The Twilight of the Souls Part 19

"Aren't you going away this summer?" asked Gerrit.

"Not I, my dear fellow!" said Paul, decidedly. "It's such dirty work, travelling: your skin gets black, your nails get black in the train; your clothes get creased in your trunk; and you never know what sort of bed awaits you. No, I'm getting too old to go away...."

"But aren't you even going to Nunspeet?"

"Oh, my dear Gerrit," Paul implored, "what _is_ the use of my going to Nunspeet? Mamma has Adeline and the children with her; Constance is devoting herself to Ernst: what earthly use would it be for me to go to Nunspeet?... All that travelling is such a nuisance; and going to Nunspeet would make me almost as dirty as going to Switzerland.... No, I shall stay where I am. The landlady's very clean and so is the maid; and, though I have to see to a lot myself, of course, things are fairly well cared for ... and not _too_ dirty...."

"But, Paul," said Gerrit, with a sort of "Look here, drop it!" gesture, "that cleanliness of yours is becoming a mania!"

"And why shouldn't I have a mania as well as any one else?" asked Paul, in an offended voice. "Every one has a mania. You have a mania for bringing children into the world. Mine is comparatively sterile, but has just as much right to exist as yours."

"But, Paul, you're becoming an old fogey at this rate, never moving, for fear of a speck of dirt. If you go on like this, you'll get rooted in a little selfish circle of your own, you'll cease to take an interest in anything ... and you're young still, only just thirty-eight...."

"I've taken an interest in the world for years," said Paul, "but I consider the world such a vile, dirty rubbish-heap, such a conglomeration of human wretchedness, such a rotten, scurvy, stinking, filthy dustbin...."

"But, Paul, you're absurd!"

"Because I choose at last to retire into my room, where at least things are clean!" said Paul, with a gesture of irritation.

"My dear chap, you don't mean what you say: I can't tell if you're serious or humbugging."

"Serious? You say I'm not serious?" cried Paul, grinning scornfully and working himself into a real temper. "Do you think I'm not serious?"

"Well, if you're serious, then I say that you're simply diseased."

"Diseased?"

"Yes, diseased: just as much as Ernst is diseased. That tidiness of yours is a mania; that way of looking upon the world as a dustbin is a disease. You were always a humbug, but at least you used to be good company, you used to be a brilliant talker; and nowadays, for some time past, you show yourself nowhere, you shut yourself up, you're becoming impossible and a bore...."

"I'm becoming older," said Paul, soberly. "A brilliant talker? I may have been, perhaps. But it's not worth while. The moment you fashion a thought into words and try to express it, no one listens to you. People are just as sloppy and messy in their conversation as in everything else. It's not worth while.... And yet," he said, with a touch of melancholy, "you're right: I used to be different. But it's really not worth while, old fellow, in my case. You have your wife and your children: not that I'm yearning for a wife and children, especially such an ant-hill as you've brought into the world. But what have I? The club bores me. Doing anything bores me. I am too modern for the old ideas and not modern enough for the new ones."

His eyes lit up as he heard himself beginning to talk:

"Yes, the old ideas," he repeated; and his voice became fuller and recovered the rather sing-song rhythm of earlier days, when he used to unbosom himself at great length of all sorts of ironical theories and mock philosophy, very often superficial, but always brilliant. "The old ideas. There's rank, for instance. I've been thinking about it lately. I like rank. But do you know how I like it? Just as Ernst loves an antique vase, even so I am sometimes attracted by an old t.i.tle. I should like to be a count or a marquis, not from sn.o.bbery: don't imagine that I want to be a count or a marquis out of sn.o.bbery, for that's not the idea at all.

But just as Ernst admires an antique vase, or an old book, or a piece of brocade, I admire a count's or marquis' t.i.tle; and my t.i.tle, besides, would be much cleaner than the piece of brocade, which is full of microbes. But, for goodness' sake, don't run away with the idea that I want to be a count or a marquis out of sn.o.bbery. You understand, don't you? I should only care for it from the decorative and traditional point of view.... But a modern t.i.tle of _jonkheer_,[19] Gerrit, dating back to William I.,[20] I wouldn't have if you paid me! To begin with, I think _jonkheer_ an ugly word; and then I think that a t.i.tle of that sort looks like a modern-art signboard, like one of those _art-nouveau_ posters with their everlasting stiff, upright, squirmy lines; and those conventional poppies are positively revolting to my mind because they symbolize to me the cant and hypocrisy of our modern world.... Yes, there's a great deal of poetry, Gerrit, in old ideas. We people are crammed full of old ideas: we inherited them; they're in our blood. And we live in a society in which the new ideas are already putting forth shoots, the real, new ideas, the true, the beautiful ideas, the three or four beautiful ideas that already exist. But I, for my part, have my blood so full of old ideas that I can't advance with the rest.... New ideas: look here, one new idea, a really beautiful new idea, in our time, is pity. Gerrit, what could be more beautiful and more delightful and newer than pity: genuine pity for all human wretchedness? I feel it myself, even though I never leave my sofa. I feel it myself. But, even as I feel it and never leave my sofa, so the whole world feels the new idea of pity ... and never leaves its sofa.... Lord, my dear chap, there's blood sticking to everything; the world is nothing but mean selfishness and hypocrisy; there's war, injustice and all sorts of rottenness; and we know it's there and we condemn it and we feel pity for everything that is trampled underfoot and sucked dry.... And what do we do? Nothing. I do just as little as the great powers do. The Tsar does nothing; there's not a government, not an individual that does a thing. You don't do anything either.... Meanwhile, there is war, there is injustice, not only in South Africa, but everywhere, Gerrit, everywhere: you've only to go outside and you'll come upon injustice in the Hoogstraat; you've only to go travelling and get black with grime and dirt ... and you'll find injustice everywhere.... And, meanwhile, that idea is stirring in this filthy world of ours: the idea of pity....

And, just as I am powerless, everything and everybody is powerless....

Then am I not right to withdraw from the whole business into my room ...

and to stay on my sofa?..."

He went on talking; and at last Gerrit got up, glad that he had been to see Paul and that Paul had talked as usual, long-winded though he might have been. But he was hardly gone, before Paul rose from his sofa. He flung open the shutters, to air the room of Gerrit's smoke; he rang the bell, to have the ash cleared away; he put the chairs straight and removed every trace of Gerrit's visit:

"There, I let myself be persuaded into talking!" thought Paul, irritably. "But d'you think the chap grasped it and valued it for a moment? Of course he didn't: not what I said of the old and not what I said of the new ideas!... It's not worth while taking the trouble to be a brilliant talker.... The world is dirty and stupid ... and Gerrit is stupid also, with his nine children, and dirty, with those cigars of his ... and besides he's a melancholy beggar, who has his manias ... just as Ernst has ... and I ... and everybody...."

And he flung himself angrily on his cushions and read his modern novel, all day long, without so much as stirring....

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Shirt.

[2] Half-castes.

[3] Malay: rice, currie.

[4] Market-place, bazaar.

[5] Booths.

[6] Attractive, pretty.

[7] "Put the baby down, nurse; nurse, put baby down."

[8] Cedarwood, or any other scented wood.

[9] Lord!

[10] The dried fish known in British India as Bombay duck.

[11] A sort of cocoa-nut.

[12] Indian cornflour.

[13] Cocoa-nut milk.

[14] The nickname given by the half-castes to the pure bred Dutch.

[15] Red pepper, capsic.u.m.

[16] Tomato-capsic.u.m.

[17] Cuc.u.mber, gherkin.

[18] Take breath.

[19] The lowest t.i.tle of n.o.bility in Holland, ranking after the barons and hereditary knights or _ridders_. The highest t.i.tle is that of count. There are no marquises or dukes in the Northern Netherlands.

[20] 1814.

CHAPTER X

Dorine also, Gerrit remembered, had remained in the Hague; and he looked her up at her boarding-house, where she occupied two small, comfortless rooms. He had not seen her for days ... or was it weeks? He called twice without finding her in: the servant did not know where she had gone, for Miss van Lowe was nearly always out. At last, Gerrit caught her at home, at twelve o'clock, when she was hurriedly having a makeshift lunch, on the edge of the table, with her chair askew, taking nervous bites and timid sips.

"My dear Dorine, where have you been hiding all this time?" asked Gerrit, with boisterous geniality.

She was out of sorts at being taken by surprise: