DESPARD EXPLAINS
"Suppose we sit down long enough to smoke a cigarette," suggested
Aylmer. "Perhaps the thump I received just now has had a disastrous
effect upon my limited intelligence, but I confess that Miss Van Arlen's
deportment remains a matter of mystery. What have I done?"
Despard laughed gently. He had strolled back from the camp to meet his
friends and had found them superintending the obsequies of the boar.
These were performed by a Spaniard, one of the human jetsam cast up
everywhere along the North African coast by tides of hazard and
adventure which set from every quarter of the Mediterranean. The true
son of Islam will not touch the _haloof_, the unclean jungle pig. And so
Senor Bernardo Albareda, penniless derelict and strongly suspected of
being a fugitive from the Spanish convict establishment at Melilla, was
extracting the tusks. He held them up with a dramatic gesture of
admiration.
"Twice the length of my central finger, which is not a short one!" he
remarked airily, and used the occasion to exhibit the elegances of a
hand which had patently not occupied itself lately with manual toil. One
or two of his compatriots, who had been among the beaters, were given
the task of disposing of the flesh and bristles, and departed under his
escort, carrying their burdens dependent from a couple of poles, the
Arabs hastening to avoid even the shadow of contamination which they
cast, and spitting with undisguised disfavor as they passed. Despard
accepted his comrade's invitation and joined the other two upon the seat
which they had made of a fallen mimosa stump in the shadow of the olive.
The major took out his cigarette case, found a match, and sent several
tiny clouds rolling up among the branches before he spoke. And his
answer was another question.
"You read the details of the Landon divorce case?" he hazarded.
"Yes," said Aylmer. "One could hardly escape it."
"You remember, then, that at the close the respondent was very nearly
committed for contempt of court?"
"He lost his temper, or his head," agreed Aylmer, "and threatened his
wife. I don't think any one attached much importance to his vaporings."
"Ah!" Despard nodded his head thoughtfully. "I suppose that would be the
point of view with most people."
"Not with yourself?" suggested Aylmer.
Despard shook his head.
"I have known the Van Arlens for many years," he said quietly. "Perhaps
you have forgotten that my own mother was an American, that a good deal
of my boyhood was passed in New York."
"I didn't know you knew the Van Arlens; in fact, I could hardly suspect
it, when to the best of my remembrance you never even discussed the
Landon divorce case with me."
Despard nodded.
"No," he said, in a dry, unemotional voice. "I did not discuss it with
any one. And you, moreover, were an Aylmer."
He was silent for a minute and the other two looked at him a little
curiously. This was not the Despard they were accustomed to, a sportsman
whose hobbies engrossed him to the exclusion of most other topics. This
was a man who had the force of pent feeling behind his words.
"The Van Arlens naturally did not seek outside society at the time of
the case," he continued, "but I was on leave, and I saw a good deal of
them. Has it occurred to you," he added suddenly, "that this child is
not only heir to the Landon title but to the Van Arlen millions--at
present?"
"No," said Aylmer, "but I suppose he is the only direct male
descendant."
"Do you realize what that means in America? To be a Landon, only a
barony, though I grant you an old one, is a small thing compared with
being the grandson of--the richest man in the world."
Aylmer was silent. The point of view was one that did not easily present
itself to his British complacency. Rattier, too, though he nodded
assent, did it without vehemence and with a tinge of reserve. Of a
royalist clique, transatlantic caste was outside his experience.
"At any rate your cousin Landon realized it at last in realizing what he
was losing. He moved every legal lever he could lay his hands upon to
retain the custody of his child and failed. He is to see him twice a
year, for an hour. You will understand that his chances of winning his
child's profitable affections are too limited for his taste."
Aylmer's brows met in a tiny frown of perplexity.
"Profitable affection?" he meditated.
"John is eight. In thirteen years he will be of age. His father then
will be forty-five, and quite capable of getting much enjoyment out of
his son's unlimited income."
Rattier gave a little hissing intake of the breath.
"This Landon!" he murmured admiringly.
"The Court decided, also, that the child must be brought up, for nine
months of every year, at any rate, in England. This was modified, after
medical examination and certificate, to include Europe and North
Africa."
Aylmer made a little startled motion which dropped the ash of his
cigarette upon his knee.
"Eh?" he questioned. "Medical certificate?"
"Phthisis," rejoined Despard, quietly. "The little chap has the seeds of
it, but with care the seeds need never come to growth. But he has to
winter in the South, invariably."
Rattier made a tiny caressing motion of the hand which seemed to imply
infinite commiseration. Aylmer expressed the same emotion in a little
inarticulate murmur.
"And so--?" he questioned. "And so--?"
"And so Tangier," said Despard, "which has other conveniences, for the
moneyed. The law, here, is always behind the dollars, is it not?"
The other two looked at him debatingly.
"The law?" mused Aylmer. "The law?"
"They have already had experience of it in Italy and Spain--the Van
Arlens. A man like Landon can make use of it there to further his own
purposes, against the law. The Spanish and Italian police? Can you
expect them to interfere against a man's dealings with his own child?
What do they know of the fiats of the British Courts of Chancery? He
made two very nearly successful attempts to get possession of the
boy,--one at San Remo, one at Taormina."
Aylmer gave a little low whistle of comprehension. Rattier nodded, still
with a sort of grudging admiration of this English lord's talents and
persistence.
"Have you got it now?" went on Despard. "Do you see where they stand?
Here, under the protections of the Bashaw, where Landon can never
overbid them, they enjoy a security which they can obtain nowhere else
outside America or Great Britain."
Aylmer's eyes filled with a sudden shadow of loathing.
"The scoundrel!" he cried. "The miscreant!"
Despard nodded.
"Quite so," he agreed. "The epithets any decent-minded man would apply
to him. Unfortunately, he is without shame, reckless, and heedless of
everything but his passionate desire to turn defeat into victory. He
will stop at nothing to get even with those who have so far triumphed
over him."
"And the boy's mother lives here--with her sister?" said Aylmer.
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 God! Try to think, imagine, if you can,
what hell a woman has lived in who was the wife of Landon!"
His passion 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 passion 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 passion passed 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 circumstances ... 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 passed 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.
"I thought I could not so far have misunderstood my daughter," he
answered. "I hope, Captain Aylmer, that while you remain in Tangier I
may be permitted to serve you in any way which you like to command.
Perhaps, though, your stay is short?"
And there was hopefulness in this last query. It was patent amid the
studied urbanity of the tone. In spite of himself Aylmer smiled.
"I am a bird of passage," he said lightly. "I manage to take short leave
for most of the Tent Club meetings, to which Colonel Anstruther is kind
enough to make me welcome."
He strode forward as he spoke and began to exchange greetings with Mrs.
Anstruther, who rose to meet him. He had to hear the morning's story
re-discussed, exclaimed over, criticized. He bore it, without
impatience, but with a certain aloofness which gave the subject no
chance to endure. He managed skilfully, at last, to divert the
conversation into other channels.
Anstruther, who had sat between his wife and Miss Van Arlen, had risen
to welcome Commandant Rattier. The mishap to the latter's horse
engrossed their attention; they wandered off together to examine the
wounded limb. After a moment's hesitation Aylmer sank into the vacant
chair.
He looked round at the girl. Her eyes met his, but her hand, as if
acting by some automatic command of the brain, touched her skirt and
pulled it toward herself, and away from him. His lips grew a thought
more rigid behind the veiling moustache. But his voice was entirely
divested of any semblance of pique.
"And how is my small cousin?" he asked pleasantly. "Has Selim persuaded
him to take that long-deferred siesta?"
Old Van Arlen stirred restlessly on his seat. He looked at Aylmer, his
lips moved as if to speech, and then closed again. Miss Van Arlen sat up
very straight.
"Do you mean my nephew?" she asked frigidly.
"Your nephew and my cousin," said Aylmer, cheerfully. "I hardly expected
to find a relation here when I started this morning."
Her eyes grew stormy with suspicion, almost with hate.
"Are you sure?" she demanded suddenly.
"Quite sure," said Aylmer, halting for a scarcely perceptible moment
before her meaning reached him. "I have found only friends--so far."