Vincent accepted the invitation with a laconic ‘Oh, with pleasure.’ Henk, having declared his intention to take a walk, donned only his hat and hurriedly left the house, his collar turned up and his hands in his pockets. Anna, the nursemaid, came to fetch Ben, whose chin was smeared with jelly and cream after the birthday feast. Betsy too disappeared upstairs, leaving Eline and Vincent alone in the spacious salon, now bright with gas light.
‘Let’s go and sit over there,’ said Eline, and Vincent followed her into the violet anteroom, where the small crystal chandelier diffused a soft glow that invited intimacy and confidences. To Vincent, however, the room merely breathed an atmosphere of relaxed wellbeing, and with a sigh he collapsed onto the sofa. He proceeded in his usual offhand way to enquire after the guests he had seen leaving. While replying to his question, she felt a great sympathy for her cousin welling up inside her. It was that need again, springing from her passion for Fabrice, that desire to be steeped in love, to be surrounded by it on all sides, and to bestow it on others. And just as it had struck Paul by the wan glow of a paraffin lamp, so it now struck Eline under the bright gas light flashing on the crystal pendants — Vincent bore a striking resemblance to her late beloved father, so striking as to transport her back in time to her girlhood, when her father would lean back in exactly the same way as Vincent was doing now, with the same pained expression about the mouth, the same soulful eyes contemplating some unattainable artistic vision; even the hand hanging limply over the side was exactly like her father’s when he let the paintbrush slip from his fingers to the floor.
Eline felt her sympathy for Vincent reverberating with pity and poetic heartache as she listened to his murmured reminiscences of Smyrna, thinking how interesting he was, so much more so than the other young men of her acquaintance; how right he was to pronounce life in The Hague provincial and dreary, and how well she understood his desire for wider horizons, oh, if only she, too, could. .
‘But I must be boring you with all this talk of my own dislikes,’ he continued in an altered tone, ‘neither is it civil on my part.’
‘Oh, not at all, you’re not boring me in the least!’ she hastened to say, a touch dismayed that he had cut the thread of her fantasy so abruptly. ‘Do you think I can’t imagine exactly how you feel, hating the routine of sameness day in day out, the endless going round in circles that we all do? I sometimes wish I could get away from it all myself!’ she exclaimed, waving her arms as if she were a caged bird flapping its wings. ‘Sometimes I feel very inclined to do something outrageous!’ and she gave a secret smile at the thought of Fabrice.
He returned her smile, shaking his head, and reached out to pat her lifted hand, after which it fell gracefully to her side. ‘
Why would you want to do anything outrageous?’ he asked. ‘You exaggerate. Just leading your own life without depending on others, taking no notice of what society expects from you, but following your own free will as long as it makes sense, to change one’s surroundings as often as one pleases — that is my ideal. There’s nothing like change to keep you young.’
‘But being independent, doing exactly as you please. . that takes more moral courage than most of us possess in this over-civilised society of ours,’ she replied, rather pleased with the epicurean-philosophical turn the conversation was taking.
‘Moral courage? Oh no, all you need is money!’ he said firmly. ‘If I’m rich, have good manners, do nothing outrageous, and keep up appearances before the eyes of the world, it’s well in my power to achieve my ideal, without anyone accusing me of anything worse than, say, mild eccentricity.’
This was rather too down-to-earth, too banal, to her way of thinking, and she countered by imposing her own, more romantic view.
‘Well yes, money. . of course!’ she resumed, dismissing his argument with feminine facility. ‘But if you’re not strong enough to follow your will, you’ll find yourself back in the same old routine before you know it. Which is why,’ — he had to smile at her appealing want of logic — ‘which is why I would so dearly love to do something outrageous, you know, something unheard-of. Personally, I feel strong enough to go my own way whatever people might say, in fact I sometimes feel quite reckless.’
He was charmed by the ardour in her shining eyes as she flaunted her defiance, and her graceful, slight frame made him think of a butterfly poised to flit away.
‘But Eline!’ he chuckled. ‘Whatever are you thinking of? What would you be reckless enough to do? Go on, confess, you naughty girl!’
She laughed.
‘Oh, to elope, at the very least!’
‘With me?’
‘Why not? But I’m afraid you’d leave me to fend for myself before long, you’d think me rather too expensive a companion, and I’d be back where I started, with my tail between my legs. So if that was meant as an invitation, much obliged, but I’d rather wait for a rich suitor.’
‘No log cabin, then, in the moonlight?’
‘Oh, Vincent, how dull! Never! I would die of boredom. Come to that, I’d rather be an actress. . and elope with an actor.’
She sparkled with mischief and self-importance, exulting in her secret dream with Fabrice, and she looked Vincent boldly in the eye — he would never guess what she was thinking, anyway.
He laughed heartily; the vivacity that had replaced her languid elegance in the course of their conversation, combined with the radiance in her almond eyes and the way she kept patting her knee with coquettish impatience, amused him even more than what she was actually saying. And yet, her words struck a chord with him: her heartfelt longing for change was much like his own. They looked at one another a long moment, smiling, and the softness of his pale, penetrating gaze, had the mesmeric effect on her of a serpent’s stare.
‘How extraordinary, he looks just like dear Papa, how very extraordinary!’ she thought, marvelling at the sympathy she felt for Vincent as they rose in response to the bell summoning them to the dining room.
XIII
Madame Verstraeten remained at home with Lili, who was nursing a bad cold, while Marie and Frédérique set out with Paul and Etienne, their skates slung over their shoulders, to the skating rink at Laan van Meedervoort. Mr Verstraeten was reading a book in the warm conservatory surrounded by the shiny greenery of potted palms and aralias. Lili was out of sorts, responding to her mother’s occasional remarks in listless monosyllables interspersed with valiant attempts to repress her coughing. She had pronounced herself quite recovered, and being cooped up in the house like this was not doing her any good, so she was resolved to go out again in a day or two. Looking out of the window she saw the garden looking positively Siberian, with crisp white snow lacing the bushes and the trees, and the untrodden paths resembling slabs of polished marble. Madame Verstraeten concentrated on her crochet, and the rapid movements of the needle working the wool into a knotty fabric grated on Lili’s nerves, as did the regular sound, a little way off, of her father turning yet another page. She herself did nothing, her hands lying idle in her lap, and while she normally enjoyed an afternoon of dolce far niente, she was now bored to distraction.
Secretly she envied Freddie and Marie for their good health and high spirits, while she was still convalescing and obliged to wrap up against the slightest draught. But when her sister hesitated to accompany Freddie and Etienne on their outing, Lili herself had urged her to take her skates and go; Marie could hardly be expected to stay with her all the time while she was ill, and besides, she had Mama to keep her company.