He was tall, well-built, about forty, Traherne thought, and the two Englishmen knew from his jewels that, whatever his people were, the Raja of Rukh was fabulously rich. His diamonds were good—the big blue one that winked on his forehead were hard to match anywhere; his emeralds were fine—they lay, a green, snake-like rope, on his richly furred, coral and jewel buttoned satin coat, and cascaded down to the knees of his wide velvet trousers; the aigrette in his cap-like turban was worth a great deal, and it must have plumed the head of a wonderfully virile bird, or else have been marvelously wired, for its every delicate thread stood erect in spite of the jewel that topped and weighted it; and the great turquoise from which it rose was almost a plaque. The princely shoes were a blaze of gems, one blue with sapphires, one red as a pigeon’s blood with rubies finer than Burmah ever quarries. But all this was little to the pearls. Tassels of pearls hung from his ears and his sleeves and their cuffs. Seven great ropes of pearls hung about his neck and over his shoulders—pearls such as Europe does not see over-often, and never in such quantities; one rope fell below his long-skirted coat almost to his trousers’ hem, one shorter strand was of pink pearls perfectly matched; a necklace of “black” pearls lay gray and soft across the breast of his turquoise blue coat, and from it hung one huge pear-shaped pearl so radiantly pink that it almost looked red as it touched the milk-white pearls below it—and every pearl of the many hundreds gleamed with the rainbow-burnish that some pigeons show on their jeweled necks.
The Raja’s face was intelligent, his hands were beautiful, his tiny mustache had a silken look of Paris, his eyes were dark and inscrutable.
Mrs. Crespin thought him ridiculous, outrageously “trapped out” for even an uncivilized man. Antony Crespin, with the British soldier-man’s impenetrable insularity, set him down “a hell of a nigger—what.” But Basil Traherne, skilled in faces, in human frames and in gaits, thought that the Raja of Rukh had character and distinct and polished personality.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Raja waited, cool, courteous and quite noncommittal. And after an instant Crespin advanced and saluted.
The Eastern inclined his head—did it so slightly that it accorded permission rather than returned or gave salutation. He was dignified, and he was not ridiculous, Traherne thought, for all his satins and silks and glut of hanging jewels, as he stood there in front of his temple where the goats’ heads still dripped sacrificial red, and his people about him.
“Does Your Highness speak English?” Crespin asked rather desperately—with almost a superior edge to his voice.
“Oh, yes, a little,” the Rukh said in English as English as Crespin’s own and in an accent even a little more irreproachable.
Crespin pulled himself together instantly, and said, speaking like a soldier and a man of breeding, “Then I have to apologize for our landing uninvited in your territory.”
“Uninvited; but I assure you not unwelcome.” The inclination of the bejeweled head was just a trifle more this time.