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OLD PEOPLE AND THE THINGS THAT PASS
by
LOUIS COUPERUS
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1919
CHAPTER I
Steyn's deep bass voice was heard in the passage:
"Come, Jack, come along, dog! Are you coming with your master?"
The terrier gave a loud, glad bark and came rushing madly down the
stairs, till he seemed to be tumbling over his own paws.
"Oh, that voice of Steyn's!" Ottilie hissed between her teeth angrily
and turned a number of pages of her novel.
Charles Pauws glanced at her quietly, with his little smile, his laugh
at Mamma's ways. He was sitting with his mother after dinner, sipping
his cup of coffee before going on to Elly.
Steyn went out with Jack; the evening silence settled upon the little
house and the gas hummed in the impersonal and unhomely sitting-room.
Charles Pauws looked down at the tips of his boots and admired their
fit.
"Where has Steyn gone?" asked Mamma; and her voice grumbled uneasily.
"Gone for a walk with Jack," said Charles Pauws.
He was called Lot[1] at home; his voice sounded soft and soothing.
"He's gone to his woman!" snarled Ottilie.
Lot made a gesture of weariness:
"Come, Mamma," he said, "be calm now and don't think about that scene.
I'm going on to Elly presently; meantime I want to sit cosily with
you for a bit. Steyn's your husband, after all. You mustn't always be
bickering with him and saying and thinking such things. You were just
like a little fury again. It brings wrinkles, you know, losing your
temper like that."
"I am an old woman."
"But you've still got a very soft little skin."
Ottilie smiled; and Lot stood up:
"There," he said, "give me a kiss.... Won't you? Must I give you one?
You angry little Mummy!... And what was it about? About nothing. At
least, I can't remember what it was all about. I should never be able
to analyse it. And that's always the way.... How do I come to be so
unruffled with such a little fury of a Mamma?"
"If you imagine that your father used to keep unruffled!"
Lot laughed that little laugh of his and did not reply. Mrs. Steyn de
Weert went on reading more peacefully; she sat in front of her book
like a child. She was a woman of sixty, but her blue eyes were like a
child's, full of a soft beauty, gentle and innocent; and her voice,
a little high-toned, always sounded like a child's, had just sounded
like the voice of a naughty child. Sitting, small and upright, in her
chair, she read on, attentively, calming herself because Lot had spoken
so calmly and kissed her so comfortingly. The gas hummed and Lot drank
his coffee and, looking at his boots, wondered why he was going to be
married. He did not think he was a marrying man. He was young still:
thirty-eight; he really looked much younger; he made enough money with
his articles to risk it, frugal-fashion, with what Elly would get from
Grandpapa Takma; but all the same he did not think that he was of the
marrying kind. His liberty, his independence, his selfish power to
amuse himself as he pleased were what he loved best; and marrying meant
giving one's self over, bound hand and foot, to a woman. He was not
passionately in love with Elly: he thought her an intelligent, artistic
little thing; and he was really not doing it for what she would inherit
from Grandpapa Takma. Then why was he doing it, he asked himself, as he
had asked himself day after day, during that week which had followed on
his proposal.
"Mamma, can you tell me? Why did I propose to Elly?"
Ottilie looked up. She was accustomed to queer and humorous questions
from Lot and she used to answer him in the same tone, as far as she was
able; but this question made her feel a prick of jealousy, a prick that
hurt very much, physically, like a thorn in the flesh.
"Why you proposed to Elly? I don't know. We always do things without
knowing why."
Her voice sounded soft and melancholy, a little sulky after the naughty
child's voice of just now. Had she not lost everything that she had
ever possessed? Would she not lose Lot, have to part with him to Elly
... as she had had to part with everything and everybody?...
"How seriously you answered, Mamma! That's not like you."
"Mayn't I be serious too, once in a way?"
"Why so sad and serious and tempersome lately? Is it because I am going
to be married?"
"Perhaps."
"But you're fond of Elly ..."
"Yes, she's very nice."
"The best thing we can do is to go on living together; Elly's fond of
you too. I've talked to Steyn about it."
Lot called his step-father, his second step-father, Steyn, without
anything else, after having called his first, when he was still a boy,
"Mr." Trevelley. Ottilie had been married three times.
"The house is too small," said Mamma, "especially if you go having a
family soon."
And yet she thought:
"If we remain together, I sha'n't lose Lot entirely; but I shall never
be able to get on with my daughter-in-law, especially if there are
children."
"A family?" he echoed.
"Children."
"Children?"
"Well, married people have had children before now!"
"Our family has lasted long enough. I shall be in no hurry about
children."
"And, when your wife hasn't you with her, what has she, if she hasn't
any children? It's true, you're both so clever. I'm only a stupid
woman; my children have often been a comfort to me...."
"When you were able to spoil them."
"It's not for you to reproach me with that!"
"I'm not reproaching you."
"As to living together, Lot," said Mamma, sadly, in a child's coaxing
voice, casting up her blue child-eyes, "_I_ should be quite willing, if
Elly is and if she promises to take things as she finds them. I shall
feel very lonely without you. But, if there were any objections, I
might go over to England. I have my two boys there. And Mary is coming
home from India this year."
Lot knitted his brows and put his hand up to his fair hair: it was very
neat, with a parting.
"Or else ... I might go and look up Ottilie at Nice."
"No, Mamma, not that!" said Lot, almost angrily.
"Why not?" exclaimed Mrs. Steyn de Weert, raising her voice. "She's my
child, surely?"
"Yes," Lot admitted, quickly recovering his composure. "But ..."
"But what? Surely, my own child...?"
"But it would be very silly of you to go to Ottilie."
"Why, even if we have quarrelled at times ..."
"It would never do; you can't get on with her. If you go to Ottilie, I
won't get married. Besides, Steyn has something to say in the matter."
"I'm so fond of Nice," said Mrs. Steyn de Weert; and her child-voice
sounded almost plaintive. "The winters there are so delightful....
But perhaps it would be difficult for me ... to go there ... because
Ottilie behaves so funnily. If it could be managed, I would rather
live with you, Lot. If Elly is willing. Perhaps we could have a little
larger house than this. Do you think we could afford it? Stay alone
with Steyn I will _not_. That's settled. That's quite settled."
"Mummy darling ..."
Lot's voice sounded full of pity. After her last determined words,
Mamma had big tears in her blue child-eyes, tears which did not fall
but which gave a sorrowful gleam to the naughty look in her face.
Then, with a sudden short sigh, she took up her book and was silent
and pretended to read. There was something resigned about her attitude
and, at the same time, something obstinate, the constant attitude of
a naughty child, a spoilt child that persisted in doing, quietly and
silently, what it wanted to. Lot, with his coffee-cup in his hand, his
laugh about his mouth, studied Mamma; after his compassion, he just
sat and studied her. Yes, she must have been very pretty; the uncles
always said, a little doll. She was sixty now and no longer made any
pretence to beauty; but she was still charming in a child-like and
doll-like fashion. She had the wrinkles and the deeper furrows of
an elderly woman; but the skin of her forehead and cheeks was still
white and soft, without a blemish, tenderly veined at the temples.
She had become very grey; but, as she had been very fair and her hair
was soft and curly, it sometimes looked as if she had remained fair;
and, simply though that hair appeared to be done, fastened up with one
quick movement and pinned, there were still some almost childish little
locks curling at the temples and in the neck. Her short, slim figure
was almost that of a young woman; her hands were small and pretty;
in fact, there was a prettiness about her whole person; and pretty
above all were the young, blue eyes. Lot, who smiled as he looked at
his mother, saw in her a woman over whom an emotional life, a life
of love and hate, had passed without telling very much upon her. And
yet Mamma had been through a good deal, with her three husbands, all
three of whom she had loved, all three of whom, without exception, she
now hated. A butterfly she had certainly been, but just an unthinking
butterfly, simply because her nature was a butterfly's. She had loved
much, but even a deep passion would not have made her life or her
different; naturally and unconsciously she was in headstrong opposition
to everything. She had never been economical; and yet her house was
never comfortable, nor had she ever spent much on dress, unconsciously
despising elegance and comfort and feeling that she attracted through
herself and not through any artistic surroundings. Mamma's get-up was
like nothing on earth, Lot thought; the only cosy room in the house was
his. Mamma, mad on reading, read very modern French novels, which she
did not always understand, despite a life of love and hatred, having
remained innocent in many things and totally ignorant of the darker
phases of passion. Then Lot would see, while she was reading, that she
was surprised and did not understand; a simple, childish wonder would
come into her eyes; she never dared ask Lot for an explanation....
Lot got up; he was going to Elly that evening. He kissed his mother,
with his constant little laugh of silent amusement, his little laugh at
Mamma.
"You never used to go out every evening," said Mamma, reproachfully;
and she felt the thorn in her heart's flesh.
"I'm in love now," said Lot, calmly. "And engaged. And a fellow must
go and see his girl, you know.... Will you think over my question,
why I really proposed to Elly ... and will you manage without me this
evening?"
"I shall have to do that many evenings...."
Mamma pretended to be absorbed in her French novel, but, as soon as Lot
had left the room, she put down the book and looked round, vaguely,
with a look of helplessness in her blue eyes. She did not move when
the maid brought in the tea-tray and kettle; she sat staring before
her, across her book. The water sang its bubbling song; outside the
windows, after the last summer heat, the first cold wind blew with
its wonted plaint. Ottilie felt herself abandoned: oh, how little
of everything remained! There she was now, there she was, the old,
grey-haired woman! What was there left of her life? And yet, strange
to say, her three husbands were all three alive: Lot had been lately
to Brussels with Elly, to see his father; Trevelley was spending a
life of pleasure in London: when all was said, she had liked him the
best. Her three English children lived in England, felt more English
than Dutch; Ottilie was leading her curious, unconventional life at
Nice: the whole family cried scandal about it; and Lot she was now
about to lose. He had always stayed with her so nicely, though he went
abroad pretty frequently; and he had hardly any friends at the Hague
and never went to the Witte.[2] Now he was going to be married; he was
no longer young, for a young man; he must be thirty-eight, surely? To
occupy herself a little now, beside her lonely tea-tray and bubbling
water, she began to count her children's ages on her tiny fingers.
Ottilie, Lot's sister, her eldest, forty-one: heavens, how old she was
growing! The English ones, as she always called them--"my three English
children"--Mary, thirty-five; John, thirty-two; even her handsome Hugh
was thirty: heavens above, how old they were growing! And, once she
was busy calculating ages, to amuse herself, she reckoned out that old
Mamma would now soon be--let's see--yes, she would be ninety-seven. Old
Mr. Takma, Elly's grandpapa, was only a year or two younger; and, when
she thought of him, Ottilie reflected that it was very strange that Mr.
Takma had always been so nice to her, as though it were really true
what people used to whisper, formerly, when people still interested
themselves in the family. So curious, those two old people: they saw
each other almost every day; for Papa Takma was hale and still went out
often, always walking the short distance from the Mauritskade to the
Nassaulaan and crossing the razor-back bridge with rare vigour. Yes
... and then Sister Thérèse, in Paris, eight years older than herself,
must be sixty-eight; and the brothers: Daan, in India,[3] seventy;
Harold, seventy-three; Anton, seventy-five; while Stefanie, the only
child of Mamma's first marriage and the only De Laders, was getting
on for seventy-seven. She, Ottilie, the youngest, felt that all those
others were very old; and yet she was old too: she was sixty. It was
all a matter of comparison, growing old, different ages; but she had
always felt it so: that she, the youngest, was comparatively young and
always remained younger than the others, than all the others. She had
to laugh, secretly, when Stefanie kept on saying:
"At our age ..."
Why, Stefanie was seventy-seven! There was a
difference--rather!--between sixty and seventy-seven. But she shrugged
her shoulders: what did it matter? It was all over and so long ago.
There she sat now, an old, grey-haired woman, and the aftermath of
life dragged on and the loneliness increased daily, even though Steyn
was here still: there he was, coming in. Where on earth did he go to
every evening? She heard the fox-terrier barking in the passage and her
husband's deep, bass voice:
"Hush, Jack! Quiet, Jack!..."
Oh, that voice, how she hated it!
What had she, whom had she left? She had five children, but only Lot
with her; and he went abroad so often and was now going to be married:
oh, how jealous it made her! Ottilie she never saw nowadays; Ottilie
didn't care for her mother; she sang at concerts and had made a name
for herself: she had a glorious voice; but she certainly behaved
very strangely: Stefanie spoke of her as "lost." Mary was married,
in India,[4] and her two English boys were in London: oh, how she
sometimes longed for Hugh! Which of her children was any use or
comfort to her, except that dear Lot? And Lot was going to be married
and he was asking her, his mother, who would miss him so, why he was
going to be married, why! Of course, he was only joking, really; but
perhaps it was also serious in part. Did people ever know anything?...
Did they know why they did a thing ... in their impulsiveness. She had
married three times.... Perhaps Ottilie was right after all? But no,
there was the world, there were people, even though neither the world
nor people had interested themselves in the family of late years; but
still there they were; and you couldn't act as Ottilie did, without
making yourself altogether impossible. That was why she, Mamma, had
married, had married three times. Perhaps she ought never to have
married at all: it would have been better for a heap of things, a heap
of people.... The old life was all gone. It had vanished, as if it had
never existed. And yet it had existed and, when it passed, had left
much behind it, but nothing except melancholy ghosts and shadows. Yes,
this evening she was in a serious mood and felt like thinking, a thing
which otherwise she did as seldom as possible: what good did thinking
do? When she had thought, in her life, she had never thought to any
practical purpose. When she had yielded to impulse, things had been
worse still. What was the good of wanting to live, when nevertheless
your life was mapped out for you by things stronger than yourself that
slumbered in your blood?
Ottilie gave herself up to her French novel, for Steyn de Weert had
entered the room, with Jack leaping in front of him. And any one
who had seen Mamma a moment ago and saw her now would have noticed
this phenomenon, that Mamma became much older as soon as her husband
entered. The plump cheeks contracted nervously and the lines round the
nose and mouth grew deeper. The little straight nose stuck out more
sharply, the forehead frowned angrily. The fingers, which were tearing
the pages of a novel anyhow with a hairpin, trembled; and the page was
torn awry. The back became rounder, like that of a cat assuming the
defensive. She said nothing, but poured out the tea.
"Coosh!" she said to the dog.
And, glad that the dog came to her, she patted him on the head with a
half-caress; and the fox-terrier, giving a last sharp bark, spun round
upon himself and, very suddenly, nestled down on Ottilie's skirt, with
a deep sigh. Steyn de Weert, sitting opposite her, drank his tea.
It appeared strange that they should be man and wife, for Mamma now
certainly looked her age and Steyn seemed almost young. He was a tall
fellow, broad-shouldered, not more than just fifty, with a handsome,
fresh-coloured, healthy face, the face of a strong out-of-doors man,
calm in glance and movement. The fact that, years ago, he had thrown
away his life, from a sense of honour, upon a woman much older than
himself had afterwards inspired him with an indifference that ceased
to reckon what might still be in store for him. What was spoilt was
spoilt, squandered for good, irretrievably. There was the open air,
which was cool and fresh; there was shooting; there was a drink, when
he wanted one; there were his old friends, dating back to the time when
he was an officer in the dragoons. Beyond these there were the little
house and this old woman: he accepted them into the bargain, because it
couldn't be helped. In externals he did, as far as possible, what she
wanted, because she could be so tempersome and was so obstinate; but
his cool stubbornness was a silent match for hers. Lot was a capital
fellow, a little weak and unexpected and effeminate; but he was very
fond of Lot: he was glad that Lot lived with them; he had given Lot one
of the best rooms in the house to work in. For the rest ... for the
rest, there were other things; but they were no concern of anybody.
Hang it all, he was a young man still, even though his thick hair was
beginning to turn grey! His marriage had come about through a point of
honour; but his wife was old, she was very old. The thing was really
rather absurd. He would never make a hell of his life, as long as he
still felt well and strong. With a good dose of indifference you can
shake off everything.
It was this indifference of his which irritated his wife, till she
felt as nervous as a cat when he did no more than enter the room. He
had not spoken a word, sat drinking his tea, reading the newspaper
which he had brought with him. In the small living-room, where the
gas hummed and the wind rattled the panes, the fox-terrier sometimes
snorted in dreams that made him groan and moan on the trailing edge of
his mistress' dress.
"Coosh!" she said.
And for the rest neither of them spoke, both sat reading, one her book,
the other his evening-paper. And these two people, whose lives had been
welded together by civil contract, because of the man's feelings of
conventional honesty and his sense of not being able to act otherwise
as a man of honour, these two had once, years ago, twenty years ago,
longed passionately, the man for the woman and the woman for the man.
When Steyn de Weert was a first lieutenant, a good-looking fellow,
just turned thirty, he had met Mrs. Trevelley, without knowing her
age. Besides, what did age matter when he set eyes upon a woman so
ravishingly beautiful to his quick desire that he had at once, at the
first moment that he saw her, felt the blood flaming in his veins and
thought:
"That woman I must have!..."
At that time, though already forty, she was a woman so full of
blossoming prettiness that she was still known as the beautiful Lietje.
She was small, but perfect in shape and particularly charming in
feature, charming in the still very young lines of throat and breast,
creamy white, with a few pale-gold freckles; charming with blue eyes
of innocence and very fair, soft, wavy hair; charmingly half-woman and
half-child, moulded for love, who seemed to exist only that she might
rouse glowing desires. When Steyn de Weert saw her thus for the first
time, in some ultra-modern Hague drawing-room of the Dutch-Indian set,
she was married to her second husband, that half-Englishman, Trevelley,
who was supposed to have made money in India; and Steyn had seen her
the mother of three biggish children: a girl of fifteen and two boys a
little younger; but the enamoured dragoon had refused to believe that,
by her first marriage, with Pauws, from whom she had been divorced
because of Trevelley, she had a daughter at the Conservatoire at Liège
and a son of eighteen at home! The beautiful Lietje? She had married
very young, in India, and she was still the beautiful Lietje. Such big
children? Was that woman forty? The young officer had perhaps hesitated
a moment, tried, now that he knew so much, to view Mrs. Trevelley with
other eyes; but, when he looked in hers and saw that she desired him as
he did her, he forgot everything. Why not cull a moment of happiness?
What was an instant of love with a still seductive and beautiful woman?
A triumph for a week, a month, a couple of months; and then each would
go a different way.
That was how he had thought at the time; but now, now he was sitting
here, because that bounder of a Trevelley, who wanted to get rid of
Ottilie, had taken advantage of their relations to create a scandal
and, after a pretence at a duel, to insist on a divorce; because all
the Hague had talked about Ottilie, when she was left standing alone
with a lover; and because he, Steyn, was an honest chap after all:
that, that was why he was sitting here, with that old woman opposite
him. Not a word was uttered between them; they drank their tea; the
tray was removed; Jack dreamed and moaned; the wind howled. The pages
followed in quick succession under Ottilie's fingers; and Steyn read
the Manchurian war-news and the advertisements, the advertisements and
the war-news. The room around them, married though they were, looked
as it had always looked, impersonal and unhomely; the clock ticked on
and on, under its glass shade. It looked like a waiting-room, that
drawing-room: a waiting-room where, after many things that had passed,
two people sat waiting. Sat waiting ... for what? For the end that was
so slow in coming, for the final death.
Steyn restrained himself and read through the advertisements once more.
But his wife, suddenly shutting up her book, said, abruptly:
"Frans!"
"Eh?"
"I was talking to Lot just now."
"Yes ..."
"Would you object if they stayed on with us, he and Elly?"
"No, on the contrary."
But it seemed as though Steyn's calm consent just irritated his wife,
perhaps against her own will, into contradiction:
"Yes, but it wouldn't be so easy!" she said.
"Why not?"
"The house is too small."
"We can move."
"A bigger house would be more expensive. Have you the money for it?"
"I think that, with what Lot makes and with Elly's allowance ..."
"No, a bigger house is too dear."
"Well, then here...."
"This is too small."
"Then it can't be done."
Ottilie rose, angrily:
"No, of course not: nothing can ever be done. Because of that wretched
money. But I'll tell you this: when Lot is married, I can't ... I
c-can't ..."
She stammered when she was angry.
"Well, what can't you?"
"I c-can't ... stay alone with you! I shall go to Nice, to Ottilie."
"All right, go."
He said it calmly, with great indifference, and took up his paper
again. But it was enough to make Ottilie, who was highly strung, burst
into sobs:
"You don't care a bit about me any more!"
Steyn shrugged his shoulders and went out of the room and upstairs; the
dog sprang in front of him, barking.
Ottilie remained alone; and her sobs ceased at once. She knew it
herself--the years had taught her as much as that--she easily lost her
temper and would always remain a child. But, in that case, why grow
older, in ever-increasing loneliness? There she sat, there she sat
now, an old, grey woman, in that unhomely room; and everything was
past. Oh, if Lot only remained with her, her Lot, her Charlot, her
boy! And she felt her jealousy of Lot and Elly, at first restrained,
rising more and more violently. And that other jealousy: her jealousy
of Steyn. He irritated her when he merely entered the room; but she
still remained jealous of him, as she always had been of every man that
loved her. Oh, to think that he no longer cared about her, because she
had grown old! Oh, to think that he never uttered a word of affection
now, never gave her a kiss on her forehead! She was jealous of Elly
because of Lot, she was jealous of Lot because of Steyn, because Steyn
really cared more for Lot, nowadays, than for her! How cruel the years
were, slowly to take everything from her! The years were past, the
dear, laughing love-years, full of caresses; all that was past! Even
the dog had just gone off with Steyn: no living creature was nice to
her; and why need Lot suddenly go getting married now? She felt so
forlorn that, after the forced sobs, which she had stopped as soon as
they were no longer necessary, she sank into a chair and wept softly,
really weeping, this time, because no one loved her and because she
was forlorn. Her still young and beautiful eyes, overflowing with
tears, looked into the vanished past. Then--in the days when she was
the beautiful Lietje--everything about her had been pleasant, nice,
caressing, playful, jesting, almost adoring and entreating, because she
was so pretty and gay and attractive and had an irresistible laugh and
a temper full of the most delightful little whims. True, through all
this there was always the sting of jealousy; but in those days so much
of it had come her way: all the caressing homage which the world, the
world of men, expends on a pretty woman! She laughed at it through her
tears; and the memory meandered around her, bright as pretty little,
distant clouds. Oh, what a wealth of adulation had surrounded her
then! Now, all those men were old or dead; only her own three husbands
were alive; and Steyn was still young. He was too young: if he had not
been so young, she would have kept her charm for him longer and they
would still be nice to each other, happy together as old people can be
sometimes, even though the warmth of youth is past.... She heaved a
deep sigh through her tears and sat in her chair like a helpless child
that has been naughty and now does not know what to do. What was there
for her to do now? Just to go quietly to bed, in her lonely room, an
old woman's room, in her lonely bed, and to wake in the morning and
drag one more old day after the old, old days! Ah, why could she not
have died while she was young?
She rang and told the maid to lock up; and these little habits had for
her the disconsolateness of everyday repetition, because it all seemed
unnecessary. Then she went upstairs. The little house was very tiny:
a small suite of rooms on the ground-floor, above that a suite with a
little dressing-room in addition to her room and Lot's, while Steyn had
hoisted himself up to the attic floor, doubtless so as not to be too
near his wife. And, as she undressed, she reflected that, if Elly would
consent to make shift, it might just be possible: she would give up her
present big room, with the three windows, to Lot and Elly; she, oh, she
could sleep in what was now Lot's little room: what did she care? If
only children did not come too quickly! Oh, if only she did not lose
Lot altogether! He asked her why he had proposed to Elly! He asked it
in his usual half-jesting way; but it was not nice of him to ask it:
she was glad that she had answered quietly and not worked herself into
a temper. Oh, the pain, the physical pain which she sometimes suffered
from that thorn in her heart's flesh, because of love, affection,
caresses even, that went out to another! And sadly, pitying herself,
she got into bed. The room was empty around her and unhomely: the
bedroom of a woman who does not care for all the trifles of comfort
and the vanities of the toilet and whose great joy always was to long
for the love and caresses of those whom she found attractive, because
of the once--often secret--wave of passion that flowed between them
and her. For this she had neglected the whole of the other life of a
wife, of a mother, even of a woman of the world and even of a smart
woman, not caring for it, despising auxiliaries, feeling sure of her
fascinations and very little of a mother by nature. Oh, she was old now
and alone! And she lay lonely in her chilly bed; and that evening she
had not even the consolation that Lot would come from the room next to
hers to give her a good-night kiss in bed as he knew how, pettingly,
a long, fond kiss on her forehead. At such times he would sit for a
moment on the edge of her bed, have a last chat with her; and then,
sometimes, passing his delicate hand over her cheek, he would say:
"Mamma, what a soft skin you have!"
When he came home now, he would think that she was asleep and would go
to bed. She sighed: she felt so lonely. Above Lot's room--you could
hear everything in that house--she heard Steyn pounding about. The
maid also was going to bed now; out of her own bed Ottilie listened to
all those sounds: doors opening; shoes put outside; a basin emptied.
It now became very still and she reflected what a good thing it was
that she always chose old servants. She thought of it with a certain
mischievous joy, glad that Steyn had no chance, with elderly servants.
The house was now quiet for the night, though it was not yet eleven....
Had she been asleep? Why did she wake suddenly? What was that creaking
on the stairs? Was it Lot coming home? Or was it Steyn sneaking out
again? Was it Lot? Was it Steyn? Her heart thumped in her chest. And
she got out of bed quickly and, before she knew what she was doing,
opened the door and saw a match struck flickering in the hall....
"Is that you, Lot?"
"No, it's I."
"You, Frans?"
"Yes, what's the matter?"
His voice sounded irritated, because she had heard him.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going out."
"At this time of night?"
"Yes. I can't sleep. I'm going for a walk."
"You're going for a walk at this hour?"
"Yes."
"Frans, you're not faithful to me!"
"Oh, rot! Not faithful to you! Go back to bed."
"Frans, I _won't_ have you go out."
"Look here!"
"Do stay at home, Frans! Lot isn't back yet and I'm frightened, alone.
Do, Frans!"
Her voice sounded like that of a pleading child.
"I want some air."
"You want ..."
She did not finish her sentence, suddenly choking with anger. On the
top floor--she knew it--the old servant-maid was standing with her door
ajar, laughing and grinning. She knew it. She felt stifled with rage,
with nervous rage; she quivered all over her body, shivering in her
night-dress. The hall-door had opened and shut. Steyn was outside; and
she ... she was still standing on the stairs above. She clenched her
fists, she panted; she could have run after him, in her night-dress;
the big tears sprang from her child-eyes; but, ashamed because of the
maid, she went back to her room.
She cried, cried very softly, so as not to let the maid hear, so that
the maid should not have that added enjoyment. Oh, that pain, that
sting, here, in her heart, a physical pain, a physical pain! No one
who did not feel it as she did could know the physical pain which it
gave her, the sort of pain one describes to a doctor. Where could Steyn
be going? He was still so young, he still looked so well-set-up. And
yet he was her husband, her husband! Oh, why had he not remained nice
to her, old though she was? She never even felt the touch of his hand
now! And how at one time she had felt that touch tingle through all
her being! Oh, never again, never even a kiss, a kind kiss, such as old
people still exchange at times!
She did not go to bed; she waited up. Would Steyn come back soon? Was
that ... was that he coming now? No, it was Lot: it was his key she
heard, his lighter footstep.
And she opened the door:
"Lot!"
"Mummy, aren't you in bed yet?"
"No, dear. Lot, Lot, come here!"
He went into her room.
"Lot, Steyn is out."
"Out?"
"Yes, he went to his room first ... and then I heard him go quietly
down the stairs; then he went out of the hall-door, quietly."
"He didn't want to wake you, Mummy."
"Ah, but where has he gone to?"
"For a walk. He often does. It's very hot and close."
"Gone for a walk, Lot, gone for a walk? No, he's gone ..."
She stood in front of him--he could see it by the candle-light--blazing
with passion. Her little figure in the white night-dress was like that
of a fury with the curly yellow hair, shot with grey, all shining;
everything that was sweet in her seethed up into a raging temper,
as though she were irritated to the utmost, and she felt an impulse
suddenly to raise her hand and box Lot's ears with its small,
quivering fingers for daring to defend Steyn. She controlled herself
and controlled her wrath, but words of vulgar invective and burning
reproach came foaming to her trembling lips.
"Come, Mummy, Mummy! Come!"
Lot tried to calm her. And he took her in his arms and patted her back,
as one does to an excited child:
"Come, Mummy, come!"
She now burst into sobs. But he remonstrated with her gently, said
that she was exaggerating, that she had been overwrought lately, that
he absolutely refused to get married if she did not become calmer; and
very prettily he flirted with her in this way and persuaded her to go
to bed, tucked her in, shook up her pillows:
"Come, Mummy, go to sleep now and don't be silly. Let Steyn go for his
walk in peace, don't think of Steyn, don't think of anything...."
She acquiesced, under the stroke of his delicate hand on her hair, her
cheek.
"Will you go to sleep now, you silly Mummy?... I say, Mummy, what a
soft skin you have!..."
[1] Pronounced "Lo," as in the French "Charlot."
[2] The Witte and the Plaats are the two leading clubs at the Hague.
[3] Dutch East Indies: Java.
[4] British India.