The early hours of the day were often cool, washed clean by the
abundant rains; and in the young sunshine of these morning hours the
earth emitted a tender haze, a blue softening of every hard line
and colour, so that the Lange Laan, with its villa-residences and
fenced gardens, seemed to be surrounded with the vagueness and beauty
of a dream-avenue: the dream-columns rose insubstantially, like a
vision of pillared tranquillity; the lines of the roofs acquired
distinction in their indefiniteness; the hues of the trees and the
outlines of their leafy tops were etherealized into tender pastels
of misty rose and even mistier blue, with a single brighter gleam
of morning yellow and a distant purple streak of dawn. And over all
this matutinal world fell a cool dew, like a fountain that rose from
that drenched ground and fell back in pearly drops in the child-like
gentleness of the first sunbeams. It was as though every morning the
earth and her people were newly created, as though mankind were newly
born to a youth of innocence and paradisal unconsciousness. But the
illusion of the dawn lasted but a minute, barely a few moments: the
sun, rising higher in the sky, shone forth from the virginal mist;
boastfully it unfurled its proud halo of piercing rays, pouring down
its burning gold, full of godlike pride because it was reigning over
its brief moment of the day, for the clouds were already mustering,
greyly advancing, like battle-hordes of dark phantoms, pressing eerily
onwards: deep bluish-black and heavy lead-grey phantoms, overmastering
the sun and crushing the earth under white torrents of rain. And the
evening twilight, short and hurried, letting fall veil upon veil of
crape, was like an overwhelming melancholy of earth, nature and life,
in which one forgot that paradisal moment of the morning; the white
rain rustled down like a flood-tide of melancholy; the road and the
gardens were dripping, drinking up the falling torrents until they
shone like marshy pools and flooded meadows in the dusky evening; a
chill, spectral mist rose on high with a slow movement as of ghostly
draperies, which hovered over the puddles; and the chilly houses,
scantily lit with their smoking lamps, round which clouds of insects
swarmed, falling on every hand and dying with singed wings, became
filled with a yet chillier sadness, an over-shadowing fear of the
menacing world out of doors, of the all-powerful cloud-hordes, of the
boundless immensity that came whispering on the gusty winds from the
far-off unknown, high as the heavens, wide as the firmament, against
which the open houses appeared unprotected, while the inmates were
small and petty for all their civilization and science and soulful
feelings, small as wriggling insects, insignificant, abandoned to
the play of the giant mysteries blowing up from the distance.
Léonie van Oudijck, in the half-lit back-verandah of the residency,
was talking to Theo in a soft voice: and Oorip squatted beside her.
"It's nonsense, Oorip!" she cried, peevishly.
"Really not, mem-sahib," said the maid. "It's not nonsense. I hear
them every evening."
"Where?" asked Theo.
"In the banyan-tree behind the house, high up, in the top branches."
"It's wild cats," said Theo.
"It's not wild cats, sahib," the maid insisted. "Come, come! As if
Oorip didn't know how wild cats mew! Kriow, kriow: that's how they
go. What we hear every night is the ghosts. It's the little children
crying in the trees. The souls of the little children, crying in
the trees."
"It's the wind, Oorip."
"Come, come, mem-sahib: as if Oorip couldn't hear the wind! Boo-ooh:
that's how the wind goes; and then the branches move. But this is the
little children, moaning in the top boughs; and the branches don't
move then. This is a bad omen, mem-sahib."
"And why should it be a bad omen?"
"Oorip knows but dares not tell. The mem-sahib is sure to be angry."
"Come, Oorip, tell me."
"It's because of the excellency, sahib, because of the residèn."
"Why?"
"The other day, with the evening-market in the square and the
fancy-fair for the white people in the gardens."
"Well, what about it?"
"The day wasn't well-chosen, according to the portents. It was an
unlucky day.... And with the new well...."
"What about the new well?"
"There was no sacrifice. So no one uses the new well. Every one fetches
water from the old well.... The water's not good either. For from the
new well the woman rises with the bleeding hole in her breast.... And
Miss Doddie...."
"What of her?"
"Miss Doddie has seen the white hadji going by! The white hadji
is not a good hadji. He's a ghost.... Miss Doddie saw him twice:
at Patjaram and here.... Listen, mem-sahib!"
"What?"
"Don't you hear? The children's little souls are moaning in the
top boughs. There's no wind blowing at this moment. Listen, listen:
that's not wild cats. The wild cats go kriow, kriow, when they're
courting! These are the little souls!"
They all three listened. Léonie mechanically pressed closer to
Theo. She looked deathly pale. The roomy back-verandah, with the table
always laid, stretched away in the dim light of a single hanging
lamp. The half-swamped back-garden gleamed wet out of the darkness
of the banyan-trees, full of pattering drops but motionless in the
impenetrable masses of their velvety foliage. And an inexplicable,
almost imperceptible crooning, like a gentle mystery of little
tormented souls, whimpered high above their heads, as though in the
sky or in the topmost branches of the trees. Now it was a short cry,
then a moan as of a sick child, then a soft sobbing as of little
girls in misery.
"What sort of animal can it be?" asked Theo. "Is it birds or insects?"
The moaning and sobbing was very distinct. Léonie looked white as a
sheet and was trembling all over.
"Don't be so frightened," said Theo. "Of course it's animals."
But he himself was white as chalk with fear; and, when they looked
each other in the eyes, she understood that he too was afraid. She
clutched his arm, nestled up against him. The maid squatted low,
humbly, as though accepting all fate as an impenetrable mystery. She
did not wish to run away. But the eyes of the white man and woman
held only one idea, the idea of escaping. Suddenly, both of them,
the step-mother and the step-son, who were bringing shame upon the
house, were afraid, as with a single fear, afraid as of a threatening
punishment. They did not speak, they said nothing to each other;
they leant against each other, understanding each other's trembling,
two white children of this mysterious Indian soil, who from their
childhood had breathed the mystic air of Java and had unconsciously
heard the vague, stealthily approaching mystery, as an accustomed
music, a music which they had not noticed, as though mystery were
an accustomed thing. As they stood thus, trembling and looking
at each other, the wind rose, bearing away with it the secret of
the tiny souls, bearing away with it the little souls themselves;
the interlacing branches swayed angrily and the rain began to fall
once more. A shuddering chill came fanning up, filling the house;
a sudden draught blew out the lamp. And they remained in the dark,
a little longer, she, despite the openness of the verandah, almost
in the arm of her step-son and lover; the maid crouching at their
feet. But then she flung off his arm, flung off the black oppression
of darkness and fear, filled with the rustling of the rain; the
wind was cold and shivery and she staggered indoors, on the verge
of fainting. Theo and Oorip followed her. The middle gallery was
lighted. Van Oudijck's office was open. He was working. Léonie stood
irresolute, with Theo, not knowing what to do. The maid disappeared,
muttering. It was then that she heard a whizzing sound and a small
round stone flew through the gallery, fell somewhere near at hand. She
gave a cry; and, behind the screen which divided the gallery from the
office where Van Oudijck sat at his writing-table, she flung herself
once more into Theo's arms, abandoning all her caution. They stood
shivering in each other's arms. Van Oudijck had heard her: he stood
up, came from behind the screen. His eyes blinked, as though tired
with working. Léonie and Theo had recovered themselves.
"What is it, Léonie?"
"Nothing," she said, not daring to tell him of the little souls or
of the stone, afraid of the threatening punishment.
She and Theo stood there like criminals, both of them white and
trembling. Van Oudijck, his mind still on his work, did not notice
anything.
"Nothing," she repeated. "The mat is frayed and ... and I nearly
stumbled. But there was something I wanted to tell you, Otto."
Her voice shook, but he did not hear it, blind to what she did,
deaf to what she said, still absorbed in his papers:
"What's that?"
"Oorip has suggested that the servants would like to have a sacrifice,
because a new well has been built in the grounds...."
"That well which is two months old?"
"They don't make use of the water."
"Why not?"
"They are superstitious, you know; they refuse to use the water before
the sacrifice has been offered."
"Then it ought to have been done at once. Why didn't they tell Kario
at once to ask me? I can't think of all that nonsense myself. But I
would have given them the sacrifice then. Now it's like mustard after
meat. The well is two months old."
"It would be a good thing all the same, Papa," said Theo. "You know
what the Javanese are like: they won't use the well as long as they've
not had a sacrifice."
"No," said Van Oudijck, unwillingly, shaking his head. "To give them a
sacrifice now would have no sense in it. I would have done so gladly;
but now, after two months, it would be absurd. They ought to have
asked for it at once."
"Do, Otto," Léonie entreated. "I should give them the sacrifice. You'll
please me if you do."
"Mamma half-promised Oorip," Theo insisted gently.
They stood trembling before him, white in the face, like
petitioners. But he, weary and thinking of his papers, was seized
with a stubborn unwillingness, though he was seldom able to refuse
his wife anything.
"No, Léonie," he said, firmly. "And you must never promise things of
which you're not certain."
He turned away, went round the screen and sat down to his work.
They looked at each other, the mother and the step-son. Slowly,
aimlessly, they moved away, to the front-verandah, where a moist,
dripping darkness drifted between the stately pillars. They saw
a white form coming through the swamped garden. They started, for
they were now afraid of everything, thinking at the sight of every
figure of the chastisement that would overtake them like some strange
thing, if they remained in the paternal house which they had covered
with shame. But, when they looked more closely, they saw that it was
Doddie. She had come home; she said, trembling, that she had been at
Eva Eldersma's. Actually she had been walking with Addie de Luce;
and they had sheltered from the rain in the compound. She was very
pale, she was trembling; but Léonie and Theo did not notice it in the
dark verandah, even as she herself did not see that her step-mother
and Theo were pale. She was trembling like that because in the
garden--Addie had brought her to the gate--stones had been thrown at
her. It must have been some impudent Javanese, who hated her father
and his house and his household; but, in the dark verandah, where she
saw her step-mother and her brother sitting side by side in silence,
as though in despair, she suddenly felt, she did not know why, that
it was not an impudent Javanese....
She sat down by them, silently. They looked out at the damp, dark
garden, over which the spacious night was hovering as on the wings of
a gigantic bat. And, in the mute melancholy which drifted like a grey
twilight between the tall white pillars, all three of them--Doddie
singly, but the step-mother and step-son together--felt frightened
to death and crushed by the strange thing that was about to befall
them....