3
“Is this the first time he has been to see you?” asked Amélie.
“Yes,” replied Cecile. “An uncalled-for civility, don’t you think?”
“Taco Quaerts is always very correct in matters of etiquette,” said Anna, defending him.
“Still, this visit was hardly a matter of etiquette,” said Cecile, laughing merrily. “But Taco Quaerts seems to be quite infallible in the eyes of all of you.”
“He waltzes divinely!” cried Suzette. “The other day, at the Eekhofs’ dance....”
Suzette chattered on; there was no restraining Suzette that afternoon; she seemed already to hear the castanets rattling in her little brain.
Jules had a peevish fit on him, but he remained quietly at a window, with the boys.
“You don’t much care about Quaerts, do you, Auntie?” asked Anna.
“I don’t find him attractive,” said Cecile. “You know, I am easily influenced by my first impressions. I can’t help it, but I don’t like those very healthy, robust people, who look so strong and manly, as if they walked straight through life, clearing away everything that stands in their way. It may be morbid of me, but I can’t help it; I always dislike any excessive display of health and physical force. Those strong people look upon others who are not so strong as themselves much as the Spartans used to look upon their deformed children.”
Jules could control himself no longer:
“If you think that Taco is no better than a Spartan, you know nothing at all about him,” he said, fiercely.
Cecile looked at him, but, before Amélie could interpose, he continued:
“Taco is the only person with whom I can talk about music and who understands every word I say. And I don’t believe I could talk with a Spartan.”
“Jules, how rude you are!” cried Suzette.
“I don’t care!” he exclaimed, furiously, rising suddenly and stamping his foot. “I don’t care! I won’t hear Taco abused; and Aunt Cecile knows it and only does it to tease me. And I think it very mean to tease a boy, very mean....”
His mother and sisters tried to bring him to reason with their authority. But he caught up his books:
“I don’t care! I won’t have it!”
He was gone in a moment, furious, slamming the door, which groaned with the shock. Amélie was trembling in every nerve:
Oh, that boy!” she hissed out, shivering. “That Jules, that Jules!...”
“It’s nothing,” said Cecile, gently, excusing him. “He is just a little excitable....”
She had turned rather paler and glanced at her boys, Dolf and Christie, who had looked up in dismay, their mouths wide open with astonishment.
“Is Jules naughty, mamma?” asked Christie.
She shook her head, smiling. She felt a strange, an unspeakably strange weariness. She did not know what it meant; but it seemed to her as if very distant vistas were opening before her eyes and fading into the horizon, pale, in a great light. Nor did she know what this meant; but she was not angry with Jules and it seemed to her as if he had lost his temper, not with her, but with somebody else. A sense of the enigmatical depth of life, the soul’s unconscious mystery, like to a fair, bright endlessness, a far-away silvery light, shot through her in silent rapture.
Then she laughed:
“Jules is so nice,” she said, “when he gets excited.”
Anna and Suzette, upset at the incident, played with the boys, looking over their picture-books. Cecile spoke only to her sister. But Amélie’s nerves were still quivering.
“How can you defend those ways of Jules’?” she asked, in a choking voice.
“I think it nice of him to stand up for people he likes. Don’t you think so too?”
Amélie grew calmer. Why should she be put out if Cecile was not?
“I dare say,” she replied. “I don’t know. He has a good heart I believe, but he is so unmanageable. But, who knows, perhaps it’s my fault: if I understood things better, if I had more tact....”
She grew confused; she sought for something more to say and found nothing, wandering like a stranger through her own thoughts. Then, suddenly, as if struck by a ray of certain knowledge, she said:
“But Jules is not stupid. He has a good eye for all sorts of things and for persons too. Personally, I think you judge Taco Quaerts wrongly. He is a very interesting man and a great deal more than a mere sportsman. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about him different from other people, I can’t say exactly what....”
She was silent, seeking, groping.
“I wish Jules got on better at school. As I say, he is not stupid, but he learns nothing. He has been two years now in the third class. The boy has no application. He makes me despair of him.”
She was silent again; and Cecile also did not speak.
“Ah,” said Amélie, “I dare say it is not his fault! Very likely it is my fault. Perhaps he takes after me....”
She looked straight before her: sudden, irrepressible tears filled her eyes and fell into her lap.
“Amy, what’s the matter?” asked Cecile, kindly.
But Amélie had risen, so that the girls, who were still playing with the children, might not see her tears. She could not restrain them, they streamed down and she hurried away into the adjoining drawing-room, a big room in which Cecile never sat.
“What’s the matter, Amy?” Cecile repeated.
She had followed Amélie out and now threw her arms about her, made her sit down, pressed Amélie’s head against her shoulder.
“How do I know what it is?” Amélie sobbed. “I don’t know, I don’t know.... I am wretched because of that feeling in my head. It is more than I can bear sometimes. After all, I am not mad, am I? Really, I don’t feel mad, or as if I were going mad! But I feel sometimes as if everything had gone wrong in my head, as if I couldn’t think. Everything runs through my brain. It’s a terrible feeling!”
“Why don’t you see a doctor?” asked Cecile.
“No, no, he might tell me I was mad; and I’m not. He might try to send me to an asylum. No, I won’t see a doctor. I have every reason to be happy otherwise, have I not? I have a kind husband and dear children; I have never had any great sorrow. And yet I sometimes feel profoundly miserable, desperately miserable! It is always as if I wanted to reach some place and could not succeed. It is always as if I were hemmed in....”
She sobbed violently; a storm of tears rained down her face. Cecile’s eyes, too, were moist; she liked her sister, she felt sorry for her. Amélie was only ten years older than she; and already she had something of an old woman about her, something withered and shrunken, with her hair growing grey at the temples, under her veil.
“Cecile, tell me, Cecile,” she said, suddenly, through her sobs, “do you believe in God?”
“Why, of course I do, Amy!”
“I used to go to church sometimes, but it was no use.... And I’ve stopped going.... Oh, I am so unhappy! It is very ungrateful of me. I have so much to be grateful for.... Do you know, sometimes I feel as if I should like to go to God at once, all at once, just like that!”
“Come, Amy, don’t excite yourself so.”
“Ah, I wish I were like you, so calm! Do you feel happy?”
Cecile smiled and nodded. Amélie sighed; she remained lying for a moment with her head against her sister’s shoulder. Cecile kissed her, but suddenly Amélie started:
“Be careful,” she whispered, “the girls might come in. There ... there’s no need for them to see that I’ve been crying.”
Rising, she arranged her hat before the looking-glass, carefully dried her veil with her handkerchief:
“There, now they won’t know,” she said. “Let’s go in again. I am quite calm. You’re a dear thing....”
They went back to the boudoir:
“Come, girls, it’s time to go home,” said Amélie, in a voice which was still a little unsettled.
“Have you been crying, Mamma?” Suzette at once asked.