The oppressive, sultry, rainless summer days followed one after the
other; and the night also waited in oppressive expectation of oppressive
things, which were to happen and never happened, as though what we
expected to happen immediately withdrew and withdrew farther and only
hung over houses and people with heavy stormy skies: skies of blazing
morning blue, until great grey-white clouds blew up from a mysterious
cloudland and drifted past on high; only on the more distant horizons
was there any lightning; and that came soundlessly, later in the day;
the threat of a thunderstorm drove past; the foliage became scorched in
the dust of advancing summer and faded with the approach of decay; and
there was, almost, a sort of longing for autumn and for purple death in
autumnal storms: a nature, tired with heavy, trailing summer life, that
had never finally become anything and was always becoming something,
never flashing forth in a bright achievement of summer but dragging her
incompleteness from heavy day to heavy day, under the heavy immensity of
skies, towards the later bursting delights of autumn: heavy wind, heavy
rain, followed by the heavy death-struggle and unwillingness to die of
that which had never been the glory of the sun and yet left no golden
memory behind....
Often in those oppressive nights Marietje van Saetzema could not get to
sleep, or else woke up with a sudden start. She had been dreaming that
she was falling down an abyss, or gliding down a staircase or bumping
her head against the ceiling, like a giant bluebottle. Then she would
get up, draw the curtains and look out at the heavy night of trees, grey
with darkness melting into darkness: the road beyond the house was grey,
like an ashen path; the oak and beeches showed grey, their leafy tops
unruffled by the wind; in the front garden the dust-covered standard
roses stood erect as pikes and the roses drooped from them, grey and
with the tired, pining attitude of heavy flowers hanging from limp
stalks. All was grey and silent: only, in the very far distance, a dog
barked. And the bedroom, still dark with the night--the nightlight had
gone out--began to stifle Marietje so much that she softly opened the
door and went through the attic, though Addie had forbidden her to
wander about like this at night. She went carefully in noiseless
slippers, pale in her night-dress, staring wide-eyed into the grey
indoor twilight. She passed the doors of the maids' bedrooms and down
the first flight of stairs, stepping very lightly, so that the stairs
did not creak. Once on the staircase she breathed more freely, with
relief at feeling something more spacious than the air of her room, the
relief of unfettered movement, although the grey silence wove such
strange great cobwebs all around her, through which she walked down the
endless passages. She now went past Uncle's door, Aunt's door, Mamma's
door, the girls' doors, past Addie's and Mathilde's empty rooms ... and
she felt that she was very much in love with Addie, silently and without
desire, and was always thinking of him, even though she did not always
do as he told her, because she simply could not remain in her room and
longed even for the out-of-door air, to feel it blowing through the
filmy tissues that covered her young body. And, however much without
desire, because Addie remained to her the utterly unattainable, yet
there blossomed up in her a nervous passion like some strange flower or
orchid or lily, seen in a waking dream, a blameless girl's dream of
love, of soft, wistful lying in each other's arms and feeling the
pressure of breast against breast or mouth against mouth and ecstatic
thrills through all one's body.... Then Marietje would long for Addie,
so that he might lay his hand upon her head: no more, that was enough
for her, because she was also very fond of him, of his voice and his
glance and his speech, of his care, of his sympathy, of everything
abstract that came from him to her; she knew that, on his side, it was
no more than gentle interest, but it was enough for her: she lived upon
little like a bloodless lily, her body and soul needing no excess. She
well knew at the moment that she was doing what she should not,
wandering like that through the house, half awake, half asleep, because
it was so fresh and cool to walk about like that half-naked. The night
grew grey with dusk and there were deeper shadows in the corners, but
she was not afraid, after she had once talked to Addie about the house
and he had explained to her that, _if_ there was anything of the past
hovering about it, it could not be malign or angry, but rather
well-disposed and on the alert, in case it could be of use.... He spoke
to nobody but her like this; she knew that and it gave her a deep love
for him, especially because he had said it so very simply and without
any sort of exaggeration, as though it were the very simplest thing that
he could have wished to say.... Nor did he speak like that often; once
or twice at most he had spoken so; but it had reassured her greatly,
ever since she had been frightened into fainting on the little
staircase, all because of a sudden shadow which she thought that she saw
and yet did not know if she really saw....
She was now going down by that same little back staircase, almost
longing to see a shadow and always thinking of Addie; but she saw
nothing. White and as though walking in her sleep, she felt her way down
the narrow little stairs. They creaked slightly. She next opened a door,
leading into the long hall, which was like that of an old castle, so
fine with its old wainscoting. The long Deventer carpet was paled by
many years' traffic of feet; the front door seemed to vanish in the grey
vista; on the oak cabinet the Delft jars gleamed dimly.... She walked in
a waking dream on her noiseless slippers and now opened the door of the
morning-room, all dark, with the blinds down--she was very white now in
the darkness and could see her own whiteness--and she looked through the
drawing-room into the conservatory, where Grannie was always accustomed
to sit. The conservatory-windows showed faintly like transparent
greynesses; and behind them, in the dawning light of very early morning,
something of the dusk of the garden melted away: in the very early light
it was all ash, the conservatory full of fading ash and the garden full
of ash. Not an outline was visible as yet; and she gazed and gazed ...
and thought it so strange--and yet perhaps not so very strange--that
such outlines as did stand out in the conservatory against the grey
windows were motionless as the outlines of two dark shadows sitting each
at a window, as it were an old man and an old woman, looking out at the
birth of morning, which very far in the distance gave just a reflexion
of paler twilight....
Marietje now closed her eyes for an instant, then raised her lids again
and stared at the conservatory; and it was always that: the outline of
the dark, brooding shadows, so very similar to unconsciousness, as if
she were looking through atmosphere within atmosphere, invisible at
other hours than those of the greyness of the ending night and the
beginning of the morning melancholy.... The two irrealities remained
grey against grey; and suddenly Marietje felt very cold and shivered,
half naked as she was; and, in her shivering, it seemed to her that,
very quickly, the shadows themselves shivered, as with a start of
surprise, and disappeared, because she had dared to stare at them.
Nothing was outlined any more against the conservatory-windows; only the
morning between the trees grew paler: there was even a streak of
white....
Marietje was cold. She left the room, forgot to shut the door after her
and, going down the passage, made for the little back staircase and here
also forgot to shut the door. Up, up she crept, shivering, with the
noiseless tread of the soft slippers; across the attic now; and she
stole into bed, quite cooled, and, after just thinking about what she
had seen dimly outlined--perhaps--against the grey conservatory-windows,
she fell asleep, peacefully, and dozed until late in the morning,
peacefully and like a cold virgin now, with the bedclothes drawn up to
her chin.