reproaching you."
"As to living together, Lot," said Mamma, sadly, in a child's coaxing voice, casting up her blue child-eyes, "I should be quite willing, if Elly is and if she promises to take things as she finds them. I shall feel very lonely without you. But, if there were any objections, I might go over to England. I have my two boys there. And Mary is coming home from India this year."
Lot knitted his brows and put his hand up to his fair hair: it was very neat, with a parting.
"Or else … I might go and look up Ottilie at Nice."
"No, Mamma, not that!" said Lot, almost angrily.
"Why not?" exclaimed Mrs. Steyn de Weert, raising her voice. "She's my child, surely?"
"Yes," Lot admitted, quickly recovering his composure. "But … "
"But what? Surely, my own child … ?"
"But it would be very silly of you to go to Ottilie."
"Why, even if we have quarrelled at times … "
"It would never do; you can't get on with her. If you go to Ottilie, I won't get married. Besides, Steyn has something to say in the matter."
"I'm so fond of Nice," said Mrs. Steyn de Weert; and her child-voice sounded almost plaintive. "The winters there are so delightful. … But perhaps it would be difficult for me … to go there … because Ottilie behaves so funnily. If it could be managed, I would rather live with you, Lot. If Elly is willing. Perhaps we could have a little larger house than this. Do you think we could afford it? Stay alone with Steyn I will not. That's settled. That's quite settled."
"Mummy darling … "
Lot's voice sounded full of pity. After her last determined words, Mamma had big tears in her blue child-eyes, tears which did not fall but which gave a sorrowful gleam to the naughty look in her face. Then, with a sudden short sigh, she took up her book and was silent and pretended to read. There was something resigned about her attitude and, at the same time, something obstinate, the constant attitude of a naughty child, a spoilt child that persisted in doing, quietly and silently, what it wanted to. Lot, with his coffee-cup in his hand, his laugh about his mouth, studied Mamma; after his compassion, he just sat and studied her. Yes, she must have been very pretty; the uncles always said, a little doll. She was sixty now and no longer made any pretence to beauty; but she was still charming in a child-like and doll-like fashion. She had the wrinkles and the deeper furrows of an elderly woman; but the skin of her forehead and cheeks was still white and soft, without a blemish, tenderly veined at the temples. She had become very grey; but, as she had been very fair and her hair was soft and curly, it sometimes looked as if she had remained fair; and, simply though that hair appeared to be done, fastened up with one quick movement and pinned, there were still some almost childish little locks curling at the temples and in the neck. Her short, slim figure was almost that of a young woman; her hands were small and pretty; in fact, there was a prettiness about her whole person; and pretty above all were the young, blue eyes. Lot, who smiled as he looked at his mother, saw in her a woman over whom an emotional life, a life of love and hate, had passed without telling very much upon her. And yet Mamma had been through a good deal, with her three husbands, all three of whom she had loved, all three of whom, without exception, she now hated. A butterfly she had certainly been, but just an unthinking butterfly, simply because her nature was a butterfly's. She had loved much, but even a deep passion would not have made her life or her different; naturally and unconsciously she was in headstrong opposition to everything. She had never been economical; and yet her house was never comfortable, nor had she ever spent much on dress, unconsciously despising elegance and comfort and feeling that she attracted through herself and not through any artistic surroundings. Mamma's get-up was like nothing on earth, Lot thought; the only cosy room in the house was his. Mamma, mad on reading, read very modern French novels, which she did not always understand, despite a life of love and hatred, having remained innocent in many things and totally ignorant of the darker phases of passion. Then Lot would see, while she was reading, that she was surprised and did not understand; a simple, childish wonder would come into her eyes; she never dared ask Lot for an explanation. …
Lot got up; he was going to Elly that evening. He kissed his mother, with his constant little laugh of silent amusement, his little laugh at Mamma.
"You never used to go out every evening," said Mamma, reproachfully; and she felt the thorn in her heart's flesh.
"I'm in love now," said Lot, calmly. "And engaged. And a fellow must go and see his girl, you know. … Will you think over my question, why I really proposed to Elly … and will you manage without me this evening?"
"I shall have to do that many evenings. … "
Mamma pretended to be absorbed in her French novel, but, as soon as Lot had left the room, she put down the book and looked round, vaguely, with a look of helplessness in her blue eyes. She did not move when the maid brought in the tea-tray and kettle; she sat staring before her, across her book. The water sang its bubbling song; outside the windows, after the last summer heat, the first cold wind blew with its wonted plaint. Ottilie felt herself abandoned: oh, how little of everything remained! There she was now, there she was, the old, grey-haired woman! What was there left of her life? And yet, strange to say, her three husbands were all three alive: Lot had been lately to Brussels with Elly, to see his father; Trevelley was spending a life of pleasure in London: when all was said, she had liked him the best. Her three English children lived in England, felt more English than Dutch; Ottilie was leading her curious, unconventional life at Nice: the whole family cried scandal about it; and Lot she was now about to lose. He had always stayed with her so nicely, though he went abroad pretty frequently; and he had hardly any friends at the Hague and never went to the Witte.[2] Now he was going to be married; he was no longer young, for a young man; he must be thirty-eight, surely? To occupy herself a little now, beside her lonely tea-tray and bubbling water, she began to count her children's ages on her tiny fingers. Ottilie, Lot's sister, her eldest, forty-one: heavens, how old she was growing! The English ones, as she always called them—"my three English children"—Mary, thirty-five; John, thirty-two; even her handsome Hugh was thirty: heavens above, how old they were growing! And, once she was busy calculating ages, to amuse herself, she reckoned out that old Mamma would now soon be—let's see—yes, she would be ninety-seven. Old Mr. Takma, Elly's grandpapa, was only a year or two younger; and, when she thought of him, Ottilie reflected that it was very strange that Mr. Takma had always been so nice to her, as though it were really true what people used to whisper, formerly, when people still interested themselves in the family. So curious, those two old people: they saw each other almost every day; for Papa Takma was hale and still went out often, always walking the short distance from the Mauritskade to the Nassaulaan and crossing the razor-back bridge with rare vigour. Yes … and then Sister Thérèse, in Paris, eight years older than herself, must be sixty-eight; and the brothers: Daan, in India,[3] seventy; Harold, seventy-three; Anton, seventy-five; while Stefanie, the only child of Mamma's first marriage and the only De Laders, was getting on for seventy-seven. She, Ottilie, the youngest, felt that all those others were very old; and yet she was old too: she was sixty. It was all a matter of comparison, growing old, different ages; but she had always felt it so: that she, the youngest, was comparatively young and always remained younger than the others, than all the others. She had to laugh, secretly, when Stefanie kept on saying:
"At our age … "
Why, Stefanie was seventy-seven! There was a difference—rather!—between sixty and seventy-seven. But she shrugged her shoulders: what did it matter? It was all over and so long ago. There she sat now, an old, grey-haired woman, and the aftermath of life dragged on and the loneliness increased
