Eline Vere

by Louis Couperus

  ‘And he invited me to go skating with him, as soon as I’m better,’ confided Lili, almost bashfully. She gave a slight cough.

  Marie stared at her sister in astonishment.

  ‘De Woude? With you? And what did you say?’

  ‘That it was very kind of him, of course. What else was I supposed to say?’

  Marie laughed outright.

  ‘You going skating with De Woude? Lili, how could you? I thought you said he was a boring prig, and that you couldn’t stand him.’

  ‘Well, he said he’d help me with my skating. At least he’s more gallant than Paul and Etienne.’

  ‘But he can’t even skate!’ laughed Marie.

  ‘He says he’s very keen, though.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you believe it. He’s just pretending.’

  Lili shrugged with impatience.

  ‘I see no reason for him to pretend about it.’

  ‘Dear me, how you leap to his defence! And you couldn’t stand him before!’

  ‘I always thought him very friendly, and polite …’

  ‘Lili, how can you tell such barefaced fibs! You thought he was intolerable!’

  ‘But Marie, that’s no reason not to go skating with him,’ cried Lili, almost beseechingly. ‘When you go to a ball you dance with other people besides your beau, don’t you?’

  ‘Still, I hardly know what to think,’ Marie teased. ‘Off skating together, just like that! What about Mama, does she approve?’

  Lili turned away with dignified contempt.

  ‘Don’t be childish,’ was all she said, looking down at her sister, and was dismayed to feel herself blushing yet again – for no reason, after all.

  …

  ‘Is Papa sleeping?’ asked Georges, entering Emilie’s sitting room after dinner that evening.

  Emilie gave a little start. She had been slumped in her easy chair by the hearth, feeling the effects of a copious repast.

  ‘Yes, Papa’s asleep,’ she said, blinking.

  Georges laughed.

  ‘And you, Emilie, did you nod off as well?’ he teased.

  Emilie responded with like good humour. No, she had not been asleep, just resting, she assured him. Would Georges be staying for tea? She would enjoy that.

  She felt a sort of motherly affection for her so much younger brother, whom she had cared for and doted on since his early childhood, and who was now back under her wing after his months abroad. He looked well, she noted with satisfaction, he had even put on a little weight, and she was glad to discern a new manliness in his fine features – or had she simply failed to notice it before he went away?

  Georges sat down beside her and they chatted about this and that. She knew him well, she believed, and could sense that he had something to ask her. She was inwardly pleased at this, but saucy enough to oblige him to broach the subject without any assistance from her. He prevaricated at length, but her non-committal replies did not inspire confidence in him, and he decided to delay unburdening himself. Abruptly, and in an altered, firmer tone, he made some trivial remark, whereupon she regretted her feigned indifference and tried to think of some way of drawing him out. However, she could think of nothing tactful, so eventually asked him point-blank:

  ‘I say, Georges, what’s on your mind? What did you want to tell me?’

  Now it was his turn to pretend, and with assumed amazement he echoed:

  ‘Tell you? What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, just a feeling I have. It must be the curl of your moustache!’ she quipped. ‘Seriously, though, is there nothing the matter? Money affairs, perhaps?’

  But she knew better: money posed no problem to him, it never had; so fastidious was he where finances were concerned that she, having taken charge of all their elderly father’s affairs, never encountered the slightest grounds for correction. Georges smiled and shook his head, but said nothing. Could the matter at hand be so weighty as to render him speechless, she jested, a chatterbox like him?

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing,’ he answered. ‘Besides, you know what they say – silence is golden and all that.’

  ‘I beg you, Georges, don’t you be coy with me! If you have something to say or to ask, please do so, and no mincing of words, please, you know that is quite unnecessary with me!’ she said, almost reproachfully, but with so much warm encouragement in her tone that he took her large white hand and raised it with playful gallantry to his lips.

  ‘Now then, out with it!’ Emilie persisted, giving him a light tap under the chin with the back of the hand he had just kissed.

  There was no going back now, and he plucked up the courage to speak, slowly at first, in disjointed sentences, but his query soon gathered momentum. There was his position to think about, of course, but would she think him very foolish if he considered … marriage? A tremor had come into his voice, as though his fate depended on her answer.

  His words took her by surprise, for although he was all of four and twenty she still regarded him as her little boy, her pet. And here was he was, thinking of marriage! But she also knew him to be grownup and sensible under the light veneer of affectation; he would not ask her opinion unless he had thought the matter out beforehand, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings by assuming an all-too-lighthearted tone. However, she felt a pang of alarm at the thought of having sooner or later to part with him.

  ‘Marriage! Georges, are you serious?’

  He gave a secretive smile, as though absorbed in some sweet vision.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, his voice sinking to a whisper.

  ‘Are you … are you then … so much in love?’ she asked in a hardly audible voice. ‘Is it …?’ A name rose to her lips, but she left it unsaid.

  He nodded happily, as if he knew she had guessed. Before his departure to Berlin she had already been teasing him about being sweet on Lili Verstraeten, of whom he talked so often. But now that he had acknowledged it, she was crestfallen. How did he know that Lili cared for him? Wasn’t he building castles in the air? But she did not voice these concerns, for he seemed so happy and hopeful.

  ‘Georges, if you are truly in earnest, well … let’s see …’ she resumed, moving her chair closer to his. ‘Suppose everything goes smoothly at first, say you propose, and she accepts, what then? You know you’ll have to wait for ages before you can have a wedding.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘But, Georges, what are you thinking? Surely you don’t mean to marry on your salary as Assistant-Consul? A mere twelve hundred guilders, am I right? Of course, there is your share of Mama’s estate, but it’s a bagatelle, it won’t make you wealthy by any means! So I ask you, what will you live on? You can’t count on the Verstraetens giving very much as a dowry; they live comfortably enough, but quite modestly. They are not rich, you know.’

  ‘My dear Emilie, if you must do my sums for me, you could at least get them right. It’s true that I don’t reckon on support from my …’ he smiled as his voice sank to a whisper, ‘from my future parents-in-law, should it come to that. In fact I would not even wish to.’

  ‘I hardly think you would say no if they offered.’

  ‘I don’t know, that is an aspect I haven’t considered yet. It hasn’t even crossed my mind, to be honest, but what I meant was that your calculations were a bit wide off the mark. Suppose I don’t sit the Vice-Consular exam this year, then we’re entitled to fifteen hundred guilders each, aren’t we?’

  ‘About that.’

  ‘Well then, twelve hundred plus fifteen hundred is–’

  ‘Two thousand seven hundred guilders. And you would marry on that?’

  ‘But Emilie, why ever not?’

  She threw up her hands in exasperation.

  ‘Forgive me for saying so, Georges, but you must be out of your mind! I wish you’d stop acting like a child and come to your senses. I suppose you’ve been reading that silly little book for young married couples – what is it called again? Something like How to Live Comfortably and Respectably on Fi
fteen Hundred a Year.’

  ‘No, I haven’t seen it, but fifteen hundred is not the same as twenty-seven hundred, and I have reason to be confident–’

  ‘You have reason to be confident? No, no, quite the contrary, you have no idea! What makes you think you would be able to live with a wife from January to December on a miserable two thousand and seven hundred guilders? You are confident, you say!’ she burst out when he made to interrupt her. She sprang up from her easy chair. ‘I can just see you now, living in some poky upstairs flat with a joint of beef once a week for a treat! Not that I would know what it’s like, never having been in that situation, but what I do know is that both you and Lili grew up in comfortable circumstances, so how could the pair of you possibly …? Oh come now, all this is absurd. Do be sensible. I know you too well.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know me well enough!’ he countered, his gentle tone contrasting with her stridency. ‘Because I’m quite sure that I shall be able to adjust my needs to my means.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to say that, but what about your wife? Do you really want to force a young girl, brought up with a certain amount of luxury, to adjust her needs to your means? Believe me, Georges dear, no one can live on air these days.’

  ‘I never thought they could.’

  ‘Let me finish. Young people like you, like Lili, need all sorts of things. For one thing they want to go out, to entertain friends, and–’

  ‘Oh, all that going out! I did enough of that as a student to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘Egotist! Just because you went out as much as you pleased when you were young you want to stay in for economy’s sake when you’re married, and sit with your wife in your little upstairs apartment savouring your weekly beefsteak. A grand prospect for her, to be sure!’

  ‘Seriously, Emilie, why all this emphasis on the need to go out every evening? I don’t believe society is a good place to look for happiness, anyway.’

  ‘Until now you’ve been quite happy flitting from one soirée to another, in other words, you have been in a social whirl. Falling in love has given you poetic ideas, but believe me, it’ll wear off, and when you have been married a while you will find yourself missing the company of friends and acquaintances.’

  ‘Granted, as far as the friends and acquaintances are concerned, but giving them up is not part of my plan, and it will not cost all that much to continue seeing them.’

  ‘It will cost a lot, Georges, believe me!’ Emilie persisted. ‘You will receive invitations, and you won’t want to appear mean so you’ll be obliged to reciprocate from time to time with a dinner party, however modest, and you’ll have to do so again and again, and all this on twenty-seven hundred guilders a year? I can see you at it already. Especially your poor wife, having to run a household on those paltry twenty-seven hundred guilders, or rather, on as much of it as you allow her. Well, you won’t catch me coming to stay with you, I can tell you.’

  Her comical resentment amused him, but he was adamant.

  ‘My dear Emilie, you can say what you like, but it’s my firm belief that you can get quite far with a little money and some good sense, and be happy to boot.’

  ‘Oh, hark at Master Georges, thinks he knows better than his big sister, does he? So stubborn, it’s a disgrace!’ she sputtered vexedly.

  ‘Emilie, please calm down,’ he soothed. ‘Nothing’s been decided yet. I haven’t actually … I’m not even sure she …’

  He left his sentence unfinished, not wishing to voice a thought he could not contemplate.

  ‘Yes, Georges, I understand,’ said Emilie, somewhat appeased by his tone. ‘Still, financial considerations need to be confronted sooner rather than later, as I’m sure you agree.’

  ‘I agree with you there, but you exaggerate the stringency of my budget. By the way,’ he interrupted himself with a winning smile, ‘talking of budgets, couldn’t you do me an enormous favour and help me draw one up?’

  ‘For an annual total of twenty-seven hundred guilders? Impossible, Georges, I couldn’t do it. Why, you’d need more than that to live on if you moved into a rented apartment, even if you weren’t married.’

  He sighed.

  ‘So we can’t reach any kind of agreement on this?’

  She gave a shrug.

  ‘How stubborn you are. You’re like a child, you know nothing about life.’

  Georges, in spite of himself, felt his resolve weaken. His high hopes began to founder under the oppressive burden of common sense, and the future seemed to crumble before his eyes. He passed his hand across his forehead with a slow, defeated gesture and thought: Yes, perhaps it would be better to wait a while.

  ‘Best to wait for a time, then, I suppose,’ he intoned in a low voice, sounding so doleful that Emilie began to have qualms about her victory.

  She took his face in both her hands and peered into his sad, regretful eyes.

  ‘You’re such a dreamer!’ she said, and her heart went out to him. ‘Well, you’re still young, and perhaps one day … you never know.’

  ‘Perhaps what?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right and I don’t know what I’m talking about!’ she broke out with a pang of remorse at having pained her young brother. ‘Only, I beg you: be sensible and don’t rush into anything, Georges!’ And she pressed long kisses on his closed eyes, aware of the tears rising in them.

  XIV

  ‘Goodnight, Betsy! ’Night, Henk! I’m off to bed; I’m quite worn out,’ Eline said in a rush of words as they entered the front hall.

  ‘Won’t you have a bite to eat first?’ asked Betsy.

  ‘Thank you all the same, but no.’

  Eline started up the stairs. Betsy shrugged; she could tell from the peremptory tone that her sister was in one of her nervous, irritable moods and would brook no interference.

  ‘What’s the matter with Eline?’ asked Henk in the dining room, fearing another spate of strained relations.

  ‘Oh, how should I know?’ cried Betsy. ‘It started at the concert, and you saw how she ignored me in the carriage going home. I pretended not to notice, but I can’t stand it when she goes into one of her sulks.’

  Eline ascended the stairs in her swan’s-down and plush evening cape with an air of offended majesty, and entered her sitting room. Mina had had the foresight to turn on the gas light, and there was even a log burning in the grate. She glanced about her a moment, then tore the white-lace fichu from her head and flung away her cape, and stood there with her head bowed, staring blankly at the floor in an attitude of utter disillusionment.

  Raising her eyes to the Venetian pier glass with its pretty red cords above her porcelain Amor and Psyche, whose charming idyll was in such loathsome contrast to her present emotion, she saw her reflection: shimmering in her pink rep silk and with the aigrette of pink plumes in her upswept hair, the very ensemble she had worn when she first set eyes on Fabrice, three whole months ago.

  And now …

  She almost laughed out loud at the sheer absurdity of it all, then cringed in self-disgust, as though she had defiled herself.

  There had been a concert of the Diligentia Society at the Hall of Arts and Sciences, to which she had persuaded Henk and Betsy to accompany her. Fabrice was to perform: ‘The popular baritone of the French opera has been invited to gather fresh laurels from a new audience,’ the newspaper had reported. Eline had not rested until she was certain to be attending: first she had approached the Verstraetens, but Madame was not thus inclined and Lili was still ill; then she had turned to Emilie, but Emilie had a prior engagement. As a last resort she had appealed to Henk and Betsy, who, although neither enthusiastic concert-goers, had consented to go. Eline was very excited: not only would she be seeing Fabrice perform in new surroundings, but also in a new role, that of a concert-singer. Thankfully, their seats were on the balcony, close to the stage, and oh, he was bound to recognise her from the opera, he would make some sign to her, he was in love with her … the Bucchi fan …! She conjured il
lusions without end as her passion ran rampant in her soul, filling it with a second, fabulous existence, with Fabrice and her as the hero and heroine of a sublimely romantic idyll.

  He was enchanted by her beauty, he worshipped her, they would run away together, they would sing on stage, suffer hardship, become rich and famous … The dizzying prospect of seeing him again had infused the translucent pallor of her cheeks with a faint bloom like that of a velvety peach, and the ardour in her lambent gaze belied her languishing demeanour as she took her seat, radiating beauty, while every lorgnette in the audience was trained on her – a fact that had not gone unheeded by Henk, nor indeed by Betsy. The concert had commenced with a lilting symphony, which had sounded to her as a hymn of love and happiness.

  Then … then he had made his entrance, to a resounding burst of applause.

  While Eline stared dazedly into the glass, reliving the moment, the image came back to her in glaring detail.

  Awkward, like a burly carpenter in a dress coat that was too tight, his coarse, frizzy hair plastered down with pomade, his face flushed crimson in contrast to his snowy shirtfront, he looked common and overweight, with a disagreeable, sullen expression about the bearded mouth and in the eyes glowering from under bushy eyebrows. She had felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. Without the grand theatrical gestures and lavish stage costumes that displayed his figure to uppermost advantage, the spell he had cast on her was suddenly broken, and while his voice resounded with the same clarion flourish that had filled her with rapture at the opera, she no longer registered it, so horrified was she by the enormity of her mistake.

  How could she have been so blind? How could that common carpenter have been the ideal of her wildest imaginings? She could have wept with rage and disappointment, but her face remained impassive as she sat, straight-backed, almost stiffly, merely drawing the sides of her white plush cape together with a scarcely perceptible shudder. Constricted by emotion, her breathing became fast and shallow as she continued to fix him for as long as he sang, surveying him from head to toe, as though not wishing to spare her feelings. Could this be the same figure she had seen in the Wood, with his woollen scarf and the soft felt hat that gave him the dashing look of an Italian highwayman? What had come over her?