CHAPTER VIII
LOT PAUWS was sitting in his room, writing, when
he heard the voices of his mother and of her
husband, Steyn, below. Mamma Ottilie’s voice
sounded shrill, in steadily rising anger; and Steyn’s
calm, indifferent bass voice boomed with short, jerky
sentences and egged on Mamma’s words till she
stuttered them out and almost choked in the panting
effort.
Lot put down his pen with a sigh and went downstairs.
He saw the old servant-maid listening
eagerly at the kitchen-door, but she disappeared
when she heard Lot’s footstep on the stair.
Lot entered the room:
“What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter? I’ll
tell you what’s the matter: I was a fool when I
married, I was a fool to bring my property into
settlement. If I hadn’t, I could have done as I
pleased! Aren’t they my children, my own children?
If they want money, can’t I send it to them? Must
they starve, while he … while he …”
She pointed to Steyn.
“Well, what?” said Steyn, challenging her.
“While he blews my money on women, his everlasting,
low women …”
“I say, Mamma!”
“Well, it’s true!”
“Hush, Mamma, for shame: don’t talk like that I
What’s it. all about, Steyn?”
“Mamma has had a letter from London.”
“From the Trevelleys?”
“From Hugh. He asks for money.”
“And can’t I send my son money if I want to?”
cried Mamma to Lot. “Isn’t Hugh my child, isn’t
he my son? It’s bad enough of you to object to
my seeing much of them, but am I to break with
them altogether? If Hugh is without an appointment
for the moment, can’t I send him some money?
Isn’t it my money? Steyn has his money, his pension.
I don’t ask him for his money!”
“Look here, Lot,” said Steyn. “Mamma can do
as she likes, of course. But there is hardly enough
as you know, for our regular expenses. If Mamma
goes and sends Hugh fifty pounds, I don’t know how
we shall manage. That’s all; and for the rest I
don’t care what Mamma says.”
“You blew my money on low women, for you’re
low yourself and always have been!”
“Mamma, stop that! And be quiet. I can’t
stand quarrelling and scolding. Be quiet. Be quiet,
Mamma. Let me see Hugh’s letter.”
“No, I sha’n’t let you see it either! What do
you imagine? I’m not accountable to my son!
Are you also siding with that brute against your
mother? You’d both of you like me to break with
my own children, my own flesh and blood, my
darlings, my d-dar-lings, because it suits your book!
When do I see them? When? Tell me, when?
Mary, John, Hugh: when do I see Hugh? Suppose
I was mistaken in their father, aren’t they my own
children, just as much as you and Ottilie? I can’t
let my boy starve!”
“I know quite well that Hugh abuses your kind’
ness, your weakness … not to speak of the two
others.”
“That’s right, don’t you speak of them! Just
break with your brothers and sisters! Just think
that there’s nobody in the world but yourself and
that your mother has no one but you; and go and
get married and leave your mother alone with that
fellow, that low fellow, who sneaks out at night to
his women! Because he’s still young! Because he’s
so young and his wife is old! But, if he has to go
to his women and if you get married, I promise you
I won’t stay in the house alone and I swear I’ll go
to Hugh. My own dear boy, my d-dar-lmg: when
do I see him? When do I see him? I haven’t seen
him for a year!”
“Please, Mamma, keep calm and don’t scream so.
Talk quietly. You make me so dreadfully tired with
that screaming and quarrelling and scolding: I can’t
stand it … I won’t ask you to show me Hugh’s
letter. But Steyn is right; and, from what I know
of our present financial position, it would be folly
to send six hundred guilders to Hugh, who never has
more than some vague ‘appointment’ in the City.
You can’t do it.”
“Yes, I can, selfish brute that you are! What
do you know about your mother’s money? I always
have money when I want it!”
“Yes, I know: you lose it and then you find it
again in your cupboard….”
“And, though I don’t find it in my cupboard this
time and if Steyn keeps the money locked up, I
shall just go to the bank and ask for it and they
won’t refuse me. And I’ll have it sent by the bank.
There, you see, I can do it, grasping, selfish brutes
that you both are! I’ll put on my hat and go.
I’ll go at once, I’ll go to the bank; and Hugh …
Hugh shall have his money to-morrow or next day,
any day. I should do it for you, Lot, or for Ottilie;
and I shall do it for Hugh. I am his mother and I
shall do it: I shall, I shall, so there!”
She stammered and choked with rage; and a prick
of jealousy, because Lot had defended Steyn and
because Steyn cared more for Lot than for her, drove
into the flesh of her heart and caused her such suffering
that she no longer knew what she was saying
and felt like boxing Lot’s ears and felt that …
that she could have murdered Steyn! And she
flounced out of the room, pale with passion, knocking
against the furniture, slamming the door, and
rushed upstairs. She could have sobbed with that
pricking pain…. Steyn and Lot heard her
moving and stamping overhead, putting on her things
and talking to herself and scolding, scolding,
scolding.
Steyn’s hard features, rough but handsome under
his beard, were suddenly twisted to softness by a
spasm of despair.
“Lot, my dear fellow,” he said, “I’ve stood this
for nearly twenty years.”
“Now then, Steyn!”
“For nearly twenty years. Screaming, scolding,
wrangling…. She’s your mother. We won’t
say any more about it.”
“Steyn, she’s my mother and I’m fond of her,
in spite of everything; but you know I feel how you
must suffer.”
“Suffer? I don’t know. A chap gets dulled. But
I do think sometimes that I’ve thrown away my life
in a most wretched way. And who’s benefited by it?
Not even she.”
“Try to look upon her as a child, as a tempersome,
spoilt child. Be nice to her, once in a way.
A kind word, a caress: that’s what she needs. She’s
a woman who lives on petting. Poor Mamma: I
know nobody who needs it as she does. She leans
up against me sometimes, while I stroke her. Then
she’s happy. If I give her a kiss, she’s happy. If I
tell her she’s got a soft skin, she’s happy. She is a
child. Try to look upon her as that; and be nice
to her, just once or twice.”
“I can’t, any longer. I was mad on her, madly
in love with her, at one time. If she hadn’t always
quarrelled and been so impossibly unreasonable, we
could still be living together amicably. Though she
is older than I, we could still have got on. But she’s
impossible. You see it as well as I do. There’s no
money; and, because she doesn’t discover any in her
cupboard this time, she simply goes and draws it
from the bank to send to Hugh. It’s those letters
from the Trevelleys which cause scenes at regular
intervals. They bleed her in turns; and the shabbiest
part of it, you know, is that the father’s at the
back of it.”
“Is that quite certain?”
“Yes. Trevelley’s always at the back of it. He
influences those children. We are getting into debt
for Trevelley’s sake…. Lot, I’ve often thought
of getting a divorce. I wouldn’t do it, because
Mamma has been twice divorced already. But I
sometimes ask myself, am I not throwing away my
life for nothing? What good am I to her or she
to me? We are staying together for nothing, for
things that are past, for a passion that is past: one
moment of mad, insensate blindness, of not knowing
or caring, of just wanting…. For things that
are past I have been throwing away my life, day
after day, for twenty years on end. I am a simple
enough chap, but I used to enjoy my life, I enjoyed
the service … and I have taken a dislike to
everything and go on wasting my life day after day
… For something that is quite past I …”
“Steyn, you know I appreciate what you do. And
you’re doing it purely for Mamma’s sake. But, you
know, I have often said to you, go your own way.
Barren sacrifices make no appeal to me. If you
think you will still find something in life by leaving
Mamma, then do so.”
But Steyn seemed to have recovered his indifference:
“No, my boy, what’s spoilt is spoilt. Twenty
years wear out a man’s energy to make something
more of his life. I felt at the time that I oughn’t
to desert Mamma, when she was left all alone, not
wholly through my fault, perhaps, but still very
much so. To leave her now, when she is an old
woman, would be the act of a cad: I can’t do it.
I take that line not as a barren sacrifice, but because
I can’t help it. I don’t allow my life to be made a
hell of. I go my own way when I want to, though
Mamma exaggerates when she pretends that I go
to a woman at night.”
“Mamma is naturally jealous and she’s still
jealous of you.”
“And she’s jealous of you. She’s an unhappy
woman; and the older she grows the unhappier she
will be. She’s one of those people who ought never
to grow old…. Come along, Jack, we’re going
for a walk…. But, Lot, if Mamma goes on
like this, we shall have to have her property administered
for her. There’s nothing else for it.”
Lot gave a start: he pictured Mamma with her
property transferred to an administrator; and yet
Steyn was right. He thought that he had better have
a quiet talk with Mamma. For the moment, there
was nothing to be done: Mamma was exasperated,
was behaving like a lunatic and would send Hugh
the fifty pounds.
Lot went back to his room and tried to resume
his work. He was writing an essay On Art, proving
that art was entertainment and the artist an entertainer.
He did not know whether he agreed with
everything that he was saying, but that didn’t matter
and was of no importance. It was a subject to fill
a few brilliant pages, written with all his talent for
words; and it would catch the public, it would be
read: it would rouse indignation on the one side and
a smile on the other, because there really might be
a good deal in it and because Charles Pauws might
be right in what he said. He lovingly fashioned his
sentences out of beautiful words, making them seem
convincing through their brilliancy…. But in
between the sentences he thought of poor Mamma
and suddenly found that he could not go on writing.
He pitied her. He felt for Steyn, but he pitied
poor Mamma…. He rose and paced his room,
which was full of spoils of Italy: a few bronzes, a
number of photographs after the Italian masters.
A good fellow, Steyn, to let him have this room
next to Mamma’s and to go up to the top floor himself.
But he pitied his mother, who was such a child.
She had always been a child: she could not help
being and remaining a child. She had been so very
pretty and so seductive: a little doll always; and
he remembered, when he was already a boy of seventeen,
how perfectly charming Mamma used to look:
so young, so extraordinarily young, with that adorable
little face, those blue childlike eyes and that perfect,
plump figure. She was thirty-eight then, without
a sign of age; she was a pretty woman in the full
bloom of her attractiveness. He had no need to
look at Mamma’s photographs as she was in those
days and earlier: he remembered her like that; he
remembered her looking like a young girl in a low,
creamy-white lace dress, which she did not even take
the trouble to put on very neatly, looking above
all things charming, so intensely charming; he remembered
her in a brown-cloth frock trimmed with
astrakhan, with a little astrakhan cap on her frizzy
hair, skating with him on the ice, so lightly and
gracefully that people believed her to be his sister.
… Poor Mamma, growing old now! And yet
she still looked very nice, but she was growing old;
and she had nothing—he was sure of this—she had
nothing but her faculty for love. She had five children,
but she was not a mother: Lot laughed and
shook his head at the thought. He had educated
himself; Ottilie had very early become aware of her
great talent and her beautiful voice and had also
educated herself; the Trevelleys had run more wild.
… No, Mamma was not a mother, was not a
woman of domestic tastes, was not even a woman
of the world: Mamma had nothing but her faculty
for love. She needed love, probably no longer
needed passion, but still needed love; and what she
needed most, needed mortally, was petting, like a
child. And nobody petted her more than he did,
because he knew that Mamma was mad on petting.
She had once safd to him, pointing to a photograph
of his half-brother Hugh Trevelley, a good-looking
lad turned twenty:
“Lot, it’s eight months since I had a kiss from
him!”
And he had seen something in Mamma as though
she were craving for Hugh’s kiss, though he sometimes
treated her so roughly and cavalierly. Of
course, this was also a motherly feeling on Mamma’s
part, but it was perhaps even more a need
to have this lad, who was her son, caress her,
caress her sweetly…. And were they to put
her under any kind of restraint? Perhaps it would
have to come! It would be perfectly horrid: that
dear Mummy! But she was so silly sometimes! So
stupid! Such a child, for such an old woman!
… Oh, it was terrible, that growing old and
older and yet remaining what you were! How little
life taught you! How little it formed you! It left
you as you were and merely wore off your sharp and
attractive irregularities! … Poor Mamma, her
life was made up of nothing but things that were
past … and especially things of love! …
Aunt Stefanie spoke of hysteria; and a great streak
of sensual passion had run through the family; but it
did not come from the Derckszes, as Aunt Stefanie
pretended: it came from Grandmamma herself. He
had always heard that, like his mother, she too had
been a woman of passion. People talked of all sorts
of adventures which she had had in India, until she
met Takma. There was a kind of curse on their
family, a curse of unhappy marriages. Both of
Grandmamma’s marriages had turned out unhappily:
General de Laders appeared to have been a brute,
however much Aunt Stefanie might defend her
father. With Grandpapa Dercksz, so people said,
Grandmamma was exceedingly unhappy: the adventures
dated back to that time. Grandpapa
Dercksz was drowned by falling at night into the
swollen river behind a pasangrahan in the Tegal
mountains. Lot remembered how that had always
been talked about, how the rumours had persisted
for years. The story, which dated sixty years back,
ran that Grandpapa Dercksz had shown kindness to
a woman in the kampong and that he was stabbed
by a Javanese out of jealousy. It was mere gossip:
Dr. Roelofsz said that it was mere gossip….:
A curse of unhappy marriages…. Uncle Anton
had never been married; but in him the streak of
passion developed into a broad vein of hysteria.
… Uncle Harold, human but inscrutable, had
been unhappy with his freule, who was too Dutch
for an Indian planter…. Uncle Daan, in India—they
were on their way to Holland at this
moment—was to outward appearances not unhappy
with a far too Indian wife, Aunt Floor: they were
now old and staid and sedate, but there was a time
when the fatal streak had run through both of them,
developing in Aunt—a Dillenhof, belonging to
Grandmamma’s family—into the vein, the broad
vein. Well, that was all past: they were old people
now…. Aunt Thérèse van der Staff had become
a Catholic, after an unhappy marriage; they
said that Theo, her son, was not the son of her
husband…. And his own poor mother, thrice
married and thrice unhappily!
He had never looked at it like this before, throughout
and down the generations, but, when he did, it
was terrible: a sort of clinging to the social law—of
marriage—which was suited to none of those temperaments.
Why had they married? They were all
old people now, but … if they had been young
now, with modern views, would they have married?
Would they have married? Their blood, often
heated to the point of hysteria, could never have
endured that constraint. They had found the
momentary counterparts of their passion, for not
one of them—with the exception perhaps of Uncle
Harold—had married for other than passionate
reasons; but, as soon as the constraint of marriage
oppressed them, they had felt their fate, the social
law which they had always honoured, thoughtlessly
and instinctively, and which did not suit them; they
had felt their family curse of being married and
unhappy…. And he himself, why was he getting
married? He suddenly asked himself the
question, seriously, as he had once asked his mother
in jest. Why was he getting married? Was he a
man for marriage? Did he not know himself only
too well? Cynical towards himself, he saw himself
as he was and was fully aware of his own egotism.
He knew all his little vanities, of personal appearance,
of a fine literary style…. He smiled: he
was not a bad sort, there were worse than he; but,
in Heaven’s name, why was he getting married?
Why had he proposed to Elly? … And yet he
felt happy; and, now that he was seriously asking
himself why he was getting married, he felt very
seriously that he was fond of Elly, perhaps fonder
than he himself knew. But—the thought was irrepressible—why
get married? Would he escape the
family curse? Wasn’t Ottilie at Nice really right,
Ottilie who refused to marry and who lived unbound
with her Italian officer—she herself had written to
tell him so—until they should cease to love each
other? Was the streak continued in her or ….
was she right and he wrong? Was she, his sister,
a woman, stronger in her views of life than he, a
man? … Why, why get married? Couldn’t
he say to Elly, who was so sensible, that he preferred
to live unbound with her?….. No, it
was not feasible: there remained, however little
it might count with them, the question of social consideration;
there was her grandfather; there were
people and things, conventions, difficulties. No, he
could not put it to Elly; and yet she would have
understood it all right…. So there was nothing
for it but to get married in the ordinary way and to
hope—because they loved each other so thoroughly
and not only out of passion—that the curse would
not force its fate upon them, the yoke of an unhappy
marriage….
Those people, those uncles and aunts, had been
unhappy, in their marriages. They were now growing
old; those things of other days were now all
passing…. They were passing…. Would
they come to him, who was still young? Must
they come around him, now that he was growing
older? Oh, to grow older, to grow old! Oh,
the terrible nightmare of growing old, of seeing
the wintry-grey vistas opening before him! To be
humbled in his conceit with his appearance did not
mean so very much; to be humbled in his conceit
with his literary gifts hurt more; but to be humbled
in his whole physical and moral existence: that was
the horror, the nightmare! Not humbled all at
once, but slowly undergoing the decay of his young
and vigorous body, the withering of his intelligence
and his soul…. Oh, to grow as old as
Grandmamma and as Grandpapa Takma: how
awful! And those were people who had lived for
their ninety years and more. An atom of emotion
still seemed to be wafted between the two of them,
an atom of memory. Who could tell? Perhaps
they still talked … about the past…. But
to grow so old as that: ninety-seven I Oh, no, no,
not so old as that: let him die before he decayed,
before he withered! He felt himself turn cold with
dread at the thought and he trembled, now that he
realized so powerfully the possibility of growing
as old as that: ninety-seven! … O God, O
God, no, no! … Let him die young, let it be
over, in his case, while he was still young! He was
no pessimist, he loved life: life was beautiful, life
was radiant; there were so many beautiful things in
art, in Italy, in his own intellect: in his own soul
even, at present, that emotion for Elly. But he loved
young and vigorous life and did not want decay and
withering. Oh, for vigour, vigour always, youth
always! To die young, to die young! He implored
it of That which he accepted as God, that Light, that
Secret, which perhaps, however, would not listen
from out of Its unfathomable depths of might to a
prayer from him, so small, so selfish, so unmanly,
so cowardly, so vain, so incredibly vain! Oh, did
he not know himself? Did he pretend not to see
himself as he was? Could he help seeing himself
as he was?
He paced his room and did not hear the door
open.
“And the fifty pounds is in the post!”
He started. His mother stood before him, looking
like a little fury: her blue eyes blazed like those of
a little demon and her mouth was wide open like
a naughty child’s.
“Oh! ….. Mamma!
“Lot! … What’s the matter with you?”
“With me? … Nothing….”
“Oh, my boy, my boy, what’s the matter with
you?”
He was shivering as in a fever. He was quite
pale. He tried to master himself, to be manly,
plucky and brave. A dark terror overwhelmed him.
Everything went black before his eyes.
“My dear, my dear … what is it?”
She had thrown her arm round him and now drew
him to the sofa.
“Oh, Mamma! … To grow old! To grow
old!”
“Hush, darling, be still!”
She stroked his head as it lay on her shoulder.
She knew him like that: it was his disease, his weakness;
it returned periodically and he would lie
against her thus, moaning at the thought of growing
old, of growing old…. Ah, well, it was his
disease, his weakness; she knew all about it; and
she became very calm, as she would have done if
he had been feverish. She fondled him, stroked his
hair with regular strokes, trying not to disorder it.
She kissed him repeatedly. She felt a glow of content
because she was petting him; her motherly attitude
was bound to calm him.
“Hush, darling, be still!”
He did keep still for a moment.
“Do you really think it so terribb … to
grow old … perhaps … later on?” asked
Ottilie, melancholy in spite of herself.
“Yes….”
“I didn’t think it pleasant either. But you ….,
you are so young still!”
He was already regaining his self-control and
feeling ashamed of himself. He was a child, like
his mother, an ailing, feeble, hysterical child at
times. That was his hysteria, that dread of old
age. And he was looking for consolation to his
mother, who was not a mother! …
No, he regained his self-control, was ashamed of
himself:
“Oh, yes … I’m young still!” he made an
effort to say, indifferently.
“And you’re going to be married: your life is
only just beginning …”
“Because I’m getting married?”
“Yes, because you’re getting married. If only
you are happy, dear, and not … not as your
mother …”
He gave a little start, but smiled. He regained
his self-control now and at the same time regained
his control over his mother, to whom he had looked
for a moment for consolation and who had always
petted him. And he fondled her in his turn and
gave her a fervent kiss:
“Poor little creatures that we are!” he said.
“We sometimes act and think so strangely! We
are very ill and very old ….. even though we
are still young…. Mamma, I must have a
serious talk with you some day … serious, you
know. Not now, another time: I must get on now
with my work. Leave me to myself now and be
calm … and good. Really, I’m all right again.
… And don’t you go on behaving like a little
fury!”
She laughed inwardly, with mischievous delight:
“I’ve sent off the fifty pounds for all that!” she
said, from behind the open door.
And she was gone.
He shook his head:
“I am sorry for her!” he thought, analysing his
emotions. “And … for myself! Even more
for myself. We poor, poor creatures! We ought
all to be placed under restraint … but whose?
Come, the best thing is to get to work and to keep
working, strenuously, always…..”
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