The Project Gutenberg eBook, Old People and the Things That Pass, by Louis Couperus, Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

OLD PEOPLE AND THE

THINGS THAT PASS

BY

LOUIS COUPERUS

TRANSLATED BY

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1919

CONTENTS

[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 unhappy."

"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 ..."