The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  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 retur
ned 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.

  Madame de Mauves

  I

  The view from the terrace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye is immense and famous. Paris lies spread before you in dusky vastness, domed and fortified, glittering here and there through her light vapours and girdled with her silver Seine. Behind you is a park of stately symmetry, and behind that a forest where you may lounge through turfy avenues and light-chequered glades and quite forget that you are within half an hour of the boulevards. One afternoon, however, in mid-spring, some five years ago, a young man seated on the terrace had preferred to keep this in mind. His eyes were fixed in idle wistfulness on the mighty human hive before him. He was fond of rural things, and he had come to Saint- Germain a week before to meet the spring halfway; but though he could boast of a six months’ acquaintance with the great city he never looked at it from his present vantage without a sense of curiosity still unappeased. There were moments when it seemed to him that not to be there just then was to miss some thrilling chapter of experience. And yet his winter’s experience had been rather fruitless and he had closed the book almost with a yawn. Though not in the least a cynic he was what one may call a disappointed observer, and he never chose the right-hand road without beginning to suspect after an hour’s wayfaring that the left would have been the better. He now had a dozen minds to go to Paris for the evening, to dine at the Cafe Brebant and repair afterwards to the Gymnase and listen to the latest exposition of the duties of the injured husband. He would probably have risen to execute this project if he had not noticed a little girl who, wandering along the terrace, had suddenly stopped short and begun to gaze at him with round-eyed frankness. For a moment he was simply amused, the child’s face denoting such helpless wonderment; the next he was agreeably surprised. “Why this is my friend Maggie,” he said; “I see you’ve not forgotten me.”

  Maggie, after a short parley, was induced to seal her remembrance with a kiss. Invited then to explain her appearance at Saint-Germain, she embarked on a recital in which the general, according to the infantine method, was so fatally sacrificed to the particular that Longmore looked about him for a superior source of information. He found it in Maggie’s mamma, who was seated with another lady at the opposite end of the terrace; so, taking the child by the hand, he led her back to her companions.

  Maggie’s mamma was a young American lady, as you would immediately have perceived, with a pretty and friendly face and a great elegance of fresh finery. She greeted Longmore with amazement and joy, mentioning his name to her friend and bidding him bring a chair and sit with them. The other lady, in whom, though she was equally young and perhaps even prettier, muslins and laces and feathers were less of a feature, remained silent, stroking the hair of the little girl, whom she had drawn against her knee. She had never heard of Longmore, but she now took in that her companion had crossed the ocean with him, had met him afterwards in travelling and—having left her husband in Wall Street—was indebted to him for sundry services. Maggie’s mamma turned from time to time and smiled at this lady with an air of invitation; the latter smiled back and continued gracefully to say nothing. For ten minutes, meanwhile, Longmore felt a revival of interest in his old acquaintance; then (as mild riddles are more amusing than mere commonplaces) it gave way to curiosity about her friend. His eyes wandered; her volubility shook a sort of sweetness out of the friend’s silence.

  The stranger was perhaps not obviously a beauty nor obviously an American, but essentially both for the really seeing eye. She was slight and fair and, though naturally pale, was delicately flushed just now, as by the effect of late agitation. What chiefly struck Longmore in her face was the union of a pair of beautifully gentle, almost languid grey eyes with a mouth that was all expression and intention. Her forehead was a trifle more expansive than belongs to classic types, and her thick brown hair dressed out of the fashion, just then even more ugly than usual. Her throat and bust were slender, but all the more in harmony with certain rapid charming movements of the head, which she had a way of throwing back every now and then with an air of attention and a sidelong glance from her dove-like eyes. She seemed at once alert and indifferent, contemplative and restless, and Longmore very soon discovered that if she was not a brilliant beauty she was at least a most attaching one. This very impression made him magnanimous. He was certain he had interrupted a confidential conversation, and judged it discreet to withdraw, having first learned from Maggie’s mamma—Mrs. Draper—that she was to take the six o’clock train back to Paris. He promised to meet her at the station.

  He kept his appointment, and Mrs. Draper arrived betimes, accompanied by her friend. The latter, however, made her farewells at the door and drove away again, giving Longmore time only to raise his hat. “Who is she?” he asked with visible ardour as he brought the traveller her tickets.

  “Come and see me to-morrow at the Hotel de l’Empire,” she answered, “and I’ll tell you all about her.” The force of this offer in making him punctual at the Hotel de l’Empire Longmore doubtless never exactly measured; and it was perhaps well he was vague, for he found his friend, who was on the point of leaving Paris, so distracted by procrastinating milliners and perjured lingeres that coherence had quite deserted her. “You must find Saint-Germain dreadfully dull,” she nevertheless had the presence of mind to say as he was going. “Why won’t you come with me to London?”

  “Introduce me to Madame de Mauves,” he answered, “and Saint-Germain will quite satisfy me.” All he had learned was the lady’s name and residence.

  “Ah she, poor woman, won’t make your affair a carnival. She’s very unhappy,” said Mrs. Draper.

  Longmore’s further enquiries were arrested by the arrival of a young lady with a bandbox; but he went away with the promise of a note of introduction, to be immediately dispatched to him at Saint-Germain.

  He then waited a week, but the note never came, and he felt how little it was for Mrs. Draper to complain of engagements unperformed. He lounged on the terrace and walked in the forest, studied suburban street life and made a languid attempt to investigate the records of the court of the exiled Stuarts; but he spent most of his time in wondering where Madame de Mauves lived and whether she ever walked on the terrace. Sometimes, he was at last able to recognise; for one afternoon toward dusk he made her out from a distance, arrested there alone and leaning against the low wall. In his momentary hesitation to approach her there was almost a shade of trepidation, but his curiosity was not chilled by such a measure of the effect of a quarter of an hour’s acquaintance. She at once recovered their connexion, on his drawing near, and showed it with the frankness of a person unprovided with a great choice of contacts. Her dress, her expression, were the same as before; her charm came out like that of fine music on a second hearing. She soon made conversation easy by asking him for news of Mrs. Draper. Longmore told her that he was daily expecting news and after a pause mentioned the promised note of introduction.

  “It seems less necessary now,” he said—”for me at least. But for you—I should have liked you to know the good things our friend would probably have been able to say about me.”

  “If it arrives at last,” she answered, “you must come and see me and bring it. If it doesn’t you must come without it.”

  Then, as she continued to linger through the thickening twilight, she explained that she was waiting f
or her husband, who was to arrive in the train from Paris and who often passed along the terrace on his way home. Longmore well remembered that Mrs. Draper had spoken of uneasy things in her life, and he found it natural to guess that this same husband was the source of them. Edified by his six months in Paris, “What else is possible,” he put it, “for a sweet American girl who marries an unholy foreigner?”