Small Souls Part 9

"Does she?" asked Constance. "But she has to consider the cost of things, hasn't she?"

"I have only two dress-es every year; but those are re-ally good."

"And will Van der Welcke be here soon?" asked Karel.

"On Tuesday. Then we shall look round for a house. I do think it so delightful to be back at the Hague, among all of you. I see Mamma every day. Yesterday, I was at Bertha's: a busy household, isn't it? I came plump into the middle of all sorts of rehearsals, for the wedding. And I was at Gerrit's: Adeline is a dear; and oh, how I laughed, how I laughed! What a lot of children! I can't tell them one from the other yet. But how charming and delightful, that fair-haired little woman, with that fair-haired little troop; and she's expecting another baby this summer! And Dorine is nice too.... Oh, you don't know, you don't know how glad I am to see you all! We are a big family and life at the Hague is so busy.... Look at Bertha.... And Gerrit and Adeline too are busy with their little troop.... But I do hope to take my place among you all again. It is so long since I saw you all! Ah, I didn't want to force things! Mamma did come to see me twice in Brussels. But my brothers and sisters ... No, it wasn't kind of you! But I daresay it had to be! Things were as they were! You couldn't very well respect me, you had to disown me, it couldn't be helped!... I suffered tortures, all those years! I never had any one to talk to, except him, my little son!

It wasn't right of Mamma, was it, Addie, to be always talking to you?

But I couldn't speak out to Henri, to Van der Welcke. Oh, we are very good friends, quite good friends!... I can't tell you how, all of a sudden, I longed for the Hague, for my family, for the people I used to know, for all of you, for everything! I always wrote to Mamma regularly; and Mamma gave me all the news, sent me the photographs of my little nephews and nieces. And yet my brain's whirling, now that I am seeing you all. There are such a lot of us: I don't think there can be many families as big as ours. Bertha's alone is a big household.... Fancy Bertha a grandmother!... It's dreadful, how old we're growing! I am forty-two! Oh, I couldn't have gone on living in Brussels! We had no one left there: our friends were scattered, gone away. Van der Welcke, too, was beginning to long for Holland, for Addie's sake as well as his own.

Addie speaks very good Dutch, though: I always made him keep it up. He has a bit of a Flemish accent, perhaps: what do you think, Addie?... We had a Flemish servant.... Oh, what a lot I have to tell you!" she laughed, happily. "Nothing interesting, you know, but I feel as if I must tell you everything, talk and talk and talk to you, to all of you, my brothers, my sisters!" She suddenly got up. "Karel, do you remember, in India, how we used to play in the river, behind the Palace; how we walked on those great stone boulders, you and I and Gerrit? We three always played together. Yes, Bertha had been married a year or two, while we were still children. Is Bertha fifty yet? She's quite grey! I'm going grey myself!... Dear Bertha!... And Louis and Gertrude, who died at Buitenzorg.... Do you remember, Karel? It was we three who were always together. You used to carry me over the water on your back. How naughty we were! I was quite thirteen or fourteen, at that time.... And things are so funny, in India: next year, I was in long frocks and going to the b.a.l.l.s.... I thought it delightful, all that grandeur: the aides-de-camp; the national anthem wherever we went: I used to imagine that they played it for me, the viceroy's little daughter!... Yes, Van Naghel was at the bar then, at Semarang; Bertha didn't come in for any of it.... Oh, it's past now, my vanity! That shows you how a person changes. You are changed, too, Karel: you have become so sedate, so dignified. What a pity you are no longer a burgomaster: you're cut out for it, Karel!"

She tried to speak lightly, suddenly feeling that she was talking too much about herself, letting herself go, while Karel and Cateau sat staring at her. And yet she cared for them: was not Karel her brother, who had always been bracketed with Gerrit in her childhood memories, and was not Cateau his wife, though she had not a sympathetic face, with those great round eyes of hers? Were they not members of the family, for which she had longed so? She tried to speak playfully, after her all-too-spontaneous outpouring; but she suddenly felt that this was out of tune too. She felt that, after all, she had not seen her brother for twenty years, not since the day of her marriage to De Staffelaer, and that they had become as utter strangers to each other. She felt that she did not know Cateau at all. And so, though Karel and Cateau were her brother and sister, they were also strangers. But that was just what she did not want: she wanted to win them all, the whole family; to feel that they were all warm-hearted and indulgent towards her.... And she spoke of Mamma, of the Sunday evenings, of Mamma's mania for the family, which she herself now felt so strongly, intensified as it had been in those lonely, joyless Brussels years. She asked their advice about taking a house at the Hague.

"The best thing you can do is to consult an estate-agent," said Karel.

"There's one close by; he'll know about all the houses to let."

"It will be difficult to find the right thing," said Constance. "We had a pretty flat at Brussels; and I really prefer a flat to a house. But there aren't any in Holland."

"Oh, Con-stance!" said Cateau, round-eyed. "Don't you find a flat ve-ry stuff-y?"

"Not at all; and I love to have everything on one floor. I don't care for maids running up and down the stairs."

"Yes, but the place _must_ be kept _clean_."

"Well, it was.... Only, in a flat, abroad, the bell doesn't keep ringing as it does at one's front-door in Holland. The cook goes to market in the morning...."

"And does she just buy ev-erything?"

"She buys enough for a couple of days: vegetables and eggs and whatever she wants."

"Do you leave that to the _cook_?"

"Oh, yes! Imagine if I didn't!" laughed Constance. "She simply couldn't understand it! I used only to give her a few instructions."

"Well, I _must_ say that I don't think that at _all_ a prop-er way of house-keeping!... Do _you_, Kar-el?"

"It's the way of the country," growled Karel, under his breath. "Were you thinking of looking for a house in one of the new districts, Duinoord, for instance?"

"I'd rather not be so far from all of you."

"Dear Con-stance!" laughed Cateau, with her round face. "But we _all_ live more or less _far_ from one ano-ther!"

There was a knock at the door: the porter showed Adolphine in.

"Ah, Adolphine! How nice of you to come, all the more as we are to meet at Mamma's this evening. You're a good sister." And she kissed Adolphine. "This is my boy. I brought him to see you the other day, but you were out."

"How d'ye do, Aunt?" said Addie, stiffly.

"Forgive the muddle, Adolphine. I was just unpacking my trunks."

"We ought re-ally to be go-ing on, Ka-rel."

"Are you going so soon?"

"Yes, it's rain-ing so; and the brougham is getting so we-et."

"Constance," said Karel. "Did you say that Van der Welcke would be here on Tuesday?"

"I expect so."

"Well, then, give him my kind regards and ... and would you give him my card? Then that'll be all right."

He took a visiting-card from his pocket-book and laid it on a corner of the console-table. Constance looked at him in momentary perplexity. She could not speak for a second or two, did not understand. She herself had been brought up and had lived according to very punctilious rules of card-leaving; but yet she failed to understand how one brother-in-law could leave a card on another brother-in-law, before that other was in town and during a visit paid in his sister's bedroom, amid all the muddle of her unpacked trunks. But she had been so long away from Holland and the Hague; she did not wish it to appear that she did not understand; and, as a woman of the world, she did not, above all, wish it to appear that she thought Karel's performance with the card not only stiff, but intensely vulgar.

She said, with a gentle smile.

"Thank you, Karel. Van de Welcke will appreciate your call greatly."

Her voice sounded friendly and natural; and neither Karel nor Cateau had any idea that Constance had controlled herself as she had sometimes had to control herself in Rome, in a diplomatic _salon_ full of intrigue and polished envy.

In the brougham, Cateau said:

"You did that very clev-erly, Ka-rel, with that card...."

"Yes, I thought it the best way," said Karel, in a burgomasterly manner.

CHAPTER VI

Adolphine looked enviously around her. What a lot Constance must spend on her clothes; and it was not as if they were well off either, for all they had to live on was an allowance from Papa and Mamma van der Welcke, the money which Constance had inherited from her father and the little that Van der Welcke could sc.r.a.pe together at Brussels, as a wine- and insurance-agent. Nothing to speak of, all told: that Adolphine knew for a fact. She admired in particular a magnificent fur bolero and wondered what two kinds of fur it was made of; but she said nothing: she never praised anything in another, not his raiment, nor his intellect, nor his virtues. Even if she had had anything to gain by it, she could never have brought herself to say:

"Constance, what a pretty bolero that is!"

But, pale with envy, she kept looking at the fur as it hung over a chair; and the sight of it caused her almost physical pain, because it was not hers and she did not know how one like it ever could be hers.

Constance was rather tired. First, she had been unpacking trunks with Addie; then Karel and Cateau had come and she had talked copiously in the pleasure and excitement of seeing them. But that visiting-card of Karel's had depressed her; and now she talked listlessly:

"So your girl is going to be married soon, Adolphine?"

"In May."

"I haven't seen either of them since Sunday. A couple of days ago, I found their cards and Dijkerhof's. How quickly a week pa.s.ses! I didn't find any of you at home either."

"We are so busy shopping all day long, for the trousseau."

"Is Dijkerhof a nice fellow?"