Part 7 (2/2)
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 s.p.a.ce, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 famis.h.i.+ng 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, h.e.l.l!
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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 G.o.d 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-sh.e.l.l on an ocean; to its helpless speck of experience all horrors are possible.
Its pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sistance 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 circ.u.mstance for my sad, lonely friend, and I returned home without my lesson for that day.
Next morning, pa.s.sing the house again, I saw the lad sitting in the same att.i.tude 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 Talap, 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 _Sasanah Thai_, ”The Religion of the Free”; while the ladies sat on velvet cus.h.i.+ons 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 wors.h.i.+ppers bowing, I pa.s.sed a young mother with a sleeping babe, some slave-girls playing at _sabah_ [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 makes.h.i.+ft 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.
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