"Oh, did I dream that?"

"Yes."

"No, no."

"Yes, Gerrit, you dreamt it."

Another time, he said to Van der Welcke:

"I say, Van der Welcke."

"What is it, Gerrit?"

"You don't know ... but I was carrying on with a girl ... one I knew in the old days.... Find out what's become of her, will you?"

"What's her name and where does she hang out?"

He reflected:

"Her name ... her name's Pauline."

"And where does she live?"

"In ... in the Frederikstraat."

Van der Welcke made enquiries, but said nothing, next time he came. The sick man remembered, however:

"I say, Van der Welcke."

"Yes, Gerrit?"

"Did you ask about that for me?"

"Yes," Van der Welcke answered, hesitatingly.

"Well?"

"The girl's dead, old chap."

"Did she drown herself?"

"Yes."

"They took the body to the cemetery?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then I wasn't dreaming! You see for yourself.... And your wife came and fetched me there...."

"No, no."

"Yes, she did."

"No, no, old chap."

The sick man reflected:

"I no longer know," he said, "what I've lived and what I've dreamed. The confounded snake-thing: that ... that was real. It had been eating me up ... eating me up since I was a boy...."

He grew very gloomy and sat for hours and hours, silently, in his chair ... until he sank into the downy abyss.

CHAPTER XXV

It was time that he became the old Gerrit again, bit by bit, you know, bit by bit. The weeks dragged past and the weeks became months and it was time that he became the old Gerrit again, bit by bit, you know, bit by bit. His doctor wouldn't hear yet of his resuming his service; but he saw his pals daily: the officers looked him up, fetched him for a walk; and in their company he tried to go back to his breezy, jovial tone, his rather broad jokes, all the noisy geniality which had characterized the great, yellow-haired giant that he had been. And it was all no use. He had grown thin, his cheeks were hollow, his flesh hung loosely on his bones and he was soon tired and, above all, soon giddy....

But the rottenest part of it was that he didn't remember things. No doubt he felt that, by degrees, with the diet prescribed for him, which Adeline observed so conscientiously, he would be able to strengthen his carcase a bit; he even took up his dumb-bells once, in his grief at the disappearance of those grand muscles of his; but he very soon put the heavy weights down again. Then he smacked his emaciated thighs and, despite his inner conviction, yielded to a feeling of optimism:

"Oh, well!" he thought. "That'll get right again in time!"

But the rottenest part of it was that he no longer remembered things--he was ashamed of that above all, he did not want it noticed--and that everybody noticed it. Then he would sit in a chair by the fire--it was a raw, damp January, cold without frost--and his thoughts stared out idly before him, with a thousand roaming eyes, his idle thoughts. They hung heavily in his brain, filling it, like clouds in a sky.... He would sit like that for hours, with a newspaper or an ill.u.s.trated weekly: French comic picture-papers, which Van der Welcke brought him to amuse him. He hardly laughed at the jokes, only half understood them, sat reading them stupidly. And, in his turgid brain full of clouds, full of those idle thoughts, an immense, world-wide melancholy descended, a leaden twilight. The twilight descended from the sky outside and it descended from his own brain.... Then everything became chilly around him and within him; and, above all, memory was lost. Since the beast no longer held him in its clutching dragon's claws, since the thousand-legged crawling thing had devoured all his marrow with voluptuous licks, since it had perhaps sucked up his very blood: since then it had left him like an empty house, with soft muscles and flabby flesh; and he almost longed to have the beastly thing back, because the beast had given him the energy to fight against the beast: for himself, in order to conquer; for others, in order to hide himself. The beast had conquered, the beast had eaten him up. It wanted no more of him; the great dragon-worm had disappeared. It no longer wound through the skies; and nothing more hung in the skies but twilight-distilling clouds.... Oh, the creepy, chilly twilight! Oh, the all-pervading mist, dank and clammy all round him! He shivered; and the fire no longer warmed him. He crept up to it, he could have crept into it; and the glowing, open fire no longer warmed him.

"Line, ring for some wood: I want to see flames; this c.o.ke's no use to me."

Then he heaped up the logs until Adeline feared that he would set the chimney on fire.

Or else Constance would come to fetch him, wanted him to go for a walk.

"No, dear, it's too chilly for me outside."

He remained sitting in what to the others was the unendurable heat of the blazing fire. He shivered. He shivered to such an extent that he asked:

"Line, send in the children."

"But, Gerrit, they'll only tire you."

"No, no ... I'm longing to see them."

They would come in; and, when the others came home from school, he would gather them round him and try to play with them, teasing and tickling them now and again. It tired him, but they were something warm around him: more warmth radiated from a single one of them than from his glowing log-fire.

"How many have I?" he reflected, groping in his memory, which fled in front of him with winged irony.

And he counted on his fingers. He was not quite certain. Until he saw them all gathered round him and had counted them on his fingers, silently--Marie, Adeletje, Alex, Guy--he did not always remember that he had nine. The children were very sweet: Marie saw to his oatmeal, which he had to take at five in the afternoon; the cheeky boys were very attractive. But he suffered because little Gerdy, the child with such a pa.s.sion for caresses, had become afraid of him. She shrank back timidly from him, thinking him strange, that thin, emaciated father whom she used to embrace in her little childish arms as a strong father, a great, big father who tossed her up in the air and caught her again and romped with her and kissed her. She had become frightened of his long, lean fingers and looked in dismay at the hands that gripped her with the fingers of a skeleton. He noticed it and no longer asked her to come to his room, now that he saw that she shuddered when she sat on his thin legs and that she disliked the big fire, which made her frown angrily and draw in her little lips. But it hurt him, though he said nothing.

But what hurt him most was ... that he did not remember things. It was as though daily the twilight deepened around him, around his soul, which shuddered in his chilly, shuddering body. One day, Constance said: