Ecstasy

by Louis Couperus

  Her receptions and dinners flickered up in her mind, scenes of worldliness, and she clearly recalled her husband’s eye taking in everything with a quick glance of approval or condemnation: the arrangement of her rooms, her dress, the ordering of her parties. Her marriage had not been an unhappy one; her husband was a little cold and unexpansive, wrapped wholly in his ambition, but he was attached to her after his fashion, even with tenderness; she too had been fond of him; she thought at the time that she was marrying him for love: her dependent womanliness loving the male, the master. Of a delicate constitution, probably undermined by excessive brain-work, he had died after a short illness. Cecile remembered her sorrow, her loneliness with the two children, about whom he had already feared lest she should spoil them. And her loneliness had been sweet to her, among the clouds of her dreaming …

  This portrait – a costly life-size photograph; a carbon impression dark with a Rembrandt shadow – why had she never had it copied in oils, as she had at first intended? The intention had died down of itself; for months she had not thought of the matter, now suddenly it recurred to her … And she felt no self-reproach or remorse. She would not now have it done. It was well enough as it was. She thought of the dead man without sorrow. She had never had cause to complain of him; he had never had anything with which to reproach her.

  And now she was free; she became conscious of the fact with exultation. Free to feel what she would. Her freedom arched above her as a blue firmament in which new love ascended with a dove’s immaculate flight. Freedom, air, light! She turned away from the portrait with a smile of rapture; she thrust her arms above her head as if she would measure her freedom, the width of the air, as if she would go to meet the light. Love, she was in love! There was nothing but love; nothing but the harmony of their souls, the harmony of her handmaiden’s soul with the soul of her god, an exile upon the earth. Oh, how blessed that this harmony could exist between him so exalted and her so lowly! But he must not see her lowliness; she must remain the madonna, for his sake, in the martyrdom of his reverence, in the dizziness of the high place to which he raised her, beside himself. She felt this dizziness shuddering about her like rings of light. She threw herself upon her sofa, and locked her fingers; her eyelids quivered, and then she remained staring towards some very distant point.

  VI

  Jules had been away from school for a day or two with a bad headache, which had made him look pale, and given him an air of sadness; but he was a little better now, and growing weary of his own room he went downstairs to the empty drawing-room and sat at the piano. Papa was at work in his study, but it would not interfere with papa if he played. Dolf spoilt him, seeing something in his son that was wanting in himself and that therefore attracted him, as this had possibly formerly attracted him in his wife also; Jules could do no wrong in his eyes, and if the boy had only been willing, Dolf would have spared no expense to give him a careful musical education. But Jules opposed himself violently to anything in any way resembling lessons, and maintained besides that it was not worthwhile. He had no ambition; his vanity was not tickled by his father’s hopes in him and appreciation of his playing; he played for himself only, to express himself in the vague language of musical sounds. At this moment he felt himself alone, abandoned in the great house, though he knew that papa was at work two rooms away, and that when he pleased he could take refuge on papa’s great couch; he felt within himself an almost physical feeling of dread at his loneliness, which caused something to reel about him, an inward sense of inner desolation.

  He was fourteen years old, but he felt himself neither child nor boy: a certain feebleness, a need almost feminine of dependency, of devotion to someone who would be everything to him, had already, in his earliest childhood, struck into his virility, and it shivered through him in his dread of this inner loneliness, as if he were afraid of himself. He suffered greatly from the vague moods in which that strange something oppressed him; then, not knowing where to hide his inner being, he would go to play, so that he might lose himself in the great sound-soul of music. His thin, nervous fingers would grope over the keys, and false chords would be struck in his search; then he would let himself go, find some single motive, very short, of plaintive minor melancholy and caress that motive in his joy at having found it, caress it until it returned each moment as a monotony of sorrow, thinking it so beautiful that he could not leave it. So well did they sing all that he felt, those four or five notes, that he would play them over and over again, until Suzette would burst into the room and make him stop lest she should be driven mad.

  Thus he played now. It was pitiful at first; he barely recognised the notes; harsh discords wailed up and cut into his poor brain, still smarting from his headache. He moaned as if he were in pain afresh; but his fingers were hypnotised, they could not desist, they still sought on, and the notes became purer; a short phrase released itself with a cry, a cry which continually returned on the same note, suddenly high after the bass of the prelude. This note came as a surprise to Jules; that fair cry of sorrow frightened him, and he was glad to have found it, glad to have so sweet a sorrow. Then he was no longer himself; he played on until he felt it was not himself who was playing, but another within him who compelled him; he found the full pure chords as by intuition; through the sobbing of the sounds ran the same musical figure, higher and higher, with silver feet of purity, following the curve of crystal rainbows lightly spanned on high; reaching the topmost point of the crystal arch it struck a cry, this time in very drunkenness, out into the major, throwing up wide arms in gladness to heavens of intangible blue. Then it was like souls of men, which first live and suffer and utter their complaint, and then die, to glitter in forms of light whose long wings spring from their pure shoulders in sheets of silver fight; they trip one behind the other over the rainbows, over the bridges of glass, blue, and rose, and yellow; and there come more and more, kindreds and nations of souls; they hurry their silver feet, they press across the rainbows, they laugh and sing and push one another; in their jostling their wings clash together, scattering silver down.

  Now they stand all on the top of the arc, and look up, with the great wondering of their laughing childeyes; and they dare not, they dare not, but others press on behind them, innumerable, more and more, and yet more; they crowd upwards to the topmost height, their wings straight in the air, close together. Now, now they must; they may hesitate no longer. One of them, taking deep breath, spreads his flight, and with one shock, springs out of the thick throng into the ether. Soon many follow, one after another, till their shapes swoon in the blue; all is gleam about them. Now, far below, thin as a thin thread, the rainbow arches itself, but they do not look at it; rays fall towards them – these are souls, which they embrace – they go with them in locked embraces. And then the light. Light beaming over all; all things liquid in everlasting light; nothing but light, the sounds sing the light, the sounds are the light, there is nothing now but the Light, everlasting …

  “Jules!”

  He looked up vacantly. He smiled now, as if awakened from a dream; he rose, went to her, to Cecile. She stood in the doorway; she had remained standing there while he played; it had seemed to her that he was playing a part of herself.

  “What were you playing, Jules?” she asked.

  He was quite awake now, and distressed, fearing he must have made a terrible noise in the house …

  “I don’t know, Auntie,” he said.

  She hugged him, suddenly, violently, in gratitude … To him she owed It, the great Mystery, since the day when he had broken out in anger against her …

  CHAPTER IV

  I

  “Oh, for that which cannot be told, because words are so few, always the same, varying combinations of a few letters and sounds; oh, for that which cannot be thought of in the narrow limits of comprehension; that which at best can only be groped for with the antennae of the soul; essence of the essences of the ultimate elements of our being …”

  She wrote
no more, she knew no more: why write that she had no words, and still seek them?

  She was waiting for him, and she looked out of the open window to see if he came. She remained looking a long time; then she felt that he would come immediately, and so he did; she saw him approaching along the Scheveningen Road; he pushed open the iron gate of the villa, and smiled to her as he raised his hat in greeting.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Stay where you are!”

  She ran down the steps, into the garden, where he stood. She came towards him, beaming with happiness, and so lovely, so delicately frail: her blonde head so seemly in the fresh green of May; her figure – a young girl’s – in the palest grey gown, with black velvet ribbon, and silver lace here and there.

  “I am glad you have come. You have not been to see me for so long!” she said, giving her hand.

  He did not answer at once.

  “Let us sit in the garden, the weather is so fine.”

  They walked into the garden, by the mesh of the garden paths, the jasmine vines starring white as they passed. In an adjoining villa a piano was playing; the sounds came to them of Rubinstein’s Romance in E.

  “Listen!” said Cecile, starting up. “What is that?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “What they are playing.”

  “Something of Rubinstein’s, I believe,” he replied.

  “Rubinstein … ?” she repeated, emptily. “Yes …”

  And she relapsed into the wealth of memories of … what? Once before, in this way, she had walked along these same paths, past these jasmine vines, so long, so long ago; had walked with him, with him … Why? Was the past repeating itself after centuries … ?

  “It is three weeks since you came to see me,” she said, simply, recovering herself.

  “Forgive me,” he replied.

  “What was the reason?”

  He hesitated, seeking an excuse.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, softly. “You forgive me, do you not? One day it was this, another day that. And then … I don’t know. Many reasons together. It is not good that I should see you often. Not good for you, nor for me.”

  “Begin with the second. Why isn’t it good for you?”

  “No, let us begin with the first: with what concerns you. People …”

  “People?”

  “People are talking about us. I am looked upon as an irretrievable rake. I will not have your name linked profanely with mine.”

  “And is it?”

  “Yes …”

  She smiled.

  “I do not mind.”

  “But you must mind; if not for your own sake …”

  He stopped. She knew he was thinking of her boys; she shrugged her shoulders.

  “And now, why is it not good for you?”

  “One should not be happy too often.”

  “What a sophism! Why not?”

  “I do not know; but I feel I am right. It spoils one; it blunts the appetite.”

  “Are you happy here, then?”

  He smiled, and nodded yes. They were silent a long time. They were sitting at the end of the garden, upon a seat that stood in a semi-circle of rhododendrons in flower; the great blossoms of purple satin shut them in with a high wall of closely clustered bouquets, rising from the paths and overtopping their heads; clambering roses flung their incense before them. They both sat still, happy together, happy in the sympathy of their atmospheres mingling together; yet in their happiness there was the invincible melancholy which is an integral part of all life, even in happiness.

  “I do not know how I am to tell you,” he resumed; “but suppose I were to see you every day, every moment that I thought of you … That would not do. For then I should become so refined, so subtle, that from pure happiness I should not be able to live; my other being would receive nothing, and suffer hunger like a beast. I am bad, I am egotistical to be able to speak like this, but I must tell you the truth, that you may not think too well of me. So I only seek your society as something beautiful above all things, with which I indulge myself only on rare occasions.”

  She was silent.

  “Sometimes … sometimes, too, I think that in doing this I am not doing right so far as you are concerned; that in some way or other I offend or hurt you. Then I sit thinking about it, until I feel sure it would be best to take leave of you for ever.”

  She was silent still; motionless she sat, with her hands listlessly in her lap, her head slightly bowed, a smile about her mouth.

  “Speak to me …” he begged.

  “You do not offend me, nor hurt me,” she said. “Come to me whenever you feel the need. Do always as you think best, and I shall think that best too; you must not doubt that.”

  “I should so much like to know how you like me.”

  “In what way? Surely, as a madonna a sinner who repents and gives her his soul,” she said, archly. “Am I not a madonna?”

  “Are you content to be so?”

  “Can you be so ignorant about women not to know how in each one of us there is a longing to solace and relief, to play, in fact, at being a madonna?”

  “Do not speak so,” he said, with pain in his voice.

  “I am speaking seriously …”

  He looked at her; a doubt rose within him, but she smiled to him; a calm glory was about her; she sat amidst the bouquets of the rhododendrons as in the heart of one great mystic flower. The wound of his doubt was soothed with balsam. He gave himself up wholly to his happiness; an atmosphere wafted about them of the sweet calm of life, an atmosphere in which life becomes dispassionate and restful and smiling, like the air which is rare about the gods. It began to grow dark; a violet gloom fell from the sky like crêpe falling upon crêpe; quietly the stars lighted out. The shadows in the garden, between the shrubs among which they sat, flowed into one another; the piano in the adjacent villa had stopped. And Happiness drew a veil between his soul and the outside world: the garden with its design of plots and paths; the villa with curtains at its windows, and its iron gate; the road behind, with the rattle of carriages and trams. All this withdrew itself far back; all ordinary life retreated far from him; vanishing behind the veil, it died away. It was no dream nor conceit: reality to him was the Happiness that had come while the world died away; the Happiness that was rare, invisible, intangible, coming from the Love which alone is sympathy, calm and without passion, the Love which exists purely of itself, without further thought either of taking anything, or even of giving anything, the love of the gods, that is the soul of Love itself.

  High he felt himself: the like of the illusion he had of her, which she wished to maintain for his sake, of which he was now absolutely certain, doubting nothing. For he could not understand that what had given him happiness – his illusion – so perfect, so crystalline, could cause her any grief; he could not at this moment penetrate without sin into the truth of the law which insists on equilibrium, which takes away from one what it offers another, which gives Happiness and Grief together; he could not understand that if Happiness was with him, with her there was anguish, anguish that she must make a pretence and deceive him for his own sake: anguish that she wanted above all what was earthly, that she craved for what was earthly, panted for earthly pleasures …! Still less could he know that, through all this, there was voluptuousness in her anguish: that to suffer through him, to suffer for him, made of her anguish all voluptuousness.

  II

  It was dark and late, and still they sat there.

  “Shall we go for a walk?” she asked.

  He hesitated, but she asked anew, “Why not, if you care to?”

  And he could no longer refuse.

  They rose up, and went along by the back of the house; Cecile said to the maid, whom she saw sitting sewing by the kitchen door:

  “Greta, fetch me my small black hat, my black lace shawl, and a pair of gloves.”

  The servant rose and went into the house. Cecile noticed how a little shyness marked itself more stron
gly in Quaerts’ hesitation now that they were waiting between the flower beds. She smiled, plucked a rose, and placed it in her waistband.

  “Have the boys gone to bed?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, still smiling, “long ago.”

  The servant returned; Cecile put on the small black hat and the lace about her neck; she refused the gloves Greta offered her.

  “No, not these; get me a pair of grey ones …”

  The servant entered the house again, and as Cecile looked at Quaerts, she gave a little laugh.

  “What is the matter?” she asked, mischievously, knowing perfectly what it was.

  “Nothing, nothing!” he said, vaguely, and waited patiently until Greta returned.

  Then they went through the garden gate into the woods. They walked slowly, without speaking; Cecile played with her long gloves, not putting them on.

  “Really …” he began, hesitating.

  “Come, what is it?”

  “You know; I told you the other day; it isn’t right …”

  “What?”

  “What we are doing now. You risk too much.”

  “Too much, with you?”

  “If anyone were to see us …”

  “And what then?”

  He shook his head.

  “You are wilful; you know very well.”

  She clenched her eyes; her mouth grew serious; she pretended to be a little angry.

  “Listen, you must not be anxious if I am not. I am doing no harm. Our walks are not secret; Greta at least knows about them. And, besides, I am free to do as I please.”

  “It is my fault; the first time we went for a walk in the evening it was at my request”

  “Then do penance and be good; come now, without scruple, at my request …” she said, with mock emphasis.