The Shadow of the East

For some time before her sister-in-law’s death Miss Craven had known, as only a woman can know, but now for the first time she had heard from his lips a half-confession of the love that he had guarded jealously for thirty years.

The unusual tears that to-day seemed so curiously near the surface rose despite her and she blinked the moisture from her eyes with a feeling of irritated shame.

Then a figure, almost indistinguishable in the gloom, coming from the stables, caught her eye and she gave a sharp sigh of relief.

He was walking slowly, his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the storm of wind and rain that beat on his broad back. His movements suggested intense weariness, yet nearing the house his step lagged even more as if, despite physical fatigue and the inclement weather, he was rather forcing himself to return than showing a natural desire for shelter.

There was in his tread a heaviness that contrasted forcibly with the elasticity that had formerly been characteristic. As he passed close by the window where Miss Craven was standing she saw that he was splashed from head to foot. She thought with sudden compassion of the horse that he had ridden. She had been in the stables only a few weeks before when he had handed over another jaded mud-caked brute trembling in every limb and showing signs of merciless riding to the old head groom who had maintained a stony silence as was his duty but whose grim face was eloquent of all he might not say. It was so unlike Barry to be inconsiderate, toward animals he had been always peculiarly tender-hearted.

She hurried out to the hall, almost cannoning with a little dark-clad figure who gave way with a deep Oriental reverence. “Master very wet,” he murmured, and vanished.

“There’s some sense in him,” she muttered grudgingly. And quite suddenly a wholly unexpected sympathy dawned for the inscrutable Japanese whom she had hitherto disliked. But she had no time to dwell on her unaccountable change of feeling for through the glass of the inner door she saw Craven in the vestibule struggling stiffly to rid himself of a dripping mackintosh. It had been no protection for the driving rain had penetrated freely, and as he fumbled at the buttons with slow cold fingers the water ran off him in little trickling streams on to the mat.

She had no wish to convey the impression that she had been waiting for him. She met him as if by accident, hailing him with surprise that rang genuine.

“Hallo, Barry, just in time for tea! I know you don’t usually indulge, but you can do an act of grace on this one occasion by cheering my solitude. Peter looked in for ten minutes but had to hurry away for an engagement, and Gillian is not yet back.”

His face was haggard but he smiled in reply, “All right. In the library? Then in five minutes—I’m a little wet.”

In an incredibly short time he joined her, changed and immaculate. She looked up from the tea urn she was manipulating, her eyes resting on him with the pleasure his physical appearance always gave her. “You’ve been quick!”

“Yoshio,” he replied laconically, handing her buttered toast.

He ate little himself but drank two cups of tea, smoking the while innumerable cigarettes. Miss Craven chatted easily until the tea table was taken away and Craven had withdrawn to his usual position on the hearthrug, lounging against the mantelshelf.

Then she fell silent, looking at him furtively from time to time, her hands restless in her lap, nerving herself to speak. What she had to say was even more difficult to formulate than her confidence to Peters. But it had to be spoken and she might never find a more favourable moment. She took her courage in both hands.

“I want to speak to you of Gillian,” she said hesitatingly.

He looked up sharply. “What of Gillian?” The question was abrupt, an accent almost of suspicion in his voice and she moved uneasily.

“Bless the boy, don’t jump down my throat,” she parried, with a nervous little laugh; “nothing of Gillian but what is sweet and good and dear … and yet that’s not all the truth—it’s more than that. I find it hard to say. It’s something serious, Barry, about Gillian’s future,” she paused, hoping that he would volunteer some remark that would make her task easier. But he volunteered nothing and, stealing a glance at him she saw on his face an expression of peculiar stoniness to which she had lately become accustomed. The new taciturnity, which she still found so strange, seemed to have fallen on him suddenly. She stifled a sigh and hurried on:

“I wonder if the matter of Gillian’s future has ever occurred to you? It has been in my mind often and lately I have had to give it more serious attention. Time has run away so quickly. It is incredible that nearly two years have passed since she became your ward. She will be twenty-one in March—of age, and her own mistress. The question is—what is she to do?”