Dr. Adriaan/Chapter VII
Then Adeline came in, looking for Addie. He was so tired yesterday that she had not cared to ask him the result of his visit to Amsterdam, but now, while he was still playing with Klaasje, she glanced at him with questioning eyes. She was still a young woman, no more than forty, for she had married Gerrit early and then borne him a child every year; but, despite her gentle, round, fair face, she was no longer young in appearance. Her lines had become matronly; and, especially after the great sorrow, after her husband's suicide, which had plunged her and the children into perpetual shadow like an indelible twilight, she had become so spiritless in all her simple energies that she came like a child to Constance or Addie about anything that concerned any one of them: mostly to Addie, whom she had taken to regarding as her inevitable protector. She looked up at him with respectful confidence; she always did literally what he told her to; it was he who controlled their whole little fortune, investing it as profitably as possible for the children; notwithstanding his youth, she turned to him in all that concerned her boys; and the boys themselves accepted it, inevitably, that their cousin, who was only six or seven years older than they, should look after their interests with paternal earnestness. But Adeline was well aware that Addie was very angry that Alex had had to leave Alkmaar. At first, things had gone fairly well in the secondary school at the Hague; after the third form—he was seventeen by this time—he had just succeeded in passing his matriculation; but, when he took two years over his first examination and failed in the second, Addie himself had considered that Alex had better look out for something different, however much his mother, with her mind full of Gerrit, would have liked to see her eldest son an officer. . . .
By this time, he was nearly twenty; and it was so late for him to go to the Merchants' School at Amsterdam that Addie had decided first to obtain all the details for himself and therefore had gone to Amsterdam, to see the head-master. . . . That was why, this morning, Adeline came to talk to Addie, a little nervously, rather frightened of what he might say, because he had been exceedingly dissatisfied about Alex, discouraged, not knowing what to do with him next. . . . He would like to have a talk with Alex, he said; and Adeline, sad about her son and rather frightened of Addie, went to fetch Alex and brought him back with her. He was tall, slender, pale, fair-haired: he did not look strong, although he had resembled his father, especially as a child; every year his features seemed to become more and more fixed and his face became like a spectral mask of pallor, with the look in the eyes a little shy under the lashes, as with a timorous, bashful and at the same time deep inner concealment of invisible, silent things. . . . Now that his mother had come to fetch him from the room where he sat reading, he came in with her, evidently nervous about the coming talk with Addie. But Addie said:
"I ought really to be going out, Aunt. . . . Alex, can you go with me part of the way? Then we can talk things over as we walk. The roads are too wet for cycling."
Addie's eyes and voice set Adeline's mind at ease, as though he were telling her that it would be all right at the Merchants' School. . . .
The cousins left the house together. The trees dripped with water; and the swift and angry wind chased the great clouds farther in one direction; but the sky remained grey and lowering. The far-stretching, straight country-roads vanished at last in a melancholy drab mist; and the two young men at first walked along without a word.
"Well, I went and enquired for you yesterday," said Addie, at last. "You can go in for your exam, Alex . . . and you can go on working there for some time yet. . . . I hope things will go better this time, old chap. . . . You're nearly twenty now. . . . If they don't . . ."
He made a vague gesture; and Alex took his arm:
"It's awfully good of you, Addie, to take so much trouble about me. I too hope . . . that things will go right . . . this time. . . ."
"Mamma would have liked to see you in the army."
"Still, I'm really not cut out for a soldier. . . . It's a pity I didn't think of it before I went to Alkmaar. . . . But, when I was there I felt it at once: there's nothing of the soldier about me."
"And in that way years were lost. . . . Well, I do hope that now, when you're at the Merchants' School, you won't suddenly discover . . . that you're not cut out for a business-man . . . that you're not fit for 'trade.' . . . You can become a consul, you know."
"Yes . . . perhaps . . ."
"It's a pity, Alex, that you don't know things for certain in your own mind . . . that you have no settled ideas. . . ."
"Yes . . . that's just it! . . ."
"But you must become something, mustn't you? You have no money, you fellows; and, even if you had . . . a man must be something . . . in order to do any or get any happiness out of life . . . for himself and those about him. . . ."
"Yes, Addie. . . ."
"Promise me now, old chap, to do your best. . . . You see, I'm playing the father to all of you, even though I'm only six years older than you are. I feel a sort of father to you . . . and I should like to see you all happy . . . and prosperous. . . . But you must help me, Alex. Show a little energy. If you hadn't thrown up the sponge at once at Alkmaar, you'd almost have had your commission by now. . . ."
"Yes. . . ."
"Like your father. Mamma would have liked that. But we won't talk about it any more and we'll hope that things will go better at Amsterdam. . . ."
"Addie . . . do you remember Papa well?"
"Of course I do."
"So do I. . . . I was eight years old, when he died. . . . I even remember . . ."
"What?"
"That evening . . . though I didn't understand at the time . . . why Mamma cried and screamed like that . . . or why Aunt Constance and Uncle Henri were there. . . . It was not until later, oh, years later, that I understood! . . . But I saw . . . I saw Papa lying . . . with blood all round him; and that's a thing which always . . . always . . . hovers before my eyes. I'm always seeing it, Addie! . . . Tell me, Addie, do you know why Papa did it? . . . There was nothing, surely, to make him so unhappy as all that?"
"He was very ill."
"But not incurably?"
"He thought himself incurable."
"Still, he was strong?"
"Physically."
"He was like Guy, wasn't he?"
"Yes, Guy is very like him, to look at. . . . He was tall, broad, fair-haired . . ."
"Yes, that's how I remember him. I was eight years old then."
"You were a jolly little tribe."
"And now we're nothing but a burden . . . to you. . . ."
"Nonsense, it's not as bad as that!"
"I hope things'll go better . . . Addie . . . at Amsterdam. . . ."
"Why aren't you more talkative, Alex? . . . You haven't been for a long time."
"Haven't I?"
"You never talk, at home . . . to the others. Only once in a way to me . . . when we are alone. It was after Alkmaar that you became so silent. It wasn't surely because I was angry at the time?"
"Perhaps, partly . . ."
"Well?"
"I daren't tell you."
"Tell me, Alex, if there is anything I can do for you."
"You do so much as it is, Addie. . . . You do everything."
"But speak quite openly. Perhaps there is something more that I can do for you."
"No, what could there be?"
"Something's upsetting you."
"No . . ."
"You're unhappy."
"No . . ."
"You're so reserved."
"I . . . never talk much."
"Try and trust me, Alex."
"I do trust you."
"Well, then, talk to me."
"But I . . . I've nothing to tell you, Addie."
"I know, Alex, that you must have something to tell me. . . ."
"No. . . ."
"I know it, Alex."
"No, Addie, really. . . . I've nothing to tell you. . . ."
The lad tried to release his arm from Addie's, but Addie held him tight:
"Walk a bit more with me."
"Where are you going?"
"I have a couple of patients to see. . . . Take me there, Alex . . . and speak, speak openly. . . ."
"I can't speak."
"Then try and find your words. I'll help you."
"Not to-day . . . not to-day, Addie, out here, in the roads. . . . Perhaps another time . . . indoors."
"Very well, then, another time, indoors. I'll keep you to your word. And now let's talk of nothing but the Merchants' School. . . ."
And, with Alex still hanging on his arm, he told him about the head-master, the staff, the lessons there . . . making a point of holding out hopes to Alex that everything would go easily and smoothly. Did Addie not know, did he not diagnose that the boy was so terribly afraid of life, of the days to come, because a twilight had always continued to press down upon him, the twilight of his father's suicide? . . . It had given the child a fit of shuddering in so far as he had realized it at the time; and things had suddenly grown dark, about his child-soul; and, when the power of thought had developed in him later, there had always remained the fear in that darkness, because the unconscious life went on daily . . . and because his father—why, why?—had torn himself out of the unconscious life and committed suicide. . . . That—though Alex had not spoken—was how Addie diagnosed him, that was how he really diagnosed his state, with that strange look of penetration, with that strange vision. . . . And, when he looked into another in this way, he no longer thought of himself, his self-insufficiency fell away from him and he seemed to know on the other's behalf, to know surely and positively, to know with instinctive knowledge . . . as he never knew things for himself. . . .
While they walked on, arm in arm, he thought that the boy's heavy step was becoming more rhythmical and even, that his answers—now that they went on talking about Amsterdam and the master in whose house he would be—were becoming firmer, as though he were taking greater interest. . . . There was no note of doubt in Addie's voice: his voice made the two years' schooling at Amsterdam, the whole subsequent life as a busy, hardworking man, stand out clear in the mist that hung under the trees and over the roads, made it all take on bright colours as a life spreading open with unclouded horizons of human destiny, as though all the unconscious life would run easily along ordered lines. . . . He himself had never known that fear of the days to come, because he had seen his goal before him in the future. Yet why, then, that morbid sense of insufficiency? . . .
He refused to think of it; and at once it passed from him like a ghost. Even after his sleepless night, he now felt the energy circulating strongly within him, felt the magic pouring out of him as vital warmth. He must make that boy by his side realize the life before him, he must take away his fear of the future. An unknown force inside him ordained that he should make the future shine with hope and promise for this boy, ordained that he should purge the days to come of their sombre terror.
And, when he had taken leave of Alex, because he did not wish him to know where his patients lived, the lad went back easier in his mind, with his fears pressing less heavily upon him, with the sullen sky growing gradually brighter . . . however much he might have to think always of his father, however much he had to see his father's blood-stained corpse daily more and more clearly before his eyes. . . .