The secretary, Onno Eldersma, was a busy man. The post brought
a daily average of some two hundred letters and documents to the
residency-office, which employed two senior clerks, six juniors and a
number of native writers and clerks; and the resident grumbled whenever
the work fell into arrears. He himself was an energetic worker; and he
expected his subordinates to show the same spirit. But sometimes there
was a perfect torrent of documents, claims and applications. Eldersma
was the typical government official, wholly wrapped up in his minutes
and reports; and Eldersma was always busy. He worked morning, noon and
night. He allowed himself no siesta. He took a hurried lunch at four
o'clock and then rested for a little. Fortunately he had a sound,
robust, Frisian constitution; but he needed all his blood, all his
muscles, all his nerves for his work. It was not mere scribbling,
mere fumbling with papers: it was manual labour with the pen, muscular
work, nervous work; and it never ceased. He consumed himself, he spent
himself, he was always writing. He had not another idea left in his
head; he was nothing but the official, the civil servant. He had a
charming house, a most charming and exceptional wife, a delightful
child, but he never saw them, though he lived, vaguely, amid his home
surroundings. He just slaved away, conscientiously, working off what
he could. Sometimes he would tell the resident that it was impossible
for him to do any more. But on this point Van Oudijck was inexorable,
pitiless. He himself had been a district secretary; he knew what it
meant. It meant work, it meant plodding like a cart-horse. It meant
living, eating, sleeping with your pen in your hand. Then Van Oudijck
would show him this or that piece of work which had to be finished. And
Eldersma, who had said that he could do no more than he was doing,
somehow got it done, and therefore always did do something more than
he believed that he could do.
Then his wife, Eva, would say:
"My husband has ceased to be a human being; my husband has ceased to
be a man; my husband is an official."
The young wife, very European, now in India for the first time, had
never known, before her two years at Labuwangi, that it was possible
to work as hard as her husband did, in a country as hot as Labuwangi
was during the eastern moonson. She had resisted it at first; she
had at first tried to stand upon her rights; but once she saw that he
really had not a minute to spare, she waived them. She had very soon
come to realize that her husband could not share her life, nor could
she share his: not because he was not a good husband and very fond of
his wife, but simply because the post brought two hundred letters and
documents daily. She had soon seen that there was nothing for her to
do at Labuwangi and that she would have to console herself with her
house and, later, with her child. She arranged her house as a temple of
art and comfort and racked her brains over the education of her little
boy. She was an artistically cultivated woman and came from an artistic
environment. Her father was Van Hove, the great landscape-painter;
her mother was Stella Couberg, the famous concert-singer. Eva,
brought up in an artistic and musical home whose atmosphere she had
breathed since her babyhood, in her picture-books and childish songs,
Eva had married an East-Indian civil servant and had accompanied him
to Labuwangi. She loved her husband, a good-looking Frisian and a man
of sufficient culture to take an interest in many subjects. And she
had gone, happy in her love and filled with illusions about India and
all the Orientalism of the tropics. And she had tried to preserve her
illusions, despite the warnings which she had received. At Singapore
she was struck by the colour of the naked Malays, like that of a bronze
statue, by the Eastern motley of the Chinese and Arab quarters and the
poetry of the Japanese tea-houses, which unfolded like a page of Loti
as she drove past. But, soon after, in Batavia, a grey disappointment
had fallen like a cold, drizzling rain upon her expectation of seeing
everything in India as a beautiful fairy-tale, a story out of the
Arabian Nights. The habits of their narrow, everyday existence damped
all her unsophisticated longing to admire; and she saw everything
that was ridiculous even before she discovered anything else that was
beautiful. At her hotel, the men in pyjamas lay at full length in
their deck-chairs, with their lazy legs on the extended leg-rests,
their feet--although carefully tended--bare and their toes moving
quietly in a conscientious exercise of big toe and little toe, even
while she was passing. The ladies were in sarong and kabaai, the only
practical morning-dress, which is easily changed two or three times a
day, but which suits so few, the straight, pillow-case outline at the
back being peculiarly angular and ugly, however elegant and expensive
the costume.... And then the commonplace aspect of the houses,
with all their whitewash and their rows of fragile and meretricious
flower-pots; the parched barrenness of the vegetation, the dirt of the
natives! And, in the life of the Europeans, all the minor absurdities:
the half-caste accent, with the constant little exclamations; the
narrow provincial conventionality of the officials: only the Indian
Council allowed to wear top-hats. And then the rigorous little maxims
of etiquette: at a reception, the highest functionary is the first to
leave; the others follow in due order. And the little peculiarities of
tropical customs, such as the use of packing-cases and paraffin-tins
for this, that and the other purpose: the wood for shop-windows, for
dust-bins and home-made articles of furniture; the tins for gutters
and watering-cans and all kinds of domestic utensils....
The young and cultured little woman, with her Arabian Nights illusions,
was unable, amid these first impressions, to distinguish between what
was colonial--the expedients of a European acclimatizing himself in
a country which is alien to his blood--and what was really poetic,
genuinely Indian, purely eastern, absolutely Javanese; and,
because of these and other little absurdities, she had at once
felt disappointed, as every one with artistic inclinations feels
disappointed in colonial India, which is not at all artistic or poetic
and in which the rose-trees in their white pots are conscientiously
manured with horse-droppings as high as they will bear, so that, when
a breeze springs up, the scent of the roses mingles with a stench of
freshly-sprinkled manure. And she had grown unjust, as does every
Hollander, every newcomer to the beautiful country which he would
like to see with the eyes of his preconceived literary vision, but
which impresses him at first by its absurd colonial side. And she
forgot that the country itself, which was originally so absolutely
beautiful, was not to blame for all this absurdity.
She had had a couple of years of it and had been astonished,
occasionally alarmed, then again shocked, had laughed sometimes and
then again been annoyed; and at last, with the reasonableness of
her nature and the practical side of her artistic soul, had grown
accustomed to it all. She had grown accustomed to the toe-exercises,
to the manure around the roses; she had grown accustomed to her
husband, who was no longer a human being, no longer a man, but an
official. She had suffered a great deal, she had written despairing
letters, she had been sick with longing for the home of her parents,
she had been on the verge of making a sudden departure, but she had
not gone, so as not to leave her husband in his loneliness, and she
had accustomed herself to things and made the best of them. She had
not only the soul of an artist--she played the piano exceptionally
well--but also the heart of a plucky little woman. She had gone on
loving her husband and she felt that, after all, she provided him
with a pleasant home. She gave serious attention to the education of
her child. And, once she had become accustomed to things, she grew
less unjust and suddenly saw much of what was beautiful in India;
admired the stately grace of a coco-palm, the exquisite, paradisal
flavour of the Indian fruits, the glory of the blossoming trees; and,
in the inland districts, she had realized the noble majesty of nature,
the harmony of the undulating hills, the faery forests of gigantic
ferns, the menacing ravines of the craters, the shimmering terraces
of the flooded rice-fields, with the tender green of the young paddy;
and the character of the Javanese had been a very revelation to her:
his elegance, his grace, his salutation, his dancing; his aristocratic
distinction, so often evidently handed down directly from a noble race,
from an age-old chivalry, now modernized into a diplomatic suppleness,
worshipping authority by nature and inevitably resigned under the
yoke of the rulers whose gold-lace arouses his innate respect.
In her father's house, Eva had always felt around her the cult of
the artistic and the beautiful, even to the verge of decadence;
those with her had always directed her attention, in an environment
of perfectly beautiful things, in beautiful words, in music, to the
plastic beauty of life, and perhaps too exclusively to that alone. And
she was now too well-trained in that school of beauty to persist in
her disappointment and to see only the white-wash and flimsiness of
the houses, the petty airs of the officials, the packing-cases and
the horse-droppings. Her literary mind now saw the palatial character
of the houses, so typical of the official arrogance, which could
hardly have been other than it was; and she saw all these details more
accurately, obtaining a broader insight into all that world of India,
so that revelation followed upon revelation. Only she continued to
feel something strange, something that she could not analyse, a certain
mystery, a dark secrecy, which she felt creeping softly over the land
at night. But she thought that it was no more than a mood produced by
the darkness and the very dense foliage, that it was like the very
quiet music of stringed instruments of a kind quite strange to her,
a distant murmur of harps in a minor key, a vague voice of warning,
a whispering in the night--no more--which evoked poetic imaginings.
At Labuwangi, a small inland capital, she often astonished the
acclimatized up-country elements because she was somewhat excitable,
because she was enthusiastic, spontaneous, glad to be alive--even
in India--glad of the beauty of life, because she had a healthy
nature, softly tempered and shaded into a charming pose of caring
for nothing but the beautiful: beautiful lines, beautiful colours,
artistic ideas. Those who knew her either disliked her or were very
fond of her: few felt indifferent to her. She had gained a reputation
in India for unusualness: her house was unusual, her clothes unusual,
the education of her child unusual; her ideas were unusual and
the only ordinary thing about her was her Frisian husband, who
was almost too ordinary in that environment, which might have been
cut out of an art-magazine. She was fond of society and gathered
around her as much of the European element as possible: it was,
indeed, seldom artistic; but she imparted a pleasant tone to it,
something that reminded everybody of Holland. This little clique,
this group admired her and instinctively adopted the tone which she
set. Because of her greater culture, she ruled over it, though she
was not a despot by nature. But they did not all approve of this;
and the rest called her eccentric. The clique, however, the group,
remained faithful to her, for she awakened them, in the soft languor
of Indian life, to the existence of music, ideas, and the joie de
vivre. So she had drawn into her circle the doctor and his wife, the
chief engineer and his wife, the district controller and his wife,
and sometimes a couple of outside controllers, or a few young fellows
from the sugar-factories. This brought round her a gay little band of
adherents. She ruled over them, organized amateur theatricals for them,
picnicked with them and charmed them with her house and her frocks
and the epicurean and artistic flavour of her life. They forgave her
everything that they did not understand--her æsthetic principles, her
enthusiasm for Wagner--because she gave them gaiety and a little joie
de vivre and a sociable feeling in the deadliness of their colonial
existence. For this they were fervently grateful to her. And thus
it had come about that her house became the actual centre of social
life at Labuwangi, whereas the residency, on the other hand, withdrew
with dignified reserve into the shadow of its banyan-trees. Léonie
van Oudijck was not jealous on this account. She loved her repose and
was only too glad to leave everything to Eva Eldersma. And so Léonie
troubled about nothing--neither entertaining nor musical societies
nor dramatic societies nor charities--and delegated to Eva all the
social duties which as a rule a resident's wife feels bound to take
upon herself. Léonie had her monthly receptions, at which she spoke
to everybody and smiled upon everybody, and gave her annual ball on
New Year's Day. With this the social life of the residency began and
ended. Apart from this she lived there in her egoism, in the comfort
with which she had selfishly surrounded herself, in her rosy dreams
of cherubs and in such love as she was able to evoke. Sometimes,
periodically, she felt a need for Batavia and went to spend a month
or two there. And so she, as the wife of the resident, led her own
life; and Eva did everything and Eva set the tone. It sometimes
gave rise to a little jealousy, as for instance between her and
the wife of the inspector of finances, who considered that the
first place after Mrs. van Oudijck belonged to her and not to the
secretary's wife. This would occasion a good deal of bickering over
the Indian official etiquette; and stories and tittle-tattle would
go the rounds, enhanced, aggravated, until they reached the remotest
sugar-factory in the district. But Eva took no notice of all this
gossip and preferred to devote herself to providing a little social
life in Labuwangi. And, to keep things going properly, she and her
little circle ruled the roost. She had been elected president of the
Thalia Dramatic Society and she accepted, but on condition that the
rules should be abolished. She was willing to be queen, but without
a constitution. Everybody said that this would never do: there had
always been rules. But Eva replied that, if there were to be rules,
she must refuse to be president. And they gave way: the constitution
of the Thalia was abolished; Eva held absolute sway, chose the plays
and distributed the parts. And it was the golden age of the society:
rehearsed by her, the members acted so well that people came from
Surabaya to attend the performances at the Concordia. The pieces played
were of a quality such as had never been seen at the Concordia before.
And the result of this again was that people either loved her or
did not like her at all. But she went her way and provided a little
European civilization, so that they might not grow too "stuffy"
at Labuwangi. And people descended to all sorts of trickery to get
invited to her little dinners, which were famous and notorious. For
she stipulated that her men should come in dress-clothes and not in
their Singapore jackets, without shirts. She introduced swallow-tails
and white ties; and she was inexorable. The women were low-necked,
as usual, for the sake of coolness, and thought it delightful. But
her poor men struggled against it, puffed and blew at first and
felt congested in their tall collars; the doctor declared that it
was unhealthy; and the veterans protested that it was madness and
opposed to all the good old Indian customs. But when they had puffed
and blown a few times in their dress-coats and tall collars, they
all found Mrs. Eldersma's dinners charming, precisely because they
were so European in style.