The girl caught his hand and bent her brow to it. Her eyes pleaded with him to stay with her a little, and he saw it. He touched her sheened hair fondly, as one pats a dog, nodded gayly, and went on his way.
The girl’s face quivered, and tears gathered in her big, frightened eyes. But she only salaamed again—it hurt—and whispered, “My lord!” meekly and softly. Should she ever see him again? He came to her but seldom, the lord she adored, the only man, save father and brothers, she had seen since her childhood, the only man she ever would see again though she lived to be as old as Ak-kok. Should she ever see him again? She had not seen him often. Would he come once more? Already she knew that her pain was on her. She waited, battling it where she stood, until the great outer door was closed and barred behind him, and then groped her way to the darkened inner room where the midwife waited, and all lay ready for her agony.
And the Raja of Rukh whistled happily as he went back to finish his dressing, happy because La-swak was well again.
And that was why the three English people waited so long alone in the room below, and the chef in the palace kitchen fumed, and would have given notice, or, at least, sworn, had he dared.
Rukh had thought of the English doctor below as he knelt by his child, and, had La-swak’s illness not gone as swiftly as it had come, would have summoned Traherne, and entreated his help. If he had, there’d have been a fine Oriental to-do in one harem room, and old Ak-kok would have achieved something little short of murder, or have gone raving mad again in attempting it. And this story need not have been told—for it would have ended there with handshakings and gifts, and safe escort homeward: for vicious, brutal, implacable, the Raja of Rukh would not have proved ungrateful: it was not in his Asian mountain blood.
The Raja finished his dressing leisurely, and went to his guests. But the great ruby no longer blazed in his turban. La-swak had demanded it, when he’d drunk, and Rukh had unfastened it, and it was close shut now in the sleeping baby’s little brown hand, and the osprey of diamond specks was spread out fan-like, sparkling brilliantly on La-swak’s fat little brown paunch.
But the Raja wore one jewel—he might have lost that too had he worn it to the sweetmeat-sick-room—the ribbon and star of a Russian order which only the anointed hand of the Little White Father could give, and did not give often. Alas for it now!
Much as they feared him, they were glad to see him: the uncertainty was growing increasingly intolerable, and, frankly, they all three were hungry.
He bowed to the men, and went to Mrs. Crespin. “Pray forgive me, Madam,” he said, “for being the last to appear. The fact is, I had to hold a sort of Cabinet Council—or shall I say a conclave of prelates?—with questions arising out of your most welcome arrival.”
It was perfectly true. There had been grave talk in the Council Chamber of Rukh, before the Raja had left it to lay off his native dress, and “change for dinner.”