Dr. Adriaan Part 49

CHAPTER XXVIII

Addie was out in the afternoon when Mathilde opened Constance' telegram:

"Please come see Emilie."

"There's always something," Mathilde grumbled to herself. "Addie is physician-in-ordinary to his relations. When it's not Klaasje, it's Adeletje, or Mary, or Emilie. There's always something.... What can be the matter with her now? He's only just been home. Oh, of course, she's always ill in the summer! I expect it's the same as last year...."

She had an angry impulse to tear up the telegram and say nothing to Addie, to tell him later that it must have gone astray. She did not destroy it, however, but laid it on the table where he would see it and then went out to the tennis-club. As a rule, she took the steam-tram[1]

and alighted at the Witte Brug. This time, she ran against Erzeele, with his racket in his hand, in the Bezuidenhout.

"I was waiting for you," he said.

"How nice of you!... Let's take the steam-tram."

"Why not walk?"

They stepped out, along the Hertenkamp.

"Is anything the matter?" he asked.

"Why?"

"You look so preoccupied."

"Oh, it's nothing!"

"You're out of humour."

"Need I say they want Addie again at home?"

"Who's ill this time?"

"Emilie."

"Mrs. van Raven?"

"Yes, she calls herself Mrs. van Naghel now."

"I know. She's the one who ran away with her brother, years ago."

"There was rather a scandal about that, wasn't there?"

"People didn't exactly know...."

"I don't like her. She's ill every summer. Then she becomes funny. And then she has to see my husband of course. Hence the telegram from Mamma."

"The other day ... Mrs. van der Welcke saw...."

"Saw what?"

"That I was holding your hand."

"What about it? You're a friend. We've known each other for years, since we were quite young.... Do you know, Mamma warned me against you...."

"Against me?"

"She was afraid that...."

"What?"

"You would fall in love with me."

"I am in love with you."

"Now, Johan, you're not to say that."

"You know I always have been."

"You were in love with Gerdy."

"For a minute only.... With you I have always been in love. Long ago. At our Cinderella dances.... In love? I've always loved you."

"You must not talk like that. I ... I love my husband."

"Yes, I know you do. But he doesn't make you happy."

She was silent. She did not wish to go on and say that she felt Addie so far above her, unattained and incomprehensible, that everything was coming to escape her, that her love was escaping her, that she felt herself sinking slowly, slowly, in a vague abyss, that it was only the children who made her find Addie again, every day, for a moment. She was silent. But there were tears in her eyes. Her healthy temperament, now slightly unnerved, had a need of much happiness for itself, even as a healthy plant needs much air and much water and does not know what it means to pine. The melancholy that sometimes overcame her was not native to her.

"Let's take the tram," she said. "I feel tired."

"It's better for you to walk," he said.

His voice was authoritative; and she allowed herself to be coerced: it was a hot afternoon and she dragged herself along mechanically beside him, both carrying their own rackets.

"Mamma's quite right, Johan," she said, abruptly. "It won't do for us to see each other so often, for me to talk to you so ... intimately."

"And why not, if you feel unhappy, if you want to unburden yourself to me?"

"No, no, it doesn't do.... Come, let's take the tram: we shall be too late for our tennis."

He looked out mechanically for the tram. They were at the corner of the Waalsdorp road; and he said:

"Look here, walk a little way with me. I don't feel like tennis. Do you?"