Dr. Adriaan Part 14

"Yes, I am, Auntie. Where are you off to?"

"To the store-cupboard."

He went with her and Marietje to the store-cupboard, conducted a raid among the almonds and raisins, talked a lot of nonsense and made Constance laugh, until she said:

"Come on, Guy ... run along upstairs."

But, because Adeletje looked after the flowers in the conservatory and he saw her carrying a watering-can, he a.s.sisted her and even sponged the leaves of an aralia, while Klaasje played at Grandmamma's feet, building houses with cards, which she loved for the shrill colours of the court-cards, and aces[1] and for the pretty figures of hearts and diamonds, clubs and spades. He built a house for her; he teased Gerdy, who was back at her piano, now that Mathilde had left off overhead, until Truitje came to lay the table for lunch and he raced up three flights of stairs, terrified, to work at all costs ... hang it all, yes, to work!... He sat with his hands to his ears, so as not to hear, and his eyes fixed on the maps; and, when the luncheon-bell rang, he deliberately waited a few minutes, pretended to himself to be annoyed because a morning pa.s.sed so quickly and never came down to lunch less than five minutes late, making the excuse that he had been working so hard....

Now, in the winter, the short days pa.s.sed in peaceful, sombre domesticity: in the afternoon, Constance went for a walk or to see a poor person, generally with Adeletje; paying or receiving a visit was quite an event, which happened only three or four times during the winter; only Gerdy sometimes entertained her tennis-club and gave the members tea, upstairs in the girls' sitting-room, as though striving for a little sociability from the outside.... And, in the yellow circle of light shed by the lamps, the evening drowsed on gently after dinner, with the wind whistling round the house, with Gerdy's bustle amid the c.h.i.n.k of her tea-things, with Guy and Adeletje rattling the dice:

"Two and five...."

"Double six.... Once more.... Imperial.... Once more.... Three and five...."

And Mathilde sat with a book in her hands, her eyes expressing a weight of silent boredom, while the room seemed full of things of the past, and the voice of the wind outside and the mourning women--Granny, Adeline, Emilie--like three generations of dreaming melancholy depressed her until Addie came in, for a brief hour, before going upstairs again to his reading....

[1] The aces in Dutch packs of cards are set in brightly-coloured pictures, usually town-views.

CHAPTER IX

It was raining on the morning when Adolphine alighted at Zeist-Driebergen and hurried to the tram which was on the point of leaving. She looked very weary and lean, with bitter lines round her thin, spiteful lips and a reproach in her sharp eyes; and suddenly she reflected that she was sorry that she had not put on a better cloak.

"Conductor, will you stop at Baron van der Welcke's villa, please?"

"We don't pa.s.s the villa, ma'am, but it's quite close to the road."

"Then will you tell me where to get out?"

The conductor promised; and Adolphine suddenly became very uncertain of herself. All those years, all the years that Constance had been living at Driebergen, she had never been once to look them up: really out of anger, because they had stolen Mamma, because Mamma had gone to live with them. In all those years, she had never seen her mother, had seen Constance only once and again, at Baarn, after Bertha's death; at the Hague, casually, exchanging a few words with her when they met, by accident, at Aunt Lot's; and Addie also she had seen but very seldom.

She was sorry for it now, it looked so strange, to arrive like this, all of a sudden; and then she had not announced her coming, because she disliked writing the letter.... If only Constance wasn't out, or away, or perhaps gone to Utrecht or Amsterdam for a day's shopping ... which was possible.... She was coming quite like a stranger; and her heart was thumping; and she was almost sorry now that she had taken this step.

There were plenty of other doctors besides Addie, who was still such an inexperienced boy, and yet ... and yet ... In her unstrung condition, the tears came to her eyes and she felt overcome with her sorrow, with all the bitterness of the last few melancholy years. It was all very sad at home: Van Saetzema, retired on a pension and now ailing ... with cancer in the stomach; the boys--Jaap in the Indian Civil, Chris in the army, Piet a midshipman--never writing home, now that they no longer needed the paternal house; Caroline soured by not marrying; and the youngest, Marietje, so weak lately, so queer, that Adolphine did not know what to do with her! Added to all this, because, notwithstanding her economy, they had lived on too lavish a scale in her striving after Hague grandeur, they had run into debt and were now living in a small house, really vegetating, without seeing a spark of grandeur gleaming before their eyes. It was all over, there was nothing left for them: it was all loneliness and dying off ... relations and friends; there was no family circle left at the Hague and it seemed as though such family-circle as had survived was now united--how strange!--in Van der Welcke and Constance' house at Driebergen.... Adolphine had long cherished a wonderful jealousy at this, as though, after Van Naghel's death and Bertha's, it ought to be her house which the family, however greatly dispersed, would look upon as the family-house.... It was not that she was hospitable by nature, but her vanity was injured; and to satisfy this she would not have objected even to taking Mamma to live with her, however doting and tiresome Mamma might have become. But there had never been any question of that. No, Mamma had at once gone to Constance; and Adolphine could feel, by the way in which Paul, Dorine, the Ruyvenaers and even Karel and Cateau spoke, that they all, with varying degrees of affection, looked upon Van der Welcke's house at Driebergen as still remaining the family-centre! A nice state of affairs! Adolphine was angry now, because she never succeeded in anything, because she never _had_ succeeded.... And now she had actually set out for Driebergen, with the very object of asking those two, Constance and Van der Welcke, to do her a favour, though she refused as yet to picture it so clearly as such....

She was very nervous when the conductor, at a halt, told her to get down, showed her a road, pointed to a house distantly visible between the bare, dripping trees. The great block loomed ma.s.sive-grey through the black boughs; the outline of the long, straight roof stood out harsh and unwelcoming against the grey winter sky. It was only the fancy of overstrung nerves; but in the windows of the front, with their reflecting panes and blinds half down, Adolphine seemed to feel reserve, repellence, pride, grudge, refusal.... It all shot very quickly through her, made her hesitate to go on ... and yet, now that she had come so far, now that she was approaching the gate of the front-garden, she realized that it was too late, that she must go on, round the beds with the straw-wrapped roses; and she rang at the great gloomy front-door.

She rang shyly, too softly; the bell did not sound; and she stood waiting under her dripping umbrella. Her heart was beating as she pulled a second time, rather harder, in spite of herself.... Truitje now opened the door and she recognized her as the maid, the same maid, for whom Constance had rung, years and years ago, in the Kerkhoflaan, to show her the door, after their last private interview. She was surprised to see the girl, looking older, but still recognizable; and, because her thoughts were carried back to so many years ago, the sight gave her such a sense of hesitation that she could hardly speak, especially as Truitje, equally surprised, was also staring her in the eyes. Adolphine felt that she was going to stammer, now that she had to open her lips; but there was no way out of it; the question must be put:

"Is ... is me-mevrouw ... is mevrouw at home?"

"Yes, ma'am ... mevrouw's at home."

Adolphine had entered trembling; and the maid closed the door behind her and took her wet umbrella from her. Standing on the mat, she saw the long hall before her, with the brown doors, the antique cabinet, the portraits and engravings. It gave her the impression of a very sober and serious Dutch house, but an impression, too, of reserve, repellence, pride, grudge and refusal.... And, with her eyes anxiously fixed on the open oak door at the end of the hall, she stammered once more almost imploringly, with an irresolution in her voice which she could not overcome:

"I'm not ... I'm not disturbing her?"

"Not at all, ma'am: pray come in."

Then the door of the drawing-room opened and Constance herself stood before her:

"Adolphine!"

There was surprise in her voice, if not gladness: surprise at finding Adolphine there, Adolphine whom she had never seen at Driebergen, whom she had never seen lately, for the matter of that, except once or twice, casually, at the Hague or Baarn ... when poor Bertha had died.

"Adolphine!"

"I've come to see how you are getting on, Constance ... you and ... and Mamma...."

Adolphine's voice wavered, jerkily, beseechingly, uncertain of itself; and it was so strange for Constance to see Adolphine, to hear her uttering such words, in so hesitating a voice, that she was put out for a moment and could not frame a phrase of welcome, could not even make a show of cordiality. But she saw that the door at the end of the hall stood ajar; and she said to Truitje, almost angrily:

"Truitje, why is that door open again? You know I want it shut."

"It opens sometimes with the draught, ma'am," replied the maid.

Truitje closed the door and went back to the kitchen; and the two sisters were left alone.

"Come in, Adolphine."

"I'm not disturbing you?"

"Of course not. I'm glad to see you again."

She forced a note of geniality into her voice.

"We haven't met for years," said Adolphine, in hesitating excuse.

"Not for ever so long. I go to the Hague so seldom. Here's Mamma."

The old woman was in the conservatory, gazing out of the window.

"Mamma!" said Adolphine, with emotion. "Mamma!"

She went nearer:

"Good-morning, Mamma...."

The old woman looked at her vacantly:

"It's windy," she said. "The garden is full of big branches...."

"Mamma," said Constance, "here's Adolphine come to see you."

The old woman did not recognize her daughter. She looked at Adolphine vacantly and indifferently. Then she said:

"It's not right for Gertrude to run about in the garden when it's so windy.... There are big branches falling from the trees."