The Shadow of the East

As he watched her a slight frown gathered on his face. It seemed that Peters, in a few hours, had penetrated the barrier outside which he, after months, still remained. With him she was always shyly silent. On the few rare occasions in Paris and in London when he had found himself alone with her she had shrunk into herself and avoided addressing him; and he had wondered, irritably, how much was natural diffidence and how much due to convent training. But he had made no effort at further understanding, for the past was always present dominating inclinations and impulses—perpetual memory, jogging at his elbow. There were days when the only relief was physical exhaustion and he disappeared for hours to fight his devils in solitude. And in any case he was not wanted, it was better in every way for him to efface himself. There was nothing for him to do—thanks to the improvidence of John Locke no business connected with the trust. Miss Craven had taken complete possession of Gillian and he held aloof, not attempting to establish more intimate relations with his ward. But tonight, with a fine inconsistency, it piqued him that she should respond so readily to Peters. He knew he was a fool—it mattered not one particle to him—Peters’ magnetism was proverbial—but, illogically, the frown persisted.

As if conscious of his scrutiny Gillian turned and met his searching gaze. The colour flooded her face and she pushed the dog aside and rose hastily to her feet. Shyness supervened again and she was thankful for the arrival of Miss Craven, who was breathless and apologetic.

“Late as usual! I shall be late when the last trump sounds. But this time it was really not my fault. Mrs. Appleyard descended upon me!—our old housekeeper, Gillian—and her tongue has wagged for a solid hour by the clock. I am now au fait with everything that has happened at the Towers since I was here last—do your ears burn, Peter?—metaphorically she has dragged me at her heels from garrets to cellars and back to the garrets again. She is pathetically pleased to have the house open once more.”

Still talking she led the way to the dining room. It was an immense room, panelled like most of the house, the table an oasis on a desert of Persian carpet, a huge fireplace predominating, and some of the more valuable family portraits on the walls.

As Miss Craven entered she looked instinctively for the portrait of her brother, which since his death had hung—following a family custom—in a panel over the high carved mantelpiece. But it had been removed and for it had been substituted a beautiful painting of Barry’s mother. She stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence. “An innovation?” she murmured to her nephew, with her shrewd eyes on his face.

“A reparation,” he answered shortly, as he moved to his chair. And his tone made any further comment impossible. She sat down thoughtfully and began her soup in silence, vaguely disturbed at the departure from a precedent that had held for generations. Unconventional and ultra-modern as she was she still clung to the traditions of her family, and from time immemorial the portrait of the last reigning Craven had hung over the fireplace in the big dining room waiting to give place to its successor. It all seemed bound up somehow with the terrible change that had taken place in him since his return from Japan—a change she was beginning more and more to connect with the man whose portrait had been banished, as though unworthy, from its prominence. Unworthy indeed—but how did Barry know? What had he learned in the country that had had such a fatal attraction for his father? The old shameful story she had thought buried for ever seemed rising like a horrible phantom from the grave where it had lain so long hidden.

With a little shudder she turned resolutely from the painful thoughts that came crowding in upon her and entered into animated conversation with Peters.

Gillian, content to be unnoticed, looked about her with appreciative interest; the big room, its sombre, rather formal furniture and fine pictures, appealed to her. The arrangements were in perfect harmony, nothing clashed or jarred, electric lighting was carefully hidden and only wax candles burnt in heavy silver candlesticks on the table.