CHAPTER I
When Gerrit woke that morning, his head felt misty and tired, as though weighed down by a mountain landscape, by a whole stack of mist-mountains that bore heavily upon his brain. His eyes remained closed; and, though he was waking, his nightmare still seemed to cast an after-shadow: a nightmare that he was being crushed by great rocky avalanches, which he felt pressing deep down inside his head, though he was conscious that the red daylight was already dawning through his closed eyelids. He lay there, big and burly, sprawling in his bed, beside Adeline's empty bed: he felt that her bed was empty, that there was no one in the room. The curtains had been drawn back, but the blinds were still down. And, though he was awake, his eyelids remained closed and through them he saw only the red of the daylight as through two pink shells: it seemed as if he would never be able to lift those two leaden lids from his eyes.
This after-weariness flowed slowly through his great, burly body. He felt physically rotten and did not quite know why. The day before, he had merely dined with some brother-officers at the restaurant of the Scheveningen Kurhaus: a farewell dinner to one of their number who was being transferred to Velno; and the dinner had been a long one; there was a good deal of champagne drunk afterwards; and they had gone on gaily to make a night of it. One or two of the married ones had refused, good-naturedly, but had come along all the same, so as to not spoil sport; Garrit had come too, in his genial way. At last, he had decided that that was about enough and that the road which the others were taking was not his road: he was one of you sensible, moderate people, who never went to extremes; he was very fond of his little wife; indeed, he already felt some compunction at the idea of perhaps waking her at that time of night, when he went into the bedroom, after undressing. As a matter of fact, she did wake; but he had at once reassured her with his gruff, good-natured voice and she had gone to sleep again. He had stayed awake a long time, lying there with wide-open eyes, angry at not being able to sleep, at having forgotten how to take a glass of wine with rest. At last, in the small hours, when it was quite light, he had slowly dozed off into a misty dreamland; and gradually the mist had turned into solid landscapes, had become a stack of heavy mountains, which pressed heavily upon his brain until they crumbled down in rocky avalanches.
Now, at last, he shook off the strange heaviness, took his bath; and, when he saw himself naked— the expanse of clean, white skin, the great body built on heavy, sinewy lines, a good-looking, fair-haired chap still, despite his eight-and-forty years— he wondered that he sometimes had those queer moody fits, like a lady's lap-dog. And now, as he squeezed the streaming water over himself out of the great sponge, he tried to pooh-pooh those moody fits, shrugged his shoulders at them, muttering to himself as he kept on squeezing the sponge, squeezing out the water until it splashed and spattered all around him. He had the sensation of washing the inertia from him; he drew a deep breath, flung out his chest, felt his strength returning and, still naked, took his dumb-bells and worked away with then, proud of a pair of biceps that were like two rolling cannon-balls. His eyes recovered their usual jovial expression, which also played around his fair moustache with a roguish sparkle, as of inward mockery; the wrinkles vanished from his forehead, which was gradually acquiring a loftier arch as the crop of fair hair on his head diminished; and the blood seemed to be flowing normally through his big body, after the bath and the five minutes' exercise, for his cheeks, now shaved, became tinged with an almost pink flush. And he simply could not make up his mind to dress: he looked at himself, at his big, strong, clean body, which he kneaded yet once more, as proud of his muscles as a woman of her graceful figure.
Then he quickly put on his uniform and went downstairs to breakfast. The children surrounded him instantly; and he at once felt himself the father, full of a father's affection, passionately fond as he was of his children. He was only just in time to see Alex and Guy go off with their satchels: the school was close by and they went by themselves, two sturdy little fellows of nine and seven; but the other children, all except the eldest, Marietje, who was also at school, were eating their bread-and-butter at the round table, while Adeline sat in front of her tea-tray. And Gerrit, in the little dining-room, at the round table, felt himself become normal again, quite normal, because of his wife and his children.
The dining-room was small and very simply furnished, containing only what was strictly necessary. Adeline, now thirty-two, looked older: a plump little mother, with not much to say for herself, full of little cares for her little brood; and Gerrit, noisy and clamorous, filling the whole little room with the gay thunder of his drill-sergeant's voice, was full of incessant jokes and fun. There were half-a-dozen younger ones round the table: two girls, Adèletje and Gerdy; three boys: Constant, Jan and Piet; and the latest baby, a girl, Klaasje. Gerrit had given the youngest three their names, in his annoyance at the high-sounding names of the others: Alexander, Guy, Geraldine, christened after Adeline's family, while Marie and Constant were called after Mamma and Papa van Lowe.
"Look here, not so many of those grand names," Gerrit had said, when Jan was coming. And, after Klaasje[1]—a name which the whole family considered hideous—Gerrit said:
"If we have another, it shall be called after me, Gerrit,[2] whether it's a boy or a girl."
"Gertrude, surely, if it's a girl?" Adeline had suggested.
"No," said Gerrit, "she shall be Gerrit all the same."
Gerrit's manias were Mamma van Lowe's despair; but so far there had been no question of a grand-daughter Gerrit.
Gerrit had no favourites. His long arms swung round as many children as he could get hold of and he drew them on his knees, between his knees, almost under his feet; and by some miraculous chance he had never broken an arm or leg of any of them, so that Adeline and the children themselves were never afraid and only Mamma van Lowe, when she witnessed Gerrit's embraces, went through a thousand terrors. And to the children the joy of life seemed to be embodied in their father, a joy which they soon came to picture instinctively as a tall man, an hussar, with a loud voice and any number of jokes, a pair of high riding-boots and a clanking sword.
Gerdy was a tiny child of seven, who loved being petted; and, as soon as she saw Gerrit, she hung on to him, nestled on his knees, rubbed her head against the braid of his uniform, tugged at his moustache, dug her little fists into his eyes. Or else she would throw her arms round his neck and stay like that, quietly looking at the others, because she had taken possession of Papa.
This time too she left her chair, crept under the table, climbed on Gerrit's knees and ate out of his plate, although Adeline tried to prevent her. Gerrit ate his breakfast, with Gerdy on his lap; and the childish voices twittered all around him, like the voices of so many little birds. And this twittering produced a brightness in his heart, so that he began to smile and then to poke fun at Klaasje, the baby in her baby-chair, sitting beside him rather stupidly. Klaasje, who did not talk much yet, was still a little backward and just fretted and whimpered.
Latterly, he had felt a strange pitying tenderness when he looked at his children, as though surprised at all this dainty, flaxen life which he had created, he who had always said:
"Children are what you want; without children you have no life; without children nothing remains of you; children carry you on."
He had married, fairly late, a very young wife; and that had been the reason of his marriage, the root-idea: to beget children, as many children as possible, because it seemed to him a dismal thought that nothing of him should survive. And now, when he looked around him, now that Marietje, Adèletje and Alex were twelve and ten and nine, he sometimes had, deep down in his heart, a strange feeling of wonder and pity, even of sadness, as though the thought had suddenly come to him:
"Where do they all come from and why are they all round me?"
A strange, wondering astonishment, as though at the riddle of childbirth, the secret of human life, which suddenly became impenetrable to him, the father and husband. Then he would give a furtive glance to see if he could discover that same wondering astonishment in Adeline; but no, she quietly went her way, the gentle, fair-haired little mother, the domesticated little wife, very simple in soul and limited in mind, who had quietly, as a duty, borne her husband her fair-haired children and was bringing them up as she thought was right. No, he noticed nothing in her and he was the more surprised, because, after all, she was the mother and therefore ought really to have felt that strange thrill of wonder even more than he did.
"And all these are my children," he thought.
And, while he boisterously tickled Gerdy and pretended to eat up Klaasje's bread-and-butter, like the great tease that he was, he thought:
"Now these are all my children and Adeline's children."
And he was filled with wonder as he saw them around him, the pretty, flaxen-haired children: the wonder of an artist at his work, wonder such as a sculptor might feel on contemplating his statue, or a writer reading his book, or a composer listening to his melodies, a simple, wondering astonishment that he should have made all that, a wondering astonishment at his own power and strength.
And then, in the midst of his astonishment, he suddenly grew frightened, frightened at having heedless begotten so much life simply because he had been depressed by the thought that, if he had no children, nothing of him would survive after his death. Yes, they would survive him now, his children, his flaxen-haired little tribe, his nine; life would scatter them, the little brothers and sisters who were now all there together like little birds in the nest of the parental house, sheltered by father and mother; and what would they be like, what would their life be, what their sorrow, what their joy, when he himself, their father, was old or dead? He was afraid; a terror shot through him strangely enough at that breakfast-table where he sat eating with Gerdy out of one plate and teasing little Jan with his jokes, which made the boy crow aloud. And the strangest thing to him was that no one should suspect what he was thinking, that it was hidden from them all, from Adeline, from his mother, his brothers and sisters, because in appearance he was a great robust fellow, a sort of Goth, a civilized barbarian, with his flaxen head and his white, sinewy body, devoted to sport and racing, revelling in his work as an officer; outwardly almost commonplace, with his solid, healthy normality; loud of voice, a little vulgar in his jests, even exaggerating his noisiness and vulgarity out of a sort of bravado, an instinctive desire to hide his real self. Yes, that was it: he hid himself, he was invisible; nobody saw him, nobody knew him: not his wife, nor his family, nor his friends; nobody knew him in those strange fits of giddiness and faintness which suddenly seemed to empty his brain, as though all the blood were flowing out of it; nobody knew the secret of his temperateness, the hidden weakness that would not even allow him to take two glasses of champagne without that horrible congestion at his temples which made him feel as if his head were bursting; nobody, not even the wife at his side, knew of that heavy, oppressive nightmare which came to him when, after lying awake for hours, he dozed off, that nightmare of piled-up mountains and rocky avalanches weighing upon his brain; nobody knew of his fears and anxieties about his children, while outwardly he was the gay, jovial father, "a healthy brute," as some of his brother-officers had called him.
Sometimes, he had silently thought of the designation and smiled at it, because he knew himself to be neither a brute nor healthy. Gradually, almost mechanically, he had gone on showing that unreal side, posing successfully as the strong man, with cast-iron muscles and a simple, cast-iron conception of life: to be a good husband, a good father and a good officer; while inwardly he was gnawed by a queer monster that devoured his marrow: he sometimes pictured it as a worm with legs. A great, fat worm, you know; a beastly crawling thing, which rooted with its legs in his carcase, which lived in his back and slowly ate him up, year by year, the damned rotten thing! Of course, it wasn't a worm: he knew that, he knew it wasn't a worm, a worm with legs; but it was just like it, you know, just like a worm, a centipede, rooting away in his back. Then he felt himself all over, proud notwithstanding of his sound limbs, his well-trained, supple muscles, his youthful appearance, though he was no longer so very young; and then it seemed to him incomprehensible that it could be as it was, that that confounded centipede could keep worrying through those limbs, at those muscles, right into the marrow of his strong body. Nothing on earth would ever have induced him to see a doctor about it: he took walking-exercise, horse-exercise, rode at the head of his squadron; and the brazen blare of the trumpets, the dull thud of the horses' hoofs, the sight of his hussars—his lads—would make him really happy, would make him forget the confounded centipede for a morning. As he sat his horse, with head erect, twisting his fair moustache above his curved lip, a burly, straight-backed figure, he would say to himself:
"Come, get rid of all those tom-fool ideas and be a man—d'ye hear?—not a nervy, hypochondriacal girl. You and your centipede! Rot! I just had a peg yesterday; and that, damn it, is what I mustn't do: no peg at all, not one! . . . Perhaps not even any wine at all . . . and then not more than one cigar after dinner. . . . But, you see, giving up drinking, giving up smoking: that's the difficulty. . . ."
Gerrit had just finished his breakfast and was putting little Gerdy down, when there was a violent ring at the front-door bell. Adeline gave a start; the children shouted and laughed:
"Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling!" cried little Piet, mimicking the sound with his mug against his plate.
"Hush!" said Adeline, turning pale. She had seen Dorine through the window, walking up and down outside the door excitedly, waiting for it to be opened. "Hush, it's Auntie Dorine. . . . I do hope there's nothing wrong at Grand-mamma's! . . ."
But now the maid had opened the door and Dorine rushed into the room excitedly, perspiring under her straw hat, with a face as red as fire. She was in a furious temper; and it was impossible at first to make out what she said:
"Just think . . . just think . . ."
She could not get her words out; the passion of rage seething inside her made her incapable of speaking; moreover, she was out of breath, because she had been walking very fast. Her hair, which was beginning early to turn grey, stuck out in rat-tails from under her sailor-hat, which bobbed up and down on her head; her clothes looked even more carelessly flung on than usual; and her eyes blinked with a look of angry malevolence, a look of spite and discontent gleaming through tears of annoyance.
"Just think . . . just think . . ."
"Come, Sissy, calm yourself and tell us what's the matter!" said Gerrit, admonishing her in a good-natured, paternal, jovial fashion.
"Well then—just think—that horrible creature came to Mamma first thing this morning . . . and made a scene . . ."
"What horrible creature?"
"Why, are you all deaf? I'm telling you, I began by telling you: Miss Velders, the creature who keeps the rooms where Ernst lives . . . came and made a frightful scene . . . and upset Mamma awfully . . . and Mamma sent for me. Why me? Why always me? What can I do? I'm not a man! Why not Karel? Why not you? . . . Oh dear no: Mamma of course sent for me! . . . Off I went to Mamma's, found Mamma quite ill, that horrible creature there. . . . Then I went off with Miss Velders . . . first to Karel's . . . but Karel was absolutely indifferent . . . a selfish pig, a selfish pig: that's what Karel is. . . . Miss Velders had to go home. . . . Then I went off to Ernst . . . and, when I had seen him, I came on to you. . . . Gerrit, you're a man . . . you know about things, you know what to do; I'm a woman . . . and I do not know what's to be done!"
Her voice was now a wail and she burst into tears.
"But, Sissy, I don't yet know what's happened!" said Gerrit, quietly.
"Why, Ernst, I'm telling you . . . Ernst, I'm telling you . . ."
"What about him?"
"He's mad!"
"He's mad?"
"Yes, he's mad! . . . He wanted to go out into the street last night: he's mad! . . ."
Adeline had rung for the nurse, who took the children away.
"He's mad?" Gerrit repeated, passing his hand over his forehead.
"He's mad," Dorine repeated. "He's mad. He's mad."
"Oh, well," said Gerrit, in a vague, conciliatory tone, "Ernst is always queer!"
"But now he's mad, I tell you!" Dorine screamed, in a shrill voice. "If you don't believe me, go and see him. Don't you see, something's got to be done! I, I don't know what. I'm a woman, do you hear, and I'm utterly unnerved myself. Why didn't Mamma send for you at once? Why me? Why me? And Karel . . . Karel is a nincompoop. Karel at once said that he had a cold, that he couldn't go out. Karel? Karel's a nincompoop. . . . A cold, indeed! A cold, when your brother's gone mad all of a sudden! . . ."
"But, when you say mad . . . is he really mad?" asked Gerrit, doubtfully.
"Well, go and see him for yourself," said Dorine, fixing her irritated gaze full on Gerrit. "You go and see him for yourself; and, when you've seen him as I've seen him . . . then you won't ask me if he's mad. . . ."
"All right," said Gerrit. "I'll go at once. I must look in at barracks first and then . . ."
"Oh, you must look in at barracks first," said Dorine, angrily. "Of course you must look in at barracks first. And then, if you have a moment to spare . . ."
"I can go from here," said Gerrit, dejectedly. "Are you coming?"
"I?" screamed Dorine. "Do you think I'm going back with you? No, thank you. I've told Mamma, I've told you and now I'm going home to bed. For, if I'm not careful and go trotting about wherever you send me, I shall go off my head myself. . . . I? I'm going to bed. . . ."
She rose, walked round the table, sat down again; and suddenly her voice changed, tears of pity came into her eyes and she wailed:
"Poor Mamma! She's quite ill. . . . What an idea of that horrible creature's, to go running straight to Mamma. Why frighten her like that? Why not first have told one of us? . . . I'll just go round to Constance . . . and to Adolphine: then they can console Mamma a bit. . . . You call in at Paul's on your way: he may be able to help you, if there's anything to be done. . . . But, after that, I'm going home to bed."
"Yes," said Gerrit, "I'll go now."
And then at once he began to hesitate: ought he not to go to barracks first? Should he go first to Paul . . . or straight to Ernst? He went into the passage, strapped on his sword, put on his cap. Dorine followed him out:
"So you're going to him? Well, when you've seen him . . . you won't ask me again if he's mad."
And she made a rush for the front-door.
"Dorine . . ."
"No, thank you," she said, excitedly. "I'm going to Constance; to Adolphine . . . and then . . . then I shall go home to bed."
She had opened the door and, in another moment, she was gone. Gerrit saw Adeline weeping, wringing her hands in terror:
"Oh, Gerrit!"
"Come, come, I don't expect it's so very bad. Ernst has always been queer."
"I shall go to Mamma, Gerrit."
"Yes, darling, but don't make her nervous. Tell her that I'm on my way to Ernst and that I don't believe he's so bad as all that. Dorine always exaggerates and she hasn't told us what Ernst is like. . . . There, good-bye, darling, and don't cry. Ernst has always been queer."
He flung his great-coat over his shoulders, for the weather was like November, cold and wet. Outside, the pelting rain beat against his face; and he saw Dorine ahead of him, wobbling down the street under her umbrella, with that angry, straddling walk of hers. She turned out of the Bankastraat on the left, into the Kerkhoflaan, on her way to Constance. He took the tram and, in spite of the rain, stood on the platform, with his military great-coat flapping round his burly figure, because he was stifling, as with a painful congestion, and felt his veins, surfeited with blood, hammering at his temples:
"That confounded champagne last night!" he thought. "I don't feel clear in my head. . . . I'd better go to Paul first. . . . Yes, I'd better go to Paul first. . . . Or . . . or shall I go straight to Ernst? . . ."
He did not know what to decide and yet he had to make up his mind while his tram was going along the Dennenweg, for Ernst lived in the Nieuwe Uitleg. But, because he did not know, he remained on the tram, on the platform, with his back bent under the pelting rain; and it was not until he reached the Houtstraat that he jumped down, his sword clanking between his legs.
Paul lived in rooms above a hosier's shop. Gerrit found his brother still in bed:
"Ernst is mad," he said, at once.
"He's always been that," replied Paul, yawning.
"Yes, but . . . it appears that he's absolutely mad now," said Gerrit.
He felt so seedy and heavy-witted that he could hardly speak: his swollen tongue lolled between his teeth. However, he told Paul about Dorine's visit:
"We must go on to Ernst, Paul, and see how much there is in it."
Paul was listening now:
"Ye-es," he drawled. "But I must dress myself first. You see, the curious thing about this world is that, whatever happens, we have first to dress ourselves . . ."
"I was dressed," laughed Gerrit.
"Oh, really!" said Paul, amiably. "Well, that was lucky."
There was a note of sarcasm in his tone which escaped Gerrit, in his dull condition.
Paul, stretching himself, decided to get up. And for a moment he remained standing in front of Gerrit, in his pink pyjamas:
"Do you think Ernst is really mad?" he asked.
"Perhaps it's not so bad as that," Gerrit ventured.
"Everybody is a little mad," said Paul.
"Oh, I say!" said Gerrit, in an offended voice.
"No, not you," said Paul, genially. "Not you or I. But everybody else has a tile loose. I'm going to have my bath."
"Don't be long."
"All right."
Paul disappeared in his little bathroom; and Gerrit, who was suffocating, flung open the windows, so that the bedroom suddenly became filled with the patter of the summer rain. And Gerrit looked around him. He had hardly ever been here, at Paul's; and he was now struck by the exquisite tidiness of the rooms. Paul had a bedroom, a sitting-room and a dressing-room in which he had installed his tub.
"What a tidy beggar he is!" thought Gerrit and looked around him.
The bedroom was small and contained nothing but a brass bedstead, a walnut looking-glass wardrobe, a walnut table and two chairs. There was not a single object lying about. The pillows on the bed showed just the faintest impress of Paul's head; the bed-clothes he had thrown well back, when he got up, very neatly, as though to avoid creasing them.
Gerrit heard the ripple of water in the dressing-room. It was as if Paul were squeezing out the sponge with exquisite precaution, so as not to splash a single drop outside his tub. The bath lasted a long time. Then all was silence.
"Can't you hurry a bit?" cried Gerrit, impatiently.
"All right," Paul called back, in placid tones.
"What are you up to? I don't hear you moving."
"I'm doing my feet."
"My dear fellow, can't you get on a bit faster? Or shall I go on?"
"No, no, I wouldn't miss going with you. But I must get dressed first, mustn't I?"
"But can't you make haste about it?"
"Very well, I'll hurry."
There came a few sharp, ticking sounds as of scissors and nail-files that were being put down on the ringing marble. Gerrit breathed again. But, when everything became silent once more, Gerrit, after an interval, cried:
"Paul!"
"Yes?"
"Will you soon be ready now?"
"Yes, yes, but don't be impatient. I'm shaving. You wouldn't have me cut myself?"
"No, of course not. But we must look sharp: you don't know what sort of state Ernst may be in."
Paul did not answer; and Gerrit heard nothing more, except the swish of the rain. He heaved a deep sigh, moved about restlessly, stretching out his long legs. After some minutes, which seemed hours to Gerrit, Paul opened the door, but closed it again at once:
"Gerrit, will you please shut the window!" he cried, angrily.
Gerrit fastened the window; the rain no longer pattered into the room. Paul now came in: he was in a sleeveless flannel vest and knitted-silk drawers; a pair of striped socks clung tightly to his ankles; his feet were in slippers.
"Good Lord, my dear chap, have you only got as far as that?" asked Gerrit, irritably.
Paul looked at him, a little superciliously:
"No doubt you fling yourself into your uniform in three minutes; but I can't do that. Since one has to dress one's self and can't just shake one's feathers like a bird, I at least want to dress myself with care . . . for otherwise I feel disgusting."
"But do remember . . . if Ernst . . ."
"Ernst won't go any madder than he is because I dress myself properly and keep you waiting a quarter of an hour longer. I can't dress any quicker."
"Because you don't choose to!"
"Because I don't choose to?" retorted Paul, pale with indignation. "Because I don't choose to? Because I can't. I can't do it. Do you want me to go as I am? In my drawers? Very well; then send for a cab. I'll go like this, just as I am. But, if you want me to dress myself, you must have a little patience."
"Oh, all right!" Gerrit sighed, wearily. "Oof! Get on with your dressing."
Paul opened a door of his wardrobe. Gerrit saw his shirts lying very neatly arranged, coloured shirts and white shirts. Paul stood hesitating for a moment, looked out of the window at the rain and at last selected from the coloured stack a shirt with black stripes. He put the stack straight and hunted for his studs in his jewel-case.
"How much longer will you be?" asked Gerrit.
"Ten minutes," said Paul, lying angrily, though he was inwardly delighted to make Gerrit lose his temper.
He found a set of niello studs and links that went well with the black-striped shirt and deliberately and neatly put them into the front and cuffs.
Gerrit rose impatiently and walked up and down the room. Through the open partition-door, he saw the bathroom and was surprised to find everything tidied up, with not a drop of water anywhere.
"Do you do your wash-hand-stand yourself?" asked Gerrit, in amazement.
"Of course," said Paul, who was now getting into his shirt. "Did you think I left that to the servant? Never! She has nothing to do but empty my slop-pail. I do my tub, my basin, my soap-trays, everything myself. I have separate cloths for everything: there they are, hanging on a rail. The world is dirty enough as it is, however tidy one may be."
"In that case," said Gerrit, astounded, "you haven't been so long after all!"
"It's method," replied Paul, airily, though secretly flattered by Gerrit's remark. "When you have method, nothing takes long."
And, basking in Gerrit's praise, he rang, while pulling on his trousers, and told the maid to bring his breakfast:
"I'll only take a hurried bite," he said, amiably, just bending the points of his stand-up collar at the tips.
Then he picked out a tie, in a large Japanese box.
"By Jove, what a number of ties you have!"
"Yes, I have a lot of them," said Paul, proudly. "They're my only luxury."
And in fact, when the maid pushed back the folding-doors, revealing the sitting-room, which Paul, loathing other people's furniture, had furnished himself, in addition to his other two rooms, Gerrit was struck with the plainness of it: comfortable, but exceedingly simple.
"I adore pretty things," said Paul, "just as much as our mad Ernst. But I can't afford them: I haven't the money."
"Why, you have the same income that he has."
"Yes, but he doesn't dress. To dress yourself well is expensive."
Paul's dressing was now finished; and he had turned up the bottoms of his trousers very high, showing nearly the whole of his well-cut button-boots. He merely drank a cup of tea, ate a piece of dry bread.
"Butter's so greasy," he said, "when you've just brushed your teeth."
And he went back to his bathroom to rinse his mouth once more.
He was ready now, took his umbrella and followed Gerrit down the stairs. Gerrit opened the door.
"What beastly weather!" growled Paul, furiously, in the passage.
He drew his umbrella carefully out of its case, while Gerrit was already outside, with his blue military coat flapping round his shoulders, because he had not put his arms through the sleeves.
"What a filthy mess!" raved Paul. "This damned, rotten mud!" he cursed, pale with rage.
He had folded up the umbrella-case and slipped it into his pocket and was now opening his umbrella: he seemed to fear that it would get wet.
"Come on!" he said, seething with inward rage.
And, taking a desperate resolve, he stepped aside, fiercely slammed the front-door and carefully placed his feet upon the pavement:
"We'll wait for the tram," he said.
He glared at the rain from under his umbrella:
"What a dirty sky!" he grumbled, while Gerrit paced up and down, only half-listening to what Paul said. "What a damned dirty sky! Dirty rain, filthy streets, mud, nothing but mud. The whole world is mud. Properly speaking, everything is mud. Heavens, will the world ever be clean and the people in it clean: towns with clean streets, people with clean bodies? At present, they're mud, nothing but mud: their streets, their bodies and their filthy souls! . . ."
The tram came and they had to get in; and Paul, in his heart of hearts, regretted this for, as long as he had stood muttering under his umbrella, he could still yield to his desire to go on raving, even though Gerrit was not listening. They got out in the Dennenweg; but by this time he had lost the thread of his argument and moreover he had to be careful not to step in the puddles:
"Don't walk so fast!" he said, crossly, to Gerrit. "And mind where you walk: it's all splashing around me."
They were now in the Nieuwe Uitleg. That ancient quarter was quite dark, soaked in the everlasting rain that fell perpendicularly between the trees, like curtains of violet beads, and clattered into the canal.
"Do you think he's really mad?" asked Gerrit, nervously, as he rang the bell.
Paul shrugged his shoulders and looked down at his trousers and boots. He was satisfied with himself; he had walked very carefully: he had hardly a single splash. A fat landlady opened the door:
"Ah! . . . I'm glad you've come, gentlemen. . . . Meneer is quite calm now. . . . And have you been to a doctor?"
"A doctor?" said Gerrit, startled.
"A doctor," thought Paul. "Just so: we've been practical, as usual."
But he didn't say it.
They went upstairs. They found Ernst in his dressing-gown; his black hair, which he wore long, lay in tangled masses over his forehead. He did not get up; he gazed at his two brothers with a look of intense melancholy. He was now a man of forty-three, but seemed older, his hair turning grey, his appearance neglected, as though his shoulders had sunk in, as though something were broken in his spinal system. He did not appear very much surprised at seeing the two of them; only his sad eyes wandered from one to the other, scrutinizing them suspiciously.
And all at once the two brothers did not know what to say. Gerrit filled the room with his restless movements and nearly knocked down a couple of Delft jars with the skirts of his wet great-coat. Paul was the first to speak:
"Aren't you well, Ernst?"
"I'm quite well."
"Then what is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"What was the matter with you last night?"
"Nothing. I was suffocating."
"Are you better now?"
"Yes."
He seemed to be speaking mechanically, under the influence of the last glimmer of intelligence, for his voice sounded uncertain and unreal, as though he were not quite conscious of what he was saying.
"Come, old chap," said Gerrit, with good-natured bluntness, laying his hand on Ernst's shoulder.
As he did so, Ernst's expression changed; his eyes lost their look of intense melancholy and became hard, staring hard and black from their sockets, like two black marbles. He had turned his head in a stiff quarter-circle towards Gerrit; and the hard gleam of those black marbles bored into Gerrit's blue Norse eyes with such strange fierceness that Gerrit started. And, under his brother's big hand, which still lay on his shoulder, Ernst's limp body seemed to be turned to stone, to become rigid, hard as a rock. He stiffened his lips, his arms, his legs and feet and remained like that, motionless, evidently suffering physical and moral torture, shrinking under the pressure of Gerrit's hand, without knowing how to get rid of that pressure. He remained motionless, stark; every muscle was tense, every nerve quivered; Ernst seemed to shrink and harden under Gerrit's touch just as a caterpillar shrinks and becomes hard when it feels itself touched. As soon as Gerrit removed his hand, the tension relaxed and Ernst's body huddled together again, as though something had given way in the spinal system.
"Ernst," said Paul, "wouldn't you do well to get some sleep?"
"No," he said, "I won't go to bed again. There are three of them under the bed."
"Three what?"
"Three. They're chained up."
"Chained up? Who's chained up?"
"Three. Three souls."
"Three souls?"
"Yes. The room's full of them. They are all fastened to my soul. They are all riveted to my soul. With chains. Sometimes they break loose. But I was dragging two of them with me for ever so long yesterday, in the street, over the cobblestones. They were in pain, they were crying. I can hear them now in my ears, crying, crying. . . . There are three under the bed. They're asleep. When I go to bed, they wake up and rattle their chains. Let them sleep. They are tired, they are unhappy. As long as they're asleep, they don't know about it. . . . I . . . I can't sleep. I haven't slept for weeks. They only sleep when I'm awake. They're fastened to me. . . . Don't you hear them? The room is full of them. They belong to every age and period. I've gathered them around me, collected them from every age and period. They were hiding in the jars, in the old books, in the old charts. I have some belonging to the fourteenth century. They used to hide in the family-papers. The first moment I saw them, they rose up, the poor souls . . . with all their sins upon them, all their past. They are suffering . . . they are in purgatory. They chained themselves on to me, because they know that I shall be kind to them . . . and now they refuse to leave me. I drag them with me wherever I go, wherever I stand, wherever I sit. Their chains pull at my body. They hurt me sometimes, but they can't help it. . . . Last night . . . last night, the room was so full of souls that there was a cloud of them all round me; and I was suffocating. I wanted to go out, but the landlady and her brother prevented me. They are a miserable pair: they would have let me die of suffocation. They are a pair of brutes too: they tread on the poor souls. Do you hear . . . on the stairs? Do you hear their feet? They are treading on the souls. . . ."
Paul's face was white; and he said, nervously trying to change the subject:
"Have you seen Dorine this morning, Ernst?"
Ernst looked at his brother suspiciously:
"No," he said, "I have not seen her."
"She was here, wasn't she?"
"No, I haven't seen her," he said, suspiciously; and his eyes wandered round, as though he were looking for something in the room.
The two brothers followed his gaze mechanically. Everything about the large, comfortable sitting-room suggested the man of taste and culture, of quiet and introspective temperament, but acutely sensitive to line and form. The sombreness of the ceiling, wall-paper and carpet stood out against the yet greater sombreness of old oak and old books; and a very strange note of blue and other colours was struck in the midst of it all by the pottery, which was not all old, but included some examples of more recent art. The modern harmonies of line and the very latest discoveries in earthenware suddenly appeared with their weird flourishes in vases, jars, pots, like enamelled flowers, from modern conservatories, that had sprung up in the shadows of some old, dark forest. On the book-shelves too, the brown leather bindings of the ancient folios were relieved by the direct contact of the yellow wrappers of the latest French literature or the art-nouveau covers of the most modern Dutch novels. This lonely, silent man, who walked shyly through the streets, gliding along the walls of the houses; who had no friends, no acquaintances; who only on Sunday evenings—because he dared not stay away, from a last remnant of respect for maternal authority—consented to suffer martyrdom among the assembled members of his family, even to the extent of taking a hand at bridge: this man seemed, hidden from every one of them, to lead a rich, abundant life, a secret, inner life, a life not of one age but of many. Because he never spoke, they looked upon him as a crank; but he had lived his years abundantly. Had he filled his silent, uncompanioned loneliness too full with the ghosts of literature, history and art? Had the ghosts loomed up and come to life around him, in that dark and gloomy room, where the old and modern porcelain and earthenware glowed and rioted around him with the haunting brilliancy of their colours and glazes, of their tortured, gorgeous curves and outlines?
The two brothers, who had come because they thought their brother mad, looked round the room; and to both of them the room also seemed mad. To the captain of hussars, whose earlier depression had passed off, who suddenly felt himself becoming healthy and normal again as he listened to his eccentric brother's ravings, the room became a demented room, because it lacked a trophy of arms, riding-whips, prints of horses and dogs and the oleograph of a naked woman, bending backwards and laughing. To the other brother the room also seemed demented because here the vase was no longer an ornament, because the vase had become a morbid thing, like a many-coloured weed, growing in rank profusion among the dark shadows of the curtains and oak book-cases. To Paul the room seemed demented because there was dust on the books and because the basket full of torn paper had not been emptied. But to both of them the man Ernst himself seemed more demented than the room: the man Ernst, their brother, an eccentric fellow whom for years they had been compelled to think "queer" because he was different from any of them. When he confessed to them that his room was full of souls, souls that hovered round him like a cloud until he was on the point of suffocating, souls that chained themselves to him and rattled their chains, they thought that he was raving, that he was stammering insane words. It was the view of both of them, the view of normal, healthy men, outwardly sane in their senses, in their gestures, expression and language, because their gestures, expression and language did not clash with those of the people about them, whatever they might sometimes feel deep down in themselves. But to the man himself, to Ernst, his own view was the normal, the very ordinary view; and he thought his two brothers Gerrit and Paul queer and eccentric because he was able, in his furtive way, to see that neither of them noticed anything of the innumerable souls, though these writhed so pitifully and thronged so closely around him, as though he were in purgatory. To him there was nothing mad or insane in his room, in his words, or in any part of him. He looked upon them as mad, he looked upon himself as sensible. When, last night, he tried to go out in his nightshirt, because the souls pressed upon him until he felt as if he were suffocating in the throng, he had simply wanted air, nothing but air, had wanted to breathe without the discomfort of clothes, coat or waistcoat, upon his chest; and he had thought it quite natural that he should go downstairs with a candle and try to open the door with his key. Then the fat landlady and her lout of a brother had heard him and had come upon him, making a great to-do with their silly hands and their loud voices; and the two, the fat landlady and her lout of a brother, had stood there shouting and gesticulating like a pair of lunatics while he had already loosened the chain from the front-door and felt the draught doing him so much good, because it blew upon his bare flesh under his flapping shirt. Then Ernst had become angry, because the fat landlady and her lout of a brother did not listen to what he said: he had a soft voice, which could not cope with the rough, loud, vulgar voices of people without feeling, of people without soul, knowledge or understanding. He had become angry, because the brother, the coarse brute, had locked the door again, dragged him away, hauled him up the stairs; and he had struck the brother. But the brother, who was stronger than he was, had hit him, hit him on the chest, which had been bursting before and at that had become still worse, because all the souls had thronged against him in terror, beseeching him to protect them. And, roughly, rudely, like the unfeeling brutes that they were, the fat landlady and her lout of a brother had dragged him upstairs between them; and, as they dragged him, they had trodden not only on his bare feet but also on the poor souls! Their vulgar slippers, their clumsy, caddish feet had trodden on the poor, poor tender souls, trodden on them in the passage and along the stairs; and he heard them panting and sobbing, so loudly, so loudly, in their mortal anguish, that he could not understand why the whole town had not come running up in sheer alarm, to see the poor souls and help them. Oh, how they had moaned and gnashed their teeth, oh, how they had sobbed and lamented, most terribly!
And nobody had come. Nobody would hear. They had refused to hear, those townsfolk; no rescue had arrived; and the two brutes, that fat landlady and that wretched cad of a fellow, her brother, had hauled him along, up the stairs, into his room, had flung him in, locked the door behind him and barricaded the door on the outside. And in the passage, caught in the front-door, on the landing, caught in the door of his room, lay the poor panting, sobbing souls; they lay trodden and trampled, as if a rough crowd had danced on those tender gossamer beings, on their frail bodies; and he had spent the whole night sitting on a chair in a corner of his room, shivering in his nightshirt, in the dark, listening to the lamentations of the souls, hearing them wring their hands, hearing them pray for his pity, for his commiseration, for they knew that he loved them, that he would not hurt them, the poor souls. . . . He understood, yes, he understood that those two brutes, the woman and her brother, thought that he was mad. But he had only wanted to breathe the cool night-air, to feel the cool night-air blowing over his hot limbs, which were all aglow because, in bed, the souls pressed so close upon him, though he tried to push them softly from him. It wasn't mad, surely, to want a breath of fresh air, to want to feel the cool air blowing over one's self. That was all he wanted. . . . And, in the morning . . . yes, he had seen her at the door, opening it very carefully. He had seen the face of his sister Dorine that morning, seen her grimacing and laughing and cackling, with a devilish grin, glad, she too, at the sight of the frail bodies of the poor souls lying trampled on the stairs and in the passage; but he had been clever: he had remained sitting in his shirt, in the corner of his room, and pretended not to see her and taken no notice of her devilish grin, so as not to satisfy her evil pleasure. . . . Then at last the poor souls that still lived had settled down: he had lulled their fears with gentle words of consolation. Then they had fallen asleep around him; and he had been able to get up softly, without rattling their chains, and wash his face, put on his trousers, his socks, his dressing-gown. . . . What were his brothers doing now? He knew, he knew: no doubt they were also thinking, like the landlady and her beast of a brother, that he was mad, mad, bereft of his senses. But it was they who had lost their senses: they had no eyes, not to see the slumbering souls that filled the house; they had no ears, not to hear the plaint of the souls last night ringing through the universe. They, they were mad: they knew nothing and felt nothing; they lived like brute beasts; and he hated them both: that big, burly officer and the other, that fine gentleman, with his smooth face and his moustache like a cat's whiskers, which he couldn't stand, which he simply could not stand. Somehow, he had had to tell them about the poor souls; but, now that he saw that they were mad, he would never mention the souls to them again: otherwise they would be sure to want to beat him too and pull him about and tread on the poor souls, as those two horrible brutes had done.
So he remained sitting quietly, waiting for them to go and leave him to himself, in the peaceful solitude to which he was accustomed. For he was tired now; and, sitting straight up in his chair, he closed his eyes, partly to shut out the sight of his brothers' faces. Around him lay the souls, countless numbers of them, but they were still and silent, slumbering around him like children, though their faces were wrung with all the grief and pain that they had been made to suffer the night before.
Gerrit and Paul had stood up, were pretending to look at the vases, talking in whispers:
"He is pretty calm," said Gerrit.
"Yes, but what he said was utter nonsense."
"We must go to a doctor."
"Yes, we must go to Dr. van der Ouwe first. Perhaps to Dr. Reeuws afterwards, or any other nerve-specialist whom Van der Ouwe recommends."
"What do you think of him? Is he absolutely mad?"
"Yes, mad. He never used to talk in that incoherent way. Up to now, he was only queer, dreamy, eccentric. Now he is absolutely . . ."
"Mad," Gerrit completed, in a low voice.
"Look, he's shut his eyes . . ."
"He seems calm."
"Yes, he's calm enough."
"Shall we go?"
"Yes, let's go."
They went up to Ernst:
"Ernst . . ."
"Ernst!"
He slowly raised his heavy eyelids.
"We're off, Ernst, old chap," said Gerrit.
Ernst nodded his head.
"We shall be back soon."
But Ernst closed his eyes again, yearning for them to go, driving them out of the room with his longing. . . .
They went. He heard them shut the door softly, carefully. Then he nodded his head with satisfaction: they were not so bad, they had not waked the souls. . . . He heard them whispering on the landing, with those two beasts, the landlady and her brother. He got up, crept to the door, tried to listen. But he could not make out what they said.
Then he laughed contemptuously, because he thought them stupid, devoid of eyes, ears, heart or feeling:
"Wretched brutes, infernal brutes!" he muttered fiercely, clenching his fists.
A mortal weariness stole over him. He went to his bedroom, let down the blinds and got into bed, feeling that he would sleep.
All around him lay the souls: the whole room was full of them.