4
The ladies remained alone; the men went to the smoking-room with young Hoze. Cecile saw Mrs. Hoze come towards her. She asked her if she had not been bored at dinner; they sat down together, in a confidential tête-à-tête.
Cecile made the necessary effort to reply to Mrs. Hoze; but she would have liked to go somewhere and weep quietly, because everything passed so quickly, because the speck of the present was so small. Gone was the sweet charm of their conversation during dinner about sympathy, a fragile intimacy amid the worldly show about them. Gone was that moment, never, never to return: life sped over it with its constant flow, as with a torrent of all-obliterating water. Oh, the sorrow of it, to think how quickly, like an intangible perfume, everything speeds away, everything that is dear to us!...
Mrs. Hoze left her; Suzette van Attema came to talk to Cecile. She was dressed in pink; and she glittered in all her aspect as if gold-dust had poured all over her, upon her movements, her eyes, her words. She spoke volubly to Cecile, telling interminable tales, to which Cecile did not always listen. Suddenly, through Suzette’s prattle, Cecile heard the voices of two women whispering behind her; she only caught a word here and there:
“Emilie Hijdrecht, you know....”
“Only gossip, I think; Mrs. Hoze does not seem to heed it....”
“Ah, but I know it as a fact!”
The voices were lost in the hum of the others. Cecile just caught a sound like Quaerts’ name. Then Suzette asked, suddenly:
“Do you know young Mrs. Hijdrecht, Auntie?”
“No.”
“Over there, with the diamonds. You know, they talk about her and Quaerts. Mamma doesn’t believe it. At any rate, he’s a great flirt. You sat next to him, didn’t you?”
Cecile suffered severely in her innermost sensitiveness. She shrank into herself entirely, doing all that she could to appear different from what she was. Suzette saw nothing of her discomfiture.
The men returned. Cecile looked to see whether Quaerts would speak to Mrs. Hijdrecht. But he wholly ignored her presence and even, when he saw Suzette sitting with Cecile, came over to them to pay a compliment to Suzette, to whom he had not yet spoken.
It was a relief to Cecile when she was able to go. She was yearning to be alone, to recover herself, to return from her abstraction. In her brougham she scarcely dared breathe, fearful of something, she could not say what. When she reached home she felt a stifling heaviness which seemed to paralyse her; and she dragged herself languidly up the stairs to her dressing-room.
And yet, on the stairs, there fell over her, as from the roof of her house, a haze of protecting safety. Slowly she went up, her hand, holding a long glove, pressing the velvet banister of the stairway. She felt as if she were about to swoon:
“But, Heaven help me ... I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!” she whispered between her trembling lips, in sudden amazement.
It was as in a rhythm of astonishment that she wearily mounted the stairs, higher and higher, in a silent surprise of sudden light.
“But I am fond of him, I love him, I love him!”
It sounded like a melody through her weariness.
She reached her dressing-room, where Greta had lighted the gas; she dragged herself inside. The door of the nursery stood half open; she went in, threw back the curtain of Christie’s little bed, dropped on her knees and looked at the child. The boy partly awoke, still in the warmth of a deep sleep; he crept a little from between the sheets, laughed, threw his arms about Cecile’s bare neck:
“Mummy dear!”
She pressed him tightly in the embrace of her slender, white arms; she kissed his raspberry mouth, his drowsed eyes. And meantime the refrain sang on in her heart, right across the weariness which seemed to break her by the bedside of her child:
“But I am fond of him, I love him, I love him, I love him...!”