"Hans," asked Brauws, "what's the matter, old fellow?"

"It's that idiot of a Guy!" said Van der Welcke, at last, hoa.r.s.ely. "I was looking for him this morning, couldn't find him anywhere. His bicycle was gone.... He has cleared out. He left three letters behind him: for his mother, for Addie and for us. He writes that he can't work at books, that he wants to try his own way.... I've read all the letters.... He tells Addie ... that he feels that he must stand alone ... that he must stand alone if he's to do any good ... that ... in this house...."

Van der Welcke gave a sob.

"Well?"

"He feels himself growing flabby ... because there's too much affection, too much leniency for him.... That's the sort of thing he writes.... Who would have thought the boy was so silly?... He writes that he won't do any good ... if he stays here.... That he wants to go and face the world.... A boy of his age!... The most ridiculous idea I've ever heard of!...

"The boy may be right," said Brauws, very gently.

But Van der Welcke was not listening:

"I shall miss him," he confessed. "I miss him now. He was my favourite ... among them all. He consoled me for the loss of Addie.... I loved him as my own son; so ... so did Constance."

Brauws was silent.

"Life is a d.a.m.ned, rotten enc.u.mbrance!" said Van der Welcke, explosively. "We do everything for those children, we do everything for that boy; and, all of a sudden, he goes away ... instead of ... instead of staying with us, causes us sorrow breaks his poor mother's heart....

He writes about America.... Addie went straight to the station to make enquiries. He was going on to Rotterdam. Addie ... Addie never has a moment's peace.... He was looking tired as it was, tired and sad; and, instead of having a day's rest ... with us ... with all of us ... I wanted to go with him ... but he said he preferred to go alone.... Why not have told Addie ... that he would rather do something else ... than go into the Post Office?... G.o.d, we'd have been glad enough to help him!

... He--Addie--does everything ... does every blessed thing for the children.... Oh, Brauws, it's as if a son of my own had run away ... run away in a fit of madness!... Addie has gone to Rotterdam. It was Addie's idea, Rotterdam. But Guy can just as well have gone to Antwerp, to Le Havre, to G.o.d knows where!... He hadn't much money with him.... What will he do, what were his plans?..."

The sunny summer day pa.s.sed gloomily: just a telegram from Addie, "Coming to-morrow," without any further explanation. Constance had found the strength to go to Adeline in her room; the girls were overcome with a silent stupefaction, at the thought that Guy, their cheerful Guy, kept so much hidden under his light-heartedness: a deeper dissatisfaction with life, vague and unclear to all of them, who were so happy to be with Uncle Henri and Aunt Constance in what had so long been their family house, since they had been quite small children; and, when Alex arrived in the evening from Amsterdam, he too could not understand why Guy had felt a need so suddenly to go away from all of them, without taking leave, with that queer idea of making his way in the world alone.... On the contrary, he--Alex--valued in the highest degree all that Uncle, Aunt and Addie did for him: without them, he would never have made any headway in the world and he was making headway at last, he thought. He was now working methodically at Amsterdam and almost methodically making his melancholy yield ground: it was as though Addie inspired him with the love of work and the love of life, wooing to life in him the strength to become a normal member of society, oh, he felt it so clearly! After every talk with Addie he felt it once more, felt strength enough to stay one week in Amsterdam, to work, to live, to see the dreaded life--which his father had escaped by suicide come daily closer and closer, nearer and nearer, like a ghostly vista, at first viewed anxiously and darkly, but later entered, walked into, inevitably, until all the ghostliness of it was close around him.... And, when he thought of his father and always saw him lying, in a pool of blood, with his mother's body flung across the corpse in all the terror of despair, then at the same time he would think of Addie and reflect that life, no doubt, would not be gay but that nevertheless it need not always hark back out of black spectral dread to his youth ... because Addie spoke of being strong and becoming a man gradually.... And Guy had gone, had evaded just that beneficial, strengthening influence of Addie!... No, Alex also could not understand it; and that evening he remained sitting gloomily between his sisters, not knowing what he could say to comfort his mother.... The next day was Sunday; and, if he did not see Addie on Sunday, he knew that the following week would not be a good one for him in Amsterdam, would be a bad, black week....

And it was only Grandmamma and Ernst and Klaasje who did not feel oppressed by the sombre, sudden, incomprehensible and unexpected event which the others were all trying to understand and explain: to them the summer day had been all sunlight and the gloom had pa.s.sed unperceived by them.

Next morning Addie returned. Constance, who was quite unstrung, had been twice and three times to the station in vain. At last she saw him:

"You didn't find him?" she asked, with conviction.

"Yes, I did."

"What? You found him? How? How was it possible?"

"I had an idea that he couldn't go farther than Rotterdam: he hadn't much money on him. I hunted and hunted until I found him."

"And you haven't brought him back with you!"

"No, I let him go."

"You let him go?"

"I think it's best: he was very anxious to go. He was angry at my finding him. I talked to him for a long time. He said that he wished to be under no more obligations, fond though he was of us, grateful though he felt...."

Constance, trembling, had taken Addie's arm; they went home on foot; the road lay in a bath of summer under the trees.

"He spoke sensibly. He had a vague idea of working his pa.s.sage on a steamer as a sailor or stoker. I took a ticket for him. He will write to us regularly. I told him that Mr. Brauws, if he liked, could certainly give him some introductions in New York. He said he would see. He showed a certain decision, as if he were doing violence to something in his own character. It was rather strange.... I thought that I ought not to compel him to come back. He told me that he was certain of not pa.s.sing his examination and that this was what got on his mind and upset him, that he couldn't concentrate on his books, that he would now look after himself.... There was a boat going to London; I gave him some money....

It's better this way, Mamma. Let him stand on his own legs. Here, the way things were going, he might have gone drudging on...."

She wept distractedly:

"We shall miss him so.... He was the life of the house.... Papa, Papa will miss him badly.... Oh, it's terrible!... Poor, poor Adeline!"

They reached home.

"Let me speak to Aunt Adeline first."

"My dear, my dear, make everything right.... Oh, put it so that Aunt thinks it right and accepts it: you can do everything, dear!"

"No, Mamma, I can't do everything."

"You can do everything, you _can_. What should we have done without you?

Now that you have found him and talked to him and made things smooth for him, perhaps everything will be all right for him. If you hadn't found him ...! How did you know that he had gone to Rotterdam?"

"I felt almost sure of it, Mummie. But I didn't know anything for certain. I might have been mistaken."

"You look so tired."

"I have had a tiring day."

"Addie, to people outside, to the family we will say...."

"That he has gone to America ... a sudden idea ... with introductions from Mr. Brauws."

"My dear, how can you talk of it so calmly?"

"Mummie, perhaps it's better as it is ... for him. He was doing no good here. He wasn't working. And he was getting enervated in the midst of all his relations. He has developed a sudden energy; it would be a pity to stifle it. I ... I simply could not bring myself to do that."

"My boy, do you tell your aunt. Tell Papa, too, tell all of them, tell his sisters and Alex. I ... I can't tell them. I should only cry. I'm going upstairs, to my room. You'll tell them, won't you? You'll make it appear as if it's all right, as if it's quite natural, as if it's all for the best."

"Yes, Mummie dear, you go upstairs. I.. I'll tell it them, I'll tell all of them...."

CHAPTER XXVII

The oppressive, sultry, rainless summer days followed one after the other; and the night also waited in oppressive expectation of oppressive things, which were to happen and never happened, as though what we expected to happen immediately withdrew and withdrew farther and only hung over houses and people with heavy stormy skies: skies of blazing morning blue, until great grey-white clouds blew up from a mysterious cloudland and drifted past on high; only on the more distant horizons was there any lightning; and that came soundlessly, later in the day; the threat of a thunderstorm drove past; the foliage became scorched in the dust of advancing summer and faded with the approach of decay; and there was, almost, a sort of longing for autumn and for purple death in autumnal storms: a nature, tired with heavy, trailing summer life, that had never finally become anything and was always becoming something, never flashing forth in a bright achievement of summer but dragging her incompleteness from heavy day to heavy day, under the heavy immensity of skies, towards the later bursting delights of autumn: heavy wind, heavy rain, followed by the heavy death-struggle and unwillingness to die of that which had never been the glory of the sun and yet left no golden memory behind....

Often in those oppressive nights Marietje van Saetzema could not get to sleep, or else woke up with a sudden start. She had been dreaming that she was falling down an abyss, or gliding down a staircase or b.u.mping her head against the ceiling, like a giant bluebottle. Then she would get up, draw the curtains and look out at the heavy night of trees, grey with darkness melting into darkness: the road beyond the house was grey, like an ashen path; the oak and beeches showed grey, their leafy tops unruffled by the wind; in the front garden the dust-covered standard roses stood erect as pikes and the roses drooped from them, grey and with the tired, pining att.i.tude of heavy flowers hanging from limp stalks. All was grey and silent: only, in the very far distance, a dog barked. And the bedroom, still dark with the night--the nightlight had gone out--began to stifle Marietje so much that she softly opened the door and went through the attic, though Addie had forbidden her to wander about like this at night. She went carefully in noiseless slippers, pale in her night-dress, staring wide-eyed into the grey indoor twilight. She pa.s.sed the doors of the maids' bedrooms and down the first flight of stairs, stepping very lightly, so that the stairs did not creak. Once on the staircase she breathed more freely, with relief at feeling something more s.p.a.cious than the air of her room, the relief of unfettered movement, although the grey silence wove such strange great cobwebs all around her, through which she walked down the endless pa.s.sages. She now went past Uncle's door, Aunt's door, Mamma's door, the girls' doors, past Addie's and Mathilde's empty rooms ... and she felt that she was very much in love with Addie, silently and without desire, and was always thinking of him, even though she did not always do as he told her, because she simply could not remain in her room and longed even for the out-of-door air, to feel it blowing through the filmy tissues that covered her young body. And, however much without desire, because Addie remained to her the utterly unattainable, yet there blossomed up in her a nervous pa.s.sion like some strange flower or orchid or lily, seen in a waking dream, a blameless girl's dream of love, of soft, wistful lying in each other's arms and feeling the pressure of breast against breast or mouth against mouth and ecstatic thrills through all one's body.... Then Marietje would long for Addie, so that he might lay his hand upon her head: no more, that was enough for her, because she was also very fond of him, of his voice and his glance and his speech, of his care, of his sympathy, of everything abstract that came from him to her; she knew that, on his side, it was no more than gentle interest, but it was enough for her: she lived upon little like a bloodless lily, her body and soul needing no excess. She well knew at the moment that she was doing what she should not, wandering like that through the house, half awake, half asleep, because it was so fresh and cool to walk about like that half-naked. The night grew grey with dusk and there were deeper shadows in the corners, but she was not afraid, after she had once talked to Addie about the house and he had explained to her that, _if_ there was anything of the past hovering about it, it could not be malign or angry, but rather well-disposed and on the alert, in case it could be of use.... He spoke to n.o.body but her like this; she knew that and it gave her a deep love for him, especially because he had said it so very simply and without any sort of exaggeration, as though it were the very simplest thing that he could have wished to say.... Nor did he speak like that often; once or twice at most he had spoken so; but it had rea.s.sured her greatly, ever since she had been frightened into fainting on the little staircase, all because of a sudden shadow which she thought that she saw and yet did not know if she really saw....

She was now going down by that same little back staircase, almost longing to see a shadow and always thinking of Addie; but she saw nothing. White and as though walking in her sleep, she felt her way down the narrow little stairs. They creaked slightly. She next opened a door, leading into the long hall, which was like that of an old castle, so fine with its old wainscoting. The long Deventer carpet was paled by many years' traffic of feet; the front door seemed to vanish in the grey vista; on the oak cabinet the Delft jars gleamed dimly.... She walked in a waking dream on her noiseless slippers and now opened the door of the morning-room, all dark, with the blinds down--she was very white now in the darkness and could see her own whiteness--and she looked through the drawing-room into the conservatory, where Grannie was always accustomed to sit. The conservatory-windows showed faintly like transparent greynesses; and behind them, in the dawning light of very early morning, something of the dusk of the garden melted away: in the very early light it was all ash, the conservatory full of fading ash and the garden full of ash. Not an outline was visible as yet; and she gazed and gazed ...

and thought it so strange--and yet perhaps not so very strange--that such outlines as did stand out in the conservatory against the grey windows were motionless as the outlines of two dark shadows sitting each at a window, as it were an old man and an old woman, looking out at the birth of morning, which very far in the distance gave just a reflexion of paler twilight....

Marietje now closed her eyes for an instant, then raised her lids again and stared at the conservatory; and it was always that: the outline of the dark, brooding shadows, so very similar to unconsciousness, as if she were looking through atmosphere within atmosphere, invisible at other hours than those of the greyness of the ending night and the beginning of the morning melancholy.... The two irrealities remained grey against grey; and suddenly Marietje felt very cold and shivered, half naked as she was; and, in her shivering, it seemed to her that, very quickly, the shadows themselves shivered, as with a start of surprise, and disappeared, because she had dared to stare at them.

Nothing was outlined any more against the conservatory-windows; only the morning between the trees grew paler: there was even a streak of white....

Marietje was cold. She left the room, forgot to shut the door after her and, going down the pa.s.sage, made for the little back staircase and here also forgot to shut the door. Up, up she crept, shivering, with the noiseless tread of the soft slippers; across the attic now; and she stole into bed, quite cooled, and, after just thinking about what she had seen dimly outlined--perhaps--against the grey conservatory-windows, she fell asleep, peacefully, and dozed until late in the morning, peacefully and like a cold virgin now, with the bedclothes drawn up to her chin.