If anything in the coach that stopped before the ‘pendoppo’ was opposed to the solution of continuity I don’t know; but it is certain that it was some time before anything appeared.
There seemed to be a difficulty of etiquette, judging from the words: “If you please, Madam!” and “Resident!” Be this as it may, a gentleman at length stepped out who had in his attitude and appearance something perhaps which made you think of the Saurians I have spoken of. As we shall meet him again afterwards, I will tell you at once that his immobility was not only due to assimilation with the travelling coach, since, even when there was no van in the neighbourhood, he exhibited a calmness, a slowness, and a prudence, that would make many a Saurian jealous, and that in the eyes of many would be considered as tokens of a sedate, calm, and wise man. He was, like most Europeans in India, very pale, which, however, is not in the least considered in these regions as a sign of [[86]]delicate health. He had fine features, that certainly bore witness of intellectual development. But there was something cold in his glance, something that made you think of a table of logarithms; and though his aspect on the whole was not unpleasing or repulsive, one could not help thinking that the very large thin nose on that face was annoyed because there was so little stir.
He politely offered his hand to a lady, to help her in getting out, and after he had taken from a gentleman who was still in the coach, a child, a little fair boy of about three years old, they entered the ‘pendoppo.’ Then that gentleman himself alighted, and any one acquainted with Java would immediately observe that he waited at the carriage door to assist an old Javanese baboe (nurse-maid). Three servants had delivered themselves out of the little leather cupboard that was stuck to the back of the coach, after the manner of a young oyster on an old one.
The gentleman who had first alighted had offered his hand to the Regent and the Controller Verbrugge, which they accepted with respect; and by their attitude you could see that they were aware of the presence of an important personage. It was the Resident of Bantam, the great province of which Lebak is a district,—a Regency, or, in official language, an Assistant Residency. I have often, when reading works of fiction, been offended at the little respect of the authors for the taste of the public, [[87]]and more than ever with anything comical or burlesque; a person is made to speak, who does not understand the language, or at least pronounces it badly; a Frenchman is made to speak Dutch thus: “Ka Kaurv na de Krote Krak,” or “Krietje Kooit Keen Kare Kroente Kraakwek.”[7] For want of a Frenchman, a stammerer is selected, or a person “created,” whose hobby consists of two words recurring every moment. I have witnessed the success of a foolish vaudeville, because there was somebody in it who was always saying: “My name is Meyer.” I think this manner of being witty too cheap, and to tell you the truth, I am cross with you, if you think this funny. But now, I have to introduce to you something of that kind myself. I have to show you from time to time a person—I shall do it as seldom as possible—who had, indeed, a manner of speaking which makes me fear to be suspected of an unsuccessful effort to make you laugh; and, therefore, I must assure you that it is not my fault, if the very sedate Resident of Bantam, of whom I am speaking, is so peculiar in his mode of expressing himself, that it is very difficult for me to sketch that, without giving myself the appearance of seeking to produce the effect of wit by means of tic.[8] He spoke as if there stood after each [[88]]word a period, or even a long pause; and I cannot find a better comparison for the distance between his words than the silence which follows the “Amen” after a long prayer in church; which is, as every one knows, a signal of the proper time to cough or blow one’s nose. What he said was generally well considered, and if he could have persuaded himself to omit those untimely pauses, his sentences would have been, in a rhetorical point of view at least, passable, but all that crumbling, stuttering, and ruggedness, made listening to him very tedious. One often stumbled at it, for generally, if you commenced to reply, thinking the sentence finished, and the remainder left to your ingenuity, the remaining words came on as the stragglers of a defeated army, and made you think that you had interrupted him,—an idea which is always disagreeable. The public at Serang, such persons at least as were not in the service of the Government, called his conversation ‘slimy,’ but Government employés were more circumspect. I do not think this word very nice, but I must confess that it expressed very well the principal quality of the Resident’s eloquence. As yet I have said nothing of Max Havelaar and his wife,—for these were the two persons who had alighted from the carriage after the Resident, with their child and the ‘baboe;’ and perhaps it might be sufficient to leave the description of their appearance and character to the current of events and your proper imagination. But as I am now occupied with [[89]]descriptions, I will tell you that Madam Havelaar was not beautiful, but that she still had in language and look something very charming, and she showed very plainly, by the ease of her manner, that she had been in the world, and was at home in the higher classes of society. She had not that stiffness and unpleasantness of snobbish respectability which thinks that it must torment itself and others with “constraint,” in order to be considered distingué; and she did not care much for appearances which are thought much of by other women. In her dress too she was an example of simplicity. A white muslin Coadjoe[9] with a blue Cordelière,—I believe they call this in Europe peignoir,—was her travelling costume. Round her neck she wore a thin silk cord, from which hung two little medallions, invisible, because they were concealed in the folds of her dress. Her hair à la Chinoise, with a garland of melati[10] in the Kondek,[11]—completed her toilette.
I said that she was not beautiful, and yet I should not like you to think her ugly. I hope that you will find her beautiful as soon as I have an opportunity to show her to you, burning with indignation at what she called the “disregard of genius” when her Max was concerned, or when she was animated with an idea in connexion with the welfare of her child. [[90]]
It has too often already been said that the face is the mirror of the soul, for us to speak well of an immovable face that has nothing to reflect, because there is no soul reflected in it. Well, she had a noble soul, and certainly he must be blind who did not think her face very beautiful, when that soul could be read in it.
Havelaar was a man of about thirty-five years. He was slender and active in his movements; except his very short and expressive upper lip, and his large pale blue eyes—which, if he was in a calm humour, had something dreamlike, but which flashed fire if he was animated with a grand idea—there was nothing particular in his appearance. His light hair hung flat round his temples, and I can believe very well, that if you saw him for the first time, you would not arrive at the conclusion, that there was a person before you possessing rare qualities both of head and heart. He was full of contradictions: sharp as a lancet, and tender-hearted as a girl, he always was the first himself to feel the wound which his bitter words had inflicted; and he suffered more than the wounded. He was quick of comprehension, grasped immediately the highest and the most intricate matters, liked to amuse himself with the solution of difficult questions, and to such pursuits would devote all pains, study, and exertion. Yet often he did not understand the most simple thing, which a child could have explained to him. Full of love for truth and justice, he often neglected his most simple [[91]]and nearest obligations to remedy an injustice which lay higher, or further, or deeper, and which allured him more by the perhaps greater exertion of the struggle. He was chivalrous and gallant, but often like that other Don Quixote he wasted his valour on a windmill. He burned with insatiable ambition, which made him look on all the ordinary distinctions of social life as vanities, and yet he considered his greatest happiness to consist in a calm, domestic, secluded life. He was a poet in the highest sense of the word; at the sight of a spark he dreamed of solar systems; peopled them with creatures of his own creation, felt himself to be lord of a world, which he had animated, and yet could immediately thereupon have a conversation on the price of rice, the rules of grammar, or the economic advantages of the Egyptian system of artificial incubation. No science was entirely unknown to him: he “guessed intuitively” what he did not know, and possessed in a very high degree the gift of using the little he knew (every one knows a little, and he, though knowing more than some others, was no exception to this rule) in a way that multiplied the measure of his knowledge. He was punctual and orderly, besides being exceedingly patient; but precisely because punctuality, order, and patience were difficult to him,—his mind being somewhat wild,—slow and circumspect in judging of affairs; though this seemed not to be the case with those who heard him reach his conclusions so quickly. His [[92]]impressions were too vivid to be thought durable, and yet he often proved that they were durable. All that was grand and sublime allured him, and at the same time he was simple and naïf as a child. He was honest, above all things where honesty became magnanimity, and would have left unpaid hundreds which he owed because he had given away thousands. He was witty and entertaining where he felt that his wit was understood, but otherwise blunt and reserved: cordial to his friends; a champion of sufferers; sensible to love and friendship; faithful to his given word; yielding in trifles, but firm as a rock where he thought it worth the trouble to show character; humble and benevolent to those who acknowledged his intellectual superiority, but troublesome to those who desired to oppose it; candid from pride, and sometimes reserved, where he feared that his straightforwardness might be mistaken for ignorance; equally susceptible to sensuous and spiritual enjoyment; timid and ineloquent where he thought he was not understood, but eloquent when he felt that his words fell on fertile soil; slow when he was not urged by an incitement that came forth from his own soul, but zealous, ardent, where this was the case; moreover, he was affable, polite in his manners, and blameless in behaviour,—such was within a little the character of Havelaar.
I say, “within a little,” for if all definitions are difficult, this is particularly the case in the description of a [[93]]person who differs much from the every-day cast of men.
That is also the reason, I think, why the poets of romance generally make their heroes either devils or angels. Black or white is easy to paint, but it is more difficult to produce the varieties between these two extremes, when truth must be respected, and neither side coloured too dark or too light. I feel that the sketch which I have tried to give of Havelaar is very imperfect. The materials before me are of so extensive a nature that they impede my judgment by excess of richness, and I shall perhaps again refer to this by way of supplement, while developing the events which I wish to communicate to you. This is certain,—he was an uncommon man, and surely worthy of careful study. I see even now, that I have neglected to give, as one of his chief characteristics, that he understood at the same time, and with the same quickness, the ridiculous and the serious side of things,—a peculiar quality, imparting unconsciously to his manner of speaking a sort of humour which made his listeners always doubt whether they were touched by the deep feeling that prevailed in his words, or had to laugh at the drollery that interrupted at once the earnestness of them.
It was very remarkable that his appearance, and even his emotions, gave so few traces of his past life. The boast of experience has become a ridiculous commonplace; there [[94]]are people who have floated for fifty or sixty years in the stream in which they think to swim, and who can tell of that time little more than that they have removed from A—— Square to B—— Street, and nothing is more common than to hear those very persons boast of experience, who got their grey hairs so very easily. Other people think that they may found their claims to experience on external vicissitudes, without its appearing from anything that they have been affected in their inner life. I can imagine that to witness, or even to take part in, important events, may have little or no influence on the souls of some men. Who entertains a doubt of this, may ask himself if experience may be ascribed to all the inhabitants of France who were forty or fifty years old in 1815? And yet they were all persons who saw, not only the acting of the great drama which commenced in 1789, but had even played a more or less important part in that drama.