Now at last, after days, he was himself again! Alone, all alone, in the
night, in his study, while everyone in the house slept, while only the
night itself was awake: the night and the immense wind tormenting itself
and struggling, raging and tearing round the house. Now at last he was
alone and himself again, after Amsterdam and after Haarlem, after the
troubles and comings and goings, the excitement--needy patients, visited
by stealth; the Merchants' School; the old man, the old man
especially!--and, tired as he was, yet he could not make up his mind for
bed. In the study which was now getting dusky-brown to his eyes in the
light of the lamp, he sat in the low leather chair; and his head wearily
drooped on to his hand. Now that he had no more need for action, waves
of indeterminate darkness surged and floated all around and within him,
bearing on their crests the mood of self-insufficiency. No one else knew
him as he now knew and felt himself: not his parents, not his wife, not
one of Uncle Gerrit's children, not one of his needy patients, who only
saw him composed and steady of nerve, a little sombre-eyed, but so
four-square and firm, so calm and confident in his knowledge, always
sure what would be good for all of them, who were ill and wretched....
No one knew him as he was now, weighed down with such despondency in his
leather chair; and all who saw him four-square and firm, calm and
confident in his knowledge, would never have believed that he knew
nothing at all ... for himself. Oh, however much he might know for
others, with that almost mystic knowledge which healed as though by a
suggestive force deep down within himself, however much he might know
what was good for their bodies and souls, for himself he knew nothing,
least of all for his soul!... To them his young life seemed to move from
one goal to another, always certain of itself through the windings of
its course; yet that was all on the surface; and he knew nothing of
himself!... His own disease was insufficiency; and of recent years he
had felt it swelling within him fuller and fuller, eating into him
deeper and deeper....
He saw himself again as a child--his first recollection--between his two
parents, his father taking him from his mother's lap, his mother taking
him from his father's arms; and amid the unconsciousness of his earliest
childhood he had always felt the jarring and jealousy between them. Very
soon his blood made him speak, that calm unfevered Dutch blood; and his
unfevered Dutch nature could be seen in his serious eyes; from the first
his Dutch seriousness and steadying composure had been able to find, if
not always words, at least sounds of consoling reconciliation, of riper
tenderness for that mother, who hugged him in her arms, for that father,
whom he came to regard so soon as a bigger and older brother. And this
when he was still a little fellow. It had been like that ever since he
could remember; from the time when he was a child in the nursery,
stroking Mother's tearful eyes and bringing a laugh to Father's pouting
mouth; and, as he grew older and bigger, he remembered, it had always
been like that: he knew himself to have been their comfort.... It was
small wonder that, when still quite young, he had begun to think of the
comfort that he was and had then known for certain that he was their
comfort.... He knew it then, as child and boy--no longer in
unconsciousness but in assured, unshakable knowledge--and then it had
become his destiny. So very early it had dawned on his consciousness and
afterwards glittered before his eyes:
"I must help them, I must be to him and to her what is dear to them and
what comforts them."
So naturally had he taken that destiny upon his young shoulders that it
never became too heavy for him; and there had grown up with him an
inclination to comfort and alleviate those who were not quite so near to
him. Quite naturally he had spread his wing over all Uncle Gerrit's
children, to care for them, to bring them up. Quite naturally, he sought
what he could find to alleviate and comfort, whom he could cure, whom he
could care for ... and this farther still from him, not close to his
home, but in outlying villages and distant towns.... Thus had his nature
grown and thus did he act, naturally, in obedience to his nature.... But
the conflict between his parents, coming immediately, in the first,
unconscious years of childhood, had made his tender nerves tremble with
an incessant thrill, like a stringed instrument that is never silent....
And under the calm, earnest glance, under the laugh of comfort or
composure, under the sturdy breadth of his young and manly strength, the
strings had always vibrated and never consented to betray themselves....
They had betrayed themselves once, once only, when his very earliest
childish pain had given him a violent shock, in a despair too great to
be borne.... But immediately afterwards he had known within himself that
he must be strong to overcome the cruelties of life.... Since then the
cruelties had blown against him, like piercing winds ... without causing
the sensitive strings to vibrate visibly or audibly to others.... Oh,
did he not remember that suffering of his childish soul when he fancied
that all his childish love had been wasted, because his parents in
despite of it were going to separate, each grasping at the happiness
that had smiled to him!... no one had seen that suffering and vibration.
After the first suffering, no one had seen anything. And it was as if
the too-great sensitiveness of the ever-vibrant strings had hardened in
the robust young years of manliness; the god had stood before him so
sharply defined: yonder!... Yonder!...
He had felt young and robust; and that too-sensitive vibration had only
developed his soul mystically, so that it should heal, wherever it
directed its magic.... It had been very strange to him; but just with
the medical studies, which should have made him a materialist, there had
developed within him a conscious mysticism, enquiring into the essence
of life, which the medical books failed to teach him. When he discussed
it with his student friends, they answered with the scoff of growing
positivism, the barren philosophy which clings to most men from their
medical studies, because they ask only for the visible manifestations of
the life which it is their business to tend and not for the invisible
source, the holy well of life, whence everything flows in a radiance
that grows gradually dim ... until the first radiance is no longer
visible....
So it had happened with his student friends; and theirs had become the
common materialistic doctor's career. His eyes had always been set on
the essence of life, the source of the radiant spring.... And, with his
increase in practical science and positive knowledge, the strange,
mystic certainty had increased in him, the certainty that he was able
to heal if he wished ... that he could heal through sheer force of
will.... It was not a matter for discussion, it was in him, a great
instinctive knowledge.... Oh, that glorious certainty, which had shone
out before him so early, sending its rays abroad.... Since he had felt
it, very early, so clear and certain in himself, he no longer spoke
about it; at most there was a very rare word to his mother, an
occasional word to his father; but for the rest he would not touch his
secret power with words: they were breath to dim a mirror's lustre!
Oh, why had he not this knowledge for himself! Why, of late years, had
he sunk deeper and deeper in the vagueness of that self-insufficiency!
Why was the balance disturbed, why did he feel a consciousness of blame
welling within him!
He now sat on wearily; and, though everyone in the house was in bed,
though the blowing wind, gigantic and plaintive, moaned up over distant
heaths and slid along the walls and windows with its sombre, swelling
howl, he could not make up his mind to go to bed, as though he knew
that, if he did, he would not sleep. And, as if to know for himself how
the discouragement could have overmastered him, he dived back into his
memories, saw himself a boy again, healthy, strong and composed, loving
his Dutch horizons and Dutch skies, with the deep, growing conviction
that he had within himself the secret power which he could pour forth to
heal all who suffered in body or in nervous soul.... He saw once more
the disappointment of his parents, especially Papa, and of Grandmamma,
because he would not enter the diplomatic service, because he wanted to
become a doctor.... But he had carried his wish, backed up by Mamma, who
seemed to understand him.... His rapid power of study, which allowed him
to attain in feverish haste the aim which he saw so close before his
eyes: matriculating out of the fifth class at school; putting in a short
time at Heidelberg before he went to Leiden: he was so very young, only
seventeen; passing his first examination in a year, his second in
eighteen months, taking three intermediate courses in the next five
years, during which period he also acquired practical experience with a
demonstrator at Vienna; and lastly taking his degree at the age of
twenty-six. His parents rejoiced when, after those nine years at the
university and abroad, he settled down with them at Driebergen, when
they had him back in their house, where, despite the presence of all
Uncle Gerrit's children, he had left a feeling of emptiness.... A short
spell of the tenderness of living with them all again; and his love for
mankind had developed so quickly, making him find his patients
inevitably among the poorest of the rural population, or sometimes in
the villages, or even at Utrecht or Amsterdam.... He never spoke about
them, maintaining an earnest silence about the things which he did, even
as he was silent about the secret force which he so certainly knew
himself to possess.... Never had he spoken to anybody over that poor
little girl, a child of twelve, the daughter of two wretched labourers,
a cripple since the age of five, whom, with the veriest trifle of
material assistance, but more particularly through his sure power of
will, he had gradually helped to raise herself from her bed of straw,
enabled to move herself about, until she could now walk on her frail and
yielding little legs.... He might have been ashamed of a cure so
incredible, for he had never talked about it, not even to his mother,
not even to his father....
Oh, it lasted such a short time, the tenderness of that time when he
lived with them all again, with his parents and the others!... When he
reflected upon the strange double projection of his soul, when he was
meeting the girl, who was now his wife, at the Hague: meeting her just
now and again. A strange projection one of them? Perhaps not, after all;
but, because of the stormy night wind, sombrely sending its howl over
the sombre heaths, he was not able ... to read his own thoughts
plainly.... Mathilde! The few meetings, at the Hague; then that feeling,
when he chose her, of having been irresistibly compelled; and, combined
with a vague wonder within himself, the pride also of introducing that
good-looking and healthy young woman into his family.... He was proud
that she did not belong to their class, especially on her mother's side,
because it gave her an opportunity of triumphing over their arbitrary
divisions; proud too that she was healthy, with her complexion of milk
and roses, and above all did not suffer from "nerves," that all too
common complaint among them all.... But they had not shared his pride;
and after his marriage, some hint of antagonism seemed inevitably to
arise between him and his father; his mother, too, for all the
liberalism that had come to her late in life, remained antipathetic to
this girl, whose gait and voice, whose movements and utterance all
suggested a different environment from that to which Constance was
accustomed; it was as if Aunt Adeline, Emilie, Uncle Gerrit's children,
all their big household, had been unable to receive Mathilde in their
midst without a certain supercilious mistrust.... They could none of
them understand why he had married this woman.... And he had not failed
to see how they always stirred themselves to be gentle and amiable
towards her--because, when all was said and done, she _was_ his
wife--stirred themselves especially not to let her see that they all
thought her not _quite_, really not _quite_.... Her footfall was heavy,
her voice not high-pitched enough; in everything that she did or said
they marked that sometimes infinitesimal difference which betrays a
difference of station. He had not failed to see it, but his pride had
lain low and had never allowed them to notice that he saw it, because he
thought it so small of them, so small-souled, that they could not blind
themselves to that infinitesimal difference between Mathilde and
themselves, yes, because he considered even their assiduous amiability
small-souled. They showed it her so graciously sometimes, priding
themselves, all of them, willy-nilly, upon their greater native and
acquired distinction, all thinking themselves finer and better and
higher than his wife, whom nevertheless they did not wish to wound....
He saw this last even in his mother, in the boys, in Adeletje and in
Gerdy--though Gerdy never succeeded--and he really preferred the
undisguised aversion of little Klaasje, who clearly showed that she
could not bear Mathilde....
And he now saw that, in marrying this woman, who was not quite of their
class, he had wanted to display pride in particular against the
arbitrariness of those whom he called his people--his parents, his
family--he had wanted to show that there was no longer any distinction
of class, especially no distinction in those minor shades of class. If
they were going to think about distinctions, she had the distinction of
health ... while his own people were all sick, in body and soul, not, it
might be, suffering severely, but all affected or tainted with those
"nerves" of their time.... Perhaps his pride had just contained a desire
to place his wife, Mathilde, before them as an example:
"Look here now, here's a woman who is healthy and simple."
For that was how he looked upon her soul and body. Because he looked
upon her thus, he had felt for her the love that had driven him towards
her, his soul taking that direction of positivism and materialism which,
after his student days, had at that moment mastered the mysticism of his
soul.... For he had known then, those moments in which he--tired of his
text-books or hardened in the operating-room--had felt the mysticism
within him temporarily fading; and it was especially during those
intervals of materialism that the young doctor had experienced
Mathilde's attraction, the attraction of a healthy, pink-and-white woman
who would give him healthy children. At such moments he saw the world,
all mankind, renewed by careful selection; the vigorous life-force of
the future bursting into luxuriant rose-blossoms which would overwhelm
the sickly lilies of these days of "nerves...." When, afterwards, the
secret forces spoke more loudly within him, then he would suddenly feel
himself far removed from his wife, as though he had lost her; and
especially in his dark, vague self-insufficiency he lost her entirely,
feeling himself nerveless and without power even to return her kisses
with any warmth, while his voice in speaking to her remained dull and
his grey glance cold, whatever he said and however hard he tried to
force himself back into his healthy, positive love for the healthy
mother of his two children....
Then he would feel guilty towards her. And the inner conviction of his
guilt increased. Was it her fault that he had been able only to give her
one half of his soul, that he had it in his power to love her only with
the positive half of his nature--however sincere it might be--while he
gave her nothing of what worked and moved in him more profoundly and
gloriously, the true web and woof of himself? Was it her fault and was
he really entitled to take her, if he could not give her more than half
of himself, while all that was higher--and he well knew what was higher
in him--escaped her and always would escape her?... But often in his
black insufficiency, even as now in his weary nocturnal mood, his
consciousness of guilt, though it pained him, became suddenly too dreamy
and unreal; and he now comforted himself tranquilly:
"She is a simple woman. She has never thought of other than simple and
uncomplicated things, has never lived among them; and she will never
miss this, all that I do not give her, she will never know the lack of
it, because she is simple, because she is simple: a healthy, normal
mother, the handsome, healthy mother of my two dear children...."
Then again, tired and undecided to go to bed, he was pricked by his
consciousness of guilt, he thought of her unhappy in the house that was
dear to him, and he knew that he was incapable to-day--and so often, so
often!--of giving her that love, that positive half, that one half of
himself.... Sinking and sinking in his self-insufficiency, he now
listened to the wind howling round the house, the storm that had lasted
for days, and he seemed to hear voices that came moaning up over the
wide heath, as though the wind were alive, as though the storm were a
soul, as though it concealed weeping souls, complaining souls, and were
their one manifestation: souls blowing up again and again, souls which
now, in the night, tapped with soul-fingers at the trembling panes....
Round about this house, in which his grand-parents had lived so long and
in such loneliness, until now life had come to fill all the empty rooms,
it suddenly seemed to him as though he heard something of their voices,
moaning plaintively through the storm ... accusing him first and then
pitying him: the old man's voice, the old woman's voice. But what they
moaned he did not understand in the ever shriller howl upon howl that
floated despairingly along the swishing trees ... until suddenly the
window, fastened only by the latch, blew open with a fierce tug, the
Venetian shutter flapped to and slung open again, banging against the
wall of the house.... The wind entered and with one breath blew out the
lamp. The room now dark, the night luridly visible outside, the window
so desperately pulled open took on new outlines.... Adriaan, groping,
knocking against the chairs, moved towards the window, seized the
flapping, banging shutter, closed it, closed the window, firmly this
time, turning the old latch that was stiff with rust.
The rain poured in torrents; the wind moaned and sobbed with sorrowfully
entreating voices and tapped its fingers against the trembling panes.
That night he did not sleep, tired as he was. And he kept thinking:
"Am I at fault?"