CHAPTER XXXI
Had it all been an illusion then? Was it all for nothing?
The days passed slowly, one after the other. She saw Van Vreeswijck and felt for him, their friend, in his silent grief; she bade good-bye to Bertha and her children. She knew that Van der Welcke had seen Marianne once more before her departure; and her heart was full of pity for them both.
Had it all been an illusion then, this world of feeling, this little world of her own self? Oh, he was going to England, to lecture on Peace; for him there were always those mighty problems which consoled him for the smallness of that little world of self! But she, had she lost everything, now that the illusion no longer shone before her, now that the magic cities had fallen to pieces, now that everything had become very dreary in the disenchantment and self-reproach of realizing that she had not loved her son enough, that she had not loved him as well as his father loved him, not as well as she had loved the stranger, the friend who had taught her to live? . . .
Had she lost everything then? Now, ah now, she was really old, grey-haired; now her eye was no longer bright, her step no longer brisk; now it was really all over and it was over forever . . . But had she lost everything then? This was what she often asked herself in the days that followed, those days of sadness, sadness for herself, for him, for her son, for her husband, for the girl whom she loved too . . . for all those people, for all her life . . . And what of the great questions, the mighty problems of life? Ah, they no longer stood out before her, now that he who had called her attention to them had gone straight towards those mighty problems as to the towers of the greater life! To her they seemed infinitely remote, shadowy cities on a far horizon behind her own shattered cities of fair translucent hopes . . . Had she then lost her interest in all those things? And, having lost that interest, did she no longer care for her own development, for books, nature, art? Was the life that she had been living all illusion, a dream-life of love, lived under his influence, lived under his compelling eyes?
Yes, that was how it had been, that was how she would have to acknowledge it to herself! . . . That was how it was! . . . That was how it was! . . . Only with his eyes upon her had she felt herself born again . . . born again from her childhood onwards . . . until she had once more conjured up the fairy-vision of the little girl with the red flowers on her temples who ran over the boulders in the river under the spreading tropical leaves, beckoning the wondering little brothers . . . And she, a middle-aged woman, had grown into a girl who dreamed the shimmering dreams that were wafted along rainbow paths towards the distant clouds high in the heavens . . . In her maturity, she had developed herself hurriedly, as though afraid of being too late, into a thinking, feeling, loving woman . . . She had been sincere in that new, hurried life; but it had been nothing more than illusion and illusion alone, the illusion of a woman who felt herself growing old without ever, ever having lived . . .
But, though it had all been illusion, was illusion nothing then? . . . Or was illusion indeed something, something of no great account? And, even though she had lived only illusion, illusion under the compelling eyes of the man whom she loved, feeling love for the first and only time, under the brooding, anguished eyes of that thinker and seeker, had she not lived then, had she not lived then?
Yes, she had: she had lived, in the way in which a woman like herself—a woman who had never felt simply and sincerely except as a child in those far-off childish days, a woman whose life had been nothing but artificiality and failure—could live again, only later still, older still, old almost and finished; she had lived in illusions, in a fleeting illusion, which just for one moment she had tried to grasp, that day, now a few months ago . . .
She shook her head, her grey head; she was no longer blinded; she saw: she saw that it could never have been . . .
Yet she felt that they had—both of them—lived the illusion—both of them—for a little while . . .
And was nothing left of it?
Now that the long dreary days of sadness were drawing on, she saw: she saw that there was indeed something left, that a ray of light remained in her small soul, which had only been able to live like that, very late; for she saw that, in spite of all her repining, there was still gratitude . . .
Yes, she was grateful, for she had lived, even though everything had been illusion, the late blossoming of ephemeral dream flowers . . .
And now—when she felt that strange question rise in her soul: is this life, this futile, endless round, or is there . . . is there anything else? When she felt that bewildering, passionate doubt—then she was conscious, deep down in her heart, with a throb of gratitude, that there was something else . . .
Illusion, yes, only illusion, without which there is no life. . .
THE END