The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

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?”

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 pangéran 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 noblest regents that the government ever had in Java; and you know how greatly the government valued the pangéran. 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 pangéran. 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 assuming 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 passion. 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 pangéran, whom I held in high esteem, even as I should always wish to spare your mother, the raden-aju pangéran, any sorrow.”

“I thank you,” murmured Sunario.

“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 nobility ... 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 glasses 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 fashion, 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.1 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 Réunion, this exoticism had become a mysterious medley which had never developed beyond a sort of childishness and a jumble of petty emotions and petty passions, 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 fashion, 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 Labuwangi, 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 assure 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 nobody does any work except himself.”

“My poor, unappreciated Onno!” sighed Eva.

“I believe he’s overworking himself,” said Van Helderen. “Labuwangi 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 Labuwangi 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 fashion. 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 noble old pangéran, 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 pangéran, 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 pangéran 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,2 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? Labuwangi 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 Labuwangi. 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 nobody 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 Labuwangi: “sometimes you do appreciate India: your house, the pleasant, spacious life....”

“Materially....”

“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 rezidente3,” said Ida, gushingly.

“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 amusement. 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 Labuwangi society. And no cheating....”

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

“Done!” they all said.

The doctor sniggered. 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 sniggered.

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.”

The manifestation was incomprehensible.

Suddenly, however, the table began spelling hurriedly, as though it had something at its heels. The taps were counted and spelt:

“Lé ... onie Ou ... dijck....”

“What about Mrs. van Oudijck?”

A coarse word followed.

The ladies started, excepting Ida, who sat as though in a trance.

“The table has spoken.... What did it say?... What is Mrs. van Oudijck?” cried the voices, all speaking at once.

“It’s incredible!” murmured Eva. “Are we all playing fair?”

They all protested their honesty.

“Let us really be honest, else there’s no fun in it.... I wish I could be certain.”

They all wished that: Mrs. Rantzow, Ida, Van Helderen, Eva. The others looked on eagerly, believing; but the doctor did not believe and sat sniggering.

Again the table grated angrily and tapped: and the leg began to spell, “A...,” and repeated the coarse word.

“Why?” asked Mrs. Rantzow.

The table began to tap.

“Write it down, Onno!” said Eva to her husband.

Eldersma fetched a pencil and paper and wrote the message down.

Three names followed: one of a member of council, one of a departmental head, and one of a young business-man.

“When people aren’t backbiting in India, the tables begin to backbite!” said Eva.

“The spirits,” murmured Ida.

“They are generally mocking spirits,” said Mrs. Rantzow, didactically.

But the table went on tapping.

“Write it down, Onno!” said Eva.

Eldersma wrote it down.

“A-d-d-i-e!” the leg tapped out.

“No!” the voices all cried together, in vehement denial. “This time the table’s mistaken!... At least, young De Luce has never yet been mentioned in connection with Mrs. van Oudijck.”

“T-h-e-o!” said the table, correcting itself.

“Her step-son!... It’s terrible!... That’s different!... Everybody knows that!” cried the voices in assent.

“Yes, we know that!” said Mrs. Rantzow, with a glance at the leg of the table. “Come, tell us something that we don’t know. Come, table! Come, spirit! Please!...”

She addressed the table-leg in coaxing, wheedling accents. Everybody laughed. The table grated.

“Be serious!” Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn said, in warning.

The table bounced down on Ida’s lap.

“Oh my!” cried the pretty half-caste, waking out of her trance. “Right against my stomach!”

They laughed and laughed. The table turned round fiercely and they rose from their chairs, with their hands on the table, and accompanied its angry, waltzing movements.

“Next ... year ...” the table rapped out.

Eldersma wrote it down.

“Frightful ... war.”

“Between whom?”

“Europe ... and ... China.”

“It sounds like a fairy-tale!” grinned the doctor.

“La-bu-wangi,” tapped the table.

“What about it?” they asked.

“Is ... a ... beastly ... hole....”

“Say something serious, table, do!” Mrs. Rantzow implored, pleasantly, in her best German-matron manner.

“Dan ... ger,” the table tapped out.

“Where?”

“Threat ... ens,” the table continued, “La-bu-wangi.”

“Danger threatens Labuwangi?”

“Yes!” said the table, with one tap, angrily.

“What danger?”

“Rebellion.”

“Rebellion? Who’s going to rebel?”

“In ... two months ... Sunario.”

They became thoughtful.

But the table, suddenly, unexpectedly, fell over again into Ida’s lap.

“Oh my! Oh dear!” cried the little woman.

The table refused to go on.

“Tired,” it tapped out.

They continued to hold their hands on it.

“Leave off,” said the table.

The doctor, sniggering, laid his short, broad hand on it, as though to compel it.

“Go to blazes!” cried the table, grating and turning. “Bounder!”

And worse words followed, aimed at the doctor, as though by a street-boy: obscene words, senseless and incoherent.

“Who’s suggesting those words?” asked Eva, indignantly.

Obviously no one was suggesting them, neither the three ladies nor Van Helderen, who was always very punctilious and who was manifestly indignant at the mocking spirit’s coarseness.

“It really is a spirit,” said Ida, looking very pale.

“I’m going to leave off,” said Eva, nervously, lifting up her fingers. “I don’t understand this nonsense. It’s quite amusing, but the table’s not accustomed to polite society.”

“We’ve got a new resource for Labuwangi!” said Eldersma. “No more picnics, no dances ... but table-turning!”

“We must practise!” said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn.

Eva shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s inexplicable,” she said. “I’m bound to believe that none of us was cheating. It’s not the sort of thing Van Helderen would do, to suggest such words as those.”

“Madam!” said Van Helderen, defending himself.

“We must do it again,” said Ida. “Look, there’s a hadji leaving the grounds.”

She pointed to the garden.

“A hadji?” asked Eva.

She looked towards the garden, expecting to see a Mecca pilgrim. There was nothing.

“Oh no, it’s not!” said Ida. “I thought it was a hadji. It’s nothing, only the moonlight.”

It was late. They said good-night, laughing gaily, wondering, but finding no explanation.

“I do hope this hasn’t made you ladies nervous?” said the doctor.

No, considering all things, they were not nervous. They were more amused, even though they did not understand.

It was two o’clock when they went home. The moonlight was streaming down on the town, which lay deathly still, slumbering in the velvet shadows of the gardens.

Chapter Ten

Next day, when Eldersma had gone to the office and Eva was moving about the house, in sarong and kabaai, on her domestic duties, she saw Frans van Helderen coming through the garden.

“May I?” he called out.

“Certainly,” she called back. “Come in. But I’m on my way to the godown.”

And she held up her bunch of keys.

“I’m due at the resident’s in half an hour, but I’m too early ... so I just looked in.”

She smiled.

“But I’m busy, you know!” she said. “Come along to the godown with me.”

He followed her; he was wearing a black alpaca jacket, because he had to go to the resident presently.

“How’s Ida?” asked Eva. “Did she sleep well after her séance of last night?”

“Only fairly well,” said Frans van Helderen. “I don’t think she ought to do any more. She kept waking with a start, falling on my neck and begging me to forgive her, I don’t know what for.”

“It didn’t upset me at all,” said Eva, “though I don’t understand it in the least.”

She opened the godown, called the cook and gave the woman her orders. The cook was latta;1 and Eva loved teasing the old thing.

“La ... la-illa-lala!” she cried.

And the cook gave a start and echoed the cry and recovered herself the next moment, begging for forgiveness.

“Throw down, cook, throw down!” cried Eva, in Malay.

And the cook, acting on the suggestion, flung down a tray of litchis and mangosteens and, at once recovering, stooped and picked up the scattered fruits from the floor, imploring to be forgiven and shaking her head and clicking her tongue.

“Come, we’d better go!” said Eva to Frans. “Else she’ll be breaking my eggs presently. “Out of this, cook, outside!”

“Out of this, outside!” echoed the latta cook. “Oh, mem sahib, beg pardon, mem sahib, oh, enough, enough, mem sahib!”

“Come and sit down for a little,” said Eva to Van Helderen.

He went with her:

“You’re so cheerful,” he said.

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I’ve been feeling sad, lately.”

“I too. I told you so yesterday. It’s something in the Labuwangi air. There’s no telling what this table-turning has in store for us.”

They sat down in the back verandah. He sighed.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I care for you so. I love you.”

She was silent for an instant.

“Again?” she then said, reproachfully.

He did not answer.

“I have told you, mine is not a passionate nature. I am cold. I love my husband and my child. Let’s be friends, Van Helderen.”

“I’m fighting against it; but it’s no use.”

“I’m fond of Ida; I wouldn’t make her unhappy for the world.”

“I don’t believe I was ever fond of her.”

“Van Helderen!...”

“If I was, it was only for her pretty face. But white though Ida may be, she’s a half-caste ... with her whimsies and her childish little tragedies. I didn’t see it so much at first, but I see it now, of course. I’d met women from Europe before I met you. But you were a revelation to me, a revelation of all the charm and artistic grace that a woman can possess.... And the exotic side in you appeals to my own exotic side.”

“I value your friendship highly. Let things remain as they are.”

“Sometimes it’s just as though I were mad, sometimes I dream ... that we’re travelling in Europe together, that we’re in Italy or Paris. Sometimes I see us sitting together over a fire, in a room of our own, you talking of art, I of the modern, social developments of our time. But, after that, I see us together ... more intimately....”

“Van Helderen!...”

“It’s no longer any use your warning me. I love you, Eva, Eva....”

“I don’t believe there’s another country where there’s so much love going about as in India! I suppose it’s the heat....”

“Don’t crush me with your sarcasm. No other woman ever made such an appeal to my whole soul and body as you do, Eva....”

She shrugged her shoulders:

“Don’t be angry, Van Helderen, but I can’t stand these commonplaces. Let us be sensible. I have a charming husband, you have a dear little wife. We’re all good, pleasant friends together.”

“You’re so cold!”

“I don’t want to spoil the happiness of our friendship.”

“Friendship!”

“Friendship is what I said. There is nothing I value so highly, except my domestic happiness. I couldn’t live without friends. I am happy in my husband and my child; next to these I need friends, above all things.”

“So that they can admire you, so that you can rule over them!” said he, angrily.

She looked him in the face:

“Perhaps,” she said, coolly. “Perhaps I have a need of admiration and of ruling over others. We all have our weaknesses.”

“I have mine,” he said, bitterly.

“Come,” she said, in a kinder tone, “let us remain friends.”

“I am terribly unhappy,” he said, in a dull voice. “I feel as if I had missed everything in life. I have never been out of Java and I feel there’s something lacking in me because I have never seen ice and snow. Snow: I think of it as a sort of mysterious unknown purity, which I long for, but which I never seem to meet. When shall I see Europe? When shall I cease to rave about Il Trovatore and manage to visit Bayreuth? When shall I come within range of you, Eva? I’m feeling for everything with my antennæ, like a wingless insect.... What is my life?... With Ida, with three children, whom I foresee growing up like their mother!... I shall remain controller for years and then—possibly—be promoted to assistant-resident ... and so remain. And then at last I shall receive my dismissal—or ask for it—and go to Sukabumi to live, to vegetate on a small pension. I feel everything in me longing for idleness....”

“You like your work, for all that; you’re a first-rate official. Eldersma always says that in India a man who doesn’t work and who doesn’t love his work is lost.”

“Your nature is not made for love and mine is not made for work: not for that and nothing else. I can work for an aim that I see before me, a beautiful aim; but I can’t work ... just for work’s sake and to fill the emptiness in my life.”

“Your aim is India....”

“A fine phrase,” he said. “It may be so for a man like the resident, who has succeeded in his career and who never has to sit studying the Colonial List and calculating on the illness of this man or the death of that ... so that he may get promoted. It’s all right for a man like Van Oudijck, who, in his genuine, honest idealism, thinks that his aim is India, not because of Holland, but because of India herself, because of the native whom he, the official, protects against the tyranny of the landlords and planters. I am more cynical by nature....”

“But don’t be so lukewarm about India. It’s not merely a fine phrase: I feel like that myself. India is our whole greatness, the greatness of us Hollanders. Listen to foreigners speaking of India: they are all enchanted with her glory, with our methods of colonization.... Don’t have anything to do with the wretched Dutch spirit of our people at home, who know nothing about India, who always have a sneering word for India, who are so petty and stiff and bourgeois and narrow-minded....”

“I didn’t know that you were so enthusiastic about India. Only yesterday you were full of wretched anxieties, and I was standing up for my country....”

“Oh, it gives me a sort of shudder, the mystery in the evenings, when something seems to threaten I don’t know what! I’m afraid of the future; there’s danger ahead of us!... I feel that I, personally, am still very remote from India, though I don’t want to be; that I miss the art amid which I was educated; that I miss here, in our everyday life, the plastic beauty which both my parents always pointed out to me.... But I am not unjust. And I think that India, as our colony, is great; I think that we, in our colony, are great....”

“Formerly, perhaps it was so. Nowadays, everything is going wrong; nowadays, we are no longer great. You have an artistic nature; you are always looking for artistic perfection in India, though you seldom find it. And then your mind is confronted with that greatness, that glory. That’s the poetry of it. The prose of it is a gigantic but exhausted colony, still governed from Holland with one idea: the pursuit of gain. The reality is not an India under a great ruler, but an India under a petty, mean-souled blood-sucker; the country sucked dry; and the real population—not the Hollander, who spends his Indian money at The Hague, but the population, the native population, attached to the native soil—oppressed by the disdain of its overlord, who once improved it with his own blood, and now threatening to revolt against this oppression and disdain.... You, as an artist, feel the danger approaching, vaguely, like a cloud in the sky, in the Indian night; I see the danger as something very real, something rising—before Holland—if not from America and Japan, then out of the soil of India herself....”

She smiled:

“I like you when you talk like this,” she said. “I should end by falling in with your views.”

“If I could achieve that by talking!” he laughed, bitterly, getting up. “My half hour is over: the resident is expecting me and he doesn’t like waiting a minute. Goodbye ... and forgive me.”

“Tell me,” she said, “am I a flirt?”

“No,” he replied. “You are what you are. And I can’t help it: I love you.... I am always stretching out my poor antennæ. That is my fate....”

“I shall help you to forget me,” said she, with affectionate conviction.

He gave a little laugh, bowed and went away. She saw him cross the road to the grounds of the resident’s house, where a messenger met him.

“Really life, when all is said, is one long self-deception, a wandering amid illusions,” she thought, sadly, drearily. “A great aim, an universal aim ... or even a modest aim for one’s self, for one’s own body and soul: O God, how little it all is! And how we roam about, knowing nothing! And each of us seeks his own little aim, his illusion. The only happy people are merely exceptions, like Léonie van Oudijck, who lives no more than a beautiful flower does, or a beautiful animal.”

Her child came toddling up to her, a pretty, fair-haired, plump little boy.

“Sonny,” she thought, “how will it be with you? What will be your portion? Oh, perhaps nothing new! Perhaps a repetition of what has so often been before. Life is a story which is always being repeated.... Oh, when we feel like this, how oppressive India can be!...”

She kissed her boy; her tears trickled over his fair curls.

“Van Oudijck has his residency; I my little circle of ... admirers and subjects; Frans his love ... for me: we all have our playthings, just like my little Onno playing with his little horse. How small we are, how small!... All our lives we make believe, pretending, imagining all sorts of things, thinking that we are giving a path or a direction to our poor, aimless little lives. Oh, why am I like this, sonny? Sonny, sonny, how will it be with you?”