Small Souls Part 34

Along the street went the brightly-painted carts of a laundry, a pastrycook, a b.u.t.ter-factory. Hard behind came loud-voiced hawkers pus.h.i.+ng barrows with oranges and the very first purple-stained strawberries. And the whole economy of eating and drinking of those tidy houses, whose life lay hidden behind their lace curtains, filled the morning street. Butcher-boys prevailed. Each house had a different butcher. Broad and st.u.r.dy, the boys walked along in their clean, white smocks, carrying their wicker baskets of quivering meat held, with a fist at the handle, firmly on shoulder or hip, bending their bodies a little because of the weight; and they rang at all the doors. Sometimes, a couple bicycled swiftly down the street. At all the houses they delivered loads of meat: beefsteaks and rumpsteaks and fillet-steaks and ribs and sirloins of beef and b.a.l.l.s of forced-meat; the maid-servants took the meat in at the front-doors, with an exchange of chaff, and then closed the door again with a bang. The butcher-boys largely prevailed; but the greengrocers, with their barrows arranged with fresh vegetables, were also many in number. The dairy, with its cart filled with polished copper cans, rang at every door; and notable for its ostentatious neatness was a van conveying beer in cans: the driver, who was constantly getting down and ringing, wore a sort of brown shooting-suit, with top-boots and a motor-cap; the cart was painted with earthenware cans swelling out in relief from the panels. A barrel-organ quavered on, playing a very doleful tune: the organ-man ground out a bit of dolefulness, stopped and then pushed on again; his old woman rang at every door, put the coppers she received in her pocket, as if she were collecting so many debts. Each time, the maids, in their lilac-print dresses, appeared at the doors, or leant out and looked from the open windows of the bedrooms, or called out and flung down the rich man's dole of coppers. Domestic economy filled the street, while the wind, the blundering, mighty wind, blew on. A gentleman pa.s.sed on his way to his office, hugging a portfolio. Two girls flew by on bicycles; a lady hurried along on some urgent errand. But, for the rest, there was nothing but the economy of eating and drinking. It filled the street, it rang and rang and rang until all the houses chimed with the ringing. And the houses took in their supplies, the street grew quiet: only the wind blew the young chestnut-leaves to pieces and the flagstaffs groaned on their creaking, gouty pins....

Marietje turned away. She was a pale, fair-haired little thing of sixteen, with pale-blue eyes and a white, bloodless skin. Her hair, brushed off her forehead, was already done up behind into a k.n.o.b. She wore a little pinafore to protect her frock. And now she sat down at the piano and began to tap out her scales.

The room in which Marietje was practising was the drawing-room. It was a fairly large room on the first floor, but it was so terribly crammed with furniture, arranged in studied confusion, with an affectation of elegance, that there was hardly s.p.a.ce to move about or sit. On the backs of all the chairs hung fancy antimaca.s.sars, flattened by the pressure of reclining forms, with faded and crumpled ribbons. On all sorts of little tables stood nameless ornaments: little earthenware dogs and china smelling-bottles, set out as in a tenpenny bazaar. The wall-paper displayed big flowers, the carpet more big flowers, of a different species, while on the curtains blossomed a third kind of flower; and the colours of all these flowers yelled at one another like so many screeching parrots. In the corners of the room rose dusty Makart bouquets, which decorated those same corners year in, year out.

Marietje played her scales in the drawing-room, while the wind howled down the chimney, which smelt of soot after the winter fires.

Conscientiously Marietje played her scales with her stubborn little fingers, constantly making the same mistake, which she did not hear and therefore did not correct, thinking that it was right as it was. Now and then, she looked up through the window: "Poor trees!" thought Marietje.

"Poor leaves! See how the wind's killing them; and they're hardly open yet!..."

She played on, conscientiously, but she dearly wished that she could make the wind stop, to save the leaves, the young chestnut-leaves. She remembered, it was just the same thing last spring. The spring before that, it was the same too. And then, when the chestnut-leaves were at last able to unfurl themselves, in a quiet, windless moment, then they were scorched and shrivelled for the whole summer, for their whole leafy lives. Poor trees! Poor leaves!...

The stubborn fingers went on conscientiously, tapping out the scales and constantly playing that same wrong note with almost comical persistency: ting! The front-door bell was constantly going ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling!

All those noises--the wind: whew, boo! The scales: ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta; ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta. The front-door bell: ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling! The barrel-organs in the street, two going at the same time. The colours indoors: the colours of the wall-paper and curtains and carpet, screeching like parrots. The cries of the costermongers outside: "Strawberrees!... Fine strawberrees!" The rattle of the greengrocers' carts, clattering over the noisy cobble-stones--all these noises rang out together and it was as though the wind defined and accentuated each individual sound, blowing away a mist from each sound, leaving only the rough, resonant kernel of each sound to ring out against the glittering plate-gla.s.s windows, along the goutily-creaking flagstaffs, into this room, where the parrot-colours jabbered aloud....

It blew and rang and screeched and jabbered; and the girl with her continual false note--ting!--heard none of it, but thought only, "Oh, those poor trees! Oh, those poor leaves!" in her gentle little, hypersensitive soul. Used as she was to the wind, the noises and the colours, she saw nothing but the trees, heard nothing but the rustling of the leaves, nor heard her own persistent little false note: ting!

Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling went the bell; and the wind must have rushed through the front-door and up the stairs, for the drawing-room door blew open as lightly as though the great door had been no more than a sheet of note-paper; the maid came pounding up the stairs, the stairs creaked, another door slammed; the maid, at the door, screamed out something loud through the house, loud through the wind, loud through all the sounds and colours; another voice sounded sharply in reply; the maid went pounding down again, the stairs creaked and bang went the door:

"Will you please go upstairs, mevrouw?"

"Come upstairs, Cateau!"

"But am I re-ally not disturb-ing you, Adolph-ine?"

"No, come up."

"What a _wind_, eh, Phi-i-ine? Eh? How it's blow-ing!"

Ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta; ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, went Marietje's scales, as Mamma entered with Aunt Cateau. Whew, boo! blew the wind.

C-r-rack, cr-r-rack! went the flagstaff outside the window....

"Good-morn-ing, Marie-tje. And _tell_ me, Phi-i-ine, was it a reg-ular din-ner?"

"Yes, it was a formal dinner."

"Oh, so they _do_ see peo-ple? And I _thought_ they lived so qui-etly.

We are nev-er asked there; are _you_, Adolph-ine?"

"No, never."

"I do think she might al-so some-times show a little polite-ness to her brothers and sis-ters. We nev-er see peo-ple, as you know, _don't_ you, Adolph-ine? Ka-rel doesn't _care_ for it; he only cares for qui-et. _I_ should rather _like_ it. But it's Ka-rel, you see, who doesn't _care_ for it. And who were there, Adolph-ine?"

"Oh, well, they know n.o.body, so it looked to me rather like a failure.

n.o.body except that Vreeswijck. No doubt, they'd had one or two refusals, for they'd asked Paul to make up the party."

"Oh, _Paul_? No doubt, one or two _must_ have refused!"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, re-ally, Con-stance is ... But then _I_ don't call a din-ner like that a _success_. Do _you_, Adolph-ine?"

"No, I thought it ridiculous. A dinner-party of four!"

"Were the men _dressed_?"

"Yes, dressed."

"And Con-stance? Low-necked?"

"No, not low-necked, but smart as paint. And champagne!"

"Re-ally! Cham-pagne as we-ell?"

"Yes, a cheap brand. And the rooms so dark: I didn't think it respectable. Such a dim light, you know. Quite disreputable, I thought, with those three men," said Adolphine, whispering because of Marietje.

"She can't hear, she's play-ing. Oh, re-ally! And what next?"

"Well, I think, if Constance wants to see people in that sort of way, she could have done so just as well in Brussels. She's supposed to have come here for the family."

"But she doesn't _ask_ the fam-ily. Oh, you mustn't count _us_, Phi-i-ine. We al-ways live ve-ry qui-etly. It's Ka-rel, you see."

"But I feel sure now that she means to get presented at Court."

"Yes, by Vrees-wijck, no doubt. Will he present her to the _Queen?_"

asked Cateau, rounding her owl's eyes.

"Oh, no!" said Adolphine, irritably. "But they mean to push themselves with his a.s.sistance."

"Oh, is _that_ the way it's done? You see, _we_ know no-thing about the _Court_. You wouldn't get Ka-rel to go to _Court_ for any-thing! Not if you _paid_ him! But _now_ it's _quite_ cert-ain."

"Yes, I'm convinced of it now."

"About the _Court?_"

"Yes."

"Oh! Well, I al-ways thought that Con-stance would have too much _tact_ for _that_. And may I have a look at Floortje's trous-seau now, Adolph-ine? She'll be mar-ried _quite_ soon now, _won't_ she? In a week?

Ah! And I al-ways think it so _nice_ to be mar-ried in _May_, don't _you_, Adolph-ine?"

The two sisters' voices whined and snarled, the stairs creaked, the doors slammed. Ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, went the scales. Whew, boo, whew! went the wind, roaring down the sooty chimney. Cr-r-rack!

Cr-r-rack! went the gouty flagstaff. "Strawberrees!... Fine strawberrees!" shouted the costermonger outside. Ting! went Marietje's obstinate false note.

The girl looked up through the window.

"Those poor trees!" thought Marietje. "Oh, those poor leaves!..."