Chapter Eleven

The Patjaram sugar-factory was fourteen miles from Labuwangi and twelve from Ngadjiwa and belonged to the half-Eurasian, half-Solo family of De Luce, a family who had once been millionaires, but were no longer so very well off, owing to the recent sugar-crisis, though they still supported a numerous household. This family, which always kept together—the old mother and grandmother, a Solo princess; the eldest son, the manager; three married daughters and their husbands, clerks in the factory, all living in its shadow; three younger sons employed in the factory; the many grandchildren, playing round and about the factory; the great-grandchildren springing up round and about the factory—this family maintained the old Indian traditions which, at one time universal, are now becoming rarer, thanks to the more frequent intercourse with Europeans. The mother and grandmother was the daughter of a Solo prince and had married a young and enterprising bohemian adventurer, Ferdinand de Luce, a member of a French titled family of Mauritius, who, after wandering about for many years in search of his place in the sun, had sailed to India as a ship’s steward, and, after all sorts of vicissitudes, had found himself stranded in Solo, where he achieved fame by means of a dish prepared with tomatoes and another consisting of stuffed chilies. Thanks to these recipes, Ferdinand de Luce won the favour of the Solo princess, whose hand he afterwards obtained, and even that of the old Susuhunan. After his marriage he became a landowner, and, according to the national usage, a vassal of the Susuhunan of Solo, whom he supplied daily with rice and fruits for the household of the palace. Then he had launched out into sugar, divining the millions which a lucky fate held in store for him. He had died before the crisis, laden with wealth and honours.

The old grandmother, in whom there was not a trace left of the young princess whom Ferdinand de Luce had wedded to promote his fortunes, was never approached by the servants or the Javanese staff save with a cringing reverence; and everybody gave her the title of Raden-aju pangéran. She did not speak a word of Dutch. Wrinkled like a shrivelled fruit, with her clouded eyes and her withered, betel-stained mouth, she was peacefully living her last years, always dressed in a dark silk kabaai, the neck and the light sleeves of which were fastened with precious stones. Before her sun-bitten gaze there hovered the vision of her former palace grandeur, which she had abandoned for love of that French nobleman-cook who had pandered to her father’s taste with his dainty recipes; in her ears buzzed the constant murmur of the centrifugal separators, like the thrashing of screw propellers, throughout the milling-season, which lasted for months on end; around her were her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren: the sons and daughters addressed as raden and raden-adjeng by the servants; all of them still surrounded by the pale halo of their Solo descent. The eldest daughter was married to a full-blooded, fair-haired Dutchman; the son who followed her to an Armenian girl; the two others were married to Eurasians, both brown; and their brown children—who were also married and also had children—mingled with the fair-haired family of the eldest daughter; and the pride of the whole family was the youngest son and brother, Adrien, or Addie, who made love to Doddie van Oudijck and who was constantly at Labuwangi, the busy milling-season notwithstanding.

The milling-season and the rejoicings were now over. There was comparative peace indoors; and a languorous Indian calm had set in. But Mrs. van Oudijck, Theo and Doddie had come over for the festivities and were staying on a few days longer at Patjaram. A great circle of people sat round the marble table covered with glasses of syrup, lemonade and whisky-and-soda; they did not speak much, but rocked luxuriously, exchanging an occasional word. Mrs. de Luce and Mrs. van Oudijck spoke Malay, but were not talkative. A gentle, good-humoured boredom drifted down on all these rocking people. It was strange to see the different types: the pretty, milk-white Léonie beside the yellow, wrinkled raden-aju-dowager; Theo, pale and fair as a Dutchman, with his full, sensual lips, which he inherited from his half-caste mother; Doddie, already looking like a ripe rose, with the sparkling irises and black pupils of her black eyes; the manager’s son, Achille de Luce, brown, tall and stout, whose thoughts ran only on his machinery and his seed; the second son, Roger, brown, short and thin, the book-keeper, whose thoughts ran only on the year’s profits, with his little Armenian wife; the eldest daughter, old already, brown, stupidly ugly, with her full-blooded Dutch husband, who looked like a peasant; the other sons and daughters, in every shade of brown, not easily to be distinguished one from the other; around them the children, the grandchildren, the little, golden-skinned adopted children, the babus, the lories and the dwarf deer; and over all these people and children and animals, as though shaken down upon them, lay a good-hearted solidarity; and over all these people there also lay a common pride in their Solo ancestors, crowning all their heads with a pale halo of Javanese aristocracy; and the Armenian daughter-in-law and the bucolic Dutch son-in-law were not least proud of this descent.

The liveliest of all these elements, which were melting into one another, as it were, through long communal life under the patriarchal roofs, was the youngest son, Adrien de Luce, Addie, in whom the blood of the Solo princess and that of the French adventurer had blended harmoniously. The admixture, it is true, had given him no brains, but it had given him the physical beauty of a young Eurasian, with something of the Moor about it, something southern and seductive, something Spanish, as though in this last child the two alien racial elements had for the first time mingled harmoniously, for the first time been wedded in absolute mutual sympathy; as though in him, this last child after so many children, adventurer and princess had for the first time met in harmony. Addie seemed to possess not a jot of intellect or imagination; he was unable to unite two ideas into one composite thought; he merely felt, with the vague good-nature which had descended upon the whole family. For the rest, he was like a beautiful animal, degenerating in soul and brain, but degenerating into nothing, to a great nullity, to one great emptiness, while his body was like a renewal of his race, full of strength and beauty, while his marrow and his blood and his flesh and his muscles were all one harmony of physical seductiveness, so purely, stupidly, beautifully sensual that its harmony had for a woman an immediate appeal. The lad had but to appear, like a beautiful, southern god, for all the women to look at him and take him into the depths of their imagination, to recall him to their minds again and again; the lad had but to go to a race-ball at Ngadjiwa for all the girls to fall in love with him. He plucked love where he found it, in plenty, in the Patjaram compounds. And everything feminine was in love with him, from his mother to his little nieces. Doddie van Oudijck was infatuated with him. From a child of seven she had been in love, a hundred times and more, with every one who passed before the glance of her flashing pupils, but never yet as with Addie. Her love shone so strongly from her whole being that it was like a flame, that everybody saw it and smiled. The milling-feast had been to her one long delight ... when she danced with him; one long martyrdom ... when he danced with others. He had not asked her to marry him, but she thought of asking him and was prepared to die if he refused. She knew that the resident, her father, would object: he did not like those De Luces, that Solo-French crew, as he called them; but, if Addie was willing, her father would consent, rather than see her die. To this child of love that lovable lad was the world, the universe, life itself. He made love to her, he kissed her on the lips, but this was no more than he did to others, unthinkingly; he kissed other girls as well. And, if he could, he went further, like a devastating young god, an unthinking god. But he still stood more or less in awe of the resident’s daughter. He possessed neither pluck nor effrontery; his passions were not markedly selective; he looked on a woman as a woman and was so much sated with conquest that obstacles did not stimulate him. His garden was full of flowers which all lifted themselves up to him; he stretched out his hand, almost without looking; he merely plucked.

As they sat rocking about the table they saw him come through the garden; and the eyes of all these women turned to him as to a young tempter, arriving in the sunshine, which touched him as with a halo. The raden-aju dowager smiled and gazed at him, enamoured of her son, her favourite; squatting on the ground behind her, the little golden adopted child stared with wide-open eyes; the sisters looked out, the little nieces looked out, and Doddie turned pale and Léonie van Oudijck’s milky whiteness became tinged with a rosy shade which mingled with the glamour of her smile. She glanced at Theo mechanically; their eyes met. And these souls of sheer love, love of the eyes, of the lips, love of the glowing flesh, understood each other; and Theo’s jealousy of Léonie blazed so fiercely that the rosy shade died away and she became pale and fearful, with a sudden, unreasoning fear which shuddered through her usual indifference, while the tempter, in his halo of sunshine, came nearer and nearer....