Dr. Adriaan Part 11

That night he did not sleep, tired as he was. And he kept thinking:

"Am I at fault?"

CHAPTER VI

The old lady was sitting silently at the window--in the grey morning, which seemed spent and weary with the wind out of doors--and her thoughts were following a far course of their own in misty days of long ago. Klaasje came up to her. The child had two heavy books under her arm, bound volumes of _The Graphic_ and _L'Ill.u.s.tration_, and walked bent under them; then she dropped them, clumsily.... Cross with the weight of the books, she beat them angrily, but the hard boards hurt her little hand; and so she decided to drag them to Granny, the naughty books which refused to come: she dragged them by the open bindings which had hurt her so; she tore them a bit, but that was their own fault, because they wouldn't be carried.... Satisfied with her revenge in tearing the books, she closed the bindings contentedly; the books lay at Granny's feet, against her foot-warmer; and now Klaasje dragged up a ha.s.sock too, pushed it against Granny's dress and, kneeling on the ha.s.sock, asked Granny, in a motherly fashion:

"Granny!... Granny!... Granny like to look at pictures?"

The old woman, with a vague, misty glance, slowly turned her head towards the child, whose fair hair fell loosely round the rather thin, sharp little face, from which the over-bright eyes shone strangely, hard and staring. The voice--"Granny look at pictures?"--rang strangely kind, but too childish for a big girl of twelve, with a maturing figure. It was too maternal towards the old woman:

"Granny!... Granny like to look at pictures?"

The old woman, vaguely, fancied herself at Buitenzorg, in a large white palace among mountains, which stood out against a blue sky, and coco-trees, which waved gently like ostrich-feathers; and she thought that her little daughter Gertrude was kneeling by her and wanting to look at the books with her. Her old mouth wore a little puckered smile; and she put out her hands for the book, which Klaasje held up clumsily.

But the old woman was too weak to pull the heavy book on to her lap and it slipped obstinately down her dress to the floor, against the foot-warmer. Klaasje grew angry:

"Naughty books, naughty books!..."

She flew into a temper and struck the books again; but her little hand was hurt and she suddenly began to cry.

"Ssh!... Ssh!..." said Granny, soothingly.

She bent painfully in her big chair and laboriously pulled up the heavy, obstinate book; and Klaasje, with her eyes still wet, pushed up from below, till at last it lay in Grandmamma's lap. Then Klaasje sighed, after the final victory:

"Turn over," she said.

She turned over the heavy, clumsy binding and said:

"Klaasje will explain...."

But the black pictures, the dark portraits held no story for her; and, pointing her finger at the picture or the portrait, she could not make one up, could not find her tongue:

"Turn over, turn over," she repeated.

She was longing for colours, yellow, blue and red; but the pictures contained black, all black stripes and black patches, and she thought them ugly.

"Turn over, turn over, turn over," she kept repeating, excitedly yearning for them to become yellow, blue and red.

The old woman, with her puckered smile, patiently turned over the pictures. For her too they held no story, because they were black and sombre; and she was already seeing colours for herself, the dead-white and deep-blue, the bright, lacquered green of houses, sky and trees in Java. Here, under the sombre oppression of the skies, here, in the sombre pictures, the old woman and the child found nothing to charm them.

Then Klaasje became very angry and dragged the heavy book from Granny's lap and beat it, heedless of the pain, and scolded:

"Ugly books ... ugly, black books!"

"Ssh!... Ssh!" said the old woman soothingly, laying her veined hand on the girl's fair head.

"Build a tower!" said Klaasje, with a gurgle of laughter suddenly beholding a beautiful vision.

She sprang up quickly. On a table in a corner of the room she found a box of dominoes. She brought the box, beaming with delight, but the smooth lid slid out of the box and the dominoes rattled on the floor.

Klaasje stamped her foot, but the beautiful vision still shone before her and hurriedly and pa.s.sionately she scrabbled them into her little pinafore. Then she brought them to Granny, like a harvest, like so much booty, and rattled them down at her feet. With a great effort she again pushed one of the heavy books on to Granny's lap; and the old woman helped her, pulling while Klaasje pushed.

"Build tower!" cried the child.

Granny held the book, held it straight, while Klaasje placed two, three, four pieces on their narrow edges. Upon these she went on building the rickety black-and-white tower.

"A door and two windows," the child explained, lost in her game.

But the tower fell in with a crash.

"Granny mustn't move!" she whimpered.

Balancing the heavy book on Granny's knees, she went on building, hurriedly, so as to get very high.

"Granny mustn't move again.... Tower ... with a wall round it.... Higher ... the tower ... one more stone on the wall ... one more stone on the wall...."

But the wall and the tower came down with a crash.

"Naughty Granny!... Naughty Granny!"

"Ssh!" said the old woman, soothingly.

Addie had entered; and the child, dropping the book and the dominoes, crowed with delight and ran up to him. She called him uncle, not realizing that he was her cousin:

"Uncle Addie!" she cooed.

He opened his arms wide, lifted her a few inches from the floor:

"Look in Uncle Addie's pockets," he said.

"What have you got? What have you got?"

She fumbled in his pockets.

"No, that's Uncle's pocket-book.... No, that's his watch.... Here, look, what's this?"

He now helped her find the little parcel. She tugged hurriedly at the paper and string; and he opened the parcel for her. It was a little kaleidoscope.

"Look through it...."

"Lovely!" said the child, gleefully. "Lovely ... blue, red, yellow!..."

"Now shake it...."

She shook the kaleidoscope: the colours, from a square, changed their figure into a star.