Then Adeline came in, looking for Addie. He was so tired yesterday that
she had not cared to ask him the result of his visit to Amsterdam, but
now, while he was still playing with Klaasje, she glanced at him with
questioning eyes. She was still a young woman, no more than forty, for
she had married Gerrit early and then borne him a child every year; but,
despite her gentle, round, fair face, she was no longer young in
appearance. Her lines had become matronly; and, especially after the
great sorrow, after her husband's suicide, which had plunged her and the
children into perpetual shadow like an indelible twilight, she had
become so spiritless in all her simple energies that she came like a
child to Constance or Addie about anything that concerned any one of
them: mostly to Addie, whom she had taken to regarding as her inevitable
protector. She looked up at him with respectful confidence; she always
did literally what he told her to; it was he who controlled their whole
little fortune, investing it as profitably as possible for the children;
notwithstanding his youth, she turned to him in all that concerned her
boys; and the boys themselves accepted it, inevitably, that their
cousin, who was only six or seven years older than they, should look
after their interests with paternal earnestness. But Adeline was well
aware that Addie was very angry that Alex had had to leave Alkmaar. At
first, things had gone fairly well in the secondary school at the Hague;
after the third form--he was seventeen by this time--he had just
succeeded in passing his matriculation; but, when he took two years
over his first examination and failed in the second, Addie himself had
considered that Alex had better look out for something different,
however much his mother, with her mind full of Gerrit, would have liked
to see her eldest son an officer....
By this time, he was nearly twenty; and it was so late for him to go to
the Merchants' School at Amsterdam that Addie had decided first to
obtain all the details for himself and therefore had gone to Amsterdam,
to see the head-master.... That was why, this morning, Adeline came to
talk to Addie, a little nervously, rather frightened of what he might
say, because he had been exceedingly dissatisfied about Alex,
discouraged, not knowing what to do with him next.... He would like to
have a talk with Alex, he said; and Adeline, sad about her son and
rather frightened of Addie, went to fetch Alex and brought him back with
her. He was tall, slender, pale, fair-haired: he did not look strong,
although he had resembled his father, especially as a child; every year
his features seemed to become more and more fixed and his face became
like a spectral mask of pallor, with the look in the eyes a little shy
under the lashes, as with a timorous, bashful and at the same time deep
inner concealment of invisible, silent things.... Now that his mother
had come to fetch him from the room where he sat reading, he came in
with her, evidently nervous about the coming talk with Addie. But Addie
said:
"I ought really to be going out, Aunt.... Alex, can you go with me part
of the way? Then we can talk things over as we walk. The roads are too
wet for cycling."
Addie's eyes and voice set Adeline's mind at ease, as though he were
telling her that it would be all right at the Merchants' School....
The cousins left the house together. The trees dripped with water; and
the swift and angry wind chased the great clouds farther in one
direction; but the sky remained grey and lowering. The far-stretching,
straight country-roads vanished at last in a melancholy drab mist; and
the two young men at first walked along without a word.
"Well, I went and enquired for you yesterday," said Addie, at last. "You
can go in for your exam, Alex ... and you can go on working there for
some time yet.... I hope things will go better this time, old chap....
You're nearly twenty now.... If they don't...."
He made a vague gesture; and Alex took his arm:
"It's awfully good of you, Addie, to take so much trouble about me. I
too hope ... that things will go right ... this time...."
"Mamma would have liked to see you in the army."
"Still, I'm really not cut out for a soldier.... It's a pity I didn't
think of it before I went to Alkmaar.... But, when I was there I felt it
at once: there's nothing of the soldier about me."
"And in that way years were lost.... Well, I do hope that now, when
you're at the Merchants' School, you won't suddenly discover ... that
you're not cut out for a business-man ... that you're not fit for
'trade.'.... You can become a consul, you know."
"Yes ... perhaps...."
"It's a pity, Alex, that you don't know things for certain in your own
mind ... that you have no settled ideas...."
"Yes ... that's just it!..."
"But you must become something, mustn't you? You have no money, you
fellows; and, even if you had ... a man must be something ... in order
to do any or get any happiness out of life ... for himself and those
about him...."
"Yes, Addie...."
"Promise me now, old chap, to do your best.... You see, I'm playing the
father to all of you, even though I'm only six years older than you are.
I feel a sort of father to you ... and I should like to see you all
happy ... and prosperous.... But you must help me, Alex. Show a little
energy. If you hadn't thrown up the sponge at once at Alkmaar, you'd
almost have had your commission by now...."
"Yes...."
"Like your father. Mamma would have liked that. But we won't talk about
it any more and we'll hope that things will go better at Amsterdam...."
"Addie ... do you remember Papa well?"
"Of course I do."
"So do I.... I was eight years old, when he died.... I even
remember...."
"What?"
"That evening ... though I didn't understand at the time ... why Mamma
cried and screamed like that ... or why Aunt Constance and Uncle Henri
were there.... It was not until later, oh, years later, that I
understood!... But I saw.... I _saw_ Papa lying ... with blood all round
him; and that's a thing which always ... always ... hovers before my
eyes. _I'm always seeing it, Addie_!... Tell me, Addie, do you know why
Papa did it?... There was nothing, surely, to make him so unhappy as all
that?"
"He was very ill."
"He thought himself incurable."
"Still, he was strong?"
"Physically."
"He was like Guy, wasn't he?"
"Yes, Guy is very like him, to look at.... He was tall, broad,
fair-haired...."
"Yes, that's how I remember him. I was eight years old then."
"You were a jolly little tribe."
"And now we're nothing but a burden ... to you...."
"Nonsense, it's not as bad as that!"
"I hope things'll go better ... Addie ... at Amsterdam...."
"Why aren't you more talkative, Alex?... You haven't been for a long
time."
"Haven't I?"
"You never talk, at home ... to the others. Only once in a way to me ...
when we are alone. It was after Alkmaar that you became so silent. It
wasn't surely because I was angry at the time?"
"Perhaps, partly...."
"Well?"
"I daren't tell you."
"Tell me, Alex, if there is anything I can do for you."
"You do so much as it is, Addie.... You do everything."
"But speak quite openly. Perhaps there is something more that I can do
for you."
"No, what could there be?"
"Something's upsetting you."
"No...."
"You're unhappy."
"No...."
"You're so reserved."
"I ... never talk much."
"Try and trust me, Alex."
"I do trust you."
"Well, then, talk to me."
"But I ... I've nothing to tell you, Addie."
"I know, Alex, that you must have something to tell me...."
"No...."
"I know it, Alex."
"No, Addie, really.... I've nothing to tell you...."
The lad tried to release his arm from Addie's, but Addie held him tight:
"Walk a bit more with me."
"Where are you going?"
"I have a couple of patients to see.... Take me there, Alex ... and
speak, speak openly...."
"I can't speak."
"Then try and find your words. I'll help you."
"Not to-day ... not to-day, Addie, out here, in the roads.... Perhaps
another time ... indoors."
"Very well, then, another time, indoors. I'll keep you to your word. And
now let's talk of nothing but the Merchants' School...."
And, with Alex still hanging on his arm, he told him about the
head-master, the staff, the lessons there ... making a point of holding
out hopes to Alex that everything would go easily and smoothly. Did
Addie not know, did he not diagnose that the boy was so terribly afraid
of life, of the days to come, because a twilight had always continued to
press down upon him, the twilight of his father's suicide?... It had
given the child a fit of shuddering in so far as he had realized it at
the time; and things had suddenly grown dark, about his child-soul; and,
when the power of thought had developed in him later, there had always
remained the fear in that darkness, because the unconscious life went on
daily ... and because his father--why, why?--had torn himself out of the
unconscious life and committed suicide.... That--though Alex had not
spoken--was how Addie diagnosed him, that was how he really diagnosed
his state, with that strange look of penetration, with that strange
vision.... And, when he looked into another in this way, he no longer
thought of himself, his self-insufficiency fell away from him and he
seemed to know on the other's behalf, to know surely and positively, to
know with instinctive knowledge ... as he never knew things for
himself....
While they walked on, arm in arm, he thought that the boy's heavy step
was becoming more rhythmical and even, that his answers--now that they
went on talking about Amsterdam and the master in whose house he would
be--were becoming firmer, as though he were taking greater interest....
There was no note of doubt in Addie's voice: his voice made the two
years' schooling at Amsterdam, the whole subsequent life as a busy,
hard-working man, stand out clear in the mist that hung under the trees
and over the roads, made it all take on bright colours as a life
spreading open, with unclouded horizons of human destiny, as though all
the unconscious life would run easily along ordered lines.... He himself
had never known that fear of the days to come, because he had seen his
goal before him in the future. Yet why, then, that morbid sense of
insufficiency?...
He refused to think of it; and at once it passed from him like a ghost.
Even after his sleepless night, he now felt the energy circulating
strongly within him, felt the magic pouring out of him as vital warmth.
He must make that boy by his side realize the life before him, he must
take away his fear of the future. An unknown force inside him ordained
that he should make the future shine with hope and promise for this boy,
ordained that he should purge the days to come of their sombre terror.
And, when he had taken leave of Alex, because he did not wish him to
know where his patients lived, the lad went back easier in his mind,
with his fears pressing less heavily upon him, with the sullen sky
growing gradually brighter ... however much he might have to think
always of his father, however much he had to see his father's
blood-stained corpse daily more and more clearly before his eyes....