The Pursuit Part 1

The Pursuit.

by Frank (Frank Mackenzie) Savile.

CHAPTER I

THE LADY OF THE PIER

It was not the muleteer's shove, slight but significant though it was, which produced John Aylmer's shrug of irritation. His resentment was directed at himself. He realized that he had been guilty of a gaucherie.

For thirty seconds he had been standing halted in the main street of Tangier, a rock of obstruction to all the rabble traffic which pa.s.ses between the Bab al Marsa and the Bab al Sok, staring at--what?

At a pretty woman.

He reddened under his tan. The muleteer's shoulder had displaced him for purely practical reasons, for, indeed, almost benevolent ones, for the mules would have been capable of obtaining with their teeth what their guardian had obtained by mere weight of his body. But Aylmer felt that by accepted social standards a kick would not have been more than his due. Had he not been behaving like some cub of a c.o.c.kney clerk at an Earl's Court Exhibition? His lips moved. He was muttering excuses of himself to himself, and knew that they were valid, but that an onlooker would have had no clue to them.

For it was not her prettiness which had drawn his attention to the girl.

It took no second glance to a.s.sure him that she was no countrywoman of his, but an American. Her features had the clean regularity, her complexion the pale, unfurrowed smoothness which is kept intact on the western side of the Atlantic and there alone. The Moroccan sunlight was proving in a dozen places the mistake the shadows made when they dulled the gold of her hair to brown. Her eyes matched the waters of the unrippled bay.

Though he recognized these things, they had not, in the first place, attracted Aylmer's attention. American girls--pretty American girls--are no rarity in Tangier since Mr. Cook threw over Moghreb-al-Aksa the aegis of his protection. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have looked, approved, and, without altering his stride, pa.s.sed on. But here was something which appealed to the inherited instincts of a gentleman. What was it?

Apprehension.

He felt no reasonable doubt on the subject. Among this girl's natural attributes, he told himself, were placidity, content, self-reliance. The first two were wanting. The third was strained. There was almost a sense of furtiveness in the glances which she turned to throw not only about but, occasionally, behind her. Frankly, she was afraid.

His interest fed upon observation. He glanced at her more narrowly, he observed her surroundings. He drew aside out of the mid-street traffic, and under pretence of lighting a cigarette, halted again in the shadow of an awning.

She was not alone. She held by the hand a small, alert-looking child--a boy, who watched the pa.s.sers-by with the happy, unconcentrated interest of childhood. His eyes reviewed his surroundings without any of the surprise of unaccustomedness; obviously the scene was not strange to him. He smiled at Jew and Moslem, Christian and Infidel, with a pleasant patronage which one or two itinerant pedlars and shop touts returned with obsequious affability. One man, indeed,--a bronzed, hawk-nosed specimen of the desert Arab clad in a ragged _djelab_ of brown,--laughed gaily, plucked a carnation from behind his ear, and flung it to his small admirer as he pa.s.sed.

The child gave a little cackle of delight as he picked it up. The girl looked down as he did so and frowned.

"Who was that, Selim?" she asked quickly, and Aylmer saw that the question was addressed to a stout, muscular Moor who was in attendance.

The man lifted his shoulders in deprecation and darted a suspicious glance towards the crowd which had already closed upon the _djelab_ of brown.

"Some desert dog," he answered sullenly. "But indeed Sidi Jan encourages all the rabble of the Sok to take these liberties. He smiles, and the jackals think they have license to smile back."

The object of these reproaches thrust the carnation carelessly behind his own small ear.

"I have seen him before--once, twice, many times," he explained. "He laughs; he is not gray and dull like Selim. I would like to have him for my kava.s.s."

"I drown in perspiration three shirts a day while I wait on thee,"

affirmed the fat man reproachfully. "Is this thy grat.i.tude?"

"I do not wish to be waited on; I wish to be played with," said the child. "I should like to go to the sands where the Kaid's horses are galloped, and play with the brown man. We would paddle and I would throw the water over him. He has promised me this."

The girl started and gave a convulsive little grip of the fingers which lay in hers.

"He has spoken to you?" she cried. "When--where?"

The boy nodded his yellow mop of hair importantly.

"Yesterday as I rode through the Sok," he answered. "He walked beside my donkey and told me that I was a horseman already made, and should be on the back of a black barb like Sid' Abdullah's. Then I, too, could race upon the sands."

The girl looked stonily at the Moor.

"How was this, Selim?" she asked coldly. "Where was your watchfulness?"

The man spread out his hands.

"Am I a prophet--am I Allah Himself?" he cried aggrievedly. "There was a crowd--a press--in the Sok yesterday, wherein one had scarcely room to take breath. And you have seen for yourself. Sidi Jan s.n.a.t.c.hes at familiarities from such as that one; the nearer the gutter he finds his friends the better is he pleased."

She looked down at the delinquent, who, without being disconcerted, grinned back.

"John," she admonished him gravely, "you are _never_ to speak or listen to strangers in the Sok, or anywhere else."

John wriggled and pouted.

"I love the brown man," he answered defiantly.

"He's probably a wicked, wicked man," said his monitress. "Instead of playing with you on the sands, he'd very likely bite you--like a camel."

The eyes beneath the yellow mop grew round with interest.

"Would he?" he asked breathlessly. "That would--would be fun!"

Do what he could to restrain it, a smile broadened across Aylmer's face, and in that moment the girl, looking up, met his eye. He reddened slightly again, hastily struck and put a match to his still unlit cigarette. But in that instant he had read surprise first in her glance, then the knowledge that she had been overheard, and lastly--yes, there was no doubt about it--fear. Not the apprehension of the unknown and unexpected this time, but the thrill of distrust experienced by one seeing peril looming unveiled before her. She was afraid of him, John Aylmer! Her apprehension was no longer vague; he had become the target of it.

She dropped her eyes, made a sign to the Moor, and swung quickly towards the nearest shop. And Aylmer, in the midst of the mental disturbance caused by the incident, barely repressed a smile. For the booth, it was little more, was stored with the coa.r.s.e calicoes and prints which appeal to the dwellers in the desert; there was certainly nothing there to please the tourist or hunter of curios. No--hunted, she had turned instinctively to the nearest shelter. Undoubtedly she had fled from--him.

He wheeled quickly and strode off down the hill towards the Bab-al-Marsa. Explanation eluded him; he felt baffled. At the same time he was conscious of a sense of relief. Instinct had brought him to a halt, the instinct which bids the normal man stop to offer help to the helpless even before that help is claimed. He had discovered, or thought he had discovered, fear in the girl's att.i.tude, and almost inadvertently had stayed to rout it. And now? What fear could have a stable foundation which made him, an absolute stranger, its sudden focus?

He shook his head regretfully. To what could not neurasthenia or some such fashionable derangement of the nerves bring a woman in these days of fashionable stress? And yet? Her bearing had not been that of a neurotic. And she was young, three and twenty at the outside. Her face was unlined, her eyes clear, yet, after a moment's scrutiny, she had fled from him. He could not dismiss the problem; he carried it with him out of the Marsa gate, along the wooden pier. Behind the toll bar he sat upon a timber balk and studied it. It gave him a sense of physical pain to remember the expression in those eyes, of which the sea was one vast reminder.

A minute or two later, with a petulant shrug, he dismissed the matter--or tried to--from his thoughts. After all, mystery though it was, the affair had no real significance for him. He had, inadvertently, frightened a lady. But no real responsibility was his. He had looked at her keenly; too keenly, perhaps, but with no shadow of offence. She had chosen to interpret his scrutiny as menacing. They would probably not meet again--why, indeed, should they? And yet, this decision was mentally addressed to a possibly listening Fate to disarm it. Without defining the desire even to himself, he knew that it was there. He wanted to meet her again; he wanted it badly.

It was with this desire still at the back of his mind that he turned his eyes seaward on the mission which had brought him to the harbor.

The _Diomede_? Was she in? Would her commander, Paul Rattier, be in time to join him in riding out to the Tent Club that evening, or would they have to postpone their expedition to the early hours of daylight? He strained his glance northward where the gray bulk of Gibraltar was hidden by floating clouds of Mediterranean mist.

Two French men-of-war lay far out in the bay. A trail of black smoke showed where another steamed eastward with invalids from Casablanca to Oran. But neither of the three was the _Diomede_; he knew her squat turrets among a thousand. He gave a pessimistic little sigh. Instead of the jovial evening out at Awara under canvas, they would have the hot discomforts of an hotel and a fifteen-mile ride in the dawning to sap their energies before the day's sport began. He looked up with discontent at the westering sun. It appeared to be sinking towards the horizon with almost indecent haste.

He pulled out another cigarette and lounged lazily along the plank, watching the traffic of the pier and sh.o.r.e in _blase_ indifference. Just below him half a dozen _barca.s.ses_ were being filled with stout, squat little cattle, destined for food for the weary troops of Ber Rechid and El Setat. The bullocks were being goaded up an incline of planks and tumbled roughly into the unwieldy lighters, and as these were filled a little tug fussed up and towed them by threes to the waiting steamer of the Compagnie Mixte. And here the sufferings of the bullocks deepened from mere discomfort to the fine edge of tragedy. In twos they were la.s.soed round the horns. The steam winch aboard the steamer crashed, and with straining necks and starting eyes the unfortunate beasts were rushed up through the air and swung with terrifying speed down into the hold. They were near enough for him to see through his binoculars the strained mute agony of fear in the eyes of each brute as it swung. And there was a dog on board. Each time as the living load pa.s.sed within reach of its leap, it sprang into the air and made its teeth meet in the helpless flesh. And the stevedores applauded and goaded him to further efforts. Finally the horns of one struggling animal broke. There was a hoa.r.s.e laugh as it fell, to break other bones, no doubt, in the depths of the hold, or to mutilate some former comrade below. Aylmer turned away with a shrug of sickened disgust. What a land of cruelty it was, of grinding cruelty which spared neither man, woman, nor child, and certainly no beast! He turned his glance sh.o.r.ewards to avoid seeing the tragedy of the bullocks repeat itself.

As he did so he gave a start of suddenly aroused interest. Rapidly nearing him was a man whom he recognized. He was the hawk-nosed, swarthy son of the desert who had flung the carnation at the American child's feet. He was walking rapidly, smiling, talking in a quick undertone to another child, one who trotted at his side happily enough--born of his own people, this--a little Moor, clad in a tiny bournous and a hooded _djelab_ of brown.

They were making for the steps which led down from Aylmer's side to the huddle of rowboats which awaited chance fares below.