Part 3 (1/2)

He was ready now, took his umbrella and followed Gerrit down the stairs.

Gerrit opened the door.

”What beastly weather!” growled Paul, furiously, in the pa.s.sage.

He drew his umbrella carefully out of its case, while Gerrit was already outside, with his blue military coat flapping round his shoulders, because he had not put his arms through the sleeves.

”What a filthy mess!” raved Paul. ”This d.a.m.ned, rotten mud!” he cursed, pale with rage.

He had folded up the umbrella-case and slipped it into his pocket and was now opening his umbrella: he seemed to fear that it would get wet.

”Come on!” he said, seething with inward rage.

And, taking a desperate resolve, he stepped aside, fiercely slammed the front-door and carefully placed his feet upon the pavement:

”We'll wait for the tram,” he said.

He glared at the rain from under his umbrella:

”What a dirty sky!” he grumbled, while Gerrit paced up and down, only half-listening to what Paul said. ”What a d.a.m.ned dirty sky! Dirty rain, filthy streets, mud, nothing but mud. The whole world is mud. Properly speaking, everything is mud. Heavens, will the world ever be clean and the people in it clean: towns with clean streets, people with clean bodies? At present, they're mud, nothing but mud: their streets, their bodies and their filthy souls!...”

The tram came and they had to get in; and Paul, in his heart of hearts, regretted this for, as long as he had stood muttering under his umbrella, he could still yield to his desire to go on raving, even though Gerrit was not listening. They got out in the Dennenweg; but by this time he had lost the thread of his argument and moreover he had to be careful not to step in the puddles:

”Don't walk so fast!” he said, crossly, to Gerrit. ”And mind where you walk: it's all splas.h.i.+ng around me.”

They were now in the Nieuwe Uitleg. That ancient quarter was quite dark, soaked in the everlasting rain that fell perpendicularly between the trees, like curtains of violet beads, and clattered into the ca.n.a.l.

”Do you think he's really mad?” asked Gerrit, nervously, as he rang the bell.

Paul shrugged his shoulders and looked down at his trousers and boots.

He was satisfied with himself; he had walked very carefully: he had hardly a single splash. A fat landlady opened the door:

”Ah!... I'm glad you've come, gentlemen.... Meneer is quite calm now....

And have you been to a doctor?”

”A doctor?” said Gerrit, startled.

”A doctor,” thought Paul. ”Just so: we've been practical, as usual.”

But he didn't say it.

They went upstairs. They found Ernst in his dressing-gown; his black hair, which he wore long, lay in tangled ma.s.ses over his forehead. He did not get up; he gazed at his two brothers with a look of intense melancholy. He was now a man of forty-three, but seemed older, his hair turning grey, his appearance neglected, as though his shoulders had sunk in, as though something were broken in his spinal system. He did not appear very much surprised at seeing the two of them; only his sad eyes wandered from one to the other, scrutinizing them suspiciously.

And all at once the two brothers did not know what to say. Gerrit filled the room with his restless movements and nearly knocked down a couple of Delft jars with the skirts of his wet great-coat.

Paul was the first to speak:

”Aren't you well, Ernst?”