SHE had been thinking of him all day--of the incredible insignificance
of the point on which they had quarrelled; the babyish folly of the
quarrel itself, the silly pride that had made the quarrel strong till
the very memory of it was as a bar of steel to keep them apart. Three
years ago, and so much had happened since then. Three years! and not a
day of them all had passed without some thought of him; sometimes a
happy, quiet remembrance transfigured by a wise forgetfulness; sometimes
a sudden recollection, sharp as a knife. But not on many days had she
allowed the quiet remembrance to give place to the knife-thrust, and
then kept the knife in the wound, turning it round with a scientific
curiosity, which, while it ran an undercurrent of breathless pleasure
beneath the pain, yet did not lessen this--intensified it, rather.
To-day she had thought of him thus through the long hours on deck, when
the boat sped on even keel across the blue and gold of the Channel, in
the dusty train from Ostend--even in the little open carriage that
carried her and her severely moderate luggage from the station at Bruges
to the Hotel du Panier d'Or. She had thought of him so much that it was
no surprise to her to see him there, drinking coffee at one of the
little tables which the hotel throws out like tentacles into the Grande
Place.
There he sat, in a grey flannel suit. His back was towards her, but she
would have known the set of his shoulders anywhere, and the turn of his
head. He was talking to someone--a lady, handsome, but older than
he--oh! evidently much older.
Elizabeth made the transit from carriage to hotel door in one swift,
quiet movement. He did not see her, but the lady facing him put up a
tortoiseshell-handled _lorgnon_ and gazed through it and through
narrowed eyelids at the new comer.
Elizabeth reappeared no more that evening. It was the waiter who came
out to dismiss the carriage and superintend the bringing in of the
luggage. Elizabeth, stumbling in a maze of forgotten French, was met at
the stair-foot by a smiling welcome, and realised in a spasm of
grateful surprise that she need not have brought her dictionary. The
hostess of the "Panier d'Or," like everyone else in Belgium, spoke
English, and an English far better than Elizabeth's French had been.
She secured a tiny bedroom, and a sitting room that looked out over the
Place, so that whenever he drank coffee she might, with luck, hope to
see the back of his dear head.
"Idiot!" said Elizabeth, catching this little thought wandering in her
mind, and with that she slapped the little thought and put it away in
disgrace. But when she woke in the night, it woke, too, and cried a
little.
That night it seemed to her that she would have all her meals served in
the little sitting-room, and never go downstairs at all, lest she should
meet him. But in the morning she perceived that one does not save up
one's money for a year in order to have a Continental holiday, and
sweeten all one's High-school teaching with one thought of that holiday,
in order to spend its precious hours between four walls, just
because--well, for any reason whatsoever.
So she went down to take her coffee and rolls humbly, publicly, like
other people.
The dining-room was dishevelled, discomposed; chairs piled on tables and
brooms all about. It was in the hotel _cafe_, where the marble-topped
little tables were, that Mademoiselle would be served. Here was a
marble-topped counter, too, where later in the day _aperitifs_ and
_petits verres_ would be handed. On this, open for the police to read,
lay the list of those who had spent the night at the "Panier d'Or."
The room was empty. Elizabeth caught up the list. Yes, his name was
there, at the very top of the column--Edward Brown, and below it "_Mrs.
Brown_--"
Elizabeth dropped the paper as though it had bitten her, and, turning
sharply, came face to face with that very Edward Brown. He raised his
hat gravely, and a shiver of absolute sickness passed over her, for his
glance at her in passing was the glance of a stranger. It was not
possible.... Yet it was true. He had forgotten her. In three little
years! They had been long enough years to her, but now she called them
little. In three little years he had forgotten her very face.
Elizabeth, chin in air, marched down the room and took possession of the
little table where her coffee waited her.
She began to eat. It was not till the sixth mouthful that her face
flushed suddenly to so deep a crimson that she dared not raise her eyes
to see how many of the folk now breaking their rolls in her company had
had eyes for her face. As a matter of fact, only one observed the sudden
colour, and he admired and rejoiced, for he had seen such a colour in
that face before.
"She is angry--good!" said he, and poured out more coffee with a steady
hand.
The thought that flooded Elizabeth's face and neck and ears with damask
was one quite inconsistent with the calm eating of bread-and-butter. She
laid down her knife and walked out, chin in air to the last. Alone in
her sitting-room she buried her face in a hard cushion and went as near
to swearing as a very nice girl may.
"Oh! oh! oh!--oh! _bother!_ Why did I go down? I ought to have fled to
the uttermost parts of the earth: or even to Ghent. Of course. Oh, what
a fool I am! It's because he's married that he won't speak to me. You
fool! you fool! you fool! Yes, of course, you knew he was married; only
you thought you'd like the silly satisfaction of hearing his voice speak
to you, and yours speaking to him. But--oh! fool! fool! fool!"
Elizabeth put on the thickest veil she had, and the largest hat, and
went blindly out. She walked very fast, never giving a glance to the
step-and-stair gables of the old houses, the dominant strength of the
belfry, the curious, un-English groups in the streets. Presently she
came to a bridge--a canal--overhanging houses--balconies--a glimpse like
the pictures of Venice. She leaned her elbows on the parapet and
presently became aware of the prospect.
"It _is_ pretty," she said grudgingly, and at the same moment turned
away, for in a flower-hung balcony across the water she saw _him_.
"This is too absurd," she said. "I must get out of the place--at least,
for the day. I'll go to Ghent."
He had seen her, and a thrill of something very like gratified vanity
straightened his shoulders. When a girl has jilted you, it is comforting
to find that even after three years she has not forgotten you enough to
be indifferent, no matter how you may have consoled yourself in the
interval.
Elizabeth walked fast, but she did not get to the railway station,
because she took the wrong turning several times. She passed through
street after strange street, and came out on a wide quay; another canal;
across it showed old, gabled, red-roofed houses. She walked on and came
presently to a bridge, and another quay, and a little puffing, snorting
steamboat.