Eline Vere (21 page)

‘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 Fifteen 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.

‘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 illusions 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?

With a tremor of panic, she cast an eye about the audience. No one was paying attention to her, no one suspected her inner turmoil, for all ears and eyes were focused on Fabrice. No one knew, thank goodness, and no one ever would.

But she found no comfort in having escaped censure in the eyes of the world. At her feet lay the shattered remains of the glass palace she had conjured up in her lovesick imaginings, the airy, frangible edifice of her fantasy that she had erected column by column, towering ever higher in sparkling crystal splendour to an apotheosis in the clouds.

And now everything was ruined, all her visions and daydreams pulverised, blown away by a single gust of wind that did not even wreak havoc, for all that was left to her was a huge, aching void – and the spectacle of that tradesman type with the red face above
the white shirtfront, the too-tight frock coat and the plastered-down hair.

She could not recall ever having felt so humiliated.

For three whole months the phantom of love and romance had made her heart beat faster each time she heard mention of him or happened to see his name on a poster, and yet now it had taken just one look at that unsightly, fat fellow – Vincent's words echoed mockingly in her ears – to rip every shred of romantic feeling from her being. It was gone, all gone.

Afterwards, in the foyer, she said very little. When Betsy remarked on her pallor and asked if she was all right, Eline replied coolly that she was indeed feeling a little under the weather. The Oudendijks and the Van Larens were present, too; pleasantries were exchanged and Fabrice's name was mentioned, but Eline remained seated on a banquette like a wounded dove, almost swooning with grief, yet forcing herself to smile as she mimed attentiveness to the Hijdrecht boy.

After the intermission Fabrice came on again, to the same enthusiastic applause as the first time, and Eline felt crazed in her mind, as though the audience, mad with adulation, were about to dance a satanic jig around the baritone, who stood there looking as sullen, red-faced and ungainly as before. Her forehead was beaded with perspiration, her hands were ice-cold and clammy in the tight-fitting suede gloves, and her bosom heaved from the exertion of breathing with a lump in her throat. Thank goodness, the concert was over.

. . .

Alone at last, she allowed herself to surrender to the storm of emotion raging in her heart, and with an anguished cry fell to her knees beside the Persian sofa. She pressed her throbbing forehead to the soft cushions embroidered with gold, trying to stifle her racking sobs with her hands, and in so doing her hair came loose and tumbled about her slight, shaking frame in a mass of glossy waves.