The subscription-lists went round. The plays were rehearsed and
performed in three weeks' time; and the committee handed the resident
a sum of nearly fifteen hundred guilders for Mother Staats. Her debts
were paid; a little house was rented for her; and she was set up in a
small milliner's shop, which Eva stocked from Paris. All the ladies
in Labuwangi gave Mother Staats an order; and in less than a month
not only was the woman saved from utter ruin, but her mode of life
was established, her children were going to school again and she was
enjoying a pleasant livelihood. All this had happened so swiftly and
unostentatiously; the subscriptions were so munificent; the ladies
so readily ordered a dress or a hat which they did not need that Eva
was astounded. And she had to confess to herself that the egoism, the
self-absorption, the unlovable qualities which she often observed in
their social life--in their intercourse, conversation, intriguing and
gossip--had been suddenly thrust into the background by a common gift
for doing the right thing, quite simply, because it had to be done,
because there was no question about it, because the woman had to be
assisted. Roused from her depression by the bustle of the rehearsals,
stimulated to brisk action, she appreciated the better and finer side
of her environment and wrote of it so enthusiastically to Holland
that her parents, to whom India was a closed book, smiled. But,
although this episode had awakened a soft and gentle and appreciative
feeling in her, it was only an episode; and she remained the same
when the emotion of it was over. And, notwithstanding that she felt
the disapproval of Labuwangi around her, she continued to find the
main interest of her life in Van Helderen's friendship.
For there was so little else. Her little circle of adherents, which
she had gathered round her with so many illusions, which she invited
to dinner, to which her doors were always open: what did it actually
amount to? She now accepted the Doorn de Bruijns and the Rantzows as
indifferent acquaintances, but no longer as friends. She suspected
Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn of insincerity; Dr. Rantzow was too common,
too vulgar; his wife was an insignificant German Hausfrau. True, they
joined in the table-turning, but they relished the absurd ineptitudes,
the indecent conversation of the mocking spirit. She and Van Helderen
took the whole thing seriously, though she thought the table rather
comical. And so no one but Van Helderen remained to interest her.
But Van Oudijck had won her admiration. She had suddenly obtained a
glimpse of his character; and, though it entirely lacked the artistic
charm which had hitherto exclusively attracted her in men, she saw
the fine quality also in this man, who was not at all artistic, who
had not the least conception of art, but who had so much that was
beautiful in his simple, manly idea of duty and in the calmness with
which he endured the disappointment of his domestic life. For Eva
saw that, though he adored his wife, he did not approve of Léonie's
indifference to all the interests of which his own life was built
up. If he saw nothing more, if he was blind to all the rest that went
on in his domestic circle, this disappointment was his secret pain,
to which he was not blind, deep down in himself.
And she admired him; and her admiration was as it were a revelation
that art does not always stand highest in the affairs of this life. She
suddenly understood that the exaggerated importance attaching to art
in our time was a disease from which she had suffered and was still
suffering. For what was she, what did she do? Nothing. Her parents,
both of them, were great artists, true artists; and their house was
like a temple and their bias was comprehensible and pardonable. But
what of her? She played the piano pretty well; and that was all. She
had a few ideas, a little taste; and that was all. But in her time
she had gushed with other girls; and she now remembered all that
foolish gushing, that trick of exchanging letters crammed with cheap
philosophy and written in a modern style distantly aping that of
the poets Kloos and Gorter. And thus, for all her depression, her
meditation carried her a stage further and she underwent a certain
development. For it seemed incredible that she, the child of her
parents, should not always place art above everything else.
And she had in her that play and counterplay of seeking and thinking in
order to find her way, now that she was quite lost in a country alien
to her nature, among people on whom she looked down, without letting
them perceive it. She strove to find the good in the country, in order
to make it her own and cherish it; she was glad to find among the
people those few who roused her sympathy and her admiration; but the
good remained incidental to her, the few people remained exceptional;
and, despite all her seeking and thinking, she did not find her way and
retained the moodiness of a woman who was too European, too artistic,
notwithstanding her self-knowledge and her consequent denial of her
artistic capacity, to live quietly and contentedly in an up-country
Javanese town, beside a husband wrapped up in his office-work,
in a climate that upset her health, amid natural surroundings that
overwhelmed her and among people whom she disliked.
And, in the most lucid moments of this play and counterplay, there
was the obvious fear, the fear which she felt most definitely of all,
the fear which she felt slowly approaching, she knew not whence,
she knew not whither, but hovering over her head as with the thousand
veils of a fate gliding through the sultry, rain-laden skies....
In these inharmonious moods, she had refrained from gathering her
little clique around her, for she herself did not care to take the
trouble and her friends did not understand her well enough to seek her
out. They missed the cheerfulness in her which had attracted them at
first. Envy and hostility were now given more rein; people began to
speak freely of her: she was affected, pedantic, vain, proud; she had
the pretention always to aim at being the leading person in the town;
she behaved just as though she were the resident's wife and ordered
every one about. She was not really pretty, she had an impossible
way of dressing, her house was preposterously arranged. And then her
relation with Van Helderen, their evening walks to the light-house! Ida
heard about it at Tosari, amid the band of gossips at the small,
poky hotel, where the visitors are bored when they are not going on
excursions and therefore sit about in their poky little verandahs,
almost in one another's pockets, peeping into one another's rooms,
listening at the thin partitions; Ida heard about it at Tosari and it
was enough to rouse the little Indian woman's instincts, the instincts
of a white half-caste, and induce her suddenly, without stating any
cause, to remove her children from Eva's charge. Van Helderen, when he
went up for the week-end, asked his wife for an explanation, asked her
why she insulted Eva by taking the children away, without a reason,
and having them up in the hills, thus increasing the hotel-bills. Ida
made a scene, talking loudly, with hysterics that rang through the
little hotel, made all the visitors prick up their ears and, like
a gale of wind, whipped the cackling chatter into a storm. And,
without further explanation, Ida broke with Eva.
Eva withdrew into herself. Even in Surabaya, where she went to do
some shopping, she heard the scandalous chatter; and she became
so sick of her world and her friends that she silently shrank back
into herself. She wrote to Van Helderen not to call any more. She
entreated him to become reconciled with his wife. She gave up seeing
him. And she was now all alone. She felt that she was not in the
mood to find comfort in any one around her. There was no sympathy
and no understanding in India for such moods as hers. And so she shut
herself up. Her husband was working hard, as usual. But she devoted
herself more zealously to her little boy, she immersed herself in
her love for her child. She withdrew herself into her love for her
house. Well, this was her life of never going out, of never seeing any
one, of never hearing any other music than her own. This was seeking
comfort in her house, her child and her books. This was the personality
that she had become, after her early illusions and strivings. She now
constantly felt the yearning for Europe, for Holland, for her parents,
for people of artistic culture. And now it developed into hatred for
the country which she had at first seen in the overwhelming grandeur
of its beauty, with its majestic mountains and the softly-creeping
mystery that lurked in nature and humanity. Now she hated nature and
humanity; and their mystery terrified her.
She filled her life with thoughts of her child. Her boy, little Otto,
was three years old. She would guide him, make a man of him. From the
day of his birth she had had vague illusions of later seeing her son
a great artist, by preference a great writer, famous throughout the
world. But she had learnt much since then. She felt that art does
not always stand supreme. She felt that there are higher things,
which sometimes, in her despondency, she denied, but which were there
nevertheless, radiant and great. These things had to do with the
shaping of the future; these things had to do above all with peace,
justice and brotherhood. Oh, the great brotherhood of the poor and
the rich! Now, in her loneliness, she contemplated this as the highest
ideal at which one can work, as sculptors work on a monument. Justice
and peace would follow. But human brotherhood must be aimed at first;
and she wished her son to work at it. Where? In Europe? In India? She
did not know; she did not see it before her. She saw it in Europe
rather than in India, where the inexplicable, the enigmatical, the
fearful remained in the foreground of her thoughts. How strange it was,
how strange!...
She was a woman made for ideals. Perhaps this by itself was the simple
explanation of what she felt and feared ... in India....
"Your impressions of India are altogether mistaken," her husband
would say. "You see India quite wrongly. Quiet? You think it's quiet
here? Why should I have to work so hard in India, if things were quiet
at Labuwangi?... We have hundreds of interests at heart, of Europeans
and Javanese alike. Agriculture is studied as eagerly in this country
as anywhere. The population is increasing steadily.... Declining? A
colony in which there is always so much going on? That's one of
Van Helderen's imbecile ideas: speculative ideas, mere vapourings,
which you just echo after him.... I can't understand the way in which
you regard India nowadays.... There was a time when you had eyes for
all that was beautiful and interesting here. That time seems to be
past. You ought to go home for a bit, really...."
But she knew that he would be very lonely without her; and for this
reason she refused to go. Later, when her boy was older, she would
have to go to Holland. But by then Eldersma would certainly be an
assistant-resident. At present he still had seventeen controllers
and district secretaries above him. It had been going on like this
for years, that looking towards promotion in the distant future. It
was like yearning after a mirage. Of ever becoming a resident he did
not so much as think. Assistant-resident for a couple of years or so;
and then to Holland, on a pension....
She thought it a heart-breaking existence, slaving one's self to
death like that ... for Labuwangi!...
She was down with malaria; and her maid, Saina, was giving her massage,
kneading her aching limbs with supple fingers.
"It's a nuisance, Saina, when I'm ill, for you to be living in the
compound. You'd better move into the house this evening, with your
four children."
Saina thought it troublesome, a great fuss.
"Why?"
And the woman explained. Her cottage had been left to her by
her husband. She was attached to it, though it was in an utterly
dilapidated condition. Now that the rainy monsoon was on, the rain
often came in through the roof; and then she was unable to cook and
the children had to go without their food. To have it repaired was
difficult. She had a rix-dollar a week from the mem-sahib. Sixty cents
of that went on rice. Then there were a few cents daily for fish,
coconut oil, betel-pepper; a few cents for fuel.... No, repairs were
out of the question. She would be much better off with the mem-sahib,
much better off on the estate. But it would be such a fuss to find
a tenant for the cottage, because it was so dilapidated; and the
mem-sahib knew that no house was allowed to remain unoccupied in the
compound: there was a heavy fine attached to that.... So she would
rather go on living in her damp cottage. She could easily stay and
sit up with the mem-sahib at night; her eldest girl would look after
the little ones.
And, resigned to her small existence of petty miseries, Saina passed
her supple fingers, with a firm, gentle pressure, over her mistress'
ailing limbs.
And Eva thought it heart-rending, this living on a rix-dollar a week,
with four children, in a house which let in the rain, so that it was
impossible to cook there.
"Let me look after your second little daughter, Saina," said Eva,
a day or two after.
Saina hesitated, smiled: she would rather not, but dared not say so.
"Yes," Eva insisted, "let her come to me: you will see her all day
long; she will sleep in cook's room; I shall provide her clothes;
and she will have nothing to do but to see that my room is kept
tidy. You can teach her that."
"So young still, mem-sahib; only just ten."
"No, no," Eva insisted. "Let me do this to help you. What's her name?"
"Mina, mem-sahib."
"Mina? That won't do," said Eva. "That's the seamstress' name. We'll
find another for her."
Saina brought the child, looking very shy, with a streak of moist
rice-powder on her forehead; and Eva dressed her prettily. She was a
very attractive little thing, with a soft brown skin covered with a
downy bloom, and looked charming in her new clothes. She sedulously
piled the sarongs in the press, with fragrant white flowers between
the layers: the flowers were changed for fresh ones daily. For a joke,
because she arranged the flowers so prettily, Eva called her Melati,
after the East-Indian jasmine.
Two days later, Saina crouched down before her njonja.
"What is it, Saina?"
Might the little girl come back to the damp cottage in the
compound? Saina asked.
"Why?" asked Eva, in amazement. "Isn't your little girl happy here?"
Yes, she was, said Saina, bashfully, but she preferred the cottage. The
mem-sahib was very kind, but little Mina would rather be in the
cottage.
Eva was angry and let the child go home, with the new clothes, which
Saina took away with her as a matter of course.
"Why wasn't the child allowed to stay?" Eva asked of the latta cook.
Cook at first dared not say.
"Come, cook, why wasn't she?" asked Eva, insisting.
"Because the mem-sahib called the little girl Melati.... Names
of flowers and fruits ... are given only ... to dancing-girls,"
explained the cook, as though expounding a mystery.
"But why didn't Saina tell me?" asked Eva, greatly incensed. "I had
not the least idea of that!"
"Too shy," said cook, by way of excusing Saina. "Beg pardon,
mem-sahib."
These were trivial incidents in the daily domestic life, little
episodes of her housekeeping; but they made her feel sore, because
she felt behind them as it were a wall that always existed between
her and the people and things of India. She did not know the country,
she would never know the people.
And the minor disappointment of the episodes filled her with the same
soreness as the greater disappointment of her illusions, because her
life, amid the daily trivialities of her housekeeping, was itself
becoming more and more trivial.