CHAPTER XIV.
“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.