The Hidden Force Part 7

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

"What? Getting up parties? Arranging theatricals?"

"It's you who are the real rezidente [9]," said Ida, gus.h.i.+ngly.

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

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

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

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

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

"My mother was a Frenchwoman."

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

"Eva!" Ida entreated.

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

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

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

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

"Table-turning," whispered the two ladies.

There was a general laugh.

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

"Table-turning," repeated Mrs. Rantzow.

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

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

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

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

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

They rose.

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

"No," said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn.

"An ordinary gipsy-table?"

"A three-legged wooden table."

"The eight of us?"

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

"Fire away, then!" said Eva. "A new diversion for Labuw.a.n.gi society. And no cheating...."

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

"Done!" they all said.

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

The table quivered....

They exchanged frightened glances; the doctor sn.i.g.g.e.red.

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

"Did anybody move?" asked Eva.

They all shook their heads. Ida had turned pale.

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

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

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

And the table tilted its leg for the third time.

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

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

The table tapped once:

"Yes."

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

"Z X R S A."