Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/13

Rh end of that typical Dutch interior, as an eternally-sealed mystery. . . . Pluckily, playing the mistress of the house who was looking into things, while her heart beat with terror, she had opened the door and seen the staircase, the little staircase winding up in the dark to the bedroom floor; and the old charwoman had told her that it was very handy for carrying up water, because there was no water laid on upstairs: a decided fault in the house. . . . Then she had shut the door again and known all about it: a little back-stair, for the maids, and nothing more. . . . But why had she never opened the door since, never touched the handle? No doubt because there was no need to, because she felt sure that the maids would scrub the small staircase as well as the big one on the days set aside for cleaning stairs and passages. Why should she have opened the gloomy door? . . . And she had never opened it since. Once and once only she had seen it open; old Mie had forgotten to shut it; and she had grumbled, had told Truitje that it looked slovenly to leave the door open like that. . . . She had then seen the little staircase winding up in the dark, its steps just marked with brown stripes against the black of the shadow. . . . But the door, when closed, stared at her. She had never told anyone; but the door stared at her. . . like the front of the house. Yes, in the garden behind, the back-windows also stared at her as with eyes, but more gently, sadly and almost laughingly, with an encouraging and more winsome look amid the livelier green of the lime-trees which, in summer, surrounded her with their heavy fragrance. . . . Summer! . . . It was November now, with its incessant wind and rain, raging all around and against the house and rattling on the window-panes until they shivered. . . . It was a strange feeling