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Louisa Pallant
by
“It’s enough that he belongs to you. But it isn’t for you I do it–it’s for myself,” she strangely went on.
“Doubtless you’ve your own reasons–which I can’t penetrate. But can’t you sacrifice something else? Must you sacrifice your only child?”
“My only child’s my punishment, my only child’s my stigma!” she cried in her exaltation.
“It seems to me rather that you’re hers.”
“Hers? What does SHE know of such things?–what can she ever feel? She’s cased in steel; she has a heart of marble. It’s true–it’s true,” said Louisa Pallant. “She appals me!”
I laid my hand on my poor friend’s; I uttered, with the intention of checking and soothing her, the first incoherent words that came into my head and I drew her toward a bench a few steps away. She dropped upon it; I placed myself near her and besought her to consider well what she said. She owed me nothing and I wished no one injured, no one denounced or exposed for my sake.
“For your sake? Oh I’m not thinking of you!” she answered; and indeed the next moment I thought my words rather fatuous. “It’s a satisfaction to my own conscience–for I HAVE one, little as you may think I’ve a right to speak of it. I’ve been punished by my sin itself. I’ve been hideously worldly, I’ve thought only of that, and I’ve taught her to be so–to do the same. That’s the only instruction I’ve ever given her, and she has learned the lesson so well that now I see it stamped there in all her nature, on all her spirit and on all her form, I’m horrified at my work. For years we’ve lived that way; we’ve thought of nothing else. She has profited so well by my beautiful influence that she has gone far beyond the great original. I say I’m horrified,” Mrs. Pallant dreadfully wound up, “because she’s horrible.”
“My poor extravagant friend,” I pleaded, “isn’t it still more so to hear a mother say such things?”
“Why so, if they’re abominably true? Besides, I don’t care what I say if I save him.”
I could only gape again at this least expected of all my adventures. “Do you expect me then to repeat to him–?”
“Not in the least,” she broke in; “I’ll do it myself.” At this I uttered some strong inarticulate protest, but she went on with the grimmest simplicity: “I was very glad at first, but it would have been better if we hadn’t met.”
“I don’t agree to that, for you interest me,” I rather ruefully professed, “immensely.”
“I don’t care if I do–so I interest HIM.”
“You must reflect then that your denunciation can only strike me as, for all its violence, vague and unconvincing. Never had a girl less the appearance of bearing such charges out. You know how I’ve admired her.”
“You know nothing about her! I do, you see, for she’s the work of my hand!” And Mrs. Pallant laughed for bitterness. “I’ve watched her for years, and little by little, for the last two or three, it has come over me. There’s not a tender spot in her whole composition. To arrive at a brilliant social position, if it were necessary, she would see me drown in this lake without lifting a finger, she would stand there and see it –she would push me in–and never feel a pang. That’s my young lady!” Her lucidity chilled me to the soul–it seemed to shine so flawless. “To climb up to the top and be splendid and envied there,” she went on–“to do that at any cost or by any meanness and cruelty is the only thing she has a heart for. She’d lie for it, she’d steal for it, she’d kill for it!” My companion brought out these words with a cold confidence that had evidently behind it some occult past process of growth. I watched her pale face and glowing eyes; she held me breathless and frowning, but her strange vindictive, or at least retributive, passion irresistibly imposed itself. I found myself at last believing her, pitying her more than I pitied the subject of her dreadful analysis. It was as if she had held her tongue for longer than she could bear, suffering more and more the importunity of the truth. It relieved her thus to drag that to the light, and still she kept up the high and most unholy sacrifice. “God in his mercy has let me see it in time, but his ways are strange that he has let me see it in my daughter. It’s myself he has let me see–myself as I was for years. But she’s worse–she IS, I assure you; she’s worse than I intended or dreamed.” Her hands were clasped tightly together in her lap; her low voice quavered and her breath came short; she looked up at the southern stars as if THEY would understand.