"Oh, I thought he would have written to you!... I might really have gone with him to Amsterdam."
"He had business to attend to...."
"Well, I shouldn't have hindered him in his business...."
She sat silent now and indifferent and looked at her watch, regretting that she had come down too early. She thought that it was six and that they would be having dinner at once. And it was not even half-past five yet.... Should she go upstairs again for a bit?... No, she was there now and she would stay.... She had slept too long that afternoon.... She felt heavy and angry.... What a place, what a place, Driebergen in November! Not a soul to talk to, except three or four antediluvian families.... When was she likely to see the Hague again? The children would be looked after all right: there were busybodies enough in the house for that!... And she remained sitting beside Emilie, without moving or speaking, weary, indifferent and heavy after her long sleep.... She knew it: as usual, her entrance had caused friction. That odious idiot child, pushing her chair away, with its "Go away!" She could have boxed its ears.... But she had controlled herself. Didn't she always control herself? Wasn't she always being insulted by her husband's relatives?... Why on earth had she married him? Couldn't she have married anybody at the Hague?... In her weary, heavy indifference, mingled with spiteful rancour, she felt herself a martyr.... Wasn't she a very handsome woman? Couldn't she have married anybody, though her father was a penniless naval officer, though there was no money on her mother's side either?... She was a handsome girl; and, from the time when she was quite young, her one thought had been to make a good match, first and foremost a good match, and to get away from the poverty and the vulgar crew that gathered in Papa and Mamma's house.... Oh, yes, she was very fond of her husband; but now it was all his fault: he ... he was neglecting her!... Wasn't she a martyr?
Deep down within herself, no doubt, she knew that she had not married him for himself alone, that she had certainly thought it heavenly, she, a Smeet, plain Mathilde Smeet, to marry Baron van der Welcke ... plenty of money ... a smart match ... even though the family no longer lived in the Hague....
Baroness van der Welcke.... On her cards: Baroness van der Welcke.... A coronet on her handkerchiefs, a coat-of-arms on her note-paper: oh, how delicious, how delicious!... What a joy at last to order the gowns in Brussels, to get out of the poverty of her parents' home, which reeked of rancid butter and spilt paraffin, to shake it from her, to plunge and drown it in the past, that poverty, as you drown a mangy dog in a pond....
Driebergen ... well, yes. But it wouldn't always be Driebergen. She would back herself to coax her husband out of that patriarchy, to coax him to the Hague, where he would be the young, fashionable doctor: a fine house, smart acquaintances, a box at the Opera, presentation at court, Baroness ... Baronne van der Welcke....
She had two children now, a boy and a girl. It was irresistible; and yet she knew that she must take care and not let the nurse have too much of it:
"Geertje, have you washed the jonker's hands?... Geertje, I want the freule to wear her white frock to-day?"[1]
For she had noticed that the others never used the words in speaking to Geertje or to the maids, never said jonker or freule, always just simply Constant and Henriette, or even Stan and Jet; and so, when the others were there, she copied them and said, "Stan" and "Jet"; but oh, the joy, as soon as they were gone, of once more blurting out the titles to Geertje, the warm rapture of feeling that she was not only a baroness but the mother of a freule and a jonker: