CHAPTER XV
LOT had ordered a bedroom in the Hotel de Luxembourg
and had written to his sister Ottilie. On
arriving, they found a basket of red roses awaiting
them in their room. It was October; the windows
were open; and the sea shone with a dark metallic
gleam in a violent flood of sunlight and rippled
under the insolent forward thrusts of a gathering
mistral.
They had a bath, lunched in their bedroom, feeling
a little tired after the journey; and the scent
of the roses, the brightness of the sun, the deepening
turquoise of the sky and the more and more
foam-flecked steel of the sea intoxicated both of
them. The salad of tomatoes and capsicums made
a red-and-orange patch around the chicken on the
table; and long pearls seemed to melt in their glasses
of champagne. The wind rose in mighty gusts and
with its arrogant, brutal, male caresses swept away
any haze that still hung around. The glowing sun
poured forth its flood as from a golden spout in the
turquoise sky.
They sat side by side, intoxicated with it all, and
ate and drank but did not speak. A sense of peace
permeated them, accompanied by a certain slackness,
as though in surrender to the forces of life,
which were so turbulent and so violent and so radiantly
gold and insolently red.
There was a knock; and a woman’s head, crowned
with a large black hat, appeared through the open
door:
“May I come in?”
“Ottilie!” cried Lot, springing up. “Come in,
come in!”
She entered:
“Welcome! Welcome to Nice! I haven’t seen
you for ages, Lot! Elly, my sister, welcome! …
Yes, I sent the roses. I’m glad you wrote to me
… and that you are willing to see me and
that your wife is too….”
She sat down, accepted a glass of champagne;
cordial greetings passed between Lot and his sister.
Ottilie was a couple of years older than Lot; she
was Mamma’s eldest child and resembled both her
father, Pauws, and Mamma, for she was tall, with
her father’s masterful ways, but had Mamma’s
features, her clear profile and delicate chin, though
not her eyes. But her many years of public appearances
had given her movements a graceful assurance,
that of a talented and beautiful woman,
accustomed to being looked at and applauded, something
quite different from any sort of ordinary,
domestic attractiveness: the harmonious, almost
sculptural gestures, after being somewhat studied
at first, had in course of time become natural….
“What a good-looking woman!” thought Elly;
and she felt herself to be nobody, small, insignificant,
in the simple wrap which she had put on hurriedly
after her bath.
Ottilie, who was forty-one, looked no more than
thirty and had the youthfulness of an artist who
keeps her body young by means of an art and science
of beauty unknown to the ordinary woman. A
white-cloth gown, which avoided the last extravagances
of fashion, gave her figure the perfection
of a statue and revealed the natural outlines of
arms and bosom beneath the modern dress. The
great black hat circled its black ostrich-feather
around her copper-glowing fair hair, which was
plaited in a heavy coil; a wide grey boa hung in a
light cloud of ostrich-feathers around her; and, in
those colourless tints—white, black and grey—she
remained, notwithstanding her almost too great
beauty, attractive at once as a well-bred woman and
an artist.
“Well, that’s my sister, Elly!” said Lot, proudly.
“What do you think of her? ”
“I’ve seen you before, Elly, at the Hague,” said
Ottilie.
“I don’t remember, Ottilie.”
“No, you were a little girl of eight, or nine perhaps;
and you had a big playroom at Grandpapa
Takma’s and a lovely doll’s-house….”
“So I did.”
“I haven’t been to the Hague since.”
“You went to the Conservatoire at Liège?”
“Yes.”
“When did you sing last?” asked Lot.
“In Paris not long ago.”
“We hear nothing of you. You never sing in
Holland.”
“No, I don’t ever go to Holland.”
“Why not, Ottilie?” asked Elly.
“I have always felt depressed in Holland.”
“Because of the country or the people?”
“Because of everything: the country, the
people, the houses … the family … our
circle….”
“I quite understand,” said Lot.
“I couldn’t breathe,” said Ottilie. “It’s not
that I want to run the country down, or the people
or the family. It all has its good side. But, just
as the grey skies hindered me from breathing, so
the houses hindered me from producing my voice
properly; and there was something around me, I
don’t know what, that struck me as terrible.”
“Something that struck you as terrible?” said
Elly.
“Yes, an atmosphere of sorts. At home, I could
never get on with Mamma, any more than Papa
and Mamma could ever get on together. Mamma’s
impossible little babyish character, with her little
fits of temper, used to drive me wild. Lot has a
more accommodating nature than I!…”
“You ought to have been a boy and I a girl,”
said Lot, almost bitterly.
“Mais je suis tres femme, moi” said Ottilie.
Her eyes grew soft and filmy and happiness
lurked in her smile.
“Mais je te crois” replied Lot.
“No,” continued Ottilie, “I couldn’t hit it off
with Mamma. Besides, I felt that I must be free.
After all, there was life. I felt my voice inside
me. I studied hard and seriously, for years on
end. And I made a success. All my life is given
to singing….”
“Why do you only sing at concerts, Ottilie ?
Don’t you care about opera? You sing Wagner, I
know.”
“Yes, but I can’t lose myself in a part for more
than a few moments, not for more than a single
scene, not for a whole evening.”
“Yes, I can imagine that,” said Lot.
“Yes,” said Elly, with quick understanding,
“you’re a sister of Lot’s in that. He can’t work
either for longer than his essay or his article lasts.”
“A family weakness, Ottilie,” said Lot.
“Inherited.”
Ottilie reflected, with a smile: the Gioconda smile,
Elly thought.
“That may be true,” said Ottilie. “It was a
shrewd observation of your little Elly’s.”
“Yes,” said Lot, proudly. “She’s very observant.
Not one of our three natures is what you
would call commonplace.”
“Ah,” murmured Ottilie, “Holland …
those houses … those people! … Mamma
and ‘Mr.’ Trevelley at home: it was terrible. One
scene after the other. Trevelley reproaching
Mamma with Papa, Mamma reproaching Trevelley
with a hundred infidelities! Mamma was jealousy
incarnate. She used to keep her hat and cloak
hanging in the hall. If ‘Mr.’ Trevelley went out,
Mamma would say, ‘Hugh, where are you going?’
‘Doesn’t matter to you,’ said Trevelley. ‘I’m coming
with you,’ said Mamma, putting on her hat all
askew and flinging on her cloak; and go with him she
did. Trevelley cursed and swore; there was a scene;
but Mamma went with him: he walking along the
street two yards in front of her, Mamma following,
mad with rage…. She was very, very pretty
in those days, a little doll, with a fair-haired
Madonna face, but badly dressed…. Lot was
always quiet, with calm, tired-looking eyes: how
well I remember it all! He was never out of
temper, always polite to ‘Mr.’ Travelley….”
“I have managed to get on with all my three
papas.”
“When Mamma and Trevelley had had enough
of each other and Mamma fell in love with Steyn,
I cleared out. I went first to Papa and then to the
Conservatoire. And I haven’t been back in Holland
since…. Oh, those houses! … Your
house, Elly—Grandpapa Takma’s house—everything
very neatly kept by Aunt Adèle, but it seemed
to me as if something stood waiting behind every
door…. Grandmamma’s house and Grandmamma’s
figure, as she sat at the window there
staring … and waiting, she too. Waiting what
for? I don’t know. But it did depress me so. I
longed for air, for blue sky, for freedom; I had
to expand my lungs.”
“I have felt like that too sometimes,” said Lot,
half to himself.
Elly said nothing, but she thought of her childhood,
spent with the old man, and of her doll’s-house,
which she ruled so very seriously, as if it
had been a little world.
“Yes, Lot,” said Ottilie, “you felt it too: you
went off to Italy to breathe again, to live, to live.
… In our family, they had lived. Mamma
still lived, but her own past clung to her….
I don’t know, Elly; I don’t think I’m very sensitive;
and yet … and yet I did feel it so: an oppression
of things of the past all over one. I couldn’t
go on like that. I longed for my own life.”
“That’s true,” said Lot, “you released yourself
altogether. More so than I did. I was never able
to leave Mamma for good. I’m fond of her. I
don’t know why: she has not been much of a mother
to me. Still I’m fond of her, I often feel sorry
for her. She is a child, a spoilt child. She was
overwhelmed, in her youth, with one long adoration.
The men were mad on her. Now she is old
and what has she left? Nothing and nobody. Steyn
and she lead a cat-and-dog life. I pity Steyn, but
I sometimes feel for Mamma. It’s a dreadful thing
to grow old, especially for the sort of woman that
she was, a woman—one may as well speak plainly—who
lived for her passions. Mamma has never
had anything in her but love. She is an elementary
woman; she needs love and caresses, so much so
that she has not been able to observe the conventions.
She respected them only to a certain point.
When she fell in love, everything else went by the
board.”
“But why did she marry? I didn’t marry! And
I am in love too.”
“Ottilie, Mamma lived in a different social
period. People used to marry then. They marry
still, for the most part. Elly and I got married.”
“I have nothing to say against it, if you know
that you have found each other for life. Did
Mamma know that with any of her husbands? She
was mad on all the three of them.”
“She now hates them all.”
“Therefore she ought not to have married.”
“No, but she lived in a different social period.
And, as I say, Ottilie, people still get married.”
“You disapprove of my not marrying.”
“I don’t disapprove. It’s not my nature to
disapprove of what other people think best in their
own judgment.”
“Let us talk openly and frankly. You call
Mamma a woman who lives for her passions. Perhaps
you call me the same.”
“I don’t know much about your life.”
“I have lived with men. If I had had Mamma’s
ideas, or rather her unconscious conventions, I
should have married them. I loved and was loved.
Twice I could have married, as Mamma did; but
I didn’t do it.”
“You were disheartened by what you had
seen.”
“Yes; and I didn’t know, I never knew. Perhaps
now, Lot, perhaps now I feel certain for the first
time.”
“Do you feel certain, Ottilie?” said Elly.
She took Ottilie’s hand. She thought Ottilie so
beautiful, so very beautiful and so genuine that she
was greatly affected by her.
“Perhaps, Elly, I now know for certain that I
shall never love any one else as I love Aldo……;
He loves me …”
“And you will get married?” asked Lot.
“No, we shall not get married.”
“Why not?…”
“Is he certain?”
“But you say he’s fond of you.”
“Yes, but is he certain? No, he is not. We are
happy together, ever so happy. He wants to marry
me. But is he certain? No, he is not. He is not
certain: I know for certain that he does not know
for certain…. Why should we bind ourselves
with legal ties? If I have a child by him, I shall
be very happy and shall be a good mother to my
child. But why those legal ties? … Aldo isn’t
certain, happy though he may be. He is two years
older than I. Who knows what may be waiting
for him to-morrow, what emotion, what passion,
what love? … I myself know that I have
found, but I know that he does not know….
If he leaves me to-morrow, he is free. Then he
can find another happiness, perhaps the lasting one.
… What do we poor creatures know? …
We seek and seek until suddenly we find certainty.
/ have found it. But he has not…. No, Lot,
we shall not get married. I want Aldo to be free
and to do as he pleases. I am no longer young and
I want to leave him free. Our love, our bodies, our
souls are free, absolutely free, in our happiness.
And, if I am old to-morrow, an old woman, with
no voice left …”
“Then you will pay the penalty, Ottilie,” said
Lot.
“Then I shall pay no penalty, Lot. Then I shall
have been happy. Then I shall have had my portion.
I don’t ask for eternity here below. I shall
be satisfied and I shall grow old, quietly, quietly
old….”
“Oh, Ottilie, and I … I suffer from growing
old, from growing older.”
“Lot, that’s a disease. You’re happy now, you
have Elly, life is beautiful, there is sunshine, there
is happiness. Take all that, enjoy it and be happy
and don’t think of what is to come.”
“Don’t you then ever think of growing old and
of the horror of it?”
“I do think of growing old, but I don’t see anything
horrible in it.”
“If Aldo were to leave you to-morrow, you
would be alone … and you would grow old.”
“If Aldo left me to-morrow, for his own happiness,
I should think it right and I should grow old,
but I should not be alone, for I should have all
my memories of his love and of our happiness,
which is actual now and so real that there can be
nothing else after it.”
She got up.
“Are you going?”
“I have to. Come and lunch with us to-morrow.
Will you come, Elly?”
“Thanks, Ottilie.”
Ottilie looked out of the window. The sun
beamed as it died away, from behind mauve and
rose clouds, and the wind had subsided on the
waves: the sea just rocked it softly on her rolling,
deep-blue bosom, like a gigantic lover who lay resting
in her lap after his spell of blazing ardour.
“How splendid those clouds are!” said Elly.
“The wind has gone down.”
“Always does, at this time,” said Ottilie. “Look,
Lot, there he is!”
“Who?”
“Aldo. He’s waiting for me.”
They saw a man sitting on the Promenade des
Anglais—there were not many people about—and
looking at the sea.
“I can only see his back,” said Lot.
“You shall see him to-morrow. I’m delighted
that you’re coming.”
Her voice sounded grateful, as though she were
touched. She kissed them both and went away.
“Heavens, what a beautiful woman!” said Lot.
“She is anything but young, but years don’t count
with a woman accustomed to appear in public and
as handsome as she is….”
Elly had gone out on the balcony:
“Oh, Lot, what a glorious sunset! … It’s
like a fairy-picture in the sky. That’s how I imagine
the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights. Look, it’s
just like the tail of a gigantic phoenix vanishing behind
the mountains in flames…. There’s Ottilie,
on the promenade; she’s waving her handkerchief.”
“And there’s Aldo, with her, bowing…. A
fine good-looking fellow, that Italian officer of hers.
… What a handsome couple! … Look,
Elly, as they’re walking together: what a handsome
couple! I declare I’m jealous of him. I should
like to be as tall as that, with such a pair of shoulders
and such a figure.”
“But aren’t you content that I like you as you
are?”
“Yes, I’m quite content. I’m more than content,
Elly…. I believe that I have come to my
divine moment, my moment of happiness….”
“It will be more than a moment.”
“Are you certain of it?”
“Yes, I feel it within me … just as Ottilie
felt it within her. And you?”
He looked at her gravely and did not tell her
that she was much younger than Ottilie, too young
to know so much. And he merely answered:
“I too believe that I know for certain. But we
must not force the future…. Oh, what a wonderful
evening! Look at those mountains beginning
to turn violet…. The fairy-picture is changing
every moment. The sea is rocking the wind in
her lap and the phoenix is dying away in ashes.
Let’s stay here, let’s stay and look. There are the
first stars. It’s as though the sea were becoming
very calm and the wind sleeping peacefully on her
blue breast. You can just feel its breath still, but
it’s asleep…. This is the land of life and
love. We are too early for the season; but what
do we care for smart people? … This is gorgeous,
Elly, this wealth of life, of love, of living
colour, fading away so purple in the darkness of
the night. The cool breath of that mighty wind,
which is now asleep: how very different from the
howling wind of our north, which whistles so
dismally! This mad merry wind here, now sleeping,
like a giant, in the blue lap of that giantess,
the sea! That’s freedom, life, love and glory and
pomp and gaiety. Oh, I’m not running down my
country; but I do feel once more, after all these
months, that I can breathe freely and that there’s
a glow in life … and youth, youth, youth!
It makes you feel drunk at first, but I’m already
getting used to the intoxication….”
They remained on the balcony. When the wind
woke in the lap of the sea and got up again, with
an unexpected leap of its giant gaiety, blowing the
first stars clear of the last purple clouds with a
single sweep, they went inside, with their arms
around each other’s waist.
Over the joyously-quivering sea the fierce mistral
came rushing.
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