Small Souls/Chapter X
Two days later, Van der Welcke, Constance and Addie were in the train on their way to Driebergen. The boy, to whom Holland was a new country, was interested in the vague, dim, low-lying expanses bounded, on the mist-blurred horizons, by straggling rows of trees, with here and there a village-steeple; the wind-mills flung out their sails like despairing arms to the great jaundiced clouds, whose gloomy masses, driven by a rainy wind, scurried across the lowering skies. The boy asked question after question, sitting with his hand in his father’s; and, to avoid the sight of that caress, Constance gazed out of the opposite window, in silence.
They had been to the Van Saetzemas the evening before; and, though Constance felt irritated at first, she ended with a passion of pity. Good heavens, how was it possible that Adolphine had become so common! Whom on earth did she get it from! Mamma, so refined and distinguished! Papa, her poor father, such an aristocrat, a gentleman of the old school! . . . And yet, perhaps, from the Ruyvenaers. You would never have taken Uncle for a brother of Mamma’s. Was it from the Ruyvenaers, perhaps? Great heavens, how common Adolphine was! . . . Her husband was a boor; her house pretentious and slovenly; her girls, the two elder, pretentious, priggish, envious; Marie, the youngest girl, a sort of Cinderella, but a sweet, shy, down-trodden, quiet child. . . . But then there were the three boys, so repulsive, so slovenly, so rude. . . . What a crew, what a crew! . . . They had gone to take tea there quietly; but it turned out to be a sort of little evening-party: a regular rabble, as Van der Welcke, who was furious, had said. Two men in dress-coats and white ties; the others running through the entire scale of masculine attire: frock-coats, dinner-jackets, tweeds. Adolphine seemed always to send out ambiguous invitations; and people never knew what they should wear nor whom they would meet. . . . Floortje in a dirty, white, low-necked dress, if you please; Caroline and Marietje in walking-dress; Van Saetzema himself looking like a fat farmer, carrying on in his noisy way with Uncle Ruyvenaer: it was all so vulgar! . . . Aunt Ruyvenaer was always good-natured; and the girls, though very Indian-looking, were pleasant and natural and simple; but, for the rest, the evening, with all sorts of strangers, was a snare, especially for Van der Welcke, whom, as a brother-in-law, they might surely have welcomed in a more intimate and heartier fashion the first time they saw him, after refusing, for years, to recognize him as a member of the family! And, once back in the hotel, she had had a violent scene with her husband: he abusing that rabble of a family of hers, she, defending her family, against her own conviction, until Addie woke, got out of bed and begged them to be quiet, or he wouldn’t be able to sleep. . . . The darling, how prettily he had said it, in that dear little decided way of his, like a regular little man: oh, where would they be without him! She sometimes thought, if he died, if they ever had to lose him, she would do away with herself! He was not their child: he was their treasure, their life. And she gave a glance at him; but, when she saw him sitting hand in hand with his father, while Van der Welcke tried to make out the distant village-steeples after all those years, she turned round again, quickly, with a jealous pang at her heart. . . . Oh, she felt sorry for Adolphine! She saw in Adolphine a struggle to be “in the swim,” a desperate struggle, because Van Saetzema had nothing but a fine-sounding name: in everything else, he was an insignificant person, who had great difficulty in obtaining his promotion, after long years of waiting; married to Adolphine, no one knowing why she had taken him or he her; first trying to set up as an advocate and attorney at the Hague; later, receiving a billet in the Ministry of Justice, but never liked by Papa and never helped on by him, as Van Naghel had been; never thought much of by his superiors; now pushed into all sorts of little jobs and committees by Adolphine; trying to botch up some kind of political creed, in order to stand as a candidate for the Municipal Council, because Adolphine, always jealous and envious of Bertha’s importance, wanted to see her own husband coming more and more to the front and had so little chance of realizing that ideal. . . . Yes, Adolphine must be inwardly furious when she thought of Bertha’s household: her husband colonial secretary, after making money at the bar at Semarang; their house a replica of the dignified, stately paternal home of the old days: the same big dinners, the same good society, just verging on the diplomatic set. And so Adolphine gave those impossible “little evenings:” all sorts of persons dragged in anyhow; diversified elements that knew nothing of one another, never saw one another, were astonished to meet one another in those cramped drawing-rooms, full of faded specimens of amateur needle-work and dusty Makart bouquets; a rubber, a jingling duet by the girls, next the tables pushed aside and suddenly, by way of a dance, a mad romp, which sent a cloud of dust flying from the carpet: everything, everything in the same execrable taste, uninviting and, especially, common, with the thick sandwiches and the sluttish maid-servant, who shrugged her shoulders impertinently if the girls asked her to do a thing! Oh, Constance felt sorry for Adolphine, who was, after all, her sister; and she became aware, after years, as though it had been slumbering, of a warm family-affection for all her brothers and sisters and their children. Did she inherit it from her mother? A warm family-affection. She would have loved to have a friendly talk with Adolphine, to advise her to separate the different elements a little at those evenings of hers, to make her invitations less heterogeneous and to tell Floortje not to wear a soiled ball-dress on an occasion like that! And then those three boys, with their dirty hands, rushing about the crammed drawing-rooms without any idea of manners, so badly brought up compared with her Addie, who perhaps had not been brought up at all, but who was such a nice little fellow of himself, so polite, stiff though he might be, and who talked properly and not with a splutter of low Hague slang! Oh, it was dreadful! And she was so afraid that Addie might catch some of it. . . . Poor Adolphine, what a struggle, especially with all Bertha’s unattainable perfection before her eyes! For they all suffered from jealousy in their family: she had it herself; and Adolphine had always had it very strongly-developed from a child: jealous of her elder sisters and brothers. . . . Would she ever be able to give Adolphine a word of advice? Now that Floortje’s wedding was near at hand, couldn’t she be of use to Adolphine? She thought it such a pity that her sister—a Van Lowe, after all—was becoming so common; and, after last night, she was so afraid of that wedding; and it would be all the worse because Bertha’s Emilie was to be married about the same time, in May, a couple of months hence. In any case, she would talk to Mamma about it, not for the sake of interfering, but because Adolphine was her sister, because she cared for her as a sister and because she had a feeling of pity for her, genuine, heart-rending pity. . . .
“Mamma, what are you looking at?”
It was Addie’s voice; and she saw that the boy had come to sit by her, because it was her turn now. He always divided his favours like that between his father and mother. For Van der Welcke at once took up the Nieuwe Rotterdammer and buried himself in its wide pages, in his corner.
“Oh, so you’ve come to sit by me at last!” she whispered.
“Mummy, don’t be so jealous: do you want me to chop myself in two?”
He talked to her, amused her. She always admired the way in which he talked, prettily, sensibly and divertingly, with a sort of talent for small-talk. Very likely he had acquired it because, without him, his father and mother would have been silent, when they were not quarrelling. He talked of a couple of houses which they had seen yesterday; he talked of the landscape, said it made him feel a Dutch boy at once—wasn’t it funny?—and kept his mother amused like a gallant little cavalier. And yet he had nothing of a dandy about him: a broad, short, firmly-built little man, in a coloured shirt, a blue great-coat and knickerbockers. He wore a soft felt hat, shaped like a Boer hat. She didn’t like that hat, but he insisted on having one. But, even with that hat, how handsome he was! Oh, what a good-looking boy he was! His frank, blue eyes, a little hard and grave; his fresh-coloured, firm cheeks, with those refined, clear-cut features, Henri’s features; his small mouth, which she loved; his square shoulders; his pretty, knickerbockered legs, with the square knees and the slender, rounded calves. Her child, her child: he was her all in all! He was the happiness, the grace of her life; because of him her life was worth the living!
He talked, but she saw a grave look in his eyes, a look graver than usual. Yes, she felt it: it was because of what was awaiting them, in an hour’s time; the reception by the grandparents down there, at Driebergen. . . . Van der Welcke also was nervous, did not speak a word, folded his newspaper, this side and that. . . . Constance’ heart beat in her throat, which was dry and parched with nervousness. And Addie’s look became more fixed, more serious than ever. Yes, she felt it. There was a tenderness in the child’s voice, as though he wanted to say:
“Mind you bear up, Mummy, presently. . . .”
And, the nearer they approached, the quieter they became: Henri in his newspaper; she staring through the window; while Addie himself found nothing more to say and sat quite still, with his hands in the pockets of his little great-coat. No, she could never forget that those two old people had taken thirteen years, not to accept her as their daughter, but to look upon her child as their grandchild. During all that time, not a letter, not an attempt at reconciliation: a complete silence, an absolute death towards their only son, towards their only grandson. She was not thinking of herself; she asked for no affection from them, only for cold civility. She felt so much resentment, so much resentment that, when she thought of it, she almost choked. And, over and above, came the crushing consciousness that she had to be grateful because those parents had sacrificed their son to her, as they had once said; because they had insisted that Henri should marry her, even though it shattered his career. And that, that was what she could never forgive, because it had always wounded, because it still wounded her vanity.
She would have been grateful, for her son’s sake, if they had decided that Henri, after a retirement of some years, relying on his influential connections, should resume his career, with her by his side. De Staffelaer had left the diplomatic service, was living at his country-place near Haarlem; and they could never have met him abroad except by some extraordinary coincidence. . . . No, that she never would and never could forgive them, because of her wounded vanity; it was that which caused the bitterness that almost choked her: the “sacrifice,” Henri’s career shattered through her. Had she not for five years been the wife of the Netherlands minister at Rome? Had she not filled her position with tact, with grace, even with consummate knowledge of the world, until the Dutch colony praised her salons above those of the other Netherlands legations abroad? Had she not taken pride in that reputation, taken pleasure in the fact that the Dutch colony and Dutch travellers found something in her dinners and receptions that reminded them of Holland and home? How often had she not been told, “Mevrouw, with you, in Rome, everything is most charming, especially when compared with this place and that;” her countrymen used often to complain to her of the dulness and stiffness and exclusiveness of so many of their legations. Would she not have been in her right place by Van der Welcke’s side, even though people might talk and cavil at first, because, she, the divorced wife of a minister plenipotentiary, had afterwards married the youngest secretary in the service! But she would have shown tact, it would have been forgotten, it would have subsided into the past. She refused to believe but that all this would have been possible, not for any one else, perhaps, but certainly for her. And this was her grievance, that those two old people—and Henri with them—had never been able to see this as she did; that they had given her their son, with an allowance that meant poverty—two alms for which she was expected to be grateful!—but had left her and him and their child in Brussels, in a corner, like some unnamable disgrace! No, that was a thing which she could never forgive, never, never, never!
She was so deep in her thoughts that she did not notice that the train had stopped and that they had arrived at Zeist-Driebergen.
“Mamma!” said Addie, softly.
She started, turned pale. But she was resolved to control herself, to be dignified, to show those old people that she was not a worthless woman, even though she had committed a mistake, a false step in her life: very well, a sin, if they pleased, because she had loved. Addie helped her to alight; and her gloved fingers trembled in his firm little hand. But she was resolved not to give way: she must keep quite calm; yes, she would be calm and dignified above all. . . .
“There’s the carriage,” said Henri, in a stifled voice.
He recognized the very old carriage of years ago. He even recognized the old coachman, who looked at him and touched his hat. The footman who opened the carriage-door was a youth, whom he did not know. And the coachman, as an old servant, bent over to him and, in a quavering voice, using the old title, said:
“Morning, jonker. Good-morning, mevrouw.”
“How are you, Dirk?” said Henri, in a dull voice.
They settled themselves in the carriage. And Constance saw that Henri was setting his lips, gritting his teeth and clenching his jaws, as though with a violent effort to stop himself from crying like a child. Now and then he shivered, nervously, and stared out of the window. He recognized the villas on either side of the road, looking so melancholy in the middle of the bleak March gardens that stretched hazily in the damp mist; he noticed how much had been pulled down to make way for new houses. How changed it was! What a lot had been built lately! But yet there was something under those great cloudy skies, heavy with eternal rain, in that road, in the gardens of those villas: something of the old days, something of his childhood, something of the time when he was young. He felt like an old man coming home again: he, scarcely eight-and-thirty! It was as though he were ashamed in the presence of the familiar! And, very secretly, too weak to accuse himself, he accused her, the woman sitting beside him, the woman four years older than himself. He too was thinking of Rome now, of the rooms of the Netherlands Legation, of her, then Mrs. de Staffelaer, the wife of his chief, of their love-affair, first in jest, then in earnest, until that terrible moment in the room where they used to meet; De Staffelaer in the doorway; Constance fleeing through another door; and his interview with the injured old man, who had been good to him, in a fatherly fashion! And he blamed her for it: it was her fault! He was a young man then, with hardly any knowledge of the world; she, a woman of twenty-eight, married for over five years, had enticed him, had been the temptress! It was she, it was she: he blamed her for it! He had not loved her at first, during the first stages of the flirtation. There had been a chat, a waltz, a jest. Yes, then it had turned to passion; but what was passion? The flame of a moment, flaring up and then extinguished. And he knew it: from that day, when he stood as a culprit in the presence of that dignified old man, from that day the flame was extinguished. And from that day he began to see the life that lay before him: the scandal, which filled all Rome; the despair of his pious parents, far away at home, in Holland; Constance in Florence: their first interview there, himself yielding to his parents’ wishes and asking her to be his wife, to marry him in England as soon as the divorce was granted. Since then, he had always seen his fate hanging before him; and it had crushed him, so weak, so small. . . . Amid the wretchedness, amid the ruin of his young life, beside that woman in whom he, who did not take blame to himself, never lost sight of the worldly-wise temptress four years older than he, beside that woman, the eternal obstacle, and amid that wretchedness, the only grace had been the child. That which might have increased the misery had been the mercy, from the first moment that he set eyes on it, little, red morsel that it was: the darling child; the child that was his, though the fruit of their misery; the child that, as it grew older, became his comfort; the child that felt with its little hands over his face and in his hair; the child that said “Daddy;” the child that he smothered in his arms! The child, her child, it was true, but his child also: his child, his son, growing up and soon becoming the little moderator between them and the reason, also, why they remained together; the child, growing up to boyhood and, without understanding or knowing, still feeling the eternal struggle, the eternal misery, until its eyes became more grave and it felt that it was the moderator and the comforter. The child, there it sat, opposite him: his handsome, sturdy boy, who looked like him, with the fixed, earnest, gentle eyes; and he was now going to show him to his parents: her child, it was true, the fruit of their misery, but his child and their grandson.
The boy glanced from his father to his mother. They both sat opposite him and both silently looked out of the window, half-turning their backs upon each other. The boy would so gladly have taken their hands, the hands of both of them, and said something: a word to unite them at this moment, which he felt to be very serious; but he did not know the word, cleverly though he knew how to talk as a rule. He glanced from his father to his mother, from his mother to his father; and they, they did not look, dared not look at him, feeling his glance and filled to overflowing with their own thoughts. Then the boy felt life sinking very heavily, like a weight, upon his small breast. He drew a very deep breath, under the heavy weight, and his breath was a deep sigh.
They both now looked up, looked at their child. Henri would have liked to throw out his arms, to feel his child at his heart; but the carriage now turned through a gate and drove along a front garden of rounded lawns, in which the rose-bushes, swathed in straw, stood waiting for the spring.