"So you're going to get married; that's right."
The gesture brought the mittened hands to the level of Lot's head, which she held for a moment and kissed with a trembling mouth; she kissed Elly too; and the girl said, prettily:
"Grandmamma...."
"I am glad to see you both. Mamma has already told me the great news. Be happy, children, happy...."
The words sounded like a short speech from out of the twilight of the throne-like chair, but they trembled, breaking with emotion:
"Be happy, children, happy," Mamma had said.
And Anton Dercksz seemed to see that his mother was thinking that there had not been many happy marriages in the family. He was conscious of the underlying thought in her words and was glad that he had never been married: it gave him a silent, pleasurable sense of satisfaction, as he looked at Lot and Elly. They were sitting there so youthful and unwrung, he thought; but he knew that this was only on the surface, that Lot, after all, was thirty-eight and that this was not Elly's first engagement. Yet how young those two lives were and how many vigorous years had they not before them! He became jealous at the thought and envious; and his eyes grew sullen when he reflected that vigorous years were no longer his. And, with the sly glance of a man secretly enjoying the sensual pleasures of the imagination, he asked himself whether Lot was really a fellow who ought to think of marrying. Lot was delicately built, was hardly a man of flesh and blood, was like his mother in appearance, with his pink face and his fair plastered hair, his short fair moustache above his cynical upper lip, and very spruce in his smooth-fitting jacket and the neat little butterfly tie beneath his double collar. And yet no fool, thought Anton Dercksz: his articles written from Italy, on Renascence subjects, were very good and Anton had read them with pleasure, without ever complimenting Lot upon them; and his two novels were excellent: one about the Hague, one about Java, with a keen insight into Dutch-Indian society. There was a great deal in the lad, more than one would think, for he looked not a man of flesh and blood, but a fair-haired, finikin doll, a fashion-plate.
Elly was not pretty, had a pale but sensible little face: he did not believe that she was a woman of warm passion, or, if she was, it would not reveal itself till later. He did not expect that they would kiss each other very rapturously; and yet that was the most genuine consolation in this confounded life of ours, always had been so to him. Everything grew confused before his jaundiced eyes, in a regret for things that were lost; but nevertheless he listened to the conversation, which was carried on calmly and quietly, in order not to tire Grandmamma: when Lot and Elly meant to get married, where they would go for the honeymoon.
"We shall be married in three months," said Lot. "There's nothing to wait for. We shall go to Paris and on to Italy. I know Italy well and can show Elly about...."
Anton Dercksz rose and took his leave; and, when he went downstairs, he found his sister, Ottilie Steyn de Weert, and Roelofsz, the old doctor, in the morning-room: