CHAPTER II. AN OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE ALLIANCE.
When the now buoyant Major Alan Hawke was awakened by the golden lances of morning which shivered gayly upon the Pennine Alps he proceeded to a most leisurely toilet, having first satisfied himself that his winnings of the night before were not the baseless fabric of a dream. He smiled as he fingered the crisp, clean notes, and gazed lovingly upon the dingy-looking but potent check drawn on the old army bankers.
“No nonsense about that signature,” he cheerfully said. “Anstruther is no welsher,” and, as he rang for his hot water and a morning refresher, he picked up the little note with an eager curiosity.
“By Gad! she is a cool one! This is no vulgar darned occasion! I need all my wits to-day!” He was studying over the brief words when the ready waiter took his order for a cosy breakfast. He had deliberately moved out all his lines to an easy comfort, throwing out a line of pickets against any appearance of social shabbiness. “She said that she had money,” he murmured, as he read the note again. “What the devil does she want, then, if she has all the money she needs! Perhaps some discarded mistress! Bah! The old man’s heart is as hollow as a sentrybox, and, besides, he has not been in Europe for nearly twenty years. Ah, I see! Perhaps a bit of blackmail—some early indiscretion! She did speak about the girl! Then I must be the silent partner of her future harvest! She probably needs a man’s arm to reach the wary old Baronet in future. My lady writes in no uncertain tone.”
He carefully folded the note and bestowed it safely with the spoil of the young patrician. “Of course I must show up,” he said as he betook himself to his tub whence he emerged shapely as an Adonis with the corded torso of an athlete. The appetizing breakfast put the Major in excellent humor, and he drew forth his “sailing orders” as he lit his first cheroot. Seated in a window recess, he watched the hotel frontage, while he read the imperative lines again. They were explicit enough and had been dictated en reine. “Meet me at the Musee Rath, in the vestibule at two o’clock. He leaves here at one-thirty. Keep away from the hotel and avoid us both. Go up to Ferney and come back on the one o’clock boat.”
There was a neat carte de visite in the inclosure.
“Now, I will wager that is not her name,” he smiled as he read the Italian script.
“I can certainly now afford to throw a day or so away on her. At any rate, I will let her make the game. I must wait a day or so to send on the Grindlay check,” the wanderer mused, smiling genially upon the head porter. Major Alan Hawke casually inquired, upon his leisurely descent, “My friend?”
“Ah, sir! Paid his bill and left. Luggage already sent to the station labeled ‘Paris.’” Alan Hawke most liberally tipped the functionary. “I think I will take a run of a few days up to Lausanne or Chillon myself; the weather is delightful.” He strolled over to the local Cook’s Agency and sent his treasure-trove check on to London for collection.
“I think that I will fight shy of this sleepy burgh,” he ruminated, as the little paddle-wheel steamer sped along toward Ferney, leaving behind a huge triangular wake carved in the pellucid waters. “It might be devilish awkward if Anstruther should find me here, hovering around his fair enslaver. I may need this golden youth again, in the days to come! He will be out of India for a couple of years, but I will not trust Fate blindly. What the old Harry can she be up to?” He suddenly burst into a merry peal of laughter, to the astonishment of the crowd of passengers.
“Fool that I am! I see it all now! Anstruther cleared out early! The proprieties of the home of Calvin must be respected! After he has adroitly pumped the intellectual fountain of the past dry, then a quiet little breakfast tete et tete will give Madame Louison the time to fool him to the top of his bent! The sly minx! Evidently she is cast for the ‘ingenue’ part in this little social drama! And her trump card is to hide from me what she extracts from our Lovelace by the coy use of those deuced fetching brown eyes and—other charms too numerous to mention! But you shall tell me all yet, Miss Sly Boots!” And the Major dreamed pleasant day dreams.
Life now seemed so different to the hopeful vaurien, with the physical and moral backing of the four hundred and odd pounds! “I was a fool—a damned fool, yesterday,” he cheerfully ruminated. “If I only handle this woman rightly, then I may get the hold I want on this old recluse Johnstone, congested with the fat pickings of forty-five years. A close-mouthed old rat is he, and yet it seems that he is vulnerable after all. If he is playing fast and loose with the government he will never get his honors before he gives up the sleeping trust of the forgotten years.”
Major Hawke vainly tried to follow the exuberant Anstruther in his incursion into the placid temple of Minerva, where that watchful spinster, Miss Euphrosyne Delande, eyed somewhat icily the handsome. young “Greek bearing gifts.” Professional prudence and the memory of certain judiciously smothered escapades caused Miss Euphrosyne at first to retire within her moral breast works and draw up the sally-port bridge. For even in chilly Geneva, young hearts throb in nature’s flooding lava passions, jealously bodiced in school-girl buckram and glacial swiss muslin. So it was very cool for a time in the august cavern of conference where Anson Anstruther, a bright Ithuriel, struggled with the cautious and covetous Swiss preceptress, and the swift steamer Chilian was far up the lake before Captain the victorious Honorable Anson Anstruther, sped away to the morning meeting with the woman who had seemed to lean down from the moon-lit skies upon her young Endymion in that starry night by the throbbing lake.
Major Alan Hawke, proceeding on his voyage, found a certain bitterness in the distant mental contemplation of Captain Anstruther’s employment of his leisure till train time, not knowing that the young soldier’s sense of duty led him first to dispatch several careful official dispatches, one to London, and the two others to Calcutta and Delhi, respectively. When Captain Anstruther finally deposited his mail with the head porter of the Grand Hotel National he deftly questioned that functionary. “My friend—Major Hawke?”
“Gone up the lake for two or three days, sir. Going to Lausanne and Chillon. Keeps all his luggage here, though. Shall I give him any message for you?” With a view to artfully veiling his coming meeting with the beautiful Egeria a la Houbigant, the captain deposited a card marked “P. P. C.”
“A devilish pleasant fellow and a right stunning hand at ecarte.” Anstruther prudently walked for a couple of squares, and then hailed a passing voiture, directing him to the very cosiest restaurant in the snug city of Bonnivard.
Major Hawke, far away now, entertained a slight resentment toward the man who had so coolly aspired to les bonnes fortunes, and ignored his own possible interference with the Lady of the Lake. It was with a grim satisfaction, however, that he saw on the boat the Misses Phenie and Genie Forbes, of Chicago, the bright particular stars of the traveling upper tendom. “Popper” and “Mommer” were deep in certain red-bound Baedeker’s and busied in delving for “historic facts,” while the artful Alan Hawke glided into a fast and familiar flirtation with the two bright-eyed, sharp-voiced damsels. Both the heiresses were dressed as if for a reception, with judiciously selected jewelry samples, evidencing the wondrous success of machine conducted pig demolition. They glittered in the sun as Fortune’s bediamonded favorites.
And, so, while Madame Berthe Louison and Captain Anstruther lingered au cabinet particulier, over their Chablis and Ostend oysters, the recouped gambler extended his store of mental acquirement, by tender converse with the two sprightly belles of the Windy City. In fact, the whistle of the steamer was heard long before Alan Hawke could extricate himself from the clinging tentacles of the audacious beauties. He was somewhat repaid for his social exertions, however, as he sped back to keep his tryst at Geneva, by the acquisition of a large steel-engraved business card inscribed, “Forbes, Haygood & Co., Chicago,” loftily tendered him by “Popper.” He smiled at the whispered assurances of the Misses Phenie and Genie that they “should soon meet again.”
“Bring your friend—that other Lord,” cried the departing Miss Genie, waving a thousand-franc lace fan, as she sagely observed, “Two’s company—three’s none. We’ll have a jolly lark—us four. Don’t forget, now!” The polite Major laid his hand upon his heart and played the amiable tiger, although burning inwardly now, in a fierce personal jealousy of Anstruther as he wandered alone around the cold gray halls of the museum, and gazed upon the pinched features of the permanently eclipsed shining lights of the “Bulwark of Civil and Religious Liberty.” There was no charm for him in the bigoted ferocity of Calvin’s lean, dark face, smacking his thin lips over the roasted Servetus. He abhorred the departed heroes of the golden evolution from Eidegenossen into Higuerios and later Huguenots. They interested him not, neither did he love Professor Calame’s scratchy pictures, nor the jumbled bric-a-brac of art and history. None of these charmed him. He waited only for the gliding step, the clasp of a burning hand, and the flash of the lustrous dark-brown eyes. It was his own innings now.
He had referred to his watch for the fiftieth time, when, from a closed carriage, the object of his mental vituperations gracefully alighted at last. It was with the very coldest of bows that the irritated man received the graceful, self-possessed woman, whose lovely face was but partially hidden by her coquettishly dotted veil.
“She dresses like a Parisienne, walks like an Andalu-sian, and has all the seductiveness of a Polish countess!” the quick-witted rascal thought, as they strolled into the museum, which the departed General Rath knew not would be the scene of many a hidden love intrigue, when he endowed it with a benevolent vanity. The two wary strangers strolled along until they found a retired corner. Madame Louison seated herself, waving her lace parasol with the impatient gesture of one accustomed to command.
Alan Hawke was in no gentle humor, and his cheeks reddened as he felt the calm scrutiny of the woman’s searching glances. He was now determined to take the whip hand, and to keep it. His accents were staccato as he said, “Tell me now who you are, and what you wish of me!” A clock, hung high over them on the dreary, drab walls, ticked away brusquely, as the angered woman gazed steadily into his face.
“And so your little windfall of last night has already made you impudent? If you cannot find another tone at once, I will find another agent! The man whom you plucked has told me the story of your wonderful skill at cards!” The sneer cut the renegade like a whip lash, and Alan Hawke sprang up in anger. Madame Berthe Louison coolly settled herself down into the red cushions.
“The way to India is before you, but five hundred pounds is not a fortune for Major Alan Hawke! Listen! I watched you carefully yesterday, in your vigil upon Rousseau’s Island. Your telltale face betrayed you. You were left stranded here in Geneva. An accident has brought us together. You cannot divine my motives. I can fathom yours easily. Tell me now, of yourself, of your past in India—of your present standing there. If you are frank, I may contribute to your fortune; if not—our ways part here!”
“And, if I warn Anson Anstruther that you are a mere adventuress, if I notify my old friend Hugh Fraser (soon to be Sir Hugh Johnstone), then your little game will be spoiled, Madame Louison!” defiantly said Hawke. The woman leaned back and laughed merrily in his face.
“You are like all professional lady killers, a mere fool in the hands of the first woman of wit. I dare you to cross my path! I will then join Captain the Honorable Anson Anstruther, in Paris, at the Hotel Binda! I will also see that you are excluded from every club in India! Your occupation will be gone, my Knight of Ecarte. Anstruther waits for me.” She tossed him a card. “See for yourself. He was kind enough at breakfast, and, he will help me, if I ask him.”
“And why do you not fly to his arms?” sneered Alan Hawke, who had quickly resigned the bullying tone of his abordage.
“Because he is a nice boy and a gentleman,” the woman said, with a cutting emphasis. “Now, let me read you, Monsieur le Major, a lesson in manners. Never be rough with a woman! That is the road which always leads on to failure. I wish you a good appetite for your breakfast, which I have delayed, and for which I beg your pardon!” She rose and swept along with her Juno strides, and had reached the second Hall of Antiquities before Alan Hawke overtook her. It had flashed across his mind that he had for once in his life met a woman who was not afraid of the future, whatever had been her past. A single malicious letter from Anstruther would ruin him in India, for there was an ominous cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, lingering in that hiatus between his old rank of Lieutenant of Bengal Artillery, and the shadowy tenure of his self-dubbed Majority. This Aspasia hid none of her methods. She had boldly captivated the passing Pericles, and, evidently, she was the desired one.
“Let me explain,” he began, as the woman looked calmly into his face.
“We are only losing time, Major,” Madame Louison remarked, as she sought a corner. “I see that you have already repented. Do you know any one in Geneva?”
“Not one of the seventy-five thousand here,” frankly answered Hawke. “The only man I came here to see, the English Consul, is away on leave.”
“Then I can use you safely,” answered the stranger. “Now, I owe you a breakfast. Will you put me in my carriage? I know the town thoroughly. Remember that it is only business that brings us together, and yet we may become better friends.” In a half an hour they were seated in an arbor by the lake, where a homely German restaurant offered good cheer.
The Lady of the Lake did the honors ceremoniously, and Major Alan Hawke was permitted a cigar after the lake trout, filet, pears, cheese, Chambertin, and black coffee had been discussed. He was both conquered and repentant, and had adroitly atoned for his mauvais debut by a respectful demeanor, which was not feigned. He answered the running fire of questions which had led him from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, and from Chittagong to the Khyber Pass.
“You are sure that no one in Geneva knows your face?” Berthe Louison asked at last.
“I have been here only two days, and it is twenty years since I first roved over Switzerland on schoolboy leave,” was the truthful answer.
“Then I can use you if you will decide to aid me, after you have heard me. I know, already, all that young Anstruther knows of the whole Johnstone matter. I do not intend to meet him at Paris,” she demurely said. “I am absolutely untrammeled in this world. I am free to act as a woman’s moods sway her. I have plenty of money, a fact which lifts me above the degradation of man’s chase, and I indulge in no illusions. I am a soldier’s daughter, and my dead father was the son of one of Napoleon’s heroes of La Grande Armee. My whole life has been most unconventional; and I am free to dispose of myself, body and soul, and will, but for one thing.” She was pleased with Alan Hawke’s mute glance of inquiry. “Only the business which brought me to Geneva! We are all the slaves of circumstance! The veriest fools of fortune! I do not blame you for your surmises! I had vainly sought, for two years, the very information which I gained last night by chance at a Geneva table d’hote. It was from Anstruther that I discovered the changed name under which Hugh Fraser’s daughter has been hidden from me for years. For I owe this all to chance, to Anstruther’s susceptibility, and to my playing the risque part which you saw fit me so well.” The woman’s eyes were now flashing ominously.
“But you led me on—you deceived me!” stammered Alan Hawke.
“I had nothing to risk!” the resolute beauty replied. “My name is not Berthe Louison, as you may well imagine! As for the little amourette de voyage, I will leave the laurels to your handsome young friend and yourself. I do not play with boys, and, as for you, I should always guard myself against you!
“Now, I will be practical! I know Europe; I do not know India! I need a man brave, cool, and unscrupulous; I need a resolute man to aid me in the one purpose of my life! I wish to go out to India to face this Hugh Fraser, to lift up the curtain of the dead past, and I need a protector—a paid champion—a man who values the only thing which is concrete power in life; a man who knows the power of money! For, gold is irresistible!” Her bright face hardened.
“My duties are, then, not to be of a tender nature,” lightly hazarded Hawke.
“I can soon judge of your value by your adroitness, and you can make your own record!” smiled the strange woman waif. “Let me see how you would do this! I do not care to personally approach Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, I would have a picture of the woman whom I seek—the lonely child whom I have hungered for long years to see! I do not care to expose myself here—”
“The Preceptress might telegraph out to India and the girl be spirited away!” broke in Alan Hawke.
“Very good! Precisely so!” said Berthe Louison, gravely. “I will tell you now that I have played perfectly fair with Anstruther! I have enabled him to assure himself of Nadine Johnstone’s regular standing as the legal and only heiress of the would-be Baronet! I do not fear Anstruther! He is a gallant boy, worthy to wear a sword, and, he does not work for hire! He tells me that Euphrosyne Delande showed him the last pictures of the girl which were sent on before Hugh Fraser suddenly telegraphed to have his child ‘personally conducted’ on carte blanche terms out to join him.”
Major Hawke buried his head in his hands and slowly said: “I can do it easily! We must not be seen together here! Go up to the Hotel Faucon, at Lausanne, and wait for me there for three days. I have to remain here at any rate to collect Anstruther’s check in London. I have in my favor all the facts of Anstruther’s story. I happen also to have Anstruther’s P. P. C. card. I will bring you the picture you want, or a half dozen copies. Will you trust to me? I make no professions!”
“That is right!” sternly said Berthe Louison. “Let our casual association be one of a mere money interest. We can find each other out easily. You have no motive to injure me, your own interest now and always lies the other way. I only wish to have some one at hand when I am ready to face the embryo Sir Hugh Johnstone!”
“You are bold!” slowly said Alan Hawke. “If I should denounce you to Johnstone, himself! If he should be warned—”
“I hold him and his long cherished dream, the Baronetcy, in my hand,” the brown-eyed beauty frankly cried. “I should not burn my ships in Europe! Even if I were to be betrayed, the purpose of my life will be carried out. I should leave here behind me the safest of anchors in other well-paid agents. Your rash meddling would only ruin your own money interests and not hurt my plans.”
“Then we are to make an offensive and defensive alliance without trust or faith in each other?” agnostically remarked Hawke.
“Just so!” answered Madame Louison. “I can make it to your interest to serve me well, better than the man whom I wish to face. You know India—you happen to know Delhi. Your possible adversary is an old civilian, rich, retired, and unable to rake up trouble for you in military circles. I will do my work alone, but I shall want your aid, and I will pay you liberally. I will go up to Lausanne. You will find me at the Hotel Faucon. Bring up some route maps of India. We will go out as soon as possible. Do you wish any present money?”
Alan Hawke reddened as he shook his head.
“Then, Major Hawke, if you will take the first passing carriage, we will meet as soon as you have succeeded. Send me a telegram of your coming.” The adventurer’s low bow of silent assent terminated the strange breakfast scene, and at the gate of the vine-clad garden he turned and saw her seated there alone, with her head bowed in a reverie.
“Damme if she is made of flesh and blood!” mused the Major, as he drove back to the Hotel National. That very evening he revenged himself upon the callous-hearted stranger, by a reckless flirtation with the Misses Phenie and Genie Forbes, still of Chicago. It was not a matter of concern to any one but Paterfamilias Forbes that the Major indulged in a stolen moonlight excursion upon the lake in charge of two extremely prononcee Daisy Millers. The Major’s slumbers, however, were of the lightest, for the face of the chance-met directress of his immediate future haunted his uneasy dreams. He was a model of respectable gravity, however, when he presented himself before Mademoiselle Euphrosyne Delande, at her Institute, when the bells clanged ten in the morning. Major Hawke at once impressed the sleek door-opener, Francois, by the ultra refinement of his demeanor, and the suave elegance of his French. “Evidently the one necessary Adam in this Garden of undeveloped young Peris,” thought Hawke, as he gazed around the cheerless room, with its globes, busts of departed sages, topographical maps, and framed samples of the “Execution” of the jeunes personnes, with brush and pencil.
“Looks breachy, that fellow—they all have to sneak out to drink, and for les fetifs plaisirs! He may be made useful. I’ll have a shy at him,” mused the Major, now on his mettle. Francois stood there expectant of a tip, when he announced the regrets of Mademoiselle Delande, that class duties would detain her for a few moments.
“Would Monsieur kindly pardon, etc.?”
“Am I right in inferring that the ladies, are the daughters of the famous Professor Delande?” the Major hazarded, with a wild guess. Before the votary of Minerva finally descended, Francois had artfully “yielded up” much valuable information to the gravely interested visitor. The attendant was the richer by a five-franc piece when he retired to vigorously fall upon the Major’s hat and brush it in an anticipatory manner.
It was but a half an hour later when Alan Hawke had concluded his deftly worded compliments upon the justly famed Institute, and had subjugated the still susceptible spinster by his adroitly veiled flatteries. The easy aplomb with which he introduced the forgotten commission of Captain Anstruther was aided by the presentation of that gentleman’s visiting card, and the charms of an interesting word sketch of Delhi and its surroundings.
The sound of distant girlish voices punctuated the refined murmur of the ensuing conference, which was an exposition of Mademoiselle Delande’s grand manner! Hawke adroitly soothed the natural uneasiness of the cunning Swiss spinster as to her sister’s comfort, safety, and the surety of Hugh Johnstone’s fabulously liberal money inducement to retain Miss Justine in his service for a year. The flattered woman fell easily into Alan Hawke’s net, and she freely dilated upon the singular eccentricities of the Indian magnate as to his daughter’s education.
There was a breaking light now illumining the strange childhood of a girl, nurtured by proxy, and kept in ignorance of her brilliant future and vast monetary inheritance.
“In fact, I have never seen the honored Mr. Hugh Fraser,” concluded Miss Euphrosyne. “Nadine was brought to us a child of three by the wife of Professor Fraser, since deceased! And, by special arrangement, she was taken by us, and her whole girlhood has been passed in our charge. We have never seen her uncle, Professor Fraser, whose duties at Edinburgh University chained him down. It was her own father’s written and positive direction that no one, whomsoever, should be admitted to converse with his child. And so Justine and myself have formed her entirely!”
Hawke’s keen eyes glowed for a moment, in a secret satisfaction. “I have you, my lady! They wished to keep you away from this young Peri, formed upon such heroically antique models.” Major Hawke gazed upon the leather-faced visage of the slaty-eyed woman, whose age none might venture to guess. An artless admiration of the absent Miss Justine’s photographed charms, caused a faint glow to flicker upon the ancient maiden’s cheek. When Alan Hawke drew forth a hideous carbuncle and Indian filigree bracelet (an old relic of bazaar haunting), the thin lips of the preceptress parted in a wintry smile.
With modest urging, he soon overcame the Roman firmness of Mademoiselle Euphrosyne, and, wonder of wonders, was honored by an invitation to dine with the austere Genevan maiden. The happy Major was soon triumphant at all points, and Francois was hastily dispatched to the Photographic Atelier to order a half dozen copies of the card portrait which displayed to Alan Hawke the rosebud face of the Veiled Beauty of Delhi. The adventurer made haste to excuse himself for interrupting the flow of the Parnassian stream, and walked backward from the presence of the poor old woman whom he had duped, as if she were a queen.
It was an easy matter for the Englishman to waylay and intercept the returning man-at-arms of this castle of cosmopolitan beauty. Francois had duly availed himself of his lengthened absence, and his thick tongue and swimming eye spoke of potations of the Kirsch-wasser dear to the Swiss heart. Major Hawke impressed the servitor with the necessity of bringing the pictures down to his rooms upon the morrow, and then the Major judiciously duplicated his five-franc piece. The happy butler winked with an acute divination of the Major’s purpose and went unsteadily back to the whirlpool of learning. The Major cheerfully went on his own way to meet Miss Genie Forbes, with whom he had established a private understanding as to a runaway visit to the Cathedral, to be followed by an impromptu breakfast. “I can stand the old Gorgon’s dinner,” mused the happy adventurer, “after a tete-a-tete with Miss Genie, and as for Francois, I will also waste a bottle of good Cognac on him. I think that I will start into this strange partnership with a better stock of family history than even this remarkably self-possessed young woman, who seems to be the heiress of some old family vendetta.”
The Major laughed as he heard the mills of the gods grinding out a golden grist of the future. But lifted up beyond the impulses of his itching palm the sight of the delicate, girlish face of the Rosebud of Delhi had caused him to dream the strangest dreams. “Why not?” he murmured as he wandered back to the hotel and privately indulged in a petit verre before his rendezvous with Miss Genie, the belle of the West Side. Major Alan Hawke was in “great form” as he piloted the bright-eyed, willful Chicago girl through the dim religious light of the Cathedral. His mocking history of the gay life and racy adventures of Bonnivard, when posing as the rollicking Prior of St. Victor in the wild days of his youth, greatly amused the nervous American heiress.
“I should say that he was a holy terror,” laughed Miss Genie, “and I don’t blame the Bishop of Geneva and the Duke of Savoy for making him do his six years in that dark old hole at Chillon! He was a gay boy, you bet, and with his three wives and his lively ways, I reckon the Genevans were blamed sorry they ever let him out. He seems to have been a free thinker, a free liver, and a free lover!”
“And yet,” mused Alan Hawke, “his writings to-day are the pride of Genevan scholars; his library was the nucleus of the Geneva University; his defiant spirit broke the chains of Calvin’s narrowness, and his resistant, spiritual example caught up has made Geneva the home of the oppressed, the central, radiant point of mental light and liberty for the world! Geneva since 1536 has harbored the brightest wandering Spanish, French, English, and Irish youth! Even grim Russia cannot reclaim from the free city its wayward exiles. France, in her distress, has found an asylum here for its helpless nobles and expelled philosophers. I willingly take my hat off to brave little Switzerland, where Royal Duke, proscribed patriot, mad enthusiast, bold agnostic, and tired worldling can all find an inviolate asylum under the majestic shadows of its mountains—by the shores of its dreaming lakes!” Alan Hawke dropped suddenly from the clouds as the practical Miss Genie led the way to the breakfast rendezvous, cheerfully demonstrating her own bold ideas of social freedom by remarking:
“Say! what’s the matter with a little day’s run up to Chillon? Phenie is game for anything! You just get that other English Lord and we will dodge Popper and Mommer.”
“I am sorry to say that my friend has left suddenly, bound for London,” laughed the Major, gazing admiringly at this pretty feminine Bonnivard.
“That’s awful bad luck!” gloomily remarked Miss Genie. “He was a regular dandy, and I liked him—but,” she said, with a thirsty peck at a glass of champagne, as they waited for the breakfast, “Phenie will then have to give that long-legged Italian fellow the tip. The Marquis of Santa Marina! He’s not much, but better than nothing at all. We’ll have a jolly day!”
Major Hawke was mystified at the daring personal independence of the sprightly young heiress. She was a social revelation to him, and the sunny afternoon was not altogether thrown away, for they carelessly rambled over the proud old town together, doing all the sights. They visited the stately National Monument, the Jardin Anglais, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, the Muse’e Foy, the Botanic Gardens, and the Athende. He gazed upon the fresh face of the rebellious young American social mutineer with an increasing wonder as they wandered alone on the Promenade des Bastions, and was simply astounded when he vainly tried to take advantage of a shady corner in the Musee Ariana to steal a kiss from the wayward girl’s rosy lips. Miss Genie “formed herself into a hollow square” and calmly, but energetically, repulsed him.
“See here! Major Hawke!” she coolly said, “get off the perch! I don’t care for any soft sawder! I’m a pretty good fellow in my way, but I know how to take care of myself!”
In fact, Major Alan Hawke at last recognized the existence of a species of womanhood which he had never before met. Miss Genie was frankly unconventional, and yet she was both hard-headed and hardhearted. When he carefully dressed himself for the intellectual feast of Mademoiselle Delande’s “refined collation,” he dimly became aware that the role of unpaid bear leader to the Chicago girl simply amounted to being an unsalaried valet de place! “As for compromising that devil of a girl,” he growled, “she could have given the snake in the Garden of Eden long odds and beaten him hollow, in subtlety.” This view of the impeccability of the Chicago epidermis was confirmed later when Hawke returned from the “Institute” at the decorous hour of ten that evening. He was thoroughly happy, for the sly Francois was ready to meet him at the door, whispering:
“I will be at your rooms at ten, and bring you the photographs. I have a couple of hours of freedom then.”
Mademoiselle Euphrosyne’s pale, anemic nature had bloomed out under the graceful attentions of the gallant officer, and gradually she expanded, little by little unfolding the desiccated leaves of her tranquil past, and, yielding, as of old, to the charm of youth and good looks, the faded spinster told him all.
“I will sell my precious knowledge, bit by bit, to Madame Berthe,” he ruminated. “Evidently the Louison dares not face this stony-faced Swiss Medusa. The felices histoires of Francois will fill up my mental notebook.” Major Hawke then sat down at ease in the cafe of the Hotel National to indite a dispatch of spartan brevity to “Madame Louison” at the Hotel Faucon, Lausanne. “The Cook’s Agency tell me that the London draft will be paid to-morrow. Francois will deliver me the photographs, and relate his selected historical excerpts, and then I will be ready to have a duel of wits with Madame Berthe.” So he simply telegraphed to Lausanne:
“Successful—arrive to-morrow night.” He then dispatched the head porter with the telegram, and while enjoying his parting brandy and soda, was suddenly made aware of the near proximity of Mr. Phineas Forbes of Chicago, who was anxiously drinking cocktail after cocktail in a moody unrest. The lank Chicago capitalist waved his tufted chin beard dejectedly as he answered the Briton’s casual salutation. “I’m worried about the girls,” he simply said. “They’re off on the lake, with the Marquis de Santa Marina and that French chap, the Count de Roquefort. I don’t more than half like it.” The hour was late, and the heavy father glued his eyes upon the darkened window pane. “Is Madame Forbes with them?” murmured the Englishman.
“Oh, Lord, no!” simply said the Illinois capitalist. “The girls are used to going out alone with their gentlemen friends, but I’m afraid that these two damned useless foreigners will upset the boat and drown my two girls. I wouldn’t care a rap if they were alone. But these Dago noblemen are no good—at least that’s my experience. I indorsed a draft for one of them that Mommer and the girls dragged up to the house last year. Came back marked ‘N. G.’—I wish to God the girls wouldn’t pick up these fellows.”
Alan Hawke hazarded the inquiry “Why do you permit it?”
The Chicago pork jammer thrust his hand in his pockets and whistled reflectively. “How the deuce can I help it?” he reflectively answered, “Mother and the girls go in for high society. What’ll you have? You can talk French to this fellow. Now, order up the best in the house,” Alan Hawke laughed and charitably divided the hour of long waiting with the simple-hearted old father. At half-past twelve, with a rush and a flutter, the two young falcons sailed into the main hallway and effusively bade adieu to their limp cavaliers, who slunk away, in different directions, when they observed the disgruntled parent and the heartily amused Briton.
“So they brought you home safely?” calmly remarked Hawke, as he watched the happy father gathering his chickens unto his wing.
“We brought them home safe,” cutely remarked Miss Phenie. “Those fellows are heavenly dancers, but they are not worth shucks in a boat. I wish we had had you out with us. I like Englishmen!” with which frank declaration Miss Phenie and Miss Genie whisked themselves away to bed, Miss Genie leaning over the banister to jovially cry out:
“Don’t you go away till we fix up that Chillon trip.” Major Hawke and Phineas Forbes, Esq., drank a last libation to the friendly god Neptune, the old man huskily remarking:
“Say, Major, those are two fine girls, and they will have a million apiece. I want ‘em to be sensible and marry Chicago men, but, they both go in for coronets and all that humbug.” The laughing Major extricated himself from the social tentacles of the honest old boy, mentally deciding to play off Miss Genie against Mad-ame Berthe Louison.
“I will give these strange girls ‘a day out.’ It may reduce the nez retroussee my mysterious employer.” And so he dreamed that night that he was an assistant presiding genius of the great pig Golgotha, where Phineas Forbes was the monarch of the meat ax. “Right smart girls, and you bet they can take care of themselves,” was the last encomium of their self-denying parent which rang in Alan Hawke’s ears as he wandered away into the Land of Nod.
“They are a queer lot,” laughed the happy schemer, as he woke next day to his closing labors at Geneva. “Now, for my check cashing, then, Monsieur Francois, a farewell visit to Miss Euphrosyne, and a secret council with the fair Genie,” He merrily breakfasted, and was more than rewarded for his Mephistophelian entertainment of Francois. The sly Figaro “parted freely,” and when he slunk back to the “Institute” he was the richer by fifty francs. Major Hawke was the happy possessor of the coveted photographs, and a private address of Francois, artfully informing that person that he was going to London, and on his return, in a few months, desired a cicerone in the hypocritically placid town. Francois’s eyes gleamed in a happy anticipation of more Cognac and many easily earned francs. “Now, Madame Berthe, I think I have the key of the enigma! I see a year’s assured comfort before me, for I can play the part of the Saxon troops at Leipzig,” the schemer joyously ruminated.
His farewell to Miss Delande impressed that thrifty dame with the golden fortunes which had descended upon her sister. “Should you return to India, Major,” she sibillated, “I will give you a confidential letter to Justine, for I know there is no one more fitted to remain in charge of sweet Nadine than my dear sister!” The Major blushingly accepted the honor, and directed the letter to be sent at once to Morley’s Hotel, for, as he mysteriously whispered,
“The Foreign office may send me back to India—in fact, I may be telegraphed for at any moment, and your sister will surely find a fast friend in me.”
“Easily gulled!” laughed Alan Hawke. “I will sweeten’ upon Miss Justine; those thin lips indicate the auri sacra fames. These miserly Swiss sisters may aid me to approach the veiled Rose Bird.” His delight at fingering the crisp proceeds of Anstruther’s check sent him to the Ouchy steamer in the very happiest of moods, and, his cup was running over when the birdlike Miss Genie Forbes descended upon him to announce a meeting on the morrow at Montreux.
“We can do the castle, and essay the airy railroad at Territet Glion, have a jolly dinner on the hill, and come home on the last boat! You be sure to meet Phenie and me.” The astounded Major murmured his delight and surprise. “Oh! Popper will let us go up there. He likes you—he says that you are a thoroughbred. So, we’ll cut the other fellows and come alone. Say, can’t you scare up another fellow like yourself for Phenie?” Whereat Alan Hawke laughed, and promised to secure an eligible “fellow” among the migratory Englishmen hovering around Lausanne-Ouchy, and he pledged a future friendship with the patient Phineas Forbes, who lingered in the cafe, engulfing cocktails, while “Mother and Phenie were out shopping.” The vivacious Genie had confided to her callous swain that she had watched him as he lingered on Rousseau’s Island.
“I rather thought that you were sick and distressed, you looked so peaked like, and I was mighty near speaking to you. I was just bound to meet you.” And upon this frank declaration, Alan Hawke kissed her firm white hand, agreeing to her plans, and the glow of prosperity shone out upon his impassive face, as he glided away to meet the strange woman whom he distrusted. “I hold the trump cards now, my lady!” he cried, as he watched Miss Genie’s handkerchief fluttering on the quay. Major Alan Hawke wasted no time in his three hours’ voyage to Lausanne-Ouchy in carefully preparing for his interview with Madame Berthe Louison. He abandoned the idea of trying the “whip hand,” remembering how suddenly he had descended from the “high horse.” “Bah! She is about as sentimental as a rat-tail file. However, she is good for my passage to India, at any rate, and, the nearer I am to old Johnstone and this pretty heiress to be, the better my all-round chances are.” So, he contented himself with watching the pictured shores of Lake Leman glide by, and wondering if he might not turn aside safely to the chase of the bright-eyed, sharp-featured, Miss Genie Forbes. He had profited by Phineas Forbes’s frank disclosures, and yet the Madame Sans Gene manners of the heiresses rather frightened him. He was aware from the amatory failure in the dim old cathedral that Miss Genie was armed cap-a-pie. “Those American girls, apparently so approachable, are all ready to stand to arms at a moment’s notice.” And so, he drifted back in his day dreams toward the Land of the Pagoda Tree, with Ouchy and Chillon. He studied the beautiful face of the lonely child from the school-girl photograph, and decided, in spite of hideous frocks and a lack of conventional war paint, that she was a rare beauty.
“Yes! She will do—with the money. All she needs is the art to show off her points, and that is easily gained. The recruits in Vanity Fair easily pick up the tricks of society, and old Hugh’s money and prospective elevation will surely draw suitors around like flies swarming near the honey.” The boat gracefully glided in to the port of Ouchy before Major Hawke’s day dream faded away.
A flattering dream which led him on to a future gilded by Sir Hugh Johnstone’s money. He longed to ruffle it bravely with the best. To hold up his head once more in official circles, and to smother the ugly floating memories ef a renegade who had served those English guns under the fierce Sikkim hill tribes against his one-time fellow soldiers. “I must have that money, with or without the girl! There must be a way to it! I will cut through the barriers to get it!” There was a steely glitter in his blue eyes as he murmured: “Now for the fox’s hide! She shall have her way—for a time! My play comes on later, when the deal is with me!”
He sprang lightly ashore, and was chatting with the gold-banded porter of the Hotel Faucon, when a lovely face, thrilling in its awakened emotion, met his glance at the window of a carriage. He dispatched his luggage to the Faucon, and sprang lightly in the carriage when the omnibuses had departed for the Lausanne plateau. Alan Hawke was carefully deferential in his greeting and he meekly answered all the rapid queries of his mysterious employer.
“You have closed up your own private affairs?” she briskly queried.
“All is ready for the road in one day more. I have a private social engagement for to-morrow,” he replied. “But I brought you all the sailing dates and the detailed information you requested.”
“You obtained the pictures safely, then, and with a prudent caution,” anxiously demanded Madame Louison.
“You shall know all soon. I hope that I have satisfied you!” he said, handing her a packet, failing to tell her that he had kept two pictures of the far-away girl for his own private use. They were now near the plateau where the Hotel Faucon shows its semi-circular front to the splendid panorama unrolled before its windows.
An afternoon concert was in progress at the Casino, near the local museum. “We will stop here for a few moments,” said the excited woman. “You can go on alone, and walk over to the hotel and secure your own rooms. Then send your card up to me in the usual manner. To-night we will go out separately and meet for a conference. We can arrange all our business.” The Major bowed submissively, and assisted the lady to alight.
Madame Louison dismissed her carriage, and the confederates-to-be entered the afternoon concert room. A superb orchestra was playing the finishing bars of the last number on the program, and the audience had dwindled away to a few knots of demure residents. Following his passive policy, the adventurer sat silently, stealing oblique glances at his companion as she nervously unfolded the wrappings of the coveted pictures. There was a gasp, a low moan, as the woman’s head fell back. Alan Hawke’s strong arms were clasped round her, as she leaned back helplessly in her fauteuil. But a smile of secret triumph was on his face as he quickly bore the helpless form to an anteroom at once opened by the frightened ushers. Berthe Louison’s face was corpse-like in its pallor, as she lay there upon a divan, her fingers still clutching the photograph.
“There is a physician near by,” hazarded a sympathetic woman who had crowded into the room. The music had stopped with a crash.
“Summon him at once!” energetically ordered Hawke. “Some brandy—quick!” he cried, listening to her agonized words, “Valerie! My God! It is Valerie herself! My poor sister!” In a few moments an elderly man parted the assembling loiterers. His bustling air of command soon dispelled the loiterers. A woman attendant was bending over the still senseless woman as the spectacled medico seized Alan Hawke’s arm. “Has your wife ever had a previous heart attack?” he gravely asked, as he opened his lancet case. Major Hawke shook his head, and gazed pityingly upon the beautiful pallid face before him.
“Can I be of any use to Monsieur?” demanded the chef d’orchestre in evening grand tenue, his baton still in his hand.
There was a glance of wondering astonishment as the Englishman faced the speaker. “Wieniawski—Casimir, you here?” The other dropped his voice as the physician ripped up the sleeve of the patient’s gown.
“Major Hawke, I thought you were still in Delhi? Your wife—” faltered the artist, as he listened to a low moan when the lancet blade entered the ivory arm of the sufferer. Then, with a backward step, he pressed his hands to his brows. “My God! It is Alixe Delavigne!” he brokenly said. But Hawke sprang to his side and quickly drew him from the room.
“Not a word! Not a single word to any one! Where are you stopping? I will come to you tonight!” the excited man sternly said, his firm hand still clutching the musician’s arm.
“Here, at the Casino! Come in after ten! I will await you! But where did you meet her?” the Polish violinist cried, speaking as if in a dream.
“You shall know all later! I must get her to the hotel!” He returned to the physician’s side, who authoritatively cried, “Now an easy carriage and to the Faucon, you said?” In half an hour, Berthe Louison was sleeping, a nurse at her side, while Alan Hawke counted the moments crawling on till ten o’clock.