by Henry James
“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 app
ear 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 porti; agere 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 tha
t 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.”