Addie was out in the afternoon when Mathilde opened Constance' telegram:
"Please come see Emilie."
"There's always something," Mathilde grumbled to herself. "Addie is
physician-in-ordinary to his relations. When it's not Klaasje, it's
Adèletje, or Mary, or Emilie. There's always something.... What can be
the matter with her now? He's only just been home. Oh, of course, she's
always ill in the summer! I expect it's the same as last year...."
She had an angry impulse to tear up the telegram and say nothing to
Addie, to tell him later that it must have gone astray. She did not
destroy it, however, but laid it on the table where he would see it and
then went out to the tennis-club. As a rule, she took the steam-tram[1]
and alighted at the Witte Brug. This time, she ran against Erzeele, with
his racket in his hand, in the Bezuidenhout.
"I was waiting for you," he said.
"How nice of you!... Let's take the steam-tram."
"Why not walk?"
They stepped out, along the Hertenkamp.
"Is anything the matter?" he asked.
"Why?"
"You look so preoccupied."
"Oh, it's nothing!"
"You're out of humour."
"Need I say they want Addie again at home?"
"Who's ill this time?"
"Emilie."
"Mrs. van Raven?"
"Yes, she calls herself Mrs. van Naghel now."
"I know. She's the one who ran away with her brother, years ago."
"There was rather a scandal about that, wasn't there?"
"People didn't exactly know...."
"I don't like her. She's ill every summer. Then she becomes funny. And
then she has to see my husband of course. Hence the telegram from
Mamma."
"The other day ... Mrs. van der Welcke saw...."
"Saw what?"
"That I was holding your hand."
"What about it? You're a friend. We've known each other for years, since
we were quite young.... Do you know, Mamma warned me against you...."
"Against me?"
"She was afraid that...."
"What?"
"You would fall in love with me."
"I am in love with you."
"Now, Johan, you're not to say that."
"You know I always have been."
"You were in love with Gerdy."
"For a minute only.... With you I have always been in love. Long ago. At
our Cinderella dances.... In love? I've always loved you."
"You must not talk like that. I ... I love my husband."
"Yes, I know you do. But he doesn't make you happy."
She was silent. She did not wish to go on and say that she felt Addie so
far above her, unattained and incomprehensible, that everything was
coming to escape her, that her love was escaping her, that she felt
herself sinking slowly, slowly, in a vague abyss, that it was only the
children who made her find Addie again, every day, for a moment. She was
silent. But there were tears in her eyes. Her healthy temperament, now
slightly unnerved, had a need of much happiness for itself, even as a
healthy plant needs much air and much water and does not know what it
means to pine. The melancholy that sometimes overcame her was not native
to her.
"Let's take the tram," she said. "I feel tired."
"It's better for you to walk," he said.
His voice was authoritative; and she allowed herself to be coerced: it
was a hot afternoon and she dragged herself along mechanically beside
him, both carrying their own rackets.
"Mamma's quite right, Johan," she said, abruptly. "It won't do for us to
see each other so often, for me to talk to you so ... intimately."
"And why not, if you feel unhappy, if you want to unburden yourself to
me?"
"No, no, it doesn't do.... Come, let's take the tram: we shall be too
late for our tennis."
He looked out mechanically for the tram. They were at the corner of the
Waalsdorp road; and he said:
"Look here, walk a little way with me. I don't feel like tennis. Do
you?"
She let herself be dragged along and turned down the lonely, green road.
She seemed to surrender feebly to his wishes; and she became aware that
she was in a profound state of melancholy, a hesitation of not knowing
things, of wavering, of feeling unhappy.
"Everything could have been so different," she said, almost crying.
"What do you mean? When?"
"If Addie...."
"If he what?"
"I don't know," she said. "I'm tired of thinking about it. It is not his
fault."
"No, it's your fault."
"My fault?"
"Yes! Nothing would keep you from marrying him.... And I loved you."
"You? But you never asked me!"
"But you knew that I loved you. Yes, everything could have been
different, oh, everything could have been so very different!"
She suddenly began to cry.
"Tilly!"
"Oh," she said, sobbing, "don't let us talk like this! Let's go to the
tennis-club."
"No, no, I don't want to."
She turned.
"Tilly...."
"No, I won't go any farther. I'm going to the club. It'll distract me
... to play tennis."
She turned back; he followed her.
"Tilly, you're so unstrung. If you were a little calmer, I should tell
you...."
"What?"
"That I can't bear to see you unhappy. Oh, I love you, I love you! Let
us go away ... together."
"Go away? Where?"
"With each other. I love you, I love you, I have always loved you."
She stopped with a start:
"You're mad!"
"Why?"
"To suggest such a thing," she said, with a scornful laugh. "You're mad.
You think that I...."
"Want to be unhappy all your life?"
"That I should consent to run away with you. I love my husband ... and
my children ... and you imagine...."
"Yes," he said, "it was mad of me to suggest it. You love your husband,
not me. You never allow me anything, not anything."
"Nothing ... at all?" she asked, scornfully.
"Nothing ... that counts," he retorted, hoarsely, roughly.
She shrugged her shoulders:
"You men always want ... that. Our happiness does not always consist ...
of that."
"No, but ... if you loved me ... entirely...."
"Johan!" she cried.
They crossed the bridge and entered the Woods.
"If you ever dare speak to me like that again...."
"Very well, I won't."
"But you're always doing it.... We'd better not see each other at all."
"Not see each other?"
"No."
"I won't have that," he said. "I won't have that either."
"And if I insist?"
"Even so."
"You don't make me any happier by talking like that; you make me even
unhappier than I am."
"Oh, Tilly, I can't bear to see you unhappy!... What are we to do, what
are we to do?"
"I don't know," she said, in a dead voice.
"You don't care for me."
"Not in that way. Why shouldn't we be friends?"
"That's nonsense. Friendship between a man and a woman? That's one of
those notions which you picked up, I dare say, at Driebergen, among
neurotic people. Between a man and a woman there's only ... yearning. I
want you and I am in hell because I haven't got you."
"Yes, it's always ... that," she said; and she thought of Addie.
"Oh, if you would only go with me ... out of this."
"Would that make me happy?"
"I should live for you entirely. I have a little money...."
"That would make me happy, would it? To leave my husband, to leave my
children?"
"Your husband, your children? But I should be there!"
"Yes, but...."
"You don't care for me."
"Not like that."
"All the same, you would become happy.... You never found happiness in
your husband--you say so yourself--because you don't understand him. You
would understand me."
She began to cry again:
"Oh," she said, "don't go on talking like that!"
"Do you care for me, Tilly, do you care for me?"
"Yes, Johan, I do care for you."
"Well?"
She stood still:
"Listen," she said, looking him straight in the eyes. "I care for you."
Her voice sounded loving in spite of herself. "I care for you ... very
much indeed. At this moment, perhaps even more than for Addie ... I'm
not quite sure. A time may come ... _may_ come, when I shall care for
you even _more_ ... certainly more than for Addie."
"Oh," he cried, "but then...."
"Don't speak," she said. "Listen to me. What you're asking of me ... I
refuse."
"Why?"
"Because I am an honest woman.... Because I am naturally an honest
woman.... Because I always mean to be an honest woman.... I could never
do what you ask me to.... Because, even if I had to say good-bye to my
husband, I should never, never be willing to say good-bye to my
children."
"You love your children better?"
"Better? I love them in a way which a man like you simply cannot
understand."
"Tilly! Tilly!"
"Be quiet!... There are people coming.... Be quiet!"
"Oh, Tilly, what then?"
"I don't know," she said, dully. "Oh, come along to the club; we'll play
some tennis!"
She quickened her pace; he followed her, lurching like a drunken man.
[1] Running from the Hague to Scheveningen through the Dunes, as opposed
to the electric tram running through the Scheveningen Woods.