“Oh, yes, but I can’t think what it is.”
“Gounod’s ‘Funeral March of a Marionette,’” the Raja said in an odd voice, an odd look in his narrowed eyes—“a most humorous composition. May I pour you a glass of maraschino, Madam?”
CHAPTER XXVI
The dinner was sumptuous; better still, it was perfect. What a magician wealth was, Traherne mused; and Major Crespin enjoyed it immensely. The Raja was a jolly good fellow, whatever the color of his skin, damned if he wasn’t. Any chap who did one as well as that was a man and a brother: the excellent food, the exquisite and welcomer wines, had lulled to fast sleep the English soldier’s every fear. He was at peace with all the universe, Asia and Germany included, especially Asia: to hell with silly race-distinctions!—good fizz knew none.
The Funeral March pulsed through the loggia. The sky was the color of blood. When the record was finished, Rukh called for no other—Watkins waiting at the gramophone had a sinecure.
Antony Crespin was drinking too much. Traherne watched him through angry eyes; Rukh, not seeming to look, with an inscrutable smile. Lucilla was nervous and wretched. Surely he could have spared her this—here! He might have controlled his craving until he had reached his own room, and have asked there for what he craved—he would only have needed to ask in this palace of sumptuous and pressed hospitality.
But Crespin could not wait. He was doing his best. And, Traherne thanked heaven for it, he was eating heartily.
Traherne ate well too—doing it in careful fore-thought of what might be before him to do—or to attempt. And Lucilla Crespin ate as much as she could. She too was doing her best.
The Raja ate sparingly, without seeming to do so, and drank very little. But he chatted entertainingly all the time: the perfect host, considerate and quietly cordial—and if the woman who sat on his right hand received most of his attention, and all his deference, he, in that, paid their own European custom the sincere flattery of imitation.
The meal was long—not too long. The sunset glow faded, great stars pulsed green, white and gold in the strip of purple sky between the o’ertopping, high, snow-covered mountains. Dessert in great cut-gold bowls was put on the table. Watkins came and touched a switch, and when the table sparkled with electric lights among the flowers on it, and others above it, came and stood behind his master’s chair. The old major-domo and his white-clad satellites with the Raja’s livery of gold, silver and green twisted in their turbans hovered watchfully round.