A few words were exchanged about the members of the family. Soon the reverend mother rose discreetly, said good-bye, expressed her thanks for the visit.
"How is Uncle Harold?... And how is Mamma, Charles? I very often think of her. I often pray for Mamma, Charles...."
Her voice, long cracked, sounded softer than pure Dutch and was mellow with its creole accent; both Lot and Elly were touched by a certain tenderness in that cracked voice, while Theo stared painfully in front of him: he felt depressed and constrained in his mother's presence.
"It is nice of you not to forget us," Lot ventured to say.
"I shall never forget your mother," said Aunt Thérèse. "I never see her now and perhaps I shall never see her again. But I am very, very fond of her ... and I pray, I often pray for her. She needs it. We all need it. I pray for all of them ... for all the family. They all need it. And I also pray for Mamma, for Grandmamma. And, Elly, I pray for Grandpapa too.... I have been praying now for years, I have been praying for quite thirty years. God is sure to hear my prayers...."
It was difficult to say anything; and Elly merely took Aunt's hand and pressed it. Aunt Thérèse lifted Elly's face a little by the chin, looked at it attentively, then looked at Lot. She was struck by a resemblance, but said nothing.
She knew. Aunt Thérèse knew. She never went to Holland now and she expected that probably she would never again see her sister, whom she knew to be Takma's child, never again see Takma, never again her mother. But she prayed, especially for those old people, because she knew. She, who had once, like her mother, been a woman of society and a woman of passion, with a creole's heart that loved and hated fervently, had learnt from her mother's own lips, in violent attacks of fever, the Thing which she had since known. She had seen her mother see—though she herself had not seen—she had seen her mother see the spectre looming in the corner of the room. She had heard her mother beg for mercy and for an end to her punishment. She had not, as had Harold Dercksz, seen the Thing sixty years ago, but she had known it for thirty years. And the knowledge had given a permanent shock to her nervous and highly-strung soul; and, after being the creole, the woman of passionate love and hatred, the woman of adventures, the woman who loved and afterwards hated those whom she had loved, she had sunk herself in contemplation, had bathed in ecstasy, which shone down upon her from the celestial panes of the church-windows; and one day, in Paris, she had gone to a priest and said:
"Father, I want to pray. I feel drawn towards your faith. I wish to become a Catholic. I have wished it for months."
She had become a Catholic and now she prayed. She prayed for herself, but she prayed even more for her mother. All her highly-strung soul went up in prayer for that mother whom she would probably never see again, but through whom she suffered and whom she hoped to redeem from sin and save from too horrible a punishment hereafter; that mother who had prevented him, her father, from defending himself, by clinging to him until the other man had snatched the weapon from the clenched hand that was seeking revenge in blood-maddened rage.... She knew. Aunt Thérèse knew. And she prayed, she always prayed. Never could too many prayers rise to Heaven to implore mercy.
"Mamma," said Theo, "the reverend mother told me that you have fainted in chapel. And that you don't eat."