Now, at last, he shook off the strange heaviness, took his bath; and, when he saw himself naked—that expanse of clean, white skin, the great body built on heavy, sinewy lines, a good-looking, fair-haired chap still, despite his eight-and-forty years—he wondered that he sometimes had those queer moody fits, like a lady's lap-dog. And now, as he squeezed the streaming water over himself out of the great sponge, he tried to pooh-pooh those moody fits, shrugged his shoulders at them, muttering to himself as he kept on squeezing the sponge, squeezing out the water until it splashed and spattered all around him. He had the sensation of washing the inertia from him; he drew a deep breath, flung out his chest, felt his strength returning and, still naked, took his dumb-bells and worked away with them, proud of a pair of biceps that were like two rolling cannon-balls. His eyes recovered their usual jovial expression, which also played around his fair moustache with a roguish sparkle, as of inward mockery; the wrinkles vanished from his forehead, which was gradually acquiring a loftier arch as the crop of fair hair on his head diminished; and the blood seemed to be flowing normally through his big body, after the bath and the five minutes' exercise, for his cheeks, now shaved, became tinged with an almost pink flush. And he simply could not make up his mind to dress: he looked at himself, at his big, strong, clean body, which he kneaded yet once more, as proud of his muscles as a woman of her graceful figure.
Then he quickly put on his uniform and went downstairs to breakfast. The children surrounded him instantly; and he at once felt himself the father, full of a father's affection, passionately fond as he was of his children. He was only just in time to see Alex and Guy go off with their satchels: the school was close by and they went by themselves, two sturdy little fellows of nine and seven; but the other children, all except the eldest, Marietje, who was also at school, were eating their bread-and-butter at the round table, while Adeline sat in front of her tea-tray. And Gerrit, in the little dining-room, at the round table, felt himself become normal again, quite normal, because of his wife and his children.
The dining-room was small and very simply furnished, containing only what was strictly necessary. Adeline, now thirty-two, looked older: a plump little mother, with not much to say for herself, full of little cares for her little brood; and Gerrit, noisy and clamorous, filling the whole little room with the gay thunder of his drill-sergeant's voice, was full of incessant jokes and fun. There were half-a-dozen younger ones round the table: two girls, Adèletje and Gerdy; three boys: Constant, Jan and Piet; and the latest baby, a girl, Klaasje. Gerrit had given the youngest three their names, in his annoyance at the high-sounding names of the others: Alexander, Guy, Geraldine, christened after Adeline's family, while Marie and Constant were called after Mamma and Papa van Lowe.
"Look here, not so many of those grand names," Gerrit had said, when Jan was coming.
And, after Klaasje[1]—a name which the whole family considered hideous—Gerrit said:
"If we have another, it shall be called after me, Gerrit,[2] whether it's a boy or a girl."
"Gertrude, surely, if it's a girl?" Adeline had suggested.
"No," said Gerrit, "she shall be Gerrit all the same."
Gerrit's manias were Mamma van Lowe's despair; but so far there had been no question of a grand-daughter Gerrit.
Gerrit had no favourites. His long arms swung round as many children as he could get hold of and he drew them on his knees, between his knees, almost under his feet; and by some miraculous chance he had never broken an arm or leg of any of them, so that Adeline and the children themselves were never afraid and only Mamma van Lowe, when she witnessed Gerrit's embraces, went through a thousand terrors. And to the children the joy of life seemed to be embodied in their father, a joy which they soon came to picture instinctively as a tall man, an hussar, with a loud voice and any number of jokes, a pair of high riding-boots and a clanking sword.