. .
Later — after several balls at which Eline, resplendent in floaty, pastel-coloured dresses and dainty slippers of white satin, had glided and whirled to the intoxicating three-quarter time in the arms of a succession of eager cavaliers — later, she had received two offers of marriage, both of which she had declined. They lingered in her mind as easy conquests, bringing a calm smile of satisfaction to her lips when she thought of them, although her remembrance of the first often elicited a faint sigh as well. For it was at that time that she had met Henri van Raat, and since that first encounter she often wondered how it was possible that such a big bumbling fellow, as she thought of him, a man so unlike the hero of her dreams, should appeal so strongly to her sympathies that she often found herself, quite suddenly, longing for his company. In the hero of her dreams there were touches of the idealised image of her father, and likewise of the heroes in Ouida’s novels, but none at all of Van Raat, with his mellow, lazy manner arising from the full-bloodedness of an overly sanguine humour, his uncomprehending, blue-grey eyes, his slow diction and unrefined laugh. And yet there was in his voice and in his glance, as in his candid bonhomie, something that attracted her, something protective, so that she sometimes felt vaguely inclined to rest her head on his shoulder. And he too sensed, with a certain pride, that he meant something to her.
That pride, however, vanished the moment Betsy drew near. He felt so intimidated by Eline’s sister that he found himself on more than one occasion responding to her lively banter with even slower speech and gruffer laughter than usual. She thought it an exquisite pleasure, cruel though it was, to goad him into paying her compliments, whereupon she would mischievously twist the meaning of his words and pretend to be offended. He would apologise, stumbling in search of the right phrases, often unaware of quite what impropriety he had committed, which flustered him so greatly that he could only stammer muddled assurances of his good intentions. Then she would peal with laughter, and the sound of that full, hearty laugh, mocking him with her sense of superiority, stirred greater emotion in him than the more ethereal, needful allure of her sister. Eline’s was that of a tearful, sweet-eyed siren rising from the blue of the ocean with sinuous, beckoning arms and a piteous cry, only to lapse helplessly into the deep once more, while Betsy’s was more like that of a thyrsus-wielding Bacchante seeking to entwine him with vine tendrils, or threatening to dash her brimming glass in his face by way of merry provocation.
. .
And so it had come about — he could not tell precisely how — that one evening, in the green coolness of a dimly-lit conservatory, he had abruptly, in a rush of words, asked Betsy to be his wife. There had been something compelling, magnetic even, about Betsy’s conduct that evening that had moved him to propose. She had quite calmly accepted, without demurral, taking care to hide her delight at the prospect of being mistress of her own home beneath a veneer of serenity. She longed for a change from the dignified stuffiness of Aunt Vere’s front room with its large plate-glass windows, the thick Deventer rug, the fire in the grate and the storks and peonies on the Japanese screen.
But when Eline congratulated Henk quite simply and sweetly on his betrothal, he was somewhat taken aback, and a pang of disquiet over his impetuous deed left him tongue-tied in the face of her sisterly good wishes.
Eline herself, more disturbed than she knew by this unexpected turn of events, suddenly felt on her guard with Betsy, and withdrew into melancholy aloofness. Knowing herself to be the weaker of the two, she grew haughty and irritable, and henceforth took to opposing her sister’s dominating influence.
. .
Henk and Betsy had been married a year when the girls’ aunt died. Betsy had given birth to a son. Henk, at the instigation of his wife, had cast around for some employment, for he annoyed her at times with his stolid, good-tempered lassitude, which reminded her of a faithful dog for ever lying at one’s feet and inadvertently getting kicked as a result. He too entertained vague notions of the necessity for a young chap, regardless of the size of his personal fortune, to have some occupation. In the meantime, however, he had found nothing suitable, and had ceased his efforts. In any case, she had little to complain of. In the morning it was his habit to ride out with his two Ulmer hounds running along behind him; in the afternoon he accompanied Betsy on social calls at her behest, or, when relieved of this duty, visited his club. His evenings were frequently taken up with escorting his butterfly spouse to the theatre and soirées, where he did duty as a somewhat burdensome but indispensable accessory. He submitted to this social whirl, for he could not summon the courage to protest, and on the whole found it less daunting to get dressed and follow Betsy than to disturb the domestic peace by pitting his will against hers. But the quiet evenings spent alone together, although few, were gratifying to his innate predilection for home comforts, and his lazy contentment on those occasions did more to rouse his love than the sight of her at some social gathering, engaged in brilliant conversation. That only made him peevish, and he would retreat into sullen silence on the way home. To Betsy staying in was a dreadful bore; she would recline on the sofa with a book in the soporific glow of the gas lamp, stealing looks at her husband as he gazed upon the pages of an illustrated magazine or just sat there blowing on his tea for minutes on end, both of which habits she found exceedingly irritating. At times she became so irritated that she could not resist carping about his failure to find something to do, to which he, rudely awakened from his cosy reverie, could only give a slurred response. Nonetheless, at heart she was quite content; she loved being able to spend as much as she liked on clothes, without the need for any of the meticulous accounts her aunt had obliged her to keep, and frequently she could look back in smiling satisfaction on a week without a single evening spent at home.
Eline, meanwhile, had passed the year in glum solitude at Aunt Vere’s house with its plate-glass windows and Japanese storks and peonies, only occasionally swept up in Betsy’s social whirl. She had done a lot of reading, and was especially taken with Ouida’s rich phantasmagoria of imagined lives in vibrant hues under the golden sunshine of Italian skies, much as in a scintillating kaleidoscope. She read her treasured Tauchnitz editions until the pages, dog-eared and crumpled, came loose and hung by a single thread. When her aunt was ill she spent long hours at her bedside, and even during these vigils, which gave her a sense of romantic fulfilment, she read and re-read her novels. In the airless sick-room with its medicinal odours, Eline was enraptured by the virtues and prowess of noble heroes and the astonishing beauty of infernally wicked or divinely righteous heroines; indeed she was frequently seized with a passionate longing to reside in one of those old English castles herself, the kind of place where earls and duchesses observed such refined etiquette in their courtships, and where exquisitely romantic trysts were held in ancient parklands, with stage-like settings shimmering in the moonlight against a backdrop of blue-green boughs.