Part 53 (1/2)
”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 antimaca.s.sars 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.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
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?”