"It is Mr. Longueville, whom we met at Baden," said Angela to her mother, gravely.
Mrs. Vivian began to smile, and stepped down quickly toward the gate.
"Ah, Mr. Longueville," she murmured, "it 's so long—it 's so pleasant—it 's so strange—"
And suddenly she stopped, still smiling. Her smile had an odd intensity; she was trembling a little, and Bernard, who was prepared for hissing scorn, perceived with a deep, an almost violent, surprise, a touching agitation, an eager friendliness.
"Yes, it 's very long," he said; "it 's very pleasant. I have only just arrived; I met Miss Vivian."
"And you are not coming in?" asked Angela's mother, very graciously.
"Your daughter has not asked me!" said Bernard.
"Ah, my dearest," murmured Mrs. Vivian, looking at the girl.
Her daughter returned her glance, and then the elder lady paused again, and simply began to smile at Bernard, who recognized in her glance that queer little intimation—shy and cautious, yet perfectly discernible—of a desire to have a private understanding with what he felt that she mentally termed his better nature, which he had more than once perceived at Baden-Baden.
"Ah no, she has not asked me," Bernard repeated, laughing gently.
Then Angela turned her eyes upon him, and the expression of those fine organs was strikingly agreeable. It had, moreover, the merit of being easily interpreted; it said very plainly, "Please don't insist, but leave me alone." And it said it not at all sharply—very gently and pleadingly. Bernard found himself understanding it so well that he literally blushed with intelligence.
"Don't you come to the Casino in the evening, as you used to come to the Kursaal?" he asked.
Mrs. Vivian looked again at her daughter, who had passed into the door-way of the cottage; then she said—
"We will go this evening."
"I shall look for you eagerly," Bernard rejoined. "Auf wiedersehen, as we used to say at Baden!"
Mrs. Vivian waved him a response over the gate, her daughter gave him a glance from the threshold, and he took his way back to his inn.
He awaited the evening with great impatience; he fancied he had made a discovery, and he wished to confirm it. The discovery was that his idea that she bore him a grudge, that she was conscious of an injury, that he was associated in her mind with a wrong, had all been a morbid illusion. She had forgiven, she had forgotten, she did n't care, she had possibly never cared! This, at least, was his theory now, and he longed for a little more light upon it. His old sense of her being a complex and intricate girl had, in that quarter of an hour of talk with her, again become lively, so that he was not absolutely sure his apprehensions had been vain. But, with his quick vision of things, he had got the impression, at any rate, that she had no vulgar resentment of any slight he might have put upon her, or any disadvantage he might have caused her. Her feeling about such a matter would be large and original. Bernard desired to see more of that, and in the evening, in fact, it seemed to him that he did so.
The terrace of the Casino was far from offering the brilliant spectacle of the promenade in front of the gaming-rooms at Baden. It had neither the liberal illumination, the distinguished frequenters, nor the superior music which formed the attraction of that celebrated spot; but it had a modest animation of its own, in which the starlight on the open sea took the place of clustered lamps, and the mighty resonance of the waves performed the function of an orchestra. Mrs. Vivian made her appearance with her daughter, and Bernard, as he used to do at Baden, chose a corner to place some chairs for them. The crowd was small, for most of the visitors had compressed themselves into one of the rooms, where a shrill operetta was being performed by a strolling troupe. Mrs. Vivian's visit was a short one; she remained at the Casino less than half an hour. But Bernard had some talk with Angela. He sat beside her—her mother was on the other side, talking with an old French lady whose acquaintance she had made on the beach. Between Bernard and Angela several things were said. When his friends went away Bernard walked home with them. He bade them good-night at the door of their chalet, and then slowly strolled back to the Casino. The terrace was nearly empty; every one had gone to listen to the operetta, the sound of whose contemporary gayety came through the open, hot-looking windows in little thin quavers and catches. The ocean was rumbling just beneath; it made a ruder but richer music. Bernard stood looking at it a moment; then he went down the steps to the beach. The tide was rather low; he walked slowly down to the line of the breaking waves. The sea looked huge and black and simple; everything was vague in the unassisted darkness. Bernard stood there some time; there was nothing but the sound and the sharp, fresh smell. Suddenly he put his hand to his heart; it was beating very fast. An immense conviction had come over him—abruptly, then and there—and for a moment he held his breath. It was like a word spoken in the darkness—he held his breath to listen. He was in love with Angela Vivian, and his love was a throbbing passion! He sat down on the stones where he stood—it filled him with a kind of awe.
CHAPTER XXI
It filled him with a kind of awe, and the feeling was by no means agreeable. It was not a feeling to which even a man of Bernard Longueville's easy power of extracting the savour from a sensation could rapidly habituate himself, and for the rest of that night it was far from making of our hero the happy man that a lover just coming to self-consciousness is supposed to be. It was wrong—it was dishonorable—it was impossible—and yet it was; it was, as nothing in his own personal experience had ever been. He seemed hitherto to have been living by proxy, in a vision, in reflection—to have been an echo, a shadow, a futile attempt; but this at last was life itself, this was a fact, this was reality. For these things one lived; these were the things that people had died for. Love had been a fable before this—doubtless a very pretty one; and passion had been a literary phrase—employed obviously with considerable effect. But now he stood in a personal relation to these familiar ideas, which gave them a very much keener import; they had laid their hand upon him in the darkness, he felt it upon his shoulder, and he knew by its pressure that it was the hand of destiny. What made this sensation a shock was the element that was mixed with it; the fact that it came not simply and singly, but with an attendant shadow in which it immediately merged and lost itself. It was forbidden fruit—he knew it the instant he had touched it. He felt that he had pledged himself not to do just this thing which was gleaming before him so divinely—not to widen the crevice, not to open the door that would flood him with light. Friendship and honor were at stake; they stood at his left hand, as his new-born passion stood already at his right; they claimed him as well, and their grasp had a pressure which might become acutely painful. The soul is a still more tender organism than the body, and it shrinks from the prospect of being subjected to violence. Violence—spiritual violence—was what our luxurious hero feared; and it is not too much to say that as he lingered there by the sea, late into the night, while the gurgitation of the waves grew deeper to his ear, the prospect came to have an element of positive terror. The two faces of his situation stood confronting each other; it was a rigid, brutal opposition, and Bernard held his breath for a while with the wonder of what would come of it. He sat a long time upon the beach; the night grew very cold, but he had no sense of it. Then he went away and passed before the Casino again, and wandered through the village. The Casino was shrouded in darkness and silence, and there was nothing in the streets of the little town but the salt smell of the sea, a vague aroma of fish and the distant sound of the breakers. Little by little, Bernard lost the feeling of having been startled, and began to perceive that he could reason about his trouble. Trouble it was, though this seems an odd name for the consciousness of a bright enchantment; and the first thing that reason, definitely consulted, told him about the matter was that he had been in love with Angela Vivian any time these three years. This sapient faculty supplied him with further information; only two or three of the items of which, however, it is necessary to reproduce. He had been a great fool—an incredible fool—not to have discovered before this what was the matter with him! Bernard's sense of his own shrewdness—always tolerably acute—had never received such a bruise as this present perception that a great many things had been taking place in his clever mind without his clever mind suspecting them. But it little mattered, his reason went on to declare, what he had suspected or what he might now feel about it; his present business was to leave Blanquais-les-Galets at sunrise the next morning and never rest his eyes upon Angela Vivian again. This was his duty; it had the merit of being perfectly plain and definite, easily apprehended, and unattended, as far as he could discover, with the smallest material difficulties. Not only this, reason continued to remark; but the moral difficulties were equally inconsiderable. He had never breathed a word of his passion to Miss Vivian—quite the contrary; he had never committed himself nor given her the smallest reason to suspect his hidden flame; and he was therefore perfectly free to turn his back upon her—he could never incur the reproach of trifling with her affections. Bernard was in that state of mind when it is the greatest of blessings to be saved the distress of choice—to see a straight path before you and to feel that you have only to follow it. Upon the straight path I have indicated, he fixed his eyes very hard; of course he would take his departure at the earliest possible hour on the morrow. There was a streak of morning in the eastern sky by the time he knocked for re-admittance at the door of the inn, which was opened to him by a mysterious old woman in a nightcap and meagre accessories, whose identity he failed to ascertain; and he laid himself down to rest—he was very tired—with his attention fastened, as I say, on the idea—on the very image—of departure.