The Pursuit Part 7

Despard did not reply for a moment. There was a queer pause and catch in his voice as if he sought uneasily for breath.

"Miss Van Arlen is here, and the old man, Jacob Van Arlen, the grandfather."

"And the mother?" asked Aylmer, with a note of surprise in his voice.

"Lady Landon, or does one call her Mrs. Van Arlen?"

"She is broken down in health," answered Despard, in a curiously wooden, expressionless accent. "She has been--recommended to try for at least six months the effects of an Alpine Sanatorium."

The two listeners understood, or thought they understood, and muttered their sympathy in an almost inaudible chorus.

"Insane?" they whispered. "Insane?"

Despard smote his hand down upon the rotting wood.

"No!" he cried fiercely. "Her brain is as sound as yours or mine, but her heart has been frozen. By G.o.d! Try to think, imagine, if you can, what h.e.l.l a woman has lived in who was the wife of Landon!"

His pa.s.sion seemed to choke him. His eyes glowed, his chest heaved, he was another man from the one who had sat down smilingly to smoke a cigarette with them a few minutes before. And the pa.s.sion of his wrath infected his hearers. Imagination painted pictures in their brains; they, too, breathed a little faster as they listened.

The gust of Despard's pa.s.sion pa.s.sed and left him calm again. He gave a tiny shrug of the shoulders, which seemed to imply apology. He began to speak with ordinary unshaken accents.

"It was I who suggested Tangier to the Van Arlens. I am in garrison at Gibraltar; I can see them at frequent intervals; I introduced them to the Foreign Colony here. The Anstruthers have done their best to make them at home. I got Absalaam to be their dragoman, and I don't think you will find a better or more versatile one between Tripoli and Mogador.

They have the most suitable villa outside the town. The Bashaw has been given to understand the situation, has been generously tipped, and is doing his best to keep his side of the bargain. The men who guard them are picked and know that matters will reach an extreme of unpleasantness for them if their vigilance is allowed to relax. All has been done that can be done. And yet--?" He shrugged his shoulders again. "They share the anxieties of Damocles," he added. "They live under a sword which may fall at any moment."

He rose, flicked the cigarette ash from his sleeve, and made a motion towards the hill.

"Shall we be getting on?" he asked. "The sun waits for no one."

They rose slowly and began to follow the distant line of beaters. Aylmer linked his hand through Despard's arm.

"Miss Van Arlen understood ... what we feel ... all we Aylmers, about Landon?" he asked.

Despard hesitated.

"I put it to her, strongly," he answered.

There was something not entirely convincing in the reply. Aylmer's voice showed anxiety.

"But--but she cannot imagine that we, or any decent-minded man, could view him with anything but loathing?"

There was still a perceptible pause before Despard's reply.

"I didn't tell her yesterday that you were coming," he said. "Indeed, Anstruther only informed me last night. I thought it would be well that you should arrive and make a good impression before she learned your name. Then, you see, as it happened, you exploded it on her rather startlingly. And she, at the time, was rather shaken."

"And this means--?" said Aylmer, impatiently.

"It means," answered Despard, debatingly, "that your name recalls memories to her which, unfortunately, do not prepossess you in her favor. And, I think, that, being a woman ... your service to the child ... your saving of him ... under the circ.u.mstances ... acted against you."

Aylmer turned and looked into his friend's face with amazement.

"But--but I don't understand!" he stammered. "That's unjust!"

Despard shook his head.

"Not entirely," he demurred. "It's feminine; it's jealousy. It is hard to her that you should have saved the child's life. I could see that, and combated it, during the few minutes in which we rode back to camp."

Aylmer was frowning. He dropped Despard's arm, thrust his own hands into his pockets, and stared out into the distance. He shook his head.

"No!" he said suddenly. "I can't quite follow it. No woman with that girl's ... eyes ... would be so ... shabby ... if she understood!"

Rattier gave him an impulsive little nod.

"If?" he enunciated slowly. "If?"

Despard threw the Frenchman a grateful glance.

"That's it," he agreed. "His name is Aylmer. So far she has not got beyond that fact, my friend."

Aylmer looked round at them both. There was something calculating in the way in which he surveyed the two, as if they were factors in a situation which had hitherto eluded him, but which was now beginning to take definite shape. And his lips had set one upon the other in a rigid line.

His chin seemed to have attained incongruous squareness beneath the suave droop of his moustache.

"She's got to believe in me!" he announced grimly. "I won't let her be unworthy of herself."

And the other two noticed that as he said it he nodded to himself two or three times decidedly. He drew himself up; unconsciously his carriage grew stiffer. It was as if he had mapped out and settled a matter definitely. He began to talk and laugh naturally, and on other subjects.

And if any allusion to the day's adventure outcropped into the conversation he did not avoid it, but simply pa.s.sed it by without comment. He had taken his line. The incident, apart from his resolution, was closed.

As the three strolled up to the camp a man rose from the group which sat in the shadow of the awning at the door of the largest tent and came out to meet them. He was tall, white-haired, aquiline of feature. And his pervading characteristic seemed to be gravity. His figure and face alike were unbending.

He made them a studied little bow.

"My daughter tells me, Captain Aylmer," he said, "that I have to thank you for your prompt action on behalf of my grandson. You saved him from a situation of grave peril."

Aylmer realized that this was without doubt Jacob Van Arlen. He suspected, also, why the old man had thus addressed him without waiting for an introduction. For men who are introduced, amid the intimate sociabilities of the Tangier Tent Club, at any rate, usually shake hands. Van Arlen's right hand held his sombrero; his left was at his side.

Aylmer returned the bow.

"I did no more than what had obviously to be done," he said quietly.

"Despard merits your thanks more than I."

The other looked at the major with a distinct tinge of relief.

"Is that so?" he asked hopefully.

"No!" said Despard, laconically. "Your thanks are not in the least misdirected, Mr. Van Arlen."

The old man made another courteous inclination of the head.