Several moments passed, and neither moved, neither spoke again, neither
lowered his eyes.
They stood so—still, grim, determined, but not yet seeing their
way—when Rukh strolled into the room, debonnaire, spick and span in the
latest Bond Street Rotten Row attire.
He accosted them instantly, jauntily, and hospitably. “Good-morning,
Major! Good-morning, Doctor! How do you like my snuggery? I hope you
have slept well?” Neither answered him. “No? Ah, perhaps you find this
altitude trying? Never mind. We have methods of dealing with insomnia.”
Antony Crespin answered him then. “Come now, Raja,” he complained
lustily; “a joke’s a joke, but this cat-and-mouse business gets on one’s
nerves. Make arrangements to send us back to the nearest British
outpost, and we’ll give you our Bible oath to say nothing about
the—pleasantry you’ve played on us.”
“Send you back, my dear Major?” The Raja held up slim horror-shocked
hands, but under their lowered lids his dark eyes danced wickedly. “I
assure you, if I were ever so willing, it would be as much as my place
is worth. You don’t know how my faithful subjects are looking forward to
to-morrow’s ceremony. I have just come in from my morning ride, and in
all my experience of them, I have never before been so acclaimed, met
with such bubbling enthusiasm, such gratitude. They are children, and
they are demented with their childish joy and anticipation of to-morrow.
If I tried to cancel it, there would be a revolution. You must be
reasonable, my dear sir.” He spoke in a low purring voice—a caress in
it even—more vindictive, more implacable than any explosive show of
hatred and malice could have been, and seated himself carelessly at his
writing-table.
Crespin turned on him furiously.
“Do you think we would truckle to you, damn you, if it weren’t for my
wife’s sake? But for her we’ll make any concession—promise you
anything.”
“What can you that is worth a brass farthing to me?” Rukh retorted.
“No.” He spoke vehemently now, pent up ferocity storming out from angry
voice, hate-full eyes and eloquent, quivering hands. “Asia,” he hissed,
“has a long score against you swaggering, blustering, whey-faced lords
of creation, and, by all the gods! I mean to see some of it paid
to-morrow!” His show of storm ceased as suddenly as it had come. He
added suavely, “But in the meantime there is no reason why we shouldn’t
behave like civilized beings. How would you like to pass the morning?
I’m sorry I can’t offer you any shooting. I mustn’t lead you into
temptation. What do you say to billiards? It soothes the nerves. Here is
the billiard-room,” he told them, and opened the door. “I have a little
business to attend to, but I’ll join you presently.”
“Of all the infernal, purring devils—!” Crespin broke out, beside
himself with fury and impotence.
The Raja laughed indulgently. “Dignity, Major, dignity!” he reminded him
with intolerable good-nature.
Crespin, almost demented, raised a threatening hand, but Dr. Traherne
interposed himself determinedly between the seething Englishman and the
still smiling native, laid a firm reminding hand on Crespin’s shoulder,
and pushed and shepherded him across the floor, through the door, and
into the billiard-room. And almost at once, Rukh, listening, heard the
steady click of the billiard-balls.
They were playing the game again—and the Raja’s face lit with an
admiring smile. He liked their grit.
Indeed, it scarcely could be said that he did not also like—as
individuals—the two men in there whom he certainly purposed to put to
death the next day. He hated the thing they stood for, he resented their
presence in Asia—because of what it signified and exampled, but he had
no actual dislike either of Dr. Traherne or of Major Crespin. He had
intense bias, unalterable convictions, but, in telling Lucilla Crespin
that he had no prejudices, if he had boasted, he had but boasted a fact.
And he had too acute a mind, and had lived and seen too much to bear
ill-grudge for expressions of dislike and contempt wrung out of his
prisoners by the torture of their dire plight. They were not
Orientals—it was their misfortune, not their fault—and it was not to
be expected that they should bear either anguish of mind or anguish of
body with the suave dignity that an Oriental both by instinct and by the
teaching of precedent would. “No man is bound to impossibilities.” That,
he remembered, was an old axiom of the Roman law—and of Nature’s law
too. The game went on—the last billiards the players would ever
play—were they thinking of that? The even, careful click of the ivory
balls came steadily in to him here. They were whispering, scheming
planning, of course, though no sound of it readied him where he sat at
the writing-table. Let them. They were welcome to plan what they would.
They were powerless to do anything but meet with what fortitude of
bearing they could the death he had decreed them—had decreed, and
tomorrow at sunset would enforce.
Rukh drew a pad of paper a little nearer his hand, picked up a pencil,
pressed the bell beside him, and fell to thinking how he should word
what he was about to write.
“Your ’Ighness rang?” Watkins said, in a few moments, at the door.
“Come in, Watkins,” the white servant’s brown master ordered without
looking up. “Just close the billiard-room door, will you?”
The valet glanced into the billiard-room as he was obeying. “They’re
good plucked ’uns, sir; I will say that,” he blurted out admiringly as
he came to the Raja’s side.
“Yes,” the ruler agreed, “there’s some satisfaction in handling them.
I’m glad they’re not abject—it would spoil the sport.”
“Quite so, sir,” was the grim response.
“But it has occurred to me, Watkins,” Rukh looked up for the first time,
“that perhaps it’s not quite safe to have them so near the wireless
room. Their one chance would be to get into wireless communication with
India. They appeared last night to know nothing about wireless, but I
have my doubts. Most British service officers know something of it now.
Tell me, Watkins, have they made any attempt to bribe you?”
“Not yet, sir,” Watkins said cryptically.
“Ha, that looks bad,” the Raja observed regretfully. “It looks as if
they had something else up their sleeves, and were leaving bribery to
the last resort. I want to test their ignorance of wireless. I want you,
in their presence, to send out some message that is bound to startle or
enrage them, and see if they show any sign of understanding it.”
“That’s a notion, sir,” Watkins exclaimed with a grin of applause. His
manner when he and Rukh were alone was no less respectful—he knew that
his head answered for that—but it was less wooden and
servant-impersonal than it was before others. And when alone they
invariably spoke English, as indeed they usually did at other times.
Rukh grinned back at Watkins. The child in him liked applause and sucked
it, even from an inferior he despised.
“But,” he said with a bothered frown, rising and moving aimlessly
towards the wireless room, “I can’t think of a message.”
If that was an appeal, Watkins ignored it. He made no attempt to help
the prince to a sufficiently effective and stinging message. Sage
Watkins obeyed orders implicitly; he never assumed responsibility. If
the Raja of Rukh fumbled and waited for a cue, the valet did not feel it
his place to give it. And he had volunteered more now than he often
volunteered. He stood perfectly still and waited—waited perfectly.
At the door of the wireless-room the Raja paused suddenly, and fingered
the lock, making sure that it was well secure. And as he stood doing it
the ayah opened the corridor door, and Mrs. Crespin passed by her into
the snuggery. She did not see either Rukh or Watkins until she was well
inside the room, and the ayah had reclosed the door she had opened, and
had disappeared. It was too late to retreat, Lucilla knew, so she merely
paused, and held her ground. She again wore the plain tweed frock she
had worn in the aeroplane, the locket again at her throat, as it had
been when she’d waked, the wide silk scarf hanging carelessly over her
shoulders. Her face was pale, but her eyes were feverishly bright, and
she held her head—she had dressed it today, simply—proudly.
Rukh heard the door close, turned, and came to her quickly.
“Ah, Mrs. Crespin,” he said cordially, “I was just thinking of you.
Think of angels and you hear their wings. Won’t you sit down?”
Lucilla Crespin ignored it all.
“I thought my husband was here,” she said coldly.
“He’s not far off,” Rukh replied. “Just wait in there for a few
minutes,” he told Watkins, pointing to the wireless-room, “I may have
instructions for you.”
Watkins went at once, unlocking the door of the wireless-room with a key
on his own ring, and closed it carefully behind him.
Then the Raja continued.
“Do, pray, sit down.” She had not moved since she had seen that Rukh was
in the room she had entered. “I want so much to have a chat with you,”
he urged her. At that—it seemed to her best—she sat down in silence,
neither looking at him, nor seeming to avoid doing so. “I hope you had
everything you required?” Rukh persisted, solicitously, as he reseated
himself.
“Everything,” she replied indifferently.
“The ayah?” he still persisted.
“Was most attentive,” Mrs. Crespin said briefly.
“And you slept—?”
“More or less,” she said with light contempt.
“More rather than less, if one may judge by your looks,” the Raja of
Rukh told her with something of warmth and emphasized admiration in eyes
and tone. Lucilla Crespin did not trouble to meet his eyes, but she
heard the tone.
“Does it matter?” she retorted scornfully.
“What can matter more than the looks of a beautiful woman?” the Raja
asked softly.
“What’s that?” she exclaimed less listlessly, lifting her head suddenly,
and listening.
“The click of billiard balls,” Rukh told her. “Your husband and Dr.
Traherne are passing the time.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said ceremoniously, as she rose, “I’ll join
them.”
But the man did not intend that. “Oh,” he said with mingled deference
and insistence, “pray spare me a few moments. I want to speak to you
seriously.”
She threw him a look then. There was nothing in it that he liked. But he
only smiled back at her pleasantly. He could wait. The Raja of Rukh was
skilled in waiting, as he was at most things.
Mrs. Crespin sat down listlessly. “Well—” she said wearily, “I am
listening.”
“You are very curt, Mrs. Crespin,” Rukh said pleadingly, leaning his arm
on the writing-table, as he seated himself at it again, and leaning his
chin on his hand. “I’m afraid you bear me malice—you hold me
responsible for the doubtless trying situation in which you find
yourself.”
“Who else is responsible?” she demanded, and her voice was certainly
curt—as curt as it was cold.
“Who?” the Raja echoed. “Why chance, fate, the gods,
Providence—whoever, or whatever, pulls the strings of this
unaccountable puppet-show. Did _I_ bring you here? Did _I_ conjure up
the fog? Could _I_ have prevented your dropping from the skies? And when
once you had set foot in the Goddess’ precinct, it was utterly out of my
power to save you—at any rate the men of your party.” The woman curdled
at the significance he threw lightly but clearly into those last words,
but she neither moved nor looked; her face was mask-like,
expressionless, and her pallor took no change. “If I raised a finger,”
Rukh went on evenly, but saying it all very earnestly, “to thwart the
Goddess, it would be the end of my rule—perhaps of my life.”
“You know that is not true,” the woman flashed out at him, her very
contempt firing her to retort—which she had meant not to do, let him
say what he might. “You could easily smuggle us away, and then face the
people out. What about your troops?” she demanded. She was not
pleading—yet.
“A handful, dear lady—a toy army,” Rukh murmured regretfully, but
vastly amused too. “It amuses me to play at soldiers. They could do
nothing against priests and people, even if they were to be depended
upon. And,” he added emphatically, “they, too, worship the Goddess.”
The woman smiled bitterly. “What you really mean, Raja,” she said,
looking him full in the eyes, “is that you dare not risk it—you haven’t
the courage.”
“You take a mean advantage, Madam,” the Raja sighed. “You abuse the
privilege of your sex in order to taunt me with cowardice.”
“Let us say, then,” she replied bitterly, “that you haven’t the will to
save us.”
He leaned across the corner of the writing-table, and with a beseeching
gesture, begged, “Reflect one moment, Madam. Why should I have the will,
at the risk of all I possess, to save Major Crespin and Dr. Traherne?
Major Crespin is your husband—does that recommend him to me? Forgive me
if I venture to guess that it doesn’t greatly recommend him to you.”
Lucilla gave him a haughty, outraged stare, but he continued, as if he
had not seen it. “He is only too typical a specimen of a breed I detest:
pigheaded, bull-necked, blustering, overbearing.” Lucilla Crespin’s
rings were cutting her fingers, but she gave him no sign. “Dr. Traherne
is an agreeable man enough—I dare say a man of genius.”
“If you kill him,” Lucilla interrupted quickly, and the Raja saw her
bosom rise and fall, a faint color tinge her cheeks, a look of life
creep into her face. He had stirred her at last! “If you cut short his
work—you’ll kill millions of your own race, whom he would have saved.”
The Raja smiled—a little at her new eagerness, though it stung
him—more at what she had said. “I don’t know that I care very much
about the millions you speak of,” he answered quietly—more intent in
watching her, and in trying to cut some breach in her seeming composure,
than in the words he used. “Life is a weed that grows again as fast as
death mows it down. At all events, he is an Englishman, a Feringhi—and,
may I add, without indiscretion, that the interest you take in him—”
the woman stiffened, and blanched again, and Rukh saw a vein swell and
beat in her throat—“oh, the merest friendly interest, I am sure—does
not endear him to me. One is, after all, a man, and the favor shown to
another man by a beautiful woman—”
Without glancing at him, Mrs. Crespin rose slowly, and moved calmly
towards the room where the ivory balls still clicked; but there was
blood oozed under her wedding-ring.
But the Raja rose swiftly, and faced her, standing between her and it
before she reached the billiard-room door.
“Please, please, Mrs. Crespin,” he said entreatingly, and his eyes grew
suddenly soft, “bear with me if I transgress your Western conventions.
Can I help being an Oriental?” he asked with a slight, proud smile.
“Believe me, I mean no harm; I wanted to talk to you about—” He broke
off lamely, as if not knowing how to go on.
“Well?” she said imperiously, after a moment, a goad in her quiet tone,
a taunt in her stern, angry eyes.
“You spoke last night,” Rukh said very gently, “of—your children—”
She turned away swiftly, her self-control was wavering at last. He had
hit the woman below the belt! The bad blow had crumpled her. She turned
away, and she swayed a little as she moved.
“I think you said—a boy and a girl,” the despot pushed his advantage
home.
It was too much.
Every human mind, every human pride, every human courage; every human
creature has its breaking point. Some may be spared ever reaching or
knowing it. But always it is there. Lucilla Crespin had reached hers.
She threw herself down on the couch with a desperate cry. “My babies, my
babies!” she sobbed.
Rukh winced. Give him his due—he was hurt for her grief. It did not
budge him from his purpose. But for the moment, at least, his vengeance
tasted sour in his mouth.
The billiard balls still clicked.