Chapter Twenty-Seven
Léonie kept her bed for a couple of days with nervous fever. People at Labuwangi said that the residency was haunted. At the weekly assemblies in the Municipal Garden, when the band played and the children and the young people danced on the open-air stone floor, there were whispered conversations around the refreshment-tables touching the strange happenings in the residency. Dr. Rantzow was asked many questions, but could only tell what the resident had told him, what Mrs. van Oudijck herself had told him, of her being frightened in the bathroom by an enormous toad, on which she had trodden and stumbled. There was more known through the servants, however; though, when one spoke of the throwing of stones and the spitting of betel-juice, another laughed and called it all babu-talk. And so uncertainty prevailed. Nevertheless, the papers throughout the country, from Surabaya to Batavia, contained curious, hinting paragraphs, which were not very lucid but which suggested a good deal.
Van Oudijck himself discussed the matter with nobody, neither with his wife and children nor with the officials or the servants. But on one occasion he came out of the bathroom looking deathly pale, with eyes staring wildly. He went indoors quietly, however, and pulled himself together; and no one noticed anything. Then he spoke to the chief of police. There was an old graveyard next to the residency-grounds. This was now watched day and night; also the outer wall of the bathroom. The bathroom itself was no longer used; they took their baths instead in the visitors’ bathroom.
As soon as Mrs. van Oudijck had recovered, she went to stay with friends at Surabaya. She did not return. She had gradually, and unostentatiously, without a word to Van Oudijck, made Oorip pack up her clothes and all sorts of knick-nacks to which she was attached. Trunk upon trunk was sent after her. When Van Oudijck happened to go to her bedroom one day, he found it empty of all but the furniture. Numberless things had disappeared also from her boudoir. He had not observed the dispatch of the trunks, but he now understood that she would not return. He cancelled his next reception. It was December; and René and Ricus were to come from Batavia for the Christmas holidays, for a week or ten days; but he cancelled the boys’ visit. Then Doddie was invited to stay at Patjaram, with the De Luce family. Although, with the instinct of a full-blooded Hollander, he did not like the De Luces, he consented. They were fond of Doddie there: she would have a better time than at Labuwangi. He had given up his idea, the hope that Doddie would not become Indianized. Suddenly, Theo also went away: through Léonie’s influence with commercial magnates at Surabaya, he obtained a well-paid berth in an export-and-import business.
Van Oudijck was left all alone in his big house. As the cook and the butler had run away, Eldersma and Eva constantly asked him to meals, both to lunch and dinner. He never mentioned his house at their table and it was never discussed. What he discussed confidentially with Eldersma, as secretary, and with Van Helderen, as controller, these two never mentioned, treating it all as an official secret. The chief of police, who had been accustomed daily to make his brief report—that nothing particular had happened, or that there had been a fire, or that a man had been wounded—now made long, secret reports, with the doors of the office locked, to prevent the messengers outside from listening. Gradually all the servants ran away, departing stealthily in the night, with their families and their household belongings, leaving their huts in the compound empty and dirty. They did not even stay in the residency. Van Oudijck let them go. He kept only Kario and the messengers; and the prisoners tended the garden daily. Thus the house remained apparently unaltered, outside. But, inside, where nothing was looked after, the dust lay thick on the furniture, white ants devoured the mats, mildew and patches of moisture came through the walls. The resident never went about the house, occupying only his bedroom and his office. His face began to wear a look of gloom, like a bitter, silent doubt. He worked more conscientiously than ever and stimulated his subordinates more actively, as though he were thinking of nothing but the interests of Labuwangi. In his isolated position, he had no friend and sought none. He bore everything alone, on his own shoulders, on his own back, which grew bent with approaching age: the heavy burden of his house, which was being destroyed, and of his family life, which was breaking up amid the strange happenings that escaped his police, his watchmen, his personal vigilance and his secret spies. He discovered nothing. Nobody told him anything. No one threw any light on anything.
And the strange happenings continued. A mirror was smashed by a great stone. Calmly he had the pieces cleared away. It was not his nature to believe in the supernatural character of possibilities; and he did not believe in it. He was secretly enraged at being unable to discover the culprits and an explanation of the events. But he refused to believe. He did not believe when he found his bed soiled and Kario, squatting at his feet, swore that he did not know how it had happened. He did not believe when the tumbler which he lifted broke into shivers. He did not believe when he heard a constant, irritating hammering overhead. But his bed was soiled, his glass did break, the hammering was a fact. He investigated all these facts, as punctiliously as though he were investigating a criminal case, and nothing came to light. He remained unperturbed in his relations with his European and native officials and with the regent. No one remarked anything in his behaviour; and in the evenings he worked on, defiantly, at his writing-table, while the hammering continued and the night fell softly in the garden, as by enchantment.
On the steps outside, the messengers crept together, listening and whispering, glancing round timorously at their master who sat writing, with a frown of concentration on his brows:
“Doesn’t he hear it?”
“Yes, yes, he’s not deaf.”
“He must hear it.”
“He thinks he can find it out through detectives.”
“There are soldiers coming from Ngadjiwa.”
“From Ngadjiwa!”
“Yes, he does not trust the detectives. He has written to the major sahib.”
“To send soldiers?”
“Yes, there are soldiers coming.”
“Look at him frowning.”
“And he just goes on working!”
“I’m frightened. I should never dare to stay, if I hadn’t got to.”
“I’m not afraid to stay, as long as he’s there.”
“Yes ... he’s brave.”
“He’s plucky.”
“He’s a brave man.”
“But he doesn’t understand it.”
“No, he doesn’t know what it is.”
“He thinks it’s rats.”
“Yes, he has had a search made for rats upstairs, under the roof.”
“These Hollanders don’t know things.”
“No, they don’t understand.”
“He smokes a lot.”
“Yes, quite twelve cigars a day.”
“He doesn’t drink much.”
“No ... only his whisky-and-soda of an evening.”
“No one has stayed with him.”
“No. The others understood. They’ve all left.”
“He goes to bed very late.”
“Yes, he’s working hard.”
“He never sleeps at night, only in the afternoon.”
“Look at him frowning.”
“He never stops working.”
“Messenger!”
“He’s calling.”
“Yes, excellency?”
“Bring whisky-and-soda.”
One of the messengers rose, to fetch the drink. He had everything ready to hand, in the visitors’ wing, to avoid having to go through the house. The others pressed closer together and went on whispering. The moon pierced the clouds and lit up the garden and the pond as with a humid vapour of silent enchantment. The messenger had mixed the drink; he returned, squatted and offered it to the resident.
“Put it down,” said Van Oudijck.
The messenger stood the tumbler on the writing-table and crept away. The other messengers whispered together.
“Messenger!” cried Van Oudijck.
“Excellency.”
“What have you put in this glass?”
The man trembled and shrank away at Van Oudijck’s feet:
“Excellency, it’s not poison; I swear it by my life, by my death; I can’t help it, excellency. Kick me, kill me: I can’t help it, excellency!”
“Fetch another tumbler and fill it before me.”
The messenger went away, trembling.
The others sat close together, feeling the contact of one another’s bodies through the sweat-soaked cloth of their liveries, and stared before them in dismay. The moon rose from its clouds, laughing and mocking like a wicked fairy; its moist and silent enchantment shone silver over the wide garden. In the distance, from the garden at the back, a plaintive cry rang out, as though a child were being throttled.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“And how are you, mevrouwtje? How’s the depression? Is India suiting you any better to-day?”
His words sounded cheerful to Eva, as she saw him coming through the garden, on the stroke of eight, for dinner. His tone expressed nothing more than the gay greeting of a man who has been working hard at his desk and is delighted to see a pretty woman at whose table he is about to sit. She was filled with surprise and admiration. There was not a suggestion of a man who is plagued all day long, in a deserted house, by strange and incomprehensible happenings. There was hardly a shadow of dejection on his wide forehead, hardly a care seemed to rest upon his broad, slightly bowed back; and the jovial, smiling line about his thick moustache was there as usual. Eldersma came up; and Eva divined in his greeting, in his pressure of the hand, a silent freemasonry of things known, of confidences shared in common. And Van Oudijck drank his gin-and-bitters in a perfectly normal manner, spoke of a letter from his wife, who was probably going on to Batavia, said that René and Ricus were staying in the Preanger1 with friends who had a plantation there. He did not speak of the reason why they were not with him, why he had been entirely abandoned by his family and servants. In the intimacy of their circle, which he now visited twice a day for his meals, he had never spoken of this. And, though Eva did not ask any questions, it was making her extremely nervous. So close to the house, the haunted house, whose pillars she could see by day in the distance, gleaming through the foliage of the trees, she became more and more nervous daily. All day long, the servants whispered around her and peered timidly at the haunted residency. At night, unable to sleep, she strained her ears to hear whether she could detect anything strange, the moaning of the little children. The Indian night was so full of voices that it could but make her shudder on her bed. Through the imperious bellowing of the frogs for rain and rain and more rain still, the constant croaking on the one bellowing note, she heard thousands of ghostly sounds that kept her from sleeping. Through it all the lizards and geckos emitted their clockwork strokes, like strange mysterious time-pieces.
She thought of it all day long. Eldersma did not speak of it either. But, when she saw Van Oudijck come to lunch or dinner, she had to compress her lips lest she should question him. And the conversation touched upon all sorts of topics, but never upon the strange happenings. After lunch, Van Oudijck went across to the residency again; after dinner, at ten o’clock, she saw him once more vanish into the haunting shadow of the garden. With a calm step, every evening he went back, through the enchanted night, to his wretched, deserted house, where the messengers and Kario sat squatting close together outside his office; and he worked until late in the night. He never complained. He pursued his enquiries closely, all through the district, but nothing came to light. Everything continued to happen in impenetrable mystery.
“And how does India suit you this evening, mevrouwtje?”
It was always more or less the same pleasantry; but each time she admired his tone. Courage, robust self-confidence, a certainty in his own knowledge, a belief in what he knew for certain: all these rang in his voice with metallic clearness. Miserable though he must feel—he, the man of profoundly domestic inclinations and of cool, practical sense—in a house deserted by those who belonged to him and full of inexplicable happenings, there was not a trace of doubt or dejection in his unfailing masculine simplicity. He went his way and did his work, more conscientiously than ever; he continued his investigations. And at Eva’s table he always kept up an animated conversation, on politics in India and the new craze for having India ruled from Holland by lay-men who did not know even the A.B.C. of the business. And he talked with an easy, pleasant vivacity, free from all effort, till Eva came to admire him more and more.
But with her, a sensitive woman, it became a nervous obsession. And once, in the evening, as she was walking a little way with him, she asked him if it wasn’t terrible, if he couldn’t leave the house, if he couldn’t go on circuit, for a good long time. She saw his face clouding at her questions. But still he answered kindly, saying that it was not so bad, even though it was all inexplicable, and that he would back himself to get to the bottom of the conjuring. And he added that he really ought to be going on circuit, but that he would not go, lest he should seem to be running away. Then he hurriedly pressed her hand and told her not to upset herself and not to think about it any more or talk about it. The last words sounded like a friendly admonition. She pressed his hand again, with tears in her eyes. And she watched him walk away, with his calm, firm step, and disappear in the darkness of his garden, where the enchantment must be creeping in through the croaking of the frogs. But standing there like that made her shudder; and she hurried indoors. And she felt that her house, that roomy house of hers, was small and unduly open and defenceless against the vast Indian night, which could enter from every side.
But she was not the only person obsessed by the mysterious happenings. Their inexplicable nature lay like an oppression over the whole town, so completely did it clash with the things of everyday life. The mystery was discussed in every house, but only in a whisper, lest the children should be frightened and the servants perceive that people were impressed by the Javanese conjuring, as the resident himself had called it. And the uneasiness and depression were making everybody ill with apprehension and nervous listening when the darkness was teeming with voices in the night, which drifted down on the town in a dense, velvety greyness; and the town seemed to be hiding itself more deeply than ever in the foliage of its gardens, seemed, in these moist evening twilights, to be shrinking away altogether in dull, silent resignation, bowing before the mystery.
Then Van Oudijck thought it time to take strong measures. He wrote to the major commanding the garrison at Ngadjiwa to come over with a captain, a couple of lieutenants and a company of soldiers. That evening, the officers, with the resident and Van Helderen, dined at the Eldersmas’. They hurried through their meal; and Eva, standing at the garden-gate, saw them all—the resident, the secretary, the controller and the four officers—go into the dark garden of the haunted house. The residency-grounds were shut off, the house surrounded and the churchyard watched. The men went to the bathroom by themselves.
They remained there all through the night. And all through the night the grounds and house remained shut off and surrounded. They came out at about five o’clock and went straight to the swimming-bath and bathed, all of them together. What had happened to them they did not say, but they had had a terrible night. That morning the bathroom was pulled down.
They had all promised Van Oudijck not to speak about that night; and Eldersma would not tell anything to Eva, nor Van Helderen to Ida. The officers too, on their return to Ngadjiwa, were silent. They merely said that their night in the bathroom was too improbable for any one to believe the story. At last one of the young lieutenants allowed a hint of his adventures to escape him. And a tale of betel-juice-spitting and stone-throwing, of a floor that heaved, while they struck at it with sticks and swords, and of something more, something unutterably horrible that had happened in the water of the bath, went the rounds. Every one added to it. When the story reached Van Oudijck’s ears, he hardly recognized it as an account of the terrible night, which had been terrible enough without any additions.
Meanwhile Eldersma had written a report of their united vigil; and they all signed the improbable story. Van Oudijck himself took the report to Batavia and delivered it to the governor-general with his own hands. Thenceforth it slumbered in the secret archives of the government.
The governor-general advised Van Oudijck to go to Holland on leave for a short period, assuring him that this leave would have no influence on his promotion to a residency of the first class, which was nearly due. He refused this favour, however, and returned to Labuwangi. The only concession that he made was to move into Eldersma’s house until the residency should be thoroughly cleaned. But the flag continued to wave from the flagstaff in the residency-grounds.
On his return from Batavia, Van Oudijck often met Sunario, the regent, on matters of business. And, in his intercourse with the regent, the resident remained stern and formal. Then he had a brief interview, first with the regent and afterwards with his mother, the raden-aju pangéran. The two conversations did not last longer than twenty minutes. But it appeared that those few words were of great and portentous moment.
For the strange happenings ceased. When everything had been cleaned and repaired, under Eva’s supervision, Van Oudijck compelled Léonie to come back, because he wished to give a great ball on New Year’s Day. In the morning, the resident received all his European and native officials. In the evening, the guests streamed into the brightly lit galleries from every part of the town, still inclined to shudder and very inquisitive and instinctively looking around and above them. And, while the champagne went round, Van Oudijck himself took a glass and offered it to the regent with a deliberate breach of etiquette; and, in a tone of solemn admonition mingled with good-humoured jest, he uttered these words, which were seized upon and repeated on every hand and which continued to be repeated for months throughout Labuwangi:
“Drink with an easy mind, regent. I give you my word of honour that no more glasses will be broken in my house, except by accident or carelessness.”
He was able to say this because he knew that—this time—he had been too strong for the hidden force, merely through his simple courage as an official, a Hollander and a man.
But in the regent’s gaze, as he drank, there was still a very slight gleam of irony, intimating that, though the hidden force had not conquered, this time, it would yet remain an enigma, forever inexplicable to the short-sighted eyes of the Europeans....
1 The chief coffee-growing district of Java.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Labuwangi came to life again. It was as though people unanimously agreed not to discuss the strange affair any further with outsiders, because it was so excusable that any one should refuse to believe in the thing; and they, at Labuwangi, believed. And the up-country town, after the mystic oppression under which it had lain cowering during those unforgettable weeks, came to life again, as though shaking off all its obsession. Party followed upon party, ball upon ball, theatricals upon concert: all threw open their doors to entertain their friends and make merry, in order to feel natural and normal after the incredible nightmare. People so accustomed to the natural and tangible life, to the spacious and lavish material existence of India—to good cooking, cool drinks, wide beds, roomy houses, to everything that represents physical luxury to the European in the east—such people breathed again and shook off the nightmare, shook off the belief in strange happenings. If and when they discussed the thing nowadays, they commonly called it that incomprehensible conjuring—echoing the resident—the regent’s conjuring-tricks. For that the regent had something to do with it was certain. That the resident had held a terrible threat over him and his mother, if the strange happenings did not cease, was certain. That, after this, order had been restored in everyday life was certain. So it was conjuring. All were now ashamed of their credulity and their fears and of having shuddered at what had looked like mysticism and was only clever conjuring. And all breathed again and made up their minds to be cheerful; and entertainment followed upon entertainment.
Léonie, amid all this dissipation, forgot her irritation at having been recalled by Van Oudijck. And she too was determined to forget the scarlet pollution of her body. But something of its terror lingered in her. She now bathed early of an afternoon, as early as half-past four, in the newly-built bathroom. Her second bath always gave her a certain shudder. And, now that Theo had a job at Surabaya, she got rid of him, also, from terror. She could not get rid of the idea that the enchantment had threatened to punish both of them, the mother and son, who were bringing shame on the home. In the romantic side of her perverse imagination, in her rosy fancy full of cherubs and cupids, this idea, inspired by her fears, struck too precious a note of tragedy for her not to cherish it, for all that Theo might say. She would go no further. And it made him furious, because he was mad with love for her, because he could not forget the shameful happiness which he had enjoyed in her arms. But she steadily refused him and told him of her dread and said that she was certain that the witchcraft would begin again if they two loved each other, he and his father’s wife. Her words drove him scarlet with fury, on the one Sunday which he spent at Labuwangi: he was furious with her non-compliance, with the motherly attitude which she now adopted and with the fact, of which he was well aware, that she saw Addie often, that she often went to stay at Patjaram. Addie danced with her at parties and hung over her chair at concerts, in the improvised residential box. True, he was not faithful to her, for it was not his nature to love one woman—he loved women wholesale—but still he was as faithful to her as he was able to be. He inspired her with a more lasting passion than she had ever felt before; and this passion roused her from her usual passive indifference. Often, in company, suffering and inflicting boredom, enthroned in the brilliance of her white beauty, like a smiling idol, with the langour of her years in India gradually filling her blood until her movements had acquired that lazy indifference for anything that did not spell love and caresses, until her voice had assumed a drawling accent in any word that was not a word of passion: often the flame which Addie shed over her would transfigure into a younger woman, livelier in company, gayer, flattered by the persistent homage of this youth, on whom every girl was mad.
And she delighted in monopolizing him as much as she could, to the vexation of all the girls and of Doddie in particular. In the midst of her passion, she also took an evil pleasure in tantalizing, merely for tantalizing’s sake: it gave her an exquisite enjoyment; it made her husband jealous—perhaps for the first time, for she had always been very careful—and made Theo and Doddie jealous; she aroused the jealousy of every young married woman and every girl; and, since she stood above all of them, as the resident’s wife, she had an ascendancy over all of them. When of an evening she had gone too far, she delighted in winning back, with a smile, with a gracious word, the place in their affection which she had lost through her flirtations. And, strange though it might seem, she succeeded. The moment they saw her, the moment she spoke, smiled and exerted herself to be amiable, she won back all she had lost and was forgiven everything. Even Mrs. Eldersma allowed herself to be conquered by the strange charm of this woman who was neither witty nor intelligent, who merely became just a little livelier, who roused herself a little from her boring lethargy, who triumphed only through the lines of her body, the contour of her face, the glance of her strange eyes, restful and yet full of hidden passion, and who was conscious of all her charm because she had meditated upon it since her childhood. Together with her indifference, this charm constituted her strength. Fate seemed to have no hold upon her. For it had indeed touched her with a strange magic, until she thought that a chastisement was about to descend upon her, but it had gone its way again, drifted away. But she accepted the warning. She had done with Theo and henceforth affected a motherly attitude towards him. It made him furious, especially at these parties, now that she had grown younger, livelier and more seductive.
His passion for her began to burn to hatred. He hated her now, with all the instinct of a fair-haired native, for that was what he really was, despite his white skin. For he was his mother’s son rather than his father’s. Oh, he hated her now, for he had felt his fear of the punishment only for an instant and he ... he had forgotten everything by now! And his one idea was to injure her—how he did not yet know—but to injure her so that she might feel pain and suffer. The process of thinking it over imparted a Satanic gloom to his small, murky soul. Although he did not think about it, he felt unconsciously that she was as though invulnerable; he even felt that she boasted inwardly of her invulnerability and that it made her daily more brazen and indifferent. She was constantly staying at Patjaram, on any excuse that offered. The anonymous letters which Van Oudijck still often showed her no longer disturbed her; she was growing accustomed to them. She returned them to him without a word; once she even forgot them, left them lying about in the back-verandah. Once Theo read them. In a sudden flash of light, due to he knew not what, suddenly he seemed to recognize certain characters, certain strokes. He remembered, in the compound, near Patjaram, the hut, half bamboo, half packing-case-boards, where he and Addie de Luce had been to see Si-Oudijck and the papers hastily raked together by an Arab. He had a vague recollection of seeing those same characters, those strokes, on a scrap of paper on the floor. It passed vaguely and quick as lightning through his head. But it was no more than a lightning-flash. His small, murky soul had room for nothing but dull hatred and troubled calculation. But he had not sense enough to follow out that calculation. He hated his father by instinct and innate antipathy; his mother, because she was a half-caste; his step-mother, because she had finished with him; he hated Addie and Doddie into the bargain; he hated the world, because it made him work. He hated every berth he had ever had: he now hated his office at Surabaya. But he was too lazy and too muddle-headed to do harm. Rack his brains as he might, he could not discover how to harm his father, Addie and Léonie. Everything about him was vague, turbid, dissatisfied, indistinct. The object of his desire was money and a fine woman. Beyond this, he had nothing in him but the dull-witted gloom and discontent of the fat, fair-haired Eurasian that he was. And he continued to brood impotently over his murky thoughts.
Until now, Doddie had always been very fond of Léonie, instinctively. But she was no longer able to conceal the fact from herself: what she had first thought an accident—mamma and Addie always seeking each other with the same smile of allurement, one drawing the other the length of the great room, as though irresistibly—was not an accident at all! And she too hated mamma now, mamma with her beautiful calmness, her sovereign indifference. Her own violent passionate nature was coming into collision with that other nature, with its milk-white, creole languor, which now for the first time, late in the day, because of the sheer kindliness of fate, was letting itself go as it pleased, without reserve. She hated mamma; and her hatred resulted in scenes, scenes of nervous, loud-voiced temper in Doddie contrasting with the irritating calmness of mamma’s indifference, scenes caused by all sorts of little differences of opinion: a visit, a ride on horse-back, a dress, a spice or condiment which the one liked and the other did not. Then Doddie wanted to have her cry out on papa’s breast, but Van Oudijck would not admit that she was in the right and said that she must show more respect to mamma. But once, when Doddie had come to him for consolation and he reproached her for going for walks with Addie, she screamed out that mamma herself was in love with Addie. Van Oudijck angrily ordered her out of the room. But it all agreed too closely—the anonymous letters, his wife’s new-born flirtations, Doddie’s accusations and what he himself had noticed at the last few parties—not to give him food for reflection and even to worry him. And, once he began to worry and reflect upon it all, memories came suddenly darting into his mind like lightning-flashes: memories of an unexpected visit; of a locked door; of a moving curtain; of a whispered word and a timidly averted glance. He pieced it all together and he quite suddenly recollected those same subtle memories in combination with others, of an earlier date. It all at once aroused his jealousy, a husband’s jealousy of the wife whom he loves as his most personal possession. This jealousy burst upon him like a gust of wind, blowing its way through his concentration upon his work, confusing his thoughts as he sat writing, making him suddenly run out of his office, during the police-cases, and search Léonie’s room and lift a curtain and even look under the bed.
And now he no longer consented to have Léonie staying at Patjaram, advancing as his pretext that the De Luces should not be encouraged in the hope of getting Doddie as a wife for Addie. For he dared not speak to Léonie of his jealousy.... That Addie should ever get Doddie for his wife!... True, there was native blood in his daughter too; but he wanted a full-blooded European as his son-in-law. He hated anything half-caste. He hated the De Luces and all the up-country, Indian, half-Solo traditions of that Patjaram of theirs. He hated their gambling, their hobnobbing with all sorts of Indian headmen, people whom he accepted officially, allowing them their rights, but, apart from this, regarded as unavoidable instruments of the government policy. He hated all their posing as an old Indian family and he hated Addie: an idle youth, who was supposed to be employed in the factory but did nothing at all, except run after every woman, girl and maid-servant in the place. He, the older, industrious man, was unable to understand that kind of existence.
So Léonie had to do without Patjaram; but in the mornings she went quietly to Mrs. van Does and met Addie in this lady’s little house while Mrs. van Does herself went out peddling, in a little cart, with two jam-pots filled with diamonds and a bundle of embroidered bedspreads. Then, in the evenings, Addie would stroll out with Doddie and listen to her passionate reproaches. He laughed at her tempersome displays, took her in his arms till she hung panting on his breast, kissed the reproaches from her mouth till she melted away amorously on his lips. They went no further, feeling too much afraid, especially Doddie. They strolled behind the compounds, on the irrigation-dikes of the rice-fields, while swarms of fire-flies whirled about them in the dark like tiny lanterns; they strolled arm-in-arm, they walked hand-in-hand, in enervating, caressing love, which never dared to push matters any further. When she came home again, she was furious, raging at mamma, in whom she envied the calm, smiling satiety as she lay musing, in her white tea-gown, with a touch of powder on her face, in a cane chair.
And the house, newly painted and whitewashed after the strange happenings, which were now past, the house was filled with a hatred that rose on every hand, as it were the very demoniacal bloom of that strange secret; a hatred centering upon that silent woman, who was too languid to hate and only delighted in silent tantalizing; a jealous hatred of the father for the son, when he saw him too often sitting beside his step-mother, begging, in spite of his own hatred, for something, the father did not know what; a hatred of the daughter for the mother; a hatred in which all this family-life was being wrecked. How it had all gradually come about Van Oudijck did not know. He sadly regretted the time when he was blind, when he had seen his wife and children only in the light in which he wished to see them. That time was past. Like the strange happenings of not so long ago, a hatred was now rising out of life, like a miasma out of the ground. And Van Oudijck, who had never been superstitious, who had worked on coolly and calmly in his lonely house, with the incomprehensible witchcraft all about him; who had read reports while the hammering went on above his head and his whisky-and-soda changed colour in his glass; Van Oudijck for the first time in his life—now that he saw the gloomy glances of Theo and Doddie; now that he suddenly discovered his wife, growing more brazen daily, sitting hand-in-hand with young De Luce, her knees almost touching his—became superstitious, believing in a hidden force which lurked he knew not where, in India, in the soil of India, in a deep-seated mystery, somewhere or other, a force that wished him ill because he was a European, a ruler, a foreigner on the mystic, sacred soil. And, when he saw this superstition within himself, something so new to him, the practical man, something so strange and incredible to him, a man of single-minded, masculine simplicity, he was afraid of himself, as of a rising insanity which he began to perceive deep down within himself.
And, strong though he had proved himself to be at the time of the strange happenings, which he had been able to exorcize with a single word of threatening force, this superstition, which came as an aftermath of those events, found a weakness in him, a vulnerable spot as it were. He was so much surprised at himself that he did not understand and was afraid lest he might be going mad; and still he worried. His health was undermined by an incipient liver-complaint; and he kept on examining his jaundiced complexion. Suddenly he had an idea that he was being poisoned. The kitchen was searched, the cook subjected to a cross-examination; but nothing came to light. He realized that he had been frightened by nothing. But the doctor declared that he had an enlarged liver and prescribed the usual diet. A thing which otherwise he would have thought quite natural, a far from uncommon illness, now of a sudden struck him as strange, a mysterious event; and he worried over it. And it got on his nerves. He began to suffer from sudden weariness when working, from throbbing headaches. His jealousy upset him; he was overcome by a shuddering restlessness. He suddenly reflected that, if there were now any hammering above his head, if betel-juice were now spat at him, he would not be able to stay in the house. And he began to believe in a hatred rising slowly all around him out of the hostile soil, like a miasma. He believed in a force deep-hidden in the things of India, in the nature of Java, in the climate of Labuwangi, in the conjuring—as he continued to call it—which sometimes makes the Javanese cleverer than the European and gives him the power, a mysterious power, not to release himself from the yoke, but to cause illness, lingering illness, to plague and harass, to play the ghost most incredibly and hideously: a hidden force, a hidden power, hostile to our temperament, our blood, our bodies, our souls, our civilization, to all that seems to us the right thing to do and be and think. It had flashed before him as in a sudden light, it was not the result of thought, it had flashed out before him as in a dreadful revelation, which was utterly in conflict with all the logic of his methodical life, his methodical mode of thought. In a vision of terror, he suddenly saw it before him, as the light of his approaching old age, as men who are growing old do sometimes suddenly perceive the truth. And yet he was young still and hale. And he felt that, if he did not divert his maddening thoughts, they might make him ill, weak and miserable, for ever and ever....
To him, above all, a simple, practical man, this change of mental attitude was almost unbearable. What a morbid mind might have contemplated in quiet meditation now flashed upon him as a sudden terror. Never would he have thought that there might be somewhere, deeply hidden in life, things which were stronger than the power of the human will and intellect. Nowadays, after the nightmare which he had so courageously defeated, it seemed to him that the nightmare had sapped his strength nevertheless and inoculated him with every sort of weakness. It was incredible, but now, as he sat working late in the day, he would listen to the evening voices in the garden, or to the rat that rustled overhead. And then he would suddenly get up, go to Léonie’s room and look under the bed. When he at last discovered that many of the anonymous letters by which he was persecuted came from the pen of a half-caste who described himself as his son and was even known in the compound by his own surname, he felt too doubtful to investigate the matter, because of what might come to light that he had himself forgotten, dating from his controllership, from the old days, at Ngadjiwa. He was doubtful now of things of which he had once been certain and positive. Nowadays he was no longer able so positively to order his recollections of that period as to swear that he had not a son, begotten almost unconsciously in those days. He did not clearly remember the housekeeper who had looked after him before his first marriage. And he preferred to let the whole business of the anonymous letters smoulder in the dusky shadows, rather than stir it up and enquire into it. He even caused money to be sent to the native who called himself his son, so that the fellow might not abuse the name which he arrogated to himself and demand presents all over the compound: chickens and rice and clothes, things which Si-Oudijck exacted from ignorant villagers, whom he threatened with the vague anger of his father the sahib, yonder at Labuwangi. In order that there might be no more threats of this anger, Van Oudijck sent him money. It was weak of him: he would never have done it in the old days. But now he had an inclination to hush things up, to gloss over things, to be less stern and severe and rather to mitigate anything unduly strict by half-measures. Eldersma was sometimes amazed when he saw the resident, who used to be so firm, hesitating, when he saw him yielding in matters of business, in differences with crown tenants, as he had never done before. And slack methods of work would gradually have found their way automatically into the office, if Eldersma had not taken the work out of Van Oudijck’s hands and given himself even more to do than he already had. It was generally stated that the resident was ill. And, in fact, his skin was yellow; his liver was painful; the least thing set his nerves quivering. It unsettled the house, in conjunction with Doddie’s tempers and outbursts and Theo’s jealousy and hatred, for Theo was at home again, had already thrown up Surabaya. Léonie alone continued her triumphant career, ever beautiful, white, calm, smiling, contented, happy in the lasting passion of Addie, whom she knew how to hold, amorous expert, love’s sorceress that she was. Fate had warned her and she kept Theo at a distance; but for the rest she was happy and contented.
Then suddenly Batavia fell vacant. The names of two or three residents were mentioned, but Van Oudijck had possessed the best chance. And he worried about it, was afraid of it: he did not care for Batavia as a residency. He would not have been able to work in Batavia as he worked here, at Labuwangi, zealously and devotedly fostering so many different interests connected with agriculture and the people. He would rather have been appointed to Surabaya, where there was plenty going on; or to one of the Vorstenlanden, where his tact in dealing with the native princes would have been turned to good purpose. But Batavia! It was the least interesting of all districts, from the official point of view, and, what with the arrogant atmosphere of the place, the least flattering to one in the position of resident, in close contact with the governor-general, surrounded by the highest officials, so that the resident, who was almost supreme anywhere else, was at Batavia no more than yet another high official among so many members of council and directors. And it was much too near Buitenzorg, with its arbitrary secretariat, whose bureaucratic and red-tape methods were always clashing with the practical administrative methods of the residents themselves.
The prospect of being appointed unsettled him entirely, harassed him more than ever, with the thought of leaving Labuwangi in a month’s time, of selling up his furniture. It would break his heart to leave Labuwangi. In spite of all that he had gone through there, he loved the town and especially his district. During all those years, he had left traces of activity throughout his district, traces of his devoted labour, of his ambition, of his affection. And now, within a month, he would probably have to transfer all this to a successor, to tear himself away from everything that he had so lovingly cherished and fostered. It filled him with a sombre melancholy. He cared not a straw for the fact that the promotion also brought him nearer to his pension. That unoccupied future, with the boredom of approaching old age, was a very nightmare to him. And his successor would perhaps make all manner of changes, would disagree at every single point.
In the end, the chance of his promotion became such a morbid obsession with him that the improbable thing happened and he wrote to the director of the B.B. and to the governor-general, begging to be left at Labuwangi. The secret of these letters was pretty well kept: he himself concealed them entirely, both from his family and from his subordinates, so that, when a younger second-class resident was appointed Resident of Batavia, people said that Van Oudijck had been passed over, but not that this had happened at his own request. And, in seeking the cause, they raked up all the old gossip about the dismissal of the Regent of Ngadjiwa and the strange happenings thereafter, but without finding in either any particular reason why the government should have passed over Van Oudijck.
He himself recovered a strange sort of peace, a peace due to weariness, to laisser-aller, to becoming rooted in his familiar Labuwangi, to not having to be transferred, old up-country veteran that he was, to Batavia, where things were so very different. When the governor-general, at his last audience, had spoken to him about going to Europe on leave, he had felt afraid of Europe, afraid of no longer feeling at home there; and now he felt afraid even of Batavia. And yet he knew all that there was to know about the would-be western humbug of Batavia; yet he knew that the capital of Java only pretended to be exceedingly European and in reality was only half-European. In himself—and unknown to his wife, who regretted that dispelled illusion of Batavia—he chuckled silently at the thought that he had succeeded in remaining at Labuwangi. But, while he chuckled, he nevertheless felt changed, aged, belittled, felt that he was no longer glancing at that upward path—the prospect of constantly winning a higher place among his fellow-men—which had always been his path of life. What had become of his ambition? What had happened to decrease his love of authority? He put it all down to the influence of the climate. It would certainly be a good thing to refresh his blood and his mind in Europe, to spend a couple of winters there. But the idea immediately evaporated, wiped out by his lack of resolution. No, he did not want to go to Europe; it was India that he loved. And he indulged in long meditations, lying in a long-chair, enjoying his coffee, his light clothing, the gentle relaxation of his muscles, the aimless drowsiness of his thoughts. The only obvious thing in his drowsy mood was his ever-increasing suspicion; and now and again he would suddenly wake from his languor and listen to the vague sounds, the soft, suppressed laughter which he seemed to hear in Léonie’s room, even as at night, when, suspicious of ghosts, he listened to the muffled sounds in the garden and to the rat scurrying overhead.