Chapter Eleven
The Patjaram sugar-factory was fourteen miles from Labuwangi and twelve from Ngadjiwa and belonged to the half-Eurasian, half-Solo family of De Luce, a family who had once been millionaires, but were no longer so very well off, owing to the recent sugar-crisis, though they still supported a numerous household. This family, which always kept together—the old mother and grandmother, a Solo princess; the eldest son, the manager; three married daughters and their husbands, clerks in the factory, all living in its shadow; three younger sons employed in the factory; the many grandchildren, playing round and about the factory; the great-grandchildren springing up round and about the factory—this family maintained the old Indian traditions which, at one time universal, are now becoming rarer, thanks to the more frequent intercourse with Europeans. The mother and grandmother was the daughter of a Solo prince and had married a young and enterprising bohemian adventurer, Ferdinand de Luce, a member of a French titled family of Mauritius, who, after wandering about for many years in search of his place in the sun, had sailed to India as a ship’s steward, and, after all sorts of vicissitudes, had found himself stranded in Solo, where he achieved fame by means of a dish prepared with tomatoes and another consisting of stuffed chilies. Thanks to these recipes, Ferdinand de Luce won the favour of the Solo princess, whose hand he afterwards obtained, and even that of the old Susuhunan. After his marriage he became a landowner, and, according to the national usage, a vassal of the Susuhunan of Solo, whom he supplied daily with rice and fruits for the household of the palace. Then he had launched out into sugar, divining the millions which a lucky fate held in store for him. He had died before the crisis, laden with wealth and honours.
The old grandmother, in whom there was not a trace left of the young princess whom Ferdinand de Luce had wedded to promote his fortunes, was never approached by the servants or the Javanese staff save with a cringing reverence; and everybody gave her the title of Raden-aju pangéran. She did not speak a word of Dutch. Wrinkled like a shrivelled fruit, with her clouded eyes and her withered, betel-stained mouth, she was peacefully living her last years, always dressed in a dark silk kabaai, the neck and the light sleeves of which were fastened with precious stones. Before her sun-bitten gaze there hovered the vision of her former palace grandeur, which she had abandoned for love of that French nobleman-cook who had pandered to her father’s taste with his dainty recipes; in her ears buzzed the constant murmur of the centrifugal separators, like the thrashing of screw propellers, throughout the milling-season, which lasted for months on end; around her were her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren: the sons and daughters addressed as raden and raden-adjeng by the servants; all of them still surrounded by the pale halo of their Solo descent. The eldest daughter was married to a full-blooded, fair-haired Dutchman; the son who followed her to an Armenian girl; the two others were married to Eurasians, both brown; and their brown children—who were also married and also had children—mingled with the fair-haired family of the eldest daughter; and the pride of the whole family was the youngest son and brother, Adrien, or Addie, who made love to Doddie van Oudijck and who was constantly at Labuwangi, the busy milling-season notwithstanding.
In this family, traditions were still maintained, now quite obsolete, such as people remembered in the Indian families of long ago. Here you still saw, in the grounds, in the back verandah, the numberless babus,1 one grinding rice into a fine face-powder, another preparing incense, another pounding diverse condiments, all with dreamy eyes, all with slender, nimbly-moving fingers. Here the habit still prevailed of an endless array of dishes at lunch, with a long row of servants, one after the other, solemnly handing round one more vegetable, one more sauce, one more dish of chicken, while, squatting behind the ladies, the babus pounded each a different condiment in an earthenware mortar, according to the several tastes and requirements of the sated palates. Here it was still the custom, when the family attended the races at Ngadjiwa, for each of the ladies to appear followed by a babu, moving slowly, lithely, solemnly; one babu carrying a betel-pot, another a bonbonnière filled with peppermints, or a pair of race-glasses, or a fan, or a scent-bottle; the whole resembling a ceremonial procession bearing the insignia of state. Here, too, you still found the old-fashioned hospitality: the row of spare-rooms open to any one who cared to knock; here all could stay as long as they pleased; no one was asked the object of his journey or the date of his departure. A great simplicity of mind, an all-embracing, spontaneous, innate cordiality prevailed, together with an unbounded weariness and tedium, a life of no ideas and but few words, the ready, gentle smile making good the lack of both; a material life, full and sated: a life of cool drinks and native pastry and fruit-salad handed round all day, three babus being specially appointed to make fruit-salad and pastry. Any number of animals were scattered over the estate: there was a cage full of monkeys; a few lories; dogs, cats, some tame squirrels and an exquisite little dwarf deer, which ran about loose. The house, built on to the factory, quaking all through the milling-season with the noise of machinery—like the throbs of screw propellers—was spacious and furnished with the old, old-fashioned furniture: the low wooden bedsteads with four carved bed-posts hung with curtains; the heavy-legged tables; the rocking-chairs with peculiarly round backs: all things which are now no longer obtainable; nothing that betrayed the least touch of modernity, except—and this only during the milling-season—the electric light in the front verandah! The occupants were always in indoor dress: the men in white or blue-and-white striped pyjamas; the ladies in sarong and kabaai, toying with a monkey or a lory or a doe, in simplicity of mind, with ever the same pleasant jest, drawling and drowsy, and the same gentle little laugh. The passions, which were certainly there, slumbered in that gentle smile. Then, when the milling-season was over; when all the bustle was over; when the files of sugar-carts, drawn by the superb oxen, with glossy brown hides, had brought an ever-increasing store of canes over the fibre-covered road, which was cut to pieces by the broad cart-ruts; when the seed had been bought for next year and the machines were stopped: then came the sudden relaxation after the incessant labour, the long, long holiday, the many months’ rest, the craving for festivity and enjoyment; the big dinner given by the lady of the house, followed by a ball and tableaux-vivants; the whole house full of visitors, who stayed on and on, known and unknown; the old, wrinkled grandmamma, the landowner, the raden-aju, Mrs. de Luce, whatever you liked to call her, always amiable, with her dull eyes and her betel-stained mouth, amiable to one and all, with always an anak-mas, a “golden child,” a poor little adopted princess at her heels, carrying a gold betel-box behind the great princess from Solo: a slender little woman of eight years old, her front hair cut into a fringe, her forehead whitened with moist rice-powder, her already rounded little breasts confined in the little pink silk kabaai, with the miniature gold sarong round the slender hips; a doll, a toy for the raden-aju, for Mrs. de Luce, for the Dowager de Luce. And for the compounds there were the popular rejoicings, a time-honoured lavishness, in which all Patjaram shared, according to the age-old tradition which was always observed, despite any crisis or unrest.
The milling-season and the rejoicings were now over. There was comparative peace indoors; and a languorous Indian calm had set in. But Mrs. van Oudijck, Theo and Doddie had come over for the festivities and were staying on a few days longer at Patjaram. A great circle of people sat round the marble table covered with glasses of syrup, lemonade and whisky-and-soda; they did not speak much, but rocked luxuriously, exchanging an occasional word. Mrs. de Luce and Mrs. van Oudijck spoke Malay, but were not talkative. A gentle, good-humoured boredom drifted down on all these rocking people. It was strange to see the different types: the pretty, milk-white Léonie beside the yellow, wrinkled raden-aju-dowager; Theo, pale and fair as a Dutchman, with his full, sensual lips, which he inherited from his half-caste mother; Doddie, already looking like a ripe rose, with the sparkling irises and black pupils of her black eyes; the manager’s son, Achille de Luce, brown, tall and stout, whose thoughts ran only on his machinery and his seed; the second son, Roger, brown, short and thin, the book-keeper, whose thoughts ran only on the year’s profits, with his little Armenian wife; the eldest daughter, old already, brown, stupidly ugly, with her full-blooded Dutch husband, who looked like a peasant; the other sons and daughters, in every shade of brown, not easily to be distinguished one from the other; around them the children, the grandchildren, the little, golden-skinned adopted children, the babus, the lories and the dwarf deer; and over all these people and children and animals, as though shaken down upon them, lay a good-hearted solidarity; and over all these people there also lay a common pride in their Solo ancestors, crowning all their heads with a pale halo of Javanese aristocracy; and the Armenian daughter-in-law and the bucolic Dutch son-in-law were not least proud of this descent.
The liveliest of all these elements, which were melting into one another, as it were, through long communal life under the patriarchal roofs, was the youngest son, Adrien de Luce, Addie, in whom the blood of the Solo princess and that of the French adventurer had blended harmoniously. The admixture, it is true, had given him no brains, but it had given him the physical beauty of a young Eurasian, with something of the Moor about it, something southern and seductive, something Spanish, as though in this last child the two alien racial elements had for the first time mingled harmoniously, for the first time been wedded in absolute mutual sympathy; as though in him, this last child after so many children, adventurer and princess had for the first time met in harmony. Addie seemed to possess not a jot of intellect or imagination; he was unable to unite two ideas into one composite thought; he merely felt, with the vague good-nature which had descended upon the whole family. For the rest, he was like a beautiful animal, degenerating in soul and brain, but degenerating into nothing, to a great nullity, to one great emptiness, while his body was like a renewal of his race, full of strength and beauty, while his marrow and his blood and his flesh and his muscles were all one harmony of physical seductiveness, so purely, stupidly, beautifully sensual that its harmony had for a woman an immediate appeal. The lad had but to appear, like a beautiful, southern god, for all the women to look at him and take him into the depths of their imagination, to recall him to their minds again and again; the lad had but to go to a race-ball at Ngadjiwa for all the girls to fall in love with him. He plucked love where he found it, in plenty, in the Patjaram compounds. And everything feminine was in love with him, from his mother to his little nieces. Doddie van Oudijck was infatuated with him. From a child of seven she had been in love, a hundred times and more, with every one who passed before the glance of her flashing pupils, but never yet as with Addie. Her love shone so strongly from her whole being that it was like a flame, that everybody saw it and smiled. The milling-feast had been to her one long delight ... when she danced with him; one long martyrdom ... when he danced with others. He had not asked her to marry him, but she thought of asking him and was prepared to die if he refused. She knew that the resident, her father, would object: he did not like those De Luces, that Solo-French crew, as he called them; but, if Addie was willing, her father would consent, rather than see her die. To this child of love that lovable lad was the world, the universe, life itself. He made love to her, he kissed her on the lips, but this was no more than he did to others, unthinkingly; he kissed other girls as well. And, if he could, he went further, like a devastating young god, an unthinking god. But he still stood more or less in awe of the resident’s daughter. He possessed neither pluck nor effrontery; his passions were not markedly selective; he looked on a woman as a woman and was so much sated with conquest that obstacles did not stimulate him. His garden was full of flowers which all lifted themselves up to him; he stretched out his hand, almost without looking; he merely plucked.
As they sat rocking about the table they saw him come through the garden; and the eyes of all these women turned to him as to a young tempter, arriving in the sunshine, which touched him as with a halo. The raden-aju dowager smiled and gazed at him, enamoured of her son, her favourite; squatting on the ground behind her, the little golden adopted child stared with wide-open eyes; the sisters looked out, the little nieces looked out, and Doddie turned pale and Léonie van Oudijck’s milky whiteness became tinged with a rosy shade which mingled with the glamour of her smile. She glanced at Theo mechanically; their eyes met. And these souls of sheer love, love of the eyes, of the lips, love of the glowing flesh, understood each other; and Theo’s jealousy of Léonie blazed so fiercely that the rosy shade died away and she became pale and fearful, with a sudden, unreasoning fear which shuddered through her usual indifference, while the tempter, in his halo of sunshine, came nearer and nearer....
1 Maid-servants.
Chapter Twelve
Mrs. van Oudijck had promised to stay at Patjaram a few days longer; and she disliked the prospect, really not feeling quite at home in these old-fashioned Indian surroundings. But when Addie appeared she thought better of it. In the deepest secrecy of her heart this woman worshipped her sensuality, as in the temple of her egoism: here the milk-white creole offered up all the most intimate dreams of her rosy imagination and unquenchable longing; and in this cult she had achieved as it were an art, a knowledge, a science, that of deciding, for herself, at a glance, what it was that attracted her in the man who approached her, in the man who passed her by. In one it was his bearing, his voice; in another it was the set of his neck on his shoulders; in a third it was the way his hand rested on his knee; but, whatever it was, she saw it directly, at a glance; she knew it immediately, in an instant; she had judged the passer-by in an indivisible moment; and she at once knew those whom she rejected—they were the majority—and those whom she approved—they were many. And the few whom she rejected in that indivisible moment of her supreme judgement, with that single glance, in that single instant, need cherish no hope: she, the priestess, did not admit them to the temple. To the others, the temple was open, but only behind the curtain of her conventionality. However shameless, she was always correct, her love was always secret; to the world, she was nothing but the charming, smiling wife of the resident, a little indolent in her ways, but winning everybody with her smile. When people did not see her, they spoke ill of her; when they saw her, she conquered them at once. Among all of those with whom she shared the secret of her love there reigned a certain freemasonry, a mystery of worship; scarcely, when two of them met, would they whisper a word or two, at a similar recollection. And Léonie could sit smiling, milk-white, tranquil, in the great circle, around the marble table, with at least two or three men who knew her secret. It did not disturb her tranquillity nor mar her smile. She smiled to the pitch of boredom. Scarcely would her glance glide from one to the other, while she judged them once again, with her infallible knack of judgement. Scarcely would the memories of past hours rise hazily within her, scarcely would she think of the assignation for the following day. The secret lay wholly in the mystery of the meeting and indeed was never uttered before the profane world. If a foot in the circle sought to touch her foot, she drew hers away. She never flirted; she was even sometimes a little tedious, stiff, correct, smiling. In the freemasonry between herself and the initiated she disclosed the mystery; but, before the world, in the circles about the marble tables, she vouchsafed not a glance, not a pressure of the hand or knee.
She had been bored during these days at Patjaram, for which she had accepted the invitation to the milling-feast because she had refused it in past years; but now that she saw Addie approaching she was bored no longer. Of course she had known him for years; and she had seen him grow from a child into a boy, into a man; and she had kissed him even as a boy. She had long ago judged him, the tempter. But now, as he came forward with his halo of sunshine, she judged him once more: his comely, slender animalism and the glow of his tempter’s eyes in the dusky brown of his young Moorish face; the pouting curves of his lips, formed for kissing, with the young down of his moustache; the tigerish strength and litheness of limbs which Don Juan might have envied: it all dazzled her, made her blink her eyes. As he greeted his mother’s visitors and sat down, a volley of wordy gaiety ran round that circle of languid conversation and drowsy thoughts, as though he were casting a handful of his sunshine, of the gold-dust of his temptation over them all, over all those women, mother and sisters and nieces and Doddie and Léonie van Oudijck. Léonie looked at him, as they all looked at him, and her glance fell upon his hands. She could have kissed those hands of his; she suddenly became smitten with the shape of his fingers, with the brown, tigerish strength of the hands themselves: she suddenly became smitten with all the young wild-animal vigour which breathed like a fragrance of manhood from the whole of his boyish frame. She felt her blood throbbing, almost uncontrollably, despite her great art of remaining cool and correct in the circles around the marble tables. But she was no longer bored. She had found an object to fill the next few days. Only ... her blood throbbed so violently that Theo had noticed her blush and the quivering of her eyelids. Enamoured of her as he was, his eyes had penetrated her soul. And, when they rose to go to lunch in the back verandah, where the babus had been squatting, grinding everybody’s different admixture of spices with pestles, in little stone mortars, he whispered two words between his teeth:
“Take care!”
She started; she felt that he was threatening her. This had never happened before: all who had shared in the mystery had always respected her. She started so violently, she was so indignant at this wrenching away of the temple-curtain, in a verandah full of people, that her tranquil indifference seethed with anger and she was roused to rebellion in her ever-serene self-mastery. But she looked at him and she saw him broad and tall and fair, a younger edition of her husband, his Indian blood showing only in his sensuous mouth; and she did not want to lose him: she wanted to preserve his type beside the type of the Moorish tempter. She wanted them both; she wanted to taste the different charm of their respective types, that white-skinned Dutch type, so very slightly Indian, and Addie’s wild-animal type. Her soul quivered, her blood thrilled, while the long array of dishes was solemnly handed round. She was in a revolt such as she had never experienced before. The awakening from her placid indifference was like a rebirth, like an unknown emotion. She was surprised to remember that she, at thirty, was feeling for the first time. A feverish depravity blossomed up within her, as though bursting into heady crimson flowers. She looked at Doddie, sitting beside Addie: the poor child, glowing with love, was hardly able to eat.... Oh, the tempter, who had only to appear!... And Léonie, in this fever of depravity, rejoiced at being the rival of a step-daughter so many years younger than herself. She would look after her; she would even warn Van Oudijck. Would it ever come to a match? What did she care: what harm could marriage do to her, Léonie? Oh, the tempter! Never had she dreamt of him thus, the supreme lover, in her rosy hours of siesta! This was no charm of little cherubs; this was the stark radiance of tigerish enchantment: the golden glitter of his eyes, the sinewy litheness of his stealthy paw.... And she smiled at Theo, with just one glance of self-surrender, a very exceptional thing at the luncheon-table. As a rule she gave nothing of herself in public. Now she surrendered herself, for a moment, pleased by his jealousy. She was madly fond of him too. She thought it delightful, that he should look pale and angry with jealousy. And round about her the afternoon was one blaze of sunlight and the hot spices stung her dry palate. Faint beads of perspiration stood on her forehead and trickled down her bosom under the lace of her kabaai. And she would fain have clasped them both, Theo and Addie, in one embrace, in one blending of different lusts, pressing them both to her amorous woman’s body....
Chapter Thirteen
The night was like a veil of softest velvet dropping slowly from the heavens. The moon, in its first quarter, displayed a very narrow, horizontal sickle, like a Turkish crescent, between whose points the unlit portion of the disk was faintly washed in against the sky. A long avenue of tjemara-trees stretched in front of the house, their trunks straight, their leafage like drawn plush or ravelled velvet, showing like blots of cotton-wool against the clouds, which, drifting low, announced the approaching rainy monsoon fully a month beforehand. Wood-pigeons cooed at intervals and a gecko was calling, first with two rattling, preliminary notes, as though tuning up, then with his call of “Tokkè! Tokkè!” four or five times repeated: first loudly, then submissively and more faintly.
A night watchman, in his hut in front of the house, on the high-road, where the sleeping market-place now showed its empty stalls, struck eleven blows on his hollow block of wood; and as yet one more belated cart drove past, he cried, in a hoarse voice:
“Who goes there?”
The night was like softest velvet dropping slowly from the heavens, like a whirling mystery, like an oppressive menace of the future. But, in that mystery, under the frayed black blots, the ravelled plush of the tjemaras, there was an inexorable incitement to love, in the windless night, like a whisper that this hour should not be wasted.... True, the gecko was gibing like a mocking imp, with a sort of dry humour; and the watchman, with his “Who goes there?” startled the hearer; but the wood-pigeons cooed softly and the whole night was like a world of softest velvet, like a great alcove curtained by the plush of the tjemaras, while the distant, sultry rain-clouds, hanging all that month on the horizon, ringed the skies with an oppressive spell. Mystery and enchantment hovered through the velvety night, drifting down in the twilit alcove; and at their touch all thought was dissolved; the very soul dissolved, leaving only a warm, sensuous vision....
The gecko fell silent, the watchman dropped asleep; the velvety night reigned like an enchantress crowned with the sickle of the moon. They came walking slowly, two youthful figures, their arms about each other’s waists, lips seeking lips under the tyranny of the enchantment. They were as shadows under the drawn velvet of the tjemaras; and softly, in their white garments, they dawned on the beholder like an eternal pair of lovers who are forever and everywhere repeating themselves. And here above all were lovers inevitable, in this enchanted night, were one with the night, conjured up by the all-powerful spell; here they were inevitable, unfolding like a twin flower of predestined love, in the velvet mystery of the compelling heavens.
And the tempter seemed to be the son of that night, the son of that inexorable queen of the night, bearing with him the yielding girl. In her ears the night seemed to sing with his voice; and her small soul melted in tender compliance, under these magic powers. She walked on against his side, feeling the warmth of his body sinking into her yearning maidenhood; and she lifted her brimming gaze to him, with the languid light of her sparkling pupils glittering like diamonds in her eyes. He, drunk with the power of the night, the enchantress, who was as his mother, thought first of leading her still farther, no longer conscious of reality, no longer feeling any awe of her or of any one whatever; thought of leading her still farther, past the slumbering watchman, across the high road, into the compound, which lay hidden yonder between the stately plumes of the coco-palms that would form a canopy to their love; of leading her to a hiding-place, a house which he knew, a bamboo hut the door of which would be opened to him ... when suddenly she stopped ... and started ... and gripped his arm and pressed herself still more tightly against him and implored him to go no farther. She was frightened.
“Why not?” he asked, gently, in his soft voice, which was as deep and velvety as the night. “Why not to-night, to-night at last?... There is no danger.”
But she shuddered and shook and entreated:
“Addie, Addie, no ... no.... I daren’t go any farther.... I’m frightened that the watchman will see us ... and then ... there’s a hadji walking over there ... in a white turban....”
He looked out at the road: on the farther side the kampong lay waiting, under the canopy of the coco-palms, with the bamboo hut whose door would be opened to him.
“A hadji?... Where, Doddie? I don’t see any one....”
“He crossed the road; he looked back at us; he saw us: I saw his eyes gleaming; and he went into the compound, behind those trees.”
“Darling, I saw nothing, there’s no one there.”
“Yes, there is! Yes, there is! Addie, I daren’t go: oh, do let us go back!”
His handsome Moorish face became overcast; he already saw the door of the little hut opened by the old woman whom he knew, who worshipped him as every woman worshipped him, from his mother to his little nieces.
And he again tried to persuade her, but she refused, stood still, and clung to the ground with her little feet. Then they turned back and the clouds were sultrier, low on the horizon, and the velvety darkness fell more thickly, like warm snow, and the ravelled tjemaras were fuller and blacker than before. The house loomed up before them, sunk in sleep, with not a light showing. And he entreated her, he implored her not to leave him that night, saying that he would die, that night, without her.... Already she was yielding, promising, with her arms around his neck ... when again she started and again cried:
“Addie! Addie!... There he is again!... That white figure!...”
“But you seem to see hadjis everywhere!” he said, banteringly.
“Look for yourself then ... over there!”
He looked, and now really saw a white figure approaching them in the front-verandah. But it was a woman.
“Mamma!” cried Doddie, in dismay.
It was indeed Léonie, slowly coming towards them:
“Doddie,” she said, gently, “I have been hunting for you everywhere. I was so frightened, I didn’t know where you were. Why do you go out walking so late? Addie,” she continued gently, in kind, motherly tones, as though addressing two children, “how can you behave like this and be out with Doddie so late? You really mustn’t do it again: I mean it! I know that there’s nothing in it; but suppose any one saw you! You must promise me never to do it again! You’ll promise, won’t you?”
She begged this prettily, in tones of engaging reproach, as though to show that she quite understood him, quite realized that they were yearning for each other in that velvet night of enchantment, forgiving them at once in the words which she uttered. She looked like an angel, with her round, white face in the loose, waving, fair hair, in the white silk kimono which hung round her in supple folds. And she drew Doddie to her and kissed the girl and wiped away her tears. And then, gently, she pushed Doddie before her, to her room in the annexe, where she slept safely amidst so many other rooms full of the daughters and grandchildren of old Mrs. de Luce. And, while Doddie, softly crying, went to the solitude of her room, Léonie continued to speak words of gentle reproach to Addie, warning him, prettily now, as a sister might do, while he, brown and handsome, with his Moorish look, stood before her, bantering yet embarrassed. They were in the dusk of the dark front verandah; and the night outside exhaled its inexorable breath of luxuriance, love and velvety mystery. And she reproached him and warned him and said that Doddie was a child and that he mustn’t take advantage of her. He shrugged his shoulders, defended himself, in his bantering manner. His words fell upon her like gold-dust, while his eyes glittered like a tiger’s. As she argued persuasively that he must really spare Doddie in the future, she seized his hand, that hand of which she was enamoured, his fingers, his palm, which she could have kissed that morning in her confusion; and she pressed it and almost cried and implored him to have mercy on Doddie.... He suddenly realized it, he looked at her suddenly with the lightning of his wild-animal glance and he found her beautiful, was aware of her as a woman, white as milk, and he knew her for a priestess full of secret knowledge. And he too spoke of Doddie, coming closer to Léonie, touching her, pressing her hands between his two hands, giving her to understand that he understood. And, still pretending to weep and entreat and implore, she led him on and opened the door of her room. He saw a faint light and her maid, Oorip, who disappeared through the outer door and lay down to sleep there, like a faithful dog, on a little mat. Then she gave him a laugh of welcome; and he, the tempter, was amazed at the glowing laugh of this white, fair-haired temptress, who flung off her silken kimono and stood before him, like a nude statue, spreading out her arms....
Oorip, outside, listened for a moment. And she was about to lie down to sleep, smiling, dreaming of the lovely sarongs which the mem sahib would give her to-morrow, when she started as she saw walking through the grounds and disappearing in the night a hadji in a white turban....
Chapter Fourteen
That day the Regent of Ngadjiwa, Sunario’s younger brother, was to pay a visit at Patjaram, because Mrs. van Oudijck was leaving on the following day. They sat waiting for him in the front verandah, rocking about the marble table, when his carriage came rattling down the long avenue of tjemaras. They all stood up. And now it appeared more plainly than ever how highly respected the old raden-aju, the dowager, was, how closely related to the Susuhunan himself, for the regent alighted and, without taking another step, squatted on the lowest stair of the verandah and salaamed respectfully, while behind his back a retainer, holding up the closed gold-and-white umbrella like a furled sun, made himself still smaller and shrank together in self-annihilation. And the old woman, the Solo princess, who once more saw the palace gleaming before her, went to meet him and welcomed him with all the courtesy of palace Javanese, the language spoken among princely equals, till the regent rose and, following her, approached the family circle. And the manner in which he then, for the first time, bowed to the wife of his resident, however polite, was almost condescending, compared with his obsequiousness of a moment ago.... He now sat down between Mrs. de Luce and Mrs. van Oudijck; and a drawling conversation began. The Regent of Ngadjiwa was a different type from his brother Sunario; taller, coarser, without the other’s look of a marionette in a puppet-show; though younger, he looked the older of the two, with his eyes seared with passion: the passion for women, and wine, the passion for opium, the passion, above all, for gambling. And a silent thought seemed to flash up in that listless, drawling conversation, with few words and no ideas, ever and again interrupted by the courtly “Saja, saja,” behind which they all concealed their secret longing.... They spoke Malay because Mrs. van Oudijck did not dare to speak Javanese, that refined, difficult language, full of shades of etiquette, on which hardly a single Hollander ventures when speaking to Javanese persons of rank. They spoke little; they rocked gently; a vague, courteous smile showed that all were taking part in the conversation, though only Mrs. de Luce and the Regent exchanged an occasional word.... Until at last the De Luces—the old mother, her son Roger, her brown daughters-in-law—were no longer able to restrain themselves, even in Mrs. van Oudijck’s presence, and laughed shyly while drinks and cakes were being handed round; until, notwithstanding their courtesy, they rapidly consulted one another, over Léonie’s head, in a few words of Javanese; until the old mother, no longer mistress of herself, at last asked her whether she would mind if they had a little game of cards. And they all looked at her, the wife of the resident, the wife of the high official who, they knew, hated the gambling which was ruining them, which was destroying the grandeur of the Javanese families whom he wished to uphold in spite of themselves. But she was too indifferent to think of preventing them with a single word of tactful jest, for her husband’s sake; she, the slave of her own passion, allowed them to be the slave of theirs, in the luxury of their enslavement. She merely smiled and readily permitted the players to withdraw to the twilight of the spacious, oblong inner gallery, the ladies counting their money into their handkerchiefs, alternating with the men, until they were sitting close together, and, with their eyes on the cards or spying into one another’s eyes, gambled and gambled endlessly, winning, losing, paying or receiving, just opening and closing the handkerchiefs containing the money, with never a word nor a sound but the faint rustle of the cards in the twilight of the inner room. What game were they playing? Léonie did not know, did not care, indifferent to their passion and glad that Addie had remained beside her and that Theo was glaring at him jealously. Did he know, did he suspect anything? Would Oorip always hold her tongue? She enjoyed the emotion and she wanted them both; she wanted both white and brown; and the fact that Doddie was sitting on the other side of Addie and almost swooning as she rocked to and fro afforded her an acute and wicked delight. What else was there in life but to yield to one’s luxurious cravings? She had no ambition and was indifferent to her exalted station; she, the first woman in the residency, who delegated all her duties to Eva Eldersma, who was quite unmoved when hundreds of people, at the receptions at Labuwangi, Ngadjiwa and elsewhere, greeted her with a ceremony not far short of royal honours, who, in her rosy, perverse day-dreams, with a novel by Catulle Mendès in her hands, silently laughed at the exaggerated ideas that ruled up-country, where the wife of a resident is treated as a queen. She had no other ambition than to be loved by the men whom she selected, no other emotional life than the worship of her body, like an Aphrodite who chose to be her own priestess. What did she care if they played cards in there, if the Regent of Ngadjiwa was ruining himself! On the contrary, she thought it interesting to read that ruin on his seamed face; and she would take care to be even more carefully groomed, to let Oorip massage her face and limbs, to make Oorip prepare even more of the white moist rice-powder, the wonderful cream, the magic salve of which Oorip knew the secret and which kept her flesh firm and unwrinkled and white as a mangosteen. She thought it exciting to see the Regent of Ngadjiwa burning away like a candle, foolishly, brutalized by women, wine, opium and cards; perhaps most of all by cards; by that bewildered glaring at them; by high play, and the calculation of chances which defied calculation, superstitiously reckoning by sacred omens the day and the hour when he should play in order to win, the number of the players, the amount of his stake.... Now and then she took a furtive glance at the faces of the players in the inner gallery, darkened by twilight and the lust of gain, and reflected on what Van Oudijck would say, how angry he would be if she told him about it.... What did it matter to him if the regent’s family ruined themselves? What did his policy matter to her, what did the whole Dutch policy matter, which aims at securing the position of the Javanese nobility, through whom it governs the population? What did it matter to her that Van Oudijck, thinking of the noble old pangéran, was grieved by his children’s visible decline? None of it mattered to her; what mattered was only herself and Addie and Theo. She must really tell her step-son, her fair-haired lover, that afternoon, not to be so jealous. It was becoming obvious; she was sure that Doddie noticed it.... Didn’t she save the poor child yesterday? But how long would that yearning last? Hadn’t she better warn Van Oudijck, like a kind, solicitous mother?... Her thoughts wandered languidly; it was a sultry morning, in those last, scorching days of the eastern monsoon, which cover the limbs with trickling moisture. A shiver ran through her body; and, leaving Doddie with Addie, she carried Theo off and reproached him for looking so savage with impotent jealousy. She pretended to be a little angry and asked him what he wanted.
They had gone to the side of the house, to the long side-verandah; there were monkeys here in a cage, with skins strewn all around from the bananas which the animals had eaten, fed to them by the children.
The luncheon-gong had already sounded twice; the babus were squatting in the back-verandah, pounding everybody’s spices. But the people around the card-table seemed to hear nothing. Only the whispering voices became louder and shriller, so that Léonie and Theo, as well as Addie and Doddie, pricked up their ears. A dispute seemed suddenly to break out between Roger and the regent, notwithstanding Mrs. de Luce’s attempts to hush it. They spoke Javanese, but they let all courtesy go to the winds. Like two coolies, they abused each other for cheats, constantly interrupted by the soothing efforts of old Mrs. de Luce, supported by her daughters and daughters-in-law. But the chairs were roughly thrust back; a glass was broken. Roger seemed to dash his cards down in anger. All the women in the inner room took part in the soothing process, their voices raised, or muffled, or whispering, with little outcries, little shrieks of apology and indignation. The servants, innumerable, were listening in every corner of the house. Then the dispute abated, but long, explanatory arguments still continued between the regent and Roger; the women tried to hush them down—“Ssh!... Ssh!”—embarrassed because of the resident’s wife, looking out to see where she might be. And at last all was quiet and they sat down in silence, hoping that not too much of the dispute had reached her ears. Until at length, very late—it was almost three o’clock—old Mrs. de Luce, with the gambling-passion still blazing in her dim eyes, summoning all her distinction and her princely prestige, went to the verandah and, as though nothing had happened, asked Mrs. van Oudijck if she would not come in to lunch.
Chapter Fifteen
Yes, Theo knew. He had spoken to Oorip after lunch; and although the maid had at first tried to deny everything, afraid of losing the sarongs, she had been unable to continue lying and had contented herself with feeble little protests of “no ... no.”... And, still early that same afternoon, raging with jealousy, he sought out Addie. But Theo was calmed by the indifferent composure of the good-looking youth, with his Moorish face, already so fully sated with his conquests that he himself never felt any jealousy. Theo was calmed by the complete absence of thought in this tempter, who at once forgot everything after an hour of love; forgot so gracefully that he looked up with eyes of ingenuous surprise when Theo, red and boiling with fury, burst into his room and, standing before his bed—where he was lying quite naked, as was his habit during his siesta, with the magnificence of a bronze statue, sublime as an ancient sculpture—declared that he would strike him across the face. And Addie’s surprise was so artless, his indifference so harmonious, he seemed to have so utterly forgotten his hour of love of the night before, he laughed so serenely at the idea of fighting about a woman that Theo quieted down and came and sat on the edge of his bed. And then Addie, who was a couple of years younger but possessed incomparable experience, told him that he really mustn’t do it again—get so angry about a woman, a mistress who gave herself to another. And Addie patted him on the shoulder with almost fatherly compassion; and now, since they understood each other, they went on confidentially pumping one another as they chatted.
They exchanged further confidences, about women, about girls. Theo asked if Addie was going to marry Doddie. But Addie said that he wasn’t thinking of marrying and that the resident wouldn’t be willing either, because he didn’t care for Addie’s family and thought them too Indian. Then, in a single word, he let slip his pride in his Solo descent and his pride in the halo which shone dimly behind the heads of all the De Luces. And Addie asked if Theo knew that he had a young brother running wild in the compound. Theo knew nothing about it. But Addie assured him that it was so: a young son of papa’s, mark you, from the time when the governor was still controller at Ngadjiwa; a fellow of their own age, a regular Eurasian: the mother was dead. Perhaps the old man himself didn’t know that he still had a son in the compound, but it was true; everybody knew it: the regent knew, the native councillor knew, the head of the district knew, and the meanest coolie knew. There was no actual proof; but a thing like that, which was known the whole world over, was as true as that the world itself existed.... What did the fellow do? Nothing, except curse and swear, declaring that he was a son of the kandjeng tuan residèn, who allowed him to rot in the compound.... What did he live on? On nothing, on what he got by shameless begging, on what people gave him and then ... by all sorts of practices: by going round the districts, through all the villages, and asking if there were any complaints and then drawing up little petitions; by encouraging people to go to Mecca and let him book their passages with very cheap little steamship-companies of which he was the unofficial agent: he would go to the remotest village and display coloured posters representing a steamer full of Mecca pilgrims and the Kaaba and the Sacred Tomb of Mohammed. He would mess around like this, sometimes mixed up in rows, once in a robbery, sometimes dressed in a sarong, sometimes in an old striped calico suit; and he slept anywhere. And, when Theo showed surprise and said that he had never heard of this half-brother of his and expressed curiosity, Addie suggested that they should go and look him up, if he was to be found in the compound. And Addie gaily and quickly took his bath and put on a clean white suit; and they went across the road and along the rice-fields into the compound.
It was already dusk under the heavy trees: the bananas lifted the cool green paddles of their leaves; and under the stately canopy of the coco-palms the little bamboo houses hid, romantically Oriental, idyllic, with their palm-leaf roofs, their doors often already closed, or, if open, framing a little black inward vista, with the vague outline of a bench on which squatted a dark figure. The scabby, hairless dogs barked; the children, naked, with bells dangling from their stomachs, ran indoors and stared out of the houses; the women kept quiet, recognizing the tempter and vaguely laughing, blinking their eyes as he passed in his glory. And Addie pointed to the little house where his old babu lived, Tidjem, the woman who helped him, who always opened her door to him when he wanted the use of her hut, who worshipped him as his mother and his sisters and his little nieces worshipped him. He showed Theo the house and thought of his walk last night with Doddie under the tjemaras. Tidjem the babu saw him and ran up to him delightedly. She squatted down beside him, she pressed his leg against her withered breast, she rubbed her forehead against his knee, she kissed his white shoe, she gazed at him in rapture, her beautiful prince, her raden, whom she had rocked as a little chubby boy in her already infatuated arms. He tapped her on the shoulder and gave her a rix-dollar and asked her if she knew where Si-Oudijck was, because his brother wished to see him.
Tidjem stood up and beckoned to him to follow: it was some way to walk. And they stepped out of the compound into an open road with rails along it, by which the bamboo baskets filled with sugar were removed to the proas that lay moored at a landing-stage yonder, in the Brantas. The sun was going down in a fan-shaped glory of orange sheaves; and the distant rows of trees that outlined the paddy-fields were washed in with dark, soft, velvety touches against their arrogant glow. These fields were not yet planted, but their dark, earth-coloured expanse lay as broken by the plough. From the factory came a few men and women, making their way home. Beside the river, by the landing-stage, a small market of portable kitchens had been set up under a sacred, five-fold banyan-tree, with its five trunks merging into one another and its wide-spreading roots. Tidjem called the ferry-man and he put them across, across the orange Brantas, amidst the last yellow rays of the sun, outspread fanwise like a peacock’s tail. When they were on the other bank, the night fell over everything, like the hasty fall of a gauze curtain; and the clouds, which all through November had threatened the low horizons, hung oppressively on the sultry air. And they entered another compound, lit here and there by a paraffin-lamp, set down on the ground, with a long lamp-glass but no globe. At last they came to a little house, built partly of bamboo, partly of old packing-cases, and roofed partly with tiles, partly with palm-leaves. Tidjem pointed to it and, once more squatting on the ground and embracing and kissing Addie’s knee, asked permission to depart. Addie knocked at the door; a grumbling and rumbling within was the only answer; but, when Addie called out, the door was kicked open and the two young men stepped into the one room of which the hut consisted: half bamboo, half deal boards from packing-cases; a couch with a couple of dirty pillows in a corner, and a limp chintz curtain dangling in front of it; a crazy table with a chair or two; on the table, a paraffin-lamp without a globe; and a litter of oddments stacked on a packing-case in a corner. Everything was permeated with an acrid odour of opium.
And Si-Oudijck was sitting at the table with an Arab, while a Javanese woman squatted on the couch, preparing a leaf of betel for herself. A few sheets of paper lay on the table between the Arab and the young half-caste. The last-named, evidently annoyed by the unexpected visit, hurriedly crumpled the papers together. But he recovered his composure and, assuming a jovial air, cried:
“Hullo, Adipati! Susuhunan! Sultan of Patjaram! Sugar-lord! How are you, my god of beauty, the ruin of all good women?”
His jovial torrent of greetings continued without ceasing, while he scrambled the papers together and made a sign to the Arab, who disappeared through the other door, at the back.
“And who’s that with you, Raden Mas Adrianus, my bonnie Lucius?”
“It’s your little brother,” said Addie.
Si-Oudijck looked up suddenly:
“Oh, is it really?” said he, speaking broken Dutch, Javanese and Malay in the same breath. “I can see it is: my legitimate one. And what does the fellow want?”
“He’s come to see what you’re like.”
The two brothers looked at each other: Theo inquisitively, rejoicing at having made this discovery, as a weapon against the old man, if the weapon ever became necessary; the other, Si-Oudijck, secretly restraining, behind his brown, crafty, leering face, all his jealousy, all his bitterness and hatred.
“Is this where you live?” asked Theo, for the sake of saying something.
“No, I’m just staying with her for the time being,” replied Si-Oudijck, with a jerk of his head towards the woman.
“Has your mother been dead long?”
“Yes. Yours is still alive, isn’t she? She lives in Batavia. I know her. Do you ever see her?”
“No.”
“H’m.... Prefer your step-mother?”
“Pretty well,” said Theo, drily. And, changing the subject, “I don’t believe the old man knows that you exist.”
“Yes, he does.”
“I doubt it. Have you ever spoken to him?”
“Yes, formerly. Years ago.”
“Well?”
“No use. He says I’m not his son.”
“It must be difficult to prove.”
“Legally, yes. But it’s a fact and everybody knows it. It’s known all over Ngadjiwa.”
“Have you no sort of evidence?”
“Only the oath which my mother took when she was dying, before witnesses.”
“Come, tell me things,” said Theo. “Walk a bit of the way with us: it’s stuffy in here.”
They left the hut and sauntered back through the compounds, while Si-Oudijck told his story. They strolled beside the Brantas, which wound vaguely in the evening dusk under a sky powdered with stars.
It did Theo good to hear about all this, about that housekeeper of his father’s, in the days of his controllership, dismissed for an infidelity of which she was guiltless; the child born later and never recognized, never maintained; the boy wandering from compound to compound, romantically proud of his inhuman father, whom he watched from a distance, following him with his furtive glance when the father became assistant-resident and resident, married, divorced his wife and married again; by slow degrees learning to read and write from a native scrivener of his acquaintance. It did the legitimate son good to hear about all this, because in his innermost self, fair-haired and fair-skinned though he might be, he was more the son of his mother, the half-caste, than of his father; because in his innermost self he hated his father, not for this or that reason, but from a secret antipathy in his blood, because, despite the appearance and behaviour of a fair-haired and fair-skinned European, he felt a secret kinship for this illegitimate brother, felt a vague sympathy for him. Were they not both sons of the self-same motherland, for which their father felt nothing except as a result of his acquired development, the artificially cultivated, humane love of the ruler for the territory which he governs. From his childhood Theo had felt like that, far removed from his father; and later that antipathy had grown into a slumbering hatred. It gave him pleasure to hear the legend of his faultless parent demolished; the impeccable, magnanimous man, a functionary of the highest integrity, who loved his domestic circle, loved his residency, loved the Javanese, and was anxious to uphold the regent’s family, not only because his official instructions prescribed that the Javanese nobility should be respected, but because his own heart told him as much, when he thought of the noble old pangéran.... Theo knew that his father was all this: blameless, high-minded, upright, magnanimous; and it did him good, here, in the mysterious evening beside the Brantas, to hear that blamelessness, that high-minded, upright magnanimity torn to ribbons; it did him good to meet an outcast who in one moment spattered that high-throned paternal figure with mud and filth, dragging him from his pedestal, making him appear no higher than another, sinful, wicked, heartless, mean. It filled him with a wicked joy, even as he was filled with a wicked joy at possessing his father’s wife, whom his father adored. What to do with this dark secret he did not yet know, but he clutched at it as a weapon; he was whetting it there, that very evening, while he listened to the end to what this furtive-eyed half-caste, ranting and working himself up, had to say. And Theo hid his secret, hid his weapon deep in his heart.
Grievances rose in his mind; and he too now, the legitimate son, abused his father; declared that the resident did no more to help him, his own lawful son, to get on than he would do for any of his clerks; told him how his father had once recommended him to the manager of an impossible undertaking, a rice-plantation, where he had been unable to stay longer than a single month; how afterwards he had left him to his fate, thwarting him when he went hunting after concessions, even in other residencies, even in Borneo, until he was now obliged to remain hanging about and sponging at home, unable to find a job, thanks to his father, and merely tolerated in that house where he disliked everything.
“Except your step-mother!” Si-Oudijck interpolated, drily.
But Theo went on, growing confidential in his turn and telling his brother that it would be no great advantage for him even if he were acknowledged and legitimatized. And in this way they both became excited, glad to have met each other, to have grown intimate in this brief hour. And beside them walked Addie, surprised by this quick mutual attraction, but otherwise empty of thought. They had crossed a bridge and by a circuitous route had come out behind the Patjaram factory-buildings. Here Si-Oudijck said good-night, shaking hands with Theo, who slipped a couple of rix-dollars into his palm. They were accepted greedily, with a flicker of the furtive glance, but not a word of thanks. And Addie and Theo went past the factory, now silent, to the house. The family were strolling, outside, in the garden and in the tjemara-avenue. And, as the two young men approached, the golden, eight-year-old child came running towards them, the old grandmother’s little foster-princess, with her fringe of hair and her whitened forehead, in her rich little, doll-like dress. She came running up to them and suddenly stopped in front of Addie and looked up at him. Addie asked her what she wanted, but the child did not answer and only looked up at him and then, putting out her little hand, stroked his hand with it. It was all so clearly the result of an irresistible magnetism in the shy child, this running up, stopping, looking up and stroking, that Addie laughed aloud and stooped and kissed her lightly. The child skipped back contentedly. And Theo, still excited by his evening, first by his conversation with Oorip and then by his explanation with Addie, his meeting with his half-brother, his own confidences about his father—Theo, feeling bitter and interesting, was so greatly irritated by this trivial behaviour of Addie and the child, that he exclaimed, almost angrily:
“Oh, you ... you’ll never be anything but a woman’s man!...”