Part 31 (1/2)
”Pretty well, my boy.”
”I shall go back to Leiden to-morrow, Mamma.”
”Oh?”
”Yes; and I shall probably not be home for some time. I mean to work hard....”
”That's right.”
”There's really nothing else to do but work. It's so slow here, Auntie, now that Emilie's gone. Otto's all right, with Louise. She missed him badly, while he was in India. Funny brothers and sisters, aren't we? So exaggerated.... Well, Mamma, I'll say good-bye: I shall start the first thing in the morning.”
He said good-bye and went away pulling himself together, putting a good face on his grief. Bertha began to weep softly.
A maid knocked at the door:
”Master van der Welcke, mevrouw.”
”Addie's come to fetch me.”
”Ask Master van der Welcke to come upstairs,” said Bertha.
The boy came in. He remained near the door; in the half-dark room, he stood small but erect, like a little man:
”I have come to fetch you, Mamma.”
The two sisters looked at him, smiling. Bertha had it on her lips to say that it was not right for Addie to go about the streets alone, but she said nothing when the boy went up to his mother. He looked capable of protecting her and himself against anything, though he was only thirteen: against the dark night and against life that bore down so heavily upon their small souls.
And a melancholy jealousy welled up in Bertha, while Constance was kissing her good-bye:
”Don't be too bitter, Constance,” she whispered, ”and cherish, cherish that boy of yours....”
CHAPTER XX
Constance, after this talk with Bertha, for days felt easier in her mind, as though filled with an indefinable contentment that bid fair to soothe and heal. Yes, she hoped that, gradually, she would win them all back like that, all her near ones, whom she had lost for years. She saw Mamma daily; and in these regular meetings between mother and child there was the sweetness of finding each other after long years of almost uninterrupted separation, a sweetness touched with a melancholy that held no bitterness, a mingling of glad tears and smiles over the happiness of it all. Also, Constance had now found Bertha again; and, though they did not see each other until Mamma's Sunday-evening, still there was more sisterly confidence between them, while Marianne grew to like running in at the Kerkhoflaan and would stay to dinner or go cycling with Van der Welcke and Addie. In this way, light bonds were established. As for Karel and Cateau, Constance was sorry, for in Karel she still remembered the brother with whom she used to play on the boulders in the river at Buitenzorg; but she had felt at once that she must not expect much from Karel, now that he and his wife had become mutual images of placid egotism, wrapped in their well-fed, middle-cla.s.s life, in the sheltered comfort of their warm, shut house. No, Karel, she felt, she had lost, though they were conventionally civil to each other.
With Gerrit it was pleasanter. Gerrit and Adeline would come now and then to take tea in the evening, after the children had gone to bed.
Only it was a pity that Gerrit always insisted on crabbing and poking fun at the Van Naghels and their friends. This, Constance thought, was not very tactful towards Van der Welcke, because, though he and she did not go into society, it so happened that Van der Welcke had a good many old friends, at the club, who belonged to the aristocratic set. Gerrit was a boisterous, lively fellow, fair-haired, handsome, broad-shouldered and vigorous in his hussar's uniform; but his boisterousness was sometimes, she thought, rather overdone; and she suspected that Van der Welcke did not like Gerrit, thought him a little vulgar. And so she was always on the alert to take up the cudgels for Gerrit against her husband; and Van der Welcke said nothing about Gerrit and was even amiable and talkative when Gerrit and Adeline were there. Adeline was a dear little woman, a fair-haired, little doll-mother, with her seven children, like a family of flaxen-haired dolls: the oldest a girl turned eight, the youngest a baby of a year or so; and Gerrit was always making jokes about not leaving off yet; and indeed Adeline was expecting another in the autumn. So Constance got on well with Gerrit and Adeline, but still she felt out of touch with this brother too, even though Gerrit had such a charming way of bringing back the memory of their early days, when they used to play in the river at Buitenzorg. Yes, she was an interesting child then, Gerrit always said: there was something so nice about her; she was full of imagination; and it was curious to hear this great, heavy hussar going into ecstasies over that little sister of the old days: a frail, fair-haired little girl, in her white _baadje;_ she used to walk on her pretty little bare feet over the boulders and invent all sorts of fables and fairy-tales, which her elder brothers were not quite capable of understanding and yet had to play at, good-humouredly, for the two brothers were very fond of their little sister. Yes, Gerrit always said, he had not understood until afterwards how much poetry there was in Constance in the days when she dreamed those stories, those fables, in which she often played a fairy, or a _poetri_ out of the Javanese legends: at such times, she would wreathe her hair with a garland of broad leaves; she would look like Ophelia, in the water, decked with tropical blossoms; and the brothers must needs follow the tiny bare feet and the fancies of their little sister, who looked marvellously charming as she ran over the great rocks, ran through the foaming water, ran in crystal green shadows, which quivered over the river, under the heavy awning of the foliage. Yes, that had left a great impression on Gerrit; and he often talked about it:
”Constance, do you remember? What a nice little girl you were then, though you were a little queer!...”
Until Constance would laugh and ask if she was no longer nice now that she no longer ran about barefoot in a white _baadje_ with purple _kembang-spatoe_[20] on her temples. Then Gerrit shook his head and said, yes, she was very nice still, but ... but.... And, diving back into his recollections, he said that, two years later, she suddenly changed, became grown-up and a prig and would dance with no one but the secretary-general.... And then Constance cried with laughter, because Gerrit could never forget that secretary-general. Yes, she would only dance with the biggest big-wigs: she was a ma.s.s of vanity, a real daughter of the _Toean Besar_.[21] And it was as though Gerrit were bent upon getting back that little younger sister who used to make up fairy-tales in the river behind the Palace at Buitenzorg, notwithstanding that he was now a big, heavy, powerful fellow and a captain of hussars. Then Constance would look at him, handsome, broad, fair-haired, vigorous, enjoying his drink or his good cigar, and she reflected that she did not know Gerrit and did not understand Gerrit: very vaguely she felt something in him escape her, felt it so vaguely that it was hardly a thought, but merely a haze pa.s.sing over her bewilderment. Adeline sat very quietly in the midst of it, smiling pleasantly at those reminiscences, at those games of the old days:
”Yes, it's extraordinary, the way children play by themselves!” she said, simply; and then she would tell prettily of the games of her own fair-haired brood.
But Gerrit would shake his head: no, that was romping, what his boys did, but the other thing was playing, real playing. Until Constance laughingly asked him to talk of something else than her bare feet. And then the conversation took a more ordinary turn; and it was as if both Gerrit and Constance felt that, although they liked each other, they had not yet found each other. And in this there was a very gentle melancholy that could hardly be formulated.
Constance did not see much of Ernst. She and Van der Welcke and Addie had once lunched with him at his rooms and he had been a most amiable host: he showed her the old family-papers, which, after Papa's death, he had asked leave to keep, because he took most interest in them and they would be in good hands. He would leave them to Gerrit's eldest son: Gerrit was the only one of the four brothers who, so far, had provided heirs. He showed her his old china and called her attention to the different marks that were signs of its value. Next, he spread out an old piece of brocade, embroidered with seed-pearls, and said very seriously that it was a stomacher from a dress of Queen Elizabeth's. When Constance laughed and ventured to express a doubt, he became rather grave and almost angry, but graciously changed the conversation, as one does, a little condescendingly, with people who have said something stupid, who have not the same culture as ourselves.