"Ottilie, you must think about it calmly.... We have grown so very old.... You must think about it calmly, asIthink 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 ... andhealso 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: likethat!..."
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 forthat."
"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,thatis 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 seehimstanding, 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 aretooold. 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.
[1]Malay: nurse,ayah.
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 ofsomething, 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 forme!"
"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,Icall it. I consider it warmer in here: ay-ay, itiswarmer 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,Ican do nothing,Ican 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,Ican 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'llsee a hundred all right, ay-ay, yes-yes, though hehasbeen 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.
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 whodoes," 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 formysake," 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,Ijust 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 willnot. 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'tcomparePapa Dercksz withhim."
"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, "thatmyDercksz 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 ... haveyounever 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.
"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'tyouthink 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 believethat, when you see themnow!... 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 thebourgeoisambition 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 ismyartistic 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.
[1]The White Bridge.
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 anonna[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.
"Idon'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 ... isle 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, "andthatcost 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 getthatfrom 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 lonelypasangrahan[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 theklamboe,[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 hisbaboe... but he hears voices, whispering, in the back verandah.... The blood curdles in the boy's body: he thinks of thieves, ofketjoes,[7]and is horribly frightened.... No, they are not speaking Javanese: they are notketjoes. 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 thesinjo[8]should hear!..."
"He's asleep,kandjeng[9]...."
"If theoppas[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,notin 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?"
"Icouldn't help it!Iacted in self-defence!Youhated him,Ididn'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 realizewhom. In his innocence, he thinks only of terrible things and people, of robbers and treasures, of creepy incidents in his story-books....Whomare 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 theoppashear?... 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 theklamboeto, pulls the coverlet over his ears. And he lies shaking with fever. The iron bedstead underneath him trembles in unison. He is alone in thepasangrahanand 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 aperkara[12]with a woman, in thekampong,[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 thepasangrahan, unable to sleep because of his fever and the sultry weather—went out during the night, for the sake of air.... Theoppasserheard him ... and was rather surprised, for it was raining in torrents.... But it was not the first time that thekandjenghad 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 thepasangrahan, 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!...Inever 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!