pounds—and a little trumpery jewelry—I can’t ever get back to India on that!” He seemed to hear again the rasping voice of the vulpine caller at Monte Carlo: “Messieurs! Faites vos jeux! Rien ne va plus! Le jeu est fait!” And, if a dismal failure in Lender had been his Leipsic, the black week at Monaco had been his long drawn-out Waterloo! “I was a rank fool to go there,” he growled, “and a greater fool to come over here! I might have got on easily to Malta, and then chanced it from there to Calcutta!”
The sun’s last lances glittered on the waters gleaming clear as crystal, with their deep blue tint of reflected sky, and liquid sapphire! The gardens were becoming deserted as the loungers dropped off homeward one by one, and still the handsome young fellow sat moodily gazing down into the rushing waters of the arrowy Rhone, as if he fain would cast the dark burden of his dreary thoughts far away from him down into those darkling waters. But thirty-two years of age, Alan Hawke had already outlived all his wild boyish romances. The thrill with which he had first set foot upon the land of Clive and Warren Hastings had faded away long years gone! And, Fate had stranded him at Geneva!
As he sat, still irresolute as to his future movements, the dying sunlight gilded the splendid panorama of the whole Mont Blanc group. Rose and purple, with fading gold and amethystine gleams played softly upon the far-away giant peak, with its noble bodyguard, the Aiguilles du Midi, Grandes Jorasses, the Dent du Geant, the sturdy pyramid of the Mole, and the long far sweep of the Voirons. But he noted not these splendors of the dying sun god, as he stood there moodily defying adverse fate, a modern Manfred. “I might with this get on to London—but what waits me there? Only scorn, callous neglect!” His eye fell upon the statue of Jean Jacques, lifted up there by the sturdy men who have for centuries clung to the golden creeds of civil and religious liberty—the independence of man—and the freedom of the unshackled human soul. “Poor Rousseau! seer and parasite, fugitive adventurer, the sport of the great, the eater of bitter bread—the black bread of dependence! I will not linger here in a long-drawn agony! Here, I will end it forever, and to-night!”
There were certain visions of the past which returned to shake even the iron nerves of Alan Hawke! Face to face now with his half formed resolution of suicide, the wasted past slowly unrolled itself before him.
The brief days of his service in India, an abrupt exit from the service, long years of wandering in Japan and China, as a gentleman adventurer, and all the singular phases of a nomadic life in Burmah, Nepaul, Cashmere, Bhootan, and the Pamirs.
He smiled in derision at the recollection of a briefly flattering fortune which had rebaptized him with a shadowy title of uncertain origin. Thus far, his visiting card, “Major Alan Hawke, Bombay Club” had been an easily vised passport, but—alas—good only among his own kind! He was but a free lance of the polished “Detrimentals,” and, under this last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat was being swamped in the black waters of adversity. He had staked much upon a little campaign at the Foreign Office in London. The cold rebuff which he had received to there had carried him in sheer desperation over to Monaro and incoming onto Geneva, he had “burned his ships” behind him. Ignorant of the precise manner in which his clouded reputation had stopped the way to his advancement in the English Secret Service, he remembered, even at the last, that a few letters were due to those who still watched his little flickering light on its way over the trackless sea of life. For hard-hearted as he was—benumbed by the blows of fate, his heart calloused with the snapping of cords and ties which once had closely bound him—there were yet loosely knit bonds of the past which tinged with the glow of his dying passions—the unforgotten idols of his adventurous career!
He rose and walked mechanically along the Qua du Mont Blanc with the alert, springy step of the soldier. “Once a Captain, always a Captain” was in every line of his resolute, martial figure. His well-set-up, graceful form, his nobly poised head and easy soldierly bearing contrasted sharply with the lazy shuffle of the prosperous Swiss denizens and the listless lolling of the sporadic foreign tourists. Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache, with a resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome face burnt to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun. An easy insouciance tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter doffed his gold banded cap.
“Table d’hote serving now, Major!” With the mere social instinct of long years, Alan Hawke recognized the man’s perfunctory politeness, tipped him a couple of francs, and then, mechanically sauntered to a seat in the superb salle a manger. “I’ll get out of here to-night,” he muttered, and then he bent down his head over the carte du jour and peered at the wine list, as the chatter of happy voices, the animated faces of lovely women and the eager hum of social life around, recalled him to that world from which he contemplated an unceremonious exit. It was in a deference to old habit, and the “qu en dira’t on,” that he ordered a half bottle of excellent Chambertin and then proceeded to dine with all the scrupulous punctilio of the old happy mess days.
Something of defiance seemed to steal back into his veins with the generous warmth of the wine—a touch of the old gallant spirit with which he had faced a hard world, since the unfortunate incident which had abruptly terminated his connection with “The Widow’s” Service. His eye swept carelessly over the international detachment seated at the splendid table. Lively and chattering as they were, it was a human Sahara to him. He easily recognized the “Ten-Pounder” element of wandering Britons; poor, anxious-eyed beings grudgingly furloughed from shop and desk, and now sternly determined to descend at Charing Cross without breaking into the few reserve sovereigns. Serious-looking women, clad in many colors, and stolid cockneys, hostile to all foreign innovation, met his eye. He sighed as he cast his social net and drew up nothing.
There was a vacant chair at his left. Very shortly, without turning his eyes, he was made aware of the proximity of a woman, young, evidently a continental, from her softly murmured French.
“Houbigant’s Forest Violets,” he murmured. “She is at least semi-civilized!” He was dreaming of the far off lotos land which he had left, as he felt the rebellious protest of his young blood and the defiant spirit awaked by the mechanical luxury of the well-ordered dinner. “These human pawns seem to be all prosperous, if not happy! I’ll have another shy at it! By God! I must get back to India!” The whole checkered past rushed back over his mind! The fifteen years of his “wanderjahre”! Scenes which even he dared not recall! Incidents which he had never dared to own to any European! He but too well knew the origin of his loosely applied title of Major—a field officer’s rank more honored at the easygoing clubs of Yokahama, Shanghai, and Hong Kong than on the Army List—a rank best known at the ring-side of Indian sporting grounds, and only tacitly accepted in the extra-official circles of Hindustan. For it figured not in the official Army List, either as active or retired. The whole panorama of the mystic land of the Hindus was unrolled once more by the memories of fifteen clouded years, He saw again his far-away theater of varied action, with its huge grim mountains towering far over the snow line, its arid wastes, its fertile plains bathed in intense sunshine, its mystic rivers, and its silent, solemn shrines of the vanished gods.
Major Alan Hawke silently ran over his slender professional accomplishments. “I’m not too heavy to ride yet. I’ve a fair hand at cards—tough nerves, and even a bit of staying power. Luck may turn my way yet and there’s always the Pamirs! At the worst, the Russians—the Afghans—or those fellows up in Sikkim and Hill Tipperah! An artillerist is always welcome there!” But even in his moral desperation, he hung his head, for a flush of his boyhood’s bright ambitions returned to shame him. An old song jingled in his memory, “When I first put this uniform on.” He lapsed into a bitter reverie!
The soldier of fortune was finally aroused from a brown study by the impassive steward presenting two great dishes. The clatter of some late convive seating himself also caused him to turn his head.
