第30章

It was affirmed at an early stage of this narrative that he was a young man of a contemplative and speculative turn, and he had perhaps never been more true to his character than during an hour or two that evening as he sat by himself on the terrace of the Conversation-house, surrounded by the crowd of its frequenters, but lost in his meditations.

The place was full of movement and sound, but he had tilted back his chair against the great green box of an orange-tree, and in this easy attitude, vaguely and agreeably conscious of the music, he directed his gaze to the star-sprinkled vault of the night.

There were people coming and going whom he knew, but he said nothing to any one--he preferred to be alone; he found his own company quite absorbing. He felt very happy, very much amused, very curiously preoccupied. The feeling was a singular one.

It partook of the nature of intellectual excitement.

He had a sense of having received carte blanche for the expenditure of his wits. Bernard liked to feel his intelligence at play; this is, perhaps, the highest luxury of a clever man.

It played at present over the whole field of Angela Vivian's oddities of conduct--for, since his visit in the afternoon, Bernard had felt that the spectacle was considerably enlarged.

He had come to feel, also, that poor Gordon's predicament was by no means an unnatural one. Longueville had begun to take his friend's dilemma very seriously indeed. The girl was certainly a curious study.

The evening drew to a close and the crowd of Bernard's fellow-loungers dispersed. The lighted windows of the Kursaal still glittered in the bosky darkness, and the lamps along the terrace had not been extinguished; but the great promenade was almost deserted; here and there only a lingering couple--the red tip of a cigar and the vague radiance of a light dress--gave animation to the place. But Bernard sat there still in his tilted chair, beneath his orange-tree; his imagination had wandered very far and he was awaiting its return to the fold.

He was on the point of rising, however, when he saw three figures come down the empty vista of the terrace--figures which even at a distance had a familiar air.

He immediately left his seat and, taking a dozen steps, recognized Angela Vivian, Blanche Evers and Captain Lovelock.

In a moment he met them in the middle of the terrace.

Blanche immediately announced that they had come for a midnight walk.

"And if you think it 's improper," she exclaimed, "it 's not my invention--it 's Miss Vivian's."

"I beg pardon--it 's mine," said Captain Lovelock. "I desire the credit of it. I started the idea; you never would have come without me."

"I think it would have been more proper to come without you than with you,"

Blanche declared. "You know you 're a dreadful character."

"I 'm much worse when I 'm away from you than when I 'm with you," said Lovelock. "You keep me in order."

The young girl gave a little cry.

"I don't know what you call order! You can't be worse than you have been to-night."

Angela was not listening to this; she turned away a little, looking about at the empty garden.

"This is the third time to-day that you have contradicted yourself," he said. Though he spoke softly he went nearer to her; but she appeared not to hear him--she looked away.

"You ought to have been there, Mr. Longueville," Blanche went on.

"We have had a most lovely night; we sat all the evening on Mrs. Vivian's balcony, eating ices. To sit on a balcony, eating ices--that 's my idea of heaven."

"With an angel by your side," said Captain Lovelock.

"You are not my idea of an angel," retorted Blanche.

"I 'm afraid you 'll never learn what the angels are really like," said the Captain. "That 's why Miss Evers got Mrs. Vivian to take rooms over the baker's--so that she could have ices sent up several times a day. Well, I 'm bound to say the baker's ices are not bad."

"Considering that they have been baked! But they affect the mind,"

Blanche went on. "They would have affected Captain Lovelock's--only he has n't any. They certainly affected Angela's--putting it into her head, at eleven o'clock, to come out to walk."

Angela did nothing whatever to defend herself against this ingenious sally; she simply stood there in graceful abstraction. Bernard was vaguely vexed at her neither looking at him nor speaking to him; her indifference seemed a contravention of that right of criticism which Gordon had bequeathed to him.

"I supposed people went to bed at eleven o'clock," he said.

Angela glanced about her, without meeting his eye.

"They seem to have gone."

Miss Evers strolled on, and her Captain of course kept pace with her; so that Bernard and Miss Vivian were left standing together.

He looked at her a moment in silence, but her eye still avoided his own.

"You are remarkably inconsistent," Bernard presently said.

"You take a solemn vow of seclusion this afternoon, and no sooner have you taken it than you proceed to break it in this outrageous manner."

She looked at him now--a long time--longer than she had ever done before.

"This is part of the examination, I suppose," she said.

Bernard hesitated an instant.

"What examination?"

"The one you have undertaken--on Mr. Wright's behalf."

"What do you know about that?"

"Ah, you admit it then?" the girl exclaimed, with an eager laugh.

"I don't in the least admit it," said Bernard, conscious only for the moment of the duty of loyalty to his friend and feeling that negation here was simply a point of honor.

"I trust more to my own conviction than to your denial.

You have engaged to bring your superior wisdom and your immense experience to bear upon me! That 's the understanding."

"You must think us a pretty pair of wiseacres," said Bernard.

"There it is--you already begin to answer for what I think.

When Mr. Wright comes back you will be able to tell him that I am 'outrageous'!" And she turned away and walked on, slowly following her companions.

"What do you care what I tell him?" Bernard asked. "You don't care a straw."