[1]River.
[1]River.
But Aunt Floor was just coming, shuffling down the stairs with her flopping bosom, and Uncle Daan was just ringing at the front-door. Old Anna was delighted. She loved that bustle of members of the family on the ground-floor and she received everybody with her pleased old face and her meek, civil remarks, while the fat cat under her petticoats arched its back and tail against her legs. Old Dr. Roelofsz came limping down the stairs behind Aunt Floor, hobbling on his one stiff leg; and his enormous paunch seemed to push Aunt Floor on, as she shuffled carefully, step by step.
Aunt Stefanie was glad to get rid of Ina d'Herbourg and said:
"NowI'llgo upstairs."
She pushed past Roelofsz' stiff leg in the passage and forced her way to the stairs between Daan and Aunt Floor; and, in her nervous hurry, afraid of Ina, of sinfulness, of curiosity, afraid of Hell, she almost stumbled over the cat, which slipped just between her feet.
"I thought I should find you here, Roelofsz," said Uncle Daan. "If I hadn't, I should have looked you up at once."
"Aha, aha, well-well-well, so you're back once more, Dercksz!" said the old doctor.
They shook hands; and Daan Dercksz nervously looked at Dr. Roelofsz, as if he wanted to say something. But he wavered and merely remarked, hesitatingly, to Ina:
"Aren't you going upstairs, Ina?"
"No, Uncle," answered Ina, with apparent politeness, glad to have a word with Dr. Roelofsz. "You go first. Honestly, you go first. I can easily wait a little longer. I'll wait down here."
Dr. Roelofsz joined her in the morning-room, rubbing his cold hands, saying that it was warmer here than upstairs, where they only kept up a small fire: old Takma was never cold; he was always blazing hot inside. But Aunt Floor, who also came into the morning-room for a minute, puffed and put off her heavy fur cloak, Ina helping her:
"A handsome cloak, Aunt."
"Oh, I don't know, child!" said Aunt Floor, disparagingly. "Just an old fur. Had it thr-r-ree year-r-rs. But useful in Gholland: nice and war-r-r-m!"
Inwardly proud of the cloak, she bit the last word into Ina's face, rolling her r's as she did so. They all three sat down and Anna thought it so pleasant of them that she brought in some brandy-cherries, three glasses on a tray:
"Or would you rather have tea, Mrs. Ina?"
"No, Anna, your cherries are delicious."
The servant went away, glad, happy at the bustle on the ground-floor, to which the old lady no longer ever descended. That ground-floor was her kingdom, where not even the companion held sway, where she, Anna, alone held sway, receiving the family and offering refreshments.
Ina tasted a cherry, was sorry that Aunt Floor had joined them in the morning-room. It was quite possible that the old doctor, a younger contemporary of Grandmamma's, knew something; but it was not certain. For Uncle Daan himself had only known it such a little while, though Papa had known it for sixty years. Sixty years! The length of that past hypnotized her. Sixty years ago, that old ailing doctor—who had given up practice and now merely kept Grandmamma and Mr. Takma going, with the aid of a younger colleague—was a young man of twenty-eight, newly-arrived in Java, one of Grandmamma's many adorers.
She saw it before her and tried to see farther into it; her curiosity, like a powerful lens, burnt and revealed a vista in front of her, gleaming with new light, through the opaque denseness of the past. And she began:
"Poor Papa is not at all well. I'm afraid he's going to be ill. He is so depressed mentally too. Yes, Aunt, he has been more depressed, mentally, since he saw Uncle Daan again than I have known him for years. What can it be? It can't be money-matters...."
"No, my dear, it's not money-matters, though we're still as poor as r-r-rats."
"Then what has brought Uncle Daan to Holland?" asked Ina, suddenly and quickly.
Aunt Floor looked at her stupidly:
"What's brought him?... Upon my word, child, I don't know. Blessed if I know. Uncle always ghoes r-r-regularly to Gholland ... on bissiness, bissiness, always bissiness. What they're scheming together now, your Papa and Uncle Daan, blessed if I know; but we sha'n't get rich on it." And she shook her head almost in Ina's face, reproachfully. "And it's year-r-rs that they've been messing about together."
"Poor Papa!" said Ina, sighing.
"Yes-yes-yes, well-well-well," exclaimed the doctor, sitting sideways, with his paunch dangling in front of him, "we're getting old, we're getting old ..."
"Speak for yourself!" cried Aunt Floor, angrily. "I'm only ssixty."
"Only sixty? Aha, aha!" mumbled the doctor. "Only sixty? I thought you were older."
"I'm only ssixty, I tell you!" said Aunt Floor, wrathfully.
"Yes-yes, then you're the same age ... as ... as Ottilie.... Well-well, well-well!..."
"Yes," said Aunt Floor, "I'm just the same age as Ottilie Steyn."
"Sixty years ... well-well!" mumbled the doctor.
"You were a young man then, doctor," said Ina, with a little laugh.
"Yes-yes, child, yes-yes ... a young man!"
"There's a good many years between you and Grandmamma, isn't there?"
"Yes-yes-yes!" said Dr. Roelofsz, confirming the statement vehemently. "Nine years' difference, nine years.... And with Takma ... five years ... aha, yes, five years ... that's the difference between him and me ..."
"It's so nice that you and Grandmamma and Mr. Takma have always kept together," Ina continued, softly. "First in India ... and afterwards always here, at the Hague."
"Yes-yes, we just kept together...."
"Ssuch old fr-r-riends!" said Aunt Floor, with feeling.
But she winked at Ina, to convey that Dr. Roelofsz, in spite of the difference of nine years, had nevertheless been a very intimate friend of Grandmamma's.
"Doctor," said Ina, suddenly, "is it true that, sixty years ago...?"
She stopped, not knowing what to say. She had begun her sentence like that, craftily, and now broke it off deliberately. The old doctor had a shock: his paunch flung itself from left to right and now hung over his sound leg.
"Wha-at?" he almost screamed.
His eyes rolled in his head as he looked at her. Terror distorted the wrinkled roundness of his enormous old head, with the monk's-face, clean-shaven, and the sunken mouth, which was now open, while slaver flowed between the crumbly teeth over the frightened lips. He clenched and raised his old hands, with the skin hanging in loose, untidy folds, and then dropped them on his knee.
Heknew:Ina saw that at once. And she acted as though his scream was no more than an exclamation following upon a failure to hear, because of his deafness; she raised her voice politely and quietly and repeated in a little louder tone, articulating her words very clearly:
"Is it true that, sixty years ago, Grandmamma—though she was thirty-seven then—was still a gloriously beautiful woman? Yes, those old people took more care of themselves than we do. I'm forty-five, but I'm an old woman...."
"Come, come," said Aunt Floor, "an oldd womann!"
And the doctor mumbled:
"Yes-yes, aha, oh, is that what you were asking, Ina?... Yes, yes, certainly: Grandmamma ... Grandmamma was a splendid, a splendid woman ... even after she was past her first youth...."
"And what about Ottilie? She was for-r-rty when Steyn fell in love with her."
"Yes," said Ina. "It wasn't ... quite nice of Aunt Ottilie; but it was a wonderful testimony to her youth...."
And she stared at the doctor with the hidden glance of her well-bred, wearily-blinking eyes. He sat huddled in his chair, an old, decayed, shapeless mass, a heaped-up ruin of a man and a human being, an old, old monk, but wearing a loose frockcoat and loose waistcoat, which draped his broad body. The terror in his rolling eyes had died away; and his glance drooped to the left, his head to the right. It was as though he were seized with inertia, after his fright, after his excessive emotion at Ina's question, at the ominous number of sixty. He nodded his enormous head sagaciously; and, in the wintry light from outside, the shiny top of his head became covered with bright patches.
"Yes-yes-yes, well-well-well!" he mumbled, almost like an idiot.
He rose laboriously, now that Daan Dercksz came downstairs, followed by Stefanie, followed by old Mr. Takma, who refused any assistance on the stairs, though Anna made a point of looking on anxiously, driving away the cat, fearing lest it should slip between the old gentleman's feet.
"Grandmamma is tired," said Daan Dercksz.
"Then I'd better not go up," said Ina. "No, Anna, I think I won't go up. I'll come back some other day soon. Grandmamma has had so many visitors to-day."
Nevertheless she lingered a little and then went away, sick with unsatisfied curiosity, which filled her soul with ravenous hunger. Aunt Stefanie also took her leave, saying that Mamma was poorly to-day; and the last to go was old Takma, calculating his steps carefully, but walking straight and erect. Ina felt that he too must know. What was it, what could it be? Those old people knew, every one of them!
"Come, let's go home, Dhaan," said Aunt Floor. "Our car-r-riage is waiting."
"You go," said Daan Dercksz, hesitating. "I want to talk to Roelofsz first. I'm so glad to see him again...."
"Eh, always talking!" said Aunt Floor, displeased when her husband left her side. "Then I'll send back the car-r-riage for you presently...."
She said good-bye and shuffled away.
"May I see you home, Mr. Takma?" Ina asked.
Takma nodded his consent:
"Do, child," he said, taking her arm.
Though he held himself well and would never have a cab, he always thought it reassuring and pleasant if somebody went back with him, down the Nassaustraat, over the razor-back bridge, to his house on the Mauritskade. He never asked to be accompanied, but was glad to accept when any one offered. Ina, however, reflected that she would not dare to ask old Mr. Takma anything: imagine, suppose he knew and were also to get a shock, in the street! It would be enough to give him a stroke! No, she was too careful for that, but she was sick and famished with the hunger of curiosity in her soul. What could it be? And howshouldshe ever know?
Daan Dercksz remained behind with the old doctor. His parrot-profile shook and his beady bird's-eyes—Aunt Stefanie's eyes—kept blinking as though with excitement, while all his lean figure seemed to shrivel still smaller beside the colossal bulk of the doctor, who towered before him with the figure of a deformed Templar, resting on one leg which was sound and one which was short and limping.
"Well, Roelofsz," said Daan Dercksz, "Iamglad to see you again."
"Yes-yes, aha, it's quite five years since you were in Holland last.... Well-well, that's a long time.... We're growing old, we're growing old.... You didn't expect to find your mother so fit.... Yes-yes, I'll make her see a hundred yet! You wait and see, you wait and see.... Perhaps she'll survive us all, Takma and me, yes-yes...."
"Yes," said Daan Dercksz, "Mamma is very little altered."
"She has a splendid constitution, yes-yes, always has had. Her mind's quite clear; her memory is good; well-well, yes-yes, that's a blessing, at her age...."
"And Takma also ..."
"Keeps well, keeps well, yes-yes.... Well-well, we're all growing old ... I too, yes-yes, I too...."
But Daan Dercksz was greatly agitated. He had promised his brother Harold to be very careful and not to talk, but, during the two months that he had known, the secret and the horror of it burnt into his soul, the soul of a business-man who, old as he was, for the first time underwent a great emotion outside his business.
And he could not hold himself in check. The house was silent. Anna had gone back to her kitchen; the old lady was sitting upstairs, alone with the companion. A small gas-jet was burning in the morning-room; another in the passage. Afternoon darkness and silence hovered in the atmosphere of the little house in which the old lady had lived so long, had so long sat waiting at her window upstairs, in her high chair.
"Roelofsz," said Daan Dercksz.
He was a head shorter than the doctor; he took hold of a button of the doctor's waistcoat.
"Yes-yes," said Roelofsz. "What is it, Dercksz?"
"Roelofsz ... I've heard about it."
"What?" shouted the doctor, deaf.
"I've heard everything ... in India."
"What?" shouted the doctor, no longer deaf, but dismayed.
"I've heardeverything, heard it all ... in India."
The doctor looked at him with rolling eyes; and his pendulous lips slavered in his clean-shaven monk's-face, while his breath panted, reeking between the crumbly teeth.
And he, in his turn, caught hold of one of Daan Dercksz' buttons:
"Whathave you heard?"
"I've heardeverything," Daan Dercksz repeated. "Heard it all ... in India. I know ... I know everything."
"You know ... everything? Oh? Oh? You know everything?... What ... whatdoyou know?"
"About ... about Mamma.... About Takma.... About ..."
They stood staring into each other's startled eyes.
"About my father," said Daan Dercksz; and his frightened voice sank to a hesitating whisper. "About my father. What you know too. What you have always known. That Takma, that night, when he was with my mother, snatched my father's own weapon from him: a kris which the Regent had given him the day before...."
"You know?" cried the doctor. "You know? Oh, my God! Do you know that? I ... I have never said aword. I am eightee-eight years of age ... but I've ... I've never said aword."
"No, you never said anything ... but Mamma'sbaboe..."
"Ma-Boeten?"
"Yes, Ma-Boeten told her son, amantriat Tegal. Ma-Boeten is dead and themantrihas started blackmailing me. He's been to me for money. I've given him money. I shall give him money every month."
"So you know.... Yes-yes, O my God, yes-yes!... So you know, Dercksz, youknow?"
"Yes, I know."
"What did themantrisay? What had Ma-Boeten told him?
"That my father tried to kill Takma, with a kris.... That Takma snatched the kris from him, while ..."
"While what?... Yes-yes, while what?"
"While Mamma ... while my mother ..."
"Yes-yes?"
"Flung her arms round my father, to prevent him ..."
"O my God, yes, yes!"
"To prevent him from defending himself ... and that Ma-Boeten, behind the door, heard her say ..."
"Yes-yes ... yes-yes ... O my God!"
"Heard her say, 'Ihateyou, Ihateyou: I've always hated you ...'"
"Yes-yes ... O my God!"
"'I've always hated you and ... and I love Emile!'"
"Yes-yes ... and then?"
"And then she called out to Takma, almost aloud, 'Emile, give him a stab: rather he than you!'"
"O ... my ... God!"
The doctor sank, in a heavy mass, upon a chair:
"So youknow!" he moaned. "It's sixty years ago, yes-yes, O my God, yes-yes! I've never spoken about it,never!I was so fond of your mother. I ... I ... I held an inquest on the body next day!"
"Yes, they let it drift down stream ... in thekali..."
"I held an inquest on the body next day ... and I ... Iunderstood.... I had understood it before, for I had seen your mother that morning and she was raving in her delirium ... and I ... I promised ... yes-yes, I promised that I wouldn't tell ... O my God, O my God ... if she ... if she would consent to love me! O my God, O my God, Dercksz, Dercksz, Daan, I have never ... I have never said a word!... And God knows what people, sixty years ago, yes-yes, sixty years ago, didn't think ... and say ... and gossip and gossip ... without knowing the truth ... until it was all forgotten ... until it was too late to hold a fresh inquest, after all those months.... I never, never said aword.... O my God, no-no, no-no!..."
"When I knew, Roelofsz, Icouldn'tstay in India. I felt that I must see Harold, see you, see Mamma, see Takma...."
"Why?"
"I don't know, I had to see you all. Oh, how they must have suffered. I am sorry for her, for Takma. I had to see you, to talk to you about it. I knew that you ..."
"Did themantriknow ... aboutme?"
"Through Ma-Boeten."
"Yes, she knew everything, the hag!"
"She held her tongue for years. I did not even know that she was alive. And then she told her son. She thought Mamma was dead. The son knew some of the servants at our house. He got to know that Mamma was still alive...."
"O my God, O my God, yes-yes!"
"I give him so much a month."
"Until Mamma dies?"
"Yes ... until she dies!"
"O my God, O my God, yes-yes!"
"But Roelofsz, what you didnotknow ..."
"What.... What?...Whatdidn't I know?"
"What you did not know is that Harold ..."
"Harold? Your brother?"
"Knew!..."
"Haroldknew?"
"Yes!... Yes!..."
"He knew? How did Harold know? O my God, O my God!Howdid Harold know?"
"Harold knew ... because he saw!"
"He saw? Harold saw?"
"He was with them there, in the hills; he was in thepasangrahan."
"Harold?"
"He was a boy of thirteen. He woke up! He saw Mamma, Takma and Ma-Boeten. He saw them carrying his father's body. He stepped in his father's blood, Roelofsz! He was thirteen years old! He was thirteen years old! He has never forgotten what he saw! And he has known italways, all his life, all his life long!"
"O my God, O my God!... Oh, dear!... Is it true? Is it reallytrue?"
"It's true! He told me himself."
"And he too ... did he never tell?"
"No, he never told!"
"He's a good fellow, yes-yes, one of the best of fellows. He does not want to bring disgrace ... oh, dear ... on his old mother's head!... Daan, Daan ... O my God!... Daan, don't you ever tell: don'tevertell!"
"No, I sha'n't tell. I have spoken to you and to Harold, because I discuss everything with him: business matters and ... and everything. He's often helped me.... He helped me in India, in a nasty affair which I had out there ... in my time ... yes ... O Lord ... in my time! I've always discussedeverythingwith Harold. I spoke to you because I knew that you knew...."
"Well-well-well, yes-yes-yes.... But Daan, Dercksz, don't speak to any one else!"
"No, no, I sha'n't speak to any one else."
"Not to Stefanie, not to Anton, not to Ottilie ..."
"Theirchild!..."
"Yes-yes, her child and his. Hush-hush, Daan, these are sucholdthings, they're all past!"
"If only they were! But they are not past ... as long as Mamma ... and Takma ... are still alive!"
"Yes-yes, yes-yes, you're right: as long as they're alive, those things are not past.... But, oh, they are so old, he and she! It won't last much longer. They're passing, they're passing, those things ... slowly, but they're passing.... Yes-yes, it's so very long ago.... And people no longer trouble about any of us.... In the old days, yes, in the old days they, people, used to talk ... about Mamma and Takma and the children, about Anton, aboutyou... and that scandal in India ... about Ottilie: they talked a great deal about Ottilie.... That's all past now ... it's passing.... We are old ... yes-yes ... we are old...."
He sank back in his chair; his shapeless bulk collapsed over his slanting paunch, as if it would fall to the floor.
At that moment there came from upstairs a shrill scream, suppressed but penetrating, as though it issued from an old throat that was being strangled; and almost at the same time the door upstairs was flung back and the companion called:
"Anna ... Anna, come quick!"
Daan Dercksz was an old man, but a shiver ran down his back like ice-cold water. The doctor started, tottering on his legs, and at last drew up his shapeless bulk and cried:
"What is it? Whatisit?"
And the two men hurried up the stairs as fast as they could, with Anna behind them.
There were two lamps alight in the drawing-room; and the old lady was sitting straight up in her chair. Her eyes, enormously dilated, stared from her head in tense dismay; her mouth remained open, after the scream which she had uttered, and formed a dark cavity; and she held one arm uplifted, pointing with an outstretched finger to the corner of the room, near the china-cabinet. Thus she sat, as though petrified and rigid: rigid the staring expression and the open mouth, rigid all the old face, in extreme terror, petrified the gesture of the stiffly-held arm, as though she could never lower it again. And the companion and Anna, who now went up to her together excitedly, asked:
"Mevrouw, mevrouw, what's the matter? Aren't you well? Aren't you well?"
"The-ere!" stammered the old woman. "There!... There!"
And she stared and kept on pointing. The two men had appeared in the doorway and instinctively they all turned their eyes to the corner, near the china-cabinet. There was nothing to be seen save by the eyes of the old lady, nothing save what she saw there—and she alone saw it—rising before her, nothing save what she saw rising in a paroxysm of the remorse that had overwhelmed her for years and years ... until suddenly shesawagain, saw for ten or twenty seconds, in which she became petrified and rigid, while the old blood froze in her veins. She now received a shock; her hand fell in her lap; she herself dropped back against the straight pillow of her high-backed chair and her eyes closed.
"The mistress has been taken like this before," said old Anna, in a whisper.
They all, all except Daan Dercksz, knew that she had been taken like that before. They crowded round her. She had not fainted. Soon she opened her eyes, knew the doctor, knew the two women, but did not know her son Daan. She glared at him and then gave a sudden shiver, as if she had been struck by a resemblance.
"Mother! Mother!" cried Daan Dercksz.
She still stared, but she now realized that he was not a materialization of what she had just seen, realized that he was a son who resembled his father, the man whom she had first loved and then hated. Her fixed look died away; but the wrinkles in her face, in the later paroxysm of shuddering, remained motionless in their deep grooves, as though etched and bitten in.
Anna stroked her hand and wrist with the soft, regular movement of a light massage, to restore her consciousness entirely ... until the old blood melted and flowed again.
"To bed," murmured the old lady. "To bed...."
The two men went away, leaving her to the care of the women. At the bottom of the stairs, the dimly-lighted ground-floor shivered, full of shadow silent as the grave. Daan Dercksz took Roelofsz' arm, while the doctor hobbled laboriously down the stairs, from the bad leg on to the sound leg.
"What was it she saw?" asked Daan Dercksz.
"Ssh!" said the old doctor. "Yes-yes ... yes-yes...."
"What did she see?"
"She saw ...Dercksz;she saw ...your father!..."
In the kitchen the cat sat mewing with fright.
Aunt Adèle Takma, with her key-basket on her arm, came fussing quietly from the dining-room into the passage, for she had seen the postman and was hoping for a letter from Elly. Lot and Elly were at Florence, both of them working busily at the Laurentiana and the Archives, where Lot was collecting materials for an historical work on the Medicis. They had been as far as Naples and, on the homeward journey, tired of so much sightseeing—Italy was quite new to Elly—they had stopped at Florence, settled down in apensionand were now working together. Elly seemed happy and wrote enthusiastic letters.
Aunt Adèle looked in the letter-box. Yes, there was a letter from Elly, a letter for Grandpapa. Aunt Adèle always read the letters out to Grandpapa: that was so nice; and after all the letter was for her too. Yes, the children were sure to be away three months longer—it was the beginning of January now—and then the plan was that they would quietly take up their quarters with Steyn and Mamma, for a little while, to see if it answered; and, if it did not answer, they would quietly turn out again and go their own way: they were still keen on travelling and were not yet anxious for a settled home. Ottilie was in London, where she had her two boys, John and Hugh Trevelley: Mary was in India and married. Mamma had been quite unable to stand it by herself; and there was certainly no harm in her going to look up her two sons ... if only those two sons had not been such sharks. They were always wanting money: Aunt Adèle knew that from Elly and Lot.
Aunt Adèle finished what she had to do downstairs, spoke to the cook, locked the store-cupboard, smoothed a tablecloth here, put a chair straight there, so that she need not come down again and might have time to read Elly's letter to the old gentleman at her ease. He always liked hearing Elly's letters, because she wrote in a clever and sprightly style; they always gave him a pleasant morning; and he often read them over and over again after Aunt Adèle had read them out to him.
Aunt Adèle now went upstairs, glad at having the letter, and knocked at the door of the old gentleman's study. He did not answer and, thinking that he had gone to his bedroom, she moved on there. The door was open and she walked in. The door between the bedroom and the study was open and she walked in. The old man was sitting in his usual chair, in front of the writing-table.
He was asleep. He sat limply in his chair; and it struck her how very small he looked, as though he had shrunk in his sleep. His eyes appeared to be closed and his hand lay on an open drawer of his desk. A waste-paper-basket stood beside him; other papers and letters lay scattered over the table.
"He's asleep," she said to herself.
And, so as not to wake him, she stole away on tiptoe through the open door. She did not wish to disturb his rest, if he did not wake of himself through the mere fact of her entering. He was so old, so very old....
She was sorry at having to wait before reading Elly's letter. She had nothing more to do, her housekeeping-duties were finished; the two servants were quietly doing their work. And Aunt Adèle sat down by the window in the dining-room, with her key-basket beside her, glad that everything was nicely tidied, and read the morning paper, which had just come: she would take it up to him presently. It was snowing outside. A still white peace slumbered through the room and through the house. The voice of one of the maids sounded for a moment and died away towards the kitchen. Aunt Adèle quietly read the four pages of the newspaper.
Then she got up, took her basket, the letter and the paper and went upstairs once more. She knocked at the door of the study. But the old man did not reply. She now opened the door. He was still sitting in his chair, in the same attitude of sleep as just now. But he looked even more shrivelled—oh, so very small!—in his short jacket.
Aunt started and came nearer to him. She saw that his eyes were not closed but staring glassily into distant space.... Aunt Adèle turned pale and trembled. When she was close to the old gentleman, she saw that he was dead.
He was dead. Death had overtaken him and a slight touch had sufficed to make his blood stand still for good in his worn veins. He was dead and, as it would seem, had died without a struggle, merely because death had come and laid a chill finger on his heart and head.
Aunt Adèle trembled and burst into sobs. She rang the bell and called out in fright for the maids, who came running up at once, the two of them.
"The old gentleman is dead!" cried Aunt Adèle, sobbing.
The two servants also began to cry; they were three women all alone.
"What shall we do, miss?"
"Keetje,"[1]said Aunt Adèle, "go straight to Dr. Thielens and then on to Mr. Steyn de Weert. I don't know of any one else. Your master had no relations. But Mr. Steyn de Weert is sure to help us. Take a cab and go at once. Bring Mr. Steyn straight back with you. Mrs. Steyn is in London. Go, Keetje, go, quick!"
The maid went, crying.
"He's dead," said Aunt Adèle. "The doctor can do nothing for him, but he must give a certificate. Door,[2]you and I will lay the master on his bed and undress him gently...."
They lifted the old man out of the chair, Aunt Adèle taking his head, Door his feet: he weighed nothing in the women's hands. He was so light, he was so light! They laid him on the bed and began to undress him. The jacket, when they hung it over a chair, bulged out behind, retained the shape of the old man's back.
Keetje had found Steyn de Weert at home; and he came back with her in the cab: they left word at Dr. Thielens' house; the doctor was out. Aunt Adèle met Steyn in the hall. A still, white peace dozed through the big house downstairs; outside, the snow fell thicker than ever.
"I knew of no one but you, Steyn!" cried Aunt Adèle, sobbing. "And I also sent for you because I knew—the old gentleman told me so—that you're his executor. Yes, he's dead. He went out like a candle.... This morning, I brought him his breakfast, as usual. Then he went and sat at his table, looking through some papers. I got a letter from Elly and came upstairs and found him ... asleep, as I thought. I went away, so as not to wake him. But, when I came back, he was still sitting like that. He was dead. He is dead, Steyn.... He was close upon ninety-four."
Steyn remained with Aunt Adèle until the doctor had been and signed the death-certificate; Steyn would see to everything that had to be done. He telegraphed to London to his wife: Aunt Adèle asked him to do this; he telegraphed to Florence to Lot and Elly: they certainly could not get back to the Hague in time for the funeral. And he went on at once to his brother-in-law Harold Dercksz, whom he found at home after lunch:
"Harold," he asked, "what are we to do about Mamma? We can't tell her, can we?"
Harold Dercksz had sunk back into his chair. It was one of his bad days, he was moaning with anguish and, though he did not complain, his face was wrung painfully and his breath came in dull jerks.
"Is ... is the old man ... dead?" he asked.
He said nothing more, sat moaning.
"Do you feel so rotten?" asked Steyn.
Harold Dercksz nodded.
"Shall I send for Dr. Thielens to come and see you?"
Harold Dercksz shook his head:
"There's nothing he can do. Thank you, Frans. I know what to do for it: the great thing is to pay no attention to it...."
He was silent again, sat staring in front of him, holding his hand before his eyes because the light outside, reflected by the snow, hurt his face. And he went on breathing with dull, irregular jerks.... The old man was dead.... The old man was dead.... At last.... The Thing, the terrible Thing was passing, was not yet past, was trailing, rustling, staring at him with its fixed, spectral eyes, which he had known ever since his childhood; but it was passing, passing.... Oh, how he had looked and looked for the old man's death! He had hated him, the murderer of his father, who had been dear to him when a child; but, first as a child, afterwards as a young man, he had been silent, for his mother's sake, had been silent for sixty years. Only now, quite lately, he had spoken to Daan, because Daan had come from India in dismay, knowing everything, knowing everything at this late date, after the death of thebaboe, who had spoken to her son, themantri.... He had hated him, in his secret self, hated his father's murderer. Then his hatred had cooled, he had come to understand the passion and the self-defence of the crime; then he had felt pity for the old man, who had to carry the burden of his remorse for all those years; then his pity had grown into compassion, deep, quivering compassion for both of them, for Takma and for his mother....
"Give him a stab; rather he than you!"
Oh, that passion, oh, the hatred, of years ago, in the woman that she had then been, a still young and always attractive woman, she who was now dragging out the last years of her life: did she remember? Did she remember, as she sat in her straight-backed chair, in that red twilight of the window-curtains?... He, Harold Dercksz, had longed for the death of Takma, longed for the death of his mother ... so that for both of them, the old people, the thing, the terrible Thing might have passed entirely and plunged into the depths of what had been.... He had longed; and now ... now the old man was dead!
Harold Dercksz breathed again:
"No, Frans," he said, in his soft, dull voice, "we cannot tell Mother.... Remember how very old she is...."
"So I thought. We must keep the old man's death from her at any rate.... It won't be possible to keep it from Dr. Roelofsz ... but it will be a blow to him."
"Yes," said Harold Dercksz. "You've telegraphed to Ottilie?"
"Adèle said I was to."
"Yes," said Harold Dercksz. "She's ... she's his daughter."
"Did she know it? We never spoke of it."
"I never spoke of it to Mamma either. I believe Ottilie suspected it. You're the executor...."
"So Adèle said."
"Yes," said Harold Dercksz. "He'll have left most of his money ... to Elly ... and to Ottilie. When's the funeral?"
"Monday."
"Lot and Elly won't be here."
"No. It won't be possible to wait for them."
"Will the funeral procession go through the Nassaulaan?"
"It's on the way to the cemetery."
"You had better let it go round ... not past Mamma's house. She's always sitting at the window."
"I'll arrange that."
"How soon can Ottilie be here?"
"She can take the night-boat this evening."
"Yes, she's sure to do that. She suspects ... she suspects it all; she was very fond of the old man and he of her."
"I must go, Harold. Would you mind telling Dr. Roelofsz?"
"I'll do that certainly. If I can be of any further use ..."
"No, thank you."
"Let us meet at Mother's this afternoon. We must warn the family as far as possible not to drop the least hint before Mamma; we must keep it from her. The shock would kill her...."
And Harold thought to himself that, if only she were dead, then the Thing would be past; but they had no right to murder her.
When Steyn opened the door, he ran against Ina in the passage. She had been at the window and seen him come; and, curious to know what he wanted to talk about with her father, she had crept upstairs and listened casually.
"Good-morning, Steyn," she said: she did not call him uncle because of the very slight difference between their ages. "Has anything happened?"
She knew before she asked.
"Old Mr. Takma is dead."
"Ina," said her father, "be sure not to say a word to Grandmamma. We want to keep it from her. It is such a blow for the old lady that it might be the death of her...."
"Yes," said Ina, "we won't say anything to Grandmamma. Mr. Takma was well off, wasn't he? I suppose Elly will get everything?..."
"I don't know," said Steyn. "Probably."
"Lot and Elly have become rich all of a sudden."
"Remember, Ina, won't you?" said her father.
He shook hands with Steyn and went straight off to Roelofsz'.
"Did he die during the night?" asked Ina.
Steyn gave the details. He let out that he had telegraphed to Lot and to his wife, Aunt Ottilie.
"Why Aunt Ottilie?"
"Because ..." said Steyn, hesitating, regretting his slip of the tongue. "It's better she should be there."
Ina understood. Aunt Ottilie was old Takma's daughter: she was sure to get a legacy too.
"How much do you think the old man will leave?... Haven't you any idea? Oh, not that it interests me to know: other people's money-matters arele moindre de mes soucis!...Don't you think Papa very depressed, Steyn? He has been so depressed since he saw Uncle Daan again.... Steyn, don'tyouknow why Uncle Daan has come to Holland?"
She was still yearning with curiosity and remained ever unsatisfied. She went about with her gnawing hunger for days and weeks on end; she did not know to whom to turn. The craving to know was constantly with her. It had spoilt her sleep lately. She had tried to start the subject once more with Aunt Stefanie, to get behind it at all costs; but Aunt Stefanie had told her firmly that she—whatever it might be—refusedto know, because she did not want to have anything to do with old sins and things that were not proper; even though they had to do with her mother, they did not concernher. It was Hell lying in wait for them; and, after Aunt Stefanie's penitential homily, Ina knew that she would get nothing out of her aunt, not even the hazy recollection that might have loomed for a moment before her aunt's eyes. What was it, what could it be that Papa had known for sixty years, that Uncle Daan had learnt quite lately and that had brought him to Holland? Oh, to whom, to whom was she to turn?
No, Steyn knew nothing and was surprised at her question, thinking that Daan must have had business to discuss with Harold, as usual. And he went away, hurried off to Stefanie, to Anton, to Daan and Floor, to the Van Welys; and he impressed upon all of them that the old man's death must be kept from Mamma. They all promised, feeling one and the same need, as children, to keep from their mother the death of the man to whom she had remained so long attached, whom she had seen sitting opposite her, almost every day, on a chair by the window. And Steyn arranged with all of them merely to say that Mr. Takma was unwell and not allowed out ... and to keep it up, however difficult it might be in the long run.
Then Steyn went to Aunt Adèle; and she asked:
"Couldn't we tidy up those papers in the old gentleman's study, Steyn? It's such a litter. They're all lying just as he left them."
"I'd rather wait till Lot and Elly are back," said Steyn. "All you have to do is to lock the door of the room. There's no need to seal anything up. I've spoken to the solicitor."
He went away; and Aunt Adèle was left alone in the house of death, behind the closed shutters. The old lady, over in the Nassaulaan, so close by, never saw any one except her children and grandchildren: she would not be told. Monday was the funeral. Lot and Elly could not be expected home before Wednesday. It was hard on them, poor children, to be disturbed like that in Italy, in the midst of their work. But still Elly was—to the outside world—the old man's only relation; and she was his heiress....
Aunt Adèle was not grasping. The old man was sure to have left her a handsome legacy: she felt certain of that. What would upset her was to have to leave the big house: she had lived there so long, had looked after it so very long for the old gentleman. She was fond of it, was fond of every piece of furniture in it.... Or would Elly keep the house on? She thought not: Elly considered it gloomy; and it would be too big, thought Aunt Adèle, for Elly was no doubt sharing the money with Ottilie Steyn.... Of course, people would talk, though perhaps not so very much; the old gentleman had, so to speak, become dead to the outside world, with the exception of the Dercksz family; and, except Dr. Roelofsz, all his contemporaries were dead. The only survivors of his period were the old lady and the doctor.... Yes, she, Aunt Adèle, would certainly have to leave the house; and the thought brought tears to her eyes. How beautifully it was kept, for such an old place! What she regretted was that Steyn had not consented to tidy up the papers in the study. He had locked the door and given her the key. That was the only room, in all the tidy house, with litter and dust in it. Next to the study, in his bedroom, lay the old gentleman: he was to be put into his coffin that evening; Steyn and Dr. Thielens would be there then. The whole house was quiet and tidy around the dead man, except for the dust and litter in the study. The thought irritated Aunt Adèle. And, that afternoon, she took the key and went in. The room had remained as it was when they lifted the old gentleman out of his chair—so light, oh, so light!—and laid him on his bed and undressed him....
Aunt Adèle opened the windows: the cold wintry air entered and she drew her woollen cape closer over her shoulders. She stood at a loss for a moment, with her duster in her hand, not knowing where to begin. One of the drawers of the writing-table had been left open; there were papers on the table; a waste-paper-basket stood close by; papers lay on the ground. No, she couldn't leave things like that; instead of a crime, it was a kindness to the old man who lay waiting in the next room, lifeless, to put a little order into it all. She collected what she found on the table and tucked it into a letter-wallet. She dusted the desk, arranged everything neatly, pushed the open drawer to and locked it. She picked up what lay on the floor; and she gave a start, for she saw that it was a letter torn across the middle, a letter torn in two. The old gentleman had been tearing up letters: she could see that from the paper-basket, in which the little, torn pieces made white patches. This letter had evidently dropped from his hand at the last moment of all, when death came and tapped him on the heart and head. He had not had the strength to tear up into smaller pieces the letter already torn in two; the two halves had slipped from his fingers and he himself had slid out of life. It touched Aunt Adèle very much; tears came to her eyes. She remained staring irresolutely, with the two pieces in her hand. Should she tear them up? Should she put them away, in the wallet, for Steyn? Better tear them up: the old gentleman had intended to tear them up. And she tore the two pieces in four....
At that moment, an irresistible impulse forced her to glance at the uppermost piece. It was hardly curiosity, for she did not even think that she was holding in her hand anything more than a very innocent letter—the old gentleman kept so many—a letter, among a hundred others, which he had gradually come to the conclusion that he would do well to destroy. It was hardly curiosity: it was a pressure from without, an impulse from outside herself, a force compelling her against her honest conviction. She did not resist it: she read; and, as she read, the idea rose clearly within her to finish tearing up the letter and drop the pieces in the basket.
Yet she did not do so: she read on. She turned pale. She was a simple-minded, placid woman, who had reached years of maturity calmly, with healthy, unstirred blood, foreign to all violent passion. Reading had left her soul untouched; and burning sentences, she thought, were invented by the authors for the sake of fine writing. The fact that words could be written down such as she now read, on paper yellow with age, in ink pale-red with age, struck her with consternation, as though a red flame had burst forth from smouldering ashes which she was raking. She never knew that such a thing could be. She did not know that those violent glowing words could be uttered just like that. They hypnotized her. She had sunk into the old man's chair and she read, unable to do anything but read. She read of burning things, of passion which she had never suspected, of a melting together of body and soul, a fusion of souls, a fusion of bodies, only to forget, at all costs to forget. She read, in a frenzy of words, of a purple madness exciting itself in order to plunge and annihilate two people in each other's soul and, with undiscovered kisses, to burn away and melt away in oblivion, in oblivion....
To melt into each other and never to be apart again.... To be together for ever.... To be inseparable for ever in unquenchable passion.... To remain so and to forget.... Especially to forget, O God, to forget ... that one night, that night!... And through the first passionate purple words there now began to flow the purple of blood.... Through the words of passionate love there now flowed words of passionate hatred.... The frenzied joy that this hatred had cooled after all.... The jubilant assurance that, if that night could ever recur, the hatred would cool a second time! The mad words deceived themselves, for, immediately after, they again writhed in despair and declared that nevertheless, in spite of satisfied passion, the memory was as a spectre, a bloody spectre, that never left you.... Oh, the hatred would always cool like that, for a third time, for a fourth time ... but yet the bloody spectre remained horrible!... It was maddening.... It was maddening.... And the letter ended with an entreaty that he would come, come speedily, to blend with her in soul and body and, in the rapture of it, to forget and no longer to behold the spectre. At the bottom of the letter were the words, "Tear this up at once," and the name:
"OTTILIE."
Aunt Adèle remained sitting motionless, with the four pieces in her hand. She had read the letter: it was irrevocable. She wished that she had not read it. But it was too late now. And she knew....
The letter was dated from Tegal, sixty years ago. Flames no longer flickered out of the words, now that Aunt Adèle had read them, but the scarlet quivered before her terrified eyes. She sat huddled and trembling and her eyes stared at that quivering scarlet. She felt her knees shake; they would not let her rise from her chair. And sheknew. Through a welter of hatred, passion, jubilation, madness, passionate love and passionate remorse, the letter was clear and conjured up—as in an unconscious impulse to tell everything, to feel everything over again, to describe everything in crimson clearness—a night of years and years ago, a night in silent mountains, by a dark jungle, by a river in flood, a night in a lonelypasangrahan, a night of love, a night of hatred, of surprise, of self-defence, of not knowing how, of rising terror, of despair to the pitch of madness.... And the words conjured up a scene of struggle and bloodshed in a bedroom, conjured up a group of three people who carried a corpse towards that river in flood, not knowing what else to do, while the pouring rain streamed and clattered down.... All this the words conjured up, as though suggested by a force from the outside, an impulse irresistible, a mystic violence compelling the writer to say what, logically speaking, she should have kept hidden all her life long; to describe in black on white the thing that was a crime, until her letter became an accusation; to scream it all out and to paint in bright colours the thing which it would have been safest to keep buried in a remorseful soul and to erase, so that not a trace remained to betray it....
And the simple, placid woman, grown to mature years in calmness of blood, sat dismayed at what had been revealed to her. At first, her dismay had shone red in front of her, dismay at an evocation of hatred and passionate love; and now, suddenly, there rose before her eyes the drawing-room of an old woman and the woman herself sitting at a window, brittle with the lasting years, and, opposite her, Takma, both silently awaiting the passing. The old woman sat there still; yonder, in the next room, lay the old man and he too awaited the morrow and the last honours: for to-day everything was past....
O God, sothatwas the secret of their two old lives! So vehemently had they loved, so violently hated, so tragic and ever-secret a crime had they committed in that lonely mountain night and such blood-red memories had they dragged with them, always and always, all their long, long lives! And now, suddenly, she alone knew what nobody knew!... She alone knew, she thought; and she shuddered with dread. What was she to do with that knowledge, what was she to do with those four pieces of yellow paper, covered with pale-red ink as though with faded letters of blood?... What was she to do, what was she to do with it all?... Her fingers refused to tear those four pieces into smaller pieces and to drop them into the paper-basket. It would make her seem an accomplice. And what was she to do with her knowledge, with what she alone knew?... That tragic knowledge would oppress her, the simple-minded woman, to stifling-point!...
Now at last she rose, shivering. It was very cold in the aired room. She went to the window to close it and felt her feet tottering, her knees knocking together. Her eyes staring in dismay, she shook her head to and fro, to and fro. Mechanically, with her duster in her hand, she dusted here and there, absent-mindedly, constantly returning to the same place, dusting two and three times over. Mechanically she put the chairs straight; and her habit of neatness was such that, when she left the room, she was still trembling, but the room was tidy. She had locked up the torn letter. She could not destroy it. And suddenly she was seized with a fresh curiosity, a fresh impulse from without, a strange feeling that compelled her: she wanted to see the old man.... And she entered the death-chamber on the tips of her slippered toes. In the pale dim light, the old man's head lay white on the white pillow, on the bed with its white counterpane. The eyelids were closed; the face had fallen away on either side of the nose and mouth in loose wrinkles of discoloured parchment; there were a few scanty grey hairs near the ears, like a dull silver wreath. And Aunt Adèle looked down upon him, with eyes starting from their sockets, and shook her head to and fro in dismay. There he lay, dead. She had known him and looked after him for years. She had never suspectedthat. There he lay, dead; and in his dead relics lay all the past passionate love and hatred; surely too the past remorse and remembrance. Or was there a hereafter yet to come, with more struggling and more remorse and penitence ... and punishment perhaps?...
Whatever he might have suffered within himself, he had not been fully punished here on earth. His life, outwardly, had flowed long and calmly. He had achieved consideration, almost riches. He had not had an ailing old age. On the contrary, his senses had remained unimpaired; and she remembered that he even used often to complain, laughing in his genial manner—which was too pronounced to be sincere—that he heard everything and was far from growing deaf with age, that in fact he heard voices which did not exist. What voices had he heard, what voice had he heard calling? What voice had called to him when the letter, half-destroyed and too long preserved, dropped from the hand that played him false?... No, in this world he had not been fully punished, unless indeed his whole life was a punishment.... A cold shiver passed through Aunt Adèle: that a person could live for years beside another and not know him and know nothing about him! How long was it? For twenty-three years, she, the poor relation, had lived with him like that!... And the old woman also lived like that....
Shaking her head in stupefaction, Aunt Adèle moved away. She clasped her hands together, gently, with an old maid's gesture. She saw the old woman in her imagination. The old woman was sitting, dignified and majestic, frail and thin, in her high-backed chair. She had once been the woman who was able to write that letter full of words red with passion and hatred and madness and the wish to forget, in a fusion of the senses with him, with him who lay there so insignificant, so small, so old, dead now, after years and years. She had once been able to write like that!...
The words still burnt before the eyes of the stupefied elderly woman, placid in soul and blood. That such things were, that such things could be!... Her head kept shaking to and fro....