Читать книгу The Lacquer Lady - Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse - Страница 15

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THE life at the Golden Palace absorbed Fanny thenceforward. She was not taken to live within the flame and gold enclosure, but hardly a day passed that she did not visit them, as the bee visits the honey-laden blossom.

The Middle Princess had taken an aggressive liking to Fanny. Exclaiming that she loved her at first sight, she proceeded to talk to her at great length day after day about herself, Supaya-lat. This was a new experience for Fanny, who was used to being the bestower and not the receiver of confidences. Yet the adaptability of her mind, as supple as her slight body, accommodated itself with ease to this new order of things. For was it not a Princess who asked of her this change? And oddly enough the rôle of confidante gave to Fanny a feeling of superiority. She realised, with that unfailing instinct of hers, which was her only talent, that it is weakness which has to talk, and that it is strength which can listen, and listen without comparative references to self. For Fanny had never been, in the true sense of the word, a confider. She had talked about herself, she had been the brilliant and attractive person who held the centre of the stage, but she had never given a true confidence in her life. Her stories had been but stories, a fine spun-glass fabric woven of her wishes, and not actual truths. Supaya-lat was inferior, or superior—according to the point of view—to Fanny in this matter. She did not see herself as an enchanting little figure in the midst of a set scene, she felt and thought with an astonishing naïveté, violence and actuality, which Fanny could not approach.

Boring as it had been to her, Brighton had yet taught Fanny that there were different points of view in the world and different civilisations, but behind that retreating Alompra forehead, Supaya-lat had room for only one idea. And that idea was not so much the importance, the greatness and the uniqueness of the Kingdom of Ava, as the conviction that there really did not exist anything outside it. She was as completely innocent of the imaginative conception of other strange human beings, let alone civilisations, as a rabbit in its burrow would have been. She was a person of immense importance, and she knew it. She and her two sisters had been declared Tabindaing, which meant that they were of the royal blood, pure and uncontaminated, and were fit for marriage with whatever king inherited the throne. Who that king might be lay on the lap of the gods, or in the hand of Mindoon, or more likely still in the hands of the Palace plotters, but whosoever he might be, the Great, the Middle and the Little Supayas had a claim on him as his predestined wives.

Supaya-lat, though the germs of ambition were already beginning to flourish within her, had not formulated her desires very expressly as yet. She had determined some day to be Queen, and had but a small opinion of her older and plainer sister, who was really only fit to be a nun, known as the Supaya-gyi or Great Supaya; and an even smaller opinion of her meek, good-natured youngest sister, Supaya-gale, or Little Supaya; while her half-sister, the plain, uncanny Salin Princess, worried her not at all, in spite of being King Mindoon’s favourite daughter. Supaya-lat felt convinced that if lack of priority prevented her being the Chief Queen, she would yet contrive to be the most important. After all, was not her mother the Centre Queen, the most important person in the Palace, while the Chief Queen was of no account?

As to Fanny, it was sufficient for her, for the time being, that she had gained the Golden Palace Friendship. Perhaps later on she might become a Maid of Honour, now it was enough for her that she was the spoiled child, the petted playmate, the only kalā on terms of light-hearted intimacy, who went as a matter of course three times a week to the women’s part of the Palace.

Summer came and burned its relentless way onwards, but while Fanny mocked at its red-hot pressure, Agatha lost the apple-red that was wont to lie on her high cheek-bones, and became wan and listless under her triple roof. Fanny spent the days playing in the Southern Gardens amongst the Queens and Princesses in a temporary palace erected against the heat, and there sometimes would come King Mindoon himself, that large, grave, kindly man, with his upward-slanting eyes and the thin, black, down-curving moustache that lay across the pallor of his face like a strung bow. Surrounded by his Queens and his many children, by the giggling, bright-hued little Maids of Honour, and the mischievous pages, the King threw off the grave and weighty air which he assumed for audiences, and revealed the child that lies so close beneath the skin of most men and of every Oriental.

The King’s idea of a joke was as simple as most of the ideas obtaining at the Palace. Great merriment was excited one day by the discovery of a dozen or more turtles crawling about at the edge of one of the canals in the Water Gardens; all the little brightly-coloured ladies ran forward with little screams of pleasure, and started looking for eggs, which they discovered, in satisfactorily large quantities, buried just beneath the sandy soil. There was much discussion as to how the turtles could have found their way into the garden, and the turtles’ eggs were cooked and eaten at that day’s picnic. Then Mindoon explained that he had caused the turtles to be brought to the city and the eggs to be buried, ready for their discovery by the ladies. Everyone was very gay and happy over this, the most harmless of all Palace plots.

Fanny and Julie Delange were not the only foreigners who passed freely in and out of the Palace. Indeed, two kalās lived in the Palace itself and were allowed freedom to come and go—the King’s Minister of Forests, a German called Dr. Tarfels; and an old Manipuri Brahmin, Raj Singh, who was astrologer and horoscopist at the Court. The fat German doctor, who had left a not too flourishing practice in Rangoon for the greater emoluments which he felt he could pick up at the Court, did not interest Fanny; but old Raj Singh, who cast her horoscope for her, impressed her profoundly. Not that he told her anything very definite, but there was much talk of important happenings, Fanny herself was seen in a very lofty position, a long life was promised to her, though the old Brahmin refused to tell her of her latter years, but this did not worry Fanny. A high position in the immediate future was too exciting for that. She felt that Raj Singh was really telling her the truth, not making up pretty fairy stories as he did for the little ladies of the Court. It was a strangely superficial and simple life that was led in the women’s quarters of the Golden Palace—little jokes of a personal character, little ripples of laughter, little jealousies, little heart-burnings and griefs went to make up the days.

And Fanny accepted this gay and careless living, this butterfly fluttering over the surface of things, with rapture. For although her desires and her passions, with which she had as yet only trifled ever so slightly, were strong enough, her mind was of the slightest. She knew that there was something that she wanted, something that she was following in this airy maze, but as yet her youth made her content with the brightness of the passing moments.

These moments lost no whit of their brightness from Fanny’s description of them to Agatha, on those rare occasions when Fanny passed from the glittering play-hours at the Palace, to spend a quieter and less luxurious afternoon at the Mission House. There, in the hot, dark room where the heavy air was hardly disturbed by the punkahs, lazily pulled by Indians who were apt to fall asleep, Agatha would be sitting, pale and peeked and disapproving. Poor Agatha indeed found life as a lady missionary far less romantic than she had anticipated. Her father, excellent man, with a thwarted and delicate imagination that might have flowered into beautiful words and ideas had his upbringing and the mode of life which he had imposed upon himself not inhibited such a thing, was irritable to live with, fussy over trifles and occasionally afflicted with violent headaches. Agatha, laboriously learning Burmese, was still unable to instruct the native children except in the use of the needle, a matter at which she had never been very adept herself. Her correspondence with the girls at Brighton, which had begun in such a flourishing manner, had died. What indeed was there to tell except Fanny’s triumphs? Mr. Protheroe had been sent for to Rangoon, the headquarters of the S.P.G., and Agatha’s maiden fancies, that had begun to endow him, moustacheless as he was, with the glamour of Sir Galahad, languished and died. The French kept themselves to themselves, the Greeks nobody wished to know, of English there were none save a few adventurers who would have been laid by the heels for debt had they remained in Lower Burma, and who fled to Mandalay to see whether they could not manage to fleece the innocent Buddhist in his own fastnesses. The nuns of St. Joseph’s were always friendly and pleasant, but Agatha resented the fact that they did not consider her a Catholic and treated her with pitying benevolence. Though Fanny irritated her, she could not but feel pleasure at her gay entry, that high fluting voice, that fluttering of fresh muslins and ribbons and of explanatory hands that meant Fanny telling of her latest adventures.

“How can you care about it, Fanny?” said Agatha, “playing about like that all day like a lot of lower-form children, worse, kindergarten children! Don’t you ever want to read a book, a serious book, I mean?”

“No, indeed,” cried Fanny. “I had enough of that at Miss Patterson’s, thank you! Why should I want to read? Oh, Agatha, we had such fun yesterday, the Princess and me. She took me out in a little boat in the Southern Garden, and fancy, I nearly upset the boat! Wouldn’t it have been dreadful if I had? You can’t think how lovely the lotuses were, just masses of them, like a pink carpet, and I screamed out ‘Oh!’ just like that, and leaned out to pick them, and the boat nearly upset, only the Princess seized hold of the root of a tree and prevented it. My, she was angry for a moment, Agatha! I was frightened. She stared at me with her big eyes, and they looked all cold and different somehow, and she said: ‘Do you know that if I were drowned my father would kill you? You would be beaten on the throat with a club till you were dead, then you would be thrown into the Irrawaddy.’ ”

“What a dreadful girl!” said Agatha.

“Oh, I didn’t mind, really,” said Fanny, tossing her head.

“I said, ‘Oh, Teik Supaya, I am not afraid of the King killing me, because if the boat had upset we should both have been drowned, and he wouldn’t have been able to.’ Then, what do you think? She burst out laughing and said: ‘You’re a very smart girl, and I love you and you shall always come and play with me.’ And that evening she gave me some earrings, but I can’t wear them, they’re the real big amber ones, as big as cigars, but I like having them. They’re the last things she’s got that are real, as the Queen found she pawned all her jewellery to have money, so she’s taken it all away and only gives her imitation things.”

“Doesn’t she mind very much? It’s such an awful disgrace!” asked Agatha, interested in spite of herself.

“Not a bit, she doesn’t care about wearing jewellery anyway. She only likes it so that she can get the money to spend. She gets all sorts of things done for her when she has money. What do you think she’s done now? She’s bribed one of the Maids of Honour to get a whole boy’s outfit from one of her brothers, and she’s going to dress up as a boy.”

“Why?” said Agatha.

“I don’t quite know why, she hasn’t told me, but I think”—Fanny lowered her voice anxiously—“I think she means to go over into the Northern Gardens and see one of the Princes, but you mustn’t breathe a word. Of course, it’s a dreadful thing to do. I don’t know what would happen if it were found out.”

Agatha was really impressed at last, almost too impressed to be shocked. After all, Supaya-lat was very young and had no notion, no idea save that of a childish prank.... In Agatha’s mind the whole thing savoured rather of school-days at Miss Patterson’s and of innocent little affairs with the boys from Dr. Hargreave’s school, when the whole excitement had consisted in passing surreptitious notes from one crocodile to another.

That evening when Fanny arrived home she found her mother very important with news from the Palace, having just returned from a visit to the Centre Queen’s apartments, Supaya-lat, dressed as a boy, had managed to get into the Northern Gardens in search of one of her half-brothers, Thahgaya, for whom, at the moment, she was suffering the sentimental throes of first love.

“Only fancy, Fanny,” said Mrs. Moroni, awestruck and speaking English for fear of listening servants. “She could not find him and she met the Thibaw Prince, you know, the one who is called the poongyi’s son——” Mrs. Moroni whispered the scandalous words—“his mother is the Shan Princess who was disgraced. Well, she met him and asked where the Thahgaya Prince was, and because he didn’t answer at once, for he took a minute or two to recognise her, she hit his head with her hand.”

“What did he do?” asked Fanny, interested.

“Do? Why, nothing. He is of lesser birth-rank than the Princess. He pointed with his finger, so, and said, ‘He’s in there.’ But when she went in to look for Thahgaya, he was non est, so she had to come away again and back to the Southern Garden!”

“Well, there wasn’t any harm done,” said Fanny practically, “how did anyone find out? Did the Thibaw Prince tell about it?”

“Gracious, no!” cried Mrs. Moroni, shocked. “No, but one of the Queen’s sycophants—you know what they’re like, all over the Palace—watched and found out. Oh, my, there is trouble! Supaya-lat is shut up in her room, and the Queen is going to the King about her. It is indeed a disgraceful thing for a young girl to have done. Mark my words, Fanny, that girl will land them all in trouble yet. Her mother’s heart is sorrowing for her behaviour.”

All agog, Fanny went to the Palace next day, but Supaya-lat was still shut in her room, and Fanny was only the wiser by the gossip of the excited Maids of Honour. The Queen had suggested to the King that Supaya-lat had better be married as soon as possible, as she caused too much anxiety as she was.

“Perhaps they will marry her to Thahgaya,” suggested Fanny. But this was met with a chorus of shocked disapproval.

“No, no, how could that be? He’s a Prince of the pure blood, and she has disgraced herself. No, they say now that she will be married to Prince Thibaw, the one that she hit on the head.”

Mrs. Moroni shook her head when Fanny repeated this conversation.

“The Queen would never marry one of her daughters to Prince Thibaw. He is the least of all the King’s sons, his mother is the Shan woman and disgraced. No, no. Fanny, you will see that that will not happen.”

“The Queen might have some reason for doing it,” remarked Fanny.

“What reason could she have?” demanded Mrs. Moroni. “Supaya-lat is Tabindaing. She could wait to marry the next King.”

Fanny shrugged her shoulders at her mother’s simplicity.

“And the next King, who do you think he will be?”

“That no one can tell.”

“Besides, they say the Thibaw Prince is studying very hard and well at the Monastery, and if he passes his examination well, the King will be pleased with him.”

“He will never be King all the same,” said Mrs. Moroni, “and the Queen wishes her daughters to marry a king. I tell you I know, Fanny, I have known her for years.”

“Well, we shall see,” said Fanny. “But I’d like Supaya-lat to be Queen, of course.”

Supaya-lat was released from confinement, though still under severe supervision. She had declared that nothing would induce her to marry the son of the Shan woman, and the Centre Queen ceased to press the matter. Supaya-lat was, after the Salin Princess, Mindoon’s favourite daughter, and he was incapable of harshness towards her. Prince Thibaw disappeared into the Golden Monastery to study for his great examination.

The person who came worst out of the whole affair was the innocent Fanny. Mindoon Min took it into his head that it must have been the free and easy manners of the West, as inculcated by Fanny, that had led Supaya-lat to the performance of her mad prank, and, taking advantage of the rain, which provided a good excuse, he bade the Alè Nammadaw Queen, Sinbyew-mashin, intimate to Fanny that it was too difficult for her to continue her visits to the Palace. The Alè Nammadaw Queen, who, like her daughter, had taken a liking to Fanny, and, more than her daughter, was able to appraise the use that the clever little Fanny might be to her as a link with the outside world, was furious, but thought it better for the time being to acquiesce. So those delightful visits to the Palace ceased, and the gay hours that had hovered, drunken of honey, and slept with folded pinions within the red walls and among the enclosed gardens, fell, broken-plumed, into the dead past. Fanny, desolate in the Moroni bungalow, listening to the thunder of the descending skies upon the iron roof, had to content herself with surreptitious notes that occasionally arrived from Supaya-lat.

And then, in October, news came flying round the kalā town that the Nammadaw, the Chief Queen, was very ill. King Mindoon, who was devoted to her, childless as she was, was frantic with alarm. When physicians, even the doctor from the British Residency, failed to allay the fever, he set free sixty-nine prisoners from the gaol, one for every year of the Queen’s life, in the hopes that this pious act would be of avail to the patient. The prisoners went off rejoicing, especially five dacoits who had been under sentence of death, but the sentence on the Queen was not lifted, and in November she died.

There was true mourning throughout the city, for King Mindoon had often sought her advice, and it had always been given on the side of charity and mercy. The King mourned inconsolably in the Palace, and Fanny received news that Sinbyew-mashin was now going to try and become Chief Queen. Fanny’s heart bounded up—that would mean her own recall to the Palace. But apparently all the other Queens petitioned the King with tears in their eyes, telling him that if the violent-tempered and arrogant Sinbyew-mashin became Chief Queen their lives would be unbearable, and Mindoon promised them that no one should take the vacant place of the Nammadaw. So Fanny continued to languish in the kalā town.

One evening, Captain Bagshaw, big, red, clumsy and beaming, came to call. Fanny, who had forgotten all about him, greeted him with demure enthusiasm. The booming tones of his voice, as he sat in a rocking-chair in the Moroni’s drawing-room, made her forget the depressing evenings when the rain had beaten on the roof. He brought with him a little offering which he presented with clumsy good-humour—twelve dear little handkerchiefs embroidered by the nuns in Rangoon. Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure. She would send six to Supaya-lat—it was time she gave the Princess a present—and would keep six for herself. She would take one next time she went to Agatha’s.