On one unfortunate day he kept Marshal Daendels waiting in the outer court for an hour beyond the time appointed for an interview, while the sultan and his women made merry, and the gamelan sounded gaily from the Water Kastel’s galleries. Daendels, growing weary, suddenly pushed through the retainers to the mouth of the tunnel, and appeared to the dallying sultan in the Water Kastel without announcement or further ceremony, and with still less ceremony seized the sultan by the arm and led him back to Dutch headquarters, where the interview took place. Another version of this Water Kastel tradition describes the mad marshal as making a dash down terraces and staircases to a water-pavilion sunk deep in foliage at the edge of a tank, where, in a shady cellar of a sleeping-room, shielded and cooled by a water curtain falling in front of it, he dragged the sultan from his bed, and carried him off to headquarters. The opas and the chattering old guardian, who led us about the Kastel’s labyrinths, plunged into the green gloom of a long, mossy staircase that led to the platform on which the sultan’s sleeping-room opened, to show us the “unlucky bed” and prove by it their particular or favored version of the irruption of Marshal Daendels. The bedstead or couch is an elaborately carved affair, and must once have been the chief ornament of this cool cave-like retreat; but in the reek and gloom of the late afternoon this water boudoir seemed too suggestive of rheumatism, malaria, and snakes by wholesale to invite one to linger, or to suggest repose on the “unlucky bed,” which insures an early death to the one who touches it.
Another water-chamber was provided in the Sumoor Gamelan (“Musical Spring”), a deep circular well or tank near the ruined banquet-hall, with vaulted chambers opening around it—just such echoing places of green twilight, where it must be cool on the hottest noonday, as one may see in the old palaces at Lucknow, Futtehpore Sikri, and Ahmedabad, in the fatherland whence the ruling princes of Java came. There is, too, a great oval tank with beautiful walls, parapets, and pavilions, well worthy of a Hindu palace; and in this secluded place there lived for many decades a sacred white or dingy yellow turtle with red eyes, an albino to whom the people made offerings and paid homage. The Taman Sarie has great fascination for one, and at sunset something of romance seems to linger in the old gardens and grottoes, the picturesque courtyards and galleries; and one could imagine scores of legends and harem’s mysteries belonging there—that anything and everything had happened there by that lake that burns a rose-red when the palms are silhouetted against the high sunset sky. A group of children played hide-and-seek about the once august court, supple, nimble little bronze fauns, with the carefully folded kerchiefs on their heads their only garments—kerchiefs that they arrange with the greatest care and deliberation many times a day, holding the ends of the cloth with agile toes while they pat and crease and coax the fine folds into the prescribed order of good form. These children dashed through the shrubberies, leaped balusters and walls as lightly and easily as wild creatures, and ran up tall trees like squirrels, to gather tasseled orchids and some strange blue flowers that we pointed to with suggestive coppers, and they hailed us as old friends when we came again.
There were delightful drives to be taken in and around Djokja in the cool of the afternoon, the tamarind- and waringen-shaded streets leading to bowery suburbs, that gave wider views out over the fertile plain with the winding Oepak River, or toward the beautiful blue mountain cones that slumbered to northward. There were always the most decorative palm-trees in the right place to outline themselves against the rosy sunset sky, and the drives back to the hotel through the quick twilight and sudden darkness gave many views into lamp-lighted huts and houses—genre pictures of native life, Dutch-Indies interiors, where candle-light or firelight illuminated family groups and women at their homely occupations, that should inspire a new, a tropical school of Dutch painters. The graves of the old Hindu princes of Mataram crown a beautiful wooded hill south of the city near the sea-shore, and are still worshiped and garlanded by their people.
Through our now near friend, august patron, and protector, the kindly assistant resident, we received word at sunrise that the independent Prince Pakoe Alam V (“Axis of the Universe”) and his family would graciously receive us the next morning at nine o’clock; and that meanwhile our patronage was invited for a topeng, or lyric dance, to be given by Prince Pakoe Alam’s palace troupe on that evening for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the soldiers killed in the Lombok war. This Lombok war had been brought to a close that week by the capture of the treacherous Balinese sultan who had so tyrannized over the Sassaks, and was then on his way to be paraded with the victorious soldiers before the governor-general in a grand triumph or review at Batavia.
TYING THE TURBAN.
I had a long, quiet afternoon at the Hotel Toegoe to give again to the enormous folios of Wilsen’s drawings of Boro Boedor, while my companions napped, the palm-branches hung motionless in the garden, and only a few barefooted servants moved without sound—that deathly silence of tropic afternoon life that is sometimes a boon, and sometimes an exasperation and irritation to one accustomed to doing his sleeping by dark and not turning day into night. Finally the pale skeleton of an invalid, who was my next neighbor on the long porch, lifted his pitiful voice, and was helped out to his chair, and then our imperturbable Amat stirred from his leisured sleep on the flags beyond, meditated for a while, twisted his kerchief turban anew, disappeared, and returned with the tea-tray, silent, impassive, and automatic, as if under some spell. A graceful little woman peddler came to the porch’s edge—a pretty, gentle creature with dark, starry Hindu eyes, clear-cut features, even little white teeth, and crinkly hair. It was delight enough to watch this pretty creature’s flash of eyes and teeth, and her manners were most beguiling as she proffered her sarongs—intricately figured batteks from Cheribon and Solo, silk plaided ones from Singapore, and those of Borneo shot through with glittering threads. Nothing could have been more graceful and charming than the naïve appeals of the little peddler woman, and nothing could have presented more extreme and unfortunate contrast than to have the sockless and waistless young Dutch matron of the opposite portico step down and run to the garden gate at sound of a military band. Few women since Atalanta’s time have been able to run gracefully; and this thick-ankled young matron, with her flapping mule slippers, scant sarong, and shapeless jacket, outdid all descriptions and caricatures of “the woman who runs.” A friendly cavalier in gaudy battek pajamas, who had been talking to the lady, and blowing clouds of pipe-smoke into her face the while, gaily danced an elephantine fandango as the band went sounding down the street to give its sunset concert in the park.