Dr. Adriaan Part 52

Whatever people may have thought, whatever people may have said, none of it's true, it's all false! He was my brother, my own brother; and I loved him as a brother, though perhaps too much; and he loved me as a sister, though perhaps too much.... Oh, people are so wicked, so utterly wicked! They thought, they said ... As for me, I would never speak. Oh, Addie, your parents and you, your kindest and dearest of parents, never asked me a question, but took me to live with them in their house, which has become my sanctuary, where I can lead my cloistered life! Oh, Addie, I shall be grateful for ever and ever to your dear parents ... and to you! They never asked me anything, they have been like father and mother to me; I have been able to live under their roof, though my life has been nothing but remorse and pain.... Oh, Addie, let me tell you everything!... Henri was a clown in a circus--you know about that--and I, I made money by painting. We lived ... we lived together; we were both of us happy; then Eduard came.... Oh, he was like an evil spirit!

Oh, when I dream of him now, I dream of a devil! Addie, Eduard came!...

And it was he ... it was he...."

"I know, Emilie, I know."

The words burst from her in a scream:

"It was he ... he ... he ... who murdered Henri!"

"Hush, Emilie."

"Oh, I can't keep silent, I can't keep silent for ever; it chokes me, it chokes me, here!"

She uttered loud, hysterical cries, twisting herself against the chair; her eyes stared distractedly out of her face; her hair hung loose about her cheeks; her features were pale and distorted.

"It was after an evening when he had been playing in the circus ... and Eduard ... Eduard...."

"I know, I know.... Hush, Emilie!"

"He waited for him ... in the pa.s.sage in front of the house where we lived ... and ... and he called him names ... they quarrelled.... Then ... then he _stabbed_ him ... with a knife!"

"Hush, Emilie, hush!"

But she screamed it out: her screeches rang through the room. She wriggled like a madwoman against his knees; he stroked her dishevelled hair, to quiet her.

"Oh, your parents, your dear parents, Addie: they never asked me anything!... They came and fetched me: oh, Addie, that journey home, with his coffin between us, oh, those formalities at the frontiers!...

Oh, Addie, your dear parents: they saved me: I was mad, I was mad, I was mad at that time! Now it's all coming back to me; I can't keep it to myself any longer!... You see, he waited for him, they began quarrelling about me and ... suddenly they were like two wild animals!

Henri rushed at him ... and then Eduard stabbed him with his knife! The villain, the villain! He has been missing since then; I have never seen him again; only at night, at night I see him _with his knife_! Oh, Addie, Addie, help me!"

He gripped her by the arms with all his might and sought to control her; but she resisted. She was like a madwoman; in the sultry summer heat she was overmastered by the day-long vision that loomed up regularly with the first balmy warmth of spring. She was like a madwoman; she saw everything before her eyes; she lived the past over again.

"n.o.body has ever known, Addie, except you, except you!"

"Hush, Emilie, hush!"

He tried to look into her eyes, but they avoided his. She twisted and turned as though she were in the grasp of a ravisher; she dragged herself along the floor, while his hand held her arms. Suddenly his eyes met hers and he held and pierced them deeply with his grey-blue glance.

She fell back helplessly against a chair; her features, now relaxed, hung slackly, like an old woman's; her lips drooped. She lay huddled and moaning, with a monotonous moan of pain. Then she began to shake her head, up and down, up and down, grating the back of her head against the chair.

"Get up, Emilie."

She obeyed, let him help her up, hung like a rag in his hands. She fell back on her bed, with her eyes closed; and he rang the bell. It was Constance who entered.

"We will undress her now, Mamma; she's much quieter. I'll ring for Aunt Adeline to help you."

He rang again and asked Truitje to go for Mrs. van Lowe. But, as soon as Emilie felt the touch of Constance' fingers, she began to moan anew and opened her eyes:

"Oh, Auntie, Auntie, you're a dear, you're a dear! You never, never asked me!"

"Perhaps it will be better to leave her now, Mamma," whispered Addie.

Constance left the room, promising to remain within call with Adeline.

Emilie lay on the bed, her eyes staring straight before her, as though she still beheld all the horror of the past; and she went on moaning in fear and pain:

"Addie, Addie, it was Eduard ... it was Eduard who murdered Henri....

Oh, n.o.body knows, n.o.body knows!... Uncle and Aunt never asked me....

People at the Hague say that it was I who made Eduard unhappy, that that is why he has gone away, disappeared.... Perhaps I did, perhaps I did make him unhappy.... I don't know, I don't know.... You see, I didn't know what I was doing when I married Eduard. I thought ... I thought it would be all right, I thought I cared for him ... Ssh, Addie, don't tell anybody, but I cared for Henri, for my brother, only. I swear, it was all quite beautiful what he and I felt for each other; there was never anything between us, never anything to be ashamed of!... But my life, Addie, my poor life, oh, my poor little life was quite wrecked, because I did not know, because I felt so strangely, because I fought against the common things of life, against my marriage, against my husband, and because all that was stronger than what I tried to do, what I myself did not really know, nor Henri, nor Henri either I...."

The heart-broken lamentation over her life moaned away in plaintive words and it was as though, after uttering herself, she sank into a dull vacancy, with her eyes wide open, staring through the room, as if she still saw all the things of the past but as if they were now vanishing after she had uttered herself. And it was the same every year: each time spring came round, the same strange, mysterious force compelled her to tell it, to tell it right out, to tell all the sad secret of her piteous wreck and failure of a woman's life, she a very small soul, crushed under too great a tragedy, under too great an affliction, something too strange, which had crushed her and yet not crushed her to death. She lived on, she had lived on for years, living her life devoid of all interest and yet still young; bonds seemed still to bind her body and soul to life; and there was nothing left for her except the pity of those who surrounded her and a dull resignation, which only once, in each year, as though roused by the warm torrents of spring or summer, burst forth into a thunder of storm.... It gathered, it gathered, she felt it threatening days beforehand, as though it were bursting within her brain; during those sleepless nights she lay with her head clasped in her hands; and it gathered, it gathered: a fit of nerves, a violent attack of nerves; and she called for Addie, the only one who knew; and she told him, she told it him again; and, after she had told it and had fallen asleep under his eyes, she woke a little calmer. Then, after days, after long, slow days, her quivering nerves became restful; she surrendered herself; and that dull resignation wove itself round her again, the summer beat hot and sultry upon her, the slow course of the monotonous days dragged her on and on. n.o.body talked of it all; and then, one evening, in the garden, she found herself recovered, feeling strange and resigned, limp her hands, limp her arms, with poor Aunt Adeline beside her, quite cheered and receiving a short letter from Guy, while the girls and Aunt Constance put Grannie to bed and then Klaasje, that great big girl, who still always insisted on being taken to bed ...

and while Uncle Ernst wandered round the pond, talking to himself ...

and while Paul had not shown himself for three days, locking himself in his room, in the villa over there, lower down....

That was how she recovered, as if waking from a hideous dream; that was how she came to herself, in the evening, sitting in the garden with Aunt Adeline, reading and rereading Guy's letter, beside her. And a little further away sat Mr. Brauws and Uncle Henri: Uncle Henri who could not get used to Guy's absence ... and who fretted over it sometimes, with the tears standing wet in his eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Addie returned to the Hague that evening; and seldom had he felt so heavy and listless, as if he knew nothing for himself. No, he knew nothing, nothing more for his poor self, as if he, as he grew older, daily lost more and more of the knowledge that is sacredly imparted for a man's own soul, like a far-lighting lamp casts its rays over the paths of his own destiny that lie dimly in the future.... Though he knew for others so often and so surely, for himself he knew nothing nowadays, nothing. Once he had known himself to be a dual personality; to-day he no longer knew which of the two he was. He felt like a prematurely old and decrepit young man, prematurely old and decrepit because life had become serious for him too early and opened out to him too early, so that he had fathomed it through and through: prematurely old and decrepit because his own life later had not trembled in the pure balance of his own twin forces of soul. He had felt fettered to the one; and it drew him down, while the other had not the power to lift him up to the height of pure self-realization....

He walked home from the station, late in the evening. He dragged himself along, his step was heavy and slow; over the dark ma.s.ses of the Wood hung a sultry, pearl-grey summer night; the houses in the Bezuidenhout faded away white in the evening silence. Light rain-clouds dreamed in the sky: it would doubtless rain to-morrow; and far behind them lurked the threatening summer storm. For the present the evening sombreness drifted on as though in hushed expectation. Everything was still: the trees, the houses, the clouds. There was hardly anyone about; a last tram came rumbling out of the distance, from Scheveningen; and its bell seemed to ring through the s.p.a.ce of the evening, very far behind him.

He walked on, dragged himself along past the houses. He was tired out, as he was every time that he practised hypnotism; in addition to this, it always broke his heart to leave Driebergen. How united he was with everybody and everything there! The house was his father's and his; the family was his mother's and his. As the child of his two parents, he felt at home there, in that great sombre house. But he no longer lived there, no longer worked there. In the crudely-bright, small, motley-painted house towards which he was wending, his wife awaited him; and he would find his children.

Healthy children, a healthy wife: he had all that. What he had longed for, in his anxiety at what he saw in his mother's family, he now possessed: a healthy wife and healthy children. How they both of them loved the children; how united they were, where the children were concerned! All their difference arose from a spiritual misunderstanding, because at first they had not known.... Know? Did he know now? Did he know that he ought never to have taken a wife like Mathilde? Did he not know that it was his fault?

There was nothing else for him to do than to continue the sacrifice, all his life long; but the sacrifice was very heavy: living and working in contradiction to his impulses, in a sphere that was not his. It was this that made him ill and prematurely old. He saw no future before him. The sacrifice was killing something deep down in himself.

He felt a sudden rebellion: it was not a man's business to sacrifice himself like that. What was done was done. Mathilde must accommodate herself somehow. He would tell her that it wouldn't do, that the Hague was killing him, that he must go back to the house out there, to the village, to the district where he was of use and able to work. She would have to go with him.

But he saw her, as a sacrificial victim, offered up for a faith which she did not share, because of his mistake in life. No, no, he could never do it, could never tell her that the Hague was killing him, that she must accommodate herself and make the best of things. It was for him, for him to make the best of things: if he wished to remain in any sense just, he must continue to sacrifice himself, though it wore him to death.

How sombre and joyless it all was! How grey it all was, far and wide around him, like the very night that hung pearl-white close by and, farther away, dug itself into abysses of threatening darkness!

As he drew nearer home, his feet lagged more heavily. And suddenly, before turning down the street in which he lived, he dropped on to a bench and remained sitting as though paralyzed, with his head in his hand.

How hard and heavy it was for him, to have to go back like that to his own house! Oh, to remain sitting, just sitting like that until he had attained certain knowledge! He closed his eyes.

He felt himself conquered, overcome.... Suddenly, as in a dream, voices struck upon his ear; and he seemed to recognize the voices. He rose mechanically and, past the houses, along the silent pavement, saw approaching the dark figures of two people walking slowly, a man and a woman. Their voices sounded clearly, though he could not catch the words; he recognized the leisurely forms. It was Johan Erzeele and Mathilde.

They did not see him. They walked on very slowly and Addie followed behind them. Johan seemed to be persistently pleading, Mathilde seemed to be refusing something. Addie's heart beat fearfully as he followed after them; and a jealousy suddenly flared up amid his dull dejection.

Was she not his wife, was she not his wife? And why, lately, was she always looking for Johan and he for her? Was it not always so: always these tennis-parties together, always meeting at friends' houses where he, Addie, never went?... Where were they coming from now? Where had they been? Was he bringing her home? How intimate their conversation sounded, how sad almost! Had they grown fond of each other, in a dangerous increasing friendship?

He followed them un.o.bserved, almost glad to have surprised them, suspicious in his jealous grief. Did not he still love his wife, notwithstanding their deep-seated differences?... He slackened his pace and followed very slowly.... After his first access of jealousy, he seemed rather to feel a certain curiosity to observe in silence, to make a diagnosis. His nature got the upper hand of him, the nature of one who is born to heal and who, before healing, diagnoses the disease. Yes, jealousy still smouldered within him; but he felt even more distinctly the craving for knowledge. Did he not still love Mathilde?... Ah, but was she indispensable to his life?

That suddenly became clear to him: indispensable to his life she was not.... His children, yes: they belonged to all of them, to all of them yonder, in the old house, the old family-house. She, his wife, did not.

His children were indispensable to his life: he felt that clearly.