Small Souls Part 15

"Well, we shall see," Van der Welcke ventured to put in.

"See, see, see!" said Constance, angrily. "I want to have my own house quickly. The hotel is expensive; and I dislike it. By the time the furniture has come from Brussels, by the time we are settled...."

"Oh, well, Mummy," said Addie, decisively, "Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."

She smiled at once. Every word spoken by her child was a balm, an anodyne. The old grandmother smiled. Dorine smiled.

"Addie," said Mamma van Lowe, "you must do your best to help Papa and Mamma with the house."

"Yes, Granny. It won't be plain sailing...."

The child was more at his ease than on the Sunday evening. Granny was very kind; so was Aunt Dorine, to trot about like that, after those houses.

"Aunt Dorine, do you always run errands?"

Everybody laughed: it was a mania of Dorine's to traverse the Hague daily from end to end; she was a very willing creature and she was particularly busy just now for Bertha and Adolphine, because of the two weddings.

Ernst and Paul entered.

"We heard that Van der Welcke was at Mamma's," said Paul, "and we've come to be introduced."

"These at least are not visits _in optima forma_," thought Constance to herself.

Ernst resembled Bertha and blinked his eyes; but, in addition, he was odd, shy, always timid, even in the family-circle. There was something bashful about him, as though he wanted to run away as soon as he could.

But he made an effort and suddenly asked Constance:

"Are you fond of china?"

"Delft, do you mean?"

"Yes. Are you fond of vases? I love vases. I have all sorts of vases.

Have you ever thought of a vase: the shape, the symbol of a vase? No, you don't know what I mean. Will you come and see me one day, in my rooms? Will you come and lunch: you and your husband? Then I'll show you my vases."

Constance smiled:

"I should love to, Ernst. Have you so many rare vases?"

"Yes," he said in a proud whisper. "I have some very rare ones. I am always afraid they will be stolen. They are my children."

And he laughed; and she laughed too, while shrinking a little from him and from coming to those rooms filled with vases that were children. She did not know what more to say to Ernst; and she now told Mamma, softly, that old Mr. and Mrs. van der Welcke, her father- and mother-in-law, had asked them to Driebergen.

Mrs. van Lowe beamed and whispered:

"Child, I am so glad! I am so glad they have done that. It's been running in my head all this time, what att.i.tude they would take up to you. After all, Adriaan is their grandson as well as mine."

"For thirteen years ..." Constance began, bitterly.

"Child, child, don't bear malice, don't bear malice. Make no more reproaches. All will come right, my child. I am so glad. They are different from us, dear, not so broad-minded, very orthodox and strict in their principles. And, when, at the time, they insisted that Van der Welcke should marry you, that was a great sacrifice on their part, child: it shattered their son's career."

"Why?" exclaimed Constance, in a whisper, but vehemently. "It shattered his career? Why? Why need he have left the service?"

"Dear, it was so difficult for him to remain, after the scandal."

Constance gave a scornful laugh:

"In that circle, where there is nothing but scandal which they hush up!"

"Hush, child: don't be so violent, don't be so irritable. I am so glad, Connie! I could kiss those old people. I will call on them too, when you have been ... to embrace them...."

Mamma was in tears. Constance pressed her hands to her breast: she was suffocating.

"Very well, Mamma," she said, softly and calmly. "I will be grateful, all my life long, to Papa and Mamma van der Welcke, to Henri, to you, to all of you!..."

"Child, don't be bitter. Try to be a little happy now, among us all. We will all try to be nice to you and to make you forget the past...."

"Mamma!..."

She embraced the old woman:

"Mamma, don't cry! I am happy, I really am, to be back, back among all of you!"

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 ma.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sion 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 Munic.i.p.al 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 s.l.u.ttish 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: