“To live!” she thought. “I have never lived. I would so gladly live once … just once. To live! But not like this … in a dress that cost six hundred francs. I know that, I know all about it: it is just a momentary brilliancy and then nothing. … To live! I should like to live … really … truly. There must be something. But it is a mad wish. I am too old. I am growing old, I am becoming an old woman. … To live! I have never lived … I have been in the world, as a woman of the world; I spoilt that life; then I hid myself. … I was so anxious to come back to my country and my family; and it all meant nothing but a little show and illusion … and a great deal of disappointment. And so the days were wasted, one after the other, and I … have … never … lived. … Just as I throw away my money, so I have thrown away my days. Perhaps I have squandered all my days … for nothing. Oh, I oughtn’t to feel like this! What does it mean when I do? What am I regretting? What is there left for me? At Nice, I thought for a moment of joining in that feminine revolt against approaching age; and I did join in it; and I succeeded. But what does it all mean and what is the use of it? It only means shining a little longer, for nothing; but it does not mean living. … But to long for it doesn’t mean anything either, for there is nothing for me now but to grow old, in my home; and, even if I am not exactly among my people, my brothers and sisters, at any rate I have my mother … and, perhaps for quite a long time still, my son too. …”
“Mummy … what are you thinking about so deeply?”
But she smiled, said nothing, looked earnestly at him:
“He’s much fonder of his father,” she thought. “I know it, but it can’t be helped. I must put up with it and accept what he gives me.”
“Come, Mummy, what are you thinking about?”
“Lots of things, my boy … and perhaps nothing. … Mamma feels so lonely … with no one about her … except you. …”
He started, struck by what she had said: it was almost the same words that his father had used that afternoon.
“My boy, will you always stay with me? You won’t go away, like everybody? …”
“Come, Mummy, you’ve got Granny and Uncle Gerrit and Uncle Paul.”
“Yes, they are nice,” she said, softly.
And she thought:
“I shall lose him, later, when he’s grown up. … I know that I shall lose him. …”
It made her feel very weak and helpless; and she began to cry. …
He knelt down beside her and, in a stern voice, forbade her to be so excitable, forbade her to cry about nothing. …
It was heavenly to have him laying down the law like that. And she thought:
“I shall lose him, when he’s grown up. … Oh, let me be thankful that I have him still! …”
Then, tired out, she went to sleep; and he left her, thinking to himself:
“They both feel the same thing!”
Chapter V
She tried tyrannically to monopolize her son, so that Van der Welcke became very jealous. It was the next day, Wednesday afternoon.
“Are you coming with me to Granny’s?”
“I promised Papa to go cycling.”
“You’ve had seven weeks for cycling with Papa.”
“I promised him yesterday that I would go for a long ride to-day.”
She was angry, offended:
“The first day that I’m home! …” she began.
He kissed her, with a shower of tiny little kisses, tried to appease her wrath:
“I promised!” he said. “We don’t go cycling together often. You will have me to yourself all the evening. Be sensible now and nice; and don’t be so cross.”
She tried to be reasonable, but it cost her an effort. She went alone to Mrs. van Lowe’s. She saw two umbrellas in the hall:
“Who is with mevrouw?” she asked the maid.
“Mrs. van Naghel and Mrs. van Saetzema.”
She hesitated. She had not seen her sisters since that awful Sunday-evening. She had gone abroad five days after. But she wanted to show them. …
She went upstairs. Her step was no longer as timid as when she climbed those stairs ten months ago, when she first came back among them all. She did not wish to seem arrogant, but also she did not wish to be too humble. She entered with a smile:
“Mamma!” she cried, gaily, kissing her mother.
Mrs. van Lowe was surprised:
“My child!” she exclaimed, trembling. “My child! Are you back? Are you back again? What a long time you’ve been abroad!”
“I’ve enjoyed myself immensely. How d’ye do, Bertha? How d’ye do, Adolphine?”
She did not shake hands, but just nodded to them, almost cordially, because of her mother, who looked anxiously at her three daughters. Bertha and Adolphine nodded back. Carelessly and easily, she took the lead in the conversation and talked about Nice. She tried to talk naturally, without bragging; but in spite of herself there was a note of triumph in her voice:
“Yes, I felt I wanted to go abroad a bit. … Not nice of me to run away without saying good-bye, was it, Mamma dear? Well, you see, Constance sometimes behaves differently from other people. … I had a very pleasant time at Nice: full season, lovely weather.”
“Weren’t you lonely?”
“No, for on the very first day I met some of our Rome friends at the hotel. …”
She felt that Bertha started, blinked her eyes, disapproved of her for daring to speak of Rome. And she revelled in doing so, casually and airily, thought it delicious to dazzle Adolphine with a list of her social triumphs, very naturally described:
“People we used to know in Rome: Comte and Comtesse d’Azigny. He was French ambassador in those days. They recognized me at once and were very kind; and through the introduction I went to a glorious ball at the Duchesse de Rivoli’s. And, Mummy, here’s a portrait of your daughter in her ball-dress.”
She showed the photograph, enjoyed giving the almost too-well-executed portrait to Mamma, not to her sisters, while letting them see it. She described her dress, described the ball, bragging a little this time, saying that, after all, parties abroad were always much grander than that “seeing a few friends” in Holland, addressing all her remarks to Mamma and, in words just tinged with ostentation, displaying no small scorn for Bertha’s dinners and Adolphine’s “little evenings:”
“Everything here is on such a small scale,” she continued. “There, the first thing you see is a suite of twelve rooms, all with electric light … or, better still, all lit up with wax-candles. … Yes, our little social efforts at the Hague cut a very poor figure beside it.”
She gave a contemptuous little laugh to annoy her sisters, while Mamma, always interested in the doings of the great, did not notice the contempt and was glad enough to see that the sisters behaved as usual to one another. And now Constance went on to say that everything had gone on so well at home, that Truitje had looked after everything, even though Constance had gone away indefinitely, an unprecedented thing, so