Old People and the Things That Pass

Charles Pauws glanced at her quietly, with his little smile, his laugh at Mamma's ways. He was sitting with his mother after dinner, sipping his cup of coffee before going on to...

Aunt Adèle Takma, with her key-basket on her arm, came fussing quietly from the dining-room into the passage, for she had seen the postman and was hoping for a letter from Elly....

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 a...

Lot Pauws was sitting in his room, writing, when he heard the voices of his mother and of her husband, Steyn, below. Mamma Ottilie's voice sounded shrill, in steadily rising ang...

The room was warmed by a moderate fire; the curtains were half-closed; and Lot had slept calmly, for the first time since the fever had passed its crisis. It was his own old roo...

Ina d'Herbourg was waiting for them in the little house of her son-in-law and daughter, Frits and Lily van Wely: Frits, a callow little officer; Lily, a laughing, fair-haired li...

But Aunt Floor was just coming, shuffling down the stairs with her flopping bosom, and Uncle Daan was just ringing at the front-door. Old Anna was delighted. She loved that bust...

Since the evening when Mamma Ottilie had told her of Dr. Roelofsz' death, the old woman had not left her bed. Dr. Thielens called every day, declaring that she was really remark...

She moaned and groaned and, raising her two arms in the air, drove the cat back to the kitchen, because the passage was full enough as it was: Ina d'Herbourg had arrived with he...

They had now been a few days in Paris; and Elly, who was seeing Paris for the first time, was enchanted. The Louvre, the Cluny, the life in the streets and the cafés, the theatr...

Lot had ordered a bedroom in the Hôtel de Luxembourg and had written to his sister Ottilie. On arriving, they found a basket of red roses awaiting them in their room. It was Oct...

"And I've taken a room for you at the Métropole, but I reckoned on it that you'd first come and have supper at my place. Then I shall have been at your wedding too. I don't expe...

Elly Takma was very happy and looked better than she had done for a long time. Well, thought Cousin Adèle, who had long kept house for Grandpapa Takma--she was a Takma too and u...

She wandered round the house, greatly agitated and uncertain what to do. She heard her son Pol, the undergraduate, in his room downstairs, next to the front-door. He was sitting...

It was Anton Dercksz, the old lady's eldest son by her second marriage; by her first she had only an unmarried daughter, Stefanie de Laders. Anton also had never married; he had...

The old gentleman went out at about three o'clock, alone: he did not like to be accompanied when he went, though he was glad to be brought back home; but he would never ask for...

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 thin...

Next morning, Ottilie Steyn de Weert arrived at the Hook of Holland. She was accompanied by a young fellow of nearly thirty, a good-looking, well-set-up young Englishman, clean-...

The sunny days had come, at the end of April, in Naples; and Lot, from his room, across the green-lacquered palms of the Villa Nazionale, saw the sea stretch blue, a calm, strai...

"Come," said Lot, gently, one morning, sitting with Elly in the sitting-room where he came so often to chat and have tea with her in the old days before they were married, "come...

There was another ring; and Anna, profoundly moved by the death of Dr. Roelofsz and moaning, "Oh dear, oh dear!" opened the door to Ottilie Steyn de Weert and Adèle Takma. Ina c...

The front-door bell made old Takma wake with a start. And he knew that he had been to sleep, but he did not allude to it and quietly acted as though he had only been sitting and...

"Oof!" said Lot, outside, putting two fingers in his ears, which had been deafened by the birds. "No more uncles and cousins for the present, Elly: I'm not going to Uncle Harold...

"Yes, one long love-sleep," Ottilie echoed. "At the beginning of the autumn, the heavy rains come. They may overcome us yet, suddenly. When they are past, then nature buds for t...

In the night express, the young wife sat thinking. Lot lay asleep, with a rug over him, in one corner of the carriage, but the little bride could not sleep, for an autumnal wind...

Papa Dercksz had not left much behind him, but Stefanie de Laders, the only child of the first marriage, was a rich woman; and the reason why old Mamma had only a little left of...

Old Takma was just coming from the razor-back bridge by the barracks, stiff and erect in his tightly-buttoned overcoat, considering each step and leaning on his ivory-knobbed st...

He went upstairs slowly, knocked, opened the door. The companion was sitting with the old woman and reading something out of the paper in a monotonous voice. She rose from her c...

They arrived in the evening, on the day after the funeral, Lot and Elly, tired from the journey and out of harmony amid their actual sorrow. Aunt Adèle--they were to stay in the...

Ina lay awake all night. Yes, curiosity was her passion, had been since her childhood. If she could only know now, now, now! Her husband would give her no assistance, was afraid...