quering his sluggishness or his reluctance to take up the matter of the millions he fancied he might still expect. And he was answered with an old current account . . . an argument, as is well known, which is unanswerable.
But oh, they were to be so careful at Lebak! And why not? In such an uncivilized country no girls wander about the streets late at night, who have a little “honour” to sell for a little food. One meets no stray people there who live by problematic professions. It does not happen there that a family is suddenly ruined by a change of fortune . . . and such, after all, were usually the rocks whereon Havelaar’s good intentions foundered. The number of Europeans in that division was so insignificant that it might be called negligible, and at Lebak the Javanese were too poor to become—by whatever vicissitude—interesting by still greater poverty. All this was not exactly considered by Tine—if so, it would have been necessary for her to go into the causes of their reduced circumstances more precisely than her love of Max made desirable—but there was in their new surroundings something like the calm after a storm, a kind of absence of every inducement which—of course with a more or less falsely romantic appearance—had ere this so often made Havelaar say:
“Well, Tine, this surely is a case I cannot very well pass by!”
To which words she had ever answered:
“No, certainly not, Max, you cannot pass this by!”
We shall see, however, how this simple, apparently unexciting place of Lebak cost Havelaar more than all former excesses of his heart taken together. But this they could not know! They looked to the future with confidence, and felt so happy in their love and the possession of their child. . . .
“What a lot of roses in the garden,” exclaimed Tine, “and even rampeh and tchempaka, and so much melatti,[1] and look at those beautiful lilies . . .”
- ↑ Javanese plants.
