CHAPTER XXXIX
“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.