Addie was sitting with Mrs. van Does, in the little back-verandah,
when they heard a carriage rattle up in front of the house. They
smiled at each other and rose from their seats:
"I shall leave you to yourselves," said Mrs. van Does.
And she disappeared, to drive round the town in a dog-cart and do
business among her friends.
Léonie entered:
"Where is Mrs. van Does?" she asked, for she always behaved as though
it were the first time.
It was her great charm. He knew this and answered:
"She has just gone out. She will be sorry to have missed you."
He spoke like this because he knew that she liked it: the ceremonial
opening each time, to preserve above all things the freshness of
their liaison.
They now sat down in the little, shut-in middle gallery, side by side
on a settee.
The settee was covered with a cretonne displaying many-coloured
flowers; on the white walls were a few cheap fans and kakemonos; and
on either side of a little looking-glass stood a console-table with an
imitation bronze statue, two nondescript knights, each with one leg
advanced and a spear in his hand. Through the glass door the musty
little back-verandah showed, with its damp, yellow-green pillars,
its flower-pots, also yellow-green, with a few withered rose-trees;
and behind this was the damp, neglected little garden, with a couple
of lean coco-palms, hanging their leaves like broken feathers.
He now took her in his arms and drew her to him, but she pushed him
away gently:
"Doddie is becoming unbearable," she said. "Something must be done."
"How so?"
"She must leave the house. She is so irritable that there's no living
with her."
"You tease her, you know."
She shrugged her shoulders; she had been put out by a recent scene
with her step-daughter:
"I never used to tease her. She was fond of me and we got on all right
together. Now she flies out at the least thing. It's your fault. Those
everlasting evening walks, which lead to nothing, upset her nerves."
"Perhaps it's just as well that they lead to nothing," he murmured,
with his little laugh, the laugh of the tempter. "But I can't break
with her, you know: it would make her unhappy. And I can't bear to
make a woman unhappy."
She laughed scornfully:
"Yes, you're so good-natured. From sheer good-nature you would scatter
your favours broadcast. Anyway, she'll have to go."
"Go? Where to?"
"Don't ask such silly questions!" she exclaimed, angrily, roused out
of her usual indifference. "She'll have to go, somewhere or other,
I don't care where. You know, when I say a thing, it's done. And this
is going to be done."
He was now clasping her in his arms:
"You're so angry. You're not a bit pretty like that."
In her temper, she at first refused to let him kiss her: but, as he did
not like these tempers and was well aware of the irresistible power
of his comely, Moorish virility, he mastered her with rough, smiling
violence and held her so tight to him that she was unable to stir:
"You mustn't be angry any longer."
"Yes, I will. I hate Doddie."
"The poor girl has done you no harm."
"Possibly."
"On the contrary, it's you who tease her."
"Yes, because I hate her."
"Why? Surely you're not jealous!"
She laughed aloud:
"No! That's not one of my failings."
"Then why?"
"What does it matter to you? I myself don't know. I hate her. I love
tormenting her."
"Are you as wicked as you are beautiful?"
"What does wicked mean? I don't know or care! I should like to torment
you too, if I only knew how."
"And I should like to give you a good smacking."
She again gave a shrill laugh:
"Perhaps it would do me good," she admitted. "I seldom lose my temper,
but Doddie...!"
She contracted her fingers and, suddenly calming down, nestled against
him and locked her arms about his body:
"I used to be very indifferent," she confessed. "Latterly I have
been much more easily upset, after I had that fright in the bathroom
... after they spat at me so, with betel-juice. Do you believe it was
ghosts? I don't. It was some practical joke of the regent's. Those
beastly Javanese know all sorts of things.... But, since then, I have,
so to speak, lost my bearings. Do you understand that expression?... It
used to be delightful: I would let everything run off me like water
off a duck's back. But, after being so ill, I seem to have changed,
to be more nervous. Theo one day, when he was angry with me, said
that I've been hysterical since then ... and I never used to be. I
don't know: perhaps he's right. But I'm certainly changed.... I
don't care so much what people think or say; I think I'm growing
quite shameless.... They're gossiping too more spitefully than they
used to.... Van Oudijck irritates me, prying about as he does. He's
beginning to notice something.... And Doddie! Doddie!... I'm not
jealous, but I can't stand her evening walks with you.... You
must give it up, do you hear, walking with her! I won't have it,
I won't have it!... And then everything bores me in this place, at
Labuwangi. What a wretched, monotonous life!... Surabaya's a bore
too.... So's Batavia.... It's all so dull and stodgy: people never
think of anything new.... I should like to go to Paris. I believe I
have it in me to enjoy Paris thoroughly...."
"Do I bore you too?"
"You?"
She stroked his face with her two hands and passed them over his
chest and down his thighs:
"I'll tell you what I think of you. You're a pretty boy, but you're too
good-natured. That irritates me too. You kiss everybody who wants you
to kiss them. At Patjaram, you are always pawing everybody, including
your old mother and your sisters. I think it's horrid of you!"
He laughed:
"You're growing jealous!" he exclaimed.
"Jealous? Am I really getting jealous? How horrid if I am! I don't
know: I don't think I am, all the same. I don't want to be. After all,
I believe there's something that will always protect me."
"A devil...."
"Possibly. Un bon diable."
"Are you taking to speaking French?"
"Yes. With a view to Paris.... There's something that protects
me. I firmly believe that life can do me no injury, that nothing can
touch me."
"You're becoming superstitious."
"Oh, I was always that! Perhaps I've become more so.... Tell me,
have I changed, lately?"
"You're touchier."
"Not so indifferent as I was?"
"You're livelier, more amusing."
"Used I to be a bore?"
"You were a little quiet. You were always beautiful, exquisite,
divine ... but rather quiet."
"Perhaps it was because I minded people more then."
"Don't you now?"
"No, not now. They gossip just the same.... But tell me; haven't I
changed more than that?"
"Yes, you have: you're more jealous, more superstitious, more
touchy.... What more do you want?"
"Physically: haven't I changed physically?"
"No."
"Haven't I grown older?... Am I not getting wrinkled?"
"You? Never!"
"Listen. I believe I have still quite a future before me, something
very different...."
"In Paris?"
"Perhaps.... Tell me, am I not too old?"
"What for?"
"For Paris.... How old do you think I am?"
"Twenty-five."
"You're fibbing. You know perfectly well that I'm thirty-two. Do I
look thirty-two?"
"Rather not!"
"Tell me, don't you think India a horrible country?... Have you never
been to Europe?"
"No."
"I was there from ten to fifteen.... Properly speaking, you're a
brown native and I a white creole...."
"I love my country."
"Yes, because you think yourself a bit of a Solo prince.... That's your
Patjaram nonsense.... As for me, I hate India, I loathe Labuwangi. I
want to get away. I want to go to Paris.... Will you come too?"
"No. I should never want to go...."
"Not even when you reflect that there are hundreds of women in Europe
whom you have never loved?"
He looked at her: something in her words, in her voice, made him glance
up; a crazy hysteria, which had never struck him in the old days, when
she had always been the silently passionate mistress, with half-closed
eyes, who always wanted to forget everything at once and to become
conventional again. Something in her repelled him. He loved the soft,
pliant surrender of her caresses, the smiling indolence which she
used to display, but not these half-mad eyes and this purple mouth,
which seemed ready to bite. She seemed to feel this, for she suddenly
pushed him from her and said, brusquely:
"You bore me.... I know all there is to know in you.... Go away...."
But this he would not do. He did not care for futile rendez-vous and
he now embraced her and solicited her....
"No," she said, curtly. "You bore me. Every one bores me
here. Everything bores me."
He, on his knees, put his hands about her waist and drew her to
him. She, smiling a little, became slightly more yielding, rumpling
his hair nervously with her hand. A carriage pulled up in front of
the house.
"Hark!" she said.
"It's Mrs. van Does."
"How soon she's back!"
"I expect she's sold nothing."
"Then it'll cost you a ten-guilder note."
"I dare say."
"Do you pay her much ... for allowing us to meet here?"
"Oh, what does it matter?"
"Listen," she said again, more attentively.
"That's not Mrs. van Does."
"No."
"It's a man's footstep.... It wasn't a dog-cart either: it was much
too noisy."
"I expect it's nothing," said she. "Some one who has mistaken the
house. Nobody ever comes here."
"The man's going round," he said, listening.
They both listened for a moment. And then, suddenly, after two or
three strides through the cramped little garden and along the little
back-verandah, his figure, Van Oudijck's, appeared outside the closed
glass door, visible through the curtain. And he had pulled it open
before Léonie and Addie could change their position, so that Van
Oudijck saw them both, her sitting on the couch and him kneeling
before her, while her hand still lay, as though forgotten, on his hair.
"Léonie!" roared her husband.
Her blood under the shock of the surprise broke into stormy waves
and seethed through her veins and, in one second, she saw the whole
future: his anger, the trial, the divorce, her alimony, all in one
whirling vision. But, as though by the compulsion of her nervous
will, the tide of blood within her at once subsided and grew calm;
and she remained quietly sitting there, her terror showing for but
a moment longer in her eyes, until she could turn them hard as steel
upon Van Oudijck. And, by pressing her finger softly on Addie's head,
she suggested to him also to remain in the same attitude, to remain
kneeling at her feet, and she said, as though self-hypnotized,
listening in astonishment to her own slightly husky voice:
"Otto ... Adrien de Luce is asking me to put in a word with you for
him.... He is asking ... for Doddie's hand...."
They all three remained motionless, all three under the influence of
these words, of this thought which had come ... whence Léonie herself
did not know. For, sitting rigid and erect as a sibyl and still with
that gentle pressure on Addie's head, she repeated:
"He is asking ... for Doddie's hand...."
She was still the only one to speak. And she continued:
"He knows that you have certain objections. He knows that you do
not care for his family ... because they have Javanese blood in
their arteries."
She was still speaking as though some one else were speaking inside
her; and she had to smile at that word arteries, she did not know why:
perhaps because it was the first time in her life that she had used
the word arteries, for veins, in conversation.
"But," she went on, "there are no financial drawbacks, if Doddie likes
to live at Patjaram.... And the children have been fond of each other
... so long."
She alone was speaking still:
"Doddie has so long been overstrung, almost ill.... It would be a
crime, Otto, not to consent."
Gradually her voice became more musical and the smile formed about her
lips; but the light in her eyes was still hard as steel, as though
she were threatening Van Oudijck with her anger if he refused to
believe her.
"Come," she said, very gently, very kindly, patting Addie's head
softly with her trembling fingers. "Get up ... Addie ... and go ... to
... papa."
He rose, mechanically.
"Léonie, what were you doing here?" asked Van Oudijck, hoarsely.
"Here? I was with Mrs. van Does."
"And he?" pointing to Addie.
"He?... He happened to be calling.... Mrs. van Does had to go
out.... Then he asked leave to speak to me.... And then he asked me
... for Doddie's hand...."
They were again all three silent.
"And you, Otto?" she now asked, more harshly. "What brought you here?"
He looked at her sharply.
"Is there anything you want to buy of Mrs. van Does?" she asked.
"Theo told me you were here...."
"Theo was right...."
"Léonie...."
She rose and, with her eyes hard as steel, she intimated to him that
he must believe her, that she insisted on his believing her:
"In any case, Otto," she said; and her manner was once more gently
kind, "do not leave Addie any longer in his uncertainty. And you,
Addie, don't be afraid ... and ask papa for Doddie's hand.... I have
nothing to say where Doddie is concerned ... as I have often told you."
They now all three stood facing one another, in the narrow middle
gallery; breathing with difficulty, oppressed by their accumulated
emotions. Then Addie said:
"Resident, I ask you ... for your daughter's hand."
A dog-cart pulled up at the front of the house.
"That's Mrs. van Does," said Léonie, hurriedly. "Otto, say something
before she comes...."
"I consent," said Van Oudijck, gloomily.
He made off at the back before Mrs. van Does had entered and
did not see the hand which Addie held out to him. Mrs. van Does
came in trembling, following by a babu carrying her bundle, her
merchandise. She saw Léonie and Addie standing stiff and hypnotized:
"That was the residèn's chariot!" stammered the Indian lady, pale in
the face. "Was it the residèn?"
"Yes," said Léonie, calmly.
"Oh dear! And what happened?"
"Nothing," said Léonie, laughing.
"Nothing?"
"Or rather, something did happen."
"What?"
"Addie and Doddie are ..."
"What?"
"Engaged!"
And she shrieked the words with a shrill outburst of uncontrollable
mirth at the comedy of life and took Mrs. van Does, who stood with
the eyes starting out of her head, and spun her round and kicked
the bundle out of the babu's hands, so that a parcel of embroidered
bedspreads and table-slips fell to the ground and a little jam-pot
full of glittering crystals rolled away and broke.
"Oh dear!... My brilliants!"
One more kick of frolicsome wantonness; and the table-slips flew to
left and right and the diamonds lay glittering scattered among the legs
of the tables and chairs. Addie, his eyes still filled with terror,
crawled about on his hands and feet, raking them together.
Mrs. van Does repeated:
"Engaged!"