Constance was in her bedroom one morning, arranging all sorts of things,
when the servant came and said:
"Mrs. van Saetzema is here, ma'am."
Constance' eyelashes trembled and her lips contracted. She would have
liked to make an excuse, to say that she was not at home; but she
refrained because of the maid:
"Very well, Truitje; ask her to come up."
Adolphine came upstairs noisily, with elaborate gaiety:
"Good-morning, Constance, how are you? We hardly ever see you now. I
say, have you been ill?"
"No."
"You are not looking well. Why is it so dark in here?"
"Dark?"
"Yes, I should feel stifled in a light like this. Oh, of course, it's
the trees opposite! They take away all the light. My goodness, this is a
gloomy house of yours I Aren't your husband and boy back yet?"
"No."
"I say, why didn't you go with them?"
"For no special reason."
"They're a very particular old couple, aren't they, that father and
mother of your husband's? Whatever are you doing?"
"I'm tidying up my cupboard."
"You'd do better to go for a walk: you're looking so pale."
"But I'm perfectly well."
"I've come to ask if you'll come to dinner at my house the day after
to-morrow. But you must make yourself smart. We shall be fourteen. My
first dinner-party. It's a summer dinner. But we know such an awful lot
of people; and I always begin my dinners very early. You see, it's quite
plain, at my place, but jolly. Bertha doesn't begin till January; but
she works everything out so closely. I like doing things handsomely. So
it's settled, isn't it: you'll come?"
"I'm sorry, Adolphine. It's very nice of you to ask me, but I can't
come."
"Why not?"
"I don't know your friends. And I don't care about going out."
"Oh!" said Adolphine, nettled. "I suppose my friends are not smart
enough for you? I can tell you, I have the Hijdrechts coming and the
Erkenbouts and the...."
"I'm not saying anything about your friends, but I don't care for
dinner-parties."
"And you give them yourself!"
"I?"
"Yes, as I saw for myself not so long ago."
"I don't give dinner-parties. I have Van Vreeswijck to dinner now and
again."
"To dinner ... with pink candles on the table?"
"Yes, with pink candles."
"Well, if you don't want to come ... this is a free country...."
"Fortunately!"
"You're rather upset this morning, aren't you?"
"Not at all."
"Is it just because our boys had a fight? You've adopted quite a
different tone to me since: I've noticed. _I_ can't help it if boys
choose to fight."
"Adolphine, don't let us talk of matters that can make us say things
which we might regret."
But Adolphine was angry because Constance had refused to come to her
dinner. Her invitations had all gone wrong and she wanted Constance;
also, she thought that Constance did not value the invitation; also, she
thought Constance a snob, with that everlasting Vreeswijck of hers, that
Court man....
"Regret?" she said, coldly. "I never say anything that I have to regret.
But I can't help it if people at the Hague are saying unpleasant things
about us all just now!"
And, working herself into a state of nervous excitement, she tried to
cry, in order to make Constance, who was so unkind, feel, once and for
all, that not only she, Adolphine, but the whole family had to suffer no
end of pain because of Constance. And she managed to get the tears into
her eyes and squeezed them out.
But Constance remained indifferent:
"What sort of things?" she asked.
"What sort of things?" snapped Adolphine, furiously, crying with temper,
offended at the refusal, forgetting all the nice things that Constance
had said about Floortje's trousseau, hating her sister at the moment.
"What sort of things? That you are not Papa's daughter!"
"That I...?"
"That you are not Papa's daughter!" shrieked the other, getting more
excited at every word, deliberately screwing herself up into a frenzy of
nerves. "They're slandering Mamma, they're slandering Mamma! Yes,
they're saying that you're not Papa's daughter!"
Constance shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, what do you say to it?" demanded Adolphine.
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Nothing?" cried Adolphine, beside herself because Constance
remained so cool at such a revelation. "Nothing? Oh, I expect you're
accustomed to have people talking about you. Well, I'm not, d'you see? I
have always been used to decency and respectability in my circle, among
my friends. No one ever talked about us before. No one ever said that
_I_ wasn't Papa's daughter...."
"You can't tell. There's time yet!" said Constance.
"Yes, you don't care!" Adolphine blubbered, furiously. "You, with your
stuck-up coolness, you're so eaten up with conceit that you don't take
anything to heart. I'm not like that. I'm sensitive, I'm easily
affected, it hurts me when people talk about us. But then I'm not used
to it as you are!"
And Adolphine kept squeezing the tears out of her eyes, wishing to
convey that she was misunderstood and misjudged and very sensitive;
wishing also to make Constance feel that it was Constance' fault and
that there was plenty more that was Constance' fault. Constance,
however, remained cool.
Though a single unfortunate word from her husband was enough to set her
nerves on edge and her temper seething, she kept calm and cold towards
her sister, because, after the fight between their boys, she had settled
accounts with Adolphine, written her off as it were; and this feeling
had depressed her too much to allow her now to excite herself into a
quarrel. She wondered if she was overdoing it; and, to settle the
matter, she said:
"I confess that I have never had such an experience of backbiting as
here, at the Hague; in Brussels, at any rate, no one ever doubted the
legitimacy of my child. But here--and even in your house,
Adolphine--people seem to think that he is not my husband's son."
"How can I help that?" Adolphine began to blubber.
"No, you can't help it; at least I'm prepared to believe you can't. But
I did hope that, if any one in your house spoke unkindly of your sister,
you would have stood up for her, against your children, who perhaps did
not quite realize all the mischief which their words might cause.... Let
me finish, Adolphine: I am quite calm and I want to tell you this
calmly.... If Addie had dared to speak of you in my presence as your
children must have spoken of me, I should have been very severe with
him. I was under the illusion that I might expect as much from you. I
thought that there was still a family-bond, a family-affection, a
family-pride among all of us; I thought that there was a mutual sympathy
among us great enough, even though there was an appearance of truth in
people's slanders, for that sympathy and pride to excuse and protect and
defend the one who was slandered. The things that can be said about me
are no secret. They are a matter of general knowledge; and I carry the
punishment for my sin about with me as a burden on my life. But I have
nothing more to reproach myself with than what is known as a fact. Don't
think that I am making light of it. I only say that that is all there
is. I should have thought that you would have known this, that you would
have believed this, even if I had never told you. Addie is Van der
Welcke's son as surely as I am Papa's daughter. What people like to
invent besides is no concern of mine. I can't even understand why they
care to invent at all, when I have already given them so much that is
true to discuss. But it was a great disappointment to me, Adolphine, to
find that those lies could be countenanced for a moment in your house."
Adolphine, seeing that her pumped-up tears were making no impression,
had time to recover herself while Constance was speaking. Inwardly
furious, but superficially calm, she now said, spitefully, in a tone of
sisterly reproof:
"You must have expected some disappointment on returning to the Hague?"
"Perhaps, but not this disappointment ... if you had had any affection
for me."
"Come, Constance, it's not as if I wasn't fond of you. But it might have
been better if you had not come back."
"It's a little late to speak of that now, Adolphine: I'm here and I mean
to stay. When I wrote to Mamma six months ago...."
"Mamma is a mother."
"I thought that you were a sister."
"I am not the only one."
"I hope that the others feel more affection for me and more indulgence
than you do."
"Bertha was against your coming. So was Karel."
"I thank you for telling me; but, as I said, it is too late now."
"Gerrit and the others don't count, because they don't see people.
Bertha and Karel and I have our family, our friends."
"And I compromise you in their eyes, do I?"
"Your coming here raked up a heap of things which had been long
forgotten. And I know as a fact that your father- and mother-in-law were
against it."
"You seem to know a great deal; and I am glad that you are so frank."
"I am always frank."
"And so irreproachable."
"I could never have done what you did, never."
"I am so glad that you came to see me this morning, Adolphine. And that
we have had this quiet talk."
"If you had written to me at the time and asked my advice, instead of
writing to Mamma only, I should have told you my opinion quietly," said
Adolphine, with a touch of sadness in her voice. "I should have
recommended you, as a sister, for your own sake, not to come back to the
Hague. You have become quite unsuited for Holland, for the Hague and for
living among your family. Everything in your ideas, in your home life,
in your way of bringing up your son clashes with our Dutch notions of
what is right and decent and proper. I'm not saying this angrily, you
know, Constance: I'm saying it calmly, very calmly. I daresay that is
best. You dress yourself as no Dutchwoman of your age would think of
doing. The fact that you have no one to your house except a friend of
your husband's causes comment. The way in which you bring up your son is
considered exceptionally lax."
"Anything more?"
"Yes, there's something more: why did you ever leave Brussels? That's
what we all ask ourselves. Bertha was saying, only the other day, that
you would make things impossible for her, if you thought of pushing
yourself and getting yourself presented. And she declared positively
that she would never ask you to her official dinners."
"Anything more?"
"Anything more, anything more: what more do you want? I'm not saying it
to offend you, Constance, but because I like you and want to save you
from further disappointments. Do you think it pleasant for Bertha and me
to have our friends talking about our family as they are doing? And that
they do so is your fault entirely."
Constance' hands were shaking; and, in order to employ them, she began
to fold the laces lying on the table.
"Is that real Brussels?" asked Adolphine, with apparent guilelessness.
"Yes."
"Where do you get the money, Constance, to spend on those expensive
things?"
"I get it from my lovers," said Constance.
"Wha-at?" cried Adolphine, in a terrified voice.
Constance gave a nervous laugh:
"I tell you, from all my lovers."
"Oh, don't say things like that, even in fun! I thought it was imitation
lace."
"Yes, but you don't know much about lace, do you?" said Constance, very
calmly. "Or about diamonds? And you have not the least notion how to
dress yourself, have you? I sometimes think you look very dowdy,
Adolphine. It may be Dutch and substantial, but I consider it dowdy.
And, on the other hand, you oughtn't to buy such rubbishy,
shabby-genteel things as you do. And you haven't much notion of
arranging your house, either, have you? If you were capable of
understanding my taste, I wouldn't mind helping you to alter your
drawing-room. But you would have to begin by getting rid of those
horrible antimacassars and those china monkeys and dogs. Do; I wish you
would. And choose a quieter carpet.... Don't you find those dinners very
trying, Adolphine? I should say that Bertha is more at home in that sort
of thing, isn't she?... And so the Erkenbouts go to your dinners, do
they? I should have thought that Bruis, of the _Fonograaf_, was more in
your set. But I was forgetting: you haven't a set, really; you have a
bit of everything, an omnium gatherum.... Curious, isn't it, that none
of our friends of the old days--our little Court set, let me call
it--ever come to you nowadays? What's the reason?... Of course, you have
to make your house attractive, if you want to keep your
acquaintances.... I suppose you don't care really about seeing people.
It's such hard work for you.... You're more the good mother of your
children, though I consider your girls, at least Floortje and Caroline,
rather loud; and, as for your boys, you seem quite unable to teach them
any sort of manners.... Well, if I can be of any use to you, if you want
to alter that drawing-room of yours, you have only to say so and we will
fix a day...."
Adolphine had listened gasping, unable to believe her ears. Had
Constance gone mad? She stood up, shaking all over, while Constance,
with apparent composure, continued to fold her laces:
"You're a deceitful creature!" she hissed, furious, so deeply wounded in
every detail of her vanity that she could no longer control herself.
"Why?" asked Constance, calmly. "Perhaps I was, for months, with a view
to winning your affection; and that was why I spent myself in praises
admiring Floortje's trousseau. But now that I know that you love me so
well, now that we have had a good, sisterly talk, now that we have given
each other our advice and our opinion, I see no further need for being
deceitful and I too prefer to express my sisterly feelings with the
frankest sincerity."
"Do you mean to say you didn't like Floortje's trousseau?" asked
Adolphine, raging.
But Constance mastered her quivering nerves:
"Adolphine," she said, coldly, "please let us end this conversation. It
can't matter to you in the least whether I, your despised sister, like
or dislike anything in or about you. Spiteful, hateful words have been
spoken between us; and we have seen into each other's souls. You never
had any affection for me, nor any indulgence nor mercy, whereas I
believed that you had and tried to find a sister in you. I failed; and
that is all. There is nothing more. We will end this conversation, if
you please; and, if you don't mind, when we meet at Mamma's or
elsewhere, let us act as though there had been nothing said between us.
That is all I ask of you."
She rang. The parlour-maid appeared. Adolphine stood staring at
Constance; and her lips began to swell with the venom of the words which
she felt rising to her lips.
"It's to let Mrs. van Saetzema out, Truitje," said Constance, quietly.