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The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

by Louis Couperus · English · Gutenberg #34725 · 472,528 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

Author: Louis Couperus

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos


        
Release date: December 22, 2010 [eBook #34725]
                Most recently updated: December 15, 2022

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIDDEN FORCE: A STORY OF MODERN JAVA ***




                            THE HIDDEN FORCE

                         A Story of Modern Java

                    by LOUIS COUPERUS translated by
                      Alexander Teixeira de Mattos



                             Jonathan Cape
                       Eleven Gower Street London









                          First published 1922
                          All rights reserved

                        Printed in Great Britain
                    by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh






TRANSLATOR'S NOTE


The Hidden Force gives a picture of life in the Dutch East Indies in
the last year of the nineteenth and the first year of the twentieth
century. Conditions have altered slightly since then--Dutch ladies no
longer wear "sarong" and "kabaai" so generally, and there are other
minor changes--but the relations between the Europeans and the natives
remain very much as they were.

I have translated nearly all the Malay and Javanese words scattered
through the text, agreeing with my publisher that the sense of colour
throughout the book is strong enough without insisting on these native
terms, and I have done my best to reduce foot-notes to a minimum.


    Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

    Chelsea, 20th November 1921






CONTENTS


                                   Page
        Translator's Note            5
        Chapter One                  9
        Chapter Two                 19
        Chapter Three               26
        Chapter Four                39
        Chapter Five                46
        Chapter Six                 54
        Chapter Seven               59
        Chapter Eight               69
        Chapter Nine                78
        Chapter Ten                 94
        Chapter Eleven             102
        Chapter Twelve             111
        Chapter Thirteen           116
        Chapter Fourteen           123
        Chapter Fifteen            129
        Chapter Sixteen            140
        Chapter Seventeen          150
        Chapter Eighteen           153
        Chapter Nineteen           165
        Chapter Twenty             174
        Chapter Twenty-one         188
        Chapter Twenty-two         193
        Chapter Twenty-three       204
        Chapter Twenty-four        214
        Chapter Twenty-five        225
        Chapter Twenty-six         234
        Chapter Twenty-seven       244
        Chapter Twenty-eight       251
        Chapter Twenty-nine        258
        Chapter Thirty             275
        Chapter Thirty-one         287
        Chapter Thirty-two         294






CHAPTER ONE


The full moon wore the hue of tragedy that evening. It had risen
early, during the last glimmer of daylight, in the semblance of a
huge, blood-red ball, and, flaming like a sunset low down behind the
tamarind-trees in the Lange Laan, it was ascending, slowly divesting
itself of its tragic complexion, in a pallid sky. A deathly stillness
lay over all things like a veil, as though, after the long mid-day
siesta, the evening rest were beginning without an intervening period
of life. Over the town, whose white villas and porticoes lay huddled
amid the trees of the lanes and gardens, hung the windless oppression
of the evening air, as though the listless night were weary of the
blazing day of eastern monsoon. The houses, from which not a sound
was heard, shrank away, in deathly silence, amid the foliage of their
gardens, with their evenly-spaced, gleaming rows of great whitewashed
flower-pots. Here and there a lamp was already lit. Suddenly a dog
barked and another answered, rending the muffled silence into long,
ragged tatters: the dogs' angry throats sounded hoarse, panting,
harshly hostile; then they, too, suddenly fell silent.

At the end of the Lange Laan the Residency lay far back in its
grounds. Low and vivid in the darkness of the banyan-trees, it
lifted the zig-zag outline of its tiled roofs, one behind the other,
against the dark background of the garden, with one crude line of
letters and numerals that dated the whole: a roof over each gallery
and verandah, a roof over each room, receding into one long outline
of irregular roofs. In front, however, rose the white pillars of the
front verandah, and the white pillars of the portico, gleaming tall
and stately, set far apart, with a large, welcoming spaciousness,
making the roomy entrance impressive as a palace doorway. Through
the open doors the central gallery was seen in dim perspective,
running through to the back, lit by a single flickering light.

A native messenger was lighting the lanterns beside the
house. Semicircles of great white pots with roses and chrysanthemums,
with palms and caladiums, curved widely to right and left in front of
the house. A broad gravel path formed the drive to the white-pillared
portico; next came a wide, parched lawn, surrounded by flower-pots,
and, in the middle, on a carved stone pedestal, a monumental vase,
holding a tall latania. The only fresh green was that of the meandering
pond, on which floated the giant leaves of a Victoria Regia, huddled
together like round green tea-trays, with here and there a bright
lotus-like flower between them. A path wound beside the pond; and
on a circular space paved with pebbles stood a tall flag-staff, with
the flag already hauled down, as it was every day at six o'clock. A
plain gate divided the grounds from the Lange Laan.

The vast grounds were silent. There were now burning, slowly and
laboriously lit by the lamp-boy, one lamp in the chandelier in the
front verandah and one indoors, turned low, like two night-lights in
a palace which, with its pillars and its vanishing perspective of
roofs, was somehow reminiscent of a child's dream. On the steps of
the office a few messengers, in their dark uniforms, sat talking in
whispers. One of them stood up after a while and walked, with a quiet,
leisurely step, to a bronze bell which hung high, by the messengers'
lodge, in the extreme corner of the grounds. When he had reached
it, after taking about a hundred paces, he sounded seven slow,
reverberating strokes. The clapper struck the bell with a brazen,
booming note; and each stroke was prolonged by an undulating echo, a
deep, thrilling vibration. The dogs began to bark again. The messenger,
boyishly slender in his blue cloth jacket with yellow facings and
trousers with yellow stripes, slowly and quietly, with supple step,
retraced his hundred paces to the other messengers.

A light now shone in the office and also in the adjoining bedroom,
from which it filtered through the Venetian blinds. The resident,
a tall, heavy man, in a black jacket and white duck trousers, walked
across the room and called to the man outside:

"Messenger!"

The chief messenger, in a cloth uniform jacket edged with broad yellow
braid, approached with bended knees and squatted before his master.

"Call Miss Doddie."

"Miss Doddie is out, excellency," whispered the man, while with his
two hands, the fingers placed together, he sketched the reverential
gesture of the salaam.

"Where has she gone?"

"I did not ask, excellency," said the man, by way of excuse for not
knowing, again with his sketchy salaam.

The resident reflected for a moment. Then he said:

"My cap. My stick."

The chief messenger, still bending his knees as though reverently
shrinking into himself, scuttled across the room, and, squatting,
presented an undress uniform cap and a walking-stick.

The resident went out. The chief messenger hurried after him, carrying
in his hand a long, burning slow-match, of which he waved the glowing
tip from side to side so that the resident might be seen by any one
passing in the dark. The resident walked slowly through the garden
to the Lange Laan. Along this lane, an avenue of tamarind-trees and
flamboyants, lay the villas of the more important townsfolk, faintly
lighted, deathly silent, apparently uninhabited, with their rows of
whitewashed flower-pots gleaming in the vague dusk of the evening.

The resident first passed the secretary's house; then, on the
other side, a girls' school; then the notary's house, an hotel, the
post-office, and the house of the president of the Criminal Court. At
the end of the Lange Laan stood the Catholic church; and, farther on,
across the river-bridge, lay the railway-station. Near the station
was a large European store, which was more brilliantly lighted than
the other buildings. The moon had climbed higher, turning a brighter
silver in its ascent, and now shone down upon the white bridge,
the white store and the white church, all standing round a square,
treeless, open space, in the middle of which was the town-clock,
a small monument with a pointed spire.

The resident met nobody; now and then, however, an occasional Javanese,
like a moving shadow, appeared out of the darkness; and then the
messenger waved the glowing point of his wick with great ostentation
behind his master. As a rule, the Javanese understood and made himself
small, cowering along the edge of the road and passing with a scuttling
gait. Now and again an ignorant native, just arrived from his village,
did not understand, but went by, looking in terror at the messenger,
who merely waved his wick, and, in passing, sent a curse after the
fellow, behind his master's back, because he, the village yokel, had
no manners. When a cart or trap approached he waved his little fiery
star again and again through the darkness and made signs to the driver,
who either stopped and alighted or squatted in his little carriage,
and, so squatting, drove on along the farther side of the road.

The resident went on gloomily, with the smart step of a resolute
walker. He had turned off to the right of the little square and was
now walking past the Protestant church, making straight for a handsome
villa adorned with slender, fairly correct Ionian plaster pillars and
brilliantly lighted with paraffin lamps set in chandeliers. This was
the Concordia Club. A couple of native servants in white jackets
sat on the steps. A European in a white suit, the steward, passed
along the verandah. But there was no one sitting at the great
gin-and-bitters-table; and the wide cane chairs opened their arms
expectantly but in vain.

The steward, on seeing the resident, bowed; and the resident, raising
his finger to his cap, went past the club and turned to the left. He
walked down a lane, past dark little houses, each in its own little
demesne, turned off again and walked along the mouth of the river,
which was like a canal. Proa after proa lay moored to the banks; the
monotonous humming of Maduran seamen crept drearily across the water,
from which rose a smell of fish. Past the harbour-master's office
the resident made for the pier, which projected some way into the
sea and at the end of which a small lighthouse, a miniature Eiffel
tower, stood like an iron candlestick, with its lamp at the top. Here
the resident stopped and filled his lungs with the night air. The
breeze had suddenly freshened, the north-east wind had risen, blowing
in from the offing, as it did daily at this hour. But sometimes it
suddenly dropped again, unexpectedly, as though its fanning wings had
been stricken powerless; and the roughened sea fell again, until its
curdling, foaming breakers, white in the moonlight, were replaced by
smooth rollers, slightly phosphorescent in long, pale streaks.

A mournful and monotonous rhythm of dreary singing approached over
the sea; a sail loomed darkly, like a great night-bird; and a fishing
proa with a high, curved stem, suggesting an ancient galley, glided
into the channel. A melancholy resignation to life, an acquiescence
in all the small, obscure things of earth beneath that infinite
sky, upon that remote, phosphorescent sea, was adrift in the night,
conjuring up an oppressive mystery....

The tall, sturdy man who stood there, with straddling legs, breathing
in the loitering, fitful wind, tired with his work, with sitting at
his writing-table, with calculating the duiten-question, that important
matter, the abolition of the duit, [1] for which the governor-general
had made him personally responsible: this tall, sturdy man, practical,
cool-headed, quick in decision from the long habit of authority, was
perhaps unconscious of the mysterious shadow that drifted over the
native town, over the capital of his district, in the night; but he
was conscious of a yearning for affection. He vaguely felt a longing
for a child's arms around his neck, for shrill little voices about him,
a longing for a young wife awaiting him with a smile. He did not give
definite expression to this sentimentality in his thoughts; it was
not his habit to give way to musing upon his individual needs; he was
too busy, his days were too full of interests of all kinds for him to
yield to what he knew to be his moments of weakness, the suppressed
ebullitions of his younger years. But, though he did not reflect, the
mood upon him was not to be thrown off; it was like a pressure on his
sturdy chest, like a morbid tenderness, like a sentimental discomfort
in the otherwise highly practical mind of this superior official,
who was strongly attached to his sphere of work, to his territory,
who had its interests at heart, in whom the almost independent power
of his post harmonized entirely with his authoritative nature, and
who was accustomed with his strong lungs to breathe an atmosphere of
spacious activity and extensive, varied work, even as he now stood
breathing the spacious wind from the sea.

A longing, a desire, a certain nostalgia filled him more than was
usual that evening. He felt lonely, not merely because of the isolation
which nearly always surrounds the head of a native government, who is
approached either with formality and smiling respect, for purposes
of conversation, or curtly, with official respect, for purposes of
business. He felt lonely, though he was the father of a family. He
thought of his big house, he thought of his wife and children. And he
felt lonely and borne up merely by the interest which he took in his
work. That was the one thing in his life. It filled all his waking
hours. He fell asleep thinking of it; and his first thought in the
morning was of some district interest.

Tired with casting up figures, at this moment, breathing the wind,
he inhaled together with the coolness of the sea its melancholy, the
mysterious melancholy of the Indian seas, the haunting melancholy
of the seas of Java, the melancholy that rushes in from afar on
whispering, mysterious wings. But it was not his nature to yield
to mystery. He denied mystery. It was not there: there was only the
sea and the cool wind. There was only the sea-fog, with its mingled
savour of fish and flowers and seaweed, a savour which the cool wind
was blowing away. There was only the moment of respiration; and such
mysterious melancholy as he, nevertheless, irresistibly felt stealing
that evening through his somewhat softened mood he believed to be
connected with his domestic circle: he would have liked to feel that
this circle was a little more compact, fitting more closely around
the father and husband in him. If there was any cause for melancholy,
it was that. It did not come from the sea, nor from the distant sky. He
refused to yield to any sudden sensation of the uncanny. And he set his
feet more firmly, flung out his chest, lifted his fine, soldierly head
and snuffed up the smell of the sea and the fragrance of the wind....

The chief messenger, squatting with his glowing wick in his hand,
peeped attentively at his master, as though thinking:

"How strange, those Hollanders!... What is he thinking now?... Why is
he behaving like this?... Just at this time and on this spot?... The
sea-spirits are about now.... There are caymans under the water,
and every cayman is a spirit.... Look, they have been sacrificing
to them there: bananas and rice and meat dried in the sun and a
hard-boiled egg, on a little bamboo raft, down by the foot of the
light-house.... What is the sahib doing here?... It is not good here,
it is not good here, alas, alas!..."

And his watching eyes glided up and down the back of his master,
who simply stood and gazed into the distance: what was he gazing
at?... What did he see blowing up in the wind?... How strange, those
Hollanders, how strange!...

The resident turned, suddenly, and walked back; and the messenger,
starting up, followed him, blowing the tip of his slow-match. The
resident walked back by the same road; there was now a member sitting
in the club, who greeted him; and a couple of young men were strolling
in the Lange Laan. The dogs were barking.

When the resident approached the entrance to the residency, he saw
before him, standing by the other gate, two white figures, a man and
a girl, who vanished into the darkness under the banyans. He went
straight to his office; another messenger came up and took his cap
and stick. Then he sat down at his writing-table. He had time for an
hour's work before dinner.






CHAPTER TWO


A few of the lamps had been lit. Really the lamps were burning
everywhere; but in the long, broad galleries it was only just light. In
the grounds and inside the house there were certainly no fewer than
twenty or thirty paraffin-lamps burning in chandeliers and lanterns;
but they yielded no more than a vague, yellow twilight glimmering
through the house. A flood of moonshine poured into the garden,
making the flower-pots gleam brightly and shimmering in the pond;
and the banyans were like soft velvet against the luminous sky.

The first gong had sounded for dinner. In the front verandah a young
man was swinging up and down in a rocking-chair, with his hands behind
his head. He was bored. A young girl came along the middle gallery,
humming to herself, as though in expectation. The house was furnished
in accordance with the conventional type of up-country residencies,
with commonplace splendour. The marble floor of the verandah was
white and glossy as a mirror; tall palms stood in pots between the
pillars; groups of rocking-chairs stood round the marble tables. In
the first inner gallery, which ran parallel with the verandah, chairs
were drawn up against the wall as though in readiness for an eternal
reception. The second inner gallery, which ran from front to back,
showed at the end, where it opened into a cross-gallery, a huge red
satin curtain hanging from a gilt cornice. In the white spaces between
the doors of the rooms hung either mirrors in gilt frames, resting on
marble console-tables, or lithographs--pictures as they call them in
India--of Van Dyck on horseback; Paolo Veronese received by a doge on
the steps of a Venetian palace, Shakespeare at the court of Elizabeth
and Tasso at the court of Este; but in the biggest panel, in a crowned
frame, hung a large etching, a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina in her
coronation-robes. In the middle of the central gallery was a red satin
ottoman, topped by a palm. There were also many chairs and tables,
and everywhere great chandeliers. Everything was very neatly kept and
distinguished by a commonplace pomp, an uncomfortable readiness for the
next reception, with not a single home-like corner. In the half-light
of the paraffin-lamps--one lamp was lit in each chandelier--the long,
wide, spacious galleries stretched in tedious vacancy.

The second gong sounded. In the back-verandah, the long table--too
long, as though always expecting guests--was laid for three
persons. The native butler and half-a-dozen boys stood waiting by the
servers' tables and the two sideboards. The butler at once began to
fill the soup-plates; and two of the boys placed the three plates
of soup on the table, on top of the folded napkins which lay on
the dinner-plates. Then they waited again, while the soup steamed
gently. Another boy filled the three tumblers with large lumps of ice.

The girl came in, humming a tune. She was perhaps seventeen,
and resembled her divorced mother, the resident's first wife, a
good-looking half-caste, who was now living in Batavia, where she
was said to keep a discreet gaming house. The young girl had a pale
olive complexion, sometimes just touched with a peach-like blush; she
had beautiful black hair, curling naturally at the temples and wound
round her head in a heavy coil; her black pupils and sparkling irises
swam in humid bluish-whites, over which her thick lashes flickered
up and down, and up again. Her mouth was small and a little full;
and her upper lip was just shadowed by a dark, downy line. She was
not tall and was already too fully formed, like a hasty rose that has
bloomed too soon. She wore a white piqué skirt and a white linen blouse
with lace insertions; and round her throat was a bright yellow ribbon
that accorded well with her olive pallor, which sometimes flushed up,
suddenly, as with a rush of warm blood.

The young man came sauntering in from the front verandah. He was
like his father, tall, broad and fair-haired, with a thick, fair
moustache. He was barely twenty-three, but looked quite five years
older. He wore a suit of white Russian linen, but with a shirt-collar
and tie.

Van Oudijck also came at last: his firm step approached as though
he were always busy, as though he were now coming just to have some
dinner in the midst of his work.

"When does mamma arrive to-morrow?" asked Theo.

"At half-past eleven," replied Van Oudijck; and, turning to his
body-servant behind him, "Kario, remember that the mem-sahib is to
be fetched from the station at half-past eleven to-morrow."

"Yes, excellency," murmured Kario.

The fish was served.

"Doddie," asked Van Oudijck, "who was with you at the gate just now?"

"At ... the gate?" she asked slowly, in a very soft accent.

"Yes."

"At ... the gate?... Nobody.... Theo perhaps."

"Were you at the gate with your sister?" asked Van Oudijck.

The boy knitted his thick, fair eyebrows:

"Possibly.... Don't know.... Don't remember...."

They were all three silent. They hurried through dinner: sitting at
table bored them. The five or six servants, in white cotton jackets
with red linen facings, moved softly on their flat toes, waiting
quickly and noiselessly. Steak and salad was served, and a pudding,
followed by dessert.

"Everlasting rumpsteak!" Theo muttered.

"Yes, that cook!" laughed Doddie, with her little throaty laugh,
clipping her sentences in the half-caste fashion. "She always gives
steak, when mamma not here; doesn't matter to her, when mamma not
here. She has no imagination. Too bad though!"

They had been twenty minutes over their dinner when Van Oudijck went
back to his office. Doddie and Theo sauntered towards the front of
the house.

"Tedious," Doddie yawned. "Come, we play billiards?"

In the first inner gallery, behind the satin portière, was a small
billiard-table.

"Come along," said Theo.

They played.

"Why am I supposed to have been with you at the gate?"

"Oh ... tut!" said Doddie.

"Well, why?"

"Papa needn't know."

"Who was with you? Addie?"

"Of course!" said Doddie. "Say, band playing to-night?"

"I think so."

"Come, we go, yes?"

"No, I don't care to."

"Oh, why not?"

"I don't want to."

"Come along now?"

"No."

"With mamma ... you would, yes?" said Doddie, angrily. "I know very
well. With mamma you go always to the band."

"What do you know ... you little minx!"

"What do I know?" she laughed. "What do I know? I know what I know."

"Huh!" he said, to tease her, fluking a cannon. "You and Addie, huh!"

"Well ... and you and mamma!"

He shrugged his shoulders:

"You're crazy."

"No need to hide from me. Besides, every one says."

"Let them say."

"Too bad of you though!"

"Oh, go to the devil!"

He flung his cue down in a temper and went towards the front of the
house. She followed him.

"I say, Theo ... don't be angry now. Come along to the band."

"No."

"I'll never say it again," she entreated, coaxingly.

She was afraid that he would continue to be angry and then she would
have nothing and nobody, then she would die of boredom.

"I promised Addie and I can't go by myself...."

"Well, if you won't make any more of those idiotic remarks...."

"Yes, I promise. Theo dear, yes, come then...."

She was already in the garden.

Van Oudijck appeared on the threshold of his office, which always
had the door open, but which was separated from the inner gallery by
a large screen:

"Doddie!" he called out.

"Yes, papa?"

"Will you see that there are flowers in mamma's room to-morrow?"

His voice was almost embarrassed and his eyelids blinked.

"Very well, papa ... I'll see to it."

"Where are you going to?"

"With Theo ... to the band."

Van Oudijck became red and angry:

"To the band? But you might have asked my leave first!" he exclaimed,
in a sudden temper.

Doddie pouted.

"I don't like you to go out, without my knowing where you go. You were
out this afternoon too, when I wanted you to come for a walk with me."

"Well, doesn't matter then!" said Doddie, bursting into tears.

"You can go if you want to," said Van Oudijck, "but I insist on your
asking me first."

"No, I don't care about it now," said Doddie, in tears. "Doesn't
matter! No band."

They could hear the first strains in the distance, coming from the
Concordia garden.

Van Oudijck returned to his office. Doddie and Theo flung themselves
into two rocking-chairs in the verandah and swung furiously to and fro,
skating with the chairs over the smooth marble.

"Come," said Theo, "let's go. Addie expects you."

"No," she pouted. "Don't care. I'll tell Addie to-morrow papa
so unkind. He spoils my pleasure. And ... I'll put no flowers in
mamma's room."

Theo grinned.

"Say," whispered Doddie, "that papa ... eh? So in love, always. He
blushed when he asked me about the flowers."

Theo grinned once more and hummed in unison with the band in the
distance.






CHAPTER THREE


Next morning Theo went in the landau to fetch his step-mother from
the station at half-past eleven.

Van Oudijck, who was in the habit of taking the police-cases at that
hour, had made no suggestion to his son; but, when from his office he
saw Theo step into the carriage and drive off, he thought it nice of
the boy. He had idolized Theo as a child, had spoilt him as a lad,
had often come into conflict with him as a young man; but the old
paternal fondness still often flickered up in him, irresistibly. At
this moment he loved his son better than Doddie, who had maintained
her sulky attitude that morning and had put no flowers in his wife's
room, so that he had ordered Kario to see to them. He now felt sorry
that he had not said a kind word to Theo for some days and he resolved
to mend matters at once. The boy was scatter-brained: in three years
he had been employed on at least five different coffee-plantations;
now he was once more without a berth and was hanging around at home,
looking out for something else.

Theo had not long to wait at the station before the train arrived. He
at once saw Mrs. van Oudijck and the two little boys, René and
Ricus--two little half-castes, as compared with himself--whom she was
bringing back from Batavia for the long holidays, and her maid, Oorip.

Theo helped his step-mother to alight; the station-master offered
a respectful greeting to the wife of his resident. She nodded in
return with her queenly smile. Still smiling, a trifle ambiguously,
she allowed her step-son to kiss her on the cheek. She was a tall
woman, with a fair complexion and fair hair; she had turned thirty
and possessed the languid dignity of women born in Java, daughters of
European parents on both sides. Something about her attracted attention
at once. It was perhaps her white skin, her creamy complexion, her
very light fair hair, her strange grey eyes, which were sometimes a
little pinched and always wore an ambiguous expression, or it might
be her eternal smile, sometimes very sweet and charming and often
insufferable and tiresome. One could never tell at the first sight of
her whether she concealed anything behind that glance, whether there
was any depth, any soul behind it, or whether it was merely her look
and her laugh, both of them slightly equivocal. Soon, however, one
perceived an observant indifference in her smiles, as though there
were very little that she cared for, as though it would hardly matter
to her should the heavens fall, as though she would watch the event
with a smile.

Her gait was leisurely. She wore a pink piqué skirt and bolero, a white
satin ribbon round her waist and a white sailor-hat with a white satin
bow; and her summer travelling-costume was very smart, compared with
that of a couple of other ladies on the platform, lounging in stiffly
starched washing-frocks that looked like night-dresses, with tulle hats
topped with feathers! And, in her very European aspect, perhaps that
leisurely walk, that languid dignity was the only Indian characteristic
that distinguished her from a woman newly arrived from Holland.

Theo had given her his arm and she let him lead her to the carriage,
the "chariot," followed by the two dark little brothers. She had been
away two months. She had a nod and a smile for the station-master; she
had a nod for the coachman and the groom; and she took her seat slowly,
a languid, fair sultana, still smiling. The three step-sons followed
her into the carriage; the maid rode behind in a dog-cart. Mrs. van
Oudijck looked out once or twice and thought Labuwangi unchanged. But
she said nothing. She turned away slowly, languidly leaning back. Her
face displayed a certain satisfaction, but especially that radiant,
laughing indifference, as though nothing could harm her, as though
she were protected by a mysterious force. There was something strong
about this woman, something powerful in her sheer indifference; there
was something invulnerable about her. She looked as though life would
have no hold on her, neither on her complexion nor on her soul. She
looked as though she were incapable of suffering; and it seemed
as though she smiled and were thus contented because no sickness,
no suffering, no poverty, no misery existed for her. An irradiation
of glittering egoism encompassed her. And yet she was, for the most
part, lovable. She was charming and prepossessing because she was so
pretty. This woman, with her sparkling self-satisfaction, was loved,
whatever people might say about her. When she spoke, when she laughed,
she was disarming and, even more, engaging. This was despite, and,
perhaps, just because of her unfathomable indifference. She took
an interest only in her own body and her own soul: everything else,
everything, was totally indifferent to her. Unable to give anything of
her soul, she was incapable of feeling save for herself, but she smiled
so peacefully and enchantingly that she was always thought lovable,
adorable. It was perhaps because of the contour of her cheeks, the
strange ambiguity of her glance, her ineffaceable smile, the elegance
of her figure, the tone of her voice and her knack of always hitting
on the right word. If at first one thought her insufferable, she did
not notice it and simply made herself absolutely charming. If anyone
was jealous, she did not notice it and just praised, intuitively,
indifferently--for she did not care in the least--something in which
that other had thought herself deficient. She could admire with the
sweetest expression on her face a dress which she thought hideous;
and, because she was so completely indifferent, she betrayed no
insincerity afterwards and did not gainsay her admiration. Her vital
power was her boundless indifference. She had accustomed herself to
do everything that she felt inclined to do, but she smiled as she did
it; and, however people might talk behind her back, she remained so
correct in her behaviour, so bewitching, that they forgave her. She
was not loved while she was not seen; but so soon as people saw her,
she had won back all that she had lost. Her husband worshipped her;
her step-children--she had no children of her own--could not help
being fond of her, despite themselves; her servants were all under
the influence of her charm. She never grumbled; she gave an order
with a word and the thing was done. If something went wrong, if
something was broken, her smile died away for a moment ... and that
was all. And if her own moral or physical interests were in danger,
she was generally able to avoid the danger and settle things to
her advantage, without even allowing her smile to fade. But she had
gathered this personal interest so closely about her that she could
usually control its circumstances. No destiny seemed to weigh upon this
woman. Her indifference was radiant, was absolutely indifferent, devoid
of contempt, or envy, or emotion: it was merely indifference. And the
tact with which, instinctively, without ever giving much thought to
it, she guided and ruled her life was so great that possibly if she
had lost everything that she now possessed--her beauty, her position,
for instance--she would still contrive to remain indifferent, in her
incapacity for suffering.

The carriage drove into the residency-grounds just as the police
cases were beginning. The native assessor was already with Van
Oudijck in the office; the chief constable and the police led the
procession of the accused; the natives tripped along, holding on to
the corners of one another's jackets; but the few women among them
walked alone. They all squatted in waiting under a banyan tree, at a
short distance from the steps of the office. A messenger, hearing the
clock in the verandah, struck half-past twelve on the great bell by
the lodge. The loud stroke reverberated like a brazen voice through
the scorching mid-day heat. But Van Oudijck had heard the sound
of the carriage-wheels and let the native magistrate wait: he went
to welcome his wife. His face brightened; he kissed her tenderly,
effusively, asked how she was. He was glad to see the boys back. And,
remembering what he had been thinking about Theo, he found a kind
word for his first-born. Doddie, her little mouth still pouting and
sulky, kissed mamma. Mrs. van Oudijck allowed herself to be kissed,
resignedly, smilingly; she returned the kisses calmly, without coldness
or warmth, just doing what she had to do. Her husband, Theo and Doddie
admired her perceptibly, and audibly said that she was looking well;
Doddie asked where mamma had got that pretty travelling-dress. In
her room she noticed the flowers, and, as she knew that Van Oudijck
always saw to these, she gently stroked his arm.

The resident went back to his office, where the assessor was waiting;
the hearing began. Pushed along by a policeman, the accused came
one by one and squatted on the steps, outside the office-door,
while the assessor squatted on a mat and the resident sat at his
writing-table. During the first case, Van Oudijck was still listening
to his wife's voice in the middle gallery, when the prisoner, defending
himself, gave a loud cry of:

"No, no!"

The resident knitted his brows and listened attentively....

The voice in the middle gallery ceased. Mrs. van Oudijck had gone to
take off her things and put on her native dress for lunch. She wore
the dress gracefully: a Solo sarong, a transparent kabaai, jewelled
pins, white leather slippers with a little white bow. She was just
ready when Doddie came to her door and said:

"Mamma! Mamma!... Mrs. van Does is here!"

The smile died away for a moment; the soft eyes looked dark.

"I'll come at once, dear...."

But she sat down instead; Oorip, the maid, sprinkled some scent on
her handkerchief. Mrs. van Oudijck put up her feet and lay musing,
after the fatigue of her journey. She found Labuwangi desperately dull
after Batavia, where she had spent two months staying with relations
and friends, free and untrammelled by obligations. Here, as the wife
of the resident, she had certain duties, though she delegated most of
them to the secretary's wife. She felt tired in herself, out of sorts,
dissatisfied. Despite her complete indifference, she was human enough
to have her silent moods, in which she wished everything at the bottom
of the sea. At one time she suddenly longed to do something mad,
at another she vaguely longed for Paris.... She would never let any
one see all this. She was able to control herself; and she controlled
herself now, before making her appearance again. Her vague Bacchanalian
longings melted away in her fatigue. She stretched herself out at
greater ease. She mused, with eyes almost closed. Through her almost
superhuman indifference a curious fancy sometimes crept, hidden from
the world. She preferred to live in her bedroom her life of fragrant
imagination, especially after her month in Batavia. After one of
those months of perversity, she felt a need to let her vagrant,
rosy imaginings rise like a whirling mist before her half-closed
eyes. There was in her otherwise utterly barren soul as it were an
unnatural growth of little azure flowers, which she cherished with the
only feeling that she could ever experience. She felt for no living
creature, but she felt for those little flowers. It was delicious to
dream like this of what she would have liked to be if she were not
compelled to be what she was. Her fancies rose in a whirling mist:
she saw a white palace, with little cupids everywhere....

"Mamma ... do come! Mrs. van Does is here, Mrs. van Does, with two
stoppered bottles...."

It was Doddie, at the door. Léonie van Oudijck stood up and went to
the back verandah, where the Indian lady was sitting, the wife of
the postmaster. She kept cows and sold milk. But she also drove other
trades. She was a stout woman, rather dark-skinned, with a prominent
stomach; she wore a very simple little kabaai with a narrow band of
lace round it; and she sat stroking her stomach with her fat hands. In
front of her, on the table, stood two small phials, with something
glittering in them. What was it, Mrs. van Oudijck wondered: sugar,
crystals? Then she suddenly remembered....

Mrs. van Does said that she was glad to see her again. Two months
away from Labuwangi. Too bad, Mrs. van Oudijck! And she pointed to
the bottles. Mrs. van Oudijck smiled. What was inside them?

With a great air of mystery, Mrs. van Does laid a fat, double-jointed
forefinger on one of the jam-pots and said:

"Diamonds!"

"Oh, really?" said Mrs. van Oudijck.

Doddie, wide-eyed, and Theo, greatly amused stared at the stoppered
bottles.

"Yes ... you know ... that lady's, of whom I spoke to you.... She
doesn't want her name mentioned. Poor thing, her husband once a great
swell ... and now ... yes, so unfortunate; she has nothing left! All
gone. Only these two little bottles. Had all her jewels unset and
keeps the stones in the bottles. All counted. She trusts them to me
to sell. Know her through my milk-business. Will you look at, Mrs. van
Oudijck, yes? Lovely stones! The residèn he buy for you, now you back
home again. Doddie, give me a bit of black stuff: velvet best...."

Doddie sent the seamstress to fetch a bit of black velvet from a
cupboard of odds and ends. A boy brought glasses with tamarind-syrup
and ice. Mrs. van Does, holding a little pair of tongs in her
double-jointed fingers, laid a couple of stones carefully on the
velvet:

"Ah!" she cried. "Look at that water, mevrouw! Ser-per-len-did!"

Mrs. van Oudijck looked on. She gave her most charming smile and then
said, in her gentle voice:

"That stone is not real, dear mevrouw."

"Not real?" screamed Mrs. van Does. "Not real?"

Mrs. van Oudijck looked at the other stones:

"And those others, mevrouw," stooping attentively: then, in her most
charming tones, "those others ... they too are paste."

Mrs. van Does looked at her with delight. Then she said to Doddie
and Theo, archly:

"That mamma of yours ... oh, so shrewd! She sees at once!"

And she laughed aloud. They all laughed. Mrs. van Does returned the
stones to the bottle:

"A joke, yes, mevrouw? I only wanted to see if you understood. I give
you my word, of course: I should never have sold them to you.... But
there ... look!..."

And now solemnly, almost religiously, she opened the other little
phial, which contained only a few stones, and placed them lovingly
on the black velvet.

"That one would be splendid ... for a pendant," said Mrs. van Oudijck,
gazing at a very large brilliant.

"There, what did I tell you?" said the Indian lady.

And they all gazed at the diamonds, at the real ones, which came out
of the "real" bottle, and held them up carefully to the light.

Mrs. van Oudijck saw that they were all real:

"I really have no money, dear mevrouw!" she said.

"This big one ... for a pendant ... six hundred guilders. [2] ... A
bargain, I assure you, mevrouw!"

"Oh, mevrouw, never!"

"How much then? You are doing a charity if you buy. Poor thing,
her husband once a great swell, Indian Council."

"Two hundred."

"Oh dear! What next? Two hundred guilders!"

"Two hundred and fifty, but no more. I really have no money."

"The residèn!" whispered Mrs. van Does, catching sight of Van
Oudijck, who, now that the cases were finished, was coming to the
back verandah. "The residèn ... he buy for you!"

Mrs. van Oudijck smiled and looked at the sparkling drop of light on
the black velvet. She liked jewels, she was not altogether indifferent
to diamonds. And she looked at her husband:

"Mrs. van Does is showing us a lot of beautiful things," she said,
caressingly.

Van Oudijck felt an inward shock. He was never pleased to see Mrs. van
Does in his house. She always had something to sell: at one time,
richly embroidered counterpanes; at another time, a pair of woven
slippers; at another, magnificent but very expensive table-slips,
with golden flowers in batik on yellow glazed linen. Mrs. van Does
always brought something with her, was always in touch with the wives
of erstwhile "great swells," whom she helped by selling their things
for a very high commission. A morning call from Mrs. van Does cost him
each time at least a few rix-dollars and very often fifty guilders,
for his wife had a calm habit of always buying things which she did not
need but which she was too indifferent to refuse to buy of Mrs. van
Does. He did not see the two bottles at once, but he saw the drop of
light on the black velvet and he understood that the visit would cost
him more than fifty guilders this time, unless he was very firm:

"Mevrouwtje!" he exclaimed, in dismay. "It's the end of the month:
there's no question of buying diamonds to-day! And bottles full
too!" he added, with a stare, when he now saw them glittering on the
table, among the glasses of tamarind-syrup.

"Oh, that residèn!" laughed Mrs. van Does, as though a resident were
bound to be always well off.

Van Oudijck hated that little laugh. His household cost him every
month a few odd hundred guilders above his salary; and he was living
beyond his income, was in debt. His wife never troubled herself
with money matters; for these more especially she reserved her most
smiling indifference.

She made the diamond sparkle in the sun and shoot forth a blue ray.

"It's a beauty ... for two hundred and fifty," said Mrs. van Oudijck.

"For three hundred then, dear mevrouw...."

"Three hundred?" she asked, dreamily, playing with the gem.

Whether it cost three hundred or four or five hundred was all one
to her. It left her wholly indifferent. But she liked the stone and
meant to have it, at whatever price. And therefore she quietly put
the stone down and said:

"No, dear mevrouw, really ... it's too expensive; and my husband has
no money."

She said it so prettily that there was no guessing her intention. She
was adorably self-sacrificing as she spoke the words. Van Oudijck
felt a second inward shock. He could refuse his wife nothing.

"Mevrouw," he said, "you can leave the stone ... for three hundred
guilders. But for God's sake take your bottles away with you!"

Mrs. van Does looked up delightedly:

"There, what did I tell you? I knew for certain the residèn would
buy for you!..."

Mrs. van Oudijck looked up in gentle reproach:

"But, Otto!" she said: "How can you?"

"Do you like the stone?"

"Yes, it's beautiful.... But such a lot of money! For one diamond!"

And she drew her husband's hand towards her and suffered him to
kiss her on the forehead, because he had been permitted to buy her
a three-hundred-guilder diamond. Doddie and Theo stood winking at
each other.






CHAPTER FOUR


Léonie Van Oudijck always enjoyed her siesta. She only slept for a
moment, but she loved after lunch to be alone in her cool bedroom
till five or half-past five. She read a little, mostly the magazines
from the circulating library, but as a rule she did nothing but
dream. Her dreams were vague imaginings, which rose before her
as in an azure mist during her afternoons of solitude. Nobody
knew of them and she kept them very secret, like a secret vice,
a sin. She committed herself much more readily--to the world--where
her liaisons were concerned. These never lasted long; they counted
for little in her life; she never wrote letters; and the favours
which she granted afforded the recipient no privileges in the daily
intercourse of society. Hers was a silent, correct depravity, both
physical and moral. For her imaginings too, despite their poetical
insipidity, were depraved. Her pet author was Catulle Mendès: she
loved all those little flowers of azure sentimentality, those rosy,
affected little cupids, with one little finger in the air and their
legs gracefully hovering around the most vicious themes and motives
of perverted passion. In her bedroom hung a few engravings: a young
woman lying on a lace-covered bed and being kissed by two sportive
angels; another: a lion with an arrow through its breast at the feet
of a smiling maiden; lastly, a large coloured advertisement of some
scent or other: a sort of floral nymph whose veils were being drawn
on either side by playful little cherubs, of the kind which we see
on soap-boxes. This "picture" in particular she thought splendid;
she could imagine nothing with a greater æsthetic appeal. She knew
that the plate was monstrous, but she had never been able to prevail
upon herself to take the horrible thing down, though it was looked
at askance by everybody: her friends, her step-children, all of whom
walked in and out of her room with the Indian casualness which makes
no secret of the toilet. She could stare at it for minutes on end,
as though bewitched; she thought it perfectly charming; and her own
dreams resembled this print. She also treasured a chocolate-box with
a keepsake picture on it, as the type of beauty which she admired,
even above her own: the pink flush on the cheeks, the brown eyes under
unconvincing golden hair, the bosom showing through the lace. But
she never committed herself in respect of this absurdity, which she
vaguely suspected; she never spoke of these prints and boxes, just
because she knew that actually they were hideous. But she thought
them lovely; for her they were delightful, were artistic and poetical.

These were her happiest hours.

Here, at Labuwangi, she dared not do what she did in Batavia; and
here, at Labuwangi, people hardly believed what people in Batavia
said. Nevertheless, Mrs. van Does averred that this resident and
that inspector--the one travelling for his pleasure, the other on an
official circuit--staying for a few days at the residency, had found
their way in the afternoon, during the siesta, to Léonie's bedroom. But
all the same at Labuwangi any such actual occurrences were the rarest
of interludes between Mrs. van Oudijck's rosy afternoon visions.

Still, this afternoon it seemed as though, after dozing a little
while and after all the dullness caused by the journey and the heat
had cleared away from her milk-white complexion--it seemed, now that
she was looking at the romping angels of the scent-advertisement, that
her thoughts were no longer dwelling on those rosy, tender, doll-like
forms, but as though she were listening to the sounds outside....

She was wearing nothing but a sarong, which she had pulled up under her
arms and hitched in a twist across her breast. Her beautiful fair hair
hung loose. Her pretty little white feet were bare: she had not even
put on her slippers. And she looked through the slats of the shutters.

Between the flower-pots, which, standing on the side steps of the
house, masked her windows with great masses of foliage, she could
see an annexe consisting of four rooms, the spare-rooms, one of which
was Theo's.

She stood peering for a moment and then set the shutter ajar. And
she saw that the shutter of Theo's room also opened a little way....

Then she smiled; she knotted her sarong more closely and lay down
upon the bed again.

She listened.

In a moment she heard the gravel grating slightly under the pressure
of a slipper. Her shutters, without being closed, were drawn to. A
hand now opened them cautiously....

She looked round smiling:

"What is it, Theo?" she asked.

He came nearer. He was dressed in pyjamas and he sat on the edge of
the bed and played with her soft white hands and suddenly he kissed
her fiercely.

At that instant a stone whizzed through the bedroom.

They both started, looked up, and in a moment were both standing in
the middle of the room.

"Who threw that?" she asked.

"One of the boys, perhaps," he said: "René or Ricus, playing about
outside."

"They aren't up yet."

"Or something may have fallen from above...."

"But it was thrown...."

"A stone so often gets loose...."

"But this is gravel."

She picked up the little stone. He looked outside cautiously:

"It's nothing, Léonie. It must really have fallen out of the gutter
... and then bounced up again. It's nothing."

"I'm frightened," she murmured.

He laughed almost aloud and asked:

"But why?"

They had nothing to fear. The room lay between Léonie's boudoir
and two large spare-rooms, which were reserved exclusively for
residents, generals and other highly-placed officials. On the
other side of the middle gallery were Van Oudijck's rooms--his
office and his bedroom--and Doddie's room and the room of the boys,
Ricus and René. Léonie was therefore isolated in her wing, between
the spare-rooms. It made her cynically insolent. At this hour, the
grounds were quite deserted. For that matter, she was not afraid
of the servants. Oorip was wholly to be trusted and often received
handsome presents: sarongs; a gold clasp; a long diamond kabaai-pin,
which she wore as a jewelled silver plaque on her breast. As Léonie
never grumbled, was generous in advancing wages and displayed an
apparently easy-going temperament--although everything always happened
as she wished--she was not disliked; and, whatever the servants might
know about her, they had never yet betrayed her. It made her all the
more insolent. A curtain hung before a passage between her bedroom
and boudoir; and it was arranged, once and for all, between Theo and
Léonie, that at the least danger he would slip away quietly behind this
hanging, go out through the garden-door of the boudoir and pretend to
be looking at the rose-trees in the pots on the steps. This would make
it appear as though he had just come from his own room and were merely
inspecting the roses. The inner doors of the boudoir and bedroom were
usually locked, because Léonie declared frankly that she did not like
to be interrupted unawares.

She liked Theo, because of his fresh youthfulness. And here, at
Labuwangi, he was her only vice, not counting a passing inspector and
the little pink angels. The two were now like naughty children; they
laughed silently, in each other's arms. It was past four by this time;
and they heard the voices of René and Ricus in the garden. They were
taking possession of the grounds for the holidays. They were thirteen
and fourteen years old; and they revelled in the garden. They ran about
barefoot, in blue striped pyjamas, and went to look at the horses, at
the pigeons; they teased Doddie's cockatoo, which tripped about on the
roof of the outhouses. They had a tame squirrel. They hunted geckos,
those large-headed lizards, which they shot with a blow-pipe, to the
great vexation of the servants, because the geckos bring luck. They
bought roasted monkey-nuts at the gate of a passing Chinaman and then
mocked him, imitating his accent, his difficulty with his r's:

"Loasted monkey-nuts!... Chinaman kaput!"

They climbed into the flamboyant and swung in the branches
like monkeys. They flung stones at the cats; they incited the
neighbour's dogs to bark themselves hoarse and bite one another's
ears to pieces. They splashed about with the water in the pond,
made themselves unpresentable with mud and dirt and dared to pluck
the Victoria Regias, which was strictly forbidden. They tested the
bearing-power of the flat, green Victoria-leaves, which looked like
tea-trays, and tried to stand on them and tumbled in. Then they took
empty bottles, set them in a row and bowled at them with rounded
flints. Then, with bamboos, they fished up all sorts of unspeakable
floating things from the ditch beside the house and threw them at
each other. Their inventive fancy was inexhaustible; and the hour
of the siesta was their special hour. They had caught a gecko and
a cat and were making them fight each other; the gecko opened its
jaws, which were like a small crocodile's, and hypnotized the cat,
which slunk away, withdrawing from its enemy's beady, black eyes,
arching its back and bristling with terror. And after that the boys
ate themselves ill with unripe mangoes.

Léonie and Theo had watched the fight between the cat and gecko through
the slats of the shutter and now saw the boys quietly eating the unripe
mangoes on the grass. But it was now the hour when the prisoners,
twelve in number, worked in the grounds, under the supervision of a
dignified old native overseer, with a little cane in his hand. They
fetched water in tubs and watering-cans made out of paraffin-tins,
sometimes in the actual paraffin-tins themselves, and watered the
plants, the grass and the gravel. Then they swept the grounds with
a loud rustle of coco-nut-fibre brooms.

René and Ricus, behind the overseer's back, for they were afraid of
him, threw half-eaten mangoes at the prisoners and called them names
and made faces and grimaces at them. Doddie appeared after her nap,
carrying her cockatoo on her wrist. It cried, "Kaka! Ka-ka!" and
raised its yellow crest with swift movements of its neck.

And Theo now stole behind the curtain into the boudoir, and, at a
moment when the boys were running and bombarding each other with
mangoes, and when Doddie was strolling towards the pond with the
loitering gait and the swing of the hips peculiar to the Creole, he
came from behind the plants, smelling at the roses and behaving as
though he had been walking in the garden before going to take his bath.






CHAPTER FIVE


Van Oudijck felt in a more pleasant mood than he had done for weeks:
his house seemed to have recovered after those two months of dull
boredom; he thought it jolly to see his two rascals of boys romping
round the garden, even though they did all sorts of mischief; and
above all he was very glad that his wife was back.

They were now sitting in the garden, in undress, drinking tea, at
half-past five. It was very strange, but Léonie at once filled the
great house with a certain home-like feeling of comfort, because she
liked comfort herself. At other times Van Oudijck would hurriedly
swallow a cup of tea which Kario brought him in his bedroom: to-day
this afternoon tea made a pleasant break in the day; cane chairs
and long deck-chairs were placed outside, in front of the house; the
tea-tray stood on a cane table; there were roasted bananas; and Léonie,
in a red silk Japanese kimono, with her fair hair hanging loose, lay
back in a cane chair playing with Doddie's cockatoo and feeding it
with pastry. It was different at once, Van Oudijck thought: his wife,
so sociable, charming, pretty, telling scraps of news about their
friends in Batavia, the races at Buitenzorg, a ball at the Viceroy's,
the Italian opera; the boys merry, healthy and jolly, however dirty
they might make themselves in playing. He called them to him and
romped with them and asked them about the grammar-school--they were
both in the second class--and even Doddie and Theo seemed different
to him: Doddie was now plucking roses from the potted trees, looking
delightfully pretty and humming a tune; and Theo was communicative
with mamma and even with him. A pleased expression played around
Van Oudijck's moustache. His face was quite young still; he hardly
looked forty-eight. He had a quick, bright glance, a way of looking up
suddenly with an acute, penetrating air. He was rather heavy of build,
with a tendency to become still heavier, but yet he had retained a
soldierly briskness and he was indefatigable on his circuits: he was
a first-rate horseman. Tall and powerfully built, content with his
house and his family, he wore a pleasant air of robust virility,
with a jovial laughing expression around his moustache. And,
relaxing himself, stretched out at full length in his cane chair,
he drank his cup of tea, and gave utterance to the thoughts which
generally welled up in him at such moments of satisfaction. Yes, it
was not a bad life in India, [3] when all was said, in the B.B. [4]
At least it had always been good for him; but then he had been pretty
lucky. Promotion nowadays was a desperate business: he knew any number
of assistant-residents who were his contemporaries and who had no
chance of becoming residents for years to come. And that certainly was
a desperate position, to continue so long in a subordinate office,
to be compelled at that age to hold one's self at the orders of
a resident. He could never have stood it, at forty-eight! But to
be a resident, to give orders on his own initiative, to rule as
large and important a district as Labuwangi, with such extensive
coffee-plantations, with such numbers of sugar-factories, with so
many leased concessions: that was a delight, that was living, that
was a life grander and more spacious than any other, a life with
which no life or position in Holland was to be compared. His great
responsibility delighted his authoritative nature. His activities
were varied: office work and circuit; the interest of his work
varied: a man was not bored to death in his office-chair; after the
office there was out-of-door life; and there was always a change,
always something different. He hoped in eighteen months to become a
resident of the first class, if a first-class residency fell vacant:
Batavia, Samarang, Surabaya, or one of the Vorstenlanden. [5] And yet
it would go to his heart to leave Labuwangi. He was attached to his
district, for which he had done so much during the past five years,
which in those five years had attained its highest prosperity, in so
far as prosperity was possible in these times of general depression,
with the colonies poor, the population impoverished, the coffee-crops
worse than ever, sugar perhaps threatened with a serious crisis in
two years' time. India was in a languishing condition; and even in the
industrial eastern portion of the island inertia and lack of vitality
were spreading like a blight; but still he had been able to do much
for Labuwangi. During his administration the people had thrived and
prospered; the irrigation of the corn-fields was excellent, after he
had succeeded in tactfully winning over the engineer, who at first was
always in conflict with the B.B. Miles and miles of steam tramway had
been laid down. The secretary, his assistant-residents and controllers
were his willing coadjutors, though he kept them hard at work. But he
had a pleasant way with them, even though the work was hard. He knew
how to be jolly and friendly with them, resident though he was. He was
glad that all of them--controllers and assistant-residents--represented
the wholesome, cheerful type of B.B. official, pleased with their life,
liking their work, though nowadays given much more than formerly to
studying the Government Almanack and the Colonial List with an eye
to their promotion. And it was Van Oudijck's hobby to compare his
officials with the judicial functionaries, who did not represent the
same alert type: there was always a slight jealousy and animosity
between the two orders.... Yes, it was a pleasant life, a pleasant
sphere of activity: everything was all right. There was nothing
to beat the B.B. His only regret was that his relations with the
regent [6] were not easier and more agreeable. But it was not his
fault. He had always very conscientiously given the regent his due,
had left him in the enjoyment of his full rights, had seen to it
that he was duly respected by the Javanese population and even by
the European officials. Oh, how intensely he regretted the death
of the old pangéran, the regent's father; the old regent, a noble,
cultivated Javanese! Van Oudijck had always been in sympathy with him,
had at once won him by his tact. Had he not, five years ago, when
he arrived at Labuwangi to take over the administration, invited the
pangéran--the type of the genuine Javanese noble--to sit beside him in
his own carriage, rather than allow him to follow in a second carriage,
behind the resident's carriage, as was usual? And had not this civility
toward the old prince at once won all the Javanese heads and officials
and flattered them in their respect and love for their regent, the
descendant of one of the oldest Javanese families, the Adiningrats,
who were Sultans of Madura in the Company's time?... But Sunario,
his son, now the young regent, he was unable to understand, unable
to fathom. This he confessed only to himself, in silence, seeing
him always enigmatic--that marionette, that puppet, as he called
him--always stiff, keeping his distance towards him, the resident,
as though he, the prince, looked down upon him, the Dutch burgher,
and wholly absorbed in all sorts of superstitious observances and
fanatical speculations. He never said as much openly, but something in
the regent escaped him. He was unable to place that delicate figure,
with the fixed, coal-black eyes, in the practical life of human beings,
as he had always been able to place the old pangéran. The latter had
always been to him, in accordance with his age, a fatherly friend;
in accordance with etiquette, his "younger brother"; but always the
fellow-ruler of his district. But Sunario seemed to him unreal, not
a functionary, not a regent, merely a fanatical Javanese who always
shrouded himself in mystery:

"Such nonsense!" thought Van Oudijck.

He laughed at the reputation for sacrosanctity which the populace
bestowed upon Sunario. He thought him unpractical, a degenerate
Javanese, a crazy Javanese dandy.

But his lack of harmony with the regent--a lack of harmony in
character only, which had never developed into actual fact: why,
he could twist the mannikin round his finger!--was the only great
difficulty which had arisen during all these years. And he would not
have exchanged his life as a resident for any other life whatever. Why,
he was already fretting about what he would do later, when he was
pensioned off! What he would have preferred was to continue as long
as possible in the service, as a member of the Indian Council, as
vice-president of the Council. The object of his unspoken ambition,
in the far-away future, was the throne of Buitenzorg. But nowadays
they had that strange mania in Holland for appointing outsiders
to the highest posts--men sent straight from Holland, newcomers
who knew nothing about India--instead of remaining faithful to the
principle of selecting old Indian servants, who had made their way
up from subcontroller and who knew the whole official hierarchy by
heart.... Yes, what would he do, pensioned off? Live at Nice? With
no money? For saving was impracticable: his life was comfortable,
but expensive; and instead of saving he was running up debts. Well,
that didn't matter now: the debts would be paid off in time, but
later, later.... The future, the existence of a pensioned official,
was anything but an agreeable prospect for him. To vegetate at the
Hague, in a small house, with a gin-and-bitters at the club, among the
old fogeys: br-r-r! The very idea of it made him shudder. He wouldn't
think about it; he preferred not to think about it at all: perhaps he
would be dead by that time. But it was all delightful now: his work,
his house, India. There was absolutely nothing to compare with it.

Léonie had listened to him smilingly: she was accustomed to his
quiet enthusiasm, his rhapsodizing over his post; as she put it, his
adoration of the B.B. She also valued the luxury of being a resident's
wife. The comparative isolation she did not mind; she usually was
sufficient unto herself. And she answered smilingly, contented and
charming with her creamy complexion, which showed still whiter under
the light coat of rice-powder against the red silk of her kimono and
looked so delightful amidst the surrounding waves of her fair hair.

That morning she had felt put out for a moment: Labuwangi,
after Batavia, had depressed her with the tedium of an up-country
capital. But since then she had acquired a large diamond; since then
she had got Theo back. His room was close to hers. And it was sure
to be a long time before he could obtain a berth.

These were her thoughts, while her husband sat blissfully reflecting
after his pleasant confidences.

Her thoughts went no deeper than this: anything like remorse would
have surprised her in the highest degree, had she been capable
of feeling it. It began to grow dark slowly; the moon was already
rising and shining brightly; and behind the velvety banyans, behind
the feathery boughs of the coco-palms, which waved gently up and down
like stately sheaves of dark ostrich-feathers, the last light of the
sun cast a faintly stippled, dull-gold reflection, against which the
softness of the banyans and the pomp of the coco-palms stood out as
though etched in black. From the distance came the monotonous tinkle
of the native orchestra, mournfully, limpid as water, like a xylophone,
with a deep dissonance at intervals....






CHAPTER SIX


Van Oudijck, in a pleasant mood because of his wife and children,
suggested a drive; and the horses were put to the landau. Van
Oudijck had a pleased and jovial look, under the broad, gold-laced
peak of his cap. Léonie, seated beside him, was wearing a new mauve
muslin frock, from Batavia, and a hat with mauve poppies. A lady's
hat in the up-country districts is a luxury, a colossal elegance;
and Doddie, facing her, but dressed inland fashion, without a hat,
was secretly vexed and thought that mamma might just as well have
told her she was going to "take" a hat, to use Doddie's idiom. She
now looked such a contrast to mamma; she couldn't stand them now,
those softly swaying poppies. Of the boys, René was with them, in
a clean white suit. The chief messenger sat on the box beside the
coachman, holding against his side the great golden umbrella, the
symbol of authority. It was past six, it was already growing dark;
and over Labuwangi there hung at this hour the velvety silence,
the tragic mystery of the twilit atmosphere that marked the days of
the eastern monsoon. Sometimes a dog barked, or a wood-pigeon cooed,
breaking the unreality of the silence, as of a deserted town. But
now there was also the rattle of the carriage driving right through
the silence; and the horses stamped the silence into tiny shreds. No
other carriages were met; an absence of all signs of human life cast
a spell upon the gardens and verandahs. A couple of young men on foot,
in white, took off their hats.

The carriage had left the wealthier part of the town and entered
the Chinese quarter, where the lights were burning in the little
shops. Business was almost finished: the Chinamen were resting, in
all sorts of limp attitudes, with their legs dangling or crossed,
their arms round their heads, their pigtails loose or twisted around
their skulls. When the carriage approached, they rose and remained
standing respectfully. The Javanese for the most part--those who were
well brought up and knew their manners--squatted. Along the road
stood the little portable kitchens, lit by small paraffin lamps,
of the drink-vendors and pastry-sellers. The motley colours showed
dingy in the evening darkness, lit by innumerable little lamps. The
Chinese shops, crammed with goods, displayed red and gold signboards
and red and gold placards with inscriptions; in the background was the
domestic altar with the sacred print; the white god seated, with the
black god grimacing behind him. But the street widened, became suddenly
more considerable: rich Chinese houses loomed white in the dusk;
the most striking was the gleaming, palatial villa of an immensely
wealthy retired opium-factor, who had made his money in the days
before the opium monopoly: a gleaming palace of graceful stucco-work
with numberless outbuildings. The porticos of the verandah were in a
monumental style of imposing elegance and in many soft shades of gold;
in the depth of the open house the immense domestic altar was visible,
with the print of the gods conspicuously illuminated; the garden was
laid out with conventional winding paths, but beautifully filled with
square pots and tall vases of dark blue-and-green glazed porcelain,
containing dwarf trees, handed down as heirlooms from father to son;
and all was kept with a radiant cleanliness, a careful neatness
of detail, eloquent of the prosperous, spick-and-span luxury of a
Chinese opium-millionaire. But not all the Chinese houses were so
ostentatiously open: most of them lay hidden with closed doors in
high-walled gardens, tucked away in the secrecy of their domestic life.

But suddenly the houses came to an end and Chinese graves stretched
along a broad road, rich graves, each grassy mound with a stone
entrance--the door of death--raised in the form of the symbol of
fecundity--the door of life--and all surrounded with a wide space
of turf, to the great vexation of Van Oudijck, who reckoned out
how much ground was lost to cultivation by these burial-places
of the wealthy Chinese. And the Chinese seemed to triumph in life
and death in this mysterious town which was otherwise so silent;
the Chinese gave it its real character of busy traffic, of trade, of
money-making, of living and dying; for, when the carriage drove into
the Arab quarter--a district of ordinary houses, but gloomy, lacking
in style, with life and prosperity hidden away behind closed doors;
with chairs in the verandah, but the master of the house gloomily
sitting cross-legged on the floor, following the carriage with a black
look--this quarter seemed even more mysterious than the fashionable
part of Labuwangi and seemed to radiate its unutterable mystery like
an atmosphere of Islam that spread over the whole town, as though
it were Islam that had poured forth the dusky, fatal melancholy of
resignation which filled the shuddering, noiseless evening.... They
did not feel this in their rattling carriage, accustomed to that
atmosphere as they were from childhood and no longer sensitive
to the gloomy secret that was like the approach of a dark force
which had always breathed upon them, the foreign rulers with their
creole blood, so that they should never suspect it. Perhaps, when
Van Oudijck now and again read about Pan-Islam in the newspapers,
he was dimly conscious in his deepest thoughts of this dark force,
this gloomy secret. But at moments like the present--driving with
his wife and children, amidst the rattling of his carriage and the
trampling of his fine Walers; the messenger with the furled umbrella,
which glittered like a furled sun, on the box--he was too intensely
aware of his individuality, his authoritative, overbearing nature,
to feel anything of the dark secret, to divine anything of the black
peril. And he was now in far too pleasant a mood to feel or see
anything melancholy. In his optimism he did not see even the decline
of his town, which he loved; he was not struck, as they drove past,
by the immense porticoed villas, the witnesses to the prosperity of
former planters, now deserted, neglected, standing in grounds that
had run wild, one of them taken over by a timber-felling company,
which allowed the foreman to live in it and stacked the logs in the
front-garden. The deserted houses gleamed sadly with their pillared
porticos, which, amid the desolate grounds, loomed spectral in the
moonlight, like temples of evil. But they did not see it like that:
enjoying the rocking of the smooth carriage-springs, Léonie smiled
and dozed; and Doddie, now that they were approaching the Lange Laan
again, looked out to see whether she could catch sight of Addie....






CHAPTER SEVEN


The secretary, Onno Eldersma, was a busy man. The post brought
a daily average of some two hundred letters and documents to the
residency-office, which employed two senior clerks, six juniors and a
number of native writers and clerks; and the resident grumbled whenever
the work fell into arrears. He himself was an energetic worker; and he
expected his subordinates to show the same spirit. But sometimes there
was a perfect torrent of documents, claims and applications. Eldersma
was the typical government official, wholly wrapped up in his minutes
and reports; and Eldersma was always busy. He worked morning, noon and
night. He allowed himself no siesta. He took a hurried lunch at four
o'clock and then rested for a little. Fortunately he had a sound,
robust, Frisian constitution; but he needed all his blood, all his
muscles, all his nerves for his work. It was not mere scribbling,
mere fumbling with papers: it was manual labour with the pen, muscular
work, nervous work; and it never ceased. He consumed himself, he spent
himself, he was always writing. He had not another idea left in his
head; he was nothing but the official, the civil servant. He had a
charming house, a most charming and exceptional wife, a delightful
child, but he never saw them, though he lived, vaguely, amid his home
surroundings. He just slaved away, conscientiously, working off what
he could. Sometimes he would tell the resident that it was impossible
for him to do any more. But on this point Van Oudijck was inexorable,
pitiless. He himself had been a district secretary; he knew what it
meant. It meant work, it meant plodding like a cart-horse. It meant
living, eating, sleeping with your pen in your hand. Then Van Oudijck
would show him this or that piece of work which had to be finished. And
Eldersma, who had said that he could do no more than he was doing,
somehow got it done, and therefore always did do something more than
he believed that he could do.

Then his wife, Eva, would say:

"My husband has ceased to be a human being; my husband has ceased to
be a man; my husband is an official."

The young wife, very European, now in India for the first time, had
never known, before her two years at Labuwangi, that it was possible
to work as hard as her husband did, in a country as hot as Labuwangi
was during the eastern moonson. She had resisted it at first; she
had at first tried to stand upon her rights; but once she saw that he
really had not a minute to spare, she waived them. She had very soon
come to realize that her husband could not share her life, nor could
she share his: not because he was not a good husband and very fond of
his wife, but simply because the post brought two hundred letters and
documents daily. She had soon seen that there was nothing for her to
do at Labuwangi and that she would have to console herself with her
house and, later, with her child. She arranged her house as a temple of
art and comfort and racked her brains over the education of her little
boy. She was an artistically cultivated woman and came from an artistic
environment. Her father was Van Hove, the great landscape-painter;
her mother was Stella Couberg, the famous concert-singer. Eva,
brought up in an artistic and musical home whose atmosphere she had
breathed since her babyhood, in her picture-books and childish songs,
Eva had married an East-Indian civil servant and had accompanied him
to Labuwangi. She loved her husband, a good-looking Frisian and a man
of sufficient culture to take an interest in many subjects. And she
had gone, happy in her love and filled with illusions about India and
all the Orientalism of the tropics. And she had tried to preserve her
illusions, despite the warnings which she had received. At Singapore
she was struck by the colour of the naked Malays, like that of a bronze
statue, by the Eastern motley of the Chinese and Arab quarters and the
poetry of the Japanese tea-houses, which unfolded like a page of Loti
as she drove past. But, soon after, in Batavia, a grey disappointment
had fallen like a cold, drizzling rain upon her expectation of seeing
everything in India as a beautiful fairy-tale, a story out of the
Arabian Nights. The habits of their narrow, everyday existence damped
all her unsophisticated longing to admire; and she saw everything
that was ridiculous even before she discovered anything else that was
beautiful. At her hotel, the men in pyjamas lay at full length in
their deck-chairs, with their lazy legs on the extended leg-rests,
their feet--although carefully tended--bare and their toes moving
quietly in a conscientious exercise of big toe and little toe, even
while she was passing. The ladies were in sarong and kabaai, the only
practical morning-dress, which is easily changed two or three times a
day, but which suits so few, the straight, pillow-case outline at the
back being peculiarly angular and ugly, however elegant and expensive
the costume.... And then the commonplace aspect of the houses,
with all their whitewash and their rows of fragile and meretricious
flower-pots; the parched barrenness of the vegetation, the dirt of the
natives! And, in the life of the Europeans, all the minor absurdities:
the half-caste accent, with the constant little exclamations; the
narrow provincial conventionality of the officials: only the Indian
Council allowed to wear top-hats. And then the rigorous little maxims
of etiquette: at a reception, the highest functionary is the first to
leave; the others follow in due order. And the little peculiarities of
tropical customs, such as the use of packing-cases and paraffin-tins
for this, that and the other purpose: the wood for shop-windows, for
dust-bins and home-made articles of furniture; the tins for gutters
and watering-cans and all kinds of domestic utensils....

The young and cultured little woman, with her Arabian Nights illusions,
was unable, amid these first impressions, to distinguish between what
was colonial--the expedients of a European acclimatizing himself in
a country which is alien to his blood--and what was really poetic,
genuinely Indian, purely eastern, absolutely Javanese; and,
because of these and other little absurdities, she had at once
felt disappointed, as every one with artistic inclinations feels
disappointed in colonial India, which is not at all artistic or poetic
and in which the rose-trees in their white pots are conscientiously
manured with horse-droppings as high as they will bear, so that, when
a breeze springs up, the scent of the roses mingles with a stench of
freshly-sprinkled manure. And she had grown unjust, as does every
Hollander, every newcomer to the beautiful country which he would
like to see with the eyes of his preconceived literary vision, but
which impresses him at first by its absurd colonial side. And she
forgot that the country itself, which was originally so absolutely
beautiful, was not to blame for all this absurdity.

She had had a couple of years of it and had been astonished,
occasionally alarmed, then again shocked, had laughed sometimes and
then again been annoyed; and at last, with the reasonableness of
her nature and the practical side of her artistic soul, had grown
accustomed to it all. She had grown accustomed to the toe-exercises,
to the manure around the roses; she had grown accustomed to her
husband, who was no longer a human being, no longer a man, but an
official. She had suffered a great deal, she had written despairing
letters, she had been sick with longing for the home of her parents,
she had been on the verge of making a sudden departure, but she had
not gone, so as not to leave her husband in his loneliness, and she
had accustomed herself to things and made the best of them. She had
not only the soul of an artist--she played the piano exceptionally
well--but also the heart of a plucky little woman. She had gone on
loving her husband and she felt that, after all, she provided him
with a pleasant home. She gave serious attention to the education of
her child. And, once she had become accustomed to things, she grew
less unjust and suddenly saw much of what was beautiful in India;
admired the stately grace of a coco-palm, the exquisite, paradisal
flavour of the Indian fruits, the glory of the blossoming trees; and,
in the inland districts, she had realized the noble majesty of nature,
the harmony of the undulating hills, the faery forests of gigantic
ferns, the menacing ravines of the craters, the shimmering terraces
of the flooded rice-fields, with the tender green of the young paddy;
and the character of the Javanese had been a very revelation to her:
his elegance, his grace, his salutation, his dancing; his aristocratic
distinction, so often evidently handed down directly from a noble race,
from an age-old chivalry, now modernized into a diplomatic suppleness,
worshipping authority by nature and inevitably resigned under the
yoke of the rulers whose gold-lace arouses his innate respect.

In her father's house, Eva had always felt around her the cult of
the artistic and the beautiful, even to the verge of decadence;
those with her had always directed her attention, in an environment
of perfectly beautiful things, in beautiful words, in music, to the
plastic beauty of life, and perhaps too exclusively to that alone. And
she was now too well-trained in that school of beauty to persist in
her disappointment and to see only the white-wash and flimsiness of
the houses, the petty airs of the officials, the packing-cases and
the horse-droppings. Her literary mind now saw the palatial character
of the houses, so typical of the official arrogance, which could
hardly have been other than it was; and she saw all these details more
accurately, obtaining a broader insight into all that world of India,
so that revelation followed upon revelation. Only she continued to
feel something strange, something that she could not analyse, a certain
mystery, a dark secrecy, which she felt creeping softly over the land
at night. But she thought that it was no more than a mood produced by
the darkness and the very dense foliage, that it was like the very
quiet music of stringed instruments of a kind quite strange to her,
a distant murmur of harps in a minor key, a vague voice of warning,
a whispering in the night--no more--which evoked poetic imaginings.

At Labuwangi, a small inland capital, she often astonished the
acclimatized up-country elements because she was somewhat excitable,
because she was enthusiastic, spontaneous, glad to be alive--even
in India--glad of the beauty of life, because she had a healthy
nature, softly tempered and shaded into a charming pose of caring
for nothing but the beautiful: beautiful lines, beautiful colours,
artistic ideas. Those who knew her either disliked her or were very
fond of her: few felt indifferent to her. She had gained a reputation
in India for unusualness: her house was unusual, her clothes unusual,
the education of her child unusual; her ideas were unusual and
the only ordinary thing about her was her Frisian husband, who
was almost too ordinary in that environment, which might have been
cut out of an art-magazine. She was fond of society and gathered
around her as much of the European element as possible: it was,
indeed, seldom artistic; but she imparted a pleasant tone to it,
something that reminded everybody of Holland. This little clique,
this group admired her and instinctively adopted the tone which she
set. Because of her greater culture, she ruled over it, though she
was not a despot by nature. But they did not all approve of this;
and the rest called her eccentric. The clique, however, the group,
remained faithful to her, for she awakened them, in the soft languor
of Indian life, to the existence of music, ideas, and the joie de
vivre. So she had drawn into her circle the doctor and his wife, the
chief engineer and his wife, the district controller and his wife,
and sometimes a couple of outside controllers, or a few young fellows
from the sugar-factories. This brought round her a gay little band of
adherents. She ruled over them, organized amateur theatricals for them,
picnicked with them and charmed them with her house and her frocks
and the epicurean and artistic flavour of her life. They forgave her
everything that they did not understand--her æsthetic principles, her
enthusiasm for Wagner--because she gave them gaiety and a little joie
de vivre and a sociable feeling in the deadliness of their colonial
existence. For this they were fervently grateful to her. And thus
it had come about that her house became the actual centre of social
life at Labuwangi, whereas the residency, on the other hand, withdrew
with dignified reserve into the shadow of its banyan-trees. Léonie
van Oudijck was not jealous on this account. She loved her repose and
was only too glad to leave everything to Eva Eldersma. And so Léonie
troubled about nothing--neither entertaining nor musical societies
nor dramatic societies nor charities--and delegated to Eva all the
social duties which as a rule a resident's wife feels bound to take
upon herself. Léonie had her monthly receptions, at which she spoke
to everybody and smiled upon everybody, and gave her annual ball on
New Year's Day. With this the social life of the residency began and
ended. Apart from this she lived there in her egoism, in the comfort
with which she had selfishly surrounded herself, in her rosy dreams
of cherubs and in such love as she was able to evoke. Sometimes,
periodically, she felt a need for Batavia and went to spend a month
or two there. And so she, as the wife of the resident, led her own
life; and Eva did everything and Eva set the tone. It sometimes
gave rise to a little jealousy, as for instance between her and
the wife of the inspector of finances, who considered that the
first place after Mrs. van Oudijck belonged to her and not to the
secretary's wife. This would occasion a good deal of bickering over
the Indian official etiquette; and stories and tittle-tattle would
go the rounds, enhanced, aggravated, until they reached the remotest
sugar-factory in the district. But Eva took no notice of all this
gossip and preferred to devote herself to providing a little social
life in Labuwangi. And, to keep things going properly, she and her
little circle ruled the roost. She had been elected president of the
Thalia Dramatic Society and she accepted, but on condition that the
rules should be abolished. She was willing to be queen, but without
a constitution. Everybody said that this would never do: there had
always been rules. But Eva replied that, if there were to be rules,
she must refuse to be president. And they gave way: the constitution
of the Thalia was abolished; Eva held absolute sway, chose the plays
and distributed the parts. And it was the golden age of the society:
rehearsed by her, the members acted so well that people came from
Surabaya to attend the performances at the Concordia. The pieces played
were of a quality such as had never been seen at the Concordia before.

And the result of this again was that people either loved her or
did not like her at all. But she went her way and provided a little
European civilization, so that they might not grow too "stuffy"
at Labuwangi. And people descended to all sorts of trickery to get
invited to her little dinners, which were famous and notorious. For
she stipulated that her men should come in dress-clothes and not in
their Singapore jackets, without shirts. She introduced swallow-tails
and white ties; and she was inexorable. The women were low-necked,
as usual, for the sake of coolness, and thought it delightful. But
her poor men struggled against it, puffed and blew at first and
felt congested in their tall collars; the doctor declared that it
was unhealthy; and the veterans protested that it was madness and
opposed to all the good old Indian customs. But when they had puffed
and blown a few times in their dress-coats and tall collars, they
all found Mrs. Eldersma's dinners charming, precisely because they
were so European in style.






CHAPTER EIGHT


Eva was at home to her friends once a fortnight: "You see, resident,
it's not a reception," she always said, in self-defence, to Van
Oudijck. "I know that no one's allowed to 'receive' in the interior,
except the resident and his wife. It's really not a reception,
resident. I shouldn't dare to call it that. I'm just at home to
everybody once a fortnight; and I'm glad if our friends care to
come.... It's all right, isn't it, resident, as long as it's not a
'reception'?"

Van Oudijck would laugh merrily, with his jovial laugh shaking his
military moustache, and ask if little Mrs. Eldersma was pulling his
leg. She could do anything, if she would only continue to provide
a little gaiety, a little acting, a little music, a little pleasant
intercourse. That was her duty, once and for all: to look after the
social element at Labuwangi.

There was nothing Indian about her at-home days. For instance, at the
resident's, the receptions were regulated according to the old inland
practice: all the ladies sat side by side, on chairs along the walls;
Mrs. van Oudijck walked past them and talked to each for a moment in
turn, standing, while they remained sitting; the resident chatted to
the men in another gallery. The male and female elements kept apart;
gin-and-bitters, port and iced water were handed round.

At Eva's, people strolled about, walked through the galleries, sat
down wherever they pleased; everybody talked to everybody. There was
not the same ceremony as at the resident's, but there was all the
chic of a French drawing-room, with an artistic touch to it. And it
had become a habit for the ladies to dress more for Eva's days than
for the resident's receptions: at Eva's they wore hats, a symbol of
extreme elegance in India. Fortunately, Léonie did not care; it left
her totally indifferent.

Léonie was now sitting in the middle gallery, on a couch, and remained
sitting with the raden-aju, the wife of the regent. She liked that:
everybody came up to her, whereas at her own receptions she had to
do so much walking, past the row of ladies along the wall. Now she
took her ease, remained sitting, smiling on those who came to pay her
their respects. But, apart from this, there was a restless movement
of guests. Eva was here, there and everywhere.

"Do you think it's pretty here?" Mrs. van der Does asked Léonie,
with a glance at the middle gallery.

And her eyes wandered in surprise over the dull arabesques, painted
in distemper on the pale-grey walls, like frescoes; over the teak
wainscoting, carved by skilful Chinese cabinetmakers after a drawing in
the Studio: over the bronze Japanese vases, on their teak pedestals,
in which branches of bamboo and bouquets of gigantic flowers cast
their shadows right up to the ceiling.

"Odd ... but very pretty! Unusual!" murmured Léonie, to whom Eva's
taste was always a conundrum.

Withdrawn into herself as into a temple of egoism, she did not mind
what others did or felt, or how they arranged their houses. But she
could not have lived here. She liked her own lithographs--Veronese
and Shakespeare and Tasso: she thought them distinguished--liked them
better than the handsome carton photographs after Italian masters
which Eva had standing here and there on easels. Above all, she loved
her chocolate-box and the scent-advertisement with the little angels.

"Do you like that dress?" Mrs. van der Does asked next.

"Yes, I do," said Léonie, smiling pleasantly. "Eva's very clever:
she painted those blue irises herself, on Chinese silk...."

She never said anything but kind, smiling things. She never spoke
evil; it left her indifferent. And she now turned to the raden-aju
and thanked her in kindly, drawling sentences for some fruit which
the latter had sent her. The regent came to speak to her and she
asked after his two little sons. She talked in Dutch and the regent
and the raden-aju both answered in Malay. The Regent of Labuwangi,
Raden Adipati Surio Sunario, was still young, just turned thirty:
a refined Javanese face like the conceited face of a puppet; a
little moustache, with the points carefully twisted; and, above all,
a staring gaze that struck the beholder, a gaze that stared as though
in a continual trance; a gaze that seemed to pierce the visible reality
and to see right through it; a gaze that issued from eyes like coals,
sometimes dull and weary, sometimes flashing like sparks of ecstasy and
fanaticism. Among the population, which was almost slavishly attached
to its regent and his family, he enjoyed a reputation for sanctity
and mystery, though no one ever knew the truth of the matter. Here,
in Eva's gallery, he merely produced the impression of a puppet-like
figure, of a distinguished Indian prince, save that his trance-like
eyes occasioned surprise. The sarong, drawn smoothly around his hips,
hung low in front in a bundle of flat, regular pleats, which fluttered
open; he wore a white starched shirt with diamond studs and a little
blue tie; over this was a blue cloth uniform-jacket, with gold uniform
buttons, with the royal "W" and the crown; his bare feet were encased
in black, patent-leather pumps turning up at the pointed toes; the
kerchief carefully wound about his head in narrow folds imparted a
feminine air to his refined features, but the black eyes, now and then
weary, constantly sparkled as in a trance, an ecstasy. The golden kris
was stuck in his blue-and-gold waist-band, right behind, in the small
of his back; a large jewel glittered on his tiny, slender hand; and
a cigarette-case of braided gold wire peeped from the pocket of his
jacket. He did not say much--sometimes he looked as though he were
asleep; then his strange eyes would flash up again--and his replies
to what Léonie said consisted almost exclusively of a curt, clipped

"Saja, yes...."

He uttered the two syllables with a hard, sibilant accent of
politeness, laying equal stress upon each. He accompanied his little
word of civility with a brief, automatic nod of the head. The raden-aju
too, seated beside Léonie, answered in the same way:

"Saja...."

But she always followed it up with a little embarrassed laugh. She was
very young still, possibly just eighteen. She was a Solo princess; and
Van Oudijck could not tolerate her, because she introduced Solo manners
and Solo expressions into Labuwangi, in her conceited arrogance, as
though nothing could be so distinguished and so purely aristocratic
as what was done and said at the court of Solo. She employed court
phrases which the Labuwangi population did not understand; she had
forced the regent to engage a Solo coachman, with the Solo state
livery, including the wig and the false beard and moustache, at which
the people stared wide-eyed. Her yellow complexion was made to appear
yet paler by a light layer of rice-powder applied moist; her eyebrows
were slightly arched in a fine black streak; jewelled hairpins were
stuck in her glossy chignon and a kenanga-flower in her girdle. Over an
embroidered garment which, according to the custom of the Solo court,
was long and trailing in front, she wore a kabaai of red brocade,
relieved with gold braid and fastened with three large gems. Two stones
of fabulous value, moreover, in heavy silver settings, dragged her ears
down. She wore light-coloured open-work stockings and gold embroidered
slippers. Her little thin fingers were stiff with rings, as though
set in brilliants; and she held a white marabou fan in her hand.

"Saja ... saja," she answered, civilly, with her embarrassed little
laugh.

Léonie was silent for a moment, tired of carrying on the conversation
by herself. When she had spoken to the regent and the raden-aju
about their sons she could not find much more to say. Van Oudijck,
after Eva had shown him round the galleries--for there was always
something new to admire--joined his wife; the regent rose to his feet.

"Well, regent," asked the resident, in Dutch, "how is the raden-aju
pangéran?"

He was enquiring after Sunario's mother, the old regent's widow.

"Very well ... thank you," murmured the regent, in Malay. "But mamma
didn't come with us ... so old ... easily tired."

"I want to speak to you, regent."

The regent followed Van Oudijck into the front verandah, which
was empty.

"I am sorry to have to tell you that I have just had another bad
report of your brother, the Regent of Ngadjiwa.... I am informed
that he has lately been gambling again and has lost large sums of
money. Do you know anything about it?"

The regent shut himself up, as it were, in his puppet-like stiffness
and kept silence. Only his eyes stared, as though gazing through Van
Oudijck at distant objects.

"Do you know anything about it, regent?"

"Tida, no...."

"I request you, as head of the family, to look into it and to keep
a watch upon your brother. He gambles, he drinks; he does your name
no credit, regent. If the old pangéran could have guessed that his
second son would go to the dogs like this, it would have pained
him greatly. He held his name high. He was one of the wisest and
noblest regents that the government ever had in Java; and you know
how greatly the government valued the pangéran. Even in the Company's
days, Holland owed much to your house, which was always loyal to
her. But the times seem to be altering.... It is very regrettable,
regent, that an old Javanese family with such lofty traditions as
yours should be unable to remain faithful to those traditions...."

Raden Adipati Surio Sunario turned pale with a greenish pallor. His
hypnotic eyes pierced the resident through; but he saw that the latter
too was boiling with anger. And he veiled the strange glitter of his
gaze with a drowsy weariness.

"I thought, resident, that you had always felt an affection for my
house," he murmured, almost plaintively.

"And you thought right, regent. I loved the pangéran. I have always
admired your house and have always tried to uphold it. I want to
uphold it still, together with yourself, regent, hoping that you see
not only, as your reputation suggests, the things of the next world,
but also the realities about you. But it is your brother, regent,
whom I do not love and cannot possibly esteem. I have been told--and I
can trust the words of those who told me--that the Regent of Ngadjiwa
has not only been gambling ... but also that he has failed this month
to pay the heads at Ngadjiwa their salaries...."

They looked at each other fixedly; and Van Oudijck's firm and steady
glance met the regent's gaze, the gaze of a man in a trance.

"The persons who act as your informants may be mistaken...."

"I am assuming that they would not bring me such reports without
the most incontestable certainty.... Regent, this is a very delicate
matter. I repeat, you are the head of your family. Enquire of your
younger brother to what extent he has misapplied the money of the
government and make it all good as soon as possible. I am purposely
leaving the matter to you. I will not speak to your brother about it,
in order to spare a member of your family as long as I can. It is
for you to admonish your brother, to call his attention to what in my
eyes is a crime, but one which you, by your prestige as the head of
the family, are still able to undo. Forbid him to gamble and order him
to master his passion. Otherwise I foresee very grievous things and I
shall have to propose your brother's dismissal. You yourself know how
I should dislike to do that. For the Regent of Ngadjiwa is the second
son of the old pangéran, whom I held in high esteem, even as I should
always wish to spare your mother, the raden-aju pangéran, any sorrow."

"I thank you," murmured Sunario.

"Reflect seriously upon what I am saying to you, regent. If you
cannot make your brother listen to reason, if the salaries of the
heads are not paid at the earliest possible date, then ... then I
shall have to act. And, if my warning is of no avail, then it means
your brother's ruin. You yourself know, the dismissal of a regent is
such a very exceptional thing that it would bring disgrace upon your
family. Help me to save the house of the Adiningrats from such a fate."

"I promise," murmured the regent.

"Give me your hand, regent."

Van Oudijck pressed the thin fingers of the Javanese:

"Can I trust you?" he asked.

"In life, in death."

"Then let us go indoors. And tell me as soon as possible what you
have discovered."

The regent bowed. A greenish pallor betrayed the silent, secret rage
which was working inside him like the fire of a volcano. His eyes,
behind Van Oudijck's back, stabbed with a mysterious hatred at the
Hollander, the low-born Hollander, the base commoner, the infidel
Christian, who had no business to feel anything, with that unclean soul
of his, concerning him, his house, his father, his mother, or their
supremely sacred aristocracy and nobility ... even though they had
always bowed beneath the yoke of those who were stronger than they....






CHAPTER NINE


"I have counted on your staying to dinner," said Eva.

"Of course," replied Van Helderen, the controller, and his wife.

The reception--not a reception, as Eve always said in self-defence--was
nearly over: the Van Oudijcks had been the first to go; the
regent followed. The Eldersmas were left with their little band of
intimates: Dr. Rantzow and Doorn de Bruijn, the senior engineer,
with their wives, and the Van Helderens. They sat down in the front
verandah with a certain sense of relief and rocked comfortably to and
fro. Whiskies-and-soda and glasses of lemonade, with great lumps of
ice in them, were handed round.

"Always chock full, reception at Eva's," said Mrs. van
Helderen. "Fuller than other day at resident's...."

Ida van Helderen was the type of the white-skinned half-caste. She
always tried to behave in a very European fashion, to talk Dutch
nicely; she even pretended to speak bad Malay and not to care for
native dishes. She was short and plump all over; she was very white,
a dead white, with big, black, astonished eyes. She was full of little
mysterious fads and hatreds and affections; all her actions were
the result of mysterious little impulses. Sometimes she hated Eva,
sometimes she doted on her. She was absolutely unreliable; her every
action, her every movement, her every word might be a surprise. She
was always in love, tragically. She took all her little affairs very
tragically, on a very large and serious scale, with not the least
sense of proportion, and then unbosomed herself to Eva, who laughed
and comforted her.

Her husband, the controller, had never been in Holland: he had been
educated entirely in Batavia, at the William III. College and the
Indian Department. And he was very strange to see, this creole,
apparently quite European, tall, fair and pale, with his fair
moustache, his blue eyes, expressing animation and interest, and his
manners, which displayed a finer courtesy than could be found in the
smartest circles of Europe, but with not a vestige of India in thought,
speech or dress. He would speak of Paris and Vienna as though he had
spent years in both capitals, whereas he had never been out of Java;
he was mad on music, although he found it difficult to appreciate
Wagner, at least as Eva played him; and his great illusion was that
he must really go to Europe on leave next year, to see the Paris
Exhibition. [7] There was a wonderful distinction, an innate style
about young Van Helderen, as though he were not the offspring of
European parents who had always lived in India, as though he were a
foreigner from an unknown country, of a nationality which you could not
place at once. His accent barely betrayed a certain softness, resulting
from the climate; he spoke Dutch so correctly that it would have
sounded almost stiff amid the slovenly slang of the mother-country;
and he spoke French, English and German with greater facility than
most Dutchmen. Perhaps he owed to a French mother that exotic and
courtly politeness, so innate, pleasant and natural. In his wife,
who was also of French extraction, springing from a creole family
in Réunion, this exoticism had become a mysterious medley which had
never developed beyond a sort of childishness and a jumble of petty
emotions and petty passions, while she tried, with those great,
sombre eyes of hers, to read tragedy into her life, though she did
no more than just dip into it as into an ill-written magazine-story.

She now imagined herself to be in love with the senior engineer,
the oldest of the little band, a man already turning grey, with a
black beard; and, in her tragic fashion, she pictured scenes with
Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn, a stout, placid, melancholy woman. Dr. Rantzow
and his wife were Germans: he fat, fair-haired, vulgar, pot-bellied;
she, with a serene German face, pleasant and matronly, talking Dutch
vivaciously with a German accent.

This was the little clique over which Eva Eldersma reigned. In
addition to Frans van Helderen the controller, it consisted of quite
ordinary Indian and European elements, people without artistic sense,
as Eva said; but she had no other choice at Labuwangi, and therefore
she amused herself with Ida's little tragedies and made the best of
the others.

Onno, her husband, tired as usual with his work, did not join much
in the conversation, sat and listened.

"How long was Mrs. van Oudijck at Batavia?" asked Ida.

"Two months," said the doctor's wife. "A very long visit, this time."

"I hear," said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn, placid, melancholy and quietly
venomous, "that this time one member of council, one head of a
department and three young business-men kept Mrs. van Oudijck amused
at Batavia."

"And I can assure you people," said the doctor, "that, if Mrs. van
Oudijck did not go to Batavia regularly, she would miss a beneficial
cure, even though she takes it on her own and not ... by my
prescription."

"Let us speak no evil!" Eva interrupted, almost entreatingly. "Mrs. van
Oudijck is beautiful--with a tranquil Junoesque beauty and the eyes
of a Venus--and I can forgive anything to beautiful people about
me. And you, doctor," threatening him with her finger, "mustn't
betray professional secrets. You doctors, in India, are often far too
outspoken about your patients' secrets. When I'm unwell, it's never
anything but a headache. Will you make a careful note of that, doctor?"

"The resident seems preoccupied," said Doorn de Bruijn.

"Could he know ... about his wife?" asked Ida, sombrely, her great
eyes filled with black velvet tragedy.

"The resident is often like that," said Frans van Helderen. "He has his
moods. Sometimes he's pleasant, cheerful, jovial, as he was lately,
on circuit. Then again he has his gloomy days, working, working and
working and grumbling that nobody does any work except himself."

"My poor, unappreciated Onno!" sighed Eva.

"I believe he's overworking himself," said Van Helderen. "Labuwangi
is a tremendously busy district. And the resident takes things too
much to heart, both in his own house and outside, in his relations
with his son and his relations with the regent."

"I should sack the regent," said the doctor.

"But, doctor," said Van Helderen, "you know enough about conditions
in Java to know that things can't be done just like that. The regent
and his family are closely identified with Labuwangi and too highly
considered by the population...."

"Yes, I know the Dutch policy. The English in British India deal with
their Indian princes in a more arbitrary and high-handed fashion. The
Dutch treat them much too gently."

"The question might arise which of the two policies is the better in
the long run," said Van Helderen, drily, hating to hear a foreigner
disparage anything in a Dutch colony. "Fortunately, we know nothing
here of the continual poverty and famine that prevail in British
India."

"I saw the resident speaking very seriously to the regent," said
Doorn de Bruijn.

"The resident is too susceptible," said Van Helderen. "He allows
himself to be greatly dejected by the gradual decline of this old
Javanese family, which is doomed to go under, though he'd like to
hold it up.... The resident, cool and practical though he may be, is a
bit of a romantic in this, though he might refuse to admit it. But he
remembers the Adiningrats' glorious past, he remembers that last fine
figure, the noble old pangéran, and he compares him with his sons,
the one a fanatic, the other a gambler...."

"I think our regent--not the Ngadjiwa one: he's a
coolie--delightful!" said Eva. "He's a living figure out of a
puppet-show. Except his eyes: they frighten me. What terrible
eyes! Sometimes they're asleep and sometimes they're like a
maniac's. But he is so refined, so distinguished! And the raden-aju
too is an exquisite little doll: 'Saja ... saja!' She says nothing,
but she looks very decorative. I'm always glad when they adorn my
at-home day and I miss them when they're not there. And the old
raden-aju pangéran, grey-haired, dignified, a queen...."

"A gambler of the first water," said Eldersma.

"They gamble away all they possess," said Van Helderen, "she and the
regent of Ngadjiwa. They're no longer rich. The old pangéran used to
have splendid insignia of rank for state occasions, magnificent lances,
a jewelled betel-box, spittoons--useful objects, those!--of priceless
value. The old raden-aju has gambled them all away. I doubt if she has
anything left but her pension: two hundred and forty guilders a month,
I believe. And how our regent manages to keep all his cousins, male
and female, in the Kabupaten, [8] according to the Javanese custom,
is beyond me."

"What custom is that?" asked the doctor.

"Every regent collects his whole family around him like parasites,
clothes them, feeds them, provides them with pocket-money ... and
the natives think it dignified and smart."

"Sad ... that ruined greatness!" said Ida, gloomily.

A boy came to announce dinner and they went to the back verandah and
sat down to table.

"And what have you in prospect for us, mevrouwtje?" asked the senior
engineer. "What are the plans? Labuwangi has been very quiet lately."

"It's really terrible," said Eva. "If I hadn't all of you, it would be
terrible. If I weren't always planning something and having ideas, it
would be terrible, this living at Labuwangi. My husband doesn't feel
it; he works, as all you men do: what else is there to do in India
but work, regardless of the heat? But for us women! What a life,
if we didn't find our happiness purely in ourselves, in our home,
in our friends ... when we have the good fortune to possess those
friends! Nothing from the outside. Not a picture, not a statue to look
at; no music to listen to. Don't be cross, Van Helderen. You play
the 'cello charmingly, but nobody in India can keep up to date. The
Italian Opera plays Il Trovatore. The amateur companies--and they're
really first-rate at Batavia--play ... Il Trovatore. And you, Van
Helderen ... don't object. I saw you in an ecstasy when the Italian
company from Surabaya were here lately, at the club, playing ... Il
Trovatore. You were enchanted."

"There were some beautiful voices among them."

"But twenty years ago, they tell me, even then people were enchanted
with ... Il Trovatore. Oh, it's terrible! Sometimes, suddenly, it
crushes me. Sometimes, all of a sudden, I feel that I have not grown
used to India and that I never shall; and I began to long for Europe,
for life!"

"But Eva," Eldersma began, in alarm, dreading lest she should really
go home one day, leaving him alone in what would then be his utterly
joyless working-life at Labuwangi: "sometimes you do appreciate India:
your house, the pleasant, spacious life...."

"Materially...."

"And don't you appreciate your own work--I mean the many things which
you are able to do here?"

"What? Getting up parties? Arranging theatricals?"

"It's you who are the real rezidente [9]," said Ida, gushingly.

"Thank goodness, we're coming back to Mrs. van Oudijck," said Mrs. Doom
de Bruijn, teasingly.

"And to professional secrecy," said Dr. Rantzow.

"No," sighed Eva, "we want something new. Dances, parties, picnics,
trips into the mountains ... we've exhausted all that. I know nothing
more. The Indian depression's coming over me. I'm in one of my dejected
moods. Those brown faces of my 'boys' around me suddenly strike me
as uncanny. India frightens me at times. Do none of you feel the
same? A vague dread, a mystery in the air, something menacing.... I
don't know what it is. The evenings are sometimes so full of mystery
and there is something mysterious in the character of the native,
who is so remote from us, who differs from us so...."

"Artistic feelings," said Van Helderen, chaffingly. "No, I don't feel
like that. India is my country."

"You type!" said Eva, chaffing him in return. "What makes you what
you are, so curiously European? I can't call it Dutch."

"My mother was a Frenchwoman."

"But, after all, you're a creole: born here, brought up here.... And
you have nothing of a creole about you. I think it's wonderful to
have met you: I like you as a change.... Help me, can't you? Suggest
something new. Not a dance, not a trip into the mountains. I want
something new. Else I shall get a craving for my father's paintings,
for my mother's singing, for our beautiful, artistic house at the
Hague. If I don't have something new, I shall die. I'm not like your
wife, Van Helderen, always in love."

"Eva!" Ida entreated.

"Tragically in love, with her beautiful, sombre eyes. Always, first
with her husband and then with somebody else. I am never in love. Not
even any longer with my husband. He is ... with me. But I have not
an erotic temperament. There's a great deal of love-making in India,
isn't there, doctor?... Well, we've ruled out dances, excursions into
the mountains and love-making. What then, in Heaven's name, what then?"

"I know of something," said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn; and a sudden anxiety
came over her placid melancholy.

She gave a side-glance at Mrs. Rantzow; the German woman grasped
her meaning.

"What is it?" asked the others, eagerly.

"Table-turning," whispered the two ladies.

There was a general laugh.

"Oh dear!" sighed Eva, disappointed. "A trick, a joke, an evening's
amusement. No, I want something that will fill my life for at least
a month."

"Table-turning," repeated Mrs. Rantzow.

"Listen to me," said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn. "The other day, for a joke,
we tried making a gipsy-table turn. We all promised not to cheat. The
table ... moved, spelt out words, tapping them out by the alphabet."

"But was there no cheating?" asked the doctor, Eldersma and Van
Helderen.

"You'll have to trust us," declared the two ladies, in self-defence.

"All right," said Eva. "We've finished dinner. Let's have some
table-turning."

"We must all promise not to cheat," said Mrs. Rantzow. "I can see
that my husband will be ... antipathetic. But Ida ... a great medium."

They rose.

"Must we have the lights out?" asked Eva.

"No," said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn.

"An ordinary gipsy-table?"

"A three-legged wooden table."

"The eight of us?"

"No, we must begin by choosing: for instance, yourself, Eva, Ida,
Van Helderen, and Mrs. Rantzow. The doctor's antipathetic; so is
Eldersma. De Bruijn and I will relieve you."

"Fire away, then!" said Eva. "A new diversion for Labuwangi
society. And no cheating...."

"We must give one another our word of honour, as friends, not to
cheat."

"Done!" they all said.

The doctor sniggered. Eldersma shrugged his shoulders. A boy brought
a gipsy-table. They sat round the little wooden table and placed
their fingers on it lightly, looking at one another expectantly and
suspiciously. Mrs. Rantzow was solemn, Eva amused, Ida sombre, Van
Helderen smilingly indifferent. Suddenly a strained expression came
over Ida's beautiful half-caste face.

The table quivered....

They exchanged frightened glances; the doctor sniggered.

Then slowly, the table tilted one of its three legs and carefully
put it down again.

"Did anybody move?" asked Eva.

They all shook their heads. Ida had turned pale.

"I feel a trembling in my fingers," she murmured.

The table once more tilted its leg, described an angry, grating
semicircle over the marble floor and put its leg down with a violent
stamp.

They looked at one another in surprise. Ida sat as though bereft of
life, staring, with fingers outspread, ecstatically.

And the table tilted its leg for the third time.

It was certainly very curious. Eva doubted for a moment whether
Mrs. Rantzow was lifting the table, but, when she questioned her with
a glance, the German doctor's wife shook her head and Eva saw that
she was playing fair. They once more promised absolute honesty. And,
when they were now certain of one another, in full confidence, it
was most curious how the table continued to describe angry, grating
semicircles, tilting one leg and tapping on the marble floor.

"Is there a spirit present, revealing itself?" asked Mrs. Rantzow,
with a glance at the leg of the table.

The table tapped once:

"Yes."

But, when the spirit was asked to spell its name, to tap out the
letters of its name by the letters of the alphabet, all that came was:

"Z X R S A."

The manifestation was incomprehensible.

Suddenly, however, the table began spelling hurriedly, as though it
had something at its heels. The taps were counted and spelt:

"Lé ... onie Ou ... dijck...."

"What about Mrs. van Oudijck?"

A coarse word followed.

The ladies started, excepting Ida, who sat as though in a trance.

"The table has spoken.... What did it say?... What is Mrs. van
Oudijck?" cried the voices, all speaking at once.

"It's incredible!" murmured Eva. "Are we all playing fair?"

They all protested their honesty.

"Let us really be honest, else there's no fun in it.... I wish I
could be certain."

They all wished that: Mrs. Rantzow, Ida, Van Helderen, Eva. The
others looked on eagerly, believing; but the doctor did not believe
and sat sniggering.

Again the table grated angrily and tapped: and the leg began to spell,
"A...," and repeated the coarse word.

"Why?" asked Mrs. Rantzow.

The table began to tap.

"Write it down, Onno!" said Eva to her husband.

Eldersma fetched a pencil and paper and wrote the message down.

Three names followed: one of a member of council, one of a departmental
head, and one of a young business-man.

"When people aren't backbiting in India, the tables begin to
backbite!" said Eva.

"The spirits," murmured Ida.

"They are generally mocking spirits," said Mrs. Rantzow, didactically.

But the table went on tapping.

"Write it down, Onno!" said Eva.

Eldersma wrote it down.

"A-d-d-i-e!" the leg tapped out.

"No!" the voices all cried together, in vehement denial. "This time
the table's mistaken!... At least, young De Luce has never yet been
mentioned in connection with Mrs. van Oudijck."

"T-h-e-o!" said the table, correcting itself.

"Her step-son!... It's terrible!... That's different!... Everybody
knows that!" cried the voices in assent.

"Yes, we know that!" said Mrs. Rantzow, with a glance at the leg
of the table. "Come, tell us something that we don't know. Come,
table! Come, spirit! Please!..."

She addressed the table-leg in coaxing, wheedling accents. Everybody
laughed. The table grated.

"Be serious!" Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn said, in warning.

The table bounced down on Ida's lap.

"Oh my!" cried the pretty half-caste, waking out of her trance. "Right
against my stomach!"

They laughed and laughed. The table turned round fiercely and they
rose from their chairs, with their hands on the table, and accompanied
its angry, waltzing movements.

"Next ... year ..." the table rapped out.

Eldersma wrote it down.

"Frightful ... war."

"Between whom?"

"Europe ... and ... China."

"It sounds like a fairy-tale!" grinned the doctor.

"La-bu-wangi," tapped the table.

"What about it?" they asked.

"Is ... a ... beastly ... hole...."

"Say something serious, table, do!" Mrs. Rantzow implored, pleasantly,
in her best German-matron manner.

"Dan ... ger," the table tapped out.

"Where?"

"Threat ... ens," the table continued, "La-bu-wangi."

"Danger threatens Labuwangi?"

"Yes!" said the table, with one tap, angrily.

"What danger?"

"Rebellion."

"Rebellion? Who's going to rebel?"

"In ... two months ... Sunario."

They became thoughtful.

But the table, suddenly, unexpectedly, fell over again into Ida's lap.

"Oh my! Oh dear!" cried the little woman.

The table refused to go on.

"Tired," it tapped out.

They continued to hold their hands on it.

"Leave off," said the table.

The doctor, sniggering, laid his short, broad hand on it, as though
to compel it.

"Go to blazes!" cried the table, grating and turning. "Bounder!"

And worse words followed, aimed at the doctor, as though by a
street-boy: obscene words, senseless and incoherent.

"Who's suggesting those words?" asked Eva, indignantly.

Obviously no one was suggesting them, neither the three ladies nor
Van Helderen, who was always very punctilious and who was manifestly
indignant at the mocking spirit's coarseness.

"It really is a spirit," said Ida, looking very pale.

"I'm going to leave off," said Eva, nervously, lifting up her
fingers. "I don't understand this nonsense. It's quite amusing,
but the table's not accustomed to polite society."

"We've got a new resource for Labuwangi!" said Eldersma. "No more
picnics, no dances ... but table-turning!"

"We must practise!" said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn.

Eva shrugged her shoulders.

"It's inexplicable," she said. "I'm bound to believe that none of
us was cheating. It's not the sort of thing Van Helderen would do,
to suggest such words as those."

"Madam!" said Van Helderen, defending himself.

"We must do it again," said Ida. "Look, there's a hadji leaving
the grounds."

She pointed to the garden.

"A hadji?" asked Eva.

She looked towards the garden, expecting to see a Mecca pilgrim. There
was nothing.

"Oh no, it's not!" said Ida. "I thought it was a hadji. It's nothing,
only the moonlight."

It was late. They said good-night, laughing gaily, wondering, but
finding no explanation.

"I do hope this hasn't made you ladies nervous?" said the doctor.

No, considering all things, they were not nervous. They were more
amused, even though they did not understand.

It was two o'clock when they went home. The moonlight was streaming
down on the town, which lay deathly still, slumbering in the velvet
shadows of the gardens.






CHAPTER TEN


Next day, when Eldersma had gone to the office and Eva was moving
about the house, in sarong and kabaai, on her domestic duties, she
saw Frans van Helderen coming through the garden.

"May I?" he called out.

"Certainly," she called back. "Come in. But I'm on my way to the
godown."

And she held up her bunch of keys.

"I'm due at the resident's in half an hour, but I'm too early ... so
I just looked in."

She smiled.

"But I'm busy, you know!" she said. "Come along to the godown with me."

He followed her; he was wearing a black alpaca jacket, because he
had to go to the resident presently.

"How's Ida?" asked Eva. "Did she sleep well after her séance of
last night?"

"Only fairly well," said Frans van Helderen. "I don't think she ought
to do any more. She kept waking with a start, falling on my neck and
begging me to forgive her, I don't know what for."

"It didn't upset me at all," said Eva, "though I don't understand it
in the least."

She opened the godown, called the cook and gave the woman her
orders. The cook was latta; [10] and Eva loved teasing the old thing.

"La ... la-illa-lala!" she cried.

And the cook gave a start and echoed the cry and recovered herself
the next moment, begging for forgiveness.

"Throw down, cook, throw down!" cried Eva, in Malay.

And the cook, acting on the suggestion, flung down a tray of litchis
and mangosteens and, at once recovering, stooped and picked up the
scattered fruits from the floor, imploring to be forgiven and shaking
her head and clicking her tongue.

"Come, we'd better go!" said Eva to Frans. "Else she'll be breaking
my eggs presently. "Out of this, cook, outside!"

"Out of this, outside!" echoed the latta cook. "Oh, mem sahib, beg
pardon, mem sahib, oh, enough, enough, mem sahib!"

"Come and sit down for a little," said Eva to Van Helderen.

He went with her:

"You're so cheerful," he said.

"Aren't you?"

"No, I've been feeling sad, lately."

"I too. I told you so yesterday. It's something in the Labuwangi
air. There's no telling what this table-turning has in store for us."

They sat down in the back verandah. He sighed.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I can't help it," he said. "I care for you so. I love you."

She was silent for an instant.

"Again?" she then said, reproachfully.

He did not answer.

"I have told you, mine is not a passionate nature. I am cold. I love
my husband and my child. Let's be friends, Van Helderen."

"I'm fighting against it; but it's no use."

"I'm fond of Ida; I wouldn't make her unhappy for the world."

"I don't believe I was ever fond of her."

"Van Helderen!..."

"If I was, it was only for her pretty face. But white though Ida may
be, she's a half-caste ... with her whimsies and her childish little
tragedies. I didn't see it so much at first, but I see it now, of
course. I'd met women from Europe before I met you. But you were a
revelation to me, a revelation of all the charm and artistic grace
that a woman can possess.... And the exotic side in you appeals to
my own exotic side."

"I value your friendship highly. Let things remain as they are."

"Sometimes it's just as though I were mad, sometimes I dream
... that we're travelling in Europe together, that we're in Italy or
Paris. Sometimes I see us sitting together over a fire, in a room of
our own, you talking of art, I of the modern, social developments of
our time. But, after that, I see us together ... more intimately...."

"Van Helderen!..."

"It's no longer any use your warning me. I love you, Eva, Eva...."

"I don't believe there's another country where there's so much love
going about as in India! I suppose it's the heat...."

"Don't crush me with your sarcasm. No other woman ever made such an
appeal to my whole soul and body as you do, Eva...."

She shrugged her shoulders:

"Don't be angry, Van Helderen, but I can't stand these
commonplaces. Let us be sensible. I have a charming husband, you have
a dear little wife. We're all good, pleasant friends together."

"You're so cold!"

"I don't want to spoil the happiness of our friendship."

"Friendship!"

"Friendship is what I said. There is nothing I value so highly,
except my domestic happiness. I couldn't live without friends. I
am happy in my husband and my child; next to these I need friends,
above all things."

"So that they can admire you, so that you can rule over them!" said
he, angrily.

She looked him in the face:

"Perhaps," she said, coolly. "Perhaps I have a need of admiration
and of ruling over others. We all have our weaknesses."

"I have mine," he said, bitterly.

"Come," she said, in a kinder tone, "let us remain friends."

"I am terribly unhappy," he said, in a dull voice. "I feel as if I
had missed everything in life. I have never been out of Java and
I feel there's something lacking in me because I have never seen
ice and snow. Snow: I think of it as a sort of mysterious unknown
purity, which I long for, but which I never seem to meet. When shall
I see Europe? When shall I cease to rave about Il Trovatore and
manage to visit Bayreuth? When shall I come within range of you,
Eva? I'm feeling for everything with my antennæ, like a wingless
insect.... What is my life?... With Ida, with three children, whom I
foresee growing up like their mother!... I shall remain controller for
years and then--possibly--be promoted to assistant-resident ... and
so remain. And then at last I shall receive my dismissal--or ask for
it--and go to Sukabumi to live, to vegetate on a small pension. I
feel everything in me longing for idleness...."

"You like your work, for all that; you're a first-rate
official. Eldersma always says that in India a man who doesn't work
and who doesn't love his work is lost."

"Your nature is not made for love and mine is not made for work: not
for that and nothing else. I can work for an aim that I see before
me, a beautiful aim; but I can't work ... just for work's sake and
to fill the emptiness in my life."

"Your aim is India...."

"A fine phrase," he said. "It may be so for a man like the resident,
who has succeeded in his career and who never has to sit studying the
Colonial List and calculating on the illness of this man or the death
of that ... so that he may get promoted. It's all right for a man like
Van Oudijck, who, in his genuine, honest idealism, thinks that his
aim is India, not because of Holland, but because of India herself,
because of the native whom he, the official, protects against the
tyranny of the landlords and planters. I am more cynical by nature...."

"But don't be so lukewarm about India. It's not merely a fine phrase:
I feel like that myself. India is our whole greatness, the greatness
of us Hollanders. Listen to foreigners speaking of India: they are all
enchanted with her glory, with our methods of colonization.... Don't
have anything to do with the wretched Dutch spirit of our people at
home, who know nothing about India, who always have a sneering word for
India, who are so petty and stiff and bourgeois and narrow-minded...."

"I didn't know that you were so enthusiastic about India. Only
yesterday you were full of wretched anxieties, and I was standing up
for my country...."

"Oh, it gives me a sort of shudder, the mystery in the evenings,
when something seems to threaten I don't know what! I'm afraid of the
future; there's danger ahead of us!... I feel that I, personally, am
still very remote from India, though I don't want to be; that I miss
the art amid which I was educated; that I miss here, in our everyday
life, the plastic beauty which both my parents always pointed out to
me.... But I am not unjust. And I think that India, as our colony,
is great; I think that we, in our colony, are great...."

"Formerly, perhaps it was so. Nowadays, everything is going wrong;
nowadays, we are no longer great. You have an artistic nature;
you are always looking for artistic perfection in India, though you
seldom find it. And then your mind is confronted with that greatness,
that glory. That's the poetry of it. The prose of it is a gigantic
but exhausted colony, still governed from Holland with one idea: the
pursuit of gain. The reality is not an India under a great ruler,
but an India under a petty, mean-souled blood-sucker; the country
sucked dry; and the real population--not the Hollander, who spends his
Indian money at The Hague, but the population, the native population,
attached to the native soil--oppressed by the disdain of its overlord,
who once improved it with his own blood, and now threatening to
revolt against this oppression and disdain.... You, as an artist,
feel the danger approaching, vaguely, like a cloud in the sky, in
the Indian night; I see the danger as something very real, something
rising--before Holland--if not from America and Japan, then out of
the soil of India herself...."

She smiled:

"I like you when you talk like this," she said. "I should end by
falling in with your views."

"If I could achieve that by talking!" he laughed, bitterly, getting
up. "My half hour is over: the resident is expecting me and he doesn't
like waiting a minute. Goodbye ... and forgive me."

"Tell me," she said, "am I a flirt?"

"No," he replied. "You are what you are. And I can't help it: I
love you.... I am always stretching out my poor antennæ. That is
my fate...."

"I shall help you to forget me," said she, with affectionate
conviction.

He gave a little laugh, bowed and went away. She saw him cross the
road to the grounds of the resident's house, where a messenger met him.

"Really life, when all is said, is one long self-deception, a
wandering amid illusions," she thought, sadly, drearily. "A great
aim, an universal aim ... or even a modest aim for one's self,
for one's own body and soul: O God, how little it all is! And how
we roam about, knowing nothing! And each of us seeks his own little
aim, his illusion. The only happy people are merely exceptions, like
Léonie van Oudijck, who lives no more than a beautiful flower does,
or a beautiful animal."

Her child came toddling up to her, a pretty, fair-haired, plump
little boy.

"Sonny," she thought, "how will it be with you? What will be your
portion? Oh, perhaps nothing new! Perhaps a repetition of what
has so often been before. Life is a story which is always being
repeated.... Oh, when we feel like this, how oppressive India can
be!..."

She kissed her boy; her tears trickled over his fair curls.

"Van Oudijck has his residency; I my little circle of ... admirers
and subjects; Frans his love ... for me: we all have our playthings,
just like my little Onno playing with his little horse. How small
we are, how small!... All our lives we make believe, pretending,
imagining all sorts of things, thinking that we are giving a path or
a direction to our poor, aimless little lives. Oh, why am I like this,
sonny? Sonny, sonny, how will it be with you?"






CHAPTER ELEVEN


The Patjaram sugar-factory was fourteen miles from Labuwangi and
twelve from Ngadjiwa and belonged to the half-Eurasian, half-Solo
family of De Luce, a family who had once been millionaires, but were
no longer so very well off, owing to the recent sugar-crisis, though
they still supported a numerous household. This family, which always
kept together--the old mother and grandmother, a Solo princess; the
eldest son, the manager; three married daughters and their husbands,
clerks in the factory, all living in its shadow; three younger sons
employed in the factory; the many grandchildren, playing round and
about the factory; the great-grandchildren springing up round and about
the factory--this family maintained the old Indian traditions which, at
one time universal, are now becoming rarer, thanks to the more frequent
intercourse with Europeans. The mother and grandmother was the daughter
of a Solo prince and had married a young and enterprising bohemian
adventurer, Ferdinand de Luce, a member of a French titled family
of Mauritius, who, after wandering about for many years in search of
his place in the sun, had sailed to India as a ship's steward, and,
after all sorts of vicissitudes, had found himself stranded in Solo,
where he achieved fame by means of a dish prepared with tomatoes
and another consisting of stuffed chilies. Thanks to these recipes,
Ferdinand de Luce won the favour of the Solo princess, whose hand he
afterwards obtained, and even that of the old Susuhunan. After his
marriage he became a landowner, and, according to the national usage,
a vassal of the Susuhunan of Solo, whom he supplied daily with rice
and fruits for the household of the palace. Then he had launched out
into sugar, divining the millions which a lucky fate held in store
for him. He had died before the crisis, laden with wealth and honours.

The old grandmother, in whom there was not a trace left of the young
princess whom Ferdinand de Luce had wedded to promote his fortunes,
was never approached by the servants or the Javanese staff save with
a cringing reverence; and everybody gave her the title of Raden-aju
pangéran. She did not speak a word of Dutch. Wrinkled like a shrivelled
fruit, with her clouded eyes and her withered, betel-stained mouth,
she was peacefully living her last years, always dressed in a dark
silk kabaai, the neck and the light sleeves of which were fastened
with precious stones. Before her sun-bitten gaze there hovered the
vision of her former palace grandeur, which she had abandoned for love
of that French nobleman-cook who had pandered to her father's taste
with his dainty recipes; in her ears buzzed the constant murmur of
the centrifugal separators, like the thrashing of screw propellers,
throughout the milling-season, which lasted for months on end;
around her were her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren:
the sons and daughters addressed as raden and raden-adjeng by the
servants; all of them still surrounded by the pale halo of their
Solo descent. The eldest daughter was married to a full-blooded,
fair-haired Dutchman; the son who followed her to an Armenian girl;
the two others were married to Eurasians, both brown; and their brown
children--who were also married and also had children--mingled with
the fair-haired family of the eldest daughter; and the pride of the
whole family was the youngest son and brother, Adrien, or Addie, who
made love to Doddie van Oudijck and who was constantly at Labuwangi,
the busy milling-season notwithstanding.

In this family, traditions were still maintained, now quite obsolete,
such as people remembered in the Indian families of long ago. Here you
still saw, in the grounds, in the back verandah, the numberless babus,
[11] one grinding rice into a fine face-powder, another preparing
incense, another pounding diverse condiments, all with dreamy eyes,
all with slender, nimbly-moving fingers. Here the habit still prevailed
of an endless array of dishes at lunch, with a long row of servants,
one after the other, solemnly handing round one more vegetable, one
more sauce, one more dish of chicken, while, squatting behind the
ladies, the babus pounded each a different condiment in an earthenware
mortar, according to the several tastes and requirements of the sated
palates. Here it was still the custom, when the family attended
the races at Ngadjiwa, for each of the ladies to appear followed
by a babu, moving slowly, lithely, solemnly; one babu carrying a
betel-pot, another a bonbonnière filled with peppermints, or a pair
of race-glasses, or a fan, or a scent-bottle; the whole resembling a
ceremonial procession bearing the insignia of state. Here, too, you
still found the old-fashioned hospitality: the row of spare-rooms
open to any one who cared to knock; here all could stay as long
as they pleased; no one was asked the object of his journey or the
date of his departure. A great simplicity of mind, an all-embracing,
spontaneous, innate cordiality prevailed, together with an unbounded
weariness and tedium, a life of no ideas and but few words, the ready,
gentle smile making good the lack of both; a material life, full
and sated: a life of cool drinks and native pastry and fruit-salad
handed round all day, three babus being specially appointed to
make fruit-salad and pastry. Any number of animals were scattered
over the estate: there was a cage full of monkeys; a few lories;
dogs, cats, some tame squirrels and an exquisite little dwarf deer,
which ran about loose. The house, built on to the factory, quaking
all through the milling-season with the noise of machinery--like
the throbs of screw propellers--was spacious and furnished with
the old, old-fashioned furniture: the low wooden bedsteads with
four carved bed-posts hung with curtains; the heavy-legged tables;
the rocking-chairs with peculiarly round backs: all things which
are now no longer obtainable; nothing that betrayed the least touch
of modernity, except--and this only during the milling-season--the
electric light in the front verandah! The occupants were always in
indoor dress: the men in white or blue-and-white striped pyjamas; the
ladies in sarong and kabaai, toying with a monkey or a lory or a doe,
in simplicity of mind, with ever the same pleasant jest, drawling
and drowsy, and the same gentle little laugh. The passions, which
were certainly there, slumbered in that gentle smile. Then, when the
milling-season was over; when all the bustle was over; when the files
of sugar-carts, drawn by the superb oxen, with glossy brown hides,
had brought an ever-increasing store of canes over the fibre-covered
road, which was cut to pieces by the broad cart-ruts; when the seed
had been bought for next year and the machines were stopped: then
came the sudden relaxation after the incessant labour, the long,
long holiday, the many months' rest, the craving for festivity and
enjoyment; the big dinner given by the lady of the house, followed
by a ball and tableaux-vivants; the whole house full of visitors,
who stayed on and on, known and unknown; the old, wrinkled grandmamma,
the landowner, the raden-aju, Mrs. de Luce, whatever you liked to call
her, always amiable, with her dull eyes and her betel-stained mouth,
amiable to one and all, with always an anak-mas, a "golden child," a
poor little adopted princess at her heels, carrying a gold betel-box
behind the great princess from Solo: a slender little woman of eight
years old, her front hair cut into a fringe, her forehead whitened
with moist rice-powder, her already rounded little breasts confined
in the little pink silk kabaai, with the miniature gold sarong round
the slender hips; a doll, a toy for the raden-aju, for Mrs. de Luce,
for the Dowager de Luce. And for the compounds there were the popular
rejoicings, a time-honoured lavishness, in which all Patjaram shared,
according to the age-old tradition which was always observed, despite
any crisis or unrest.

The milling-season and the rejoicings were now over. There was
comparative peace indoors; and a languorous Indian calm had set in. But
Mrs. van Oudijck, Theo and Doddie had come over for the festivities
and were staying on a few days longer at Patjaram. A great circle
of people sat round the marble table covered with glasses of syrup,
lemonade and whisky-and-soda; they did not speak much, but rocked
luxuriously, exchanging an occasional word. Mrs. de Luce and Mrs. van
Oudijck spoke Malay, but were not talkative. A gentle, good-humoured
boredom drifted down on all these rocking people. It was strange to see
the different types: the pretty, milk-white Léonie beside the yellow,
wrinkled raden-aju-dowager; Theo, pale and fair as a Dutchman, with
his full, sensual lips, which he inherited from his half-caste mother;
Doddie, already looking like a ripe rose, with the sparkling irises
and black pupils of her black eyes; the manager's son, Achille de Luce,
brown, tall and stout, whose thoughts ran only on his machinery and his
seed; the second son, Roger, brown, short and thin, the book-keeper,
whose thoughts ran only on the year's profits, with his little Armenian
wife; the eldest daughter, old already, brown, stupidly ugly, with her
full-blooded Dutch husband, who looked like a peasant; the other sons
and daughters, in every shade of brown, not easily to be distinguished
one from the other; around them the children, the grandchildren, the
little, golden-skinned adopted children, the babus, the lories and
the dwarf deer; and over all these people and children and animals,
as though shaken down upon them, lay a good-hearted solidarity; and
over all these people there also lay a common pride in their Solo
ancestors, crowning all their heads with a pale halo of Javanese
aristocracy; and the Armenian daughter-in-law and the bucolic Dutch
son-in-law were not least proud of this descent.

The liveliest of all these elements, which were melting into one
another, as it were, through long communal life under the patriarchal
roofs, was the youngest son, Adrien de Luce, Addie, in whom the blood
of the Solo princess and that of the French adventurer had blended
harmoniously. The admixture, it is true, had given him no brains,
but it had given him the physical beauty of a young Eurasian, with
something of the Moor about it, something southern and seductive,
something Spanish, as though in this last child the two alien racial
elements had for the first time mingled harmoniously, for the first
time been wedded in absolute mutual sympathy; as though in him, this
last child after so many children, adventurer and princess had for
the first time met in harmony. Addie seemed to possess not a jot of
intellect or imagination; he was unable to unite two ideas into one
composite thought; he merely felt, with the vague good-nature which had
descended upon the whole family. For the rest, he was like a beautiful
animal, degenerating in soul and brain, but degenerating into nothing,
to a great nullity, to one great emptiness, while his body was like
a renewal of his race, full of strength and beauty, while his marrow
and his blood and his flesh and his muscles were all one harmony of
physical seductiveness, so purely, stupidly, beautifully sensual that
its harmony had for a woman an immediate appeal. The lad had but to
appear, like a beautiful, southern god, for all the women to look at
him and take him into the depths of their imagination, to recall him
to their minds again and again; the lad had but to go to a race-ball
at Ngadjiwa for all the girls to fall in love with him. He plucked
love where he found it, in plenty, in the Patjaram compounds. And
everything feminine was in love with him, from his mother to his little
nieces. Doddie van Oudijck was infatuated with him. From a child of
seven she had been in love, a hundred times and more, with every one
who passed before the glance of her flashing pupils, but never yet as
with Addie. Her love shone so strongly from her whole being that it
was like a flame, that everybody saw it and smiled. The milling-feast
had been to her one long delight ... when she danced with him; one
long martyrdom ... when he danced with others. He had not asked her
to marry him, but she thought of asking him and was prepared to die
if he refused. She knew that the resident, her father, would object:
he did not like those De Luces, that Solo-French crew, as he called
them; but, if Addie was willing, her father would consent, rather than
see her die. To this child of love that lovable lad was the world,
the universe, life itself. He made love to her, he kissed her on
the lips, but this was no more than he did to others, unthinkingly;
he kissed other girls as well. And, if he could, he went further,
like a devastating young god, an unthinking god. But he still stood
more or less in awe of the resident's daughter. He possessed neither
pluck nor effrontery; his passions were not markedly selective;
he looked on a woman as a woman and was so much sated with conquest
that obstacles did not stimulate him. His garden was full of flowers
which all lifted themselves up to him; he stretched out his hand,
almost without looking; he merely plucked.

As they sat rocking about the table they saw him come through
the garden; and the eyes of all these women turned to him as to a
young tempter, arriving in the sunshine, which touched him as with
a halo. The raden-aju dowager smiled and gazed at him, enamoured
of her son, her favourite; squatting on the ground behind her, the
little golden adopted child stared with wide-open eyes; the sisters
looked out, the little nieces looked out, and Doddie turned pale
and Léonie van Oudijck's milky whiteness became tinged with a rosy
shade which mingled with the glamour of her smile. She glanced at
Theo mechanically; their eyes met. And these souls of sheer love,
love of the eyes, of the lips, love of the glowing flesh, understood
each other; and Theo's jealousy of Léonie blazed so fiercely that the
rosy shade died away and she became pale and fearful, with a sudden,
unreasoning fear which shuddered through her usual indifference,
while the tempter, in his halo of sunshine, came nearer and nearer....






CHAPTER TWELVE


Mrs. van Oudijck had promised to stay at Patjaram a few days longer;
and she disliked the prospect, really not feeling quite at home in
these old-fashioned Indian surroundings. But when Addie appeared
she thought better of it. In the deepest secrecy of her heart this
woman worshipped her sensuality, as in the temple of her egoism:
here the milk-white creole offered up all the most intimate dreams
of her rosy imagination and unquenchable longing; and in this cult
she had achieved as it were an art, a knowledge, a science, that of
deciding, for herself, at a glance, what it was that attracted her
in the man who approached her, in the man who passed her by. In one
it was his bearing, his voice; in another it was the set of his neck
on his shoulders; in a third it was the way his hand rested on his
knee; but, whatever it was, she saw it directly, at a glance; she
knew it immediately, in an instant; she had judged the passer-by
in an indivisible moment; and she at once knew those whom she
rejected--they were the majority--and those whom she approved--they
were many. And the few whom she rejected in that indivisible moment
of her supreme judgement, with that single glance, in that single
instant, need cherish no hope: she, the priestess, did not admit them
to the temple. To the others, the temple was open, but only behind
the curtain of her conventionality. However shameless, she was always
correct, her love was always secret; to the world, she was nothing but
the charming, smiling wife of the resident, a little indolent in her
ways, but winning everybody with her smile. When people did not see
her, they spoke ill of her; when they saw her, she conquered them at
once. Among all of those with whom she shared the secret of her love
there reigned a certain freemasonry, a mystery of worship; scarcely,
when two of them met, would they whisper a word or two, at a similar
recollection. And Léonie could sit smiling, milk-white, tranquil,
in the great circle, around the marble table, with at least two or
three men who knew her secret. It did not disturb her tranquillity nor
mar her smile. She smiled to the pitch of boredom. Scarcely would her
glance glide from one to the other, while she judged them once again,
with her infallible knack of judgement. Scarcely would the memories
of past hours rise hazily within her, scarcely would she think of
the assignation for the following day. The secret lay wholly in
the mystery of the meeting and indeed was never uttered before the
profane world. If a foot in the circle sought to touch her foot, she
drew hers away. She never flirted; she was even sometimes a little
tedious, stiff, correct, smiling. In the freemasonry between herself
and the initiated she disclosed the mystery; but, before the world,
in the circles about the marble tables, she vouchsafed not a glance,
not a pressure of the hand or knee.

She had been bored during these days at Patjaram, for which she had
accepted the invitation to the milling-feast because she had refused
it in past years; but now that she saw Addie approaching she was bored
no longer. Of course she had known him for years; and she had seen
him grow from a child into a boy, into a man; and she had kissed him
even as a boy. She had long ago judged him, the tempter. But now, as
he came forward with his halo of sunshine, she judged him once more:
his comely, slender animalism and the glow of his tempter's eyes
in the dusky brown of his young Moorish face; the pouting curves of
his lips, formed for kissing, with the young down of his moustache;
the tigerish strength and litheness of limbs which Don Juan might have
envied: it all dazzled her, made her blink her eyes. As he greeted his
mother's visitors and sat down, a volley of wordy gaiety ran round
that circle of languid conversation and drowsy thoughts, as though
he were casting a handful of his sunshine, of the gold-dust of his
temptation over them all, over all those women, mother and sisters
and nieces and Doddie and Léonie van Oudijck. Léonie looked at him,
as they all looked at him, and her glance fell upon his hands. She
could have kissed those hands of his; she suddenly became smitten
with the shape of his fingers, with the brown, tigerish strength
of the hands themselves: she suddenly became smitten with all the
young wild-animal vigour which breathed like a fragrance of manhood
from the whole of his boyish frame. She felt her blood throbbing,
almost uncontrollably, despite her great art of remaining cool and
correct in the circles around the marble tables. But she was no longer
bored. She had found an object to fill the next few days. Only ... her
blood throbbed so violently that Theo had noticed her blush and the
quivering of her eyelids. Enamoured of her as he was, his eyes had
penetrated her soul. And, when they rose to go to lunch in the back
verandah, where the babus had been squatting, grinding everybody's
different admixture of spices with pestles, in little stone mortars,
he whispered two words between his teeth:

"Take care!"

She started; she felt that he was threatening her. This had never
happened before: all who had shared in the mystery had always
respected her. She started so violently, she was so indignant at this
wrenching away of the temple-curtain, in a verandah full of people,
that her tranquil indifference seethed with anger and she was roused
to rebellion in her ever-serene self-mastery. But she looked at him and
she saw him broad and tall and fair, a younger edition of her husband,
his Indian blood showing only in his sensuous mouth; and she did not
want to lose him: she wanted to preserve his type beside the type of
the Moorish tempter. She wanted them both; she wanted to taste the
different charm of their respective types, that white-skinned Dutch
type, so very slightly Indian, and Addie's wild-animal type. Her soul
quivered, her blood thrilled, while the long array of dishes was
solemnly handed round. She was in a revolt such as she had never
experienced before. The awakening from her placid indifference
was like a rebirth, like an unknown emotion. She was surprised to
remember that she, at thirty, was feeling for the first time. A
feverish depravity blossomed up within her, as though bursting into
heady crimson flowers. She looked at Doddie, sitting beside Addie:
the poor child, glowing with love, was hardly able to eat.... Oh,
the tempter, who had only to appear!... And Léonie, in this fever of
depravity, rejoiced at being the rival of a step-daughter so many years
younger than herself. She would look after her; she would even warn Van
Oudijck. Would it ever come to a match? What did she care: what harm
could marriage do to her, Léonie? Oh, the tempter! Never had she dreamt
of him thus, the supreme lover, in her rosy hours of siesta! This was
no charm of little cherubs; this was the stark radiance of tigerish
enchantment: the golden glitter of his eyes, the sinewy litheness of
his stealthy paw.... And she smiled at Theo, with just one glance of
self-surrender, a very exceptional thing at the luncheon-table. As
a rule she gave nothing of herself in public. Now she surrendered
herself, for a moment, pleased by his jealousy. She was madly fond
of him too. She thought it delightful, that he should look pale and
angry with jealousy. And round about her the afternoon was one blaze
of sunlight and the hot spices stung her dry palate. Faint beads of
perspiration stood on her forehead and trickled down her bosom under
the lace of her kabaai. And she would fain have clasped them both,
Theo and Addie, in one embrace, in one blending of different lusts,
pressing them both to her amorous woman's body....






CHAPTER THIRTEEN


The night was like a veil of softest velvet dropping slowly from the
heavens. The moon, in its first quarter, displayed a very narrow,
horizontal sickle, like a Turkish crescent, between whose points
the unlit portion of the disk was faintly washed in against the
sky. A long avenue of tjemara-trees stretched in front of the house,
their trunks straight, their leafage like drawn plush or ravelled
velvet, showing like blots of cotton-wool against the clouds, which,
drifting low, announced the approaching rainy monsoon fully a month
beforehand. Wood-pigeons cooed at intervals and a gecko was calling,
first with two rattling, preliminary notes, as though tuning up,
then with his call of "Tokkè! Tokkè!" four or five times repeated:
first loudly, then submissively and more faintly.

A night watchman, in his hut in front of the house, on the high-road,
where the sleeping market-place now showed its empty stalls, struck
eleven blows on his hollow block of wood; and as yet one more belated
cart drove past, he cried, in a hoarse voice:

"Who goes there?"

The night was like softest velvet dropping slowly from the heavens,
like a whirling mystery, like an oppressive menace of the future. But,
in that mystery, under the frayed black blots, the ravelled plush
of the tjemaras, there was an inexorable incitement to love, in
the windless night, like a whisper that this hour should not be
wasted.... True, the gecko was gibing like a mocking imp, with a sort
of dry humour; and the watchman, with his "Who goes there?" startled
the hearer; but the wood-pigeons cooed softly and the whole night was
like a world of softest velvet, like a great alcove curtained by the
plush of the tjemaras, while the distant, sultry rain-clouds, hanging
all that month on the horizon, ringed the skies with an oppressive
spell. Mystery and enchantment hovered through the velvety night,
drifting down in the twilit alcove; and at their touch all thought
was dissolved; the very soul dissolved, leaving only a warm, sensuous
vision....

The gecko fell silent, the watchman dropped asleep; the velvety
night reigned like an enchantress crowned with the sickle of the
moon. They came walking slowly, two youthful figures, their arms
about each other's waists, lips seeking lips under the tyranny of
the enchantment. They were as shadows under the drawn velvet of the
tjemaras; and softly, in their white garments, they dawned on the
beholder like an eternal pair of lovers who are forever and everywhere
repeating themselves. And here above all were lovers inevitable,
in this enchanted night, were one with the night, conjured up by the
all-powerful spell; here they were inevitable, unfolding like a twin
flower of predestined love, in the velvet mystery of the compelling
heavens.

And the tempter seemed to be the son of that night, the son of that
inexorable queen of the night, bearing with him the yielding girl. In
her ears the night seemed to sing with his voice; and her small soul
melted in tender compliance, under these magic powers. She walked on
against his side, feeling the warmth of his body sinking into her
yearning maidenhood; and she lifted her brimming gaze to him, with
the languid light of her sparkling pupils glittering like diamonds
in her eyes. He, drunk with the power of the night, the enchantress,
who was as his mother, thought first of leading her still farther,
no longer conscious of reality, no longer feeling any awe of her or
of any one whatever; thought of leading her still farther, past the
slumbering watchman, across the high road, into the compound, which
lay hidden yonder between the stately plumes of the coco-palms that
would form a canopy to their love; of leading her to a hiding-place,
a house which he knew, a bamboo hut the door of which would be opened
to him ... when suddenly she stopped ... and started ... and gripped
his arm and pressed herself still more tightly against him and implored
him to go no farther. She was frightened.

"Why not?" he asked, gently, in his soft voice, which was as deep and
velvety as the night. "Why not to-night, to-night at last?... There
is no danger."

But she shuddered and shook and entreated:

"Addie, Addie, no ... no.... I daren't go any farther.... I'm
frightened that the watchman will see us ... and then ... there's a
hadji walking over there ... in a white turban...."

He looked out at the road: on the farther side the kampong lay waiting,
under the canopy of the coco-palms, with the bamboo hut whose door
would be opened to him.

"A hadji?... Where, Doddie? I don't see any one...."

"He crossed the road; he looked back at us; he saw us: I saw his eyes
gleaming; and he went into the compound, behind those trees."

"Darling, I saw nothing, there's no one there."

"Yes, there is! Yes, there is! Addie, I daren't go: oh, do let us
go back!"

His handsome Moorish face became overcast; he already saw the door of
the little hut opened by the old woman whom he knew, who worshipped him
as every woman worshipped him, from his mother to his little nieces.

And he again tried to persuade her, but she refused, stood still,
and clung to the ground with her little feet. Then they turned back
and the clouds were sultrier, low on the horizon, and the velvety
darkness fell more thickly, like warm snow, and the ravelled tjemaras
were fuller and blacker than before. The house loomed up before them,
sunk in sleep, with not a light showing. And he entreated her, he
implored her not to leave him that night, saying that he would die,
that night, without her.... Already she was yielding, promising, with
her arms around his neck ... when again she started and again cried:

"Addie! Addie!... There he is again!... That white figure!..."

"But you seem to see hadjis everywhere!" he said, banteringly.

"Look for yourself then ... over there!"

He looked, and now really saw a white figure approaching them in the
front-verandah. But it was a woman.

"Mamma!" cried Doddie, in dismay.

It was indeed Léonie, slowly coming towards them:

"Doddie," she said, gently, "I have been hunting for you everywhere. I
was so frightened, I didn't know where you were. Why do you go out
walking so late? Addie," she continued gently, in kind, motherly tones,
as though addressing two children, "how can you behave like this and
be out with Doddie so late? You really mustn't do it again: I mean
it! I know that there's nothing in it; but suppose any one saw you! You
must promise me never to do it again! You'll promise, won't you?"

She begged this prettily, in tones of engaging reproach, as though
to show that she quite understood him, quite realized that they were
yearning for each other in that velvet night of enchantment, forgiving
them at once in the words which she uttered. She looked like an angel,
with her round, white face in the loose, waving, fair hair, in the
white silk kimono which hung round her in supple folds. And she drew
Doddie to her and kissed the girl and wiped away her tears. And then,
gently, she pushed Doddie before her, to her room in the annexe,
where she slept safely amidst so many other rooms full of the
daughters and grandchildren of old Mrs. de Luce. And, while Doddie,
softly crying, went to the solitude of her room, Léonie continued to
speak words of gentle reproach to Addie, warning him, prettily now,
as a sister might do, while he, brown and handsome, with his Moorish
look, stood before her, bantering yet embarrassed. They were in the
dusk of the dark front verandah; and the night outside exhaled its
inexorable breath of luxuriance, love and velvety mystery. And she
reproached him and warned him and said that Doddie was a child and
that he mustn't take advantage of her. He shrugged his shoulders,
defended himself, in his bantering manner. His words fell upon her
like gold-dust, while his eyes glittered like a tiger's. As she
argued persuasively that he must really spare Doddie in the future,
she seized his hand, that hand of which she was enamoured, his fingers,
his palm, which she could have kissed that morning in her confusion;
and she pressed it and almost cried and implored him to have mercy on
Doddie.... He suddenly realized it, he looked at her suddenly with
the lightning of his wild-animal glance and he found her beautiful,
was aware of her as a woman, white as milk, and he knew her for
a priestess full of secret knowledge. And he too spoke of Doddie,
coming closer to Léonie, touching her, pressing her hands between
his two hands, giving her to understand that he understood. And,
still pretending to weep and entreat and implore, she led him on and
opened the door of her room. He saw a faint light and her maid, Oorip,
who disappeared through the outer door and lay down to sleep there,
like a faithful dog, on a little mat. Then she gave him a laugh of
welcome; and he, the tempter, was amazed at the glowing laugh of
this white, fair-haired temptress, who flung off her silken kimono
and stood before him, like a nude statue, spreading out her arms....

Oorip, outside, listened for a moment. And she was about to lie down
to sleep, smiling, dreaming of the lovely sarongs which the mem sahib
would give her to-morrow, when she started as she saw walking through
the grounds and disappearing in the night a hadji in a white turban....






CHAPTER FOURTEEN


That day the Regent of Ngadjiwa, Sunario's younger brother, was to
pay a visit at Patjaram, because Mrs. van Oudijck was leaving on the
following day. They sat waiting for him in the front verandah, rocking
about the marble table, when his carriage came rattling down the long
avenue of tjemaras. They all stood up. And now it appeared more plainly
than ever how highly respected the old raden-aju, the dowager, was,
how closely related to the Susuhunan himself, for the regent alighted
and, without taking another step, squatted on the lowest stair of the
verandah and salaamed respectfully, while behind his back a retainer,
holding up the closed gold-and-white umbrella like a furled sun, made
himself still smaller and shrank together in self-annihilation. And
the old woman, the Solo princess, who once more saw the palace gleaming
before her, went to meet him and welcomed him with all the courtesy of
palace Javanese, the language spoken among princely equals, till the
regent rose and, following her, approached the family circle. And the
manner in which he then, for the first time, bowed to the wife of his
resident, however polite, was almost condescending, compared with his
obsequiousness of a moment ago.... He now sat down between Mrs. de Luce
and Mrs. van Oudijck; and a drawling conversation began. The Regent
of Ngadjiwa was a different type from his brother Sunario; taller,
coarser, without the other's look of a marionette in a puppet-show;
though younger, he looked the older of the two, with his eyes seared
with passion: the passion for women, and wine, the passion for opium,
the passion, above all, for gambling. And a silent thought seemed to
flash up in that listless, drawling conversation, with few words and
no ideas, ever and again interrupted by the courtly "Saja, saja,"
behind which they all concealed their secret longing.... They spoke
Malay because Mrs. van Oudijck did not dare to speak Javanese,
that refined, difficult language, full of shades of etiquette, on
which hardly a single Hollander ventures when speaking to Javanese
persons of rank. They spoke little; they rocked gently; a vague,
courteous smile showed that all were taking part in the conversation,
though only Mrs. de Luce and the Regent exchanged an occasional
word.... Until at last the De Luces--the old mother, her son Roger,
her brown daughters-in-law--were no longer able to restrain themselves,
even in Mrs. van Oudijck's presence, and laughed shyly while drinks and
cakes were being handed round; until, notwithstanding their courtesy,
they rapidly consulted one another, over Léonie's head, in a few words
of Javanese; until the old mother, no longer mistress of herself,
at last asked her whether she would mind if they had a little game
of cards. And they all looked at her, the wife of the resident, the
wife of the high official who, they knew, hated the gambling which
was ruining them, which was destroying the grandeur of the Javanese
families whom he wished to uphold in spite of themselves. But she
was too indifferent to think of preventing them with a single word
of tactful jest, for her husband's sake; she, the slave of her
own passion, allowed them to be the slave of theirs, in the luxury
of their enslavement. She merely smiled and readily permitted the
players to withdraw to the twilight of the spacious, oblong inner
gallery, the ladies counting their money into their handkerchiefs,
alternating with the men, until they were sitting close together,
and, with their eyes on the cards or spying into one another's eyes,
gambled and gambled endlessly, winning, losing, paying or receiving,
just opening and closing the handkerchiefs containing the money,
with never a word nor a sound but the faint rustle of the cards in
the twilight of the inner room. What game were they playing? Léonie
did not know, did not care, indifferent to their passion and glad
that Addie had remained beside her and that Theo was glaring at him
jealously. Did he know, did he suspect anything? Would Oorip always
hold her tongue? She enjoyed the emotion and she wanted them both;
she wanted both white and brown; and the fact that Doddie was sitting
on the other side of Addie and almost swooning as she rocked to and
fro afforded her an acute and wicked delight. What else was there in
life but to yield to one's luxurious cravings? She had no ambition
and was indifferent to her exalted station; she, the first woman
in the residency, who delegated all her duties to Eva Eldersma,
who was quite unmoved when hundreds of people, at the receptions at
Labuwangi, Ngadjiwa and elsewhere, greeted her with a ceremony not
far short of royal honours, who, in her rosy, perverse day-dreams,
with a novel by Catulle Mendès in her hands, silently laughed at
the exaggerated ideas that ruled up-country, where the wife of a
resident is treated as a queen. She had no other ambition than to
be loved by the men whom she selected, no other emotional life than
the worship of her body, like an Aphrodite who chose to be her own
priestess. What did she care if they played cards in there, if the
Regent of Ngadjiwa was ruining himself! On the contrary, she thought
it interesting to read that ruin on his seamed face; and she would
take care to be even more carefully groomed, to let Oorip massage her
face and limbs, to make Oorip prepare even more of the white moist
rice-powder, the wonderful cream, the magic salve of which Oorip knew
the secret and which kept her flesh firm and unwrinkled and white as
a mangosteen. She thought it exciting to see the Regent of Ngadjiwa
burning away like a candle, foolishly, brutalized by women, wine, opium
and cards; perhaps most of all by cards; by that bewildered glaring
at them; by high play, and the calculation of chances which defied
calculation, superstitiously reckoning by sacred omens the day and the
hour when he should play in order to win, the number of the players,
the amount of his stake.... Now and then she took a furtive glance at
the faces of the players in the inner gallery, darkened by twilight
and the lust of gain, and reflected on what Van Oudijck would say,
how angry he would be if she told him about it.... What did it matter
to him if the regent's family ruined themselves? What did his policy
matter to her, what did the whole Dutch policy matter, which aims
at securing the position of the Javanese nobility, through whom it
governs the population? What did it matter to her that Van Oudijck,
thinking of the noble old pangéran, was grieved by his children's
visible decline? None of it mattered to her; what mattered was only
herself and Addie and Theo. She must really tell her step-son, her
fair-haired lover, that afternoon, not to be so jealous. It was
becoming obvious; she was sure that Doddie noticed it.... Didn't
she save the poor child yesterday? But how long would that yearning
last? Hadn't she better warn Van Oudijck, like a kind, solicitous
mother?... Her thoughts wandered languidly; it was a sultry morning,
in those last, scorching days of the eastern monsoon, which cover the
limbs with trickling moisture. A shiver ran through her body; and,
leaving Doddie with Addie, she carried Theo off and reproached him
for looking so savage with impotent jealousy. She pretended to be a
little angry and asked him what he wanted.

They had gone to the side of the house, to the long side-verandah;
there were monkeys here in a cage, with skins strewn all around from
the bananas which the animals had eaten, fed to them by the children.

The luncheon-gong had already sounded twice; the babus were squatting
in the back-verandah, pounding everybody's spices. But the people
around the card-table seemed to hear nothing. Only the whispering
voices became louder and shriller, so that Léonie and Theo, as well
as Addie and Doddie, pricked up their ears. A dispute seemed suddenly
to break out between Roger and the regent, notwithstanding Mrs. de
Luce's attempts to hush it. They spoke Javanese, but they let all
courtesy go to the winds. Like two coolies, they abused each other
for cheats, constantly interrupted by the soothing efforts of old
Mrs. de Luce, supported by her daughters and daughters-in-law. But
the chairs were roughly thrust back; a glass was broken. Roger seemed
to dash his cards down in anger. All the women in the inner room
took part in the soothing process, their voices raised, or muffled,
or whispering, with little outcries, little shrieks of apology and
indignation. The servants, innumerable, were listening in every
corner of the house. Then the dispute abated, but long, explanatory
arguments still continued between the regent and Roger; the women
tried to hush them down--"Ssh!... Ssh!"--embarrassed because of the
resident's wife, looking out to see where she might be. And at last
all was quiet and they sat down in silence, hoping that not too much
of the dispute had reached her ears. Until at length, very late--it
was almost three o'clock--old Mrs. de Luce, with the gambling-passion
still blazing in her dim eyes, summoning all her distinction and her
princely prestige, went to the verandah and, as though nothing had
happened, asked Mrs. van Oudijck if she would not come in to lunch.






CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Yes, Theo knew. He had spoken to Oorip after lunch; and although
the maid had at first tried to deny everything, afraid of losing
the sarongs, she had been unable to continue lying and had contented
herself with feeble little protests of "no ... no."... And, still early
that same afternoon, raging with jealousy, he sought out Addie. But
Theo was calmed by the indifferent composure of the good-looking youth,
with his Moorish face, already so fully sated with his conquests that
he himself never felt any jealousy. Theo was calmed by the complete
absence of thought in this tempter, who at once forgot everything
after an hour of love; forgot so gracefully that he looked up with
eyes of ingenuous surprise when Theo, red and boiling with fury, burst
into his room and, standing before his bed--where he was lying quite
naked, as was his habit during his siesta, with the magnificence of a
bronze statue, sublime as an ancient sculpture--declared that he would
strike him across the face. And Addie's surprise was so artless, his
indifference so harmonious, he seemed to have so utterly forgotten
his hour of love of the night before, he laughed so serenely at
the idea of fighting about a woman that Theo quieted down and came
and sat on the edge of his bed. And then Addie, who was a couple of
years younger but possessed incomparable experience, told him that
he really mustn't do it again--get so angry about a woman, a mistress
who gave herself to another. And Addie patted him on the shoulder with
almost fatherly compassion; and now, since they understood each other,
they went on confidentially pumping one another as they chatted.

They exchanged further confidences, about women, about girls. Theo
asked if Addie was going to marry Doddie. But Addie said that he
wasn't thinking of marrying and that the resident wouldn't be willing
either, because he didn't care for Addie's family and thought them
too Indian. Then, in a single word, he let slip his pride in his
Solo descent and his pride in the halo which shone dimly behind the
heads of all the De Luces. And Addie asked if Theo knew that he had a
young brother running wild in the compound. Theo knew nothing about
it. But Addie assured him that it was so: a young son of papa's,
mark you, from the time when the governor was still controller at
Ngadjiwa; a fellow of their own age, a regular Eurasian: the mother
was dead. Perhaps the old man himself didn't know that he still had
a son in the compound, but it was true; everybody knew it: the regent
knew, the native councillor knew, the head of the district knew, and
the meanest coolie knew. There was no actual proof; but a thing like
that, which was known the whole world over, was as true as that the
world itself existed.... What did the fellow do? Nothing, except curse
and swear, declaring that he was a son of the kandjeng tuan residèn,
who allowed him to rot in the compound.... What did he live on? On
nothing, on what he got by shameless begging, on what people gave him
and then ... by all sorts of practices: by going round the districts,
through all the villages, and asking if there were any complaints
and then drawing up little petitions; by encouraging people to go
to Mecca and let him book their passages with very cheap little
steamship-companies of which he was the unofficial agent: he would
go to the remotest village and display coloured posters representing
a steamer full of Mecca pilgrims and the Kaaba and the Sacred Tomb
of Mohammed. He would mess around like this, sometimes mixed up in
rows, once in a robbery, sometimes dressed in a sarong, sometimes
in an old striped calico suit; and he slept anywhere. And, when Theo
showed surprise and said that he had never heard of this half-brother
of his and expressed curiosity, Addie suggested that they should go
and look him up, if he was to be found in the compound. And Addie
gaily and quickly took his bath and put on a clean white suit; and
they went across the road and along the rice-fields into the compound.

It was already dusk under the heavy trees: the bananas lifted the
cool green paddles of their leaves; and under the stately canopy of
the coco-palms the little bamboo houses hid, romantically Oriental,
idyllic, with their palm-leaf roofs, their doors often already
closed, or, if open, framing a little black inward vista, with the
vague outline of a bench on which squatted a dark figure. The scabby,
hairless dogs barked; the children, naked, with bells dangling from
their stomachs, ran indoors and stared out of the houses; the women
kept quiet, recognizing the tempter and vaguely laughing, blinking
their eyes as he passed in his glory. And Addie pointed to the little
house where his old babu lived, Tidjem, the woman who helped him,
who always opened her door to him when he wanted the use of her hut,
who worshipped him as his mother and his sisters and his little nieces
worshipped him. He showed Theo the house and thought of his walk last
night with Doddie under the tjemaras. Tidjem the babu saw him and
ran up to him delightedly. She squatted down beside him, she pressed
his leg against her withered breast, she rubbed her forehead against
his knee, she kissed his white shoe, she gazed at him in rapture, her
beautiful prince, her raden, whom she had rocked as a little chubby
boy in her already infatuated arms. He tapped her on the shoulder and
gave her a rix-dollar and asked her if she knew where Si-Oudijck was,
because his brother wished to see him.

Tidjem stood up and beckoned to him to follow: it was some way to
walk. And they stepped out of the compound into an open road with
rails along it, by which the bamboo baskets filled with sugar were
removed to the proas that lay moored at a landing-stage yonder,
in the Brantas. The sun was going down in a fan-shaped glory of
orange sheaves; and the distant rows of trees that outlined the
paddy-fields were washed in with dark, soft, velvety touches against
their arrogant glow. These fields were not yet planted, but their dark,
earth-coloured expanse lay as broken by the plough. From the factory
came a few men and women, making their way home. Beside the river,
by the landing-stage, a small market of portable kitchens had been
set up under a sacred, five-fold banyan-tree, with its five trunks
merging into one another and its wide-spreading roots. Tidjem called
the ferry-man and he put them across, across the orange Brantas,
amidst the last yellow rays of the sun, outspread fanwise like a
peacock's tail. When they were on the other bank, the night fell over
everything, like the hasty fall of a gauze curtain; and the clouds,
which all through November had threatened the low horizons, hung
oppressively on the sultry air. And they entered another compound,
lit here and there by a paraffin-lamp, set down on the ground, with
a long lamp-glass but no globe. At last they came to a little house,
built partly of bamboo, partly of old packing-cases, and roofed partly
with tiles, partly with palm-leaves. Tidjem pointed to it and, once
more squatting on the ground and embracing and kissing Addie's knee,
asked permission to depart. Addie knocked at the door; a grumbling
and rumbling within was the only answer; but, when Addie called out,
the door was kicked open and the two young men stepped into the one
room of which the hut consisted: half bamboo, half deal boards from
packing-cases; a couch with a couple of dirty pillows in a corner,
and a limp chintz curtain dangling in front of it; a crazy table with
a chair or two; on the table, a paraffin-lamp without a globe; and a
litter of oddments stacked on a packing-case in a corner. Everything
was permeated with an acrid odour of opium.

And Si-Oudijck was sitting at the table with an Arab, while a Javanese
woman squatted on the couch, preparing a leaf of betel for herself. A
few sheets of paper lay on the table between the Arab and the young
half-caste. The last-named, evidently annoyed by the unexpected visit,
hurriedly crumpled the papers together. But he recovered his composure
and, assuming a jovial air, cried:

"Hullo, Adipati! Susuhunan! Sultan of Patjaram! Sugar-lord! How are
you, my god of beauty, the ruin of all good women?"

His jovial torrent of greetings continued without ceasing, while
he scrambled the papers together and made a sign to the Arab, who
disappeared through the other door, at the back.

"And who's that with you, Raden Mas Adrianus, my bonnie Lucius?"

"It's your little brother," said Addie.

Si-Oudijck looked up suddenly:

"Oh, is it really?" said he, speaking broken Dutch, Javanese and
Malay in the same breath. "I can see it is: my legitimate one. And
what does the fellow want?"

"He's come to see what you're like."

The two brothers looked at each other: Theo inquisitively, rejoicing
at having made this discovery, as a weapon against the old man,
if the weapon ever became necessary; the other, Si-Oudijck, secretly
restraining, behind his brown, crafty, leering face, all his jealousy,
all his bitterness and hatred.

"Is this where you live?" asked Theo, for the sake of saying something.

"No, I'm just staying with her for the time being," replied Si-Oudijck,
with a jerk of his head towards the woman.

"Has your mother been dead long?"

"Yes. Yours is still alive, isn't she? She lives in Batavia. I know
her. Do you ever see her?"

"No."

"H'm.... Prefer your step-mother?"

"Pretty well," said Theo, drily. And, changing the subject, "I don't
believe the old man knows that you exist."

"Yes, he does."

"I doubt it. Have you ever spoken to him?"

"Yes, formerly. Years ago."

"Well?"

"No use. He says I'm not his son."

"It must be difficult to prove."

"Legally, yes. But it's a fact and everybody knows it. It's known
all over Ngadjiwa."

"Have you no sort of evidence?"

"Only the oath which my mother took when she was dying, before
witnesses."

"Come, tell me things," said Theo. "Walk a bit of the way with us:
it's stuffy in here."

They left the hut and sauntered back through the compounds, while
Si-Oudijck told his story. They strolled beside the Brantas, which
wound vaguely in the evening dusk under a sky powdered with stars.

It did Theo good to hear about all this, about that housekeeper
of his father's, in the days of his controllership, dismissed for
an infidelity of which she was guiltless; the child born later and
never recognized, never maintained; the boy wandering from compound
to compound, romantically proud of his inhuman father, whom he
watched from a distance, following him with his furtive glance
when the father became assistant-resident and resident, married,
divorced his wife and married again; by slow degrees learning to
read and write from a native scrivener of his acquaintance. It
did the legitimate son good to hear about all this, because in his
innermost self, fair-haired and fair-skinned though he might be,
he was more the son of his mother, the half-caste, than of his
father; because in his innermost self he hated his father, not
for this or that reason, but from a secret antipathy in his blood,
because, despite the appearance and behaviour of a fair-haired and
fair-skinned European, he felt a secret kinship for this illegitimate
brother, felt a vague sympathy for him. Were they not both sons of
the self-same motherland, for which their father felt nothing except
as a result of his acquired development, the artificially cultivated,
humane love of the ruler for the territory which he governs. From his
childhood Theo had felt like that, far removed from his father; and
later that antipathy had grown into a slumbering hatred. It gave him
pleasure to hear the legend of his faultless parent demolished; the
impeccable, magnanimous man, a functionary of the highest integrity,
who loved his domestic circle, loved his residency, loved the Javanese,
and was anxious to uphold the regent's family, not only because his
official instructions prescribed that the Javanese nobility should be
respected, but because his own heart told him as much, when he thought
of the noble old pangéran.... Theo knew that his father was all this:
blameless, high-minded, upright, magnanimous; and it did him good,
here, in the mysterious evening beside the Brantas, to hear that
blamelessness, that high-minded, upright magnanimity torn to ribbons;
it did him good to meet an outcast who in one moment spattered that
high-throned paternal figure with mud and filth, dragging him from his
pedestal, making him appear no higher than another, sinful, wicked,
heartless, mean. It filled him with a wicked joy, even as he was
filled with a wicked joy at possessing his father's wife, whom his
father adored. What to do with this dark secret he did not yet know,
but he clutched at it as a weapon; he was whetting it there, that
very evening, while he listened to the end to what this furtive-eyed
half-caste, ranting and working himself up, had to say. And Theo hid
his secret, hid his weapon deep in his heart.

Grievances rose in his mind; and he too now, the legitimate son,
abused his father; declared that the resident did no more to help him,
his own lawful son, to get on than he would do for any of his clerks;
told him how his father had once recommended him to the manager of an
impossible undertaking, a rice-plantation, where he had been unable
to stay longer than a single month; how afterwards he had left him
to his fate, thwarting him when he went hunting after concessions,
even in other residencies, even in Borneo, until he was now obliged
to remain hanging about and sponging at home, unable to find a job,
thanks to his father, and merely tolerated in that house where he
disliked everything.

"Except your step-mother!" Si-Oudijck interpolated, drily.

But Theo went on, growing confidential in his turn and telling his
brother that it would be no great advantage for him even if he were
acknowledged and legitimatized. And in this way they both became
excited, glad to have met each other, to have grown intimate in this
brief hour. And beside them walked Addie, surprised by this quick
mutual attraction, but otherwise empty of thought. They had crossed
a bridge and by a circuitous route had come out behind the Patjaram
factory-buildings. Here Si-Oudijck said good-night, shaking hands with
Theo, who slipped a couple of rix-dollars into his palm. They were
accepted greedily, with a flicker of the furtive glance, but not a
word of thanks. And Addie and Theo went past the factory, now silent,
to the house. The family were strolling, outside, in the garden and in
the tjemara-avenue. And, as the two young men approached, the golden,
eight-year-old child came running towards them, the old grandmother's
little foster-princess, with her fringe of hair and her whitened
forehead, in her rich little, doll-like dress. She came running
up to them and suddenly stopped in front of Addie and looked up at
him. Addie asked her what she wanted, but the child did not answer and
only looked up at him and then, putting out her little hand, stroked
his hand with it. It was all so clearly the result of an irresistible
magnetism in the shy child, this running up, stopping, looking up
and stroking, that Addie laughed aloud and stooped and kissed her
lightly. The child skipped back contentedly. And Theo, still excited
by his evening, first by his conversation with Oorip and then by his
explanation with Addie, his meeting with his half-brother, his own
confidences about his father--Theo, feeling bitter and interesting,
was so greatly irritated by this trivial behaviour of Addie and the
child, that he exclaimed, almost angrily:

"Oh, you ... you'll never be anything but a woman's man!..."






CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Things had gone well with Van Oudijck upon the whole. Born of a simple
Dutch family, with no money, he had found his youth a hard though
never cruel school of precocious earnestness, of early strenuous
work, of immediate looking forward to the future, to a career,
to the honourable position which he hoped--with the least possible
delay--to fill among his fellow-men. His years of oriental study at
Delft had been just gay enough to enable him later to believe that he
had once been young; and, because he had taken part in a masquerade,
he even thought that he had spent quite a dissolute life, with much
squandering of money and riotous living. His character was based on
a good deal of quiet Dutch respectability and an earnest outlook upon
life, a rather gloomy, disillusioned outlook, though intelligent and
practical: he was accustomed to visualize his honourable position
among his fellow-men; and his ambition had developed rhythmically
and steadily into a temperate thirst for position, but only on the
lines along which his eyes were always wont to gaze: the hierarchical
lines of the Indian Civil Service. Things had always gone well with
him. Displaying great capacity, he had been greatly valued; he had
become an assistant-resident earlier than most and a resident while
still young; and his ambition was now really satisfied because his
authoritative office was in complete harmony with his nature, whose
love of rule had progressed with its ambition. He was now really
satisfied; and, though his eyes looked still much farther ahead and
saw glimmering before them a seat on the Indian Council, and even
the throne at Buitenzorg, he had days when, sober and contented, he
declared that to become a resident of the first class--putting aside
the higher pension--had little in its favour except at Samarang and
Surabaya, but that the Vorstenlanden were absolutely a burden, while
Batavia occupied such a peculiar and almost derogatory position,
in the thick of so many higher officials, members of council and
directors. And, though his eyes thus looked farther ahead, his
practical and temperate nature would have been quite satisfied if
any one should have prophesied to him that he would die as Resident
of Labuwangi. He loved his district and loved India; he never
yearned for Holland, nor for the pageant of European civilization,
even though he himself had remained very Dutch and above all hated
anything that was half-caste. This was the inconsistency in his
character, for he had married his first wife, herself a half-caste,
purely out of affection; and, as for his children, in whom the Indian
blood was eloquent--outwardly in Doddie, inwardly in Theo, while René
and Ricus were two thorough little Eurasians--he loved them with an
intense feeling of paternity, with all the tenderness and sentiment
that slumbered in the depths of his nature: a need to give much and
receive much in the circle of his domestic life. Gradually this need
had extended to the circle of his district: he took a paternal pride
in his assistant-residents and controllers, among whom he was popular
and beloved. It had happened only once in the six years during which
he had been Resident of Labuwangi that he had been unable to get on
with a controller: then the man was a half-caste, and he had had him
transferred: had him sacked, as he put it. And he was proud that,
despite his strict discipline, despite his stern insistence on
work, he was beloved by his officials. He was all the more grieved
by the constant secret enmity of the regent, his "younger brother,"
to use the Javanese title, in whom indeed he would gladly have found
a younger brother to govern his native population under himself,
the elder brother. It grieved him that matters had fallen out thus;
and he would then think of other regents, not only of this one's
father, the fine old pangéran, but of others whom he knew: the Regent
of D---, a cultivated man, speaking and writing Dutch correctly,
contributing lucid Dutch articles to newspapers and magazines; the
Regent of S---, a trifle frivolous and vain, but very rich and very
benevolent, figuring as a dandy in European society and polite to
the ladies. Why should things have fallen out just so in Labuwangi,
with this silent, spiteful, secretive, fanatical puppet, with the
reputation of a saint and sorcerer, stupidly idolized by the people,
in whose welfare he took no interest and who adored him only for
the glamour of his ancient name, a man in whom he always felt an
antagonism, never uttered in words, but plainly palpable under his
icy correctness of demeanour? And then at Ngadjiwa too there was
the brother, the card-player, the gambler: why should just he be so
unlucky in his regents?

Van Oudijck was in a gloomy mood. He was accustomed to receiving,
at regular intervals, anonymous letters, venomous libels spewed forth
from quiet corners, bespattering at one time an assistant-resident, at
another a controller, besmirching now the native head-men and now his
own family; sometimes taking the form of a friendly warning, sometimes
displaying a malicious delight in wounding; very, very anxious to
open his eyes to the shortcomings of his officials and to his wife's
misconduct. He was so completely used to this that he did not count
the letters, reading them hastily or hardly at all and carelessly
destroying them. Accustomed as he was to judging for himself, these
spiteful warnings made no impression on him, though they reared their
heads like hissing snakes among all the letters which the post brought
him daily; and as regards his wife he was so blind, he had always been
so much in the habit of picturing Léonie in the tranquillity of her
smiling indifference and in the home-like sociability which she most
certainly attracted round her--in the hollow void of the residency,
whose chairs and ottomans seemed always arranged for a reception--that
he could never have credited the most trivial of all these slanders.

He never mentioned them to her. He loved his wife; he was in love with
her; and, as he always saw her almost silent in society, as she never
flirted or coquetted, he never glanced into the slough of corruption
that was her soul. At home, indeed, he was absolutely blind. At
home he displayed that utter blindness which is often seen in men
who are very capable and efficient in their business or profession;
who are accustomed to scan with sharp eyes the wide perspective of
their official duties, but who are near-sighted at home; who are wont
to analyse things in the lump, but not their psychological details;
whose knowledge of mankind is based on principles, and who divide
mankind into types, as in the caste of an old-fashioned play; who can
at once plumb the capacity of their subordinates, but are utterly
unable to realize the intricate complex, like a tangled arabesque,
like rankly-growing tendrils, of the psychic involution of those who
form their own household: always gazing over their heads, failing
to grasp the inner meaning of their speech, and taking no interest
in the kaleidoscopic emotions of hatred and jealousy and life and
love that shine with prismatic hues right before their eyes. He loved
his wife and he loved his children, because the feeling and the fact
of paternity were necessities of his being; but he knew neither his
wife nor his children. He knew nothing about Léonie; and he had never
realized that Theo and Doddie had secretly remained faithful to their
mother, so far away in Batavia, ruined by her unspeakable mode of
life, and that they felt no love for him. He thought that they did
give him their love; and, as for him ... when he thought of them,
a slumbering affection awoke within him.

He received these anonymous letters daily. They had never made an
impression on him; yet of late he no longer destroyed them, but read
them attentively and put them aside in a secret drawer. He could
not have said why. They contained accusations against his wife, they
contained imputations against his daughter. They sought to intimidate
him by threatening that he might be stabbed in the dark. They warned
him that his spies were utterly untrustworthy. They told him that
his divorced wife was suffering from poverty and 

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