Things had gone well with Van Oudijck upon the whole. Born of a simple
Dutch family, with no money, he had found his youth a hard though
never cruel school of precocious earnestness, of early strenuous
work, of immediate looking forward to the future, to a career,
to the honourable position which he hoped--with the least possible
delay--to fill among his fellow-men. His years of oriental study at
Delft had been just gay enough to enable him later to believe that he
had once been young; and, because he had taken part in a masquerade,
he even thought that he had spent quite a dissolute life, with much
squandering of money and riotous living. His character was based on
a good deal of quiet Dutch respectability and an earnest outlook upon
life, a rather gloomy, disillusioned outlook, though intelligent and
practical: he was accustomed to visualize his honourable position
among his fellow-men; and his ambition had developed rhythmically
and steadily into a temperate thirst for position, but only on the
lines along which his eyes were always wont to gaze: the hierarchical
lines of the Indian Civil Service. Things had always gone well with
him. Displaying great capacity, he had been greatly valued; he had
become an assistant-resident earlier than most and a resident while
still young; and his ambition was now really satisfied because his
authoritative office was in complete harmony with his nature, whose
love of rule had progressed with its ambition. He was now really
satisfied; and, though his eyes looked still much farther ahead and
saw glimmering before them a seat on the Indian Council, and even
the throne at Buitenzorg, he had days when, sober and contented, he
declared that to become a resident of the first class--putting aside
the higher pension--had little in its favour except at Samarang and
Surabaya, but that the Vorstenlanden were absolutely a burden, while
Batavia occupied such a peculiar and almost derogatory position,
in the thick of so many higher officials, members of council and
directors. And, though his eyes thus looked farther ahead, his
practical and temperate nature would have been quite satisfied if
any one should have prophesied to him that he would die as Resident
of Labuwangi. He loved his district and loved India; he never
yearned for Holland, nor for the pageant of European civilization,
even though he himself had remained very Dutch and above all hated
anything that was half-caste. This was the inconsistency in his
character, for he had married his first wife, herself a half-caste,
purely out of affection; and, as for his children, in whom the Indian
blood was eloquent--outwardly in Doddie, inwardly in Theo, while René
and Ricus were two thorough little Eurasians--he loved them with an
intense feeling of paternity, with all the tenderness and sentiment
that slumbered in the depths of his nature: a need to give much and
receive much in the circle of his domestic life. Gradually this need
had extended to the circle of his district: he took a paternal pride
in his assistant-residents and controllers, among whom he was popular
and beloved. It had happened only once in the six years during which
he had been Resident of Labuwangi that he had been unable to get on
with a controller: then the man was a half-caste, and he had had him
transferred: had him sacked, as he put it. And he was proud that,
despite his strict discipline, despite his stern insistence on
work, he was beloved by his officials. He was all the more grieved
by the constant secret enmity of the regent, his "younger brother,"
to use the Javanese title, in whom indeed he would gladly have found
a younger brother to govern his native population under himself,
the elder brother. It grieved him that matters had fallen out thus;
and he would then think of other regents, not only of this one's
father, the fine old pangéran, but of others whom he knew: the Regent
of D---, a cultivated man, speaking and writing Dutch correctly,
contributing lucid Dutch articles to newspapers and magazines; the
Regent of S---, a trifle frivolous and vain, but very rich and very
benevolent, figuring as a dandy in European society and polite to
the ladies. Why should things have fallen out just so in Labuwangi,
with this silent, spiteful, secretive, fanatical puppet, with the
reputation of a saint and sorcerer, stupidly idolized by the people,
in whose welfare he took no interest and who adored him only for
the glamour of his ancient name, a man in whom he always felt an
antagonism, never uttered in words, but plainly palpable under his
icy correctness of demeanour? And then at Ngadjiwa too there was
the brother, the card-player, the gambler: why should just he be so
unlucky in his regents?
Van Oudijck was in a gloomy mood. He was accustomed to receiving,
at regular intervals, anonymous letters, venomous libels spewed forth
from quiet corners, bespattering at one time an assistant-resident, at
another a controller, besmirching now the native head-men and now his
own family; sometimes taking the form of a friendly warning, sometimes
displaying a malicious delight in wounding; very, very anxious to
open his eyes to the shortcomings of his officials and to his wife's
misconduct. He was so completely used to this that he did not count
the letters, reading them hastily or hardly at all and carelessly
destroying them. Accustomed as he was to judging for himself, these
spiteful warnings made no impression on him, though they reared their
heads like hissing snakes among all the letters which the post brought
him daily; and as regards his wife he was so blind, he had always been
so much in the habit of picturing Léonie in the tranquillity of her
smiling indifference and in the home-like sociability which she most
certainly attracted round her--in the hollow void of the residency,
whose chairs and ottomans seemed always arranged for a reception--that
he could never have credited the most trivial of all these slanders.
He never mentioned them to her. He loved his wife; he was in love with
her; and, as he always saw her almost silent in society, as she never
flirted or coquetted, he never glanced into the slough of corruption
that was her soul. At home, indeed, he was absolutely blind. At
home he displayed that utter blindness which is often seen in men
who are very capable and efficient in their business or profession;
who are accustomed to scan with sharp eyes the wide perspective of
their official duties, but who are near-sighted at home; who are wont
to analyse things in the lump, but not their psychological details;
whose knowledge of mankind is based on principles, and who divide
mankind into types, as in the caste of an old-fashioned play; who can
at once plumb the capacity of their subordinates, but are utterly
unable to realize the intricate complex, like a tangled arabesque,
like rankly-growing tendrils, of the psychic involution of those who
form their own household: always gazing over their heads, failing
to grasp the inner meaning of their speech, and taking no interest
in the kaleidoscopic emotions of hatred and jealousy and life and
love that shine with prismatic hues right before their eyes. He loved
his wife and he loved his children, because the feeling and the fact
of paternity were necessities of his being; but he knew neither his
wife nor his children. He knew nothing about Léonie; and he had never
realized that Theo and Doddie had secretly remained faithful to their
mother, so far away in Batavia, ruined by her unspeakable mode of
life, and that they felt no love for him. He thought that they did
give him their love; and, as for him ... when he thought of them,
a slumbering affection awoke within him.
He received these anonymous letters daily. They had never made an
impression on him; yet of late he no longer destroyed them, but read
them attentively and put them aside in a secret drawer. He could
not have said why. They contained accusations against his wife, they
contained imputations against his daughter. They sought to intimidate
him by threatening that he might be stabbed in the dark. They warned
him that his spies were utterly untrustworthy. They told him that
his divorced wife was suffering from poverty and hated him, they
told him that he had a son whom he had left unprovided for. They
stealthily grubbed up all the secret or obscure passages in his
life and his career. The thing depressed his spirits in spite of
himself. It was all very vague; and he had nothing with which to
reproach himself. In his own eyes and the world's, he was a good
official, a good husband and a good father, he was a good man. That
he should be blamed for having judged too unjustly and unfairly here,
for having acted cruelly there, for having divorced his first wife,
for having a son running wild in the compound; that people should
throw mud at Léonie and Doddie: it all depressed him nowadays. For it
was unaccountable that people should do just this. To this man, with
his practical good sense, the vagueness was just the most vexatious
part of it. He would not fear an open fight, but this mock battle
in the dark was upsetting his nerves and his health. He could not
conceive why it was happening. There was nothing to tell him. He
could not conjure up the face of an enemy. And the letters came day
after day; and enmity lurked daily in the shadows about him. It was
too mystical and too much opposed to his nature not to embitter and
depress and sadden him. Then paragraphs appeared in the lesser papers,
utterances of a mean and hostile press, vague accusations or palpable
falsehoods. Hatred was seething all about him. He could not fathom the
reason of it, he became ill from brooding over it. And he discussed
it with nobody and hid his suffering deep down within himself.
He did not understand it. He could not imagine why it was, why it
should be so. There was no logic in it all. Logically he should
be loved, not hated, however strict and authoritative he might
be considered. Indeed, did he not often temper his authoritative
strictness with the jovial laugh under his thick moustache, with
a friendly, genial warning and exhortation? Was he not on circuit
a pleasant resident, who regarded the circuit with his officials
as a relaxation, as a delightful trip on horseback through the
coffee-plantations, touching at the go-downs in each; as a jolly
excursion, which relaxed one's muscles after all those weeks of
office-work: the big staff of district heads following on their
little horses, riding their skittish animals like nimble monkeys,
with flags in their hands; with the native orchestra tinkling out its
blithe crystal notes of welcome wherever he went; with the carefully
prepared dinner in the dak-bungalow in the evening and the rubber
till late at night? Had not his officials, in informal moments,
told him that he was a regular sport of a resident, an indefatigable
rider, jovial at meals and so young that he would actually take
the scarf from the nautch-girl and dance with her for a moment,
very cleverly performing the lissom ritual movements of the hands
and feet and hips, instead of buying himself off with a rix-dollar
and leaving her to dance with the district head? Never did he feel
so happy as on circuit. And now that he was gloomy and depressed,
dissatisfied, not knowing what hidden forces were opposing him in the
dusk--straight, honest man that he was, a man of simple principles,
a serious worker--he thought that he would go on circuit soon and, by
that diversion, rid himself of the gloom that was oppressing him. He
would ask Theo to go with him, for the sake of a few days' change.
He was fond of his boy, even though he considered him stupid,
thoughtless, reckless, lacking in perseverance, never satisfied with
his superiors, tactlessly opposing his manager, until he had once more
made himself impossible in the coffee-plantation or sugar-factory
at which he happened to be employed. He considered that Theo ought
to make his own way, as his father had done before him, instead of
relying entirely on the resident's protection. He did not hold with
nepotism. He would never favour his son above any one else who had
the same rights. He had often told nephews of his, keen on obtaining
concessions in Labuwangi, that he would rather have no relations
in his district and that they must expect nothing from him except
absolute impartiality. That was how he had got on; that was how he
expected them to get on ... and Theo too. Nevertheless, he silently
watched Theo, with all a father's love, with an almost sentimental
tenderness; he regretted, silently but profoundly, that Theo was not
more persevering and did not look more closely to his future, to his
career, to an honourable situation among his fellow-men, from the
standpoint of either money or position. The lad just lived from day
to day, without a thought of the morrow.... Perhaps he was a little
cold to Theo, outwardly: well, he would have a confidential talk with
him some day, would advise him; and now, in any case, he would ask
Theo to go with him on circuit.
And the thought of riding for five or six days in the pure air
of the mountains, through the coffee-plantations, inspecting the
irrigation-works, doing what most of all attracted him in his official
duties, the thought of this relieved his soul, brightened his outlook,
till he ceased to think about the letters. He was made for a plain,
simple life: he found life natural, not complex and involved; his
life had followed a perceptible ascent, open and gradual, looking out
towards a glittering summit of ambition; and the things that teemed
and swarmed in the shadow and the darkness, the things that bubbled
up from the abyss: these he had never been able or anxious to see. He
was blind to the life that underlies the visible life. He did not
believe in it, any more than a mountaineer who has lived long on a
quiescent volcano believes in the inner fire which persists in its
mysterious depths and which escapes only in the form of hot steam and
a sulphurous stench. He believed neither in the force above things nor
in the force of things themselves. He did not believe in dumb fate
nor in silent inevitability. He believed only in what he saw with
his own eyes: in the harvest, in the roads, districts and villages
and in the welfare of his province; he believed only in his career,
which he saw before him like an ascending path. And, in the unclouded
clarity of his simple, masculine nature, in the universally perceptible
obviousness of his upright love of authority, his legitimate ambition
and his practical sense of duty, there was only one weak point: his
affection, his deep, almost effeminate, sentimental affection for the
members of his domestic circle ... into whose soul he could not see,
being blind and seeing only in the light of his fixed principle,
seeing his wife and children as they ought to be.
Experience had taught him nothing. For he had loved his first wife also
as he now loved Léonie.... He loved his wife because she was his wife,
because she belonged to him, because she was the principal person in
his circle. He loved the circle as such and not as so many individuals
who formed its links. Experience had taught him nothing. His thoughts
were not in accordance with the changing hues of his life; they
accorded with his ideas and principles. They had made a man and a
force of him and also a good official. They had also allowed him as
a rule to be a good man, according to his lights. But, because he
possessed so much affection, unconscious, unanalysed and merely very
deeply felt, and because he did not believe in the hidden force, in the
life within life, in the force that teemed and swarmed like volcanic
fires under the mountains of majesty, like troubles under a throne,
because he did not believe in the mysticism of tangible things, life
sometimes found him weak and unprepared when, serene as the gods and
more powerful than men, it deviated from what he regarded as logical.