Chapter X

Chapter XConstance 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 wouldgladly 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 whatdidyou do?” asked Van der Welcke.And Brauws smiled his strange, gentle smile, in which there gleamed a touch of irony and compassion—withhimself, 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, Iwillbe 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 ofwhat 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 seeeach 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 straightaway.... 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, arara 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 moreclosely, 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 XIA 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 aboutmy 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 ... Ishall 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, “graduallyperhaps 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 XIIIt 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 ofa 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 dothey 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’snotthere: 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 andpoetries,1decked withflowers, red and white—that, after those years, I lost something of myself, something romantic that wasinme then, something living that wasinme then, and that, since then, I haveneverlived, 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 wonderingsflashed 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!...”1Malay fairies.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 ... Ihadto say it.... How can I be ofanyuse 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?... DoIknow 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 thereonewoman 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 willnotthink 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 XIVA 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 youarea 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, itmustbe 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 otherswho 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 youwerevery 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 Uncleisso 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 talkingto 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, Iamcrying!...”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 XConstance 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 wouldgladly 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 whatdidyou do?” asked Van der Welcke.And Brauws smiled his strange, gentle smile, in which there gleamed a touch of irony and compassion—withhimself, 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, Iwillbe 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 ofwhat 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 seeeach 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 straightaway.... 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, arara 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 moreclosely, 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 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 wouldgladly 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 whatdidyou do?” asked Van der Welcke.And Brauws smiled his strange, gentle smile, in which there gleamed a touch of irony and compassion—withhimself, 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, Iwillbe 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 ofwhat 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 seeeach 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 straightaway.... 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, arara 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 moreclosely, 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.

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 wouldgladly 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 whatdidyou do?” asked Van der Welcke.

And Brauws smiled his strange, gentle smile, in which there gleamed a touch of irony and compassion—withhimself, 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, Iwillbe 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 ofwhat 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 seeeach 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 straightaway.... 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, arara 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 moreclosely, 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 XIA 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 aboutmy 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 ... Ishall 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, “graduallyperhaps 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 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 aboutmy 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 ... Ishall 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, “graduallyperhaps 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.

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 aboutmy 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 ... Ishall 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, “graduallyperhaps 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 XIIIt 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 ofa 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 dothey 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’snotthere: 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 andpoetries,1decked withflowers, red and white—that, after those years, I lost something of myself, something romantic that wasinme then, something living that wasinme then, and that, since then, I haveneverlived, 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 wonderingsflashed 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!...”1Malay fairies.

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 ofa 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 dothey 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’snotthere: 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 andpoetries,1decked withflowers, red and white—that, after those years, I lost something of myself, something romantic that wasinme then, something living that wasinme then, and that, since then, I haveneverlived, 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 wonderingsflashed 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!...”

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 ofa 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 dothey 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’snotthere: 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 andpoetries,1decked withflowers, red and white—that, after those years, I lost something of myself, something romantic that wasinme then, something living that wasinme then, and that, since then, I haveneverlived, 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 wonderingsflashed 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!...”

1Malay fairies.

1Malay fairies.

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 ... Ihadto say it.... How can I be ofanyuse 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?... DoIknow 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 thereonewoman 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 willnotthink 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 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 ... Ihadto say it.... How can I be ofanyuse 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?... DoIknow 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 thereonewoman 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 willnotthink 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?...”

“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 ... Ihadto say it.... How can I be ofanyuse 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?... DoIknow 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 thereonewoman 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 willnotthink 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 XIVA 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 youarea 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, itmustbe 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 otherswho 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 youwerevery 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 Uncleisso 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 talkingto 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, Iamcrying!...”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 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 youarea 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, itmustbe 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 otherswho 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 youwerevery 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 Uncleisso 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 talkingto 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, Iamcrying!...”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.

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 youarea 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, itmustbe 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 otherswho 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 youwerevery 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 Uncleisso 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 talkingto 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, Iamcrying!...”

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.

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