A Few days' skating produced a sudden, unexpected lightness of heart; and Mathilde grew more animated. The members of Gerdy's tennis-club met again on the ice; Guy did nothing but skate these days, excusing himself to Constance and Addie for his idleness by saying that one had to make the most of the ice, which never lasted long; and even Van der Welcke was persuaded by Guy to fasten on his skates, remaining young as ever in his quiet way. It was indeed a sudden, unexpected lightness of heart after so many rainy days: the cold wind whipped up their blood; the snow crackled like powdered crystal under their eager, hurrying feet; young men and girls of Gerdy's little circle came to fetch her in the morning and again after lunch; and, when the skating was over, they would all meet round the tea-table, in the big drawing-room. And Addie taught Klaasje to skate on the pond in the garden; and, under the jovial influence of the frosty snow, he romped about the garden with his children, with little Jetje and Constant. And yet perhaps none of them sniffed up the healthy outdoor life of those cold days of east-wind and ice so greedily as Mathilde, suddenly quickened in her rich blood, her somewhat coarse build, her heavy tread and her loud, full, womanly voice. It had been no life for her, with the silent, dripping rain, in the noisy but yet sombre big house. She and the children had kept upstairs as much as possible in her own rooms, because she felt out of tune with the whole pack below, unable to coalesce with the big household: those sad women and all those children of Uncle Gerrit's, who daily monopolized Addie more and more, until he had hardly a moment to give to his own children and her. What was he to her now, always busy, always occupied, always away, always attending to the pack below or to poor people outside, poor people about whom she knew nothing? What was her life to her, the life in which she pined away in that musty atmosphere, in which she always remained a stranger, for lack of any sort of sympathy, because she did not—any more than any of them—wish for the establishment of any harmonious intimacy? Was it not really a terrible existence, for a young and spirited woman, in the country, in the winter, at Driebergen, with no friends, in a house with rooms so dark and gloomy that the servants declared that it was haunted; then downstairs, always at the window, the doting grandmother; Klaasje, half an imbecile; Adeline and Emilie, never cheerful, always melancholy; and those who were cheerful, Guy and Gerdy, never nice to her; her father-in-law much fonder of Guy and Gerdy than of herself, whom, as she well knew, he actually disliked; her mother-in-law, kind at times, it was true—had she not given Mathilde the beautiful brilliant which now sparkled on her finger?—but still cold, she thought, cold even to the children, just forcing herself to be kind because Mathilde happened to be her son's wife. No, she couldn't say who or what was to blame, but a stranger she remained, a constant stranger, half-forgotten, together with her two children, the children who alone, besides Papa and Addie, bore the name of the house, of Van der Welcke—Baron and Baroness van der Welcke—the children neglected, because the whole troop of Van Lowes made themselves masters of the house; of the affection of her father-in-law and mother-in-law, of every minute that Addie had to spare! Oh, it was just a hospital! Adeletje was always ailing; and now Marietje van Saetzema, really very seriously ill, had been added to the rest. Or wasn't it rather, with their exaggerated clinging to that family of semilunatics, a mad-house, now that, over and above doting Grandmamma and half-witted Klaasje, this Uncle Ernst, who was quite out of his mind, had appeared upon the scene? True, he did not live in the house, but he was there a great deal and would come in to meals unexpectedly, without a word of warning. She was frightened when she met him suddenly in the passages, always carrying on about the Delft jars; and then he didn't recognize her, didn't know who she was, what she was doing there, until he remembered: Addie's wife. Perhaps he only behaved like that from craftiness, from wickedness.
A haunted house, a sick-house, a mad-house: that's what it was; and this was where she had to spend her life, for Addie's suggestion, that they should live by themselves, economically, at the Hague, did not attract her: she had had enough of economy, she had not married him for economy! She had not married him for his money or for his title either: she had really and truly married him because she loved him, loved his quiet, charming, serious face, his eyes, his mouth, loved having him in her arms, because she loved his voice, loved, strange though it might seem, his rather elderly, restful manliness, calmness and strength suggested by that rather short, sturdy, blond frame. She had looked upon him with love, had felt love for him; and no one could blame her for being sensible and for not being prepared to marry him if he had been quite without money. Of course she thought it nice to have a title: well, there may have been a little vanity in that; but weren't there hundreds like her? And did that make her bad and so contemptible that they just left her to her own devices, Addie himself just as much as the whole pack of them?
All the little grievances accumulated within her breast, weighing her down and almost stifling her: the tea, which Gerdy purposely made not fit to drink; the half-witted child, which pushed against her chair; the imbecile man, who did not recognize her; the coolness of Papa, who never spoke a kind word to her, not even when he was playing with his grandchildren, Jetje and Constant, who were just as much her children as Addie's. . . . The grievances accumulated within her: grievances against Papa, Mamma, the sick people and the mad people they had to live with them—all because they were relations—against the servants, against Truitje, against everything and everybody. . . . Oh, how gloomy that rainy winter had been, ever and ever raining, with the great wind blustering round the house, drawing such strange, moaning sounds from the creaking windows and shutters and bellowing down the chimney, till all the old wood of the house and the furniture came to life, took soul unto itself and squeaked and groaned, until the whole place was one errie horror of inexplicable noises! . . . Those noises, oh, those noises! They all knew of them and not one of them spoke of them, because, in spite of it all, they clung to the old, creepy haunted house; they even denied their existence to her; and the best thing that Mathilde could do was not to speak about them, because they refused to hear them! But she was frightened, she had gradually become frightened, with that long keeping indoors: where could she go, with the rain, the wind, the storm, lashing for days and days? She had become frightened, frightened; and they, all of them, had one another, whereas she had nobody, with her husband generally out, visiting his patients: she had only her two little children; and she was frightened on their account too! And now, when she suddenly came upon Ernst on the stairs, she became frightened again; and she could see that the children also were frightened. No, she was not happy and she was angry with herself at not being pluckier and choosing poverty and economy—oh, how sick of it she was!—at the Hague rather than the so-called luxury of this haunted house. And such luxury: the furniture old, the carpets worn, the table very simple; really, a simple, middle-class life and one that cost thousands and thousands, as Addie would assure her on the first of the month, when handing her her allowance for herself and the children! With those thousands and thousands they could surely have had a more genuine luxury, if Papa and Mamma and Addie hadn't been such soft-hearted fools as to take in that pack of Uncle Gerrit's: you could do good and still think of yourself. . . . With those thousands—but without the pack—they could start and furnish the house in a better, less stuffy and more modern style; paint all those brown, gloomy doors a cheerful white and gold; have cheerful new carpets, curtains and furniture, with flowers and Japanese fans in the conservatory; make a summer-residence of the house and in the winter live at the Hague, keep their carriage, have their opera-box, go out and entertain. . . . They could have lived like that, Papa, Mamma and Addie, if they had wished, for the thousands were there to do it with; at the Hague, Addie, as Baron van der Welcke, could have acquired a smart practice, the good-looking, pleasant fellow that he was! . . . That was how they might have lived, deriving some enjoyment from their money; and even then they could very well have helped Aunt Adeline with the up-bringing of her children; and everyone would have thought it very handsome of them and no one would have thought that they were living or acting unreasonably or selfishly or inexplicably, whereas now! . . . Whereas now! . . . Locking themselves up in the dark haunted house, all through the long, long winter, with nothing but sick people, all through the long, long winter, with nothing but sick people, nothing but mad people about them! . . .
Fortunately it had begun to freeze. It was as though this glorious ice had brought about a friendlier feeling: Gerdy was not so very horrid; Guy skated with Mathilde because she was a good, finished skater, fond of good, finished, unwearied skating; and the crisp crystal cold, after all the days of rain and storm, made everybody cheerful and indulgent. Oh, those skating-trips! First a short journey by train; and then along the waterways, endlessly, endlessly! And she was so grateful when Addie, one single morning, was able to escape going to all those sick, poor people, whom he had to visit daily—she hated the sight and the feel of him when he returned—and went with her, for half a day's skating! And she took possession of her husband, glad to have him with her, with crossed hands, swaying evenly and rhythmically with him, in the rhythm of hip to hip, in the swing of firmly-shod feet, while she cut through the broad blast of the wind with her swift, powerful movement, till her eyes and face shone and she was drunk with swallowing the ice-cold distance, shooting far ahead in canal-vistas between the snow-clad meadows, under the low-hanging skies, swept clean as with giant besoms of wind, while the horizons of skeleton trees dwindled and faded away, and the wind-mills, with the broad, black, silent gestures of their sails, loomed up and disappeared as she shot past.
Fortunately it had begun to freeze. It seemed to her as if, suddenly, in these days of winter pastime, she had found her husband again, as if she half felt that he was finding her again! He did love her then? He was not quite indifferent to her? Through her glove, she felt his hand glowing in hers; she felt the swift rhythm of their hips as a voluptuousness; and she could have hung round his neck because he took her with him like that, rushing, rushing over the straight streaks of endless smooth ice!
"Addie, Addie, you do love me, don't you?"
Amid the swift movement she looked at him and laughed; and his eyes turned, with a little laugh, to her. Oh, how they knew how to laugh, those great, earnest eyes of his, with the often strange blue spark, like a flash of secret fire, which she sometimes did not understand but which she understood now! For what else did it mean, that flash, than that he loved her too, that he thought her pretty? And was he not telling her with his eyes as he had often told her in words that he loved her because she was so attractive, so palpably healthy and pretty and that it was this that attracted him in her: her pink-and-white complexion, her rounded form, her young and vigorous limbs? Then she felt him akin to herself, a young man, a man made young again, a man with a clear, materialistic soul; and in this man she read the young doctor, who loved her healthy body, her rich, healthy blood, weary as he must be of the morbid nerves of his mother's family! Oh, those Van Lowe's: she hated them all, she felt herself to belong to another race! And was Addie himself, like his father, not healthy, simply healthy and manly, a good-looking young fellow, a man, even though he was almost prematurely old? Was he, in the very smallest degree, a Van Lowe, with all their nerves, the morbidity, their semilunacy, so sickly in constitution one and all, that she could not stand any one of them? Bah, they turned her stomach: Adeletje, always ailing; Marietje, really very ill; Alex, so weak; Emilie, so crushed and melancholy: a Van Naghel, she, but still with Van Lowe blood in her: and Guy was a nice-looking boy, but so dull and sleepy; and Gerdy was a nice-looking girl, but full of eccentric ways, of course because she was a Van Lowe! Bah, they turned her stomach, that always ailing, half-mad family of her mother-in-law's, who had ensconced themselves in their house; and it was lucky that in Addie she found simply a Van der Welcke, Baron van der Welcke, a healthy fellow belonging to a healthy, normal family. That was how she looked at it: normal. That was how she looked at it while she let her husband swing her along the endless, endless streaks of ice; the snow-fields flew past; the horizons of leafless trees approached, changed their aspect, disappeared; the spreading sails of the windmills loomed up, disappeared, loomed up, with the silent tragedy of their despairing gestures outlined against the sky. That was how she looked at it: normal. True, Addie employed hypnotism from time to time, but that was the fashion nowadays: he could not lag behind when medicine was making progress in all directions. . . . And, utterly blind to the really duplicate soul that was her husband's, she saw him merely single, simple and normal, because she remembered now, in the joy of their sport on the ice, the vigorous embrace of his arms, the hunger and thirst of his unsated kisses. . . . Normal, quite normal; and oh, she felt herself so strong now to win him, to bind him to herself, because she herself was comely and healthy and normal: his delight, when he was tired of every sort of ailment; his luxury, which already had given him two pretty children. . . . People were skating in front of her, behind her, like the pair of them; and she was proud that she was skating with her husband; she would not let him go; he was hers; he was hers. . . .
It was fortunate that it had begun to freeze. They had had three fine days and this was the fourth; and already—alas!—a touch of thaw seemed to slacken the crystal-clear firmness of the sky which had been so transparent at first. But still the ice was in no way impaired; a trip was planned and Mathilde felt sure that Addie would come. And great was her disappointment when he said:
"Not to-day, Tilly. I must go to my patients this morning."
"You managed with the afternoon yesterday."
"I can't wait so long this time: there's an old woman who expects me. And Marietje isn't so well to-day: Mary, I mean, as Mamma calls her."
"Then I sha'n't go either," she said, crossly.
"Why shouldn't you go?" he persisted, gently.
"You enjoy it so."
"With you."
"I can't come this morning."
"Yes, you can . . . to please me."
"No, I can't come this morning, Tilly. But you would please me by going."
"I like skating with you."
His eyes laughed.
"And do you imagine that I don't enjoy it?"
"You don't love me."
"You know better."
"Then come."
"Not this morning."
"You're always so self-willed."
"Because I mustn't go this morning. . . . Be sensible now and go without me."
She shrugged her shoulders:
"All right, I'll go, I'll go."
It was just after breakfast; and the children were still downstairs. He played with them: Constant toddled to him on shaky legs; Addie held Jetje on his arm and rubbed his moustache against her milk-white little face, to make her laugh and crow. A soft feeling of bliss welled within him, because he was pressing against him a life that was his life, a small shrine of frail and tender child body in which flashed an atom of soul that laughed and crowed and lived. And the baby was so ordinary, a baby just like other babies, when he looked at it as a doctor; and the baby was so mystic when, as a father, he pressed it to himself. What was more mystic than a little child? What was more mysterious and higher in divine incomprehensibility than a little child, a little child born just ordinarily a few months ago? What was more divinely mysterious and mystic than birth and the dawn of life? Where did it come from, the baby with its tiny atom of soul, the baby which his wife had borne him? As a doctor, he laughed at his own naïve question; as a father and man, he grew grave in awe of it. . . . He felt two beings within himself, more and more clearly every day; two beings long maintained in a strange equilibrium, but now trembling, as at a test. He felt two within himself: the ordinary, normal, practical, almost prematurely old, earnest young scientist and doctor; and within that soul his second soul: a soul of mystery, of divine incomprehensibility; a soul full of mysticism; a soul full of unfathomable force, a force which unloosed a magic that was salutary to many. . . . And, when that magic passed out of him, salutary to many, he would feel himself normal, practical and serious, but suddenly blind for himself, as though he knew nothing for himself, because he was two souls, too much two souls to know things for himself. . . . Oh, what was more incomprehensible than the essence of life, what more incomprehensible than himself, what more incomprehensible than this little baby and that little toddling boy! . . . And it was born so simply, in the womb of a healthy woman, and it grew up so ordinarily; and that very ordinary growth was as great a riddle as anything or everything. . . . Oh, who knew, what did anyone know? . . . And the strangest thing of all was that he knew, with a strange consciousness for others, what to do, what to say, how to act; that he had known, unconsciously, as a child, when he had spoken words of consolation to his father, to his mother; later, consciously, with a salutary and sacred knowledge, not alone for father and mother but for others, for so many, for so many!
Now he handed her back to the nurse, his little Jetje, his little riddle of birth and the dawn of life, his little atom of soul; now he stroked the silky curls of Constant, who was clinging to his legs, and went upstairs, knowing. How strange that was in him, that calm, quiet knowledge, that certainty of his will, which would shine forth in a setting of calm speech! . . . He went up the stairs, to the top floor, to what used to be Guy's room, where Guy had generally sat in the morning bending over his books and maps, until, in an impulse of youthful restlessness, he would wander through the house, looking for his sisters or aunt. Marietje now occupied the room, or Mary, as she was usually called. . . . Addie knocked and she asked who was there, kept him waiting for a moment in her modesty as she nervously tidied something in her room and put away her clothes. When he entered, she was sitting in a big arm-chair, looking very pale. . . .
But Mathilde, angry that Addie had refused to come skating, suddenly felt a violent jealousy, a violent, dagger-sharp jealousy in her soul, because Addie had spoken of patients who expected him and because he had spoken of Marietje. And, in her room, undecided whether to go or not, whether to stay indoors and sulk or to seek her amusement without her husband, she suddenly felt an irresistible impulse to follow her husband upstairs. She went; and, in order to keep in countenance should she meet anybody, she resolved that she would pretend to be fetching a coat hanging in a wardrobe-closet next to Marietje's room. The wardrobes were used for clothes that were not worn every day. Entering the closet, she softly closed the door and held her keys in her hand: if she were surprised, she would quietly open the big wardrobe. Meanwhile she listened at the partition. And she heard the voices of her husband and Marietje as though they were sounding across a distance and an obstacle:
"How did you sleep, Marietje?"
"I haven't slept at all."
"What was the matter?"
"All night long I had a buzzing in my ears. . . . It was a roaring and roaring like the sea. . . . I wanted to get up and come downstairs . . . to Auntie, but I was afraid to . . . and I didn't want to disturb the house. . . . It was just like waves. . . . I didn't sleep at all. . . . And then I dream, I dream while I lie awake. . . . All sorts of things flash out before me, like visions. . . . And it makes the night so long, so endless. . . . And I feel so tired now and above all so hopeless. I shall never get well."
"Yes, you will."
"No, Addie. I have always been ill."
"You must have a quiet sleep now."
"I sha'n't be able to."
"Yes. Come and lie here on the sofa. I'll draw the blinds."
"Addie!"
"What is it, Marietje?"
"Do you know what I should like?"
"What?"
"I should like, when you have put me to sleep, as you did yesterday and the day before, I should like never to wake again, to remain asleep always. I should like your voice to lull me to sleep for ever and ever."
"And why don't you want to go on living? You're young and you will get better."
"Tell me what's the matter with me."
"Don't think about that."
"My body is ill, but isn't my soul ill too?"
"Don't think about that; and lie down . . . keep very still . . . give me your hand. . . . Hush, sleep is coming, peaceful sleep. . . . The eyelids are closing. . . . The eyelids feel heavier and heavier. . . . The eyelids are closing. . . . Heavier and heavier the eyelids. . . . You can't lift them, you can't lift them. . . . The hand grows heavier and heavier; you can't lift the hand, . . . The whole body is growing heavy, heavy, heavier and heavier with sleep, peaceful sleep, coming, coming. . . ."
Mathilde listened breathlessly at the partition. All was silent now in Marietje's room; Mathilde no longer heard Addie's soothing voice summoning sleep, the magic of peaceful sleep. And suddenly, as she listened, she grew frightened, she, Mathilde, grew frightened of things which she did not understand, grew frightened as she was frightened when, in the evening, late, she went along the dark passages and the dark staircases. And yet it was morning now and the wintry reflexion of the snow, a little faded by the first touch of the thaw, fell shrill into the narrow closet, without any shade of mystery. . . .
She trembled where she knelt, frightened of what she did not understand. She trembled and in her trembling became conscious of a fierce jealousy not only of Marietje but of all Addie's patients, those outside, whom she had never seen, living in their poor little houses, which she did not know. But she was most jealous of Marietje. Was the girl asleep now? . . . She heard Addie's footstep, heard his hand on the handle of the door, heard him go out. He was going out . . . Marietje was no doubt asleep. . . . She waited a few seconds longer, heard the stairs creak lightly under his feet as he went down; and now, after her fears and jealousy, she was seized with curiosity. She left the wardrobe-closet, listened in the passage outside Marietje's door. And suddenly, grasping the handle firmly and carefully, she opened the door and saw Marietje slumbering peacefully in the darkened room, her face white and relaxed on the sofa-cushions. Then she closed the door again and went downstairs. She was no longer frightened, no longer curious; only her jealousy burnt fiercely within her, like an angry fever. She had just time to put on her things and pick up her skates: Guy, Gerdy and their friends were waiting for her downstairs.