Small Souls/Chapter XXXI
The boy had grown serious. For that little incident represented more to him than a quarrel with a cousin about a word of abuse: it had suddenly opened a window to him, who was already none too young for his years, given him a view into the people around him, the big, older, grown-up, serious people, the people to whom he would belong later, when he too was big and old and grown-up; and, at the same time, it had given him his first great sorrow. The boy had grown more serious, more serious than he already was, now that he had discussed it calmly with Frans van Naghel and told him that he had asked his father about it and that the nickname was a pure slander. And the delicate bloom on his child-soul, which was like the soul of a little man, was not only offended by that slander and soiled by it and profaned, but that fledgling man’s soul, with its downy freshness, was startled and astonished and shocked and did not understand why the people around him uttered slanders, the people for whom Mamma had longed because she missed them so in her loneliness and because she was filled with that strange feeling, that passion for her family. Why, why did people slander? Why did they speak evil? For he now felt that they all knew that nickname and perhaps all believed that slander a little, inasmuch as they all slandered. What did it benefit them, what did they gain by it, what good did it do them to slander for slander’s sake? And the suspicion lingered; for, if it was not true, what they said about his father and mother, what was it that was true? He felt that there was something in their past, something that had never entirely disappeared, something that still embittered the existence of both of them, something that was perhaps the cause of their irreconcilable discord.
And the boy felt this so deeply, in the seriousness that had come with his new-found knowledge, that once, when he was alone with his father, he climbed on his knees and simply asked him to tell him what it was. He was a child, for he still sat on his father’s knee, and yet he was already a sturdy boy, though short for his years; and, however serious he might be, he still had the soft bloom of his childhood on his cheeks and on his soul. True, his father was beginning to ask:
“Aren’t you too big, my boy, to sit on your father’s knee?”
But he himself did not think that he was too big yet. Seriousness and extreme childishness, manhood and boyhood were mingled in him; and, though he was a little man, he was also still a boy; though he was serious, he still remained a child.
He sat on his father’s knees and asked him, gravely, to tell him what was true, if the slanders which people spoke were not true; for he felt that there was something. And he read in his father’s eyes that he must not ask; and his father answered that he was still too young for his father to discuss everything with him. Then he fell silent, did not insist; but the suspicion never left him and he now knew for certain that there was something, because his father had told him that he was too young to discuss things with him. And so the boy became serious; and, when Van der Welcke came home to dinner from the club, he no longer found his cheerful Addie, who could talk so brightly and fill up the gap between him and Constance with his pleasant, boyish talk. The boy sat in silence, ate in silence, with his young soul full of suspicion, full of silent questionings as to what it really was, if the slanders which people uttered were not true. He loved them so fondly, with that love of his; and it made him profoundly sad that he did not know that thing of the past, because, for want of that knowledge, he was no longer living their life. He now wished that he was older, so as to be able to live their life and have the right to know. And he weighed what he did know in his soul that longed for certainties: he knew that Mamma had been married before and was divorced from the husband whom she never mentioned. Had it been that first husband’s fault? Or had she made him unhappy? Addie did not know and was craving to know. And his longing was no morbid curiosity, but the result of his unnatural upbringing: his longing had come about quite naturally, after his first great sorrow, because his father and mother had both always looked upon him as almost more than their child, as their comrade, as their consolation, as their passion, to whom all the current of both their hearts went out. That Constance should have sobbed in his lap, that Van der Welcke should worship him as his warmest friend—him, their boy, their little son—had made his serious soul still more serious and as deep as a small, clear lake; and it could not be but that, after the first shock and the first sorrow, questions and longings should arise in him that as yet made no appeal to other children. His nature was healthy, the nature of a healthy child’s soul, well and peacefully balanced in its early, sturdy manliness; but his existence between his two parents—it could not be called an upbringing—had worked on his nerves to the extent of now making him quiver with the wish to know.
Those were gloomy meals; and Constance asked Van der Welcke why Addie was so gloomy, so different from what he had been. Now that the boy was gloomy, with that new, strange and serious gloominess, they both sought each other more than they had done, talked to each other, calmly, without angry scenes. Now that the child was still suffering, they both, together, sought for a solution, how to stop his suffering. And, helpless in the midst of this entirely new confidence, they looked at each other as though in despair, because they thought the solution too terrible. The child wanted to know; and they, both of them, would be compelled—to stop his suffering, or, perhaps, increase it and feel his growing contempt and blame pressing upon them—both of them would be compelled to speak of the years past, of the gigantic mistake of their lives, the mistake which had given him, their child, his life! Oh, how they felt it, both of them, that past which never died, sunk in a bottomless pit, but always haunted them, haunting them more seriously, more menacingly now that Addie was growing older and had been unhappy and wanted to know! Oh, how helpless they both felt, while they stared at each other in despair because they did not know how to spare their darling, how to spare him, even though they would spare him to-day, how—how indeed?—to spare him to-morrow! And, because their sorrow was the same, the same sorrow for their darling, for their comrade, their consolation, their passion, it was as though, for the first time, after years and years, they were nearing each other and for the first time bearing together a part of the heavy burden of life that pressed upon their small souls. How were they to spare him, how were they to spare him?
Finding no solution, they each went their own way again, their eyes still blank with helplessness, their hearts heavy with despair. What had become of the melancholy contentment that had brought Constance her gentle happiness? And, when they met again at meals and the boy, the sensible, merry little comrade of old, who had always enlivened those meal-times, sat in silence, ate in silence, with his serious boy’s face, firm in outline already and yet with the soft bloom of the child upon it, and his steel-blue eyes full of thought, then they would timidly stare at each other again and the same discouragement would send its cry of despair from out of their timid glance. This was no longer to be endured, this made them both suffer overmuch, this would have cost them their lives and the grace of their lives, this they could no longer face, this made them feel more helpless from day to day.
Though they both of them, separately, took him in their arms, he no longer said a word, accepted the fact that he was too young to know what was really true, if the slander was not true; but neither his face nor his soul brightened and the deepening of his gloom was the measure of their despair.
“What are we to do?” thought Constance. “What are we to do?” she asked Van der Welcke.
And she wrung her hands, feeling that the past was now doomed to remain for ever and that to think anything else was to invite disillusion. Oh, the past, which not only remained, which not only would cling to them for ever, but which grew, grew with the child, as though the sorrow of that past would always blossom anew, again and again, with perennial grief and woe! Oh, the indestructible sorrow, which always came back to haunt them, even though it seemed to have died, sunk in a bottomless pit, the abyss of past years! Until, at last, as in a cry for help in the helplessness that pressed and bore upon her more fiercely from day to day, clutching at her throat, inexorably demanding a decision, she made that decision and wailed:
“Tell him! Tell him! Tell him!” And, as she uttered that wail, he saw her so prostrate under the decision that would bring down upon her the scorn, the rage perhaps, of their child, of their son, the death—O Heaven!—of his love, if he once knew and, above all, realized the truth, that he, her husband, felt pity for the woman who had turned his life into a long and dreary futility; and he said:
“I will tell him, I will tell him. But have no fear: if he does understand and realize it, he will love you none the less for it, Constance!”
She looked at him, feeling that he no longer grudged her their child’s love, that he was not as jealous as she. And, for a moment, she thought of throwing herself on his breast and sobbing out the anguish which she felt pressing more and more upon her, felt coming towards her like a monster looming out of the future. But the emotion tugging at her heart-strings was drawn back violently; and she went away and flung herself on the floor in her bedroom and hiccoughed her despair . . . because her son was going to be told!