The Twilight of the Souls Part 37

"Why, you yourself, Mamma!"

"I?"

"Yes, you...."

"Oh, yes!" said the old woman, remembering. "Yes, yes, I remember; I only asked because it looks so out of place here ... in the little room ... and it is such a fine portrait...."

Dorine said nothing more. Her legs shook beneath her; but she went on spreading out the cards.

Karel and Cateau arrived:

"How _aw-ful_!" said Cateau, pale in the face. "We thought we had bet-ter come ... for Mamma's sake ... didn't we, Ka-rel?"

"Mamma knows nothing," said Dorine. "But we can't possibly keep it from her.... Otto has gone to Baarn to break the news to Bertha."

The Van Saetzemas arrived:

"No details yet?" asked Adolphine.

"No," Dorine whispered, nervously, seeing Mamma approaching.

"How late you all are!" grumbled the old woman. "Why aren't Uncle Herman and Auntie Lot here? And why haven't Auntie Tine and Auntie Rine come yet?"

There was a moment's painful pause.

"But they haven't been coming for some time, Mamma," said Adolphine, gently.

"What do you say? Are they ill?"

"The old aunts haven't been for ev-er so long on Sunday even-ings," said Cateau, with a great deal of pitying emphasis.

Suddenly Mrs. van Lowe seemed to remember. Yes, it was true: the sisters had not come on Sunday evenings for a long time. She nodded her head in a.s.sent, with an air of knowing all about the sad things which happen in old age and which will happen also in the future that is still hidden from the children. But in her heart she thought:

"There's something."

And she seemed to be trying to gaze ahead. But she did not see it before her, did not see it before her vague eyes, as she had seen the death of Henri's mother, yonder, in a dark room at Driebergen, in a dark oak bedstead, behind dark green curtains. She felt that there was something that they had kept from her in order to spare her pain; but she did not see it as she had but lately seen other things which the children did not know. It was as though her sight were growing dim and uncertain, as though she only guessed, only suspected things. And she would not ask what it was. If there was something ... well, then her Sunday family-evening could not help being dreary and silent. Adolphine's children no longer sat round the big table in the conservatory: the old lady did not understand why, did not see that they were growing up, that the round games bored them. Only, as she looked at her empty room, she asked just one more question:

"Where's Bertha? And where's Constance?"

This time, Adolphine and Cateau did not even trouble to remind Mamma that Bertha was living at Baarn. As for Auntie Lot, how could they tell her that the good soul had had a nervous break-down after being told of Henri's sudden death, about which no one knew any details? Toetie arrived very late and said that Mamma had a little headache. As for Constance, not one of the children would have dared to say that she and Van der Welcke had gone to Paris by the night-mail at six o'clock, as soon as they could after Emilie's telegram. Gerrit wanted to go with them, but he was ill and had hardly said a word to Adeline about the telegram when he returned home from the Kerkhoflaan. He had got into bed shivering, thinking that he had a feverish attack, influenza or something. The daughters also thought it better not to tell Mamma that Gerrit was ill; and Mamma did not even ask after Gerrit, though she missed him and Adeline and thought that her rooms looked very empty.

Where could they be? the old woman wondered. None of Bertha's little tribe; the old sisters not there; Constance not there; Gerrit not there; Auntie Lot not there: where were they all? the old woman kept wondering.

How big her rooms looked, what a shivery feeling the card-tables gave her, with the markers, with the cards spread out in an S! Well, if there were no children left, it was not worth while having the table put out for the round games in the conservatory, at least not until Gerrit's children were bigger, until a new warmth surrounded her, on her poor Sunday evenings! And what was the use of ordering such a lot of cakes, if there was n.o.body there to eat them?

And it was very strange, but this evening, now that her rooms were so empty, she grew very weary of those who were there--Adolphine, Cateau, Floortje and Dijkerhof--very tired. She felt her face becoming drawn and haggard, her drooping eyelids twitching over her dim eyes and her heavily-veined hands trembling in her lap with utter weariness. She did not speak, only nodded: the wise nod of old age, knowing that old age spells sadness. She only nodded, longing for them to go. They were uncomfortable: they whispered together, their faces were pale; they sat there staring in such a strange, spectral way ... as if something dreadful had happened or was going to happen.... Had the servants made up the fires so badly? Was it so bitterly cold, so creepily chilly in her rooms, that she felt shivers all down her old, bent back?... And, when the children at last, earlier than usual, took leave of her--still with that same spectral stare, as though they were looking at something dreadful that had happened or was going to happen--she felt inclined to say to them that she was getting too old now to keep up her Sunday evenings; she had it on her lips to say as much to Floortje, to Cateau, to Adolphine; but a pity for them all and especially for herself restrained her and she did not say it. On the contrary, she said, very wearily:

"Well, I hope that you will all be more particular about coming next Sunday ... all of you, all of you.... I want you all here.... I want to have you all around me."

Then they left her alone, earlier than usual, and the old woman did not ring at once for the servants to put out the lights, to go to bed, but first wandered for a little while longer through her large, empty, still brightly-lit rooms. How much had changed in the many, many years that very slowly acc.u.mulated about her and seemed to bury her under their grey mounds! Sometimes it seemed to her as if nothing had changed, as if the Sunday evenings always remained the same, even though this or that one might be absent for one reason or another. But sometimes, as to-day, it seemed to her as if everything, everything had changed, with hardly perceptible changes. Did she alone remain unchanged?...

She had now reached the little boudoir: hardly any of the cakes had been touched; above them hung the fine portrait of her husband, in the gold-laced uniform, with the orders. He was dead ... and with him all their grandeur, which she had learnt to love because of him, through him.... She wandered back to the other rooms: there were portraits on the walls, photographs in frames on the tables and mantelpieces. Dead was the old family-doctor; as good as dead her two old sisters; dead was Van Naghel; as good as dead Bertha, now so far away. Aunt Lot, she still remained, she still remained, bearing up bravely, in spite of financial disaster.... Then the children: they were all dying off, for surely it was tantamount to that, when they were becoming more and more remote from her: Karel; Adolphine; Ernst; even Paul; and Dorine, her youngest.

There was only Constance ... and Gerrit, perhaps.... And the grandchildren: Frans, in Java; Emilie and Henri, in Paris: O G.o.d, what were they doing in Paris? O G.o.d, what was it, what was the matter with them? For she suddenly saw the boy ... white as a corpse ... with his clothes open ... and a deep, gaping wound above his heart, sending a stream of purple blood from his lung ... while he lay in the last agonies of death.... Why did she see it, this strange vision of a second or two? It couldn't be true, yet it filled her with anxiety.... And in sad understanding she nodded her old head, with the dim eyes which were suddenly seeing visions more clearly than reality ... until the time when they would see nothing, numbed by the years which were slowly acc.u.mulating about her.... Why did she see it?... And, amid the emptiness of her brightly-lit drawing-room, a sort of roar came to her from the distance, from the distance outside the room, the distance outside the house, the distance outside the night, the very distant distance of eternity, the eternity whence all the things of the future come: a roar so overwhelming that it seemed to come from a supernatural sea in which the poor, trembling old woman was drowned, drowned with all her vanity and all her unimportant, insignificant sorrow, a sea in which her very small, small soul was drowned, swallowed up like the veriest atom in the roaring, roaring waves; a roar whose voice told her that it was coming, that it was coming, the great sorrow, the thing before which she trembled with fear because she had long foreseen it and because it would be so heavy for her to bear ... now that she was too old and too weary to bear any more sorrow! And, with an unconscious gesture, she raised her trembling old hands and prayed, mechanically:

"O G.o.d, no more, no more!..."

Why must fate be like that, so heavy, so ruthless and crushing? Why had it not all come earlier, including the thing which advanced with such a threatening roar and under which she, too weary now, too weak and too old, would succ.u.mb when it pa.s.sed over her, when it reached her at last out of the roaring, threatening, distant, distant eternity, wherein all the things of the future are born....

But the roar of that doom and her knowledge of it lasted no longer than a second. And, when that second was past, there was nothing around her but the empty, brightly-lit rooms. It was eleven o'clock, the children had all gone home and she rang for the servants, to put out the lights, to go to bed, duly observant of the small needs of her very small life, in spite of all those supernatural things which threatened from afar, out of eternity....

Leaving the maids occupied in the empty room, where they turned off the gas in the chandelier, the old woman slowly climbed the stairs, nodding her old head in bitter comprehension, knowing too well, alas, that the great sorrow would come ... even though, trembling with fear, she prayed:

"O G.o.d ... no more, _no more_!"

CHAPTER XXI

"Are you going out, Gerrit?" asked Adeline.

She was surprised to see him come down the stairs, dressed, in uniform.

He had spent the morning in bed, but he felt better now; and a feverish excitement acted like a spur. He said, in answer to his wife's question, that he was better, played for a moment with Gerdy, took his lunch standing and then hurried out of the house and rushed through a parade at barracks, where he was not expected. The fever, which he still felt sending shivers through his great body, drove him out of barracks again; and he walked to the Kerkhoflaan and asked Truitje if there was any news of her master or mistress, if Master Addie had had a telegram from Paris; but Truitje didn't know. Then he tore off like one possessed, first to Otto and Frances' house, where he found Frances and Louise, both sick with waiting: Otto had gone to Baarn, to break the news to Bertha.

He could not stay with the two women: Frances wandering from room to room, crying helplessly; Louise, calmer, looking after the children, the entire care of whom she had taken on herself since she had come to live with Otto and since Frances had become such an invalid. Gerrit could not possibly stay: with long strides, he flew to the Alexanderstraat, to Mamma, who was glad to see him well again after his two days' illness.

He found Dorine with her; Adolphine called, followed by Cateau, all obeying an impulse not to leave the old woman alone in these days, when at any moment Van der Welcke, Constance and Emilie might arrive from Paris, bringing home the body of Henri, of whose death no one had telegraphed any details, much to the indignation of Adolphine and Cateau.

But, when Auntie Lot came in, her small eyes red and swollen with weeping, and cried, "Oh dear!... _Ka.s.sian_!"--an exclamation at once hushed by the children, an exclamation which Mamma, staring dimly into s.p.a.ce, failed to understand--Gerrit could no longer endure it among all those overwrought women; and, convinced that Mamma did not even yet know that Constance and Van der Welcke had gone to Paris, convinced that the sisters had not even paved the way by telling her that Henri was seriously ill, he cleared out suddenly, without saying good-bye, and rushed into the open air, down the street, into the Woods, gasping for breath.

What was it, what could it be, hanging in the air? The clouds seemed to be bending over the town in pity, an immense, yearning pity which turned into a desperate melancholy while Gerrit hurried along with his great strides; the wintry trees lifted their crowns of branches in melancholy despair; the rooks cawed and circled in swarms; the bells of the tram-cars tinkled as though m.u.f.fled in black c.r.a.pe; the few pedestrians walked stiffly and unnaturally; he met ague-stricken, black-clad figures with sinister, spectral faces: they pa.s.sed him like so many ghosts; and all around him, in the vistas of the Woods, rose a clammy mist, in which every outline of houses, trees and people was blurred into a shadowy unreality. And it seemed to Gerrit as if he alone were real and possessed a body; and he ran and rushed through the spectral landscape, through the hollow avenues of death.

What was it in the air? Nothing, nothing extraordinary: it was winter in Holland; and the people ... the people had nothing extraordinary about them: they walked in thick coats and cloaks, with their hands in their pockets, because it was cold; and, because the mist was cold and raw, their eyes looked fixed, their lips and noses drawn and pinched and they bore themselves rigidly and spectrally when they came towards him out of the fog and pa.s.sed him with those shadowy and unreal figures. And, with all sorts of fever-born images whirling before his eyes, like shining will-o'-the-wisps in that morning mist, his thoughts touched hastily on every sort of subject: he saw the barracks before him; Pauline; the Paris train and Constance and Van der Welcke in a compartment with Henri's coffin between them; Auntie Lot and Mamma; Bertha at Baarn. He saw his boyhood at Buitenzorg; the foaming river; all his bright-haired children. He saw a worm, big as a dragon, with bristles like lances sticking straight out of its dragon's back....

He was still feverish and had been unwise to get up and go out. But he could not have stayed in bed, he couldn't have done it: his feverish excitement had driven him to the barracks, to his mother and to....

Where was he going? Was he going to Scheveningen? And why was he going through the Woods like that? What was it that constantly impelled him to keep to the right, to turn up the paths on the right, as though he were making for the Nieuwe Weg? What did he want on the right?...

Suddenly, as a counteragent to his fever, he turned to the left; but, on coming to a cross-road, he wandered off to the right again, helplessly, as if he had forgotten the way.... There was the Ornamental Water, with the Nieuwe Weg behind it. There lay the ponds, like two dull, weather-worn mirrors, under the sullen pity of the skies; and the rather tame landscape of the Woods, with its wreath of dunes, became cruel, a tragic pool surrounded by all that avenue of chill death, which seemed to be creeping through the wintry air....

But what was it in the air? Why, there was nothing, nothing but the Ornamental Water, in a misty haze; the few villas around it looming vaguely out of the fog; no pedestrians at all; nothing but the familiar, everyday, usual things.... Then what impelled him to wander so aimlessly past the Ornamental Water to the Nieuwe Weg? Why were those ponds like tragic pools? Was it not as though pale faces stared out of them, out of those tragic pools, pale, white faces of women, multiplied a hundredfold by strange reflections, eddies of white, faces, with dank, plastered hair and dying eyes, which gleamed?...

Yes, yes, he was in a fever. He had been unwise to go out, in that chill morning mist. But it was rotten to be ill ... and he was never ill. He had never said that he was ill. He was a fellow who could stand some knocking about. But for all that he was feverish. Otherwise he would not have seen the Ornamental Water as a tragic pool ... with the white faces of mermaids.... Lord, how cold and shivery the mermaids must feel down there in those chilly, silent pools ... their dying eyes just gleaming up with a single spark! Were they dead or alive, the chilly mermaids?

Were their eyes dying or were they ogling? How strangely they were all reflected, until they became as a thousand mermaids, until their faces blossomed like white flowers of death above the light film of ice coating the pool! Whew! How chill and cold they were, the poor, dead, ogling mermaids!...

Dead: were they dead?... Were they ogling and laughing ... with eyes of gold?... He shivered as though ice-cold water were trickling down his spine; and he wrapped himself closely in his military great-coat. He felt something hard in his breast-pocket, a square piece of cardboard.

Yes, he had been carrying that about for ever so long ... and yet ...

and yet he couldn't do it. It was the photograph of his children, the latest group, taken for Mamma's last birthday. For weeks he had been carrying it about in his pocket, in an envelope with an address on it ... and yet, yet he couldn't send it or hand it in at her door. The portrait of all his children:

"I expect they're charming kiddies, Gerrit?"