FOOTNOTES:
[26] Malay: forward!
CHAPTER XIII
No, nobody saw it in him. He could admit that now without hesitation. Around him there appeared to be—he became more and more conscious of it—an opaque sphere, like a materialized phantasm, through which no one could see him, through which no one could penetrate and know him as he knew himself. This evening, as he sat with Constance, Constance did not see that he had met Pauline yesterday and gone back with her to her room. His wife did not notice it; Van der Welcke did not notice it. There was nothing around him but the everyday circumstances of an after-dinner chat in Constance' drawing-room, in the soft, cosy light of the lace-shaded lamps, while the wind outside blew from a great distance and howled moaning round the little house.... In his easy-chair, with the glass of grog mixed by Constance at his side, he was just a big, burly, light-haired fellow in his mufti; and his movements were brisk, his parade-voice sounded loud.... His wife was sitting there, gentle and placid, the quiet, resigned little mother; the children were asleep at home. Oh, his children, how he loved them!... Certainly, all of that existed, it was no phantasm, it was most certainly the truth; but behind that truth lay hidden another truth; and that was why it seemed a phantasm, his outward life as an officer, a husband, a father, while the real truth was what he always kept to himself: his strange gloom; the great worm that gnawed at him; his hot, racing blood; his sentimental and melancholy soul; that wriggling horror in his marrow; that recrudescence of sensuality in his blood.... The quiet, kindly words fell softly round the room, like small, sweet things between a brother and a sister who still have sympathy and affection for each other amid the inevitable slow moving apart of the family-spheres; but he—though he talked, though he was lively, though he cracked joke—he saw Pauline before him, as he had held her in his arms the day before.... Heavens, he couldn't help it: why was he built like that? A handsome woman, standing before his eyes, drove him crazy! Well, for years, all the years of his marriage, he had remained sober and sedate, but he had gradually begun to feel that this sedateness did not really suit him. It was no good his thinking it rotten; it was no good his telling himself that he was a husband and a father—the father of such jolly children too—and that he oughtn't to think of those things, that all that sort of thing belonged to his youth, to which he had said good-bye. It had been all very well to say it. But a thousand memories had gone curling into the air before his eyes, like swarming spirals; and, when he met Pauline again—by accident?—he had made an appointment with her for the next evening, in her room, cursing himself as he did so and swearing at her, with a torrent of rough words.... No, nobody had kissed him like that for years! Besides, he was sentimental. Didn't he himself know, damn it, what a sentimental ass he was? Didn't he know that sometimes, when he read a book or saw a play, when Mamma told him her troubles, as she had now got into the habit of doing, when he saw Dorine and felt sorry for her: didn't he himself know, damn it, that he was a sentimental ass and that he must pull himself together and not let the tears come to his eyes.... And Pauline, whether she did or did not know how sentimental he was: he couldn't see as far as that—not only kissed him as no one else did and knew how to drive him crazy, but she also worked upon his sentimentality. Was she making a fool of him, or did she mean all she said? He had never been able to trust those eyes of hers: they always retained a glint of mockery; but, when she said to him, "Men ... men are all beasts, every one of them, Gerrit ... except you.... You're not ... you're so nice and gentle ... however rough you may be," then she had him by his sentimental side and he did not know how to shake her off....
"I tell you, Gerrit, that's why I was so glad to see you again ... oh, I was so glad, Gerrit!"
He had cursed her, asked why she didn't go after a young, rich fellow rather than him, who was neither young nor rich; but her golden eyes had gleamed and she had merely repeated:
"Oh, men are all beasts, Gerrit ... beasts, beasts ... every one of them!"
And—perhaps that was the stupidest thing of all—he had believed her, believed that he was the only one whom she did not think a beast; and, when a woman got hold of him by his crazy side and his sentimental side as well, then he did not find it easy to wrench himself away: oh, he knew himself well enough for that!
Not one of them knew it, you see, while he sat talking so quietly with them, while he sipped his grog with enjoyment, his legs stretched out wide in front of him, and while he heard the raging wind outside come howling up from the distance.... And now Paul came in, rubbing his hands: he had driven up in a cab, declaring that he was too old to walk from the Houtstraat to the Kerkhoflaan in that weather and through such dirty streets. Why didn't he take the tram? Thank you for nothing: was there ever such a filthy conveyance as a tram, in wind and rain too? And a volley of sparkling witticisms flashed out for a moment: tirades against his dirty country, where it was always, always raining; against people, against the whole world, all dirty alike.... When he sat down, he looked round, with a glance that had become a second habit, to see that there were no bits of fluff on his chair. And he at once ceased talking, the battery of his words exhausted, sat still, not thinking it worth while to talk, because nobody appreciated what he said. Gerrit heard Constance chide him, in her gentle voice, in a sisterly but serious fashion, because he was growing so elderly, shutting himself up, giving way to his mania for cleanliness and for thinking everything dirty. He answered with a couple of whimsical sallies....
Then Constance said that she had asked Dorine also, but that Dorine did not seem to be coming; and that Aunt Ruyvenaer was too tired, because she was fixing up the new small house with the girls. And Gerrit felt—now that Mamma was getting old, very old—how Constance was trying to keep the elements of the family together in her place. Not in such a wide and comprehensive manner as Mamma used to do—and still did—but with some measure of sympathy. Ah, she wouldn't succeed, thought Gerrit! The circles were not moving closer together: each was just himself; he was no different from the rest. Was he not thinking of Pauline? Had he not his silent secret? Had not each of them perhaps his silent secret, while they sat talking together with such apparent sympathy?...
Addie came in, after finishing his school-work upstairs; and Gerrit noticed the conciliatory smile with which he at once went up to his father, who had been sulking of late because his boy had made a choice of which he altogether disapproved. But for weeks and weeks he had seemed unable to resist the conciliatory smile; and Gerrit had noticed that it was Van der Welcke himself who suffered most from his sulking, which went on because he did not know how to manage a gradual change of attitude, while the boy's calm smile meant:
"Daddie will have to give in, for what I want is only reasonable...."
And Gerrit enjoyed looking at Addie, hoping that his own boys would grow up like that; but Paul, as soon as he saw his nephew, flashed forth into chaff, a chaff which had a speculative interest underlying it and which the boy took quietly, looking at Paul with his serious, blue eyes, which gazed so steadily out of his fresh, boyish face.
"Well, learned professor in ovo, my dear doctor in spe, how are the patients? Are they keeping you busy just now? Has mankind increased in vitality and primordial vigour since you entered the therapeutic arena? O great healer, on whom are you going to try your powers first, Æsculapius? On members of your family, I suppose? Are you going to make us live for ever, Addie? Well, you needn't trouble about me.... Can't you manage to make the human body work a little more cleanly in future? That's the thing before which we're expected to kneel in admiration: the Creator's masterpiece, the human body; and what is dirtier than the human body? A nasty house of flesh, with our poor small soul pining away inside it.... Addie, when you grow very clever later on, just remove all that: entrails, intestines, the whole bag of tricks; and put in its place a little silver machine which a fellow can polish at least ... if there must be a machine of some sort!"
The boy never got annoyed, but stood in front of his uncle and put his hand on Paul's shoulder and looked at him and said:
"Why aren't you always so lively, Uncle?"
"Lively? Do you think me lively? He thinks I'm lively, while I sit here cursing human filthiness! Is that your diagnosis, professor? Well, you're quite out of it, my boy! You'll never get your ten guilders for that! Lively? Heavens, boy, I'm far from that!... As long as life remains as dirty as it is, I shall be as melancholy as melancholy can be.... Cure me, if you like, but first clean the Augean stable.... There's just one little clean spot left in our soul; but all the rest is dirty!... Tell me now: whom will you start on? Couldn't you cure Uncle Gerrit? Give him a better appetite? Sounder sleep? A healthier complexion? Teach him to buck up that big carcase of his a bit?... Just see how wasted he looks!..."
There was something in Paul's chaff that grated on Gerrit very unpleasantly; but he laughed, as though he thought it the best joke he had ever heard, that Paul should be wishing him a better appetite and sounder sleep. Was Paul getting at him? Did Paul see through his sham strength? And would Addie do so, later?... No, nobody saw through it: the centipede rooted in him unseen by them all....
And he got up, to mix himself another grog; but he mixed it so that it was hardly more than hot water and lemon.
CHAPTER XIV
He had never quite understood her, not even in the old days. In the old days, as a young officer, he had seen in her a fine girl, a delicious girl, of whom he had been madly enamoured. He had never understood her eyes, never understood her soul; but formerly he had not thought so very much about those eyes and that soul, because in those days he didn't know much about himself either, did not know what he knew now. In those days, he only now and then had a vague glimpse of his own latent sentimentality: to-day, he knew that sentimentality to be there most positively, as a blue background to his soul. And he was so much afraid of that sentimentality, so much afraid lest he should miss the truth, the naked, mocking reality of that courtesan's soul, so much afraid lest he should make it out to be finer than it really was, kinder above all and gentler and more tender, that he could never speak to her without abusing her or swearing at her, his voice as rough as if he were roaring at one of his hussars.
"I mustn't let myself be put upon by her ... or by myself either," he constantly reflected.
And he kept on his guard. Add to that a vague resentment, at not having been able to keep away from her, at having gone to see her in her room; a vague resentment at the thought of his home, of his children, of all that he went back to when he left her room. The way you got used to anything, he would reflect! Now, when he had been to her, he would put his latchkey calmly into his front-door, without feeling his heart beating with nervousness, would undress calmly, would walk into the room where Adeline lay in bed! The way you got used to everything and by degrees came to do things which at first you thought rotten! You did it because you couldn't very well help it ... and also because your ideas about things, day by day, as you did it, slumbered away into a feeling that you weren't responsible, that it was no use resisting what had got such a hold of you.... Nevertheless, when he was with her, he always felt that resentment keenly: it did not slumber away.... At Pauline's, he had a keen apprehension of being still more imposed upon, of seeing kindness and charming tenderness in that girl, whereas of course she was nothing but a courtesan who meant to get money out of him. And then, in her small, shabby room, he would roar at her and ask:
"Look here, why can't you leave me alone?"
Her golden eyes gleamed; and he read a secret mockery in them. No, mark you, he'd take jolly good care that his sentimentality didn't make him see her as a chocolate-box picture! You only had to look at her eyes!
"But, Gerrit," she said, nestling at his feet, "I never ran after you! I met you by accident, really by accident, I assure you. Don't you remember? Yes, once when I was driving: that was the first time; then near the Alexander Barracks...."
"But what were you doing near the barracks, damn it?"
She looked at him coaxingly, stroked him caressingly:
"Oh, well ... I thought...!"
"There, you see!... You thought...!"
"Yes, you won't believe me.... Even towards the end ... in Paris, Gerrit...."
"Well?"
"I used to think of you sometimes."
"Oh, rot, you're lying!... Do you think I believe you?"
"No, you don't believe me, but, Gerrit.... I assure you ... men are beasts ... and you...."
"Oh, yes, you tell everybody that: do you imagine I don't see through it?"
Then she laughed merrily; and he laughed too.
"I'm laughing," she said, "because you're pretending to be so cynical. ... Tell me, Gerrit, why do you pretend to be so cynical?"
"I?"
"Yes, you: why do you do it? You're putting it on, aren't you, on purpose?"
"Purpose be blowed!... If you think I'm going to be taken in by all your pretty speeches!... If you come to me with pretty speeches, it's because you want money and I've ... I've told you, I haven't any...."
"But, Gerrit, I don't ask you for money ... and I'm not getting any from you either...."
He flushed, a deep glow overspreading his red, sunburnt face and the white neck on which the tight collar of his uniform had left a plainly-visible line. What she said was quite true: she asked for no money and he gave her no money. He had none to give her.
"Now let me tell you," she said, nestling still closer against his knees. "You see, in Paris, towards the end, I got the blues badly.... You understand, Gerrit, don't you, one has enough of the life sometimes ... and a fit like that isn't very cheerful?"
"Oh, rot!" he said, gruffly. "And you, who are always laughing!"
"I'm always laughing?"
"Yes, you, with those eyes of yours, those eyes which are always laughing."
"That's my eyes, Gerrit: I can't help it if they laugh."
"And you want to make me believe that you get fits of the blues?"
"Well, why shouldn't I?"
"Very likely. But you're not the sort...."
"To what?"
"To sit moping for long."
"Well, I didn't. I came to Holland."
"Weren't you doing well in Paris?"
"Not quite so well, perhaps," she said, hesitating between her vanity and certain strange feelings which she did not clearly realize.
"So that's why you came to Holland!"
"I might have gone to London."
"To London?"
"And from there to Berlin."
"Berlin?"
"And then to St. Petersburg."
"Look here, what are you talking about?"
"And next to Constantinople."
"Oh, shut up!"
"And do you know where we finish?"
"What do you mean, finish?"
"At Singapore. You know that's the regular tour."
"Oh, well.... I've heard it; but that's nonsense."
"So many of us go on that tour. It's not a circular tour, Gerrit. It doesn't bring you back ... to Paris."
"What a queer way you have of saying those things!" said Gerrit, laughing uncomfortably. "You were always a strange girl. Tell me, your father ... was a waiter, wasn't he?"
"No, a gentleman. My mother was a laundress ... in Brussels."
"And those twelve years of yours in Paris...."
"Made me into a Parisian, you think?... Gerrit, I longed for Holland!"
"I'll never believe that."
"Yes, Gerrit, I longed for Holland."
"You're a great liar ... with those eyes of yours! I never believe a word you say."
"Gerrit ... and for you!"
"What's that?"
"I longed for you."
"Yes, of course. Tell that to the marines."
"I remembered the old days...."
"Oh, drop it!"
"Don't you know, when...."
"Yes, yes, I know everything. Stow all that, you and your recollections! You've taken me in enough, as it is. Why don't you look out for a young, rich chap?"
"You're not old, Gerrit."
"Oh, I'm not old!"
"No. I am. I've grown older, haven't I, Gerrit?"
"Your eyes haven't."
"But the rest of me?"
"Yes, of course.... You have grown older..."
"Gerrit, I don't want to get old.... I think it terrible to get old.... Am I still pretty and...?"
"Yes, yes, yes...."
"But, very soon, I shall...."
"You'll what?"
"I shall be plain ... and old."
"Oh, don't sit there bothering!"
"I'm very fond of you, Gerrit. You're so...."
"Yes, I know what you're going to say. I'm off now...."
"Must you go?... I say, Gerrit, you have children, haven't you? I expect they're charming children."
He seemed to see mockery in the gleaming eyes.
"You drop it about my children, will you?"
"Mayn't I ask after them?"
"No."
"I saw them out walking the other day."
"Shut up!"
"I thought them so charming."
He swore at her, roughly and hoarsely:
"Shut up, blast it, can't you?"
"Very well. ... Are you going?"
"Yes."
He was outside the door.
"Are you cross with me?"
"No, but this talkee-talkee bores me. That's not what I come to you for...."
"No, I know you don't. ... But, still, you can't mind my talking to you sometimes, Gerrit?..."
"Very likely, but not such twaddle. And I won't have you mention my children."
"I won't do it again. Good-bye, Gerrit."
"Good-night."
He looked round, in the passage, and nodded to her. In the dim light of the room, he saw her standing, framed in the half-open doorway; she stood there, a handsome, slender, willowy figure, in a shimmer of dull gold: the light, the yellow tea-gown, the touches of gold lace round the very white neck, the strange gold hair round the powdered white face and, under the sharp line of the eyebrows, the golden eyes, with a golden gleam. Her voice, all the evening, had sounded very soft and coaxing in his ears, as though crooning a plaintive song, of youth, of memories, of the past, of longing for her native country ... and for him: all unnatural and impossible things in her, things which he only heard in her voice because of his confounded sentimentality, a sentimentality which, however deeply it might be hidden from everybody else, was clearly perceptible to himself....
And, outside, he thought:
"I must be careful with that girl. ... She is as dangerous as can be ... to me...."
CHAPTER XV
Well, if he treated it like that, he thought, he could reduce the danger to a minimum. He had allowed himself to be taken in; and the only thing now was to disentangle himself, slowly, gradually; and he would certainly succeed in this, for none of them, not even Pauline, had ever held him for long. Though she had got him to come and see her, though he had gone back once or twice, he had shown her that she had no sort of power over him and that he remained his own master. His voice roared hers down, so that he did not even hear the coaxing, brooding tones; his robust cynicism was more than a match for his sentimental tendencies; and so her only hold was on his recrudescent sensuality, glowing with the memories that had been smouldering in his blood. But that would run its course in time; and meanwhile, as he would never really recapture those old sensations after twelve years, the charm, the enchantment of it would wear off ... and pretty quickly too.... Yes, she had grown old. She had not gone through her twelve years in Paris with impunity. All that former freshness, as of a fruit into which he used to bite, had vanished; he could not endure the musty smell of the paint which she smeared on her face: he once roughly rubbed a towel over her cheeks till she had grown angry and locked herself in; and he had to go away and apologize next time. And he was struck above all by her timidity in revealing her body, her artfulness in retaining, even when in his arms, those laces and fripperies which were supposed to create a filmy haze all around her: a haze through which he was well able to see that she was no longer the girl of twelve years ago.... And, when he compared his recollections of that time with what she gave him now, he could not understand that he had allowed himself to be caught like that by her eyes, which had remained the same, though she now smeared black stuff round them; he did not understand how he had gone into the Woods with her; he did not understand how he had yielded to her entreaties that he should come to see her.... No, he would disentangle himself from this woman, from this faded courtesan, who was complicating his life, his life as a respectable husband and father, especially father. He would disentangle himself. It would not be difficult, now that the present gave him back so little of what had glowed in his memory.... But, just because of that, because it would be so easy, because the present was such dead ashes, a heavy melancholy fell around him like a curtain of twilight.... Great Lord, how rotten it was: that slow decay, that getting old, that dragging on of the days and years! How rotten that you had to pay for everything that life gave you, first with your youth and then with your prime, as if your life were a bank on which you drew bills of exchange, as if your existence were a capital on which you lived, without ever saving a farthing, so that, when you died, you would have squandered every little bit of it. Lord, how rotten! Not dying, which was nothing, after all; but just that slow decay, that confounded spending of your later years, for which you got nothing in return; for you had had everything already: your youth, your strength, your good spirits; and, as the years dragged and dragged along, you just jogged on towards the cheerless end; and there was nothing to do but look on while every day you spent one more day of your capital of later days and got nothing in return, while nothing remained but your memory of the youth which you had also squandered.... Lord, Lord, how dark it all grew around you, when you thought of such rotten things!... Oh, of course, there was one streak of light: he knew it, he saw it, saw the golden dawn, the dawn in his own house, the dawn of his children: light still shone from them; their circle was still moving within his circle, just for a time, for so long as their shining sphere touched his own sphere ... until later it would circle away, ever farther and farther, describing wider and wider revolutions, even as every sphere rolls away, rolls away from the centre!... That was how it would be ... when he had grown old, very old. It was not so yet: for the present, the bright-haired little tribe was still in its golden dawn.... Yes, for its sake too he would like to disentangle himself, to disentangle himself. The thing that had never been able to hold him, would it hold him in his old age?... Well, there was no question of old age yet, even though he was getting on for fifty. But still it wasn't as it used to be: nothing was as it used to be, no, not even Pauline....
No, not even Pauline. When he went to her now, he took a malicious pleasure in telling her so, with rough words, in making her feel it ... both in order to make himself appear rougher than he was and because of the resentment which always kept pricking him sharply.
"I say, you're not a bit like those old photographs of yours now!"
It gave her a shock when he said this. Nothing gave her such a blinding shock, as if the shock had plunged her into darkness and made everything go black and menacing as death.
She felt that it was cruel of him to throw it in her face like this; and she couldn't understand it in him. But, because her eyes were always laughing, even now they laughed their golden laugh....
"Ah, you don't believe it!... You just think you're exactly as you were, the same young and pretty girl.... Well, my beauty, you never made a greater mistake in your life!... But I see you don't believe me, you grin when I tell you, you think your charms are going to live for ever.... Everything wears, child.... However, you won't believe it: I can see your eyes mocking me now...."
Indeed, her eyes were laughing and the smouldering spark of mockery seemed to leap into flame. And, because he spoke like that, she laughed, a loud laugh with a shrill note which annoyed him, in which he heard mockery ... because, after all, though she no longer resembled her old photographs, she had caught him badly.
"Just come here," he said, roughly.
"Why?"
"Just come here."
She went up to him, trembling.
He took hold of her, a little more roughly than he intended, took her between his knees, looked her in the face:
"What do you make up for?" he asked.
"I don't make up."
"Oh, you don't, don't you? Do you think I can't see it?"
"No, I don't make up."
"Then what's that?"
He pointed to her cheek.
"That's only powder, which stays on because I use a face-cream first."
"Oh, really! And isn't that making up?"
"No."
"And what's that?"
He pointed to her eyes. She shrugged her shoulders:
"That's done with a pencil, just a touch. It's nothing. That's not a make-up. Make-up ... is something quite different."
"Oh, really! Well, I don't like all that messing. What do you do it for?"
She looked at him in dismay; and again the blinding shock bored an endless, dead-black perspective before her ... of death. But he saw only the laugh of her golden eyes.
"What do you do it for?" he repeated. "You usedn't to."
"No."
"Then why do it now?"
She made an effort, so as not to cry. She laughed, shrilly; and it sounded like a jeer, as though she were saying, jeeringly:
"I make up my face, but I've got you all the same."
"Give me a towel," he said, roughly.
"No," she said, struggling and releasing herself from his grip.
"Give me a towel."
"No, Gerrit, I won't, do you hear?"
Her eyes just flashed an angry look of dark reproach. But they laughed and mocked immediately afterwards.
He snatched a towel from the wash-hand-stand:
"Come here," he said.
Her first impulse was a storm of seething rage, a rage as on the last occasion, when she locked herself in and he had to go away.... But there was something so cruel and vindictive in his voice, in his glance, in the abrupt movements of his great body that she grew frightened and came:
"Gerrit," she implored, softly, timidly.
"Come here. I don't like all that muck...."
He had wetted the towel. He now washed her face; and he became a little gentler in his movements, glance and voice ... because she was frightened and meek. He washed her face all over:
"There," he said. "Now at least you're natural."
Something like hatred gripped at her heart, but she could not yield to it: her nerves had become too slack for hatred. Besides, she had always, always been very fond of him, just because he was such a strange mixture of roughness and gentleness. She remained standing anxiously in front of him, with her hands in his.
Like that, like that, at any rate, she no longer looked like the picture on a chocolate-box. He was safe now against his sentimentality. But, Lord, how old she looked! Her skin was wrinkled, covered with freckles and blotches. Was it possible that a drop of wet stuff out of a bottle and a touch of powder could cover all that? And the golden eyes of mockery, how ghastly they looked, without the shadows about the brows and lashes!... And yet she kept on mocking him.... But then, suddenly, he felt pity, was sick at having been rough, at pretending to be rougher than he was. He was always like that, always made that pretence, putting on a blustering voice, squaring his broad shoulders, banging his fist on the table ... for no reason, save to be rough ... and not sentimental. And, seeking for something to say to her, he said, in a voice which she at once recognized, a voice of pity, the gentleness now tempering the roughness, that mixture which she had always loved in him:
"Really, Pauline, you look much prettier like this...."
But she saw the dark vista opening out before her, black as night.
"You're much prettier now. You look a fresh and pretty woman."
Her eyes were laughing.
"You haven't the least need to smear all that stuff on your face."
Her lips were laughing now.
"Come and give me a kiss.... Come...."
He caught her in his arms. He felt her flesh, soft and flabby, as though he were grasping wadding or lace, not as though he were grasping the woman whom he remembered in his glowing memories, a woman of warm marble.
She roused herself, in her desire. She strained her muscles, embraced him with force, with all the science of passion which she had acquired during the years. They embraced each other wholly; and their embrace was full of despair for both of them, as though they were both plunging with their intense happiness into a black abyss, instead of soaring to the stars....
She now lay against him like a corpse. Never had he felt so full of heavy melancholy in his heavy, heavy soul. Never had his whole, whole life passed before him like that, suddenly, in a flash: his boyhood, Buitenzorg, the river, Constance; his young years as a subaltern, his reckless period, the period of inexhaustible, gay, brutal, young life; and, after that very youthful period, still many long years of youth, with Pauline herself still young, warm marble; and then the sobering down, his marriage and oh, the golden dawn of his children!... He was not old, he was not old, but everything had arrived.... Nothing, nothing more would come but the dragging past of the monotonous years; and, with each year, the bright circles would shift farther and farther apart and the gloom would deepen around him.... Never had he felt so full of heavy melancholy in his heavy, heavy soul.
She, against him, lay like a corpse. He felt her like a bundle of down, of lace, soft and flabby as a pillow, still in his arms. He would have liked to fling her away from him, weary, sick of that tepid flabbiness. But he kept her in his arms, made her lie against him, suffered the tepid heap of lace and down on his chest. Her eyelids hung closed, as though she would never raise them again. Her mouth hung down, as though she would never laugh again. And yet he continued to hold her like that. It was not because of his sentimentality, for she was anything but a chocolate-box picture now, and it was not out of a sudden recrudescence of rough sensuality that he now held that flabby bundle in his arms: no, it was from a real, genuine, but heavy and melancholy feeling, a feeling of pity. He had been able to wash the make-up from her face with a towel, but he couldn't fling her from him now, before she herself should raise herself from his arms. And she remained lying, like a corpse. God, what a time it lasted!... Still, he couldn't do it: he continued to suffer her there, on his heart. He looked down at her askance, without moving; and his eyes grew moist.... Those confounded eyes of his, which grew moist! He couldn't help it: they just grew moist. He screwed them up, wiped them with his free hand, before Pauline could see them moist. And he remained like that, so long, so long!... At last he gave a deep sigh and she drew breath; he could not go on: not because of her weight, but because of her softness, that soft flabbiness, that stuffiness, that crumpled lace against him. His chest rose high; and she awoke from her lethargy. She lifted her heavy eyelids, she pinched her lips into a smile. It was a smile of utter despair....
She released herself from his arms, stood up; and he made ready to go.
"Gerrit," she said, faintly.
"What is it, child?"
"Gerrit," she repeated, "you don't know how glad I am that I ... that I met you again ... here ... that we have seen each other again.... I used to think of you so often ... in Paris ... because I was always ... a little fond of you ... because you are so gentle and rough in one.... That's how you are ... and that was why I was fond of you.... Oh, it was so nice to see you again ... after so many, many years ... those dirty, dirty years!... It has made me so happy, so happy!... Thank you, Gerrit ... for everything. But I wanted to say...."
"What, child?"
"You had better not come back again.... You know, you had better not come back.... We have seen each other again now: not often, perhaps ten or twelve times, I can't remember.... It was such heavenly, such heavenly happiness ... that I forgot to count the number of times.... But you had better not come back any more...."
"And why not, child? Are you angry ... because I washed your face with that towel?"
"No, Gerrit, it's not that, I'm not angry about that.... I'm not angry at all...."
Indeed, her eyes were laughing. Then she repeated:
"But still ... you had better not come back."
"I see. So you've had enough of me?"
She gave a shrill laugh:
"Yes," she said.
"Oh! And have you found a young, rich chap, as I advised you?"
Her laugh sounded still shriller and her golden eyes were full of mockery.
"Yes," she said.
Under his heavy melancholy, he was angry and jealous:
"So you don't want me any more?"
"Want you?... I shall certainly want you, but...."
"But what?"
"It's better for every reason, better not. You mustn't come back, Gerrit."
"Very well."
"And don't be angry, Gerrit."
"I'm not angry. So this evening was the last time?"
"Yes," she said.
They both looked at each other and both read in each other's eyes the memory of their last embrace: the stimulus of despair.
"Very well," he repeated, more gently.
"Good-bye, Gerrit."
"Good-bye, child."
She kissed him and he her. He was ready to go. Suddenly he remembered that he had never given her anything except on that first evening in the Woods, a ten-guilder piece and two rixdollars:
"Pauline," he said, "I should like to give you something. I should like to send you something. What may I give you?"
"I don't mind having something ... but then you mustn't refuse it me...."
"Unless it's impossible...."
"If it's not possible ... then I won't have anything."
"What is it you'd like?"
"You're sure to have a photograph ... a group ... of your children...."
"Do you want that?" he asked, in surprise.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know; I'd like it."
"A photograph of my children?"
"Yes. If you haven't one ... or if you can't give it me ... then I don't want anything, Gerrit. And thank you, Gerrit."
"I'll see," he said, dully.
He kissed her once more:
"So good-bye, Pauline."
"Good-bye, Gerrit."
She kissed him hurriedly, almost drove him out of the room. It was ten o'clock in the evening. Gerrit, in the street outside, heaved a great sigh of relief. Yes, this was all right: he was rid of her now. It had not lasted very long; and the best part of it was that none of his brother-officers, of his friends or of his family had for a moment suspected that connection, for a moment noticed that the past, his memories, his youth had loomed up before him, haunting him and mocking him in Pauline, in her body, in her golden eyes. It had remained a secret; and what might have been a great annoyance in his life as husband and father had been no more than a momentary and unsuspected effort to force back what was long over and done with. It was now over and done with for ever. Oh, it was the first time and the last: never again would he allow himself to be entrapped by the haunting recollections of former years!... But how sad it was to reflect that all that past was really over and done with ... and that everything had been!
During the days and weeks that followed, he went about with heavy, heavy melancholy in his heavy soul. Nobody noticed anything in him: at the barracks he blustered as usual; at home he romped with the children; he went with Adeline to take tea at Constance' and laughed at the tirades of Paul, who was daily becoming more and more of an elderly gentleman. Nobody noticed anything in him; and he himself thought it very strange that the eyes of the world never penetrated to the shuddering soul deep down within him, as though sickening in his great body, with its sham strength. Sick: was his soul sick? No, perhaps not: it was only shrinking into itself under the heavy, heavy melancholy. Sham strength: was his body weak? No, not his muscles ... but the worm was crawling about in his spine, the centipede was eating up his marrow.... And nobody in the wide world saw anything—of the centipede, of the worm, of all the horror of his life—even as nobody had seen anything of what had come about during the last few weeks between himself and his past: the last flare up of youth, Pauline.... Nobody saw anything. Life itself seemed blind. It jogged on in the old, plodding way. There were the barracks, always the same: the horses, the men, his brother-officers. There were his mother, his brothers and sisters. There were his wife and his children.... He saw himself reflected in the blind eyes of plodding life as a rough, kindly fellow, a good officer, a big, fair-haired man, just a little grey, a good sort to his wife, a good father to his children.... Lord, how good he was, reflected in the blind eyes of plodding life!... But there was nothing good about him and he was quite different from what he seemed. He had always been different from what he seemed. Oh, idiot people! Oh, blind, idiot life!
CHAPTER XVI
It was a steadily grey and rainy winter. A winter without frost, but with endless, endless rains, with a firmament of everlasting clouds hanging over the small, murky town, over the flooded streets, through which the gloomy people hurried under the little roofs of their umbrellas, clouds so preternaturally big and heavy that everything seemed to cower beneath their menace, as though the end of the world were slowly approaching. Black-grey were those everlasting clouds; and it seemed as if they cast the shadow of their menace from the first hour of the day; and so short were the days that it was as though it were eternal night and as though the sun had lost itself very far away, circled from the small human world, circled very far behind the immeasurable world of the clouds and the endless firmaments. And, lashing, ever lashing, the whips of the rain beat down, wielded by the angry winds. Gloom and menace hung over the shuddering town and over the shuddering souls of the people. There were but few days of light around them.
The old grandmother sat gloomily at her window, nodding her head understandingly but reproachfully, because old age had not come in the nice and peaceful way which she had always, peacefully, hoped. The shadows of old age had gathered around her like a dark, dreary twilight, were already gathering closer and closer because she saw that, however hard she had tried, she had not been able to keep around her all that she loved. Was the supreme sorrow not coming nearer?... Just as the shadows were gathering around her, so they had already gathered around Bertha, over at Baarn, far away, too far for her, an old woman, to reach her; and, in a sudden flash of clairvoyance, she saw—though no one had ever told her—Bertha sitting at a window, listlessly, with her hands in her lap, saw her sitting and staring, even as she herself stared and sat. In a flash of clairvoyance she saw Karel and Cateau and Adolphine's little tribe far, far away from her, even though they lived in the same town and came regularly on Sunday evenings. Far away from her she saw Paul and Dorine. Very far away from her she saw her poor Ernst, whom she knew to be mad; and her old head nodded in understanding but yet in protest against the cruelty of life, which brought old age to her in such a sad guise and made it gather so darkly and menacingly around her loneliness.... Yes, there was Constance, there was Gerrit: she felt these two to be closest to her; but, though they were closer, it grew black around her, black under the black skies, with the glimpses of light, the flashes of clairvoyance, in the midst of them.... She saw—though no one had told her—a pale, thin girl, Marianne, pining away by Bertha's side.... She saw—though no one knew it—Emilie and Henri toiling in Paris, struggling with life, which came towards them hideous and horrible, bringing with it poverty, which they had never known. She saw it so clearly that she almost felt like speaking of it.... But, because they would not have believed her, she remained silent, enduring all that gloomy life even as the town endured the black skies and the lashing of the rain....
And yonder, far away, too far for her, she saw a woman, old like herself, dying. She saw her dying and by her bedside she saw Constance and she saw Addie. She saw it so clearly, between her eyes and the rain-streaks, as though flung upon the screen of the rain, that she felt like speaking of it, like crying it out.... But, because they would not have believed her, she remained silent, enduring all that gloomy life even as the town endured the black skies.
Then things grew dull around her and she saw nothing more; and the nodding head fell asleep upon her breast; and she sat sleeping, a black, silent figure, while the rain tapped as though with fingers—which would not tap her awake—at the panes of the conservatory-window at which she used to sit....
For hours she would sit thus alone in the shadow of her day and the shadow of her soul; and, when any of her children or friends called, they would find her in low spirits.
"Mamma, don't you feel lonely like this?" Adolphine asked, one afternoon. "We should all like to see you take a companion."
The old woman shook her head irritably:
"A companion? What for? Certainly not."
"Or have Dorine to live with you."
"Dorine? Living with me? No, no, I won't have her in the house with me. Why should I?"
"You're so lonely; and, though you've had the servants a long time, somebody ... to sit with you, you know...."
"Somebody sitting with me all day long? No, no...."
"We should like to see it, Mamma."
"Well, you won't see it."
And the old woman remained obstinate.
Another afternoon, Adeline said:
"Mamma dear, Constance asked me to tell you that she won't be able to see you for a day or two."
"And why not? What's the matter with Constance?"
"Nothing, Mamma dear, but she's been sent for to Driebergen...."
"To Driebergen?..."
"Yes, dear. Old Mrs. van der Welcke hasn't been quite so well lately...."
"Is she dead?"
"No, no, Mamma. ... She's only a little unwell...."
The old woman nodded her head comprehendingly. She had already seen Constance standing yonder by the dying woman's sickbed, but she did not say so ... because Adeline would have refused to believe it....
Another afternoon, Cateau said:
"Mamma ... it's ve-ry sad, but old Mrs. Friese-steijn...."
"Oh, I haven't seen her ... for ever so long; and...."
"Yes. And it's ve-ry sad, Mam-ma, because she was a friend of yours. And, Mam-ma, peo-ple are saying that she's ill and that she won't last very long."
The old woman nodded knowingly:
"Yes, I knew about it," she said.
"Oh?" said Cateau, round-eyed. "Has somebody told you?..."
"No, but...."
The old lady had seen her, had seen her old friend dying; and she nearly committed herself, nearly betrayed herself to Cateau.
"What?" asked Cateau.
"I suspected it," said the old lady. "When you are old, old people die round you...."
"Mam-ma, we should ve-ry much like...."
"What?"
"Adolph-ine would like it ... and so would Ka-rel."
"What?"
"If you would take a compan-ion to live with you."
"No, no, I don't want a companion."
"Or Do-rine. She's ve-ry nice too...."
"No, no. Not Dorine either."
And the old woman remained obstinate.... The old people were dying around her; she was constantly hearing of contemporaries who had gone before her. Her old family-doctor was dead, the man who had brought all her children into the world, in Java; now an old friend was gone; the next to go would be Henri's old mother, who had been unkind to Constance and none the less had sent for Constance to come to her.... Who else was gone? She couldn't remember them all: her brain was sometimes very hazy; and then she forgot names and people, just as the old sisters always forgot and muddled things. She did not want to muddle things; but she could not help forgetting.
"So I sha'n't see Constance for quite a long time?" she said to Cateau.
"Con-stance?"
"Yes, you said she was going to Driebergen."
"No, Mam-ma, I never men-tioned Con-stance."
The old woman nodded her understanding nod. Nevertheless she no longer remembered who it was that had told her about Constance; but she preferred not to ask....
And she thought it over, for hours....
CHAPTER XVII
An icy shudder swept over Constance when she arrived at Driebergen and saw the carriage waiting outside the station, with the coachman and the footman:
"How is mevrouw?" she asked, as she stepped in.
But she hardly heard the answer, although she grasped it. She shuddered, icy cold. She shivered in her fur cloak. It had rained steadily for days upon the dreary, wintry trees, out of a sky that hung low but tremendously wide and heavy, as oppressive as a pitiless darkness. Drearily the wintry roads shot forward as the carriage rattled along them. Drearily, in their bare gardens, the houses rose, very sadly, because they were deserted summer dwellings, in the ice-cold winter rain.
The day was almost black. It was three o'clock, but it was night; and the rain, grey over the road and grey over the houses and gardens, was black over the misty landscapes which could be dimly descried through the bare gardens. The dreary trees looked dead and lived only in the despairing gestures of their branches when a wind, howling up from the distance, blew through them and moved them.
The carriage turned into the bare front-garden, round the beds with the straw-shrouded rose-bushes. Constance had driven in like this only a few times before, with the careful coachman always describing the same accurate curve round the flower-beds: the first time, when she came back from Brussels, and two or three times since, after the old woman had been to the Hague, on one of Henri's birthdays. And suddenly a strange presentiment flashed through the black day right into her, a presentiment that she was destined very often, so many times that she could not count them, to drive with that curve round those beds....
She stepped out of the carriage; and the strange presentiment flashed into her that she would often, very often, stand like that, waiting for that solemn front-door of the great gloomy, solemn villa to open to her.... Then she walked in; and the long oak entrance-hall stretched before her like a strange indoor vista, with at the end a dark door that led to ... she did not quite know what.... And she felt that she would often, very often, go through that hall and stare at that dark door, knowing full well what it led to.... And it was very strange indeed now, but she imagined that she had, unconsciously, had this presentiment before—really unconsciously, so vaguely that she had not felt it yet—from the first time that she had come and waited in this hall, sitting on the oak settle, with her hand on the shoulder of her boy, the grandchild whom she had come to introduce to his grandparents.... Oh, what a gloomy house it was, with that long hall and that dark door at the end of it, with those portraits and those old engravings, only brightened by the gleam of the Delft on the old oak cabinet! Oh, what a gloomy house it was and how strange was the presentiment that she would so often be coming here now, that she would have to mingle some part of herself with this gloomy Dutch domestic atmosphere!... Shuddering, shivering, still in her fur cloak, she was thrilled with a very swift and fleeting home-sickness for her dear, cosy house in the Woods, at the Hague, and she did not know when she would go back to it now.... The old woman was ill; Henri had gone first; Addie had followed him.... Then she had asked for Constance; and Constance had taken the first train....
She had asked Piet in the hall how mevrouw was, but she had not taken in his answer either. She now went up the stairs, which wound in their ascent and were quite dark; and, because the strange presentiment also forced itself upon her on the stairs, she resisted it, put it from her. How strange everything seemed around her and within her! Was that the approach of death, skulking along with the wind, as it were tapping at the windows on the staircase and knocking in the heavy oak presses in the hall? Was that the approach of death, of the death which she already felt around her? Or was it only because the day was black and the house gloomy?...
And now everything seemed to make her shudder. A dark door had opened, slowly; and she started; and yet it was simply her child, her boy, coming out to meet her.
"How is Grandmamma?"
But again she did not take in the answer; and, as though in a shuddering dream in which she already felt the approach of death, she entered a room. There sat the old man; and Henri sat beside him, like a child, with his hand in his father's large, bony hand. She herself did not hear what she said ... to the old man. She was only conscious that her voice sounded soft and sweet, as with a new music, in the gloomy house. She was only conscious that she kissed the old man. But she felt herself growing strange, frightened and shuddering, in the dark room, in the gloomy house, with the vast, low, heavy skies outside. The black rain rattled against the panes. The old man had taken her hand, awkwardly; he held only two of her fingers; and they trembled, pinched in his bony grip. He led her in this way to another room, dark with the curtains of the window and the bed, lighted only by the reflected gleam of an old-fashioned looking-glass wardrobe. The black rain rattled against the panes. Oh, how she felt the approach of dread death, that great, black death before which small people shudder, even though they do not value their small lives! How she felt it rustling in the rain against the window, how she felt the ghostly flapping of its cloak in the shadows among the heavy furniture, how she felt death reflected in the reflex light of that looking-glass! She shivered, in her fur cloak. But in the shadow of the bed-curtains two eyes smiled at her gently from out of the suffering old face.... The old man had gone.
"Here I am, Mamma...."
"Is that you?"
"Yes."
"I had to send for you...."
"I thought it would be too much for you.... That's why I let Henri and Addie come without me...."
"Are we alone?"
"Yes, Mamma."
"Tell me, you didn't stay away ... because you were angry ... because you still bore a grudge?..."
"Oh, no! I was not angry. I thought it would be too much for you."
"Is that true?"
"Quite true."
"The simple truth?"
"The simple truth."
"Yes, I can tell: you're not angry. But you were angry...."
"Hush, Mamma, hush!"
"No, no, let me speak. I sent for you to speak to you.... There was a time when you were angry. And we could not talk together. Let us talk now, for the first and last time."
"Mamma...."
"There were those long, long years, dear. The years which are now all dead.... There was your suffering ... but there was also our suffering, Father's ... and mine."
"Yes...."
"It was a day like to-day, gloomy and black; and it was raining. I was restless, I had such a strange presentiment: I had a presentiment ... that Henri was dead, my child, my boy, in Rome. It was a gloomy day ... seventeen or eighteen years ago. And in the afternoon, about this time—it was quite dark, the lights were not yet lit—a letter came: a letter from Rome ... from Henri.... I trembled ... I could not find the matches, to light the gas ... and, when I looked for them, the letter dropped from my hands.... I thought, 'He's writing to me that he is very ill. I shall hear presently that he's dead.' I lit the gas ... and read the letter. I read not that he was ill ... but that he had to resign his post. He wrote to me about a woman whom I did not know, he wrote to me about you, dear. I breathed again, I thought to myself, 'He is not dead, I have not lost my son.' But Father thought differently: he said, 'Henri is dead, we have lost our son.' Then I knew that my presentiment was right, that he was dead.... He was dead ... and he stayed dead for years and years.... Oh, how I longed for him to come to life again! Oh, how I kept on thinking of my child!... But year followed upon year; and he remained dead.... Then by degrees I began to feel that it would not always be like that, that things would be a little brighter one day, that he would come back out of that distant death.... He came back; I had my boy back.... I saw you ... for the first time. Long dead years lay between us; and, when I wished to embrace you, I felt that I could not, that I did not reach you. My words did not reach you. They remained lying between us, they fell between us like hard, round things.... I knew then that you had suffered much and also that for long, long years you had been full of grief and resentment ... grief and resentment.... You brought us your child: you brought him grudgingly.... Hush, don't cry, don't cry: it couldn't be helped. There was bound to be that feeling, that grudge, inside you ... oh, I knew how it rankled! People are always like that: they never understand each other as long as there is no love; and, when there is no love and no understanding, there is bitterness ... oh, and often hatred!... No, it was not hatred yet, it was bitterness: I knew it. Don't cry: the bitterness couldn't be helped. We did not reach each other across that bitterness.... Also you were young still, dear, and it was I who had to go to you on Henri's birthday ... and yet I do not believe that there was any wrong on my side. Tell me, was there any wrong on my side? Was it not your bitter, implacable youth that refused the reconciliation?... Hush, don't cry: reconciliation always comes, sooner or later; sooner or later, all bitterness melts away ... if not here ... then there.... But with you and me, dear, it is here. With you and me it is here. I am certain that you gradually felt the bitter grudge melting away in you, because you learnt to understand ... learnt to understand that old people have different ideas from young people; you learnt to understand their ideas, the ideas of the older people, folk before your time, old-fashioned folk, my dear. You learnt to understand them; and your soul became more gently disposed towards them ... and you said to yourself, 'I understand them: they could not be any different.' You can even understand, can't you, dear, that the old man has not yet, has not even now forgiven and forgotten as completely as I forgave and forgot, long, long ago? I am right about that, am I not? You must even learn to understand ... that he will never forgive and forget—hush, child, don't cry!—you must learn to understand that; you do understand it.... We must understand that together, however much we may regret it, but we will not tell anybody and we will both of us forgive him, dear, for now and for the time to come; for, if he can't do otherwise, then he is not to blame.... And, once we are there ... when we meet again ... oh, what will all the old bitterness and all the old suffering amount to? Nothing! There, all the old bitterness and the old suffering are lost in love. Then Father too will no longer be bitter.... That's why I sent for you, you see: to tell you all this; because of the words which I could not keep in, because I longed to say to you, 'My dear child, you have suffered ... but we have suffered too! My dear child, I ... I want to forgive you, now, with my last kiss. But let my forgiveness count as two; and do you, my dear child—it is my last request—forgive the old man also ... now and always ... always...."
The room was quite dark. The rain clattered in the darkness against the window. Constance had dropped to her knees beside the bed; she was sobbing quietly, her tears falling upon the old woman's hand. And there was a long silence, interrupted by nothing but the clatter of the rain and the soft, heaving sobs. The dark room was full of the past, full of all the things which the old woman's words had brought to life out of the dead years. But through that past the dying woman saw the morrow breaking, as in a radiant dawn. She saw it breaking in radiance and she said:
"Tell me that you forgive him ... now ... and always ... always."
"Yes, yes, Mamma ... now ... . now and always."
"For he will never forgive, he will never forgive."
"No, no ... but I forgive him, I forgive him."
"Even if he never forgives?"
"Yes, yes ... even if he never forgives!"
"For he will never forgive, he will never forgive."
"No ... but I forgive him..."
"And I, dear..."
"You forgive me ... you forgive me!"
"Yes, I forgive you ... everything. From first to last. Your bitterness...."
"Oh, I have long ceased to be bitter!"
"Yes, I know that you had learnt to understand.... We could have become very fond of each other, if...."
"Yes, if...."
"But it was not to be. Let us become fond of each other now. Love me, Constance, in your memory...."
"Yes...."
"Just as I shall continue to love you. There! Just because we suffered through each other in this life, we shall now love each other."
"Yes, oh, yes!"
"Kiss me, my dear. And ... and forgive the old man."
"Yes...."
"Even if he...."
"Yes, oh yes!..."
"Never forgives. For he will never, he will never forgive!"
"I forgive him, I forgive him!"
"Then all is well. Let him come in now: him ... and my child, my son, Henri ... and him ... the child ... our child...."
Constance rose from her knees; she stumbled, sobbing, across the dark room. She groped for the door, opened it: the light of the lamps streamed in.
"Mamma is asking for you," she stammered through her tears. "For you ... and Henri ... and Addie...."
Death entered the room with them....
CHAPTER XVIII
Constance and Henri returned to the Hague a week after Mrs. van der Welcke's funeral. Constance went straight to her mother.
"Oh, you mustn't leave me alone again so long!" Mrs. van Lowe complained. "I can't do without you for so long. It's so dark, so gloomy when you're not here, my Connie!... Yes, yes, they all came to see me regularly. But they are not like you, dear. It seems they no longer understand me. And, when they're gone, I sit here feeling so lonely, so lonely!... They're now all bothering me, wanting me to take a companion, or to have Dorine to live with me ... but I won't have any one here. It's such a trouble. An extra person in the house means such a lot of trouble. I can't see to everything as I used to. I just sit here at my window.... So the old lady, down there, is dead? People are dying every day. I can't understand why I need remain. I am no use to anybody now. I just sit here, giving all of you trouble: you all worry about me ... you all have to come regularly to see how I am. I can't understand why I need go on living. It would be much better if I just died.... There is nothing more to come for me. I've no illusions left. Not one. Even your boy, Connie: what an idea, to want to be a doctor How do we know if he's suited for it?... It's a good thing that you're back. I couldn't do without you.... Is the old man over there going to remain all alone, in that big house ... just as I remained all alone here?"
"No, Mamma, he won't be alone. There's a cousin coming to live with him: you know, old Freule[27] van der Welcke...."
"No, I don't remember. I often muddle people and names."
"Cousin Betsy van der Welcke...."
"No, I don't remember...."
"She's coming to live with the old man. We would have liked him to have had a companion to keep house for him ... because Cousin Betsy herself is so old."
"A companion, a companion: you want everybody to have a companion. So the old man will be all alone...."
"No, Mamma, the old cousin's coming."
"Which old cousin?"
"Cousin Betsy van der Welcke."
"Who?"
"Cousin Betsy, Mamma."
"Oh, yes, Cousin Betsy ... and a companion?..."
"No, not a companion...."
"Well, then he'll be well looked after ... with Cousin Betsy and a companion. Better than I. I'm here all by myself."
"But that's not right. You must have some one with you."
"No companions for me, thank you!"
"Or Dorine...."
"So you're beginning with Dorine too! No, I won't have Dorine. She's too fidgety and restless for me."
"But she's out so much."
"No, she's fidgety and restless.... It's not nice of me to say so, dear, but really Dorine is too fidgety and restless, child.... Oh, child, if you yourself could come and live with me!"
"But, Mamma, that would never do."
"Yes, with your husband ... and your boy...."
"No, Mamma, it really wouldn't do."
"Yes, it would, yes, it would ... with your husband and your boy.... Then I would put up with the extra trouble."
"No, Mamma, really, it wouldn't do. Whereas Dorine...."
"No, no, I don't want Dorine. I want you."
"Why?"
"I want you. I want Addie. I want youth around me. It's all so gloomy here. Dorine.... Dorine's gloomy too.... So will you come?"
"Mamma ... really...."
"You don't want to. I see you don't want to.... You are all of you selfish.... Children always are.... Oh, why need I go on living?"
"Dear Mamma, do be reasonable. You say you would find Dorine too much trouble ... and, after all, there are three of us...."
"Yes, three of you. Well?"
"And the rest of the family?"
"What about them?"
"They wouldn't approve."
"It's none of their business to approve or disapprove."
"And my husband...."
"Well?"
"My husband ... no, really, it wouldn't do."
"Yes, I see you don't want to come.... You're all selfish alike...."
No, it was not feasible. Constance foresaw all the difficulties: the old woman still always moving aimlessly about the house in the mornings ... and coming upon a cigarette of Van der Welcke's ... a book of Addie's lying about ... a hundred trifles.... Adolphine, Cateau, Dorine disapproving, beyond a doubt, that Constance, of all people, should come to live with her mother: Constance, of all people ... with Van der Welcke.... No, it was not feasible ... because of all those trifles ... and also because of a strange feeling of delicacy: she did not want to come and live at Mamma's with her husband, with Van der Welcke, long as it was since it had all happened....
"Very well, dear, don't," said the old woman, bitterly; and she nodded her head repeatedly, in sad comprehension of all the disappointments of lonely, melancholy old age. "Yes, yes ... that's how it is ... always.... And so the old man; down there, is left all alone?..."
Constance's heart shrank within her. She saw the old woman's dim eyes look vaguely into her own eyes and she read in the vague glance the uncertain memory of things that had just been said. And, while the eyes gazed dimly, the plaintive voice went on lamenting, with that inward sighing, a broken sound of broken strings, and with a keener note of bitterness through it, so that, with that voice, with that glance, the old woman suddenly aged into the semblance of her old sisters, Auntie Tine, Auntie Rine....
Constance went home through a dismal, heavy rain, hurrying along under the shelter of her umbrella, from which the drops fell in a steady cataract. She could not shake off the gloomy anxiety that haunted her in these days, through which flashed strange premonitions and presentiments; and, since she had been to Driebergen, in response to the old woman's dying summons, she could no longer free herself from this haunting dread, as though it were all a magic web in which she was caught. Oh, what could be threatening, now that the old woman yonder was dead? What sort of change would come looming up, day after day, gloomy day after gloomy day, in her small life, in the small lives around her?... For herself, in the late aftermath of life, she had found a tiny grain of true philosophy—small, oh, so small, but very precious!—and she did not think of herself, because she believed that what might still come, in her own life, she would be able to bear philosophically. Sometimes even, at such times, she would think of the worst that could happen to her: if Addie were suddenly to die. In that case, perhaps, in that case alone, the grain would not be sufficient to enable her to bear it with philosophy.... But, for the rest ... for the rest, she was no longer afraid of life. And yet what were these vague terrors which chilled her soul, which enveloped her nowadays in that magic web of anxious speculation concerning the future? Would she be involved or would others? Was it illness ... money trouble ... an accident ... a catastrophe ... or was it death?... Was it to do with Addie ... or was it to do with her mother? Oh, she wanted to be prepared for anything ... but what ... what would it be? And these haunting terrors which gathered around her so menacingly, like a gloomy twilight, with all those ghostly premonitions and presentiments of what was coming, was it because the days themselves were so gloomy, because it was always raining out of fateful skies? Why should there be deeper gloom around her soul in these days than around others, perhaps hundreds and thousands of people? Was it not the reflection of that gloomy winter in and around her and was not that reflection casting its gloom around all the people who were now, like herself, walking under dripping umbrellas or else, like spectres, looking with pallid faces out of their windows at another dark and dreary day?... Oh, how vast, how immense it all was and how small were they all! To think that, if the sun happened to shine, she would perhaps think and feel quite differently! To think that possibly she was divining, with a shudder, something of days and things to come and went flying off to distant cloud-lands, to all ... and that possibly she was divining nothing!... How ready people were to play with their emotions, their sensitiveness! How ready they were to delude themselves that they had seen invisible things, that they had foretold the most profound secrets!... No, she could foretell nothing, she saw nothing invisible ... but still, argue as sensibly as she might, a haunting fear oppressed her, a chill shudder ran through her, as though she had brought something of death back with her from Driebergen, as though its shadow continued to follow her, indoors and out of doors. Was it only because it was raining?...
Well, she was glad to be at home, to change her wet things, to slip into a tea-gown and warm herself by the fire. Hark to the wind howling round the house and down the lane, the wind that came tearing on from afar that was far, wide and mysterious, wide and mysterious as the heavens, above houses small as boxes, above people as insects small!... How mighty was the wind!... How often had she not thus listened to the wind, her mighty Dutch wind, as though it would carry all sorts of things to her ... or, not heeding her smallness, swoop right down upon her!... What calamity was there that could happen? Addie brought home unexpectedly: an accident on his bicycle; run over by a motor-car; murdered? Henri telling her that they were ruined; that he would have to work for his bread: he who had never been able to work after his shattered career? The house on fire, at home ... or at Mamma's? Mamma dying?...
Oh, what thoughts of shuddering horror they all were and of sombre misfortune and of death, always death!... Something happening to one of the brothers or sisters or to their children. For, in spite of everything, she was fond of all of them, they were still her brothers and sisters. Despite all the misunderstanding, the lack of harmony, the ill-feeling, she was fond of all of them, felt herself to be of one blood with them.... Oh, how lonely she was!... And perhaps, very soon, she would have to be all alone like that, all her life long: without Mamma, dead; without Henri, dead; without Addie, dead!...
She stared into the fire and shivered in its ruddy glow, while the shuddering horror gripped her in its sharp clutches. But a bell jangled loudly ... and she felt a shock of apprehension passing through her; her breath was almost a scream: were they bringing Addie home dead?...
Truitje opened the hall-door: thank goodness, she heard his voice. She sank back in her chair; the door of the room opened; and he stood on the threshold, laughing:
"I daren't come in, Mummy, I'm dripping wet. I'll go and change first. Did you ever see such weather?"
She smiled; he shut the door; and—she couldn't help it—she began to sob. When he came down a quarter of an hour later, healthy, vigorous, smiling, he found her in tears:
"What is it, Mummy?"
"I don't know, dear...."
"But why are you crying? Surely there must be something!..."
"No, it's nothing.... It's nothing ... I think...."
She leant against him. She told him how the dread horror was clutching at her. She was very much unstrung and she felt as if something was going to happen: a great sorrow, a disaster, an accident, she didn't know what.... She poured out her anxious soul to him, nestling in his arms:
"It's too silly, Addie. I must try to be calmer."
She became calmer under his steady gaze. Oh, what delightful eyes he had! As she looked into them, she became calmer:
"Addie ... your eyes...."
"What about them, Mummy?"
"They are growing lighter in colour: they are serious, as always, but they're becoming lighter...."
"What's the matter with my eyes now?"
"They've become grey."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Yes, they're turning grey, blue-grey...."
He laughed at her a little. She remained with her head on his shoulder, looked into his eyes. She became quite calm, now, gave a last, deep sigh:
"Dear, listen ... listen to it blowing...."
"Yes, Mamma."
"I'm afraid of the wind sometimes...."
"And sometimes you love it."
"Yes."
"You're a very sensitive little Mummy."
"I wonder, Addie, if I'm so strange ... because of a presentiment...."
"A presentiment?"
"Don't you believe in them?"
"I don't know ... I never have 'em...."
"Are you awfully matter-of-fact, Addie?... Or...."
"I don't know, Mamma...."
"No, you're not matter-of-fact.... It's very strange, but you have a magnetism about you which matter-of-fact people never have. You calm one. When I lean against you, I grow calmer.... Listen, listen to it blowing!"
"Yes, it's very stormy. Let's listen to it together, Mamma. Perhaps we shall hear something ... in the storm."
She looked into his eyes. His eyes were smiling. She did not know if he was serious or joking.
"Yes," she said, nestling closer in his arms, feeling that she still had him, that she had not yet lost him. "Let us listen to the storm ... and see if we can hear anything ... in the wind...."
And they remained still, without speaking. The lamps were not lit; only the fire in the open hearth cast its dancing gleams and shadows on the walls. The wind tore on from very far away, out of mysterious cloud-laden skies. It shrieked round the house, rushed past the windows, howled in the chimney, spread its wide wings and flapped on through the clattering rain, leaving its howl like a trail in the air....
By the flickering firelight, playing upon their small souls, they listened attentively.... He smiled.... Her eyes were wide and staring....