Read Online Inevitable by Louis Couperus - Free Book Online Page B

his chair, without speaking, while Cornélie read him the opening of her pamphlet. He was moved by what he glimpsed of personal suffering and experience, but he was irritated by the lack of harmony between that slim, lily-like woman, with her fractured movements, and the surroundings, in which she now felt at home, totally absorbed in her hatred of society, especially Hague society, which had become hostile to her, because she had not stayed with a blackguard who abused her. Andas she read Duco’s thought: she would not write this way if she were not writing everything from the perspective of her own pain. Why doesn’t she turn it into a novella …? Why that generalising of one’s own suffering, and why that admonitory tone … He did not find it beautiful. He found the sound of her voice so harsh, those truths so personal, that bitterness unsympathetic and that hatred of convention so petty. And when she asked him something, he did not say much, shook his head in mild approval, and sat there uncomfortably stiff. He did not know what to reply, he did not know how to admire, he found her un-artistic. And yet a great pity welled up in him, he saw how sweet she would be, what a noble woman, once she had found the line in her life and moved harmoniously along that line with the music of her own movement. Now he saw her taking a wrong path; a path pointed out to her by others, and not taken on an inner impulse. And he felt a deep pity for her. He, as an artist, but especially as a dreamer, sometimes saw things with great clarity, despite his dreams, despite his all-embracing feeling for line and colour and haziness; he, the artist and dreamer, often saw as if clairvoyant the emotion glimpsed beneath people’s pretence, saw the soul, like a light shining through alabaster, and he suddenly saw her lost, searching, wandering; searching for she knew not what; wandering through she knew not what labyrinth; far from her line, her lifeline and the direction in which her soul was moving, which she had never yet found.
    She sat excitedly in front of him, having read her final pages, face flushed, voice resonating, her whole being feverish. It was as if she wanted to fling those pages full ofbitterness at the feet of her Dutch sisters, at the feet of all women. Lost in his reflections, melancholy in his pity for her, he had scarcely listened, and shook his head in vague approval. And suddenly she spoke about herself, gave herself completely, told the story of her life: her young lady’s existence in The Hague, the upbringing designed to make her shine a little and be pleasant and beautiful, without one serious look at her future, simply awaiting a good match, with a flirtation here, and a crush there until she was married; a good marriage in her own circle; her husband a lieutenant in the hussars, a handsome strapping fellow, good distinguished family, a little money, with whom she had fallen in love because of his handsome face, and the dashing figure he cut in uniform, which suited him; who had fallen in love with her, as he might have fallen in love with another girl, because she had a pretty face: then, the revelation of those very first days: the immediate eruption of disharmony between their characters. She, spoiled at home, fine, delicate, sensitive, but egoistically sensitive, but irritable about her own spoiled ego; he, no longer paying court, but immediately and crudely the husband with rights to this and rights to that, now with curses, now with fulminations; she, without any tact, without any of the patience needed to make the best of their lives that were headed for disaster: nervous, passionate, pitching passion against coarseness, which made his violence flare up to the point where he abused her, swore at her, hit her, shook her and slammed her against the wall …
    Then her divorce; he at first unwilling, despite everything happy to have a home, and in that home a wife, alittle woman for the master of the house, and not