When Constance returned home, she was even more troubled than she
had been in the morning by what she called her dishonesty towards Van
der Welcke. She lunched alone with Addie; Van der Welcke did not come
in, was evidently trying to lose himself on his bicycle in the roads
outside the Hague and lunching off a sandwich and a glass of beer at
a country inn. He did not come home till very late, tired and dusty,
and he was in an unbearable mood, as though his surfeit of movement
and speed and space had produced nothing but an evil intoxication and
not the beneficent anaesthesia which he had expected of it. Roughly,
as though dispirited and disgusted, he put away his machine, without
bestowing on it the care which he usually gave to it after a long
ride, angry with the lifeless steel which had not consoled him,
which had not shown itself a friend this time. It was three o'clock;
and he went straight to his room to change his clothes.
Constance, in her drawing-room, remained uneasy. In her heart there
was a deep pity for Marianne; and for him too an almost motherly
pity, which made her eyes fill with tears. Oh, when she had found
so very much for herself, so much that was broad and lofty, radiant
and lovely, of which she asked no more than that it should exist,
exist in soft radiance within herself, a mystic sun, a glowing
mystery, invisible to all but her, it pained her that those two,
Henri and Marianne, could find nothing for themselves and for each
other!... She listened anxiously to the sounds upstairs. She heard his
footsteps tramping overhead, heard him even throwing his clothes about,
splashing the water noisily, almost breaking the jug and basin in his
savage recklessness, his violent resentment against everything. It
all reechoed in her; she kept on starting: there he was flinging his
boots across the room; bang went the door of his wardrobe; and, when
he had finished, she heard him go to his den. Everything became still;
the warmth of the summer afternoon floated in through the open windows;
a heat mist hung over the garden of the little villa; in the kitchen,
the maid was droning out a sentimental song, in a dreary monotone....
Constance' uneasiness increased. Yes, she must, she must tell him
something: she almost became frightened at the idea of telling him
nothing, of concealing from him entirely that Van Vreeswijck had asked
her to go to Marianne. And yet nothing compelled her to say anything
to Henri; and it would perhaps not even, she thought, be fair to Van
Vreeswijck. She did not know; her thoughts rambled on uneasily. But
persistently, as though from out of the new, fresh youth that was hers,
one idea obtruded itself: it would not be honest to tell Henri nothing,
not even a casual word, so that at any rate he should not imagine, if
he came to hear later, that she had been plotting behind his back....
All of a sudden, the anxiety, the uneasiness became so great in her
that she rose, impulsively, and went upstairs. The servant was droning
sentimentally. Constance quietly opened the door of Henri's little
den. He was sitting in a chair, with his arms hanging down beside him;
he was not even smoking.
"Am I disturbing you?" she asked. "I should like to speak to you for
a moment...."
He gave her a sharp look. Usually, when she came in like that,
it meant that she had something to reproach him with, that she was
spoiling for a scene ... about a trifle, sometimes about nothing. She
would come in then with the same words; and her voice at once sounded
aggressive. This time, though she tried to speak gently, her voice,
because of her uneasiness and anxiety, sounded harsh and discordant;
and he, with his irritated nerves, seemed to hear the aggressive note,
the prelude to a scene. It was as though his nerves at once became set,
as though he were pulling himself together in self-defence:
"What is it now?" he asked, roughly.
She sat down, outwardly calm, inwardly trembling, anxious, uneasy. And
she made an effort to clear her hoarse voice and to speak calmly
... so that he might know:
"Oh," she began, reflectively, wishing to show him at once that she
had not come to make reproaches, that she did not wish to make a scene,
"I wanted to speak to you ... to ask your advice...."
Her voice, now under control, sounded soft, as she wished it; and he
was astonished for a second, just remembered, almost unconsciously,
that she had not been so quick-tempered lately, that in fact they
had not had a scene for weeks. Still he continued suspicious: she,
who never asked his advice! And he echoed:
"To ask my advice?"
"Yes," she went on, in that same calm, reflective tone, with a certain
constraint, "I wanted to tell you--what do you think?--Vreeswijck
stayed talking to me for a long time yesterday evening ... and he
wanted absolutely...."
"Wanted what?"
She saw him turn pale; his eyes blazed angrily, as though sparks were
flashing from that vivid blue, generally so young and boyish.
"He would so much like ... he asked me...."
She could not get the words out, looked at him, afraid of his eyes,
now that she was in no mood for a scene of mutual recrimination. But
she could not keep silent either:
"He asked me ... if I thought ... that Marianne...."
She saw him give a shiver. He understood it all. Nevertheless, she
went on:
"That Marianne could get to care for him.... He asked me to go to
Bertha ... and ask her...."
"Van Vreeswijck? Marianne?" he repeated; and his eyes were almost
black. "Asked you ... to go to Bertha?... Well, you're not mixing
yourself up in it, are you? You're not going, surely?"
"I went this morning," she said; and her voice once more sounded
discordant.
He seemed to hear a hostile note in it. And, unable to contain himself,
he flew into a passion:
"You went? You went this morning?" he raved; and even in his raving
she saw the suffering. "Why need you mix yourself up in it? What
business has Van Vreeswijck to come asking you?... Van Vreeswijck...."
He could not find the words. All that he could get out was a rough
word, cruel, hard and insulting:
"Plotting and scheming ... if you want to go plotting...."
Her eyes flamed; she felt his intention to insult her. But his
suffering was so obvious, she saw him so plainly writhing under his
pain, that the angry tempest died down at once and she merely said,
very gently:
"She has refused him."
He looked at her. The black cloud lifted from his eyes, which
turned blue again, and his gloomy frown gave way to his usual boyish
expression, full of wide-eyed astonishment now. His features relaxed,
his whole body relaxed; he gave a shiver and sat down, as though all
his temper and rage were subsiding like a sudden storm that had arisen
for no reason at all. And he asked, slowly:
"She ... has refused him?"
"Yes. Of course, Bertha had nothing against it. But Marianne, when
I spoke to her, declined at once. I did not insist. Poor Vreeswijck!"
"Yes, poor fellow!" he said, mechanically.
"I wanted to tell you, because ..."
"Because what?"
"Because Vreeswijck is a friend and I thought it better that you
should know. I meant to tell you this morning, before I started. But
you went out...."
He looked at her again, with a keen glance, wondering if she was
sincere or if there was anything behind her words; wondering what
she thought, knew or guessed about him and Marianne; what she would
really have liked; if it was a disappointment to her that Marianne had
declined so promptly: so promptly that Constance had not insisted for
a moment. But she was so calm and gentle, as she stood leaning against
his table, that he found her incomprehensible and was only conscious
of breathing again after that first moment when it had seemed to
him that his throat, lungs, chest and heart were all gripped in one
hideous constriction.
They were silent, she standing there and he looking at her, with
his keen glance. A heat haze hung over the garden; the heavy summer
scent floated up to them; from the kitchen came the monotonous voice
of the housemaid droning out her love-song. And suddenly a sort
of remorse loomed as a spectre before Constance, because she had
fettered him to her life, for all his life, years ago; because she
had fettered him to her then by accepting his sacrifice and that of
his parents in her despair and helplessness, reviled outcast as she
then was. It flashed before her: the recollection of that day when
he came to her in Florence, when he made his gift of himself to her,
made it despairingly, feeling even then perhaps, despite the forced
love-illusion of passion, the life-long mistake which they were
mutually making. She had accepted his gift, taken his youth; she had
rendered him aimless, him and his life, his career and his happiness:
all that he might perhaps yet have found. It flashed before her again:
the recollection of that good-looking boy, the way he had come to
her in Florence and the way she had taken everything, without having
anything to give him in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now,
how it hung round her shoulders, crushing her like a nightmare that
was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh,
the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!
She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table;
and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the
small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her,
penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:
"Henri...."
He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and
again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew ... and what else
she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her,
made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression
of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had
become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning
for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the
woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and
darted like multitudes of laughing butterfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly
in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in
ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther
than the usual little circle which had bounded her vision for years:
the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities,
the little follies; the little circle in which all the others--her
own people, people like herself, the small people--felt happy and
comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions,
their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been
contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light
on the horizons above which sailed the spacious cloud-worlds and
across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which
she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized
into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left
in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at
herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If
she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh,
she felt--in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few
seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with
heat and excitement--that she was shaking off the nightmare of the
past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back
what she had taken ... and what had never belonged to her, because
it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness,
any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had
grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous;
and what she had stolen she would like to give back now ... in so
far as was possible to her!
"Henri," she repeated, for her whole thought had rushed through her in
those two or three seconds, "there is something more I want to say to
you. I should like to talk frankly to you. Promise me to keep calm;
and do not let us lose our tempers. It is not necessary to lose our
tempers, Henri, in order to understand each other at last...."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I have been thinking a great deal lately," she continued, turning her
steady eyes towards him. "I have been thinking a very great deal, about
our life, about both our lives ... and about the mistake we made...."
He became impatient:
"What on earth are you driving at and what is it all about?" he asked,
with an irritable shake of his shoulders.
"Come, Henri," she said, gently, "let us talk for once, for once
in our lives, and be quite frank and serious. Our life has been a
mistake. And the fault...."
"Is mine, I suppose?" he broke in, angrily, aggressively, working
himself up for the scene which he foresaw.
She looked at him long and deeply and then said, firmly:
"The fault is mine."
He remained silent, again shook his shoulders, restlessly, not
understanding her, not recognizing her at all. This woman was now a
stranger to him; and, above all, her calm seriousness confused him:
he would almost have preferred that she should fly out at him and
have done with it and tell him that he had no business to go bicycling
alone with Marianne.
But she did not do this, she merely repeated, calmly:
"The fault is mine. The fault, the blame is mine alone, Henri. I ought
not, in Florence, to have accepted the sacrifice which you made for
me, which your father and mother made for me. It was my fault that
your life did not become ... what it might have been."
Yes, she was frank and calm: he had to admit that; and it was not
a crafty prelude leading up to one of her angry scenes. She was
speaking so quietly and gently; her voice had a note of sorrowful
humility that almost touched him.
"But what are you driving at?" he said, nevertheless, in a voice
that was still nervous and jerky. "You are very frank and honest in
looking at things like that; but what is the use of it all now? It
is so long ago. It is the past. And it was my duty then to make up
for the wrong which I had done you."
"I had done you quite as great a wrong, Henri. I should not have
accepted your sacrifice. I ought not to have become your wife."
"But what would you have done then?"
"I should have gone away, somewhere or other. If I had been then the
woman that I am now, I should have gone away, somewhere or other. And
I should have left you to your life ... and to the happiness that
was perhaps awaiting you elsewhere...."
"I should have had to give up the service just the same...."
"But you would have been freer without me. You were still so young:
you had your whole life before you; and you would perhaps have found
your happiness. As it is, you have never found it ... or ... perhaps
too late."
He stood up, very restless and nervous, and his boyish eyes pleaded
anxiously:
"Constance, I can't talk in this way. I'm not used to it...."
"Can't you face things seriously for a moment?..."
"No, I can't. It upsets me. I don't know: you mean to be nice, I
believe, but please don't let us talk like this. We're not accustomed
to it. And I ... I can't do it. You can see for yourself, it upsets
me."
"Come," she said, in a motherly tone, "you are not so much upset as
all that. You can have a bicycle-ride afterwards and you will feel
better. But first let us talk seriously for a moment...."
He sighed, sank into his chair, submitted to her stronger will. If
only she had flown out at him, he would have stormed back at her;
but she was saying such strange things, the sort of things that people
never said, and she was so calm and frank about it, calmer and franker
than people ever were.
"You will listen seriously for a moment? Well, what I want to ask
you is this: have you never thought that it would be better ... if
we just quietly separated, Henri?"
He said nothing, looked at her with his great wondering eyes.
"It is certainly very late," she said, "very late for me to propose
it. But it is perhaps not too late.... Let us be honest, Henri:
we have never been happy together. You might perhaps still be happy
without me, released from me, free...."
He continued to look at her, his eyes still full of amazement; and
it seemed as though he was afraid to turn his gaze towards a life of
such transcendent peace and quietness and sincerity. It seemed to him
that she was urging him to take a road which grew fainter and fainter
as it took its mystic, winding way towards clouds ... towards things
that did not exist.
"I?... Happy?" he stammered, not knowing what to say.
But a more concrete thought now came into his mind:
"And Addie?" he asked.
"I am not forgetting him," she said, gently. "He is the child of both
of us, whom we both love. If we quietly ... quietly separate, if you
become happy later, he will be able to understand that his parents,
however passionately they both loved him, separated because it was
better that they should. He need not suffer through it. He will not
suffer through it. At least, I like to think that he will not. If we
are only honest, Henri, he cannot suffer through it."
"And you ... what would you do?"
She blushed, but did not lose her composure; he did not see her
blush. She had not yet thought of herself for a moment: she was
thinking, had been thinking, after that wave of remorse and after
holding Marianne that morning in her arms, only of him and Marianne,
of their happiness, his and Marianne's, even though she did not
mention the girl's name again, once she had told him that Marianne
had refused Van Vreeswijck. She was thinking only of the two of
them.... What would she do? She did not know. Her love, it is true,
rose radiantly before her: her love, her new life; but she was not
thinking of outward change. Life, the real life, was an inward thing;
outwardly she was the mother of her son and would remain so....
"I?" she asked. "Nothing. I should simply stay as I am. Addie could
be with us in turns."
"It would distress him, Constance...."
"Perhaps, at first.... But he would soon understand."
"Constance, tell me, why are you speaking like this?"
"In what way?"
"What do you really mean, Constance? What do you mean by my happiness?"
"Only what I say, Henri: that you may still be able to find your
happiness."
"You are frank," he said, forcing himself to adopt her tone, though
it was difficult for him to speak like that. "You are frank. I will
also try to be frank. My happiness? You speak of my happiness?... I
am too old to find that now."
"No, you are not old. You are young."
"And you?"
"I ... am old. But there is no question about me. I am thinking
... of you."
She looked at him and he suddenly understood her. He understood her,
but he writhed under so much frankness and at seeing life so honestly:
"No, no, Constance," he mumbled.
"Think it over," she said, gently. "If you like ... I will agree. Only
... let us do it quietly, Henri, ... let us do it, if possible,
with something of affection for each other."
Her eyes filled with tears. He was very much moved:
"No, Constance, no," he mumbled.
"Henri, have the courage to be honest. Have the courage and do not
be weak. Be a man. I am only a woman and I have the courage."
"Constance, people ..."
"No, Henri, you must not hesitate because of people. If we cannot
do it, it would be because of Addie. But I like to think that, if
he understands, he will not suffer through it. He must not suffer
through it: that would be selfish of him; and he is not selfish."
"No, Constance, no!" he protested again.
"Think it over, Henri," she repeated. "Think it all out. I shall think
of Addie also. You know how passionately devoted I am to him. But ..."
"Constance, it is all too late."
"But think it over, Henri."
"Yes, yes, Constance, I shall ... I shall think it over."
"And, if we decide upon it ... let us do it ... let us decide to do
it with something of affection for each other ..."
"Yes, Constance ... yes, with affection ... You are nice ... you are
kind ..."
He looked at her, his chest heaving with emotion; a haze dimmed the
boyish glance of his eyes. She had meant to go, quietly, to leave
him alone. She went to the door, without another word, another look,
wishing to leave him alone with his thoughts.
"Constance!" he cried, hoarsely.
She looked round. He was standing before her; and she saw him
quivering, trembling with the emotion, the shock which the reality
of life had sent shuddering through him. For a moment they stood in
front of each other; and, because they saw into each other's eyes,
they told each other once more--silently, without words--that they
understood each other! A great gratitude, an emotion that to him was
almost superhuman shot through his small soul and flowed over her. And,
impotently, he cried once more, like a man in a fever:
"Constance!"
He flung himself, distractedly, desperately, with a wild impulse, into
her arms; bursting into sobs, he buried his head in her breast. She
started violently; she felt his convulsive tremors against her
heart. Then she threw her arm around him, stroked his hair. It was
as though she were comforting her son.
"I am mad, I am mad!" he muttered.
He released himself, hurriedly pressed a quivering kiss on her forehead
and tore down the stairs. And, when she went down to her drawing-room,
she suddenly heard the front-door slam and saw him bicycling away
like a madman, his back arched like a professional's. He pedalled,
pedalled furiously: she watched him lose himself ... in movement,
speed and space ...
"Poor boy!" she thought.
Then she sank into a chair, while the room swam round her. She closed
her eyes and her hands fell limply at her side. So she sat for half
an hour, unconscious, alone ... as if the new life had been too keen,
too intense, with its pure air, its honesty ... too rare and keen in
its cold-blue ether ... and as if she were swooning away in it....