Small Souls/Chapter V
It was Sunday afternoon.
“We must re-ally, Ka-rel, pay a coup-le of vis-its, this af-ter-noon,” drawled Cateau van Lowe.
Karel assented: it was visiting-day.
“Where?” he asked.
She named one or two acquaintances:
“And then we must al-so go to Aunt and Un-cle Ruyvenaer; it’s their turn. . . . And then, Ka-rel, to your sis-ter, to Con-stance. . . .”
“Hadn’t we better wait till Van der Welcke’s there? Otherwise we shall have to go again.”
“I don’t think it looks friend-ly . . . to wait till Van der Wel-cke comes. . . . Mamma did set us the exam-ple, Ka-rel, you know.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better, Cateau, for you to go alone first: then I can call on Van der Welcke later. Or do you think I ought to wait until Van der Welcke has been to see me?”
“We won’t cal-culate it quite so close-ly as all that,” said Cateau, generously. “It looks as if we were not friend-ly. . . . It would be bet-ter if you came with me to-day, Karel.”
So they decided both to call on Constance that afternoon; and they were on the point of starting when the bell rang and Adolphine van Saetzema entered: “What a nui-sance,” thought Cateau. “Now the carriage will ab-solute-ly have to wait.”
It was raining; and this meant that the brougham would get wet. The horse was jobbed; the coachman did not count: he was only a man.
“Ah, Adolph-ine! This is nice of you. . . .”
“I see your carriage is at the door. . . . Are you going out?”
“Yes, pres-ently, to pay a visit . . . or two. . . .”
“So am I. But don’t let me keep you. I am going to Constance this afternoon.”
“So are we.”
“Oh, are you? I would really rather have waited till she had called on me.”
“Oh,” said Cateau, “it looks as if we weren’t friend-ly, to cal-culate it so close-ly, don’t you think, Adolph-ine? But do sit down, Adolph-ine.”
Adolphine sat down, for she was paying Karel and Cateau a visit; and, if she had not sat down, the visit would not have been paid, would not have counted as a visit. Perhaps that was also the reason why Karel and Cateau urged Adolphine to sit down: otherwise, she would have been obliged to come back another day.
They all sat down: the brother, the sister, the sister-in-law. Outside, the rain was pouring in torrents; and already the brougham was glistening with the wet: Cateau’s saucer-eyes watched every drop through the curtains. The usual drawing-room talk began:
“What terrible wea-ther, isn’t it, Adolph-ine?” “Terrible.”
Adolphine was thin, angular, envious, badly-dressed. Beside the prosperous, opulent respectability of Karel and Cateau, sleek with good living, heavy with comfort, radiating money and ease—Karel in his thick frieze great-coat, Cateau in a rich silk dress and a rich fur-trimmed jacket, with a rich toque crowning her round, pink-and-white, full-moon face—Adolphine looked shabby, peevish and pretentious. The stuff of her clothes could not compare with Cateau’s, which were eloquent of money, good, substantial money; and yet Adolphine had certain pretentions to fashion and elegance. A thin, straggling boa wound its length around her neck. Her fringe, out of curl because of the wet, hung in rats’-tails from under a shabby little hat, draped in a limp veil. It was as though Adolphine felt this, for she said, enviously:
“I didn’t trouble to put on anything decent, in this beastly rain.”
Cateau looked meaningly at the carriage outside:
“So you’re going to Con-stance’ al-so? . . .”
“Yes. But when will Van der Welcke be here? Saetzema is waiting to pay his visit until Van der Welcke comes. . . .”
“You see?” said Karel to Cateau.
“Oh?” asked Cateau, drawling her words more than ever. “Is Saet-zema wait-ing until Van der Wel-cke comes? . . . Oh, I told Karel to come with me because, per-haps, it wouldn’t look friend-ly! . . . What do you think of Con-stance, Adolphine? Karel thinks his sis-ter so al-tered, so altered. . . .”
“Yes, she’s altered. She has grown old, very old,” said Adolphine, who, herself four years younger than Constance, looked decidedly older.
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Karel, trying to defend his sister. “You would never say she was forty-two. . . .”
“Oh, is she forty-two?” drawled Cateau.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Adolphine. “I don’t think Constance looks a bit distinguished.”
When Adolphine was envious and jealous—and that was generally—she said the exact opposite of what she thought in her heart.
“Not a bit distinguished!” she repeated, with conviction. “There is something in the way she does her hair, in those rings of hers—I don’t know—something not quite respectable. . . .”
“Yes, something foreign,” said Karel, feebly, by way of an excuse.
“I think,” said Cateau, “Con-stance has something about her that’s not quite prop-er. . . .”
“Oh,” said Adolphine, “but propriety isn’t her strong point!”
“Never was,” grinned Karel, in his turn.
“If she had only stayed in Brussels!” snapped Adolphine.
“Ah!” said Cateau, opening big owl’s eyes. “Do you think so too?”
“Yes. And you?” “So do we, re-ally,” drawled Cateau, more cheerfully, forgetting the brougham waiting in the wet.
“Yes,” said Adolphine, with conviction. “What are we to do with a sister like that?”
“Whom you can’t let any one meet,” growled Karel under his breath.
“Oh, dear!” whined Cateau to Adolphine. “Do you think so too?”
“And,” said Adolphine, “mark my words, you’ll see, she’s full of pretensions. You know the sort of thing,” with an envious wave of the hand. “Society . . . pushing herself . . . perhaps even going to Court.”
“No!” drawled Cateau. “Sure-ly for that, even Constance would have too much tact.”
“I’m not so sure!” growled Karel.
Unlike Bertha and Constance, Adolphine had not been presented at Court, because, after Constance’ marriage Papa and Mamma van Lowe, feeling old and tired, had taken to living more quietly. She could never forgive them for it.
“No!” droned Cateau. “But then you are such a regular, good, Dutch wife and mo-ther, Adolph-ine. That’s what I al-ways say to Ka-rel.”
Adolphine looked flattered.
“Yes, but,” said Karel, by way of excuse, “you mustn’t look to Constance for what she has never been. She went straight to Rome after her first marriage.”
“Those Court circles are always fast,” Adolphine declared. “And then, in Rome,” cried Cateau, clasping her fat hands, “such things hap-pen!”
Adolphine rose: her visit was paid. She had a great deal more to talk about, among others the way in which Bertha had, so to speak, forced her daughter Emilie into her engagement with Van Raven; but it was growing late: she took her leave. Karel and Cateau went straight to the brougham:
“Oh, de-ar!” said Cateau, in a startled voice. “How wet the carriage has got!”
They drove to pay their visits. First, they drove to the Ruyvenaers: Karel rang; fortunately, Uncle and Aunt were out. Cards for Uncle and Aunt. Next—Cateau consulted her list—to Mrs. van Friesesteijn, an old friend of Mrs. van Lowe’s. At home. A cantankerous, shrivelled little old lady, always alert for news:
“Glad to see you, Cateau. Sit down, Van Lowe. So, Constance is back, I hear.”
“Ye-es,” drawled Cateau, “it’s ve-ry unpleas-ant for us.”
“And how is Constance?”
“Oh, she’s all right,” said Karel, casually.
“You see, me-vrouw,” droned Cateau, “she’s Karel’s sis-ter, isn’t she?”
“So you’re all receiving her?”
“Yes, because of Mamma, you know.”
“And Bertha too?”
“Ye-e-es, Berth-a, too.”
“And will she go to Court again, do you think?” “Well, Adolph-ine said that she’d be sure to go to Court again.”
“I think that’s wrong of Constance,” said the old lady, sharply, inquisitively, eager for a bit of scandal. “And Bertha’s Emilie is soon to be married.”
“Ye-es. And Adolph-ine’s Floor-tje too.”
“I hear Emilie is to have a splendid trousseau,” said the old lady. “Floortje’s will be much less grand, I suppose?”
“Not so fine,” drawled Cateau. “But still ve-ry nice. What terrible wea-ther, me-vrouw! . . . Come, Ka-rel, we must be go-ing on. . . .”
In the brougham again. Next visit to Mr. and Mrs. IJkstra, cousins of Cateau, who was born an IJkstra:
“How d’ye do, Pie-ie-iet? How d’ye do, Anna?”
“How d’ye do, Cateau? How d’ye do, Karel? So Constance is back?”
“Yes. What do you thi-i-i-ink of it? And they all say ev-erywhere, that she is go-ing to Court.”
“Oh!”
“Nonsense!”
“Yes, Adolph-ine said so . . . and so did Mrs. van Frie-sesteijn.”
“How mad of Mrs. van der Welcke, with that past of hers!”
“Perhaps it’s her husband who wants to go.”
“Oh, no doubt it’s her husband.”
“And how does she look?” “Oh, so-so! Of course, she’s Ka-rel’s sis-ter, but I think her not so ve-ry distin-guished.”
“Oh, well, I think her rather smart!” growled Karel, a little crossly.
“Oh, Ka-rel! . . . Well, smart, if you like, but not what I call good ta-aste.”
“Rather foreign, I suppose?” asked Anna IJkstra.
“Ye-es. And so many rings: that’s what I don’t like. And her hair: all curled and waved, puffed right out, you know. So ridic-ulous . . . because she’s ve-ry grey, you know. . . .”
“Oh, really!”
“Yes. What terrible wea-ther, An-na. . . . We ought to be go-ing on, Ka-rel.”
“Where?” growled Karel.
“To the Van Ra-vens.”
“Oh, no!” muttered Karel. “It’s raining so. . . . And I have to get out all the time and ring the bell.”
“But haven’t you a footman?” asked Anna, pretending not to know.
“I say, what next!” muttered Karel. “A footman, indeed!”
“But, Ka-rel, in that case, let us just go on to Constance’.”
“Oh, are you going to Mrs. van der Welcke’s?”
“Yes, we must re-ally pay her a vis-it, to-day. . . .”
“Well, come along then!” growled Karel, who was irritable without knowing why. And they drove to the Hôtel des Indes. The porter left them in the hall for a moment, then showed them up.
“How nice of you to come!” said Constance. She was genuinely pleased. “And in this awful weather! But, as you see, you have to come up to my bedroom. I have no sitting-room; and the drawing-room is such a bore. Really, it’s very nice of you to come,” she repeated, “and in this rain, too! Adriaan!”
“Yes, Mamma!”
“Here are Uncle Karel and Aunt Cateau.”
She beckoned to the boy to come from his room. She was smiling with happiness, glad to see the faces of her brother and her sister-in-law, longing for the sympathy of family-affection, thought she had not known Cateau in the old days.
“Ah, is that your boy, Con-stance? . . . Well, he is a big boy!”
“How d’ye do, Aunt? How d’ye do, Uncle?” said the lad, a little coldly and haughtily.
“Is he like his father?” asked Karel.
“Yes,” said Constance, grudgingly.
Karel and Cateau looked at Adriaan. The boy stood bolt upright before them, a strikingly handsome lad: he certainly resembled his father; he had Van der Welcke’s regular features, his round head, his short, soft, curly hair. At thirteen, an age when other boys are overgrown, gawky and clumsy in their ways, he was not tall, but well-proportioned and rather broadly built, with a pair of square shoulders in his blue serge jacket, with something about his gestures and movements that denoted a certain manliness and self-possession, uncommon in so young a boy. He tried to be polite, but could not conceal a certain mistrust of this unknown uncle and aunt. His small mouth was firmly closed; his eyes stared fixedly, dark-blue, serious and cold.
Constance made her sister-in-law and brother sit down:
“Forgive all this muddle,” she said with a laugh. “I was taking advantage of the rainy day to arrange my trunks a bit.”
Cateau gave a sharp glance round: there were dresses hanging over the chairs and from the pegs; a couple of hats lay on a table.
“Oh, Con-stance!” said Cateau; and she felt a little impertinent at saying, “Constance,” just like that—she had married Karel after Constance’ marriage to De Staffelaer and this was only the second time that she had seen her sister-in-law—and had it on her lips to say, “Mevrouw,” instead. “Oh, Con-stance, what a lot of clothes you have!”
“Do you think so? Things get so spoilt in one’s trunks.”
“I haven’t as many dress-es as that, have I, Karel? But what I have is re-ally good. But yours are good, too, Con-stance. I like re-ally good clothes. . . . Only, such a lot of lace would fid-get me. . . . Bertha dresses well, too. . . . But Adolph-ine. . . . Oh, what a sight she al-ways looks!” “Does she?” asked Constance. “But she has to consider the cost of things, hasn’t she?”
“I have only two dress-es every year; but those are re-ally good.”
“And will Van der Welcke be here soon?” asked Karel.
“On Tuesday. Then we shall look round for a house. I do think it so delightful to be back at the Hague, among all of you. I see Mamma every day. Yesterday, I was at Bertha’s: a busy household, isn’t it? I came plump into the middle of all sorts of rehearsals, for the wedding. And I was at Gerrit’s: Adeline is a dear; and oh, how I laughed, how I laughed! What a lot of children! I can’t tell them one from the other yet. But how charming and delightful, that fair-haired little woman, with that fair-haired little troop; and she’s expecting another baby this summer! And Dorine is nice too. . . . Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know how glad I am to see you all! We are a big family and life at the Hague is so busy. . . . Look at Bertha. . . . And Gerrit and Adeline too are busy with their little troop. . . . But I do hope to take my place among you all again. It is so long since I saw you all! Ah, I didn’t want to force things! Mamma did come to see me twice in Brussels. But my brothers and sisters . . . No, it wasn’t kind of you! But I daresay it had to be! Things were as they were! You couldn’t very well respect me, you had to disown me, it couldn’t be helped! . . . I suffered tortures, all those years! I never had any one to talk to, except him, my little son! It wasn’t right of Mamma, was it, Addie, to be always talking to you? But I couldn’t speak out to Henri, to Van der Welcke. Oh, we are very good friends, quite good friends! . . . I can’t tell you how, all of a sudden, I longed for the Hague, for my family, for the people I used to know, for all of you, for everything! I always wrote to Mamma regularly; and Mamma gave me all the news, sent me the photographs of my little nephews and nieces. And yet my brain’s whirling, now that I am seeing you all. There are such a lot of us: I don’t think there can be many families as big as ours. Bertha’s alone is a big household. . . . Fancy Bertha a grandmother! . . . It’s dreadful, how old we’re growing! I am forty-two! Oh, I couldn’t have gone on living in Brussels! We had no one left there: our friends were scattered, gone away. Van der Welcke, too, was beginning to long for Holland, for Addie’s sake as well as his own. Addie speaks very good Dutch, though: I always made him keep it up. He has a bit of a Flemish accent, perhaps: what do you think, Addie? . . . We had a Flemish servant. . . . Oh, what a lot I have to tell you!” she laughed, happily. “Nothing interesting, you know, but I feel as if I must tell you everything, talk and talk and talk to you, to all of you, my brothers, my sisters!” She suddenly got up. “Karel, do you remember, in India, how we used to play in the river, behind the Palace; how we walked on those great stone boulders, you and I and Gerrit? We three always played together. Yes, Bertha had been married a year or two, while we were still children. Is Bertha fifty yet? She’s quite grey! I’m going grey myself! . . . Dear Bertha! . . . And Louis and Gertrude, who died at Buitenzorg. . . . Do you remember, Karel? It was we three who were always together. You used to carry me over the water on your back. How naughty we were! I was quite thirteen or fourteen, at that time. . . . And things are so funny, in India: next year, I was in long frocks and going to the balls. . . . I thought it delightful, all that grandeur: the aides-de-camp; the national anthem wherever we went: I used to imagine that they played it for me, the viceroy’s little daughter! . . . Yes, Van Naghel was at the bar then, at Semarang; Bertha didn’t come in for any of it. . . . Oh, it’s past now, my vanity! That shows you how a person changes. You are changed, too, Karel: you have become so sedate, so dignified. What a pity you are no longer a burgomaster: you’re cut out for it, Karel!”
She tried to speak lightly, suddenly feeling that she was talking too much about herself, letting herself go, while Karel and Cateau sat staring at her. And yet she cared for them: was not Karel her brother, who had always been bracketed with Gerrit in her childhood memories, and was not Cateau his wife, though she had not a sympathetic face, with those great round eyes of hers? Were they not members of the family, for which she had longed so? She tried to speak playfully, after her all-too-spontaneous outpouring; but she suddenly felt that this was out of tune too. She felt that, after all, she had not seen her brother for twenty years, not since the day of her marriage to De Staffelaer, and that they had become as utter strangers to each other. She felt that she did not know Cateau at all. And so, though Karel and Cateau were her brother and sister, they were also strangers. But that was just what she did not want: she wanted to win them all, the whole family; to feel that they were all warm-hearted and indulgent towards her. . . . And she spoke of Mamma, of the Sunday evenings, of Mamma’s mania for the family, which she herself now felt so strongly, intensified as it had been in those lonely, joyless Brussels years. She asked their advice about taking a house at the Hague.
“The best thing you can do is to consult an estate-agent,” said Karel. “There’s one close by; he’ll know about all the houses to let.”
“It will be difficult to find the right thing,” said Constance. “We had a pretty flat at Brussels; and I really prefer a flat to a house. But there aren’t any in Holland.”
“Oh, Con-stance!” said Cateau, round-eyed. “Don’t you find a flat ve-ry stuff-y?”
“Not at all; and I love to have everything on one floor. I don’t care for maids running up and down the stairs.”
“Yes, but the place must be kept clean.”
“Well, it was. . . . Only, in a flat, abroad, the bell doesn’t keep ringing as it does at one’s front-door in Holland. The cook goes to market in the morning. . . .”
“And does she just buy ev-erything?”
“She buys enough for a couple of days: vegetables and eggs and whatever she wants.”
“Do you leave that to the cook?”
“Oh, yes! Imagine if I didn’t!” laughed Constance. “She simply couldn’t understand it! I used only to give her a few instructions.”
“Well, I must say that I don’t think that at all a prop-er way of house-keeping! . . . Do you, Kar-el?”
“It’s the way of the country,” growled Karel, under his breath. “Were you thinking of looking for a house in one of the new districts, Duinoord, for instance?”
“I’d rather not be so far from all of you.”
“Dear Con-stance!” laughed Cateau, with her round face. “But we all live more or less far from one ano-ther!”
There was a knock at the door: the porter showed Adolphine in.
“Ah, Adolphine! How nice of you to come, all the more as we are to meet at Mamma’s this evening. You’re a good sister.” And she kissed Adolphine. “This is my boy. I brought him to see you the other day, but you were out.”
“How d’ye do, Aunt?” said Addie, stiffly.
“Forgive the muddle, Adolphine. I was just unpacking my trunks.”
“We ought re-ally to be go-ing on, Ka-rel.” “Are you going so soon?”
“Yes, it’s rain-ing so; and the brougham is getting so we-et.”
“Constance,” said Karel. “Did you say that Van der Welcke would be here on Tuesday?”
“I expect so.”
“Well, then, give him my kind regards and . . . and would you give him my card? Then that’ll be all right.”
He took a visiting-card from his pocket-book and laid it on a corner of the console-table. Constance looked at him in momentary perplexity. She could not speak for a second or two, did not understand. She herself had been brought up and had lived according to very punctilious rules of card-leaving; but yet she failed to understand how one brother-in-law could leave a card on another brother-in-law, before that other was in town and during a visit paid in his sister’s bedroom, amid all the muddle of her unpacked trunks. But she had been so long away from Holland and the Hague; she did not wish it to appear that she did not understand; and, as a woman of the world, she did not, above all, wish it to appear that she thought Karel’s performance with the card not only stiff, but intensely vulgar.
She said, with a gentle smile.
“Thank you, Karel. Van de Welcke will appreciate your call greatly.”
Her voice sounded friendly and natural; and neither Karel nor Cateau had any idea that Constance had controlled herself as she had sometimes had to control herself in Rome, in a diplomatic salon full of intrigue and polished envy.
In the brougham, Cateau said:
“You did that very clev-erly, Ka-rel, with that card. . . .”
“Yes, I thought it the best way,” said Karel, in a burgomasterly manner.