The Hidden Force Part 17

"You're a bit overstrung. But I knew that you had a good heart ... and would not leave me in the lurch ... and would consent to help poor old Mother Staats. But don't throw away any money, mevrouwtje: no expense, no new scenery. Just your wit, your talent, your beautiful elocution: French or Dutch, as you please. We're proud of all that at Labuw.a.n.gi, you know; and all the beautiful acting--which you give us free of charge--is quite enough to make the performance a success. But how overstrung you are, mevrouwtje! Why are you crying? Aren't you well? Tell me: is there anything I can do for you?"

"Don't work my husband so hard, resident. I never see anything of him."

He made a gesture to show that he could not help himself:

"It's true," he admitted. "There's an awful lot to do. Is that the trouble?"

"And make me see the good side of India."

"Is that it?"

"And a lot besides."

"Are you becoming homesick? Don't you care for India any longer, don't you care for Labuw.a.n.gi, where we all make so much of you?... You misjudge India. Try to see the good side of it."

"I have tried."

"Is it no use?"

"No."

"You are too sensible not to perceive the good in this country."

"You are too fond of it to be impartial. And I don't know how to be impartial. But tell me the good things."

"Which shall I begin with? The satisfaction of being able, as an official, to do good to the country and the people. The fine, delightful sense of working for this country and this people; the ample hard work that fills a man's life out here.... I'm not speaking of all the office-work of your husband, who is district secretary. But I'm speaking of later on, when he becomes an a.s.sistant-resident!"

"It will be so long before that happens!"

"Well, then, the s.p.a.cious material life?"

"The white ants gnaw everything."

"That's a poor joke, mevrouw."

"Very possibly, resident. Everything is out of tune with me, inside and out: my wit, my piano and my poor soul."

"Nature, then?"

"I don't feel it all. Nature is conquering me and devouring me."

"Your own activities?"

"My activities? One of the good things in India?"

"Yes. To inspire us material, practical people with your wit, now and again."

"Resident! You're paying me compliments!... Is this all on account of the theatricals?"

"And to do good to Mother Staats with that wit of yours!"

"Couldn't I do good in Europe?"

"Certainly, certainly," he said, bluffly. "Go to Europe, mevrouw, by all means. Go and live at the Hague; join the Charity Organization Society ... with a collecting-box at your door and a rix-dollar ... how often?"

She laughed:

"Now you're becoming unjust. They do a lot of good in Holland too."

"But do they ever do in Holland for one distressed person ... what we, what you are now going to do for Mother Staats? And don't tell me that there's less poverty here."

"Well?"

"Well, then, there is a great deal of good for you here. Your special activities. Your material and moral work for others.... Don't let Van Helderen get too much smitten with you, mevrouw. He's a charming fellow, but he puts too much literature into his monthly reports.... I see him coming and I must be off. So I can rely on you?"

"Absolutely."

"When shall we have the first meeting, with the committee and the ladies?"

"To-morrow evening, resident, at your house?"

"Right you are. I shall send round the subscription-lists. We must make a lot of money, mevrouw."

"We'll do our best for Mother Staats," she said, gently.

He shook her hand and went away. She felt limp, she did not know why:

"The resident has been warning me against you, because you're too literary!" she said to Van Helderen, teasingly.

She sat down in the front verandah. The skies burst asunder; a white curtain of rain descended in perpendicular streams. A plague of locusts came hopping along the verandah. A cloud of tiny flies hummed in the corners like an aeolian harp. Eva and Van Helderen placed their hands on the little table and it tilted its leg with a jerk, while the beetles buzzed around them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The subscription-lists went round. The plays were rehea.r.s.ed and performed in three weeks' time; and the committee handed the resident a sum of nearly fifteen hundred guilders for Mother Staats. Her debts were paid; a little house was rented for her; and she was set up in a small milliner's shop, which Eva stocked from Paris. All the ladies in Labuw.a.n.gi gave Mother Staats an order; and in less than a month not only was the woman saved from utter ruin, but her mode of life was established, her children were going to school again and she was enjoying a pleasant livelihood. All this had happened so swiftly and unostentatiously; the subscriptions were so munificent; the ladies so readily ordered a dress or a hat which they did not need that Eva was astounded. And she had to confess to herself that the egoism, the self-absorption, the unlovable qualities which she often observed in their social life--in their intercourse, conversation, intriguing and gossip--had been suddenly thrust into the background by a common gift for doing the right thing, quite simply, because it had to be done, because there was no question about it, because the woman had to be a.s.sisted. Roused from her depression by the bustle of the rehearsals, stimulated to brisk action, she appreciated the better and finer side of her environment and wrote of it so enthusiastically to Holland that her parents, to whom India was a closed book, smiled. But, although this episode had awakened a soft and gentle and appreciative feeling in her, it was only an episode; and she remained the same when the emotion of it was over. And, notwithstanding that she felt the disapproval of Labuw.a.n.gi around her, she continued to find the main interest of her life in Van Helderen's friends.h.i.+p.

For there was so little else. Her little circle of adherents, which she had gathered round her with so many illusions, which she invited to dinner, to which her doors were always open: what did it actually amount to? She now accepted the Doorn de Bruijns and the Rantzows as indifferent acquaintances, but no longer as friends. She suspected Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn of insincerity; Dr. Rantzow was too common, too vulgar; his wife was an insignificant German Hausfrau. True, they joined in the table-turning, but they relished the absurd inept.i.tudes, the indecent conversation of the mocking spirit. She and Van Helderen took the whole thing seriously, though she thought the table rather comical. And so no one but Van Helderen remained to interest her.

But Van Oudijck had won her admiration. She had suddenly obtained a glimpse of his character; and, though it entirely lacked the artistic charm which had hitherto exclusively attracted her in men, she saw the fine quality also in this man, who was not at all artistic, who had not the least conception of art, but who had so much that was beautiful in his simple, manly idea of duty and in the calmness with which he endured the disappointment of his domestic life. For Eva saw that, though he adored his wife, he did not approve of Leonie's indifference to all the interests of which his own life was built up. If he saw nothing more, if he was blind to all the rest that went on in his domestic circle, this disappointment was his secret pain, to which he was not blind, deep down in himself.

And she admired him; and her admiration was as it were a revelation that art does not always stand highest in the affairs of this life. She suddenly understood that the exaggerated importance attaching to art in our time was a disease from which she had suffered and was still suffering. For what was she, what did she do? Nothing. Her parents, both of them, were great artists, true artists; and their house was like a temple and their bias was comprehensible and pardonable. But what of her? She played the piano pretty well; and that was all. She had a few ideas, a little taste; and that was all. But in her time she had gushed with other girls; and she now remembered all that foolish gus.h.i.+ng, that trick of exchanging letters crammed with cheap philosophy and written in a modern style distantly aping that of the poets Kloos and Gorter. And thus, for all her depression, her meditation carried her a stage further and she underwent a certain development. For it seemed incredible that she, the child of her parents, should not always place art above everything else.

And she had in her that play and counterplay of seeking and thinking in order to find her way, now that she was quite lost in a country alien to her nature, among people on whom she looked down, without letting them perceive it. She strove to find the good in the country, in order to make it her own and cherish it; she was glad to find among the people those few who roused her sympathy and her admiration; but the good remained incidental to her, the few people remained exceptional; and, despite all her seeking and thinking, she did not find her way and retained the moodiness of a woman who was too European, too artistic, notwithstanding her self-knowledge and her consequent denial of her artistic capacity, to live quietly and contentedly in an up-country Javanese town, beside a husband wrapped up in his office-work, in a climate that upset her health, amid natural surroundings that overwhelmed her and among people whom she disliked.