“And I too, Madam,” Rukh retorted with a short, ugly laugh, “know what to think.” Kneeling—there was nothing of supplication about it—with one knee on the throne, he caught her shoulders in his delicate, sinewy olive hands, and turned her face to him. “Come, look me in the eyes,” he ordered, “and tell me that you honestly intend to fulfill your bargain! . . . I knew it!” For her eyes had flinched. “You are playing with me! But the confiding barbarian is not so simple as you imagine. No woman has ever tried to fool me that has not repented it. You think, when you have to pay up, you will fob me off with your dead body. Let me tell you, I have no use for you dead—I want you with all the blood in your veins, with all the pride in that damned sly brain of yours. I want to make my plaything of your beauty, my mockery of your pride. I want to strip off the delicate English lady, and come down to the elemental woman, the handmaid and the instrument of man.” His passion had risen higher and higher with the words he’d fed it, and his now wide open eyes glowed like the eyes of a brute. The woman crouching there at the side of the barbaric throne, clutching it desperately for the support she desperately needed, looked at him dumbly and numb, her terror-stricken and fascinated eyes like those of some forest youngling the snake is poised to strike—powerless to move, powerless even to cry.
His tone changed, his voice fell a note. “Come now, I’ll make you a plain offer. I will put Dr. Traherne over the frontier, and, as they set him free, my people shall hand him a letter written by you at my dictation. You will tell him that you have determined to accept my protection and make this your home.” She bowed her head in bitter acquiescence. “Consequently you wish to have your children conveyed to you here—”
“Never—never—never!” She pelted it at him, her pallid face set and fixed, her dazed numbed eyes alight again, her broken body tense again. “I will make no bargain that involves my children.”
“You see!” Rukh laughed—a fiendish, ugly laugh. “You will give me no hostages for the fulfillment of your bond. But a pledge of your good faith I must have. For without a pledge, Madam, I don’t believe in it one little bit.” And as he paused he snapped his fingers delicately.
“What pledge?” she asked desperately.
“Only one is left—Dr. Traherne himself,” the Raja told her. “I may—though it will strain my power to the uttermost—save his life, while keeping him in prison. Then, when you have fulfilled your bond—fulfilled it to the uttermost, mark you!—when you have borne me a child—I will let him go free. But the moment you attempt to evade your pledge, by death or escape, I will hand him over to the priests to work their will with, and I will put no restraint upon their savage instincts.”
There are life-decisions to be made, that come to some, now and then, so hideous in their complexity, that the bravest soul, the clearest mind, the purest heart must shudder and sicken at the insupportable task—grope—hesitate—waver—faint. Knowing not what to do, but knowing that whatever one’s course, regret must be its long, hard aftermath, moral strength crumples up and is frail and trembling at such hideous crossroads of conduct—and right and wrong, highest virtue and lowest crime seem inextricably mixed. And however it wrings us, not one but must experience a measure of relief and thankfulness when such terrible deciding is by some overruling whipped out of our hands, and the befuddled wavering soul is left intense suffering merely, but spared responsibility and remorse.
This was the hardest moment of Lucilla Crespin’s life. She did not know how to decide. She could not decide. But she knew that she must. And she did have to—there was no possible escape for her, unless Heaven itself actually and now peeped “through the blanket of the dark” and threw down its verdict. And upon the woman’s deciding of this must rest the ultimate appraisement of her, of her character, and of the soundness and sweetness of her moral judgment. But two possible decisions lay for her choosing. No more choice than that was offered her. And by her decision between the terrible two her claim to the highest personal fineness, strength and nobility must stand or fall. Either way could be taken nobly, and in self-sacrifice—but one of the two led to the higher heights—one was supreme.
She did not know, as she cowered, huddled there, how she should decide. But she knew that in some way she would and must.
Rukh waited and watched her. But the sun was going, throwing its last gay pools of Tuscan gold on the hall’s dim floor, its angry pools of red on the courtyard, turning the feet of the gigantic Green Goddess to blood.