Small Souls/Chapter VII
That evening, Constance played bridge, though her head was still very bad. At Mamma van Lowe’s request, she had brought Addie with her; and he had joined his boy- and girl-cousins in their round games. Constance was playing with Bertha, Gerrit and Uncle Ruyvenaer.
“Constance,” said Bertha, “you mustn’t think me unkind for only coming once to see you—and when you were out too—but I am so busy. I have sent you your invitation to-day for the wedding-functions. You’ll come, of course, won’t you?”
Bertha was the eldest daughter, Mrs. van Naghel van Voorde; her husband was secretary for the colonies; in their house, Constance had at once felt something of her father’s house, in the old days: a big family; a circle which took a faint colonial tinge from the presence of the great Indian officials home from Java. Van Naghel had made his career through the protection of his father-in-law, the late viceroy; and their set also just grazed the edge of the diplomatic world and, of course, included a number of the chief officials of the home government as well. Although Constance had been only once, as yet, to their house, in the midst of the bustle of rehearsals for the wedding-theatricals, she at once felt something congenial there, something that was familiar to her, something of her former home: an atmosphere of distinction, of importance, which she had not known for many years past, but to which she yet felt herself drawn through the innate, instinctive vanity which she imagined was dead in her.
Constance was happy, though she still had a headache. Uncle Ruyvenaer was fussy but gay, because he was winning, with Gerrit for his partner. Bertha and Constance, their thoughts both far from the cards, went on talking, played badly. Bertha was almost entirely grey, greyer even than Mamma van Lowe. She had a rather ceremonious face and resembled her father: she had his hard, stiff features, his hard, dark eyes, his thin lips. Her eyes were always blinking, as though she had a difficulty in seeing. And in her manner of talking there was something abstracted, as though she were always thinking of something else. She was well-dressed, simply, in good taste.
“I think it so nice that your house is a sort of replica of our old house, when we were children,” said Constance.
“Yes,” said Bertha. “What are trumps?”
“You went diamonds yourself,” said Gerrit, the cavalry-captain, tall, broad-chested and fair. “Attend to your game, Sis.”
“And you have a very busy home, I suppose, Bertha?”
“Yes,” said Bertha, “very busy.”
And she played the wrong card.
“I have known all that bustle myself,” said Constance. “It was like that in Rome, terribly busy: four or five things every day which you couldn’t possibly avoid. . . .”
Bertha smiled vaguely; and Constance suddenly felt that she mustn’t talk about Rome. She winced: she could not mention De Staffelaer’s name, must ignore all that period of importance. . . . It suddenly upset her nerves, for she had not reflected that, even among her brothers and sisters, she would have to be careful, to exercise tact. She had come to them just because she wanted to be able to let herself go, to be frank and natural; but she felt strongly that Bertha disapproved of her for venturing to refer to Rome. She would have liked to talk about Rome, partly from vanity, to remind her sister, the wife of a minister, who was “in the movement,” that she too had known greatness and lived in the midst of it. But she felt that she must be humble, that she was nothing more than Mrs. van der Welcke, the sister who had made a false step in life, who had married her “lover” and who, years after, had been taken into favour by the charity of the family. This was clearly expressed in Bertha’s hard, ceremonious Van Lowe face, with the blinking eyes, even though Bertha spoke not a word.
Constance was silent, went on playing; Uncle Ruyvenaer was noisy, cracked his jokes:
“The queen falls,” he said, in his fat voice. “One more unfortunate!” he shouted, clamorously.
And, playing his ace, with a wide sweep of his hand he gathered in the trick. Constance went pale; and Bertha blinked her eyes till they closed entirely. But Bertha was too much used to Uncle’s astounding vulgarities to be much disturbed by them and she answered her partner’s call correctly.
Constance kept her presence of mind, played her cards. She could have burst into one of her nervous fits of sobbing, but she restrained herself, knowing that Uncle was tactless, noisy and common, but that he would never hurt her wilfully. And she was grateful to Gerrit when he came to her assistance:
“What a nice lad that boy of yours is, Constance.”
“My Addie? Yes.”
“A bit dignified for his years, but otherwise a fine little chap.”
“He’s always very good to me. We both dote on him.”
“You must let him come to us often. Our house is one big nursery; and he’ll keep young among that troop of mine.”
“Very well, Gerrit, gladly. It’s very kind of you.”
“What is he going to be?”
“Van der Welcke wants him to go to the university first and then into the diplomatic service.”
“Is that his line?”
“I don’t know. . . . He’s a little too stiff, perhaps. . . . But he’s so young still.”
“Send him to lunch with us on Wednesday; and then he can go for a walk with my crowd.”
“Very well, I’ll tell him.” “Yes,” said Bertha, more cordially, as though waking from a dream. “He’s a charming boy, only a little stiff.”
“He’s still rather strange here.”
“He is very polite,” said Bertha, “but distant. He has very nice manners, but, when he says, ‘How d’ye do, Aunt?’ it sounds as if he were talking to a stranger.”
“Oh, Bertha, he is meeting such a lot of new uncles and aunts all at once!”
“He is a very nice boy. A handsome little fellow. Is he like his father?”
“Yes,” said Constance, grudgingly.
She felt again that the past had cropped up once more. She felt that Bertha was thinking that Van der Welcke was a very good-looking man—she had seen his portrait at Mamma’s—and that was why Constance had fallen in love with him.
But Gerrit laughed:
“Why do you say that in such a funny way, Sissy?”
“Did I?”
“One would think that you did not approve of your son’s taking after his father!”
Constance was grateful: Gerrit was so easy, so natural; and she laughed:
“What nonsense!”
“Do you think I can’t hear? ‘Is he like his father?’ ‘Ye-e-es!’ . . .”
Of a sudden, she became very sincere, with Gerrit:
“Did I speak like that? Yes, it’s silly of me, but I am a little jealous of Van der Welcke, where Addie is concerned. Silly of me, isn’t it?”
Bertha looked severe, blinked her eyes. Uncle gathered in trick after trick:
“Game and rubber to us. We’ll carry on the stakes, shall we?”
The sandwiches and drinks went round.
“Gerrit,” said Constance, as she moved her chair beside his, “you’re happy, aren’t you, in your house, with your little wife and your children?”
Gerrit looked surprised:
“Why do you ask?”
“I had the impression.”
“But why do you ask?”
“Well, aren’t you? . . .”
“Yes, of course, of course. Of course I am, of course I am. Adeline!”
He beckoned to his wife, a plump, fair-haired little doll, a dear, sweet little woman of twenty-eight: she had seven children already, because Gerrit, who had married rather late in life, said that he must make up for lost time and get a whole troop together.
“Constance wants to know if we’re happy.”
“Silly Constance! Why, of course we are!” said Adeline.
“You have a dear little troop of children.”
“Your boy is a darling, too.”
They smiled, happy in their offspring. Gerrit, restless, moved his big limbs almost violently:
“Children, that’s the one thing in life!” he shouted. “We don’t mean to leave off till we have a dozen, do we, Line?”
“Gerrit, you’re quite mad!”
“Oh, but I say, Constance, why leave that lad of yours all by himself? It’s not good for a child.”
“No, Gerrit, it’s best as it is. It would not make us any happier to have a lot of children.”
“I say, you were indiscreet enough to ask if we were happy; now it’s my turn. I don’t believe that you and your husband get on so very well together.”
“Oh, well, we understand each other! Perhaps not even that! But Addie keeps us together. We both dote on him. Van der Welcke dotes on his boy. So do I. So do I. He is everything, both to him . . . and to me. . . .” Her eyes filled with tears. “We are nothing now . . . to each other!” She was sitting between Gerrit and Adeline. “I did so want all of you!” she continued, taking each of them by the hand. “Be nice to me, will you? I am simply pining for affection. My child is all to me, but he is still so young; and I tell him too much as it is. . . . Heavens, what a life I have had these last few years! No, you were not kind! Why did you never, never once come to me, in Brussels?”
“But, Constance dear,” said Gerrit, “if we had only known that you would have liked us to! Remember, you never sent us a line. You only wrote to Mamma; and she did go to see you once or twice. Own up: we had become strangers.”
“Let us be friends again, then! Be nice to me! Your dear little wife . . . I don’t know her. . . . But you are my sister, too, Adeline, are you not? Be a little fond of me.”
“Yes, of course, Constance. And let us see a lot of each other.”
“Tell me, Gerrit; what is Bertha like now?”
“Bertha is very nice. Bertha is an exemplary mother, an excellent wife. Bertha has a busy life. They do a great deal of good, they live for their children, they see heaps of people. They are in the upper ten, or, rather, the upper two or three of the Hague. We are not, you know. And we never go to their big dinners; we are not in their set at all.”
“I don’t even go to Bertha’s at-homes,” said Adeline.
“And yet we are very good friends. And Bertha is very nice; and, when Adeline is expecting a baby, which is the usual state of affairs with us, Bertha is just like a mother. But she and her husband live in their own circle, which is very big and busy and important and smart and all the rest of it.”
“So Adolphine and Van Saetzema . . .?”
“Oh, you needn’t ask: they don’t go to their dinners, at-homes, balls, etcetera, either. And that makes Adolphine furious. But we don’t care in the least.”
“And Aunt and Uncle Ruyvenaer?”
“They go to the at-home days,” laughed Adeline, “but not to the dinners. And they have their own little Indian clique, which is very lively, but of course a thing quite by itself.” “Yes,” reflected Constance. “A big family like ours necessarily has all sorts of sections. . . .”
“And that is why Mamma is so devoted to her ‘family-group,’ in which all the different elements meet.”
“Sometimes we don’t see one another for weeks and months at a time, except on those Sunday evenings. . . .”
“And tell me: Karel and Cateau. . . .”
“Ka-rel and Ca-teau,” said Gerrit, mimicking Cateau, “live ve-ry com-fortably and have ve-ry nice little din-ners all by their lit-tle selves, don’t they, Adel-ine?”
They laughed.
“I was always fond of Karel,” said Constance. “Of Karel and you, Gerrit. . . . Do you remember, in the river, behind the Palace at Buitenzorg. . . .”
He looked at her long, seeking their childish past in her eyes:
“Yes, you were a pretty child then. You used to act all sorts of fairy-tales with us, among those great, spreading leaves: stories of a princess and fairies and knights and I don’t know what. You were a darling of a child: such a dainty, pale little elf, in your white cotton baadjet[1]; and your brothers were in love with you. . . . But two years later, when I was a boy of sixteen and you fifteen, you suddenly became a stuck-up girl, in a long ball-dress, and you refused to dance with any one except old staff-officers and the secretary-general. . . .”
“And what am I now?” she asked, smiling, with her soul full of sadness.
“The lost sister . . . found again.”
“Yes, the lost sister, indeed!”
“Come, Sissy, not so gloomy!”
“My life has been hard to bear.”
“But you have your boy, your child. Children are everything.”
“My life has been nothing but mistake upon mistake. And I am so afraid that I sha’n’t bring up my boy properly.”
“Then leave that to your husband!” said Gerrit, man-like.
“Oh, really?” said Adeline. “Is she to leave that to her husband?”
“Yes, Adeline. Just as we do. I the boys, you the girls.”
“Oh, really?”
“But, Gerrit, if I leave Addie to Van der Welcke, I shall have nothing left, nothing.”
“Then be bolder and have no fear.”
“Oh, life is sometimes so difficult! . . . So, Adeline, Gerrit, you will care a little for your lost sister who has been found again?”
Adeline kissed Constance.
Mamma van Lowe approached, radiant, as always, at the “family-group” which she had brought together. “Mamma, I am so glad, so happy, to be among you all!” murmured Constance.
The maids entered with the coats and wraps.
- ↑ A diminutive of kabaai, a native jacket with sleeves.