The Hidden Force

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

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.

[1] The duit, or doit, was a coin of the Dutch East India Company, a little lower in value than the cent, of which latter a hundred go to the guilder or florin (1s. 8d.). The survival of the duit complicated the official accounts considerably.

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.[1] ... 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.

[1] £50.

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,[1] when all was said, in the B.B.[2] 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.[3] 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[4] 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....

[1] The Dutch always speak of the Dutch East Indies—Java, Sumatra, Celebes, etc.—as India.

[2] The Binnenlandsch Bestuur, or inland administration.

[3] The native states of Surakarta and Djokjakarta are known as the Vorstenlanden, or Principalities.

[4] The native regent, or rajah.

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?”