Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter XIII

by Louis Couperus

CHAPTER XIII

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 cafes, 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 of La Gioconda...."

"The smile of La 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 of quartiers and 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-mache chicken here,"—they were in the Avenue de l'Opera,—"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 Theatre Frangais, I had a shock, just as I did to-day at the Venus of Milo. The Theatre 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, your blase husband? ... In Italy, we shall find real enjoyment...."

"Why, everything will be still older there!"

"Yes, but everything is not growing older. That's all past, it's all the past. 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, what I see of it, is dead; 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 where I'll take you: quite a small place, but exquisite. They have a homard a l'americaine that'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 superieure," 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 Dieu doesn't expect us to go to such extremes as madame does. I don't pray a quarter as much as madame. Madame is always praying. I shouldn't have time for it. Le bon Dieu doesn'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. We can't always be praying."

"Mamma can," said Theo, with a laugh.

"Madame prays too much" said the reverend mother. "Madame is an enthousiaste ..."

"Always was, in everything she did," said Theo, staring in front of him.

"And she has remained so. She is an enthousiaste in her new creed, in our religion. But she oughn't to go to extremes ... or to fast unnecessarily. ... The other day we found her fainting in the chapel.... And we have our little trues: when it is not absolutely necessary to fast, we give her bouillon in her soupe-maigre or 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 prevented him, 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. "Even we don't do that. It is unnecessary. It is not even convenable. 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 the homard a l'americaine!" cried Theo.

And, as he hailed a carriage, it was as though his fat body became relaxed, simply from breathing the fresh, free air.