Meanwhile the "child-wife," to whom his Majesty had presented me at my first audience, appeared, and after saluting profoundly the sister of the Kralahome, and conversing with her for some minutes, lay down on the cool floor, and, using her betel-box for a pillow, beckoned to me. As I approached, and seated myself beside her, she said: "I am very glad to see you. It is long time I not see. Why you come so late?" to all of which she evidently expected no reply. I tried baby-talk, in the hope of making my amiable sentiments intelligible to so infantile a creature, but in vain. Seeing me disappointed and embarrassed, she oddly sang a scrap of the Sunday-school hymn, "There is a Happy Land, far, far away"; and then said, "I think of you very often. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
This meritorious but disjointed performance was followed by a protracted and trying silence, I sitting patient, and Boy wondering in my lap. At last she half rose, and, looking around, cautiously whispered, "Dear Mam Mattoon! I love you. I think of you. Your boy dead, you come to palace; you cry—I love you"; and laying her finger on her lips, and her head on the betel-box again, again she sang, "There is a Happy Land, far, far away!"
Mrs. Mattoon is the wife of that good and true American apostle who has nobly served the cause of missions in Siam as a co-laborer with the excellent Dr. Samuel House. While the wife of the latter devoted herself indefatigably to the improvement of schools for the native children whom the mission had gathered round it, Mrs. Mattoon shared her labors by occasionally teaching in the palace, which was for some time thrown open to the ladies of her faithful sisterhood. Here, as elsewhere, the blended force and gentleness of her character wrought marvels in the impressible and grateful minds to which she had access.
So spontaneous and ingenuous a tribute of reverence and affection from a pagan to a Christian lady was inexpressibly charming to me.
Thus the better part of the day passed. The longer I rested dreaming there, the more enchanted seemed the world within those walls. I was aroused by a slight noise proceeding from the covered gallery, whence an old lady appeared bearing a candlestick of gold, with branches supporting four lighted candles. I afterward learned that these were daily offerings, which the king, on awakening from his forenoon slumber, sent to the Watt P'hra Këau. This apparition was the signal for much stir. The Lady Tâlâp started to her feet and fled, and we were left alone with the premier's sister and the slaves in waiting. The entire household seemed to awake on the instant, as in the "Sleeping Palace" of Tennyson, at the kiss of the Fairy Prince,—
"The maid and page renewed their strife;
The palace banged, and buzzed, and clackt;
And all the long-pent stream of life
Dashed downward in a cataract."
A various procession of women and children—some pale and downcast, others bright and blooming, more moody and hardened—moved in the one direction; none tarried to chat, none loitered or looked back; the lord was awake.
"And last with these the king awoke,
And in his chair himself upreared,
And yawned, and rubbed his face, and spoke."
Presently the child-wife reappeared,—arrayed now in dark blue silk, which contrasted well with the soft olive of her complexion,—and quickly followed the others, with a certain anxious alacrity expressed in her baby face. I readily guessed that his Majesty was the awful cause of all this careful bustle, and began to feel uneasy myself, as my ordeal approached. For an hour I stood on thorns. Then there was a general frantic rush. Attendants, nurses, slaves, vanished through doors, around corners, behind pillars, under stairways; and at last, preceded by a sharp, "cross" cough, behold the king!
We found his Majesty in a less genial mood than at my first reception. He approached us coughing loudly and repeatedly, a sufficiently ominous fashion of announcing himself, which greatly discouraged my darling boy, who clung to me anxiously. He was followed by a numerous "tail" of women and children, who formally prostrated themselves around him. Shaking hands with me coldly, but remarking upon the beauty of the child's hair, half buried in the folds of my dress, he turned to the premier's sister, and conversed at some length with her, she apparently acquiescing in all that he had to say. He then approached me, and said, in a loud and domineering tone:—