"Tell him," I replied, unable to control my anger at the cowardly trick to intimidate me, "I shall leave Siam when I please, and that no man shall set the time for me."
The man departed, cringing and crouching, and excusing himself. This was the same wretch at whose instigation poor Moonshee had been so shamefully beaten.
I did not close my eyes that night. Again and again prudence advised me to seek safety in flight, but the argument ended in my turning my back on the timid monitor, and resolving to stay.
About three weeks after this occurrence, his Majesty was going on an excursion "up country," and as he wished me to accompany my pupils, the prime minister was required to prepare a cabin for me and my boy on his steamer, the Volant. Before we left the palace one of my anxious friends made me promise her that I would partake of no food nor taste a drop of wine on board the steamer,—an injunction in the sequel easy to fulfil, as our wants were amply provided for at the Grand Palace, where we spent the whole day. But I cite this incident to show the state of mind which led me to prolong my stay, hateful as it had become.
After this, affairs in the royal household went smoothly enough for some time; but still my tasks increased, and my health began to fail. When I informed his Majesty that I needed at least a month of rest, and that I thought of making a trip to Singapore, he was so unwilling that I should rate highly the services I rendered him, that he was careful to assure me I had not "favored" him in any way, nor given him satisfaction; and that if I must be idle for a month, he certainly should not pay me for the time; and he kept his word. Nevertheless, while I was at Singapore he wrote to me most kindly, assuring me that his wives and children were anxious for my return.
After the sad death of the dear little princess, Chow Fâ-ying, the king had become more cordial; but the labor he imposed upon me was in proportion to the confidence he reposed in me. At times he required of me services, in my capacity of secretary, not to be thought of by a European sovereign; and when I declined to perform them, he would curse me, close the gates of the palace against me, and even subject me to the insults and threats of the parasites and slaves who crawled about his feet. On two occasions—first for refusing to write a false letter to Sir John Bowring, now Plenipotentiary for the Court of Siam in England; and again for declining to address the Earl of Clarendon in relation to a certain British officer then in Siam—he threatened to have me tried at the British Consulate, and was so violent that I was in real fear for my life. For three days I waited, with doors and windows barred, for I knew not what explosion.
After the death of the Second King, his Majesty behaved very disgracefully. It was well known that the ladies of the prince's harem were of the most beautiful of the women of Laos, Pegu, and Birmah; above all, the Princess of Chiengmai was famed for her manifold graces of person and character. Etiquette forbade the royal brothers to pry into the constitution of each other's sérail, but by means most unworthy of his station, and regardless of the privilege of his brother, Maha Mongkut had learned of the acquisition to the subordinate king's establishment of this celebrated and coveted beauty; and although she was now his legitimate sister-in-law, privately married to the prince, he was not restrained by any scruple of morality or delicacy from manifesting his jealousy and pique. [Footnote: See portrait, Chap. XXV.] Moreover, this disgraceful feeling was fostered by other considerations than those of mere sensuality or ostentation. Her father, the tributary ruler of Chiengmai, had on several occasions confronted his aggressive authority with a haughty and intrepid spirit; and once, when Maha Mongkut required that he should send his eldest son to Bangkok as a hostage for the father's loyalty, and good conduct, the unterrified chief replied that he would be his own hostage. On the summons being repeated in imperative terms, the young prince fled from his father's court and took refuge with the Second King in his stronghold of Ban Sitha, where he was most courteously received and entertained until he found it expedient to seek some securer or less compromising place of refuge.
The friendship thus founded between two proud and daring princes soon became strong and enduring, and resulted in the marriage of the Princess Sunartha Vismita (very willingly on her part) to the Second King, about a year before his death.
The son of the King of Chiengmai never made his appearance at the court of Siam; but the stout old chief, attended by trusty followers, boldly brought his own "hostage" thither; and Maha Mongkut, though secretly chafing, accepted the situation with a show of graciousness, and overlooked the absence of the younger vassal.
With the remembrance of these floutings still galling him, the Supreme King frequently repaired to the Second King's palace on the pretext of arranging certain "family affairs" intrusted to him by his late brother, but in reality to acquaint himself with the charms of several female members of the prince's household; and, scandalous as it should have seemed even to Siamese notions of the divine right of kings, the most attractive and accomplished of those women were quietly transferred to his own harem. For some time I heard nothing more of the Princess of Chiengmai; but it was curious, even amusing, to observe the serene contempt with which the "interlopers" were received by the rival incumbents of the royal gynecium,—especially the Laotian women, who are of a finer type and much handsomer than their Siamese sisters.