Confidence. Генри Джеймс

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СКАЧАТЬ of little girls for whom existence was but a shimmering surface, was to prattle and ruffle their plumage; their view of life and its duties was as simple and superficial as that of an Oriental bayadere. It surely could not be with regard to this transparent little flirt that Gordon Wright desired advice; you could literally see the daylight—or rather the Baden gaslight—on the other side of her. She sat there for a minute, turning her little empty head to and fro, and catching Bernard’s eye every time she moved; she had for the instant the air of having exhausted all topics. Just then a young lady, with a gentleman at her side, drew near to the little group, and Longueville, perceiving her, instantly got up from his chair.

      “There ‘s a beauty of the unconscious class!” he said to himself. He knew her face very well; he had spent half an hour in copying it.

      “Here comes Miss Vivian!” said Gordon Wright, also getting up, as if to make room for the daughter near the mother.

      She stopped in front of them, smiling slightly, and then she rested her eyes upon Longueville. Their gaze at first was full and direct, but it expressed nothing more than civil curiosity. This was immediately followed, however, by the light of recognition—recognition embarrassed, and signalling itself by a blush.

      Miss Vivian’s companion was a powerful, handsome fellow, with a remarkable auburn beard, who struck the observer immediately as being uncommonly well dressed. He carried his hands in the pockets of a little jacket, the button-hole of which was adorned with a blooming rose. He approached Blanche Evers, smiling and dandling his body a little, and making her two or three jocular bows.

      “Well, I hope you have lost every penny you put on the table!” said the young girl, by way of response to his obeisances.

      He began to laugh and repeat them.

      “I don’t care what I lose, so long—so long—”

      “So long as what, pray?”

      “So long as you let me sit down by you!” And he dropped, very gallantly, into a chair on the other side of her.

      “I wish you would lose all your property!” she replied, glancing at Bernard.

      “It would be a very small stake,” said Captain Lovelock. “Would you really like to see me reduced to misery?”

      While this graceful dialogue rapidly established itself, Miss Vivian removed her eyes from Longueville’s face and turned toward her mother. But Gordon Wright checked this movement by laying his hand on Longueville’s shoulder and proceeding to introduce his friend.

      “This is the accomplished creature, Mr. Bernard Longueville, of whom you have heard me speak. One of his accomplishments, as you see, is to drop down from the moon.”

      “No, I don’t drop from the moon,” said Bernard, laughing. “I drop from—Siena!” He offered his hand to Miss Vivian, who for an appreciable instant hesitated to extend her own. Then she returned his salutation, without any response to his allusion to Siena.

      She declined to take a seat, and said she was tired and preferred to go home. With this suggestion her mother immediately complied, and the two ladies appealed to the indulgence of little Miss Evers, who was obliged to renounce the society of Captain Lovelock. She enjoyed this luxury, however, on the way to Mrs. Vivian’s lodgings, toward which they all slowly strolled, in the sociable Baden fashion. Longueville might naturally have found himself next Miss Vivian, but he received an impression that she avoided him. She walked in front, and Gordon Wright strolled beside her, though Longueville noticed that they appeared to exchange but few words. He himself offered his arm to Mrs. Vivian, who paced along with a little lightly-wavering step, making observations upon the beauties of Baden and the respective merits of the hotels.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      “Which of them is it?” asked Longueville of his friend, after they had bidden good-night to the three ladies and to Captain Lovelock, who went off to begin, as he said, the evening. They stood, when they had turned away from the door of Mrs. Vivian’s lodgings, in the little, rough-paved German street.

      “Which of them is what?” Gordon asked, staring at his companion.

      “Oh, come,” said Longueville, “you are not going to begin to play at modesty at this hour! Did n’t you write to me that you had been making violent love?”

      “Violent? No.”

      “The more shame to you! Has your love-making been feeble?”

      His friend looked at him a moment rather soberly.

      “I suppose you thought it a queer document—that letter I wrote you.”

      “I thought it characteristic,” said Longueville smiling.

      “Is n’t that the same thing?”

      “Not in the least. I have never thought you a man of oddities.” Gordon stood there looking at him with a serious eye, half appealing, half questioning; but at these last words he glanced away. Even a very modest man may wince a little at hearing himself denied the distinction of a few variations from the common type. Longueville made this reflection, and it struck him, also, that his companion was in a graver mood than he had expected; though why, after all, should he have been in a state of exhilaration? “Your letter was a very natural, interesting one,” Bernard added.

      “Well, you see,” said Gordon, facing his companion again, “I have been a good deal preoccupied.”

      “Obviously, my dear fellow!”

      “I want very much to marry.”

      “It ‘s a capital idea,” said Longueville.

      “I think almost as well of it,” his friend declared, “as if I had invented it. It has struck me for the first time.”

      These words were uttered with a mild simplicity which provoked Longueville to violent laughter.

      “My dear fellow,” he exclaimed, “you have, after all, your little oddities.”

      Singularly enough, however, Gordon Wright failed to appear flattered by this concession.

      “I did n’t send for you to laugh at me,” he said.

      “Ah, but I have n’t travelled three hundred miles to cry! Seriously, solemnly, then, it is one of these young ladies that has put marriage into your head?”

      “Not at all. I had it in my head.”

      “Having a desire to marry, you proceeded to fall in love.”

      “I am not in love!” said Gordon Wright, with some energy.

      “Ah, then, my dear fellow, why did you send for me?”

      Wright looked at him an instant in silence.

      “Because I thought you were a good fellow, as well as a clever one.”

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