Easter was at hand; spring brought a new balminess to the wind, a new
softness to the rain, a new warmth to the air, which hung low in a heavy
grey canopy; and much had changed during the past few weeks. The big
house, full though it was with all of them, seemed very quiet now that
Addie and Mathilde had moved to the Hague, though their rooms were
always kept ready for them because Van der Welcke had said that Addie
must always have his rooms ready for him whenever he chose to come home,
though it were only for a day. And so the bedrooms and the nursery
always remained in mute expectation, with silent furniture and closed
doors; and only in Addie's big study, one of the best rooms of the
house, formerly the old man's library, Guy now sat and worked at the
window. And it was as though, in spite of the restfulness induced by
Mathilde's absence, they were all gloomy because Addie was gone, as if
they had all lost him. True, he came regularly, twice a week in fact,
especially because of Marietje--Mary; but even then he had so much to do
outside that they scarcely saw him except at meals. And it was as if
they could all have put up with Mathilde, rather than lose Addie.
Klaasje no longer pushed her chair away, Gerdy no longer spilt the milk,
at evening tea--those small, almost ridiculous vexations with which
Constance had had to put up so often--as soon as Mathilde entered; but,
now that all vexation was gone, Addie also was gone and seemed lost for
all time. And they lived on in a sort of grey harmony, still and
peaceful but now, regularly, without many words, in a dull resignation
which mourned in all their eyes and voices, while Gerdy now silently,
silently pined and pined; and it was only Guy and Van der Welcke who,
once in a way, indulged in loud and forced merriment. Paul also had his
melancholy days: sometimes he would not put in an appearance for a week,
said that he was ill, remained in his rooms, lying on a sofa with a book
in his hands, not thinking it worth while to talk brilliantly or to play
the piano. But they looked him up, Constance, Brauws, the girls; they
drove him out of his rooms and out of his mood of depression; and he
returned, like a victim, grumbled that Gerdy's piano was always dirty,
asked for a duster, scrubbed the keys and submissively played Grieg, the
melodies dripping slackly from his fingers. And, though everything was
grey, in the somewhat sultry spring air, still it was strangely happy
with a harmony felt in silence, a family concord, which sometimes
brought the tears to Constance' eyes when she sat talking to Brauws in
the twilight upstairs in her own sitting-room, in whispered interchange
of quick half-words, which at once understood one another. Then, when
Addie arrived, he brought with him a certain gleam, a light, a sudden
glory; and yet his eyes too were full of sombre greyness, but they were
all so glad to see him that they saw only glory in them. He was happy at
the Hague, he said. He had a good practice, everything was going well.
Mathilde was very cheerful; the children were well. He asked them all to
come down sometime, for, though they had all been once, to see the
house, they did not come again, withdrawing themselves from him as it
were ... He saw it and was hurt by it; his eyes seemed to roam through
the dear brown rooms, as if this big house remained his house; and,
when Constance embraced him, she felt in her son's heart a difficult
struggle and a swelling of great sorrow. He never spoke of it; he
hypnotized Marietje; he regularly kept up Klaasje's reading-lessons and
the books with the coloured letters gleamed into the child's awakening
imagination; he talked, on Saturdays, at great length with Alex or sat
with old Grandmamma and always thought of something to say to her that
made her nod her head with soft, smiling satisfaction; he found a moment
for his father, for his mother, for all of them: also for the poor sick
people on the silent country roads; once he interested himself in an old
sick horse which caused Marietje--Mary--great sorrow, when she saw it
tortured, and bought it for her and let it run about, for her sake, in a
meadow belonging to a farmer whom they knew. And his regular visits were
what they all looked forward to, once a week, as to a delightful day;
and the other days dragged on, in grey harmony, amid the quiet family
life, in which they all recognized the same loss in one another.
Easter arrived; and the three, Constant, Jan and Piet, came home for the
holidays. And it was one great emotion, not only for Adeline, but also
for Constance and also for Addie, when he came down, an emotion which
bound them still more closely together, an emotion aroused by the future
of all those boys, an emotion felt over the examinations which they had
passed or were about to pass. Constant, now seventeen, was to be
transferred this year from the Secondary School at the Hague to the
School of Agriculture at Wageningen; Jan, now fifteen, was still at a
boarding-school at Barneveld, preparing to go up for his naval
examination next year; Piet, now fourteen, was at the Hague, at the
Secondary School, with a view to the Polytechnic. At the Hague,
Constant and Piet lived with a tutor; and Addie was almost glad that he
himself was now living at the Hague and seeing more of the boys, for the
tutor was not satisfied: the boys did their lessons badly, not because
they were unwilling, but because they had no head for books, for
working, for studying, any more than Alex, any more than Guy. The three
yellow-haired younger ones were even worse feather-heads than their two
elders: Constant was something of a dreamer, Jan the most solid, Piet
the cleverest of the three, but none of them workers. They all displayed
the same incapacity for perseverance, with the different shades of their
different characters: Alex, true, doing his best for Addie's sake at the
Merchants' School at Amsterdam, but full of a secret dread of life,
struck as a child with that dread since, staring through open doors, he
had seen his father's dead body, in that single moment of horror and
blood; Guy, kindly, genial, merry and light-hearted; Constant, inwardly
sombre, morose, with a strange deep look of suspicion in his eyes; Jan,
a boy for games; and Piet--the youngest except Klaasje--no doubt the
most enlightened intellectually, but delicate, shy, girlish and
reminding Constance most of the flaxen dolls of the old days: the merry,
careless children, romping round the dining-room in the Bankastraat,
while Gerrit, in his uniform and riding-boots, stood tall and
wide-legged in the midst of their fun. And now, now the boys were no
longer careless: it was their reports, it was their careers opening
yonder in the future that as it were compelled them to think of serious
things; and it was as though they none of them developed with the
blossoming of their years, as though they, Alex, Guy, Constant and Jan,
remained feeble, light-hearted, sombre and rough and Piet so shy and
delicate, while cruel life opened out before them, society, in which
they had to conquer a place for themselves, when none of them could
persevere in the youthful studies which prepared their future. It was a
great source of anxiety for Addie; and, if the boys had not all been so
fond of him, the anxiety would have been greater than he could cope
with. Was it not he who had really chosen their career for them, because
they did not know, because they had no preference, all of them perhaps
shuddering with dread of having to take their place in human society,
such as Alex felt it most deeply in the melancholy of his dejection, as
though their father's suicide, of which they all knew, had cast a shadow
over all of them, a twilight over their childish souls? And Addie, like
an elder brother, like a young father, had had, in consulting them, to
choose for them, had had to discuss the matter with them at length. The
Indian Civil Service appealed to none of them; Addie thought that not
any of them had the brains for college; and so it was decided: Alex,
army training-college, but that had not been a success and he was doing
better now at the Commercial School; Guy, the Post Office; Constant,
Wageningen; Jan, the Navy; and Piet, in whom Addie saw the brightest
intelligence of all, he had stimulated to enter for the Polytechnic. But
it was not only Alex: Guy also was a source of trouble to him, plodding
with gloomy resignation at his maps and books; Constant, sombre and
morose, was doing his best; but the competitive examinations for
Willemsoord might prove very difficult, Addie thought, for Jan later;
while Piet ... But the boy was still a child, clinging so dependently to
Addie, with his rather girlish affection, with his shyness, which placed
confidence in Addie only.... Yes, thought Constance, now that she saw
them all together, they would long be a great trouble, they would still
be a great burden to Addie; and Adeline, poor Adeline could never
unaided have made men of her boys.
It was Easter; and it was strange how much at home they all were in the
big house at Driebergen, which they regarded as their paternal house,
regarding Uncle Henri and Aunt Constance next to their mother as parents
also, regarding Addie as an elder brother, as their youngest father, on
whom everything really depended. No one ever opposed this view; and in
everything, down to the least thing, it was quite natural for them to
say:
"I'll ask Addie."
They thought their cousin much older in spirit than in years and all
looked up to him naturally and with unquestioning confidence, as though
he must know things, as though he would be sure to make life smooth for
them, that future of career beside career which opened before them like
a battlefield. However much they might differ in character, in this they
felt alike, quite naturally, as though they could not do otherwise; and,
when a stranger sometimes expressed surprise that Addie fathered them
so, their eyes would glance up in astonishment, as though to ask:
"What do you expect? Of course, Addie does everything for us!"
And they were very grateful, almost unconsciously, to Uncle Henri, who
paid the bills, to Aunt Constance, who took care of them in so many
ways, to Addie, who would make life smooth for them; but still they
thought it very natural, because it had always been like that, for the
girls too: Marietje, Adèletje, Gerdy and Klaasje. There it was: Uncle,
Aunt and Addie looked after them, because Mamma was so sad and not very
capable and devoid of energy. They had been used to it ever since they
were very young and small; and it was like that; and it could never have
been different.
Now, when he came down from the Hague, Addie talked to all of them
seriously; and they listened with serious faces, looking up at him,
accepting what he said, promising to work better in future, to show
better reports next time, to give him more reason for content in all
respects.... Then he would shake hands with them; and that handshake
conveyed a promise which they would be glad to keep, to please Addie,
because Addie, after all, was bearing the entire responsibility for
their lives and their futures. They left it all to him, but they began
to see more and more clearly that they must make it easier for him. He
spoke to Piet in particular:
"Mr. Veghel's not satisfied, Piet."
This was the tutor with whom Constant and Piet boarded.
The boy blushed, with a quick flow of colour to his round, girlish
cheeks; his eyes glanced up shyly and timidly.
"You must work harder, Piet: you can when you like; and therefore, if
you don't, you can't possibly go to Delft.... And you're cut out for a
civil engineer. That's what you want to be, isn't it?"
"Yes, Addie."
"Well, see that you get your remove before the summer holidays. You
won't get your remove, Piet, if you go on like this."
"I'll do my best, Addie."
Then the boy became very restless, because Addie was not satisfied; and
inwardly he wished that Addie did not see him so clearly, so clever and
capable if only he liked; and Piet thought the Polytechnic a very
difficult affair:
"It'll never come off," he thought, in his secret heart.
But he did not say so, because, in spite of himself, he hoped that it
would, if only because Addie wanted it to and because it was such a long
way off, the Polytechnic, and because Addie lately had worn such a
wrinkle in his forehead, as though he were disappointed ... possibly in
him.
"We're a great trouble to you, Addie, what?"
"If only you work hard, Piet ... then it won't be such a trouble and
things will look after themselves."
But Piet was not the only one to see it: they all saw it, the boys and
girls alike, and wondered if it was because of them only or because of
something quite different--himself, or Mathilde--that his forehead
wrinkled so and his grey eyes grew so sombre....