Part 3 (2/2)
She made the diamond sparkle in the sun and shoot forth a blue ray.
”It's a beauty ... for two hundred and fifty,” said Mrs. van Oudijck.
”For three hundred then, dear mevrouw....”
”Three hundred?” she asked, dreamily, playing with the gem.
Whether it cost three hundred or four or five hundred was all one to her. It left her wholly indifferent. But she liked the stone and meant to have it, at whatever price. And therefore she quietly put the stone down and said:
”No, dear mevrouw, really ... it's too expensive; and my husband has no money.”
She said it so prettily that there was no guessing her intention. She was adorably self-sacrificing as she spoke the words. Van Oudijck felt a second inward shock. He could refuse his wife nothing.
”Mevrouw,” he said, ”you can leave the stone ... for three hundred guilders. But for G.o.d's sake take your bottles away with you!”
Mrs. van Does looked up delightedly:
”There, what did I tell you? I knew for certain the residen would buy for you!...”
Mrs. van Oudijck looked up in gentle reproach:
”But, Otto!” she said: ”How can you?”
”Do you like the stone?”
”Yes, it's beautiful.... But such a lot of money! For one diamond!”
And she drew her husband's hand towards her and suffered him to kiss her on the forehead, because he had been permitted to buy her a three-hundred-guilder diamond. Doddie and Theo stood winking at each other.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leonie Van Oudijck always enjoyed her siesta. She only slept for a moment, but she loved after lunch to be alone in her cool bedroom till five or half-past five. She read a little, mostly the magazines from the circulating library, but as a rule she did nothing but dream. Her dreams were vague imaginings, which rose before her as in an azure mist during her afternoons of solitude. n.o.body knew of them and she kept them very secret, like a secret vice, a sin. She committed herself much more readily--to the world--where her liaisons were concerned. These never lasted long; they counted for little in her life; she never wrote letters; and the favours which she granted afforded the recipient no privileges in the daily intercourse of society. Hers was a silent, correct depravity, both physical and moral. For her imaginings too, despite their poetical insipidity, were depraved. Her pet author was Catulle Mendes: she loved all those little flowers of azure sentimentality, those rosy, affected little cupids, with one little finger in the air and their legs gracefully hovering around the most vicious themes and motives of perverted pa.s.sion. In her bedroom hung a few engravings: a young woman lying on a lace-covered bed and being kissed by two sportive angels; another: a lion with an arrow through its breast at the feet of a smiling maiden; lastly, a large coloured advertis.e.m.e.nt of some scent or other: a sort of floral nymph whose veils were being drawn on either side by playful little cherubs, of the kind which we see on soap-boxes. This ”picture” in particular she thought splendid; she could imagine nothing with a greater aesthetic appeal. She knew that the plate was monstrous, but she had never been able to prevail upon herself to take the horrible thing down, though it was looked at askance by everybody: her friends, her step-children, all of whom walked in and out of her room with the Indian casualness which makes no secret of the toilet. She could stare at it for minutes on end, as though bewitched; she thought it perfectly charming; and her own dreams resembled this print. She also treasured a chocolate-box with a keepsake picture on it, as the type of beauty which she admired, even above her own: the pink flush on the cheeks, the brown eyes under unconvincing golden hair, the bosom showing through the lace. But she never committed herself in respect of this absurdity, which she vaguely suspected; she never spoke of these prints and boxes, just because she knew that actually they were hideous. But she thought them lovely; for her they were delightful, were artistic and poetical.
These were her happiest hours.
Here, at Labuw.a.n.gi, she dared not do what she did in Batavia; and here, at Labuw.a.n.gi, people hardly believed what people in Batavia said. Nevertheless, Mrs. van Does averred that this resident and that inspector--the one travelling for his pleasure, the other on an official circuit--staying for a few days at the residency, had found their way in the afternoon, during the siesta, to Leonie's bedroom. But all the same at Labuw.a.n.gi any such actual occurrences were the rarest of interludes between Mrs. van Oudijck's rosy afternoon visions.
Still, this afternoon it seemed as though, after dozing a little while and after all the dullness caused by the journey and the heat had cleared away from her milk-white complexion--it seemed, now that she was looking at the romping angels of the scent-advertis.e.m.e.nt, that her thoughts were no longer dwelling on those rosy, tender, doll-like forms, but as though she were listening to the sounds outside....
She was wearing nothing but a sarong, which she had pulled up under her arms and hitched in a twist across her breast. Her beautiful fair hair hung loose. Her pretty little white feet were bare: she had not even put on her slippers. And she looked through the slats of the shutters.
Between the flower-pots, which, standing on the side steps of the house, masked her windows with great ma.s.ses of foliage, she could see an annexe consisting of four rooms, the spare-rooms, one of which was Theo's.
She stood peering for a moment and then set the shutter ajar. And she saw that the shutter of Theo's room also opened a little way....
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