She remembered that her grandfather on the mother’s side had lived in very high style, and it appeared from some papers that he had been in possession of the post-offices [[122]]in Switzerland, in the same manner as till now, in a great part of Germany and Italy, this branch of revenue is an appanage of the princes of Tour and Taxis. Hence a large fortune was to be expected; but from some entirely unknown causes, nothing, or very little at least, was handed over to the second generation.
Havelaar did not learn the little that could be known of this matter till after his marriage; and while investigating it, he was surprised that the said writing-desk, with the contents, which she preserved from a feeling of filial love, without knowing that it perhaps contained papers of importance in a financial point of view, had incomprehensibly disappeared. Disinterested as he was, he built on this and many other circumstances the idea that a romantic story was hidden in the background; and one cannot be angry with him that he, who was in want of so much for his style of living, desired that this romance should have a happy end. However this may be, whether there had been spoliation or not, it is certain that in Havelaar’s imagination something was produced which one could call—un rêve aux millions.
It is again strange, that he who would have so carefully examined and so sharply defended the right of another, though it might have been buried very deep beneath dusky papers and thick-webbed chicanery, here, where his own interest was at stake, carelessly neglected the moment when he ought to have taken the matter up. [[123]]It seemed as if he was ashamed of it, because it concerned here his own interest, and I believe for certain, that had “his Tine” been married to another, and he been intrusted to break the cobweb in which her ancestral fortunes remained hanging, Havelaar would have succeeded in putting “the interesting orphan” in the possession of the fortune she was entitled to. But now this interesting orphan was his wife; her fortune was his: and he thought it something mean and degrading, something derogatory, to ask in her name, “Don’t you owe me something more?”
Yet he could not shake off this dream of ‘millions,’ were it only to have an excuse at hand for the often repeated self-reproach that he spent too much money.
But a short time before returning to Java, when he had already suffered much under the pressure of impecuniosity, when he had to bow his proud head under the furca caudina of many a creditor, he succeeded in conquering his idleness or shyness, and set himself to work for the millions to which he still thought he had a right. And they sent him in reply a long-standing bill, an argument against which, as everybody knows, nothing can be said.
But they would be economical at Lebak. And why not? In such an uncivilized country you will not see girls in the streets who have a little honour to sell for a little food. There you will not meet persons who live on problematic [[124]]employments. There it does not happen, that a family suddenly loses all through a change of fortune——and of this kind were generally the rocks on which the good intentions of Havelaar had made shipwreck. The number of Europeans in this district was too small to be noticed; and the Javanese at Lebak were too poor to become interesting through any increase of poverty. Tine did not think of all this; for then she ought to have thought more than her love for Max permitted of the causes of their less favourable circumstances. There was something, however, in their new surroundings that breathed a calm, an absence of all cases of falsely romantic appearance, which had made Havelaar so often say in former days: “Is not this, Tine, a case from which I cannot withdraw?” And the answer always was: “Certainly, Max, you cannot withdraw from it.”
We shall see how the simple, apparently still life of Lebak, cost Havelaar more than all the former excesses of his heart taken together.
But that they did not know! They expected the future with confidence, and were so happy in their love, and in the possession of their child.
“How full this garden is of roses!” said Tine, “and look at the rampeh, and tjempaka, and melati,[11] and beautiful lilies——.”
And children as they were, they were delighted with [[125]]their new house; and when in the evening Duclari and Verbrugge, after a visit to Havelaar, returned to their common home, they made many remarks on the childlike joy of the newly arrived family.