But she sat down instead; Oorip, the maid, sprinkled some scent on her handkerchief. Mrs. van Oudijck put up her feet and lay musing, after the fatigue of her journey. She found Labuwangi desperately dull after Batavia, where she had spent two months staying with relations and friends, free and untrammelled by obligations. Here, as the wife of the resident, she had certain duties, though she delegated most of them to the secretary’s wife. She felt tired in herself, out of sorts, dissatisfied. Despite her complete indifference, she was human enough to have her silent moods, in which she wished everything at the bottom of the sea. At one time she suddenly longed to do something mad, at another she vaguely longed for Paris.... She would never let any one see all this. She was able to control herself; and she controlled herself now, before making her appearance again. Her vague Bacchanalian longings melted away in her fatigue. She stretched herself out at greater ease. She mused, with eyes almost closed. Through her almost superhuman indifference a curious fancy sometimes crept, hidden from the world. She preferred to live in her bedroom her life of fragrant imagination, especially after her month in Batavia. After one of those months of perversity, she felt a need to let her vagrant, rosy imaginings rise like a whirling mist before her half-closed eyes. There was in her otherwise utterly barren soul as it were an unnatural growth of little azure flowers, which she cherished with the only feeling that she could ever experience. She felt for no living creature, but she felt for those little flowers. It was delicious to dream like this of what she would have liked to be if she were not compelled to be what she was. Her fancies rose in a whirling mist: she saw a white palace, with little cupids everywhere....
“Mamma ... do come! Mrs. van Does is here, Mrs. van Does, with two stoppered bottles....”
It was Doddie, at the door. Léonie van Oudijck stood up and went to the back verandah, where the Indian lady was sitting, the wife of the postmaster. She kept cows and sold milk. But she also drove other trades. She was a stout woman, rather dark-skinned, with a prominent stomach; she wore a very simple little kabaai with a narrow band of lace round it; and she sat stroking her stomach with her fat hands. In front of her, on the table, stood two small phials, with something glittering in them. What was it, Mrs. van Oudijck wondered: sugar, crystals? Then she suddenly remembered....
Mrs. van Does said that she was glad to see her again. Two months away from Labuwangi. Too bad, Mrs. van Oudijck! And she pointed to the bottles. Mrs. van Oudijck smiled. What was inside them?
With a great air of mystery, Mrs. van Does laid a fat, double-jointed forefinger on one of the jam-pots and said:
“Diamonds!”
“Oh, really?” said Mrs. van Oudijck.
Doddie, wide-eyed, and Theo, greatly amused stared at the stoppered bottles.
“Yes ... you know ... that lady’s, of whom I spoke to you.... She doesn’t want her name mentioned. Poor thing, her husband once a great swell ... and now ... yes, so unfortunate; she has nothing left! All gone. Only these two little bottles. Had all her jewels unset and keeps the stones in the bottles. All counted. She trusts them to me to sell. Know her through my milk-business. Will you look at, Mrs. van Oudijck, yes? Lovely stones! The residèn he buy for you, now you back home again. Doddie, give me a bit of black stuff: velvet best....”
Doddie sent the seamstress to fetch a bit of black velvet from a cupboard of odds and ends. A boy brought glasses with tamarind-syrup and ice. Mrs. van Does, holding a little pair of tongs in her double-jointed fingers, laid a couple of stones carefully on the velvet: