“Come, tell me things,” said Theo. “Walk a bit of the way with us: it’s stuffy in here.”
They left the hut and sauntered back through the compounds, while Si-Oudijck told his story. They strolled beside the Brantas, which wound vaguely in the evening dusk under a sky powdered with stars.
It did Theo good to hear about all this, about that housekeeper of his father’s, in the days of his controllership, dismissed for an infidelity of which she was guiltless; the child born later and never recognized, never maintained; the boy wandering from compound to compound, romantically proud of his inhuman father, whom he watched from a distance, following him with his furtive glance when the father became assistant-resident and resident, married, divorced his wife and married again; by slow degrees learning to read and write from a native scrivener of his acquaintance. It did the legitimate son good to hear about all this, because in his innermost self, fair-haired and fair-skinned though he might be, he was more the son of his mother, the half-caste, than of his father; because in his innermost self he hated his father, not for this or that reason, but from a secret antipathy in his blood, because, despite the appearance and behaviour of a fair-haired and fair-skinned European, he felt a secret kinship for this illegitimate brother, felt a vague sympathy for him. Were they not both sons of the self-same motherland, for which their father felt nothing except as a result of his acquired development, the artificially cultivated, humane love of the ruler for the territory which he governs. From his childhood Theo had felt like that, far removed from his father; and later that antipathy had grown into a slumbering hatred. It gave him pleasure to hear the legend of his faultless parent demolished; the impeccable, magnanimous man, a functionary of the highest integrity, who loved his domestic circle, loved his residency, loved the Javanese, and was anxious to uphold the regent’s family, not only because his official instructions prescribed that the Javanese nobility should be respected, but because his own heart told him as much, when he thought of the noble old pangéran.... Theo knew that his father was all this: blameless, high-minded, upright, magnanimous; and it did him good, here, in the mysterious evening beside the Brantas, to hear that blamelessness, that high-minded, upright magnanimity torn to ribbons; it did him good to meet an outcast who in one moment spattered that high-throned paternal figure with mud and filth, dragging him from his pedestal, making him appear no higher than another, sinful, wicked, heartless, mean. It filled him with a wicked joy, even as he was filled with a wicked joy at possessing his father’s wife, whom his father adored. What to do with this dark secret he did not yet know, but he clutched at it as a weapon; he was whetting it there, that very evening, while he listened to the end to what this furtive-eyed half-caste, ranting and working himself up, had to say. And Theo hid his secret, hid his weapon deep in his heart.
Grievances rose in his mind; and he too now, the legitimate son, abused his father; declared that the resident did no more to help him, his own lawful son, to get on than he would do for any of his clerks; told him how his father had once recommended him to the manager of an impossible undertaking, a rice-plantation, where he had been unable to stay longer than a single month; how afterwards he had left him to his fate, thwarting him when he went hunting after concessions, even in other residencies, even in Borneo, until he was now obliged to remain hanging about and sponging at home, unable to find a job, thanks to his father, and merely tolerated in that house where he disliked everything.
“Except your step-mother!” Si-Oudijck interpolated, drily.
But Theo went on, growing confidential in his turn and telling his brother that it would be no great advantage for him even if he were acknowledged and legitimatized. And in this way they both became excited, glad to have met each other, to have grown intimate in this brief hour. And beside them walked Addie, surprised by this quick mutual attraction, but otherwise empty of thought. They had crossed a bridge and by a circuitous route had come out behind the Patjaram factory-buildings. Here Si-Oudijck said good-night, shaking hands with Theo, who slipped a couple of rix-dollars into his palm. They were accepted greedily, with a flicker of the furtive glance, but not a word of thanks. And Addie and Theo went past the factory, now silent, to the house. The family were strolling, outside, in the garden and in the tjemara-avenue. And, as the two young men approached, the golden, eight-year-old child came running towards them, the old grandmother’s little foster-princess, with her fringe of hair and her whitened forehead, in her rich little, doll-like dress. She came running up to them and suddenly stopped in front of Addie and looked up at him. Addie asked her what she wanted, but the child did not answer and only looked up at him and then, putting out her little hand, stroked his hand with it. It was all so clearly the result of an irresistible magnetism in the shy child, this running up, stopping, looking up and stroking, that Addie laughed aloud and stooped and kissed her lightly. The child skipped back contentedly. And Theo, still excited by his evening, first by his conversation with Oorip and then by his explanation with Addie, his meeting with his half-brother, his own confidences about his father—Theo, feeling bitter and interesting, was so greatly irritated by this trivial behaviour of Addie and the child, that he exclaimed, almost angrily:
“Oh, you ... you’ll never be anything but a woman’s man!...”
Chapter Sixteen
Things had gone well with Van Oudijck upon the whole. Born of a simple Dutch family, with no money, he had found his youth a hard though never cruel school of precocious earnestness, of early strenuous work, of immediate looking forward to the future, to a career, to the honourable position which he hoped—with the least possible delay—to fill among his fellow-men. His years of oriental study at Delft had been just gay enough to enable him later to believe that he had once been young; and, because he had taken part in a masquerade, he even thought that he had spent quite a dissolute life, with much squandering of money and riotous living. His character was based on a good deal of quiet Dutch respectability and an earnest outlook upon life, a rather gloomy, disillusioned outlook, though intelligent and practical: he was accustomed to visualize his honourable position among his fellow-men; and his ambition had developed rhythmically and steadily into a temperate thirst for position, but only on the lines along which his eyes were always wont to gaze: the hierarchical lines of the Indian Civil Service. Things had always gone well with him. Displaying great capacity, he had been greatly valued; he had become an assistant-resident earlier than most and a resident while still young; and his ambition was now really satisfied because his authoritative office was in complete harmony with his nature, whose love of rule had progressed with its ambition. He was now really satisfied; and, though his eyes looked still much farther ahead and saw glimmering before them a seat on the Indian Council, and even the throne at Buitenzorg, he had days when, sober and contented, he declared that to become a resident of the first class—putting aside the higher pension—had little in its favour except at Samarang and Surabaya, but that the Vorstenlanden were absolutely a burden, while Batavia occupied such a peculiar and almost derogatory position, in the thick of so many higher officials, members of council and directors. And, though his eyes thus looked farther ahead, his practical and temperate nature would have been quite satisfied if any one should have prophesied to him that he would die as Resident of Labuwangi. He loved his district and loved India; he never yearned for Holland, nor for the pageant of European civilization, even though he himself had remained very Dutch and above all hated anything that was half-caste. This was the inconsistency in his character, for he had married his first wife, herself a half-caste, purely out of affection; and, as for his children, in whom the Indian blood was eloquent—outwardly in Doddie, inwardly in Theo, while René and Ricus were two thorough little Eurasians—he loved them with an intense feeling of paternity, with all the tenderness and sentiment that slumbered in the depths of his nature: a need to give much and receive much in the circle of his domestic life. Gradually this need had extended to the circle of his district: he took a paternal pride in his assistant-residents and controllers, among whom he was popular and beloved. It had happened only once in the six years during which he had been Resident of Labuwangi that he had been unable to get on with a controller: then the man was a half-caste, and he had had him transferred: had him sacked, as he put it. And he was proud that, despite his strict discipline, despite his stern insistence on work, he was beloved by his officials. He was all the more grieved by the constant secret enmity of the regent, his “younger brother,” to use the Javanese title, in whom indeed he would gladly have found a younger brother to govern his native population under himself, the elder brother. It grieved him that matters had fallen out thus; and he would then think of other regents, not only of this one’s father, the fine old pangéran, but of others whom he knew: the Regent of D—-, a cultivated man, speaking and writing Dutch correctly, contributing lucid Dutch articles to newspapers and magazines; the Regent of S—-, a trifle frivolous and vain, but very rich and very benevolent, figuring as a dandy in European society and polite to the ladies. Why should things have fallen out just so in Labuwangi, with this silent, spiteful, secretive, fanatical puppet, with the reputation of a saint and sorcerer, stupidly idolized by the people, in whose welfare he took no interest and who adored him only for the glamour of his ancient name, a man in whom he always felt an antagonism, never uttered in words, but plainly palpable under his icy correctness of demeanour? And then at Ngadjiwa too there was the brother, the card-player, the gambler: why should just he be so unlucky in his regents?