Van Oudijck had been to the government-building that day. Léonie met
him the moment he returned.
"The raden-aju pangéran is here," she said. "She has been here quite
an hour, Otto. She wishes to speak to you badly. She has been waiting
for you."
"Léonie," he said, "I want you to look through these letters. I often
get libels of this sort and I've never mentioned them to you. But
perhaps it's better that you should not be left in ignorance. Perhaps
it's better for you to know. But please don't take them to heart. I
needn't assure you that I don't for a moment believe one word of all
this filth. So don't get upset about it and give me back the letters
presently yourself. Don't leave them lying about.... And send the
raden-aju pangéran to my office...."
Léonie, carrying the letters in her hand, went to the back-verandah
and returned with the princess, a distinguished-looking, grey-haired
woman, with a proud, royal bearing in her still slender figure. Her
eyes were a sombre black; her mouth, which was widened in outline
by betel-nut-juice and which grinned with filed, black, lacquered
teeth, was like a grimacing mask and spoilt the proud nobility of
her expression. She wore a black satin kabaai fastened with jewelled
buttons. It was above all her grey hair and her sombre eyes that
gave her a peculiar admixture of venerable dignity and smouldering
passion. Tragedy hung over her old age. She herself felt that fate
was pressing tragically upon her and hers; and she placed her only
hope in the far-reaching, divinely-appointed power of her first-born,
Sunario, the Regent of Labuwangi.
While the old princess preceded Van Oudijck into the office, Léonie
examined the letters in the middle gallery. They were lampoons couched
in foul language, about her and Addie and Theo. Always wrapped in the
selfish dream of her own life, she never troubled greatly about what
people thought or said, especially as she knew that she could always
and immediately win every one again with her personality, with her
smile. She possessed a tranquil charm which was irresistible. She
herself never spoke ill of others, out of indifference; she made
amiable excuses for everything and everybody; and she was loved
... when people saw her. But she considered these dirty letters,
spat out from some dark corner, tiresome and unpleasant, even though
Van Oudijck did not believe them. Suppose that one day he began
to believe things? She must be prepared for it. She must above
all retain for that possible day her most charming tranquillity,
all her invulnerability, all her inviolability. Who could have
sent the letters? Who hated her so much, who could be interested in
writing like this to her husband? How strange that the thing should
be known!... Addie? Theo? How did people know? Was it Oorip? No,
not Oorip.... But who then? And was everything actually known? She
had always thought that what happened in the secret chambers would
never be known on the housetops. She had even believed--it was
simple of her--that the men never discussed her with one another,
that they might discuss other women, but not herself. Her mind
harboured such simple illusions, despite all her experience, in a
simplicity which harmonized with the half-perverse, half-childish
poetry of her rose-hued imagination. Could she then not always keep
hidden the secrets of her mystery, the secrets of reality? It annoyed
her for a moment, that reality, which was being revealed despite
her superficial correctness.... Thoughts and dreams always remained
secret. It was the actions that were so troublesome. For an instant
she thought of being more careful in future, of refraining. But she
saw before her, in imagination, Theo and Addie, her fair love and
her dark love; and she felt that she was too weak for that. She knew
that in this she could not conquer her passions, though she controlled
them. Would they end by proving her destruction, notwithstanding all
her tactfulness? But she laughed at the thought: she had a firm faith
in her invulnerability. Life always glided off her shoulders.
Still she wanted to prepare herself for what might happen. She had no
higher ideal in life than to be free from pain, free from grief, free
from poverty and to make her passions the slaves of her enjoyment,
so that she might possess this enjoyment as long as possible, lead
this life as long as possible. She reflected what she should say
and do if Van Oudijck suddenly questioned her, suspicious because
of these anonymous letters. She reflected whether she had better
break with Theo. Addie was enough for her. And she lost herself
in her calculations, as in the vague combinations of a play about
to be enacted. Then, suddenly, she heard the raden-aju pangéran's
voice sounding loudly in the office, in between her husband's calmer
accents. She listened, inquisitively, foreseeing a tragedy, and was
quietly relieved that this tragedy also was gliding away from her. She
crept into Van Oudijck's bedroom; the communicating-doors were always
left open for coolness and only a screen separated the bedroom from
the office. She peeped past the screen. And she saw the old princess
more greatly excited than she had ever seen any Javanese woman. The
raden-aju was beseeching Van Oudijck in Malay; he was assuring her
in Dutch that what she asked was impossible. Léonie listened more
closely. And she now heard the old princess imploring the resident to
show mercy to her second son, the Regent of Ngadjiwa. She entreated
Van Oudijck to remember her husband, the pangéran, whom he had loved
as a father, who had loved him as a son, with a mutual affection more
intense than that of an "elder and younger brother"; she conjured him
to think of their famous past, of the glory of the Adiningrats, ever
loyal friends of the Company, its allies in war, its most faithful
vassals in peace; she conjured him not to decree the downfall of
their race, on which a doom had descended since the pangéran's death,
driving it into an abyss of fatal destruction. She stood before the
resident like a Niobe, like a tragic mother, flinging up her arms
in the vehemence of her protestations, while tears poured from her
sombre eyes and only the wide mouth, painted with brown betel-juice,
was like the grimace of a mask. But from this grimace the fluent
phrases of protestation and conjuration were pouring forth; and she
wrung her hands in entreaty and beat her breast in contrition.
Van Oudijck answered in a firm but gentle voice, telling her that
certainly he had loved the old pangéran most sincerely, that he
respected the old race highly, that no one would be better pleased
than he to uphold their lofty position. But then he grew more severe
and asked her whom the Adiningrats had to blame for the fate that was
now pursuing her. And, with his eyes looking into hers, he said that
it was she! She fell back, flaring up with rage; but he repeated
it again and yet again. Her sons were her children: bigoted and
proud and incurable gamblers. And it was gambling, that low passion,
which was wrecking their greatness. Their race was staggering to its
downfall through their insatiable greed of gain. How often did it not
happen that a month went by at Ngadjiwa before the regent paid the
native heads their salaries? She protested that it was true: it was
at her instigation that her son had taken the money of the treasury,
to pay gambling debts. But she also swore that it would never happen
again. And where, asked Van Oudijck, had a regent, descended from
an ancient race, ever behaved as the Regent of Ngadjiwa had at the
race-ball? The mother lamented: it was true, it was true; fate dogged
their footsteps and had clouded her son's mind; but it would never,
never happen again. She swore by the soul of the old pangéran that it
would never happen again, that her son would win back his dignity. But
Van Oudijck grew more vehement and reproached her with never having
exercised a good influence over her sons and nephews, with being
the evil genius of her family, because a demon of gambling and greed
held her fast in its claws. She began to shriek with anguish, she,
the old princess, who looked down upon the resident, the Hollander
without birth or breeding, shrieking with anguish because he dared
to speak like this and was entitled to do so. She flung out her arms,
she begged for mercy; she begged him not to urge her son's dismissal
by the government, which would act as the resident suggested, which
would follow the advice of such a highly esteemed official; she begged
him to have pity and show patience a little longer. She would speak
to her son; Sunario would speak to his brother; they would bring him
back to his senses, which had been bewildered by drink and play and
women. Oh, if the resident would only have pity, if he would only
relent! But Van Oudijck remained inexorable. He had shown patience
for so long. It was now exhausted. Since her son, at the instigation
of the native physician, relying on his talisman, had resisted him
with his insolent silence, which, as he firmly believed, made him
invulnerable to his enemies, he would prove that he, the spokesman of
the government, the representative of the queen, was the stronger,
physician and talisman notwithstanding. There was no alternative:
his patience was at an end; his love for the pangéran did not allow
of further indulgence; his feeling of respect for their race was not
such that he could transfer it to an unworthy son. It was settled:
the regent would be dismissed.
The princess had listened to him, unable to credit his words, seeing
the abyss yawn before her. And, with a yell like that of a wounded
lioness, with a scream of pain, she pulled the jewelled hairpins from
her head, till her long grey hair fell streaming about her face;
with a rending tug she tore open her satin kabaai; beside herself
with anguish, she threw herself before the feet of the European, took
firm hold of his foot with her two hands, planted it, with a movement
which made Van Oudijck stagger, on her bowed neck and cried aloud
and screamed that she, the daughter of the sultans of Madura, would
for ever be his slave, that she swore to be nothing but his slave,
if only he would have mercy on her son this time and not plunge her
house into the abyss of shame which she saw yawning around her. And she
clutched the European's foot, as though with the strength of despair,
and held that foot, like a yoke of servitude, with the sole and heel
of the shoe pressed upon her flowing grey hair, upon her neck bowed
to the floor. Van Oudijck trembled with emotion. He realized that
this high-spirited woman would never humble herself like that, with
evident spontaneity, to the lowest depths of humiliation that she
could conceive, would not resort to the most vehement utterance of
actual grief that a woman could ever display, with her hair unbound
and the ruler's foot planted on her neck, if she had not been shaken
to the very depths of her soul, if she did not feel desperate to
the pitch of self-destruction. And he hesitated for a moment. But
only for a moment. He was a man of considered principles, of fixed,
a priori logic, immovable when he had come to a decision, wholly
inaccessible to impulse. With the utmost respect, he at last released
his foot from the princess' clinging grasp. Holding out both hands
to her, with visible compassion, visible emotion, he raised her from
the floor. He made her sit down; and she fell into a chair, broken,
sobbing aloud. For a moment, perceiving his gentleness, she thought
that she had won. But when he calmly but decidedly shook his head
in denial, she understood that it was over. She panted for breath,
half-swooning, her kabaai still open, her hair still unbound.
At that moment Léonie entered the room. She had seen the drama enacted
before her eyes and felt a thrill of artistic emotion. She experienced
something like compassion in her barren soul. She approached the
princess, who flung herself into her arms, woman seeking woman in the
unreasoning despair of that inevitable doom. And Léonie, turning her
beautiful eyes on Van Oudijck, murmured a single word of intercession
and whispered:
"Give in! Give in!"
And for the second time Van Oudijck wavered. Never had he refused
his wife anything, however costly, for which she asked. But this
meant the sacrifice of his principle never to reconsider a decision,
always to persist in what he had resolved should happen. Then had
he always controlled the future. Thus things always happened as he
willed. Then had he never shown any weakness. And he answered that
it was impossible.
In his obstinacy, he did not divine the sacred moments in which a
man must not insist upon his own will, but must piously surrender
to the pressure of the hidden forces. These moments he did not
respect, acknowledge or recognize; no, never. He was a man with
a clear, logically deduced, simple, masculine sense of duty, a
man of a plain and simple life. He would never know that, lurking
under the simple life, are all those forces which together make the
omnipotent hidden force. He would have laughed at the idea that there
are nations which have a greater control over that force than the
western nations have. He would shrug his shoulders--and continue his
own road--at the mere supposition that among the nations there are
a few individuals in whose hands that force loses its omnipotence
and becomes an instrument. No experience would teach him. He would
perhaps for an instant be nonplussed. But immediately afterwards he
would grasp the chain of his logic in his virile hand and link up
the iron actualities together....
He saw Léonie lead the old princess from his office, bowed and sobbing.
A deep emotion, an utterly agitating compassion, brought the tears
to his eyes. And before those tearful eyes rose the vision of that
Javanese whom he loved like a father.
But he did not give in.