"Yes," said Paul, as he followed Constance out of her own sitting-room,
while she, with her key-basket over her arm, went down the stairs with
Marietje and Gerdy, "yes, I'm not ashamed to confess it: I've come to
see how the country suits me. The Hague is becoming so dirty that I
can't stand it any longer. What a dirty place a town is! It's much
cleaner in the country.... You're fortunate, you people. But I daresay I
should have stayed on at the Hague--I'm not really a man for the
country--if my landlady wasn't getting so old, if she wasn't always
changing the servants, if those servants weren't so unspeakably slovenly
and dirty.... She produced such specimens lately that I gave her
notice.... I'd had those rooms fourteen years.... It'll be a great
change for me.... But I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to see to
everything myself; and I'm getting too old for that.... Yes, I still do
my wash-hand-stand myself.... But look here, Constance, when it came to
making my bed--because the servant's hands were dirty and my sheets one
night smelt of onions--you know, that was really too much to expect. I'm
no longer a young man: I'm forty-six. Yes, that's right, you young
baggages, laugh at your old uncle! I'm forty-six, forty-six. Lord, what
a lot of dirt I've seen in those years!... As the years go by, filth
heaps itself around you like a mountain: there's no getting through it.
Politics, people, servants, bedclothes, everything you eat, everything
you touch, everything you do, say, think or feel: it's a beastly
business, just one sickening mass of filth.... The only pure, unsullied
thing that I have found in the world is music. Ah, what a pure thing
music is!..."
"Paul, I must just go down to the store-room and have a talk with my
cook about the filth which I'm to give you this evening," said
Constance; and the girls laughed.
"All right, I'll come with you ... I sha'n't be in the way. Ah, what a
pure thing music is!" he continued, in the store-room, while the cook
opened wide eyes. "Look at painting, for instance, how dirty:
oil-colours, turpentine, a palette, paint-brushes, water, all equally
messy. Sculpture: clay and damp cloths; literature: what's more
loathsomely dirty than ink, the oceans of ink which an author pours
forth?... But music: that's tone, that's purity, that's sheer
Platonism.... Oh, no, since they've taken to building public
conveniences at the street-corners in the Hague, I can't go on living
there!"
"_Paul_!" said Constance, warningly; but he was too much worked up to
understand that she was rebuking him. "Run away now, with the girls and
leave me with Keetje.[1] Look at her, staring at you and not minding a
word I say.... Keetje, listen to me, I want to order the dinner; and
you, Paul, ajo,[2] be off!"
"Come away, Uncle!" said Marietje, "Keetje, at Driebergen, isn't
accustomed to hear everything called so dirty."
"Keetje's proud of her kitchen, aren't you, Keetje?" said Gerdy.
"Oh, well," said Keetje, "I expect meneer doesn't mean all he says."
"Not mean all I say!" Paul shouted at the servant, who stood calmly
with her arms akimbo. "Not mean all I say!"
"One can do a lot with scrubbing, sir, to keep things nice and clean."
"And I tell you," Paul blazed out, "that everything's dirty, except
music...."
"And except my kitchen!" said Keetje, greatly offended. "I don't know
what sort of servants meneer's had. But we're good cleaners here, aren't
we, ma'am?... Yes, I know, old Mie[3] is very old and mevrouw only keeps
her on out of kindness ... and we've got young help besides.... But
dirty!" shaking her head energetically. "There's no dirt here ... though
it is an old house ... and a big family...."
"Girls! Paul!" cried Constance, in despair. "I've no time to stand in my
store-room arguing about what's dirty and what not in the world or in
Keetje's kitchen.... Get out of this!... And you, Keetje, listen to _me_
and answer _me_."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Uncle, come along!" said Gerdy. "We'll show you Keetje's kitchen."
"Well, meneer can inspect that with pleasure!" said Keetje, by way of a
last shot.
The girls dragged Paul off to the kitchen, where they were joined by
Adèletje and even by Marietje van Saetzema; and they screamed with
merriment when Paul examined the pans one after the other:
"But look, Uncle ... they're shining like silver and gold!"
"Well, we _can_ have our dinner out of them to-night.... Still,
children, music, music is the only pure thing in the world!"
"Provided it's not false."
"Of course it mustn't be false.... Have you a good piano here?"
"Yes, Uncle, Mathilde has hers upstairs and here's mine, in the
conservatory," said Gerdy. "I'm the only one who plays."
Paul sat down at the piano, struck a few chords:
"The tone is fairly good.... Ah, music, music!..."
And he played. He played _Wotan's Farewell,_ followed by the _Fire
Magic_.... He played very well, by heart: his pale, narrow features
became animated, his long fingers quivered, his eyes lit up. In the
conservatory the old mother listened, heard merely a flow of soothing
sound. At her feet, Klaasje listened, playing with her toys. Mathilde
came from upstairs; after her came Guy, deserting his books. Paul
played, went on playing ... he had forgotten all about them. Suddenly he
stopped:
"You mustn't think," he said abruptly, "that I am an unconditional
Wagner-worshipper. His music is delightful; his poetry is crude,
childish and thin; his philosophy is very faulty and horribly German and
vague.... Proofs? You ask for proofs?... Take the Rheingold: did you
ever see such gods? With no real strength, no real marrow in their
coarse thieves' souls, their burglars' souls full of filth.... Is that
the beginning of a world? No, a world begins in a purer fashion.... And
so childishly and crudely: the world's treasure, the gold, the pure gold
guarded by three dirty Lorelei, with their hair full of sea-weed, who,
the moment they set eyes upon a dwarf, start giggling and making fun....
Are those the pure guardians of the pure gold? But the music in itself,
the purity of tone: oh, in that purity of tone he is a master!..."
And he played the prelude to the Rheingold, played it twice
consecutively. Suddenly he stopped once more:
"Oh, Gerdy, how dusty your piano is!... Does no one ever wipe the
keys?... Where can I wash my hands?"
"Uncle dear, do go on playing!"
"And my fingers black with dust? No, look here, Keetje's pans may shine
like silver and gold, but your piano is a sounding-board of dirt. Where
can I wash my hands?"
"Here, at the tap."
She led him to the hall.
"Well, first find me a clean towel."
"The towel is clean, sir," said Truitje, who happened to be passing.
"No, I want a towel fresh from the wash, folded in nice, clean folds."
And it was great fun: Marietje ran hunting for Constance, to get the
keys of the linen-press.
"So you've come to live here?" said Van der Welcke, who came down while
Paul was washing his hands.
"Yes, I had a sudden, irresistible impulse to move to Driebergen. I was
feeling a little lonely at the Hague," he confessed. "I am growing old
and lonely. And it's cleaner in the country; the air is less foul,
though I'm not lucky with this thaw. The road outside was one great
puddle. But I have found two airy rooms, in a villa.... It's strange, I
should never have believed that I could ever come and live at Driebergen
... and in the winter too!..."
He inspected his hands, which were now clean:
"Imagine," he said, "if there were no water left! I should be dead next
day!"
Paul really brightened up. He was a great deal at the house, very soon
got into the habit of dining there every evening and, because he felt
scruples at always taking his meals at Van der Welcke's expense, he made
handsome presents, as a set-off for his sponging, he said, so that in
the end it cost him more than if he had dined every day at home. He
ordered fine flowers and fruit from the Hague; on Van der Welcke's
birthday, he gave him a case of champagne; on Constance' birthday, a
parcel of caravan tea, because he came and had tea with them every
afternoon. In this way he contributed generously to the house-keeping
and relieved his scruples. He brightened up considerably, after his
recent years of loneliness, talked away lustily, broached his
philosophies, played Wagner; and even Mathilde accepted him as a
pleasant change, with a touch of the Hague about him.
Constance would rebuke him at times and say:
"Paul, I won't have you constantly ordering that expensive fruit for me
from the Hague."
"My dear Constance," he would answer, "I'm saving the cost of it on my
ties; for my dandyism is gradually wearing away."
In the evening, in the great sitting-room--while the wind blew round the
house and the dice fell hard on the backgammon-board and the gaudy
colour of the cards flickered in the hands of the bridge-players--Paul's
music came as a new sound, driving away the grey melancholy, tinkling in
drops of silver harmony. He played everything by heart; and the only
thing that his attentive audience couldn't stand was his habit of
suddenly breaking off in the most delightful passages to defend some
philosophical thesis which no one at that instant was thinking of
attacking, with which everyone agreed at the time. Nevertheless, despite
his playing and his new-found cheerfulness, he felt old, lonely and
aimless. Whenever he had an opportunity of talking quietly to Constance
for a moment, without having to run after her downstairs, to the
store-room, he would say, sadly:
"I? I'm an old bachelor, an old boy. I'm a typical old bachelor."
"You ought to get married, Paul," she said, one day.
He gave a violent start:
"Constance," he said, "if ever you try to lay a trap for me, I swear
I'll run away and you shall never set eyes on me again!... Where should
I find a wife who would be as tidy as I? And then I'm so difficult to
please that the poor child would have a terrible life of it....
Sometimes, yes, sometimes I do cherish the illusion ... of marriage with
a very young girl, one whom I could train according to my ideas, my
philosophy, my ideas and philosophy of purity ... of which the loftiest
is the idea of purity in soul and life...."
"That's a regular old bachelor's idea, Paul: getting married to a very
young girl, training her in your ideas. A fine woman of thirty or over:
that's better."
"As old as that!" exclaimed Paul.
"A woman of thirty is not old for a man of forty-six."
"No, Constance, don't trouble your head. Marriage is a desperate affair.
No, it's a good thing that I never got married.... But I do feel lonely
sometimes. I'm glad I came to live here.... It's you who are providing,
the family-picture now.... Poor Mamma! She still knows me quite well.
But she thinks that I am still very, very young.... Yes, the
family-picture is with you now, not on Sunday evenings, but every day of
the week.... Now that I'm growing old, I feel myself becoming more
pastoral than I used to be. Do you remember how I used to abuse the
family and deny family-affection and how angry poor Gerrit used to get?
Now I'm growing very idyllic and I'm throwing back and longing for the
family in the desert.... I'm glad that your house has become a centre
for the family, Constance. But for that, there would be nothing to keep
us together. Oh, it's a melancholy thing to grow so old, lonely as I am!
What have I to live for? Nothing.... Well, with you, I am still at least
a sort of rich uncle, one from whom the children may have expectations:
I dare say I shall leave each of my nephews and nieces a trifle. I must
have a talk with my solicitor one day. It won't be much for them, but
I'll leave them enough to buy a clock, or some other ornament for their
mantelpiece..... And your old friend Brauws is back at the Hague, you
know.... Oh, didn't you know? Hasn't he written? He's sure to soon.... I
met him the other day: the fellow's grown old. He always had an old
face: wrinkles are things that need looking after; they want massage....
I used to massage mine, but I've given it up: my personal vanity has
gone. As you see, I wear the same tie always. I'm fond of this tie. I
have it steamed from time to time: that keeps it fresh. It's a nice tie;
but I no longer have such a collection as I used to.... Yes, the family
no longer cling together at the Hague. Karel and Cateau still do nothing
but eat good dinners by themselves. For years and years they have done
nothing but eat good meals together. Lord, Lord, what a disgusting pair
to find their pleasure in that!... Saetzema and Adolphine: that's a sad
case; you people have been very kind to Marietje.... Otto and Frances
have a heap of children now and that good Louise looks after them, while
Frances makes a scene one day and embraces her the next with a great
display of emotion and loads of tears. And that has lasted for years
too.... Yes, the years pass. I simply couldn't bear it any longer,
especially with those sluts of servants whom my landlady started
engaging lately. I yearned for cleanliness and ... for my family. It's a
sign that I'm growing very old, Constance. _My_ dotage is always marked
by that idyllic longing.... That's why I take so much pleasure in
immersing myself amid you all in family-affection. It's a great thing
that none of you quarrel; even you and your husband don't quarrel any
more. It's become the golden age."
[1] Kate, Kittie.
[2] Malay: clear out!
[3] Mary.