fault of his own, had gradually lost his friends and the love of his wife and daughter.
It had been wrong, Roxana knew, to be glad when someone died and yet ,when wearing the deepest black, she had followed her father’s coffin to the graveside, she had known that the trappings were only a farce.
It was a relief that after so long he was freed of his tortured body, but Roxana had cried at her aunt’s death as she had never been able to do for her father.
It seemed so cruel and so unnecessary that, when she was so ecstatically happy at having given her husband the son he had longed for after so many years, Agnes Helderik had died.
If Roxana was unhappy, it was nothing compared to the overwhelming grief suffered by Pieter Helderik.
He had not only adored his wife with his whole heart and soul but she was also a part of him, completely necessary both to his mind and body.
He was like a rudderless ship and it was true, Roxana thought, to say that the light had gone out of his life.
He had flung himself into his work in Bali with no less enthusiasm and a one-pointed concentration that was so characteristic of his personality but then from the day Agnes died something was missing.
Before her death everything he had said and done had been spontaneous and seemed to come almost as if it was an inspiration from above. Now he drove himself hard and at times Roxana even thought that he was pretending to feel what was not actually there.
She could not put her finger on exactly what was wrong and yet she knew that her aunt, from the moment she died, had taken with her something that was indispensable to Pieter Helderik.
Soon after coming to Bali Roxana had seen and understood clearly why the Dutch had been reluctant to issue even temporary permits to Missionaries.
She had known without anyone telling her that the intransigence of the inhabitants in religious matters doomed all the Missionaries’ efforts to failure.
All she had read about Bali and all she saw from her own observations made her realise that the Priests, the pedandas, would not tolerate it that any member of their race should go over to a new religion.
When there were Christian converts, although they were very few, they were boycotted and usually hunted out of the community.
Balinese doctors refused to treat Christians and they were threatened that if they died they would not be allowed to be buried in Balinese cemeteries.
She tried tactfully to tell Pieter Helderik what was happening but he would not listen and pretended that he did not believe her. But it was obvious that he was shunned when he moved about the villages.
The Balinese, usually a smiling easy-going people, vanished into their thatched houses when he appeared or deliberately moved away when he attempted to speak to them.
It was only the children who were not afraid and so were not concerned with anything except that he would give them sweetmeats and occasionally buy them toys.
‘It is hopeless! Quite hopeless!’ Roxana told herself over and over again.
But she dare not say it out loud for fear of hurting her uncle more than he had been hurt already.
She knew that he was aware of what was happening as the lines on his face sharpened and he grew thinner and thinner until the clothes he had brought with him from Holland hung on him as if he was a scarecrow.
He found it hard to eat even the delicious dishes that Geertruida prepared and which had been his favourites at home.
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