"How much longer will you be?" asked Gerrit.
"Ten minutes," said Paul, lying angrily, though he was inwardly delighted to make Gerrit lose his temper.
He found a set of niello studs and links that went well with the black-striped shirt and deliberately and neatly put them into the front and cuffs.
Gerrit rose impatiently and walked up and down the room. Through the open partition-door, he saw the bathroom and was surprised to find everything tidied up, with not a drop of water anywhere.
"Do you do your wash-hand-stand yourself?" asked Gerrit, in amazement.
"Of course," said Paul, who was now getting into his shirt. "Did you think I left that to the servant? Never! She has nothing to do but empty my slop-pail. I do my tub, my basin, my soap-trays, everything myself. I have separate cloths for everything: there they are, hanging on a rail. The world is dirty enough as it is, however tidy one may be."
"In that case," said Gerrit, astounded, "you haven't been so long after all!"
"It's method," replied Paul, airily, though secretly flattered by Gerrit's remark. "When you have method, nothing takes long."
And, basking in Gerrit's praise, he rang, while pulling on his trousers, and told the maid to bring his breakfast:
"I'll only take a hurried bite," he said, amiably, just bending the points of his stand-up collar at the tips.
Then he picked out a tie, in a large Japanese box.
"By Jove, what a number of ties you have!"
"Yes, I have a lot of them," said Paul, proudly. "They're my only luxury."
And in fact, when the maid pushed back the folding-doors, revealing the sitting-room, which Paul, loathing other people's furniture, had furnished himself, in addition to his other two rooms, Gerrit was struck with the plainness of it: comfortable, but exceedingly simple.
"I adore pretty things," said Paul, "just as much as our mad Ernst. But I can't afford them: I haven't the money."
"Why, you have the same income that he has."
"Yes, but he doesn't dress. To dress yourself well is expensive."
Paul's dressing was now finished; and he had turned up the bottoms of his trousers very high, showing nearly the whole of his well-cut button-boots. He merely drank a cup of tea, ate a piece of dry bread.
"Butter's so greasy," he said, "when you've just brushed your teeth."
And he went back to his bathroom to rinse his mouth once more.
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 passage.
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 damned, 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 damned 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 splashing 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 canal.
"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 masses 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?"
"I'm quite well."
"Then what is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"What was the matter with you last night?"
"Nothing. I was suffocating."
"Are you better now?"
"Yes."
He seemed to be speaking mechanically, under the influence of the last glimmer of intelligence, for his voice sounded uncertain and unreal, as though he were not quite conscious of what he was saying.
"Come, old chap," said Gerrit, with good-natured bluntness, laying his hand on Ernst's shoulder.
As he did so, Ernst's expression changed; his eyes lost their look of intense melancholy and became hard, staring hard and black from their sockets, like two black marbles. He had turned his head in a stiff quarter-circle towards Gerrit; and the hard gleam of those black marbles bored into Gerrit's blue Norse eyes with such strange fierceness that Gerrit started. And, under his brother's big hand, which still lay on his shoulder, Ernst's limp body seemed to be turned to stone, to become rigid, hard as a rock. He stiffened his lips, his arms, his legs and feet and remained like that, motionless, evidently suffering physical and moral torture, shrinking under the pressure of Gerrit's hand, without knowing how to get rid of that pressure. He remained motionless, stark; every muscle was tense, every nerve quivered; Ernst seemed to shrink and harden under Gerrit's touch just as a caterpillar shrinks and becomes hard when it feels itself touched. As soon as Gerrit removed his hand, the tension relaxed and Ernst's body huddled together again, as though something