It was a dismal evening at Mrs. van Lowe's that Sunday. And yet Mamma knew nothing: together with Dorine, she had seen that the maids set out the card-tables, had seen, according to her custom, to the sandwiches, the cakes and the wine which were invariably put out in the boudoir, under the portrait of her husband, the late governor-general. But the old lady was different from usual; and Dorine, looking very pale and apprehensive, gave a start of amazement when she asked:
"Dorine, who's been moving Papa's portrait?"
The old woman asked the question testily and peremptorily.
"But, Mamma, it's been here for years. After Papa's death, you said you wouldn't have it always before your eyes in the drawing-room . . . and it was moved in here . . ."
"Who, do you say, moved it?"
"Why, you yourself, Mamma!"
"I?"
"Yes, you. . . ."
"Oh, yes!" said the old woman, remembering. "Yes, yes, I remember; I only asked because it looks so out of place here . . . in the little room . . . and it is such a fine portrait. . . ."
Dorine said nothing more. Her legs shook beneath her; but she went on spreading out the cards.
Karel and Cateau arrived:
"How aw-ful!" said Cateau, pale in the face. "We thought we had bet-ter come . . . for Mamma's sake . . . didn't we, Ka-rel?"
"Mamma knows nothing," said Dorine. "But we can't possibly keep it from her. . . . Otto has gone to Baarn to break the news to Bertha."
The Van Saetzemas arrived:
"No details yet?" asked Adolphine.
"No," Dorine whispered, nervously, seeing Mamma approaching.
"How late you all are!" grumbled the old woman. "Why aren't Uncle Herman and Auntie Lot here? And why haven't Auntie Tine and Auntie Rine come yet?"
There was a moment's painful pause.
"But they haven't been coming for some time, Mamma," said Adolphine, gently.
"What do you say? Are they ill?"
"The old aunts haven't been for ev-er so long on Sunday even-ings," said Cateau, with a great deal of pitying emphasis.
Suddenly Mrs. van Lowe seemed to remember. Yes, it was true: the sisters had not come on Sunday evenings for a long time. She nodded her head in assent, with an air of knowing all about the sad things which happen in old age and which will happen also in the future that is still hidden from the children. But in her heart she thought:
"There's something."
And she seemed to be trying to gaze ahead. But she did not see it before her, did not see it before her vague eyes, as she had seen the death of Henri's mother, yonder, in a dark room at Driebergen, in a dark oak bedstead, behind dark green curtains. She felt that there was something that they had kept from her in order to spare her pain, but she did not see it as she had but lately seen other things which the children did not know. It was as though her sight were growing dim and uncertain, as though she only guessed, only suspected things. And she would not ask what it was. If there was something . . . well, then her Sunday family-evening could not help being dreary and silent. Adolphine's children no longer sat round the big table in the conservatory: the old lady did not understand why, did not see that they were growing up, that the round games bored them. Only, as she looked at her empty room, she asked just one more question:
" here's Bertha? And where's Constance?"
This time, Adolphine and Cateau did not even trouble to remind Mamma that Bertha was living at Baarn. As for Auntie Lot, how could they tell her that the good soul had had a nervous breakdown after being told of Henri's sudden death, about which no one knew any details? Toetie arrived very late and said that Mamma had a little headache. As for Constance, not one of the children would have dared to say that she and Van der Welcke had gone to Paris by the night-mail at six o'clock, as soon as they could after Emilie's telegram. Gerrit wanted to go with them, but he was ill and had hardly said a word to Adeline about the telegram when he returned home from the Kerkhoflaan. He had got into bed shivering, thinking that he had a feverish attack, influenza or something. The daughters also thought it better not to tell Mamma that Gerrit was ill; and Mamma did not even ask after Gerrit, though she missed him and Adeline and thought that her rooms looked very empty.
Where could they be? the old woman wondered. None of Bertha's little tribe; the old sisters not there; Constance not there; Gerrit not there; Auntie Lot not there: where were they all? the old woman kept wondering. How big her rooms looked, what a shivery feeling the card-tables gave her, with the markers, with the cards spread out in an S! Well, if there were no children left, it was not worth while having the table put out for the round games in the conservatory, at least not until Gerrit's children were bigger, until a new warmth surrounded her, on her poor Sunday evenings! And what was the use of ordering such a lot of cakes, if there was nobody there to eat them?
And it was very strange, but this evening, now that her rooms were so empty, she grew very weary of those who were there—Adolphine, Cateau, Floortje and Dijkerhof—very tired. She felt her face becoming drawn and haggard, her drooping eyelids twitching over her dim eyes and her heavily-veined hands trembling in her lap with utter weariness. She did not speak, only nodded: the wise nod of old age, knowing that old age spells sadness. She only nodded, longing for them to go. They were uncomfortable: they whispered together, their faces were pale; they sat there staring in such a strange, spectral way . . . as if something dreadful had happened or was going to happen. . . . Had the servants made up the fires so badly? Was it so bitterly cold, so creepily chilly in her rooms, that she felt shivers all down her old, bent back? . . . And, when the children at last, earlier than usual, took leave of her—still with that same spectral stare, as though they were looking at something dreadful that had happened or was going to happen—she felt inclined to say to them that she was getting too old now to keep up her Sunday evenings; she had it on her lips to say as much to Floortje, to Cateau, to Adolphine; but a pity for them all and especially for herself restrained her and she did not say it. On the contrary, she said, very wearily:
"Well, I hope that you will all be more particular about coming next Sunday . . . all of you, all of you. . . . I want you all here. . . . I want to have you all around me."
Then they left her alone, earlier than usual, and the old woman did not ring at once for the servants to put out the lights, to go to bed, but first wandered for a little while longer through her large, empty, still brightly-lit rooms. How much had changed in the many, many years that very slowly accumulated about her and seemed to bury her under their grey mounds! Sometimes it seemed to her as if nothing had changed, as if the Sunday evenings always remained the same, even though this or that one might be absent for one reason or another. But sometimes, as to-day, it seemed to her as if everything, everything had changed, with hardly perceptible changes. Did she alone remain unchanged? . . .
She had now reached the little boudoir: hardly any of the cakes had been touched; above them hung the fine portrait of her husband, in the gold-laced uniform, with the orders. He was dead . . . and with him all their grandeur, which she had learnt to love because of him, through him. . . . She wandered back to the other rooms: there were portraits on the walls, photographs in frames on the tables and mantelpieces. Dead was the old family-doctor; as good as dead her two old sisters; dead was Van Naghel; as good as dead Bertha, now so far away. Aunt Lot, she still remained, she still remained, bearing up bravely, in spite of financial disaster. . . . Then the children: they were all dying off, for surely it was tantamount to that, when they were becoming more and more remote from her: Karel; Adolphine; Ernst; even Paul; and Dorine, her youngest. There was only Constance . . . and Gerrit, perhaps. . . . And the grandchildren: Frans, in Java; Emilie and Henri, in Paris: O God, what were they doing in Paris? O God, what was it, what was the matter with them? For she suddenly saw the boy . . . white as a corpse . . . with his clothes open . . . and a deep, gaping wound above his heart, sending a stream of purple blood from his lung . . . while he lay in the last agonies of death. . . . Why did she see it, this strange vision of a second or two? It couldn't be true, yet it filled her with anxiety. . . . And in sad understanding she nodded her old head, with the dim eyes which were suddenly seeing visions more clearly than reality . . . until the time when they would see nothing, numbed by the years which were slowly accumulating about her. . . . Why did she see it? . . . And, amid the emptiness of her brightly-lit drawing-room, a sort of roar came to her from the distance, from the distance outside the room, the distance outside the house, the distance outside the night, the very distant distance of eternity, the eternity whence all the things of the future come: a roar so overwhelming that it seemed to come from a supernatural sea in which the poor, trembling old woman was drowned, drowned with all her vanity and all her unimportant, insignificant sorrow, a sea in which her very small, small soul was drowned, swallowed up like the veriest atom in the roaring, roaring waves; a roar whose voice told her that it was coming, that it was coming, the great sorrow, the thing before which she trembled with fear because she had long foreseen it and because it would be so heavy for her to bear . . . now that she was too old and too weary to bear any more sorrow! And, with an unconscious gesture, she raised her trembling old hands and prayed, mechanically:
"O God, no more, no more! . . ."
Why must fate be like that, so heavy, so ruthless and crushing? Why had it not all come earlier, including the thing which advanced with such a threatening roar and under which she, too weary now, too weak and too old, would succumb when it passed over her, when it reached her at last out of the roaring, threatening, distant, distant eternity, wherein all the things of the future are born. . . .
But the roar of that doom and her knowledge of it lasted no longer than a second. And, when that second was past, there was nothing around her but the empty, brightly-lit rooms. It was eleven o'clock, the children had all gone home and she rang for the servants, to put out the lights, to go to bed, duly observant of the small needs of her very small life, in spite of all those supernatural things which threatened from afar, out of eternity. . . .
Leaving the maids occupied in the empty room, where they turned off the gas in the chandelier, the old woman slowly climbed the stairs, nodding her old head in bitter comprehension, knowing too well, alas, that the great sorrow would come . . . even though, trembling with fear, she prayed:
"O God . . . no more, no more!"