Eline Vere

by Louis Couperus

And with increased animation, she began to talk about her dear husband; over there was his portrait.…

It was past four when Eline hurried away; it was growing dark, it was thawing, and the lowering clouds threatened to fall upon her and choke her. That old lady had been happy, very happy.… and she, Eline, was not happy, even at her age—oh! how would she feel when she too would be old, ugly, and shrivelled up! To her even the memories of the past would bring no comfort, nor yet the solacing thought that happiness did exist, that she had tasted its sweets; to her all would be dull and leaden as the clouds above! “Oh, God, why live, if life were void of happiness?—why, why?” she whispered, and she hurried on to dress for dinner.

It was to be a simple, homely little dinner. At half-past six the Ferelyns came, and shortly after, Emilie and Georges. Betsy received them in the drawing-room, and asked Jeanne how the child was.

“She is much easier now, the little dot; the fever is gone, but still [[32]]she is not quite better. Doctor Reyer said she was getting on. It’s very nice of you to have invited us; a little change is really necessary for me. But you see, I took your word for it that it would be quite a family party, so I haven’t dressed for it.” And with some misgiving her eyes wandered from her own plain black dress to Betsy’s gown of gray satin.

“Really, there is no one else coming but Emilie here, and her brother. But you told me you would be going home early, so we have arranged, later on, to look in at the opera, in Uncle Verstraeten’s box. So you need not be uneasy, you were quite right to come as you are.”

Henk, looking jolly and contented, entered in his smoking-jacket, and on seeing him Jeanne felt more reassured than by all Betsy’s protestations. With Emilie, lively as ever, she was on the most intimate terms, and it was Georges alone, with his immaculate shirt-front, and his big gardenia, who made her feel somewhat uneasy at her own simple dress.

Frans Ferelyn, an East-Indian official, was in Holland on furlough, and his wife was an old school-mate of Eline’s and Betsy’s.

Jeanne seemed a homely little woman, very quiet and depressed under her domestic troubles. Delicate, emaciated, and pallid, with a pair of soft brown eyes, she felt crushed under the double burden of pecuniary embarrassment and anxiety for her three ailing children, and she felt an irresistible longing for India, the land of her birth, and for the quiet life she led there. She suffered much from the cold, and numbered the months she would still have to pass in Holland. She told Emilie of her life at Temanggoeng in the Kadoe—Frans was Comptroller first-class—in the midst of a menagerie of Cochin-China fowls, ducks, pigeons, a cow, two goats, and a cockatoo. “Just like Adam and Eve in Paradise,” remarked Emilie. Then she told them how each morning she used to look after her Persian roses and her pretty azaleas, and gather her vegetables from her own garden, and how her children, immediately on their arrival in Holland, were taken ill and began to cough. “’Tis true, in India they looked rather pale, but there at least they were not obliged to be in constant fear of draughts and open doors.” And she was sorry that, owing to the expense of the voyage, she had had to come away without her baboo, Saripa. She was now in service at Samarang, but she [[33]]had promised to come back to her “as soon as we are home again,” and she was to bring her over some pretty frocks from Holland.

Emilie listened attentively, and did her best to set her talking; she knew how those Indian reminiscences could draw Jeanne out of her usual quiet reserve. Betsy considered her out of place in company, so when she did ask her, it was always together with her husband, and if possible, with one or two others. The fact was, she thought her a bore, generally ill-dressed, and her conversation flat and uninteresting, but still she could not help occasionally inviting her, more with a kind of pity than anything else.

While Frans Ferelyn was speaking to Henk about his forthcoming promotion to Assistant Resident, and Georges was listening to Jeanne telling him about Frans’s horse one day stepping right into their room to fetch his pisang, Betsy lay back in her chair, thinking how long Eline was. She would have liked to have dined early, so as not to be so very late at the opera, and she inwardly hoped that the Ferelyns would not be indiscreet and stay too long. Amusing they certainly were not, she thought, and she rose, concealing her impatience, to fix a bunch of peacock feathers in one of the vases, a few of the knick-knacks on the little centre table; then with her foot she arranged the tiger-skin rug in front of the flaming hearth, all the time feeling annoyed at Eline’s delay.