Louis Couperus

“ The wind outside roared and a violent rain beat down upon the windows, as though tapping at them with furious angry fingers. The drawn blinds, the closed curtains, the lighted lamps, Gerdy pouring out the tea with her pretty little ways: it all gave Constance, though she felt tired and would gladly have been alone for once, a caress of soft, homely satisfaction, a velvety sense of being in utter harmony with all around her, even though there was so much trouble, not only with the children, but also sometimes no little difficulty and misunderstanding with Mathilde, Addie's wife. ”

“ Her eyes flashed.
"Tilly!" he implored.
It was as though a sudden terror blinded him, as though a spectre of guilt suddenly loomed up out of all the black self-insufficiency of the last few years, his years of married life.
"Because I'm good enough . . . to bear you children. Because you want to have children by me, healthy children, children different from your family, your mother's family."
"Tilly!"
"Addie!" she entreated. "Love me! Love me!"
"I do love you, Tilly!" he cried, in despair. ”

“ Then she felt him akin to herself, a young man, a man made young again, a man with a clear, materialistic soul; and in this man she read the young doctor, who loved her healthy body, her rich, healthy blood, weary as he must be of the morbid nerves of his mother's family! Oh, those Van Lowe's: she hated them all, she felt herself to belong to another race! And was Addie himself, like his father, not healthy, simply healthy and manly, a good-looking young fellow, a man, even though he was almost prematurely old? ”

“ Van der Welcke warned her; but she had already released herself from his arms and was running on, with the dog after her.
"She's gone wild," he thought, "wild with the joy of life. She is beginning to wake up, physically and mentally. It is as though a twilight were withdrawing from her, a twilight which is beginning to steal over me. What is the matter with me? What do I feel? Oh, I long to go bicycling, to go for a long spin . . . but Addie's not here; and, even when he is, he has no time, and Guy's working! Suppose I asked Gerdy: she's fond of a little run." ”

“ Addie flung his arm round his father's neck; and Van der Welcke now sobbed on his son's breast. He could restrain himself no longer. He gave one great, loud sob, clutching hold of his own son, like a child.... Had it not always been like that, the child the consoler of his father? The son now his mother's consoler?
The emotion lasted but a moment, because of the calmness of older years; but it was a moment full as the whole soul and the whole life of a small being. The older man felt all his soul, saw all his small life. ”

“ It floated through the passages and creaked in the furniture; it could be felt in the old grandmother's sitting at the conservatory-window, in the pale, unchangingly sad face of Adeline, who was so helpless; it appeared in the silent sorrow of Emilie, who was spiritless and never spoke much these days. In the sombre house they sat or moved in an atmosphere of bygone things which mingled with the atmosphere of the house itself, as though they were small, pale souls, broken by life and sheltering in the safe house, now that the winter seemed endless and the heavy clouds were so oppressive.... ”

“ At about nine o'clock there was a certain movement in those intimate, silent, almost melancholy indoor lines and colours, when Adeline took Klaasje to bed and Constance and Adeletje helped Grandmamma upstairs: the child and the old woman at the same hour, the one never outgrowing her first childhood, the other relapsing into her second, after so well knowing the many sad things that were to come, that had come, that had already faded away, even as all life, that comes and goes, fades away in the faded pallor of the past. ”

“ That's a king and a queen. It's a fairy-tale, Uncle. This is a fairy. The king and queen are purple ... purple; and the fairy—look, Uncle, look at the fairy—is sky-blue. Uncle Addie says it's a-zure."
She drew out the word in a long, caressing voice, as though the names of the colours had a peculiar meaning for her, rousing in her strange memories of very early colours, colours seen in gay, faraway countries, down, down yonder....
"Mr. Brauws won't come," said Emilie.
"No, it's raining too hard," said Adeline. "He won't come this evening."
"He's become so much one of the family." ”

“ Sombre was the house and sombre the everlasting wind that blew around it; full of strange voices, of things of long ago; and they did not brighten the house, those three sad, silent women, so different in age, so sombre in their equal melancholy. They did not brighten the morning which they spent there together, in the house on the long, rain-swept road; and it was Constance herself, followed quietly by Marietje or Adeletje, who woke the house, stairs and passages to life with her active footfall and the shrill rattle of her keys. ”

“ Oh, how the grievances whirled up, fighting against her self-reproach, until at last she burst into tears, sheer nervous tears, such as she had never shed before! And, as though the grievances were winning, she suddenly laid the blame on Addie, on all of them, on her husband's whole family, on Driebergen, on the house full of lunatics and invalids, on the eerie, haunted house where she could not breathe, while they all, down below, found living there so delightful. ”

“ But she was jealous of those patients, who took Addie from her for hours and days together; and she was jealous, very jealous of Marietje. . . . But what then? How was she to win him? . . . And in this rich-blooded woman, whose senses bloomed purple and fierce, there shot up as with a riot of red roses the thought of winning him more and yet more with her kisses, with her whole body, with all that she would give him, with all that she would find for him, to wind tendrils round him and bind him to her for ever and for ever. ”

“ Emilie, a young woman, but broken . . . like all the greyness exuding from human souls that are always living in the past and in the melancholy of that past; and now that Brauws also saw it as a thing of shadows and twilight round Alex—because the boy could never forget the horror of his father's death—he also understood within himself that bygone things are never to be cast off and that they perhaps hang closer in clouds of melancholy, around people under grey skies—the small people under the great skies—than in bright countries of mountains and sunshine and blue sky. ”

“ Ah, if Constance and Addie had not led her!...
And Constance in her turn was grateful to Van der Welcke, for was it not his house in which she lived with her nephews and nieces, was it not with his money, for a great part, that she brought up those children?... Oh, if the old man would only cease spreading that rancour around them, filling the whole great sombre house with it because they had intruded, because they were living there on his money, though that money now belonged to his heir! At every guilder that Constance spent on her swollen household, she felt the old man's rancour. ”

“ The house gradually became very full. The daughter-in-law also remained alien to the big house; but the children, Constance and Jetje, were always like golden sunbeams, sometimes whirling in a sound of yet stammering voices of early springtime, as they went along the stairs and passages with their nurse—one already toddling on foot, the other still carried—to go for a drive in the governess-cart or to play in the conservatory, where the old great-grandmother, at the window, looked on with vague smiles at their playfulness, which was that of very small children. ”

“ And, when Marietje lifted her head a little, as with the movement of a lily on its slender stem, Mathilde saw her smiling, saw her eyes gleaming softly, saw the words taking birth as it were smiling on her lips; and it seemed as though those words added a touch of colour to the pale lips and a blush to the pale cheeks. . . .
"How very much better she looks than when she came!" thought Mathilde, though she wanted to call out to Addie and tell him to let go Marietje's hand. "They are about the same age," she thought. "I am much younger than she is." ”

“ Locking themselves up in the dark haunted house, all through the long, long winter, with nothing but sick people, all through the long, long winter, with nothing but sick people, nothing but mad people about them! . . .
Fortunately it had begun to freeze. It was as though this glorious ice had brought about a friendlier feeling: Gerdy was not so very horrid; Guy skated with Mathilde because she was a good, finished skater, fond of good, finished, unwearied skating; and the crisp crystal cold, after all the days of rain and storm, made everybody cheerful and indulgent. Oh, those skating-trips! ”

“ It was indeed a sudden, unexpected lightness of heart after so many rainy days: the cold wind whipped up their blood; the snow crackled like powdered crystal under their eager, hurrying feet; young men and girls of Gerdy's little circle came to fetch her in the morning and again after lunch; and, when the skating was over, they would all meet round the tea-table, in the big drawing-room. And Addie taught Klaasje to skate on the pond in the garden; and, under the jovial influence of the frosty snow, he romped about the garden with his children, with little Jetje and Constant. ”

“ 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? ”

“ At the Hague, Constant and Piet lived with a tutor; and Addie was almost glad that he himself was now living at the Hague and seeing more of the boys, for the tutor was not satisfied: the boys did their lessons badly, not because they were unwilling, but because they had no head for books, for working, for studying, any more than Alex, any more than Guy. The three yellow-haired younger ones were even worse feather-heads than their two elders: Constant was something of a dreamer, Jan the most solid, Piet the cleverest of the three, but none of them workers. ”

“ It was no longer the Hague now: it was Driebergen; it was Van der Welcke's house and Gerrit's children: Gerrit, how rough, how very rough he used to be, but even so not exactly wicked and depraved! And the cards as they were played one after the other fell from the fingers of Van der Welcke, Gerdy, Alex and Marietje. The same game; only life changed; the game did not change nor did the souls, the poor souls, ever and ever suffering around him, linking themselves to his soul with dragging chains.... ”

“ She brought the box, beaming with delight, but the smooth lid slid out of the box and the dominoes rattled on the floor. Klaasje stamped her foot, but the beautiful vision still shone before her and hurriedly and passionately she scrabbled them into her little pinafore. Then she brought them to Granny, like a harvest, like so much booty, and rattled them down at her feet. With a great effort she again pushed one of the heavy books on to Granny's lap; and the old woman helped her, pulling while Klaasje pushed.
"Build tower!" cried the child. ”

“ Of an evening now, alone in his study, in the soft light of his reading-lamp—the table with Guy's books and maps standing in one corner—he would walk up and down, up and down, wringing his hands, glancing deep into that despair, while the self-insufficiency was no longer vague, but soul-torturing in self-dissatisfaction, because he saw himself at fault in that great action of his life, which was still so very young, his marriage: at fault towards himself, at fault towards his wife. ”

“ Van der Welcke, strolling along the paths, found pleasure in watching Klaasje, the big girl of thirteen, tearing round the water, pursued by Jack, the new terrier, who barked and barked incessantly with his sharp, throaty bark.
"She is still just like a child," thought Van der Welcke, "and she is developing like a little woman. It is strange, the influence which Addie has over her . . . and the way the child is perking up now that the fine days have come. But it is not only the fine days, it is Addie above all that gives her this balance: what's it through, I wonder? ”

“ Then Marietje would long for Addie, so that he might lay his hand upon her head: no more, that was enough for her, because she was also very fond of him, of his voice and his glance and his speech, of his care, of his sympathy, of everything abstract that came from him to her; she knew that, on his side, it was no more than gentle interest, but it was enough for her: she lived upon little like a bloodless lily, her body and soul needing no excess. ”