‘Like Papa,’ she smiled sadly.
‘And then I get all excited about making the best of my voice, such as it is, but before I know it all my plans and resolutions have fizzled out like so many burnt matches.’
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘From now on I shall be hiding the aspirations of my genius in law cases, you’ll see,’ he said with a chuckle as he rose to his feet. ‘But now I must go to Prinsessegracht — to the Verstraetens’, as a matter of fact. So don’t expect me this afternoon. We have a good deal to do before Losch arrives. Goodbye, Eline! Bye-bye little Ben!’
‘Goodbye, then. I hope your throat will mend soon.’
Paul left and Eline returned to her piano. For a while she sat thinking what a pity it was that Paul had so little energy, and from him her thoughts drifted to Henk.
But she felt altogether too cheerful to do much philosophising, so she resumed her singing with gusto, and did not pause until the tinkle of the noon bell summoned her and Ben downstairs.
. .
Paul had said he would not be lunching at home, as he was expected at the Verstraetens’. He lived in Laan van Meerdervoort with his mother, who was Madame Verstraeten’s elder sister and a respectable lady with pensive, pale-blue eyes, a slightly old-fashioned, silvery-grey coiffure, and a demeanour suffused with resignation and fatigue. As she was having increasing trouble walking, she was usually to be found sitting in her high-backed easy chair with her head bowed down and her blue-veined hands folded in her lap. She led a calm, monotonous life, the aftermath of a calm, contented and nigh cloudless existence at the side of her husband, whose portrait hung close by. She looked at it often: a handsome figure in general’s uniform, strong, open features set with a pair of faithful, sensible eyes and an engaging expression about the firm, closed mouth. Life had brought her few great sorrows, and for that, in the poetic simplicity of her faith, she thanked the Lord. Of late, however, she had been feeling increasingly tired, her spirit quite broken by the loss of the man for whom she had felt affection until the end, by which time her youthful, ebullient love for him had subsided into the unruffled serenity of a becalmed lake. Since his passing she had taken to fretting over a thousand trivialities, which gave rise to daily vexations with servants and tradesmen, and these sources of annoyance had come together in her mind as an intolerable burden. She was feeling her age; life had little more to offer her, and she withdrew into a quietly egotistic state of daydreaming about the lost poetry of her past.
She had borne him three children, the youngest of whom, a girl, had died.
Of her two sons her favourite was Henk, whose sturdy posture reminded her most of her husband. But in his good-natured disposition, too, there was more of the upright robustness of their father than in Paul’s high-strung wilfulness and constrained genius. Paul she had always found rather too unsettled and nervous; as a student in Leiden he had interrupted his law studies several times, and had only graduated after Uncle Verstraeten stepped in to apply some moral pressure. And she was no less concerned nowadays, what with his staying out late, his passions for painting, tableaux vivants and the singing of duets, not to mention his recurring bouts of idleness, during which he would lounge on the sofa all afternoon pretending to read a book.
In the years preceding his marriage, Henk, being more staid and homely than Paul, had fitted in better with his old mother’s habits. He was not given to conversation, but she had never found fault with his taciturn habit: to her it was like being in the comforting presence of a faithful Newfoundland dog keeping a half-closed, watchful eye on its mistress. She felt so secure in dear Henk’s company. She disliked being alone, for it was then that the rose-tinted remembrances of far-off times contrasted all too painfully with the uniform greyness of the present, and of Paul she saw little more than when he was bolting down his dinner in order to keep some appointment, or lazing about the house. She seldom went out, having grown unaccustomed to the noisy traffic of the streets and the hubbub of crowds.
Henk was her pet, and despite the worries clouding her mind she was ever alert where his welfare was concerned. She regretted her son’s marriage to Betsy Vere. She had never considered Betsy a suitable match for her boy, nor indeed had she been able to give him her whole-hearted maternal blessing when he announced whom he intended to take for a wife. But she had made no attempt to dissuade her beloved son from his choice, for fear of causing him unhappiness. On the contrary, and somewhat to her own surprise, she had concealed her feeling of unease toward the intruder and had welcomed her as a daughter. All the same, she felt deeply concerned about Henk’s future. She had been acquainted with the late Madame Vere, though not closely, and had not been taken with her: she remembered her as domineering and disagreeable, and was troubled by Betsy’s resemblance to her. Although Henk was clearly possessed of much more firmness of character than Betsy’s father, whom she remembered as being deathly pale and plagued by migraines while letting his wife think and act for him, although Henk had inherited his father’s frank robustness and would not stand for any nonsense from a wife, she was convinced he would never be as happy with Betsy as she herself had been with her husband. Dwelling on these thoughts, she would sigh and grow moisteyed; the maternal instinct that made her blind to Henk’s failings also gave her a keen sense of an underlying truth, while her only wish was for her son to find the same happiness in marriage as she had known herself.
She was roused from her meditation by Leentje, the maid, laying the round table for one in the next room, and with weary resignation she seated herself to partake of her luncheon alone. How hateful this solitude was! Tomorrow would be the same to her as today: the summer of her life had come to an end, and though autumn and winter might be free from storms, all they brought was dreariness and cold lethargy. She might as well be dead!
The sense of loneliness and abandonment made her so dull that she did not once scold Leentje for her clumsiness, although it did not escape her that her porcelain serving dish had become severely chipped along the edges during the washing-up.
. .
That afternoon Eline left the house earlier than usual, to call at the Verstraetens’. It was nearing the end of November, and winter had set in with a vengeance. There was a sharp frost; the snow, still bluish-white and unsullied, crackled under Eline’s light, regular tread, but where possible she took to the pavements that had been swept clear of snow. With her daintily gloved hands tucked into the small muff, now and then bestowing a cordial smile and nod on some acquaintance from under her short veil of tulle, she made her way along Javastraat towards Prinsessegracht. She was still in a happy humour, content with her smart winter ensemble trimmed with brown fur, and quite unaffected by the slight argument she had just had with Betsy, who had accused her of ordering Grete to do Mina’s work. This kind of disagreement was becoming increasingly frequent of late, much to Henk’s dismay, for he hated nothing more than the pettiness of domestic bickering.
This time, however, Eline had paid little heed to Betsy’s remark, and had responded less sharply than usual; she had no intention of letting her good humour be spoilt by such trivialities — life was too dear to her.
And, thankful for having curbed her temper, she turned the corner of Javastraat.
Arriving at the Verstraetens’, she found the household still in some disarray. Dien declared that her mistress was not receiving, but Eline brushed her aside and made her way to the suite, where she came upon the lady of the house, who apologised for being in her peignoir. Losch, the photographer, had his head tucked under the green cloth of his apparatus to view the ensemble portraying the five senses. Etienne and Paul and the girls were all smiles, and Eline, after apologising to Madame Verstraeten for her absence the previous evening, said how glad she was of the opportunity to see something of the tableaux after all. But now, in the bleak daylight reflected from the snowy garden, the scene did not make the same glowing, lavish impression as the previous evening, nor were the colours as rich as they had been in the blaze of Bengal lights. The draperies hung in loose and crumpled folds, Frédérique’s cloth of gold had a dingy, mottled tint, her ermine turned out to be a plain woollen blanket embroidered with black, and Etienne’s blonde wig was decidedly out of curl. Losch begged them to put on a more affable expression, to no avail; Lili, as the Sense of Smell, lay half asleep on her cushions.