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...."