CHAPTER III.
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 £, 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.