The Shadow of the East

“He’s tough,” she said lightly, unconsciously echoing Peters’ words and apparently heedless of the interval between Miss Craven’s remark and her own reply. She seemed more interested in the fire than in her guardian. Laying the tongs away leisurely she came back to Miss Craven’s chair and settled down on the floor beside her, her arms crossed on the elder woman’s knee. She looked up frankly, a faint smile lightening her serious brown eyes.

“I don’t think Mr. Craven wants any sympathy, cherie,” she said slowly, “I reserve all mine for Yoshio, he fusses so dreadfully when the ‘honourable master’ goes for those tremendous long rides or is out hunting. Have you noticed that he always waits in the hall, to be ready at the first moment to rush away and get dry clothes and a hot bath and all the other Oriental paraphernalia for checking chills and driving the ache out of sore bones? I don’t suppose Mr. Craven has ever had sore bones—he is so splendidly strong—and Yoshio certainly seems determined he never shall. Mary thoroughly approves of him, she’s a fusser by nature too; she deplores his heathenism but says he has more sense than many a Christian. Soon after we came here I found him in the hall one day staring through the window, looking the picture of misery, his funny little yellow face all puckered up. He saw me out of the back of his head, truly he did, for he never turned, and tried to slip away. But I made him stay and talk to me. I sat on the stairs and he folded himself up on the mat—I can’t describe it any other way—and told me all about Japan, and California and Algeria and all the other queer places he has been to with Mr. Craven. He has such a quaint dramatic way of speaking and lapses into unintelligible Japanese just at the exciting moments—so tantalising! They seem to have been in some very—what do you say?—tight corners. We got quite sociable. I was so interested in listening to his description of the wonderful gardens they make in Japan that I never heard Mr. Craven come in and did not realise that he was standing near us until Yoshio suddenly shot up and fled, literally vanished, and left me planteel! I felt so idiotic sitting on the stairs hugging my knees and Mr. Craven, all splashed and muddy, waiting for me to let him pass—I was dreadfully frightened of him in those days,” the faintest colour tinged her cheeks. “I longed for an earthquake to swallow me up,” she laughed and scrambled to her feet, gathering the heap of furs into her arms and holding them dark and silky against her face. “You shouldn’t have encouraged in me a love of beautiful furs, Aunt Caro,” she said inconsequently, with sudden seriousness. “I’ve sense enough left to know that I shouldn’t indulge it—and I’m human enough to adore them.”

“Rubbish! furs suit you—please my sense of the artistic. I would not encourage you if you had a face like a harvest moon and no carriage—I can’t bear sloppiness in anything,” snapped Miss Craven in quite her old style. “When do the Horringfords start for Egypt?” she added by way of definitely changing the subject.

Gillian rubbed her cheek against the soft sealskin with an understanding smile. It was hopeless to try and curb Miss Craven’s generosity, hopeless to attempt to argue against it. “Next week,” she answered the inquiry. “Tuesday, probably. They stay in Paris for a month en route; Lord Horringford wants some data from the Louvre and also to arrange some preliminaries with the French Egyptologist who is joining their party.”

“Hum! And Alex—still interested in mummies?”

“More than ever, she is full of enthusiasm. She talks of dynasties and tribal deities, of kings and Kas and symbols until my head spins. Lord Horringford teases her but it is easy to see that her interest pleases him. He says she is the mascot of the expedition, that she brought luck to the digging last year.”

“Alex has had many hobbies but never one that ran for two seasons,” said Miss Craven thoughtfully; “I am glad she has found an interest at last that promises to be permanent.”

Gillian gathered the furs closer in her arms and made a few steps toward the door. “She has found more than that,” she said softly, and the colour flamed in her sensitive face. Miss Craven nodded. “You mean that in unearthing the buried treasure of a dead past she has found the living treasure of a man’s love? Yes, and not any too soon, poor silly child. Men like Horringford don’t bear playing with. I wonder whether she knows how near she has been to making shipwreck of her life.”

“I think she knows—now,” said Gillian, with a little wise smile as she left the room.

The sound of her soft contralto singing an old French nursery rhyme echoed faintly back to the library:

“Mon père m’a donné un petit mari,
Mon Dieu, quel homme!”