“Adieu, Betsy! good-night, Henk! I am going to lie down, I am tired
out!” said Eline in one breath, while still in the hall.
“Won’t you take a snack of supper first?” asked Betsy.
“No, thank you.”
She walked up-stairs, while Betsy shrugged her shoulders. Betsy knew
her and her ways, and from the curt, determined words she guessed that
Eline was in one of those moods of nervous excitability in which she
almost hated any one who attempted to dissuade her from her intentions.
“What is the matter with Eline?” asked Henk anxiously, when they had
entered the dining-room.
“Oh, how should I know?” cried Betsy. “It commenced at the concert, and
in the carriage she did not even answer me, as you must have noticed. I
don’t trouble about it, but I think Eline intolerable when she has
those ridiculous fits.”
Calm and dignified, in her swan’s-down and plush, Eline walked
up-stairs and entered her sitting-room. The gas was alight, and a log
of wood burnt on the hearth. For a moment she looked round, then tore
the white lace from her hair, and the little cloak from her shoulders,
and with bowed head and staring eyes gazed in front of her with a
vacant expression, as though crushed under the weight of a terrible
disappointment.
In the little Venetian mirror, gracefully suspended with red cords and
tassels, above the white group of Amor and Psyche, whose idyllic
appearance was in mocking contrast with the irony of her thoughts, she
saw herself reflected, glistening in “her pink rep silk,” a pink
aigrette in her hair, the same in which, three months ago, she had
first seen Fabrice.
And now—
She almost laughed aloud, she thought herself so ridiculous, she felt a
loathing for herself, as if she had been dabbling in the mire.
There had been a concert of the Diligentia Society at the Hall of Arts
and Sciences, and at her request, Henk and Betsy had accompanied her
there. Fabrice was to sing; “the popular baritone of the French Opera
had been invited to gather fresh laurels at the concerts in the Hall,”
so ran the paragraph in Het Vaderland.
Eline did not rest until she was certain of going; at first she had
asked the Verstraetens; Madame Verstraeten did not feel inclined, Lili
was still ill; then she asked Emilie—Emilie had an engagement; at last
she came to Henk and Betsy, who, although neither of them were much in
love with concerts, agreed to go. And Eline had expected great things
in seeing Fabrice in a new sphere, that of a concert-singer.
Fortunately enough, their seats were close to the stage; he—oh! he must
have noticed her at the opera, he would give her a sign, he loved
her—the Bucchi fan! And so Eline went on, creating endless illusions;
her passion filled her mind, more and more with a second, imaginary,
fantastic existence, in which Fabrice and she were the hero and
heroine; a romance of improbabilities and a constantly growing web of
poetical extravagance.
He thought her beautiful, he worshipped her, they would fly, sing on
the stage, and through poverty and privation pass on to fame and
fortune. A feverish rapture at the thought that she would once more see
him diffused a light pink tint over the amber pallor of her features,
her eyes had sparkled in the veiled glow of her languishing glances;
and—They had gone, she had taken her seat, resplendent with a beauty
that had drawn glass after glass towards her, and the first notes of
the symphony sounded in her ears as the soft strains of a hymn, laden
with joyful whisperings of love and happiness. Then—then he appeared,
amid a thunder of applause.
And just now, whilst Eline was vacantly staring into the mirror in
front of her, she once more pictured him as he appeared on the concert
platform.
Clumsily, like a stout carpenter, in a dress-coat that seemed too tight
for him, his short crisp hair greasy and slimy with cosmétique,
plastered down upon his cheeks, his face as red as a lobster, in
contrast to the spotless white of his shirt-front, he presented a
coarse and prosy appearance, with a disagreeably sullen expression
about his bearded mouth and in his blinking, half-closed eyes, shaded
by thick, bushy eyebrows. And it seemed to Eline as though it were the
first time she saw him. All the charm with which he, in his talented
vivid acting, in the brilliant dresses which displayed his figure to
the greatest advantage, had exerted over her, was now dispelled as by
one strong gust of wind; and though his voice resounded with the same
splendid metallic ring which had filled her with rapture at the opera,
she was scarcely aware that he was singing, shocked as she was at her
gigantic mistake.
Had she then had no eyes? What! that prosy carpenter the ideal of her
fantastic brain! In her despair and disappointment she could have
sobbed with chagrin, but not a feature moved, and she remained sitting
immovable, almost stiff; but a light shudder ran through her, as she
drew the cloak about her shoulders. As long as he sang she looked at
him from top to toe, as though she would no longer spare herself, and
her breath came and went quick with agitation now that she plunged into
the depths of her sorrow without being able to give vent to it. Why had
she not seen him thus when she met him in the Bosch, in his cape, with
his muffler and his big felt, that gave him a romantic appearance,
something of an Italian brigand? Had she indeed so far forgotten
herself? Shuddering, she glanced round the room. No one seemed to
notice her, no one suspected the storm of disappointment that raged
within her; Fabrice absorbed the attention of all. Fortunately none
knew, none would know.
But the thought that she was safe from the eye of the world gave her no
comfort. Before her lay the shattered ruins of the airy, glass edifice
of her tender visions and fancies, which, pillar by pillar, light and
delicate, she had erected for herself, glittering and fair, higher and
higher still, in fantastic crystal splendour, ever higher, higher,
until as with an apotheosis it seemed to reach the very clouds.
And now, all was shattered, all visions and fancies of the brain were
vanished, dispelled as by one gust of wind, and not even a chaos was
left of it all, only a terrible vacuum, only that man there, with his
red butcher’s face and his white shirt, and his tight-fitting coat and
grease-beplastered hair.
Never had she suffered as she suffered that evening.
For three long months that romance of love had caused her heart to beat
each time his name was pronounced in her presence, each time she saw
his name announced on a placard, and now—one glance at that (Vincent’s
words re-echoed in her ears, full of mockery and derision) “stout ugly
customer” tore that romance out of her soul, and all—all was gone.
She scarcely spoke, and when in the foyer Betsy, noticing her drawn
pallid features, asked her whether she was ill, Eline calmly replied in
the affirmative—yes, she did feel rather faint. They met the Oudendyks
and the van Larens, they laughed and joked, they mentioned Fabrice’s
name, but Eline sank down on a bench, like a wounded dove, and
listened, nearly swooning with grief, understanding nothing, and with a
vacant smile, to something young Hydrecht was saying to her.
In the second part of the concert Fabrice appeared again, and again he
was received with jubilant applause, and Eline felt faint and giddy. It
was as though the public in their mad admiration were dancing a satanic
dance round about the baritone, sullen, red, and coarse as ever. Cold
drops of perspiration formed on her brow, her hands felt cold and
clammy in their tight-fitting covering of peau de Suède, and her bosom
heaved with long, oppressive gasps of breath. At last—thank Heaven!—the
concert was over.
Now she was alone, and she could allow herself to be swayed as much as
she chose by that storm of grief; she need no longer nerve herself to
appear bright and smiling before the world; and so, with a sob of
anguish, she fell upon her knees before the Persian sofa, and hid her
little throbbing head in the embroidery of the soft cushions. With her
hands she tried to quench the gasping sobs that shook all her delicate
frame, her hair came away from the clasp that held it, and fell about
her, a mass of glossy waves.
After the first grief and disappointment, a bitter feeling overmastered
her, as though she had, even were it but in her own eyes, rendered
herself up to an ineffaceable ridicule, to something that was unworthy
and ludicrous, the stain of which would for ever cling to her, and of
which the memory would ever continue to haunt her, like a mocking,
grinning phantom.
Long she remained thus, her head buried in the cushions, her whole
being writhing in the anguish of her despair. First she heard Henk,
then Betsy, retiring to their rooms, and then Gerard bolting the street
door for the night, the sound re-echoing through the silence that
reigned in the house. After that nothing stirred, and Eline felt
herself very lonely, as though forsaken in the midst of an ocean of
sorrow.
All at once, a thought made her start. Quickly she raised herself up,
while the brown hair whirled about her shoulders, and an expression of
wounded pride came over her tear-stained face. With a firm resolution
and apparent calmness, she approached her writing-desk, and shuddering
placed the key in the lock, opened the drawer once so dear to her, and
took the album out of it. The red velvet seemed to scorch her fingers
like fire. She pushed a chair by the side of the hearth, where the log
of wood was still aglow with fire; she opened the book. That, then, was
the shrine of her love, the temple of her passion, in which she had
worshipped her idol! And as she turned the pages, the procession of
portraits passed along: Ben-Saïd, Hamlet, Tell, Luna, Nelusco,
Alphonse, de Nevers—for the last time. Roughly, the gilt-edged leaves
tearing under her fingers, she removed the photographs, one by one, and
without hesitation tore them up in little pieces, cracking the hard
cardboard in the angry clutch of her delicate fingers. The pieces she
cast into the fire, one by one, and while the flames were curling round
them she continued her work of destruction, and threw more and still
more into the fire, stirring it up with the poker, until it was all
burnt out. That was past, that shame was purged.
Then she rose, somewhat relieved. But the torn album, which she still
held in her fingers, continued to scorch her hand, and suddenly
grasping the velvet book, so roughly that it split her finger-nails,
she hurled it, with a subdued cry of abhorrence, far away from her,
against the piano, the chords of which gave forth a dull, low sigh.
Then she picked up her cloak and her lace from the floor, smoothed the
rumpled silk of her dress, and retired to her bedroom, where a small
milk-white night-lamp diffused a soft, sad light around.
And it seemed to her as if anew she was plunged into that ocean of
sorrow, that abyss of disappointments, whilst all at once a dispute
with Betsy rose to her mind. But a few days ago, in fact, she had
declared that Roberts, her music-master, was growing old and was no
longer any good, that she intended in future to take lessons of an
artiste—of Fabrice, for instance—and Betsy had asked her if she was
mad, and had declared that such a thing should certainly not be done in
her house.
It need not be now.