The Shadow of the East Part 23

"What do you mean?"

Peters leant forward, resting one arm on his knee, and the knuckles of his clenched hand shone white.

"I asked you in so many words what you were going to do to her," he said, in a voice vibrant with emotion. "You will say it is no business of mine. But I am going to make it my business. Good G.o.d, Barry, do you think I've seen nothing all these years? Do you think I can sit down and watch history repeat itself and make no effort to avert it for lack of moral courage? I can't. When you were a boy I had to stand aside and see your mother's heart broken, and I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm going to keep silent while you break Gillian's heart. I loved your mother, the light went out for me when she died. For her sake I carried on here, hoping I might be of use to you--because you were her son. And then Gillian came and helped to fill the blank she had left. She honoured me with her friendship, she brought brightness into my life until gradually she has become as dear to me as if she were my own daughter. All I care about is her happiness--and yours. But she comes first, poor lonely child. Why did you marry her if it was only to leave her desolate again? Wasn't her past history sad enough? She was happy here at first, before your marriage. But afterwards--were you blind to the change that came over her? Couldn't you see that she was unhappy? I could. And I tell you I was hard put to it sometimes to hold my tongue. It wasn't my place to interfere, it wasn't my place to see anything, but I couldn't help seeing what was patent to the eye of anybody who was interested. You left her, and you have come back. For what? You are her husband, in name at any rate--oh, yes, I know all about that, I know a great deal more than I am supposed to know, and do you think I am the only one?--legally she is bound to you, though I do not doubt she could easily procure her freedom if she so wished, so I ask you again--what are you going to do?

She is wholly in your power, utterly at your mercy. What more is she to endure at your hands? I am speaking plainly because it seems to me to be a time for plain speaking. I can't help what you think, I am afraid I don't care. You've been like a son to me. I promised your mother on her death-bed that I would never fail you, I could have forgiven you any mortal thing on earth--but Gillian. It's Gillian and me, Barry. And if it's a case of fighting for her happiness--by G.o.d, I'll fight! And now you know why I have told you all that I have tonight, why I have rendered an account of my stewardship. If you want me to go I shall quite understand. I know I have exceeded my prerogative but I can't help it. I've left everything in order, easy for anybody to take over--"

Craven's head had sunk into his hands, now he sprang to his feet unable to control himself any longer. "Peter--for G.o.d's sake--" he cried chokingly, and stumbling to the window he wrenched back the curtain and flung up the sash, lifting his face to the storm of wind and rain that beat in about him, his chest heaving, his arms held rigid to his sides.

"Do you think I don't care?" he said at last, brokenly. "Do you think it hasn't nearly killed me to see her unhappiness--to be able to do nothing. You don't know--I wasn't fit to be near her, to touch her. I hoped by going to Africa to set her free. But I couldn't die. I tried, G.o.d knows I tried, by every means in my power short of deliberately blowing my brains out--a suicide's widow--I couldn't brand her like that. When men were dying around me like flies death pa.s.sed me by--I wasn't fit even for that, I suppose." He gave a ghastly little mirthless laugh that made Peters wince and came back slowly into the room, heedless of the window he had left open, and walked to the fireplace dropping his head on his arm on the mantel. "You asked me just now what I meant to do to her--it is not a question of me at all but what Gillian elects to do. I am going to her tomorrow. The future rests with her.

If she turns me down--and you turn me down--I shall go to the devil the quickest way possible. It's not a threat, I'm not trying to make bargains, it's just that I'm at the end of my tether. I've made a d.a.m.nable mess of my life, I've brought misery to the woman I love. For I do love her, G.o.d help me. I married her because I loved her, because I couldn't bear to lose her. I was mad with jealousy. And heaven knows I've been punished for it. My life's been h.e.l.l. But it doesn't matter about me--it's only Gillian who matters, only Gillian who counts for anything." His voice sank into a whisper and a long shudder pa.s.sed over him.

The anger had died out of Peters' face and the old tenderness crept back into his eyes as they rested on the tall bowed figure by the fireplace.

He rose and went to the window, shutting it and drawing the curtain back neatly into position. Then he crossed the room slowly and laid his hand for an instant on Craven's shoulder with a quick firm pressure that conveyed more than words. "Sit down," he said gruffly, and going back to the little table splashed some whisky into a gla.s.s and held it under the syphon. Craven took the drink from him mechanically but set it down barely tasted as he dropped again into the chair he had left a few minutes before. He lit a cigarette, and Peters, as he filled his own pipe, noticed that his hands were shaking. He was silent for a long time, the cigarette, neglected, smouldering between his fingers, his face hidden by his other hand. At last he looked up, his grey eyes filled with an almost desperate appeal.

"You'll stay, Peter--for the sake of the place?" he said unsteadily.

"You made it what it is, it would go to pieces if you went. And I can't go without you--if you chuck me it will about finish me."

Peters drew vigorously at his pipe and a momentary moisture dimmed his vision. He was remembering another appeal made to him in this very room thirty years before when, after a stormy interview with his employer, the woman he had loved had begged him to remain and save the property for the little son who was her only hold on life. It was the mother's face not the son's he saw before him, the mother's voice that was ringing in his ears.

"I'll stay, Barry--as long as you want me," he said at length huskily from behind a dense cloud of smoke. A look of intense relief pa.s.sed over Craven's worn face. He tried to speak and, failing, gripped Peters' hand with a force that left the agent's fingers numb.

There was another long pause. The blaze of the cheerful fire within and the fury of the storm beating against the house without were the only sounds that broke the silence. Peters was the first to speak.

"You say you are going to her tomorrow--do you know where to find her?"

Craven looked up with a start.

"Has she moved?" he asked uneasily. Peters stirred uncomfortably and made a little deprecating gesture with his hand.

"It was a tallish rent, you know. The flat you took was in the most expensive quarter of Paris," he said with reluctance. Craven winced and his hands gripped the arms of his chair.

"But you--you write to her, you have been over several times to see her," he said, with a new trouble coming into his eyes, and Peters turned from his steady stare.

"Her letters, by her own request, are sent to the bank. I was only once in the flat, shortly after you left. I think she must have given it up almost immediately. Since then when I have run over for a day--she never seemed to want me to stay longer--we have met in the Louvre or in the gardens of the Tuileries, according to weather," he said hesitatingly.

Craven stiffened in his chair.

"The Louvre--the gardens of the Tuileries," he gasped, "but what on earth--" he broke off with a smothered word Peters did not catch, and springing up began to pace the room with his hands plunged deep in his pockets. His face was set and his lips compressed under the neat moustache. His mind was in a ferment, he could hardly trust himself to speak. He halted at last in front of Peters, his eyes narrowing as he gazed down at him. "Do you mean to tell me that you yourself do not know where she is?" he said fiercely. Peters shook his head. "I do not. I wish to heaven I did. But what could I do? I couldn't question her. She made it plain she had no wish to discuss the subject. The little I did say she put aside. It was not for me to spy on your wife, or employ a detective to shadow her movements, no matter how anxious I felt."

"No, you couldn't have done that," said Craven drearily, and turned away. To pursue the matter further, even with Peters, seemed suddenly to him impossible. He wanted to be alone to think out this new problem, though at the same time he knew that no amount of thought would solve it. He would have to wait with what patience he could until the morning when he would be able to act instead of think.

His face was expressionless when he turned to Peters again and sat down quietly to discuss business. Half an hour later the agent rose to go.

"I'll bring up a checque book and some money in the morning before you start. You won't have time to go to the bank in London. Wire me your address in Paris--and bring her back with you, Barry. The whole place misses her," he said with a catch in his voice, stuffing the bundle of papers into his pocket. Craven's reply was inaudible but Peters' heart was lighter than it had been for years as he went out into the hall to get his coat. "Yes, I'm walking," he replied in response to an inquiry, "bit of rain won't hurt me, I'm too seasoned," and he laughed for the first time that evening.

Going back to the study Craven threw a fresh log on the fire, filled a pipe, and drew a chair close to the hearth. It was past one but he was disinclined for bed. Peters' revelations had staggered him. His brain was on fire. He felt that not until he had found her and got to the bottom of all this mystery would he be able to sleep again. And perhaps not even then, he thought with a quickening heart-beat and a sick fear of what his investigations in Paris might lead to.

Before leaving England he had s.n.a.t.c.hed time from his African preparations to superintend personally the arrangements for her stay in Paris. He had himself selected the flat and installed her with every comfort and luxury that was befitting his wife. She had demurred once or twice on the score of extravagance, particularly in the case of the car he had insisted on sending over for her use, but he had laughed at her protests and she had ceased to make any further objection, accepting his wishes with the shy gentleness that marked her usual att.i.tude toward him. And she must have hated it all! Why? She was his wife, what was his was hers. He had consistently impressed that on her from the first. But it was obvious that she had never seen it in that light. He remembered her pa.s.sionate refusal--ending in tears that had horrified him--of the big settlement he had wished to make at the time of their marriage, her distress in taking the allowance he had had to force upon her. Was it only his money she hated, or was it himself as well? And to what had her hatred driven her? A fiercer gust of wind shrieked round the house, driving the rain in torrents against the window, and as he listened to it splashing sharply on the gla.s.s Craven shivered. Where was she tonight? What shelter had she found in the pitiless city of contrasts?

Fragile and alone--and penniless? His hand clenched until the stem of the pipe he was holding snapped between his fingers and he flung the fragments into the fire, leaning forward and staring into the dying embers with haggard eyes--picturing, remembering. He was intimately acquainted with Paris, with two at least of its multifarious aspects--the brilliant Paris of the rich, and the cruel Paris of the struggling student. And yet, after all, what did his knowledge of the latter amount to? It had amused him for a time to live in the Latin quarter--it was in a disreputable cabaret on the south side of the river that he had first come across John Locke--he had mixed there with all and sundry, rubbing shoulders with the riff-raff of nations; he had seen its vice and dest.i.tution, had mingled with its feverish surface gaiety and known its underlying squalor and ugliness, but always as a disinterested spectator, a transient pa.s.ser by. Always he had had money in his pocket. He had never known the deadly ever present fear that lies coldly at the heart of even the wildest of the greater number of its inhabitants. He had seen but never felt starvation. He had never sold his soul for bread. But he had witnessed such a sale, not once or twice but many times. In his carelessness he had accepted it as inevitable.

But the recollection stabbed him now with sudden poignancy. Merciful G.o.d, toward what were his thoughts tending! He brushed his hand across his eyes as though to clear away some hideous vision and rose slowly to his feet. The expiring fire fell together with a little crash, flared for an instant and then died down in a smouldering red ma.s.s that grew quickly grey and cold. With a deep sigh Craven turned and went heavily from the room. He lingered for a moment in the hall, dimly lit by the single lamp left burning above, listening to the solemn ticking of the clock, that at that moment chimed with unnatural loudness.

Mechanically he took out his watch and wound it, and then went slowly up the wide staircase. At the head of the stairs he paused again. The great house had never seemed so silent, so empty, so purposeless. The rows of closed doors opening from the gallery seemed like the portals of some huge mausoleum, vacant and chill. A house of desolation that cried to him to fill its emptiness with life and love. With lagging steps he walked half way along the gallery, pa.s.sing two of the closed doors with averted head, but at the third he stopped abruptly, yielding to an impulse that had come to him. For a moment he hesitated, as though before some holy place he feared to desecrate, then with a quick drawn breath he turned the handle and went in.

In the darkness his hand sought and found the electric switch by the door, and pressing it the room was flooded with soft shaded light.

Peters had spoken only the truth when he said that the house was kept in immediate readiness for its mistress's return. Craven had never crossed the threshold of this room before, and seeing it thus for the first time he could hardly believe that for two years it had been tenantless.

She might have gone from it ten minutes before. It was redolent of her presence. The little intimate details were as she had left them. A bowl of bronze chrysanthemums stood on the dressing table where lay the tortoise-sh.e.l.l toilet articles given her by Miss Craven. A tiny clock ticked companionably on the mantelpiece. The pain in his eyes deepened as they swept the room with hungry eagerness to take in every particular. Her room! The room from which his unworthiness had barred him. All that he had forfeited rose up before him, and in overwhelming shame and misery a wave of burning colour rolled slowly over his face.

Never had the distance between them seemed so wide. Never had her purity and innocence been brought home to him so forcibly as in this spotless white chamber. Its simplicity and fresh almost austere beauty seemed the reflection of her own stainless soul and the fierce pa.s.sion that was consuming him seemed by contrast hideous and brutal. It was as if he had violated the sanctuary of a cloistered Nun. And yet might not even pa.s.sion be beautiful if love hallowed it? His arms stretched out in hopeless longing, her name burst from his lips in a cry of desperate loneliness, and he fell on his knees beside the bed, burying his face in the thick soft quilt, his strong brown hands outflung, gripping and twisting its silken cover in his agony.

Hours later he raised his tired eyes to the pale light of the wintry dawn filtering feebly through the close drawn curtains.

He left that morning for Paris, alone.

It was still raining steadily and the chill depressing outlook from the train did not tend to lighten his gloomy thoughts.

In London the rain poured down incessantly. The roads were greasy and slippery with mud, the pavements filled with hurrying jostling crowds, whose dripping umbrellas glistened under the flaring shop lights. Craven peered at the cheerless prospect as he drove from one station to the other and shivered at the gloom and wretchedness through which he was pa.s.sing. The mean streets and dreary squalid houses took on a greater significance for him than they had ever done. The sight of a pa.s.sing woman, ill-clad and rain-drenched, sent through him a stab of horrible pain. Paris could be as cruel, as pitiless, as this vaster, wealthier city.

He left his bag in the cloakroom at Charing Cross and spent the hours of waiting for the boat train tramping the streets in the vicinity of the station. He was in no mood to go to his Club, where he would find a host of acquaintances eager for an account of his wanderings and curious concerning his tardy return.

The time dragged heavily. He turned into a quiet restaurant to get a meal and ate without noticing what was put before him. At the earliest opportunity he sought the train and buried himself in the corner of a compartment praying that the wretched night might lessen the number of travellers. Behind an evening paper which he did not attempt to read he smoked in silence, which the two other men in the carriage did not break. Foreigners both, they huddled in great coats in opposite corners and were asleep almost before the train pulled out of the station.

Laying down the paper that had no interest for him Craven surveyed them for a moment with a feeling of envy, and tilting his hat over his eyes, endeavoured to emulate their good example. But, despite his weariness, sleep would not come to him. He sat listening to the rattle of the train and to the peaceful snoring of his companions until his mind ceased to be diverted by immediate distractions and centred wholly on the task before him.

At Dover the weather had not improved and the sea was breaking high over the landing stage, drenching the few pa.s.sengers as they hurried on to the boat and dived below for shelter from the storm. Indifferent to the weather Craven chose to stay on deck and stood throughout the crossing under lea of the deckhouse where it was possible to keep a pipe alight.

Contrary to his expectation he managed to sleep in the train and slept until they reached Paris. Avoiding a hotel where he was known he drove to one of the smaller establishments, and engaging a room ordered breakfast and sat down to think out his next move.

There were two possible sources of information, the flat, where she might have left an address when she vacated it, and the bank where Peters had told him she called for letters. He would try them before resorting to the expedient of employing a detective, which he was loth to do until all other means failed. He hated the idea, but there was no alternative except the police, whose aid he had determined not to invoke unless it became absolutely necessary. It was imperative that his search should be conducted as quietly and as secretly as possible. He decided to visit the flat first, and, having wired to Peters in accordance with his promise, set out on foot.

It was not actually raining but the clouds hung low and threatening and the air was raw. He walked fast, swinging along the crowded streets with his eyes fixed straight in front of him. And his great height and deeply tanned face made him a conspicuous figure that excited attention of which he was ignorant.

Leaving the narrow street where was his hotel he emerged into the Place de la Madeleine, and threading his way through the stream of traffic turned into the Boulevard de Malesherbes, which he followed, cutting across the Boulevard Haussmann and pa.s.sing the Church of Saint Augustin, until the trees in the Parc Monceau rose before him. How often in the heat of Africa had he pictured her sitting in the shade of those great spreading planes, reading or sketching the children who played about her? He had thought of her every hour of the day and night, seeing her in his mind moving about the flat he had taken and furnished with such care. How utterly futile had been all his dreams about her. His lips tightened as he pa.s.sed up the steps of the house he remembered so well.

But to his inquiries the concierge, who was a new-comer, could give no reply. He had no knowledge of any Madame Craven who had lived there, and was plainly uninterested in a tenant who had left before his time. It was past history with which he had nothing to do, and with which he made it clear he did not care to be involved. He was curt and decisive but, with an eye to Craven's powerful proportions, refrained from the insolence that is customary among his kind. It was the first check, but as he walked away Craven admitted to himself that he had not counted overmuch on obtaining any information from that quarter, taking into account the short time she had lived there. Remained the bank. He retraced his steps, walking directly to the Place de l'Opera. But the bank, which was also a tourists' agency, could give him no a.s.sistance.

The lady called for her letters at infrequent intervals, they had no idea where she might be found. Would the gentleman care to leave a card, which would be given to her at the first opportunity? But Craven shook his head--the chance of her calling was too vague--and pa.s.sed out again into the busy streets. There was nothing for it now but a detective agency, and with his face grown grimmer he went without further delay to the bureau of a firm he knew by repute. In the private room of the _Chef de Bureau_ he detailed his requirements with national brevity and conciseness. His knowledge of the language stood him in good stead and the painfulness of the interview was mitigated by the businesslike and tactful manner in which his commission was received. The keen-eyed man who sat tapping a gold pencil case on his thumbnail in the intervals of taking notes had a reputation to maintain which he was not unwilling to increase; foreign clients were by no means rare, but they did not come every day, nor were they always so apparently full of wealth as this stern-faced Englishman, who spoke authoritatively as one accustomed to being obeyed and yet with a turn of phrase and _politesse_ unusual in his countrymen.

Followed two days of interminable waiting and suspense, two days that to Craven seemed like two lifetimes. He hung about the hotel, not daring to go far afield lest he should lose some message or report. He had no wish either to advertise his presence in Paris, he had too many friends there, too many acquaintances whose questions would be difficult to parry.

But on the morning of the third day, about eleven o'clock, he was called to the telephone. A feeling of dread ran through him and he was conscious of a curious sensation of weakness as he lifted the receiver.

But the voice that hailed him was rea.s.suring and complacently expressive of a neat piece of work well done. The wife of _Monsieur_ had been traced, they had taken time--oh, yes, but they had followed _Monsieur's_ instructions _au pied de la lettre_ and had acted with a discretion that was above criticism. Then followed an address given minutely. For a moment he leaned against the side of the telephone box shaking uncontrollably. Only at this moment did he realise completely how great his fear had been. There had been times when the recurring thought of the Morgue and its pitiful occupants had been a foretaste of h.e.l.l. The feeling of weakness pa.s.sed quickly and he went out to the entrance of the hotel and leaped into a taxi which had just set down a fare.

He knew well the locality toward which he was driving. Years ago he could almost have walked to it blindfold, but today time was precious.

And as he sat forward in the jolting cab, his hands locked tightly together, it seemed to him as if every possible hindrance had combined to bar his progress. The traffic had never appeared so congested, the efforts of the agents on point duty so hopelessly futile. Omnibuses and motors, unwieldy meat carts and fiacres, inextricably jammed, met them at every turn, until at last swinging round by the corner of the Louvre the streets became clearer and the car turned sharply to cross the river. As they approached the address the detective had given him Craven was conscious of no sensation of any kind. A deadly calm seemed to have taken possession of him. He had ceased even to speculate on what lay before him. The house at which they stopped at last was typical of its kind; in his student days he had rented a studio in a precisely similar building, and the concierge to whom he applied might have been the twin sister of the voluble amply proportioned citoyenne of long ago who had kept a maternal eye on his socks and shirts and a soft spot in her heart for the _bel Anglais_ who chaffed her unmercifully, but paid his rent with commendable prompt.i.tude. A huge woman, with a shrewd not unkindly face, she sat in a rocking chair with a diminutive kitten on her shoulder and a ma.s.s of knitting in her lap. As she listened to Craven's inquiry she tossed the kitten into a basket and bundled the shawl she was making under her arm, while she rose ponderously to her feet and favoured the stranger with a stare that was frankly and undisguisedly inquisitive. A pair of twinkling eyes encased in rolls of fat swept him from head to foot in leisurely survey, and he felt that there was no detail about him that escaped attention, that even the texture of his clothing and the very price of the boots he was wearing were gauged with accuracy and ease. She condescended to speak at last in a voice that was curiously soft, and warmed into something almost approaching enthusiasm.

Madame Craven? but certainly, _au quatrieme_. Monsieur was perhaps a patron of the arts, he desired to buy a picture? It was well, painters were many but buyers were few. Madame was a.s.suredly at home, she was in fact engaged at that moment with a model. A model--_Sapristi_!--he called himself such, but for herself she would have called him _un vrai apache_! Of a countenance, _mon Dieu_! She paused to wave her hands in horror and jerk her head toward the staircase, continuing her confidences in a lowered tone. The door of the studio was open, it was wiser when such gentry presented themselves, and also did she not herself always sit in the hall that she might be within call, one never knew--and Madame was an angel with the heart of a child. A face to study--and she thought of nothing else. But there were those who thought for her, the blessed innocent. It was doubtless because she was English--Monsieur was also English, she observed with another shrewd glance and a wide smile. Madame would be glad to see a compatriot. If Monsieur would do himself the trouble of ascending the stairs he could not mistake the door, it was at the top, and, as she had said, it was open.

She beamed on him graciously as with a murmur of thanks Craven turned to mount the stone staircase. A feeling of relief came to him at the thought of the warm hearted self-appointed guardian sitting in kindly vigilance in the big armchair below. Here, too, it would appear, Gillian had made herself beloved. As he pa.s.sed quickly upward the unnatural calm that had come over him gave place to a very different feeling. It was brought home to him all at once that what he had longed and prayed for was on the point of taking effect. He realised that the ghastly waiting time was over, that in a few moments he would see her, and his heart began to throb violently. Every second that still separated them seemed an age and he took the last remaining flight two steps at a time. But he stopped abruptly as he reached the level of the landing. The open door was within a few feet of him but screened from where he stood.

It was her voice that had arrested him, speaking with an accent of weariness he had never heard before that sent a sudden quiver to his lips. His fingers clenched on the soft hat he held.

"But it does not do at all," she was saying, and the racking cough that accompanied her words struck through Craven's heart like a knife, "it is the expression that is wrong. If you look like that I can never believe that you are what you say you are. Think of some of the horrible things you have told me--try and imagine that you are still tracking down that brute who took your little Colette from you--" A husky voice interrupted her. "No use, Madame, when I remember that I can only think of you and the American doctor who gave her back to me, and our happiness."