Louisa Pallant | Page 7

mistress.
These pursuits supported her, they helped her to an assurance under such narrow inspection--I ended by rebuking Archie for it; I told him he stared the poor girl out of countenance--and she sought further relief in smiling all over the place. When my young man's eyes shone at her those of Miss Pallant addressed themselves brightly to the trees and clouds and other surrounding objects, including her mother and me. Sometimes she broke into a sudden embarrassed happy pointless laugh. When she wandered off with him she looked back at us in a manner that promised it wasn't for long and that she was with us still in spirit. If I liked her I had therefore my good reason: it was many a day since a pretty girl had had the air of taking me so much into account. Sometimes when they were so far away as not to disturb us she read aloud a little to Mr. Archie. I don't know where she got her books--I never provided them, and certainly he didn't. He was no reader and I fear he often dozed.

III
I remember the first time--it was at the end of about ten days of this-- that Mrs. Pallant remarked to me: "My dear friend, you're quite AMAZING! You behave for all the world as if you were perfectly ready to accept certain consequences." She nodded in the direction of our young companions, but I nevertheless put her at the pains of saying what consequences she meant. "What consequences? Why the very same consequences that ensued when you and I first became acquainted."
I hesitated, but then, looking her in the eyes, said: "Do you mean she'd throw him over?"
"You're not kind, you're not generous," she replied with a quick colour. "I'm giving you a warning."
"You mean that my boy may fall in love with your girl?"
"Certainly. It looks even as if the harm might be already done."
"Then your warning comes too late," I significantly smiled. "But why do you call it a harm?"
"Haven't you any sense of the rigour of your office?" she asked. "Is that what his mother has sent him out to you for: that you shall find him the first wife you can pick up, that you shall let him put his head into the noose the day after his arrival?"
"Heaven forbid I should do anything of the kind! I know moreover that his mother doesn't want him to marry young. She holds it the worst of mistakes, she feels that at that age a man never really chooses. He doesn't choose till he has lived a while, till he has looked about and compared."
"And what do you think then yourself?"
"I should like to say I regard the fact of falling in love, at whatever age, as in itself an act of selection. But my being as I am at this time of day would contradict me too much."
"Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place tomorrow."
"So as not to see Archie fall--?"
"You ought to fish him out now--from where he HAS fallen--and take him straight away."
I wondered a little. "Do you think he's in very far?"
"If I were his mother I know what I should think. I can put myself in her place--I'm not narrow-minded. I know perfectly well how she must regard such a question."
"And don't you know," I returned, "that in America that's not thought important--the way the mother regards it?"
Mrs. Pallant had a pause--as if I mystified or vexed her. "Well, we're not in America. We happen to be here."
"No; my poor sister's up to her neck in New York."
"I'm almost capable of writing to her to come out," said Mrs. Pallant.
"You ARE warning me," I cried, "but I hardly know of what! It seems to me my responsibility would begin only at the moment your daughter herself should seem in danger."
"Oh you needn't mind that--I'll take care of Linda."
But I went on. "If you think she's in danger already I'll carry him off to-morrow."
"It would be the best thing you could do."
"I don't know--I should be very sorry to act on a false alarm. I'm very well here; I like the place and the life and your society. Besides, it doesn't strike me that--on her side--there's any real symptom."
She looked at me with an air I had never seen in her face, and if I had puzzled her she repaid me in kind. "You're very annoying. You don't deserve what I'd fain do for you."
What she'd fain do for me she didn't tell me that day, but we took up the subject again. I remarked that I failed to see why we should assume that a girl like Linda--brilliant enough to make one of the greatest-- would fall so very easily into my nephew's arms. Might I