It was Easter; and it was strange how much at home they all were in the big house at Driebergen, which they regarded as their paternal house, regarding Uncle Henri and Aunt Constance next to their mother as parents also, regarding Addie as an elder brother, as their youngest father, on whom everything really depended. No one ever opposed this view; and in everything, down to the least thing, it was quite natural for them to say:

"I'll ask Addie."

They thought their cousin much older in spirit than in years and all looked up to him naturally and with unquestioning confidence, as though he must know things, as though he would be sure to make life smooth for them, that future of career beside career which opened before them like a battlefield. However much they might differ in character, in this they felt alike, quite naturally, as though they could not do otherwise; and, when a stranger sometimes expressed surprise that Addie fathered them so, their eyes would glance up in astonishment, as though to ask:

"What do you expect? Of course, Addie does everything for us!"

And they were very grateful, almost unconsciously, to Uncle Henri, who paid the bills, to Aunt Constance, who took care of them in so many ways, to Addie, who would make life smooth for them; but still they thought it very natural, because it had always been like that, for the girls too: Marietje, Adeletje, Gerdy and Klaasje. There it was: Uncle, Aunt and Addie looked after them, because Mamma was so sad and not very capable and devoid of energy. They had been used to it ever since they were very young and small; and it was like that; and it could never have been different.

Now, when he came down from the Hague, Addie talked to all of them seriously; and they listened with serious faces, looking up at him, accepting what he said, promising to work better in future, to show better reports next time, to give him more reason for content in all respects.... Then he would shake hands with them; and that handshake conveyed a promise which they would be glad to keep, to please Addie, because Addie, after all, was bearing the entire responsibility for their lives and their futures. They left it all to him, but they began to see more and more clearly that they must make it easier for him. He spoke to Piet in particular:

"Mr. Veghel's not satisfied, Piet."

This was the tutor with whom Constant and Piet boarded.

The boy blushed, with a quick flow of colour to his round, girlish cheeks; his eyes glanced up shyly and timidly.

"You must work harder, Piet: you can when you like; and therefore, if you don't, you can't possibly go to Delft.... And you're cut out for a civil engineer. That's what you want to be, isn't it?"

"Yes, Addie."

"Well, see that you get your remove before the summer holidays. You won't get your remove, Piet, if you go on like this."

"I'll do my best, Addie."

Then the boy became very restless, because Addie was not satisfied; and inwardly he wished that Addie did not see him so clearly, so clever and capable if only he liked; and Piet thought the Polytechnic a very difficult affair:

"It'll never come off," he thought, in his secret heart.

But he did not say so, because, in spite of himself, he hoped that it would, if only because Addie wanted it to and because it was such a long way off, the Polytechnic, and because Addie lately had worn such a wrinkle in his forehead, as though he were disappointed ... possibly in him.

"We're a great trouble to you, Addie, what?"

"If only you work hard, Piet ... then it won't be such a trouble and things will look after themselves."

But Piet was not the only one to see it: they all saw it, the boys and girls alike, and wondered if it was because of them only or because of something quite different--himself, or Mathilde--that his forehead wrinkled so and his grey eyes grew so sombre....

CHAPTER XXII

At the Hague, Mathilde felt a certain gratification, a satisfaction; and the bustle of the early weeks gave her a pleasant feeling of excitement and made her forget the despairing thoughts of the last few weeks spent at Driebergen. They had an attractive little new house in a side-street off the Bezuidenhout itself. It was freshly painted, bright in colouring; and she found it delightful to be able to furnish the house, now that summer was approaching, with light, modern furniture which looked and suggested a doll's house, with the small rooms and the abundance of light-coloured muslin in the drawing-room and conservatory, which she thought looked nice and cheerful. The first spring light entered hard and shrill; and the new colours of the wallpapers showed up in the first sunny days, crying out at Addie when he returned from his visits in his smart little brougham. And she displayed a certain solicitude that above all he should be nicely dressed, that he should look very well-groomed: she insisted on his ordering a couple of new suits. He had not a large practice yet, but that was sure to come: she was full of hope. In the afternoons, she would go out, rejoicing in the shopping-streets, in all the errands which she had to do, in the old-acquaintances whom she met, people whom she had known in her parents' house--they were both dead now--and occupying a somewhat lower social scale than her own at present. And she loved especially to show herself to her relations--a few uncles and aunts and cousins in her elaborate new dresses: Baroness van der Welcke.... And, in her gratification, in her satisfaction, in her new environment, created by herself in sympathy with her commonplace illusions, it was as though she had suddenly wiped all Driebergen out of her life, as though they had never existed, the nearly three crowded early years of her marriage yonder, in the melancholy, rainy village, in the sombre house, the haunted house full of lunatics and invalids. A newness, fresh and commonplace as the paint of her house, reigned all around her; she inhaled newness and was grateful to Addie; but that which, despite herself, had begun to grow refined in her, through her intercourse with antagonistic but yet finer natures than her own, now became blunted at once; and the days of real misery which she had undergone now, in her superficial thoughts, seemed very far away, as though they had been never lived but only dreamed, as read in a book, but never felt. The feeling had not burst forth from her, like a plant that buds, but had moved slowly around her, like a wind that blows or a drifting cloud. It had moved her, but had not metamorphosed her. Now, in her own atmosphere, she was blossoming up, fully, like a flower transplanted to the earth which it needed in order to blossom entirely.

And yet, though she recovered herself, she was not quite herself again.

Even though she no longer craved to know and to receive that which escaped her in Addie, yet she continued to know that something in him did escape her; and, however eagerly, in her simple entreaty, she had begged that he would love her, now, even though she uttered the same request, almost with a childish plaint--"Addie, you _do_ love me, don't you?"--she had to admit to herself that she now saw him really very far above herself, not only in that which escaped her, but also in that which she understood: the daily sacrifice which he was making by living at the Hague, by acting as she had asked, seeking to establish a practice as she wished, by shifting the tenor of his life, as with a strong grip of the hand, in the direction which would make her happy, her, the woman who no longer loved him as she had done ... as she had done when she felt him akin to herself, in the healthy normal life of physical natures.... He was that still, but he was also different; and that different thing was not akin to her, nor was the superiority with which he sacrificed himself. The superiority, the sacrifice oppressed her.... She soon forgot; and, when she was out of doors, going along the shops, meeting acquaintances who admired her, she was happy. When she came home, waiting with her two children for Addie's return, she suddenly felt oppressed:

"I grew melancholy at Driebergen," she would think.

But now she was in her new, freshly-painted house; and she was oppressed and felt unattractive; she dragged with her something that she could not shake off. She often wept, sobbed, as at Driebergen, but there, she knew, it was only about Marietje van Saetzema, whereas here she did not know what she was sobbing for.... At meals, sitting with him alone, she was silent, or else spoke harshly, without intending to. She did not sit with him when he was working, though he asked her to. When he wanted to kiss her, she drew back. At night she often locked herself in, pretended to be asleep.... Only in the children did she feel in harmony with him, did she agree with him, with his system of feeding them, of sending them out every day in all weathers. The children united them, now and then, for a few moments.... When the children were in bed, their life together became strangely unreal, as though both were asking themselves why, why? And it grew worse daily. He was now living exactly as she wished; and it seemed to him as if he had no life of his own. The keeping up of his reading, in the evenings, became mechanical; and mechanically he went once, sometimes twice, a week to Driebergen, remaining there for half the day. They saw him looking strange, unsettled, old, with wrinkles in his forehead and a gloom of despair in his eyes.

"My dear old chap," Van der Welcke said, one day, "I can see that things are not going well with you. Do you remember how your father, not so very long ago, with the only bit of wisdom that ever fell to his share, advised you to seek your own life for yourself?... You're seeking it less and less ... for yourself. Things are not well with you down there ... at the Hague."

"Father, I have so little right to seek my own life for myself."

"And yet we all do it."

"There was a time, once, when you didn't. You then gave up your life for me."

"I did that quite naturally. I don't know what's happening inside you ... but it looks to me as if you were forcing yourself. Here you're at home, here you feel a man: you love this house, you love the work you used to do here...."

"I don't belong to myself any more."

"You never did belong to yourself. As a child, you belonged to your silly parents ... who got the better of you entirely; and now you belong to your wife. I expect it's your fate."

"If it has to be...."

"I should so much like to see you happy, Addie. Bless my soul, old chap, we should all like to see it. We're all suffering on your account. Your poor mother's suffering."

"Does she talk about it to you?"

"No, we never talk much together, as you know, but still...."

"Do you understand each other better?"

"No, but that's not the question. The question at this moment is your happiness...."

"Father, I am not unhappy. Things are really all right with me."

"You've got that cold, distant voice, my boy, which I know so well in you, which you put on when you're hiding yourself and not facing things.

I never mistake it."

Van der Welcke got up, walked restlessly across the room, all blue with smoke, walked back again and suddenly stopped in front of Addie and took his son's head in his two hands:

"My boy, why was it necessary that your fate should be the same as your father's, an unhappy marriage?"

"Father...."

"Don't deny it. Why should you? Aren't we two friends who have always known all about each other? As a child, you were my friend. We were always like brothers. Why must your fate be the same as your father's, an unhappy marriage? You, who are so clever where others are concerned."

Addie suddenly clutched hold of his father. Van der Welcke continued:

"Why must you always know so little that will help yourself?... At the time, I raised no objection. You were fond of the woman; you always knew your mind with such certainty; I thought that you knew things for yourself; I let you have your way. I was jealous because you were getting married; so was your mother; we should have been jealous of any woman. We didn't like the girl you brought us; we thought, 'It's our jealousy that makes us not like her. She's Addie's wife; she's taking our boy from us.' We had no right to think like that. We tried to stifle our jealousy. We received Mathilde, hoping, almost knowing for certain, that you were finding your own happiness in her, because you always knew your mind.... You didn't know it in your own case.... You knew everything so positively in ours.... You also knew so positively, so plainly, that the profession which I tried to urge upon you was not the thing for you: you found your own vocation. You were a small boy; and you know it all so clearly and positively.... When you grew up and became a man, you no longer knew things. Isn't that so?... Why should your fate be the same as your father's? I was a ne'er-do-well, when I made my mistake; you were a calm, serious man...."

It was as if his father were depriving Addie of all his strength, but he merely said, in his almost cool, even, restrained tones:

"Dear Father, really ... things are all right between Mathilde and me.