Part 35 (1/2)
Before the morning dawned on the sea-girt coast of La Manche, Marie Victor had duly telegraphed Major Hawke's impending departure for India to the beautiful recluse who now cheered the lonely bride of ”the Moonshee,” at the old Norman chateau, embowered in its splendid gardens, within a league of the Banker's Folly.
Alan Hawke, closely shaven, and masquerading in a French commis-voyageur's modest garb, was seated at ease in Etienne Garcin's death-trap at the Cor d'Abundance, in foggy Granville. His darkened locks and nondescript garb thoroughly effaced the ”officer and gentleman.” One of the old French villain's wickedest and prettiest woman decoys was coquettishly serving Hawke's breakfast as he read the burning words of Justine Delande's message from the heart. The last greeting, tear-blotted, and promptly sent to the Hotel Binda.
”It's a wild day, a wild-looking place, and a wild enough sea,” grumbled Major Hawke, gazing out of the grimy window at the rolling green surges breaking, white-capped, far out beyond the new pier, where the black cannon were drenched and crusted with the salty flying scud. Far away, a little side-wheel steamer was laboring along over the strait from the blue island of Jersey, rising and dipping half out of sight, with a trail of intermittent puffs of dense black smoke.
”There is the enemy's stronghold, and now for Jack Blunt's plan of campaign! I wonder if he'll come over to-day, or to-morrow? He must have had my telegram last night!” Alan Hawke amused himself with the bold, black-eyed French girl's vicious stories of olden deeds done there in Etienne Garcin's gloomy spider's den. He even laughed when the red-bodiced she-devil laughingly pointed down at the loosened floor-planks in the back room, underneath which mantrap the swish of the throbbing waves could be heard.
Then the sheeted, cold driving rain hid the promontory, with its heavy, lumpy-looking fort, the old gray granite parish church, and the cl.u.s.tered s.h.i.+ps of the harbor, now das.h.i.+ng about and tugging wildly at their doubled moorings, soon to be left high and dry on the soft ooze when the thirty-foot tide receded. ”There's where we find our best customers,” laughed the French wanton, as Alan Hawke drew her to his knee, and they laughed merrily over the golden harvest of the sea, the price of the recovered dead. Through the narrow stone fanged streets lumbered along the heavy French hooded carts, driven by squatty men in oil skins and sou'westers, and laden down with the spoils of the whale, cod, and oyster fisheries. Stout women in huge blue ap.r.o.ns, with baskets on their rounded arms, gossiped at the protecting corners, while the shouts of Landlord Etienne Garcin's drunken band of sea wolves now began to ring out in the smoky salle a boire.
It was two o'clock when the burly form of Etienne Garcin was propelled unceremoniously into Alan Hawke's room. A grin of satisfaction spread over the bullet-headed old ruffian's face, and his round gray pig eyes twinkled, as he noted the already established entente cordiale between Jack Blunt's pal and the wanton spy who was the absent Jack's own especial pet. But, Alan Hawke was temporarily blind to the universally offered charms of the soubrette as he read Joseph Smith's careful report.
”That's the talk!” joyously cried Hawke. His heart bounded in a fierce thrill. ”By G.o.d! Simpson shall be 'done up' in short order. The drunken old dog. He cut off the payment of my drafts with his blabbing tongue!
”Yes, over the cliffs he goes, and we will make sure of him--forever--before he takes his last tumble! Jack! Jack! You are a hero!” he mused, as the triumphant words of Jack Blunt's great discovery were read again and again. And then, he carefully burned the letter, before the astonished eyes of the tempting companion of his waiting hours. ”These fools of employers!” cheerfully muttered Alan Hawke. ”They always think that 'Servant's Hall' has no eyes. That the maid in her cap and ap.r.o.n has not the same burning pa.s.sions as idle Madame in her silks and laces. That the man has not his own easy-going vices just as alive and masterful as the base appet.i.tes of the swell master.”
While Alan Hawke thus exulted at Granville, there was gloom and jealousy in the heart of Prof. Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University, Wisconsin, U. S. A.
A tall, lank, bespectacled ”Westerner,” nearly thirty-five years of age, the blue-eyed country boy had dragged himself up from the obscurity of a frontier American farm into the higher life. Uncouth, awkward, and yet resolute and untiring, he had justified his first instructor's prediction:
”He has the head of a horse, and will make his mark!” Newspaper trainboy, chainman, a.s.sistant on Government frontier surveys, and frontier scout, he early saved his money so as to complete a sporadic university curriculum. A trip to Liberia, a dash down into Mexico, and a desert jaunt in Australia, had not satisfied his craving for adventure.
With the results of two years of professional lectures, he was now imbibing continental experiences, and plotting a bicycle ”scientific tour of the world.” Hard-headed, fearless, devoted, and sincere, he was a mad theorist in all his mental processes, and had tried, proved, and rejected free love, anarchy, Christian science, and a dozen other feverish fads, which for a time jangled his mental bells out of tune.
A cranky tracing of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel down to the genial scalpers of the American plains had thrown him across the renowned Professor Andrew Fraser, who had, on his part, located these same long mourned Hebrews in Thibet, ignoring the fact that they are really dispersed in the United States of America as ”eaters of other men's hard-made 'honey'” in the ”drygoods,” clothing, and ”shent per shent”
line. For, a glance at the signs on Broadway will prove to any one that the ”lost” have been found in Gotham.
Smoking his corncob pipe the Professor paced his rooms at the Royal Victoria, and mentally consigned Prince Djiddin and his indefatigable Moonshee to Eblis, the Inferno, Sheol, or some other ardent corner of Limbo. ”How long will these two yellow fellows keep poor old Fraser enchanted?” mused the disgruntled American, mindful of his hotel bill running on. ”The old man is crazy after the two Thibetans, and I can't see his game. He does not wish me to publish my own volume first. That is why he has given me the 'marble heart,' and taken them into his house. Their wing of the Banker's Folly is now an Eastern idolaters'
temple. If I could only hook on to the 'Moonshee,' I might make a 'scoop'--a clean scoop--on old Fraser. G.o.d! how my book would sell if I could only get it out first. And yet I dare not offend this old scholar, Andrew Fraser. He must be true to me. He has read to me all the original ma.n.u.script of his own half-finished work. He must trust to me, and he has promised to give me a resume of their disclosures also after they leave. The Thibetan Prince will only be here two weeks longer.”
”Then old Fraser will take me to his heart again.” Alaric Hobbs reflected on his vain attempt to try the Tunguse, Chinook, Zuni, Apache, Sioux, and Esquimaux dialects on the handsome Prince Djiddin, whose Oriental magnificence was even now the despairing admiration of the two pretty housemaids.
”My august master cannot speak to any one but the great scholar whom he came here to see. He soon returns to his retirement in his palace in the Karakorum Mountains. And he never will emerge thence!” solemnly said the Moonshee, adding in a whisper: ”He may, by the grace of Buddha, be re-incarnated as the Dalai-Lama. He springs from the loins of kings. I dare not break in upon his awful silence.” The Moonshee's significant gesture of drawing a hand across his own brown throat had silenced the pus.h.i.+ng American professor.
”By hokey!” he groaned, ”it is hard to have to play second fiddle to this purblind old Scotchman.” Alaric Hobbs had been a reporter upon that dainty sheet, The New York Whorl, in one of his ”emergent” periods, and so he writhed in agony at being left at the post. ”I must be content to tap old Fraser when he comes back from London with that embarra.s.sing lump of beauty, his millionaire niece. She would make a fitting spouse for this Prince Djiddin, for she never speaks a word--at least to me.
And this swell Prince, who comes 'only one in a box,' gets the same 'frozen hand.' Funny girl, that. But I must yield to old Fraser's moods.” Alaric Hobbs then descended to the tap-room and instructed the pretty barmaid in the manufacture of his own favorite ”c.o.c.ktail,” an American drink of surpa.s.sing fierceness and ”innate power,” which had once caused ”Bald-headed Wolf,” a Kiowa chieftain, to slay his favorite squaw, scalp a peace commissioner, and chase a fat army paymaster till he died of fright in his ambulance, after Alaric Hobbes had incautiously left a bottle of this ”red-eye” mixture with his aboriginal host on one of the ”exploring tours.” A powerful disturbing agent, the American c.o.c.ktail!
But for all Miss Nadine Johnstone's seeming aversion to men, and in spite of Prince Djiddin's inability to utter a word of any jargon save ninety-five degree Thibetan, ”far above proof,” on this very morning while the ”Moonshee” was transcribing under the watchful eyes of the excited Andrew Fraser the disclosures of the evening before, the young millionairess was ”getting on” very well in exhibiting the glories of the tropical garden to the august tourist from the lacustrine Himalayas.
Jules Victor adroitly busied the maid whom Janet Fairbarn had dispatched to ”play propriety,” and the other London girl had quietly stolen away to her own last rendezvous with her mysterious London lover, ”Mr. Joseph Smith,” otherwise ”Jack Blunt, Esq., of the Swell Mob of the Thames.”
The whispers of the stately young Prince brought crimson blushes to the face of the glowing girl, whose answering murmurs were as low as the siren voice of Swinburne's ”small serpents, with soft, stretching throats.” They had a double secret to keep now. A momentous, a dangerous one; for in the depths of the Tropical Gardens of Rozel, the pa.s.sionate hearted Alixe Delavigne was hidden, waiting this very morning to clasp again the beautiful orphan to a bosom throbbing in wildest love. Prince Djiddin, always on his guard, artfully turned back and busied the maid, when she was released from Jules Victor's vociferous bar-gaining, with a half-hour's choosing her ”fairing,” out of the lively peddler's pretty stock. The woman's vanity made her an easy victim. The ”descendant of Thibetan Kings” could not, of course, speak intelligibly, but the yellow sovereigns which he carried were the magic talisman which opened at once the pretty maid servant's softened heart.
It was a long half hour before the happy Nadine Johnstone returned to join the kinsman of the Maharajah of Cashmere. Her eyes were gleaming in a tender, dawning lovelight, her lips still thrilling with Alixe Delavigne's warm kisses. In her heart, there still rang out her mysterious visitor's last words: ”Wait, darling! My own darling! Before another month the secret Government agent will have officially visited Andrew Fraser. We are all ready to act with crus.h.i.+ng power when the happy moment safely arrives. And you shall then hear all the story of the past on my breast. You shall know how near you have been to my loving heart in all these weary years. The story of your own dear mother's life shall be my wedding present to you. Yet, a few days more of watchful patience,” softly sighed Alixe.
”For we must not let Andrew Fraser wake for a moment from his frenzy of Thibetan study until we can force from him the permission which we will demand to visit you, and to free you from his control.”
Prince Djiddin paced solemnly back toward the Banker's Folly, leaving the overjoyed maid to bundle up all her many gifts. A grateful wink to Jules Victor from the Prince rewarded the disguised valet, as he gayly sped away to meet his mistress, and to obtain her orders for the next day. This artful game of mingled Literature and Love had so far been safely played, but Jules Victor had secretly warned Nadine Johnstone against any confidences with her pretty London sewing woman. ”She has found a sweetheart here. He is a curious looking fellow, he has money and is liberal, and, so, what you tell her she will surely tell her sweetheart. Trust to no one but the other maid, who is devoted to me,”
proudly said the dapper little Frenchman. Nearing the mansion, on this eventful morning, Prince Djiddin, at a hidden bend of a leafy path, whispered to his fair conductress, ”For G.o.d's sake, darling Nadine, do not betray yourself! Those sweetly s.h.i.+ning eyes are tell-tale stars!
Your heart happiness will struggle for expression. Go to your rooms at once. Pour out your happy heart in song, lift up your voice. But, watch over your very heart-throbs! Only a single fortnight more, darling, and we will clip the claws of this old Scottish lion who has you in his clutches!
”Anstruther will soon make his coup de main, for Hawke has at last gone back to India, and we will have a deadly grasp soon on the frightened Andrew Fraser. He must either give up his legal tyranny and yield you to us, or else face a future which would appall even a braver man. I dare not to tell you our secret yet. Only the Viceroy and Anstruther know it.