Constance, when she was alone, burst into a fit of nervous sobbing....
Oh, that past, that wretched past, which always clung to her, which
there was no shaking off! She thought life unjust and the family and
everybody. She was not a wicked woman: there was only one mistake to be
charged against her, the mistake of her heedless youth; and were the
consequences to last for ever?... After all, what she now wished was so
little, so very little, that she could not understand why it remained so
unattainable. She merely asked to live quietly at the Hague, in her own
country, and to be loved a little by all her relations, for whom she
felt that strange, powerful feeling, that family-affection. That was
all; she asked for nothing more. She demanded nothing more of life than
to be allowed to grow old like that, with a little forgiveness and
forbearance around her, and then to see her boy grow up into a man,
while she, for the boy's sake, would endure her life, as best she could,
by the side of her husband. That was all, that was all. That was the
only thing that she, with her small soul, asked of life; and she asked
nothing more; and it was as though all sorts of secret enmities around
her grudged it to her. Whereas she wished for nothing but peace and
quietness, enmity seemed to eddy around her. Why did people hate her so?
And why could they not make somebody else or something else the subject
of their talk, of their spiteful, malevolent talk, if they really found
it impossible to do without talking?
She continued greatly dispirited for days, went out very little, seeing
only her mother, to whose house she went regularly. Paul was abroad; and
Adeline was expecting her confinement. Mrs. van Lowe noticed nothing of
what was troubling Constance; and, when, on Sunday, the members of the
family all met again, the old woman was radiant in the illusion of their
great attachment to one another. The children always kept her in
ignorance of their disputes, kept her, out of love and respect, in her
dear illusion. Adolphine never spoke cattishly of Bertha, in Mamma's
presence; was amiable to Constance. The old lady knew nothing of the
quarrel between Addie and Jaap, nothing of the explanation which Van der
Welcke had demanded from the Van Saetzemas.
When her husband and Addie returned, Constance spoke casually of her
conversation with Adolphine. But, for the rest, she remained very silent
and solitary and only saw Mamma and, just once, Adeline, the quiet
little mother, expecting her eighth child. And once she went with her
mother to call on the old aunts in their little villa near Scheveningen;
and then it was:
"How are you, Dorine?"
"What do you say?"
"Marie asks how you are, Rine. She _is_ so deaf, Marie."
"Oh, I'm all right.... Who's that?"
And Aunt Dorine pointed to Constance, always failing to recognize her,
with the stubbornness of second childhood.
"That's Constance," said Mrs. Van Lowe.
"That's Gertrude!" Auntie Tine would say next. "Isn't it, Marie? That's
Gertrude!"
"No, Christine, Gertrude died as a child at Buitenzorg."
But Auntie Tine was yelling in Auntie Rine's ear:
"That's Marie's daughter!"
"Marie's daughter?"
"Yes, Gertrude, Gertru-u-ude!"
Constance smiled:
"Never mind, Mamma," she whispered.
And Mamma said good-bye:
"Well, good-bye, Dorine and Christine."
"What d'you say?"
"Good-bye, Dorine and Christine; we must go."
"They've got to go!" yelled Auntie Tine in Auntie Rine's ear.
"Oh, have they got to go? Where are they going?"
"Home!"
"Oh, home? Oh, don't they live here?... Well, good-bye, Marie; thanks
for your visit. Good-bye, Gertrude! You are Gertrude, aren't you?"
"Ye-e-es!" Auntie Tine assured her, in a shrill, long-drawn-out yell.
"She's Ger-trude, Marie's daugh-ter."
"Well, then, good-bye, Gertrude."
"Never mind, Mamma, let them think I'm Gertrude," said Constance,
softly, indulgently, while Mrs. van Lowe became a little irritable, not
understanding how very old people could cling so stubbornly to an
opinion and a little sad at the thought of Gertrude, who was dead.
And so the weeks passed and the months, very quietly, lonely and
monotonously: the dreary months of the unseasonable cold, wet autumn,
with heavy storms whipping the trees in the Kerkhoflaan, the wind
incessantly howling round the house, the rain clattering down. Constance
hardly ever went out, shut herself up indoors, as though her soul had
received a hurt, as though she would rather henceforward remain safe in
her dear rooms. She was very silent, she looked pale, she often sat
thinking, pondering--she hardly knew what--sunk in her melancholy,
staring at the fury of the storm outside. She did not often have scenes
with Van der Welcke now, as though a brooding sadness had numbed her
nerves. At half-past four, she would go to the window and watch
longingly for her son, would cheer up a little when she saw him, when he
talked nicely and pleasantly, her boy who was becoming more of a man
daily. But she did not see very much of him now that he went to the
grammar-school and had a lot of work to do in the evenings, which,
studious by nature, he did conscientiously. Van Vreeswijck came to
dinner once every two or three weeks, generally alone, or perhaps, as
Paul was still abroad, she would ask Marianne van Naghel, of whom she
was very fond. It would be one of those cosy, daintily-arranged little
dinners which she knew so well how to give; and that was the extent of
her social doings.
Thus she lived in herself and in her house. The rooms in which she sat
always reflected herself, a woman of elegant and refined taste, even
though she was not exactly artistic; and those rooms displayed in
particular the inhabited, sociable, home-like appearance that comes from
the presence of a woman who is much indoors and finds solace in her
home. And round about her the lines and colours of her furniture and
flowers, her knicknacks and fancy-work all made an atmosphere of soft
fragrance peculiarly her own, with something very personal, something
delicate and intimate: a soft dreaminess as of really very small, simple
femininity, without one really artistic object anywhere, without a
single water-colour or drawing or fashionable novel; and yet with
nothing in colour or form or line that could offend the eye of an
artist: on the contrary, everything blending into a perfect harmony of
small material things with inner personal things that likewise had no
greatness....
One day, when Truitje brought her some circulars, letters and bills from
the letter-box, Constance' eye fell upon a newspaper in a wrapper; and
she opened it. She read the title of the little sheet: the
_Dwarskijker;_[22] and, as she seldom received much by post, she thought
that it must have been sent as an advertisement. Suddenly, however, she
remembered: the _Dwarskijker_ was an odious little weekly paper edited
by a disreputable individual who pried into all the secrets of the great
Hague families; who had often been tried for blackmail, but always
managed to escape; and who as constantly resumed his vile trade, because
the families whom he attacked paid hush-money, whether his attacks were
based on truth or calumny. Constance was about to tear up the paper
indignantly, when her eye caught the name of Van Aghel, a parody
obviously meant for Van Naghel, and she could not help reading on. She
then read a nasty little article against her brother-in-law, the
colonial secretary, an article crammed with personal attacks on Van
Naghel, describing him as a great nonentity, who had made money at the
bar in India by means of a shady Chinese practice and had been shoved on
in his career by a still greater and more pompous nonentity, his
father-in-law, the ex-Governor-general "Van Leeuwen." The article next
attacked Van Naghel's brother, the Queen's Commissary in Overijssel,
and, in conclusion, it promised, in a subsequent issue of the
_Dwarskijker_ to give a glimpse into the immorality of the other
relations of this _bourgeois_ who had battened on the Chinese and who
had rendered no real service to India. And the writer aimed very
pointedly at Mrs. van Naghel's sister, another woman moving in those
exalted circles whose end would soon be nigh in the better order of
things at hand: she was described as the "ex-ambassadress;" and he wound
up with the alluring promise to give, next week, full details of those
old stories, which were always interesting because they afforded the
reader a peep into the depravity of aristocratic society.
Constance, as she read on, felt her heart beating, the blood rushing to
her cheeks; her hands trembled, her knees shook, she felt as though she
were about to faint. She was growing accustomed to oral slander; but
these written, printed articles, which everybody could read, came as a
shock to her; and, with eyes starting from their sockets, she read the
thing over and over again. She was filled with helpless despair at the
thought that such things were being published about her and hers, that
next week more things would be printed about her in that libellous
paper. She was at her wits' end what to do, when, vaguely rolling her
terrified eyes, she caught sight, among the bills and circulars, of
another paper, which said:
/$
"NOTICE!!!
"Why not become a subscriber to the
_"DWARSKIJKER?_
"Terms of subscription:
"50 guilders quarterly, post-free."
$/
The notice was printed in the cynical capitals of blackmail; and she at
once understood; she understood what that subscription of two hundred
guilders a year to a scurrilous rag meant! But she also understood that,
even if she sent the fifty guilders or the two hundred guilders that
moment, it would be no safeguard against further defamation or
extortion; and she did not know what to do....
She at first thought of concealing the paper from Van der Welcke; but
she was so upset all day that, after dinner, when Addie had gone
upstairs, she showed it to her husband. He grew furious at once, giving
way to his naturally irritable temper, which he usually kept under
control so as not to have too violent scenes with his wife. He swore,
clenched his fists, walked up and down the room in impotent rage,
longing to break something or to go out and revile the Hague, its
streets and its people. To him also the printed libel--especially
because it was printed, for every one to read--was a terrible disgrace,
which he felt that he would have done anything to avoid. It also
occurred to him to go to the office of the _Dwarskijker_ and horsewhip
the editor. And, without really knowing why or how, he allowed himself
to utter that unpremeditated, illogical phrase, the phrase of a naughty
child which does not stop to think when its temper is roused:
"It's all your fault!"
"My fault!" she echoed, vehemently. "And why, in Heaven's name? Why is
it my fault?"
"It's your fault! You would come and live here, with that morbid craving
of yours for your family. In Brussels, nobody knew us and nobody talked
about us; and our life if not happy, was at least quiet. Here there's
always something, always something! It's no life at all, our life here!"
"And you, weren't you longing to come back? Was I the only one who
longed?" she cried, hurt by his unreasonableness.
But he did not hear her; and all his pent-up bitterness burst forth:
"I walk about the streets here every day, feeling as if every one were
looking at me and pointing at me! When I go to the Witte or the Plaats,
among all the men I used to know, I feel out of place, I feel like an
interloper whom they don't want to own. It's your fault, it's your
fault!"
"Indeed!"
"Why were you absolutely bent on coming back to Holland?"
"And you?"
"I?"
"Yes, you, you! Didn't you sometimes long for your parents, for Holland!
Didn't you yourself say that it would be good for our boy?"
"For our boy!" he shouted, refusing to listen, in his impotent, seething
rage. "For our boy!"
And he laughed more bitterly, more scornfully than she had ever heard
him before:
"For our boy! A lot I can do for him here! However hard he may work,
whatever tact he may show, even though he enters the career which I had
to abandon, he will always, always be reminded of the scandal of his
parents! For our boy! Let him become a farmer, if he must be a Dutchman
in Holland, hidden somewhere from all our family, our friends and our
acquaintances! And it's all, all your fault!"
"You are unreasonable!" she cried, wincing under his insults. "If we
have anything to reproach ourselves with, then it falls upon both of us;
and you have not the right to let me, me, a woman, bear the burden of
our misery alone!"
"That misery would at least not have been discussed, mocked at,
criticized, ridiculed, traduced," he shouted, raging and stamping, "if
you had not insisted on coming back to Holland!"
"Was I the only one to wish it?"
"Very well," he admitted, losing all his self-control, "I did too. But
we were both fools, to return to this rotten country and these rotten
people!"
"I don't need them. I only longed for my family."
"For your family! The Saetzemas, with whom we have quarrelled already,
to whom we never speak except at Mamma's; the Van Naghels, who are no
use to us: is that how you want to live, for your boy, in Holland, here,
buried away in your Kerkhoflaan, in your house, in your rooms, with no
one but Vreeswijck, who sometimes does us the honour to come and dine
with us? Whom do we know? Who comes to see us? Who cares a jot about
us?"
"I only wanted the affection of my family!"
"And for the sake of that affection, do you want to go on living here
like this, buried away, when you want your boy to pursue his career
later on? Ha, ha, he'll go far, like that! Do you imagine that he'll
succeed simply through examinations? No, influence is what he wants:
that's more important than any number of examinations. And you want him
to enter the service under those conditions, while his father and mother
sit cursing their luck here, in the Kerkhoflaan? Well then, let him
become a farmer: the future is with the proletariat in any case. Very
well, it's the fault of both of us, the silly, stupid fault of both of
us. But, if it's my fault, it's your fault too. Have you ever done
anything to get on? I, at least in my own mind, reckoned on the Van
Naghels; I thought to myself: My brother-in-law has no end of
connections, we shall go to his house; I don't care about it for my own
sake, but it will be a good thing, later, for the boy...."
"Oh? And have you no connections? Have your parents no relations? All
your old friends at the Plaats: which of them comes to see us? Which of
them, except Vreeswijck, has had the ordinary civility to call on your
wife? Not one of them, not one!" she almost screamed. "Not that I want
them here, any more than you want to dine at Van Naghel's; but, if you
attach so much importance to connections, for the sake of our son, you
could have done something else than cycle all over the Hague and
Scheveningen, you could have pointed out to your friends that, as they
condescend to know you in the sacred mysteries of that Plaats of yours,
the least they could do would be to look you up at home and not to go on
ignoring your wife, as though she were still your mistress...!"
"It'll always, always be like that!" he cried, raging impotently, almost
to the point of tears. "We can never alter it, if we live to be sixty,
if we live to be eighty!"
"Very well," she said, as though with a sudden intuition to join issue
with her husband's unreasonableness. "You wish it for your son's sake!
I'll do it! I shall speak to Bertha and I shall be the first to speak. I
shall tell her what I want of her, as a sister. But I shall also expect
you to have your son's interests at heart among your own acquaintances;
and I shall expect to be presented in the winter. I never thought of it
myself; but people have done nothing but talk about it from the moment
that we came here; and now I mean to do it. What is the objection? That
we shall rub shoulders with De Staffelaer's family! I don't care whom I
rub shoulders with. My intention was simply to live here, amid the
affection of my family; but, if that is to be denied me, if such
wretched libels as this are to be published, if you reproach me with not
thinking of my son's future, then I shall alter my line of conduct and
talk to Bertha. You, on your side, talk to your friends at the Plaats
and, if you have any pride about you, refuse to have anything more to do
with them unless they accept your wife and yourself as belonging to
their set. I will stand it no longer! I wished for nothing more than
peace and affection, than to grow old here beside my mother and my
brothers and sisters; but, if there must be a scandal, notwithstanding
those simple wishes, well then a scandal there shall be, so that people
can say, with truth, 'Mrs. van der Welcke is pushing herself into the
circles to which she always used to belong.'"
"I can't do it!" he said, weakly. "I can't possibly do what you want.
After putting up with the tolerance and condescension of my former
friends, I can't go to them now and explain that my wife and I want to
call on them and their wives and expect them to call on us in return."
"Then I'll do without you!" she said. "I'm not on speaking terms with
Adolphine; but I don't need that jumble-set of hers. I believe that
Bertha still has some sisterly affection left for me; and I shall talk
to her and she will have to help me. But you will never be able to
reproach me again with not thinking of my child's future. And, if you're
too weak to show your friends what you expect of them, then I, later,
when our son meets with difficulties in his career, shall have the right
to reproach you as you are reproaching me now...."
"Reproach! I'm not thinking of reproaches!" he broke in, angrily,
illogically, unreasonably. "I'm only thinking of that rotten paper, that
rotten paper...."
He looked at it in despairing irritation:
"I'll go to the fellow, I'll slash him across the face, I'll slash him
across the face!"
She laughed, scornfully:
"Shall you do that for the sake of your son's future?"
He controlled himself, clenched his fists, rushed from the room with
tears in his eyes, flung himself in his chair upstairs, smoked cigarette
upon cigarette, walked up and down in impotent rage....
That evening, Gerrit and Paul came round. They also knew about the
_Dwarskijker:_ they said that a copy had been dropped into Van Naghel's
letter-box too. And Gerrit, getting furious, because Van der Welcke was
still furious, said:
"If you want to break the fellow's jaw, Van der Welcke, I'm your man!"
Paul wearily closed his eyes and expressed disapproval with every bored
feature of his face:
"My dear Gerrit, don't come playing the bold swashbuckler, thinking you
can chop the world to pieces with your silly old sword. And you, Van der
Welcke, for Heaven's sake, keep calm, if you don't want to make things
worse than they are!"
"But what are we to do?" asked Constance, impatiently.
"Nothing at all," said Paul, philosophically.
[22] The _Inspector_.