The young mother drooped under the blow, like flowers stricken by a black frost, never to revive again. The healing hand of time rendered her placid and resigned, but her former cheerfulness never returned. She became very devout, and all her music was an utterance of prayer. Looking on this life with the eye of one weary of its illusions, she steadfastly fixed her thoughts on that world whither her darling had gone. From the youthful soul of Jan the shadow was more easily lifted. Again he revelled in the bright colours, the pungent perfumes, and the varied sounds of that luxuriant region of the earth. Again he began to mock the birds and the boatmen, and to mingle in dances with the other young slaves. About two years after he lost his best beloved playmate, he met with a companion who more than supplied his place, and who imparted to his existence a greater degree of vivacity and joyfulness, than he had ever known. Walking toward Grésik, one morning, to execute some commission for his mistress, he heard a pleasant voice in the distance, singing a merry tune. The sounds approached nearer and nearer, and they were so lively, that involuntarily his feet moved faster. Presently, a young girl emerged from a clump of tamarind trees, with a basket of fruit on her head; and the tune stopped abruptly. The expression of her countenance was extremely innocent and modest, and though her complexion was of a deeper brown than his own, a blush shone through it, like the glow of wine through a dark bottle in the sunshine. Jan noticed this as she passed; and something, he knew not what, made him remember her face very distinctly, and wish to see it again. He never went to Grésik without thinking of the merry voice in the distance, and never passed the clump of tamarind trees without recalling the bright vision he met there. Many weeks elapsed before he obtained another glimpse of her; but at last he overtook her with her basket on the way to Grésik; and this time they did not meet to pass each other; for their path lay in the same direction. With mutual bashfulness they spoke and answered; and each thought the other handsomer than they had at first supposed. The acquaintance thus begun rapidly ripened into intimacy. He was not yet thirteen years old, and she was not eleven. But in that precocious clime, Cupid shoots at children with a bow of sugar-cane; and this little maiden carried a store of his arrows in her large lustrous eyes. After that, Jan was seized with redoubled zeal to do all the errands to Grésik; and it so happened that he often overtook her on the way, or found her resting herself among the tamarind trees. Then her road homeward was, for a mile, the same as his own. Thus they travelled back and forth with their baskets, making the air musical as they went; as happy as the birds, and as thoughtless of the coming years. During these frequent interviews, he learned that she was a slave; that her mother was from the island of Bali; and that her Arab father had given her the name of Zaida. Before many months elapsed, Madame Van der Veen heard, from the other servants, that Jan was in love with a pretty girl, whose master lived not far from Grésik; and when she questioned him, he bashfully confessed the fact. Then she spoke very seriously to him, and told him how sorry she should be to see him doing as many did around him. She said if Zaida was a good girl, and wished to marry him, she would try to buy her; and if they would promise to be faithful and kind to each other, they should have a handsome wedding at her house, and a bamboo hut to live in. This almost maternal kindness excited his sensitive soul to tears. She seized that impressible moment to talk to him concerning his duties to God, and to explain how He had made man for a higher destiny than to mate, like the birds, for a season.
The negotiation for the purchase of Zaida was somewhat prolonged, and she was at last obtained at an unusually high price; for her master took advantage of Madame Van der Veen’s well-known character for generosity and indulgence to the inmates of her household. Meanwhile, the gentle lady allowed her slave frequent opportunities of seeing his beloved. Once a week, he took his guitar and spent two or three hours with his singing-bird. Every errand to Grésik was intrusted to him, and Zaida found many occasions for going thither at the same hour. Very beautiful were the scenes through which they passed in those happy days. South of them was a range of mountains, blue and softened in the distance. On the north was the bright sea, with the island of Madura lying like an emerald gem on its bosom. Bamboo cottages, shaded by a mass of luxuriant vegetation, dotted the level landscape, as it were, with little islands, whose deep verdure formed a lovely contrast with the rich yellow of the ripened rice fields. Here, the large scarlet blossoms of a pomegranate, beautiful above all other trees, filled the air with fragrance; and there, a tall cocoa-palm reared its great feathery head high above the light elegant foliage of a tamarind grove. Arum lilies held up their large white cups among the luxuriant vines that lay tangled by the wayside. Wild peacocks and other gorgeous birds flitted across their path, glittering in the sunlight, like jewels from fairy land. The warbling of birds, the buzzing of bees, the whiz and the whirr of numerous insects, all the swarming sounds of tropical life, mingled with the monotonous tones of boatmen coming down the river Solo with their merchandise, singing with measured cadence,
“Pull and row, brothers! pull and row!”
Only one discordant note disturbed the chorus which nature sang to love. Near the house where Zaida’s master dwelt, there lived a Dutchman and his wife, who were notoriously cruel to their slaves. Zaida recounted some shocking instances of severity, and especially expressed pity for a girl little older than herself, who had formerly belonged to a very kind master and mistress. When they died, she was sold at auction, and had the misfortune to pass into the hands of their inhuman neighbour, whose wife was jealous, and lost no opportunity of tormenting her. When Jan was singing some of the plaintive melodies to which his own taste always inclined him, or when, to amuse the merry Zaida, he imitated Chinese jingle jangles, sometimes the sound of the lash, accompanied with shrieks, would break in upon the music or the merriment, and put their spirits out of tune. Nature had made Jan more sensitive than reflective; and he had been brought up so like a humming-bird among flowers, that he had never thought any thing about his own liabilities as a slave. Now, for the first time, it occurred to him, “What if my master and mistress should die, and I should be sold?”
An English family lived very near Madame Van der Veen’s, and, as both were musical, an intimacy had grown up between them. The father and mother of this family were very strongly opposed to slavery, and not unfrequently discussed the subject. Jan, as he passed in and out of the parlour, waiting upon the guests, had been accustomed to hear these conversations as though he heard them not. In fact, he often wished the old Englishman would stop talking, and give his son an opportunity to accompany Madame Van der Veen’s piano with his flute. But after those lashes and shrieks had waked up his mind to the possibility of auction and transfer, he listened more attentively, and carried with him into riper years the memory of many things he heard.
When he was fourteen years old, and Zaida was twelve, they were married. Madame Van der Veen furnished cake and lemonade for the wedding, and gave gay dresses to the juvenile bride and bridegroom, who looked extremely well in their new finery. Jan had lost something of his childish beauty, but he was still handsome. His yellow complexion was rendered paler by the contrast of his jet black hair and the bright turban that surmounted it. His limbs were slender and flexible, his features small and well proportioned, and his large antelope eyes had a floating, plaintive expression, as if there was always a tear in his soul. Zaida was rounder, and browner, and ruddier. Her dark hair was combed entirely back, and twisted into a knot, ornamented with scarlet flowers. The short downy hairs about the forehead curled themselves into a little wavy fringe. From her small ears were suspended two large gilded hoops, a bridal present from the old Englishman. From her Arab father she inherited eyes more beautifully formed than belonged to her mother’s race. The long dark lashes curled upward, and imparted a smiling expression, even in her most serious moments; and when she was amused, her eyes laughed outright. There was a harmonized contrast between her and her bridegroom, which was extremely agreeable. The young Englishman compared them to the major and minor mode; and Madame Van der Veen said they looked like hope and memory. Personal comeliness is rare among the natives of those islands. Little Zaida was like a ruby among pudding-stones.
A bamboo hut, raised two feet from the ground, and consisting of two apartments, without windows, was their bridal home. It was all they needed in a climate where, more than half the year, all household occupations could be most conveniently performed out of doors. There was a broad verandah in front, sheltered from rain and sun by the projecting roof. In front was a grove of orange and lemon trees, and in the rear was a group of plantains, whose immensely long broad leaves and yellow spikes of nodding flowers cast refreshing shadows.
A grass mat, of Jan’s own weaving, and pillows filled with a kind of silky down from a wild plant, answered for a bed. Gourd shells, a few earthern dishes, and a wooden waiter from which they ate their meals, seated on the floor, constituted their simple furniture. The rooms, which received light from the open door, were used only for eating and sleeping. The verandah was the place where all their sedentary occupations were pursued. There, Zaida might be seen busy at her spinning-wheel and loom; there, Jan wove mats and baskets for his master’s household; and there stood his gambang, a musical instrument, with wooden bars of graduated lengths, which he struck with a mallet, to accompany the simple Javanese melodies that he and Zaida were accustomed to sing together.
Years passed over their heads without any more serious variations than slight dissensions with the other slaves, occasional illness, and the frequent birth of children. Some of them resembled the father, others the mother; and some had their eyes obliquely set, like the island ancestry from whom they descended. Some were bright, some dull, some merry and some pensive; but Madame Van der Veen pronounced them all very good children; and they certainly were trained to be devotedly attentive to her. During their first years, it cost nothing to clothe them, for they ran about naked; and it required almost as little expense to furnish them with food, where rice was so easily cultivated, and plantains, cocoas and oranges grew wild. The warmth of the climate, the lavish bounty of the soil, the improvident habits which every human being must necessarily form, who acquires no property by economy, and the extreme indulgence with which he had always been treated by his gentle-hearted mistress, all conspired to render Jan forgetful of the precarious tenure by which he held the external blessings of his mere animal existence. Sometimes, when he went to Grésik, he passed by a slave-auction, and the sight always gave him a pang; for it brought up a picture of Zaida and her children standing there amid the indecent jests and rude handling of a crowd of men. Sometimes he witnessed despotic and cruel treatment of slaves, and still more frequently he heard of such instances. Then came recollections of the lashes and shrieks, that used to interrupt his music and merriment in the days of courtship; and always they brought with them the question, “What if Zaida and our daughters should ever be sold to such people as that cruel Dutchman and his jealous wife?” While any instances were fresh in his mind, he listened attentively to whatever was said about slavery by his master and the English family. From them he learned how the English, during their brief possession of Java, had interdicted slave traffic with the neighbouring islands; had passed laws forbidding slaves to be sold, except with their own consent; and had allowed them to hold, as their own, any property they were able to acquire. Mr. Van der Veen tried to excuse the Dutch for renewing their slave-trade, by urging that it was a necessity imposed upon them, because there was no other method of procuring servants. The Englishman denied any such necessity. He maintained that the natives of Java were intelligent, teachable and honest, and very willing to render services for money. He highly commended the native princes for never permitting any of their own people to be slaves. He told of one of those princes, who had inherited fifty slaves; but when the British Government declared that all should become free, unless publicly registered by their masters, within a specified time, he said, “Then I will not register my slaves. They shall be free. I have kept them hitherto, because it was the custom, and because the Dutch liked to be attended by slaves when they visited the palace. But as that is not the case with the British, they shall cease to be slaves; for I have long felt shame, and my blood has run cold, when I have reflected on what I once saw at Batavia and Semarang, where human beings were exposed at public sale, placed on a table, and examined like sheep and oxen.” The Englishman declared that he lost no opportunity of talking with all classes of people on the subject, and of circulating publications, translated into Dutch, and sent to him from England for that purpose; and he expressed a strong belief that the Dutch would soon abolish slavery. In these conversations, nothing interested Jan so much as his master’s statement, that, according to existing laws, slaves might purchase themselves. He resolved to save all the small coins he might receive; and visions flitted through his brain, of mats and baskets to be made, when his daily tasks were completed. But when he received this information, he already had a brood of children; he despaired of ever being able to collect money enough to buy them; and his anxious thoughts were far more on their account, than on his own. He always solaced himself with the thought that his mistress would not allow them to be sold while she lived, and that she would certainly make provision for them before she died.
Sixteen years of his married life had passed away, and during all that time such forecasting thoughts had been mere transient clouds fleeting across the sunshine of contentment. But the time came when Mr. Van der Veen was summoned to Batavia, on account of some entanglement in his commercial affairs; and three weeks afterwards, tidings were brought that he had died suddenly in that unhealthy city. Again Jan saw his mistress bowed to the earth with sorrow; and it was beautiful to witness the delicate expressions of sympathy, which nature taught him. He moved noiselessly, and spoke softly. He and Zaida sang only religious hymns and soothing tunes, such as she loved to hear after her little Lam was taken away. His prettiest child, then nearly three years old, was sent every morning with a fresh bouquet of the flowers she loved best. He would never lie down for the night until he believed she was sleeping; and his first waking thoughts were devoted to her. It soon became known that Mr. Van der Veen had died in debt, and that a large portion of his property must be assigned to creditors. In this assignment were included many slaves, in various cities, and some belonging to his domestic establishment. Quite a small fortune for the widow was saved from the wreck of his wealth; and in that she expressly stipulated that Jan and all his family should be included, together with the estate on which she had always lived since her marriage. By this unexpected turn of affairs, the remote contingency, which had sometimes created temporary uneasiness in Jan’s mind, was brought frightfully near. He never again forgot, for a single day, scarcely for a single hour, that he was merely a favoured slave, and that all the lives intertwined with his held their privileges by the same precarious tenure. He never hinted his anxiety to any one but Zaida; but Madame Van der Veen had the thoughtful kindness to assure him that she would dispossess herself of every thing, rather than part with him and his family; saying, at the same time, that there was no danger of her being called upon to make any such sacrifice, as there was enough property left to enable them all to live comfortably. He deeply and gratefully felt her kindness; but the shadow of her death fell darkly across the consolation it imparted. Not for the world would he have told her so; lest the suggestion should increase her melancholy, by making her suppose that even the most attached of her servants, and the only ones she had left, wanted to be free to quit her service.