Easter was at hand; spring brought a new balminess to the wind, a new softness to the rain, a new warmth to the air, which hung low in a heavy grey canopy; and much had changed during the past few weeks. The big house, full though it was with all of them, seemed very quiet now that Addie and Mathilde had moved to the Hague, though their rooms were always kept ready for them because Van der Welcke had said that Addie must always have his rooms ready for him whenever he chose to come home, though it were only for a day. And so the bedrooms and the nursery always remained in mute expectation, with silent furniture and closed doors; and only in Addie's big study, one of the best rooms of the house, formerly the old man's library, Guy now sat and worked at the window. And it was as though, in spite of the restfulness induced by Mathilde's absence, they were all gloomy because Addie was gone, as if they had all lost him. True, he came regularly, twice a week in fact, especially because of Marietje—Mary; but even then he had so much to do outside that they scarcely saw him except at meals. And it was as if they could all have put up with Mathilde, rather than lose Addie. Klaasje no longer pushed her chair away, Gerdy no longer spilt the milk, at evening tea—those small, almost ridiculous vexations with which Constance had had to put up so often—as soon as Mathilde entered; but, now that all vexation was gone, Addie also was gone and seemed lost for all time. And they lived on in a sort of grey harmony, still and peaceful but now, regularly, without many words, in a dull resignation which mourned in all their eyes and voices, while Gerdy now silently, silently pined and pined; and it was only Guy and Van der Welcke who, once in a way, indulged in loud and forced merriment. Paul also had his melancholy days: sometimes he would not put in an appearance for a week, said that he was ill, remained in his rooms, lying on a sofa with a book in his hands, not thinking it worth while to talk brilliantly or to play the piano. But they looked him up, Constance, Brauws, the girls; they drove him out of his rooms and out of his mood of depression; and he returned, like a victim, grumbled that Gerdy's piano was always dirty, asked for a duster, scrubbed the keys and submissively played Grieg, the melodies dripping slackly from his fingers. And, though everything was grey, in the somewhat sultry spring air, still it was strangely happy with a harmony felt in silence, a family concord, which sometimes brought the tears to Constance' eyes when she sat talking to Brauws in the twilight upstairs in her own sitting-room, in whispered interchange of quick half-words, which at once understood one another. Then, when Addie arrived, he brought with him a certain gleam, a light, a sudden glory; and yet his eyes too were full of sombre greyness, but they were all so glad to see him that they saw only glory in them. He was happy at the Hague, he said. He had a good practice, everything was going well. Mathilde was very cheerful; the children were well. He asked them all to come down sometime, for, though they had all been once, to see the house, they did not come again, withdrawing themselves from him as it were . . . He saw it and was hurt by it; his eyes seemed to roam through the dear brown rooms, as if this big house remained his house; and, when Constance embraced him, she felt in her son's heart a difficult struggle and a swelling of great sorrow. He never spoke of it; he hypnotized Marietje; he regularly kept up Klaasje's reading-lessons and the books with the coloured letters gleamed into the child's awakening imagination; he talked, on Saturdays, at great length with Alex or sat with old Grandmamma and always thought of something to say to her that made her nod her head with soft, smiling satisfaction; he found a moment for his father, for his mother, for all of them: also for the poor sick people on the silent country roads; once he interested himself in an old sick horse which caused Marietje—Mary—great sorrow, when she saw it tortured, and bought it for her and let it run about, for her sake, in a meadow belonging to a farmer whom they knew. And his regular visits were what they all looked forward to, once a week, as to a delightful day; and the other days dragged on, in grey harmony, amid the quiet family life, in which they all recognized the same loss in one another.
Easter arrived; and the three, Constant, Jan and Piet, came home for the holidays. And it was one great emotion, not only for Adeline, but also for Constance and also for Addie, when he came down, an emotion which bound them still more closely together, an emotion aroused by the future of all those boys, an emotion felt over the examinations which they had passed or were about to pass. Constant, now seventeen, was to be transferred this year from the Secondary School at the Hague to the School of Agriculture at Wageningen; Jan, now fifteen, was still at a boarding-school at Barneveld, preparing to go up for his naval examination next year; Piet, now fourteen, was at the Hague, at the Secondary School, with a view to the Polytechnic. At the Hague, Constant and Piet lived with a tutor; and Addie was almost glad that he himself was now living at the Hague and seeing more of the boys, for the tutor was not satisfied: the boys did their lessons badly, not because they were unwilling, but because they had no head for books, for working, for studying, any more than Alex, any more than Guy. The three yellow-haired younger ones were even worse feather-heads than their two elders: Constant was something of a dreamer, Jan the most solid, Piet the cleverest of the three, but none of them workers. They all displayed the same incapacity for perseverance, with the different shades of their different characters: Alex, true, doing his best for Addie's sake at the Merchants' School at Amsterdam, but full of a secret dread of life, struck as a child with that dread since, staring through open doors, he had seen his father's dead body, in that single moment of horror and blood; Guy, kindly, genial, merry and light-hearted; Constant, inwardly sombre, morose, with a strange deep look of suspicion in his eyes; Jan, a boy for games; and Piet—the youngest except Klaasje—no doubt the most enlightened intellectually, but delicate, shy, girlish and reminding Constance most of the flaxen dolls of the old days: the merry, careless children, romping round the dining-room in the Bankastraat, while Gerrit, in his uniform and riding-boots, stood tall and wide-legged in the midst of their fun. And now, now the boys were no longer careless: it was their reports, it was their careers opening yonder in the future that as it were compelled them to think of serious things; and it was as though they none of them developed with the blossoming of their years, as though they, Alex, Guy, Constant and Jan, remained feeble, light-hearted, sombre and rough and Piet so shy and delicate, while cruel life opened out before them, society, in which they had to conquer a place for themselves, when none of them could persevere in the youthful studies which prepared their future. It was a great source of anxiety for Addie; and, if the boys had not all been so fond of him, the anxiety would have been greater than he could cope with. Was it not he who had really chosen their career for them, because they did not know, because they had no preference, all of them perhaps shuddering with dread of having to take their place in human society, such as Alex felt it most deeply in the melancholy of his dejection, as though their father's suicide, of which they all knew, had cast a shadow over all of them, a twilight over their childish souls? And Addie, like an elder brother, like a young father, had had, in consulting them, to choose for them, had had to discuss the matter with them at length. The Indian Civil Service appealed to none of them; Addie thought that not any of them had the brains for college; and so it was decided: Alex, army training-college, but that had not been a success and he was doing better now at the Commercial School; Guy, the Post Office; Constant, Wageningen; Jan, the Navy; and Piet, in whom Addie saw the brightest intelligence of all, he had stimulated to enter for the Polytechnic. But it was not only Alex: Guy also was a source of trouble to him, plodding with gloomy resignation at his maps and books; Constant, sombre and morose, was doing his best; but the competitive examinations for Willemsoord might prove very difficult, Addie thought, for Jan later; while Piet . . . But the boy was still a child, clinging so dependently to Addie, with his rather girlish affection, with his shyness, which placed confidence in Addie only. . . . Yes, thought Constance, now that she saw them all together, they would long be a great trouble, they would still be a great burden to Addie; and Adeline, poor Adeline could never unaided have made men of her boys.
It was Easter; and it was strange how much at home they all were in the big house at Driebergen, which they regarded as their paternal house, regarding Uncle Henri and Aunt Constance next to their mother as parents also, regarding Addie as an elder brother, as their youngest father, on whom everything really depended. No one ever opposed this view; and in everything, down to the least thing, it was quite natural for them to say:
"I'll ask Addie."
They thought their cousin much older in spirit than in years and all looked up to him naturally and with unquestioning confidence, as though he must know things, as though he would be sure to make life smooth for them, that future of career beside career which opened before them like a battlefield. However much they might differ in character, in this they felt alike, quite naturally, as though they could not do otherwise; and, when a stranger sometimes expressed surprise that Addie fathered them so, their eyes would glance up in astonishment, as though to ask:
"What do you expect? Of course, Addie does everything for us!"
And they were very grateful, almost unconsciously, to Uncle Henri, who paid the bills, to Aunt Constance, who took care of them in so many ways, to Addie, who would make life smooth for them; but still they thought it very natural, because it had always been like that, for the girls too: Marietje, Adeletje, Gerdy and Klaasje. There it was: Uncle, Aunt and Addie looked after them, because Mamma was so sad and not very capable and devoid of energy. They had been used to it ever since they were very young and small; and it was like that; and it could never have been different.
Now, when he came down from the Hague, Addie talked to all of them seriously; and they listened with serious faces, looking up at him, accepting what he said, promising to work better in future, to show better reports next time, to give him more reason for content in all respects. . . . Then he would shake hands with them; and that handshake conveyed a promise which they would be glad to keep, to please Addie, because Addie, after all, was bearing the entire responsibility for their lives and their futures. They left it all to him, but they began to see more and more clearly that they must make it easier for him. He spoke to Piet in particular:
"Mr. Veghel's not satisfied, Piet."
This was the tutor with whom Constant and Piet boarded.
The boy blushed, with a quick flow of colour to his round, girlish cheeks; his eyes glanced up shyly and timidly.
"You must work harder, Piet: you can when you like; and therefore, if you don't, you can't possibly go to Delft. . . . And you're cut out for a civil engineer. That's what you want to be, isn't it?"
"Yes, Addie."
"Well, see that you get your remove before the summer holidays. You won't get your remove, Piet, if you go on like this."
"I'll do my best, Addie."
Then the boy became very restless, because Addie was not satisfied; and inwardly he wished that Addie did not see him so clearly, so clever and capable if only he liked; and Piet thought the Polytechnic a very difficult affair:
"It'll never come off," he thought, in his secret heart.
But he did not say so, because, in spite of himself, he hoped that it would, if only because Addie wanted it to and because it was such a long way off, the Polytechnic, and because Addie lately had worn such a wrinkle in his forehead, as though he were disappointed . . . possibly in him.
"We're a great trouble to you, Addie, what?"
"If only you work hard, Piet . . . then it won't be such a trouble and things will look after themselves."
But Piet was not the only one to see it: they all saw it, the boys and girls alike, and wondered if it was because of them only or because of something quite different—himself, or Mathilde—that his forehead wrinkled so and his grey eyes grew so sombre. . . .