‘But he can’t even skate!’ laughed Marie.
‘He says he’s very keen, though.’
‘Oh, don’t you believe it. He’s just pretending.’
Lili shrugged with impatience.
‘I see no reason for him to pretend about it.’
‘Dear me, how you leap to his defence! And you couldn’t stand him before!’
‘I always thought him very friendly, and polite. .’
‘Lili, how can you tell such barefaced fibs! You thought he was intolerable!’
‘But Marie, that’s no reason not to go skating with him,’ cried Lili, almost beseechingly. ‘When you go to a ball you dance with other people besides your beau, don’t you?’
‘Still, I hardly know what to think,’ Marie teased. ‘Off skating together, just like that! What about Mama, does she approve?’
Lili turned away with dignified contempt.
‘Don’t be childish,’ was all she said, looking down at her sister, and was dismayed to feel herself blushing yet again — for no reason, after all.
. .
‘Is Papa sleeping?’ asked Georges, entering Emilie’s sitting room after dinner that evening.
Emilie gave a little start. She had been slumped in her easy chair by the hearth, feeling the effects of a copious repast.
‘Yes, Papa’s asleep,’ she said, blinking.
Georges laughed.
‘And you, Emilie, did you nod off as well?’ he teased.
Emilie responded with like good humour. No, she had not been asleep, just resting, she assured him. Would Georges be staying for tea? She would enjoy that.
She felt a sort of motherly affection for her so much younger brother, whom she had cared for and doted on since his early childhood, and who was now back under her wing after his months abroad. He looked well, she noted with satisfaction, he had even put on a little weight, and she was glad to discern a new manliness in his fine features — or had she simply failed to notice it before he went away?
Georges sat down beside her and they chatted about this and that. She knew him well, she believed, and could sense that he had something to ask her. She was inwardly pleased at this, but saucy enough to oblige him to broach the subject without any assistance from her. He prevaricated at length, but her non-committal replies did not inspire confidence in him, and he decided to delay unburdening himself. Abruptly, and in an altered, firmer tone, he made some trivial remark, whereupon she regretted her feigned indifference and tried to think of some way of drawing him out. However, she could think of nothing tactful, so eventually asked him point-blank:
‘I say, Georges, what’s on your mind? What did you want to tell me?’
Now it was his turn to pretend, and with assumed amazement he echoed:
‘Tell you? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, just a feeling I have. It must be the curl of your moustache!’ she quipped. ‘Seriously, though, is there nothing the matter? Money affairs, perhaps?’
But she knew better: money posed no problem to him, it never had; so fastidious was he where finances were concerned that she, having taken charge of all their elderly father’s affairs, never encountered the slightest grounds for correction. Georges smiled and shook his head, but said nothing. Could the matter at hand be so weighty as to render him speechless, she jested, a chatterbox like him?
‘No, no, it’s nothing,’ he answered. ‘Besides, you know what they say — silence is golden and all that.’
‘I beg you, Georges, don’t you be coy with me! If you have something to say or to ask, please do so, and no mincing of words, please, you know that is quite unnecessary with me!’ she said, almost reproachfully, but with so much warm encouragement in her tone that he took her large white hand and raised it with playful gallantry to his lips.
‘Now then, out with it!’ Emilie persisted, giving him a light tap under the chin with the back of the hand he had just kissed.
There was no going back now, and he plucked up the courage to speak, slowly at first, in disjointed sentences, but his query soon gathered momentum. There was his position to think about, of course, but would she think him very foolish if he considered. . marriage? A tremor had come into his voice, as though his fate depended on her answer.
His words took her by surprise, for although he was all of four and twenty she still regarded him as her little boy, her pet. And here was he was, thinking of marriage! But she also knew him to be grown-up and sensible under the light veneer of affectation; he would not ask her opinion unless he had thought the matter out beforehand, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings by assuming an all-too-light-hearted tone. However, she felt a pang of alarm at the thought of having sooner or later to part with him.
‘Marriage! Georges, are you serious?’
He gave a secretive smile, as though absorbed in some sweet vision.
‘Why not?’ he said, his voice sinking to a whisper.
‘Are you. . are you then. . so much in love?’ she asked in a hardly audible voice. ‘Is it. .?’ A name rose to her lips, but she left it unsaid.
He nodded happily, as if he knew she had guessed. Before his departure to Berlin she had already been teasing him about being sweet on Lili Verstraeten, of whom he talked so often. But now that he had acknowledged it, she was crestfallen. How did he know that Lili cared for him? Wasn’t he building castles in the air? But she did not voice these concerns, for he seemed so happy and hopeful.
‘Georges, if you are truly in earnest, well. . let’s see. .’ she resumed, moving her chair closer to his. ‘Suppose everything goes smoothly at first, say you propose, and she accepts, what then? You know you’ll have to wait for ages before you can have a wedding.’
‘Why?’
‘But, Georges, what are you thinking? Surely you don’t mean to marry on your salary as Assistant-Consul? A mere twelve hundred guilders, am I right? Of course, there is your share of Mama’s estate, but it’s a bagatelle, it won’t make you wealthy by any means! So I ask you, what will you live on? You can’t count on the Verstraetens giving very much as a dowry; they live comfortably enough, but quite modestly. They are not rich, you know.’
‘My dear Emilie, if you must do my sums for me, you could at least get them right. It’s true that I don’t reckon on support from my. .’ he smiled as his voice sank to a whisper, ‘from my future parents-in-law, should it come to that. In fact I would not even wish to.’
‘I hardly think you would say no if they offered.’
‘I don’t know, that is an aspect I haven’t considered yet. It hasn’t even crossed my mind, to be honest, but what I meant was that your calculations were a bit wide off the mark. Suppose I don’t sit the Vice-Consular exam this year, then we’re entitled to fifteen hundred guilders each, aren’t we?’
‘About that.’
‘Well then, twelve hundred plus fifteen hundred is—’
‘Two thousand seven hundred guilders. And you would marry on that?’
‘But Emilie, why ever not?’
She threw up her hands in exasperation.
‘Forgive me for saying so, Georges, but you must be out of your mind! I wish you’d stop acting like a child and come to your senses. I suppose you’ve been reading that silly little book for young married couples — what is it called again? Something like How to Live Comfortably and Respectably on Fifteen Hundred a Year.’
‘No, I haven’t seen it, but fifteen hundred is not the same as twenty-seven hundred, and I have reason to be confident—’
‘You have reason to be confident? No, no, quite the contrary, you have no idea! What makes you think you would be able to live with a wife from January to December on a miserable two thousand and seven hundred guilders? You are confident, you say!’ she burst out when he made to interrupt her. She sprang up from her easy chair. ‘I can just see you now, living in some poky upstairs flat with a joint of beef once a week for a treat! Not that I would know what it’s like, never having been in that situation, but what I do know is that both you and Lili grew up in comfortable circumstances, so how could the pair of you possibly. .? Oh come now, all this is absurd. Do be sensible. I know you too well.’