"And how are you, mevrouwtje? How's the depression? Is India suiting
you any better to-day?"
His words sounded cheerful to Eva, as she saw him coming through
the garden, on the stroke of eight, for dinner. His tone expressed
nothing more than the gay greeting of a man who has been working hard
at his desk and is delighted to see a pretty woman at whose table he is
about to sit. She was filled with surprise and admiration. There was
not a suggestion of a man who is plagued all day long, in a deserted
house, by strange and incomprehensible happenings. There was hardly
a shadow of dejection on his wide forehead, hardly a care seemed to
rest upon his broad, slightly bowed back; and the jovial, smiling line
about his thick moustache was there as usual. Eldersma came up; and
Eva divined in his greeting, in his pressure of the hand, a silent
freemasonry of things known, of confidences shared in common. And
Van Oudijck drank his gin-and-bitters in a perfectly normal manner,
spoke of a letter from his wife, who was probably going on to Batavia,
said that René and Ricus were staying in the Preanger [12] with
friends who had a plantation there. He did not speak of the reason
why they were not with him, why he had been entirely abandoned by his
family and servants. In the intimacy of their circle, which he now
visited twice a day for his meals, he had never spoken of this. And,
though Eva did not ask any questions, it was making her extremely
nervous. So close to the house, the haunted house, whose pillars
she could see by day in the distance, gleaming through the foliage
of the trees, she became more and more nervous daily. All day long,
the servants whispered around her and peered timidly at the haunted
residency. At night, unable to sleep, she strained her ears to hear
whether she could detect anything strange, the moaning of the little
children. The Indian night was so full of voices that it could but
make her shudder on her bed. Through the imperious bellowing of the
frogs for rain and rain and more rain still, the constant croaking
on the one bellowing note, she heard thousands of ghostly sounds that
kept her from sleeping. Through it all the lizards and geckos emitted
their clockwork strokes, like strange mysterious time-pieces.
She thought of it all day long. Eldersma did not speak of it
either. But, when she saw Van Oudijck come to lunch or dinner,
she had to compress her lips lest she should question him. And
the conversation touched upon all sorts of topics, but never upon
the strange happenings. After lunch, Van Oudijck went across to the
residency again; after dinner, at ten o'clock, she saw him once more
vanish into the haunting shadow of the garden. With a calm step, every
evening he went back, through the enchanted night, to his wretched,
deserted house, where the messengers and Kario sat squatting close
together outside his office; and he worked until late in the night. He
never complained. He pursued his enquiries closely, all through the
district, but nothing came to light. Everything continued to happen
in impenetrable mystery.
"And how does India suit you this evening, mevrouwtje?"
It was always more or less the same pleasantry; but each time she
admired his tone. Courage, robust self-confidence, a certainty in
his own knowledge, a belief in what he knew for certain: all these
rang in his voice with metallic clearness. Miserable though he must
feel--he, the man of profoundly domestic inclinations and of cool,
practical sense--in a house deserted by those who belonged to him
and full of inexplicable happenings, there was not a trace of doubt
or dejection in his unfailing masculine simplicity. He went his
way and did his work, more conscientiously than ever; he continued
his investigations. And at Eva's table he always kept up an animated
conversation, on politics in India and the new craze for having India
ruled from Holland by lay-men who did not know even the A.B.C. of
the business. And he talked with an easy, pleasant vivacity, free
from all effort, till Eva came to admire him more and more.
But with her, a sensitive woman, it became a nervous obsession. And
once, in the evening, as she was walking a little way with him,
she asked him if it wasn't terrible, if he couldn't leave the house,
if he couldn't go on circuit, for a good long time. She saw his face
clouding at her questions. But still he answered kindly, saying that
it was not so bad, even though it was all inexplicable, and that he
would back himself to get to the bottom of the conjuring. And he added
that he really ought to be going on circuit, but that he would not go,
lest he should seem to be running away. Then he hurriedly pressed
her hand and told her not to upset herself and not to think about
it any more or talk about it. The last words sounded like a friendly
admonition. She pressed his hand again, with tears in her eyes. And
she watched him walk away, with his calm, firm step, and disappear in
the darkness of his garden, where the enchantment must be creeping in
through the croaking of the frogs. But standing there like that made
her shudder; and she hurried indoors. And she felt that her house,
that roomy house of hers, was small and unduly open and defenceless
against the vast Indian night, which could enter from every side.
But she was not the only person obsessed by the mysterious
happenings. Their inexplicable nature lay like an oppression over the
whole town, so completely did it clash with the things of everyday
life. The mystery was discussed in every house, but only in a whisper,
lest the children should be frightened and the servants perceive
that people were impressed by the Javanese conjuring, as the resident
himself had called it. And the uneasiness and depression were making
everybody ill with apprehension and nervous listening when the darkness
was teeming with voices in the night, which drifted down on the town
in a dense, velvety greyness; and the town seemed to be hiding itself
more deeply than ever in the foliage of its gardens, seemed, in these
moist evening twilights, to be shrinking away altogether in dull,
silent resignation, bowing before the mystery.
Then Van Oudijck thought it time to take strong measures. He wrote
to the major commanding the garrison at Ngadjiwa to come over with
a captain, a couple of lieutenants and a company of soldiers. That
evening, the officers, with the resident and Van Helderen, dined at
the Eldersmas'. They hurried through their meal; and Eva, standing
at the garden-gate, saw them all--the resident, the secretary,
the controller and the four officers--go into the dark garden of
the haunted house. The residency-grounds were shut off, the house
surrounded and the churchyard watched. The men went to the bathroom
by themselves.
They remained there all through the night. And all through the night
the grounds and house remained shut off and surrounded. They came
out at about five o'clock and went straight to the swimming-bath and
bathed, all of them together. What had happened to them they did not
say, but they had had a terrible night. That morning the bathroom
was pulled down.
They had all promised Van Oudijck not to speak about that night;
and Eldersma would not tell anything to Eva, nor Van Helderen to
Ida. The officers too, on their return to Ngadjiwa, were silent. They
merely said that their night in the bathroom was too improbable for
any one to believe the story. At last one of the young lieutenants
allowed a hint of his adventures to escape him. And a tale of
betel-juice-spitting and stone-throwing, of a floor that heaved,
while they struck at it with sticks and swords, and of something more,
something unutterably horrible that had happened in the water of the
bath, went the rounds. Every one added to it. When the story reached
Van Oudijck's ears, he hardly recognized it as an account of the
terrible night, which had been terrible enough without any additions.
Meanwhile Eldersma had written a report of their united vigil;
and they all signed the improbable story. Van Oudijck himself took
the report to Batavia and delivered it to the governor-general with
his own hands. Thenceforth it slumbered in the secret archives of
the government.
The governor-general advised Van Oudijck to go to Holland on leave for
a short period, assuring him that this leave would have no influence
on his promotion to a residency of the first class, which was nearly
due. He refused this favour, however, and returned to Labuwangi. The
only concession that he made was to move into Eldersma's house until
the residency should be thoroughly cleaned. But the flag continued
to wave from the flagstaff in the residency-grounds.
On his return from Batavia, Van Oudijck often met Sunario, the regent,
on matters of business. And, in his intercourse with the regent, the
resident remained stern and formal. Then he had a brief interview,
first with the regent and afterwards with his mother, the raden-aju
pangéran. The two conversations did not last longer than twenty
minutes. But it appeared that those few words were of great and
portentous moment.
For the strange happenings ceased. When everything had been cleaned
and repaired, under Eva's supervision, Van Oudijck compelled Léonie
to come back, because he wished to give a great ball on New Year's
Day. In the morning, the resident received all his European and native
officials. In the evening, the guests streamed into the brightly lit
galleries from every part of the town, still inclined to shudder and
very inquisitive and instinctively looking around and above them. And,
while the champagne went round, Van Oudijck himself took a glass and
offered it to the regent with a deliberate breach of etiquette; and,
in a tone of solemn admonition mingled with good-humoured jest, he
uttered these words, which were seized upon and repeated on every hand
and which continued to be repeated for months throughout Labuwangi:
"Drink with an easy mind, regent. I give you my word of honour that
no more glasses will be broken in my house, except by accident or
carelessness."
He was able to say this because he knew that--this time--he had been
too strong for the hidden force, merely through his simple courage
as an official, a Hollander and a man.
But in the regent's gaze, as he drank, there was still a very
slight gleam of irony, intimating that, though the hidden force had
not conquered, this time, it would yet remain an enigma, forever
inexplicable to the short-sighted eyes of the Europeans....