The Hidden Force Part 5

CHAPTER SEVEN

The secretary, Onno Eldersma, was a busy man. The post brought a daily average of some two hundred letters and doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments, 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 const.i.tution; 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, that it was possible to work as hard as her husband did, in a country as hot as Labuw.a.n.gi 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 doc.u.ments daily. She had soon seen that there was nothing for her to do at Labuw.a.n.gi 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 Labuw.a.n.gi. 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 j.a.panese 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 pa.s.sing. 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 n.o.ble majesty of nature, the harmony of the undulating hills, the faery forests of gigantic ferns, the menacing ravines of the craters, the s.h.i.+mmering 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 n.o.ble race, from an age-old chivalry, now modernized into a diplomatic suppleness, wors.h.i.+pping 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 a.n.a.lyse, 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, 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 aesthetic 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, whereas the residency, on the other hand, withdrew with dignified reserve into the shadow of its banyan-trees. Leonie 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 Leonie 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. Leonie 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 t.i.ttle-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 Labuw.a.n.gi. 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 const.i.tution. 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 const.i.tution 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: rehea.r.s.ed 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 Labuw.a.n.gi. 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 s.h.i.+rts. 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 Labuw.a.n.gi.

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, Leonie did not care; it left her totally indifferent.

Leonie 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 Leonie, 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 j.a.panese 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 Leonie, 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 Ta.s.so: 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-advertis.e.m.e.nt with the little angels.

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

"Yes, I do," said Leonie, 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 sanct.i.ty 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 s.h.i.+rt with diamond studs and a little blue tie; over this was a blue cloth uniform-jacket, with gold uniform b.u.t.tons, 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 Leonie 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 Leonie, answered in the same way:

"Saja...."

But she always followed it up with a little embarra.s.sed 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, 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 Labuw.a.n.gi 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 embarra.s.sed little laugh.

Leonie 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 pangeran?"

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

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

"I want to speak to you, regent."

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

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

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

"Do you know anything about it, regent?"

"Tida, no...."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I thank you," murmured Sunario.