The boy felt it. He felt his breathing oppressed with all that gloom; and again and again he wanted to sigh, but he kept back his sighs. He did not know what to say; and he gave his grandparents the impression of a quiet, subdued child, who was not happy. They spoke to him too as old people do to a child, with condescending kindness, pointing out the little things in the room. The boy, who was accustomed to be a man standing between his two parents, answered nothing except in shy monosyllables.
Henri and Constance avoided looking at each other; and each of them, even in the same conversation, talked as it were separately to the old people. They were to stay to lunch—the old-fashioned Dutch "coffee-drinking"—and return at five o'clock to the Hague. The butler came to say that luncheon was served and pushed back the sliding doors. The dining-room lay on this side of the great, closed conservatory, a gloomy shadow in the pale daylight that streaked in through the rain; and the mahogany furniture gleamed with reflected lights, the table shone white and glassy. They sat down: difficult words fell now and again and sounded hard in the somewhat chilly room. The old woman with much ceremony offered a soft-boiled egg, or a tongue-sandwich which lay neatly arranged with its fellows on a tray. She herself filled the small china coffee-cups. It all lasted very long, was all very solemn and proper, with much formality about the egg and the sandwich. Addie felt as if he could easily swallow both the egg and sandwich in one gulp; and he had to restrain himself in order to eat the egg slowly and neatly in little spoonfuls and to chew the sandwich with little bites, so as not to finish too soon nor deprive the table of its excuse for being so elaborately laid. He was not sure whether he was still hungry or not when Grandmamma offered him a second sandwich; but he took it, because otherwise he would not have known what to do with his hands. He sat like a small, stiff little boy, shyly; and, when he looked up at his father, it seemed to him that he too was sitting as if he had eaten his sandwich too fast. Grandmamma herself buttered his bread for him and offered it to him, ready cut into strips. He ate the narrow fingers with a great effort at self-control.
It lasted endlessly long; and the table remained white, bare and neat, now that the sandwiches were finished; the empty coffee-cups gave the only touch of untidiness: the broken, yellowy egg-shells Grandmamma had put away on the sideboard. When they rose, Grandpapa asked Henri to come and smoke a cigar in his study; Grandmamma stayed in the sitting-room with Constance and Addie. On the road outside, the rain splashed in the puddles.
Constance felt a stranger in this house. Nevertheless, her mood became softer, because the old woman's eyes, in the stiff, silver-framed face, were still sad and constantly filled with tears. She was very sensitive to any emotion in another; and, though she fought against it, she herself felt moved. She wanted to talk to this grandmother about her grandson; and so she said how clever he was, how good to his parents. Mrs. van der Welcke nodded good-naturedly, but continued to look upon Addie as a child, while Constance was talking of him as man. The old woman did not fully grasp the meaning of Constance' words, but the sound of them increased her emotion. She called Addie to her side, said that he must come and stay with them in the summer: it was delightful in the country then, for games. The boy had it on his lips to say that his parents could not do without him; but he felt that his words would sound strange and elderly and priggish. And he only said, very prettily:
"I should like to, Grandmamma."
He played at being a little child, because Grandmamma happened to look upon him as one. Really he was thinking of something very different, thinking of the houses which he had seen yesterday with Papa and Mamma and which his parents could not agree upon, in any particular: the neighbourhood, the division of the rooms. Because he knew that the hotel was expensive and that both Papa and Mamma would become less fidgety once they had a house, he thought of cutting the Gordian knot and going by himself to the owner of a nice house near the Woods, not so very far from Granny van Lowe's. If he didn't interfere, it would be weeks and weeks before Papa and Mamma made up their minds. He knew that to take a house was a very serious matter, but he also knew that Papa and Mamma would never agree. He must needs, therefore, risk something and he would hope for the best, hope that all would turn out well.
"A couple of houses farther on, there are two very nice little boys: you shall see them when you come in the summer, Adriaan."
"Yes, Grandmamma."
His voice sounded very refined and soft; and Constance had to smile. But, while he sat there stiffly, with his shoulders squared and his legs close together, he was dividing the rooms of the house near the Woods. Mamma, meanwhile, was exchanging toilsome words with Grandmamma. He portioned out the rooms. Downstairs, the drawing-room and the dining-room, more or less as at Uncle Gerrit's: those two rooms always communicated in Holland, with folding-doors between them. And the little conservatory. And the little garden was quite nice. Upstairs, the large room for Mamma and the smaller one for Papa; and it was jolly that he himself could have that sort of turret-room, with a bow-window, in between their two bedrooms. So he would be between Papa and Mamma. Above that, there was still a sort of attic floor, but that did not concern him: Mamma must manage that. It was rather risky perhaps, to go to that fat man to-morrow—a contractor, Papa called him—and tell him that Papa had sent him to say that he would take the house.... Perhaps that house in the something van Nassaustraat was better, bigger. But it was dearer also.... Perhaps Papa would be angry, if he acted just like that, off his own bat; but, of course, there would be nothing settled in black and white. Only, if Papa and Mamma once knew that he had been to the fat man, well, they might be a little angry at first, might squabble a bit more; and then both of them would look at him and laugh and they would take the house and everything would be all right.... If they did not decide a bit quicker, if they went on squabbling, their Brussels furniture would suddenly be there, in front of their noses, and they without a house to put it in.... It was true, Granny van Lowe had said, "Be careful about taking a house:" that was all very well when people agreed; but that's what Papa and Mamma never did. They had come to Holland, because he had said:
"Why, I'm a Dutch boy, aren't I? Then let's go!"