“Excellency, it’s not poison; I swear it by my life, by my death; I can’t help it, excellency. Kick me, kill me: I can’t help it, excellency!”
“Fetch another tumbler and fill it before me.”
The messenger went away, trembling.
The others sat close together, feeling the contact of one another’s bodies through the sweat-soaked cloth of their liveries, and stared before them in dismay. The moon rose from its clouds, laughing and mocking like a wicked fairy; its moist and silent enchantment shone silver over the wide garden. In the distance, from the garden at the back, a plaintive cry rang out, as though a child were being throttled.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“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[1] 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.