"And some cakes," said he.
"Yes, and perhaps a bottle of lemonade."
"Romance is an imp!" thought I, climbing up into the carriage. The train swung out of the station; the air, blowing through the open windows, smelled of fresh leaves. There were sudden pools of light in the darkness; when I arrived at Bruges the bells were ringing, and white and mysterious shone the moon over the Grand' Place.
(1910)
A TRUTHFUL ADVENTURE
"THE little town lies spread before the gaze of the eager traveller like a faded tapestry threaded with the silver of its canals, made musical by the great chiming belfry. Life is long since asleep in Bruges; fantastic dreams alone breathe over tower and mediaeval house front, enchanting the eye, inspiring the soul and filling the mind with the great beauty of contemplation."
I read this sentence from a guide-book while waiting for Madame in the hotel sitting-room. It sounded extremely comforting, and my tired heart, tucked away under a thousand and one grey city wrappings, woke and exulted within me...I wondered if I had enough clothes with me to last for at least a month. "I shall dream away whole days," I thought, "take a boat and float up and down the canals, or tether it to a green bush tangling the water side, and absorb mediaeval house fronts. At evensong I shall lie in the long grass of the Béguinage meadow and look up at the elm trees—their leaves touched with gold light and quivering in the blue air—listening the while to the voices of nuns at prayer in the little chapel, and growing full enough of grace to last me the whole winter."
While I soared magnificently upon these very new feathers Madame came in and told me that there was no room at all for me in the hotel—not a bed, not a corner. She was extremely friendly and seemed to find a fund of secret amusement in the fact; she looked at me as though expecting me to break into delighted laughter. "To-morrow," she said, "there may be. I am expecting a young gentleman who is suddenly taken ill to move from number eleven. He is at present at the chemist's—perhaps you would care to see the room?"
"Not at all," said I. "Neither shall I wish to-morrow to sleep in the bedroom of an indisposed young gentleman."
"But he will be gone," cried Madame, opening her blue eyes wide and laughing with that French cordiality so enchanting to English hearing. I was too tired and hungry to feel either appreciative or argumentative. "Perhaps you can recommend me another hotel?"
"Impossible!" She shook her head and turned up her eyes, mentally counting over the blue bows painted on the ceiling. "You see, it is the season in Bruges, and people do not care to let their rooms for a very short time"—not a glance at my little suit case lying between us, but I looked at it gloomily, and it seemed to dwindle before my desperate gaze—become small enough to hold nothing but a collapsible folding tooth-brush.
"My large box is at the station," I said coldly, buttoning my gloves.
Madame started. "You have more luggage...Then you intend to make a long stay in Bruges, perhaps?"
"At least a fortnight—perhaps a month." I shrugged my shoulders.
"One moment," said Madame. "I shall see what I can do." She disappeared, I am sure not further than the other side of the door, for she reappeared immediately and told me I might have a room at her private house—"just round the corner and kept by an old servant who, although she has a wall eye, has been in our family for fifteen years. The porter will take you there, and you can have supper before you go."
I was the only guest in the dining-room. A tired waiter provided me with an omelette and a pot of coffee, then leaned against a sideboard and watched me while I ate, the limp table napkin over his arm seeming to symbolise the very man. The room was hung with mirrors reflecting unlimited empty tables and watchful waiters and solitary ladies finding sad comfort in omelettes, and sipping coffee to the rhythm of Mendelssohn's Spring Song played over three times by the great chiming belfry.
"Are you ready, Madame?" asked the waiter. "It is I who carry your luggage."
"Quite ready."
He heaved the suit case on to his shoulder and strode before me—past the little pavement cafés where men and women, scenting our approach, laid down their beer and their post-cards to stare after us, down a narrow street of shuttered houses, through the Place van Eyck, to a red-brick house. The door was opened by the wall-eyed family treasure, who held a candle like a minature frying-pan in her hand. She refused to admit us until we had both told the whole story.
"C'est ça, c'est ça," said she. "Jean, number five!"
She shuffled up the stairs, unlocked a door and lit another minature frying-pan upon the bed-table. The room was papered in pink, having a pink bed, a pink door and a pink chair. On pink mats on the mantelpiece obese young cherubs burst out of pink eggshells with trumpets in their mouths. I was brought a can of hot water; I shut and locked the door. "Bruges at last," I thought as I climbed into a bed so slippery with fine linen that one felt like a fish endeavouring to swim over an ice pond, and this quiet house with the old "typical" servant,—the Place van Eyck, with the white statue surrounded by those dark and heavy trees,—there was almost a touch of Verlaine in that...
Bang! went a door. I started up in terror and felt for the frying-pan, but it was the room next to mine suddenly invaded. "Ah! home at last," cried a female voice. "Mon Dieu, my feet! Would you go down to Marie, mon cher, and ask her for the tin bath and some hot water?"
"No, that is too much," boomed the answer. "You have washed them three times to-day already."
"But you do not know the pain I suffer; they are quite inflamed. Look only!"
"I have looked three times already; I am tired. I beg of you come to bed."
"It would be useless; I could not sleep. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, how a woman suffers!" A masculine snort accompanied by the sounds of undressing.
"Then, if I wait until the morning will you promise not to drag me to a picture gallery?"
"Yes, yes, I promise."
"But truly?"
"I have said so."
"Now can I believe you?"
A long groan.
"It is absurd to make that noise, for you know yourself the same thing happened last evening and this morning."
...There was only one thing to be done. I coughed and cleared my throat in that unpleasant and obtrusive way of strange people in next door bedrooms. It acted like a charm, their conversation sifted into a whisper for female voice only! I fell asleep.
"Barquettes for hire. Visit the Venice of the North by boat. Explore the little known and fascinating by-ways." With the memory of the guide book clinging about me I went into the shop and demanded a boat. "Have you a small canoe?"
"No, Mademoiselle, but a little boat—very suitable."
"I wish to go alone and return when I like."
"Then you have been here before?"
"No."
The boatman looked puzzled. "It is not safe for Mademoiselle to go without a guide for the first time."
"Then I will take one on the condition that he is silent and points out no beauties to me."
"But the names of the bridges?" cried the boatman—"the famous house fronts?"
I ran down to the landing stage. "Pierre, Pierre!" called the waterman. A burly young Belgian, his arms full of carpet strips and red velvet pillows, appeared and tossed his spoil into an immense craft. On the bridge above the landing stage a crowd collected, watching the proceedings, and just as I took my seat a fat couple who had been hanging over the parapet rushed down the steps and declared they must come too. "Certainly,