# Dr. Adriaan/Chapter XVIII

That night, Marietje van Saetzema had a dream which was like a nightmare. She was running down a sloping mountain, deep as an abyss; she rushed and rushed and Addie came rushing after her and Mathilde after Addie, rushing with delirious screams. After Mathilde, Johan Erzeele came rushing and, last of all, Gerdy; and before any one of them reached the other, Marietje, who was running in front, plunged into the deep abyss; and they all plunged after her. The echoing fall, in the black depths, made Marietje wake with a start to find the darkness of her bedroom quivering all around her, the strange inner darkness of the night; and she was cold and clammy and sat up wide-eyed, while the wind blew fiercely outside. Her first impulse was to get up and run out of the room for help, to Aunt Constance, to Addie. But, growing calmer, though her head and heart were still throbbing, she let herself fall back upon her pillows and controlled her fears. She would stay quietly in her room.
A month ago, she would never have done as much; at the Hague, after this sort of dream, she would utter cries, go running through the house, scream aloud. Now she did not scream, but lay where she was and drove the feverish thoughts in front of her. Yes, feverish she was; but she speedily recovered a sense of calmness, as soon as she began to think of Addie. Hadn't he said so himself:
"Marietje, when you feel overstrung . . . think of me!"
​And she thought of him; and things began to smile and to grow very calm around her. . . . She gave a deep sigh. . . . She recalled the words which he used when hypnotizing her:
"The body is growing heavy. . . . The hand is growing heavy. . . . You can't lift your hand. . . ."
And, though she did not fall asleep, she became very quiet and smiled contentedly. True, she knew that he said the same thing to all the patients whom he hypnotized:
"Think of me, whenever you feel your nerves give way."
But she, when she thought of him . . . was she in love with him? Perhaps; she didn't know: perhaps she did love him, deep down within herself, in the chastest recesses of her soul; perhaps she had been in love with him for years, ever since he used to talk to her so kindly—he a small boy, she a rather bigger girl, but about the same age—when her brothers were so rough to her and Mamma, Floortje and Caroline used to snub her, as they always did. In the noisy, uproarious, vulgar house, she had grown up quietly, like a little pale plant, humble, oppressed, as it were hiding herself, until suddenly some impulse in her blood had made her scream the house down with neurotic cries. They all asked whether she had gone mad; and she had locked herself up since, hidden herself, in her room. . . . And, after these attacks, she would remain behind as in a dream, seeing nothing, hearing nothing around her, just staring. And, when she saw that her condition at last made an impression, she at once became proud of that impression, lifted herself out of the Cinderella humility, became the interesting figure at home, now that she aroused her father's fears, her mother's ​pity, her sister's annoyance. And she had grown proud of her neuroticism; she let father, mother and sister feel fear, pity and annoyance, with a sort of vindictive satisfaction. Yet she had a vague feeling of deep unhappiness, because her soul was sinking as into an abyss, her hands groping vaguely in the terrible void. . . . She would spend days in tears. Then Aunt Constance had come, so kind, so gentle, so sensible; and she had resisted, because perhaps she was very fond of Addie and always had been, in obedience to some modest dread, did not wish to live where he lived. But Aunt Constance had insisted and she had yielded; and Addie, Addie was now curing her: oh, he cured her when he merely pressed his hand softly on her forehead! And she confessed to him the wicked, arrogant pride in her illness, which at last created an agitation in the paternal house where Marietje had never counted. . . .
He had listened so earnestly, telling her that this was very wrong, that it was the worst of all and that, with such wicked feelings she would never get well. And, after that, he talked for days, oh, so earnestly! And she listened to him in ecstasy, as though her soul were rocking on his deep, soothing voice. And gradually, gradually, she had discovered in him—oh, no affection for her, no ordinary affection or love, for she was plain and thin and without charm, while Mathilde was so handsome: a beautiful woman!—but a real harmony between some of his feelings and views with what she, in her silent life as a lonely, down-trodden little girl, had thought about all sorts of people, animals, things, about everything which had aroused her compassion in her youthful earnestness and hypersensitiveness: about the wind lashing the leaves; about a driver ill-treating a horse; about Aunt Adeline, ​Granny, Emilie, little Klaasje; about poor people whom she would sometimes go and visit with Aunt Constance and Adeletje. And thus, slowly, out of all these small, simple feelings something had thrilled in unison with his feelings, had roused kindred feelings in him, until they had talked of all sorts of strange presentiments and dreams, of existence before life and after death, of an invisible world and life crossing their threads with the visible world and life. And, when sometimes she had been a little fanciful, Addie had always understood her, but at the same time, with all his restfulness and strength, his seriousness and smiling earnestness, had quieted her in her hypersensitiveness and hyper-imagination, in her dread and surmise, until she now discussed all those questions with him so quietly, in words that quickly understood one another, so that, even in these conversations, which might easily have made her more neurotic, he satisfied her and lulled all the anxious thrills of her sick girlish nerves and soul. There was a mystic force in his voice, in his glance, in the pressure of his hand, so that, even after these conversations, she remained lying in a deep and blissful sleep and, after half an hour, woke from it as though rising refreshed out of a wide, still bath on strangely rarefied air, like cool water, which gave her an incomprehensible, blissful sense of spiritual well-being.
And that peaceful life of sympathy was healing to her, whereas it vexed Mathilde. She thought that it would always keep flowing on like this; and she was greatly surprised when she suddenly heard of a ball at Utrecht to which they were all invited.
"Which of you want to go?" asked Constance. "I shall stay at home, but Uncle will chaperon you."
​Mathilde loved the idea, even though Addie did not give it a thought. Of the girls, however, only Gerdy cared about it; but Guy would go with her.
"So none of you: Adeletje? . . . Mary? . . . Marietje?"
No, they did not feel inclined, even though Aunt Constance urged them, said that they very seldom had any fun, that they ought really to go, now that the chance offered. But the girls didn't want to; and Aunt Constance said:
"Well, then, you and Uncle will just make four; so you can go in the carriage."
But Mathilde preferred to dress at Utrecht, in an hotel, because her dress would get creased in the carriage; and she decided to go in the afternoon, with a box.
On the evening of the ball, Constance grumbled at Adeletje, Mary and Marietje, because they took no pleasure in dancing, and said that, if this went on, they would move to the Hague, because the girls were growing so dull in the country. Constance' nerves were raw; and she said angry, unreasonable things; her eyes filled with tears.
"But, Auntie," said Marietje, "we're all so happy here together! Why talk about the Hague? What do we care about a dance?"
"That's just it. I think it unnatural."
"Listen to it blowing!" said Adeletje.
"And raining!" said Marietje—Mary.
"That's what Uncle and Gerdy and Guy are driving through," said Adeletje.
"The poor horses!" said Marietje—Mary.
The others laughed.
"Yes, the horses will get wet, poor things!" said Marietje—Mary.
"Dirk'll look after them," said Constance. "The horses are taken out so seldom."
​"But when they are . . . they are taken out in the rain!" said Mary, reproachfully.
Paul was there, playing softly on the piano. Ernst was there; and it was very strange to see the friends which he had silently made with Klaasje. Together they looked in her picture-books: the unnaturally old queer man and the unnaturally young child.
"I can read now," said the backward girl of thirteen, very proudly.
"Really?" said Uncle Ernst.
"Yes, Uncle Addie is teaching me to read. Look, in these books, with pretty letters, blue, yellow, red. That's violet. And that, Uncle Addie says, is purple. That's purple: a lovely colour, purple. Uncle Addie teaches me to read."
And laboriously she spelt out the highly coloured words.
"So Uncle Addie teaches you to read with coloured letters?" asked Ernst.
"Yes, I don't like black letters. And look at my books: all with beautiful pictures. 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."
The evening passed quietly; the old grandmother and Klaasje were taken and put to bed; but, because ​Aunt Constance was sitting up till the carriage returned from Utrecht, they all wanted to sit up.
"What an idea!" said Constance, with nervous irritability. "Why don't you all go to bed?"
But they were gathered round her so pleasantly and they stayed up: Addie, Emilie, Adeline, Marietje; but Addie sent Adeletje and Mary to bed.
And they sat waiting downstairs in the night. It was three o'clock when at last they heard the carriage; and Van der Welcke, Gerdy and Guy entered.
"Mathilde is spending the night at the hotel," said Van der Welcke.
"And Uncle made a very sweet chaperon," said Guy, chaffingly.
But Gerdy did not say much, looked tired, very pale, constrained. They went upstairs, to their rooms, and Gerdy kissed her mother. But, without the others seeing it, she followed Adeline to her room and suddenly, unable to contain herself, burst into a paroxysm of tears.
"Darling, darling, what is it?"
And the mother, long since broken, took the girl, now breaking, into her arms and it was as though she suddenly wakened from her apathy and felt herself very much a mother. . . . Oh, she knew that she could not do much for her children, that she was not capable, never had been since Gerrit's death, that without Van der Welcke, Constance and Addie she could not have made anything of her children! Nevertheless, they remained her children; and, if she did not know how to guide her sons in their careers, she did know how to sympathize with her poor Gerdy's sobs.
"Darling, darling, what is it?"
And, dropping into her chair, while Gerdy knelt before her in the folds of her white-tulle frock, she ​held the pale little face against her and compelled the child to speak, to speak. . . .
"It's nothing," said Gerdy, through her sobs. "I didn't enjoy myself."
"You didn't? Why, what happened?"
"I hardly danced at all."
"Why not?"
"Mamma, it's better to tell you plainly. I'm so unhappy! It's about Johan . . ."
"Erzeele? Has he proposed to you?"
Gerdy shook her head:
"No, but . . ."
"But what?"
"In the winter . . . skating . . . I thought he was fond of me. . . . It's my own fault: it was silly of me, it was silly. . . . It wasn't anything. . . . He was just the same to me as to other girls; and I thought, I thought . . . It's nothing, Mamma, it's my own fault, but I thought . . . Mamma, I oughtn't to take it so much to heart . . . but it makes me very unhappy. . . . He danced with me, once. . . . But he danced with Mathilde the whole time. . . . He was always with her. . . . People were talking about it. . . . It was just as if she was mad, as if she didn't think . . . that she oughtn't to behave like that . . . with Johan. . . . It struck Uncle Henri too: I could see it by his face. They were together the whole evening and . . . you understand. . . . He paid her attentions . . . shamelessly . . . the way he does to married women. . . . With girls he's different. . . . I hated him for a moment. But then he came and asked me, for that one dance . . . and then I thought . . . I oughtn't to have thought it. It's my own fault. I'm very unhappy, Mamma. . . . Uncle Henri was very angry too . . . with Mathilde . . . because she ​wouldn't come back with us to Driebergen. . . . He gave way and let her stay, to avoid unpleasantness. . . . But it was ridiculous of her: the carriage is big enough and she would not have been so badly creased. . . . Oh, she looked lovely, she looked lovely! . . . She is quite lovely, dressed like that, at a ball. . . . Addie ought to have come with us. . . . She was really beautiful, but not—it's wrong of me to say it, I know—not like us."
"How do you mean, dear?"
"Not like Aunt Constance and Emilie and you. . . . She didn't . . . she didn't look well-bred. . . . She looked beautiful, but she looked coarse. . . . If Addie had come, perhaps she would have restrained herself, not worn her dress so low. She was the only one in such a very low frock. . . . You see, there was something about her . . . that repelled me even more than usual: I can't say what and it's very wrong of me, because after all she's Addie's wife and we must be fond of her; but really, she didn't look a lady; and I could see it in people's faces: they thought her very handsome . . . but not . . . not well-bred. . . . And . . . after that . . . when she did nothing but dance with Johan . . . then . . . oh, Mamma, then she looked at me . . . and looked at me with a sneer . . . as if she were looking down on me! . . . I knew that I was not at my best, that I looked pale and thin; my shoulders are not good; and Johan behaved so oddly to me, in such a queer, mocking way: oh, Mamma, he was almost cruel! . . . I do believe, oh, Mamma, I do believe, that I . . . that I'm in love with him! But I oughtn't to tell you and I oughtn't to be like this . . . I oughtn't to cry so; but I couldn't help it, I couldn't help it! . . . I did my best, Mamma, not to show it before Uncle Henri and before Guy, ​but, oh, Mamma, the whole dance . . . the whole dance was a torture!"
Adeline mingled her sobs with Gerdy's:
"My darling, my poor, poor darling!"
"Mamma! Oh, Mamma!"
"What is it, my poor dear?"
"Listen, Mamma!"
"What?"
"Don't you hear? The sound . . . upstairs!"
"Hush! . . . Hush! . . . The sound . . ."
"Is dragging itself . . ."
"Downstairs. It's like a footstep. It's always like that."
"Oh, Mamma, I'm frightened!"
"It's nothing, dear: the wind, a draught, a board creaking . . ."
"Oh, but I'm frightened!"
"It's nothing. . . . I opened the door once . . . to look."
"You dared to?"
"Yes. It was nothing."
"There was nothing to see? . . . "
"No. It was only very draughty."
"And everything's closed!"
"It's nothing, it's nothing, dear."
"Now it's dragging itself away . . . down below. . . ."
"It's the draught. . . . Oh, my poor, poor darling!"
"Oh, Mamma, I'm unhappy . . . and I'm frightened, I'm frightened, I'm frightened! . . ."