The Twilight of the Souls Part 8

"Yes."

"That the cad downstairs won't wake them and tread on them?"

"Yes, yes."

"You promise that?"

"Yes."

"We'll lock up the room very quietly?"

"Yes."

"And n.o.body at all will come in?"

"No."

"You promise that?"

"Yes."

"Will you swear it?"

"Yes, Ernst."

"All right, then."

"Will you come?" she cried, rejoicing and unable to believe her ears.

"Yes. Because you would so much like to go for walks ... on the heath.

You're nice...."

He spoke gently, pityingly; and his contempt was not as great as it had been, for he looked upon her as a nice but stupid child that needed his help and his protection.

She smiled at him in return, stood up where she had been kneeling beside him, put out her hands to him, inviting him to get up from his corner also. He let her pull him up; he was a heavy weight: she drew him out of his corner like a lump of lead.

"Then we start to-morrow, Ernst?"

He nodded yes, good-naturedly: she was very nice ... and she was longing for those walks ... and she was so weak, so stupid, she knew nothing, saw, heard and felt nothing, absolutely nothing. He must help her and guide her and support her.

"And shall we pack a trunk now, while I am here?"

He did not understand that a trunk was necessary: he looked at her blankly; but he wanted to please her and said:

"All right. But don't make a noise."

The doctor returned.

"He's coming," she whispered. "We're going to pack his trunk."

The doctor pressed her hand. Ernst looked down upon them both, smiling, as upon poor, unfortunate people who cannot help being so stupid ... so slow of understanding ... so limited in their knowledge ... so dull of perception....

And, while Constance and the doctor opened the clothes-press in his bedroom, he warned them, quietly, but with dignity:

"Ssh! Be careful, you know. Don't let the door of the wardrobe creak.

Don't wake them!..."

CHAPTER IV

It was a sultry summer morning and old Mrs. van Lowe sat at the conservatory-window, crying very quietly. She had been crying incessantly now for two long days. After her first sob in Constance'

arms, she had sobbed no more; but since then her tears had flowed continually, salt, stinging tears that burned her wrinkled cheeks. She sat with her hands folded in her lap; and from time to time she nodded her head up and down, while she stared at the leafy garden, over which the stormy sky hung dark and heavy as lead. Now and then she cleared her throat, now and then heaved a deep sigh; and her handkerchief was soaked with the tears that kept on flowing, quietly, out of her smarting eyes.

Constant fretting had drawn down the corners of her mouth into two long, sad wrinkles. Oh yes, it was very hard! Trouble ... always trouble ...

her life had been full of trouble: trouble when Louis and Gertrude had died at Buitenzorg, poor children; what had they not suffered from fever and cholera? Money troubles: an expensive household to be kept up on limited means. Trouble again, terrible trouble with dear Constance; and the heavy trouble of her husband's illness and death: he had never recovered from Constance' disgrace; more trouble over Van Naghel's death, the great change in Bertha and the break-up of the whole household; and now there was this last sore trouble with her son, her poor son, who had gone mad! Oh, if it had only happened a little earlier, when she was younger, she could have borne it, as she had borne the rest, could have accepted it as her natural share, a mother's share of trouble. But she was so old now; and it seemed to her that the supreme trouble was drawing near, a trouble which was coming very late in her life, too late for her to bear it with strength and patience, now that she was growing older and feebler daily; and her only wish had been to see her big family happy together, that great family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, amongst which she had always rejoiced to live, thankful as she had been for that great blessing. It was as though a presentiment were coming to her from very far, from very far out of those heavy, lowering skies, a presentiment which her nerves, sharpened by age, suddenly not only felt but saw coming like a menace, as old people will suddenly see the truth very clearly, the future: a waning lamp which suddenly flickers up brightly, before dying out in darkness; a bright flicker which suddenly reveals the shadows in the room and in which the portraits grin, with faces that seem to speak ...

before the lamp dies out, before everything is swallowed up in the black darkness! Oh, the awful presentiment which suddenly approached like a spectre out of the leaden clouds, that filled the whole vista before her eyes with grey terrors; the presentiment that this trouble, the greatest of all, was going to strike her most, now, in her old, old age, when she no longer had the strength to endure it, when she would sink under the weight of it!... O G.o.d, why should it now, why now, fall with such pitiless, crushing weight? Why now? Was it not enough that one of her children ... had gone mad, surely the most terrible thing that can happen? Was not that enough? What more could be threatening, looming before her, now that she was growing so feeble? See, did not her old hands tremble at the mere thought, was not her whole helpless body shaking, were not the tears flowing until they smarted in the furrows of her wrinkles and until her handkerchief was just a wet rag? What more could there be coming?

"O G.o.d, no more, no more!" she prayed, automatically, believing, in her feeble despair, in the great, infinite Omnipotence which is so very, very far removed from us ... and which she had always worshipped decently, once a week, in church ... formerly ... when she still went out. "O G.o.d, no more, no more!"

It was greater, the infinite Omnipotence, than what they worshipped in church; it filled everything far and wide, to the utmost limits of her thought; and it terrified and dismayed her: she saw it threatening from afar; and why, why now? Oh, why had it not all come earlier, when she would have had more fort.i.tude, when she would have borne everything as her natural share, a mother's share, of trouble?... She would have been so glad just now to grow old peacefully, amongst her wide circle of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But, alas, there was so much to bear and ... perhaps there was still more coming!

"O G.o.d, no more, no more!" she implored: was it not enough that one of her children ... had gone mad, surely the most terrible thing that can happen?

She moaned in spirit, then felt a little eased as the rain began to patter heavily on the expectant leaves and the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled and the sky was rent asunder. But the tears kept flowing in spite of her relief that the rain had come at last; and, because of the thunder which filled her fast-aging ears, she did not hear the door open softly, did not hear some one come through the drawing-room and approach the conservatory, did not at once see the slender little figure that stood quietly before her, solicitous not to intrude upon the grief of the weeping old woman.

"Granny," the younger woman said, gently.

The old woman looked up in surprise, blinked her eyes, tried to see through the flowing tears, did not recognize the one who called her granny:

"Eh?" she said, plaintively. "Who is it?"

And the girl did not answer at once, because it had given her a shock to see those silent tears flowing down the cheeks of that lonely old woman.

She remained standing quietly, a pretty, almost fragile little figure, like a Dresden-china doll, but a very up-to-date doll, like a sketch by one of the ultra-modern French draughtsmen, with the pointed little face below the elaborately-waved hair under the very large hat, a hat which, in the shape of its crown and the sweep of its feathers represented the very latest extreme of fashion and consequently attracted immediate attention in Holland, in these dignified rooms, while the light tailor-made costume looked too dressy for a summer morning at the Hague and a touch in every accessory--the sunshade, the tulle boa--proclaimed that the young woman was no longer of the Hague and of Holland, short though the time was since she had run away.

The old woman, still sensitive in all social matters, remained looking at Emilie a little suspiciously, failing to recognize her and at once noticing, just by those touches--the large hat, the tulle boa--the exaggeration that displeased her.

"But who is it?" she repeated, wiping her eyes to see better.

And now the pretty little doll knelt down beside her and said:

"Don't you know me, Granny? It's I ... Emilie."

"Oh, my child!" cried the old woman, brightening up, glad, delighted.

"Is it you, Emilietje? And Granny who didn't know you again!... But then you've got such a big hat on, child. And Eduard: how is he and where is he?"

"But, Granny!..."