The Hidden Force: A Story of Modern Java

Then, like a clap of thunder, the rumour ran through Labuwangi that Van Oudijck and his wife were going to be divorced. Léonie went to Europe, very suddenly, really without any...

Labuwangi came to life again. It was as though people unanimously agreed not to discuss the strange affair any further with outsiders, because it was so excusable that any one s...

Reports arrived from Ternate and Halmaheira that a terrible submarine earthquake had visited the surrounding group of islands, that whole villages had been washed away, that tho...

The reception--not a reception, as Eve always said in self-defence--was nearly over: the Van Oudijcks had been the first to go; the regent followed. The Eldersmas were left with...

Van Oudijck, who was in the habit of taking the police-cases at that hour, had made no suggestion to his son; but, when from his office he saw Theo step into the carriage and dr...

Ngadjiwa was a gayer place than Labuwangi: there was a garrison; managers and employers often came down from the coffee-plantations in the interior for a few days' amusement; th...

The subscription-lists went round. The plays were rehearsed and performed in three weeks' time; and the committee handed the resident a sum of nearly fifteen hundred guilders fo...

Things had gone well with Van Oudijck upon the whole. Born of a simple Dutch family, with no money, he had found his youth a hard though never cruel school of precocious earnest...

Eva Eldersma was in a more listless and dejected mood than she had yet experienced in Java. After her efforts, after the fuss and the success of the fancy-fair, after the shudde...

The secretary, Onno Eldersma, was a busy man. The post brought a daily average of some two hundred letters and documents to the residency-office, which employed two senior clerk...

Yes, Theo knew. He had spoken to Oorip after lunch; and although the maid had at first tried to deny everything, afraid of losing the sarongs, she had been unable to continue ly...

Addie was sitting with Mrs. van Does, in the little back-verandah, when they heard a carriage rattle up in front of the house. They smiled at each other and rose from their seats:

The full moon wore the hue of tragedy that evening. It had risen early, during the last glimmer of daylight, in the semblance of a huge, blood-red ball, and, flaming like a suns...

"Léonie," he said, "I want you to look through these letters. I often get libels of this sort and I've never mentioned them to you. But perhaps it's better that you should not b...

Van Helderen's two children, a boy and girl of six and seven, were staying at Eva's; and Van Helderen came in regularly once a day for a meal. He no longer spoke of his intense...

The Patjaram sugar-factory was fourteen miles from Labuwangi and twelve from Ngadjiwa and belonged to the half-Eurasian, half-Solo family of De Luce, a family who had once been...

Eva was at home to her friends once a fortnight: "You see, resident, it's not a reception," she always said, in self-defence, to Van Oudijck. "I know that no one's allowed to 'r...

And, despite their anxiety, the two sought each other all the oftener, feeling themselves now bound by indissoluble bonds. In the afternoon he would steal to her room; and, desp...

The early hours of the day were often cool, washed clean by the abundant rains; and in the young sunshine of these morning hours the earth emitted a tender haze, a blue softenin...

Next day, when Eldersma had gone to the office and Eva was moving about the house, in sarong and kabaai, on her domestic duties, she saw Frans van Helderen coming through the ga...

Van Oudijck felt in a more pleasant mood than he had done for weeks: his house seemed to have recovered after those two months of dull boredom; he thought it jolly to see his tw...

His words sounded cheerful to Eva, as she saw him coming through the garden, on the stroke of eight, for dinner. His tone expressed nothing more than the gay greeting of a man w...

Léonie 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 litt...

The night was like a veil of softest velvet dropping slowly from the heavens. The moon, in its first quarter, displayed a very narrow, horizontal sickle, like a Turkish crescent...

That day the Regent of Ngadjiwa, Sunario's younger brother, was to pay a visit at Patjaram, because Mrs. van Oudijck was leaving on the following day. They sat waiting for him i...

Doddie was rapt into the seventh heaven of delight when Van Oudijck told her that Addie had asked her hand in marriage; and, when she heard that mamma had been her advocate, she...

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 wer...

Léonie kept her bed for a couple of days with nervous fever. People at Labuwangi said that the residency was haunted. At the weekly assemblies in the Municipal Garden, when the...

Mrs. van Oudijck had promised to stay at Patjaram a few days longer; and she disliked the prospect, really not feeling quite at home in these old-fashioned Indian surroundings....

Van Oudijck was fond of certain effects. He did not say much about his visit to the palace that day, nor in the evening, when Eldersma and Van Helderen came to speak to him abou...

Van Oudijck, in a pleasant mood because of his wife and children, suggested a drive; and the horses were put to the landau. Van Oudijck had a pleased and jovial look, under the...

The mysticism of concrete things in that island of mystery which is Java!... Outwardly the docile colony with the subject race, which was no match for the rude trader who, in th...