The Hidden Force Part 15

Then at last the fancy-fair took place. Eva had organized a series of three tableaux from the Arthurian legend on the stage of the club: Vivien and Guinevere and Lancelot; in the middle of the garden was a Madura proa, fitted up like a Viking's ship, in which iced punch was served; a neighbouring sugar-factory, always full of fun, famed for its jovial tone, had provided a complete Dutch fritters-stall, as a nostalgic memory of Holland, with the ladies dressed as Frisian peasant-girls and the young fellows from the factory as cooks; and the excitement over the Transvaal was represented by a Majuba Hill with ladies and gentlemen in fantastic Boer costumes. There was not a word about the tremendous seaquake at Ternate, although one half of the receipts was destined for the devastated districts. Under the glowing festoons of Chinese lanterns slung across the gardens, a great sense of fun prevailed, coupled with a readiness to spend pots of money, especially on behalf of the Transvaal. But amid the merriment there yet quivered a fear. Groups a.s.sembled, peering glances were cast at the road outside, where Eurasians, Javanese, Chinese and Arabs stood round the steaming portable kitchens. And the visitors, while tossing off a gla.s.s of champagne or toying with a plate of fritters, turned their ears in the direction of the square, where the public fair was in full swing. When Van Oudijck appeared with Doddie, received with the national anthem, generously scattering rixdollars and banknotes, he was constantly asked whispered questions. And, when it was seen that Mrs. van Oudijck was not coming, people began to ask one another where she was. She had been suffering so with her teeth, said one; she had gone to Surabaya to see the dentist. They did not think it nice of her; they did not like her when they did not see her. She was much discussed that evening; the most horrible scandals were told about her. Doddie took up her stand in the Madura proa as a saleswoman; and Van Oudijck, with Eldersma, Van Helderen and a couple of controllers from other districts, went round and treated the members of his council. When people asked their mysterious questions, with anxious glances at the road, with ears p.r.i.c.ked towards the popular market, he rea.s.sured them with a majestic smile; nothing was going to happen, he pledged his word on it. They considered him extremely trusting, mightily sure of himself; but the jovial smile around his thick moustache was comforting. He urged all who belonged to his good town of Labuw.a.n.gi to think of nothing but enjoyment and benevolence. And, when suddenly the Regent, Raden Adipati Sunario, and his wife, the young raden-aju, appeared at the entrance and paid for bouquets, programmes and fans with a hundred-guilder-note, the tension was relaxed throughout the garden. Everybody soon knew about the hundred-guilder-note. And they all breathed again, realizing that there was now no occasion for anxiety, that there would be no insurrection that night. They made much of the regent and his smiling young wife, who glittered with her beautiful jewels.

Out of sheer relief and relaxation of their tense anxiety, out of sheer craziness, they spent more and more money, trying to vie with the few wealthy Chinese--those dating from before the opium-monopoly, the owners of the white marble and stucco palaces--as these with their wives, in embroidered grey and green Chinese costumes, their shiny hair stuck full of flowers and precious stones, smelling strongly of sandalwood, distributed rixdollars broadcast. Money flowed like water, dripped as though in silver drops into the collecting-boxes of the delighted saleswomen. And the fancy-fair was a success. And, when Van Oudijck at last, little by little, here and there, said a word to Doorn de Bruijn, to Rantzow, to the officials from other residencies about his visit, about his interview with the raden-aju pangeran--a.s.suming an air of humility and simplicity, but nevertheless, despite himself, beaming with happy pride, with delight in his triumph--then he attained his greatest effect.

The story ran round the garden, of the tact, the cleverness of the resident, who had laid the spectre of insurrection merely with a word. He received a sort of ovation. And he filled every gla.s.s with champagne, he bought up every fan, he purchased all the tickets in the tombola that remained unsold. It was his apotheosis, his greatest moment of success and popularity. And he joked with the ladies and flirted with them.

The entertainment was prolonged until daylight, until six o'clock in the morning. The merry cooks were drunk and danced around their fritters-stove. And, when Van Oudijck went home at last, he felt an inner mood of self-satisfaction, of strength, he was delighted, enraptured with himself. He felt a king in his little world and a diplomatist into the bargain and beloved by all whose quiet and peace he had a.s.sured. That evening made him rise in his own esteem and he valued himself more highly than he had ever done before. Never had he felt as happy as he felt now.

He had sent the carriage away and he walked home with Doddie. A few early salesmen were going to market. Doddie, dog-tired and half-asleep, dragged herself along on her father's arm ... until some one pa.s.sed close beside her and, feeling rather than seeing, she suddenly shuddered. She looked up. The figure had pa.s.sed. She looked round and recognized the back of the hadji, hurrying away....

She turned cold and felt as though she would faint. But then, wearily, walking in her sleep, she reflected that she was half dreaming, dreaming of Addie, of Patjaram, of the moonlit night under the tjemaras, where the white hadji had startled her at the end of the avenue....

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Eva Eldersma was in a more listless and dejected mood than she had yet experienced in Java. After her efforts, after the fuss and the success of the fancy-fair, after the shuddering fear of a rising, the little town conscientiously went to sleep again, as though well content to be able to slumber as usual. It was December and the heavy rains had begun, as usual, on the fifth of the month: the rainy monsoon invariably opened on St. Nicholas' Day. The clouds which, for the past month, continually swelling, had piled themselves upon the lower horizons now rose curtain-wise, like water-laden sails higher against the skies, rent open as by a sudden fury of far-flashing lightning, pouring and lashing down as though this wealth of water could no longer be upheld, now that the swollen sails were torn apart, as though all their wanton abundance came streaming down from a single rent. Of an evening, Eva's front-verandah was invaded by a crazy swarm of insects, which, drunk with light, rushed upon their destruction in the lamps, as in an apotheosis of fiery death, filling the lamp-chimneys and strewing the marble tables with their fluttering, dying bodies. Eva inhaled a cooler air, but a miasma of damp, arising from earth and leaves, soaked the walls, seemed to ooze from the furniture, dimming the mirrors, staining the silk hangings and covering boots and shoes with mildew, as though nature's frenzied downpour were bent on the ruin of all that was fine and delicate, sparkling and graceful in human achievement. But the trees and foliage and gra.s.s shot up and expanded and rioted luxuriantly upwards, in a thousand shades of fresh green; and, in the reviving glory of verdant nature, the crouching human community of open-fronted villas, wet and humid with fungi, all the whiteness of the lime-washed pillars and flower-pots turned to a mouldy green.

Eva watched the slow and gradual ruin of her house, her furniture, her clothes. Day by day, inexorably, something was spoilt, something rotted away, something was covered with mildew or rust. And none of the aesthetic philosophy with which she had at first taught herself to love India, to appreciate the good in India, to seek in India for external plastic beauty and inward beauty of soul, was able to withstand the streaming water, the cracking of her furniture, the staining of her frocks and gloves, the damp, mildew and rust that wrecked the exquisite environment which she had designed and created all around her, as a comfort, to console her for living in India. All her logic, all her feeling of making the best of things, of finding something attractive and beautiful after all in the land of all-prevailing nature and of people eager for money and position, all this failed her and came to naught, now that she was every moment irritated and incensed as a housewife, as an elegant woman, an artistic woman. No, it was impossible in India to surround one's self with taste and exquisiteness. She had been here for only two years and she was still able to make a certain fight for her western culture; but nevertheless she was now already better able than in the first days after her arrival to understand the laisser-aller of the men, after their hard work, and of the women, in their housekeeping. True, the servants with their soundless movements, working with gentle hands, willing, never impertinent, were to her thinking far superior to the noisy, pounding maids in Holland; but nevertheless she felt in all her household an eastern antagonism to her western ideas. It was always a struggle not to surrender to that laisser-aller, to the running to waste of the over-large grounds, invariably hung at the back with the dirty washing of the servants and strewn with nibbled mangoes; to the gradual spoiling and fading of the paint of the house, which was also too large, too open, too much exposed to wind and weather to be cared for with Dutch cleanliness; to the habit of sitting and rocking, undressed, in sarong and kabaai, with one's bare feet in slippers, because it was really too hot, too sultry to dress one's self in a frock or tea-gown, which only became soaked in perspiration. It was for her sake that her husband always dressed for dinner, in a black jacket and stand-up collar; but, when she saw his tired face, with that more and more fixed, overtired office expression above that stand-up collar, she herself begged him not to trouble to dress next time after his second bath and allowed him to dine in a white jacket, or even in pyjamas. She thought it terrible, thought it unspeakably dreadful; it shocked all her ideas of correctness; but really he was too tired and it was too sultry and oppressive for her to expect anything more from him. And she, after only two years in India, understood more and more easily that laisser-aller--in dress, in body and in soul--now that every day she lost something more of her fresh, Dutch blood and her western energy, now that she admitted, certainly, that in India men worked perhaps as in no other country, but that they worked with one sole object before their eyes: position, money, retirement, pension ... and home, back home to Europe. True, there were others, born in India, who had been out of India only once, for barely a year, who would not hear of Holland, who adored their land of sunshine. She knew that the De Luces were like this; and there were others as well, she knew. But in her own circle of civil servants and planters every one had the same object in life: position, money ... and then off, off to Europe. Every one calculated the years of work still before him. Every one saw before him in the future the illusion of that European retirement. An occasional friend, like Van Oudijck, an occasional civil servant, who perhaps loved his work for his work's sake and because it suited his nature, feared the coming pensioned retirement, which would mean a stupid, vegetating existence. But Van Oudijck was an exception. The majority worked in the service and on the plantations for the sake of the rest to come. Her husband also, for instance, was toiling like a slave to become a.s.sistant-resident and, after some years, to draw his pension; he slaved and toiled for his illusion of rest. At present she felt her own energy leaving her with every drop of blood that she felt flowing more sluggishly through her weary veins. And, in these early days of the wet monsoon, while the eaves of the house incessantly discharged the thick, plashing shafts which irritated her with their clatter, while she watched the gradual ruin of all the material surroundings which she had selected with so much taste as her artistic consolation in India, she reached a more discordant mood of listlessness and dejection than she had ever gone through before. Her child was still too small to mean much to her, to be a kindred spirit. Her husband did nothing but work. He was a kind and thoughtful husband to her, a dear fellow in every way, a man of great simplicity, whom she had accepted--perhaps only because of this simplicity, because of the quiet serenity of his smiling, fair-skinned, Frisian face and the burliness of his broad shoulders--after one or two excited, juvenile romances of enthusiasm and misunderstanding and soulful discussions, romances dating from her girlhood. She, who was herself neither simple nor serene, had sought the simplicity of her life in a simple romance. But his qualities failed to satisfy her. Now especially, when she had been longer in India and was suffering defeat in her contest with the country that did not harmonize with her nature, his serene conjugal love failed to satisfy her.

She was beginning to feel unhappy. She was too versatile a woman to find all her happiness in her little boy. He certainly filled a part of her life, with the minor cares of the present and the thought of his future. She had even worked out a whole educational system for him. But he did not fill her life entirely. And a longing for Holland encompa.s.sed her, a longing for her parents, a longing for the beautiful, artistic home where you were always meeting painters, writers, musicians, the artistic salon--an exception in Holland--that gathered together for a brief moment the artistic elements which in Holland usually remained isolated.

The vision pa.s.sed before her eyes like a vague and distant dream, while she listened to the approaching thunders that filled the air, sultry to bursting-point, while she gazed at the downpour that followed. Here she had nothing. Here she felt out of place. Here she had her little clique of adherents, who collected around her because she was cheerful; but she found no sort of deeper sympathy, no serious conversation ... except in Van Helderen. And with him she meant to be careful, so as to give him no illusions.

There was only Van Helderen. And she thought of all the other people around her at Labuw.a.n.gi. She thought of people, people everywhere. And, very pessimistic in these days, she found in all of them the same egoism, the same self-complacency, the same unattractiveness, the same self-absorption: she could hardly express it to herself, distracted as she was by the terrific force of the pelting rain. But she found in everybody conscious and unconscious traits of unloveliness ... even in her faithful adherents ... and in her husband ... and in the men, young wives, girls, young men around her. There was nothing in any of them but his own ego. Not one of them had sufficient harmony of mind for himself and another. She disapproved of this in one, hated that in another; a third and a fourth she condemned entirely. This critical att.i.tude made her despondent and melancholy, for it was against her nature: she preferred to like others. She liked to live, in spontaneous harmony, with a number of a.s.sociates: originally she had a profound love of people, a love of humanity. Great questions moved her. But nothing that she felt met with any echo. She found herself empty and alone, in a country, a town, an environment in which all and everything, large and small, offended her soul, her body, her character, her nature. Her husband worked. Her child was already becoming thoroughly Indian. Her piano was out of tune.

She stood up and tried the piano, with long scales that ended in the Feuerzauber of Valkyrie. But the roar of the rain was louder than her playing. When she got up again, feeling desperately dejected, she saw Van Helderen standing before her.

"You startled me," she said.

"May I stay to lunch?" he asked. "I am all by myself at home. Ida has gone to Tosari for her malaria and has taken the children with her. She went yesterday. It's an expensive business. How I'm to keep going this month I do not know."

"Send the children to us, after they've had a few days in the hills."

"Won't they bother you?"

"Of course not. I'll write to Ida."

"It's really awfully good of you. It would certainly make things easier for me."

She laughed softly.

"Aren't you well?" he asked.

"I feel deadly," she said.

"How do you mean?"

"I feel as if I were dying by inches."

"Why?"

"It's terrible here. We've been longing for the rains; and, now that they've come, they are driving me mad. And ... I don't know what: I can't stand it here any longer."

"Where?"

"In India. I have taught myself to see the good, the beautiful in this country. It's all no use. I can't go on with it."

"Go to Holland," he said gently.

"My people would be glad to see me, no doubt. It would be good for my boy, because he's forgetting his Dutch daily, though I had begun to teach it to him so conscientiously, and he speaks Malay ... or gibberish. But I can't leave my husband here all alone. He would have nothing here without me. At least, I think so: that is one more sort of illusion. Perhaps it's not so at all."

"But, if you fall ill...?"

"Oh, I don't know!"

Her whole being was filled with an unusual fatigue.

"Perhaps you're exaggerating!" he began, cheerfully. "Come, perhaps you're exaggerating! What's upsetting you, what's making you so unhappy? Let's draw up an inventory together."

"An inventory of my misfortunes? Very well. My garden is a marsh. Three chairs in my front-verandah are splitting to pieces. The white ants have devoured my beautiful j.a.panese mats. A new silk frock has come out all over stains, for no reason that I can make out. Another is all unravelled, simply with the heat, I believe. To say nothing of various minor miseries of the same order. To console myself I took refuge in the Feuerzauber. My piano was out of tune; I believe there are c.o.c.kroaches walking among the strings."

He gave a little laugh.

"We're idiots here," she continued, "we Europeans in this country! Why do we bring all the paraphernalia of our costly civilization with us, considering that it's bound not to last? Why don't we live in a cool bamboo hut, sleep on a mat, dress in a cotton sarong and a chintz kabaai, with a scarf over our shoulders and a flower in our hair. All your civilization by which you propose to grow rich ... is a western idea, which fails in the long run. Our whole administration ... is so tiring in the heat. Why--if we must be here--don't we live simply and plant paddy and live on nothing?"

"You're talking like a woman," he said, with another little laugh.

"Possibly," she said. "Perhaps I don't mean quite all I say. But that I feel here, opposing me, opposing all my western notions, a force which is antagonistic to me ... that is certain. I am sometimes frightened. I always feel ... that I am on the point of being conquered, I don't know what by: by something out of the ground, by a force of nature, by a secret in the soul of these black people, whom I don't know.... I feel particularly afraid at night."

"You're overwrought," he said, tenderly.

"Possibly," she replied, wearily, seeing that he did not understand and too tired to go on explaining. "Let's talk about something else. That table-turning's very curious."

"Very," he said.

"The other day, the three of us: Ida, you and I...."

"It was certainly very curious."

"Do you remember the first time? Addie de Luce: it seems to be true about him and Mrs. van Oudijck.... And the insurrection ... the table foretold it."

"May we not have suggested it unconsciously?"

"I don't know. But to think that we should all be playing fair and that that table should go tapping and talking to us by means of an alphabet!"