Our roads have divided, but both of us work for the same ideal; what matters it which road one takes if it but leads to the same goal?
I long to go to Holland for many reasons; the first is study, the second is that I want European air to blow upon the few remaining prejudices that still cling to me, so that they may be wholly driven away. There are not many left, it is true, but some obstinately remain. Only your cold air, Stella, can make of me in truth, a free woman. To mention but one of the persistent little prejudices, I should not be disturbed in the least if I were alone in a room filled with European gentlemen. But I can think of nothing, that could make me, under any possible circumstances, receive alone, even one well-born Javanese young man, who was unmarried. I think it is laughable, absurd, idiotic, but it is true. I dare not talk to a strange man without a companion, and even if there were company, I should think it tiresome, and should not feel at my ease.
So you see that in spite of my strong ideas of freedom, I cannot get away from the influence of my native environment, which keeps girls strictly secluded. When the idea has been strongly inculcated that it is not modest to show oneself to strange men's eyes, then it is a hard task to break away from it. It must not remain always so, that prejudice must go. How else shall we be able to work together with men? And that is part of our plan. One way in which we hope to accomplish much good.
Only the air of Europe will be potent to separate me from the influence of my Javanese education. Sometimes I laugh at myself and it drives away the foolishness for a little, but it always comes back.
We returned from our journey on the 19th of April. Father came several stations to meet us. He brought a long official telegram from the Resident, which announced that the Heer Van Kol would come to Japara the next day. That was a delightful greeting of welcome, and I found something still nicer when I got home—your letter.
All the government officials along the whole line received the orders from the Resident to wait upon the Heer Van Kol as he passed through. On Sunday afternoon, at the stroke of three, the travellers arrived. With Van Kol was a journalist, who served him as interpreter and guide, and Father, who had waited for him at the border.
Van Kol had made a resolution never to lodge anywhere except in a hotel, because he knows well the open hospitality of the country. But after he had made the acquaintance of our family, and received a pressing invitation, he stayed with us. Later we heard that it was we who had been responsible for his faithlessness to his resolution. He thought us worthy of scrutiny, he wished to observe the influence of European education on girls of the aristocracy, and could not let the opportunity pass. Happily we did not hear this till afterwards. The knowledge would have made us constrained and self-conscious.
At the table, he talked almost constantly of his wife and children. It was splendid to hear how this great man honours his wife. He met her through correspondence, a point of resemblance there, Stella. He corresponded with her at first about her literary work. It was only by chance that she discovered her great gift, her talent for writing. She was at that time a governess, and was staying with some friends at a villa on the slope of the Pinanggoengan (their villa now in Prinsenhage is called after that villa "Lali Djiwa"—soul's rest). One of the party must write a description of the place, and they drew lots to decide which one it should be. The lot fell upon her. She sent the article to a magazine and the editor wrote asking her for more.
Van Kol has been to all of the places where he lived and worked in his early days, and the children who formerly played with his daughter, he found mothers themselves when he went back. But he still remembered them and knew them all by their names.