A few days had passed, when Brauws rang at the door, late one afternoon. Constance was sitting in the drawing-room and saw him through the corner window; and, as she heard the bell, she felt a shock of alarm. She was afraid, she did not know why, and listened anxiously to his deep voice in the passage.
"Is meneer at home?"
"No, sir."
"Perhaps mevrouw is at home?"
"Yes, sir, mevrouw is in. I'll just ask . . ."
Truitje entered:
"Mr. Brauws, ma'am . . ."
"Show meneer in."
She still felt her heart beating with that strange, inexplicable shock of alarm. And she thought that it was because she was alone with that strange man, who had been a workman in America and who could say such rude things sometimes, suddenly.
They shook hands:
"Henri is out," she said. "But sit down. I see in the paper that you are speaking at Arnhem tomorrow."
"Yes, mevrouw, but I haven't come to talk about my lectures. I've come to make you my very humble apologies."
"What for?"
"Mevrouw, I'm a bear. I don't know how to talk to people. Forgive me . . . for what I said the other day."
"But what did you say?"
"Nothing—after your friendly encouragement—but what was rude."
"I have no great reverence for titles," she said, quickly.
She said it so suddenly and spontaneously that it surprised even herself; and she asked herself, the next second:
"Why do I say that? And is it true, now? Or is it not true?"
She herself did not know.
"You haven't, perhaps, but Hans has . . . But I was rude especially because, after you had asked me so kindly and graciously, I still would not talk about my life."
"But you were to do that when we knew each other better . . ."
"People never know each other well. Still . . ."
"What?"
"I don't know . . . May I tell you something about myself from time to time? Perhaps it won't interest you as much as, from politeness, you wish me to think; but . . . when I've done it . . . I shall feel relieved . . . Heavens, how difficult words are!"
"And yet you are accustomed to speak for hours! . . ."
"That's a different thing. Then some one else is speaking inside me. When I myself am speaking, in everyday life, I find words difficult."
"Then don't make the least effort, but tell me . . . gradually."
"What did Addie think? I should like to know."
"He was disappointed, but he did not say much."
"He's a serious boy, isn't he? Tell me about him."
She felt no more fear and talked about Addie. Brauws laughed, gently and kindly, at the pride that kept shining from her:
"I was a serious child too," he said.
And she understood that he was making an effort, in order to talk about himself.
"I was a strange child. Behind our house was a pine-forest, with hills in it; and behind that a little stream. I used to wander all day long in those woods, over the hills and beside the stream. They would miss me at home and look for me and find me there. But gradually they stopped being frightened, because they understood that I was only playing. I used to play by myself: a lonely, serious child. It's true I played at highwaymen and pirates; and yet my games were very serious, not like a child's . . . I still feel a thrill when I think of that strange childhood of mine . . . I used to play there in those woods and beside that stream, in Holland; but sometimes I imagined that I was playing at pirates and highwaymen in America, or in the tropics. And in my childish imagination the whole Dutch landscape changed. It became a roaring river, with great boulders, from which the water fell foaming, and very dense, tropical foliage, such as I had seen in pictures; and great flowers, red and white, grew in the enormous trees. Then my fancy changed and I was no longer a pirate or robber, but became . . . an oriental prince. I don't know why I, a pure-bred Dutch boy, should have had that strange vision of the east, of something tropical, there, on those pine-covered hills and beside that little stream . . . It was always like that afterwards: the tropical landscape, the spreading cocoa-trees, the broad plantain-leaves and the huge flowers, white and red . . . and then I often thought, 'Now I will find her.' Whom I wanted to find I didn't know; but I would run down the hills and roam beside the little river and seek and seek . . . and my seeking for 'her' became strange and fantastic: I, an oriental, was seeking for a fairy, or a princess, I forget which. It seemed to me as if she were running there ahead of me, very white and fragile: a little child, as I was a child; a girl, as I was a boy; in white and decked with the flowers, white and red . . . And my seeking for the princess, for the fairy, for the little white, fragile girl became so intense that I sometimes thought I had found her, found her in my imagination; and then I would speak to her, as in a dream . . . Until . . . until I woke from my waking dream and remembered that I had been wandering away from home for hours, that my mother would be anxious, that I was not fit to be seen, that I looked like a dirty street-boy, that I had only been dreaming, that there were no white or red flowers around me . . . and then I would cry, boy of thirteen though I was, passionately, as if I should go mad . . . And I have never told all this to any one, but I am telling it to you, because I want to ask you: Addie is not like that, is he? When you come to think of it, how children differ, at that age!"
She sat on her chair, very pale, and could not speak.
"My parents did not know that I was like that; and I told nobody about my fancies. I went to school, in the meantime, and was just the usual sort of schoolboy. I was cruel to animals, a vulgar little rascal, in the meantime; and it was only in those free hours that I wandered and dreamt. And, when I now look at your boy, who is like a little man, I sometimes think, how is it possible that he is like this and that I was like that, at the same age?"
She made an effort to smile.
"So you see," he said, "gradually perhaps I shall be able to tell you something about my life . . . at least, if it interests you . . ."
It seemed as if his first confession had in fact given him a greater facility, for of his own accord he now went on talking: how, when he grew a year or two older, he had shaken those fancies from him as so much child's-play and devoted himself seriously to every kind of study, until he went to the university, where he not only read law, but really took up all the other faculties in between, while at the same time he felt attracted by every branch of knowledge:
"I was a ready learner and a quick reader; I remembered everything; and I had a sort of fever to know everything in the world, to know all there was to know and learn. That I afterwards went and travelled goes almost without saying. And then . . ."
It was at this moment that Van der Welcke entered. He was at first surprised, almost annoyed to see Brauws; but his warm friendship gained the upper hand:
"Hullo, anarchist!" he said. "Is that you?"
But it was very late; Addie came in; it was close upon dinner-time. Brauws said good-bye and promised to come again and fetch Van der Welcke in a "machine;" and that made up for everything to Van der Welcke.