Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/137

Rh those sad women and all those children of Uncle Gerrit's, who daily monopolized Addie more and more, until he had hardly a moment to give to his own children and her. What was he to her now, always busy, always occupied, always away, always attending to the pack below or to poor people outside, poor people about whom she knew nothing? What was her life to her, the life in which she pined away in that musty atmosphere, in which she always remained a stranger, for lack of any sort of sympathy, because she did not—any more than any of them—wish for the establishment of any harmonious intimacy? Was it not really a terrible existence, for a young and spirited woman, in the country, in the winter, at Driebergen, with no friends, in a house with rooms so dark and gloomy that the servants declared that it was haunted; then downstairs, always at the window, the doting grandmother; Klaasje, half an imbecile; Adeline and Emilie, never cheerful, always melancholy; and those who were cheerful, Guy and Gerdy, never nice to her; her father-in-law much fonder of Guy and Gerdy than of herself, whom, as she well knew, he actually disliked; her mother-in-law, kind at times, it was true—had she not given Mathilde the beautiful brilliant which now sparkled on her finger?—but still cold, she thought, cold even to the children, just forcing herself to be kind because Mathilde happened to be her son's wife. No, she couldn't say who or what was to blame, but a stranger she remained, a constant stranger, half-forgotten, together with her two children, the children who alone, besides Papa and Addie, bore the name of the house, of Van der Welcke—Baron and Baroness van der Welcke—the children neglected, because the whole troop of Van Lowes made themselves masters of the house; of the affection of her