. Pallant immediately guessed that his mother was my sister
Charlotte, whom she spoke of familiarly, though I knew she had scarce
seen her. Then in a moment it came to her which of the Parkers Charlotte
had married; she remembered the family perfectly from the old New York
days--"that disgustingly rich set." She said it was very nice having the
boy come out that way to my care; to which I replied that it was very
nice for the boy. She pronounced the advantage rather mine--I ought to
have had children; there was something so parental about me and I would
have brought them up so well. She could make an allusion like that--to
all that might have been and had not been--without a gleam of guilt in
her eye; and I foresaw that before I left the place I should have
confided to her that though I detested her and was very glad we had
fallen out, yet our old relations had left me no heart for marrying
another woman. If I had remained so single and so sterile the fault was
nobody's but hers. She asked what I meant to do with my nephew--to which
I replied that it was much more a question of what he would do with me.
She wished to know if he were a nice young man and had brothers and
sisters and any particular profession. I assured her I had really seen
little of him; I believed him to be six feet high and of tolerable
parts. He was an only son, but there was a little sister at home, a
delicate, rather blighted child, demanding all the mother's care.
"So that makes your responsibility greater, as it were, about the boy,
doesn't it?" said Mrs. Pallant.
"Greater? I'm sure I don't know."
"Why if the girl's life's uncertain he may become, some moment, all the
mother has. So that being in your hands--"
"Oh I shall keep him alive, I suppose, if you mean that," I returned.
"Well, WE won't kill him, shall we, Linda?" my friend went on with a
laugh.
"I don't know--perhaps we shall!" smiled the girl.
