Chapter 19
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
séjour 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 calèche,
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.