Dr. Adriaan Part 38

"Share me?... With whom?" he roared.

"Not with her, perhaps," she resumed, frightened, "but with ...

with...."

"With whom?"

"With them all."

"All whom?"

"Your family ... all of them ... whom you love more than me."

"I don't love them more."

"No, but you feel with them ... and not with me."

"Then feel with me!" he implored, as though to save both her and himself. "Feel, Tilly, that I can't be a fashionable doctor, but that I have a large practice, a number of patients to whom I am of use."

"They don't pay you."

His mouth involuntarily gave a twist of contempt.

"They don't pay you," she repeated. "You are wearing yourself out ...

for nothing."

"Try and feel, Tilly, that I am not wearing myself out for nothing ...

just because I am not making money."

"Then teach me to feel it."

He looked at her in despair.

"Teach me!" she entreated. "For your sake, because I love you, I will try to learn, try to feel ... I love you, I love you, Addie!"

"Dear," he said, gently, "I'll do my best ... to teach you to feel it.

Come with me."

"Where?"

"There ... to those little cottages."

"Who lives in them?"

"Poor people ... sick people ... whom I attend."

"Addie ... no, no ... no!..."

"Why not?"

"I'm not prepared for it.... You know I can't stand that...."

"You're a healthy woman; your nerves are strong: come with me."

She went with him, not daring to refuse.

"Tilly," he said, gently, as they walked on and approached the cottages, "I will try to have understanding for both of us.... If you are to be happy in yourself ... with me ... happy the two of us ... then...."

"Well?"

"Then you must learn to understand me ... to understand me very deep down, as I am. Then you must try to understand ... all of us; to love us all: my father, my mother.... Tilly, Tilly, can you?..."

She did not answer, trembling, frightened, looking deeper into things, after all that he had said. Her fine eyes gazed at him despairingly, like those of a wounded animal in its pain. She could have embraced him now, just ordinarily, clasping him warmly and firmly to herself. But he led her on as he might lead a child. He knocked, opened the little door and led her in. A sultry heat of mean poverty struck her in the face like a blow; and it was nothing but misery, wherever he took her. It seemed to her as if she herself carried that misery with her, in her soul, which had never yet thrilled as it did now.

CHAPTER XX

Oh, he was to blame, he was to blame, he was to blame! He saw suddenly, in a sort of despair, that the only answer to the question which he sometimes had to ask in vague, black self-insufficiency was the a.s.senting yes, yes, yes!... Because he had not known it for himself, entirely for himself, for the two personalities which he so clearly felt himself to be, he was to blame, because he loved his wife with only half of himself. Was she to blame in any way? Was she not what she always had been? No, she had changed, she had refined herself, as if her soul, despite the antipathy of her environment, had yet become transformed and grown more like the people and things that surrounded her! And it was his fault: he had brought her into this environment, in which no sympathy was created and which had given her nothing beyond a refinement of soul, senses and nerves, so that she now suffered through that which he had always thought that she would never perceive. With what sudden clearness, in her simplicity, she had seen it all, almost unconsciously, and was now flinging it at his feet! He wrung his hands and felt desperate at the thought of it all. Of an evening now, alone in his study, in the soft light of his reading-lamp--the table with Guy's books and maps standing in one corner--he would walk up and down, up and down, wringing his hands, glancing deep into that despair, while the self-insufficiency was no longer vague, but soul-torturing in self-dissatisfaction, because he saw himself at fault in that great action of his life, which was still so very young, his marriage: at fault towards himself, at fault towards his wife. To let her marry him, because she was healthy and simply normal, with that idea of setting an example--see, that is what we ought all to be: normal, simple and healthy--oh, to love her, yes, but to love with only the half of himself, without ever giving her anything of the deep--things of the soul, things which he gave to all with whom he felt a soul-relationship, without counting, in a lavish prodigality: how _could_ he have done it, he who knew things for others I More clearly than ever he perceived that he had never known them for himself; and he clearly perceived that others, his father, his mother, had suspected that he did not know for himself, that he had not known when he brought Mathilde to them as his wife: into their midst, into their house. And now, in his emotion, in this lonely silent contemplation, there awakened within him the energy to redress, oh, to redress if possible: to redress everything, everything for her!...

Now, suddenly, he went to her room, where she was spending a moment after dinner, before tea was brought in, where he often found her when he wished to be alone with her for a minute; and he found her now. She was sitting listlessly in a chair; and the room was dark: the children were already asleep next door. He lit the gas and looked at her with all the energy that leapt up within him like springs, the energy to redress, to redress. And, without any preamble, he said:

"Tilly ... we'll go to the Hague."

"What do you mean?" she asked, in surprise.

"We shall go and live at the Hague. I shall do what you suggest: I shall look for a practice at the Hague."

She had him to herself now, for the first time after their talk that afternoon, and suddenly, sobbing, she threw her arms around him, pressed him to her:

"Love me!" she implored.

"I do love you.... It won't do for us to stay here.... It's better that you should be quite by yourself, in your own house, your own mistress."

"We've talked about it so often!" she sobbed.

"There will be money enough, Tilly; I shall make money."

"You said five thousand guilders."

"No, there will be more. Don't be afraid, have no care, there will be enough ... and you can do as you please. I promise, I promise."

"But it's a sacrifice for you...."

"To leave the house?"

"Yes."