by Henry James
“Mrs. Vivian does n’t think so,” said Bernard, who had just perceived this lady, seated under a tree with a book, over the top of which she was observing her pretty protege. Blanche looked toward her and gave her a little nod and a smile. Then chattering on to the young men—
“She ‘s awfully careful. I never saw any one so careful. But I suppose she is right. She promised my mother she would be tremendously particular; but I don’t know what she thinks I would do.”
“That is n’t flattering to me,” said Captain Lovelock. “Mrs. Vivian does n’t approve of me—she wishes me in Jamaica. What does she think me capable of?”
“And me, now?” Bernard asked. “She likes me least of all, and I, on my side, think she ‘s so nice.”
“Can’t say I ‘m very sweet on her,” said the Captain. “She strikes me as feline.”
Blanche Evers gave a little cry of horror.
“Stop, sir, this instant! I won’t have you talk that way about a lady who has been so kind to me.”
“She is n’t so kind to you. She would like to lock you up where I can never see you.”
“I ‘m sure I should n’t mind that!” cried the young girl, with a little laugh and a toss of her head. “Mrs. Vivian has the most perfect character— that ‘s why my mother wanted me to come with her. And if she promised my mother she would be careful, is n’t she right to keep her promise? She ‘s a great deal more careful than mamma ever was, and that ‘s just what mamma wanted. She would never take the trouble herself. And then she was always scolding me. Mrs. Vivian never scolds me. She only watches me, but I don’t mind that.”
“I wish she would watch you a little less and scold you a little more,” said Captain Lovelock.
“I have no doubt you wish a great many horrid things,” his companion rejoined, with delightful asperity.
“Ah, unfortunately I never have anything I wish!” sighed Lovelock.
“Your wishes must be comprehensive,” said Bernard. “It seems to me you have a good deal.”
The Englishman gave a shrug.
“It ‘s less than you might think. She is watching us more furiously than ever,” he added, in a moment, looking at Mrs. Vivian. “Mr. Gordon Wright is the only man she likes. She is awfully fond of Mr. Gordon Wright.”
“Ah, Mrs. Vivian shows her wisdom!” said Bernard.
“He is certainly very handsome,” murmured Blanche Evers, glancing several times, with a very pretty aggressiveness, at Captain Lovelock. “I must say I like Mr. Gordon Wright. Why in the world did you come here without him?” she went on, addressing herself to Bernard. “You two are so awfully inseparable. I don’t think I ever saw you alone before.”
“Oh, I have often seen Mr. Gordon Wright alone,” said Captain Lovelock—”that is, alone with Miss Vivian. That ‘s what the old lady likes; she can’t have too much of that.”
The young girl, poised for an instant in one of her pretty attitudes, looked at him from head to foot.
“Well, I call that scandalous! Do you mean that she wants to make a match?”
“I mean that the young man has six thousand a year.”
“It ‘s no matter what he has—six thousand a year is n’t much! And we don’t do things in that way in our country. We have n’t those horrid match-making arrangements that you have in your dreadful country. American mothers are not like English mothers.”
“Oh, any one can see, of course,” said Captain Lovelock, “that Mr. Gordon Wright is dying of love for Miss Vivian.”
“I can’t see it!” cried Blanche.
“He dies easier than I, eh?”
“I wish you would die!” said Blanche. “At any rate, Angela is not dying of love for Mr. Wright.”
“Well, she will marry him all the same,” Lovelock declared.
Blanche Evers glanced at Bernard.
“Why don’t you contradict that?” she asked. “Why don’t you speak up for your friend?”
“I am quite ready to speak for my friend,” said Bernard, “but I am not ready to speak for Miss Vivian.”
“Well, I am,” Blanche declared. “She won’t marry him.”
“If she does n’t, I ‘ll eat my hat!” said Captain Lovelock. “What do you mean,” he went on, “by saying that in America a pretty girl’s mother does n’t care for a young fellow’s property?”
“Well, they don’t—we consider that dreadful. Why don’t you say so, Mr. Longueville?” Blanche demanded. “I never saw any one take things so quietly. Have n’t you got any patriotism?”
“My patriotism is modified by an indisposition to generalize,” said Bernard, laughing. “On this point permit me not to generalize. I am interested in the particular case—in ascertaining whether Mrs. Vivian thinks very often of Gordon Wright’s income.”
Miss Evers gave a little toss of disgust.
“If you are so awfully impartial, you had better go and ask her.”
“That ‘s a good idea—I think I will go and ask her,” said Bernard.
Captain Lovelock returned to his argument.
“Do you mean to say that your mother would be indifferent to the fact that I have n’t a shilling in the world?”
“Indifferent?” Blanche demanded. “Oh no, she would be sorry for you. She is very charitable—she would give you a shilling!”
“She would n’t let you marry me,” said Lovelock.
“She would n’t have much trouble to prevent it!” cried the young girl.
Bernard had had enough of this intellectual fencing.
“Yes, I will go and ask Mrs. Vivian,” he repeated. And he left his companions to resume their walk.
CHAPTER X
It had seemed to him a good idea to interrogate Mrs. Vivian; but there are a great many good ideas that are never put into execution. As he approached her with a smile and a salutation, and, with the air of asking leave to take a liberty, seated himself in the empty chair beside her, he felt a humorous relish of her own probable dismay which relaxed the investigating impulse. His impulse was now simply to prove to her that he was the most unobjectionable fellow in the world— a proposition which resolved itself into several ingenious observations upon the weather, the music, the charms and the drawbacks of Baden, the merits of the volume that she held in her lap. If Mrs. Vivian should be annoyed, should be fluttered, Bernard would feel very sorry for her; there was nothing in the world that he respected more than the moral consciousness of a little Boston woman whose view of life was serious and whose imagination was subject to alarms. He held it to be a temple of delicacy, where one should walk on tiptoe, and he wished to exhibit to Mrs. Vivian the possible lightness of his own step. She herself was incapable of being rude or ungracious, and now that she was fairly confronted with the plausible object of her mistrust, she composed herself to her usual attitude of refined liberality. Her book was a volume of Victor Cousin.
“You must have an extraordinary power of abstracting your mind,” Bernard said to her, observing it. “Studying philosophy at the Baden Kursaal strikes me as a real intellectual feat.”
“Don’t you think we need a little philosophy here?”
“By all means—what we bring with us. But I should n’t attempt the use of the text-book on the spot.”
“You should n’t speak of yourself as if you were not clever,” said Mrs. Vivian. “Every one says you are so very clever.”
Longueville stared; there was an unexpectedness in the speech and an incongruity in Mrs. Vivian’s beginning to flatter him. He needed to remind himself that if she was a Bostonian, she was a Bostonian perverted.
“Ah, my dear madam, every one is no one,” he said, laughing.
“It was Mr. Wright, in particular,” she rejoined. “He has always told us that.”
“He is blinded by friendship.”
“Ah yes, we know about your friendship,” said Mrs. Vivian. “He has told us about that.”
“You are making him out a terrible talker!”
“We think he tal
ks so well—we are so very fond of his conversation.”
“It ‘s usually excellent,” said Bernard. “But it depends a good deal on the subject.”
“Oh,” rejoined Mrs. Vivian, “we always let him choose his subjects.” And dropping her eyes as if in sudden reflection, she began to smooth down the crumpled corner of her volume.
It occurred to Bernard that—by some mysterious impulse— she was suddenly presenting him with a chance to ask her the question that Blanche Evers had just suggested. Two or three other things as well occurred to him. Captain Lovelock had been struck with the fact that she favored Gordon Wright’s addresses to her daughter, and Captain Lovelock had a grotesque theory that she had set her heart upon seeing this young lady come into six thousand a year. Miss Evers’s devoted swain had never struck Bernard as a brilliant reasoner, but our friend suddenly found himself regarding him as one of the inspired. The form of depravity into which the New England conscience had lapsed on Mrs. Vivian’s part was an undue appreciation of a possible son-in-law’s income! In this illuminating discovery everything else became clear. Mrs. Vivian disliked her humble servant because he had not thirty thousand dollars a year, and because at a moment when it was Angela’s prime duty to concentrate her thoughts upon Gordon Wright’s great advantages, a clever young man of paltry fortune was a superfluous diversion.
“When you say clever, everything is relative,” he presently observed. “Now, there is Captain Lovelock; he has a certain kind of cleverness; he is very observant.”
Mrs. Vivian glanced up with a preoccupied air.
“We don’t like Captain Lovelock,” she said.
“I have heard him say capital things,” Bernard answered.
“We think him brutal,” said Mrs. Vivian. “Please don’t praise Captain Lovelock.”
“Oh, I only want to be just.”
Mrs. Vivian for a moment said nothing.
“Do you want very much to be just?” she presently asked.
“It ‘s my most ardent desire.”
“I ‘m glad to hear that—and I can easily believe it,” said Mrs. Vivian.
Bernard gave her a grateful smile, but while he smiled, he asked himself a serious question. “Why the deuce does she go on flattering me?—You have always been very kind to me,” he said aloud.
“It ‘s on Mr. Wright’s account,” she answered demurely.
In speaking the words I have just quoted, Bernard Longueville had felt himself, with a certain compunction, to be skirting the edge of clever impudence; but Mrs. Vivian’s quiet little reply suggested to him that her cleverness, if not her impudence, was almost equal to his own. He remarked to himself that he had not yet done her justice.
“You bring everything back to Gordon Wright,” he said, continuing to smile.
Mrs. Vivian blushed a little.
“It is because he is really at the foundation of everything that is pleasant for us here. When we first came we had some very disagreeable rooms, and as soon as he arrived he found us some excellent ones—that were less expensive. And then, Mr. Longueville,” she added, with a soft, sweet emphasis which should properly have contradicted the idea of audacity, but which, to Bernard’s awakened sense, seemed really to impart a vivid color to it, “he was also the cause of your joining our little party.”
“Oh, among his services that should never be forgotten. You should set up a tablet to commemorate it, in the wall of the Kursaal!— The wicked little woman!” Bernard mentally subjoined.
Mrs. Vivian appeared quite unruffled by his sportive sarcasm, and she continued to enumerate her obligations to Gordon Wright.
“There are so many ways in which a gentleman can be of assistance to three poor lonely women, especially when he is at the same time so friendly and so delicate as Mr. Wright. I don’t know what we should have done without him, and I feel as if every one ought to know it. He seems like a very old friend. My daughter and I quite worship him. I will not conceal from you that when I saw you coming through the grounds a short time ago without him I was very much disappointed. I hope he is not ill.”
Bernard sat listening, with his eyes on the ground.
“Oh no, he is simply at home writing letters.”
Mrs. Vivian was silent a moment.
“I suppose he has a very large correspondence.”
“I really don’t know. Just now that I am with him he has a smaller one than usual.”
“Ah yes. When you are separated I suppose you write volumes to each other. But he must have a great many business letters.”
“It is very likely,” said Bernard. “And if he has, you may be sure he writes them.”
“Order and method!” Mrs. Vivian exclaimed. “With his immense property those virtues are necessary.”
Bernard glanced at her a moment.
“My dear Lovelock,” he said to himself, “you are not such a fool as you seem.— Gordon’s virtues are always necessary, doubtless,” he went on. “But should you say his property was immense?”
Mrs. Vivian made a delicate little movement of deprecation. “Oh, don’t ask me to say! I know nothing about it; I only supposed he was rich.”
“He is rich; but he is not a Croesus.”
“Oh, you fashionable young men have a standard of luxury!” said Mrs. Vivian, with a little laugh. “To a poverty-stricken widow such a fortune as Mr. Wright’s seems magnificent.”
“Don’t call me such horrible names!” exclaimed Bernard. “Our friend has certainly money enough and to spare.”
“That was all I meant. He once had occasion to allude to his property, but he was so modest, so reserved in the tone he took about it, that one hardly knew what to think.”
“He is ashamed of being rich,” said Bernard. “He would be sure to represent everything unfavorably.”
“That ‘s just what I thought!” This ejaculation was more eager than Mrs. Vivian might have intended, but even had it been less so, Bernard was in a mood to appreciate it. “I felt that we should make allowances for his modesty. But it was in very good taste,” Mrs. Vivian added.
“He ‘s a fortunate man,” said Bernard. “He gets credit for his good taste— and he gets credit for the full figure of his income as well!”
“Ah,” murmured Mrs. Vivian, rising lightly, as if to make her words appear more casual, “I don’t know the full figure of his income. “
She was turning away, and Bernard, as he raised his hat and separated from her, felt that it was rather cruel that he should let her go without enlightening her ignorance. But he said to himself that she knew quite enough. Indeed, he took a walk along the Lichtenthal Alley and carried out this line of reflection. Whether or no Miss Vivian were in love with Gordon Wright, her mother was enamored of Gordon’s fortune, and it had suddenly occurred to her that instead of treating the friend of her daughter’s suitor with civil mistrust, she would help her case better by giving him a hint of her state of mind and appealing to his sense of propriety. Nothing could be more natural than that Mrs. Vivian should suppose that Bernard desired his friend’s success; for, as our thoughtful hero said to himself, what she had hitherto taken it into her head to fear was not that Bernard should fall in love with her daughter, but that her daughter should fall in love with him. Watering-place life is notoriously conducive to idleness of mind, and Bernard strolled for half an hour along the overarched avenue, glancing alternately at these two insupposable cases.
A few days afterward, late in the evening, Gordon Wright came to his room at the hotel.
“I have just received a letter from my sister,” he said. “I am afraid I shall have to go away.”
“Ah, I ‘m sorry for that,” said Bernard, who was so well pleased with the actual that he desired no mutation.
“I mean only for a short time,” Gordon explained. “My poor sister writes from England, telling me that my brother-in-law is suddenly obliged to go home. She has decided not to remain behind, and they are to sail a fortnight hence. She wants very much to see m
e before she goes, and as I don’t know when I shall see her again, I feel as if I ought to join her immediately and spend the interval with her. That will take about a fortnight.”
“I appreciate the sanctity of family ties and I project myself into your situation,” said Bernard. “On the other hand, I don’t envy you a breathless journey from Baden to Folkestone.”
“It ‘s the coming back that will be breathless,” exclaimed Gordon, smiling.
“You will certainly come back, then?”
“Most certainly. Mrs. Vivian is to be here another month.”
“I understand. Well, we shall miss you very much.”