But beneath all this show the hidden force lurks, slumbering now and unwilling to fight. Beneath all this appearance of tangible things the essence of that silent mysticism threatens, like a smouldering fire underground, like hatred and mystery in the heart. Beneath all this peace of grandeur the danger threatens and the future mutters like the subterranean thunder in the volcanoes, inaudible to human ears. And it is as though the subject race knew it and were leaving matters to the latent force of things and awaiting the divine moment that is to come if there be any truth in the calculations of the mystics. As for the native, he reads his overlord with a single penetrating glance; he sees in him the illusion of civilization and humanity and he knows that they are non-existent. While he gives him the title of lord and the homage due to the master, he is profoundly conscious of his democratic, commercial nature and despises him for it in silence and judges him with a smile which his brother understands; and he too smiles. Never does he offend against the form of slavish servility; and, with his salaam, he acts as though he were the inferior, but he is silently aware that he is the superior. He is conscious of the hidden, unuttered force; he feels the mystery borne upon the surging winds of his mountains, in the silence of the secret, sultry nights; and he foresees events that are as yet remote. What is will not always be; the present is disappearing. Dumbly he hopes that God will lift up those who are oppressed, some time, some time in the distant advent of the dawning future. But he feels and hopes and knows it in the innermost depths of his soul, which he never unlocks to his ruler, which he would not even be able to unlock, which always remains an indecipherable book, in the unknown, untranslatable tongue in which the words indeed are the same but the shades of meaning expressed by them are different and in which the manifold hues of the two ideals show different spectra: spectra in which the colours differ as though given forth by two separate suns, rays from two separate worlds. And never is there the harmony that understands; never does that love blossom forth which is conscious of unity; and between the two there is always the gap, the chasm, the abyss, the distance, the width whence looms the mystery wherefrom, as from a cloud, the hidden force will one day flash forth....
So it was that Van Oudijck did not feel the mysticism of tangible things.
And the serene life, as of the gods, might well find him weak and unprepared....
Chapter Eighteen
Ngadjiwa was a gayer place than Labuwangi: there was a garrison; managers and employers often came down from the coffee-plantations in the interior for a few days’ amusement; there were races twice a year, accompanied by festivities which filled a whole month: the reception of the resident, a horse-raffle, a battle of flowers and an opera, two or three balls, distinguished by the revellers as the fancy-dress ball, the ceremonial ball and the soirée dansante; it was a time of early rising and late retiring, of losing hundreds of guilders in a few days at écarté and in the totalizator.... The longing for pleasure and the cheery joy of life were freely indulged during those days; coffee-planters and young men from the sugar-factories looked forward to them for months ahead; people saved up for them during half the year. The two hotels were filled with guests from all directions, every household entertained its visitors; people betted furiously, while champagne flowed in torrents, all, including the ladies, knowing the race-horses as thoroughly as though they were their own property, feeling quite at home at the dances, everybody knowing everybody, as at family-parties, while the waltzes and Washington Posts and grazianas were danced with the languorous grace of the Eurasian dancers, to a swooning measure, the trains gently floating, a smile of quiet rapture on the parted lips, with that dreamy voluptuousness which the Indian settlers express so charmingly in their dances, especially those who have Javanese blood in their veins. Dancing with them is not a rough diversion, all bumping against one another with rude leaps and loud laughter, not the wild whirl of the Lancers as at Dutch boy-and-girl balls, but represents, especially to the Eurasians, nothing but courtesy and grace: a serene blossoming of the poetry of motion; a gracefully designed curve of precise steps to a pure measure over the club-room floors; an almost eighteenth-century harmony of youthful nobility, waving and trailing and swaying in the dance, despite the primitive boom-booming of the Indian musicians. This was how Addie de Luce danced, with the eyes of every woman and girl fixed upon him, following him, imploring him with their glances to take them with him also in that waving and undulating motion; which was like a dream upon the water.... This came to him with his mother’s blood, this was a survival of the grace of the dancing princesses among whom his mother had spent her childhood; and the mingling of modern European and ancient Javanese gave him an irresistible charm.
And now, at the last ball, the soirée dansante, he danced like this with Doddie and, after her, with Léonie. It was late at night, or rather early in the morning: the day was dawning outside. A fatigue hung over the ball-room; and Van Oudijck at last intimated to the assistant-resident, Vermalen, with whom he and his family were staying, that he was ready to go home. At that moment he was in the front verandah of the club, talking to Vermalen, when the native councillor suddenly ran up to him from the shadow of the garden and, suffering from obvious excitement, squatted, salaamed and said:
“Excellency! Excellency! Please advise me, tell me what to do! The regent is drunk, he is walking along the street and forgetting all his dignity.”
The guests were taking their departure. The carriages drove up; the owners stepped in; the carriages drove away. In the road outside the club the resident saw a Javanese: the upper part of the man’s body was bare; he had lost his head-dress; and his long, black hair floated loosely, while he talked aloud, with violent gestures. Groups gathered in the dusky shadow, looking on from a distance.
Van Oudijck recognized the Regent of Ngadjiwa. Already at the ball the regent had behaved without self-control, after losing heavily at cards and mixing all sorts of wines.