“Of all the infernal, purring devils—!” Crespin broke out, beside himself with fury and impotence.
The Raja laughed indulgently. “Dignity, Major, dignity!” he reminded him with intolerable good-nature.
Crespin, almost demented, raised a threatening hand, but Dr. Traherne interposed himself determinedly between the seething Englishman and the still smiling native, laid a firm reminding hand on Crespin’s shoulder, and pushed and shepherded him across the floor, through the door, and into the billiard-room. And almost at once, Rukh, listening, heard the steady click of the billiard-balls.
They were playing the game again—and the Raja’s face lit with an admiring smile. He liked their grit.
Indeed, it scarcely could be said that he did not also like—as individuals—the two men in there whom he certainly purposed to put to death the next day. He hated the thing they stood for, he resented their presence in Asia—because of what it signified and exampled, but he had no actual dislike either of Dr. Traherne or of Major Crespin. He had intense bias, unalterable convictions, but, in telling Lucilla Crespin that he had no prejudices, if he had boasted, he had but boasted a fact. And he had too acute a mind, and had lived and seen too much to bear ill-grudge for expressions of dislike and contempt wrung out of his prisoners by the torture of their dire plight. They were not Orientals—it was their misfortune, not their fault—and it was not to be expected that they should bear either anguish of mind or anguish of body with the suave dignity that an Oriental both by instinct and by the teaching of precedent would. “No man is bound to impossibilities.” That, he remembered, was an old axiom of the Roman law—and of Nature’s law too. The game went on—the last billiards the players would ever play—were they thinking of that? The even, careful click of the ivory balls came steadily in to him here. They were whispering, scheming planning, of course, though no sound of it readied him where he sat at the writing-table. Let them. They were welcome to plan what they would. They were powerless to do anything but meet with what fortitude of bearing they could the death he had decreed them—had decreed, and tomorrow at sunset would enforce.
Rukh drew a pad of paper a little nearer his hand, picked up a pencil, pressed the bell beside him, and fell to thinking how he should word what he was about to write.
“Your ’Ighness rang?” Watkins said, in a few moments, at the door.
“Come in, Watkins,” the white servant’s brown master ordered without looking up. “Just close the billiard-room door, will you?”
The valet glanced into the billiard-room as he was obeying. “They’re good plucked ’uns, sir; I will say that,” he blurted out admiringly as he came to the Raja’s side.
“Yes,” the ruler agreed, “there’s some satisfaction in handling them. I’m glad they’re not abject—it would spoil the sport.”