Ernst was still living in his rooms in the Nieuwe Uitleg, surrounded by
his collections, surrounded by his hobbies. A man of fifty now, he led a
silent, solitary life amid his books, his china, his curiosities; and
the landlady looked after him and cooked his meals, because he paid
well, paid too much indeed. He saw little of the family because the
others really lived as secluded as he did, Paul in his rooms, Dorine at
her boarding-house, though she was never satisfied and was constantly
changing her boarding-house; and no family-tie drew him to Van
Saetzema's house or Karel's. In this way a separation and estrangement
had grown up among all of them; the bond between them had perished, now
that Mamma was no longer at the Hague to gather them all around her on
Sunday evenings in her big house in the Alexander Straat; and Constance,
of late years, had often pressed him to come and live at Driebergen. But
he obstinately refused; and yet, on the rare occasions when he saw her
at the Hague, he would take her hand and sit knee to knee with her,
unbosoming himself of all his stored-up discontent with the rooms, the
meals, the landlady, that brother of hers: the brother especially, whom
he could never stand, the vulgar bounder, as he called him. Constance
then felt him to be an aging, always lonely man, who never uttered his
thoughts and who, because of this continual silence, bottled up within
himself the thousands of words which he now poured forth to her all in
one torrent with a timid look, as if he were afraid that the landlady
and her brother were standing behind the door, listening. When
Constance, at such times, tried to persuade him to move to Driebergen,
he shook his head obstinately, as though some part of him had grown fast
to that room of his, as though he could not tear himself out of it; and
his eyes would glance at his books and his china, as though to say that
it was impossible to remove all that. And, because he was calm and no
trouble and quiet in his behaviour, she let him alone, because this was
what he preferred: to live within himself, among his hobbies, solitary,
shy and eccentric. Five years ago, it was true, he had been ill again,
had talked to himself for days on end, had wandered about in the Wood.
Paul wrote to Constance and she had come over; but Ernst had soon grown
quiet again, afraid no doubt that he would have to go back to Nunspeet,
afraid of a change of residence, afraid of keepers, of nurses, of the
things which he had never been able to forgive any of them, not even
Constance. That was years ago, five years ago; and lately Constance and
Addie too had never seen Ernst other than calm and peaceful, though a
good deal of strange and silent brooding seemed to lurk behind the
silent cunning of his dark, staring eyes. But then, months and months
would again pass without their seeing him, without their hearing of him;
they were all accustomed to his strangeness; and the months would drag
past without the threatened crisis coming. No, nothing came, even though
the man was strange, though he did talk to himself, though he was full
of bottled-up grievances; and, when they saw him again after a lapse of
months, they were struck by a certain artistic method in his rooms with
their beautiful warm colouring, struck by some new arrangement of the
furniture, by some new purchase; and he, as though conscious that he was
on trial, would talk almost normally, terrified lest they should drag
him from his rooms, to which he was attached even though the landlady
and her brother always stood spying behind the door....
Constance, feeling suddenly upset and filled with self-reproach at
neglecting Ernst, went to the Hague with Addie the day after Adolphine's
visit; and the two of them arrived unexpected in the Nieuwe Uitleg.
"Meneer is out," said the landlady.
"In this rain?" asked Constance.
"Yes, ma'am, he went out early this morning."
"How has he been lately?"
"Pretty well, ma'am. As usual. Meneer is always odd, you know, but he is
not troublesome. He is fairly well."
"Not like ...?"
"Some years ago? No, ma'am. Meneer has been talking to himself rather
more of late, but that's all. Will you wait for him?"
"Yes."
"He is sure to be back by twelve o'clock or so. He is very regular in
his habits. Won't you come upstairs?"
Constance and Addie went upstairs and waited in Ernst's room.
"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" said Constance, with emotion.
She did not know what was the matter with her, but she felt full of
self-reproach. Oh, were they not leaving him too much alone, sunk in his
solitude? How she wished that she could coax him to go back with her to
Driebergen and to live there, not far from them, in a little villa, with
some people who were in the habit of looking after invalids! Oh, not in
their own house, not in their own house! She would never have dared
suggest that to Van der Welcke; nor had Addie ever proposed it. No, not
at home, not at home, but somewhere near, so that she could see him at
any moment and not worry herself with the idea of his suddenly having a
nervous breakdown with no one by him to take his piteous soul-sickness
to heart.
And, as she sat thinking, she looked around her and was struck by the
manner in which the eerie lines of the old porcelain and new pottery
curved against the sombre hangings and furniture. It was very strange,
stranger than she had ever noticed. The setting enhanced the eeriness of
it all. As the years passed, the vases had become more and more of a
disease, blossoming in eerie lines and glowing glaze like some vicious
orchid, high against the walls, rising to the ceiling, in a riot of
exotic forms, like a vegetation reaching up, stretching up, stretching
up necks and hands with the necks and handles of the vases, as though
trying to rise higher and higher beyond the grasp of profane mortals.
"Why does Ernst put his vases so high up?" Constance wondered, as she
looked round the room.
Suddenly he entered. The landlady below must have told him that his
sister and his nephew, the young doctor, were upstairs, for the movement
with which he turned the door-handle was abrupt, his glance as he stood
and looked from the one to the other was laden with suspicion and his
voice trembled violently as he asked:
"What are you here for?"
He stood before them an old, trembling man. His neglected clothes hung
in old, slack folds about his angular limbs; his hair already almost
entirely grey, hung long and lank around his lean, trembling features
and dark, staring eyes, which looked with a martyred glance from the one
to the other. And yet, however neglected and soul-sick this trembling
man might be, who looked an old, old man though he was not more than
fifty, a gleam of intelligence shone deep down in his suspicious glance;
and his long, lean fingers were those of an artist: impotent to paint or
model, in lime, colour, wood or sound, the fluttering, ever-present
dream of a beauty only just divined.
They both strove to reassure him, said that they happened to be at the
Hague and so had come to look him up; and, after the first shock, he
really did not strike them as strange or more ill than usual. Suddenly
even a ray of sympathy seemed to shoot through him and he sat down
between them, took their hands and delivered himself of his complaint:
"Hush! They're always listening behind the door, the brutes!" he
whispered, timidly. "The landlady and her brother! I can't call my soul
my own; they're always spying.... When I'm undressing, when I go to bed,
when I have my meals ... they're always spying. I can hear them
grinning.... They're standing there now, to hear if we're talking about
them.... And, when I open the door, they're gone in a moment ... so
quickly, just like ghosts.... The other day, he lay under my bed all
night. I'm getting used to it, I no longer mind.... But, properly
speaking, I can't call my soul my own. Any one with less steady nerves
than mine simply could not stand it, could never stand it...."
"But, Ernst, why don't you move?"
He knew the question well, he recognized the motive. He gave a kind and
condescending little smile, because they did not know, because they were
so coarse of fibre.
"I can't very well move," he said. "You see ... I have everything here
... everything here...."
His glance and his gestures became very vague, as though he did not wish
to say more. And Addie saw how it was: Uncle Ernst still believed, had
always, all those years, believed in the souls that swarmed around him,
the souls that had been conjured like spirits out of books, curiosities
and old vases. But he never spoke of the souls now, because he
remembered only too well how stupid and wicked his people had been in
the old days. After that attack twelve years ago, he had gone on
believing in these brain-and soul-phantoms of his, but he had learnt to
keep silent about them, to talk as the stupid people talked. Or by
preference he did not talk at all.... But this very silence had caused
his mistrust to develop into a mania that he was being persecuted, a
mania that made him constantly look round, timidly.... He would open the
door, look into the passage.... And Constance knew that, in the street,
he was for ever looking round, attracting the attention of the
passers-by with this frightened, suspicious trick of his.
Addie saw it: Ernst believed in the souls which lay crowding around him,
which linked themselves with chains to his soul, which he dragged with
him through the mud of the streets and the wretchedness of life, the
souls that thronged in agony around him, until they weighed down his
chest and stifled him so that he longed to run half-naked into the
street to cool himself in rain and air, to gulp down the wind. And very
deeply bedded in the sick soul Addie saw hypersensitiveness hiding as an
adorable tenderness which, instead of turning to a disease, might have
developed into the profoundest qualities of sympathetic feeling, not
only to feel, but also to know and understand, because of the slumbering
spark of intelligence, because of the knowledge so eagerly gleaned....
And now these were wasted gifts, morbid qualities, now it was all
useless and sick and had become more sick and more useless as the sick
years of shadow drearily dragged on their misty-melancholy introspection
and increasing distrustfulness. It was all, all lost. And, in his pity
at this fatal waste, at this tenderness which had soured almost into
madness and was devoted to shadows while the poor world stood in such
real need of tenderness and feeling, Addie remembered how once, years
ago, he had felt conscious of a longing with a single word to cure the
sick man: but which, which word? It was as though he knew that one word
to be hovering in the air around him, while he was still too young and
ignorant to catch it as he might have caught a butterfly with his hat!
And now, now he knew for certain--after all those years of
misty-melancholy introspection and increasing distrustfulness--that it
was too late and that the man could not recover and that he would die as
he had lived in the almost proud hallucination which brought around him
for protection the numberless oppressed, persecuted and martyred souls,
suffocating him in the cloud of their frail tortured and complaining
bodies. And it was not only the souls: the living who sought him out
were also included in his proud illusion; they also needed his support,
because he alone was strong and all of them were weak.
It was too late for a cure; but still Addie longed, though he knew for
certain that no cure could ever take place, to free that lost and
impaired quality of noble feeling from everything that could shock or
offend the silent, suffering man; and he swore to himself to get Uncle
Ernst out of the Hague, out of these rooms, where he was taking root and
at the same time being tortured. He happened that day to feel very
restful, very calm, even though, deep down in the subsoil of his soul,
black self-insufficiency lowered as usual. He would not know what to do
for himself; for this sick man he did know what to do! For himself, he
groped around in a dark labyrinth; for the man of stricken brain and
soul he knew it all suddenly, with a bright ray of clearest perception,
knew with a sacred, instinctive knowledge! And yet there was not a touch
of joy, not a touch of ecstasy or fervour in his sombre, melancholy
glance, in his deep, sombre voice, when, with his customary earnestness
of words and manner, he said to his mother:
"Mamma, you must leave me alone with Uncle Ernst."
She looked at him. And, despite his quietness, his earnestness, his calm
and sombreness, she knew her son too well not to feel, suddenly, that he
knew.
"Very well," she said, "you stay with Uncle Ernst. I'll go round to Aunt
Adolphine and see Marietje. When and where shall I see you? This
evening, at the hotel?"
He shook his head:
"No," he said. "You had better go back by yourself to Driebergen, with
Marietje. As for me...."
He paused, as though reflecting, passed his hand across his forehead:
"As for me, you'll see me to-morrow," he said, "or the next day...."
"At Driebergen? At home?"
"Yes."
"And ... your uncle?"
He made a sign with his eyelids; and she understood him, partly, and
asked no more. She took leave of Ernst and moved to go; but Ernst kept
her for a moment at the door:
"Constance...."
"What is it, Ernst?"
"If there's anything ... that I can do for you, you'll tell me, won't
you? Tell me frankly.... It's very difficult for me, I know ... to look
after all of you ... but, if I don't, nobody else will.... So tell me
plainly if I can help you in any way...."
"There's nothing at the moment, Ernst...."
"But later on?..."
"Perhaps."
"Then I shall be very glad to help. You must ask me straight out."
"I will."
"Look here ... you must be careful...."
"Of what?"
"Of the brother.... The fellow's a scoundrel. Take care, don't speak too
loud: he's standing behind the door. You see, he can't reach so high."
"What do you mean?"
"He can't reach up to my poor vases. He would have to take the steps ...
and he won't do that in a hurry."
"What used he to do to the vases, Ernst?"
"Take them in his hands."
"I dare say he admired them."
"No, he used to break them ... on purpose. He ... he...."
"What, Ernst?"
"He used to throttle them. Hush! He used to wring their necks with his
vile fingers."
Then he realized at length that he was saying too much and he gave a
loud, kindly laugh:
"You don't believe that he used to throttle them. Well, at any rate,
they're safer up there."
"At least, he can't break them."
"No. What's the matter with Addie? He's not looking well."
"Nothing. He's staying on to talk to you."
"Is there anything I can do for him?"
"Perhaps there is, Ernst. Have a talk with him."
"You people are a heavy burden on me...."
"I must go now, dear."
She kissed him good-bye.
"Be careful," he whispered.
Suddenly, he swung open the door:
"There!" he cried, triumphantly. "Did you see? The scoundrel slips away
so quickly. Just like a ghost. No, more like a devil."
She gave a last glance at Addie; her eyelids flickered at him and she
went away. Ernst closed the door very carefully.
"He simply can't go on living by himself," thought Constance, as she
hurried to the Van Saetzemas'.
It was a very small house in a side-street at Duinoord; and she found
Van Saetzema sick and ailing in a stuffy little sitting-room; she saw
Caroline, too, bitter-eyed and bitter-mouthed, generally embittered by
her dull existence as spinster of nearly thirty, with no prospect of
marrying. Meanwhile, Adolphine kept her sister waiting. She had
obviously run upstairs to put on a clean tea-gown. At the back of the
little house, under the grey sky, which sent down a false, morning light
through the heavy rain-clouds, the atmosphere seemed full of bitterness
... bitterness because they were ill and poor and disappointed; and all
this dreariness was scantily and narrowly housed between the father,
mother and daughter, in the little room where they kept getting in one
another's way. A melancholy born of pity welled up in Constance; and
she tried to talk cheerfully, while Van Saetzema coughed and complained,
Caroline, bitter-mouthed and bitter-eyed, sat silent and Adolphine
suddenly, with no attempt at preamble, observed to Constance:
"It's splendid air here, at Duinoord.... And the house is
extraordinarily convenient...."
But her boasting voice choked as she completed her sentence more humbly:
"For the four of us."
"And where is Marietje?" asked Constance.
"Upstairs. She likes being upstairs, in her own little room...."
"How is she to-day?"
"Just the same."
"May I see her?"
Adolphine rose with some hesitation. But she took Constance upstairs and
opened a door:
"Marietje, here's Aunt Constance."
The girl rose from her chair in the grey light of the little room. She
was tall and pale and, in that light, seemed suddenly to blossom up like
a lily of sorrow, with the white head drooping at the neck, a little on
one side. The very fair hair hung limply about the temples. It was
heavy--her only attraction--and was wrung into a heavy knot which she
wore low at her neck. The movements of her long arms, of her long, thin
hands betrayed a listless, lingering anæmia; and her blouse hung in
folds over her flat bosom. She was twenty-six, but looked younger; her
lacklustre eyes were innocent of all passion, as though she were
incapable of ever becoming a woman, as though her senses were dying away
like some fading lily on its bending stalk.
"Good-morning, Auntie."
The little room was grey and white as a nun's cell, with the cloistered
simplicity of a hermitage.
"I'm so glad to see you, Marietje."
"Auntie, Mamma said that you and Uncle...."
"Yes, Marietje, we'll be glad to have you with us. Mamma has told you,
hasn't she?... Then Addie can...."
"It's very kind of you, Auntie. But ... but I would rather not come."
"What do you mean, dear?"
"I would rather stay here.... There's not much about me to cure; and I'm
not anxious to be cured. And in your house...."
"Well?"
"I should be so gloomy. I am never bright or cheerful, you know. And I
hardly ever come downstairs."
Adolphine's eyes filled with tears.
"It's true," she said, softly. "She lives up here."
"You would be cheerful enough with us, Marietje."
"No, Auntie, I should feel uncomfortable with you ... because I am not
cheerful. I should depress you all."
"We are not so easily depressed. And the chief thing is that Addie could
treat you regularly."
Marietje gave a pale smile.
"Why won't you go, dear?" asked Adolphine.
The girl retained her pale smile. She seemed to be wrestling with a
temptation that opened up soft and peaceful visions in her pale life as
a constant invalid; but she did not wish to yield.
"Come," said Constance, "you had much better, really."
Suddenly Marietje felt herself grow very weak. She saw death, saw the
end so very close before her eyes; and the soft, peaceful visions would
never be more than a very brief hallucination, which after all she might
as well accept. And, because she suddenly felt as though in a dream,
she had no strength to resist the gently persuasive voices of her mother
and her aunt, which were luring and luring her, like voices from very
far away, voices which she seemed to hear through the haze of vague and
enticing distance. Yet her own wan voice did not reveal what she felt,
as she continued feebly objecting:
"I should be too much trouble. An invalid is so depressing."
"It would be very difficult for Addie to look after you here."
"Besides, you have Grandmamma...."
"She's no trouble."
"And little Klaasje."
"Yes, but that's different."
"How are Marietje and Adele?"
"Quite well, very well indeed. We'll go on calling her Marietje and, if
you come down, we'll call you ... let's say Mary, to avoid confusion."
"Mary...."
"Will that do?"
"But your house is so full as it is."
"Guy is giving you his room."
The girl uttered more faint words and phrases, but they were like little
waves which carried her softly and tenderly towards the gentle vision
and the dream.
"Very well, Auntie," she said, at last. "You are very good to me."
"It's only natural, as far as I'm concerned. But, when you're at
Driebergen, you'll thank your uncle, won't you?"
"Of course. It's his house."
"Yes."
"Won't it be rather damp ... for Marietje?" asked Adolphine,
hesitatingly.
"I don't think so," said Constance.
"Constance," said Adolphine, taking her hand, "it is so kind of you ...
and I am so grateful...."
Her voice trembled as she spoke.
"My dear, what a fuss you make!" said Constance. "I'm your sister and
Marietje is my niece. But...."
"But what?"
"It certainly is kind ... of Henri."
"Yes, it's very nice of your husband."
"You see, it's his house."
"Yes ... and he had so many calls on him," said Adolphine, humbly.
"Constance, won't you let me pay something ... for Marietje's keep? So
much a month, I mean ... until she's a little better...."
"You'd better not bother to do that, Adolphine."
"You have so many expenses."
"Yes, but you've plenty of use for your money too."
"What I mean is ... it's your husband's money."
"I know. But Henri would rather you didn't pay anything ... really."
"Really?"
"I'm sure of it. If you or Van Saetzema wrote him a line ... he'd like
that."
"Of course I shall. I shall thank him myself."
"And you'll come and see the child whenever you like, won't you,
Adolphine?"
"Yes, Constance, I will.... What a pity it is that you don't live in the
Hague!"
"Why?"
"Oh, the Hague is so much _our_ town, our family town; and your house,
now that Mamma is so old, is certainly _the_ house ... of the family,
the centre, so to speak...."
"It's Henri's house."
"Yes, that's what I mean."
Constance stood up to go:
"Then will Marietje come down with me to-morrow?"
"Yes, we'll pack her trunk."
Marietje rose suddenly, threw her arm round Constance and sobbed
excitedly:
"Auntie ... Auntie ... I do think it so...."
"So what, dear?"
The rapture died out of her voice; and she concluded:
"I think it so kind ... of Uncle ... of Uncle and you ... to have me ...
to live with you, to live with you...."
Van Saetzema downstairs had a violent attack of coughing; and Adolphine
rushed anxiously out of the door.