Marietje sat in Marianne's room staring out at the road. The road, white with dust and sunlight, gleamed through the green of the trees, described a curve and wound round the creeper-clad station, which stood in the shade close by. A train came thundering in, making all the walls of the little villa shake. Each time that a train rumbled past, whether it stopped or steamed through almost without slackening speed, it shook the little villa....
Marietje was bored. She was home for the holidays from her Brussels boarding-school, spending a few weeks at Baarn with Mamma and Marianne, and she was bored. She would rather have stayed at school. Of coursemadamewas a beast, but Brussels at any rate was better fun than Baarn, even for a schoolgirl.... She wondered how she would be able to stand a month of it. She had reckoned on an invitation from Uncle and Aunt van Naghel to their beautiful country-place in Overijssel, where she would have cycled and played tennis with her boy cousins; but Uncle had not said a word about it: Uncle wanted her to put in her month with Mamma, at Baarn. Lord, howcouldMamma go and live here, in such a house! It would come tumbling down on her head one day, with that everlasting rumble of the trains. She simply could not get away from the rumble of the trains.... Marianne said that Mamma did not mind it and that she herself had become so used to the noise that once, when there was an accident at Hilversum and the something p.m. train did not arrive at Baarn, she had woke up because of the unwonted silence! Well, that was a bit stiff, thought Marietje. Still, perhaps the rumble of the trains did keep Mamma and Marianne from going to sleep. For what a life it was, in this little villa at Baarn! Neither Mamma nor Marianne knew anybody; and they saw nobody. They had no carriage; and howcanone live in the country without keeping a carriage? Even if it was only a dog-cart, or a governess-car, with a pony; but you must havesomething.... It was a rotten way of living. A brilliant idea of Uncle Adolf's, wasn't it, to insist that she should come and bury herself here for a whole mortal month and bore herself to death with Mamma and Marianne!... Karel hadn't come, the brute! Oh no, he had gone to Uncle's. Marietje knew why: because Uncle wanted to keep an eye on him! So she didn't even see her brother.... Oh, how dull it all was!... Silly little walks to the Beukenkom, to Soestdijk: once in a way, there'd be the excitement of seeing the Queen drive past. But that was over in a flash—whoosh!—and then there was nothing more to see. Well, if she had been the Queen, she would never have come and spent the summer at Soestdijk!... A month! She would never live through it. She counted the days. She simply longed to go back to Brussels.Madamehad a young nephew who used to make love to her in great secrecy, even leaving notes under her napkin. It was risky, but it was great fun. He wrote so thrillingly.... Ah, when you compared the life that awaited her, when she came home for good in eighteen months, with what Emilie and Marianne had had: parties at Court; dances at the Casino, with all the smartest people in the Hague; the grand dinners at home: her sisters had had all that.... Pretty frocks too.... And she, what would she have? Nothing at all. She'd just go to Baarn, for you might be sure that Uncle and Aunt would never, never ask her to stay with them! And at the Hague ... who was going to invite her to the Hague? The whole winter at Baarn ... good Heavens! No, she must absolutely get herself invited to the Hague, once she had left school! Granny had a big house ... but Granny didn't like people staying with her; Aunt Adolphine: bah, such a crew, she wouldn't go there if she could; Uncle Gerrit: no, he had too many children, she wouldn't care about that and they hadn't a spare-room either; Uncle Karel was no use thinking about.... No, there was only Aunt Constance, who never saw anybody, and Uncle and Aunt Ruyvenaer, who had no smart friends, nothing but East-Indian people.... Yes, it was an awful nuisance, but she saw no prospect of an invitation. But one thing she did promise herself, to get married as soon as she could ... and to make a good match while she was about it, some one with lots of money! A nice thing she called it: Papa and Mamma brought you up in luxury and, the moment you began to grow up, they let you eat your heart out at Baarn! She was decent-looking, thank goodness, and her figure was going to be all right ... and then she would marry a lot of money! You had to be practical: that was the great thing. Therewerea few rich men left. But she ... she would show some sense and not behave like Emilie, who had got married by mistake or by accident, so it seemed, and accepted Eduard just as you accept a partner for a waltz.... Nor like Marianne either, who had fallen in love with her uncle! No, mark her words, she promised herself that much: since she had been brought up in luxury, now that the luxury was gone, she would see that she married money ... for money was everything. She wasn't going to trouble about a title or a name: if a rich bounder came and proposed, he'd do. But a fine house, fine clothes ... and a carriage ... and jewellery: all that she must have and all that she meant to have; for, without it, life wasn't worth living. To go on vegetating at Baarn, with that incessant rumbling of the trains, which made the walls of the villa shake as if the whole house were going to tumble down on her head: never! She had made up her mind to that: never!
Marianne came into the room, which was her own boudoir, with a conservatory leading into the garden: it was the pleasantest room in the house; the only others on the ground-floor were a small drawing-room and a gloomy dining-room. Marietje, lost in thought, was staring out at the sunny, dusty white road.
"Shall we go for a walk, Marietje?" asked Marianne.
"Beukenkom?" asked Marietje, languidly.
"No, farther than that...."
"Soestdijk?"
"No, farther still, through the Overbosch and across the moor, if you like."
"No, thank you: it's too hot and there's too much dust and glare. Can't we hire the pony-cart? Then I'll drive you."
"That mounts up, you know, Marietje; we can't take it every morning."
"Every morning!" growled Marietje. "Listen to you: every morning!... Well, then let's stay and look out of the window."
"Why don't you play the piano or do some painting?"
"Thank you for nothing. I can do that at school. I have no accomplishments."
"Then take a book and read."
"Oh, rot! The books that amuse me I'm not allowed to read; and the books I'm allowed to read don't amuse me. It's one of the drawbacks of my awkward age! Why haven't you joined a tennis-club?"
"Yes, I'm sorry I didn't. I'll see that I do next year."
"Next year ... that's a long way off. You ought to have thought of it before: you knew that you were expecting your sister and that there wouldn't be much for her to do here. But you can't think of anything here, you can't take your eyes off that horrible white road. It hurts your eyes too.... My poor child, how can you stand this place ... after the Hague! Don't you long for the Hague?"
"Not a bit."
"But what do you do here all the winter?"
"Nothing, Marietje."
"Oh, I know! You've grown pi. You go in for good works. Sewing for the poor."
"There are two poor families for whom I make things sometimes."
"There, what did I tell you? I knew it! Well, give us some nighties, in Heaven's name!"
"Oh no, Marietje, never mind about that!"
"Yes, yes, yes, hand over your nighties and let's sew them!"
Marianne had sat down at her work basket and Marietje, out of sheer boredom, also took up a "nightie." But she did no sewing:
"Just imagine if we wore this sort of thing, Marianne! It would tear my skin.... Oh Lord, there's another train! What a row, what an awful row! Aren't you afraid the house will fall in?"
"No."
"Do you like that noise?"
"Yes, one gets used to it."
"You could sleep to it, eh?"
"Yes, it lulls one."
Marietje shrieked with laughter:
"Oh, Marianne, how sentimental ... you ... have ... be-come, as Aunt Cateau would say...."
And, to herself, she thought:
"No, I'm not like that, you know. You won't catch me falling in love with my uncle for nothing. I mean to marry money, lots of money...."
But she said nothing, just stared out at the sunny, dusty road. A few people came along from the station.
"There's the rank and fashion of Baarn!" sneered Marietje. "The great sight of the day: three tradesmen and a hunch-backed shop-girl. Uncle Paul would say, three and a half atoms of human wretchedness.... Another tradesman and another shop-girl.... Two ladies.... Look, as I live, two ladies!... Goodness me, it's Aunt Constance and ... and Emilie!"
"Nonsense!"
"Yes, yes, it's Aunt Constance and Emilie! Hurrah!"
And Marietje, in sheer wild ecstasy at the unexpected distraction, threw the "nightie" right up to the ceiling, where it caught in the chandelier, and rushed through the garden down the road. She flung one leg up in the air with delight.
"Auntie! Emilie!" Marianne heard her yelling, quite beside herself.
Marietje embraced her aunt and her sister madly at the gate of the villa, conducted them indoors, thanked them personally for the surprise which they were giving her, for the welcome distraction which their arrival provided....
"And Uncle Ernst?" asked Marianne. "Poor Uncle Ernst! We had a letter from Frances...."
Constance told her how he was getting on at Nunspeet, that he was still rather restless, because he would look all over the house for fettered souls that moaned and implored him to help them.
"Will the delusion never leave him?" asked Marianne, with tears in her eyes. "Auntie, will he never get better?"
"The doctor has every hope that it will not be permanent...."
Marietje had taken possession of Emilie:
"And so you're living in Paris? With Henri? What do you do there, the two of you? Come, let's hear! Aren't you going to ask me to stay? Haven't you a spare-room? Look out: I shall come tearing in from Brussels, suddenly! Just imagine if I did!"
But by this time they had passed through the dining-room into the drawing-room, where they found Bertha. She was sitting at the window; she looked up.
"Here's Aunt Constance, Mamma. And Emilie."
Bertha merely stood up, kissed her sister and her daughter and at once dropped into her chair again. She scarcely seemed surprised at seeing them so unexpectedly. She barely asked after Mamma, after Ernst, after Henri. She seemed rooted to her seat at that window, through which she gazed at the shadows of the trees. She had grown thin, her eyes stared blankly and miserably in front of her and, in her black dress, she gave an impression of weary, listless resignation. She spoke scarcely more than a word or two, as if it were quite natural that Constance and Emilie should be sitting there.
"Henri sends you his best love, Mamma," said Emilie.
Bertha gave a faint smile, just blinked her eyes, as though to say yes, it was very nice of Henri. But she asked no questions.
"I have just come from Ernst, Bertha," said Constance. "I took him to Nunspeet with the doctor. I went down again yesterday, to see him; and, once I had started, I thought I would come and look you up."
"It's nice of you," said Bertha, vaguely, taking Constance' hand. "Is Ernst very bad? We had a letter from Frances."
"The doctor is very hopeful."
"Yes," said Bertha, as if it went without saying, "he's sure to get over it."
And she seemed tired from talking so much and said nothing more.
Presently Marianne, when she was alone with Constance, said:
"You'll stay to lunch, of course, Auntie?"
"Yes, dear, if I may."
"Are you staying for the night?"
"At the hotel."
"I'm sorry that we haven't a spare-room. Emilie can sleep here; then I'll sleep on the sofa.... I must just go and see about lunch."
"Don't put yourself out for me, dear."
"No, Auntie, but I must see what there is. You know, with just the three of us, we live very simply."
She flushed; and Constance realized that they had to be careful and that they could not keep the same generous table as in the old days.
They exchanged a sad smile. Suddenly, Marianne flung herself into Constance' arms.
"My darling, how are you yourself?"
"Quite well, Auntie."
"You don't look at all well. My child, how thin you've grown! And how drawn your little face looks! And your poor cheeks: why, they've gone to nothing!... Aren't you happy here, dear?"
"Oh yes, Auntie!"
"No, but tell me, honestly: are you happy at Baarn?"
"Yes, Auntie, I am."
"Do you regret the Hague?"
"Regret?... No...."
"Still, just a little?..."
"No ... no...."
Her eyes were full of tears; she began to sob on Constance' shoulder:
"Forgive me, Auntie. I oughtn't to break down like this."
"My darling ... tell me all about it...."
"No, Auntie, it's nothing, really. I feel so ashamed, but, as you know, I always let myself go with you ... because I feel that you do love me ... a little ... and that you are not angry with me ... and that you forgive me...."
"I have nothing to forgive, Marianne...."
"Yes, you have, yes, you have, Auntie.... Oh, forgive me, forgive me! Tell me you forgive me!..."
"How do you spend your time here, dear?"
"Quietly, Auntie, but I'm quite satisfied. I try to be of some little use ... to Mamma ... and others. I have some poor people whom I look after. But I can't do much, I haven't much.... In the old days, you know, Mamma used to do a lot of good ... in between all her rush and worry; and I try to do a little now. But it is hard work ... and rather thankless work.... However, that's all that's left: to live a little for others ... and do a little for others. But sometimes ... sometimes I find it too much for me...."
"Poor Marianne!"
"Yes, sometimes it's too much for me. I am so young still ... and I feel as if I had done with everything, for good and all!..."
"No, dear, no.... If you only knew! You're a child still, Marianne.... And life, real life, will come later...."
"It will never come for me, Auntie. Oh, forgive me! I feel ashamed of myself. I don'twantto talk like this ... but with you, just with you, because you're fond of me, I can't restrain myself.... Oh, tell me that you forgive me, say it, say it!"
"My child, if it does you any good to hear me say so, though I have nothing to forgive, very well, I forgive you."
"Oh, thank you, thank you, Auntie!... You are good and kind; you understand."
"Yes, dear, I understand. But the real thing will come later."
"No, nothing will ever come, nothing can come...."
"Can't it?"
"No, how could it?"
"If you had the strength and courage not to give in, Marianne, there would be happiness for you in days to come."
"But I have neither courage, Auntie, nor strength. What am I? Nothing. There is a great, big river, which rushes and flows, carrying everything, everything with it, like a deluge. And then there is ... a tiny twig, a leaf. That's what I am, Auntie.... How can I hope to...?"
"You're talking in parables, my child. Shall I do the same?"
"Do, Auntie."
"Come and sit here beside me. Put your head on my shoulder. There. And now listen to my parable.... There was once a soul, a very small soul, like yours, Marianne. A very small soul it was, quite an insignificant little soul. It knew nothing about anything, it seemed to be walking blindly, walking in a dream, a child's dream, light and airy and fragile. There was water and there were flowers ... and there was a far-away light, towards which it moved. As the soul went on, the flowers and the trees disappeared; and in their stead a palace and every sort of pomp and vanity gleamed in front of the small soul.... But all that glitter was just as much a dream as the water and the flowers; and the small soul ... made its second mistake. It walked blindly in that dream of pomp and vanity and thought that itsawall that radiance. It gave itself away, Marianne, gave everything it had to any one who might make it shine still more brilliantly ... gave away everything it possessed, for nothing ... for an illusion. And it already felt unhappy, thinking, 'There is nothing more coming; I've had everything now.' It thought that, even before its fate arrived. It saw its fate arrive and could still have avoided it, but did not, remained blind, blind to everything. Its fate swept it along; and it thought, Marianne, that everything was over, over for good and all; that it would wither like a flower, like a twig, like a leaf; and that the river would carry it along with it. And then, Marianne, then something else came, after it had been swept along by fate: there came a great revelation, a vision of rapture, an ecstasy of glory. And the small soul saw that it wasthat; but its fate forbade it to accept that great happiness, that vision of ecstasy.... And once again it thought, 'Now,now, I have really had everything. Afterthat, nothing more can possibly come.' And yet something did come. And, after that revelation, it was no longer a dream, but a reality, as tangible as it could hope to be ... for such a poor small soul.... What came, Marianne, was not so very much; but the small soul does not want much: an atom, a grain of absolute truth and reality; a tiny grain, but all-sufficing.... For small souls do not need much.... Just an atom, a grain. And of that grain, Marianne, it even communicated a part ... to others. My child, that is the whole secret: to share your grain, to give, though it be but of your superfluity, to others. But, Marianne, you will have to wait for that grain; it will only come later; and, before you can possess it ... you must first go through everything ... you must pass through all that unreality, that vain dreaming...."
"And, Auntie, have you the grain?"
"Oh, child, the grain is so small, so small! So tiny, so wee, such a very little grain! But what are we ourselves? And, we being what we are, is not that little tiny grain enough?..."
"For happiness ... some day, later, much later, after long, long years?..."
"Happiness? Happiness?... Yes, the happiness of knowing, of understanding; the happiness of resignation; the happiness of accepting one's own smallness ... and of not being angry and bitter because of all the mistakes ... and of being grateful for, what is beautiful and clear and true...."
"Grateful...."
"For the great dream.... And the happiness of satisfying hunger and thirst ... with that one, solitary little grain ... and of no longer yearning for the great, great dream!"
"But yet remaining grateful...."
"Yes, grateful that the dream has been vouchsafed to us, that its radiance ever smiled upon us...."
"But, Auntie, suppose it was no dream ... but the very bread of life!"
"My child, who can tell younowwhat is the only bread of life? Now, you are only hungry for your dream ... and, later, much later...."
"Have I hungered then ... after nothing?"
"Perhaps."
"After nothing? Oh no!"
"Who can tell?"
"Auntie, is every one of life's parables so cruel in its worldly wisdom? Do they all teach that the great dream is nothing and the little grain, which comes so late, everything?..."
"I fear so, child."
"Oh, Auntie, it's all words ... soft, gentle words!... I understand you: it is yourownstory,yourparable. But, until now, mine ... is nothing but the river ... and the leaf...."
"And later perhaps there will come ... the tiny treasure, the grain...."
Then they were silent; and Constance thought: "Every soul must first go throughthat, must have its dream.... Not until very late does it find the grain ... for itself. What another communicates to it never satisfies its hunger as does its own grain ... the grain it has found for itself...."
Addie was nearly sixteen. He did not grow much in stature, he promised to have the same build as his father, for there was something sturdy and yet delicate, something robust and yet gentle about him: strength and refinement combined. He continued to look older than he was, as though he could never quite catch himself up: his face, carved in firm and yet delicate lines, wore an air of calm serenity that did not belong to his years; his cheeks were covered with a golden down: indeed, his mother would have liked him to start shaving, which however he was not willing to do yet; and so the vague strip of golden velvet above his upper lip had become a decided moustache. His hair, with its soft, short, brown curls, was exactly like his father's; and his eyes also were his father's eyes, but they had grown still more serious, if possible, calm and tender, with a smiling sadness in their depths, and, above all, Addie's eyes were of a clear, untroubled blue, with none of the boyishness which shone in Van der Welcke's. Addie's were northern eyes, as his mother said: Dutch eyes, she called them, as distinguished from the creole eyes of all her family, the Van Lowes.
"Addie, how Dutch you are!" his mother would say, meaning thereby that they all, the Van Lowes, were specimens of the languid, less robust East-Indian type and that his father also had become more or less un-Dutch through his long residence abroad. "Addie, how Dutch you are! For a boy born on the Riviera, brought up in Brussels, who had never been in Holland before his thirteenth year, how is it possible that you should be the most Dutch of us all! You have nothing of the cosmopolitan about you!"
His mother used to tease him like this, especially when she looked into his eyes, his clear, calm, Dutch eyes, as into two blue mirrors, with a smile in them like a reflexion ... and beneath that smile, a vague shadow of sadness. And then he would give a sober nod of assent, laughing quietly, as though to say that she was right, that he felt quite Dutch and neither a languid East-Indian nor a mongrel cosmopolitan. He was a Dutch boy above all things, but here, in this little village of Nunspeet, he felt even more Dutch than at the Hague, especially as he looked out of his window at the hotel and saw the glittering white dunes undulating towards those vast skies, saw the piled-up clouds, the immensities of grey-blue rolling clouds, drifting by in their puissant majesty: all the glory of a small land; grandeur and might and majesty towering above the small lowlands, which bowed humbly beneath their awfulness.... Those clouds, those Dutch clouds: Addie loved them, those awful powers throned high above the gently undulating lands ... and Mamma, who teased him so, loved them too, her Dutch clouds, so vast, so vast, as though they were islands and fields, larger than the fields and islands of Holland itself....
It was early, six o'clock; and he looked out of his window into the pearly morning and, with a characteristic gesture of enthusiasm, flung out his arms towards the clouds. Then he laughed at himself, hoped that no one had seen him from the road. No, the peasants going to their work did not look up at his window; and now he dressed himself quickly, ran downstairs, breakfasted hurriedly on bread-and-butter and a glass of milk and went along the high-road and down a shorter road to Dr. van Heuvel's villa. The house stood some way back, in a large garden, quiet and shady; and, as the house stood high, it looked out over the undulating, sparkling dunes, past the dark-green masses of fir-trees on the moor which shimmered purple in the early morning sunshine, towards low horizons of just a streak of green, broken only by the needle-point of a steeple: just a narrow strip beneath the awful majesties of the vast clouds which drifted calmly by, one after the other, on and on, unceasingly, ever vast and majestic.
The doctor came out to meet Addie.
"Here I am, doctor."
"That's right, Van der Welcke, you're in good time. Would you mind going for a walk with your uncle presently?"
"Not at all."
"For I can't manage to come to-day."
"There's no reason why you should, doctor."
"It's the first time you'll have been out alone with him. When will your mother be back?"
"This afternoon."
"Of course, I could send the keeper with you. But it's better that your uncle should not see more of him than's necessary."
"Don't worry, doctor; it'll be all right."
"Don't go too far, you know."
"No, close by, on the dunes."
"I can rely on you?"
"Yes, doctor, absolutely."
"Here he comes."
Ernst came shuffling into the garden from the verandah; he knew Addie and smiled:
"Where's Mamma?" he asked.
"She'll be back this afternoon, Uncle. Are you coming for a walk with me?"
"No, I'm going to wait for Mamma," said Ernst, in a suspicious voice, with a glance at the doctor.
Nevertheless, Addie succeeded in coaxing him outside, down the road. And then Ernst took Addie by the arm and said:
"Do you know what's so rotten? That fellow's hidden Mamma."
"No, Uncle, really he hasn't."
"Yes, he has, my boy. The fellow's buried her somewhere in the dunes. Shall we go and look for her?"
"Uncle, I'm quite ready to go for a walk, but Mamma is not hidden or buried: she's gone to Baarn, to see Aunt Bertha, and she'll be here this afternoon."
Ernst shook his head and grinned contemptuously:
"You people are always so obstinate. Do you mean to say you don't hear Mamma? Can't you hear her moaning? She's been moaning all night. That fellow's buried her, I tell you."
"I don't believe it, Uncle, but at any rate we can go for a walk...."
"Yes, we'll look for her."
They went through a pine-wood: it was cool and dark as a church. Ernst kept poking the ground with his stick, kept listening to the ground:
"She's farther on," he said, "in the dunes. Her voice comes from farther away. Don't you hear it?"
"No, Uncle."
Ernst shrugged his shoulders:
"You people are so dull-witted. You have no senses ... and no souls," he said, roughly. And he immediately added, as though afraid that he had given pain, as though anxious to make atonement without delay, "Mamma is kind. You too, you're a good boy. I may make something of you yet."
They walked along, up and down the dunes, Ernst continually stopping and Addie continually forcing him to go on. At last, Ernst went down on his knees and dug a big hole with his two hands:
"It's here," he said. "I can hear Mamma's voice sighing. O God, O God, how she's moaning! She'll be suffocated, she'll be suffocated. Her mouth, her throat, her eyes are full of sand. What cruel wretches people are! What harm has poor Mamma done them? The wretches, the savages!... It's here, it's here: yes, wait a bit, Constance, wait a bit. I'm digging you out, I'm digging you out!"
He dug away, with his stick and his hands, dug away till the sand flew all round him, making his clothes white with dust. Addie had stretched himself on the ground and was letting him have his way, looking on quietly with his serene blue eyes, which seemed to study each of Ernst's movements. He said nothing more, finding no words with which to dispel the hallucination. At that moment, all words were vain. The hallucination was so vivid that Ernst actually saw Constance through the sand, saw her lying four or five yards beneath the surface, stuck fast in the sand, with its myriad grains pressing so tightly round her that she could not move and that, when, through her sighing and moaning, she was compelled to open her mouth, the sand at once trickled into it. He saw her body, as in a black garment, glued tightly to her limbs, stiff and motionless in that tomb of sand, in that winding-sheet which pressed closer and closer to her until the pressure threatened to choke her, especially now that her mouth was full of sand. Ernst could just see her black eyes faintly gleaming through a screen of sand; sand trickled into, her ears; and the sand, though there was no room for it below, kept trickling faster and faster, till it became an eddy of trickling sand. The trickling grains of sand were now gyrating madly around Constance like a great cyclone ... and Ernst dug and dug, with furious hands. He dared not use his stick ... for fear of hurting Constance. He dug, like an animal, with frantic hands. He dug away, dug out a regular pit; and the sand became wetter and wetter: he was now flinging out great lumps of sand.... Then, as he dug, he saw the dark body sinking, for ever sinking a yard lower: he could not reach his sister. The body sank and sank; and he reflected that, however deep he might dig his pit, he would never reach Constance:
"Addie!" he cried. "Addie! Help me, can't you? Help me!"
Addie, lying at full length, with his chin on his hand, looked quietly at his uncle, with all the serenity of his searching blue eyes. Suddenly Ernst stopped his digging, quickly turned his head halfway towards Addie; and his restless eyes looked into Addie's eyes. Then Addie shook his head gently, as if in denial, as if to explain to Ernst, without words, that it was not as Ernst thought, that there was not a body under the sand....
They looked at each other like that for a few minutes. Ernst lay on his knees by the pit, his fingers still cramped with the effort of digging. Suddenly, his feverish energy seemed to subside; he shivered and cried:
"O my God, O my God, O my God!..."
Then he bent over the pit and looked down. He saw nothing now: the body was not there; there was nothing but the hard, impenetrable subsoil. Then he listened, with his head on one side, for the plaintive voice. There was no voice: there was nothing but the great subterranean silence. There was nothing now: no body, no voice. He looked around: around him lay the sand which he had flung up, those senseless heaps of sand.
"O my God, O my God, O my God!" he cried.
Addie looked at him, very quietly; and Ernst shuddered under the blue serenity of that compassionate, studying glance. Then, with a jerk which shook his whole frame, the tension relaxed and his body seemed to go slack. But he still scraped some sand together and carefully filled up the pit to a certain depth, so that the wet sand was powdered over with dry, white sand. Finally he stretched himself at full length, with his legs straight out and his arms under his head. He was very tired, especially in his head. He could not have spoken a word. Heaving a deep sigh, he lay staring up at the tremendous clouds. They drifted past like something unearthly in their immensity, drifted very, very slowly, before his upturned gaze....
Then he closed his eyes, as if he were becoming frightened, as if it were all too big for him, too tremendous, too unearthly. And at the thought of his smallness he was oppressed with melancholy, a darkness that clouded his soul. He could not help it: under his closed eyes, the slow tears forced themselves; a sob shook him; and he lay weeping, still stretched at full length, still with his eyes closed. A big tear trickled down his cheek....
Addie never took his eyes off him. Now he rose, came nearer and gently stroked Ernst's long, black hair....
And Ernst just raised his eyelids and saw Addie stooping over him: blue eyes looking into black eyes. Then he closed his own again, breathed heavily, let Addie stroke his hair. The big tears trickled slowly....
There was no need, thought Addie, to speak to the tired man. The hallucination had gone; it must have left him utterly fagged out. Round both of them, man and boy, hung the haze of the summer morning; a steady droning filled the sultry air. Overhead, clouds drifted endlessly, everlastingly, cloud after cloud, drifting on and on....
It had gone very, very still. The tired man had dozed off; it seemed as though his nerve-taut limbs had relaxed and lay loose and slack: the thin legs in the wide, creased trousers; the chest sunk under the rumpled coloured shirt; the narrow shoulders, the lean arms in the old coat, with its tired creases. And the features of his face had also fallen in, now that the nerves were at last resting; they had fallen in like an old man's: queer wrinkles furrowed the forehead and etched lines under the eyes and round the nose and mouth; the short, scanty beard formed a stubble around the long chin; and the hair too was thin and stubby, a little thin behind the ears. Addie looked at the hands of the sleeping man: long, thin fingers, in which a nervous tremor still lingered, a very slight tremor, as though quivers were passing under the skin, over the veins.... The boy looked curiously at the hands, for he was always interested in hands, judging people more by their hands than by anything else: he did not exactly know why and certainly could not analyze it. And he could see those long, thin hands not only reaching out vaguely and ineffectually after art, but also laying hold of books with a more confident grasp, turning them page by page. He saw too a tremor of pity in the tapering finger-tips, which seemed not to dare to touch things; and those finger-tips struck him particularly because of the short nails, which nevertheless showed breeding, with their almond shape and the little crescent-moon at the quick; only, the nails were bitten short, as though in fits of nervousness. Then, mechanically, as he always did when studying people's hands, he looked at his own: his father's hands, but still boy's hands, though they were already becoming manlier, short and broad, white and strong, hands that would take a close, steady grip of things. He no longer bit the nails, but would cut them swiftly, with a pen-knife, whenever they bothered him. And from his own hands he glanced once more towards his Uncle Ernst's and seemed to read in them a soul highly susceptible to art and of extreme sensitiveness; a soul ready to assimilate the contents of books; a soul evolved out of loneliness, out of lonely life and lonely knowledge and, above all, out of lonely, very lonely feeling; a soul so lonely and shrinking that it had fallen ill of that loneliness and appeared to see and hear actually the thousand reflexions of all that it had read in books, seen in art and felt in its lonely hypersensitiveness....
The tired man slept on.... And Addie stretched himself at still fuller length, while around him the white dunes rippled away in the summer haze under those wide, unearthly skies. He felt well and not unhappy, though there was just a streak of sadness running through his reverie, sadness because people and things were what they were. It was a pleasant, benevolent sort of secret reverie; and through it all there was the desire to grasp things, to hold them as with the close, steady grip of his own hands, that close, steady grip, firm but tender, with which he meant to grasp everything in this wavering, uncertain life, earnestly and charitably and above all with a great longing for absolutely understanding, for divine knowledge, for the sake both of others and of himself.... And, because he had made up his mind, he ceased dreaming and began to reflect, thinking over how he was going to tell his parents what he knew so well in his own heart. He had loved them with such earnest love from early childhood that he understood them very well, both of them, knew them as thoroughly as it is possible for one being to know another. His father had always remained young, despite what he called the ruin of his life, despite that other thing which had brought great sorrow to him recently. His mother had grown older but more serious and lately, when she talked to him, Addie, had expressed views on all sorts of subjects which he used to think rather ... or was it because he himself was growing older and understood more and fathomed more of the depths of this deep life? Had Mamma always been like this? Were his childish memories at fault and had she always been the serious woman that she now was?... No, that was impossible, he thought; but nevertheless this was more an intuitive feeling than a definite ability to assert it positively and unhesitatingly.... And now he reflected—he had admitted it to himself—that, for as far as his love was greater for one than for the other, it was greater for his father, however much he would have liked it to be equally great for both.... Still, he would not speak to his father this time: he would speak to his mother. She would understand him more quickly than Papa; and what he had to tell her would hurt Papa more than it would Mamma. He would speak to Mamma first.... True, it appeared to him difficult to speak of this matter at all and to destroy in them a thought, an expectation, a hope which they had always cherished. But yet his idea had sprung up with such force from his innermost consciousness that he felt that he could not do otherwise. He would have to speak and tell them what he had resolved to do with his life, whose impenetrable future he saw unfolding before him, clearer every day, as though wide doors were being opened, till he saw what things would be like and where he would go to, a long, long way ahead....
He would tell her that afternoon, would tell his mother first. And, as he made up his mind to this, he felt that in his case it would be a vocation, that the voice was a distinct one, as though it were calling to him and beckoning him, through the wide doors that had opened. The voice that called to him so distinctly he would answer....
But Ernst was stirring and now woke from his sleep.
"Do you feel rested, Uncle?"
Ernst sadly nodded yes.
"Well, then shall we walk a bit? Else the doctor won't be pleased, Uncle."
They rose and walked on, in silence, up and down, down and up the rippling dunes. Ernst was very gloomy and, at last, said:
"You see, it's beyond my powers to help all of you, all of you.... There are so many of you, you see, that I can't possibly take care of every one of you ... however much I should like to. Then again you mustn't forget that there are thousands swarming round me as it is. True, they are no longer alive ... but they feel, all the same. Those are the souls. They never leave me in peace. And then to look after all of you, who are alive, as well ... it's beyond me; sometimes it's beyond me.... There's Mamma, poor woman. The whole world is at her heels; and, if I didn't see to it, they would hide her away and bury her.... Then I have to look after Papa and you and Uncle Gerrit and Uncle Paul and all the rest of them. I have all of you to look after. You never see anything and you know nothing, you live in a dream, you walk blindly ... to your ruin, all of you.... Who would look after you if I wasn't there? Who would look after you if I died to-morrow?... If I worried about it, instead of quietly doing my duty, it would send me mad to think of it!... And you never stay by me, you keep on running about, with the wretches at your heels, waiting to hide you away and bury you. Why, they had hold of Uncle Gerrit the other day, in chains, under my room! I heard him all through the night and I couldn't release him until ... until...."
He had lost the thread of his thoughts, passed his hand over his hair and said, mournfully:
"Addie, my dear boy, you mustn't come and see me any more. Uncle is in a bad house. It's a bad place, that doctor's house. Terrible things happen there at night. You're too young, Addie, to come to such a bad house. Promise me that you won't come again...."
"Uncle, the doctor's is not a bad house...."
"Of course you would know better than I! You're young; and you don't know and don't see things. There are scandalous goings-on at night, scandalous things in every room in the house. I shall tell Mamma to take you away: I can't look after all of you...."
"Uncle, you should stop thinking of such things and enjoy your walk and the air and the woods and the dunes and the clouds...."
"Yes, that's what you say: stop thinking ... and enjoy ... and enjoy...."
"Yes, enjoy nature around you...."
"Nature?..."
His restless black eyes encountered Addie's clear glance. And suddenly he stopped and said:
"Tell me, do they leave them alone, in my rooms on the Nieuwe Uitleg?"
"Uncle, there's nothing there; and all your books and china are well taken care of...."
"Is there nothing there?"
"No, Uncle, not what you think."
"And in the doctor's house?"
"There's nothing there either, Uncle."
"Here, round about us?"
"There's nothing, Uncle."
"Then what I hear...."
"Is an hallucination, Uncle."
"What I see...."
"That too."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it's the truth, Uncle."
"How do you know what is the truth?"
"Through my senses, Uncle. Through my reason."
"Are they healthy? Are they infallible?"
"Perhaps not infallible, but healthy. And yours are ailing."
"Are mine ailing?"
"Yes, Uncle."
"My senses?"
"Yes. And your reason too."
"You know that?"
"Yes, I know it for certain."
It was as though the sick man for one moment doubted himself, while he kept his eyes fixed on the boy's steady, blue eyes and read a strange lucidity in them. But something inside him made him unable or unwilling to overstep a certain boundary which was like a line of suffering in his sick mind, a grievous horizon, an horizon which was too near, which he could not look at from a distance, which had neither light nor darkness behind it, but only mist.
"And what about this?" he asked, pointing with his stick to the dune on which they stood.
"What, Uncle?"
"This, this, underneath us! This moaning and sighing and imploring for help!"
He threw himself flat on the sand; he dug furiously:
"Yes!" he shouted. "Wait! Wait a moment! I'm coming, I'm coming!"
And, rooting with his hands, like an animal, he sent the sand flying around him.
"Oh," thought Addie, "if he would only make one more effort suddenly to see, to hear, to feel that he was dreaming ... that he was dreaming! Oh, to have him get well ... to see him get well, all at once, so that one knew it by the brightness in his eyes ... and the untroubled look on his face!..."
Then he put his hand on Ernst's shoulder. The sick man stood up, walked along:
"Come on," he said, beckoning to Addie.
That evening, in the lane in front of the little hotel, Addie walked arm-in-arm with his mother. The deepening shadows gathered round them, pierced by the bright light of the lamp outside the house.
"Mummy, I want to talk to you...."
They were strolling slowly up and down; and the pressure of his hand urged her gently forward, through the deepening shadows, out of the fierce glow of the lamp and farther along the road, whence, under the starry skies, the meadows receded to remote distances towards the last streak of light on the horizon.
"What about, my boy?"
How old he was for his years and how serious! She felt his hand lying heavy on her arm, like a man's hand; she heard his voice in her ear, full of deep resonance, sounding a little more caressing than usual. He was still a boy, a schoolboy, but that was in years; in his soul she realized him to be a man, her big son; and, though this made her feel very old, it also made her feel calm and contented and safe in the possession of him ... so long as she did not lose him.... And what did he want to talk about now? For he had not spoken yet, but was walking on, silently. And, all at once, she began to be curious, wondering what it could be that he wanted to tell her in that suddenly caressing voice, what he wanted to obtain from her. For she felt that he was going to ask her for something, a favour almost, a gift. Because he was leaning on her like that, she felt that something was weighing on his mind, some oppressive anxiety which he would tell her in order to make it lighter to bear. What could be troubling him? What would it be? It could not be money: he was too sensible; he knew exactly how much she could spare. Was he in love? A boy's love-affair? Yes, she was convinced that that was it. She had always said that, when Addie fell in love, it would be once and for all; and she had grown a little afraid for her big son, with that serious heart of his....
"Well, what is it?" she asked; and she added, playfully, "Are you in love?"
He only laughed:
"No, I'm not in love. But still I have something very important to say to you, something that will distress you perhaps, because you always pictured it differently...."
"What is it, Addie?" she asked, feeling a little frightened and bewildered.
"It's this, Mamma," he said, quietly and very calmly. "I can't go into the diplomatic service ... because I want to be a doctor."
She was silent, walked on, with his arm in hers; and it seemed to her that new vistas suddenly opened out before her. No, she never thought that he was going to speak to her of his future. It had always been so positively settled, from the very beginning, that her son should take up the life and the career which she had ruined for his father. She had always looked upon it as a vague form of compensation which Addie, her son, would pay to her husband, to his father. She had never imagined that it would be otherwise. It could be done: he bore a distinguished name, he would have money later on and, once he had entered the profession which in their set had always been considered so eminent and honourable and illustrious—the most eminent, honourable and illustrious of all—he would console his father for the ruin of his career and restore to his mother something of her old position in society.... She had always, almost unconsciously, looked at it like that. And then there was still a grain of vanity in her, dormant, it was true, of late, but still an eternal, ineradicable germ: the vanity inherent in her, the vanity of thinking thatherson would pursue that most eminent, honourable and illustrious career. Now her whole world seemed to be turned upside down: the shock, the surprise, the disappointment made her dizzy; and through it all there came a sudden impulse to say no, no, no, that it was impossible, quite impossible, that it would give too much pain to Papa, to herself, to poor old Grandmamma and certainly to his grandparents as well; and, if he insisted, to say to him imperiously, almost in a tone of command, that it was out of the question, out of the question. But for the moment she said nothing; and he said nothing either; and they walked on, along the grey ribbon of the road, which ran on through the meadows fleeing on either side to the last streak of light on the horizon, under the great starry skies. He said nothing, as if he had said all that he had to say, quietly and simply. And she was too much under the influence of that tumult of shock, surprise and disappointment....
"Does it upset you, Mamma?" he asked, at last.
"It comes as a blow, Addie.... I never expected it...."
"Can't you understand that I...?"
"Understand? I don't know, Addie. We always thought...."
"Yes, I know: you and Papa always thought differently. I understand that it must upset you and that it is a disappointment."
"You had better speak to Papa first...."
"No," he said, calmly and quietly. "I want to speak to you, first, Mamma. You know how fond I am of my father, what chums we are. But I can't speak to him first, because he would not understand. And I want to speak to you first, Mamma, because you will understand."
There was something soothing to her vanity in his words, but also something deeper underlying them, which was not at once clear to her; for she knew that he loved his father more than her and yet he wanted to speak to her first....
"You will understand, Mamma, when I tell you. I don't feel in any way cut out for a career in which, no doubt, one can rise very high if one happened to be one of the four or five great men who stand out in it.... And even so ... even if I were one of those four or five—always supposing I had the brains or the genius for it, which I haven't and never shall have—then there would still be something in me which would make me feel that I had missed my vocation, that it was all purposeless, that I had got into the wrong path, into the wrong sort of work. I should always be too simple, Mamma, and too natural, your Dutch boy...."
He turned towards her with a little laugh; and she suddenly pictured him, faultlessly attired, in a white tie and a dress-coat, among the young diplomatists whom she remembered in the old days, in Rome. No, he did not resemble his father as much as all that....
"Whereas the other thing, doctoring, I feel quite different about. It's the only thing which attracts me and in which I feel that I shall do well. Let me just tell you what I do feel about it. First of all, there's nothing that interests me more than people ... and studying them, both their outsides and their insides. That's myhead, Mummy. And, as well as that, there's something else, a question offeeling. I feel for nothing so much as for any one who suffers, physically or mentally. And then I get a sort of impulse, which comes to me as naturally as sitting or walking or talking, to help as much as I can. That's how I feel; and I can't tell it you in any other way. It's no use my trying to explain it in a lot of words; I couldn't say more than I have already said. But, just telling it you like this, I do hope that you understand it, Mamma, and that you get the same feeling as I do.... And then, Mummy, there's something else, something I hardly dare say to you, because you will perhaps think that I am imagining...."
"Say it, dear...."
"It's this, Mamma: I feel inside me the power of curing people. And I feel that that power is growing...."
His great seriousness startled her.
"But I'm only saying this toyou, Mamma; I won't say it to any one else ... not even to Papa, because I feel that he would not understand. I am only saying it to you; and I shall never say it to any one but you; and I'm only saying it to you as a sort of justification for what I mean to do. And, if I'm wrong and it doesn't turn out as I think, then you'll forgive me, won't you? For I'm quite in earnest now."
"My darling...."
"Who can tell me for certain that I am mistaken, Mamma, and that I havenotthat absolute conviction deep down in my soul? It is a wonderful thing to have an absolute conviction like that about yourself. I would almost say that to be certain about other people ... is not so wonderful as to be certain about yourself.... But still ... but still.... Ifeelthat this is my vocation. Who can deny the existence of what I feel so very plainly within me, even though I am sometimes amazed at my own consciousness of it?... I know, Mamma, that all this sounds very strange and that I am not talking like a boy of my age. But that is because I am being very, very confidential and letting you know my most private thoughts.... It is so calm and peaceful out here this evening, Mamma, and the stars are shining so bright, as iftheyknew everything for quite certain. I ... I do not know for certain: I only feel ... and I wish. And I am telling you my most private thoughts, just freely and in the strictest confidence, so that you may not be unhappy...."
A thrill of tenderness went through her.
"Darling, I am not unhappy."
"What I have told you ... is a disappointment."
"A disappointment?... Is it a disappointment? I don't think so now, dear.... Not after the first shock of hearing it. It's not a disappointment any longer. If there is clearly something inside you which tells you what your vocation is ... oh, why shouldn't you follow it? So few of us feel clearly about anything.... Let's sit here, on the sand, under the trees.... So few people feel things clearly. Everything was vague with me ... until quite late in life, dear. We all cling to small things, to small interests ... both in our own case and in the case of the small people around us.... Do you still remember ... that friend of ours ... whom Mamma liked so much? Things weren't clear to him.... Darling, if they're clear to you, already, and if you are almost certain that you are not mistaken ... then obey your vocation. No one has the right to hold you back; and why should I hold you back ... for small reasons, while much greater things perhaps are urging you on? For small reasons ... for a touch of vanity, perhaps ... Ah, you see, darling, Iamsmall. I should have loved to see you, you my own boy, in the diplomatic service. Papa would have been satisfied; and you would perhaps have given me back something of the past.... Do you understand? It would not be honest of me if I did not confess that I should have been glad to see it. But that is because I still cling to small things ... while you are urged on by greater things. And, if it is really so, then I am proud of you, proud of you. You see, my darling, there's always that about your mother: her little bit of vanity. She is so glad that you did not inherit it ... that perhaps she gave you other things—something very small, but the best she had—which may become very great in you, an atom which in you will grow into a world.... No, I am not disappointed any longer...."
"You see, Mamma, I feel it so clearly when I am alone with Uncle Ernst: not that I can do anything yet, but I am certain that I shall be able to, later.... I feel that, if he were to come a fraction of an inch towards me ... and if I had the power to go another fraction of an inch towards him, we should get near to each other, he and I.... It doesn't happen now; but I feel ever so clearly that I am looking for something in him, the secret spot from which I could cure him if ... if I was older, more advanced and stronger...."
But he pulled himself up:
"Perhaps it's better not to say that."
"Why not, dear?"
"One shouldn't say those very private things.... But I wanted to talk quite frankly to you...."
"You have, darling. Don't force your words, if they won't come. Just tell me quietly, when talking comes to you more easily. Mamma will try to understand you. Mamma does understand you."
"And you forgive me ... for the disappointment?"
"It has gone."
"Then what is left?"
"A great sense of peace, dear. It will all be for the very best, I think. Do as you think, go to what calls you."
She leant against him, laid her head on his shoulder. He kissed her. A kindly, health-giving stream seemed to be flowing through her.
"He knows already, he is certain about himself," she thought, looking up at the understanding stars. "He knows his own mind ... definitely, definitely. O God, let him always know his own mind!"
Old Mrs. van Lowe had taken a furnished villa at Nunspeet for a few weeks and gone to stay there with Adeline and her flaxen-haired little tribe. She wanted to be near Ernst; and the doctors had not objected to her going to Nunspeet and even seeing him once or twice: there was no question of an isolation-cure; on the contrary, the patient had always been too lonely; and something in the way of kindly sympathy, which would counteract his shyness, might even have a salutary effect.
Gerrit ran down once or twice from the Hague. But there was hardly room for him in the villa, which was full up with the children's little beds; and also he was secretly hurt that Ernst had taken a dislike to him. And, when he was back at the Hague, alone in his house, he pondered over it all, over the difference and the resemblance between them: Ernst belonging to the dark Van Lowes, Papa's blood; he, like Constance and Paul, to the fair ones, Mamma's blood, though they all had black or at least very dark-brown eyes, with that rather hard, beady glance. But what struck him as very singular was that he more or less understood why Ernst had become as he was: a little odd, he called it, nothing more; whereas Ernst saw nothing in Gerrit, saw nothing but a nature entirely antipathetic to his own: no doubt his deceptive muscular strength, which was antipathetic to the morbid sensitiveness of the shy, lonely, studious brother.... But did any one see him, Gerrit, really as he was? And had it not always been so, from the time when he was a child, a boy, a young man? It gave him a melancholy sense of security, in these days; that he was living by himself, living a life taken up exclusively with his military duties, captain for the week, out very early, in the stables from six to seven seeing to the grooming of the horses, the cleaning of their boxes, thinking even more of the horses than of the men and caring more, hussar that he was, for a fresh, clean-smelling stable, with a litter of fresh, clean-smelling straw for the animals, than for the details of the troopers' mess. When the horses had been fed and watered came the ride with his squadron: drilling, target-practice or field-duty; then back again, handing in his report, finishing any business in the squadron-office. This took up the whole morning; and in the exercise of those minor duties which he loved he had hardly time for thinking; and the officers for the week saw him as they had always seen him: the big, strong, yellow-haired Goth, brisk in his movements, flicking his whip against his riding-boots, broad-chested in his red-frogged uniform, his voice loud and domineering, with a note of kindliness under the bluster, his step quick and firm, giving an impression of energy.... That was all that officers and men saw of him; and he, for the time, was what he appeared, even to himself.... But then he would go home and bolt his sandwich, alone, and would ride his second charger, before going back to barracks in the evening, to supervise the foddering of the horses again. And it was during this afternoon interval that he was accustomed to pick out lonely roads, where he would meet none of his brother-officers; it was then, in that afternoon interval, when loneliness was all around him, that he saw himself and knew himself to be different from what he seemed to his acquaintances, different even to himself.... He saw himself again as a child in Java, a small boy playing with his sister Constance, on the great boulders in the river behind the palace at Buitenzorg. He could see her still in her whitebaadje,[4]with the red flowers at her temples. The thought of it gave him a curious sentimental pang, which made him melancholy, he did not know why. Then he saw himself grown a few years older and in love, perpetually in love, with the earnest amorousness of East-Indian schoolboys for girls of their own age, littlenonnas[5]who learn so rapidly that they are women and that they attract the boys who ripen so rapidly into men under the burning sun. He, Gerrit, had always been in love, sometimes in romantic fashion, like the fairy princes in the stories which his little sister Constance used to tell him, but more often in rougher style, longing to satisfy his greedy mouth and greedy hands, the gluttonous senses of his lusty, growing body, the body of a schoolboy and of a young man in one.... Oh, he still laughed at those recollections. He could see the school distinctly and, at play-time, the boys slyly looking through the reeds by the ditch-side at the schoolgirls' little carts; the youngnonnas, in their whitebaadjes, peeping through the curtains of the rickshaw; the boys throwing them a kiss with quivering fingers, the girls throwing back the kiss to their boyish lovers in the reeds. And the assignations in the great, dark gardens; the burning and glowing in the childish breast: oh, he remembered it all!... And he saw, as he went on his lonely ride—although he now laughed the laugh of his mature years—he saw before his eyes all the girls with whom he had been in love, as a schoolboy, at Buitenzorg....
There was one delicate, fair-skinned girl, very pale and very pretty. She soon acquired the purple, laughing lips of the child who, by the time that she is thirteen, becomes a full-grown woman, with a ripe bust and riotous black curls.... And he also remembered a coffee-plantation in the hills, with a young married woman of barely twenty, who had taken him, a lad of fifteen, in her arms and had not released him until the boy had become a man. She had taught him the secret that was seething in his blood, throbbing in his veins, the secret that flushed his cheeks and took away his breath the moment he approached anything in the shape of a woman: the secret which the boy knew by hearsay but not by experience. And, ever since she taught it him, there had been in him, like a healthy hysteria or vigorous sensuality, a great lustiness of his adolescent body; a surplus of strength which he must needs dissipate: he never came near a woman now but he at once swiftly appraised her arms, her swinging gait, her bust, the look in her eyes, the laugh on her lips; if he passed her in the street, a quick glance printed her whole figure like a photograph on his sensual imagination until the next woman whom he met effaced it with her own, later print.
And, when he came to Holland as a young man and entered as a cadet at Breda, the need for lust had developed into an overpowering obsession, as it were an unquenchable thirsting of those new-found senses which were fermenting in the young male body. Afterwards, as a young officer, he had known one quick sensual passion after the other, taking each laughing enjoyment with all the carelessness of a youthful conqueror. His strong constitution and open-air life had enabled him to triumph like that with impunity, for years on end; but even at that time he had often suffered from sudden fits of depression, a secret, silent hopelessness, when everything seemed to be going black before him with needless, useless, menacing gloom. None of his fellow-officers saw it; none of his brothers or sisters. If he put in an appearance on one of those days, he was the same blunt, jovial soldier, the fair-haired, burly giant, rough and noisy, with the mock fierceness in his voice and the love of women in his brown, questing eyes, that went up and down, doing their appraising in a moment. But, secretly, there was within him so great a discontent with himself, that, as soon as he was alone, he would think:
"O God, what a rotten, filthy life!..."
Then he would fling himself on a couch, under his sword-rack, and wonder whether it was because he had drunk champagne yesterday, or because of something else ... something else ... a strong feeling of discontent. He did not know, but he made up his mind on one point, that he must knock off champagne: the damned fizzy stuff didn't suit him and he wouldn't drink it again. Indeed, he wouldn't drink much at all: no beer, no cocktails, for it all flew straight to his temples, like a wave of blood, and throbbed there, madly. And so it came to a secret abstemiousness, of which he never spoke and which he calculated so cunningly that his friends, though they knew that he was no great drinker, did not know that he could not support a drink at all. Sometimes he was fierce about it, allowed the drink to be poured out and emptied the glass under the table or broke it deliberately, knocked it over. That beastly drinking drove him mad; the other thing, on the contrary, kept him calm and cool, cleared his blood and his brain. It was after drinking, especially, that he felt depressed; after the other thing, he felt as if he were starting a new life. He was like that as a young officer, like that for years at Deventer, Venlo and the Hague; and his sudden rough outbursts—of insolent gaiety rather than anger—had given him his name as a big, blustering, brainless sort of ass: a pane of glass smashed, without the slightest occasion; a quarrel with a friend, without occasion; a duel provoked for no reason and then a reconciliation effected, with the greatest difficulty, by the other officers; a need sometimes to go for houses and people like a madman and destroy and break things, more from a sheer animal instinct of wanton gaiety than from anger. When he was angry, he knew what he was doing; a kind of soft-heartedness prevented him from becoming really angry; it was only that madness of his which allowed him to go really far, letting himself be carried away by a strange intoxication, the same intoxication which he felt on horseback, when riding in a steeplechase: a longing to rave and rage and go too far and trample on everything under him, not out of malice but out of madness. That again cooled him, made him feel clear and calm: it was only the confounded drink that drove him mad....
But, as he grew older, he quieted down and mastered his hot blood, so that he was satisfied with a quietliaisonwith a little woman whom he went to see at regular intervals; and suddenly, in his secret fits of gloom and blackness, it was borne in upon him that he must get married, that it was that confounded living alone in rooms which gave him the deep-lying discontent which he never spoke about, for it would never have done to let the others notice things which they would think queer and of which he himself was at heart ashamed. And then, as he lay quietly, under his sword-rack, he would think, ah, to get married, to have a dear little wife ... and children, heaps of children ... and not to dissipate your substance for nothing!... But children ... Lord, Lord, how jolly, to have a whole tribe of children round you!... All that was kindly in him and friendly, not to say very romantic and extremely sentimental, now made him wax enthusiastic, under the sword-rack, the great, strong fellow who made the couch crack under him with his weight: Lord, Lord, how jolly! A whole tribe of children: not two or three, but a tribe, a tribe!... He smiled at the thought; after his riotous youth, it was a pleasant prospect: a nice little house, a home of his own, a dear little wife, children.... He talked to his mother about it; and she was delighted; because she had long been thinking that he ought to get married.... He was thirty-five now; yes, really, it would be a good thing to get married.... And she looked about and found Adeline for him: a good family, of French descent; connections in India, which was always nice; no money, but the Van Lowes never looked at money, though they hadn't so very much themselves, comparatively, professing a laughing contempt for the dross which, all the same, they could very well do with. A dear little girl, Adeline, young—she was thirteen years younger than her husband—fair-haired and placid: a regular little mother even as a girl. And Gerrit, though he had had a brief vision of other women, other girls, had thought:
"Oh, well, yes, a bit bread-and-buttery; but you want a different sort for your wife than you do for your mistress!"
And, after all, she was round and plump, a little round ball, even as a girl, and nice to hug, even though she was a bit short and though her figure was badly deficient in the lines that set his blood tingling. He never for a moment fell in love with Adeline; but he saw her for what she was: his wife and the mother of his children, the little tribe for which he longed, because it was such a pity and almost mean to go dissipating your substance for nothing, especially when you were getting a bit older and sobering down. He would have a healthy little wife in Adeline; she would give him a healthy little tribe.... She, in her placid way, had come to love him, very simply, because he was big and good-looking and because he was offering her, a penniless girl, a modest position. They had got married and were still living in the same little house, quite a small house, but big enough to harbour what Gerrit had looked for from the start, one citizen of the world after the other.
He thought it rotten now to be alone; and, when Mamma had asked Adeline and the children to the little villa at Nunspeet, he had grumbled that they were leaving him all alone, but gave in: a few weeks in the country would do the wife and the children good; and he ran down once or twice to Nunspeet on Sundays. But the loneliness was bad for him; and the house that had suddenly become lifeless and silent oppressed him with a gloom which weighed upon him so heavily that he could not throw it off: a cursed heavy weight which bore down on his chest. Add to this that, in order not to be alone in the evenings, he allowed the other fellows, at whose mess he dined these days, to persuade him to go with them and have a drink at the Witte ... and it was those confounded drinks which finished him, simply finished him.... He was home by one, at the latest; but he felt, after those drinks, as if he had been up all night: he could not sleep; if he fell asleep at last, he kept on waking up; his heart bounced as if it were trying to reach his temples; he turned about and turned about, dabbed his face and wrists, lay down again, ended by splashing cold water all over his body; then he crept into bed again, huddling himself up, with his knees drawn up to his chin, like a child; he stuffed the sheets into his ears, hid his watch, so as not to hear it ticking louder and louder, and at last went to sleep. When he woke in the early morning, whole landscapes of misty mountains pressed upon his brain, as though his poor head were the head of an Atlas supporting the world on his neck; persistent, slow-rolling, rocky avalanches crumbled all the way down his spine; and, with his legs stretched out wide in bed, he was so horribly depressed by that waking nightmare that he felt as if he could never make a move to get up, as if he could not stir his little finger. Then, at last, with a groan, he got up, cursing himself for drinking the damned stuff, took his bath, did his dumb-bell exercises, full of wondering admiration for his powerful arms and ingenuously thinking, if he was so strong in his muscles, why couldn't he carry off a drink or two?... Then he would look at his arms with the smiling vanity of a woman contemplating her beautiful curves; and, though his eyelids still hung heavy and round, too weary to roll up, the waking nightmare vanished under the influence of the water and the exercises and the misty mountains rose higher and higher till they vanished out of sight and the avalanche of rocks just tickled his back with a last gritty hail of pebbles. Then he became himself again: his orderly was waiting outside with his horse; in barracks he was the zealous captain, who carefully performed his military duties; none of the officers saw anything the matter with him....