“Oh, Mrs. Crespin,” Traherne called before they saw him clambering down
from the rocks where the ruined bus lay. “I’ve found,” he called as he
came in sight, “in the wreck the newspaper you spoke of—you were right
about Rukh.”
Major Crespin pulled himself up roundly, he was not of the breed to show
his hurt to the other man. “What does it say?” he asked briskly, as
Traherne came up to them with the paper in his hand.
Traherne unfolded it, found the place, and read, “‘Abdulabad, Tuesday.
Sentence of death has been passed on the three men found guilty of the
murder of Mr. Haredale. It appears that these miscreants are natives of
Rukh, a small and little-known independent state among the northern
spurs of the Himalayas.’”
“Yes,” Lucilla nodded, “that’s what I read.”
“This news isn’t the best possible passport for us in our present
situation,” Traherne said gravely, and his face was graver than his
words.
“But,” Mrs. Crespin protested reassuringly, “if we’re hundreds of miles
from anywhere, it can’t be known here yet.”
“One would think not,” Traherne assented.
“In any case, they wouldn’t dare to molest us,” Major Crespin said
nonchalantly across the fresh cigarette he was lighting.
Traherne shot him a sharp look. Did Crespin for one moment believe that?
Or was he trying to reassure his wife? The latter no doubt, Traherne
concluded.
“All the same,” the physician said—and following Crespin’s lead by
saying it lightly, “it might be safest to burn this paragraph, in case
there’s anybody here that can read it.” And he suited action to words,
lighting at Crespin’s cigarette the strip of paper he tore out
carefully, watching it burn until it licked at his fingers, and he had
to drop the flaming fragment. But he watched it burn to the last ash,
and then stamped upon that. Lucilla watched it too—they all did, and
Yazok the priest watched most intently of all.
Mrs. Crespin held out her hand for the rest of the newspaper, and when
Traherne gave it she went and put it with her leather coat where it lay
on a rock as Traherne had placed it.
“Hullo!” Crespin held up a hand.
Strange ululations, mingled with the throb of tom-toms and the clash of
cymbals were faintly heard from the distance—faint, but growing clearer
and clearer, from the mountain-path up which the runner had sped at the
priest’s command.
“Hullo!” the Major repeated. “What’s this?”
“Sounds like the march of the Great Panjandrum,” Traherne murmured.
It certainly did; and it looked even more than it sounded, when it swept
and pranced into sight.
The natives all ran to the point where the path debouched on the open
space. All their lives they had seen their Raja come, as had their
fathers, and theirs before them, and as often as not keeping just such
state, but they never tired of the spectacle, and it never failed to
move them. The rustle of satisfaction which is the Oriental equivalent
of our “loud cheering,” and, by the way, very much more eloquent, swept
through them like a gust of gentle wind in a field of well-ripe corn;
then, as their prince came nearer, they prostrated themselves on each
side of his way. They were delighted to see him, and exquisitely proud
of his gorgeous and noised display, but not a face relaxed, all were
inordinately grave, as too were the harlequin mobbery that preceded and
followed his litter. Except in China and Burmah, merriment is not the
Asian’s idea of enjoyment, and very rarely its expression. Even the
babies are grave. But, for all that, the tatter-demalion Rukh populace
were enjoying themselves intensely.
It was a wild procession that came down the mountain path. A gigantic
negro, flourishing two great naked sabers, and gyrating in a barbaric
war-dance, headed it. His sole garment was a tiger’s skin slung over one
shoulder and falling apron-wise over one breast down to a little below
his waist, his sole ornament a wide head-band of brass in which one
great red stone burned. Six music-men followed him, beating their
tom-toms and clashing their cymbals till the very air winced. They wore
less than the ebon major-domo did, but what their crimson loin cloths
lacked in quantity they made up in color, and they were flaked with
chips of purple, green and yellow glass, and the musicians’ great,
sinewy arms were hung with bells. And most of the runners who padded
lightly behind them tinkled too as they walked. The short-distance
runners, sent only about the capital itself, to and fro from the palace
on the Raja’s errands, wore no bells, but the many more who were sent
all over the kingdom, and even beyond it, each wore many tiny but noisy
bells; for all Asia knows that wild beasts fear the sound of bells as
they fear nothing else, and will flee from the path of the panting
runner who tinkles and rings as he goes.
A half score of men, clad to their heels in spotless flowing white, each
with a flat hat with wide, tightly rolled brim, each hat of a different
costly brocade, came next, and close behind them was carried the Raja’s
palanquin. It looked something like a Chinese bride-chair, but its
gauze-hung sides were not opaque; it looked something like a Burmese
pagoda, for its gilded, pointed roof rose above it on much the same
lines as does the great pile at Mulmien. It looked a little like a
high-carried boat; and not a little like a grotesque howdah, one corner
of its canopy-roof upheld by a glittering, bright blue monkey, one by a
writhing green-eyed vermilion snake, one by a twisted white and pink
pelican, the other by an elaborate square pillar of sandal-wood, whose
carvings simulated bamboos and tulips. It looked something like a super
pantomime-chair; and it looked, as it was, a thing of great cost, and of
the almost lifelong labor of many skilled and patient craftsmen.
The seated figure inside it showed but indistinctly through the gauzy
film of the litter’s curtains; a human figure undoubtedly, and in
perfect repose, but instinct with power—a blur of turquoise and rose,
of heliotrope and saffron, of silk and satin and tinsel and gems.
Immediately behind him came the strangest sight in Rukh—an English
valet, if ever one was in Mayfair—an immaculate, demure, correct valet
who might have strolled into the picture from St. James Street, and as
unmoved, detached and imperturbable there in the Eastern glare and din
as if the gyrating negro had been a white-gloved constable on
point-duty, the prostrate half-naked crowd a well-dressed, leisurely
mêlée of shoppers, or just come from Burlington House, and the musicians
before and the guards and rabble behind buses and taxis on Piccadilly
and Albemarle Street.
Behind Watkins, for his name was as English as his coat, came the Raja’s
bodyguard, or a considerable detachment of it—grim-faced, high-cheeked
men of all heights and shapes, dressed in the most fantastic and
parti-colored attire that men-at-arms ever wore yet: short sleeveless
jackets of velvet, jackets of silk that were all sleeves, pleated
petticoats of chintz and of shantung silk, trousers of red and yellow
woolens, bare brown, hairy legs, and legs spiraled with puttee-like
twistings, some of exquisite embroideries, some of time-tarnished rags.
Some wore upturned-toed sandals, some were shod but with studs on their
toes or a ring of jade on one ankle or on both. One wore a helmet, one
carried an umbrella, several wore caps—caps made of fur, of brocade or
of sheer white “chicken-work”—one bare head was perfectly bald, one
wore a dancing mop of densely oiled corkscrew curls. Several wore long
chains of barbaric beads that clacked as they moved, one wore a collar
of glass-jeweled tin; two were turbaned. All were armed with antique
match-locks, some of them with barrels six or seven feet long; and one
carried a tame, monster-sized rat on his naked shoulder, and three had
marigolds stuck behind their ears, which was where two carried cheroots.
Six boys, wearing long yellow skirts but nothing above them, brought up
the rear. Two carried big, squat, lighted braziers, lest even in this
heat their lord be cold; four, lest he be warm, carried huge
long-handled fans of peacocks’ feathers and others of glass-sprinkled
braided sweetgrass.
The bearers put the litter down deferentially, directly in front of the
temple, and knelt down behind it with their faces to the ground.
Lucilla Crespin, for all her anxiety, wanted to laugh at this
raree-show. She’d seen it done better at a Drury Lane pantomime!
But Crespin and Traherne had less impulse to laugh, or to smile. They
suspected something of the strength that might lurk in the tigerish
claws underneath the ridiculous gloves of tinsel.
The man in Bond Street clothes came at once, with a padded, cat-like
tread to the side of the resting litter, parted its curtains, and held
down obsequiously a crooked broadcloth arm through which, as it rose,
the seated figure put a slim brown hand.
The Raja stepped out, released his servitor’s arm, and made just a step
towards the three Europeans, scanning the men lightly and in
silence—not seeming to see Mrs. Crespin.
He was tall, well-built, about forty, Traherne thought, and the two
Englishmen knew from his jewels that, whatever his people were, the Raja
of Rukh was fabulously rich. His diamonds were good—the big blue one
that winked on his forehead were hard to match anywhere; his emeralds
were fine—they lay, a green, snake-like rope, on his richly furred,
coral and jewel buttoned satin coat, and cascaded down to the knees of
his wide velvet trousers; the aigrette in his cap-like turban was worth
a great deal, and it must have plumed the head of a wonderfully virile
bird, or else have been marvelously wired, for its every delicate thread
stood erect in spite of the jewel that topped and weighted it; and the
great turquoise from which it rose was almost a plaque. The princely
shoes were a blaze of gems, one blue with sapphires, one red as a
pigeon’s blood with rubies finer than Burmah ever quarries. But all this
was little to the pearls. Tassels of pearls hung from his ears and his
sleeves and their cuffs. Seven great ropes of pearls hung about his neck
and over his shoulders—pearls such as Europe does not see over-often,
and never in such quantities; one rope fell below his long-skirted coat
almost to his trousers’ hem, one shorter strand was of pink pearls
perfectly matched; a necklace of “black” pearls lay gray and soft across
the breast of his turquoise blue coat, and from it hung one huge
pear-shaped pearl so radiantly pink that it almost looked red as it
touched the milk-white pearls below it—and every pearl of the many
hundreds gleamed with the rainbow-burnish that some pigeons show on
their jeweled necks.
The Raja’s face was intelligent, his hands were beautiful, his tiny
mustache had a silken look of Paris, his eyes were dark and inscrutable.
Mrs. Crespin thought him ridiculous, outrageously “trapped out” for even
an uncivilized man. Antony Crespin, with the British soldier-man’s
impenetrable insularity, set him down “a hell of a nigger—what.” But
Basil Traherne, skilled in faces, in human frames and in gaits, thought
that the Raja of Rukh had character and distinct and polished
personality.