I have called it a stale expedient on Bernard Longueville’s part to “go
to Europe” again, like the most commonplace American; and it is certain
that, as our young man stood and looked out of the window of his inn at
Havre, an hour after his arrival at that sea-port, his adventure did
not strike him as having any great freshness. He had no plans nor
intentions; he had not even any very definite desires. He had felt the
impulse to come back to Europe, and he had obeyed it; but now that he
had arrived, his impulse seemed to have little more to say to him. He
perceived it, indeed--mentally--in the attitude of a small street-boy
playing upon his nose with that vulgar gesture which is supposed to
represent the elation of successful fraud. There was a large blank wall
before his window, painted a dirty yellow and much discolored by the
weather; a broad patch of summer sunlight rested upon it and brought
out the full vulgarity of its complexion. Bernard stared a while at
this blank wall, which struck him in some degree as a symbol of his
own present moral prospect. Then suddenly he turned away, with the
declaration that, whatever truth there might be in symbolism, he, at any
rate, had not come to Europe to spend the precious remnant of his youth
in a malodorous Norman sea-port. The weather was very hot, and neither
the hotel nor the town at large appeared to form an attractive sejour
for persons of an irritable nostril. To go to Paris, however, was hardly
more attractive than to remain at Havre, for Bernard had a lively vision
of the heated bitumen and the glaring frontages of the French capital.
But if a Norman town was close and dull, the Norman country was
notoriously fresh and entertaining, and the next morning Bernard got
into a caleche, with his luggage, and bade its proprietor drive him
along the coast. Once he had begun to rumble through this charming
landscape, he was in much better humor with his situation; the air was
freshened by a breeze from the sea; the blooming country, without walls
or fences, lay open to the traveller’s eye; the grain-fields and copses
were shimmering in the summer wind; the pink-faced cottages peeped
through the ripening orchard-boughs, and the gray towers of the old
churches were silvered by the morning-light of France.
At the end of some three hours, Bernard arrived at a little
watering-place which lay close upon the shore, in the embrace of a
pair of white-armed cliffs. It had a quaint and primitive aspect and a
natural picturesqueness which commended it to Bernard’s taste. There was
evidently a great deal of nature about it, and at this moment, nature,
embodied in the clear, gay sunshine, in the blue and quiet sea, in the
daisied grass of the high-shouldered downs, had an air of inviting the
intelligent observer to postpone his difficulties. Blanquais-les-Galets,
as Bernard learned the name of this unfashionable resort to be, was
twenty miles from a railway, and the place wore an expression of
unaffected rusticity. Bernard stopped at an inn for his noonday
breakfast, and then, with his appreciation quickened by the homely
felicity of this repast, determined to go no further. He engaged a
room at the inn, dismissed his vehicle, and gave himself up to the
contemplation of French sea-side manners. These were chiefly to be
observed upon a pebbly strand which lay along the front of the village
and served as the gathering-point of its idler inhabitants. Bathing in
the sea was the chief occupation of these good people, including, as it
did, prolonged spectatorship of the process and infinite conversation
upon its mysteries. The little world of Blanquais appeared to form a
large family party, of highly developed amphibious habits, which sat
gossiping all day upon the warm pebbles, occasionally dipping into the
sea and drying itself in the sun, without any relaxation of personal
intimacy. All this was very amusing to Bernard, who in the course of the
day took a bath with the rest. The ocean was, after all, very large, and
when one took one’s plunge one seemed to have it quite to one’s self.
When he had dressed himself again, Bernard stretched himself on the
beach, feeling happier than he had done in a long time, and pulled his
hat over his eyes. The feeling of happiness was an odd one; it had come
over him suddenly, without visible cause; but, such as it was, our hero
made the most of it. As he lay there it seemed to deepen; his immersion
and his exercise in the salt water had given him an agreeable languor.
This presently became a drowsiness which was not less agreeable, and
Bernard felt himself going to sleep. There were sounds in the air above
his head--sounds of the crunching and rattling of the loose, smooth
stones as his neighbors moved about on them; of high-pitched French
voices exchanging colloquial cries; of the plash of the bathers in the
distant water, and the short, soft breaking of the waves. But these
things came to his ears more vaguely and remotely, and at last they
faded away. Bernard enjoyed half an hour of that light and easy slumber
which is apt to overtake idle people in recumbent attitudes in the open
air on August afternoons. It brought with it an exquisite sense of
rest, and the rest was not spoiled by the fact that it was animated by a
charming dream. Dreams are vague things, and this one had the defects of
its species; but it was somehow concerned with the image of a young
lady whom Bernard had formerly known, and who had beautiful eyes, into
which--in the dream--he found himself looking. He waked up to find
himself looking into the crown of his hat, which had been resting on the
bridge of his nose. He removed it, and half raised himself, resting on
his elbow and preparing to taste, in another position, of a little more
of that exquisite rest of which mention has just been made. The world
about him was still amusing and charming; the chatter of his companions,
losing itself in the large sea-presence, the plash of the divers and
swimmers, the deep blue of the ocean and the silvery white of the cliff,
had that striking air of indifference to the fact that his mind had been
absent from them which we are apt to find in mundane things on emerging
from a nap. The same people were sitting near him on the beach--the
same, and yet not quite the same. He found himself noticing a person
whom he had not noticed before--a young lady, who was seated in a low
portable chair, some dozen yards off, with her eyes bent upon a book.
Her head was in shade; her large parasol made, indeed, an awning for
her whole person, which in this way, in the quiet attitude of perusal,
seemed to abstract itself from the glare and murmur of the beach. The
clear shadow of her umbrella--it was lined with blue--was deep upon her
face; but it was not deep enough to prevent Bernard from recognizing
a profile that he knew. He suddenly sat upright, with an intensely
quickened vision. Was he dreaming still, or had he waked? In a moment he
felt that he was acutely awake; he heard her, across the interval, turn
the page of her book. For a single instant, as she did so, she looked
with level brows at the glittering ocean; then, lowering her eyes, she
went on with her reading. In this barely perceptible movement he saw
Angela Vivian; it was wonderful how well he remembered her. She was
evidently reading very seriously; she was much interested in her book.
She was alone; Bernard looked about for her mother, but Mrs. Vivian
was not in sight. By this time Bernard had become aware that he was
agitated; the exquisite rest of a few moments before had passed away.
His agitation struck him as unreasonable; in a few minutes he made up
his mind that it was absurd. He had done her an injury--yes; but as she
sat there losing herself in a French novel--Bernard could see it was a
French novel--he could not make out that she was the worse for it. It
had not affected her appearance; Miss Vivian was still a handsome girl.
Bernard hoped she would not look toward him or recognize him; he wished
to look at her at his ease; to think it over; to make up his mind. The
idea of meeting Angela Vivian again had often come into his thoughts;
I may, indeed, say that it was a tolerably familiar presence there; but
the fact, nevertheless, now presented itself with all the violence of an
accident for which he was totally unprepared. He had often asked himself
what he should say to her, how he should carry himself, and how he
should probably find the young lady; but, with whatever ingenuity he
might at the moment have answered these questions, his intelligence at
present felt decidedly overtaxed. She was a very pretty girl to whom he
had done a wrong; this was the final attitude into which, with a good
deal of preliminary shifting and wavering, she had settled in his
recollection. The wrong was a right, doubtless, from certain points of
view; but from the girl’s own it could only seem an injury to which its
having been inflicted by a clever young man with whom she had been on
agreeable terms, necessarily added a touch of baseness.
In every disadvantage that a woman suffers at the hands of a man, there
is inevitably, in what concerns the man, an element of cowardice. When I
say “inevitably,” I mean that this is what the woman sees in it. This is
what Bernard believed that Angela Vivian saw in the fact that by giving
his friend a bad account of her he had prevented her making an opulent
marriage. At first he had said to himself that, whether he had held
his tongue or spoken, she had already lost her chance; but with time,
somehow, this reflection had lost its weight in the scale. It conveyed
little re-assurance to his irritated conscience--it had become
imponderable and impertinent. At the moment of which I speak it entirely
failed to present itself, even for form’s sake; and as he sat looking
at this superior creature who came back to him out of an episode of his
past, he thought of her simply as an unprotected woman toward whom he
had been indelicate. It is not an agreeable thing for a delicate man
like Bernard Longueville to have to accommodate himself to such an
accident, but this is nevertheless what it seemed needful that he should
do. If she bore him a grudge he must think it natural; if she had vowed
him a hatred he must allow her the comfort of it. He had done the only
thing possible, but that made it no better for her. He had wronged her.
The circumstances mattered nothing, and as he could not make it up
to her, the only reasonable thing was to keep out of her way. He had
stepped into her path now, and the proper thing was to step out of it.
If it could give her no pleasure to see him again, it could certainly do
him no good to see her. He had seen her by this time pretty well--as far
as mere seeing went, and as yet, apparently, he was none the worse for
that; but his hope that he should himself escape unperceived had now
become acute. It is singular that this hope should not have led him
instantly to turn his back and move away; but the explanation of his
imprudent delay is simply that he wished to see a little more of Miss
Vivian. He was unable to bring himself to the point. Those clever things
that he might have said to her quite faded away. The only good taste was
to take himself off, and spare her the trouble of inventing civilities
that she could not feel. And yet he continued to sit there from moment
to moment, arrested, detained, fascinated, by the accident of her not
looking round--of her having let him watch her so long. She turned
another page, and another, and her reading absorbed her still. He was
so near her that he could have touched her dress with the point of his
umbrella. At last she raised her eyes and rested them a while on the
blue horizon, straight in front of her, but as yet without turning them
aside. This, however, augmented the danger of her doing so, and Bernard,
with a good deal of an effort, rose to his feet. The effort, doubtless,
kept the movement from being either as light or as swift as it might
have been, and it vaguely attracted his neighbor’s attention. She turned
her head and glanced at him, with a glance that evidently expected
but to touch him and pass. It touched him, and it was on the point of
passing; then it suddenly checked itself; she had recognized him. She
looked at him, straight and open-eyed, out of the shadow of her parasol,
and Bernard stood there--motionless now--receiving her gaze. How long it
lasted need not be narrated. It was probably a matter of a few seconds,
but to Bernard it seemed a little eternity. He met her eyes, he looked
straight into her face; now that she had seen him he could do nothing
else. Bernard’s little eternity, however, came to an end; Miss Vivian
dropped her eyes upon her book again. She let them rest upon it only a
moment; then she closed it and slowly rose from her chair, turning
away from Bernard. He still stood looking at her--stupidly, foolishly,
helplessly enough, as it seemed to him; no sign of recognition had been
exchanged. Angela Vivian hesitated a minute; she now had her back turned
to him, and he fancied her light, flexible figure was agitated by her
indecision. She looked along the sunny beach which stretched its shallow
curve to where the little bay ended and the white wall of the cliffs
began. She looked down toward the sea, and up toward the little Casino
which was perched on a low embankment, communicating with the beach at
two or three points by a short flight of steps. Bernard saw--or supposed
he saw--that she was asking herself whither she had best turn to avoid
him. He had not blushed when she looked at him--he had rather turned
a little pale; but he blushed now, for it really seemed odious to have
literally driven the poor girl to bay. Miss Vivian decided to take
refuge in the Casino, and she passed along one of the little pathways
of planks that were laid here and there across the beach, and directed
herself to the nearest flight of steps. Before she had gone two paces
a complete change came over Bernard’s feeling; his only wish now was
to speak to her--to explain--to tell her he would go away. There was
another row of steps at a short distance behind him; he rapidly ascended
them and reached the little terrace of the Casino. Miss Vivian stood
there; she was apparently hesitating again which way to turn. Bernard
came straight up to her, with a gallant smile and a greeting. The
comparison is a coarse one, but he felt that he was taking the bull by
the horns. Angela Vivian stood watching him arrive.
“You did n’t recognize me,” he said, “and your not recognizing me made
me--made me hesitate.”
For a moment she said nothing, and then--
“You are more timid than you used to be!” she answered.
He could hardly have said what expression he had expected to find in her
face; his apprehension had, perhaps, not painted her obtrusively pale
and haughty, aggressively cold and stern; but it had figured something
different from the look he encountered. Miss Vivian was simply
blushing--that was what Bernard mainly perceived; he saw that her
surprise had been extreme--complete. Her blush was re-assuring; it
contradicted the idea of impatient resentment, and Bernard took some
satisfaction in noting that it was prolonged.
“Yes, I am more timid than I used to be,” he said.
In spite of her blush, she continued to look at him very directly; but
she had always done that--she always met one’s eye; and Bernard now
instantly found all the beauty that he had ever found before in her
pure, unevasive glance.
“I don’t know whether I am more brave,” she said; “but I must tell the
truth--I instantly recognized you.”
“You gave no sign!”
“I supposed I gave a striking one--in getting up and going away.”
“Ah!” said Bernard, “as I say, I am more timid than I was, and I did n’t
venture to interpret that as a sign of recognition.”
“It was a sign of surprise.”
“Not of pleasure!” said Bernard. He felt this to be a venturesome, and
from the point of view of taste perhaps a reprehensible, remark; but he
made it because he was now feeling his ground, and it seemed better to
make it gravely than with assumed jocosity.
“Great surprises are to me never pleasures,” Angela answered; “I am not
fond of shocks of any kind. The pleasure is another matter. I have not
yet got over my surprise.”
“If I had known you were here, I would have written to you beforehand,”
said Bernard, laughing.
Miss Vivian, beneath her expanded parasol, gave a little shrug of her
shoulders.
“Even that would have been a surprise.”
“You mean a shock, eh? Did you suppose I was dead?”
Now, at last, she lowered her eyes, and her blush slowly died away.
“I knew nothing about it.”
“Of course you could n’t know, and we are all mortal. It was natural
that you should n’t expect--simply on turning your head--to find me
lying on the pebbles at Blanquais-les-Galets. You were a great surprise
to me, as well; but I differ from you--I like surprises.”
“It is rather refreshing to hear that one is a surprise,” said the girl.
“Especially when in that capacity one is liked!” Bernard exclaimed.
“I don’t say that--because such sensations pass away. I am now beginning
to get over mine.”
The light mockery of her tone struck him as the echo of an unforgotten
air. He looked at her a moment, and then he said--
“You are not changed; I find you quite the same.”
“I am sorry for that!” And she turned away.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Where are you going?”
She looked about her, without answering, up and down the little terrace.
The Casino at Blanquais was a much more modest place of reunion than
the Conversation-house at Baden-Baden. It was a small, low structure of
brightly painted wood, containing but three or four rooms, and furnished
all along its front with a narrow covered gallery, which offered a
delusive shelter from the rougher moods of the fine, fresh weather.
It was somewhat rude and shabby--the subscription for the season was
low--but it had a simple picturesqueness. Its little terrace was a very
convenient place for a stroll, and the great view of the ocean and of
the marble-white crags that formed the broad gate-way of the shallow
bay, was a sufficient compensation for the absence of luxuries. There
were a few people sitting in the gallery, and a few others scattered
upon the terrace; but the pleasure-seekers of Blanquais were, for the
most part, immersed in the salt water or disseminated on the grassy
downs.
“I am looking for my mother,” said Angela Vivian.
“I hope your mother is well.”
“Very well, thank you.”
“May I help you to look for her?” Bernard asked.
Her eyes paused in their quest, and rested a moment upon her companion.
“She is not here,” she said presently. “She has gone home.”
“What do you call home?” Bernard demanded.
“The sort of place that we always call home; a bad little house that we
have taken for a month.”
“Will you let me come and see it?”
“It ‘s nothing to see.”
Bernard hesitated a moment.
“Is that a refusal?”
“I should never think of giving it so fine a name.”
“There would be nothing fine in forbidding me your door. Don’t think
that!” said Bernard, with rather a forced laugh.
It was difficult to know what the girl thought; but she said, in a
moment--
“We shall be very happy to see you. I am going home.”
“May I walk with you so far?” asked Bernard.
“It is not far; it ‘s only three minutes.” And Angela moved slowly to
the gate of the Casino.