The Romance of the Harem

by Anna Harriette Leonowens

Behind the veiled figure were two leathern bags which contained some wearing apparel and a supply of provisions to serve them during their stay in the capital.

There are no such places as inns or caravansaries to lodge the multitude who are thus forced into Bangkok every year. Those who have boats live in them on the river and its numerous canals, others take refuge in the Buddhist monasteries, while the poorer classes have the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather may be, for their couch.

It was not until they were quite exhausted, and could no longer maintain the pace at which they had been making their way through the crowded city, that the old man began to look around him for some spot where they could encamp. The place at which they had arrived was the southern gate of the citadel, called Patoo Song Khai (Gate of Commerce). Here they came upon the haunts of commerce and traffic,—market and tradeswomen were hurrying to and from the inner city. All around was noise and confusion, and here, beneath the shadow of a projecting porch and wall, the old man suddenly halted, and, lifting the girl lightly to the ground, said in a low, deep, and not unmusical voice, "Let us abide here, my child; and though we can call nothing our own, we shall live like the bright gods, feeding on happiness."

There was something tender in the way he said this, but the girl did not appear to heed him. Looking about her with a startled and bewildered gaze, she seemed to be haunted by apprehensions of being led captive to some gloomy place, where she would be chained and scourged, and, worse than all, where she would never see her father but through iron gratings and bars. Her terrors at length became so real that she wrapped her faded "saree" more closely around her, and burst into tears.

"Art thou afraid?" inquired the old man. "Why, thou hast less to fear here by my side than if I had left thee behind in the mountains of Prabat."

He then proceeded to unpack his beast, while the girl timidly made ready to cook their evening meal of boiled rice and fish.

There was a certain sense of safety in the shadow of the grand royal palace that seemed to restore the girl to a state of moderate tranquillity, and the Amazons who loitered round the gate watched the travellers with some degree of interest, which arose partly from curiosity and partly from want of something better to do. The old man seemed a sombre sort of being to them; but the girl was an object of wonder and delight, as, though she replied to her father in a language foreign to the listeners, she frequently intermingled her remarks with the Siamese word "cha" (dear), which pleased the stout-hearted guardians of the gate so much that they made no objections to the travellers' resting there.

In such a spot as this there was, indeed, more of danger than of safety both for father and child, if they could but have known it; but the poorer class of strangers clung to the name of the great king Maha Mongkut as a babe clings to its mother's arms, and the old man felt as safe as if lodged in an impregnable castle, surrounded by a million of guardian angels; while the girl, gathering courage from the satisfaction that settled on her father's face, began to take note of what was passing around her, and her fears soon gave place to a variety of happy thoughts.

The freshness of the evening air, the song of the merry birds, the beauty of the wild flowers that grew among the tangled bushes on the banks of the river, and, above all, the constant stream of richly gilded boats and gondolas that glided past on the limpid waters, now glittering in the roseate hues of the setting sun, soothed and gladdened, as with tender, loving words, the heart of the lonely mountain girl.