Small Souls/Chapter XIV
Those were busy days at the Van Naghels, full of all kinds of excitement. Emilie was to be married in three weeks; and in a fortnight Van Naghel and Bertha expected their son Otto back from India, with his young wife and their two children.
Otto had taken his degree early, married and gone to Java at twenty-four with a billet in the civil service. But he was unable to stay, because his wife had fallen ill on the day of their arrival at Batavia and she had been ill ever since. It annoyed Van Naghel to see his son’s career interrupted, even though he was still young and Van Naghel could easily find him another appointment in Holland. But he had always been against this match: a delicate Dutch girl, with no money. They would have to take charge of the children, in Holland; and, though he was well off, though his wife had some money of her own, though he had his salary as a minister, it was, all told, scarcely enough for the very expensive establishment which they kept up: the eldest son on his way home from India with his wife and two children; two boys, Frans and Henri, who had been at Leiden for over two years and who were obviously in no hurry to take their degrees; three girls who were all out, the second of whom was now going to be married; another boy, of sixteen, and a girl of fourteen; their salon, to gratify Van Naghel’s ambition, an official salon, a meeting-place for members of the higher government-circles, while the diplomatic set just passed through it; so expensive an establishment, from first to last, that Bertha had to work miracles of economy to keep things going on fifty thousand guilders, more or less, a year. And everything was growing dearer: the two boys, Frans and Henri, cost almost three times as much as Otto had cost; Emilie and Marianne, of whom the former had been out three years and the other just one, had much grander ideas, in every way, than Louise, who had been out six; the boys at Leiden were both to take part in the masque this year; Emilie was receiving a trousseau that cost three times as much as the one which Bertha had had in her day from Papa and Mamma van Lowe; Marianne must have her simplest dresses lined with silk; Karel, the schoolboy, a tall, thin, weakly lad, but nevertheless a member of all sorts of football-, cricket- and tennis-clubs, had an allowance for pocket-money that was positively ridiculous; and Bertha saw tendencies in her youngest girl that made her anxious for the future. And so, outwardly, it was a great house full of movement: Papa a minister, the girls presented at Court, the boys spending money lustily; and, inwardly, there was many a despondent conversation between Van Naghel and Bertha as to how they could possibly economize: of course, Otto must be helped first; the boys, of course, must take their degrees first; the girls, of course, were bound to go out; and Karel, of course, was obliged to keep up his football- and cricket-clubs. They might give one dinner less each winter, but that was really the only thing. And, if the boys, after taking their degrees, were to cost as much money as Otto was costing now; if Louise and Marianne also got married and had to have the same trousseau as Emilie: if it was to go on like that, always and always, with never a moment for taking breath and saving a little: then they did not know what they were to do; for, let Bertha calculate as much as she pleased, the thing was not to be done on fifty thousand guilders a year.
Then, if Van Naghel lost his temper, he reproached Bertha, saying that it was all her fault, that she was a Van Lowe, that the Van Lowes had never been able to calculate, that the Van Lowes’ own housekeeping had been run on much too extravagant a scale, in the old days; but Bertha, blinking her eyes unmoved, reminded him that he owed his career to Papa van Lowe, to Papa’s connections in the years, following upon his term as governor-general, when he still had a great deal of influence in Holland; and she showed him her housekeeping accounts, in which she had carefully made the different entries, telling him that, if he absolutely insisted upon living on the scale they did, it could not be done for less, with the best will in the world. . . . And, seeing no way out of it, they made friends again and did not mention the subject of money for another month; and, outwardly, it was the regular household of a minister of state, full of solid Dutch comfort, with a tinge of modernity superadded: the children very much up-to-date, but the parents, nevertheless, sensible people of weight and distinction, quite aware how far they themselves could go and how far they could let the children go. The real position was not even suspected by a soul. Bertha never spoke to anybody, not even to her mother, of anything that had the faintest connection with money. To their relations and friends, the house in the Bezuidenhout spread its broad front with such an air of solid dignity, the staircases, the drawing-rooms and dining-room with their stately, handsome furniture, the children’s rooms—more modern in style, but still with no flimsy affectation of tawdry elegance—all made so great an impression of imperishable prosperity that no one could ever have suspected that the two parents sometimes sat reckoning up for hours at a time to see whether they could reduce their expenses by as much as a thousand guilders that month. In this house of theirs, notwithstanding all the bustle, the dinners, the approaching wedding, the approaching home-coming of the eldest son, for whom a set of rooms was being prepared on the top floor, everything seemed to go so methodically, without any trouble—busily, it is true, but quite harmoniously—that no one would ever have suspected the least difficulty. Mamma van Lowe was constantly at Bertha’s during these days and even neglected Constance a little; but she loved this bustle: the alterations on the top floor; the fuss about the trousseau; the rehearsals of the wedding-theatricals; the long tables to be laid, the flowers to be arranged, the visits to be discussed; dresses brought home; the undergraduates constantly at the Hague, noisy, merry and young: the old woman loved all this; it reminded her of her own house in the old days; it was like a repetition of her young life: only, she thought, she herself had often worried about money, even though Van Lowe had been able to save during his term as governor-general, and Bertha was so entirely without financial cares! How delightful that was! And she, as the grandmother, also interested herself in Emilie’s trousseau; she gave her advice and never thought about money; she slowly climbed the stairs to the top floor, to see the nursery which had been got ready for her two great-grandchildren on the way home from India, proud of that fourth generation, delighting in that large family, that busy household, all that movement, which she missed so greatly in her own house, where her quiet life was interrupted only by those family-gatherings every Sunday evening. Yes, she loved being with Van Naghel and Bertha; she loved to see her son-in-law take a prominent place in society, as her husband had done in his time; she loved the solid, dignified, official house; and the modernity of the children, although now and again she would shake her head in disapproval, made her smile for all that, because she thought that people must go with the times and that Van Naghel and Bertha were very sensible not to hold the reins too tightly. It was true, there were manners which she did not like: that going out of young girls alone, letting themselves in at night with their latch-keys; but then it was only to a few personal friends, said Bertha, and it was impossible to make other arrangements. Yes, the old woman loved being here, in the house of her eldest daughter; and, though she cared for all her children, because they were her children, she felt more in her element at Bertha’s than in the comfortable, middle-class, selfish house of Karel and Cateau, whom she blamed for having no children; and, though, she also liked Gerrit and Adeline’s younger household, with the children ranging from eight years down to ten months, a troop of fair-haired mites, things were too simple and everyday for her there, did not remind her of her ancient splendours; she could not stand Gerrit sometimes, when he made fun of his old mother for mentioning, quite casually, that she had met the Russian envoy at Bertha’s. And going to Adolphine and Van Saetzema’s always vexed her: it was as though she did not recognize her child in Adolphine, with her badly-arranged, common house and Adolphine so bitter and so envious and jealous of Bertha, especially now that Floortje was engaged and her trousseau, of course, could not be as fine as Emilie’s. Yes, she went to Adolphine’s and discussed the trousseau there also, but she did not care about it: not because it was simple—a trouseau could be very nice in spite of that—but because Adolphine was always so spiteful, with her perpetual “Yes, that’s good enough for us; but, of course, at Bertha’s! . . .” She felt herself a mother to all her children—had she a favourite? She thought not—but she was very fond of going to Bertha’s, because she found her own past there.
And what the old woman loved above all things in Bertha’s house was the mutual sympathy, the family-affection which she had always fostered in her own house, which she still fostered, thanks to the institution of those Sunday evenings, to keep the children together at all costs. Yes, in Van Naghel and Bertha that sentiment, that constant thought for the children was very strong; and there was one thing which Mamma van Lowe had not done and which Bertha was doing, which was to receive the son again, after he had once left the house, now that he was returning with a sick wife and two little children. It touched her: oh, how good they were to their tribe; and what a thousand pities that that little doll-wife was so ill! And the children, too, had that same family-affection among themselves. Otto had always kept up a busy correspondence with his eldest sister, Louise, who was twenty-five and came next to him in age; the two Leiden boys were exceedingly nice to their three fashionable little sisters and Henri was even a little bit jealous because Emilie was engaged; only Karel was perhaps rather too much out of doors and away from the family-circle for so young a boy, with all his clubs and his importance; and, because of that, Marietje, the youngest girl, of fourteen, was left a good deal alone. And yet they all liked Marietje: her big brothers, the other girls. . . . Yes, that was the charming thing with all those children: the family-affection, the fondness for one another, the pride in the names of Van Lowe and Van Naghel, the refusal to suffer any outsider to say a word against a member of the family, even though criticism was not spared within the home itself. But that any acquaintance should dare to reflect upon a member of the family, that they would none of them permit. They had felt that fondness, that tenderness, even for Constance, because she was a sister. And the old lady remembered, in so far as concerned Constance, the philosophical reflexions of her youngest son, Paul; the trouble which Dorine had taken to assemble all the brothers and sisters on that first Sunday-evening; the ready compliance of all her children, for, out of respect to her, none of them had criticized that erring sister in front of her. She saw it in all of them: the family-affection for one another. They all felt themselves to be brothers and sisters; they stood up for one another, even though there were differences of opinion sometimes and even jealousy; they felt united within the family-circle.
That was the crowning glory of her old age, as a mother and grandmother. It represented to her a beautiful idea, a natural ideal, an illusion attained: a comfort for the peaceful declining years of the lonely woman in her big house. That she preferred to be lonely in her big house and would not have Dorine, nor Ernst, nor Paul to live with her was an eccentricity which in no way detracted from her cult of the beautiful idea, from her perfect happiness at seeing the ideal realized, the illusion attained. She had a happy old age. She had also had much sorrow in her big household, in spite of all her splendour, but not more than her natural share: money-troubles, because neither Van Lowe nor she was economical; two children lost, one after the other; while Constance’ false step was certainly a very heavy blow, under which she suspected that Van Lowe had really succumbed, suffering silently and incessantly because of the grief which his favourite daughter had caused him. . . . But she, though she too had suffered, had shown greater elasticity, had not counted all that sorrow for more than her human lot, such as might befall any large household. And that she now, in her extreme old age, had all her children gathered about her in the same town, in a close family-circle, in an affectionate family-life: this she considered a great happiness; she thanked God for it. She had no more religion of the church-going kind than was held to be correct in her circle, which was very different from the orthodox Calvinistic circle of a few old Hague families; but she was grateful to God in her heart. She thanked God for her happiness, for her happy old age. All was well, now that she had Constance back also, back with the others at the Hague. Next to Buitenzorg, the Hague had always been to her the ideal place of residence. The Court was there; and her husband had taught her to love splendour. There was an atmosphere of official eminence in their circle in which she took pleasure as in an element that had become natural to her and in which Van Naghel and Bertha also had attained their distinction and their high position. Karel had returned to the Hague, after burgomastering elsewhere; and in him she had her son back again, although, in her secret heart, she did not like Cateau. Gerrit, who had been a subaltern at Deventer and Venlo, was now a captain at the Hague. And the other children had never left the Hague; she had always been able to keep them round her.
She was happy and she was not unthankful. She was even thankful that Otto was returning—although the reason, his wife’s illness, was a sad one—because she would see her great-grandchildren. They were her first; she felt a new joy because of them, an unknown emotion. She had felt something like it when Otto himself was born, her first grandchild; but now that feeling was almost more intense, perhaps because it was a fourth generation, a continuation of the family, even though they were Van Naghels and not Van Lowes. She was a woman: she did not care so much about the name. Bertha was her daughter, Otto her grandson, his children her grandchildren. She traced them back in this way to herself and the sound of the name mattered less to her. They were her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren; and she loved them all, with one great love, with a clannish love. That she lived alone in her big house was because she was old and could bear bustle only when it was expected, when she could prepare for it. The Sunday evenings were bustling, but they did not tire her. But to have Paul or Dorine living with her, to be for ever hearing them going in and out would have worked on her nerves. She wandered daily through all the rooms of the big house to see if everything was tidy and in its place. Dorine was slovenly; and Paul was anything but easy to get on with; and Ernst, with his collection of curiosities, she would never be able to have with her, because she was afraid of all the microbes that hang about those old things. But nevertheless she loved them all and she was glad that they lived at the Hague and that she saw them regularly. She was like that and no otherwise.
And she now came every day to Bertha’s, waiting for Otto and his children, until Constance grew jealous and reproached her, saying that she never came to her new house near the Woods.