“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.”
“A good fellow!” repeated Longueville. “I don’t understand your
confounded scientific nomenclature. But excuse me; I won’t laugh. I am
not a clever fellow; but I am a good one.” He paused a moment, and then
laid his hand on his companion’s shoulder. “My dear Gordon, it ‘s no
use; you are in love.”
“Well, I don’t want to be,” said Wright.
“Heavens, what a horrible sentiment!”
“I want to marry with my eyes open. I want to know my wife. You don’t
know people when you are in love with them. Your impressions are
colored.”
“They are supposed to be, slightly. And you object to color?”
“Well, as I say, I want to know the woman I marry, as I should know any
one else. I want to see her as clearly.”
“Depend upon it, you have too great an appetite for knowledge; you set
too high an esteem upon the dry light of science.”
“Ah!” said Gordon promptly; “of course I want to be fond of her.”
Bernard, in spite of his protest, began to laugh again.
“My dear Gordon, you are better than your theories. Your passionate
heart contradicts your frigid intellect. I repeat it--you are in love.”
“Please don’t repeat it again,” said Wright.
Bernard took his arm, and they walked along.
“What shall I call it, then? You are engaged in making studies for
matrimony.”
“I don’t in the least object to your calling it that. My studies are of
extreme interest.”
“And one of those young ladies is the fair volume that contains the
precious lesson,” said Longueville. “Or perhaps your text-book is in two
volumes?”
“No; there is one of them I am not studying at all. I never could do two
things at once.”
“That proves you are in love. One can’t be in love with two women
at once, but one may perfectly have two of them--or as many as you
please--up for a competitive examination. However, as I asked you
before, which of these young ladies is it that you have selected?”
Gordon Wright stopped abruptly, eying his friend.
“Which should you say?”
“Ah, that ‘s not a fair question,” Bernard urged. “It would be invidious
for me to name one rather than the other, and if I were to mention the
wrong one, I should feel as if I had been guilty of a rudeness towards
the other. Don’t you see?”
Gordon saw, perhaps, but he held to his idea of making his companion
commit himself.
“Never mind the rudeness. I will do the same by you some day, to make it
up. Which of them should you think me likely to have taken a fancy to?
On general grounds, now, from what you know of me?” He proposed this
problem with an animated eye.
“You forget,” his friend said, “that though I know, thank heaven, a good
deal of you, I know very little of either of those girls. I have had too
little evidence.”
“Yes, but you are a man who notices. That ‘s why I wanted you to come.”
“I spoke only to Miss Evers.”
“Yes, I know you have never spoken to Miss Vivian.” Gordon Wright stood
looking at Bernard and urging his point as he pronounced these words.
Bernard felt peculiarly conscious of his gaze. The words represented an
illusion, and Longueville asked himself quickly whether it were not his
duty to dispel it. The answer came more slowly than the question,
but still it came, in the shape of a negative. The illusion was but a
trifling one, and it was not for him, after all, to let his friend know
that he had already met Miss Vivian. It was for the young girl
herself, and since she had not done so--although she had the
opportunity--Longueville said to himself that he was bound in honor not
to speak. These reflections were very soon made, but in the midst of
them our young man, thanks to a great agility of mind, found time
to observe, tacitly, that it was odd, just there, to see his “honor”
thrusting in its nose. Miss Vivian, in her own good time, would
doubtless mention to Gordon the little incident of Siena. It was
Bernard’s fancy, for a moment, that he already knew it, and that the
remark he had just uttered had an ironical accent; but this impression
was completely dissipated by the tone in which he added--“All the same,
you noticed her.”
“Oh, yes; she is very noticeable.”
“Well, then,” said Gordon, “you will see. I should like you to make
it out. Of course, if I am really giving my attention to one to the
exclusion of the other, it will be easy to discover.”
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.