"I'm ready, Mamma. The carriage is waiting."
"I'm coming, I'm coming, my boy."
CHAPTER XXV
Summer came suddenly: fine, sunny days followed one after the other, all the windows in the big house were opened and the summer seemed to enter and drive everything of winter out of the open windows. The spreading garden became closely leaved with a green and gold triumph of dense foliage which, lightly stirred by the wind, cast shadows over the pond, with a play of alternating flecks of light and shade. Van der Welcke, strolling along the paths, found pleasure in watching Klaasje, the big girl of thirteen, tearing round the water, pursued by Jack, the new terrier, who barked and barked incessantly with his sharp, throaty bark.
"She is still just like a child," thought Van der Welcke, "and she is developing like a little woman. It is strange, the influence which Addie has over her ... and the way the child is perking up now that the fine days have come. But it is not only the fine days, it is Addie above all that gives her this balance: what's it through, I wonder? Purely through his influence, through a sort of healing magic that flows from him.... It is very strange. The other day, I had a terrible headache; and, when he came and just gave me a little massage, it was gone, quite.... And the way the fellow has succeeded in developing the child's mind, with those picture-books, with those coloured things: it's as though he wanted to affect her by means of colours and glitterings and I don't know what. In any case, it came off; she is really learning her lessons very well; and everything she says is more reasonable and sensible. It's as though she were catching herself up.... Yes, amuse yourself, child.... Look, how wildly excited she is with that dog, like a real child; she's enjoying the fine weather; she's just like a child of nature; and she looks well too: she'll grow into a pretty girl, though she's a trifle heavily built.... She no longer has that stupid look in her eyes; and there's something kind and genuine about her ... in her behaviour towards old Mamma and Ernst, something motherly and understanding combined, as if she felt she had something in common with their clouded minds. ... It's jolly to look at the child, to see her sprouting and blossoming, exactly like a plant that is now receiving just the right light and just the right amount of water ... and yet she owes it all to Addie and will very likely never know that she owes it to him.... Yes, the fellow wields a wonderful influence.... Alex is keeping his end up now in Amsterdam and seems to be losing some of his melancholia since Addie has been talking to him so regularly: poor chap, he was ten years old when he saw his father lying dead in all that blood; and it affected him for all time!... We were right to take all those children to live with us: that sort of thing gives a man an object in life, even me, though I myself do nothing, though it's Constance and Addie who act. I feel a certain satisfaction, even though I just let them do as they please.... Who would ever have thought that it would become like this, the big, lonely house, where Father and Mother lived so very long and sadly by themselves, now so full, as a refuge for Constance' family? It turned out so strangely, so very strangely.... Oh, if my boy were only happier!... Who would have thought that he, he who has everything in his favour, should go falling in love with a woman who cannot make him happy? I am always thinking about it. I get up with it, I go to bed with it; I see the two of them in the smoke of my cigarette; and I am beginning to worry and worry about it: a proof that I'm getting old.... And I can see that Constance also worries about it, that the thought of Addie ... and that woman is always, always with her ... oh, everything might have turned out so happily!... But it was not to be, it was not to be.... A lovely summer morning like this almost makes a fellow melancholy.... Yes, it makes you melancholy because you know for certain that it won't long remain so, that calmness in the air, that beautiful clear sky, that green and gold of the trees, and that it will soon become different, soon become different, full of sadness and of gloomy things."
He suddenly spread out his arms, for Klaasje, pursued by the dog, came rushing down the path in his direction without seeing him, as it were blinded by the game which she was playing.
"Uncle Henri, Uncle Henri, let me go! Jack will catch me!"
"Mind and don't tumble into the water," Van der Welcke warned her; but she had already released herself from his arms and was running on, with the dog after her.
"She's gone wild," he thought, "wild with the joy of life. She is beginning to wake up, physically and mentally. It is as though a twilight were withdrawing from her, a twilight which is beginning to steal over me. What is the matter with me? What do I feel? Oh, I long to go bicycling, to go for a long spin ... but Addie's not here; and, even when he is, he has no time, and Guy's working!... Suppose I asked Gerdy: she's fond of a little run."