An Inland Voyage | Page 3

to dine in the company of three
uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The food,
as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; indeed
I have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among
this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day
long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and
somehow falling between the two.
The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace of the old
piping favourite, save where two wires had been pushed apart to hold
its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer
apprentices would have nothing to say to us, nor indeed to the bagman;
but talked low and sparingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight
with a gleam of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in
the Scots phrase) barnacled.
There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out
of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts of
curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified. She spoke to us
very fluently in her jargon, asked us information as to the manners of
the present day in England, and obligingly corrected us when we

attempted to answer. But as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps
our information was not so much thrown away as it appeared. The sex
likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. It is good
policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a
woman admire him, were it only for his acquaintance with geography,
he will begin at once to build upon the admiration. It is only by
unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep us in our place.
Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have said, 'are such
ENCROACHERS.' For my part, I am body and soul with the women;
and after a well- married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the
world as the myth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take
to the woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago,
and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this about some
women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they
suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone without the
countenance of any trousered being. I declare, although the reverse of a
professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women for this ideal than I
should be to the majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a
spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as the spectacle of
self-sufficiency. And when I think of the slim and lovely maidens,
running the woods all night to the note of Diana's horn; moving among
the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest and the starlight,
not touched by the commotion of man's hot and turbid life--although
there are plenty other ideals that I should prefer--I find my heart beat at
the thought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a grace!
That is not lost which is not regretted. And where--here slips out the
male--where would be much of the glory of inspiring love, if there were
no contempt to overcome?

ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL

Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, the rain
began heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at about the
drinking temperature of tea; and under this cold aspersion, the surface
was covered with steam. The exhilaration of departure, and the easy
motion of the boats under each stroke of the paddles, supported us
through this misfortune while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and

the sun came out again, our spirits went up above the range of
stay-at-home humours. A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows
of trees that bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the
light in tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear;
but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and
desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer by. Progress was
intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular person, of marine antecedents,
hailed us from the tow-path with a 'C'est vite, mais c'est long.'
The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or overtook a
long string of boats, with great green tillers; high sterns with a window
on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower- pot in one of
the windows; a dinghy following behind; a woman busied about the