The Later Life

by Louis Couperus

“Ve-ry well.... Yes, that’s most unfor-tunate. Your Floor-tje, Phine, is bet-ter off than that with Dij-kerhof.”

“At least, they’re not thinking of getting divorced. I always look upon a divorce as a scandal. We’ve one divorce in the family as it is; and I consider that one too many.”

Constance turned pale and felt that Adolphine was speaking loud on purpose, though it was behind her back.... Dear Mamma noticed nothing!... She had been much upset on that one Sunday, that terrible evening, but had not really understood the truth: the terrible thing to her was merely that the old sisters had talked so loud and so spitefully about her poor Constance, like the cross-grained, spiteful old women that they were; but what happened besides she had really never quite known.... And this, now that Constance was gradually drawing farther away from her brothers and sisters, suddenly struck her as rather fine. Whatever happened, they kept Mamma out of it as far as they could, in a general filial affection for Mamma, in a filial conspiracy to leave Mamma her happiness and her illusion about the family; and it seemed as if the brothers and sisters also impressed this on their children; it appeared that Adolphine even taught it to her loutish boys, for, to her sudden surprise, she saw Chris and Piet go up to Addie and ask him to join in their game. Addie refused, coldly; and now Constance was almost ashamed that she herself had not pointed out to Addie that Grandmamma must always be spared and left in her fond illusion that all was harmony. But fortunately Addie of his own accord always knew what was the right thing to do; for, when Adolphine’s Marietje also came up with a smile and asked him to come and play cards in the conservatory, he went with her at once. She smiled because of it all: no, there was no mutual sympathy, but there was a general affection for Mamma. A general affection, for Mamma, was something rather touching after all; and really she had never before seen it in that light, as something fine, that strong and really unanimous feeling among all those different members of a family whose interests and inclinations in the natural course of things were divided. Yes, now that she was standing farther away from her brothers and sisters, she saw for the first time this one feature which was good in them. Yes, it was really something very good, something lovable; and even Adolphine had it.... It was as though a softer mood came over Constance, no longer one of criticism and resentment, but rather of sympathy and understanding, in which bitterness had given place to kindliness; and in that softer mood there was still indeed sadness, but no anger, as if everything could not well be other than it was, in their circle of small people, of very small people, whose eyes saw only a little way beyond themselves, whose hearts were sensitive only a little way beyond themselves, not farther than the narrow circle of their children and perhaps their children’s children.... She did not know why, but, in the vague sadness of this new, softer mood, she thought of Brauws. And, though not able at once to explain why, she connected her thought of him with this kindlier feeling of hers, this deeper, truer vision of things around her. And, as though new, far-stretching vistas opened up before her, she suddenly seemed to be contemplating life, that life which she had never yet contemplated. A new, distant horizon lay open before her, a distant circle, a wide circle round the narrow little circle past which the eyes of her soul had never yet been able to gaze.... It was strange to her, this feeling, here in this room, in this family-circle. It was as though she suddenly saw all her relations—the Ruyvenaers had now arrived as well—sitting and talking in that room, all her relations and herself also, as very small people, who sat and talked, who moved and lived and thought in a very narrow little circle of self-interest, while outside that circle the horizon extended ever wider and wider, like a vision of great cloudy skies, under which towns rose sharply, seas billowed, bright lightning glanced. It all shot through her and in front of her very swiftly: two or three little revealing flashes, no more; swift revelations, which flashed out and then darkened again. But, swiftly though those revelations had flashed, after that brightness the room remained small, those people remained small, she herself remained small....

She herself had never lived: oh, she had so often suspected it! But those other people: had they also never, never lived? Mamma, in the narrow circle of her children’s and grandchildren’s affection; Uncle and Aunt, in their interests as sugar-planters; Karel and Cateau, in their narrow, respectable, complacent comfort; Adolphine, in her miserable struggle for social importance; and the others, Gerrit, Dorine, Ernst, Paul: had they ever, ever lived? Her husband: had he ever lived? Or was it all just a mere existence, as she herself had existed; a vegetation rooted in little thoughts and habits, in little opinions and prejudices, in little religions or philosophies; and feeling pleasant and comfortable therein and looking down upon and condemning others and considering one’s self fairly good and fairly high-minded, not so bad as others and at least far more sensible in one’s opinions and beliefs than most of one’s neighbours?... Oh, people like themselves; people in their “set,” in other sets, with their several variations of birth, religion, position, money; decent people, whom Brauws sometimes called “the bourgeois:” had they ever lived, ever looked out beyond the very narrow circle which their dogmas drew around them? What a small and insignificant merry-go-round it was! And what was the object of whirling among one another and round one another like that?... It suddenly appeared to her that, of all these people who belonged to her and of all the others, the acquaintances, whom with a swift mental effort she grouped around them, there was not one who could send a single thought shining out far and wide, towards the wide horizons yonder, without thinking of himself, his wife and his children and clinging to his prejudices about money, position, religion and birth.... As regards money, it was almost a distinction among all of them not to have any and then to live as if they had. Position was what they strove for; and those who did not strive for it, such as Paul and Ernst, were criticized for their weakness. Religion was, with those other people, the mere acquaintances, not belonging to their circle, sometimes a matter of decency or of political interest; but, in their set, with its East-Indian leaven, it was ignored, quietly and calmly, never thought about or talked about, save that the children were just confirmed, quickly, as they might be given a dancing- or music-lesson. Birth, birth, that was everything; and even then there was that superior contempt for new titles of nobility, that respect only for old titles and a tendency to think themselves very grand, even though they were not titled, as members of a patrician Dutch-Indian family which, in addition to its original importance, had also absorbed the importance attaching to the highest official positions in Java.... And over it all lay the soft smile of indulgent pity and contempt for any who thought differently from themselves. It formed the basis of all their opinions, however greatly those opinions might vary according to their personal interests and views: compassion and contempt for people who had no money and lived economically; for those who did not aim at an exalted position; for those, whether Catholics or anti-revolutionaries—they themselves were all moderate liberals, with special emphasis on the “moderate”—who cherished an enthusiasm for religion; for those who were not of such patrician birth as themselves. And so on, with certain variations in these opinions.... It was as though Constance noticed the merry-go-round for the first time, whirling in that little circle. It was as though she saw it in the past, saw it whirling in their drawing-rooms, when her father was still alive, then especially. She saw it suddenly, as a child, after it is grown up, sees its parents and their house, their former life, in which it was a child, in which it grew up. She saw it now like that at her mother’s, only less vividly, because of the informality of that family-gathering. She saw it like that, dimly, in all, in every one of them, more or less. But she also saw the respect, the love for Mamma, the wish to leave her in the illusion which that love gave her.

She had never seen it like that before. She herself was just the same as the others. And she thought herself and all of them small, so small that she said to herself:

“Do we all of us live for so very little, when there is so very much beyond, stretching far and wide, under the cloudy skies of that immense horizon? Do we never stop outside this little circle in which we all, with our superior smile—because we are so distinguished and enlightened—spin round one another and ourselves, like humming-tops, like everlasting humming-tops?”

And again Brauws’ figure rose before her eyes. Oh, she now for the first time understood what he had said, on that first evening when she saw and heard him, about Peace!... Peace! The pure, immaculate ideal suddenly streamed before her like a silver banner, fluttered in the wide cloudy skies! Oh, she now for the first time understood ... why he sought. He had wanted to seek ... life! He had sought ... and he had not found. But, while seeking, he had lived: he still lived! His breath came and went, his pulses throbbed, his chest heaved ... even though his sadness, because he had never “found,” bedimmed his energies. But she and all of them did not live! They did not live, they had never lived. They were born, people of distinction, with all their little cynicisms about money and religion, with all their fondness for birth and position; and they continued to spin round like that, to spin like humming-tops: moderate liberals. That they all tolerated her again, in the little circle, was that not all part of their moderate liberal attitude? Oh, to live, to live really, to live as he had lived, to live ... to live with him!

She was now startled at herself. She was in a room full of people and she sat in silence next to her mother. Dear Mamma!... And she was weary of her own thinking, for swift as lightning it all flashed through her, that revelation of her thoughts, without sentences, without images, without words. It just flashed; and that was all. But that flashing made her feel weary, enervated, almost breathless in the room, which she found close.... And the very last of her thoughts, which had just for a moment appeared before her—sentence, image and word—had startled her. She had to confess it to herself: she loved, she loved him. But she inwardly pronounced that love—perhaps with the little cynical laugh which she had observed in her own people—she pronounced that love to be absurd, because so many silent, dead years lay heaped up there, because she was old, quite old. To wish to live at this time of day was absurd. To wish to dream at this stage was absurd. No, after so many years had been wasted on that meaningless existence, then she, an old woman now, must not hope to live again when it dawned too late, that life of thinking and feeling, that life from which might have sprung a life of doing and loving, of boundless love, of love for everybody and everything.... No, after so many years had been spent in living the life of a plant, until the plant became yellow and sere, then inevitably, inexorably extinction, slow extinction, was the only hope that remained....

The absurdity, of being so old—forty-three—and feeling like that!... Never, she swore, would she allow anybody to perceive that absurdity. She knew quite well that it was not really absurd, that its absurdity existed only in the narrow little circle of little prejudices and little dogmas. But she also knew that she, like all of them, was small, that she herself was full of prejudice; she knew that she could not rise, could never rise above what she considered absurd, what she had been taught, from a child, in her little circle, to look upon as absurd!

No, now that she was old, there was nothing for her but to turn her eyes from the radiant vision and, calmly, to grow still older ... to go towards that slow extinction which perhaps would still drag on for many long and empty years: the years of a woman of her age ... in their set....