Those were busy days at the Van Naghels, full of all kinds of
excitement. Emilie was to be married in three weeks; and in a fortnight
Van Naghel and Bertha expected their son Otto back from India, with his
young wife and their two children.
Otto had taken his degree early, married and gone to Java at twenty-four
with a billet in the civil service. But he was unable to stay, because
his wife had fallen ill on the day of their arrival at Batavia and she
had been ill ever since. It annoyed Van Naghel to see his son's career
interrupted, even though he was still young and Van Naghel could easily
find him another appointment in Holland. But he had always been against
this match: a delicate Dutch girl, with no money. They would have to
take charge of the children, in Holland; and, though he was well off,
though his wife had some money of her own, though he had his salary as a
minister, it was, all told, scarcely enough for the very expensive
establishment which they kept up: the eldest son on his way home from
India with his wife and two children; two boys, Frans and Henri, who had
been at Leiden for over two years and who were obviously in no hurry to
take their degrees; three girls who were all out, the second of whom was
now going to be married; another boy, of sixteen, and a girl of
fourteen; their _salon_, to gratify Van Naghel's ambition, an official
_salon_, a meeting-place for members of the higher government-circles,
while the diplomatic set just passed through it; so expensive an
establishment, from first to last, that Bertha had to work miracles of
economy to keep things going on fifty thousand guilders, more or less, a
year. And everything was growing dearer: the two boys, Frans and Henri,
cost almost three times as much as Otto had cost; Emilie and Marianne,
of whom the former had been out three years and the other just one, had
much grander ideas, in every way, than Louise, who had been out six; the
boys at Leiden were both to take part in the masque this year; Emilie
was receiving a trousseau that cost three times as much as the one which
Bertha had had in her day from Papa and Mamma van Lowe; Marianne must
have her simplest dresses lined with silk; Karel, the schoolboy, a tall,
thin, weakly lad, but nevertheless a member of all sorts of football-,
cricket- and tennis-clubs, had an allowance for pocket-money that was
positively ridiculous; and Bertha saw tendencies in her youngest girl
that made her anxious for the future. And so, outwardly, it was a great
house full of movement: Papa a minister, the girls presented at Court,
the boys spending money lustily; and, inwardly, there was many a
despondent conversation between Van Naghel and Bertha as to how they
could possibly economize: of course, Otto must be helped first; the
boys, of course, must take their degrees first; the girls, of course,
were bound to go out; and Karel, of course, was obliged to keep up his
football- and cricket-clubs. They might give one dinner less each
winter, but that was really the only thing. And, if the boys, after
taking their degrees, were to cost as much money as Otto was costing
now; if Louise and Marianne also got married and had to have the same
trousseau as Emilie: if it was to go on like that, always and always,
with never a moment for taking breath and saving a little: then they did
not know what they were to do; for, let Bertha calculate as much as she
pleased, the thing was not to be done on fifty thousand guilders a year.
Then, if Van Naghel lost his temper, he reproached Bertha, saying that
it was all her fault, that she was a Van Lowe, that the Van Lowes had
never been able to calculate, that the Van Lowes' own housekeeping had
been run on much too extravagant a scale, in the old days; but Bertha,
blinking her eyes unmoved, reminded him that he owed his career to Papa
van Lowe, to Papa's connections in the years, following upon his term as
governor-general, when he still had a great deal of influence in
Holland; and she showed him her housekeeping-accounts, in which she had
carefully made the different entries, telling him that, if he absolutely
insisted upon living on the scale they did, it could not be done for
less, with the best will in the world.... And, seeing no way out of it,
they made friends again and did not mention the subject of money for
another month; and, outwardly, it was the regular household of a
minister of state, full of solid Dutch comfort, with a tinge of
modernity superadded: the children very much up-to-date, but the
parents, nevertheless, sensible people of weight and distinction, quite
aware how far they themselves could go and how far they could let the
children go. The real position was not even suspected by a soul. Bertha
never spoke to anybody, not even to her mother, of anything that had the
faintest connection with money. To their relations and friends, the
house in the Bezuidenhout spread its broad front with such an air of
solid dignity, the staircases, the drawing-rooms and dining-room with
their stately, handsome furniture, the children's rooms--more modern in
style, but still with no flimsy affectation of tawdry elegance--all made
so great an impression of imperishable prosperity that no one could ever
have suspected that the two parents sometimes sat reckoning up for hours
at a time to see whether they could reduce their expenses by as much as
a thousand guilders that month. In this house of theirs, notwithstanding
all the bustle, the dinners, the approaching wedding, the approaching
home-coming of the eldest son, for whom a set of rooms was being
prepared on the top floor, everything seemed to go so methodically,
without any trouble--busily, it is true, but quite harmoniously--that no
one would ever have suspected the least difficulty. Mamma van Lowe was
constantly at Bertha's during these days and even neglected Constance a
little; but she loved this bustle: the alterations on the top floor; the
fuss about the trousseau; the rehearsals of the wedding-theatricals; the
long tables to be laid, the flowers to be arranged, the visits to be
discussed; dresses brought home; the undergraduates constantly at the
Hague, noisy, merry and young: the old woman loved all this; it reminded
her of her own house in the old days; it was like a repetition of her
young life: only, she thought, she herself had often worried about
money, even though Van Lowe had been able to save during his term as
governor-general, and Bertha was so entirely without financial cares!
How delightful that was! And she, as the grandmother, also interested
herself in Emilie's trousseau; she gave her advice and never thought
about money; she slowly climbed the stairs to the top floor, to see the
nursery which had been got ready for her two great-grandchildren on the
way home from India, proud of that fourth generation, delighting in that
large family, that busy household, all that movement, which she missed
so greatly in her own house, where her quiet life was interrupted only
by those family-gatherings every Sunday evening. Yes, she loved being
with Van Naghel and Bertha; she loved to see her son-in-law take a
prominent place in society, as her husband had done in his time; she
loved the solid, dignified, official house; and the modernity of the
children, although now and again she would shake her head in
disapproval, made her smile for all that, because she thought that
people must go with the times and that Van Naghel and Bertha were very
sensible not to hold the reins too tightly. It was true, there were
manners which she did not like: that going out of young girls alone,
letting themselves in at night with their latch-keys; but then it was
only to a few personal friends, said Bertha, and it was impossible to
make other arrangements. Yes, the old woman loved being here, in the
house of her eldest daughter; and, though she cared for all her
children, because they were her children, she felt more in her element
at Bertha's than in the comfortable, middle-class, selfish house of
Karel and Cateau, whom she blamed for having no children; and, though,
she also liked Gerrit and Adeline's younger household, with the children
ranging from eight years down to ten months, a troop of fair-haired
mites, things were too simple and everyday for her there, did not remind
her of her ancient splendours; she could not stand Gerrit sometimes,
when he made fun of his old mother for mentioning, quite casually, that
she had met the Russian envoy at Bertha's. And going to Adolphine and
Van Saetzema's always vexed her: it was as though she did not recognize
her child in Adolphine, with her badly-arranged, common house and
Adolphine so bitter and so envious and jealous of Bertha, especially now
that Floortje was engaged and her trousseau, of course, could not be as
fine as Emilie's. Yes, she went to Adolphine's and discussed the
trousseau there also, but she did not care about it: not because it was
simple--a trousseau could be very nice in spite of that--but because
Adolphine was always so spiteful, with her perpetual "Yes, that's good
enough for us; but, of course, at Bertha's!..." She felt herself a
mother to all her children--had she a favourite? She thought not--but
she was very fond of going to Bertha's, because she found her own past
there.
And what the old woman loved above all things in Bertha's house was the
mutual sympathy, the family-affection which she had always fostered in
her own house, which she still fostered, thanks to the institution of
those Sunday evenings, to keep the children together at all costs. Yes,
in Van Naghel and Bertha that sentiment, that constant thought for the
children was very strong; and there was one thing which Mamma van Lowe
had not done and which Bertha was doing, which was to receive the son
again, after he had once left the house, now that he was returning with
a sick wife and two little children. It touched her: oh, how good they
were to their tribe; and what a thousand pities that that little
doll-wife was so ill! And the children, too, had that same
family-affection among themselves. Otto had always kept up a busy
correspondence with his eldest sister, Louise, who was twenty-five and
came next to him in age; the two Leiden boys were exceedingly nice to
their three fashionable little sisters and Henri was even a little bit
jealous because Emilie was engaged; only Karel was perhaps rather too
much out of doors and away from the family-circle for so young a boy,
with all his clubs and his importance; and, because of that, Marietje,
the youngest girl, of fourteen, was left a good deal alone. And yet they
all liked Marietje: her big brothers, the other girls.... Yes, that was
the charming thing with all those children: the family-affection, the
fondness for one another, the pride in the names of Van Lowe and Van
Naghel, the refusal to suffer any outsider to say a word against a
member of the family, even though criticism was not spared within the
home itself. But that any acquaintance should dare to reflect upon a
member of the family, that they would none of them permit. They had felt
that fondness, that tenderness, even for Constance, because she was a
sister. And the old lady remembered, in so far as concerned Constance,
the philosophical reflexions of her youngest son, Paul; the trouble
which Dorine had taken to assemble all the brothers and sisters on that
first Sunday-evening; the ready compliance of all her children, for, out
of respect to her, none of them had criticized that erring sister in
front of her. She saw it in all of them: the family-affection for one
another. They all felt themselves to be brothers and sisters; they stood
up for one another, even though there were differences of opinion
sometimes and even jealousy; they felt united within the family-circle.
That was the crowning glory of her old age, as a mother and grandmother.
It represented to her a beautiful idea, a natural ideal, an illusion
attained: a comfort for the peaceful declining years of the lonely woman
in her big house. That she preferred to be lonely in her big house and
would not have Dorine, nor Ernst, nor Paul to live with her was an
eccentricity which in no way detracted from her cult of the beautiful
idea, from her perfect happiness at seeing the ideal realized, the
illusion attained. She had a happy old age. She had also had much sorrow
in her big household, in spite of all her splendour, but not more than
her natural share: money-troubles, because neither Van Lowe nor she was
economical; two children lost, one after the other; while Constance'
false step was certainly a very heavy blow, under which she suspected
that Van Lowe had really succumbed, suffering silently and incessantly
because of the grief which his favourite daughter had caused him.... But
she, though she too had suffered, had shown greater elasticity, had not
counted all that sorrow for more than her human lot, such as might
befall any large household. And that she now, in her extreme old age,
had all her children gathered about her in the same town, in a close
family-circle, in an affectionate family-life: this she considered a
great happiness; she thanked God for it. She had no more religion of the
church-going kind than was held to be correct in her circle, which was
very different from the orthodox Calvinistic circle of a few old Hague
families; but she was grateful to God in her heart. She thanked God for
her happiness, for her happy old age. All was well, now that she had
Constance back also, back with the others at the Hague. Next to
Buitenzorg, the Hague had always been to her the ideal place of
residence. The Court was there; and her husband had taught her to love
splendour. There was an atmosphere of official eminence in their circle
in which she took pleasure as in an element that had become natural to
her and in which Van Naghel and Bertha also had attained their
distinction and their high position. Karel had returned to the Hague,
after burgomastering elsewhere; and in him she had her son back again,
although, in her secret heart, she did not like Cateau. Gerrit, who had
been a subaltern at Deventer and Venlo, was now a captain at the Hague.
And the other children had never left the Hague; she had always been
able to keep them round her.
She was happy and she was not unthankful. She was even thankful that
Otto was returning--although the reason, his wife's illness, was a sad
one--because she would see her great-grandchildren. They were her first;
she felt a new joy because of them, an unknown emotion. She had felt
something like it when Otto himself was born, her first grandchild; but
now that feeling was almost more intense, perhaps because it was a
fourth generation, a continuation of the family, even though they were
Van Naghels and not Van Lowes. She was a woman: she did not care so much
about the name. Bertha was her daughter, Otto her grandson, his children
her grandchildren. She traced them back in this way to herself and the
sound of the name mattered less to her. They were her children, her
grandchildren, her great-grandchildren; and she loved them all, with one
great love, with a clannish love. That she lived alone in her big house
was because she was old and could bear bustle only when it was expected,
when she could prepare for it. The Sunday evenings were bustling, but
they did not tire her. But to have Paul or Dorine living with her, to be
for ever hearing them going in and out would have worked on her nerves.
She wandered daily through all the rooms of the big house to see if
everything was tidy and in its place. Dorine was slovenly; and Paul was
anything but easy to get on with; and Ernst, with his collection of
curiosities, she would never be able to have with her, because she was
afraid of all the microbes that hang about those old things. But
nevertheless she loved them all and she was glad that they lived at the
Hague and that she saw them regularly. She was like that and no
otherwise.
And she now came every day to Bertha's, waiting for Otto and his
children, until Constance grew jealous and reproached her, saying that
she never came to her new house near the Woods.