And Addie had interested himself in his nine children as calmly as if they were not the least trouble.... Then came the move to Driebergen, but Addie remained at the Hague, staying with Aunt Lot, for the two years that he still went to school. He came down each week-end, however: by the husband's train. Van der Welcke said, chaffingly, to join his wife and children; and he took a hand in everything: in the profitable investment and saving of their two thousand guilders apiece; in their schooling; in the choice of a governess for the girls: he saved Aunt Adeline all responsibility; his Saturday afternoons and Sundays were filled with all sorts of cares; he considered and discussed and decided.... Moreover, Granny, who was now lonely and fallen into her dotage, could no longer be left to live in her big house, with no one to look after her; and Constance had easily managed for old Mamma to accompany them to Driebergen. But the old woman had hardly noticed the change: she thought that she was still living in the Alexanderstraat sometimes, in the summer, she would be living at Buitenzorg, in the viceregal palace, and the children round her went about and talked vivaciously ... as she had always known them to do.... Emilie had refused to leave Constance; and, though she sometimes went to stay at Baarn, she really lived with them: Emilie, so grievously shattered in her young life, so unable to forget Henri's death that she was as a shadow of her former self, pale and silent, mostly pining in her room ... until from sheer loneliness she went to join the family-circle downstairs....
Ten years ... ten years had sped like this, sped like fleeting shadows of time; and yet how much had happened! The children growing up, blossoming into young girls and sturdy lads; Addie studying medicine at Amsterdam, walking the hospitals, until, after passing his examination, the young foster-father at last settled down among them all as a doctor, in the great house at Driebergen; and then that immense change in their lives: his marriage, his dreadfully premature marriage.... Oh, that marriage of her son's!... She had had to summon all her deeper wisdom and to clutch it with convulsive hands ... in order to approve ... to approve ... and not for a single moment to let herself be dragged along by all the prejudices of the old days, the prejudices of the narrow little circle which she had learnt to scorn in her later life, the life which had become permanent!... Now he was really a husband, now he was really a father.
"Aunt Constance ... do come!"
It was Gerdy's voice; and it fidgeted her. They were all very nice, certainly, but also they were all very restless; and she was really a woman for loneliness and dreams—had become so—and sometimes felt a need to be quite alone ... quite alone ... in her room; to lie on her sofa and think ... above all things, to think herself back into the years which had sped and sped and sped as fleeting shadows of time....
A tripping step came hastening up the stairs, followed by a tapping at the door:
"Auntie! Aunt Constance.... I've made tea; and, if you don't come, it'll be too strong...."
She would have liked to tell Gerdy that she did not care for that calling out all over the house and through the passages: it always jarred upon her, as though the clear, girlish voice profaned that brown indoor atmosphere of the sombre old house which was so full of the past ... as though the old people were still living there and might be shocked by all that youthful carelessness and presumption. But she never did tell her.
"Yes, darling, I'm coming."
She was ready now and turned out the gas. Gerdy ran downstairs again; and Constance found the lamps lit in the drawing-room and Gerdy very busy with the tea-pot and tea-cups. And Constance smiled, for there was a sort of homely peace, in this room, a peace almost of happiness, the lesser happiness which people sometimes find, for a brief moment. Marietje, the eldest of the girls, a motherly little soul from childhood, had coaxed Grandmamma into leaving the conservatory, which was really too cold, had installed her in the back drawing-room, where the old woman now sat, with her shawl round her, her toes on the foot-warmer, her hands trembling in her lap and her head nodding, as though she knew all sorts of things for certain.... Always she sat like that and scarcely spoke, only a few words, quietly living away the last few years of her life and already looking at the rest in panorama ... but quite unconscious of her surroundings.... In front of the fire, close together, sat Adeline and Emilie, both silent, but filled with the strange peace that reigned in both of them, because things around them were so youthful and so bright. For at this hour all the young people were gathered in the drawing-room, all Gerrit's children, except Constant, who was seventeen and at a boarding-school near Arnhem, to Gerdy's great regret, for she and he had always been together, two good little, fair-haired children. Marietje was twenty-two now, had not grown up pretty, was tall and lank, fair-haired, really an unattractive girl, though she had a certain lovableness from always caring for others, especially for Grandmamma: she had acquired this very early, as the eldest sister, because her mother had at once and as a matter of course entrusted her with the care of her little brothers and sisters. Adeletje too was plain and in addition ailing and anything but strong, with her narrow, shrunk chest; and Constance often wondered that the two elders had become like that, because she remembered them as the two pretty little fair-haired children that they used to be, frail, it is true, but rosy-cheeked, sweet little children. Alex also was there; and he too often surprised Constance, when she remembered the naughty rascal that he was, now a boy of twenty, pale and sallow, with frightened blue eyes, shy, reserved, with a trick of giving a sudden glance of terror which made her anxious, she did not know why. She recognized her brother Gerrit most in Guy, who was tall, fair and broad, as Gerrit had been, but who had always been unmanageable, with not one serious thought in his head; he was nineteen years old now and as undecided about his future as Alex himself.... That was Constance' great care and not only hers but Addie's as well; and Van der Welcke often chaffed his son, that it was not an unmixed joy to be the father of nine children. If Alex was gloomy now, with that strange look, sometimes of sudden fright, in his eyes, Guy was undoubtedly attractive, was genial, pleasant, cheerful, foolish, a great baby and the favourite nephew of Van der Welcke, with whom he went cycling, as Addie never had time now: Addie the serious man, the young doctor with an increasing practice. Guy called Van der Welcke Papa; they got on so well, almost too well together: Van der Welcke, who had remained a child for all his fifty-one years delighted in that tall, fair-haired adopted son of Addie's; and, jealous as he was of all the earnestness, the labour and care displayed by Addie, who had hardly a moment nowadays to give his father, he was glad to have found Guy, as though to show Addie:
"I've got another friend, you know, and I can do without you sometimes!"