An icy shudder swept over Constance when she arrived at Driebergen and saw the carriage waiting outside the station, with the coachman and the footman:
"How is mevrouw?" she asked, as she stepped in.
But she hardly heard the answer, although she grasped it. She shuddered, icy cold. She shivered in her fur cloak. It had rained steadily for days upon the dreary, wintry trees, out of a sky that hung low but tremendously wide and heavy, as oppressive as a pitiless darkness. Drearily the wintry roads shot forward as the carriage rattled along them. Drearily, in their bare gardens, the houses rose, very sadly, because they were deserted summer dwellings, in the ice-cold winter rain.
The day was almost black. It was three o'clock, but it was night; and the rain, grey over the road and grey over the houses and gardens, was black over the misty landscapes which could be dimly descried through the bare gardens. The dreary trees looked dead and lived only in the despairing gestures of their branches when a wind, howling up from the distance, blew through them and moved them.
The carriage turned into the bare front-garden, round the beds with the straw-shrouded rose-bushes. Constance had driven in like this only a few times before, with the careful coachman always describing the same accurate curve round the flower-beds: the first time, when she came back from Brussels, and two or three times since, after the old woman had been to the Hague, on one of Henri's birthdays. And suddenly a strange presentiment flashed through the black day right into her, a presentiment that she was destined very often, so many times that she could not count them, to drive with that curve round those beds. . . .
She stepped out of the carriage; and the strange presentiment flashed into her that she would often, very often, stand like that, waiting for that solemn front-door of the great gloomy, solemn villa to open to her. . . . Then she walked in; and the long oak entrance-hall stretched before her like a strange indoor vista, with at the end a dark door that led to . . . she did not quite know what. . . . And she felt that she would often, very often, go through that hall and stare at that dark door, knowing full well what it led to. . . . And it was very strange indeed now, but she imagined that she had, unconsciously, had this presentiment before—really unconsciously, so vaguely that she had not felt it yet—from the first time that she had come and waited in this hall, sitting on the oak settle, with her hand on the shoulder of her boy, the grandchild whom she had come to introduce to his grandparents. . . . Oh, what a gloomy house it was, with that long hall and that dark door at the end of it, with those portraits and those old engravings, only brightened by the gleam of the Delft on the old oak cabinet! Oh, what a gloomy house it was and how strange was the presentiment that she would so often be coming here now, that she would have to mingle some part of herself with this gloomy Dutch domestic atmosphere! . . . Shuddering, shivering, still in her fur cloak, she was thrilled with a very swift and fleeting home-sickness for her dear, cosy house in the Woods, at the Hague, and she did not know when she would go back to it now. . . . The old woman was ill; Henri had gone first; Addie had followed him. . . . Then she had asked for Constance; and Constance had taken the first train. . . .
She had asked Piet in the hall how mevrouw was, but she had not taken in his answer either. She now went up the stairs, which wound in their ascent and were quite dark; and, because the strange presentiment also forced itself upon her on the stairs, she resisted it, put it from her. How strange everything seemed around her and within her! Was that the approach of death, skulking along with the wind, as it were tapping at the windows on the staircase and knocking in the heavy oak presses in the hall? Was that the approach of death, of the death which she already felt around her? Or was it only because the day was black and the house gloomy? . . .
And now everything seemed to make her shudder. A dark door had opened, slowly; and she started; and yet it was simply her child, her boy, coming out to meet her.
"How is Grandmamma?"
But again she did not take in the answer; and, as though in a shuddering dream in which she already felt the approach of death, she entered a room. There sat the old man; and Henri sat beside him, like a child, with his hand in his father's large, bony hand. She herself did not hear what she said . . . to the old man. She was only conscious that her voice sounded soft and sweet, as with a new music, in the gloomy house. She was only conscious that she kissed the old man. But she felt herself growing strange, frightened and shuddering, in the dark room, in the gloomy house, with the vast, low, heavy skies outside. The black rain rattled against the panes. The old man had taken her hand, awkwardly; he held only two of her fingers; and they trembled, pinched in his bony grip. He led her in this way to another room, dark with the curtains of the window and the bed, lighted only by the reflected gleam of an old-fashioned looking-glass wardrobe. The black rain rattled against the panes. Oh, how she felt the approach of dread death, that great, black death before which small people shudder, even though they do not value their small lives! How she felt it rustling in the rain against the window, how she felt the ghostly flapping of its cloak in the shadows among the heavy furniture, how she felt death reflected in the reflex light of that looking-glass! She shivered, in her fur cloak. But in the shadow of the bed-curtains two eyes smiled at her gently from out of the suffering old face. . . . The old man had gone.
"Here I am, Mamma. . . ."
"Is that you?"
"Yes."
"I had to send for you. . . ."
"I thought it would be too much for you. . . . That's why I let Henri and Addie come without me. . . .
"Are we alone?"
"Yes, Mamma."
"Tell me, you didn't stay away . . . because you were angry . . . because you still bore a grudge? . . ."
"Oh, no! I was not angry. I thought it would be too much for you."
"Is that true?"
"Quite true."
"The simple truth?"
"The simple truth."
"Yes, I can tell: you're not angry. But you were angry. . . ."
"Hush, Mamma, hush!"
"No, no, let me speak. I sent for you to speak to you. . . . There was a time when you were angry. And we could not talk together. Let us talk now, for the first and last time."
"Mamma . . ."
"There were those long, long years, dear. The years which are now all dead. . . . There was your suffering . . . but there was also our suffering, Father's . . . and mine."
"Yes. . . ."
"It was a day like to-day, gloomy and black; and it was raining. I was restless, I had such a strange presentiment: I had a presentiment . . . that Henri was dead, my child, my boy, in Rome. It was a gloomy day . . . seventeen or eighteen years ago. And in the afternoon, about this time—it was quite dark, the lights were not yet lit—a letter came: a letter from Rome . . . from Henri. . . . I trembled . . . I could not find the matches, to light the gas . . . and, when I looked for them, the letter dropped from my hands. . . . I thought, 'He's writing to me that he is very ill. I shall hear presently that he's dead.' I lit the gas . . . and read the letter. I read not that he was ill . . . but that he had to resign his post. He wrote to me about a woman whom I did not know, he wrote to me about you, dear. I breathed again, I thought to myself, 'He is not dead, I have not lost my son.' But Father thought differently: he said, 'Henri is dead, we have lost our son.' Then I knew that my presentiment was right, that he was dead. . . . He was dead . . . and he stayed dead for years and years. . . . Oh, how I longed for him to come to life again! Oh, how I kept on thinking of my child! . . . But year followed upon year; and he remained dead. . . . Then by degrees I began to feel that it would not always be like that, that things would be a little brighter one day, that he would come back out of that distant death. . . . He came back; I had my boy back. . . . I saw you . . . for the first time. Long dead years lay between us; and, when I wished to embrace you, I felt that I could not, that I did not reach you. My words did not reach you. They remained lying between us, they fell between us like hard, round things. . . . I knew then that you had suffered much and also that for long, long years you had been full of grief and resentment . . . grief and resentment. . . . You brought us your child: you brought him grudgingly. . . . Hush, don't cry, don't cry: it couldn't be helped. There was bound to be that feeling, that grudge, inside you . . . oh, I knew how it rankled! People are always like that: they never understand each other as long as there is no love; and, when there is no love and no understanding, there is bitterness . . . oh, and often hatred! . . . No, it was not hatred yet, it was bitterness: I knew it. Don't cry: the bitterness couldn't be helped. We did not reach each other across that bitterness. . . . Also you were young still, dear, and it was I who had to go to you on Henri's birthday . . . and yet I do not believe that there was any wrong on my side. Tell me, was there any wrong on my side? Was it not your bitter, implacable youth that refused the reconciliation? . . . Hush, don't cry: reconciliation always comes, sooner or later; sooner or later, all bitterness melts away . . . if not here . . . then there. . . . But with you and me, dear, it is here. With you and me it is here. I am certain that you gradually felt the bitter grudge melting away in you, because you learnt to understand . . . learnt to understand that old people have different ideas from young people; you learnt to understand their ideas, the ideas of the older people, folk before your time, old-fashioned folk, my dear. You learnt to understand them; and your soul became more gently disposed towards them . . . and you said to yourself, 'I understand them: they could not be any different.' You can even understand, can't you, dear, that the old man has not yet, has not even now forgiven and forgotten as completely as I forgave and forgot, long, long ago? I am right about that, am I not? You must even learn to understand . . . that he will never forgive and forget—hush, child, don't cry!—you must learn to understand that; you do understand it. . . . We must understand that together, however much we may regret it, but we will not tell anybody and we will both of us forgive him, dear, for now and for the time to come; for, if he can't do otherwise, then he is not to blame. . . . And, once we are there . . . when we meet again . . . oh, what will all the old bitterness and all the old suffering amount to? Nothing! There, all the old bitterness and the old suffering are lost in love. Then Father too will no longer be bitter. . . . That's why I sent for you, you see: to tell you all this; because of the words which I could not keep in, because I longed to say to you, 'My dear child, you have suffered . . . but we have suffered too! My dear child, I . . . I want to forgive you, now, with my last kiss. But let my forgiveness count as two; and do you, my dear child—it is my last request—forgive the old man also . . . now and always . . . always. . . ."
The room was quite dark. The rain clattered in the darkness against the window. Constance had dropped to her knees beside the bed; she was sobbing quietly, her tears falling upon the old woman's hand. And there was a long silence, interrupted by nothing but the clatter of the rain and the soft, heaving sobs. The dark room was full of the past, full of all the things which the old woman's words had brought to life out of the dead years. But through that past the dying woman saw the morrow breaking, as in a radiant dawn. She saw it breaking in radiance and she said:
"Tell me that you forgive him . . . now . . . and always . . . always."
"Yes, yes, Mamma . . . now . . . now and always."
"For he will never forgive, he will never forgive."
"No, no . . . but I forgive him, I forgive him."
"Even if he never forgives?"
"Yes, yes . . . even if he never forgives!"
"For he will never forgive, he will never forgive."
"No . . . but I forgive him . . ."
"And I, dear . . ."
"You forgive me . . . you forgive me!"
"Yes, I forgive you . . . everything. From first to last. Your bitterness . . ."
"Oh, I have long ceased to be bitter!"
"Yes, I know that you had learnt to understand. . . . We could have become very fond of each other, if . . ."
"Yes, if . . ."
"But it was not to be. Let us become fond of each other now. Love me, Constance, in your memory . . ."
"Yes . . ."
"Just as I shall continue to love you. There! Just because we suffered through each other in this life, we shall now love each other."
"Yes, oh, yes!"
"Kiss me, my dear. And . . . and forgive the old man."
"Yes . . ."
"Even if he . . ."
"Yes, oh yes! . . ."
"Never forgives. For he will never, he will never forgive!"
"I forgive him, I forgive him!"
"Then all is well. Let him come in now: him . . . and my child, my son, Henri . . . and him . . . the child . . . our child. . . ."
Constance rose from her knees; she stumbled, sobbing, across the dark room. She groped for the door, opened it: the light of the lamps streamed in.
"Mamma is asking for you," she stammered through her tears. "For you . . . and Henri . . . and Addie. . . ."
Death entered the room with them. . . .