Dr. Adriaan Part 31

She laughed softly:

"So simply ... with no great effort!"

"When we are not great ... why should we act as though we were? We are small; and we act accordingly. If we do good in a small way ... isn't that a beginning?"

"A striving...."

"For later."

"Yes, for later."

"I, I can't even say ... that I am doing good in a small way."

"Tell me about yourself."

"There is nothing to tell. Thinking, living, seeking ... always seeking.... There has been nothing besides."

"Then do as we do," she laughed, softly. "Do good in a small way ... as you say that we do."

"I shall try.... But I am disheartened. I admire you and I envy you."

"I ... I am disheartened. I am sometimes quite dejected. I should like to live quietly, with a heap of books around me. I ... I'm giving it up."

"The struggle?"

"Yes, the struggle to seek and find. Little by little, it has conquered me. Can you understand me? You ... you have conquered it."

"What have I conquered?"

"You understand."

"You rank that conquest too high.... And you, why are you conquered?"

"Because ... because I have never achieved anything.... I may sometimes have found, but never, never achieved.... And now I want to rest ...

with a heap of books around me ... and, if I can, follow your example ... and do good in a small way."

"I will help you," she said, jesting, very sadly.

They were silent; and between her and him the room was full of bygone things. The furniture was the same, certain lines and tones were the same as years ago.... Out of doors, the unsparing night of the clattering rain and raging wind was the same as years ago. Life went on weaving its long woof of years, like so many grey shrouds. They both smiled at it; but their hearts were very sad.

CHAPTER XVI

And the melancholy of bygone things seemed to swell on the loud moaning of the wind during the following days, when the rain poured down; the house these days seemed full of the melancholy of bygone things. They were days of shadow and half-light reflected around the old, doting woman in the conservatory; Adeline, the silent, mournful mother; Emilie, a young woman, but broken ... like all the greyness exuding from human souls that are always living in the past and in the melancholy of that past; and now that Brauws also saw it as a thing of shadows and twilight round Alex--because the boy could never forget the horror of his father's death--he also understood within himself that bygone things are never to be cast off and that they perhaps hang closer in clouds of melancholy, around people under grey skies--the small people under the great skies--than in bright countries of mountains and sunshine and blue sky. And that there were sorrowful things of the soul that slumbered: did he not see it in Addie's knitted brows, in ailing Marietje's dreamy stare, in Mathilde's glances brooding with envy and secret bitterness and malice? Did he not see it in the sudden melancholy moods of Gerdy, usually so cheerful? And did he not understand that in between their young lives there was weaving a woof of feelings that were most human but exceedingly intense, perhaps so intense because the feelings of small souls under big skies can be deeply sorrowful between the brown walls of a house, between the dark curtains of a room, which the grey daylight enters as a tarnish of pain, mingling its tarnish with the reflexion which lingers from former years in dull mirrors, as though all feeling and all life were quiveringly mirrored in the atmosphere amid which life has lived and palpitated?

Brauws was now living at Zeist and he had collected his heap of books around him and lived there quietly, conquered, as he said. But he was with them a great deal and was hardly surprised when, one morning, intending to come for lunch, he heard unknown children's voices in the hall, saw in the hall a young woman whom he did not know at first, heard her say in a very soft voice of melancholy, with a sound in it like a little cracked bell of silvery laughter:

"Don't you recognize me, Mr. Brauws?"

She put out her hand to him:

"Do you mean to say you really don't know me? Aunt Constance, Mr. Brauws doesn't know me; and yet we used to have so many disputes, in the old days!"

"Freule ... Freule van Naghel ... Freule Marianne!" Brauws stammered.

"Mrs. van Vreeswijk," said Marianne, correcting him, gently. "And here are my children."

And she showed him a little girl of eight and two boys of seven and six; and he was hardly surprised, but he felt the melancholy of the past rising in the big house when Van der Welcke came down the stairs and said:

"Ah, Marianne! Is that you and the children?"

"Yes, Uncle, we have been to Utrecht to look up Uncle and Aunt van Vreeswijk: they are so fond of the children.... Charles may come on this afternoon ... but he wasn't quite sure."

And, turning to Brauws, she continued, very, easily:

"We are living near Arnhem. Won't you come and see us in the summer?

Vreeswijk would be very glad, I know."

She spoke quite easily and it was all very prosaic and ordinary when they all sat down round the big table in the dining-room and Marianne quietly chatted on:

"And Marietje--Lord, what a lot of Marietjes we have in the family--_our_ Marietje is soon coming to introduce her young soldier to you."

"Is it settled then?" asked Constance. "I thought Uncle van Naghel didn't approve."

"He's given in," said Marianne, shrugging her shoulders. "But the dear boy hasn't a cent; and we none of us know how they're going to live on his subaltern's pay. And Marietje who always used to swear that she would only marry a rich man! ... And we have good news from India: Karel is really doing well...."

How prosaic life was! How prosaically it rolled along its steady drab course, thought Brauws, silently to himself, as he looked on while Guy carved the beef in straight, even slices.... And, prosaically though it rolled, what a very different life it always became from what any man imagined that his life would be, from the future which he had pictured, from the illusion, high or small, which he had gilded for himself, with his pettily human fancy ever gilding the future according to its pettily human yearning after illusions.... Oh, if the illusion had come about which, in the later life reborn out of themselves, he and Constance had conceived, without a word to each other, in a single, brightly glittering moment, oh, if Henri's illusion had come about and that of this young woman, now the little mother of three children, would it all have been better than it now was? Who could tell? Who could tell?...

And, though the dreamy reflecting upon all this brought back all the melancholy of the past, yet this melancholy contained an a.s.surance that life, as it went on, knew everything better than the people who pictured the future to themselves.... There they all were, sitting so simply round the big table at the simple meal for which Constance apologized, saying that Marianne had taken her unawares; and Brauws was but mildly astonished to find that Marianne was married to Van Vreeswijk: he had not heard of it and it was a surprise to him to see her suddenly surrounded by children; he was but mildly astonished to see her and Hans talking together so simply, as uncle and niece, as though there had never been a shred of tenderness between them; he was but mildly astonished when he himself talked to Constance so simply, while he felt depressed about Addie, whose eyes looked so dark and sombre. When Addie was still a child, he had conceived an enthusiasm for him, perceiving in him a certain future which he himself would never achieve. And he had also suffered, because he felt Addie's jealousy for his father's sake, when he, Brauws, used to sit for hours with his mother in the half-dark room, whispering intimate words so quickly understood, so sympathetically felt....

Now the years had pa.s.sed; sorrow had faded away and sorrow was being born again perhaps, for life cannot exist without sorrow, laid up as an inheritance for one and all; and yet sorrow was so very little and became so small in the measureless life entire. There was nothing for it but to smile, later, much later, at all the disappointment, even that of seeking and not finding and not achieving....

It was very noisy because of the children: the three little Vreeswijks after lunch playing with Jetje and Constant; and, as the girls were staying with the children, Constance, with her arm round Marianne's waist, went upstairs to her own room:

"Let's sit here quietly for a bit," she said.

Marianne smiled:

"You've always got your hands full, Auntie."

"I don't know why, dear.... We live so quietly here, at Driebergen ...

and yet ... yet my hands are always full. I do sometimes crave to be quite alone.... But the craving never lasts long ... and it seems impossible.... However, it's all right as it is...."

"What awful weather, Auntie!... I remember how often it used to rain like this when I came to see you in the Kerkhoflaan.... How long ago it is, years and years ago!... Here, among all your old knicknacks it looks to me suddenly and strangely as though everything had remained the same ... and yet changed. Auntie ... Auntie...."

Obeying a sudden impulse, she dropped on her knees beside Constance and seized her hand: