Read Online The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom - Free Book Online Page B

were going to do. We imagined that we had a huge old manse like this one to decorate, and rejoiced to discover that we had the same ideas about furniture, flowers, even the same favorite colors. Only about children did we disagree: Karel wanted four, while I held out stubbornly for six.
    And all this while the word “marriage” was never spoken.
    One day when Karel was in the village, Willem came out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee in his hands. Tine with a cup of her own was just behind him.
    â€œCorrie,” Willem said, handing me the coffee and speaking as though with effort, “has Karel led you to believe that he is—”
    â€œSerious?” Tine finished his sentence for him.
    The hateful blush that I could never control set my cheeks burning. “I . . . no . . . we . . . why?”
    Willem’s face reddened too. “Because, Corrie, this is something that can never be. You don’t know Karel’s family. They’ve wanted one thing since he was a small child. They’ve sacrificed for it, planned for it, built their whole lives around it. Karel is to . . . ‘marry well’ is the way I think they put it.”
    The big barren parlor seemed suddenly emptier still. “But—what about what Karel wants? He’s not a small child now!”
    Willem fixed his sober, deep-set eyes on mine. “He will do it, Corrie. I don’t say he wants it. To him it’s just a fact of life like any other. When we’d talk about girls we liked—at the university—he’d always say at the end, ‘Of course I could never marry her. It would kill my mother.’”
    The hot coffee scalded my mouth but I gulped it down and made my escape to the garden. I hated that gloomy old house and sometimes I almost hated Willem for always seeing the dark, hard side of things. Here in the garden it was different. There wasn’t a bush, hardly a flower, that Karel and I hadn’t looked at together, that didn’t have a bit of our feeling for each other still clinging to it. Willem might know more than I did about theology and war and politics—but when it came to romance! Things like money, social prestige, family expectations, why, in the books they vanished like rainclouds, every time.
    K AREL LEFT M ADE a week or so later, and his last words made my heart soar. Only months afterward did I remember how strangely he spoke them, the urgency, almost desperation in his voice. We were standing in the driveway of the manse waiting for the horse and cart, which Made still regarded as the only dependable conveyance when there was a train to be caught. We had said good-bye after breakfast and if part of me was disappointed that he still had not proposed, another part of me was content just to be beside him. Now suddenly in the driveway he seized both my hands.
    â€œCorrie, write to me!” he said, but not gaily. Pleadingly. “Write me about the Beje! I want to know everything. I want every detail of that ugly, beautiful, crumbling old house! Write about your father, Corrie! Write how he forgets to send the bills. Oh Corrie, it’s the happiest home in Holland!”
    A ND SO IT was, indeed, when Father, Mama, Betsie, Nollie, Tante Anna, and I returned. It has always been a happy place, but now each little event seemed to glow because I could share it with Karel. Every meal I cooked was an offering to him, each shining pot a poem, every sweep of the broom an act of love.
    His letters did not come as often as mine went singing to him, but I put this down to his work. The minister he was assisting, he wrote, had turned the parish calling over to him: it was a wealthy congregation and large contributors expected frequent and unhurried visits from the clergy.
    As time went by his letters came more seldom. I made up for it with mine and went humming my way though the summer and fall. One glorious, nippy November day when all of Holland was singing with me,