“I hope you will not think me indiscreet, Mevrouw, taking the liberty to visit you.”
“On the contrary, Mr Quaerts,” she said coldly. “Pray sit down.”
He sat down and placed his hat on the floor. “I am not disturbing you, Mevrouw?”
“Not in the least; I am expecting Mrs Van Attema and her daughters. You were so polite as to leave a card on me; but you know, I see nobody.”
“I know it, Mevrouw. Perhaps it is to that knowledge the indiscretion of my visit is due.”
She looked at him coldly, politely, smilingly. There was a feeling of irritation in her. She felt a desire to ask him frankly why he had come.
“How is that?” she asked, her mannerly smile converting her face into a veritable mask.
“I feared I should not see you for a long time, and I should consider it a great privilege to be allowed to know you more intimately.”
His tone was in the highest degree respectful. She raised her eyebrows, as if she did not understand, but the accent of his voice was so very courteous that she could not find a cold word with which to answer him.
“Are those your two children?” he asked, with a glance towards Dolf and Christie.
“Yes,” she replied. “Get up, boys, and shake hands with Meneer.”
The children approached timidly, and put out their little hands. He smiled, looked at them penetratingly with his small, deep-set eyes, and drew them to him.
“Am I mistaken, or is not the little one very like you?”
“They both resemble their father,” she replied.
It seemed to her she had set a shield of mistrust about herself, from which the children were excluded, within which she found it impossible to draw them. It troubled her that he held them, that he looked at them as he did.
But he set them free, and they went back to their little stools, gentle, quiet, well-behaved.
“Yet they both have something of you,” he insisted.
“Possibly,” she said.
“Mevrouw,” he resumed, as if he had something important to say to her, “I wish to ask you a direct question: tell me honestly, quite honestly, do you think me indiscreet?”
“Because you pay me a visit? No, I assure you, Mr Quaerts. It is very polite of you. Only if I may be candid.”
She gave a little laugh.
“Of course,” he said.
“Then I will confess to you that I fear you will find little in my house to amuse you, I see nobody …”
“I have not called on you for the sake of the people I might meet at your house.”
She bowed, smiling as if he had paid her a special compliment.
“Of course I am very pleased to see you. You are a great friend of Dolf’s, are you not?”
She tried continually to speak differently to him, more coldly, defiantly; but he was too courteous, and she could not do it.
“Yes,” he replied, “Dolf and I have known each other a long time. We have always been great friends, though we are so entirely different.”
“I like him very much; he is always very kind to us.”
She saw him look smilingly at the little table. Some reviews were scattered about it, and a book or two; among these a little volume of Emerson’s essays.
“You told me you did not read much,” he said, mischievously.
“I should think …”
And he pointed to the books.
“Oh,” said she, carelessly, with a slight shrug of her shoulders, “a little …”
She thought him tiresome; why should he remark that she had hidden herself from him? Why, indeed, had she hidden herself from him?
“Emerson,” he read, bending forward a little. “Forgive me,” he added quickly. “I have no right to spy upon your pursuits. But the print is so large; I read it from here.”
“You are far-sighted?” she asked, laughing.
“Yes.”
His politeness, a certain respectfulness, as if he would not venture to touch the tips of her fingers, placed her more at her ease. She still felt antipathy towards him, but there was no harm in his knowing what she read.
“Are you fond of reading?” asked Cecile.
“I do not read much: it’s too great a pleasure to me for that; nor do I read all that appears, I am too eclectic.”
“Do you know Emerson?”
“No …”
“I like his essays very much. They look so far into the future. They place one upon a delightfully exalted level.”
She suited her phrase with an expansive gesture, and her eyes lighted up.
Then she observed that he was following her attentively, with his respectfulness. And she recovered herself; she no longer wished to talk with him about Emerson.
“It is very fine indeed,” was all she said, in a most uninterested voice, to close the conversation. “May I give you some tea?”
“No, thank you, Mevrouw; I never take tea at this time.”
“Do you look upon it with so much scorn?” she asked, jestingly.
He was about to answer, when there was a ring at the bell, and she cried:
“Ah, here they are!”
Amélie entered, with Suzette and Anna. They were a little surprised to see Quaerts. He said he had wanted to call on Mrs Van Even. The conversation became general. Suzette was very merry, full of a dance fair, at which she was going to assist, in a Spanish costume.
“And you, Anna?”
“Oh, no, Auntie,” said Anna, shrinking together with fright. “Imagine me at a fancy fair? I should never sell anybody anything.”
“It is a gift,” said Amélie, with a far-away look.
Quaerts rose: he bowed with a single word to Cecile, when the door opened. Jules came in with books under his arm, on his road home from school.
“How do you do, Auntie? Hallo, Taco, are you going away just as I arrive?”
“You drive me away,” said Quaerts, laughing.
“Ah, Taco, do stay a little longer!” begged Jules, enraptured to see him, in despair that he had chosen this moment to leave.
“Jules, Jules!” cried Amélie, thinking it was the proper thing to do.
Jules pressed Quaerts, took his two hands, forced him, like the spoilt child that he was. Quaerts laughed the more. Jules in his excitement knocked some books from the table.
“Jules, be quiet!” cried Amélie.
Quaerts picked up the books, while Jules persisted in his bad behaviour. As Quaerts replaced the last book he hesitated; he held it in his hand, he looked at the gold lettering: “Emerson …”
Cecile watched him.
“If he thinks I am going to lend it to him he is mistaken,” she thought.
But Quaerts asked nothing: he had released himself from Jules and said goodbye. With a quip at Jules he left.
VII
“Is this the first time he has been to see you?” asked Amélie.
“Yes,” replied Cecile. “A superfluous politeness, was it not?”
“Taco Quaerts is always very correct in matters of etiquette,” said Anna, defending him.
“But this visit was hardly a matter of etiquette,” Cecile said, laughing merrily. “Taco Quaerts seems to be quite infallible in your eyes.”
“He waltzes delightfully!” cried Suzette. “The other day at the Eekhof’s dance …”
Suzette chattered on; there was no restraining Suzette that afternoon; she seemed to hear already the rattling of her castanets.
Jules had a fit of crossness coming on, but he stood still at a window, with the boys.
“You don’t much care about Quaerts, do you, Auntie?” asked Anna.
“I do not find him very sympathetic,” said Cecile. “You know, I am easily influenced by my first impressions. I can’t help it, but I do not like those very healthy, strong people, who look so sturdy and manly, as if they walked straight through life, clearing away everything that stands in their way. It may be a morbid antipathy in me, but I can’t help it that I always dislike a super-abundance of robustness. These strong people look upon others who are not so strong as themselves much as the Spartans used to look upon their deformed children.”