“Will you believe me when I swear to you that I have reflected deeply on all this? Will you believe me when I swear to you that I suffer at the thought of never being permitted to see you again? Above all, will you forgive me when I swear to you that I am acting in this way because I think I am doing right? Oh! I am thankful to you, and I love you as a soul of light alone, only light!
“Perhaps I do wrong to send you this letter. I do not know. Perhaps I will presently destroy what I have written …”
Yet he had sent the letter.
There was bitterness within her. She had done battle once, had conquered herself, and in a sacred moment had confessed both battle and conquest; she knew that fate had compelled her to do so; she now knew that through this confession she would lose him. For a short moment, a single evening perhaps, she had been worthy of her god, and his equal. Now she was so no longer; for that reason too she felt bitter; and bitterest of all because the thought dared to rise within her:
“A god! Is he a god? Is a god afraid of battle?”
Then her threefold bitterness changed to despair, black despair, a night which her eyes sought to penetrate in order to see where they saw nothing, nothing, and she moaned low, and wrung her hands, sunk into a heap before the window, and peered at the trams which, with the tinkling of their bells, ran pitilessly to and fro.
III
She shut herself up; she saw little of her children; she told her friends that she was ill. She was at home to no visitors. She guessed intuitively that in their respective circles people spoke of Quaerts and herself. Life hung dull about her, a closely woven web of tiresome meshes, and she remained motionless in her corner, to avoid entangling herself in those meshes. Once Jules forced his way to her; he went up to her in spite of Greta’s protests; he sought her in the little boudoir, and, not finding her, went resolutely to her bedroom. He knocked without receiving any reply, but entered nevertheless. The room was half in darkness, for she kept the blinds lowered; in the shadow of the canopy which rose above the bedstead, with its hangings of old blue brocade, Cecile lay sleeping. Her dressing-gown was open over her breast, the train fell from the bed and lay creased over the carpet; her hair trailed over the pillows; one of her hands clutched nervously at the tulle bed-curtain.
“Auntie!” cried Jules. “Auntie!”
He shook her by the arm, and she waked heavily, with heavy, blue-encircled eyes. She did not recognise him at first, and thought that he was little Dolf.
“It is I, Auntie; Jules …”
She recognised him, asked him how he came there, what was the matter, whether he did not know that she was ill.
“I knew, but I wanted to speak to you. I came to speak to you about … him …”
“Him?”
“About Taco. He asked me to tell you. He could not write to you. He is going on a long journey with his friend from Brussels; he will be away a long time, and he would like … he would like to take leave of you.”
“To take leave?”
“Yes, and he told me to ask you whether he might see you once more?”
She had half risen up, and looked at Jules stupidly. In an instant the memory ran through her brain of a long look which Jules directed on her so strangely when she saw Quaerts for the first time and spoke to him coolly and distantly: “Have you many relations in the Hague? You have no occupation I believe? Sport?” The memory of Jules playing on the piano, of Rubinstein’s Romance in E, of the ecstasy of his fantasia: the glittering rainbows and the souls turning to angels.
“To take leave?” she repeated.
Jules nodded. “Yes, Auntie, he is going away for a long, long time.”
He could have shed tears himself, and there were tears in his voice, but he would not, and his eyes were moist.
“He told me to ask you,” he repeated with difficulty.
“Whether he can come and take leave?”
“Yes, Auntie.”
She made no reply, but lay staring before her. An emptiness began to measure itself out before her, in endless perspective, a silhouette of their evening of rapture, but no light beamed out of the shadow.
“Emptiness …” she muttered through closed lips.
“What, Auntie?”
She would have liked to ask Jules whether he was still, as formerly, afraid of the emptiness within himself; but a gentleness of pity, a soft feeling, a sweetening of the bitterness which so filled her being, stayed her.
“To take leave?” she repeated, with a smile of melancholy, and the big tears fell heavily, drop by drop, upon her fingers wrung together.
“Yes, Auntie …”
He could no longer restrain himself: a single sob convulsed his throat, but he gave a cough to conceal it. Cecile threw her arm round his neck.
“You are very fond of Taco … are you not?” she asked; and it struck Cecile that this was the first time she had pronounced the name, for she had never called Quaerts by it: she had never called him by any name.
He did not answer at first, but nestled in her arm, in her embrace, and began to cry.
“Yes, I cannot tell you how much,” he said.
“I know,” she said, and she thought of the rainbows and the angels; he had played as out of her own soul.
“May he come?” asked Jules, faithfully thoughtful of his instructions.
“Yes.”
“He asks whether he may come this evening?”
“Very well.”
“Auntie, he is going away, because … because …”
“Because what, Jules?”
“Because of you; because you do not like him, and will not marry him. Mamma says so …”
She made no reply; she lay sobbing, her head on Jules’ head.
“Is it true, Auntie? No, it is not true, is it … ?”
“No.”
“Why, then?”
She raised herself suddenly, conquering herself, and looked at him fixedly.
“He is going away because he must, Jules. I cannot tell you why. But what he does is right. All that he does is right.”
The boy looked at her, motionless, with large, wet eyes, full of astonishment.
“Is right?” he repeated.
“Yes. He is better than any of us. If you continue to love him, Jules, it will bring you happiness, even if … if you never see him again.”
“Do you think so?” he asked. “Does he bring happiness? Even in that case …”
“Even in that case …”
She listened to her words as she spoke them: it was to her as if another was speaking; another who consoled not only Jules but herself as well, and who would perhaps give her strength to take leave from Taco as would be seemly – without despair.
IV
“So you are going a long journey?” she asked.
He sat facing her, motionless, with anguish on his face. Outwardly she was very calm, only there was melancholy in her look and in her voice. In her white dress, with the girdle falling before her feet, she lay back among the three cushions of the rose-moiré chaise-longue; the points of her little slippers were lost in the sheepskin rug. On the little table before her lay a great bouquet of loose roses, pink, white, and yellow, bound together with a broad ribbon. He had brought them for her, and she had not yet placed them. There was great calm about her; the “exquisite” atmosphere of the boudoir seemed unchanged.