They stepped from the carriage; the hall-door opened. The curtains of
the front room shook slightly, as though with the trembling touch of an
old hand; but there was no one in the hall to receive them except the
butler who had opened the door.
Then Constance said:
"Henri, you go in first. I'll come presently, with Addie, when you call
me...."
He looked at her, hesitating to say that he himself wished to go in with
Addie. But she had laid her hand on the boy's shoulder and looked at Van
der Welcke so steadily that he understood that she would not consent.
And he went in, staggering like a drunken man, went into the room where
the window-curtains had trembled.
The butler retired, not knowing what to do. And Constance sat down on
the oak settle and drew Addie beside her. So she was meekly waiting in
the hall, waiting the pleasure of her father- and mother-in-law; but it
was of her own will that she waited now, after waiting nearly fourteen
years for a word that would have called her to them. With a woman's
delicacy, she had let Henri go in first to his parents; but she had set
her mind upon taking her boy to his grand-parents herself. It was for
her to do that; she insisted on her privilege, her right.... Henri's
hesitation had not escaped her; but she had laid her hand upon her son's
shoulder, as though taking possession of him.
She did not know how long she waited, but it seemed very long; and she
had time to see every detail of the hall: the oak wainscoting; the three
or four family-portraits; a couple of old engravings of city-views; the
Delft jugs on an antique cabinet; the staircase leading to the floor
above; the oak doors of the rooms, which remained silent and closed. She
saw the pattern of the tiles in the passage and the colours of the wide
strip of Deventer carpet.... Then, at last, the door of the front room
opened and an old man appeared. Constance rose. The old man had Henri's
features, but more deeply furrowed, and his clean-shaven upper lip fell
in; his straight nose was more prominent and his ivory forehead arched
high above a scanty fringe of iron-grey hair. His eyes looked out blue
and hard, as Henri's eyes looked out. He was tall, Henri was short; his
shoulders were broad and bent in the long, dark coat, Henri was square
and straight. His hands were long, wrinkled and bony and they trembled;
and Henri's hands were short and broad.... She made her comparison in
two or three seconds, standing with her hand on her son's shoulder. Then
the old man said:
"Come in, Constance...."
She went, gently pushing Addie before her, and they entered the room.
She saw an old woman, with a large face that in no way reminded her of
Henri. The grey hair, parted in the middle, was set severely in a
silver-stiff frame; her complexion was yellow and waxen; her dark-grey
eyes were full of tears, and peered painfully through that misty haze.
Her figure was bent in the dark stuff dress; her legs seemed to move
with difficulty; and her stooping body was almost deformed. She was
holding Henri's hand....
"Constance," the old woman began; and her trembling hands were raised as
though for an embrace.
"Here is your grandson," said Constance, stiffly.
She pushed Addie a little nearer. The boy looked out of his steady eyes,
which were the eyes of Henri and of the old man, and said:
"How do you do, Grandpapa and Grandmamma?"
In the large, sombre room, his voice sounded dull and yet firm. The old
woman and the old man looked at the boy; and there was an oppressive
silence. They looked at the boy, and they were so struck with amazement
that they could not find a word to say. The old woman had taken Henri's
hand again; and the tears flowed from her eyes. Henri's jaws grated and
he shuddered, nervously:
"That's my boy," he said.
"So that is Adriaan," said the old woman, trembling, and her embrace,
which had not reached Constance, now closed upon the child. He kissed
her in his turn; and then the old man also embraced him and the child
kissed him back.
"Hendrik," said the old woman. "Hendrik, how like ... how like Henri,
when he was that age!"
The old man nodded gently. The past was coming back to the old people;
and it was as if they saw their own son when he was thirteen. They were
so much surprised at this that they could only stare at the boy, as
though they did not believe their eyes, as though it were some strange
dream.
Constance stood stiffly and said nothing. But the old woman now said:
"It is a great pleasure to us to see you here, Constance."
Constance tried to smile:
"You are very kind," she said, pleasantly.
"But do sit down," said the old woman, trembling, and she pointed to the
chairs.
They all sat down; and Henri made an effort to talk naturally, about
Driebergen. The past that lay between them was so high-heaped that it
seemed as though they were never to approach one another across this
obstacle. So many words that should have been spoken had remained
unspoken, for the sake of an harmonious silence, that silence itself
became a torture; and so many years were piled between the parents and
the children that it seemed impossible for them now to reach one another
with words. The words fell strangely in the sombre room, which looked
out upon the March garden and upon the road paling away in the vague
mists; the words fell like things, strangely, like hard, round things,
material things, and struck against one another like marbles clashing
together....
It was the painful talking on indifferent topics that was almost
impossible. For the words constantly struck against things of the past,
things painful to the touch; and there were no indifferent topics. When
Henri said that Driebergen was very much changed, he was referring to
his many years of absence. When Constance made a remark about Brussels,
she was referring to her long residence there, during which her
husband's parents had refused to see her and looked upon her as a
disgrace. When they spoke of Addie's life as a small child, it was as
though they two, the father and the mother, were reproaching the
grandparents. There were no indifferent topics; and a despairing gloom
hung between the old people and the child, because they could not reach
the child across their son and their daughter-in-law.... Outside, the
wind rose, howling; the heavy grey clouds descended upon them like a
damp mist; and the rain clattered down. Henri had thought of asking his
father to take him into the garden, to see if he still recognized it,
but the pelting rain prevented him; and he saw nothing but his mother's
tears. In his heart, he laid these to his wife's charge. The past was
piled up as a wall between each soul and its neighbour.
The boy felt it. He felt his breathing oppressed with all that gloom;
and again and again he wanted to sigh, but he kept back his sighs. He
did not know what to say; and he gave his grandparents the impression of
a quiet, subdued child, who was not happy. They spoke to him too as old
people do to a child, with condescending kindness, pointing out the
little things in the room. The boy, who was accustomed to be a man
standing between his two parents, answered nothing except in shy
monosyllables.
Henri and Constance avoided looking at each other; and each of them,
even in the same conversation, talked as it were separately to the old
people. They were to stay to lunch--the old-fashioned Dutch
"coffee-drinking"--and return at five o'clock to the Hague. The butler
came to say that luncheon was served and pushed back the sliding doors.
The dining-room lay on this side of the great, closed conservatory, a
gloomy shadow in the pale daylight that streaked in through the rain;
and the mahogany furniture gleamed with reflected lights, the table
shone white and glassy. They sat down: difficult words fell now and
again and sounded hard in the somewhat chilly room. The old woman with
much ceremony offered a soft-boiled egg, or a tongue-sandwich which lay
neatly arranged with its fellows on a tray. She herself filled the small
china coffee-cups. It all lasted very long, was all very solemn and
proper, with much formality about the egg and the sandwich. Addie felt
as if he could easily swallow both the egg and sandwich in one gulp; and
he had to restrain himself in order to eat the egg slowly and neatly in
little spoonfuls and to chew the sandwich with little bites, so as not
to finish too soon nor deprive the table of its excuse for being so
elaborately laid. He was not sure whether he was still hungry or not
when Grandmamma offered him a second sandwich; but he took it, because
otherwise he would not have known what to do with his hands. He sat like
a small, stiff little boy, shyly; and, when he looked up at his father,
it seemed to him that he too was sitting as if he had eaten his sandwich
too fast. Grandmamma herself buttered his bread for him and offered it
to him, ready cut into strips. He ate the narrow fingers with a great
effort at self-control.
It lasted endlessly long; and the table remained white, bare and neat,
now that the sandwiches were finished; the empty coffee-cups gave the
only touch of untidiness: the broken, yellowy egg-shells Grandmamma had
put away on the sideboard. When they rose, Grandpapa asked Henri to come
and smoke a cigar in his study; Grandmamma stayed in the sitting-room
with Constance and Addie. On the road outside, the rain splashed in the
puddles.
Constance felt a stranger in this house. Nevertheless, her mood became
softer, because the old woman's eyes, in the stiff, silver-framed face,
were still sad and constantly filled with tears. She was very sensitive
to any emotion in another; and, though she fought against it, she
herself felt moved. She wanted to talk to this grandmother about her
grandson; and so she said how clever he was, how good to his parents.
Mrs. van der Welcke nodded good-naturedly, but continued to look upon
Addie as a child, while Constance was talking of him as man. The old
woman did not fully grasp the meaning of Constance' words, but the sound
of them increased her emotion. She called Addie to her side, said that
he must come and stay with them in the summer: it was delightful in the
country then, for games. The boy had it on his lips to say that his
parents could not do without him; but he felt that his words would sound
strange and elderly and priggish. And he only said, very prettily:
"I should like to, Grandmamma."
He played at being a little child, because Grandmamma happened to look
upon him as one. Really he was thinking of something very different,
thinking of the houses which he had seen yesterday with Papa and Mamma
and which his parents could not agree upon, in any particular: the
neighbourhood, the division of the rooms. Because he knew that the hotel
was expensive and that both Papa and Mamma would become less fidgety
once they had a house, he thought of cutting the Gordian knot and going
by himself to the owner of a nice house near the Woods, not so very far
from Granny van Lowe's. If he didn't interfere, it would be weeks and
weeks before Papa and Mamma made up their minds. He knew that to take a
house was a very serious matter, but he also knew that Papa and Mamma
would never agree. He must needs, therefore, risk something and he would
hope for the best, hope that all would turn out well.
"A couple of houses farther on, there are two very nice little boys: you
shall see them when you come in the summer, Adriaan."
"Yes, Grandmamma."
His voice sounded very refined and soft; and Constance had to smile.
But, while he sat there stiffly, with his shoulders squared and his legs
close together, he was dividing the rooms of the house near the Woods.
Mamma, meanwhile, was exchanging toilsome words with Grandmamma. He
portioned out the rooms. Downstairs, the drawing-room and the
dining-room, more or less as at Uncle Gerrit's: those two rooms always
communicated in Holland, with folding-doors between them. And the little
conservatory. And the little garden was quite nice. Upstairs, the large
room for Mamma and the smaller one for Papa; and it was jolly that he
himself could have that sort of turret-room, with a bow-window, in
between their two bedrooms. So he would be between Papa and Mamma. Above
that, there was still a sort of attic floor, but that did not concern
him: Mamma must manage that. It was rather risky perhaps, to go to that
fat man to-morrow--a contractor, Papa called him--and tell him that Papa
had sent him to say that he would take the house.... Perhaps that house
in the something van Nassaustraat was better, bigger. But it was dearer
also.... Perhaps Papa would be angry, if he acted just like that, off
his own bat; but, of course, there would be nothing settled in black and
white. Only, if Papa and Mamma once knew that he had been to the fat
man, well, they might be a little angry at first, might squabble a bit
more; and then both of them would look at him and laugh and they would
take the house and everything would be all right.... If they did not
decide a bit quicker, if they went on squabbling, their Brussels
furniture would suddenly be there, in front of their noses, and they
without a house to put it in.... It was true, Granny van Lowe had said,
"Be careful about taking a house:" that was all very well when people
agreed; but that's what Papa and Mamma never did. They had come to
Holland, because he had said:
"Why, I'm a Dutch boy, aren't I? Then let's go!"
Well, they would take the house after he had been to the fat man. There
was nothing else to be done, though it was risky.
Papa came downstairs with Grandpapa, looking more cheerful: perhaps he
had been talking to his father. They sat on a little longer and Papa
took out his watch once or twice....
Then the carriage drove up; the old coachman, who had known Papa as a
small boy, drove them to the station, where they arrived twenty minutes
too soon.
Quietly, without speaking, they walked up and down, waiting for the
train....