She was a woman made for ideals. Perhaps this by itself was the simple explanation of what she felt and feared ... in India....
“Your impressions of India are altogether mistaken,” her husband would say. “You see India quite wrongly. Quiet? You think it’s quiet here? Why should I have to work so hard in India, if things were quiet at Labuwangi?... We have hundreds of interests at heart, of Europeans and Javanese alike. Agriculture is studied as eagerly in this country as anywhere. The population is increasing steadily.... Declining? A colony in which there is always so much going on? That’s one of Van Helderen’s imbecile ideas: speculative ideas, mere vapourings, which you just echo after him.... I can’t understand the way in which you regard India nowadays.... There was a time when you had eyes for all that was beautiful and interesting here. That time seems to be past. You ought to go home for a bit, really....”
But she knew that he would be very lonely without her; and for this reason she refused to go. Later, when her boy was older, she would have to go to Holland. But by then Eldersma would certainly be an assistant-resident. At present he still had seventeen controllers and district secretaries above him. It had been going on like this for years, that looking towards promotion in the distant future. It was like yearning after a mirage. Of ever becoming a resident he did not so much as think. Assistant-resident for a couple of years or so; and then to Holland, on a pension....
She thought it a heart-breaking existence, slaving one’s self to death like that ... for Labuwangi!...
She was down with malaria; and her maid, Saina, was giving her massage, kneading her aching limbs with supple fingers.
“It’s a nuisance, Saina, when I’m ill, for you to be living in the compound. You’d better move into the house this evening, with your four children.”
Saina thought it troublesome, a great fuss.
“Why?”
And the woman explained. Her cottage had been left to her by her husband. She was attached to it, though it was in an utterly dilapidated condition. Now that the rainy monsoon was on, the rain often came in through the roof; and then she was unable to cook and the children had to go without their food. To have it repaired was difficult. She had a rix-dollar a week from the mem-sahib. Sixty cents of that went on rice. Then there were a few cents daily for fish, coconut oil, betel-pepper; a few cents for fuel.... No, repairs were out of the question. She would be much better off with the mem-sahib, much better off on the estate. But it would be such a fuss to find a tenant for the cottage, because it was so dilapidated; and the mem-sahib knew that no house was allowed to remain unoccupied in the compound: there was a heavy fine attached to that.... So she would rather go on living in her damp cottage. She could easily stay and sit up with the mem-sahib at night; her eldest girl would look after the little ones.
And, resigned to her small existence of petty miseries, Saina passed her supple fingers, with a firm, gentle pressure, over her mistress’ ailing limbs.