← catalogue

Confidence

by Henry James · English · Gutenberg #178 · 439,327 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Confidence
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Confidence

Author: Henry James


        
Release date: March 15, 2006 [eBook #178]
                Most recently updated: September 20, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/178

Credits: Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFIDENCE ***




Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger





CONFIDENCE

by Henry James





CHAPTER I

It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending
the winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of
several social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the
Alps, but he was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a
pretext for lingering. He had spent five days at Siena, where he had
intended to spend but two, and still it was impossible to continue his
journey. He was a young man of a contemplative and speculative turn, and
this was his first visit to Italy, so that if he dallied by the way he
should not be harshly judged. He had a fancy for sketching, and it was
on his conscience to take a few pictorial notes. There were two old
inns at Siena, both of them very shabby and very dirty. The one at which
Longueville had taken up his abode was entered by a dark, pestiferous
arch-way, surmounted by a sign which at a distance might have been read
by the travellers as the Dantean injunction to renounce all hope. The
other was not far off, and the day after his arrival, as he passed
it, he saw two ladies going in who evidently belonged to the large
fraternity of Anglo-Saxon tourists, and one of whom was young and
carried herself very well. Longueville had his share--or more than his
share--of gallantry, and this incident awakened a regret. If he had
gone to the other inn he might have had charming company: at his own
establishment there was no one but an aesthetic German who smoked bad
tobacco in the dining-room. He remarked to himself that this was always
his luck, and the remark was characteristic of the man; it was charged
with the feeling of the moment, but it was not absolutely just; it was
the result of an acute impression made by the particular occasion;
but it failed in appreciation of a providence which had sprinkled
Longueville’s career with happy accidents--accidents, especially, in
which his characteristic gallantry was not allowed to rust for want of
exercise. He lounged, however, contentedly enough through these bright,
still days of a Tuscan April, drawing much entertainment from the high
picturesqueness of the things about him. Siena, a few years since, was
a flawless gift of the Middle Ages to the modern imagination. No other
Italian city could have been more interesting to an observer fond
of reconstructing obsolete manners. This was a taste of Bernard
Longueville’s, who had a relish for serious literature, and at one time
had made several lively excursions into mediaeval history. His friends
thought him very clever, and at the same time had an easy feeling about
him which was a tribute to his freedom from pedantry. He was clever
indeed, and an excellent companion; but the real measure of his
brilliancy was in the success with which he entertained himself. He was
much addicted to conversing with his own wit, and he greatly enjoyed his
own society. Clever as he often was in talking with his friends, I am
not sure that his best things, as the phrase is, were not for his
own ears. And this was not on account of any cynical contempt for the
understanding of his fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have
called his own society was more of a stimulus than that of most other
people. And yet he was not for this reason fond of solitude; he was, on
the contrary, a very sociable animal. It must be admitted at the outset
that he had a nature which seemed at several points to contradict
itself, as will probably be perceived in the course of this narration.

He entertained himself greatly with his reflections and meditations upon
Sienese architecture and early Tuscan art, upon Italian street-life and
the geological idiosyncrasies of the Apennines. If he had only gone to
the other inn, that nice-looking girl whom he had seen passing under the
dusky portal with her face turned away from him might have broken bread
with him at this intellectual banquet. Then came a day, however, when
it seemed for a moment that if she were disposed she might gather up the
crumbs of the feast. Longueville, every morning after breakfast, took
a turn in the great square of Siena--the vast piazza, shaped like
a horse-shoe, where the market is held beneath the windows of that
crenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower
springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the
bonnet of a captain. Here he strolled about, watching a brown contadino
disembarrass his donkey, noting the progress of half an hour’s chaffer
over a bundle of carrots, wishing a young girl with eyes like animated
agates would let him sketch her, and gazing up at intervals at the
beautiful, slim tower, as it played at contrasts with the large blue
air. After he had spent the greater part of a week in these grave
considerations, he made up his mind to leave Siena. But he was not
content with what he had done for his portfolio. Siena was eminently
sketchable, but he had not been industrious. On the last morning of his
visit, as he stood staring about him in the crowded piazza, and feeling
that, in spite of its picturesqueness, this was an awkward place for
setting up an easel, he bethought himself, by contrast, of a quiet
corner in another part of the town, which he had chanced upon in one
of his first walks--an angle of a lonely terrace that abutted upon the
city-wall, where three or four superannuated objects seemed to slumber
in the sunshine--the open door of an empty church, with a faded fresco
exposed to the air in the arch above it, and an ancient beggar-woman
sitting beside it on a three-legged stool. The little terrace had an
old polished parapet, about as high as a man’s breast, above which was
a view of strange, sad-colored hills. Outside, to the left, the wall
of the town made an outward bend, and exposed its rugged and rusty
complexion. There was a smooth stone bench set into the wall of the
church, on which Longueville had rested for an hour, observing the
composition of the little picture of which I have indicated the
elements, and of which the parapet of the terrace would form the
foreground. The thing was what painters call a subject, and he had
promised himself to come back with his utensils. This morning he
returned to the inn and took possession of them, and then he made his
way through a labyrinth of empty streets, lying on the edge of the town,
within the wall, like the superfluous folds of a garment whose wearer
has shrunken with old age. He reached his little grass-grown terrace,
and found it as sunny and as private as before. The old mendicant was
mumbling petitions, sacred and profane, at the church door; but save for
this the stillness was unbroken. The yellow sunshine warmed the brown
surface of the city-wall, and lighted the hollows of the Etruscan hills.
Longueville settled himself on the empty bench, and, arranging his
little portable apparatus, began to ply his brushes. He worked for some
time smoothly and rapidly, with an agreeable sense of the absence of
obstacles. It seemed almost an interruption when, in the silent air, he
heard a distant bell in the town strike noon. Shortly after this, there
was another interruption. The sound of a soft footstep caused him to
look up; whereupon he saw a young woman standing there and bending her
eyes upon the graceful artist. A second glance assured him that she
was that nice girl whom he had seen going into the other inn with her
mother, and suggested that she had just emerged from the little church.
He suspected, however--I hardly know why--that she had been looking
at him for some moments before he perceived her. It would perhaps be
impertinent to inquire what she thought of him; but Longueville, in the
space of an instant, made two or three reflections upon the young lady.
One of them was to the effect that she was a handsome creature, but
that she looked rather bold; the burden of the other was that--yes,
decidedly--she was a compatriot. She turned away almost as soon as she
met his eyes; he had hardly time to raise his hat, as, after a moment’s
hesitation, he proceeded to do. She herself appeared to feel a certain
hesitation; she glanced back at the church door, as if under the impulse
to retrace her steps. She stood there a moment longer--long enough to
let him see that she was a person of easy attitudes--and then she walked
away slowly to the parapet of the terrace. Here she stationed herself,
leaning her arms upon the high stone ledge, presenting her back to
Longueville, and gazing at rural Italy. Longueville went on with his
sketch, but less attentively than before. He wondered what this young
lady was doing there alone, and then it occurred to him that her
companion--her mother, presumably--was in the church. The two ladies had
been in the church when he arrived; women liked to sit in churches; they
had been there more than half an hour, and the mother had not enough of
it even yet. The young lady, however, at present preferred the view that
Longueville was painting; he became aware that she had placed herself in
the very centre of his foreground. His first feeling was that she would
spoil it; his second was that she would improve it. Little by little she
turned more into profile, leaning only one arm upon the parapet, while
the other hand, holding her folded parasol, hung down at her side. She
was motionless; it was almost as if she were standing there on purpose
to be drawn. Yes, certainly she improved the picture. Her profile,
delicate and thin, defined itself against the sky, in the clear shadow
of a coquettish hat; her figure was light; she bent and leaned easily;
she wore a gray dress, fastened up as was then the fashion, and
displaying the broad edge of a crimson petticoat. She kept her position;
she seemed absorbed in the view. “Is she posing--is she attitudinizing
for my benefit?” Longueville asked of himself. And then it seemed to
him that this was a needless assumption, for the prospect was quite
beautiful enough to be looked at for itself, and there was nothing
impossible in a pretty girl having a love of fine landscape. “But posing
or not,” he went on, “I will put her into my sketch. She has simply
put herself in. It will give it a human interest. There is nothing like
having a human interest.” So, with the ready skill that he possessed, he
introduced the young girl’s figure into his foreground, and at the
end of ten minutes he had almost made something that had the form of a
likeness. “If she will only be quiet for another ten minutes,” he said,
“the thing will really be a picture.” Unfortunately, the young lady was
not quiet; she had apparently had enough of her attitude and her view.
She turned away, facing Longueville again, and slowly came back, as if
to re-enter the church. To do so she had to pass near him, and as she
approached he instinctively got up, holding his drawing in one hand.
She looked at him again, with that expression that he had mentally
characterized as “bold,” a few minutes before--with dark, intelligent
eyes. Her hair was dark and dense; she was a strikingly handsome girl.

“I am so sorry you moved,” he said, confidently, in English. “You were
so--so beautiful.”

She stopped, looking at him more directly than ever; and she looked at
his sketch, which he held out toward her. At the sketch, however, she
only glanced, whereas there was observation in the eye that she bent
upon Longueville. He never knew whether she had blushed; he afterward
thought she might have been frightened. Nevertheless, it was not exactly
terror that appeared to dictate her answer to Longueville’s speech.

“I am much obliged to you. Don’t you think you have looked at me
enough?”

“By no means. I should like so much to finish my drawing.”

“I am not a professional model,” said the young lady.

“No. That ‘s my difficulty,” Longueville answered, laughing. “I can’t
propose to remunerate you.”

The young lady seemed to think this joke in indifferent taste. She
turned away in silence; but something in her expression, in his feeling
at the time, in the situation, incited Longueville to higher play. He
felt a lively need of carrying his point.

“You see it will be pure kindness,” he went on,--“a simple act of
charity. Five minutes will be enough. Treat me as an Italian beggar.”

She had laid down his sketch and had stepped forward. He stood there,
obsequious, clasping his hands and smiling.

His interruptress stopped and looked at him again, as if she thought him
a very odd person; but she seemed amused. Now, at any rate, she was not
frightened. She seemed even disposed to provoke him a little.

“I wish to go to my mother,” she said.

“Where is your mother?” the young man asked.

“In the church, of course. I did n’t come here alone!”

“Of course not; but you may be sure that your mother is very contented.
I have been in that little church. It is charming. She is just resting
there; she is probably tired. If you will kindly give me five minutes
more, she will come out to you.”

“Five minutes?” the young girl asked.

“Five minutes will do. I shall be eternally grateful.” Longueville was
amused at himself as he said this. He cared infinitely less for his
sketch than the words appeared to imply; but, somehow, he cared greatly
that this graceful stranger should do what he had proposed.

The graceful stranger dropped an eye on the sketch again.

“Is your picture so good as that?” she asked.

“I have a great deal of talent,” he answered, laughing. “You shall see
for yourself, when it is finished.”

She turned slowly toward the terrace again.

“You certainly have a great deal of talent, to induce me to do what you
ask.” And she walked to where she had stood before. Longueville made a
movement to go with her, as if to show her the attitude he meant; but,
pointing with decision to his easel, she said--

“You have only five minutes.” He immediately went back to his work, and
she made a vague attempt to take up her position. “You must tell me if
this will do,” she added, in a moment.

“It will do beautifully,” Longueville answered, in a happy tone, looking
at her and plying his brush. “It is immensely good of you to take so
much trouble.”

For a moment she made no rejoinder, but presently she said--

“Of course if I pose at all I wish to pose well.”

“You pose admirably,” said Longueville.

After this she said nothing, and for several minutes he painted rapidly
and in silence. He felt a certain excitement, and the movement of his
thoughts kept pace with that of his brush. It was very true that she
posed admirably; she was a fine creature to paint. Her prettiness
inspired him, and also her audacity, as he was content to regard it
for the moment. He wondered about her--who she was, and what she
was--perceiving that the so-called audacity was not vulgar boldness,
but the play of an original and probably interesting character. It was
obvious that she was a perfect lady, but it was equally obvious that
she was irregularly clever. Longueville’s little figure was a success--a
charming success, he thought, as he put on the last touches. While he
was doing this, his model’s companion came into view. She came out of
the church, pausing a moment as she looked from her daughter to the
young man in the corner of the terrace; then she walked straight over
to the young girl. She was a delicate little gentlewoman, with a light,
quick step.

Longueville’s five minutes were up; so, leaving his place, he approached
the two ladies, sketch in hand. The elder one, who had passed her hand
into her daughter’s arm, looked up at him with clear, surprised eyes;
she was a charming old woman. Her eyes were very pretty, and on either
side of them, above a pair of fine dark brows, was a band of silvery
hair, rather coquettishly arranged.

“It is my portrait,” said her daughter, as Longueville drew near. “This
gentleman has been sketching me.”

“Sketching you, dearest?” murmured her mother. “Was n’t it rather
sudden?”

“Very sudden--very abrupt!” exclaimed the young girl with a laugh.

“Considering all that, it ‘s very good,” said Longueville, offering his
picture to the elder lady, who took it and began to examine it. “I can’t
tell you how much I thank you,” he said to his model.

“It ‘s very well for you to thank me now,” she replied. “You really had
no right to begin.”

“The temptation was so great.”

“We should resist temptation. And you should have asked my leave.”

“I was afraid you would refuse it; and you stood there, just in my line
of vision.”

“You should have asked me to get out of it.”

“I should have been very sorry. Besides, it would have been extremely
rude.”

The young girl looked at him a moment.

“Yes, I think it would. But what you have done is ruder.”

“It is a hard case!” said Longueville. “What could I have done, then,
decently?”

“It ‘s a beautiful drawing,” murmured the elder lady, handing the thing
back to Longueville. Her daughter, meanwhile, had not even glanced at
it.

“You might have waited till I should go away,” this argumentative young
person continued.

Longueville shook his head.

“I never lose opportunities!”

“You might have sketched me afterwards, from memory.”

Longueville looked at her, smiling.

“Judge how much better my memory will be now!”

She also smiled a little, but instantly became serious.

“For myself, it ‘s an episode I shall try to forget. I don’t like the
part I have played in it.”

“May you never play a less becoming one!” cried Longueville. “I hope
that your mother, at least, will accept a memento of the occasion.” And
he turned again with his sketch to her companion, who had been listening
to the girl’s conversation with this enterprising stranger, and looking
from one to the other with an air of earnest confusion. “Won’t you do me
the honor of keeping my sketch?” he said. “I think it really looks like
your daughter.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you; I hardly dare,” murmured the lady, with a
deprecating gesture.

“It will serve as a kind of amends for the liberty I have taken,”
 Longueville added; and he began to remove the drawing from its paper
block.

“It makes it worse for you to give it to us,” said the young girl.

“Oh, my dear, I am sure it ‘s lovely!” exclaimed her mother. “It ‘s
wonderfully like you.”

“I think that also makes it worse!”

Longueville was at last nettled. The young lady’s perversity was perhaps
not exactly malignant; but it was certainly ungracious. She seemed to
desire to present herself as a beautiful tormentress.

“How does it make it worse?” he asked, with a frown.

He believed she was clever, and she was certainly ready. Now, however,
she reflected a moment before answering.

“That you should give us your sketch,” she said at last.

“It was to your mother I offered it,” Longueville observed.

But this observation, the fruit of his irritation, appeared to have no
effect upon the young girl.

“Is n’t it what painters call a study?” she went on. “A study is of use
to the painter himself. Your justification would be that you should keep
your sketch, and that it might be of use to you.”

“My daughter is a study, sir, you will say,” said the elder lady in a
little, light, conciliating voice, and graciously accepting the drawing
again.

“I will admit,” said Longueville, “that I am very inconsistent. Set it
down to my esteem, madam,” he added, looking at the mother.

“That ‘s for you, mamma,” said his model, disengaging her arm from her
mother’s hand and turning away.

The mamma stood looking at the sketch with a smile which seemed to
express a tender desire to reconcile all accidents.

“It ‘s extremely beautiful,” she murmured, “and if you insist on my
taking it--”

“I shall regard it as a great honor.”

“Very well, then; with many thanks, I will keep it.” She looked at the
young man a moment, while her daughter walked away. Longueville thought
her a delightful little person; she struck him as a sort of transfigured
Quakeress--a mystic with a practical side. “I am sure you think she ‘s a
strange girl,” she said.

“She is extremely pretty.”

“She is very clever,” said the mother.

“She is wonderfully graceful.”

“Ah, but she ‘s good!” cried the old lady.

“I am sure she comes honestly by that,” said Longueville, expressively,
while his companion, returning his salutation with a certain scrupulous
grace of her own, hurried after her daughter.

Longueville remained there staring at the view but not especially seeing
it. He felt as if he had at once enjoyed and lost an opportunity. After
a while he tried to make a sketch of the old beggar-woman who sat there
in a sort of palsied immobility, like a rickety statue at a church-door.
But his attempt to reproduce her features was not gratifying, and he
suddenly laid down his brush. She was not pretty enough--she had a bad
profile.







CHAPTER II

Two months later Bernard Longueville was at Venice, still under the
impression that he was leaving Italy. He was not a man who made plans
and held to them. He made them, indeed--few men made more--but he
made them as a basis for variation. He had gone to Venice to spend a
fortnight, and his fortnight had taken the form of eight enchanting
weeks. He had still a sort of conviction that he was carrying out his
plans; for it must be confessed that where his pleasure was concerned he
had considerable skill in accommodating his theory to his practice. His
enjoyment of Venice was extreme, but he was roused from it by a summons
he was indisposed to resist. This consisted of a letter from an intimate
friend who was living in Germany--a friend whose name was Gordon Wright.
He had been spending the winter in Dresden, but his letter bore the date
of Baden-Baden. As it was not long, I may give it entire.

“I wish very much that you would come to this place. I think you have
been here before, so that you know how pretty it is, and how amusing. I
shall probably be here the rest of the summer. There are some people I
know and whom I want you to know. Be so good as to arrive. Then I will
thank you properly for your various Italian rhapsodies. I can’t reply on
the same scale--I have n’t the time. Do you know what I am doing? I am
making love. I find it a most absorbing occupation. That is literally
why I have not written to you before. I have been making love ever since
the last of May. It takes an immense amount of time, and everything else
has got terribly behindhand. I don’t mean to say that the experiment
itself has gone on very fast; but I am trying to push it forward. I have
n’t yet had time to test its success; but in this I want your help.
You know we great physicists never make an experiment without an
‘assistant’--a humble individual who burns his fingers and stains his
clothes in the cause of science, but whose interest in the problem is
only indirect. I want you to be my assistant, and I will guarantee
that your burns and stains shall not be dangerous. She is an extremely
interesting girl, and I really want you to see her--I want to know what
you think of her. She wants to know you, too, for I have talked a good
deal about you. There you have it, if gratified vanity will help you on
the way. Seriously, this is a real request. I want your opinion, your
impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don’t say I ask
for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But
I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those
things. I don’t see why I should n’t tell you all this--I have always
told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about
women, but I have always supposed that you knew everything. You
certainly have always had the tone of that sort of omniscience. So come
here as soon as possible and let me see that you are not a humbug. She
‘s a very handsome girl.”

Longueville was so much amused with this appeal that he very soon
started for Germany. In the reader, Gordon Wright’s letter will,
perhaps, excite surprise rather than hilarity; but Longueville thought
it highly characteristic of his friend. What it especially pointed to
was Gordon’s want of imagination--a deficiency which was a matter of
common jocular allusion between the two young men, each of whom kept a
collection of acknowledged oddities as a playground for the other’s
wit. Bernard had often spoken of his comrade’s want of imagination as a
bottomless pit, into which Gordon was perpetually inviting him to lower
himself. “My dear fellow,” Bernard said, “you must really excuse me; I
cannot take these subterranean excursions. I should lose my breath down
there; I should never come up alive. You know I have dropped things
down--little jokes and metaphors, little fantasies and paradoxes--and I
have never heard them touch bottom!” This was an epigram on the part
of a young man who had a lively play of fancy; but it was none the less
true that Gordon Wright had a firmly-treading, rather than a winged,
intellect. Every phrase in his letter seemed, to Bernard, to march
in stout-soled walking-boots, and nothing could better express his
attachment to the process of reasoning things out than this proposal
that his friend should come and make a chemical analysis--a geometrical
survey--of the lady of his love. “That I shall have any difficulty in
forming an opinion, and any difficulty in expressing it when formed--of
this he has as little idea as that he shall have any difficulty in
accepting it when expressed.” So Bernard reflected, as he rolled in the
train to Munich. “Gordon’s mind,” he went on, “has no atmosphere; his
intellectual process goes on in the void. There are no currents and
eddies to affect it, no high winds nor hot suns, no changes of season
and temperature. His premises are neatly arranged, and his conclusions
are perfectly calculable.”

Yet for the man on whose character he so freely exercised his wit
Bernard Longueville had a strong affection. It is nothing against
the validity of a friendship that the parties to it have not a mutual
resemblance. There must be a basis of agreement, but the structure
reared upon it may contain a thousand disparities. These two young men
had formed an alliance of old, in college days, and the bond between
them had been strengthened by the simple fact of its having survived the
sentimental revolutions of early life. Its strongest link was a sort of
mutual respect. Their tastes, their pursuits were different; but each
of them had a high esteem for the other’s character. It may be said that
they were easily pleased; for it is certain that neither of them had
performed any very conspicuous action. They were highly civilized
young Americans, born to an easy fortune and a tranquil destiny, and
unfamiliar with the glitter of golden opportunities. If I did not shrink
from disparaging the constitution of their native land for their own
credit, I should say that it had never been very definitely proposed to
these young gentlemen to distinguish themselves. On reaching manhood,
they had each come into property sufficient to make violent exertion
superfluous. Gordon Wright, indeed, had inherited a large estate. Their
wants being tolerably modest, they had not been tempted to strive for
the glory of building up commercial fortunes--the most obvious career
open to young Americans. They had, indeed, embraced no career at all,
and if summoned to give an account of themselves would, perhaps, have
found it hard to tell any very impressive story. Gordon Wright was much
interested in physical science, and had ideas of his own on what is
called the endowment of research. His ideas had taken a practical
shape, and he had distributed money very freely among the investigating
classes, after which he had gone to spend a couple of years in Germany,
supposing it to be the land of laboratories. Here we find him at
present, cultivating relations with several learned bodies and promoting
the study of various tough branches of human knowledge, by paying the
expenses of difficult experiments. The experiments, it must be added,
were often of his own making, and he must have the honor of whatever
brilliancy attaches, in the estimation of the world, to such pursuits.
It was not, indeed, a brilliancy that dazzled Bernard Longueville, who,
however, was not easily dazzled by anything. It was because he regarded
him in so plain and direct a fashion, that Bernard had an affection
for his friend--an affection to which it would perhaps be difficult to
assign a definite cause. Personal sympathies are doubtless caused by
something; but the causes are remote, mysterious to our daily vision,
like those of the particular state of the weather. We content ourselves
with remarking that it is fine or that it rains, and the enjoyment of
our likes and dislikes is by no means apt to borrow its edge from
the keenness of our analysis. Longueville had a relish for fine
quality--superior savour; and he was sensible of this merit in the
simple, candid, manly, affectionate nature of his comrade, which seemed
to him an excellent thing of its kind. Gordon Wright had a tender heart
and a strong will--a combination which, when the understanding is not
too limited, is often the motive of admirable actions. There might
sometimes be a question whether Gordon’s understanding were sufficiently
unlimited, but the impulses of a generous temper often play a useful
part in filling up the gaps of an incomplete imagination, and
the general impression that Wright produced was certainly that
of intelligent good-nature. The reasons for appreciating Bernard
Longueville were much more manifest. He pleased superficially, as well
as fundamentally. Nature had sent him into the world with an armful
of good gifts. He was very good-looking--tall, dark, agile, perfectly
finished, so good-looking that he might have been a fool and yet be
forgiven. As has already been intimated, however, he was far from being
a fool. He had a number of talents, which, during three or four years
that followed his leaving college, had received the discipline of the
study of the law. He had not made much of the law; but he had
made something of his talents. He was almost always spoken of as
“accomplished;” people asked why he did n’t do something. This question
was never satisfactorily answered, the feeling being that Longueville
did more than many people in causing it to be asked. Moreover, there was
one thing he did constantly--he enjoyed himself. This is manifestly not
a career, and it has been said at the outset that he was not attached
to any of the recognized professions. But without going into details,
he was a charming fellow--clever, urbane, free-handed, and with that
fortunate quality in his appearance which is known as distinction.






CHAPTER III

He had not specified, in writing to Gordon Wright, the day on which
he should arrive at Baden-Baden; it must be confessed that he was
not addicted to specifying days. He came to his journey’s end in the
evening, and, on presenting himself at the hotel from which his friend
had dated his letter, he learned that Gordon Wright had betaken himself
after dinner, according to the custom of Baden-Baden, to the grounds
of the Conversation-house. It was eight o’clock, and Longueville, after
removing the stains of travel, sat down to dine. His first impulse had
been to send for Gordon to come and keep him company at his repast; but
on second thought he determined to make it as brief as possible. Having
brought it to a close, he took his way to the Kursaal. The great German
watering-place is one of the prettiest nooks in Europe, and of a summer
evening in the gaming days, five-and-twenty years ago, it was one of the
most brilliant scenes. The lighted windows of the great temple of hazard
(of as chaste an architecture as if it had been devoted to a much purer
divinity) opened wide upon the gardens and groves; the little river that
issues from the bosky mountains of the Black Forest flowed, with an air
of brook-like innocence, past the expensive hotels and lodging-houses;
the orchestra, in a high pavilion on the terrace of the Kursaal, played
a discreet accompaniment to the conversation of the ladies and gentlemen
who, scattered over the large expanse on a thousand little chairs,
preferred for the time the beauties of nature to the shuffle of coin and
the calculation of chance; while the faint summer stars, twinkling above
the vague black hills and woods, looked down at the indifferent groups
without venturing to drop their light upon them.

Longueville, noting all this, went straight into the gaming-rooms; he
was curious to see whether his friend, being fond of experiments, was
trying combinations at roulette. But he was not to be found in any of
the gilded chambers, among the crowd that pressed in silence about the
tables; so that Bernard presently came and began to wander about the
lamp-lit terrace, where innumerable groups, seated and strolling, made
the place a gigantic conversazione. It seemed to him very agreeable and
amusing, and he remarked to himself that, for a man who was supposed not
to take especially the Epicurean view of life, Gordon Wright, in coming
to Baden, had certainly made himself comfortable. Longueville went his
way, glancing from one cluster of talkers to another; and at last he saw
a face which brought him to a stop. He stood a moment looking at it; he
knew he had seen it before. He had an excellent memory for faces; but
it was some time before he was able to attach an identity to this one.
Where had he seen a little elderly lady with an expression of timorous
vigilance, and a band of hair as softly white as a dove’s wing? The
answer to the question presently came--Where but in a grass-grown corner
of an old Italian town? The lady was the mother of his inconsequent
model, so that this mysterious personage was probably herself not far
off. Before Longueville had time to verify this induction, he found his
eyes resting upon the broad back of a gentleman seated close to the old
lady, and who, turning away from her, was talking to a young girl.
It was nothing but the back of this gentleman that he saw, but
nevertheless, with the instinct of true friendship, he recognized in
this featureless expanse the robust personality of Gordon Wright. In a
moment he had stepped forward and laid his hand upon Wright’s shoulder.

His friend looked round, and then sprang up with a joyous exclamation
and grasp of the hand.

“My dear fellow--my dear Bernard! What on earth--when did you arrive?”

While Bernard answered and explained a little, he glanced from his
friend’s good, gratified face at the young girl with whom Wright had
been talking, and then at the lady on the other side, who was giving him
a bright little stare. He raised his hat to her and to the young
girl, and he became conscious, as regards the latter, of a certain
disappointment. She was very pretty; she was looking at him; but she was
not the heroine of the little incident of the terrace at Siena.

“It ‘s just like Longueville, you know,” Gordon Wright went on; “he
always comes at you from behind; he ‘s so awfully fond of surprises.” He
was laughing; he was greatly pleased; he introduced Bernard to the two
ladies. “You must know Mrs. Vivian; you must know Miss Blanche Evers.”

Bernard took his place in the little circle; he wondered whether he
ought to venture upon a special recognition of Mrs. Vivian. Then it
seemed to him that he should leave the option of this step with the
lady, especially as he had detected recognition in her eye. But Mrs.
Vivian ventured upon nothing special; she contented herself with soft
generalities--with remarking that she always liked to know when people
would arrive; that, for herself, she never enjoyed surprises.

“And yet I imagine you have had your share,” said Longueville, with a
smile. He thought this might remind her of the moment when she came out
of the little church at Siena and found her daughter posturing to an
unknown painter.

But Mrs. Vivian, turning her benignant head about, gave but a
superficial reply.

“Oh, I have had my share of everything, good and bad. I don’t complain
of anything.” And she gave a little deprecating laugh.

Gordon Wright shook hands with Bernard again; he seemed really very glad
to see him. Longueville, remembering that Gordon had written to him
that he had been “making love,” began to seek in his countenance for the
ravages of passion. For the moment, however, they were not apparent; the
excellent, honest fellow looked placid and contented. Gordon Wright had
a clear gray eye, short, straight, flaxen hair, and a healthy diffusion
of color. His features were thick and rather irregular; but his
countenance--in addition to the merit of its expression--derived a
certain grace from a powerful yellow moustache, to which its wearer
occasionally gave a martial twist. Gordon Wright was not tall, but he
was strong, and in his whole person there was something well-planted and
sturdy. He almost always dressed in light-colored garments, and he wore
round his neck an eternal blue cravat. When he was agitated he grew very
red. While he questioned Longueville about his journey and his health,
his whereabouts and his intentions, the latter, among his own replies,
endeavored to read in Wright’s eyes some account of his present
situation. Was that pretty girl at his side the ambiguous object of his
adoration, and, in that case, what was the function of the elder lady,
and what had become of her argumentative daughter? Perhaps this was
another, a younger daughter, though, indeed, she bore no resemblance to
either of Longueville’s friends. Gordon Wright, in spite of Bernard’s
interrogative glances, indulged in no optical confidences. He had
too much to tell. He would keep his story till they should be alone
together. It was impossible that they should adjourn just yet to
social solitude; the two ladies were under Gordon’s protection. Mrs.
Vivian--Bernard felt a satisfaction in learning her name; it was as if a
curtain, half pulled up and stopped by a hitch, had suddenly been raised
altogether--Mrs. Vivian sat looking up and down the terrace at the
crowd of loungers and talkers with an air of tender expectation. She was
probably looking for her elder daughter, and Longueville could not help
wishing also that this young lady would arrive. Meanwhile, he saw that
the young girl to whom Gordon had been devoting himself was extremely
pretty, and appeared eminently approachable. Longueville had some talk
with her, reflecting that if she were the person concerning whom Gordon
had written him, it behooved him to appear to take an interest in her.
This view of the case was confirmed by Gordon Wright’s presently turning
away to talk with Mrs. Vivian, so that his friend might be at liberty to
make acquaintance with their companion.

Though she had not been with the others at Siena, it seemed to
Longueville, with regard to her, too, that this was not the first time
he had seen her. She was simply the American pretty girl, whom he had
seen a thousand times. It was a numerous sisterhood, pervaded by a
strong family likeness. This young lady had charming eyes (of the color
of Gordon’s cravats), which looked everywhere at once and yet found time
to linger in some places, where Longueville’s own eyes frequently
met them. She had soft brown hair, with a silky-golden thread in it,
beautifully arranged and crowned by a smart little hat that savoured
of Paris. She had also a slender little figure, neatly rounded, and
delicate, narrow hands, prettily gloved. She moved about a great deal
in her place, twisted her little flexible body and tossed her head,
fingered her hair and examined the ornaments of her dress. She had
a great deal of conversation, Longueville speedily learned, and she
expressed herself with extreme frankness and decision. He asked her,
to begin with, if she had been long at Baden, but the impetus of
this question was all she required. Turning her charming, conscious,
coquettish little face upon him, she instantly began to chatter.

“I have been here about four weeks. I don’t know whether you call that
long. It does n’t seem long to me; I have had such a lovely time. I have
met ever so many people here I know--every day some one turns up. Now
you have turned up to-day.”

“Ah, but you don’t know me,” said Longueville, laughing.

“Well, I have heard a great deal about you!” cried the young girl, with
a pretty little stare of contradiction. “I think you know a great friend
of mine, Miss Ella Maclane, of Baltimore. She ‘s travelling in Europe
now.” Longueville’s memory did not instantly respond to this signal, but
he expressed that rapturous assent which the occasion demanded, and
even risked the observation that the young lady from Baltimore was very
pretty. “She ‘s far too lovely,” his companion went on. “I have often
heard her speak of you. I think you know her sister rather better than
you know her. She has not been out very long. She is just as interesting
as she can be. Her hair comes down to her feet. She ‘s travelling in
Norway. She has been everywhere you can think of, and she ‘s going to
finish off with Finland. You can’t go any further than that, can you?
That ‘s one comfort; she will have to turn round and come back. I want
her dreadfully to come to Baden-Baden.”

“I wish she would,” said Longueville. “Is she travelling alone?”

“Oh, no. They ‘ve got some Englishman. They say he ‘s devoted to Ella.
Every one seems to have an Englishman, now. We ‘ve got one here, Captain
Lovelock, the Honourable Augustus Lovelock. Well, they ‘re awfully
handsome. Ella Maclane is dying to come to Baden-Baden. I wish you ‘d
write to her. Her father and mother have got some idea in their heads;
they think it ‘s improper--what do you call it?--immoral. I wish you
would write to her and tell her it is n’t. I wonder if they think that
Mrs. Vivian would come to a place that ‘s immoral. Mrs. Vivian says she
would take her in a moment; she does n’t seem to care how many she has.
I declare, she ‘s only too kind. You know I ‘m in Mrs. Vivian’s care.
My mother ‘s gone to Marienbad. She would let me go with Mrs. Vivian
anywhere, on account of the influence--she thinks so much of Mrs.
Vivian’s influence. I have always heard a great deal about it, have n’t
you? I must say it ‘s lovely; it ‘s had a wonderful effect upon me. I
don’t want to praise myself, but it has. You ask Mrs. Vivian if I have
n’t been good. I have been just as good as I can be. I have been so
peaceful, I have just sat here this way. Do you call this immoral? You
‘re not obliged to gamble if you don’t want to. Ella Maclane’s father
seems to think you get drawn in. I ‘m sure I have n’t been drawn in. I
know what you ‘re going to say--you ‘re going to say I have been drawn
out. Well, I have, to-night. We just sit here so quietly--there ‘s
nothing to do but to talk. We make a little party by ourselves--are you
going to belong to our party? Two of us are missing--Miss Vivian and
Captain Lovelock. Captain Lovelock has gone with her into the rooms to
explain the gambling--Miss Vivian always wants everything explained. I
am sure I understood it the first time I looked at the tables. Have you
ever seen Miss Vivian? She ‘s very much admired, she ‘s so very unusual.
Black hair ‘s so uncommon--I see you have got it too--but I mean for
young ladies. I am sure one sees everything here. There ‘s a woman
that comes to the tables--a Portuguese countess--who has hair that is
positively blue. I can’t say I admire it when it comes to that shade.
Blue ‘s my favorite color, but I prefer it in the eyes,” continued
Longueville’s companion, resting upon him her own two brilliant little
specimens of the tint.

He listened with that expression of clear amusement which is not always
an indication of high esteem, but which even pretty chatterers, who are
not the reverse of estimable, often prefer to masculine inattention; and
while he listened Bernard, according to his wont, made his reflections.
He said to himself that there were two kinds of pretty girls--the
acutely conscious and the finely unconscious. Mrs. Vivian’s protege was
a member of the former category; she belonged to the genus coquette. We
all have our conception of the indispensable, and the indispensable, to
this young lady, was a spectator; almost any male biped would serve
the purpose. To her spectator she addressed, for the moment, the whole
volume of her being--addressed it in her glances, her attitudes, her
exclamations, in a hundred little experiments of tone and gesture and
position. And these rustling artifices were so innocent and obvious
that the directness of her desire to be well with her observer became
in itself a grace; it led Bernard afterward to say to himself that the
natural vocation and metier of little girls for whom existence was but a
shimmering surface, was to prattle and ruffle their plumage; their
view of life and its duties was as simple and superficial as that of
an Oriental bayadere. It surely could not be with regard to this
transparent little flirt that Gordon Wright desired advice; you could
literally see the daylight--or rather the Baden gaslight--on the other
side of her. She sat there for a minute, turning her little empty head
to and fro, and catching Bernard’s eye every time she moved; she had for
the instant the air of having exhausted all topics. Just then a young
lady, with a gentleman at her side, drew near to the little group, and
Longueville, perceiving her, instantly got up from his chair.

“There ‘s a beauty of the unconscious class!” he said to himself. He
knew her face very well; he had spent half an hour in copying it.

“Here comes Miss Vivian!” said Gordon Wright, also getting up, as if to
make room for the daughter near the mother.

She stopped in front of them, smiling slightly, and then she rested her
eyes upon Longueville. Their gaze at first was full and direct, but
it expressed nothing more than civil curiosity. This was immediately
followed, however, by the light of recognition--recognition embarrassed,
and signalling itself by a blush.

Miss Vivian’s companion was a powerful, handsome fellow, with a
remarkable auburn beard, who struck the observer immediately as being
uncommonly well dressed. He carried his hands in the pockets of a little
jacket, the button-hole of which was adorned with a blooming rose. He
approached Blanche Evers, smiling and dandling his body a little, and
making her two or three jocular bows.

“Well, I hope you have lost every penny you put on the table!” said the
young girl, by way of response to his obeisances.

He began to laugh and repeat them.

“I don’t care what I lose, so long--so long--”

“So long as what, pray?”

“So long as you let me sit down by you!” And he dropped, very gallantly,
into a chair on the other side of her.

“I wish you would lose all your property!” she replied, glancing at
Bernard.

“It would be a very small stake,” said Captain Lovelock. “Would you
really like to see me reduced to misery?”

While this graceful dialogue rapidly established itself, Miss Vivian
removed her eyes from Longueville’s face and turned toward her
mother. But Gordon Wright checked this movement by laying his hand on
Longueville’s shoulder and proceeding to introduce his friend.

“This is the accomplished creature, Mr. Bernard Longueville, of whom you
have heard me speak. One of his accomplishments, as you see, is to drop
down from the moon.”

“No, I don’t drop from the moon,” said Bernard, laughing. “I drop
from--Siena!” He offered his hand to Miss Vivian, who for an appreciable
instant hesitated to extend her own. Then she returned his salutation,
without any response to his allusion to Siena.

She declined to take a seat, and said she was tired and preferred to go
home. With this suggestion her mother immediately complied, and the two
ladies appealed to the indulgence of little Miss Evers, who was obliged
to renounce the society of Captain Lovelock. She enjoyed this luxury,
however, on the way to Mrs. Vivian’s lodgings, toward which they all
slowly strolled, in the sociable Baden fashion. Longueville might
naturally have found himself next Miss Vivian, but he received an
impression that she avoided him. She walked in front, and Gordon Wright
strolled beside her, though Longueville noticed that they appeared to
exchange but few words. He himself offered his arm to Mrs. Vivian, who
paced along with a little lightly-wavering step, making observations
upon the beauties of Baden and the respective merits of the hotels.






CHAPTER IV

“Which of them is it?” asked Longueville of his friend, after they had
bidden good-night to the three ladies and to Captain Lovelock, who went
off to begin, as he said, the evening. They stood, when they had turned
away from the door of Mrs. Vivian’s lodgings, in the little, rough-paved
German street.

“Which of them is what?” Gordon asked, staring at his companion.

“Oh, come,” said Longueville, “you are not going to begin to play at
modesty at this hour! Did n’t you write to me that you had been making
violent love?”

“Violent? No.”

“The more shame to you! Has your love-making been feeble?”

His friend looked at him a moment rather soberly.

“I suppose you thought it a queer document--that letter I wrote you.”

“I thought it characteristic,” said Longueville smiling.

“Is n’t that the same thing?”

“Not in the least. I have never thought you a man of oddities.” Gordon
stood there looking at him with a serious eye, half appealing, half
questioning; but at these last words he glanced away. Even a very modest
man may wince a little at hearing himself denied the distinction of a
few variations from the common type. Longueville made this reflection,
and it struck him, also, that his companion was in a graver mood than he
had expected; though why, after all, should he have been in a state of
exhilaration? “Your letter was a very natural, interesting one,” Bernard
added.

“Well, you see,” said Gordon, facing his companion again, “I have been a
good deal preoccupied.”

“Obviously, my dear fellow!”

“I want very much to marry.”

“It ‘s a capital idea,” said Longueville.

“I think almost as well of it,” his friend declared, “as if I had
invented it. It has struck me for the first time.”

These words were uttered with a mild simplicity which provoked
Longueville to violent laughter.

“My dear fellow,” he exclaimed, “you have, after all, your little
oddities.”

Singularly enough, however, Gordon Wright failed to appear flattered by
this concession.

“I did n’t send for you to laugh at me,” he said.

“Ah, but I have n’t travelled three hundred miles to cry! Seriously,
solemnly, then, it is one of these young ladies that has put marriage
into your head?”

“Not at all. I had it in my head.”

“Having a desire to marry, you proceeded to fall in love.”

“I am not in love!” said Gordon Wright, with some energy.

“Ah, then, my dear fellow, why did you send for me?”

Wright looked at him an instant in silence.

“Because I thought you were a good fellow, as well as a clever one.”

“A good fellow!” repeated Longueville. “I don’t understand your
confounded scientific nomenclature. But excuse me; I won’t laugh. I am
not a clever fellow; but I am a good one.” He paused a moment, and then
laid his hand on his companion’s shoulder. “My dear Gordon, it ‘s no
use; you are in love.”

“Well, I don’t want to be,” said Wright.

“Heavens, what a horrible sentiment!”

“I want to marry with my eyes open. I want to know my wife. You don’t
know people when you are in love with them. Your impressions are
colored.”

“They are supposed to be, slightly. And you object to color?”

“Well, as I say, I want to know the woman I marry, as I should know any
one else. I want to see her as clearly.”

“Depend upon it, you have too great an appetite for knowledge; you set
too high an esteem upon the dry light of science.”

“Ah!” said Gordon promptly; “of course I want to be fond of her.”

Bernard, in spite of his protest, began to laugh again.

“My dear Gordon, you are better than your theories. Your passionate
heart contradicts your frigid intellect. I repeat it--you are in love.”

“Please don’t repeat it again,” said Wright.

Bernard took his arm, and they walked along.

“What shall I call it, then? You are engaged in making studies for
matrimony.”

“I don’t in the least object to your calling it that. My studies are of
extreme interest.”

“And one of those young ladies is the fair volume that contains the
precious lesson,” said Longueville. “Or perhaps your text-book is in two
volumes?”

“No; there is one of them I am not studying at all. I never could do two
things at once.”

“That proves you are in love. One can’t be in love with two women
at once, but one may perfectly have two of them--or as many as you
please--up for a competitive examination. However, as I asked you
before, which of these young ladies is it that you have selected?”

Gordon Wright stopped abruptly, eying his friend.

“Which should you say?”

“Ah, that ‘s not a fair question,” Bernard urged. “It would be invidious
for me to name one rather than the other, and if I were to mention the
wrong one, I should feel as if I had been guilty of a rudeness towards
the other. Don’t you see?”

Gordon saw, perhaps, but he held to his idea of making his companion
commit himself.

“Never mind the rudeness. I will do the same by you some day, to make it
up. Which of them should you think me likely to have taken a fancy to?
On general grounds, now, from what you know of me?” He proposed this
problem with an animated eye.

“You forget,” his friend said, “that though I know, thank heaven, a good
deal of you, I know very little of either of those girls. I have had too
little evidence.”

“Yes, but you are a man who notices. That ‘s why I wanted you to come.”

“I spoke only to Miss Evers.”

“Yes, I know you have never spoken to Miss Vivian.” Gordon Wright stood
looking at Bernard and urging his point as he pronounced these words.
Bernard felt peculiarly conscious of his gaze. The words represented an
illusion, and Longueville asked himself quickly whether it were not his
duty to dispel it. The answer came more slowly than the question,
but still it came, in the shape of a negative. The illusion was but a
trifling one, and it was not for him, after all, to let his friend know
that he had already met Miss Vivian. It was for the young girl
herself, and since she had not done so--although she had the
opportunity--Longueville said to himself that he was bound in honor not
to speak. These reflections were very soon made, but in the midst of
them our young man, thanks to a great agility of mind, found time
to observe, tacitly, that it was odd, just there, to see his “honor”
 thrusting in its nose. Miss Vivian, in her own good time, would
doubtless mention to Gordon the little incident of Siena. It was
Bernard’s fancy, for a moment, that he already knew it, and that the
remark he had just uttered had an ironical accent; but this impression
was completely dissipated by the tone in which he added--“All the same,
you noticed her.”

“Oh, yes; she is very noticeable.”

“Well, then,” said Gordon, “you will see. I should like you to make
it out. Of course, if I am really giving my attention to one to the
exclusion of the other, it will be easy to discover.”

Longueville was half amused, half irritated by his friend’s own relish
of his little puzzle. “‘The exclusion of the other’ has an awkward
sound,” he answered, as they walked on. “Am I to notice that you are
very rude to one of the young ladies?”

“Oh dear, no. Do you think there is a danger of that?”

“Well,” said Longueville, “I have already guessed.”

Gordon Wright remonstrated. “Don’t guess yet--wait a few days. I won’t
tell you now.”

“Let us see if he does n’t tell me,” said Bernard, privately. And he
meditated a moment. “When I presented myself, you were sitting very
close to Miss Evers and talking very earnestly. Your head was bent
toward her--it was very lover-like. Decidedly, Miss Evers is the
object!”

For a single instant Gordon Wright hesitated, and then--“I hope I have
n’t seemed rude to Miss Vivian!” he exclaimed.

Bernard broke into a light laugh. “My dear Gordon, you are very much in
love!” he remarked, as they arrived at their hotel.






CHAPTER V

Life at Baden-Baden proved a very sociable affair, and Bernard
Longueville perceived that he should not lack opportunity for the
exercise of those gifts of intelligence to which Gordon Wright had
appealed. The two friends took long walks through the woods and over the
mountains, and they mingled with human life in the crowded precincts of
the Conversation-house. They engaged in a ramble on the morning after
Bernard’s arrival, and wandered far away, over hill and dale. The
Baden forests are superb, and the composition of the landscape is most
effective. There is always a bosky dell in the foreground, and a
purple crag embellished with a ruined tower at a proper angle. A little
timber-and-plaster village peeps out from a tangle of plum-trees, and a
way-side tavern, in comfortable recurrence, solicits concessions to the
national custom of frequent refreshment. Gordon Wright, who was a dogged
pedestrian, always enjoyed doing his ten miles, and Longueville, who was
an incorrigible stroller, felt a keen relish for the picturesqueness
of the country. But it was not, on this occasion, of the charms of the
landscape or the pleasures of locomotion that they chiefly discoursed.
Their talk took a more closely personal turn. It was a year since they
had met, and there were many questions to ask and answer, many arrears
of gossip to make up. As they stretched themselves on the grass on a
sun-warmed hill-side, beneath a great German oak whose arms were quiet
in the blue summer air, there was a lively exchange of impressions,
opinions, speculations, anecdotes. Gordon Wright was surely an excellent
friend. He took an interest in you. He asked no idle questions and made
no vague professions; but he entered into your situation, he examined
it in detail, and what he learned he never forgot. Months afterwards,
he asked you about things which you yourself had forgotten. He was not a
man of whom it would be generally said that he had the gift of
sympathy; but he gave his attention to a friend’s circumstances with
a conscientious fixedness which was at least very far removed from
indifference. Bernard had the gift of sympathy--or at least he was
supposed to have it; but even he, familiar as he must therefore have
been with the practice of this charming virtue, was at times so
struck with his friend’s fine faculty of taking other people’s affairs
seriously that he constantly exclaimed to himself, “The excellent
fellow--the admirable nature!”

Bernard had two or three questions to ask about the three persons who
appeared to have formed for some time his companion’s principal society,
but he was indisposed to press them. He felt that he should see for
himself, and at a prospect of entertainment of this kind, his
fancy always kindled. Gordon was, moreover, at first rather shy of
confidences, though after they had lain on the grass ten minutes there
was a good deal said.

“Now what do you think of her face?” Gordon asked, after staring a while
at the sky through the oak-boughs.

“Of course, in future,” said Longueville, “whenever you make use of
the personal pronoun feminine, I am to understand that Miss Vivian is
indicated.”

“Her name is Angela,” said Gordon; “but of course I can scarcely call
her that.”

“It ‘s a beautiful name,” Longueville rejoined; “but I may say, in
answer to your question, that I am not struck with the fact that her
face corresponds to it.”

“You don’t think her face beautiful, then?”

“I don’t think it angelic. But how can I tell? I have only had a glimpse
of her.”

“Wait till she looks at you and speaks--wait till she smiles,” said
Gordon.

“I don’t think I saw her smile--at least, not at me, directly. I hope
she will!” Longueville went on. “But who is she--this beautiful girl
with the beautiful name?”

“She is her mother’s daughter,” said Gordon Wright. “I don’t really know
a great deal more about her than that.”

“And who is her mother?”

“A delightful little woman, devoted to Miss Vivian. She is a widow, and
Angela is her only child. They have lived a great deal in Europe; they
have but a modest income. Over here, Mrs. Vivian says, they can get a
lot of things for their money that they can’t get at home. So they stay,
you see. When they are at home they live in New York. They know some of
my people there. When they are in Europe they live about in different
places. They are fond of Italy. They are extremely nice; it ‘s
impossible to be nicer. They are very fond of books, fond of music, and
art, and all that. They always read in the morning. They only come out
rather late in the day.”

“I see they are very superior people,” said Bernard. “And little Miss
Evers--what does she do in the morning? I know what she does in the
evening!”

“I don’t know what her regular habits are. I have n’t paid much
attention to her. She is very pretty.”

“Wunderschon!” said Bernard. “But you were certainly talking to her last
evening.”

“Of course I talk to her sometimes. She is totally different from Angela
Vivian--not nearly so cultivated; but she seems very charming.”

“A little silly, eh?” Bernard suggested.

“She certainly is not so wise as Miss Vivian.”

“That would be too much to ask, eh? But the Vivians, as kind as they are
wise, have taken her under their protection.”

“Yes,” said Gordon, “they are to keep her another month or two. Her
mother has gone to Marienbad, which I believe is thought a dull place
for a young girl; so that, as they were coming here, they offered to
bring her with them. Mrs. Evers is an old friend of Mrs. Vivian, who, on
leaving Italy, had come up to Dresden to be with her. They spent a month
there together; Mrs. Evers had been there since the winter. I think
Mrs. Vivian really came to Baden-Baden--she would have preferred a less
expensive place--to bring Blanche Evers. Her mother wanted her so much
to come.”

“And was it for her sake that Captain Lovelock came, too?” Bernard
asked.

Gordon Wright stared a moment.

“I ‘m sure I don’t know!”

“Of course you can’t be interested in that,” said Bernard smiling. “Who
is Captain Lovelock?”

“He is an Englishman. I believe he is what ‘s called aristocratically
connected--the younger brother of a lord, or something of that sort.”

“Is he a clever man?”

“I have n’t talked with him much, but I doubt it. He is rather rakish;
he plays a great deal.”

“But is that considered here a proof of rakishness?” asked Bernard.
“Have n’t you played a little yourself?”

Gordon hesitated a moment.

“Yes, I have played a little. I wanted to try some experiments. I had
made some arithmetical calculations of probabilities, which I wished to
test.”

Bernard gave a long laugh.

“I am delighted with the reasons you give for amusing yourself!
Arithmetical calculations!”

“I assure you they are the real reasons!” said Gordon, blushing a
little.

“That ‘s just the beauty of it. You were not afraid of being ‘drawn in,’
as little Miss Evers says?”

“I am never drawn in, whatever the thing may be. I go in, or I stay out;
but I am not drawn,” said Gordon Wright.

“You were not drawn into coming with Mrs. Vivian and her daughter from
Dresden to this place?”

“I did n’t come with them; I came a week later.”

“My dear fellow,” said Bernard, “that distinction is unworthy of your
habitual candor.”

“Well, I was not fascinated; I was not overmastered. I wanted to come to
Baden.”

“I have no doubt you did. Had you become very intimate with your friends
in Dresden?”

“I had only seen them three times.”

“After which you followed them to this place? Ah, don’t say you were not
fascinated!” cried Bernard, laughing and springing to his feet.






CHAPTER VI

That evening, in the gardens of the Kursaal, he renewed acquaintance
with Angela Vivian. Her mother came, as usual, to sit and listen to the
music, accompanied by Blanche Evers, who was in turn attended by Captain
Lovelock. This little party found privacy in the crowd; they seated
themselves in a quiet corner in an angle of one of the barriers of the
terrace, while the movement of the brilliant Baden world went on around
them. Gordon Wright engaged in conversation with Mrs. Vivian, while
Bernard enjoyed an interview with her daughter. This young lady
continued to ignore the fact of their previous meeting, and our hero
said to himself that all he wished was to know what she preferred--he
would rigidly conform to it. He conformed to her present programme; he
had ventured to pronounce the word Siena the evening before, but he
was careful not to pronounce it again. She had her reasons for her own
reserve; he wondered what they were, and it gave him a certain pleasure
to wonder. He enjoyed the consciousness of their having a secret
together, and it became a kind of entertaining suspense to see how long
she would continue to keep it. For himself, he was in no hurry to let
the daylight in; the little incident at Siena had been, in itself, a
charming affair; but Miss Vivian’s present attitude gave it a sort of
mystic consecration. He thought she carried it off very well--the theory
that she had not seen him before; last evening she had been slightly
confused, but now she was as self-possessed as if the line she had taken
were a matter of conscience. Why should it be a matter of conscience?
Was she in love with Gordon Wright, and did she wish, in consequence,
to forget--and wish him not to suspect--that she had ever received an
expression of admiration from another man? This was not likely; it was
not likely, at least, that Miss Vivian wished to pass for a prodigy of
innocence; for if to be admired is to pay a tribute to corruption, it
was perfectly obvious that so handsome a girl must have tasted of the
tree of knowledge. As for her being in love with Gordon Wright, that of
course was another affair, and Bernard did not pretend, as yet, to have
an opinion on this point, beyond hoping very much that she might be.

He was not wrong in the impression of her good looks that he had carried
away from the short interview at Siena. She had a charmingly chiselled
face, with a free, pure outline, a clear, fair complexion, and the eyes
and hair of a dusky beauty. Her features had a firmness which
suggested tranquillity, and yet her expression was light and quick, a
combination--or a contradiction--which gave an original stamp to her
beauty. Bernard remembered that he had thought it a trifle “bold”; but
he now perceived that this had been but a vulgar misreading of her dark,
direct, observant eye. The eye was a charming one; Bernard discovered in
it, little by little, all sorts of things; and Miss Vivian was, for the
present, simply a handsome, intelligent, smiling girl. He gave her an
opportunity to make an allusion to Siena; he said to her that his friend
told him that she and her mother had been spending the winter in Italy.

“Oh yes,” said Angela Vivian; “we were in the far south; we were five
months at Sorrento.”

“And nowhere else?”

“We spent a few days in Rome. We usually prefer the quiet places; that
is my mother’s taste.”

“It was not your mother’s taste, then,” said Bernard, “that brought you
to Baden?”

She looked at him a moment.

“You mean that Baden is not quiet?”

Longueville glanced about at the moving, murmuring crowd, at the lighted
windows of the Conversation-house, at the great orchestra perched up in
its pagoda.

“This is not my idea of absolute tranquillity.”

“Nor mine, either,” said Miss Vivian. “I am not fond of absolute
tranquillity.”

“How do you arrange it, then, with your mother?”

Again she looked at him a moment, with her clever, slightly mocking
smile.

“As you see. By making her come where I wish.”

“You have a strong will,” said Bernard. “I see that.”

“No. I have simply a weak mother. But I make sacrifices too, sometimes.”

“What do you call sacrifices?”

“Well, spending the winter at Sorrento.”

Bernard began to laugh, and then he told her she must have had a very
happy life--“to call a winter at Sorrento a sacrifice.”

“It depends upon what one gives up,” said Miss Vivian.

“What did you give up?”

She touched him with her mocking smile again.

“That is not a very civil question, asked in that way.”

“You mean that I seem to doubt your abnegation?”

“You seem to insinuate that I had nothing to renounce. I gave up--I
gave up--” and she looked about her, considering a little--“I gave up
society.”

“I am glad you remember what it was,” said Bernard. “If I have seemed
uncivil, let me make it up. When a woman speaks of giving up society,
what she means is giving up admiration. You can never have given up
that--you can never have escaped from it. You must have found it even at
Sorrento.”

“It may have been there, but I never found it. It was very
respectful--it never expressed itself.”

“That is the deepest kind,” said Bernard.

“I prefer the shallower varieties,” the young girl answered.

“Well,” said Bernard, “you must remember that although shallow
admiration expresses itself, all the admiration that expresses itself is
not shallow.”

Miss Vivian hesitated a moment.

“Some of it is impertinent,” she said, looking straight at him, rather
gravely.

Bernard hesitated about as long.

“When it is impertinent it is shallow. That comes to the same thing.”

The young girl frowned a little.

“I am not sure that I understand--I am rather stupid. But you see how
right I am in my taste for such places as this. I have to come here to
hear such ingenious remarks.”

“You should add that my coming, as well, has something to do with it.”

“Everything!” said Miss Vivian.

“Everything? Does no one else make ingenious remarks? Does n’t my friend
Wright?”

“Mr. Wright says excellent things, but I should not exactly call them
ingenious remarks.”

“It is not what Wright says; it ‘s what he does. That ‘s the charm!”
 said Bernard.

His companion was silent for a moment. “That ‘s not usually a charm;
good conduct is not thought pleasing.”

“It surely is not thought the reverse!” Bernard exclaimed.

“It does n’t rank--in the opinion of most people--among the things that
make men agreeable.”

“It depends upon what you call agreeable.”

“Exactly so,” said Miss Vivian. “It all depends on that.”

“But the agreeable,” Bernard went on--“it is n’t after all, fortunately,
such a subtle idea! The world certainly is agreed to think that virtue
is a beautiful thing.”

Miss Vivian dropped her eyes a moment, and then, looking up,

“Is it a charm?” she asked.

“For me there is no charm without it,” Bernard declared.

“I am afraid that for me there is,” said the young girl.

Bernard was puzzled--he who was not often puzzled. His companion
struck him as altogether too clever to be likely to indulge in a silly
affectation of cynicism. And yet, without this, how could one account
for her sneering at virtue?

“You talk as if you had sounded the depths of vice!” he said, laughing.
“What do you know about other than virtuous charms?”

“I know, of course, nothing about vice; but I have known virtue when it
was very tiresome.”

“Ah, then it was a poor affair. It was poor virtue. The best virtue is
never tiresome.”

Miss Vivian looked at him a little, with her fine discriminating eye.

“What a dreadful thing to have to think any virtue poor!”

This was a touching reflection, and it might have gone further had not
the conversation been interrupted by Mrs. Vivian’s appealing to her
daughter to aid a defective recollection of a story about a Spanish
family they had met at Biarritz, with which she had undertaken to
entertain Gordon Wright. After this, the little circle was joined by
a party of American friends who were spending a week at Baden, and the
conversation became general.






CHAPTER VII

But on the following evening, Bernard again found himself seated in
friendly colloquy with this interesting girl, while Gordon Wright
discoursed with her mother on one side, and little Blanche Evers
chattered to the admiring eyes of Captain Lovelock on the other.

“You and your mother are very kind to that little girl,” our hero said;
“you must be a great advantage to her.”

Angela Vivian directed her eyes to her neighbors, and let them rest
a while on the young girl’s little fidgeting figure and her fresh,
coquettish face. For some moments she said nothing, and to Longueville,
turning over several things in his mind, and watching her, it seemed
that her glance was one of disfavor. He divined, he scarcely knew how,
that her esteem for her pretty companion was small.

“I don’t know that I am very kind,” said Miss Vivian. “I have done
nothing in particular for her.”

“Mr. Wright tells me you came to this place mainly on her account.”

“I came for myself,” said Miss Vivian. “The consideration you speak of
perhaps had weight with my mother.”

“You are not an easy person to say appreciative things to,” Bernard
rejoined. “One is tempted to say them; but you don’t take them.”

The young girl colored as she listened to this observation.

“I don’t think you know,” she murmured, looking away. Then, “Set it down
to modesty,” she added.

“That, of course, is what I have done. To what else could one possibly
attribute an indifference to compliments?”

“There is something else. One might be proud.”

“There you are again!” Bernard exclaimed. “You won’t even let me praise
your modesty.”

“I would rather you should rebuke my pride.”

“That is so humble a speech that it leaves no room for rebuke.”

For a moment Miss Vivian said nothing.

“Men are singularly base,” she declared presently, with a little smile.
“They don’t care in the least to say things that might help a person.
They only care to say things that may seem effective and agreeable.”

“I see: you think that to say agreeable things is a great misdemeanor.”

“It comes from their vanity,” Miss Vivian went on, as if she had not
heard him. “They wish to appear agreeable and get credit for cleverness
and tendresse, no matter how silly it would be for another person to
believe them.”

Bernard was a good deal amused, and a little nettled.

“Women, then,” he said, “have rather a fondness for producing a bad
impression--they like to appear disagreeable?”

His companion bent her eyes upon her fan for a moment as she opened and
closed it.

“They are capable of resigning themselves to it--for a purpose.”

Bernard was moved to extreme merriment.

“For what purpose?”

“I don’t know that I mean for a purpose,” said Miss Vivian; “but for a
necessity.”

“Ah, what an odious necessity!”

“Necessities usually are odious. But women meet them. Men evade them and
shirk them.”

“I contest your proposition. Women are themselves necessities; but they
are not odious ones!” And Bernard added, in a moment, “One could n’t
evade them, if they were!”

“I object to being called a necessity,” said Angela Vivian. “It
diminishes one’s merit.”

“Ah, but it enhances the charm of life!”

“For men, doubtless!”

“The charm of life is very great,” Bernard went on, looking up at the
dusky hills and the summer stars, seen through a sort of mist of music
and talk, and of powdery light projected from the softly lurid windows
of the gaming-rooms. “The charm of life is extreme. I am unacquainted
with odious necessities. I object to nothing!”

Angela Vivian looked about her as he had done--looked perhaps a moment
longer at the summer stars; and if she had not already proved herself a
young lady of a contradictory turn, it might have been supposed she was
just then tacitly admitting the charm of life to be considerable.

“Do you suppose Miss Evers often resigns herself to being
disagreeable--for a purpose?” asked Longueville, who had glanced at
Captain Lovelock’s companion again.

“She can’t be disagreeable; she is too gentle, too soft.”

“Do you mean too silly?”

“I don’t know that I call her silly. She is not very wise; but she has
no pretensions--absolutely none--so that one is not struck with anything
incongruous.”

“What a terrible description! I suppose one ought to have a few
pretensions.”

“You see one comes off more easily without them,” said Miss Vivian.

“Do you call that coming off easily?”

She looked at him a moment gravely.

“I am very fond of Blanche,” she said.

“Captain Lovelock is rather fond of her,” Bernard went on.

The girl assented.

“He is completely fascinated--he is very much in love with her.”

“And do they mean to make an international match?”

“I hope not; my mother and I are greatly troubled.”

“Is n’t he a good fellow?”

“He is a good fellow; but he is a mere trifler. He has n’t a penny, I
believe, and he has very expensive habits. He gambles a great deal. We
don’t know what to do.”

“You should send for the young lady’s mother.”

“We have written to her pressingly. She answers that Blanche can take
care of herself, and that she must stay at Marienbad to finish her cure.
She has just begun a new one.”

“Ah well,” said Bernard, “doubtless Blanche can take care of herself.”

For a moment his companion said nothing; then she exclaimed--

“It ‘s what a girl ought to be able to do!”

“I am sure you are!” said Bernard.

She met his eyes, and she was going to make some rejoinder; but before
she had time to speak, her mother’s little, clear, conciliatory voice
interposed. Mrs. Vivian appealed to her daughter, as she had done the
night before.

“Dear Angela, what was the name of the gentleman who delivered that
delightful course of lectures that we heard in Geneva, on--what was the
title?--‘The Redeeming Features of the Pagan Morality.’”

Angela flushed a little.

“I have quite forgotten his name, mamma,” she said, without looking
round.

“Come and sit by me, my dear, and we will talk them over. I wish Mr.
Wright to hear about them,” Mrs. Vivian went on.

“Do you wish to convert him to paganism?” Bernard asked.

“The lectures were very dull; they had no redeeming features,” said
Angela, getting up, but turning away from her mother. She stood
looking at Bernard Longueville; he saw she was annoyed at her mother’s
interference. “Every now and then,” she said, “I take a turn through
the gaming-rooms. The last time, Captain Lovelock went with me. Will you
come to-night?”

Bernard assented with expressive alacrity; he was charmed with her not
wishing to break off her conversation with him.

“Ah, we ‘ll all go!” said Mrs. Vivian, who had been listening, and she
invited the others to accompany her to the Kursaal.

They left their places, but Angela went first, with Bernard Longueville
by her side; and the idea of her having publicly braved her mother,
as it were, for the sake of his society, lent for the moment an almost
ecstatic energy to his tread. If he had been tempted to presume upon his
triumph, however, he would have found a check in the fact that the young
girl herself tasted very soberly of the sweets of defiance. She
was silent and grave; she had a manner which took the edge from the
wantonness of filial independence. Yet, for all this, Bernard was
pleased with his position; and, as he walked with her through the
lighted and crowded rooms, where they soon detached themselves from
their companions, he felt that peculiar satisfaction which best
expresses itself in silence. Angela looked a while at the rows of still,
attentive faces, fixed upon the luminous green circle, across which
little heaps of louis d’or were being pushed to and fro, and she
continued to say nothing. Then at last she exclaimed simply, “Come
away!” They turned away and passed into another chamber, in which there
was no gambling. It was an immense apartment, apparently a ball-room;
but at present it was quite unoccupied. There were green velvet benches
all around it, and a great polished floor stretched away, shining in the
light of chandeliers adorned with innumerable glass drops. Miss Vivian
stood a moment on the threshold; then she passed in, and they stopped
in the middle of the place, facing each other, and with their figures
reflected as if they had been standing on a sheet of ice. There was no
one in the room; they were entirely alone.

“Why don’t you recognize me?” Bernard murmured quickly.

“Recognize you?”

“Why do you seem to forget our meeting at Siena?”

She might have answered if she had answered immediately; but she
hesitated, and while she did so something happened at the other end of
the room which caused her to shift her glance. A green velvet portiere
suspended in one of the door-ways--not that through which our
friends had passed--was lifted, and Gordon Wright stood there, holding
it up, and looking at them. His companions were behind him.

“Ah, here they are!” cried Gordon, in his loud, clear voice.

This appeared to strike Angela Vivian as an interruption, and Bernard
saw it very much in the same light.






CHAPTER VIII

He forbore to ask her his question again--she might tell him at her
convenience. But the days passed by, and she never told him--she had
her own reasons. Bernard talked with her very often; conversation formed
indeed the chief entertainment of the quiet little circle of which
he was a member. They sat on the terrace and talked in the mingled
starlight and lamplight, and they strolled in the deep green forests and
wound along the side of the gentle Baden hills, under the influence of
colloquial tendencies. The Black Forest is a country of almost unbroken
shade, and in the still days of midsummer the whole place was covered
with a motionless canopy of verdure. Our friends were not extravagant
or audacious people, and they looked at Baden life very much from the
outside--they sat aloof from the brightly lighted drama of professional
revelry. Among themselves as well, however, a little drama went
forward in which each member of the company had a part to play. Bernard
Longueville had been surprised at first at what he would have called
Miss Vivian’s approachableness--at the frequency with which he
encountered opportunities for sitting near her and entering into
conversation. He had expected that Gordon Wright would deem himself to
have established an anticipatory claim upon the young lady’s attention,
and that, in pursuance of this claim, he would occupy a recognized place
at her side. Gordon was, after all, wooing her; it was very natural
he should seek her society. In fact, he was never very far off; but
Bernard, for three or four days, had the anomalous consciousness of
being still nearer. Presently, however, he perceived that he owed this
privilege simply to his friend’s desire that he should become acquainted
with Miss Vivian--should receive a vivid impression of a person in
whom Gordon was so deeply interested. After this result might have been
supposed to be attained, Gordon Wright stepped back into his usual place
and showed her those small civilities which were the only homage that
the quiet conditions of their life rendered possible--walked with her,
talked with her, brought her a book to read, a chair to sit upon, a
couple of flowers to place in the bosom of her gown, treated her, in a
word, with a sober but by no means inexpressive gallantry. He had
not been making violent love, as he told Longueville, and these
demonstrations were certainly not violent. Bernard said to himself
that if he were not in the secret, a spectator would scarcely make the
discovery that Gordon cherished an even very safely tended flame. Angela
Vivian, on her side, was not strikingly responsive. There was nothing
in her deportment to indicate that she was in love with her systematic
suitor. She was perfectly gracious and civil. She smiled in his face
when he shook hands with her; she looked at him and listened when he
talked; she let him stroll beside her in the Lichtenthal Alley; she
read, or appeared to read, the books he lent her, and she decorated
herself with the flowers he offered. She seemed neither bored nor
embarrassed, neither irritated nor oppressed. But it was Bernard’s
belief that she took no more pleasure in his attentions than a pretty
girl must always take in any recognition of her charms. “If she ‘s
not indifferent,” he said to himself, “she is, at any rate,
impartial--profoundly impartial.”

It was not till the end of a week that Gordon Wright told him exactly
how his business stood with Miss Vivian and what he had reason to expect
and hope--a week during which their relations had been of the happiest
and most comfortable cast, and during which Bernard, rejoicing in
their long walks and talks, in the charming weather, in the beauty and
entertainment of the place, and in other things besides, had not ceased
to congratulate himself on coming to Baden. Bernard, after the first
day, had asked his friend no questions. He had a great respect for
opportunity, coming either to others or to himself, and he left Gordon
to turn his lantern as fitfully as might be upon the subject which was
tacitly open between them, but of which as yet only the mere edges had
emerged into light. Gordon, on his side, seemed content for the moment
with having his clever friend under his hand; he reserved him for final
appeal or for some other mysterious use.

“You can’t tell me you don’t know her now,” he said, one evening as the
two young men strolled along the Lichtenthal Alley--“now that you have
had a whole week’s observation of her.”

“What is a week’s observation of a singularly clever and complicated
woman?” Bernard asked.

“Ah, your week has been of some use. You have found out she is
complicated!” Gordon rejoined.

“My dear Gordon,” Longueville exclaimed, “I don’t see what it signifies
to you that I should find Miss Vivian out! When a man ‘s in love, what
need he care what other people think of the loved object?”

“It would certainly be a pity to care too much. But there is some excuse
for him in the loved object being, as you say, complicated.”

“Nonsense! That ‘s no excuse. The loved object is always complicated.”

Gordon walked on in silence a moment.

“Well, then, I don’t care a button what you think!”

“Bravo! That ‘s the way a man should talk,” cried Longueville.

Gordon indulged in another fit of meditation, and then he said--

“Now that leaves you at liberty to say what you please.”

“Ah, my dear fellow, you are ridiculous!” said Bernard.

“That ‘s precisely what I want you to say. You always think me too
reasonable.”

“Well, I go back to my first assertion. I don’t know Miss Vivian--I mean
I don’t know her to have opinions about her. I don’t suppose you wish
me to string you off a dozen mere banalites--‘She ‘s a charming
girl--evidently a superior person--has a great deal of style.’”

“Oh no,” said Gordon; “I know all that. But, at any rate,” he added,
“you like her, eh?”

“I do more,” said Longueville. “I admire her.”

“Is that doing more?” asked Gordon, reflectively.

“Well, the greater, whichever it is, includes the less.”

“You won’t commit yourself,” said Gordon. “My dear Bernard,” he added,
“I thought you knew such an immense deal about women!”

Gordon Wright was of so kindly and candid a nature that it is hardly
conceivable that this remark should have been framed to make Bernard
commit himself by putting him on his mettle. Such a view would imply
indeed on Gordon’s part a greater familiarity with the uses of irony
than he had ever possessed, as well as a livelier conviction of the
irritable nature of his friend’s vanity. In fact, however, it may be
confided to the reader that Bernard was pricked in a tender place,
though the resentment of vanity was not visible in his answer.

“You were quite wrong,” he simply said. “I am as ignorant of women as a
monk in his cloister.”

“You try to prove too much. You don’t think her sympathetic!” And as
regards this last remark, Gordon Wright must be credited with a certain
ironical impulse.

Bernard stopped impatiently.

“I ask you again, what does it matter to you what I think of her?”

“It matters in this sense--that she has refused me.”

“Refused you? Then it is all over, and nothing matters.”

“No, it is n’t over,” said Gordon, with a positive head-shake. “Don’t
you see it is n’t over?”

Bernard smiled, laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder and patted it a
little.

“Your attitude might almost pass for that of resignation.”

“I ‘m not resigned!” said Gordon Wright.

“Of course not. But when were you refused?”

Gordon stood a minute with his eyes fixed on the ground. Then, at last
looking up,

“Three weeks ago--a fortnight before you came. But let us walk along,”
 he said, “and I will tell you all about it.”

“I proposed to her three weeks ago,” said Gordon, as they walked along.
“My heart was very much set upon it. I was very hard hit--I was deeply
smitten. She had been very kind to me--she had been charming--I thought
she liked me. Then I thought her mother was pleased, and would have
liked it. Mrs. Vivian, in fact, told me as much; for of course I spoke
to her first. Well, Angela does like me--or at least she did--and I see
no reason to suppose she has changed. Only she did n’t like me enough.
She said the friendliest and pleasantest things to me, but she thought
that she knew me too little, and that I knew her even less. She made a
great point of that--that I had no right, as yet, to trust her. I told
her that if she would trust me, I was perfectly willing to trust her;
but she answered that this was poor reasoning. She said that I was
trustworthy and that she was not, and--in short, all sorts of nonsense.
She abused herself roundly--accused herself of no end of defects.”

“What defects, for instance?”

“Oh, I have n’t remembered them. She said she had a bad temper--that
she led her mother a dreadful life. Now, poor Mrs. Vivian says she is an
angel.”

“Ah yes,” Bernard observed; “Mrs. Vivian says that, very freely.”

“Angela declared that she was jealous, ungenerous, unforgiving--all
sorts of things. I remember she said ‘I am very false,’ and I think she
remarked that she was cruel.”

“But this did n’t put you off,” said Bernard.

“Not at all. She was making up.”

“She makes up very well!” Bernard exclaimed, laughing.

“Do you call that well?”

“I mean it was very clever.”

“It was not clever from the point of view of wishing to discourage me.”

“Possibly. But I am sure,” said Bernard, “that if I had been present at
your interview--excuse the impudence of the hypothesis--I should have
been struck with the young lady’s--” and he paused a moment.

“With her what?”

“With her ability.”

“Well, her ability was not sufficient to induce me to give up my idea.
She told me that after I had known her six months I should detest her.”

“I have no doubt she could make you do it if she should try. That ‘s
what I mean by her ability.”

“She calls herself cruel,” said Gordon, “but she has not had the cruelty
to try. She has been very reasonable--she has been perfect. I agreed
with her that I would drop the subject for a while, and that meanwhile
we should be good friends. We should take time to know each other better
and act in accordance with further knowledge. There was no hurry, since
we trusted each other--wrong as my trust might be. She had no wish that
I should go away. I was not in the least disagreeable to her; she liked
me extremely, and I was perfectly free to try and please her. Only I
should drop my proposal, and be free to take it up again or leave it
alone, later, as I should choose. If she felt differently then, I should
have the benefit of it, and if I myself felt differently, I should also
have the benefit of it.”

“That ‘s a very comfortable arrangement. And that ‘s your present
situation?” asked Bernard.

Gordon hesitated a moment.

“More or less, but not exactly.”

“Miss Vivian feels differently?” said Bernard.

“Not that I know of.”

Gordon’s companion, with a laugh, clapped him on the shoulder again.

“Admirable youth, you are a capital match!”

“Are you alluding to my money?”

“To your money and to your modesty. There is as much of one as of the
other--which is saying a great deal.”

“Well,” said Gordon, “in spite of that enviable combination, I am not
happy.”

“I thought you seemed pensive!” Bernard exclaimed. “It ‘s you, then, who
feel differently.”

Gordon gave a sigh.

“To say that is to say too much.”

“What shall we say, then?” his companion asked, kindly.

Gordon stopped again; he stood there looking up at a certain
particularly lustrous star which twinkled--the night was cloudy--in an
open patch of sky, and the vague brightness shone down on his honest and
serious visage.

“I don’t understand her,” he said.

“Oh, I ‘ll say that with you any day!” cried Bernard. “I can’t help you
there.”

“You must help me;” and Gordon Wright deserted his star. “You must keep
me in good humor.”

“Please to walk on, then. I don’t in the least pity you; she is very
charming with you.”

“True enough; but insisting on that is not the way to keep me in good
humor--when I feel as I do.”

“How is it you feel?”

“Puzzled to death--bewildered--depressed!”

This was but the beginning of Gordon Wright’s list; he went on to say
that though he “thought as highly” of Miss Vivian as he had ever done,
he felt less at his ease with her than in the first weeks of their
acquaintance, and this condition made him uncomfortable and unhappy.

“I don’t know what ‘s the matter,” said poor Gordon. “I don’t know what
has come between us. It is n’t her fault--I don’t make her responsible
for it. I began to notice it about a fortnight ago--before you came;
shortly after that talk I had with her that I have just described to
you. Her manner has n’t changed and I have no reason to suppose that
she likes me any the less; but she makes a strange impression on me--she
makes me uneasy. It ‘s only her nature coming out, I suppose--what you
might call her originality. She ‘s thoroughly original--she ‘s a kind
of mysterious creature. I suppose that what I feel is a sort of
fascination; but that is just what I don’t like. Hang it, I don’t want
to be fascinated--I object to being fascinated!”

This little story had taken some time in the telling, so that the two
young men had now reached their hotel.

“Ah, my dear Gordon,” said Bernard, “we speak a different language. If
you don’t want to be fascinated, what is one to say to you? ‘Object to
being fascinated!’ There ‘s a man easy to satisfy! Raffine, va!”

“Well, see here now,” said Gordon, stopping in the door-way of the inn;
“when it comes to the point, do you like it yourself?”

“When it comes to the point?” Bernard exclaimed. “I assure you I don’t
wait till then. I like the beginning--I delight in the approach of it--I
revel in the prospect.”

“That’s just what I did. But now that the thing has come--I don’t revel.
To be fascinated is to be mystified. Damn it, I like my liberty--I like
my judgment!”

“So do I--like yours,” said Bernard, laughing, as they took their
bedroom candles.






CHAPTER IX

Bernard talked of this matter rather theoretically, inasmuch as to
his own sense, he was in a state neither of incipient nor of absorbed
fascination. He got on very easily, however, with Angela Vivian, and
felt none of the mysterious discomfort alluded to by his friend. The
element of mystery attached itself rather to the young lady’s mother,
who gave him the impression that for undiscoverable reasons she avoided
his society. He regretted her evasive deportment, for he found something
agreeable in this shy and scrupulous little woman, who struck him as a
curious specimen of a society of which he had once been very fond. He
learned that she was of old New England stock, but he had not needed
this information to perceive that Mrs. Vivian was animated by the genius
of Boston. “She has the Boston temperament,” he said, using a
phrase with which he had become familiar and which evoked a train of
associations. But then he immediately added that if Mrs. Vivian was a
daughter of the Puritans, the Puritan strain in her disposition had
been mingled with another element. “It is the Boston temperament
sophisticated,” he said; “perverted a little--perhaps even corrupted.
It is the local east-wind with an infusion from climates less tonic.” It
seemed to him that Mrs. Vivian was a Puritan grown worldly--a Bostonian
relaxed; and this impression, oddly enough, contributed to his wish to
know more of her. He felt like going up to her very politely and saying,
“Dear lady and most honored compatriot, what in the world have I done
to displease you? You don’t approve of me, and I am dying to know the
reason why. I should be so happy to exert myself to be agreeable to you.
It ‘s no use; you give me the cold shoulder. When I speak to you, you
look the other way; it is only when I speak to your daughter that you
look at me. It is true that at those times you look at me very hard, and
if I am not greatly mistaken, you are not gratified by what you see.
You count the words I address to your beautiful Angela--you time our
harmless little interviews. You interrupt them indeed whenever you can;
you call her away--you appeal to her; you cut across the conversation.
You are always laying plots to keep us apart. Why can’t you leave me
alone? I assure you I am the most innocent of men. Your beautiful Angela
can’t possibly be injured by my conversation, and I have no designs
whatever upon her peace of mind. What on earth have I done to offend
you?”

These observations Bernard Longueville was disposed to make, and one
afternoon, the opportunity offering, they rose to his lips and came very
near passing them. In fact, however, at the last moment, his eloquence
took another turn. It was the custom of the orchestra at the Kursaal
to play in the afternoon, and as the music was often good, a great many
people assembled under the trees, at three o’clock, to listen to it.
This was not, as a regular thing, an hour of re-union for the little
group in which we are especially interested; Miss Vivian, in particular,
unless an excursion of some sort had been agreed upon the day before,
was usually not to be seen in the precincts of the Conversation-house
until the evening. Bernard, one afternoon, at three o’clock, directed
his steps to this small world-centre of Baden, and, passing along the
terrace, soon encountered little Blanche Evers strolling there under a
pink parasol and accompanied by Captain Lovelock. This young lady was
always extremely sociable; it was quite in accordance with her habitual
geniality that she should stop and say how d’ ye do to our hero.

“Mr. Longueville is growing very frivolous,” she said, “coming to the
Kursaal at all sorts of hours.”

“There is nothing frivolous in coming here with the hope of finding
you,” the young man answered. “That is very serious.”

“It would be more serious to lose Miss Evers than to find her,” remarked
Captain Lovelock, with gallant jocosity.

“I wish you would lose me!” cried the young girl. “I think I should like
to be lost. I might have all kinds of adventures.”

“I ‘guess’ so!” said Captain Lovelock, hilariously.

“Oh, I should find my way. I can take care of myself!” Blanche went on.

“Mrs. Vivian does n’t think so,” said Bernard, who had just perceived
this lady, seated under a tree with a book, over the top of which she
was observing her pretty protege. Blanche looked toward her and gave her
a little nod and a smile. Then chattering on to the young men--

“She ‘s awfully careful. I never saw any one so careful. But I
suppose she is right. She promised my mother she would be tremendously
particular; but I don’t know what she thinks I would do.”

“That is n’t flattering to me,” said Captain Lovelock. “Mrs. Vivian
does n’t approve of me--she wishes me in Jamaica. What does she think me
capable of?”

“And me, now?” Bernard asked. “She likes me least of all, and I, on my
side, think she ‘s so nice.”

“Can’t say I ‘m very sweet on her,” said the Captain. “She strikes me as
feline.”

Blanche Evers gave a little cry of horror.

“Stop, sir, this instant! I won’t have you talk that way about a lady
who has been so kind to me.”

“She is n’t so kind to you. She would like to lock you up where I can
never see you.”

“I ‘m sure I should n’t mind that!” cried the young girl, with a
little laugh and a toss of her head. “Mrs. Vivian has the most perfect
character--that ‘s why my mother wanted me to come with her. And if she
promised my mother she would be careful, is n’t she right to keep her
promise? She ‘s a great deal more careful than mamma ever was, and that
‘s just what mamma wanted. She would never take the trouble herself. And
then she was always scolding me. Mrs. Vivian never scolds me. She only
watches me, but I don’t mind that.”

“I wish she would watch you a little less and scold you a little more,”
 said Captain Lovelock.

“I have no doubt you wish a great many horrid things,” his companion
rejoined, with delightful asperity.

“Ah, unfortunately I never have anything I wish!” sighed Lovelock.

“Your wishes must be comprehensive,” said Bernard. “It seems to me you
have a good deal.”

The Englishman gave a shrug.

“It ‘s less than you might think. She is watching us more furiously than
ever,” he added, in a moment, looking at Mrs. Vivian. “Mr. Gordon Wright
is the only man she likes. She is awfully fond of Mr. Gordon Wright.”

“Ah, Mrs. Vivian shows her wisdom!” said Bernard.

“He is certainly very handsome,” murmured Blanche Evers, glancing
several times, with a very pretty aggressiveness, at Captain Lovelock.
“I must say I like Mr. Gordon Wright. Why in the world did you come here
without him?” she went on, addressing herself to Bernard. “You two are
so awfully inseparable. I don’t think I ever saw you alone before.”

“Oh, I have often seen Mr. Gordon Wright alone,” said Captain
Lovelock--“that is, alone with Miss Vivian. That ‘s what the old lady
likes; she can’t have too much of that.”

The young girl, poised for an instant in one of her pretty attitudes,
looked at him from head to foot.

“Well, I call that scandalous! Do you mean that she wants to make a
match?”

“I mean that the young man has six thousand a year.”

“It ‘s no matter what he has--six thousand a year is n’t much! And we
don’t do things in that way in our country. We have n’t those horrid
match-making arrangements that you have in your dreadful country.
American mothers are not like English mothers.”

“Oh, any one can see, of course,” said Captain Lovelock, “that Mr.
Gordon Wright is dying of love for Miss Vivian.”

“I can’t see it!” cried Blanche.

“He dies easier than I, eh?”

“I wish you would die!” said Blanche. “At any rate, Angela is not dying
of love for Mr. Wright.”

“Well, she will marry him all the same,” Lovelock declared.

Blanche Evers glanced at Bernard.

“Why don’t you contradict that?” she asked. “Why don’t you speak up for
your friend?”

“I am quite ready to speak for my friend,” said Bernard, “but I am not
ready to speak for Miss Vivian.”

“Well, I am,” Blanche declared. “She won’t marry him.”

“If she does n’t, I ‘ll eat my hat!” said Captain Lovelock. “What do
you mean,” he went on, “by saying that in America a pretty girl’s mother
does n’t care for a young fellow’s property?”

“Well, they don’t--we consider that dreadful. Why don’t you say so,
Mr. Longueville?” Blanche demanded. “I never saw any one take things so
quietly. Have n’t you got any patriotism?”

“My patriotism is modified by an indisposition to generalize,” said
Bernard, laughing. “On this point permit me not to generalize. I am
interested in the particular case--in ascertaining whether Mrs. Vivian
thinks very often of Gordon Wright’s income.”

Miss Evers gave a little toss of disgust.

“If you are so awfully impartial, you had better go and ask her.”

“That ‘s a good idea--I think I will go and ask her,” said Bernard.

Captain Lovelock returned to his argument.

“Do you mean to say that your mother would be indifferent to the fact
that I have n’t a shilling in the world?”

“Indifferent?” Blanche demanded. “Oh no, she would be sorry for you. She
is very charitable--she would give you a shilling!”

“She would n’t let you marry me,” said Lovelock.

“She would n’t have much trouble to prevent it!” cried the young girl.

Bernard had had enough of this intellectual fencing.

“Yes, I will go and ask Mrs. Vivian,” he repeated. And he left his
companions to resume their walk.






CHAPTER X

It had seemed to him a good idea to interrogate Mrs. Vivian; but there
are a great many good ideas that are never put into execution. As he
approached her with a smile and a salutation, and, with the air of
asking leave to take a liberty, seated himself in the empty chair beside
her, he felt a humorous relish of her own probable dismay which relaxed
the investigating impulse. His impulse was now simply to prove to her
that he was the most unobjectionable fellow in the world--a proposition
which resolved itself into several ingenious observations upon the
weather, the music, the charms and the drawbacks of Baden, the merits of
the volume that she held in her lap. If Mrs. Vivian should be annoyed,
should be fluttered, Bernard would feel very sorry for her; there was
nothing in the world that he respected more than the moral consciousness
of a little Boston woman whose view of life was serious and whose
imagination was subject to alarms. He held it to be a temple of
delicacy, where one should walk on tiptoe, and he wished to exhibit
to Mrs. Vivian the possible lightness of his own step. She herself
was incapable of being rude or ungracious, and now that she was fairly
confronted with the plausible object of her mistrust, she composed
herself to her usual attitude of refined liberality. Her book was a
volume of Victor Cousin.

“You must have an extraordinary power of abstracting your mind,” Bernard
said to her, observing it. “Studying philosophy at the Baden Kursaal
strikes me as a real intellectual feat.”

“Don’t you think we need a little philosophy here?”

“By all means--what we bring with us. But I should n’t attempt the use
of the text-book on the spot.”

“You should n’t speak of yourself as if you were not clever,” said Mrs.
Vivian. “Every one says you are so very clever.”

Longueville stared; there was an unexpectedness in the speech and an
incongruity in Mrs. Vivian’s beginning to flatter him. He needed
to remind himself that if she was a Bostonian, she was a Bostonian
perverted.

“Ah, my dear madam, every one is no one,” he said, laughing.

“It was Mr. Wright, in particular,” she rejoined. “He has always told us
that.”

“He is blinded by friendship.”

“Ah yes, we know about your friendship,” said Mrs. Vivian. “He has told
us about that.”

“You are making him out a terrible talker!”

“We think he talks so well--we are so very fond of his conversation.”

“It ‘s usually excellent,” said Bernard. “But it depends a good deal on
the subject.”

“Oh,” rejoined Mrs. Vivian, “we always let him choose his subjects.” And
dropping her eyes as if in sudden reflection, she began to smooth down
the crumpled corner of her volume.

It occurred to Bernard that--by some mysterious impulse--she was
suddenly presenting him with a chance to ask her the question that
Blanche Evers had just suggested. Two or three other things as well
occurred to him. Captain Lovelock had been struck with the fact that she
favored Gordon Wright’s addresses to her daughter, and Captain Lovelock
had a grotesque theory that she had set her heart upon seeing this young
lady come into six thousand a year. Miss Evers’s devoted swain had never
struck Bernard as a brilliant reasoner, but our friend suddenly found
himself regarding him as one of the inspired. The form of depravity into
which the New England conscience had lapsed on Mrs. Vivian’s part was
an undue appreciation of a possible son-in-law’s income! In this
illuminating discovery everything else became clear. Mrs. Vivian
disliked her humble servant because he had not thirty thousand dollars
a year, and because at a moment when it was Angela’s prime duty to
concentrate her thoughts upon Gordon Wright’s great advantages, a clever
young man of paltry fortune was a superfluous diversion.

“When you say clever, everything is relative,” he presently observed.
“Now, there is Captain Lovelock; he has a certain kind of cleverness; he
is very observant.”

Mrs. Vivian glanced up with a preoccupied air.

“We don’t like Captain Lovelock,” she said.

“I have heard him say capital things,” Bernard answered.

“We think him brutal,” said Mrs. Vivian. “Please don’t praise Captain
Lovelock.”

“Oh, I only want to be just.”

Mrs. Vivian for a moment said nothing.

“Do you want very much to be just?” she presently asked.

“It ‘s my most ardent desire.”

“I ‘m glad to hear that--and I can easily believe it,” said Mrs. Vivian.

Bernard gave her a grateful smile, but while he smiled, he asked himself
a serious question. “Why the deuce does she go on flattering me?--You
have always been very kind to me,” he said aloud.

“It ‘s on Mr. Wright’s account,” she answered demurely.

In speaking the words I have just quoted, Bernard Longueville had felt
himself, with a certain compunction, to be skirting the edge of clever
impudence; but Mrs. Vivian’s quiet little reply suggested to him that
her cleverness, if not her impudence, was almost equal to his own. He
remarked to himself that he had not yet done her justice.

“You bring everything back to Gordon Wright,” he said, continuing to
smile.

Mrs. Vivian blushed a little.

“It is because he is really at the foundation of everything that is
pleasant for us here. When we first came we had some very disagreeable
rooms, and as soon as he arrived he found us some excellent ones--that
were less expensive. And then, Mr. Longueville,” she added, with a
soft, sweet emphasis which should properly have contradicted the idea
of audacity, but which, to Bernard’s awakened sense, seemed really to
impart a vivid color to it, “he was also the cause of your joining our
little party.”

“Oh, among his services that should never be forgotten. You should set
up a tablet to commemorate it, in the wall of the Kursaal!--The wicked
little woman!” Bernard mentally subjoined.

Mrs. Vivian appeared quite unruffled by his sportive sarcasm, and she
continued to enumerate her obligations to Gordon Wright.

“There are so many ways in which a gentleman can be of assistance to
three poor lonely women, especially when he is at the same time so
friendly and so delicate as Mr. Wright. I don’t know what we should have
done without him, and I feel as if every one ought to know it. He seems
like a very old friend. My daughter and I quite worship him. I will not
conceal from you that when I saw you coming through the grounds a short
time ago without him I was very much disappointed. I hope he is not
ill.”

Bernard sat listening, with his eyes on the ground.

“Oh no, he is simply at home writing letters.”

Mrs. Vivian was silent a moment.

“I suppose he has a very large correspondence.”

“I really don’t know. Just now that I am with him he has a smaller one
than usual.”

“Ah yes. When you are separated I suppose you write volumes to each
other. But he must have a great many business letters.”

“It is very likely,” said Bernard. “And if he has, you may be sure he
writes them.”

“Order and method!” Mrs. Vivian exclaimed. “With his immense property
those virtues are necessary.”

Bernard glanced at her a moment.

“My dear Lovelock,” he said to himself, “you are not such a fool as you
seem.--Gordon’s virtues are always necessary, doubtless,” he went on.
“But should you say his property was immense?”

Mrs. Vivian made a delicate little movement of deprecation. “Oh, don’t
ask me to say! I know nothing about it; I only supposed he was rich.”

“He is rich; but he is not a Croesus.”

“Oh, you fashionable young men have a standard of luxury!” said Mrs.
Vivian, with a little laugh. “To a poverty-stricken widow such a fortune
as Mr. Wright’s seems magnificent.”

“Don’t call me such horrible names!” exclaimed Bernard. “Our friend has
certainly money enough and to spare.”

“That was all I meant. He once had occasion to allude to his property,
but he was so modest, so reserved in the tone he took about it, that one
hardly knew what to think.”

“He is ashamed of being rich,” said Bernard. “He would be sure to
represent everything unfavorably.”

“That ‘s just what I thought!” This ejaculation was more eager than Mrs.
Vivian might have intended, but even had it been less so, Bernard was in
a mood to appreciate it. “I felt that we should make allowances for his
modesty. But it was in very good taste,” Mrs. Vivian added.

“He ‘s a fortunate man,” said Bernard. “He gets credit for his good
taste--and he gets credit for the full figure of his income as well!”

“Ah,” murmured Mrs. Vivian, rising lightly, as if to make her words
appear more casual, “I don’t know the full figure of his income.”

She was turning away, and Bernard, as he raised his hat and separated
from her, felt that it was rather cruel that he should let her go
without enlightening her ignorance. But he said to himself that she knew
quite enough. Indeed, he took a walk along the Lichtenthal Alley and
carried out this line of reflection. Whether or no Miss Vivian were in
love with Gordon Wright, her mother was enamored of Gordon’s fortune,
and it had suddenly occurred to her that instead of treating the friend
of her daughter’s suitor with civil mistrust, she would help her case
better by giving him a hint of her state of mind and appealing to his
sense of propriety. Nothing could be more natural than that Mrs. Vivian
should suppose that Bernard desired his friend’s success; for, as our
thoughtful hero said to himself, what she had hitherto taken it into her
head to fear was not that Bernard should fall in love with her daughter,
but that her daughter should fall in love with him. Watering-place life
is notoriously conducive to idleness of mind, and Bernard strolled for
half an hour along the overarched avenue, glancing alternately at these
two insupposable cases.

A few days afterward, late in the evening, Gordon Wright came to his
room at the hotel.

“I have just received a letter from my sister,” he said. “I am afraid I
shall have to go away.”

“Ah, I ‘m sorry for that,” said Bernard, who was so well pleased with
the actual that he desired no mutation.

“I mean only for a short time,” Gordon explained. “My poor sister writes
from England, telling me that my brother-in-law is suddenly obliged to
go home. She has decided not to remain behind, and they are to sail a
fortnight hence. She wants very much to see me before she goes, and as I
don’t know when I shall see her again, I feel as if I ought to join
her immediately and spend the interval with her. That will take about a
fortnight.”

“I appreciate the sanctity of family ties and I project myself into
your situation,” said Bernard. “On the other hand, I don’t envy you a
breathless journey from Baden to Folkestone.”

“It ‘s the coming back that will be breathless,” exclaimed Gordon,
smiling.

“You will certainly come back, then?”

“Most certainly. Mrs. Vivian is to be here another month.”

“I understand. Well, we shall miss you very much.”

Gordon Wright looked for a moment at his companion.

“You will stay here, then? I am so glad of that.”

“I was taking it for granted; but on reflection--what do you recommend?”

“I recommend you to stay.”

“My dear fellow, your word is law,” said Bernard.

“I want you to take care of those ladies,” his friend went on. “I don’t
like to leave them alone.”

“You are joking!” cried Bernard. “When did you ever hear of my ‘taking
care’ of any one? It ‘s as much as I can do to take care of myself.”

“This is very easy,” said Gordon. “I simply want to feel that they have
a man about them.”

“They will have a man at any rate--they have the devoted Lovelock.”

“That ‘s just why I want them to have another. He has only an eye to
Miss Evers, who, by the way, is extremely bored with him. You look after
the others. You have made yourself very agreeable to them, and they like
you extremely.”

“Ah,” said Bernard, laughing, “if you are going to be coarse and
flattering, I collapse. If you are going to titillate my vanity, I
succumb.”

“It won’t be so disagreeable,” Gordon observed, with an intention
vaguely humorous.

“Oh no, it won’t be disagreeable. I will go to Mrs. Vivian every
morning, hat in hand, for my orders.”

Gordon Wright, with his hands in his pockets and a meditative
expression, took several turns about the room.

“It will be a capital chance,” he said, at last, stopping in front of
his companion.

“A chance for what?”

“A chance to arrive at a conclusion about my young friend.”

Bernard gave a gentle groan.

“Are you coming back to that? Did n’t I arrive at a conclusion long ago?
Did n’t I tell you she was a delightful girl?”

“Do you call that a conclusion? The first comer could tell me that at
the end of an hour.”

“Do you want me to invent something different?” Bernard asked. “I can’t
invent anything better.”

“I don’t want you to invent anything. I only want you to observe her--to
study her in complete independence. You will have her to yourself--my
absence will leave you at liberty. Hang it, sir,” Gordon declared, “I
should think you would like it!”

“Damn it, sir, you ‘re delicious!” Bernard answered; and he broke into
an irrepressible laugh. “I don’t suppose it ‘s for my pleasure that you
suggest the arrangement.”

Gordon took a turn about the room again.

“No, it ‘s for mine. At least, it ‘s for my benefit.”

“For your benefit?”

“I have got all sorts of ideas--I told you the other day. They are all
mixed up together and I want a fresh impression.”

“My impressions are never fresh,” Bernard replied.

“They would be if you had a little good-will--if you entered a little
into my dilemma.” The note of reproach was so distinct in these words
that Bernard stood staring. “You never take anything seriously,” his
companion went on.

Bernard tried to answer as seriously as possible.

“Your dilemma seems to me of all dilemmas the strangest.”

“That may be; but different people take things differently. Don’t you
see,” Gordon went on with a sudden outbreak of passion--“don’t you
see that I am horribly divided in mind? I care immensely for Angela
Vivian--and yet--and yet--I am afraid of her.”

“Afraid of her?”

“I am afraid she ‘s cleverer than I--that she would be a difficult wife;
that she might do strange things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, that she might flirt, for instance.”

“That ‘s not a thing for a man to fear.”

“Not when he supposes his wife to be fond of him--no. But I don’t
suppose that--I have given that up. If I should induce Angela Vivian to
accept me she would do it on grounds purely reasonable. She would think
it best, simply. That would give her a chance to repent.”

Bernard sat for some time looking at his friend.

“You say she is cleverer than you. It ‘s impossible to be cleverer than
you.”

“Oh, come, Longueville!” said Gordon, angrily.

“I am speaking very seriously. You have done a remarkably clever thing.
You have impressed me with the reality, and with--what shall I term
it?--the estimable character of what you call your dilemma. Now this
fresh impression of mine--what do you propose to do with it when you get
it?”

“Such things are always useful. It will be a good thing to have.”

“I am much obliged to you; but do you propose to let anything depend
upon it? Do you propose to take or to leave Miss Vivian--that is, to
return to the charge or to give up trying--in consequence of my fresh
impression?”

Gordon seemed perfectly unembarrassed by this question, in spite of the
ironical light which it projected upon his sentimental perplexity.

“I propose to do what I choose!” he said.

“That ‘s a relief to me,” Bernard rejoined. “This idea of yours is,
after all, only the play of the scientific mind.”

“I shall contradict you flat if I choose,” Gordon went on.

“Ah, it ‘s well to warn me of that,” said Bernard, laughing. “Even the
most sincere judgment in the world likes to be notified a little of the
danger of being contradicted.”

“Is yours the most sincere judgment in the world?” Gordon demanded.

“That ‘s a very pertinent question. Does n’t it occur to you that you
may have reason to be jealous--leaving me alone, with an open field,
with the woman of your choice?”

“I wish to heaven I could be jealous!” Gordon exclaimed. “That would
simplify the thing--that would give me a lift.”

And the next day, after some more talk, it seemed really with a hope of
this contingency--though, indeed, he laughed about it--that he started
for England.






CHAPTER XI

For the three or four days that followed Gordon Wright’s departure,
Bernard saw nothing of the ladies who had been committed to his charge.
They chose to remain in seclusion, and he was at liberty to interpret
this fact as an expression of regret at the loss of Gordon’s good
offices. He knew other people at Baden, and he went to see them and
endeavored, by cultivating their society, to await in patience the
re-appearance of Mrs. Vivian and her companions. But on the fourth day
he became conscious that other people were much less interesting than
the trio of American ladies who had lodgings above the confectioner’s,
and he made bold to go and knock at their door. He had been asked to
take care of them, and this function presupposed contact. He had
met Captain Lovelock the day before, wandering about with a rather
crest-fallen aspect, and the young Englishman had questioned him eagerly
as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Vivian.

“Gad, I believe they ‘ve left the place--left the place without giving a
fellow warning!” cried Lovelock.

“Oh no, I think they are here still,” said Bernard. “My friend Wright
has gone away for a week or two, but I suspect the ladies are simply
staying at home.”

“Gad, I was afraid your friend Wright had taken them away with him; he
seems to keep them all in his pocket. I was afraid he had given them
marching orders; they ‘d have been sure to go--they ‘re so awfully fond
of his pocket! I went to look them up yesterday--upon my word I did.
They live at a baker’s in a little back-street; people do live in rum
places when they come abroad! But I assure you, when I got there, I ‘m
damned if I could make out whether they were there or not. I don’t speak
a word of German, and there was no one there but the baker’s wife. She
was a low brute of a woman--she could n’t understand a word I said,
though she gave me plenty of her own tongue. I had to give it up. They
were not at home, but whether they had left Baden or not--that was
beyond my finding out. If they are here, why the deuce don’t they show?
Fancy coming to Baden-Baden to sit moping at a pastry-cook’s!”

Captain Lovelock was evidently irritated, and it was Bernard’s
impression that the turn of luck over yonder where the gold-pieces were
chinking had something to do with the state of his temper. But more
fortunate himself, he ascertained from the baker’s wife that though Mrs.
Vivian and her daughter had gone out, their companion, “the youngest
lady--the little young lady”--was above in the sitting-room.

Blanche Evers was sitting at the window with a book, but she
relinquished the volume with an alacrity that showed it had not been
absorbing, and began to chatter with her customary frankness.

“Well, I must say I am glad to see some one!” cried the young girl,
passing before the mirror and giving a touch to her charming tresses.

“Even if it ‘s only me,” Bernard exclaimed, laughing.

“I did n’t mean that. I am sure I am very glad to see you--I should
think you would have found out that by this time. I mean I ‘m glad to
see any one--especially a man. I suppose it ‘s improper for me to say
that--especially to you! There--you see I do think more of you than of
some gentlemen. Why especially to you? Well, because you always seem to
me to want to take advantage. I did n’t say a base advantage; I did n’t
accuse you of anything dreadful. I ‘m sure I want to take advantage,
too--I take it whenever I can. You see I take advantage of your being
here--I ‘ve got so many things to say. I have n’t spoken a word in three
days, and I ‘m sure it is a pleasant change--a gentleman’s visit. All of
a sudden we have gone into mourning; I ‘m sure I don’t know who ‘s dead.
Is it Mr. Gordon Wright? It ‘s some idea of Mrs. Vivian’s--I ‘m sure
it is n’t mine. She thinks we have been often enough to the Kursaal. I
don’t know whether she thinks it ‘s wicked, or what. If it ‘s wicked the
harm ‘s already done; I can’t be any worse than I am now. I have seen
all the improper people and I have learnt all their names; Captain
Lovelock has told me their names, plenty of times. I don’t see what good
it does me to be shut up here with all those names running in my ears.
I must say I do prefer society. We have n’t been to the Kursaal for
four days--we have only gone out for a drive. We have taken the most
interminable drives. I do believe we have seen every old ruin in
the whole country. Mrs. Vivian and Angela are so awfully fond of
scenery--they talk about it by the half-hour. They talk about the
mountains and trees as if they were people they knew--as if they were
gentlemen! I mean as if the mountains and trees were gentlemen. Of
course scenery ‘s lovely, but you can’t walk about with a tree. At any
rate, that has been all our society--foliage! Foliage and women; but I
suppose women are a sort of foliage. They are always rustling about and
dropping off. That ‘s why I could n’t make up my mind to go out
with them this afternoon. They ‘ve gone to see the Waterworths--the
Waterworths arrived yesterday and are staying at some hotel. Five
daughters--all unmarried! I don’t know what kind of foliage they are;
some peculiar kind--they don’t drop off. I thought I had had about
enough ladies’ society--three women all sticking together! I don’t think
it ‘s good for a young girl to have nothing but ladies’ society--it ‘s
so awfully limited. I suppose I ought to stand up for my own sex and
tell you that when we are alone together we want for nothing. But we
want for everything, as it happens! Women’s talk is limited--every one
knows that. That ‘s just what mamma did n’t want when she asked Mrs.
Vivian to take charge of me. Now, Mr. Longueville, what are you laughing
at?--you are always laughing at me. She wanted me to be unlimited--is
that what you say? Well, she did n’t want me to be narrowed down; she
wanted me to have plenty of conversation. She wanted me to be fitted
for society--that ‘s what mamma wanted. She wanted me to have ease of
manner; she thinks that if you don’t acquire it when you are young you
never have it at all. She was so happy to think I should come to Baden;
but she would n’t approve of the life I ‘ve been leading the last four
days. That ‘s no way to acquire ease of manner--sitting all day in a
small parlor with two persons of one’s own sex! Of course Mrs. Vivian’s
influence--that ‘s the great thing. Mamma said it was like the odor of
a flower. But you don’t want to keep smelling a flower all day, even
the sweetest; that ‘s the shortest way to get a headache. Apropos of
flowers, do you happen to have heard whether Captain Lovelock is alive
or dead? Do I call him a flower? No; I call him a flower-pot. He always
has some fine young plant in his button-hole. He has n’t been near me
these ten years--I never heard of anything so rude!”

Captain Lovelock came on the morrow, Bernard finding him in Mrs.
Vivian’s little sitting-room on paying a second visit. On this occasion
the two other ladies were at home and Bernard was not exclusively
indebted to Miss Evers for entertainment. It was to this source of
hospitality, however, that Lovelock mainly appealed, following the
young girl out upon the little balcony that was suspended above the
confectioner’s window. Mrs. Vivian sat writing at one of the windows of
the sitting-room, and Bernard addressed his conversation to Angela.

“Wright requested me to keep an eye on you,” he said; “but you seem very
much inclined to keep out of my jurisdiction.”

“I supposed you had gone away,” she answered--“now that your friend is
gone.”

“By no means. Gordon is a charming fellow, but he is by no means the
only attraction of Baden. Besides, I have promised him to look after
you--to take care of you.”

The girl looked at him a moment in silence--a little askance.

“I thought you had probably undertaken something of that sort,” she
presently said.

“It was of course a very natural request for Gordon to make.”

Angela got up and turned away; she wandered about the room and went and
stood at one of the windows. Bernard found the movement abrupt and
not particularly gracious; but the young man was not easy to snub. He
followed her, and they stood at the second window--the long window that
opened upon the balcony. Miss Evers and Captain Lovelock were leaning on
the railing, looking into the street and apparently amusing themselves
highly with what they saw.

“I am not sure it was a natural request for him to make,” said Angela.

“What could have been more so--devoted as he is to you?”

She hesitated a moment; then with a little laugh--

“He ought to have locked us up and said nothing about it.”

“It ‘s not so easy to lock you up,” said Bernard. “I know Wright has
great influence with you, but you are after all independent beings.”

“I am not an independent being. If my mother and Mr. Wright were to
agree together to put me out of harm’s way they could easily manage it.”

“You seem to have been trying something of that sort,” said Bernard.
“You have been so terribly invisible.”

“It was because I thought you had designs upon us; that you were
watching for us--to take care of us.”

“You contradict yourself! You said just now that you believed I had left
Baden.”

“That was an artificial--a conventional speech. Is n’t a lady always
supposed to say something of that sort to a visitor by way of pretending
to have noticed that she has not seen him?”

“You know I would never have left Baden without coming to bid you
good-bye,” said Bernard.

The girl made no rejoinder; she stood looking out at the little sunny,
slanting, rough-paved German street.

“Are you taking care of us now?” she asked in a moment. “Has the
operation begun? Have you heard the news, mamma?” she went on. “Do you
know that Mr. Wright has made us over to Mr. Longueville, to be kept
till called for? Suppose Mr. Wright should never call for us!”

Mrs. Vivian left her writing-table and came toward Bernard, smiling at
him and pressing her hands together.

“There is no fear of that, I think,” she said. “I am sure I am very glad
we have a gentleman near us. I think you will be a very good care-taker,
Mr. Longueville, and I recommend my daughter to put great faith in
your judgment.” And Mrs. Vivian gave him an intense--a pleading, almost
affecting--little smile.

“I am greatly touched by your confidence and I shall do everything I can
think of to merit it,” said the young man.

“Ah, mamma’s confidence is wonderful!” Angela exclaimed. “There was
never anything like mamma’s confidence. I am very different; I have no
confidence. And then I don’t like being deposited, like a parcel, or
being watched, like a curious animal. I am too fond of my liberty.”

“That is the second time you have contradicted yourself,” said Bernard.
“You said just now that you were not an independent being.”

Angela turned toward him quickly, smiling and frowning at once.

“You do watch one, certainly! I see it has already begun.” Mrs. Vivian
laid her hand upon her daughter’s with a little murmur of tender
deprecation, and the girl bent over and kissed her. “Mamma will tell you
it ‘s the effect of agitation,” she said--“that I am nervous, and don’t
know what I say. I am supposed to be agitated by Mr. Wright’s departure;
is n’t that it, mamma?”

Mrs. Vivian turned away, with a certain soft severity.

“I don’t know, my daughter. I don’t understand you.”

A charming pink flush had come into Angela’s cheek and a noticeable
light into her eye. She looked admirably handsome, and Bernard frankly
gazed at her. She met his gaze an instant, and then she went on.

“Mr. Longueville does n’t understand me either. You must know that I am
agitated,” she continued. “Every now and then I have moments of talking
nonsense. It ‘s the air of Baden, I think; it ‘s too exciting. It
‘s only lately I have been so. When you go away I shall be horribly
ashamed.”

“If the air of Baden has such an effect upon you,” said Bernard, “it
is only a proof the more that you need the solicitous attention of your
friends.”

“That may be; but, as I told you just now, I have no confidence--none
whatever, in any one or anything. Therefore, for the present, I shall
withdraw from the world--I shall seclude myself. Let us go on being
quiet, mamma. Three or four days of it have been so charming. Let the
parcel lie till it ‘s called for. It is much safer it should n’t be
touched at all. I shall assume that, metaphorically speaking, Mr.
Wright, who, as you have intimated, is our earthly providence, has
turned the key upon us. I am locked up. I shall not go out, except upon
the balcony!” And with this, Angela stepped out of the long window and
went and stood beside Miss Evers.

Bernard was extremely amused, but he was also a good deal puzzled, and
it came over him that it was not a wonder that poor Wright should not
have found this young lady’s disposition a perfectly decipherable page.
He remained in the room with Mrs. Vivian--he stood there looking at
her with his agreeably mystified smile. She had turned away, but on
perceiving that her daughter had gone outside she came toward
Bernard again, with her habitual little air of eagerness mitigated by
discretion. There instantly rose before his mind the vision of that
moment when he had stood face to face with this same apologetic mamma,
after Angela had turned her back, on the grass-grown terrace at Siena.
To make the vision complete, Mrs. Vivian took it into her head to utter
the same words.

“I am sure you think she is a strange girl.”

Bernard recognized them, and he gave a light laugh.

“You told me that the first time you ever saw me--in that quiet little
corner of an Italian town.”

Mrs. Vivian gave a little faded, elderly blush.

“Don’t speak of that,” she murmured, glancing at the open window. “It
was a little accident of travel.”

“I am dying to speak of it,” said Bernard. “It was such a charming
accident for me! Tell me this, at least--have you kept my sketch?”

Mrs. Vivian colored more deeply and glanced at the window again.

“No,” she just whispered.

Bernard looked out of the window too. Angela was leaning against the
railing of the balcony, in profile, just as she had stood while he
painted her, against the polished parapet at Siena. The young man’s eyes
rested on her a moment, then, as he glanced back at her mother:

“Has she kept it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Vivian, with decision.

The decision was excessive--it expressed the poor lady’s distress at
having her veracity tested. “Dear little daughter of the Puritans--she
can’t tell a fib!” Bernard exclaimed to himself. And with this
flattering conclusion he took leave of her.






CHAPTER XII

It was affirmed at an early stage of this narrative that he was a young
man of a contemplative and speculative turn, and he had perhaps never
been more true to his character than during an hour or two that
evening as he sat by himself on the terrace of the Conversation-house,
surrounded by the crowd of its frequenters, but lost in his meditations.
The place was full of movement and sound, but he had tilted back his
chair against the great green box of an orange-tree, and in this easy
attitude, vaguely and agreeably conscious of the music, he directed his
gaze to the star-sprinkled vault of the night. There were people coming
and going whom he knew, but he said nothing to any one--he preferred to
be alone; he found his own company quite absorbing. He felt very happy,
very much amused, very curiously preoccupied. The feeling was a singular
one. It partook of the nature of intellectual excitement. He had a
sense of having received carte blanche for the expenditure of his wits.
Bernard liked to feel his intelligence at play; this is, perhaps, the
highest luxury of a clever man. It played at present over the whole
field of Angela Vivian’s oddities of conduct--for, since his visit in
the afternoon, Bernard had felt that the spectacle was considerably
enlarged. He had come to feel, also, that poor Gordon’s predicament was
by no means an unnatural one. Longueville had begun to take his friend’s
dilemma very seriously indeed. The girl was certainly a curious study.

The evening drew to a close and the crowd of Bernard’s fellow-loungers
dispersed. The lighted windows of the Kursaal still glittered in
the bosky darkness, and the lamps along the terrace had not been
extinguished; but the great promenade was almost deserted; here and
there only a lingering couple--the red tip of a cigar and the vague
radiance of a light dress--gave animation to the place. But Bernard
sat there still in his tilted chair, beneath his orange-tree; his
imagination had wandered very far and he was awaiting its return to the
fold. He was on the point of rising, however, when he saw three figures
come down the empty vista of the terrace--figures which even at a
distance had a familiar air. He immediately left his seat and, taking
a dozen steps, recognized Angela Vivian, Blanche Evers and Captain
Lovelock. In a moment he met them in the middle of the terrace.

Blanche immediately announced that they had come for a midnight walk.

“And if you think it ‘s improper,” she exclaimed, “it ‘s not my
invention--it ‘s Miss Vivian’s.”

“I beg pardon--it ‘s mine,” said Captain Lovelock. “I desire the credit
of it. I started the idea; you never would have come without me.”

“I think it would have been more proper to come without you than with
you,” Blanche declared. “You know you ‘re a dreadful character.”

“I ‘m much worse when I ‘m away from you than when I ‘m with you,” said
Lovelock. “You keep me in order.”

The young girl gave a little cry.

“I don’t know what you call order! You can’t be worse than you have been
to-night.”

Angela was not listening to this; she turned away a little, looking
about at the empty garden.

“This is the third time to-day that you have contradicted yourself,” he
said. Though he spoke softly he went nearer to her; but she appeared not
to hear him--she looked away.

“You ought to have been there, Mr. Longueville,” Blanche went on. “We
have had a most lovely night; we sat all the evening on Mrs. Vivian’s
balcony, eating ices. To sit on a balcony, eating ices--that ‘s my idea
of heaven.”

“With an angel by your side,” said Captain Lovelock.

“You are not my idea of an angel,” retorted Blanche.

“I ‘m afraid you ‘ll never learn what the angels are really like,” said
the Captain. “That ‘s why Miss Evers got Mrs. Vivian to take rooms over
the baker’s--so that she could have ices sent up several times a day.
Well, I ‘m bound to say the baker’s ices are not bad.”

“Considering that they have been baked! But they affect the mind,”
 Blanche went on. “They would have affected Captain Lovelock’s--only he
has n’t any. They certainly affected Angela’s--putting it into her head,
at eleven o’clock, to come out to walk.”

Angela did nothing whatever to defend herself against this ingenious
sally; she simply stood there in graceful abstraction. Bernard was
vaguely vexed at her neither looking at him nor speaking to him; her
indifference seemed a contravention of that right of criticism which
Gordon had bequeathed to him.

“I supposed people went to bed at eleven o’clock,” he said.

Angela glanced about her, without meeting his eye.

“They seem to have gone.”

Miss Evers strolled on, and her Captain of course kept pace with her; so
that Bernard and Miss Vivian were left standing together. He looked at
her a moment in silence, but her eye still avoided his own.

“You are remarkably inconsistent,” Bernard presently said. “You take a
solemn vow of seclusion this afternoon, and no sooner have you taken it
than you proceed to break it in this outrageous manner.”

She looked at him now--a long time--longer than she had ever done
before.

“This is part of the examination, I suppose,” she said.

Bernard hesitated an instant.

“What examination?”

“The one you have undertaken--on Mr. Wright’s behalf.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Ah, you admit it then?” the girl exclaimed, with an eager laugh.

“I don’t in the least admit it,” said Bernard, conscious only for the
moment of the duty of loyalty to his friend and feeling that negation
here was simply a point of honor.

“I trust more to my own conviction than to your denial. You have engaged
to bring your superior wisdom and your immense experience to bear upon
me! That ‘s the understanding.”

“You must think us a pretty pair of wiseacres,” said Bernard.

“There it is--you already begin to answer for what I think. When Mr.
Wright comes back you will be able to tell him that I am ‘outrageous’!”
 And she turned away and walked on, slowly following her companions.

“What do you care what I tell him?” Bernard asked. “You don’t care a
straw.”

She said nothing for a moment, then, suddenly, she stopped again,
dropping her eyes.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, very gently; “I care a great deal. It ‘s
as well that you should know that.”

Bernard stood looking at her; her eyes were still lowered.

“Do you know what I shall tell him? I shall tell him that about eleven
o’clock at night you become peculiarly attractive.”

She went on again a few steps; Miss Evers and Captain Lovelock had
turned round and were coming toward her.

“It is very true that I am outrageous,” she said; “it was extremely
silly and in very bad taste to come out at this hour. Mamma was not at
all pleased, and I was very unkind to her. I only wanted to take a turn,
and now we will go back.” On the others coming up she announced this
resolution, and though Captain Lovelock and his companion made a
great outcry, she carried her point. Bernard offered no opposition. He
contented himself with walking back to her mother’s lodging with her
almost in silence. The little winding streets were still and empty;
there was no sound but the chatter and laughter of Blanche and her
attendant swain. Angela said nothing.

This incident presented itself at first to Bernard’s mind as a sort
of declaration of war. The girl had guessed that she was to be made
a subject of speculative scrutiny. The idea was not agreeable to her
independent spirit, and she placed herself boldly on the defensive. She
took her stand upon her right to defeat his purpose by every possible
means--to perplex, elude, deceive him--in plain English, to make a fool
of him. This was the construction which for several days Bernard put
upon her deportment, at the same time that he thought it immensely
clever of her to have guessed what had been going on in his mind. She
made him feel very much ashamed of his critical attitude, and he did
everything he could think of to put her off her guard and persuade her
that for the moment he had ceased to be an observer. His position at
moments seemed to him an odious one, for he was firmly resolved that
between him and the woman to whom his friend had proposed there should
be nothing in the way of a vulgar flirtation. Under the circumstances,
it savoured both of flirtation and of vulgarity that they should even
fall out with each other--a consummation which appeared to be more or
less definitely impending. Bernard remarked to himself that his own only
reasonable line of conduct would be instantly to leave Baden, but I
am almost ashamed to mention the fact which led him to modify this
decision. It was simply that he was induced to make the reflection that
he had really succeeded in putting Miss Vivian off her guard. How he had
done so he would have found it difficult to explain, inasmuch as in one
way or another, for a week, he had spent several hours in talk with her.
The most effective way of putting her off her guard would have been to
leave her alone, to forswear the privilege of conversation with her, to
pass the days in other society. This course would have had the drawback
of not enabling him to measure the operation of so ingenious a policy,
and Bernard liked, of all the things in the world, to know when he was
successful. He believed, at all events, that he was successful now, and
that the virtue of his conversation itself had persuaded this keen
and brilliant girl that he was thinking of anything in the world but
herself. He flattered himself that the civil indifference of his manner,
the abstract character of the topics he selected, the irrelevancy of
his allusions and the laxity of his attention, all contributed to this
result.

Such a result was certainly a remarkable one, for it is almost
superfluous to intimate that Miss Vivian was, in fact, perpetually in
his thoughts. He made it a point of conscience not to think of her, but
he was thinking of her most when his conscience was most lively. Bernard
had a conscience--a conscience which, though a little irregular in
its motions, gave itself in the long run a great deal of exercise; but
nothing could have been more natural than that, curious, imaginative,
audacious as he was, and delighting, as I have said, in the play of his
singularly nimble intelligence, he should have given himself up to a
sort of unconscious experimentation. “I will leave her alone--I will be
hanged if I attempt to draw her out!” he said to himself; and meanwhile
he was roaming afield and plucking personal impressions in great
fragrant handfuls. All this, as I say, was natural, given the man and
the situation; the only oddity is that he should have fancied himself
able to persuade the person most interested that he had renounced his
advantage.

He remembered her telling him that she cared very much what he should
say of her on Gordon Wright’s return, and he felt that this declaration
had a particular significance. After this, of her own movement, she
never spoke of Gordon, and Bernard made up his mind that she had
promised her mother to accept him if he should repeat his proposal, and
that as her heart was not in the matter she preferred to drop a veil
over the prospect. “She is going to marry him for his money,” he said,
“because her mother has brought out the advantages of the thing. Mrs.
Vivian’s persuasive powers have carried the day, and the girl has made
herself believe that it does n’t matter that she does n’t love him.
Perhaps it does n’t--to her; it ‘s hard, in such a case, to put one’s
self in the woman’s point of view. But I should think it would matter,
some day or other, to poor Gordon. She herself can’t help suspecting it
may make a difference in his happiness, and she therefore does n’t wish
to seem any worse to him than is necessary. She wants me to speak well
of her; if she intends to deceive him she expects me to back her up.
The wish is doubtless natural, but for a proud girl it is rather an odd
favor to ask. Oh yes, she ‘s a proud girl, even though she has been
able to arrange it with her conscience to make a mercenary marriage. To
expect me to help her is perhaps to treat me as a friend; but she ought
to remember--or at least I ought to remember--that Gordon is an older
friend than she. Inviting me to help her as against my oldest friend--is
n’t there a grain of impudence in that?”

It will be gathered that Bernard’s meditations were not on the whole
favorable to this young lady, and it must be affirmed that he was
forcibly struck with an element of cynicism in her conduct. On the
evening of her so-called midnight visit to the Kursaal she had suddenly
sounded a note of sweet submissiveness which re-appeared again at
frequent intervals. She was gentle, accessible, tenderly gracious,
expressive, demonstrative, almost flattering. From his own personal
point of view Bernard had no complaint to make of this maidenly
urbanity, but he kept reminding himself that he was not in question and
that everything must be looked at in the light of Gordon’s requirements.
There was all this time an absurd logical twist in his view of things.
In the first place he was not to judge at all; and in the second he was
to judge strictly on Gordon’s behalf. This latter clause always served
as a justification when the former had failed to serve as a deterrent.
When Bernard reproached himself for thinking too much of the girl, he
drew comfort from the reflection that he was not thinking well. To let
it gradually filter into one’s mind, through a superficial complexity
of more reverent preconceptions, that she was an extremely clever
coquette--this, surely, was not to think well! Bernard had luminous
glimpses of another situation, in which Angela Vivian’s coquetry should
meet with a different appreciation; but just now it was not an item to
be entered on the credit side of Wright’s account. Bernard wiped his
pen, mentally speaking, as he made this reflection, and felt like a
grizzled old book-keeper, of incorruptible probity. He saw her, as
I have said, very often; she continued to break her vow of shutting
herself up, and at the end of a fortnight she had reduced it to
imperceptible particles. On four different occasions, presenting himself
at Mrs. Vivian’s lodgings, Bernard found Angela there alone. She made
him welcome, receiving him as an American girl, in such circumstances,
is free to receive the most gallant of visitors. She smiled and talked
and gave herself up to charming gayety, so that there was nothing
for Bernard to say but that now at least she was off her guard with
a vengeance. Happily he was on his own! He flattered himself that he
remained so on occasions that were even more insidiously relaxing--when,
in the evening, she strolled away with him to parts of the grounds of
the Conversation-house, where the music sank to sweeter softness and
the murmur of the tree-tops of the Black Forest, stirred by the warm
night-air, became almost audible; or when, in the long afternoons, they
wandered in the woods apart from the others--from Mrs. Vivian and the
amiable object of her more avowed solicitude, the object of the sportive
adoration of the irrepressible, the ever-present Lovelock. They were
constantly having parties in the woods at this time--driving over
the hills to points of interest which Bernard had looked out in
the guide-book. Bernard, in such matters, was extremely alert and
considerate; he developed an unexpected talent for arranging excursions,
and he had taken regularly into his service the red-waistcoated
proprietor of a big Teutonic landau, which had a courier’s seat behind
and was always at the service of the ladies. The functionary in the
red waistcoat was a capital charioteer; he was constantly proposing
new drives, and he introduced our little party to treasures of romantic
scenery.






CHAPTER XIII

More than a fortnight had elapsed, but Gordon Wright had not
re-appeared, and Bernard suddenly decided that he would leave Baden. He
found Mrs. Vivian and her daughter, very opportunely, in the garden
of the pleasant, homely Schloss which forms the residence of the Grand
Dukes of Baden during their visits to the scene of our narrative, and
which, perched upon the hill-side directly above the little town, is
surrounded with charming old shrubberies and terraces. To this garden a
portion of the public is admitted, and Bernard, who liked the place,
had been there more than once. One of the terraces had a high parapet,
against which Angela was leaning, looking across the valley. Mrs. Vivian
was not at first in sight, but Bernard presently perceived her seated
under a tree with Victor Cousin in her hand. As Bernard approached the
young girl, Angela, who had not seen him, turned round.

“Don’t move,” he said. “You were just in the position in which I painted
your portrait at Siena.”

“Don’t speak of that,” she answered.

“I have never understood,” said Bernard, “why you insist upon ignoring
that charming incident.”

She resumed for a moment her former position, and stood looking at the
opposite hills.

“That ‘s just how you were--in profile--with your head a little thrown
back.”

“It was an odious incident!” Angela exclaimed, rapidly changing her
attitude.

Bernard was on the point of making a rejoinder, but he thought of Gordon
Wright and held his tongue. He presently told her that he intended to
leave Baden on the morrow.

They were walking toward her mother. She looked round at him quickly.

“Where are you going?”

“To Paris,” he said, quite at hazard; for he had not in the least
determined where to go.

“To Paris--in the month of August?” And she gave a little laugh. “What a
happy inspiration!”

She gave a little laugh, but she said nothing more, and Bernard gave no
further account of his plan. They went and sat down near Mrs. Vivian for
ten minutes, and then they got up again and strolled to another part of
the garden. They had it all to themselves, and it was filled with things
that Bernard liked--inequalities of level, with mossy steps connecting
them, rose-trees trained upon old brick walls, horizontal trellises
arranged like Italian pergolas, and here and there a towering poplar,
looking as if it had survived from some more primitive stage of culture,
with its stiff boughs motionless and its leaves forever trembling. They
made almost the whole circuit of the garden, and then Angela mentioned
very quietly that she had heard that morning from Mr. Wright, and that
he would not return for another week.

“You had better stay,” she presently added, as if Gordon’s continued
absence were an added reason.

“I don’t know,” said Bernard. “It is sometimes difficult to say what one
had better do.”

I hesitate to bring against him that most inglorious of all charges,
an accusation of sentimental fatuity, of the disposition to invent
obstacles to enjoyment so that he might have the pleasure of seeing
a pretty girl attempt to remove them. But it must be admitted that if
Bernard really thought at present that he had better leave Baden, the
observation I have just quoted was not so much a sign of this conviction
as of the hope that his companion would proceed to gainsay it. The
hope was not disappointed, though I must add that no sooner had it been
gratified than Bernard began to feel ashamed of it.

“This certainly is not one of those cases,” said Angela. “The thing is
surely very simple now.”

“What makes it so simple?”

She hesitated a moment.

“The fact that I ask you to stay.”

“You ask me?” he repeated, softly.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, “one does n’t say those things twice!”

She turned away, and they went back to her mother, who gave Bernard a
wonderful little look of half urgent, half remonstrant inquiry. As they
left the garden he walked beside Mrs. Vivian, Angela going in front of
them at a distance. The elder lady began immediately to talk to him of
Gordon Wright.

“He ‘s not coming back for another week, you know,” she said. “I am
sorry he stays away so long.”

“Ah yes,” Bernard answered, “it seems very long indeed.”

And it had, in fact, seemed to him very long.

“I suppose he is always likely to have business,” said Mrs. Vivian.

“You may be very sure it is not for his pleasure that he stays away.”

“I know he is faithful to old friends,” said Mrs. Vivian. “I am sure he
has not forgotten us.”

“I certainly count upon that,” Bernard exclaimed--“remembering him as we
do!”

Mrs. Vivian glanced at him gratefully.

“Oh yes, we remember him--we remember him daily, hourly. At least, I
can speak for my daughter and myself. He has been so very kind to us.”
 Bernard said nothing, and she went on. “And you have been so very kind
to us, too, Mr. Longueville. I want so much to thank you.”

“Oh no, don’t!” said Bernard, frowning. “I would rather you should n’t.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Vivian added, “I know it ‘s all on his account;
but that makes me wish to thank you all the more. Let me express my
gratitude, in advance, for the rest of the time, till he comes back.
That ‘s more responsibility than you bargained for,” she said, with a
little nervous laugh.

“Yes, it ‘s more than I bargained for. I am thinking of going away.”

Mrs. Vivian almost gave a little jump, and then she paused on the Baden
cobble-stones, looking up at him.

“If you must go, Mr. Longueville--don’t sacrifice yourself!”

The exclamation fell upon Bernard’s ear with a certain softly mocking
cadence which was sufficient, however, to make this organ tingle.

“Oh, after all, you know,” he said, as they walked on--“after all, you
know, I am not like Wright--I have no business.”

He walked with the ladies to the door of their lodging. Angela kept
always in front. She stood there, however, at the little confectioner’s
window until the others came up. She let her mother pass in, and then
she said to Bernard, looking at him--

“Shall I see you again?”

“Some time, I hope.”

“I mean--are you going away?”

Bernard looked for a moment at a little pink sugar cherub--a species
of Cupid, with a gilded bow--which figured among the pastry-cook’s
enticements. Then he said--

“I will come and tell you this evening.”

And in the evening he went to tell her; she had mentioned during the
walk in the garden of the Schloss that they should not go out. As he
approached Mrs. Vivian’s door he saw a figure in a light dress standing
in the little balcony. He stopped and looked up, and then the person in
the light dress, leaning her hands on the railing, with her shoulders a
little raised, bent over and looked down at him. It was very dark,
but even through the thick dusk he thought he perceived the finest
brilliancy of Angela Vivian’s smile.

“I shall not go away,” he said, lifting his voice a little.

She made no answer; she only stood looking down at him through the warm
dusk and smiling. He went into the house, and he remained at Baden-Baden
till Gordon came back.






CHAPTER XIV

Gordon asked him no questions for twenty-four hours after his return,
then suddenly he began:

“Well, have n’t you something to say to me?”

It was at the hotel, in Gordon’s apartment, late in the afternoon.
A heavy thunder-storm had broken over the place an hour before, and
Bernard had been standing at one of his friend’s windows, rather idly,
with his hands in his pockets, watching the rain-torrents dance upon
the empty pavements. At last the deluge abated, the clouds began to
break--there was a promise of a fine evening. Gordon Wright, while the
storm was at its climax, sat down to write letters, and wrote half a
dozen. It was after he had sealed, directed and affixed a postage-stamp
to the last of the series that he addressed to his companion the
question I have just quoted.

“Do you mean about Miss Vivian?” Bernard asked, without turning round
from the window.

“About Miss Vivian, of course.” Bernard said nothing and his companion
went on. “Have you nothing to tell me about Miss Vivian?”

Bernard presently turned round looking at Gordon and smiling a little.

“She ‘s a delightful creature!”

“That won’t do--you have tried that before,” said Gordon. “No,” he added
in a moment, “that won’t do.” Bernard turned back to the window, and
Gordon continued, as he remained silent. “I shall have a right to
consider your saying nothing a proof of an unfavorable judgment. You
don’t like her!”

Bernard faced quickly about again, and for an instant the two men looked
at each other.

“Ah, my dear Gordon,” Longueville murmured.

“Do you like her then?” asked Wright, getting up.

“No!” said Longueville.

“That ‘s just what I wanted to know, and I am much obliged to you for
telling me.”

“I am not obliged to you for asking me. I was in hopes you would n’t.”

“You dislike her very much then?” Gordon exclaimed, gravely.

“Won’t disliking her, simply, do?” said Bernard.

“It will do very well. But it will do a little better if you will tell
me why. Give me a reason or two.”

“Well,” said Bernard, “I tried to make love to her and she boxed my
ears.”

“The devil!” cried Gordon.

“I mean morally, you know.”

Gordon stared; he seemed a little puzzled.

“You tried to make love to her morally?”

“She boxed my ears morally,” said Bernard, laughing out.

“Why did you try to make love to her?”

This inquiry was made in a tone so expressive of an unbiassed
truth-seeking habit that Bernard’s mirth was not immediately quenched.
Nevertheless, he replied with sufficient gravity--

“To test her fidelity to you. Could you have expected anything else? You
told me you were afraid she was a latent coquette. You gave me a chance,
and I tried to ascertain.”

“And you found she was not. Is that what you mean?”

“She ‘s as firm as a rock. My dear Gordon, Miss Vivian is as firm as the
firmest of your geological formations.”

Gordon shook his head with a strange positive persistence.

“You are talking nonsense. You are not serious. You are not telling me
the truth. I don’t believe that you attempted to make love to her.
You would n’t have played such a game as that. It would n’t have been
honorable.”

Bernard flushed a little; he was irritated.

“Oh come, don’t make too much of a point of that! Did n’t you tell me
before that it was a great opportunity?”

“An opportunity to be wise--not to be foolish!”

“Ah, there is only one sort of opportunity,” cried Bernard. “You
exaggerate the reach of human wisdom.”

“Suppose she had let you make love to her,” said Gordon. “That would
have been a beautiful result of your experiment.”

“I should have seemed to you a rascal, perhaps, but I should have saved
you from a latent coquette. You would owe some thanks for that.”

“And now you have n’t saved me,” said Gordon, with a simple air of
noting a fact.

“You assume--in spite of what I say--that she is a coquette!”

“I assume something because you evidently conceal something. I want the
whole truth.”

Bernard turned back to the window with increasing irritation.

“If he wants the whole truth he shall have it,” he said to himself.

He stood a moment in thought and then he looked at his companion again.

“I think she would marry you--but I don’t think she cares for you.”

Gordon turned a little pale, but he clapped his hands together.

“Very good,” he exclaimed. “That ‘s exactly how I want you to speak.”

“Her mother has taken a great fancy to your fortune and it has rubbed
off on the girl, who has made up her mind that it would be a pleasant
thing to have thirty thousand a year, and that her not caring for you is
an unimportant detail.”

“I see--I see,” said Gordon, looking at his friend with an air of
admiration for his frank and lucid way of putting things.

Now that he had begun to be frank and lucid, Bernard found a charm in
it, and the impulse under which he had spoken urged him almost violently
forward.

“The mother and daughter have agreed together to bag you, and Angela, I
am sure, has made a vow to be as nice to you after marriage as possible.
Mrs. Vivian has insisted upon the importance of that; Mrs. Vivian is a
great moralist.”

Gordon kept gazing at his friend; he seemed positively fascinated.

“Yes, I have noticed that in Mrs. Vivian,” he said.

“Ah, she ‘s a very nice woman!”

“It ‘s not true, then,” said Gordon, “that you tried to make love to
Angela?”

Bernard hesitated a single instant.



“No, it is n’t true. I calumniated myself, to save her reputation. You
insisted on my giving you a reason for my not liking her--I gave you
that one.”

“And your real reason--”

“My real reason is that I believe she would do you what I can’t help
regarding as an injury.”

“Of course!” and Gordon, dropping his interested eyes, stared for some
moments at the carpet. “But it is n’t true, then, that you discovered
her to be a coquette?”

“Ah, that ‘s another matter.”

“You did discover it all the same?”

“Since you want the whole truth--I did!”

“How did you discover it?” Gordon asked, clinging to his right of
interrogation.

Bernard hesitated.

“You must remember that I saw a great deal of her.”

“You mean that she encouraged you?”

“If I had not been a very faithful friend I might have thought so.”

Gordon laid his hand appreciatively, gratefully, on Bernard’s shoulder.

“And even that did n’t make you like her?”

“Confound it, you make me blush!” cried Bernard, blushing a little in
fact. “I have said quite enough; excuse me from drawing the portrait of
too insensible a man. It was my point of view; I kept thinking of you.”

Gordon, with his hand still on his friend’s arm, patted it an instant in
response to this declaration; then he turned away.

“I am much obliged to you. That ‘s my notion of friendship. You have
spoken out like a man.”

“Like a man, yes. Remember that. Not in the least like an oracle.”

“I prefer an honest man to all the oracles,” said Gordon.

“An honest man has his impressions! I have given you mine--they pretend
to be nothing more. I hope they have n’t offended you.”

“Not in the least.”

“Nor distressed, nor depressed, nor in any way discomposed you?”



“For what do you take me? I asked you a favor--a service; I imposed it
on you. You have done the thing, and my part is simple gratitude.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Bernard, smiling. “You have asked me a
great many questions; there is one that in turn I have a right to ask
you. What do you propose to do in consequence of what I have told you?”

“I propose to do nothing.”

This declaration closed the colloquy, and the young men separated.
Bernard saw Gordon no more that evening; he took for granted he had gone
to Mrs. Vivian’s. The burden of Longueville’s confidences was a heavy
load to carry there, but Bernard ventured to hope that he would deposit
it at the door. He had given Gordon his impressions, and the latter
might do with them what he chose--toss them out of the window, or let
them grow stale with heedless keeping. So Bernard meditated, as he
wandered about alone for the rest of the evening. It was useless to
look for Mrs. Vivian’s little circle, on the terrace of the
Conversation-house, for the storm in the afternoon had made the place so
damp that it was almost forsaken of its frequenters. Bernard spent the
evening in the gaming-rooms, in the thick of the crowd that pressed
about the tables, and by way of a change--he had hitherto been almost
nothing of a gambler--he laid down a couple of pieces at roulette. He
had played but two or three times, without winning a penny; but now he
had the agreeable sensation of drawing in a small handful of gold.
He continued to play, and he continued to win. His luck surprised and
excited him--so much so that after it had repeated itself half a dozen
times he left the place and walked about for half an hour in the outer
darkness. He felt amused and exhilarated, but the feeling amounted
almost to agitation. He, nevertheless, returned to the tables, where he
again found success awaiting him. Again and again he put his money on
a happy number, and so steady a run of luck began at last to attract
attention. The rumor of it spread through the rooms, and the crowd about
the roulette received a large contingent of spectators. Bernard felt
that they were looking more or less eagerly for a turn of the tide; but
he was in the humor for disappointing them, and he left the place, while
his luck was still running high, with ten thousand francs in his pocket.
It was very late when he returned to the inn--so late that he forbore
to knock at Gordon’s door. But though he betook himself to his own
quarters, he was far from finding, or even seeking, immediate rest. He
knocked about, as he would have said, for half the night--not because he
was delighted at having won ten thousand francs, but rather because all
of a sudden he found himself disgusted at the manner in which he
had spent the evening. It was extremely characteristic of Bernard
Longueville that his pleasure should suddenly transform itself into
flatness. What he felt was not regret or repentance. He had it not
in the least on his conscience that he had given countenance to the
reprehensible practice of gaming. It was annoyance that he had passed
out of his own control--that he had obeyed a force which he was unable
to measure at the time. He had been drunk and he was turning sober. In
spite of a great momentary appearance of frankness and a lively relish
of any conjunction of agreeable circumstances exerting a pressure to
which one could respond, Bernard had really little taste for giving
himself up, and he never did so without very soon wishing to take
himself back. He had now given himself to something that was not
himself, and the fact that he had gained ten thousand francs by it was
an insufficient salve to an aching sense of having ceased to be his own
master. He had not been playing--he had been played with. He had been
the sport of a blind, brutal chance, and he felt humiliated by having
been favored by so rudely-operating a divinity. Good luck and bad luck?
Bernard felt very scornful of the distinction, save that good luck
seemed to him rather the more vulgar. As the night went on his disgust
deepened, and at last the weariness it brought with it sent him to
sleep. He slept very late, and woke up to a disagreeable consciousness.
At first, before collecting his thoughts, he could not imagine what
he had on his mind--was it that he had spoken ill of Angela Vivian? It
brought him extraordinary relief to remember that he had gone to bed in
extreme ill-humor with his exploits at roulette. After he had dressed
himself and just as he was leaving his room, a servant brought him a
note superscribed in Gordon’s hand--a note of which the following proved
to be the contents.

“Seven o’clock, A.M.

“My dear Bernard: Circumstances have determined me to leave Baden
immediately, and I shall take the train that starts an hour hence. I am
told that you came in very late last night, so I won’t disturb you for
a painful parting at this unnatural hour. I came to this decision last
evening, and I put up my things; so I have nothing to do but to take
myself off. I shall go to Basel, but after that I don’t know where, and
in so comfortless an uncertainty I don’t ask you to follow me. Perhaps
I shall go to America; but in any case I shall see you sooner or later.
Meanwhile, my dear Bernard, be as happy as your brilliant talents should
properly make you, and believe me yours ever,

“G.W.

“P.S. It is perhaps as well that I should say that I am leaving in
consequence of something that happened last evening, but not--by any
traceable process--in consequence of the talk we had together. I may
also add that I am in very good health and spirits.”

Bernard lost no time in learning that his friend had in fact departed
by the eight o’clock train--the morning was now well advanced; and then,
over his breakfast, he gave himself up to meditative surprise. What had
happened during the evening--what had happened after their conversation
in Gordon’s room? He had gone to Mrs. Vivian’s--what had happened there?
Bernard found it difficult to believe that he had gone there simply to
notify her that, having talked it over with an intimate friend, he gave
up her daughter, or to mention to the young lady herself that he had
ceased to desire the honor of her hand. Gordon alluded to some definite
occurrence, yet it was inconceivable that he should have allowed himself
to be determined by Bernard’s words--his diffident and irresponsible
impression. Bernard resented this idea as an injury to himself, yet
it was difficult to imagine what else could have happened. There was
Gordon’s word for it, however, that there was no “traceable” connection
between the circumstances which led to his sudden departure and the
information he had succeeded in extracting from his friend. What did he
mean by a “traceable” connection? Gordon never used words idly, and he
meant to make of this point an intelligible distinction. It was this
sense of his usual accuracy of expression that assisted Bernard in
fitting a meaning to his late companion’s letter. He intended to
intimate that he had come back to Baden with his mind made up to
relinquish his suit, and that he had questioned Bernard simply from
moral curiosity--for the sake of intellectual satisfaction. Nothing was
altered by the fact that Bernard had told him a sorry tale; it had not
modified his behavior--that effect would have been traceable. It
had simply affected his imagination, which was a consequence of the
imponderable sort. This view of the case was supported by Gordon’s
mention of his good spirits. A man always had good spirits when he had
acted in harmony with a conviction. Of course, after renouncing the
attempt to make himself acceptable to Miss Vivian, the only possible
thing for Gordon had been to leave Baden. Bernard, continuing to
meditate, at last convinced himself that there had been no explicit
rupture, that Gordon’s last visit had simply been a visit of farewell,
that its character had sufficiently signified his withdrawal, and that
he had now gone away because, after giving the girl up, he wished
very naturally not to meet her again. This was, on Bernard’s part,
a sufficiently coherent view of the case; but nevertheless, an hour
afterward, as he strolled along the Lichtenthal Alley, he found himself
stopping suddenly and exclaiming under his breath--“Have I done her
an injury? Have I affected her prospects?” Later in the day he said to
himself half a dozen times that he had simply warned Gordon against an
incongruous union.






CHAPTER XV

Now that Gordon was gone, at any rate, gone for good, and not to return,
he felt a sudden and singular sense of freedom. It was a feeling of
unbounded expansion, quite out of proportion, as he said to himself, to
any assignable cause. Everything suddenly appeared to have become very
optional; but he was quite at a loss what to do with his liberty. It
seemed a harmless use to make of it, in the afternoon, to go and pay
another visit to the ladies who lived at the confectioner’s. Here,
however, he met a reception which introduced a fresh element of
perplexity into the situation that Gordon had left behind him. The door
was opened to him by Mrs. Vivian’s maid-servant, a sturdy daughter
of the Schwartzwald, who informed him that the ladies--with much
regret--were unable to receive any one.

“They are very busy--and they are ill,” said the young woman, by way of
explanation.

Bernard was disappointed, and he felt like arguing the case.

“Surely,” he said, “they are not both ill and busy! When you make
excuses, you should make them agree with each other.”

The Teutonic soubrette fixed her round blue eyes a minute upon the patch
of blue sky revealed to her by her open door.

“I say what I can, lieber Herr. It ‘s not my fault if I ‘m not so clever
as a French mamsell. One of the ladies is busy, the other is ill. There
you have it.”

“Not quite,” said Bernard. “You must remember that there are three of
them.”

“Oh, the little one--the little one weeps.”

“Miss Evers weeps!” exclaimed Bernard, to whom the vision of this young
lady in tears had never presented itself.

“That happens to young ladies when they are unhappy,” said the girl; and
with an artless yet significant smile she carried a big red hand to the
left side of a broad bosom.

“I am sorry she is unhappy; but which of the other ladies is ill?”

“The mother is very busy.”

“And the daughter is ill?”

The young woman looked at him an instant, smiling again, and the light
in her little blue eyes indicated confusion, but not perversity.

“No, the mamma is ill,” she exclaimed, “and the daughter is very busy.
They are preparing to leave Baden.”

“To leave Baden? When do they go?”

“I don’t quite know, lieber Herr; but very soon.”

With this information Bernard turned away. He was rather surprised, but
he reflected that Mrs. Vivian had not proposed to spend her life on the
banks of the Oos, and that people were leaving Baden every day in the
year. In the evening, at the Kursaal, he met Captain Lovelock, who was
wandering about with an air of explosive sadness.

“Damn it, they ‘re going--yes, they ‘re going,” said the Captain, after
the two young men had exchanged a few allusions to current events.
“Fancy their leaving us in that heartless manner! It ‘s not the time to
run away--it ‘s the time to keep your rooms, if you ‘re so lucky as to
have any. The races begin next week and there ‘ll be a tremendous crowd.
All the grand-ducal people are coming. Miss Evers wanted awfully to see
the Grand Duke, and I promised her an introduction. I can’t make out
what Mrs. Vivian is up to. I bet you a ten-pound note she ‘s giving
chase. Our friend Wright has come back and gone off again, and Mrs.
Vivian means to strike camp and follow. She ‘ll pot him yet; you see if
she does n’t!”

“She is running away from you, dangerous man!” said Bernard.

“Do you mean on account of Miss Evers? Well, I admire Miss Evers--I
don’t mind admitting that; but I ain’t dangerous,” said Captain
Lovelock, with a lustreless eye. “How can a fellow be dangerous when he
has n’t ten shillings in his pocket? Desperation, do you call it? But
Miss Evers has n’t money, so far as I have heard. I don’t ask you,”
 Lovelock continued--“I don’t care a damn whether she has or not. She ‘s
a devilish charming girl, and I don’t mind telling you I ‘m hit. I stand
no chance--I know I stand no chance. Mrs. Vivian ‘s down on me, and, by
Jove, Mrs. Vivian ‘s right. I ‘m not the husband to pick out for a young
woman of expensive habits and no expectations. Gordon Wright’s the sort
of young man that ‘s wanted, and, hang me, if Mrs. Vivian did n’t want
him so much for her own daughter, I believe she ‘d try and bag him for
the little one. Gad, I believe that to keep me off she would like to
cut him in two and give half to each of them! I ‘m afraid of that little
woman. She has got a little voice like a screw-driver. But for all that,
if I could get away from this cursed place, I would keep the girl in
sight--hang me if I would n’t! I ‘d cut the races--dash me if I would
n’t! But I ‘m in pawn, if you know what that means. I owe a beastly lot
of money at the inn, and that impudent little beggar of a landlord won’t
let me out of his sight. The luck ‘s dead against me at those filthy
tables; I have n’t won a farthing in three weeks. I wrote to my brother
the other day, and this morning I got an answer from him--a cursed,
canting letter of good advice, remarking that he had already paid my
debts seven times. It does n’t happen to be seven; it ‘s only six, or
six and a half! Does he expect me to spend the rest of my life at the
Hotel de Hollande? Perhaps he would like me to engage as a waiter there
and pay it off by serving at the table d’hote. It would be convenient
for him the next time he comes abroad with his seven daughters and two
governesses. I hate the smell of their beastly table d’hote! You ‘re
sorry I ‘m hard up? I ‘m sure I ‘m much obliged to you. Can you be of
any service? My dear fellow, if you are bent on throwing your money
about the place I ‘m not the man to stop you.” Bernard’s winnings of the
previous night were burning a hole, as the phrase is, in his pocket. Ten
thousand francs had never before seemed to him so heavy a load to carry,
and to lighten the weight of his good luck by lending fifty pounds to
a less fortunate fellow-player was an operation that not only gratified
his good-nature but strongly commended itself to his conscience.
His conscience, however, made its conditions. “My dear Longueville,”
 Lovelock went on, “I have always gone in for family feeling, early
associations, and all that sort of thing. That ‘s what made me confide
my difficulties to Dovedale. But, upon my honor, you remind me of the
good Samaritan, or that sort of person; you are fonder of me than my own
brother! I ‘ll take fifty pounds with pleasure, thank you, and you
shall have them again--at the earliest opportunity. My earliest
convenience--will that do? Damn it, it is a convenience, is n’t it? You
make your conditions. My dear fellow, I accept them in advance. That
I ‘m not to follow up Miss Evers--is that what you mean? Have you been
commissioned by the family to buy me off? It ‘s devilish cruel to take
advantage of my poverty! Though I ‘m poor, I ‘m honest. But I am honest,
my dear Longueville; that ‘s the point. I ‘ll give you my word, and I
‘ll keep it. I won’t go near that girl again--I won’t think of her till
I ‘ve got rid of your fifty pounds. It ‘s a dreadful encouragement to
extravagance, but that ‘s your lookout. I ‘ll stop for their beastly
races and the young lady shall be sacred.”

Longueville called the next morning at Mrs. Vivian’s, and learned that
the three ladies had left Baden by the early train, a couple of hours
before. This fact produced in his mind a variety of emotions--surprise,
annoyance, embarrassment. In spite of his effort to think it natural
they should go, he found something precipitate and inexplicable in the
manner of their going, and he declared to himself that one of the party,
at least, had been unkind and ungracious in not giving him a chance
to say good-bye. He took refuge by anticipation, as it were, in this
reflection, whenever, for the next three or four days, he foresaw
himself stopping short, as he had done before, and asking himself
whether he had done an injury to Angela Vivian. This was an idle and
unpractical question, inasmuch as the answer was not forthcoming;
whereas it was quite simple and conclusive to say, without the note
of interrogation, that she was, in spite of many attractive points,
an abrupt and capricious young woman. During the three or four days in
question, Bernard lingered on at Baden, uncertain what to do or where
to go, feeling as if he had received a sudden check--a sort of spiritual
snub--which arrested the accumulation of motive. Lovelock, also, whom
Bernard saw every day, appeared to think that destiny had given him
a slap in the face, for he had not enjoyed the satisfaction of a last
interview with Miss Evers.

“I thought she might have written me a note,” said the Captain; “but it
appears she does n’t write. Some girls don’t write, you know.”

Bernard remarked that it was possible Lovelock would still have news of
Miss Blanche; and before he left Baden he learned that she had addressed
her forsaken swain a charming little note from Lausanne, where the three
ladies had paused in their flight from Baden, and where Mrs. Vivian had
decreed that for the present they should remain.

“I ‘m devilish glad she writes,” said Captain Lovelock; “some girls do
write, you know.”

Blanche found Lausanne most horrid after Baden, for whose delights she
languished. The delights of Baden, however, were not obvious just now to
her correspondent, who had taken Bernard’s fifty pounds into the Kursaal
and left them there. Bernard, on learning his misfortune, lent him
another fifty, with which he performed a second series of unsuccessful
experiments; and our hero was not at his ease until he had passed over
to his luckless friend the whole amount of his own winnings, every penny
of which found its way through Captain Lovelock’s fingers back into the
bank. When this operation was completed, Bernard left Baden, the Captain
gloomily accompanying him to the station.

I have said that there had come over Bernard a singular sense of
freedom. One of the uses he made of his freedom was to undertake a long
journey. He went to the East and remained absent from Europe for upward
of two years--a period of his life of which it is not proposed to
offer a complete history. The East is a wonderful region, and Bernard,
investigating the mysteries of Asia, saw a great many curious and
beautiful things. He had moments of keen enjoyment; he laid up a great
store of impressions and even a considerable sum of knowledge. But,
nevertheless, he was not destined to look back upon this episode with
any particular complacency. It was less delightful than it was supposed
to be; it was less successful than it might have been. By what unnatural
element the cup of pleasure was adulterated, he would have been very
much at a loss to say; but it was an incontestable fact that at times he
sipped it as a medicine, rather than quaffed it as a nectar. When people
congratulated him on his opportunity of seeing the world, and said they
envied him the privilege of seeing it so well, he felt even more than
the usual degree of irritation produced by an insinuation that fortune
thinks so poorly of us as to give us easy terms. Misplaced sympathy is
the least available of superfluities, and Bernard at this time found
himself thinking that there was a good deal of impertinence in the
world. He would, however, readily have confessed that, in so far as he
failed to enjoy his Oriental wanderings, the fault was his own; though
he would have made mentally the gratifying reflection that never was
a fault less deliberate. If, during the period of which I speak, his
natural gayety had sunk to a minor key, a partial explanation may
be found in the fact that he was deprived of the society of his late
companion. It was an odd circumstance that the two young men had not met
since Gordon’s abrupt departure from Baden. Gordon went to Berlin, and
shortly afterward to America, so that they were on opposite sides of the
globe. Before he returned to his own country, Bernard made by letter two
or three offers to join him in Europe, anywhere that was agreeable to
him. Gordon answered that his movements were very uncertain, and that he
should be sorry to trouble Bernard to follow him about. He had put him
to this inconvenience in making him travel from Venice to Baden, and
one such favor at a time was enough to ask, even of the most obliging of
men. Bernard was, of course, afraid that what he had told Gordon about
Angela Vivian was really the cause of a state of things which, as
between two such good friends, wore a perceptible resemblance to
alienation. Gordon had given her up; but he bore Bernard a grudge for
speaking ill of her, and so long as this disagreeable impression should
last, he preferred not to see him. Bernard was frank enough to charge
the poor fellow with a lingering rancor, of which he made, indeed, no
great crime. But Gordon denied the allegation, and assured him that,
to his own perception, there was no decline in their intimacy. He only
requested, as a favor and as a tribute to “just susceptibilities,”
 that Bernard would allude no more either to Miss Vivian or to what had
happened at Baden. This request was easy to comply with, and Bernard, in
writing, strictly conformed to it; but it seemed to him that the act of
doing so was in itself a cooling-off. What would be a better proof of
what is called a “tension” than an agreement to avoid a natural topic?
Bernard moralized a little over Gordon’s “just susceptibilities,” and
felt that the existence of a perverse resentment in so honest a nature
was a fact gained to his acquaintance with psychological science. It
cannot be said, however, that he suffered this fact to occupy at all
times the foreground of his consciousness. Bernard was like some great
painters; his foregrounds were very happily arranged. He heard nothing
of Mrs. Vivian and her daughter, beyond a rumor that they had gone to
Italy; and he learned, on apparently good authority, that Blanche Evers
had returned to New York with her mother. He wondered whether Captain
Lovelock was still in pawn at the Hotel de Hollande. If he did not allow
himself to wonder too curiously whether he had done a harm to Gordon,
it may be affirmed that he was haunted by the recurrence of that other
question, of which mention has already been made. Had he done a harm to
Angela Vivian, and did she know that he had done it? This inquiry by no
means made him miserable, and it was far from awaiting him regularly
on his pillow. But it visited him at intervals, and sometimes in the
strangest places--suddenly, abruptly, in the stillness of an Indian
temple, or amid the shrillness of an Oriental crowd. He became familiar
with it at last; he called it his Jack-in-the-box. Some invisible touch
of circumstance would press the spring, and the little image would
pop up, staring him in the face and grinning an interrogation. Bernard
always clapped down the lid, for he regarded this phenomenon as
strikingly inane. But if it was more frequent than any pang of
conscience connected with the remembrance of Gordon himself, this last
sentiment was certainly lively enough to make it a great relief to hear
at last a rumor that the excellent fellow was about to be married. The
rumor reached him at Athens; it was vague and indirect, and it omitted
the name of his betrothed. But Bernard made the most of it, and took
comfort in the thought that his friend had recovered his spirits and his
appetite for matrimony.






CHAPTER XVI

It was not till our hero reached Paris, on his return from the distant
East, that the rumor I have just mentioned acquired an appreciable
consistency. Here, indeed, it took the shape of authentic information.
Among a number of delayed letters which had been awaiting him at
his banker’s he found a communication from Gordon Wright. During
the previous year or two his correspondence with this trusted--and
trusting--friend had not been frequent, and Bernard had received little
direct news of him. Three or four short letters had overtaken him in his
wanderings--letters as cordial, to all appearance, if not as voluminous,
as the punctual missives of an earlier time. Bernard made a point of
satisfying himself that they were as cordial; he weighed them in the
scales of impartial suspicion. It seemed to him on the whole that there
was no relaxation of Gordon’s epistolary tone. If he wrote less often
than he used to do, that was a thing that very commonly happened as men
grew older. The closest intimacies, moreover, had phases and seasons,
intermissions and revivals, and even if his friend had, in fact, averted
his countenance from him, this was simply the accomplishment of a
periodical revolution which would bring them in due order face to face
again. Bernard made a point, himself, of writing tolerably often
and writing always in the friendliest tone. He made it a matter of
conscience--he liked to feel that he was treating Gordon generously,
and not demanding an eye for an eye. The letter he found in Paris was so
short that I may give it entire.

“My dear Bernard (it ran), I must write to you before I write to any
one else, though unfortunately you are so far away that you can’t be the
first to congratulate me. Try and not be the last, however. I am going
to be married--as soon as possible. You know the young lady, so you can
appreciate the situation. Do you remember little Blanche Evers, whom we
used to see three years ago at Baden-Baden? Of course you remember
her, for I know you used often to talk with her. You will be rather
surprised, perhaps, at my having selected her as the partner of a
life-time; but we manage these matters according to our lights. I am
very much in love with her, and I hold that an excellent reason. I have
been ready any time this year or two to fall in love with some simple,
trusting, child-like nature. I find this in perfection in this charming
young girl. I find her so natural and fresh. I remember telling you
once that I did n’t wish to be fascinated--that I wanted to estimate
scientifically the woman I should marry. I have altogether got over
that, and I don’t know how I ever came to talk such nonsense. I am
fascinated now, and I assure you I like it! The best of it is that I
find it does n’t in the least prevent my estimating Blanche. I judge her
very fairly--I see just what she is. She ‘s simple--that ‘s what I want;
she ‘s tender--that ‘s what I long for. You will remember how pretty she
is; I need n’t remind you of that. She was much younger then, and she
has greatly developed and improved in these two or three years. But she
will always be young and innocent--I don’t want her to improve too much.
She came back to America with her mother the winter after we met her at
Baden, but I never saw her again till three months ago. Then I saw her
with new eyes, and I wondered I could have been so blind. But I was n’t
ready for her till then, and what makes me so happy now is to know that
I have come to my present way of feeling by experience. That gives me
confidence--you see I am a reasoner still. But I am under the charm, for
all my reason. We are to be married in a month--try and come back to the
wedding. Blanche sends you a message, which I will give you verbatim.
‘Tell him I am not such a silly little chatterbox as I used to be at
Baden. I am a great deal wiser; I am almost as clever as Angela Vivian.’
She has an idea you thought Miss Vivian very clever--but it is not true
that she is equally so. I am very happy; come home and see.”

Bernard went home, but he was not able to reach the United States in
time for Gordon’s wedding, which took place at midsummer. Bernard,
arriving late in the autumn, found his friend a married man of some
months’ standing, and was able to judge, according to his invitation,
whether he appeared happy. The first effect of the letter I have just
quoted had been an immense surprise; the second had been a series
of reflections which were quite the negative of surprise; and these
operations of Bernard’s mind had finally merged themselves in a simple
sentiment of jollity. He was delighted that Gordon should be married; he
felt jovial about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom
he had chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed
highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less
shaped to minister to Gordon’s strenuous needs than the light-hearted
and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained
for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time.
Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose--the prettiest of little geese,
perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for
a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view
of human responsibilities. What a singular selection--what a queer
infatuation! Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of
criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error
carried almost to the point of naivetae. He exclaimed that Blanche Evers
was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright’s stamp always
ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much
better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to
solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian. This
was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid,
in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who
were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what
the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure
in finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways,
and it pleased and flattered him to feel that he could afford, morally
speaking, to have a kittenish wife. He had within himself a fund of
common sense to draw upon, so that to espouse a paragon of wisdom would
be but to carry water to the fountain. He could easily make up for the
deficiencies of a wife who was a little silly, and if she charmed and
amused him, he could treat himself to the luxury of these sensations for
themselves. He was not in the least afraid of being ruined by it, and if
Blanche’s birdlike chatter and turns of the head had made a fool of him,
he knew it perfectly well, and simply took his stand upon his rights.
Every man has a right to a little flower-bed, and life is not all mere
kitchen-gardening. Bernard rapidly extemporized this rough explanation
of the surprise his friend had offered him, and he found it
all-sufficient for his immediate needs. He wrote Blanche a charming
note, to which she replied with a great deal of spirit and grace. Her
little letter was very prettily turned, and Bernard, reading it over two
or three times, said to himself that, to do her justice, she might very
well have polished her intellect a trifle during these two or three
years. As she was older, she could hardly help being wiser. It even
occurred to Bernard that she might have profited by the sort of
experience that is known as the discipline of suffering. What had become
of Captain Lovelock and that tender passion which was apparently none
the less genuine for having been expressed in the slang of a humorous
period? Had they been permanently separated by judicious guardians, and
had she been obliged to obliterate his image from her lightly-beating
little heart? Bernard had felt sure at Baden that, beneath her
contemptuous airs and that impertinent consciousness of the difficulties
of conquest by which a pretty American girl attests her allegiance to a
civilization in which young women occupy the highest place--he had felt
sure that Blanche had a high appreciation of her handsome Englishman,
and that if Lovelock should continue to relish her charms, he might
count upon the advantages of reciprocity. But it occurred to Bernard
that Captain Lovelock had perhaps been faithless; that, at least, the
discourtesy of chance and the inhumanity of an elder brother might have
kept him an eternal prisoner at the Hotel de Hollande (where, for
all Bernard knew to the contrary, he had been obliged to work out his
destiny in the arduous character of a polyglot waiter); so that the poor
young girl, casting backward glances along the path of Mrs. Vivian’s
retreat, and failing to detect the onward rush of a rescuing cavalier,
had perforce believed herself forsaken, and had been obliged to summon
philosophy to her aid. It was very possible that her philosophic studies
had taught her the art of reflection; and that, as she would have said
herself, she was tremendously toned down. Once, at Baden, when Gordon
Wright happened to take upon himself to remark that little Miss Evers
was bored by her English gallant, Bernard had ventured to observe,
in petto, that Gordon knew nothing about it. But all this was of no
consequence now, and Bernard steered further and further away from the
liability to detect fallacies in his friend. Gordon had engaged himself
to marry, and our critical hero had not a grain of fault to find with
this resolution. It was a capital thing; it was just what he wanted; it
would do him a world of good. Bernard rejoiced with him sincerely, and
regretted extremely that a series of solemn engagements to pay visits in
England should prevent his being present at the nuptials.

They were well over, as I have said, when he reached New York. The
honeymoon had waned, and the business of married life had begun.
Bernard, at the end, had sailed from England rather abruptl

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/178