"Not to-day ... not to-day, Addie, out here, in the roads.... Perhaps another time ... indoors."
"Very well, then, another time, indoors. I'll keep you to your word. And now let's talk of nothing but the Merchants' School...."
And, with Alex still hanging on his arm, he told him about the head-master, the staff, the lessons there ... making a point of holding out hopes to Alex that everything would go easily and smoothly. Did Addie not know, did he not diagnose that the boy was so terribly afraid of life, of the days to come, because a twilight had always continued to press down upon him, the twilight of his father's suicide?... It had given the child a fit of shuddering in so far as he had realized it at the time; and things had suddenly grown dark, about his child-soul; and, when the power of thought had developed in him later, there had always remained the fear in that darkness, because the unconscious life went on daily ... and because his father—why, why?—had torn himself out of the unconscious life and committed suicide.... That—though Alex had not spoken—was how Addie diagnosed him, that was how he really diagnosed his state, with that strange look of penetration, with that strange vision.... And, when he looked into another in this way, he no longer thought of himself, his self-insufficiency fell away from him and he seemed to know on the other's behalf, to know surely and positively, to know with instinctive knowledge ... as he never knew things for himself....
While they walked on, arm in arm, he thought that the boy's heavy step was becoming more rhythmical and even, that his answers—now that they went on talking about Amsterdam and the master in whose house he would be—were becoming firmer, as though he were taking greater interest.... There was no note of doubt in Addie's voice: his voice made the two years' schooling at Amsterdam, the whole subsequent life as a busy, hard-working man, stand out clear in the mist that hung under the trees and over the roads, made it all take on bright colours as a life spreading open, with unclouded horizons of human destiny, as though all the unconscious life would run easily along ordered lines.... He himself had never known that fear of the days to come, because he had seen his goal before him in the future. Yet why, then, that morbid sense of insufficiency?...
He refused to think of it; and at once it passed from him like a ghost. Even after his sleepless night, he now felt the energy circulating strongly within him, felt the magic pouring out of him as vital warmth. He must make that boy by his side realize the life before him, he must take away his fear of the future. An unknown force inside him ordained that he should make the future shine with hope and promise for this boy, ordained that he should purge the days to come of their sombre terror.
And, when he had taken leave of Alex, because he did not wish him to know where his patients lived, the lad went back easier in his mind, with his fears pressing less heavily upon him, with the sullen sky growing gradually brighter ... however much he might have to think always of his father, however much he had to see his father's blood-stained corpse daily more and more clearly before his eyes....
CHAPTER VIII
The household took its everyday course of a morning: the everyday life, driven indoors by the merciless winter, the grey skies and blustering wind, rolled on softly and evenly in the rooms and passages of the big house. Not much came from outside, where the great trees in the garden dripped with chill rain; nothing to stir the big house, which stood there like a great lonely block on the villa-road, amid the sombre mystery of its wind-blown trees. For the occupants of the big, gloomy house had made as few acquaintances as possible among their neighbours, though in the spring and summer Gerdy would take her racket daily to the tennis-club.... In the winter, it was a quiet life indoors, varied only by a walk, or a visit to a sick or poor neighbour, a quiet life between the walls of the big rooms, with the wind tapping at the window-panes....
The old grandmother sat mostly in the conservatory and looked out into the garden, sagely nodding her silver-grey head. She no longer recognized all the children and as a rule thought herself back at Buitenzorg, in the midst of her own family; even when Klaasje sat playing at her feet, she would think that it was little Gertrude, Gertrude who had died, as a child, at Buitenzorg.... Constance, a zealous housewife, active despite her fifty-five years, moved about the house incessantly during the morning, with Marietje or Adeletje to help her. Twenty-two and twenty-one respectively, they were always with Constance: Marietje already full of unselfish consideration and Adeletje delicate, not speaking much, sitting with her needlework upstairs in their room; and, because of Alex' strange melancholy, it was only Guy and Gerdy that represented joyous, healthy youth in the house, that rich health and radiance which reminded Constance of their father, of her brother Gerrit, who had been so noisy, broad and strong until he fell ill, too ill to go on living....