did not go to bed; she waited up. Would Steyn come back soon? Was that … was that he coming now? No, it was Lot: it was his key she heard, his lighter footstep.
And she opened the door:
"Lot!"
"Mummy, aren't you in bed yet?"
"No, dear. Lot, Lot, come here!"
He went into her room.
"Lot, Steyn is out."
"Out?"
"Yes, he went to his room first … and then I heard him go quietly down the stairs; then he went out of the hall-door, quietly."
"He didn't want to wake you, Mummy."
"Ah, but where has he gone to?"
"For a walk. He often does. It's very hot and close."
"Gone for a walk, Lot, gone for a walk? No, he's gone … "
She stood in front of him—he could see it by the candle-light—blazing with passion. Her little figure in the white night-dress was like that of a fury with the curly yellow hair, shot with grey, all shining; everything that was sweet in her seethed up into a raging temper, as though she were irritated to the utmost, and she felt an impulse suddenly to raise her hand and box Lot's ears with its small, quivering fingers for daring to defend Steyn. She controlled herself and controlled her wrath, but words of vulgar invective and burning reproach came foaming to her trembling lips.
"Come, Mummy, Mummy! Come!"
Lot tried to calm her. And he took her in his arms and patted her back, as one does to an excited child:
"Come, Mummy, come!"
She now burst into sobs. But he remonstrated with her gently, said that she was exaggerating, that she had been overwrought lately, that he absolutely refused to get married if she did not become calmer; and very prettily he flirted with her in this way and persuaded her to go to bed, tucked her in, shook up her pillows:
"Come, Mummy, go to sleep now and don't be silly. Let Steyn go for his walk in peace, don't think of Steyn, don't think of anything. … "
She acquiesced, under the stroke of his delicate hand on her hair, her cheek.
"Will you go to sleep now, you silly Mummy? … I say, Mummy, what a soft skin you have! … "
[1] Pronounced "Lo," as in the French "Charlot."
[2] The Witte and the Plaats are the two leading clubs at the Hague.
[3] Dutch East Indies: Java.
[4] British India.
CHAPTER II
Elly Takma was very happy and looked better than she had done for a long time. Well, thought Cousin Adèle, who had long kept house for Grandpapa Takma—she was a Takma too and unmarried—well, a first little love-romance which a girl experiences when not much over twenty and which makes her feel unhappy, an engagement broken off with a fellow who used to go and see his mistress after spending the evening with his betrothed: a romance of that sort does not influence a girl's life; and, though Elly had moped for a while, Lot Pauws was making her happy and making her look better, with a glad laugh on her lips and a bright colour in her cheeks.
Cousin Adèle—Aunt Adèle, as Elly called her, Indian-fashion—buxom, full-figured, fresh and young-looking for her age, had nothing of a poor relation employed to do the housekeeping, but was altogether the capable mistress of the house, seeing to everything, caring for nothing but the details of her household and proud of her orderly home. She had never been in India and ruled Grandpapa's house with true Dutch conscientiousness, leaving Elly entirely to her hobby of the moment; for Elly had her hobbies, which she rode until she attained absolute perfection, after which she would take up a fresh one. At eighteen, she had been a famous tennis-player, winning medals in tournaments, well-known for her exquisite, powerful and graceful play, mentioned in all the sporting-papers. After achieving perfection in tennis, she had suddenly grown bored with it, hung up her racket, studded round with the medals, by a pink ribbon in her bedroom and begun to work zealously for the Charity Organization Society, doing much practical slumming and sick-visiting; they thought highly of her in the committee. One day, however, when a sick man showed her his leg with a hole in it, she fainted and considered that she had overstepped her philanthropic limits. She resigned the work; and, feeling a certain handiness quivering at the tips of her sensitive fingers, she started making her own hats and also modelling. She was successful in both pursuits: the hats were so pretty that she thought seriously of setting up as a milliner and working for her living. The modelling too was most charming: after the first few lessons, she was modelling from the life; and her head of A Beggar Boy was accepted for exhibition. Then Elly had fallen in love and was very much in love; her engagement lasted three months; then it was broken off; and Elly, who did nothing by halves, for all her varying interests, had suffered a great deal and faded and pined and been dangerously ill, until one day she recovered, with a feeling of melancholy as her only remembrance.
She was then twenty-three and had taken to writing. Under a pseudonym, she published her own engagement in the form of a short story: it was not a bad short story. Her new hobby brought her gradually into contact with Charles Pauws, who also wrote, mostly for the newspapers: articles, causeries. Elly was of opinion that she had soon reached her literary limits. After this short story, which had blossomed in her and blossomed out of her heart, she would never write anything more. She was twenty-three, she was old. She had lived her life, with different vicissitudes. Still there was something, there was Charles. Soft, weak, passably witty, with his mother's attractive eyes, with his fair hair carefully brushed, with his too pale blue ties, he was not the man of her dreams; and she still felt, sometimes very grievously, the sadness of her sorrow. But she was fond of him, she was very fond of him and she considered that he was wasting his talent on trivial work, on journalism, which he did with remarkable ease—after all, it was an art in itself, Charles would retort—whereas his two novels were so good; and he had attempted no serious work for the last ten years. And in this girl, with her thoroughness—within limits—there arose, on the now somewhat romantic ground of her melancholy and her sorrow, the mission to rouse Lot to work, to produce real work, fine work. She must work no longer for herself but for another, for Lot, who possessed so many good qualities, but did not cultivate them earnestly. She saw more and more of him; she had him to tea; they talked, talked at great length; Lot, though not physically in love with her, thought it really pleasant to be with Elly, allowed himself to be stimulated, began a novel, stuck in the middle. She created in his mind the suggestion that he wanted her. And he proposed to her. She was very happy and he too, though they were not passionately in love. They were attracted by the prospect of being together, talking together, living, working, travelling together, in the smiling sympathy of their two souls: his a rather small, vain, cynical, artistic soul, with above all much kindly indulgence for others and a tinge of laughing bitterness and one great dread, which utterly swayed his soul, the dread of growing old; hers, at this moment, full of the serious thought of remaining true to her mission and giving her life a noble object by wrapping it up in another's.
Elly, that morning, was singing while the wind sent the early autumn leaves driving in a shower of golden sunlight along the window-panes. She was busy altering a winter hat, with a talent which she had not quite lost, when Cousin—Aunt—Adèle entered the room:
"Grandpapa has had a bad night; I kept on hearing him moving."
"Yes, then he's troubled with buzzings which are just like voices," said Elly. "Grandpapa is always hearing those voices, you know. Dr. Thielens looks upon them as a premonitory symptom of total deafness. Poor Grandad! I'll go to him at once … I must just finish my hat