The Literary Sense

"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.

She hurriedly collected a few scattered items of her school vocabulary —

"Est-ce que – est-ce que – ce bateau à vapeur va – va– anywhere?"

A voluble assurance that it went at twelve-thirty did not content her. She gathered her forces again.

"Oui; mais où est-ce qu'il va aller – ?"

The answer sounded something like "Sloosh," and the speaker pointed vaguely up the green canal.

Elizabeth went on board. This was as good as Ghent. Better. There was an element of adventure about it. "Sloosh" might be anywhere; one might not reach it for days. But the boat had not the air of one used to long cruises; and Elizabeth felt safe in playing with the idea of an expedition into darkest Holland.

And now by chance, or because her movements interested him as much as his presence repelled her, this same Edward Brown also came on board, and, concealed by the deep daydream into which she had fallen, passed her unseen.

When she shook the last drops of the daydream from her, she found herself confronting the boat's only other passenger – himself.

She looked at him full and straight in the eyes, and with the look her embarrassment left her and laid hold on him.

He remembered her last words to him —

"If ever we meet again, we meet as strangers." Well, he had kept to the very letter of that bidding, and she had been angry. He had been very glad to see that she was angry. But now, face to face for an hour and a half – for he knew the distance to Sluys well enough – could he keep silence still and yet avoid being ridiculous? He did not intend to be ridiculous; yet even this might have happened. But Elizabeth saved him.

She raised her chin and spoke in chill, distant courtesy.

"I think you must be English, because I saw you at the 'Panier d'Or'; everyone's English there. I can't make these people understand anything. Perhaps you could be so kind as to tell me how long the boat takes to get to wherever it does get to?"

It was a longer speech than she would have made had he been the stranger as whom she proposed to treat him, but it was necessary to let him understand at the outset what was the part she intended to play.

He did understand, and assumed his rôle instantly.

"Something under two hours, I think," he said politely, still holding in his hand the hat he had removed on the instant of her breaking silence. "How cool and pleasant the air is after the town!" The boat was moving now quickly between grassy banks topped by rows of ash trees. The landscape on each side spread away like a map intersected with avenues of tall, lean, wind-bent trees, that seemed to move as the boat moved.

"Good!" said she to herself; "he means to talk. We shan't sit staring at each other for two hours like stuck pigs. And he really doesn't know me? Or is it the wife? Oh! I wish I'd never come to this horrible country!" Aloud she said, "Yes, and how pretty the trees and fields are – "

"So – so nice and green, aren't they?" said he.

And she said, "Yes."

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 —