impossible. That was why she, Mamma, had married, had married three times. Perhaps she ought never to have married at all: it would have been better for a heap of things, a heap of people. … The old life was all gone. It had vanished, as if it had never existed. And yet it had existed and, when it passed, had left much behind it, but nothing except melancholy ghosts and shadows. Yes, this evening she was in a serious mood and felt like thinking, a thing which otherwise she did as seldom as possible: what good did thinking do? When she had thought, in her life, she had never thought to any practical purpose. When she had yielded to impulse, things had been worse still. What was the good of wanting to live, when nevertheless your life was mapped out for you by things stronger than yourself that slumbered in your blood?
Ottilie gave herself up to her French novel, for Steyn de Weert had entered the room, with Jack leaping in front of him. And any one who had seen Mamma a moment ago and saw her now would have noticed this phenomenon, that Mamma became much older as soon as her husband entered. The plump cheeks contracted nervously and the lines round the nose and mouth grew deeper. The little straight nose stuck out more sharply, the forehead frowned angrily. The fingers, which were tearing the pages of a novel anyhow with a hairpin, trembled; and the page was torn awry. The back became rounder, like that of a cat assuming the defensive. She said nothing, but poured out the tea.
"Coosh!" she said to the dog.
And, glad that the dog came to her, she patted him on the head with a half-caress; and the fox-terrier, giving a last sharp bark, spun round upon himself and, very suddenly, nestled down on Ottilie's skirt, with a deep sigh. Steyn de Weert, sitting opposite her, drank his tea. It appeared strange that they should be man and wife, for Mamma now certainly looked her age and Steyn seemed almost young. He was a tall fellow, broad-shouldered, not more than just fifty, with a handsome, fresh-coloured, healthy face, the face of a strong out-of-doors man, calm in glance and movement. The fact that, years ago, he had thrown away his life, from a sense of honour, upon a woman much older than himself had afterwards inspired him with an indifference that ceased to reckon what might still be in store for him. What was spoilt was spoilt, squandered for good, irretrievably. There was the open air, which was cool and fresh; there was shooting; there was a drink, when he wanted one; there were his old friends, dating back to the time when he was an officer in the dragoons. Beyond these there were the little house and this old woman: he accepted them into the bargain, because it couldn't be helped. In externals he did, as far as possible, what she wanted, because she could be so tempersome and was so obstinate; but his cool stubbornness was a silent match for hers. Lot was a capital fellow, a little weak and unexpected and effeminate; but he was very fond of Lot: he was glad that Lot lived with them; he had given Lot one of the best rooms in the house to work in. For the rest … for the rest, there were other things; but they were no concern of anybody. Hang it all, he was a young man still, even though his thick hair was beginning to turn grey! His marriage had come about through a point of honour; but his wife was old, she was very old. The thing was really rather absurd. He would never make a hell of his life, as long as he still felt well and strong. With a good dose of indifference you can shake off everything.
It was this indifference of his which irritated his wife, till she felt as nervous as a cat when he did no more than enter the room. He had not spoken a word, sat drinking his tea, reading the newspaper which he had brought with him. In the small living-room, where the gas hummed and the wind rattled the panes, the fox-terrier sometimes snorted in dreams that made him groan and moan on the trailing edge of his mistress' dress.
"Coosh!" she said.
And for the rest neither of them spoke, both sat reading, one her book, the other his evening-paper. And these two people, whose lives had been welded together by civil contract, because of the man's feelings of conventional honesty and his sense of not being able to act otherwise as a man of honour, these two had once, years ago, twenty years ago, longed passionately, the man for the woman and the woman for the man. When Steyn de Weert was a first lieutenant, a good-looking fellow, just turned thirty, he had met Mrs. Trevelley, without knowing her age. Besides, what did age matter when he set eyes upon a woman so ravishingly beautiful to his quick desire that he had at once, at the first moment that he saw her, felt the blood flaming in his veins and thought:
"That woman I must have! … "
At that time, though already forty, she was a woman so full of blossoming prettiness that she was still known as the beautiful Lietje. She was small, but perfect in shape and particularly charming in feature, charming in the still very young lines of throat and breast, creamy white, with a few pale-gold freckles; charming with blue eyes of innocence and very fair, soft, wavy hair; charmingly half-woman and half-child, moulded for love, who seemed to exist only that she might rouse glowing desires. When Steyn de Weert saw her thus for the first time, in some ultra-modern Hague drawing-room of the Dutch-Indian set, she was married to her second husband, that half-Englishman, Trevelley, who was supposed to have made money in India; and Steyn had seen her the mother of three biggish children: a girl of fifteen and two boys a little younger; but the enamoured dragoon had refused to believe that, by her first marriage, with Pauws, from whom she had been divorced because of Trevelley, she had a daughter at the Conservatoire at Liège and a son of eighteen at home! The beautiful Lietje? She had married very young, in India, and she was still the beautiful Lietje. Such big children? Was that woman forty? The young officer had perhaps hesitated a moment, tried, now that he knew so much, to view Mrs. Trevelley with other eyes; but, when he looked in hers and saw that she desired him as he did her, he forgot everything. Why not cull a moment of happiness? What was an instant of love with a still seductive and beautiful woman? A triumph for a week, a month, a couple of months; and then each would go a different way.
That was how he had thought at the time; but now, now he was sitting here, because that bounder of a Trevelley, who wanted to get rid of Ottilie, had taken advantage of their relations to create a scandal and, after a pretence at a duel, to insist on a divorce; because all the Hague had talked about Ottilie, when she was left standing alone with a lover; and because he, Steyn, was an honest chap after all: that, that was why he was sitting here, with that old woman opposite him. Not a word was uttered between them; they drank their tea; the tray was removed; Jack dreamed and moaned; the wind howled. The pages followed in quick succession under Ottilie's fingers; and Steyn read the Manchurian war-news and the advertisements, the advertisements and the war-news. The room around them, married though they were, looked as it had always looked, impersonal and unhomely; the clock ticked on and on, under its glass shade. It looked like a waiting-room, that drawing-room: a waiting-room where, after many things that had passed, two people sat waiting. Sat waiting … for what? For the end that was so slow in coming, for the final death.
Steyn restrained himself and read through the advertisements once more. But his wife, suddenly shutting up her book, said, abruptly:
"Frans!"
"Eh?"
"I was talking to Lot just now."
"Yes … "
"Would you object if they stayed on with us, he and Elly?"
"No, on the contrary."
But it seemed as though Steyn's calm consent just irritated his wife, perhaps against her own will, into contradiction:
"Yes, but it wouldn't be so easy!" she said.
"Why not?"
"The house is too small."
"We can move."
"A bigger house would be more expensive. Have you the money for it?"
"I think that, with what Lot makes and with Elly's allowance … "
"No, a bigger house is too dear."
"Well, then here. … "
"This is too small."
"Then it can't be done."
Ottilie rose, angrily:
"No, of course not: nothing can ever be done. Because of that wretched money. But I'll tell you this: when Lot is married, I can't … I c-can't … "
She stammered when she was angry.
"Well,