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 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 awa