"Yes, but the place must be kept clean."
"Well, it was. … Only, in a flat, abroad, the bell doesn't keep ringing as it does at one's front-door in Holland. The cook goes to market in the morning. … "
"And does she just buy ev-erything?"
"She buys enough for a couple of days: vegetables and eggs and whatever she wants."
"Do you leave that to the cook?"
"Oh, yes! Imagine if I didn't!" laughed Constance. "She simply couldn't understand it! I used only to give her a few instructions."
"Well, I must say that I don't think that at all a prop-er way of house-keeping! … Do you, Kar-el?"
"It's the way of the country," growled Karel, under his breath. "Were you thinking of looking for a house in one of the new districts, Duinoord, for instance?"
"I'd rather not be so far from all of you."
"Dear Con-stance!" laughed Cateau, with her round face. "But we all live more or less far from one ano-ther!"
There was a knock at the door: the porter showed Adolphine in.
"Ah, Adolphine! How nice of you to come, all the more as we are to meet at Mamma's this evening. You're a good sister." And she kissed Adolphine. "This is my boy. I brought him to see you the other day, but you were out."
"How d'ye do, Aunt?" said Addie, stiffly.
"Forgive the muddle, Adolphine. I was just unpacking my trunks."
"We ought re-ally to be go-ing on, Ka-rel."
"Are you going so soon?"
"Yes, it's rain-ing so; and the brougham is getting so we-et."
"Constance," said Karel. "Did you say that Van der Welcke would be here on Tuesday?"
"I expect so."
"Well, then, give him my kind regards and … and would you give him my card? Then that'll be all right."
He took a visiting-card from his pocket-book and laid it on a corner of the console-table. Constance looked at him in momentary perplexity. She could not speak for a second or two, did not understand. She herself had been brought up and had lived according to very punctilious rules of card-leaving; but yet she failed to understand how one brother-in-law could leave a card on another brother-in-law, before that other was in town and during a visit paid in his sister's bedroom, amid all the muddle of her unpacked trunks. But she had been so long away from Holland and the Hague; she did not wish it to appear that she did not understand; and, as a woman of the world, she did not, above all, wish it to appear that she thought Karel's performance with the card not only stiff, but intensely vulgar.
She said, with a gentle smile.
"Thank you, Karel. Van de Welcke will appreciate your call greatly."
Her voice sounded friendly and natural; and neither Karel nor Cateau had any idea that Constance had controlled herself as she had sometimes had to control herself in Rome, in a diplomatic salon full of intrigue and polished envy.
In the brougham, Cateau said:
"You did that very clev-erly, Ka-rel, with that card. … "
"Yes, I thought it the best way," said Karel, in a burgomasterly manner.
CHAPTER VI
Adolphine looked enviously around her. What a lot Constance must spend on her clothes; and it was not as if they were well off either, for all they had to live on was an allowance from Papa and Mamma van der Welcke, the money which Constance had inherited from her father and the little that Van der Welcke could scrape together at Brussels, as a wine- and insurance-agent. Nothing to speak of, all told: that Adolphine knew for a fact. She admired in particular a magnificent fur bolero and wondered what two kinds of fur it was made of; but she said nothing: she never praised anything in another, not his raiment, nor his intellect, nor his virtues. Even if she had had anything to gain by it, she could never have brought herself to say:
"Constance, what a pretty bolero that is!"
But, pale with envy, she kept looking at the fur as it hung over a chair; and the sight of it caused her almost physical pain, because it was not hers and she did not know how one like it ever could be hers.
Constance was rather tired. First, she had been unpacking trunks with Addie; then Karel and Cateau had come and she had talked copiously in the pleasure and excitement of seeing them. But that visiting-card of Karel's had depressed her; and now she talked listlessly:
"So your girl is going to be married soon, Adolphine?"
"In May."
"I haven't seen either of them since Sunday. A couple of days ago, I found their cards and Dijkerhof's. How quickly a week passes! I didn't find any of you at home either."
"We are so busy shopping all day long, for the trousseau."
"Is Dijkerhof a nice fellow?"
"Yes; and they are a very good family."
As it happened, the Dijkerhofs were not in quite the same set as the Van Lowes; and Mamma van Lowe was not over-enthusiastic about the engagement.
Constance was silent: she was tired, she had a headache and she thought that Adolphine had better keep the conversation going. But Adolphine was too much distracted by the bolero to be in form. She cast about for a subject. And yet there were plenty, for she was dying of curiosity to know all sorts of things: for instance, what Constance thought of Bertha and Cateau. If only that wretched bolero were not there! At last, she began:
"So you're looking for a house?"
Constance answered at random; and, because of her headache, her expression became stiff and haughty and her lips were tightly compressed. Adolphine thought her arrogant and reflected that Constance had always been stuck-up, after her marriage to De Staffelaer and all the smart society in Rome. Adolphine suspected Constance of looking down upon her; and Constance merely had a headache.
"And shall you call on many people?"
No, Constance thought not.
"Won't you go to Court?"
No, Constance hadn't given it a thought.
"Is your boy going to the high-school?"
No, he was to pass his examination for the grammar-school: Van der Welcke wanted him to go to one of the universities, later.
"What photographs are those?"
"Friends of ours, in Brussels."
"Had you many friends there?"
"Not so many, latterly."
Suddenly Constance' eyes met Adolphine's. And Constance did not see Adolphine's hateful hostility: Constance saw only her sister, four years younger than herself, but worn out by a tiresome, difficult life, a life full of money-bothers, full of trouble with spoilt, disagreeable children, receiving no assistance from her husband, Van Saetzema, who was chief clerk at the Ministry of Justice; Constance saw her sister, thin, yellow, eaten up with worry and bitterness, in her almost shabby and yet pretentious clothes. And, notwithstanding her raging headache, she was filled with pity, because Adolphine was her sister. She rose and went to Adolphine:
"Phine," she said, frankly, "don't be angry if I am not very talkative, but I have such a headache. And I really do think it nice of you to look me up. Come often. Let us see a lot of each other. I only came to the Hague because of you all. I wanted you so badly. I have dragged through so many dreary years. I have no one in my life, except my boy.