A Fascinating Traitor: An Anglo-Indian Story — Reading Companion

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In Category - Young Readers Enchanted Adventures

Authors: Savage, Richard, 1846-1903 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: India -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 127,135

Reading time 553 min

Text sections 13

For A Fascinating Traitor: An Anglo-Indian Story — Reading Companion, the stored edition analysis reports 127,135 words, 9 hr 13 min estimated reading time, and 13 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 15.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “India -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #5972

Colonel Richard Henry Savage's 1891 novel opens with Major Alan Hawke brooding in Geneva, then shifts to Delhi's intrigues. The excerpts reveal a web of surveillance, hidden motives, and uneasy alliances among British officers, a jewel merchant, and a mysterious disappearance.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg5972

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CHANCE MEETING AT GENEVA.

“By Jove! I may as well make an end of the thing right here to-night!” was the dejected conclusion of a long council of war over which Major Alan Hawke had presided, with the one straggling comfort of being its only member.

All this long September afternoon he had dawdled away in feeding certain rapacious swans navigating gracefully around Rousseau’s Island. He had consumed several Trichinopoly cigars in the interval, and had moodily gazed back upon the strange path which had led him to the placid shores of Lake Leman! The gay promenaders envied the debonnair-looking young Briton, whose outer man was essentially “good form.” Children left the side of their ox-eyed bonnes to challenge the handsome young stranger with shy, friendly approaches.

Bevies of flashing-eyed American girls “took him in” with parthian glances, and even a widowed Russian princess, hobbling by, easing her gouty steps with a jeweled cane, gazed back upon the moody Adonis and sighed for the vanished days, when she possessed both the physical and mental capacity to wander from the beaten paths of the proprieties.

But--the world forgetting--the young man lingered long, gazing out upon the broad expanse of the waters, his eyes resting carelessly upon the superb panorama of the southern shore. He had wandered far away from the Grand Hotel National, in the aimlessness of sore mental unrest, and, all unheeded, the hours passed on, as he threaded the streets of the proud old Swiss burgher city. He had known its every turn in brighter days, and, though the year of ninety-one was a brilliant Alpine season, and he was in the very flower of youth and manly promise, gaunt care walked as a viewless warder at Alan Hawke’s side.

He had crossed over the Pont de Montblanc to the British Consulate, only to learn that the very man whom he had come from Monaco to seek, was now already at Aix la Chapelle, on his way to America, on a long leave. He had wearily made a tour of the principal hotels and scanned the registers with no lucky find! Not a single gleam of hope shone out in all the polyglot inscriptions passing under his eye! And so he had sadly betaken himself to a safe, retired place, where he could hold the aforesaid council of war.

The practical part of the operations of this sole committee of ways and means, was an exhaustive examination of his depleted pockets. A few sovereigns and a single crisp twenty-pound Bank of England note constituted the rear guard of Alan Hawke’s vanished “sinews of war.” The young man briefly noted the slender store, with a sigh.

“Twenty-five 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!

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The novel opens with Major Alan Hawke, a young Briton in Geneva, feeding swans and smoking Trichinopoly cigars while brooding over a 'long council of war' he has held alone. The narrative voice quickly establishes a contrast between Hawke's 'debonnair-looking' exterior and his inner 'sore mental unrest.' He is searching for a man who has already left for America, a missed connection that sets the tone for a story built on elusive figures and half-glimpsed plots.

The setting shifts to Delhi, where the jewel merchant Ram Lal Singh reports a mysterious disappearance: two women have slipped away from a 'marble house' via a special train, leaving their rooms 'just as if they had gone out for a drive.' The dialogue is thick with suspicion, bribery, and veiled threats, with characters like the 'tiger of tigers' Mem-Sahib looming offstage.

A Solitary Council and a Missed Connection

The opening chapter places Alan Hawke alone on Rousseau’s Island, feeding swans and smoking Trichinopoly cigars, while he reviews his past. The narrator notes that 'gaunt care walked as a viewless warder at Alan Hawke’s side,' a phrase that underlines his isolation despite the lively Geneva promenade. He has come from Monaco to seek a man at the British Consulate, only to learn that the man has already left for Aix la Chapelle and then America. This missed connection is the first of several failed encounters in the excerpts.

The narrative voice is detached yet precise, cataloging Hawke’s movements—crossing the Pont de Montblanc, scanning hotel registers—without revealing his inner thoughts. The effect is to make Hawke a figure observed from the outside, a man whose 'debonnair-looking' appearance draws glances from American girls and a Russian princess, but whose purpose remains opaque. The chapter ends with Hawke still unresolved, his 'long council of war' yielding only the decision to perhaps end things that night.

Surveillance and Suspicion in Delhi

In Delhi, the narrative shifts to a tense conversation between Hawke and the jewel merchant Ram Lal Singh. Ram Lal reports that two women have vanished from the 'marble house' of a man called Johnstone, leaving their rooms untouched. The merchant has been spying: he bribed servants, watched the house, and even slipped inside after the butler went out drinking. His network includes 'mail clerks, telegraph men, and all,' suggesting a pervasive surveillance system.

The dialogue is laced with mutual distrust. Hawke accuses Ram Lal of lying: 'If you are lying to me, Ram Lal, we may lose both our pickings from this fat pagoda tree.' Ram Lal, in turn, fears the 'Mem-Sahib at the Silver Bungalow,' calling her a 'tiger of tigers.' The women’s escape is described in logistical detail—a special train from Allahabad, branch lines to Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay—but their destination remains unknown. The scene ends with Hawke advising silence, but the tension is palpable.

Characterization Through Contrast and Voice

The excerpts build characters through sharp contrasts. Hawke is outwardly 'good form' but inwardly desperate; Ram Lal is a 'smooth old Mohammedan' with a 'dark face, seamed with lines of care,' who prefers the 'role of fox to lion.' The women are described only through others’ fears: the 'Swiss woman,' Johnstone’s daughter, and the 'tiger of tigers' Mem-Sahib. Their absence drives the plot.

The narrative voice shifts between Hawke’s interiority and Ram Lal’s conspiratorial report. Hawke’s thoughts are rendered in free indirect style ('By Jove! I may as well make an end of the thing right here to-night!'), while Ram Lal’s speech is colloquial and detailed, full of asides and winks. The setting—Geneva’s lake versus Delhi’s bungalows—reinforces the contrast between European leisure and colonial intrigue. The novel’s title, A Fascinating Traitor, hints that betrayal may be central, but the excerpts leave the traitor’s identity unclear.

Readers should attend to the novel’s layered deceptions: characters are rarely what they seem, and information is parceled out through surveillance and rumor. The excerpts offer no resolution to the women’s disappearance or Hawke’s mission, so the full book likely unravels these threads through further misdirection. The Anglo-Indian setting is not mere backdrop but a web of power, secrecy, and uneasy alliances.

Reading Savage’s tangled web of hidden motives in Delhi, I felt that same quiet ache for truth buried beneath polite surfaces. It reminded me of another world entirely—one of domestic whispers rather than imperial plots—yet the loneliness was familiar. The Awakening of Helena Richie — Story, Setting & Ideas lingers in that softer, stranger space where a woman’s secret life unfolds, and somehow, both stories echo the same unhurried dusk.