Confidence

“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.