CHAPTER VIII
Giving the pink and silver dawn of a new life, not to forget a baker's dozen of stormclouds.
Mr. Ezra W. Warburton accomplished things less by keeping abreast of opportunity in the matter of enterprise, by a cunning and algebraic reckoning and dovetailing of the slightest details and chances as was the business secret of his rival, Mr. Preserved Higgins, than by an innate, sudden perceptiveness that was almost genius—would have been classified as genius had he been an artist instead of a financier.
Thus, just as soon as he had read Chandra's cablegram which quoted the one Aziza Nurmahal had received from London in toto and added the distressing information that the princess had finally had her way, that there was going to be no more talk of “concessions” until her father's prime minister, who had gone on a mysterious errand, had returned, he had decided to proceed to Tamerlanistan forthwith.
He had no idea what he should do after he got there. Too, he knew from former experiences that Mr. Preserved Higgins, in spite of his extravagant and blasphemous verbosity, was not given to bluffing, to empty boasting, when it came to business; and there was the wire which the Londoner had sent him to his New York office and which had been cabled on to the Savoy:
“Got you licked to a frazzle. What price Tamerlanistan now?”
Mr. Warburton told himself that, in the tug-of-war about the Tamerlanistan “concessions,” he had lost out on two counts: the princess' decision and his rival's shrewdness, and—he added in his thoughts—perhaps the former was only a cloak for the latter; perhaps Aziza Nurmahal and the Cockney were working hand-in-hand.
And it was then that his congenital pettiness came into the focus. He would fight Mr. Preserved Higgins to the last trench. Doubtless, his own chance to make enormous investments in Tamerlanistan and to reap correspondingly large profits was gone. But at least he might be able to make success, if not impossible, then harder for the other, and there, in Mr. Warburton's philosophy of life and business—interchangeable terms—was a point gained. Too, it was in this that he differed fundamentally from the real builder, the real pioneer, who works and constructs and massively clouts together for the glory, the zest, the bully splendor of the thing, and not for his personal, despicable glory and profit.
He was like a small boy who has eaten his fill, and who, rather than push his plate across the table to his younger brother, decides to finish his ice cream to the last, painful spoonful.
Yes. At least he would be on the spot ready to watch his chance for mischief; and so he had made sure at once, over the telephone, that Mr. Preserved Higgins had not booked on the P. & O. liner Kashmere which left for Calcutta the following morning, and that there would be no other sailing for the next ten days.
His decision to ask his daughter to come with him had also been made on the spur of the moment.
His wife had died when Jane was a young child, and father and daughter had always been very close. He was very proud of her. He admired her clean, audacious self-reliance, but, too, parentlike, was a little afraid of it.
Thus when Hector, following Mr. Preserved Higgins' exposure, had left the room, and when Jane had turned to him with a flat “I don't believe it. The man is innocent!” his heart had given a bound, for he knew from former experiences her sweeping, uncompromising fashion of taking the part of the underdog. Heretofore, the occasion had usually been with some underfed slum child or some underpaid servant, and had been easily and satisfactorily settled with the help of check book and fountain pen. But this time it was a man, a good-looking and youthful male with romantic eyes, who had flashed a romantic Oriental blade.
“Damn!” Mr. Warburton had said to himself.
Then, in a loud voice, and with an entirely false note of cheerful off-handedness:
“Ridiculous, my dear. The young fellow owned up to it himself.”
“And yet I know he's innocent, dad!”
“How do you know, Jane?”
“Because!”
“A woman's reason, my dear.”
“And the very, very bestest reason in the world. I just—know it!”
“But …” an ejaculation, typically, malely irascible.
“But—nothing, dad! Nobody with eyes like his can possibly be guilty of such a mean thing as cheating at cards. And then—remember how he used his blade, dad!” she had added with serene, unblushing inconsequence.
He had begun to think of speeches, very firm, explicit, and didactic speeches, he would make, pointing out to her that London, all Europe in fact, was full of fortune hunters, that he was an immensely wealthy man and she a famous heiress, that perhaps Hector Wade had staged the fight near St. Katherine so as to meet her in a picturesque setting.
But, knowing her stubbornness, her sense of absolute independence, he had thought that it would be better to let well enough alone, and had satisfied himself with a grumbled “I had an idea that, with all your social experiences, here and in New York and in Paris, you'd have more sense than to fall for that sort of …” he had come near saying “bunk,” but had recovered in time and had said “thing!”
The choice of words had been unfortunate.
Jane had made a rash reply, and by the end of the scene—for it had degenerated into a scene—for the first time in their lives they had felt conscious of a certain antagonism toward each other. It had been as sudden as it had been unexpected.
And it had hurt—both.
Then had come Babu Chandra's telegram; and—“distance and a change of milieu is the best palliative in the world,” had been his paternally cynical thought. In the golden romance of far Asia she would forget the romance her girlish heart had woven about “that card-cheating adventurer,” as he called him.
Therefore his invitation to come along with him.
Therefore, too, her warm, moist kiss.
Therefore, finally, Jane smiling impishly at a large bouquet of silvery Guelder roses that had come, that very morning, accompanied by a note which was typically English, both in its shy, clumsy self-consciousness and its unexpected, direct outspokenness, saying amongst other things:
“… and so I hope you'll accept these roses. I know I have not the right to be fond of you, but I can't very well help it, can I? No harm done, anyway. For, you see, I am off to India to-morrow morning, and the odds are rather long that I shall never see you again.”
The signature was:
“Hector Wade.”
Thus, Mr. Ezra W. Warburton was doubly shocked, when, having nursed his mal de mer in his cabin during the first few days of the journey, as was his habit, just as the Kashmere was sticking her dainty nose into the green swirl of the Bay of Biscay, and after he had decided that the world was not so bad when all was said and done and that he would be able to do with a cup of beef broth, a dry biscuit, and a glass of port, passing by a large Anglo-Indian lady with spats, an abortive mustache, big feet, and a tailor-made manner, he heard her say to her companion:
“Such a jolly little girl that—what's her name?—oh, yes!—Warburton. And, would you believe it, my dear, she pals up with that bounder of a Wade!”
“You mean that Dragoon chap who …”
“Yes, my dear.”
“Good Heavens! You know, they shouldn't allow chaps like Wade to go to India. Wretched for the morale of the natives. But, with the Liberals in power, what can you …”
The financier did not wait to hear the end of the sentence. He forgot all about broth and biscuit and port.
“Have you by any chance seen my daughter?” he asked the steward in a positively dramatic manner.
“Yes, sir. I saw her on top deck two minutes back. Thank you, sir.”
And it was in the snug shadow of a life-boat that the irate father came upon his daughter, side by side with Hector Wade.
“Good—morning!” he said, with a strong accent on the “good” and a smile curling his thin lips.
But his daughter knew of old that this altogether, too consummate endeavor after genial ease was nothing except a cloak for a smoldering rage that might break at any moment.
It was she herself, therefore, who fired the first shot.
“Dad,” she said, “it's no use your saying anything to Hector!”
“Hector?”
“Yes, dad”—a tiny finger indicating her companion who was trying to speak but was prevented from doing so by the firm grinding of Jane's right heel into his left instep—-“I mean Mr. Wade. You know him, don't you? I know what you're thinking, dad, and I tell you it's no use blaming him. I made him talk to me. I made him sit by me. Didn't I, Hector?”
“Daughter!” said Mr. Warburton, in a decidedly episcopal manner, “come with me at once.”
“I'm too old to be spanked, dad,” smiled Jane, “but I'll come with you, and …”
“As to you, sir,” her father had turned to Hector, “you—you are a rascal! An adventurer! You—you … to follow my daughter—to take the same ship—to …”
“When did you book your passage, Mr. Warburton?” came the younger man's cool question.
“Saturday afternoon! Why?”
“Because I booked mine Saturday morning. If you do not believe me, ask the purser. Good day, sir!”
And he bowed to Jane and turned on his heel, while the girl looked at her father rather triumphantly.
The next moment she had slipped her hand through his arm and was walking by his side.
“Dad,” she said, “don't be angry. I just wanted to find out something from Hector, and I did. And I am so glad you are better. Oh—come on! Stop biting your lips!”
Late that night—for, after all, there was real affection between them—Jane confided in her father.
“Dad,” she said, “I do believe he is innocent. He wouldn't say so—though goodness knows I tried to make him 'fess up!”
For the first time her father smiled.
“I know what a persistent little baggage you are, and I feel it in my heart to be sorry for young Wade if you nagged him.”
“I didn't. I just asked him.”
“All right. I understand. I am quite familiar with your way of—asking. Well—what was the result?”
“I—oh—I don't know. 'Are you really guilty?' I asked him, and he said: 'Yes.' And then I repeated my question once—perhaps twice …”
“Call it seventeen times,” dryly from her father.
“And, finally, in a sort of desperation …”
“Which I personally can well appreciate—”
“He said: 'If you do not believe me, ask my father and my older brother.' Now, isn't that queer?”
“What's queer about it?”
“Why—if I asked his own father, his own brother, they would naturally defend him; wouldn't they? They'd swear up and down that he's innocent—of course! So why does he want me to ask them?”
“Something to that,” grumbled Mr. Warburton; and, suddenly, she put her arms about his neck.
“You and I are pals, aren't we, dad?”
“You bet, little daughter.”
“You wouldn't want me to hide anything from you, would you?”
“Sure not.”
“Well—I am fond of Hector! Very, very fond!”
He flared up.
“Do you mean to say,” he demanded, in a voice choked with rage, “that that young scoundrel has dared …”
“He?” She shook her head. “Gracious no! He isn't that sort! It was up to me to make the advances …”
“Jane!”
“It's all right, dad. He wouldn't let me. But I am fond of him, and I do believe he is innocent, and … oh, dear …”
And then her father took her on his knees as he used to do when she was a small girl and had broken her pet doll, and talked to her at length and very gently. For, while he believed devoutly in a holy trinity composed of money, respectability, and pedigree, he also believed in fairness: fairness hedged in by certain safety-first, protective, social conventions.
“If Mr. Wade is innocent,” he wound up, “let him prove it. And then—well—we'll talk about it again. But promise me that you will keep away from him as long as he is under a cloud—right or wrong—innocent or guilty. Our social prejudices may be wretched and mean and narrow, but—there they are! We simply have to live up to them this side of Utopia.”
“That's exactly what Hector says,” she replied through her tears. “He told me that he has no right to speak to me—that …”
And then her father mumbled something about Hector Wade, after all, not being such a bad fellow, and thought to himself that he would strengthen the younger man's resolution to keep away from Jane by a few, kindly, but decisive words.
But there was no need for it. Somehow, the ship seemed to have swallowed Hector. He took his meals in his cabin and only went for a breath of fresh air late at night, nor was it altogether because of the girl that he kept to himself so rigorously. For, knowing his own class and the emphatic, pitiless judgments of his own class when it came to things that “simply aren't done,” he could well imagine what was being said about him in the smoking saloon by the home-English and Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Chinese, all belonging to that social stratum, as hide-bound as the most superstitious Brahmin caste, that puts the niceties of manners and customs far above the niceties of their Christian religion, which preaches forgiveness and plain, straight humanity, and prefers a crimson-handed murderer to a cad.
He had cheated at cards, society said; he had broken an unwritten law; and down there, in the first-class smoking saloon, it was held that a man could put his foot on the decalogue as long as he “played the game.”
And a jolly good rule too; thought Hector, without the slightest trace of bitterness against his country men; for, after all, this unwritten rule had made Britain what she was, fully as much as Magna Charta.
He did not even fell unhappy or depressed when, in his lonely wanderings late at night about the deserted top deck, he heard Jane Warburton's low laugh drift up from the music room.
Hopeless, his love for her? Of course.
Utterly hopeless, and he knew it.
But he stared at the revelation of his love like a new Adam, and he was certain that the original Garden of Eden lay behind her deep, gold-reflecting eyes
Light, frothy love had come to him in the past. Had come and gone.
But now, for the first time, love that was not light had come into his life, and the burden of it was both heavy and sweet.
And all the time, while he was calling himself a silly fool who was trying to rope the far stars with a clumsy, leathern noose of his own clouting; while he cursed himself for a sentimental jackass who ought to be kicked; a wild thing in him, a thing that his past life seemed to have beggared and starved and denied, woke in its full, fresh strength.
Calling to him like some flying spirit in a storm, it claimed him. It seemed to summon him back to some thing he had forgotten long ago—centuries ago. It drew him as empty space draws a giddy man, to the very edge of the precipice. Steadily it gained in strength and massiveness until it had enveloped him completely in a silent, receptive atmosphere which he could not shake off, waking or sleeping; and, at the very core of it, at the flaming center of his love, strong yet soft, steely yet pliable, brutal yet loyal, was the sword—the ancient blade which had come out of Asia!
It gave meaning to his life and, somehow, a faint, silvery promise to his love—
His thoughts roamed back frequently to the little shop in Coal Yard Street, off Drury Lane, and to the strange, elderly Asiatic who, more even than his own impulse, had been responsible for his sudden, aimless, fantastic departure for Calcutta—and what lay beyond.
Resolutely, deliberately, being a sober-minded young Englishman, he tried to forget, to deny even to himself, the mysterious veil which cloaked the whole incident, from the advertisement in the newspaper to Ali Yusuf Khan's parting advice that the blade would speak to him when man failed him, or Fate. He preferred to picture Ali as a kindly old man who had taken pity on his unhappiness and had helped him out of the generosity of his heart without any ulterior motive; and so, twenty-four hours before the Kashmere reached Calcutta, he asked the cabin steward to bring pen and ink and paper, and wrote a letter to his impromptu benefactor, winding up with:
“… and so, while I don't know what the future may have in store for me, I shall always be very grateful to you, to you and—well, yes—to Asia. You must let me know if I can ever be of help to you …
And, just then, Ali Yusuf Khan needed help.
For a day after Police Sergeant Horatio Pinker had told the story of the old Oriental's string of diamonds to reporter Jimmy Hawden who, in turn, had mentioned it to a sandy-haired gentleman, the latter had faced Mr. Preserved Higgins in the dingy, cobwebby office on Upper Thames Street, not far from Poultney's Inn.
He had told his tale, and the Cockney millionaire had mused and shaken his head.
“I 'ave 'arf an idea who the blighter is,” he had said, finally, “but I don't know wot 'e's doin' 'ere. Well— alwys be on the syfe side, as the fat boy sed as 'e swalloed 'is tenth mutton pie. Yes—I think 'e'll be syfer in jug, syfer for me, that is!”
And he had gone to the police, had given a description of a necklace of diamonds of which he had been robbed, had sworn to a search warrant by the strength of which a very similar string of diamonds—“as like to mine as peas in a pod,” he had said—had been found in Ali Yusuf Khan's small safe. And, by this entirely crude, but entirely efficient method, the latter was told twenty-four hours later by Police Captain Hodges that everything he might say would be used against him, while Sergeant Horatio Pinker banked a neat check which Mr. Preserved Higgins had given him and dreamt of promotion.
All Yusuf Khan had taken his imprisonment with a great deal of blandly philosophic calm and had driven Mr. Robertson, the young lawyer whom the court had assigned to him, nearly to distraction by absolutely refusing to say where and how he had got the necklace, and by simply smiling into his patriarchal beard when confronted with the fair enough statement that a man in his position had no business having such valuable jewels in his possession.
“Yes,” he had said, in his soft, halting English, “the diamonds—they are mine—yes, saheb. Yes. I can prove it.”
“Then why don't you? Why do you let it come to trial?”
“Because …” Ali Yusuf Khan had interrupted himself. “Tell me, saheb. Mr. Higgins—he must come—I mean be present at my trial?”
“Yes. At least I can arrange it so.”
“Good. And perhaps you can arrange too that the trial—it will not be for many, many weeks?”
“Well—I may be able to hold it over until the September assizes. But why, man? Heavens above, do you prefer to stay in jail?”
“Yes, saheb, if that should keep Mr. Higgins in town.”
“But—why, man? What's going on in the back of your twisting Oriental brain?”
And Ali Yusuf Khan had smiled guilelessly and had refused to answer any further questions.
Meanwhile, the Kashmere came in sight of Calcutta, and all the world was on deck, exchanging cards and promises to write, which would not be kept, and beginning to reestablish the strict social lines of Anglo-India which divide a deputy assistant commissioner's wife from the wife of a penniless subaltern of native infantry, lines which had been partly forgotten in the humanizing influence of an ocean steamship.
Utterly alone in the throng, with the very stewards knowing and whispering of his disgrace. Hector Wade leaned over the top deck gunwale, looking out to where the sun was rising in the distant east behind lowering cloud banks that were like mountains of gold, glowing lava. There was a gauze-like fog which lifted suddenly, and, minute by minute. Job Charnock's old town came more sharply into the focus. Nearer and nearer it came until he could see the details.
The roofs of the city were bathed in a purple light. The windows flashed with a thousand dazzling reflections. The whole was Calcutta on a perfect day in late summer; a city of brass and copper and gold, hard, shimmering, like the legendary town the Titans once forged out of the molten fragments of a forgotten world.
So the Kashmere steamed up that chained, or rather unchained, monster named the Hoogli, which every once in a while rises kittenishly, gnawing at the water front with sharp teeth, and strewing the surrounding landscape with the torn, battered carcasses of great ships.
Asia! thought Hector. The land which had given him birth! The land which he had forgotten in the soft, yellow Sussex wold! And he seemed to recognize it after the manner of scenes seen in vivid dreams. Like a treasure house it was to him, which he could not enter without the right password, and somehow he knew that he would remember the password—that the ancient blade, which throbbed against his heart, would whisper it to him.
He was curiously excited as he stood there, amidst the chattering, gossiping, laughing crowd of Anglo-Indians, picking out familiar landmarks. Yet his excitement was neither vicious nor violent, but like a delicate network of feelers connecting him with the great, motley Asia which lay there at his feet—“waiting for me, expecting me,” the words came to him unconsciously.
And he stood there and stared and thought, while the Kashmere, obeying the touch of the master pilot, zigzagged her way through the shifting sand banks of the great, man-eating river, and while beyond the arrogant town the highlands came into view, closing in like a tide of stone—as if Asia were there, behind those naked, sun-scorched ridges that glowed like topaz and sapphire—Asia, passive, patient, amorphous, yet minatory—threatening, even in its sleep, the handful of Europeans who were clinging to its outer fringe …
As Hector looked, something hidden seemed to grow within him to a height of abnormal perceptiveness. The sense of a past life, a life which he was dimly remembering again, became magnified with every minute that passed. He felt that presently the power of perceiving would pass into that of doing. He would strike a blow for his fate … a blow … his hand touched the sword that pressed against his heart …
Then, very suddenly, a dry cackle jerked him back into the realities of his life.
“Yes,” somebody was saying, “they kicked him out of the Dragoons. Cheated at cards, the damned cad. What's he going to do in India? Heaven knows. The usual thing, I s'pose—go under—mate up with some low-caste bazaar woman—live native style—come 'round the Club, cadgin' for drinks … you know, Jack! Calcutta's full of his sort …”