Part 46 (2/2)
No, cycling alone did not console him; his handsome, glittering, nickel-plated machine glided listlessly down the summer lanes and he suddenly turned round:
”That's enough for me ... all by myself, without anybody or anything....”
And he rode back home slowly, put the machine away and looked at the empty stand where Guy usually kept his machine.
”Have you seen Guy?” asked Constance, meeting her husband in the hail.
”He's out,” said Van der Welcke, curtly and angrily.
”He hasn't been working,” she added. ”I always look into Addie's study to see if Guy is at work: Addie asked me to.”
”No, he has not been working; he's....”
”Out?”
”Yes, with his bicycle.”
”They why didn't he ask you to go with him?”
”I'm sure _I_ don't know,” said Van der Welcke, angrily, shrugging his shoulders.
Constance too did not think it friendly of Guy:
”What does it mean?” she wondered to herself. ”He ought to have been working, but, if he wanted to go cycling, he might really have let his uncle know.”
And her soul too became filled with melancholy, because young people were inevitably so ungrateful. But she said nothing to Van der Welcke; and they never knew that they often thought and felt alike, as in an imperceptible harmony of approaching old age that found only a negative expression: they so seldom quarrelled nowadays, at most exchanged a single irritable word, even though no deep sympathy had ever come to them....
Constance went to her room to put on a hat; the carriage was ordered; she was going for a drive with the girls. She felt worried about poor Gerdy, who no longer took pleasure in anything:
”It will pa.s.s,” she thought. ”We have all of us, in our time, been through a phase of melancholy.... Adeline told me that Gerdy was in love with Erzeele ... but he doesn't appear to think about her.... Oh, how I worry and worry about it all: about my poor boy, about Mathilde!...
Erzeele is bound ... is bound to be attracted by her.... Come, I need air, in this fine weather; and yet this warm air oppresses me: the summer is always oppressive in our country. The weather in our country is always _becoming_ something: it never has become anything, like the weather in the south; it is becoming, always becoming something....
It's sultry now, the sun is scorching; we are sure to have a storm this evening.”
She now left her room, ready, and thought:
”Addie is coming to lunch to-day; it's his day: oh, how I always long for that day!... Last time, he had to answer some letters and ran for ink for his writing-table. I'll just see if everything is in order now.”
She entered the room that used to be Addie's study:
”Yes, the ink's there,” she told herself, with a glance at the writing-table. ”How uncosy, how cold the room looks, with nothing but the old furniture, the old man's furniture!... There are letters for Addie again: the poor boy never has any rest....”
Casually she took a step towards the table and was struck by the appearance of the letters:
”What is that?” she thought.
The letters--there were three of them--were without stamps or postmarks: it was this that had struck her.
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