It was a dismal evening at Mrs. van Lowe's that Sunday. And yet Mamma
knew nothing: together with Dorine, she had seen that the maids set out
the card-tables, had seen, according to her custom, to the sandwiches,
the cakes and the wine which were invariably put out in the boudoir,
under the portrait of her husband, the late governor-general. But the
old lady was different from usual; and Dorine, looking very pale and
apprehensive, gave a start of amazement when she asked:
"Dorine, who's been moving Papa's portrait?"
The old woman asked the question testily and peremptorily.
"But, Mamma, it's been here for years. After Papa's death, you said you
wouldn't have it always before your eyes in the drawing-room ... and it
was moved in here...."
"Who, do you say, moved it?"
"Why, you yourself, Mamma!"
"I?"
"Yes, you...."
"Oh, yes!" said the old woman, remembering. "Yes, yes, I remember; I
only asked because it looks so out of place here ... in the little room
... and it is such a fine portrait...."
Dorine said nothing more. Her legs shook beneath her; but she went on
spreading out the cards.
Karel and Cateau arrived:
"How _aw-ful_!" said Cateau, pale in the face. "We thought we had
bet-ter come ... for Mamma's sake ... didn't we, Ka-rel?"
"Mamma knows nothing," said Dorine. "But we can't possibly keep it from
her.... Otto has gone to Baarn to break the news to Bertha."
The Van Saetzemas arrived:
"No details yet?" asked Adolphine.
"No," Dorine whispered, nervously, seeing Mamma approaching.
"How late you all are!" grumbled the old woman. "Why aren't Uncle Herman
and Auntie Lot here? And why haven't Auntie Tine and Auntie Rine come
yet?"
There was a moment's painful pause.
"But they haven't been coming for some time, Mamma," said Adolphine,
gently.
"What do you say? Are they ill?"
"The old aunts haven't been for ev-er so long on Sunday even-ings," said
Cateau, with a great deal of pitying emphasis.
Suddenly Mrs. van Lowe seemed to remember. Yes, it was true: the sisters
had not come on Sunday evenings for a long time. She nodded her head in
assent, with an air of knowing all about the sad things which happen in
old age and which will happen also in the future that is still hidden
from the children. But in her heart she thought:
"There's something."
And she seemed to be trying to gaze ahead. But she did not see it before
her, did not see it before her vague eyes, as she had seen the death of
Henri's mother, yonder, in a dark room at Driebergen, in a dark oak
bedstead, behind dark green curtains. She felt that there was something
that they had kept from her in order to spare her pain; but she did not
see it as she had but lately seen other things which the children did
not know. It was as though her sight were growing dim and uncertain, as
though she only guessed, only suspected things. And she would not ask
what it was. If there was something ... well, then her Sunday
family-evening could not help being dreary and silent. Adolphine's
children no longer sat round the big table in the conservatory: the old
lady did not understand why, did not see that they were growing up, that
the round games bored them. Only, as she looked at her empty room, she
asked just one more question:
"Where's Bertha? And where's Constance?"
This time, Adolphine and Cateau did not even trouble to remind Mamma
that Bertha was living at Baarn. As for Auntie Lot, how could they tell
her that the good soul had had a nervous break-down after being told of
Henri's sudden death, about which no one knew any details? Toetie
arrived very late and said that Mamma had a little headache. As for
Constance, not one of the children would have dared to say that she and
Van der Welcke had gone to Paris by the night-mail at six o'clock, as
soon as they could after Emilie's telegram. Gerrit wanted to go with
them, but he was ill and had hardly said a word to Adeline about the
telegram when he returned home from the Kerkhoflaan. He had got into bed
shivering, thinking that he had a feverish attack, influenza or
something. The daughters also thought it better not to tell Mamma that
Gerrit was ill; and Mamma did not even ask after Gerrit, though she
missed him and Adeline and thought that her rooms looked very empty.
Where could they be? the old woman wondered. None of Bertha's little
tribe; the old sisters not there; Constance not there; Gerrit not there;
Auntie Lot not there: where were they all? the old woman kept wondering.
How big her rooms looked, what a shivery feeling the card-tables gave
her, with the markers, with the cards spread out in an S! Well, if there
were no children left, it was not worth while having the table put out
for the round games in the conservatory, at least not until Gerrit's
children were bigger, until a new warmth surrounded her, on her poor
Sunday evenings! And what was the use of ordering such a lot of cakes,
if there was nobody there to eat them?
And it was very strange, but this evening, now that her rooms were so
empty, she grew very weary of those who were there--Adolphine, Cateau,
Floortje and Dijkerhof--very tired. She felt her face becoming drawn and
haggard, her drooping eyelids twitching over her dim eyes and her
heavily-veined hands trembling in her lap with utter weariness. She did
not speak, only nodded: the wise nod of old age, knowing that old age
spells sadness. She only nodded, longing for them to go. They were
uncomfortable: they whispered together, their faces were pale; they sat
there staring in such a strange, spectral way ... as if something
dreadful had happened or was going to happen.... Had the servants made
up the fires so badly? Was it so bitterly cold, so creepily chilly in
her rooms, that she felt shivers all down her old, bent back?... And,
when the children at last, earlier than usual, took leave of her--still
with that same spectral stare, as though they were looking at something
dreadful that had happened or was going to happen--she felt inclined to
say to them that she was getting too old now to keep up her Sunday
evenings; she had it on her lips to say as much to Floortje, to Cateau,
to Adolphine; but a pity for them all and especially for herself
restrained her and she did not say it. On the contrary, she said, very
wearily:
"Well, I hope that you will all be more particular about coming next
Sunday ... all of you, all of you.... I want you all here.... I want to
have you all around me."
Then they left her alone, earlier than usual, and the old woman did not
ring at once for the servants to put out the lights, to go to bed, but
first wandered for a little while longer through her large, empty, still
brightly-lit rooms. How much had changed in the many, many years that
very slowly accumulated about her and seemed to bury her under their
grey mounds! Sometimes it seemed to her as if nothing had changed, as if
the Sunday evenings always remained the same, even though this or that
one might be absent for one reason or another. But sometimes, as to-day,
it seemed to her as if everything, everything had changed, with hardly
perceptible changes. Did she alone remain unchanged?...
She had now reached the little boudoir: hardly any of the cakes had been
touched; above them hung the fine portrait of her husband, in the
gold-laced uniform, with the orders. He was dead ... and with him all
their grandeur, which she had learnt to love because of him, through
him.... She wandered back to the other rooms: there were portraits on
the walls, photographs in frames on the tables and mantelpieces. Dead
was the old family-doctor; as good as dead her two old sisters; dead was
Van Naghel; as good as dead Bertha, now so far away. Aunt Lot, she still
remained, she still remained, bearing up bravely, in spite of financial
disaster.... Then the children: they were all dying off, for surely it
was tantamount to that, when they were becoming more and more remote
from her: Karel; Adolphine; Ernst; even Paul; and Dorine, her youngest.
There was only Constance ... and Gerrit, perhaps.... And the
grandchildren: Frans, in Java; Emilie and Henri, in Paris: O God, what
were they doing in Paris? O God, what was it, what was the matter with
them? For she suddenly saw the boy ... white as a corpse ... with his
clothes open ... and a deep, gaping wound above his heart, sending a
stream of purple blood from his lung ... while he lay in the last
agonies of death.... Why did she see it, this strange vision of a second
or two? It couldn't be true, yet it filled her with anxiety.... And in
sad understanding she nodded her old head, with the dim eyes which were
suddenly seeing visions more clearly than reality ... until the time
when they would see nothing, numbed by the years which were slowly
accumulating about her.... Why did she see it?... And, amid the
emptiness of her brightly-lit drawing-room, a sort of roar came to her
from the distance, from the distance outside the room, the distance
outside the house, the distance outside the night, the very distant
distance of eternity, the eternity whence all the things of the future
come: a roar so overwhelming that it seemed to come from a supernatural
sea in which the poor, trembling old woman was drowned, drowned with all
her vanity and all her unimportant, insignificant sorrow, a sea in which
her very small, small soul was drowned, swallowed up like the veriest
atom in the roaring, roaring waves; a roar whose voice told her that it
was coming, that it was coming, the great sorrow, the thing before which
she trembled with fear because she had long foreseen it and because it
would be so heavy for her to bear ... now that she was too old and too
weary to bear any more sorrow! And, with an unconscious gesture, she
raised her trembling old hands and prayed, mechanically:
"O God, no more, no more!..."
Why must fate be like that, so heavy, so ruthless and crushing? Why had
it not all come earlier, including the thing which advanced with such a
threatening roar and under which she, too weary now, too weak and too
old, would succumb when it passed over her, when it reached her at last
out of the roaring, threatening, distant, distant eternity, wherein all
the things of the future are born....
But the roar of that doom and her knowledge of it lasted no longer than
a second. And, when that second was past, there was nothing around her
but the empty, brightly-lit rooms. It was eleven o'clock, the children
had all gone home and she rang for the servants, to put out the lights,
to go to bed, duly observant of the small needs of her very small life,
in spite of all those supernatural things which threatened from afar,
out of eternity....
Leaving the maids occupied in the empty room, where they turned off the
gas in the chandelier, the old woman slowly climbed the stairs, nodding
her old head in bitter comprehension, knowing too well, alas, that the
great sorrow would come ... even though, trembling with fear, she
prayed:
"O God ... no more, _no more_!"