"Well, at the worst, we're cousins," said Elly.
"Yes, Grandmamma began it.... There was a lot of talk.... Oh, those people are so old now! Their contemporaries are dead. And things pass. Who is there now to think and talk about things that are so long past?"
"Grandmamma's lovers?"
"Innumerable!"
"The doctor?"
"So they say. And Elly's grandpapa."
"Those old people!" said Elly.
"They were young once."
"And we shall be old one day," said Lot. "We're growing old as it is."
"Shut up, boy! There's time enough for that when you're seventy.... Yes, Grandmamma de Laders, Grandmamma Dercksz: I can remember her in India fifty years ago."
"O my God, what a time to remember things!" said Lot, shuddering.
"Take some more champagne, if it makes your flesh creep.... Fifty years ago, I was little more than a boy, I was twenty. Grandmamma was still a fine woman, well over forty. She became a widow quite young, on the death of her first husband. Well, let's see: when Dercksz was drowned, she was ... about ... thirty-six.... Then Mamma was born."
"What a long, long time ago that was!" said Lot. "It makes one giddy to look back upon."
"That's sixty, yes, sixty years ago now," said Pauws, dreamily. "I was a child then, ten years old. I still remember the incident. I was at Semarang; my father was in the paymaster's department. My people knew the Derckszes. The thing was talked about. I was a child, but it made an impression on me. It was very much talked about, it was talked about for years and years after. There was a question of exhuming the body. They decided that it was too late. At that time, he had been buried for months. They said that ..."
"That a native ... with a kris ... because of a woman...?"
"Yes; and they said more than that. They said that Takma had been to thepasangrahanthat evening and that Grandmamma.... But what's the use of talking about it? What can it matter to you? Elly's as white as a sheet—child, how pale you look!—and Lot is shivering all over his body, though it happened so long ago."
"Should you say that those old people ... are hiding something?"
"Probably," said Pauws. "Come, let's have some champagne and not talk about it any more. They themselves have forgotten it all by this time. When you get as old as that ..."
"You become dulled," said Lot.
"So you're going on to Paris to-morrow?"
"Yes."
"Shall you look up Aunt Thérèse?"
"Yes, I expect so," said Elly. "We mustn't behave quite like savages."
"And then?"
"We shall go to Nice."
"Oh, really?... And ... and will you see Ottilie there?"
"Of course we shall," said Lot.
"That's right, that's right.... Yes, how can you expect a family like ours to keep up a circle of decent acquaintances?... Ottilie writes to me now and again.... She's living with an Italian.... Why they don't get married is more than I can make out."
"And why should they get married?" asked Lot.
"But, Lot," said Elly, "you and I did!"
"We are more conventional than Ottilie. I am more conventional than Ottilie ever was. I should never have dared to suggest to younotto get married. Ottilie is more thorough than I."
"She's a thorough fine girl ... and a devilish handsome woman," said Pauws.
"Nowshe'slike you."
"But a good-looking edition!" said the old gentleman, chaffingly. "Here, Elly, have some morepâté. But why they don't want to get married I can't and never shall make out. After all, we have all of us got married."
"Buthow?" said Lot.
"I must say you're not defending marriage very vigorously on your wedding-day!"
"Ottilie has seen so many unhappy marriages all around her."
"That's what she writes. But I don't consider that a reason. Hang it all, when a man falls in love, he goes and gets married! He gets married by the mayor and by the parson.... Yes, to tell you the truth, I think it was rather feeble of you two not to get married in church."
"But, Papa, you surely don't attach importance to having your marriage blessed by a parson!"
"No more I do, but still one does it. It's one of the things one does. We're not quite a law unto ourselves."
"No, but all social laws are being changed."
"Well, you can say what you please: I stick to it that youhaveto get married. By the mayor and by the parson. You two have been married by the mayor; but Ottilie refuses to be married at all. And I'm expected to think it natural and enlightened and I don't know what. I can't do it. I'm sorry for her sake. It's all very well: she's a great artist and can behave differently from an ordinary woman; but, if one fine day she returns to our ordinary circles, she'll find that she's made herself impossible.... How would you have friends and acquaintances gather round such a family?"
"They don't gather; and I'm glad of it. I have the most charming acquaintances in Italy, friends who ..."
"Children, you may be right. Ottilie may be right not to get married at all; and you may be right to have been married only by the mayor."
"At any rate," said Elly, "I never thought that, though there was no reception, we should have such a cosy little supper."
"And such a nice one," said Lot. "Elly, these tarts are heavenly!"
"Only we oughtn't to have sat rooting up past things," said the old gentleman. "It makes Lot's flesh creep. Look at the fellow eating tarts! It's just what your mother used to do. A baby, a regular baby!"
"Yes, I'm a baby sometimes too, but not so much as Mamma."
"And is she going to England now?"
"She promised me not to. But her promise doesn't mean much. We shall be so long away; we shall be in Italy all through the winter. There's one thing makes me feel easier: Mamma has no money; and I went to the bank before I left and asked them, if Mamma came for money, to make up a story and persuade her that it couldn't be done, that there was no money...."
"But she draws ... she always did."
"The manager told me that he would help me, that he wouldn't let her have any money."
"Then she'll get it just the same."
"From whom?"
"I don't know, but she'll get it. She always gets it, I don't know how...."
"But, Papa!"
"Yes, my boy, you can be as indignant as you please: I am speaking from experience. How often haven't I had questions about money with Mamma! First there was none; and then, all of a sudden, there it was!..."
"Mamma is bad at figures and she is untidy. Then she finds some money in her cupboard."
"Yes, I know all about it: in the old days she was always finding something in her cupboard. A good thing, that she goes on finding it. Still, we should never have parted because of money. If it hadn't been for that damned Trevelley, we might still.... But, when Mamma had once set her heart on anybody, then.... Don't let's talk about it.... Look here, you know this old photograph. It's charming, isn't it, Elly? Yes, that's how she used to look. I've never been able to forget her. I've never loved any one else. I'm an old fellow now, children, but ... but I believe that I'm still fond of her.... I sometimes think that it's past, that it's all past and done with; and yet, sometimes, old as I am, I still suffer from it and feel rotten.... I believe I'm still fond of her.... And, if Mamma had had a different character and a different temper and if she hadn't met Trevelley.... But there are so very many 'ifs' in the case.... And, if she hadn't met Trevelley, she would have met Steyn just the same.... She would always have met somebody.... Come, Elly, pour out the coffee. Will you have chartreuse or benedictine? And stay on and talk a bit, cosily. Not about old things: about young things, young things; about yourselves, your plans, Italy.... It's not late yet; it's barely half-past ten.... But, of course, you're only this moment married.... Well, I'll see you to your hotel.... Shall we walk? It's no distance.... Let your old father see you to your hotel and give you a good-night kiss at the door and wish you happiness, every happiness ... dear children!"
They had now been a few days in Paris; and Elly, who was seeing Paris for the first time, was enchanted. The Louvre, the Cluny, the life in the streets and the cafés, the theatres in the evenings almost drove Aunt Thérèse from her mind.
"Oh, don't let's go to her!" said Lot, one morning, as they were walking along the boulevards. "Perhaps she doesn't even know who we are."
Elly felt a twinge of conscience:
"She wrote me a very nice letter on my engagement and she gave us a wedding-present. Yes, Lot, she knows quite well who we are."
"But she doesn't know that we're in Paris. Don't let's go to her. Aunt Thérèse: I haven't seen her for years, but I remember her long ago ... at the time of Mamma's last marriage. I was a boy of eighteen then. Aunt Thérèse must have been forty-eight. A handsome woman. She was even more like Grandmamma than Mamma is: she had all that greatness and grandness and majesty which you see in the earlier portraits of Grandmamma and which she still has when she sits enthroned in her chair.... It always impresses me.... Very slender and handsome and elegant ... calm and restful, distinguished-looking, with a delightful smile."
"The smile ofLa Gioconda...."
"The smile ofLa Gioconda," Lot repeated, laughing because of his wife, who was enjoying herself so in Paris. "But by the way, Elly ... the Venus of Milo: I couldn't tell you so when we were standing there, because you were in such silent rapture, but ... after I hadn't seen her for years, I found her such a disappointment. Only imagine ..."
"Well, what, Lot?"
"I thought her grown old!"
"But, Lot!..."
"I assure you, I thought her grown old! Does everything grow old then, do even the immortals grow old? I remember her as she used to be: calm, serene, imposing, white as snow, in spite of her mutilation, against a brilliant background of dark-red velvet. This time I thought her no longer imposing, no longer white as snow; she seemed pathetically crippled; and the velvet background was no longer brilliant. Everything had grown old and dull and I had a shock and felt very sad.... Soberly speaking, I think now that they ought just to clean her down one morning and renew the velvet hanging; and then, on a sunny day, if I was in a good mood, I daresay I should think her serene and white as snow again. But, as she showed herself to me, I thought her grown old; and it gave me a shock. It upset me for quite an hour, but I didn't let you see it.... For that matter, I think Paris altogether has grown very old: so dirty, so old-fashioned, so provincial; a conglomeration ofquartiersand small towns huddled together; and so exactly the same as it was fifteen years ago, but older, grimier and more old-fashioned. Look! This papier-mâché chicken here"—they were in the Avenue de l'Opéra—"has been turning on that spit, as an advertisement, with the oily butter dripping from it: Elly, that chicken has been turning for fifteen years! And last night, at the Théâtre Français, I had a shock, just as I did to-day at the Venus of Milo. The Théâtre Français had grown so old, so old, with that dreadful ranting, that I asked myself, 'Was it always so old, or do I think it old because I am older myself?'..."
"But Aunt Thérèse ..."
"So you insist on going to her.... Really, we'd better not. She too has grown old; and what are we to her?... We are young still.... I also am young still, am I not?... You don't think me too old, yourblaséhusband?... In Italy, we shall find real enjoyment...."
"Why, everything will be still older there!"
"Yes, but everything is notgrowingolder. That's all past, it's allthepast. It's the obvious past and therefore it's so restful. It's all dead."
"But surely the country is alive?... Modern life goes on?..."
"I don't care about that. All that I see is the past; and that is so beautifully, so restfully dead. That doesn't sadden me. What saddens me is the old people and the old things that are still alive and ever so old and have gradually, gradually gone past us; but things which are restfully dead and which are so exquisitely beautiful as in Italy, they don't sadden me: they calm me and rouse my admiration for everything that was once so beautifully alive and is still so beautiful in death. Paris saddens me, because the city is dying, as all France is; Rome exhilarates me: the city, whatIsee of it,isdead; and I feel myself young in it still and still alive; and that makes me glad, selfishly glad, while at the same time I admire the dead, calm beauty."
"So that will be the subject of your next essay."
"Now you're teasing! If I can't talk without being accused of essay-writing ... I'll hold my tongue."
"Don't be so cross.... Now what about Aunt Thérèse?"
"We won't go.... Well, talk of the devil! Goodness gracious, how small Paris is! A village!"
"Why, what is it, Lot?"
"There's Theo! Theo van der Staff!"
"Theo, Aunt Thérèse's son?"
"Yes. Hullo, Theo! How are you?... How funny that we should meet you!..."
"I didn't know you were in Paris.... Are you on your honeymoon?"
He was a fat little man of over forty, with a round face containing a pair of small, sparkling eyes: they leered at Elly with an almost irresistible curiosity to see the young wife, married but a few days since. A sensuality ever seeking physical enjoyment surrounded him as with a warm atmosphere, jovial and engaging, as though he would invite them presently to come and have a nice lunch with him in a good restaurant and to go on somewhere afterwards. His long residence abroad had imparted a something to his clothes, a something to his speech and gestures that lightened his native Dutch heaviness, rather comically, it is true, because he remained a little elephantine in his grace. Yet his ears pricked up like a satyr's; and his eyes sparkled; and his laughing lips swelled thickly, as though with Indian blood; and his small, well-kept teeth glistened in between. When a woman passed, his quick glance undressed her in a twinkling; and he seemed to reflect, for a second or two.
"We were just speaking of your mother, Theo. Funny that we should meet you," Lot repeated.
"I walk down the boulevards every morning, so it's very natural that we should meet. I'm glad to have the opportunity of congratulating you.... Mamma? She's all right, I believe."
"Haven't you seen her lately?"
"I haven't seen her for a week. Are you going to call on her? Then I may as well come too. Shall we have a good lunch somewhere afterwards, or shall I be in the way? If not, come and lunch with me. Not in one of your big restaurants, which everybody knows, but at a place whereI'lltake you: quite a small place, but exquisite. They have ahomard à l'américainethat's simply heavenly!" And he kissed the tips of his fat fingers. "Do you want to go to Mamma's at once? Very well, we'll take a carriage, for she lives a long way off."
He stopped a cab and gave the address:
"Cent-vingt-cinq, Rue Madame."
And he gallantly helped Elly in, then Lot, insisted upon himself taking the little back seat and sat like that, with one foot on the step of the carriage. He enquired conventionally and indifferently after the relations at the Hague, as after strangers whom he had seen once or twice. In the Rue Madame the driver pulled up outside a gate of tall railings, with a fence of boards behind it, so that no one could see in.
"This is the convent where Mamma lives," said Theo.
They stepped out and Theo rang. A sister opened the gate, said that Mme. van der Staff was at home and led the way across the courtyard. The convent belonged to the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady of Lourdes; and Aunt Thérèse boarded there, together with a few other pious old ladies. The sister showed them into a small parlour on the ground-floor and opened the shutters. On the mantelpiece stood a statue of the Blessed Virgin between two candelabra; there were a sofa and a few chairs in white loose covers.
"Is Reverend Mother at home, sister?" asked Theo.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Would it be convenient for her to see me? Will you tell her that I have come to call on her?"
"Yes, monsieur."
The sister left the room. Theo gave a wink:
"I ought to have done that long ago," he said. "I am seizing the opportunity. The reverend mother is a sensible woman, twice as sensible as Mamma."
They waited. It was cold and shivery in the bare parlour. Lot shuddered and said:
"I couldn't do it. No, I couldn't do it."
"No more could I," said Theo.
The reverend mother was the first to enter: a short woman, lost in the spacious folds of her habit. Two brown eyes gleamed from under the white band over her forehead.
"M. van der Staff ..."
"Madame ..."
He pressed her hand:
"I have long been wanting to come and see you, to tell you how grateful I am for the care which you bestow upon my mother."
His French sentences sounded polite, gallant and courteous.
"May I introduce my cousins, M. and Mme. Pauws?"
"Newly married, I believe," said the reverend mother, bowing, with a little smile.
Lot was surprised that she should know:
"We have come to pay my aunt a visit ... and you too, madame la supérieure," he added, courteously.
"Pray sit down. Madame will be here at once."
"Is Mamma quite well?" asked Theo. "I haven't seen her ... for some time."
"She's very well," said the reverend mother. "Because we look after her."
"I know you do."
"She won't look after herself. As you know, she goes to extremes.Le bon Dieudoesn't expect us to go to such extremes as madame does. I don't pray a quarter as much as madame. Madame isalwayspraying. I shouldn't have time for it.Le bon Dieudoesn't expect it. We have our work; I have my nursing-institute, which keeps us very busy. At this moment, nearly all the sisters are out nursing. Then I have my servants' registry-office. Wecan'talways be praying."
"Mamma can," said Theo, with a laugh.
"Madame praystoo much," said the reverend mother. "Madame is anenthousiaste..."
"Always was, in everything she did," said Theo, staring in front of him.
"And she has remained so. She is anenthousiastein her new creed, in our religion. But she oughtn't to go to extremes ... or to fast unnecessarily.... The other day we found her fainting in the chapel.... And we have our littletrucs: when it is not absolutely necessary to fast, we give herbouillonin hersoupe-maigreor over her vegetables, without her noticing it.... Here is madame...."
The door was opened by a sister; and Mrs. van der Staff, Aunt Thérèse, entered the room. And it seemed to Lot as though he saw Grandmamma herself walk in, younger, but still an old woman. Dressed in a smooth black gown, she was tall and majestic and very slender, with a striking grace in her movements. Grandmamma must have been just like that. A dream hovered over her dark eyes, which had remained the eyes of a creole, and it seemed as if she had a difficulty in seeing through the dream; but the mouth, old as it now was, had a natural smile, with ecstasy playing around it. She accepted Theo's kiss and said to Lot and Elly, in French:
"It's very nice of you to look me up. I'm very grateful to you.... So this is Elly? I saw you years ago, in Holland, at Grandpapa Takma's. You were a little girl of fourteen then. It's very nice of you to come. Sit down. I never go to Holland now ... but I often think, I very often think ... of my relations...."
The dream hovered over her eyes; ecstasy played around her smile. She folded her thin hands in her lap; and their fingers were slender and wand-like, like Grandmamma's. Her voice sounded like Grandmamma's. As she sat there, in her black gown, in the pale light of that convent-parlour, permeated with a chilliness that was likewise pale, the resemblance was terrifying: this daughter appeared to be one and the same as her mother, seemed to be that mother herself; and it was as though bygone years had returned in a wonderful, haunting, pale, white light.
"And how are they all at the Hague?" asked Aunt Thérèse.
A few words were exchanged about the members of the family. Soon the reverend mother rose discreetly, said good-bye, expressed her thanks for the visit.
"How is Uncle Harold?... And how is Mamma, Charles? I very often think of her. I often pray for Mamma, Charles...."
Her voice, long cracked, sounded softer than pure Dutch and was mellow with its creole accent; both Lot and Elly were touched by a certain tenderness in that cracked voice, while Theo stared painfully in front of him: he felt depressed and constrained in his mother's presence.
"It is nice of you not to forget us," Lot ventured to say.
"I shall never forget your mother," said Aunt Thérèse. "I never see her now and perhaps I shall never see her again. But I am very, very fond of her ... and I pray, I often pray for her. She needs it. We all need it. I pray for all of them ... for all the family. They all need it. And I also pray for Mamma, for Grandmamma. And, Elly, I pray for Grandpapa too.... I have been praying now for years, I have been praying for quite thirty years. God is sure to hear my prayers...."
It was difficult to say anything; and Elly merely took Aunt's hand and pressed it. Aunt Thérèse lifted Elly's face a little by the chin, looked at it attentively, then looked at Lot. She was struck by a resemblance, but said nothing.
She knew. Aunt Thérèse knew. She never went to Holland now and she expected that probably she would never again see her sister, whom she knew to be Takma's child, never again see Takma, never again her mother. But she prayed, especially for those old people, because she knew. She, who had once, like her mother, been a woman of society and a woman of passion, with a creole's heart that loved and hated fervently, had learnt from her mother's own lips, in violent attacks of fever, the Thing which she had since known. She had seen her mother see—though she herself had not seen—she had seen her mother see the spectre looming in the corner of the room. She had heard her mother beg for mercy and for an end to her punishment. She had not, as had Harold Dercksz, seen the Thing sixty years ago, but she had known it for thirty years. And the knowledge had given a permanent shock to her nervous and highly-strung soul; and, after being the creole, the woman of passionate love and hatred, the woman of adventures, the woman who loved and afterwards hated those whom she had loved, she had sunk herself in contemplation, had bathed in ecstasy, which shone down upon her from the celestial panes of the church-windows; and one day, in Paris, she had gone to a priest and said:
"Father, I want to pray. I feel drawn towards your faith. I wish to become a Catholic. I have wished it for months."
She had become a Catholic and now she prayed. She prayed for herself, but she prayed even more for her mother. All her highly-strung soul went up in prayer for that mother whom she would probably never see again, but through whom she suffered and whom she hoped to redeem from sin and save from too horrible a punishment hereafter; that mother who had preventedhim, her father, from defending himself, by clinging to him until the other man had snatched the weapon from the clenched hand that was seeking revenge in blood-maddened rage.... She knew. Aunt Thérèse knew. And she prayed, she always prayed. Never could too many prayers rise to Heaven to implore mercy.
"Mamma," said Theo, "the reverend mother told me that you have fainted in chapel. And that you don't eat."
"Yes, I eat, I eat," said Aunt Thérèse, softly and slowly. "Don't make yourself uneasy, Theo."
A contempt for her son embittered the smile on her old lips; her voice, in addressing her son, grew cold and hard, as though she, the woman of constant prayer, suddenly became once more towards her son the former woman, who had loved and afterwards hated that son's father, the father who was not her husband.
"I eat," said Aunt Thérèse. "Indeed, I eat too much. Those good sisters! They sometimes forget when we have to fast; and they give me meat. Then I take it and give it to my poor.... Tell me more, children, tell me more about the Hague. I have a few moments left. Then I must go to the chapel. I say my prayers with the sisters."
And she asked after everybody, all the brothers and sisters and their children:
"I pray for all of them," she said. "I shall pray for you also, children."
A restlessness overcame her and she listened for a sound in the passage. Theo winked at Lot and they rose to their feet.
"No," Aunt Thérèse assured them, "I shall not forget you. Send me your photographs, won't you?"
They promised.
"Where is your sister, Charles?"
"At Nice, Aunt."
"Send me her photograph. I pray for her too. Good-bye, children, good-bye, dear children."
She took leave of Lot and Elly and went away in a dream and forgot to notice Theo. He shrugged his shoulders. The chant of a litany came from the chapel, which occupied a larger room opposite the little parlour.
They met the reverend mother in the passage; she was on her way to the chapel:
"How did you find your aunt?" she whispered. "Going to extremes, I expect: yes, she does go to extremes. Look!..."
And she made Elly, Lot and Theo peep through the door of the chapel. The sisters, kneeling on the praying-chairs, were chanting their prayers. On the floor, between the chairs, lay Aunt Thérèse, prostrate at full length, with her face hidden in her hands.
"Look!" said the reverend mother, with a frown. "Evenwedon't do that. It is unnecessary. It is not evenconvenable. I shall have to tell monsieur le directeur, so that he may speak to madame about it. I shall certainly tell him.Au revoir, madame, au revoir, messieurs...."
She bowed, like a woman of the world, with a smile and an air of calm distinction.
A sister saw them to the gate, let them out....
"Oof!" sighed Theo. "I've performed my filial duty once more for a few months."
"I could not do it," muttered Lot. "I simply couldn't."
Elly said nothing. Her eyes were wide-open and staring. She understood devotion and she understood vocation; though she understood differently, where she was concerned, yet she understood.
"And now for thehomard à l'américaine!" cried Theo.
And, as he hailed a carriage, it was as though his fat body became relaxed, simply from breathing the fresh, free air.
In the night express, the young wife sat thinking. Lot lay asleep, with a rug over him, in one corner of the carriage, but the little bride could not sleep, for an autumnal wind was howling along the train; and so she just sat silently, in the other corner, thinking. She had now given her life to another and hoped for happiness. She hoped that she had a vocation and that she would have devotion to bestow. That was happiness; there was nothing else; and Aunt Thérèse was right, even though she, Elly, conceived devotion, happiness and vocation so very differently. She wanted more than the feeling, the thought; she wanted, above all, action. Even as she had always given herself to action, though it was only tennis at first—and sculpture later and in the end the pouring out of her own sorrow in words and the sending of it to an editor, to a publisher—so she now longed to devote herself to action, or at least to active collaboration. She looked wistfully at Lot and felt that she loved him, however differently it might be from the way in which she had loved the first time. She loved him less for her own sake, as when she had been in love before, and loved him more for his sake, to rouse him to great things. It was all very vague, but there was ambition in it and ambition, springing from love, for his sake. What a pity that he should fritter away his talent in witty little articles and hastily-written essays. That was like his conversation, light and amusing, unconvinced and unconvincing; and he could do better than that, much better. Perhaps writing a novel was also not the great thing; perhaps the great thingwaswriting, but not a novel. What then? She sought and did not yet find, but knew for certain—or thought she knew—that shewouldfind and that she would rouse Lot.... Yes, they would be happy, they would continue happy.... Out there, in Italy, she would find it. She would find it in the past, in history, perhaps; in things that were past, in beautiful noble things that were dead, peacefully dead and still beautiful.... Then why did she feel so melancholy? Or was it only the melancholy which she had always felt, so vaguely, and which was as a malady underlying all her activity and which broke in the inflection of her quick, voluble voice: the melancholy because her youth, as a child without parents, brothers or sisters, had bloomed so quietly in the old man's big house. He had always been kind and full of fatherly care for her; but he was so old and she had felt the pressure of his old years. She had always had old people around her, for, as far back as she could remember anything, she remembered old Grandmamma Dercksz and Dr. Roelofsz: she knew them, old even then, from the time when she was a little child. Lot also, she thought—though the life of a man, who went about and travelled, was different from that of a girl, who stayed at home—Lot also had felt the pressure of all that old age around him; and that, no doubt, was the reason why his dread of growing old had developed into a sort of nervous obsession. Aunt Stefanie and the uncles at the Hague were old and their friends and acquaintances seemed to have died out and they moved about, without contemporaries, a little lonesomely in that town, along the streets where their houses were, to and fro, to and fro among one another.... It was so forlorn and so very lonely; and it engendered melancholy; and she had always felt that melancholy in her youth.... She had never been able to keep her girl-friends. She no longer saw the girls of the tennis-club; her fellow-pupils at the Academy she just greeted with a hurried nod when she passed them in the street. After her unfortunate engagement, she had withdrawn herself more than ever, except that she was always with Lot, walking with him, talking to him; he also was lonely at the Hague, with no friends: he was better off for friends, he said, in Italy.... How strange, that eternal loneliness and sense of extinction around both of them! No friends or acquaintances around them, as around most people, as around most families. It was doubtless because of the oppression of those two very old people; but she could not analyse beyond that and she felt that something escaped her which she did not know, but which was nevertheless there and pressed upon her and kept other people away: something gloomy, now past, which remained hovering around the old man and the old woman and which enveloped the others—the old woman's children, the old man's only grandchild—in a sort of haze, something indescribable but so definitely palpable that she could almost have taken hold of it by putting out her hand....
It was all very vague and misty to think about, it was not even possible to think about it; it was a perception of something chill, that passed, nothing more, no more than that; but it sometimes prevented her breathing freely, taking pleasure in her youth, walking fast, speaking loud: when she did that, she had to force herself with an effort. And she knew that Lot felt the same: she had understood it from two or three very vague words and more from the spirit of those words than from their sound; and it had given her a great soul-sympathy for Lot. He was a strange fellow, she thought, looking at him as he slept. Outwardly and in his little external qualities and habits, he was a very young boy, a child sometimes, she thought, with round his childishness a mood of disillusionment that sometimes uttered itself quite wittily but did not ring sincere; beneath the exterior lay a disposition to softness, a considerable streak of selfishness and a neurotic preoccupation where he was himself concerned, tempered by something that was almost strength of character in dealing with his mother, for he was the only one who could get on with Mamma. With this temperament he possessed natural gifts which he did not value, though it was really necessary for him to work. He presented a medley of contradictions, of seriousness and childishness, of feeling and indifference, of manliness and of very feeble weakness, such as she had never seen in any man. He was vainer of his fair hair than of his talent, though he was vain of this too; and a compliment on his tie gave him more pleasure than a word of praise for his finest essay. And this child, this boy, this man she loved: she considered it strange when she herself thought of it, but she loved him and was happy only when he was with her.
He woke up, asked her why she was not sleeping and now took her head on his breast. Tired by the train and by her thoughts, she fell asleep; and he looked out at the grey dawn, which broke over the bleak and chilly fields after they had passed Lyons. He yearned for sea, for blue sky, for heat, for everything that was young and alive: the South of France, the Riviera and then Italy, with Elly. He had disposed of his life and he hoped for happiness, happiness in companionship of thought and being, because loneliness induces melancholy and makes us think the more intensely of our slow decay....
"She is very charming," he thought, as he looked down upon her where she slept on his breast; and he resisted the impulse to kiss her now that she had just fallen asleep. "She is very charming and she has a delicate artistic sense. I must tell her to start modelling again ... or to write something: she's good at both. That was a very fine little book of hers, even though it is so very subjective and a great deal too feminine. There is much that is good in life, even though life is nothing but a transition which can't signify much in a world that's rotten. There must be other lives and other worlds. A time must come when there will be no material suffering, at most a spiritual suffering. Then all our material anxieties will be gone.... And yet there is a great charm about this material life ... if we forget all wretchedness for a moment. A spell of charm comes to everybody: I believe that mine has come. If it would only remain like this; but it won't. Everything changes.... Better not think about it, but work instead: better do some work, even while travelling. Elly would like it. At Florence, the Medicis; in Rome, the whole papacy.... I don't know which I shall select: it must be one of the two. But there's such a lot of it, such a lot of it.... Could I write a fine history of civilization, I wonder?... I hate collecting notes: all those rubbishy odds and ends of paper.... If I can't see the whole thing before me, in one clear vision, it's no good. I can't study: I have to see, to feel, to admire or shudder. If I don't do that, I'm no good. An essay is what I'm best at. A word is a butterfly: you just catch it, lightly, by the wings ... and let it fly away again.... Serious books on history and art are like fat beetles, crawling along....Tiens!That's not a bad conceit. I must use it one day in an article: the butterfly wafted on the air ... and the heavy beetle...."
They were approaching Marseilles; they would be at Nice by two o'clock in the afternoon....
Lot had ordered a bedroom in the Hôtel de Luxembourg and had written to his sister Ottilie. On arriving, they found a basket of red roses awaiting them in their room. It was October; the windows were open; and the sea shone with a dark metallic gleam in a violent flood of sunlight and rippled under the insolent forward thrusts of a gathering mistral.
They had a bath, lunched in their bedroom, feeling a little tired after the journey; and the scent of the roses, the brightness of the sun, the deepening turquoise of the sky and the more and more foam-flecked steel of the sea intoxicated both of them. The salad of tomatoes and capsicums made a red-and-orange patch around the chicken on the table; and long pearls seemed to melt in their glasses of champagne. The wind rose in mighty gusts and with its arrogant, brutal, male caresses swept away any haze that still hung around. The glowing sun poured forth its flood as from a golden spout in the turquoise sky.
They sat side by side, intoxicated with it all, and ate and drank but did not speak. A sense of peace permeated them, accompanied by a certain slackness, as though in surrender to the forces of life, which were so turbulent and so violent and so radiantly gold and insolently red.
There was a knock; and a woman's head, crowned with a large black hat, appeared through the open door:
"May I come in?"
"Ottilie!" cried Lot, springing up. "Come in, come in!"
She entered:
"Welcome! Welcome to Nice! I haven't seen you for ages, Lot! Elly, my sister, welcome!... Yes, I sent the roses. I'm glad you wrote to me ... and that you are willing to see me and that your wife is too...."
She sat down, accepted a glass of champagne; cordial greetings passed between Lot and his sister. Ottilie was a couple of years older than Lot; she was Mamma's eldest child and resembled both her father, Pauws, and Mamma, for she was tall, with her father's masterful ways, but had Mamma's features, her clear profile and delicate chin, though not her eyes. But her many years of public appearances had given her movements a graceful assurance, that of a talented and beautiful woman, accustomed to being looked at and applauded, something quite different from any sort of ordinary, domestic attractiveness: the harmonious, almost sculptural gestures, after being somewhat studied at first, had in course of time become natural....
"What a good-looking woman!" thought Elly; and she felt herself to be nobody, small, insignificant, in the simple wrap which she had put on hurriedly after her bath.
Ottilie, who was forty-one, looked no more than thirty and had the youthfulness of an artist who keeps her body young by means of an art and science of beauty unknown to the ordinary woman. A white-cloth gown, which avoided the last extravagances of fashion, gave her figure the perfection of a statue and revealed the natural outlines of arms and bosom beneath the modern dress. The great black hat circled its black ostrich-feather around her copper-glowing fair hair, which was plaited in a heavy coil; a wide grey boa hung in a light cloud of ostrich-feathers around her; and, in those colourless tints—white, black and grey—she remained, notwithstanding her almost too great beauty, attractive at once as a well-bred woman and an artist.
"Well, that's my sister, Elly!" said Lot, proudly. "What do you think of her?"
"I've seen you before, Elly, at the Hague," said Ottilie.
"I don't remember, Ottilie."
"No, you were a little girl of eight, or nine perhaps; and you had a big playroom at Grandpapa Takma's and a lovely doll's-house...."
"So I did."
"I haven't been to the Hague since."
"You went to the Conservatoire at Liège?"
"Yes."
"When did you sing last?" asked Lot.
"In Paris not long ago."
"We hear nothing of you. You never sing in Holland."
"No, I don't ever go to Holland."
"Why not, Ottilie?" asked Elly.
"I have always felt depressed in Holland."
"Because of the country or the people?"
"Because of everything: the country, the people, the houses ... the family ... our circle...."
"I quite understand," said Lot.
"I couldn't breathe," said Ottilie. "It's not that I want to run the country down, or the people or the family. It all has its good side. But, just as the grey skies hindered me from breathing, so the houses hindered me from producing my voice properly; and there was something around me, I don't know what, that struck me as terrible."
"Something that struck you as terrible?" said Elly.
"Yes, an atmosphere of sorts. At home, I could never get on with Mamma, any more than Papa and Mamma could ever get on together. Mamma's impossible little babyish character, with her little fits of temper, used to drive me wild. Lot has a more accommodating nature than I!..."
"You ought to have been a boy and I a girl," said Lot, almost bitterly.
"Mais je suis très femme, moi," said Ottilie.
Her eyes grew soft and filmy and happiness lurked in her smile.
"Mais je te crois," replied Lot.
"No," continued Ottilie, "I couldn't hit it off with Mamma. Besides, I felt that I must be free. After all, there was life. I felt my voice inside me. I studied hard and seriously, for years on end. And I made a success. All my life is given to singing...."
"Why do you only sing at concerts, Ottilie? Don't you care about opera? You sing Wagner, I know."
"Yes, but I can't lose myself in a part for more than a few moments, not for more than a single scene, not for a whole evening."
"Yes, I can imagine that," said Lot.
"Yes," said Elly, with quick understanding, "you're a sister of Lot's in that. He can't work either for longer than his essay or his article lasts."
"A family weakness, Ottilie," said Lot. "Inherited."
Ottilie reflected, with a smile: the Gioconda smile, Elly thought.
"That may be true," said Ottilie. "It was a shrewd observation of your little Elly's."
"Yes," said Lot, proudly. "She's very observant. Not one of our three natures is what you would call commonplace."
"Ah," murmured Ottilie, "Holland ... those houses ... those people!... Mamma and 'Mr.' Trevelley at home: it was terrible. One scene after the other. Trevelley reproaching Mamma with Papa, Mamma reproaching Trevelley with a hundred infidelities! Mamma was jealousy incarnate. She used to keep her hat and cloak hanging in the hall. If 'Mr.' Trevelley went out, Mamma would say, 'Hugh, where are you going?' 'Doesn't matter to you,' said Trevelley. 'I'm coming with you,' said Mamma, putting on her hat all askew and flinging on her cloak; and go with him she did. Trevelley cursed and swore; there was a scene; but Mamma went with him: he walking along the street two yards in front of her, Mamma following, mad with rage.... She was very, very pretty in those days, a little doll, with a fair-haired Madonna face, but badly dressed.... Lot was always quiet, with calm, tired-looking eyes: how well I remember it all! He was never out of temper, always polite to 'Mr.' Trevelley...."
"I have managed to get on with all my three papas."
"When Mamma and Trevelley had had enough of each other and Mamma fell in love with Steyn, I cleared out. I went first to Papa and then to the Conservatoire. And I haven't been back in Holland since.... Oh, those houses!... Your house, Elly—Grandpapa Takma's house—everything very neatly kept by Aunt Adèle, but it seemed to me as if something stood waiting behind every door.... Grandmamma's house and Grandmamma's figure, as she sat at the window there staring ... and waiting, she too. Waiting what for? I don't know. But it did depress me so. I longed for air, for blue sky, for freedom; I had to expand my lungs."
"I have felt like that too sometimes," said Lot, half to himself.
Elly said nothing, but she thought of her childhood, spent with the old man, and of her doll's-house, which she ruled so very seriously, as if it had been a little world.
"Yes, Lot," said Ottilie, "you felt it too: you went off to Italy to breathe again, to live, to live.... In our family, theyhadlived. Mammastilllived, but her own past clung to her.... I don't know, Elly; I don't think I'm very sensitive; and yet ... and yet I did feel it so: an oppression of things of the past all over one. I couldn't go on like that. I longed for my own life."
"That's true," said Lot, "you released yourself altogether. More so than I did. I was never able to leave Mamma for good. I'm fond of her. I don't know why: she has not been much of a mother to me. Still I'm fond of her, I often feel sorry for her. She is a child, a spoilt child. She was overwhelmed, in her youth, with one long adoration. The men were mad on her. Now she is old and what has she left? Nothing and nobody. Steyn and she lead a cat-and-dog life. I pity Steyn, but I sometimes feel for Mamma. It's a dreadful thing to grow old, especially for the sort of woman that she was, a woman—one may as well speak plainly—who lived for her passions. Mamma has never had anything in her but love. She is an elementary woman; she needs love and caresses, so much so that she has not been able to observe the conventions. She respected them only to a certain point. When she fell in love, everything else went by the board."
"But why did she marry?Ididn't marry! And I am in love too."
"Ottilie, Mamma lived in a different social period. People used to marry then. They marry still, for the most part. Elly and I got married."
"I have nothing to say against it, if you know that you have found each other for life. Did Mamma know that with any of her husbands? She was mad on all the three of them."
"She now hates them all."
"Therefore she ought not to have married."
"No, but she lived in a different social period. And, as I say, Ottilie, people still get married."
"You disapprove of my not marrying."
"I don't disapprove. It's not my nature to disapprove of what other people think best in their own judgment."
"Let us talk openly and frankly. You call Mamma a woman who lives for her passions. Perhaps you call me the same."
"I don't know much about your life."
"I have lived with men. If I had had Mamma's ideas, or rather her unconscious conventions, I should have married them. I loved and was loved. Twice I could have married, as Mamma did; but I didn't do it."
"You were disheartened by what you had seen."
"Yes; and I didn't know, I never knew. Perhaps now, Lot, perhaps now I feel certain for the first time."
"Do you feel certain, Ottilie?" said Elly.
She took Ottilie's hand. She thought Ottilie so beautiful, so very beautiful and so genuine that she was greatly affected by her.
"Perhaps, Elly, I now know for certain that I shall never love any one else as I love Aldo.... He loves me ..."
"And you will get married?" asked Lot.
"No, we shall not get married."
"Why not?..."
"Ishecertain?"
"But you say he's fond of you."
"Yes, but is hecertain?No, he is not. We are happy together, ever so happy. He wants to marry me. But is he certain? No, he is not. He is not certain: I know for certain that he does not know for certain.... Why should we bind ourselves with legal ties? If I have a child by him, I shall be very happy and shall be a good mother to my child. But why those legal ties?... Aldo isn'tcertain, happy though he may be. He is two years older than I. Who knows what may be waiting for him to-morrow, what emotion, what passion, what love?... I myself know that I have found, but I know that he doesnotknow.... If he leaves me to-morrow, he is free. Then he can find another happiness, perhaps the lasting one.... What do we poor creatures know?... We seek and seek until suddenly we find certainty.Ihave found it. Buthehas not.... No, Lot, we shall not get married. I want Aldo to be free and to do as he pleases. I am no longer young and I want to leave him free. Our love, our bodies, our souls are free, absolutely free, in our happiness. And, if I am old to-morrow, an old woman, with no voice left ..."
"Then you will pay the penalty, Ottilie," said Lot.
"Then I shall pay no penalty, Lot. Then I shall have been happy. Then I shall have had my portion. I don't ask for eternity here below. I shall be satisfied and I shall grow old, quietly, quietly old...."
"Oh, Ottilie, andI... I suffer from growing old, from growing older."
"Lot, that's a disease. You're happy now, you have Elly, life is beautiful, there is sunshine, there is happiness. Take all that, enjoy it and be happy and don't think of what is to come."
"Don't you then ever think of growing old and of the horror of it?"
"I do think of growing old, but I don't see anything horrible in it."
"If Aldo were to leave you to-morrow, you would be alone ... and you would grow old."
"If Aldo left me to-morrow, for his own happiness, I should think it right and I should grow old, but I should not be alone, for I should have all my memories of his love and of our happiness, which is actual now and so real that there can be nothing else after it."
She got up.
"Are you going?"
"I have to. Come and lunch with us to-morrow. Will you come, Elly?"
"Thanks, Ottilie."
Ottilie looked out of the window. The sun beamed as it died away, from behind mauve and rose clouds, and the wind had subsided on the waves: the sea just rocked it softly on her rolling, deep-blue bosom, like a gigantic lover who lay resting in her lap after his spell of blazing ardour.
"How splendid those clouds are!" said Elly. "The wind has gone down."
"Always does, at this time," said Ottilie. "Look, Lot, there he is!"
"Who?"
"Aldo. He's waiting for me."
They saw a man sitting on the Promenade des Anglais—there were not many people about—and looking at the sea.
"I can only see his back," said Lot.
"You shall see him to-morrow. I'm delighted that you're coming."
Her voice sounded grateful, as though she were touched. She kissed them both and went away.
"Heavens, what a beautiful woman!" said Lot. "She is anything but young, but years don't count with a woman accustomed to appear in public and as handsome as she is...."
Elly had gone out on the balcony:
"Oh, Lot, what a glorious sunset!... It's like a fairy-picture in the sky. That's how I imagine the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights. Look, it's just like the tail of a gigantic phoenix vanishing behind the mountains in flames.... There's Ottilie, on the promenade; she's waving her handkerchief."
"And there's Aldo, with her, bowing.... A fine good-looking fellow, that Italian officer of hers.... What a handsome couple!... Look, Elly, as they're walking together: what a handsome couple! I declare I'm jealous of him. I should like to be as tall as that, with such a pair of shoulders and such a figure."
"But aren't you content that I like you as you are?"
"Yes, I'm quite content. I'm more than content, Elly.... I believe that I have come to my divine moment, my moment of happiness...."
"It will be more than a moment."
"Are you certain of it?"
"Yes, I feel it within me ... just as Ottilie felt it within her. And you?"
He looked at her gravely and did not tell her that she was much younger than Ottilie, too young to know so much. And he merely answered:
"I too believe that I know for certain. But we must not force the future.... Oh, what a wonderful evening! Look at those mountains beginning to turn violet.... The fairy-picture is changing every moment. The sea is rocking the wind in her lap and the phoenix is dying away in ashes. Let's stay here, let's stay and look. There are the first stars. It's as though the sea were becoming very calm and the wind sleeping peacefully on her blue breast. You can just feel its breath still, but it's asleep.... This is the land of life and love. We are too early for the season; but what do we care for smart people?... This is gorgeous, Elly, this wealth of life, of love, of living colour, fading away so purple in the darkness of the night. The cool breath of that mighty wind, which is now asleep: how very different from the howling wind of our north, which whistles so dismally! This mad merry wind here, now sleeping, like a giant, in the blue lap of that giantess, the sea! That's freedom, life, love and glory and pomp and gaiety. Oh, I'm not running down my country; but I do feel once more, after all these months, that I can breathe freely and that there's a glow in life ... and youth, youth, youth! It makes you feel drunk at first, but I'm already getting used to the intoxication...."
They remained on the balcony. When the wind woke in the lap of the sea and got up again, with an unexpected leap of its giant gaiety, blowing the first stars clear of the last purple clouds with a single sweep, they went inside, with their arms around each other's waist.
Over the joyously-quivering sea the fierce mistral came rushing.
The garden was reached from the flat by a little terrace and two or three steps.
"You are too early to see it in its winter glory," said Ottilie. "You're much too early. Nature here sleeps all through the summer under the scorching sun."
"That's one long, long love-sleep," said Lot, with his arm in his sister's.
"Yes, one long love-sleep," Ottilie echoed. "At the beginning of the autumn, the heavy rains come. They may overcome us yet, suddenly. When they are past, then nature buds for the winter. That is so exquisite here. When, everywhere up in the north, there's not a leaf or flower to be seen, the ground here is dug up, grass is sown and the mimosa blossoms and the carnations and you get your violets. You're too early, but you can see one phase of the change. Look at my last summer roses, blooming in such mad, jolly disorder. And the heliotrope, delicious, eh? Yes, this one is still glorious. Look at my pears: did you ever see such big ones? How many are there? Three, four, five ... six. We'll pluck them; they're quite ripe: if they fall to the ground, the ants eat them in a moment.... Aldo! Aldo! Come here for a second.... Pluck a few pears, will you? I can't reach them, no more can Lot ... Elly, have you seen my grapes? Just look at my trellis-work of vines? It might be a pergola, mightn't it? And they're those raspberry-grapes, you know; you must taste them. Try this bunch: they're delicious.... We'll eat the pears presently, at lunch. They're like sweet, aromatic snow.... Here are figs for you: this is an old tree, but it still stands as a symbol of fruitfulness. Pick them for yourself, take as many as you like.... Here are my peaches.... How hot the sun is still! And everything's steaming: I love all that natural perfume. Those grapes sometimes drive me mad...."
She thrust a white arm out of the sleeve of her white gown among the hazy-blue bunches and picked and picked, more and more. It was a feast of gluttony, an orgy of grapes. Aldo picked the finest for Elly. Well past forty, in the tranquil calmness of his graceful strength he was plainly a man of warm passion, a southern man of passion, a tranquil, smiling and yet passionate nature. As he drew himself up lissomely, in his loose-fitting grey-flannel suit, and stretched his hands towards the highest bunches, the harmonious lines of his statuesquely handsome figure appeared sinewy and supple; and there was this contradiction in him, that he suggested a piece of classic sculpture in the costume of to-day. The smiling serenity of his regular, large-boned face also reminded Lot of busts which he had seen in Italy: theHermesof the Vatican—no, Aldo was not so intelligent as that—theAntinousof the Capitol, but a manlier brother; theWrestlersof the Braccio Nuovo, only not so young and more powerfully built.... Aldo's smile answered to Ottilie's smile and contained the tranquillity of a secure happiness, of an intense moment of perfect human bliss. That moment was there, even if it were passing. That secure happiness was as the pressed bunch of grapes....
Lot felt that he was living his own ecstatic moment, felt that he was happy in Elly, but yet he experienced a certain jealousy because of the physical happiness in that very good-looking couple: there was something so primitive in it, something almost classical in this southern autumnal nature, among this superabundance of bursting fruits; and he knew for certain that he would never approach such happiness, physically, because he felt the north in his soul, however eagerly his soul might try to escape that north; because he felt the dread of the years that were to come; because his love for Elly was so very much one of sympathy and temperament; because his nature was lacking in vigorous sensuality. And it made him feel the want of something; and because of that want he was jealous, with all the jealousy which he had inherited from his mother.... They too, Aldo and Ottilie, felt no morbid melancholy, no sickly dread; and yet their happiness, however superabundant, had the sere tint of autumn, like all the nature around them. The glowing-copper leaves of the plane-trees blew suddenly over the vine-trellis, scattered by the rough, brusque hands of the gaily-gathering wind. A shudder passed through the disordered rose-bushes; a heavy-ripe pear fell to the ground. It was autumn; and neither Aldo nor Ottilie was young, really young. And yet they had found this; and who could tell what they had found before, each on a different path! Oh, that untrammelled happiness, that moment!... Oh, how Lot felt his jealousy!... Oh, how he longed to be like Aldo, so tall, so vigorous, handsome as a classical statue, so natural, a classical soul!... To feel his blood rush madly through his veins!... Oh, that north, which froze something inside him; that powerlessness to seize the moment with a virile hand; and the dread, the dread of what was to come: that horror of old age, while after all he was still young!... He now looked at his wife; and suddenly his soul became quite peaceful. He loved her. Silent inward melancholy, dread: those were his portion; they couldn't be helped; they must be accepted with resignation. The headiness of rapture could overwhelm him for a moment: it was not the true sphere of his happiness. It would intoxicate him: his blood was not rich enough for it. He loved, in so far as he was able; he was happy, in so far as he could be. It was that, after all: he had found what he wanted, he wished to be grateful. A tenderness for Elly flowed through him so intensely: he felt that his soul was the sister-soul to hers. Superabundance was not for him; and the pressure of the things that passed had always weighed upon him and always hindered him from flinging his two arms riotously round life....
He threw away the stalk of his bunch of grapes and followed Aldo, who was calling to him, indoors. The Italian took his arm with a movement of sympathy:
"Ottilie's going to sing," he said. "Your wife has asked her to."
His French had the sensual softness of his too southern accent.
Ottilie was already singing, to her own accompaniment, in the drawing-room. Her rich voice, schooled to the spaciousness of large halls, swelled to a pure stream of sound, made the air quiver even in the garden with notes heavy with happiness. It was an Italian song, by a composer whom Lot did not know; and it provided an illusion as though Ottilie were improvising the song at the moment. There was a single phrase, which opened softly, rippled with laughter and melted away swooning, like a nymph in a faun's arms.
"Another time, perhaps I'll sing you something serious," said Ottilie. "This is only a single cry: a cry of life, nothing more...."
They sat down to lunch. The sun, which had scorched them, the wind, which had covered them with rough kisses, had given them an appetite; and the saffronbouillabaissestimulated their palates lustily. On the side-board the fruit lay heaped in large, plain baskets and represented autumn's lavish abundance indoors as well.
"Lot," said Elly, suddenly, "I don't know what it is, but I suddenly feel the south."
"We poor northerners!" said Lot. "Ottilie and Aldo:theyfeel the south."
"But so do I!" said Elly.
"Nice is a novitiate for you, Elly, before you get to Italy!" said Ottilie. "Do you actually feel the south here? In the air?"
"Yes, in the air ... and in myself, inmyself...."
"Well, we have tropical blood in us," said Ottilie. "Why shouldn't we feel the south at once? Aldo could never feel the north: he went to Stockholm with me when I was singing there."
"Didn't you feel the north, in the air?" asked Lot.
"Sicuro!" said Aldo. "I found it cold and bleak, but then it was winter. I felt no more in it than that. You northerners feel things more sensitively. We feel perhaps ... more brutally and fully. We have redder blood. You have the gift of feelingnuances. We haven't. When I feel, I feel entirely. When Ottilie feels a thing now, she also feels it like that. But she was not always so."
"Aldo is making a southerner of me!" said Ottilie. "He is wiping out all mynuances!"
Outside, the mistral rose and raged in a whirl of glowing-copper plane-leaves.
"That's autumn," said Ottilie.
"Turning into winter," said Lot.
"But winter here is life again, renewed. Life is renewed daily. Every day that comes is new life."
"So no dying, but everlasting resurrection?" asked Lot, with a smile.
"No dying, everlasting resurrection!"
Her voice rang out defiantly. Oh, to embrace the moment ... with virile strength! It was not for him, thought Lot. But what there was was tender happiness. If only it remained so! If only he were not left behind, lonely, alone and old, now that he had known tender happiness!... He looked at his wife. The topaz-coloured wine sent a sparkle to her eyes and a flush over her usual pallor; she was joking with Aldo and Ottilie, was gayer than Lot had ever seen her; she became almost pretty and began boldly to talk Italian to Aldo, spinning out whole sentences which he corrected with his quiet laugh.
"Who knows," thought Lot, "what she may yet feel? She is twenty-three. She is very fond of me; and, before she came to love me, she had known sorrow, because of another love. Who can tell what the years may bring? Oh, but this is a divine moment, these days are perhaps forming the most heavenly moment of my life! Let me never forget them.... I am happy, so far as I can be happy. And Elly must be feeling happy too.... She is breathing again.... It is as though an oppression had gone over her and as though she were breathing again. She lived too long with the old man. The past is an oppression in his house. It is an oppression at Grandmamma's. It is an oppression even with us, at home, because of Mamma.... Life does not renew itself there. It dies away, it passes; and the melancholy of it depresses even us, the young people.... Oh, Elly will not be really happy until she is in Italy!... This is only an intoxication, delicious, but too full and brutal for our senses; and there ... there, when we are working together, we shall find glad happiness: I know it! Glad happiness in a country not so sensual as Nice, but more intelligent and dusted exquisitely with the bloom of the dead past.... Yes, we shall be in harmony there and happy and we shall work together...."
Aldo was opening the champagne; and Lot whispered:
"Elly!"
"What?"
"You felt the south just now?"
"Yes ... oh, Lot, beyond a doubt!"
"Well, I ...Ifeel happiness!"
She squeezed his hand; a smile played around her lips. She also would never forget this moment of her life, whatever else those future years might bring: with her northern soul of sadness, she felt the south and her happiness ... and what passed they did not see....
There was a cold wind, with whirling snowflakes, and Aunt Stefanie de Laders had not at first intended to go out: she had a cough and lately had not been feeling at all the thing; she feared that this winter would be her last. Not everybody lived to be so old as Mamma or Mr. Takma; and she, after all, was seventy-seven: wasn't that a fine age? But she did not want to die yet, for she had always been very much afraid of death, always carried a horrid vision of Hell before her eyes: you could never know what awaited you, however good and religious you might have been, serving God properly. Now she, thank God, had nothing to reproach herself with! Her life had gone on calmly, day after day, without a husband, or children, or mundane ties, but also without any great sorrow. Twice she had suffered the loss of a tom-cat to which she was attached; and she thought it very sad when the birds in the cages grew old and lost their feathers and sometimes gripped on to their perches with their long claws, for years together, until one fine morning she found their little bodies stiff. She thought it sad that the family had no religion—the De Laders had always had religion—and she felt very sad when Thérèse, in Paris, became a Catholic, for after all papistry was idolatry, that she knew for certain; and she also knew for certain that Calvin had had the root of the matter in him. She had always been able to save money and did not quite know how to dispose of it: she had executed a number of different wills, making bequests and then rescinding them; she would leave a good deal to charitable institutions. Her health for very long had been exceedingly good. Short, sprightly and withered, she had been very active, had for years run along the streets like a lapwing. Her witch-face became brown and tanned and wrinkled, small and wizened; and her little figure, with the shrunk breasts, bore no resemblance whatever to the even yet majestic old age of old, old Mamma. The barren field of her life, without emotion, love or passion, had grown drier and drier around her carping egoism, without arousing in her a sense of either melancholy or loss. On the contrary, she had felt glad that she was able to fear God, that she had had time to make her own soul and that she had not heard the sins of the body speak aloud, in between the murmured reading of her pious books and the shrill twittering of her birds. Lucky that she had never been hysterical, like those Derckszes, she thought contentedly, preferring with a certain filial reverence to put down that hysteria rather to the Derckszes' account than to that of her old mother, though nevertheless she shook her head over Mamma for thinking so little, at her age, of Heaven and Hell and for continuing to see old Takma, doubtless in memory of former sinfulness. Anton was a dirty old blackguard and, old as he was, had narrowly escaped most unpleasant consequences, a month ago, for allowing himself to take liberties with his laundress' little girl; and Aunt, who saw a great deal of Ina, knew that it was owing to D'Herbourg's influence and intervention—he being the only one of the family who had any connections—that the business had no ill results, that it was more or less hushed up. But Aunt Stefanie thought it so sinful and hysterical of Anton, looked upon Anton as so irretrievably sold to Satan that she would have preferred to have nothing more to do with him ... if it were not that he had some money and that she feared lest he should leave the money to sinful things and people ... whereas Ina could do with it so well. And she now, in spite of the weather, thought of sending for a cab and going out: then she could first pick up Anton, as arranged, and take him with her to the Van Welys, Lily and Frits, to see their godchildren, Stefje and Antoinetje. There were two babies now; and she and Anton had a godchild apiece. A tenderness flowed through her selfish old-maid's heart at the thought of those children, who belonged to her just a little—for she tyrannized over Anton's godchild too—and in whom, she reflected contentedly, she had not the least sinful share. For she considered the things of the flesh more or less sinful, even when hallowed by matrimony.
The cab came; and Aunt Stefanie, in a very old fur cloak, hoisted herself in, sprightlily, climbed up the step and felt anything but well. Was it coming at last? Was she about to fall ill and die? Oh, if she could only be sure of going to Heaven! So long as she was not sure of it, she would rather go on living, rather grow as old as Mother and Takma, rather live to be a hundred. The cab was now pulling up in front of the ground-floor rooms in which Anton lived; and she thought, should she wait till he came out or should she get out herself for a minute? She resolved upon the latter course and, when the door was opened by the landlady, she clambered down the step of the cab again, refusing the driver's assistance, and, with a few snowflakes on her old-lady's cape and old fur cloak, went in to her brother, who was sitting beside a closed stove, with his book and his pipe. A thick haze of smoke filled the room, drifting heavily with slow, horizontal cloud-lines.