As, month, after month, I continued to teach in the palace,--especially
as the language of my pupils, its idioms and characteristic forms of
expression, began to be familiar to me,--all the dim life of the place
"came out" to my ken, like a faint picture, which at first displays to
the eye only a formless confusion, a chaos of colors, but by force of
much looking and tracing and joining and separating, first objects and
then groups are discovered in their proper identity and relation, until
the whole stands out, clear, true, and informing in its coherent
significance of light and shade. Thus, by slow processes, as one whose
sight has been imperceptibly restored, I awoke to a clearer and truer
sense of the life within "the city of the beautiful and invincible
angel."
Sitting at one end of the table in my school-room, with Boy at the
other, and all those far-off faces between, I felt as though we were
twenty thousand miles away from the world that lay but a twenty minutes'
walk from the door; the distance was but a speck in space, but the
separation was tremendous. It always seemed to me that here was a
sudden, harsh suspension of nature's fundamental law,--the human heart
arrested in its functions, ceasing to throb, and yet alive.
[Illustration: PRESENTATION OF A PRINCESS.]
The fields beyond are fresh and green, and bright with flowers. The sun
of summer, rising exultant, greets them with rejoicing; and evening
shadows, falling soft among the dewy petals, linger to kiss them
good-night. There the children of the poor--naked, rude, neglected
though they be--are rich in the freedom of the bounteous earth, rich in
the freedom of the fair blue sky, rich in the freedom of the limpid
ocean of air above and around them. But within the close and gloomy
lanes of this city within a city, through which many lovely women are
wont to come and go, many little feet to patter, and many baby citizens
to be borne in the arms of their dodging slaves, there is but cloud and
chill, and famishing and stinting, and beating of wings against golden
bars. In the order of nature, evening melts softly into night, and
darkness retreats with dignity and grace before the advancing triumphs
of the morning; but here light and darkness are monstrously mixed, and
the result is a glaring gloom that is neither of the day nor of the
night, nor of life nor of death, nor of earth nor of--yes, hell!
In the long galleries and corridors, bewildering with their everlasting
twilight of the eye and of the mind, one is forever coming upon shocks
of sudden sunshine or shocks of sudden shadow,--the smile yet dimpling
in a baby's face, a sister bearing a brother's scourging; a mother
singing to her "sacred infant," [Footnote: P'hra-ong.] a slave sobbing
before a deaf idol. And O, the forlornness of it all! You who have never
beheld these things know not the utterness of loneliness. Compared with
the predicament of some who were my daily companions, the sea were a
home and an iceberg a hearth.
How I have pitied those ill-fated sisters of mine, imprisoned without a
crime! If they could but have rejoiced once more in the freedom of the
fields and woods, what new births of gladness might have been
theirs,--they who with a gasp of despair and moral death first entered
those royal dungeons, never again to come forth alive! And yet have I
known more than one among them who accepted her fate with a repose of
manner and a sweetness of smile that told how dead must be the heart
under that still exterior. And I wondered at the sight. Only twenty
minutes between bondage and freedom,--such freedom as may be found in
Siam! only twenty minutes between those gloomy, hateful cells and the
fair fields and the radiant skies! only twenty minutes between the
cramping and the suffocation and the fear, and the full, deep, glorious
inspirations of freedom and safety!
I had never beheld misery till I found it here; I had never looked upon
the sickening hideousness of slavery till I encountered its features
here; nor, above all, had I comprehended the perfection of the life,
light, blessedness and beauty, the all-sufficing fulness of the love of
God as it is in Jesus, until I felt the contrast here,--pain, deformity,
darkness, death, and eternal emptiness, a darkness to which there is
neither beginning nor end, a living which is neither of this world nor
of the next. The misery which checks the pulse and thrills the heart
with pity in one's common walks about the great cities of Europe is
hardly so saddening as the nameless, mocking wretchedness of these
women, to whom poverty were a luxury, and houselessness as a draught of
pure, free air.
And yet their lot is light indeed compared with that of their children.
The single aim of such a hapless mother, howsoever tender and devoted
she may by nature be, is to form her child after the one strict pattern
her fate has set her,--her master's will; since, otherwise, she dare not
contemplate the perils which might overtake her treasure. Pitiful
indeed, therefore, is the pitiless inflexibility of purpose with which
she wings from her child's heart all the dangerous endearments of
childhood,--its merry laughter, its sparkling tears, its trustfulness,
its artlessness, its engaging waywardness; and in their place instils
silence, submission, self-constraint, suspicion, cunning, carefulness,
and an ever-vigilant fear. And the result is a spectacle of unnatural
discipline simply appalling. The life of such a child is an egg-shell on
an ocean; to its helpless speck of experience all horrors are possible.
Its passing moment is its eternity; and that overwhelmed with terrors,
real or imaginary, what is left but that poor little floating wreck, a
child's despair?
I was often alone in the school-room, long after my other charges had
departed, with a pale, dejected woman, whose name translated was
"Hidden-Perfume." As a pupil she was remarkably diligent and attentive,
and in reading and translating English, her progress was extraordinary.
Only in her eager, inquisitive glances was she child-like; otherwise,
her expression and demeanor were anxious and aged. She had long been out
of favor with her "lord"; and now, without hope from him, surrendered
herself wholly to her fondness for a son she had borne him in her more
youthful and attractive days. In this young prince, who was about ten
years old, the same air of timidity and restraint was apparent as in his
mother, whom he strikingly resembled, only lacking that cast of pensive
sadness which rendered her so attractive, and her pride, which closed
her lips upon the past, though the story of her wrongs was a moving one.
It was my habit to visit her twice a week at her residence, [Footnote:
Each of the ladies of the harem has her own exclusive domicile, within
the inner walls of the palace.] for I was indebted to her for much
intelligent assistance in my study of the Siamese language. On going to
her abode one afternoon, I found her absent; only the young prince was
there, sitting sadly by the window.
"Where is your mother, dear?" I inquired.
"With his Majesty up stairs, I think," he replied, still looking
anxiously in one direction, as though watching for her.
This was an unusual circumstance for my sad, lonely friend, and I
returned home without my lesson for that day.
Next morning, passing the house again, I saw the lad sitting in the same
attitude at the window, his eyes bent in the same direction, only more
wistful and weary than before. On questioning him, I found his mother
had not yet returned. At the pavilion I was met by the Lady Tâlâp, who,
seizing my hand, said, "Hidden-Perfume is in trouble."
"What is the matter?" I inquired.
"She is in prison," she whispered, drawing me closely to her. "She is
not prudent, you know,--like you and me," in a tone which expressed both
triumph and fear.
"Can I see her?" I asked.
"Yes, yes! if you bribe the jailers. But don't give them more than a
tical each. They'll demand two; give them only one."
In the pavilion, which served as a private chapel for the ladies of the
harem, priests were reading prayers and reciting homilies from that
sacred book of Buddha called _Sâsânâh Thai_, "The Religion of the Free";
while the ladies sat on velvet cushions with their hands folded, a vase
of flowers in front of each, and a pair of odoriferous candles, lighted.
Prayers are held daily in this place, and three times a day during the
Buddhist Lent. The priests are escorted to the pavilion by Amazons, and
two warriors, armed with swords and clubs, remain on guard till the
service is ended. The latter, who are eunuchs, also attend the priests
when they enter the palace, in the afternoon, to sprinkle the inmates
with consecrated water.
Leaving the priests reciting and chanting, and the rapt worshippers
bowing, I passed a young mother with a sleeping babe, some slave-girls
playing at _sabâh_ [Footnote: Marbles, played with the knee instead of
the fingers.] on the stone pavement, and two princesses borne in the
arms of their slaves, though almost women grown, on my way to the palace
prison.
If it ever should be the reader's fortune, good or ill, to visit a
Siamese dungeon, whether allotted to prince or peasant, his attention
will be first attracted to the rude designs on the rough stone walls
(otherwise decorated only with moss and fungi and loathsome reptiles) of
some nightmared painter, who has exhausted his dyspeptic fancy in
portraying hideous personifications of Hunger, Terror, Old Age, Despair,
Disease, and Death, tormented by furies and avengers, with hair of
snakes and whips of scorpions,--all beyond expression devilish. Floor it
has none, nor ceiling, for, with the Meinam so near, neither boards nor
plaster can keep out the ooze. Underfoot, a few planks, loosely laid,
are already as soft as the mud they are meant to cover; the damp has
rotted them through and through. Overhead, the roof is black, but not
with smoke; for here, where the close steam of the soggy earth and the
reeking walls is almost intolerable, no fire is needed in the coldest
season. The cell is lighted by one small window, so heavily grated on
the outer side as effectually to bar the ingress of fresh air. A pair of
wooden trestles, supporting rough boards, form a makeshift for a
bedstead, and a mat (which may be clean or dirty, the ticals of the
prisoner must settle that) is all the bed.
In such a cell, on such a couch, lay the concubine of a supreme king and
the mother of a royal prince of Siam, her feet covered with a silk
mantle, her head supported by a pillow of glazed leather, her face
turned to the clammy wall.
There was no door to grate upon her quivering nerves; a trap-door in the
street overhead had opened to the magic of silver, and I had descended a
flight of broken steps of stone. At her head, a little higher than the
pillow, were a vase of flowers, half faded, a pair of candles burning in
gold candlesticks, and a small image of the Buddha. She had brought her
god with her. Well, she needed his presence.
I could hardly keep my feet, for the footing was slippery and my brain
swam. Touching the silent, motionless form, in a voice scarcely audible
I pronounced her name. She turned with difficulty, and a slight sound of
clanking explained the covering on the feet. She was chained to one of
the trestles.
Sitting up, she made room for me beside her. No tears were in her eyes;
only the habitual sadness of her face was deepened. Here, truly, was a
perfect work of misery, meekness, and patience.
Astonished at seeing me, she imagined me capable of yet greater things,
and folding her hands in an attitude of supplication, implored me to
help her. The offence for which she was imprisoned was briefly this:--
She had been led to petition, through her son, [Footnote: A privilege
granted to all the concubines.] that an appointment held by her late
uncle, Phya Khien, might be bestowed on her elder brother, not knowing
that another noble had already been preferred to the post by his
Majesty.
Had she been guilty of the gravest crime, her punishment could not have
been more severe. It was plain that a stupid grudge was at the bottom of
this cruel business. The king, on reading the petition, presented by the
trembling lad on his knees, became furious, and, dashing it back into
the child's face, accused the mother of plotting to undermine his power,
saying he knew her to be at heart a rebel, who hated him and his dynasty
with all the rancor of her Peguan ancestors, the natural enemies of
Siam. Thus lashing himself into a rage of hypocritical patriotism, and
seeking to justify himself by condemning her, he sent one of his judges
to bring her to him. But before the myrmidon could go and come,
concluding to dispense with forms, he anticipated the result of that
mandate with another,--to chain and imprison her. No sooner was she
dragged to this deadly cell, than a third order was issued to flog her
till she confessed her treacherous plot; but the stripes were
administered so tenderly, [Footnote: In these cases the executioners are
women, who generally spare each other if they dare.] that the only
confession they extorted was a meek protestation that she was "his
meanest slave, and ready to give her life for his pleasure."
"Beat her on the mouth with a slipper for lying!" roared the royal
tiger; and they did, in the letter, if not in the spirit, of the brutal
sentence. She bore it meekly, hanging down her head. "I am degraded
forever!" she said to me.
When once the king was enraged, there was nothing to be done but to wait
in patience until the storm should exhaust itself by its own fury. But
it was horrible to witness such an abuse of power at the hands of one
who was the only source of justice in the land. It was a crime against
all humanity, the outrage of the strong upon the helpless. His madness
sometimes lasted a week; but weeks have their endings. Besides, he
really had a conscience, tough and shrunken as it was; and she had, what
was more to the purpose, a whole tribe of powerful connections.
As for myself, there was but one thing I could do; and that was to
intercede privately with the Kralahome. The same evening, immediately on
returning from my visit to the dungeon, I called on him; but when I
explained the object of my visit he rebuked me sharply for interfering
between his Majesty and his wives.
"She is my pupil," I replied. "But I have not interfered; I have only
come to you for justice. She did not know of the appointment until she
had sent in her petition; and to punish one woman for that which is
permitted and encouraged in another is gross injustice." Thereupon he
sent for his secretary, and having satisfied himself that the
appointment had not been published, was good enough to promise that he
would explain to his Majesty that "there had been delay in making known
to the Court the royal pleasure in this matter"; but he spoke with
indifference, as if thinking of something else.
I felt chilled and hurt as I left the premier's palace, and more anxious
than ever when I thought of the weary eyes of the lonely lad watching
for his mother's return; for no one dared tell him the truth. But, to do
the premier justice, he was more troubled than he would permit me to
discover at the mistake the poor woman had made; for there was good
stuff in the moral fabric of the man,--stern rectitude, and a judgment,
unlike the king's, not warped by passion. That very night [Footnote: All
consultations on matters of state and of court discipline are held in
the royal palace at night.] he repaired to the Grand Palace, and
explained the delay to the king, without appearing to be aware of the
concubine's punishment.
On Monday morning, when I came to school in the pavilion, I found, to my
great joy, that Hidden-Perfume had been liberated, and was at home again
with her child. The poor creature embraced me ardently, glorifying me
with grateful epithets from the extravagant vocabulary of her people;
and, taking an emerald ring from her finger, she put it upon mine,
saying, "By this you will remember your thankful friend." On the
following day she also sent me a small purse of gold thread netted, in
which were a few Siamese coins, and a scrap of paper inscribed with
cabalistic characters,--an infallible charm to preserve the wearer from
poverty and distress.
Among my pupils was a little girl about eight or nine years old, of
delicate frame, and with the low voice and subdued manner of one who had
already had experience of sorrow. She was not among those presented to
me at the opening of the school. Wanne Ratâna Kania was her name ("Sweet
Promise of my Hopes"), and very engaging and persuasive was she in her
patient, timid loveliness. Her mother, the Lady Khoon Chom Kioa, who had
once found favor with the king, had, at the time of my coming to the
palace, fallen into disgrace by reason of her gambling, in which she had
squandered all the patrimony of the little princess. This fact, instead
of inspiring the royal father with pity for his child, seemed to attract
to her all that was most cruel in his insane temper. The offence of the
mother had made the daughter offensive in his sight; and it was not
until long after the term of imprisonment of the degraded favorite had
expired that Wanne ventured to appear at a royal _levée_. The moment the
king caught sight of the little form, so piteously prostrated there, he
drove her rudely from his presence, taunting her with the delinquencies
of her mother with a coarseness that would have been cruel enough if she
had been responsible for them and a gainer by them, but against one of
her tender years, innocent toward both, and injured by both, it was
inconceivably atrocious.
On her first appearance at school she was so timid and wistful that I
felt constrained to notice and encourage her more than those whom I had
already with me. But I found this no easy part to play; for very soon
one of the court ladies in the confidence of the king took me quietly
aside and warned me to be less demonstrative in favor of the little
princess, saying, "Surely you would not bring trouble upon that wounded
lamb."
It was a sore trial to me to witness the oppression of one so
unoffending and so helpless. Yet our Wanne was neither thin nor pale.
There was a freshness in her childish beauty, and a bloom in the
transparent olive of her cheek, that were at times bewitching. She loved
her father, and in her visions of baby faith beheld him almost as a god.
It was true joy to her to fold her hands and bow before the chamber
where he slept. With that steadfast hopefulness of childhood which can
be deceived without being discouraged, she would say, "How glad he will
be when I can read!" and yet she had known nothing but despair.
Her memory was extraordinary; she delighted in all that was remarkable,
and with careful wisdom gathered up facts and precepts and saved them
for future use. She seemed to have built around her an invisible temple
of her own design, and to have illuminated it with the rushlight of her
childish love. Among the books she read to me, rendering it from English
into Siamese, was one called "Spring-time." On translating the line,
"Whom He loveth he chasteneth," she looked up in my face, and asked
anxiously: "Does thy God do that? Ah! lady, are _all_ the gods angry and
cruel? Has he no pity, even for those who love him? He must be like my
father; _he_ loves us, so he has to be _rye_ (cruel), that we may fear
evil and avoid it."
Meanwhile little Wanne learned to spell, read, and translate almost
intuitively; for there were novelty and hope to help the Buddhist child,
and love to help the English woman. The sad look left her face, her life
had found an interest; and very often, on _fête_ days, she was my only
pupil;--when suddenly an ominous cloud obscured the sky of her transient
gladness. Wanne was poor; and her gifts to me were of the riches of
poverty,--fruits and flowers. But she owned some female slaves; and one
among them, a woman of twenty-five perhaps (who had already made a place
for herself in my regard), seemed devotedly attached to her youthful
mistress, and not only attended her to the school day after day, but
shared her scholarly enthusiasm, even studied with her, sitting at her
feet by the table. Steadily the slave kept pace with the princess. All
that Wanne learned at school in the day was lovingly taught to Mai Noie
in the nursery at night; and it was not long before I found, to my
astonishment, that the slave read and translated as correctly as her
mistress.
Very delightful were the demonstrations of attachment interchanged
between these two. Mai Noie bore the child in her arms to and from the
school, fed her, humored her every whim, fanned her naps, bathed and
perfumed her every night, and then rocked her to sleep on her careful
bosom, as tenderly as she would have done for her own baby. And then it
was charming to watch the child's face kindle with love and comfort as
the sound of her friend's step approached.
Suddenly a change; the little princess came to school as usual, but a
strange woman attended her, and I saw no more of Mai Noie there. The
child grew so listless and wretched that I was forced to ask the cause
of her darling's absence; she burst into a passion of tears, but replied
not a word. Then I inquired of the stranger, and she answered in two
syllables,--_My ru_ ("I know not").
Shortly afterward, as I entered the school-room one day, I perceived
that something unusual was happening. I turned toward the princes' door,
and stood still, fairly holding my breath. There was the king, furious,
striding up and down. All the female judges of the palace were present,
and a crowd of mothers and royal children. On all the steps around,
innumerable slave-women, old and young, crouched and hid their faces.
But the object most conspicuous was little Wanne's mother, manacled, and
prostrate on the polished marble pavement. There, too, was my poor
little princess, her hands clasped helplessly, her eyes tearless but
downcast, palpitating, trembling, shivering. Sorrow and horror had
transformed the child.
As well as I could understand, where no one dared explain, the wretched
woman had been gambling again, and had even staked and lost her
daughter's slaves. At last I understood Wanne's silence when I asked her
where Mai Noie was. By some means--spies probably--the whole matter had
come to the king's ears, and his rage was wild, not because he loved the
child, but that he hated the mother.
Promptly the order was given to lash the woman; and two Amazons advanced
to execute it. The first stripe was delivered with savage skill; but
before the thong could descend again, the child sprang forward and flung
herself across the bare and quivering back of her mother.
_Ti chan, Tha Moom! [Footnote: Tha Mom or Moom, used by children in
addressing a royal father.] Poot-thoo ti chan, Tha Mom!_ ("Strike _me_,
my father! Pray, strike me, O my father!")
The pause of fear that followed was only broken by my boy, who, with a
convulsive cry, buried his face desperately in the folds of my skirt.
There indeed was a case for prayer, any prayer!--the prostrate woman,
the hesitating lash, the tearless anguish of the Siamese child, the
heart-rending cry of the English child, all those mothers with
grovelling brows, but hearts uplifted among the stars, on the wings of
the Angel of Prayer. Who could behold so many women crouching,
shuddering, stupefied, dismayed, in silence and darkness, animated,
enlightened only by the deep whispering heart of maternity, and not be
moved with mournful yearning?
The child's prayer was vain. As demons tremble in the presence of a god,
so the king comprehended that he had now to deal with a power of
weakness, pity, beauty, courage, and eloquence. "Strike _me_, O my
father!" His quick, clear sagacity measured instantly all the danger in
that challenge; and though his voice was thick and agitated (for,
monster as he was at that moment, he could not but shrink from striking
at every mother's heart at his feet), he nervously gave the word to
remove the child, and bind her. The united strength of several women was
not more than enough to loose the clasp of those loving arms from the
neck of an unworthy mother. The tender hands and feet were bound, and
the tender heart was broken. The lash descended then, unforbidden by any
cry.