A cold something iced in the room. Out in the far open a bird of prey
screamed exultantly. Somewhere in the palace a gong was struck, three
barbaric, ominous, bellowing notes.
Rukh gave no sign that he listened, but he listened. A child was being
born.
They were silent.
No one spoke, no one moved. But Rukh smoked on quietly.
When the silence had lasted so long that all their English nerves were
tortured, and cried for relief, any relief, Major Crespin broke it,
trying to speak naturally, and failing.
“It surely,” he said, “can’t be so very far, since you had heard of the
sentence passed on those assassins.”
The Raja smiled slightly. “I am glad, Major,” he said smoothly, “that
you have so tactfully spared me the pain of re-opening that subject. We
should have had to come to it sooner or later.”
There was another pause—an embarrassed pause. Rukh waited patient and
imperturbable.
“When Your Highness”—Traherne spoke slowly, he was picking his words
with care—“said they were your brothers, you were of course speaking
figuratively. You meant your tribesmen.”
“Not at all,” the Raja replied; “they are sons of my father—not of my
mother.”
Lucilla Crespin turned to him quickly, and he turned his eyes away from
the unmistakable sympathy in hers. “And we,” she cried impulsively,
“intrude upon you at such a time! How dreadful!” And the Raja of Rukh
knew that the woman had spoken and not the hostage.
“Oh, pray don’t apologize,” he begged formally, smothering from his
voice the inevitable Oriental gratitude that stirred at his heart.
“Believe me, your arrival has given great satisfaction.”
“How do you mean?” Traherne demanded quickly. There had been nothing but
menace and hardness in the Rukh’s last sentence.
“I’ll explain presently,” the Raja promised. “But first—”
Crespin interrupted rashly, blundering in the accredited British way.
“First, let us understand each other—” and his tone and manner were
crassly mandatory. “You surely can’t approve of this abominable crime?”
he demanded—more as if Rukh had been his prisoner than he Rukh’s.
“My brothers,” the Raja said with an enigmatic smile, an ominous
smoothness, “are fanatics, and there is no fanaticism in me.”
“How do they come to be so different from you?” Lucilla Crespin asked
him, again speaking impulsively—and it was ill-advised.
But Rukh showed no resentment. Traherne wondered if he felt none.
Perhaps—Oriental susceptibilities, though quicker and sharper, differ
widely from ours.
“That is just what I was going to tell you,” Rukh answered. “I was my
father’s eldest son, by his favorite wife. Through my mother’s influence
(my poor mother—how I loved her!)”—Lucilla knew he said it sincerely;
Traherne wondered if he did; and that he might never occurred to
Crespin, who wished for the love of Mike the fellow’d cut the cackle and
get to the horses—_their_ horses!—“at her wish I was sent to Europe.
If only our women knew what that does to us! My education was wholly
European. I shed all my prejudices. I became the open-minded citizen of
the world whom I hope you recognize in me—” That was part sarcasm, part
vanity, part a child’s truckling for applause. The true Oriental is
always a child. However old he lives, he whom the gods of the East love
die young. “My brothers,” he continued, “on the other hand, turned to
India for their culture. The religion of our people has always been a
primitive idolatry. My brothers naturally fell in with adherents of the
same superstition and they worked each other up to a high pitch of
frenzy against the European exploitation of Asia.”
Traherne nodded; he was not altogether out of sympathy with that. But he
said, “Had you no restraining influence upon them?”
The Raja smiled—it was not a sunny smile. “Of course I might have
imprisoned them—or had them strangled—the traditional form of argument
in our family. But why should I? As I said, I have no prejudices—least
of all in favor of the British. My family is of Indian blood, though
long severed from the Motherland—and I do not love her tyrants.”
Again out in the open the bird screamed its horrid gluttonous cry.
“In short, sir,” Crespin broke in—wine-fumes and fear both fuddling his
mind, “you defend their devilish murder?”
“Oh, no,” Rukh answered softly; “I think it foolish and futile. But
there is a romantic as well as a practical side to my nature, and, from
the romantic point of view, I rather admire it.”
“Then, sir,” Crespin blustered, rising, “the less we intrude on your
hospitality the better. If you will be good enough to furnish us with
transport to-morrow morning—”
“That,” the Raja interrupted him suavely, “is just where the difficulty
arises.”
“No transport, hey?” Crespin’s tone was bullying now. Oh, those English!
Those English abroad!
“Materially it might be managed,” the Raja said with an amiable shrug;
“but morally I fear it is—excuse the colloquialism, Madam—no go.”
“What the devil do you mean, sir?”
Still Rukh showed no resentment And Lucilla, trying to cover a little
her husband’s blunder, asked gently, “Will Your Highness be good enough
to explain?”
“I mentioned,” the Raja asked, turning to her with a pleasant smile,
“that the religion of my people is a primitive superstition? Well, since
the news has spread that three Feringhis have dropped from the skies
precisely at the time when three princes of the royal house are
threatened with death at the hands of the Feringhi government—and
dropped moreover in the precincts of a temple—my subjects have got it
into their heads that you have been personally conducted hither by the
Goddess whom they especically worship.”
“The Goddess—?” Lucilla asked.
“Here”—the Raja turned and pointed to the statuette—“is her portrait
on the mantelpiece—much admired by connoisseurs.”
Lucilla looked, and shuddered, although she tried not to.
“I need not say,” the Raja began, but broke off to count the gong-beats
that came again, then went on with a slight good-humored shrug of
contempt (it was only a girl) “need not say I am far from sharing the
popular illusion. Your arrival is of course the merest coincidence—for
me, a charming coincidence. But my people hold unphilosophical views. I
understand—and indeed I observed—that even in England the vulgar are
apt to see the Finger of Providence in particularly fortunate—or
unfortunate—occurrences.”
“Then,” Crespin muttered impatiently, “the upshot of all this palaver is
that you propose to hold us as hostages, to exchange for your brothers?”
“That is not precisely the idea, my dear sir.” The Raja spoke with great
courtesy—almost exaggerated. “My theologians do not hold that an
exchange is what the Goddess decrees. Nor, to be quite frank, would it
altogether suit my book.”
“Not to get your brothers back again?” Lucilla exclaimed incredulously.
“You may have noted in history, Madam,” he replied with a smile, “that
family affection is seldom the strong point of princes. Is it not Pope
who remarks on their lack of enthusiasm for a ‘brother near the throne’?
My sons are mere children, and, were I to die—we are all mortal—there
might be trouble about the succession. In our family uncles seldom love
nephews.”
“So you would raise no finger to save your brothers?” the Englishwoman
asked him in horror.
“That is not my only reason,” Rukh said with a smile. “Supposing it
possible that I could bully the Government of India into giving up my
relatives, do you think it would sit calmly down under the humiliation?
No, no, dear lady. It might wait a few years to find some decent
pretext, but assuredly we should have a punitive expedition. It would
cost thousands of lives and millions of money, but what would that
matter? Prestige would be restored, and I should end my days in a
maisonette at Monte Carlo. It wouldn’t suit me at all. Hitherto I have
escaped the notice of your Government by a policy of masterly
inactivity, and I propose to adhere to that policy.”
“Then,” Crespin broke in, “I don’t see how—”
And Traherne, speaking at the same time, said, “Surely you don’t mean—”
“We are approaching the crux of the matter,” Rukh returned, “a point you
may have some difficulty in appreciating. I would beg you to remember
that though I am what is commonly called an autocrat, there is no such
thing under the sun as real despotism. All government is government by
consent of the people. It is very stupid of them to consent—but they
do. I have studied the question—took a pretty good degree at Cambridge,
in Moral and Political Science—and I assure you that, though I have
absolute power of life and death over my subjects, it is only their
acquiescence that gives me that power. If I defied their prejudices or
their passions, they could upset my throne to-morrow.”
Anthony Crespin was losing his head and his temper. “Will you be so kind
as to come to the point, sir?” he stormed.
“Gently, Major!” Rukh said soothingly. “We shall reach it soon enough.”
He turned to Lucilla, “Please remember, too, Madam, that autocracy is
generally a theocracy to boot, and mine is a case in point. I am a slave
to theology. The clerical party can do what it pleases with me, for
there is no other party to oppose it. True I am my own Archbishop of
Canterbury—‘but I have a partner: Mr. Jorkins’—I have a terribly
exacting Archbishop of York. I fear I may have to introduce you to him
to-morrow.”
Lucilla Crespin lifted a drawn face, but she looked him straight in the
eyes—and there were both defiance and entreaty in hers. “You are
torturing us, Your Highness,” she told him simply. “Like my husband, I
beg you to come to the point.”
“The point is, dear lady,” the Raja answered her sadly, “that the
theology on which, as I say, my whole power is founded, has not yet
emerged from the Mosaic stage of development: It demands an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth—”
There was a pause.
“—a life for a life.”
There was a pause—longer, tenser, a terrible hopeless pause. Crespin
sagged in his chair, his miserable eyes fixed on his wife’s face, seeing
nothing, thinking of nothing but her. She sat where she was, statue-like
in her motionless horror. Traherne never lowered his look from Rukh’s
expressionless face.
Again the wild bird cried, nearer now; they could hear the beat of its
great angry wings.
Dr. Traherne spoke first. “You mean to say—”
“Unfortunately I do,” the Raja replied.