Old People and the Things that Pass/Chapter XXII

by Louis Couperus

CHAPTER XXII

AUNT ADÈLE TAKMA, with her key-basket on her arm, came fussing quietly from the dining-room into the passage, for she had seen the postman and was hoping for a letter from Elly. Lot and Elly were at Florence, both of them working busily at the Laurentiana and the Archives, where Lot was collecting materials for an historical work on the Medicis. They had been as far as Naples and, on the homeward journey, tired of so much sight-seeing—Italy was quite new to Elly—they had stopped at Florence, settled down in a pension and were now working together. Elly seemed happy and wrote enthusiastic letters.

Aunt Adèle looked in the letter-box. Yes, there was a letter from Elly, a letter for Grandpapa. Aunt Adèle always read the letters out to Grandpapa: that was so nice; and after all the letter was for her too. Yes, the children were sure to be away three months longer—it was the beginning of January now—and then the plan was that they would quietly take up their quarters with Steyn and Mamma, for a little while, to see if it answered; and, if it did not answer, they would quietly turn out again and go their own way: they were still keen on travelling and were not yet anxious for a settled home. Ottilie was in London, where she had her two boys, John and Hugh Trevelley: Mary was in India and married. Mamma had been quite unable to stand it by herself; and there was certainly no harm in her going to look up her two sons ... if only those two sons had not been such sharks. They were always wanting money: Aunt Adèle knew that from Elly and Lot.

Aunt Adèle finished what she had to do downstairs, spoke to the cook, locked the store-cupboard, smoothed a tablecloth here, put a chair straight there, so that she need not come down again and might have time to read Elly's letter to the old gentleman at her ease. He always liked hearing Elly's letters, because she wrote in a clever and sprightly style; they always gave him a pleasant morning; and he often read them over and over again after Aunt Adèle had read them out to him.

Aunt Adèle now went upstairs, glad at having the letter, and knocked at the door of the old gentleman's study. He did not answer and, thinking that he had gone to his bedroom, she moved on there. The door was open and she walked in. The door between the bedroom and the study was open and she walked in. The old man was sitting in his usual chair, in front of the writing-table.

He was asleep. He sat limply in his chair; and it struck her how very small he looked, as though he had shrunk in his sleep. His eyes appeared to be closed and his hand lay on an open drawer of his desk. A waste-paper-basket stood beside him; other papers and letters lay scattered over the table.

"He's asleep," she said to herself.

And, so as not to wake him, she stole away on tiptoe through the open door. She did not wish to disturb his rest, if he did not wake of himself through the mere fact of her entering. He was so old, so very old....

She was sorry at having to wait before reading Elly's letter. She had nothing more to do, her housekeeping-duties were finished; the two servants were quietly doing their work. And Aunt Adèle sat down by the window in the dining-room, with her key-basket beside her, glad that everything was nicely tidied, and read the morning paper, which had just come: she would take it up to him presently. It was snowing outside. A still white peace slumbered through the room and through the house. The voice of one of the maids sounded for a moment and died away towards the kitchen. Aunt Adèle quietly read the four pages of the newspaper.

Then she got up, took her basket, the letter and the paper and went upstairs once more. She knocked at the door of the study. But the old man did not reply. She now opened the door. He was still sitting in his chair, in the same attitude of sleep as just now. But he looked even more shrivelled—oh, so very small!—in his short jacket.

Aunt started and came nearer to him. She saw that his eyes were not closed but staring glassily into distant space.... Aunt Adèle turned pale and trembled. When she was close to the old gentleman, she saw that he was dead.

He was dead. Death had overtaken him and a slight touch had sufficed to make his blood stand still for good in his worn veins. He was dead and, as it would seem, had died without a struggle, merely because death had come and laid a chill finger on his heart and head.

Aunt Adèle trembled and burst into sobs. She rang the bell and called out in fright for the maids, who came running up at once, the two of them.

"The old gentleman is dead!" cried Aunt Adèle, sobbing.

The two servants also began to cry; they were three women all alone.

"What shall we do, miss?"

"Keetje," said Aunt Adèle, "go straight to Dr. Thielens and then on to Mr. Steyn de Weert. I don't know of any one else. Your master had no relations. But Mr. Steyn de Weert is sure to help us. Take a cab and go at once. Bring Mr. Steyn straight back with you. Mrs. Steyn is in London. Go, Keetje, go, quick!"

The maid went, crying.

"He's dead," said Aunt Adèle. "The doctor can do nothing for him, but he must give a certificate. Door, you and I will lay the master on his bed and undress him gently...."

They lifted the old man out of the chair, Aunt Adèle taking his head, Door his feet: he weighed nothing in the women's hands. He was so light, he was so light! They laid him on the bed and began to undress him. The jacket, when they hung it over a chair, bulged out behind, retained the shape of the old man's back.

Keetje had found Steyn de Weert at home; and he came back with her in the cab: they left word at Dr. Thielens' house; the doctor was out. Aunt Adèle met Steyn in the hall. A still, white peace dozed through the big house downstairs; outside, the snow fell thicker than ever.

"I knew of no one but you, Steyn!" cried Aunt Adèle, sobbing. "And I also sent for you because I knew—the old gentleman told me so—that you're his executor. Yes, he's dead. He went out like a candle.... This morning, I brought him his breakfast, as usual. Then he went and sat at his table, looking through some papers. I got a letter from Elly and came upstairs and found him ... asleep, as I thought. I went away, so as not to wake him. But, when I came back, he was still sitting like that. He was dead. He is dead, Steyn.... He was close upon ninety-four."

Steyn remained with Aunt Adèle until the doctor had been and signed the death-certificate; Steyn would see to everything that had to be done. He telegraphed to London to his wife: Aunt Adèle asked him to do this; he telegraphed to Florence to Lot and Elly: they certainly could not get back to the Hague in time for the funeral. And he went on at once to his brother-in-law Harold Dercksz, whom he found at home after lunch:

"Harold," he asked, "what are we to do about Mamma? We can't tell her, can we?"

Harold Dercksz had sunk back into his chair. It was one of his bad days, he was moaning with anguish and, though he did not complain, his face was wrung painfully and his breath came in dull jerks.

"Is ...is the old man ... dead?" he asked.

He said nothing more, sat moaning.

"Do you feel so rotten?" asked Steyn.

Harold Dercksz nodded.

"Shall I send for Dr. Thielens to come and see you?"

Harold Dercksz shook his head:

"There's nothing he can do. Thank you, Frans. I know what to do for it: the great thing is to pay no attention to it...."

He was silent again, sat staring in front of him, holding his hand before his eyes because the light outside, reflected by the snow, hurt his face. And he went on breathing with dull, irregular jerks.

The old man was dead. The old man was dead.... At last.... The Thing, the terrible Thing was passing, was not yet past, was trailing, rustling, staring at him with its fixed, spectral eyes, which he had known ever since his childhood; but it was passing, passing. ... Oh, how he had looked and looked for the old man's death! He had hated him, the murderer of his father, who had been dear to him when a child; but, first as a child, afterwards as a young man, he had been silent, for his mother's sake, had been silent for sixty years. Only now, quite lately, he had spoken to Daan, because Daan had come from India in dismay, knowing everything, knowing everything at this late date, after the death of the baboe, who had spoken to her son, the mantri. ... He had hated him, in his secret self, hated his father's murderer. Then his hatred had cooled, he had come to understand the passion and the self-defence of the crime; then he had felt pity for the old man, who had to carry the burden of his remorse for all those years; then his pity had grown into compassion, deep, quivering compassion for both of them, for Takma and for his mother.... "Give him a stab; rather he than you!" Oh, that passion, oh, the hatred, of years ago, in the woman that she had then been, a still young and always attractive woman, she who was now dragging out the last years of her life: did she remember? Did she remember, as she sat in her straight-backed chair, in that red twilight of the window-curtains? ... He, Harold Dercksz, had longed for the death of Takma, longed for the death of his mother ... so that for both of them, the old people, the thing, the terrible Thing might have passed entirely and plunged into the depths of what had been.... He had longed; and now ... now the old man was dead!

Harold Dercksz breathed again:

"No, Frans," he said, in his soft, dull voice, "we cannot tell Mother.... Remember how very old she is...."

"So I thought. We must keep the old man's death from her at any rate.... It won't be possible to keep it from Dr. Roelofsz ... but it will be a blow to him."

"Yes," said Harold Dercksz. "You've telegraphed to Ottilie?"

"Adèle said I was to."

"Yes," said Harold Dercksz. "She's ... she's his daughter."

"Did she know it? We never spoke of it."

"I never spoke of it to Mamma either. I believe Ottilie suspected it. You're the executor...."

"So Adèle said."

"Yes," said Harold Dercksz. "He'll have left most of his money ... to Elly ... and to Ottilie. When's the funeral?"

"Monday."

"Lot and Elly won't be here."

"No. It won't be possible to wait for them."

"Will the funeral procession go through the Nassaulaan?"

"It's on the way to the cemetery."

"You had better let it go round ... not past Mamma's house. She's always sitting at the window."

"I'll arrange that."

"How soon can Ottilie be here?"

"She can take the night-boat this evening."

"Yes, she's sure to do that. She suspects ... she suspects it all; she was very fond of the old man and he of her."

"I must go, Harold. Would you mind telling Dr. Roelofsz?"

"I'll do that certainly. If I can be of any further use ..."

"No, thank you."

"Let us meet at Mother's this afternoon. We must warn the family as far as possible not to drop the least hint before Mamma; we must keep it from her. The shock would kill her...."

And Harold thought to himself that, if only she were dead, then the Thing would be past; but they had no right to murder her.

When Steyn opened the door, he ran against Ina in the passage. She had been at the window and seen him come; and, curious to know what he wanted to talk about with her father, she had crept upstairs and listened casually.

"Good-morning, Steyn," she said: she did not call him uncle because of the very slight difference between their ages. "Has anything happened?" She knew before she asked.

"Old Mr. Takma is dead."

"Ina," said her father, "be sure not to say a word to Grandmamma. We want to keep it from her. It is such a blow for the old lady that it might be the death of her...."

"Yes," said Ina, "we won't say anything to Grandmamma. Mr. Takma was well off, wasn't he? I suppose Elly will get everything? ..."

"I don't know," said Steyn. "Probably."

"Lot and Elly have become rich all of a sudden."

"Remember, Ina, won't you?" said her father.

He shook hands with Steyn and went straight off to Roelofsz'.

"Did he die during the night?" asked Ina.

Steyn gave the details. He let out that he had telegraphed to Lot and to his wife, Aunt Ottilie.

"Why Aunt Ottilie?"

"Because ..." said Steyn, hesitating, regretting his slip of the tongue. "It's better she should be there."

Ina understood. Aunt Ottilie was old Takma's daughter: she was sure to get a legacy too.

"How much do you think the old man will leave? ... Haven't you any idea? Oh, not that it interests me to know: other people's money-matters are le moindre de mes soucis! ... Don't you think Papa very depressed, Steyn? He has been so depressed since he saw Uncle Daan again.... Steyn, don't you know why Uncle Daan has come to Holland?"

She was still yearning with curiosity and remained ever unsatisfied. She went about with her gnawing hunger for days and weeks on end; she did not know to whom to turn. The craving to know was constantly with her. It had spoilt her sleep lately. She had tried to start the subject once more with Aunt Stefanie, to get behind it at all costs; but Aunt Stefanie had told her firmly that she—whatever it might be—refused to know, because she did not want to have anything to do with old sins and things that were not proper; even though they had to do with her mother, they did not concern her. It was Hell lying in wait for them; and, after Aunt Stefanie's penitential homily, Ina knew that she would get nothing out of her aunt, not even the hazy recollection that might have loomed for a moment before her aunt's eyes. What was it, what could it be that Papa had known for sixty years, that Uncle Daan had learnt quite lately and that had brought him to Holland? Oh, to whom, to whom was she to turn?

No, Steyn knew nothing and was surprised at her question, thinking that Daan must have had business to discuss with Harold, as usual. And he went away, hurried off to Stefanie, to Anton, to Daan and Floor, to the Van Welys; and he impressed upon all of them that the old man's death must be kept from Mamma. They all promised, feeling one and the same need, as children, to keep from their mother the death of the man to whom she had remained so long attached, whom she had seen sitting opposite her, almost every day, on a chair by the window. And Steyn arranged with all of them merely to say that Mr. Takma was unwell and not allowed out ... and to keep it up, however difficult it might be in the long run.

Then Steyn went to Aunt Adèle; and she asked:

"Couldn't we tidy up those papers in the old gentleman's study, Steyn? It's such a litter. They're all lying just as he left them."

"I'd rather wait till Lot and Elly are back," said Steyn. "All you have to do is to lock the door of the room. There's no need to seal anything up. I've spoken to the solicitor."

He went away; and Aunt Adèle was left alone in the house of death, behind the closed shutters. The old lady, over in the Nassaulaan, so close by, never saw any one except her children and grandchildren: she would not be told. Monday was the funeral. Lot and Elly could not be expected home before Wednesday. It was hard on them, poor children, to be disturbed like that in Italy, in the midst of their work. But still Elly was—to the outside world—the old man's only relation; and she was his heiress....

Aunt Adèle was not grasping. The old man was sure to have left her a handsome legacy: she felt certain of that. What would upset her was to have to leave the big house: she had lived there so long, had looked after it so very long for the old gentleman. She was fond of it, was fond of every piece of furniture in it.... Or would Elly keep the house on? She thought not: Elly considered it gloomy; and it would be too big, thought Aunt Adèle, for Elly was no doubt sharing the money with Ottilie Steyn.... Of course, people would talk, though perhaps not so very much; the old gentleman had, so to speak, become dead to the outside world, with the exception of the Dercksz family; and, except Dr. Roelofsz, all his contemporaries were dead. The only survivors of his period were the old lady and the doctor.... Yes, she, Aunt Adèle, would certainly have to leave the house; and the thought brought tears to her eyes. How beautifully it was kept, for such an old place! What she regretted was that Steyn had not consented to tidy up the papers in the study. He had locked the door and given her the key. That was the only room, in all the tidy house, with litter and dust in it. Next to the study, in his bedroom, lay the old gentleman: he was to be put into his coffin that evening; Steyn and Dr. Thielens would be there then. The whole house was quiet and tidy around the dead man, except for the dust and litter in the study. The thought irritated Aunt Adèle. And, that afternoon, she took the key and went in. The room had remained as it was when they lifted the old gentleman out of his chair—so light, oh, so light!—and laid him on his bed and undressed him....

Aunt Adèle opened the windows: the cold wintry air entered and she drew her woollen cape closer over her shoulders. She stood at a loss for a moment, with her duster in her hand, not knowing where to begin. One of the drawers of the writing-table had been left open; there were papers on the table; a waste-paper-basket stood close by; papers lay on the ground. No, she couldn't leave things like that; instead of a crime, it was a kindness to the old man who lay waiting in the next room, lifeless, to put a little order into it all. She collected what she found on the table and tucked it into a letter-wallet. She dusted the desk, arranged everything neatly, pushed the open drawer to and locked it. She picked up what lay on the floor; and she gave a start, for she saw that it was a letter torn across the middle, a letter torn in two. The old gentleman had been tearing up letters: she could see that from the paperbasket, in which the little, torn pieces made white patches. This letter had evidently dropped from his hand at the last moment of all, when death came and tapped him on the heart and head. He had not had the strength to tear up into smaller pieces the letter already torn in two; the two halves had slipped from his fingers and he himself had slid out of life. It touched Aunt Adèle very much; tears came to her eyes. She remained staring irresolutely, with the two pieces in her hand. Should she tear them up? Should she put them away, in the wallet, for Steyn? Better tear them up: the old gentleman had intended to tear them up. And she tore the two pieces in four....

At that moment, an irresistible impulse forced her to glance at the uppermost piece. It was hardly curiosity, for she did not even think that she was holding in her hand anything more than a very innocent letter—the old gentleman kept so many—a letter, among a hundred others, which he had gradually come to the conclusion that he would do well to destroy. It was hardly curiosity: it was a pressure from without, an impulse from outside herself, a force compelling her against her honest conviction. She did not resist it: she read; and, as she read, the idea rose clearly within her to finish tearing up the letter and drop the pieces in the basket.

Yet she did not do so: she read on. She turned pale. She was a simple-minded, placid woman, who had reached years of maturity calmly, with healthy, unstirred blood, foreign to all violent passion. Reading had left her soul untouched; and burning sentences, she thought, were invented by the authors for the sake of fine writing. The fact that words could be written down such as she now read, on paper yellow with age, in ink pale-red with age, struck her with consternation, as though a red flame had burst forth from smouldering ashes which she was raking. She never knew that such a thing could be. She did not know that those violent glowing words could be uttered just like that. They hypnotized her. She had sunk into the old man's chair and she read, unable to do anything but read. She read of burning things, of passion which she had never suspected, of a melting together of body and soul, a fusion of souls, a fusion of bodies, only to forget, at all costs to forget. She read, in a frenzy of words, of a purple madness exciting itself in order to plunge and annihilate two people in each other's soul and, with undiscovered kisses, to burn away and melt away in oblivion, in oblivion.... To melt into each other and never to be apart again.... To be together for ever.... To be inseparable for ever in unquenchable passion. ... To remain so and to forget.... Especially to forget, O God, to forget ... that one night, that night! ... And through the first passionate purple words there now began to flow the purple of blood.... Through the words of passionate love there now flowed words of passionate hatred.... The frenzied joy that this hatred had cooled after all.... The jubilant assurance that, if that night could ever recur, the hatred would cool a second time! The mad words deceived themselves, for, immediately after, they again writhed in despair and declared that nevertheless, in spite of satisfied passion, the memory was as a spectre, a bloody spectre, that never left you. ... Oh, the hatred would always cool like that, for a third time, for a fourth time ... but yet the bloody spectre remained horrible! ... It was maddening.... It was maddening.... And the letter ended with an entreaty that he would come, come speedily, to blend with her in soul and body and, in the rapture of it, to forget and no longer to behold the spectre. At the bottom of the letter were the words, "Tear this up at once," and the name:

"OTTILIE."

Aunt Adèle remained sitting motionless, with the four pieces in her hand. She had read the letter: it was irrevocable. She wished that she had not read it. But it was too late now. And she knew....

The letter was dated from Tegal, sixty years ago. Flames no longer flickered out of the words, now that Aunt Adèle had read them, but the scarlet quivered before her terrified eyes. She sat huddled and trembling and her eyes stared at that quivering scarlet. She felt her knees shake; they would not let her rise from her chair. And she know. Through a welter of hatred, passion, jubilation, madness, passionate love and passionate remorse, the letter was clear and conjured up—as in an unconscious impulse to tell everything, to feel everything over again, to describe everything in crimson clearness—a night of years and years ago, a night in silent mountains, by a dark jungle, by a river in flood, a night in a lonely pasangrahan, a night of love, a night of hatred, of surprise, of self-defence, of not knowing how, of rising terror, of despair to the pitch of madness.... And the words conjured up a scene of struggle and bloodshed in a bedroom, conjured up a group of three people who carried a corpse towards that river in flood, not knowing what else to do, while the pouring rain streamed and clattered down.... All this the words conjured up, as though suggested by a force from the outside, an impulse irresistible, a mystic violence compelling the writer to say what, logically speaking, she should have kept hidden all her life long; to describe in black on white the thing that was a crime, until her letter became an accusation; to scream it all out and to paint in bright colours the thing which it would have been safest to keep buried in a remorseful soul and to erase, so that not a trace remained to betray it....

And the simple, placid woman, grown to mature years in calmness of blood, sat dismayed at what had been revealed to her. At first, her dismay had shone red in front of her, dismay at an evocation of hatred and passionate love; and now, suddenly, there rose before her eyes the drawing-room of an old woman and the woman herself sitting at a window, brittle with the lasting years, and, opposite her, Takma, both silently awaiting the passing. The old woman sat there still; yonder, in the next room, lay the old man and he too awaited the morrow and the last honours: for to-day everything was past....

O God, so that was the secret of their two old lives! So vehemently had they loved, so violently hated, so tragic and ever-secret a crime had they committed in that lonely mountain night and such blood-red memories had they dragged with them, always and always, all their long, long lives! And now, suddenly, she alone knew what nobody knew! ... She alone knew, she thought; and she shuddered with dread. What was she to do with that knowledge, what was she to do with those four pieces of yellow paper, covered with pale-red ink as though with faded letters of blood? What was she to do, what was she to do with it all? ... Her fingers refused to tear those four pieces into smaller pieces and to drop them into the paper-basket. It would make her seem an accomplice. And what was she to do with her knowledge, with what she alone knew? ... That tragic knowledge would oppress her, the simple-minded woman, to stifling-point! ...

Now at last she rose, shivering. It was very cold in the aired room. She went to the window to close it and felt her feet tottering, her knees knocking together. Her eyes staring in dismay, she shook her head to and fro, to and fro. Mechanically, with her duster in her hand, she dusted here and there, absent-mindedly, constantly returning to the same place, dusting two and three times over. Mechanically she put the chairs straight; and her habit of neatness was such that, when she left the room, she was still trembling, but the room was tidy. She had locked up the torn letter. She could not destroy it. And suddenly she was seized with a fresh curiosity, a fresh impulse from without, a strange feeling that compelled her: she wanted to see the old man. ... And she entered the death-chamber on the tips of her slippered toes. In the pale dim light, the old man's head lay white on the white pillow, on the bed with its white counterpane. The eyelids were closed; the face had fallen away on either side of the nose and mouth in loose wrinkles of discoloured parchment; there were a few scanty grey hairs near the ears, like a dull silver wreath. And Aunt Adèle looked down upon him, with eyes starting from their sockets, and shook her head to and fro in dismay. There he lay, dead. She had known him and looked after him for years. She had never suspected that. There he lay, dead; and in his dead relics lay all the past passionate love and hatred; surely too the past remorse and remembrance. Or was there a hereafter yet to come, with more struggling and more remorse and penitence ... and punishment perhaps? ...

Whatever he might have suffered within himself, he had not been fully punished here on earth. His life, outwardly, had flowed long and calmly. He had achieved consideration, almost riches. He had not had an ailing old age. On the contrary, his senses had remained unimpaired; and she remembered that he even used often to complain, laughing in his genial manner—which was too pronounced to be sincere—that he heard everything and was far from growing deaf with age, that in fact he heard voices which did not exist. What voices had he heard, what voice had he heard calling? What voice had called to him when the letter, half-destroyed and too long preserved, dropped from the hand that played him false? ... No, in this world he had not been fully punished, unless indeed his whole life was a punishment.... A cold shiver passed through Aunt Adèle: that a person could live for years beside another and not know him and know nothing about him! How long was it? For twenty-three years, she, the poor relation, had lived with him like that! ... And the old woman also lived like that....

Shaking her head in stupefaction, Aunt Adèle moved away. She clasped her hands together, gently, with an old maid's gesture. She saw the old woman in her imagination. The old woman was sitting, dignified and majestic, frail and thin, in her high-backed chair. She had once been the woman who was able to write that letter full of words red with passion and hatred and madness and the wish to forget, in a fusion of the senses with him, with him who lay there so insignificant, so small, so old, dead now, after years and years. She had once been able to write like that!

The words still burnt before the eyes of the stupefied elderly woman, placid in soul and blood. That such things were, that such things could be!...... Her head kept shaking to and fro.....