Small Souls Part 50

"No, I can't understand it. I can't understand you, Henri. I feel that there is a very, very deep gulf between us. I feel that there is neither love nor fear of G.o.d in you, that everything in your life, in your relations with your wife, with your child, lacks a religious tendency.

It makes me very sad. I could never have pictured things like that. I at least thought that you would have asked G.o.d's forgiveness daily for the sin you once committed, the sin against yourself, your parents, that woman, her husband, against the world, against G.o.d. I never imagined you, Henri, so obdurate, so entirely without repentance, regretting merely your own ruined life and shattered career. I can only pray for you and I will pray for you, every day. Still, I can understand want of faith. But what I can't understand is that you should--plainly and simply--corrupt the soul of your son, a child of fourteen, by telling him of your sin--plainly and simply--so that he might no longer suffer: those were your words, were they not? Now, when I repeat those words to myself and repeat them again and think over them and reflect upon them, I fail to understand them. I do not understand them. I feel that you must be entirely lacking in moral sense, in any idea of duty towards your child, in any fear of G.o.d, to be able to act like that, to be able to speak like that to your son, just to spare him suffering--plainly and simply--and I ask myself, 'Am I dreaming? Where am I? Whom am I speaking to? Is the man opposite me my son, my child, brought up by myself, and is what he is telling me the truth or an illusion?' And, if that illusion is the truth, Henri, if you are so entirely lost to every sense of moral and parental duty, then I am very, very sorry to hear it and I sit staring into a horrible abyss; and I confess that I do not understand you and that I understand nothing of the world, the times and the people of to-day...."

The old man had spoken slowly, measuring every word.

"Father," said Henri, "you and I are different; and I can understand that you, an old man, in your great goodness and transcendental sense of duty, cannot understand how I feel and think and act. Still, I do not believe that I have corrupted Addie and I am convinced that it was a good impulse that suggested to Constance and me to tell our child about our past at once and not to wait until he was a year or two older. Tell me if you think that he looks like a child whose imagination has been defiled. Tell me if you do not think, on the contrary, that he is a strong-minded boy who suffered from those slanders, when they reached him, simply because he did not know the truth, and who now, knowing the truth, loves both his parents with his clear, candid soul and is no longer in doubt, but knows."

The old man slowly shook his head with the tall, ivory forehead, while his gnarled hands trembled:

"Henri, you can thank G.o.d if your child, whose purity you have put to so severe a test, emerges from that test unstained."

Van der Welcke was silent, out of respect. He felt himself, notwithstanding his love, so far removed from his father that his heart was wrung and he thought:

"Will Addie ever, ever be so far removed from me?..."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

The old man often reverted to that conversation:

"Henri, can you imagine me, your father, speaking to you, when you were thirteen, about a sin, a crime I had committed?"

No, Van der Welcke could never have imagined it! He was sorry now that he had told his father so much, seeing how shocked the old man was. And, though he tried to find soothing words, in order to calm his father after that shock, still everything that he said sounded too cynical, too modern, too flippant almost; and he no longer answered, but preferred to avoid the subject, when the old man returned to it daily, shaking his head and making his comments. And Van der Welcke was obliged to smile when his father often closed those comments with the remark:

"Don't let your mother know anything about it."

No, he did not tell his mother, because his father ordered him to leave his mother out of all this cynical philosophy and atheistical lack of principle, because his father thought that it would hurt her, his wife, whom he had always kept secluded from all knowledge of the outside world, until the scandal in Rome had come as a shock to both of them.

And even then, in the years that followed, he had always hidden as much as possible of the world from his wife, holding that a woman, whatever her age, need not know, need not read, need not discuss, need not reflect upon all those things which, far removed from the two of them, were sin: sin such as their son had committed....

Van der Welcke now for the first time fully realized how grievous the shock of the scandal must have been to both of them, years ago. He, young though he was and but lately emanc.i.p.ated from his parents, had at once lost so much of those strict principles in his life in Rome, in his contact with women of the world, in his polished drawing-room talk on soul-weariness with Constance; and he now for the first time fully understood why they had not wished to see the two of them and why years had to elapse before there could be any question of forgiveness. And, however much he had longed for his father, in Brussels, he now felt that this longing was an illusion; that his father was a stranger to him now and he a stranger to his father: two strangers to each other, whom only a remembrance of former days had brought together again. And, curiously, though, as a child, he had liked his father better than his mother, his love now seemed to turn more to his mother, who had never become a stranger, who had always remained the mother, silently reading her forbidden book, longing simply for her child, to whom the voices had sent her....

"But, just as my father would never have spoken out to me, no more would I ever have gone bicycling with my father?" thought Van der Welcke, as he darted with Addie along the smooth roads towards the Zeist Woods.

They were like two brothers, an elder and a younger brother, neither of them tall, but both fairly broad, both with something delicate and high-bred and yet something powerful in their build--Van der Welcke was young still and slender for his nine-and-thirty years--and both, under the same sort of cap, had the same face, the same steel-blue eyes, the same straight profile, with its short nose, well-formed mouth and broad chin, though one was a man and the other a boy. They pedalled and pedalled and devoured the roads on that scorching August morning, talking gaily like two friends.

"Let's stop here, Addie, and take a rest," said Van der Welcke, at length, out of breath.

They alighted, leant their machines against a couple of trees, flung themselves on the mound of needles under the fir-trees, which rose silently and peacefully, calm as cathedral-pillars.

"I say, I'm tired," said Van der Welcke, feeling a little older, for the moment, than his son. "Addie, how you take it out of your father!"

Addie laughed, pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Van der Welcke rested his head on Addie's knee.

"Move higher up: you're not comfortable like that," said Addie.

And, catching his father under the arm-pits, he hoisted him up a bit:

"No, that won't do either," he said. "Look here, you're squas.h.i.+ng my stomach!"

"Is this better?"

"Yes, if you keep still, old chap, and don't move, you can stay like that."

And he pa.s.sed his fingers through his father's short, curly hair, while Van der Welcke lay silent, closed his eyes and thought:

"Fancy me, when I was fourteen, pulling up my father by his arms and saying to him, 'Look here, you're squas.h.i.+ng my stomach!... If you keep still, old chap, you can stay like that!'"

And he suddenly began to splutter with laughter.

"I say, what's up? What are you laughing at?"

"Addie, I was thinking, I was thinking...."

"Well, what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking...."

And Van der Welcke began to wobble up and down with laughter.

"Oh, but I say! Woa! woa! Don't go jumping about on my stomach like that! Hi! Stop! Keep still! What's the joke?"

"I was thinking ... of your Grandpapa's face ... if ... when I was your age ... I had hauled him up like that by his arms and said to him, 'If you keep still ... if you keep still...!'"

Addie's sense of humour made him see the picture at once: Grandpapa, getting on for forty and very stately and dignified, and Papa, a boy like himself; and Papa saying:

"If you keep still, old chap, you can stay like that!"

And both of them burst with laughter, one on top of the other; and Addie, whom his father's weight prevented from laughing as he would have liked to, flung his legs madly in the air, almost stood on his head, until Van der Welcke tumbled backwards, with his head lower than his feet:

"Bother you! I was just so comfortable!"

Addie took pity on Papa, pulled him up again under his arms, dragged him about most disrespectfully, first shoved his head on his chest ... no, that hurt ... then a little lower down ... on his stomach.... There, he could stay like that....

But Van der Welcke kept on laughing like a lunatic. And Addie was the first to recover his seriousness:

"Father, stop it now! Stop shaking about like that!"

Van der Welcke closed his eyes blissfully. The scent of the steaming pines floated on the summery air; the needles glistened and gave off their fragrance. And Van der Welcke fell asleep, with his head in his son's lap.

"Dear old Father!" thought Addie; and he stroked his father's round, curly head.

He looked down at him and, so as not to disturb his father's sleep, sat motionless, with his back against a tree. He looked down at him: dear old Father!... But he was not old, his father: he was young.... And, all at once, it seemed to Addie that he saw it for the first time: his father was young. And he thought to himself how strange it was that, when you are young yourself, you call everybody old: Granny van Lowe and Grandpapa and Grandmamma van der Welcke were old; and Uncle Ruyvenaer and Auntie were old; and the two old aunts, Auntie Rine and Auntie Tine, were very old, regular old mummies. But Papa, Papa was young. Why, he was only a year or two older than Uncle Paul, who was always the young man, the dandy, with his exquisite coats and beautiful ties. And Papa looked younger than Uncle Paul, Papa certainly looked younger.... Addie bent over him, while he slept. He lay quietly sleeping, with his face three-quarters turned on Addie's lap. And Addie, seeing for the first time that Papa was young, studied his face. Oh, how young Papa was: he was younger than Mamma! He looked much younger; he looked almost like an elder brother of Addie's. His hair, thinning ever so little over the temples, was still quite brown: soft, short, curly brown hair, almost close-cropped, but curling just a little, like his own. His forehead was white, like that of a statue, without a wrinkle, had kept white under the peak of his cycling-cap; and his cheeks, a little blue from shaving, were healthily bronzed. His eyelids were young, his lids now closed in sleep; his straight nose was young and his mouth, with the short, thick, curly moustache above it. His frame was young; and on Addie's knees lay his young hands, small, broad and dainty, with carefully-tended nails: Addie looked at his own finger-nails, boy's nails, which were torn rather than cut.... How strange that Papa should be so young! He noticed it for the first time. And for the first time he felt himself to have grown older, no longer quite a child, a boy still, but grown into a young man, even though he was only fourteen.... Yes, when you were a child, a real child, you looked upon anybody older than yourself as just old. Now, he was astounded: how young Papa was; and how much older Mamma was! True, her face was young still, but she had grey hair, she was forty-three.... He could imagine Papa with a very young wife, a girl almost, like one of the cousins, Louise or Emilie, or Floortje: Papa and a wife like that would make a good pair.... How young he was, how young he was!... He was now sleeping like a child, on Addie's stomach, peacefully breathing.... Dear old Father!... No, not a bit old: as young as a brother, as a friend, as a chum. So jolly too and so mad sometimes.... And then suddenly he would try to be the stern parent!

Dear Father!--Addie laughed--That didn't come off at all! He loved him like that: so young, such a friend, such a chum, such a brother....

Mamma was his mother, always, even though he did sometimes flirt with her; but Papa was not a Papa, Papa was his friend and his brother. But, young though Papa was, Addie nevertheless thought it strange that he had said to him so often:

"My life is shattered, my career is done for."