Cecile smiled.
“No, certainly it’s not.”
“I want always to do what is right.”
“That is very good.”
“No, no!” he said deprecatingly. “Everything seems to me so bad, do you know. Why is everything so bad?”
“But there is much that is good too, Jules.”
He shook his head.
“No, no!” he repeated. “Everything is bad. Everything is very bad. Everything is selfishness. Just mention something that is not selfish!”
“Parental love!”
But Jules shook his head again.
“Parental love is ordinary selfishness. Children are a part of their parents, who only love themselves when they love their children.”
“Jules!” cried Amélie. “You talk far too rashly. You know I don’t like it: you are much too young to talk like that. One would think you knew everything.”
The boy was silent.
“And I always say that we never know anything. We never know anything, don’t you think so too, Cecile? I, at least, never know anything, never …”
She looked round the room absently. Her fingers smoothed the fringe of her chair, tidying up. Cecile put her arm softly round Jules’ neck.
III
It was Quaerts’ turn to sit out from the card-table, and although Dolf pressed him to continue playing, he rose. She saw him coming towards the room where she still sat with Amélie – Jules sitting at her feet – engaged in desultory talk, for Amélie could never maintain a conversation, always wandering and losing the threads. She did not know why, but Cecile suddenly wore a most serious expression, as if she were discussing very important matters with her sister; though all she said was:
“Jules should really take lessons in harmony, when he composes so nicely …”
Quaerts had approached her; he sat down next to them with a scarcely perceptible shyness in his manner, with a gentle hesitation in the brusque force of his movements. But Jules fired up.
“No, Auntie; I want to be taught as little as possible. I don’t want to learn names and principles and classifications, I could not do it. I only compose like this,” suiting his phrase with a vague movement of his fingers.
“Jules can hardly read, it’s a shame!” said Amélie.
“And he plays so sweetly,” said Cecile.
“Yes, Auntie; I remember things, I pick them out on the piano. Ah! it’s not very clever; it just comes out of myself, you know.”
“That is just what is fine.”
“No, no! You have to know the names and principles and classifications. You must have that in everything. I shall never learn technique; I can’t do anything.”
He closed his eyes a moment; a look of sadness flitted across his restless face.
“You know, a piano is so … so big, such a piece of furniture, isn’t it? But a violin, oh, how delightful! You hold it to you like this, against your neck, almost against your heart; it is almost part of you, and you caress it, like this, you could almost kiss it! You feel the soul of the violin throbbing inside the wood, and then you only have a string or two, which sing everything.
“Jules …” Amélie began.
“And, oh, Auntie, a harp! A harp, like this, between your legs, a harp which you embrace with both your arms: a harp is just like an angel, with long golden hair. Ah, I have never yet played on a harp!”
“Jules, leave off!” cried Amélie, angrily. “You drive me silly with that nonsense! I wonder you are not ashamed, before Mr Quaerts.”
“Before Taco? Do you think I have anything to be ashamed of, Taco?” said Jules in surprise.
“Of course not, my boy.”
The sound of his voice was like a caress. Cecile looked at him, astonished; she would have expected him to make fun of Jules. She did not understand him, but she disliked him very much, so healthy and strong, with his energetic face and his fine expressive mouth, so different from Amélie and Jules and herself.
“Of course not, my boy.”
Jules looked up at his mother contemptuously …
“You see! Taco is a good chap.” He twisted his stool round towards Quaerts, laying his head against his knee.
“Jules!”
“Pray let him be, Mevrouw.”
“Everyone spoils that boy …”
“Except yourself,” said Jules.
“I,” cried Amélie, indignantly. “I spoil you out and out! I wish I could send you to the Indies! Then you would be more of a man! But I can’t do it; and your father spoils you too. I don’t know what will become of you!”
“What is to become of you, Jules?” asked Quaerts.
“I don’t know. I mustn’t go to college, I am too weak a chap to do much work.”
“Would you like to go to the Indies someday?”
“Yes, with you. Not alone; oh, to be alone, always alone! I shall always be alone, it is terrible to be alone!”
“But, Jules, you are not alone now,” said Cecile.
“Oh, yes, yes, in myself I am alone, always alone …” he pressed himself against Quaerts’ knee.
“Jules, don’t talk so stupidly,” cried Amelie, nervously.
“Yes, yes!” said Jules, with a sudden half sob. “I will hold my tongue! But don’t talk about me!” He locked his hands and implored them, dread in his face. They all stared at him, but he buried his face in Quaerts’ knees, as though deadly frightened of something …
IV
Anna had played execrably, to Suzette’s despair: she could not even remember the trumps! and Dolf called to his wife:
“Amélie, do come in for a rubber; at least if Quaerts does not wish to. You can’t give your daughter very many points, but you are not quite so bad!”
“I would rather stay and talk to Mrs Van Even,” said Quaerts.
“Go and play without minding me, if you prefer, Mr Quaerts,” said Cecile, in a cold voice, as towards someone she utterly disliked.
Amélie dragged herself away with an unhappy face. She, too, did not play a brilliant game, and Suzette always lost her temper when she made mistakes.
“I have so long been hoping to make your acquaintance, Mevrouw, that I should not like to miss the opportunity tonight,” answered Quaerts.
She looked at him: it troubled her that she could not understand him. She knew him to be somewhat of a gallant. There were stories in which the name of a married woman was coupled with his. Did he wish to try his blandishments upon her? She had no hankering for that sort of pastime; she had never cared for flirtations.
“Why?” she asked, calmly, immediately regretting the word; for her question sounded like coquetry, and she intended anything but that.
“Why?” he repeated. He looked at her in slight embarrassment as he sat near her, with Jules on the ground between them, against his knee, his eyes closed.
“Because … because,” he stammered, “because you are my friend’s sister, I suppose, and I used never to see you here …”
She made no answer: in her seclusion she had forgotten how to talk, and she did not take the least trouble about it.
“I used often to see you formerly at the theatre,” said Quaerts, “when Mr Van Even was still alive.”
“At the opera?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Ah! I did not know you then.”
“No.”
“I have not been out in the evening for a long time, on account of my mourning.”
“And I always choose the evening to pay my visits here.”
“So it is easily explained that we have never met.”
They were silent for a moment. It seemed to him she spoke very coldly.
“I should like to go to the opera!” murmured Jules with closed eyes. “Ah no, after all, I think I would rather not.”
“Dolf told me that you read a great deal,” Quaerts continued. “Do you keep up with modern literature?”
“A little. I do not read so very much.”
“No?”
“Oh, no. I have two children, and consequently not much time for it. Besides, it has no particular fascination for me; life is so much more romantic than any novel.”
“So you are a philosopher?”
“I? Oh, no, I assure you, Mr Quaerts. I am the most commonplace woman in the world.”
She spoke with her wicked little laugh and her cold voice: the voice and the laugh she employed when she feared lest she should be wounded in her secret sensitiveness, and when therefore she hid herself deep within herself, offering to the outside world something very different from what she really was. Jules opened his eyes and sat looking at her, and his steady glance troubled her.
“You live in a charming place, on the Scheveningen Road.”
“Yes.”
She realised suddenly that her coldness amounted to rudeness, and she did not wish this, even if she did dislike him. She threw herself back negligently; she asked at random, quite without concern, merely for the sake of conversation:
“Have you many relations in the Hague?”
“No; my father and mother live at Velp, and the rest of my family are at Arnhem chiefly. I never fix myself anywhere; I cannot remain long in one place. I have lived for a considerable time in Brussels.”
“You have no occupation, I believe?”
“No; as a boy my longing was to enter the navy, but I was rejected on account of my eyes.”
Involuntarily she looked into his eyes: small, deep-set eyes, the colour of which she could not determine. She thought they looked sly and cunning.
“I have always regretted it,” he continued. “I am a man of action. There is always within me the desire of movement. I console myself as best I can with sport.”
“Sport?” she repeated coldly.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Quaerts is a Nimrod and a Centaur, and a Hercules, are you not?” said Jules.
“Ah, Jules,” said Quaerts, with a laugh, “names and theories and classifications. Which class do you really place me in?”
“Among the very, very few people I really love!” the boy answered, ardently, and without hesitation. “Taco, when are you going to give me my riding-lessons?”
“Whenever you like, my son.”
“Yes, but you must fix the day for us to go to the riding-school. I won’t fix a day, I hate fixing days.”
“Well, tomorrow? Tomorrow is Wednesday.”
“Very well.”
Cecile noticed that Jules was still staring at her. She looked at him back. How was it possible that the boy could like this man? How was it possible that it irritated her and not him – all that healthiness, that strength, that power of muscle and rage of sport? She could make nothing of it; she understood neither Quaerts nor Jules, and she herself drifted away again into that mood of half-consciousness, in which she did not know what she thought, nor what at that very moment she might say; in which she seemed to be lost, and wandering in search of herself.
She rose, tall, frail, in her crêpe, like a queen who mourns; touches of gold in her flaxen hair, where a little jet aigrette glittered like a black mirror.
“I am going to see who is winning,” she said, and went to the card-table in the other room. She stood behind Mrs Hoze, seeming to be interested in the game, but across the light of the candles she peered at Quaerts and Jules. She saw them talking together, softly, confidentially, Jules with his arm on Quaerts’ knee. She saw Jules looking up, as if in adoration, into the face of this man, and then the boy suddenly threw his arms around his friend in a wild embrace, while this latter kept him off with a patient gesture.
V
The next evening Cecile revelled even more than usual in the luxury of being able to stay at home. It was after dinner; she sat on the chaise-longue 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 up to him, and said, Oh my lord, let me stay as a bondsman instead of Benjamin. For our father, who is such an old man, said to us when we went away with Benjamin: My son Joseph I have already lost; surely he has been torn in pieces by the wild beasts. And if you take this one also from me, and any harm befall him, I shall become grey with sorrow, and die. Then (Judah said) I said to our father that I would be responsible for his safety, and that I should be very naughty if we did not bring Benjamin home again. And therefore I pray you, Oh my lord, let me be your bondsman, and let the lad go back with his brethren. For how can I go back to my father if the lad be not with me …”
“And Joseph, Mamma, what did Joseph say?” asked Christie. He nestled closely against his mother, this poor slender little fellow of six, with his fine golden hair, and his eyes of pale forget-me-not blue, his little fingers hooking themselves nervously into Cecile’s gown, rumpling the crêpe.
“Then Joseph could no longer restrain himself, and ordered his servants to leave him; then he burst into tears, crying, Do you not know me? I am Joseph.”
But Cecile could not continue, for Christie had thrown himself on her neck in a frenzy of despair, and she heard him sobbing against her.
“Christie! My 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 came down to Egypt to live with Joseph.”
“Was it really like that? Or are you making it up?”
“No, really my 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 to cry!” said Dolf. “It was 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 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. When after an hour she was sitting downstairs again alone, she first realised how sad she felt.
Ah no, she did not know! Amélie 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 most 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 the 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 a 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, 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 consequence? She could not analyse it; she could not explain the presence of this man, rising up through her grief in the a
tmosphere of her 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 dread; withdrawn from the world which had no charm for her, sunk away alone into all 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 rise 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 ordinarily. And now! She saw nothing before her, no future, no life, nothing but broad darkness. Estranged from her children, alone within herself …
She rose up with a half moan of pain, and walked across the boudoir. The discreet half-light 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 fire burned on the hearth, but she felt cold.
She stood by the little table; she took up a card, with one corner turned down, and read: “T. H. Quaerts.” A coronet with five balls was engraved 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 card, angry with herself. She felt cold, and not herself, just as she had felt at the Van Attemas’ the evening before.
“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 wished to finish 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 book, her diary. She wrote the date, then reflected a moment, tapping her teeth nervously with the silver penholder.
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