The Green Goddess

It well might have been the wedding-day of heaven and earth, it was so lovely. There were scant wild flowers in Rukh, but each that there was lifted up a glad, gay face. There a...

Watkins passed into the corridor and came back almost at once, ushering in an ornate, sinister-faced figure. He must have been wearing not less than half a dozen coats or gowns,...

Few slept in Rukh that night. Over every mountain path eager peasants came from outlying hamlets and solitary, scattered huts. The horn lanterns they swung as they walked, swarm...

The clustering hillsmen followed Traherne, but Yazok, the temple priest, did not. His penance and oblations done at last, he stood immovable, his deep-set, inimical eyes fixed,...

They stood so—still, grim, determined, but not yet seeing their way—when Rukh strolled into the room, debonnaire, spick and span in the latest Bond Street Rotten Row attire.

“Traherne,” he said, as he sat down again, “don’t you think that I haven’t tried to help Crespin. I have again and again. I’ve tried all I knew. We all have. It breaks my heart...

Doctor Traherne was _persona grata_ at Colonel Agnew’s bungalow, if any one was; and several were. Their people at home in England were neighbors and friends, and for that Agnew...

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, wha...

Out on the ocean Lucilla Crespin missed her father more than he, alone now in the vicarage, missed her. He had been bereaved too often to feel overwhelming or insupportable shoc...

Hand in hand, the Raja, coatless and waistcoatless, the one gem in his turban flashing brilliantly in the waning afternoon light of the long, twisting corridors, his cerise brac...

It took pluck—to go through it without a whimper, without one flicker of the white feather for any inimical other to see and report, or even for the solitude and their own tortu...

They drew closer together—one, not three in their sudden hope, which tingled through the very room vibrantly as the telegraphist’s speaking wire’s words tingle through the air o...

Out in the sacred courtyard where all had been babel and noise, a terrible stillness had come—every head thrown back, every startled black eye strained to the sky. Through the s...

The ayah—if that was her household rank—who had brought Lucilla into the room went quietly out, closing the door. And the three captives—the men at least knew it for that—stood...

To say that Traherne and Crespin were less than intensely perturbed at the situation in which they found themselves, and still worse in which they had landed the woman who was d...

The rooms to which Mrs. Crespin and the two Englishmen had been conducted were in as perfect taste as they were luxurious and were all comfortable, hers even more all this than...

“Let us look at it,” the Raja suggested, and turning towards it he saw that his body-guard had broken rank, and all were clustered pell-mell on the path, looking in rather frigh...

They all three were excited—even Traherne, though he scarcely showed it—and they drew closer together eagerly. What importance Mrs. Crespin’s discovery, if she was right, could...

“I regret that I must offer you the services of a less well-trained ayah,” Rukh said, “but it is unavoidable. The woman who has waited on you had the bad taste to be greatly att...

“Oh, Mrs. Crespin,” Traherne called before they saw him clambering down from the rocks where the ruined bus lay. “I’ve found,” he called as he came in sight, “in the wreck the n...

Odd places and peoples lie—for the most part unsuspected by the rest of the world—tucked away solitary and secure in the uncharted wilds beyond the Himalayas: tiny isolated king...

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 thoug...

A cold something iced in the room. Out in the far open a bird of prey screamed exultantly. Somewhere in the palace a gong was struck, three barbaric, ominous, bellowing notes.

The Vicar was suffering—almost as much as he had suffered the night that Helen, his wife, had died—and _because_ he was suffering he dressed his fine cameo-like face in its sunn...

At last as it almost ceased, and the woman’s sobs were but panted breath, he went a step nearer, and said earnestly, “I feel for you, Mrs. Crespin, I do indeed. I would do anyth...

He had sat down at his writing-table when Mrs. Crespin had left him, and now he drew a pad to him, and picked up the pencil again. He began to write; he had found the words he w...

The man had come in noiselessly, carrying a centerpiece for the dinner table, a silver elephant very beautiful in its workmanship, the howdah filled with fresh flowers—delicate...

“Do you think,” he cried, “it is with a light heart that I turn my back upon the life of earth, and all it might have meant for you and me—for you and me, Lucilla?”

Traherne nodded. “But we can’t tell her, sir. And Major Crespin never will. And probably no one in India knows but you and me and him—perhaps no one else living now, knows or re...

Armistice Day and its solemn celebrations had passed—but not its deep thanksgiving—when the regiment was ordered to Dehra Dun, a more interesting, less narrowed station in itsel...

Lucilla Crespin came into sight first, but Traherne was first on the ground. Crespin climbing down rather awkwardly hesitated a moment at a difficult point, his foothold not too...

Colonel Agnew was furious, splutteringly, dementedly furious, and at the same time coldly, and determinedly furious. No one ever had seen him so angry before. Kathleen, who rule...

Watkins flung round on him viciously. “I advise you to keep a civil tongue in yer ’ead, Major,” he snarled roughly. “Don’t forget that I ’ave you in the ’ollow of my ’and.”

All through the last night’s torture it had been his fear and his agony that, if no help came to them, she might _not_ die. Until now—here in the very presence of their impendin...

Watkins opened the door of the Raja’s snuggery, and withdrew as he ushered Crespin in, and Crespin came in sulkily enough. He looked about him quickly and apprehensively and fin...

“Yes. This. When I was a boy at Harrow, one of the small boys, about the youngest there, Antony Crespin was my fag-master. He was jolly decent to me. He wasn’t much at schools,...

Traherne went to it quickly. “Don’t open it,” he whispered. “There are soldiers in the passage. I’ll hold it.” He put his back against the door—and stood rock-like before it.

The priest still apologized to the stone. The people still jabbered and watched. Crespin smoked on, and Traherne stood quietly studying the place—the lay of its land, the stand...

Outside the waiting people were eating oily sweetmeats and greasier cakes and water-lily seeds, drinking sickly fermented goats’ milk, and watching now sacred snakes tearing liv...

The Vicar was suffering acutely. He knew he’d miss his daughter. And he thought he should not see her again after to-morrow’s parting. So he went into the breakfast-room, where...

“Not I, Madam; the clerical party,” Rukh said suavely. “And only if my brothers are executed. If not, I will merely demand your word of honor that what has passed between us sha...

What were they to do? They were all three wondering that. There was nothing for them to do but mark time—and watch with alert eyes, ears open, and placid faces. They all realize...

Lucilla Crespin did not like Sumnee. She liked her life there fairly well. She loved her home there. She loved Antony. She liked some of his friends. She loved her happiness, an...

“You have heard no lie,” Bruce said stoutly. “Surrey! Good Lord—to be in Surrey when the marrow’s in bloom and the cabbage in fruit, and the starch stands to its collar! Hot! Ho...

Mrs. Crespin looked Rukh full in the face, and at what he saw in hers his eyes almost fell. But as she passed to the door of the billiard-room he challenged her, “That is your a...

she, but no one else, might have given, and Antony seized. No one else saw or thought anything of the sort—Lucilla Crespin least of all. But it’s a habit and gift able physician...

“In men whom men proclaim divine, I find so much of sin and blot, In men whom men condemn as ill, I find so much of goodness still; I hesitate to draw the line Between the two,...