Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter XXI

by Louis Couperus

CHAPTER XXI

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:

"Now I'll go 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.

He knew: 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 frock-coat 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 how should she 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, "I am glad 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 heard everything, 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:

"What have you heard?"

"I've heard everything," Daan Dercksz repeated. "Heard it all ... in India. I know ... I know everything."

"You know ... everything? Oh? Oh? You know everything? ... What ... what do you 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 a word. I am eightee-eight years of age ... but I've ... I've never said a word."

"No, you never said anything ,... but Mamma's baboe ..."

"Ma-Boeten?"

"Yes, Ma-Boeten told her son, a mantri at Tegal. Ma-Boeten is dead and the mantri has 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, you know?"

"Yes, I know."

"What did the mantri say? 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, 'I hate you, I hate you: 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 you know!" 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 the kali ..."

"I held an inquest on the body next day ... and I ... I understood.... 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 a word.... O my God, no-no, no-no!..."

"When I knew, Roelofsz, I couldn't stay 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 the mantri know ... about me?"

"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 did not know ..."

"What ... What? ... What didn't I know?"

"What you did not know is that Harold ..."

"Harold? Your brother?"

"Knew! ..."

"Harold knew?"

"Yes! ... Yes! ..."

"He knew? How did Harold know? O my God, O my God! How did Harold know?"

"Harold knew ... because he saw!"

"He saw? Harold saw?"

"He was with them there, in the hills; he was in the pasangrahan."

"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 it always, all his life, all his life long!"

"O my God, O my God! ... Oh, dear! ... Is it true? Is it really true?"

"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't ever tell!"

"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 discussed everything with 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 ..."

"Their child! ..."

"Yes-yes, her child and his. Hush-hush, Daan, these are such old things, 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, about you ... 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? What is it?"

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 she saw again, 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.