Confidence

“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.”