She had sent Adeletje upstairs, to change her things at once, and opened the door of the drawing-room. … It felt a little chilly, she thought; and, while she saw her mother sitting quietly in the conservatory, peering out of doors from her usual seat, she went to the stove, moved the cinder-drawer to and fro to send the ashes to the bottom and make the fire glow up behind the mica doors. …
"Aren't you cold out there, Mummie?"
The old woman looked round at the sound of her voice. Constance went into the conservatory and again asked:
"Aren't you cold, Mummie?"
The old woman heard her this time; and Constance stooped over her and kissed the waxen forehead.
"It's blowing," said the old woman.
"Yes, it's blowing like anything!" said Constance. "You don't feel cold?"
The old woman smiled, with her eyes in her daughter's.
"Won't you rather come and sit inside, Mamma?"
But the old woman only smiled and said:
"The trees are waving from side to side; and just now a branch fell … right in front of the window."
"Yes. Harm'll have plenty of work to-morrow. There are branches lying all over the place."
"It's blowing," said the old woman.
Constance went in, took a shawl and put it over her mother's shoulders:
"You'll come in, won't you, Mamma, if you feel cold?"
And she went back to the drawing-room, intending to go upstairs.
But voices sounded from the hall and the door was opened. It was Gerdy and Guy:
"Are you in, Auntie?"
"Are you back at last?"
"Where have you been all the afternoon?"
"Have you been walking with Adele?"
"Come, Auntie," said Guy, "give an account of yourself!"
He was a well-set-up, fair-haired boy of nineteen, tall and broad, with a fair moustache; and she spoilt him because he was like his father. Really she spoilt them all, each for a different reason, but Guy could do anything that he pleased with her. He now caught her in his arms and asked once more:
"Now, Auntie, where have you been?"
And she blushed like a child. She did not mean to say where she had been, but she had not reckoned on his attacking her like this:
"Why, nowhere!" she said, defending herself. "I've been walking with Adele. … "
"No!" said Guy, firmly. "You've been to the little old lady's."
"Oh, no!"
"Oh, yes!"
"Come, boy, let me be. I want to go up and change. … Where's Mamma?"
"Mamma's upstairs," said Gerdy. "Are you coming down soon again, Auntie? Shall I get tea ready? Shall I light the lamp? It's jolly, having tea in a storm like this."
"All right, dear, do."
"Will you come down soon?"
"Yes, yes, at once. … "
She went upstairs, up the wide, winding oak staircase. … Why did she think, each time the wind blew, of that evening when she had gone up like that, across the passage, through the rooms, to the great, dark bedstead, in which the wan face of the dying woman showed palely on the pillow? … Then as now the heavy rain rattled against the windows and the tall cabinets in the dark passage creaked with those sudden sounds which old wood makes and which sometimes moaned and reverberated through the house. But one scarcely heard them now, because the house was no longer silent, because now there were always voices buzzing and young feet hurrying in the rooms and along the passages, thanks to all the new life that had entered the house. … Ten years, thought Constance, while she put on the light in her room, before dressing: was it really ten years? … Immediately after the death of her poor brother Gerrit—poor Adeline and the children had moved from their house to a cheap pension—came the death of old Mr. Van der Welcke, just as she, Van der Welcke and Addie, going through Gerrit's papers, had come upon this letter:
"Addie, I recommend my children to your care; my wife I recommend to yours, Constance."
It was the letter of a sick man, mentally and physically sick, who already saw death's wings beating before his eyes. And even in that shabby pension Addie had taken charge of the children, as though he were their own young father; but, when the old gentleman died and both Van der Welcke and Addie insisted on moving to Driebergen, then the boy had stepped forward boldly as the protector of those nine children, as the protector of that poor woman distraught and utterly crushed by the blow. … Even now, while hurriedly changing her dress, so as not to keep them waiting too long downstairs, Constance still heard her boy say, in his calm, confident voice:
"Papa … Mamma … we have a big house now, a very big house. … We are rich now … and Aunt Adeline has nothing … the children have only a couple of thousand guilders apiece. … They must all come to us now, mustn't they, all come and live with us at Driebergen, mustn't they, Papa … and Mamma?"
He said nothing beyond those few simple words; and his confident voice was as quiet as though his proposal spoke for itself, as though it were quite commonplace. …
"What is there to make a fuss about?" he had asked, with wide-open eyes, when she fell upon his neck with tears of emotion and kissed him, her heart swelling with happiness in her child. …
She had just looked round anxiously at her husband, anxious what he would wish, what he would say to his son's words. … There were fewer scenes between them, it was true, much fewer; but still she had thought to herself, what would he say to this? … But he had only laughed, burst out laughing, with his young laugh like a great boy's … laughed at all his son's great family: a wife and nine children whom Addie at sixteen was quietly taking unto himself, because his people had money now and a big house. … Since that time Van der Welcke had always chaffed the boy about his nine children. And Addie answered his father's chaff with that placid smile in his eyes and on his lips, as though he were thinking:
"Have your joke, Daddy. You're a good chap after all! … "
And Addie had interested himself in his nine children as calmly as if they were not the least trouble. … Then came the move to Driebergen, but Addie remained at the Hague, staying with Aunt Lot, for the two years that he still went to school. He came down each week-end, however: by the husband's train. Van der Welcke said, chaffingly, to join his wife and children; and he took a hand in everything: in the profitable investment and saving of their two thousand guilders apiece; in their schooling; in the choice of a governess for the girls: he saved Aunt Adeline all responsibility; his Saturday afternoons and Sundays were filled with all sorts of cares; he considered and discussed and decided. … Moreover, Granny, who was now lonely and fallen into her dotage, could no longer be left to live in her big house, with no one to look after her; and Constance had easily managed for old Mamma to accompany them to Driebergen. But the old woman had hardly noticed the change: she thought that she was still living in the Alexanderstraat sometimes, in the summer, she would be living at Buitenzorg, in the viceregal palace, and the children round her went about and talked vivaciously … as she had always known them to do. … Emilie had refused to leave Constance; and, though she sometimes went to stay at Baarn, she really lived with them: Emilie, so grievously shattered in her young life, so unable to forget Henri's death that she was as a shadow of her former self, pale and silent, mostly pining in her room … until from sheer loneliness she went to join the family-circle downstairs. …
Ten years … ten years had sped like this, sped like fleeting shadows of time; and yet how much had happened! The children growing up, blossoming into young girls