Dr. Adriaan. Louis Couperus

at Buitenzorg;[2] she herself and Gerrit's widow and their children; Emilie: all, all strangers, all with their manifold life and ceaseless bustle filling the once silent and serious house. … And Mathilde, a stranger. … And, so strange, even Mathilde and Addie's children, little Constant and Jetje, were two little strangers, though they bore the family name. … Why did she feel this? Perhaps because she still considered that the great gloomy house belonged to the old man. It was as though he lived there still, as though he still walked outside, in the garden. It was as though the great, gloomy house was still filled with his rancour towards her and hers. … Yes, she had been living here for ten years, but the old man still bore rancour because she was there and because so many of hers had come with her to the house in which they had no business, in which she herself was an intruder as were all who had intruded themselves along with her. … It was a feeling which had so often oppressed her, during those ten years, and which would always oppress her. … And she would not utter it to anybody, for Van der Welcke had given Addie free leave to bring the troop with him; and he himself loved the troop. …

      Oh, how the angles between her and her husband had been rubbed smooth with the years, whether they passed slow or fast! … How they had learnt to put up with each other! … They were growing old: she fifty-six, he a little younger; it was true, no affection had come between them, but so much softening of all that had once been sharp and unkind between them, so that they had been able to go on living, in this house, and together with their child performing the task that seemed to be laid upon them: looking after Gerrit's children! …

      And Adeline took it as quite natural; but yet … how grateful she was to them! How often she told them that she could never have brought up the children alone, that she would have had neither the strength for it nor the money! … Gerrit's death had broken her. She had always quietly done her little duties as a wife and mother, but Gerrit's death had broken her. She had remained among all her children as one who no longer knows. It was as if the simplicity of her life had become shrouded in a darkness wherein she wandered and sought, groping with outstretched hands. Ah, if Constance and Addie had not led her! …

      And Constance in her turn was grateful to Van der Welcke, for was it not his house in which she lived with her nephews and nieces, was it not with his money, for a great part, that she brought up those children? … Oh, if the old man would only cease spreading that rancour around them, filling the whole great sombre house with it because they had intruded, because they were living there on his money, though that money now belonged to his heir! At every guilder that Constance spent on her swollen household, she felt the old man's rancour. And it made her thriftier than she had ever been at the time when she and Henri, though their needs were far from small, had had to live on a few thousand guilders a year. Though she now lived in this big house, though twelve and often fifteen of them sat down to table, she was comparatively thriftier in her whole mode of life than she had ever been in her little house with her husband and child. … It was the old man's money, a large fortune, and it was Henri's money now, of course, but it was first and foremost the old man's money! … The curtains in the drawing-room were sadly faded, but she would not buy new, though Van der Welcke himself had begged her at least to buy some for the front room. Her everyday table was very simple, simpler than she had ever been accustomed to. And this gave her the remorse that she was feeding Henri, now that he was growing older, more simply than she had in his younger days. And she urged him daily to buy a motor-car. …

      He was sensible, refused to do anything of the kind. Buying the "sewing-machine," well, yes, that was one big initial outlay … but the most expensive part of it was the upkeep of it, the chauffeur, the excursions. He feared that, once he possessed the "machine," it would become a very costly joke. … And all those ten years, though he had often thought of a car, he had never bought the old sewing-machine. Then Constance felt so violently self-reproachful, at using Henri's money for her brother's children, that she discussed it with Addie. Those discussions about the motor had recurred regularly every year. Addie thought that Papa was right, that it was not the initial outlay that was so burdensome, but all the further expenses. Then again motor-cars were being so much improved yearly that, when once Papa had caught the fever, he would get rid of his sewing-machine yearly to buy a new and more modern one. No, it would be a very expensive story. … And Van der Welcke had never bought his sewing-machine, had barely, once in a way, hired one. … Constance felt a lasting self-reproach because of it. …

      They were rich now; and yet … what was their fortune, with so many burdens! Burdens, moreover, which were not even the natural burdens of one's own children growing up! Burdens of Gerrit's children! … And so she economized more and more, wearing her gowns till they became shiny, till Addie said that Mamma was losing all her daintiness in her old age. He had always known his mother as a well-dressed woman and now she went about in blouses that shone like looking-glasses. He used to tease her; there was one which he always called the looking-glass blouse. Constance laughed gaily, said she no longer cared so much about clothes. Well off though she now was, she spent upon her dress not half of what she used to in the old days. … And Mathilde, who sprang from a poverty reeking of paraffin and rancid butter, Mathilde, who would have liked to be surrounded with luxury at every moment, Mathilde thought her mother-in-law above all things stingy, decided that stinginess was the outstanding feature of her character. …