"You never talk, at home ... to the others. Only once in a way to me ...

when we are alone. It was after Alkmaar that you became so silent. It wasn't surely because I was angry at the time?"

"Perhaps, partly...."

"Well?"

"I daren't tell you."

"Tell me, Alex, if there is anything I can do for you."

"You do so much as it is, Addie.... You do everything."

"But speak quite openly. Perhaps there is something more that I can do for you."

"No, what could there be?"

"Something's upsetting you."

"No...."

"You're unhappy."

"No...."

"You're so reserved."

"I ... never talk much."

"Try and trust me, Alex."

"I do trust you."

"Well, then, talk to me."

"But I ... I've nothing to tell you, Addie."

"I know, Alex, that you must have something to tell me...."

"No...."

"I know it, Alex."

"No, Addie, really.... I've nothing to tell you...."

The lad tried to release his arm from Addie's, but Addie held him tight:

"Walk a bit more with me."

"Where are you going?"

"I have a couple of patients to see.... Take me there, Alex ... and speak, speak openly...."

"I can't speak."

"Then try and find your words. I'll help you."

"Not to-day ... not to-day, Addie, out here, in the roads.... Perhaps another time ... indoors."

"Very well, then, another time, indoors. I'll keep you to your word. And now let's talk of nothing but the Merchants' School...."

And, with Alex still hanging on his arm, he told him about the head-master, the staff, the lessons there ... making a point of holding out hopes to Alex that everything would go easily and smoothly. Did Addie not know, did he not diagnose that the boy was so terribly afraid of life, of the days to come, because a twilight had always continued to press down upon him, the twilight of his father's suicide?... It had given the child a fit of shuddering in so far as he had realized it at the time; and things had suddenly grown dark, about his child-soul; and, when the power of thought had developed in him later, there had always remained the fear in that darkness, because the unconscious life went on daily ... and because his father--why, why?--had torn himself out of the unconscious life and committed suicide.... That--though Alex had not spoken--was how Addie diagnosed him, that was how he really diagnosed his state, with that strange look of penetration, with that strange vision.... And, when he looked into another in this way, he no longer thought of himself, his self-insufficiency fell away from him and he seemed to know on the other's behalf, to know surely and positively, to know with instinctive knowledge ... as he never knew things for himself....

While they walked on, arm in arm, he thought that the boy's heavy step was becoming more rhythmical and even, that his answers--now that they went on talking about Amsterdam and the master in whose house he would be--were becoming firmer, as though he were taking greater interest....

There was no note of doubt in Addie's voice: his voice made the two years' schooling at Amsterdam, the whole subsequent life as a busy, hard-working man, stand out clear in the mist that hung under the trees and over the roads, made it all take on bright colours as a life spreading open, with unclouded horizons of human destiny, as though all the unconscious life would run easily along ordered lines.... He himself had never known that fear of the days to come, because he had seen his goal before him in the future. Yet why, then, that morbid sense of insufficiency?...

He refused to think of it; and at once it pa.s.sed from him like a ghost.

Even after his sleepless night, he now felt the energy circulating strongly within him, felt the magic pouring out of him as vital warmth.

He must make that boy by his side realize the life before him, he must take away his fear of the future. An unknown force inside him ordained that he should make the future shine with hope and promise for this boy, ordained that he should purge the days to come of their sombre terror.

And, when he had taken leave of Alex, because he did not wish him to know where his patients lived, the lad went back easier in his mind, with his fears pressing less heavily upon him, with the sullen sky growing gradually brighter ... however much he might have to think always of his father, however much he had to see his father's blood-stained corpse daily more and more clearly before his eyes....

CHAPTER VIII

The household took its everyday course of a morning: the everyday life, driven indoors by the merciless winter, the grey skies and bl.u.s.tering wind, rolled on softly and evenly in the rooms and pa.s.sages of the big house. Not much came from outside, where the great trees in the garden dripped with chill rain; nothing to stir the big house, which stood there like a great lonely block on the villa-road, amid the sombre mystery of its wind-blown trees. For the occupants of the big, gloomy house had made as few acquaintances as possible among their neighbours, though in the spring and summer Gerdy would take her racket daily to the tennis-club.... In the winter, it was a quiet life indoors, varied only by a walk, or a visit to a sick or poor neighbour, a quiet life between the walls of the big rooms, with the wind tapping at the window-panes....

The old grandmother sat mostly in the conservatory and looked out into the garden, sagely nodding her silver-grey head. She no longer recognized all the children and as a rule thought herself back at Buitenzorg, in the midst of her own family; even when Klaasje sat playing at her feet, she would think that it was little Gertrude, Gertrude who had died, as a child, at Buitenzorg.... Constance, a zealous housewife, active despite her fifty-five years, moved about the house incessantly during the morning, with Marietje or Adeletje to help her. Twenty-two and twenty-one respectively, they were always with Constance: Marietje already full of unselfish consideration and Adeletje delicate, not speaking much, sitting with her needlework upstairs in their room; and, because of Alex' strange melancholy, it was only Guy and Gerdy that represented joyous, healthy youth in the house, that rich health and radiance which reminded Constance of their father, of her brother Gerrit, who had been so noisy, broad and strong until he fell ill, too ill to go on living....

Klaasje was very troublesome in the mornings, very restless, full of freaks and cranks, always bothering the others to play with her or at least to make a fuss over her; and Constance was so sorry that Klaasje could not be upstairs in the nursery with Jetje and Constant, but Mathilde would not have her there. And the poor, innocent child, twelve years old by now, was jealous of Constant and Jetje and hated Mathilde, as though, unconsciously, she felt in the children a childishness that was natural and as though she knew that, after all, she herself was much too big to play about like that and build houses with cards and dominoes....

Above the great sombre house, against the great sombre skies and inside the house itself there was always a strange melancholy of things that had been.... It floated through the pa.s.sages and creaked in the furniture; it could be felt in the old grandmother's sitting at the conservatory-window, in the pale, unchangingly sad face of Adeline, who was so helpless; it appeared in the silent sorrow of Emilie, who was spiritless and never spoke much these days. In the sombre house they sat or moved in an atmosphere of bygone things which mingled with the atmosphere of the house itself, as though they were small, pale souls, broken by life and sheltering in the safe house, now that the winter seemed endless and the heavy clouds were so oppressive.... A cloud of recollection hung over the old woman, as she sat silently staring, as she played with Klaasje, who would never grow up; a last reflexion of sombre tragedy lingered around the simple mother of so many children, as though her husband's suicide still struck her with tragic wonder that life could strike so suddenly and fiercely and cruelly; it was as though a strange psychological secret slumbered in the sad eyes of Emilie, who was still a young woman; a secret which she would never speak....

Sombre was the house and sombre the everlasting wind that blew around it; full of strange voices, of things of long ago; and they did not brighten the house, those three sad, silent women, so different in age, so sombre in their equal melancholy. They did not brighten the morning which they spent there together, in the house on the long, rain-swept road; and it was Constance herself, followed quietly by Marietje or Adeletje, who woke the house, stairs and pa.s.sages to life with her active footfall and the shrill rattle of her keys.... The sound of a piano came harshly from Mathilde's sitting-room upstairs; and it had only to be heard to make the other piano in the drawing-room downstairs cry out in pain under Gerdy's furious little fingers, until Constance was startled at so much noise and hurriedly whispered to Marietje:

"Do tell Gerdy not to play when Mathilde is playing upstairs!..."

Marietje would then rush to the drawing-room and rebuke Gerdy; and, because it was Aunt Constance' request, Gerdy's piano suddenly fell silenced, leaving Mathilde's runs and flourishes to triumph overhead.

The children drove out daily with their nurse in the governess-court, whatever the weather: it was Addie's principle and they throve on it; and their youthfulness, stammering its first words, was like a bright, rosy dawn of the future, as they went along the sombre stairs and dark pa.s.sages and rooms, casting a sudden golden radiance in that atmosphere of the past, as though they were suddenly powdering through the brown of the shadows, as though they were sprinkling the sound of children's voices through the brown air, which had not caught a childish sound for so many years....

When Addie was out, visiting his patients, Van der Welcke remained in his room, reading and smoking, Uncle Jupiter, as Gerdy called him, because he usually sat enveloped in the blue clouds of his cigarette; and Guy did a little work, for his examination as a clerk in the postal service, except when he went to Utrecht, where he was receiving private tuition in geography. But when he was working at home, in his little room, up on the third floor, his young, healthy restlessness constantly made him get up and run downstairs, to borrow an atlas of Van der Welcke, hang round Uncle Henri for a bit, smoke a cigarette with him, then go back upstairs. He would look at his books and maps for three minutes and then jump up again, stretch himself, take up his dumb-bells, feeling stiff from the long sitting, and go downstairs once more.

Constance met him in the hall:

"Aren't you working, Guy?"