CHAPTER XVII
“Oh, Mrs. Crespin,” Traherne called before they saw him clambering down from the rocks where the ruined bus lay. “I’ve found,” he called as he came in sight, “in the wreck the newspaper you spoke of—you were right about Rukh.”
Major Crespin pulled himself up roundly, he was not of the breed to show his hurt to the other man. “What does it say?” he asked briskly, as Traherne came up to them with the paper in his hand.
Traherne unfolded it, found the place, and read, “‘Abdulabad, Tuesday. Sentence of death has been passed on the three men found guilty of the murder of Mr. Haredale. It appears that these miscreants are natives of Rukh, a small and little-known independent state among the northern spurs of the Himalayas.’”
“Yes,” Lucilla nodded, “that’s what I read.”
“This news isn’t the best possible passport for us in our present situation,” Traherne said gravely, and his face was graver than his words.
“But,” Mrs. Crespin protested reassuringly, “if we’re hundreds of miles from anywhere, it can’t be known here yet.”
“One would think not,” Traherne assented.
“In any case, they wouldn’t dare to molest us,” Major Crespin said nonchalantly across the fresh cigarette he was lighting.
Traherne shot him a sharp look. Did Crespin for one moment believe that? Or was he trying to reassure his wife? The latter no doubt, Traherne concluded.
“All the same,” the physician said—and following Crespin’s lead by saying it lightly, “it might be safest to burn this paragraph, in case there’s anybody here that can read it.” And he suited action to words, lighting at Crespin’s cigarette the strip of paper he tore out carefully, watching it burn until it licked at his fingers, and he had to drop the flaming fragment. But he watched it burn to the last ash, and then stamped upon that. Lucilla watched it too—they all did, and Yazok the priest watched most intently of all.
Mrs. Crespin held out her hand for the rest of the newspaper, and when Traherne gave it she went and put it with her leather coat where it lay on a rock as Traherne had placed it.
“Hullo!” Crespin held up a hand.
Strange ululations, mingled with the throb of tom-toms and the clash of cymbals were faintly heard from the distance—faint, but growing clearer and clearer, from the mountain-path up which the runner had sped at the priest’s command.
“Hullo!” the Major repeated. “What’s this?”
“Sounds like the march of the Great Panjandrum,” Traherne murmured.
It certainly did; and it looked even more than it sounded, when it swept and pranced into sight.
The natives all ran to the point where the path debouched on the open space. All their lives they had seen their Raja come, as had their fathers, and theirs before them, and as often as not keeping just such state, but they never tired of the spectacle, and it never failed to move them. The rustle of satisfaction which is the Oriental equivalent of our “loud cheering,” and, by the way, very much more eloquent, swept through them like a gust of gentle wind in a field of well-ripe corn; then, as their prince came nearer, they prostrated themselves on each side of his way. They were delighted to see him, and exquisitely proud of his gorgeous and noised display, but not a face relaxed, all were inordinately grave, as too were the harlequin mobbery that preceded and followed his litter. Except in China and Burmah, merriment is not the Asian’s idea of enjoyment, and very rarely its expression. Even the babies are grave. But, for all that, the tatter-demalion Rukh populace were enjoying themselves intensely.
It was a wild procession that came down the mountain path. A gigantic negro, flourishing two great naked sabers, and gyrating in a barbaric war-dance, headed it. His sole garment was a tiger’s skin slung over one shoulder and falling apron-wise over one breast down to a little below his waist, his sole ornament a wide head-band of brass in which one great red stone burned. Six music-men followed him, beating their tom-toms and clashing their cymbals till the very air winced. They wore less than the ebon major-domo did, but what their crimson loin cloths lacked in quantity they made up in color, and they were flaked with chips of purple, green and yellow glass, and the musicians’ great, sinewy arms were hung with bells. And most of the runners who padded lightly behind them tinkled too as they walked. The short-distance runners, sent only about the capital itself, to and fro from the palace on the Raja’s errands, wore no bells, but the many more who were sent all over the kingdom, and even beyond it, each wore many tiny but noisy bells; for all Asia knows that wild beasts fear the sound of bells as they fear nothing else, and will flee from the path of the panting runner who tinkles and rings as he goes.
A half score of men, clad to their heels in spotless flowing white, each with a flat hat with wide, tightly rolled brim, each hat of a different costly brocade, came next, and close behind them was carried the Raja’s palanquin. It looked something like a Chinese bride-chair, but its gauze-hung sides were not opaque; it looked something like a Burmese pagoda, for its gilded, pointed roof rose above it on much the same lines as does the great pile at Mulmien. It looked a little like a high-carried boat; and not a little like a grotesque howdah, one corner of its canopy-roof upheld by a glittering, bright blue monkey, one by a writhing green-eyed vermilion snake, one by a twisted white and pink pelican, the other by an elaborate square pillar of sandal-wood, whose carvings simulated bamboos and tulips. It looked something like a super pantomime-chair; and it looked, as it was, a thing of great cost, and of the almost lifelong labor of many skilled and patient craftsmen.
The seated figure inside it showed but indistinctly through the gauzy film of the litter’s curtains; a human figure undoubtedly, and in perfect repose, but instinct with power—a blur of turquoise and rose, of heliotrope and saffron, of silk and satin and tinsel and gems. Immediately behind him came the strangest sight in Rukh—an English valet, if ever one was in Mayfair—an immaculate, demure, correct valet who might have strolled into the picture from St. James Street, and as unmoved, detached and imperturbable there in the Eastern glare and din as if the gyrating negro had been a white-gloved constable on point-duty, the prostrate half-naked crowd a well-dressed, leisurely mêlée of shoppers, or just come from Burlington House, and the musicians before and the guards and rabble behind buses and taxis on Piccadilly and Albemarle Street.
Behind Watkins, for his name was as English as his coat, came the Raja’s bodyguard, or a considerable detachment of it—grim-faced, high-cheeked men of all heights and shapes, dressed in the most fantastic and parti-colored attire that men-at-arms ever wore yet: short sleeveless jackets of velvet, jackets of silk that were all sleeves, pleated petticoats of chintz and of shantung silk, trousers of red and yellow woolens, bare brown, hairy legs, and legs spiraled with puttee-like twistings, some of exquisite embroideries, some of time-tarnished rags. Some wore upturned-toed sandals, some were shod but with studs on their toes or a ring of jade on one ankle or on both. One wore a helmet, one carried an umbrella, several wore caps—caps made of fur, of brocade or of sheer white “chicken-work”—one bare head was perfectly bald, one wore a dancing mop of densely oiled corkscrew curls. Several wore long chains of barbaric beads that clacked as they moved, one wore a collar of glass-jeweled tin; two were turbaned. All were armed with antique match-locks, some of them with barrels six or seven feet long; and one carried a tame, monster-sized rat on his naked shoulder, and three had marigolds stuck behind their ears, which was where two carried cheroots. Six boys, wearing long yellow skirts but nothing above them, brought up the rear. Two carried big, squat, lighted braziers, lest even in this heat their lord be cold; four, lest he be warm, carried huge long-handled fans of peacocks’ feathers and others of glass-sprinkled braided sweetgrass.
The bearers put the litter down deferentially, directly in front of the temple, and knelt down behind it with their faces to the ground.
Lucilla Crespin, for all her anxiety, wanted to laugh at this raree-show. She’d seen it done better at a Drury Lane pantomime!
But Crespin and Traherne had less impulse to laugh, or to smile. They suspected something of the strength that might lurk in the tigerish claws underneath the ridiculous gloves of tinsel.
The man in Bond Street clothes came at once, with a padded, cat-like tread to the side of the resting litter, parted its curtains, and held down obsequiously a crooked broadcloth arm through which, as it rose, the seated figure put a slim brown hand.
The Raja stepped out, released his servitor’s arm, and made just a step towards the three Europeans, scanning the men lightly and in silence—not seeming to see Mrs. Crespin.
He was tall, well-built, about forty, Traherne thought, and the two Englishmen knew from his jewels that, whatever his people were, the Raja of Rukh was fabulously rich. His diamonds were good—the big blue one that winked on his forehead were hard to match anywhere; his emeralds were fine—they lay, a green, snake-like rope, on his richly furred, coral and jewel buttoned satin coat, and cascaded down to the knees of his wide velvet trousers; the aigrette in his cap-like turban was worth a great deal, and it must have plumed the head of a wonderfully virile bird, or else have been marvelously wired, for its every delicate thread stood erect in spite of the jewel that topped and weighted it; and the great turquoise from which it rose was almost a plaque. The princely shoes were a blaze of gems, one blue with sapphires, one red as a pigeon’s blood with rubies finer than Burmah ever quarries. But all this was little to the pearls. Tassels of pearls hung from his ears and his sleeves and their cuffs. Seven great ropes of pearls hung about his neck and over his shoulders—pearls such as Europe does not see over-often, and never in such quantities; one rope fell below his long-skirted coat almost to his trousers’ hem, one shorter strand was of pink pearls perfectly matched; a necklace of “black” pearls lay gray and soft across the breast of his turquoise blue coat, and from it hung one huge pear-shaped pearl so radiantly pink that it almost looked red as it touched the milk-white pearls below it—and every pearl of the many hundreds gleamed with the rainbow-burnish that some pigeons show on their jeweled necks.
The Raja’s face was intelligent, his hands were beautiful, his tiny mustache had a silken look of Paris, his eyes were dark and inscrutable.
Mrs. Crespin thought him ridiculous, outrageously “trapped out” for even an uncivilized man. Antony Crespin, with the British soldier-man’s impenetrable insularity, set him down “a hell of a nigger—what.” But Basil Traherne, skilled in faces, in human frames and in gaits, thought that the Raja of Rukh had character and distinct and polished personality.