3
Anna had played execrably, to Suzette’s despair: she could not even remember the winning trumps!
Dolf called out to his wife:
“Amélie, do come in for a rubber; that is, if Quaerts doesn’t want to. You can’t give your daughter many points, but still you’re not quite so bad!”
“I would rather stay and talk to Mrs. van Even,” said Quaerts.
“Go and play without minding me, if you prefer, Mr. Quaerts,” said Cecile, in the cold voice which she adopted towards people whom she disliked.
Amélie dragged herself away with an unhappy face. She did not play a brilliant game either; and Suzette always lost her temper when she made mistakes.
“I have so long been hoping to make your acquaintance, mevrouw, that I should not like to miss this opportunity,” Quaerts replied.
She looked at him: it troubled her that she could not understand him. She knew him to be something of a Lothario. There were stories in which the name of a married woman was coupled with his. Did he wish to try his blandishments on her? She had no particular hankering for this sort of pastime; she had never cared for flirtations.
“Why?” she asked, calmly, immediately regretting the word; for her question sounded like coquetry and she intended anything but that.
“Why?” he echoed.
He looked at her in slight surprise as he sat near her, with Jules on the ground between them, against his knee, his eyes closed.
“Because ... because,” he stammered, “because you are my friend’s sister, I suppose, and I had never met you here....”
She made no answer: in her seclusion she had forgotten how to talk and she did not take the least trouble about it.
“I used often to see you at the theatre,” said Quaerts, “when Mr. van Even was still alive.”
“At the opera,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Really? I didn’t know you then.”
“No.”
“I have not been out in the evening for a long time, because of my mourning.”
“And I always choose the evening to come to Dolf’s.”
“So that explains why we have never met.”
They were silent for a moment. It seemed to him that she spoke very coldly.
“I should love to go to the opera!” murmured Jules, without opening his eyes. “Or no, after all, I think I would rather not.”
“Dolf told me that you read a great deal,” Quaerts continued. “Do you keep in touch with modern literature?”
“A little. I don’t read so very much.”
“No?”
“Oh, no! I have two children; that leaves me very little time for reading. Besides, it has no particular fascination for me: life is much more romantic than any novel.”
“So you are a philosopher?”
“I? Oh, no, I assure you, Mr. Quaerts! I am the most commonplace woman in the world.”
She spoke with her wicked little laugh and her cold voice: the voice and the laugh which she employed when she feared lest she should be wounded in her secret sensitiveness and when therefore she hid deep within herself, offering to the outside world something very different from what she really was. Jules had opened his eyes and sat looking at her; and his steady glance troubled her.
“You live in a charming house, on the Scheveningen Road.”
“Yes.”
She realized suddenly that her coldness amounted to rudeness; and she did not wish this, even though she did dislike him. She threw herself back negligently; she asked at random, quite without concern, merely for the sake of conversation:
“Have you many relations in The Hague?”
“No; my father and mother live at Velp and the rest of my family at Arnhem chiefly. I never fix myself anywhere; I can’t stay long in one place. I have spent a good many years in Brussels.”
“You have no occupation, I believe?”
“No. As a boy, my one desire was to enter the navy, but I was rejected on account of my eyes.”
Involuntarily she looked into his eyes: small, deep-set eyes, the colour of which she could not determine. She thought they looked sly and cunning.
“I have always regretted it,” he continued. “I am a man of action. I am always longing for action. I console myself as best I can with sport.”
“Sport?” she repeated, coldly.
“Yes.”
“Oh!”
“Quaerts is a Nimrod and a Centaur and a Hercules rolled into one, aren’t you, Quaerts?” said Jules.
“Ah, so you’re ‘naming’ me!” said Quaerts, with a laugh. “Where do you really ‘class’ me?”
“Among the very few people that I really like!” the boy answered, ardently and without hesitation. “Taco, when are you going to teach me to ride?”
“Whenever you like, my son.”
“Yes, but you must fix the day for us to go to the riding-school. I won’t fix a day; I hate fixing days.”
“Well, shall we say to-morrow? To-morrow will be Wednesday.”
“Very well.”
Cecile noticed that Jules was still staring at her. She looked at him back. How was it possible that the boy could like this man! How was it possible that it irritated her and not him, all that health, that strength, that power of muscle and rage of sport! She could make nothing of it; she understood neither Quaerts nor Jules; and she herself drifted away again into that mood of half-consciousness, in which she did not know what she thought nor what at that very moment she might say, in which she seemed to be lost and wandering in search of herself.
She rose, tall, slender and frail in her crape, like a queen who mourns, with little touches of gold in her flaxen hair, where a small jet aigrette glittered like a black mirror.
“I’m going to see who’s winning,” she said and moved to the card-table in the other room.
She stood behind Mrs. Hoze, appeared to be interested in the game; but across the light of the candles she peered at Quaerts and Jules. She saw them talking together, softly, confidentially, Jules with his arm on Quaerts’ knee. She saw Jules looking up, as if in adoration, into the face of this man; and then the boy suddenly threw his arms around his friend in a wild embrace, while the other pushed him away with a patient gesture.
[1] Two military staff-colleges in Holland and Java respectively.