"Did—did he mention any particular time?" faltered Sue.
"Why, yes, now I think of it, I believe he said something about this evening."
"Oh!" gasped Susie, and then closed her lips tightly together. "Well," she said to herself, as she turned away, "he hasn't lost any time, to be sure! I'm afraid he's worse than I thought!"
CHAPTER XII
Events of the Night
Life at Weet-sur-Mer, as at most other places of its class, swung in a round prescribed by custom, as fixed and predestined as the courses of the stars. In the late morning occurred the promenade, taken as a brisk constitutional by a few, but by the great majority as a languid stroll designed to create an appetite for luncheon. That meal was followed by a period of torpor, then every one sought the beach—the high, the low; the rich, the poor; the dowdy and the well-dressed; the virgin in white and the cocotte in scarlet; the thin and the obese; the French, the Dutch, the Italian—yea, and the angular English, for Weet-sur-Mer attracted a crowd as hybrid as its name! There they amused themselves each after his own fashion, with dignity or abandon, as the case might be. They could not be said to mingle in the way that an American crowd would have done under like circumstances—the elements of society in an aristocratic country are as incapable of mingling as oil and water. The oil floated placidly on top, while the water disported itself contentedly beneath.
The oil, to preserve the simile, consisted, in the first place, of a number of self-important individuals stalking solemnly up and down, seemingly unconscious of the fact that they were not as solitary as Crusoe; and, in the second place, of certain solid, cohesive groups, presenting to the world a front as impenetrable and threatening as any Austrian phalanx, and guarding in their midst two or three young girls who must, at any hazard, be kept unspotted from the world. Strange to say, the girls appeared contented, even happy; the position seemed to them, no doubt, the normal one for them to occupy—and they could, of course, look forward with certainty to the opening of the prison door when a marriage should be arranged for them. They order this matter better in Europe; or, at least, differently, for there, as a discerning observer has pointed out, marriage means always that a woman is taken down from the shelf, while with us, alas, too often! that she is placed upon it, never to be removed!
To this class, too, belonged certain obese women and emaciated men sitting, in couples, under the gay sunshades with which the beach was bright. The women were dressed always in gowns which, however ornate, were not quite new, not quite fresh, not quite clean; and the black coats of the men were a little shiny at the elbow, a little faded at the seams. But madame still took care to preserve such figure as unkind fate had left her; and monsieur still kept his moustaches waxed to a needle's point; and they sat there together, quite immovable, for hours at a time, staring drearily out toward the horizon, meditating, no doubt, over past glories, or arranging some coup by which their fortunes might be retrieved. Pride will slip from them gradually, as the years pass; madame will abandon her figure and monsieur his moustaches, and they will end their days miserably in some second- or third-rate pension—even, perhaps, the Maison Vauquer!
The water was more interesting, being at once more natural and lively. With it there was no question of maintaining the equilibrium of its position; there was no need of air or artifice; there was none of that heartburning with which the latest Pontifical Princess smilingly swallows the insolence of the descendant (à la main gauche) of the Great Henri, happy to have been noticed, even though to be noticed meant inevitably to be snubbed. There was a freedom about the water, an honest vulgarity, a quality as of Rabelais, refreshingly in contrast with the hot-house manners and morals of the haute noblesse. Madame need not hesitate to cross her legs, if she found that attitude comfortable; monsieur could at once remove coat, waist-coat, collar, cuffs, if he found the weather warm.
Families whose size testified to their bourgeois respectability, lolled in happy promiscuity upon the sands; the children constructed forts or canals, the women tore some neighbour's reputation to pieces, the men lay back lazily and smoked and kept an eye out for the bathers.