"Don't let your mother know anything about it."
No, he did not tell his mother, because his father ordered him to leave his mother out of all this cynical philosophy and atheistical lack of principle, because his father thought that it would hurt her, his wife, whom he had always kept secluded from all knowledge of the outside world, until the scandal in Rome had come as a shock to both of them. And even then, in the years that followed, he had always hidden as much as possible of the world from his wife, holding that a woman, whatever her age, need not know, need not read, need not discuss, need not reflect upon all those things which, far removed from the two of them, were sin: sin such as their son had committed....
Van der Welcke now for the first time fully realized how grievous the shock of the scandal must have been to both of them, years ago. He, young though he was and but lately emancipated from his parents, had at once lost so much of those strict principles in his life in Rome, in his contact with women of the world, in his polished drawing-room talk on soul-weariness with Constance; and he now for the first time fully understood why they had not wished to see the two of them and why years had to elapse before there could be any question of forgiveness. And, however much he had longed for his father, in Brussels, he now felt that this longing was an illusion; that his father was a stranger to him now and he a stranger to his father: two strangers to each other, whom only a remembrance of former days had brought together again. And, curiously, though, as a child, he had liked his father better than his mother, his love now seemed to turn more to his mother, who had never become a stranger, who had always remained the mother, silently reading her forbidden book, longing simply for her child, to whom the voices had sent her....
"But, just as my father would never have spoken out to me, no more would I ever have gone bicycling with my father?" thought Van der Welcke, as he darted with Addie along the smooth roads towards the Zeist Woods.
They were like two brothers, an elder and a younger brother, neither of them tall, but both fairly broad, both with something delicate and high-bred and yet something powerful in their build—Van der Welcke was young still and slender for his nine-and-thirty years—and both, under the same sort of cap, had the same face, the same steel-blue eyes, the same straight profile, with its short nose, well-formed mouth and broad chin, though one was a man and the other a boy. They pedalled and pedalled and devoured the roads on that scorching August morning, talking gaily like two friends.
"Let's stop here, Addie, and take a rest," said Van der Welcke, at length, out of breath.
They alighted, leant their machines against a couple of trees, flung themselves on the mound of needles under the fir-trees, which rose silently and peacefully, calm as cathedral-pillars.
"I say, I'm tired," said Van der Welcke, feeling a little older, for the moment, than his son. "Addie, how you take it out of your father!"
Addie laughed, pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Van der Welcke rested his head on Addie's knee.
"Move higher up: you're not comfortable like that," said Addie.