VI
I don't know how deeply she flushed as she made, in the form of her
question, this avowal, which was a retraction of a former denial and the
real truth, as I permitted myself to believe; but was aware of the
colour of my own cheeks while I took my way to Stresa--a walk of half an
hour--in the attenuating night. The new and singular character in which
she had appeared to me produced in me an emotion that would have made
sitting still in a carriage impossible. This same stress kept me up
after I had reached my hotel; as I knew I shouldn't sleep it was useless
to go to bed. Long, however, as I deferred this ceremony, Archie had not
reappeared when the inn-lights began here and there to be dispensed
with. I felt even slightly anxious for him, wondering at possible
mischances. Then I reflected that in case of an accident on the lake,
that is of his continued absence from Baveno--Mrs. Pallant would already
have dispatched me a messenger. It was foolish moreover to suppose
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 a much
tighter place. 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 make us contiguous. Before I went to bed I had
occasion to ring for a servant, and I then learned by a chance enquiry
that my nephew had returned an hour before and had gone straight to his
own quarters. I hadn't 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 now--I was so
anxious as to how I should find him; but I checked myself, for evidently
he had wanted to dodge me. This didn't diminish my curiosity, and I
slept even less than I had expected. His so markedly shirking our
encounter--for if he hadn't perceived me downstairs he might have looked
for me in my room--was a sign that Mrs. Pallant's interview with him
would really have come off. What had she said to him? What strong
measures had she taken? That almost morbid resolution I still seemed to
hear the ring of pointed to conceivable extremities that I shrank from
considering. She had spoken of these things while we parted there as
something she would do for me; but I had made the mental comment in
walking away from her that she hadn't done it yet. It wouldn't truly be
done till Archie had truly 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 to the couchant Alps. HAD he thought better of it?--was he making up
his mind to think better of it? There was a strange contradiction in the
matter; there were in fact more contradictions than ever. I had taken
from Louisa what she told me of 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 her mother's grand
treachery--I didn't know what to call it--had been at least, to her
lover, thoroughgoing. It would need strong action in that lady to
justify his retreat. For him too I was sorry--if she had made on him the
impression she desired. Once or twice I was on the point of getting into
my dressing-gown and going forth to condole with him. I was sure he too
had jumped up from his bed and was looking out of his window at the
everlasting hills.
But I am bound to say that when we met in the morning for breakfast he
showed few traces of ravage. Youth is strange; it has resources that
later experience seems only to undermine. One of these is the masterly
resource of beautiful blankness. As we grow older and cleverer we think
that 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; fagged with my journey I had wanted
to go to bed--he replied: "Oh nothing in particular. I hung about the
place; I like it better than this one. We had an awfully jolly time on
the water. _I_ wasn't in the least fagged." I didn't worry him with
questions; it struck me as gross 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 he
would be glad to come too. Then he let fall that he'd stop at Stresa--he
had paid them such a tremendous visit; also that he had arrears of
letters. 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 soothed my
anxiety so little that it was really this yearning that carried me back
to Baveno. This time I ordered a conveyance, and as I got into it he
stood watching me from the porch of the hotel with his hands in his
pockets. Then it was for the first time that I saw in the poor youth's
face the expression of a person slightly dazed, slightly foolish even,
to whom something 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 to escape my call. I
said to myself that he had been indeed warned off, but that it wouldn't
take much to bring him back.
The servant to whom I spoke at Baveno described my friends as in a
summer-house in the garden, to which he led the way. The place at large
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 the case I stopped
short, rather awkwardly--I might have been, from the way I suddenly
felt, an unmasked hypocrite, a proved conspirator against her security
and honour. But there was no embarrassment in lovely Linda; she looked
up with a cry of pleasure from the book she was reading and held out her
hand with engaging frankness. I felt again as if I had no right to that
favour, which I pretended not to have noticed. This gave no chill,
however, to her pretty manner; she moved a roll of tapestry off the
bench so that I might sit down; she praised the place as a delightful
shady corner. She had never been fresher, fairer, kinder; she made her
mother's awful talk about her a hideous dream. She told me her mother
was coming to join her; she had remained indoors to write a letter. One
couldn't write out there, though it was so nice in other respects: the
table refused to stand firm. They too then had pretexts of letters
between them--I judged this a token that the situation was tense. It
was the only one nevertheless that Linda gave: like Archie she was young
enough to carry it off. She had been used to seeing us always together,
yet she made no comment on my having come over without him. I waited in
vain for her to speak of this--it would only be natural; her omission
couldn't but have a sense. At last I remarked that my nephew was very
unsociable that morning; I had expected him to join me, but he hadn't
seemed to see the attraction.
"I'm very glad. You can tell him that if you like," said Linda Pallant.
I wondered at her. "If I tell him he'll come at once."
"Then don't tell him; I don't want him to come. He stayed too long last
night," she went on, "and kept me out on the water till I don't know
what o'clock. That sort of thing isn't done here, you know, and every
one was shocked when we came back--or rather, you see, when we didn't! 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 awfully awkward."
These words much impressed me; and as I have treated the reader to most
of the reflexions--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--entertained the graceful thought of
strengthening her hold of Archie by attempting to prove he had
"compromised" her. "Ah no doubt that was the reason he had a bad
conscience last evening!" I made answer. "When he came back to Stresa he
sneaked off to his room; he wouldn't look me in the face."
But my young lady was not to be ruffled. "Mamma was so vexed that she
took him apart and gave him a scolding. 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 how her mother met Linda's appeal; Louisa stood there with two
letters, sealed and addressed, in her hand. She greeted me gaily and
then asked her daughter if she were possessed of postage-stamps. Linda
consulted a well-worn little pocket-book and confessed herself
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 reasons. I had bought some at Stresa that morning and
was on the point of offering them when, apparently having guessed my
intention, the elder lady silenced me with a look. Linda announced
without reserve that she hadn't money and Louisa then fumbled for a
franc. When she had found and bestowed it the girl 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've done?"
"She knows I've done something and she's making up her mind what it is.
She'll satisfy herself 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!"
"Shan't you tell her? Can you sit down together in this summer-house,
this divine day, with such a dreadful thing as that between you?"
My question found my friend quite ready. "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 conveniently between persons who like to keep
up forms, as we both do: so that, always, if we've understood each other
it has been enough. We shall understand each other now, as we've always
done, and nothing will be changed. There has always been something
between us that couldn't be talked about."
"Certainly, she's amazing--she's 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'm glad of that," she answered simply.
"But I'm not sure he won't come back. He didn't this morning, but he had
already half a mind to."
"That's your imagination," my companion said with her fine authority.
"If you knew what I told him you'd be sure."
"And you won't let me know?"
"Never, dear 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?"
"Take him away--take him away!" she broke out. "That's why I got rid of
Linda, to tell you you mustn't stay--you must leave Stresa to-morrow.
This time it's you who 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'll break camp again to-morrow--ah
me! But I want to go myself," I added. I took her hand in farewell, but
spoke again while I held it. "The way you put it, about Linda, was very
bad?"
"It was horrible."
I turned away--I felt indeed that I couldn't stay. 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
there with her, spend it before the bright blue lake and the snowy
crests of the Alps. When I reached Stresa again I found my young man had
gone off to Milan--to see the cathedral, the servant said--leaving a
message for me to the effect that, as he shouldn't be back for a day or
two, though there were numerous trains, he had taken a few clothes. The
next day I received telegram-notice that he had determined to go on to
Venice and begged I would 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 him to his own devices. He proceeded to Venice and I
re-crossed the Alps. For several weeks after this I expected to discover
that he had rejoined Mrs. Pallant; but when we met that November in
Paris I saw he had nothing to hide from me save indeed the secret of
what our extraordinary friend had said to him. This he concealed from me
then and has concealed ever since. He returned to America before
Christmas--when I felt the crisis over. I've never again seen the
wronger of my youth. About a year after our more recent adventure her
daughter Linda married, in London, a young Englishman the heir to a
large fortune, a fortune acquired by his father in some prosaic but
flourishing industry. Mrs. Gimingham's admired photographs--such is
Linda's present name--may be obtained from the principal stationers. I
am convinced her mother was sincere. My nephew has not even yet changed
his state, my sister at last thinks it high time. I put before her as
soon as I next saw her the incidents here recorded, and--such is the
inconsequence of women--nothing can exceed her reprobation of Louisa
Pallant.
