The Twilight of the Souls Part 14

"No, nothing will ever come, nothing can come...."

"Can't it?"

"No, how could it?"

"If you had the strength and courage not to give in, Marianne, there would be happiness for you in days to come."

"But I have neither courage, Auntie, nor strength. What am I? Nothing.

There is a great, big river, which rushes and flows, carrying everything, everything with it, like a deluge. And then there is ... a tiny twig, a leaf. That's what I am, Auntie.... How can I hope to...?"

"You're talking in parables, my child. Shall I do the same?"

"Do, Auntie."

"Come and sit here beside me. Put your head on my shoulder. There. And now listen to my parable.... There was once a soul, a very small soul, like yours, Marianne. A very small soul it was, quite an insignificant little soul. It knew nothing about anything, it seemed to be walking blindly, walking in a dream, a child's dream, light and airy and fragile. There was water and there were flowers ... and there was a far-away light, towards which it moved. As the soul went on, the flowers and the trees disappeared; and in their stead a palace and every sort of pomp and vanity gleamed in front of the small soul.... But all that glitter was just as much a dream as the water and the flowers; and the small soul ... made its second mistake. It walked blindly in that dream of pomp and vanity and thought that it _saw_ all that radiance. It gave itself away, Marianne, gave everything it had to any one who might make it s.h.i.+ne still more brilliantly ... gave away everything it possessed, for nothing ... for an illusion. And it already felt unhappy, thinking, 'There is nothing more coming; I've had everything now.' It thought that, even before its fate arrived. It saw its fate arrive and could still have avoided it, but did not, remained blind, blind to everything.

Its fate swept it along; and it thought, Marianne, that everything was over, over for good and all; that it would wither like a flower, like a twig, like a leaf; and that the river would carry it along with it. And then, Marianne, then something else came, after it had been swept along by fate: there came a great revelation, a vision of rapture, an ecstasy of glory. And the small soul saw that it was _that_; but its fate forbade it to accept that great happiness, that vision of ecstasy....

And once again it thought, 'Now, _now_, I have really had everything.

After _that_, nothing more can possibly come.' And yet something did come. And, after that revelation, it was no longer a dream, but a reality, as tangible as it could hope to be ... for such a poor small soul.... What came, Marianne, was not so very much; but the small soul does not want much: an atom, a grain of absolute truth and reality; a tiny grain, but all-sufficing.... For small souls do not need much....

Just an atom, a grain. And of that grain, Marianne, it even communicated a part ... to others. My child, that is the whole secret: to share your grain, to give, though it be but of your superfluity, to others. But, Marianne, you will have to wait for that grain; it will only come later; and, before you can possess it ... you must first go through everything ... you must pa.s.s through all that unreality, that vain dreaming...."

"And, Auntie, have you the grain?"

"Oh, child, the grain is so small, so small! So tiny, so wee, such a very little grain! But what are we ourselves? And, we being what we are, is not that little tiny grain enough?..."

"For happiness ... some day, later, much later, after long, long years?..."

"Happiness? Happiness?... Yes, the happiness of knowing, of understanding; the happiness of resignation; the happiness of accepting one's own smallness ... and of not being angry and bitter because of all the mistakes ... and of being grateful for, what is beautiful and clear and true...."

"Grateful...."

"For the great dream.... And the happiness of satisfying hunger and thirst ... with that one, solitary little grain ... and of no longer yearning for the great, great dream!"

"But yet remaining grateful...."

"Yes, grateful that the dream has been vouchsafed to us, that its radiance ever smiled upon us...."

"But, Auntie, suppose it was no dream ... but the very bread of life!"

"My child, who can tell you _now_ what is the only bread of life? Now, you are only hungry for your dream ... and, later, much later...."

"Have I hungered then ... after nothing?"

"Perhaps."

"After nothing? Oh no!"

"Who can tell?"

"Auntie, is every one of life's parables so cruel in its worldly wisdom?

Do they all teach that the great dream is nothing and the little grain, which comes so late, everything?..."

"I fear so, child."

"Oh, Auntie, it's all words ... soft, gentle words!... I understand you: it is your _own_ story, _your_ parable. But, until now, mine ... is nothing but the river ... and the leaf...."

"And later perhaps there will come ... the tiny treasure, the grain...."

Then they were silent; and Constance thought: "Every soul must first go through _that_, must have its dream.... Not until very late does it find the grain ... for itself. What another communicates to it never satisfies its hunger as does its own grain ... the grain it has found for itself...."

CHAPTER VI

Addie was nearly sixteen. He did not grow much in stature, he promised to have the same build as his father, for there was something st.u.r.dy and yet delicate, something robust and yet gentle about him: strength and refinement combined. He continued to look older than he was, as though he could never quite catch himself up: his face, carved in firm and yet delicate lines, wore an air of calm serenity that did not belong to his years; his cheeks were covered with a golden down: indeed, his mother would have liked him to start shaving, which however he was not willing to do yet; and so the vague strip of golden velvet above his upper lip had become a decided moustache. His hair, with its soft, short, brown curls, was exactly like his father's; and his eyes also were his father's eyes, but they had grown still more serious, if possible, calm and tender, with a smiling sadness in their depths, and, above all, Addie's eyes were of a clear, untroubled blue, with none of the boyishness which shone in Van der Welcke's. Addie's were northern eyes, as his mother said: Dutch eyes, she called them, as distinguished from the creole eyes of all her family, the Van Lowes.

"Addie, how Dutch you are!" his mother would say, meaning thereby that they all, the Van Lowes, were specimens of the languid, less robust East-Indian type and that his father also had become more or less un-Dutch through his long residence abroad. "Addie, how Dutch you are!

For a boy born on the Riviera, brought up in Brussels, who had never been in Holland before his thirteenth year, how is it possible that you should be the most Dutch of us all! You have nothing of the cosmopolitan about you!"

His mother used to tease him like this, especially when she looked into his eyes, his clear, calm, Dutch eyes, as into two blue mirrors, with a smile in them like a reflexion ... and beneath that smile, a vague shadow of sadness. And then he would give a sober nod of a.s.sent, laughing quietly, as though to say that she was right, that he felt quite Dutch and neither a languid East-Indian nor a mongrel cosmopolitan. He was a Dutch boy above all things, but here, in this little village of Nunspeet, he felt even more Dutch than at the Hague, especially as he looked out of his window at the hotel and saw the glittering white dunes undulating towards those vast skies, saw the piled-up clouds, the immensities of grey-blue rolling clouds, drifting by in their puissant majesty: all the glory of a small land; grandeur and might and majesty towering above the small lowlands, which bowed humbly beneath their awfulness.... Those clouds, those Dutch clouds: Addie loved them, those awful powers throned high above the gently undulating lands ... and Mamma, who teased him so, loved them too, her Dutch clouds, so vast, so vast, as though they were islands and fields, larger than the fields and islands of Holland itself....

It was early, six o'clock; and he looked out of his window into the pearly morning and, with a characteristic gesture of enthusiasm, flung out his arms towards the clouds. Then he laughed at himself, hoped that no one had seen him from the road. No, the peasants going to their work did not look up at his window; and now he dressed himself quickly, ran downstairs, breakfasted hurriedly on bread-and-b.u.t.ter and a gla.s.s of milk and went along the high-road and down a shorter road to Dr. van Heuvel's villa. The house stood some way back, in a large garden, quiet and shady; and, as the house stood high, it looked out over the undulating, sparkling dunes, past the dark-green ma.s.ses of fir-trees on the moor which s.h.i.+mmered purple in the early morning suns.h.i.+ne, towards low horizons of just a streak of green, broken only by the needle-point of a steeple: just a narrow strip beneath the awful majesties of the vast clouds which drifted calmly by, one after the other, on and on, unceasingly, ever vast and majestic.

The doctor came out to meet Addie.

"Here I am, doctor."

"That's right, Van der Welcke, you're in good time. Would you mind going for a walk with your uncle presently?"

"Not at all."

"For I can't manage to come to-day."

"There's no reason why you should, doctor."

"It's the first time you'll have been out alone with him. When will your mother be back?"

"This afternoon."

"Of course, I could send the keeper with you. But it's better that your uncle should not see more of him than's necessary."

"Don't worry, doctor; it'll be all right."

"Don't go too far, you know."

"No, close by, on the dunes."

"I can rely on you?"