Small Souls Part 33

But this was not only one of Constance' handsome, but also one of her amiable evenings. As a hostess, in however small a way, she came into her own and was like another woman, much more gentle, without any bitterness and ready to accept the fact that a rock had to be doubled now and again. Her smile gave to her cheeks a roundness that made her look younger. What a pity, thought Paul, that she was not always just like that, so full of tact, always the hostess in her own house, hostess to her husband too:

"How strange women are," he thought. "If I were dining here alone with them, in the ordinary course of things, and if these same rocks had occurred in the conversation, Constance would have lost her temper three times by now and Van der Welcke would have caught it finely. And now that there's a guest, now that we are in our dinner-jackets and Constance in an evening-frock, now that there are grapes and flowers on the table and a more elaborate _menu_ than usual, now she does not lose her temper and won't lose her temper, however many rocks we may have to steer past. I believe that, even if we began to talk about infidelity and divorce, about marriages with old men and love-affairs with young ones, she would remain quite calm, smiling prettily with those little dimples at the corners of her mouth, as though nothing could apply to her... What strange creatures women are, full of little reserves of force that make them very powerful in life!... And, presently, when Van Vreeswijck is gone, she will rave at Van der Welcke if he so much as blows his nose; and all her little reserve-forces will have vanished; and she will be left without the smallest self-control.... Still, in any case, she is most charming; and I have had a capital dinner and am feeling very pleasant...."

The bell rang and, through the open door leading to the hall, Constance and Paul heard voices at the front-door:

"That's Adolphine's voice!" said Constance.

"And Carolientje's," said Paul....

"Oh, then I won't stay!" they heard Adolphine say, loudly, shrilly.

Constance rose from her chair. She thought it a bore that Adolphine should call just in this evening, but she was bent upon never allowing Adolphine to see that she was unwelcome:

"Excuse me, Mr. van Vreeswijck, for a moment. I hear my sister...."

She went out into the pa.s.sage:

"How are you, Adolphine?"

"How are you, Constance?" said Adolphine.

She knew that Constance was giving a little dinner that evening and she had come prying on purpose, though she pretended to know nothing:

"I just looked in," she said, "as I was pa.s.sing with Carolientje; I saw a light in your windows and thought you must be at home. But your servant says that you're having a dinner-party!" said Adolphine, tartly and reproachfully, as though Constance had no right to give a dinner.

"Not a dinner-party. Van Vreeswijck and Paul are dining with us."

"Van Vreeswijck? Oh!" said Adolphine.

"The one at Court?"

"He's a chamberlain of the Regent's," said Constance, simply.

"Oh!"

"He's an old friend of Van der Welcke's," said Constance, almost in self-excuse.

"Oh! Well, then I won't disturb you...."

The dining-room door was open. Adolphine peeped in and saw the three men talking over their dessert. She saw the candles, the flowers, the dinner-jackets of the men; she noticed Constance' dress....

"Do come in, Adolphine," said Constance, mastering herself and in her gentlest voice.

"No, thanks. If you're having a dinner-party, I won't come in, at dessert.... Oof! How hot it is in here, Constance: do you still keep on fires? It's suffocating in your house; and so dark, with those candles.

How pale you look! Aren't you feeling well?"

"Pale? No, I'm feeling very well indeed."

"Oh, I thought you must be tired or ill, you look so awfully pale!

You're not looking well. Perhaps you've put on too much powder. Or is it your dress that makes you look pale? Is that one of your Brussels dresses? I don't think it improves you! Your grey cashmere suits you much better."

"Yes, Adolphine, but that's a walking-dress."

"Oh, of course, you can't wear that at a dinner, at a dinner-party.

Still, I prefer that walking-dress."

"Won't you come in for a moment?"

"No, I'm only in walking-dress, you see, Constance dear. And Carolientje too. And then I don't want to disturb you, at your men's dinner-party."

"I'm sorry, Adolphine, that you should have called just this night, if you won't come in. Come in to tea some other evening soon, will you?"

"Well, you see, I don't often come this way: you live so far from everywhere, in this depressing Kerkhoflaan. At least, I always think it depressing. What induced you to come and live here, tell me, between two graveyards? It's not healthy to live in, you know, because of the miasma...."

"Oh, we never notice anything!"

"Ah, that's because you always keep your windows shut! You want more ventilation, really, in Holland. I a.s.sure you, I should stifle in this atmosphere."

"Come, Adolphine, do come in...."

"No, really not. I'm going; make my apologies to your husband. Good-bye, Constance. Come, Carolientje."

And, as though she were really suffocating, she hurried to the front-door with her daughter, first glancing through the open door of the dining-room, noticing the hot-house grapes, the pink roses, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her eyes to read the label on the champagne-bottle from which Paul was filling up the gla.s.ses. Then she pushed Carolientje before her and departed, slamming the front-door after her....

Constance went back to the dining-room. Her nerves were shaken, but she kept a good countenance.

"It was Adolphine, wasn't it?" asked Paul.

"Yes, but she wouldn't come in," said Constance. "It's such a pity, she's such good company...."

She did not mean it, but she wished to mean it. That she said so was not hypocrisy on her part. Any other evening, after Adolphine's comments, all in five minutes, on her house, her street, her candles, her fires, her dress and her complexion, she would probably have flung herself at full length on her sofa, to recover from the annoyance of it. But now she was the hostess; and she showed no discomposure and asked the men not to mind her and to stay and smoke their cigars with her, at the dinner-table. She herself poured out the coffee, from her dainty little silver-gilt service, and the liqueurs; and, when Paul asked her if she would not smoke a cigarette, she answered, with her pretty expression and the little laugh at the bend of her lips which made her so young that night and caused her to look so very charming:

"No, I used to smoke, in my flighty days; but I gave it up long ago."

CHAPTER XXII

Marietje van Saetzema stood at the window and looked out into the street. She looked down the whole street, because the house, a corner-house, stood not in the length of it, but in the width, half-closing the street, making it a sort of courtyard of big houses.

The street stretched to some distance; and another house part-closed the farther end, turning it actually into a courtyard, occupied by well-to-do people. The two rows of gables ran along with a fine independence of chimney-stacks, of little cast-iron pinnacles and pointed zinc roofs, little copper weatherc.o.c.ks and little balconies and bow-windows, as though the architects and builders had conspired to produce something artistic and refused to design one long monotonous gable-line. But the new street--it was about twenty years old--had nevertheless retained the Dutch trimness that characterizes the dwellings of the better cla.s.ses: the well-scrubbed pavements ran into the distance, growing ever narrower to the eye, with their grey hem of kerb-stone, their regularly-recurring lamp-posts; in the middle of the street was a plantation: oval gra.s.s-plots surrounded by low railings, in which were chestnut-trees, neatly pruned, and, beneath them, a neat shrubbery of dwarf firs. The fronts of the houses glistened with cleanliness after the spring cleaning; the tidily-laid bricks displayed their rectangular outlines clearly, even at a distance; the window-frames were bright with fresh paint, dazzling cream-colour or pale brown; the blinds, neatly lowered in front of the shining plate-gla.s.s windows, were let down in each house precisely the same depth, as though mathematically measured; and the houses concealed their inner lives very quietly behind the straight, nicely-balanced lace curtains. And this was very characteristic, that above each gable there jutted a flagstaff, held aslant with iron pins, the staff painted a bright red, white and blue--the national colours--as though wound about with ribbons, with a freshly-gilded k.n.o.b at the top. All those flagstaffs--a forest of staffs, with their iron pins, for ever aslant on the gables--waited patiently to hoist their colours, to wave their bunting, twice a year, for the Queen and her mother, the Regent.

Marietje looked out. It was May; and the chestnuts in the gra.s.s-plots tried to outstretch and unfurl their soft, pale-green fans, now folded and bent back against their stalks. But a mad wind whirled through the street, which was like a courtyard of opulence, and the wind scourged the still furled chestnut-fans. The girl looked at them compa.s.sionately as they were whipped to and fro by the wind, the eager young leaves which, full of vernal life and pride of youth, were trying hard to unfold. The tender leaves were full of hope, because yesterday the sun had shone, after the rain, out of a flood-swept sky; and they thought that their leafy days were beginning, their life of leaves budding out from stalk and twig. They did not know that the wind was always at work, lashing, as with angry scourges, with stinging whips; they did not know that their leafy parents had been lashed last year, even as they were now; and, though they loved the wind, upon which they dreamt of floating and waving and being merry and happy, they never expected to be lashed with whips even before they had unfurled all the young bravery of their green.

The wind was pitiless. The wind lashed through the air like one possessed, like a madman that had no feeling: strong in his might and blind in his heartlessness. And the girl's pity went out to the eager leaves, the young, hoping leaves, which she saw shaken and pulled and scourged and driven withered across the street. The blind, all-powerful north-east wind filled the street: the weatherc.o.c.ks spun madly; the iron pins of the flagstaff creaked goutily and painfully; the flagstaffs themselves bent as though they were the masts of a fleet of houses moored in a roadstead of bricks.

The girl looked out into the street. It was a May morning. Standing in front of one house and looking for all the world like sailors on a ship were men dressed in white sailors'-jackets, busy fixing ladders and climbing up them to clean the plate-gla.s.s windows. They swarmed up the ladders, carrying pails of water; and, in the midst of the forest of masts, of the red-white-and-blue flagstaffs, they looked like seamen gaily rigging a ship.