Small Souls Part 36

"No, Gerrit. Van Naghel, do you know who those two people are: that stout gentleman and that tall lady?"

"Yes, Mamma: it's Bruys and his wife. He's the editor of the _Fonograaf:_ very respectable people, Mamma...."

"My dear Van Naghel!..."

Utterly perplexed, the old lady pa.s.sed on, leaning on Van Naghel's arm....

Constance had overheard the comments of the family upon Adolphine's friends. She herself, newcomer that she now was in Hague society, was not so greatly struck by the fact that Adolphine's guests consisted of all sorts of dissimilar elements: she had sometimes at Rome had to suffer incongruous elements at her big receptions and she had often found, abroad, that it was possible for witty, polished, cultured people to exist, even though they did not belong to her set. Then again she considered that, at a wedding-party, which was attended by relations'

relations and friends' friends, it was almost inevitable that the guests were sometimes entirely unknown to one another: wasn't it the same at Bertha's party? Yes, Bertha had given two evening-parties, in order to separate the elements; but hadn't the family found fault with this? Was there nothing but fault-finding and criticizing in the family; and did none think right what another did? Gerrit and Paul were now sitting beside her; and she heard them talking, condemning, criticizing, ridiculing.

"Poor, dear Mother: she's quite bewildered!"

"I say, Paul, are you allowing yourself to be introduced to Dijkerhof's uncles and aunts?"

"I'm not going to be introduced to another soul," said Paul, wearily blinking his eyes. "I'm here to make studies. The only way to amuse yourself in a Noah's ark like this party of Adolphine's is to make studies of the animal side of mankind. Look at Mrs. Bruys eating her cake with an almost animal satisfaction. Look at that uncle of Dijkerhof's dancing with Van Saetzema's cousin: it's almost disgusting."

"Paul," said Constance, "I've known you wittier than you are to-night."

"My dear sister, I feel myself growing dull here. The figures and colours swarm before my eyes so hideously as really to cause me physical pain. My G.o.d, the charm of our modern life, the charm at an evening-party of Adolphine's: where is it, where is it?"

"It's gone, it's gone!" Gerrit noisily declaimed. "Adolphine's charm is gone!"

"I don't think either of you at all nice!" Constance broke in, irritably. "Tell me, my dear brothers, is this irony, this fault-finding tone, usual among us? Has it become a custom for the brothers and sisters to carp and cavil at one another--and even for Mamma to cavil at her children--as I have heard you all do to-night? Does each of us criticize the other in a general cross-fire of criticism? I heard something of the kind at Bertha's party; but is there really nothing good here to-night? I feel bound to tell you I think you very petty, provincial, narrow-minded and cliquey: even you, Paul, for all your philosophy! You, Gerrit, are afraid of demeaning yourself by allowing yourself to be introduced to a few of Dijkerhof's uncles and aunts, whom perhaps you won't see three times again as long as you live; and, as for you, Paul, why are you so spiteful in your comments on absolute strangers who don't eat a cake in the exact way which you approve of? I think Uncle Ruyvenaer ridiculous: he's not particularly well-bred himself and he sneers at the breeding of Van Saetzema's friends; I think Cateau ridiculous: she hasn't the faintest pretensions to smartness, though her clothes may be good and substantial, and she criticizes Adolphine's smartness...."

"O dear, gentle soul!" said Paul, affectedly, and took Constance' hand.

"O proud and n.o.ble one! O heroine in a sacred cause! You are a revelation to me! How broad are the principles which you proclaim, how great your tolerance! It is terrible! Only you, you dear, gentle soul, are not so sparing of the criticism which you criticize in us."

"Very well, I criticized you, for once; but you're criticizing others everlastingly."

"No, not quite; but we're only very small people and we think it fun to pa.s.s remarks on others," said Gerrit.

"I am a very small person, like yourselves. I have never met big people, in our 'set,'" said Constance, with a sneer. "What is any one in our set _but_ small?"

"Good!" said Paul. "Well done! You got that from me. But proceed, my fond disciple!"

"I am frightened!" said Constance, earnestly. "You think I am only just exciting myself a little, but I'm frightened, I'm simply frightened. I hear so much criticism from the mouths of my relations on every side, criticism on a dress, on an evening-party, on a couple of utter strangers who happen to be friends of my sister's, that I am frightened of the criticism of my relations concerning myself, myself in whom there is so much to criticize."

"Come, Sis!" said Gerrit, good-naturedly, restlessly stretching out his long legs.

"Mayn't I speak out my mind, to my brothers?" asked Constance. "Have I come back to the Hague and to all of you, after being away for years, to behave as though nothing had happened to separate me from all of you who are dear to me?"

"O tender one!" said Paul. "Hearken unto the words of wisdom of your younger brother! You're afraid of criticism, because you fear that, where so much criticism is pa.s.sed, in such a hot-bed of criticism as our family, you yourself will not escape a severe judgment. But let me tell you now that you don't know humanity, the humanity of small people.

Small people criticize--because they think it fun, as Gerrit says--criticize a dress, or an evening-party, but they never criticize life. To begin with, they're afraid to: small people are interested only in what is not serious, in what is really not worth while."

"I don't believe you," said Constance. "That's a clever phrase, Paul, and nothing more. I am becoming distrustful. When I hear so much criticizing--even from Mamma--on Adolphine, I ask myself, 'What will my mother, what will my brothers and sisters find to say of me?...' Oh, perhaps it can't be helped; perhaps everything is insincere, in our set!"

"But not in our family," said Gerrit.

"You say that, Gerrit, with a nice sound in your voice."

"The captain of hussars with the nice sound in his voice!" said Paul.

"You silly boy! Be serious for a moment, if you can! I am frightened, I am frightened. Honestly, it makes me nervous. Perhaps I did wrong, perhaps I ought not to have come back here, to the Hague, among all of you...."

"Are you so disappointed in your brothers and sisters?" asked Gerrit.

"I am not complaining on my own behalf now, I am complaining on behalf of Adolphine. I think you others are not tolerant enough of anything that does not appeal to your taste. That's all. I am not complaining as far as I'm concerned. You have all received me very nicely; only, I am frightened. I'm frightened, I'm frightened.... Tell me, is it possible that there should be a strong family-feeling, a mutual kindliness, when the daily criticism is so inexorable?"

"The daily criticism in the family: what a good t.i.tle for an essay!"

"Paul, do be serious!"

"My dear Connie, you know I can't. Alas, I can only be serious when I am holding forth myself!"

"Well, then, I'll let you talk...."

"That's generous of you. My Connie, you must remember this--it's a cruel law in our social life--that parents care much for their children, but children less for their parents; that the family-bonds become still looser between brothers and sisters; and that those bonds gradually become wholly loosened between uncles and aunts and nephews and nieces and cousins. Family-life may have existed in the days of the old patriarchs, who went into the wilderness with sons and daughters and herds, but it has ceased to exist in our modern days. At Gerrit's, although he has no herds, a little bit of it may still exist, because his children are very many and very small. But, when children are a little bigger, they want to stretch their wings; and then the family-bonds get loosened. If children marry, then each child has his own family--for so long as it lasts--and his own interests; and the bonds that bound together the patriarchal family of the desert flap lightly in the wind. Now how can you expect criticism, the greatest and cheapest 'fun' that man can have at his fellow-man's expense, not to be directed at relations, when the word 'relation' is really only a synonym for 'stranger'? There is no such thing as the family in modern society.

Each man is himself. But in natures such as yours and Mamma's there remains something nice and atavistic that belongs to the patriarchal family of the desert: you would like to see the family exist, with family-love, love of parents for children and children for parents, of brothers and sisters and even nephews and nieces and uncles and aunts and cousins. Mamma, who has a simple nature, has inst.i.tuted, for the satisfying of that feeling, a weekly evening at which we, who are related by blood but not by interest, meet out of deference for an old woman whom we do not want to grieve, whom we wish to leave in her illusion. You, my n.o.ble, gentle one, with your more complex character, feel a more powerful yearning for the old patriarchal life of the desert, especially after the sorrow and loneliness which you have known in your life. And you come to the Hague, with your pastoral ideas, to find yourself in the midst of polished cannibals, who rend one another daily into tiny pieces and eat one another up with their family-criticism. That your gentle nature should be shocked at the spectacle was only to be expected."

"So we are all strangers to one another," said Constance; and a chilly feeling pa.s.sed over her, a melancholy rose within her at the sound of those words of Paul's, half banter, half earnest. "We are strangers to one another. That feeling which I felt to be deep and true within myself, when I was abroad, and which drove me back to my family and my country is what you call atavistic and has no reason for existence, since we no longer live in Mosaic times. So we are strangers to one another, we who, for Mamma's sake, continue to greet one another as relations once a week, at her Sundays, because otherwise we should give her pain; and my longing for you all, whom I had not seen for twenty years, my yearning for you, which brought me back to my own country, was no more than an illusion, a phantom?..."

"Well, Connie, perhaps I was cruel; but, really, you are so pastoral!

Country, native country! My dear child, what beautiful phrases: how well you remember your Dutch! I have forgotten the very words."

"Sis, dear," Gerrit interrupted, "don't listen to the fellow: he's talking nonsense. He denies everything because he loves to hear himself speak and because he is a humbug: to-morrow he will be defending the country and the family just as he is demolishing then to-night, No, Sis, believe me, there are such things as family and one's native country."

"Listen to the captain, the defender of his country, with the nice sound in his voice!"

"There is such a thing as family. Not only with me, because my children are still young, as Paul has been trying to explain, but everywhere, everywhere. I feel that you are my sister, even though I didn't see you for twenty years. I did not recognize you at once, perhaps; perhaps I have not quite got you back yet: when I think of Constance, I always think of my little sister who used to play in the river at Buitenzorg...."

"Oh, Gerrit, don't begin about my bare feet again!" said Constance, raising her finger.

"But I feel that you are not a stranger, that there is a bond between us, a relationship, something almost mystical...."

"Oh, I say, what a poetic captain of hussars!" cried Paul. "Once he lets himself go...!"

"And country, one's native country," Gerrit continued, impetuously, "there is such a thing as one's country: I feel it in me, Paul, you sceptic and philosopher, old before your time; I feel it in me, not as something poetical and mystical, my boy, like the family-feeling, but as something quite simple, when I ride at the head of my squadron; I feel it as something big and primitive and not at all complex, when I escort my Queen; I feel that there exists for me a land where I was born, out of which I have grown...."

"Adelientje!" Paul beckoned. "Do come here, Adelientje! Your husband is so poetic, you must really listen to him."

The fair-haired little mother came up.

"I feel that, if any one says anything about Holland, about my native land, criticizes it, speaks a disrespectful word of my sovereign, I feel something here, here, in my breast...."

"Adelientje, do listen! Your husband is not an orator, but still he feels that he feels something; in short, he feels! Loud cheers for the captain of hussars with the soft note in his voice and the mystic feelings!"

"Gerrit, they're teasing you!" said Adeline.