Outside the waiting people were eating oily sweetmeats and greasier
cakes and water-lily seeds, drinking sickly fermented goats’ milk, and
watching now sacred snakes tearing living birds to bleeding pieces—a
priest-granted sight both to whet and hold in leash their maddened
blood-thirst for the greater slaughter to come—so soon to come now; for
the sun had not ceased to sink; and here in the dark, terrible hall the
tawny prince in gauds of satins and gems, and the white-skinned woman in
a plain tweed gown, bartered and played for a man’s life, a woman’s soul
and body. A Raja staked a whim and a lust, an Englishwoman staked her
all.
They staked and threw.
And the sun sank lower.
“Soho!” Rukh said at last, all the kindness real or assumed gone from
his voice, the wicked light of a primitive, angry feeling disfiguring
his eyes, “you will do for your lover—to save him a little additional
pain—what you would not do to have your children restored to you!
Suppose I agree—would he accept this sacrifice?”
“No,” the woman said quickly, “no, he wouldn’t—but he must have no
choice. That is part of the bargain. Send him—bound hand and foot, if
need be—down to Kashmir, and put him over the frontier—”
“You don’t care what he thinks of you?” Rukh broke in.
“He will know what to think,” the woman said.
“And I too, Madam,” Rukh retorted with a short, ugly laugh, “know what
to think.” Kneeling—there was nothing of supplication about it—with
one knee on the throne, he caught her shoulders in his delicate, sinewy
olive hands, and turned her face to him. “Come, look me in the eyes,” he
ordered, “and tell me that you honestly intend to fulfill your bargain!
. . . I knew it!” For her eyes had flinched. “You are playing with me!
But the confiding barbarian is not so simple as you imagine. No woman
has ever tried to fool me that has not repented it. You think, when you
have to pay up, you will fob me off with your dead body. Let me tell
you, I have no use for you dead—I want you with all the blood in your
veins, with all the pride in that damned sly brain of yours. I want to
make my plaything of your beauty, my mockery of your pride. I want to
strip off the delicate English lady, and come down to the elemental
woman, the handmaid and the instrument of man.” His passion had risen
higher and higher with the words he’d fed it, and his now wide open eyes
glowed like the eyes of a brute. The woman crouching there at the side
of the barbaric throne, clutching it desperately for the support she
desperately needed, looked at him dumbly and numb, her terror-stricken
and fascinated eyes like those of some forest youngling the snake is
poised to strike—powerless to move, powerless even to cry.
His tone changed, his voice fell a note. “Come now, I’ll make you a
plain offer. I will put Dr. Traherne over the frontier, and, as they set
him free, my people shall hand him a letter written by you at my
dictation. You will tell him that you have determined to accept my
protection and make this your home.” She bowed her head in bitter
acquiescence. “Consequently you wish to have your children conveyed to
you here—”
“Never—never—never!” She pelted it at him, her pallid face set and
fixed, her dazed numbed eyes alight again, her broken body tense again.
“I will make no bargain that involves my children.”
“You see!” Rukh laughed—a fiendish, ugly laugh. “You will give me no
hostages for the fulfillment of your bond. But a pledge of your good
faith I must have. For without a pledge, Madam, I don’t believe in it
one little bit.” And as he paused he snapped his fingers delicately.
“What pledge?” she asked desperately.
“Only one is left—Dr. Traherne himself,” the Raja told her. “I
may—though it will strain my power to the uttermost—save his life,
while keeping him in prison. Then, when you have fulfilled your
bond—fulfilled it to the uttermost, mark you!—when you have borne me a
child—I will let him go free. But the moment you attempt to evade your
pledge, by death or escape, I will hand him over to the priests to work
their will with, and I will put no restraint upon their savage
instincts.”
There are life-decisions to be made, that come to some, now and then, so
hideous in their complexity, that the bravest soul, the clearest mind,
the purest heart must shudder and sicken at the insupportable
task—grope—hesitate—waver—faint. Knowing not what to do, but knowing
that whatever one’s course, regret must be its long, hard aftermath,
moral strength crumples up and is frail and trembling at such hideous
crossroads of conduct—and right and wrong, highest virtue and lowest
crime seem inextricably mixed. And however it wrings us, not one but
must experience a measure of relief and thankfulness when such terrible
deciding is by some overruling whipped out of our hands, and the
befuddled wavering soul is left intense suffering merely, but spared
responsibility and remorse.
This was the hardest moment of Lucilla Crespin’s life. She did not know
how to decide. She could not decide. But she knew that she must. And she
did have to—there was no possible escape for her, unless Heaven itself
actually and now peeped “through the blanket of the dark” and threw down
its verdict. And upon the woman’s deciding of this must rest the
ultimate appraisement of her, of her character, and of the soundness and
sweetness of her moral judgment. But two possible decisions lay for her
choosing. No more choice than that was offered her. And by her decision
between the terrible two her claim to the highest personal fineness,
strength and nobility must stand or fall. Either way could be taken
nobly, and in self-sacrifice—but one of the two led to the higher
heights—one was supreme.
She did not know, as she cowered, huddled there, how she should decide.
But she knew that in some way she would and must.
Rukh waited and watched her. But the sun was going, throwing its last
gay pools of Tuscan gold on the hall’s dim floor, its angry pools of red
on the courtyard, turning the feet of the gigantic Green Goddess to
blood.
And he saw, and said, “Choose, my dear lady, choose!”
The moment had come.
She lifted her head wearily, clenched tighter on the jeweled edge of the
throne, her lips moved difficultly to a word. “I choose—”
He bent nearer to catch her labored saying, his dark Eastern face tense
and keen, his eyes excited, not unanxious. For he not only wanted his
own way, but he intensely wished to have it in his own way.
“—then—to—”
Slowly her eyes left his face. Her words did not break or trail—they
stopped. She lifted her face towards the clerestory slits, and listened.
She listened—more intensely than ever at Lucknow a woman had
listened—and an impalpable shimmer of hope dawned on Mrs. Crespin’s
face.
The murmur of the crowd below sounded subdued. It broke, and ceased.
Were they listening too?
With a shriek of insane excitement, the wild overflow of self-control
and despair undammed at last, the cowering woman sprang to her feet.
“Aeroplanes!” she cried. “The aeroplanes!” she shouted and laughed.
“Basil! Basil! The aeroplanes!”