Papa filled a most important office,—it was in the year 1846,—and in consequence of one thing or another, perhaps in connection with the mysterious journeys, he had, one 6th of December, received a token that the State appreciated his services. Since that day, the said token had been inseparable from the black coat, without which no one ever saw Mijnheer Van Arlen. It was quite in harmony with the impressive wrinkle on his forehead, which looked as though Van Arlen had for years been staring upward in a bent position,—in harmony, too, with the compressed lips, which seemed in continual fear of letting a State secret escape; while his hair had become quite white, probably from the anxiety occasioned by the weighty matters which occupied his head. The daughters found in papa the type of a handsome man, and at the same time of a thoroughly respectable one; mamma adored him with the enthusiasm which every good housewife is bound to feel for her husband, and never spoke of him except as “Mijnheer Van Arlen.” Conversely, he always referred to his wife as “Mevrouw mijne echtgenoote;”[[36]] and he preferred to allude to his daughters in numerical order, unwilling to admit the outer world to so great a degree of familiarity as to speak to it of his daughters by their Christian names.
Either the bottle had stood too long on this particular day, or some other cause had spoilt Van Arlen’s taste for it; anyhow, he did not finish his glass, and, when dinner was over, fixed a penetrating gaze on the door, and remained silent.
“Are you not well, papa?” asked Caroline.
“Quite well, my child!”
“Difficult business?” asked Mevrouw, sympathetically.
“Oh! all business is difficult, mamma,” said Van Arlen, weightily, and stared into nothing more perseveringly than ever.
Mamma sighed, and the daughters looked sadly at papa. Could Uncle Van Noost Prigson’s letter be the cause of the trouble?
“Will you have any dessert, papa?”
The dessert was standing ready, as usual, on the small side-table. A box of flat biscuits, a butter-dish, a corner of cheese under a glass cover, and a little dish of fruit, or, if there was none to be had, of preserved ginger. But papa did not care for dessert, and never took any, except when the above-mentioned relation or intimate friend from the country was present; for “a dinner is not complete without dessert.”
“No, thank you, my dear? Will you?”