Читать книгу The Lacquer Lady - Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse - Страница 6

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THE Crocodile walked, as sedately as the blustering wind permitted, along the parade. A dark reptile, sharply articulated, it crawled along the strip of asphalt that separated the pearly wind-blown sky and pallid sea from the greys and duns of the town. To closer view it was plain that the reptile was divided into living sections; two and two the girls struggled along, be-ribboned sailor hats bent forward, brown kid-gloved hands clutching at the rims; heavily-swathed and many looped dresses of blue serge blown against those moving pillars of flesh and bone that were never called legs, but referred to as lower limbs.

Two and two, as alike to a casual and distant glance, as toy soldiers out of a box, all were sharing the same physical sensations of stinging eyelids, swaddled bodies, a slight emptiness of stomach, and the coolness of the wind that blew upon salty lips and made the tongue taste again and again of that sharp little flavour.

A nearer glance, and the toy soldiers could be seen to differ each from each, though a certain unmistakably British look would have protected them—with one exception—from the supposition that they could belong to any other nation. Round faces, pointed faces, blobby faces, dark girls, fair girls, clumsy or graceful girls, all bore the stamp of nationality, so hard to analyse, so impossible to mistake. Only one girl, about the middle of the crocodile, walking with a high-boned British creature whose bright blue eyes of a fierce purity made her almost beautiful, showed traces of strange origins, and that was not so much in her colouring—her hair was no blacker than that of a Highland girl who followed after—as in the slant of her dark liquid eyes, the slight flattening of the nose—not a negroid but rather an Egyptian flattening, purely straight in profile—and in something almost inhuman in the fine bird-like lightness and delicacy of the bones of her face and of her whole frame. Yet even she, to casual glance, held only a fugitive strangeness, no sooner caught than merged in the blue serge undulating length of the monster. For though, at close range, the girls could be seen as recognisable individuals, their alikeness still seemed stronger than any difference ... and yet, beneath each stiff sailor hat was that sharp point of consciousness which is I, that in every one of them would persist inescapably for a lifetime.... And with, yet beyond, the general shared sensations of the moment, there went on, behind the different faces, the knowledge of that I myself who informed each one. Each one was conscious, within the varying degree of her capacity for awareness, of the same physical sensations.... I feel the wind and the heavy clothing and emptiness, my nose is cold, how good tea will be, even the thick chunks of bread and butter old Patterson gives us, and perhaps there will be potted meat, Lazenby’s, I hope. And the ringletted, pretty, rather chinless Maude: Perhaps I shall get a few minutes’ talk with Miss Simpson .... I can think of some excuse ... I’d rather own up to something I haven’t done—I can invent something—so that she scolds me, than not talk to her at all. It’s rather thrilling being scolded by Miss Simpson, it makes me go sort of queer and trembly. ... I wonder if Milly will help me with my prep. sums if I help her with her history and English? ... And Milly: I wonder if Maude will help me with my history and English if I do her sums for her? She will if only she’s not too taken up with Miss Simpson ... how anyone can rave on a music mistress! Anyway, let’s hope there’ll be something extra for tea.

Thus the I myself that was Maude and the I myself that was Milly, while that of Ellen said, through her present physical sensations and her preoccupation with tea, something slightly different.... And perhaps cake, but anyway I do hope I get a few minutes at “Under Two Flags” afterwards. I can carry it to the lavatory in the folds of my polonaise and read it till there’ve been two rattlings at the door-handle, it’s not safe beyond that. I wish it didn’t make my heart beat so, I know my cheeks are scarlet when I come out. But Ouida’s all right, I can’t see why people make such a fuss over her. Everyone knows people fall in love. I know I shall fall in love simply tremendously myself. It’s much better to read Ouida, even if it’s forbidden, than to read all the bad parts of the Bible like that little beast Minna does, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And then to talk about it afterwards like she does. I wonder if it’s true what she says. I don’t think I want babies if it is. But I’m sure Father and Mother can’t have been like that. I expect Minna’s got it wrong somehow.

And Minna, the demure reprobate, walking along with that perpetual sneer on her full lips.... I hope Mother lets me leave and come out soon, they’re all so stupid here. But it was great fun getting that note from the boy at Dr. Hargreave’s ... if I can manage to meet him it would be something to amuse myself with and to hint about to the other girls. Oh dear, how stupid they all are. It’s a shame to keep me here, I’m a woman really, I know I am. I have to wear real shaped corsets and the others only wear Rational bodices, except Molly, and she’s so fat it doesn’t count.

If only, thought Agatha Lumsden, the fair girl walking with the dark Francesca, I could convert Fanny, how wonderful it would be. I do think religion the most important thing in life, and I can’t help it if I know I’m the most spiritually-minded girl in the school. It’s all very well for Fanny to say she’s a Roman Catholic, and of course I know the Roman Catholics are a branch of the Catholic church, though in schism, but I don’t really think she’s any better than a heathen. She doesn’t mind which church she goes to, and often she pretends to have a headache and gets out of going to any.

And Fanny? Fanny walking along so demurely, managing her unruly draperies with so much more skill than was achieved by any of her companions. What thoughts went on behind that ivory face and lay in those sleepy eyes? Her vague musings were perhaps even more shapeless than those of the other girls. Not one of them had been taught how to think, it was a mere stream of more or less gently-rippling consciousness that flowed through their undeveloped and undirected brains; a series of pictures in which each saw herself in thrilling or picturesque situations. Fanny was no exception. Her strangeness was physical and moral rather than mental. Her dreams were bolder, cruder, more rapacious, more vivid, but not more coherent than those of her schoolmates, her chief preoccupation was to snatch the greatest possible amount of attention and approbation from life as she went through it, and many were the little plots she contrived at Miss Patterson’s to achieve this end. Sometimes she made mistakes, bad mistakes, because though she insisted on her English blood, she was always finding herself at fault with the strange race. They had an odd way of resenting things that they called cheating, all except girls like Minna, but Minna was a stupid who made a lot of fuss over things that everybody knew, and even so got them all wrong....

Fanny still had a bitter aching, like a sudden blow on her chest, whenever she remembered that dreadful time she had bought a piece of Oriental embroidery from the curiosity shop in Ship Street to give Miss Patterson on that august lady’s birthday. She had escaped from the other girls and running into the back of the shop, had bought the embroidery privily, with much haste. It would seem so much more important to give a present from herself alone, instead of subscribing to the cut-glass rose bowl that was the school’s offering.

“From Mandalay, Miss Patterson. My mother got it from the Palace, the King gave it her ...” said Fanny, tending her gift, and feeling an Oriental princess herself as she did so. Miss Patterson had been impressed, and though she felt it her duty to imply that she preferred the girls to share and share alike in the matter of present-giving, still she called the others around her to point out the beauties of the embroidery and give a sketchy little lesson in geography deduced from it. To tell the truth, no one, not Miss Patterson herself, who “took” geography, had any but very vague ideas as to the position and history of Burma, till Fanny came to the school, and Fanny herself, daughter of an Italian father, and a mother half-English, half Burman, was too much a child of no man’s land to assist much in the clarification of Miss Patterson’s ideas. Yes, Fanny, though accused by some of her schoolfellows of “showing-off” had certainly scored a success with that piece of embroidery ... and then the shop went and spoiled everything by appealing to Miss Patterson for payment when Fanny’s promised money from Mandalay failed to materialise. Fanny was disgraced before the whole school, and she had never forgotten or forgiven it. Only Agatha had been kind to her, although Agatha had been shocked. But Fanny knew she could always fascinate Agatha whenever she chose.

“Fanny,” said Agatha, struggling with the wind, her words almost blown from her lips, “there’s the house where Constance Kent lived before she confessed. She was converted by Father Wagner of St. Paul’s, you know, where I want you to come to church.”

“Your church is so odd,” said Fanny, “only you and two of the others go to St. Paul’s. Miss Patterson thinks it is wrong.”

Agatha flushed up even through the redness the wind had brought upon her too-thin skin. She did not feel equal, tired and hungry as she was, to explaining for the hundredth time to Fanny the whole importance of the Anglo-Catholic position. She said instead:

“Anyway, the religion of Father Wagner was able to do what all the Roman Catholic convents abroad hadn’t been able to, though of course, it’s true they were French. It made Constance Kent confess to the murder.”

“What murder?” asked Fanny, interested.

“Why, didn’t you know? Constance Kent murdered her little half-brother because she was jealous of the second family.”

“Did she kill them all?” asked Fanny.

“Goodness, no! What a dreadful idea! She murdered this little boy, and everyone in turn was suspected, the nursemaid and even the little boy’s father, and they all lived under a cloud for years, till Constance went to confession to Father Wagner and he wouldn’t give her absolution till she confessed publicly. Then she was sent to prison, and she is very, very good there, quite saintly, they say.”

“How silly to confess when nobody knew,” said Fanny.

“But, Fanny, don’t you see that she couldn’t have gone on without confessing once she had seen the light?”

“In Burma,” explained Fanny, “when a king dies, the next king has all the other brothers killed, so that he shall be safe on his throne. If Constance Kent had only killed everyone, there would have been nobody left to mind and then she would have been all right.”

“Fanny!”

Fanny looked sideways at her friend and suddenly broke into her high tinkling laughter, the loveliest sound to be heard at Miss Patterson’s and probably in the whole of Brighton. Like a peal of fairy bells, so Miss Simpson, the music mistress, described it. Certainly there was something oddly elfin and inhuman in it, lovely as it was. Agatha never failed to soften to it, it knocked at her heart after the loud guffaws or secretive sniggers of the other girls.

“Silly Agatha!” said Fanny, “you never know when I’m joking. My heart is very Christian really.” And with a naturally dramatic gesture she laid one small hand over her heart.

Agatha smiled her relief—she never laughed just after Fanny if she could remember not to—and decided against telling Fanny that the word Christian had (rather unfortunately) a Protestant sound.

The Crocodile made its last turn for home, and the streams of consciousness flowed on with it, eyes were less nipped by the wind in this street and weary hands could let go of hat-brims, but stomachs were every moment more clamorous for tea. Passion for Miss Simpson, passion for Ouida, passion for underhand experiences, passion for spiritual supremacy, all became merged somewhat in the imminence of tea. Each I myself, the most real person in the school, in Brighton, in the world, in all time up to this present year of 1875, wanted her tea, from the two little girls at the head of the crocodile to Miss Patterson and Miss Simpson at its tail. And the I myself that was Miss Patterson looked with pride at her lady-like girls, and through her mind flowed the pleasant knowledge that they were pure-minded, obedient, truly nice girls, and did her and their country credit.

There was potted meat for tea, though it was not Lazenby’s. Maude had the felicity of sitting next to Miss Simpson, and so, half-regretfully, was able to abandon her plan of self-accusation. Ellen could snatch only a few minutes with her Ouida, but it was her bath night, and she looked forward to an uninterrupted ten minutes during which modesty would ensure her privacy, and as long as she kept splashing with one hand she would be thought to be washing while she was really holding up her book with the other. Minna found a giggling though fearful new girl to whom she imparted the story of the Levite and his concubine, in the broad light of the gas in the schoolroom.

“I’m helping Beatrice with her Scripture, Miss Patterson.”

“That’s right, Minna, I like to see the old girls give a helping hand to the new.”

Fanny, ever indolent, found good excuse in a letter from her mother, of which she kept the actual script to herself, while disseminating, not without a little glorification, its news.

Dear Fanny, (wrote her mother)

I have joy in telling you your father has been called to the Palace once more by the King and in the presence of the Ministers asked him do you repent, and your father, surprised, remained mute for a second or two for he knew he had committed no fault and only on the whispering advices of the Yenangyoung Mingyi and Myo-Woon U Thah Oh, Mayor of Mandalay, to say Yes, I have repented, so as not to displease the King, as otherwise he would annoy him, only to result in your father being forbidden to trade in Mandalay and sent away, your father was therefore obliged to say Yes, Your Majesty, I have repented. The King was very pleased, and ordered him to attend the Palace once more and next day sent for him and said, Moroni, don’t be sore in heart at me. I never hated you, but my Ministers dislike you because you married a British subject and were friendly at the Residency and as there is a saying in Burmese—Thingan ga payah ma san hnain, which, as you know, if you have not forgotten your Burmese, Francesca, means, “Even God cannot resist the power of the clergy,” so I was therefore obliged to send you away to please them for the time being. Your father took the King’s above sayings cum grano salis, for you know the craft of Burmese kings, and their manœuvring policy. But now your father has been allowed the revenue of the export tax on Burmese ponies at the rate of 20 rupees per head as well as salary for his work making velvet with Monsieur Delange, which he is now allowed to resume, and to take the Lac, worth about 30,000 rupees, from the Palace of the King’s late brother to enrich himself, which is a good thing, because the expense of a Christian family is always more than those of a Burmese. Therefore your father thinks it is time you should come to Mandalay and be presented to the Queens, because it must not be said now your father is in favour that his daughter is with the English, but if you wish for more education you can go to the Convent of St. Joseph here. I have written to the good Miss Patterson and your father is sending money for your fare, first-class. You should travel with some nuns if that is possible, or with another lady, or with some officer’s wife.

I am your loving mother,

Mai Mya Moroni.

Fanny looked round the bare schoolroom, where the flickering gas-jets played over the varnished maps upon the wall, and gave a little inner laugh of triumph. She was to leave all this, and take up life in the great gaudy Shway Nandaw, the Golden Palace of the City of Gems.... For she never doubted that she would penetrate those inner fastnesses, once she had been presented to the Queens. She would take them presents from Brighton, pictures of the Pavilion, artificial flowers, some woolwork for cushions. Secretly, Fanny considered everything English, except the Pavilion, to be hideous. Everything was so bare, so grey. She could vividly remember the great red walls that girdled the Royal City of Gems and were reflected in the lily-laden moat, could even, so she told herself, remember the red and gold and sparkling glass mosaic of the Palace itself, when she had been taken there as a tiny girl, before her father fell out of favour. Rangoon had seemed dull after the perpetual excitements of Mandalay, with its processions and feasts, and she had not minded coming to school in England. But she had had enough of it; three years in Brighton ... and something in her blood leapt to the memory of the red and gold Palace, and the crowded city beside the mighty Irrawaddy. No going to the Convent of St. Joseph for her ... she was a woman now by Burmese, even by Italian, standards. She looked round with a sudden savage contempt at schoolfellows and mistresses, so stiff and contented and somehow thick-looking, they knew nothing, they never would know anything—not of the things she knew already in her blood and imagination. Poor Agatha, so like a rather nice-looking sheep.... Agatha was nearly two years older than she, for Agatha was seventeen, but what a child!

My father has been called to the Court of King Mindoon ... who has given him thirty thousand rupees worth of lac and gold ... my father has been given a high post at Court—(no need to say he had been allowed, after five years of disgrace, to go back to his weaving)—and I am to go out and be presented and made a Maid of Honour. I shall take presents for the Queens, of course—you shall come with me and help me buy them, Agatha. They will be sure to give me lovely presents, rubies and diamonds. Maids of Honour get presents every day. To the best of her ability Fanny presented these dazzling pictures.

The schoolroom was convulsed with excitement, discipline was relaxed, Miss Patterson saw herself as the dearly-loved and never-forgotten schoolmistress of a Maid of Honour. Agatha said warningly:

“But, Fanny! Heathens!”

But even she could not but share in the general glow. Only Minna tried to spoil things.

“A nigger court!” sneered Minna, “I don’t think it’s much to be a sort of servant to nigger queens, who have only one husband between them!”

But Miss Patterson, though slightly jarred at this dragging into the open of the fact that the King of this court of Fanny’s was a polygamist, reproved Minna for speaking so ignorantly of the friendly Kingdom of Ava. Of course Buddhists were heathens, which was very sad, but what a chance for our dear little Fanny to carry on a glorious work of conversion. Fanny dropped her long ivory lids, while Agatha’s blue eyes glowed.

And, a stuffless sound in that dull schoolroom and to those unattuned ears, did Destiny give a little laugh, lighter and more mocking even than Fanny’s own?