LITMIR.BIZ

CHAPTER IV. THE VEILED ROSEBUD OF DELHI

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      The October winds were whirling the pine needles down the mountain defiles in the bracing Alpine autumn, as Alan Hawke sped on past Suez, gliding on through the stifling furnace heat of the Red Sea, past Mocha, and dashing along through the Bridge of Tears, to Aden. He left at Suez, and also at the Eastern Gibraltar of haughty Albion, the brief letters for his mysterious employer, and he mentally arranged the social gambit of his reappearance at Delhi in the nine days before the Sepoy steamed into the island-dotted bay of Bombay.

      Sternly shunning, on his arrival, the local sirens, whose songs of old fell so sweetly upon his ear, the determined Major sped away at once for Allahabad. He was on shaking social quagmires at Bombay. There were sundry little threads of the past still left hanging out in the shape of stray urban indebtedness, and he now scorned to throw away a single one of the crisp Bank of England notes showered upon him by Fortune. He was growing sadly wise. He had lately mused over the old motto, “Lucky at cards—unlucky in love!” The cool provision of the funds at Lausanne by Berthe Louison, her separate route to Delhi, her business-like coldness in their strangely frank relations, all these things proved to him that he was to be only an intelligent tool; not a trusted friend in the little drama about to open at the old capital of Oude.

      Alan Hawke had already abandoned the idea of any sentimental advances upon Alixe Delavigne. “Strange, strange,” he murmured; “a woman can sometimes easily be flattered into a second conjugation of the verb ‘To Love,’ but an internal previous evidence of man’s unreliability can do that which no personal sorrow can effect. The key to this woman’s behavior is in the story of her sister’s shadowed life.

      “The hiatus from Hugh Fraser to Pierre Troubetskoi covers the tragedy of Valerie Delavigae’s life, the death blow was then struck, and the central figure is the child. So, with the strangely acquired fortune at her beck and call, Alixe Delavigne has consecrated herself to that most illogical of human careers—a woman’s silent vengeance! That achieved, will the furnace fires of her stormy heart be lit by the hand of passion?”

      He ruminated sagely over these matters as he sped on over the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The western Ghauts were now far behind him and their dark basalt crags. Bombay, Hyderabad, Berar, the Central Provinces, Central India, and the southern prong of Oude was reached. He was, however, no whit the wiser when he reached the Ganges and hastily sought the telegraph station at Allahabad. But he felt like a prince in the direct line of succession with his net eight hundred pounds still to the good. His first care was to telegraph to Madame Berthe Louison, to the care of Grindley, at Calcutta: “Waiting at Allahabad for your letters, and news of your safe arrival.” While rushing past the Vindhia Mountains he had encountered several of his old Indian acquaintances. The mere hint of a secret governmental employ of gravity satisfied the languid curiosity of the qui hais. For a week he lingered in the “City of God,” and daily haunted the post and telegraph offices.

      He had sent on to the Delhi Club a note for the maw of the local gossips, and also had dispatched a skillfully constructed letter to the unsuspecting Hugh Johnstone. With a veiled flattery of the old civilian’s wisdom and experience, he referred to his desire to consult him as to a secret journey in the direction of the Pamirs. The opportune windfall of Anstruther’s ecarte and Berthe Louison’s liberal advance enabled Major Alan Hawke to maintain a dignified and easy port as he wandered through Allahabad. Strolling by the waters of the Ganges and Jumna, he invoked anew the blessings of the goddess Fortuna, as he gazed out upon the majestic heaven descended stream. The daily tide of travel toward Delhi brought on each day some familiar faces, and yet Alan Hawke lingered gently, declining their traveling company. “Waiting orders,” he said, with the sad, sweet smile of one enjoying a sinecure. His swelling outward port thoroughly proved that the days were gone when he was to be scanned before the morning salutation. Les eaux sout basses, the impecunious Frenchman mourns, but there was a swelling tide bearing Alan Hawke onward now.

      A hearty welcoming letter from the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was a good omen, for rumor of a thousand tongues had already invested the returning Major with an important secret mission. His epistolary seed planted in Delhi had brought forth fruit as rapidly as the magic of the Indian conjuror’s mango-tree trick. It was already rumored even in Allahabad that “Hawke had dropped upon a decidedly good thing.” The Major was busied, however, in analyzing the motives of Alixe Delavigne, in her change of name, her separate journey, her choice of the Calcutta route, and the inner nature of her projected enterprise.

      “A woman in her position, easy as to fortune, will stoop to none of the arts of the blackmailer; she could choose a life of soft luxury, for she is yet in the bloom of vigorous early womanhood. To her the personality of Hugh Fraser is surely nothing. There are but two objects of attack—his proposed social elevation, the nattering title, and the peace of mind and future of the daughter, this lovely veiled Rose! Love, a natural love, even for the stranger child, would ward away the blow; but only an unslaked vengeance would point the shaft! The reproduction of her sister’s face seemed to touch her to her very bosom’s core. There is some fixed purpose in this cold-hearted woman’s coming! Not a lingering annoyance, but some coup de main, a bolt to be launched at Hugh Johnstone alone!”

      “I do not know how I can break her lines, unless she shows me some weak point,” he mused. “But either her fortune or Johnstone’s shall yield me a heavy passing toll. And, there is always the girl! There, I would have to meet Berthe Louison as a determined enemy!” In recognizing the fact that his employer must make the game at last, that she must lead out and so uncover herself, he saw his own masterly position between the two prospective foes.

      “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

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