Читать книгу The Lacquer Lady - Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse - Страница 11

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THE days that followed were a disappointment to Fanny. She was not, and never had been, accustomed to luxury; the Brighton school, apart from the much ornamented parlour in which parents were received, had been plain and uncomfortable enough, but even so the standard set had been higher than that obtaining in the Moroni household. The bungalows for kalās in Mandalay were simple wooden buildings standing in compounds of trodden earth, where tamarinds and mangoes might grow, but where nothing more solid than a frail fence gave any privacy or sense of a garden, for no house was allowed to be so enclosed that it might be capable of being fortified.

The roads, though well designed in that they were straightly laid out at right angles to each other, and shaded with trees, were mere rough tracks pitted with great holes, and the bullock-carts that were the only means of conveyance were the most painful affairs, with rude wheels often worn quite out of the round, and axles that screamed and wailed for lack of oil. All day long this wailing of the bullock-carts rose and fell till the ear grew so accustomed to the noise that the nights seemed mere empty spaces to echo the dreadful intermittent barking of the wretched pi-dogs. Fanny was young and healthy, her nerves were excellent, but the sordidness of her surroundings depressed her. Her mother, in that perpetual wrapper and bentwood rocking chair. The messy meals of curry and rice. The flies that buzzed everywhere. The Indian servant, a Madrassee, whose black face never lightened from its gloom, so different from the cheerful bumptiousness of the Burman who acted as bullock-driver. Yet perhaps, observed Moroni, in his usual dry manner, a Madrassee was less likely to be a spy in the pay of the Palace than a Burman. In no household were the kalās able to rid themselves of that ever-present dread ... Foreigners, above all the English, who had already, in the second Burmese war, wrested the rich Pegu province from Pagan Min, Mindoon’s deposed brother, were suspect at the Court of Ava, although they were welcomed also for what they could bring of Western knowledge and arts. Moroni was an Italian, and Mindoon was for ever playing off the Italians against the French, and Moroni was at the moment high in favour, but his wife was half-English and his daughter had been sent to England for her education. Besides, favour ran oddly at the Palace, he who was exalted to-day might be cast down to-morrow. Mindoon was not the bloodthirsty maniac that his brother Pagan Min and his father, Tharawaddy, had been, but he was of the unstable race of Alompra, quick-tempered for all his genuine piety and kindliness. The foreigners who came to Mandalay did so at their own risk, even when, like Delange and Moroni, they had come at the invitation of the King. An atmosphere of intrigue was all very well, Fanny felt her own mettle quite equal to that, but it must be amidst the traffic of the Palace, not in the straggling wastes of the town-without-the-walls.

On the third day of her stay Moroni brought back a note from the Palace for his daughter, who fell upon it with avidity. Her father watched her with his amused look that could not be called a smile and that always made Fanny feel faintly uneasy.

“It’s only from Mademoiselle. From Julie Delange,” he observed dryly.

Fanny felt a little pang of disappointment, but kept the bright excited look upon her face without faltering.

“From Mademoiselle Delange! How nice! Is she young, Papa?”

“Very old. Quite thirty!”

“Oh, dear! Still ...” and she opened the note. “She invites me to come and take coffee with her this afternoon, Papa.”

“Shall you care to go? They live very quietly, you know, she and her father. Just a little French ménage.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Can I take Agatha?”

“Better not. The French keep very much to their own people everywhere. And the Delanges are Catholics. They know the priest and the nuns from St. Joseph’s. The great Bishop Bigandet himself has stayed with them. They have Burmese friends, too. Although they live without the walls they are in great favour at the Palace.”

“Oh, of course I won’t take Agatha. She’d asked me to go round to tea to-day. I shall send a note to say I have an engagement.”

And Fanny went dancing off, happy for the first time since she had arrived in Upper Burma.

It was impossible not to feel the charm of the Delange house after the bungalow. It was a brick building, cream-washed, built round a courtyard, with green shutters, and might have been transported straight from southern France. A vine grew over the walls, throwing upon them a delicate tracery of blue; cocks and hens walked in and out of the long, low living-room. On a table covered with a checked cloth of white and yellow there was a coffee service of Sèvres ware and plates of pastries. Two cobwebby bottles of wine stood beside a dish of oranges. The evening sun shone in on all these pleasant things, and found bubbles and splinters of light on rounded surfaces and sharp edges. Against the whitewashed walls hung brightly-coloured prints of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of the Empress Eugénie at the height of her glory at Compiègne, and of the Stabat Mater, her breast transfixed with a perfect galaxy of swords. A photograph of the saintly Bishop Bigandet, the great Buddhist scholar and Catholic missionary, was upon a side table. In the middle of the room Julie Delange stood to receive her guests.

She was not pretty, was Fanny’s first thought, but she was very elegant. She had had small-pox, and her colourless skin was slightly thickened and the outline of her fine features a little blurred. Her eyes, soft and brown, looked weak, and she kept her lids screwed up as though to see better. She had a lovely smile, showing small even teeth, and she held herself erect save for a slight poking-forward of her head, which added to the impression she gave of peering. Her simple dress of fine grey silk woven by herself was beautifully cut and fitted her slender figure perfectly. Fanny felt suddenly gaudy in her frills and flounces of pink muslin.

Julie Delange was an important person in her quiet way in the strange cities both within and without the walls. Outspoken, with a flashing temper, yet supple and secretive when she chose ... there were people who said that you never really knew Julie. She had the strength that comes of being able to eliminate oneself entirely from the conversation save as a listener; she was fearless but respectful in her dealings with the incalculable royalties, and she had never married, saying that she had no right to do so because of the perpetual menace of blindness that she felt creeping ever nearer. So much had Moroni observed to Fanny, talking to himself rather than to her after his wont, as though he did not expect her to follow any subtleties of his thought. He had lived long with his wife. Fanny felt a little thrill of gratification when her quicker comprehension drew a more personal regard from his eyes.

Julie welcomed Fanny kindly, holding her hand between her own soft palms for a moment, when she introduced her to Delange, a white-haired, stout little Frenchman from the Midi. Two Sisters from St. Joseph’s were there, Sœur Thérèse, the Superior, and Sœur Sophie. They talked among themselves, paying little attention to Fanny, and she listened eagerly, although she could not always follow their French, for all of their talk was of the Palace, of the illness of the Chief Queen; and of the Alè Nammadaw, or Centre Queen, Sinbyew-mashin—that, Fanny knew, was the Queen who befriended her mother—of her three daughters, the Big Princess, the Middle Princess and the Little Princess.

“Sinbyew-mashin will be Chief Queen yet,” observed Julie. “There is no manner of doubt about it.”

“Ah, and then she will start marrying off the Princesses,” said Sœur Thérèse; “Sinbyew-mashin frightens me sometimes. She can be so gracious—only yesterday she gave me a ruby ring for my poor—and then next time I may sit for hours and word will come the Queen is not seeing anyone that day. She is a cruel woman, I saw her a few days ago in a rage with a Maid of Honour, she tore her hair down and beat her face with a slipper.”

“She will do a great deal worse than that if she gets the chance,” said Delange, handing the little cups of coffee that his daughter had poured out. “Heaven send that the King has a long life. After him ... !” And he gesticulated with the tray in a manner that drew a reproof from Julie.

“Who will be King after him?” asked Fanny innocently.

The others looked at each other.

“My child,” said Moroni, “that is not a question we ask here in Mandalay. Not aloud, that is. No one asks themselves anything else in private. Who indeed? It’s not a case of the eldest son as it is in Europe, the King can choose whom he pleases, and he has many sons.”

“And many daughters,” said Delange. “Since the King must marry his sister, that is of importance too.”

Fanny, who had been too young when she left Burma to have assimilated this fact, was shocked. Moroni smiled.

“They only follow the custom of the greatest civilisation in the world. The Egyptian rulers did the same thing. Whether it’s a good plan considering the madness in the Alompra dynasty ...”

“The Salin Princess is the King’s favourite,” said Sœur Thérèse, “he believes in his heathen fashion that she is the re-incarnation of his mother. They say that when she was taken into the room of the King’s mother, which has been kept sealed ever since her death, she was able to tell them where everything was kept, where the silk dresses were, and what jewels were in the jewel-box. Since then the King has been certain it is the voice of his mother speaking.”

“She’s a strange little thing,” said Julie, “so grave and quiet. But it’s certain that whoever is King afterwards, she is to be Queen.”

Mrs. Moroni, who had maintained her customary placid silence hitherto, and had occupied herself in disposing of a great many little cakes, now broke in with unusual finality.

“If Sinbyew-mashin becomes Chief Queen, then the little Salin Princess will never be a Queen. It is the daughters of Sinbyew-mashin that will be Queens, perhaps all of them. You do not know the Alè Nammadaw Queen as I do. People will have to do as she chooses if she outlives the King, I know.”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said Delange nervously, for Mrs. Moroni had spoken in Burmese. “Julie, perhaps Mademoiselle Moroni would like to look at some of your silks, eh?”

While Fanny was thus engaged, the nuns took their departure and a new visitor arrived. He was introduced as Monsieur d’Avera, and Fanny felt at once that, elderly though he was, he was much better worth her attention than Monsieur Delange. This was no little bourgeois, but a French aristocrat, and even his shortness and excessive stoutness did not detract from his dignity. His grey imperial was neatly trimmed, a red ribbon was in his buttonhole, his manner as he bowed over her hand made her feel she was already at Court. No one with any knowledge of the world would have mistaken M. d’Avera for anything than the finest type of French gentleman if he had met him in the middle of the desert, and that even if, as at the present moment, he carried under one arm a couple of bottles wrapped in old newspaper.

Was it imagination or did Fanny see the tiniest little glance of dismay pass between Julie and her father? M. d’Avera, with a beaming smile, laid the bottles on the table. “A little present, Mademoiselle Julie,” he announced, “from my own vineyard.”

A resigned look appeared upon the faces of father and daughter, but it was only for a moment. They thanked him warmly and with every appearance of sincerity. The three men began almost insensibly, despite their courteous manners, to talk amongst themselves. M. d’Avera had had a mail from France.

“It is my belief, my friend,” remarked M. d’Avera, who had by now removed the cork from one of his bottles, and filled from it several glasses that Julie had brought him with an expression even more inscrutable than usual upon her pale countenance; “that the Assembly is soon going to break up. What is this?—the beginning of February. Soon, you see, we shall hear of trouble. Ah, if only the Legitimists and Orleanists could have settled their differences, we should have had a king on the throne of France by now.”

“A king!” said Moroni, in his dry voice charged with scorn, “the Comte de Chambord! A man with a mind as narrow as his nose. I can’t believe that even your MacMahon would support him, or the Comte de Paris either.”

“You must not forget, Monsieur,” replied d’Avera rather stiffly, “that MacMahon, although like myself, to serve France he fought under the Empire, is a Royalist; and that the hope of all of us, when he was made President, was that he would be able to hold France together until we could present a king. He is a man of strict honour and will endeavour, I feel certain, to continue the policy with which he has been entrusted.”

“He will continue it to the best of his ability,” remarked M. Delange, “and, after all, our new constitution, our famous constitution of only last year combines the Republic and the Monarchy and the Empire. Napoleon’s administrative system, republican principles and a constitutional ruler subject to the deputies, will be the result of it all. It is already the result. What does it matter what you call your figurehead, king, emperor, or president? It is the constitution that matters.”

“No, no, my friend,” said d’Avera, “we,” and he tapped himself lightly on the breast, “in France have been planning a constitutional government, but it was to be a monarchy like that of England and Belgium.”

“Bah!” grumbled Moroni, “you might as well frankly adopt the Austrian ideal: temporal power, absolute monarchy and the domination of the clergy. You succeed in nothing because your factions all work against each other. When we made United Italy we all pulled together, Royalists, and Republicans, Piedmontese, and all.”

“Yes, and we helped you,” remarked d’Avera, “don’t forget that. I agree with Delange that the new constitution may solve everything. I regret, naturally, the passing of things that I and my ancestors have fought for, but MacMahon and the Duc de Broglie have at least the right principles. They are not like that wretch Gambetta.”

“In Gambetta is the only hope for France in the long run,” said Moroni.

“Permit me to disagree with you. He gives himself all the airs of a king without being one. We should at least have the advantages of a king if we have to have the disadvantages. Pomp and colour, everything that gives beauty to life, will soon be gone, for there will be no more kings or emperors in France.”

“And a good thing too,” grunted Delange, “what do they ever do but bring about wars?”

“Republics have been known to shed blood,” observed d’Avera dryly, “and there was always the Commune.... But at least, my friend, as an honest tradesman you must have admired the Second Empire for its prosperity.”

Delange made a gesture of blowing something away from between a snapped thumb and finger.

“Bah, the pasteboard prosperity, shattered by impossible dreams of grandeur abroad and squabbles of politicians at home. Maximilian in Mexico and the Spanish woman in the Tuileries—these two made an end of the tinsel. That’s what the prosperity of your Second Empire was—tinsel.”

“Very like the prosperity here,” observed d’Avera. “Perhaps that is why I am happier here than I should be at home. We have to come to the East for the pomp of courts nowadays. But my dear Delange, M. Moroni, you are not drinking your wine,” and the old gentleman lifted up his own glass, and with a bow towards the ladies, emptied it at one essay. His friends bowed towards him, but only sipped their wine.

Fanny thought all this sort of talk extremely dull, and she was glad when Mr. Moroni made his farewells and took his family home. He laughed a little to himself as they picked their way gradually down the uneven road. It was Sky-shutting-in time and they wished to get home before Brothers-would-not-know-each-other time descended with its attendant dangers upon the kalā town.

“Why do you laugh, Papa?” asked Fanny, stumbling along to keep up with her father, and clasping both her little hands round his arm.

“I was only thinking,” he told her, “of M. d’Avera. He is the finest and most honest man in Mandalay, with the exception of M. Delange. We have all quarrelled together for some years now, but, oh! saints in heaven, that dreadful wine of his!”

“What’s the matter with it, Papa?”

“He makes it himself,” groaned Mr. Moroni, “from his own vines. The last bottle he gave me I used instead of vinegar in the salad.”

“They all seem to talk a lot of politics,” observed Fanny. “I shouldn’t have thought, Papa, that it mattered out here—what happens in France, I mean.”

It was almost dark, but she could see her father’s fine, quiet smile to which she was becoming accustomed, although it always made her faintly uneasy.

“It is what happens in France and perhaps in Italy, or even in Germany, that will determine what happens in Mandalay,” said Mr. Moroni.

Fanny shook off such tiresome predictions. She was more interested and amused in the little story about M. d’Avera’s wine than she was in the fate of European cabinets. She had met a lot of people; she had observed polite admiration in M. d’Avera’s elderly but gallant eye. She went to bed happier than she had been hitherto.