The Later Life/Chapter XXII
Constance began to love her loneliness more and more.
Her daily life was very uneventful: she could count the people with whom she came into contact. First her husband and her son: there was something gentler in her attitude towards Van der Welcke, something almost motherly, which prevented her from getting angry with him, even though the inclination welled up within her. Addie was as usual, perhaps even a little more serious: this disquieted her. Then there was Brauws, who came regularly. He dined with them regularly, on a fixed day in the week, quite informally; and moreover he had become the friend of both Van der Welcke and Constance and even of Addie. Then there were Mamma, Gerrit and his little tribe and, now and again, Paul. And then there was Van Vreeswijck; and Marianne, of course; and latterly she had seen more of Bertha. For the rest she seemed to drift away from all the others, even from warm-hearted Aunt Lot. She kept in touch only with those with whom she was really in sympathy.
Still, though she had these few friends, she often had quite lonely afternoons. But they did not depress her; she gazed out at the rain, at the cloud-phantoms. And she dreamed . . . along the path of light. She smiled at her dream. Even though she very much feared the absurdity of it for herself, she could not help it: a new youthfulness filled her with a gentle glow, a new tenderness, like the delicate bloom of a young girl's soul dreaming of the wonderful future . . . And then she would come back to herself suddenly and smile at her sentimentality and summon up all her matronly common-sense; and she would think:
"Come, I oughtn't to be sitting like this! . . . Come, I oughtn't to be acting like this and thinking of everything and nothing! . . . Certainly, I like him very much; but why cannot I do that without these strange thoughts, without dreaming and picturing all manner of things and filling my head with romantic fancies . . . as if I were a girl of eighteen or twenty? . . . Oh, those are the things which we do not speak about, the deep secret things which we never tell to anybody! . . . I should never have suspected them in myself . . . or that they could be so exquisitely sweet to me. How strangely sweet, to dream myself back to youth in visions which, though they never really take shape, yet make a shining path to those cloudy skies, to imagine myself young again in those dreams! . . . If I never had these thoughts and dreams before, why do I have them now? Come, I oughtn't to be sitting like this and thinking like this! . . . I make up a host of pretty stories, sentimental little stories, and see myself, see us both, years ago, as quite young children, both of us. He played and I played . . . almost the same game: he a boy, I a girl. It was as though he were seeking me. It was as though I, in my childish dreams, divined something of him, far, far away, as though there were a part of me that wanted to go to him, a part of him that wanted to come to me . . . Stop, I am giving way again to those secret enthusiasms which lie deep down in my soul like strange, hidden streams, those vague, romantic ferments such as I imagined that young girls might have, but not I, a woman of my years, a woman with my past, the mother of a big son . . . I will not do it any more, I will not . . . It is morbid to be like this . . . And yet . . . and yet . . . when the wind blows and the rain comes down, it is, it still is the dear secret that brings the tears to my eyes . . . If I love him, quite silently, deep down within myself, why may I not just dream like that? The absurdity of it exists only for me: nobody, nobody knows of it. I have some one else hidden within me: a younger woman, a sister, a young sister-soul, a girl's soul almost. It is absurd, I know; but sometimes, sometimes it is so strong in me and I love him so well and feel, just like a girl, that he is the first man I have ever loved . . . Oh, Henri! I can see now what that was: he was young; it was at first mere play-acting, just like a comedy; then it became passion, very quickly, a mad impulse, an almost feverish impulse to hold him in my arms. That is all dead. Passion is dead . . . This is a dream, a young girl's dream. It is the beginning. It is absurd; and I am often ashamed of it, for my own sake. But I cannot resist it: it envelops me, just as the spring sunshine and the scent of the may and the cherry-blossom in the Woods envelop one with languorous sweetness. I cannot resist it, I can not resist it. My eyes go towards those clouds, my soul goes towards those clouds, my dreams go towards them . . . and I love him, I love him . . . I feel ashamed: sometimes I dare not look my son in the face . . . I love him, I love him; and I feel ashamed: sometimes I dare not go across the street, as though people would notice it, by the light on my face . . . But ah, no, that light does not shine from me, because I am old! It does from Marianne, poor child, but not from me . . . oh, thank God for that! . . . I want to struggle against it, but it is stronger than I; and, when I think of him, I feel as if I were numbed here in my chair. When he comes into the room, I tremble, powerless to make a movement. Let me be ashamed of myself, argue with myself, struggle as I may, it is so, it is something real, as though I had never felt anything real in my life: it is a dream and it is also reality . . ."
She often strove against it, but the dream was always too strong for her, enveloping her as with a multitude of languorous spring scents. It imparted a strange tenderness to her, to her fresh, round face, the face of a woman in her prime, with the strange, soft, curly hair, which the years were changing without turning grey. If he came, she awoke from that dream, but felt herself blissfully languid and faint.
"I am not a girl," she thought, now that she heard herself speak; but her fixed idea, that she was old, quite old, retreated a little way into the background.
But, though she now no longer felt so old in her dream, after her dream she thought herself ignorant. Oh, how ignorant she was! And why had she never acquired an atom of knowledge in her wasted days, in her squandered, empty years. When she was talking to Brauws—and now that he came regularly, they often talked together, long and earnestly, in the friendly twilight—she thought:
"How ignorant I am!"
She had to make an effort sometimes to follow him in the simplest things that he said. She was obliged to confess to him that she had never learnt very much. But he said that that was a good thing, that it had kept her mind fresh. She shook her head in disclaimer; she confessed that she was ignorant and stupid. He protested; but she told him frankly that it sometimes tired her to follow him. And she was so honest with him that she herself was sometimes surprised at it. If ever their conversation became too hopelessly deep, she preferred to be silent rather than lie or even seek an evasion in words . . . Ignorant, yes; and it distressed her to such an extent that, one afternoon, when Henri was out and Addie at school, she went to her son's room and opened his book-case. In addition to the ordinary school-manuals, it contained a few boys'-books; and she laughed at herself, her little tender, mocking laugh of gentle irony. But she found a couple of volumes on Universal History, a present from Van der Welcke to Addie, who was very fond of history; and she opened them where she stood. She turned the pages. She was afraid that some one might come in: the maid, perhaps, by accident. She sat down in the only easy-chair, impregnated with the smoke of the cigarettes which Van der Welcke smoked one after the other, silently, while Addie was preparing his lessons; and she turned the pages and read. She continued to suffer from that sense of her own absurdity. She felt like a schoolgirl dreaming . . . and learning her lessons. She went on reading; and, when Truitje was looking for her all over the house and she heard her ask the cook where on earth mevrouw could be, she blushed violently, quickly put the books back on the shelves and left the room. She would have liked to take the books with her, but dared not; however, that evening at dinner she plucked up courage and said:
"Addie, Mr. Brauws was saying something about the French Revolution the other day; and I felt so stupid at being so ignorant on the subject. Have you any books about it?"
Yes, he had this book and that book, in fact he had always been attracted by that period and had collected as many books upon it as his scanty pocket-money permitted. He would bring them to her after dinner. And she acquired a sort of passion for reading and learning. She indulged it almost hastily, feverishly, without any method, as though nervously anxious to make up for the deficiencies of her own education. And at the same time she was frightened lest other people—even Van der Welcke and Addie—should notice that fevered haste; and she devoured book after book with studied cunning, sometimes turning the pages over hurriedly, feverishly, then again reading more attentively, but never leaving the books about, always replacing them on her boy's shelves, or returning them to Brauws and Paul when they had been borrowed from them, or carefully putting away those which she had bought herself, so that her room apparently remained the same, without the confusion and untidiness of a lot of books. Her reading was a strange medley: a volume of Quack's Socialists, which Brauws lent her; Zola's novel, L'Œuvre; a pamphlet by Bakunin and an odd number of the Gids; a copy of The Imitation which had strayed among Van der Welcke's books; Gonse on Japanese Art; Tolstoi's novels and pamphlets. But it was a strange bold power of discrimination that at once taught her to pick and choose amid the chaos of all this literature, made her accept this and reject that: a psychological analysis; a new work on modern social evolution; an æsthetic rhapsody about a Japanese vase. She learnt quickly to look into them boldly and to take from them what was able as it were to develop her; and out of many of those books there flashed forth such entirely new revelations of hitherto unperceived truths that often, tired, dazed, astounded, she asked herself:
"Is there so much then? Is so much thought about, dreamt about, so much sought for, lived for? Do people have those visions then, those dreams? And does it all exist? And can it all be taken in by me, by my intelligence?"
And, as she thought, it seemed as if crape veils were being raised everywhere from before her and as if she, whose gaze had never wandered from her family and friends, now saw, suddenly, through the distant clouds, right into those cities, right into those civilizations, into the future, into the past, into so much of the present as still hovered closely around her own existence. She experienced shock after shock: she felt dimly that even the terrible French Revolution, though it did cost Marie-Antoinette her life, had its good side. Zola seemed to her so magnificent that she was almost frightened at her own enthusiasm and dared not put her feeling into words. And the noble dreams of those apostles of humanity, even though they anathematized the power of the State and money—all that she had unconsciously looked upon, all her life, as indispensable to civilized society—made her quiver first with alarm, then with compassion, then with terror, with despair, with exultation . . . She did not utter her thoughts; only, in her conversations with Brauws, she felt that she was gradually better able to follow him, that she was more responsive, less vague in her replies . . . If in all this, this new self-education, there was something hurried and superficial, the tremulous haste of an eager, nervous woman who fears that she is devoting herself too late to what is vitally necessary, there was at the same time something fresh and ingenuous, something youthful and unspoilt, like the enthusiasm of a woman still young who, after her girlish dreams, wants to grasp some part of the vivid, many-coloured, radiant life around her, who grasps with joyous open hands at the colours and the sunbeams and who, though she grasps wildly, nevertheless gathers fresh life in her illusion . . . She gathered fresh life. The wind that blew outside seemed to blow through her soul; the rain that pelted seemed actually to wash her face; the continual gusts on every hand blew the mist from before her eyes, drew it aside like a curtain . . . Her eyes sparkled; and, when the winter had done blowing and raining, when suddenly, without any transition, a breath of spring—the limpid blue of the sky, the tender green of the stirring earth—floated over and through the Woods, it was as though she yearned for movement. She managed, every afternoon that Addie was free, to take him away from Van der Welcke and to lure him out for a long walk, out of the town, over the dunes, ever so far. Addie, with his eyes bright with laughing surprise, thought it very jolly of her and would go with her, though he was no walker and preferred bicycling, athirst for speed. But, in his young, gallant boy's soul, he laughed softly, thought Mamma charming: grown years younger, grown into a young woman, suddenly, in her short skirt, her little cloth cape, with the sailor-hat on her curly hair and the colour in her cheeks, slim-waisted, quick-footed, her voice clear, her laugh sometimes ringing out suddenly. He thought of Papa and that she was now becoming as young as he; and Addie felt himself old beside her. He saw nothing of what was happening in his mother, even as nobody saw it, for she kept it to herself, was no different to the others, spoke no differently to the others, perhaps only just with a brighter laugh. What she read, what she learnt, what she felt, what she thought: all this was not perceptible to the others. It did not shine out from her; and her foot merely moved a shade quicker, her speech became a shade more spontaneous. But everything that blossomed and flamed up in her she kept to herself, in the vast silence of her broad but unshared vistas. To her husband she was gentler, to her son she was younger. Only now, in those walks, perhaps Addie was the one person in her life who noticed that, when Mamma happened to mention Mr. Brauws' name, an unusual note sounded in her brighter, younger voice. A boy of his age does not analyse a subtle perception of this kind; only, without reasoning, without analysing, just instinctively, this boy of fourteen thought of his father, whom he worshipped with a strange, protecting adoration such as one gives to a brother or a friend—a younger brother, a younger friend—and felt a pang of jealousy on his behalf, jealousy of this man who did what Papa never did, talked with Mamma for hours three or four times a week, so often in fact that she was growing younger, that she had taken to reading, so as no longer to be ignorant, that she had developed a need for walking great distances. But the lad kept this jealousy locked up within himself, allowed none to perceive it. Perhaps he was just a trifle colder to him, to this man, the friend of the family, though Brauws was so fond of him, Addie, almost passionately fond of him indeed: Addie knew that. This jealousy for his father, jealousy of that friend of the family, was very strong in him; and he felt himself to be the child of both his parents, felt within himself their double heritage of jealousy. The image of his father appeared constantly before him, appeared between the images of Brauws and of his mother. But he let her see nothing of it.
She gathered fresh life in those walks. When Addie was at school, she walked alone, no longer fearing the loneliness out of doors, she who had come to love her indoor loneliness and the still deeper loneliness of her soul. It was as though, after dreaming and educating herself—quickly, nervously, superficially and with youthful simplicity—in what great men had thought and written, she felt herself breathe again in the midst of nature. No longer from her arm-chair, through the windows, along the bend of the curtains did she see the great clouds, but she now saw them out of doors and overhead, blue, white, immense, irradiated by the sun in the vault of the boundless spring skies all vocal with birds, saw them as she stood on the dunes, with the wind all round her head, all round her hair and blowing through her skirts. . . .
"I love him, I love him," a voice inside her sang softly and yet insistently, while the wind's strong passion seemed to lift her up and waft her along.
But in the movement of her hands there was something as though she were resisting the wind, with a smile of gentle irony, of tender mockery. The wind blew past, as if grumbling, and she walked on, saw the sea. She seemed to look upon the sea for the first time. It was as though, in the strong wind, under the blue-white clouds, the sea streamed to her for the first time from the ethereal fount of the horizon and were now rushing towards her, roaring and frothing, like a triumph of multitudinous, white-crested horses. And the sky and the sea were as one great triumph of mighty, omnipotent nature. A nameless but overwhelming triumph seemed from out of those clouds to hold reins in thousands of fists, the reins of the multitudinous white-crested horses; and all that triumph of nature advanced towards her like a riot of youth. It was as though every atom of her former life, every memory flew away around her like sand, like dust, like straw. It all flew away; and the waves broke, the sea uplifted itself like an exulting menace, as though to carry her with it in the riotous rush of its triumphant crested steeds, over all that small life, over everything . . . if she did not take care.
It was all big, wide, far-reaching, like a world. When she reached home, she was tired out, sobered by the tram-ride and the last bit of walking, past casual, shadowy people. Worn out, she fell asleep, woke shortly before dinner, welcomed Addie in a dream. Until sometimes she read her son's eyes, made an effort, plunged her face in a basin of water, tried to be, to appear as she had always been. And then, in the glass, she saw herself like that, to all appearance the same woman, with just something livelier in her eyes, her gait, her movements. But inside her everything was changed.
At home sometimes the past would still rise up before her, but different, quite different. She seemed to withdraw from her former personality and it was as though, far removed from the woman that she had once been, she was now for the first time able to judge her past from another point of view than her own. She saw suddenly what her father must have suffered, Mamma, the brothers even, the sisters. She realized for the first time the sacrifice which those old, pious people, Henri's parents, had made. She thought in dismay of the injury which she had done her first husband, De Staffelaer. She thought of them all, in dismay at herself, in compassion for them. And she felt sorry even for her husband and for what he had always querulously resented, his shattered career, which had constituted his grudge, his obsession, the excuse for his inertia: for Van der Welcke and even for that grudge she felt compassion. How young he was when she met him, when they had acted their comedy, their comedy which had become deadly earnest! And she had at once fettered him to herself, in ever-increasing antagonism! Then her eyes would rest on him with a more understanding glance, sometimes almost with a certain pity, as she looked into his eyes, his young blue boyish eyes, which Addie had inherited from him, but which in the father looked younger, more boyish than in the son. If, at the sound of his voice, the inclination to speak to him irritably welled up in her from the eternal antagonism between them, as from a gloomy spring deep down in her, she would restrain herself, control herself with that new sympathy and pity, answer gently, almost jokingly, and would let him have the last word. And, now that she herself was in love and felt herself live again, she had a sympathy that was almost motherly for his love, even though she herself was beginning to feel young again, and with it a strange tenderness for the two of them, Marianne and Henri. She did not think of the danger for him; she still had only, in her new world of romance, a sympathy for romance. He was her husband, but she felt none of a wife's jealousy. And for Marianne she felt the same strange compassion, as for a younger sister-in-love. . . .
There came to her scarcely a fleeting thought of the immorality which the world, people, small people—the whirlers in the little circle, with their little prejudices and dogmas, their little creeds and philosophies—would see in such strange views from a married woman concerning herself and a friend, concerning her husband and the little niece with whom her husband was evidently in love. She was a small creature like all of them, she was a small soul, like all of them; but her soul at least was growing, growing upwards and outwards; she no longer felt depressed; and it seemed as if she were being borne on wings to the greater cloud-worlds yonder, to the far cities, where flashed the lightnings of the new revelations, the new realities. . . .
Everything in her was changed. . . .