Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV
IT was Anton Dercksz, the old lady's eldest son by her second marriage; by her first she had only an unmarried daughter, Stefanie de Laders. Anton also had never married; he had made his career in Java; he was an ex-resident. He was seventy-five, taciturn, gloomy and self-centred, owing to his long, lonely life, full of lonely thoughts about himself, the heady thoughts of a sensualist who, in his old age, had lapsed into a sensualist in imagination. ... It had been his nature, first instinctively, then in a more studied fashion, to hide himself, not to give himself; not to give of himself even that which would have won him the praise and esteem of his fellow-men. Endowed with intelligence above the ordinary, a student, a man of learning, he had fostered that intelligence only for himself and had never been more than an average official. His self-' centred, gloomy soul had demanded and still demanded solitary enjoyments, even as his powerful body had craved for obscure pleasures.

He entered in his overcoat, which he kept closely wrapped about him, feeling chilly, though it was still a sunny September and autumn had hardly given its first shiver. He came to see his mother once a week, from an old habit of respect and awe. Her children&mdash;elderly men and women, all of them&mdash;all called regularly, but first asked Anna, the maid, with the cat always among her skirts, who was upstairs with Mamma. If some member of the family were there already, they did not go up at once, anxious on no account to tire her with too great a gathering and too many voices. Then Anna would receive them in the downstair morning-room, where she kept up a fire in the winter, and often the old servant would offer the visitor a brandy-cherry. If old Mr. Takma had only just arrived, Anna did not fail to say so; and the children or grandchildren would wait downstairs for a quarter of an hour and longer, because they knew that Mamma, that Grandmamma liked to be alone for a while with Takma, her old friend. If Takma had been there some time, Anna would reckon out whether she could let them go upstairs at once.... The companion was not there in the afternoons, except when mevrouw sent for her, as sometimes happened when the weather was bad and nobody called.

Anton Dercksz entered, hesitating because of Takma, uncertain whether he was intruding. The old woman's children, however much advanced in years, continued to behave as children to the once stern and severe mother, whom they still saw in the authority of her motherhood. And Anton in particular always saw her like that, seated in that chair which was as an unyielding throne, strange in that very last and fragile life hanging from a brittle, invisible thread, which, in snapping, would have broken life's last string. At the window, because of a lingering ray of sunshine outside, the mother sat in a crimson twilight of curtains and valance, sat as if she would never move again until the moment came for the dark portals to open. For the "children" did not see her move, save with the single, angular gesture sometimes suggested by once active, but now gouty, slender, wand-like fingers. Anton Dercksz knew that&mdash;if the portals had not opened that day&mdash;his mother would move, round about eight o'clock, to be taken to bed by Anna and the companion. But he never saw this: what he saw was the well-nigh complete immobility of the brittle figure in the chair that was almost a throne, amid a twilight just touched with pink. Old man as he himself was, he was impressed by this. His mother sat there so strangely, so unreally: she sat waiting, waiting. Her eyes, already glazed, stared before her, sometimes as though she were afraid of something.... The lonely man had developed within himself an acute gift of observation, a quick talent for drawing inferences, which he never allowed any one to perceive. For years he had held the theory that his mother was always thinking of something, always thinking of something, an invariable something. What could it be? ... Perhaps he was mistaken, perhaps he looked too far, perhaps his mother's expression was but the staring of almost sightless eyes. Or was she thinking of hidden things in her life, things sunk in her life as in a deep, deep pool? Had she her secrets, as he had his, the secrets of his sullen hedonism? He was not inquisitive: everybody had his secrets; perhaps Mother had hers. He would never strive to find out. People had always said that Takma and Mother had been lovers: she no doubt thought of those old things ... or was she not thinking, was she merely waiting and staring out of her window? ... However this might be, his awe remained unchanged.

"It is lovely weather, for September," he said, after the usual greetings.

He was a big man, broad in his overcoat, with a massive florid face, in which deep folds hung beside the big nose and made dewlaps under the cheeks; the grey-yellow moustache bristled above a sensual mouth with thick, purple lips, which parted over the yellow teeth, crumbling, but still firm in their gums; the thick beard, however recently shaved, still left a black stubble on the cheeks; and a deep scar cleft the twice deeply-wrinkled forehead, which rose towards a thinning tuft of yellow-grey hair, with the head bald at the back of it. The skin of his neck was rough, above the low, stand-up collar, and grooved, though not quite so deeply, like that of an old labourer, with deep-ploughed furrows. His coarse-fisted hands lay like clods on his thick knees; and a watch-chain, with big trinkets, hung slackly over his great stomach, which had forced open a button of his worn and shiny waistcoat. His feet rested firmly on the carpet in their Wellington boots, whose tops showed round under the trouser-legs. This outward appearance betrayed only a rough, sensual, elderly man: it showed him neither in his intellect nor, above all, in his power of imagination. The great dream-actor that he was remained hidden from whoever saw him no otherwise than thus.

Takma, so many years older, with his habit of gaiety and his sometimes shrill heartiness, which gave a birdlike sound to his old voice and a factitious glitter to his false teeth, Takma, in his short, loose jacket, had something delicate beside Anton Dercksz, something younger and more restless, together with a certain kindly, gentle, benevolent comprehension, as if he, the very old man, understood the whol^ life of the younger one. But this was just what always infuriated Anton with Takma, because he, Anton Dercksz, saw through it. It concealed something: Takma hid a secret, though he hid it in a different way from Anton Dercksz'. He hid a secret: when he started, with that jerk of his head, he was afraid that he had been seen through.... Well, Anton was not inquisitive. But this very old man, this former lover of his mother, of the woman who still filled Anton with awe when he saw her sitting erect, waiting, in her chair by the window: this old man annoyed him, irritated him, had always roused his dislike. He had never allowed it to show and Takma had never perceived it.

The three old people sat without exchanging many words, in the narrow drawing-room. The old woman had now calmly mastered herself, because her son, her "child," was sitting there and she had always remained calm before the splenetic glance of his slightly prominent eyes. Straight up she sat, as though enthroned, as though she were a sovereign by reason of her age and her authority, dignified and blameless, but so frail and fragile, as though the aura of death would presently blow away her soul. Her few words sounded a note of appreciation that her son had come to see her, asking, as was his filial duty, once a week, after her health. She was pleased at this; and it was not difficult for her to calm herself, suddenly put in a placid mood by that feeling of satisfaction, even though but now, as in a suggestion from without, she had been obliged to speak of former things which she had seen pass before her eyes. And, when the bell rang again, she said:

"That's the children, I expect...."

They all three listened, in silence. Sharp-eared old Takma heard some one speaking to Anna in the hall:

"They're asking if it won't be too much for you," said Takma.

"Anton, call down the stairs to have them shown up," said the old lady; and her voice rang like a maternal command.

Anton Dercksz rose, went to the door and called out:

"You can come up. Grandmamma's expecting you."

Lot and Elly came in and their entrance was as though they feared to dispel the atmosphere around the old woman with the too-great youthfulness approaching her. But the old woman made an angular movement of her arms, which lifted themselves in the black folds of the wide sleeves; and a hint of the gesture was given, gouty-stiff, in the crimson shade of the curtains, while she said:

"So you're going to get married; that's right."

The gesture brought the mittened hands to the level of Lot's head, which she held for a moment and kissed with a trembling mouth; she kissed Elly too; and the girl said, prettily:

"Grandmamma...."

"I am glad to see you both. Mamma has already told me the great news. Be happy, children, happy...."

The words sounded like a short speech from out of the twilight of the throne-like chair, but they trembled, breaking with emotion:

"Be happy, children, happy" Mamma had said.

And Anton Dercksz seemed to see that his mother was thinking that there had not been many happy marriages in the family. He was conscious of the underlying thought in her words and was glad that he had never been married: it gave him a silent, pleasurable sense of satisfaction, as he looked at Lot and Elly. They were sitting there so youthful and unwrung, he thought; but he knew that this was only on the surface, that Lot, after all, was thirty-eight and that this was not Elly's first engagement. Yet how young those two lives were and how many vigorous years had they not before them! He became jealous at the thought and envious; and his eyes grew sullen when he reflected that vigorous years were no longer his. And, with the sly glance of a man secretly enjoying the sensual pleasures of the imagination, he asked himself whether Lot was really a fellow who ought to think of marrying. Lot was delicately built, was hardly a man of flesh and blood, was like his mother in appearance, with his pink face and his fair plastered hair, his short fair moustache above his cynical upper lip, and very spruce in his smooth-fitting jacket and the neat little butterfly tie beneath his double collar. And yet no fool, thought Anton Dercksz: his articles written from Italy, on Renascence subjects, were very good and Anton had read them with pleasure, without ever complimenting Lot upon them; and his two novels were excellent: one about the Hague, one about Java, with a keen insight into Dutch-Indian society. There was a great deal in the lad, more than one would think, for he looked not a man of flesh and blood, but a fair-haired, finikin doll, a fashion-plate.

Elly was not pretty, had a pale but sensible little face: he did not believe that she was a woman of warm passion, or, if she was, it would not reveal itself till later. He did not expect that they would kiss each other very rapturously; and yet that was the most genuine consolation in this confounded life of ours, always had been so to him. Everything grew confused before his jaundiced eyes, in a regret for things that were lost; but nevertheless he listened to the conversation, which was carried on calmly and quietly, in order not to tire Grandmamma: when Lot and Elly meant to get married, where they would go for the honeymoon.

"We shall be married in three months," said Lot. "There's nothing to wait for. We shall go to Paris and on to Italy. I know Italy well and can show Elly about...."

Anton Dercksz rose and took his leave; and, when he went downstairs, he found his sister, Ottilie Steyn de Weert, and Roelofsz, the old doctor, in the morning-room:

"The children are upstairs," he said.

"Yes, I know, said Ottilie. "That's why I'm waiting; it would be too much for Mamma otherwise ..."

"Well-well-well," muttered the old doctor.

He sat huddled in a chair, a shapeless mass of dropsical obesity: his one stiff leg was stuck out straight in front of him and his paunch hung sideways over it in curving lines; his face, clean-shaven but bunched into wrinkles, was like the face of a very old monk; his thin grey hair looked as if it were moth-eaten and hung in frayed wisps from his skull, which was shaped like a globe, with a vein at one temple meandering in high relief; he lisped and muttered exclamation upon exclamation; his watery eyes swam behind gold spectacles.

"Well-well-well, Ottilie, so your Lot is getting married at last!..."

He was eighty-eight, the doctor, the last surviving contemporary of Grandmamma and Mr. Takma; he had brought Ottilie Steyn into the world, in Java, at a time when he was a young doctor, not long since arrived from Holland; and he called her either by her Christian name or "child."

"At last?" cried Ottilie, in a vexed tone. "It's early enough for me!"

"Yes-yes-yes, yes-yes, child; you'll miss him, you'll miss your boy, I daresay.... Still, they'll make a nice couple, he and Elly, well-well, yes-yes-yes, working together, artistic, yes, well.... That good old Anna hasn't started her fires yet! This room's warm, but upstairs, yes-yes, it's very chilly. ... Takma's always blazing hot inside, eh-eh? Well-well! Mamma likes a cool room too; well-well, cool: cold, I call it. I consider it warmer in here: ay-ay, it is warmer down here. Well-well! ... Mamma wasn't so well, child, yesterday...."

"Come, doctor," said Anton Dercksz, "you'll make Mamma see a hundred yet!"

And he buttoned up his coat and went away, satisfied at having performed his filial duty for that week.

"Oh-oh-oh!" cried the doctor; but Anton was gone. "A hundred! A hundred! Oh-dear-no, oh-dear-no, tut-tut! No, I can do nothing, I can do nothing. I'm old myself, yes-yes, I'm old: eightee-eight years old, eightee-eight, Lietje! ... Yes-yes, that counts, yes-yes.... No, I can do nothing more, what do you say? And it's a good thing that Mamma's got Dr. Thielens: he's young, ay-ay, he's young.... Here come the children! Well-well!" the doctor continued, by way of greeting. "Best congratulations, ay-ay, very nice! Art, eh, art for art's sake? ... Is Granny better to-day? Then I'll just go upstairs, yes-yes, well-well! ..."

"Where are you going now, children?" asked Mamma Ottilie.

"To Aunt Stefanie's," said Elly. "And perhaps to Uncle Harold's afterwards."

Anna let them out; and Ottilie, going upstairs behind Dr. Roelofsz, who hoisted himself up one step after the other, tried to understand what he was muttering, but understood nothing. He kept talking to himself:

"Yes-yes, that Anton, all-very-well, make her see a hundred! A hundred! Well, he'll see a hundred all right, ay-ay, yes-yes, though he has been such a beast! ... Yes-yes, yes-yes, a beast: don't I know him? Tut-tut! A beast, that's what he's been! ... Yes-yes, perhaps he's still at it!"

"What do you say, doctor?"

"Nothing, child, nothing.... Make her see a hundred! I, I, who am old myself; eightee-eight ... eightee-eight! ..."

Puffing with the effort of climbing the stairs, he entered and greeted the two old people, his contemporaries, who nodded to him, each at a window:

"Well-well, yes-yes, how-do, Ottilie? How-do, Takma? ... Well-well, yes-yes.... Well, I don't call it warm in here!..."

"Come," said Takma, "it's only September...."

"Yes, you're always blazing hot inside!..."

Ottilie walked behind him, like a little child, and kissed her mother, very gently and carefully; and, when she went up to Takma afterwards, he pulled her hand, so that she might give him a kiss too.