Jeanne said it was time they went home. The three men soon appeared, and Henk helped Jeanne into her long overcoat. Forcing herself to smile amiably, she bade them goodbye, reiterating how kind Betsy had been to invite her and her husband to this intimate gathering, and again feeling a pang of annoyance when Eline kissed her on both cheeks.
‘That Jeanne is such a bore!’ said Betsy when the Ferelijns had gone. ‘She hardly said a word all evening. What on earth were you talking to her about just now, Eline?’
‘Oh, about little Dora, and about her husband. . nothing in particular.’
‘Poor Jeanne!’ said Emilie with feeling. ‘Come, Georges, could you get me my cloak?’
But before he could do so Mina came in with the ladies’ outer garments, so De Woude went off to don his Ulster greatcoat, leaving Henk to rub his large hands with pleasure at the prospect of staying in after his copious dinner. The carriage had been waiting for the past half hour in the thawing snow, with Dirk the coachman and Herman the groom on the box, huddled under their capacious fur capes.
‘Oh Frans, don’t ever make me accept another invitation from the Van Raats!’ Jeanne said beseechingly, shivering on her husband’s arm as they splashed along the muddy street, trying with her small, icy hand to hold the sides of her oversized coat together against the gusting wind. ‘Honestly, I simply don’t feel at home with them any more, Betsy and Eline have changed so much.’
His response was an impatient shrug of the shoulders, and they plodded onwards in their wet shoes, the monotony of their progress relieved only by the regularly spaced street lanterns shining tremulously in the puddles along the way.
. .
The third act of Le Tribut de Zamora had just begun when Betsy, Emilie, Eline and Georges entered their box. Their arrival prompted a ripple in the stillness of the audience; there was a rustling of silks and satins, a turning of eyes and craning of necks and much whispering, wondering who they were.
Emilie and Eline seated themselves at the front, with Betsy and Georges behind them, and Eline glanced about a moment, smiling faintly as she laid down her fan and mother-of-pearl opera glasses. Then she slowly untied her short cloak of white plush with the pink-satin lining and let it slide off her shoulders as a pink-and-white cloud, whereupon De Woude draped the garment over the back of her chair. Affecting not to notice the looks of admiration, she savoured the triumph of her beauty.
‘It’s full tonight, we’re in luck,’ whispered Emilie. ‘I think it’s so dismal when the house is half empty.’
‘Oh, I quite agree!’ said Betsy. ‘Look, there are the Eekhofs: Ange, Léonie and their mama. They were at the Verstraetens’ yesterday, too, and they’re giving a soirée dansante next week,’ she concluded, returning the girls’ greeting.
‘Tonight we’re hearing Theo Fabrice, the new baritone from Brussels,’ De Woude said to Eline. ‘Did you know two baritones have already been dismissed? This is the third one since the debuts started.’
‘There doesn’t seem to be an end to the debuts this winter,’ breathed Eline, taking up her fan.
‘The tenor was excellent from the start, but this Fabrice is very good too, so I have heard. Look, there he is.’
The chorus of Ben-Saïd’s odalisques had come to an end, and the Moorish king himself swept into his palace, leading Xaïma by the hand. Eline was not paying attention, however. She was still scanning the audience, nodding and smiling at acquaintances, and did not direct her gaze to the stage until Ben-Saïd and his slave girl were well and duly enthroned under the canopy, signalling the start of the ballet. She always enjoyed the dancing scenes, and minutely followed the ballerinas in their shiny satin bodices and full skirts of spangled tulle as they glided on tiptoe towards the Moorish arcades, beneath which they hovered in clusters, holding aloft their veils and silver-tasselled fans.
‘A pretty ballet,’ said Emilie, yawning behind her fan as she settled back in her seat. She was feeling the effects of her lavish dinner.
Eline nodded, and while she could hear Betsy and Georges whispering behind her, she kept her eyes fixed on the prima ballerina with the glittering aigrette of diamonds in her hair, who was floating on the curved tips of her satin ballet shoes as she twirled among the other dancers and the flutter of veils and fans.
True to her dreamy and idealistic nature, Eline had a passion for the opera, not only because it gave her the opportunity to display her languorous elegance, not only because of the music and the chance to hear some celebrated chanteuse sing a particular aria, but also because of the exciting, highly romantic intrigues and melodramatic scenes of hatred and love and revenge. She did not mind the plots being predictable, nor did she aspire to find any truth in them. She had no need to forget for one moment that she was observing actors and actresses, not knights and noble ladies, or that she was in a crowded theatre gazing at a brightly lit stage with painted scenery and music from a visible orchestra, not sharing the life of the hero and heroine in some poetic medieval fantasy — she enjoyed herself anyway, as long as the singing was tolerable, the acting not too coarse and the costumes becoming.
Betsy, by contrast, went to the opera only to see and be seen, and had she known what Eline found so enjoyable, would have shrugged dismissively, saying that was childish of her. But Eline kept her enjoyment to herself, for she knew what Betsy was like and preferred to leave her sister in the belief that for her, too, the main purpose of an evening at the theatre was to see and be seen.
She now regretted having arrived so late, for she had never seen Le Tribut de Zamora and consequently did not know what had gone before. Emilie had fallen silent under the influence of her fish pastry and her truffled fowl, and like Eline kept her eyes fixed on the stage.
The ballet came to an end. Ben-Saïd and Xaïma descended from their thrones, and the king, having uttered the phrase ‘Je m’efforce en vain de te plaire!’ in recitative, launched into the romantic air:
O Xaïma, daigne m’entendre!
Mon âme est à toi sans retour!
The new baritone’s voice was deep and resonant, more like that of a basso cantante, and in his delivery he cast a pall of melancholy over the song.
However, his extravagant Moorish costume made him appear rather large and burly. Neither in his pose nor in his facial expression did he convey anything resembling the passionate devotion of a lover, and in the looks he directed at the chanteuse-légère, silver-robed and with pearl-studded blonde locks, there was more fierceness than tender devotion.
Eline was not insensitive to this shortcoming of his acting, but was nonetheless charmed by the contrast between his overbearing demeanour and the humble, beseeching tone of his voice. She followed his song note by note, and when, at an abrupt, plangent fortissimo, the actress assumed an expression of great terror, she was astonished, thinking: Why is she so frightened? What could have happened? He doesn’t look all that wicked to me.
During the applause she cast around the audience again, and lit on a party of gentlemen who had posted themselves on the steps leading to the stalls. She saw them peering up at her box, presumably discussing its occupants, and was about to look away in a show of gracious disinterest when she noticed that one of the men, hat and cane in hand, was smiling at her in a courteous yet familiar way. She stared at him a moment, wide-eyed, too startled to answer the greeting, and then abruptly turned away, put her hand on Betsy’s knee and whispered in her ear:
‘Look, Betsy, look who’s over there!’