by Mary Morris
“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* 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 favour 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 favourite 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 favour 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, humoured 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 littl
e 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 thing could descend again, the child sprang forward and flung herself across the bare and quivering back of her mother.
Ti chan, Tha Moom!* 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.
* Each of the ladies of the harem has her own exclusive domicile, within the inner walls of the palace.
* Marbles, played with the knee instead of the fingers.
* A privilege granted to all the concubines.
* In these cases the executioners are women, who generally spare each other if they dare.
* All consultations on matters of state and of court discipline are held in the royal palace at night.
* Tha Mom or Moom, used by children in addressing a royal father.
MARGARET FOUNTAINE
(1862–1940)
“Signorina, I would so much like to see your butterflies,” the ardent suitor says. Fountaine ranks as a resounding favorite among people who admire the lady travelers. In the lives of most women travelers, husbands and fathers played minor roles if they weren’t obstacles to overcome: Mary Kingsley never married and waited until her father died before she began traveling; Isabella Bird married late in life and (luckily for her wandering self) her husband died soon after; Anna Leonowens was widowed eight years after her marriage. But Margaret Fountaine was inspired by a love of men. In diaries that she began in 1878, her seventeenth year, Fountaine told of her travels to Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand in search of butterflies. And of the men she met along the way. For twenty-three years Fountaine wrote of her travels in this way, and then she met Khalil Neimy in Damascus. The two of them traveled together until he died in 1929. When Fountaine died she left instructions that her diaries not be opened until April 15, 1978, a hundred years after they were begun.
from LOVE AMONG THE BUTTERFLIES
When I arrived at Palermo, though it was scarcely more than 4 A.M. the sun was up, and had already left the mountains golden. Oh, that I were there now! I never spent one dull moment when I was at Palermo. I will not endure the loneliness I have known in the past ever again, and I was determined wherever I was to make friends with all who I met. My first step was to hunt up Signor Ragusa, a well-known Sicilian entomologist; he was the proprietor of the Grand Hotel des Palmes, so I lost no time in repairing thither. The information he gave me was most valuable, for M. Pherusa, the butterfly I most wished to find, was, I knew, like all butterflies of that genus, most local in its habits; it was therefore a grand point for me to hear the precise locality for it, at the foot of Monte Cuccio, about five miles from Palermo.
I would drive to Bocco di Falco, a straggling dirty village, full of hens and goats, and spend the long hours of those sweet summer days hunting the Pherusa, a wild, wind-blown creature who would often lead me a long and arduous chase over the loose stones and tangled herbage, to escape in the end, but they were so common in this one spot that to lose sight of one was soon to see another, so I always returned home with a crowded pocket box. Then I would spend my time setting them in my bedroom at the Hotel de France, till it was nearly dinner time, when I would go down, always trying to make myself agreeable to anyone I happened to be sitting next, probably to find myself the only woman at the table with some fifteen to twenty men.
So the long, happy, sunny days went by and I loved each one as it passed, though I will not say I altogether cared for the attention I attracted when I walked along the Corso in butterfly attire—net, knapsack and all complete. But all the same, every empty “carrozza” seemed to think I was sufficiently respectable, the sponge man never failed to solicit my custom, and the beggars seemed to consider me a person of means. Another time when I would be dressed to my best advantage, going along the same Corso for shopping or what not, I would wonder however I dared to make my appearance in butterfly attire among so many smartly dressed people.
A new epoch was beginning in my life which I attributed almost entirely to my having discovered a new and very becoming way of doing my hair! (A foolish reason, but Uncle Edward always used to say, the difference between a pretty woman and an ugly one was the way she did her hair.) The very first day I walked out (not, however, in butterfly attire) with this new fashion adopted, I was followed and finally joined by three Palermo youths, who afterwards on their own evidence I found belonged to the fastest set in the town. I spent the morning with them, and pleasantly enough too; we all went together to see the view from Santa Maria di Jesu, a walk some way out into the country, along dusty white roads, hot enough for anything. Then I and these boys (for they really were only boys, compared with the weight of years I carried on my shoulders!) sat down in a lemon garden, and drank lemon water, and ate the white skins of the lemons, a fourth having joined the party, an indescribably comical youth who evidently considered that he was my champion, and as I had no objection to having the flowers etc. carried for me, I graciously accepted his attentions.
He did not come the whole way back to Palermo, but with much importance explained that he was obliged to return to look after his peasants who, he said, would be lazy without his supervision. But before he went, he had persuaded me to say (rather against my better judgement) that I would go to the theatre that evening with him and his companions.
Now, there was staying in the hotel a tall Italian with a dark beard, who had shown me some little civilities, such as lending me his Baedeker. This man spoke English extremely well, and as I had rather suspected him of taking a slight interest in me, I resolved to relate to him at dinner my adventures of the morning and ask his opinion about the discretion of my going to the theatre. He listened with some interest, and only said: “Very kind of them.”
“So you advise me to go?” I asked.
“If you think you would care to go to the theatre this evening, yes, by all means, but will you not come out with me?”
“How can I, if I am going with them?” I innocently enquired. So it was left so, and I went up to my room not without some misgivings but knowing that
I had a head on my shoulders and ought, at my age, to be able to take care of myself. I had not been there long when a knock came at the door. “Avanti!” I said at once, thinking it was the waiter come to announce the arrival of my knights below, but only another knock came, so I opened the door.
Two figures were standing outside in the dim light in the passage. They neither of them spoke, so I stepped out, and having moved into a better light, soon recognised the comical youth, and one of his friends. They seemed slightly embarrassed at their own boldness, and I didn’t wonder at it. However, they recovered their composure and said they had come to inform me that tonight it was a “Riposo” at the theatre, but if I would like a walk they were at my disposition. It was a hot, dark summer’s night, and we walked along the Marina, down by the sea, and talked gaily enough. The comical youth said he did not wish me to think of him as “comico” but rather as “simpatico.” Of course, I soon saw the bent of his inclinations, and was wondering how I should parry the blow, when it came in this wise: “Signorina, a che ora va a’ letto?” (What time do you go to bed?) I replied early, adding, and up early in the morning. This voluntary, additional information put him off his stroke for a moment, but only for a moment. I knew an improper proposition was coming, and soon enough out it came. “Signorina, when you go to bed, do you go to sleep quickly?” I replied that I always did go to sleep very quickly and pretended not to understand his meaning.
