Louisa Pallant | Page 5

a softer surface than that of her old ambitions. Furthermore I had to
recognise that her devotion to her daughter was a kind of religion; she
had done the very best possible for Linda.

Linda was curious, Linda was interesting; I've seen girls I liked
better--charming as this one might be--but have never seen one who for
the hour you were with her (the impression passed somehow when she
was out of sight) occupied you so completely. I can best describe the
attention she provoked by saying that she struck you above all things as
a felicitous FINAL product--after the fashion of some plant or some
fruit, some waxen orchid or some perfect peach. She was clearly the
result of a process of calculation, a process patiently educative, a
pressure exerted, and all artfully, so that she should reach a high point.
This high point had been the star of her mother's heaven--it hung before
her so unquenchably--and had shed the only light (in default of a better)
that was to shine on the poor lady's path. It stood her instead of every
other ideal. The very most and the very best--that was what the girl had
been led on to achieve; I mean of course, since no real miracle had been
wrought, the most and the best she was capable of. She was as pretty,
as graceful, as intelligent, as well-bred, as well-informed, as
well-dressed, as could have been conceived for her; her music, her
singing, her German, her French, her English, her step, her tone, her
glance, her manner, everything in her person and movement, from the
shade and twist of her hair to the way you saw her finger-nails were
pink when she raised her hand, had been carried so far that one found
one's self accepting them as the very measure of young grace. I
regarded her thus as a model, yet it was a part of her perfection that she
had none of the stiffness of a pattern. If she held the observation it was
because you wondered where and when she would break down; but she
never broke down, either in her French accent or in her role of educated
angel.
After Archie had come the ladies were manifestly his greatest resource,
and all the world knows why a party of four is more convenient than a
party of three. My nephew had kept me waiting a week, with a serenity
all his own; but this very coolness was a help to harmony--so long, that
is, as I didn't lose my temper with it. I didn't, for the most part, because
my young man's unperturbed acceptance of the most various forms of
good fortune had more than anything else the effect of amusing me. I
had seen little of him for the last three or four years; I wondered what
his impending majority would have made of him--he didn't at all carry
himself as if the wind of his fortune were rising--and I watched him

with a solicitude that usually ended in a joke. He was a tall fresh-
coloured youth, with a candid circular countenance and a love of
cigarettes, horses and boats which had not been sacrificed to more
strenuous studies. He was reassuringly natural, in a supercivilised age,
and I soon made up my mind that the formula of his character was in
the clearing of the inward scene by his so preordained lack of
imagination. If he was serene this was still further simplifying. After
that I had time to meditate on the line that divides the serene from the
inane, the simple from the silly. He wasn't clever; the fonder theory
quite defied our cultivation, though Mrs. Pallant tried it once or twice;
but on the other hand it struck me his want of wit might be a good
defensive weapon. It wasn't the sort of density that would let him in,
but the sort that would keep him out. By which I don't mean that he had
shortsighted suspicions, but that on the contrary imagination would
never be needed to save him, since she would never put him in danger.
He was in short a well-grown well-washed muscular young American,
whose extreme salubrity might have made him pass for conceited. If he
looked pleased with himself it was only because he was pleased with
life--as well he might be, with the fortune that awaited the stroke of his
twenty-first year--and his big healthy independent person was an
inevitable part of that. I am bound to add that he was accommodating--
for which I was grateful. His habits were active, but he didn't insist on
my adopting them and he made numerous and generous sacrifices for
my society. When I say he made them for mine I must duly remember
that