The Hidden Force Part 6

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

"I promise," murmured the regent.

"Give me your hand, regent."

Van Oudijck pressed the thin fingers of the Javanese:

"Can I trust you?" he asked.

"In life, in death."

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

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

CHAPTER NINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The resident is often like that," said Frans van Helderen. "He has his moods. Sometimes he's pleasant, cheerful, jovial, as he was lately, on circuit. Then again he has his gloomy days, working, working and working and grumbling that n.o.body does any work except himself."

"My poor, unappreciated Onno!" sighed Eva.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What custom is that?" asked the doctor.

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

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

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

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

"It's really terrible," said Eva. "If I hadn't all of you, it would be terrible. If I weren't always planning something and having ideas, it would be terrible, this living at Labuw.a.n.gi. My husband doesn't feel it; he works, as all you men do: what else is there to do in India but work, regardless of the heat? But for us women! What a life, if we didn't find our happiness purely in ourselves, in our home, in our friends ... when we have the good fortune to possess those friends! Nothing from the outside. Not a picture, not a statue to look at; no music to listen to. Don't be cross, Van Helderen. You play the 'cello charmingly, but n.o.body in India can keep up to date. The Italian Opera plays Il Trovatore. The amateur companies--and they're really first-rate at Batavia--play ... Il Trovatore. And you, Van Helderen ... don't object. I saw you in an ecstasy when the Italian company from Surabaya were here lately, at the club, playing ... Il Trovatore. You were enchanted."

"There were some beautiful voices among them."

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

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

"Materially...."