"I shall be weak!"

"Auntie, Auntie, why are you so overwrought?"

"I shall be weak!"

"No, Auntie, you won't. And you mustn't be so frightened. There is nothing but love all around you ... and they will all of them, all of them help you."

"I am frightened ... and I shall be very weak...."

"No, Auntie.... Oh, Auntie, do stop crying! ... What are you afraid of?

And what could happen now?... For whom are you afraid?"

"For Addie ... for my boy ... for Mathilde."

"But why, Auntie, why?... Oh, don't be so frightened!... Everything's all right between them ... and Addie ... Addie is so calm, so practical, so simple in his way of acting and thinking...."

"Perhaps.... Oh, if he is only strong!"

"Isn't he always?"

"Perhaps he is.... Oh, my dear child, I am so frightened!..."

"Hush, Auntie, hush!... Don't cry any more.... Lie still, now; lie still in my arms.... Even if we have sorrow to go through, even if we have sad things to experience, even then you should remember that everything ...

that everything comes right again ... in the end.... If we all have our share, why shouldn't they have theirs?... And perhaps--who knows?--your anxiety is exaggerated, Auntie ... because you have been a little overwrought ... lately."

"It may be that."

"Is it all ...a little too much for you sometimes?"

"I am so seldom alone."

"I dare say you feel tired sometimes."

"It may be that."

"You mustn't think about it any more Tell me, Auntie: Gerdy isn't very well...."

"What makes you say that?"

"I thought she looked pale ... and rather sad."

Constance pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead:

"Oh, Marianne," she said, "I wish that I could talk it all away, think it all away!... But I can't.... I'm frightened, I keep on being frightened...."

And she sobbed gently on Marianne's shoulder, while the younger woman knelt beside her.

The rain fell in vertical streaks. The carriage took Marianne and her children to the station through a deluge.

CHAPTER XVII

Since that first time, Mathilde was p.r.i.c.ked with continual jealousy; and in the mornings, when Addie went upstairs to Marietje van Saetzema's room, she always followed him and stole into the wardrobe-closet next door, always with her keys in her hand, so that, if she happened to be caught, she might appear to be looking for some article of dress in one of the presses. She listened at the part.i.tion and understood what they were saying sometimes but not always, because Marietje spoke very low and Mathilde could not always hear what she answered. But, as her eyes glanced mechanically along the big flowers that formed the pattern of the wall-paper, she suddenly noticed a broad crevice, where the wood had split and the paper cracked and torn; and, with her heart leaping to her throat, she peeped and peeped.... She had to squeeze between two cupboards, she banged her head against the part.i.tion and was terrified lest they had heard; but they heard nothing or else the noise did not strike them, for the sound of their voices went on.... Mathilde now put her eye to the crevice and was able, though with difficulty, to see into the room, saw Marietje sitting with Addie sitting beside her, saw her hand resting in his:

"Why does he hold her hand so long?" she thought. "Need he feel her pulse as long as that?"

But he did not let go of Marietje's hand; and Mathilde became impatient, also because she could not catch what they were saying:

"How softly they are talking and how confidential it all is!" she thought.

And, when Marietje lifted her head a little, as with the movement of a lily on its slender stem, Mathilde saw her smiling, saw her eyes gleaming softly, saw the words taking birth as it were smiling on her lips; and it seemed as though those words added a touch of colour to the pale lips and a blush to the pale cheeks....

"How very much better she looks than when she came!" thought Mathilde, though she wanted to call out to Addie and tell him to let go Marietje's hand. "They are about the same age," she thought. "I am much younger than she is."

And yet Marietje, though twenty-six, had a certain youthfulness, as of a very young girl; and Mathilde could not get rid of the thought:

"They are--very nearly--the same age. It's ridiculous: a young doctor like Addie ... with a young woman, a young girl like her. It's ridiculous.... Why is he wasting his time on her now?"

She now saw the smile fade from Marietje's lips, saw the girl, on the contrary, look very serious, tell a long and serious story:

"What can she be telling him?" thought Mathilde.

And she saw their faces come nearer to each other: it was as though Addie were rea.s.suring Marietje, explaining things; and now, now he laid his hand on Marietje's head and she ... she lay back on the sofa.

"It's absurd," thought Mathilde, "this hypnotizing ... and that they should be alone together for so long."

Soon the hypnotism took effect. Marietje fell asleep and Addie quietly left the room. Mathilde waited a few minutes and also stole away, meeting no one on the stairs....

What she had seen through the slit in the wall-paper was nothing; and yet ... and yet she could not help constantly brooding over it.... She now also noticed, at lunch, that Marietje was much more cheerful, that her movements were much less languid, that she laughed with the other girls; and she noticed that, after lunch, she helped Adeletje with the plants in the conservatory, that she was beginning to join in the life of the others, that she no longer went straight back to her room as she used to do at first.... And constantly too, downstairs, in the conservatory, she was struck by an intimacy between Marietje and Addie.... Mathilde was quite sensible, though she was jealous of her husband; she was jealous of all his patients; she was quite sensible and thought:

"A certain affection between a young girl and a doctor, a young doctor, who obviously has a good influence upon her, as Addie has, is easy enough to understand."

And she wanted to go on thinking so sensibly, she, a woman of sound, normal sense, but it was difficult, very difficult.... For Addie went out and she at once saw Marietje's smile disappear, saw her happy vivacity sink as it were ... and Marietje soon went upstairs, until she came down again with Aunt Constance and Adeletje to go for a walk, as they did every afternoon when the weather was not too bad.... Mathilde remained upstairs, played the piano, looked out upon the sad, misty road.... Oh, she loved her husband, she even loved him pa.s.sionately and she was living here for his sake; but wasn't it awful, wasn't it awful?

In Heaven's name wouldn't it be better just to move to a small house at the Hague ... and accept the pinch of poverty?... She went to the next room, to her children: they had been out and were playing prettily, while the nurse sat at the window sewing; and now she did not know what to do next.... What an existence, in the winter, in a village like this, in a big house, a house full of sick people and mad people! As it happened, through the window she saw Uncle Ernst walking along the road, with his back bent under his long coat, talking to himself as he returned to his rooms in the villa where he was being looked after: what an existence, oh, what an existence ... for a young and healthy woman like herself! She was never susceptible to melancholy; but she felt a twilight descending upon her from the unrelieved sky overhead. She could have wept.... And yet she could have stood it all, if only she had possessed Addie entirely.... If only she could win him entirely, she thought, suddenly; and suddenly it occurred to her that she did possess him ... but not entirely, not entirely.... He escaped her, so to speak, in part.... They had love, they had fervour in common; they had the children in common; they had bonds of sympathy, physical sympathy almost. She felt happy in his arms and he in hers; but for the rest he escaped her. Something of his innermost being, something of his soul, the quintessence of his soul, escaped her, whereas she gave herself wholly to him and did not feel within herself those secret things which refused to surrender themselves.... She felt it, she understood it now; suddenly, under the grey melancholy of the skies, as though she suddenly saw clearly in that twilight; she understood it: their love was merely physical! Oh, he escaped her; and she did not know how she was ever to win him entirely, so as to have him all to herself, all to herself!...

Perhaps if she began to take an interest in his patients, to share his life in them? But she was jealous of those patients, who took Addie from her for hours and days together; and she was jealous, very jealous of Marietje.... But what then? How was she to win him?... And in this rich-blooded woman, whose senses bloomed purple and fierce, there shot up as with a riot of red roses the thought of winning him more and yet more with her kisses, with her whole body, with all that she would give him, with all that she would find for him, to wind tendrils round him and bind him to her for ever and for ever.... And then, then also to make him jealous of her, as she was jealous of him, by disturbing his unruffled calm, the calm of a young, powerful man, with painful suspicions, which would yet bring him wholly to her, so that she might win him entirely....

Oh, wasn't it awful, wasn't it awful? As it was, she sat here the livelong day and possessed her husband only in the evening, only at night, as though she were food for nothing else. It went against the grain; and suddenly, intuitively, she felt her jealousy of Addie's long talks with Marietje more sharply than before. What need had he to talk to her at such length? Oh, he ought not to neglect his wife so, he ought not to think her good only for that: he ought to talk to her also, for hours at a time, earnestly, strangely, gazing into her eyes, as he talked to Marietje! Why did he not talk to her, his wife, like that?

What were these talks? What had those two to talk about? It was not only about being ill and about medicines and not even only about hypnotism: of that she was convinced. There existed between the two of them secret things, about which they talked, things which they two alone knew....

Oh, how she felt her husband escape her, as though she were stretching out her fingers at him covetously and as though she did indeed grip him in her hot embrace ... only to lose him again at once!...

Her days pa.s.sed in constant monotony. She was a healthy, superficial, rather vain, very young woman, with a few vulgar aspirations; and she suffered in her surroundings because she had an undoubted need for healthy and superficial affection. She would have been happy leading a simple, very carnal, very material married life, with plenty of money, plenty of enjoyment, with children around her; and then she would have laughed with pride and been good, as far as she was able. As it was, she felt that, except physically, she was hardly the wife of her husband and, despite her children, hardly accepted by his family and hardly suffered in their house. And she peevishly blamed them all, thinking that they were not kind to her, and she failed to perceive that what separated her from them all was a lack of spiritual concord, of harmony, of sympathy, because she had nothing that appealed to them and they had nothing that appealed to her, because the emanations from her soul and theirs never reached each other but flowed in two directions, because everything that they understood in one another, even without words, she did not understand, even though it were explained to her in words, because she looked upon them as sick, mad, egoistical and nerve-ridden, because they looked upon her as shallow and vulgar. It was an antipathy of blood and of soul: n.o.body was to blame; and even that she did not understand. The only one to blame, perhaps, was Addie, because, when taking her for his wife, he had not listened to the soul within his soul and had allowed himself to be led only by instinct and by his material philosophy of regeneration:

"She is a healthy, simple woman. I want healthy, simple children. That's how we ought all to be: healthy and simple as she is."

Were those not the ideas which had made him introduce her into the midst of them all, as an object lesson, without listening to the still, slumbering voices of his soul's soul?... And scarcely had those voices awakened before he had been roused out of himself with the thought: