Part 8 (1/2)
”I'll go over to the club now and get a room! Send all my things over!”
said the Major. ”I wish to let Hugh know that I am here. I will give you the directions about the house to-morrow. Make no mistake with this message now!” Whereat Alan Hawke repeated a few words which would awake the slumbering curiosity in the woman-heart of the lonely Justine Delande!
”Now, I will return and await your success,” concluded Hawke as he read over a dozen times Madame Berthe Louison's long dispatch, ordering him to prepare her pied de terre in Delhi. ”Gad! Milady means to do the thing in style,” he murmured. ”She is a deep one, and she must have a pot of money!” He lit a cheroot and sauntered away to show up officially at the club. Major Hawke soon became aware that nothing succeeds like success. Not only did all the flaneurs of the Chandnee Chouk seize upon him, but, from pa.s.sing carriages, bright, roguish eyes merrily challenged him as the hot-hearted English Mem-Sahibs whirled by.
Rumor had magnified the importance of Major Alan Hawke's secret service appointment, and the wanderer was astounded when the highest official of the Delhi College gravely saluted him.
”By Gad! I believe that I am really becoming respectable!” laughed the delighted major. His uncertain past seemed to be fast fading away in the glow of the skillfully hinted official promotion. ”I wonder now if old Ram Lal has a hold on my canny friend, Hugh Fraser Johnstone--Sir Hugh to be! Perhaps they are like all the rest of us--rascals of the same grade, but only in different ways. The old jewel matters! I must look to this and watch Ram Lal!” The returned Anglo-Indian carelessly nodded to the group of men gathered in the club's lounging-room as he entered.
Designedly, he loudly demanded to know if his traps had arrived. ”Left all my odds and ends in store,” he murmured to a friend, as he called for a brandy p.a.w.nee. ”Beastly bore! Must wait orders here for some time!”
Skilled at tossing the ball of conversation to and fro, Major Alan Hawke, while at luncheon, artfully planted seeds here and there, to be neatly dished up later for that incipient baronet, Hugh Johnstone. And yet a graceful shade of dignified reserve lent color to his rumored advancement, and the schemer leaned over the writing table with quite a foreign-office air as he indited his diplomatic note of arrival to his destined prey.
With a grave air he selected his rooms and accommodations to suit his swelling port, and even the club stewards nodded in recognition of the tidal wave of Alan Hawke's mended fortunes.
With due official gravity the man ”who had dropped into a good thing,”
disappeared, to allow the gilded youth of Delhi to carry the gossip to mess and bungalow. It was a welcome morsel to these merry crows!
It was late when the handsome Major returned to find a small pyramid of notes on his table and many letters in his box. He was in the highest good humor, for the wary Ram Lal had most diplomatically acquitted his task of opening a secret communication.
”Just as I thought,” laughed the Major, as he sipped his pale ale in Ram Lal's s.p.a.cious room of pleasaunce. ”They all protest, woman-like, but they all come!”
The watchful Swiss exile's heart fluttered tenderly in the far-off Lotos land at the arrival of a secret friend of her sage sister. She longed for the morning to meet her new friend. Alan Hawke's irresistible attractions had pointed the praises which flowed smoothly over the double crossed letter which had preceded him! The oily Ram Lal, a veteran observer of many an intrigue, scented a budding rose of romance in the Major's adroit coup, and the arrival of the only lady whom Alan Hawke had ever socially fathered in Delhi.
”In three days I will be all ready! So you can telegraph to-night,”
reported the merchant, when the Major carefully went over all the details of the proposed temporary establishment of the disguised Alixe Delaviarne.
”Very good!” approvingly answered the dignified confidant and patron.
”See here, Ram Lal! You have only to serve me well in these little private matters, and you shall handle all the coming Mem-Sahib's money business here! She wants to be quiet. I am to direct all her private matters! Not a word, however, to old Hugh!” The two men separated, Hawke with the knowledge that one of Ram's men had already glided into the swarming household entourage of Hugh Johnstone's stately home, and the spy was on every movement of the strange interior, which defied the Delhi beaux.
”Not a bad day's work,” mused Hawke, as he dined in solitary state. The hospitable bidding of the wealthiest civilian of Delhi to tiffin on the morrow brought him in touch with Alixe Delavigne's proposed victim once more. The delighted rascal mused: ”I will surely have letters from her to-morrow, possibly even a telegram of her arrival. When the silly Swiss woman is the partner of an innocent secret, she is mine to control! Then the chase for a few lacs of rupees begins!”
Major Hawke was somewhat startled at the little avalanche of welcoming cards and notes. ”Bravo! this will throw old Hugh off the track a bit also. The simple duty of piquing local curiosity shall open all hearts, hearths, and homes to me!” And then, Alan Hawke joyously realized how easily the light-headed world can be fooled to the top of its bent by the hollow trick of a bit of mystery play.
”This falls out rightly,” he mused. ”I will take up all the threads of my old society life and Madame Berthe Louison may deign to confide a bit in me the first half of the story forced from her, then I will guess out all the missing links of the chain. Once domiciled here, she is helpless in my hands, for I can either gain her inner secrets, or boldly checkmate her. And the veiled Rose of Delhi?”
Alan Hawke dreamed not of the sorrows of the restless heart beating in that virginal bosom. He paced the veranda of the Club gravely preoccupied till the midnight hour. Long before that, Justine Delande had sought her rooms in a feeble flutter of excitement over the harmless a.s.signation of the morrow. There was a stern old man pacing his splendid hall alone, with an unhappy heart, that night, for Hugh Johnstone saw again in the sweet uplifted eyes of his beautiful child the old unanswered question!
He stood long gazing out upon the unpitying stars, while above him, lonely and lovely, Nadine recked not the queenly splendor of her magnificent apartment. Glittering wealth, splendid train of servants, the golden future stretching out before her, all this she noted not, for, even in the gray, colorless life of the pension school at Geneva, soft-eyed Hope whispered to her of a gentle and gracious mother!
Loved--gone before, but not lost--and, here in the land of gaudy Asiatic splendors, a strange land of wonderment and fairy riches, she sobbed alone in her heart anguish:
”He will not speak! He tells me nothing! A marble palace this, but never a home!” The timid girl had seen no beloved woman's face upon the fretwork of the walls of this Aladdin's castle. And, in her own frightened heart, she remembered the ashen pallor of her father's face when she had faltered out the burning question of her yearning heart--the question of long years! The past was still a blank to her, while on this same night, crafty Alan Hawke in Delhi, and, in far Calcutta, a woman, pacing her boudoir in sad unrest, were both busied with the story of the vanished mother whom the Rose of Delhi had never seen!
Alixe Delavigne, lonely and resolute, was thinking of her departure on the morrow, to face the man who had locked his dead past in his own marble heart, in his grand marble palace. Her busy days at Calcutta had astounded the senior manager of Grindlay & Co. The old banker marveled at the strange commissions and imperative orders of his beautiful business client, but many years had taught him much of the incomprehensibility of womanhood! Whereupon he marveled in silence, and bowing with his hand upon his heart, a.s.sured the lady of his absolute discretion, and the unbroken honor of the house. ”Some very queer little life histories go on out here in India!” mused the old banker, as he handed the lady her special letter to the Delhi agents of the great house which house which he directed. ”As beautiful as a statue, as firm as a flint! Where have I seen a face like hers?” mused the old man, as he sought his rest.
The ”beautiful statue” was steadfastly gazing at the picture of the young Rose of Delhi, in her lonely boudoir. ”She shall learn to love her! To love her--through me! And this man of iron shall yield! He shall hear my prayer! For, if he does not, then, he shall be struck to the heart--blow for blow! And Fate shall pa.s.s her over! I swear it by that lonely grave in far away Jitomir!” There were kisses rained upon the pictured face smiling up at her, the face which had called back to her the dead past, and then the ”beautiful statue” tore aside her gown. She gazed upon a folded paper which had long lain upon her throbbing heart.
”This shall speak for me--at the last! His pride shall bend! He shall not break the child's heart! For the mother's sake, I swear it! She shall love and be loved!” and as she spoke, in far away Delhi sweet Nadine stirred in her sleep, and smiled, with opening arms, for the phantom mother she fondly sought seemed to clasp her now to a loving breast!
In the Delhi Club there was high wa.s.sail below him, while Major Alan Hawke restlessly paced his s.p.a.cious rooms above, watching the lonely white moon sail through the clearest skies on earth. The quid mines had all observed the patiently haughty air of the returned Major, and even the chattering club stewards marveled at the sudden efflorescence of Hawke Sahib's fortunes.