Ernst was still living in his rooms in the Nieuwe Vitley, surrounded by his collections, surrounded by his hobbies. A man of fifty now, he led a silent, solitary life amid his books, his china, his curiosities; and the landlady looked after him and cooked his meals, because he paid well, paid too much indeed. He saw little of the family because the others really lived as secluded as he did, Paul in his rooms, Dorine at her boarding-house, though she was never satisfied and was constantly changing her boarding-house; and no family-tie drew him to Van Saetzema's house or Karel's. In this way a separation and estrangement had grown up among all of them; the bond between them had perished, now that Mamma was no longer at the Hague to gather them all around her on Sunday evenings in her big house in the Alexander Straat; and Constance, of late years, had often pressed him to come and live at Driebergen. But he obstinately refused; and yet, on the rare occasions when he saw her at the Hague, he would take her hand and sit knee to knee with her, unbosoming himself of all his stored-up discontent with the rooms, the meals, the landlady, that brother of hers: the brother especially, whom he could never stand, the vulgar bounder, as he called him. Constance then felt him to be an aging, always lonely man, who never uttered his thoughts and who, because of this continual silence, bottled up within himself the thousands of words which he now poured forth to her all in one torrent with a timid look, as if he were afraid that the landlady and her brother were standing behind the door, listening. When Constance, at such times, tried to persuade him to move to Driebergen, he shook his head obstinately, as though some part of him had grown fast to that room of his, as though he could not tear himself out of it; and his eyes would glance at his books and his china, as though to say that it was impossible to remove all that. And, because he was calm and no trouble and quiet in his behaviour, she let him alone, because this was what he preferred: to live within himself, among his hobbies, solitary, shy and eccentric. Five years ago, it was true, he had been ill again, had talked to himself for days on end, had wandered about in the Wood. Paul wrote to Constance and she had come over; but Ernst had soon grown quiet again, afraid no doubt that he would have to go back to Nunspiet, afraid of a change of residence, afraid of keepers, of nurses, of the things which he had never been able to forgive any of them, not even Constance. That was years ago, five years ago; and lately Constance and Addie too had never seen Ernst other than calm and peaceful, though a good deal of strange and silent brooding seemed to lurk behind the silent cunning of his dark, staring eyes. But then, months and months would again pass without their seeing him, without their hearing of him; they were all accustomed to his strangeness; and the months would drag past without the threatened crisis coming. No, nothing came, even though the man was strange, though he did talk to himself, though he was full of bottled-up grievances; and, when they saw him again after a lapse of months, they were struck by a certain artistic method in his rooms with their beautiful warm colouring, struck by some new arrangement of the furniture, by some new purchase; and he, as though conscious that he was on trial, would talk almost normally, terrified lest they should drag him from his rooms, to which he was attached even though the landlady and her brother always stood spying behind the door. . . .
Constance, feeling suddenly upset and filled with self-reproach at neglecting Ernst, went to the Hague with Addie the day after Adolphine's visit; and the two of them arrived unexpected in the Nieuwe Vitley.
"Meneer is out," said the landlady.
"In this rain?" asked Constance.
"Yes, ma'am, he went out early this morning."
"How has he been lately?"
"Pretty well, ma'am. As usual. Meneer is always odd, you know, but he is not troublesome. He is fairly well."
"Not like . . .?"
"Some years ago? No, ma'am. Meneer has been talking to himself rather more of late, but that's all. Will you wait for him?"
"Yes."
"He is sure to be back by twelve o'clock or so. He is very regular in his habits. Won't you come upstairs?"
Constance and Addie went upstairs and waited in Ernst's room.
"Poor fellow, poor fellow!" said Constance, with emotion.
She did not know what was the matter with her, but she felt full of self-reproach. Oh, were they not leaving him too much alone, sunk in his solitude? How she wished that she could coax him to go back with her to Driebergen and to live there, not far from them, in a little villa, with some people who were in the habit of looking after invalids! Oh, not in their own house, not in their own house! She would never have dared suggest that to Van der Welcke; nor had Addie ever proposed it. No, not at home, not at home, but somewhere near, so that she could see him at any moment and not worry herself with the idea of his suddenly having a nervous breakdown with no one by him to take his piteous soul-sickness to heart.
And, as she sat thinking, she looked around her and was struck by the manner in which the eerie lines of the old porcelain and new pottery curved against the sombre hangings and furniture. It was very strange, stranger than she had ever noticed. The setting enhanced the eeriness of it all. As the years passed, the vases had become more and more of a disease, blossoming in eerie lines and glowing glaze like some vicious orchid, high against the walls, rising to the ceiling, in a riot of exotic forms, like a vegetation reaching up, stretching up, stretching up necks and hands with the necks and handles of the vases, as though trying to rise higher and higher beyond the grasp of profane mortals.
"Why does Ernst put his vases so high up?" Constance wondered, as she looked round the room.
Suddenly he entered. The landlady below must have told him that his sister and his nephew, the young doctor, were upstairs, for the movement with which he turned the door-handle was abrupt, his glance as he stood and looked from the one to the other was laden with suspicion and his voice trembled violently as he asked:
"What are you here for?"
He stood before them an old, trembling man. His neglected clothes hung in old, slack folds about his angular limbs; his hair already almost entirely grey, hung long and lank around his lean, trembling features and dark, staring eyes, which looked with a martyred glance from the one to the other. And yet, however neglected and soul-sick this trembling man might be, who looked an old, old man though he was not more than fifty, a gleam of intelligence shone deep down in his suspicious glance; and his long, lean fingers were those of an artist: impotent to paint or model, in lime, colour, wood or sound, the fluttering, ever-present dream of a beauty only just divined.
They both strove to reassure him, said that they happened to be at the Hague and so had come to look him up; and, after the first shock, he really did not strike them as strange or more ill than usual. Suddenly even a ray of sympathy seemed to shoot through him and he sat down between them, took their hands and delivered himself of his complaint:
"Hush! They're always listening behind the door, the brutes!" he whispered, timidly. "The landlady and her brother! I can't call my soul my own; they're always spying. . . . When I'm undressing, when I go to bed, when I have my meals . . . they're always spying. I can hear them grinning. . . . They're standing there now, to hear if we're talking about them. . . . And, when I open the door, they're gone in a moment . . . so quickly, just like ghosts. . . . The other day, he lay under my bed all night. I'm getting used to it, I no longer mind. . . . But, properly speaking, I can't call my soul my own. Any one with less steady nerves than mine simply could not stand it, could never stand it. . . ."
"But, Ernst, why don't you move?"
He knew the question well, he recognized the motive. He gave a kind and condescending little smile, because they did not know, because they were so coarse of fibre.
"I can't very well move," he said. "You see . . . I have everything here . . . everything here. . . ."
His glance and his gestures became very vague, as though he did not wish to say more. And Addie saw how it was: Uncle Ernst still believed, had always, all those years, believed in the souls that swarmed around him, the souls that had been conjured like spirits out of books, curiosities and old vases. But he never spoke of the souls now, because he remembered only too well how stupid and wicked his people had been in the old days. After that attack twelve years ago, he had gone on believing in these brain- and soul-phantoms of his, but he had learnt to keep silent about them, to talk as the stupid people talked. Or by preference he did not talk at all. . . . But this very silence had caused his mistrust to develop into a mania that he was being persecuted, a mania that made him constanty look round, timidly. . . . He would open the door, look into the passage. . . . And Constance knew that, in the street, he was for ever looking round, attracting the attention of the passers-by with this frightened, suspicious trick of his.
Addie saw it: Ernst believed in the souls which lay crowding around him, which linked themselves with chains to his soul, which he dragged with him through the mud of the streets and the wretchedness of life, the souls that thronged in agony around him, until they weighed down his chest and stifled him so that he longed to run half-naked into the street to cool himself in rain and air, to gulp down the wind. And very deeply bedded in the sick soul Addie saw hypersensitiveness hiding as an adorable tenderness which, instead of turning to a disease, might have developed into the profoundest qualities of sympathetic feeling, not only to feel, but also to know and understand, because of the slumbering spark of intelligence, because of the knowledge so eagerly gleaned. . . . And now these were wasted gifts, morbid qualities, now it was all useless and sick and had become more sick and more useless as the sick years of shadow drearily dragged on their misty-melancholy introspection and increasing distrustfulness. It was all, all lost. And, in his pity at this fatal waste, at this tenderness which had soured almost into madness and was devoted to shadows while the poor world stood in such real need of tenderness and feeling, Addie remembered how once, years ago, he had felt conscious of a longing with a single word to cure the sick man: but which, which word? It was as though he knew that one word to be hovering in the air around him, while he was still too young and ignorant to catch it as he might have caught a butterfly with his hat! And now, now he knew for certain—after all those years of misty-melancholy introspection and increasing distrustfulness—that it was too late and that the man could not recover and that he would die as he had lived in the almost proud hallucination which brought around him for protection the numberless oppressed, persecuted and martyred souls, suffocating him in the cloud of their frail tortured and complaining bodies. And it was not only the souls: the living who sought him out were also included in his proud illusion; they also needed his support, because he alone was strong and all of them were weak.
It was too late for a cure; but still Addie longed, though he knew for certain that no cure could ever take place, to free that lost and impaired quality of noble feeling from everything that could shock or offend the silent, suffering man; and he swore to himself to get Uncle Ernst out of the Hague, out of these rooms, where he was taking root and at the same time being tortured. He happened that day to feel very restful, very calm, even though, deep down in the subsoil of his soul, black self-insufficiency lowered as usual. He would not know what to do for himself; for this sick man he did know what to do! For himself, he groped around in a dark labyrinth; for the man of stricken brain and soul he knew it all suddenly, with a bright ray of clearest perception, knew with a sacred, instinctive knowledge! And yet there was not a touch of joy, not a touch of ecstasy or fervour in his sombre, melancholy glance, in his deep, sombre voice, when, with his customary earnestness of words and manner, he said to his mother:
"Mamma, you must leave me alone with Uncle Ernst."
She looked at him. And, despite his quietness, his earnestness, his calm and sombreness, she knew her son too well not to feel, suddenly, that he knew.
"Very well," she said, "you stay with Uncle Ernst. I'll go round to Aunt Adolphine and see Marietje. When and where shall I see you? This evening, at the hotel?"
He shook his head:
"No," he said. "You had better go back by yourself to Driebergen, with Marietje. As for me . . ."
He paused, as though reflecting, passed his hand across his forehead:
"As for me, you'll see me to-morrow," he said, "or the next day. . . ."
"At Driebergen? At home?"
"Yes."
"And . . . your uncle?"
He made a sign with his eyelids; and she understood him, partly, and asked no more. She took leave of Ernst and moved to go; but Ernst kept her for a moment at the door:
"Constance . . ."
"What is it, Ernst?"
"If there's anything . . . that I can do for you, you'll tell me, won't you? Tell me frankly. . . . It's very difficult for me, I know . . . to look after all of you . . . but, if I don't, nobody else will. . . . So tell me plainly if I can help you in any way. . . ."
"There's nothing at the moment, Ernst. . . ."
"But later on? . . ."
"Perhaps."
"Then I shall be very glad to help. You must ask me straight out."
"I will."
"Look here . . . you must be careful . . ."
"Of what?"
"Of the brother. . . . The fellow's a scoundrel. Take care, don't speak too loud: he's standing behind the door. You see, he can't reach so high."
"What do you mean?"
"He can't reach up to my poor vases. He would have to take the steps . . . and he won't do that in a hurry."
"What used he to do to the vases, Ernst?"
"Take them in his hands."
"I dare say he admired them."
"No, he used to break them . . . on purpose. He . . . he . . ."
"What, Ernst?"
"He used to throttle them. Hush! He used to wring their necks with his vile fingers."
Then he realized at length that he was saying too much and he gave a loud, kindly laugh:
"You don't believe that he used to throttle them. Well, at any rate, they're safer up there."
"At least, he can't break them."
"No. What's the matter with Addie? He's not looking well."
"Nothing. He's staying on to talk to you."
"Is there anything I can do for him?"
"Perhaps there is, Ernst. Have a talk with him."
"You people are a heavy burden on me. . . ."
"I must go now, dear."
She kissed him good-bye.
"Be careful," he whispered.
Suddenly, he swung open the door:
"There!" he cried, triumphantly. "Did you see? The scoundrel slips away so quickly. Just like a ghost. No, more like a devil."
She gave a last glance at Addie; her eyelids flickered at him and she went away. Ernst closed the door very carefully.
"He simply can't go on living by himself," thought Constance, as she hurried to the Van Saetzemas'.
It was a very small house in a side-street at Duinoord; and she found Van Saetzema sick and ailing in a stuffy little sitting-room; she saw Caroline, too, bitter-eyed and bitter-mouthed, generally embittered by her dull existence as spinster of nearly thirty, with no prospect of marrying. Meanwhile, Adolphine kept her sister waiting. She had obviously run upstairs to put on a clean tea-gown. At the back of the little house, under the grey sky, which sent down a false morning light through the heavy rain-clouds, the atmosphere seemed full of bitterness . . . bitterness because they were ill and poor and disappointed; and all this dreariness was scantily and narrowly housed between the father, mother and daughter, in the little room where they kept getting in one another's way. A melancholy born of pity welled up in Constance; and she tried to talk cheerfully, while Van Saetzema coughed and complained, Caroline, bitter-mouthed and bitter-eyed, sat silent and Adolphine suddenly, with no attempt at preamble, observed to Constance:
"It's splendid air here, at Duinoord. . . . And the house is extraordinarily convenient . . ."
But her boasting voice choked as she completed her sentence more humbly:
"For the four of us."
"And where is Marietje?" asked Constance.
"Upstairs. She likes being upstairs, in her own little room. . . . "
"How is she to-day?"
"Just the same."
"May I see her?"
Adolphine rose with some hesitation. But she took Constance upstairs and opened a door:
"Marietje, here's Aunt Constance."
The girl rose from her chair in the grey light of the little room. She was tall and pale and, in that light, seemed suddenly to blossom up like a lily of sorrow, with the white head drooping at the neck, a little on one side. The very fair hair hung limply about the temples. It was heavy—her only attraction—and was wrung into a heavy knot which she wore low at her neck. The movements of her long arms, of her long, thin hands betrayed a listless, lingering anæmia; and her blouse hung in folds over her flat bosom. She was twenty-six, but looked younger; her lacklustre eyes were innocent of all passion, as though she were incapable of ever becoming a woman, as though her senses were dying away like some fading lily on its bending stalk.
"Good-morning, Auntie."
The little room was grey and white as a nun's cell, with the cloistered simplicity of a hermitage.
"I'm so glad to see you, Marietje."
"Auntie, Mamma said that you and Uncle . . ."
"Yes, Marietje, we'll be glad to have you with us. Mamma has told you, hasn't she? . . . Then Addie can . . ."
"It's very kind of you, Auntie. But . . . but I would rather not come."
"What do you mean, dear?"
"I would rather stay here. . . . There's not much about me to cure; and I'm not anxious to be cured. And in your house . . ."
"Well?"
"I should be so gloomy. I am never bright or cheerful, you know. And I hardly ever come downstairs."
Adolphine's eyes filled with tears.
"It's true," she said, softly. "She lives up here."
"You would be cheerful enough with us, Marietje."
"No, Auntie, I should feel uncomfortable with you . . . because I am not cheerful. I should depress you all."
"We are not so easily depressed. And the chief thing is that Addie could treat you regularly."
Marietje gave a pale smile.
"Why won't you go, dear?" asked Adolphine.
The girl retained her pale smile. She seemed to be wrestling with a temptation that opened up soft and peaceful visions in her pale life as a constant invalid; but she did not wish to yield.
"Come," said Constance, "you had much better, really."
Suddenly Marietje felt herself grow very weak. She saw death, saw the end so very close before her eyes; and the soft, peaceful visions would never be more than a very brief hallucination, which after all she might as well accept. And, because she suddenly felt as though in a dream, she had no strength to resist the gently persuasive voices of her mother and her aunt, which were luring and luring her, like voices from very far away, voices which she seemed to hear through the haze of vague and enticing distance. Yet her own wan voice did not reveal what she felt, as she continued feebly objecting:
"I should be too much trouble. An invalid is so depressing."
"It would be very difficult for Addie to look after you here."
"Besides, you have Grandmamma . . ."
"She's no trouble."
"And little Klaasje."
"Yes, but that's different."
"How are Marietje and Adele?"
"Quite well, very well indeed. We'll go on calling her Marietje and, if you come down, we'll call you . . let's say Mary, to avoid confusion."
"Mary. . . ."
"Will that do?"
"But your house is so full as it is."
"Guy is giving you his room."
The girl uttered more faint words and phrases, but they were like little waves which carried her softly and tenderly towards the gentle vision and the dream.
"Very well, Auntie," she said, at last. "You are very good to me."
"It's only natural, as far as I'm concerned. But, when you're at Driebergen, you'll thank your uncle, won't you?"
"Of course. It's his house."
"Yes."
"Won't it be rather damp . . . for Marietje?" asked Adolphine, hesitatingly.
"I don't think so," said Constance.
"Constance," said Adolphine, taking her hand, "it is so kind of you . . . and I am so grateful. . . ."
Her voice trembled as she spoke.
"My dear, what a fuss you make!" said Constance. "I'm your sister and Marietje is my niece. But . . ."
"But what?"
"It certainly is kind . . . of Henri."
"Yes, it's very nice of your husband."
"You see, it's his house."
"Yes . . . and he had so many calls on him," said Adolphine, humbly. "Constance, won't you let me pay something . . . for Marietje's keep? So much a month, I mean . . . until she's a little better. . . ."
"You'd better not bother to do that, Adolphine."
"You have so many expenses."
"Yes, but you've plenty of use for your money too."
"What I mean is . . . it's your husband's money."
"I know. But Henri would rather you didn't pay anything . . . really."
"Really?"
"I'm sure of it. If you or Van Saetzema wrote him a line . . . he'd like that."
"Of course I shall. I shall thank him myself."
"And you'll come and see the child whenever you like, won't you, Adolphine?"
"Yes, Constance, I will. . . . What a pity it is that you don't live in the Hague!"
"Why?"
"Oh, the Hague is so much our town, our family town; and your house, now that Mamma is so old, is certainly the house . . . of the family, the centre, so to speak. . . ."
"It's Henri's house."
"Yes, that's what I mean."
Constance stood up to go:
"Then will Marietje come down with me tomorrow?"
"Yes, we'll pack her trunk."
Marietje rose suddenly, threw her arm round Constance and sobbed excitedly:
"Auntie . . . Auntie . . . I do think it so . . ."
"So what, dear?"
The rapture died out of her voice; and she concluded:
"I think it so kind . . . of Uncle . . . of Uncle and you . . . to have me . . . to live with you, to live with you. . . ."
Van Saetzema downstairs had a violent attack of coughing; and Adolphine rushed anxiously out of the door.