An Inland Voyage | Page 7

up an enthusiasm over anything but his
ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and
whether he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched
Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk.
When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of pale ale to
the Club's prosperity, one of their number escorted us to an hotel. He
would not join us at our dinner, but he had no objection to a glass of
wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing; and I begin to understand why

prophets were unpopular in Judaea, where they were best known. For
three stricken hours did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate
on boats and boat-races; and before he left, he was kind enough to
order our bedroom candles.
We endeavoured now and again to change the subject; but the diversion
did not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman bridled, shied,
answered the question, and then breasted once more into the swelling
tide of his subject. I call it his subject; but I think it was he who was
subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all racing as a creature of the devil,
found himself in a pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance for
the honour of Old England, and spoke away about English clubs and
English oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears.
Several times, and, once above all, on the question of sliding-seats, he
was within an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has rowed
races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns these slips of his
wanton youth, his case was still more desperate; for the Royal Nautical
proposed that he should take an oar in one of their eights on the
morrow, to compare the English with the Belgian stroke. I could see
my friend perspiring in his chair whenever that particular topic came up.
And there was yet another proposal which had the same effect on both
of us. It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as most
other champions) was a Royal Nautical Sportsman. And if we would
only wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler would be so
condescending as to accompany us on our next stage. Neither of us had
the least desire to drive the coursers of the sun against Apollo.
When the young man was gone, we countermanded our candles, and
ordered some brandy and water. The great billows had gone over our
head. The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a
man would wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a thought
too nautical for us. We began to see that we were old and cynical; we
liked ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind about this and
the other subject; we did not want to disgrace our native land by
messing an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion
canoeist. In short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but
we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere compliments.
And indeed it was no time for scruples; we seemed to feel the hot
breath of the champion on our necks.

AT MAUBEUGE

Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal Nauticals,
partly from the fact that there were no fewer than fifty-five locks
between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that we should travel by
train across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's
journey was pretty well tantamount to trudging the whole distance on
foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment to
the trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking
children.
To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for the
Arethusa. He is somehow or other a marked man for the official eye.
Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered together. Treaties
are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit
throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all
the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly clergymen,
school-mistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and
rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the
railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is
taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If
he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about the
matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he is suffered
to go his way indeed, but not until he has been humiliated by a general
incredulity. He is a born