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Old People and the Things That Pass

by Louis Couperus · English · Gutenberg #48271 · 502,380 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Old People and the Things That Pass

Author: Louis Couperus

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos


        
Release date: February 15, 2015 [eBook #48271]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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OLD PEOPLE AND THE THINGS THAT PASS

by

LOUIS COUPERUS

Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos







New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1919




CHAPTER I


Steyn's deep bass voice was heard in the passage:

"Come, Jack, come along, dog! Are you coming with your master?"

The terrier gave a loud, glad bark and came rushing madly down the
stairs, till he seemed to be tumbling over his own paws.

"Oh, that voice of Steyn's!" Ottilie hissed between her teeth angrily
and turned a number of pages of her novel.

Charles Pauws glanced at her quietly, with his little smile, his laugh
at Mamma's ways. He was sitting with his mother after dinner, sipping
his cup of coffee before going on to Elly.

Steyn went out with Jack; the evening silence settled upon the little
house and the gas hummed in the impersonal and unhomely sitting-room.
Charles Pauws looked down at the tips of his boots and admired their
fit.

"Where has Steyn gone?" asked Mamma; and her voice grumbled uneasily.

"Gone for a walk with Jack," said Charles Pauws.

He was called Lot[1] at home; his voice sounded soft and soothing.

"He's gone to his woman!" snarled Ottilie.

Lot made a gesture of weariness:

"Come, Mamma," he said, "be calm now and don't think about that scene.
I'm going on to Elly presently; meantime I want to sit cosily with
you for a bit. Steyn's your husband, after all. You mustn't always be
bickering with him and saying and thinking such things. You were just
like a little fury again. It brings wrinkles, you know, losing your
temper like that."

"I am an old woman."

"But you've still got a very soft little skin."

Ottilie smiled; and Lot stood up:

"There," he said, "give me a kiss.... Won't you? Must I give you one?
You angry little Mummy!... And what was it about? About nothing. At
least, I can't remember what it was all about. I should never be able
to analyse it. And that's always the way.... How do I come to be so
unruffled with such a little fury of a Mamma?"

"If you imagine that your father used to keep unruffled!"

Lot laughed that little laugh of his and did not reply. Mrs. Steyn de
Weert went on reading more peacefully; she sat in front of her book
like a child. She was a woman of sixty, but her blue eyes were like a
child's, full of a soft beauty, gentle and innocent; and her voice,
a little high-toned, always sounded like a child's, had just sounded
like the voice of a naughty child. Sitting, small and upright, in her
chair, she read on, attentively, calming herself because Lot had spoken
so calmly and kissed her so comfortingly. The gas hummed and Lot drank
his coffee and, looking at his boots, wondered why he was going to be
married. He did not think he was a marrying man. He was young still:
thirty-eight; he really looked much younger; he made enough money with
his articles to risk it, frugal-fashion, with what Elly would get from
Grandpapa Takma; but all the same he did not think that he was of the
marrying kind. His liberty, his independence, his selfish power to
amuse himself as he pleased were what he loved best; and marrying meant
giving one's self over, bound hand and foot, to a woman. He was not
passionately in love with Elly: he thought her an intelligent, artistic
little thing; and he was really not doing it for what she would inherit
from Grandpapa Takma. Then why was he doing it, he asked himself, as he
had asked himself day after day, during that week which had followed on
his proposal.

"Mamma, can you tell me? Why did I propose to Elly?"

Ottilie looked up. She was accustomed to queer and humorous questions
from Lot and she used to answer him in the same tone, as far as she was
able; but this question made her feel a prick of jealousy, a prick that
hurt very much, physically, like a thorn in the flesh.

"Why you proposed to Elly? I don't know. We always do things without
knowing why."

Her voice sounded soft and melancholy, a little sulky after the naughty
child's voice of just now. Had she not lost everything that she had
ever possessed? Would she not lose Lot, have to part with him to Elly
... as she had had to part with everything and everybody?...

"How seriously you answered, Mamma! That's not like you."

"Mayn't I be serious too, once in a way?"

"Why so sad and serious and tempersome lately? Is it because I am going
to be married?"

"Perhaps."

"But you're fond of Elly ..."

"Yes, she's very nice."

"The best thing we can do is to go on living together; Elly's fond of
you too. I've talked to Steyn about it."

Lot called his step-father, his second step-father, Steyn, without
anything else, after having called his first, when he was still a boy,
"Mr." Trevelley. Ottilie had been married three times.

"The house is too small," said Mamma, "especially if you go having a
family soon."

And yet she thought:

"If we remain together, I sha'n't lose Lot entirely; but I shall never
be able to get on with my daughter-in-law, especially if there are
children."

"A family?" he echoed.

"Children."

"Children?"

"Well, married people have had children before now!"

"Our family has lasted long enough. I shall be in no hurry about
children."

"And, when your wife hasn't you with her, what has she, if she hasn't
any children? It's true, you're both so clever. I'm only a stupid
woman; my children have often been a comfort to me...."

"When you were able to spoil them."

"It's not for you to reproach me with that!"

"I'm not reproaching you."

"As to living together, Lot," said Mamma, sadly, in a child's coaxing
voice, casting up her blue child-eyes, "_I_ should be quite willing, if
Elly is and if she promises to take things as she finds them. I shall
feel very lonely without you. But, if there were any objections, I
might go over to England. I have my two boys there. And Mary is coming
home from India this year."

Lot knitted his brows and put his hand up to his fair hair: it was very
neat, with a parting.

"Or else ... I might go and look up Ottilie at Nice."

"No, Mamma, not that!" said Lot, almost angrily.

"Why not?" exclaimed Mrs. Steyn de Weert, raising her voice. "She's my
child, surely?"

"Yes," Lot admitted, quickly recovering his composure. "But ..."

"But what? Surely, my own child...?"

"But it would be very silly of you to go to Ottilie."

"Why, even if we have quarrelled at times ..."

"It would never do; you can't get on with her. If you go to Ottilie, I
won't get married. Besides, Steyn has something to say in the matter."

"I'm so fond of Nice," said Mrs. Steyn de Weert; and her child-voice
sounded almost plaintive. "The winters there are so delightful....
But perhaps it would be difficult for me ... to go there ... because
Ottilie behaves so funnily. If it could be managed, I would rather
live with you, Lot. If Elly is willing. Perhaps we could have a little
larger house than this. Do you think we could afford it? Stay alone
with Steyn I will _not_. That's settled. That's quite settled."

"Mummy darling ..."

Lot's voice sounded full of pity. After her last determined words,
Mamma had big tears in her blue child-eyes, tears which did not fall
but which gave a sorrowful gleam to the naughty look in her face.
Then, with a sudden short sigh, she took up her book and was silent
and pretended to read. There was something resigned about her attitude
and, at the same time, something obstinate, the constant attitude of
a naughty child, a spoilt child that persisted in doing, quietly and
silently, what it wanted to. Lot, with his coffee-cup in his hand, his
laugh about his mouth, studied Mamma; after his compassion, he just
sat and studied her. Yes, she must have been very pretty; the uncles
always said, a little doll. She was sixty now and no longer made any
pretence to beauty; but she was still charming in a child-like and
doll-like fashion. She had the wrinkles and the deeper furrows of
an elderly woman; but the skin of her forehead and cheeks was still
white and soft, without a blemish, tenderly veined at the temples.
She had become very grey; but, as she had been very fair and her hair
was soft and curly, it sometimes looked as if she had remained fair;
and, simply though that hair appeared to be done, fastened up with one
quick movement and pinned, there were still some almost childish little
locks curling at the temples and in the neck. Her short, slim figure
was almost that of a young woman; her hands were small and pretty;
in fact, there was a prettiness about her whole person; and pretty
above all were the young, blue eyes. Lot, who smiled as he looked at
his mother, saw in her a woman over whom an emotional life, a life
of love and hate, had passed without telling very much upon her. And
yet Mamma had been through a good deal, with her three husbands, all
three of whom she had loved, all three of whom, without exception, she
now hated. A butterfly she had certainly been, but just an unthinking
butterfly, simply because her nature was a butterfly's. She had loved
much, but even a deep passion would not have made her life or her
different; naturally and unconsciously she was in headstrong opposition
to everything. She had never been economical; and yet her house was
never comfortable, nor had she ever spent much on dress, unconsciously
despising elegance and comfort and feeling that she attracted through
herself and not through any artistic surroundings. Mamma's get-up was
like nothing on earth, Lot thought; the only cosy room in the house was
his. Mamma, mad on reading, read very modern French novels, which she
did not always understand, despite a life of love and hatred, having
remained innocent in many things and totally ignorant of the darker
phases of passion. Then Lot would see, while she was reading, that she
was surprised and did not understand; a simple, childish wonder would
come into her eyes; she never dared ask Lot for an explanation....

Lot got up; he was going to Elly that evening. He kissed his mother,
with his constant little laugh of silent amusement, his little laugh at
Mamma.

"You never used to go out every evening," said Mamma, reproachfully;
and she felt the thorn in her heart's flesh.

"I'm in love now," said Lot, calmly. "And engaged. And a fellow must
go and see his girl, you know.... Will you think over my question,
why I really proposed to Elly ... and will you manage without me this
evening?"

"I shall have to do that many evenings...."

Mamma pretended to be absorbed in her French novel, but, as soon as Lot
had left the room, she put down the book and looked round, vaguely,
with a look of helplessness in her blue eyes. She did not move when
the maid brought in the tea-tray and kettle; she sat staring before
her, across her book. The water sang its bubbling song; outside the
windows, after the last summer heat, the first cold wind blew with
its wonted plaint. Ottilie felt herself abandoned: oh, how little
of everything remained! There she was now, there she was, the old,
grey-haired woman! What was there left of her life? And yet, strange
to say, her three husbands were all three alive: Lot had been lately
to Brussels with Elly, to see his father; Trevelley was spending a
life of pleasure in London: when all was said, she had liked him the
best. Her three English children lived in England, felt more English
than Dutch; Ottilie was leading her curious, unconventional life at
Nice: the whole family cried scandal about it; and Lot she was now
about to lose. He had always stayed with her so nicely, though he went
abroad pretty frequently; and he had hardly any friends at the Hague
and never went to the Witte.[2] Now he was going to be married; he was
no longer young, for a young man; he must be thirty-eight, surely? To
occupy herself a little now, beside her lonely tea-tray and bubbling
water, she began to count her children's ages on her tiny fingers.
Ottilie, Lot's sister, her eldest, forty-one: heavens, how old she was
growing! The English ones, as she always called them--"my three English
children"--Mary, thirty-five; John, thirty-two; even her handsome Hugh
was thirty: heavens above, how old they were growing! And, once she
was busy calculating ages, to amuse herself, she reckoned out that old
Mamma would now soon be--let's see--yes, she would be ninety-seven. Old
Mr. Takma, Elly's grandpapa, was only a year or two younger; and, when
she thought of him, Ottilie reflected that it was very strange that Mr.
Takma had always been so nice to her, as though it were really true
what people used to whisper, formerly, when people still interested
themselves in the family. So curious, those two old people: they saw
each other almost every day; for Papa Takma was hale and still went out
often, always walking the short distance from the Mauritskade to the
Nassaulaan and crossing the razor-back bridge with rare vigour. Yes
... and then Sister Thérèse, in Paris, eight years older than herself,
must be sixty-eight; and the brothers: Daan, in India,[3] seventy;
Harold, seventy-three; Anton, seventy-five; while Stefanie, the only
child of Mamma's first marriage and the only De Laders, was getting
on for seventy-seven. She, Ottilie, the youngest, felt that all those
others were very old; and yet she was old too: she was sixty. It was
all a matter of comparison, growing old, different ages; but she had
always felt it so: that she, the youngest, was comparatively young and
always remained younger than the others, than all the others. She had
to laugh, secretly, when Stefanie kept on saying:

"At our age ..."

Why, Stefanie was seventy-seven! There was a
difference--rather!--between sixty and seventy-seven. But she shrugged
her shoulders: what did it matter? It was all over and so long ago.
There she sat now, an old, grey-haired woman, and the aftermath of
life dragged on and the loneliness increased daily, even though Steyn
was here still: there he was, coming in. Where on earth did he go to
every evening? She heard the fox-terrier barking in the passage and her
husband's deep, bass voice:

"Hush, Jack! Quiet, Jack!..."

Oh, that voice, how she hated it!

What had she, whom had she left? She had five children, but only Lot
with her; and he went abroad so often and was now going to be married:
oh, how jealous it made her! Ottilie she never saw nowadays; Ottilie
didn't care for her mother; she sang at concerts and had made a name
for herself: she had a glorious voice; but she certainly behaved
very strangely: Stefanie spoke of her as "lost." Mary was married,
in India,[4] and her two English boys were in London: oh, how she
sometimes longed for Hugh! Which of her children was any use or
comfort to her, except that dear Lot? And Lot was going to be married
and he was asking her, his mother, who would miss him so, why he was
going to be married, why! Of course, he was only joking, really; but
perhaps it was also serious in part. Did people ever know anything?...
Did they know why they did a thing ... in their impulsiveness. She had
married three times.... Perhaps Ottilie was right after all? But no,
there was the world, there were people, even though neither the world
nor people had interested themselves in the family of late years; but
still there they were; and you couldn't act as Ottilie did, without
making yourself altogether impossible. That was why she, Mamma, had
married, had married three times. Perhaps she ought never to have
married at all: it would have been better for a heap of things, a heap
of people.... The old life was all gone. It had vanished, as if it had
never existed. And yet it had existed and, when it passed, had left
much behind it, but nothing except melancholy ghosts and shadows. Yes,
this evening she was in a serious mood and felt like thinking, a thing
which otherwise she did as seldom as possible: what good did thinking
do? When she had thought, in her life, she had never thought to any
practical purpose. When she had yielded to impulse, things had been
worse still. What was the good of wanting to live, when nevertheless
your life was mapped out for you by things stronger than yourself that
slumbered in your blood?

Ottilie gave herself up to her French novel, for Steyn de Weert had
entered the room, with Jack leaping in front of him. And any one
who had seen Mamma a moment ago and saw her now would have noticed
this phenomenon, that Mamma became much older as soon as her husband
entered. The plump cheeks contracted nervously and the lines round the
nose and mouth grew deeper. The little straight nose stuck out more
sharply, the forehead frowned angrily. The fingers, which were tearing
the pages of a novel anyhow with a hairpin, trembled; and the page was
torn awry. The back became rounder, like that of a cat assuming the
defensive. She said nothing, but poured out the tea.

"Coosh!" she said to the dog.

And, glad that the dog came to her, she patted him on the head with a
half-caress; and the fox-terrier, giving a last sharp bark, spun round
upon himself and, very suddenly, nestled down on Ottilie's skirt, with
a deep sigh. Steyn de Weert, sitting opposite her, drank his tea.
It appeared strange that they should be man and wife, for Mamma now
certainly looked her age and Steyn seemed almost young. He was a tall
fellow, broad-shouldered, not more than just fifty, with a handsome,
fresh-coloured, healthy face, the face of a strong out-of-doors man,
calm in glance and movement. The fact that, years ago, he had thrown
away his life, from a sense of honour, upon a woman much older than
himself had afterwards inspired him with an indifference that ceased
to reckon what might still be in store for him. What was spoilt was
spoilt, squandered for good, irretrievably. There was the open air,
which was cool and fresh; there was shooting; there was a drink, when
he wanted one; there were his old friends, dating back to the time when
he was an officer in the dragoons. Beyond these there were the little
house and this old woman: he accepted them into the bargain, because it
couldn't be helped. In externals he did, as far as possible, what she
wanted, because she could be so tempersome and was so obstinate; but
his cool stubbornness was a silent match for hers. Lot was a capital
fellow, a little weak and unexpected and effeminate; but he was very
fond of Lot: he was glad that Lot lived with them; he had given Lot one
of the best rooms in the house to work in. For the rest ... for the
rest, there were other things; but they were no concern of anybody.
Hang it all, he was a young man still, even though his thick hair was
beginning to turn grey! His marriage had come about through a point of
honour; but his wife was old, she was very old. The thing was really
rather absurd. He would never make a hell of his life, as long as he
still felt well and strong. With a good dose of indifference you can
shake off everything.

It was this indifference of his which irritated his wife, till she
felt as nervous as a cat when he did no more than enter the room. He
had not spoken a word, sat drinking his tea, reading the newspaper
which he had brought with him. In the small living-room, where the
gas hummed and the wind rattled the panes, the fox-terrier sometimes
snorted in dreams that made him groan and moan on the trailing edge of
his mistress' dress.

"Coosh!" she said.

And for the rest neither of them spoke, both sat reading, one her book,
the other his evening-paper. And these two people, whose lives had been
welded together by civil contract, because of the man's feelings of
conventional honesty and his sense of not being able to act otherwise
as a man of honour, these two had once, years ago, twenty years ago,
longed passionately, the man for the woman and the woman for the man.
When Steyn de Weert was a first lieutenant, a good-looking fellow,
just turned thirty, he had met Mrs. Trevelley, without knowing her
age. Besides, what did age matter when he set eyes upon a woman so
ravishingly beautiful to his quick desire that he had at once, at the
first moment that he saw her, felt the blood flaming in his veins and
thought:

"That woman I must have!..."

At that time, though already forty, she was a woman so full of
blossoming prettiness that she was still known as the beautiful Lietje.
She was small, but perfect in shape and particularly charming in
feature, charming in the still very young lines of throat and breast,
creamy white, with a few pale-gold freckles; charming with blue eyes
of innocence and very fair, soft, wavy hair; charmingly half-woman and
half-child, moulded for love, who seemed to exist only that she might
rouse glowing desires. When Steyn de Weert saw her thus for the first
time, in some ultra-modern Hague drawing-room of the Dutch-Indian set,
she was married to her second husband, that half-Englishman, Trevelley,
who was supposed to have made money in India; and Steyn had seen her
the mother of three biggish children: a girl of fifteen and two boys a
little younger; but the enamoured dragoon had refused to believe that,
by her first marriage, with Pauws, from whom she had been divorced
because of Trevelley, she had a daughter at the Conservatoire at Liège
and a son of eighteen at home! The beautiful Lietje? She had married
very young, in India, and she was still the beautiful Lietje. Such big
children? Was that woman forty? The young officer had perhaps hesitated
a moment, tried, now that he knew so much, to view Mrs. Trevelley with
other eyes; but, when he looked in hers and saw that she desired him as
he did her, he forgot everything. Why not cull a moment of happiness?
What was an instant of love with a still seductive and beautiful woman?
A triumph for a week, a month, a couple of months; and then each would
go a different way.

That was how he had thought at the time; but now, now he was sitting
here, because that bounder of a Trevelley, who wanted to get rid of
Ottilie, had taken advantage of their relations to create a scandal
and, after a pretence at a duel, to insist on a divorce; because all
the Hague had talked about Ottilie, when she was left standing alone
with a lover; and because he, Steyn, was an honest chap after all:
that, that was why he was sitting here, with that old woman opposite
him. Not a word was uttered between them; they drank their tea; the
tray was removed; Jack dreamed and moaned; the wind howled. The pages
followed in quick succession under Ottilie's fingers; and Steyn read
the Manchurian war-news and the advertisements, the advertisements and
the war-news. The room around them, married though they were, looked
as it had always looked, impersonal and unhomely; the clock ticked on
and on, under its glass shade. It looked like a waiting-room, that
drawing-room: a waiting-room where, after many things that had passed,
two people sat waiting. Sat waiting ... for what? For the end that was
so slow in coming, for the final death.

Steyn restrained himself and read through the advertisements once more.
But his wife, suddenly shutting up her book, said, abruptly:

"Frans!"

"Eh?"

"I was talking to Lot just now."

"Yes ..."

"Would you object if they stayed on with us, he and Elly?"

"No, on the contrary."

But it seemed as though Steyn's calm consent just irritated his wife,
perhaps against her own will, into contradiction:

"Yes, but it wouldn't be so easy!" she said.

"Why not?"

"The house is too small."

"We can move."

"A bigger house would be more expensive. Have you the money for it?"

"I think that, with what Lot makes and with Elly's allowance ..."

"No, a bigger house is too dear."

"Well, then here...."

"This is too small."

"Then it can't be done."

Ottilie rose, angrily:

"No, of course not: nothing can ever be done. Because of that wretched
money. But I'll tell you this: when Lot is married, I can't ... I
c-can't ..."

She stammered when she was angry.

"Well, what can't you?"

"I c-can't ... stay alone with you! I shall go to Nice, to Ottilie."

"All right, go."

He said it calmly, with great indifference, and took up his paper
again. But it was enough to make Ottilie, who was highly strung, burst
into sobs:

"You don't care a bit about me any more!"

Steyn shrugged his shoulders and went out of the room and upstairs; the
dog sprang in front of him, barking.

Ottilie remained alone; and her sobs ceased at once. She knew it
herself--the years had taught her as much as that--she easily lost her
temper and would always remain a child. But, in that case, why grow
older, in ever-increasing loneliness? There she sat, there she sat
now, an old, grey woman, in that unhomely room; and everything was
past. Oh, if Lot only remained with her, her Lot, her Charlot, her
boy! And she felt her jealousy of Lot and Elly, at first restrained,
rising more and more violently. And that other jealousy: her jealousy
of Steyn. He irritated her when he merely entered the room; but she
still remained jealous of him, as she always had been of every man that
loved her. Oh, to think that he no longer cared about her, because she
had grown old! Oh, to think that he never uttered a word of affection
now, never gave her a kiss on her forehead! She was jealous of Elly
because of Lot, she was jealous of Lot because of Steyn, because Steyn
really cared more for Lot, nowadays, than for her! How cruel the years
were, slowly to take everything from her! The years were past, the
dear, laughing love-years, full of caresses; all that was past! Even
the dog had just gone off with Steyn: no living creature was nice to
her; and why need Lot suddenly go getting married now? She felt so
forlorn that, after the forced sobs, which she had stopped as soon as
they were no longer necessary, she sank into a chair and wept softly,
really weeping, this time, because no one loved her and because she
was forlorn. Her still young and beautiful eyes, overflowing with
tears, looked into the vanished past. Then--in the days when she was
the beautiful Lietje--everything about her had been pleasant, nice,
caressing, playful, jesting, almost adoring and entreating, because she
was so pretty and gay and attractive and had an irresistible laugh and
a temper full of the most delightful little whims. True, through all
this there was always the sting of jealousy; but in those days so much
of it had come her way: all the caressing homage which the world, the
world of men, expends on a pretty woman! She laughed at it through her
tears; and the memory meandered around her, bright as pretty little,
distant clouds. Oh, what a wealth of adulation had surrounded her
then! Now, all those men were old or dead; only her own three husbands
were alive; and Steyn was still young. He was too young: if he had not
been so young, she would have kept her charm for him longer and they
would still be nice to each other, happy together as old people can be
sometimes, even though the warmth of youth is past.... She heaved a
deep sigh through her tears and sat in her chair like a helpless child
that has been naughty and now does not know what to do. What was there
for her to do now? Just to go quietly to bed, in her lonely room, an
old woman's room, in her lonely bed, and to wake in the morning and
drag one more old day after the old, old days! Ah, why could she not
have died while she was young?

She rang and told the maid to lock up; and these little habits had for
her the disconsolateness of everyday repetition, because it all seemed
unnecessary. Then she went upstairs. The little house was very tiny:
a small suite of rooms on the ground-floor, above that a suite with a
little dressing-room in addition to her room and Lot's, while Steyn had
hoisted himself up to the attic floor, doubtless so as not to be too
near his wife. And, as she undressed, she reflected that, if Elly would
consent to make shift, it might just be possible: she would give up her
present big room, with the three windows, to Lot and Elly; she, oh, she
could sleep in what was now Lot's little room: what did she care? If
only children did not come too quickly! Oh, if only she did not lose
Lot altogether! He asked her why he had proposed to Elly! He asked it
in his usual half-jesting way; but it was not nice of him to ask it:
she was glad that she had answered quietly and not worked herself into
a temper. Oh, the pain, the physical pain which she sometimes suffered
from that thorn in her heart's flesh, because of love, affection,
caresses even, that went out to another! And sadly, pitying herself,
she got into bed. The room was empty around her and unhomely: the
bedroom of a woman who does not care for all the trifles of comfort
and the vanities of the toilet and whose great joy always was to long
for the love and caresses of those whom she found attractive, because
of the once--often secret--wave of passion that flowed between them
and her. For this she had neglected the whole of the other life of a
wife, of a mother, even of a woman of the world and even of a smart
woman, not caring for it, despising auxiliaries, feeling sure of her
fascinations and very little of a mother by nature. Oh, she was old now
and alone! And she lay lonely in her chilly bed; and that evening she
had not even the consolation that Lot would come from the room next to
hers to give her a good-night kiss in bed as he knew how, pettingly,
a long, fond kiss on her forehead. At such times he would sit for a
moment on the edge of her bed, have a last chat with her; and then,
sometimes, passing his delicate hand over her cheek, he would say:

"Mamma, what a soft skin you have!"

When he came home now, he would think that she was asleep and would go
to bed. She sighed: she felt so lonely. Above Lot's room--you could
hear everything in that house--she heard Steyn pounding about. The
maid also was going to bed now; out of her own bed Ottilie listened to
all those sounds: doors opening; shoes put outside; a basin emptied.
It now became very still and she reflected what a good thing it was
that she always chose old servants. She thought of it with a certain
mischievous joy, glad that Steyn had no chance, with elderly servants.
The house was now quiet for the night, though it was not yet eleven....

Had she been asleep? Why did she wake suddenly? What was that creaking
on the stairs? Was it Lot coming home? Or was it Steyn sneaking out
again? Was it Lot? Was it Steyn? Her heart thumped in her chest. And
she got out of bed quickly and, before she knew what she was doing,
opened the door and saw a match struck flickering in the hall....

"Is that you, Lot?"

"No, it's I."

"You, Frans?"

"Yes, what's the matter?"

His voice sounded irritated, because she had heard him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going out."

"At this time of night?"

"Yes. I can't sleep. I'm going for a walk."

"You're going for a walk at this hour?"

"Yes."

"Frans, you're not faithful to me!"

"Oh, rot! Not faithful to you! Go back to bed."

"Frans, I _won't_ have you go out."

"Look here!"

"Do stay at home, Frans! Lot isn't back yet and I'm frightened, alone.
Do, Frans!"

Her voice sounded like that of a pleading child.

"I want some air."

"You want ..."

She did not finish her sentence, suddenly choking with anger. On the
top floor--she knew it--the old servant-maid was standing with her door
ajar, laughing and grinning. She knew it. She felt stifled with rage,
with nervous rage; she quivered all over her body, shivering in her
night-dress. The hall-door had opened and shut. Steyn was outside; and
she ... she was still standing on the stairs above. She clenched her
fists, she panted; she could have run after him, in her night-dress;
the big tears sprang from her child-eyes; but, ashamed because of the
maid, she went back to her room.

She cried, cried very softly, so as not to let the maid hear, so that
the maid should not have that added enjoyment. Oh, that pain, that
sting, here, in her heart, a physical pain, a physical pain! No one
who did not feel it as she did could know the physical pain which it
gave her, the sort of pain one describes to a doctor. Where could Steyn
be going? He was still so young, he still looked so well-set-up. And
yet he was her husband, her husband! Oh, why had he not remained nice
to her, old though she was? She never even felt the touch of his hand
now! And how at one time she had felt that touch tingle through all
her being! Oh, never again, never even a kiss, a kind kiss, such as old
people still exchange at times!

She did not go to bed; she waited up. Would Steyn come back soon? Was
that ... was that he coming now? No, it was Lot: it was his key she
heard, his lighter footstep.

And she opened the door:

"Lot!"

"Mummy, aren't you in bed yet?"

"No, dear. Lot, Lot, come here!"

He went into her room.

"Lot, Steyn is out."

"Out?"

"Yes, he went to his room first ... and then I heard him go quietly
down the stairs; then he went out of the hall-door, quietly."

"He didn't want to wake you, Mummy."

"Ah, but where has he gone to?"

"For a walk. He often does. It's very hot and close."

"Gone for a walk, Lot, gone for a walk? No, he's gone ..."

She stood in front of him--he could see it by the candle-light--blazing
with passion. Her little figure in the white night-dress was like that
of a fury with the curly yellow hair, shot with grey, all shining;
everything that was sweet in her seethed up into a raging temper,
as though she were irritated to the utmost, and she felt an impulse
suddenly to raise her hand and box Lot's ears with its small,
quivering fingers for daring to defend Steyn. She controlled herself
and controlled her wrath, but words of vulgar invective and burning
reproach came foaming to her trembling lips.

"Come, Mummy, Mummy! Come!"

Lot tried to calm her. And he took her in his arms and patted her back,
as one does to an excited child:

"Come, Mummy, come!"

She now burst into sobs. But he remonstrated with her gently, said
that she was exaggerating, that she had been overwrought lately, that
he absolutely refused to get married if she did not become calmer; and
very prettily he flirted with her in this way and persuaded her to go
to bed, tucked her in, shook up her pillows:

"Come, Mummy, go to sleep now and don't be silly. Let Steyn go for his
walk in peace, don't think of Steyn, don't think of anything...."

She acquiesced, under the stroke of his delicate hand on her hair, her
cheek.

"Will you go to sleep now, you silly Mummy?... I say, Mummy, what a
soft skin you have!..."


[1] Pronounced "Lo," as in the French "Charlot."

[2] The Witte and the Plaats are the two leading clubs at the Hague.

[3] Dutch East Indies: Java.

[4] British India.




CHAPTER II


Elly Takma was very happy and looked better than she had done for a
long time. Well, thought Cousin Adèle, who had long kept house for
Grandpapa Takma--she was a Takma too and unmarried--well, a first
little love-romance which a girl experiences when not much over twenty
and which makes her feel unhappy, an engagement broken off with a
fellow who used to go and see his mistress after spending the evening
with his betrothed: a romance of that sort does not influence a girl's
life; and, though Elly had moped for a while, Lot Pauws was making her
happy and making her look better, with a glad laugh on her lips and a
bright colour in her cheeks.

Cousin Adèle--Aunt Adèle, as Elly called her, Indian-fashion--buxom,
full-figured, fresh and young-looking for her age, had nothing of a
poor relation employed to do the housekeeping, but was altogether the
capable mistress of the house, seeing to everything, caring for nothing
but the details of her household and proud of her orderly home. She
had never been in India and ruled Grandpapa's house with true Dutch
conscientiousness, leaving Elly entirely to her hobby of the moment;
for Elly had her hobbies, which she rode until she attained absolute
perfection, after which she would take up a fresh one. At eighteen,
she had been a famous tennis-player, winning medals in tournaments,
well-known for her exquisite, powerful and graceful play, mentioned in
all the sporting-papers. After achieving perfection in tennis, she had
suddenly grown bored with it, hung up her racket, studded round with
the medals, by a pink ribbon in her bedroom and begun to work zealously
for the Charity Organization Society, doing much practical slumming
and sick-visiting; they thought highly of her in the committee. One
day, however, when a sick man showed her his leg with a hole in it,
she fainted and considered that she had overstepped her philanthropic
limits. She resigned the work; and, feeling a certain handiness
quivering at the tips of her sensitive fingers, she started making
her own hats and also modelling. She was successful in both pursuits:
the hats were so pretty that she thought seriously of setting up as
a milliner and working for her living. The modelling too was most
charming: after the first few lessons, she was modelling from the life;
and her head of _A Beggar Boy_ was accepted for exhibition. Then Elly
had fallen in love and was very much in love; her engagement lasted
three months; then it was broken off; and Elly, who did nothing by
halves, for all her varying interests, had suffered a great deal and
faded and pined and been dangerously ill, until one day she recovered,
with a feeling of melancholy as her only remembrance.

She was then twenty-three and had taken to writing. Under a pseudonym,
she published her own engagement in the form of a short story: it
was not a bad short story. Her new hobby brought her gradually into
contact with Charles Pauws, who also wrote, mostly for the newspapers:
articles, _causeries_. Elly was of opinion that she had soon reached
her literary limits. After this short story, which had blossomed in
her and blossomed out of her heart, she would never write anything
more. She was twenty-three, she was old. She had lived her life, with
different vicissitudes. Still there was something, there was Charles.
Soft, weak, passably witty, with his mother's attractive eyes, with his
fair hair carefully brushed, with his too pale blue ties, he was not
the man of her dreams; and she still felt, sometimes very grievously,
the sadness of her sorrow. But she was fond of him, she was very fond
of him and she considered that he was wasting his talent on trivial
work, on journalism, which he did with remarkable ease--after all, it
was an art in itself, Charles would retort--whereas his two novels were
so good; and he had attempted no serious work for the last ten years.
And in this girl, with her thoroughness--within limits--there arose,
on the now somewhat romantic ground of her melancholy and her sorrow,
the mission to rouse Lot to work, to produce real work, fine work. She
must work no longer for herself but for another, for Lot, who possessed
so many good qualities, but did not cultivate them earnestly. She saw
more and more of him; she had him to tea; they talked, talked at great
length; Lot, though not physically in love with her, thought it really
pleasant to be with Elly, allowed himself to be stimulated, began a
novel, stuck in the middle. She created in his mind the suggestion
that he wanted her. And he proposed to her. She was very happy and he
too, though they were not passionately in love. They were attracted
by the prospect of being together, talking together, living, working,
travelling together, in the smiling sympathy of their two souls: his
a rather small, vain, cynical, artistic soul, with above all much
kindly indulgence for others and a tinge of laughing bitterness and one
great dread, which utterly swayed his soul, the dread of growing old;
hers, at this moment, full of the serious thought of remaining true to
her mission and giving her life a noble object by wrapping it up in
another's.

Elly, that morning, was singing while the wind sent the early autumn
leaves driving in a shower of golden sunlight along the window-panes.
She was busy altering a winter hat, with a talent which she had not
quite lost, when Cousin--Aunt--Adèle entered the room:

"Grandpapa has had a bad night; I kept on hearing him moving."

"Yes, then he's troubled with buzzings which are just like voices,"
said Elly. "Grandpapa is always hearing those voices, you know. Dr.
Thielens looks upon them as a premonitory symptom of total deafness.
Poor Grandad! I'll go to him at once ... I must just finish my hat
first: I want to wear it to-day. We are going to old Mrs. Dercksz and
to Aunt Stefanie.... Auntie, I am so happy. Lot is so nice. And he is
so clever. I am certain that we shall be very happy. I want to travel a
great deal. Lot loves travelling.... There is some talk of our living
with Steyn and Ottilie. I don't know what to say. I would rather we
were by ourselves. Still, I don't know. I'm very fond of Mamma; and
she's Lot's mother after all. But I like harmony around me; and Steyn
and she quarrel. I call him Steyn, simply. _Meneer_ is too stiff; and I
can't call him Papa. Besides, Lot calls him Steyn too. It's difficult,
that sort of household. Steyn himself would think it odd if I called
him Papa.... Do you like the hat like this? I'll alter yours to-morrow.
Look, it's an absolutely new hat!... I'll go to Grandpapa now. Poor
Grandad, so he's had a bad night?..."

She left the door open. Aunt Adèle looked round: the room was lumbered
with hat-trimmings. The _Beggar Boy_ smiled in a corner; the medals
were studded round the racket, on its pink ribbon; the writing-table
was tesselated with squares of note-paper.

"What a litter!" said Aunt Adèle.

She dared not touch the papers, though she would have liked to tidy
them: she could not bear to see such a heap of scattered papers and
she had to restrain her itching fingers. But she cleared up the
hat-trimmings, quickly, and put them away in cardboard boxes. Then she
went downstairs, where the maids were turning out the dining-room.
Elly, flitting up the stairs, heard the blows beating on an arm-chair,
felt them almost on her own back, ran still quicker up the stairs, to
the next floor, where Grandpapa's room was. She stopped outside his
door, recovered her breath, knocked, opened the door and went in with a
calm step:

"How are you this morning, Grandad?"

The old gentleman sat at a knee-hole table, looking in a drawer; he
locked it quietly when Elly entered. She went up and kissed him:

"I hear you did not sleep well?"

"No, child, I don't think I slept at all. But Grandad can do without
sleep."

Grandpapa Takma was ninety-three: married late in life and his son
married late made it possible for him to have a granddaughter of
Elly's age. He looked younger, however, much younger, perhaps because
he tactfully mingled a seeming indifference to his outward appearance
with a really studied care. A thin garland of grey hair still fringed
the ivory skull; the clean-shaven face was like a stained parchment,
but the mouth, because of the artificial teeth, had retained its
young and laughing outline and the eyes were a clear brown, bright
and even keen behind his spectacles. His figure was small, slender
and slight as a young man's; and a very short jacket hung over his
slightly-arched and emaciated back: it was open in front and hung in
folds behind. The hands, too large in proportion to the man's short
stature, but delicately veined and neatly kept, trembled incessantly;
and there was a jerk in the muscles of the neck that twitched the head
at intervals. His tone was cheerful and lively, a little too genial
not to be forced; and the words came slowly and well-weighed, however
simple the things which they expressed. When he sat, he sat upright,
on an ordinary chair, never huddled together, as though he were always
on his guard; when he walked, he walked briskly, with very short steps
of his stiff legs, so as not to betray their rheumatism. He had been
an Indian civil servant, ending as a member of the Indian Council, and
had been pensioned years ago; his conversation showed that he kept pace
with politics, kept pace with colonial matters: he laughed at them,
with mild irony. In his intercourse with others, who were always his
juniors--for he had no contemporaries save old Mrs. Dercksz, _née_
Dillenhof, who was ninety-seven, and Dr. Roelofsz, eighty-eight--in his
intercourse he was kindly and condescending, realizing that the world
must seem other to people even of sixty and seventy than it did to him;
but the geniality was too great, was sometimes too exuberant not to be
assumed and not to make people feel that he never thought as he spoke.
He gave the impression of being a diplomatist who, himself always on
his guard, was sounding another to find out what he knew. Sometimes,
in his bright eyes, a spark shone behind the spectacles, as though he
had suddenly been struck by something, a very acute perception; and
the jerk of the neck would throw his head on one side, as though he
suddenly heard something. His mouth would then distort itself into a
laugh and he would hurriedly agree with whomever he was addressing.

What was most striking in him was that quick, tremulous lucidity in so
very old a man. It was as though some strange capacity had sharpened
his senses so that they remained sound and serviceable, for he still
read a great deal, with glasses; he was sharp of hearing; he was
particular in the matter of wine, with an unimpaired sense of smell;
he could find things in the dark. Only, sometimes, in the midst of a
conversation, it was as though an invincible drowsiness overcame him;
and his eyes would suddenly stare glassily in front of him and he would
fall asleep. They left him alone and had the civility not to let him
know it; and, five minutes later, he would wake up, go on talking,
oblivious of that momentary unconsciousness. The inward shock with
which he had woke was visible to no one.

Elly went to see her grandfather in the morning, always for a minute.

"We are going to pay calls this afternoon," said Elly. "On the family.
We have been nowhere yet."

"Not even to Grandmamma."

"We shall go to her first this afternoon. Grandad, we've been engaged
three days. And you can't go troubling everybody with your happiness
immediately."

"And you _are_ happy, child," Grandpapa began, genially.

"I think so...."

"I'm sorry I can't keep you with me, you and Lot," he continued,
lightly: he sometimes had an airy way of treating serious topics; and
his thin voice then lacked emphasis. "But you see, I'm too old for
that: a young household grafted on mine! Besides, to live by yourselves
is more charming.... Baby, we never talk of money, you and I. As you
know, Papa left nothing and he ran through your mother's money, lost it
in different businesses in Java; they none of them succeeded. Your poor
parents never had any luck. Well, Baby, I'm not a rich man, but I can
live like this, on my Mauritskade, because an old man doesn't want much
and Aunt Adèle manages things so cleverly. I've worked out that I can
give you two hundred guilders a month. But that's all, child, that's
all."

"But, Grandad, it's really very handsome...."

"Well, you can accept it from your grandfather. You're my heiress,
after all, though you're not all alone; no, Grandfather has others:
kind acquaintances, good friends.... It won't last very long now,
child. You won't be rich, for my house is my only luxury. All the rest,
as you know, is on an economical scale. But you will have enough,
especially later on; and Lot appears to make a good bit. Oh, it's not
money that matters to him, child: what matters to him is ... is ..."

"What, Grandad?"

A drowsiness suddenly overcame the old man. But, in a few minutes, he
resumed:

"There is some talk of your living with Steyn...."

"Yes, but nothing's decided."

"Ottilie is nice, but hot-tempered," said the old gentleman, sunk in
thought: he seemed to be thinking of other things, of more important
things especially.

"If I do, it will be for Mamma's sake, Grandad, because she is so much
attached to Lot. I would rather have my own little house. But we shall
travel a good deal in any case. Lot says that he can travel cheaply."

"You might be able to do it, child, with a little tact: live with the
Steyns, I mean. Ottilie is certainly very much alone, poor thing.
Who knows? Perhaps you would supply a little affection, a little
sympathy...."

His airy voice became softer, fuller, sounded more earnest.

"We shall see, Grandpapa. Will you stay upstairs, or are you coming
down to lunch?"

"No, send me something up here. I've not much appetite, I've no
appetite...."

His voice sounded airy again, like the whisper of a breeze.

"It's windy weather; and I think it's going to rain. Are you going out
all the same, this afternoon?"

"For a moment, I think.... To Mrs. Dercksz' ..."

"To Grandmamma's...."

"Yes, yes, better say Grandmamma. When you see her, call her Grandmamma
at once. It's less stiff: she will like it ... even though you're not
married to Lot yet...."

His voice sank; he sighed, as though he were thinking of other things,
of more important things; and, with the jerk in his neck, he started
up and remained like that for a second, with his head on one side, as
if he heard something, as if he were listening. Elly did not think
Grandpapa looking well to-day. The drowsiness overcame him again; his
head dropped and his eyes grew glassy. And he sat there, so frail and
fragile, as if one could have blown the life out of him like a dancing
feather. Elly, after a moment's hesitation, left him alone. The old
gentleman gave a start, when he heard the door close gently, and
recovered his full consciousness. He sat for a second or two without
moving. Then he unlocked the drawer of his writing-table, with which
he had been busy before, and took out the pieces of a letter that had
already been torn up. He tore the pieces still smaller, as small as
they possibly could be, and scattered them in his waste-paper-basket,
in among other discarded papers. After that he tore up a second letter,
after that a third, without reading them over. He scattered the tiny
pieces in the basket and shook the basket, shook the basket. The
tearing tired his stiff fingers; the shaking tired his arm.

"A few more this afternoon," he muttered. "It's getting time, it's
getting time...."




CHAPTER III


The old gentleman went out at about three o'clock, alone: he did not
like to be accompanied when he went, though he was glad to be brought
back home; but he would never ask for this service. Aunt Adèle looked
out of the window and followed him with her eyes as he turned by the
barracks and crossed the razor-back bridge. He was not going farther
than just down the Nassaulaan, to Mrs. Dercksz'; and he managed the
distance with a delicate, erect figure and straight legs: he did
not even look so very old a man, in his overcoat buttoned up to the
throat, even though each step was carefully considered and supported
by his heavy, ivory-knobbed stick. In order above all not to let it be
perceived that this short walk was his exercise and his relaxation,
a great deal of exercise and relaxation for his now merely nervous
strength, he had needs to consider every step; but he succeeded in
walking as though without difficulty, stiff and upright, and he studied
his reflection in the plate-glass of the ground-floor windows. In the
street, he did not strike a passer-by as so very old. When he rang, old
Anna hurried and the cat slipped crosswise through her petticoats, cat
and maid making for the front-door at one run:

"The old gentleman, I expect."

Then she drove the cat back to the kitchen, afraid lest the old
gentleman should stumble, and drew him in with little remarks about
the weather and questions about his health; and to Takma it called
for rare art to let his overcoat, which he took off in the hall, slip
from his shoulders and arms into the maid's hands. He did it slowly
and gradually, a little tired with the walk, but in the meanwhile he
recovered breath sufficiently to go upstairs, one flight only, with
the aid of the stick--"We may as well keep the stick, Anna," he would
say--for Mrs. Dercksz nowadays never came down to the ground-floor
rooms.

She was expecting him.

He came almost every day; and, when he was not coming, Aunt Adèle or
Elly would call round to say so. So she sat, in her high-backed chair,
waiting for him. She sat at the window, looking out at the gardens of
the villas in the Sofialaan.

He murmured heartily, though his salutation was indistinct:

"Well, Ottilie?... It's blowing out of doors.... Yes, you've been
coughing a bit lately.... You must take care of yourself, you know....
I'm all right, I'm all right, as you see...."

With a few more words of genial heartiness, he sat down straight
upright in the arm-chair at the other window, while Anna now for the
first time relieved him of his hat, and rested his hands, still clad
in the wide, creased gloves of _glacé_ kid, on his stick.

"I haven't seen you since the great news," said Mrs. Dercksz.

"The children are coming presently to pay their visit of inspection...."

They were both silent, their eyes looking into each other's eyes, chary
of words. And quietly for a while they sat opposite each other, each
at a window of the narrow drawing-room. The old, old woman sat in a
twilight of crimson-rep curtains and cream-coloured lace-and-canvas
blinds, in addition to a crimson-plush valance, which kept out the
draught and hung with a bend along the window-frame. She had only moved
just to raise her thin hand, in its black mitten, for Takma to press.
Now they both sat as though waiting for something and yet pleased to
be waiting together.... The old lady was ninety-seven and she knew
that what she was waiting for must come before her hundredth year had
dawned.... In the twilight of that curtained corner, against the sombre
wall-paper, her face seemed almost like a piece of white porcelain,
with wrinkles for the crackle, in that shadow into which she still
withdrew, continuing a former prudent habit of not showing too much of
her impaired complexion; and her wig was glossy-black, surmounted with
the little black-lace cap; the loose black dress fell in easy, thin
lines around her almost brittle, lean figure, but hid her so entirely
in those never-varying folds of supple cashmere that she could never be
really seen or known, but only suggested in that dark drapery. Besides
the face, nothing else seemed alive but the frail fingers trembling
in her lap, like so many tapering, luminous wands in their black
mittens; the wrists were encircled in close-fitting woollen cuffs. She
sat upright on her high-backed chair, as on a throne, supported by a
stiff, hard cushion; another cushion was under her feet, which she
never showed, as they were slightly deformed by gout. Beside her, on
a little table, was some crochet-work, untouched for years, and the
newspapers, which were read to her by a companion, an elderly lady who
withdrew as soon as Mr. Takma arrived. The room was neat and simple,
with a few framed photographs here and there as the only ornament amid
the highly-polished, black, shiny furniture, the crimson sofa and
chairs, with a few pieces of china gleaming in a glass cabinet. The
closed folding-doors led to the bedroom: these were the only two rooms
inhabited by the old woman, who took her light meal in her chair.

Golden-sunny was the late summer day; and the wind blew gaily, in a
whirl of early yellow leaves, through the garden of the Sofialaan.

"A nice view, that," said Mrs. Dercksz, as she had said so often
before, with her mittened hand just hinting at an angular pointing
gesture.

The voice, long cracked, sounded softer than pure Dutch and was
mellower, with its creole accent; and, now that she looked out of the
window, the eyes also took on an eastern softness in the porcelain
features and became darker. She did not clearly distinguish things
outside; but yet the knowledge that there were flowers and trees over
the way was dear to her dim eyes.

"Fine asters in the garden opposite," said Takma.

"Yes," Mrs. Dercksz assented, unable to see them, but now knowing about
the asters.

She understood him quite well; her general deafness she concealed by
never asking what was said and by replying with a smile of her thin,
closed lips or a movement of her head.

After a pause, as each sat looking out of his own window, she said:

"I saw Ottilie yesterday."

The old gentleman felt bewildered for a moment:

"Ottilie?" he asked.

"Lietje ... my daughter...."

"Oh, yes!... You saw Lietje yesterday.... I thought you were speaking
of yourself."

"She was crying."

"Why?"

"Because Lot is going to be married."

"She'll be very lonely, poor Lietje; yet Steyn is a decent fellow....
It's a pity.... I like Steyn...."

"We are all of us lonely," said Mrs. Dercksz; and the cracked voice
sounded sad, as though she were regretting a past full of vanished
shades.

"Not all of us, Ottilie," said Takma. "You and I have each other. We
have always had each other.... Our child, when Lot is married, will
have no one, not even her own husband."

"Ssh!" said the old woman; and the straight, lean figure gave a shiver
of terror in the twilight.

"There's no one here; we can speak at our ease."

"No, there's no one...."

"Did you think there was some one?"

"No, not now.... Sometimes ..."

"Yes?"

"Sometimes ... you know ... I think there is."

"There's no one."

"No, there's no one."

"Why are you afraid?"

"Afraid? Am I afraid? What should I be afraid of? I am too old ... much
too old ... to be afraid now.... Even though _he_ may stand over there."

"Ottilie!"

"Ssh!"

"There's no one."

"No."

"Have you ... have you seen _him_ lately?"

"No.... No.... Not for months, perhaps not ... for years, for years....
But I did see him for many, many years.... You never saw him?"

"No."

"But ... you used to _hear_ him?..."

"Yes, _I_ ... I used to _hear_ him.... My hearing was very good and
always keen.... It was hallucinations.... I often heard his voice....
Don't let us talk about it.... We are both so old, so old, Ottilie....
He _must_ have forgiven us by now. Else we should never have grown so
old. Our life has passed peacefully for years: long, long, old years;
nothing has ever disturbed us: he _must_ have forgiven us.... _Now_ we
are both standing on the brink of our graves."

"Yes, it will soon come. I feel it."

But Takma brought his geniality into play:

"You, Ottilie? You'll live to be a hundred!"

His voice made an effort at bluff braggadocio and then broke into a
shrill high note.

"I shall never see a hundred," said the old woman. "No. I shall die
this winter."

"This winter?"

"Yes. I foresee it. I am waiting. But I am frightened."

"Of death?"

"Not of death. But ... of _him!_"

"Do you believe ... that you will see him again?"

"Yes. I believe in God, in the communion of souls. In a life hereafter.
In atonement."

"I don't believe in an atonement hereafter, because we have both of us
suffered so much in our lives, Ottilie!"

The old man's tone was almost one of entreaty.

"But there has been no punishment," said she.

"Our suffering was a punishment."

"Not enough. I believe that, when I am dead, he, _he_ will accuse me."

"Ottilie, we have become so old, quietly, quietly. We have only had
to suffer inwardly. But that has been enough, God will consider that
punishment enough. Don't be afraid of death."

"I should not be afraid if I had seen his face wearing a gentler
expression, with something of forgiveness. He always stared at me....
Oh, those eyes!..."

"Hush, Ottilie!..."

"When I sat here, he would stand there, in the corner by the cabinet,
and look at me. When I was in bed, he appeared in my mirror and gazed
at me. For years and years.... Perhaps it was an hallucination....
But I grew old like that. I have no tears left. I no longer wring my
hands. I never move except between this chair and my bed. I have had
no uneasiness ... or terror ... for years: _nobody knows_. Of the
_baboe_[1] ..."

"Ma-Boeten?"

"Yes ... I have had no news for years. She was the only one who knew.
She's dead, I expect."

"Roelofsz knows," said the old gentleman, very softly.

"Yes ... he knows ... but ..."

"Oh, he has always kept silent!..."

"He is ... _almost_ ... an accomplice...."

"Ottilie, you must think about it calmly.... We have grown so very
old.... You must think about it calmly, as _I_ think about it.... You
have always been too fanciful ..."

His voice sounded in entreaty, very different from its usual airy
geniality.

"It was after that in particular that I became full of fancies. No, I
have never been able to think about it calmly! At first I was afraid of
people, then of myself: I thought I should go mad!... Now, now that it
is approaching ... I am afraid of God!"

"Ottilie!"

"It has been a long, long, long martyrdom.... O God, can it be that
this life is not enough?"

"Ottilie, we should not have grown so very old--you ... and I ... and
Roelofsz--if God ... and _he_ also had not forgiven us."

"Then why did he so often ... come and stand there! Oh, he stood there
so often! He just stared, pale, with dark, sunken eyes, eyes like two
fiery daggers: like _that!..._"

And she pointed the two slender, wand-like fore-fingers straight in
front of her.

"I ... I am calm, Ottilie. And, if we are punished afterwards, after
our death, we must endure it. And, if we endure it ... we shall receive
mercy."

"I wish I were a Catholic. I thought for a long time of becoming a
Catholic. Thérèse was quite right to become a Catholic.... Oh, why do I
never see her now? Shall I ever see her again? I hope so. I hope so....
If I had been a Catholic, I should have confessed ..."

"There is no absolution among Catholics for _that_."

"Isn't there? I thought ... I thought that a priest could forgive
anything ... and cleanse the soul before you died. The priest at any
rate could have consoled me, could have given me hope! Our religion is
so cold. I have never been able to speak of it to a clergyman...."

"No, no, of course not!"

"I could have spoken of it to a priest. He would have made me do
penance all my life long; and it would have relieved me. Now, _that_ is
always here, on my breast. And I am so old. I sit with it. I lie in bed
with it. I cannot even walk about with it, roam about with it, forget
myself in movement...."

"Ottilie, why are you talking about it so much to-day? Sometimes we do
not mention it for months, for years at a time. Then the months and
years pass quietly.... Why are you suddenly talking so very much about
it to-day?"

"I began thinking, because Lot and Elly are getting married."

"They will be happy."

"But isn't it a crime, a crime against nature?"

"No, Ottilie, do reflect ..."

"They are ..."

"They are cousins. They don't know it, but that isn't a crime against
nature!"

"True."

"They are cousins."

"Yes, they're cousins."

"Ottilie is my daughter; her son is my grandson. Elly's father ..."

"Well?"

"Do reflect, Ottilie: Elly's father, my son, was Lietje's brother.
Their children are first cousins."

"Yes."

"That's all they are."

"But they don't know that they are cousins. Lietje has never been told
that she is your daughter. She has never been told that she was your
son's sister."

"What difference does that make? Cousins are free to marry."

"Yes, but it's not advisable.... It's not advisable because of the
children that may come, because of the blood and because ... because
of everything."

"Of what, Ottilie?"

"They inherit our past. They inherit that terror. They inherit our sin.
They inherit the punishment for our offence."

"You exaggerate, Ottilie. No, they don't inherit as much as that."

"They inherit everything. One day perhaps they will see _him_ standing,
perhaps they will hear him, in the new houses where they will live....
It would have been better if Elly and Lot had found their happiness
apart from each other ... in other blood, in other souls.... They will
never be able to find the ordinary happiness. Who knows, perhaps their
children will be ..."

"Hush, Ottilie, hush!"

"Criminals...."

"Ottilie, please be quiet! Oh, be quiet! Why do you speak like that?
For years, it has been so peaceful. You see, Ottilie, we are _too_ old.
We have been allowed to grow so old. We have had our punishment. Oh,
don't let us speak about it again, never again! Let us wait calmly,
calmly, and suffer the things that come after us, for we cannot alter
them."

"Yes, let us wait calmly."

"Let us wait. It will come soon. It will come soon, for you and me."

His voice had sounded imploringly; his eyes shone wet with terror.
She sat stiff and upright in her chair; her fingers trembled violently
in the deep, black folds of her lap. But a lethargy descended upon
both of them; the strange lucidity and the anxious tension of their
unaccustomed words seemed but for a moment to be able to galvanize
their old souls, as though by a suggestion from without. Now they both
grew lethargic and became very old indeed. For a long time they stared,
each at his window, without words.

Then there was a ring at the front-door.


[1] Malay: nurse, _ayah_.




CHAPTER IV


It was Anton Dercksz, the old lady's eldest son by her second marriage;
by her first she had only an unmarried daughter, Stefanie de Laders.
Anton also had never married; he had made his career in Java; he was an
ex-resident. He was seventy-five, taciturn, gloomy and self-centred,
owing to his long, lonely life, full of lonely thoughts about himself,
the heady thoughts of a sensualist who, in his old age, had lapsed
into a sensualist in imagination.... It had been his nature, first
instinctively, then in a more studied fashion, to hide himself, not to
give himself; not to give of himself even that which would have won
him the praise and esteem of his fellow-men. Endowed with intelligence
above the ordinary, a student, a man of learning, he had fostered that
intelligence only for himself and had never been more than an average
official. His self-centred, gloomy soul had demanded and still demanded
solitary enjoyments, even as his powerful body had craved for obscure
pleasures.

He entered in his overcoat, which he kept closely wrapped about him,
feeling chilly, though it was still a sunny September and autumn had
hardly given its first shiver. He came to see his mother once a week,
from an old habit of respect and awe. Her children--elderly men and
women, all of them--all called regularly, but first asked Anna, the
maid, with the cat always among her skirts, who was upstairs with
Mamma. If some member of the family were there already, they did not
go up at once, anxious on no account to tire her with too great a
gathering and too many voices. Then Anna would receive them in the
downstairs morning-room, where she kept up a fire in the winter, and
often the old servant would offer the visitor a brandy-cherry. If old
Mr. Takma had only just arrived, Anna did not fail to say so; and the
children or grandchildren would wait downstairs for a quarter of an
hour and longer, because they knew that Mamma, that Grandmamma liked
to be alone for a while with Takma, her old friend. If Takma had been
there some time, Anna would reckon out whether she could let them go
upstairs at once.... The companion was not there in the afternoons,
except when mevrouw sent for her, as sometimes happened when the
weather was bad and nobody called.

Anton Dercksz entered, hesitating because of Takma, uncertain whether
he was intruding. The old woman's children, however much advanced in
years, continued to behave as children to the once stern and severe
mother, whom they still saw in the authority of her motherhood. And
Anton in particular always saw her like that, seated in that chair
which was as an unyielding throne, strange in that very last and
fragile life hanging from a brittle, invisible thread, which, in
snapping, would have broken life's last string. At the window, because
of a lingering ray of sunshine outside, the mother sat in a crimson
twilight of curtains and valance, sat as if she would never move again
until the moment came for the dark portals to open. For the "children"
did not see her move, save with the single, angular gesture sometimes
suggested by once active, but now gouty, slender, wand-like fingers.
Anton Dercksz knew that--if the portals had not opened that day--his
mother would move, round about eight o'clock, to be taken to bed by
Anna and the companion. But he never saw this: what he saw was the
well-nigh complete immobility of the brittle figure in the chair that
was almost a throne, amid a twilight just touched with pink. Old man
as he himself was, he was impressed by this. His mother sat there so
strangely, so unreally: she sat waiting, waiting. Her eyes, already
glazed, stared before her, sometimes as though she were afraid of
something.... The lonely man had developed within himself an acute
gift of observation, a quick talent for drawing inferences, which he
never allowed any one to perceive. For years he had held the theory
that his mother was always thinking of something, always thinking of
_something_, an invariable something. What could it be?... Perhaps
he was mistaken, perhaps he looked too far, perhaps his mother's
expression was but the staring of almost sightless eyes. Or was she
thinking of hidden things in her life, things sunk in her life as in
a deep, deep pool? Had she her secrets, as he had his, the secrets of
his sullen hedonism? He was not inquisitive: everybody had his secrets;
perhaps Mother had hers. He would never strive to find out. People
had always said that Takma and Mother had been lovers: she no doubt
thought of those old things ... or was she not thinking, was she merely
waiting and staring out of her window?... However this might be, his
awe remained unchanged.

"It is lovely weather, for September," he said, after the usual
greetings.

He was a big man, broad in his overcoat, with a massive florid face, in
which deep folds hung beside the big nose and made dewlaps under the
cheeks; the grey-yellow moustache bristled above a sensual mouth with
thick, purple lips, which parted over the yellow teeth, crumbling, but
still firm in their gums; the thick beard, however recently shaved,
still left a black stubble on the cheeks; and a deep scar cleft the
twice deeply-wrinkled forehead, which rose towards a thinning tuft of
yellow-grey hair, with the head bald at the back of it. The skin of his
neck was rough, above the low, stand-up collar, and grooved, though
not quite so deeply, like that of an old labourer, with deep-ploughed
furrows. His coarse-fisted hands lay like clods on his thick knees; and
a watch-chain, with big trinkets, hung slackly over his great stomach,
which had forced open a button of his worn and shiny waistcoat. His
feet rested firmly on the carpet in their Wellington boots, whose
tops showed round under the trouser-legs. This outward appearance
betrayed only a rough, sensual, elderly man: it showed him neither
in his intellect nor, above all, in his power of imagination. The
great dream-actor that he was remained hidden from whoever saw him no
otherwise than thus.

Takma, so many years older, with his habit of gaiety and his sometimes
shrill heartiness, which gave a birdlike sound to his old voice and
a factitious glitter to his false teeth, Takma, in his short, loose
jacket, had something delicate beside Anton Dercksz, something younger
and more restless, together with a certain kindly, gentle, benevolent
comprehension, as if he, the very old man, understood the whole life
of the younger one. But this was just what always infuriated Anton
with Takma, because he, Anton Dercksz, saw through it. It concealed
something: Takma hid a secret, though he hid it in a different way
from Anton Dercksz'. He hid a secret: when he started, with that jerk
of his head, he was afraid that he had been seen through.... Well,
Anton was not inquisitive. But this very old man, this former lover of
his mother, of the woman who still filled Anton with awe when he saw
her sitting erect, waiting, in her chair by the window: this old man
annoyed him, irritated him, had always roused his dislike. He had never
allowed it to show and Takma had never perceived it.

The three old people sat without exchanging many words, in the
narrow drawing-room. The old woman had now calmly mastered herself,
because her son, her "child," was sitting there and she had always
remained calm before the splenetic glance of his slightly prominent
eyes. Straight up she sat, as though enthroned, as though she were
a sovereign by reason of her age and her authority, dignified and
blameless, but so frail and fragile, as though the aura of death
would presently blow away her soul. Her few words sounded a note of
appreciation that her son had come to see her, asking, as was his
filial duty, once a week, after her health. She was pleased at this;
and it was not difficult for her to calm herself, suddenly put in a
placid mood by that feeling of satisfaction, even though but now, as
in a suggestion from without, she had been obliged to speak of former
things which she had seen pass before her eyes. And, when the bell rang
again, she said:

"That's the children, I expect...."

They all three listened, in silence. Sharp-eared old Takma heard some
one speaking to Anna in the hall:

"They're asking if it won't be too much for you," said Takma.

"Anton, call down the stairs to have them shown up," said the old lady;
and her voice rang like a maternal command.

Anton Dercksz rose, went to the door and called out:

"You can come up. Grandmamma's expecting you."

Lot and Elly came in and their entrance was as though they feared
to dispel the atmosphere around the old woman with the too-great
youthfulness approaching her. But the old woman made an angular
movement of her arms, which lifted themselves in the black folds of the
wide sleeves; and a hint of the gesture was given, gouty-stiff, in the
crimson shade of the curtains, while she said:

"So you're going to get married; that's right."

The gesture brought the mittened hands to the level of Lot's head,
which she held for a moment and kissed with a trembling mouth; she
kissed Elly too; and the girl said, prettily:

"Grandmamma...."

"I am glad to see you both. Mamma has already told me the great news.
Be happy, children, _happy_...."

The words sounded like a short speech from out of the twilight of the
throne-like chair, but they trembled, breaking with emotion:

"Be happy, children, _happy_," Mamma had said.

And Anton Dercksz seemed to see that his mother was thinking that there
had not been many happy marriages in the family. He was conscious of
the underlying thought in her words and was glad that he had never been
married: it gave him a silent, pleasurable sense of satisfaction, as
he looked at Lot and Elly. They were sitting there so youthful and
unwrung, he thought; but he knew that this was only on the surface,
that Lot, after all, was thirty-eight and that this was not Elly's
first engagement. Yet how young those two lives were and how many
vigorous years had they not before them! He became jealous at the
thought and envious; and his eyes grew sullen when he reflected that
vigorous years were no longer his. And, with the sly glance of a man
secretly enjoying the sensual pleasures of the imagination, he asked
himself whether Lot was really a fellow who ought to think of marrying.
Lot was delicately built, was hardly a man of flesh and blood, was like
his mother in appearance, with his pink face and his fair plastered
hair, his short fair moustache above his cynical upper lip, and very
spruce in his smooth-fitting jacket and the neat little butterfly tie
beneath his double collar. And yet no fool, thought Anton Dercksz: his
articles written from Italy, on Renascence subjects, were very good and
Anton had read them with pleasure, without ever complimenting Lot upon
them; and his two novels were excellent: one about the Hague, one about
Java, with a keen insight into Dutch-Indian society. There was a great
deal in the lad, more than one would think, for he looked not a man of
flesh and blood, but a fair-haired, finikin doll, a fashion-plate.

Elly was not pretty, had a pale but sensible little face: he did
not believe that she was a woman of warm passion, or, if she was,
it would not reveal itself till later. He did not expect that they
would kiss each other very rapturously; and yet that was the most
genuine consolation in this confounded life of ours, always had been
so to him. Everything grew confused before his jaundiced eyes, in a
regret for things that were lost; but nevertheless he listened to the
conversation, which was carried on calmly and quietly, in order not to
tire Grandmamma: when Lot and Elly meant to get married, where they
would go for the honeymoon.

"We shall be married in three months," said Lot. "There's nothing to
wait for. We shall go to Paris and on to Italy. I know Italy well and
can show Elly about...."

Anton Dercksz rose and took his leave; and, when he went downstairs, he
found his sister, Ottilie Steyn de Weert, and Roelofsz, the old doctor,
in the morning-room:

"The children are upstairs," he said.

"Yes, I know," said Ottilie. "That's why I'm waiting; it would be too
much for Mamma otherwise ..."

"Well-well-well," muttered the old doctor.

He sat huddled in a chair, a shapeless mass of dropsical obesity: his
one stiff leg was stuck out straight in front of him and his paunch
hung sideways over it in curving lines; his face, clean-shaven but
bunched into wrinkles, was like the face of a very old monk; his thin
grey hair looked as if it were moth-eaten and hung in frayed wisps from
his skull, which was shaped like a globe, with a vein at one temple
meandering in high relief; he lisped and muttered exclamation upon
exclamation; his watery eyes swam behind gold spectacles.

"Well-well-well, Ottilie, so your Lot is getting married at last!..."

He was eighty-eight, the doctor, the last surviving contemporary of
Grandmamma and Mr. Takma; he had brought Ottilie Steyn into the world,
in Java, at a time when he was a young doctor, not long since arrived
from Holland; and he called her either by her Christian name or "child."

"At last?" cried Ottilie, in a vexed tone. "It's early enough for _me!_"

"Yes-yes-yes, yes-yes, child; you'll miss him, you'll miss your boy, I
daresay.... Still, they'll make a nice couple, he and Elly, well-well,
yes-yes-yes, working together, artistic, yes, well.... That good old
Anna hasn't started her fires yet! This room's warm, but upstairs,
yes-yes, it's very chilly.... Takma's always blazing hot inside, eh-eh?
Well-well! Mamma likes a cool room too; well-well, cool: cold, _I_ call
it. I consider it warmer in here: ay-ay, it _is_ warmer down here.
Well-well!... Mamma wasn't so well, child, yesterday...."

"Come, doctor," said Anton Dercksz, "you'll make Mamma see a hundred
yet!"

And he buttoned up his coat and went away, satisfied at having
performed his filial duty for that week.

"Oh-oh-oh!" cried the doctor; but Anton was gone. "A hundred! A
hundred! Oh-dear-no, oh-dear-no, tut-tut! No, _I_ can do nothing, _I_
can do nothing. I'm old myself, yes-yes, I'm old: eightee-eight years
old, eightee-eight, Lietje!... Yes-yes, that counts, yes-yes.... No,
_I_ can do nothing more, what do you say? And it's a good thing that
Mamma's got Dr. Thielens: he's young, ay-ay, he's young.... Here come
the children! Well-well!" the doctor continued, by way of greeting.
"Best congratulations, ay-ay, very nice! Art, eh, art for art's
sake?... Is Granny better to-day? Then I'll just go upstairs, yes-yes,
well-well!..."

"Where are you going now, children?" asked Mamma Ottilie.

"To Aunt Stefanie's," said Elly. "And perhaps to Uncle Harold's
afterwards."

Anna let them out; and Ottilie, going upstairs behind Dr. Roelofsz, who
hoisted himself up one step after the other, tried to understand what
he was muttering, but understood nothing. He kept talking to himself:

"Yes-yes, that Anton, all-very-well, make her see a hundred! A hundred!
Well, _he'll_ see a hundred all right, ay-ay, yes-yes, though he _has_
been such a beast!... Yes-yes, yes-yes, a beast: don't I know him?
Tut-tut! A beast, that's what he's been!... Yes-yes, perhaps he's still
at it!"

"What do you say, doctor?"

"Nothing, child, nothing.... Make her see a hundred! I, _I_, who am old
myself; eightee-eight ... eightee-eight!..."

Puffing with the effort of climbing the stairs, he entered and greeted
the two old people, his contemporaries, who nodded to him, each at a
window:

"Well-well, yes-yes, how-do, Ottilie? How-do, Takma?... Well-well,
yes-yes.... Well, I don't call it warm in here!..."

"Come," said Takma, "it's only September...."

"Yes, you're always blazing hot inside!..."

Ottilie walked behind him, like a little child, and kissed her mother,
very gently and carefully; and, when she went up to Takma afterwards,
he pulled her hand, so that she might give him a kiss too.




CHAPTER V


Papa Dercksz had not left much behind him, but Stefanie de Laders, the
only child of the first marriage, was a rich woman; and the reason
why old Mamma had only a little left of her first husband's fortune
was because she had never practised economy. Stefanie, however, had
saved and put by, never knowing why, from an inherited proclivity for
adding money to money. She lived in a small house in the Javastraat
and was known in philanthropic circles, devoting herself prudently and
thriftily to good works. Lot and Elly found Aunt at home: she rose from
her chair, amidst a twittering of little birds in little cages, and she
herself had something of a larger-sized little old bird: short, lean,
shrivelled, tripping with little bird-like steps, restless, in spite
of her years, with her narrow little shoulders and her bony hands,
she was a very ugly little old woman, a little witch. Never having
been married, devoid of passions, devoid of the vital flame, she had
grown old unscathed in her little egoisms, with only one great fear,
which had clung to her all her life: the fear of encountering Hell's
terrors after her death, which, after all, was drawing nearer. And so
she was very religious, convinced that Calvin knew all about it, for
everybody and for all subsequent ages; and, trusting blindly in her
faith, she read anything of this tendency on which she could lay hands,
from paper-covered tracts to theological works, though she did not
understand the latter, while the former left her full of shuddering.

"Quite a surprise, children!" Aunt Stefanie de Laders screamed, as
though Lot and Elly were deaf. "And when are you getting married?"

"In three months, Aunt."

"In church?"

"I don't think so, Aunt," said Lot.

"I thought as much!"

"Then you made a good guess."

"But it's not the thing. Don't you want to get married in church
either, Elly?"

"No, Aunt, I agree with Lot.... May I say Aunt?"

"Yes, certainly, child, say Aunt. No, it's not the thing. But you get
that from the Derckszes: they never thought of what might be in store
for them hereafter...."

The birds twittered and Aunt's high-pitched voice sounded aggressive.

"If Grandpapa could be at the wedding, I should do it perhaps, for his
sake," said Elly. "But he's too old to come. Mamma Steyn doesn't make a
point of it either."

"No, of course not!" screamed Aunt Stefanie.

"You see, Aunt, you're the only one in the family who _does_," said Lot.

He did not see Aunt Stefanie often; but, when he saw her, it amused him
to draw her out.

"And there's no need to do it for _my_ sake," said Aunt,
self-righteously; and she thought to herself, "They sha'n't come in for
a cent, if they don't get married in church and do the proper thing. I
had intended to leave them something: now I shall leave everything to
Harold's grandchildren. They at least behave properly...."

But, when Elly made as though to rise, Aunt, who was flattered at
having visitors, said:

"Well, stay a bit longer, come, Elly! I don't see Lot so often; and
he's his aunt's own nephew after all.... It's not the thing, my boy....
You know, _I_ just speak out. I've done so from a child. I'm the
eldest: with a family like ours, which has not always behaved properly,
I have always had to speak out.... I've shown a great deal of tact,
however. But for me, Uncle Anton would have been quite lost, though
even now he isn't always proper. But leave him to his fate I will
_not_. Uncle Daniel and especially Uncle Harold, with their children:
how often haven't they needed me!..."

"Aunt, you have always been invaluable," said Lot. "But you were not
able to do much for Aunt Thérèse: she turned Catholic; and that wasn't
due to your influence, surely!"

"Thérèse is lost!" cried Aunt Stefanie, violently. "I've long since
given up having anything to do with Thérèse.... But any one for whom
I can do anything ... I sacrifice myself for. For Uncle Harold I do
what I can, also for his children; to Ina I am a second mother, also to
D'Herbourg: now there's a proper man for you; and Leo and Gus are good
and proper boys...."

"Not forgetting Lily," said Lot, "who didn't hesitate to call her
first-born son after you, though I think Stefanus a queer sort of name!"

"No, you'll never call your children after me," screamed Aunt, in
between the birds, "not though you get a dozen girls! What do you want
me to say, my boy? Uncle Harold's family has always shown me more
affection than your mother's family has; I got most perhaps from the
Trevelley children! And yet God alone knows what your mother owes to
me: but for me, Lot, she would have been lost! I'm not saying it to be
unpleasant, my boy; but she would have been lost, Lot, but for me! Yes,
you can feel grateful to me! You can see for yourself, your dear Mamma,
twice divorced, from her first two husbands: no, Lot, that was anything
but proper."

"My dear Aunt, Mamma has always been the black sheep of our virtuous
family."

"No, no, no!" said Aunt Stefanie, shaking her restless little bird-like
head; and the birds around her agreed with her and twittered their
assent. "The family's not so virtuous as that. Generally speaking, it
has never been proper! I won't say a word against my mother, but this
much is certain: she lost my father too early. You can't _compare_ Papa
Dercksz with _him_."

"Of course, there's no comparing a Dercksz with a De Laders," said Lot.

"You're being sarcastic!" said Aunt; and the birds twittered their
indignation in sympathy. "But there's many a true word spoken in jest.
I'm not saying it because of your mother, who's a dear child, whom
I'm fond of, but all the other Derckszes, with the exception of Uncle
Harold, are ..."

"Are what, Aunt Stefanie?"

"Are a sinful, hysterical crew!" cried Aunt Stefanie, aggressively.
"Uncle Anton, Uncle Daan, Aunt Thérèse and, my boy--though she's not
a Dercksz, it's in her blood--your sister Ottilie as well! They're a
sinful, hysterical, crew!" And she thought, "Your mother's one of them
too, my boy, though I'm not saying so."

"Then I'm once more glad," said Lot, "that _my_ Dercksz hysteria is
steadied by a certain Pauws calmness and sedateness." And he thought,
"Aunt's quite right, but it all comes from her own mother ... only it
happened to pass over Aunt Stefanie."

But Aunt went on, seconded by the birds:

"I'm not saying it to say anything unpleasant about the family, my boy.
I daresay I'm hard, but I speak out properly. Who speaks out properly
in our family?"

"You do, Aunt, you do!"

"Yes, I do, I, I, I!" cried Aunt; and all the birds in all the cages
twittered their agreement. "Don't go away just yet, stay a little
longer, Elly. I think it's so nice of you to have come. Elly, just
ring the bell, will you? Then Klaartje will bring a brandy-cherry: I
make them after the recipe of Grandmamma's Anna; and she makes them
properly."

"Aunt, we must really be getting on."

"Come, just one cherry!" Aunt insisted; and the birds joined in the
invitation. "Otherwise Aunt will think that you're angry with her for
speaking out...."

The brandy-cherries were tasted; and this put Aunt in a good humour,
even when Lot exclaimed, through the twittering of the birds:

"Aunt ... have _you_ never been hysterical?"

"I? Hysterical? No! Sinful, yes: I am sinful still, as we all are! But
hysterical, thank God, I have never been! Hysterical, like Uncle Anton,
Aunt Thérèse and ... your sister Ottilie, I have never been, never!"

The birds could not but confirm this.

"But you've been in love, Aunt! I hope you'll tell me the story of your
romance one day; then I'll make it into a very fine book."

"You've put too much about the family into your sinful books, as
it is, for Aunt ever to tell you that, though she had been in love
ten times over. For shame, boy! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!
Write a moral book that's a comfort to read, but don't go digging up
sinfulness for the sake of describing it, however fine the words you
choose may be."

"So at any rate you think my words fine?"

"I think nothing fine that you write, it's accursed books that you
write!... Are you really going now, Elly? Not because I don't admire
Lot's books, I hope? No? Then just one more cherry. You should get the
recipe from Anna, at Grandmamma's. Well, good-bye, children; and think
over what sort of present you'd like from Aunt. You can choose your
own, child, you can choose your own. Aunt'll give a present that's the
proper thing."

The birds agreed and, as Lot and Elly took their leave, twittered them
lustily out of the room.




CHAPTER VI


"Oof!" said Lot, outside, putting two fingers in his ears, which
had been deafened by the birds. "No more uncles and cousins for the
present, Elly: I'm not going to Uncle Harold and the D'Herbourgs after
this! A grandmamma, a future grandpapa, an uncle, an aunt and a very
old family-doctor: that's enough antediluvianism for one day! I can't
do with any more old people to-day, not even Uncle Harold, who is far
from being the most repellent. So many old people, all in one day:
it's too oppressive, it's stifling!... Let's walk a bit, if you're not
tired. It's fine, the wind'll refresh us, it won't rain.... Come into
the dunes with me. Here's the steam-tram coming: we'll take it as far
as the Witte Brug[1] and then go into the dunes. Come along!"

They went by tram to the Witte Brug and were soon in the dunes, where
they went and sat in the sand, with a strong sea-breeze blowing over
their heads.

"I hope I shall never grow old," said Lot. "Elly, don't _you_ think it
terrible to grow old, older every day?..."

"Your pet aversion, Lot?" asked Elly.

She smiled. He looked at her seriously, almost pale in the face, but,
because he saw her smiling, he managed to speak lightly:

"Worse than that. It's my nightmare. To see more and more wrinkles
every day in your skin, more streaks of grey in your hair; to feel your
memory going; to feel the edge of your emotions growing blunt; to feel
an extra crease in your stomach which spoils the fit of your waistcoat;
to feel your powers waning and your back bending under all the weight
of the past which you drag along with you ... without being able to do
a thing to prevent it!... When your suit gets old, you buy a new one:
I'm speaking from the capitalist's point of view. But your body and
soul you get once for all and you have to take them with you to the
grave. If you economize with either of them, then you haven't lived,
whereas, if you squander them, you have to pay for it.... And then that
past, which you tow and trail along! Every day adds its inexorable
quota. We are just mules, dragging along till we can go no farther and
till we drop dead with the effort.... Oh, Elly, it's terrible! Think of
those old people of to-day! Think of Grandpapa Takma and Grandmamma! I
look upon them as something to shudder at.... There they sit, nearly
every day, ninety-three and ninety-seven, each looking out of a window.
What do they talk about? Not much, I expect: their little ailments,
the weather; people as old as that don't talk, they are numbed. They
don't remember things. Their past is heavy with years and crushes them,
gives them only a semblance of life, of the aftermath of life: they've
had their life.... Was it interesting or not? You know, I think it must
have been interesting for those old people, else they wouldn't trouble
to meet now. They must have lived through a good deal together."

"They say that Grandpapa ..."

"Yes, that he was Grandmamma's lover.... Those old people: to believe
_that_, when you see them _now!_... To realize love ... passion ... in
those old people!... They must have lived through a lot together. I
don't know, but it has always seemed to me, when I see them together,
as if there were something being wafted between them, something
strange, to and fro: something of a tragedy which has become unravelled
and of which the last threads, now almost loose, are hovering between
the two of them.... And yet their souls must be numbed: I cannot
believe that they talk much; but they look at each other or out of
the window: the loose threads hover, but still bind their lives
together.... Who knows, perhaps it was interesting, in which case it
might be something for a novel...."

"Have you no idea, at the moment?"

"No, it's years since I had an idea for a novel. And I don't think
that I shall write any more. You see, Elly, I'm getting ... too old to
write for very young people; and who else reads novels?"

"But you don't write only for the public; you have your own ideal of
art!"

"It's such a barren notion, that principle. All very fine when you're
quite young: then it's delightful to swagger a bit with that ideal of
art; you go in for it then as another goes in for sport or a cultivated
palate.... Art really isn't everything. It's a very beautiful thing,
but, properly speaking, it oughtn't to be an aim in life. Artists
combine a great deal of pretentiousness with what is really a small
aim."

"But, Lot, the influence they exercise ..."

"With a book, a painting, an opera? Even to the people who care about
it, it's only an insignificant pleasure. Don't go thinking that artists
wield great influence. All our arts are little ivory towers, with
little doors for the initiate. They influence life hardly at all. All
those silly definitions of art, of Art with a capital A, which your
modern authors give you--art is this, art is that--are just one series
of exaggerated sentences. Art is an entertainment; and a painter is an
entertainer; so is a composer; so is a novelist."

"Oh, no, Lot!"

"I assure you it is so. You're still so precious in your conception
of art, Elly, but it'll wear away, dear. It's an affectation. Artists
are entertainers, of themselves and others. They have always been so,
from the days of the first troubadours, in the finest sense of the
word. Make the sense of it as fine as you please, but entertainers
they remain. An artist is no demigod, as we picture him when we
are twenty-three, like you, Elly. An entertainer is what he is; he
entertains himself and others; usually he is vain, petty, envious,
jealous, ungenerous to his fellow-entertainers, puffed up with his
principles and his art, that noble aim in life; just as petty and
jealous as any one else in any other profession. Then why shouldn't I
speak of authors as entertainers? They entertain themselves with their
own sorrows and emotions; and with a melancholy sonnet or a more or
less nebulous novel they entertain the young people who read them. For
people over thirty, who are not in the trade, no longer read novels
or poems. I myself am too old to write for young people. When I write
now, I have the _bourgeois_ ambition to be read by my contemporaries,
by men getting on for forty. What interests them is actual life, seen
psychologically, but expressed in concrete truths and not reflected in
a mirage and poetized and dramatized through fictitious personages.
That's why I'm a journalist and why I enjoy it. I like to grip my
reader at once and to let him go again at once, because neither he nor
I have any time to spare. Life goes on. But to-morrow I grip him again;
and then again I don't want to charm him any longer than I grip him. In
our ephemeral lives, this, journalism, is the ephemeral and the true
art, for I want the form of it to be frail but chaste.... I don't say
that I have got so far myself; but that is _my_ artistic ideal...."

"Then will you never write any more novels?"

"Who can say what he will or will not do again? Say it ... and you do
something different all the same. Who knows what I shall be saying or
doing in a year's time? If I knew Grandmamma's inner life, I should
perhaps write a novel. It is almost history; and, even as I take an
interest in the story of our own time, in the anticipation of our
future, so history has a great charm for me, even though history
depresses humanity and human beings and though our own old folk depress
me. Grandmamma's life is almost history: emotions and events of another
period...."

"Lot, I wish you would begin to work seriously."

"I shall start working as soon as we are in Italy. The best thing,
Elly, is not to think of setting up house yet. Not with Mamma and also
not by ourselves. Let us go on wandering. When we are very old it will
be time enough to roost permanently. What draws me to Italy is her
tremendous past. I try to reach antiquity through the Renascence, but
I have never got so far and in the Forum I still think too much of
Raphael and Leonardo."

"So first to Paris ... and then Nice ..."

"And on to Italy if you like. In Paris we shall look up another aunt."

"Aunt Thérèse?"

"Yes. That's the one who is more Catholic than the Pope. And at Nice
Ottilie.... Elly, you know that Ottilie lives with an Italian, she's
not married: will you be willing to see her all the same?"

"I should think so," said Elly, with a gentle smile. "I am very anxious
to see Ottilie again.... The last time was when I heard her sing at
Brussels."

"She has a heavenly voice ..."

"And she's a very beautiful woman."

"Yes, she is like Papa, she is tall, she doesn't take after Mamma a
bit.... She could never get on with Mamma. And of course she spent more
of her time with Papa.... She's no longer young, she's two years older
than I.... It's two years since I saw her.... What will she be like?
I wonder if she is still with her Italian.... Do you know how she met
him? By accident, in the train. They travelled in the same compartment
from Florence to Milan. He was an officer. They talked to each other
... and they've been together ever since. He resigned his commission,
so as to go with her wherever she was singing.... At least, I believe
they are still together.... 'Sinful and hysterical,' Aunt Stefanie
would say!... Who knows? Perhaps Ottilie met a great happiness ... and
did not hesitate to seize it.... Ah, most people hesitate ... and grope
about!..."

"We're different from Ottilie, Lot, and yet we don't grope ... or
hesitate...."

"Elly, are you quite sure that you love me?"

She bent over him where he lay, stretched out in the sand, leaning
on his two elbows. She felt her love inside her very intensely, as a
glowing need to live for him, to eliminate herself entirely for his
sake, to stimulate him to work, but to great, very great work.... That
was the way in which her love had blossomed up, after her grief....
Under the wide sky, in which the clouds drifted like a great fleet of
ships with white, bellying sails, a doubt rose in her mind for perhaps
one moment, very vaguely and unconsciously, whether he would need her
as she herself intended to give herself.... But this vague, unconscious
feeling was dissipated in the breeze that blew over her temples; and
her almost motherly love was so intense and glowing that she bent over
him and kissed him and said, quite convinced and certain of herself,
though not so certain of life and the future:

"Yes, Lot, I am sure of it."

Whatever doubt he may have entertained was scattered in smiles from his
soul after this tender and simple affirmation that she loved him, as
he felt, for himself alone, in a gentle, wondering bliss that already
seemed to see happiness approaching....


[1] The White Bridge.




CHAPTER VII


Harold Dercksz, the second son, was seventy-three, two years younger
than Anton. He was a widower and lived with his only daughter, Ina,
who had married Jonkheer[1] d'Herbourg and had three children: Lily, a
young, flaxen-haired little woman, married to Van Wely, an officer in
the artillery, and two boys, Pol and Gus, who were at the university
and the grammar-school respectively.

It was sometimes very unpleasant for Ina d'Herbourg that her father's
family, taken all round, did not display a correct respectability more
in keeping with the set in which she moved. She was quite at one with
Aunt Stefanie--with whom she curried favour for other reasons too--and
she agreed with Aunt that Grandmamma had been ill-advised, after having
married a De Laders, to get married again to one of the much less
distinguished Derckszes: this though Ina herself was a Dercksz and
though her very existence would have been problematical if Grandmamma
had not remarried. Ina, however, did not think so far as this: she
was merely sorry not to be a De Laders; and the best thing was to
mention Papa's family as little as possible. For this reason she denied
Uncle Anton, as far as her acquaintances were concerned, he being
a discreditable old reprobate, about whom the queerest stories were
rumoured. At the same time, he was a moneyed uncle; and so she caused
him to be kept in view, especially by the young Van Wely couple, for
Ina, in her very small soul, was both a good daughter to her father and
a good mother to her children and would like to see Uncle Anton leave
his money--how much would he have?--to her children. Then there was the
Indian family of Uncle Daniel, who was Papa's partner in business in
Java and who came over to Holland at regular intervals: well, Ina was
glad when business went well--for that meant money in the home--and
when Uncle Daniel and fat, Indian Aunt Floor were safe on board the
outward mail again, for really they were both quite unpresentable,
Uncle with his East-Indian ways and Aunt such a _nonna_[2] that Ina was
positively ashamed of her! Well, then, in Paris you had Aunt Thérèse
van der Staff, who, after leading a pretty loose life, had turned
Catholic: there you were, that again was so eccentric! The De Laders
had always been Walloons[3] and the D'Herbourgs also were always
Walloons: really, Walloonism was more distinguished than Catholicism,
at the Hague. The best thing was ... just never to mention Aunt
Thérèse. Last but not least, there was Aunt Ottilie Steyn de Weert,
living at the Hague, alas, three times married and twice divorced! And
she had a daughter who was a singer and had gone to the bad and a son
who had written two immoral novels: oh, that was a terrible thing for
Ina d'Herbourg, you know; it was such bad form and so incorrect; and
all their acquaintances knew about it, though she never mentioned Aunt
Ottilie or her three husbands, who were all three alive! And, when Ina
d'Herbourg thought of Aunt Steyn de Weert, she would cast up her weary,
well-bred eyes with a helpless air and heave a deep sigh; and, with
that glance and her despair, she looked an entire IJsselmonde. For she
herself, she thought, inherited more of the aristocratic blood of her
mother, a Freule[4] IJsselmonde, than of her father's Dercksz blood.
An only daughter, she had been able, through the Aunts IJsselmonde, to
mix in rather better circles than the all too East-Indian circle of
her father's family, in so far as that circle existed, for the family
was little known in society: an isolation seemed to reign around the
Derckszes, who knew very few people; and even her mother, when she was
still alive, had never been able to push Papa forward as something of
a specialist in East-Indian affairs and make him aim at the colonial
secretaryship, hard though she had tried to do so.

No, Father was not to be dragged out of his innate, silent timidity;
and, though he was quite gentle and amenable, though he joined in
paying all the visits that were deemed essential, though he gave
dinners and went out to dinner, he remained the man he was, a quiet,
peaceful man of business, ailing in health and silently broken in soul,
with pain and suffering in his eyes and around his mouth, but never
complaining and always reticent. Harold Dercksz was now a tall, thin
old man; and that intermittent suffering and eternal silence seemed to
grow worse with the years of sorrow and pain, seemed no longer capable
of concealment; yet he spoke of it to nobody but his doctor and not
much to him. For the rest, he was silent, never talked about himself,
not even to his brother Daan, who came at regular intervals to Holland
on the business-matters in which they were both interested.

Ina d'Herbourg was a good daughter: when her father was ill, she looked
after him as she looked after everything in the house, correctly and
not without affection. But she did sometimes ask herself whether her
mother had not been disappointed in her marriage, for Papa had not
much money, in spite of all the Indian business. Yes, Mamma had been
disappointed financially; and financial disappointment was always
facing Ina too. But, when Ina's husband, Leopold d'Herbourg--who,
after taking his degree in law, had first thought of entering the
diplomatic service, but who, in spite of his self-importance, had
not felt himself sufficiently gifted for that career and was now a
briefless barrister--when Ina's husband was also disappointed with the
Indian money, then Ina, after a few domestic scenes, began to think
that it would be her fate always to long for money and never to have
any. Now, it was true, they lived in a big house and Papa was very
generous and bore the whole expense of keeping Pol at Leiden; but
yet things didn't go easily with Ina, the money trickled through her
fingers and she would very much have liked to see more money about, a
great deal more money. That was why she was pleasant to Aunt Stefanie
de Laders and pleasant, furtively, to Uncle Anton.

Her fate continued to persecute her: instead of Lily's waiting a little
and making a good match, she had fallen so deeply in love, when hardly
twenty, with Frits van Wely, a penniless subaltern, that Ina could do
nothing, especially when Papa said:

"Do let the children be happy!..."

And he had given them an allowance, but it meant sheer poverty; and yet
Frits and Lily were married and in less than no time there was a boy.
Then the only thing that Ina could induce them to do was to call the
baby after Aunt Stefanie.

"Stefanus?" Lily exclaimed, in dismay.

Well, anything for a quiet life! They would call the boy Stef, which
sounded rather nice, for Aunt would never hear of Etienne. Ina would
have liked Stefanus Anton best; but to this Frits and Lily would not
consent.

It was a principle of Ina d'Herbourg's never to talk about money and
never about the family; but, because principles are very difficult to
maintain, there was always talk about money in the D'Herbourgs' house
and a great deal of talk about the family. Both were grateful subjects
of conversation between Ina and her husband; and, now that Lot Pauws
was engaged to Elly Takma, the talk flowed on of its own accord, one
evening after dinner, while Harold Dercksz sat looking silently in
front of him.

"How much do you think they'll have, Papa?" asked Ina.

The old gentleman made a vague gesture and went on staring.

"Lot, of course, has nothing," said D'Herbourg. "His parents are both
alive. I daresay he makes something by those articles of his, but it
can't amount to much."

"What does he get for an article?" asked Ina, eager to know at all
costs.

"_ I_ don't know, I haven't the remotest notion!" cried D'Herbourg.

"Do you think he'll get anything from old Pauws? He lives in Brussels,
doesn't he?"

"Yes, but old Pauws has nothing either!"

"Or from Aunt Ottilie? She has the money her father left her, you know.
Steyn has nothing, has he, Father? Besides, why should Steyn give Lot
anything?"

"No," said D'Herbourg. "But old Mr. Takma has plenty: Elly's sure to
get something from him."

"I can't understand how they are going to live," said Ina.

"They won't have less than Lily and Frits."

"But I can't understand how those two are going to live either!" Ina
retorted.

"Then you should have found your daughter a rich husband!"

"Please," said Ina, wearily closing the well-bred eyes, with the glance
of the IJsselmondes, "don't let us talk about money. I'm sick and tired
of it. And other people's money ... is _le moindre de mes soucis_.
I don't care in the least how another person lives.... Still ... I
believe that Grandmamma is better off than we think."

"I know roughly how much she ought to have," said D'Herbourg. "Deelhof
the solicitor was saying the other day ..."

"How much?" asked Ina, eagerly; and the weary eyes brightened up.

But, because he saw an expression of pain come over his father-in-law's
face and wrinkle it and because he did not know whether the pain was
physical or moral, arising from gastritis or from nerves, D'Herbourg
evaded the question. It was difficult, however, to stop at once, even
though Papa did look pained, and so he said:

"Aunt Stefanie must be comfortably off."

"Yes, but I should think," said Ina, "considering how Uncle Anton used
to hoard while he was a resident, that he's much better off than Aunt
Stefanie. As an unmarried man, he never entertained during his term of
office: that I know for a fact. The resident's house was tumbling to
pieces when he left it after eight years...."

"But Uncle Anton is an old reprobate," said D'Herbourg, forcibly, "and
_that_ cost him money."

"_No!_" said Harold Dercksz.

He said it as though in pain, waving his hand in a gesture of denial;
but he had no sooner uttered this single word in defence of his brother
than he regretted it, for Ina asked, eagerly:

"No, Papa? But surely Uncle Anton's life won't bear investigation ..."

And D'Herbourg asked:

"Then how was he able to be such a beast, without paying for his
pleasures?..."

Harold Dercksz cast about for a word in palliation; he said:

"The women were fond of Anton ..."

"Women? Flappers, you mean!"

"No, _no!_" Harold Dercksz protested, repudiating the suggestion with
his lean old hand.

"Ssh!" said Ina, looking round.

The boys entered.

"Why, Uncle Anton was had up thirty years ago!" D'Herbourg continued.

"No, no," Harold Dercksz protested.

Pol, the student, and Gus, the younger boy, entered; and there was no
more talk about money and the family that evening; and, because of the
boys, the after-dinner tea went off pleasantly. Truly, Ina was a good
mother and had brought her boys up well: because of old Grandfather,
they were gay without being noisy, which always gave Harold Dercksz
an agreeable, homely feeling; and they were both very polite, to the
great contentment of Ina, who was able to say that Pol and Gus did
not get _that_ from the Derckszes: when Grandfather rose to go to his
study upstairs, Gus flew to the door and held it open, with very great
deference. The old man nodded kindly to his grandson, tapped him on
the shoulder and went up the stairs, reflecting that Ina was a good
daughter, though she had her faults. He liked living in her house. He
would have felt very lonely by himself. He was fond of those two boys.
They represented something young, something that was still on its way
to maturity, merrily and gaily, those two young-boyish lives: they were
not, like all the rest, something that passed, things that passed,
slowly and threateningly, for years and years and years....

On reaching his study, Harold Dercksz turned up the gas and dropped
into his chair and stared. Life sometimes veiled things, veiled them
silently, those terrible, life-long things, and then they did not
threaten so greatly and, until death came and wiped them away, they
passed, passed always, however slowly they might pass. But they
passed away very slowly, the things. He was an old man now, a man of
seventy-three, and an infirm old man, dragging his old age to the grave
for which he was yearning. How many sufferings had he not endured! He
could not understand why he need grow so old, while the things passed
so slowly, went silently by, but with such a trailing action, as though
they, the things of the past, were ghosts trailing very long veils
over very long paths and as though the veils rustled over the whirling
leaves that fluttered upon the paths. All his long aftermath of life
he had seen the things go past and he had often failed to understand
how seeing them go past like that was not too much for a man's brain.
But the things had dragged their veils and the leaves had just rustled:
never had the threat been realized; no one had stepped from behind
a tree; the path had remained desolate under his eyes; and the path
wound on and on and the ghostly things went past.... Sometimes they
looked round, with ghostly eyes; sometimes they went on again, with
dragging slowness: they were never brought to a standstill. He had
seen them pass silently through his childhood, through his boyhood,
when he was the age of Pol and Gus; he had seen them pass through his
very commonplace life as a coffee-planter in Java and a manufacturer
afterwards and through his married life with a woman whose existence
he had come to share by mistake, even as she had come by mistake to
share his: he, doubtless, because he did nothing but see those things,
the things that passed.... He now coughed, a hard, dry cough, which
hurt his chest and stomach and sent jolts shooting through his shrunken
legs....

Oh, how much longer would it last, his seeing the things?... They
went past, they went past and loitered and loitered.... Oh, why did
they not go faster?... From the time when he was a little fellow of
thirteen, a merry, sportive little fellow playing barefoot in the river
before the assistant-resident's house, rejoicing in the fruit, the
birds, the animals, rejoicing in all the glad child-life of a boy in
Java who can play in big grounds, beside running waters, and climb up
tall, red-blossoming trees; from the moment--a sultry night, the dark
sky first threatening and then shedding heavy, clattering torrents of
rain--from the moment when he saw the things, the first things, the
first terrible Thing: from that moment a confusion had crept over his
tender brain like a monster which had not exactly crushed the child,
but which had ever since possessed it, held it in its claws.... All the
years of his life, he had seen the Thing rise up again, like a vision,
the terrible Thing begotten and born in that night when, being no doubt
a little feverish, he had been unable to sleep under the heavy, leaden
night, which still held up the rain in powerful sails that could not
burst and allowed no air through for him to breathe. The vision? No,
the Thing, the actual Thing ...

       *       *       *       *       *

A lonely _pasangrahan_[5] in the mountains: he is there alone with
his two parents, he the darling of his father, who is taking his
sick-leave. The other brothers and the sisters have been left behind in
the town, in the assistant-resident's house.

He cannot sleep and he calls:

"_Baboe_, come here!..."

She does not answer. Where is she? As a rule, she lies outside his
door, on her little mat, and wakes at once.

"_Baboe, baboe_, come here!"

He becomes impatient; he is a big boy, but he is frightened, because
he has a touch of fever too, like Papa, and because the night is so
sultry, as though an earthquake were at hand.

"_Baboe!_..."

She is not there.

He struggles up and gets entangled in the _klamboe_,[6] which he is
unable to open in his feverish terror.... He now releases himself from
the muslin folds and is again about to call out for his _baboe_ ...
but he hears voices, whispering, in the back verandah.... The blood
curdles in the boy's body: he thinks of thieves, of _ketjoes_,[7] and
is horribly frightened.... No, they are not speaking Javanese: they
are not _ketjoes_. They are speaking Dutch, with Malay in between; and
he next recognizes Baboe's voice. And he tries to utter a scream of
fright, but his fright prevents him.... What are they doing, what is
happening? The boy is clammy, cold.... He has heard his mother's voice:
he now recognizes the voice of Mr. Emile, Mr. Takma, the secretary, who
is so often at the house in the town.... Oh, what are they doing out
there in the dark?... He was frightened at first, but now he is cold
rather and shivers and does not know why.... What can be happening?
What are Mamma and Mr. Takma and Ma-Boeten doing out there in the
night?... His curiosity overcomes his terrors. He keeps very quiet,
only his teeth chatter; he opens the door of his room, very gently, to
prevent its creaking. The middle verandah is dark, the back verandah is
dark....

"Hush, _baboe_, hush, O my God, hush!... Quietly, quietly.... If the
_sinjo_[8] should hear!..."

"He's asleep, _kandjeng_[9]...."

"If the _oppas_[10] should hear!..."

"He's asleep, _kandjeng_...."

"O my God, O my God, if he should wake!... Oh, _baboe, baboe,_ what are
we to do?..."

"Be quiet, Ottilie, be quiet!..."

"Nothing else for it, _kandjeng_: in the river, in the river!..."

"O my God, O my God, no, no, _not_ in the river!"

"Do keep quiet, Ottilie!"

"O my God, no, not in the river!"

"It's the only way, Ottilie! Be quiet, be quiet! Hold your tongue, I
say! Do you want to get us both taken up ... for murder?"

"I? Did I murder him?"

"_I_ couldn't help it! _I_ acted in self-defence! _You_ hated him, _I_
didn't, Ottilie. But you did it with me."

"Oh, my God, no, no!"

"Don't try to avoid your share of the blame!"

"No, no, no!"

"You hung on to him ..."

"Yes, no ..."

"When I snatched his kris from him!"

"Yes ... yes."

"Hush, _kandjeng_, hush!"

"O my God, O my God, it's lightning!... Oh, what a clap, what a clap!"

The mountains echo the rolling thunder, again and again and yet again.
The torrent pours down, as though the rain-sails were tearing....

The boy hears his mother's scream.

"Quiet, Ottilie, quiet!"

"I can bear it no longer, I shall faint!"

"Be quiet! Hold his leg. _Baboe_, you take the other leg!"

"There's blood, on the floor...."

"Wipe it up."

"Presently, _kandjeng_, oh, presently!... First to the river...."

"O my God, O my God!"

The boy's teeth chatter and his eyes start from his head and his heart
thumps, in his fever. He is mortally frightened, but he wants to see,
too. He does not understand and, above all, he wants to see. His
childish curiosity wants to see the terrible Thing which he does not
yet understand. Silently, on his bare feet, he steals through the dark
verandah. And, in the dim light of the night outside ... he sees! He
sees the Thing! A flash of lightning, terrible; a clap of thunder, as
if the mountains were falling ... and he has seen! He is now looking
only at vagueness, the vague progress of something which they are
carrying ... of somebody whom they are carrying, Mamma, Mr. Emile
and Ma-Boeten. In his innocence, he does not realize _whom_. In his
innocence, he thinks only of terrible things and people, of robbers and
treasures, of creepy incidents in his story-books.... _Whom_ are they
carrying through the garden? Can't Papa hear them? Won't he wake? Is he
so fast asleep?

Now he no longer hears their voices.... Now they have disappeared in
the garden.... Doesn't the _oppas_ hear?... No, everything remains
quiet; everything has disappeared in the darkness and the rain; he sees
nothing but the rain pouring in torrents, pelting, pelting, furiously.
The furious pelting prevents Father and Oppas from hearing.... The
sky has burst and all the rain in the sky is pelting down.... He is
shivering with cold and fever. And suddenly he feels his little bare
foot stepping on something warm and soft.... It is blood, clotted
blood....

He no longer dares to move forwards or backwards. He stands with his
teeth chattering and all the clatter of the rain around him.... But he
must wake his father, take refuge with him, hide himself in his arms
and sob and sob with fright!... He gropes his way back to the middle
verandah; he sees the door of Mamma's room standing open: a little
lamp is flickering faintly. Again his foot feels the soft warmth and
he shudders at the terrible mire, which is blood, clotted blood, and
lies everywhere, on the matting. But he wants to get to the little
lamp, to take it with him to Papa's room, so far away, near the front
verandah. He goes to the lamp and takes it and sees Mamma's bed all
tumbled, with the pillows on the floor.... And he now sees the red on
the floor, already almost black, and he is terrified and feels icy
cold and steps aside with the lamp, so as not to tread on a kris, a
handsome presentation weapon, which Papa received from the Regent[11]
yesterday! There it lies ... and the blade is red! Now everything is
misty-red before his childish eyes, oh, terribly red in the verandah,
with its dancing shadows, through which he, so small, goes with his
little lamp, in his terror and fever: perhaps he is dreaming!... To
Papa's room:

"Papa, oh, Papa, oh, Papa!"

He is stammering with fright, at his wits' end without Papa's
protection.

He opens Papa's door:

"Papa, oh, Papa, oh, Papa!"

He goes up to the bed with his little lamp in his hand. Papa has slept
in the bed, but is not there now.... Where is Papa?... And of a sudden
it stands revealed to his childish mind. He sees the terrible Thing,
sees it as a dreadful, awful, blood-red haunting vision. What they
carried away through the garden, through the pouring rain, to the river
... was Papa, was Papa! What Mamma and Mr. Emile and Ma-Boeten are
carrying away outside ... is Papa!... He is all alone in the house ...
Papa is dead and they are carrying him to the river.... He has seen the
Thing.... He goes on seeing the Thing.... He will always see it....
He does not know why--he has suddenly grown years older--but he shuts
Papa's door, goes back, puts Mamma's lamp where he found it and goes
back to his own room. He trembles in the dark and his teeth chatter and
his eyes start and stare out of his head. But he washes his feet, in the
dark, and at once flings the towel into the linen-basket. He creeps
into bed, pulls the _klamboe_ to, pulls the coverlet over his ears.
And he lies shaking with fever. The iron bedstead underneath him
trembles in unison. He is alone in the _pasangrahan_ and he has seen
the terrible Thing: first the actual progress of it and then the
revealing vision, in the glare of the lightning-flashes, under the
roar of the mountain-cleaving thunder. He lies and shakes.... How long
does it last? How long does it last?... Half an hour, three-quarters
of an hour.... He hears Baboe coming back and Mamma moaning, sobbing,
groaning and Ma-Boeten muttering:

"Hush, _kadjeng_, hush!..."

"They're sure to have seen us!..."

"No, there was no one there.... Think of Sinjo Harold, _kandjeng_!..."

Everything becomes still....

Deathly still....

The boy lies shaking with fever; and all night long his starting eyes
stare and he sees the Thing....

He has seen it ever since; and he has grown to be an old man....

Next day, Papa's body is discovered among the great boulders in the
river. There are suggestions of a _perkara_[12] with a woman, in the
_kampong_,[13] of jealousy. But Dr. Roelofsz finds that the wound
was caused by nothing more than a sharp rock, to which Dercksz tried
to cling, when drowning.... No need to credit natives' gossip....
No question of a murder.... The controller draws up the report:
Assistant-resident Dercksz--staying temporarily in the _pasangrahan_,
unable to sleep because of his fever and the sultry weather--went out
during the night, for the sake of air.... The _oppasser_ heard him
... and was rather surprised, for it was raining in torrents.... But
it was not the first time that the _kandjeng_ had gone out into the
jungle at night, because of his sleeplessness.... He missed his way;
and the river was swollen.... It was impossible for him to swim, among
the great rocks.... He was drowned in the stormy night.... His body
was found by natives some distance below the _pasangrahan_, while Mrs.
Dercksz, on waking in the morning, was very uneasy at not finding her
husband in his room....

       *       *       *       *       *

Harold Dercksz sat and stared.

In his silent, gloomy business-man's study, he saw the Thing pass, but
with such a trailing movement and so slowly.... And he did not notice
the door open and his daughter Ina enter. "Father ..."

He did not answer.

"Father! Father ..."

He started.

"I have come to say good-night.... What were you thinking of so hard,
Father?"

Harold Dercksz drew his hand over his forehead:

"Nothing, dear ... things ... old things...."

He saw them: there they went, trailing long spectral veils over
rustling leaves ... and ... and was anything threatening behind the
trees in that endless path?...

"Old things?... Oh, Father, they are past by now!... _I_ never think of
old things: the life of to-day is difficult enough for people without
money...."

She kissed him good-night....

No, the old things ... are not yet the things of the past.... They are
passing, they are passing ... but so slowly!


[1] A Dutch title of nobility, ranking below that of baron.

[2] A half-caste.

[3] The Walloon Protestants are a branch of the French Calvinists
imported into the Netherlands at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
They differ from the general body of Dutch Calvinists only in the use
of the French language and the Geneva Catechism. They are gradually
dying out as a separate body.

[4] The title borne by the unmarried daughters of Dutch noblemen.

[5] Dak bungalow.

[6] Mosquito-curtain.

[7] Native robber-bands.

[8] The young gentleman.

[9] Mem-sahib.

[10] From the Dutch _oppasser_: overseer, watchman.

[11] A title of an independent native prince, equivalent to rajah.

[12] Business, fuss, bother.

[13] Compound.




CHAPTER VIII


Lot Pauws was sitting in his room, writing, when he heard the voices
of his mother and of her husband, Steyn, below. Mamma Ottilie's voice
sounded shrill, in steadily rising anger; and Steyn's calm, indifferent
bass voice boomed with short, jerky sentences and egged on Mamma's
words till she stuttered them out and almost choked in the panting
effort.

Lot put down his pen with a sigh and went downstairs. He saw the old
servant-maid listening eagerly at the kitchen-door, but she disappeared
when she heard Lot's footstep on the stair.

Lot entered the room:

"What's the matter?"

"What's the matter? What's the matter? I'll tell you what's the matter:
I was a fool when I married, I was a fool to bring my property into
settlement. If I hadn't, I could have done as I pleased! Aren't they my
children, my own children? If they want money, can't I send it to them?
Must they starve, while he ... while he ..."

She pointed to Steyn.

"Well, what?" said Steyn, challenging her.

"While he blows my money on women, his everlasting, low women ..."

"I say, Mamma!"

"Well, it's true!"

"Hush, Mamma, for shame: don't talk like that! What's it all about,
Steyn?"

"Mamma has had a letter from London."

"From the Trevelleys?"

"From Hugh. He asks for money."

"And can't I send my son money if I want to?" cried Mamma to Lot.
"Isn't Hugh my child, isn't he my son? It's bad enough of you to object
to my seeing much of them, but am I to break with them altogether? If
Hugh is without an appointment for the moment, can't I send him some
money? Isn't it my money? Steyn has _his_ money, his pension. I don't
ask him for his money!"

"Look here, Lot," said Steyn. "Mamma can do as she likes, of course.
But there is hardly enough as you know, for our regular expenses. If
Mamma goes and sends Hugh fifty pounds, I don't know how we shall
manage. That's all; and for the rest I don't care what Mamma says."

"You blew my money on low women, for you're low yourself and always
have been!"

"Mamma, stop that! And be quiet. I can't stand quarrelling and
scolding. Be quiet. Be quiet, Mamma. Let me see Hugh's letter."

"No, I sha'n't let you see it either! What do you imagine? I'm not
accountable to my son! Are you also siding with that brute against your
mother? You'd both of you like me to break with my own children, my
own flesh and blood, my darlings, my _d-dar-lings_, because it suits
your book! When do I see them? When? Tell me, when? Mary, John, Hugh:
when do I see Hugh? Suppose I _was_ mistaken in their father, aren't
they my own children, just as much as you and Ottilie? I can't let my
boy starve!"

"I know quite well that Hugh abuses your kindness, your weakness ...
not to speak of the two others."

"That's right, don't you speak of them! Just break with your brothers
and sisters! Just think that there's nobody in the world but yourself
and that your mother has no one but you; and go and get married and
leave your mother alone with that fellow, that low fellow, who sneaks
out at night to his women! Because he's still young! Because he's so
young and his wife is old! But, if he has to go to his women and if you
get married, I promise you I won't stay in the house alone and I swear
I'll go to Hugh. My own dear boy, my _d-dar-ling:_ when do I see him?
When do I see him? I haven't seen him for a year!"

"Please, Mamma, keep calm and don't scream so. Talk quietly. You
make me so dreadfully tired with that screaming and quarrelling and
scolding: I can't stand it ... I won't ask you to show me Hugh's
letter. But Steyn is right; and, from what I know of our present
financial position, it would be folly to send six hundred guilders to
Hugh, who never has more than some vague 'appointment' in the City.
You can't do it."

"Yes, I can, selfish brute that you are! What do you know about your
mother's money? I always have money when I want it!"

"Yes, I know: you lose it and then you find it again in your
cupboard...."

"And, though I don't find it in my cupboard this time and if Steyn
keeps the money locked up, I shall just go to the bank and ask for it
and they won't refuse me. And I'll have it sent by the bank. There, you
see, I _can_ do it, grasping, selfish brutes that you both are! I'll
put on my hat and go. I'll go at once, I'll go to the bank; and Hugh
... Hugh shall have his money to-morrow or next day, any day. I should
do it for you, Lot, or for Ottilie; and I shall do it for Hugh. I am
his mother and I shall do it: I shall, I shall, so _there!_"

She stammered and choked with rage; and a prick of jealousy, because
Lot had defended Steyn and because Steyn cared more for Lot than for
her, drove into the flesh of her heart and caused her such suffering
that she no longer knew what she was saying and felt like boxing Lot's
ears and felt that ... that she could have murdered Steyn! And she
flounced out of the room, pale with passion, knocking against the
furniture, slamming the door, and rushed upstairs. She could have
sobbed with that pricking pain.... Steyn and Lot heard her moving and
stamping overhead, putting on her things and talking to herself and
scolding, scolding, scolding.

Steyn's hard features, rough but handsome under his beard, were
suddenly twisted to softness by a spasm of despair.

"Lot, my dear fellow," he said, "I've stood this for nearly twenty
years."

"Now then, Steyn!"

"For nearly twenty years. Screaming, scolding, wrangling.... She's your
mother. We won't say any more about it."

"Steyn, she's my mother and I'm fond of her, in spite of everything;
but you know I feel how you must suffer."

"Suffer? I don't know. A chap gets dulled. But I do think sometimes
that I've thrown away my life in a most wretched way. And who's
benefited by it? Not even _she_."

"Try to look upon her as a child, as a tempersome, spoilt child. Be
nice to her, once in a way. A kind word, a caress: that's what she
needs. She's a woman who lives on petting. Poor Mamma: I know nobody
who needs it as she does. She leans up against me sometimes, while I
stroke her. Then she's happy. If I give her a kiss, she's happy. If I
tell her she's got a soft skin, she's happy. She is a child. Try to
look upon her as that; and be nice to her, just once or twice."

"I can't, any longer. I was mad on her, madly in love with her, at
one time. If she hadn't always quarrelled and been so impossibly
unreasonable, we could still be living together amicably. Though she is
older than I, we could still have got on. But she's impossible. You see
it as well as I do. There's no money; and, because she doesn't discover
any in her cupboard this time, she simply goes and draws it from the
bank to send to Hugh. It's those letters from the Trevelleys which
cause scenes at regular intervals. They bleed her in turns; and the
shabbiest part of it, you know, is that the father's at the back of it."

"Is that quite certain?"

"Yes. Trevelley's always at the back of it. He influences those
children. We are getting into debt for Trevelley's sake.... Lot, I've
often thought of getting a divorce. I wouldn't do it, because Mamma
has been twice divorced already. But I sometimes ask myself, am I not
throwing away my life for nothing? What good am I to her or she to me?
We are staying together for nothing, for things that are past, for a
passion that is past: one moment of mad, insensate blindness, of not
knowing or caring, of just wanting.... For things that are past I have
been throwing away my life, day after day, for twenty years on end. I
am a simple enough chap, but I used to enjoy my life, I enjoyed the
service ... and I have taken a dislike to everything and go on wasting
my life day after day.... For something that is quite past I ..."

"Steyn, you know I appreciate what you do. And you're doing it purely
for Mamma's sake. But, you know, I have often said to you, go your own
way. Barren sacrifices make no appeal to me. If you think you will
still find something in life by leaving Mamma, then do so."

But Steyn seemed to have recovered his indifference:

"No, my boy, what's spoilt is spoilt. Twenty years wear out a man's
energy to make something more of his life. I felt at the time that
I oughtn't to desert Mamma, when she was left all alone, not wholly
through my fault, perhaps, but still very much so. To leave her now,
when she is an old woman, would be the act of a cad: I can't do it. I
take that line not as a barren sacrifice, but because I can't help it.
I don't allow my life to be made a hell of. I go my own way when I want
to, though Mamma exaggerates when she pretends that I go to a woman at
night."

"Mamma is naturally jealous and she's still jealous of you."

"And she's jealous of you. She's an unhappy woman; and the older she
grows the unhappier she will be. She's one of those people who ought
never to grow old.... Come along, Jack, we're going for a walk.... But,
Lot, if Mamma goes on like this, we shall have to have her property
administered for her. There's nothing else for it."

Lot gave a start: he pictured Mamma with her property transferred to an
administrator; and yet Steyn was right. He thought that he had better
have a quiet talk with Mamma. For the moment, there was nothing to be
done: Mamma was exasperated, was behaving like a lunatic and would send
Hugh the fifty pounds.

Lot went back to his room and tried to resume his work. He was writing
an essay _On Art_, proving that art was entertainment and the artist
an entertainer. He did not know whether he agreed with everything that
he was saying, but that didn't matter and was of no importance. It was
a subject to fill a few brilliant pages, written with all his talent
for words; and it would catch the public, it would be read: it would
rouse indignation on the one side and a smile on the other, because
there really might be a good deal in it and because Charles Pauws
might be right in what he said. He lovingly fashioned his sentences
out of beautiful words, making them seem convincing through their
brilliancy.... But in between the sentences he thought of poor Mamma
and suddenly found that he could not go on writing. He pitied her. He
felt for Steyn, but he pitied poor Mamma.... He rose and paced his
room, which was full of spoils of Italy: a few bronzes, a number of
photographs after the Italian masters. A good fellow, Steyn, to let him
have this room next to Mamma's and to go up to the top floor himself.
But he pitied his mother, who was such a child. She had always been a
child: she could not help being and remaining a child. She had been so
very pretty and so seductive: a little doll always; and he remembered,
when he was already a boy of seventeen, how perfectly charming Mamma
used to look: so young, so extraordinarily young, with that adorable
little face, those blue childlike eyes and that perfect, plump figure.
She was thirty-eight then, without a sign of age; she was a pretty
woman in the full bloom of her attractiveness. He had no need to
look at Mamma's photographs as she was in those days and earlier: he
remembered her like that; he remembered her looking like a young girl
in a low, creamy-white lace dress, which she did not even take the
trouble to put on very neatly, looking above all things charming, so
intensely charming; he remembered her in a brown-cloth frock trimmed
with astrakhan, with a little astrakhan cap on her frizzy hair, skating
with him on the ice, so lightly and gracefully that people believed her
to be his sister.... Poor Mamma, growing old now! And yet she still
looked very nice, but she was growing old; and she had nothing--he
was sure of this--she had nothing but her faculty for love. She had
five children, but she was not a mother: Lot laughed and shook his
head at the thought. He had educated himself; Ottilie had very early
become aware of her great talent and her beautiful voice and had also
educated herself; the Trevelleys had run more wild.... No, Mamma was
not a mother, was not a woman of domestic tastes, was not even a woman
of the world: Mamma had nothing but her faculty for love. She needed
love, probably no longer needed passion, but still needed love; and
what she needed most, needed mortally, was petting, like a child. And
nobody petted her more than he did, because he knew that Mamma was mad
on petting. She had once said to him, pointing to a photograph of his
half-brother Hugh Trevelley, a good-looking lad turned twenty:

"Lot, it's eight months since I had a kiss from him!"

And he had seen something in Mamma as though she were craving for
Hugh's kiss, though he sometimes treated her so roughly and cavalierly.
Of course, this was also a motherly feeling on Mamma's part, but it
was perhaps even more a need to have this lad, who was her son, caress
her, caress her sweetly.... And were they to put her under any kind of
restraint? Perhaps it would have to come! It would be perfectly horrid:
that dear Mummy! But she was so silly sometimes! So stupid! Such a
child, for such an old woman!... Oh, it was terrible, that growing old
and older and yet remaining what you were! How little life taught you!
How little it formed you! It left you as you were and merely wore off
your sharp and attractive irregularities!... Poor Mamma, her life was
made up of nothing but things that were past ... and especially things
of love!... Aunt Stefanie spoke of hysteria; and a great streak of
sensual passion had run through the family; but it did not come from
the Derckszes, as Aunt Stefanie pretended: it came from Grandmamma
herself. He had always heard that, like his mother, she too had been
a woman of passion. People talked of all sorts of adventures which
she had had in India, until she met Takma. There was a kind of curse
on their family, a curse of unhappy marriages. Both of Grandmamma's
marriages had turned out unhappily: General de Laders appeared to have
been a brute, however much Aunt Stefanie might defend her father. With
Grandpapa Dercksz, so people said, Grandmamma was exceedingly unhappy:
the adventures dated back to that time. Grandpapa Dercksz was drowned
by falling at night into the swollen river behind a _pasangrahan_ in
the Tegal mountains. Lot remembered how that had always been talked
about, how the rumours had persisted for years. The story, which dated
sixty years back, ran that Grandpapa Dercksz had shown kindness to
a woman in the _kampong_ and that he was stabbed by a Javanese out
of jealousy. It was mere gossip: Dr. Roelofsz said that it was mere
gossip.... A curse of unhappy marriages.... Uncle Anton had never been
married; but in him the streak of passion developed into a broad vein
of hysteria.... Uncle Harold, human but inscrutable, had been unhappy
with his _freule_, who was too Dutch for an Indian planter.... Uncle
Daan, in India--they were on their way to Holland at this moment--was
to outward appearances not unhappy with a far too Indian wife, Aunt
Floor: they were now old and staid and sedate, but there was a time
when the fatal streak had run through both of them, developing in
Aunt--a Dillenhof, belonging to Grandmamma's family--into the vein, the
broad vein. Well, that was all past: they were old people now.... Aunt
Thérèse van der Staff had become a Catholic, after an unhappy marriage;
they said that Theo, her son, was not the son of her husband.... And
his own poor mother, thrice married and thrice unhappily!

He had never looked at it like this before, throughout and down the
generations, but, when he did, it was terrible: a sort of clinging
to the social law--of marriage--which was suited to none of those
temperaments. Why had they married? They were all old people now, but
... if they had been young now, with modern views, would they have
married? Would they have married? Their blood, often heated to the
point of hysteria, could never have endured that constraint. They had
found the momentary counterparts of their passion, for not one of
them--with the exception perhaps of Uncle Harold--had married for other
than passionate reasons; but, as soon as the constraint of marriage
oppressed them, they had felt their fate, the social law which they
had always honoured, thoughtlessly and instinctively, and which did
not suit them; they had felt their family curse of being married and
unhappy.... And he himself, why was he getting married? He suddenly
asked himself the question, seriously, as he had once asked his mother
in jest. Why was he getting married? Was he a man for marriage? Did he
not know himself only too well? Cynical towards himself, he saw himself
as he was and was fully aware of his own egotism. He knew all his
little vanities, of personal appearance, of a fine literary style....
He smiled: he was not a bad sort, there were worse than he; but, in
Heaven's name, why was he getting married? Why had he proposed to
Elly?... And yet he felt happy; and, now that he was seriously asking
himself why he was getting married, he felt very seriously that he was
fond of Elly, perhaps fonder than he himself knew. But--the thought was
irrepressible--why get married? Would _he_ escape the family curse?
Wasn't Ottilie at Nice really right, Ottilie who refused to marry and
who lived unbound with her Italian officer--she herself had written
to tell him so--until they should cease to love each other? Was the
streak continued in her or ... was she right and he wrong? Was she, his
sister, a woman, stronger in her views of life than he, a man?... Why,
why get married? Couldn't he say to Elly, who was so sensible, that he
preferred to live unbound with her?... No, it was not feasible: there
remained, however little it might count with them, the question of
social consideration; there was her grandfather; there were people and
things, conventions, difficulties. No, he could not put it to Elly;
and yet she would have understood it all right.... So there was nothing
for it but to get married in the ordinary way and to hope--because
they loved each other so thoroughly and not only out of passion--that
the curse would not force its fate upon them, the yoke of an unhappy
marriage....

Those people, those uncles and aunts, had been unhappy, in their
marriages. They were now growing old; those things of other days were
now all passing.... They were passing.... Would they come to him, who
was still young? Must they come around him, now that he was growing
older? Oh, to grow older, to grow old! Oh, the terrible nightmare of
growing old, of seeing the wintry-grey vistas opening before him! To
be humbled in his conceit with his appearance did not mean so very
much; to be humbled in his conceit with his literary gifts hurt more;
but to be humbled in his whole physical and moral existence: that
was the horror, the nightmare! Not humbled all at once, but slowly
undergoing the decay of his young and vigorous body, the withering of
his intelligence and his soul.... Oh, to grow as old as Grandmamma and
as Grandpapa Takma: how awful! And those were people who had _lived_
for their ninety years and more. An atom of emotion still seemed to
be wafted between the two of them, an atom of memory. Who could tell?
Perhaps they still talked ... about the past.... But to grow so old as
that: ninety-seven! Oh, no, no, not so old as that: let him die before
he decayed, before he withered! He felt himself turn cold with dread
at the thought and he trembled, now that he realized so powerfully the
possibility of growing as old as that: ninety-seven!... O God, O God,
no, no!... Let him die young, let it be over, in his case, while he was
still young! He was no pessimist, he loved life: life was beautiful,
life was radiant; there were so many beautiful things in art, in Italy,
in his own intellect: in his own soul even, at present, that emotion
for Elly. But he loved young and vigorous life and did not want decay
and withering. Oh, for vigour, vigour always, youth always! To die
young, to die young! He implored it of That which he accepted as God,
that Light, that Secret, which perhaps, however, would not listen from
out of Its unfathomable depths of might to a prayer from him, so small,
so selfish, so unmanly, so cowardly, so vain, so incredibly vain! Oh,
did he not know himself? Did he pretend not to see himself as he was?
Could he help seeing himself as he was?

He paced his room and did not hear the door open.

"And the fifty pounds is in the post!"

He started. His mother stood before him, looking like a little fury:
her blue eyes blazed like those of a little demon and her mouth was
wide open like a naughty child's.

"Oh!... Mamma!"

"Lot!... What's the matter with you?"

"With me?... Nothing...."

"Oh, my boy, my boy, what's the matter with you?"

He was shivering as in a fever. He was quite pale. He tried to master
himself, to be manly, plucky and brave. A dark terror overwhelmed him.
Everything went black before his eyes.

"My dear, my dear ... what is it?"

She had thrown her arm round him and now drew him to the sofa.

"Oh, Mamma!... To grow old! To grow old!"

"Hush, darling, be still!"

She stroked his head as it lay on her shoulder. She knew him like that:
it was his disease, his weakness; it returned periodically and he would
lie against her thus, moaning at the thought of growing old, of growing
old.... Ah, well, it was his disease, his weakness; she knew all about
it; and she became very calm, as she would have done if he had been
feverish. She fondled him, stroked his hair with regular strokes,
trying not to disorder it. She kissed him repeatedly. She felt a glow
of content because she was petting him; her motherly attitude was bound
to calm him.

"Hush, darling, be still!"

He did keep still for a moment.

"Do you really think it so terrible ... to grow old ... perhaps ...
later on?" asked Ottilie, melancholy in spite of herself.

"Yes...."

"I didn't think it pleasant either. But you ... you are so young still!"

He was already regaining his self-control and feeling ashamed of
himself. He was a child, like his mother, an ailing, feeble, hysterical
child at times. That was _his_ hysteria, that dread of old age. And he
was looking for consolation to his mother, who was not a mother!...

No, he regained his self-control, was ashamed of himself:

"Oh, yes ... I'm young still!" he made an effort to say, indifferently.

"And you're going to be married: your life is only just beginning ..."

"Because I'm getting married?"

"Yes, because you're getting married. If only you are happy, dear, and
not ... not as your mother ..."

He gave a little start, but smiled. He regained his self-control now
and at the same time regained his control over his mother, to whom he
had looked for a moment for consolation and who had always petted him.
And he fondled her in his turn and gave her a fervent kiss:

"Poor little creatures that we are!" he said. "We sometimes act and
think so strangely! We _are_ very ill and very old ... even though we
are still young.... Mamma, I must have a serious talk with you some day
... _serious_, you know. Not now, another time: I must get on now with
my work. Leave me to myself now and be calm ... and good. Really, I'm
all right again.... And don't _you_ go on behaving like a little fury!"

She laughed inwardly, with mischievous delight:

"I've sent off the fifty pounds for all that!" she said, from behind
the open door.

And she was gone.

He shook his head:

"I am sorry for her!" he thought, analysing his emotions. "And ... for
myself! Even more for myself. We poor, poor creatures! We ought all to
be placed under restraint ... but whose? Come, the best thing is to get
to work and to keep working, strenuously, always...."




CHAPTER IX


Old Takma was just coming from the razor-back bridge by the barracks,
stiff and erect in his tightly-buttoned overcoat, considering each step
and leaning on his ivory-knobbed stick, when Ottilie Steyn de Weert,
arriving from the other side, saw him and went up to him:

"How do you do, Mr. Takma?"

"Ah, Ottilie, how do you do?... Are you going to Mamma's too?"

"Yes...."

"It was raining this morning and I thought I shouldn't be able to go.
Adèle was grumbling because I went out after all, but it's fine now,
it's fine now...."

"I think it'll rain again presently though, and you haven't even an
umbrella, Mr. Takma."

"Well, you see, child, I hate an umbrella: I never carry one.... Fancy
walking with a roof over your head!"

Ottilie smiled: she knew that the old man could not lean on his stick
when holding up his umbrella. But she said:

"Well, _if_ it rains, may I see you home?... That is, if you won't have
a carriage?"

"No, child, I think a carriage even more horrid than an umbrella."

She knew that the jolting of a cab caused him great discomfort.

"The only carriage in which I'm likely to drive will be the black
coach. Very well, child, if it rains, you shall bring me home ... and
hold your little roof over my head. Give me your arm: I'll accept that
with pleasure."

She gave him her arm; and, now that he was leaning on her, his stiff,
straight step became irregular and he let himself go and hobbled along
like a very old, old man....

"How quiet you are, child!"

"I, Mr. Takma?"

"Yes."

"You notice everything."

"I could hear at once by your voice that you were not in good spirits."

"Well, perhaps I am worried.... Here we are."

She rang at old Mrs. Dercksz': old Anna, inside, came hurrying at a
great rate to open the door.

"I'll just take breath, Anna," said the old gentleman, "just take
breath ... keep on my coat, I think ... and take breath for a moment
... in the morning-room."

"It's getting coldish," said old Anna. "We shall start fires soon
in the morning-room. The mistress never comes downstairs, but
there's often some one waiting; and Dr. Roelofsz is a very chilly
gentleman...."

"Don't start fires too soon, don't start fires too soon," said the old
man, querulously. "Fires play the dickens with us old people...."

He sat down, wearily, in the morning-room, with his two hands on the
ivory knob of his stick. Anna left them to themselves.

"Come, child, what is it? Worry?"

"A little.... I shall be so lonely.... The wedding's to-morrow."

"Yes, yes ... to-morrow is Lot and Elly's wedding. Well, they'll be
very happy."

"I hope so, I'm sure.... But I...."

"Well?"

"I shall be _un_happy."

"Come, come!"

"What have I left? Not one of my children with me. I sometimes think
of going to England. I have John and Hugh there ... and Mary is coming
home from India."

"Yes, child, as we grow older, we are left all alone. Look at me. Now
that Elly is marrying, I shall have no one but Adèle. It's lucky that
I can still get out ... and that I sometimes see Mamma ... and ... and
all of you ... and Dr. Roelofsz.... But, if I were helpless, what would
there be for _me?_... You, you're young still."

"I? Do you call _me_ young?..."

"Yes, child, aren't you young?..."

"But, Mr. Takma, I'm sixty!"

"Are you sixty?... Are you _sixty?_... Child, do you mean to tell me
you're sixty?"

The old man cudgelled his brains, fighting against a sudden cloud in
his memory that hazed around him like a mist. And he continued:

"No, you must be mistaken. You _can't_ be sixty."

"Yes, really, Mr. Takma, really: I'm sixty!"

"Oh, Lietje, my child, are you really ... as old ... as that!"

He cudgelled his brains ... and closed his eyes:

"Sixty!" he muttered. "More than sixty ... more than sixty years ..."

"No, sixty exactly."

"Yes, yes, sixty! Oh, child, are you really sixty? I thought you
were forty or fifty at most ... I was dreaming.... The old man was
dreaming.... Sixty!... More than sixty years ago!..."

His voice mumbled; she did not understand what he meant:

"Were you a little confused?"

"When?" he asked, with a start.

"Just now."

"Just now?..."

"When you thought ... that I was forty."

"What do you say?"

"When you thought that I was _forty_."

"Yes, yes ... I hear what you say.... I can still hear very well.... I
have always heard very well ... too well ... too well ..."

"He's wandering," thought Ottilie Steyn. "He's never done that before."

"So you're sixty, child!" said the old man, more calmly, recovering his
voice. "Yes, I suppose you must be.... You see, we old people, we very
old people, think that you others always remain children ... well, not
children, but young ... that you always remain young.... Ah ... and you
grow old too!"

"Oh, yes, _very_ old! And then there's so little left."

Her voice sounded ever so sad.

"Poor girl!" said old Takma. "But you oughtn't to quarrel so with Pauws
... I mean ... I mean, with Trevelley."

"With Steyn, you mean."

"Yes, I mean, with Steyn ... of course."

"I can't stand him."

"But you could, once!"

"Ah ... when one's in love ... then...!"

"Yes, yes, you were able to stand him at one time!" said the old man,
obstinately. "And so the wedding is to-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"I can't be there: I'm very sorry, but ..."

"Yes, it would tire you too much.... They're coming to take leave of
Grandmamma presently."

"That's nice, that's nice of them."

"It'll be a tame affair," said Ottilie. "They are so tame. There'll be
nothing, no festivity. They refuse to be married in church."

"Yes, those are their ideas," said the old man, in a tone of
indifference. "I don't understand it, that 'not being married in
church;' but they must know their own business."

"Elly hasn't even a bridal dress; I think it so odd.... Elly is really
_very_ serious for so young a girl. I shouldn't care to be married like
that, when you're married for the first time. But, on the other hand,
what's the use of all that fuss, as Lot says? The relations and friends
don't really care. And it runs into money."

"Elly could have had whatever she liked," said the old gentleman, "a
dinner, a dance or anything.... But she refused."

"Yes, they're both agreed."

"Those are their ideas," said the old man, with indifference.

"Mr. Takma ..." said Ottilie, hesitatingly.

"Yes, child?"

"I wanted to ask you something, but I dare not...."

"What are you afraid of, child? Do you want something?"

"No, not exactly, but ..."

"But what, child?... Is it money?"

Ottilie heaved a great sob:

"I hate asking you!... I think it's horrid of me.... And you mustn't
_ever_ tell Lot that I ask you sometimes.... But, you see, I'll tell
you frankly, I've sent Hugh some money; and now ... and now I have
nothing left for myself.... If you hadn't always been so immensely kind
to me, I should never dare ask you. But you've always spoilt me, as you
know.... Yes, you know: you've always had a soft place in your heart
for me.... And, if you don't think it horrid of me to ask you and if
you could ... let me have ..."

"How much do you want, child?"

Ottilie looked at the door, to see if any one was listening:

"Only three hundred guilders...."

"Why, of course, child, of course. Come round to-morrow, to-morrow
evening ... after the wedding.... And, when you want anything, ask me,
do you see? Ask me with an easy conscience.... You can ask me whenever
you please...."

"You _are_ so good to me!..."

"I have always been very fond of you ... because I'm so very fond of
your mother.... So ask me, child ... ask me whenever you please, only
... be sensible ... and don't do ..."

"Don't do what, Mr. Takma?"

The old man suddenly became very uncertain in his speech:

"Don't do ... don't do anything rash....."

"What do you mean?.

"Sixty years ... sixty years ago ..."

He began to mumble; and she saw him fall asleep, sitting erect, with
his hands on the ivory knob of his stick.

She was frightened and, stealing noiselessly to the door, she opened it
and called:

"Anna ... Anna...."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Come here.... Look.... Mr. Takma has fallen asleep.... We'd better
stay with him till he wakes up, hadn't we?"

"Oh, the poor soul!" said the maid, compassionately.

"He isn't...?" asked Ottilie, in the voice of a frightened child.

But Anna shook her head reassuringly. The old man slept on, stiff and
straight in his chair, with his hands resting on his stick.

The two women sat down and watched.




CHAPTER X


There was a ring; and Ottilie whispered:

"Do you think that's Mr. Lot and Miss Elly?..."

"No," said Anna, looking out of the window, "it's Mr. Harold."

And she went to the front-door. Ottilie came out to her brother in the
passage.

"How are you, Ottilie?" said Harold Dercksz. "Is there no one with
Mamma?"

"No. I met Mr. Takma just outside the door. Look, he's fallen asleep.
I'm waiting here till he wakes."

"Then I'll go up to Mamma meanwhile."

"You're looking poorly, Harold."

"Yes. I do not feel well. I'm in pain ..."

"Where?"

"Everywhere. Heart, liver: everything's wrong.... So to-morrow is the
great day, Ottilie?"

"Yes," said Ottilie, mournfully, "to-morrow.... They're so
unenterprising. No reception and no religious marriage."

"Lot asked me to be one of his witnesses."

"Yes, you and Steyn, with Dr. Roelofsz and D'Herbourg for Elly....
Anton declined...."

"Yes, Anton doesn't care for that sort of thing."

He went upstairs slowly, knocked, opened the door. The companion was
sitting with the old woman and reading something out of the paper in a
monotonous voice. She rose from her chair:

"Here's Mr. Harold, mevrouw."

She left the room; and the son bent over his mother and gave her a
very gentle kiss on the forehead. As it was dark, the lined porcelain
of the old woman's face was hardly indicated in the crimson twilight
of the curtains and the tall valance. She sat on the chair, in the
cashmere folds of her wide dress, straight upright, as on a throne;
and in her lap the frail fingers trembled like slender wands in the
black mittens. A few words were exchanged between mother and son, he
sitting on a chair beside her, for no one ever took the chair by the
window, which was kept exclusively for Mr. Takma: words about health
and weather and the wedding of Elly and Lot next day. Sometimes a look
of pain came over Harold's parchment-coloured face; and his mouth was
drawn as though with cramp. And, while he talked about Lot and about
health and weather, he saw--as he always saw, when sitting here beside
or opposite Mamma--the things that passed and dragged their ghostly
veils over the path rustling with dead leaves: the things that passed
so slowly, years and years to every yard, until it seemed as though
they never would be past and as though he would always continue to
see them, ever drawing out their pageant along the age-long path.
While he talked about health and weather and Lot, he saw--as he always
saw, when sitting beside or opposite Mamma--the one thing, the one
terrible Thing, the Thing begotten in that night of clattering rain
in the lonely _pasangrahan_ at Tegal; and he heard the hushed voices:
Baboe's whispering voice; Takma's nervous-angry voice of terror; his
mother's voice of sobbing despair; himself a mere child of thirteen.
He knew; he had seen, he had heard. He was the only one who had heard,
who had seen. All his life long--and he was an old, sick man now--he
had seen the Thing slowly passing like that; and the others had heard
nothing, seen nothing, known nothing.... Had they really not known,
not seen, not heard? He often asked himself the question. Roelofsz
must surely have seen the wound. And Roelofsz had never mentioned a
wound; on the contrary, he had denied it.... Rumours had gone about,
vague rumours, of a woman in the _kampong_, of a stab with a kris, of
a trail of blood: how many rumours were there not going about! His
father was drowned in the river, one sultry night, when he had gone
into the garden for air and been caught in the pelting rain.... The
Thing, the terrible Thing was passing, was a step farther, looked
round at him with staring eyes. Why did they all live to be so old
and why did the Thing pass so slowly?... _He knew_: he had known
more ... because of rumours which he had heard; because of what he
had guessed instinctively in later years, when he was no longer a
child: his father hearing a sound ... a sound of voices in his wife's
room.... Takma's voice, the intimate friend of the house.... His
suspicions: was he right? Was it Takma? Yes, it was Takma.... Takma
in his wife's room.... His rage, his jealousy; his eyes that saw red;
his hand seeking for a weapon.... No weapon but the kris, the handsome
ornamental kris, a present which Papa received only yesterday from the
Regent.... He steals to his wife's room.... There ... _there_ ... he
hears their voices.... They are laughing, they are laughing under their
breath.... He flings himself against the door; the bamboo bolt gives
way; he rushes in.... Two men face to face because of a woman.... Their
contest, their passion, as in primeval days.... Takma has snatched
the kris from Harold's father.... No longer human beings, no longer
men, but male animals fighting over a female.... No other thoughts in
their red brains and before their red gaze but their passion and their
jealousy and their wrath.... His father mortally wounded!... But Harold
Dercksz does not see his mother in all this: he does not see her, he
does not know how she behaves, how she behaved during the struggle
between these two animal men.... He does not see how the female
behaved: that never rose up before his intuition, however often he may
have stared after the Thing that passed, however often, for years
and years, again and again he may have sat beside his mother, talking
about health and weather. And to-day it is much stronger than his whole
being; and he asks the very old woman:

"Was your companion reading the paper to you?"

"Yes."

"Does she read nicely?"

"Yes. She sometimes finds it difficult to know what to choose."

"Politics don't interest you?"

"The war does: it's terrible, all that loss of human life."

"It's murder ... on a large scale...."

"Yes, it's murder...."

"Does she read you the serial story?"

"No, no; I don't care for serials."

"No more do I."

"We are too old for that."

"Yes, we old people have our own serial stories...."

"Yes.... A quiet life's the best...."

"Then you have nothing to reproach yourself with...."

He sees the slender, wand-like fingers tremble. _Has_ she anything to
reproach herself with, more than her infidelity to the man who was her
husband? He has never seen it for himself; and yet the Thing has always
and always dragged its ghostly veils rustling over dead leaves....

"Hasn't she been reading about that murder?"

"What murder?"

"In England, the woman who ..."

"No, no, she never reads me that sort of thing...."

Her words are almost an entreaty.... How old she is, how old she is!...
The toothless mouth trembles and mumbles, the fingers shake violently.
He is full of pity, he, the son, who knows and who suspects what he
does not know, because he knows the soul of that mother, her soul now
dulled and blunted in waiting for the body's death, but her soul also
once a soul of passion, of temper, an amorous creole soul, capable at
one moment of forgetting all the world and life itself for a single
instant of rapture ... or perhaps of hate! He knows that she hated his
father, after first adoring him; that she hated him because her own
passion expired before him in a heap of ashes.... This had all been
made clear to him, gradually, year after year, when he was no longer a
child but grew into a man and was a man and understood and looked back
and reflected and pieced together what he had understood and looked
back upon.... He suspects, because he knows her soul. But how blunted
that soul is now; and how old she is, how old she is! A pity softens
his own soul, old, old, too, and full of melancholy for all the things
of life gone by ... for his mother ... and for himself, an old man
now.... How old she is, how old she is!... Hush, oh, hush: let her
grow just a little older; and then it will be over and the Thing will
have passed! The last fold of its spectral veil will have vanished; the
last leaf on that endless, endless path will have rustled; and, though
once a rumour, vaguely, with a dismal moaning, hovered through those
trees, it never grew into a voice and an accusation and, from among
those trees, no one ever stepped forward with threatening hand that
stayed the Thing, the sombre, ghostly Thing, dragging itself along its
long road, for years and years and years....




CHAPTER XI


The front-door bell made old Takma wake with a start. And he knew that
he had been to sleep, but he did not allude to it and quietly acted as
though he had only been sitting and resting, with his hands leaning on
his ivory-knobbed stick. And, when Dr. Roelofsz entered, he said, with
his unvarying little joke:

"Well, Roelofsz, you don't get any thinner as the years go by!"

"Well-well," said the doctor, "d'you think so, Takma?"

He came rolling in, enormous of paunch, which hung dropsically and
askew towards his one stiff leg, which was shorter than the other;
and, in his old, clean-shaven, monkish face, his bleared little eyes
glittered behind the gold spectacles and were angry because Takma was
always referring to his paunch and he didn't like it.

"Harold is upstairs," said Ottilie Steyn.

"Come, child," said Takma, rising with an effort, "we'd better go
upstairs now; then we'll drive Harold away...."

They went up slowly. But there was another ring at the front-door.

"There's _such_ a bustle some days," said old Anna to the doctor. "But
the mistress isn't neglected in her old age! We shall soon have to
start fires in the morning-room, for there's often some one waiting
here...."

"Yes-yes-yes," said the doctor, rubbing his short, fat, fleshy hands
with a shiver. "It's coldish, it's chilly, Anna. You may as well have a
fire...."

"Mr. Takma says fires are the dickens."

"Yes, but he's always blazing hot inside," said Dr. Roelofsz,
viciously. "Well-well-well, here are the children...."

"Can we go up?" asked Elly, entering with Lot.

"Yes, go upstairs, miss," said Anna. "Mr. Harold is just coming down;
and there's no one upstairs but Mamma ... and Mr. Takma."

"Grandmamma's holding a court," said Lot, jestingly.

But his voice hesitated in joking, for a certain awe always oppressed
him as soon as he entered his grandmother's house. It was because
of that atmosphere of the past into which he sometimes felt too
hyperimaginative to intrude, an atmosphere from which bygone memories
and things constantly came floating. The old doctor, who had something
of a monk and something of a Silenus in his appearance, was so very
old and, though younger than Grandmamma, had known her as a young and
seductive woman.... Here was Uncle Harold coming down the stairs: he
was much younger, but a deep and mysterious melancholy furrowed his
faded face, which moreover was wrung with physical pain.

"Till to-morrow, till to-morrow, children," he said, gently, and went
away after shaking hands with them. "Till to-morrow, till to-morrow,
Roelofsz...."

That voice, broken with melancholy, always made Lot shudder. He now
followed Elly up the stairs, while the doctor remained below, talking
to old Anna:

"Yes-yes-yes, well-well-well!"

The ejaculations pursued Lot as he mounted the stairs. Each time that
he came to the house he became more conscious of finding himself on
another plane, more sensitive to that atmosphere of former days, which
seemed to drag with it something that rustled. A whole past lay hidden
behind the joviality of the voluble doctor. Oh, to grow old, to grow
old! He shivered at the thought on that first autumnal day.... They
now entered the room: there they sat, Grandmamma, Grandpapa Takma and,
in between them, so strangely, like a child, Lot's mother. And Lot,
walking behind Elly, modulated his tread, his gestures, his voice; and
Elly also was very careful, he thought, as though she feared to break
that crystal, antique atmosphere with too great a display of youth.

"So you're to be married to-morrow? That's right, that's right," said
the old woman, contentedly.

She raised her two hands with an angular gesture and, with careful and
trembling lips, kissed first Elly and then Lot on the forehead. They
were now all sitting in a circle; and a few words passed at intervals;
and Lot felt as if he himself were a child, Elly quite a baby, his
mother a young woman. She resembled Grandmamma, certainly; but what in
Grandmamma had been an imposing creole beauty had been fined down in
Mamma, had become the essence of fineness, was so still. Yes, she was
like Grandmamma, but--it struck him again, as it had before--she had
something, not a resemblance, but a similar gesture, with something
about the eyes and something about the laugh, to Grandpapa Takma....
Could it be true after all, what people had whispered: that the
youngest child, Ottilie, had been born too long after Dercksz' death
for his paternity to be accepted, for the paternity to be attributed
to any one but Takma? Were they really sitting there as father, mother
and child? He, was he Takma's grandson? Was he a cousin of Elly's?...
He didn't know it for certain, nothing was certain: there were--he
had heard them very long ago--those vague rumours; and there was that
likeness! But, if it was so, then they both knew it; then, if they were
not quite dulled, they were thinking of it at this moment. They were
not in their dotage, either of them, those old, old people. It seemed
to Lot that some emotion had always continued to sharpen their wits;
for it was wonderful how well Grandmamma, despite her age, understood
all about everything, about his marriage now, about the family:

"Uncle Daan and Aunt Floor are on their way from India," said
Grandmamma. "I can't imagine what they are coming for ... with the
winter so near. Aunt Floor won't like it, I know.... I only wish that
_I_ had remained in India, instead of coming here.... Yes, I've been
sitting here for years now, until ... until ..."

She stammered and looked out of the window, waiting, waiting. At the
other window sat Takma and waited, waited, nodding his head. Oh, it was
awful, thought Lot, looking at his mother. She did not understand his
look, had forgotten his moment of prostration and weakness, his dread
of old age, because she always forgot when he did not complain; and she
merely thought that he wanted to get up. She smiled, sadly, as was her
custom in these days, nodded and was the first to rise:

"Well, we'd better be going now, Mamma.... Mr. Takma, am I not to see
you home?"

"No, child, it's not raining; and I can manage by myself, I can
manage...."

Ottilie's voice sounded very sad and childish and old Takma's paternal,
but fluttering and airy. Lot and Elly rose; and there were more careful
kisses; and Mr. Takma kissed Ottilie also. When they were gone, the old
doctor came rolling in.

"Well, Roelofsz," said Grandmamma.

"Well-well-well, yes-yes," mumbled the doctor, dropping into a chair.

They sat like that, without words, the three old people. The light was
waning outside; and a bleak autumnal wind drove the first yellow leaves
through the gardens of the Sofialaan.

"You're out too late, Takma," said the doctor.

"No, no," said the old man.

"It gets chilly early, at this season."

"No, no, I'm not chilly."

"Yes, you're always blazing hot inside."

"Yes, just as you're always getting fatter."

The doctor gave an explosive laugh, not viciously this time, because
he had got his joke in first; and Takma also laughed, with a shrill,
cracked note. The old woman did not speak, leant over slightly, looked
out of the window. The dusk of evening was already gathering over the
Nassaulaan.

"Look," said the old woman, pointing with her trembling, slender,
wand-like finger.

"What?" asked the two men, looking out.

"I thought ..."

"What?"

"I thought that there was something ... moving ... over there, under
the trees...."

"What was moving?"

"I don't know: something ... somebody...."

"She's wandering," thought the doctor to himself.

"No, Ottilie," said Takma, "there's nothing moving."

"Oh, is there nothing moving?"

"No."

"I thought that something was passing ... just hazily...."

"Yes ... well ... that's the damp rising," said the doctor.

"Yes," said Takma, "that's mist...."

"You're out of doors much too late, Takma," said the doctor.

"I've got my great-coat, a warm one...."

"Well-well...."

"The leaves are rustling," said the old woman. "And the wind's howling.
It'll soon be winter."

"Well ... yes-yes, winter's coming. One more of 'em...."

"Yes," said the old woman. "The last ... the last winter...."

"No-no-no-no!" boasted the old doctor. "The last! I promise you, you'll
see a hundred yet, Ottilie!..."

Old Takma nodded his head:

"It's more than sixty years ..."

"Wha-at?" exclaimed the doctor, in a startled voice.

"Ago ..."

"What are you saying?" cried the old woman, shrilly.

"I'm saying," said Takma, "that Ottilie, that Lietje ... is turned
sixty ..."

"Oh, yes!"

"And so it's more than sixty ... more than sixty years ago since ..."

"Si-ince _what?_" exclaimed the doctor.

"Since Dercksz ... was drowned," said Takma.

And he nodded his head.

"Oh!" moaned the old woman, lifting her hands to her face with an
angular and painful movement. "Don't speak about that. What made you
say that?"

"No," said Takma, "I said nothing...."

"No-no-no-no!" mumbled the doctor. "Don't talk about it, don't talk
about it.... We never talk about it.... Yes ... aha ... Takma, what
made you talk about it?... There-there-there-there ... it's nothing,
but it makes Ottilie sad...."

"No," said the old woman, calmly. "I'm never sad now.... I'm much too
old for that.... I only sit and wait.... Look, isn't that something
passing?..."

"Where?"

"In the street, opposite ... or down there, in the road ... something
white...."

"Where? Aha, oh, there?... No, Ottilie, that's mist."

"The leaves ... the leaves are rustling."

"Yes-yes-yes, autumn ... winter's coming...."

"The last," said the old woman.

The doctor mumbled a vague denial. Takma nodded his head. They sat
very still, for a time. Yes, it was more than sixty years ago.... They
all three saw it: the old man and the old woman saw it happening; and
the doctor saw it as it had happened. He had understood and guessed,
at once, and he had known, all those years long. Very many years ago
he had been in love with Ottilie, he much younger than she, and there
was a moment when he had called upon her to pay him the price of his
knowledge.... He had buried all that in himself, but he saw it as it
had happened.... It was more than sixty years ago.

"Come," said Takma, "it's time I went.... Else ... else it'll be too
late...."

He rose with an effort and remembered that he had not torn up one
letter to-day. That was not right, but the tearing tired his fingers.
The doctor also arose and rang the bell twice, for the companion.

"We're going, juffrouw."

It was almost dark in the room.

"Good-bye, Ottilie," said Takma, pressing the mittened hand, which was
raised an inch or two.

The doctor also pressed her hand:

"Good-bye, Ottilie.... Yes-yes-yes: till to-morrow or next day."

Mr. Takma found Ottilie Steyn de Weert waiting downstairs:

"You here still, child?"

"Yes, Mr. Takma. I'll just see you home. You've really stayed out too
late to-day; Elly thought so too; and Adèle will be uneasy...."

"Very well, child, do; see the old man home."

He took her arm; and his now irregular step tottered as Anna let them
out.

"Juffrouw," said the old woman, upstairs, when the companion was about
to light the lamp, "wait a moment and just look out of the window. Tell
me: there, on the other side of the road, through those leaves falling
... isn't there something ... something white ... passing?"

The companion looked through the window:

"No, mevrouw, there's nothing. But there's a mist rising. Mr. Takma has
stayed much too long again."

She closed the shutters and lit the lamp. The old woman sat and took
her soup; then the companion and old Anna put her to bed.




CHAPTER XII


Old Mr. Pauws came to meet them at the station, in the evening, at
Brussels:

"My dear boy, my _dear_ boy, how are you? And so this is your little
wife! My dear child, I wish you joy with all my heart!"

His arms, thrown wide, embraced first Lot and then Elly.

"And I've taken a room for you at the Métropole, but I reckoned on it
that you'd first come and have supper at my place. Then I shall have
been at your wedding too. I don't expect you're tired, are you? No,
it's nothing of a journey. Better send your trunks straight to the
hotel. I've got a carriage: shall we go home at once? Do you think
there's room for the three of us? Yes, yes, we'll fit in nicely."

It was the second time that Elly had seen the old gentleman, a
pink-and-white, well-preserved man of seventy: she had been with Lot to
look him up during their engagement. There was something decided and
authoritative about him, together with a cheerful gaiety, especially
now, because he was seeing Lot again. He would receive them at his own
place, at his rooms, for he lived in bachelor quarters. He opened the
door with his latch-key; he had paid the cabman quickly, before Lot
could; and he now hustled the young couple up the stairs. He himself
lit a gas-jet in the passage:

"I have no one to wait on me in the evening, as you see. A
_femme-de-ménage_ comes in the morning. I take my meals at a
restaurant. I thought of treating the two of you to supper at a
restaurant; but I think this is pleasanter.... There!"

And he now lit the gas in the sitting-room, with a quick movement, like
a young man's. Elly smiled at him. The table was laid and there were
flowers on it and a few pints of Heidsieck in a wine-cooler.

"Welcome, my dear child!" said the old man, kissing Elly.

He helped her take off her hat and cloak and carried them into his
bedroom:

"You'd better bring your coat in here too, Lot."

"Your father is wonderful!" said Elly.

The little sitting-room was cosy and comfortable; it was his own
furniture. There were books about; photographs on the walls and prints
of horses and dogs; arms on a rack; and, underneath--it impressed Elly,
just as it had impressed her the first time--a portrait of Ottilie at
twenty, in an old-fashioned bonnet which made her look exquisitely
pretty, like a little heroine in a novel. Strange, thought Elly to
herself, Steyn also had pictures of dogs and horses in his room; Steyn
also was a hunting man, a man of out-door pursuits; Steyn also was
good-looking. She smiled at her reflection that it was always the same
sort of manliness that had attracted Ottilie; she smiled just as Lot
sometimes smiled at his mother.

"You two are very like each other," said Pauws, as they sat down to
table. "Look, children, here's what I've got for you. Everything's
ready, you see. Hors d'oeuvres. Do you like caviare, with these toasted
rolls?"

"I'm mad on caviare," said Lot.

"I remembered that! After the hors d'oeuvres, a mayonnaise of fish:
perhaps that's rather too much fish, but I had to think out a cold
menu, for I've no cook and no kitchen. Then there's cold chicken and
compote: a Dutch dish for you; they never eat the two together here or
in France. Next, there's a _pâté-de-foie-gras_. And tartlets for you,
Elly."

"I'm fond of tartlets too," said Lot, attentively examining the dish.

"All the better. A decent claret, Chateau-Yquem and Heidsieck. I got
you some good fruit. Coffee, liqueurs, a cigar, a cigarette for you,
Elly, and that's all. It's the best I could do."

"But, Papa, it's delightful!"

The old gentleman was uncorking the champagne, quickly and handily,
with a twist of the wires:

"Here goes, children!"

The wine frothed up high.

"Wait, Elly, wait, let me fill up your glass.... There, here's to you,
children, and may you be happy!"

"You take after Lot," said Elly.

"I? In that case, Lot takes after me."

"Yes, I meant that of course."

"Ah, but it's quite a different thing!"

"Yes, but Lot ... Lot is also like his mother."

"Yes, I'm like Mamma," said Lot.

He was short, slender, almost frail of build and fair; the old
gentleman was solid in flesh and figure, with a fresh complexion and
very thick grey hair, which still showed a few streaks of black.

"Yes, but I think Lot also has that flippancy of yours, though he is
like his mother."

"Oh, so I'm flippant, am I?" said old Pauws, laughing.

His hands, moving in sweeping gestures, were busy across the table,
with the hors d'oeuvres, which he was now handing.

"Would you ever believe that Papa was seventy?" said Lot. "Papa, I'm
amazed every time I see you! What keeps you so young?"

"I don't know, my boy; I'm built that way."

"Were you never afraid of getting old?"

"No, my dear fellow, I've never been afraid ... of getting old or of
anything else."

"Then whom do I get it from? Mamma hasn't that fear, not as I have it,
although ..."

"You're an artist; they have those queer ideas. I'm just ordinary."

"Yes, I wish I were like you, tall and broad-shouldered. I'm always
jealous when I look at you."

"Come, Lot, you're very well as you are!" said Elly, defending him
against himself.

"If you were like me, you wouldn't have attracted your wife, what do
you say, Elly?"

"Well, there's no telling, Papa!"

"How are things at home, my boy?"

"Same as usual, just the same."

"Is Mamma well?"

"Physically, yes. Morally, she's depressed ... because I'm married."

"How do she and Steyn get on?"

"They quarrel."

"Ah, that mother of yours!" said Pauws. "Elly, will you help the
mayonnaise? No, Lot, give me the Yquem: I'll open it.... That mother of
yours has always quarrelled. Pity she had that in her. Temper, violent
words ... all about nothing: it was always like that in my time. And
she was so nice otherwise ... and so sweetly pretty!"

"Yes," said Lot, "and I'm like Mamma, an ugly edition."

"He doesn't mean a word of it," said Elly.

"No," said the old gentleman, "not a word of it, the conceited fellow!"

"All the same, I'd rather be like you, Papa."

"Lot, you're talking nonsense.... Some more mayonnaise, Elly? Sure?
Then we'll see what the cold chicken's made of. No, give it here, Lot,
I'll carve.... And your wedding was very quiet? No religious ceremony?"

"No."

"No reception?"

"No, Elly has so few friends and I have so few, in Holland. We lead
such a life of our own, at the Hague. I know more people in Italy than
I do at the Hague. The whole family rather lives a life of its own.
Except the D'Herbourgs there's really nobody."

"That's true."

"Those very old, old people are out of the question, of course."

"Yes, Grandpapa, Grandmamma.... And the old doctor...."

"Uncle Anton lives his own life."

"H'm, h'm ... yes...."

"Uncle Harold is old also."

"Two years older than I."

"But he's poorly."

"Yes ... and queer. Always has been. Quiet and melancholy. Still, a
very good sort."

"We at home, with Steyn and Mamma: what's the use of our entertaining
people?"

"You forget Aunt Stefanie: she's an aunt with money to leave, just as
Uncle Anton is an uncle with money to leave; but your aunt has plenty."

"Oh, Lot is quite indifferent to what money he inherits!" said Elly.

"Besides, you two won't be badly off," said old Pauws. "You're right:
what's the use of wedding-festivities? As for acquaintances ..."

"We none of us have many."

"It's a funny thing. As a rule, there's such a lot of movement around
Indian families. 'Swirl' we used to call it."

"Oh, I don't know: there's no 'swirl' of acquaintances round us!"

"No, we've had 'swirl' enough among ourselves: Mamma saw to that at
least!"

"It made Mamma lose her friends too."

"Of course it did. Mamma's life has really been hardly decent ... with
her three husbands!"

"Well, of course.... I don't allow it to upset me.... But the family
isn't thought much of."

"No. Grandmamma was the first to begin it. She also did just what she
pleased...."

"I've heard a lot of vague rumours...."

"Well, I've heard a lot of rumours too, but they weren't vague.
Grandmamma was a _grande coquette_ in her day and inspired more than
her share of the great passions in Java."

"They say that Mamma ..."

"I don't know, but it's quite possible. At least, you two are so like
each other that you might be brother and sister."

"Well, at the worst, we're cousins," said Elly.

"Yes, Grandmamma began it.... There was a lot of talk.... Oh, those
people are so old now! Their contemporaries are dead. And things pass.
Who is there now to think and talk about things that are so long past?"

"Grandmamma's lovers?"

"Innumerable!"

"The doctor?"

"So they say. And Elly's grandpapa."

"Those old people!" said Elly.

"They were young once."

"And we shall be old one day," said Lot. "We're growing old as it is."

"Shut up, boy! There's time enough for that when you're seventy....
Yes, Grandmamma de Laders, Grandmamma Dercksz: I can remember her in
India fifty years ago."

"O my God, what a time to remember things!" said Lot, shuddering.

"Take some more champagne, if it makes your flesh creep.... Fifty years
ago, I was little more than a boy, I was twenty. Grandmamma was still
a fine woman, well over forty. She became a widow quite young, on the
death of her first husband. Well, let's see: when Dercksz was drowned,
she was ... about ... thirty-six.... Then Mamma was born."

"What a long, long time ago that was!" said Lot. "It makes one giddy to
look back upon."

"That's sixty, yes, sixty years ago now," said Pauws, dreamily. "I was
a child then, ten years old. I still remember the incident. I was at
Semarang; my father was in the paymaster's department. My people knew
the Derckszes. The thing was talked about. I was a child, but it made
an impression on me. It was very much talked about, it was talked about
for years and years after. There was a question of exhuming the body.
They decided that it was too late. At that time, he had been buried for
months. They said that ..."

"That a native ... with a kris ... because of a woman...?"

"Yes; and they said more than that. They said that Takma had been to
the _pasangrahan_ that evening and that Grandmamma.... But what's the
use of talking about it? What can it matter to you? Elly's as white as
a sheet--child, how pale you look!--and Lot is shivering all over his
body, though it happened so long ago."

"Should you say that those old people ... are hiding something?"

"Probably," said Pauws. "Come, let's have some champagne and not talk
about it any more. They themselves have forgotten it all by this time.
When you get as old as that ..."

"You become dulled," said Lot.

"So you're going on to Paris to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Shall you look up Aunt Thérèse?"

"Yes, I expect so," said Elly. "We mustn't behave quite like savages."

"And then?"

"We shall go to Nice."

"Oh, really?... And ... and will you see Ottilie there?"

"Of course we shall," said Lot.

"That's right, that's right.... Yes, how can you expect a family like
ours to keep up a circle of decent acquaintances?... Ottilie writes to
me now and again.... She's living with an Italian.... Why they don't
get married is more than I can make out."

"And why should they get married?" asked Lot.

"But, Lot," said Elly, "you and I did!"

"We are more conventional than Ottilie. I am more conventional than
Ottilie ever was. I should never have dared to suggest to you _not_ to
get married. Ottilie is more thorough than I."

"She's a thorough fine girl ... and a devilish handsome woman," said
Pauws.

"Now _she's_ like you."

"But a good-looking edition!" said the old gentleman, chaffingly.
"Here, Elly, have some more _pâté_. But why they don't want to get
married I can't and never shall make out. After all, we have all of us
got married."

"But _how?_" said Lot.

"I must say you're not defending marriage very vigorously on your
wedding-day!"

"Ottilie has seen so many unhappy marriages all around her."

"That's what she writes. But I don't consider that a reason. Hang
it all, when a man falls in love, he goes and gets married! He gets
married by the mayor and by the parson.... Yes, to tell you the truth,
I think it was rather feeble of you two not to get married in church."

"But, Papa, you surely don't attach importance to having your marriage
blessed by a parson!"

"No more I do, but still one does it. It's one of the things one does.
We're not quite a law unto ourselves."

"No, but all social laws are being changed."

"Well, you can say what you please: I stick to it that you _have_
to get married. By the mayor and by the parson. You two have been
married by the mayor; but Ottilie refuses to be married at all. And
I'm expected to think it natural and enlightened and I don't know
what. I can't do it. I'm sorry for her sake. It's all very well: she's
a great artist and can behave differently from an ordinary woman;
but, if one fine day she returns to our ordinary circles, she'll find
that she's made herself impossible.... How would you have friends and
acquaintances gather round such a family?"

"They don't gather; and I'm glad of it. I have the most charming
acquaintances in Italy, friends who ..."

"Children, you may be right. Ottilie may be right not to get married at
all; and you may be right to have been married only by the mayor."

"At any rate," said Elly, "I never thought that, though there was no
reception, we should have such a cosy little supper."

"And such a nice one," said Lot. "Elly, these tarts are heavenly!"

"Only we oughtn't to have sat rooting up past things," said the old
gentleman. "It makes Lot's flesh creep. Look at the fellow eating
tarts! It's just what your mother used to do. A baby, a regular baby!"

"Yes, I'm a baby sometimes too, but not so much as Mamma."

"And is she going to England now?"

"She promised me not to. But her promise doesn't mean much. We shall
be so long away; we shall be in Italy all through the winter. There's
one thing makes me feel easier: Mamma has no money; and I went to the
bank before I left and asked them, if Mamma came for money, to make up
a story and persuade her that it couldn't be done, that there was no
money...."

"But she draws ... she always did."

"The manager told me that he would help me, that he wouldn't let her
have any money."

"Then she'll get it just the same."

"From whom?"

"I don't know, but she'll get it. She always gets it, I don't know
how...."

"But, Papa!"

"Yes, my boy, you can be as indignant as you please: I am speaking
from experience. How often haven't I had questions about money with
Mamma! First there was none; and then, all of a sudden, there it
was!..."

"Mamma is bad at figures and she is untidy. Then she finds some money
in her cupboard."

"Yes, I know all about it: in the old days she was always finding
something in her cupboard. A good thing, that she goes on finding it.
Still, we should never have parted because of money. If it hadn't been
for that damned Trevelley, we might still.... But, when Mamma had once
set her heart on anybody, then.... Don't let's talk about it.... Look
here, you know this old photograph. It's charming, isn't it, Elly?
Yes, that's how she used to look. I've never been able to forget her.
I've never loved any one else. I'm an old fellow now, children, but
... but I believe that I'm still fond of her.... I sometimes think
that it's past, that it's all past and done with; and yet, sometimes,
old as I am, I still suffer from it and feel rotten.... I believe I'm
still fond of her.... And, if Mamma had had a different character and
a different temper and if she hadn't met Trevelley.... But there are
so very many 'ifs' in the case.... And, if she hadn't met Trevelley,
she would have met Steyn just the same.... She would always have met
somebody.... Come, Elly, pour out the coffee. Will you have chartreuse
or benedictine? And stay on and talk a bit, cosily. Not about old
things: about young things, young things; about yourselves, your plans,
Italy.... It's not late yet; it's barely half-past ten.... But, of
course, you're only this moment married.... Well, I'll see you to your
hotel.... Shall we walk? It's no distance.... Let your old father see
you to your hotel and give you a good-night kiss at the door and wish
you happiness, every happiness ... dear children!"




CHAPTER XIII


They had now been a few days in Paris; and Elly, who was seeing Paris
for the first time, was enchanted. The Louvre, the Cluny, the life in
the streets and the cafés, the theatres in the evenings almost drove
Aunt Thérèse from her mind.

"Oh, don't let's go to her!" said Lot, one morning, as they were
walking along the boulevards. "Perhaps she doesn't even know who we
are."

Elly felt a twinge of conscience:

"She wrote me a very nice letter on my engagement and she gave us a
wedding-present. Yes, Lot, she knows quite well who we are."

"But she doesn't know that we're in Paris. Don't let's go to her. Aunt
Thérèse: I haven't seen her for years, but I remember her long ago ...
at the time of Mamma's last marriage. I was a boy of eighteen then.
Aunt Thérèse must have been forty-eight. A handsome woman. She was
even more like Grandmamma than Mamma is: she had all that greatness
and grandness and majesty which you see in the earlier portraits of
Grandmamma and which she still has when she sits enthroned in her
chair.... It always impresses me.... Very slender and handsome and
elegant ... calm and restful, distinguished-looking, with a delightful
smile."

"The smile of _La Gioconda_...."

"The smile of _La Gioconda_," Lot repeated, laughing because of his
wife, who was enjoying herself so in Paris. "But by the way, Elly ...
the Venus of Milo: I couldn't tell you so when we were standing there,
because you were in such silent rapture, but ... after I hadn't seen
her for years, I found her such a disappointment. Only imagine ..."

"Well, what, Lot?"

"I thought her grown old!"

"But, Lot!..."

"I assure you, I thought her grown old! Does everything grow old then,
do even the immortals grow old? I remember her as she used to be: calm,
serene, imposing, white as snow, in spite of her mutilation, against
a brilliant background of dark-red velvet. This time I thought her
no longer imposing, no longer white as snow; she seemed pathetically
crippled; and the velvet background was no longer brilliant. Everything
had grown old and dull and I had a shock and felt very sad.... Soberly
speaking, I think now that they ought just to clean her down one
morning and renew the velvet hanging; and then, on a sunny day, if I
was in a good mood, I daresay I should think her serene and white as
snow again. But, as she showed herself to me, I thought her grown old;
and it gave me a shock. It upset me for quite an hour, but I didn't
let you see it.... For that matter, I think Paris altogether has grown
very old: so dirty, so old-fashioned, so provincial; a conglomeration
of _quartiers_ and small towns huddled together; and so exactly
the same as it was fifteen years ago, but older, grimier and more
old-fashioned. Look! This papier-mâché chicken here"--they were in the
Avenue de l'Opéra--"has been turning on that spit, as an advertisement,
with the oily butter dripping from it: Elly, that chicken has been
turning for fifteen years! And last night, at the Théâtre Français, I
had a shock, just as I did to-day at the Venus of Milo. The Théâtre
Français had grown so old, so old, with that dreadful ranting, that I
asked myself, 'Was it always so old, or do I think it old because I am
older myself?'..."

"But Aunt Thérèse ..."

"So you insist on going to her.... Really, we'd better not. She too has
grown old; and what are we to her?... We are young still.... I also
am young still, am I not?... You don't think me too old, your _blasé_
husband?... In Italy, we shall find real enjoyment...."

"Why, everything will be still older there!"

"Yes, but everything is not _growing_ older. That's all past, it's all
_the_ past. It's the obvious past and therefore it's so restful. It's
all dead."

"But surely the country is alive?... Modern life goes on?..."

"I don't care about that. All that I see is the past; and that is so
beautifully, so restfully dead. That doesn't sadden me. What saddens me
is the old people and the old things that are still alive and ever so
old and have gradually, gradually gone past us; but things which are
restfully dead and which are so exquisitely beautiful as in Italy, they
don't sadden me: they calm me and rouse my admiration for everything
that was once so beautifully alive an

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