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.