Eline Vere

XXX

Madame van Raat had written to Dr Reijer, and he had responded by paying Eline a visit. They had greeted each other warmly, and had made light conversation on various topics. Reijer had left it at that during that first visit, as it was clear to him from the outset that Eline was reluctant to engage with him in his capacity as physician. Madame van Raat, present at that encounter, was not favourably impressed by the smart young doctor who spoke with such facility about Spain and Paris instead of touching on the delicate matter at hand. When Reijer called again two days later, she gave him a somewhat chilly welcome. However, she soon noticed the penetrating looks he directed at Eline when he was not glancing distractedly about the room, and her opinion of him improved: he evidently wished to spare Eline’s feelings. Appreciating his tact and delicacy, she left them alone for a while. When Reijer had gone Eline reported that he had examined her thoroughly, and although the old lady was surprised to hear of the young doctor’s powers of persuasion, she was only too happy to place her trust in his expertise. On his third visit he had a word with her in private after seeing Eline. She found him plain-spoken and firm in his opinion; he said outright that he had no wish to mislead her, that he held it incumbent on him to tell her the truth. He had discovered the germs of pulmonary consumption in Eline, the consequence of neglecting a severe cold from which she had mistakenly thought she had recovered. He for his part would naturally exert all his efforts to combat those germs. Beyond that, however, he perceived in Eline’s frame of mind the signs of what he termed ‘the fate of the Veres’. Her late father had been highly strung, too, and so was her cousin Vincent. In Eline’s case it was a soul-disturbing agitation of her nerves, which were tangled like the strings of a broken musical instrument. He would not presume to exaggerate the extent of his knowledge, and believed it would not be in his power to restore full harmony to her mind, no more than he was able to reverse the damage caused by rough handling of a delicate flower. Madame van Raat herself was far better equipped to lavish care on a flower, she was in a position to administer the very remedy Eline was most in need of in her present condition: a restful environment with plenty of warmth and tender care. Come winter, though, a milder climate than that of Holland might be desirable.

He did not mention the quinine drops he had prescribed for Eline.

Madame van Raat’s eyes filled with tears as she listened to the doctor’s verdict, and she pressed his hand with warm sympathy when he took his leave. But the task he had entrusted to her weighed heavily on her frail shoulders, for all that she dearly wished to devote herself entirely to Eline. She feared that Reijer overestimated the healing power of her love for the poor girl, and suspected that for her to recover her health completely another kind of love would need to enter her life.

Eline, however, seemed assuaged, and began to look forward to Reijer’s visits.

The days passed in soothing repose. Eline was reluctant to venture out of the house, despite Reijer’s recommendation that she go for a stroll, preferably late in the day in order to improve her chances of sleeping well at night. But she was more partial to sitting out on the veranda with Madame van Raat of an evening, comfortably installed in a wide wicker chair with a cup of tea, looking up at the darkening sky with the stars coming out one by one like daisies in a meadow. She spoke little, because the old lady always chided her ever so gently when she got carried away and couldn’t stop talking; she was grateful for such gentle correction, and kept silent for long moments, gazing at the stars. Now and then Paul joined them on the veranda for tea. He would perch on the balustrade and indicate a few constellations with a casual wave of the hand — Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, the Lyre — promising to point them out to her on his celestial globe some time. Then, when he was gone, she would tilt back her head and seek out the star patterns all over again, for it seemed to her that they shone softly into her soul.

. .

It was July; the heat of day had succumbed to the long hours of twilight, and she remembered a similar evening at De Horze, a few years ago. They sat on the veranda for a long while, until Madame van Raat announced that she was tired and wanted to go to bed. Eline too retired to her room. She closed the windows, undressed and lay down. The night light spread a soft glow amid the looming shadows, and the curtains over the French windows shimmered in the light of the rising moon. Eline closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

Instead of sinking into slumber, however, she felt tense and wide awake. Her mind was filled with a jumble of illogical thoughts and associations — one moment she was in Spain, the next in Brussels jesting with Eliza, or she was embracing Betsy, who had come towards her leading Ben by the hand, her ears ringing with a tune she had heard someone sing in Madrid; she was in a garden with a Moorish ruin and citrus groves; she was dining at the Moulangers, riding in a carriage at dusk in the environs of the Des Luynes’ chateau, consulting with her doctors in Paris, recoiling from the leering beggar who had given her such a fright in Nice — one scene after another with constantly changing characters and settings.

Her face and neck were beaded with perspiration and she threw off the bed sheet. The slightest sound set her nerves jangling, and suddenly she was struck by the sound of her watching ticking away, which seemed deafeningly loud although she had been wholly unaware of it a moment ago. She heard the wardrobe begin to creak, then what sounded like a fingernail scratching the wallpaper, and suddenly, from outside, came a horrible cry of someone being throttled, and she held her breath in terror — but no, it was merely a cock crowing in the distance.

She turned over with a sigh, opened her eyes and brushed her damp hair from her forehead. Looking up she saw the ghostly reflection of the illuminated curtain in the pier glass. Then her slippers, on the floor at the foot of her bed, caught her attention, and she imagined how horrified she would be if a hand appeared suddenly from under the bedstead to snatch them away. In the looming shadows, which the night light did not dispel, black beasts began to prowl, so she closed her eyes again.

But still sleep escaped her; notwithstanding her shuttered vision, she felt more awake than ever. The creaking of the wardrobe grew louder, as did the scratching on the wallpaper, and any moment now she expected to hear her slippers being snatched away by the hand. She broke out in a sweat when she opened her eyes again and saw her white petticoat draped over a chair — it was a shroud!

Making no movement, not even daring to look away, she stared in wide-eyed horror at the corpse, certain that she had seen it move.

Then, in the deep silence that filled the house, she heard the scrape of a key as it found the lock in the front door, and a wave of relief washed over her. It was Paul, returning home to bed, and she followed his every movement as he crept up the stairs, tiptoed across the landing and let himself into his room. A few moments later she heard him setting down his boots in the corridor and shutting his door. After that, all was still.

The knowledge that Paul was close by brought Eline back to earth, and she saw that the corpse was nothing but her petticoat. She got up, took the night light and crouched down to look under her bed — there was no hand to be seen. But then, as she was setting the lamp on the table, the shadows began to heave again with wild animals on the prowl, and she ran back to bed, shivering with fear as she drew up the clammy, rumpled sheet. Her next thought was of the hand under the bed.

However hard she tried to halt the workings of her brain so that she might sleep, she stayed awake, filled with a dark sense of foreboding. Madame van Raat might die all of a sudden, and then what? She conjured up all manner of confused, illogical scenes illustrating the circumstances of her passing: a protracted illness, like the one Aunt Vere had suffered, complete with bouts of ill temper which Eline would bear with infinite forbearance, or a sudden heart attack, or else a fatal accident, such as a railway disaster. Or something even more dramatic: there was a man, for instance, a man with a grudge bent on revenge, he was dragging the old lady over the floor by her grey hair, stabbing her with a kitchen knife so that she lay dying in a pool of blood, until Eline broke down and sobbed at her fantasised horror.

How grief-stricken she would be, how she would cling to the lifeless body, how she would scream when forcibly dragged away! In a flash, the tragedy was transformed into a gentle scene, filled with love and happiness: a reconciliation between her and Otto, who came towards her, pressed her to his chest and kissed her. With their arms about each other, they wandered off into a Spanish landscape, only for her to push him away abruptly and for him to fall at her feet in a flood of tears. She raised him up again, and they were standing on top of a bridge, swaying sky-high over a thunderous waterfall, deafened by the noise; then he enfolded her in his arms, and together, exhausted from their grief and the roaring in their ears, they jumped into the deep.

Outside, the cock crowed again, and Eline sat up with a jolt. Had she been asleep, had she been dreaming? How could that be? She could have sworn that she had not slept a wink. Panting and clammy with perspiration, she got out of bed. Her throat was parched, and after moistening her face with a wet towel she gulped down a glass of water, then another and another in rapid succession. She shivered, despite the warm stuffiness of the room, and donned a grey woollen peignoir. Then she lifted the edge of the window curtain and looked outside, where the night was beginning to pale. It was half-past three; the cock crowed yet again, and this time its cry was answered by several others.

Her fevered imagination came to rest in the bleak onset of dawn, and she turned away from the window. The sight of her rumpled bed, on which she had spent so many hours tossing and turning, filled her with distaste, so she lay down on the Persian couch instead. From there she could just see the leafy crowns of the chestnut trees outside, and she focused her attention on the ruffled foliage.

Inside, the night light sputtered, flickered, then went out, leaving the wick smoking.

Eline dropped off to asleep, exhausted in mind and body, as the gathering light of day played on her sallow, waxen features.

. .

Reijer was not due to call on her that morning, but Eline sent him an urgent summons and he came forthwith. She almost begged him to give her something to make her sleep, saying that she would surely go mad if the horrendous experience of the past sleepless nights repeated itself. Reijer replied that he could of course prescribe a sleep-inducing medicine, but she would be far better off trying to regain a normal sleep pattern without artificial means. She should take exercise, go for walks. Eline sighed and shrugged her shoulders impatiently. She had barely had the strength to get out of bed this morning, and even now she could only drag herself with difficulty from one chair to the next! Take exercise — in this warm weather? She was simply not up to it, so she stayed at home, only feeling slightly revived in the fresh air of evening, in her large wicker chair on the veranda. Madame van Raat eyed her with concern.

Come the evening, Paul joined them again for tea, as was becoming his habit. Regarding Eline from his perch on the balustrade he was reminded of the dance party for Lili’s wedding, when he had conceived the idea of setting his cap at Eline, just for the sport of it. Although she was not as fresh-faced as she used to be, and much thinner, she made on him an impression of ethereal elegance; indeed, he found her rather beautiful with her dark, sunken eyes and her sad little mouth. However, he dismissed all thought of engaging her attention with honeyed tones and blandishments, for he could see that her spirit was broken. He recalled how dazzling she used to be, how coquettish and vivacious, with laughter pearling from her lips, and the memory filled him with a deep sense of pity for her. She had said her life was in ruins, and he thought that might well be the case.

‘How are you feeling, Eline? Better than this afternoon?’ he asked, and in his voice there was something, a certain warmth, that reminded her of Henk.

She nodded faintly, and he pointed to the stars that were beginning to twinkle in the dusk, asking whether she would like to see his celestial globe; this was as good an occasion as any, especially since he had brought it down from the attic that very morning. She was in no mind for astronomy, but did not wish to disappoint him, so off he went to fetch the globe. He placed himself beside her, and she sat up straight in readiness for instruction. Madame van Raat looked on as Paul, having availed himself of her crochet needle, used it to point out the constellations, after which Eline obligingly tried to identify the corresponding figures in the sky, smiling as she raised her finger to trace imaginary lines from one star to the next.

Paul’s mother noted the sweetness of Eline’s smile, and was likewise impressed by her son’s affable tone, in which there was not a trace of the cynicism and breezy condescension he so often affected. A vague sense of optimism came over her: to be sure, time was when she would have liked to see Eline wedded to her son Henk, but she could not help thinking that a measure of tenderness had crept into Eline’s exchanges with Paul of late. Even now she was responding with some animation while Paul pursued his elementary lesson in astronomy, circumstantially explaining that since she was looking down at the stars on the astronomy globe whereas she looked up at them in the sky, she should try and imagine herself at the centre of the globe.

That evening Paul stayed at home until the ladies made to retire at eleven. When he took his leave, his mother clasped his hand and kissed him on the forehead, instead of nodding a perfunctory goodbye as she usually did.