Dr. Adriaan Part 29

"I? I'm an old bachelor, an old boy. I'm a typical old bachelor."

"You ought to get married, Paul," she said, one day.

He gave a violent start:

"Constance," he said, "if ever you try to lay a trap for me, I swear I'll run away and you shall never set eyes on me again!... Where should I find a wife who would be as tidy as I? And then I'm so difficult to please that the poor child would have a terrible life of it....

Sometimes, yes, sometimes I do cherish the illusion ... of marriage with a very young girl, one whom I could train according to my ideas, my philosophy, my ideas and philosophy of purity ... of which the loftiest is the idea of purity in soul and life...."

"That's a regular old bachelor's idea, Paul: getting married to a very young girl, training her in your ideas. A fine woman of thirty or over: that's better."

"As old as that!" exclaimed Paul.

"A woman of thirty is not old for a man of forty-six."

"No, Constance, don't trouble your head. Marriage is a desperate affair.

No, it's a good thing that I never got married.... But I do feel lonely sometimes. I'm glad I came to live here.... It's you who are providing, the family-picture now.... Poor Mamma! She still knows me quite well.

But she thinks that I am still very, very young.... Yes, the family-picture is with you now, not on Sunday evenings, but every day of the week.... Now that I'm growing old, I feel myself becoming more pastoral than I used to be. Do you remember how I used to abuse the family and deny family-affection and how angry poor Gerrit used to get?

Now I'm growing very idyllic and I'm throwing back and longing for the family in the desert.... I'm glad that your house has become a centre for the family, Constance. But for that, there would be nothing to keep us together. Oh, it's a melancholy thing to grow so old, lonely as I am!

What have I to live for? Nothing.... Well, with you, I am still at least a sort of rich uncle, one from whom the children may have expectations: I dare say I shall leave each of my nephews and nieces a trifle. I must have a talk with my solicitor one day. It won't be much for them, but I'll leave them enough to buy a clock, or some other ornament for their mantelpiece..... And your old friend Brauws is back at the Hague, you know.... Oh, didn't you know? Hasn't he written? He's sure to soon.... I met him the other day: the fellow's grown old. He always had an old face: wrinkles are things that need looking after; they want ma.s.sage....

I used to ma.s.sage mine, but I've given it up: my personal vanity has gone. As you see, I wear the same tie always. I'm fond of this tie. I have it steamed from time to time: that keeps it fresh. It's a nice tie; but I no longer have such a collection as I used to.... Yes, the family no longer cling together at the Hague. Karel and Cateau still do nothing but eat good dinners by themselves. For years and years they have done nothing but eat good meals together. Lord, Lord, what a disgusting pair to find their pleasure in that!... Saetzema and Adolphine: that's a sad case; you people have been very kind to Marietje.... Otto and Frances have a heap of children now and that good Louise looks after them, while Frances makes a scene one day and embraces her the next with a great display of emotion and loads of tears. And that has lasted for years too.... Yes, the years pa.s.s. I simply couldn't bear it any longer, especially with those s.l.u.ts of servants whom my landlady started engaging lately. I yearned for cleanliness and ... for my family. It's a sign that I'm growing very old, Constance. _My_ dotage is always marked by that idyllic longing.... That's why I take so much pleasure in immersing myself amid you all in family-affection. It's a great thing that none of you quarrel; even you and your husband don't quarrel any more. It's become the golden age."

[1] Kate, Kittie.

[2] Malay: clear out!

[3] Mary.

CHAPTER XV

And the hard-braced north-east winds, which had brought the nipping frost with them, came no more; they had pa.s.sed; and it was no longer the strong, boisterous winds, but the angry winds, the winds that brought with them the clouds of grey melancholy, in eternal steady-blowing sadness, as though in the west, yonder, there were a dark realm of mysterious sorrow, whence blew huge howling cohorts of gigantic woes, t.i.tanic griefs, overshadowing the small country and the small people.

The sky and the clouds now seemed bigger and mightier than the small country and the small people; the sky now seemed to be the universe; and houses, roads, trees and people, horizons of woods and moors, lastly, human souls all seemed to shrink under the great woes that drowned the small country and the small people from horizon to horizon. Curtains of streaming water cloaked the vistas and a damp fog blurred the distant wavering line of trees; a rainy mist washed out the almost spectral gestures, the silent, despairing movements of the windmill-sails; and the low-lying world, feeble, small, sombre and bowed down, endured the crus.h.i.+ng, oppressive force of rain and wind lasting night and day and all day long.

Constance and Brauws were sitting once more in her own sitting-room, which was a replica of the little boudoir in the Kerkhoflaan at the Hague. Along the curving folds of the curtains, through the grey, clouded panes, they watched the grey rain falling, now in vertical streaks, now aslant, driven by the raging wind.

"I so well remember this weather," he said, "in the old days, when I used to sit chatting with you at the Hague, in your room which was so like this room."

"Yes," she said.

"I would come late in the afternoon, find you sitting in the dark and scold you because you had not been out; and we used to talk about all sorts of things...."

"It's a long time ago."

"The years fly past. Do you remember, we used to fight a little, both of us, against the years that were overtaking us, against the years that would make us old?"

She laughed:

"Yes," she said. "We no longer fight against them now. We are old now.

We have grown old."

"We are growing old. And yet what an amount of youth a human being possesses! As we grow older, we always think, 'Now we are growing old.'

And, when we are older than when we thought that, we feel ... that we have always remained the same as we were from a child."

"Yes ... a person doesn't change."

"Only all his joys and all his sorrows change and become blurred; but we ourselves do not."

"No, we don't change. Then why should there be joy and sorrow ... when, after many years, we have remained the same as we were from childhood?"

"Because we remain the same ... and yet do not remain the same."

"Yes," she said, smiling. "I understand what you mean. We remain the same from childhood ... and yet ... yet we change. It is like a game of riddles. I ... I am the same ... and I am changed."

"I too. My soul still recognizes in itself my former child's soul ...

and yet ... yet I am changed.... Tell me: I believe things are running smoothly with you...."

"Sometimes."

"Not always?"

"No."

"I am so glad to see ... that things are going well as between you and Henri."

"We are growing so old ... Everything gets blunted."

"No, it's not only that."

"No, not only."

"You have grown used to each other...."

"Without talking about it."

"You set store by each other by now...."

"Perhaps.... Gradually...."

"Hans is a good sort."

"Yes, he's just simply that."

"And you appreciate this now."