The Twilight of the Souls

by Louis Couperus

FOOTNOTES:

[27] The title borne by the unmarried daughters of the Dutch noblemen.

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CHAPTER XIX

The next day, a Sunday, Constance felt a strange longing for youth and laughter, for merry voices and sunny faces. Addie and his father had gone out early, trying the bicycles on the sodden roads; and she was so lonely, still obsessed by that unaccountable sense of depression, that she felt that she must have laughter around her, that she must watch the romping of children, or she would be perpetually bursting into tears. And she took advantage of a lull in the rain to go to Adeline's in the Bankastraat.

As she entered the house, it seemed to her that the sun was shining. Adeline was sitting downstairs in the living-room, with the children round her. Marie, the eldest girl, was just twelve. All the others followed her at regular intervals of age, like the steps of a staircase. Marie was a sort of little mother to the rest: she was a great help to Adeline with the three youngest, those with the ugly names, Jan, Piet and Klaasje. These were now six years, four and two; and they formed a little group within the big group, because Jan insisted on ruling over Klaasje and Piet, looking upon them as his vassals, imitating Papa's voice, playing at horses with Piet and Klaasje, both very docile, while Jan was the tyrant, trying to impart a roar to his shrill little cock-crow of a voice ... until Marietje had to come in between as a supreme referee, giving her decision in all sorts of difficult questions that arose out of the merest trifle.... Adèletje, ten and a half, was a delicate, ailing child, mostly sitting very quietly close to Mamma, hiding in her skirts: a puny little thing, a great anxiety to her mother; and Adeline was uneasy too about Klaasje, as the child remained very backward and dull: the uncles and aunts called it an idiot.... But a merry little couple were Gerdy and Constant, nine and eight years old, always together, adoring each other, good little flaxen-haired kiddies that they were: very babyish for their age, blending their resemblance to Papa and Mamma into one soft mixture of pink and white and gold, almost like a coloured picture, and seeming a couple of idyllic little figures by the side of the rough, sturdy elder brothers. For, while Jan already was turbulent and tyrannical, Alex and Guy were regular "nuts;" had become indifferent to Marietje's judicial decisions, no longer even submitted to Adeline's restraint and had lost all sense of awe except when the stairs creaked under Gerrit's heavy footstep or when he bellowed at them. Though even then they knew, secretly, with a knowing glance of mutual understanding, that Papa might raise his voice, but never raised his hand; that, when Mamma decreed a punishment, he would say something to her in French, so that the punishment became very slight. And this precocious worldly wisdom had turned them, in their little nursery world, into two intractable, cheeky, swanking young reprobates, putting on big boys' airs, striking terror into little Gerdy and Constant, who would run away together and hide and play at mothers and fathers behind the sofa standing aslant in the drawing-room, chuckling quietly when Mamma or Marietje looked for them and could not find them. But, however intractable, Alex and Guy were two handsome little fellows, with cheeky mouths, but gentle eyes, dark eyes, the Van Lowe eyes: not their hard, but their soft eyes; and, when they were impudent and troublesome, with lips stuck out cheekily, but with those eyes full of dark, soft gentleness, then Constance felt in love with them, spoilt them even more than Gerrit did, put up with everything from the rascals, even allowing the two great boys to hang all over her and ruffle her clothes and hair. This time too, they rushed at her the moment she came in; and Constance, glad to see them so radiant, glad that everything became bright around her, as though the sun were shining, flung open her arms; but Adeline cried:

"Alex! Guy! Take care: Auntie's good cloak!... Boys, do take care: Auntie's beautiful hat!"

But neither Alex nor Guy had any regard for Auntie's good cloak or Auntie's beautiful hat; and Constance was so weak in their rather rough and disrespectful embrace that she only laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh, sunshine, sunshine at last! Passionately fond as she was of her own big son, this was what she needed in these days of rain and gloomy skies and gloomy feelings: this almost overwhelming sunshine, this almost pitiless blaze of radiant youth; this rough gambolling around her of what was young and healthy and bright, as if the shock brought her out of her gloomy depression....

When the boys, after behaving like young dogs jumping up to kiss her face, were at last satisfied, she and sober Marietje looked all through the house for Gerdy and Constant, who had purposely hidden themselves and who, she knew, had crept behind the slanting sofa in the drawing-room. She would not find them too quickly, wished to prolong their enjoyment, called out in the drawing-room:

"But where can they be? Wherever can they be? Constant! Gerdy!..."

Then at last the giggles of the little brother and sister behind the sofa made her look over the back:

"Here they are! Here they are!"

Oh, how young those children were! Excepting wise and sedate Marietje—Mamma's help—and perhaps quiet Adèletje, how young they were! Those two rascals, what children they were for their eleven and ten years! That little father-and-mother pair, Gerdy and Constant, what babies for their nine and eight! And then the nursery proper, Jan tyrannizing over Piet and Klaasje!... How pink and young and fresh and sunny it all was!... Now those were real children, even though Klaasje's laugh was very dull and silly. She had never known Addie like that. Addie had never had that sort of youth. No, his childhood had been spent amid the outbursts of temper of his father and mother, amid their jealousies, amid scenes and tears, so that the child had never been a child. And yet ... and yet, though he had grown up early, how well he had taken care of himself and what kindly powers had watched over him, making him into their one great joy and happiness and consolation!...

But, though this melancholy just passed through her, still the morning, that Sunday morning, had begun sunnily for her, with all that golden hair, all those soft, pink cheeks, all that mad, radiant gaiety; and Constance forgot her gloomy depression, caused by she knew not what, in the glow of childish happiness in that living-room.

The stairs now groaned under a heavy tread.

"There's Gerrit," said Adeline.

"How late he is!" said Constance, laughing. "Gerrit, how late you are!" she cried, even before he opened the door.

And she was surprised that his step should sound so sluggish and heavy, accustomed as she was to hear him fill the whole house with the brisk noise of his movements. Sluggishly and heavily his footsteps came down the passage. Then he slowly opened the door of the dining-room, which was also the living-room.

He remained standing in the doorway:

"Ah, Constance! Good-morning."

"Good-morning, Gerrit. How late you are!" she repeated, gaily. "You're in no hurry to get up on a Sunday, I see!"

But she was startled when she looked at him:

"Gerrit, dear ... what's the matter?"

"I'm feeling rotten," he said, gloomily. "No, children, don't worry Father."

And he pushed aside the playful-rough hands of the two cheeky rascals, Alex and Guy.

"Gerrit hasn't been at all well for a day or two," said Adeline, anxiously.

"What is it, Gerrit?" asked Constance, smiling her smile of a moment ago, when the sunny warmth of the children had made her smile through her own gloomy depression.

"I feel beastly rotten," he repeated, gloomily. "No, thanks, I don't want any breakfast."

"Haven't you been well for the last two days?" asked Constance.

He looked at her with dull, glassy eyes. He thought of telling her, with bitter irony, that all his life he had not been well; but she would not have understood, she would have believed that he was joking, that he was vexed about something; she would not have known. And, besides, he did not want to hurt her either: she was so nice, he always looked upon her as the nicest of his sisters, though they had gone years without seeing each other. What a good thing it was that she had come back! She had been back in Holland three years now, his little sister; he was fond of her, his little sister; he had an almost mystic feeling for her, the sympathy which has its origin in kinship, that sharing of the same blood, the same soul, apportioned so mysteriously in the birth of brother and sister out of one and the same mother by one and the same father; and he felt so clearly that she was his sister, that he loved her as something of himself, a part of himself, something of his own flesh and blood and soul, that he went up to her, laid his hand on her head—she had taken off her hat; and her hair was all ruffled with the boys' romping—and said to her, in a voice which he could not possibly raise to a roar and which broke faintly with emotion:

"It's good to see you, Sissy, with your dear, kind face.... I don't know about being unwell, child: I've had a couple of bad nights, that's all."

"But you sleep well as a rule."

"Yes, as a rule."

"And your appetite is good."

"Yes, Connie, I have a good appetite as a rule. But ... I don't feel like breakfast this morning."

"Your face is so drawn...."

"I shall be all right presently," he said, brightening up. And he struck his chest with his two hands. "My old carcase can stand some knocking about."

"Gerrit came home dripping wet two days ago," said Adeline. "He had been standing on the front of the tram, in a pelting rain, and he was wet to the skin."

"But, Gerrit, why did you do it?"

"To get the wind in my face, Sissy...."

"And to catch cold."

He laughed:

"There, don't worry about me. My old carcase," striking his chest, "can stand some knocking about."

"But you're looking ill."

"Oh, rot!"

"Yes, you're looking ill."

"I want some air. The weather's not so bad. It's not raining, it's only blowing fit to blow your head off. Are you afraid of the wind, or will you come for a walk with your brother?"

"Very well, Gerrit ... but first eat a nice little egg."

He gave a roar of laughter which made the whole room ring again. The children also laughed: they always laughed when Papa laughed like that; and the laughter gave courage to Gerdy, who had looked frightened at first. She crept up on Gerrit's knees, mad on being caressed, clung on to Gerrit, kissed him with tiny little kisses; and Alex and Guy hung, one on his arm, the other on his leg, while his Homeric laughter still rang long and loud.

And his laughter never ceased. He laughed till the servant peeped round the door and disappeared again, perplexed. He laughed till all the children, the nine of them, were laughing, for his laughter had tempted the three little ones—Jan, the tyrant, and his two small vassals—from the stairs, where they were playing. He laughed till Adeline, the dear quiet little mother, also got a painful fit of giggling, which made her choke silently in herself. And he could not stop; his laughter roared out and filled the house: even a street-boy, out of doors, flattened his nose against the window in an attempt to peer in and discover who was laughing like that inside.

And at last Gerrit got up, released himself from the three children, kissed Constance; and, with a red face, tears in his eyes and a mouth still distorted with merriment, he caught her two shoulders in his great hands and said, looking deep into her eyes:

"Don't be angry, Sissy, but I c-couldn't help it, I c-couldn't help it!... You'll be the death of me with laughing, if you go on like that!... And when you put on that kind little voice and or-order me ... to eat a n-nice little egg ... before you consent to go for a walk with me...! ... Oh, dear, oh, dear! I shall never get over it!... Very well ... all right ... just to please you ... but then ... but then you must ... b-boil the n-nice little egg for me ... and put it before me ... put my n-nice little egg before me!..."

Constance was laughing too; the children all kept on laughing, like mad, not really knowing what they were laughing at, now that they were all laughing together; and Adeline, Adeline....

"L-look!" said Gerrit, pointing to his wife. "L-look!"

And, while Constance took the egg out of the boiler, she looked round at Adeline. The little mother was still overcome with her fit of silent giggling; the tears rolled down her cheeks; the children around her were screaming with the fun of it.

"I n-never in all my l-life, Connie," said Gerrit, "saw Line laugh ... as she's laughing at that n-nice little egg of yours...."

And he started afresh. He roared. But she had put his plate in front of him. He now played the clown, took up his spoon, said in a pretty little voice that sounded humorously in his great roaring throat:

"Thank you kindly, Constance ... for your n-nice little egg.... It's too sweet of you!..."

And he nipped at his nice little egg with small, careful spoonfuls, pretending to be very weak and very fragile; and the children, seeing their big, burly father nipping at the nice little egg with dainty little movements, were wild with delight, thought it great fun of Papa....

He had finished and was ready for his walk with Constance.

"Papa, may we come too? Do let us come too, Papa!"

"No," he said, bluntly. "No, don't be such limpets. You're just like a pack of octopuses, winding one in their suckers. No, Father wants to go out with his sister alone, for once...."

And he went out alone with Constance, after she had managed to conceal the disorder of her hair under her hat and veil.

Outside, she said to him:

"Gerrit, how bright it all is in your house, how sunny, how happy!"

"Yes," he said.

"You have every reason to be thankful, Gerrit."

"Yes."

"Do you feel better now, in the air?"

"Yes ... especially after your nice little egg."

"No, don't be silly, Gerrit. You don't look half as well as usual."

"And I feel simply rotten ... if you really want to know."

"Still?"

"Yes ... but it'll pass off.... I ... I always sleep very well; and just because of that a bad night upsets me...."

"But that's an exception, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course, it's an exception. Don't be anxious about me, Sissy. I've a hide like a rhinoceros. I'm the pachyderm of the family. I haven't got your dainty little constitution...."

"I am so glad when I come to you, Gerrit. I always brighten up in your house."

"You haven't been gloomy, surely?"

"That's just what I have been, quite lately."

"And why, Connie?"

"I don't know. Because of the weather...."

"Are you afraid of it? It's beginning to rain again."

"As long as it doesn't pour, we can go on walking...."

"It does me good, especially the wind blowing about one. Do you like wind?"

"Yes, I do ... but...."

"But what?"

"Sometimes I hear too much in it."

"My little fanciful sister of old! What do you hear in it?"

"Gloomy things, melancholy things ... but always very big things ... whereas we ourselves are so small, so very small...."

"People never change.... You're just the little sister that you used to be ... in the river ... with your fairy-tales...."

"But what I hear in the wind is not a fairy-tale."

"What do you hear?"

"Life: the whole of life itself.... Things of the past; things of the future; and all big and tremendous.... When I listen to the wind, the past becomes immense and the future tremendous ... and I remain so small, so small...."

"What you remain, child, is a dreamer...."

"No, I haven't remained so.... I may have become one again...."

"Yes, you have become one again.... I recognize you like this absolutely, just as you were as a slim, fair-haired little girl, the same little fairy-like vision.... How long ago it all is, Connie!... How everything melts away in our lives!... How old we grow!..."

"But all your children: they keep you young. They all ... they all belong to the future...."

"Yes, if only I myself...."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What were you going to say?"

"I was going to own up to something. I was going to confess to you. But why should I? It's better not. It would be very weak of me. It's better not. It's better that I shouldn't speak."

"Gerrit ... Gerrit, dear ... tell me ... is there ... is there...?"

"What?..."

"Is there anything?..."

"No."

"Is there anything threatening you?"

"Why, no, child!"

"Aren't you well?... Do you feel ... unhappy?... Have you some big trouble?... Tell me, Gerrit, tell me!... I'm your sister after all!"

"Yes, you're my sister, the same flesh and blood, soul of my soul.... No, there's nothing, Constance, there's nothing threatening."

"And there's no secret trouble?"

"No, no secret trouble."

"Yes, I'm sure there is."

"No, old girl. It's only that I've slept badly the last night or two. And I feel rotten. That's all."

"But your health is good, isn't it?"

"Oh dear, yes!"

"There's nothing serious the matter? You're not seriously ill?"

"No, no, certainly not."

"Then what is it?"

"Nothing."

"No, no, I feel that you have a trouble of some kind. Gerrit, aren't you happy? Is there some private worry? Aren't you happy with Adeline?"

"Why, of course I am, Connie! She's awfully sweet. I'm very happy with her."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Yes, Gerrit, there's something wrong. Oh, do tell me about it! Don't keep it to yourself. Sorrow ... chokes us ... when we keep it in."

"No, it's not sorrow.... It's ... I don't know what it is...."

"You don't know?"

"No."

"But there's something, you see. What is it?"

"Constance, it's ... it's...."

"What?"

"Constance, it's ... an overpowering melancholy."

"An overpowering melancholy?"

"Yes."

"What about?"

"About ... myself."

"Yourself?"

"Yes.... Because I'm rotten."

"Because you haven't felt well the last few days?"

"Because I'm never well."

She now thought that he was exaggerating, that he was joking, that he was pessimistical, hypochondriacal; and she said:

"Why, Gerrit!..."

He understood that she did not believe him, that she never would believe him. He laughed:

"Yes," he said, "I've a gay old imagination, haven't I?"

"Yes, I think you're imagining things a bit."

"It's this confounded weather, you know."

"Yes, that makes people out of sorts. It doesn't affect children, fortunately."

"No, not children."

"When you see them presently, you'll.... But you mustn't let our walk make you gloomy. Gerrit, will you try to keep your mind off things and not to be melancholy? I had no idea that you were like this!"

"No, old girl, but what does any one of us know about the other?"

"Not much, I admit."

"Each of us is a sealed book to the other. And yet you're fond of me and I of you. And you know nothing about me ... nor I about you."

"That's true."

"You know nothing of my secret self. And I know nothing of your secret self."

"No," she confessed softly; and she blushed and thought of the life that had blossomed late in her, blossomed into spring and summer, the life of which nobody knew.

"It has to be so. It can't be otherwise. We perceive so little of one another, in the words we exchange. I have often longed for a friend ... with whom I could feel his secret self and I mine. I never had a friend like that."

"Gerrit, I did not know ... that you were so ... sensitive."

"No. I am saying things to you which I never talk about. And I say them feeling that it is no use saying them. And yet you're my sister, you know."

"Yes."

"I shall take you home now. I'm only dragging you through the mud and rain. The roads are soaked through. You'll be home in a minute or two."

He brought her home. She rang the bell. Truitje opened the door.

"Is Van der Welcke in, do you think?" Gerrit asked Constance.

"Yes, ma'am," Truitje answered, "the master's upstairs."

"I'll just go up and see him."

Gerrit ran up the stairs.

"I was forgetting, ma'am: there's a telegram come," said Truitje.

"A telegram?..."

She did not know what came over her, but she felt deadly afraid. The blood seemed to freeze round her heart. She took the telegram from Truitje, went into the drawing-room and closed the door before breaking it open....

Gerrit had only run up to say a word to Van der Welcke: he had to go back home, for it was twelve o'clock and getting on for lunch-time. Van der Welcke saw him down the stairs.

"Well, good-bye, old chap," said Gerrit, genially, shaking hands with Van der Welcke. "Constance!" he cried. "Constance!..."

She did not answer.

"Constance!" Gerrit called once more.

The kitchen-door was open.

"The mistress is in the drawing-room, sir," said the servant.

"Constance...."

He opened the door. But the door stuck, as though pushing against a body.

"What the devil!..." Gerrit began, in consternation.

They rushed in through the dining-room: Van der Welcke, Gerrit, the maid. Constance was lying against the door in a dead faint, with the telegram crumpled in her clenched hand:

"Paris....
"Henri dead. Am in despair.
"EMILIE"

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CHAPTER XX

It was a dismal evening at Mrs. van Lowe's that Sunday. And yet Mamma knew nothing: together with Dorine, she had seen that the maids set out the card-tables, had seen, according to her custom, to the sandwiches, the cakes and the wine which were invariably put out in the boudoir, under the portrait of her husband, the late governor-general. But the old lady was different from usual; and Dorine, looking very pale and apprehensive, gave a start of amazement when she asked:

"Dorine, who's been moving Papa's portrait?"

The old woman asked the question testily and peremptorily.

"But, Mamma, it's been here for years. After Papa's death, you said you wouldn't have it always before your eyes in the drawing-room ... and it was moved in here...."

"Who, do you say, moved it?"

"Why, you yourself, Mamma!"

"I?"

"Yes, you...."

"Oh, yes!" said the old woman, remembering. "Yes, yes, I remember; I only asked because it looks so out of place here ... in the little room ... and it is such a fine portrait...."

Dorine said nothing more. Her legs shook beneath her; but she went on spreading out the cards.

Karel and Cateau arrived:

"How aw-ful!" said Cateau, pale in the face. "We thought we had bet-ter come ... for Mamma's sake ... didn't we, Ka-rel?"

"Mamma knows nothing," said Dorine. "But we can't possibly keep it from her.... Otto has gone to Baarn to break the news to Bertha."

The Van Saetzemas arrived:

"No details yet?" asked Adolphine.

"No," Dorine whispered, nervously, seeing Mamma approaching.

"How late you all are!" grumbled the old woman. "Why aren't Uncle Herman and Auntie Lot here? And why haven't Auntie Tine and Auntie Rine come yet?"

There was a moment's painful pause.

"But they haven't been coming for some time, Mamma," said Adolphine, gently.

"What do you say? Are they ill?"

"The old aunts haven't been for ev-er so long on Sunday even-ings," said Cateau, with a great deal of pitying emphasis.

Suddenly Mrs. van Lowe seemed to remember. Yes, it was true: the sisters had not come on Sunday evenings for a long time. She nodded her head in assent, with an air of knowing all about the sad things which happen in old age and which will happen also in the future that is still hidden from the children. But in her heart she thought:

"There's something."

And she seemed to be trying to gaze ahead. But she did not see it before her, did not see it before her vague eyes, as she had seen the death of Henri's mother, yonder, in a dark room at Driebergen, in a dark oak bedstead, behind dark green curtains. She felt that there was something that they had kept from her in order to spare her pain; but she did not see it as she had but lately seen other things which the children did not know. It was as though her sight were growing dim and uncertain, as though she only guessed, only suspected things. And she would not ask what it was. If there was something ... well, then her Sunday family-evening could not help being dreary and silent. Adolphine's children no longer sat round the big table in the conservatory: the old lady did not understand why, did not see that they were growing up, that the round games bored them. Only, as she looked at her empty room, she asked just one more question:

"Where's Bertha? And where's Constance?"

This time, Adolphine and Cateau did not even trouble to remind Mamma that Bertha was living at Baarn. As for Auntie Lot, how could they tell her that the good soul had had a nervous break-down after being told of Henri's sudden death, about which no one knew any details? Toetie arrived very late and said that Mamma had a little headache. As for Constance, not one of the children would have dared to say that she and Van der Welcke had gone to Paris by the night-mail at six o'clock, as soon as they could after Emilie's telegram. Gerrit wanted to go with them, but he was ill and had hardly said a word to Adeline about the telegram when he returned home from the Kerkhoflaan. He had got into bed shivering, thinking that he had a feverish attack, influenza or something. The daughters also thought it better not to tell Mamma that Gerrit was ill; and Mamma did not even ask after Gerrit, though she missed him and Adeline and thought that her rooms looked very empty.

Where could they be? the old woman wondered. None of Bertha's little tribe; the old sisters not there; Constance not there; Gerrit not there; Auntie Lot not there: where were they all? the old woman kept wondering. How big her rooms looked, what a shivery feeling the card-tables gave her, with the markers, with the cards spread out in an S! Well, if there were no children left, it was not worth while having the table put out for the round games in the conservatory, at least not until Gerrit's children were bigger, until a new warmth surrounded her, on her poor Sunday evenings! And what was the use of ordering such a lot of cakes, if there was nobody there to eat them?

And it was very strange, but this evening, now that her rooms were so empty, she grew very weary of those who were there—Adolphine, Cateau, Floortje and Dijkerhof—very tired. She felt her face becoming drawn and haggard, her drooping eyelids twitching over her dim eyes and her heavily-veined hands trembling in her lap with utter weariness. She did not speak, only nodded: the wise nod of old age, knowing that old age spells sadness. She only nodded, longing for them to go. They were uncomfortable: they whispered together, their faces were pale; they sat there staring in such a strange, spectral way ... as if something dreadful had happened or was going to happen.... Had the servants made up the fires so badly? Was it so bitterly cold, so creepily chilly in her rooms, that she felt shivers all down her old, bent back?... And, when the children at last, earlier than usual, took leave of her—still with that same spectral stare, as though they were looking at something dreadful that had happened or was going to happen—she felt inclined to say to them that she was getting too old now to keep up her Sunday evenings; she had it on her lips to say as much to Floortje, to Cateau, to Adolphine; but a pity for them all and especially for herself restrained her and she did not say it. On the contrary, she said, very wearily:

"Well, I hope that you will all be more particular about coming next Sunday ... all of you, all of you.... I want you all here.... I want to have you all around me."

Then they left her alone, earlier than usual, and the old woman did not ring at once for the servants to put out the lights, to go to bed, but first wandered for a little while longer through her large, empty, still brightly-lit rooms. How much had changed in the many, many years that very slowly accumulated about her and seemed to bury her under their grey mounds! Sometimes it seemed to her as if nothing had changed, as if the Sunday evenings always remained the same, even though this or that one might be absent for one reason or another. But sometimes, as to-day, it seemed to her as if everything, everything had changed, with hardly perceptible changes. Did she alone remain unchanged?...

She had now reached the little boudoir: hardly any of the cakes had been touched; above them hung the fine portrait of her husband, in the gold-laced uniform, with the orders. He was dead ... and with him all their grandeur, which she had learnt to love because of him, through him.... She wandered back to the other rooms: there were portraits on the walls, photographs in frames on the tables and mantelpieces. Dead was the old family-doctor; as good as dead her two old sisters; dead was Van Naghel; as good as dead Bertha, now so far away. Aunt Lot, she still remained, she still remained, bearing up bravely, in spite of financial disaster.... Then the children: they were all dying off, for surely it was tantamount to that, when they were becoming more and more remote from her: Karel; Adolphine; Ernst; even Paul; and Dorine, her youngest. There was only Constance ... and Gerrit, perhaps.... And the grandchildren: Frans, in Java; Emilie and Henri, in Paris: O God, what were they doing in Paris? O God, what was it, what was the matter with them? For she suddenly saw the boy ... white as a corpse ... with his clothes open ... and a deep, gaping wound above his heart, sending a stream of purple blood from his lung ... while he lay in the last agonies of death.... Why did she see it, this strange vision of a second or two? It couldn't be true, yet it filled her with anxiety.... And in sad understanding she nodded her old head, with the dim eyes which were suddenly seeing visions more clearly than reality ... until the time when they would see nothing, numbed by the years which were slowly accumulating about her.... Why did she see it?... And, amid the emptiness of her brightly-lit drawing-room, a sort of roar came to her from the distance, from the distance outside the room, the distance outside the house, the distance outside the night, the very distant distance of eternity, the eternity whence all the things of the future come: a roar so overwhelming that it seemed to come from a supernatural sea in which the poor, trembling old woman was drowned, drowned with all her vanity and all her unimportant, insignificant sorrow, a sea in which her very small, small soul was drowned, swallowed up like the veriest atom in the roaring, roaring waves; a roar whose voice told her that it was coming, that it was coming, the great sorrow, the thing before which she trembled with fear because she had long foreseen it and because it would be so heavy for her to bear ... now that she was too old and too weary to bear any more sorrow! And, with an unconscious gesture, she raised her trembling old hands and prayed, mechanically:

"O God, no more, no more!..."

Why must fate be like that, so heavy, so ruthless and crushing? Why had it not all come earlier, including the thing which advanced with such a threatening roar and under which she, too weary now, too weak and too old, would succumb when it passed over her, when it reached her at last out of the roaring, threatening, distant, distant eternity, wherein all the things of the future are born....

But the roar of that doom and her knowledge of it lasted no longer than a second. And, when that second was past, there was nothing around her but the empty, brightly-lit rooms. It was eleven o'clock, the children had all gone home and she rang for the servants, to put out the lights, to go to bed, duly observant of the small needs of her very small life, in spite of all those supernatural things which threatened from afar, out of eternity....

Leaving the maids occupied in the empty room, where they turned off the gas in the chandelier, the old woman slowly climbed the stairs, nodding her old head in bitter comprehension, knowing too well, alas, that the great sorrow would come ... even though, trembling with fear, she prayed:

"O God ... no more, no more!"

---

CHAPTER XXI

"Are you going out, Gerrit?" asked Adeline.

She was surprised to see him come down the stairs, dressed, in uniform. He had spent the morning in bed, but he felt better now; and a feverish excitement acted like a spur. He said, in answer to his wife's question, that he was better, played for a moment with Gerdy, took his lunch standing and then hurried out of the house and rushed through a parade at barracks, where he was not expected. The fever, which he still felt sending shivers through his great body, drove him out of barracks again; and he walked to the Kerkhoflaan and asked Truitje if there was any news of her master or mistress, if Master Addie had had a telegram from Paris; but Truitje didn't know. Then he tore off like one possessed, first to Otto and Frances' house, where he found Frances and Louise, both sick with waiting: Otto had gone to Baarn, to break the news to Bertha.

He could not stay with the two women: Frances wandering from room to room, crying helplessly; Louise, calmer, looking after the children, the entire care of whom she had taken on herself since she had come to live with Otto and since Frances had become such an invalid. Gerrit could not possibly stay: with long strides, he flew to the Alexanderstraat, to Mamma, who was glad to see him well again after his two days' illness. He found Dorine with her; Adolphine called, followed by Cateau, all obeying an impulse not to leave the old woman alone in these days, when at any moment Van der Welcke, Constance and Emilie might arrive from Paris, bringing home the body of Henri, of whose death no one had telegraphed any details, much to the indignation of Adolphine and Cateau.

But, when Auntie Lot came in, her small eyes red and swollen with weeping, and cried, "Oh dear!... Kassian!"—an exclamation at once hushed by the children, an exclamation which Mamma, staring dimly into space, failed to understand—Gerrit could no longer endure it among all those overwrought women; and, convinced that Mamma did not even yet know that Constance and Van der Welcke had gone to Paris, convinced that the sisters had not even paved the way by telling her that Henri was seriously ill, he cleared out suddenly, without saying good-bye, and rushed into the open air, down the street, into the Woods, gasping for breath.

What was it, what could it be, hanging in the air? The clouds seemed to be bending over the town in pity, an immense, yearning pity which turned into a desperate melancholy while Gerrit hurried along with his great strides; the wintry trees lifted their crowns of branches in melancholy despair; the rooks cawed and circled in swarms; the bells of the tram-cars tinkled as though muffled in black crape; the few pedestrians walked stiffly and unnaturally; he met ague-stricken, black-clad figures with sinister, spectral faces: they passed him like so many ghosts; and all around him, in the vistas of the Woods, rose a clammy mist, in which every outline of houses, trees and people was blurred into a shadowy unreality. And it seemed to Gerrit as if he alone were real and possessed a body; and he ran and rushed through the spectral landscape, through the hollow avenues of death.

What was it in the air? Nothing, nothing extraordinary: it was winter in Holland; and the people ... the people had nothing extraordinary about them: they walked in thick coats and cloaks, with their hands in their pockets, because it was cold; and, because the mist was cold and raw, their eyes looked fixed, their lips and noses drawn and pinched and they bore themselves rigidly and spectrally when they came towards him out of the fog and passed him with those shadowy and unreal figures. And, with all sorts of fever-born images whirling before his eyes, like shining will-o'-the-wisps in that morning mist, his thoughts touched hastily on every sort of subject: he saw the barracks before him; Pauline; the Paris train and Constance and Van der Welcke in a compartment with Henri's coffin between them; Auntie Lot and Mamma; Bertha at Baarn. He saw his boyhood at Buitenzorg; the foaming river; all his bright-haired children. He saw a worm, big as a dragon, with bristles like lances sticking straight out of its dragon's back....

He was still feverish and had been unwise to get up and go out. But he could not have stayed in bed, he couldn't have done it: his feverish excitement had driven him to the barracks, to his mother and to.... Where was he going? Was he going to Scheveningen? And why was he going through the Woods like that? What was it that constantly impelled him to keep to the right, to turn up the paths on the right, as though he were making for the Nieuwe Weg? What did he want on the right?...

Suddenly, as a counteragent to his fever, he turned to the left; but, on coming to a cross-road, he wandered off to the right again, helplessly, as if he had forgotten the way.... There was the Ornamental Water, with the Nieuwe Weg behind it. There lay the ponds, like two dull, weather-worn mirrors, under the sullen pity of the skies; and the rather tame landscape of the Woods, with its wreath of dunes, became cruel, a tragic pool surrounded by all that avenue of chill death, which seemed to be creeping through the wintry air....

But what was it in the air? Why, there was nothing, nothing but the Ornamental Water, in a misty haze; the few villas around it looming vaguely out of the fog; no pedestrians at all; nothing but the familiar, everyday, usual things.... Then what impelled him to wander so aimlessly past the Ornamental Water to the Nieuwe Weg? Why were those ponds like tragic pools? Was it not as though pale faces stared out of them, out of those tragic pools, pale, white faces of women, multiplied a hundredfold by strange reflections, eddies of white, faces, with dank, plastered hair and dying eyes, which gleamed?...

Yes, yes, he was in a fever. He had been unwise to go out, in that chill morning mist. But it was rotten to be ill ... and he was never ill. He had never said that he was ill. He was a fellow who could stand some knocking about. But for all that he was feverish. Otherwise he would not have seen the Ornamental Water as a tragic pool ... with the white faces of mermaids.... Lord, how cold and shivery the mermaids must feel down there in those chilly, silent pools ... their dying eyes just gleaming up with a single spark! Were they dead or alive, the chilly mermaids? Were their eyes dying or were they ogling? How strangely they were all reflected, until they became as a thousand mermaids, until their faces blossomed like white flowers of death above the light film of ice coating the pool! Whew! How chill and cold they were, the poor, dead, ogling mermaids!...

Dead: were they dead?... Were they ogling and laughing ... with eyes of gold?... He shivered as though ice-cold water were trickling down his spine; and he wrapped himself closely in his military great-coat. He felt something hard in his breast-pocket, a square piece of cardboard. Yes, he had been carrying that about for ever so long ... and yet ... and yet he couldn't do it. It was the photograph of his children, the latest group, taken for Mamma's last birthday. For weeks he had been carrying it about in his pocket, in an envelope with an address on it ... and yet, yet he couldn't send it or hand it in at her door. The portrait of all his children:

"I expect they're charming kiddies, Gerrit?"

Gad, how could she have asked it, how could she have asked it, as though to drive him mad?... Whew, how cold it was!... He looked fearsomely at the mermaids: no, no, there was nothing, nothing but the chilly pool. He was in a high fever, that's what he was ... Gad, how could she ask such a thing?

Still ... still, it was over. She was no longer the girl she was. She was finished with, done for; she had lain in his arms like a corpse, tired of her own kisses, broken by his embrace, white as a sheet, done for.... Lord, how rotten, to be done for and still so young, a young woman!... Done for ... like a defective machine: Lord, how rotten!... No, he couldn't give that photograph ... of all his children ... to a light-o'-love.... He couldn't do it.... If she had only asked for a necklace or some such gaud ... he would have managed somehow, out of his poverty, to buy her a nice keepsake.... Whew, how raw and cold it was!... The will-o'-the-wisps of all sorts of images shone in front of him; and, through them, through the flames, the flying Paris express ... with the compartment, the coffin, Van der Welcke, Constance, two motionless figures. And yet it was bitterly, clammily cold; he was chilled to his marrow; and a great hairy dragon split its beastly maw to lick that chilled marrow with a fiery tongue. How big the filthy brute had grown! It was no longer inside him, it was all around him now: it filled the air with its wriggling body; it lifted its tail among the wintry boughs; and its tongue of fire licked at Gerrit's marrow; and under that marrow—how strange!—he was simply freezing.... Brrr, brrr!... Lord, how he was shivering, what a fever he was in!... Home ... home ... to bed!... Oh, how good to get into bed ... nice and warm, nice and warm!... Still better to be nice and warm in women's arms ... no kissing ... just sleeping, nice and warm!... Brrr, brrr!... Lord, Lord, Lord, the water pouring down his back! Never in his life had he shivered like that!... How hard that photograph of his children was! He felt it on his heart like a plank. How long had he been carrying it about with him? Brrr, brrr! He might just as well have let her have it: it was the only thing that she had asked him for.... Money he had never given her: only fifteen guilders—brrr, brrr!—fif—brrr!—teen—brrr!—guilders.... Come, why not do it now?... Just hand it in, at her door—brrr!—and then—brrr!—and then—brrr!—home, to bed ... nice and warm in bed!...

The thought suddenly took definite shape and it drove him on along the Kanaal. Here also the mist hung like a haze over the water and the meadows on the other side; and, shivering and shuddering under the fiery lick of the dragon's tongue, Gerrit hurried to the Frederikstraat. That was where she lived, that was where he had been so often lately, until that last time when she had begged him not to come back again and to give her, as a keepsake, the portrait ... the portrait of his children. He would leave it now at the door. He had taken it in his hand, because it lay like a plank an his heart; and her name was on the envelope.... Brrr!... Hand it in quickly and then—brrr!—nice and warm in bed.

The landlady opened the door.

"Would you please give this to the young lady?"

He meant to shove the envelope into the woman's hand and then—brrr, brrr!—home ... to bed ... warm ... warm....

"Don't you know, then, where the young lady is, sir?"

"Where she is?"

"Where she's gone to?"

"Has she gone?"

"She didn't come home yesterday afternoon. I don't say I'm anxious; but still she always used to come home of an evening. She owes me some money, but she hasn't run away ... for everything has been left as it was, upstairs: her clothes, her bits of jewellery...."

"Perhaps she's out of town...."

"Perhaps ... only she's taken nothing with her."

"Perhaps, all the same...."

"Yes ... it's possible.... So I'm to give her the envelope ... when she comes?"

"Yes.... Or no, no, give it to me ... I'll see to it myself.... Or no, you'd better give it her when she comes back.... No, after all, I'll see to it...."

He stuffed the envelope into his pocket, went off. Brrr! It lay on his chest like a plank.... Where could she be gone to? Where was Pauline gone to? Had she gone out of town?... Why hadn't he simply left the envelope? Well, you never knew: if she didn't come back, it would be there, with the photograph of his children.... She'd probably cleared out.... Yes, she had probably cleared out ... with her rich young fellow.... Well, he, whoever he was, wouldn't remember her as he remembered her in the old days.... Brrrrrr!... Lord, Lord, how he was shivering!... Oh, to be in bed!... When could Constance and Van der Welcke be back?... Oh, the express!... Oh, the coffin!... Oh, the fiery lick of the dragon, whose great, hairy body filled the whole grey sky with its wriggling!...

He turned down the Javastraat: he wanted to hurry home; his teeth were chattering; he felt as if ice-cold water was dripping from him, while the confounded brute sucked his marrow with long, fiery licks of its tongue. Near the Schelpkade, he met a little group of four or five policemen: rough words sounded loud; their words sounded so loud through the unreality of the mist that they woke him out of a walking sleep, out of his dream of the dragon-beast with the stiff bristles:

"She was quite blue," he heard one of them say. They were striding along, talking loudly, as if something startling had happened. Gerrit suddenly stood rooted to the ground:

"Who was blue?" he asked, in a hoarse bellow.

The policeman saluted:

"Sir?"

"Who was blue?" bellowed Gerrit.

"A woman, sir.... A woman who drowned herself, last night, in the Kanaal...."

"A woman?"

"Yes, sir. My mate here was the first to see the body, when it was floating with the face out of the water. Then he came and told me; and we went and fetched the drag. It was a young woman...."

"And she was quite blue, you say?..."

"Yes, sir, and all bloated: she'd swallowed a lot of water.... We took the body to the cemetery near the Woods and we're on our way to the commissary."

"To the cemetery?..."

"Yes, sir...."

The men saluted:

"Sir."

"She was quite blue," Gerrit repeated to himself.

And he hurried on at a jog-trot. Brrr, brrr! Oh, to be in bed ... he wanted to get to bed! He was as cold as that woman must have been last night, floating in the water until her face blossomed up like a phantom flower of death.... Brrr! Icy cold water: wasn't he walking beside icy cold water twenty minutes ago? Hadn't it seemed to him that the whole tame landscape, in its wreath of dunes, had melted away into a hazy unreality, with those ghostly villas and trees ... and the ponds like tragic pools, in which were mirrored the motionless, low, grey skies, full of the wriggling of his giant worm ... until the faces of mermaids, with wet, plastered hair and gold-gleaming eyes had risen up like dead flowers, water-lilies of death, and ogled him with the last quiver of their dying eyes?... Oh, the Paris express!... Oh, what a fever he was in!... He must go quick to bed now ... but, before he went, he would just call in at the Kerkhoflaan and ask if there was no telegram from Van der Welcke and Constance.... But how cold he felt and how he was shivering: brrr, brrr!...

It was as though his legs moved independently of his will, propelled by alien instincts, by energies outside himself; for his legs moved healthily, sturdily and quickly, with the click-clack of his sword knocking against his thigh, while, above those sturdy legs, his body shivered in the clutch of the monster, which licked and licked with fiery dabs of its tongue. And, above his body, towered his head, colossally large, with vertigos whirling like tangible circles around the huge head in which he seemed to be carrying a heavy lump of brains. From it there shot forth the strangest dreams; and these dreams, together with the contortions of the monster, filled the whole grey sky until everything became one great dream: all that town of unknown streets; houses; people who bowed and nodded to him; a couple of hussars, who saluted; a couple of officers whom he knew and to whom he waved:

"Bonjour!"

"Bonjour!"

And, in this singular dreaming and waking and suffering and walking, he knew things which nobody had told him, knew them for certain: knew that a woman had drowned herself last night in Paris, in the lake in the Bois; knew that Van der Welcke and Constance had gone to fetch her body and were now bringing it back to him in a rushing express-train, but a train that came rushing through the sky on whirling aerial rails, cutting through the contortions of a huge snake-thing which wriggled round the clouds and filled the whole sky. Oh, how full the sky was! For round the snake wriggled like corkscrews the whirling rails, all aslant and askew, tangled into iron spirals; and the express, in which Van der Welcke and Constance sat with a coffin between them containing a woman's blue corpse, had to follow all those turns and came rushing and puffing along them, constantly curving round its own track and covering them a thousand times, as though that aerial express were climbing and descending endless wriggling corkscrews. Then the rails and the dragon-coils were all tangled together; and the rails became dragon-coils; and the express flew and flew along the twisting dragon-thing, flew along every curve of its tail. The train became a toy-train; the dragon was enormous and filled the firmament; the town underneath was a toy-town; and Gerrit walked and walked with hurrying legs; and his head towered colossally large; and his brains became like heavy clouds: he saw his lump of brains massing in curling clouds outside him. Nevertheless he was propelled by instincts and energies of assured consciousness, for, when he turned down the Kerkhoflaan and left the Kerkhof, the cemetery, behind him, on one side, he knew quite well that there lay in it a blue woman who had been dragged out of the Kanaal by policemen; but he also knew, with equal certainty, that, up in the sky above, the express flew and flew over the body of his dragon and along its every curve; and he also knew that he was now standing outside Van der Welcke's villa: so small a house, such a toy-house that Gerrit's head stuck out above the roof of it and that his own voice sounded to him like distant thunder as he asked the person who opened the door:

"Telegram? From your master and mistress? Telegram?"

He did not at once recognize who was at the door nor at once understand the reply:

"Telegram? Telegram?" he repeated.

And the thunder of his voice sounded distant and dull compared with the rattle of the express-train right through the sky.

"What do you say?" he now repeated. "What do you say?"

"Uncle, are you ill?" asked Addie.

"Ill? Ill? No, I'm not ill, my boy. But ... telegram? Telegram?"

"Papa and Mamma will be back to-morrow morning; they're bringing Henri's body with them, Uncle; and they're bringing Emilie; and I've been to the undertaker's ... to arrange to have the body fetched at the station at once.... I've seen to everything.... And I must go to all the uncles now: to Uncle Karel and Uncle Saetzema.... I've telegraphed to Otto; I don't know if Aunt Bertha will come or not.... It's very sad, Uncle, and it'll be very sad for Grandmamma when she knows everything: Henri ... Henri was murdered; he was drunk, it seems; and...."

"He drowned himself and he was quite blue?..."

"No, Uncle, he was murdered: stabbed with a dagger.... Mamma is bearing up, Papa writes, but she is terribly overwrought ... on Emilie's account also. Emilie is quite beside herself. Papa fortunately is keeping calm: he is doing all that has to be done; he has been to the legation.... But, Uncle, you're not at all well; you're shivering; you've caught a chill. Oughtn't you to go home and get into bed?..."

"Yes, yes, I'm going home."

"Then you'll be better in the morning...."

"Yes, of course, of course.... I shall be better...."

"Then will you come to the station too, early to-morrow morning, and meet the train from Paris?"

"To-morrow morning early ... yes, certainly, certainly...."

"You oughtn't to have gone out."

"No, no ... but I'm going home now ... going to bed.... Good-bye. To-morrow morning early."

"Good-bye, Uncle."

Gerrit went away.

Above the Woods, on one side, the low sky sank lower and lower, heavy with grey clouds, such heavy grey clouds that they did not seem light enough to continue hovering there, seemed bound to fall ... and to Gerrit they were, in the dim hues of his fevered vision, like purple pieces falling from the dragon's body, which was cut up by the express. The whole sky was full of purple dragon's blood; and it now streamed down like pouring rain. The blood streamed in a violent downpour and appeared intent upon drowning everything....

Gerrit had now turned in the direction of the cemetery; and, impelled by instincts and forces outside himself, he walked in and, vaguely, asked the porter some question, he did not know what. The man seemed to understand him, however, and led the way: Gerrit followed ... brrr, brrr!... Nevertheless, it was as though his fever abated; and, in that sudden cooling, he all at once felt and knew the truth. It must be so: it was she. The water, the policemen, she. Who else could it be?... He walked on, following the porter....

On either side, the silent graves, with their tombstones, the lettering blurred and melancholy in the rain.... Yonder, on the left, the family-grave. Gerrit recognized it in the purple rain of dragon's blood: a sombre mausoleum of brick, like a small house; and it looked larger to him than the toy-villa of just now. What a huge building it was, that family-tomb of theirs! It was like a great palace: it would be able to contain all their dead within its walls. For the present, Papa was living alone there, quietly; but he was waiting, waiting for all of them, waiting for all of them ... until the shadows had deepened into thick darkness around all of them and they came to him, in that huge sepulchral palace.... Lord, Lord, how small he was now: he was walking like a dwarf past the tomb, which stuck its steeple into the clouds, high as a cathedral....

What was that strangeness in the air?... How long had he been walking?... Was life no longer ordinary?... Were there not, as usual, houses, people, things: the barracks ... his children ... Adeline?... Who was that man who went before and led the way?... Was it a real man, that porter?... Or was it a dead man, walking?... Wasn't everything dead here?... Was it morning or was it evening?... Was it life or death?... Was he alive or was he dead?... Brrr, how cold he felt again!... Was that the cold of death?... What was this building which they now entered?... What a huge place!... Was it a church or was it only a tomb?... Where was he and why was he alone, alone with that dead man, that ghost showing him the way?... Where on earth was Constance and where was Van der Welcke?... Hadn't they brought it back from Paris, Pauline's blue body?... Was that Pauline?...

The coffin was open, covered only with a sheet; he lifted it, the sheet.... Brrr, brrr, how cold he was!... He remembered: Paris; yes, yes, he remembered: Paris; poor fellow; poor Henri!... But this, this wasn't Henri.... Who was it, who could it be?... Wasn't it Henri the policemen found?... What had become of those policemen?... When was it he met some policemen?... It was years since he met those policemen ... and her body had turned quite blue.... What was the matter now?... What was that porter saying, hovering round him like a ghost?...

Yes, everything was dead, for the shivering cold which he felt could only be the cold shiver of death....

Blue, was she blue?... The man lifted a corner of the sheet: Gerrit saw a face, pale as that of a mermaid whose features had blossomed up out of the icy stillness of a tragic pool.... The eyes were open.... What sad golden eyes those were!.... Had they not always laughed ... with golden gleams of mockery?... Then why did he now for the first time see them weeping ... in death ... see them mournfully staring ... in death?... Had they never laughed?... Had they always gazed mournfully ... even though they gleamed golden and mocked ... or seemed to ... seemed to?... Then what was real?... Was everything ... was everything dead then?... Did he ... dead ... want to bring her his gift ... what she had asked for so strangely ... the portrait ... the portrait of his children?... He had it here: he felt it lying on his chest ... hard and heavy ... like a plank, like a plank.... He had it here....

"Gerrit, dear, are you coming?"

Who was calling him from so very far away?... Wasn't it his sister?... His favourite sister?...

"Come along, Gerrit!"

Who were those calling him away from that woman?... What were those voices, which he vaguely recognized?... Was it not the voice of his favourite sister, was it not the voice of her husband, of the two of them, who had brought Pauline's body back from Paris?... Yes, he recognized them, it was....

"Come on, Gerrit, old man, you're not well.... What are you doing here, beside this woman, beside this corpse? She's all blue, drowned in the lake in the Bois de Boulogne.... Did you know the woman?..."

Yes, yes, he had known the woman....

"Come along, old chap!"

"Gerrit, dear, won't you come?"

"Constance," whispered Gerrit, "you brought her from Paris...."

"Beg pardon, sir?" asked the porter.

"Yes, there she lies, there she lies, dead...."

"Gerrit, come away!" cried the voices.

"Lay your flowers over her now!... Constance, lay your flowers over her.... She is lying so cold and all alone ... and it is all so big here ... big as a church ... she is lying ... as if in a cold, damp church.... Lay flowers beside her...."

"What do you say, sir?"

"Yes ... lay flowers beside her ... lay flowers beside her ... Constance...."

"Won't you come away now?"

"Yes, yes, I'm coming...."

There, there she lay ... covered all over, with the sheet. She was nothing but a blue, motionless woman's shape ... under a sheet. Now ... flowers lay over the sheet: all the white flowers of his imagination. Now his fingers tore into little pieces the plank which he carried on his heart and strewed them in between the flowers: into such little, little pieces that they were as the petals of flowers ... and nothing more ... over the woman....

The voices called him.

"Yes, yes, I'm coming ... I'm coming...."

The voices lured him home, to bed; and he jogged on through the streets raining with dragon's blood....

When he reached home, Adeline at once sent for the doctor.... It was typhoid fever.

---

CHAPTER XXII

Next morning, in a mist, a drizzly mist, the relations met at the railway-station: Otto van Naghel; Karel; Van Saetzema; Uncle Ruyvenaer, just back from India; Paul; Addie. They moved about, in the waiting-room, on the platform, with gloomy faces and upturned coat-collars, waiting for the train, which was late, which would not arrive for another quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.

"Does Grandmamma know about it yet?" Uncle Ruyvenaer asked Addie.

"No, Uncle. No one liked to tell her. I believe the uncles and aunts would really prefer to keep it from her altogether."

"That's impossible."

"I think it would be very difficult, Uncle. Grandmamma might hear it from an outsider.... She has friends who call to see her."

"Is Emilie coming?"

"Yes, Uncle. She'll stay with us."

"Is Uncle Gerrit very ill?"

"Yes, Uncle, very ill indeed."

"Does Grandmamma know he's ill?"

"No."

"The children are now all out of the house, aren't they? We've got Alex and Guy with us."

"And we have Adèletje, Gerdy and Constance. The three little ones are at Otto's: Louise came and fetched them. Marietje is with Aunt Adolphine."

"Has Aunt Adeline any one to help her?"

"There are two male nurses, Uncle. Uncle Gerrit is very violent in his delirium."

"Oughtn't the train to be here soon?"

"It's overdue now."

"It's a very sad affair. And how people will talk! Yes, how people will talk! Lord, Lord, how they're going to talk!"

"Here comes the train, Uncle."

The train steamed slowly into the station, like a grey ghost of a train through the ghostly, drizzling mist; and the waiting relations saw Constance, Van der Welcke and Emilie get out, Emilie leaning heavily upon Constance. Then came the dreary, dreary task of taking possession of the coffin. The hearse was waiting outside. And it all went as in a dream, in the ghostly, drizzling mist....

"How people will talk!" Uncle Ruyvenaer whispered to Karel and Van Saetzema, with whom he was sitting in the second coach.

"Yes, it's a damned rotten business."

"It's not over-respectable...."

"Having a nephew who becomes a clown...."

"And then, it seems, goes and gets murdered in Paris...."

"For a girl?"

"Yes ... some obscure story about a girl ... in Paris."

"I thought he had committed suicide?"

"We really don't know anything. Constance wrote no particulars."

"In any case, it's not over-respectable."

"I call it a damned rotten business."

"Constance has gone on ahead with Emilie."

"Yes. What a sight Emilie looked!"

"Very odd, that sister and brother."

"Yes, it was because of him that she left her husband. And now—no doubt through his own imprudence—stabbed, I suppose...?"

"Unless he committed suicide."

"Van Raven, after all, was a decent fellow."

"Van Raven? I believe you! Van Raven was a very decent fellow."

"Those young Van Naghels never had a sensible bringing-up...."

"No, I bring my boys up very differently."

"Ah, but then they're fine boys!"

"Is Van der Welcke in the first coach?"

"Yes, with Otto, Paul and Addie."

"Then why did they put us in the second coach?"

"Perhaps it was a mistake."

"I daresay, but it's not the thing. Uncle ought to be in the first coach."

"Yes; and you too, Karel."

"Yes; and you too, Saetzema, of course."

"Well ... I daresay it's a mistake. The thing wasn't arranged...."

"No; but when Van der Welcke has to arrange a thing...!"

"It was that young bounder who arranged things."

"Addie?"

"Of course."

"Oh, so that young bounder arranged things!"

"Look here, what are we to say to Mamma?"

"Well, I don't intend to mention it. For that matter, I know nothing."

"Nor I. The women had better do it."

"But they're too much upset."

"The best thing will be not to say anything."

"Yes, it's best not to say anything to Mamma."

"Lord, what a day!... And to have to ride for an hour in this weather at a foot's pace ... behind the body of an undergraduate who has been sent down from Leiden and must needs run away to Paris with his sister and become a circus-clown...."

"And go getting murdered into the bargain! But we mustn't tell anybody that. No, no, we won't speak about it. We'll merely say that he was taken ill. After all, it's a rotten incident ... for us."

"Yes, it's very rotten for us."

"Lord, Lord, how people will jabber!"

"Of course they will."

"Of course they will."

"If things con-tin-ue like this ... I shall leave the Hague," said Karel. "Ca-teau said so too."

He copied his wife's voice: he always copied her voice, unconsciously, when he talked about her.

"Are we nearly there?"

"No such luck!"

"Lord, what a day!..."

"How people will talk!..."

The carriage containing Constance had driven on ahead of the procession. Emilie leant against her, feebly and listlessly, without speaking or hearing. When they approached the Kerkhoflaan, Emilie said:

"Auntie ... it's just stupid chance...."

"What, dear?"

"Is this life? My life has never been anything but stupid chance! The little pleasure I had ... and the sorrow ... was all stupid chance! I am now so miserable; and it's all ... all stupid chance!... Oh, Auntie, I shall never be able to live ... not now, when Henri's death will always ... will always haunt me like an accusing ghost!... Auntie ... do other people have so much stupid chance in their lives?... If I hadn't gone to Paris!... If Henri had not ... oh, I can't say it, I can't say it! Auntie, we shall never know! It's too awful, what happened! I can never tell you ... what I think!"

"My darling, I suspect it!"

"Oh, it's awful, awful! Uncle suspects it too ... so they do at the legation.... It's awful, awful!... He's disappeared: Eduard, I mean.... It was a mere accident: we were walking together, Henri and I, when we ... when we met Eduard.... They looked at each other.... They hated each other.... Then he walked on ... but we met him again later.... Then, in the evening, when I came home ... and found Henri ... lying in his blood...!"

She flung herself back with a scream.

"Auntie, Auntie, we know nothing!... But the suspicion will always be with me! I shall always see it like that! Oh, Auntie, Auntie, help me ... and keep me with you always, always!..."

She closed her eyes in Constance' arms, too weak to face her life, which had changed from fantastic humour into tragedy.... The carriage suddenly, stopped, in the Kerkhoflaan; Truitje opened the door; Constance made a sign to her to ask no questions. She herself, on the other hand, asked:

"How is Mr. Gerrit doing?"

"Not at all well, ma'am."

"Where are the children?"

"They're in the dining-room, ma'am, playing: it's easier there for me to keep an eye on them."

Constance opened the door of the dining-room, with her arm round Emilie. She saw Gerdy and Constant; but, just as in the drawing-room at home, they had hidden behind a sofa standing aslant, where they were quietly playing at father and mother, worshipping each other like a little husband and wife, two small birds in a little nest.

"Peek-a-boo!" said Constance, mechanically.

They were quiet at first and then burst into chuckles, crept out, kissed Auntie and Emilie:

"Auntie," asked Gerdy, "is Papa ill?"

"Yes, darling."

"Will Papa get better very soon?"

"Oh, yes, dear!"

"Are we staying with you long?"

"No, not very long, darling."

And Constance did not know why, but she suddenly saw the children staying on; and this vision was mingled with a vague impression of the gloomy house at Driebergen. She thought that her brain must be very tired in her head, that she was sleeping while awake, dreaming as she moved about. Everything before her was confused: that terrible day in Paris; Henri's body; the mystery about the whole affair, with the dark, half-uttered suspicions; the formalities; the legation; the journey back: oh, she was dead-tired, dead-tired!... Oh, that coffin, that coffin!... And in the middle of it all a letter from Addie: Uncle Gerrit seriously ill; the children ordered out of the house; he was taking Gerdy and Constant and giving them his room: he was sure Mamma would approve.... Oh, how dead-tired, how dead-tired she was!...

"Auntie," said Constant, "Truitje has been so kind: she made us a lovely rice-pudding...."

"But we'd rather be at home!" said Gerdy.

And the children suddenly began to cry. Constance took them in her arms, pressed them to her:

"You would be just a little in Mamma's way," she said, with a dead voice. "Mamma must look after Papa...."

And she dropped almost fainting into a chair.

"Aunt Constance!" Emilie sobbed: "Aunt Constance, let me ... let me ... stay with you!... Let me stay with you!... Where ... where could I go?"

She sobbed wildly, huddled on the floor against Constance' knees. The children were also crying. Constance had put one arm round Emilie and held the children in the other. It was very gloomy out of doors. Indoors, life's tragedy lay heavy upon them.

---

CHAPTER XXIII

The gigantic beast wriggled through the sky, from end to end of the vast sky. The beast wobbled the point of its tail slowly up and down over the earth: in the room, above the bed, which had become a narrow coffin; and, commencing with that wobbling tail, the beast's body wound up and up, filling the room and the house with one mighty contortion of monstrous dragon's scales and sweeping away with its tangible reality all the dreamy unreality of the room and the house, the ceilings and roofs. With thousands of legs the beast humped its sinuous body over the chimney-stacks and church-steeples, slung itself wriggling round the church-steeples and chimney-stacks like a festoon of scales, which then turned into a long, dense chain of clouds, filling the sky with great cloud-eddies, which whirled and whirled over the town and through the sky, from end to end of the vast sky. And the monstrous beast now lifted its long crocodile's jaws out of its own winding clouds; and its eyes belched forth fire like volcanoes; and shafts of flame shot like lightning-flashes from its darting tongue: shafts darting to such a length from the very high expanse, right up there, up there, from the sky above the clouds, that they shot through the man in one second and retreated and hid themselves again in the abyss of the dragon's mouth, from such a height indeed that they shot quicker than lightning right down to his marrow, licking it until it dried up; and, after each burning lick, after each dab of fire, the lightning-quick, darting flame, the miles-long shaft withdrew to its own source and birthplace in the deep funnel of the fiery jaws. And the martyred man shivered under the dabbing lick; and in his shivering he raised himself high as though upon waves of trembling, as though his fever were a stormy sea that bore him away from his bed high above the clouds, the clouds that were the windings of the beast's body.... And, as he rose, as the man rose, the beast set up all its stiff bristles, which stuck out between its scales like trees, stuck them up and drew them in again, until the whole sky, the whole vast stretch of sky, was all the time growing full of tree-trunks, straight forests of dragon's bristles which swarmed and vanished, swarmed and vanished as the beast put them out or drew them in.... And the point of the beast's bristly, scaly tail flicked with such oppressive weight upon the chest of the man who lay in the bed which was a coffin that the man moaned and groaned and tried with both hands to lift that heavy, flicking tail from his crushed heart.... But the beast grinned with its cavernous jaws, shot fire from the volcanoes of its eyes, darted swiftly up and down the miles-long fiery trail of its all-penetrating tongue, split into myriad needles of fire, and with long voluptuous licks sucked away the man's marrow, until the man, all shivering and shaking, was scorched and roasted and shrivelled within.... The beast left him no blood, licked up his marrow and blood and poured fire into him instead. When the beast smacked its lips voluptuously, when it greedily swallowed the blood and the marrow, when the man thought that he was dying, then the beast pricked him with a needle of its fiery tongue and goaded him to shivering-point; and the man shivered and raised himself high upon the waves with his shivering, as though his fever were a stormy sea....

Thus the man lay twisting and tossing, till he put out his hands towards the demon and tried to fight the beast with human hands.... And it seemed to him as if he were flinging his hands, the hands of a brave man and a martyr and a hero, around the beast; and, while the stormy sea, the sky, which was churned into billows by the contortions of the beast, bore him up and up and up, he fought and wrestled with the ever more violently writhing and coiling beast; and the beast humped its way through the sombre universe of clouds, shooting out its thousands of feet; its head was now here, now there; its tail flicked now high, now low; the beast lashed earth and sky; the beast became one vast, dizzying whirl, with town, spires, roofs and chimney-stacks all whirling in it; the bed which was a coffin was now here, now there, now high, now low; and he fought and wrestled and twisted round the beast and the beast round him; and he would not let himself be conquered by the beast. Until the beast from out of the volcano of its eyes and the abyss of its jaws belched so much fire that the sky was a sea of blood-fire wherein a hell of faces flamed—faces of women and children: naked women with eyes of gold; bright children with flaxen hair—like a sudden flowering of tortured affections, of tortured passions, all blossoming up in the blood-fire into faces of laughing and crying children and ogling siren-mermaids; and through it all and through them all the man writhed and wrestled with the wrestling, writhing beast, which could not free itself from him, even as he could not free himself from the beast....

"Gerrit, dear Gerrit," voices sounded, soft-murmuring, earthly voices, voices from far below,

"Gerrit, dear, are you coming?"

And he answered:

"Yes ... yes ... I'm coming...."

And he, the man heaving up and down, down and up, on the mighty swaying of the storm, down and up, up and down, he, this heaving, wrestling man, one with the beast and the beast one with him, saw a woman, between the faces of children and women, saw two women, two women belonging to him: his wife and his sister. But in between them crept a third woman; and her eyes mocked like golden eyes of mockery ... until suddenly they ceased to mock and died away in sadness, in unutterable sadness, as though really they had always been sad and had never mocked or laughed.

"Gerrit ... dear Gerrit ... are you coming?"

"Yes ... yes ... I'm coming...."

"He's delirious," whispered Constance.

The room around the sick man had now become as glass, but not transparent glass. For he no longer, through the walls of the room, saw the universe and the beast: he saw nothing now save the room; but so brittle was that room, so brittle all the things which it contained that it seemed to be all of glass—the room, the bed and he—all glass, all brittle glass, which a single incautious movement might shiver into dust. Yes, now that the beast had sucked up all his marrow with that voluptuous licking, it had let him go, left him lying exhausted on his bed; and he lay, his glass body lay powerless to move; and, now that, after a long time, he had laboriously opened his eyes and saw his room around him as glass and felt himself as glass, he knew that the beast would no longer dart the fiery shafts of his tongue, because it had eaten the whole of him up. His body lay lifeless, like a glass husk; and he asked himself if he wasn't dead. He did not know for certain that he was alive. He saw that the room was very quiet; beside him, in the glass atmosphere of his room, sat a man, who also seemed made of brittle glass; and the man sat motionless: he seemed to be sitting with a book in his hand, reading in the glassy twilight that filtered through the close-drawn window-curtains....

The sick man laboriously closed his eyes again; and it seemed to him that he sank away very slowly, into a great, downy abyss, lower and lower, a very depth of down, into which he sank and went on sinking, sank and went on sinking....

"There's less fever now," said the military doctor. "He's asleep."

"Is he out of danger?" asked the pale little wife, who sat with Constance' arms around her.

"Yes.... You would be wise to take a rest, mevrouw."

"I can't ... I can't...."

"Go and get some sleep, Adeline," said Constance. "I'll stay in the room with Gerrit; and the nurse will keep a good watch."

"He looked round for a moment very peacefully, before he fell asleep," said the male nurse by Gerrit's bedside.

"Go and get some sleep, Adeline...."

How long the sick man sank and sank and sank in the downy abyss no one knew.... At last he opened his eyes again and looked into the room and saw the quiet attendant sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed, where he also saw a woman standing:

"Constance," the sick man murmured.

He tried to smile because he knew her, but he felt too weak to smile.

Another woman appeared beside the first: he knew her too, but it was as though she were dead....

"Line," murmured the sick man.

"He knows us," whispered Constance.

---

CHAPTER XXIV

Gerrit made progress every day. He was now so much better that he sat in a big chair, sat dozing until he sank away in the downy abyss and fell asleep in his chair. He was now so much better that he was able to speak a few words to the two women and the doctor and the nurse; and his first question was:

"The children...?"

He had understood that they were not there and that he would not see them just yet.

He was now so much better that he remembered his recent life and asked:

"Pauline...?"

And he saw that they did not understand. Why they did not understand he failed to see, for, when he asked after the children or Mamma, they always understood and answered kindly, telling him that Mamma and the children were well.

Then he asked:

"Your husband, Constance...? Your boy...?"

And Constance answered that they were well.

Then he asked:

"Pauline...?"

And she gave a gentle, smiling nod.

Yes, of course, she understood now, told him that Pauline was well.

Yes, yes, he remembered: Mamma, the children, Pauline.... They were as ghosts in his empty memory, looming up and making him ask questions of the women around him. But, apart from that, his memory was one vast emptiness, like an empty universe, now that the beast had vanished into space ... into nothingness ... into nothingness....

He had no marrow left: the beast would not eat him up any more. There was no centipede rooting at his carcase now. Lord, Lord, how done he felt, how utterly done for!...

He now recognized his doctor:

"Ah, is that you, Alsma?"

"Well, Van Lowe, do you recognize me?"

"Yes, yes.... Didn't I recognize you before?"

"No ... once or twice you didn't know who I was.... Well, you'll soon be all right again now. You're getting better every day...."

"Yes, yes ... but...."

"What?"

"I feel very queer ... damned queer...."

"Yes, you're a bit weak still...."

"A bit weak?..."

He gave a grin. He felt his arm, thought it odd that he couldn't find his biceps:

"Where's the thing got to?" he asked. "Is it gone?..."

"No, you'll get your strength back all right.... It doesn't take long, once you're well again."

"Oh, it doesn't take long?"

"No, you'd be surprised...."

"I say, Alsma, can't I see my children ... just for once?..."

"No, it would tire you a bit.... Later on, later on...."

"I say, do you know what's so rotten? I don't know ... all sorts of things ... whether I've been dreaming ... or not...."

"Don't worry about it. That'll all come right ... bit by bit, bit by bit...."

"A lake full of white-faced mermaids: that's rot, eh?... An express-train: was I away, shortly before my illness? I wasn't, was I?... The body ... of a girl: did I see that?... A snake-thing, a great wriggling snake-thing: yes, that snake-thing was there all right; I fought the thing.... I believe it was all rot ... except the great snake-thing, which licked me up ... with its tongue...."

"You mustn't talk so much."

"... Because I always used to feel that snake-thing inside me ... always...."

"Come, Van Lowe ... keep very quiet now ... and rest ... rest...."

The sick man sank away, sank away in the downy abyss....

Gerrit made progress every day. He was now so much better that he had walked across the room, on Constance' arm, and just seen his two boys, only for a moment, because he longed for them so:

"The others too," he said.

The next day they brought Marietje and Gerdy and Constant to him; the day after that, the four others.... He had now seen them all:

"But for such a short time!" he said.

He recovered slowly. He had seen Van der Welcke and Addie; and, one pale, wintry, sunny day, he had been out for a little while, but the outside world made him giddy. Still he couldn't deny it: he was getting better. He saw his mother; and, when she saw him, she forgot that he had been ill:

"Where have you been, Gerrit?..."

"Laid up, Mamma."

"Laid up?..." The old woman nodded wisely. "You haven't been ill, have you?"

"Just a little, Mamma. It wasn't very bad...."

And he got better, he made progress. He went out walking, with his wife, with Constance, with Van der Welcke. He went out with his nephew Addie; the outside world no longer made him giddy. On his walks, he recognized brother-officers; one day, he met the hussars:

"Oh, damn it all!" he swore, without knowing why.

It was as though he suddenly saw that he would never again ride, straight-backed, clear-eyed, at the head of his squadron. But it was all rot, seeing that....

Still he was unable to resume his service. He lazed and loafed, as he said. In the evenings, always very early, he sank away into a downy abyss, dropped asleep, heavily....

And he no longer remembered things:

"I say, Constance."

"What is it, Gerrit?"

"When I saw that girl ... in the cemetery ... were you there too and did you call me?..."

"No, Gerrit. You've been dreaming."

"Oh, did I dream that?"

"Yes."

"No, no."

"Yes, Gerrit, you dreamt it."

Another time, he said to Van der Welcke:

"I say, Van der Welcke."

"What is it, Gerrit?"

"You don't know ... but I was carrying on with a girl ... one I knew in the old days.... Find out what's become of her, will you?"

"What's her name and where does she hang out?"

He reflected:

"Her name ... her name's Pauline."

"And where does she live?"

"In ... in the Frederikstraat."

Van der Welcke made enquiries, but said nothing, next time he came. The sick man remembered, however:

"I say, Van der Welcke."

"Yes, Gerrit?"

"Did you ask about that for me?"

"Yes," Van der Welcke answered, hesitatingly.

"Well?"

"The girl's dead, old chap."

"Did she drown herself?"

"Yes."

"They took the body to the cemetery?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then I wasn't dreaming! You see for yourself.... And your wife came and fetched me there...."

"No, no."

"Yes, she did."

"No, no, old chap."

The sick man reflected:

"I no longer know," he said, "what I've lived and what I've dreamed. The confounded snake-thing: that ... that was real. It had been eating me up ... eating me up since I was a boy...."

He grew very gloomy and sat for hours and hours, silently, in his chair ... until he sank into the downy abyss.

---

CHAPTER XXV

It was time that he became the old Gerrit again, bit by bit, you know, bit by bit. The weeks dragged past and the weeks became months and it was time that he became the old Gerrit again, bit by bit, you know, bit by bit. His doctor wouldn't hear yet of his resuming his service; but he saw his pals daily: the officers looked him up, fetched him for a walk; and in their company he tried to go back to his breezy, jovial tone, his rather broad jokes, all the noisy geniality which had characterized the great, yellow-haired giant that he had been. And it was all no use. He had grown thin, his cheeks were hollow, his flesh hung loosely on his bones and he was soon tired and, above all, soon giddy....

But the rottenest part of it was that he didn't remember things. No doubt he felt that, by degrees, with the diet prescribed for him, which Adeline observed so conscientiously, he would be able to strengthen his carcase a bit; he even took up his dumb-bells once, in his grief at the disappearance of those grand muscles of his; but he very soon put the heavy weights down again. Then he smacked his emaciated thighs and, despite his inner conviction, yielded to a feeling of optimism:

"Oh, well!" he thought. "That'll get right again in time!"

But the rottenest part of it was that he no longer remembered things—he was ashamed of that above all, he did not want it noticed—and that everybody noticed it. Then he would sit in a chair by the fire—it was a raw, damp January, cold without frost—and his thoughts stared out idly before him, with a thousand roaming eyes, his idle thoughts. They hung heavily in his brain, filling it, like clouds in a sky.... He would sit like that for hours, with a newspaper or an illustrated weekly: French comic picture-papers, which Van der Welcke brought him to amuse him. He hardly laughed at the jokes, only half understood them, sat reading them stupidly. And, in his turgid brain full of clouds, full of those idle thoughts, an immense, world-wide melancholy descended, a leaden twilight. The twilight descended from the sky outside and it descended from his own brain.... Then everything became chilly around him and within him; and, above all, memory was lost. Since the beast no longer held him in its clutching dragon's claws, since the thousand-legged crawling thing had devoured all his marrow with voluptuous licks, since it had perhaps sucked up his very blood: since then it had left him like an empty house, with soft muscles and flabby flesh; and he almost longed to have the beastly thing back, because the beast had given him the energy to fight against the beast: for himself, in order to conquer; for others, in order to hide himself. The beast had conquered, the beast had eaten him up. It wanted no more of him; the great dragon-worm had disappeared. It no longer wound through the skies; and nothing more hung in the skies but twilight-distilling clouds.... Oh, the creepy, chilly twilight! Oh, the all-pervading mist, dank and clammy all round him! He shivered; and the fire no longer warmed him. He crept up to it, he could have crept into it; and the glowing, open fire no longer warmed him.

"Line, ring for some wood: I want to see flames; this coke's no use to me."

Then he heaped up the logs until Adeline feared that he would set the chimney on fire.

Or else Constance would come to fetch him, wanted him to go for a walk.

"No, dear, it's too chilly for me outside."

He remained sitting in what to the others was the unendurable heat of the blazing fire. He shivered. He shivered to such an extent that he asked:

"Line, send in the children."

"But, Gerrit, they'll only tire you."

"No, no ... I'm longing to see them."

They would come in; and, when the others came home from school, he would gather them round him and try to play with them, teasing and tickling them now and again. It tired him, but they were something warm around him: more warmth radiated from a single one of them than from his glowing log-fire.

"How many have I?" he reflected, groping in his memory, which fled in front of him with winged irony.

And he counted on his fingers. He was not quite certain. Until he saw them all gathered round him and had counted them on his fingers, silently—Marie, Adèletje, Alex, Guy—he did not always remember that he had nine. The children were very sweet: Marie saw to his oatmeal, which he had to take at five in the afternoon; the cheeky boys were very attractive. But he suffered because little Gerdy, the child with such a passion for caresses, had become afraid of him. She shrank back timidly from him, thinking him strange, that thin, emaciated father whom she used to embrace in her little childish arms as a strong father, a great, big father who tossed her up in the air and caught her again and romped with her and kissed her. She had become frightened of his long, lean fingers and looked in dismay at the hands that gripped her with the fingers of a skeleton. He noticed it and no longer asked her to come to his room, now that he saw that she shuddered when she sat on his thin legs and that she disliked the big fire, which made her frown angrily and draw in her little lips. But it hurt him, though he said nothing.

But what hurt him most was ... that he did not remember things. It was as though daily the twilight deepened around him, around his soul, which shuddered in his chilly, shuddering body. One day, Constance said:

"We have good news from Nunspeet...."

But Gerrit remembered nothing about Nunspeet; still he did not wish to show it:

"Really?" he said.

Nevertheless she saw it in his blank look.

"Yes," she continued, "Ernst is a great deal better. I shall go and see him again to-morrow."

He now remembered all about Ernst and Nunspeet, but yet he was ashamed of his recent lack of memory and his hollow cheeks almost flushed....

A week later, Ernst came to see him, with Constance. He was so much improved that the doctor himself had advised him to go to the Hague for a few days; he was staying with the Van der Welckes. His hallucinations had almost vanished; and, when Gerrit saw him, it struck Gerrit that Ernst was looking better, his complexion healthier, probably through the outdoor life, his hair and beard trimmed; and his eyes were not so restless, while he himself was neatly dressed, under his sister's care.

"Well, old chap," said Gerrit, "so you've come to look me up?... That's nice of you.... I'm a bit off colour. And you...?"

"I'm much better, Gerrit."

"I'm glad of that. And those queer notions of yours: what about them?"

Ernst gave an embarrassed laugh:

"Yes," he confessed, shyly. "I did have queer notions sometimes. I don't think I have any now. But I am staying on at the doctor's. I've only come up for a day or two.... I've seen my rooms again."

"You have, have you?... And your vases?"

"Yes, my vases," said Ernst, greatly embarrassed.

"And all the voices that you used to hear, Ernst ... all the souls that used to throng round you, old chap: you don't feel them thronging now, you don't hear them any longer?"

Gerrit tried to put on his genial bellow and to poke fun at Ernst about the vases and the souls, as he used to; but it was no good. He lay back in his chair, by the big fire; and his idle thoughts stared before him.

"No," Ernst answered, quietly. "I only hear the voices now and again; and I no longer feel them thronging so much, Gerrit.... And you've been very ill, haven't you?" he added, quietly.

"Yes, old chap."

"You're getting better, eh?"

"Yes, I'm getting better now. My carcase can stand some knocking about. I'm glad you're better too...."

Constance made a sign to Ernst: he got up, good and obedient as a child. And they left Gerrit alone.

Adeline was sitting in the other room, with both doors open, because Gerrit's big fire was too much for her and also because she didn't want the children to be running in and worrying him.

"Ernst is looking well," she said, glancing up at him.

Then her hands felt for Constance' hands and she began to cry, sobbing very quietly lest Gerrit should hear.

"Hush, Adeline, hush!"

"He won't get better!"

"Yes, he will, he'll get quite well. Ernst is better too."

"But he ... he's lost all his strength ... he's so weak!..."

"He'll get well and strong again...."

"What day of the week is it, Constance?..."

"It's Sunday, Adeline.... I'm going with Ernst to Mamma's for a minute or two. How glad Mamma will be to see him!... Are you coming to Mamma's this evening, Sissy?"

Adeline shook her head:

"No," she said, "I can't. I daren't leave Gerrit alone yet...."

---

CHAPTER XXVI

Oh, how the twilight was gathering, oh, how it was gathering around him! It was dark now, quite dark; and the fire on the hearth was dying out in the dark, shadowy room. But what was the use of making it blaze up: did the room not always remain shiveringly cold, however much the fire might glow? What was the use of lighting lamps: was the twilight not deeper and gloomier day by day, whether it were morning or evening? Did not the pale gold of the dawn shimmer more and more vaguely through the dense mist of twilight?... A dull, apathetic, feeble man.... Had he kept his secret all his life, concealed the real condition of his body and his soul, to become like that? And yet was he not Ernst's brother? Had he not always been Ernst's brother ... though it had always seemed otherwise? Were they not of the same blood and had not they, the brothers, the same soul, the same darkened soul? Was the darkness not gathering around all of them now, the sombre twilight of their small lives?... Would the darkness one day close in upon his own pale-golden dawn: his children, who also shared the same soul?... It might be the darkness of old age as it closed in upon Mamma—he could see her as she sat—or it might be the darkness of sorrow and weariness and loneliness, as yonder, round Bertha. Were the shadows not deepening round Paul and Dorine, for all their youth?... Had it not been as a night round Ernst, even though he was now stepping out of the dark ... back into the twilight that surrounded them all?... Was it their fault or the fault of their life: the small life of small souls?... Did the twilight come from their blood, which grew poorer, or from their life, which grew smaller?... Would they never behold through the twilight—the vistas, far-reaching as the dawn, where life, when all was said, must be spacious ... and would they never strive for that? Would his children never strive for that? Would they never send forth the rays of their golden sunlight towards the greater life and would they not grow into great souls?... Would the twilight, afterwards, deepen ... and deepen ... and deepen ... around them too ... until perhaps the very great things of life came thundering and lightening unexpectedly before them, crushing them and blinding them ... because they had not learnt to see the light?...

He tried to remember thoughts of former days ... but they shot ahead, like winged ironies. He knew only that night was falling, one vast night around all the family, under the grey skies of their winter. He knew only that the light was growing dimmer and dimmer around them, until it became unillumined dusk: the dusk of age; the dusk of sorrow; the dusk of cynical selfishness; the dusk of life without living; all the heavy, sombre twilight that gathered around small souls ... until with Ernst the dusk had grown into night and the dark dream from which he was now emerging.... They called that recovering.... They thought that he would recover.... Oh, how dark and gloomy were the shadows of the twilight and how heavy was the fate that hung over their small souls, hung over them like a leaden sky, an immensity of leaden skies!...

He, yes, he would get better. It might take months yet; and then he would resume his service as a dull, decrepit old man, diseased through and through, from his childhood, under the semblance of muscular strength, until one serious illness was enough to break him and make him dull and old for all the rest of his life.... Yes, he would get better. But it would no longer be necessary to raise his voice to a roar, to make his movements rough and blunt, to make a show of strength and force and roughness; for they would now all see through the sad pretence. He would jog along through his small, shadowed life, until the shadows gathered around him ... as they were now gathering, around his mother; and ... and ... and his children would never again recognize in him their father of the old days, who used to romp with them and fill the whole house with all the rush of his healthy vitality.... It was over, over for the rest of his life....

It was over. In the room which had grown chill and dark, the black thought haunted him, that it was over. It almost made him calm, to know that it was over, that for his children, his nine—did he not remember their golden number correctly?—he could never be other than the shadow of their father of the old days.... Oh, would he never again be able to love them, to be a father to them? Could he never do that again? Must he, when cured, remain for all the rest of his life the man conquered by the beast, the man eaten up by the beast, the man broken in the contest with the dragon-beast? Was it so? Was it so?...

Why did they leave him in the cold and the dark? Shivers ran down his back—his marrowless back, his bloodless body—like a stream of ice-cold water? Why didn't they make up his fire and why didn't they light his lamp?... Did they know that nothing could give him warmth and light?

"Adeline!"

His voice sounded faint and weak. In the next room, which was now dark, nothing stirred. He rose out of his deep chair with difficulty, like an old man, groped round for the door of the other room. A feeble light still entered from outside.... There she sat, there she lay, his wife: she had fallen asleep with weariness and anxiety for him, her arms on the table, her face on her arms.... Was it his imagination, or had she really changed? He had not noticed her for weeks, since his illness, had not looked at her, though she had nursed him all the time.... Certainly he was very fond of her; but she was doing her duty as his wife. She had borne him his children and she was nursing him now that he was ill. Had he been wrong in thinking like that? Yes, perhaps it had not been right of him.... Gad, how she had changed! How different from the young, fresh face that she used to have, the little mother-girl, the little child-mother! Was it the ghostly effect of the faint light or was it so? Was she so pale and thin and tired ... with anxiety about him, with nursing and looking after him?... He felt his heart swelling. He had never loved her as he did now! He bent down and kissed her ... with a fonder kiss than he had ever given her. She just quivered in her sleep: she was sound asleep.... Lord, how tired she was! How pale she was, how thin! She lay broken with worry and weariness, her head in her arms....

"Adeline...."

She did not answer, she slept.... He would not wake her; he would ring for the fire and the lamp himself.... But what was the good? Lamp and fire would make things no brighter around him, now that the great twilight was descending.... Oh, the great inexorable, pitiless twilight! Would it fall around him as it had fallen around Ernst ... around whom it was now slowly clearing? Did the twilight clear again? Or would the shadows around him gradually deepen into darkness, the darkness that was now gathering around his mother? Or would it just remain dim around him, with the same wan light that glimmered around Paul and Dorine? What, what would their twilight be?...

The house was very cold and he felt chilly. Was there no fire anywhere? Where were the children? Were Marietje and Adèletje and the two boys not back from school yet?... He now heard Gerdy and Constant playing in the room downstairs—the nursery and dining-room—heard them talking together with their dear little voices.... Oh, his two sunny-haired darlings!... But Gerdy was afraid of him.... He was becoming afraid of himself.... He was no longer the man he used to be.... People now saw him as he was.... He could no longer put on that air of brute strength.... His voice had lost its blustering force....

He did not know why, but he roamed through the house.... It struck him as lonely, dreary and quiet, though the children were playing below.... He stood on the stairs and listened. What was that rushing noise in the distance? No, there was no rushing.... Yes, there was: something came rushing, from outside, to where he stood; something came rushing: a melancholy wind, like a wind out of eternity.... An immense eternity; and immense the wind that rushed out of it; and chilly and small and dreary the house; everything so small; he himself so small!... He did not know what was coming over him, but he felt frightened ... frightened, as he had sometimes felt when a child.... He was so afraid of that rushing sound that he called out:

"Adeline!... Line!..."

He waited for her to hear and answer. But she did not hear, she slept.... Then he roamed on, shuddering ... upstairs ... to his own little room.... And it was all so dreary and chill and lonely and the sound of rushing from the immense eternity outside the house was so melancholy that he sank helplessly into a chair and began to sob.... He was done for now.... He sobbed.... His great, emaciated body jolted up and down with his sobs; his lungs panted with his sobs; and, in his great, lean hands, his head sobbed, in despair....

He was done for now.... He knew now that he would not get well.... He knew now that he ought really to have died ... and that he had gone on living only because his life had gone on hanging to a thread that had not broken. Would that last thread soon break? Or would his darkened life go on for a long time—he always ill—hanging to that last thread? Would he yet be able to be a father to his children ... or would he ... on the contrary ... become ... a burden to his dear ones? Was it growing dark, was it growing dark? Was not that eternity rushing along?...

He heaved a deep sigh, amid his sobs. His eyes sought along the wall, where a rack of swords and Malay krises hung between prints of race-horses and pretty women. He had a whole collection of those weapons. Some of them had belonged to his father. At Papa's death they had been divided between him and Ernst.... Among the krises and swords were two revolvers....

He stared past the swords and krises ... and his eyes fastened on the revolvers.... In among the swords and krises, in among the race-horses and the pretty women whirled all the heads of his children—he did not know if they were portraits or spectres—as they had been, children's heads of six months, one year old, two years old: growing older and bigger, radiating more and more sunlight, his golden dawn of nine bright-haired children?... Would he be able to be a father to them, or would he on the contrary become a burden?...

It was as if his imagination were digging in a deep pit. In a deep pit his imagination, with hurrying hands, dug up sand. What was it seeking, his rooting imagination? What was it seeking in the deep pit, why was it flinging the sand around him ... just as Addie once told him that Ernst had dug and flung up sand ... in the dunes ... in the dunes at Nunspeet?... What!... What!... Was he going mad too!... Was he going mad ... like Ernst? Was he going mad ... like Ernst?... A cold sweat broke out over his chilly, shivering body. Was he going mad?...

"Gerrit!... Gerrit!"

A voice sounded very far away through the house, which had suddenly become very deep, very wide, very big.

"Gerrit!... Gerrit!"

He could hear the hurrying footsteps on the creaking stairs, but he was powerless to answer.

"Gerrit!... Gerrit!... Where are you?"

The door opened. It was Adeline, looking for him ... in the dark:

"Gerrit!... Are you here?..."

Even yet he did not answer.

"Where are you, Gerrit?"

"Here."

"Are you here?"

"Yes."

"Why are you sitting in the dark ... in the cold?... What are you doing here, Gerrit?..."

"I ... I was looking for something."

"For what?..."

"I've forgotten."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

She had lit the gas.

"You were asleep."

"Don't be angry, Gerrit. I was tired."

"I'm not angry, dear. I didn't like to disturb you."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"You were asleep."

"You ought to have waked me."

He put out his arms to her:

"Come here, dear."

She came; he drew her to his knees.

"What is it, Gerrit?"

"Darling ... Line ... I believe I'm very ... very ill."

"You've been ill, Gerrit. You're ... you're getting better now...."

"Do you think so?..."

"Oh yes!"

"Line, I believe.... I'm very ... very ... ill."

"Why, do you feel worse?... It's so cold in here. Come downstairs. We'll make up the fire."

"No, stay here.... Tell me, Line: if I died, would you...."

"No, no, Gerrit, I can't bear it!"

"Hush, dear: if I died, would you believe ... after I am dead...."

"Oh, Gerrit, Gerrit!"

"That I have always been very fond of you...."

"Gerrit, don't!"

"That I have always been kind to you ... that I have not neglected you?..."

"Oh, you're not going to die, Gerrit!... You will get better ... and you have always, always been kind!..."

"Line ... and all our children...."

"Don't, Gerrit!"

"Won't they think ... if I die ... that I had no business to die ... because I ought to have lived and been a father to them?..."

"But, Gerrit, you're not going to die!"

"I should like to go on living, Line ... for you, dear, and for the children. But I fear I'm very ill...."

"Will you see the doctor, Gerrit?..."

"No, no.... Stay like this, quietly, for a minute, on your husband's knees.... Line, Gerdy has become frightened of me. Tell me, Line, are you also frightened of your skeleton of a husband?"

"Gerrit, Gerrit, no! Gerdy isn't frightened ... and I ... I'm not frightened...."

"Put your arms round me."

She put her arms right round him. She hugged him, warmed him against herself, while she sat upon his knees:

"I'm not frightened, Gerrit. Why should I be frightened of you? Because you've been ill, because you've grown thin? Aren't you still my husband, whom I love, whom I have always loved? Sha'n't I nurse you till you are yourself again, till you're quite well ... and strong?... Oh, Gerrit, even if it should take weeks ... months ... a year! Gerrit, what is a year? In a year's time, you will be yourself again and well ... and strong ... and then we shall be happy once more ... and then our children will grow up...."

"Yes, dear ... if only it doesn't get dark...."

"Gerrit...."

"If only it doesn't get so dark!... Do you know that it got very dark around Ernst? It's getting lighter around him now ... but there's some twilight around him still ... even now. ... Do you know that it is getting dark around Mamma ... and that it will get darker and darker?... Do you know that the twilight is closing around Bertha ... and that there's twilight around the others?... Line, darling, I'm frightened. I'm frightened ... when it gets dark. As a child, I remember, I used to be frightened ... when it grew dark.... You've lit the gas now, you see, Line.... Is there only one light burning? The flame of a gas-jet ... and yet ... and yet it's getting dark...."

"Gerrit, my Gerrit, is the fever returning? Would you like to go to bed?"

"Yes, Line, I want to go to bed.... Put your baby to bed, Line ... it's tired, it's not well. Put it to bed, Line, and tuck the nice, warm clothes round its cold back ... and promise to stay and sit with it ... till it's asleep ... till it's asleep.... Put it to bed, Line.... And, Line, if your baby ... if your baby dies ... if it dies ... will you promise never ... to think ... that it did not love you ... as much as it ought to?..."

She had gently forced him to rise from his chair and she opened the partition-door. He stood in the middle of the little room while she busied herself in the bedroom and lit the gas and then came back for him and helped him undress.

"It's getting dark ... it's getting dark," he muttered, shivering, while his teeth chattered with the cold.

And he felt that it was not the cold of fever, but a cold in his veins and his spine, because the beast had sucked all his blood and marrow with its voluptuous licks, had eaten him up from the days of his childhood, had devoured him until now, in the twilight, his soul shrank and withered in his body, which had no more sap to feed it....

"It's getting dark," he muttered.

---

CHAPTER XXVII

It was snowing heavily. For days the great snowflakes had been falling over the small town out of an infinite sky-land, out of infinite sky-plains of infinite snow. And, after all the gloom of the dark days that had been, the days under the grey skies of storm and rain, it was now snowing whiter and whiter out of a denser greyness of sky-plains and sky-land, flakes falling upon flakes in a soft white shroud of oblivion that enveloped houses and people. And, in that ever-falling snow from the great, grey infinity above the small town and the small people, the town seemed still smaller, with the outline of its houses now scarcely defined against the all-effacing oblivion, which fell and fell without ceasing, and the people also seemed still smaller, as they moved about the town or looked through the windows of their small houses at the white flakes descending from the grey infinity overhead.

For old Mrs. van Lowe the white days dragged on monotonously from Sunday to Sunday: only the Sunday gave her a glimpse of light; but the other days had become so white and blank, so white and blank in their twilight emptiness. Even though the children called to see her regularly, she no longer knew that they had been. It was only on Sundays that she missed them: when she did not see all of those whom she still carried in her mind gathered in her large rooms, rooms which not the largest fires now seemed able to warm, a mournful reproach swelled up in her heart; and her head nodded in sad understanding and protest against the sorrows of old age....

"But here is Ernst, Mamma, coming again as he used to," said Constance, leading Ernst by the hand to her mother.

He now came up once a week from Nunspeet, for the day, in order to reaccustom himself to all the familiar things at the Hague, to the houses and the people; and, though still a little shy, as usual, he had lost all his nervous restlessness and become quite calm.

"Ernst?" asked Mamma.

"Yes, Mamma, he is coming again as he used to."

"Has he been long away?"

"Yes, Mamma."

Light seemed to break upon the old woman and she smiled, becoming younger in her smile, now that she remembered. She took her son's hands and looked at Constance with unclouded eyes:

"Is he better now?"

"Yes, Mamma," said Constance.

"Are you better now, Ernst?"

"Yes, Mamma, I am much better."

She looked very glad, as though a flood of light were shining around her:

"Don't you hear ... any of those ... of those strange things?"

"No, Mamma," he answered, smiling gently.

"And don't you see ... don't you see any ... of those strange things?"

"No, Mamma."

"That's good."

She said it with grateful, shining eyes, the flood of light making everything very clear.

"I have been very strange, I believe," Ernst admitted, softly and shyly.

"That's all cured now, Ernst," said Constance.

"But Aunt Lot?" asked Mamma. "What's become of her ... and the girls?"

"They've gone to Java, Mamma."

"To Java?..."

"Yes, don't you remember? They came and said good-bye last week. They'll be back in twelve months.... Don't you remember? They thought they could live more cheaply in India...."

"Yes, yes, I remember," said the old woman.

"India ... I wish I could go there myself...."

She felt as if she must go there to have warmth in and around her. And yet ... Ernst was back; and at the card-tables were Karel and Cateau; Adolphine and her little tribe; Otto and Frances were there; Van der Welcke, Dorine and Paul, Addie....

"There are a good many, after all," she said to Constance. "There are a great many.... But I miss ... I miss...."

"Whom, Mamma?"

"I miss my big lad ... I miss Gerrit. Where is Gerrit?"

"He hasn't been very well lately, Mamma. I don't think he'll come."

"He's ill again...."

"Not ill, but...."

"Yes, he is, he's ill.... He's very seriously ill.... Constance...."

"What is it, Mamma?"

"You're the only one to whom I dare say it.... Constance, Gerrit is very ... very ill.... Hush ... he's ... he's dead!..."

"No, Mamma, he's not dead."

"He is dead."

"No, Mamma."

"Yes, child.... Look, don't you see, in the other room?..."

"What, Mamma?"

"That he's dead."

"No."

"What do you see in the other room then?"

"Nothing, Mamma. I see the two card-tables and Karel and Adolphine and Adolphine's two girls playing cards."

"And that light...."

"What light?"

"All that light: don't you see it?"

"No, Mamma."

"He's lying there ... on the floor."

"No, no, Mamma."

"Be quiet, child ... I can see it plainly!... There, now it's gone!..."

"Mamma darling!"

"Constance...."

"Yes, Mamma?..."

"Go ... go to Gerrit's house...."

"Do you want me to go to him?"

"No, no, stay here.... Constance...."

"Yes, Mamma?..."

"Send your husband ... or your son."

"Are you feeling anxious?"

"Anxious?... No. But send your husband ... or your son.... Send Addie.... If you send Addie ... that'll be best."

"Would you like him just to go ... and find out for you how Gerrit is?"

"Yes, yes."

"What's the matter with Mamma?" asked Van der Welcke.

"Isn't Mamma well?" asked Adolphine, at the card-table.

"Mamma is very restless and excited," said Van Saetzema. "Hadn't we better send for the doctor?..."

"The doctor?" they repeated, irresolutely.

"Addie," asked Dorine, "are you going to the doctor's?"

"No, I'm going to Uncle Gerrit's. Granny is uneasy. She wants to know how he is."

"Constance," whispered the old woman, with strangely luminous eyes, "it's better that you should go too."

"Addie's gone now, Mamma."

"You go too ... with your husband. You and your husband go too.... Tell the others that I am tired. Let them go away ... now ... soon. Tell the others that I am tired, dear. And tell them ... tell them...."

"Tell them what, Mamma?"

"That I am too tired to...."

"Yes?"

"On Sundays...."

"To have us here on Sundays, Mamma?"

"No, dear, no, don't say it.... Don't say that!... But tell them that this evening...."

"This evening?"

"Is the last time...."

"The last evening?"

"No, dear, no, not the last.... Just tell them to go away, dear ... and you go with your husband.... Has Addie gone? But you go now ... you go also ... to Gerrit's house.... And then come back here again.... I want to see you ... all three of you ... here again.... Do you understand?... All three of you ... do you understand?"

"Yes, Mamma."

"Go now ... go...."

They went; and the children took their leave.

Outside, it was snowing great flakes. The snowflakes had been falling all through the night over the small town out of an infinite land of death, out of infinite sky-plains of infinite death. And, after all the gloom of the dark nights that had been, the nights under the grey skies of storm and rain, it had snowed whiter and whiter out of the dense greyness of sky-plains and skyland, flakes falling upon flakes in a soft white shroud of oblivion that enveloped houses and people....

---

CHAPTER XXVIII

Outside, the snow was falling in great flakes. The parlour-maid had opened the door:

"But your cab isn't here yet, ma'am...."

"It doesn't matter. We'll walk."

"I must say, it's a little absurd of Mamma," said Van der Welcke, on the doorstep. "Must we go to Gerrit's ... in this weather? And has Addie gone too?... Was Mamma as anxious as all that?... It's snowing hard, Constance: it's enough to give one one's death, to go out in this weather...."

"Well, then you stay, Henri."

"Do you mean to go in any case?"

"Yes, Mamma wants me to."

"But it's absurd!"

"Perhaps so ... but she would like it.... And we mayn't be able to do things to please her much longer!"

"Then send the cab on to the Bankastraat, when it comes...."

"Very well, sir."

They went....

"Didn't Addie go just now?"

"Yes, a minute or two before we did."

"I don't see him."

"He walks very fast."

"Was Mamma so uneasy?"

"Yes.... She was very restless and anxious."

"Have the others gone away as well?"

"Yes, Mamma was tired.... All the same, she relies upon us ... to come back presently for a moment."

"Mamma is becoming a little exacting...."

"She's growing so old.... We may as well give her that pleasure ... of just going."

How much gentler her tone had become!...

Once, ah, once she would have flared out at him violently for less than this little difference!... Now, ah, now, how much gentler everything about her had become!...

She stumbled through the snow.

"Take care, Constance.... The pavements are slippery.... Take my arm."

"No, I can manage."

"Take my arm."

She took his arm. She slipped again; he held her up. He felt that she was trembling.

"Are you cold?"

"No."

"You've got a thick cloak on."

"I'm not cold."

"What are you so nervous about?"

"I don't know...."

"Your nerves have been all wrong for some time.... You often cry ... about nothing."

"Yes. I don't know why.... It's nothing.... It's the weather...."

"Yes ... our Dutch climate.... Now at last it's something like winter. It's freezing like anything. The snow is crisp underfoot."

She slipped again. He held her up and they walked close together, in the driving snow, which blinded them....

"I must say, it's absurd of Mamma ... to send us out in this weather...."

She did not answer: she understood that he thought it absurd. The cold took her breath away; and it seemed to her, as she kept on slipping, that they would never reach the Bankastraat.... At last they turned the corner of the Nassauplein. And she calculated: not quite ten minutes more; then a moment with Gerrit and Adeline; the cab would fetch them there; then back to Mamma's with Addie ... to set Mamma's mind at ease. And, as she reckoned it out, she grew calmer and thought, with Henri, that it was certainly rather absurd of Mamma. She planted her feet more firmly; she was now walking more briskly, still holding her husband's arm.... Was it the cold or what, that made her keep on trembling with an icy shiver?... Now, at last, they were nearing the Bankastraat and Gerrit's house; and it seemed to her as if she had been walking the whole evening through the thick, crisp snow. Suddenly, she stopped:

"Henri," she stammered.

"What?"

"I ... I daren't...."

"What daren't you?"

"I daren't ring."

"Why not?"

"I daren't go in."

"But what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing.... I'm frightened. I daren't."

"But, Constance...."

"Henri, I'm trembling all over!..."

"Are you feeling ill?"

"No ... I'm frightened...."

"Come, Constance, what are you frightened of? Now that we're there, we may as well ring. What else would you do?... Here's the house."

He rang the bell.... They waited; no one came to the door; and the snow beat in their faces.

"But there's a light," he said. "They haven't gone to bed."

"And Addie...."

"Yes, Addie must be there."

"Ring again," she said.

He rang the bell.... They waited.... The house remained silent in the driving snow; but there was a light in nearly every window.

"Oh!... Henri!"

He rang the bell.

"Oh!... Henri!" she began to sob. "I'm frightened! I'm frightened!..."

She felt as if she were sinking into the snow, into a fleecy, bottomless abyss. Her knees knocked together and he saw that she was giving way. He held her up and she fell against him almost swooning.... He rang the bell....

The door was opened. It was Addie who opened the door. They entered; Constance staggered as she went. And, in her half-swooning giddiness, she seemed to see the house full of whirling snowflakes, coming through the roof, filling the passage and the rooms; and, amid this strange snow, her son's face appeared to her as the face of a ghost, very white, with the blue flame of his big eyes....

At that moment there came from upstairs a wailing cry, a long-drawn-out shriek, uttered in an agony of despair; and that cry seemed to call to Constance out of Adeline's body through all that night of snow indoors and out.

"Mamma, Papa, hush!... Uncle Gerrit ... Uncle Gerrit is ... dead.... Uncle Gerrit has...."

It was snowing, before Constance' giddy eyes, as she went up the stairs, with her husband and her son; it was snowing wildly, a whirl of all-obliterating white; it was snowing all around her. And through it, for the second time, Adeline's long wail of despair rang out loud and shrill....

The rooms upstairs were open.... The maids ... and Marietje in her little nightgown ... were peeping round the doors, trembling.... Gerrit's little room was open ... and on the floor lay the big body, looking bigger still, stretched out like that ... and, beside it, beside the big body, on her knees, the wife ... the small, fair-haired wife.... And her wail of despair rang out for the third time.

"Adeline!"

She now looked round, flung up her arms, felt her sister's arms, Constance' arms, around her:

"He's dead! He's dead!"

"No, Adeline ... perhaps he's fainted."

"He's dead! He's dead!... He's cold ... wet ... blood ... feel!..."

She uttered a scream of horror, the small, fair-haired wife. And suddenly, drawing herself up, she looked at the sword-rack.... Yes, the missing revolver ... was clutched in his stiff hand.

Van der Welcke and Addie closed the doors. The maids were sobbing outside. But the sound of little voices came; and small fists banged at the closed door:

"Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!... Aunt Constance!"

Constance rose, giddy and fainting, not knowing whether to go or stay....

"Constance! Constance!" cried Adeline, calling her back, holding her in her arms.

"Mamma! Mamma!... Aunt Constance! Aunt Constance!"

Constance rose to her feet, made a vast effort to overcome that dizzy faintness ... and, now that the body of the small, fair-haired woman lay moaning upon the body of the dead man, she opened the door.... Was every light in the house full on? Why were the maids sobbing like that? Was it real then, was it real?... Was this Marietje, clasping her so convulsively, trembling in her little nightgown?... Were these Guy and Alex, sleepy still their gentle eyes, cheeky their little mouths?... Were these Gerdy—oh, so frightened!—and little Constant?...

"Aunt Constance, Aunt Constance!"

She overcame her dizziness, she did not faint:

"Darlings, my darlings, hush!... Hush!..."

And she led them back to their bedroom.... What could she do but embrace them, but press them to her?...

"Darlings, my darlings!..."

The wail of despair rang out once more.... Oh, she must go back to that poor woman! Oh, she had not arms enough, not lives enough!... Oh, she must multiply her life tenfold!...

"Mamma." It was Addie speaking. "The cab is here.... I'm going for Dr. Alsma. One of the maids has gone to another doctor, close by."

"Yes, dear; and then ... and then go to ... oh, go to Grandmamma's! She's expecting us! I know for certain that she's expecting us!... Stay in here, darlings, don't leave the room, promise me!... And, Addie, don't tell her ... don't tell her anything yet ... tell her ... tell her that...."

The wail of despair rang out. And there were only two of them, now that Addie was gone, there were only two of them, helpless, she and Henri, in that night of death and snow—as though death were snowing outside, as though death were snowing into the brightly-lit house, with its all-obliterating whiteness, dazzlingly light, dazzlingly white—there were only two of them....

---

CHAPTER XXIX

The twilight had passed away in the dazzling white light.

But yonder, in the big, dark, chilly house, the old woman sat waiting. She had sent the maids to bed and told them to put out all the lights, but she herself did not go to bed; she waited. She sat in her big, dark room, with just a candle flickering on the table beside her.

It seemed to her that she was waiting a long time. She felt very cold, though she had put her little black shawl round her shoulders. And she peered into the frowning shadow, which quivered with dancing black ghosts and with the flickering of the candle. It was a dance of ghosts, hovering silently round the room, and they seemed to have come from the distant past to haunt her, to have come out of the things of long ago, of very long ago: far-off, forgotten years of childhood and girlhood; the young man whom she had married; their long life together; their children, young around them.... Then the rise of their greatness; the rise of the white palaces in tropical climes; the glitter around them and their children of all the glittering vanity of the world.... Then the children growing up and moving farther and farther away from her.... And she saw it all looming so darkly and so menacingly in the long, dark rooms, while she sat waiting and watching by the flickering flame of the candle.

Then her old head nodded very slowly up and down, as if to say that she recognized all the things of long ago which loomed so darkly and threateningly, that there was not a ghost which she did not recognize, but that she did not understand why they all thronged round her to-night, like a vision of menace, a dance of death.... And, while she sat and wondered, it was as if each dancing phantom blacked out something of the room and the present that she still saw faintly gleaming, blacked out one outline after the other with dancing phantom after dancing phantom, until at last all was black around her ... and not only the room and the present had become black, but also the pale visions of the past: the years of childhood and girlhood; the young man whom she had married; and the children; and all the life, yonder, in the white palaces amid the tropical scenery: black, everything became black, until everything was blotted out, until the dance of all those phantoms was obliterated in shadow and the old woman, nodding her head, still sat peering into the dark, with the flickering candle beside her.

Thus she sat and waited; and, with the darkness before her, it was as if she did not see the candle, now that everything had become black. Thus she sat and waited and wondered whether many and many nights would still drag their blackness over her: how many black hours, how many black nights could the black future still drag along?... Until at last she heard a bell, clanging like a shrill alarm through the livid darkness. And mechanically—because she was waiting—she rose painfully and took her candle. Through the dark room and the dim passage she went; and the faint light went with her, so faint that she did not see it, that she just groped her way painfully through the passage and down the stairs, still holding high the candle.... The stairs seemed steep to her and she went cautiously, waiting on each step; at each step the faint light of the candle descended with her; and behind her the night accumulated with each step that she left behind her.... She had now reached the foot of the stairs; and, slowly and painfully, with the dragging tread of age, she went through the hall to the front door, whence the alarm had rung.

And her trembling hand opened the door. Addie entered:

"Granny, is that you yourself?..."

"Yes, child."

"I came, Granny dear, because Mamma said that you expected us."

"Yes."

"Were you waiting up for us, Granny?"

"Yes."

---

TABLE

[CHAPTER I]
[CHAPTER II]
[CHAPTER III]
[CHAPTER IV]
[CHAPTER V]
[CHAPTER VI]
[CHAPTER VII]
[CHAPTER VIII]
[CHAPTER IX]
[CHAPTER X]
[CHAPTER XI]
[CHAPTER XII]
[CHAPTER XIII]
[CHAPTER XIV]
[CHAPTER XV]
[CHAPTER XVI]
[CHAPTER XVII]
[CHAPTER XVIII]
[CHAPTER XIX]
[CHAPTER XX]
[CHAPTER XXI]
[CHAPTER XXII]
[CHAPTER XXIII]
[CHAPTER XXIV]
[CHAPTER XXV]
[CHAPTER XXVI]
[CHAPTER XXVII]
[CHAPTER XXVIII]
[CHAPTER XXIX]