Free The Hidden Force by Louis Couperus

view of life, which she had merely flicked through like a badly written novelette.
    Now she imagined she was in love with the senior engineer, the black-bearded doyen of the clique, already greying; and, in her tragic way, she imagined scenes with Mrs Doorn de Bruijn, a portly, placid, melancholy woman. The other couple in their intimate circle, Doctor Rantzow and his wife, were German: he, fat, blond, rather vulgar, with a middle-age spread; she, a pleasant, matronly type who spoke animatedly in Dutch with a German accent.
    This was the clique where Eva’s word was law. Apart from Frans van Helderen, the controller, it consisted of very ordinary Indies and European types, people without any aesthetic sense, as Eva said, but she had no other choice in Labuwangi, and so she amused herself with Ida’s petty Eurasian tragedies, and resigned herself to the rest. Her husband, Onno, tired from his work as always, did not contribute much to the conversation, but listened.
    “How long was Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia?” asked Ida.
    “Two months,” said the doctor’s wife. “A long stay this time.”
    “I’ve heard,” said Mrs Doorn de Bruijn—placid, melancholy , and quietly venomous—that this time a memberof the Council of the Indies, a head of department in the colonial service and three young men in trade amused Mrs Van Oudijck in Batavia.”
    “And I can assure you all,” ventured the doctor, “that if Mrs Van Oudijck did not go regularly to Batavia, she would forgo a very salutary cure, even though she is taking it on her own initiative and not… on my orders.”
    “Don’t let’s speak ill of her!” Eva interrupted him almost pleadingly. “Mrs Van Oudijck is beautiful—with a calm Junoesque type of beauty, with the eyes of Venus—and I’m prepared to forgive beautiful people around me a lot. And you, Doctor…” she wagged her finger at him. “Don’t betray professional secrets. You know that doctors in the Indies are often too free with their patients’ secrets. If ever I’m ill, I’ll never have anything worse than a headache. You won’t forget that, will you, Doctor?”
    “The Commissioner looked preoccupied,” said Doorn de Bruijn.
    “Do you think he knows… about his wife?” asked Ida gloomily, with her large eyes full of black velvet tragedy.
    “The Commissioner is often like that,” said Frans van Helderen. “He has his moods. At times he’s good company, cheerful, jovial, as on the recent inspection tour. At others, he has his dark days, he works and works and works, and roars that the only person who does any work is himself.”
    “My poor, unappreciated Onno!” sighed Eva.
    “I think he’s working too hard,” Van Helderen went on. “Labuwangi has been a huge burden. And the Commissionertakes too much to heart, both at home and outside. His relationship with his son
and
with the Prince.”
    “I’d get rid of the Prince,” said the doctor.
    “But, Doctor,” said Van Helderen, “you know enough about conditions in Java to realize that it’s not as easy as that. The Prince’s family is too identified with Labuwangi and too highly regarded by the people…”
    “Yes, I know Dutch policy… The British in India are more high-handed and peremptory with their Indian princes. The Dutch defer to them too much.”
    “It remains to be seen which policy is best in the long run,” said Van Helderen drily, who could not stand a foreigner criticizing anything in a Dutch colony. “Fortunately we don’t have conditions of squalor and famine like they have in British India.”
    “I saw the Commissioner talking very seriously to the Prince,” said Doorn de Bruijn.
    “The Commissioner is too sensitive,” said Van Helderen. “He’s definitely troubled by the slow decline of an ancient Javanese family, a family that is doomed to fall but one that he would like to preserve. In that respect, however cool and practical he may be, the Commissioner is behaving rather poetically,