"He feels himself growing flabby ... because there's too much affection, too much leniency for him.... That's the sort of thing he writes.... Who would have thought the boy was so silly?... He writes that he won't do any good ... if he stays here.... That he wants to go and face the world.... A boy of his age!... The most ridiculous idea I've ever heard of!...
"The boy may be right," said Brauws, very gently.
But Van der Welcke was not listening:
"I shall miss him," he confessed. "I miss him now. He was my favourite ... among them all. He consoled me for the loss of Addie.... I loved him as my own son; so ... so did Constance."
Brauws was silent.
"Life is a damned, rotten encumbrance!" said Van der Welcke, explosively. "We do everything for those children, we do everything for that boy; and, all of a sudden, he goes away ... instead of ... instead of staying with us, causes us sorrow breaks his poor mother's heart.... He writes about America.... Addie went straight to the station to make enquiries. He was going on to Rotterdam. Addie ... Addie never has a moment's peace.... He was looking tired as it was, tired and sad; and, instead of having a day's rest ... with us ... with all of us ... I wanted to go with him ... but he said he preferred to go alone.... Why not have told Addie ... that he would rather do something else ... than go into the Post Office?... God, we'd have been glad enough to help him! ... He—Addie—does everything ... does every blessed thing for the children.... Oh, Brauws, it's as if a son of my own had run away ... run away in a fit of madness!... Addie has gone to Rotterdam. It was Addie's idea, Rotterdam. But Guy can just as well have gone to Antwerp, to Le Havre, to God knows where!... He hadn't much money with him.... What will he do, what were his plans?..."
The sunny summer day passed gloomily: just a telegram from Addie, "Coming to-morrow," without any further explanation. Constance had found the strength to go to Adeline in her room; the girls were overcome with a silent stupefaction, at the thought that Guy, their cheerful Guy, kept so much hidden under his light-heartedness: a deeper dissatisfaction with life, vague and unclear to all of them, who were so happy to be with Uncle Henri and Aunt Constance in what had so long been their family house, since they had been quite small children; and, when Alex arrived in the evening from Amsterdam, he too could not understand why Guy had felt a need so suddenly to go away from all of them, without taking leave, with that queer idea of making his way in the world alone.... On the contrary, he—Alex—valued in the highest degree all that Uncle, Aunt and Addie did for him: without them, he would never have made any headway in the world and he was making headway at last, he thought. He was now working methodically at Amsterdam and almost methodically making his melancholy yield ground: it was as though Addie inspired him with the love of work and the love of life, wooing to life in him the strength to become a normal member of society, oh, he felt it so clearly! After every talk with Addie he felt it once more, felt strength enough to stay one week in Amsterdam, to work, to live, to see the dreaded life—which his father had escaped by suicide come daily closer and closer, nearer and nearer, like a ghostly vista, at first viewed anxiously and darkly, but later entered, walked into, inevitably, until all the ghostliness of it was close around him.... And, when he thought of his father and always saw him lying, in a pool of blood, with his mother's body flung across the corpse in all the terror of despair, then at the same time he would think of Addie and reflect that life, no doubt, would not be gay but that nevertheless it need not always hark back out of black spectral dread to his youth ... because Addie spoke of being strong and becoming a man gradually.... And Guy had gone, had evaded just that beneficial, strengthening influence of Addie!... No, Alex also could not understand it; and that evening he remained sitting gloomily between his sisters, not knowing what he could say to comfort his mother.... The next day was Sunday; and, if he did not see Addie on Sunday, he knew that the following week would not be a good one for him in Amsterdam, would be a bad, black week....
And it was only Grandmamma and Ernst and Klaasje who did not feel oppressed by the sombre, sudden, incomprehensible and unexpected event which the others were all trying to understand and explain: to them the summer day had been all sunlight and the gloom had passed unperceived by them.
Next morning Addie returned. Constance, who was quite unstrung, had been twice and three times to the station in vain. At last she saw him:
"You didn't find him?" she asked, with conviction.