Part 8 (1/2)
”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 pa.s.sage,” 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.”
CHAPTER V
MR. MILLER
Outside their own country two British types carry their caste marks patently. They are the tourist and the officer. Gibraltar abounds with both, the company of the first having an occasional and transient superiority when it is swollen by Transatlantic arrivals or intermittent yachting cruisers. But the officers of the garrison and their wives and daughters are the reigning members of the informal club which makes Society on the Rock. They know each other, they discuss each other; the longer they stay the more parochial grow their interests. Newcomers undergo a period of silent probation. They cannot slip in un.o.bserved.
The who and the whence test is applied to each with unction, sometimes without justice, but almost invariably with good-humor. As a consequence everybody, within limits, knows something about everybody else.
There are exceptions, and one, an olive-complexioned, gray-clad, gray-haired, dark-eyed man, was walking steadily down the Waterport one sunny afternoon as a rush of cabs towards the custom-house proclaimed the incoming of an important steamer. Mr. William Miller had a pleasantly situated cottage in the South Town. The postman knew that he had many correspondents in Spain, England, Germany, and elsewhere.
Moorish visitors from across the straits were not infrequent at a small office which he retained in Waterport Street. Men of letters, desiring information on recondite subjects, separated themselves from the frivolous landing parties of Messrs. Cook and called at the same address. No one had ever tapped the sources of Mr. Miller's encyclopaedic knowledge in vain. No one had found him otherwise than affable. And though it was understood that his activities were literary, no resident or tourist had successfully probed the nature of his life-work.
The wives of many colonels had recognized this and had flung themselves with ardor against the breastworks of his imperturbability. Not one of them could look back with pride on any action in which they had won even a temporary advantage. Mr. Miller spoke freely, showed an intimate knowledge of men and manners throughout the civilized world, and appeared to manifest pleasure in sociabilities. His only attempts to return these lay in small but eclectic tea-parties whereat he displayed h.o.a.rds of artistic treasures and discoursed learnedly of carpet dye and porcelain marks.
But he was by no means a ladies' man. He accepted, and was welcome at the hospitalities of many a mess or gun room. He sang well and could play a more than ordinary effective accompaniment to a comic song after hearing the air whistled half a dozen times by its would-be interpreter.
The impersonality of his social att.i.tude prevented his being popular, but he was an inst.i.tution. As he walked along he bowed, nodded, smiled; obviously he knew everybody. Obviously everybody knew him.
As he walked across the sunlit square and dived into the deeply shadowed tunnel which is the Waterport, a tender fussed noisily up to the quay.
Mr. Miller eyed the pa.s.sengers on its deck keenly.
The steamer was evidently a White Star in from New York. The load of colossal trunks upon the deck would have told him that apart from the accent of the pa.s.sengers and the flag at the masthead. Baggage agents began to dart here and there; Mr. Cook's uniformed interpreters were in the forefront of the fray; Spanish cab runners yelled and grimaced.