CHAPTER V. A DIPLOMATIC TIFFIN.
Major Alan Hawke had designedly breakfasted in the stately seclusion of his rooms, and as he came gravely sauntering into the Club ordinary, was at once beset by a friendly chorus, as he carelessly glanced over the morning letters which attested his progress toward the social zenith. He, however, gazed impatiently at the club-house door, where a neat pair of ponies awaited him, with servants deftly purveyed by the subtle Ram Lal. His two body servants were also afrites of the same sly Aladdin. His swelling port duly impressed his old friends.
The man “who had dropped into a good thing” gently put aside sundry hospitable proffers, politely laughed away several tempting bargains as to horses, carriages, furnished bungalows, and offers of racing engagements, hunting bouts, and “private” dinners. “Waiting orders, d’ye see!” he gently murmured. “Not worth while to set up anything!” 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 spacious 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 anticipation 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, Japanese 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 friendship 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 sturdy 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 reassured 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 sunshine 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 unobserved. For I have so much that I would say to you.” It was with a sigh of relief that the frightened woman hastily passed through Ram Lal’s spacious snuggery in rear of his jewel mart and was soon ensconced in a little pagoda, where Major Hawke seated himself at her side and skillfully took up his soft refrains.
In half an hour they were thoroughly en bon 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 anticipations. 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.
“And so,” earnestly said Major Alan Hawke, “I am absolutely prevented from seeing you, unless you will trust yourself to me, and come here again.” The frightened woman cast a glance at the unfamiliar loveliness of the secluded garden, with the hidden kiosques, sacred to Ram Lal’s furtive amours.
“I dare not!” she said, with trembling lips. “I would like to come, but—”
“Listen!” said Alan Hawke, softly taking her unresisting hand, “I will confide in you. I must, even to-day, go to Hugh Johnstone’s house. He has bidden me to a private interview. And he gives a tiffin in my honor. I have known him in past years. He does not as yet know of my official position. My duties are secret. My very honor forbids me to divulge it. I dare not openly acknowledge an acquaintance with you, with your sister. It rests with you that we meet again, for my sake, for your own sake, for your sister’s sake. I cannot lose you for a mere quibble.”
There was a genuine alarm in Justine Delande’s voice as she started up, crying out, “You come to us to-day?”
“Precisely!” gravely said Major Hawke, as he tried a long shot. “Both Captain Anstruther and myself have the gravest secret duties in connection with Hugh Johnstone’s future. He soon may be Sir Hugh, you know. And I dare not divulge to him my own delicate functions in this matter. Now you understand me at last,” said Hawke, warmly pressing Justine Delande’s hand. “I feel that I must not lose you, because I have my duty to perform, and I trust my honor to you. All will be well if you will only favor me with your womanly kindness, and trust to me as frankly as I to you. We must meet to-day at Hugh Johnstone’s as absolute strangers. We must also remain strangers to all appearances for a time,” he said at last. The Swiss spinster gazed up at him piteously.
“May I not even tell Nadine?” she faltered.
“Ah!” carelessly said Alan Hawke, “she is a mere child; I shall probably never see her. It is you alone that I would trust. Will you not come here again? I dare not, for your own sake, detain you longer now.” The timid woman glanced hurriedly at her watch.
“I have been here already too long, and I must go! And there is so much I would say to you!” She was almost handsome in her blushing confusion.
“Then you will come again, here? Ram Lal is my old factotum!” the young Major pleaded.
“I will come!” the half-subjugated woman whispered under her breath. “But when?” Her eyes were meekly downcast and her faltering voice trembled.
“The day after to-morrow, at the same time,” said Alan Hawke, his heart leaping up in a secret victory, “but no living soul must ever know of it. I will be here in the pagoda, waiting for you. Ram Lal will wait for you himself and admit you. Do you promise?” he said, with a glance which set her pallid cheeks aflame.
“I promise! I promise! Let me go, now!” gasped the excited woman. With stately courtesy, the Major then led her back into the jewel merchant’s luxurious lounging-room.
“Wait here for a single moment!” he whispered as he quickly poured out a glass of cordial. And, then, returning in a few moments, he clasped upon the woman’s wrist a bracelet of old Indian gold, whose flexible links glittered with the fire of a row of old Indian mine stones. Justine Delande sat mute, as if dreaming.
“Our little secret is now all our own!” he pleasantly murmured. “Remember! Should we meet at the marble house, you do not know me! Can you trust yourself? You must—for my sake! This will help you to remember our first meeting.”
“You may depend upon me, whenever you may wish to call upon me,” she whispered. “I will come!” and then she fled away, with soft, gliding steps, to regain the safety of her own room before the trying hour of tiffin.
Major Alan Hawke closed the door, and laughed softly as he threw himself into a chair. “They are all the same!” he mused. “Not a bad morning’s work! For she will never tell our little secret! And she will surely come again! She may be my salvation here! Madame Louison, I now debit you just thirty pounds!” laughed Major Alan Hawke, as he deftly blew a kiss in the direction of Allahabad. “You shall pay for this bracelet, and much more! You shall pay for all! And I’ll set this soft-hearted Swiss woman on to watch you, and you shall pay her well, too! Now, for my old friend, Hugh Johnstone!” He waited in a most happy frame of mind till his carriage bore him to the club for an elaborate Anglo-Indian toilet.
There was a crowd of eager gossips secretly tracking him who watched him roll away in state to the marble house.
“By Jove! I believe that he is the coming man!” said old Captain Verner. “I wonder if this handsome young beggar is really going in for the Veiled Rose of Delhi. Just his damned luck!” And then the loungers left the club window and drank deeply confusion to the would-be wooer’s stratagems.
All unconscious of their busy curiosity, the gallant Major Alan Hawke calmly descended at the marble house, with a secret oath now registered to ignore the very existence of Nadine Johnstone, “The old man is always harping on his daughter,” he mused. “I must throw this old beggar off his guard thoroughly to-day, once and for all. He must never think that I, too, am ‘harping on his daughter.’
“But only let me get to the core of this old secret of the jewels, and I will find a way to frighten the baronet-to-be until he opens his miserly old heart.” And so the wary guest sought his old friend’s presence. When Major Alan Hawke’s neat trap drew up before the marble house there was an officious crowd of Hindu underlings in waiting to welcome the expected guest.
Casting his eyes around the wide hall gleaming with its superb trophies of priceless arms, with a quick glance at the crowd of sable retainers, Major Hawke realized in all the barren splendors of the first story the absence of any womanly hand. As he followed the obsequious house butler into a vast reception room, he murmured:
“A diplomatic tiffin, I will warrant! The old fox is sly.” He wandered idly about the Commissioner’s sanctum, admiring the precious loot of years, displayed with an artfully artless confusion. On the walls, a series of beautiful Highland scenes recalled the Land o’ Lakes. Pausing before a sketch of a stern old Scottish keep of the moyen age, Major Alan Hawke softly sneered: “Oatmeal Castle! The family stronghold of the old line of the Sandy Johnstone’s, nee Fraser.” And, picking up the last number of the Anglo-Indian Times, he then affected a composure which he was far from feeling.
“Damn this sly Scotsman! Why does he not show up?” was the chafing soliloquy of the Major, now anxious to seal his re-entree into Delhi society with the open friendship of the most powerful European civilian within the battered walls of the wicked city. He needed all his nerve now, for Hugh Fraser Johnstone was a past master of the arts of dissimulation.
In fact, the mauvais quart d’heure was really due to the innate womanly weakness of Mademoiselle Justine Delande. This guileless Swiss maiden had been carried off her feet by the romantic episode of the morning. Her cool palm still tingled with the meaning pressure of the handsome Major’s hand! She had hastened away to her own apartment, as a wounded tigress seeks its cave for a last stand! The concealment of the diamond bracelet was a matter of necessity, and, with a beating heart, she buried it deep under the poor harvest of paltry Delhi trinkets which she had already gathered, with a mere magpie acquisitiveness.
Alan Hawke had builded better than he knew, when he selected this same bauble. He had been guided by a chance remark of Ram Lal’s. “Give her that,” said the crafty old jeweler. “She has priced it a dozen times since her first coming here.” It was the Ultima Thule of personal decoration to her. The Swiss governess reserved the secret delight of donning the glittering ornament until she was positive that no tell-tale spy had observed her innocent assignation with her sister’s chivalric friend. “He must be rich and powerful,” she murmured as she fled from her room to play the safety game of being found with the heiress when her Prince Charming should arrive. Miss Nadine Johnstone failed not to observe the unusual color mantling her sedate friend’s cheeks.
“You look as if you had received some good news. Is the mail in?” queried Miss Johnstone.
“Not yet. I hastened back, for I forgot to take my watch and was belated. I fear I am late, even now, for tiffin,” demurely replied the Swiss maiden, dropping for the first time in her life into the baleful arts of the other daughters of Eve. She had broken the ice of propriety in which her past life had been congealed and an insidious pleasure now thrilled her quickened veins, as she felt herself possessed of a secret, one linking her to an attractive member of the dangerous sex, and a hero of romance, a very Don Juan in seductive softness. Her knees trembled at a sudden summons to report to the Master of the marble house, forthwith.
Her bosom heaved with a vague alarm as she timidly descended the grand stair, and was conducted to the private snuggery of the Commissioner adjoining his own apartments. “Does he know aught of the meeting?” she questioned herself, in the throes of a sudden fright. She was somewhat reassured as she observed the carriage drawn up in the compound and, by hazard, caught a glance of Alan Hawke’s graceful martial figure, as he stood regarding her intently from the safe shelter of the darkened reception-room. Her heart bounded with delight as her Prince Charming smilingly placed his finger on his lip.
A sense of manly protection, never felt before, gave her the strength of ten as she then glided along boldly to face her gray-headed master. For now she knew that she had a champion at her side, a man professionally brave, both resolute and charming. Her promise to meet Alan Hawke again at the jeweler’s now took on a roseate hue.
“I must surely keep my plighted word at all risks,” she murmured to herself. For the sage reflection that she owed a sacred duty to her sister’s friend, now came to comfort her, in her heart of hearts. It was almost a pious duty which lay before her now. And so she became brave in the knowledge of the innocent secret shared between herself and the handsome official visitor.
To her delight and relief she found it an easy task to face Hugh Johnstone, after that one reassuring glance. Her stern employer failed to pierce the muslin fortifications of her guilty bosom and discern the moral turpitude lurking there. She stole a last anxious glance at her still plump wrist where the diamond bracelet had softly clasped her flesh, and then softly sighed in relief as the master calmly said:
“Miss Justine, I have a gentleman of some distinction to entertain to-day at tiffin. An official visitor. I would be thankful if you would do the honors. Will you kindly join us in the reception room in half an hour, and I will present Major Hawke, my old friend. He has just returned from England.”
“And Miss Nadine?” meekly demanded the happy woman. The old Commissioner’s brow darkened, as he shortly said: “My daughter will be served in her rooms, as usual on such formal occasions. These interlopers are no part of her life. We may soon leave for Europe, and she is therefore better off to remain a stranger to these merely local acquaintances. It is very unlikely that we shall ever re-visit India! Will you see her and say that I purpose driving out with her later?”
No woman in India was as happy, at that particular moment, as the Genevese, who merely bowed in silence, and glided softly away, having escaped the levin-bolt of Hugh Johnstone’s wrath, ever ready, lurking under his bushy, white eyebrows. It was the work of a moment for her to fulfill her simple task as messenger, and this done, she burned to hide herself in her own coign of vantage, for certain new-born ideas of personal decoration were crystallizing in her excited brain. For the first time in her life, she would be fair to man’s views; so as to justify the partner of her momentous secret in the complimentary remarks which, even now, made her ears tingle in delight.
“Do you know aught of this Major Hawke who comes to-day?” wearily, said the listless girl. “Some one of these red-faced old relics of my father’s early life, I suppose!” The Rose of Delhi was gazing wistfully out upon the wilderness of beauty in the tangled gardens, sweeping far out to where the high stone wall shut off the glare and flying dust of the Chandnee Chouk.
“Certainly not, Nadine!” softly said the governess. “This is only a peopled wilderness to me!” Her heart smote her as the girl, with a sudden lonely sinking of the heart, threw her arms around the neck of her startled companion.
“I am so unhappy here—so wretched, this is but a gleaning white stone prison, Justine! I stifle in this wretched land! Why did my father bring me here to die by inches?” There was no pretense in her stormy sobs.
“We are soon going home, Darling!” cried the affrighted Swiss. “Just now your father told me that we were all to leave India forever, and at once.” And so, gently soothing the unhappy girl, orphaned in her heart, Justine Delande escaped to the first essay of her life in high decorative art. “There is some strange mystery of the past in all this! He has a heart of flint, this old tyrant!” murmured Justine, as with fingers trembling in haste she completed a toilet, which later caused even old Hugh Johnstone to growl “By Gad! This Swiss woman’s not half bad looking!” A last pang, caused by the keen secret sorrow of not daring to wear her diamond bracelet, was effaced by the rising tide of indignation in Justine Delande’s awakened heart. There were strange emotional currents fitfully thrilling through her usually placid veins as she stole a last glance at herself in the mirror. “A tyrant to the daughter. I warrant that in the old days he broke the mother’s heart! He never mentions her! Not a picture is here—nothing—not even a memento, not a reference to the woman who gave him this lovely child! Her life, her death, even her resting place, are all wrapped in the selfish and brutal silence of a selfish tyrant! He should have been only a drill sergeant to knock about the half-crazed brutes who stagger under a soldier’s pack over these burning plains!” It suddenly occurred to her that in some mysterious way Major Alan Hawke’s coming would contribute to the rescue of the captive Princess.
Justine Delande really loved her beautiful charge with all the fond attachment of a mature woman for the one rose blossoming in her lonely heart. Their gray passionless lives had run on together since Nadine’s childhood, as brooks quietly mingle, seeking the unknown sea! She now felt the wine of life stirring within her, and, seizing upon another justification for her dangerous secret association with Alan Hawke, she murmured: “I will tell him of all this. He has high influence with the Home Government. This Captain Anstruther on the Viceroy’s staff is certainly his firm friend. We must leave here and return to dear old Switzerland. Perhaps the Major himself knows the secret of the family history!”
And there was a meaning light in her eyes as she stole back to Nadine’s room when the silver gong sounded, and throwing her arms around the girl, whispered: “We are going home soon, darling! Be brave and trust to me! I will find out the story of the past and tell you all, my darling!” Justine Delande unwound the girl’s arms from round her neck, while honest tears trembled in her eyes.
The low cry: “My mother! My darling mother! He never even breathes the name!” had loosened all the tide of repressed feeling long pent up in Justine Delande’s heart.
“Trust to me! You shall know all, dearest! I am sure that Euphrosyne knows, and we shall see her soon!” So with an added reason for their second meeting, Miss Justine descended the grand marble stair, murmuring: “He shall tell me all he knows; he can search the past here! He can help me, and he must—for Nadine’s sake!”
And as he bowed low before her in courteous acknowledgment of the master’s presentation, Alan Hawke caught the lambent gleam of the newly awakened fires in Justine Delande’s eyes. “She is another woman,” he mused. With one silent glance of veiled recognition, Alan Hawke returned to his diplomatic fence with the wary old nabob who sat at the head of the glittering table. He was in no doubt now as to the second meeting at Ram Lal Singh’s shop, for Justine Delande’s eyes promised him more than even his habitual hardihood would have dared to ask. “What the devil’s up now?” he mused, “Something about the girl, I warrant. I suppose that the old brute has exiled her here for safety.” And then and there, Alan Hawke swore to reach the side of the Veiled Rose of Delhi, though the cold gray eyes of the host never caught him off his guard a moment in the two hours of the pompously drawn-out feast. Both the men were keenly watching each other now.
It had been no mere accidental slip of the tongue which guided Alan Hawke in his greeting of the old ex-Commissioner when Hugh Johnstone entered the reception-room, a study in gray and white, with only the three priceless pigeon-blood rubies lending a color to his snowy linen. “Upon my word, Sir Hugh, you are looking younger than I ever saw you,” said the visitor gracefully advancing.
“You’re a bit premature, are you not, Hawke?” dryly said the civilian, opening a silver cheroot box, once the property of a Royal Prince of Oude. Hugh Johnstone motioned his visitor to be seated, and keenly watched the younger man.
“I am on the inside of the matter,” soberly said Alan Hawke. “It was an open secret when I left London, and I’ve heard more since. A brief delay only,—a matter of a few months—no more.”
“Take a weed! They serve in half an hour!” abruptly said Hugh Johnstone, as if anxious to change the subject. The old man then strode forward and closed the door. Then, turning sharply upon his visitor, frankly demanded, “Now, tell me why you are here?”
“That depends partly upon your affairs,” said Hawke, meeting his questioner’s gaze unflinchingly. “I may have something to say to you about the Baronetcy, by and bye.” He paused to notice the keen old Scotchman wince under the thrust, “but, in the mean time, I am merely waiting orders here, and I want you to post me about the condition of affairs up there.” He vaguely indicated with his thumb the far-distant battlement of the Roof of the World. Hugh Johnstone rang a silver bell, and muttered a few words in Hindostanee to an attendant. “I must know more from Calcutta before I can explain just where I stand,” said the renegade soldier, with caution.
Before the silver tray loaded with ante-prandial beverages was produced, Hugh Johnstone quietly turned to his guest. “Did you see Anstruther in London?” he demanded, with a scarcely veiled eagerness.
“We were together some days,” very neatly rejoined the now confident Major. “In fact, I’m to operate partly under his personal directions. We are old friends.”
“I wonder when he will return?” dreamily said Johnstone, as if the subject was growing annoying in its bold directness.
“I believe that he has a long leave—a furlough of a year,” lightly answered the Major. “In fact, I am to carry on some official matters for him in his absence, but he is wary and non-committal.”
“What is his English address?” abruptly said Johnstone, as they bowed formally over their glasses.
“I do not know,” frankly returned Hawke. “I am to send all reports to headquarters in Calcutta.”
“Are you going down there soon?” asked the old nabob, with a growing uneasiness.
“Not unless I am sent for by the Viceroy,” quietly said the Major, with a listless air, gazing around admiringly on the magnificence of the apartment.
“I will give you a letter to my nephew, Douglas Fraser, when you do go,” said Johnstone. “He is a fine youngster, and he will have charge of all my Indian affairs, if I go home. He is in the P. and O. office. I would like you to know him.”
“I did not know that you had any family connection here,” replied the Major with a start of innocent surprise.
“Only this boy,” hastily replied the incipient baronet, “and my daughter. She is, however, a mere child—a mere child. I have seen the leaves of the family tree wither and drop off one by one.” The host then stiffly rose, and formally said, “Let us go in!”
“You are good for a score of years yet,” jovially remarked Major Hawke, as he gazed at the well-preserved outer man of his uneasy entertainer. “The harpoon is deeply fixed in the old whale,” mused Hawke, as he followed Hugh Johnstone. “He begins to flounder now.”
Conscious of the mental alarm which Hugh Johnstone could not altogether conceal, Major Hawke had simply bowed, in his grand manner, when the host presented his guest to Mademoiselle Delande. “I will let the old beggar lead out,” mused Hawke. “This royal spread is an excuse for any amount of silence.” And the Anglo-Indian renegade gazed admiringly at the thousand and one adjuncts of a blended English comfort and Indian luxury.
“Ever been in Geneva?” suddenly demanded Hugh Johnstone, with a glance at his two companions.
“He’s an uneasy old devil. He is trying to trap me now,” thought Hawke, who innocently replied: “Long years ago, when I was a mere lad. I’m told the town has been vastly improved by the Duke of Brunswick’s legacy. I’ve not seen it in later years.”
“Miss Delande is a Genevese,” remarked the host.
“I congratulate you, Mademoiselle,” politely said the Major. “It is a famous city to date from.”
It was evident that the spinster was held in reverent awe of her employer, for she guarded a judicious silence, as with a formal bow she at last left the table at the graciously permitting nod of Hugh Johnstone. There was a cold and brooding restraint, which had seemed to cast a chill even over the sultry Indian midday, but Justine’s smile was bright and winning as she faintly acknowledged with a blushing cheek Major Hawke’s gallantry as he sprang up and opened the door for the retiring lady. “She will come, she will come,” gayly throbbed the Major’s happy heart.
Alan Hawke was now thoroughly on his guard. He had never lifted an eyebrow at the mention of Miss Johnstone. He had dropped Justine Delande like a plummet into the lake of forgetfulness, and watched Hugh Johnstone’s listless trifling with the dainties of the superb collation. The raw-boned old Scotsman leaned heavily back in his chair.
His bony hands were thin and claw-like, his bushy white beard and eyebrows gave him a “service” aspect, while his cold blue eye gleamed out pale and menacing as the Pole star on wintry arctic seas. His broad chest was sunken, his tall form was bent, and a visible air of dejection and unrest had replaced the sturdy vigor of his early manhood. He was sipping a glass of pale ale in silence when Hawke neatly applied the lance once more. “It must be a great change for you to leave India, Johnstone, but you need rest, and a general shaking up. You have a good deal to leave here. I suppose your nephew—”
“He’s a good lad, but a stranger to me, Hawke,” broke in the host. “The fact is, I am as yet undecided. I go home for my daughter’s sake; it’s no place for her out here,” he sternly said. “You know what Indian life is?”
Hawke bowed, and mutely cried, “Peccavi.” He had been a part of it. “I’m waiting for the action of the Government. This Baronetcy. I must talk with you about it. I might have had the Star of India. You see, it’s an empty honor. And I hate to break away for good, after all. Do you know anything from Anstruther? He was up here, you know.”
“I have him now!” secretly exulted Hawke, as he said gravely, “You know what duty is, I cannot speak as yet, but you can depend on me as soon as my honor will permit—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Hugh Johnstone, with a sigh, rising from the table. “You must make yourself at home here. In fact, I am thinking of sending my daughter back to Europe. Douglas Fraser can have them well bestowed; that is, if I have to remain and fight out this Baronetcy affair, then I could put you up here.” Alan Hawke bowed his thanks.
They had wandered back to the reception-room. With an affected surprise the Major consulted his watch. “By Jove! I’ve got a heavy official mail to prepare, and I’m to dine to-day with Harry Hardwicke, of the Engineers. General Willoughby wants a private conference with me, and Hardwicke is the only confidential man he has. He gets his Majority soon, and Willoughby will lose him on promotion. A fine fellow and a rising man.”
“See here, Hawke! Come in to-morrow and dine with me at seven. I want to have a long talk with you,” said the uneasy host.
“You may absolutely depend on me, Sir Hugh,” heartily answered the visitor, with a fine forgetfulness as to the title. When he rode away, Major Hawke caught sight of a womanly figure at a window above him, watching his retreat in due state, and there was the flutter of a handkerchief as his carriage drove around the oval. “I wonder if Ram Lal knows about the jewels. I must buy him out and out, or make Berthe Louison do it unconsciously for me,” so mused the victorious renegade. “He is afraid of me! Now to dispatch Ram Lal to Allahabad. I must only see Berthe Louison, at night, in her own bungalow, for my shy old bird would take the alarm were we seen together. What the devil is her game? I know mine, and I swear that I will soon know hers. I have him guessing now. I must hunt up Hardwicke and call on old Willoughby to keep up the dumb show. Johnstone may watch me—very likely he will. He is afraid of some coup de theatre.” He drove in a leisurely way back to the Club and sported the oak after giving Ram Lal his last orders.
“I think I hear the jingle of gold ‘in the near future,’ as the Yankees say; and, Miss Justine, you shall open the way to the veiled Rose of Delhi for me, while Berthe Louison tortures this old vetch. Place aux dames! Place aux dames!” he laughed.