“No … no. …”
“Not because you’re still angry with us?”
“No, I’m not angry.”
“That’s all right. Oh, I am glad! I should like to give you a motor for making me so happy!”
“Those old tin kettles cost a lot of money. …”
“Poor Uncle! No, I don’t mean uncle. …”
“Here we are.”
He rang the bell.
“Thank you for seeing me home.”
“Good-night, Marianne.”
The butler opened the door; she went in. He trotted back, whistling like a boy.
“Wherever have you been, Marianne?” asked Bertha.
“I stayed to dinner at Aunt Constance’.”
“I was anxious about you,” said Bertha.
But she was glad that Constance had been so gracious.
“Who brought you home?”
“Uncle.”
She ran up to her room. She looked in the glass, as though to read her own eyes. There she read her secret:
“God help me!” she thought. “I oughtn’t to have gone. I oughtn’t to have gone. I was too weak, too weak. … Oh, if only they had never made it up, Papa and … he! … Oh dear! I shall never go there again. It’s the last time, the last time. … O God, help me, help me! …”
She sank into a chair and sat with her face hidden in her hands, not weeping, her happiness still shedding its dying rays around her, but with a rising agony; and she remained like that for a long time, with her eyes closed, as though she were dreaming and suffering, both.
1 The period of the novel is about 1901.
2 Equivalent to vous or tu.
Chapter VIII
“And who do you think’s in town?” Van Vreeswijck asked Van der Welcke, as they were walking together.
“I don’t know.”
“Brauws.”
“Brauws?”
“Max Brauws.”
“Max? Never! What, Leiden Max?”
“Yes, Leiden Max. I hadn’t seen him for years.”
“Nor I, of course. And what is he doing?”
“Well, that’s a difficult question to answer. Shall I say, being eccentric?”
“Eccentric? In what way?”
“Oh, in the things he does. First one thing and then another. He’s giving lectures now. In fact, he’s a Bohemian.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Yes, he asked after you.”
“I should like to see him. Does he belong to the Witte?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He’s a mad fellow. Always was mad. An interesting chap, though. And a good sort. Has he money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he staying?”
“In rooms, in the Buitenhof.”
“We’re close by. Let’s go and see if he’s in.”
Brauws was not in. And Van der Welcke left a card for his old college-chum, with a pencilled word.
A fortnight passed; and Van der Welcke began to feel annoyed:
“I’ve heard nothing from Brauws,” he said to Van Vreeswijck.
“I haven’t seen him either.”
“Perhaps he’s offended about something.”
“Nonsense, Brauws isn’t that sort.”
Van der Welcke was silent. Since the scene with the family, he was unduly sensitive, thinking that people were unfriendly, that they avoided him.
“Well, if he wants to ignore my card, let him!” he said, angrily. “He can go to the devil, for all I care!”
But, a couple of days later, when Van der Welcke was smoking in his little room, Truitje brought in a card.
“Brauws!” exclaimed Van der Welcke.
And he rushed outside:
“Come upstairs, old chap!” he shouted, from the landing.
In the hall stood a big, quiet man, looking up with a smile round his thick moustache.
“May I come up?”
“Yes, yes, come up. Upon my word, Max, I am glad. …”
Brauws came upstairs; the two men gripped each other’s hands.
“Welckje!” said Brauws. “Mad Hans!”
Van der Welcke laughed:
“Yes, those were my nicknames. My dear chap, what an age since we. …”
He took him to his den, made him sit down, produced cigars.
“No, thanks, I don’t smoke. I’m glad to see you. Why, Hans, you haven’t changed a bit. You’re a little stouter; and that’s all. Just look at the fellow! You could pass for your own son. How old are you? You’re thirty-eight … getting on for thirty-nine. And now just look at me. I’m three years your senior; but I look old enough to be your father.”
Van der Welcke laughed, pleased and flattered by the compliment paid to his youth. Their Leiden memories came up; they reminded each other of a score of incidents, speaking and laughing together in unfinished, breathless sentences which they understood at once.
“And what have you been doing all this time?”
“Oh, a lot! Too much to tell you all at once. And you?”
“I? Nothing, nothing. You know I’m married?”
“Yes, I know,” said Brauws. “But what do you do? You’re in a government-office, I suppose?”
“No, Lord no, old fellow! Nothing, I just do nothing. I cycle.”
They both laughed. Brauws looked at his old college-friend, almost paternally, with a quiet smile.
“The beggar hasn’t changed an atom,” he said. “Yes, now that I look at you again, I see something here and there. But you’ve remained Welckje, for all that. …”
“But not Mad Hans,” sighed Van der Welcke.
“Vreeswijck has become a great swell,” said Brauws. “And the others?”
“Greater swells still.”
“Not you?”
“No, not I. Do you cycle?”
“Sometimes.”
“Have you a motor-car?”
“No.”
“That’s