1936 On the Continent

yourself pacing the quay, waiting for Muriel. She has fixed the rendezvous. In ten minutes she will be with you. She is coming to spend a short holiday in Belgium, and this is what she wired you:
    “DEAR PIERRE STOP I SHALL ARRIVE AT 3 O’CLOCK STOP PLEASE MEET ME AT THE QUAY STOP MURIEL.”
    Immediately on receipt of this you, being a really obliging fellow, took the boat-train, and here you are, waiting at the quay-side for the Dover mail-boat.
    Good old Muriel.… What a pleasant surprise.… Will she have altered? … Is she still as jolly and charming as she used to be? … Married, perhaps … with children.… Who knows? … A lot may happen in five years. How impatient you are to see her again.… You’ve lived so long without feeling her absence, and now, because you have two more minutes to wait your impatience swells unbearably, and if she should not be on that boat, coming slowly nearer, you’d be the most wretched man on earth.
    It takes three hours to cross the channel, three hours and twenty minutes to be accurate. She, too, will have had time to remember your firm friendship of the good old days. What adventures you’ve had together … what happy days you’ve shared! But all that was very longago. It goes back to the time when Muriel helped you to discover England. This time it’s the other way round. Muriel is going to discover Belgium, and you will be her guide. You owe her that, and you intend to be the most attentive of guides.
    Three hours to cross the Channel.… It’s really not a journey to speak of. Why has she waited so long? …
A Girl on the Boat
    Three hours to cross the Channel, pondered Muriel; or rather three hours and twenty minutes. (The posters tell us it’s a three hours’ crossing, but it takes fully three hours and twenty minutes, and one and a half hours to go from London to Dover.) In five hours, roughly, I can be in Belgium.… I may as well go there.… I’ll write to Pierre, then off we go.
    How surprised Pierre is going to be. What years since we met. It’ll be great fun seeing one another again. He’s quite a good sort—but what a curious profession he’s taken up: journalist, writer, the idea! However, you earn your living according to your talents; what matters is to earn it.
    This is quite a comfortable boat. And the sea is really delightful. There is much less noise, too, than in London. The sky and sea are boundless. Just imagine! There are people who cross this swimming. One must really be very hard up or very strange to undertake it. It’s so much more convenient to go by steamer. Especially as the sea is so smooth and calm in these parts. The seagulls accompany the ship. Are they the birds who each carry the soul of a dead sailor? Or are they messengers of brighter things, telling us that Belgium is waiting for us and that we shall be welcomed there as old friends?
    I hope Pierre will be there. Not that I’m afraid of travelling alone, but I know nothing of Belgium.
    Oh! but I do. Here’s just a glimpse of Ostend in the distance, which is no longer quite strange to me. It modestly calls itself “The Queen of Watering Places.” Old King Leopold II, who reigned before King Albert, and who had such a lovely white beard, did a great deal for Ostend. He made it a fashionable resort by building a royal chalet there, which is very much desertedthese days. And that enormous building which occupies the centre of the sea-front and which bulges outwards, what is that?
    “That is the Kursaal, madam,” says one of the stewards. “That is where they play roulette and baccarat. One may win a fortune there in one night. One may lose it, too.”
    “Oh,” says Muriel, “I shall have to look more closely into all that.”
    Here is the jetty. The boat swerves round. Are we sailing back to Dover? Not a whit. We’re just sliding gracefully—backwards—into harbour. Here we are … all ready to land.
Two Friends
    “Hello, Muriel! Had a good crossing?”
    “Good old Pierre. I’m so glad you managed to come. You haven’t altered a bit.”
    “Thanks. You’ve not changed either. You’re as pretty as ever. I hope you’re staying for some time? Are you alone?”
    “All alone, but I’m counting on you to show me round. I don’t know a thing about Belgium. Can you spare the time? Are you free?”
    “Entirely. And my greatest desire is to show you everything. If you want my advice …”
    “Any advice you choose to offer. Decide. Lead me. I follow you