"I don't need them. I only longed for my family."
"For your family! The Saetzemas, with whom we have quarrelled already, to whom we never speak except at Mamma's; the Van Naghels, who are no use to us: is that how you want to live, for your boy, in Holland, here, buried away in your Kerkhoflaan, in your house, in your rooms, with no one but Vreeswijck, who sometimes does us the honour to come and dine with us? Whom do we know? Who comes to see us? Who cares a jot about us?"
"I only wanted the affection of my family!"
"And for the sake of that affection, do you want to go on living here like this, buried away, when you want your boy to pursue his career later on? Ha, ha, he'll go far, like that! Do you imagine that he'll succeed simply through examinations? No, influence is what he wants: that's more important than any number of examinations. And you want him to enter the service under those conditions, while his father and mother sit cursing their luck here, in the Kerkhoflaan? Well then, let him become a farmer: the future is with the proletariat in any case. Very well, it's the fault of both of us, the silly, stupid fault of both of us. But, if it's my fault, it's your fault too. Have you ever done anything to get on? I, at least in my own mind, reckoned on the Van Naghels; I thought to myself: My brother-in-law has no end of connections, we shall go to his house; I don't care about it for my own sake, but it will be a good thing, later, for the boy...."
"Oh? And have you no connections? Have your parents no relations? All your old friends at the Plaats: which of them comes to see us? Which of them, except Vreeswijck, has had the ordinary civility to call on your wife? Not one of them, not one!" she almost screamed. "Not that I want them here, any more than you want to dine at Van Naghel's; but, if you attach so much importance to connections, for the sake of our son, you could have done something else than cycle all over the Hague and Scheveningen, you could have pointed out to your friends that, as they condescend to know you in the sacred mysteries of that Plaats of yours, the least they could do would be to look you up at home and not to go on ignoring your wife, as though she were still your mistress...!"
"It'll always, always be like that!" he cried, raging impotently, almost to the point of tears. "We can never alter it, if we live to be sixty, if we live to be eighty!"
"Very well," she said, as though with a sudden intuition to join issue with her husband's unreasonableness. "You wish it for your son's sake! I'll do it! I shall speak to Bertha and I shall be the first to speak. I shall tell her what I want of her, as a sister. But I shall also expect you to have your son's interests at heart among your own acquaintances; and I shall expect to be presented in the winter. I never thought of it myself; but people have done nothing but talk about it from the moment that we came here; and now I mean to do it. What is the objection? That we shall rub shoulders with De Staffelaer's family! I don't care whom I rub shoulders with. My intention was simply to live here, amid the affection of my family; but, if that is to be denied me, if such wretched libels as this are to be published, if you reproach me with not thinking of my son's future, then I shall alter my line of conduct and talk to Bertha. You, on your side, talk to your friends at the Plaats and, if you have any pride about you, refuse to have anything more to do with them unless they accept your wife and yourself as belonging to their set. I will stand it no longer! I wished for nothing more than peace and affection, than to grow old here beside my mother and my brothers and sisters; but, if there must be a scandal, notwithstanding those simple wishes, well then a scandal there shall be, so that people can say, with truth, 'Mrs. van der Welcke is pushing herself into the circles to which she always used to belong.'"
"I can't do it!" he said, weakly. "I can't possibly do what you want. After putting up with the tolerance and condescension of my former friends, I can't go to them now and explain that my wife and I want to call on them and their wives and expect them to call on us in return."
"Then I'll do without you!" she said. "I'm not on speaking terms with Adolphine; but I don't need that jumble-set of hers. I believe that Bertha still has some sisterly affection left for me; and I shall talk to her and she will have to help me. But you will never be able to reproach me again with not thinking of my child's future. And, if you're too weak to show your friends what you expect of them, then I, later, when our son meets with difficulties in his career, shall have the right to reproach you as you are reproaching me now...."
"Reproach! I'm not thinking of reproaches!" he broke in, angrily, illogically, unreasonably. "I'm only thinking of that rotten paper, that rotten paper...."