Hand in hand, the Raja, coatless and waistcoatless, the one gem in his
turban flashing brilliantly in the waning afternoon light of the long,
twisting corridors, his cerise braces streaking his white-shirted back,
as if a broad thong had lashed it, her saffron cloth now russet-dark,
now red-gold as they passed through the shadows great porphyry pillars
threw, or into the light from open windows and arches. She led him, and
he clung to her hand, as he had at twilight when he had done his first
walking with her clasp for his stay and confidence.
It was a long, long way this that they took through the vast palace of
Rukh; to him it seemed endless. At last she paused by a closed carven
door. Two scimitared men on guard, drew aside and made obeisance.
Rukh caught his breath, smothering an oath. “Mother,” he sobbed, “will
he die?”
Ak-kok lifted her thin old arms in caress and comfort to his face, and
he caught her wrists and held them there.
“Now I have brought you, he will drink perhaps the cup I have made. If
he drinks, the cramp may pass, and all may be well.”
The Raja motioned towards the heavy door, Ak-kok signaled one of the
guards, the man ran and opened it, Rukh put up a trembling hand and
lifted the curtain of broad-striped silk inside the door, and he and
Ak-kok entered the room.
On a low native bed, ropes threaded across sides and ends of chased and
beaten silver, a child lay moaning on a snow-leopard pelt. Charms—a
tiger’s eye, a cheeta’s claw, a little jade god—hung in his flat
embroidered cap of green silk, charms strung on a red silk cord hung
about his neck, charms dangled over his acorn-shaped little belly, rich
bangles clinked on his arms as he tossed them in pain, and jeweled
anklets circled above each dimpled foot—and he wore nothing else. Toys
strewed the silk floor-carpets, half a dozen serving women, wild-eyed
and useless, cluttered the room—all but one who was kneeling down
watching a saucepan that hummed on a low brazier. A girl richly robed,
heavily jeweled, exquisitely beautiful, crouched on the floor weeping
piteously but without a sound. She lurched a little towards Rukh as he
passed her, not rising, just moving a little to lay her face on his
shoe. He paid her no attention, but stumbled down by their child:
La-swak, whom he loved more than he loved Rukh.
“The cramp is passing a little, my lord, I think,” the girl whispered.
Still he gave her neither word nor glance. And she hid her face in her
hands. She had seen his European clothes, if old Ak-kok had not, and she
knew that when her husband and lord wore European clothes there were
European women—or, a thousand times worse—a European woman; and a
cramp worse than over-fed, sugar-plum-stuffed La-swak ever had felt, or
ever would, writhed and twisted his mother.
The Ranee of Rukh, and her sister wives, of whom this was the youngest,
were fairly good friends. They ate their hearts out, and beat their
ayahs when a white woman’s shadow fell on the palace floors. And Ak-kok
went farther. She took the dance-girls for granted, saw to it often that
they were fairly fed, and softly clad, but she, watching her chance, had
beaten a French danseuse once till the dancer never would dance again.
Rukh flung himself down beside the child’s low bed; La-swak held out his
arms, and smiled, and the half-clad Raja caught him and held him
close—all that he loved most in the world, and loved most purely,
cuddled and cuddling tenderly there, with little brown,
jeweled-cap-crowned head pressed contentedly against the stiff-starched
shirt and the cerise silk braces. La-swak put up a dark dimpled hand and
snatched at the brilliant braces. His moaning had ceased. Ak-kok had
taken the silver pannikin from the brazier, and stood at the open window
pouring the liquid it held back and forth from pannikin and cup till it
was cooled to satisfy her. She brought it now, and Rukh took the cup and
held it to the child’s lips. La-swak shuddered a little, but he drank it
all, while the father fondled and encouraged him—then gave back the
cup.
“He is not very ill?” the Raja stated rather than asked.
“Not now,” old Ak-kok answered. “He will do now. He soon will
sleep—better he be left alone now.”
One by one the others went out. The young mother went first, and the
women followed her one by one. The girl mother rose reluctantly, and
hesitated a moment, hoping her husband might give her a word or a
glance; but he did not, and she went slowly out, hanging her head,
veiling beneath their blue-veined lids the rage and pain in her great,
black eyes. Rukh felt nothing but kindness for the girl: she had borne
him La-swak, she had bored and had disappointed him less than any other
of his women ever had, and he and her father were close-sworn
friends—they had throttled a half-grown wild beast together, and
speared a great snake, they had shared war and blood-feuds, and frolic
and schemes; but Rukh was engrossed with his boy. He did not even see
Ko-sak go, scarcely knew she’d been there.
The child dozed. Ak-kok tugged at Rukh’s arm, and he rose and too went
quietly out, through the long, twisted corridors with the great columns
and arches back to his own room.
Just before he left the harem quarters he came upon a girl, almost a
child, sitting idly and alone, on the wide seat of a window’s embrasure,
the gay strip of embroidered stuff she’d been working lying neglected
where it had fallen from her listless fingers on to the mosaicked floor
at her feet She caught his footfall, turned her head carelessly, flushed
passionately, rose quickly, and salaamed deeply. Rukh was in no mood for
such companionship now, and well could have spared the encounter—but he
paused, and spoke to her kindly, laying his hands on her shoulders; for
she was big with child. A wild rose stained the pale amber of her
delicate face, the terror faded out of her dark childish eyes; and Rukh
knew she would have pressed her face to him, and clung, staying him so,
had she dared.
“Nay, Zu-kunl,” he told her soothingly, “it is not too much, it lasts
not long, your midwife is skilful, the auguries are kind, and the joy
that it brings is a woman’s sweetest and proudest.”
“My lord!” she whispered. “If the child should be but a girl?”
He shrugged indulgently. “Some must,” he said, “and if it is as fair,
and as obedient as you, I will forgive it and thee.”
The girl caught his hand and bent her brow to it. Her eyes pleaded with
him to stay with her a little, and he saw it. He touched her sheened
hair fondly, as one pats a dog, nodded gayly, and went on his way.
The girl’s face quivered, and tears gathered in her big, frightened
eyes. But she only salaamed again—it hurt—and whispered, “My lord!”
meekly and softly. Should she ever see him again? He came to her but
seldom, the lord she adored, the only man, save father and brothers, she
had seen since her childhood, the only man she ever would see again
though she lived to be as old as Ak-kok. Should she ever see him again?
She had not seen him often. Would he come once more? Already she knew
that her pain was on her. She waited, battling it where she stood, until
the great outer door was closed and barred behind him, and then groped
her way to the darkened inner room where the midwife waited, and all lay
ready for her agony.
And the Raja of Rukh whistled happily as he went back to finish his
dressing, happy because La-swak was well again.
And that was why the three English people waited so long alone in the
room below, and the chef in the palace kitchen fumed, and would have
given notice, or, at least, sworn, had he dared.
Rukh had thought of the English doctor below as he knelt by his child,
and, had La-swak’s illness not gone as swiftly as it had come, would
have summoned Traherne, and entreated his help. If he had, there’d have
been a fine Oriental to-do in one harem room, and old Ak-kok would have
achieved something little short of murder, or have gone raving mad again
in attempting it. And this story need not have been told—for it would
have ended there with handshakings and gifts, and safe escort homeward:
for vicious, brutal, implacable, the Raja of Rukh would not have proved
ungrateful: it was not in his Asian mountain blood.
The Raja finished his dressing leisurely, and went to his guests. But
the great ruby no longer blazed in his turban. La-swak had demanded it,
when he’d drunk, and Rukh had unfastened it, and it was close shut now
in the sleeping baby’s little brown hand, and the osprey of diamond
specks was spread out fan-like, sparkling brilliantly on La-swak’s fat
little brown paunch.
But the Raja wore one jewel—he might have lost that too had he worn it
to the sweetmeat-sick-room—the ribbon and star of a Russian order which
only the anointed hand of the Little White Father could give, and did
not give often. Alas for it now!
Much as they feared him, they were glad to see him: the uncertainty was
growing increasingly intolerable, and, frankly, they all three were
hungry.
He bowed to the men, and went to Mrs. Crespin. “Pray forgive me, Madam,”
he said, “for being the last to appear. The fact is, I had to hold a
sort of Cabinet Council—or shall I say a conclave of prelates?—with
questions arising out of your most welcome arrival.”
It was perfectly true. There had been grave talk in the Council Chamber
of Rukh, before the Raja had left it to lay off his native dress, and
“change for dinner.”
Before Mrs. Crespin could answer, the Major said eagerly, “May we hope,
Raja, that you were laying a dawk for our return?”
Rukh laughed pleasantly. “Pray, pray, Major, let us postpone that
question for the moment. First let us fortify ourselves; after dinner we
will talk seriously. If you are in too great a hurry to desert me, must
I not conclude, Madam, that you are dissatisfied with your reception?”
“How could we possibly be so ungrateful, Your Highness,” she said. “Your
hospitality overwhelms us.”
Rukh swept his eyes over her slowly, as she stood before him—she had
risen at his entrance—and then he said deferentially, “I trust my
Mistress of the Robes furnished you with all you required?”
The Englishmen frowned a little at his question—they did not dare go
beyond that—but Lucilla smiled gravely, and told him brightly, “With
all and more than all. She offered me quite a bewildering array of
gorgeous apparel.”
“Oh, I am glad.” There was just a caressing note in the Raja’s voice,
more than a hint of velvet, as there so often is in the high-bred
Asiatic voice when it speaks a foreign tongue. And again the long,
close-lidded Oriental eyes swept her slowly with a something of
appraisement. Traherne saw it, and chafed, but what could he do?—“I had
hoped that perhaps your choice might have fallen on something more—”
his eyes indicated “décolleté” even more than the graceful gesture of
his slender olive hand. It was delicately done, but his unspoken meaning
was unmistakable. Traherne threw an ugly quick look to Major Crespin,
but Crespin had strolled to the loggia opening, and seemed to have seen
or heard nothing. Had he gone to be nearer the big wine-cooler? Traherne
wondered viciously. But again what could Crespin do? Nothing that would
not aggravate their peril. “But no,” the soft silken voice said on, “I
was wrong—Madam’s taste is irreproachable.”
A white-clad servant, with the Raja’s livery of green and silver and
gold twisted in his _puggree_, came in bringing cocktails. Lucilla
Crespin was glad of the interruption, and made the man’s approach serve
for that. She shook her head at the salver he proffered her, and moved
away to a table, and picked up a book.
The men drank. Traherne’s throat felt as dry as Crespin’s for once, but
when Rukh put down his glass he followed Mrs. Crespin, and glanced at
the yellow paper-bound volume she held.
“You see, Madam,” he said to her, “we fall behind the age here. We are
still in the Anatole France period. If he bores you, here”—he offered
her another book—“is a Maurice Barrés that you may find more amusing.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Crespin told him, as she took it—she had to take it—“I too
am in the Anatole France period, I assure you.” She glanced a little
apprehensively at the titled back of the newer book, and a shade of
relief touched her face. “‘Sur la Pierre Blanche’—isn’t that the one
you were recommending to me, Dr. Traherne?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Yes, I like it better than some of his later books,” Traherne replied,
joining them at the book-covered table.
The Raja spoke again to Lucilla. “Are you fond of music, Mrs. Crespin?
But, of course, you are!”
“Why?” she demanded gayly.
Rukh looked into her eyes. “It is written—there,” he told her softly.
“Suppose we have some during dinner.” He went, as he spoke, to the
gramophone in the corner, and began turning over a stack of records that
lay beside it, and put one of them carefully on the top of the pile,
just as Watkins came noiselessly in from a door, and the major-domo as
silently from another. “Watkins, just start that top record, will you.
Ah!”—the native servant, salaaming had spoken—“_Madame est servie!_
Allow me—”
And Mrs. Crespin laid her white hand on the brown man’s black-sleeved
arm.
“I can recommend this caviare, Major,” Rukh said when they were
seated—“and you’ll take a glass of maraschino with it—Russian
fashion?”
Crespin would.
The gramophone reeled out its first, slow bars, and a wonderful sunset
flooded the loggia.
“Oh, what is that?” Lucilla asked after she’d listened a moment.
“Don’t you know it?” Rukh questioned.
“Oh, yes, but I can’t think what it is.”
“Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a Marionette,’” the Raja said in an odd
voice, an odd look in his narrowed eyes—“a most humorous composition.
May I pour you a glass of maraschino, Madam?”