The Hidden Force Part 12

"Mamma!" cried Doddie, in dismay.

It was indeed Leonie, 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, Leonie 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 embarra.s.sed. 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 Leonie, 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, coa.r.s.er, 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 pa.s.sion: the pa.s.sion for women, and wine, the pa.s.sion for opium, the pa.s.sion, 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 Leonie'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 pa.s.sion, 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 s.p.a.cious, 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? Leonie did not know, did not care, indifferent to their pa.s.sion 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 Labuw.a.n.gi, 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 Mendes 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.sage 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, superst.i.tiously 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 l.u.s.t 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 n.o.bility, through whom it governs the population? What did it matter to her that Van Oudijck, thinking of the n.o.ble old pangeran, 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 Leonie and Theo, as well as Addie and Doddie, p.r.i.c.ked 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 gla.s.s 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 m.u.f.fled, 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--"Ss.h.!.+... Ss.h.!.+"--embarra.s.sed 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-pa.s.sion 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 compa.s.sion; 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 a.s.sured 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 residen, 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 pet.i.tions; by encouraging people to go to Mecca and let him book their pa.s.sages with very cheap little steams.h.i.+p-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 pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+pped him as his mother and his sisters and his little nieces wors.h.i.+pped 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 peac.o.c.k'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-gla.s.s 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, a.s.suming a jovial air, cried:

"Hullo, Adipati! Susuhunan! Sultan of Patjaram! Sugar-lord! How are you, my G.o.d 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 Adria.n.u.s, 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 controllers.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sistant-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 kins.h.i.+p 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 n.o.bility should be respected, but because his own heart told him as much, when he thought of the n.o.ble old pangeran.... 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.