“I can play them off the one against each other, at the right time, and, if they fight each other, with the help of Justine Delande, I may even make a strong running for the girl. I think I now see a way!” He felt that his wandering days were over. The dark days of carking cares, of harassing duns, of frequent changes of base, driven onward by the rolling ball of gossip and innuendo.
He felt strangely lifted up in the familiar scenes of his years of wanderings. For he was at home again. Alixe Delavigne, however carefully watched for her eastern adventure, was socially helpless in a land of strange alien races, of discordant Babel tongues, of shifting scenes, a land as unreal as the visions of a summer night.
But to Alan Hawke all this Indian life was now a second nature. The scenes of Bombay recalled his once ambitious youth, the days when he first delightedly gazed upon the wonders of Elephanta, and the gloomy grottoes of Salcette. From his very landing he had set himself one cardinal rule of conduct, to absolutely ignore all the lighter attractions of native and Eurasian beauty, and to let no single word fall from his lips respecting the sudden occultation of Miss Nadine Johnstone—this new planet softly swimming in the evening skies of Delhi. He felt that he was beginning a new career, one in which neither greed nor passion must betray him. It was the “third call” of Fortune, and he had wisely decided upon a golden silence. “If I had only met the favored Justine, instead of that withered Aspasia, Euphrosyne, then, the girl’s heart might have been easily made mine,” was the unavailing regret of the handsome Major. “If I could have come out with them,” he sighed. He well knew the softening effect upon romantic womanhood of a long sea voyage where the willing winds sway the softer emotions of the breast, and the trembling woman is defenseless against the perfidious darts of Cupid.
“My time will come,” he murmured as the train rushed along through the incense breathing plantations. A richer nature than foggy England was spread out before him in treacherous Hindostan with its warring tribes, its dying creeds, its dead languages, its history sweeping far back into the mists of the unknown. For every problem of the human mind, every throe of the restless heart of man is worn old and threadbare in Hindostan, with its very dust compounded of the wind-blown ashes of dead millions upon millions. Gross vulgar Gold reigns now as King on the broad savannas where spice plantations and indigo farms vary the cotton, rice, and sugar fields. Wasted treasures of dead dynasties gleam out in the ornamentation of the temples abandoned to the prowling beast of prey. And riches and ruin meet the eye in a strange medley. Dead greatness and the prosaic present.
Modern bungalows, where the faltering conqueror watches the tax-ridden ryots dot the landscape, and an overweighted official system brings its haughty military, its self-sufficient civilians, its proud womanhood, to drain the exhausted heart of India. And the ryot groans under many taskmasters.
Lingering with a restless heart, in Allahabad, Alan Hawke roused himself as at a bugle call, when he received a telegram announcing the safe arrival of the Empress of India at Calcutta.
“La danse va commencer,” he muttered, as he read the brief words of his employer: “Go on to Delhi, await me there. Telegrams to you there at private address. Leave letters.” The signature “Lausanne” was a new spur to his well-considered prudence. And, so, the next day, Major Hawke sedately descended at Delhi.
There was nothing to distinguish Hawke from any other well-to-do European, as he stood gazing around the station, in his cool linens, his pith helmet and floating puggaree. The prudent air of judicious mystery lately adopted sat easily upon him as his eye roved over the familiar scenes of old with a silent gleam of recognition, he followed a confidential attendant who salaamed, murmuring “My master awaits the sahib whom he delights to love and honor.”
“There is one card I must play at once,” murmured Hawke, as the carriage sped along. “Mademoiselle Justine Delande must be my secret friend! I wonder if Euphrosyne really swallowed the bait! If she has fallen into the trap and written to her sister, then—all is well!”
His eyes roved over the familiar scene of the broad Chandnee Chouk, sweeping magnificently away from the Lahore gate to the superb palace. The sun beat down with its old ferocious glare on shop and bazaar. Grave merchants lolled over their priceless treasures of gold and silver work, heaped up jewels and bullion-threaded shawls for princely wear. Under the awnings lingered the familiar polyglot groups, while beggary and opulence jostled each other on every hand.