“Why, what then, youngster?” said I, “what ought I to say?”
“Why ... just like other people. The Juffrouw lives downstairs—she sells saucers and tops.”
Well—I am a coffee-broker—Last & Co., Lauriergracht, 37—there are thirteen of us in the counting-house, and, if you count Stern, who gets no salary, fourteen. And yet my wife is simply called Juffrouw; and does any one expect me to go and say Mevrouw to that person? Certainly not. Every one ought to keep his place; and what’s more, the sheriff’s officers had been there the day before, and taken away the furniture. So I thought it quite the proper thing to say Juffrouw, and stuck to it.
I asked why Sjaalman has not come to my house to fetch back his parcel. She seemed to know all about it, and said that they had been away—at Brussels. He had been writing for the Indépendance there, but had been obliged to give it up, because the paper had so often been refused admission into France on account of his articles. They had returned to Amsterdam a few days since, because Sjaalman had heard of a situation there.
“At Gaafzuiger’s, I suppose?”
Yes, that was the name. But it had come to nothing, after all, she said. Well, I knew more about that than she did. He had dropped the bound volume of Aglaia, and he was lazy, pedantic, and in bad health ... just so; that was why they discharged him.
She added that he meant to come and see me one of these days,—perhaps he was even now on his way to my house,—to ask me for an answer to the request he had made to me.
I said that he could come when it suited him, but that he was not to ring the bell, because that gives the servant so much trouble. If he waited a little, I told her, some one would be sure to come out sooner or later, and he could go in then. And then I departed, taking my sweets with me, for, to tell the truth, I didn’t like the look of things at all. I did not feel at my ease there. Why, a coffee-broker is not a crossing-sweeper, or a street-porter, I should think; and I am sure I look respectable enough. I had on my fur-lined overcoat, and yet she sat there as calmly, and talked as unconcernedly to her children, as if she had been alone. Besides, she seemed to have been crying, and if there is anything I cannot put up with, it is discontented people. Besides, it was chilly and unsociable in the place,—I suppose, because the furniture had been taken,—and I like a room to look cosy and comfortable. As I was going home, I thought I would try and keep on my old clerk Bastiaans a little longer,—because, after all, I don’t like turning a man into the street.
Multatuli.
(From “Max Havelaar.”)