Eline Vere was the younger of the two sisters, darker of hair and eyes,
slenderer, with a figure less maturely developed. Her deeply-shaded
dark brown eyes, and the ivory pallor of her complexion, together with
the languor of some of her movements, gave her somewhat of the dreamy
nature of an odalisk of the harem. The beauty with which she had been
endowed, she prized like a precious jewel, and indeed she was at times
half intoxicated with the glamour of her own fascinations. For several
moments at a time she could stand looking at her own image in the
glass, her rosy-tipped fingers gently stroking the delicate arch of the
eyebrow or the long silken lashes, or arranging the wealth of brown
hair about her head, in the wild luxuriance of a gay gitana. Her toilet
afforded her endless employment, continuous and earnest meditation, in
testing the effects, harmonious or otherwise, of the softened tints of
satins, and the warmer colourings of plush, and the halo of tulle and
gauze, muslin and lace, that surrounded it all. In short, everything
about her, from the faint clinging odour of violets, to the shimmer of
soft draperies, was full of refined, charming suggestion.
Somewhat dreamy and romantic by nature, there were times when, in a fit
of languor, she thought with a certain lingering regret of her
childhood, recalling to mind all sorts of memories of those days, and
treasuring them up like so many precious relics. It was then that
consciously or unconsciously she imparted a fresh colour of sentiment
to those faded recollections of days gone by. In this way, the most
trivial episode of her childhood became idealized and suffused with a
charm of poetry. Betsy, with her practical turn of mind, never missed
an opportunity rightly or wrongly to discount anything that bore but
the faintest resemblance to idealism; and Eline, in her transient state
of half happiness, half melancholy, usually succeeded, after her
sister’s practical demonstrations, in distinguishing the actual state
of things from the luxuriant fantasies conjured up by her own
imagination.
At times her memory went back to her father, a painter, of refined and
artistic temperament, elegant, but without the strength of a creative
faculty, married whilst but a youth to a woman many years his senior,
and by far his superior in strength of will and individuality. To her
master hand, his pliant nature readily yielded, for his was a
fine-strung temperament which, like the chords of a precious
instrument, would have trembled under her rude touch, just as that of
Eline sometimes trembled under the touch of her sister. She recalled to
mind that father, with his complexion of yellow ivory, and his
bloodless transparent fingers, lying down in listless languor, his
active brain thinking out some great creation, only to be cast aside
after the first few touches of the brush. Her he had often made his
confidante, and the trust he placed in her caused her childish nature
to regard him with a mixture of affectionate devotion and worshipful
reverence, so that in her eyes he assumed the appearance of a poetical,
dreamy-eyed, long-haired Rafael. Her mother, on the other hand, had
always inspired her with a certain amount of fear, and the remembrance
of the disillusionizing trivialities of daily life, with which the
figure of her mother became inseparably interwoven, rendered it
impossible for Eline to idealize her in her thoughts.
She remembered, after the death of her father, at a still early age,
but still after many years of half-hearted effort and dismal failures,
and after the demise of her mother, felled by a sudden attack of heart
disease, spending the days of her early girlhood under the guardianship
of a widowed aunt. Old-fashioned, reserved and prim, with saddened
regular features, the ruins of a once beautiful woman, she well
remembered those two bony hands in perpetual motion over four bright
glistening knitting-needles. There she lived, in that big room, in
nerveless ease and placid luxury, in a paradise of cosy comfort, amid a
wealth of soft draperies and carpets, and all that was pleasing and
soothing to the senses.
The two sisters growing up side by side under the same training, under
the same surroundings, developed within themselves a somewhat similar
mental and moral condition, which, however, as years went by followed
the bent of their different temperaments. In Eline, who, of a languid
and lymphatic nature, felt the need of tender support, and gentle
warmth of affection, and whose nerves, delicate as the petals of a
flower, even in their soft, velvet-clad surroundings, were often too
rudely handled by the slightest opposition, there developed a kind of
timid reserve, which filled her mind with thousands of small tokens of
a secret grief. Then when her measure of half-imaginary sorrows was
full, it would relieve itself in one overwhelming, foaming wave of
tearful passion. In Betsy’s more sanguine nature there grew, nurtured
by Eline’s need of support, a desire for domineering, by means of which
she could force her whole psychological being into that of her pliant
sister, to whom, after the first shock, it always brought a feeling of
rest and contentment. But neither Eline’s fear of wounding her
fine-strung temperament, nor Betsy’s over-ruling egoism, could ever
have led to a tragic crisis, as the sharp contrasts of each character
became, in the soft enervating atmosphere of their surroundings,
blended and dissolved in one dull tint of neutral gray.
After one or two dances, where Eline’s little white-satined feet had
glided along in rhythmical accompaniment to a dazzling harmony of
brilliant light and colour, soft strains of melody and dulcet tones of
admiration, she received two offers of marriage, each of which she
declined. Those two proposals remained still in her memory as two
easily-gained triumphs, but at times the recollection of the first
would call forth a faint sigh from her bosom. It was then that she met
Henri van Raat, and ever since she asked herself how it could possibly
be that such a mass of stolidity as she called him, with so little
resemblance to the hero of her dreams, appealed so strongly to her
sympathies, ay, to such an extent that frequently she was overtaken
with a sudden, irresistible impulse to be near him. The heroes of her
dreams bore some resemblance to the idealized image of her father, to
the conceptions of Ouida’s fanciful brain. But they had nothing in
common with van Raat, with his sanguine, equable, complacent
temperament, his soft sleepy gray-blue eyes, his laboured speech and
heavy laugh. And yet in his voice, in his glance, there was something
that attracted her, as in his unstudied bonhomie. In all this she found
support, so that at times she felt conscious of the vague desire to
rest her weary head on his shoulder. And he too felt conscious, with a
certain pride, that he was something to her.
But this pride vanished, however, the moment that Betsy came between
them. Towards Eline’s sister he felt conscious of such a moral
inferiority, that often he was at a loss to reply to her light and airy
banter. At such times, she thought it an exquisite pleasure, cruel as
it was, to draw him out, and tempt him to say things for which she
overwhelmed him with false admiration, only to ridicule them afterwards
to his face, which usually had the effect of reducing his sluggish mind
to abject confusion. Then she would burst out laughing, and the sound
of that full hearty laugh, full of mockery and self-confidence, fired
his imagination even more than did the tender feminine charm of Eline’s
presence. Hers was the charm of a weeping soft-eyed siren, raising her
arms in tempting languor from out of the blue of ocean, only to be
again drawn to the depths below with irresistible force; that of
Betsy’s, however, was the impetuous witchery of a gay Bacchante,
enchaining his senses with tangled vines, or dashing her brimming,
foaming cup in his face, and intoxicating him with the wild impetuosity
of her joyous nature.
And so it came about—how he could not really say—but one evening in the
dim light of late autumn, he as with a sudden impulse asked her to be
his wife. It had indeed been a strange evening to him. The one thing he
had felt conscious of was that he was as though driven to it, as though
hypnotized by an indefinable something in Betsy’s eyes; he could not
but ask her what he eventually did. She, calm and collected, accepted
his offer, taking care to conceal her inward joy at the prospect of
having a home—and more especially a dominion of her own—under an
outward appearance of calm indifference. She longed for a different
atmosphere than that of the staid stuffiness of the big room, with the
stately old furniture and dignified surroundings. But when Eline came
and offered him her innocent congratulations, he became suddenly aware
of such an inward surprise and dissatisfaction with himself that he
could find no speech in answer to her sisterly good wishes. And Eline,
rudely shaken as she was by this rapid succession of events, shrunk
back in sudden terror of Betsy into her melancholy reserve, at the same
time making every effort—only resulting in the loss of her own peace of
mind—to resist the domineering influence which she had so long allowed
her sister to exercise over her mind.
Betsy and Henk had been married a twelvemonth when aunt died. It was
then that, urged by her, he had looked out for some occupation, for
with his eternally calm good-natured indolence he often bored her much
in the same way as a faithful dog, which, ever to be found at his
master’s feet, receives many a kick which a less devoted creature would
have escaped. He too felt in a vague way that a young fellow, be his
income ever so comfortable, ought to do something. However, although he
sought, he found nothing, and in the meantime his ardour had
considerably cooled down, now that Betsy herself did not longer worry
him about it.
And certainly he did not trouble her very much. In the morning he was
generally away, taking what exercise he could on horseback, followed by
his two gray boarhounds; in the afternoon, yielding to his wife’s
requests, he accompanied her on sundry calls, or when relieved of that
duty, he visited his club; the evenings being generally spent by him in
accompanying his butterfly wife to concerts and theatres, where he did
duty much after the fashion of Becky Sharp’s faithful sheep-dog, a
burdensome but indispensable adjunct. He adapted himself as well as he
could to this much too excited a life; he knew his will was not strong
enough to resist that of Betsy, and he found it suited his temperament
much better quietly to dress and accompany his wife, than to disturb
the domestic peace by an intrusion of his own ideas. Then again the few
evenings she spent at home afforded him, with his instinctive love of
sociability, a certain sensuous dreamy happiness, which in the end did
more to win his love than when he beheld his wife beyond his own reach,
the most brilliant figure in the grandest ballroom. That only made him
peevish and morose. To her, however, the few evenings she spent at home
were a terrible bore. The singing of the gas-flame made her drowsy, and
from her corner on the sofa she would cast many an angry glance at her
husband, as he sat turning the pages of the illustrated paper or lazily
sipping his tea. At such a moment she would feel an irresistible
impulse to urge him on in heaven’s name to look for some occupation, to
which he, astonished at being aroused in such a way from his dolce far
niente, would reply in incoherent heavy sentences.
She, however, was at heart very happy. For was it not glorious to be
able to spend as much as she chose on her dress? And at the end of the
week she would ofttimes remember, with a smile of happiness, that she
had not spent a single evening at home.
Eline meanwhile had passed the year in melancholy solitude at Aunt
Vere’s. She read much, feeling especially charmed with Ouida’s
luxuriant phantasmagory of an idealized life, sparkling with a wealth
of colour, and bathed in the golden sunshine of Italian skies, vivid
and glowing as a glittering kaleidoscope. She would read and literally
devour those pages until, dog-eared and crumpled, they would flutter
out of her grasp. Even at her aunt’s sick-bed, where with a certain
feeling of romantic satisfaction she sat watching night after night,
she would read them, again and again.
In the atmosphere of that sick room, permeated as it was with an
ætherealized odour of drugs, the virtues and prowess of the noble
heroes, the spotless beauties of the arch-wicked or divinely righteous
heroines, became endowed with an irresistible charm of tempting
unreality; and Eline often felt a passionate longing to be in one of
those old English mansions, where earls and duchesses were engaged in
such exquisite love-making, and had such romantic meetings under the
moon-lit trees of a grand old park. Aunt died, and Henk and Betsy
invited Eline to make their house her home.
At first she refused, overcome by a strange sadness at the thought of
the relationship of her brother-in-law to her sister. But with an
immense exercise of will power she at length conquered those feelings.
Had she not always wondered at the mysterious attraction she felt for
Henk? And now that he was her sister’s husband, there suddenly arose to
her mind such an insurmountable obstacle between them, an obstacle
raised by the laws of decency and custom, that she could, without any
risk, give herself over to sisterly sympathy, and therefore she thought
it very childish to allow the memory of the past, and feelings that she
never really had understood, to stand between her and the prospects of
a comfortable home.
In addition to this, there was the fact that her guardian uncle, Daniel
Vere, who lived in Brussels, and was a bachelor, was too young a man to
offer a girl in her teens a home with him.
In the end, Eline waived her objections, and with the stipulation that
she should be allowed to contribute a trifle towards her board, took up
her abode at her brother-in-law’s. Henk had at first refused to agree
to such a condition, but Betsy remarked that she could quite understand
it; had she been in Eline’s place she too would have done the same for
her own independence’ sake. From the sum settled on her by her parents
Eline derived a yearly income of about £160, and by putting into
practice the lessons of economy she had been taught by her aunt, she
managed to dress as elegantly on that, as did Betsy who always had a
well-filled purse at her disposal.
And thus three years of monotonous existence passed by.