It was the beginning: the opening out of herself, the dawn of her soul’s life, the joyful miracle, the miraculous inception of love.
She passed the days which followed in self contemplation, wandering through her dreams as through a new country, rich with great light, where distant landscapes paled into light, fantastic, like meteors in the night, quivering in incandescence upon the horizon. It seemed to her as though she, a light, pious pilgrim, progressed along paradisial oases towards those distant scenes, there to find still more: the Goal … Only a little while ago her prospect had been but narrow and forlorn – her children gone from her, her loneliness wrapping her about like a night – and now, now she saw before her a long road, a wide horizon, glittering the whole way in light; nothing but light …
That was, all that was! It was no fine poet’s dream; it existed, it gleamed in her heart like a sacred jewel, like a mystic rose with stamina of light! A freshness as of dew fell over her, over her whole life; over the life of her senses; over the life of outward appearances; over the life of her soul; over the life of the truth indwelling. The world was new, fresh with young dew, the very Eden of Genesis, and her soul was a soul of newness, born anew in a metempsychosis of greater perfection, of closer approach to the ideal, that distant Goal – there, far away, hidden like a god in the sanctity of its ecstasy of light, in the radiance of its own being.
V
Cecile did not go out for a few days; she saw nobody. One morning she received a note; it ran:
“MEVROUW,
“I do not know if you were offended at my mystical utterances. I cannot recall distinctly what I said, but I remember that you told me that I was going too far. I hope you have not taken my indiscretion amiss. It would be a great pleasure to me to come to see you. May I hope that you will permit me to call on you this afternoon?
“With most respectful regards,
“QUAERERTS.”
As the bearer was waiting for a reply, she responded:
“DEAR SIR,
“I shall be pleased to see you this afternoon.
“CECILE VAN EVEN.”
When she was left alone she read the note over and over again; she looked at the paper with a smile, looked at the handwriting.
“How strange,” she thought. “This note, and everything that happens. How strange everything is!”
She remained dreaming a long time, with the note in her hand. Then she carefully folded it up, rose, walked up and down the room, sought in a bowl full of visiting cards, taking out two which she looked at for a long time. “Quaerts …” The name sounded differently from before … How strange it all was! And finally she locked away the letter and the two cards in a little empty drawer of her writing-table.
She stayed at home, and sent the children out with the nurse. She hoped that no one else would call, neither Mrs Hoze nor the Van Attemas. And staring before her she reflected a long, long time. There was so much she did not understand: properly speaking she understood nothing. As far as she was concerned, she had fallen in love; there was no analysing that, it must simply be accepted. But he, what did he feel, what were his emotions?
Her earlier antipathy? Sport … he was fond of sport ,she remembered … His visit, which was an impertinence … He seemed to wish now to atone, not to call again without her permission. His mystical conversation at the dinner-party … And Mrs Hijdrecht …
“How strange he is,” she reflected. “I cannot understand him; but I love him, I cannot help it. Love, love … how strange that it should exist! I never realised that it existed! I am no longer myself: I am becoming someone else? Why does he wish to see me? … And how singular: I have been married, I have two children! I feel just as if I had none. And yet, I am so fond of my little boys! But the other thing is so beautiful, so bright, so transparent, as if that alone were truth. Perhaps love is the only truths … It is as if everything in and about me were turning to crystal!”
She looked around her, surprised and troubled that her surroundings should have remained the same: the rosewood furniture, the folds of the curtains, the withered landscape of the Scheveningen Road outside. But it snowed, still and softly, with great slow flakes which fell heavily, as if they would purify the world. The snow was fresh and new, but yet the snow was not real nature to her, who always saw her distant landscape quivering in pure incandescence of light.
At four o’clock he came. She saw him for the first time since the self-revelation which had flashed upon her astounded sense. And when he came she felt the singularly rapturous feeling that in her eyes he was a demi-god, that he perfected himself in her imagination, that everything in him was good. Now that he sat there before her, she saw him for the first time, and she saw that he was physically beautiful. The strength of his body was exalted into the strength of a young god, broad, and yet slender, sinewed as with marble sinews of a statue; all this seeming so strange beneath the modernness of his frock coat. She saw his face completely for the first time. The cut of it was Roman, the head that of a Roman emperor, with its sensual profile, its small full mouth, living red under the brown gold of his curled moustache. The forehead was low, the hair cut very close, like an enveloping black casque, and over that forehead, with its one line, hovered sadness, like a mist of age, strangely contradicting the wanton youthfulness of mouth and chin. And then his eyes, which she already knew, his eyes of mystery, small and deep set, with the deeper depth of their pupils, which seemed now to veil themselves and then again to look out.
But strangest was, that from all his beauty, from all his being, from all his attitude, with his hands folded between his knees, there came out to her a magnetism, which dominated her, drawing her irresistibly towards him; as if she had suddenly, from the first moment of her self-revelation, become his, to serve him in all things. She felt this magnetism attracting her so violently that every power in her melted into heaviness and weakness. A weakness as if he might take her and carry her away, anywhere, wherever he wished; a weakness as if she no longer possessed her own thoughts, as if she had become nothing – apart from him.
She felt this intensely; and then came the very strangest of all, when he continued to sit there, at a respectful distance, his eyes bearing a respectful look, his voice falling in respectful accents. That was the strangest of all, that she saw him beneath her, while she felt him above her; that she wished to be his inferior, and he seemed to consider her higher than himself. She did not know how suddenly she so intensely realised this, but she did realise it, and it was the first pain love gave her.
“You are kind not to be angry with me,” he began.
There was often something caressing in his voice; it was not clear, and now and then even a little broken, but this just gave it a certain charm of quality.
“Why?” she asked.
“In the first place I did wrong to pay you that visit. Secondly, I was ill-mannered at Mrs Hoze’s dinner.”