Ostend is a magnificent white Kursaal on the Belgian coast. Certain
requisites are attached to it in the way of great hotels and villas
along a tiled _digue_, and innumerable bathing-machines on the sands
below. There is an old town, it is true, somewhere behind it, with
quaint narrow streets, a Place d’Armes dotted round with cafés, and
a thronged market-square; there is also a bustling port and a fishing
population. But the Ostend of practical life begins and ends at the
Kursaal. Were it to perish during a night, the following day would see
the exodus of twenty thousand visitors. The vast glass rotunda can hold
thousands. Within its precincts you can do anything in reason and out of
reason. You can knit all day long like Penelope, or you can go among
the Sirens with or without the precautions of Ulysses. You can consume
anything from a biscuit to a ten-course dinner. You can play dominoes at
centime points or roulette with a forty-franc minimum. You can listen to
music, you can dance, you can go to sleep. You can write letters, send
telegrams, and open a savings-bank account. By moving to one side or the
other of a glass screen you can sit in the warm sunshine or in the keen
sea wind. You can study the fashions of Europe from St. Petersburg to
Dublin, and if you are a woman, you can wear the most sumptuous garments
Providence has deigned to bestow on you. And lastly, if you are looking
for a place where you will be sure to find the very last person in the
world you desire to see, you will meet with every success at the Kursaal
of Ostend.
Such was Mrs. Winstanley’s passing thought one day. She was there with
Sophia and Evan Wilmington. It was always a great pleasure, she used
to say, to have young people about her; and very naturally, since young
people can be particularly useful in strange places to a middle-aged
lady. The brother and sister fetched and carried for her all day long,
which was very nice and suitable, and Mrs. Winstanley was in her
most affable mood. On the day in question, however, she saw, to her
astonishment and annoyance, Canon Chisely and Yvonne making their way
towards her through the crowded lines of tables.
“Good gracious, Everard!” she said as they came up. “How did you find
your way here? I thought you were going to Switzerland.”
“So we are,” replied the Canon. “We have broken our journey. And as for
getting here, we took the boat from Dover and then walked.”
“The frivolity of the place is infecting you already, Canon,” cried
Sophia, with a laugh. “I hope you are going to stay a long time.”
“Oh, not too long,” said Yvonne. “It wouldn’t be fair to the Canon, who
needs some mountain air. This is just a little treat all for me.”
She glanced at him affectionately as she spoke. It was good of him to
tarry for her sake in this Vanity Fair of a place.
“We were going by Calais, as you know,” said the Canon, explanatively
to Mrs. Winstanley. “We only changed our minds a day or two ago--we
thought it would be a little surprise for you.”
“Of course it is--a delightful one--to see dear Yvonne and yourself.
Where are you staying?”
“At the Océan,” said the Canon, “and you must all come and dine with us
this evening.”
“And will you come to the _bal_ here afterward?” asked Sophia. “Evan has
run across some college friends--or won’t you think it proper?”
“I am going to wear the whole suit of motley while I am here,” replied
the Canon gaily.
He kept his word, not being a man of half measures. No check should be
placed on Yvonne’s enjoyment. She had been moping, as far as Yvonne could
mope, during the latter dullness of Fulminster; now she expanded like a
flower to the gaiety around her. The Canon found an aesthetic pleasure
in watching her happiness. Her expressions of thanks too were charmingly
conveyed. Since that unfortunate attempt on his part, over a twelvemonth
back, to instruct her in the responsibilities of her position, she had
never exhibited toward him such spontaneous feeling. He let her smile
upon whom she would, without a twinge of jealousy.
Yvonne enjoyed herself hugely. She danced and jested with the young men;
she chattered in French to her table d’hôte neighbours, delighted to
speak her mother’s tongue again; she staked two-franc pieces on the
public table, and one afternoon came out of the gaming-room into the
great hall where the Canon was sitting with Mrs. Winstanley, and poured
a great mass of silver on to the table--as much as her two small hands
joined could carry.
“I thought gambling was against your principles, Everard,” said Mrs.
Winstanley, after Yvonne had gone again.
“I am sacrificing them for my wife’s happiness, Emmeline,” he replied,
with a touch of irony.
“Yes, it would be a pity to spoil her pleasure. She is such a child.”
“I wish we all had something of her nature,” said the Canon.
Mrs. Winstanley noted the snub. She was treasuring up many resentments
against Yvonne. In her heart she considered herself a long-suffering
woman.
“You seem to enjoy it too, Everard,” said Yvonne to him that evening.
They were sitting near the entrance watching the smartly-dressed people.
“And I am so glad to be alone with you.”
He was pleased, smiled at her, and throwing off his dignity, entered
into the frivolous spirit of the place. Yvonne forgot the restraint she
had always put upon her tongue when talking to him. She chattered about
everything, holding her face near him, so as to be heard through the
hubbub of thousands of voices, the eternal shuffling of passing feet,
and the crash of the orchestra in the far gallery.
“It is a _Revue des Deux Mondes,_” she said, looking rapidly around
her, with bright eyes.
“How?” asked the Canon.
“The _beau_ and the _demi_,” she replied, wickedly. She shook his knee.
“Oh, do look at that woman! what does she think a man can see in her!”
“Powder,” answered the Canon. “She has been using her puff too freely.”
“She has been putting it on with a _muff_,” cried Yvonne.
He laughed. Yvonne had such a triumphant air in delivering herself of
little witticisms.
A magnificently dressed woman, in a great feathered hat and low-dress,
with diamonds gleaming at her neck, passed by. “You are right, I fear,
about the two worlds,” said the Canon.
“Are n’t there crowds of them? I like to look at them because they wear
such beautiful things. And they fit so. And then to rub shoulders with
them makes one feel so delightfully wicked. You know, I knew a girl
once--she went in for that life of her own accord and she was awfully
happy. Really. Is n’t it odd?”
“My dear Yvonne!” said the Canon, somewhat shocked, “I sincerely trust
you did not continue the acquaintance, afterwards.”
“Oh, no,” she replied, sagely. “It would not have done for me at all.
A lone woman can’t be too careful. But I used to hear about her from my
dressmaker.”
Her point of view was not exactly the Canon’s. But further discussion
was stopped by the arrival of the Wilmingtons, who carried off Yvonne
to the dancing-room. The Canon, drawing the line at his own appearance
there, strolled back contentedly to the hotel to finish the evening over
a book.
Two mornings afterwards Yvonne was walking by herself along the _digue_.
They were to leave for Switzerland the next day, and she determined to
make the most of her remaining time. Sophia Wilmington, for whom she
had called, had already gone out. The Canon, who was engaged over his
correspondence, she was to meet later at the Kursaal. It was a lovely
morning. The line of white hotels, with their al fresco breakfast tables
spread temptingly on the terraces, gleamed in the sun. The _digue_ was
bright with summer dresses. The sands below alive with tennis players,
children making sand-castles, and loungers, and bathers, and horses
moving among the bathing-machines. Yvonne tripped along with careless
tread. Her heart was in harmony with the brightness and movement and
the glint of the sun on the sea. Once a man, meeting her smiling glance,
hesitated as if to speak to her, but seeing that the smile was addressed
to the happy world in general, he passed on his way. It was easy to
kill time. She went down the Rue Flammande and looked at the shops. The
jewelry and the models of Paris dresses delighted her. The display
of sweets at Nopenny’s allured her within. When she returned to the
_digue_, it was time to seek the Canon at the Kursaal.
The liveried attendants lifted their hats as she ran up the steps and
passed the barrier. She gave them a smiling “_bonjour_.” Neither the
Canon nor any of the friends being visible on the verandah, she entered
the great hall, where the morning instrumental concert was going on.
She scanned the talking, laughing crowd as she passed through. Many eyes
followed her. For Yvonne, when happy, was sweet to look upon. She was
turning back to retrace her steps, when, suddenly, a man started up from
a group of three who were playing cards and drinking absinthe at a small
table, and placed himself before her.
“_Tiens! c’est Yvonne!_”
She stared at him with dilated eyes and parted lips and uttered a little
gasping cry. Seeing her grow deadly white and thinking she was going to
faint, the man put out his arm. But Yvonne was mistress of herself.
“_Allons d’ici_,” she whispered, turning a terrified glance around.
The man raised his hat to his companions and signed to her to come. He
was a handsome, careless, dissipated-looking fellow, with curly hair and
a twirled black moustache; short and slightly made. He wore a Tyrolese
hat and a very low turned-down collar and a great silk bow outside
his waistcoat. There was a devil-may-care charm in his swagger as
he walked--also an indefinable touch of vulgarity; the type of the
_cabotin_ in easy circumstances.
Yvonne, more dead than alive, followed him through the deserted _salle
des jeux_ on to the quiet bit of verandah, and sank into a chair that he
offered. She looked at him, still white to the lips.
“You?”
“Yes,” he said laughingly, “why not? It is not astonishing.”
“But I thought you dead!” gasped Yvonne, trembling.
“_A la bonne heure!_ And I seem a ghost. Oh, I am solid. Pinch me. But
how did you come to learn? Ah! I remember it was given out in Paris. A
_canard_. It was in the hospital--paralysis, _ma chère_. See, I can only
just move my arm now. _Cétait la verte, cette sacrée verte--_”
“Absinthe?” asked Yvonne, almost mechanically.
He nodded, went through the motions of preparing the drink, and laughed.
“I had a touch lately,” he went on. “That was the second. The third I
shall be _prrrt--flambé!_ They tell me to give it up. Never in life.”
“But if it will kill you?”
“Bah. What do I care? When one lives, one amuses oneself. And I have
well amused myself, eh, Yvonne? For the rest, _je m’en fiche!_”
He went on talking with airy cynicism. To Yvonne it seemed some horrible
dream. The husband she had looked upon as dead was before her, gay,
mocking, just as she had known him of old. And he greeted her after all
these years with the-same lightness as he had bidden her farewell.
“_Et toi, Yvonne?_” said he at length. “_Ça roule toujours?_ You
look as if you were brewing money. Ravishing costume. _Crépon_--not
twenty-five centimes a yard! A hat that looks like the Rue de la Paix!
_Gants de reine et petites bottines de duchesse!_ You must be doing
golden business. But speak, _petite_, since I assure you I am not a
ghost!”
Yvonne forced a faint smile. She tried to answer him, but her heart was
thumping violently and a lump rose in her throat.
“I am doing very well, Amédée,” she said. The dreadfulness of her
position came over her. She felt sick and faint. What was going to
happen? For some moments she did not hear him as he spoke. At last
perception returned.
“And you are pretty,” Amédée Bazouge was saying. “_Mais jolie à
croquer_--prettier than you ever were. And I--I am going down the hill
at the gallop. _Tiens_, Yvonne. Let us celebrate this meeting. Come and
see me safe to the bottom. It won’t be long. I have money. I am always
_bon enfant._ Let us remarry. From to-day. _Ce serait rigolo!_ And I
will love you--_mais énormément!_”
“But I am already married!” cried Yvonne.
“Thinking me dead?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her for a few seconds, then slapped his thigh and, rising
from his chair, bent himself double and gave vent to a roar of laughter.
The tears stood in Yvonne’s eyes.
“Oh, but it’s comic. You don’t find it so?”
He leant back against the railings and laughed again in genuine
merriment.
“Why, it’s all the more reason to come back to me. _Ça y met du salé_.
Have you any children?”
Yvonne shook her head.
“_Eh bien!_” he exclaimed, triumphantly, stepping towards her with
outstretched hands. But she shrank from him, outraged and bewildered.
“Never, never!” she cried. “Go away. Have pity on me, for God’s sake!”
Amédée Bazouge shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
“It’s a comedy, not a tragedy, _ma chère_. If you are happy, I am not
going to be a spoilsport. It is not my way. Be tranquil with your good
fat Englishman--I bet he’s an Englishman--In two years--bah! I can amuse
myself always till then--my poor little Yvonne. No wonder I frightened
you.”
The affair seemed to cause him intense amusement. A ray of light
appeared to Yvonne.
“You won’t interfere with me at all, Amédée--not claim anything?”
“Oh, don’t be afraid. _Dès ce moment je vais me reflanquer au sapin!_ I
shall be as dead as dead can be for you. _Suis pas méchant va!_”
“Thank you,” said Yvonne. “You were always kind-hearted, Amédée--oh,
it was a horrible mistake--it can’t be altered. You see that I am
helpless.”
“Why, my child,” said he, seating himself again, “I keep on telling you
it is a farce--like all the rest of life. I only laugh. And now let us
talk a little before I pop into the coffin again. What is the name of
the thrice happy being?”
“Oh, don’t ask me, I beg you,” said Yvonne shivering. “It is all
so painful. Tell me about yourself--your voice--Is it still in good
condition?”
“Never better. I am singing here this afternoon.”
“In the Kursaal?”
“Why, yes. That’s why I am here. Oh, _ca marche--pas encore paralysée,
celle-là_. Come and hear me. _Et ton petit organe à toi?_”
“I am out of practice. I have given up the profession.”
“Ah, it’s a pity. You had such an exquisite little voice. I regretted
it after we parted. Two or three times it nearly brought me back to
you--_foi d’artiste!_”
“I think I must go,” said Yvonne after a little. “I am leaving Ostend
to-morrow and I shall not see you again. You don’t think I am treating
you unkindly, Amédée?”
He laughed in his bantering way and lit a cigarette.
“On the contrary, _cher ange_. It is very good of you to talk to a poor
ghost. And you look so pathetic, like a poor little saint with its harp
out of tune.”
She rose, anxious to leave him and escape into solitude, where she could
think. She still trembled with agitation. In the little cool park, on
the other side of the square below, she could be by herself. She dreaded
meeting the Canon yet awhile.
“Do give up that vile absinthe,” she said, as a parting softness.
“It is the only consoler that remains to me--sad widower.”
“Well, good-bye, Amédée.”
“Ah--not yet. Since you are the wife of somebody else, I am dying to
make love to you.”
He held her by the wrist, laughing at her. But at that moment Yvonne
caught sight of the Canon and Mrs. Winstanley, entering upon the
terrace. She wrenched her arm away.
“There is my husband.”
“_Nom de Dieu!_” cried Bazouge, stifling a guffaw before the austere
decorum of the English churchman. “_Ça?_ Oh, my poor Yvonne!” She shook
hands rapidly with him and turned away. He bowed gracefully, including
the new-comers in his salute. The Canon responded severely. Mrs.
Winstanley stared at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette.
“We have been looking all over the place for you,” said the Canon,
as they passed through the window into the _salle des jeux_, leaving
Bazouge in the corner of the verandah.
“I’m sorry,” said Yvonne penitently.
“And who was that rakish-looking little Frenchman you were talking to?”
“An old friend--I used to know him,” said Yvonne, struggling with her
agitation. “A friend of my first husband--I had to speak to him--we went
there to be quiet. I could n’t help it, Everard, really I could n’t.”
“My dear child,” said the Canon, kindly, “I was not scolding you--though
he did look rather undesirable.”
“I suppose you had to mix with all kinds of odd Bohemian people in your
professional days?” said Mrs. Winstanley.
“Of course,” faltered Yvonne.
They went through the great hall. At the door they parted with Mrs.
Winstanley, who was waiting for the Wilmingtons. “We will call for you
on our way to the concert this afternoon,” said the Canon.
“Thanks,” said Mrs. Winstanley, and then, suddenly looking at Yvonne--
“Mercy, my dear! How white you are!”
“There’s nothing the matter with me,” said Yvonne, trying to smile.
“It’s past our _déjeuner_ hour,” said the Canon, briskly. “You want some
food.”
“Perhaps I do,” said Yvonne.
She went with the Canon on to the _digue_, and walked along the shady
side, by the hotels, past the gay terraces thronged with lunching
guests. But all the glamour had gone from the place. An hour had changed
it. And that hour seemed a black abyss separating her from happiness.
An hour ago she had looked upon this kind, grave man who walked by
her side as her husband. Now what was he to her? She shrank from the
thought, terrified, and came nearer to him, touching the flying skirt of
his coat as if to take strength from him.
They entered the crowded dining-room, where the _maître d’hôtel_ had
reserved them a table. She struggled bravely through part of the meal,
strove to keep up a conversation. But the strain was too great. Another
five minutes, she felt, would make her hysterical. She rose, with an
excuse to the Canon, and escaped to her room.
There she flung herself down on the bed and buried her face in the cool
pillows. It was a relief to be alone with her fright and dismay. She
strove to think, but her head was in a whirl. The incidents of the late
scene came luridly before her mind, and she shivered with revulsion. A
rough hand had been laid on the butterfly and brushed the dust from its
wings.
The Canon came later to her room, kindly solicitous. Was she ill? Would
she like to see a medical man? Should he sit with her? She clasped his
hand impulsively and kissed it.
“You are too good to me. I am not worth it. I am not ill. It was the
sun, I think. Let me lie down this afternoon by myself and I shall be
better.”
Surprised and touched by her action, he bent down and kissed her.
“My poor little wife.”
He stepped to the window and pulled the curtain to shield her eyes from
the glare, and promising to order some tea to be brought up later, he
went out.
The kiss, the term, and the little act of thoughtfulness comforted her,
gave her a sense of protection. She had been so bruised and frightened.
Now she could think a little. Should she tell Everard? Then she broke
down again and began to cry silently in a great soothing pity for
herself.
“It would only make him unhappy,” she moaned. “Why should I tell him?”
She grew calmer. If Amédée would only keep his promise and leave her
free, there was really nothing to fret about. She reassured herself with
his words. Through all his failings toward her he had ever been “_bon
enfant_.” There was no danger.
Suddenly a thought came that made her spring from her bed in dismay. The
concert. She had forgotten that Amédée was singing there. Everard was
going. He would see the name on the programme, “Amédée Bazouge.” There
could not be two tenors of that name in Europe. Everard must be kept
away at all costs.
She rushed from the room and down the stairs, in terrible anxiety lest
he should have already left the hotel. To her intense relief, she saw
him sitting in one of the cane chairs in the vestibule smoking his
after-lunch cigar. He threw it away as he caught sight of her at the
head of the stairs, breathless, and holding the balusters, and went up
to meet her.
“My poor child,” said he in an anxious tone. “What is the matter?”
“Oh, Everard--I don’t want any more to be left alone. Don’t think me
silly and cowardly. I am afraid of all kinds of things.”
“Of course I ’ll come and sit with you a little,” he replied kindly.
They entered her room together. Yvonne lay down. Her head was splitting
with nervous headache. The Canon tended her in his grave way and
sat down by the window with a book. Yvonne felt very guilty, but yet
comforted by his presence. At the end of an hour, he looked at his watch
and rose from his seat.
“Are you easier now?”
“You are not going to the Kursaal, Everard?”
“I am afraid Emmeline is expecting me.” She signed to him to approach,
and put her arms round his neck.
“Don’t go. Send her an excuse--and take me for a drive. It would do me
good, and I should so love to be alone with you.”
It was the very first time in her life that Yvonne had consciously
cajoled a man. Her face flushed hot with misgivings. It was with a
mixture of her sex’s shame and triumph that she heard him say.
“Whatever you like, dear. It is still your holiday.”