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....
[1] The chief coffee-growing district of Java.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Labuwangi came to life again. It was as though people unanimously agreed not to discuss the strange affair any further with outsiders, because it was so excusable that any one should refuse to believe in the thing; and they, at Labuwangi, believed. And the up-country town, after the mystic oppression under which it had lain cowering during those unforgettable weeks, came to life again, as though shaking off all its obsession. Party followed upon party, ball upon ball, theatricals upon concert: all threw open their doors to entertain their friends and make merry, in order to feel natural and normal after the incredible nightmare. People so accustomed to the natural and tangible life, to the spacious and lavish material existence of India—to good cooking, cool drinks, wide beds, roomy houses, to everything that represents physical luxury to the European in the east—such people breathed again and shook off the nightmare, shook off the belief in strange happenings. If and when they discussed the thing nowadays, they commonly called it that incomprehensible conjuring—echoing the resident—the regent’s conjuring-tricks. For that the regent had something to do with it was certain. That the resident had held a terrible threat over him and his mother, if the strange happenings did not cease, was certain. That, after this, order had been restored in everyday life was certain. So it was conjuring. All were now ashamed of their credulity and their fears and of having shuddered at what had looked like mysticism and was only clever conjuring. And all breathed again and made up their minds to be cheerful; and entertainment followed upon entertainment.
Léonie, amid all this dissipation, forgot her irritation at having been recalled by Van Oudijck. And she too was determined to forget the scarlet pollution of her body. But something of its terror lingered in her. She now bathed early of an afternoon, as early as half-past four, in the newly-built bathroom. Her second bath always gave her a certain shudder. And, now that Theo had a job at Surabaya, she got rid of him, also, from terror. She could not get rid of the idea that the enchantment had threatened to punish both of them, the mother and son, who were bringing shame on the home. In the romantic side of her perverse imagination, in her rosy fancy full of cherubs and cupids, this idea, inspired by her fears, struck too precious a note of tragedy for her not to cherish it, for all that Theo might say. She would go no further. And it made him furious, because he was mad with love for her, because he could not forget the shameful happiness which he had enjoyed in her arms. But she steadily refused him and told him of her dread and said that she was certain that the witchcraft would begin again if they two loved each other, he and his father’s wife. Her words drove him scarlet with fury, on the one Sunday which he spent at Labuwangi: he was furious with her non-compliance, with the motherly attitude which she now adopted and with the fact, of which he was well aware, that she saw Addie often, that she often went to stay at Patjaram. Addie danced with her at parties and hung over her chair at concerts, in the improvised residential box. True, he was not faithful to her, for it was not his nature to love one woman—he loved women wholesale—but still he was as faithful to her as he was able to be. He inspired her with a more lasting passion than she had ever felt before; and this passion roused her from her usual passive indifference. Often, in company, suffering and inflicting boredom, enthroned in the brilliance of her white beauty, like a smiling idol, with the langour of her years in India gradually filling her blood until her movements had acquired that lazy indifference for anything that did not spell love and caresses, until her voice had assumed a drawling accent in any word that was not a word of passion: often the flame which Addie shed over her would transfigure into a younger woman, livelier in company, gayer, flattered by the persistent homage of this youth, on whom every girl was mad.