"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.