The Later Life
by Louis Couperus · English · Gutenberg #37578 · 411,656 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Later Life
Author: Louis Couperus
Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Release date: September 30, 2011 [eBook #37578]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LATER LIFE ***
Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE LATER LIFE
By
LOUIS COUPERUS
Author of "Small Souls," "Footsteps of Fate," etc.
Translated by
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1915
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
The Later Life is the second of The Books of the Small Souls,
following immediately upon Small Souls, the novel that gives the
title to the series. In the present story, Couperus reverts, at
times and in a measure, to that earlier, "sensitivist" method which
he abandoned almost wholly in Small Souls and which he again abandons
in The Twilight of the Souls and in Dr. Adriaan, the third and fourth
novels of the series.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
Chelsea,
22 March, 1914.
THE LATER LIFE
CHAPTER I
Van der Welcke woke that morning from a long, sound sleep and
stretched himself luxuriously in the warmth of the sheets. But
suddenly he remembered what he had been dreaming; and, as he did so,
he gazed into the wardrobe-glass, in which he could just see himself
from his pillow. A smile began to flicker about his curly moustache;
his blue eyes lit up with merriment. The sheets, which still covered
his body--he had flung his arms above his head--rose and fell with
the ripple of his silent chuckles; and suddenly, irrepressibly,
he burst into a loud guffaw:
"Addie!" he shouted, roaring with laughter. "Addie, are you
up?... Addie, come here for a minute!"
The door between the two rooms opened; Addie entered.
"Addie!... Just imagine ... just imagine what I've been dreaming. It
was at the seaside--Ostende or Scheveningen or somewhere--and
everybody, everybody was going about ... half-naked ... their legs
bare... and the rest beautifully dressed. The men had coloured
shirts and light jackets and exquisite ties and straw hats, gloves
and a stick in their hands ... and the rest ... the rest was stark
naked. The ladies wore lovely blouses, magnificent hats, parasols
... and that was all!... And there was nothing in it, Addie, really
there was nothing in it; it was all quite natural, quite proper,
quite fashionable; and they walked about like that and sat on chairs
and listened to the music!... And the fishermen ... the fishermen,
Addie, went about like that too!... And the musicians ... in the
bandstand ... were half-naked too; and ... the tails ... of their
dress-coats ... hung down ... well ... like that!"
Van der Welcke, as he told his dream in broken sentences, lay shaking
with laughter; his whole bed shook, the sheets rose and fell; he was
red in the face, as if on the verge of choking; he wept as though
consumed with grief; he gasped for breath, threw the bed-clothes off:
"Just imagine it ... just imagine it ... you never ... you never saw
such a stretch of sands as that!"
Addie had begun by listening with his usual serious face; but, when
he saw his father crying and gasping for breath, rolling about in
the bed, and when the vision of those sands became clearer to his
imagination, he also was seized with irresistible laughter. But he
had one peculiarity, that he could not laugh outright, but, shaken
with internal merriment, would laugh in his stomach without uttering
a sound; and he now sat on the edge of his father's bed, rocking with
silent laughter as the bed rocked under him. He tried not to look at
his father, for, when he saw his father's face, distorted and purple
with his paroxysms of laughter, lying on the white pillow like the
mask of some faun, he had to make agonized clutches at his stomach and,
bent double, to try to laugh outright; and he couldn't, he couldn't.
"Doesn't it ... doesn't it ... strike you as funny?" asked Van der
Welcke, hearing no sound of laughter from his son.
And he looked at Addie and, suddenly remembering that Addie could
never roar with laughter out loud, he became still merrier at the
sight of his poor boy's silent throes, his noiseless stomach-laugh,
until his own laughter rang through the room, echoing back from the
walls, filling the whole room with loud Homeric mirth.
"Oh, Father, stop!" said Addie at last, a little relieved by his
internal paroxysms, the tears streaming in wet streaks down his face.
And he heaved a sigh of despair that he could not laugh like his
father.
"Give me a pencil and paper," said Van der Welcke, "and I'll draw
you my dream."
But Addie was very severe and shocked:
"No, Father, that won't do! That'll never do.... it'd be a vulgar
drawing!"
And his son's chaste seriousness worked to such an extent upon Van
der Welcke's easily tickled nerves that he began roaring once more
at Addie's indignation....
Truitje was prowling about the passage, knocking at all the doors,
not knowing where Addie was:
"Are you up, Master Addie?"
"Yes," cried Addie. "Wait a minute."
He went to the door:
"What is it?"
"A telegram ... from the mistress, I expect...."
"Here."
He took the telegram, shut the door again.
"From Mamma?" asked Van der Welcke.
"Sure to be. Yes, from Paris: 'J'arrive ce soir.'"
Van der Welcke grew serious:
"And high time too. What business had Mamma to go rushing abroad like
that?... One'd think we were well off.... What did you do about those
bills, Addie?"
"I went to the shops and said that mevrouw was out of town and that
they'd have to wait."
"I see. That's all right.... Can you meet Mamma at the station?"
"Yes. The train's due at six.... Then we'll have dinner afterwards,
with Mamma."
"I don't know.... I think I'd better dine at the club."
"Come, Father, don't be silly!"
"No," said Van der Welcke, crossly, "don't bother me. I'll stay on
at the Witte."
"But don't you see that means starting off with a
manifestation? Whereas, if you wait in for Mamma peacefully and we all
have dinner together, then things'll come right of themselves. That'll
be much easier than if you go staying out at once: Mamma would only
think it rude."
"Rude?... Rude?..."
"Well, there's nothing to flare up about! And you just come home to
dinner. Then you'll be on the right side."
"I'll think it over. If I don't look out, you'll be bossing me
altogether."
"Well, then, don't mind me, stay at the Witte."
"Oho! So you're offended, young man?"
"Oh, no! I'd rather you came home, of course; but, if you prefer to
dine at the Witte, do."
"Dearly-beloved son!" said Van der Welcke, throwing out his hands
with a comical gesture of resignation. "Your father will obey your
sapient wishes."
"Fond Father, I thank you. But I must be off to school now."
"Good-bye, then ... and you'd better forget those sands."
They both exploded and Addie hurried away and vanished, shaking with
his painful stomach-laugh, while he heard Van der Welcke break into
a fresh guffaw:
"He can laugh!" thought the boy.
CHAPTER II
Van der Welcke had dressed and breakfasted and, because he felt
bored, took his bicycle and went for a long ride by himself. He was
very often bored these days, now that Addie was working hard at the
grammar-school. Without his boy, he seemed at once to have nothing to
do, no object in life; he could see no reason for his existence. He
would smoke endless cigarettes in his den, or go bicycling, or turn
up once in a way at the Plaats, once in a way at the Witte; but he
did not go to either of his clubs as often as he used to. He saw much
less of his friends, his friends of former days, the men of birth
and position who had all won fame in their respective spheres, though
Van Vreeswijck continued his visits regularly, appreciating the cosy
little dinners. Van der Welcke generally felt lonely and stranded,
found his own company more and more boring from day to day; and it
was only when he saw his boy come back from school that he cheered up,
enjoyed life, was glad and lively as a child.
He loved the quick movement of it; and he cycled and cycled along the
lonely, chill, windy country-roads, aiming at no destination, just
pedalling away for the sake of speed, for the sake of covering the
ground. If he were only rich: then he'd have a motor-car! There was
nothing like a motor-car! A motor-car made up for this rotten, stodgy,
boring life. To rush along the smooth roads in your car, to let her
rip: tock, tock, tock, tock, tock-tock-tock-tock! Ha!... Ha!... That
would be grand! Suppose his father were to make him a present of a
car.... Ha!... Tock-tock-tock-tock!... And, as he spurted along, he
suggested to himself the frantic orgy of speed of a puffing, snorting
motor-car, the acrid stench of its petrol-fumes, the ready obedience of
the pneumatic-tyred wheels while the car flew through the dust like a
storm-chariot over the clouds. It made him poetic--tock-tock-tock-tock,
tock-tock-tock-tock--but, as long as his father lived, he would never
have enough money to buy himself a decent car!
Life was stodgy, rotten, boring.... If only Addie had finished
school! But then ... then he would have to go to the university ... and
into the diplomatic service.... No, no, the older his boy grew, the
less he would see of him.... How wretched it all was: he did not know
whether to wish that Addie was older or not!... To think, it wasn't
a year ago since the child used to sit on his knee, with his cheek
against his father's, his arm round his father's neck; and Van der
Welcke would feel that slight and yet sturdy frame against his heart;
and now ... now already he was a lad, a chap with a deep voice, who
ruled his father with a rod of iron! Yes, Van der Welcke was simply
ruled by him: there was no getting away from it! Suppose he wanted to
stay and dine at the Witte that night: why the blazes shouldn't he? And
he knew as sure as anything that he wouldn't! He would come home like
a good little boy, because Addie had rather he did, because otherwise
Addie would look upon it as a manifestation against Constance.... She
too was coming back, after Addie had written that it really wouldn't
do, financially. She had run away like a madwoman, two months ago,
after that pleasant business at the last Sunday-evening which they had
spent at Mamma van Lowe's, after the furious scene which she had made
him, Van der Welcke, because he wanted to hit their brother-in-law,
Van Naghel, in the face. Mind, it was for her, for his wife's sake,
that he wanted to hit Van Naghel in the face. For her sake, because
that pompous ass had dared to say that he wasn't keen on Constance
calling on Bertha's at-home day ... but that in other respects they
were brothers and sisters! The disgusting snob! That old woman, that
non-entity, that rotter, that twopenny-halfpenny cabinet-minister,
who had got on simply because old Van Lowe, in his day, had kicked
him upstairs step by step!... Van der Welcke was still furious when
he thought of the fellow, with his smooth face and his namby-pamby
speeches. He hadn't been able to control himself that time: his wife,
at any rate, was his wife; his wife was Baroness van der Welcke; and
he couldn't stand it, that they should insult his wife and before his
face too; and, if Paul had not prevented him, he would have struck the
snobbish ass in the face, thrashed him, thrashed him, thrashed him! His
blood still boiled at the thought of it.... Well, there it was! Paul
had held him back ... but still, he would have liked to challenge
the fellow, to have fought a duel with him!... He grinned--pedalling
like mad, bending over like a record-breaker at the last lap of
a bicycle-race--he grinned now when he thought of the despair of
the whole family, because their revered brother-in-law Van Naghel,
"his excellency," whom they all looked up to with such reverence,
might have to fight a duel with a brother-in-law who was already
viewed with sufficient disfavour at the Hague!... Well, it hadn't
come off. They had all interfered; but it wasn't for that reason,
but because dear old Mamma van Lowe had taken to her bed--and also
for Addie's sake--that he had not insisted on the duel. Yes, those
Dutchmen: they never wanted to fight if they could help it! He,
Van der Welcke, would have liked to fight, though Van Naghel had
been a thousand times his brother-in-law, a thousand times colonial
secretary. And it wasn't only that the whole family had thought the
very idea of a duel so dreadful; but his wise son had interfered,
had taken up a very severe attitude to his father, had reproached
him because he--still "a young man," as Addie put it in his amusing
way--wanted to insult and strike a man of Uncle van Naghel's age,
even though it was for Mamma's sake! And Addie had gone to Frans van
Naghel, the eldest son, the undergraduate, of whom he was very fond;
and Frans was furious, wanted to take his father's place and fight in
his stead. But Addie had said that Papa was in the wrong, that Papa
had lost his self-control; and he had calmed Frans and told him,
his father, positively, that it was his, Van der Welcke's, duty to
apologize to Uncle van Naghel! That boy, that boy, thought Van der
Welcke, thinking half-angrily of his son's perpetual tutelage. It
was really too silly: if he didn't look out, the brat would twist
him round his little finger entirely. A little chap like that,
a schoolboy of fourteen ... and yet the beggar had managed so that
Frans did not challenge Van der Welcke and that Van der Welcke had
sent Van Naghel a note of apology, a note the thought of which made
him boil even now, made him rant and curse at the thought that he had
let himself be persuaded by the fourteen-year-old schoolboy. And then
he had had to express his regret to Mamma van Lowe into the bargain;
but that he didn't mind, for she was an old dear and he thought it
too bad that the wretched affair should have made her ill. And so
the fourteen-year-old schoolboy had succeeded in hushing up a Hague
scandal, just like a grown-up man.... When you came to think of it,
it was simply absurd, incredible; you would never have believed it if
you read it in a book; and it was the positive truth: the schoolboy had
prevented the cabinet-minister or his son from fighting a duel with
the schoolboy's father!... And now Van der Welcke had to choke with
laughter at the thought of it; and, as he spurted along the roads,
like a professional, with his back bent into an arch, he roared with
laughter all by himself and thought:
"Lord, what an extraordinary beggar he is!"
But the boy's mother, after scene upon scene with him, the father; his
mother, furious that her husband should have dared to raise his hand
against that revered brother-in-law, "his excellency;" his mother,
driven out of her senses, with every nerve on edge after all that
she had had to endure that Sunday: his mother the boy had not been
able to restrain; a woman is always more difficult to manage than
a man; a mother is not half so easy as a father! Constance, after
one of those scenes which followed one upon the other as long as the
atmosphere remained charged with electricity, had said:
"I'm sick of it all; I'm going away; I'm going abroad!"
And even the fact that she was leaving her son behind her did not
bring her to reason. She packed her trunks, told Truitje to keep
house for the master and Master Addie as she herself used to and went
away, almost insolently, hardly even saying good-bye to Addie.... They
thought at first that she would do something rash, goodness knows what,
and were anxious because they didn't know where Constance had gone;
but the next day there was a telegram from Paris to reassure them,
telling them that Constance was going to Nice and meant to stay some
time. Then letters came from Nice and they had no more fears, nor had
Mamma van Lowe; they all thought the change might even do her good; and
she continued pretty sensible. She wrote to her mother, to Addie; she
wrote to Truitje, impressing upon her to look after the house well and
after the master and Master Addie and to see that everything was going
on all right when her mistress returned. And this sensible, housewifely
letter had done more than anything to reassure Mamma van Lowe and the
two of them; and now they didn't grudge Constance, Mamma, her trip,
for once in a way. But it was an expensive amusement. Constance, it
was true, had taken some money of her own with her; but still, since
they had come to the Hague, Van der Welcke no longer made anything
out of wine- and insurance-commissions; he was no longer an agent for
the Brussels firms; and they had not much to live on and had to be
very economical. And so Van der Welcke, after seven weeks had passed,
was obliged to tell Addie that it wouldn't do for Mamma to stay on at
Nice, in an expensive hotel, and that he had better write to her. And
the schoolboy had written asking his mother to come back now, telling
his mother that that would have to do and that there was no money
left. And Constance was coming home that evening.
Van der Welcke was in good spirits all day, perhaps through the
after-effects of his dream--he kept seeing those sands before his
eyes--and, pedalling along like mad, he sat shaking in his saddle,
thinking of that young scamp of his, who ruled over his father and
mother. It wasn't right, it was too absurd, soon they would neither of
them be able to call their souls their own; but the boy was so sensible
and he was always the little peacemaker, who settled everything. Yes,
the scamp was the joy of his life; and really, really, except for
the boy, everything was unrelieved gloom.... If only he could buy
a motor-car, or at least a motor-cycle. He must find out one day,
just ask what a motor-cycle cost.... But, apart from that, what was
there? Especially now that they two--Constance in particular--had
wanted at all costs to "rehabilitate" themselves, as Constance called
it, in Hague society and now that they had failed utterly through that
scene with Van Naghel, things were stodgier than ever ... with no one
to come and see them but Van Vreeswijck, with no outside interests
whatever. It was his fault, his fault, his wife kept reproaching him
in their scenes, almost with enjoyment, revelling in her revenge,
because he, not long ago, had reproached her that it was her fault,
her fault that they were buried away there, "cursing their luck in the
Kerkhoflaan." And he was sorry too because of Marianne: she used to
come and dine once in a way; when Van Vreeswijck was coming, Constance
would ask either Paul or Marianne, to make four; and, now that he had
insulted her father, she wouldn't come again, they were on unfriendly
terms not only with the parents, but also with the daughter ... and
with the sons, to the great regret of Addie, who was very fond of
Frans and Henri.... His fault! His fault! Perhaps it was his fault,
but he couldn't always restrain himself, control himself, master
himself. Possibly, if he had stuck to his career, he would have learnt
to do it, after his training in diplomatic reserve ... or else he
would always have remained an indifferent diplomatist. That might have
happened too; it was quite possible!... Yes, he was sorry ... because
of Marianne. She was a nice girl, so natural, so unaffected, in spite
of her worldly environment; and he liked her eyes, her voice. He was
sorry ... because of Marianne; but it couldn't be helped: although
he had written to her father, she would not come to the house again,
she would never come again, he thought.
And he almost sighed, sadly, he did not know why, no doubt because
life would be still more stodgy without Marianne's eyes and voice. But,
after all, it was only once every four or five weeks that she used to
come and dine; so what did it really matter? What did it matter? No,
really nothing mattered; really, the whole world was a sickening,
stodgy business, rottenly managed.... Oh, if he could only have bought
a motor! The longing was so intense, so violent that he was almost
tempted to ask his father for one straight out. And now, while he
spurted home after his long ride, he hummed between his teeth, to
the rhythm of the flying wheels, a song which he suddenly made up
for himself:
"A motor-car--and a motor-car: Ottocar in a motor-car--Ottocar in
a motor-car!"
And burning with his longing for the unattainable, he pedalled
away--Ottocar in a motor-car!--in a mad frenzy, delighting in the
sheer speed of his ride, which made people turn round and stare at him,
at his arched back and his piston-legs, like an automaton's....
He came home very late, just as Addie was starting to go to the
station.
"I really thought, Daddy, that you were staying at the Witte after
all!" said the boy. "You're so late!"
"No, old chap, I wouldn't have dared do that!" cried Van der
Welcke. "Ottocar--in a motor-car! I've been cycling my legs off and
I'm tired out."
"You're quite red in the face."
"Yes, I've had great fun! Ottocar--in his motor-car! You see, I've
got to have my fun by myself ... when you're cooped up at school."
"What are you saying, Father, about Ottocar?"
"Nothing, nothing, it's a song: Ottocar in his motor-car!..."
"Well, I'm off ... to meet Mamma. Good-bye, you mad old Dad!"
"Good-bye, my boy.... Come here a moment...."
"What's the matter now?..."
"Old chap, I feel so lonely sometimes ... so terribly alone ... so
forlorn.... Tell me, Addie, you'll always be your father's chum,
won't you?... You won't leave me, like all the rest? You'll stay with
your old father?"
"But, Daddy, what makes you so sentimental suddenly?"
"Oh, no, I'm not sentimental ... but, my dear boy, I'm so awfully
bored sometimes!"
"Then why don't you find more to do, Daddy?"
"Oh, my boy, what would you have me do?... Oh, if I only had a car!"
"A car?..."
"A motor-car! Like Ottocar!"
And Van der Welcke burst out laughing:
"He at least had one!" he bellowed, amidst his laughter.
"Father, you're mad!"
"Yes, to-day ... because of that dream, those wonderful sands.... Oh,
how I wish I were Ottocar!... My boy, my boy, I'm so terribly bored
sometimes!"
"And just after you've had a jolly bicycle-ride!"
"All on my own ... with my head full of all sorts of wretched
thoughts!..."
"Well, to-morrow, Wednesday afternoon, we'll go together."
"Do you mean it? A long ride? To-morrow? To-morrow?"
"Yes, certainly, a long ride."
"You brick! My own Addie! My boy! My boy!"
He was as grateful as a child, caught his son in his arms:
"Addie, let me give you one more hug!"
"Well, be quick about it, Father, for I must really go, or I shall
be late."
Van der Welcke put his arms round him, kissed him on both cheeks,
and flew upstairs. He undressed, flung his clothes to right and
left, washed his face in a huge basin of water, shaved quickly,
dressed himself neatly. He did all this with much fuss and rushing
about, as though his toilet was a most important affair. Then he
went downstairs. The table was laid. It was nearly seven. Constance
would be there in no time. And, sitting down in the drawing-room
with a cigarette, looking round the room--Constance' room all over,
in which he sat as a stranger--he hummed, while he waited for his
wife and his son:
"And Ottocar had a motor-car; but I--have--none!..."
CHAPTER III
Addie ran up the stairs to the platform just as the train from Paris
steamed in. He hurried along, looking into the windows.... There was
Mamma, there was Mamma! And he flung himself on the handle, pulled
open the door, helped Constance to alight.
"Ah!" he said. "There you are! There you are at last!"
She laughed, kissed him, her handsome, sturdy boy:
"My boy, how could I do so long without you?"
"Ah, so you see! You're surprised at it yourself! Come, make haste,
I've got a cab. Give me your luggage-ticket."
He swept her along; and, in the cab, while they were waiting for
the luggage:
"Tell me, Addie," she said, "is there really no money left?"
"Do you imagine that, when you go spending seven weeks at Nice,
in a first-class hotel, there'll still be money?"
"I never thought of it like that," she said meekly.
He laughed, thought her tremendously amusing. She laughed too, they
both bubbled with mirth, Constance glad at seeing him, at finding
him looking so well and in such good spirits.
"Mamma, you're hopeless!" he exclaimed. "Did you really never think
that there was no money left?"
"No," said Constance, humbly.
And they both started laughing again. He shook his head, considered
her incorrigible:
"And I've got some bills too, for the things you bought when you
went away."
"Oh, yes!" she said, remembering. "But they can wait."
"I told them that you were abroad and that they'd have to wait."
"Of course," said she.
And they arrived in the Kerkhoflaan in excellent spirits.
"Well, Truitje, have you looked after the master and Master Addie
nicely?"
"I did the best I could, ma'am.... But it's just as well you're
back again...."
"Well, Constance?"
"Well, Henri?"
"Did you have a good time?"
"Yes."
"You're looking well."
"Thanks.... Oh, have you waited dinner for me?"
"Well, of course!"
"I'll go and wash my hands and I'll be down immediately."
"Mamma never thought for a moment ... that there was no money left,"
said Addie.
"Nonsense!" said Van der Welcke.
But he seemed to consider it quite natural; and, when Constance came
downstairs, he said, laughing:
"Didn't you think that there was no money left?"
Constance glanced up, imagining that he meant to make a scene. But
he was smiling; and his question sounded good-humoured.
"No!" she said, as if it was only natural.
And now they all went into fits of laughter, Addie with his silent
convulsions, which made him shake up and down painfully.
"Do laugh right out, boy!" said Van der Welcke, teasing him. "Do
laugh right out, if you can."
They were very gay as they sat down to dinner.
"And just guess," said Constance, "whom I met in the hotel at
Nice, whom I sat next to at the table d'hote: the d'Azignys, from
Rome.... The first people I met, the d'Azignys. It's incredible how
small the world is, how small, how small!"
He also remembered the d'Azignys: the French ambassador at Rome and
his wife ... fifteen years ago now....
"Really?" he asked, greatly interested. "Were they all right?"
"Oh, quite," she said, "quite! I remembered them at once, but didn't
bow. But d'Azigny was very polite; and, after a minute or two, he
spoke to me, asked if he wasn't right in thinking I was the Baronne
de Staffelaer. 'Baronne van der Welcke,' I replied. He flushed up
and his wife nudged him, but after that they were very charming
and amiable all the time I was at Nice. I saw a lot of them and,
through their introduction, I went to a splendid ball at the Duc de
Rivoli's. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I wore a beautiful dress, I was in
my element once more, I was a foreigner, everybody was very pleasant
and I felt light-hearted again, quit of everything and everybody,
and I thought to myself...."
"Well, what did you think?"
"Oh, if only we had never gone back to Holland! If, when Brussels
became so dull, we had just moved to a town like Nice. It's delightful
there. As a foreigner, you need have nothing to trouble about,
you can do just as you like, know just whom you please. You feel
so free, so free.... And why, I thought, must Addie become and
remain a Dutchman? He could just as well be a Frenchman ... or a
cosmopolitan...."
"Thank you, Mamma: I don't feel like being a Frenchman, nor yet a
cosmopolitan. And you'd better not say that to Uncle Gerrit, or you
can look out for squalls."
"Addie, I've met with so many squalls in my dear Holland that I feel
like blowing away myself, away from everybody...."
"Including your son?"
"No, my boy. I missed you. I thought of you every day. I am so glad
to see you again. But I did think to myself that we should have done
better never to come back to Holland."
"Yes," said Van der Welcke, thoughtfully.
"We could have lived at Nice, if we liked."
"Yes," Van der Welcke admitted, a little dubiously, "but you were
longing for your family."
She clenched her little hand and struck the table with it:
"And you!" she cried. "Didn't you long for your parents, for your
country?"
"But not so much as you did."
"And who thought it necessary for Addie? I didn't!" she exclaimed,
in a shrill voice. "I didn't for a moment! It was you!"
"Oh, d----," said Addie, almost breaking into an oath. "My dearest
parents, for Heaven's sake don't begin quarrelling at once, for I
assure the two of you that, if you do, I'll blow away and I'll go to
Nice ... money or no money!"
Van der Welcke and Constance gave one roar and Addie joined in
the laugh.
"Oh, that boy!" said Van der Welcke, choking with merriment. "That
boy!"
Constance uttered a deep sigh:
"Oh, Addie!" she said. "Mamma does and says such strange things,
sometimes ... but she doesn't mean them a bit. She's really glad
to be back again, in her horrid country ... and in her own home,
her dear cosy home ... and with her son, her darling boy!"
And, throwing her arm round his neck, she let her head fall on his
breast and she sobbed, sobbed aloud, so that Truitje, entering the
room, started, but then, accustomed to these perpetual, inevitable
scenes, quietly went on laying the dessert-plates.
Van der Welcke fiddled with his knife.
"Why can't those two manage to get on better together?" thought Addie,
sadly, while he comforted his mother and gently patted her shoulder....
CHAPTER IV
"And shall Mamma show you what she looked like at the Duc de Rivoli's?"
Dinner was over and she was sitting by her open trunk, while Truitje
helped her unpack and put the things away.
"I had my photograph taken at Nice. But first here's a work-box for
Truitje, with Nice violets on it. Look, Truitje: it's palm-wood inlaid;
a present for you. And here's one for cook."
"Oh, thank you, ma'am!"
"And for my wise son I hunted all over Nice for a souvenir and found
nothing, for I was afraid of bringing you something not serious enough
for your patriarchal tastes; and so I had myself photographed for
you. There: the last frivolous portrait of your mother."
She took the photograph from its envelope: it showed her at
full-length, standing, in her ball-dress; a photograph taken with a
great deal of artistry and chic, but too young, too much touched up,
with a little too much pose about the hair, the fan, the train.
He looked at her with a smile.
"Well, what do you think of it?" she asked.
"What a bundle of vanity you are, Mamma!"
"Don't you like it? Then give it back at once."
"Why, no, Mummy: I think it awfully jolly to have a photograph
of you...."
"Of my last mad mood. Now your mother is really going to grow old,
my boy. Upon my word, I believe Truitje admires my portrait more than
my son does!..."
"Oh, ma'am, I think it's splendid!"
"How many did you have done, Mummy?"
"Six. One for Granny, one for Uncle Gerrit, one for Uncle Paul,
one for you, one for myself...."
"And one for Papa."
"Oh, Papa owns the original!"
"No, give your husband one."
"Henri!" she called.
He came in.
"Here's a portrait of your wife."
"Lovely!" he exclaimed. "That's awfully good! Thanks very much."
"Glad you like it. My husband and my handmaid are satisfied, at any
rate. My son thinks me a bundle of vanity.... Oh, how glad I am to be
back!... Here's the ball-dress. We'll put it away to-morrow. I shall
never wear the thing again. A dress that cost six hundred francs for
one wearing. Now we'll be old again and economical."
They all laughed, including Truitje.
"Oh, how glad I am to be back!... My own room, my own
cupboards.... Truitje, what did you give your masters to eat?"
"Well, just what you used to, ma'am!..."
"So it was all right? I wasn't missed?..."
"Oh, but you mustn't go away for so long again, ma'am!" said Truitje,
in alarm.
Constance laughed and stretched herself out on her sofa, glad to be
home. Van der Welcke left the room with his photograph, Truitje with
her work-box.
"Come here, Addie. Papa has had you for seven weeks. Now you belong
to me ... for an indefinite period."
She drew him down beside her, took his hands. It struck him that
she looked tired, more like her years, not like her photograph; and,
his mind travelling swiftly to his father, he thought his father so
young, outwardly a young man and inwardly sometimes a child: Ottocar
in a motor-car....
"It's strange, Addie," she said, softly, "that you are only fourteen:
you always seem to me at least twenty. And I think it strange also
that I should have such a big son. So everything is strange. And your
mother herself, my boy, is the strangest of all. If you ask me honestly
if I like being 'vain,' I mean, taking part in social frivolities,
I shouldn't know what to answer. I certainly used to enjoy it in the
old days; and, a fortnight ago, I admit I looked upon it as a sort
of youth that comes over one again; but really it all means nothing:
just a little brilliancy; and then you feel so tired and empty ... and
so discontented...."
She stopped suddenly, not caring to say more, and looked at the
photograph, now lying on a table beside her. It made her laugh again;
and at the same time a tear trembled on her lashes. And she did not
know if it gave her a peaceful feeling to be growing old ... or if
she regretted it. It was as though the sun of Nice had imbued her
with a strange, dull melancholy which she herself did not understand.
"To live!" she thought. "I have never lived. I would so gladly live
once ... just once. To live! But not like this ... in a dress that
cost six hundred francs. I know that, I know all about it: it is
just a momentary brilliancy and then nothing.... To live! I should
like to live ... really ... truly. There must be something. But it
is a mad wish. I am too old. I am growing old, I am becoming an old
woman.... To live! I have never lived ... I have been in the world,
as a woman of the world; I spoilt that life; then I hid myself.... I
was so anxious to come back to my country and my family; and it all
meant nothing but a little show and illusion ... and a great deal
of disappointment. And so the days were wasted, one after the other,
and I ... have ... never ... lived.... Just as I throw away my money,
so I have thrown away my days. Perhaps I have squandered all my days
... for nothing. Oh, I oughtn't to feel like this! What does it mean
when I do? What am I regretting? What is there left for me? At Nice,
I thought for a moment of joining in that feminine revolt against
approaching age; and I did join in it; and I succeeded. But what
does it all mean and what is the use of it? It only means shining
a little longer, for nothing; but it does not mean living.... But to
long for it doesn't mean anything either, for there is nothing for me
now but to grow old, in my home; and, even if I am not exactly among my
people, my brothers and sisters, at any rate I have my mother ... and,
perhaps for quite a long time still, my son too...."
"Mummy ... what are you thinking about so deeply?"
But she smiled, said nothing, looked earnestly at him:
"He's much fonder of his father," she thought. "I know it, but it
can't be helped. I must put up with it and accept what he gives me."
"Come, Mummy, what are you thinking about?"
"Lots of things, my boy ... and perhaps nothing.... Mamma feels so
lonely ... with no one about her ... except you...."
He started, struck by what she had said: it was almost the same words
that his father had used that afternoon.
"My boy, will you always stay with me? You won't go away, like
everybody?..."
"Come, Mummy, you've got Granny and Uncle Gerrit and Uncle Paul."
"Yes, they are nice," she said, softly.
And she thought:
"I shall lose him, later, when he's grown up.... I know that I shall
lose him...."
It made her feel very weak and helpless; and she began to cry....
He knelt down beside her and, in a stern voice, forbade her to be so
excitable, forbade her to cry about nothing....
It was heavenly to have him laying down the law like that. And she
thought:
"I shall lose him, when he's grown up.... Oh, let me be thankful that
I have him still!..."
Then, tired out, she went to sleep; and he left her, thinking to
himself:
"They both feel the same thing!"
CHAPTER V
She tried tyrannically to monopolize her son, so that Van der Welcke
became very jealous. It was the next day, Wednesday afternoon.
"Are you coming with me to Granny's?"
"I promised Papa to go cycling."
"You've had seven weeks for cycling with Papa."
"I promised him yesterday that I would go for a long ride to-day."
She was angry, offended:
"The first day that I'm home!..." she began.
He kissed her, with a shower of tiny little kisses, tried to appease
her wrath:
"I promised!" he said. "We don't go cycling together often. You will
have me to yourself all the evening. Be sensible now and nice; and
don't be so cross."
She tried to be reasonable, but it cost her an effort. She went alone
to Mrs. van Lowe's. She saw two umbrellas in the hall:
"Who is with mevrouw?" she asked the maid.
"Mrs. van Naghel and Mrs. van Saetzema."
She hesitated. She had not seen her sisters since that awful
Sunday-evening. She had gone abroad five days after. But she wanted
to show them....
She went upstairs. Her step was no longer as timid as when she
climbed those stairs ten months ago, when she first came back among
them all. She did not wish to seem arrogant, but also she did not
wish to be too humble. She entered with a smile:
"Mamma!" she cried, gaily, kissing her mother.
Mrs. van Lowe was surprised:
"My child!" she exclaimed, trembling. "My child! Are you back? Are
you back again? What a long time you've been abroad!"
"I've enjoyed myself immensely. How d'ye do, Bertha? How d'ye do,
Adolphine?"
She did not shake hands, but just nodded to them, almost
cordially, because of her mother, who looked anxiously at her three
daughters. Bertha and Adolphine nodded back. Carelessly and easily,
she took the lead in the conversation and talked about Nice. She
tried to talk naturally, without bragging; but in spite of herself
there was a note of triumph in her voice:
"Yes, I felt I wanted to go abroad a bit.... Not nice of me to run
away without saying good-bye, was it, Mamma dear? Well, you see,
Constance sometimes behaves differently from other people.... I had
a very pleasant time at Nice: full season, lovely weather."
"Weren't you lonely?"
"No, for on the very first day I met some of our Rome friends at
the hotel...."
She felt that Bertha started, blinked her eyes, disapproved of her
for daring to speak of Rome. And she revelled in doing so, casually
and airily, thought it delicious to dazzle Adolphine with a list of
her social triumphs, very naturally described:
"People we used to know in Rome: Comte and Comtesse d'Azigny. He was
French ambassador in those days. They recognized me at once and were
very kind; and through the introduction I went to a glorious ball
at the Duchesse de Rivoli's. And, Mummy, here's a portrait of your
daughter in her ball-dress."
She showed the photograph, enjoyed giving the almost too-well-executed
portrait to Mamma, not to her sisters, while letting them see it. She
described her dress, described the ball, bragging a little this time,
saying that, after all, parties abroad were always much grander than
that "seeing a few friends" in Holland, addressing all her remarks
to Mamma and, in words just tinged with ostentation, displaying no
small scorn for Bertha's dinners and Adolphine's "little evenings:"
"Everything here is on such a small scale," she continued. "There,
the first thing you see is a suite of twelve rooms, all with electric
light ... or, better still, all lit up with wax-candles.... Yes, our
little social efforts at the Hague cut a very poor figure beside it."
She gave a contemptuous little laugh to annoy her sisters, while Mamma,
always interested in the doings of the great, did not notice the
contempt and was glad enough to see that the sisters behaved as usual
to one another. And now Constance went on to say that everything had
gone on so well at home, that Truitje had looked after everything, even
though Constance had gone away indefinitely, an unprecedented thing,
so unlike a Dutch housewife! Then she turned to her sisters with an
indifferent phrase or two; and they answered her almost cordially,
out of respect for Mamma....
Adolphine was the first to leave, exasperated by Constance'
insufferable tone, by all that talk about Nice, all those counts and
dukes whom Constance had mentioned; and, when Constance said good-bye,
Bertha also left and they went down the stairs together.
"Constance," said Bertha, "can I speak to you a minute in the
cloak-room?"
Constance looked up haughtily, surprised; but she did not like to
refuse. They went into the little cloak-room.
"Constance," said Bertha, "I do so want to say that I am sorry for
what happened between us. Really, it pained me very much. And I want
to tell you also that Van Naghel greatly appreciated Van der Welcke's
writing to him to apologize. He has written to Van der Welcke to say
so. But we should both like to call on you one day, to show you how
glad we should be to come back to the old terms once more."
"Bertha," said Constance, a little impatiently and wearily, "I am
prepared to receive your visit, but I should really like to know what
is the good of it and why you suggest it. Do let us have some sincerity
... when there is no occasion for hypocrisy. Sometimes one has to be
insincere ... but there is no need for that between us now. We both
know that our mutual sympathy, if it ever existed, is dead. We never
meet except at Mamma's and we don't let her see our estrangement. Apart
from that, it seems to me that things are over between us."
"So you would rather that Van Naghel and I did not come?"
"It's not for me to decide, Bertha: I shall speak about it to Van
der Welcke and write you a line."
"Is that cold answer all you have to say to me, Constance?"
"Bertha, a little time ago, I was not backward in showing my affection
for you all. Perhaps I asked too much in return; but, in any case,
I was repulsed. And now I retire. That is all."
"Constance, you don't know how sorry we all are that the old aunts
... spoke as they did. They are foolish old women, Constance; they
are in their second childhood. Mamma had to take to her bed, her
nerves are still quite upset; she can't bear to see her sisters now;
and it sometimes sends her almost out of her mind. I have never seen
her like it before. And we are all of us, all of us, Constance, very,
very sorry."
"Bertha, those two old women only yelled out at the top of their
voices, as deaf people do, what the rest of you thought in your
hearts."
"Come, Constance, don't be so bitter. You are hard and unjust. I swear
that you are mistaken. It is not as you think. Let me show it to you
in the future, let me prove it to you ... and please speak to Van der
Welcke and write and tell me a day when we shall find you at home,
so that Van Naghel can shake hands with Van der Welcke. He is not
a young man, Constance, and your husband is under forty. It's true,
Van der Welcke has apologized and Van Naghel appreciates it, but that
doesn't prevent him from wishing to shake hands with Van der Welcke."
"I'll tell my husband, Bertha. But I don't know that he will think it
so necessary to shake hands, any more than I do. We live very quietly
now, Bertha, and people, Hague people, no longer concern us. And Van
Naghel only wants to shake hands because of people."
"And because of the old friendship."
"Very well, Bertha," said Constance, coldly, "because of the old
friendship: a vague term that says very little to me. What I wished
for was brotherly and sisterly affection, cordial companionship. That
is no longer possible: it was a foolish fancy of mine, which has gone
forever. But, as I said, I shall speak to Van der Welcke."
They came out into the hall; the maid was waiting at the door. It
was raining. Bertha's carriage was outside, had been sent to fetch her.
"Shall I drop you on my way, Constance?"
"No, thank you, Bertha; the fresh air will do me good; I'd rather
walk."
And, as she walked, she thought:
"Oh, why did I go on like that to annoy them? And why didn't I welcome
Bertha's visit at once?... It's all so small, so petty...."
And she shrugged her shoulders under her umbrella, laughed at herself
a little, because she had shown herself so petty.
CHAPTER VI
At Addie's wish, at the little schoolboy's wish, the Van der Welckes
responded to Van Naghel's advances and Constance sent a note. The
visit was paid and the brothers-in-law shook hands. Van der Welcke
himself shrugged his shoulders over the whole business; but Addie
was pleased, started going for walks again with Frans and spoke to
Karel again at the grammar-school, though he did not much care for
him. Two days later, Marianne called in the afternoon, when the rain
was coming down in torrents. Constance was at home. The girl stood
in the door-way of the drawing-room:
"May I come in, Auntie?..."
"Of course, Marianne, do."
"I don't like to: I'm rather wet."
"Nonsense, come in!"
And the girl suddenly ran in and threw herself on her knees beside
Constance, almost with a scream:
"I am so glad, I am so glad!" she cried.
"Why?"
"That Uncle wrote to Papa ... that Papa and Mamma have been here
... that everything is all right again.... It was so dreadful; it
kept me from sleeping. I kept on thinking about it. It was a sort
of nightmare, an obsession. Auntie, dear Auntie, is everything all
right now?"
"Yes, certainly, child."
"Really all right?... Are you coming to us again ... and may I come
and see you ... and will you ask me to dinner again soon? Is everything
all right, really all right?"
She snuggled up to her aunt like a child, putting her head against
Constance' knees, stroking her hands:
"You will ask me again soon, Auntie, won't you? I love coming to
you, I simply love it. I should have missed it so, I can't tell you
how much...."
Her voice broke, as she knelt by Constance' side, and she suddenly
burst into tears, sobbing out her words so excitedly that Constance
was startled, thinking it almost unnatural, absurd:
"I was nearly coming to you before Papa and Mamma had been.... But I
didn't dare.... I was afraid Papa would be angry.... But I can come
now, it's all right now...."
"Yes, it's all right now...."
She kissed Marianne. But the door opened and Van der Welcke entered.
"How do you do, Uncle?"
He always thought it odd when Marianne called him uncle, just like
that:
"Is it you, Marianne?... Constance, did I leave my Figaro down here?"
"The Figaro? No...."
He hunted for his paper and then sat down.
"Uncle," said Marianne, "I've just been telling Auntie, I'm so glad,
I'm so glad that everything's settled."
"So am I, Marianne."
Outside, the rain came pelting down, lashed by the howling
wind. Inside, all was cosiness, with Constance pouring out the tea
and telling them about Nice, while Marianne talked about Emilie and
Van Raven and how they were not getting on very well together and
how Otto and Frances were also beginning to squabble and how Mamma
took it all to heart and allowed it to depress her:
"I sha'n't get married," she said. "I see nothing but unhappy marriages
around me. I sha'n't get married."
Then she started. She had a knack of behaving awkwardly and tactlessly,
of saying things which she ought not to say. Van der Welcke looked
at her, smiling. To make up for her indiscretion, she was more
demonstrative than ever, profuse in exclamations of delight:
"Oh, Auntie, how glad I am to be with you once more!... I must be
off presently in the rain.... I wish I could stay...."
"But stay and dine," said Van der Welcke.
Constance hesitated: she saw that Marianne would like to stop on
and she did not know what to do, did not wish to seem ungracious;
and yet....
"Will you stay to dinner?" she asked.
Marianne beamed with joy:
"Oh, I should love to, Auntie! Mamma knows I'm here; she'll
understand...."
Constance was sorry that she had asked her; her nerves were feeling
the strain of it all; but she was determined to control herself,
to behave naturally and ordinarily. She could see it plainly: they
were too fond of each other!
They were in love! Long before, she had seemed to guess it, when she
saw them together, at her little dinners. The veriest trifle--an
intonation of voice, a laughing phrase, the passing of a dish of
fruit--had made her seem to guess it. Then the vague thought that went
through her mind, like a little cloud, would vanish at once, leaving
not even a shadow behind it. But the cloud had come drifting again and
again, brought by a gesture, a glance, a how-do-you-do or good-bye,
an appointment for a bicycle ride. On such occasions, the brothers had
always gone too--so had Addie--and there had never been anything that
was in the least incorrect; and at the little dinners there was never
a joke that went too far, nor an attempt at flirtation, nor the very
least resemblance to love-making. And therefore those vague thoughts
had always drifted away again, like clouds; and Constance would think:
"There is nothing, there is nothing. I am mistaken. I am imagining
something that doesn't exist."
She had not seen them together for two months; and she knew, had
understood from a word dropped here and there, that Van der Welcke had
not seen Marianne during those two months which had passed since that
Sunday evening. And now, suddenly, she was struck by it: the shy,
almost glad hesitation while the girl was standing at the door of
Constance' drawing-room; her unconcealed delight at being able to
come back to this house; the almost unnatural joy with which she
had sobbed at Constance' knee ... until Van der Welcke came in,
after doubtless recognizing the sound of her voice in his little
smoking-room, as transparent as a child, with his clumsy excuse of
searching for a newspaper. And now at once she was struck by it: the
almost insuppressible affection with which they had greeted each other,
with a certain smiling radiance that beamed from them, involuntarily,
irresistibly, unconsciously.... But still Constance thought:
"I am mistaken, there is nothing; and I am imagining something that
doesn't exist."
And the thought passed away, that they were really in love with
each other; only this time there remained a faint wonder, a doubt,
which had never been there before. And, while she talked about Nice,
it struck her that Van der Welcke was still there ... that he was
staying on in her drawing-room, a thing which he never did except
when Paul was there, or Gerrit.... He sat on, without saying much;
but that happy smile never left his lips.... Yet she still thought:
"I am mistaken; it is only imagination; there is nothing, or at most
a little mutual attraction; and what harm is there in that?"
But, be this as it might, she, who was so jealous where her son
was concerned, now felt not the least shade of jealousy amid her
wondering doubts. Yes, it was all gone, any love, passion, sentiment
that she had ever entertained for Henri. It was quite dead.... And,
now that he smiled like that, she noticed, with a sort of surprise,
how young he was:
"He is thirty-eight," she thought, "and looks even younger."
As he sat there, calmly, always with the light of a smile on
his face, it struck her that he was very young, with a healthy,
youthful freshness, and that he had not a wrinkle, not a grey hair
in his head.... His blue eyes were almost the eyes of a child. Even
Addie's eyes, though they were like his father's, were more serious,
had an older look.... And, at the sight of that youthfulness,
she thought herself old, even though she was now showing Marianne
the pretty photograph from Nice.... Yes, she felt old; and she was
hardly surprised--if it was so, if she was not mistaken--at that
youthfulness in her husband and at his possible love for that young
girl.... Marianne's youth seemed to be nearer to his own youth.... And
sometimes it was so evident that she almost ceased doubting and
promised herself to be careful, not to encourage Marianne, not to
invite her any more....
Unconscious: was it unconscious, thought Constance, on their part? Had
they ever exchanged a more affectionate word, a pressure of the hand,
a glance? Had they already confessed it to each other ... and to
themselves? And a delicate intuition told her:
"No, they have confessed nothing to each other; no, they have not
even confessed anything to themselves."
Perhaps neither of them knew it yet; and, if so, Constance was the
only one who knew. She looked at Marianne: the girl was very young,
even though she had been out a year or two. She had something of
Emilie's fragility, but she was more natural, franker; and that
natural frankness showed in her whole attitude: she seemed not
to think, but to allow herself to be dragged along by impulse,
by sentiment.... She looked out with her smile at the pelting rain,
nestled deeper in her chair, luxuriously, like a kitten, then suddenly
jumped up, poured out a cup of tea for Constance and herself; and,
when Van der Welcke begged his wife's leave to smoke a cigarette,
she sprang up again, struck a match, held the light to him, with a
fragile grace of gesture like a little statue. Her pale-brown eyes,
with a touch of gold-dust over them, were like chrysolite; and they
gazed up enthusiastically and then cast their glance downwards timidly,
under the shade of their lids. She was pale, with the anaemic pallor
of alabaster, the pallor of our jaded society-girls; and her hands
moved feverishly and restlessly, as though the fingers were constantly
seeking an object for their butterfly sensitiveness....
Was it so? Or was it all Constance' imagination? And, amidst her
wondering doubts, there came suddenly--if it really was so--a spasm
of jealousy; but not jealousy of her husband's love: jealousy of
his youth. She suddenly looked back fifteen years and felt herself
grown old, felt him remaining young. Life, real life, for which she
sometimes had a vague yearning, while she felt herself too old for it,
after frittering away her days: that life he would perhaps still be
able to live, if he met with it. He at least was not too old for it!
It all filled her with a passion of misery and anger; and then again
she thought:
"No, there is nothing; and I am imagining all manner of things that
do not exist."
Addie came home; and, with the rain pelting outside, there was a
gentle cosiness indoors, at table. Constance was silent, but the
others were cheerful. And, when, after tea had been served, the fury
out of doors seemed to have subsided, Marianne stood up, almost too
unwilling to go away:
"It's time for me to go, Auntie...."
"Shall Addie see you home?"
"No, Addie's working," said Van der Welcke. "I'll see Marianne home."
Constance said nothing.
"Oh, Auntie," said Marianne, "I am so glad that everything's settled!"
She kissed Constance passionately.
"Uncle, isn't it a nuisance for you to go all that way with me?"
"I wish I had a bicycle for you!..."
"Yes, if only we had our tandem here!"
"It's stopped raining; we shall be able to walk."
They went, leaving Constance alone. Her eyes were eager to follow them
along the street. She could not help herself, softly opened a window,
looked out into the damp winter night. She saw them go towards the
Bankastraat. They were walking side by side, quite ordinarily. She
watched them for a minute or two, until they turned the corner:
"No," she said, "there is nothing. Oh, it would be too dreadful!"
CHAPTER VII
Van der Welcke and Marianne went side by side.
"How deliciously fresh it is now," she almost carolled. "The wind
has gone down and the air is lovely; and look, how beautiful the
sky is with those last black clouds.... Oh, I think it so ripping,
that everything's all right again between you and Papa! I did feel it
so. You know how fond I am of both of you, Aunt Constance and you,
and of Addie; and it was all so sad.... Tell me, does Auntie still
feel bitter about it? I expect she does.... Ah, I understand quite well
now ... that she would have liked to come to our house ... officially,
let me say! But why not first have spoken to Mamma ... or to me, who
am so fond of you? Then we could have seen: we might have thought
of something. As it was, Mamma was so startled by that unexpected
visit.... Poor Aunt Constance, she isn't happy! How sad that you and
she aren't happier together! Oh, I could cry about it at times: it
seems such a shame!... A man and woman married ... and then ... and
then what I so often see!... I oughtn't to have said what I did before
dinner, it was stupid of me; but I may speak now, mayn't I?... Oh, I
sha'n't marry, I won't marry!... To be married like Otto and Frances,
like Emilie and Van Raven: I think it dreadful. Or like you and Auntie:
I should think it dreadful. Can't you be happier together? Not even for
Addie's sake? I wish you could; it would make me so happy. I can't bear
it, when you and Auntie quarrel.... She was sweet and gentle to-night,
but so very quiet. She is so nice.... That was a mad fit of hers, to
go abroad so suddenly; but then she had had so much to vex her. Oh,
those two old aunts: I could have murdered them! I can hear them
now!... Poor Auntie! Do try and be a little nice to her.... Has this
been going on between you for years? Don't you love each other any
longer?... No, I sha'n't marry, I sha'n't marry, I shall never marry."
"Come, Marianne: if some one comes along whom you get to love...."
"No, I shall never marry.... I might expect too much of my husband. I
should really want to find something beautiful, some great joy, in my
love ... and to marry for the sake of marrying, like Frances or Emilie,
is a thing I couldn't, couldn't do.... Otto is fonder of Louise than of
his wife; and lately Emilie and Henri are inseparable.... In our family
there has always been that affection between brother and sister. But
it is too strong, far too strong. It doesn't make them happy. I've
never felt it in that way, fond as I am of my brothers.... No, I
should place the man I love above everybody, above everybody.... But
I suppose you're laughing ... at my bread-and-butter notions...."
"No, I'm not laughing, Marianne; and, just as you would like to
see Aunt Constance and me happy, so I should like to see you happy
... with a man whom you loved."
"That will never be, Uncle; no, that will never be."
"How can you tell?"
"Oh, I feel it, I feel it!..."
"Come, I'll have a bet on it," he said, laughingly.
"No, Uncle," she said, with a pained smile, "I won't bet on a thing
like that...."
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Marianne...."
"I know that...."
"But you mustn't be so melancholy, at your age. You're so young...."
"Twenty-one. That's quite old."
"Old! Old! What about me?"
She laughed:
"Oh, you're young! A man...."
"Is always young?"
"Not always. But you are."
"A young uncle?"
"Yes, a young uncle.... A woman gets old quicker...."
"So, when you're old and I am still young, we shall be about the
same age."
She laughed:
"What a calculation! No, you're older. But age doesn't go by years."
"No. I sometimes have very young wishes. Do you know what I have been
longing for since yesterday, like a baby, like a boy?"
"No."
"A motor-car."
She laughed, with a laugh like little tinkling bells:
"A motor-car?"
"Wouldn't it be delightful? To go tearing and tearing over fields
and roads, through clouds of dust...."
"You're becoming poetic!"
"Yes, it's making me poetic...."
"And the smell of the petrol?... The mask and goggles against the
dust?... The hideous dress?..."
"Oh, that's nothing!... To tear and fly along, faster and faster,
at a mad pace...."
"I have never been in a motor-car...." [1]
"I have, in Brussels, in a friend's car. There's nothing to come up
to it."
Her laugh tinkled out again:
"Yes, now you're most certainly like a boy!"
"I'm so young?"
"O young Uncle!"
"You oughtn't to call me uncle, Marianne: I'm too young for it."
The tinkling bells:
"What am I to call you then?"
"Anything you like. Not uncle."
"Nunkie?"
"No, no...."
"But I can't call you Henri ... or Van der Welcke?"
"No, that's too difficult. Better say nothing."
The tinkling bells:
"Nothing. Very well.... But am I to say U or je?" [2]
"Say je."
"But it seems so funny ... before people!"
"People, people! You can't always bother about people."
"But I have to: I'm a girl!"
"Oh, Marianne, people are always a nuisance!"
"A desert island would be the thing."
"Yes, a desert island...."
"With a motor-car...."
"And just you and me."
They both laughed; and her little bells tinkled through his boyish
laugh.
"What a perfect night!"
"Perfect: the air is so crisp...."
"Marianne...."
"Yes, Uncle...."
"No, not uncle.... You must be my little friend.... Not a
niece.... I've never had a girl-friend."
"Your little friend?... But I am!"
"Well, that's all right."
"Look, how dark it is in the Wood.... People say it's dangerous. Is
it, Uncle? No, I didn't mean to say uncle...."
"Sometimes. Are you frightened? Take my arm."
"No, I'm not frightened."
"Come, take my arm."
"I don't mind...."
"We shall be home in a minute."
"If only Mamma isn't angry with me, for staying out.... Are you
coming in?"
"No ... no...."
"Not because you're still angry with us?"
"No, I'm not angry."
"That's all right. Oh, I am glad! I should like to give you a motor
for making me so happy!"
"Those old tin kettles cost a lot of money...."
"Poor Uncle! No, I don't mean uncle...."
"Here we are."
He rang the bell.
"Thank you for seeing me home."
"Good-night, Marianne."
The butler opened the door; she went in. He trotted back, whistling
like a boy.
"Wherever have you been, Marianne?" asked Bertha.
"I stayed to dinner at Aunt Constance'."
"I was anxious about you," said Bertha.
But she was glad that Constance had been so gracious.
"Who brought you home?"
"Uncle."
She ran up to her room. She looked in the glass, as though to read
her own eyes. There she read her secret:
"God help me!" she thought. "I oughtn't to have gone. I oughtn't to
have gone. I was too weak, too weak.... Oh, if only they had never made
it up, Papa and ... he!... Oh dear! I shall never go there again. It's
the last time, the last time.... O God, help me, help me!..."
She sank into a chair and sat with her face hidden in her hands,
not weeping, her happiness still shedding its dying rays around her,
but with a rising agony; and she remained like that for a long time,
with her eyes closed, as though she were dreaming and suffering, both.
CHAPTER VIII
"And who do you think's in town?" Van Vreeswijck asked Van der Welcke,
as they were walking together.
"I don't know."
"Brauws."
"Brauws?"
"Max Brauws."
"Max? Never! What, Leiden Max?"
"Yes, Leiden Max. I hadn't seen him for years."
"Nor I, of course. And what is he doing?"
"Well, that's a difficult question to answer. Shall I say, being
eccentric?"
"Eccentric? In what way?"
"Oh, in the things he does. First one thing and then another. He's
giving lectures now. In fact, he's a Bohemian."
"Have you spoken to him?"
"Yes, he asked after you."
"I should like to see him. Does he belong to the Witte?"
"No, I don't think so."
"He's a mad fellow. Always was mad. An interesting chap, though. And
a good sort. Has he money?"
"I don't know."
"Where is he staying?"
"In rooms, in the Buitenhof."
"We're close by. Let's go and see if he's in."
Brauws was not in. And Van der Welcke left a card for his old
college-chum, with a pencilled word.
A fortnight passed; and Van der Welcke began to feel annoyed:
"I've heard nothing from Brauws," he said to Van Vreeswijck.
"I haven't seen him either."
"Perhaps he's offended about something."
"Nonsense, Brauws isn't that sort."
Van der Welcke was silent. Since the scene with the family, he was
unduly sensitive, thinking that people were unfriendly, that they
avoided him.
"Well, if he wants to ignore my card, let him!" he said, angrily. "He
can go to the devil, for all I care!"
But, a couple of days later, when Van der Welcke was smoking in his
little room, Truitje brought in a card.
"Brauws!" exclaimed Van der Welcke.
And he rushed outside:
"Come upstairs, old chap!" he shouted, from the landing.
In the hall stood a big, quiet man, looking up with a smile round
his thick moustache.
"May I come up?"
"Yes, yes, come up. Upon my word, Max, I am glad...."
Brauws came upstairs; the two men gripped each other's hands.
"Welckje!" said Brauws. "Mad Hans!"
Van der Welcke laughed:
"Yes, those were my nicknames. My dear chap, what an age since we...."
He took him to his den, made him sit down, produced cigars.
"No, thanks, I don't smoke. I'm glad to see you. Why, Hans, you haven't
changed a bit. You're a little stouter; and that's all. Just look at
the fellow! You could pass for your own son. How old are you? You're
thirty-eight ... getting on for thirty-nine. And now just look at
me. I'm three years your senior; but I look old enough to be your
father."
Van der Welcke laughed, pleased and flattered by the compliment paid
to his youth. Their Leiden memories came up; they reminded each other
of a score of incidents, speaking and laughing together in unfinished,
breathless sentences which they understood at once.
"And what have you been doing all this time?"
"Oh, a lot! Too much to tell you all at once. And you?"
"I? Nothing, nothing. You know I'm married?"
"Yes, I know," said Brauws. "But what do you do? You're in a
government-office, I suppose?"
"No, Lord no, old fellow! Nothing, I just do nothing. I cycle."
They both laughed. Brauws looked at his old college-friend, almost
paternally, with a quiet smile.
"The beggar hasn't changed an atom," he said. "Yes, now that I look
at you again, I see something here and there. But you've remained
Welckje, for all that...."
"But not Mad Hans," sighed Van der Welcke.
"Vreeswijck has become a great swell," said Brauws. "And the others?"
"Greater swells still."
"Not you?"
"No, not I. Do you cycle?"
"Sometimes."
"Have you a motor-car?"
"No."
"That's a pity. I should like to have a motor. But I can't afford
one of those sewing-machines."
Brauws roared with laughter:
"Why don't you start saving up for one?"
"No, old chap, no...."
"I say, do you know what's a funny thing? While you were living in
Brussels, I too was living just outside Brussels."
"Impossible!"
"Yes, I was."
"And we never met?"
"I so seldom went into town. If I had known...."
"But what a pity!"
"Yes. And what's still funnier is that, when you were on the Riviera,
I was there too."
"Look here, old fellow, you're kidding me!"
"I never knew till later that you were there also that year. But you
were at Monte Carlo and I at Antibes. Just compare the dates."
They compared dates: Brauws was right.
"But that was horribly unlucky."
"It couldn't be helped. However, we've found each other now."
"Yes. We must see something of each other now, eh? Let's go cycling
together ... or buy a motor-car between us."
Brauws roared with laughter again:
"Happy devil!" he shouted.
"I?" cried Van der Welcke, a little huffed. "What's there happy about
me? I sometimes feel very miserable, very miserable indeed."
Brauws understood that he was referring to his marriage.
"Here's my boy," said Van der Welcke, showing Addie's photograph.
"A good face. What's he going to be?"
"He's going into the diplomatic service. I say, shall we take
a stroll?"
"No, I'd rather sit here and talk."
"You're just as placid as ever...."
Brauws laughed:
"Outwardly, perhaps," he said. "Inwardly, I'm anything but placid."
"Have you been abroad much?"
"Yes."
"What do you do?"
"Much ... and perhaps nothing. I am seeking...."
"What?"
"I can't explain it in a few words. Perhaps later, when we've seen
more of each other."
"You're the same queer chap that you always were. What are you seeking?"
"Something."
"There's our old oracle. 'Something!' You were always fond of those
short words."
"The universe lies in a word."
"Max, I can't follow you, if you go on like that. I never could,
you know."
"Tell me about yourself now, about Rome, about Brussels."
Van der Welcke, smoking, described his life, more or less briefly,
through the blue clouds of his cigarette. Brauws listened:
"Yes," he said. "Women...."
He had a habit of not finishing his sentences, or of saying only a
single word.
"And what have women done to you?" asked Van der Welcke, gaily.
Brauws laughed:
"Nothing much," he said, jestingly. "Not worth talking about. There
have been many women in my life ... and yet they were not there."
Van der Welcke reflected.
"Women," he said, pensively. "Sometimes, you know...."
"Hans, are you in love?"
"No, no!" said Van der Welcke, starting. "No, I've been fairly good."
"Fairly good?"
"Yes, only fairly..."
"You're in love," said Brauws, decisively.
"You're mad!" said Van der Welcke. "I wasn't thinking of
myself.... And, now, what are you doing in the Hague?"
Brauws laughed:
"I'm going to give lectures, not only here, but all over Holland."
"Lectures?" cried Van der Welcke, in astonishment. "What made you
think of that? Do you do it to make money? Don't you find it a bore
to stand jawing in front of a lot of people for an hour at a time?"
"Not a bit," said Brauws. "I'm lecturing on Peace."
"Peace?" cried Van der Welcke, his blue orbs shining in wide-eyed young
amazement through the blue haze of his cigarette-smoke. "What Peace?"
"Peace, simply."
"You're getting at me," cried Van der Welcke.
Brauws roared; and Van der Welcke too. They laughed for quite a minute
or two.
"Hans," said Brauws, "how is it possible for any one to change as
little as you have done? In all these years! You are just as incapable
as in the old days of believing in anything serious."
"If you imagine that there's been nothing serious in my life," said
Van der Welcke, vexed.
And, with great solemnity, he once more told his friend about
Constance, about his marriage, his shattered career.
Brauws smiled.
"You laugh, as if it all didn't matter!" cried Van der Welcke, angrily.
"What does anything matter?" said Brauws.
"And your old Peace?"
"Very little as yet, at any rate.... Perhaps later.... Luckily,
there's the future."
But Van der Welcke shrugged his shoulders and demolished Peace in a
few ready-made sentences: there would always be war; it was one of
those Utopian ideas....
Brauws only smiled.
"You must come and dine one day, to meet Vreeswijck," said Van
der Welcke.
Brauws' smile disappeared suddenly:
"No, my dear fellow, honestly...."
"Why not?"
"I'm not the man for dinners."
"It won't be a dinner. Only Vreeswijck. My wife will be very pleased."
"Yes, but I shall be putting your wife out...."
"Not a bit. I'll see if she's at home and introduce you to her."
"No, my dear fellow, no, honestly.... I'm no ladies' man. I'm nothing
of a drawing-room person. I never know what to say."
"You surely haven't grown shy!"
"Yes, almost. With ladies ... I really don't know what to say. No,
old chap, honestly....."
His voice was full of anxious dismay.
"I think it's mean of you, to refuse to come and dine with us,
quite quietly."
"Yes ... and then it'll be a dinner of twenty people. I know."
"I shouldn't know where to get them from. We see nobody. Nobody."
"No, no.... Well, yes, perhaps later."
He raised his hand deprecatingly, almost impatiently:
"Come," he said, "let's go for a walk."
And, as though fearing lest Van der Welcke should still find a moment
to introduce him to his wife, Brauws hurried him down the stairs. Once
outside, he breathed again, recovered his usual placidity.
CHAPTER IX
"I went last night with Van Vreeswijck to hear Brauws speak
at Diligentia," said Van der Welcke, one morning. "The fellow's
inspired. He speaks extempore and magnificently; he's an orator. A
splendid fellow, the way he spoke: it was astounding.... I knew
him years ago at Leiden. He was a queer chap even then. He did
not belong to any particular club, not to ours either: his family
is nothing out of the way. His father has a factory, I believe,
somewhere in Overijssel. He himself has nothing of the tradesman
about him. He used to coach us dull beggars and help us get up our
examinations. I should never have passed without him. He knows about
everything, he's not only good at law. He's read everything; he has a
tremendous memory. He's travelled a lot and done all sorts of things,
but I can't find out exactly what. Now he's lecturing. This evening,
he's lecturing in Amsterdam. I asked him to dinner, but he refuses
to come, says he's shy with ladies. Silly fellow!"
The newspapers printed lengthy reports of Brauws' speeches on
Peace. He spoke in all the large Dutch towns and in many of the
smaller ones. When he was to speak at the Hague for the second time,
Van der Welcke said, excitedly:
"Constance, you must absolutely go and hear Brauws this evening. He's
grand. You know, I can never listen to any one for more than a quarter
of an hour...."
"Nor I for more than three minutes," said Paul, who was there. "But
I love to talk for an hour on end myself."
"But Brauws: the fellow electrifies you. Though I think that Peace
idea of his all rot. But that makes no difference: the chap speaks
magnificently.... I'm dining with Van Vreeswijck and we're going
on together."
Paul asked Constance to go with him. That evening, the little hall
of Diligentia--the proceeds were to go to the fund for the Boer
wounded--was full: Constance and Paul had difficulty in finding seats.
"All sorts of people," Paul observed. "A curious audience. An olla
podrida of every set in the Hague. Here and there, the very select
people have turned up, no doubt brought by Van Vreeswijck: look, there
are the Van der Heuvel Steijns; and there's the French minister;
and there, as I live, is Van Naghel, with his colleague from the
Treasury.... And look, there's Isidore the hairdresser.... A bit of
everything, a bit of everything.... How brotherly and sisterly the
Hague has become this evening: it makes me feel quite sentimental!"
Brauws made his entrance, to faint applause.
"The fellow's not in evening-dress; he's wearing a frock-coat. I
suppose he's playing the demagogue or the preacher."
But he had to stop, for Brauws at once began to speak from the
rostrum. He had nothing with him, not a note; and his voice was firm
but very gentle. He began with a masterly exposition of the present
political situation, sketching it in broad outlines, like an enormous
picture, for all those people in front of him. His voice became
clearer; his eyes looked through the hall, steady and bright, like two
shining stars. Constance, who seldom read any political news, listened,
was at once interested, wondered vaguely for a moment that she lived
like that, from day to day, without knowing the times in which she
lived. The present took shape before her in those few sentences of
Brauws'. Then he spoke of Peace, which would be essential sooner or
later, which was already making its joyous way into the mind of the
nations, even though they were actually still waging war upon one
another. It was as though wide and radiant vistas opened under his
words; and his voice, at first so gentle, now rang through the hall,
triumphantly confirming the glad tidings. He spoke without pausing,
for two hours on end; and, when he stopped, the hall was breathless
for a moment, the audience forgot to cheer. Then indeed applause
burst forth, jubilant; but by that time Brauws was gone. They called
him back, but he did not return; and the audience streamed out.
Constance and Paul were in the crush, when they saw Van Vreeswijck
and Van der Welcke behind them.
"Mevrouw," said Van Vreeswijck, bowing. "What do you think of our
friend?"
"Wonderful," said Constance, excitedly.
"The fellow speaks well," said Paul, "but he is too earnest. He means
all he says. People don't like that in the long run."
Van der Welcke protested vehemently, as he pushed through the
close-packed crowd, and declared that he was converted, that he
believed in Peace.
They reached the street: the hum of the crowd floated through the
wintry air.
"How excited our stolid Haguers are!" said Paul.
"There's our man," said Van Vreeswijck.
"Yes, there he is!" exclaimed Van der Welcke.
And he darted forwards, stopped Brauws, who was walking fast and saw
nobody, and seized his hand. The others drew near. Van Vreeswijck,
out of politeness, stayed by Constance, waved his hand to Brauws. Van
der Welcke was in a great state of excitement:
"Where are you going?" they heard him ask Brauws. "To the Witte?"
"No, my dear fellow, home."
"Home? Can you go home now? Won't you come to the Witte? I say,
do let me introduce you to my wife, to my brother-in-law...."
Brauws started:
"No, Hans, honestly.... No, no.... What's the good?..."
Constance heard and could not help smiling. She walked on with Van
Vreeswijck and Paul.
"Yes, yes," Van der Welcke insisted.
Brauws no doubt realized that Constance had heard, for he said,
in a voice of despair:
"Very well then, Hans...."
"Constance! Paul!" cried Van der Welcke, proud of his friend, and
caught them up.
He would have liked to introduce Brauws to the whole world, to the
whole audience streaming out of Diligentia.
"Let me introduce you: my friend, Max Brauws; my wife; my
brother-in-law, Van Lowe."
They shook hands. Brauws remained standing in front of Constance,
shyly and awkwardly. She tried to pay him a compliment that would
not sound too obvious; and, like the tactful woman that she was, she
succeeded. Paul also said something; they walked on, Van Vreeswijck
silently amused at Van der Welcke's excitement and Brauws' awkwardness.
"And are you really going home? Won't you come to the Witte?" Van
der Welcke urged, in imploring tones.
"My dear Hans, what would you have me do at the Witte?"
"So you're going home."
"Yes, I'm going home, but I'll walk a bit of the way with you."
And, wishing to appear polite, he bowed vaguely to Constance, but
said nothing more.
It was a delightful winter evening, with a sharp frost and a sky full
of twinkling stars.
"I love walking," said Constance. "When I've heard anything
fine--music, a play, or a speech like to-night's--I would much rather
walk than rattle home in a cab."
"My dear fellow!" cried Van der Welcke, still bubbling over with
enthusiasm. "You've converted me! I believe in it, I believe in that
Peace of yours!"
Brauws gave a sudden bellow.
"There, now the chap's laughing at me again!" said Van der Welcke,
in an injured tone.
"Well," said Brauws, "shall I come and fetch you in a motor to-morrow,
to reward you?"
They all laughed this time.
"Have you got one?" cried Van der Welcke, delightedly.
"No, but I can hire one," said Brauws. "And then you can drive."
"Can you hire one? Can you hire one?" cried Van der Welcke, in
delighted amazement. "And may I really drive?"
And forgetting all about Peace, he was soon eagerly discussing
motor-cars and motor-cycles....
When they reached the Kerkhoflaan, Constance asked:
"Won't you all come in?"
Van Vreeswijck and Paul said that they would be glad to come and have
a glass of wine; but Brauws said:
"Mevrouw, it's so late...."
"Not for us."
"Come along, Max," said Van der Welcke.
But Brauws laughed his queer, soft laugh and said:
"What's the good of my coming in?..."
And he went off, with a shy bow. They all laughed.
"Really, Brauws is impossible," said Van Vreeswijck, indignantly.
"And he's forgotten to tell me at what time he's coming for me with
his old sewing-machine...."
But next day, very early, in the misty winter morning, the "machine"
came puffing and snorting and exploding down the Kerkhoflaan and
stopped at Van der Welcke's door with a succession of deep-drawn
sighs and spasmodic gasps, as if to take breath after its exertions;
and this monster as it were of living and breathing iron, odorous of
petrol--the acrid smell of its sweat--was soon surrounded by a little
group of butchers'-boys and orange-hawkers. Brauws stepped out; and,
as Constance happened to be coming downstairs, she received him.
"I'm not fit to be seen, mevrouw. In these 'sewing-machines,' as Hans
calls them, one becomes unpresentable at once."
He was shy, looked out at the gasping motor-car and smiled at the
crowd that had gathered round:
"I'm causing quite a tumult outside your door."
"They ought to be used to 'sewing-machines' at the Hague by now."
"That's a very graphic word of Hans'."
They both laughed. She thought his laugh attractive and his voice
soft and restful to listen to.
"Mevrouw," he said, suddenly, overcoming his bashfulness, "I hope
you were not angry that I was so ungracious yesterday?..."
"But you weren't at all ungracious."
"Yes, I was, very. But what excuse can I make? I have lost the habit
... of just talking...."
She smiled:
"To ladies," she said, jokingly.
"Yes, about nothing ... you know ... small talk...."
"You really needn't apologize, Mr. Brauws. You had already said so
many delightful things last night that I can quite understand...."
"Yes, but I have said nothing this morning and...."
"You wouldn't know what to say ... about nothing. But please don't
trouble ... and make yourself at home. Henri will be down in a minute;
he is very worried at not being ready."
In fact, they heard Van der Welcke upstairs, dressing excitedly;
he was rushing madly round his room and shouting:
"Addie! Addie! Pick me out a tie! Do be quick, boy!"
And Constance rose to go. Brauws stopped her:
"Mevrouw," he said, hurriedly, "Hans asked me to dinner."
"And you refused...."
"Well, you see, I'm such a bear. Don't be angry and don't let Hans
be angry either and let me come and dine with you one day."
"So you're inviting yourself?"
"Yes."
"Very well; we shall be delighted to see you. When will you come?"
"Whenever you like."
"To-morrow?"
"With great pleasure."
"Would you rather come alone, or shall I ask Van Vreeswijck to
meet you?"
"Yes, certainly, Van Vreeswijck...."
"And nobody else."
"No, nobody. But I mustn't dictate to you."
"Why shouldn't you, in this case?"
Van der Welcke came rushing down the stairs, followed by Addie:
"This is jolly of you, Max! Let's have a look at the old machine. She's
a first-rater! And here's my boy.... Addie, eat a bit of bread and
butter, quick; then we'll drop you at your school."
Addie laughed, quietly ate his bread and butter without sitting down:
"I've lots of time," he said.
"So much the better ... we'll drive you round a bit first. Quick,
quick! Take your bread and butter with you in your hand!"
He rushed like a madman through the dining-room and hall, hunted
for his hat, couldn't find it, shouted up the stairs, made Truitje
look all over the place for his gloves, created a breezy draught all
through the house. At last, he was ready:
"If only I can manage the old sewing-machine! ... Tock-tock-tock-tock,
tock-tock-tock-tock!... Good-bye, Constance...."
He shoved Addie in front of him, made him get into the car, settled
himself:
"We're off, Brauws!"
"Good-bye, mevrouw. Till to-morrow then!"
He ran out. Constance looked out of the window: they drove off, with
Addie between them, waving his hand to her, while Brauws was showing
Van der Welcke--much too quick, too wild, too impatient--how to work
the "sewing-machine" and obviously asking him to be careful....
CHAPTER X
Constance had invited Van Vreeswijck at the last moment and he was
engaged, so that Brauws was the only guest. Though Constance usually
gave a deal of thought to her little dinners, she received Brauws quite
simply, treating him as one of themselves; and Addie dined with them.
"And now tell me what you have been doing all these years?" asked
Van der Welcke.
Brauws tried to tell him, but kept on hesitating, as though under
a strange compulsion. His father was a manufacturer, owning big
iron-works in Overijssel, and still carried on that huge business
with Brauws' two elder brothers, who were married to two sisters, the
daughters of another manufacturer, owning a cotton-mill in the same
district. But Max, who had been a queer boy from a child, had from
a child felt repelled by all that factory-life of masters and men,
as he saw it around him; and his father, recognizing his exceptional
intelligence, had sent him to college, hoping that in this way he would
carve out an honourable career for himself among his fellow-men. Max
was fond of study and studied long and hard, for the sake of study. At
Leiden, he became acquainted with Van Vreeswijck, Van der Welcke and
other young sprigs of the aristocracy, who would gladly have admitted
him to their club, putting up with him because he had plenty of money
to spend and because he was clever and it amused him to help them in
their examinations. Van der Welcke and Van Vreeswijck had learnt to
value his friendship, but nevertheless lost sight of him afterwards,
thinking that he had joined his brothers after all and was managing
the factory with them. And, even as they, as youths, had hardly
known their friend more than superficially, so they did not know,
on leaving Leiden, that Max had not gone to Overijssel--where his
father would have liked to marry him to the third daughter of the
father-in-law of his two other sons--but to America, to "seek."
"Well, but to seek what?" Van der Welcke asked, failing to understand
what a rich youth could want to seek in America, if he did not see
some idea, some plan, some object plainly outlined before him.
Brauws now confessed that at the time he scarcely knew what he had gone
to seek, in America. He admitted that his father, the iron-master, had
hoped that Max would form industrial connections in America which would
have benefited the factory. But Max had formed no connections at all.
"Then what did you do?" asked Van der Welcke.
And Brauws smiled his strange, gentle smile, in which there gleamed a
touch of irony and compassion--with himself, or the world, or both--a
smile which sometimes broke into his big, resonant laugh. He smiled
and at last said, very slowly:
"But I hardly dare confess to you, my dear Hans, what I did in
America. I don't talk about that time as a rule, because it all
sounds so strange, now that I am sitting at table with you and your
wife and your son. Perhaps, if I tell you what I did do in America,
Mrs. van der Welcke, after the first shock of surprise, will shudder
at having invited such a queer person to her table and probably think
me a very bad example for Addie. So don't let's talk about myself or
what I did in America."
But Van der Welcke had grown inquisitive:
"No, my dear fellow, you sha'n't get out of it like that. I can't
imagine that you did anything in America that Addie mustn't hear
about; and in any case he needn't take you for his model. But I'm
burning with curiosity and I insist on knowing what you were up to
in America. Not lecturing on Peace all the time?..."
"No, not even once."
"Well, what then?"
"But, Hans, what's the good of talking about myself to this extent?"
"We're all interested, Mr. Brauws," said Constance. "We certainly
are. But, if you would rather not talk about those days, we will not
be indiscreet."
"Yes, yes, yes," said Van der Welcke, impatiently. "By Jingo, I will
be indiscreet. Max, I must know...."
"Well, then," said Max Brauws, very simply and shyly, as though he
were making an apology. "At the risk of your wife's never asking me
to her house again: I was a porter."
They all three looked at him and did not understand.
"A porter?" asked Van der Welcke.
"A porter?" asked Constance.
"Yes, mevrouw: just a porter and dock-labourer."
"A dock-labourer?" asked Van der Welcke, thinking, from Max Brauws'
quiet voice, that he had suddenly gone mad.
"Yes, Hans; and, later on, I worked as a stoker in an iron-works,
like my father's."
"As a stoker?" asked Constance.
"Yes, mevrouw, as a stoker in a factory. And then, afterwards, as an
engine-driver. And then--but that was very hard work--I was a miner
for a short time; but then I fell ill."
"A miner?" asked Van der Welcke, in a blank voice, dazed with
astonishment.
And at last, recovering from the astonishment, he burst out:
"Look here, Max, if you want to talk seriously, do; but don't go
pulling my leg and making a fool of me to my face. I don't understand
a word of what you're saying, unless I'm to suppose that your father
was angry with you and gave you no money and that you had to work
for your bread, perhaps. But that you were a porter...."
"And dock-labourer," said Constance.
"And engine-driver and miner, that I refuse to believe, unless your
father...."
"My dear Hans, my father used to send me the same allowance that he
made me at the university: three hundred guilders a month."
"And...?"
"And I used the money ... for other things; but I lived on my wages,
like a labourer, as I really was. You see, you can't understand that;
and, as I feared, your wife thinks it horrible to be sitting at table
with a man who has been a porter, a dock-labourer and a stoker...."
"And a miner," added Van der Welcke.
And he shut his eyes, as though he had received a blow on the head.
"But, mevrouw," said Brauws, with his quiet smile, "my hands, although
they are not delicate, have become fit to show again, as you see."
And he showed his hands, big, powerful hands, probably developed by
manual labour, but now neither coarse nor hard.
"But can you explain to me," asked Constance, with a little laugh,
"why you worked in those various humble capacities?"
"Shall we say, mevrouw, for the sake of being eccentric?" replied
Brauws, almost coldly. "And then we will talk no more about
myself. Tell me instead about Addie. Hans was saying the other day
that his ambition was to enter the diplomatic service...."
But a certain constraint seemed involuntarily to make the conversation
flag, as though both host and hostess were unable to understand
their guest at all, as though some one of another class had actually
strayed by accident into their dining-room, into the home of these
born aristocrats; and Constance, perceiving this, not only wanted
to avoid that constraint, but also a deeper feeling of invincible
sympathy made her regret almost unconsciously any misunderstanding or
unpleasantness that might arise between that strange man and Henri
or herself. This deeper feeling was so faint and unconscious that,
at the moment, she saw in it only her wish, as hostess, to make the
passing hour as agreeable as possible for her guest; and she did not
hear the deeper note in her voice when she said, with that candour
and sincerity which at times gave her an exquisitely feminine charm:
"I should be very sorry indeed, Mr. Brauws, if you refused to go on
speaking of yourself. You are an old and intimate friend of Henri's;
and, now that you two have met again, it would be a pity if you refused
to talk about the years when you did not see each other. But I am not
speaking only for my husband, who will speak for himself: I am speaking
especially for my own sake. When I heard you lecturing on Peace the
other day--on something which I had really never thought about, though
I had heard the word vaguely mentioned by people now and then--your
speech really roused ... a sort of interest in me; and I listened
with keen sympathy; and afterwards I thought about that word. And,
now that you tell us that you have been a common workman in America,
I am very much interested to know how you came to adopt a life so
very different from that of the men in my set; and, if it is not too
indiscreet, I should like to ask you, as a favour, to speak about
yourself and explain what at present seems so perplexing to me...."
The simple, homely meal was finished; and they went into the
drawing-room.
"May I stay, Mamma?" asked Addie, who never accompanied them to the
drawing-room when there was a stranger present.
She laughed; and Van der Welcke said:
"You see, even my boy is curious."
"Our future diplomatist!" said Brauws, with his quiet smile. "Well,
mevrouw, may he stay or not?"
"Of course he may stay!"
"Aren't you afraid that the ideas of ... a labouring-man will spoil
him?"
"Oh, there's no spoiling my boy!" said she, lifting her head high
and putting her arm round Addie's shoulder with motherly pride.
"And you don't make him vain, by saying that?"
"There's no making him vain," she continued, boasting a little,
like a proud mother.
"So he can stay?" asked Brauws.
"He can stay."
"Well, in that case I shall tell you more about myself."
"Only in that case?"
"You are giving me a proof of confidence and, I might almost say,
of sympathy."
Van der Welcke took his friend by the shoulders:
"My dear Max, you pretend that you don't know how to talk to 'ladies'
and there you stand, like a typical courtier, paying compliments to
my wife. That's all superfluous, you know: here's a cup of coffee;
sit down, make yourself at home, choose your own chair; and now,
Mr. Miner, tell your Mad Hans how, when you were in America, you went
even madder than he."
But Brauws was obviously still seeking subterfuges, as though it were
impossible for him to interpret the riddle of his former existence
to these people who were entertaining him so kindly; and at last he
half managed to escape their pressing curiosity by saying:
"But I can't possibly tell you all that straight away.... Perhaps
later, mevrouw, when I have known you a little longer, I may be able
to tell you about that time, so that you may understand it after
a fashion."
Constance was disappointed, but she said, with a smile:
"Then I must exercise patience."
"But I exercise no patience," said Van der Welcke. "Tell us now, Max:
when you left Leiden, after taking your degree in law, a year before
I did--but you were much older than I, an older student who really
studied, a rara avis!--what did you do then?"
"I first went back to my father and my brothers, to the factory. And
then I took such an aversion to the whole thing, to all that we
represented, my father, my brothers and I, that I determined to go
and lead an entirely different life. I saw that, though my father
and brothers were comparatively good to their workmen, those workmen
remained slaves; and we...."
He passed his hand over his forehead:
"How can I and why should I talk about all this, my dear Hans?" he
said, gently interrupting himself. "You wouldn't understand me;
nor you either, mevrouw...."
"Why shouldn't we understand you?" asked Constance.
His voice assumed a rough tone that almost frightened her:
"Because both of you, you and Hans, are capitalists--and titled
capitalists at that--and because I.... But I don't want to be rude
to my host and hostess."
"Capitalists without capital," said Van der Welcke, laughing.
Brauws shrugged his shoulders:
"There are more of them than you think," he said.
"So really you're among enemies here," said Constance, in her
drawing-room voice.
"No," said Van der Welcke, "for he in his turn has deserted to the
capitalists, even the titled ones."
"Not quite," said Brauws, quietly, "though I admit that I have
been weak."
"I won't press you any more, Mr. Brauws," said Constance; but her
voice urged him to continue.
"Don't look upon yourself and Henri as my enemies, mevrouw," said
Brauws, earnestly. "Above all things, I should like to see nothing
but friendship in this world of ours. But you were asking me about
America: well, when I had lived for a short time with my father and
my brothers in our big house near the factory, it became too much for
me; and I went away, to lead my life just as if I had been born among
workmen ... so as to study them more closely, do you understand?... No,
you don't understand; and how can I go on?..."
"Max, you're being dull. And you're absurd too."
"I'm sorry, Hans, I simply can't talk about myself: you see, I've
tried to, two or three times over."
"Then we won't worry you any more," said Constance.
A constraint seemed to have come upon them, a barrier which rose
between their words at every moment. Addie, disappointed, left the
room quietly. In a little while, Brauws took his leave, awkwardly,
almost rudely. Constance and Van der Welcke exchanged a glance when
they were alone. Van der Welcke shook his head:
"The fellow's mad," he said. "Always was; but, since he's joined the
proletariats in America, he's stark, staring mad. He was so jolly
yesterday, coming with that old sewing-machine. He is a good sort,
there's something nice about him. But he's quite mad. Vreeswijck
is much better company. We won't ask him again: what do you say,
Constance? The fellow's really mad; and, besides, he doesn't know how
to talk and, when all is said, he was impertinent, with his 'titled
capitalists.' Indeed, I ought really to apologize to you for asking
such a queer fish to your house."
"He is different from other people," she said, "but I think that,
however much he may differ from you, he likes you."
Her husband burst out irritably:
"You women," he exclaimed, "are simply impossible! Who would ever have
thought that you could have found a word of excuse for Brauws! Why,
I was afraid that you would cover me with reproaches and point out
to me that, even though we see nobody, you wouldn't want to receive
a socialist friend of mine. But there's no understanding women!"
He was dissatisfied, out of temper, because of Brauws and that
spasmodic conversation; and his tone seemed to invite a scene. But
Constance raised her eyes to his very calmly and said, so gently and
quietly that the voice did not sound like hers to his ears:
"Henri, your friend Brauws is a man and an exceptional man; and that
is enough to captivate a woman for a moment."
"Well, you can ask him every day, for all I care."
"I didn't ask him."
"No, I did, of course!"
"Don't let us quarrel, Henri. Mr. Brauws asked himself. But, if you
would rather not see any more of him, we won't encourage him again;
and then he'll stay away of his own accord...."
Her gentle words, which he did not understand, disturbed him greatly;
and he went upstairs in a temper, undressed angrily and flung himself
on his bed:
"And, upon my word, he'd be upsetting Addie's head next, with those
queer notions," he muttered, as he dug his ear viciously into his
pillow.
CHAPTER XI
A few days had passed, when Brauws rang at the door, late one
afternoon. Constance was sitting in the drawing-room and saw him
through the corner window; and, as she heard the bell, she felt a
shock of alarm. She was afraid, she did not know why, and listened
anxiously to his deep voice in the passage.
"Is meneer at home?"
"No, sir."
"Perhaps mevrouw is at home?"
"Yes, sir, mevrouw is in. I'll just ask...."
Truitje entered:
"Mr. Brauws, ma'am...."
"Show meneer in."
She still felt her heart beating with that strange, inexplicable shock
of alarm. And she thought that it was because she was alone with that
strange man, who had been a workman in America and who could say such
rude things sometimes, suddenly.
They shook hands:
"Henri is out," she said. "But sit down. I see in the paper that you
are speaking at Arnhem to-morrow."
"Yes, mevrouw, but I haven't come to talk about my lectures. I've
come to make you my very humble apologies."
"What for?"
"Mevrouw, I'm a bear. I don't know how to talk to people. Forgive me
... for what I said the other day."
"But what did you say?"
"Nothing--after your friendly encouragement--but what was rude."
"I have no great reverence for titles," she said, quickly.
She said it so suddenly and spontaneously that it surprised even
herself; and she asked herself, the next second:
"Why do I say that? And is it true, now? Or is it not true?"
She herself did not know.
"You haven't, perhaps, but Hans has.... But I was rude especially
because, after you had asked me so kindly and graciously, I still
would not talk about my life."
"But you were to do that when we knew each other better...."
"People never know each other well. Still...."
"What?"
"I don't know.... May I tell you something about myself from time
to time? Perhaps it won't interest you as much as, from politeness,
you wish me to think; but ... when I've done it ... I shall feel
relieved.... Heavens, how difficult words are!"
"And yet you are accustomed to speak for hours!..."
"That's a different thing. Then some one else is speaking inside
me. When I myself am speaking, in everyday life, I find words
difficult."
"Then don't make the least effort, but tell me ... gradually."
"What did Addie think? I should like to know."
"He was disappointed, but he did not say much."
"He's a serious boy, isn't he? Tell me about him."
She felt no more fear and talked about Addie. Brauws laughed, gently
and kindly, at the pride that kept shining from her:
"I was a serious child too," he said.
And she understood that he was making an effort, in order to talk
about himself.
"I was a strange child. Behind our house was a pine-forest, with
hills in it; and behind that a little stream. I used to wander all
day long in those woods, over the hills and beside the stream. They
would miss me at home and look for me and find me there. But gradually
they stopped being frightened, because they understood that I was
only playing. I used to play by myself: a lonely, serious child. It's
true I played at highwaymen and pirates; and yet my games were very
serious, not like a child's ... I still feel a thrill when I think
of that strange childhood of mine.... I used to play there in those
woods and beside that stream, in Holland; but sometimes I imagined
that I was playing at pirates and highwaymen in America, or in the
tropics. And in my childish imagination the whole Dutch landscape
changed. It became a roaring river, with great boulders, from which
the water fell foaming, and very dense, tropical foliage, such as I
had seen in pictures; and great flowers, red and white, grew in the
enormous trees. Then my fancy changed and I was no longer a pirate
or robber, but became ... an oriental prince. I don't know why I, a
pure-bred Dutch boy, should have had that strange vision of the east,
of something tropical, there, on those pine-covered hills and beside
that little stream.... It was always like that afterwards: the tropical
landscape, the spreading cocoa-trees, the broad plantain-leaves and the
huge flowers, white and red ... and then I often thought, 'Now I will
find her.' Whom I wanted to find I didn't know; but I would run down
the hills and roam beside the little river and seek and seek ... and
my seeking for 'her' became strange and fantastic: I, an oriental,
was seeking for a fairy, or a princess, I forget which. It seemed to
me as if she were running there ahead of me, very white and fragile:
a little child, as I was a child; a girl, as I was a boy; in white
and decked with the flowers, white and red ... And my seeking for the
princess, for the fairy, for the little white, fragile girl became
so intense that I sometimes thought I had found her, found her in my
imagination; and then I would speak to her, as in a dream.... Until
... until I woke from my waking dream and remembered that I had been
wandering away from home for hours, that my mother would be anxious,
that I was not fit to be seen, that I looked like a dirty street-boy,
that I had only been dreaming, that there were no white or red flowers
around me ... and then I would cry, boy of thirteen though I was,
passionately, as if I should go mad.... And I have never told all
this to any one, but I am telling it to you, because I want to ask
you: Addie is not like that, is he? When you come to think of it,
how children differ, at that age!"
She sat on her chair, very pale, and could not speak.
"My parents did not know that I was like that; and I told nobody about
my fancies. I went to school, in the meantime, and was just the usual
sort of schoolboy. I was cruel to animals, a vulgar little rascal,
in the meantime; and it was only in those free hours that I wandered
and dreamt. And, when I now look at your boy, who is like a little
man, I sometimes think, how is it possible that he is like this and
that I was like that, at the same age?"
She made an effort to smile.
"So you see," he said, "gradually perhaps I shall be able to tell
you something about my life ... at least, if it interests you...."
It seemed as if his first confession had in fact given him a greater
facility, for of his own accord he now went on talking: how, when
he grew a year or two older, he had shaken those fancies from him as
so much child's-play and devoted himself seriously to every kind of
study, until he went to the university, where he not only read law,
but really took up all the other faculties in between, while at the
same time he felt attracted by every branch of knowledge:
"I was a ready learner and a quick reader; I remembered everything;
and I had a sort of fever to know everything in the world, to know
all there was to know and learn. That I afterwards went and travelled
goes almost without saying. And then...."
It was at this moment that Van der Welcke entered. He was at first
surprised, almost annoyed to see Brauws; but his warm friendship
gained the upper hand:
"Hullo, anarchist!" he said. "Is that you?"
But it was very late; Addie came in; it was close upon
dinner-time. Brauws said good-bye and promised to come again and
fetch Van der Welcke in a "machine;" and that made up for everything
to Van der Welcke.
CHAPTER XII
It was a howling winter night of storm and rain. Addie was doing his
lessons after dinner; and Van der Welcke had gone to sit by him with
a book "because there was such a draught in his room." Constance
was all alone. And she loved the loneliness of it just then. She
had taken up a book, a piece of needlework; but first one and then
the other had slipped from her hands. And, in the soft light of the
lace-shaded lamps, she lay back in her chair and listened to the
melancholy storm outside, which seemed to be rushing past the house
like some monstrous animal. She was in a mood of vague excitement,
of mingled nervousness and depression; and, in her loneliness, she
let this strange feeling take possession of her and gave herself up
to the quite new luxury of thinking about herself, wondering dimly:
"Does that sort of thing really exist?"
She found no answer to her question; she heard only the storm raging
outside, the hiss of its lash round the groaning trees; and those
mournful voices of the night did not include the mystic voice which
alone could have supplied the answer.
"Does that sort of thing really exist?" she asked herself again.
And, in that vague emotion, she was conscious of a sense of fear,
of a rising anxiety, an increasing terror. When, after a lull, the
storm burst into sudden fury again, she started violently, as she
had started when Brauws' hand rang the bell....
With each shriller howl of the raging storm she started; and each
fresh alarm left her so nervous and so strangely despondent that she
could not understand herself....
"Does that sort of thing really exist then?" she asked herself for
the third time.
And the question seemed each time to echo through her soul like a
refrain. She could never have thought, suspected or imagined that such
things really existed. She did not remember ever reading about them or
ever talking to anybody about them. It had never been her nature to
attach much importance to the strange coincidences of life, because
they had never harmonized in her life with those of other lives; at
least, she did not know about them, did not remember them.... For a
moment, it flashed through her mind that she had walked as the blind
walk, all her life, in a pitch-dark night ... and that to-day suddenly
a light had shone out before her and a ruddy glow had filtered through
her closed eyelids.
"No," she thought, "in those things I have always been very much of
a woman; and I have never thought about them. If by chance I ever
heard about them, they did not attract me. Then why do they strike
me so forcibly now? And why do I feel so strange?..."
The wind suddenly cried aloud, like the martyred soul of some monster;
and she started, but forced herself to concentrate her thoughts:
"He can't know," she thought. "What can he know, to make him speak
deliberately ... of those childish years? No, he can't know; and I felt
that he did not know, that he was only speaking in order to compare
himself with Addie to Addie's mother, in a burst of confidence. He is a
man of impulses, I think.... No, there was nothing at the back of his
words ... and he knows nothing, nothing of my own early years.... We
are almost the same age: he is four years older than Henri. When he
was a child, I was a child. When he was dreaming, I was dreaming. Does
that sort of thing really exist? Or is it my fancy, some unconscious
vein of poetry inside me, that is making me imagine all this?... Hush,
hush ... it is becoming absurd! It is all very pretty and charming
in children: they can have their day-dreams; and a young man and
a young girl might perhaps give a thought to them afterwards, in
a romantic moment; but, at my age, it all becomes absurd, utterly
absurd.... And of course it's not there: it's nothing but a chance
coincidence. I won't think about it any more.... And yet ... I have
never felt before as I do now. Oh, that feeling as if I had always
been straying, blindly, with my eyes shut, in a dark night! Have I
never had that feeling before, that feeling as if nothing had really
existed, as if I had never lived yet, as if I wanted to live once,
just once, in my life?... But no, it can never be like that, it can't
happen like that. No, that sort of thing does not exist. It is just
our imagination when we are feeling restless and dissatisfied ... or
when we are tired and feel that we have no energy ... or whatever it is
that makes us more easily affected by all those strange things which
we never suspected.... Why did I not at once laugh and say that, as a
child, as a little girl, I myself...? No, no, I simply couldn't say it;
and it is better that I didn't say it.... Now I am getting frightened
at my own silliness. It is all very well for young people, for a boy
and a girl, to have these fancies and even talk of them, in a romantic
moment, but at my age it is simply ridiculous.... It is so long ago, so
long ago; and, with all those years in between, it would be ridiculous
to refer to poetic dreams and fancies which can only be spoken of when
one is very young.... I sha'n't speak of them ... and I shall never
tell him. Wouldn't it be ... utterly ridiculous?... Yet it does seem
... it does seem to me that, after those years--when, as Gerrit said,
I was a dear little child, playing in the river at Buitenzorg, making
up stories about fairies and poetries, [3] decked with flowers, red and
white--that, after those years, I lost something of myself, something
romantic that was in me then, something living that was in me then,
and that, since then, I have never lived, never lived a single moment,
as if all sorts of vain and worldly things had blinded me.... Oh,
what thoughts are these and why do I have them? I won't think them;
and yet ... and yet, after those wonderful, fairy years, it was all
over ... all over.... What do I remember of the years after? Dances,
balls, society, vanity and artificiality.... Yes, it was all over
by then.... And now surely that childish spark hasn't revived,
surely my soul isn't trying, isn't wanting to live again? No, no,
it can't do that: the years are lying all around it, the silent, dead
years of vanity, of blundering, of longing, of death in life.... And
besides, if my soul did want to live again, it would be too late now,
for everything; and it doesn't want to either.... It's only because
of those strange coincidences, it's only because he spoke like that
... and because his voice it attractive ... and because I am sitting
here alone ... and because the storm is blowing so terribly, as though
it wanted to open the windows and come inside.... No, hush, hush ... I
won't give way to those thoughts again, never again ... and, even if
that sort of thing does really exist, it is only for those who are
young and who see life with the glamour of youth ... and not for me,
not for me. ... Oh, I couldn't have told him about myself when I was
a child, for it would have appeared to me as if, by telling him, I
was behaving like ... a woman offering herself!... But hush, hush:
all this is absurd ... for me ... now; and I will stop thinking
of it.... But how lonely I am, sitting here ... and how the wind
howls, how the wind howls!... The lamps are flickering; and it's
just as if hands were rattling the shutters, trying hard to open
them.... Oh, I wish those lamps wouldn't flicker so!... And I feel
as if the windows were going to burst open and the curtains fly up
in the air.... I'm frightened.... Hark to the trees cracking and
the branches falling.... Hear me, O God, hear me! I'm frightened,
I'm frightened.... Is this then the first night that I see something
of myself, as if I were suddenly looking back, on a dark path that
lies behind me, a dark path on which all the pageant of vanity has
grown dim? For it does seem as if, right at the end of the road, I
saw, as in a vision, the sun; trees with great leaves and blossoms
red and white; and a little fairy child, in white, with flowers in
her hair, standing on a boulder, in a river, beckoning mysteriously
to her brothers, who do not understand. O my God, does that sort of
thing really, really exist ... or is it only because I never, never
heard the wind blow like this before?..."
These thoughts, these doubts, these wonderings flashed through her;
and, because she had never heard herself thinking and doubting and
wondering so swiftly, she grew still more frightened in her loneliness,
while the storm howled more furiously outside. And the silent lamps
flickered so violently in her drawing-room--in a sort of passionate
draught--that she suddenly rushed staggering to the door. She went
up the stairs; and it was as though the storm would break the little
villa to pieces with one blow of its angry wing....
She went to Addie's room; her hand was on the door-handle; she turned
it. She saw her boy working at his table and Van der Welcke smoking
in the easy-chair. She gave a start, because he was there, and she
looked deathly pale, with terrified, quivering eyes.
"Mamma!"
"My boy, I'm frightened; listen to the storm!..."
"Yes, did you ever see such weather?" asked Van der Welcke, through
the clouds of his cigarette.
"Are you frightened, Mamma?"
"Yes, my boy, my Addie ... I'm frightened ... I'm frightened...."
"And shall your boy keep you safe, safe from the wind?"
"Yes, my darling, keep me safe!" she said, with a wan little
laugh. "For I'm really, really frightened ... I've been sitting alone
downstairs ... and it blew so, it blew so: the lamps blew and the
shutters banged and I'm so frightened now!..."
The boy drew her on his knees and held her very tight:
"Silly Mummy! Are you really frightened?"
She made herself very small in his arms, between his knees, nestled
up against him and repeated, as in a dream:
"Yes, I'm so frightened, I'm so frightened!..."
And, without a further glance at her husband sitting there clouded in
the blue smoke of his cigarette, she as it were crept into the heart
of her child, whispering, all pale and wan, with a wan smile and her
eyes full of anxious wonder:
"I'm frightened, Addie! Save me! Protect me!..."
CHAPTER XIII
"I'm mad!" he thought, as, after a hasty meal at a restaurant in
the town, he walked along the Hooge Weg to Scheveningen through the
shrieking winter night.
The leafless branches lashed tragically to and fro, as though sweeping
the scudding clouds; and the street-lamps seemed like ghostly eyes
blinking here and there in the fitful darkness....
"I'm mad! Why did I tell her all that, I ... I who can never talk
to women?"
He was walking against the wind, angry with himself and angry with the
wind when it barred his way with its widespread hindering arms. The
wind whistled very high in the air, along the topmost leafless boughs;
and the boughs broke off, as though at the touch of angry fingers,
and scattered all around him; and sometimes a heavier branch fell,
black, right at his feet. He walked on--his legs were stronger than
the wind barring his way, tugging at his flapping coat--walked with
his hands in his pockets, his collar turned up, his hat pulled over
his eyes; and he walked on and on without an object, only with an
eager craving for the sea, for sea and air and wind, to blow and
wash everything out of his brain, which otherwise would be sick with
dreaming.... Was he still such a dreamer, even though all the rest
of his life belied his dreams? What did he mean by suddenly going
to that woman, apologizing to her that afternoon because he didn't
know how to talk and then suddenly talking, talking like a boy,
telling her things--shadowy things of the past--which he had never
told to anybody, because they were not things to be told, because,
once told, they ceased to exist?... What interest did she take
in his childish games and his childish dreams?... He had probably
bored her: perhaps she had laughed at him--the cynical little laugh
of the society-woman--and at his really too-ridiculous simplicity,
the simplicity of a man who had thought and worked and lived and who
had yet always remained a child ... in certain little corners of his
soul.... He was so much ashamed at the recollection of all that he
had dared to say to her, so much ashamed of the irresistible impulse
which had driven him to speak to her, at such length, of his childhood
and his childish imaginings, that he was now--as though to regain
mastery of himself after the strange spell of her presence--that he
was now fighting with the wind, to make himself feel strong again
and a man.... The wind clung howling to his body, dragged itself by
his legs, struck him blinding blows in the face, but he walked on:
his strong legs walked on, with a sharp, regular step, ever mightier
than the wind, which he trod under foot and kicked out of his path....
"I don't know what it was," he thought, "but, once I was alone with
her, I had ... I had to say it.... How can I be of any use in the
world, when I am such a dreamer?... Women! Have women ever woven
into my life anything beyond the most commonplace threads? Have I
ever confided in a woman before, or felt that irresistible impulse
to open my heart, as I did this afternoon, in that weak moment of
enchantment? Why to her, why to her? Why not to others, before her,
and why first to her?... Must my life always be this clumsy groping
with dreams on one side and facts on the other? But why, why should
I have spoken like that: what was the overpowering impulse that made
me tell her those strange things, that made it impossible for me to
do anything else? Are our actions then so independent of ourselves
that we just behave according to the laws of the most secret forces
in and above us?... Do I know what it was in me that made me speak
like that, that compelled me to speak like that? It was like an
irresistible temptation, it was like a path that sloped down to
delectable valleys and it was as if angels or demons--I don't know
which--pushed and pushed me and whispered, 'Tell it all ... and
go down the path.... You'll see how beautiful it is, you'll see how
beautiful it becomes!' She ... just listened, without speaking, without
moving. What did she think? Nothing, most likely. She heard nothing,
she felt nothing. If she's thinking of me now, she thinks of me as
a madman, or at least a crank.... What is she? She has been a woman
of the world, of just that world which I hate.... What has her life
been? She married a man much older than herself, out of vanity. Then a
moment of passion, between her and Hans.... What else has there been,
what else is there in her? Nothing! How utterly small they all are,
these people who don't think, who don't live: who exist like dolls,
with dolls' brains and dolls' souls, in a dolls' world! What am I
doing among them? Oh, not that I'm big; not that I am worth more than
they, but, if I am to do anything--for the world--I must live among
real people, different people from them ... or I must live alone,
wrapped in myself!... That has always been the everlasting seesaw:
doing, dreaming, doing, dreaming.... But there has never been that
temptation, that beckoning towards delectable valleys of oblivion
and that luxury of allowing myself to be drawn along as though by
soul-magnetism, by the strange sympathy of a woman's soul!... Is it
then so, in reality! Is it merely a mirage of love? Love has never come
into my life: have I ever known what it was? Is there one woman then,
only one? Can we find, even late, like this?... Oh, I wish that this
wind would blow all this uncertainty, all these vapourings out of my
head and my heart ... and leave me strong and simple ... to act alone,
to act alone!... And now I will not think about it any more...."
And he quickened his pace and fought more vigorously against the wind,
with a wrestler's vigour, and, when at last he saw the sea, foaming
pale under the black pall of cloud and roaring with a thousand voices,
he thought:
"It all came from one moment of foolishness. It had no real
existence. I spoke as I should not have spoken, but what I said was
nothing and is being blown out of my heart and out of my head at this
very moment...."
But, the next day, waking from a calm sleep, he asked himself:
"Is it not just the unutterable things in us that matter more than
anything else to us ... and to those who made us divine them?..."
CHAPTER XIV
A day or two later, Marianne called:
"Auntie," she said, "I haven't seen you for days. What's the
matter? Are you vexed with me?"
"Why, no, Marianne."
"Yes, there's something. You're cross with me. Tell me that you're
not cross with me. I haven't dined with you for an age. You are
vexed with me because I invited myself. Tell me that I'm mistaken,
that you're not vexed with me. And do ask me to dinner again, one
day.... It's such a busy time just now: parties, dinners, the Court
ball the other night. It was very boring.... We never see you. You
never call on us. Nor Uncle either. It's all through that Brauws man."
Constance started, with that strange nervous catch in her throat:
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"That old friend of Uncle's, who speaks on Peace. I've heard him: it
was splendid, splendid. His speech was topping, I'm mad on Peace. But
he takes possession of Uncle; the boys have seen them together twice,
in a motor-car. It's all through Brauws that I never see anything of
either of you.... I suppose he's been to dinner, too?"
"Once."
"I'm jealous, Auntie. Why should he come when you don't ask me? Doesn't
Mr. Van Vreeswijck ever come now either? If you're angry with me,
I'll be an angel in the future, I'll never invite myself again. But
do invite me again, yourself!"
"But, you silly child, I'm not angry."
"Yes, you are; you're cross with me. You're not the same. You're
different towards me. I feel it. I see it."
"But, Marianne...."
"Aren't you? Am I wrong?.... Tell me that you're not cross with me."
She knelt down by Constance, caressingly.
"Marianne, what a baby you are!... I am not cross: there!"
"Say it once more, like a darling."
"I--am--not--cross. There: are you satisfied?"
"Yes, I believe you now. And when am I coming to dinner?"
"You little tyrant!"
"I daren't ask myself again."
"What do you like so much in our dinners?"
"They're just what I do like. The other night, when I was so bored
at the Court ball, I thought, 'So long as Auntie asks me again soon,
I don't mind anything!'"
"Rubbish! I don't believe a word of it!"
"It's quite true."
"Well, will you come one evening ... with Brauws and Van
Vreeswijck? Then I'll ask Uncle Gerrit and Aunt Adeline too."
"Rather! That will be lovely. When?"
"I'll write and let you know; don't be so impatient."
"Now you are a darling!"
She hugged her aunt:
"You're looking so nice to-day, Auntie. So pretty. You are really. I
say, how old are you?"
"You silly child, what does it matter?"
"I want to know. Wait, I can work it out. Mamma said there was eight
years between you. Mamma is fifty. So you must be forty-two."
"Very nearly forty-three. That's old, isn't it?"
"Old? I don't know. For some women. Not for you. You're young. And
how young Uncle looks, doesn't he? Why, Addie is more sedate
than Uncle!... You don't look forty-two, you look ten years
less than that. Auntie, isn't it strange how the years go by? I
... I feel old. One year comes after another; and it all makes
me miserable.... Auntie, tell me, what makes me so fond of
you?... Sometimes ... sometimes I feel as if I could cry when I
am here...."
"Do I make you so sad?"
"No, not that. But, when I'm with you, I don't know why, I'm always
thinking ... even when I'm chattering ... I feel happy in your house,
Auntie. Look, here are the tears!... But you ... you have tears in
your eyes also. Yes, you have, you can't deny it. Tell me, Auntie,
what is it?"
"Why, Marianne, it's nothing ... but you talk such nonsense sometimes
... and that upsets me; and, when I see other people crying, it makes
the tears come into my eyes too."
"Uncle isn't always nice to you, is he, Auntie?"
"My dear Marianne!..."
"No, I know he isn't. Do let me talk about it. It's so horrid, when
you're very fond of some one, always to be silent about the things
you're thinking of. Let me talk about it. I know that Uncle is not
always nice. I told him the other day...."
"What?"
"You'll be angry when you hear. I told him the other day that he must
be nicer to you. Are you angry?"
"No, dear, but...."
"No, you mustn't be angry: I meant to say the right thing. I can't
bear to think of your not being happy together. Do try and be happy
together."
"But, Marianne dear, it's years now...."
"Yes, but it must be altered. Auntie, it must be altered. It would
make me so awfully happy."
"Oh, Marianne, Marianne, how excitable you are!..."
"Because I feel for people when I'm fond of them. There are people
who never feel and others who never speak out. I feel ... and I say
what I think. I'm like that. Mamma's different: she never speaks
out. I must speak out; I should choke if I didn't. I should like
to say everything, always. When I'm miserable, I want to say so;
when I feel happy, I want to say so. But it's not always possible,
Auntie.... Auntie, do try and be happy with Uncle. He is so nice,
he is so kind; and you were very fond of him once. It's a very long
time ago, I know; but you must begin and grow fond of each other
again. Tell me, can't you love him any more?"
"Dear...."
"Oh, I see it all: you can't! No, you can't love him any more. And
Uncle is so nice, so kind ... even though he is so quick-tempered
and excitable. He's so young still: he's just like a hot-headed
undergraduate sometimes, Henri said. In that scene with Papa, he
was just like a game-cock.... You know, in the family, the uncles
are afraid of Uncle Henri, because he always wants to be fighting
duels. But that's his quick temper; in reality, he's nice, he's kind. I
know it, Auntie, because, when Uncle sees me home, we talk about all
sorts of things, tell each other everything. You don't mind, Auntie,
do you? You're not jealous?"
"No, dear."
"No, you're not jealous. And Uncle Henri is my uncle too, isn't he,
and there's no harm in talking to him? He talks so nicely: time seems
to fly when Uncle's talking.... Tell me, Auntie, Brauws: is Brauws
really a gentleman? He has been a workman."
"Yes, but that was because he wanted to."
"I don't understand those queer men, do you? No, you don't either,
you can't understand such a queer man any more than I can. Just
imagine ... Uncle Henri as a labouring man! Can you imagine it? No,
no, not possibly! He speaks well, Brauws; and I raved about Peace
for a whole evening...."
"And since?"
"No. I don't rave over things long. Raving isn't the same as
feeling. When I really feel...."
"Well?"
"Then--I think--it is for always. For always."
"But, Marianne, darling, you mustn't be so sentimental!..."
"Well, what about you? You're crying again...."
"No, Marianne."
"Yes, you're crying. Let's cry together, Auntie. I feel as if I want
to cry with you; I'm in that sort of mood, I don't know why. There,
see, I am crying!..."
She knelt down by Constance; and her tears really came.
"Dear, you mustn't excite yourself like that. Some one is coming;
I hear Uncle...."
The girl recovered herself quickly as Van der Welcke entered the
room. He stood for a moment in the doorway, smiling his gay, boyish
smile, his blue eyes glowing with happiness. She looked at him for
a second.
"Well, Marianne ... I haven't seen you for ever so long...."
"Yes, you're always in that old car with Brauws.... And I've been an
absolute butterfly. Only think, at the Court ball, the other night,
just as the Queen entered the ball-room...."
She sat down and told her little budget of news in a voice that
seemed to come from far away. The dusk crept in and shadowed the room,
obliterating their outlines and the expression of their faces.
CHAPTER XV
"Isn't she coming?" asked Adolphine, with a sidelong glance at
the door.
It was Sunday evening, at Mamma van Lowe's, and it was after half-past
nine. It had been like that every Sunday evening since Constance
returned from Nice: the sidelong, almost anxious look towards the door;
the almost anxious question:
"Is she coming?"
"I shouldn't be surprised if she did to-night," said Floortje. "If so,
she's coming late, so as not to stay long."
Mother and daughter were sitting at the bridge-table with Uncle
Ruyvenaer and Jaap; and the cards fell slackly one upon the other,
uninterestingly, with a dull flop; and Floortje gathered in the tricks
mechanically, silently and greedily.
"What a frump Cateau looks to-night!" said Adolphine, with a furtive
glance at the second card-table.
"Like a washerwoman in satin," said Floortje.
"I say," said Uncle Ruyvenaer, burning to say something spiteful:
he was losing, couldn't get a hand, kept throwing his low cards,
furiously, one after the other, on Floortje's fat trumps. "I say,
it's high time Bertha interfered!"
"Why, what are you talking about?"
"What am I talking about? What everybody's talking about: that Marianne
is running after Van der Welcke in the most barefaced fashion."
"Aunt Bertha had better be very careful, with such a rotten cad as
Uncle van der Welcke," Floortje opined.
"I passed them the other evening on the Koninginnegracht," said Jaap.
"And what were they doing?"
"How were they walking?"
"They had hold of each other."
"How?"
"Well, he had his arm around her waist."
"Did you see it?"
"Did I see it? And he kept on spooning her all the time."
"And Bertha," said Adolphine, "who just acts as if she saw
nothing.... Good heavens, what a frump Cateau looks to-night!... She
doesn't seem to be coming, does she?"
"No, she doesn't seem to be coming now."
"How does Mamma take it, her staying away?"
"Mamma seems to get on without her," answered Uncle Ruyvenaer.
"Mamma can't really be fond of her."
"Or else Granny would insist on her coming," said Floortje.
"It's much quieter, now that she's staying away."
"Well, I don't mind a bit of a kick-up," said Jaap.
"Have you had to-day's Dwarskijker, Jaap?"
"Yes, but they've stopped putting in anything about us."
"It's really a piece of cheek on her part, not to come any more
on Sundays...."
"And to go rushing off to Nice...."
"And not even arrange to be back on New Year's Eve."
"Yes; and then we hear about 'longing for the family.'"
"And even on New Year's Eve...."
"She takes good care to keep away."
"Yes," said Adolphine sentimentally, "on New Year's Eve we ought all
to be here."
"Just so," said Uncle Ruyvenaer. "I agree."
"Then, if you've had a quarrel...."
"You make it up again...."
"And start quarrelling again, with renewed courage, on the first of
January," grinned Jaap.
"But--I've always said so--what Constance has not got is ... a heart,"
Adolphine continued, pathetically.
"Do you know what I think?" said Floortje, sinking her voice.
"What?"
"That she encourages Marianne."
"What for?"
"Well, deliberately."
"But what for?"
"Why, to be free of her husband."
"Of Van der Welcke?"
"Yes."
"To get ... rid of him?"
"Of course. He's young ... and she's old," said Floortje, not sparing
her mother, who was only four years younger than Constance.
"But do you believe...?" said Uncle, nodding his head.
"Oh, no, I don't say that!"
"But still...."
"I expect it's only just spooning ... as Jaap says."
"I don't think!" said Jaap, with a knowing grin.
"Behave yourself, Jaap!" said Adolphine, angry because Floortje had
used the word "old."
"Rats!" said Jaap, rudely, shrugging his shoulders, as much as to
say that Mamma was an idiot. "I'll eat my hat if it's only spooning."
They looked at one another: Uncle, Adolphine and Floortje.
"You mustn't speak like that," said Adolphine, in a tone of reprimand,
"when you don't know...."
"And what does Floortje know and what do you know? And you are both
just as bad as I am, with your insinuations.... Only, I say what you
and Floortje think...."
He flung down his cards and left his seat, because he couldn't stand
being treated like a little boy who didn't know things.
The three others went on talking about Marianne and Van der Welcke
... because they saw. But they saw nothing of Brauws and Constance
... and did not talk about them....
"Oh, dear!" whined Cateau. "What a frump Aunt Adolph-ine looks
to-night!"
She was sitting at the bridge-table with Aunt Ruyvenaer, Toetie
and Eduard van Raven and looked over her ample bust at each card as
she played it, very carefully, putting it down with her fat, stumpy
fingers, the incarnation of unctuous caution.
"To-night?" asked Eduard.
"Oh, so oft-en: such a frump!" declared Cateau, emphatically. "So
dowd-y!"
"She's your husband's sister, after all," said Aunt Ruyvenaer, quietly.
"Yes, Aunt-ie, I know.... But Ka-rel is al-ways a gen-tleman!"
"And Aunt Adolphine never," replied Van Raven, to provoke her.
There was no love lost between aunt and nephew; and Cateau said,
meekly:
"Well, I'm not say-ing it to say any-thing un-kind about
Adolph-ine.... But, Van Ra-ven, how ill Emilie-tje's looking: so
tired! Are you two all right to-gether?"
"Say, half right," said Van Raven, echoing her emphasis.
Toetie tittered behind her cards; and Auntie said:
"Ajo, [4] Edua-r-r-rd, you!... Attend to the game.... Your lead!"
Cateau was no match for Van Raven at laconic repartee and so she
preferred to go on talking about Constance and said:
"Is she nev-er com-ing to Mo-ther's Sun-days again? Ah, I ex-pect
she's been fright-ened away!"
"By you?" asked Eduard, gleefully capturing Cateau's knave of trumps.
"No, by the old aunts. It was re-ally ve-ry tactless ... of the two
old aunts.... Isn't it aw-ful: about Mari-anne and Van der Wel-cke?"
Karel, Van Saetzema and Dijkerhof were playing three-handed bridge at
the third table. They had begun in grim silence, each of them eager to
play the dummy, and inwardly Karel thought his sister Adolphine dowdy,
Van Saetzema thought his sister-in-law Cateau dowdy, while Dijkerhof
thought both his aunts very dowdy, hardly presentable. All three,
however, kept their thoughts locked up in the innermost recesses of
their souls, so that outwardly they were playing very seriously,
their eyes fixed greedily and attentively on the dummy's exposed
cards. Suddenly, however, Karel said:
"I say...."
"Well?" asked Van Saetzema.
"Isn't it caddish of Van der Welcke?"
"What? Compromising Marianne?"
"Ah, those girls of Aunt Bertha's!" said Dijkerhof, with a grin.
"What do you mean?" asked his father-in-law.
"Well, Louise is in love with her brother Otto, Emilie with her
brother Henri and now Marianne, by way of variety, goes falling in
love with her uncle."
"They're crazy, all that Van Naghel lot," said Karel, who felt
particularly fit and well that evening, puffing luxuriously after a
substantial dinner. "I say, what about Constance? Isn't she coming
any more?"
"It doesn't look like it."
"Isn't Aunt Constance coming any more?"
"No, it doesn't look like it."
"Father, it's my turn to take dummy."
"Yes, Saetzema, it's Dijkerhof's turn."
Father-in-law and son-in-law exchanged seats.
The old aunts were sitting in a corner near the door of the
conservatory:
"Rine."
"Yes, Tine."
"She doesn't seem to be coming any more on Sundays."
"No, Tine, she doesn't come on Sundays now."
"A good thing too!" Tine yelled into Rine's ear.
Mamma van Lowe, smiling sadly, moved from table to table, with Dorine,
asking the children if they wouldn't like something to drink.
CHAPTER XVI
"You're absolutely humanizing Brauws," said Van der Welcke to
Constance, when Brauws had accepted a second invitation to dinner. "And
with other people coming, too!... It's incredible!"
She was fond of seeing people whom she liked at her table; and she
took a pleasure in making her house comfortable for others as well
as for herself. Addie was to come down to dinner. Adeline was going
out for the first time after her recent confinement; and Gerrit was
glad to come, appreciated a good dinner. Her only fear had been that
Van Vreeswijck would think it too much of a family dinner this time.
"Tell me frankly, would you rather not come?" she asked Van Vreeswijck.
But he almost flushed as he said:
"But I'm delighted to come, mevrouw."
She had noticed lately that he was paying great attention to Marianne;
and she was almost glad of it.
They were very gay at dinner; and Brauws, feeling quite at home, talked
about America: how he had stood on the platform of an electric tram,
in wind and rain, as driver.
"Constance," said Paul, "all the social elements are assembled
at your dinner-table to-night! Did you choose them on purpose? Van
Vreeswijck represents the Court aristocracy; your husband, let us say,
the country aristocracy: it's the only word I can find for him; Gerrit
the army; Brauws labour; I the middle-classes, the pure unadulterated
capitalists; and your boy the future, the mysterious future! The
ladies are not so mixed: next time, you must mix your ladies...."
"Mr. Brauws," Marianne asked, suddenly, "why aren't you driving a
tram now?"
"Freule, [5] to explain that, I should have to talk to you for
two hours about myself; and you wouldn't be interested in the
explanation...."
"Oh, yes!" said Marianne, flippantly. "If you had remained a
tram-driver, your life would not have interested me. Now that you
have resigned your rank as a workman and are eating pate and drinking
champagne with us, it does interest me. For it's just that evolution
which attracts me...."
"Marianne!" said Paul, admonishing her. "Not so fast, child: you're
only a little girl and you mustn't discuss such questions. You'll be
making Mr. Brauws afraid to take another mouthful!..."
Brauws was obviously a little annoyed; and Constance whispered:
"Marianne ... don't talk like that...."
"But, Auntie...."
"No, dear, don't do it: don't talk like that...."
"Am I always saying tactless things?"
"No, no, but ... if you keep on, you'll really make Brauws refuse to
come to the houses of people like ourselves...."
"Who eat pate!"
"Hush, Marianne!"
"Uncle!" said Marianne to Van der Welcke.
"Yes?"
"Don't you think it silly? To become a workman and then leave
off? Why? That's what I want to know. If you want to become one,
you should remain one! Are you in sympathy with those ideas which
lead to nothing?"
"I'm very fond of Brauws, Marianne."
"But not of his ideas?"
"No, he's a monomaniac. He's mad on that point, or was."
"Just so: was."
"Marianne, are you always so implacable?"
The bells:
"No, I'm not implacable. Paul is really right: I mustn't talk like
that. I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head. Is Brauws
angry, do you think?"
"With you? No."
"I say, Uncle, do you think it's the least use, always thinking about
that improvement of social conditions? Why not, all of us, do good
where we can and, for the rest, try and be happy ourselves? That's
the great thing."
Van der Welcke laughed:
"What an easy solution, Marianne!"
"Tell me, Uncle: do you do a lot of good?"
"No."
"Are you happy?"
"Sometimes...."
"Not always.... I don't do any good either, or not much. I am happy
... sometimes. You see, I don't go very far, even according to my own
superficial creed. Uncle, are we very insignificant, should you say?"
"Who, baby?"
"You and I! Much more insignificant than Brauws?"
"I think so."
"Are we small?"
"Small?"
"Yes, are we small souls ... and is he ... is he a big one?"
"Perhaps, Marianne."
"Yes, I'm a small one. And you too ... I think. He's not. No, he's
one of the big ones ... though he is eating pate just now. But I,
a small soul, shall always like small souls best. I like you much
better than him."
"And yet he is more interesting than I; and one doesn't come across
many big souls."
"No, but I like you best. I daren't talk to him again. I should start
quarrelling with him at once. Straight away. I could never quarrel with
you. That's the sympathy between small soul ... and small soul. Tell
me, is your insignificance attracted to mine also?"
"Perhaps, Marianne."
"You say perhaps to everything. Say yes."
"Well, then, yes."
"Are we both small?"
"Yes."
"Both of us?"
"Yes."
"In sympathy?"
"Yes."
The bells:
"Yes--yes--yes!" she laughed; and the little bells tinkled merrily,
the shrill little silver bells. "Uncle, I drink to it."
"To what?"
"To our small ... sympathy."
"Here goes!"
Their champagne-glasses touched, with a crystal note. They drank.
"What are you drinking to?" asked Paul.
She put her finger to her tiny mouth. She was radiant and, in her
excitement, she became very pretty, with her shining eyes. She felt
that Brauws was looking at her; and she felt that Brauws was still
angry. And, feeling mischievous and happy, with a desire to tease them
all, Brauws, Paul and Van der Welcke, she murmured, with an airy grace:
"That's our secret; Uncle's and mine...."
"A secret?" asked Van Vreeswijck.
She laughed. The bells rang out merrily:
"And you," she said to Van Vreeswijck, maliciously, "you sha'n't know
the secret ever!..."
CHAPTER XVII
The men remained behind to smoke; Constance went to the drawing-room
with Adeline and Marianne.
"You're looking so happy to-night, Aunt Constance," said
Marianne. "Don't you think so, Aunt Adeline? Tell me why."
The girl herself looked happy, radiant as though with visible rays,
a great light flashing from her sparkling eyes.
"Yes, Auntie's looking very well," said the simple little fair-haired
woman.
"That's because I think it so nice to have all of you with me."
Marianne knelt down beside her, in her caressing way:
"She is so nice, isn't she, Aunt Adeline? I say, Aunt Adeline, isn't
she a darling? So nice, so jolly, so homy. I adore Aunt Constance
these days."
And she embraced Constance impetuously.
"Yes, Constance," said Adeline, "I'm very fond of you too."
And she took her sister-in-law's hand. She was a very gentle,
simple, fair-haired little woman, the quiet, obedient little wife
of her big, noisy Gerrit; and the family thought her insignificant
and boring. Because Constance had at once sought her affection and
valued her affection, she had, after her first surprise, grown very
fond of Constance. She never went out in the evening, because of
the children, except when Constance invited her. And she sat there,
happy to be with Constance, with her gentle smile on her round, fair,
motherly little face, pleasant and comfortable with her matronly
little figure, now too plump for prettiness.
The men joined them; and, when Constance saw Brauws come in with
the others, she thought that he looked strange, pale under the rough
bronze of his cheeks. His deep, grey eyes seemed to lose themselves
in their own sombre depths; and for the first time she examined
his features in detail: they were somewhat irregular in outline,
with the short-cropped hair; his nose was large and straight and the
heavy eyebrows arched sombrely over the sombre eyes; his temples were
broad and level; his cheekbones wide; and all that part of his face
was energetic, intelligent, rough and sombre, a little Gothic and
barbarian, but yet curiously ascetic, with the asceticism of the
thinker. But the mouth might have belonged to quite another face:
almost weak, more finely and purely drawn than any of his other
features; the lips fresh, without any heavy sensuality; the white
teeth seemed to hold a laughing threat as though they would bite: a
threat that gave him the look of a beast of prey. And yet that mouth,
the moustache and the chin had something more delicate about them,
as though they belonged to another face; his voice was gentle; and his
laugh, which every now and then burst out naturally and clearly, was
charming, had a note of kindliness, which softened all that was rough
and threatening into something surprisingly lovable. In his vigorous,
broad, powerful movements he had retained an almost unceremonious
freedom, which most certainly remained to him from his workman years:
an indifference to the chair in which he sat, to the mantelpiece
against which he leant; an indifference which seemed a strong and
virile, easy and natural grace in the man of culture whose hands had
laboured: something original and almost impulsive, which, when it did
not charm, was bound to appear antipathetic, rude and rough to any
one who was expecting the manners prescribed by social convention for
a gentleman in a drawing-room. Constance was sometimes surprised that
she, of all women, was not offended by this unceremonious freedom, that
she was even attracted by it; but a nervous girl like Marianne--herself
a delicate, fragile little doll of boudoir culture--would tingle
to her finger-tips with irritation at that impulsive naturalness,
which was too spacious for her among the furniture of Aunt Constance'
drawing-room. And a sort of uncontrollable resentment surged through
her when Brauws came to where she sat and said:
"Do you always ... take such an interest in evolution, freule?"
She looked up at him quickly. He was bending forward a little, in a
protecting and almost mocking attitude; and she saw only the barbaric,
Teutonic part of his head and the beast-of-prey threat of his handsome
teeth. She hated it all, because it was very strong and as it were
hostile to her caste. She answered, with cool irony:
"No, Mr. Brauws, only in your case."
"And to what do I owe the honour?" asked Brauws.
"It's only natural. You were not like everybody ... once. Now that
I am meeting you just as I meet everybody, it interests me to know
how it came about."
"From weakness, you think? Is that your secret idea?"
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps you are right. And, if it were so, would you despise me?"
The conversation was getting on her nerves. She tried to evade it:
"You may be weak, you may be strong," she said, irritably. "I don't
know ... and ... it doesn't interest me so very much."
"It did just now."
Again she looked up quickly, with the quick, nervous grace of all her
movements, and it flashed upon her that he was very angry with her,
very hostile towards her.
"Aunt Constance!" she called. "Do come and help me. Mr. Brauws isn't
at all nice."
Constance came up.
"He's not nice, your friend," Marianne went on, like a spoilt child,
a little frightened. "He wants ... he absolutely insists on quarrelling
with me. Do take my part!"
And she suddenly flitted away to another chair and, bending behind
her fan to Van der Welcke:
"That Brauws man is a most disagreeable person. Why can't he let
me alone?"
She felt safe with him, this man of her own class, who joined hands
with her own selfish, happiness-craving youth--for he was young--a
small soul, like hers. Her small soul hung on his eyes; and she felt
that she loved him. As long as she did not think about it and abandoned
herself to her overflowing happiness, she remained happy, full of
radiance; it was only at home that it cost her tears and bitter agony.
"You're surely not angry with my little niece?" asked Constance.
He was still pale, under the rough bronze of his cheeks.
"Yes," he said, sombrely.
"Why?" she asked, almost beseechingly. "She is a child!"
"No, she is not merely a child. She represents to me...."
"What?..."
"All of you!" he said, roughly, with a wave of his hand.
"Whom do you mean?"
"Her caste, to which you yourself belong. What am I here for? Tell
me what I am here for. A single word from that delicate, lily-white
child, who hates me, has made me ask myself, what am I here for,
among all of you? I'm out of place here."
"No. You are our friend, Henri's friend."
"And yours?"
"And mine."
"Already?"
"Already. So don't think that you are out of place here."
"You also are a woman ... of your caste," he said, gloomily.
"Can I help that?" she asked, half laughing.
"No. But why friendship? Our ideas remain poles apart."
"Ideas? I have none. I have never thought."
"Never thought?"
"No."
"You are a woman: you have only felt."
"Not that either."
"Not felt? But then what have you done?"
"I do not believe that I have lived."
"Not ever?"
"No, not ever."
"How do you know that now?"
"I am beginning to feel it now, by degrees. No doubt because I am
getting old now."
"You are not old."
"I am old."
"And thinking: are you also beginning to think?"
"No, not yet."
"But, by the way you speak of yourself, you are quite young!"
"Don't be angry with that child!" she entreated, turning the
conversation. "She is a nice girl, I am very fond of her ... but she
sometimes says things...."
"Do you like her?"
"Yes."
"I don't. I could almost say, I hate her as she hates me."
"Why?" she asked, in a frightened voice. "You don't know her. You
can't hate her."
"I am different from other people, am I not, mevrouw? I say different
things and I say them differently. You know it, you knew it before
I entered your house!" he said, almost fiercely.
"What do you mean?"
"I want to say something to you."
"What is it?"
"That child ... that delicate, that lily-white child ... is...."
"What?"
"The danger to your domestic happiness."
She gave a violent start:
"What do you mean?"
"She's in love with Hans."
"Hush!" she whispered, trembling, and laid her hand on his
hand. "Hush!"
"She is in love with Hans."
"How do you know?"
"I see it.... It radiates from their whole being...."
They both of them looked at Van der Welcke and Marianne. The two were
whispering together with a glance and a smile, half-hidden behind
a fan, while Paul, Gerrit and Van Vreeswijck were in the midst of
an eager discussion and Addie gallantly entertaining Aunt Adeline,
who was smiling gently.
"Please hush!" Constance entreated again, very pale. "I know she's
in love with him."
"You know it?"
"Yes."
"Has she told you?"
"No. But I see it radiating out of her, as you see it. But she is no
danger ... to my domestic happiness. That happiness lies in my son,
not in my husband."
"I like Hans," he said, almost reproachfully. "I have always liked him,
perhaps just because he was always a child--and I already a man--when
we were boys. He is still a child. He also ... loves her. You see,
I say different things from other people, because I don't know how
to talk...."
"I know," she whispered, "that he loves her."
"You know?"
"Yes."
"Has he told you?"
"No. But I see it radiating out of him as I do out of her."
"So do I."
"Hush, please hush!"
"What's the use of hushing? Everybody sees it."
"No, not everybody."
"If we see it, everybody sees it."
"No."
"I say yes. I know that your brothers see it."
"No.... Please, please ... don't speak of it, don't speak of it,
don't speak of it!"
"She is happy!"
"She must be suffering as well."
"But she gives herself up to her happiness. She is young, she does
not reflect ... any more than Hans does. I am sorry ... for your
sake, mevrouw."
"It is no sorrow to me for my own sake.... I am sorry ... for
hers. Don't be angry with the child! Who knows what she suffers! Don't
be angry because she ... annoyed you at dinner, with her questions."
"One can't control one's likes ... or one's dislikes."
"No. But I do like the girl ... and I want you to try, as our friend,
not to hate her.... How seriously we're talking! I can't talk like
that: I'm not used to it. I confess to you honestly, I'm getting
frightened...."
"Of me?..."
"You're too big ... to hate a child like that."
"I'm not big at all.... I am very human. I sometimes feel very
small. But you are right: to hate that child, for a single word
which she said, for a touch of hostility which I felt in her, is very
small. Thanks for the rebuke. I won't hate her, I promise you."
At first, the sombre austerity of his frown and his expression had
almost terrified her. She now saw his lips laugh and his face light up.
"I'm going to apologize."
"No, don't do that."
"Yes, I will."
He went to Marianne; and Constance heard him say:
"Freule, I want to make friends."
She did not catch what Marianne answered, but she heard the little
bells of Marianne's laughter and saw her put out her hand to Brauws. It
was a reconciliation; and yet she felt that the hostility continued
to exist, irreconcilably, like a hostility that was too deep-seated,
going down to the fundamental antagonism of caste, even though this
was innate in her and cultivated in him....
"And why," she thought, "do not I feel that hostility?..."
CHAPTER XVIII
There was a big official dinner at Van Naghel's; and the guests were
expected in three-quarters of an hour.
"Mamma," whined Huigje to Frances, as she was dressing, "what's
happening?"
"There are people coming," said Frances, without looking up.
"What sort of people, Mamma?"
"Oh, there's a dinner-party, dear!" said Frances, irritably.
Huigje did not know what a dinner-party was:
"What's dinner-party?" he asked his little sister Ottelientje.
"Things to eat," said Ottelientje, importantly.
"Things to eat?"
"Yes, nice things ... ices."
"Shall we have dinner-party, Mamma, and ices?" whined Huigje.
"Allah, [6] baboe, [7] keep the sinjo [8] with you!... But, baboe,
do me up first."
Otto, who now had a billet at the Foreign Office, came in, followed
by Louise.
"Oh, aren't you dressing, Louise?" said Frances.
"No, I'm not going down," she answered. "I shall have my meal with
the children and with Marietje and Karel, in the nursery."
"I don't want you to have your dinner with the children," said Frances,
fastening her bracelet.
"No," said Louise, gently, "but I'm having dinner with Karel and
Marie in any case."
"One would think you were mad," said Frances. "Why aren't you at
the dinner?"
"I arranged it with Mamma. There's a place short."
"But you're not a child!"
"Frances, what do I care about these dinners?" said Louise, with a
gentle little laugh.
"If there's a place short," said Frances, working herself up about
nothing, "I'll have my dinner with the children."
"Frances, please...."
"I will!"
"But, Frances, why make difficulties when there are none?" Louise
replied, very gently. "Really, it has all been arranged ... with
Mamma."
"I'm only a step-daughter!" cried Frances.
"You mean, a daughter-in-law!" Otto put in, with a laugh.
"A step-daughter!" Frances repeated, trembling with nervous
irritation. "You're a daughter. Your place is at the dinner."
"Frances, I assure you, I'm not going in to dinner," said Louise,
quietly but decidedly.
"Oh, shut up, Frances!" said Otto.
But Frances wanted to get angry, about nothing, merely for the sake
of working herself up. She scolded the baboe, pushed the children
out of her way, broke a fan:
"There, I've smashed the rotten thing!"
"Is that your new fan?" asked Otto, furiously.
"Yes. R-r-rootsh!... There, it's in shreds!"
He flew into a rage:
"You needn't think I'll ever give you anything again!... You're not
worth it!"
"That's right, then you can give everything to your sister:
you're fonder of Louise as it is ... you're in love with
Louise. R-r-rootsh!... R-r-rootsh!"
And she sent the fan flying across the room, in pieces.
"Eh, njonja!" [9] said the baboe in mild astonishment.
"You're a regular nonna, [10] that's what you are!" said Otto,
flushing angrily.
But his wife laughed. The broken fan had relieved her, made her
feel livelier:
"Give me that other fan, baboe."
She was ready. She looked at her face in the glass, added a touch of
powder and smiled. She thought that she looked nice, though she was
a little pale and thin. Suddenly, she sat down, straight up in a chair:
"I feel so faint!" she murmured.
Louise went to her:
"What's the matter, Frances?"
"I feel so faint!" she said, almost inaudibly.
She was as white as a sheet.
"Give me some eau-de-Cologne...."
"What's the matter with you now?" cried Otto, in despair.
"Baboe," said Louise, "get some vinegar; mevrouw's fainting."
"No," moaned Frances, "vinegar ... stains ... one's ... things.... Mind
... my ... dress. Eau ... de ... Cologne."
Louise dabbed her forehead.
"Don't ruffle my hair!" screamed Frances.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" she moaned, the next second.
She rested her head against Louise:
"Louise!"
"What is it, Frances?"
"I haven't been nice to you.... I'm going to die."
"No, no, you're not."
"Yes, I am.... Huigje! Ottelientje! Mamma's going to die."
Otto took the children out of the room.
"Leave them with me!" she moaned. "I'm dying!..."
"No, Frances. But won't you lie down a little? Take off your
things? Lie down on your bed?"
"No ... no ... I'm a little better.... I must go down...."
"Are you feeling better?"
"Yes.... Give me some ... eau-de-Cologne.... Oh, Louise, everything
suddenly went black!..."
"You felt giddy, I expect. Did you take your drops to-day?"
"Yes, but they're no good, those drops. I'm much better now,
Louise. Are you angry with me?..."
"No."
"For saying Otto was in love with you?"
"Oh, nonsense, Frances!"
"Yes, he is in love with you. You're mad, you two: brother and
sister; I never heard of such a thing.... I'm better, Louise. Will
you help me downstairs? And will you ... will you have your dinner
with the children? That's sweet of you.... You see, the foreign
secretary's coming and that's why Papa wants Otto and me to be at the
dinner. Otherwise I don't care about that sort of thing.... I'm much
better now, Louise.... Come, take me downstairs."
She stood up and Louise helped her down the stairs, tenderly.
The maids were running upstairs, downstairs and along the passages;
footmen were waiting in the hall; the house was one blaze of light. In
the drawing-room, Bertha, already dressed, was speaking to Willem,
the butler; the doors were open, showing the long table glittering
through its flowers.
"What's the matter with Frances?" asked Bertha, seeing Frances come
in slowly, looking very pale, leaning on Louise's arm.
"I'm better now, Mamma.... I thought I was dying...."
At that moment, there was a loud peal at the front-door bell.
"Who can that be?"
One of the footmen opened the door.
"Who is it?" asked Bertha, softly, from the stairs.
"It's I, Mamma!"
"Emilie!"
"Yes ... I...."
Emilie came up. She had flung down a wet waterproof in the hall and
was very pale; her hair hung in disorder over her face.
"But, Emilie ... what's the matter?"
She had flown upstairs precipitately, seeing nothing; now she suddenly
perceived the rooms, all open and lit up, with the long table and
the flowers; and she remembered that there was a dinner-party....
"I've run away!" she said. "I'm not going back!"
"Run away!"
"Yes. Eduard struck me ... and insulted me ... insulted me.... I
won't go back home.... I shall stay here!"
"Emilie! Good heavens!"
"Unless you turn me away.... Then I'll go into the streets, I don't
know where ... to Leiden ... to Henri.... I'll go to Henri. Understand
what I say, Mamma: I'll never go back to Eduard."
Van Naghel appeared at the door:
"What's happened, Emilie?"
"Papa, Papa, I've run away...."
"Run away...."
"From Eduard. It's a dog's life. He's a miser. He's always bullying
me, reproaching me, saying that I spend too much money ... that my
parents, yes, that you ... that you spend too much money! He's mad
with meanness. He locks up my linen-cupboard ... because I wear
too many chemises and send too many things to the wash and employ
too expensive a laundress! He grudges me more than one chemise a
week! He's mad ... he's gone mad! For a whole week, I put on three
fresh chemises a day, to annoy him, and I threw all those chemises
into his dirty-clothes-basket, to annoy him! He found them this
morning! I told him that I was the mistress of my own chemises and
that I should wear just as many as I pleased. Then he flew into a
passion and he struck me...."
She burst out laughing:
"I flung all my chemises at his head!" she screamed, hysterically. "And
he flung them all back. The room was one vast chemise!... Oh, it's
terrible.... It's a dog's life. I won't go back to him.... Papa,
I needn't go back to him, need I?"
"Emilie, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
She threw herself upon her father, crushed herself against the orders
on his breast:
"Oh, Papa, I am so unhappy! I can't stand any more of it: I am so
unhappy!"
Marianne came in. She was looking very pretty: a delicate, fair little
society-girl, in her low-necked white frock. She heard Emilie's last
words, saw her pale, thin, dishevelled:
"Emilietje!... Sissy!... What is it?" she exclaimed. "Oh, that horrid
man! It's that horrid man!"
Bertha shut her eyes:
"Emilie," she said, wearily.
"Mamma, don't be angry ... but I'm staying!"
The bell rang.
"There's the bell, Emilie!" said Van Naghel, sternly.
"I'm going, Papa...."
She looked around her in perplexity, not knowing which door to go
out by.
"Come with me," said Louise, quickly.
And, taking Emilie almost in her arms, she hurried her away.
The first arrivals were coming up the stairs. Louise and Emilie just
managed to escape into a little boudoir. But the doors were open.
"We can run across the passage presently," whispered Louise.
"Just think," whispered Emilie, "he's absolutely mad! He interferes
with the cook's housekeeping-book. He checks what she spends each
day.... He's mad, he's mad! He won't eat at meals, so as to save a
bit of meat for next day. And, when we give a little dinner, nothing's
good enough. It's all for people, all for show: he'd starve, in order
to give his friends champagne!"
"Hush, Emilie!"
They heard the exchange of greetings in the drawing-room; their
parents' well-bred, expressionless voices; Marianne's nervous, tinkling
laugh; Otto and Frances making up to the foreign secretary. It all
sounded false. The bell kept on ringing. More guests came upstairs,
with a rustle of skirts, a creaking of shoes....
"We can't get away!" said Emilie, plaintively, almost collapsing in
Louise's arms.
They succeeded in running upstairs between two rings at the bell. The
table was laid in the nursery: Karel and Marietje were there, playing
with Ottelientje and Huig; the baboe sat huddled in a corner.
"I'll have something with you!" said Emilie. "I'm faint with
hunger.... What a day, good God, what a day!"
"We'll get something to eat in between," said Louise. "Come, Emilie,
come to my room."
And, as if they were fleeing again, this time from the children,
she dragged Emilie up to her own room.
"Emilie, do be sensible!" she implored.
"Louise, I mean what I said, give me a glass of wine, a biscuit,
anything: I'm sinking...."
Louise went out and Emilie was left alone. She looked around the
bright, cosy sitting-room, stamped with the gentle personality of its
owner: there were many books about; the doors of a book-case were open.
"The dear girl!" thought Emilie, lying back wearily in a chair. "She
lives her own life peacefully ... and, when there's anything wrong,
she's the one who helps. Her life just goes on, the same thing day
after day! She was a girl while we were still children; and, properly
speaking, we never knew her as we know one another. She's fond of
Otto, just as I'm very fond of Otto ... but, apart from that, her
life just goes on in the same way.... She's always silent.... She
just lives and reads up here ... and, if there's anything wrong,
she's the one who helps.... What have I done, my God, what have I
done!... But I won't go back!..."
Louise returned, with a glass of wine and a few biscuits.
"We're dining presently," she said. "There, drink that and be sensible,
Emilie. Does Eduard know you're here?"
"No. He was out when I left. I waited till he was out.... Louise,
I won't go back! I've telegraphed to Henri to help me. I'm expecting
him here."
They heard voices below.
"Listen!" said Louise.
"Who is it?"
"Perhaps it's some one who has come late.... But that's
impossible.... I hear a noise on the stairs...."
"My God!" cried Emilie. "It's Eduard! Hide me! Say you don't know
where I am!"
"I can't do that, Emilie. Keep calm, Emilie, be sensible. Go to my
bedroom, if you like...."
Emilie fled. It was a renewed flight, the fluttering of a young bird,
a frail butterfly, hither and thither. Her eyes seemed to be seeking,
vaguely and anxiously.... She and Louise had to go down to the next
landing and Emilie managed to escape to Marianne's room, once the
boudoir which they had shared between them:
"My own little room!" she sobbed, throwing herself into a chair.
The gas was half-lowered. Everywhere lay things of Marianne's; the
dressing-table was in disorder, as though Marianne had had to dress
quickly and hurriedly for the dinner-party.
"How nice she looked!" sobbed Emilie. "My little sister, my dear
little sister! O God, they say she's in love with Uncle Henri!"
She sprang up again in nervous restlessness, turned the gas on,
looked round, anxiously, feeling lost, even in this room:
"His portrait!" she cried. "Uncle Henri's portrait!"
She saw Van der Welcke's photograph. True, it was between Constance'
and Addie's; but there was another on Marianne's writing-table.
"My little sister, my poor little sister!" sobbed Emilie.
And she dropped limply into another chair, on the top of a corset and
petticoats of Marianne's. She lay like that, with drooping arms, among
her sister's things. Suddenly she sat up. She heard voices outside,
in the passage: Louise with Eduard, her husband.
"She's mad, she's mad!" he was snarling. "She's run away! The servant
didn't know where to. Where is she, where is she?"
"She's here," said Louise, calmly.
"Where?"
"She's resting. But keep calm, Eduard, and don't let them hear you
downstairs. There's a dinner-party."
"I don't care! I insist...."
"I insist that you keep quiet and don't make a scene...."
"Where is Emilie?"
"If you're quiet, you can speak to her. If you shout like that,
so that you can be heard downstairs, I'll send a message to Papa."
Emilie, on tenterhooks, quivering in every nerve, stood up and opened
the door:
"I am here," she said.
She stood in front of her husband. He was no longer the dapper
nonentity; he stood there coarse, raving, like a clod-hopper:
"You're coming home with me!" he shouted. "This minute!"
"Eduard!" Louise entreated. "Don't shout. Come in."
She pushed him into Marianne's room.
"You're coming home!" he shouted again. "Are you coming? Are you
coming?"
"No, I'm not," said Emilie.
"You're not?"
"No! I won't go back to you."
"You've got to!"
"I want a divorce."
"I don't; and you're coming home."
"I'm not going home. You've struck me ... and I'm placing myself under
my father's protection. I don't know the law, but I'm not going to
be struck by you."
"If you don't come ... I'll make you, I'll thrash you to the door."
She gave a contemptuous laugh:
"You're not a man," she said. "You're a cowardly brute!"
He raved as though beside himself. He cursed and foamed at the
mouth. Louise stared at him in dismay; hardly knew him, now that he
had lost all his veneer of manner, all his German, would-be correct
politeness.
"Home you go!" he roared again, pointing to the door with his finger.
"I am not going."
He flew at her, seized her by her frail shoulders, shook her, his
mouth distorted by passion, his eyes starting out of his head, like
a madman's. She writhed herself free, struck him full in the face. He
hit her back.
"Eduard! Emilie!" screamed Louise.
Her anger gave her strength. She threw herself upon her brother-in-law,
strong in her indignation, pushed him away from his wife.
"Go away!" she cried aloud, clasping Emilie in her arms. "Go away! Out
of the room!"
"I want my wife back!"
Louise calmed herself:
"Eduard," she said, quietly, "leave the room."
"No."
"Once more, Eduard, leave the room, or I'll send one of the men to
Papa. If you want to make a scandal, very well, do; but you'll be
the chief sufferer."
He suddenly remembered the Hague, his career....
"Go out of the room, Eduard."
"He's hurt me!" moaned Emilie. "I've got a pain, here...."
She lay like a dead thing in her sister's arms.
"Eduard, go out of the room."
"I'll go," he said. "But I shall stay until the dinner is over...."
He went away.
"The wretch! The wretch!" moaned Emilie. "He's bruised my breast. Lucky
that he did: now I can get a divorce, can't I, Louise?... Louise,
do you know the law?"
"No, my darling, but Papa will tell you all about it. But keep calm,
keep calm...."
"Where has he gone?"
"If you don't mind being left alone, I'll go and see...."
"No, stay with me, stay with me...."
There was a knock at the door.
"Who's there?"
An old nurse entered:
"Freule," she said to Louise, "meneer asks if you'll please not talk
so loud up here. Meneer can hear Mr. van Raven's voice."
"Where is Mr. van Raven now?"
"The blackguard has gone to Mr. Frans and Mr. Henri's sitting-room."
"Very well, Leentje, we'll make less noise. But you mustn't talk
like that."
"It hurts!" moaned Emilie.
The woman looked at her compassionately:
"The dirty blackguard!" she said. "Did he hit you, my poor dear?..."
"Leentje, I won't have you speak like that!" said Louise.
"And I'll tell him to his face ... that he's a dirty blackguard,"
the old nurse insisted, obstinately.
She knelt beside Emilie, opened the girl's blouse and softly rubbed
her breast:
"The blackguard!" she repeated.
The sisters let her alone. They were silent, all three; the room
was all in confusion. Emilie had dropped back again limply among
Marianne's clothes. Leentje got up and began tidying.
"Louise," whispered Emilie.
"My poor sissy!"
"I see Uncle Henri's portrait there.... And there.... And another
over there.... Marianne's fond of Uncle Henri...."
"Yes, but hush!"
"She's fond of him ... she's in love with him, Louise."
"Yes, I know. Hush, Emilie!"
"Does Mamma know?"
"We don't talk about it. But I think so."
"Does everybody know?"
"No, no, not everybody!"
"Does Marianne never talk about it?"
"No, never."
"Is there nothing to be done? Aunt Adolphine and Aunt Cateau were
speaking of it the other day. Everybody knows about it."
"No, no, not everybody, surely?"
"Yes, everybody. And everybody knows too that Eduard beats
me.... Louise!"
"Ssh! I hear voices."
"That's ... Henri!"
"Yes, it's Henri's voice...."
"And Eduard...."
"Heavens!... Leentje!" cried Louise. "Go to Mr. Henri and Mr. Eduard
and tell them that Papa doesn't wish them to speak loud."
"The blackguard!" said Leentje.
She left the room and went down the stairs. The whole house was lit up,
the doors of the reception-rooms were open; one caught the glitter of
the dinner-table amid its flowers and the sound of laughing voices:
a soft, well-bred society-ripple, a ring of silver, a faint tinkling
of crystal.
"The blackguard!" thought the old nurse.
She was down in the hall now: from the kitchen came the voices of
bustling maids, of the chef, the footmen. The cloak-room was lighted
and open, was full of wraps and overcoats. On the other side of the
hall was the sitting-room of the two undergraduates.
Old Leentje opened the door. She saw Van Raven standing opposite Henri;
their voices clashed, in bitter enmity:
"Then why did Emilie telegraph to me?"
"I don't know; but our affairs don't concern you."
"Mr. Henri, Mr. Eduard," said the old nurse, "your papa asks, will
you please not speak loud...."
"Where is Emilie?" asked Henri.
"The poor dear is in Marianne's room," said Leentje. "Come with me,
my boy...."
She took Henri, who was shaking all over, by the hand. And, as she
left the room with Henri, she said, out loud:
"The blackguard!"
"Who?" asked Henri.
"He!"
"What has he done?"
"What hasn't he done!"
She hesitated to tell him, dreading his temper, went cautiously up
the stairs, past the open doors of the lighted rooms.
Henri caught a glimpse of the dinner-table, through the flowers, and
of three of the guests talking and laughing, lightly and pleasantly,
in their well-bred, expressionless voices.
And then he found his two sisters in Marianne's room. As soon as
Emilie saw him, she threw herself into his arms:
"Henri!"
"Sissy, what is it?"
She told him, briefly.
"The cad!" he cried. "The cad! Has he hit you? I'll ... I'll ..."
He wanted to rush downstairs; they held him back:
"Henri, for goodness' sake," Louise entreated, "remember there are
people here!"
"Don't you all want your dinner?" asked Karel, at the door. "We're
starving."
They went to the nursery, as it had been called for years, and sat
down to table.
"I'm not hungry now," said Emilie.
"I don't want anything either," said Henri. "I'm calmer now ... and
I'm going downstairs."
They held him back again. And the time dragged on. Ottelientje and
Huig were put to bed; Karel went to do his home-work; Marietje hung
round her elder sisters, inquisitively. And they listened, with the
doors open, to the sounds below.
"They've finished dinner...."
"Yes, I can hear them in the drawing-room...."
Marianne suddenly came running upstairs, appeared in the doorway,
looking very white and sweet:
"I couldn't bear it any longer!" she exclaimed. "The dinner's over. I
escaped for a moment. Emilie! Sissy!"
"He's here!" said Emilie. "Eduard: he's waiting downstairs. He wants
to take me home with him. You must all help me. He struck me!"
"My sissy, my sissy!" cried Marianne, excitedly, wringing her arms
and her hands, kissing Emilie. "Is he downstairs? I'll tell Papa. I
daren't stay any longer. Oh, those tiresome people down there! It's
nearly nine. They'll be gone in an hour. Now I must go."
And she started to hurry away.
"Marianne!" said Henri.
"What is it?"
"I want to speak to you presently."
"Very well, presently."
And she flitted down the stairs.
"How pretty she's growing!" said Henri.
"And I," said Emilie, "so ugly!"
She leant against Louise. They heard a rustle on the stairs. It was
Bertha herself:
"My child!"
"Mamma!"
"I managed to slip away, just for a moment. My dear child!"
"Eduard is here, Mamma. He's downstairs. He wants to take me away with
him. He is waiting till the people are gone. He was shouting so...."
"I heard him."
"We told him to be quiet. I won't go with him, Mamma. I'll stay with
you, I'll stay with you. He struck me!"
"The cad!" cried Henri, pale in the face.
"The dirty blackguard!" said the old nurse.
Bertha, very pale, shut her eyes, heaved a deep sigh:
"My child, my dear child ... be sensible, make it up."
"But he is brutal to me, Mamma!"
She flung herself, sobbing, into Bertha's arms.
"My darling!" Bertha wept. "I can't stay away any longer."
She released herself, went away; her dress rustled down the stairs. Her
guests were sitting in the drawing-room; one or two looked at her
strangely, because she had absented herself. In a moment she was once
more the tactful, charming hostess.
Marianne, with a smile on her face, had gone to Van Naghel's study,
where the men were having their coffee, smoking:
"Papa...."
"What is it, dear?"
"Eduard is downstairs!" she whispered. "I only came to tell you. He
wants to take Emilie with him. He has struck her."
"Tell him I'll speak to him ... as soon as our visitors have gone."
And, as the host, he turned to his guests again.
Marianne went downstairs, found Eduard in the boys' sitting-room. He
was quietly smoking.
"Papa will speak to you as soon as they're all gone. The carriages
will be here in three-quarters of an hour."
"Very well," he said laconically.
Her blood seethed up:
"You're a cowardly wretch!" she cried. "You've struck Emilie!"
He flared up, losing all his stiff German society-manners:
"And I'm her husband!" he roared. "But you ... you ..."
"What about me?"
"You've no decency! You're in love with your uncle! With a married
man!"
"O-o-oh!" screamed Marianne.
She hid her face with her hands, terrified. Then she recovered herself,
but her pale face flushed red with shame:
"You don't know what you're saying!" she said, haughtily, trying
to withdraw into her maidenly reserve. "You don't know what you're
saying. But your manners are only put on, for strangers. And at heart
you're a cowardly cad, a cowardly cad, who strikes and insults women."
He made an angry movement at her words.
"You're not going to strike me, I suppose?" she said, drawing herself
up haughtily. "You've insulted me: isn't that enough for you?"
She made an effort to turn away calmly, walked out of the room, up
the stairs. The sobs welled up in her throat; she could no longer
keep them back:
"O God!" she thought. "Everybody knows it. Everybody sees it. I
can't keep it hidden: I love him, I love him!... Hush! Hush! I must
suppress it, deep, deep down in myself. But, if I love him, if I love
him ... if I am happy when I see him.... Oh, hush, hush!"
She pressed her two hands to her breast, as though to thrust her
emotion deep down in her soul. She wiped her eyes, had the strength
to return to the drawing-room. She talked gaily and pleasantly,
as the daughter of the house, but she suddenly felt tired to death:
"Everybody knows it, everybody sees it," she kept on thinking; and she
tried to read in the faces of the guests what they saw, what they knew.
It was over at last. The butler was continually coming to the
door, announcing the carriages. Those people would not remain much
longer. It was ten o'clock; and they began to say good-bye. They
followed one after the other, at short intervals, as is proper at
big dinner-parties.... There was only one of the ministers left,
talking earnestly to Van Naghel, in a low voice, probably about some
government matter: he was not thinking yet of going.... But at last he
also hastened away, apologizing. And Van Naghel and Bertha, Marianne,
Frances and Otto all listened while he put on his overcoat downstairs,
said a word to the butler.... The front-door slammed. They were alone.
They looked at one another....
And, as if driven by an irresistible impulse, Van Naghel went
downstairs, to his son-in-law, and Bertha and Marianne upstairs,
to Emilie....
"Mamma, have you come to me at last?" said Emilie, plaintively. "Mamma,
I shall stay here: I won't go back...."
She was clutching Henri desperately; and Marianne went up to her,
comforted her, kissed her.
"Marianne," said Henri, "here, a minute...."
He led her out into the passage:
"Marianne," he said, "you don't know how fond I am of you ... almost as
fond as of Emilie. Marianne, let me just say this to you: be sensible;
everybody's talking about it...."
"Everybody?" she asked, frightened; and she did not even ask what it
was, because she understood.
"You even know it yourself then?" he asked, quickly, to take her
by surprise.
She withdrew into the mysterious recesses of her little soul, which
was too transparent, reflected its radiance too much; she wanted to
veil that radiance from him and from the others:
"What?" she said. "There's nothing to know!... Everybody? Everybody
who? Everybody what?..."
"Everybody's talking about it, about Uncle Henri's making love to you?"
She tried to laugh; and the little silver bells sounded shrill
and false:
"Making love to me?... Uncle Henri?... People are mad!"
"You were out with him yesterday ... in a motor-car."
"And what is there in that?"
"Don't do it again."
"Why not?"
"Everybody's talking about it."
Again she tried to laugh; and the little silver bells sounded shrill
and false:
"Uncle Henri!" she said. "Why, he might be my father!"
"You know you don't mean what you say."
"Uncle Henri!"
"He is a young man.... Marianne, tell me that it's not true...."
"That he makes love to me? I'm fond of him ... just as I'm fond of
Aunt Constance."
"That you love him. There, you can't deny it. You love him."
"I do not love him," she lied.
"Yes, you do, you love him."
"I do not love him."
"Yes, you do."
"Very well, then, I do!" she said, curtly. "I love him. What then?"
"Marianne...."
"I like being with him, like talking to him, cycling with him,
motoring with him: what then? There's no harm in it; and ... I love
Aunt Constance too."
"Marianne, I've warned you," he said, sadly. "Be sensible."
"Yes," she answered. "But you be sensible also."
"How do you mean?"
"Be sensible with Eduard! Control your temper, Henri! It can only
make things worse, if you don't control your temper."
"I will control myself!" he promised, clenching his fists as he spoke.
"Henri...."
"I hate the bounder ... I could murder him, wring his neck."
"Henri, be quiet, I hear Papa coming."
"Promise me, Marianne, that you will be careful."
"Yes, Henri. And you promise me also, Henri, that you will be careful."
"I promise you."
She went up to him, put her arms round his neck:
"My brother, my poor brother!"
"My dear little sister, my little sister!"
"Hush, hush!..."
"Hush!..."
"Here's Papa...."
Van Naghel came up the stairs.
And they went with him into the nursery, where Bertha was waiting
with Emilie, Otto and Frances.
"Eduard has gone now," said Van Naghel, quietly. "I calmed him down;
he is coming back to-morrow, to talk things over. You can stay here
to-night, Emilie."
"Papa, I won't go back to him!"
"No, Emilie," cried Frances, excitedly, "you can't go back to him!"
"Be quiet, Frances," said Van Naghel, severely. And he repeated,
"You ... can ... stay here, Emilie ... to-night...."
He suddenly turned purple.
"Tell me what the law is, Papa," Emilie insisted.
"The law?" asked Van Naghel. "The law?..."
And, almost black in the face, he pulled at his collar.
"Bertha!" he cried, in a hoarse voice.
They were all terrified....
He tore open his collar, his tie, his shirt:
"Air!" he implored.
And his eyes started from his head, he staggered, fell into a chair.
Louise rang the bell. The girls screamed for the maids, the
butler. Henri flew down the stairs to fetch a doctor.
It was was too late....
Van Naghel lay dead, struck down by apoplexy.
CHAPTER XIX
The winter months dragged sadly and monotonously past, with their
continual rains and no frost: even such snow as fell melted at once
in the raw, damp atmosphere. But the wind blew all the time, kept on
blowing from some mysterious cloud-realm, carrying the clouds with
it, violet clouds and grey clouds, a never-ending succession, which
came sailing over the trees in the Woods as though over the sea. And
Constance followed them with her eyes, vaguely and dreamily, dreaming
on and on in an endless reverie. The clouds sailed everlastingly on the
wind; and the wind blew everlastingly, like an everlasting storm, not
always raging, but always rustling, sometimes high up above the trees,
sometimes straight through the trees themselves. Constance remained
mostly at home and sat by her window during those short afternoons,
which she lengthened out in the dim shadows of the fire-lit room,
where at three o'clock dusk was falling.... The everyday life went on,
regularly and monotonously: when the weather was tolerable, Van der
Welcke went bicycling; but for the rest he stayed upstairs a great
deal, seldom going to the Witte or the Plaats, smoking, cursing
inwardly because he was not rich enough to buy a "sewing-machine"
of his own. Addie went to and fro between home and school; and it
was he that enlivened the meals....
And Constance, in her drawing-room, sat at the window and gazed at
the clouds, looked out at the rain. Through the silent monotony of
her short, grey days a dream began to weave itself, as with a luminous
thread, so that she was not oppressed by the sombre melancholy of the
rainy winter. When Van der Welcke went upstairs, cursing because it was
raining again and because he had nothing to do, she settled herself in
her drawing-room--in that room in which she lived and which was tinged
as it were with her own personality--and looked out at the clouds,
at the rain. She sat dreaming. She smiled, wide-eyed. She liked the
ever louring skies, the ever drifting clouds; and, though at times
the gusty squalls still made her start with that sudden catch in her
throat and breast, she loved the raging and rustling winds, listened
to them, content for them to blow and blow, high above her head, her
house, her trees--hers--till, blowing, they lost themselves in the
infinities beyond.... She had her work beside her, a book; but she
did not sew, did not read: she dreamt.... She smiled, looking out,
looking up at the endlessly rolling skies.... The clouds sailed by,
sometimes high, sometimes low, above the houses, above the people's
heads, like passions disdaining mankind: dank, monstrous passions
riding arrogantly by upon the passion of the winds, from a far-off
land of sheer passion, sullen and tempestuous; and the threatening
cohorts rolled on, great and majestic, like Olympian deities towering
above the petty human strife hidden under the roofs over which they
passed, ever opening their mighty flood-gates.... When Constance looked
up at them, the vast, phantom monsters, coming she knew not whence
and going she knew not whither, just shadowing across her life and
followed by new monsters, no less vast and no less big with mystery,
she was not afraid or sad, for she felt safe in her dream. The sombre
skies had always attracted her, even in the old days, though they used
to frighten her then, she did not know why; but now, now for the first
time she smiled, because she felt safe. A soft radiance shone from her
eyes, which gazed up at the phantom monsters. When the wind whistled,
soughed, moaned and bellowed round the house, like a giant soul in
pain, she remained as it were looking up at the wind, let her soul
swell softly in unison with its dirges, like something that surrenders
itself, small and weak but peaceful, to a mighty force. In her little
house, as she gazed out at the dreary road, on these winter days,
especially when it grew dark of an afternoon, the wind and the rain
round about her seemed almost one element, vast and sad as life,
which came from over the sea, which drifted away over the town and
which continued to hold her and her house in its embrace....
She looked outside, she smiled. Sometimes she heard her husband's step
in the passages, as he went through the house, grumbling, muttering,
cursing, because he wanted to go out.... Then she would think for
a moment:
"He hasn't seen Marianne for days."
But then she would think no more about either of them; and her dream
shone out before her again. The dream shone softly and unfalteringly,
like a gentle, steady ray: a path of soft light that issued as it were
from her eyes to the sombre, frowning clouds out yonder. Over the
soft-shining path something seemed to be wafted from her outwards,
upwards, far and wide and then back again, to where she sat.... It
was so strange that she smiled at it, closed her eyes; and, when she
opened them, it was once more as though she saw her dream, that path of
light, always.... Her dream took no more definite shape and remained
thus, a gentle, kindly glow, a pale, soft ray from her to the sombre
skies.... It was dusk now and she sat on, quite lost in the misty,
shadowy darkness all around her, quite invisible in the black room;
and her eyes continued to stare outside, at the last wan streaks in
the darkening heavens.... The road outside was black.... A street-lamp
shone out, throwing its harsh light upon a puddle....
Then she covered her face with her hands, ashamed because she had sat
musing so long, ashamed especially because she had allowed herself to
wander along that luminous thread, the path of her dream.... She rang,
had the lamps lit and waited for Addie, who would soon be home.
But those were the lonely afternoons.... Sometimes in those wet,
dull afternoons when it grew dark so early, she saw his figure pass
the window, heard him ring. It was Brauws. She did not move and she
heard him go upstairs first, when Van der Welcke was in. But, since
he had recommenced his visits to their house, he had got into the
way of saying to Van der Welcke, in half an hour or so:
"Now I'll go and pay my respects to your wife."
The first few times, Van der Welcke had gone with him to the
drawing-room; but, now that Brauws had taken to calling in a more
informal fashion, Van der Welcke stayed upstairs, let him go his own
way. And, after the first shock which Brauws' ideas had produced in
their house, his friendship became something cheering and comforting
which both Van der Welcke and Constance continued to appreciate for
their own and each other's sakes. He and Van Vreeswijck were now the
only friends whom they both really liked, the two regular visitors
to their otherwise lonely house. And for that reason Van der Welcke
let Brauws go to Constance alone, staying away, never entering his
wife's drawing-room unnecessarily ... except when he heard the little
bells of Marianne's voice and laugh.
Constance' heart beat when she heard Brauws' voice on the stairs:
"Now I'll go and pay my respects to your wife. She's at home,
isn't she?"
"Sure to be, in this beastly weather."
She heard Brauws' step, which made the stairs creak as it came down
them. Then she felt a violent emotion, of which she was secretly
ashamed, ashamed for herself. For she was severe with herself: she
was afraid of becoming ridiculous in her own eyes. When she felt
her emotion grow too violent, she at once conjured up Addie's image:
he was fourteen now. The mother of a son of fourteen! Then a smile
of ironic indulgence would curve the dimples by her lips; and it was
with the greatest composure that she welcomed Brauws:
"Isn't it dark early? But it's only half-past three and really too
soon to light the lamp."
"There are times when twilight upsets me," he said, "and times when
it makes me feel very calm and peaceful."
He sat down near her, contentedly, and his broad figure loomed darkly
in the little room, among the other shadows. The street-lamps were
already lighted outside, glittering harshly on the wet road.
"It's been awful weather lately."
"Yes, so I prefer to stay indoors."
"You're too much indoors."
"I go out whenever it's fine."
"You don't care for going out 'in all weathers.'"
"I like looking at the weather from here. It's a different sky every
day...."
Then they talked on all sorts of subjects. He often spoke of Addie,
with a sort of enthusiasm which he had conceived for the lad. Her
face would glow with pride as she listened. And, almost involuntarily,
she told him how the boy had always been a comfort to them, to Van der
Welcke as well as to her. And, when she mentioned her husband's name,
he often answered, as though with a touch of reproach:
"I'm very fond of Hans. He is a child; and still I'm fond of him...."
Then she would feel ashamed, because she had just had a wordy dispute
with Van der Welcke--about nothing at all--and she would veer round
and say:
"It can't be helped. We can not get on. We endure each other as well
as we can. To separate would be too silly ... and also very sad for
Addie. He is fond of both of us."
And their conversation again turned on the boy. Then she had to tell
him about Brussels and even about Rome.
"It's strange," he said. "When you were in Brussels ... I was living
at Schaerbeek."
"And we never met."
"No, never. And, when you and Hans went to the Riviera, I was there
in the same year."
"Did you come often to Monte Carlo?"
"Once or twice, at any rate. Attracted by just that vivid contrast
between the atmosphere out there, where money has no value, and my
own ideas. It was a sort of self-inflicted torture. And we never
saw each other there.... And, when you were here, in the Hague, as
a girl, I used often to come to the Hague and I even remember often
passing your parents' house, where your mother still lives, in the
Alexanderstraat, and reading your name on the door: Van Lowe...."
"We were destined never to meet," she said, trying to laugh softly;
and in spite of herself her voice broke, as though sadly.
"No," he said, quietly, "we were destined not to meet."
"The fatality of meeting is sometimes very strange," she said.
"There are thousands and millions, in our lives...."
"Don't you think that we often, day after day, for months on end,
pass quite close to somebody...."
"Somebody who, if we met him or her, would influence our lives?..."
"Yes, that's what I mean."
"I'm certain of it."
"It's curious to think of.... In the street, sometimes, one's always
meeting the same people, without knowing them."
"Yes, I know what you mean. In New York, when I was a tram-driver,
there was a woman who always got into my car; and, without being
in love with her, I used to think I should like to speak to her,
to know her, to meet her...."
"And how often it is the other way round! I have met thousands of
people and forgotten their names and what they said to me. They were
like ghosts. That is how we meet people in society."
"Yes, it's all so futile...."
"You exchange names, exchange a few sentences ... and nothing remains,
not the slightest recollection...."
"Yes, it all vanishes."
"I was so often tired ... of so many people, so many ghosts.... I
couldn't live like that now."
"Yet you have remained a society-woman."
"Oh, no, I am no longer that!"
And she told him how she had once thought of making her reappearance
in Hague society; she told him about Van Naghel and Bertha.
"Are you on bad terms with your sister now?"
"Not on bad terms...."
"He died suddenly...?"
"Yes, quite suddenly. They had just had a dinner-party.... It was a
terrible blow for my sister. And I hear there are serious financial
difficulties. It is all very sad.... But this doesn't interest
you. Tell me about yourself."
"Again?"
"It interests me."
"Tell me about your own life."
"I've just been telling you."
"Yes, about Rome and Brussels. Now tell me about Buitenzorg."
"Why about that?"
"The childhood of my friends--I hope I may number you among my
friends?--always interests me."
"About Buitenzorg? I don't remember anything.... I was a little
girl.... There was nothing in particular...."
"Your brother Gerrit...."
She turned pale, but he did not see it, in the dim room.
"What has he been saying?"
"Your brother Gerrit remembers it all. The other night, after your
dinner here, he told me about it while we were smoking."
"Gerrit?" she said, anxiously.
"Yes: how prettily you used to play on the great boulders in the
river...."
She flushed scarlet, in the friendly dusk:
"He's mad!" she said, harshly. "What does he want to talk about
that for?"
He laughed:
"Mayn't he? He idolizes you ... and he idolized you at that time...."
"He's always teasing me with those reminiscences.... They're ridiculous
now."
"Why?"
"Because I'm old. Those memories are pretty enough when you are
young.... When you grow older, you let them sleep ... in the dead,
silent years. For, when you're old, they become ridiculous."
Her voice sounded hard. He was silent.
"Don't you think I'm right?" she asked.
"Perhaps," he said, very gently. "Perhaps you are right. But it is
a pity."
"Why?" she forced herself to ask.
He gave a very deep sigh:
"Because it reminds us of all that we lose as we grow older ... even
the right to our memories."
"The right to our memories," she echoed almost under her breath. And,
in a firmer voice, she repeated, severely, "Certainly. When we grow
older, we lose our right.... There are memories to which we lose our
right as we grow old...."
"Tell me," he said, "is it hard for a woman to grow old?"
"I don't know," she answered, softly. "I believe that I shall grow old,
that I am growing old as it is, without finding it hard."
"But you're not old," he said.
"I am forty-three," she replied, "and my son is fourteen."
She was determined to show herself no mercy.
"And now tell me about yourself," she went on.
"Why should I?" he asked, almost dejectedly. "You would never
understand me, however long I spoke. No, I can't speak about myself
to-day."
"It's not only to-day: it's very often."
"Yes, very often. The idea suddenly comes to me ... that everything
has been of no use. That I have done nothing that was worth while. That
my life ought to have been quite different ... to be worth while."
"What do you mean by worth while?"
"Worth while for people, for humanity. It always obsessed me, after
my games in the woods. You remember my telling you how I used to play
in the woods?"
"Yes," she said, very softly.
"Tell me," he suddenly broke in. "Are those memories to which I have
no right?"
"You are a man," said she.
"Have I more right to memories, as a man?"
"Why not ... to these?" she said, softly. "They do not make your
years ridiculous ... as mine do mine."
"Are you so much afraid ... of ridicule?"
"Yes," she said, frankly. "I am as unwilling to be ashamed in my own
eyes ... as in those of the world."
"So you abdicate...."
"My youth," she said, gently.
He was silent. Then he said:
"I interrupted myself just now. I meant to tell you that, afte
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