Also, Constance had now found Bertha again; and,
though they did not see each other until Mamma's Sunday-evening, still
there was more sisterly confidence between them, while Marianne grew to
like running in at the Kerkhoflaan and would stay to dinner or go
cycling with Van der Welcke and Addie. In this way, light bonds were
established. As for Karel and Cateau, Constance was sorry, for in Karel
she still remembered the brother with whom she used to play on the
boulders in the river at Buitenzorg; but she had felt at once that she
must not expect much from Karel, now that he and his wife had become
mutual images of placid egotism, wrapped in their well-fed, middle-class
life, in the sheltered comfort of their warm, shut house. No, Karel, she
felt, she had lost, though they were conventionally civil to each other.
With Gerrit it was pleasanter. Gerrit and Adeline would come now and
then to take tea in the evening, after the children had gone to bed.
Only it was a pity that Gerrit always insisted on crabbing and poking
fun at the Van Naghels and their friends. This, Constance thought, was
not very tactful towards Van der Welcke, because, though he and she did
not go into society, it so happened that Van der Welcke had a good many
old friends, at the club, who belonged to the aristocratic set. Gerrit
was a boisterous, lively fellow, fair-haired, handsome, broad-shouldered
and vigorous in his hussar's uniform; but his boisterousness was
sometimes, she thought, rather overdone; and she suspected that Van der
Welcke did not like Gerrit, thought him a little vulgar. And so she was
always on the alert to take up the cudgels for Gerrit against her
husband; and Van der Welcke said nothing about Gerrit and was even
amiable and talkative when Gerrit and Adeline were there. Adeline was a
dear little woman, a fair-haired, little doll-mother, with her seven
children, like a family of flaxen-haired dolls: the oldest a girl turned
eight, the youngest a baby of a year or so; and Gerrit was always making
jokes about not leaving off yet; and indeed Adeline was expecting
another in the autumn. So Constance got on well with Gerrit and Adeline,
but still she felt out of touch with this brother too, even though
Gerrit had such a charming way of bringing back the memory of their
early days, when they used to play in the river at Buitenzorg. Yes, she
was an interesting child then, Gerrit always said: there was something
so nice about her; she was