But no one appeared and she grew confused. She dared not sit down and yet she did not want to go away. But round the corner of the house, outside, there peeped a little face, two little brown faces, the faces of very young half-caste girls, and vanished again, giggling. Inside the house, Eva heard a greatly excited, very nervous whispering:
“Sidin! Sidin!” she heard somebody call, in a whisper.
She smiled, took courage and stayed and walked about in the little front-verandah. And at last there came an old woman, not perhaps so very old in years, but old in wrinkled skin and eyes that had grown dim, wearing a coloured chintz sabaai and dragging her slippers; and, beginning with a few words of Dutch and then taking refuge in Malay, smiling politely, she requested Eva to be seated and said that the resident would be there at once. She herself sat down, smiled, did not know what to talk about, did not know what to answer when Eva asked her about the lake, about the road. All that she could do was to fetch syrup and iced-water and wafers; and she did not talk, but only smiled and looked after her visitor. When the young half-caste faces peeped round the corner, the old woman angrily stamped her slippered foot and scolded them with a hasty word; and then they disappeared, giggling and running away with an audible patter of little bare feet. Then the old woman smiled again with her eternally smiling wrinkled face and looked at the lady timidly, as though apologizing. And it was a very long time before Van Oudijck at last entered the room.
He welcomed Eva effusively, excused himself for keeping her waiting. It was obvious that he had shaved in a hurry and put on a clean white suit. And he was evidently glad to see her. The old woman departed, with her eternal smile of apology. In that first cheerful moment, Van Oudijck seemed to Eva exactly the same as usual; but, when he had calmed down and taken a chair and asked her whether she had heard from Eldersma and when she herself was going to Europe, she saw that he had grown older, an old man. It did not show in his figure, which, in his well-starched white suit, still preserved its broad, soldierly air, a sturdy build, with only the back a little more bowed, as though under a burden. But it showed in his face, in the dull, uninterested glance, in the deep furrows of the careworn forehead, in the colour of his skin, which was dry and yellow, while the thick moustache, about which the jovial smile still flickered at intervals, had turned quite grey. His hands shook nervously. And, when she told him what people had said at Labuwangi, he listened without interrupting, betraying a lingering curiosity about the people yonder, about the district of which he had once been so fond. She discussed it all vaguely, glossing over things, putting the best face on them and, above all, saying nothing of the gossip: that he had taken French leave, that he had run away, nobody quite knew why.
“And you, resident,” she asked, “are you going to Europe too?”
He stared in front of him and gave a painful laugh before replying. And at last he said, almost shyly:
“No, mevrouwtje. I don’t think I’ll go home. You see, I’ve been somebody out here, in India; I’d be nobody over there. I’m nobody now, I know; but still I feel that India has become my country. It has got the upper hand of me; and I belong to it now. I no longer belong to Holland, and I have nothing and nobody in Holland that belongs to me. I’m finished, it’s true; but still I’d rather drag out my existence here than there. In Holland I should certainly not be able to stand the climate ... or the people. Here the climate suits me and I have withdrawn from society. I have helped Theo for the last time; and Doddie is married. And the two boys are going to Europe, to school....”
He suddenly bent towards her and, in a changed voice, he almost whispered, as though about to make a confession:
“You see, if everything had gone normally, then ... then I should not have acted as I did. I have always been a practical man and I was proud of it and proud of living the normal life, my own life, which I lived in accordance with principles that I thought were right, until I reached a high place among my fellow-men. I have always been like that and things went well like that. Everything went swimmingly with me. When others were worrying about their promotion, I passed over the heads of five men at a bound. It was all plain sailing for me, at least in my official career. I have not been lucky in my domestic life, but I should never have been weak enough to break down on the road with grief because of that. A man has so much outside his domestic life. And yet I was always very fond of my family-circle. I don’t think it was my fault that everything went as it did. I loved my wife, I loved my children, I loved my home, my home surroundings, in which I was the husband, and father. But that feeling in me was never fully satisfied. My first wife was a half-caste whom I married because I was in love with her. Because she could not get the upper hand of me with her whim-whams, things became impossible after a few years. I was perhaps even more in love with my second wife than with my first: I am simply constituted in these matters. But I was never allowed to have a pleasant home-circle, a pleasant, kindly wife, children climbing on your knees and growing up into men and women who owe their lives to you, their existence, in short, everything that they have and possess. That is what I should have liked to have. But, as I say, though I did not get it, that would never have pulled me under....”
He was silent for a moment and then continued in an even more mysterious whisper: