"I'm fond of the house ... but it's better that we should go to the Hague."

"Your parents ... they will all miss you."

"Now don't make difficulties, Tilly."

"No, Addie, no...."

"How do you mean, no?"

"I won't go to the Hague."

"Why not?"

"It's too late.... It wouldn't alter a thing.... It's too late."

"What's too late?"

She sobbed and embraced him. She clutched him to her, she covered his lips with glowing kisses.

"Oh, let it be!" she said, in between her kisses; and her voice sounded utterly discouraged.

"Why, Tilly? Why? I want to see you happy.... It's decided now: we're going to the Hague. I'll look out for a house."

She shook her head.

"Tell me, Tilly: why do you refuse?"

She shrugged her shoulders:

"I don't know," she said.

"You love me, surely?"

"I love you, I dote on you, I'm mad on you!... Let us stay here and ...

and ... love me a little."

"But, Tilly, I do love you. You know I love you!"

He kissed her, very tenderly; and she accepted his kisses, with her eyes closed, and lay limply, as though tired, in his arms. Suddenly she thrust him away:

"Let me be," she said, rising to her feet.

"Tilly...."

"Let me be ... stop kissing me."

"Why mayn't I kiss you?..."

"I don't want you to."

"And you say you love me!"

"Yes, but ... don't kiss me any more."

He looked at her in perplexity; and she said:

"It's not only kissing...."

"Tilly!" he said, stretching out his arms. "Whatever it is, we shall find it for each other ... with each other...."

"Yes...."

"You think so, don't you?"

"Yes."

"You believe it? When we are at the Hague ... alone ... in our own home?"

"Yes, yes, I believe it."

"And will you then be happy?"

"Yes ... when we have found it."

"And we shall find it."

"Yes."

"Come and sit with me, in my study.... I have work to do: come and sit with me. I sha'n't go downstairs for tea. I have some reading to do: come with me ... and stay with me this evening: will you?"

"Yes."

"Then it will be as if we were already at home ... in our own home ...

at the Hague...."

She went with him, pale, tired, listless, with his arm round her waist.

CHAPTER XXI

Easter was at hand; spring brought a new balminess to the wind, a new softness to the rain, a new warmth to the air, which hung low in a heavy grey canopy; and much had changed during the past few weeks. The big house, full though it was with all of them, seemed very quiet now that Addie and Mathilde had moved to the Hague, though their rooms were always kept ready for them because Van der Welcke had said that Addie must always have his rooms ready for him whenever he chose to come home, though it were only for a day. And so the bedrooms and the nursery always remained in mute expectation, with silent furniture and closed doors; and only in Addie's big study, one of the best rooms of the house, formerly the old man's library, Guy now sat and worked at the window. And it was as though, in spite of the restfulness induced by Mathilde's absence, they were all gloomy because Addie was gone, as if they had all lost him. True, he came regularly, twice a week in fact, especially because of Marietje--Mary; but even then he had so much to do outside that they scarcely saw him except at meals. And it was as if they could all have put up with Mathilde, rather than lose Addie.

Klaasje no longer pushed her chair away, Gerdy no longer spilt the milk, at evening tea--those small, almost ridiculous vexations with which Constance had had to put up so often--as soon as Mathilde entered; but, now that all vexation was gone, Addie also was gone and seemed lost for all time. And they lived on in a sort of grey harmony, still and peaceful but now, regularly, without many words, in a dull resignation which mourned in all their eyes and voices, while Gerdy now silently, silently pined and pined; and it was only Guy and Van der Welcke who, once in a way, indulged in loud and forced merriment. Paul also had his melancholy days: sometimes he would not put in an appearance for a week, said that he was ill, remained in his rooms, lying on a sofa with a book in his hands, not thinking it worth while to talk brilliantly or to play the piano. But they looked him up, Constance, Brauws, the girls; they drove him out of his rooms and out of his mood of depression; and he returned, like a victim, grumbled that Gerdy's piano was always dirty, asked for a duster, scrubbed the keys and submissively played Grieg, the melodies dripping slackly from his fingers. And, though everything was grey, in the somewhat sultry spring air, still it was strangely happy with a harmony felt in silence, a family concord, which sometimes brought the tears to Constance' eyes when she sat talking to Brauws in the twilight upstairs in her own sitting-room, in whispered interchange of quick half-words, which at once understood one another. Then, when Addie arrived, he brought with him a certain gleam, a light, a sudden glory; and yet his eyes too were full of sombre greyness, but they were all so glad to see him that they saw only glory in them. He was happy at the Hague, he said. He had a good practice, everything was going well.

Mathilde was very cheerful; the children were well. He asked them all to come down sometime, for, though they had all been once, to see the house, they did not come again, withdrawing themselves from him as it were ... He saw it and was hurt by it; his eyes seemed to roam through the dear brown rooms, as if this big house remained his house; and, when Constance embraced him, she felt in her son's heart a difficult struggle and a swelling of great sorrow. He never spoke of it; he hypnotized Marietje; he regularly kept up Klaasje's reading-lessons and the books with the coloured letters gleamed into the child's awakening imagination; he talked, on Sat.u.r.days, at great length with Alex or sat with old Grandmamma and always thought of something to say to her that made her nod her head with soft, smiling satisfaction; he found a moment for his father, for his mother, for all of them: also for the poor sick people on the silent country roads; once he interested himself in an old sick horse which caused Marietje--Mary--great sorrow, when she saw it tortured, and bought it for her and let it run about, for her sake, in a meadow belonging to a farmer whom they knew. And his regular visits were what they all looked forward to, once a week, as to a delightful day; and the other days dragged on, in grey harmony, amid the quiet family life, in which they all recognized the same loss in one another.

Easter arrived; and the three, Constant, Jan and Piet, came home for the holidays. And it was one great emotion, not only for Adeline, but also for Constance and also for Addie, when he came down, an emotion which bound them still more closely together, an emotion aroused by the future of all those boys, an emotion felt over the examinations which they had pa.s.sed or were about to pa.s.s. Constant, now seventeen, was to be transferred this year from the Secondary School at the Hague to the School of Agriculture at Wageningen; Jan, now fifteen, was still at a boarding-school at Barneveld, preparing to go up for his naval examination next year; Piet, now fourteen, was at the Hague, at the Secondary School, with a view to the Polytechnic. At the Hague, Constant and Piet lived with a tutor; and Addie was almost glad that he himself was now living at the Hague and seeing more of the boys, for the tutor was not satisfied: the boys did their lessons badly, not because they were unwilling, but because they had no head for books, for working, for studying, any more than Alex, any more than Guy. The three yellow-haired younger ones were even worse feather-heads than their two elders: Constant was something of a dreamer, Jan the most solid, Piet the cleverest of the three, but none of them workers. They all displayed the same incapacity for perseverance, with the different shades of their different characters: Alex, true, doing his best for Addie's sake at the Merchants' School at Amsterdam, but full of a secret dread of life, struck as a child with that dread since, staring through open doors, he had seen his father's dead body, in that single moment of horror and blood; Guy, kindly, genial, merry and light-hearted; Constant, inwardly sombre, morose, with a strange deep look of suspicion in his eyes; Jan, a boy for games; and Piet--the youngest except Klaasje--no doubt the most enlightened intellectually, but delicate, shy, girlish and reminding Constance most of the flaxen dolls of the old days: the merry, careless children, romping round the dining-room in the Bankastraat, while Gerrit, in his uniform and riding-boots, stood tall and wide-legged in the midst of their fun. And now, now the boys were no longer careless: it was their reports, it was their careers opening yonder in the future that as it were compelled them to think of serious things; and it was as though they none of them developed with the blossoming of their years, as though they, Alex, Guy, Constant and Jan, remained feeble, light-hearted, sombre and rough and Piet so shy and delicate, while cruel life opened out before them, society, in which they had to conquer a place for themselves, when none of them could persevere in the youthful studies which prepared their future. It was a great source of anxiety for Addie; and, if the boys had not all been so fond of him, the anxiety would have been greater than he could cope with. Was it not he who had really chosen their career for them, because they did not know, because they had no preference, all of them perhaps shuddering with dread of having to take their place in human society, such as Alex felt it most deeply in the melancholy of his dejection, as though their father's suicide, of which they all knew, had cast a shadow over all of them, a twilight over their childish souls? And Addie, like an elder brother, like a young father, had had, in consulting them, to choose for them, had had to discuss the matter with them at length. The Indian Civil Service appealed to none of them; Addie thought that not any of them had the brains for college; and so it was decided: Alex, army training-college, but that had not been a success and he was doing better now at the Commercial School; Guy, the Post Office; Constant, Wageningen; Jan, the Navy; and Piet, in whom Addie saw the brightest intelligence of all, he had stimulated to enter for the Polytechnic. But it was not only Alex: Guy also was a source of trouble to him, plodding with gloomy resignation at his maps and books; Constant, sombre and morose, was doing his best; but the compet.i.tive examinations for Willemsoord might prove very difficult, Addie thought, for Jan later; while Piet ... But the boy was still a child, clinging so dependently to Addie, with his rather girlish affection, with his shyness, which placed confidence in Addie only.... Yes, thought Constance, now that she saw them all together, they would long be a great trouble, they would still be a great burden to Addie; and Adeline, poor Adeline could never unaided have made men of her boys.