1
Next evening, Cecile revelled even more than usual in the luxury of
being able to stay at home.
It was after dinner; she was sitting on the sofa in her little
boudoir with Dolf and Christie, an arm thrown round each of them,
sitting between them, so young, like an elder sister. In her low
voice she was telling them:
"Judah came near to him, and said, O my Lord, let me abide a bondman
instead of the lad. For our father, who is such an old man, said to
us, when we left with Benjamin, My son Joseph I have already lost;
surely he is torn in pieces by the wild beasts. And if ye take this
also from me and mischief befall him, ye shall bring down my grey hairs
with sorrow to the grave. Then (Judah said) I said to our father that I
would be surety for the lad and that I should bear the blame if I did
not bring Benjamin home again. And therefore I pray thee, O my lord,
let me abide a bondman, and let the lad go up with his brethren. For
how shall I go up to my father if the lad be not with me?..."
"And Joseph, mamma, what did Joseph say?" asked Christie.
He had nestled closely against his mother, this poor little
slender fellow of six, with his fine golden hair and his eyes of
pale forget-me-not blue; and his little fingers hooked themselves
nervously into Cecile's gown, rumpling the crape.
"Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood
by him and he caused every man to leave him. And Joseph made himself
known unto his brethren. And he wept aloud and said, I am Joseph."
But Cecile could not continue the story, for Christie had thrown
himself on her neck in a frenzy of despair and she heard him sobbing
against her.
"Christie! Darling!"
She was greatly distressed; she had grown interested in her own
recital and had not noticed Christie's excitement; and now he was
sobbing against her in such violent grief that she could find no word
to quiet him, to comfort him, to tell him that it ended happily.
"But, Christie, don't cry, don't cry! It ends happily."
"And Benjamin, what about Benjamin?"
"Benjamin returned to his father; and Jacob went down into Egypt to
live with Joseph."
The child raised his wet face from her shoulder and looked at her
deliberately:
"Was it really like that? Or are you only making it up?"
"No, really, darling. Don't, don't cry any more...."
Christie grew calmer, but he was evidently disappointed. He was not
satisfied with the end of the story; and yet it was very pretty like
that, much prettier than if Joseph had been angry and put Benjamin
in prison.
"What a baby, Christie, to go crying like that!" said Dolf. "Why,
it's only a story."
Cecile did not reply that the story had really happened, because
it was in the Bible. She had suddenly become very sad, in doubt
of herself. She fondly dried the child's sad eyes with her
pocket-handkerchief:
"And now, children, bed! It's late!" she said, faintly.
She put them to bed, a ceremony which lasted a long time; a ceremony
with an elaborate ritual of undressing, washing, saying of prayers,
tucking in and kissing.
2
When, an hour later, she was sitting downstairs again alone, she
realized for the first time how sad she felt.
Ah, no, she did not know! Amelie was quite right: one never knew
anything, never! She had been so happy that day; she had found herself
again, deep in the recesses of her secret self, in the essence of
her soul; all day she had seen her dreams hovering about her as an
apotheosis; all day she had felt within her that consuming love of her
children. She had told them stories out of the Bible after dinner;
and suddenly, when Christie began to cry, a doubt had arisen within
her. Was she really good to her little boys? Did she not, in her
love, in the tenderness of her affection for them, spoil and weaken
them? Would she not end by utterly unfitting them for practical life,
with which she did not come into contact, but in which the children,
when they grew up, would have to move? It flashed through her mind:
parting, boarding-schools, her children estranged from her, coming home
big, rough boys, smoking and swearing, with cynicism on their lips and
in their hearts: lips which would no longer kiss her, hearts in which
she would no longer have a place. She pictured them already with the
swagger of their seventeen or eighteen years, tramping across her rooms
in their cadet's and midshipman's uniforms, with broad shoulders and a
hard laugh, flicking the ash from their cigars upon the carpet.... Why
did Quaerts' image suddenly rise up in the midst of this cruelty? Was
it chance or a logical consequence? She could not analyse it; she
could not explain the presence of this man, rising up through her
grief in his atmosphere of antipathy. But she felt sad, sad, sad, as
she had not felt sad since Van Even's death; not vaguely melancholy,
as she so often felt, but sad, undoubtedly sorrowful at the thought
of what must come.... Oh! to have to part with her children! And then,
to be alone.... Loneliness, everlasting loneliness! Loneliness within
herself: that feeling of which Jules had such a dread! Withdrawn
from the world which had no charm for her, sinking away alone into
emptiness! She was thirty, she was old, an old woman. Her house would
be empty, her heart empty! Dreams, clouds of dreaming, which fly away,
which lift like smoke, revealing only emptiness. Emptiness, emptiness,
emptiness! The word each time fell hollowly, with hammer strokes,
upon her breast. Emptiness, emptiness!...
"Why am I like this?" she asked herself. "What ails me? What has
altered?"
Never had she felt that word emptiness throb within her in this way:
that very afternoon she had been gently happy, as usual. And now! She
saw nothing before her: no future, no life, nothing but one great
darkness. Estranged from her children, alone within herself....
She rose with a little moan of pain and walked across the boudoir. The
discreet twilight troubled her, oppressed her. She turned the key of
the lace-covered lamp: a golden gleam crept over the rose folds of
the silk curtains like glistening water. A strange coolness wafted
away something of that scent of violets which hung about everything. A
fire burned on the hearth, but she felt cold.
She stopped beside the low table; she took up a visiting-card, with
one corner turned down, and read:
"T. H. Quaerts."
There was a five-balled coronet above the name.
"Quaerts!"
How short it sounded! A name like the smack of a hard hand. There
was something bad, something cruel in the name:
"Quaerts, Quaerts!..."
She threw down the bit of pasteboard, was angry with herself. She
felt cold and not herself, just as she had felt at the Van Attemas'
last evening:
"I will not go out again. Never again, never!" she said, almost
aloud. "I am so contented in my own house, so contented with my life,
so beautifully happy.... That card! Why should he leave a card? What
do I want with his card?..."
She sat down at her writing-table and opened her blotting-book. She
thought of finishing a half-written letter to India; but she was in
quite a different mood from when she had begun it. So she took from
a drawer a thick manuscript-book, her diary. She wrote the date,
then reflected a moment, tapping her teeth nervously with the silver
penholder....
But then, with a little ill-tempered gesture, she threw down the pen,
pushed the book aside and, letting her head fall into her hands on
the blotting-book, sobbed aloud.