"Oh, Paul, it's a very nice, motherly feeling on Adolphine's part, to like to see her child happy before another...."
Paul spluttered with laughter:
"So you think that Floortje is happy as Luxury, on the top of Marianne and that Marianne suffers badly underneath! Connie, how sentimental you are to-night and what silly things you say!... But you're looking very nice. Come, let's go and sit down here. Your hair is turning grey, but I have an idea that you leave it untouched for some coquettish reason, because it goes so well with your young features. It's a very pretty shade of grey. It's not old hair. But you're young still, you know. And you're looking nice, very nice...."
"I believe you're making fun of me...."
"I love good-looking people; and one sees so few of them. Just glance round the room: all ugly people; one walks crooked, another has a stoop, this one's bust sticks out for miles, that one has a fat stomach. I can't stand parts of the body that bulge: it makes me sick to look at them.... Yes, to be accurate, nearly everybody's ugly. Do you know, if you were to take all the heroines out of all the novels in the world, you'd just get one heap of pretty women. No novelist ever dares take an ugly, squinting, crooked or hump-backed heroine. If I were a rich man, I'd offer a prize for a hideous heroine.... Yes, look at Aunt Lot," and he imitated Mrs. Ruyvenaer's Indian accent, "glittering with diamonds; and her two hands patting her brown satin stomach. Another stomach; and I can't stand stomachs.... But good-natured, all the same, is Auntie! Look at Uncle: he's unbuttoned his waistcoat, the rude fellow!... Have you noticed my waistcoat, Connie? It's white drill, it's very smart.... I say, Connie, look at Mamma: what a grand old woman, the way she walks, laughs and talks! Now that's something like: you see at once that she's a great lady. Look at old Mrs. Friesesteijn beside her: common, noisy, spiteful; a figure like a charwoman's. Hideous, hideous!... Look at Ernst, Connie. Would you ever believe that was a brother of mine? Just like an old Jew; and what a dress-coat, what a dress-coat! Where on earth did the beggar get it cut? He spends all his money on jugs and vases!... Look at Gerrit, Connie. He's pretending to be gay again, the jolly hussar, with the broad chest all over lace frogs. Poor fellow, he's dying of melancholy! You don't believe me? It's true, I assure you.... Look at Adolphine, Connie. Just like a bird talking slander: pip, pip, pip! How Bertha's ears must tingle! Great Heavens, those eyes of Bertha's, always blinking! She ought to have something done to them.... Look at Dorine, Connie. She always looks repulsive.... As a matter of fact, Connie, there are only two good-looking people in the room: Mamma and yourself...."
"And you, Paul...."
"Your husband has a good figure too: he has an attractive back. I have an eye for nice backs. I don't like my own back; and yet my coat sits well, doesn't it? A dress-coat is a very tricky thing. Nowadays, there is hardly a tailor who can cut a good dress-coat. Yes, my waistcoat is very smart: just look at it. The buttons are smart, aren't they? They are uncut sapphires. Yes, you have a smart little brother.... Come, take my arm and let's walk round the room. Have you heard: they're all furious, the Ruyvenaers, the Saetzemas, Karel and Cateau, because they were not asked to the first party? The idea was to give it before the signing of the contract, but Otto's arrival came and upset it. He's another failure, that Otto, with his little tissue-paper wife.... Look at those Van Ravens, Connie. They're hanging on for all they're worth to Van Naghel and Bertha, lest they should be degraded at being seen with the Saetzemas.... Tell me, Connie: are you glad to be back? Are you really fond of all these relations?... I don't believe I have that family-affection which you and Mamma have; and Bertha; and Dorine. Bertha has it in her own house; Dorine and Mamma go scattering kindnesses broadcast over all the children and grandchildren.... I say, Connie, this is what people call enjoying themselves, because two of them are going to get married. But look all round: there's not a soul really enjoying himself. And that's what Van Naghel and Bertha spend a couple of thousand guilders on: giving them some dinner and a dance and letting them gaze at my Luxury, with Floortje dancing on top of Marianne. Look at those faces. Not one is naturally cheerful. Nature, nature, Connie: there's no such thing as nature among people like ourselves! We have not a gesture, not a word, not even a thought that is natural. It's all pose and humbug with every one of us; and nobody is taken in by it. Really, it's a disgusting business, a society like ours, what one calls good society. Can't you understand an anarchist loving to fling a bomb into the midst of us: for instance, at Uncle Ruyvenaer's stomach? No anarchist likes a stomach: the stomach is the trademark of the bourgeois.... Now they're going to dance: look how hideously they're spinning round the room. Just like palsied sparrows. We human beings are much too solemn and heavy to dance with any grace. Look, it's almost ghastly. Through all that pretence at elegance and smartness and dancing and gaiety, you can see that one has a stomach-ache and another a head-ache, that Van Naghel is thinking of how they went for him in the Chamber yesterday and Adolphine wondering how she shall make her wedding-parties seem only half as grand as Bertha's. . .."
She let him talk and he never ended: he could go on prattling for ever. His mother, sisters and nieces often told him to stop, moved away and left him in the midst of his outpourings; but Constance liked him, saw, indeed, a good deal of truth in what he said, in spite of all his humbug. He saw through the people around him with an insight which surprised her and which she was startled to find was not wholly inaccurate. It was certainly true that these people were not simply natural and merry. They had come there from politeness to Bertha and Van Naghel; but, in reality, one was tired, the other envious....
"Auntie," said Emilie, who was walking round the room on Van Raven's arm, "if Paul once gets hold of you, he'll never let you go...."
She called her youngest uncle by his Christian name. She was really a pretty girl, though Paul did not see any good-looking people there, and, by the side of her, her future husband was such a pale, insignificant person that people wondered why she had accepted him. She was rather thin, but there was something dainty, uncommon and original about her in her cloudy white frock; she had a pair of charming eyes of a strangely-twinkling gold-grey, like an unknown jewel; her hair was reddish, with a glint of gold in it; and there were a few tiny freckles on the clear-white complexion which often goes with that hair. She had a pretty laugh, a soft voice, a coaxing way of being nice and saying pleasant things; and, above all, she possessed an innate distinction and, as she passed, white and gleaming, she had something, one would almost have said, of a very beautiful alabaster ornament, or of a snowy azalea in the sunlight: a luminous fairness, dainty and transparently veined with palest blue. Constance knew that Emilie had a talent, something more than the usual girlish accomplishment, for painting, but that, in her busy life as a young society-girl, she had never had the opportunity to develop it. And Constance wondered at Van Raven, pale, thin, stuttering, stammering, spruce and yet awkward, with one shoulder higher than the other and his three hairs of a moustache twisted up towards his eyes. He was at the Foreign Office and he belonged to a family whose rigid Dutch orthodoxy was shocked by much in the Van Lowes, in the Van Naghels and especially in the Indian element of the Ruyvenaers: nevertheless, in view of the general reputation for wealth enjoyed by the colonial secretary, they had considered his daughter a suitable match for their son. Van Naghel and Bertha were making her a handsome allowance.