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.
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