Each inwardly smiled. In the old days each had been so eager for the
other's good opinion, so afraid of seeming commonplace, that their
conversations had been all fine work, and their very love-letters too
clever by half. Now they did not belong to each other any more, and he
said the trees were green, and she said "Yes."
"There seem to be a great many people in Bruges," said she.
"Yes," he said, in eager assent. "Quite a large number."
"There is a great deal to be seen in these old towns. So quaint, aren't
they?"
She remembered his once condemning in a friend the use of that word. Now
he echoed it.
"So very quaint," said he. "And the dogs drawing carts! Just like the
pictures, aren't they?"
"You can get pictures of them on the illustrated post-cards. So nice to
send to one's relations at home."
She was getting angry with him. He played the game too well.
"Ah! yes," he answered, "the dear people like these little tokens, don't
they?"
"He's getting exactly like a curate," she thought, and a doubt assailed
her. Perhaps he was not playing the game at all. Perhaps in these three
years he had really grown stupid.
"How different it all is from England, isn't it?"
"Oh, quite!" said he.
"Have you ever been in Holland?"
"Yes, once."
"What was it like?" she asked.
That was a form of question they had agreed to hate--once, long ago.
"Oh, extremely pleasant," he said warmly. "We met some most agreeable
people at some of the hotels. Quite the best sort of people, you know."
Another phrase once banned by both.
The sun sparkled on the moving duckweed of the canal. The sky was blue
overhead. Here and there a red-roofed farm showed among the green
pastures. Ahead the avenues tapered away into distance, and met at the
vanishing point. Elizabeth smiled for sheer pleasure at the sight of two
little blue-smocked children solemnly staring at the boat as it passed.
Then she glanced at him with an irritated frown. It was his turn to
smile.
"You called the tune, my lady," he said to himself, "and it is you shall
change it, not I."
"Foreign countries are very like England, are they not?" he said. "The
same kind of trees, you know, and the same kind of cows, and--and
everything. Even the canals are very like ours."
"The canal system," said Elizabeth instructively, "is the finest in the
world."
"_Adieu, Canal, canard, canaille_," he quoted. They had always barred
quotations in the old days.
"I don't understand Latin," said she. Then their eyes met, and he got up
abruptly and walked to the end of the boat and back. When he sat down
again, he sat beside her.
"Shall we go on?" he said quietly. "I think it is your turn to choose a
subject--"
"Oh! have you read _Alice in Wonderland_?" she said, with simple
eagerness. "Such a pretty book, isn't it?"
He shrugged his shoulders. She was obstinate; all women were. Men were
not. He would be magnanimous. He would not compel her to change the
tune. He had given her one chance; and if she wouldn't--well, it was not
possible to keep up this sort of conversation till they got to Sluys. He
would--
But again she saved him.
"I won't play any more," she said. "It's not fair. Because you may think
me a fool. But I happen to know that you are Mr. Brown, who writes the
clever novels. You were pointed out to me at the hotel; and--oh! do tell
me if you always talk like this to strangers?"
"Only to English ladies on canal boats," said he, smiling. "You see, one
never knows. They might wish one to talk like that. We both did it very
prettily. Of course, more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows, but I
think I may congratulate you on your first attempt at the English-abroad
conversation."
"Do you know, really," she said, "you did it so well that if I hadn't
known who you were, I should have thought it was the real you. The
felicitations are not all mine. But won't you tell me about Holland?
That bit of yours about the hotel acquaintances was very brutal. I've
heard heaps of people say that very thing. You just caught the tone. But
Holland--"
"Well, this is Holland," said he; "but I saw more of it than this, and
I'll tell you anything you like if you won't expect me to talk clever,
and turn the phrase. That's a lost art, and I won't humiliate myself in
trying to recover it. To begin with, Holland is flat."
"Don't be a geography book," Elizabeth laughed light-heartedly.
"The coinage is--"
"No, but seriously."
"Well, then," said he, and the talk lasted till the little steamer
bumped and grated against the quay-side at Sluys.
When they had landed the two stood for a moment on the grass-grown quay
in silence.
"Well, good afternoon," said Elizabeth suddenly. "Thank you so much for
telling me all about Holland." And with that she turned and walked away
along the narrow street between the trim little houses that look so like
a child's toy village tumbled out of a white wood box. Mr. Edward Brown
was left, planted there.
"Well!" said he, and spent the afternoon wandering about near the
landing-stage, and wondering what would be the next move in this game of
hers. It was a childish game, this playing at strangers, yet he owned
that it had a charm.
He ate currant bread and drank coffee at a little inn by the quay,
sitting at the table by the door and watching the boats. Two o'clock
came and went. Four o'clock came, half-past four, and with that went the
last return steamer for Bruges. Still Mr. Edward Brown sat still and
smoked. Five minutes later Elizabeth's blue cotton dress gleamed in the
sunlight at the street corner.
He rose and walked towards her.
"I hope you have enjoyed yourself in Holland," he said.
"I lost my way," said she. He saw that she was very tired, even before
he heard it in her voice. "When is the next boat?"
"There are no more boats to-day. The last left about ten minutes ago."
"You might have told me," she said resentfully.
"I beg your pardon," said he. "You bade me good-bye with an abruptness
and a decision which forbade me to tell you anything."
"I beg your pardon," she said humbly. "Can I get back by train?"
"There are no trains."
"A carriage?"
"There are none. I have inquired."
"But you," she asked suddenly, "how did you miss the boat? How are you
going to get back?"
"I shall walk," said he, ignoring the first question. "It's only eleven
miles. But for you, of course, that's impossible. You might stay the
night here. The woman at this inn seems a decent old person."
"I can't. There's a girl coming to join me. She's in the sixth at the
High School where I teach. I've promised to chaperon and instruct her.
I must meet her at the station at ten. She's been ten years at the
school. I don't believe she knows a word of French. Oh! I must go. She
doesn't know the name of my hotel, or anything. I must go. I must walk."
"Have you had any food?"
"No; I never thought about it."
She did not realise that she was explaining to him that she had been
walking to get away from him and from her own thoughts, and that food
had not been among these.
"Then you will dine now; and, if you will allow me, we will walk back
together."
Elizabeth submitted. It was pleasant to be taken care of. And to be
"ordered about," that was pleasant, too. Curiously enough, that very
thing had been a factor in the old quarrel. At nineteen one is so
independent.
She was fed on omelettes and strange, pale steak, and Mr. Brown insisted
on beer. The place boasted no wine cellar.
Then the walk began. For the first mile or two it was pleasant. Then
Elizabeth's shoes began to hurt her. They were smart brown shoes, with
deceitful wooden heels. In her wanderings over the cobblestones of
Sluys streets one heel had cracked itself. Now it split altogether. She
began to limp.
"Won't you take my arm?" said he.
"No, thank you. I don't really need it. I'll rest a minute, though, if I
may." She sat down, leaning against a tree, and looked out at the
darting swallows, dimpling here and there the still green water. The
level sunlight struck straight across the pastures, turning them to
gold. The long shadows of the trees fell across the canal and lay black
on the reeds at the other side. The hour was full of an ample dignity of
peace.
They walked another mile. Elizabeth could not conceal her growing
lameness.
"Something is wrong with your foot," said he. "Have you hurt it?"
"It's these silly shoes; the heel's broken."
"Take them off and let me see."
She submitted without a protest, sat down, took off the shoes, and gave
them to him. He looked at them kindly, contemptuously.
"Silly little things!" he said, and she, instead of resenting the
impertinence, smiled.
Then he tore off the heels and dug out the remaining bristle of nails
with his pocket-knife.
"That'll be better," said he cheerfully. Elizabeth put on the damp
shoes. The evening dew lay heavy on the towing-path, and she hardly
demurred at all to his fastening the laces. She was very tired.
Again he offered his arm; again she refused it.
Then, "Elizabeth, take my arm at once!" he said sharply.
She took it, and they had kept step for some fifty paces before she
said--
"Then you knew all the time?"
"Am I blind or in my dotage? But you forbade me to meet you except as a
stranger. I have an obedient nature."
They walked on in silence. He held her hand against his side strongly,
but, as it seemed, without sentiment. He was merely helping a tired
woman-stranger on a long road. But the road seemed easier to Elizabeth
because her hand lay so close to him; she almost forgot how tired she
was, and lost herself in dreams, and awoke, and taught herself to dream
again, and wondered why everything should seem so different just
because one's hand lay on the sleeve of a grey flannel jacket.
"Why should I be so abominably happy?" she asked herself, and then
lapsed again into the dreams that were able to wipe away three years, as
a kind hand might wipe three little tear-drops from a child's slate,
scrawled over with sums done wrong.
When she remembered that he was married, she salved her conscience
innocently. "After all," she said, "it can't be wrong if it doesn't make
_him_ happy; and, of course, he doesn't care, and I shall never see him
again after to-night."
So on they went, the deepening dusk turned to night, and in Elizabeth's
dreams it seemed that her hand was held more closely; but unless one
moved it ever so little one could not be sure; and she would not move it
ever so little.
The damp towing-path ended in a road cobblestoned, the masts of ships,
pointed roofs, twinkling lights. The eleven miles were nearly over.
Elizabeth's hand moved a little, involuntarily, on his arm. To cover the
movement she spoke instantly.
"I am leaving Bruges to-morrow."
"No; your sixth-form girl will be too tired, and besides--"
"Besides?"
"Oh, a thousand things! Don't leave Bruges yet; it's so 'quaint,' you
know; and--and I want to introduce you to--"
"I won't," said Elizabeth almost violently.
"You won't?"
"No; I don't want to know your wife."
He stopped short in the street--not one of the "quaint" streets, but a
deserted street of tall, square-shuttered, stern, dark mansions, wherein
a gas-lamp or two flickered timidly.
"My _wife_?" he said; "it's my _aunt_."
"It said 'Mrs. Brown' in the visitors' list," faltered Elizabeth.
"Brown's such an uncommon name," he said; "my aunt spells hers with an
E."
"Oh! with an E? Yes, of course. I spell my name with an E too, only it's
at the wrong end."
Elizabeth began to laugh, and the next moment to cry helplessly.
"Oh, Elizabeth! and you looked in the visitors' list and--" He caught
her in his arms there in the street. "No; you can't get away. I'm wiser
than I was three years ago. I shall never let you go any more, my dear."
The girl from the sixth looked quite resentfully at the two faces that
met her at the station. It seemed hardly natural or correct for a
classical mistress to look so happy.
Elizabeth's lover schemed for and got a goodnight word with her at the
top of the stairs, by the table where the beautiful brass candlesticks
lay waiting in shining rows.
"Sleep well, you poor, tired little person," he said, as he lighted the
candle; "such little feet, such wicked little shoes, such a long, long,
long walk."
"You must be tired, too," she said.
"Tired? with eleven miles, and your hand against my heart for eight of
them? I shall remember that walk when we're two happy old people nodding
across our own hearthrug at each other."
So he had felt it too; and if he had been married, how wicked it would
have been! But he was not married--yet.
"I am not very, very tired, really," she said. "You see, it _was_ my
hand against--I mean your arm was a great help--"
"It _was_ your hand," he said. "Oh, you darling!"
It was her hand, too, that was kissed there, beside the candlesticks,
under the very eyes of the chambermaid and two acid English tourists.