Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/191

 called go towards her, and it almost seemed as if she were questioning him, and as if the result were not to his advantage. He, at any rate, retraced his steps and went outside.

“I am sorry,” said Tine. “It may have been a man who had fowls for sale, or vegetables. I haven’t anything in the house yet.”

“Well, then you can send out someone,” replied Havelaar. “You know that native ladies are fond of exercising authority. Her husband was formerly the principal person here, and however little an Assistant-Resident may in reality count, in his Division he is a little king: she isn’t accustomed yet to her dethronement. Don’t let us rob the poor woman of this little pleasure. Pretend not to notice it.”

This, certainly, Tine did not find difficult: was not fond of authority.

Here it is necessary to make a digression, and I even want to digress this time about digressions. It is not always easy for a writer to sail carefully through the passage between the two rocks of too much or too little, and this difficulty increases when one describes conditions that take the reader to unknown regions. There is too close a relation between places and events to allow of the entire omission of place-description, and the difficulty of avoiding both rocks referred to is twice as great for anyone who has selected India as the scene of his story. For whereas a writer who deals with European conditions can take many things as known, he that places his drama in India must constantly ask himself whether the non-Indian reader will correctly understand this or that circumstance. If the European reader should imagine Mrs. Slotering as “staying” with the Havelaars, as might be the case in Europe, he would think it incomprehensible that she was not present in the company which was taking coffee in the front veranda. It is true, I have already said that she lived in a separate house, but for the right conception of this, and also of subsequent events, it is really necessary that I make known, more or less, the nature of Havelaar’s house and grounds.