Читать книгу The Hidden Force - Louis Couperus - Страница 4

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A few of the lamps had been lit. Really the lamps were burning everywhere; but in the long, broad galleries it was only just light. In the grounds and inside the house there were certainly no fewer than twenty or thirty paraffin-lamps burning in chandeliers and lanterns; but they yielded no more than a vague, yellow twilight glimmering through the house. A flood of moonshine poured into the garden, making the flower-pots gleam brightly and shimmering in the pond; and the banyans were like soft velvet against the luminous sky.

The first gong had sounded for dinner. In the front verandah a young man was swinging up and down in a rocking-chair, with his hands behind his head. He was bored. A young girl came along the middle gallery, humming to herself, as though in expectation. The house was furnished in accordance with the conventional type of up-country residencies, with commonplace splendour. The marble floor of the verandah was white and glossy as a mirror; tall palms stood in pots between the pillars; groups of rocking-chairs stood round the marble tables. In the first inner gallery, which ran parallel with the verandah, chairs were drawn up against the wall as though in readiness for an eternal reception. The second inner gallery, which ran from front to back, showed at the end, where it opened into a cross-gallery, a huge red satin curtain hanging from a gilt cornice. In the white spaces between the doors of the rooms hung either mirrors in gilt frames, resting on marble console-tables, or lithographs—pictures as they call them in India—of Van Dyck on horseback; Paolo Veronese received by a doge on the steps of a Venetian palace, Shakespeare at the court of Elizabeth and Tasso at the court of Este; but in the biggest panel, in a crowned frame, hung a large etching, a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina in her coronation-robes. In the middle of the central gallery was a red satin ottoman, topped by a palm. There were also many chairs and tables, and everywhere great chandeliers. Everything was very neatly kept and distinguished by a commonplace pomp, an uncomfortable readiness for the next reception, with not a single home-like corner. In the half-light of the paraffin-lamps—one lamp was lit in each chandelier—the long, wide, spacious galleries stretched in tedious vacancy.

The second gong sounded. In the back-verandah, the long table—too long, as though always expecting guests—was laid for three persons. The native butler and half-a-dozen boys stood waiting by the servers’ tables and the two sideboards. The butler at once began to fill the soup-plates; and two of the boys placed the three plates of soup on the table, on top of the folded napkins which lay on the dinner-plates. Then they waited again, while the soup steamed gently. Another boy filled the three tumblers with large lumps of ice.

The girl came in, humming a tune. She was perhaps seventeen, and resembled her divorced mother, the resident’s first wife, a good-looking half-caste, who was now living in Batavia, where she was said to keep a discreet gaming house. The young girl had a pale olive complexion, sometimes just touched with a peach-like blush; she had beautiful black hair, curling naturally at the temples and wound round her head in a heavy coil; her black pupils and sparkling irises swam in humid bluish-whites, over which her thick lashes flickered up and down, and up again. Her mouth was small and a little full; and her upper lip was just shadowed by a dark, downy line. She was not tall and was already too fully formed, like a hasty rose that has bloomed too soon. She wore a white piqué skirt and a white linen blouse with lace insertions; and round her throat was a bright yellow ribbon that accorded well with her olive pallor, which sometimes flushed up, suddenly, as with a rush of warm blood.

The young man came sauntering in from the front verandah. He was like his father, tall, broad and fair-haired, with a thick, fair moustache. He was barely twenty-three, but looked quite five years older. He wore a suit of white Russian linen, but with a shirt-collar and tie.

Van Oudijck also came at last: his firm step approached as though he were always busy, as though he were now coming just to have some dinner in the midst of his work.

“When does mamma arrive to-morrow?” asked Theo.

“At half-past eleven,” replied Van Oudijck; and, turning to his body-servant behind him, “Kario, remember that the mem-sahib is to be fetched from the station at half-past eleven to-morrow.”

“Yes, excellency,” murmured Kario.

The fish was served.

“Doddie,” asked Van Oudijck, “who was with you at the gate just now?”

“At … the gate?” she asked slowly, in a very soft accent.

“Yes.”

“At … the gate? … Nobody. … Theo perhaps.”

“Were you at the gate with your sister?” asked Van Oudijck.

The boy knitted his thick, fair eyebrows:

“Possibly. … Don’t know. … Don’t remember. …”

They were all three silent. They hurried through dinner: sitting at table bored them. The five or six servants, in white cotton jackets with red linen facings, moved softly on their flat toes, waiting quickly and noiselessly. Steak and salad was served, and a pudding, followed by dessert.

“Everlasting rumpsteak!” Theo muttered.

“Yes, that cook!” laughed Doddie, with her little throaty laugh, clipping her sentences in the half-caste fashion. “She always gives steak, when mamma not here; doesn’t matter to her, when mamma not here. She has no imagination. Too bad though!”

They had been twenty minutes over their dinner when Van Oudijck went back to his office. Doddie and Theo sauntered towards the front of the house.

“Tedious,” Doddie yawned. “Come, we play billiards?”

In the first inner gallery, behind the satin portière, was a small billiard-table.

“Come along,” said Theo.

They played.

“Why am I supposed to have been with you at the gate?”

“Oh … tut!” said Doddie.

“Well, why?”

“Papa needn’t know.”

“Who was with you? Addie?”

“Of course!” said Doddie. “Say, band playing to-night?”

“I think so.”

“Come, we go, yes?”

“No, I don’t care to.”

“Oh, why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Come along now?”

“No.”

“With mamma … you would, yes?” said Doddie, angrily. “I know very well. With mamma you go always to the band.”

“What do you know … you little minx!”

“What do I know?” she laughed. “What do I know? I know what I know.”

“Huh!” he said, to tease her, fluking a cannon. “You and Addie, huh!”

“Well … and you and mamma!”

He shrugged his shoulders:

“You’re crazy.”

“No need to hide from me. Besides, every one says.”

“Let them say.”

“Too bad of you though!”

“Oh, go to the devil!”

He flung his cue down in a temper and went towards the front of the house. She followed him.

“I say, Theo … don’t be angry now. Come along to the band.”

“No.”

“I’ll never say it again,” she entreated, coaxingly.

She was afraid that he would continue to be angry and then she would have nothing and nobody, then she would die of boredom.

“I promised Addie and I can’t go by myself. …”

“Well, if you won’t make any more of those idiotic remarks. …”

“Yes, I promise. Theo dear, yes, come then. …”

She was already in the garden.

Van Oudijck appeared on the threshold of his office, which always had the door open, but which was separated from the inner gallery by a large screen:

“Doddie!” he called out.

“Yes, papa?”

“Will you see that there are flowers in mamma’s room to-morrow?”

His voice was almost embarrassed and his eyelids blinked.

“Very well, papa … I’ll see to it.”

“Where are you going to?”

“With Theo … to the band.”

Van Oudijck became red and angry:

“To the band? But you might have asked my leave first!” he exclaimed, in a sudden temper.

Doddie pouted.

“I don’t like you to go out, without my knowing where you go. You were out this afternoon too, when I wanted you to come for a walk with me.”

“Well, doesn’t matter then!” said Doddie, bursting into tears.

“You can go if you want to,” said Van Oudijck, “but I insist on your asking me first.”

“No, I don’t care about it now,” said Doddie, in tears. “Doesn’t matter! No band.”

They could hear the first strains in the distance, coming from the Concordia garden.

Van Oudijck returned to his office. Doddie and Theo flung themselves into two rocking-chairs in the verandah and swung furiously to and fro, skating with the chairs over the smooth marble.

“Come,” said Theo, “let’s go. Addie expects you.”

“No,” she pouted. “Don’t care. I’ll tell Addie to-morrow papa so unkind. He spoils my pleasure. And … I’ll put no flowers in mamma’s room.”

Theo grinned.

“Say,” whispered Doddie, “that papa … eh? So in love, always. He blushed when he asked me about the flowers.”

Theo grinned once more and hummed in unison with the band in the distance.