are to take up your old friendship with Hugh Fraser—this budding baronet,” replied Berthe calmly. She was pouring out a glass of the wine beloved of women, but her hand trembled as she hastily drank off the inspiring fluid. “All this is bravo—mere bravo! She’s a very smart woman, and a cool customer!” decided the schemer, who had filled himself up a long drink. He took up at once the object-lesson. They were simply to be comrades—and nothing more.
“I will obey you to the very letter,” he said simply, for he was well aware the woman was keenly watching him.
“Then that is all. There is nothing more,” soberly concluded his companion. “The letters at Suez and Aden are, of course, to be mere billets de voyage. The correspondence at Allahabad may cover all of moment. Can you not give me a safe letter and telegraph address at Delhi?”
“Give me your notebook,” said Alan Hawke, as he carefully wrote down the needed information: “Ram Lal Singh, Jewel Merchant, 16 Chandnee Chouk, Delhi.”
“There’s the address of my native banker; and as trusty a Hindu as ever sold a two-shilling strass imitation for a hundred-pound star sapphire. But, in his way he is honest—as we all are.” And then Alan Hawke boldly said: “How shall I address you at Allahabad?”
The flashing brown eyes gleamed a moment with a brighter luster than pleasure’s glow. “You have my visiting card, Major,” the woman coldly said. “I travel with a French passport, always en regie.”
“By God! she has the nerve!” mused Alan Hawke, as he hastily said: “And now, as we have settled all our little preliminaries, when am I to know whether you trust me or not?”
He was pressing his advantage, for her precipitate departure would rob him of the expected effect of Casimir Wieniawski’s disclosures. “If I find you en ami de famille, at Delhi, so that you can confidentially approach Sir Hugh Johnstone, the ci-devant Hugh Fraser, your task will be soon set for you, and your reward easily earned; but under no circumstances are you to make the slightest attempt to a confidential acquaintance with this wonderful Nadine. That is my affair.” The tone was almost trifling in its lightness, but Alan Hawke recognized the hand of iron in the velvet glove.
“And now, Sir,” coquettishly said Madame Berthe Louison, “you have been a squire of dames in your day. Tell me of social India, for, while I shall get a good maid out at Calcutta, I must depend upon Munich, Venice, and Brindisi for my personal outfit. I know the whole United Kingdom thoroughly. The Englishman and his cold-pulsed blonde mate at home are well-learned lessons. The Continent, yes, even Russia, I know, too,” she gayly chattered; “but the Orient is as yet a sealed book to me, and I would be helpless in Father India, without the womanly gear appropriate to the social habits of your countrywomen.”
“You have lived in England?” briefly demanded Alan Hawke, in some surprise at her frank admissions.
“Yes, too long!” sternly answered Madame Louison, who was enjoying a cigarette, as she signed to the maid to leave them alone. “I detest the foggy climate,” she added, a little late to temper the bitterness of the remark.
“I will lull this watchful feminine tiger,” the Major secretly decided, as he began a brilliant sketch of the social life of the strange land of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. “I presume, of course, that you do not care to appear with a fifty-pound Marshall & Snell grove outfit, as if you were the wife of an Ensign in a marching regiment. I will give you the real life our women lead out there. You could have secured a splendid London outfit by a little time spent in making the detour.”
“I wish to appear en Francaise, my true character,” smiled Berthe. “I never could sacrifice my Gaelic taste to the hideous color mixtures and utilitarian ugliness of the English machine-made toilette. An Englishwoman can only be trusted with a blue serge, a plain gray traveling dress, or in the easy safety of black or white. They are not the ‘glass of fashion and the mold of form.’ Now, Sir, let me see how you have profited by your wandering in Beauty’s gardens on the Indus and Ganges?”
Alan Hawke knew very well at heart what the quickwitted woman would know. He sketched with grace, the natural features, the climatic conditions, the bizarre scenery of the million and a half square miles where the venerable Kaisar-i-Hind rules nearly two hundred millions of subjugated people. He portrayed all the light splendors of Mohammedan elegance, the wonders of Delhi and Agra, he sketched the gloomy temple mysteries of Hinduism, and holy Benares rose up before her eyes beneath the inspiration of his brilliant fancy.
The ardent woman listened with glowing eyes, as Hawke proudly referred to the wonderful sweep of the sword of Clive, which conquered an unrifled treasure vault of ages, annexed a giant Empire, and set with Golconda’s diamonds the scepter of distant England. The year 1756 was hailed by the renegade as the epoch when England’s rule of the sea became her one vitalizing policy—her first and last national necessity—for the Empire of the waves followed the pitiful beginning in Madras.
Temples, groves, and mosques peopled with the alien and warring races were conjured up, the splendid viceregal circle, the pompous headquarter military, the fast set, staid luxury-loving civilians, and all the fierce eddies and undercurrents of the graded social life, in which the cold English heart learns to burn as madly under “dew of the lawn” muslin as ever Lesbian coryphe’e or Tzigane pleasure lover.
The burning noons, the sweltering Zones of Death, the cool hills, the Vanity Fair of Simla, the shaded luxury of bungalow life, and the mad undercurrent of intrigue, the tragedy element of the Race for Wealth, the Struggle for Place, and the Chase for Fame. Major Alan Hawke was gracefully reminiscent, and in describing the social functions, the habits of those in the swim, the inner core of Indian life under its canting social and official husk, he brought an amused smile to the mobile face of his beautiful listener. He did not note the passage of time. He could now hear the music floating up from the Casino below. He had answered all her many questions. He described pithily the voyage out, the social pitfalls, the essence of “good Anglo-Indian form,” and he was astonished at the keenness of the questions with which he was plied by his employer.
“You have surely traveled in India,” he murmured, when his relation flagged.
“So I have, by proxy, and, in imagination,” laughed Madame Berthe Louison, as she demurely held up her jeweled watch. “Ten minutes more, and then, Sir, I shall give you your ordre de route. For, I must go quietly. I trust to your experience and good judgment. There is nothing to say here. There will be no letters. My bankers have their orders. You must simply pay our bill, and depart quietly via Geneva. May I ask if you wish any more money? Some personal needs?”
Major Hawke shook his head. “You may rely on me to meet you, and to faithfully obey you,” he gravely said. There were unspoken words trembling on his lips, which he fain would have uttered. “By Heavens! She is a witch!” he murmured, in a repressed excitement, as he walked quietly down the hallway to keep his tryst with Casimir Wieniawski. For Berthe Louison had at once divined the cause of his unrest.
“You think that I should tell you more? Why should I tell you anything? We are strangers yet, not even friends. You may divine that I trust no man. I have had my own sad lessons of life-lessons learned in bitterness and tears. I go out to your burning jungle land, with neither hope to allure, nor fear to repel. The whole world is the same to me. That I have a purpose, I admit; and even you may know me better by and bye! Till then, no professions, no promises, no pledges. I use you for my own selfish purposes, that is all; and you can frankly study your own self-interest. We are two clay jars swept along down the Ganges of life. For a few threads of the dark river’s current, we travel on, side by side! You have frankly taken me at my word! I have taken you at yours! There is a written order to settle my affairs and remove my luggage. Of course, should you meet with any accident, telegraph to the Vittorio Emmanuele, at Brindisi. Money,” she said, almost bitterly, “would be telegraphed; and so, I say”—he listened breathlessly—“au revoir—at Brindisi!” she concluded, giving him her hand, with a frank smile.
As Alan Hawke descended the stair, he growled. “A woman without a heart, and—not without a head!”