Dr. Adriaan Part 42

"In the evening. Friends. She is hardly ever at home of an evening. She oughtn't to do that ... without Addie, you know. It's so undomesticated."

"I know she goes out now and then of an evening to have tea ... with friends."

"Yes, exactly.... She's _always_ out.... But how well Marietje is looking, Constance! She does Addie great credit. He's making a great reputation ... with his hypnotism. Everyone wants to be hypnotized by him. I'm always hearing him praised."

"I'm so glad, Adolphine."

She went away, arranging to fetch Marietje in the afternoon and take her back to Driebergen. She had an open fly waiting: it was beautiful, mild weather; and the spring was weaving verdure in between the trees. But a heavy load lay on Constance' breast and she could have cried ... because of her boy, because of Addie. She was going to ride to him now, at the other end of the town, the Emmastraat. She meant to lunch there and, when she had seen the grandchildren, to come back to Adolphine's. It was eleven o'clock. And she felt so much weighed down with sorrow for Addie, who came home to them looking more and more gloomy every week, that she could not, could not go to him yet ... after all that Adolphine had said.... Oh, how she always loved saying things that jarred upon your nerves, things that hurt, things that grated against your soul! Did she do it purposely? Was she insincere? Or was it because she couldn't help it, because she was tactless ... or, very likely, took an unconscious pleasure in hurting other people?... Oh, perhaps she did not know how much pain she gave!... But to go straight to Addie now, to Mathilde, was impossible....

"Cabman, drive a little way through the Woods first."

The driver turned down the Javastraat, went along the Scheveningen Road and let his horse roam at will in the rides of the Woods.... Oh, the Hague was charming; she loved the Woods! Even as Addie loved Driebergen, with an innate inherited love for the house and household and the fact of living there--he was indeed his grand-parents' grand-child--so she loved the Hague greatly. She loved those green villa-lined roads, she loved the briny fragrance of the sea.... She was now riding along the Ornamental Water, now, suddenly, along the spot where she remembered meeting Brauws years ago--he sitting on that bench yonder--when, after she had turned round with a start, he caught her up; and her confession, that she had suggested a divorce to Henri.... Oh, those days, those days of life and suffering and illusion, so far, so far away in the distant past!... And now, now the man drove with his jog-trot, the jog-trot of a victoria hired by the hour, along the Kerkhoflaan; now she was riding past the old house.... Oh, that old house! It was as though the past, the illusion, the suffering and the life, the later, later life, were still hanging around it like a low-drifting cloud! It was the trees of yore and the skies of yore and the green spring life of yore. The house, the house: there was the window at which she had so often sat musing, gazing at the great skies overhead, while her soul travelled along a path of light. Up above were Addie's little turret-room and her own bedroom: oh, that night of illusion at the open window, with the noiseless flashes of hope over the sea, the distant sea yonder!... She felt almost inclined to stop, to alight, to ask leave to go over the house; but something in the curtains, in the outline of a woman sketching at the window of her former boudoir prevented her; and she rode on. Oh, how she loved her Hague; and yet ... yet she had suffered there, with what antipathy she had been surrounded!... Did that antipathy of small souls for small souls go on for ever? Must her poor boy now suffer through it, even though he made his name as a doctor?...

Oh, what a heavy depression she felt upon her heart, as if her fur cloak, were much too warm for the balmy weather with its breath of spring!... Now they were going down the Bankastraat, past poor Gerrit's old house; and suddenly that terrible night of snow stood white-hideous before her mind, stained dark with her brother's blood.... Here was Dorine's boarding-house; and Constance got out and rang, but Dorine was not in.... The driver jogged on wearily. She recognized acquaintances here and there, grown older now that her memories were harking back to past years; and the cabman, doubtless to spin out the drive, instead of following the Kanaal, turned up the Alexanderstraat. Oh, the house, the old family house, so full of recollections, so full of the past! And ...

she saw that it was empty, that it was to let. With a quick glance at the uncurtained windows above, she even recognized the plasterwork of the ceilings; and it was as though the past still brooded there, still stared out at her, through the white, streaked windows.... Wearily the horse now jogged along the Bezuidenhout; and she saw poor Bertha's house, with its tightly-drawn veil of chill panes stiff and repelling a swift penetrating glance.... Yes, the Hague was like a grave to her; and yet even as a grave the Hague was dear to her. A grave? And Addie lived down there, at the end of the street!... Would _she_ still care to live in the Hague? She did not know, she did not know: perhaps she was becoming used to Driebergen, becoming used to the big, sombre house there, because there was so much love around her, even though she continued to feel a stranger there.... And a stranger: that was how her boy felt here!

The carriage now pulled up outside her boy's house. Strange, the front-door was open: perhaps the maid was out on an errand and had left the door open for a minute to save herself trouble. Constance, telling the driver to come back at half-past two, went inside. Addie could hardly be home yet from visiting his patients. She knocked at the door of the drawing-room and received no answer. Mathilde was no doubt busy with the children or with her house-keeping. Constance opened the door and walked in, to look for her.

She gave a start. Through the drawing-room and the dining-room she saw Mathilde sitting in the conservatory, with Johan Erzeele beside her. He sat bending towards her; and he was holding her hand in his two.

Mathilde's eyes were staring into the distance; and a feeble hesitation seemed to take away something of the usual strength of her fine, healthy, rather full lines. Constance saw it for one moment, as a strange vision in that bright, unsoftened conservatory-light, which was made the harder with many-coloured muslin curtains and coa.r.s.ely vivid with the gold and motley of ugly j.a.panese fans. It gave Constance a fright; and in that inexorable light the fright and the vision were both inexorable.

It did not last longer than a second. Her shadow in the drawing-room made Mathilde and Johan start up; and they rose to their feet:

"Mamma!"

"Mrs. van der Welcke!"

It sounded like a greeting; but their voices were unsteady, because they understood that Constance had seen. Constance' voice trembled, but she merely said:

"Good-morning, dear. How do you do, Mr. Erzeele?" She kissed Mathilde, shook hands with Erzeele. "I came over with Marietje; I left her with her father and mother and came to look you up ... intending to lunch with you ... if it suits you."

She strove to make her words and her voice sound quite unaffected and she succeeded; and, because she succeeded, she suddenly felt that what she had seen was nothing: a moment of familiar intimacy. Were they not old friends? Had Mathilde not, as a girl, when he was still a cadet, danced with him often at their dancing-club? There was nothing, there was nothing; she was rea.s.sured by the tranquillity of her own voice.

"So you will stay to lunch," said Mathilde.

"If it suits you."

"Of course it does.... Addie is not in yet."

"Are the children upstairs?"

"Yes, I'll send for them."

Erzeele said good-bye, said that he must go, reminded Mathilde easily of her appointment to meet him the next day at the tennis-club. Constance glanced at him quickly: in his uniform, he was young, broad and short; his complexion fair but bronzed with the sun; above his powerful shoulders and thick neck his face stood fresh and strong, smart military, with a pair of glad, childlike grey eyes; a long fair moustache shaded his lips, which were laughing glad and warmly sensual; and, when he laughed, his small sharp ivory teeth flashed.... His thick fair hair curled slightly at the tips....? It was very strange, but it struck her suddenly that Erzeele's way of looking at Mathilde resembled that of her own husband, Van der Welcke, when ... when he was young, when she met him in Rome. Something in the fresh vigour of his glance and of his rather sensual laugh, something about his figure, about his teeth reminded her of Henri as a young man.

"You've known him a long time, haven't you?" asked Constance, when he was gone.

"Oh dear, yes!" said Mathilde, vaguely.

The nurse brought down Jetje and Constant for Grandmamma to see: after that, the children were to go out for a little longer.

"They look well," said Constance, huskily.

She felt a heavy pressure of inexplicable melancholy on her heart, a pressure so heavy that she could have cried, so heavy that she felt her eyes grow moist in spite of herself.

"Yes," said Mathilde, "they're very healthy. It's quite a system that Addie and I are practising with that special diet and the regular time each day in the open air. The other day it was blowing a gale ... and Addie absolutely insisted that they should go out all the same. And I must say I agree with him."

Suddenly, while Jetje was sitting on her lap and Constant tugging at her skirts, Constance took Mathilde's hand:

"Then things _are_ all right between you?" she whispered, almost imploringly.

"How do you mean?"

"You are happy now, Mathilde ... here at the Hague?"

"Certainly, Mamma.... You yourself understood, didn't you, that I longed for a house of my own."

"Yes, dear, I understood."

"Only...."

"What?"

"I am sorry to have robbed you of Addie."

"But, my dear, a son does not belong to his parents."

"Still, I reproach myself.... But I could not stay with you any longer.

You understood that it was not because ... because you were not kind to me. You were very kind ... you tried to be ... though I do not believe that Papa likes me, that Emilie, Aunt Adeline or any of the others like me.... I bear them no malice: I don't like them either."

Constance was silent.

"I am so different from the boy and girl cousins ... and Papa was always jealous."

"My dear!"

"And you too; but you fought against it."

"Mathilde, I always wished you to feel at home with us; I always hoped that some part of you would blend with us."

"Exactly; and that was impossible: I was too different from all of you; and at Driebergen ... in the end.... I should have become as full of nerves ... as Mary."

There was a tint of hatred in her voice.

"No, dear," said Constance, harking back, "you were not happy with us.

But because I hope that you are happy now...."

She had risen nervously; the nurse had entered and was taking the children with her: they were to have one more turn in the street before lunch.

"Tell me, Mathilde, are you really happy? Do you really and truly love Addie again?"