The Hidden Force Part 26

"Yes, because you think yourself a bit of a Solo prince.... That's your Patjaram nonsense.... As for me, I hate India, I loathe Labuw.a.n.gi. I want to get away. I want to go to Paris.... Will you come too?"

"No. I should never want to go...."

"Not even when you reflect that there are hundreds of women in Europe whom you have never loved?"

He looked at her: something in her words, in her voice, made him glance up; a crazy hysteria, which had never struck him in the old days, when she had always been the silently pa.s.sionate mistress, with half-closed eyes, who always wanted to forget everything at once and to become conventional again. Something in her repelled him. He loved the soft, pliant surrender of her caresses, the smiling indolence which she used to display, but not these half-mad eyes and this purple mouth, which seemed ready to bite. She seemed to feel this, for she suddenly pushed him from her and said, brusquely:

"You bore me.... I know all there is to know in you.... Go away...."

But this he would not do. He did not care for futile rendez-vous and he now embraced her and solicited her....

"No," she said, curtly. "You bore me. Every one bores me here. Everything bores me."

He, on his knees, put his hands about her waist and drew her to him. She, smiling a little, became slightly more yielding, rumpling his hair nervously with her hand. A carriage pulled up in front of the house.

"Hark!" she said.

"It's Mrs. van Does."

"How soon she's back!"

"I expect she's sold nothing."

"Then it'll cost you a ten-guilder note."

"I dare say."

"Do you pay her much ... for allowing us to meet here?"

"Oh, what does it matter?"

"Listen," she said again, more attentively.

"That's not Mrs. van Does."

"No."

"It's a man's footstep.... It wasn't a dog-cart either: it was much too noisy."

"I expect it's nothing," said she. "Some one who has mistaken the house. n.o.body ever comes here."

"The man's going round," he said, listening.

They both listened for a moment. And then, suddenly, after two or three strides through the cramped little garden and along the little back-verandah, his figure, Van Oudijck's, appeared outside the closed gla.s.s door, visible through the curtain. And he had pulled it open before Leonie and Addie could change their position, so that Van Oudijck saw them both, her sitting on the couch and him kneeling before her, while her hand still lay, as though forgotten, on his hair.

"Leonie!" roared her husband.

Her blood under the shock of the surprise broke into stormy waves and seethed through her veins and, in one second, she saw the whole future: his anger, the trial, the divorce, her alimony, all in one whirling vision. But, as though by the compulsion of her nervous will, the tide of blood within her at once subsided and grew calm; and she remained quietly sitting there, her terror showing for but a moment longer in her eyes, until she could turn them hard as steel upon Van Oudijck. And, by pressing her finger softly on Addie's head, she suggested to him also to remain in the same att.i.tude, to remain kneeling at her feet, and she said, as though self-hypnotized, listening in astonishment to her own slightly husky voice:

"Otto ... Adrien de Luce is asking me to put in a word with you for him.... He is asking ... for Doddie's hand...."

They all three remained motionless, all three under the influence of these words, of this thought which had come ... whence Leonie herself did not know. For, sitting rigid and erect as a sibyl and still with that gentle pressure on Addie's head, she repeated:

"He is asking ... for Doddie's hand...."

She was still the only one to speak. And she continued:

"He knows that you have certain objections. He knows that you do not care for his family ... because they have Javanese blood in their arteries."

She was still speaking as though some one else were speaking inside her; and she had to smile at that word arteries, she did not know why: perhaps because it was the first time in her life that she had used the word arteries, for veins, in conversation.

"But," she went on, "there are no financial drawbacks, if Doddie likes to live at Patjaram.... And the children have been fond of each other ... so long."

She alone was speaking still:

"Doddie has so long been overstrung, almost ill.... It would be a crime, Otto, not to consent."

Gradually her voice became more musical and the smile formed about her lips; but the light in her eyes was still hard as steel, as though she were threatening Van Oudijck with her anger if he refused to believe her.

"Come," she said, very gently, very kindly, patting Addie's head softly with her trembling fingers. "Get up ... Addie ... and go ... to ... papa."

He rose, mechanically.

"Leonie, what were you doing here?" asked Van Oudijck, hoa.r.s.ely.

"Here? I was with Mrs. van Does."

"And he?" pointing to Addie.

"He?... He happened to be calling.... Mrs. van Does had to go out.... Then he asked leave to speak to me.... And then he asked me ... for Doddie's hand...."

They were again all three silent.

"And you, Otto?" she now asked, more harshly. "What brought you here?"

He looked at her sharply.

"Is there anything you want to buy of Mrs. van Does?" she asked.

"Theo told me you were here...."

"Theo was right...."

"Leonie...."

She rose and, with her eyes hard as steel, she intimated to him that he must believe her, that she insisted on his believing her:

"In any case, Otto," she said; and her manner was once more gently kind, "do not leave Addie any longer in his uncertainty. And you, Addie, don't be afraid ... and ask papa for Doddie's hand.... I have nothing to say where Doddie is concerned ... as I have often told you."