She bent over him where he lay, stretched out in the sand, leaning on his two elbows. She felt her love inside her very intensely, as a glowing need to live for him, to eliminate herself entirely for his sake, to stimulate him to work, but to great, very great work.... That was the way in which her love had blossomed up, after her grief.... Under the wide sky, in which the clouds drifted like a great fleet of ships with white, bellying sails, a doubt rose in her mind for perhaps one moment, very vaguely and unconsciously, whether he would need her as she herself intended to give herself.... But this vague, unconscious feeling was dissipated in the breeze that blew over her temples; and her almost motherly love was so intense and glowing that she bent over him and kissed him and said, quite convinced and certain of herself, though not so certain of life and the future:
"Yes, Lot, I am sure of it."
Whatever doubt he may have entertained was scattered in smiles from his soul after this tender and simple affirmation that she loved him, as he felt, for himself alone, in a gentle, wondering bliss that already seemed to see happiness approaching....
[1] The White Bridge.
[CHAPTER VII]
Harold Dercksz, the second son, was seventy-three, two years younger than Anton. He was a widower and lived with his only daughter, Ina, who had married Jonkheer[1] d'Herbourg and had three children: Lily, a young, flaxen-haired little woman, married to Van Wely, an officer in the artillery, and two boys, Pol and Gus, who were at the university and the grammar-school respectively.
It was sometimes very unpleasant for Ina d'Herbourg that her father's family, taken all round, did not display a correct respectability more in keeping with the set in which she moved. She was quite at one with Aunt Stefanie—with whom she curried favour for other reasons too—and she agreed with Aunt that Grandmamma had been ill-advised, after having married a De Laders, to get married again to one of the much less distinguished Derckszes: this though Ina herself was a Dercksz and though her very existence would have been problematical if Grandmamma had not remarried. Ina, however, did not think so far as this: she was merely sorry not to be a De Laders; and the best thing was to mention Papa's family as little as possible. For this reason she denied Uncle Anton, as far as her acquaintances were concerned, he being a discreditable old reprobate, about whom the queerest stories were rumoured. At the same time, he was a moneyed uncle; and so she caused him to be kept in view, especially by the young Van Wely couple, for Ina, in her very small soul, was both a good daughter to her father and a good mother to her children and would like to see Uncle Anton leave his money—how much would he have?—to her children. Then there was the Indian family of Uncle Daniel, who was Papa's partner in business in Java and who came over to Holland at regular intervals: well, Ina was glad when business went well—for that meant money in the home—and when Uncle Daniel and fat, Indian Aunt Floor were safe on board the outward mail again, for really they were both quite unpresentable, Uncle with his East-Indian ways and Aunt such a nonna[2] that Ina was positively ashamed of her! Well, then, in Paris you had Aunt Thérèse van der Staff, who, after leading a pretty loose life, had turned Catholic: there you were, that again was so eccentric! The De Laders had always been Walloons[3] and the D'Herbourgs also were always Walloons: really, Walloonism was more distinguished than Catholicism, at the Hague. The best thing was ... just never to mention Aunt Thérèse. Last but not least, there was Aunt Ottilie Steyn de Weert, living at the Hague, alas, three times married and twice divorced! And she had a daughter who was a singer and had gone to the bad and a son who had written two immoral novels: oh, that was a terrible thing for Ina d'Herbourg, you know; it was such bad form and so incorrect; and all their acquaintances knew about it, though she never mentioned Aunt Ottilie or her three husbands, who were all three alive! And, when Ina d'Herbourg thought of Aunt Steyn de Weert, she would cast up her weary, well-bred eyes with a helpless air and heave a deep sigh; and, with that glance and her despair, she looked an entire IJsselmonde. For she herself, she thought, inherited more of the aristocratic blood of her mother, a Freule[4] IJsselmonde, than of her father's Dercksz blood. An only daughter, she had been able, through the Aunts IJsselmonde, to mix in rather better circles than the all too East-Indian circle of her father's family, in so far as that circle existed, for the family was little known in society: an isolation seemed to reign around the Derckszes, who knew very few people; and even her mother, when she was still alive, had never been able to push Papa forward as something of a specialist in East-Indian affairs and make him aim at the colonial secretaryship, hard though she had tried to do so.
No, Father was not to be dragged out of his innate, silent timidity; and, though he was quite gentle and amenable, though he joined in paying all the visits that were deemed essential, though he gave dinners and went out to dinner, he remained the man he was, a quiet, peaceful man of business, ailing in health and silently broken in soul, with pain and suffering in his eyes and around his mouth, but never complaining and always reticent. Harold Dercksz was now a tall, thin old man; and that intermittent suffering and eternal silence seemed to grow worse with the years of sorrow and pain, seemed no longer capable of concealment; yet he spoke of it to nobody but his doctor and not much to him. For the rest, he was silent, never talked about himself, not even to his brother Daan, who came at regular intervals to Holland on the business-matters in which they were both interested.
Ina d'Herbourg was a good daughter: when her father was ill, she looked after him as she looked after everything in the house, correctly and not without affection. But she did sometimes ask herself whether her mother had not been disappointed in her marriage, for Papa had not much money, in spite of all the Indian business. Yes, Mamma had been disappointed financially; and financial disappointment was always facing Ina too. But, when Ina's husband, Leopold d'Herbourg—who, after taking his degree in law, had first thought of entering the diplomatic service, but who, in spite of his self-importance, had not felt himself sufficiently gifted for that career and was now a briefless barrister—when Ina's husband was also disappointed with the Indian money, then Ina, after a few domestic scenes, began to think that it would be her fate always to long for money and never to have any. Now, it was true, they lived in a big house and Papa was very generous and bore the whole expense of keeping Pol at Leiden; but yet things didn't go easily with Ina, the money trickled through her fingers and she would very much have liked to see more money about, a great deal more money. That was why she was pleasant to Aunt Stefanie de Laders and pleasant, furtively, to Uncle Anton.