That evening Gerdy said to Constance:
"Auntie, Mathilde carried on like a lunatic to-day."
But Constance refused to listen. She well knew that there was no love
lost between Mathilde and the rest of them; and it always upset her
that, on the one hand, Mathilde always remained a stranger and that, on
the other, one of the children always had some remark to make about
Mathilde. She, on the contrary was always glossing over Mathilde's
shortcomings and nearly always took her side.
"Honestly, Auntie, Mathilde carried on like a lunatic this
afternoon...."
Gerdy was in a great state of excitement and she determined to tell her
story. It was after dinner, tea had not yet been served and Mathilde was
upstairs, putting the children to bed. The others in the room were
Adeline, Emilie and Guy; Granny was sitting in her corner. And Constance
refused to listen:
"You mustn't always be so intolerant ... about Mathilde," said
Constance, by way of reprimand.
"Intolerant? Intolerant?" echoed Gerdy, excitedly. "But you didn't see
her, the insane way she behaved.... We were on the ice ... and...." She
lowered her voice to a whisper, though Granny was not likely to
understand. "We were on the ice ... and there were others: the Erzeeles
from Utrecht and Johan Erzeele from the Hague, you know, the one who's
in the grenadiers.... Yes, I know, Mathilde and he are old
acquaintances, she used often to dance with him ... but that's no reason
for carrying on with him as she did."
"I say, it wasn't as bad as all that," said Guy, in a tone of
palliation.
"Not as bad as all that, not as bad as all that?" repeated Gerdy, very
angrily, because Guy, Constance and everybody were making excuses for
Mathilde. "Not as bad as all that? Well, if I was married, or even
unmarried, I should be ashamed to carry on like that with any man,
though I'd met him at a hundred dances!"
"Do let Mathilde enjoy herself," said Constance. "Really, she has so
little...."
"So little what?" said Gerdy, almost impertinently. "She has everything,
she has everything she could wish for! She has a darling of a husband,
she has the sweetest of children ... she has everything...."
"But she sometimes feels ... a little neglected and strange ... among
all of us," said Constance, still taking Mathilde's part. "So, if she's
a little irresponsible once in a way, I don't grudge it her for a
moment."
"But it was more than being irresponsible, it was much worse: she was
simply carrying on!"
"For shame, Gerdy! You mustn't be so spiteful."
Gerdy shrugged her shoulders angrily. She simply doted on Aunt
Constance; nothing on earth would induce her to quarrel with Aunt
Constance: Aunt Constance, who was so kind to all of them; and so she
preferred to say nothing. But her dear, eager little soul was up in
arms; she was very angry indeed; she pitied Addie. She was so angry, she
felt such pity for Addie that really she did not quite understand her
own feelings. After all, this was not the first time that Mathilde had
annoyed her; she had never liked Mathilde; it was enough to make her
spill the tea or the milk if Mathilde entered the room unexpectedly; and
so she really could not quite understand why she was so very angry and
thinking so much of Addie, simply because Mathilde had carried on so
with Johan Erzeele, why it should irritate her so that Constance--on
principle, she could understand that much--was taking Mathilde's part,
why it should irritate her that Mamma and Emilie were sitting so sad and
silent, that Granny was sitting so feeble and silently trembling in her
far corner, why it should irritate her that Adèletje and Guy should keep
on playing backgammon:
"Three and four...."
"Two and five.... Imperial.... Once more...."
She was very much overwrought; and, when Mathilde came in for tea--the
children were now asleep--Gerdy's little face quivered; she could hardly
contain herself; but she made the effort, because Constance was looking
at her in such surprise. And, to keep herself in countenance, she went
in search of Uncle Henri, found Van der Welcke in the passage, on the
point of coming in, and asked him:
"Uncle, are you coming to play a rubber?"
"If you like, dear. Who's going to make up?"
"Marietje, I dare say, and Alex."
"Is the other Marietje, Mary, downstairs?"
"No, Uncle, she's up in her room."
"This house of ours is a regular hospital, eh?"
"Oh, it's not as bad as that, Uncle!... I think it's a very nice house."
"You do, do you?"
Gerdy, usually so cheerful, suddenly became very nervous, cross and
angry, very limp; and she didn't understand herself, couldn't understand
herself....
"Well, come and have a rubber."
"Yes, yes, I'm coming.... Don't hustle your uncle: he's getting old."
But Gerdy laughed, shrilly, though she had to keep back her tears:
"You'll never be old."
"You think that?"
"No, never."
"Ah! Then I shall remain a scapegrace to my dying day?"
"No, a dear, kind uncle.... But come and have a rubber now."
She dragged him into the room. Constance grumbled mildly:
"Gerdy, you're just like a naughty child. Every time you run out of the
room, you leave the door open."
And Gerdy, from being limp, became filled with poignant self-pity.
Aunt Constance had ceased to care for her, cared more for her
daughter-in-law, Mathilde.... Everybody, everybody cared more for
Mathilde.... Addie, Johan Erzeele: they all cared more for Mathilde....
She, Gerdy, was misjudged by everybody ... everybody except Uncle Henri,
who was nice and kind....
She made a great effort, mastered herself, mastered her volatile
emotions. Alex had come over that Saturday from Amsterdam, where he was
now boarding with a tutor at the Merchants' School; and he and Marietje
soon got the bridge-table ready. And it became quite a serious rubber,
in the still, pale-yellow atmosphere of the big living-room, where the
lamps shone sleepily through their yellow-silk shades, just bright
enough to light the books or crochet-work in the hands of the silent
women, Constance, Adeline, Emilie.... At about nine o'clock there was a
certain movement in those intimate, silent, almost melancholy indoor
lines and colours, when Adeline took Klaasje to bed and Constance and
Adèletje helped Grandmamma upstairs: the child and the old woman at the
same hour, the one never outgrowing her first childhood, the other
relapsing into her second, after so well knowing the many sad things
that were to come, that had come, that had already faded away, even as
all life, that comes and goes, fades away in the faded pallor of the
past.... And, when Constance and Adeline returned downstairs together,
they seemed to hear the wind getting up around the house; and Adeline
said, on the stairs:
"Listen, the wind's getting up."
"There's a change in the weather," said Constance.
"That means thaw; it's a westerly wind and we shall have rain."
On entering the room, they found Ernst there. He often came round in the
evenings. He watched Gerdy's cards and sat very still, never spoke much,
feeling that they never understood what he said and that it was better
to talk to them as little as possible, even though there was some good
about them, even though they were not utterly depraved, even though they
meant the suffering souls no harm, although once in a way, all of them,
they would trample on them unconsciously, because they did not see and
understand and because they were so stupid and so innately rough....
Nevertheless, rough and stupid as they were, they were his relations and
he came and looked them up, feeling at home in the house of his sister
Constance and her husband, in the house also of Addie, who was the
cleverest of them all and who, he felt certain, did hear and see the
souls, for he often spared them.... He now stared at the cards and
thought of the rubbers at Mamma's in the Alexanderstraat, when he used
to go there on Sundays in the old days.... Strange, that everything
changed, that nothing remained, he thought.... It was no longer the
Hague now: it was Driebergen; it was Van der Welcke's house and Gerrit's
children: Gerrit, how rough, how very rough he used to be, but even so
not exactly wicked and depraved! And the cards as they were played one
after the other fell from the fingers of Van der Welcke, Gerdy, Alex and
Marietje. The same game; only life changed; the game did not change nor
did the souls, the poor souls, ever and ever suffering around him,
linking themselves to his soul with dragging chains.... He sat in
silence and followed the play of the hand, understood it, nodded his
approval of Van der Welcke's careful game....
Mathilde had come in; so had Addie, for a moment, before going upstairs
to work; and they met as husband and wife who, after dinner, in a
bustling house, seek each other out for a moment to exchange a word or
two. Mathilde's eyes were red, Addie looked serious; and they all
noticed it; it struck them, it saddened them, while they heard the wind
flapping like a sagging sail and the panes lightly creaking and the
windows lightly rattling in their frames.... Constance wondered what had
happened and thought that it must be Mathilde, always urging him to move
to the Hague; and Addie would be quite willing, for his wife's sake, but
then the money-question would crop up and remain insoluble, because
Mathilde would not be economical.... And that indeed was how it was;
and they had lost each other, Addie and Mathilde; and they would find
each other again in a rebirth of desire, when Addie reflected:
"What a beautiful, healthy woman she is! And we have to be healthy in
our bodies and normal in our longings if we would be healthy of soul, in
the life of our bodies and our physical being."
On the evening after the excursion on the ice, they found each other
again. The wind had lashed their blood to a warm glow, the exercise had
sent it coursing through their veins. Love was reborn of their embrace
until drowsiness overtook them. And Mathilde thought that she had found
him again and Addie thought that he had found her again, because their
kisses had sealed one to the other, because their arms had clasped one
to the other, but they lost each other again at once, as ever and
always, because Mathilde just did not know him in his two-sided soul and
he never knew things for himself, whatever he might know for others, in
the clarity of his knowledge; in any of the manifestations of the
instinctive knowledge which he knew silently and blissfully in his
soul's soul: the hidden spark, from which treasure shone.
Mathilde sat down quietly in a corner, sitting a little way from the
others, to catch the light of a lamp on her book; and Addie remained for
only a moment, saying that he had work to do. And, as he went out of the
door, there was a sudden draught, so that the lamps flickered and smoked
and nearly went out.
"There's something open," said Constance. "Where can that wind come
from?"
"I'll look," said Addie, closing the door.
"You see," said Gerdy, pursing up her mouth and turning to Aunt
Constance, "you see it's not always _my_ fault when there's a draught."
Silence fell; there was not a sound but the hard tap of the dice on the
backgammon-board and the rustle of the cards as they were played, while
Constance, Adeline, Emilie and Mathilde read or worked, and the evening
hours in the soft light of the sitting-room dozed away as with
soft-trailing minutes and quarters, dull reflexions in the mirrors,
faint lamplight on the furniture and the rhythmical ticking of the clock
in the almost entire silence, broken only now and again by an occasional
word, at the card-table, or when Guy said:
"It's blowing ... and thawing.... There'll be no skating to-morrow...."
A piercing scream rang through the house; and the scream so suddenly and
unexpectedly penetrated the silence of the stairs and passages of the
great house, outside the room in which they were sitting, that all of
them started, suddenly:
"What's that?... What's that?..."
They all sprang up; the cards, thanks to Gerdy's fright, fell on the
floor, and lay flat with their gaudy pictures. When Van der Welcke
opened the door, there was no longer any draught; the maids were running
into the hall, anxiously, through the open door of the kitchen.
Everybody asked questions at once. They heard Addie come down a
staircase; and the hurried creaking of his firm step on the stairs
reassured the women. They called out to him, he to them; and, amid their
confusion, they at last heard his voice, clearly:
"Help me!... Here!..."
"Where?..."
"On the stairs."
They ran up the stairs.
"On the back-staircase!" they heard him call.
And Constance saw that the partition door was standing ajar at the end
of the long passage. She gave a cold shiver and she heard Mathilde
suddenly say:
"Oh, nothing ... nothing will induce me to go up that staircase!"
But she forced herself and went; and the others followed her.
They found Addie on the small, narrow back-staircase; and he was
carrying Marietje, Mary, in his arms. She hung against him unconscious,
like a white bundle of clothes, with her nerveless arms hanging slack
and limp.
"What happened?"
"I heard her call out.... The staircase-door above was open.... I expect
she meant to go downstairs ... to fetch something ... and was taken ill
on the stairs.... Help me, can't you?" he said, almost impatiently.
The women helped him carry Marietje upstairs. They all went up now, to
their rooms; the maids, still pale and trembling, put out the lamps in
the sitting-room; and silence and darkness fell over the house, as they
went creaking up the stairs, with candles in their hands.
The wind outside increased in violence; and the dripping thaw pattered
against the panes.
The three sisters were together in their bedrooms: Marietje and Gerdy in
their room, Adèletje in her own room, with the door open between them.
And they spoke very low, in whispering voices:
"I'm getting used to it," said Marietje, sensibly; "I'm no longer
frightened."
"I heard it quite lately," said Gerdy.
And Adèletje answered:
"Yes, I hear it nearly every evening."
"Uncle and Aunt don't speak about it."
"No, it's better not to."
"It's always the same sound: like the dragging of heavy footsteps, in
the garret, under the roof...."
"And then it goes downstairs."
"Yes ... then it goes downstairs."
"Uncle had the garret examined."
"Addie has been up there, with Guy."
"They found nothing."
"It can't be a rat."
"It's quite unaccountable."
"I'm getting so used to it," said Marietje.
"It sometimes comes down the little staircase."
"Aunt Constance is afraid of the little staircase."
"She doesn't like the house at all."
"But Uncle does and Addie does."
"Mathilde was so frightened!"
"Uncle and Addie wouldn't like to leave the house."
"And it's a nice house," said Gerdy. "I ... I'm frightened myself lately
... and yet I'm fond of the house."
"I love the house too," said Adèletje. "It's so brown, so dark ... like
something safe and something very dear ... around us all. I should be
very sorry to leave the house. I shall never marry--shall I?--because
I'm ugly and delicate ... and I shall always remain with Uncle and
Aunt...."
Gerdy took her in her arms.
"_You_ won't," Adèletje went on. "You'll marry one day, Gerdy ... and so
will Marietje."
"Oh, stop!" said Gerdy. "Do stop, Adèletje!... What are you talking
about marriage!... I'm ugly as well; nobody likes me!"
"Listen!" said Marietje.
"What did you hear?"
"The sound ... I thought."
"I hear nothing."
"Listen!"
"Yes, listen!"
"It's trailing up the stairs."
"Oh, I'm frightened, I'm frightened!" said Gerdy.
The sisters all crept together.
"I'm not frightened," said Marietje. "I often hear it, like that."
"What is it?"
"The maids say...."
"What?"
"That it's...."
"Who?"
"The old man...."
"Hush!"
"Listen, listen!"
"They say the house is haunted."
"It may be nothing at all," said Marietje. "It may be the wind, making a
draught."
"But everything's shut."
"Old houses have queer draughts sometimes, for all that."
"The furniture's old too."
"Listen, it's trailing!"
"That's the wind."
"There's the same trailing sound in the wind sometimes, blowing round
the house. I'm getting used to it," said Marietje.
"Yes," said Adèletje, "one gets used, one gets used to everything.... I
shall always remain in this house, with Uncle and Aunt. I love them."
"They never talk about it."
"That's by far the best way."
"Mathilde, how frightened _she_ is!"
"Listen, listen! It's going upstairs!"
"It's the wind ... taking the draught upstairs."
"In an old house ... it's as though the old wood were alive."
"And the furniture."
"What can have been the matter with Mary?"
"Can she ... have seen anything?"
"No."
"No, no."
"She wanted to fetch something.... She fainted.... She's very ill, I
believe, very weak."
"Addie says that she's not so very ill."
"Listen!"
"Could it really be ... the old man?"
"And, if it were the old man ... what then?" said Adèletje. "I ... I
shall remain in the house. I shall die, here, I think, at Uncle and
Aunt's."
"Oh, do hush, Adèletje!" said Gerdy, limply, nestling in her sister's
arms.
"I'm not afraid of dying."
"Oh, Adèletje, do hush, do hush! You mustn't talk of dying."
"Listen! I hear it again!"
"But now it's trailing away."
"Like a draught sucking in the air."
"Yes," said Adèletje, "I expect it's the old man."
"Why should it be he?"
"He can't tear himself away from the house."
"He was always implacable...."
"To poor Aunt Constance."
"The old woman was different."
"Yes, she was different."
"No, it's the draught, it's only the draught.... And the house,
creaking."
"It's nothing."
"It's nothing."
"But perhaps we imagine ... because we hear...."
"We all feel ... a sort of fear ... because we hear."
"Mary saw something, I expect."
"Come, girls, let's go to bed."
"Do you dare sleep alone in your room, Adèletje?"
"Yes, Gerdy ... but leave the door open between us."
"Yes, that's nicer."
"Good-night then, darlings."
"Adèletje ... you won't think any more of dying, will you?" said Gerdy,
moist-eyed. "Perhaps I shall be dead before you are."
"Hush, darling! How can you talk like that?... I'm delicate and ugly....
You're strong, you're pretty."
"I may be dead first, for all that!" said Gerdy, sobbing.
"Gerdy, don't excite yourself so," said Marietje. "That's because we've
been talking about it. Now you won't sleep all night."
"I dare say I shall be frightened to-night," said Gerdy. "If so, I'll
wake you, Marietje, and creep into bed beside you."
"Very well, do.... And don't worry...."
"Good-night, then...."
"Good-night...."
"Good-night...."
Round the house the thaw wept; and in the night the sinewed grain of the
ice broke and melted in weeping melancholy, with the added melancholy of
the west wind blowing up heavy clouds, the west wind which came from
very far and moaned softly along the walls and over the roof, rattling
the tight-closed windows of the night....
Inside the house reigned the darkness of repose and the shadow of
silence; and the inmates slept. Only Gerdy could not fall sleep: she lay
thinking with wide-open eyes, as she listened vaguely to the wind
blowing and the thaw pattering, thinking that she hated ... and loved
... that she hated Mathilde ... and loved ... him ... Johan....