Holland Fiction Series
ELINE VERE
TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH OF
LOUIS COUPERUS
BY
J. T. GREIN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY EDMUND GOSSE
NEW·YORK
D. APPLETON AND CO.
1892
Copyright, 1892,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. [[iii]]
INTRODUCTION.
THE DUTCH SENSITIVISTS.
In the intellectual history of all countries we find the same phenomenon incessantly recurring. New writers, new artists, new composers arise in revolt against what has delighted their grandfathers and satisfied their fathers. These young men, pressed together at first, by external opposition, into a serried phalanx, gradually win their way, become themselves the delight and then the satisfaction of their contemporaries, and, falling apart as success is secured to them, come to seem lax, effete, and obsolete to a new race of youths, who effect a fresh æsthetic revolution. In small communities, these movements are often to be observed more precisely than in larger ones. But they are very tardily perceived by foreigners, the established authorities in art and literature retaining their exclusive place in dictionaries and handbooks long after the claim of their juniors to be observed with attention has been practically conceded at home.
For this reason, partly, and partly also because the mental life of Holland receives little attention in this country, no account has yet been taken of the revolution in Dutch taste which has occupied the last six or seven [[iv]]years. I believe that the present occasion is the first on which it has been brought to the notice of any English-speaking public. There exists, however, in Holland, at this moment, a group of young writers, most of them between thirty-five and twenty-five years of age, who exhibit a violent zeal for literature, passing often into extravagance, who repudiate, sometimes with ferocity, the rather sleepy Dutch authorship of the last forty years, and who are held together, or crushed together, by the weight of antiquated taste and indifference to executive merit which they experience around them. Certain facts seem to be undeniable: first, that every young man of letters in Holland, whose work is really promising, has joined the camp; and secondly, that, with all the ferment and crudity inseparable from prose and verse composed in direct opposition to existing canons of taste, the poems and the stories of these young Dutchmen are often full of beauty and delicacy. They have read much in their boyhood; they have imitated Rossetti and Keats; they have been fascinated by certain Frenchmen, by Flaubert, by Goncourt, particularly by Huysmans, who is a far-away kinsman of their own; they have studied the disquieting stories of Edgar Poe. But these influences are passing away, and those who know something of current Dutch belles-lettres can realize best how imperatively a ploughing up of the phlegmatic tradition of Dutch thought was required before a new crop of imagination could spring up.
Rejecting the conventional aspects of contemporary Dutch literature, I will now attempt to give some sketch of the present situation as it appears to a foreign critic observing the field without prejudice. The latest novelist of great importance was Madame Gertrude Bosboom-Toussaint, who was born in 1821. After having written a long series of historical romances for nearly forty years, [[v]]this intelligent woman and careful writer broke with her own assured public, and took up the discussion of psychological questions. She treated the problem of Socialism in Raymond de Schrijnwerker and the status of woman in Majoor Frans. Madame Bosboom-Toussaint died in 1886, just too early to welcome the new school of writers, with whom she would probably have had more sympathy than any of her contemporaries. Her place in popular esteem was taken for a short time by Miss Opzomer (A. S. C. Wallis), whose long novels have been translated into English, In dagen van strijd (“In Troubled Times”) and Vorstengunst (“Royal Favor”). She had genuine talent, but her style was heavy and tedious. After the new wind began to blow, although she was still young, she married, went to Hungary, and gave up writing novels.
Three authors of importance, each, by a curious coincidence, born in the year 1826, fill up the interval between the old and new generation. These are Dekker, Busken-Huët, and Vosmaer. Edward Douwes Dekker, whose novel of Max Havelaar dates from 1858, was a man of exceptional genius. Bred in the interior of Java, he observed the social conditions of life in the Dutch Indies as no one else had done, but his one great book remained a solitary one. He died in 1887 without having justified the very high hopes awakened by that extraordinary and revolutionary work. The career of Konrad Busken-Huët was very different. The principal literary critic of Holland in his generation, he aimed at being the Sainte-Beuve of the Dutch, and in his early days, as the dreaded “Thrasybulus” of journalism, he did much to awaken thought. His volumes of criticism are extremely numerous, and exercised a wholesome influence during his own time. He died in Paris in April, 1886. These two writers have had a strong effect on the prose style of the younger school of [[vi]]essayists and novelists. They lived long enough to observe the dawn of the new literature, and their relations with the latest writers were cordial if somewhat reserved.
What Douwes Dekker and Busken-Huët did in prose, was effected in poetry by Carel Vosmaer. This estimable man, who died in 1888, was well known throughout Europe as an art-critic and an authority on Rembrandt. In Holland he was pre-eminent as the soul of a literary newspaper, the Nederlandsche Spectator, which took an independent line in literary criticism, and affected to lead public taste in directions less provincial and old-fashioned than the rest of the Dutch press. Vosmaer wrote also several volumes of more or less fantastic poetry, a translation of Homer into alexandrines, and an antiquarian novel, Amazone, 1881. But Vosmaer’s position was, above all, that of a precursor. He, and he alone, saw that a new thing must be made in Dutch poetical literature. He, and he alone, was not satisfied with the stereotyped Batavian tradition. At the same time Vosmaer was not, it may be admitted, strong enough himself to found a new school; perhaps even, in his later days, the Olympian calm which he affected, and a certain elegant indolence which overcame him, may have made him unsympathetic to the ardent and the juvenile. At all events, this singular phenomenon has occurred. He who of all living Dutchmen was, ten or fifteen years ago, fretting under the poverty of thought and imagination in his fatherland and longing for the new era to arrive, is at this moment the one man of the last generation who is most exposed to that unseemly ferocité des jeunes which is the ugliest feature of these æsthetic revolutions. I have just been reading, with real pain, the violent attack on Vosmaer and his influence which has been published by that very clever young poet, Mr. Willem Kloos (De Nieuwe Gids, December, [[vii]]1890). All that cheers me is to know that the whirligig of time will not forget its revenges, and that, if Mr. Kloos only lives long enough, he will find somebody, now unborn, to call him a “bloodless puppet.”
Of one other representative of the transitional period, Marcellus Emants, I need say little. He wrote a poem, Lilith, and several short stories. Much was expected of him, but I know not what has been the result.
The inaugurator of the new school was Jacques Perk, a young poet of indubitable genius, who was influenced to some degree by Shelley, and by the Florence of the Dutch Browning, Potgieter. He wrote in 1880 a Mathilde, for which he could find no publisher, presently died, and began to be famous on the posthumous issue of his poems, edited by Vosmaer and Kloos, in 1883.
The sonnets of Perk, like those of Bowles with us a hundred years ago, were the heralds of a whole new poetic literature. The resistance made to the young writers who now began to express themselves, and their experience that all the doors of periodical publication in Holland were closed to them, led to the foundation in 1885 of De Nieuwe Gids, a rival to the old Dutch quarterly, De Gids. In this new review, which has steadily maintained and improved its position, most of the principal productions of the new school have appeared. The first three numbers contained De Kleine Johannes (“Little Johnny”), of Dr. Frederik van Eeden, the first considerable prose-work of the younger generation. This is a charming romance, fantastic and refined, half symbolical, half realistic, which deserves to be known to English readers. It has been highly appreciated in Holland. To this followed two powerful books by L. van Deyssel, Een Liefde (“A Love”) and De Kleine Republiek (“The Little Republic”). Van Deyssel has written with great force, but he has hitherto been the [[viii]]enfant terrible of the school, the one who has claimed with most insolence to say precisely what has occurred to him to say. He has been influenced, more than the rest, by the latest French literature.
While speaking of the new school, it is difficult to restrain from mentioning others of those whose work in De Nieuwe Gids and elsewhere has raised hopes of high performance in the future. Jacques van Looy, a painter by profession, has published, among other things, an exquisitely finished volume of Proza (“Prose Essays”). Frans Netscher, who deliberately marches in step with the French realists, is the George Moore of Holland; he has published a variety of small sketches and one or two novels. Ary Prins, under the pseudonym of Coopland, has written some very good studies of life. Among the poets are Willem Kloos, Albert Verwey, and Herman Gorter, each of whom deserves a far more careful critical consideration than can here be given to him.
Willem Kloos, indeed, may be considered as the leader of the school since the death of Perk. It was to Kloos that, in the period from 1880 to 1885, each of the new writers went in secret for encouragement, criticism, and sympathy. He appears to be a man of very remarkable character. Violent and passionate in his public utterances, he is adored by his own colleagues and disciples, and one of the most gifted of them has told me that “Kloos has never made a serious mistake in his estimate of the force of a man or of a book.” His writings, however, are very few, and his tone in controversy is acrid and uncompromising, as I have already indicated. He remains the least known and the least liked, though the most powerful, of the band. The member of the new generation whose verse and prose alike have won most acceptance is, certainly, Frederik van Eeden. His cycle of lyrical verse, [[ix]]Ellen, 1891, is doubtless the most exquisite product of recent Dutch literature.
For the peculiar quality which unites in one movement the varied elements of the school which I have attempted thus briefly to describe, the name Sensitivism has been invented by one of themselves, by Van Deyssel. It is a development of impressionism, grafted upon naturalism, as a frail and exotic bud may be set in the rough basis of a thorn. It preserves the delicacy of sensation of the one and strengthens it by the exactitude and conscientiousness of the other, yet without giving way to the vagaries of impressionism or to the brutality of mere realism. It selects and refines, it re-embraces Fancy, that maiden so rudely turned out of house and home by the naturalists; it aims, in fact, at retaining the best, and nothing but the best, of the experiments of the French during the last quarter of a century.
Van Deyssel greets L’Argent with elaborate courtesy, with the respect due to a fallen divinity. He calls his friends in Holland to attend the gorgeous funeral of naturalism, which is dead; but urges them not to sacrifice their own living Sensitivism to the imitation of what is absolutely a matter of past history. It will be seen that Dutch Sensitivism is not by any means unlike French Symbolism, and we might expect prose like Mallarmé’s and verse like Moréas’s! As a matter of fact, however, the Dutch seem, in their general attitude of reserve, to leave their mother-tongue unassailed, and to be as intelligible as their inspiration allows them to be.
To one of these writers, however, and to one of the youngest, it is time that I should turn. The first member of the new Dutch school to be presented, in the following pages, to English readers, is Louis Marie Anne Couperus. Of him, as the author of this book, I must give a fuller [[x]]biography, although he is still too young to occupy much space by the record of his achievements. Louis Couperus was born on the 10th of June, 1863, at the Hague, where he spent the first ten years of his life. He was then taken in company with his family to Java, and resided five years in Batavia. Returning to the Hague, where he completed his education, he began to make teaching his profession, but gradually drifted into devoting himself entirely to literature. He published a little volume of verses in 1884, and another, of more importance, called Orchideeën (“Orchids”), in 1887, Oriental and luscious. But he has succeeded, as every one allows, much better in prose. His long novel of modern life in the Hague, called Eline Vere, is an admirable performance. Of Noodlot (literally to be translated “Fate” or “Destiny”) our readers will judge for themselves at a later date. Such is the brief chronicle of a writer from whom much is expected by the best critics of his own country.
Edmund Gosse. [[1]]
ELINE VERE.
CHAPTER I.
They were close to each other in the dining-room, which had been turned into a dressing-room. In front of a mirror stood Frédérique van Erlevoort, with her hair hanging loose, looking very pale under a thin layer of powder, her eyebrows blackened with a single stroke of the pencil.
“Do hurry up, Paul! We shall never get ready,” she said, a little impatiently, glancing at the clock.
Paul van Raat was kneeling at her feet, and his fingers draped a long thin veil of crimson and gold in folds from her waist. The gauze hung like a cloud over the pinkness of her skirt; her neck and arms, white as snow with the powder, were left free, and sparkled with the glitter of the chains and necklaces strung across one another.
“Whew, what a draught! Do keep the door shut, Dien!” Paul shouted to an old servant who was leaving the room with her arms full of dresses. Through the open door one could see the guests—men in evening dress, ladies in light costumes: they passed along the azaleas and palms in the corridor into the large drawing-room; they smiled at the sight of the old servant, and threw surreptitious glances into the dining-room.
They all laughed at this look behind the scenes. Frédérique alone remained serious, realizing that she had the dignity of a princess of antiquity to keep up.
“Do make haste, Paul!” she pleaded. “It’s past half-past eight already!” [[2]]
“Yes, yes, Freddie, don’t get nervous; you’re finished,” he answered, and adroitly pinned a few jewels among the gauze folds of her draperies.
“Ready?” asked Marie and Lili Verstraeten, coming out of the room where the stage had been fixed up, a mysterious elevation almost effaced in semi-darkness.
“Ready,” answered Paul. “And now calmly, please,” he continued, raising his voice and looking round with an air of command.
The warning was well needed. The three boys and the five girls who did duty as ladies’-maids, were rushing about the room laughing, shouting, creating the greatest disorder. In vain Lili tried to save a gilt cardboard lyre from the hands of the son of the house, a boy twelve years old, while their two rascally cousins were just on the point of climbing up a great white cross, which stood in a corner, and was already yielding under their onslaughts.
“Get away from that cross, Jan and Karel! Give up that lyre, you other!” roared Paul. “Do look after them, Marie. And now, Bet and Dien, come here; Bet with the lamp, Dien at the door; all the rest out of the road! There’s no more room; look on from the garden through the window of the big drawing-room; you’ll see everything beautifully, at a distance. Come along, Freddie, carefully, here’s your train.”
“You’ve forgotten my crown.”
“I’ll put it on when you’re posed. Come on.”
The three girls hurried to get away, the boys squatted in a corner of the room, where they could not be seen, and Paul helped Freddie to climb on to the stage.
Marie, who, like Lili, was not yet draped, talked through the closed window with the fireman, who was waiting, muffled up, in the snowy garden, to let off the Bengal light. A great reflector stared through the window like a pale, lustreless sun.
“First white, then green, then red,” Marie called out, and the fireman nodded.
The now deserted dressing-room was dark, barely lit by the lamp which Bet held in her hand, while Dien stood at the door.
“Carefully, Freddie, carefully,” said Paul.
Frédérique sank down gently into the cushions of the couch; Paul arranged her draperies, her chains, her hair, her diadem, and placed a flower here and there. [[3]]
“Will that do?” she asked with tremulous voice, taking up the pose she had studied beforehand.
“You’re delicious; beautiful! Now then, Marie, Lili, come here.”
Lili threw herself on the floor, Marie leaned against the couch with her head at Frédérique’s feet. Paul draped both girls quickly in coloured shawls and veils, and twisted strings of gems round their arms and in their hair.
“Marie and Lili, look as if you were in despair. Wring your hands more than that, Lili! More despair, much more despair! Freddie, more languishing, turn your eyes up, set your mouth in a sadder expression.”
“Like that?”
Marie screamed.
“Yes, that will do! That’s better; now be quiet, Marie. Is everything ready?”
“Ready!” said Marie.
Paul arranged one or two more things, a crease, a flower, doubtful whether everything was right.
“Come, let’s start,” said Lili, who was in a very uncomfortable position.
“Bet, take away the lamps; Dien, shut that door, and then come here, both of you, one on each side of the folding doors of the big room.”
They were all in the dark, with beating hearts, while Paul tapped at the window, and joined the boys in the corner.
Slowly and doubtfully the Bengal light flamed up against the reflector, the folding doors opened solemnly, a clear white glow lit up the tableau.
Smiling and bowing, while the conversation suddenly changed into a muffled murmur, the guests pressed forward into the large drawing-room and the conservatory, blinded by a burst of light and colour. Men got out of the way of a couple of laughing girls. In the background boys climbed on the chairs.
“The death of Cleopatra!” Betsy van Raat read out to Mrs. Van Erlevoort, who had handed her the programme.
“Splendid! magnificent!” one heard on every side.
Ancient Egypt seemed to have come alive again in the white glow of the light. Between luxurious draperies something like an [[4]]oasis could be perceived, a blue sky, two pyramids, some palms. On her couch, supported by sphinxes, lay Cleopatra, at the point of death, an adder curling round her arm. Two slaves were prostrate in despair at her feet. The parti-coloured vision of oriental magnificence lasted a few seconds; the poetry of antiquity revived under the eyes of a modern audience.
“That’s Freddie,” said Betsy. “How lovely!” and she pointed out the dying queen to Mrs. Van Erlevoort, who was dazzled by all this luxury. Now, however, the mother recognized her daughter in the beautiful motionless statue lying before her.
“And that’s Marie, and the other—oh, that’s Lili—irrecognizable! What beautiful costumes! how elaborate! You see that dress of Lili’s, violet and silver? I lent her that.”
“How well they do it,” murmured the old lady.
The white glow of the light began to flicker, the doors were closed.
“Splendid, auntie, splendid!” Betsy cried, as Mrs. Verstraeten, the hostess, passed her.
Twice the tableau was recalled, first in a flood of sea-green, then in fiery red. Freddie, with her adder, lay immovable, and only Lili quivered in her forced attitude. Paul looked out from his corner with a beaming face; everything was going well.
“How quiet Freddie lies! And everything is so rich, and yet not overdone. Something like a picture of Makart’s,” said Betsy, opening her feather fan.
“Your daughter is tired of life very early, madam,” lisped young de Woude van Bergh, bowing towards Mrs. van Erlevoort, Freddie’s mother.
After the third repetition of the tableau Mrs. Verstraeten went to the dressing-room. She found Frédérique and Lili laughing while they got out of their Egyptian attire, looking for endless pins in every fold. Paul and Marie stood on the steps, and, lighted by two of the servants, pulled Cleopatra’s dress to pieces. Dien fussed about, picking up the dropped draperies and the fallen chains. The three boys rolled over one another on a mattress.
“Was it pretty, mamma?” cried Lili.
“Was it pretty, madam?” cried Frédérique, at the same time.
“Beautiful! They would have liked to see it again.”
“What again! I’m nearly dead already,” cried Lili; and she [[5]]tumbled into an arm-chair, throwing a great bundle off it upon the floor. Dien gave way to despair; at that rate she would never get done.
“Lili, rest yourself,” cried Paul, from the top of his steps in the other room; “you’ll get tired in that attitude. Aunt Verstraeten, tell Lili to rest herself,” and he threw some coloured carpets off the cords on which they had been hanging. Dien went on folding up.
“Dien, white sheets and white tulle this way, quick,” cried Marie. Dien misunderstood her, and came back with the wrong article.
Then all began to talk at once, and every one asked for something else, and there arose a very Babel of confusion. At the top of the staircase Paul made a gesture of despair, but no one took any notice.
“I am utterly worn out!” said he, crouching down in impotent rage. “No one does anything. It all falls to my lot!”
Madame Verstraeten, having in her turn begged Lili to rest herself, had gone to tell the servants not to forget the youthful artistes. As a result, the men soon came in, carrying big trays laden with glasses of wine and lemonade, pastry and sandwiches. The confusion only increased. The three boys were served with various good things on their mattress, over which one of the servants spilt a stream of lemonade. Up flew Marie, in a torrent of rage, and with Dien’s assistance quickly pulled the mattress away from under the boys, into the next room.
“Frédérique, do give a hand there,” cried Paul, in a voice shrill with irritation. As for keeping any further sort of control over the three lads, that he had given up as hopeless. Ere long, however, the noisy young customers were driven, loudly shrieking and stumbling one over another, out of the room by Dien.
Then there was a little more quietness, but everybody was doing something, except Lili.
“There’s a muddle!” she muttered to herself. Then she sat down and brushed her hair, wavy and blond cendré, and that done, she took up her powder-puff, and sprinkled a snowy layer over her arms.
Dien returned, very much out of breath, shaking her head, and with a kindly smile on her face.
“Dien, white sheets and tulle quickly,” Freddie, Marie, and Paul [[6]]all cried together. Paul came down from his place on the stairs, placed the big cross, the weight of which nearly crushed him, on the platform, and at the foot he laid the mattress and a snug arrangement of pillows.
“Dien, white sheets and tulle; all the tulle and muslin you can find.”
And Dien and the other servants brought it, one soft mass of white.
Madame Verstraeten sat down beside her niece, Betsy van Raat. She was married to Paul’s elder brother.
“What a pity Eline is not here! I had so depended on her to fill up the long intervals with a little music. She sings so nicely.”
“She was really not feeling well, aunt. She is very sorry, you may be sure, that she can’t be here, in honour of uncle’s birthday.”
“What is the matter with her?”
“I don’t quite know. Nerves, I think.”
“She really ought not to give herself up to these fits. With a little energy she could easily get over that nervousness.”
“Well, you see, aunt, this nervousness is the modern bane of young women, it is the fin de siècle epidemic,” said Betsy, with a faint smile.
Madame Verstraeten sighed and nodded.
“By the bye,” said she, “I suppose the girls will be too tired to-morrow evening to go to the opera. Would you care to have our box?”
Betsy reflected for a moment.
“I have a little dinner to-morrow, aunt; but still I should like the box. It is only the Ferelyns and Emilie and Georges who are coming, but the Ferelyns are going early because little Dora is not well, so I could easily go with Emilie and Georges, and be in time to see an act.”
“Well, that is settled then. I shall send you the tickets,” said Madame Verstraeten rising.
Betsy rose too. George de Woude van Bergh was just about to speak to her, but she took no notice. She thought him a terrible bore that evening; he had spoken to her twice, and each time said the same thing, something about the tableaux. No; there was no conversation in him at all. And to-morrow night too she would have to meet him again; what an enjoyable prospect! Aunt’s box [[7]]was quite a godsend. There stood her husband, in the conservatory, together with some gentlemen, Mr. Verstraeten, Mr. Hovel, Otto and Etienne van Erlevoort, they talking and he listening, his heavy body crushing the leaves of a palm, a somewhat stupid smile playing about his expressionless, good-humoured face. Oh, how he bored her! She thought him insufferable. And what a figure he cut in a dress coat! In his great-coat at all events he had a manly appearance.
Walking towards him she said, “Do say something to somebody, Henk. You look like a fixture in that corner there. Can’t you move? you do appear to enjoy yourself. Your necktie is all on one side.”
He muttered something and fumbled about his neck. She turned away and was soon at her ease in the midst of a noisy little group. Even melancholy Madame van Ryssel, Freddie’s sister, formed one of them. Emilie de Woude was unmarried and bore her thirty-eight years with an enviable grace: her pleasant, animate features charmed all who met her. She was much like her younger brother George, but about her there was something genial—a great contrast to his studied ceremoniousness.
Attracted by her amusing anecdotes, Emilie sat, the central figure in a joyous little group. She was just telling them of her recent fall on a patch of frozen snow, at the feet of a gentleman who had remained motionless, staring at her, instead of helping her to her feet.
“Just fancy my muff on the left, my hat on the right, myself in the centre, and right in front of me a man staring at me with open-mouthed amazement.”
There was the tinkling of a bell; Emilie broke off her story and ran away from her audience. The folding doors were opened, and there was a general rush to the front.
“I can’t see at all,” said Emilie, rising on tiptoe.
“Come here on my chair, miss,” cried a young girl behind her.
“You are a little dear, Toos, really. Will you allow me to pass by, Madame van der Stoor? your daughter has come to my aid.”
Madame van der Stoor, who, under a pseudonym, dabbled much in poetry, moved a step back, with an acrid smile about her lips. She felt a little disgusted at Emilie’s sans-gêne; she herself never [[8]]made an attempt to get a better view, it was not the thing to show an unfashionable interest in the entertainment.
Emilie and Cateau van der Stoor were soon standing on one chair, holding each other’s waists.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Emilie, and then remained silent in rapt attention. From out of the billows of a foaming sea arose a rough-hewn cross of marble whiteness, round the base of which a fragile fair woman clung in mortal agony, whilst a heaving wave of tulle covered her feet; and with the fierceness of despair her slender fingers grasped the Rock of Ages.
“It is Lili,” was heard here and there.
“How graceful she is, that Lili!” whispered Emilie to Cateau. “But how can she hang there like that? How can she bear it so long?”
“She is surrounded with pillows; but still it must be very tiring,” said Toos. “Of course you can’t see anything of the pillows, miss.”
“Of course not. But it is very nice; I have never seen anything so poetic before.… Say, Toos, I thought you were going to take part?”
“So I am, but only in the last tableau, with Etienne van Erlevoort. I shall have to be going soon to dress.”
Quickly she got down from her chair. The light grew dim, the folding doors were closed. Applause rang throughout the room. But ere long the white vision of surging foam was repeated, and an angel hovered over the cross, and held out her hand to the swooning woman.
Stronger and stronger grew the applause.
“Of course Marie cannot keep a serious face again,” said Emilie, shaking her head. “She will burst out laughing in a moment.”
And really something like a smile seemed to be trembling about the little mouth of the angel, the nervous twitching of the eyebrows contrasting very oddly with the pathetic expression of her features.
Although it was evident enough that the artistes were tired, not one of them being able to remain perfectly motionless, the last tableau was received with enthusiastic cheers. It was encored again and again. The tableau consisted of an allegorical representation of the Five Senses, the parts being taken by the four young girls, attired in rich dresses—cloth of gold, brocade ermine[[9]]—and by Etienne, Frédérique’s youngest brother, who, in the garb of a minstrel, represented the sense of Hearing.
The tableaux were concluded.
It was now two o’clock, and Mr. and Madame Verstraeten received the thanks of their guests as they left them.
“Do you remain to supper with Cateau?” said Madame Verstraeten to Madame van der Stoor; “quite sans cérémonie, you know.”
Madame van der Stoor, however, feared it was too late; she would just wait for her daughter.
The artistes who had doffed their costumes entered the room and were overwhelmed with the thanks of those guests still remaining, while Emilie played a march on the piano. As an intimate friend she stayed to supper with van Raat and Betsy.
“You are coming to-morrow, are you not, Toos? the photographer is coming at two,” said Marie.
“Yes,” said Cateau, “I shall be here.”
Utterly worn out, the artistes flung themselves down in the comfortable chairs in the conservatory, where a dainty little supper was served.
“What was prettiest? What was prettiest?” all cried together
Then there was a general expression of opinion, to the accompaniment of clattering plates and forks, and the jingling of glasses.
CHAPTER II.
It was half-past two when the van Raats returned from the supper to the Nassauplein. At their house all was in darkness. While Henk drew the bolt across the door Betsy thought she would take a look at her sleeping boy, snugly ensconced in his little white cot up-stairs. She took up her candle and went up-stairs, whilst he, laden with papers, walked into the breakfast-room, where the gas was still burning.
Arrived in her dressing-room, she removed her cloak from her shoulders. In the small grate the flame curled upward like the fiery tongue of a dragon. There was something indefinably soothing [[10]]in the atmosphere of the room, something like a warm vapour, mingled with the sweet faint odour of violets. After giving a glance at her child, she sat down with a sigh of fatigue, in an arm-chair. Then the door opened, and Eline, in a dressing-gown of white flannel, her hair falling in thick waves down her back, entered.
“What, Elly, not in bed yet?”
“No, I—have been reading. Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Oh yes, it was very nice. I only wish that Henk had not been such an awful bore. He never said a word, and with his stupid face he sat there fumbling at his watch-chain until he could go and take his hand at whist.”
Then with a somewhat angry movement Betsy kicked her dainty little shoes from her feet.
Eline sighed languidly.
“Did you tell Madame Verstraeten that I was not well?”
“Yes; but you know when I come home at night I like to go to bed. We can talk to-morrow, eh?”
Eline knew that her sister when she returned home at night was always more or less irritable. Still she was tempted to give her a sharp answer, but she felt too unnerved for it. With her lips she lightly touched Betsy’s cheek, and quite unconsciously laid her head on her sister’s shoulder, in a sudden and irresistible longing for tenderness.
“Are you really ill, eh, or——?”
“No. Only a little—lazy. Good-night.”
“Pleasant dreams!”
Eline retired with languid steps. Betsy proceeded to undress.
Arrived in the hall, Eline experienced the uncomfortable feeling of having been an unwelcome visitor to her sister. All the evening, giving herself up entirely to a fit of indolence, she had been in solitude, and now she longed for company. For a moment she stood undecided in the dark corridor, and then carefully feeling her way she descended the stairs and entered the breakfast-room.
Henk, divested of his coat, stood by the mantelpiece in his shirt-sleeves, preparing his grog, by way of night-cap, and the hot fumes of the liquor filled the room.
“Hallo, girl, is that you?” he said, in a jovial tone, whilst in his sleepy blue-gray eyes and about his heavily fair-bearded mouth [[11]]there played a good-humoured smile. “Did you not feel terribly bored, left to yourself all the evening?”
“Yes; just a little. Perhaps you did even more?” she asked with a pleasant smile.
“I? Not at all. The tableaux were very pretty.”
Then with his back leaning against the mantelpiece he began sipping his grog.
“Has the youngster been good?”
“Yes; he has been asleep. Are you not going to bed?”
“I just want to look at the papers. But why are you still up?”
“Oh—just because——” With a languid, graceful movement she stretched her arms, and then twisted her heavy locks into a glossy brown coil. She felt the need to speak to him without constraint, but the words would not come, and not the faintest thought could she conjure up to take shape within her dreamy mind. Gladly would she have burst into tears, not because of any poignant sorrow, but for the mere longing of hearing his deep solacing tones in comforting her. But she could find no words to give expression to her feelings, and again she stretched forth her arms in languid grace.
“Is anything wrong, eh, old girl? Come, tell me what it is.”
With a vacant stare she shook her head. No, there was nothing to tell.
“Come, you can tell me all about it, you know that.”
“Oh—I feel a little miserable.”
“What about?”
Then with a pretty little pout, “Oh—I don’t know. I have been a little nervous all day.”
He laughed—his usual soft, sonorous laugh.
“You and your nerves! Come, sis, cheer up. You are such good company when you are not so melancholy; you must not give yourself over to these fits.” He felt conscious that his eloquence would not hold out to argue the matter further, so with a laugh he concluded, “Will you have a drop of grog, sis?”
“Thank you—yes, just a sip out of your glass.”
She turned to him, and laughing in his fair beard, he raised the steaming glass to her lips. Through the half-closed eyelids he saw a tear glistening, but she kept it back. All at once, with sudden determination, he set down his glass and grasped her hands.
“Come, girl, tell me; there is something—something has occurred [[12]]with Betsy, or—come now, you generally trust me.” And he gave her a reproachful glance with his sleepy, kindly, stupid eyes, like those of a faithful sheep-dog.
Then in a voice broken with sobs, she burst forth in a stream of lamentations, though without apparent cause. It was her heart’s inmost cry for a little tenderness and sympathy. What was her life to her? to whom could she be of the slightest use? Wringing her hands, she walked up and down the room sobbing and lamenting. What would she care did she die within the hour? it was all the same to her—only that aimless, useless existence, without anything to which she could devote her whole soul; that alone was no longer bearable.
Henk contradicted her, feeling certainly somewhat abashed at the scene, which for the rest was but a repetition of so many previous ones. To give a new turn to her thoughts he began to talk about Betsy, and Ben their boy, about himself—he was even about to allude to a future home of her own, but he could not bring it so far. She on her part shook her head like a sulking child, which, not getting what it wants, refuses to take anything else, and with a passionate movement she all at once threw her head on his shoulder, and with an arm round his bull-dog neck, she burst into a fresh torrent of sobs. Thus she went on lamenting in wild and incoherent words, her nerves overstrained by the evening’s solitude and the hours of brooding in her over-heated room. Over and over again she reverted to her aimless life, which she dragged along like a wretched burden, and in her voice there was something like a reproach to him, her brother-in-law. He, confused and deeply touched by the warmth of her embrace, which he certainly could scarcely return with such tenderness, could find nothing to stem that wild torrent of incoherent sentences but a few common-places.
Slowly, softly, like rose-leaves falling gently on the limpid bosom of a summer stream, she let her melancholy broodings glide away on the full low tones of his deep voice.
At length she stopped and heaved a sigh, but her head still rested on his shoulder. Now that she was somewhat calmer, he thought it right to show a little anger at her behaviour. What a folly it was, to be sure! What stupidity! What a fuss to get into about nothing! [[13]]
“No, Henk, really——” she began, and lifted her tear-stained face to his.
“My dear girl, what rubbish you talk about your aimless life, and all that sort of thing. What puts those things into your head? We are all fond of you——” and remembering his unspoken thought of before, he proceeded, “A young girl like you—talking about an aimless——Sis, you are mad!”
Then, as though tickled at the thought, and besides, thinking that the philosophic condition had lasted long enough, he suddenly gave her arm a sharp twist, and pinched her about the pouting lips. Laughingly she resisted; his movement had somewhat restored to her her broken equilibrium.
When a few moments later both went up-stairs together, she could scarcely restrain herself from bursting out in laughter, as he suddenly lifted her up in his arms to carry her, while she, fearing he would stumble, in a voice half beseeching, half commanding, said—
“Come, Henk, let me go; do you hear? Don’t be so foolish! Henk, let go!”
CHAPTER III.
Eline Vere was the younger of the two sisters, darker of hair and eyes, slenderer, with a figure less maturely developed. Her deeply-shaded dark brown eyes, and the ivory pallor of her complexion, together with the languor of some of her movements, gave her somewhat of the dreamy nature of an odalisk of the harem. The beauty with which she had been endowed, she prized like a precious jewel, and indeed she was at times half intoxicated with the glamour of her own fascinations. For several moments at a time she could stand looking at her own image in the glass, her rosy-tipped fingers gently stroking the delicate arch of the eyebrow or the long silken lashes, or arranging the wealth of brown hair about her head, in the wild luxuriance of a gay gitana. Her toilet afforded her endless employment, continuous and earnest meditation, in testing the effects, harmonious or otherwise, of the softened tints of satins, and the warmer colourings of plush, and [[14]]the halo of tulle and gauze, muslin and lace, that surrounded it all. In short, everything about her, from the faint clinging odour of violets, to the shimmer of soft draperies, was full of refined, charming suggestion.
Somewhat dreamy and romantic by nature, there were times when, in a fit of languor, she thought with a certain lingering regret of her childhood, recalling to mind all sorts of memories of those days, and treasuring them up like so many precious relics. It was then that consciously or unconsciously she imparted a fresh colour of sentiment to those faded recollections of days gone by. In this way, the most trivial episode of her childhood became idealized and suffused with a charm of poetry. Betsy, with her practical turn of mind, never missed an opportunity rightly or wrongly to discount anything that bore but the faintest resemblance to idealism; and Eline, in her transient state of half happiness, half melancholy, usually succeeded, after her sister’s practical demonstrations, in distinguishing the actual state of things from the luxuriant fantasies conjured up by her own imagination.
At times her memory went back to her father, a painter, of refined and artistic temperament, elegant, but without the strength of a creative faculty, married whilst but a youth to a woman many years his senior, and by far his superior in strength of will and individuality. To her master hand, his pliant nature readily yielded, for his was a fine-strung temperament which, like the chords of a precious instrument, would have trembled under her rude touch, just as that of Eline sometimes trembled under the touch of her sister. She recalled to mind that father, with his complexion of yellow ivory, and his bloodless transparent fingers, lying down in listless languor, his active brain thinking out some great creation, only to be cast aside after the first few touches of the brush. Her he had often made his confidante, and the trust he placed in her caused her childish nature to regard him with a mixture of affectionate devotion and worshipful reverence, so that in her eyes he assumed the appearance of a poetical, dreamy-eyed, long-haired Rafael. Her mother, on the other hand, had always inspired her with a certain amount of fear, and the remembrance of the disillusionizing trivialities of daily life, with which the figure of her mother became inseparably interwoven, rendered it impossible for Eline to idealize her in her thoughts. [[15]]
She remembered, after the death of her father, at a still early age, but still after many years of half-hearted effort and dismal failures, and after the demise of her mother, felled by a sudden attack of heart disease, spending the days of her early girlhood under the guardianship of a widowed aunt. Old-fashioned, reserved and prim, with saddened regular features, the ruins of a once beautiful woman, she well remembered those two bony hands in perpetual motion over four bright glistening knitting-needles. There she lived, in that big room, in nerveless ease and placid luxury, in a paradise of cosy comfort, amid a wealth of soft draperies and carpets, and all that was pleasing and soothing to the senses.
The two sisters growing up side by side under the same training, under the same surroundings, developed within themselves a somewhat similar mental and moral condition, which, however, as years went by followed the bent of their different temperaments. In Eline, who, of a languid and lymphatic nature, felt the need of tender support, and gentle warmth of affection, and whose nerves, delicate as the petals of a flower, even in their soft, velvet-clad surroundings, were often too rudely handled by the slightest opposition, there developed a kind of timid reserve, which filled her mind with thousands of small tokens of a secret grief. Then when her measure of half-imaginary sorrows was full, it would relieve itself in one overwhelming, foaming wave of tearful passion. In Betsy’s more sanguine nature there grew, nurtured by Eline’s need of support, a desire for domineering, by means of which she could force her whole psychological being into that of her pliant sister, to whom, after the first shock, it always brought a feeling of rest and contentment. But neither Eline’s fear of wounding her fine-strung temperament, nor Betsy’s over-ruling egoism, could ever have led to a tragic crisis, as the sharp contrasts of each character became, in the soft enervating atmosphere of their surroundings, blended and dissolved in one dull tint of neutral gray.
After one or two dances, where Eline’s little white-satined feet had glided along in rhythmical accompaniment to a dazzling harmony of brilliant light and colour, soft strains of melody and dulcet tones of admiration, she received two offers of marriage, each of which she declined. Those two proposals remained still in her [[16]]memory as two easily-gained triumphs, but at times the recollection of the first would call forth a faint sigh from her bosom. It was then that she met Henri van Raat, and ever since she asked herself how it could possibly be that such a mass of stolidity as she called him, with so little resemblance to the hero of her dreams, appealed so strongly to her sympathies, ay, to such an extent that frequently she was overtaken with a sudden, irresistible impulse to be near him. The heroes of her dreams bore some resemblance to the idealized image of her father, to the conceptions of Ouida’s fanciful brain. But they had nothing in common with van Raat, with his sanguine, equable, complacent temperament, his soft sleepy gray-blue eyes, his laboured speech and heavy laugh. And yet in his voice, in his glance, there was something that attracted her, as in his unstudied bonhomie. In all this she found support, so that at times she felt conscious of the vague desire to rest her weary head on his shoulder. And he too felt conscious, with a certain pride, that he was something to her.
But this pride vanished, however, the moment that Betsy came between them. Towards Eline’s sister he felt conscious of such a moral inferiority, that often he was at a loss to reply to her light and airy banter. At such times, she thought it an exquisite pleasure, cruel as it was, to draw him out, and tempt him to say things for which she overwhelmed him with false admiration, only to ridicule them afterwards to his face, which usually had the effect of reducing his sluggish mind to abject confusion. Then she would burst out laughing, and the sound of that full hearty laugh, full of mockery and self-confidence, fired his imagination even more than did the tender feminine charm of Eline’s presence. Hers was the charm of a weeping soft-eyed siren, raising her arms in tempting languor from out of the blue of ocean, only to be again drawn to the depths below with irresistible force; that of Betsy’s, however, was the impetuous witchery of a gay Bacchante, enchaining his senses with tangled vines, or dashing her brimming, foaming cup in his face, and intoxicating him with the wild impetuosity of her joyous nature.
And so it came about—how he could not really say—but one evening in the dim light of late autumn, he as with a sudden impulse asked her to be his wife. It had indeed been a strange evening to him. The one thing he had felt conscious of was that [[17]]he was as though driven to it, as though hypnotized by an indefinable something in Betsy’s eyes; he could not but ask her what he eventually did. She, calm and collected, accepted his offer, taking care to conceal her inward joy at the prospect of having a home—and more especially a dominion of her own—under an outward appearance of calm indifference. She longed for a different atmosphere than that of the staid stuffiness of the big room, with the stately old furniture and dignified surroundings. But when Eline came and offered him her innocent congratulations, he became suddenly aware of such an inward surprise and dissatisfaction with himself that he could find no speech in answer to her sisterly good wishes. And Eline, rudely shaken as she was by this rapid succession of events, shrunk back in sudden terror of Betsy into her melancholy reserve, at the same time making every effort—only resulting in the loss of her own peace of mind—to resist the domineering influence which she had so long allowed her sister to exercise over her mind.
Betsy and Henk had been married a twelvemonth when aunt died. It was then that, urged by her, he had looked out for some occupation, for with his eternally calm good-natured indolence he often bored her much in the same way as a faithful dog, which, ever to be found at his master’s feet, receives many a kick which a less devoted creature would have escaped. He too felt in a vague way that a young fellow, be his income ever so comfortable, ought to do something. However, although he sought, he found nothing, and in the meantime his ardour had considerably cooled down, now that Betsy herself did not longer worry him about it.
And certainly he did not trouble her very much. In the morning he was generally away, taking what exercise he could on horseback, followed by his two gray boarhounds; in the afternoon, yielding to his wife’s requests, he accompanied her on sundry calls, or when relieved of that duty, he visited his club; the evenings being generally spent by him in accompanying his butterfly wife to concerts and theatres, where he did duty much after the fashion of Becky Sharp’s faithful sheep-dog, a burdensome but indispensable adjunct. He adapted himself as well as he could to this much too excited a life; he knew his will was not strong enough to resist that of Betsy, and he found it suited his temperament much better quietly to dress and accompany his wife, than to disturb the domestic [[18]]peace by an intrusion of his own ideas. Then again the few evenings she spent at home afforded him, with his instinctive love of sociability, a certain sensuous dreamy happiness, which in the end did more to win his love than when he beheld his wife beyond his own reach, the most brilliant figure in the grandest ballroom. That only made him peevish and morose. To her, however, the few evenings she spent at home were a terrible bore. The singing of the gas-flame made her drowsy, and from her corner on the sofa she would cast many an angry glance at her husband, as he sat turning the pages of the illustrated paper or lazily sipping his tea. At such a moment she would feel an irresistible impulse to urge him on in heaven’s name to look for some occupation, to which he, astonished at being aroused in such a way from his dolce far niente, would reply in incoherent heavy sentences.
She, however, was at heart very happy. For was it not glorious to be able to spend as much as she chose on her dress? And at the end of the week she would ofttimes remember, with a smile of happiness, that she had not spent a single evening at home.
Eline meanwhile had passed the year in melancholy solitude at Aunt Vere’s. She read much, feeling especially charmed with Ouida’s luxuriant phantasmagory of an idealized life, sparkling with a wealth of colour, and bathed in the golden sunshine of Italian skies, vivid and glowing as a glittering kaleidoscope. She would read and literally devour those pages until, dog-eared and crumpled, they would flutter out of her grasp. Even at her aunt’s sick-bed, where with a certain feeling of romantic satisfaction she sat watching night after night, she would read them, again and again.
In the atmosphere of that sick room, permeated as it was with an ætherealized odour of drugs, the virtues and prowess of the noble heroes, the spotless beauties of the arch-wicked or divinely righteous heroines, became endowed with an irresistible charm of tempting unreality; and Eline often felt a passionate longing to be in one of those old English mansions, where earls and duchesses were engaged in such exquisite love-making, and had such romantic meetings under the moon-lit trees of a grand old park. Aunt died, and Henk and Betsy invited Eline to make their house her home.
At first she refused, overcome by a strange sadness at the thought of the relationship of her brother-in-law to her sister. But with an immense exercise of will power she at length conquered [[19]]those feelings. Had she not always wondered at the mysterious attraction she felt for Henk? And now that he was her sister’s husband, there suddenly arose to her mind such an insurmountable obstacle between them, an obstacle raised by the laws of decency and custom, that she could, without any risk, give herself over to sisterly sympathy, and therefore she thought it very childish to allow the memory of the past, and feelings that she never really had understood, to stand between her and the prospects of a comfortable home.
In addition to this, there was the fact that her guardian uncle, Daniel Vere, who lived in Brussels, and was a bachelor, was too young a man to offer a girl in her teens a home with him.
In the end, Eline waived her objections, and with the stipulation that she should be allowed to contribute a trifle towards her board, took up her abode at her brother-in-law’s. Henk had at first refused to agree to such a condition, but Betsy remarked that she could quite understand it; had she been in Eline’s place she too would have done the same for her own independence’ sake. From the sum settled on her by her parents Eline derived a yearly income of about £160, and by putting into practice the lessons of economy she had been taught by her aunt, she managed to dress as elegantly on that, as did Betsy who always had a well-filled purse at her disposal.
And thus three years of monotonous existence passed by.
CHAPTER IV.
When, the morning after her passionate outburst, Eline came down to breakfast, Henk had already gone out, bound for the stables, to look after his horses and hounds. In the breakfast-room there was no one but little Ben, eating, or rather playing with a slice of bread-and-butter. Betsy she could hear running to and fro with much animation, and giving her hurried instructions to the cook.
Frans and Jeanne Ferelyn, and Miss de Woude van Bergh and her brother, were coming to dinner that day.
Eline was looking very neat and dressy in a gown of dark gray woollen material, a gray ribbon round her waist, and a small golden [[20]]arrow glittering at her throat. She wore neither rings nor bracelets. About her forehead curled a few fine locks, in frizzy garlands, soft and glossy as frayed silk.
With a friendly nod she walked round to where the child was seated, and lifting up his face with both hands pressed a loving kiss on his forehead. Then she sat down, feeling well at ease with herself, her senses agreeably soothed by the soft warmth thrown out from the glowing hearth, while outside the snow-flakes were silently wrapping a down-like mantle around them. With an involuntary smile of satisfaction she rubbed her slim white hands, and glanced at her rosy, white-tipped finger-nails; then casting a glance outside, where an old woman, almost bent double, was pushing a barrow of snow-covered oranges in front of her, she cut open a little breakfast-roll, the while listening, with amused indifference, to the angry dispute going on between Betsy and the cook.
Betsy entered, an ill-humoured expression in her heavily-shaded, twinkling eyes, her short thick lips compressed with annoyance. She carried a set of cut-glass dessert trays, which she was about to wash, as the cook had broken one of them. Carefully, notwithstanding her anger, she placed the trays on the table, and filled a basin with warm water.
“That fool of a girl! Fancy washing one of my fine glass dishes in boiling water! But it serves me right for trusting those idiots to do anything.”
Her voice sounded harsh and rasping, as she roughly pushed Ben out of the way. Eline, in unusually good humour, offered her assistance, which was readily accepted by Betsy. She had a great many things to do yet, she said; but all the same she sat down, watching Eline carefully washing and drying the dishes one by one, with light graceful movements, without moistening her fingers or spilling one drop; and she was conscious of the contrast between her own rough-and-ready way of doing things—the outcome of robust health—and Eline’s languid grace, mingled as it was with somewhat of fear of tiring or bespattering herself.
“By the bye, when I was at the Verstraetens’ yesterday, I heard they were not going to the opera this evening, as they were tired from last night; aunt asked me if I would like the box. Do you care to go to the opera?”
“And what about your visitors?”
“Jeanne Ferelyn is going early, because her child is unwell, and [[21]]I wanted to ask Emilie and her brother to come too. Henk can stay at home. It is a box for four, you know.”
“Very well; I don’t mind.”
Well satisfied with herself, Eline was just putting down the last tray, when all at once a violent altercation broke out in the kitchen, accompanied by the silvery clattering of forks and spoons. It was Grete and Mina engaged in rather forcible argument. Betsy hurried out of the room, and very soon, curt commands and impudent answers followed each other in rapid succession.
Ben in the meantime remained standing open-mouthed, and somewhat drowsily, on the spot where his mother had pushed him, full of silent alarm at all the hubbub.
“Come, Ben, to auntie’s room,” said Eline, and smilingly she held out her hand towards him. He came, and both proceeded up-stairs.
Eline occupied two rooms on the ground floor, a bedroom and a boudoir. With the economy and good taste which were common to her nature, she had succeeded in imparting to these rooms a semblance of luxury, with somewhat of an artistic polish. Her piano occupied an angle in the wall; the heavy foliage of a giant azalea cast a softening shade over the low, damask-covered couch. In a corner stood a small table laden with innumerable precious trifles. Statuettes, pictures, feathers, palm branches, filled every nook. The pink marble mantelpiece was crowned with a miniature Venetian mirror, suspended by red cords and tassels. In front stood an Amor and Psyche, after Canova, the group depicting a maiden in the act of removing her veil, and a love-sick, light-winged god.
When Eline entered with Ben, the ruddy glow from the hearth shone on her cheeks. She threw the child a few tattered volumes of engravings, and he settled himself on the sofa, soon absorbed in the pictures. Eline entered her bedroom, the windows of which were still covered with daintily-formed leaves and flowers, the effect of the night’s frost. Yonder stood a toilette duchesse—a vision of tulle and lace—touched up here and there with the satin bows of old ball bouquets, and laden with scent phials of Sèvres and fine cut-glass. In the midst of all this wealth of pink and white the mirror glittered like a sheet of burnished silver. The bedstead was hidden among red draperies, and in the corner against the door a tall cheval glass reflected a flood of liquid sunshine. [[22]]
For a moment Eline glanced round, to see if her maid had arranged everything to her satisfaction; then shivering in the chilly atmosphere she returned to her sitting-room and closed the door. With its semi-Eastern luxury the room was a most pleasant one, its comfort seemingly enhanced by the cold white glare reflected from the snow outside.
Eline felt as though brimming over with melody—a feeling which could only find adequate expression in song. She chose the waltz from Mireille. And she sang it with variations of her own, with modulations now swelling into a full, rich volume of melody, now melting away into the faintest diminuendo, with brilliant shakes and roulades clear as those of a lark. She no longer thought of the cold and snow outside. Then suddenly remembering that she had not practised for three days, she commenced singing scales, brightening her high notes, and trying a difficult portamento. Her voice resounded with a metallic ring, somewhat cold, but clear and bright as crystal.
Ben, though well used to these jubilant tones, which reverberated through the whole house, sat listening in open-mouthed wonder, without bestowing a further glance on his pictures, now and again giving a sudden start when some exceptionally shrill high si or do would penetrate his ears.
Eline was herself at a loss to account for her sadness of yesterday. How and whence came that fit of melancholy, without any definite cause? what was the overwhelming joy too that could have so suddenly chased those clouds away?
To-day she felt animated, happy, joyous; she was sorry that she had not seen the tableaux yesterday, and she feared that Mr. and Madame Verstraeten did not take her indisposition au sérieux. What a nice, pleasant man he was, Mr. Verstraeten, always full of fun! and Madame Verstraeten, what a dear good soul! She knew no one like her, so charming and kind. And then, seated at her piano, now practising a shake, then a chromatic scale, she allowed her thoughts to wander to other nice people amongst her acquaintances. Yes; all had their good qualities: the Ferelyns, Emilie de Woude, old Madame van Raat, Madame van Erlevoort, even Madame van der Stoor. As for Cateau she was a doll.
And the idea struck her that she would rather like to join that [[23]]company of players. Yes; they had an admirable conception of the amenities of life. Frédérique, Marie, Lili, Paul and Etienne, ever gay, ever together, full of droll plans for their amusement. Indeed, it must be very nice, prettily arrayed in romantic costumes, to be the objects of general admiration. Paul had a very pretty voice, it would be splendid to sing duets with him. It quite slipped her memory that only a few days ago she had assured her singing-master that his voice was absolutely void of tone. But to-day she was in a pleasant humour, and sang a second waltz, that of “Juliette” in Gounod’s opera. She adored Gounod.
It had just struck half-past ten when there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” she cried, and looking round she let her slender fingers rest on the keyboard. Paul van Raat entered.
“Bon jour, Eline. Hallo, young rascal!”
“What, Paul, you?” She rose, somewhat surprised to see him. Ben ran towards his uncle and hoisted himself up on his knees.
“How early you are! I thought you were coming to sing this afternoon. But you are welcome all the same; do you hear? Sit down and tell me about the tableaux,” Eline exclaimed with much animation; then, remembering her illness of the previous day, she continued in a languid voice—
“I was awfully sorry I was so ill yesterday. Had a terrible headache.”
“You don’t look much the worse for it.”
“It’s true, Paul, really. If I had been well, don’t you think I should have come and admired your talent? Come, tell me—tell me all about it,” and she drew him with her to the sofa and threw the pictures on the floor.
Paul had some difficulty in freeing himself from Ben, who clung to his legs.
“Come, let go, Ben. And is the headache better now?”
“Oh yes; quite gone. This afternoon I’ll go round to Mr. Verstraeten to give my congratulations. But, Paul, do tell me——”
“I was just about to tell you that I was not coming to sing this afternoon; do you hear, Elly? I couldn’t bring out a note; I am quite hoarse with the howling and screaming of yesterday. But we managed splendidly,” and he commenced describing the tableaux.
It was all his idea, and much of it the work of his own hands; but the girls too had been hard at it for the last month—getting [[24]]up the dresses, attending to a thousand trifles. That afternoon Losch was coming to take a photograph of the last group; so that, even had he been in good voice, he could not have come to sing. And how stiff in his joints he felt! for he had slaved away like a navvy, and the girls must be quite exhausted also. No; he had formed no part in the grouping, he was too busy making all the arrangements. He fell back a little on the rich damask cushions of the sofa, under the shading branches of the azalea, and stroked his hair.
Eline thought how much he resembled Henk, although he was ten years younger, more slender in figure, livelier, with more delicate features, and an expression of much greater intelligence. But a simple gesture or movement, a raising of the eyebrows, would now and again very distinctly illustrate that resemblance, and although his lips were thinner under his light moustache than Henk’s heavily-bearded upper lip, his laugh was deep and full as that of his brother.
“Why don’t you take painting lessons of a good master, Paul?” asked Eline. “Surely if you have talent——”
“But I have not,” he laughed. “It would not be worth the trouble. I just dabble a bit in it, just as I do with my singing. It amounts to nothing at all, any of it.” And he sighed at his Lick of energy to make the most of the little talent he might possess.
“You remind me of papa,” she said, and her words assumed a tone of sadness, as the idealized image of her father rose to her memory. “Yes; he had great talents, but latterly his health failed him, and he could not produce the great creation of which his soul was capable. I well remember that he was engaged on an immense canvas, a scene from Dante’s Paradiso I believe, when—when he died. Poor papa! But you are young and strong, and I can’t understand why you don’t do something great, something out of the common.”
“You know, I suppose, that I am going to be engaged at Hovel’s. Uncle Verstraeten has arranged it for me.”
Hovel was a barrister, and as Paul had, at a somewhat early age, and after a period of alternate studying and idleness, passed the law examination, Uncle Verstraeten thought he would be doing the young barrister a good turn if he recommended him to his friend. [[25]]It had therefore been arranged that Paul should continue working at Hovel’s office, until he could go in practice for himself.
“At Hovel’s? A very nice man; I like his wife very much. Oh, that will be splendid, Paul.”
“I hope so.”
“But still, if I were a man I should try and become famous. Come, Ben, don’t be troublesome now; go and look at the nice pictures on the floor. Wouldn’t you think it splendid to be famous? Really, if I weren’t Eline Vere I should become an actress.” And she gave vent to a series of brilliant shakes, which fell from her lips like a sparkling chain of diamonds.
“Famous!” and with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. “What a silly idea, to be sure. Famous! No; I don’t want to be famous, not a bit. But for all that I should like to paint well, or sing well, or something.”
“Then why don’t you take lessons, either in painting or music? Shall I speak to my master?”
“No, thanks; not that old growler of a Roberts, if I can help it. And besides, Eline, it isn’t really worth while; I should never be able to keep it up whatever it was. I am subject to sudden fits, you see. Then I think I can do anything, then I am anxious to hit upon some great subject for a picture——”
“Like papa,” she interrupted with a sad smile.
“At other times the fit moves me to make the most of what voice I have; but before long all those grand ideas have died their own death of sheer inanition, and then I continue in the same old jog-trot as before.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Henceforth I shall go and hide the aspirations of my genius in law cases,” he answered with a laugh, as he rose from his seat. “But now I must be off to the Princesse-gracht, to the Verstraetens’. So don’t expect me this afternoon; we have several details to arrange yet before Losch comes. Adieu, Eline; bye-bye, Ben.”
“Bon jour; I hope you’ll soon get over your hoarseness.”
Paul went, and Eline once more sat down at the piano. For a while she sat thinking what a pity it was Paul had so little energy, and from him her thoughts reverted again to Henk. But she felt altogether too light-hearted this morning to do much philosophizing, and, full of exuberant spirits demanding an outlet, she continued [[26]]her singing, until the mid-day gong summoned her and Ben down-stairs.
Paul had told his mother that he would not be home that afternoon for coffee, as he would be at the Verstraetens’. He lodged at Madame van Raat’s, in the Laan van Meerdervoort. Madame van Raat, an elder sister of Madame Verstraeten, was a stately dame, with pensive, light-blue eyes, and hair of silver gray, dressed in old-fashioned style, whilst over her whole being there was suffused, as it were, a calmness, a placid resignation, that unmistakably spoke of former days free from troubles and disappointments. As walking exercise was becoming irksome to her, she was mostly to be found seated in her high-backed arm-chair, the dull-gray head drooping on her bosom, the blue-veined hands folded in her lap. Thus she continued to lead a quiet, monotonous existence, the aftermath of a placid, all but cloudless life, by the side of her husband, on whose portrait she frequently allowed her eyes to dwell, as it hung before her yonder, in its smart general’s uniform; a good-looking, frank, manly face, with a pair of truthful, intelligent eyes, and an engaging expression about the firm, closed mouth. To her, life had brought but few great sorrows, and for that, in the simplicity of her faith, she felt piously grateful. But now, now she was tired, oh! so tired, her spirit quite broken by the death of that husband to whom, to the last, she had clung with an affection constant and calm as the bosom of a limpid stream, into the placid waters of which the impetuous waves of her youthful love had flowed away. After his death, she began to worry over every trifling circumstance, petty vexations with servants and tradespeople. All these she connected, until to her mind they formed an unbroken chain of irksome burdens. Yes, she felt she was growing old; time had little more to give her, and so, in silent egoism, she mused her life away in the long-vanished poesy of the past. She had had three children: her youngest, a girl, was dead.
Of her two sons, her favourite was Henk, who, strong and big, reminded her the most of his father, whilst in her eyes his sleepy good-nature had more of open, frank manliness, than Paul’s finer-strung fickleness and airy geniality. Paul she had always found too unsettled and nervous: formerly, in his constantly interrupted studies at Leyden—at last, thanks to a little moral pressure on the part of Uncle Verstraeten, crowned with promotion—as well as [[27]]now with his staying out late at night, his rage for painting, tableaux-vivants and duets, or his fits of indolence, when he would lounge away a whole afternoon on the sofa, over a book he did not read.
Before his marriage, Henk, being of a more staid and homely character than Paul, felt himself better at ease in his mother’s house; although he was quiet, his silence never irritated her; it was like the silence of a faithful dog, watching with half-closed eyes over his mistress. She felt so at her ease with Henk. She disliked being alone, for it was in solitude that the memories of the past contrasted in their rosy brightness too sharply with the leaden-gray that was the prevailing hue of her present life, and Paul she saw but rarely, except when hastily swallowing his dinner, in order to keep an appointment. She seldom went out, unaccustomed as she had grown to the noisy traffic of the streets, and the hum of many voices.
Henk was her pet, and with her mental vision unimpaired, wherever at least her son was concerned, she regretted his marriage with Betsy Vere. No; she was not a fit wife for her child, and knowing that, she could not bring herself to give him her hearty approval or her parental blessing, when he told her of his engagement. Still, she refrained from opposing her beloved son in his choice, fearing lest she should be the cause of unhappiness; it was therefore under a false assumption of frankness, at which she was surprised herself, that she had concealed her ill-feeling against the intruder, and welcomed her as her daughter. All the same, she felt deeply concerned about Henk. Madame Vere she had known slightly; passionate and domineering, she never found anything attractive in such a personality, and this daughter reminded her too much of that mother. Although, in her eyes, Henk was possessed of much more firmness of character than Vere, of whom she could not think but as a pallid, ailing sufferer, only too glad to allow his wife to think and act for him; although Henk, as she thought, had all the frank manliness of character of his father, and would not allow himself to be domineered over; still, happy as she had been with van Raat, it would never be his lot to be. And at that thought she would sigh and her eyes would grow moist; her mother’s love, despite her blindness to his failings, was the instinct which gave her an inkling of the truth, and if she could have taken his place, she would gladly have given up her own former happiness to her son, and have suffered for him. [[28]]
Her thoughts ran away with her as she saw Leentje, the servant, laying the cloth for lunch for herself alone, and with a weary resignation at the hateful loneliness of her days, she sat down. To-morrow would be to her as to-day; what remained of her life was but an aftermath of summer, and though autumn and winter might be free from storms, yet the only promise they held out was that of a barren, soulless lethargy. To what end did she live?
And so weary did she feel under the leaden pressure of this soul-killing loneliness, that she could not even muster up the energy to scold Leentje for her clumsiness, although she could not help noticing the damage that was done to one of her old china dishes.
Much earlier than she was wont to go out, Eline went to the Verstraetens’ that afternoon. It was near the end of November, and winter had already set in with extreme severity. There was a sharp frost; the snow, still white and unsullied, crackled under Eline’s light, regular tread, but her feet preferred to feel the smoothness of the clean-swept pavement; the delicately-gloved hands were hidden away in the small muff. At times bestowing a friendly nod, from under her veil, on some passing acquaintance, she proceeded along the Java-straat to the Princesse-gracht. She still felt in a happy humour, which was quite undisturbed by the little tiff she had had with Betsy about some trifling question with the servants. These little bickerings were not of such rare occurrence lately, although they always irritated Henk beyond measure.
But Eline had not taken much notice of Betsy’s words, and had replied to her with less sharpness than was her wont; she did not care to allow such trifles to spoil her good-humour: life was too dear to her——
And feeling glad that she had curbed her temper, she turned the corner of the Java-straat.
At the Verstraetens’ there still prevailed an unusual disorder. Dien was loth to admit her, but Eline took no notice, and passed inside to the large reception-room, where she found Madame Verstraeten, who apologized for being in her dressing-gown. Losch, the photographer, half hidden under the green cloth of his apparatus, was taking a view of the group representing the Five Senses. The girls, Etienne, and Paul smiled their welcome to Eline, who said it was splendid still to be able to see something of the tableaux. But now, in the chill snow-reflected daylight, the scene no longer [[29]]created the vivid, glowing impression of the previous evening, nor had it the same wealth of colouring, with which a plentiful application of Bengal fire had endowed it. The draperies hung in loose and crumpled folds; Frédérique’s cloth of gold had a smudged, faded tint, her ermine had more the appearance of white and black wool. Etienne’s fair wig was decidedly out of curl. Lili, representing the sense of Smelling, lay half dozing in her pillows.
“I am afraid it won’t come to much,” said Marie, as Losch was arranging her draperies; but Toosje van der Stoor thought otherwise and remained lying motionless, with a terribly cramped feeling, owing to her difficult attitude.
Eline, unwilling to disturb the artistes in their grouping, sat down beside Mr. Verstraeten. He laid away his book and removed his eye-glasses, and with his sparkling brown eyes glanced with unfeigned pleasure at the graceful girl.
“Do you know,” she said, as she unhooked the little fur-lined cloak, “do you know, I am really jealous of that little group there. They are always together, always happy and jolly, and full of fun and amusing ideas—really I feel quite old by the side of them.”
“Just fancy that!” answered Madame Verstraeten, laughing. “You are of the same age as Marie, three-and-twenty, aren’t you?”
“Yes; but I was never spoilt as Marie and Lili are being now, and yet I think I should not have minded a bit. You know, of course, when I was a child—papa was mostly ill, and naturally that threw a damper over us; and afterwards at Aunt Vere’s house—aunt was a dear, good woman, but much elder than papa, and not very jolly certainly——”
“You must not say anything about Aunt Vere, Eline!” said Mr. Verstraeten; “she was an old flame of mine——”
“And you must not laugh at her; I was very fond of her; she really was a second mother to us, and when that long illness ended in her death, I felt the loss keenly, I was as alone in the world. You see, all these things were not exactly calculated to make my youth a very gay one.” And she smiled a saddened smile, whilst at the thought of all she had been deprived of, her eyes glistened with moisture. “But when you look at Paul and Etienne, and the girls, it’s nothing but laughter and pleasure—really, enough to make me jealous. And that Toos, too, she is a dear child.”
The artistes came down from the platform. Losch had finished. [[30]]Paul and Etienne, with Freddy, Marie, and Cateau came forward, whilst Lili went to bed, thoroughly exhausted with the excitement of the last two days.
“Good morning, Miss Vere,” said Cateau, as she held out her little hand to Eline.
Eline felt a sudden, indescribable, unreasoning sympathy for that child, so simple and so unconsciously engaging, and as she rose to go, she was obliged to hide her emotion by playfully embracing the child.
“Good-bye, darling,” she said dotingly. “I am going, Madame Verstraeten; there is still plenty left for you to do, now that all that excitement is over. Ah! yes—I promised Betsy to ask you for the tickets. May I have them?”
It was still early, only half-past two, and Eline thought what a long time it was since she had visited old Madame van Raat, and she knew that the old lady liked her, and was always glad to have a chat in the afternoon. Henk never failed to visit his mother every morning after his ride, and the two boarhounds, whom his wife had banished from his home, followed him undisturbed up the stairs in his mother’s house. As for Betsy, of her the old lady saw very little; Betsy was well enough aware that Madame van Raat did not care for her. Eline, however, had succeeded in winning her affections, by means of a certain most engaging manner she had when in the company of aged ladies; in the tone of her voice, in her little attentions, there was a something, a delicate flavour of respect, which charmed the old dame.
Eline returned through the Java-straat to the Laan van Meerdervoort, and found Madame van Raat alone, seated in her high-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap. And in the young girl’s eyes she appeared such a picture of mute sadness; over the rich faded furniture there hovered such a melancholy shadow of past comfort; the whole apartment was filled with such an atmosphere of sorrow, and about the folds of the dark green curtains there hung such a mist of melancholy, that on entering, Eline felt her heart grow cold within her, as though a voice had told her that life was not worth living.
But she struggled against the feeling. She recalled those thoughts which in the morning had brought her such lightness of heart. She smiled, and her tone assumed that vague respect, mingled with [[31]]somewhat of love and pity, and with much animation she spoke about Paul, about the tableaux, about that evening’s dinner, and the opera—and promised Madame van Raat to send her some books, nice light literature, in which one looked at the world through rose-coloured glasses.
It pained her to chatter in this way; she would much rather have sat and cried with the old dame, in sympathetic melancholy, but she controlled herself, and even plucked up courage to touch upon a more serious subject. With her engaging, respectful manner, she took Madame to task for having been discovered by her with moistened eyes, which now she would not own; she was not inquisitive, but she would so gladly console and cheer her, if she could; and why did she not again make her her confidante, as she had done before, and so on.
And the old lady, already placed at her ease by this charm of manner, smilingly shook her head; really, there was nothing the matter at all; she only felt a little lonely. Ah, it was her own fault, she feared, for there was very little in which she still took any interest. Other old people read the papers and continued to take an interest in things generally; but not she. Yes, it was all her own fault; but Eline was a dear girl; why could not Betsy be a little like her?
And with increased animation, she began to talk about her dear husband; over there was his portrait.…
It was past four when Eline hurried away; it was growing dark, it was thawing, and the lowering clouds threatened to fall upon her and choke her. That old lady had been happy, very happy.… and she, Eline, was not happy, even at her age—oh! how would she feel when she too would be old, ugly, and shrivelled up! To her even the memories of the past would bring no comfort, nor yet the solacing thought that happiness did exist, that she had tasted its sweets; to her all would be dull and leaden as the clouds above! “Oh, God, why live, if life were void of happiness?—why, why?” she whispered, and she hurried on to dress for dinner.
It was to be a simple, homely little dinner. At half-past six the Ferelyns came, and shortly after, Emilie and Georges. Betsy received them in the drawing-room, and asked Jeanne how the child was.
“She is much easier now, the little dot; the fever is gone, but still [[32]]she is not quite better. Doctor Reyer said she was getting on. It’s very nice of you to have invited us; a little change is really necessary for me. But you see, I took your word for it that it would be quite a family party, so I haven’t dressed for it.” And with some misgiving her eyes wandered from her own plain black dress to Betsy’s gown of gray satin.
“Really, there is no one else coming but Emilie here, and her brother. But you told me you would be going home early, so we have arranged, later on, to look in at the opera, in Uncle Verstraeten’s box. So you need not be uneasy, you were quite right to come as you are.”
Henk, looking jolly and contented, entered in his smoking-jacket, and on seeing him Jeanne felt more reassured than by all Betsy’s protestations. With Emilie, lively as ever, she was on the most intimate terms, and it was Georges alone, with his immaculate shirt-front, and his big gardenia, who made her feel somewhat uneasy at her own simple dress.
Frans Ferelyn, an East-Indian official, was in Holland on furlough, and his wife was an old school-mate of Eline’s and Betsy’s.
Jeanne seemed a homely little woman, very quiet and depressed under her domestic troubles. Delicate, emaciated, and pallid, with a pair of soft brown eyes, she felt crushed under the double burden of pecuniary embarrassment and anxiety for her three ailing children, and she felt an irresistible longing for India, the land of her birth, and for the quiet life she led there. She suffered much from the cold, and numbered the months she would still have to pass in Holland. She told Emilie of her life at Temanggoeng in the Kadoe—Frans was Comptroller first-class—in the midst of a menagerie of Cochin-China fowls, ducks, pigeons, a cow, two goats, and a cockatoo. “Just like Adam and Eve in Paradise,” remarked Emilie. Then she told them how each morning she used to look after her Persian roses and her pretty azaleas, and gather her vegetables from her own garden, and how her children, immediately on their arrival in Holland, were taken ill and began to cough. “’Tis true, in India they looked rather pale, but there at least they were not obliged to be in constant fear of draughts and open doors.” And she was sorry that, owing to the expense of the voyage, she had had to come away without her baboo, Saripa. She was now in service at Samarang, but she [[33]]had promised to come back to her “as soon as we are home again,” and she was to bring her over some pretty frocks from Holland.
Emilie listened attentively, and did her best to set her talking; she knew how those Indian reminiscences could draw Jeanne out of her usual quiet reserve. Betsy considered her out of place in company, so when she did ask her, it was always together with her husband, and if possible, with one or two others. The fact was, she thought her a bore, generally ill-dressed, and her conversation flat and uninteresting, but still she could not help occasionally inviting her, more with a kind of pity than anything else.
While Frans Ferelyn was speaking to Henk about his forthcoming promotion to Assistant Resident, and Georges was listening to Jeanne telling him about Frans’s horse one day stepping right into their room to fetch his pisang, Betsy lay back in her chair, thinking how long Eline was. She would have liked to have dined early, so as not to be so very late at the opera, and she inwardly hoped that the Ferelyns would not be indiscreet and stay too long. Amusing they certainly were not, she thought, and she rose, concealing her impatience, to fix a bunch of peacock feathers in one of the vases, a few of the knick-knacks on the little centre table; then with her foot she arranged the tiger-skin rug in front of the flaming hearth, all the time feeling annoyed at Eline’s delay.
At length the door opened and Eline entered, and Jeanne could not help noticing how pretty and elegant she looked in her pink rep silk frock, simple but rich, with a neat little bow here and there on her V-shaped corsage, on the short sleeves, and at the waist. In her light-brown, back-combed hair she wore a touffe of wavy pink feathers with a small aigrette; her nimble feet were encased in small pink shoes; a single string of pearls encircled her throat. In her hands she held her long gloves, her fan of pink ostrich feathers, and her binocle set in mother-of-pearl.
Ferelyn and de Woude rose, and she shook hands with them, and kissed Emilie and Jeanne, at the same time inquiring about little Dora. She noticed how all, even Henk and Betsy, took stock of her, from head to foot, struck as they were with the rich simplicity of her dress: and when Jeanne spoke to her about her child, she smiled upon the struggling little woman, all conscious of the effect of her brilliant charms.
At table, Eline chatted pleasantly with de Woude, next to whom [[34]]she was seated. Betsy sat between her two gentlemen guests, Emilie between Henk and Frans, Jeanne between Eline and Henk. In the somewhat sombre dining-room, with its antique furniture, the table glistened with snowy damask, with silver and fine glass, whilst the rays of gas-light glinted on decanters and glasses, making the dark-red or amber-coloured wine appear to quiver under the glow of its radiance. From amid a nest of flowers in a silver basket rose the prickly crown of a splendid pine.
De Woude commenced telling Eline about the soirée at the Verstraetens’, and in glowing terms described how well Miss van Erlevoort had looked her parts, successively as Cleopatra and the sense of Sight. With Emilie, Frans, and Betsy the conversation turned on India. In this Jeanne joined every now and again, but she sat too far away, and her attention was diverted by de Woude’s chattering and the little shrill laugh of Eline, who was engaged in a mild flirtation.
Henk drank his soup and ate his fish in silence, occasionally addressing a short monosyllable to Jeanne or Emilie. And Jeanne grew more and more silent, as much from feeling ill at ease, as from fatigue at her long talk to Emilie after a day full of worries. She felt very much out of place, next to that coquettish couple. Eline in full toilet, de Woude in his evening dress, to which her own little black dress offered a shabby contrast. Still, she was glad she sat next to Henk, and in her own malaise she was conscious of a vague sort of sympathy for him, who was as much out of place there as herself.
And she could not help comparing herself with Eline and Betsy: she, struggling with her three children and her husband’s slender furlough allowance; Eline and Betsy, on the other hand, unhampered, and ever moving in a whirl of pleasures and excitement. Where was the old, happy friendship that united them in one bond, when all three used to go hand-in-hand to school, Eline with the cape of her mackintosh filled with cherries, and she herself under Betsy’s leadership giving free vent to her childish spirits in naughty answers to the governess? She felt herself repelled by that young wife, with her self-conscious, indifferent manner, and her domineering tone towards her husband; repelled also by that young girl, who appeared to her frivolous and vain in her conversation, full of brilliant nothings; and by that dandy. Eline, especially, she could not understand; in her she found something uncommon, something [[35]]indefinable and puzzling, and certain attributes which seemed ever at war with one another. Her laughter about nothing at all wearied her, and she wondered how it was that a girl who, as they said, sang so divinely, could have such an unpleasant and affected laugh. Oh! if they would but be silent for a moment!.… And in her heart she longed to be back once more in her humble apartments, with her little Dora. Why had she accepted that invitation? ’Tis true Frans had insisted, now that the child was out of danger, that she should have some change and relaxation, but this dinner-party gave her no relaxation; on the contrary, it made her nervous and confused, and she declined Henk’s offer of sweetbreads and asparagus which he recommended her.
“Did I hear aright, Miss Emilie; is Mr. de Woude a brother of yours?” Frans asked softly. It was the first time that he had met either Emilie or Georges, and he was as much struck by their resemblance as by the contrast between them.
“Certainly,” whispered Emilie; “and I am proud of him too. He is an awful swell, but a nice boy; he is engaged at the Foreign Office. Be careful, don’t you think bad of him!” she laughed, and held up her finger threateningly, as though she read Ferelyn’s thoughts.
“I have scarcely exchanged more than half a dozen words with Mr. de Woude as yet, so I should be sorry to express any opinion about him so soon,” he said, a little alarmed at Emilie’s brusqueness.
“That’s right; most people get a very different opinion of Georges after they have known him some time, from that formed when they first met him. You see, like a loving sister, I take my brother’s part. Just fill my glass, please.”