Small Souls/Chapter XVI
Next day, Emilie and Marianne van Naghel were hard at work in their boudoir. They shared a sitting-room between them; Louise, the eldest sister, had one to herself. Emilie was taking down water-colours from the wall:
“The room was so bright and cheerful!” she said, softly, and put the drawings together.
Marianne suddenly burst into sobs. The room was all topsy-turvy, because Emilie was collecting her belongings, and the wall-paper now showed in fresh, unfaded rectangular patches.
“What on earth do you want to marry that horrid man for!” cried Marianne, sobbing. “We were so happy, the two of us; we were always together. With you married, I shall have no one; and I hate the idea of arranging my room all over again.”
Emilie seemed to be staring blankly into a blank future:
“Oh, come, Marianne: I shall still be at the Hague!”
“No, I’ve lost you!” sobbed Marianne, passionately. “What did you see in that man, what did you see in him?” She embraced her sister violently and insisted. “Tell me, tell me: what did you see in that man?”
“In Eduard? I love him.” “Oh?” said Marianne. “Is that all it means, loving a man? Is that love?”
A maid entered:
“Freule, there’s a box come from Brussels, with your dresses. Mevrouw wants to know if it can be brought up at once, so as not to make a litter downstairs.”
“Yes, they can bring it up.”
Overwrought, Marianne had sunk into a chair and closed her eyes. She was in a state of nervous excitement, while Emilie, with strange calmness, was collecting boxes, portraits, ornaments.
“Emilie,” said Marianne, resignedly, “what a mess your’re making!”
“Never mind, I’m taking it all away.”
“Yes, that’s just it: everything’s going away, everything’s going away!”
“Marianne, do control yourself.”
Two maids came dragging along a packing-case.
“Where shall we put it, freule?”
“Leave it there, in the passage.”
Bertha came upstairs:
“Unpack it at once, Emilie, or the things will crease.”
“Do you think it’s my wedding-dress?”
“I expect so.”
“Then it can go on the bed.”
“No, it had better be hung in the wardrobe.”
The servants opened the packing-case and produced cardboard boxes. A third maid entered:
“A bill from Van der Laan’s, mevrouw.” “Marianne, here’s my key-basket; just pay it, will you? It’s sixty-six guilders.”
The two Leiden boys came upstairs:
“Jolly beastly, I call it,” said Frans. “You never find any one in the drawing-room, when you come home. Either it’s a party, or else everything’s upside down.”
“Bless my soul, girls,” said Henri, “look at the state your room’s in!”
“I say, shall I help you unpack?”
“Mevrouw, I can’t understand what the young mevrouw’s baboe[1] says. . . .”
“Mau apa,[2] Alima?”
“Njonja moeda[3] asks if njonja besar[4] would mind coming upstairs,” said the baboe, in Malay.
“Yes, I’ll come at once.”
“What are you all doing here?” asked Marietje, at the door. “Mamma, has Emilie’s dress come? May I see?”
“If you please, mevrouw, the old mevrouw and Mrs. van der Welcke are downstairs. . . . Shall I ask them to wait in the drawing-room?”
“Granny!” shouted Frans over the balusters.
“Half a moment!” said Henri, rushing down the stairs. “I’ll fetch Granny and Auntie.”
Marianne began sobbing again:
“My dear child, what’s the matter now?” exclaimed Bertha. “I’m going mad!” cried Marianne.
Emilie kissed her.
Old Mrs. van Lowe came slowly up the stairs, gallantly escorted by her grandson, and was met on the landing by her other grandson.
“Granny, Emilie’s wedding-dress has come and she’s going to try it on!” cried Marietje, excitedly.
“Am I in the way?” asked Constance.
“No, of course not, Constance,” said Bertha. “Come in.”
All the doors of the boudoir and bedroom were open. Louise came in—she usually kept out of the way at busy times—and, together with Bertha and the lady’s maid, shook out the white dress, which straightway filled the whole room with a snowy whiteness. . . .
“What is it, baboe?” asked Mrs. van Lowe.
“Njonja moeda asks if njonja besar would come upstairs,” repeated the baboe. “But perhaps if the kandjeng njonja besar[5] could come . . .” she added, piling on the titles out of respect for the old lady, who had once been the njonja besar Bogor.[6]
“Then I’ll go up,” said the old lady. “Constance, will you come too? . . .”
Very slowly, a little tired after the stairs, the old lady climbed up, with her hand on the baluster-rail. Constance followed her. On the top floor, there was a sudden draught; doors slammed. “Baboe. . . . Is there a window open?”
The baboe ran about stupidly, unfamiliar as yet with Dutch doors and windows.
In a sitting-room, they found Frances, Otto’s wife, with the two children.
“But, Frances, you’ve got a window open!”
“Oh, Grandmamma, I was suffocating!”
“Baboe, shut the window at once! Frances, how could you!”
“I can’t, kandjeng!” sighed the baboe, pressing with the strength of a gnat on the bars of the solid Dutch window.
Constance helped her, pushed down the window.
“This is Aunt Constance, who has come to make your acquaintance, Frances. But Frances, you’re still in your sarong and kabaai!”[7]
“Isn’t that allowed, Granny? How d’ye do, Aunt?”
“Child, how Indian you’ve become in these few years!” cried the old lady, angrier than Constance remembered ever seeing her. “How is it possible, how is it possible! Have you forgotten Holland? In March, with the window open, in a tearing draught, with both the children, you in sarong and kabaai and Huig in a little shirt! Do you want to kill yourself and the children? Baboe, put a baadje on sinjo![8] Frances, Frances, I spent years and years in India, but even in India I was nearly always dressed; and, when I came back to Holland, I had not forgotten Holland in the way in which you, a purely Dutch girl, have forgotten it in these few years!”
The old woman had taken the child on her own lap and was dressing it more warmly.
“Grandmamma, how you’re grumbling. . . .It’d be better if you told cook to make Ottelientje’s boeboer[9] properly: the child can’t eat that starch they give her. And she told baboe that she had no time to cook it differently. The whole house has gone mad because Emilie is getting married. We really can’t stay here, on the top floor at Papa and Mamma’s.”
“Frances, dress yourself first, or I shall get really angry.”
“Allah, Grandmamma!” cried Frances, irritably; but, when Constance gave her the same advice, she flung a wrapper over her sarong and kabaai and remained like that, with her bare feet in slippers.
“No wonder you’re always ill!” grumbled Grandmamma, still busying herself with the child.
“Oh, Aunt Constance, I wonder if you would run down to the kitchen and tell cook that Ottelientje can’t have her boeboer made like that?”
“My dear Frances,” laughed Constance, “the cook has never seen me, nor I her: and, if I went to her kitchen and talked about the boeboer, she would only turn me out.”
“What a country to live in, Holland!” cried Frances. “My child is starving for food!” “I’ll go down to Mamma, if you like. . . .”
“Yes, do, would you?”
Constance went downstairs. In the boudoir, Emilie, in her wedding-dress, was standing in front of a long glass. The heavy white satin crushed her, looked hard and cruel upon her, now that her hair was not done and she tired and pale.
“The bodice doesn’t fit. It will simply have to go back to Brussels,” said Bertha.
“It’s sickening!” said Emilie; and the word sounded almost like a curse between her lips.
“Marianne, will you write the letter? I’ll pin the dress up. Or no, I had better write myself. Constance, do look!”
“There’s a crease here,” said Constance, “but it’s not very bad. Daren’t you have it altered here?”
“Upon my word, I’m paying . . .” Bertha began, but she checked herself and did not say how much. “And to have it fit badly into the bargain!”
“Bertha, Frances asked me to come and see you.”
“What about?”
“There’s some trouble about Ottelientje’s boeboer.”
“I’ll go up,” said Bertha, worn-out though she was.
The maid, holding up Emilie’s train, followed her into the bedroom; Marianne and Constance remained behind alone. Constance saw that Marianne was crying.
“What is it, dear?” “Oh, Auntie!”
“What is it?”
“Is life worth all this bother and fuss? Getting married, moving your things, dancing, giving dinners and parties, ordering dresses that don’t fit and cost hundreds, being ill, having babies, eating boeboer: Auntie, is it really all worth while?”
“Why, Marianne, I might be listening to Paul!”
“Oh, no, I’m not so eloquent as Paul! But I’m suffocating with it all, I’m stifling and I’m terribly, terribly, terribly unhappy!”
“Marianne!”
The young girl suddenly burst into nervous sobs and threw herself into Constance’ arms. Around her, the room was one scene of confusion; the doors were all open.
“Marianne, let me shut the doors.”
“No, Auntie, don’t mind about that, but stay with me, do! It’s more than I can stand, more than I can stand! I’m so tired of this rush, of this unnecessary excitement, of the party yesterday, of those tableaux-vivants, of Floortje’s jealousy, of Aunt Adolphine’s spitefulness, I am tired, tired, tired of everything. I can’t stand it, Auntie. I’m so fond of Emilie, we’ve always been together, it was so nice, so jolly; and now, all at once, she’s getting married to that hateful man; and she’s taking away her sketches; and it’s all over; and now everything’s gone, everything’s gone! And Henri too is so upset about it: he dotes on Emilie, just as I do, and he can’t understand either what she’s doing it for. She’s very happy here; Papa and Mamma and all the rest are fond of her; we had such a nice life, even if it was a bit overdone and I don’t care for that everlasting going out; but now it’s all over, all over! I sat crying with Henri yesterday; and at the party we had to be gay; and every one thought that he was gay, the gay undergraduate; and the poor boy was miserable; and yesterday I had to appear in that tableau; and Floortje was so horrid and spiteful; and Henri and Frans had a dialogue to do; and the poor boy couldn’t speak his words; and I ask you, Auntie, why all this unhappiness, when we were so happy together?”
She clenched her fists and, through her sobs, suddenly began to laugh aloud:
“Oh, Auntie! . . . Ha, ha! . . . Oh, Auntie! . . . Don’t mind what I say! I am mad, I am mad, but it’s they who are driving me mad: Mamma, the boys, the servants, the baboe, Frances and the children! It’s one great merry-go-round! Ha, ha! . . . Did you ever see such an everlasting rush as we have in this house?”
She was now sobbing and laughing together; and suddenly she remembered that she had let herself go too much with a strange aunt and that Mamma did not like these spontaneous confidences to strangers; and, because she wanted to recover herself, she suddenly became rather dignified and asked:
“Did you enjoy yourself fairly yesterday, Aunt Constance?” “Yes, Marianne, I thought it very nice to be back among you all.”
“Don’t you like Brussels better than the Hague?”
“It was so quiet for us, lately, in Brussels.”
“Rome, I should like to see Rome.”
“Yes, Rome is beautiful.”
They were now silent and they both felt that things of the past parted them, the new, strange aunt, who had come back from the past, and the young girl, who was suddenly afraid of it.
And, without understanding why, Marianne sighed, in the midst of this shrinking fear:
“Oh, for a joy, a real joy that would fill me entirely! No more dinners and dresses and excitement about nothing, but a real joy, a great joy!”
She felt so strange, so giddy, but she still found strength to say:
“It’s a pity that you were away from us so long. We should always have liked you and Uncle very much, but now you are both so strange still, to all of us.”
“Yes,” replied Constance, very wearily.
And she did not understand why she suddenly felt very sad, as though, after all, for manifold reasons, she had not done well to come back, though there had been that hunger for her own people, her own kith and kin. . . .
“A joy, a great joy!” Marianne again sighed, softly.
And she pressed her hands to her breast, as though distressed by her strange longing. . . .
- ↑ Maid, nurse.
- ↑ What is it?
- ↑ The young mistress, as who should say, the young mem-sahib.
- ↑ The great mistress, or great mem-sahib, used of the wives of residents and other high officials.
- ↑ The old great mem-sahib.
- ↑ The governor-general’s mem-sahib. Bogor is the native name of Buitenzorg, in Java, which contains the governor-general’s palace.
- ↑ The native skirt, or garment wound tightly round the loins, and sleeved jacket, forming a costume which is worn pretty generally as an indoor dress by European ladies in Java.
- ↑ The young gentleman.
- ↑ Broth, pap.