It well might have been the wedding-day of heaven and earth, it was so
lovely. There were scant wild flowers in Rukh, but each that there was
lifted up a glad, gay face. There are few song-birds in the Himalayas,
but a lark sang and swayed on the spear-shaped lace of a green bamboo,
and a choir of thrushes throated up a silver carol of song from the
full-berried rowans. Yellow sunshine lay in unbroken, imperial swathes
everywhere. Children laughed and pranked, women sang at their
tasks—none doing more than she must to-day—men smoked and walked about
arm in arm.
All was ready—except the hour—and all were radiant, expectant and
happy. There was feasting and love-making, goodwill and fellowship. And
the priests moved about with an arrogant swing of their hips, and all
the people salaamed at their approach, as if they’d been gods
themselves, instead merely the servers of gods, and dressed in their
best garb.
At the full of the mid-day heat a great hush fell. There was no breath
of air, nothing moved. All Rukh seemed waiting in eager silence like
some great beast poised to spring. The hours crawled seemingly
stagnantly through the water clocks, and the green and blue dragon-flies
seemed asleep on the down of the bronze and lemon thistles.
Lucilla grew calmer and braver as the slow moments went, because the end
was nearer. It was something of stimulant, and something of narcotic
too, that so soon it would be over—strain, fear, suspense gone forever.
Only the young ayah came near her—bringing her food and drink, silently
offering her attendance. No message came from the Raja, and she sent him
none. No message could have come, unless written, or brought by him
himself—since none left in his service now could speak any word she’d
understand.
Traherne felt turning to stone. He no longer was bound, but he scarcely
moved. They brought too to him food and drink. He took what he could,
and waited stonily—neither patient nor impatient. The long night had
sapped his emotion. He was numb rather than tormented. Tension and
regret (the air flight had been his suggestion) and pallid fear had
mercifully gnawed away his power to feel or to suffer much.
They had not met since he’d been pinioned in the snuggery, and dragged
roughly from it. No message—except thought’s throbbing wireless—had
reached either from either. Neither had heard anything of the other.
But—however dulled their senses, however lulled their pain, each
watched and wished for the sun to sink, and each listened ceaselessly
with straining ears to catch the first distant throb of a far-off
aeroplane’s engine.
None came.
The sun was sinking at last, slowly, surely.
And again expectant human noises and stir came in the palace and out in
the rocky, mountainous open. And again hatred, blood-lust and fanaticism
belched through the shimmering air, and the stench of marigolds and
cocoanut oil, and the reek of lewd, guttural songs.
The Raja of Rukh strained hearing and nerves for the sound of English
aeroplanes.
None came.
The sun sank lower.
A group of priests was gathered at the doorway of the great gloomy hall
that opened on to the public open place of greatest and ceremonial
sacrifice—as priests had gathered there for centuries at such times as
this, when big tribal events called for special observation, of triumph,
or defeat or peril quivered and bleated for special appeasement of their
six-armed deity. Wild-eyed, four-footed, soft-skinned creatures had been
slaughtered in their terrified, moaning hecatombs out there in that
courtyard, and human lives had been offered in sacrifice there before
this—the lives of miscreants who had angered a prince—but not often
enemy lives—not nearly often enough: Rukh lay too far from other
principalities, too remote, too rock-and-peak-bound, and the tribes that
lay nearest were too strong and warlike, too as apt to give defeat as to
meet it. And never before had the courtyard ground run red with white
blood.
To-day was the supreme day of Rukh’s history. Not a man there, not a
little child, not a woman giving suck as they waited, but thanked the
gods for having been born, and having lived to see it.
To see the white man die, when the blood-red of the sunset came! They
ached for that. And most of all they longed to see the Feringhi woman
slaughtered, and her head laid at the feet of their Goddess. Not one
here had ever seen a white woman die, not even the ancient few who had
trapped and disemboweled human prey near the Khyber. Only one of them
all ever had seen a Feringhi woman until two days ago when the great
bird had thrown at the feet of their Goddess the Feringhi woman who was
being decked now, up there in the palace, in her death robes.
It was the woman’s death they most longed to see—a white she-victim
slain at the feet of the great green she-god! It was that that they
craved with drunken, demented longing.
For a whisper had crept through the Kingdom of Rukh.
And the women there, waiting and lusting, longed for it most.
The crowd at the edge of the courtyard seethed and pushed. And
silk-clad, veil-and-shawl-shrouded figures glided down from the
palace-harem, some in their litters, some on foot, squeezed in among the
crowding, packed peasants, harem ladies, royal-born or bought for great
price. Their jewels jingled and flashed under their shawls and veils,
and they scented the day with attar of roses.
A priest with an unscabbarded sword in his hand guarded the opening into
the great hall, but the Chief Priest stood just inside it, holding the
curtains that hung there slightly apart, peering out at the waiting,
exultant people—he liked them well, as he saw them—and scanning the
path that came down from the castle.
There are several halls not unlike this back of the Himalayas; there is
none in the Punjab.
Great columns of wood, rudely carved with distorted animal and human
figures, supported the high roof. The walls too were of wood—it was
rarer and costlier in Rukh than stone—carved as rudely and grotesquely,
and they were pierced, higher by several feet than a tallest man’s head,
by a rough clerestory—a series of oblong slits through which the deep
blue sky, just changing to sunset’s splendid motley, showed like a
velvet drop-cloth of some magnificent theatric spectacle. Roofs and
walls and pillars were a dead, dull, dark brown—somber, foreboding—but
here and there the interstices between the repellent carvings were
washed a dull red. At one side of the hall a high curtained doorway, the
curtain a terrible tapestry of human slaughter and gods’ amours, led
into the awful disrobing room, where priests put on their costliest
vestments, and victims their garlands of sacrifice. An opposite door was
heavily barred, but an oblong hole, when its sliding shutter was slid,
made a hagioscope through which the guard within could inspect whoever
approached it from without. At the far end of the hall heavy curtains,
similar indecent tapestries, covered a wide opening.
The late afternoon light, burning in through the clerestory slits,
dappled the somber floor.
A rhythmic, subdued murmur swayed through the expectant crowd, and as
slow figures came down the castle-path swelled into a tossing sea-like
storm of deep and hushed execration, but the women smiled as they
cursed, the children still sucked at their long sticks of sweet-cane and
painted sugars, and the downy babies still sucked at the brown breasts
of their mothers.
Tom-toms crashed, drums echoed, pipes screeled, skin and reed implements
sounded tunelessly. A woman sobbed in ecstasy—others caught it up and
chorused it.
The guard at the bolted door, a tiger-faced, panther-pelt-clad bronze
giant, slipped back the “squint’s” shutter and looked through it, then
unbolted and swung open the door.
Two lusty soldiers carried in and set down a rude mountain chair. Two
other soldiers guarded it on either side, and in it, tight-lipped,
proud-eyed, strapped to it securely, sat the English doctor, Basil
Traherne.
Timed to the second, the Raja of Rukh appeared at the opposite door as
the chair was borne in. His cloth-of-gold and rose and green satin
robes, but shaped like a priest’s, barely showed through the barbaric
blaze of the jewels that encrusted them. The autocrat-priest gestured,
and the soldier-bearers put down the chair; he motioned again and the
four soldiers drew away to the courtyard’s edge.
And victim and tyrant-judge eyed each other silent and grim.
Then Rukh smiled slightly and spoke. “Well, Doctor,” he said in his
slow, velvet voice, “it doesn’t appear that any ‘god from the machine’
is going to interfere with our program.”
“You are bringing a terrible vengeance upon yourself,” the Englishman
said sternly. But it sounded as if he scarcely troubled to say it at
all.
“Think, my dear Doctor,” the Raja retorted lightly. “If, as the Major
said, he did not get your S.O.S. through, I have nothing to fear. If he
lied, and did get it through, nothing can ultimately save me, and I may
as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.”
“You might have spared me this!” the Englishman said, writhing, in spite
of himself, in his bonds.
“A ritual detail, Doctor,” Rukh said deprecatingly; “not quite without
reason. Persons lacking in self-control might throw themselves to the
ground, or otherwise disarrange the ceremony.”
“I am not without self-control,” the physician told him haughtily.
The Raja bowed, smiling slightly; then gave a curt order, at which the
bearers hastened back and cut the thongs, and as Traherne strode, still
a little cramped, from the chair, carried it away.
Traherne looked about him hurriedly—but what he hoped and feared to see
was not there.
“What have you done with Mrs. Crespin?” he demanded.
“Don’t be alarmed,” was the smooth reply; “she will be here in due
time.”
“Listen to me, Raja,” Traherne said in a low, earnest voice, going very
close to the other, almost laying his hand on Rukh’s sleeve. “Do what
you will with me, but let Mrs. Crespin go. Send her to India or to
Russia, and I am sure, for her children’s sake, she will swear to keep
absolute silence as to her husband’s fate and mine.”
“You don’t believe, then, that I couldn’t save you if I would?” Rukh
demanded.
“Believe it?” Traherne scoffed. “No!”
The Raja smiled. “You are quite right, my dear Doctor. I am not a High
Priest for nothing. I might work the oracle. I might get a command from
the Goddess to hurt no hair upon your heads.”
“Then,” Traherne asked, “what devilish pleasure do you find in putting
us to death?”
“Pleasure?” Rukh echoed. “The pleasure of a double vengeance. Vengeance
for to-day—my brothers—and vengeance for centuries of subjection and
insult. Do you know what brought you here?” he said with sudden
smothered passion. “It was not blind chance, any more than it was the
Goddess. It was my will, my craving for revenge, that drew you here by a
subtle, irresistible magnetism. My will is my religion—my god. And by
that god I have sworn that you shall not escape me. Ah,” he broke off,
speaking calmly, as wild yells broke from the now frenzied crowd
outside, “they are bringing Mrs. Crespin.”
For a moment Traherne shielded his eyes with his hands, they were
trembling, then he mastered himself—and looked.
A priest was unbolting the door through which they had carried him, and
when it was opened wide, as he had been brought, she was brought,
through the door, into the grim, dark hall.
But she had come in more state. Her chair was rich and gilded, and
cushioned. She too was bound, but the thongs that roped her were lightly
twisted flowers—the rarest blooms of the palace gardens and glass.
The woman’s face was white and fixed, but her glowing eyes were brave.
The Raja went to her at once, and bent as he said, “I apologize, Madam,
for the manners of my people. Their fanaticism is beyond my control.”
She met his eyes, but she did not speak.
At a word from him her chair was lowered steadily to the ground. And the
Raja did not intervene when Traherne held out his hand to steady her as
she stepped from the palanquin—but as the European hands met he smiled.
“How long have we left?” Traherne asked, as the men were taking the
empty palanquin away.
Rukh answered at once, “Till the sun’s rim touches the crest of the
mountains. A blast of our great mountain-horn will announce the
appointed hour, and you will be led out to the sacred enclosure. You saw
the colossal image of the Goddess out yonder?” he pointed behind him.
As the chair-carriers had borne the Englishwoman in, four priests—it
had needed four—had pulled aside the heavy tapestries at the hall’s far
end. Beyond the opening two broad steps led to a wide tribune or
balcony. Over the balustrade that backed it loomed, some fifty yards
away, the head and shoulders of a colossal image of the Green Goddess.
On the tribune itself was, on a dais of two steps, a wide, gorgeous and
fantastic throne formed of barbaric filigrees, enormous elephants’ tusks
heavily jeweled, great writhing gold and silver snakes with grinning
monkey heads, and far-spread tails of gem-made peacocks’ feathers. The
throne-seat itself was low and cushioned, not much more than a great,
wide cushion, with other cushions for arms; and for back—it had no
other—another figure of the Goddess carved in high relief, with
barbaric traceries about her, behind her, and on her robes. From great,
flat brow to square, rectangular feet she was green—a violent,
virulent, hideous green—but in her great, rough-hewn ornaments, her
massive crown and in the squirmed and unsymmetrical traceries there were
touches of gold—wide daubs and swathes some, some but glimmering
hair-lines. A low brazier rested on the ground fronting the throne, and
an acrid odor came from the light green smoke that curled up from the
brazier.
Traherne barely glanced to where the Raja pointed. The woman neither
turned her head nor moved her eyes—they did not leave Traherne’s face.
“Will you grant us one last request?” the Englishman asked.
“By all means,” was the native’s instant, suave reply, “if it is my
power. In spite of your inconsiderate action of yesterday—”
“Inconsiderate—?” Traherne blurted.
“Watkins, you know—poor Watkins—a great loss to me! But _à la guerre
comme à la guerre_! I bear no malice for a fair act of war. I am anxious
to show you every consideration.” He spoke to Dr. Traherne, but he
included Mrs. Crespin by a deferential gesture, and his tone was for
her.
“Then,” Traherne said quickly and earnestly, “you will leave us alone
for the time that remains to us?”
“Why, by all means,” Rukh returned as quickly. “And oh, by the way, you
need have no fear of the—ceremony—being protracted. It will be brief
and—I trust—painless. The High Church Party are not incapable of
cruelty; but I have resolutely set my face against it.”
He paused a moment, irresolute, debating with himself. Then he quietly
stepped close to Lucilla Crespin. She had stood gazing stonily into
space while he and Traherne had been speaking, and she stood so still,
took no notice of him as he came to her, none when he spoke to her.
“Before I go, Madam,” he said, “may I remind you of my offer of
yesterday? It is not too late.” She took no notice. “Is it just to your
children to refuse?” he urged. Traherne saw her hands tremble, and she
looked in Rukh’s eyes, meeting them with a look of stone. But she did
not speak, and her fixed and rigid face gave no sign—only her hard,
cold eyes looked his through.
Rukh looked back into hers, and waited.
Still she gave no sign.
“Immovable?” he said at last. “So be it!” And he turned to go. But a
great yell of triumphant hatred weltered up from the waiting people
outside—such clamor and frenzy as they had not uttered yet—and the
Raja turned back, and spoke to her once more.
“Your husband’s body, Madam,” he told her, watching her narrowly. “They
are laying it at the feet of the Goddess.”
He had moved the Englishwoman at last.
“You promised me—” she began, and her voice and her face shook.
“That it should be burnt,” Rukh assented. “I will keep my promise. For a
white foe’s body to lie at the foot of an Asian god, honors not
dishonors it! I regret, if it pains you. But, you see, I had three,
brothers—a head for a head.” He bowed slightly and passed slowly into
the inner chamber from which he had come, and his priests, waiting till
now by the curtains before the throne, clustered about him, and followed
him.
But a guard remained. He waited by the now rebolted door they had been
carried through; he took no step towards them—but he watched.
Lucilla sank down on the broad base of a pillar—her legs were
trembling, and her heart felt queer and sick.
Traherne could not speak to her yet.
“So this is the end!” she said in a hard, toneless voice. She was not
dressed for sacrifice—Rukh’s orders had spared her that—and she waited
her butchery in the tweed in which she had landed.
“What offer did that devil make you?” he asked through stiffened lips.
“Oh,” she replied after a moment, “I didn’t mean to tell you, but I may
as well. He is an ingenious tormentor,” she said with a pitiful shrug.
“He offered yesterday to let me live, and to kidnap the children, and
bring them here to me—you know on what terms.”
“To bring the children here?” Dr. Traherne said oddly, his eyes scanning
her wonderingly, his hands crunched together.
“He said,” she went on, and her voice broke on her words a little, “in a
month I might have them in my arms. Think of it! Ronny and Iris in my
arms!”
Traherne turned away from her, as she crouched huddled and broken in her
grief and hunger.
He could not look at her.
He stood so for some time—his back to her.
The populace screamed and shrieked. They did not hear them.
At last, still his back to her, Dr. Traherne said in a low and unsteady
voice, “Are you sure you did right to refuse?”