“That is young Mrs Hijdrecht,” he said calmly, his voice a little raised.
She turned pale; her fan flapped nervously to and fro. He had named the woman rumour said to be his mistress.
III
It seemed to Cecile as though that delicate, frail thing, that soap-bubble, had burst. She wondered if he had spoken to that dark-haired woman also of circles of sympathy. So soon as she was able, Cecile observed Mrs Hijdrecht. She had a warm, dull-gold complexion, fiery dark eyes, a mouth as of fresh blood. Her dress was cut very low; her throat and the slope of her breast came out insolently handsome, brutally luscious. A row of diamonds encircled her neck with a narrow line of white brilliancy. Cecile felt ill at ease. She looked away from the young woman, and turned to Quaerts, drawn magnetically towards him. She saw a cloud of melancholy stealing over the upper half of his face; over his forehead and his eyes, in which appeared a slight look of age. And she heard him say:
“What do you care about that lady’s name; we were just in the middle of such a charming conversation …”
She too felt sad now; sad for the soap-bubble that had burst. She did not know why, but she felt pity for him; sudden, deep, spontaneous pity.
“We can resume our conversation,” she said softly.
“Do not let us take it up where we left it,” he rejoined with feigned airiness. “I had become too serious.”
He spoke of other things: she answered little, and their conversation languished. They each occupied themselves with their neighbours. The dinner came to an end. Mrs Hoze rose and took the arm of the gentleman next her. The general escorted Cecile to the drawing-room, in the slow procession of the others.
The ladies remained alone, the men went to the smoking-room with young Hoze. Cecile saw Mrs Hoze coming towards her. She asked her if she had not been wearied at dinner; they sat down by one another, in a confidential tête-à-tête.
Cecile compelled herself to reply to Mrs Hoze, but she would gladly have gone elsewhere, to weep quietly, because everything passed so quickly, because the speck of the present was so small. Past, again, was the sweet charm of their conversation at dinner about sympathy, a fragile intimacy amid the worldly splendours about them. Past that moment, never, never to return: life sped over it with its onflowing, a flood of all-obliterating water. Oh, the sorrow of it; to think how quickly, like an intangible perfume, everything speeds away, everything that is dear to us …
Mrs Hoze left her; Suzette Van Attema came to talk to Cecile. She was in pink, and shining in all her aspect as if gold dust had rained over her, upon her movements, her eyes, her words. She spoke volubly to Cecile, telling interminable tales, to which Cecile did not always listen. Suddenly, through Suzette’s prattling, Cecile heard the voices of two women whispering behind her; she only caught a word here and there:
“Emilie Hijdrecht, you know …”
“Only gossip, I think; Mrs Hoze does not seem to heed it …”
“Ah! I am afraid I know better.”
The voices were lost in the hum of others. Cecile caught a sound just like Quaerts’ name. Suzette asked suddenly:
“Do you know young Mrs Hijdrecht, Auntie?”
“No.”
“Over there, with the diamonds. You know, they talk about her and Quaerts. Mamma does not believe it. He is a great flirt. You sat next to him, did you not?”
Cecile suffered severely in the secrecy of her sensitiveness. She shrank entirely within herself, doing all she could to appear different from what she was. Suzette saw nothing of her discomfiture.
The men returned. Cecile looked to see whether Quaerts would speak to Mrs Hijdrecht. But he wholly ignored her presence, and even, when he saw Suzette sitting with Cecile, came over to them to pay a compliment to Suzette, to whom he had not yet spoken.
It was a relief for Cecile when she was able to go. She longed for solitude, to recover herself, to return from her abstraction. In her brougham she scarcely dared breathe, fearful of something, she could not say what. When she reached home she felt a stifling heaviness which seemed to paralyse her, and with difficulty she passed up the stairway to her dressing-room.
And yet, as she stepped, there fell over her, as from the roof of her house, a haze of protecting safety. Slowly she went up, her hand, holding a long glove, pressing the velvet banister of the stairway. She felt as if she were about to swoon.
“But, my God … I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!” she whispered between her trembling lips, with sudden amazement.
It was as in a rhythm of astonishment that she wearily mounted the stairway, higher and higher, in a still surprise of sudden light.
“But I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!”
It sounded like a melody through her weariness.
She reached her dressing-room, where Greta had lighted the gas; she dragged herself inside. The door of the nursery stood half open; she entered it and threw up the curtain of Christie’s little bed. She fell on her knees, and looked at the child. The boy partly awoke, still in the warmth of a deep sleep; he crept a little from between the sheets, laughed and threw his arms about Cecile’s bare neck.
“Mamma dear!”
She pressed him tightly in the embrace of her slender white arms; she kissed his raspberry mouth, his drowsy eyes. Meantime the refrain sang on in her heart, right across the weariness, which broke, as it were, by the cot of her child: “I am fond of him, I love him, I love him, I love him …!”
IV
The mystery! Suddenly, on the staircase, it had beamed open before her in her soul, like a great flower of light, a mystic rose with glistening leaves, into whose golden heart she now looked for the first time. The analysis of which she was so fond was no longer possible: this was the Enigma of Love, the eternal Enigma, that had beamed open within her, transfixing with its rays the width and breadth of her soul, in the midst of which it had burst forth like a sun in the universe; it was no longer of use to ask, why, why. It was no longer of use to ponder and dream on it; it could only be accepted as the inexplicable phenomenon of the soul; it was a creation of sentiment, of which the god who created it would be as impossible to find in the essence of his reality as the God who had created the world out of chaos. It was the light breaking forth from the darkness; it was heaven disclosed above the earth. It existed, it was reality and no chimera; for it was wholly and entirely within her; a sudden, incontestable, everlasting truth, a felt fact, so real in its ethereal incorporeity that it seemed to her as if before that moment she had never known, never thought, never felt.
It was the beginning: the opening out of herself, the dawn of her soul’s life, the joyful miracle, the miraculous inception of love.
She passed the days which followed in self contemplation, wandering through her dreams as through a new country, rich with great light, where distant landscapes paled into light, fantastic, like meteors in the night, quivering in incandescence upon the horizon. It seemed to her as though she, a light, pious pilgrim, progressed along paradisial oases towards those distant scenes, there to find still more: the Goal … Only a little while ago her prospect had been but narrow and forlorn – her children gone from her, her loneliness wrapping her about like a night – and now, now she saw before her a long road, a wide horizon, glittering the whole way in light; nothing but light …
That was, all that was! It was no fine poet’s dream; it existed, it gleamed in her heart like a sacred jewel, like a mystic rose with stamina of light! A freshness as of dew fell over her, over her whole life; over the life of her senses; over the life of outward appearances; over the life of her soul; over the life of the truth indwelling. The world was new, fresh with young dew, the very Eden of Genesis, and her soul was a soul of newness, born anew in a metempsychosis of greater perfection, of closer approach to the ideal, that distant Goal – there, far away, hidden like a god in the sanctity of its ecstasy of light, in the radiance of its own being.
V
Cecile did not go out for a few days
; she saw nobody. One morning she received a note; it ran:
“MEVROUW,
“I do not know if you were offended at my mystical utterances. I cannot recall distinctly what I said, but I remember that you told me that I was going too far. I hope you have not taken my indiscretion amiss. It would be a great pleasure to me to come to see you. May I hope that you will permit me to call on you this afternoon?
“With most respectful regards,
“QUAERERTS.”
As the bearer was waiting for a reply, she responded:
“DEAR SIR,
“I shall be pleased to see you this afternoon.
“CECILE VAN EVEN.”
When she was left alone she read the note over and over again; she looked at the paper with a smile, looked at the handwriting.
“How strange,” she thought. “This note, and everything that happens. How strange everything is!”
She remained dreaming a long time, with the note in her hand. Then she carefully folded it up, rose, walked up and down the room, sought in a bowl full of visiting cards, taking out two which she looked at for a long time. “Quaerts …” The name sounded differently from before … How strange it all was! And finally she locked away the letter and the two cards in a little empty drawer of her writing-table.
She stayed at home, and sent the children out with the nurse. She hoped that no one else would call, neither Mrs Hoze nor the Van Attemas. And staring before her she reflected a long, long time. There was so much she did not understand: properly speaking she understood nothing. As far as she was concerned, she had fallen in love; there was no analysing that, it must simply be accepted. But he, what did he feel, what were his emotions?
Her earlier antipathy? Sport … he was fond of sport ,she remembered … His visit, which was an impertinence … He seemed to wish now to atone, not to call again without her permission. His mystical conversation at the dinner-party … And Mrs Hijdrecht …
“How strange he is,” she reflected. “I cannot understand him; but I love him, I cannot help it. Love, love … how strange that it should exist! I never realised that it existed! I am no longer myself: I am becoming someone else? Why does he wish to see me? … And how singular: I have been married, I have two children! I feel just as if I had none. And yet, I am so fond of my little boys! But the other thing is so beautiful, so bright, so transparent, as if that alone were truth. Perhaps love is the only truths … It is as if everything in and about me were turning to crystal!”
She looked around her, surprised and troubled that her surroundings should have remained the same: the rosewood furniture, the folds of the curtains, the withered landscape of the Scheveningen Road outside. But it snowed, still and softly, with great slow flakes which fell heavily, as if they would purify the world. The snow was fresh and new, but yet the snow was not real nature to her, who always saw her distant landscape quivering in pure incandescence of light.
At four o’clock he came. She saw him for the first time since the self-revelation which had flashed upon her astounded sense. And when he came she felt the singularly rapturous feeling that in her eyes he was a demi-god, that he perfected himself in her imagination, that everything in him was good. Now that he sat there before her, she saw him for the first time, and she saw that he was physically beautiful. The strength of his body was exalted into the strength of a young god, broad, and yet slender, sinewed as with marble sinews of a statue; all this seeming so strange beneath the modernness of his frock coat. She saw his face completely for the first time. The cut of it was Roman, the head that of a Roman emperor, with its sensual profile, its small full mouth, living red under the brown gold of his curled moustache. The forehead was low, the hair cut very close, like an enveloping black casque, and over that forehead, with its one line, hovered sadness, like a mist of age, strangely contradicting the wanton youthfulness of mouth and chin. And then his eyes, which she already knew, his eyes of mystery, small and deep set, with the deeper depth of their pupils, which seemed now to veil themselves and then again to look out.
But strangest was, that from all his beauty, from all his being, from all his attitude, with his hands folded between his knees, there came out to her a magnetism, which dominated her, drawing her irresistibly towards him; as if she had suddenly, from the first moment of her self-revelation, become his, to serve him in all things. She felt this magnetism attracting her so violently that every power in her melted into heaviness and weakness. A weakness as if he might take her and carry her away, anywhere, wherever he wished; a weakness as if she no longer possessed her own thoughts, as if she had become nothing – apart from him.
She felt this intensely; and then came the very strangest of all, when he continued to sit there, at a respectful distance, his eyes bearing a respectful look, his voice falling in respectful accents. That was the strangest of all, that she saw him beneath her, while she felt him above her; that she wished to be his inferior, and he seemed to consider her higher than himself. She did not know how suddenly she so intensely realised this, but she did realise it, and it was the first pain love gave her.
“You are kind not to be angry with me,” he began.
There was often something caressing in his voice; it was not clear, and now and then even a little broken, but this just gave it a certain charm of quality.
“Why?” she asked.
“In the first place I did wrong to pay you that visit. Secondly, I was ill-mannered at Mrs Hoze’s dinner.”
“A whole catalogue of sins!” she laughed.
“Surely!” he continued, “and you are very good to bear me no malice.”
“Perhaps that is because I always hear so much that is good about you at Dolf’s.”
“Have you never noticed anything odd in Dolf?” he asked.
“No; what do you mean?”
“Has it never struck you that he has more of an eye for the great combinations of political questions than for the details of his own surroundings?”
She looked at him, smiling, astonished.
“Yes,” she said. “You are right. You know him well.”
“Oh, we have known one another from boyhood. It is curious; he never sees the things that lie close to his hand; he does not penetrate them. He is intellectually far-sighted.”
“Yes,” she assented.
“He does not know his wife, nor his daughters, nor Jules. He does not see what they have in them. He identifies each of them by means of a cypher fixed in his mind, which he forms out of the two most prominent traits of character, generally a little opposed. Mrs Van Attema seems to him to have a heart of gold, but to be not very practical: so much for her. Jules: a musical genius, but an untractable boy: settled.”
“Yes, he does not go very deeply into character,” she said. “For there is a great deal more in Amélie …”
“And he is quite at sea about Jules,” said Quaerts. “Jules is thoroughly tractable, and anything but a genius. Jules is nothing more than an exceedingly receptive boy, with a little rudimentary talent. And you … he misconceives you, too!”
“Me?”
“Entirely! Do you know what he thinks of you?”
“No.”
“He thinks you – let me begin by telling you this – very, very sympathetic, and a dear little mother to your boys. But he thinks also that you are incapable of growing very fond of anyone; he thinks you a woman without passion, and melancholy for no reason, except for weariness. He thinks you weary yourself!”
She looked at him quite alarmed, and saw him laughing mischievously.
“Never in my life am I weary!” she said, and laughed, too, with full conviction.
“Of course not!” he replied.
“How can you know?” she asked.
“I feel it!” he answered. “And, what is more, I know that the base of your character is not melancholy, not dark, but enthusiasm and light.”
“I am not so sure of that myself,” she scarcely murmured, heavy, with that weakness within
her; happy, that he should estimate her so exactly. “And do you, too,” she continued, very airily, “think I am incapable of loving anyone very much?”
“Now that is a matter which I am not competent to judge,” he said, with such frankness that his whole countenance suddenly grew younger, and the crease disappeared from his forehead. “I cannot tell that!”
“You seem to know a great deal about me!”
“I have seen you so often already.”
“Barely four times.”
“That is often.”
She laughed brightly.
“Is that a compliment?”
“It is meant for one,” he replied. “You do not know how much it means to me to see you.”
How much it meant to him to see her! And she felt herself so small, so weak, and him so great, so perfect. With what decision he spoke, how certain he seemed of it all! It almost saddened her that it meant so much to him to see her a single time. He placed her too high; she did not wish to be placed so high.
And that delicate fragile something hung between them again, as it had hung between them at dinner. Then it had been broken by one ill-chosen word. Oh, that it might not be broken now!
“And now let us talk about you!” she said, with affected frivolousness. “Do you know that you take all sorts of pains to understand me, and that I know nothing of you? That cannot be fair.”
“If you knew how much I have given you already! I give myself to you entirely; from others I always conceal myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I am afraid of the others!”
“You afraid?”
“Yes. You think that I do not look as if I could feel afraid? I have something …”
He hesitated.
“Well?” she asked.
“I have something that is very dear to me, and about which I am very anxious, lest any should touch it.”
“And that is?”
“My soul. I am not afraid of your touching it, for you would not hurt it. On the contrary, I know it is very safe with you.”
She would have liked once more, mechanically, to reproach him with his strangeness: she could not. But he guessed her thoughts.
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