Hoofdstuk 13

--Oh yes, gladly!

For since everything I have to tell you about this I can vouch for as true, and even partly prove, you will see from it that I did not act rashly when, in my account of that missing child, I refused to dismiss the Padang gossip as utterly absurd. You will find it quite credible once you come to know our brave general in the matters that concern me.

There were, then, inaccuracies and omissions in my cash account at Natal.

You know how every inaccuracy ends in a loss: carelessness never leaves one with money to spare.

The head of the accounting office at Padang--who just then was no particular friend of mine--claimed that there were thousands missing.

But note well that, all the while I was at Natal, no one had drawn my attention to this.

Quite unexpectedly I received a transfer to the Padang highlands.

You know, Verbrugge, that on Sumatra a posting in the highlands of Padang is regarded as more advantageous and more pleasant than one in the northern residency.

Since only a few months earlier I had had the Governor with me--presently you will hear why, and how--and because during his stay at Natal, and even in my own house, things had occurred in which I believed I had borne myself altogether very well, I took that transfer as a mark of favour, and set out from Natal for Padang.

I made the voyage on a French ship, the Baobab of Marseille, which had loaded pepper at Atjeh, and ... naturally was "short of drinking water" at Natal. As soon as I reached Padang, intending to leave at once from there for the interior, I wished, as custom and duty required, to call on the Governor; but he sent me word that he could not receive me, and at the same time that I was to postpone my departure for my new post until further orders.

You can imagine how astonished I was at this, the more so since at Natal he had left me in a mood that led me to think I stood rather well in his books. I had only a few acquaintances at Padang, but from these few I learned--or rather I perceived it from them--that the general was greatly displeased with me.

I say I perceived it because at an outpost such as Padang then was, the goodwill of many could serve as a gauge of the favour one had found in the eyes of the Governor.

I felt that a storm was brewing, without knowing from which quarter the wind would come.

Since I needed money, I asked this person and that to help me out, and I was truly astonished that everywhere I met with a refusal.

At Padang, no less than elsewhere in the Indies, where on the whole credit plays an even excessive part, the disposition on that point was otherwise quite liberal.

In any other case people would gladly have advanced a few hundred guilders to a controller who was travelling and, contrary to expectation, found himself detained somewhere.

But to me all help was refused.

I pressed some of them to name the grounds of this distrust, and bit by bit I came at last to learn that errors and omissions had been discovered in my financial administration at Natal, which made me suspect of dishonest management.

That there were errors in my administration did not surprise me in the least.

The very opposite would have astonished me; but I did find it strange that the Governor, who had personally been a witness to how, far from my office, I had again and again to contend with the discontent of the population and with persistent attempts at insurrection ... that he, who had himself praised me for what he called "resoluteness," could give the discovered errors the name of dishonesty or fraud.

No one, surely, could know better than he that in these matters there could never be any question of anything but force majeure. And even were this force majeure denied, even were I to be held responsible for errors committed at moments when I--often in peril of my life!--far from the treasury and whatever resembled it, had to entrust the management of it to others; even were it demanded that, doing the one thing, I ought not to have left the other undone, then still I would have been guilty only of a carelessness that had nothing in common with "dishonesty." There existed besides, in those days especially, numerous instances showing that the Government understood this difficulty in the position of officials on Sumatra, and it seemed indeed to be accepted in principle that on such occasions one should turn a blind eye.

They contented themselves with demanding from the officials concerned the repayment of what was missing, and the proofs had to be very clear indeed before the word "dishonesty" was uttered or even thought of.

This was indeed so accepted as a rule that at Natal I had myself told the Governor I was afraid that, after the examination of my accounts at the offices in Padang, I should have a great deal to repay, to which he answered with a shrug: "oh ... those money matters!" as though he himself felt that the lesser must give way to the greater. Now, I grant that money matters are important.

But however important, in this case they were subordinate to other branches of concern and duty.

If, through carelessness or omission, a few thousand were missing from my management, I do not call that a trifle in itself. But if these thousands were lacking as a consequence of my successful efforts to forestall the insurrection that threatened to set the region of Mandhéling ablaze, and to make the people of Atjeh return to the lands from which we had only just driven them at great cost in money and men, then the weight of such a shortfall falls away, and it became even somewhat unjust to impose its repayment on a man who had saved infinitely greater interests.

And yet I was at peace with such a repayment. For by not demanding it, one would open too wide a door to dishonesty.

After days of waiting--you can imagine in what mood!--I received from the Governor's secretariat a letter informing me that I was held suspect of dishonesty, with orders to answer for myself on a number of charges that had been raised against my management.

Some of these I could clear up at once. For others, however, I needed sight of certain documents, and above all it was important for me to investigate those matters at Natal itself, so as to inquire of my employees into the causes of the discrepancies found; and probably I should have succeeded there in my efforts to bring everything to light.

The failure to enter, for instance, a sum sent to Mandhéling--you know, Verbrugge, that the troops in the interior are paid out of the Natal treasury--or some such thing, which most likely would have become clear to me at once had I been able to investigate on the spot, had perhaps given rise to those vexing errors.

But the general would not let me set out for Natal.

This refusal made me attend the more to the strangeness of the manner in which that accusation of dishonesty had been brought against me.

Why, after all, had I been transferred from Natal so unexpectedly, and that under suspicion of dishonesty?

Why was this dishonouring suspicion first disclosed to me only when I was far from the place where I should have had the opportunity to defend myself?

And above all, why were these matters cast against me so promptly in the most unfavourable light, contrary to accepted custom and to fairness?

Before I had yet answered all those charges, as best I could without archive or oral information, I learned indirectly that the General was so displeased with me "because I had so thwarted him at Natal, in which, it was added, I had also done very wrong."