Aldo was opening the champagne; and Lot whispered:
"Elly!"
"What?"
"You felt the south just now?"
"Yes ... oh, Lot, beyond a doubt!"
"Well, I ... I feel happiness!"
She squeezed his hand; a smile played around her lips. She also would never forget this moment of her life, whatever else those future years might bring: with her northern soul of sadness, she felt the south and her happiness ... and what passed they did not see....
[CHAPTER XVII]
There was a cold wind, with whirling snowflakes, and Aunt Stefanie de Laders had not at first intended to go out: she had a cough and lately had not been feeling at all the thing; she feared that this winter would be her last. Not everybody lived to be so old as Mamma or Mr. Takma; and she, after all, was seventy-seven: wasn't that a fine age? But she did not want to die yet, for she had always been very much afraid of death, always carried a horrid vision of Hell before her eyes: you could never know what awaited you, however good and religious you might have been, serving God properly. Now she, thank God, had nothing to reproach herself with! Her life had gone on calmly, day after day, without a husband, or children, or mundane ties, but also without any great sorrow. Twice she had suffered the loss of a tom-cat to which she was attached; and she thought it very sad when the birds in the cages grew old and lost their feathers and sometimes gripped on to their perches with their long claws, for years together, until one fine morning she found their little bodies stiff. She thought it sad that the family had no religion—the De Laders had always had religion—and she felt very sad when Thérèse, in Paris, became a Catholic, for after all papistry was idolatry, that she knew for certain; and she also knew for certain that Calvin had had the root of the matter in him. She had always been able to save money and did not quite know how to dispose of it: she had executed a number of different wills, making bequests and then rescinding them; she would leave a good deal to charitable institutions. Her health for very long had been exceedingly good. Short, sprightly and withered, she had been very active, had for years run along the streets like a lapwing. Her witch-face became brown and tanned and wrinkled, small and wizened; and her little figure, with the shrunk breasts, bore no resemblance whatever to the even yet majestic old age of old, old Mamma. The barren field of her life, without emotion, love or passion, had grown drier and drier around her carping egoism, without arousing in her a sense of either melancholy or loss. On the contrary, she had felt glad that she was able to fear God, that she had had time to make her own soul and that she had not heard the sins of the body speak aloud, in between the murmured reading of her pious books and the shrill twittering of her birds. Lucky that she had never been hysterical, like those Derckszes, she thought contentedly, preferring with a certain filial reverence to put down that hysteria rather to the Derckszes' account than to that of her old mother, though nevertheless she shook her head over Mamma for thinking so little, at her age, of Heaven and Hell and for continuing to see old Takma, doubtless in memory of former sinfulness. Anton was a dirty old blackguard and, old as he was, had narrowly escaped most unpleasant consequences, a month ago, for allowing himself to take liberties with his laundress' little girl; and Aunt, who saw a great deal of Ina, knew that it was owing to D'Herbourg's influence and intervention—he being the only one of the family who had any connections—that the business had no ill results, that it was more or less hushed up. But Aunt Stefanie thought it so sinful and hysterical of Anton, looked upon Anton as so irretrievably sold to Satan that she would have preferred to have nothing more to do with him ... if it were not that he had some money and that she feared lest he should leave the money to sinful things and people ... whereas Ina could do with it so well. And she now, in spite of the weather, thought of sending for a cab and going out: then she could first pick up Anton, as arranged, and take him with her to the Van Welys, Lily and Frits, to see their godchildren, Stefje and Antoinetje. There were two babies now; and she and Anton had a godchild apiece. A tenderness flowed through her selfish old-maid's heart at the thought of those children, who belonged to her just a little—for she tyrannized over Anton's godchild too—and in whom, she reflected contentedly, she had not the least sinful share. For she considered the things of the flesh more or less sinful, even when hallowed by matrimony.