“I regret that I must offer you the services of a less well-trained
ayah,” Rukh said, “but it is unavoidable. The woman who has waited on
you had the bad taste to be greatly attached to her little—and, I must
own, not one would think personally attractive—cockney husband. She
is—just for the time being, of course—inconsolable. And her noisy
grief—she’s of that irritating type—would disturb you. And too—she
has learned—I regret it; but no autocrat can muzzle gossip, and such
chatter flies in Rukh, and particularly fast in every palace, I
think—she has learned how the inestimable, if sometimes indirect,
Watkins came by his death. I could force her to attend you, but even I
could not force or persuade her to do it civilly.”
Mrs. Crespin made no reply.
She sat on a wide stone bench, soft with cushions and fringed breadths
of silks, in the garden that snuggled radiantly below the corridor
windows—and the Raja of Rukh stood before her, his face to the palace
towards which the carved bench was backed.
He had sent old Ak-kok to bring the English lady there from the
snuggery, and Ak-kok had obeyed him sulkily, but had obeyed. Soldiers
had gone with her to see that she did, and the old nurse had known from
Rukh’s manner, even more than from his words, that in this she dare not
disobey him. There were times and moods in which her prince humored and
obeyed her. This was none. And when the soldiers had lifted the dead
man’s body from where it lay, and carried it—not disrespectfully—away,
and had indicated by unmistakable gestures that she might not follow
them, Lucilla Crespin had turned listlessly and gone with Ak-kok. Why
not? Nothing mattered now. There was no fret over little things left in
her—the time was too short.
And so she sat on the bench to which the old Rukh woman took her, then
turned and left her. And presently when they brought her food—men in
the Raja’s white and gold and green liveries—and put it down near her,
she ate and drank, because she wished to be strong to-morrow: strong to
die quietly and proudly, if no help came, strong to live to reach her
children—hers and Antony’s—if help from Amil-Serai swooped down on
imprisoning Rukh. The men servants left her as soon as they’d served
her, but a girl, evidently of the ayah class, stood near, as if in her
service, her hands folded in her sari, her eyes, Lucilla thought, not
fanatically inimical.
The Englishwoman was glad to be free of the palace walls—for a time;
glad to sit here where she could not see it. She did not know that Rukh
himself had moved the heavy seat so that its back was turned to the
fortress-palace. And she was glad to know that all those thick walls
stood impenetrable between her and what lay—it still must, she thought,
the drop down had been so far and so sheer—in the gorge below the
snuggery balcony. And of that too the Raja had thought.
She did not see the garden in which she sat, but perhaps some balm of
its beauty and quiet stole to her and laved her.
It was of no great size, though its twisted length was not
inconsiderable, for its possible fertile perch beside the
high-rock-placed palace was narrow. But it lay a very beautiful ribbon
of blooms and fragrant shrubs, of exquisite vistas and lilied tanks at
the edge of the fortress. A moat, more ornament than of possible need or
use, was cut in the other side, and over the moat and its shimmering
water a bridge—not drawn now—was perhaps the most beautiful bridge in
Asia—a bridge of writhing, coiling snakes, carved stone and malachite
cunningly—and at what human labor!—intertwisted and twined. And beyond
the moat, down on the brown rocks’ narrow perches lay the tiny
dung-thatched homes of the peasants of Rukh. And the garden was pungent
with hot, mingled sweetness.
The sun was setting. To-morrow at sunset! She lifted her hand to her
neck and felt it curiously. At this hour to-morrow—she shuddered.
Shame! she cried on herself. Englishwomen had died, suffering worse than
death before they died. She was going to her death undefiled. She
thanked her father’s God for that! And as she threw back her head with a
little lift of English pride, she saw the hills beyond the garden. It
was good to see the mountains so—the great white-topped mountains. She
lifted her eyes to them hungrily, and asked that from them her help
might come—help to live, help to home and babies, or help to die. Over
beyond the hills, back of the great snow piles lay Pahari. Ronny and
Iris were there. She’d go to them, not here in this prison-place, but
out in God’s own open, she’d _be_ with them, she’d spend such hours as
were left her now with them.
Mother-love, and the anguish-push—her will, made it an almost
omnipotent thing, wrought its incalculable miracle. She _was_ with her
children. She relived with them their little lives. She played with
them. She folded her arms about them. She gave her breasts to their baby
lips. She was not grieving now—the hours were too few—she was joying
in her boy and in Iris. And her face grew younger again, and softened.
And Rukh, coming noiselessly to her, standing and watching her, unseen
by her, wondered at what he saw in her altered face—youth, peace,
content. He had changed again, but the clothes he wore now still were
European.
Even when he spoke at last, though she turned quiet eyes up to his, she
paid no heed, and he thought did not hear.
She made no attempt to go. She showed no resentment of his presence. He
would have preferred either to the blank she gave—or rather the blank
he found. She gave nothing.
He tried her in several ways. She made no response—gave no sign.
He bit his lip, and waited.
At last he beckoned the serving woman, and sent her away to execute a
command. While she was gone he told Mrs. Crespin that he had substituted
the girl’s service of her—the best he now had to offer her—for that of
the woman who had attended her till now, and added his regret and his
explanation.
Mrs. Crespin made no comment.
He spoke of Dr. Traherne. She made no reply.
He spoke of Antony Crespin.
She gave no sign.
But when the young ayah came back, and offered a shawl, an exquisite,
delicate thing that Lucilla Crespin had not seen before, she made a
slight gesture of refusal, and said, rising, “I will go to my room now,
if I may.”
“Your wish is my law,” Rukh told her quietly.
She smiled faintly at that.
“One moment,” he begged as she turned.
She did not turn back, but she paused, and waited.
“You will dine—” he asked; “you—perhaps”—his voice almost was
humble—“will prefer to dine alone?”
“Yes,” she said, and gesturing the ayah to show her the way, went slowly
and calmly back to the palace door.
And for her proud, still courage, he maddened for her anew. He disliked
while he feared and admired her people, he despised her creed—as indeed
he did all creeds and beliefs, though deep in his blood something both
love and reverence of the Buddha held and was quick—but he desired her
fiercely as a collector desires the one rare and priceless specimen his
cabinets lack. He wanted to _own her_, but, more than that, he longed to
gain from her some personal response to the very personal feeling
towards her, the kindling inclination that tingled and throbbed his
being.
The sun had quite gone when he too left the garden, only the white sheen
of the far, high mountains lighting it—for the stars had not come yet.
At the sound of a foot, he sprang up from the bench. It was not the fall
of a native foot, he knew, and it was a woman’s tread.
She was threading her way back through the garden—the ayah stood
quietly waiting at the side-door of the palace-wall. He had ordered
strictly that no one should oppose the Ferenghi lady in aught, save her
passing from the palace precincts, but he wondered how she had found her
way back through the long, twisting palace labyrinths—no one whose
tongue she knew, no one who knew hers.
She was gathering flowers—one here, one there, selecting them
carefully, and when she had chosen a few, she moved quietly on until she
reached him. He had thought she had not seen him, but she must have done
so, for her joining of him was deliberate.
She spoke first.
“May I,” she asked quietly, “see my husband?”
“Is it necessary?” Rukh asked.
“I wish it,” she told him gently.
“Why?” he demanded. “You did not love him!”
“I did—” she said, looking him in the eyes.
It was lighter now. The first stars were hanging out their lamps of
green and blue, and the moon was cresting the horizon lustily.
“How long ago?” the Raja asked.
“May I see Major Crespin?” she repeated.
“To place those flowers in his hands? They are Rukh-grown you know!”
“For his children,” she said.
“As you wish,” the Raja told her—after a pause. The Raja of Rukh was
not unmoved. A warm heart beats always under the Oriental mask. Antony
Crespin’s widow, there in her peril and loneliness, in his garden, the
blossoms she’d filched from it in her hand, had reached it. He desired
her. He intended to take her. But his manhood was stirred.
“To-night—it is growing late—or in the morning, Mrs. Crespin?” he
asked her softly.
“Now,” she replied.
“As you wish,” he repeated.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Crespin told him.
But for his turban, he still wore European clothes. But his inseparable
silver whistle hung at the coat of his gray lounge suit. He lifted the
whistle. But she stayed him a moment, and said, “Will you tell
me—what—will be done—with Major Crespin’s body?”
“I had not thought of that yet,” Rukh asserted. It was true. “But no
disrespect shall be shown to what the flowers you have gathered
protects.”
“May my husband’s body be burned?” she asked.
“You prefer it—to burial?”
“Much.”
Rukh’s dark eyes darkened. She preferred it to burial here in Rukh, he
knew. But after an instant’s hesitation, he said quietly: “It shall be
done. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” she said again, “I will go to him now.”
The Raja bowed, and lifted the silver whistle. Its long note pierced
sharp and sweet through the evening.
“They will attend you,” he said when he’d given the soldiers who’d come
a crisp order. And she turned and went with the men, the young ayah
close behind her as they entered the door in the palace wall.
Rukh made no attempt to follow.
He stood and watched her. And when she had gone, he went a few steps,
bent, and took up a flower she had dropped, and he drew its stem through
the buttonhole of his gray lounge coat. It was a pale pink tea-rose, and
its scent was strong and sweet.