The Shadow of the East Part 16

A few months after the marriage on which she had set her heart the family curse had seized her as suddenly and as imperatively as it had ever done her nephew. An exhibition of statuary in America had served as an adequate excuse and she had started at comparatively short notice, accompanied by the faithful Mary, after a stormy interview with her doctor, whose gloomy warnings she refuted with the undeniable truism that one land was as good as another to die in. Within a few hours of the American coast the tragedy, short and overwhelming, had occurred.

From the parent ice a thousand miles away in the north the stupendous white destruction had moved majestically down its appointed course to loom out of the pitch-black night with appalling consequence. A sudden crash, slight enough to be unnoticed by hundreds, a convulsive shudder of the great s.h.i.+p like the death struggle of a t.i.tan, had been followed by unquellable panic, confusion of darkness, inadequate boats and jamming bulkheads. Miss Craven and Mary were among the first on deck and for the short s.p.a.ce of time that remained they worked side by side among the terror-stricken women and children, their own life-belts early transferred to dazed mothers who clutched wild-eyed at wailing babes.

Together they had stood back from the overcrowded boats, smiling and unafraid; together they had gone down into the mystery of the deep, two gallant women, no longer mistress and maid but sisters in sacrifice and in the knowledge of that greater love for which they cheerfully laid down their lives.

And while Gillian mourned her bitterly she was yet glad that Miss Craven was spared the sadness of witnessing the complete failure of her cherished dream.

In the little Norman church toward which Gillian was driving there had been added yet another memorial to a Craven who had died tragically and far from home; a record of disastrous calamity that, beginning four hundred years before with the Elizabethan gallant, had relentlessly pursued an ill-starred family. The church lay on the outskirts of the village and close to the south entrance of the park.

Gillian stopped the carriage for a few moments to speak to the anxious-looking woman who had hurried out from the creeper-covered lodge to open the gates. Behind one of the cas.e.m.e.nts of the cottage a child was fighting for life, a cripple, with an exquisite face, whom Gillian had painted. To the sorrowful mother the eager tender words, the soft impulsive hand that clasped her own work-roughened palm, the wide dark eyes, misty with sympathy were worth infinitely more than the material aid, so carefully packed by Mrs. Appleyard, that the footman carried up the narrow nagged path to the cottage door.

And as the impatient horses drew the carriage swiftly on again Gillian leaned back in her seat with a quivering sigh. The woman at the lodge, despite her burden of sorrow, despite her humbleness, was yet richer than she and, with intolerable pain, she envied her the crowning joy of womanhood that would never be her own. The child she longed for would never by the touch baby hands bring consolation to her starved and lonely heart. Her thoughts turned to her husband in a sudden pa.s.sion of hopeless love and longing. To bear him a child--to hold in her arms a tiny replica of the beloved figure that was so dear to her, to watch and rejoice in the dawning resemblance that the ardour of her love would make inevitable.... Hastily she brushed away the gathering tears as the carriage stopped abruptly with a jingle of harness at the lichgate.

Coaxing the reluctant Mouston from the seat where he still sulked she tied him to the gate, took the armful of flowers from the grave-faced footman, and dismissing the carriage walked slowly up the lime-bordered avenue. The orderliness and beauty of the churchyard struck her as it always did--a veritable garden of sleep, with level close-shorn turf set thick with standard rose trees, that even the cl.u.s.tering headstones could not make chill and sombre.

From the radiant suns.h.i.+ne without she pa.s.sed into the cool dimness of the little building. With its tiny proportions, ornate and numerous Craven memorials and--for its size--curiously large chancel, it seemed less the parish church it had become than the private chapel for which it had been built. Then the house had been close by, but during the troublous years of Mary Tudor was pulled down and rebuilt on the present site.

Through the quiet silence Gillian made her way up the short central aisle until she reached the chancel steps. For a few minutes she knelt, her face crushed against the flowers she held, in silent pa.s.sionate prayer that knew neither form nor words--a soundless supplication that was an inchoate appeal to a G.o.d of infinite understanding. Then rising slowly she pushed back the iron gate and went into the chancel. Directly to the left the new monument gleamed cleanly white against the old dark wall. Simple and bold, as she would herself have designed it, the sculptor's memorial was the work of the greatest genius of the day who had willingly come from France at Craven's invitation to perpetuate the memory of a sister artist who had also been a lifelong friend.

A rugged pedestal of green bronze--with an inset panel representing the tragedy--rose upward in the shape of billowing curling waves supporting a marble Christ standing erect with outstretched pitying hand, majestic and yet wholly human.

Gillian gazed upward with quivering lips at the Saviour's inclined tender face, and opening her arms let the scented ma.s.s of crimson blossom fall slowly to the slab at her feet that bore Miss Craven's name and Mary's cut side by side.

_"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."_

She read the words aloud, and with a stifled sob slipped down among the roses and carnations that Caro Craven had loved, and leaned her aching head against the cool hard bronze. "Dearest," she whispered, in an agony of tears, "I wonder can you hear? I wonder are you allowed, where you are, to know what happens here on earth? Oh, Aunt Caro, _cherie_, do you know that I have failed--failed to bring him the peace and consolation I thought my love was strong enough to give, I have tried so hard to understand, to help ... I have prayed so earnestly that he might turn to me, that I might be to him what you would have me be ... but I have not been able ... I have failed him ... failed you ... myself. Oh, dearest, do you know?"

p.r.o.ne among the roses, at the feet of the pitying Christ, she cried aloud in her desperate loneliness to the dead woman who had given her the tenderest love she had ever known. The shadows lengthened widely before she rose and drew the scattered flowers into a fragrant heap.

She stood for a while studying intently the relief of the wreck; it suggested a train of thought, and with a sudden impulse she traversed the chancel and sought among the memorials of dead Cravens for the tablets commemorating those who had disappeared or died tragically. By chance at first and later by design these had all been placed within the confines of the chancel that formed so large a part of the tiny church.

Before the florid Italian monument that recorded all that was known of the short life of the Elizabethan adventurer she paused long, looking with quickening heart-beat at the graceful kneeling figure whose face and form were those of the man she loved.

_Barry Craven ... he set his eyes unto the west_.... Amongst the calamitous record there were four more of the name--their bodies scattered widely in distant unknown graves, victims of the spirit of adventure and unrest. She moved slowly from one to the other, reading again the tragical inscriptions she knew by heart, cut as deeply in her memory as on the marble slabs before her.

_Barry Craven--Lost in the Amazon Forest_.

_Barry Craven--In the silence of the frozen seas_.

_Barry Craven--Perished in a sandstorm in the Sahara_.

_Barry Craven--In j.a.pan_.

_Barry Craven--Barry Craven_.

The name leaped at her from all sides until, with a shudder, she buried her face in her hands to shut out the staring capitals that flamed in black and gold before her eyes. The dread that was with her always seemed suddenly closer than it had ever been, menacing, inevitable.

Would the fear that haunted her day and night become at some not far distant time an actual fact? Would the curse that had already led to ten years' perpetual wandering lay hold of him again--would he, too, in quest of the peace he had never found, disappear as they had done? Was it for this that he had insisted on her acquiring a knowledge of his affairs? With the quick intuition of love she had come to understand the deep unrest that beset him periodically, an unrest she recognised as wholly apart and separate from the other shadow that lay across his life. With unfailing patience she had learned to discriminate. Covertly she had watched him, striving to fathom the varying moods that swayed him, endeavouring to antic.i.p.ate the alternating frames of mind that made any definite comprehension of his character so difficult. The charm of manner and apparent serenity that led others to think of him as one endowed beyond further desire with all that life could give did not deceive her. He played a part, as she did, a part that was contrary to his nature, contrary to his whole inclination. She guessed at the strain on him, a strain it seemed impossible for him to endure, which some day she felt must inevitably break. His habitual self-control was extraordinary--once only during their married life had he lost it when some event, jarring on his overstrung nerves, had evoked a blaze of anger that seemed totally out of proportion to the circ.u.mstance, that would have given her proof, had she needed one, of his state of mind.

His outburst had been a perfectly natural reaction, but while she admitted the fact she felt a nervous dread of its recurrence.

She feared anything that might precipitate the upheaval that loomed always before her like a threatening cloud. For sooner or later the unrest that filled him would have to be satisfied. The curse of Craven would claim him again and he would leave her. And she would have to watch him go and wait in agony for his return as other women of the race had watched and agonised. And if he went would he ever return? or would she too know the anguish of suspense, the long drawn horror of uncertainty, the fading hope that year by year would become slighter until at last it would vanish altogether and the bitter waters of despair close over her head? A moan, like the cry of a wounded animal, broke from her. In vivid self-torturing imagination she saw among the sinister record around her another tablet--that would mean finality. He was the last of the Cravens. Did it mean nothing to him--had the sorrow of that past that was unknown to her but which had become woven into her own life so inextricably, so terribly, killed in him even the pride of race? Had he, deep down in the heart that was hidden from her, no thought of parenthood, no desire to perpetuate the family name, the family traditions? It would seem that he had not--and yet she wondered.

The woman he had loved--of whose existence she had convinced herself--if she had lived, or proved faithful, would he still have desired no son?

She shrank from the stabbing thought with a very bitter sob.

A sudden horror of her environment came over her. Around her were suggestions from which she shuddered, evidences that raised the haunting dread with which she lived to a culmination of fear. It had never seemed so near, so strong. It was stronger than her will to put it from her and in it, with inherent superst.i.tion, she saw a premonition. The little peaceful church became all at once a place of terror, a grisly charnel house of vanished hopes and lives. The spirits of countless Cravens seemed all about her, hostile, malign, triumphing in her weakness, rejoicing in her fear--spectral figures of the dead crowding, hurrying, threatening. She seemed to see them, a dense and awful concourse, closing round her, to hear them whispering, muttering, jibing--at her, a thing apart, an alien soul whose presence they resented. The clamorous voices rang in her ears; vague shapes, illusive and shadowy, appeared to float before her eyes. She shrank from what seemed the contact of actual bodily forms. Unnerved and overwrought she yielded to the horror of her own imagination. With a stifled cry she turned and fled, her arms outstretched to fend from her the invisible host that seemed so real, not daring even to look again at the pitying Christ whose calm serenity formed such a striking contrast to her storm-tossed heart.

Blindly she sped down the chancel steps, along the short central aisle, out into the timbered porch, where she blundered sharply into somebody who was on the point of entering. Who, it did not at the moment seem to matter--enough that it was a human creature, real and tangible, to whom she clung trembling and incoherent. A strong arm held her, and against its strength she leaned for a few moments in the weakness of reaction from the nervous strain through which she had pa.s.sed. Then as she slowly regained control of herself she realised the awkwardness of her position, and her cheeks burned hotly. She drew back, her fingers uncurling from the tweed coat they clutched so tightly, and, trying to slip clear of the arm that still lay about her shoulders, looked up shyly with murmured thanks.

Then: "David," she cried. "Oh, David----" and burst into tears. Guiding her to the bench that rested against the side of the porch Peters drew her down beside him. "Just David," he said, with rather a sad little smile, "I was pa.s.sing and Mouston told me you were here." He spoke slowly, giving her time to recover herself, thanking fate that she had collapsed into his arms rather than into those of some chattering village busybody. He had caught a glimpse of her face as she came through the church door and knew that her agitation was caused by something more than sorrow for Miss Craven, great as that sorrow was. He had seen fear in the hunted eyes that looked unrecognisingly into his--a fear that he somehow resented with a feeling of helpless anger.

The affection he had for her was such as he would have given the daughter that might have been his had providence been kinder. And with the insight that affection gave he had seen, with acute uneasiness, a steadily increasing change in her during the last eighteen months. The marriage from which he, as well as Miss Craven, had hoped so much seemed after all to have brought no joy to either husband or wife. With his intimate knowledge and close a.s.sociation he saw deeper than the casual visitor to whom the family life at the Towers appeared an ideal of domestic happiness and concord. There was nothing he could actually take hold of, Craven was at all times considerate and thoughtful, Gillian a model of wifely attention. But there was an atmosphere that, super-sensitive, he discerned, a vague underlying feeling of tension that he tried to persuade himself was mere imagination but which at the bottom of his heart he knew existed. There had been times when he had seen them both, as it were, off their guard, had read in the face of each the same bitter pain, the same look of unsatisfied longing.

Possessing in so high a degree everything that life could give they appeared to have yet missed the happiness that should by all reasoning have been theirs. Whose was the fault? Caring for them both it was a question that he turned from in aversion, he had no wish to judge between them, no desire to probe their hidden affairs. Thrown constantly into their society while guessing much he shut his eyes to more. But anxiety remained, fostered by the memory of the tragedy of Barry's father and mother. Was he fated to see just such another tragedy played out before him with no power to avert the ruin of two more lives? The pity of it! He could do nothing and his helplessness galled him.

To-day as he sat in the little porch with Gillian's hand clasped in his he felt more than ever the extreme delicacy of his position. Intuitively he guessed that he was nearer than he had ever been to penetrating the cloud that shadowed her life and Barry's but with equal intuition he knew he must convey no hint of his understanding. He gauged her shy sensitive mind too accurately and his own loyalty debarred him from forcing such a confidence. Instead he spoke as though the visit to Miss Craven's memorial must naturally be the cause of her agitation.

"Why come, my dear, if it distresses you?" he said, in quiet remonstrance; "she would not misunderstand. She had the sanest, the healthiest conception of death. She died n.o.bly--willingly. It would sadden her immeasurably if she knew how you grieved." Her fingers worked convulsively in his. "I know--I know," she whispered, "but, oh, David, I miss her so--so inexpressibly."

"We all do," he answered; "one cannot lose a friend like Caro Craven lightly. But while we mourn the dead we have the living to consider--and you have Barry," he added, with almost cruel deliberation. She faced him with steady eyes from which she had brushed all trace of tears.

"Barry understands," she said with quick loyalty; "he mourns her too--but he doesn't _need_ her as I do." It was an undeniable truth that reduced Peters to silence and for a while Gillian also was silent.

Then she turned to him again with a little tremulous smile, the colour flooding her delicate face.

"I'm glad it was only you, David, just now. Please forget it. I don't know what's the matter with me to-day, I let my nerves get the upper hand--I'm tired--the sun was hot----"

"So of course you sent the carriage away and proposed walking two miles home by way of a rest cure!" he interrupted, jumping up with alacrity, and taking advantage of the turn in the conversation. "Luckily I've got the car. Plenty of room for you and the pampered one." And waving aside her protests he tucked her into the little two-seater, bundling Mouston unceremoniously in after her.

The village school was near the church, and while Peters steered the car carefully through groups of children who were loitering in the road she sat silent beside him, wondering, in miserable self-condemnation, how much she had betrayed during those few moments of hysterical outburst.

Resolutely she determined that she would be strong, strong enough to put away the dread that haunted her, strong enough to meet trouble only when it came.

Clear of the children and running smoothly through the park Peters condescended to break the silence.

"How went Scotland?" he asked, slowing down behind a frightened fawn who was straying on the carriage road and cantering ahead of the car in panicky haste. "Your letters were not satisfactory."

"I wasn't taught to write letters. I never had any to write," she said with a smile that made the sensitive man beside her wince. "I did my best, David, dear. And there wasn't much to tell. There were only men--Barry said he couldn't stand women with the guns again after the bother they were last year. They were nice men, shy silent creatures, big game hunters mostly, and two doctors who have been doing research work in Central Africa. When any of them could be induced to talk of their experiences it was a revelation to me of what men will endure and yet consider enjoyment. You would have liked them, David. Why didn't you come? It would have done you more good than that horrid little yacht.

And we were alone the last two weeks--we missed you," she added reproachfully.

Peters had had his own reasons for absenting himself from the Scotch lodge, reasons that, connected as they were with Craven and his wife, he could not enlarge upon. He turned the question with a laugh.

"The yacht was better suited to a crusty old bachelor, my dear," he smiled. Then he gave her a searching glance. "And what did you do all day long by yourself while the men were on the hills?"

She gave a little shrug.

"I sketched--and--oh, lots of things," she answered, rather vaguely.

"There's always plenty to do wherever you are if you take the trouble to look for it."

"Which most people don't," he replied, bringing the car to a standstill before the front door.

"Is Barry back from London?"

"Coming this afternoon. Thanks for the lift, David, you've been a Good Samaritan this afternoon. I don't think I could have walked.

Goodbye--and please forget," she whispered.

He smile rea.s.suringly and waved his hand as he restarted the car.

Calling to Mouston, who was rolling happily on the cool gra.s.s, she went slowly into the house. With the poodle rus.h.i.+ng round her she mounted thoughtfully the wide stairs and turned down the corridor leading to the studio. It seemed of all rooms the one best suited to her mood. She wanted to be alone, beyond the reach of any chance caller, beyond the possibility of interruption, and it was understood by all that in the studio she must not be disturbed.