After the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. van Nerekool started for Tjilatjap intending there to take the boat to Batavia where van Nerekool had obtained a judicial appointment. The others returned to their own spheres of work. Murowski remained at Gombong and the others went to Santjoemeh and resumed their everyday duties.
But all of them, to a man, were animated with one resolution and had determined that thenceforward it should rule all their actions. And that resolution was, to carry on war—implacable war—war à outrance against the horrors of the opium traffic. If they could only succeed in abolishing the fatal system of opium farming—if they could but succeed in preventing that poison from being forced upon the population, then they felt assured that abuse of opium would soon cease to be a curse of the fair island of Java; and that the opium-fiend would soon lose his power.
And now we conclude with the person who gives her name to this book.
We must tell our readers that a few months after baboe Dalima had found those whom she loved so faithfully and so well in the cave of the Karang Bollong mountain range, she became the mother of a dead child. That had been a great blow to her; for, in spite of the foul outrage of which she had been the victim, her warm little heart had eagerly looked forward to the advent of the little stranger. She had so looked forward to love the poor little thing. Oh, how tenderly she would have nursed it, how she would have fondled it and caressed it—as perhaps no other mother had ever done before her. Such were her dreams. She had already prepared its cradle. Not such a thing as we cold Western folk understand by the word; no, no, it was a very simple little basket, woven by her own fingers out of bamboo. But that little crib she had made so cosy, so comfortable; she had furnished it with the softest cushions and wrapped round it the best of her sarongs to keep away the mosquitoes by night and ward off the sun’s rays by day. It would be a little nest which she would hang up in the front gallery of the small cottage in which she meant to take up her abode, and, as she softly would rock it to and fro she would play on the gambang and lull her little bird to sleep with her low sweet song.
Now, all that happiness was gone! The fatigue, the exertion which she had undergone, and all the anxieties of the terrible events through which she had passed; the dreadful suspense at the Goewah Temon in which she had so nearly lost her darling Nana, had proved too much for her.
Yes, she had been very very sad; but time heals even the deepest wounds. And then, after all, she was with her Nana and she intended to remain with her to her latest breath. She had travelled with Anna to Batavia, and there she settled down to be the baboe of the little van Nerekools who, she fervently hoped, would bless the union of her friends.
And anyone who knows the faithful affection with which the Javanese do attach themselves to their masters, if the latter will but treat them with anything like fairness and kindness, must feel certain that baboe Dalima will remain faithful to her trust until
THE END.
S. Cowan & Co., Strathmore Printing Works, Perth