She spoke quite easily and it was all very prosaic and ordinary when they all sat down round the big table in the dining-room and Marianne quietly chatted on:
"And Marietje—Lord, what a lot of Marietjes we have in the family—our Marietje is soon coming to introduce her young soldier to you."
"Is it settled then?" asked Constance. "I thought Uncle van Naghel didn't approve."
"He's given in," said Marianne, shrugging her shoulders. "But the dear boy hasn't a cent; and we none of us know how they're going to live on his subaltern's pay. And Marietje who always used to swear that she would only marry a rich man! ... And we have good news from India: Karel is really doing well...."
How prosaic life was! How prosaically it rolled along its steady drab course, thought Brauws, silently to himself, as he looked on while Guy carved the beef in straight, even slices.... And, prosaically though it rolled, what a very different life it always became from what any man imagined that his life would be, from the future which he had pictured, from the illusion, high or small, which he had gilded for himself, with his pettily human fancy ever gilding the future according to its pettily human yearning after illusions.... Oh, if the illusion had come about which, in the later life reborn out of themselves, he and Constance had conceived, without a word to each other, in a single, brightly glittering moment, oh, if Henri's illusion had come about and that of this young woman, now the little mother of three children, would it all have been better than it now was? Who could tell? Who could tell?... And, though the dreamy reflecting upon all this brought back all the melancholy of the past, yet this melancholy contained an assurance that life, as it went on, knew everything better than the people who pictured the future to themselves.... There they all were, sitting so simply round the big table at the simple meal for which Constance apologized, saying that Marianne had taken her unawares; and Brauws was but mildly astonished to find that Marianne was married to Van Vreeswijk: he had not heard of it and it was a surprise to him to see her suddenly surrounded by children; he was but mildly astonished to see her and Hans talking together so simply, as uncle and niece, as though there had never been a shred of tenderness between them; he was but mildly astonished when he himself talked to Constance so simply, while he felt depressed about Addie, whose eyes looked so dark and sombre. When Addie was still a child, he had conceived an enthusiasm for him, perceiving in him a certain future which he himself would never achieve. And he had also suffered, because he felt Addie's jealousy for his father's sake, when he, Brauws, used to sit for hours with his mother in the half-dark room, whispering intimate words so quickly understood, so sympathetically felt....
Now the years had passed; sorrow had faded away and sorrow was being born again perhaps, for life cannot exist without sorrow, laid up as an inheritance for one and all; and yet sorrow was so very little and became so small in the measureless life entire. There was nothing for it but to smile, later, much later, at all the disappointment, even that of seeking and not finding and not achieving....
It was very noisy because of the children: the three little Vreeswijks after lunch playing with Jetje and Constant; and, as the girls were staying with the children, Constance, with her arm round Marianne's waist, went upstairs to her own room:
"Let's sit here quietly for a bit," she said.
Marianne smiled:
"You've always got your hands full, Auntie."