CHAPTER XXVII.
Some weeks had passed by, and Madame van Raat was beginning to feel very uneasy about Eline’s health. She wrote to Dr. Reyer, and he had visited Eline. Madame van Raat, who was present at his visit, did not form a very great opinion of the ability of the dapper little doctor, who talked about nothing but Paris and Spain, and seemed only to have come to have a little chat. When two days later Reyer repeated his visit, she received him somewhat coldly. She left the doctor and patient alone together for a moment. Reyer rose somewhat in her favour when, after he had gone, Eline told her how carefully Reyer had examined her. Then, after all, he did have an intelligent idea of Eline’s condition, thought the old lady; and under his graceful elegance she discovered Reyer’s firmness of will and strength of character, and with it the belief in his skill too grew fixed in her mind. At his third visit, after he had left Eline, she took him aside. He told her frankly that he would not mislead her, that he would tell her the whole truth. Eline had the germs of pulmonary consumption, the consequence of a severe cold which had been neglected. He would exert his skill to the utmost in his endeavours to destroy that germ, but beyond all that he had discovered something in Eline, something which he might call the fatal taint of her family. Eline’s father had suffered from it, so did Vincent. It was a soul-disturbing unrest of the nerves, which were like the tangled chords of a broken instrument. He would not presume to more skill than he really possessed; it was not in his power to renew those chords, or to tune them so that they should once more produce an harmonious tone. The delicate fibres of a flower, which a too rough handling had bruised, it was not for him to infuse with fresh sap and renewed vigour. That was a task which Madame understood better than he. She could tend and nurture that flower, she could handle Eline so delicately, with such gentleness, that, chord for chord, she might yet call back into her prematurely-wasted frame the whilom vigour of her youth. Calmness, loving care, these were the remedies of which Eline stood in need; then with the approach of winter, a milder clime than that of Holland.
The tears came into Madame van Raat’s eyes as she listened to him; when he left she pressed his hand cordially, full of grateful sympathy, but the task which he had given her weighed heavily on her shoulders. She feared that Reyer had overrated the power of her affection for the poor child; she inwardly suspected that a love other than hers was necessary to draw forth sweet melody from that soul which was now so sadly out of tune.
At his next visit Dr. Reyer insisted that Eline should try and find some occupation that would bring some life into that languid melancholy to which she had given herself up from morning till night. Eline found an excuse for her idleness in the warm summer weather; but now that the leaves were falling, now that the cool winds of early autumn began to blow refreshingly in her face, it seemed to her that she breathed anew, and she felt much more cheerful, and declared her determination to seek some occupation. Madame van Raat continued to look at her with great anxiety, for with Eline’s renewed vivacity her cough had also returned—a dull, hacking cough, which sounded as though it would choke her. In the meantime she now dressed herself with a little more care and taste than she had done during the past summer, and she practised industriously on her new Bechstein; but music alone did not satisfy her, she needed another occupation, and that she now sought elsewhere. Although she somewhat neglected her former acquaintances, she still met them occasionally in Betsy’s drawing-room. While there one evening, out of sheer ennui she arranged with an old lady, a Miss Eekhof, an aunt of Ange and Léonie, to go with her on the following Sunday to the French Church. Eline went; a new preacher with great black dreamy eyes and white aristocratic hands preached that day. She returned home in ecstasy, and told Madame van Raat excitedly about the eloquent sermon to which she had listened. She inwardly regretted that a Protestant Church was so cold, so empty, so bare, that the singing was so bad; gladly she would have been a Catholic; on an Ave Maria, or on a Gloria in Excelsis, her soul would have risen on high as on the wings of melody; at the holy transfiguration, in the mystic glamour of the altar, she would have trembled with glorious fervour, while the incense would have imbued her very being with a flavour of theatrical piety. But she was not a Catholic, and she consoled herself with her French Church; she now went there frequently with Miss Eekhof, until it became a regular habit with her, and she occupied a fixed seat. The acquaintances she met there she greeted with a serious little face, with soft dreamy eyes and a melancholy droop about her little mouth, and every one began to wonder at Eline’s new piety. Miss Eekhof was on the committee of several charities, and it needed but little persuasion on her part to induce Eline to enrol herself as a member of some of them, and many a time Miss Eekhof persuaded her to accompany her on her visits to the poor.
For a month or so she found a pleasure in this new piety, then the monotony of the preacher’s unctuous words began to pall on her, and she could tell beforehand how he would lift up his eyes at the singing, or what movement he would make with his white hand when he pronounced the benediction. The singing quite unnerved her, hearing it rising as she did from so many hoarse, uncultivated throats. The plain white walls, the simply-constructed pulpit, and the wooden pews began more and more to irritate her; she began to suspect that all these people who had come there to be edified were really a set of hypocrites. The pious fervour of the preacher was a sham; the dignified bearing of the elders was a sham. Miss Eekhof by her side, she too was shamming; and she herself, with her soft melting eyes and her serious face, what was she but a sham!
Through Miss Eekhof she heard of many a tiff, many a petty dispute among the lady directors of the different societies, and of their good intentions she now too began to doubt. Oh, she hated that philanthropy, which was a cloak for so much jealousy and envy, and she could no longer believe in the sincerity of those ladies, not even of those who had moved her to sympathy; every one of them shammed and had some motives of her own, every one was an egoist and thought only of herself, under the cloak of working for others.
And after that first month she felt thoroughly disgusted with the poor people whom she had visited with the old lady. The stuffy closeness of their dirty little rooms, their wretchedness and misery, seemed to choke her very breath. Indeed, she would have been suffocated had she but been forced for one single day to breathe such an atmosphere, and as she mistrusted the lady managers, so she mistrusted the poor. Stories of wealthy beggars rose to her mind; she had read of beggars living in London who were as rich as bankers, and who spent their evenings in feasting and pleasure; and although she remained a member of the different societies, and often enough gave Miss Eekhof some money for an ailing widow or a blind old organ-grinder, she no longer went to church, nor to these dirty people.
Winter approached, and on account of her cough Eline remained at home a good deal with Madame van Raat; in dull listlessness the days dragged by, one after another without change, without a break in the monotony; for the hundredth time Eline asked herself to what end she lived, why indeed should she live if she could not be happy. After this disappointment in her own philanthropy and piety she would trust no one; she looked around her, and she did not believe that Georges and Lili cared for each other now that they were married, or that they were happy; no doubt they were deceived in each other, and now they shammed so as to hide it. She did not believe that Betsy was happy although she was rich, for how could it be possible that she cared for Henk, and did not long for a more passionate love? And now she did not believe either that Otto had ever loved her; how could he, seeing that his character was so entirely different from hers? At one moment even her suspicion grew so intense and so all-absorbing that she no longer believed in Madame van Raat’s unselfish affection for her. Madame van Raat had hoped to find in her an agreeable companion, and now no doubt she was disappointed. Yes, Madame van Raat shammed as all the others shammed. At one time such bitter feelings as these would have driven Eline to despair, but now so much bitterness had already entered her soul, that even those feelings could no longer irritate her; she remained quite indifferent under them. What did it matter to her that life was one great lie? it was so, and could not be helped, she could not alter it. She must play her part, and lie like all the rest of them.
At least, when she could not do otherwise, when they excited her to emotion, to “life”; for as long as they did not, she would lie down, lie down in her blank indifference as in a deadening rest. Thus she thought, and forced her youth to stoop under the yoke of that apathy. To it she gave herself up completely, she even lost her charm of manner. Among her acquaintances she no longer excited any pity, and gradually she grew quite rude and disdainful; she got into the habit of staying in bed the greater part of the morning, and although Madame van Raat disapproved of it, she nevertheless had Eline’s breakfast taken to her, because otherwise she would not breakfast at all.
Eline felt well enough that she could not go on leading this kind of life; something she could not have described continually irritated her in Madame van Raat and in her house. Involuntarily Eline allowed her peevish fits to overmaster her, so that she addressed the old lady in words of passionate irritation. Then the old lady would merely look at her with a sad expression, and Eline felt at once how wrong she was. Sometimes she was too proud to acknowledge it, and then she had a sulking fit which perhaps lasted a day or two, and during which she scarcely spoke a word. At other times, again, she was so brimming over with remorse that she would sobbingly throw herself upon her knees, lay her head in the old lady’s lap, and beg for her pardon. No, little madam should not take notice of her wretched fits of temper. She could not make them out herself, and she could not control them. Oh, they were like so many demons, who dragged her away against her will wherever they would have her. The old lady wept as well, kissed her, and the next day the same demons dragged Eline along with them. No, it would not do, thought Eline. She wrote a long letter to her Uncle Daniel and Elise. She wrote that, loving and affectionate as Madame van Raat was, she felt very unhappy, and that she would die with melancholy did she stay there—she longed for other surroundings.
Uncle Daniel came to the Hague, and asked Eline in the presence of the old lady if she had quite forgotten the family in Brussels, and if she would not like to pay them a visit.
Eline did not know what to decide, but the old lady herself urged Eline not to refuse her uncle’s invitation, and go to Brussels. When Daniel Vere had left, Madame van Raat, as though crushed under a heavy disappointment, remained seated motionless on her chair; and her gray head, with its dull, staring eyes, drooped with even more than its wonted languor upon her chest. In two days Eline would leave her; there was the end then of all her expectations. She had hoped, old and weak as she was, to be of some use to this young life, and to infuse a fresh vigour into this dulled youth, and—and she guessed it—Eline grew more and more listless; Eline longed for change. How could she, old woman that she was, have had such presumption?
Eline did not fail to notice this silent grief, and a great despair overmastered her, a despair at her own egoism. She had not given a thought to the old lady when she wrote to Uncle Daniel, it was only of herself that she had thought; and now she caused the old lady pain by her departure, while she felt convinced that she, after her change of residence, would remain the same as she, faded in body and soul, had now been for the last two years, and, amid nervous sobbing, fell back on the sofa, to rise again immediately in a wild, indefinite terror. Her eyes glittered wildly, and her fingers were constantly moving, touching a vase here, tangling the fringe of the curtains, or scratching fantastic figures on the bevapoured window-panes. It seemed to her suddenly as if she had just awakened from a dream, and the memory of what had passed before completely forsook her.
“I suppose you did not understand me?” she asked doubtfully of the old lady, whose sad glance had constantly followed her.
“I—I think—I did!” stammered she, inwardly shocked at the picture of lost happiness which Eline presented.
Eline looked at her with a vacant stare; for a moment she felt a great regret at her confession, of which she scarcely longer remembered the words. But the sympathy beamed from the old lady’s eyes reassured her.
“You did understand me? You understand why it is that I can no longer be happy?” she asked in a voice of bitter sadness, as once more she sank down on her footstool.
The old lady did not answer, but, with her eyes full of tears, she threw her arms round Eline’s neck and kissed her. Both remained thus for a moment in silence.
“And can you now forgive me for leaving you?”
“Oh, why do you not stay with me?”
“I’m a trouble and a sorrow to you. I do not give you the slightest pleasure. I can do nothing for you, and you can do nothing for me.”
Yes, indeed, it was too true. The old lady could do nothing for her—no one could.
They found nothing more to say to each other. Both understood well enough that they could render each other no help in bearing the burdens of life, that neither could be of any comfort to the other. But now the old lady began to doubt, too, whether even Uncle Daniel or Elise could be of any comfort to Eline. And though they said not another word, still the old lady sat there with Eline clasped close to her bosom.
It grew dark, and a cheerless chill began to fill the rooms. Sombre shadows were descending in every corner behind the draperies and along the walls. The old lady shivered with the chill atmosphere, but she did not rise to ring the bell for the servant to look after the dying fire, for Eline had fallen asleep with her head resting on her shoulder. Were it not for Eline’s heavy breathing, Madame van Raat would have thought that death had overtaken her. The waxen pallor of those emaciated features was like unto the dew of death.
Eline slept on, and it grew chiller and chiller. The old lady glanced at the stove; not a spark of fire was to be seen. Slowly she removed the woollen pelerine from her shoulders, and gently spread it over Eline’s sleeping form.