“Vincent, stay to dinner, will you?” asked Betsy. For Betsy was in terror at having to face a dull evening. They were not invited out anywhere, and besides, she had not thought it the thing to make any arrangements to go out on her sister’s birthday; neither could she have done so, as during their late feud she had scarcely uttered a word to her. With Vincent she need stand on no ceremony, she could very well ask him half an hour before dinner. Vincent had conversation when he was in a good humour, and, at all events, he brought a fresh face with him to the table.
Vincent accepted the invitation with an indifferent “with pleasure.” In the meantime Henk declared he wanted a walk, and taking his hat quickly left the house, his coat-collar turned up, and his hands in his pockets. Anne, the nursemaid, came to fetch Ben, to make him a little tidy, as his face was besmeared with jam from the pastry he had been eating. Betsy disappeared too, and Eline and Vincent were left alone in the drawing-room, now bright with gas-light.
“Come, let us sit down in the boudoir,” said Eline, and Vincent followed her to the little room. The soft, clear beams from the small crystal chandelier, reflected on the violet plush of the furniture, lent the place an air of something mysteriously intimate, something that seemed to tempt to an unreserved confidence. To Vincent, however, it appeared to convey no sense other than one of a calm well-being; with a sigh he let himself fall on the couch with his usual languor, and put Eline a number of indifferent questions about the acquaintances he had just now seen taking their leave. Whilst answering him, she felt a great sympathy for her cousin arise within her. Again it was that need within her that had aroused such a passion for Fabrice, the need she felt of much [[116]]love and tenderness, the longing to expend the pent-up treasures of her affection. And just as it had struck Paul by the wan reflection of a petroleum-lamp, so it now struck her under the bright gas-light that played and sparkled in a thousand colours through the drooping pendants. Vincent’s resemblance to her dear dead father was so striking that, looking at him, she almost fancied herself once more back in her childhood. Yes, just like that, with that pained expression about the mouth, with those eyes full of sadness, her father used to lie down, exhausted by his artistic visions; just like that his hand used to hang over the arm of his chair when the brush had fallen from his grasp.
And Eline’s sympathy for Vincent grew stronger, permeated with compassion and poetic melancholy, as she sat listening to his low, wan, murmuring voice, while he spoke to her about Smyrna; he seemed more interesting than most of the young men in their coterie. To her he became a martyr to the littleness of the world, when he told her that to him the Hague was kleinstättig and tiresome, and that he longed for much space and freedom. So did she.
“But I weary you with my complaints, parlons autre chose,” he interrupted himself in an altered tone. “It isn’t polite of me to talk so much about myself.”
“Oh no, not at all; you don’t weary me in the least,” she answered somewhat hurriedly, rather upset that he had cut the thread of her fantasy so abruptly. “Don’t you think that I can quite share your thoughts, that I don’t understand how you can wish for anything else than the prosy groove in which we continue to go round and round? Sometimes I, too, would gladly escape from it,” she cried, with a movement of her arms like that of a captive bird beating his wings against his cage. “Sometimes I feel myself moved to some terribly mad freak or another,” and she smiled slyly as she thought of Fabrice.
He, also smiling, shook his head, and just touched her uplifted hand, as it fell gracefully by her side.
“And why should you wish to commit follies now?” he asked. “You go to extremes. To live independently of anyone, not to trouble yourself about the small-talk of a coterie, but to follow your own ideas as long as they are sensible, to change your surroundings as often as you like—that is my ideal. There’s nothing preserves one’s youth so much as change.” [[117]]
“But in order to be independent, to trouble oneself about nothing—one must possess more moral strength than we in our superculture usually dare show,” she answered.
“Moral strength! Oh dear, no; you only want the money, that’s all,” he replied briefly. “If I am rich, have good manners, commit no follies, but manage to keep myself nice and agreeable in the eyes of the world, it is quite in my power to see my ideal realized, without any one accusing me of anything more than perhaps—a little eccentricity.”