The Twilight of the Souls

by Louis Couperus

She made an effort to force back the tears in her eyes. It was always so, with those tiresome, nervous tears: they came for nothing, for no reason at all. It was not sensitiveness in her, it was sheer miserable nervousness, so she herself thought; and she hated herself for it, hated herself for those tears which sparkled so readily. But Gerrit's words had surprised her and touched her, surprised and touched her to such an extent that she was ashamed to let him see it and so blazed out, purposely, in order to hide herself behind that assumption of bitter resentment and ill-temper:

"More comfortable? More comfortable in your house? I'd be a nursemaid in your house, that's what I should be! No, I've had enough in the end of living for everybody who wants me and who can make use of me! I'm going to live for myself at last, for myself and nobody else...."

"But, Dorine...."

He did not complete his sentence. He did not wish to be cruel and tell her that she had never lived for anybody but herself: not because she was selfish, for she was not that at heart, but because she had never found the right path, along which she could have trudged valiantly, urging her lonely steps towards a point which would have formed a centre for her small life, for the small circle of herself and that which she would have loved. Year after year had passed over her head, bringing none of the sweetness of the changing seasons: the illusion of spring she had never known; the fierce heat of summer she had never known; kindly shelter she had never known; nor had she ever known aught of blowing winds and raging storms: all that was sensitive in her had shrivelled like flowers which no sun has ever shone upon; what was feminine in her had withered like flowers which no dew has watered; and everything in her had become soured and embittered into an almost unconscious exasperation at her aimless existence, at her loveless life, which had gone on for years and years. Was it now nothing but autumn in front of her and around her, like twilight in her soul, like twilight around her soul?...

He stood up, she made him feel sad. He went away; and his parting words were merely:

"No, Dorine, you would not be a nursemaid in our house. If you care to think it over, do; and be sure that Line and I will think it very jolly if you do come to us...."

And he took his afternoon ride, picked out his lonely road. With a horse, like that, it was like being with a friend. He patted the animal's neck; and it shivered, like a woman under a caressing hand. He talked to it; and it shook its pointed ears, as though it understood, as though it answered with a graceful movement of its neck and head. And, while he let the horse go at a foot's pace, with the reins held loose in his hand, he thought how lonely it had all become, now that the twilight was deepening around them. In bright flashes he thought just once more of his childhood, out there: Buitenzorg; the white palace; the delicious garden, unique of its kind and world-famous, with its precious trees, its clustering palms, its giant ferns, its strange, huge giant creepers with stems as thick as pythons slung from tree to tree.... And, behind it, the river ... where he used to play with Karel and Constance.... Oh, how vivid it all was! To think of it almost brought the tears to his eyes, now that the twilight was gathering round him and these memories were but the last reflection of those sunny days when they were all children together!... It had begun very slowly, slowly but irrevocably: the gradual separation and drifting apart, the ties loosened until they were all detached ... now, just now, in the sombre twilight that was drawing nigh.... Slowly, slowly, with every year in which the brothers and sisters grew bigger and older, in which they developed from children into persons who themselves drew a circle around them, their own circle of marriage, their own circle of children, of which they themselves were now the centre, even as his father and his mother had been in their family-circle, in their circle of children and even grandchildren.... Slowly, slowly it had happened, year by year, really almost unnoticeably, that all the brothers and sisters who had been one family in the white palace over there—which in that garden yonder, so very far away in miles and years, seemed to him part of the fairy-tale of his boyhood, with Constance' fairy figure flitting through it, red flowers at her temples—that all the brothers and sisters had drawn a circle round about themselves, a circle of their families or of themselves alone; and, though those circles for the first few years had sometimes intersected one another, slowly, slowly they had shifted farther and farther apart; and, just as that gloomy twilight drew nigh, they retreated still farther.... Had Mamma always secretly foreseen it; and was that why she had clung so obstinately to that one evening a week, the evening at which formerly he had laughed and joked with the others: always that Sunday evening of Mamma's, the "family group," that gathering at regular intervals, with cards and cakes, which they all sometimes thought extremely boring, but never neglected, for the sake of the old mother, who wished to keep the children together? Had Mamma always foreseen it? Oh, it still existed, the family-group, with the cards and cakes, every Sunday; but was it not really losing its significance more and more ... because the circles had shifted so very far apart?... The twilight was gathering around them all, sombre and menacing; and he felt its chilling influence even now as he rode along on that warm summer's day: the twilight was deepening around Dorine and around Paul, growing darker and darker with their growing loneliness, the loneliness of a lonely man and a lonely woman who had not sought or had not found the warm light for their later years, the still young but yet later years of the small soul that just exists and, consciously or unconsciously, is for ever asking itself the reason of its small existence.... The twilight was perhaps not yet so dark around Adolphine, for she still had her own circle; but even that circle had already shifted far from the original family-circle, was moving farther and farther away.... And the twilight had fallen, black as night, so suddenly, around poor Bertha, now that she was dozing away in a small house in a village where she knew nobody and did nothing but look out of her window at the garden, while the roar of the trains deadened her already dull memories. It seemed too as if Bertha's circle had broken up, like a ring of light that breaks up into sparks which die out in the distance, now that she had no one with her but Marianne, poor girl, pining away in her unhappy lot, the victim of a destiny too big for her small soul.... Karel, his brother: was Karel his brother still? Or had not Karel, with his wife, who had never been admitted to the family as an intimate, also shifted his circle far, far away from the circle of them all?... And, as for poor Ernst, had the twilight not deepened around poor Ernst, his gloomy solitude growing ever darker, until he had fallen ill, ill in his soul and in his senses?... And, now that all those circles were shifting so far away from one another and becoming ever wider, what consolation would there be for Mamma, around whom loneliness and darkness were closing, closing just around her, poor Mamma, to whom the family circle meant so much, who had always wanted to remain the centre of the love and warmth of all her children?... And it was strange that, when he thought of Constance, her circle, on the contrary, seemed to be moving closer, as though there were a new light dawning for her and Addie; and strangest of all was when he thought of himself and of his little tribe, which, it was true, had left him for the moment, but still belonged to him and was always, always round him ... as if there were no twilight there at all ... as if it were always dawn, a radiant dawn, flinging wide its golden beams.... Oh, children were everything! Had he not done wisely to create his golden dawn?... He did not think of his wife: he thought of his children; he was a father more than a husband.... Had he not done well? Was it not there that hope smiled upon him, upon all of them, upon poor Mamma: upon poor Mamma who, at that very moment, was sunning her lonely old age in the light of that golden dawn?... Had he not done wisely? But why, if he had done wisely, must he doubt sometimes and be astonished and even anxious about all that young, radiant life which he had begotten and which shed forth a warmth and light in which he now felt his strange soul happily basking, warmer and lighter than the sunlight in which he was riding? Why should he doubt and be astonished and even anxious?... Oh, he saw it, suddenly: because, later on, the rays of that golden dawn also would shine far away from their centre and that golden radiance would gradually become dim and dark in its turn!... But, suppose it were a law of nature, suppose it were bound to be, that all that was united at first in sunny affection and sunny fellowship should scatter in all directions; suppose it were bound to circle away and fade into sombre twilight; suppose it were a law of nature that brothers and sisters should become estranged, as though they had not been born of one mother and begotten of one father! Suppose that had to be! Then why have so many doubts, why feel astonishment and anxiety and why not enjoy the warmth, as long as the morning sun still shone, after the first gleams of the cheerful dawn?... Oh, how he longed for his dawn, his little tribe of laughing children! He would go to them to-morrow, to-morrow! To see them all around him, to hold them all in one vast embrace, to toss them in his arms, to let them ride on his back and on his shoulders, to dandle them on his knee, to romp with them till they all rolled in a heap, to press his lips to their soft childish skins, giving himself sheer ecstasy in those simple caresses! He would go down to-morrow, to-morrow!...

Yes, the gloom might deepen around all the rest, but light was still dawning before him, as it had shone, long years ago, before his father and mother, when they had all—he and his brothers and sisters—been children together and their sunny radiance had been their parents' dawn yonder in India, in the grand white palace, in the fairy gardens.... Yes, light was still dawning in front of him ... and, though later that light would surely circle away from him also, though the twilight would gather around his head, around his soul, as it was now beginning to gather, with such gloomy darkness, around his poor mother, there was still the present and he had no right to feel doubt or anxiety.

He rode back; and the evening dusked along the wooded roads. But straight before his eyes was a whirl of golden dust, because he had forced his thoughts to be glad and sunny: his fair-haired little tribe, at Nunspeet, whirled before his eyes. It whirled all radiant light, straight before his eyes.

When he was back in town, seated at the officers' mess, where he dined these days, not one of them noticed that he had seen that deepening twilight, nor that he had seen the first gleam of dawn; and he was just a big, yellow-haired fellow, a great, burly officer, with a jovial, blustering voice and rough movements that made his chair creak and his glass in constant danger of breaking; and all the time a stream of noisy oaths came from his mouth and his jokes set the whole table ringing with laughter....