Van der Welcke kept himself under control that Sunday evening for Mamma van Lowe’s sake, but he was really shocked at Addie’s concern and by the calumnies that appeared to be stealthily uttered against him in the Hague; and, next morning, he went to the Ministry of Justice, asked to see Van Saetzema and, without beating about the bush, requested him to punish his son Jaap for his spiteful slander. Van Saetzema, losing his head in the face of Van der Welcke’s lofty and resolute tone, stammered and spluttered, spoke to Adolphine when he got home and delegated the business to his wife. Adolphine, it is true, scolded Jaap for being so stupid, but, in doing it, created an excitement that lasted for days and penetrated to the Van Naghels, the Ruyvenaers, Karel and Cateau, Gerrit and Adeline, Paul and Dorine, until everybody was talking about it and knew of the incident, excepting only Mamma van Lowe, whom they always spared, and Constance herself. A couple of days later, Van der Welcke saw Van Saetzema again and asked him if he had corrected Jaap; and, when he perceived in Van Saetzema’s spluttering a certain vagueness, a certain inclination to avoid the point, Van der Welcke, who was naturally quick-tempered, flew into a rage and said he would speak to Jaap himself. And, that same evening, three days after the Sunday in question, Van der Welcke went to the Van Saetzemas’, was very polite to Adolphine and her husband, but told Jaap, in his parents’ presence, that, if he ever dared repeat his slanderous insinuations against Addie, he, his Uncle van der Welcke, would give him a thrashing which he would remember all the days of his life. Van Saetzema lost his head: unaccustomed to such plain speaking, he spluttered and stammered, blurting out conciliatory words; and Adolphine told Van der Welcke that she was quite capable of punishing her children herself, if she thought necessary. Van der Welcke, however, managed to keep cool and civil towards the father and mother, but again warned Jaap, so that he might know what to expect. And the whole family soon learnt that Van der Welcke had been to the Van Saetzemas’ and threatened Jaap; and all the members of the family had their different opinions, all except Mamma van Lowe, who was not told, who was always spared the revelation of any unpleasantness, from a sort of reverence on her children’s part, so that she really lived and reigned over them in a sort of illusion of harmony and close communion. And Constance also was not told, remained gently happy, gently contented, with that calm, sweet sadness in her face and soul which was the reflection of her moods. On the following Sunday, however, merely knowing that Addie was still angry with Jaap, she said, at lunch:
“Addie, won’t you go to the three boys to-day and make it up with Jaap?” But Addie gave a decided refusal:
“I’ll do anything to please you, Mamma, but I’ll never go back to those boys.”
Constance lost her temper:
“So on account of what you yourself call a boys’ quarrel—about a cat—you wish to remain on bad terms with the children of your mother’s sister!”
Addie took fright: it was true, the cause seemed very unreasonable.
But Van der Welcke, himself irritable under the restraint which he had been imposing upon himself, said, trembling all over:
“I don’t choose, Constance, that Addie should continue to go about with those boys.”
His determined manner brought her temper seething up; and all her gentle calmness vanished:
“And I choose,” she exclaimed, “that Addie should make friends with them!”
“Mamma, I can’t, really!”
“Constance, it’s impossible.”
Though she was quivering in all her nerves, there was something in the manifest determination of them both that calmed her. But she grew suspicious:
“Tell me why you quarrelled. If you can’t make it up, then it wasn’t about a cat.”
“Let us first have our lunch in peace, if possible,” said Van der Welcke. “I’ll tell you everything presently, at least if you can be calm.”
He realized that he could no longer keep her in ignorance. She collected all her strength of mind to remain cool. After lunch, when she was alone with her husband, she said:
“Now tell me what it is all about.”
“On one condition, that you keep calm. I want to avoid a scene if I possibly can, if only for the sake of our boy, who has been very unhappy.”
“I am quite calm. Tell me what it is. Why has he been unhappy?”
He now told her. She kept calm. She first tried to gloss things over, in a spirit of contradiction; but she was overcome with a deep sense of depression when she thought of her boy and his trouble. For one torturing moment, she doubted whether she had not been very wrong to return to her native land, to her native town, in the midst of all her relations. But she merely said:
“Slander . . . that appears to be people’s occupation everywhere. . . .”
Now that she seemed calm, he resolved to tell her everything and said that he had been to the Van Saetzemas and threatened Jaap.
Her temper was roused, for a moment, but subsided again in the profound depression that immediately left her numb and disheartened. The torturing pain followed again and the doubt whether she had not been quite wrong. . . .
But she did not give utterance to the doubt and simply went to the “turret-room,” where her boy was:
“Are you going out, Addie?” she asked, vaguely, calm amid her depression. “Let’s go out together, Mamma,” he said.
She smiled, glad that he was giving her this Sunday afternoon with that justice with which he divided his favours. She stood in front of him, with blank eyes to which the tears now stole, but with the smile still playing about her mouth.
“Shall we, Mamma?”
She nodded yes. Then she knelt down beside her boy, where he sat with his book in his hands, and it was as though she were making herself very small, as though she were shrinking; and she laid her head on his little knees and put one arm round him. She wept very softly into his lap.
“Come, Mummy, what’s the matter?”
She now knew what he had suffered, a sorrow almost too great for one of his years to bear. She almost wished to beg his pardon, but dared not. She only said:
“Addie, you did believe Papa, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe me too, when I say that it’s not true what people say? . . .”
“Yes, I believe you.”
He believed her; and yet a suspicion lingered in his mind. There was something, even though that particular thing was not true. There was something. But he did not ask what it was, out of respect for those past years, the years that were his parents’ own.
“My child!” she sobbed, with her head still in his lap. “Tell me, has my boy been very unhappy?” He just nodded, to say yes, and pressed her to him, lifted her up, took her close to him on his knees, with the caress of an embryo man. She closed her eyes on her son’s breast. She felt so weary with her depression that she could have remained lying there. It was as though the illusion was beginning to crumble to pieces, like a dear house of sympathy from which sympathy had shown itself to be absent.
“Don’t let Grandmamma notice anything,” she said, softly.
He promised.
She wanted to leave the old woman her happiness in her illusion, the illusion of that dear house of sympathy. Her own illusion was crumbling. And yet she thought that she was exaggerating, making too much of it, because a wretched boy had given her child pain:
“That’s no reason why they should all be like that,” she thought.
And she once more summoned to her mind the illusion of that great, dear house of sympathy for which she had yearned in her lonely exile.
“Come, Mamma, let’s go out.”
She released him slowly, smiled through her tears, as she rose from his lap and went to change her things:
“How small we all are!” she thought. “What small creatures we are and what small souls we have! Is that life? Or is there something different?”