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.