Part 4 (1/2)
Then she smiled; she knotted her sarong more closely and lay down upon the bed again.
She listened.
In a moment she heard the gravel grating slightly under the pressure of a slipper. Her shutters, without being closed, were drawn to. A hand now opened them cautiously....
She looked round smiling:
”What is it, Theo?” she asked.
He came nearer. He was dressed in pyjamas and he sat on the edge of the bed and played with her soft white hands and suddenly he kissed her fiercely.
At that instant a stone whizzed through the bedroom.
They both started, looked up, and in a moment were both standing in the middle of the room.
”Who threw that?” she asked.
”One of the boys, perhaps,” he said: ”Rene or Ricus, playing about outside.”
”They aren't up yet.”
”Or something may have fallen from above....”
”But it was thrown....”
”A stone so often gets loose....”
”But this is gravel.”
She picked up the little stone. He looked outside cautiously:
”It's nothing, Leonie. It must really have fallen out of the gutter ... and then bounced up again. It's nothing.”
”I'm frightened,” she murmured.
He laughed almost aloud and asked:
”But why?”
They had nothing to fear. The room lay between Leonie's boudoir and two large spare-rooms, which were reserved exclusively for residents, generals and other highly-placed officials. On the other side of the middle gallery were Van Oudijck's rooms--his office and his bedroom--and Doddie's room and the room of the boys, Ricus and Rene. Leonie was therefore isolated in her wing, between the spare-rooms. It made her cynically insolent. At this hour, the grounds were quite deserted. For that matter, she was not afraid of the servants. Oorip was wholly to be trusted and often received handsome presents: sarongs; a gold clasp; a long diamond kabaai-pin, which she wore as a jewelled silver plaque on her breast. As Leonie never grumbled, was generous in advancing wages and displayed an apparently easy-going temperament--although everything always happened as she wished--she was not disliked; and, whatever the servants might know about her, they had never yet betrayed her. It made her all the more insolent. A curtain hung before a pa.s.sage between her bedroom and boudoir; and it was arranged, once and for all, between Theo and Leonie, that at the least danger he would slip away quietly behind this hanging, go out through the garden-door of the boudoir and pretend to be looking at the rose-trees in the pots on the steps. This would make it appear as though he had just come from his own room and were merely inspecting the roses. The inner doors of the boudoir and bedroom were usually locked, because Leonie declared frankly that she did not like to be interrupted unawares.
She liked Theo, because of his fresh youthfulness. And here, at Labuw.a.n.gi, he was her only vice, not counting a pa.s.sing inspector and the little pink angels. The two were now like naughty children; they laughed silently, in each other's arms. It was past four by this time; and they heard the voices of Rene and Ricus in the garden. They were taking possession of the grounds for the holidays. They were thirteen and fourteen years old; and they revelled in the garden. They ran about barefoot, in blue striped pyjamas, and went to look at the horses, at the pigeons; they teased Doddie's c.o.c.katoo, which tripped about on the roof of the outhouses. They had a tame squirrel. They hunted geckos, those large-headed lizards, which they shot with a blow-pipe, to the great vexation of the servants, because the geckos bring luck. They bought roasted monkey-nuts at the gate of a pa.s.sing Chinaman and then mocked him, imitating his accent, his difficulty with his r's: