The resident was, like his fair spouse, in undress; he had on only a pair of pyjamas and a “Kabaja,” and in this airy costume was seated in the outer fore-gallery of the spacious residence, engaged in leisurely sipping his coffee and enjoying his morning cigar, when the voice of his wife was heard re-echoing through the house: “Gulpendam, Gulpenda-am!”
As if electrified, at the last long drawn-out syllable, van Gulpendam flew up out of his rocking-chair, and that with such violence and speed, that he drove the thing flying away several feet behind him.
“Man, the umbrella, quickly!” he roared.
Besides the habitual and constant use of nautical terms to which we have already alluded, van Gulpendam had another weakness; he would always insist upon having the emblem of his authority, the pajoeng, (umbrella) close by his side. In the very entrance of the official mansion four of these umbrellas were placed in a stand by the chair which the Lord Resident was wont to occupy. In his private office another pajoeng stood close by his writing desk; in his bedroom yet another was conspicuous at the head of the residential bed-stead. Thieves might break in during the night, such was his argument, and at the majesty of the mighty pajoeng would recoil in horror. To that argument Laurentia, imperious though she was, had had to bow, and had been forced to suffer the emblem of her lord’s supremacy in the inmost sanctuary of her bed-chamber; but in the pandoppo where, in her capacity of mistress of the house, she was determined to rule supreme—no pajoeng was ever allowed to intrude. If the Resident wished to go out for a walk then it was always “Man, the umbrella!” and the umbrella and the cigar-case and the lighted slow match obediently followed his footsteps. Sometimes when the great man would cool his forehead in the breeze, the servant obsequiously carried the official gold-laced cap—reverently it was carried behind him as a priest might bear some holy relic.
As van Gulpendam made his appearance in the pandoppo he was greeted with the words, somewhat sternly uttered: “What business has that pajoeng here? You know I won’t have the thing in this place.” And turning very sharply upon the unhappy attendant, Laurentia cried: “Back with you, away, quick!” and a single look from the master caused the man to disappear with his umbrella faster, indeed, than he had entered.
“I say,” said Mrs. van Gulpendam, addressing her husband, “Dalima has come back. I want you just to guess where that good-for-nothing creature has been to.”
“What is the use of my trying to guess?” replied the husband. “She has no doubt dropped anchor somewhere in the dessa.”
“In the dessa,” scornfully exclaimed the lady, “oh, no doubt. Not a bit of it—she has been on the tramp with that Ardjan of her’s.”
“Pardon, madam!” cried the poor girl, who understood Dutch quite well enough not to lose a syllable of her mistress’s words.
“And now,” Laurentia went on, all in a breath, “now she has came home with quite a romantic tale. She pretends that she has been carried off, forsooth, by Lim Ho, and that she has passed the night in a ship. Just fancy that.”