The Hidden Force Part 23

"He doesn't drink much."

"No ... only his whisky-and-soda of an evening."

"He'll ask for it presently."

"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 gla.s.s?"

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!"

The gla.s.s was a dull yellow.

"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 Rene and Ricus were staying in the Preanger [12] 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, a.s.suring him that this leave would have no influence on his promotion to a residency of the first cla.s.s, which was nearly due. He refused this favour, however, and returned to Labuw.a.n.gi. 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 pangeran. 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 Leonie 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 gla.s.s 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 Labuw.a.n.gi:

"Drink with an easy mind, regent. I give you my word of honour that no more gla.s.ses 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....