The Twilight of the Souls Part 33

And they remained still, without speaking. The lamps were not lit; only the fire in the open hearth cast its dancing gleams and shadows on the walls. The wind tore on from very far away, out of mysterious cloud-laden skies. It shrieked round the house, rushed past the windows, howled in the chimney, spread its wide wings and flapped on through the clattering rain, leaving its howl like a trail in the air....

By the flickering firelight, playing upon their small souls, they listened attentively.... He smiled.... Her eyes were wide and staring....

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The t.i.tle borne by the unmarried daughters of the Dutch n.o.blemen.

CHAPTER XIX

The next day, a Sunday, Constance felt a strange longing for youth and laughter, for merry voices and sunny faces. Addie and his father had gone out early, trying the bicycles on the sodden roads; and she was so lonely, still obsessed by that unaccountable sense of depression, that she felt that she must have laughter around her, that she must watch the romping of children, or she would be perpetually bursting into tears.

And she took advantage of a lull in the rain to go to Adeline's in the Bankastraat.

As she entered the house, it seemed to her that the sun was shining.

Adeline was sitting downstairs in the living-room, with the children round her. Marie, the eldest girl, was just twelve. All the others followed her at regular intervals of age, like the steps of a staircase.

Marie was a sort of little mother to the rest: she was a great help to Adeline with the three youngest, those with the ugly names, Jan, Piet and Klaasje. These were now six years, four and two; and they formed a little group within the big group, because Jan insisted on ruling over Klaasje and Piet, looking upon them as his va.s.sals, imitating Papa's voice, playing at horses with Piet and Klaasje, both very docile, while Jan was the tyrant, trying to impart a roar to his shrill little c.o.c.k-crow of a voice ... until Marietje had to come in between as a supreme referee, giving her decision in all sorts of difficult questions that arose out of the merest trifle.... Adeletje, ten and a half, was a delicate, ailing child, mostly sitting very quietly close to Mamma, hiding in her skirts: a puny little thing, a great anxiety to her mother; and Adeline was uneasy too about Klaasje, as the child remained very backward and dull: the uncles and aunts called it an idiot.... But a merry little couple were Gerdy and Constant, nine and eight years old, always together, adoring each other, good little flaxen-haired kiddies that they were: very babyish for their age, blending their resemblance to Papa and Mamma into one soft mixture of pink and white and gold, almost like a coloured picture, and seeming a couple of idyllic little figures by the side of the rough, st.u.r.dy elder brothers. For, while Jan already was turbulent and tyrannical, Alex and Guy were regular "nuts;"

had become indifferent to Marietje's judicial decisions, no longer even submitted to Adeline's restraint and had lost all sense of awe except when the stairs creaked under Gerrit's heavy footstep or when he bellowed at them. Though even then they knew, secretly, with a knowing glance of mutual understanding, that Papa might raise his voice, but never raised his hand; that, when Mamma decreed a punishment, he would say something to her in French, so that the punishment became very slight. And this precocious worldly wisdom had turned them, in their little nursery world, into two intractable, cheeky, sw.a.n.king young reprobates, putting on big boys' airs, striking terror into little Gerdy and Constant, who would run away together and hide and play at mothers and fathers behind the sofa standing aslant in the drawing-room, chuckling quietly when Mamma or Marietje looked for them and could not find them. But, however intractable, Alex and Guy were two handsome little fellows, with cheeky mouths, but gentle eyes, dark eyes, the Van Lowe eyes: not their hard, but their soft eyes; and, when they were impudent and troublesome, with lips stuck out cheekily, but with those eyes full of dark, soft gentleness, then Constance felt in love with them, spoilt them even more than Gerrit did, put up with everything from the rascals, even allowing the two great boys to hang all over her and ruffle her clothes and hair. This time too, they rushed at her the moment she came in; and Constance, glad to see them so radiant, glad that everything became bright around her, as though the sun were shining, flung open her arms; but Adeline cried:

"Alex! Guy! Take care: Auntie's good cloak!... Boys, do take care: Auntie's beautiful hat!"

But neither Alex nor Guy had any regard for Auntie's good cloak or Auntie's beautiful hat; and Constance was so weak in their rather rough and disrespectful embrace that she only laughed and laughed and laughed.

Oh, sunshine, sunshine at last! Pa.s.sionately fond as she was of her own big son, this was what she needed in these days of rain and gloomy skies and gloomy feelings: this almost overwhelming sunshine, this almost pitiless blaze of radiant youth; this rough gambolling around her of what was young and healthy and bright, as if the shock brought her out of her gloomy depression....

When the boys, after behaving like young dogs jumping up to kiss her face, were at last satisfied, she and sober Marietje looked all through the house for Gerdy and Constant, who had purposely hidden themselves and who, she knew, had crept behind the slanting sofa in the drawing-room. She would not find them too quickly, wished to prolong their enjoyment, called out in the drawing-room:

"But where can they be? Wherever can they be? Constant! Gerdy!..."

Then at last the giggles of the little brother and sister behind the sofa made her look over the back:

"Here they are! Here they are!"

Oh, how young those children were! Excepting wise and sedate Marietje--Mamma's help--and perhaps quiet Adeletje, how young they were!

Those two rascals, what children they were for their eleven and ten years! That little father-and-mother pair, Gerdy and Constant, what babies for their nine and eight! And then the nursery proper, Jan tyrannizing over Piet and Klaasje!... How pink and young and fresh and sunny it all was!... Now those were real children, even though Klaasje's laugh was very dull and silly. She had never known Addie like that.

Addie had never had that sort of youth. No, his childhood had been spent amid the outbursts of temper of his father and mother, amid their jealousies, amid scenes and tears, so that the child had never been a child. And yet ... and yet, though he had grown up early, how well he had taken care of himself and what kindly powers had watched over him, making him into their one great joy and happiness and consolation!...

But, though this melancholy just pa.s.sed through her, still the morning, that Sunday morning, had begun sunnily for her, with all that golden hair, all those soft, pink cheeks, all that mad, radiant gaiety; and Constance forgot her gloomy depression, caused by she knew not what, in the glow of childish happiness in that living-room.

The stairs now groaned under a heavy tread.

"There's Gerrit," said Adeline.

"How late he is!" said Constance, laughing. "Gerrit, how late you are!"

she cried, even before he opened the door.

And she was surprised that his step should sound so sluggish and heavy, accustomed as she was to hear him fill the whole house with the brisk noise of his movements. Sluggishly and heavily his footsteps came down the pa.s.sage. Then he slowly opened the door of the dining-room, which was also the living-room.

He remained standing in the doorway:

"Ah, Constance! Good-morning."

"Good-morning, Gerrit. How late you are!" she repeated, gaily. "You're in no hurry to get up on a Sunday, I see!"

But she was startled when she looked at him:

"Gerrit, dear ... what's the matter?"

"I'm feeling rotten," he said, gloomily. "No, children, don't worry Father."

And he pushed aside the playful-rough hands of the two cheeky rascals, Alex and Guy.

"Gerrit hasn't been at all well for a day or two," said Adeline, anxiously.

"What is it, Gerrit?" asked Constance, smiling her smile of a moment ago, when the sunny warmth of the children had made her smile through her own gloomy depression.

"I feel beastly rotten," he repeated, gloomily. "No, thanks, I don't want any breakfast."

"Haven't you been well for the last two days?" asked Constance.

He looked at her with dull, gla.s.sy eyes. He thought of telling her, with bitter irony, that all his life he had not been well; but she would not have understood, she would have believed that he was joking, that he was vexed about something; she would not have known. And, besides, he did not want to hurt her either: she was so nice, he always looked upon her as the nicest of his sisters, though they had gone years without seeing each other. What a good thing it was that she had come back! She had been back in Holland three years now, his little sister; he was fond of her, his little sister; he had an almost mystic feeling for her, the sympathy which has its origin in kinship, that sharing of the same blood, the same soul, apportioned so mysteriously in the birth of brother and sister out of one and the same mother by one and the same father; and he felt so clearly that she was his sister, that he loved her as something of himself, a part of himself, something of his own flesh and blood and soul, that he went up to her, laid his hand on her head--she had taken off her hat; and her hair was all ruffled with the boys' romping--and said to her, in a voice which he could not possibly raise to a roar and which broke faintly with emotion:

"It's good to see you, Sissy, with your dear, kind face.... I don't know about being unwell, child: I've had a couple of bad nights, that's all."

"But you sleep well as a rule."

"Yes, as a rule."

"And your appet.i.te is good."

"Yes, Connie, I have a good appet.i.te as a rule. But ... I don't feel like breakfast this morning."

"Your face is so drawn...."

"I shall be all right presently," he said, brightening up. And he struck his chest with his two hands. "My old carcase can stand some knocking about."

"Gerrit came home dripping wet two days ago," said Adeline. "He had been standing on the front of the tram, in a pelting rain, and he was wet to the skin."

"But, Gerrit, why did you do it?"

"To get the wind in my face, Sissy...."

"And to catch cold."

He laughed:

"There, don't worry about me. My old carcase," striking his chest, "can stand some knocking about."