Part 10 (1/2)
”Come, we'd better go!” said Eva to Frans. ”Else she'll be breaking my eggs presently. ”Out of this, cook, outside!”
”Out of this, outside!” echoed the latta cook. ”Oh, mem sahib, beg pardon, mem sahib, oh, enough, enough, mem sahib!”
”Come and sit down for a little,” said Eva to Van Helderen.
He went with her:
”You're so cheerful,” he said.
”Aren't you?”
”No, I've been feeling sad, lately.”
”I too. I told you so yesterday. It's something in the Labuw.a.n.gi air. There's no telling what this table-turning has in store for us.”
They sat down in the back verandah. He sighed.
”What's the matter?” she asked.
”I can't help it,” he said. ”I care for you so. I love you.”
She was silent for an instant.
”Again?” she then said, reproachfully.
He did not answer.
”I have told you, mine is not a pa.s.sionate nature. I am cold. I love my husband and my child. Let's be friends, Van Helderen.”
”I'm fighting against it; but it's no use.”
”I'm fond of Ida; I wouldn't make her unhappy for the world.”
”I don't believe I was ever fond of her.”
”Van Helderen!...”
”If I was, it was only for her pretty face. But white though Ida may be, she's a half-caste ... with her whimsies and her childish little tragedies. I didn't see it so much at first, but I see it now, of course. I'd met women from Europe before I met you. But you were a revelation to me, a revelation of all the charm and artistic grace that a woman can possess.... And the exotic side in you appeals to my own exotic side.”
”I value your friends.h.i.+p highly. Let things remain as they are.”
”Sometimes it's just as though I were mad, sometimes I dream ... that we're travelling in Europe together, that we're in Italy or Paris. Sometimes I see us sitting together over a fire, in a room of our own, you talking of art, I of the modern, social developments of our time. But, after that, I see us together ... more intimately....”
”Van Helderen!...”
”It's no longer any use your warning me. I love you, Eva, Eva....”
”I don't believe there's another country where there's so much love going about as in India! I suppose it's the heat....”
”Don't crush me with your sarcasm. No other woman ever made such an appeal to my whole soul and body as you do, Eva....”