Louisa Pallant | Page 6

mine and that of Mrs. Pallant and Linda were now very much the
same thing. He was willing to sit and smoke for hours under the trees
or, adapting his long legs to the pace of his three companions, stroll
through the nearer woods of the charming little hill-range of the Taunus
to those rustic Wirthschaften where coffee might be drunk under a
trellis. Mrs. Pallant took a great interest in him; she made him, with his
easy uncle, a subject of discourse; she pronounced him a delightful
specimen, as a young gentleman of his period and country. She even
asked me the sort of "figure" his fortune might really amount to, and
professed a rage of envy when I told her what I supposed it to be.
While we were so occupied Archie, on his side, couldn't do less than
converse with Linda, nor to tell the truth did he betray the least
inclination for any different exercise. They strolled away together while

their elders rested; two or three times, in the evening, when the
ballroom of the Kursaal was lighted and dance-music played, they
whirled over the smooth floor in a waltz that stirred my memory.
Whether it had the same effect on Mrs. Pallant's I know not: she held
her peace. We had on certain occasions our moments, almost our
half-hours, of unembarrassed silence while our young companions
disported themselves. But if at other times her enquiries and comments
were numerous on this article of my ingenuous charge, that might very
well have passed for a courteous recognition of the frequent admiration
I expressed for Linda--an admiration that drew from her, I noticed, but
scant direct response. I was struck thus with her reserve when I spoke
of her daughter--my remarks produced so little of a maternal flutter.
Her detachment, her air of having no fatuous illusions and not being
blinded by prejudice, seemed to me at times to savour of affectation.
Either she answered me with a vague and impatient sigh and changed
the subject, or else she said before doing so: "Oh yes, yes, she's a very
brilliant creature. She ought to be: God knows what I've done for her!"
The reader will have noted my fondness, in all cases, for the
explanations of things; as an example of which I had my theory here
that she was disappointed in the girl. Where then had her special
calculation failed? As she couldn't possibly have wished her prettier or
more pleasing, the pang must have been for her not having made a
successful use of her gifts. Had she expected her to "land" a prince the
day after leaving the schoolroom? There was after all plenty of time for
this, with Linda but two-and-twenty. It didn't occur to me to wonder if
the source of her mother's tepidity was that the young lady had not
turned out so nice a nature as she had hoped, because in the first place
Linda struck me as perfectly innocent, and because in the second I
wasn't paid, in the French phrase, for supposing Louisa Pallant much
concerned on that score. The last hypothesis I should have invoked was
that of private despair at bad moral symptoms. And in relation to
Linda's nature I had before me the daily spectacle of her manner with
my nephew. It was as charming as it could be without betrayal of a
desire to lead him on. She was as familiar as a cousin, but as a distant
one--a cousin who had been brought up to observe degrees. She was so
much cleverer than Archie that she couldn't help laughing at him, but
she didn't laugh enough to exclude variety, being well aware, no doubt,

that a woman's cleverness most shines in contrast with a man's stupidity
when she pretends to take that stupidity for her law. Linda Pallant
moreover was not a chatterbox; as she knew the value of many things
she knew the value of intervals. There were a good many in the
conversation of these young persons; my nephew's own speech, to say
nothing of his thought, abounding in comfortable lapses; so that I
sometimes wondered how their association was kept at that pitch of
continuity of which it gave the impression. It was friendly enough,
evidently, when Archie sat near her --near enough for low murmurs,
had such risen to his lips--and watched her with interested eyes and
with freedom not to try too hard to make himself agreeable. She had
always something in hand--a flower in her tapestry to finish, the leaves
of a magazine to cut, a button to sew on her glove (she carried a little
work-bag in her pocket and was a person of the daintiest habits), a
pencil to ply ever so neatly in a sketchbook which