The Patjaram sugar-factory was fourteen miles from Labuwangi and
twelve from Ngadjiwa and belonged to the half-Eurasian, half-Solo
family of De Luce, a family who had once been millionaires, but were
no longer so very well off, owing to the recent sugar-crisis, though
they still supported a numerous household. This family, which always
kept together--the old mother and grandmother, a Solo princess; the
eldest son, the manager; three married daughters and their husbands,
clerks in the factory, all living in its shadow; three younger sons
employed in the factory; the many grandchildren, playing round and
about the factory; the great-grandchildren springing up round and about
the factory--this family maintained the old Indian traditions which, at
one time universal, are now becoming rarer, thanks to the more frequent
intercourse with Europeans. The mother and grandmother was the daughter
of a Solo prince and had married a young and enterprising bohemian
adventurer, Ferdinand de Luce, a member of a French titled family
of Mauritius, who, after wandering about for many years in search of
his place in the sun, had sailed to India as a ship's steward, and,
after all sorts of vicissitudes, had found himself stranded in Solo,
where he achieved fame by means of a dish prepared with tomatoes
and another consisting of stuffed chilies. Thanks to these recipes,
Ferdinand de Luce won the favour of the Solo princess, whose hand he
afterwards obtained, and even that of the old Susuhunan. After his
marriage he became a landowner, and, according to the national usage,
a vassal of the Susuhunan of Solo, whom he supplied daily with rice
and fruits for the household of the palace. Then he had launched out
into sugar, divining the millions which a lucky fate held in store
for him. He had died before the crisis, laden with wealth and honours.
The old grandmother, in whom there was not a trace left of the young
princess whom Ferdinand de Luce had wedded to promote his fortunes,
was never approached by the servants or the Javanese staff save with
a cringing reverence; and everybody gave her the title of Raden-aju
pangéran. She did not speak a word of Dutch. Wrinkled like a shrivelled
fruit, with her clouded eyes and her withered, betel-stained mouth,
she was peacefully living her last years, always dressed in a dark
silk kabaai, the neck and the light sleeves of which were fastened
with precious stones. Before her sun-bitten gaze there hovered the
vision of her former palace grandeur, which she had abandoned for love
of that French nobleman-cook who had pandered to her father's taste
with his dainty recipes; in her ears buzzed the constant murmur of
the centrifugal separators, like the thrashing of screw propellers,
throughout the milling-season, which lasted for months on end;
around her were her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren:
the sons and daughters addressed as raden and raden-adjeng by the
servants; all of them still surrounded by the pale halo of their
Solo descent. The eldest daughter was married to a full-blooded,
fair-haired Dutchman; the son who followed her to an Armenian girl;
the two others were married to Eurasians, both brown; and their brown
children--who were also married and also had children--mingled with
the fair-haired family of the eldest daughter; and the pride of the
whole family was the youngest son and brother, Adrien, or Addie, who
made love to Doddie van Oudijck and who was constantly at Labuwangi,
the busy milling-season notwithstanding.
In this family, traditions were still maintained, now quite obsolete,
such as people remembered in the Indian families of long ago. Here you
still saw, in the grounds, in the back verandah, the numberless babus,
[11] one grinding rice into a fine face-powder, another preparing
incense, another pounding diverse condiments, all with dreamy eyes,
all with slender, nimbly-moving fingers. Here the habit still prevailed
of an endless array of dishes at lunch, with a long row of servants,
one after the other, solemnly handing round one more vegetable, one
more sauce, one more dish of chicken, while, squatting behind the
ladies, the babus pounded each a different condiment in an earthenware
mortar, according to the several tastes and requirements of the sated
palates. Here it was still the custom, when the family attended
the races at Ngadjiwa, for each of the ladies to appear followed
by a babu, moving slowly, lithely, solemnly; one babu carrying a
betel-pot, another a bonbonnière filled with peppermints, or a pair
of race-glasses, or a fan, or a scent-bottle; the whole resembling a
ceremonial procession bearing the insignia of state. Here, too, you
still found the old-fashioned hospitality: the row of spare-rooms
open to any one who cared to knock; here all could stay as long
as they pleased; no one was asked the object of his journey or the
date of his departure. A great simplicity of mind, an all-embracing,
spontaneous, innate cordiality prevailed, together with an unbounded
weariness and tedium, a life of no ideas and but few words, the ready,
gentle smile making good the lack of both; a material life, full
and sated: a life of cool drinks and native pastry and fruit-salad
handed round all day, three babus being specially appointed to
make fruit-salad and pastry. Any number of animals were scattered
over the estate: there was a cage full of monkeys; a few lories;
dogs, cats, some tame squirrels and an exquisite little dwarf deer,
which ran about loose. The house, built on to the factory, quaking
all through the milling-season with the noise of machinery--like
the throbs of screw propellers--was spacious and furnished with
the old, old-fashioned furniture: the low wooden bedsteads with
four carved bed-posts hung with curtains; the heavy-legged tables;
the rocking-chairs with peculiarly round backs: all things which
are now no longer obtainable; nothing that betrayed the least touch
of modernity, except--and this only during the milling-season--the
electric light in the front verandah! The occupants were always in
indoor dress: the men in white or blue-and-white striped pyjamas; the
ladies in sarong and kabaai, toying with a monkey or a lory or a doe,
in simplicity of mind, with ever the same pleasant jest, drawling
and drowsy, and the same gentle little laugh. The passions, which
were certainly there, slumbered in that gentle smile. Then, when the
milling-season was over; when all the bustle was over; when the files
of sugar-carts, drawn by the superb oxen, with glossy brown hides,
had brought an ever-increasing store of canes over the fibre-covered
road, which was cut to pieces by the broad cart-ruts; when the seed
had been bought for next year and the machines were stopped: then
came the sudden relaxation after the incessant labour, the long,
long holiday, the many months' rest, the craving for festivity and
enjoyment; the big dinner given by the lady of the house, followed
by a ball and tableaux-vivants; the whole house full of visitors,
who stayed on and on, known and unknown; the old, wrinkled grandmamma,
the landowner, the raden-aju, Mrs. de Luce, whatever you liked to call
her, always amiable, with her dull eyes and her betel-stained mouth,
amiable to one and all, with always an anak-mas, a "golden child," a
poor little adopted princess at her heels, carrying a gold betel-box
behind the great princess from Solo: a slender little woman of eight
years old, her front hair cut into a fringe, her forehead whitened
with moist rice-powder, her already rounded little breasts confined
in the little pink silk kabaai, with the miniature gold sarong round
the slender hips; a doll, a toy for the raden-aju, for Mrs. de Luce,
for the Dowager de Luce. And for the compounds there were the popular
rejoicings, a time-honoured lavishness, in which all Patjaram shared,
according to the age-old tradition which was always observed, despite
any crisis or unrest.
The milling-season and the rejoicings were now over. There was
comparative peace indoors; and a languorous Indian calm had set in. But
Mrs. van Oudijck, Theo and Doddie had come over for the festivities
and were staying on a few days longer at Patjaram. A great circle
of people sat round the marble table covered with glasses of syrup,
lemonade and whisky-and-soda; they did not speak much, but rocked
luxuriously, exchanging an occasional word. Mrs. de Luce and Mrs. van
Oudijck spoke Malay, but were not talkative. A gentle, good-humoured
boredom drifted down on all these rocking people. It was strange to see
the different types: the pretty, milk-white Léonie beside the yellow,
wrinkled raden-aju-dowager; Theo, pale and fair as a Dutchman, with
his full, sensual lips, which he inherited from his half-caste mother;
Doddie, already looking like a ripe rose, with the sparkling irises
and black pupils of her black eyes; the manager's son, Achille de Luce,
brown, tall and stout, whose thoughts ran only on his machinery and his
seed; the second son, Roger, brown, short and thin, the book-keeper,
whose thoughts ran only on the year's profits, with his little Armenian
wife; the eldest daughter, old already, brown, stupidly ugly, with her
full-blooded Dutch husband, who looked like a peasant; the other sons
and daughters, in every shade of brown, not easily to be distinguished
one from the other; around them the children, the grandchildren, the
little, golden-skinned adopted children, the babus, the lories and
the dwarf deer; and over all these people and children and animals,
as though shaken down upon them, lay a good-hearted solidarity; and
over all these people there also lay a common pride in their Solo
ancestors, crowning all their heads with a pale halo of Javanese
aristocracy; and the Armenian daughter-in-law and the bucolic Dutch
son-in-law were not least proud of this descent.
The liveliest of all these elements, which were melting into one
another, as it were, through long communal life under the patriarchal
roofs, was the youngest son, Adrien de Luce, Addie, in whom the blood
of the Solo princess and that of the French adventurer had blended
harmoniously. The admixture, it is true, had given him no brains,
but it had given him the physical beauty of a young Eurasian, with
something of the Moor about it, something southern and seductive,
something Spanish, as though in this last child the two alien racial
elements had for the first time mingled harmoniously, for the first
time been wedded in absolute mutual sympathy; as though in him, this
last child after so many children, adventurer and princess had for
the first time met in harmony. Addie seemed to possess not a jot of
intellect or imagination; he was unable to unite two ideas into one
composite thought; he merely felt, with the vague good-nature which had
descended upon the whole family. For the rest, he was like a beautiful
animal, degenerating in soul and brain, but degenerating into nothing,
to a great nullity, to one great emptiness, while his body was like
a renewal of his race, full of strength and beauty, while his marrow
and his blood and his flesh and his muscles were all one harmony of
physical seductiveness, so purely, stupidly, beautifully sensual that
its harmony had for a woman an immediate appeal. The lad had but to
appear, like a beautiful, southern god, for all the women to look at
him and take him into the depths of their imagination, to recall him
to their minds again and again; the lad had but to go to a race-ball
at Ngadjiwa for all the girls to fall in love with him. He plucked
love where he found it, in plenty, in the Patjaram compounds. And
everything feminine was in love with him, from his mother to his little
nieces. Doddie van Oudijck was infatuated with him. From a child of
seven she had been in love, a hundred times and more, with every one
who passed before the glance of her flashing pupils, but never yet as
with Addie. Her love shone so strongly from her whole being that it
was like a flame, that everybody saw it and smiled. The milling-feast
had been to her one long delight ... when she danced with him; one
long martyrdom ... when he danced with others. He had not asked her
to marry him, but she thought of asking him and was prepared to die
if he refused. She knew that the resident, her father, would object:
he did not like those De Luces, that Solo-French crew, as he called
them; but, if Addie was willing, her father would consent, rather than
see her die. To this child of love that lovable lad was the world,
the universe, life itself. He made love to her, he kissed her on
the lips, but this was no more than he did to others, unthinkingly;
he kissed other girls as well. And, if he could, he went further,
like a devastating young god, an unthinking god. But he still stood
more or less in awe of the resident's daughter. He possessed neither
pluck nor effrontery; his passions were not markedly selective;
he looked on a woman as a woman and was so much sated with conquest
that obstacles did not stimulate him. His garden was full of flowers
which all lifted themselves up to him; he stretched out his hand,
almost without looking; he merely plucked.
As they sat rocking about the table they saw him come through
the garden; and the eyes of all these women turned to him as to a
young tempter, arriving in the sunshine, which touched him as with
a halo. The raden-aju dowager smiled and gazed at him, enamoured
of her son, her favourite; squatting on the ground behind her, the
little golden adopted child stared with wide-open eyes; the sisters
looked out, the little nieces looked out, and Doddie turned pale
and Léonie van Oudijck's milky whiteness became tinged with a rosy
shade which mingled with the glamour of her smile. She glanced at
Theo mechanically; their eyes met. And these souls of sheer love,
love of the eyes, of the lips, love of the glowing flesh, understood
each other; and Theo's jealousy of Léonie blazed so fiercely that the
rosy shade died away and she became pale and fearful, with a sudden,
unreasoning fear which shuddered through her usual indifference,
while the tempter, in his halo of sunshine, came nearer and nearer....