“I have counted on your staying to dinner,” said Eva.

“Of course,” replied Van Helderen, the controller, and his wife.

The reception—not a reception, as Eve always said in self-defence—was nearly over: the Van Oudijcks had been the first to go; the regent followed. The Eldersmas were left with their little band of intimates: Dr. Rantzow and Doorn de Bruijn, the senior engineer, with their wives, and the Van Helderens. They sat down in the front verandah with a certain sense of relief and rocked comfortably to and fro. Whiskies-and-soda and glasses of lemonade, with great lumps of ice in them, were handed round.

“Always chock full, reception at Eva’s,” said Mrs. van Helderen. “Fuller than other day at resident’s....”

Ida van Helderen was the type of the white-skinned half-caste. She always tried to behave in a very European fashion, to talk Dutch nicely; she even pretended to speak bad Malay and not to care for native dishes. She was short and plump all over; she was very white, a dead white, with big, black, astonished eyes. She was full of little mysterious fads and hatreds and affections; all her actions were the result of mysterious little impulses. Sometimes she hated Eva, sometimes she doted on her. She was absolutely unreliable; her every action, her every movement, her every word might be a surprise. She was always in love, tragically. She took all her little affairs very tragically, on a very large and serious scale, with not the least sense of proportion, and then unbosomed herself to Eva, who laughed and comforted her.

Her husband, the controller, had never been in Holland: he had been educated entirely in Batavia, at the William III. College and the Indian Department. And he was very strange to see, this creole, apparently quite European, tall, fair and pale, with his fair moustache, his blue eyes, expressing animation and interest, and his manners, which displayed a finer courtesy than could be found in the smartest circles of Europe, but with not a vestige of India in thought, speech or dress. He would speak of Paris and Vienna as though he had spent years in both capitals, whereas he had never been out of Java; he was mad on music, although he found it difficult to appreciate Wagner, at least as Eva played him; and his great illusion was that he must really go to Europe on leave next year, to see the Paris Exhibition.1 There was a wonderful distinction, an innate style about young Van Helderen, as though he were not the offspring of European parents who had always lived in India, as though he were a foreigner from an unknown country, of a nationality which you could not place at once. His accent barely betrayed a certain softness, resulting from the climate; he spoke Dutch so correctly that it would have sounded almost stiff amid the slovenly slang of the mother-country; and he spoke French, English and German with greater facility than most Dutchmen. Perhaps he owed to a French mother that exotic and courtly politeness, so innate, pleasant and natural. In his wife, who was also of French extraction, springing from a creole family in RÉunion, this exoticism had become a mysterious medley which had never developed beyond a sort of childishness and a jumble of petty emotions and petty passions, while she tried, with those great, sombre eyes of hers, to read tragedy into her life, though she did no more than just dip into it as into an ill-written magazine-story.

She now imagined herself to be in love with the senior engineer, the oldest of the little band, a man already turning grey, with a black beard; and, in her tragic fashion, she pictured scenes with Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn, a stout, placid, melancholy woman. Dr. Rantzow and his wife were Germans: he fat, fair-haired, vulgar, pot-bellied; she, with a serene German face, pleasant and matronly, talking Dutch vivaciously with a German accent.

This was the little clique over which Eva Eldersma reigned. In addition to Frans van Helderen the controller, it consisted of quite ordinary Indian and European elements, people without artistic sense, as Eva said; but she had no other choice at Labuwangi, and therefore she amused herself with Ida’s little tragedies and made the best of the others.

Onno, her husband, tired as usual with his work, did not join much in the conversation, sat and listened.

“How long was Mrs. van Oudijck at Batavia?” asked Ida.

“Two months,” said the doctor’s wife. “A very long visit, this time.”

“I hear,” said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn, placid, melancholy and quietly venomous, “that this time one member of council, one head of a department and three young business-men kept Mrs. van Oudijck amused at Batavia.”

“And I can assure you people,” said the doctor, “that, if Mrs. van Oudijck did not go to Batavia regularly, she would miss a beneficial cure, even though she takes it on her own and not ... by my prescription.”

“Let us speak no evil!” Eva interrupted, almost entreatingly. “Mrs. van Oudijck is beautiful—with a tranquil Junoesque beauty and the eyes of a Venus—and I can forgive anything to beautiful people about me. And you, doctor,” threatening him with her finger, “mustn’t betray professional secrets. You doctors, in India, are often far too outspoken about your patients’ secrets. When I’m unwell, it’s never anything but a headache. Will you make a careful note of that, doctor?”

“The resident seems preoccupied,” said Doorn de Bruijn.

“Could he know ... about his wife?” asked Ida, sombrely, her great eyes filled with black velvet tragedy.

“The resident is often like that,” said Frans van Helderen. “He has his moods. Sometimes he’s pleasant, cheerful, jovial, as he was lately, on circuit. Then again he has his gloomy days, working, working and working and grumbling that nobody does any work except himself.”

“My poor, unappreciated Onno!” sighed Eva.

“I believe he’s overworking himself,” said Van Helderen. “Labuwangi is a tremendously busy district. And the resident takes things too much to heart, both in his own house and outside, in his relations with his son and his relations with the regent.”

“I should sack the regent,” said the doctor.

“But, doctor,” said Van Helderen, “you know enough about conditions in Java to know that things can’t be done just like that. The regent and his family are closely identified with Labuwangi and too highly considered by the population....”

“Yes, I know the Dutch policy. The English in British India deal with their Indian princes in a more arbitrary and high-handed fashion. The Dutch treat them much too gently.”

“The question might arise which of the two policies is the better in the long run,” said Van Helderen, drily, hating to hear a foreigner disparage anything in a Dutch colony. “Fortunately, we know nothing here of the continual poverty and famine that prevail in British India.”

“I saw the resident speaking very seriously to the regent,” said Doorn de Bruijn.

“The resident is too susceptible,” said Van Helderen. “He allows himself to be greatly dejected by the gradual decline of this old Javanese family, which is doomed to go under, though he’d like to hold it up.... The resident, cool and practical though he may be, is a bit of a romantic in this, though he might refuse to admit it. But he remembers the Adiningrats’ glorious past, he remembers that last fine figure, the noble old pangÉran, and he compares him with his sons, the one a fanatic, the other a gambler....”

“I think our regent—not the Ngadjiwa one: he’s a coolie—delightful!” said Eva. “He’s a living figure out of a puppet-show. Except his eyes: they frighten me. What terrible eyes! Sometimes they’re asleep and sometimes they’re like a maniac’s. But he is so refined, so distinguished! And the raden-aju too is an exquisite little doll: ‘Saja ... saja!’ She says nothing, but she looks very decorative. I’m always glad when they adorn my at-home day and I miss them when they’re not there. And the old raden-aju pangÉran, grey-haired, dignified, a queen....”

“A gambler of the first water,” said Eldersma.

“They gamble away all they possess,” said Van Helderen, “she and the regent of Ngadjiwa. They’re no longer rich. The old pangÉran used to have splendid insignia of rank for state occasions, magnificent lances, a jewelled betel-box, spittoons—useful objects, those!—of priceless value. The old raden-aju has gambled them all away. I doubt if she has anything left but her pension: two hundred and forty guilders a month, I believe. And how our regent manages to keep all his cousins, male and female, in the Kabupaten,2 according to the Javanese custom, is beyond me.”

“What custom is that?” asked the doctor.

“Every regent collects his whole family around him like parasites, clothes them, feeds them, provides them with pocket-money ... and the natives think it dignified and smart.”

“Sad ... that ruined greatness!” said Ida, gloomily.

A boy came to announce dinner and they went to the back verandah and sat down to table.

“And what have you in prospect for us, mevrouwtje?” asked the senior engineer. “What are the plans? Labuwangi has been very quiet lately.”

“It’s really terrible,” said Eva. “If I hadn’t all of you, it would be terrible. If I weren’t always planning something and having ideas, it would be terrible, this living at Labuwangi. My husband doesn’t feel it; he works, as all you men do: what else is there to do in India but work, regardless of the heat? But for us women! What a life, if we didn’t find our happiness purely in ourselves, in our home, in our friends ... when we have the good fortune to possess those friends! Nothing from the outside. Not a picture, not a statue to look at; no music to listen to. Don’t be cross, Van Helderen. You play the ’cello charmingly, but nobody in India can keep up to date. The Italian Opera plays Il Trovatore. The amateur companies—and they’re really first-rate at Batavia—play ... Il Trovatore. And you, Van Helderen ... don’t object. I saw you in an ecstasy when the Italian company from Surabaya were here lately, at the club, playing ... Il Trovatore. You were enchanted.”

“There were some beautiful voices among them.”

“But twenty years ago, they tell me, even then people were enchanted with ... Il Trovatore. Oh, it’s terrible! Sometimes, suddenly, it crushes me. Sometimes, all of a sudden, I feel that I have not grown used to India and that I never shall; and I began to long for Europe, for life!”

“But Eva,” Eldersma began, in alarm, dreading lest she should really go home one day, leaving him alone in what would then be his utterly joyless working-life at Labuwangi: “sometimes you do appreciate India: your house, the pleasant, spacious life....”

“Materially....”

“And don’t you appreciate your own work—I mean the many things which you are able to do here?”

“What? Getting up parties? Arranging theatricals?”

“It’s you who are the real rezidente3,” said Ida, gushingly.

“Thank goodness, we’re coming back to Mrs. van Oudijck,” said Mrs. Doom de Bruijn, teasingly.

“And to professional secrecy,” said Dr. Rantzow.

“No,” sighed Eva, “we want something new. Dances, parties, picnics, trips into the mountains ... we’ve exhausted all that. I know nothing more. The Indian depression’s coming over me. I’m in one of my dejected moods. Those brown faces of my ‘boys’ around me suddenly strike me as uncanny. India frightens me at times. Do none of you feel the same? A vague dread, a mystery in the air, something menacing.... I don’t know what it is. The evenings are sometimes so full of mystery and there is something mysterious in the character of the native, who is so remote from us, who differs from us so....”

“Artistic feelings,” said Van Helderen, chaffingly. “No, I don’t feel like that. India is my country.”

“You type!” said Eva, chaffing him in return. “What makes you what you are, so curiously European? I can’t call it Dutch.”

“My mother was a Frenchwoman.”

“But, after all, you’re a creole: born here, brought up here.... And you have nothing of a creole about you. I think it’s wonderful to have met you: I like you as a change.... Help me, can’t you? Suggest something new. Not a dance, not a trip into the mountains. I want something new. Else I shall get a craving for my father’s paintings, for my mother’s singing, for our beautiful, artistic house at the Hague. If I don’t have something new, I shall die. I’m not like your wife, Van Helderen, always in love.”

“Eva!” Ida entreated.

“Tragically in love, with her beautiful, sombre eyes. Always, first with her husband and then with somebody else. I am never in love. Not even any longer with my husband. He is ... with me. But I have not an erotic temperament. There’s a great deal of love-making in India, isn’t there, doctor?... Well, we’ve ruled out dances, excursions into the mountains and love-making. What then, in Heaven’s name, what then?”

“I know of something,” said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn; and a sudden anxiety came over her placid melancholy.

She gave a side-glance at Mrs. Rantzow; the German woman grasped her meaning.

“What is it?” asked the others, eagerly.

“Table-turning,” whispered the two ladies.

There was a general laugh.

“Oh dear!” sighed Eva, disappointed. “A trick, a joke, an evening’s amusement. No, I want something that will fill my life for at least a month.”

“Table-turning,” repeated Mrs. Rantzow.

“Listen to me,” said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn. “The other day, for a joke, we tried making a gipsy-table turn. We all promised not to cheat. The table ... moved, spelt out words, tapping them out by the alphabet.”

“But was there no cheating?” asked the doctor, Eldersma and Van Helderen.

“You’ll have to trust us,” declared the two ladies, in self-defence.

“All right,” said Eva. “We’ve finished dinner. Let’s have some table-turning.”

“We must all promise not to cheat,” said Mrs. Rantzow. “I can see that my husband will be ... antipathetic. But Ida ... a great medium.”

They rose.

“Must we have the lights out?” asked Eva.

“No,” said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn.

“An ordinary gipsy-table?”

“A three-legged wooden table.”

“The eight of us?”

“No, we must begin by choosing: for instance, yourself, Eva, Ida, Van Helderen, and Mrs. Rantzow. The doctor’s antipathetic; so is Eldersma. De Bruijn and I will relieve you.”

“Fire away, then!” said Eva. “A new diversion for Labuwangi society. And no cheating....”

“We must give one another our word of honour, as friends, not to cheat.”

“Done!” they all said.

The doctor sniggered. Eldersma shrugged his shoulders. A boy brought a gipsy-table. They sat round the little wooden table and placed their fingers on it lightly, looking at one another expectantly and suspiciously. Mrs. Rantzow was solemn, Eva amused, Ida sombre, Van Helderen smilingly indifferent. Suddenly a strained expression came over Ida’s beautiful half-caste face.

The table quivered....

They exchanged frightened glances; the doctor sniggered.

Then slowly, the table tilted one of its three legs and carefully put it down again.

“Did anybody move?” asked Eva.

They all shook their heads. Ida had turned pale.

“I feel a trembling in my fingers,” she murmured.

The table once more tilted its leg, described an angry, grating semicircle over the marble floor and put its leg down with a violent stamp.

They looked at one another in surprise. Ida sat as though bereft of life, staring, with fingers outspread, ecstatically.

And the table tilted its leg for the third time.

It was certainly very curious. Eva doubted for a moment whether Mrs. Rantzow was lifting the table, but, when she questioned her with a glance, the German doctor’s wife shook her head and Eva saw that she was playing fair. They once more promised absolute honesty. And, when they were now certain of one another, in full confidence, it was most curious how the table continued to describe angry, grating semicircles, tilting one leg and tapping on the marble floor.

“Is there a spirit present, revealing itself?” asked Mrs. Rantzow, with a glance at the leg of the table.

The table tapped once:

“Yes.”

But, when the spirit was asked to spell its name, to tap out the letters of its name by the letters of the alphabet, all that came was:

“Z X R S A.”

The manifestation was incomprehensible.

Suddenly, however, the table began spelling hurriedly, as though it had something at its heels. The taps were counted and spelt:

“LÉ ... onie Ou ... dijck....”

“What about Mrs. van Oudijck?”

A coarse word followed.

The ladies started, excepting Ida, who sat as though in a trance.

“The table has spoken.... What did it say?... What is Mrs. van Oudijck?” cried the voices, all speaking at once.

“It’s incredible!” murmured Eva. “Are we all playing fair?”

They all protested their honesty.

“Let us really be honest, else there’s no fun in it.... I wish I could be certain.”

They all wished that: Mrs. Rantzow, Ida, Van Helderen, Eva. The others looked on eagerly, believing; but the doctor did not believe and sat sniggering.

Again the table grated angrily and tapped: and the leg began to spell, “A...,” and repeated the coarse word.

“Why?” asked Mrs. Rantzow.

The table began to tap.

“Write it down, Onno!” said Eva to her husband.

Eldersma fetched a pencil and paper and wrote the message down.

Three names followed: one of a member of council, one of a departmental head, and one of a young business-man.

“When people aren’t backbiting in India, the tables begin to backbite!” said Eva.

“The spirits,” murmured Ida.

“They are generally mocking spirits,” said Mrs. Rantzow, didactically.

But the table went on tapping.

“Write it down, Onno!” said Eva.

Eldersma wrote it down.

“A-d-d-i-e!” the leg tapped out.

“No!” the voices all cried together, in vehement denial. “This time the table’s mistaken!... At least, young De Luce has never yet been mentioned in connection with Mrs. van Oudijck.”

“T-h-e-o!” said the table, correcting itself.

“Her step-son!... It’s terrible!... That’s different!... Everybody knows that!” cried the voices in assent.

“Yes, we know that!” said Mrs. Rantzow, with a glance at the leg of the table. “Come, tell us something that we don’t know. Come, table! Come, spirit! Please!...”

She addressed the table-leg in coaxing, wheedling accents. Everybody laughed. The table grated.

“Be serious!” Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn said, in warning.

The table bounced down on Ida’s lap.

“Oh my!” cried the pretty half-caste, waking out of her trance. “Right against my stomach!”

They laughed and laughed. The table turned round fiercely and they rose from their chairs, with their hands on the table, and accompanied its angry, waltzing movements.

“Next ... year ...” the table rapped out.

Eldersma wrote it down.

“Frightful ... war.”

“Between whom?”

“Europe ... and ... China.”

“It sounds like a fairy-tale!” grinned the doctor.

“La-bu-wangi,” tapped the table.

“What about it?” they asked.

“Is ... a ... beastly ... hole....”

“Say something serious, table, do!” Mrs. Rantzow implored, pleasantly, in her best German-matron manner.

“Dan ... ger,” the table tapped out.

“Where?”

“Threat ... ens,” the table continued, “La-bu-wangi.”

“Danger threatens Labuwangi?”

“Yes!” said the table, with one tap, angrily.

“What danger?”

“Rebellion.”

“Rebellion? Who’s going to rebel?”

“In ... two months ... Sunario.”

They became thoughtful.

But the table, suddenly, unexpectedly, fell over again into Ida’s lap.

“Oh my! Oh dear!” cried the little woman.

The table refused to go on.

“Tired,” it tapped out.

They continued to hold their hands on it.

“Leave off,” said the table.

The doctor, sniggering, laid his short, broad hand on it, as though to compel it.

“Go to blazes!” cried the table, grating and turning. “Bounder!”

And worse words followed, aimed at the doctor, as though by a street-boy: obscene words, senseless and incoherent.

“Who’s suggesting those words?” asked Eva, indignantly.

Obviously no one was suggesting them, neither the three ladies nor Van Helderen, who was always very punctilious and who was manifestly indignant at the mocking spirit’s coarseness.

“It really is a spirit,” said Ida, looking very pale.

“I’m going to leave off,” said Eva, nervously, lifting up her fingers. “I don’t understand this nonsense. It’s quite amusing, but the table’s not accustomed to polite society.”

“We’ve got a new resource for Labuwangi!” said Eldersma. “No more picnics, no dances ... but table-turning!”

“We must practise!” said Mrs. Doorn de Bruijn.

Eva shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s inexplicable,” she said. “I’m bound to believe that none of us was cheating. It’s not the sort of thing Van Helderen would do, to suggest such words as those.”

“Madam!” said Van Helderen, defending himself.

“We must do it again,” said Ida. “Look, there’s a hadji leaving the grounds.”

She pointed to the garden.

“A hadji?” asked Eva.

She looked towards the garden, expecting to see a Mecca pilgrim. There was nothing.

“Oh no, it’s not!” said Ida. “I thought it was a hadji. It’s nothing, only the moonlight.”

It was late. They said good-night, laughing gaily, wondering, but finding no explanation.

“I do hope this hasn’t made you ladies nervous?” said the doctor.

No, considering all things, they were not nervous. They were more amused, even though they did not understand.

It was two o’clock when they went home. The moonlight was streaming down on the town, which lay deathly still, slumbering in the velvet shadows of the gardens.