Part 7 (1/2)
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.