Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/186

 once leaving thence for the Interior, I wished, in accordance with custom and duty, to call on the Governor; but he sent me word that he could not see me, and at the same time that I was to defer my departure for my new station till further orders. You will understand that I was greatly astonished at this, the more so as at Natal he had on leaving me given me the impression that he had rather a good opinion of me. I had not many acquaintances at Padang, but from the few I had I learnt—or rather I inferred it from their attitude—that the General was greatly vexed with me. I say I it, for, at an outpost such as Padang was at that time, the good-will of many might be taken as a barometer of the favour one had found in the eyes of the Governor. I felt that a storm was brewing, without knowing from what quarter the wind was to come. As I was in need of money, I asked this one and the other successively to assist me, and I was really amazed to meet with a refusal everywhere. At Padang no less than elsewhere in India, where in general credit plays even great a part, the attitude on that score was usually rather liberal. In every other case they would gladly have advanced a few hundred guilders to a travelling Controller who was delayed somewhere unexpectedly. But to me all help was refused. I pressed some of those I spoke to that they should name the causes of this suspicious demeanour, and de fil en aiguille I finally came to know that in my financial management at Natal errors and omissions had been discovered which laid me under suspicion of unfaithful administration. That there were errors in my administration did not astonish me in the least. Had it been otherwise it would have given me cause for astonishment; but I certainly thought it extraordinary that the Governor, who had been a personal witness to the fact that I had constantly had to fight far from my office with the discontent of the population and their incessant attempts at rebellion that he who himself had praised me for what he had called ‘resoluteness,’ now labelled the discovered error with the name of disloyalty or dishonesty. For surely no one could know better than he