[1]Nicolette.
[1]Nicolette.
[2]Gerard.
[2]Gerard.
Old Mrs. van Lowe's neighbours thought it a funny thing that, after dinner that evening, the whole family arrived, one after the other, rang the bell and went in, though it was not Sunday. Except on those "family-group" Sundays, there was never much of a run on Mrs. van Lowe's door. And they wondered what could be the matter; and, as it was very warm, an August day, they opened all the windows, kept looking across the street and even sent their maids to enquire of Mrs. van Lowe's maids. But the maids did not know anything: they only thought it must be something to do with the young mevrouw, the one in Paris—Mrs. Emilie, as they called her—who had gone off with her brother.
"It's very queer about the Van Lowes," said the neighbours, looking out of window at the old lady's front-door, at which somebody was ringing again for the hundredth time.
"There come the Van Saetzemas."
"And here are those fat Ruyvenaers."
"What's up?"
"Yes, what can be up?"
"The servants say it's something to do with Emilie."
"A nice thing for the Van Ravens!"
"They say that Bertha has become quite childish, don't they?"
"I don't know about that: she just sits staring in front of her. They never come now: they're living at Baarn."
"Here are the Van der Welckes."
"Like aunt, like niece."
"Now they're all there."
"All?"
"Yes, I've seen them all. Captain van Lowe and his wife, Paul, Dorine and Karel."
"And Ernst?"
"He hasn't come yet."
"But then he doesn't always come."
"I wonder what's up."
"Yes, I wonder."
"There must be some scandal with Emilie."
"And, when you think of what the Van Naghels used to be.... Such big people!"
"And now...."
"Absolute nobodies...."
"Oh, I think they're rather nice people!..."
"Yes, but they're all a bit touched, you know."
"Well, suppose we go to Scheveningen?..."
"Yes, let's go to Scheveningen. We may hear there what's happened...."
"Yes ... about Emilie, you know...."
And Mrs. van Lowe's neighbours went off to Scheveningen, with the express object of hearing what had happened about Emilie....
Old Mrs. van Lowe was sitting in the conservatory, with the windows open, and crying gently, like one who was too old to cry violently, whatever the sorrow might be. Uncle Herman, Aunt Lot, all the children had come in gradually, their faces blank with utter dismay; and they were moving like ghosts about the large, dark rooms, where no one had thought of having the gas lit.
"Herman!" the old lady cried, plaintively.
Uncle Ruyvenaer and Aunt Lot approached.
"Have you seen him, Herman?" asked the old lady, wringing her old, knotted hands.
"No-o, Marie. But I ... I shall go to him to-morrow ... with Dr. van der Ouwe."
"And who is with him now?"
"A male nurse, Mamma," said Gerrit. "We've seen to everything. He's quite calm, Mamma dear, he's quite calm. It won't be very bad. It's only temporary: it'll pass, the doctor said."
Cateau's bosom suddenly loomed through the open doorway of the conservatory:
"Oh, Mam-ma," she said, "howsad... about Ernst! Who would ever have im-a-gined ... that Ernst would become ... likethis!"
And she bent over her mother-in-law and gave her a formal kiss, like the kiss of a stranger paying a visit of condolence.
"And how are you, Mamma?" asked Karel, as though there were nothing the matter. "I hope you're not suffering from the heat."
The old woman nodded dully, pressed his hand.
"All that I ask," said Adolphine, addressing her husband, Paul, Dorine and Adeline, "is that you will not talk about it. Don't talk about it to outsiders. The less it's talked about, the better pleased I shall be.... We have that Indian lack of reserve in our family, that habit of at once going and telling everybody everything.... If people ask, we can say that Ernst has had a nervous break-down; yes, that's it: let's arrange to say that Ernst has had a nervous break-down...."
She asked them to give her their word; and they promised, in order to keep her quiet.
"You'll see," she said, "this business with Ernst will mean that Van Saetzema will once more fail to get elected to the town council."
Paul looked at her in stupefaction, failing to grasp the logic of her remark. Then he said, calmly:
"Yes, you see funny things happen sometimes."
"Yes," said Adolphine, nodding her head to show how much she appreciated the fact that Paul understood her. "It's horrid forme: you'll see, Van Saetzema won't get in...."
"I believe that Ernst ... is the sanest of the lot of us!" thought Paul.
And, as he moved to a seat, he first looked to make sure that there were no bits of fluff on the chair.
But Constance had come in; and, when the old lady saw her, she half-rose, threw herself into her daughter's arms and began to sob more violently than she had done. It was strange how she had gradually come to look upon Constance once more as the nearest to her of her children, this daughter whom she had not seen for years and years, until at last Constance had returned to Holland and the family. As a mother, she had never had a favourite; yet she would often, for months at a time, feel drawn now more towards the one, then again towards the other. She was growing old, she was getting the broken look which a mother's face begins to wear as she sees sorrow coming into her children's lives: a sorrow which, in her case, arrived so late that by degrees the illusion had come to her that there would never be any sorrow. The sudden break-up of Bertha's house—that house which she was so fond of visiting, because she found in it the continuation of her own life, the reflection of her own past grandeur—had fallen on her as a painful blow: Van Naghel's sudden death; the sort of apathy into which Bertha had sunk; the divorce between Van Raven and Emilie after Emilie had refused to come back from abroad, preferring to stay in Paris with her brother Henri, who had been sent down from Leiden: a divorce obtained in the face of all the persuasion which Uncle van Naghel, the Queen's Commissary in Overijssel, had brought to bear upon them; Louise living with Otto and Frances, in order to help Frances, who was always ailing, with the children, so that Bertha was living alone with Marianne in her little villa at Baarn, now that Frans had taken his degree and gone to India, while Karel and Marietje were at boarding-school. The big household had broken up, in a few months, in a few days almost; and the old grandmother, whose dearest illusion it had always been to keep everything and everybody close together, had been seized with an innocent wonder that things could happen so, that things had happened so.... She no longer went about, finding a difficulty in walking; and, because Bertha had become so apathetic and had also ceased to go about, she had as it were lost Bertha and all who belonged to her. It had produced a void around her which nothing was able to fill, even though she saw Constance every day. A void, because with none of her other children did the old lady find the same atmosphere of rank and position which she had loved in the Van Naghels' ministerial household. She would often complain now, a thing which she never used to do: she would complain that Karel and Cateau were so selfish, so stiff and Dutch, that they were getting worse every year; she would complain that at Gerrit's the children were always so noisy, that Adeline was unable to manage them, that both Gerrit and Adeline were much too weak to bring up so many children—nine of them—with proper strictness; she would complain that Adolphine was growing more and more envious and discontented, because her husband did not make his way, because Carolientje was not married, because the three boys were so troublesome; she would complain of Dorine and Paul and had all sorts of little grievances against both of them. Then, on the Sunday evenings, when the children and grandchildren came to her, she felt the void which Van Naghel and Bertha had left behind them, missed the sound of a few aristocratic names, missed any reference to the Russian minister in her children's conversation; and, with a little half-bitter laugh, she would say to the Ruyvenaers that the family was no longer what it had been, called it agrandeur déchueand took a melancholy pleasure in the phrase, which she would repeat again and again, as though finding consolation in its gentle irony. And Constance had become the child towards whom she felt most drawn in these dreary days, because Constance devoted herself regularly to her old mother and also because she, Mamma, in her secret heart, loved to talk with Constance about Rome, about De Staffelaer even, about the Pallavicinis, the Odescalchis, whom Constance had known in the old days; because Constance, whatever might be said against her, was connected with the best Dutch families; because Constance had a title; because Addie was the only one of her grandchildren who bore a title, good family though the Van Naghels were. Oh, those grandchildren, whom she now saw so seldom! And, now that the terrible thing had befallen Ernst, the terrible thing which the children had at first wished to conceal from her, but which she had guessed nevertheless, because she had so long feared it, feared it indeed from the time when Ernst was a tiny child—oh, what frightful convulsions he used to have as a child!—now that the terrible thing had befallen Ernst, it was Constance in whose arms she was first able to sob out her grief, in whose arms she first felt how sorely she had been stricken in her declining days:
"Connie," she cried, her voice broken with sobs, "Connie darling, it's true!... Ernst ... Ernst ismad!"
And the word which no one had yet uttered to her, though she had guessed what they meant, rang shrill through the fast-darkening room, in which every whisper was suddenly hushed in terror at the shrill sound of the old woman's high-pitched voice. Silence fell upon everything; and the word sent a shudder through the room. The children looked at one another, because Mamma had uttered the word which none of them had spoken, though they had thought it silently. The word which Mamma uttered so shrilly, almost screaming it at Constance, in the intolerable pain of her sorrow, struck them all with a sudden dismay, because, coming from Mamma's lips, it sounded like an open acknowledgment of what they all knew but did not wish to acknowledge except among one another, in great secrecy. They would merely say that Ernst was suffering from a nervous break-down, nothing more. A nervous break-down was such a comprehensive term! Anybody could go to a home for nervous patients for a rest-cure. But the word uttered by Mamma to Constance in shrill acknowledgment of the truth had cut through the dim room, where no one had even thought of lighting the gas. Adolphine, Cateau, Karel, Uncle Ruyvenaer, Floortje and Dijkerhof exchanged sudden glances, terrified, struck with dismay, because they would never have been willing to utter the word aloud, in open acknowledgment of the truth.
Aunt Lot's loud "Ah,kassian!"[3]now came from a corner of the dark room; and Toetie was so much upset that she suddenly burst into sobs. That was your Indian lack of self-restraint again, thought the Van Saetzemas and Cateau; and it did not seem to them decent to let yourself go like that, it made them feel that the business was a hopeless one. But the door opened and the two doctors entered, groping their way in the darkness: the old family-doctor, a retired army-surgeon, Van der Ouwe; and Reeuws, a young nerve-specialist. At their entrance, Toetie, abashed, ceased her sobbing. The doctors had come from the Nieuwe Uitleg, where they had left Ernst reading peacefully, with the male nurse, a stolid, powerful fellow, in an adjoining room. And, when the brothers and sisters crowded round the two doctors, the older began, quietly:
"Our poor Ernst can't stay where he is, all by himself. We must see and get him to Nunspeet, at Dr. van der Heuvel's: that will do him good ... the country, change of environment, nice, quiet people, who will look after him...."
"Nunspeet?" asked Adolphine. "That's not...?"
"No," said the old doctor, decisively, understanding what she meant. "It's not."
And he did not speak the word, left it to be implied, the word that must not be uttered, the terrible word that denoted the house of shame, the family-disgrace.
"It's a nice, pleasant villa, where Dr. van der Heuvel minds a few nervous patients," he said, calmly and kindly, casting a glance round at the brothers and sisters; and his grey head nodded reassuringly to all of them.
They admired his tact; and they the more readily condemned Mamma's shrill word, which had cut through the darkness and made them shudder, they the more readily condemned Aunt Lot's exclamation and Toetie's outbreak of sobbing.
And, breathing again, they lit the gas, suddenly noticing that the room was pitch-dark now that the two doctors had gone to Mamma and were telling her quietly that it would be all right and that Ernst was just a little overstrained from being too much alone and poring too long over his dusty books.
[3]Malay: "Poor dear!"
[3]Malay: "Poor dear!"
Constance went to the Nieuwe Uitleg next morning; the landlady, shaking her head, let her in; Dr. van der Ouwe met her in the passage:
"I thank you for coming, mevrouw. It won't do for Ernst to remain here any longer; I should like to take him down to Nunspeet, with one of you, as soon as possible, to-morrow. But it won't be an easy matter ... poor fellow!"
"I'll do my best," said Constance, doubtfully.
"Then I'll leave you alone with him. You won't be nervous? No, you're not nervous. He's quite quiet, poor fellow. Don't be afraid: I shall be near."
Constance went upstairs, with her heart thumping in her breast. She tapped softly at the door and received no answer:
"Ernst!" she called; and her voice was not very steady. "Ernst...."
But there was no reply.
She slowly opened the door. The door-handle grated into her very soul; and before entering she asked once more:
"Ernst.... May I come in?"
He still did not answer and she walked into the room. She had made up her mind to smile at once, to come up to him with a smile, so that the expression of her face might put her poor brother at his ease. And so she smiled as she entered, looking for him with kindly eyes, as though there were nothing at all out of the common.
But her smile seemed to freeze on her lips when she saw him sitting huddled in a corner of the room, in a flannel shirt and an old pair of trousers, with his long hair hanging unkempt. Nevertheless she controlled herself and said, in as natural a tone as she could command:
"Good-morning, Ernst. I've come to see how you are."
He looked at her suspiciously from his corner and asked:
"Why?"
"Because I heard that you were not well. So I thought I would see how you were getting on."
"I'm not ill," he said, in a low voice.
"Why are you sitting in that corner, Ernst? Are you comfortable there?"
"Ssh!" he said. "They're asleep. Don't speak too loud."
"No. But I may talk quietly, mayn't I, Ernst?... Can't you get up from your chair? For there's no room there to sit beside you. Come, dear, won't you get up?"
And she smiled and held out both her hands to him.
He smiled back and said:
"Ssh! Don't wake them."
"No, no. But do get up."
He gave way at last and, grasping her hands warily, allowed her to pull him up, out of his corner, and once more said, earnestly:
"You must promise me not to wake them. All my visitors wake them, the brutes! The doctor woke them too."
"No, Ernst, we'll let them sleep. There, it's nice of you to have got up. Shall we sit down here?"
"Yes. Why have you come? You never come to see me...."
There was in his words an unconscious reproach that startled her. It was quite true: she never came to see him. Since that first time, eighteen months ago, when he had asked her to his rooms on her return to Holland, the day when she had lunched here with him, when he had toasted her with two fingers of champagne out of a quaint old glass, she had never once been back. She reproached herself for it now: she, who did feel all that affection for her family, why had she left that brother to himself, as all the others did, just because he was queer? If she had overcome that vague feeling of distaste, almost of repugnance; if she had felt for him always as she suddenly felt for him now, perhaps he would not have been so self-centred, perhaps he would have retained his sanity.
"No, Ernst," she confessed, "I never came to see you. It wasn't nice of me, was it?"
"No, it wasn't nice of you," he said. "For I'm very fond of you, Constance."
Her heart began to fail her. Her breath came in gasps; her eyes filled with tears. She put her arm over his shoulder and, without restraining her emotion, she cried:
"Did we all leave you so much alone, Ernst?"
"No," he said, quietly, "I am never alone. They are all of them around me, always. There are some of every century. Sometimes they are magnificently dressed and sing with exquisite voices. But latterly," mournfully shaking his head, "latterly they have not been like that. They are all grey, like ghosts; they no longer sing their beautiful tunes; they weep and wail and gnash their teeth. They used to come out into the middle of the room ... and laugh and sing and glitter. But now, oh, Constance, I don't know what they suffer, but they suffer something terrible ... a purgatory! They crowd round me, they suffocate me, till I can't draw my breath.... Hush, there they are, waking again!..."
"No, Ernst, no, Ernst, they're asleep!"
He turned to her with a knowing laugh:
"Yes," he whispered, "you are kind, you love them, you are sorry for them ... you let them sleep ... you don't wake them...."
And they sat quietly together for a moment, without speaking, she with her arm round his shoulder.
"What a lot of pretty things you have, Ernst!" she said, looking round the room.
"Yes," he said, "I collected them ... gradually, very gradually. There was one in every piece."
"Ernst," she said, gently, "perhaps it would be a good thing if you went to the country this summer."
At once he seemed to stiffen and shrink under her touch, as though all his limbs were becoming tense and stark:
"I won't leave here," he said.
"Ernst, it would be so good for you. Do you know Nunspeet?"
She felt him go rigid; and he looked at her angrily and harshly:
"The doctor wants to get me to Nunspeet," he answered, craftily. He laughed scornfully: "I know all about it. You people think I'm mad. But I'm not mad," he went on, haughtily. "You people are stupid: stupid and mad is what you are. You see nothing and hear nothing, you with your dull brute senses; and then you just think, because some one else sees and hears and feels, that he's mad ... whereas it's you yourselves who are mad. I shall stay here; I won't go to Nunspeet."
But suddenly he grew alarmed and asked:
"I say, Constance, you won't force me, surely? You won't beat me? That beastly cad down below, that fellow, that cad: he hit me ... and woke them ... and trod on them! He stood treading on them, the great fool, the blockhead!... Tell me, Constance, you will leave me here, won't you?"
"No, Ernst, no one wants to force you. But it would be a good thing if you went to Nunspeet."
"But why? I'm all right here."
"You would be among kind people ... who will be fond of you."
"No one has ever been fond of me," he said.
"Ernst!" she cried, with a sob.
"No one has ever been fond of me," he repeated, bluntly. "Not Mamma ... nor any of you ... not one. If I had not had all of them ... oh, if I had not had all of them! My darlings, my darlings! Oh, what can be the matter with them? Now they're waking up! Now they're awake! Oh, listen to them moaning! Oh dear, listen to them screaming! They're screaming, they're yelling! ...Isit purgatory? Oh, dear, how they're crowding round me! They're stifling me, they're stifling me!... Oh dear, it's more than I can bear!"
He rushed to the open window; and she was afraid that he wanted to throw himself out, so that she caught him round the body with both her arms. The old doctor came in. He shut the window.
"I can do nothing," she murmured to the old man, in despair.
"Yes, you can," said the doctor, calmly. "Yes, you can, mevrouw."
"You are all of you my enemies," said Ernst. "My enemies and theirs."
And he went and sat in his corner, huddled up, with his arms round his knees.
"Go away," he said, addressing both of them.
"I'm going, Ernst," said the old doctor. "But Constance may as well stay."
He sometimes called her by her Christian name, the old doctor who had brought them into the world in India; and to Constance it was touching, to hear that name from under his grey moustache; it called up those old, old days.
"Constance can stay?"
"Very well," said Ernst.
The doctor left them alone: the nurse would be on his guard.
"Ernst," said Constance, "suppose we went together ... to Nunspeet?"
"Why? Why?" he asked, vehemently. "I'm all right here.... And we can't take them with us there," he whispered, more gently. "Ssh! You're waking them."
"It will be quieter for them, perhaps, if you leave them here, dear," she said, kneeling on the floor beside him, feeling for his hand, with her eyes full of tears.
"No, no ... that woman's brother down there ... that cad...."
"But, Ernst," she said, more firmly, with her eyes on his, "dear Ernst, do let me tell you: they don't exist. They exist only in your imagination. You must really get rid of the idea: then you will be well again, quite well.... Ernst, dear Ernst, they don't exist. Do look round you: there's nothing to see but the room, your furniture, your books, your vases. There's nothing else, except our two selves.... Oh, Ernst, do try to see it: there's nothing.... That you feel as if you were suffocating comes from always being so much alone, never going out, never walking. At Nunspeet, we will walk ... on the heath, over the dunes ... and then you will get quite well again, Ernst.... For, honestly, you are ill.... There's nothing here, nothing. Look for yourself: there's only you and I ... and your furniture and books...."
He quietly let her talk; an ironical smile curled round his lips; and at last he gave her a glance of pitying contempt, gave a little shrug of his shoulders. Then he softly stroked her hand, patted it gently, in a fatherly manner:
"You are kind and nice, Constance, but," shaking his head, "you have no sense! I believe you mean what you say, but that's just it: you're narrow, you're limited. You don't see, you don't hear," putting his hand to his eyes and ears, "what I see, what I hear with my eyes and my ears...."
"But, Ernst, you must surely understand that those are all illusions. The doctor says that they are hallucinations."
He continued to smile, looked at her with his contemptuous pity, looked hard out of his black Van Lowe eyes.
"They are hallucinations, Ernst."
"And you?"
"No, I'm not."
"And the room, the books, the vases?..."
"No, they are not. They are all around you, they exist."
"Well ... and why not all of them, the souls?"
"They don't exist, Ernst. They are hallucinations."
He just closed his eyelids, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, to convey that he was utterly at a loss to understand such exceedingly limited perceptions. Then he said, gently and kindly:
"No, Constance dear, you're not clever ... if you mean all you say. I believe you do mean it, but that's just it: you live like a blind person; you don't see, you don't hear. That's the way you all of you live and exist, in a dream, with closed eyes and deaf ears. You none of you see, hear or understand anything. You know nothing. You are as unfeeling as stones. You can't help it, Constance, but it's a pity, for you are so nice. There might have been something to be made of you, if you had learnt to see and hear and feel. It's too late now, Constance. You are stupid now, like all the rest; but I'm sorry, for you are very nice. Your hand is soft, your voice is soft; and you did your best not to tread on my poor darlings ... and not to drag them away on their chains, which are riveted so fast to my heart that they hurt me sometimes, here!"
He put his hand to his heart. A weariness came over her brain, as though she were exhausting herself in the effort to speak and to give understanding to an intelligence and a soul which remained very far away, miles away, and which her words could only reach through a dense cloud of darkness. And suddenly that sense of weariness and impotence became crueller and harder within her: it was as though she were talking to a stone, to a wall; she felt her own words beating back against her forehead like tennis-balls striking the wall.
"But, Ernst," she tried once more, "won't you come to Nunspeet with me ... to pleaseme, to walk on the heath withme? You would be giving me such immense pleasure. It would be good forme...."
"And all of them, here, around me?..."
He pointed round the room, cautiously.
"We will leave them to sleep here."
"And that cad, downstairs?..."
"He sha'n't interfere with them, I promise you.... We'll lock up the room, Ernst, and they shall sleep peacefully."
She humoured him, not knowing if she was doing right, but feeling too tired to convince him.
"You promise?" he asked, suddenly. "You promise that they shall sleep peacefully?"
"Yes."
"That the cad downstairs won't wake them and tread on them?"
"Yes, yes."
"You promise that?"
"Yes."
"We'll lock up the room very quietly?"
"Yes."
"And nobody at all will come in?"
"No."
"You promise that?"
"Yes."
"Will you swear it?"
"Yes, Ernst."
"All right, then."
"Will you come?" she cried, rejoicing and unable to believe her ears.
"Yes. Because you would so much like to go for walks ... on the heath. You're nice...."
He spoke gently, pityingly; and his contempt was not as great as it had been, for he looked upon her as a nice but stupid child that needed his help and his protection.
She smiled at him in return, stood up where she had been kneeling beside him, put out her hands to him, inviting him to get up from his corner also. He let her pull him up; he was a heavy weight: she drew him out of his corner like a lump of lead.
"Then we start to-morrow, Ernst?"
He nodded yes, good-naturedly: she was very nice ... and she was longing for those walks ... and she was so weak, so stupid, she knew nothing, saw, heard and felt nothing, absolutely nothing. He must help her and guide her and support her.
"And shall we pack a trunk now, while I am here?"
He did not understand that a trunk was necessary: he looked at her blankly; but he wanted to please her and said:
"All right. But don't make a noise."
The doctor returned.
"He's coming," she whispered. "We're going to pack his trunk."
The doctor pressed her hand. Ernst looked down upon them both, smiling, as upon poor, unfortunate people who cannot help being so stupid ... so slow of understanding ... so limited in their knowledge ... so dull of perception....
And, while Constance and the doctor opened the clothes-press in his bedroom, he warned them, quietly, but with dignity:
"Ssh! Be careful, you know. Don't let the door of the wardrobe creak. Don't wake them!..."
It was a sultry summer morning and old Mrs. van Lowe sat at the conservatory-window, crying very quietly. She had been crying incessantly now for two long days. After her first sob in Constance' arms, she had sobbed no more; but since then her tears had flowed continually, salt, stinging tears that burned her wrinkled cheeks. She sat with her hands folded in her lap; and from time to time she nodded her head up and down, while she stared at the leafy garden, over which the stormy sky hung dark and heavy as lead. Now and then she cleared her throat, now and then heaved a deep sigh; and her handkerchief was soaked with the tears that kept on flowing, quietly, out of her smarting eyes. Constant fretting had drawn down the corners of her mouth into two long, sad wrinkles. Oh yes, it was very hard! Trouble ... always trouble ... her life had been full of trouble: trouble when Louis and Gertrude had died at Buitenzorg, poor children; what had they not suffered from fever and cholera? Money troubles: an expensive household to be kept up on limited means. Trouble again, terrible trouble with dear Constance; and the heavy trouble of her husband's illness and death: he had never recovered from Constance' disgrace; more trouble over Van Naghel's death, the great change in Bertha and the break-up of the whole household; and now there was this last sore trouble with her son, her poor son, who had gone mad! Oh, if it had only happened a little earlier, when she was younger, she could have borne it, as she had borne the rest, could have accepted it as her natural share, a mother's share of trouble. But she was so old now; and it seemed to her that the supreme trouble was drawing near, a trouble which was coming very late in her life, too late for her to bear it with strength and patience, now that she was growing older and feebler daily; and her only wish had been to see her big family happy together, that great family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, amongst which she had always rejoiced to live, thankful as she had been for that great blessing. It was as though a presentiment were coming to her from very far, from very far out of those heavy, lowering skies, a presentiment which her nerves, sharpened by age, suddenly not only felt but saw coming like a menace, as old people will suddenly see the truth very clearly, the future: a waning lamp which suddenly flickers up brightly, before dying out in darkness; a bright flicker which suddenly reveals the shadows in the room and in which the portraits grin, with faces that seem to speak ... before the lamp dies out, before everything is swallowed up in the black darkness! Oh, the awful presentiment which suddenly approached like a spectre out of the leaden clouds, that filled the whole vista before her eyes with grey terrors; the presentiment that this trouble, the greatest of all, was going to strike her most, now, in her old, old age, when she no longer had the strength to endure it, when she would sink under the weight of it!... O God, why should it now, why now, fall with such pitiless, crushing weight? Why now? Was it not enough that one of her children ... had gone mad, surely the most terrible thing that can happen? Was not that enough? What more could be threatening, looming before her, now that she was growing so feeble? See, did not her old hands tremble at the mere thought, was not her whole helpless body shaking, were not the tears flowing until they smarted in the furrows of her wrinkles and until her handkerchief was just a wet rag? What more could there be coming?
"O God, no more, no more!" she prayed, automatically, believing, in her feeble despair, in the great, infinite Omnipotence which is so very, very far removed from us ... and which she had always worshipped decently, once a week, in church ... formerly ... when she still went out. "O God, no more, no more!"
It was greater, the infinite Omnipotence, than what they worshipped in church; it filled everything far and wide, to the utmost limits of her thought; and it terrified and dismayed her: she saw it threatening from afar; and why, why now? Oh, why had it not all come earlier, when she would have had more fortitude, when she would have borne everything as her natural share, a mother's share, of trouble?... She would have been so glad just now to grow old peacefully, amongst her wide circle of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But, alas, there was so much to bear and ... perhaps there was still more coming!
"O God, no more, no more!" she implored: was it not enough that one of her children ... had gone mad, surely the most terrible thing that can happen?
She moaned in spirit, then felt a little eased as the rain began to patter heavily on the expectant leaves and the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled and the sky was rent asunder. But the tears kept flowing in spite of her relief that the rain had come at last; and, because of the thunder which filled her fast-aging ears, she did not hear the door open softly, did not hear some one come through the drawing-room and approach the conservatory, did not at once see the slender little figure that stood quietly before her, solicitous not to intrude upon the grief of the weeping old woman.
"Granny," the younger woman said, gently.
The old woman looked up in surprise, blinked her eyes, tried to see through the flowing tears, did not recognize the one who called her granny:
"Eh?" she said, plaintively. "Who is it?"
And the girl did not answer at once, because it had given her a shock to see those silent tears flowing down the cheeks of that lonely old woman. She remained standing quietly, a pretty, almost fragile little figure, like a Dresden-china doll, but a very up-to-date doll, like a sketch by one of the ultra-modern French draughtsmen, with the pointed little face below the elaborately-waved hair under the very large hat, a hat which, in the shape of its crown and the sweep of its feathers represented the very latest extreme of fashion and consequently attracted immediate attention in Holland, in these dignified rooms, while the light tailor-made costume looked too dressy for a summer morning at the Hague and a touch in every accessory—the sunshade, the tulle boa—proclaimed that the young woman was no longer of the Hague and of Holland, short though the time was since she had run away.
The old woman, still sensitive in all social matters, remained looking at Emilie a little suspiciously, failing to recognize her and at once noticing, just by those touches—the large hat, the tulle boa—the exaggeration that displeased her.
"But who is it?" she repeated, wiping her eyes to see better.
And now the pretty little doll knelt down beside her and said:
"Don't you know me, Granny? It's I ... Emilie."
"Oh, my child!" cried the old woman, brightening up, glad, delighted. "Is it you, Emilietje? And Granny who didn't know you again!... But then you've got such a big hat on, child. And Eduard: how is he and where is he?"
"But, Granny!..."
Under the arm which she had at once put round Emilie, the old woman felt a shudder pass through the dainty little doll, who had knelt down beside her so impulsively and affectionately; but she did not understand:
"Well, where is Eduard?"
"Why, Granny," cried Emilie, "you know that we're divorced!"
The old woman now shuddered in her turn and closed her eyes and sat rigid. What was this? Was she becoming old, like her old sisters Christine and Dorine, who always muddled up all the children, who never knew anything correctly about their big family? What was this? Was she getting confused? And was this the first time that she had utterly forgotten things ... or had it happened before, that she had doted like an old, old woman?
She opened her eyes sadly and the tears ran down her cheeks:
"Ah, Emilietje, my child, my child ... don't be cross with Granny! She's growing old, dear. She had forgotten it for a moment. Yes, yes, she had forgotten all about it.... Of course, child, you got a divorce. Oh, it's very sad! You oughtn't to have done it so soon, you should have gone on being patient. You see, child, a divorce in a family is always a very sad thing. You know, there was Aunt Constance.... Well, she had had a lot of trouble. You had plenty of trouble too. He used to strike you: yes, Granny knows. But you ought not to have let the world know about it. You were quite right not to let him strike you. But you should have shown him, by remaining gentle and dignified, that he was doing wrong.... No man strikes a woman, my child, if she preserves her dignity. But you used to lose your temper, child, and stamp your foot and call him names and invite scenes. Yes, yes, Granny knows all about it, Granny remembers everything. Mamma used to say it was all right, but Granny knew, Granny saw that it was far from right.... If you had not lost your dignity, child, he would never have dared to strike you. And who knows: you might gradually have made him gentler, have made him respect you ... and you might still have had a very tolerable life. You see, dear, there's always something, in marriage. It's not as young girls imagine, when they are in love. There are always difficulties: you have to get used to each other, to fall into each other's ways. Do you think that Grandmamma never had any differences with Grandpapa? Oh, there were ever so many ... and later on even, after years of marriage! How often didn't Grandmamma and Grandpapa differ about poor Aunt Constance!... And Mamma and Papa: do you think they always agreed?... Temper, Emilie, is a thing we all have in our family, but one has to keep it under. A woman must preserve her dignity towards her husband. What a pity, what a pity it was!... Well, child, and where are you living now? Not with Mamma at Baarn, I know."
"I'm living in Paris, Granny, with Henri."
"What do you say? In Paris? Are you living in Paris? With Henri? Well, you see, Henri too—yes, Granny isn't quite in her dotage yet—leaving Leiden like that! For shame! Why not have finished his college course and gone to India?... And what do you do there, in Paris? It's very nice, for the two of you to be together; but it's not natural, Emilietje. Yes, I remember now: they told me you were living in Paris. I had heard it before. But that's no sort of life: to go running through the bit of money which your poor father left you, in Paris! What will people say! For shame!... No, Grandmamma isn't pleased with you. Instead of remaining quietly with your husband ... instead of Henri's quietly finishing his time at the university! What does it all mean, what you and he have done?"
The old woman rejected Emilie's caresses:
"No, child, don't kiss me; Granny is vexed; she doesn't want to be kissed.... The family isn't what it was. It is agrandeur déchue, child, a regulargrandeur déchue. The Van Lowes were something once. There was never much money, but we didn't care about money and we always managed. But the family used to count ... in India, at the Hague. Which of you will ever have a career like your Grandpapa's, like your Papa's? No, we shall never see another governor-general in the family, nor yet a cabinet-minister. It's agrandeur déchue, agrandeur déchue.... Ah, child, Granny has too much trouble to bear, too much trouble in her old age! Your Papa's death was a great blow to Granny; Mamma has changed so much since, changed so much. And Granny never sees Mamma now, never. Otto and Frances, once in a way, and dear Louise; but the rest of you are all scattered, you are all independent of one another. Oh, it is so nice to keep together, one big family together! Why need Mamma have gone to Baarn? There's nothing but rich tradespeople there, not our class at all.... And now—have you heard, dear?—poor Uncle Ernst.... Yes, child ... it's quite true: isn't it sad, poor fellow? And hasn't Granny really too much to bear in her old age?... Dear Aunt Constance is taking him to Nunspeet to-day: ah, where should we have been without Aunt Constance?... Addie now is a great consolation to Granny.Heis a dear, clever boy; and he works hard; and he will enter the diplomatic service: he is the hope of the family. Yes, yes, I know, Frans is doing well; but Henri, Emilietje, has done the wrong thing, going to Paris ... with you.... No, child, don't kiss Granny; she's vexed.... And Karel isn't behaving at all well, so Uncle van Naghel says. They don't always tell Granny; but Granny hears, when they think she's deaf and whisper things to one another. Ah, child, it would be better if Granny died! She's getting too old, dear, she's getting too old.... She could have borne all this trouble once, but she can't do it now, Emilietje, she can't bear it now...."
And the old woman sobbed quietly; the tears flowed without ceasing. She now let Emilietje embrace her passionately; and she listened to all the caressing words with which her grand-daughter overwhelmed her.
Constance entered; and Mamma knew her at once:
"Connie! Connie! Have you taken him there? Have you come back?"
Constance, surprised at seeing Emilie, first kissed her and then said:
"Yes, Mamma, I've taken Ernst down, with Dr. van der Ouwe and Dr. Reeuws. He was quite quiet. We had reserved acoupé-compartment; and he travelled down with us very nicely. He did not speak; and he held my hand the whole time. He pities me, I don't know why.... Mamma, don't cry: he's really quiet; and he is very comfortable there. He has a pleasant room, with a bright outlook; Dr. van der Heuvel and his wife are kind, homely people. He will not be by himself: he has his meals with the other patients. It is hard on him to have to do without his books and curios. He misses his books particularly; but the doctor does not want him to read. And he must walk...."
"But walk, Connie, walk? Alone? How can he walk? All alone, on that enormous heath? He'll lose his way, he's not responsible, he'll step into a ditch and be drowned!"
"No, Mamma, we shall look after him."
"How do you mean, child?"
"It will soon be Addie's holidays: Addie and I are going to Nunspeet and we shall be with Ernst."
"Oh, how kind of you, Connie!... But I shall miss you."
"I shall come and see you regularly, Mamma: Nunspeet is not far."
"Oh, child, child, what should I do without you? Thank God, dear, that you returned to us at last!... And what will your husband do without his boy?"
"He will come down occasionally. And he is going away for a holiday with Van Vreeswijck.... I only came back to tell you that Ernst is all right. I'm going back to Nunspeet this afternoon. And from there I shall look Bertha up, at Baarn."
"I'm going to Mamma's too," said Emilie, softly.
When they saw that the old woman was tired, Constance and Emilie rose:
"We must go, Mamma...."
"Yes, child. But don't leave me too long alone. When shall I see you again?"
"In three days."
"So long?"
"The others will come and see you: Aunt Lot, Dorine, Adolphine...."
"Yes, but I am too much alone. I can't understand it: I never used to be alone. I don't like being alone. I'm not accustomed to it. What do all of you do?..."
"Suppose you took Dorine to live with you, Mamma?..."
"No, no ... not to live with me, not to live with me. Every one should be free. But they might come and see me sometimes. I never see Adeline's children now...."
"Why, Mamma, I know they were here two days ago!"
"No, no, it's longer ... it's longer than that. I never see your boy either."
"I'll send him this afternoon."
"Yes, do. Why are we all so separated now? It never used to be like that, never.... Well, good-bye, dear. Will you send Addie? Will you come yourself soon?"
"You must wait a day or two."
"Yes, very well, stay with poor Ernst. You are doing a good work. And tell Adeline too that she is neglecting me and that Ineversee the children now,never...."
They both kissed the old woman. When their mother and grandmother was alone, she nodded her head up and down, looked out at the rain; and the tears ran down her cheeks, without stopping ... without stopping....
Emilie had a cab waiting:
"I'll drive you home, Auntie."
They stepped in.
"It's months since we saw you, child."
"Yes, Auntie. I've come straight from Paris. I'm going to see Mamma at Baarn."
"And then?"
"I shall go back to Paris. I'm living there now ... I intended to come and see you too, Auntie."
"Come in then, dear, and stay to lunch."
"I should like to, Auntie."
They got out at the villa in the Kerkhoflaan. Emilie dismissed the fly. Indoors, she removed her hat, took off the tulle boa, lost something of her exaggerated smartness....
"We have an hour left before lunch, Emilie," said Constance. "Come up to my bedroom. I want to talk to you."
They went upstairs; Constance shut the door:
"Tell me, Emilie ... how are you living, in Paris?..."
"With Henri, Auntie."
"With Henri ... but why, Emilie? Why keep your brother from his work?..."
"I don't, Auntie. He doesn't want to do that sort of work. He wants to be free; and so do I."
"Free ... in what way?"
"We don't feel ourselves suited ... to Dutch life...."
"But why not?"
"I don't know: an exotic drop of blood in our veins, perhaps. Try to understand, Auntie ... you have lived abroad a long time yourself. Holland is so narrow ... and I ... I have suffered too much in Holland."
"Dear, I suffered ... away from my country; and I longed for my country when I had not seen it for years."
"You will understand all the same. Auntie, do understand. I can't possibly live in Holland again; nor Henri either."
"How do you live there? Tell me."
"We are both living on the money we had left us."
"I know how much that is. There were heavy debts. You did not receive much: not enough to dress as you are dressed.... Emilie, if you care for me at all, tell me everything frankly. I am not inquisitive, but I am fond of you, fond of all of you; and I take an interest in all of you. Youcan'tlive on the money you came into from your father."
"I work, Auntie."
"In Paris? What at? What do you do?"
"I paint. I paint fans ... and screens. You know I have a bit of a gift that way. I paint them with a good deal ofchic. People in Holland wouldn't care for the way I do them. But in Paris I sell them for twenty francs, fifty francs: my screens fetch a hundred francs. I turn them out in half an hour. They have something about them, I don't know what:chic, I suppose, that's all. But I sell them: they are quite nice."
"I see nothing against that, child."
"I've been very lucky with them, Auntie. I've brought a screen with me for Granny ... one for you too ... and a fan for Aunt Lot.... They're presents: I knock them off in a moment. It's not art exactly, butchicrather, actualchic...."
And her delicate little fingers outlined a delicate gesture of sheer twentieth-century artisticity. Constance had to laugh in spite of herself.
"And Henri?" asked Constance.
Emilie suddenly turned very red:
"What do you mean?"
"What does Henri do?"
"He does...."
"Nothing?..."
"No. He does something. But don't ask me to tell you."
"Why can't you tell me?"
"You wouldn't understand. Henri is making money, a lot of money."
"What at?"
"I can't tell you, Auntie. It's not my secret, you see: it's his."
"Is it a secret?"
"Yes, it's a secret."
"Then I won't ask."
"It's a secret ... to the others. Perhaps not ... to you."
She was burning to let it out.
"I don't ask you to tell me, Emilie."
"I'll tell you ... if you promise me not to tell anybody else ... not a soul! Henri is ... a clown!"
"Emilie! No!"
"Yes, he's a clown."
"No!... No!"
Emilie gave a loud, shrill laugh:
"You see, you refuse to believe it! I should have done better not to tell you. You can't understand it. If you saw him as a clown, you would. He is splendid, he is unique. He is not a vulgar clown, not adummer August. He is simply magnificent. He has turned the art of the clown into something really artistic, something all his own. He makes the audience laugh and cry as he pleases. He invents his own scenes, designs his own dresses, or else I design them for him. He has a way of making up.... He has discovered the melancholy side of the clown: he's sublime in that.... He has one turn in the circus with quite fifty butterflies flitting on wires all round him ... he tries to catch them and can't ... and, when he does that turn, the people begin by laughing and end by crying. You see, it's symbolical.... Really, you ought to go to Paris to see him. He's so good, so artistic.... He does a lot of exercises, to keep himself supple. He looks much better than when he was racketing about at Leiden. He's very good-looking and he knows it: he never makes up ugly. A modern sculptor wants to make a statue of him: very fanciful, you know; somethingart-nouveau; in that part, with the butterflies all round him. He is always being asked to sit to artists.... You would never have thought it of him, Auntie. Here, he was just the ordinary undergraduate, racketing about, blowing his money.... I was always fond of him. The moment he got to Paris, he understood that he must do something, show what he was made of, strike out a line for himself; and it came to him with a flash: he would be a clown! But a very, very fine clown, something quite new, not one of your vulgar clowns! He makes heaps of money, I don't know how much.... And that's how we live, Auntie: free and independent of everything and everybody. ... Auntie, you look shocked. But youmustn'tblame us! Here, I was unhappy, so was he; there, we are happy, happy together. I am fond of him and he of me. I don't know what it is, but we can't live without each other. In Paris, the people think that we are lovers; they won't believe that we are brother and sister. And there you are: we're happy and we don't care what horrible things they say about us in Holland. Do you think I've come back to Holland for any other reason than to see Grandmother, you, Mamma, Otto? I longed to see you; I have no feeling for the others. I am sorry for Uncle Ernst. But I want to lead a free life, independent of Holland, of the family ... and I had to make it independent of my husband, whom I married in mistake ... and who beat me and ill-treated me! We want tolive, Auntie, and not merely exist!"
But Constance did not know what to say and shut her eyes as if she had been struck in the face. She turned pale. They wanted to live, not merely to exist! Was it for her to blame them, for her, who herself, very late, when she was quite old—too late and too old—had felt the need to live and not merely to exist? But ... had they really found their life in what they now considered their life? Did she not now know that the real life is not for one's self, but for others? Did she not know it even though she had never reached the radiant cities of the new life which had shone far off on those unattainable horizons? Had she not guessed that it was there; and had she herself not seemed very small when she had had to leave out of her reckoning the man who had become so dear to her that she was able to forget everything for his sake, even her son, the comfort of her existence, if not of her life? Was not she herself small and had she the right to condemn, merely because she was older and therefore saw the purest truths gleam at times out of some shimmering mist of self-deception? No, she did not condemn ... but that did not prevent her from being shocked. She could understand now ... and yet the rooted prejudice was there. She was willing to accept their new, fresh, free happiness in a life without conventional bonds; and yet those bonds bound herself, despite her new powers of understanding. She understood; and yet she felt a shudder at those who did not tread the beaten path, the smooth track of their decent respectability. Did not a vague suggestion of tragedy show dimly at the far ends of the new roads? Could they possibly persevere? And what would be the result of so unconventional a view of life? Was anything but convention possible for people such as all of them? Were they not born for it, trained for it? She herself had found new roads that led up to cities of light, but she had not trodden those roads. These ... were these new roads leading up to cities of light? Or was it merely wantonness, youthful levity, turning aside from the smooth tracks, the beaten paths?...
"Emilie," she said, "if what you tell me is true, don't tell any one else, don't talk about it! If Grandmamma heard, it would hurt her so much! And Mamma too!"
"No, Auntie, I won't; besides, it is a great secret ... a secret from the family, from all our friends. I have mentioned it to nobody but you; and I shall mention it to nobody. But come, Auntie, it's not so bad as all that: you look quite upset! We have different ideas from our parents. We can't help it. Who's to blame?"
"When I think, dear, of your house, as it used to be!"
"And now Henri is a clown ... and I paint fans for my living!"
She gave a loud, shrill, almost triumphant laugh, followed by a laugh that sounded sadder:
"Poor Grandmamma!" she said. "Poor, Grandmother! She called our family agrandeur déchue. And she is right, from her point of view. I am very sorry for her. I found her sitting there so melancholy, so forlorn; and the tears were running down her cheeks.... Auntie, you're a darling; I feel that you are better than I. But I can't live here. Your trouble made you want to come back. Mine made me want to get away. You felt that there were bonds that drew you here. I felt, on the contrary, that I must throw off every bond. My life began with a mistake."
"So did mine."
"Is it always like that?"
"Often ... often...."
"Don't we know ourselves, then ... when we begin to live?..."
"No, every truth comes to us later, much later...."
"Then you don't think that I knowmytruth?"
"No, Emilie."
"You are not pleased with me?"
"Pleased, child? It is not for me to judge you. All I say is, take care. Don't play with your life. Don't waste it. Our life is a very serious thing; and you treat it as...."
"As what, Auntie?"
"An artistic caprice."
"How well you have put it, Auntie! I never thought of that, never said it. An artistic caprice! Henri too: anart-nouveaucaprice? Why not?"
"Oh, no, Emilie ... take care!"
"Auntie, we are so small. We don't make any difference. What do people like us matter, women like us, girls such as I was? Nothing. Nothing. Why make tragedies of our lives? Why not rather make them into something fanciful, something fanciful and artistic?" And she made a painter's gesture with her fore-finger and thumb. "When we are dead, it's finished.... What do we matter, that we should be tragic? That is all very well for heroes and heroines ... but not for us. I will not have my life a tragedy. I started with a mistake. Since then, I have conquered my life and given it a definite aim. Do try and see, Auntie...."
"I see, Emilie. But you forget...."
"What?"
"The bonds...."
"Which I unloose...."
"Which you cannot unloose."
"Yes, I can."
"No."
"Yes."
"No. You'll see, later, when you're older."
"I sha'n't grow old, Auntie."
"Oh, child, what do you know, what do you know? How can you tell what you will become, how tragic your life may easily become, if you don't think of it more seriously ... moreseriously?"
She rose: an irresistible impulse made her embrace the girl passionately.
Emilie gave a start:
"What are you thinking of, Auntie?... What do you mean?..."
But what was the use of saying anything now of her presentiment, when presentiments always deceive? Constance said nothing more; she did not know indeed what more to say; she merely stared in front of her, strangely, vaguely; and what had shone for a moment was gone.
And she looked deep into Emilie's eyes and saw there only a vision: Paris, a circus, a clown, butterflies, quite fifty or more....
The front-door downstairs was opened; there were sounds of footsteps and voices. Ordinary life was beginning again.
"There are Uncle and Addie," said Constance. "Emilie, I'm going to Nunspeet this afternoon."
"I'm going to Otto and Frances after lunch. Let us meet at the station; and I'll go to Nunspeet with you. I want to see Uncle Ernst. And then we'll go to Baarn together."
"Very well, dear. But will you do one thing, to please me?"
"Yes, Auntie."
"Dress a little more simply. Remember that we're in Holland."
Emilie gave a shrill laugh:
"Yes, Auntie. I'll go and buy myself a sailor-hat. All my hats are too exciting for the Hague. The butcher-boys were shouting after me: 'Hat! ... Hat!' And, at Nunspeet and Baarn, I know the whole village would turn out to look at me!"