CHAPTER V
In which a russet-haired girl from New York comes into the tale and in which, furthermore, the blade flashes free, putting several low knaves to rout.
Like many others of Britain's leading families, the Wades of Dealle, though of “county” stock, were more intimately connected with the Orient than with the yellow Sussex wold where they had settled in the days of Hengist and Horsa.
Generation after generation, they had assisted at the clouting of England's imperial fortunes in India. They had fought—and bravely fought—in the early wars of the Honorable John Company, against Moghuls, Sikhs, Burmans, Mahrattas, Persians, Afghans, Rohilkands, and innumerable border tribes. Hector's great-grandfather had saved General Napier's life in the battle of Moodkee by interposing his arm, and losing it at the wrist, when a warrior was about to bring down the togha, the brutal, crooked, short sword of the Sikh, on the general's head; his grandfather had been one of the immortal band of heroes who blew up the Delhi powder magazine, and incidentally themselves, when the 38th and 54th Sepoy regiments massacred their white officers and carried the flame of the mutiny into the heart of Delhi; his father had earned the V. C. as he marched with Lord Roberts columns from Kabul to Kandahar.
Too, generation after generation, they had been born in India. Both Hector and his brother had first seen the light of day in some stinking, miasmic Central Indian cantonment, and they had never forgotten a word of the native dialect which their brown Behari nurse had taught them before they had learned a word of English. Not only that. There was, furthermore, an old tradition, its original cause lost in the mists of the past, by which every Wade of Dealle was given a thorough grounding in Persian, the language which is to the polite Moslem elements of India and Central Asia what French was to the European society of a generation earlier.
Thus India had always been home to them. Perhaps more than home. It seemed axiomatic that the land which they had mulched with their blood, the land where they had fought and suffered and conquered and achieved and died, should mean more to them than the soft, rational commonplaces of that Sussex which to-day was nothing to them but a sentimental memory—mortgaged to the hilt.
And it was of India that Hector thought, almost instinctively, as he left Waterloo Station, with the sandy-haired gentleman's of Upper Thames Street taxicab rolling along in his wake.
India! Rather, all the glittering, resplendent, improbable East!
He had not been there since he was a child, and his five years in the Dragoons had all been spent in English and Irish barracks and cantonments.
But, as his machine whirred away, clear through the jarring clonk of the County Council's surface lines, the yelping whistle of penny steamers, the sardonic hooting of lumbering, topheavy motorbuses, the strident tinkling of costermongers' bells—clear through the thousand motley cries of gutter and pavement, through the maze and reek and riot of the sordid London streets, he heard the call of Asia.
Asia—which had always given honor and preferment and a square chance to the Wades of Dealle!
Asia—the Mother—to which he turned now, in his hour of disgrace and despair!
Not that these were the exact thoughts in his brain. For he was a rational enough young Englishman for all his high cheekbones and black, opaque eyes; and if his own, inner, secret consciousness had whispered to him just then that a mysterious, invisible force was tugging at his heart-strings and that the silent soul of all the East was whirring about his own soul, trying to edge into it, to merge with it—if his inner, secret consciousness had whispered to him any of these things, he would have entered the nearest chemist's shop and bought himself a round six-penny box filled with Mr. Beecham's renowned pills.
But the fact remained that, an hour after he had registered at the Shaftesbury Hotel in Moor Street, with the sandy-haired gentleman in close attendance, he turned toward the Docks, East of the Tower, where the steamship offices are open until late at night, to book a passage on the first P. & O. steamer for Calcutta.
Every penny he possessed in the world, about fifty pounds all told but for a few odd shillings and pence in his trousers, was in his inside coat pocket in incongruous proximity to the strange old Asian blade which he had taken from the lumber room, and he smiled grimly at the thought that a pickpocket would have a surprise in store for him if his nimble fingers went groping where they were not wanted. For that morning, obeying a rather boyish impulse, he had sharpened the point of the dagger with his razor strop, and the red velvet sheath was worn thin and threadbare.
Rapidly he walked down Ratcliffe Highway, past “model tenements” that hide their feculent, maggoty souls behind white stucco fronts, past Jamrach's world-famed “Wild Beast Shop” where the spectacled proprietor boasts that, on a day's notice, he can sell you any animal from a white Siamese elephant to a blue Tibetan bear, past Donald M'Eachran's “Murray Arms” saloon bar where a nostalgic Highlander sells the London equivalent for Athol Brose, and turned into Shadwell's smelly, greasy, gin-soaked purlieus.
Here, Wapping and the East India and Commercial and Victoria Docks spilled over with taverns and sailors' boarding-houses and ship-chandlers' and second hand stores where every last mildewy curio a sailor, for reasons only known to himself, packs in his dunnage, from Korean brass to broken bits of Yunan jade, from white Gulf corals to bundles of yellow Latakia tobacco leaves, can be bought. Too, men from all the corners of the globe; men who go down to the sea in ships and come up from the sea, as often as not, in hansom cabs to spend the bitter wages of six weeks' battling with storm and rotten timbers in one night's scarlet spree amongst the pubs and the girls of sneering Limehouse.
Silence folded about him like a cloak as he passed into deserted St. Katherine's; the stark, humming silence of a great city asleep. The black London evening dawn huddled the houses together in gray, shapeless groups. Lights flickered up, were quickly shuttered.
Then the houses whispered secrets to each other—secrets into the trooping shadows. …
The squeaking, grating tread of some night wanderer shuffling along on patched shoes vanished into the memory of sound, while the east wind came booming up the Thames, trailing a mantle of diaphanous, ochreous fog and dimming the houses with a veil almost of romance.
Romance of the Docks, where brown Laskar and sooty Seedee-boy and yellow Chinaman finds that his money gives him the rollicking, ribald waterfront equality which the forecastle denies him!
Romance that starts with a double drink of gin and perhaps a chandoo pipe in the back room of a Wapping tavern and winds up, quite possibly, in a perambulator with a half-breed child peeping out, wonderingly, protestingly!
Brutal, sordid romance—romance of knife and pistol and thudding blackjack!
Blood-stained romance. …
“Help!”
The cry stabbed through the air; shivered; choked; was echoed by another, a woman's “Oh—oh—pl—” broken off in midair, and followed by a gurgle, the sound of blows, a quick, acrid whisper in twangy Cockney:
“Aw! you will, will you? Tyke that!”
“Gawd, Bill! The gell's bit my bleedin' 'and. … 'Ere—stop it, or—go'blyme …”
“Cough up, old cock!”
With the first cry for help. Hector had wheeled in the direction whence it had come—an alley, to the left and slightly in back of him that opened between the squatting, leering houses like a sinister, black maw. A moment later he had rushed into the alley. A dozen yards up, he saw half-a-dozen rough men, typical as to peaked caps and flopping corduroys, holding a well-dressed, elderly man and a young girl, while another rough was relieving them of their valuables. All that he saw in the fraction of a second quite clearly, for a double gas jet was hanging from some mysterious recess over a stable postern, lending to the scene an unearthly light—a sheen of bluish green—like the blue on the green of young cabbages, the ludicrous thought came to him—
A second later he had reached the group, his fists going like flails … “Regular bloomin' young Berserker, he was,” the sandy-haired gentleman, who was still shadowing him and who watched it all from the corner, reported shortly afterwards to Mr. Preserved Higgins, “and, I say, for a moment he had them bluffed.”
But not for long.
The one who was going through his victims' pockets straightened up, caught Hector's fist with his open left palm, and called to two of the others:
“'Ere, Bill—'Enery! Lend us a 'and!”
And the three went for Hector, employing tactics quite unknown to the late lamented Marquis of Queensberry, and it looked desperate for Hector Wade.
He dodged and danced and grappled. His breath came in short, staccato bursts. At one and the same time he was trying to land blow, to parry blow, to sidestep kicking feet and crashing elbows, and to gain the side of the man and the girl, and the odds were against him; a rough knuckle caught him on the left temple, an open palm hit the point of his chin, the man called 'Enery dodged within the very crook of Hector's powerful right arm, and grappled, the others closing in the next moment like hounds pulling down a stag. Hector felt himself seized about the chest under the armpits by a bearlike grasp. For a second he felt as if his ribs were crushing in his lungs. A sickening smell of gin and sweat and rank tobacco rose to his nostrils. His temples throbbed. The roof of his mouth felt parched.
Grappling, straining, cursing, he fell to the ground, 'Enery on top of him. Bill booting him in the ribs, the third man dancing about, watching his chance for a knockout blow. He shot his fist to Hector's jaw, bending down; but the latter jerked his head back in the nick of time; and, the next second, with a sudden, hard bunching of muscles, he pinioned 'Enery's arms to his sides, spread his strong legs, and tried desperately to pull himself on top. He was succeeding in this when 'Enery, with a wolfish snarl, sank his teeth in his ears.
“Damn you!” Hector shrieked with rage and pain. “You'll pay for this!”
And, with a great jerk and heave, he freed himself, sending 'Enery crashing into Bill, Bill into the third man, jumped back, and reached in his inside pocket for the ancient blade.
He did it instinctively, unthinkingly. Hitherto, by the token of his English blood and training, by the token of an English gentleman's strange, wonderful, foolish prejudices, he had still been fighting according to the unwritten Anglo-Saxon rules, had still been playing the game, had refused to use fist or elbow or hit below the belt.
Now, suddenly, inside of his brain, something like a colored glass ball burst into a thousand iridescent splinters. His careful English training, his English restraint, his English prejudices, danced away in a mad whirligig of passion, and the blade leaped to his hand like a sentient being, flashed free of the velvet scabbard, caught the haggard rays of the gas jets so that the point of it glittered like a cresset of evil passions.
He used it like a rapier, with carte and tierce, with lunge and thrust and counterthrust and quick, staccato riposte, pinking here a leg, there a grimy hand, and ripping through tough corduroy-as with the edge of a razor.
In and at them, with a stamping of feet, a harsh, guttural cry!
On guard! Again carte and tierce and lightning-like feint!
And, clear through, he had the strange impression that it was not his hand which was the blade's master, but that the blade was directing his hand, was stiffening or crooking his arm as he lunged to the attack, or estrapaded sideways, or feinted to parry clumsy, ineffectual blows and kicks. The hilt throbbed and quivered in his hand, while the point of the dagger danced a mad, swishing, triumphant saraband, there, in the reeking, sordid London night, with the gas jets hiccoughing sardonically, as if the weapon's ancient, turbulent, wicked soul had awakened from the clogging sleep of centuries.
“Gawd A'mighty!” yelled 'Enery. “The blighter's gone clean off 'is noodle!”
And he was the first to seek safety in flight, while the others followed as fast as they could, and disappeared, shouting and crying and cursing, in the direction of the East India Docks.
Hector was about to rush after them, the bloodstained dagger still flickering in front of him, when a golden ripple of laughter caused him to stop short and turn.
It was the girl. She was clutching her companion's arm in a paroxysm of merriment.
“I—oh—I am so sorry," she stammered as Hector, naked dagger in his right hand, reached her side. “I—I guess I am frightfully rude. I should thank you instead of laughing at you …”
“Jane!” said the man with her.
“I know, dad. It's wretchedly rude of me. But”—again she laughed—“you were such a funny, incongruous figure—running down the alley! In your proper English clothes—with your proper bowler hat—and that murderous knife in your hand! It's Oriental, isn't it?”
“Jane!” her father admonished again. “Where are your manners?”
The girl, who was small, but strong and full-bosomed, with a silken mesh of reddish gold hair tumbling over her forehead from beneath her tight-fitting toque, a large, generous mouth, an impertinent, retroussé nose, and deep-set, hazel brown eyes, winked the tiniest little wink at Hector as if to say: “We understand, you and I! We are both young! And it was funny! Come on! Own up to it!” while her father thanked Hector in dignified terms.
“I don't know what would have happened to us if it had not been for your timely succor,” he wound up, in an exact, slightly monotonous voice and carefully chosen phraseology which stamped him as a transatlantic visitor as surely as his sober worsted suit, the meticulous crease in his trousers, and his shoes.
Hector Wade did what any other young Englishman of his class, self-conscious, shy, proud, would have done. That is, he muttered some perfectly inane words about it not mattering—honestly!—it isn't worth fussin' about, you know!—and tried to make a graceful exit. Which was rather difficult considering that, in the embarrassment of the moment, he had forgotten all about the blade which was still in his right hand, and so he nearly cut his face when he lifted his hat.
The result was to be expected. Once more the girl burst into laughter. But, at once, seeing that Hector was blushing and decidedly unhappy, she checked her mirth and held out an impulsive hand—to withdraw it immediately with the exclamation:
“Do put that knife away!”
Hector obeyed.
“Now then!” said the girl, and their hands met and clasped.
“It was bully of you,” she went on. “Perfectly, thrillingly bully. And the next time I persuade dad to roam with me at night through this part of London—I made him, you see. We only got here from home—which is New York—a day ago. Yes—the next time I take him for a night stroll I shall insist on having you as a bodyguard—you and that weapon of yours.”
“There won't be any next time,” said her father, unsmiling; and—by this time they had reached the corner of St. Katherine where, in the shadow of a doorway, the sandy-haired gentleman was hiding and listening—he introduced himself: Mr. Ezra W. Warburton.
“Not to forget Mr. Ezra W. Warburton's only child and daughter Jane!” chimed in the girl.
Hector fumbled for a card, found none, and was grateful for it a moment later. For, almost at once, he decided that he would not tell these people his right name—the name which carried shame and disgrace and social ostracism.
He chose the first name he could think of. It was Smith. Of course. Charles Smith.
Somehow, it seemed very natural that Hector should forget the errand which had brought him to the Docks; natural, too, that he should accompany his new friends to their hotel, the Savoy; natural, finally, that he should accept Mr. Ezra Warburton's invitation to come upstairs to their suite, seconded by his daughter's “Do come, Mr. Smith. I know you need a brushing down, and I have an idea you need a drink.”
“I accept both with pleasure,” smiled Hector.
There was a glow in his heart. The world did not seem so black after all; and it was all because of a girl's hazel-brown eyes, because there was a sweet curve to her upper lip and a quick, whimsical lift at the corners.
Had anybody told him just then that he had fallen head-over-heels in love with her, at first sight, Hector would have dismissed the implication as “bally, asinine drivel.” For typically English was he in this, that he treated the softer emotions with a scornful disregard, as if they were a rather vulgar convention submitted to by the masses of irresponsible mankind, which included, at least in this application, all the Continental Europeans and most of the Irish; also some of the Welsh. He did not know that this viewpoint was a pose in self-defense of his shyness and that emotional cold-bloodedness is as a rule an affectation which deceives nobody. Nor did he know that the terrible, corroding Puritanism into which he had dieted himself had not altogether scotched his inmost, smoldering, natural passions.
But he did know, as he followed the Warburtons upstairs, that in all the world there was nothing quite as becoming to a creamy complexion and reddish gold hair than a snug toque, made of the breast plumage of a pheasant, and a severely tailored suit of peacock blue serge.
Downstairs, in the meantime, the sandy-haired gentleman was frantically ringing up a number in the Mayfair.
“Are you there—are you there? Mr. Higgins!” He talked furiously across the wires for several seconds. “Right-oh, guv'nor. He's with the Warburtons at this very moment. Yes. Of course. It was an accident. Old Warburton didn't stage that holdup so's to meet young Hickamadoodle—he ain't that sort—I know. But remember—the female of the species! What do I mean? I mean that the old codger has a daughter—and, my word, ain't she the peaches and cream, though! And that Babu blighter who works for the Anglo-Indian Cable Company at Tamerlanistan is Warburton's agent, and he may find out that. … You'll be right down? You'd better. For if that Babu finds out, and if that Yankee gets on young Wade's buttered and marmaladed side, your name is … MUD!” he shouted into Central's indignant ear, for Mr. Preserved Higgins had already slammed down the receiver, and was running through his genuine Spanish Renaissance drawing-room, past his simon-pure Louis Seize bed-room, into his guaranteed Neo-Gothic reception hall where he yelled at the Italian footman to tell the Swiss gate porter to instruct the French chauffeur to come with the Rolls-Royce.
“Step on your gas, Gastong! The Savoy! 'Urry up, sonny!”
And shortly afterwards, the big car was purring to ward the Embankment and to the strident London caravanserai where to-day the Peerage and the Beerage, Montana Copper Kings and South African Diamond Magnates, Clyde Ship Builders and Omaha Pork Specialists rub elbows and swap drinks and lies—and where once the Black Prince competed in chivalry with the captive King John of France, and where Chaucer was married to the Lady Philippa de Ruet, with John o' Gaunt playing best man.