Confidence Read online

  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."

&n
bsp; "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 l
ooked 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?"