The Achmed Abdullah MEGAPACK ®. Achmed Abdullah
in the first place.
For, as the raja, arm in arm with Sir James Spottiswoode, stepped away from the door and farther into the room, it came.
Nobody heard it. Nobody saw it or smelt it. Nobody even felt it, either consciously or subconsciously.
But again, through the mixed company that crowded the duchess’s salon, there passed a shiver. A terrible, silent, hopeless shiver.
Then noises: human noises, and the relief that goes with them. A distinct sound of breath sucked in quickly, of tea-cups clacking as hands trembled, of feet shuffling uneasily on the thick Turkish carpet, of the very servants, placidly, stolidly English, stopping in their rounds of hospitable duties, standing stock-still, silver trays gripped in white-gloved fingers, and staring, breathless, like pointers at bay.
“Something—like great wings, rushing, rushing!” murmured Charlie Thorneycroft, dropping his usual slang like a cloak.
“Like—wings—” echoed Victoria de Rensen with a little sob.
Yet there was nothing formidable or sinister in the raja’s progress through the room, by the side of Sir James, who played guide, philosopher, and friend. A charming, childlike smile was on his lips. His great, opaque eyes beamed with honest, kindly pleasure. He bowed here to a lady, shook the hands of barrister and judge and artist, mumbled friendly words in soft, halting English, accepted a cup of tea from a servant who had regained his composure, and dropped into a low Windsor chair, looking at the people with the same melancholy, childlike expression.
Very gradually the huge, voiceless excitement died. Once more servants pussyfooted through the salon with food and drink; once more the Paris cubist tore the artistic theories of the white-bearded Royal Academician into shreds; once more the Wisconsin evangelist bent to the ear of the Mayfair debutante and implored her to hit the trail of salvation; once more lion growled at lion.
But Charlie Thorneycroft could not shake off the strange impression which he had received. He was still aware of the thing, whatever it was, and of the great rushing of wings. It came out of the East, from far across the sea, and it was very portentous, very terrible, very tragic.
“I didn’t hear the wings!” he exclaimed later on. “Nor did I feel them. If I had felt or heard I wouldn’t have minded so, you know. I felt with them—and I was sorry for them, awfully, awfully sorry. No sense to that? Of course not. There wasn’t a bally ounce of sense to the whole wretched thing from beginning to end—and that’s the worst of it!”
Chapter II
Such was the entrée of the Maharaja of Oneypore into London society; and for three weeks, to a day, an hour, a minute—“Hang it! To a bally second!” Charlie Thorneycroft commented—the impression which had accompanied him into the salon of Her Grace of Shropshire clung to him.
Not that people feared or mistrusted him.
There was nothing personal about it, and indeed the man was kindness itself. He could not pass by beggar, by effusive, tail-wagging street cur, or by mewing, rubbing, dusty, ash-bin cat, without giving what he thought was demanded of him—money or caress or soft word.
Nor was it because he was too foreign. For he improved his English rapidly, and, well-bred, a gentleman, it did not take him long to master European social customs, including the prejudices. He tried his best to become Western, in every sense of the word, and to that end he abandoned his Hindu dress, his turban, his magnificent jewels. He even shaved off his split, henna-stained beard, and there remained nothing about him reminiscent of his native land except the expression in his eyes—melancholy, ancient, tired; more the eyes of a race than those of an individual—and the vivid, crimson caste-mark painted on his forehead.
It seemed rather incongruous, topping, as it did, his correct English clothes tailored by a Sackville Street craftsman.
* * * *
Then, at the end of three weeks, the aura of suspense, the aura of waiting for something that had already happened which hovered about him, disappeared quite as suddenly, and quite as terribly as it had come.
It was on the occasion of a ball given at Marlborough House, and the rooms were gay with fluffy chiffon and stately brocades, with glittering uniforms, and the sharp contrast of black and white evening dress. The orchestra, hidden behind a palm screen, sobbed a lascivious Brazilian tango. Paired off, the young danced and flirted and laughed. So did the middle-aged and the old. In the buffet-room the majordomo was busy with the preparation of the famous Marlborough champagne-punch.
At half past eleven the raja entered, together with Charlie Thorneycroft, who had attached himself to him, and at once the usual enormous shiver brushed through the assembly, like a wedge of ferocious, superhuman evil, with a hidden thunder of unguessed-at immensity. People stopped still in the middle of a dance-step. The music broke off with a jarring discord as a B-string snapped. The Marchioness of Liancourt swooned against a priceless Sèvres vase and sent it splintering to the waxed floor. The majordomo dropped his mixing-ladle into the silver punch-bowl.
Remote, gigantic, extended, the impression of voiceless fear gathered speed. It gathered breath-clogging terror. It stabbed the regions of subliminal consciousness.
Strident yet unheard, huge yet unseen, torrential yet non-existent, it swelled to a draft of sound—“sound beyond the meaning of the word—words are so inadequate—sound which you could not hear!” Thorneycroft put it—that sucked through the rooms with the strength of sky and sea and stars, with the speed of splintering lances thrown by giants’ hands, with a passionate, tragic leaping and yearning that was as the ancient call of Creation itself. It flashed outward with a wrenching, tameless glory and savagery that fused all these London molecules of humanity into one shivering whole.
Two minutes it lasted, and at exactly twenty-eight minutes to twelve Thorneycroft, obeying a peculiar impulse, looked at his watch, and he never lived to forget the time nor the date: the 15th of January, 1913—the nameless impression passed into the limbo of unremembered things.
It passed as enormously—by contrast—as it had come. It passed with an all-pervading sense of sweetness and peace: of intimate sweetness, too intimate peace. It passed with a wafting of jasmine and marigold perfume, a soft tinkling of far-away bells, and the muffled sobs of women coming from across immeasurable distances.
The raja smiled.
He raised a high-veined hand in salutation. Then he trembled. He gave a low sigh that changed rapidly into a rattling gurgle. His eyes became staring and glassy. His knees gave way, and he fell straight back, dead, white-faced, the crimson caste-mark on his forehead looking like some evil thing, mocking, sardonic, triumphant.
“God!” Thorneycroft bent over the rigid form, feeling the heart that had ceased beating. He spoke a quick word, and servants came and carried out the body.
But the people who crowded the rooms seemed quite unaware that death had stalked among them. Suddenly a wild wave of gaiety surged through the house. They laughed. They chattered. They jested. They clinked glasses. The orchestra led away with a Paris waltz that was as light as foam.
That night champagne flowed like water. Half a dozen love-affairs were finished, another half-dozen begun. Scandal was winked at and condoned. Gaiety, the madness of Bacchanalian gaiety, invaded every nook and cranny of Marlborough House, invading the very servants’ hall, where the majordomo balanced the third upstairs parlor-maid on his knees and spoke to her of love in thickly dignified terms.
Two days later Martab Singh, Maharaja of Oneypore, descendant of the many gods, was buried in state, with twenty file of Horse Guards flanking the coffin, and all the purple-faced gentry of the India Office rolling behind in carriages, dressed in pompous black broadcloth and smoking surreptitious cigars.
On the same day Charlie Thorneycroft called on Victoria de Rensen, kissed her pouting lips, and told her in his vague manner that he was off to India.
Chapter III
India came to Charlie Thorneycroft as it had come to him a dozen times: with a sudden rush of splendor, flaming red, golden