THE SHADOW OF A NAME
For a moment there was silence between the two. Aylmer's fingers
unconsciously wound and unwound a tiny lock of hair in the horse's mane.
His eyes travelled over the woman's face and figure appraisingly; his
brows contracted into a frown of puzzlement.
He had seen little John Aylmer's mother once before, at her wedding nine
years previously. She had been a girl, then, almost a child, and young
for her age, which was barely eighteen. Her beauty had been the fresh,
innocent _beaute du diable_. She was fair, blue-eyed, with a tendency to
fragility. And if report told the truth, her beauty had wasted and her
fragility increased through the cruel years of her husband's domination.
A bare six months ago she had been freed. Her father's millions had
helped her to a separation which English Courts had made a legal one.
They had also given her the custody of her one child, the heir to the
Aylmer name and the Landon title.
This girl was fair, indeed; her eyes like the sea, her color fresh, her
forehead bland and unwrinkled. But she was not the woman whose woes had
made copy for a thousand newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose
sufferings had roused the storm of execration which had made the honest
name of Aylmer a byword of dishonor and reproach. No, this was not his
cousin Landon's wife.
And yet?
Feature for feature, line for line, she reminded him of the woman whose
daintiness he remembered among the massed decorations of that New York
cathedral those years ago.
He sought bluntly for an explanation.
"I, too, am John Aylmer," he said quietly. "Who are you?"
The sudden thrill of surprise with which she clutched the child to her
tightened the reins. The gray backed a step; it was as if horse and
rider were alike repelled by his question.
She stared at him with a sudden fierce aversion which was undisguised.
"You are Landon's cousin--you?" she cried.
He bowed his head.
"I have that misfortune," he answered quietly.
At the form of his answer a tinge of relief woke in her eyes, but they
still watched him with incredulity and suspicion.
"He--he has sent you?" she demanded. "You bring other proposals, or
threats?"
He smiled gravely.
"We have shared nothing, except a club, he and I," he explained. "I have
not set eyes on him for over a year."
She still watched him alertly, debatingly, and still with mistrust.
"How did you come here, and why?" she asked.
"I am a member of the Tent Club," he answered. "I am in garrison at
Gibraltar. I could not get leave till yesterday afternoon and I waited
in Tangier to accompany Captain Rattier, whose ship is in harbor. Have I
sufficiently explained myself?"
She hesitated.
"You have not seen your cousin for over a year? Perhaps you are in
correspondence with him?"
He showed signs of impatience.
"We have not exchanged half a dozen letters in our lives!" he said
emphatically.
The lines of her face remained unsoftened. Her fierce grip on the
child's shoulder did not relax.
"And this Frenchman--this Captain Rattier?" she asked. "What of him?"
His eyebrows expressed the intensity of his amazement.
"Paul Rattier is my distant cousin," he answered. "No finer gentleman
walks the earth." He paused for a moment. "Is it permitted to inquire
why you suspect--strangers?"
She did not answer him. An abstraction, real or feigned, seemed to have
seized her. She stared out over his head into the distance with unseeing
eyes as if she weighed problems, debated evidence, sought conclusions.
It was the child who roused her into attention. He laughed, clapped his
hands, and shouted.
"Browny!" he clamored in delight. "Browny!"
Aylmer looked round.
Rattier, leading a very melancholy and still bleeding horse, had
approached with Despard. Together they were bending over the major's
trophy, the dead boar. Behind them Aylmer's horse was hobbling painfully
to its feet. Despard looked up and shook an admonishing finger at his
acclaimer.
"You young rebel!" he cried. "You want a good smacking for your
disobedience!"
He slipped from the saddle as he spoke and led his horse towards them.
He laid his hand familiarly on Aylmer's shoulder.
"Hurt?" he asked.
"Not in the least," said Aylmer, and then looked, with a significant
lift of the eyebrow, from Despard to the gray horse's rider.
Despard's face showed his own surprise.
"Don't you know each other yet?" he marvelled. "Miss Van Arlen--Captain
Aylmer."
Uncertainty gripped Aylmer again. Landon had married a daughter of Jacob
Van Arlen, the millionaire. A divorcee reverted to her maiden name, but
surely not to her maiden title. But Despard had said Miss, most
distinctly Miss.
With his usual straightforward instinct to find the nearest way to probe
a mystery, he looked at the girl herself. He became aware that her eyes
had been upon his face with intentness.
"Yes," she said quietly. "This," she patted the child's shoulder, "is my
nephew."
He gave a little sigh of appreciation and, he scarcely knew why, of
relief. It was not possible, of course, that this girl, whose whole
poise and carriage spoke of resolution and unfettered self-command,
could be the woman, broken in health and spirit, who had cowered before
her husband's glance, so some of the baser journals had hinted, even
when she was seeking and had received the law's protection from him.
And her eyes? They were not of that appealing blue which had shone
beneath the bride's deep lashes on that half-forgotten wedding-day. They
were blue, indeed, but they met his with something which was akin to
defiance.
She did not explain herself, but her glance was that of one who needed
no warrant for her demeanor. Her attitude was not one of blatant
aggressiveness, but was undoubtedly distrustful.
He looked at the child with renewed interest.
"Your sister is--where?" he asked quickly.
The frown came swiftly back to her forehead.
"You ask me that? Why?" she demanded.
He looked at the boy.
"Naturally I thought she might be with you," he answered. "As an Aylmer
I should be glad to meet her."
"Ah!" Her tone was hard and suspicious again. Unconsciously she gripped
the child to her again with a fierceness which made him protest.
"You hurt!" he complained. "You hurt, and I want to see the boar."
With a sailor's instinctive fondness for children, Rattier, who had
resigned his limping horse into the hands of one of the Arab beaters,
turned towards him.
"May I be permitted?" he said simply, and held out his arms. The child
made a restless little movement towards him. "He'll show it me!" he
cried joyously. "He'll take me!"
Again she reined back, looking from one to the other with patent
misgiving.
"No!" she cried sharply. "You shall not touch him, either of you!" She
made an appealing gesture towards Despard. "You must see me back to the
camp!" she said.
He was smiling with tranquil amusement, a smile which seemed to rouse
her to anger.
"Let us go now, at once!" she said, and wheeled her horse.
Despard nodded, but did not dismiss the smile.
"Might I inform you that Aylmer has been my friend since our Sandhurst
days, and that I have shared his intimacy with Commandant Rattier for
the last five years? I can vouch for them; I really can."
She reined in her horse again and sat looking at all three with doubt
still lurking in her eyes. Aylmer met her expression with unrestrained
amazement. He found her mistrust of him a conundrum to which there was
no answer. The Frenchman's shoulders rose and fell almost imperceptibly.
His head was slanted with deferential acquiescence. He laid his hand
upon Aylmer's arm.
"Your horse?" he interposed.
He pointed to it and to Absalaam, who had now arrived and was touching
the wounds in its flank with delicate, probing fingers. The commandant's
gesture seemed to imply that the situation in which they found
themselves demanded a tactful retreat, and that here he indicated a
dignified one.
Aylmer still hesitated. He saw no reason why he should concur in his own
dismissal; the idea grated on him. What had he done?
It was Despard who took the edge of restraint off the situation. He
swung himself back into the saddle, and pointed up the hill.
"After all, the thing was a squeak," he allowed. "You are shaken." He
turned and nodded slightly to the other two. "I will return and help
with the horses; we shall have no other beat to-day."
They smiled, bowed to his companion, and gave him answering nod. They
understood. He was going to use the opportunity to sponsor them. Then he
would return, and they would have their explanation. They watched him
bend towards his companion as they rode away.
"It is almost as if we diffused a contagion, you and I," speculated
Rattier as they turned to Absalaam and the horses, but Aylmer made no
effort to elaborate the issue. An inexplicable instinct to make the
incident a personal rather than a general one had overtaken him. As he
watched Despard ride away with his companion, he felt almost as if he
were being defrauded. The relations between his cousin and her sister
made a tie between Miss Van Arlen and himself; surely, in spite of
everything, they were sufficient foundation upon which to found
something more than a mere acquaintanceship. In the name of all the
other decent-minded, clean-living Aylmers, he might have been allowed to
make his and their protest against being held responsible for the
knaveries of the head of their house.
So it was with something of dissatisfaction in his aspect that he turned
to Absalaam and the wounded horse. The Moor saw it but misunderstood its
purport.
"Merely a flesh wound, Sidi," he hastened to assure Aylmer. "A week,
perhaps ten days, of rest and he is himself again. A small price to pay
for so precious a thing as that child's life."
Aylmer looked at him with tolerant amusement. Absalaam ibn Said had
neither harem nor wife; his career had been notoriously one of unrest
and adventure. These pious opinions issued oddly from his bachelor lips.
"A small price indeed," he agreed pleasantly, "but a hundred youngsters
run risks little less in the Sok of Tangier every day."
The Moor made a sweeping motion of the hand, as if he suddenly dropped
the subject of conversation from a higher plane to a lower.
"The children of the Sok!" he cried contemptuously.
"Khabyles--Arabs--Susi--Riffs! What are they? Little more than vermin;
their ranks are replenished all too quickly as it is! But this one! Here
we tell a different story, do we not?"
Aylmer halted in his examination of the wounded pastern and looked up.
There was something arresting in the Moor's vehemence.
Absalaam caught the look and shrugged his shoulders.
"The Sidi has not visited Tangier for five or six weeks?" he said.
Aylmer nodded. And waited. He had had a good deal of experience of the
Moor and his conversational methods. He was aware that the deferring of
a climax till it could be launched on a tide of tantalization was the
chiefest of them.
"Therefore, Sid' Aylmer," continued the Moor, "you have not heard all
the tales which center round this small one's fortunes?"
Aylmer smiled and prepared to give his attention again to his horse. It
was left to Rattier to ruin the pyramid of stimulation.
"What tales?" he demanded laconically.
Absalaam's brown eyes met both question and questioner with
melancholy--almost, indeed, with scorn. How could one titillate, how
could one embroider, how could one work up to a brave display of
interest, if bald facts were to be wrung from one at this stage of a
tale? He sighed.
"Tales of his wealth and importance, Sidi," he answered, in accents of
subjection.
Rattier drew up the monocle which swung from a ribbon at his buttonhole
and concentrated his stare upon the Moor.
"Wealth?" he repeated tersely.
Absalaam opened his arms to their widest and held his palms emptily
outflung.
"Wealth sufficient to buy all Tangier, all Fez, the whole of Mogrheb al
Acksa, if a tenth of the reports be true. His life, therefore? How can
one value it!"
He beamed upon them. He had been robbed of his slowly forged
culmination, but he had, at least, been able to offer them a surprise.
Aylmer replaced upon the ground the hoof which he had been holding. He
looked at the Moor good-humoredly.
"So the gossip mongers of the Sok credit this infant with riches?" he
said. "On what evidence, if any?"
Absalaam made a motion towards the sea.
"In the harbor, when you landed, did you observe a yacht, Sidi--a white
boat, with lines of gold at her cutwater and figurehead?"
"Yes."
"That boat lies there at the service of that child. They have taken for
him the Villa Eulalia; they have surrounded it with tents of men who are
there to do no more than guard his safety; there are servants, horses,
donkeys. The Gibraltar steamer brings packets of provisions or what not
several times a week. In the town their money flows."
Rattier dropped his eyeglass.
"I think, _mon ami_," he said slowly, "that gold must be freer with them
than gratitude. Were you thanked for what you did? I don't seem to
remember it."
Aylmer shook his head.
"That is the mystery," he agreed. "I did little enough, but I was going
to be thanked--till I disclosed my name. Then," he shrugged his
shoulders, "you saw."
He meditated a minute. Then he burst out laughing.
"I was not allowed even to hold him, and I am not at all sure that I am
not his guardian!" he said suddenly.
Rattier's surprise was evident, but he managed to concentrate it in a
monosyllable.
"Eh?" he demurred wonderingly.
Aylmer gave an emphatic nod of the head.
"I was coming home from China at the time of the marriage of my cousin
Landon with this child's mother. I broke my journey in New York
specially to attend it. And Landon, merely as a form, asked me as his
kinsman to be a party to his settlement. In certain circumstances,
including his death, I was to be one of the trustees for his children."
"And he is dead, this cousin?"
"No, my friend. Merely divorced. Where do I come in--where?"