Part 9 (1/2)
And then, with the air of a martyr, he disappeared, the ponies springing briskly away, leaving all baffled conjecture behind. The curious men who were left discussing a flying rumor that Major Hawke was authorized to raise a Regiment of Irregular Horse for a special expeditionary secret purpose, wrangled with those who maintained that a brilliant local civil-service vacancy would be theatrically filled by the man who now bore a brow of mystery. The advent of this prosperous Hawke had made the great social deeps of Delhi to boil like a pot. His mission was one of those things no fellow could find out.
Laughing in his sleeve, the object of all this sudden curiosity made a number of detours, and adroitly followed a native servant down an obscure rear street, after dismissing his pony carriage. The equipage was busied during the earlier hours of the day in leaving the visiting cards of the returned soldier of fortune in certain quarters well calculated to attract social notice.
Threading the s.p.a.cious gardens in rear of Ram Lal's establishment, the artful Major entered the jewel merchant's abode without the notice of the morning gossips of the Chandnee Chouk. ”All right, now,” he laughed, as he bade the sly merchant set a private guard to prevent all intrusion upon their privacy. ”I think that I have thrown these fellows off the track very neatly!” he laughed. ”No one knows of your rear entrances at the club, I am sure!” It suited the luxurious old jewel merchant to hide the opulence of his secret life, and to veil the graceful lapses of his private code from the sober austerities of a dignified Mohammedanism.
”Look alive now, Ram Lal!” said Hawke, briskly, as he handed his confederate the telegram from Berthe Louison. ”You see that the lady will arrive here tomorrow night! Some one must go down to Allahabad for her! Are you all ready for her coming?”
”Perfectly!” smiled Ram Lal. ”The Mem-Sahib could give a dinner of twenty covers in an hour after her arrival! You know that the bungalow was fitted up for--” he bent his head and whispered to Major Hawke, who laughed intelligently and viciously.
”All right, then! Here is the address in Allahabad, where the lady is to wait for her conductors. She seems not to wish me to come down. I will be at the bungalow, then, on your arrival! I will give you a letter for her,” said Hawke. Ram Lal's eyes gleamed in antic.i.p.ation of the fat pickings of the Mem-Sahib. He pondered a moment over the case.
”Then, I will go down myself,” complacently said Ram Lal, with an eye to future business. ”You can tell her to trust to me in all things. She shall travel like a queen!”
”That is better, and so I will telegraph to her, at Allahabad, this afternoon, that I have sent you to meet her! Have a covered carriage awaiting her here, and no one must be allowed to follow her to her hidden nest. It is the making of your fortune with her!” cried Hawke, as he lit a cheroot.
”Trust to me, Sahib!” answered the wily jewel merchant, relapsing into an expectant silence. He already connected the arrival of the beautiful foreigner with the destiny of the opulent man whom he had revengefully watched for twenty years. Hugh Fraser Johnstone had heaped up a fortune, but it was not yet successfully deported to England.
”And the Swiss woman, when may I see her; this morning?” demanded the adventurer, as he dropped into a cool, j.a.panese chair.
”My man will bring you the news of her coming!” answered the oily old miscreant. ”I told him to watch her, and run on to warn me!” Ram Lal was a wily old Figaro of much experience.
”Good! Then go outside and wait for her,” coolly commanded the young man. ”When she comes, you can come in and warn me, and I will be ready.”
Ram Lal obediently left Hawke without a questioning word, and the busy brain of the adventurer was soon occupied with weaving the meshes for the bird nearing the snare. ”This woman's help is absolutely necessary to me now!” he thought, as he contemplated his own handsome person in a mirror. ”If she can only hold her tongue and keep a secret, she may be the foundation of my fortunes. I think that I can make it worth her while, but she must never fall under the influence of this she-devil in petticoats, who comes to-morrow night! And yet, the Louison knows she is here! A friends.h.i.+p between them must be prevented!” He closed his eyes dreamily, and studied the problem of the future attentively, revolving every point of womanly weakness which he had observed in his past experience.
He had finally hit upon the right thing. It came to him just as Ram Lal entered, with his finger on his lip. ”She is in there, waiting for you, and she came alone!” said the crafty merchant. ”I can perhaps frighten her with the idea that Madame Louison wishes to supplant her as lady bear leader. The future pickings of this young heiress would be then lost to her! Yes! A woman's natural jealousy will do the trick!” so sagely mused the young man as he walked out into the hall, where Ram Lal's treasures were heaped up on every side. There was no one visible in the shop, but Ram Lal silently pointed with a brown finger, gleaming with whitest gems, to a closed door. It was the entrance to the room specially devoted to the superb collection of arms, the regained loot of Delhi, slyly collected in the days of the mad sacking by the revengeful English soldiery. A bottle of rum then bought a princely token.
It had been with a guilty, beating heart that Justine Delande abandoned her fair, young charge to the morning ministrations of a bevy of dark-skinned servants. However, the st.u.r.dy Genevese waiting-maid who had accompanied them to India was at hand, when the spinster incoherently murmured her all too voluble excuses for an early morning visit to the European shops on the Chandnee Chouk, and then fled away as if fearful of her own shadow. She was duly thankful that no one had observed her entrance to the jewel shop, and the refuge of the room, pointed out by the amiable Ram Lal, at once rea.s.sured her. Justine was accorded a brief breathing spell by the fates as the Major settled his plans.
It did not seem so very hard, this first fall from maidenly grace, when Major Alan Hawke, entering the little armory chamber, politely led the startled woman to a seat, with a graceful self-introduction.
”I should have recognized you any where, Mademoiselle Justine,” deftly remarked the Major, ”by your resemblance to your most charming sister.
You have, I hope, received some private letters from her, with regard to my visit?” The Swiss gouverriante faltered forth her affirmative answer, while secretly approving the enthusiastic judgment of her distant sister upon this most admirable Crichton of English Majors. ”Then,” said Hawke, alluringly, ”we must be very good friends, you and I, for we are alone together, among strangers, in this far-away land!” Then he calmly dropped into an easy discourse, in which Geneva and Sister Euphrosyne punctuated the graceful flow of his friendly chat. There was nothing very sinful in the debut of this little intrigue.
”Let us always speak French!” said Alan Hawke, with a quiet, warning glance at the closed door. ”These same soft-eyed Hindostanees are the very subtlest serpents of the earth. The only way to do, is never to trust any of them!” The Major was busied in carefully taking a mental measurement of Mademoiselle Justine, who, still well on the sunny side of forty, was really a very comely replica of her severer intellectual sister. Justine Delande still lingered in that temperate zone of life where a fair fighting chance of matrimony was still hers. ”If a ray of suns.h.i.+ne ever steals into the flinty bosom of a Swiss woman, there maybe a gleam or two still left here,” mused the Major, most adroitly avoiding all reference to Justine's rosebud charge, and only essaying to place her entirely at her ease.
But, in proportion as he gracefully labored, the frightened governess began to realize the danger of her situation.
”I hope that no one will observe us,” she said, speaking rapidly and under her breath. ”Mr. Johnstone is so eccentric, so haughty, and so very peculiar!” Her distress was evident, and the gallant Major at once hastened to allay her fears.
”I have already thought of that. My old friend, Ram Lal, has a lovely garden in rear of his house and there we will be entirely un.o.bserved.
For I have so much that I would say to you.” It was with a sigh of relief that the frightened woman hastily pa.s.sed through Ram Lal's s.p.a.cious snuggery in rear of his jewel mart and was soon ensconced in a little paG.o.da, where Major Hawke seated himself at her side and skillfully took up his soft refrains.
In half an hour they were thoroughly en ban rapport, for the graceful Major Hawke adroitly conversed with his laughing eyes frankly beaming upon the lonely woman. He had drawn a long breath of relief when he ran over the letter which the delighted Justine frankly submitted to him for his inspection. The fair Euphrosyne's secret advices justified his warmest antic.i.p.ations. He had conquered her heart.
”I will not delay you longer this morning,” he said at last, with an artful mock confidence. ”I am infinitely grateful to you for so kindly coming to meet me here. And it is only due to you to tell you why I begged you to come here to-day. The nature of my important official duties is such that I am not permitted to exhibit my real character to any one here as yet. I am charged with some very delicate public duties which may force me to linger here for some time, or perhaps disappear without notice, only to return in the same mysterious manner. But in me you have a stanch secret friend always. I have already written to your charming sister, and I expect to receive from her letters which will be followed by letters to you from her. And I shall write to-day and tell her of your goodness to me.” Miss Justine Delande's eyes were downcast.
Her agitated bosom was throbbing with an unaccustomed fire, and the desire to be safely sheltered once more in Hugh Johnstone's marble palace was now strong upon her.
Hawke paused, still keeping his pleading eyes fixed upon the fluttering-hearted woman's face. ”Miss Nadine sees absolutely no one!”
murmured the governess, ”and, of course, I never leave her. It is a very exacting and laborious position, this charge which I now fill, and of course the life is a very lonely one, though Nadine is an angel!”
enthusiastically cried Miss Justine.