Dorine felt less tired after she had had some dinner and changed her clothes; and she put on her goloshes and went on to Mamma's at once. The rawness of the March evening bore down on the deserted Javastraat with a shudder of dripping fog. It had rained all day; and now the heavy grey sky was blotted from sight in a mist that clung in masses of woolly dampness to the roofs and tree-tops; the wind whistled from the north-west and skimmed over the rippling puddles; the trees dripped as heavily as though it were still raining; and the pale-yellow light in the clouded street-lamps shimmered down upon the street. Hardly any one was out of doors so early after dinner; a man, carrying a parcel, left a shop and shuffled close to the houses, with wide, hurrying legs.
Dorine tripped across the puddles in her goloshes, hugging herself in her old-fashioned, long fur cloak. And she talked to herself and muttered out loud. She grumbled at the rain, grumbled at all the trouble which Mamma had given her that day, sending her to all the brothers and sisters, for Constance' sake.... And you'd see, Constance wouldn't even be grateful to her, Constance would think it only natural.... Every one always thought it only natural, that Dorine should run about for the family; and no one was ever really grateful.... Every one was selfish, Mamma included.... Well, she would try it herself one day, being selfish ... and sit all day long by her fire, as Karel always did ... and live only for herself, for her own pleasure ... and leave them all to their fate.... Just imagine, supposing, to-morrow, she were to say to Bertha and Adolphine, whose girls were soon to be married, that she had no time to go on everybody's errands.... It was always Dorine: Dorine could do it all; Dorine didn't mind the rain; Dorine had to be in the Veenestraat anyhow.... Running about, running about, running about, without stopping, all out of sheer, silly good-nature; and who thanked her for it? Nobody! Not Mamma, nor Bertha, nor Adolphine.... It was all taken as a matter of course! Well, she would like to see their faces to-morrow, if she said, "I've no time, you know;" or "I'm staying at home to-day;" or, "I'm feeling rather tired." Dorine feeling tired! What next!
Still grumbling, she rang the bell at Mamma's, in the Alexanderstraat; she took off her things in the hall. And now she emerged from her long cloak, a lean and wiry little woman of thirty-five, with a thin and sallow face, her breast shrunk within a painfully tight, dark-silk blouse; her dull, mud-coloured hair drawn tightly from her forehead into a knot at the back; very thin, with no hips, with not a single rounded line and with those dark eyes of the Van Lowes, which in her were bright and intelligent, but with an odd sort of silent reproach and secret discontent at the back of them, as though brooding under her glance. Withal she had retained something very young and girlish, something innocent and gay and lively. While pulling off her gloves, she spoke pleasantly to the servant, made a playful remark about the wet weather. She felt her hair, to see if it was smooth and drawn back properly, and tripped up the stairs with a swinging gait, her shoulders bobbing up and down, her legs wide apart. There was now something quite young and unconstrained in that gay liveliness of hers.
She found Mamma upstairs, in the double drawing-room, where Klaartje was lighting the gas:
"They're all coming, Mamma!" Dorine blurted out.
Then, starting when she saw the servant, she whispered:
"I've been to all of them; first to Karel, then to Bertha, then to Adolphine; no, first to Gerrit...."
She became muddled, laughed, made Mamma sit down beside her and told her what all the brothers and sisters had said. The old woman's face beamed with satisfaction. She kissed Dorine:
"You're a dear girl, Dorinetje," she said, with the motherly voice which she used when speaking to any of her children—even to Bertha, who was fifty—and which she had never learnt to give up. "You're a dear girl to have taken so much trouble. And it's very nice of all the others to come to-night, for I know it means a great effort to some of them to forgive and forget and to take back Constance as a sister. And I appreciate it all the more...."