DR. ADRIAAN

By

LOUIS COUPERUS

TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1918

Contents

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Dr. Adriaan is the fourth and last of the volumes forming The Books of the Small Souls. In it the reader renews his acquaintance with all the characters that survive from Small Souls, The Later Life and The Twilight of the Souls.

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.

Chelsea, 30 March, 1918.

CHAPTER I

The afternoon sky was full of thick, dark clouds, drifting ponderously grey over almost black violet: clouds so dark, heavy and thick that they seemed to creep laboriously upon the east wind, for all that it was blowing hard. In its breath the clouds now and again changed their watery outline, before their time came to pour down in heavy straight streaks of rain. The stiff pine-woods quivered, erect and anxious, along the road; and the tops of the trees lost themselves in a silver-grey air hardly lighter than the clouds and dissolving far and wide under all that massive grey-violet and purple-black which seemed so close and low. The road ran near and went winding past, lonely, deserted and sad. It was as though it came winding out of low horizons and went on towards low horizons, dipping humbly under very low skies, and only the pine-trees still stood up, pointed, proud and straight, when everything else was stooping. The modest villa-residence, the smaller poor dwellings here and there stooped under the heavy sky and the gusty wind; the shrubs dipped along the road-side; and the few people who went along—an old gentleman; a peasant-woman; two poor children carrying a basket and followed by a melancholy, big, rough-coated dog—seemed to hang their heads low under the solemn weight of the clouds and the fierce mastery of the wind, which had months ago blown the smile from the now humble, frowning, pensive landscape. The soul of that landscape appeared small and all forlorn in the watery mists of the dreary winter.

The wind came howling along, chill and cold, like an angry spite that was all mouth and breath; and Adeletje, hanging on her aunt's arm, huddled into herself, for the wind blew chill in her sleeves and on her back.

"Are you cold, dear?"

"No, Auntie," said Adeletje, softly, shivering.

Constance smiled and pressed Adeletje's arm close to her:

"Let's walk a little faster, dear. It'll warm you; and, besides, I'm afraid it's going to rain. It's quite a long way to the old lady's and back again.... I fear I've tired you."

"No, Auntie."

"You see, I didn't want to take the carriage. This way, we do the thing by ourselves; and otherwise everybody would know of it at once. And you must promise me not to talk about it."

"No, Auntie, I won't."

"Not to anybody. Otherwise there'll be all sorts of remarks; and it's no concern of other people's what we do."

"The poor old thing was very happy, Auntie. The beef-tea and the wine and chicken...."

"Poor little old woman...."

"And so well-mannered. And so discreet.... Auntie, will Addie be back soon?"

"He's sure to telegraph."

"It's very nice of him to take such pains for Alex. We all of us give Addie a lot of trouble.... When do you think he'll come back?"

"I don't know; to-morrow, or the next day...."

"Auntie, you've been very fidgety lately."

"My dear, I haven't."

"Yes, you have.... Tell me, has anything happened with Mathilde? Has there?"

"No, child.... But do keep your little mouth shut now. I'm frightened, the wind's so cold."

They walked on in silence, Adeletje accommodating her step by Aunt Constance' regular pace. Constance was a good walker; and Addie always said that, leading the outdoor life she did, Mama grew no older. They had now been living for ten years at Driebergen, in the big, old, gloomy house, which seemed to be lighted only by themselves, by their affection for one another, but which Constance had never brought herself to like, hard though she tried. Ten years! How often, oh, how often she saw them speed before her in retrospect!... Ten years: was it really ten years? How quickly they had passed! They had been full and busy years; and Constance was satisfied with the years that had fleeted by, only she was distressed that it all went so fast and that she would be old before.... But the wind was blowing too fiercely and Adeletje was hanging heavily on her arm—poor child, she was shivering: how cold she must be!—and Constance could not follow her thoughts.... Before ... before.... Well, if she died, there would be Addie.... Only.... No, she couldn't think now; and besides they would be home presently.... They would be home.... Home! The word seemed strange to her; and she did not think that right. And yet, struggle against the singular emotion as she would, she could not cure herself of thinking that big house gloomy and regretting the little villa in the Kerkhoflaan at the Hague, even though she had never known any great domestic happiness there.... Still ... still, one loves the thing that one has grown used to; and was it not funny that she had grown so fond of that little house, where she had lived four years, and been disconsolate when, after the old man's death, Van der Welcke and Addie too had insisted on moving to the big, sombre villa at Driebergen?... Fortunately, it was at once lighted by all of them, by their affection for one another; if she had not had the consoling brightness of mutual love, oh, it would have been impossible for her to go and live in that dark, gloomy, cavernous villa-house, among the eternally rustling trees, under the eternally louring skies! The house was dear to Van der Welcke and Addie because of a strange sympathy, a sense that their home was there and nowhere else. The father was born in the house and had played there as a child; and the son, strangely enough, cherished the exact same feeling of attraction towards it. Had they not almost forced her to move into the house: Van der Welcke crying for it like a child, first going there for a few days at a time and living there with nobody but the decrepit old charwoman who made his bed for him; then Addie following his father's example, fitting up a room for herself and making constant pretexts—that he must go and have a look among his papers, that he must run down for a book—seizing any excuse that offered?... Then they left her alone, in her house in the Kerkhoflaan. That had trees round it too and skies overhead. But it was strange: among those trees in the Hague Woods, under those clouds which came drifting from Scheveningen, she had felt at home, though their little villa was only a house hired on a five years' lease, taken at the time under Addie's deciding influence. He, quite a small boy then, had gone and seen the fat estate-agent.... Oh, how the years, how the years hurried past!... To think that it was all so long ago!... Strange, in that leasehold house she had felt at home, at the Hague, among her relations, under familiar skies and among familiar people and things, unyielding though both things and people had often proved. Whereas here, in this house, in this great cavernous, gloomy villa-residence—and she had lived in it since the old man's death fully ten years ago—she had always felt, though the house belonged to them as their inheritance, as their family-residence, a stranger, an intruder, one who had come