The Shadow of the East Part 5

His words, matter-of-fact, almost brutal, brought Craven abruptly to actualities. There was necessity for immediate action. This was the East, where the grim finalities must unavoidably be hastened. But he resented the man's suggestion. To go back to the bungalow seemed a shirking of the responsibility that was his, the last insult he could offer her. But Yoshio argued vehemently, blunt to a degree, and Craven winced once or twice at the irrefutable reasons he put forward. It was true that he could do no real good by staying. It was true that he was of no use in the present emergency, that his absence would make things easier. But that it was the truth made it no less hard to hear. He gave in at last and agreed to all Yoshio's proposals--a curious compound of devotion to his master, shrewd commonsense and knowledge of the laws of the country. He went quickly down the winding path to the gate. The garden hurt him. The careless splashing of the tiny waterfall jarred poignantly--laughing water caring nothing that the hand that had planted much of the beauty of its banks was stilled for ever. It had always seemed a living being tumbling joyously down the hillside, it seemed alive now--callous, self-absorbed.

Craven had no clear impression of the run back into Yokohama and he looked up with surprise when the men stopped. He stood outside the gate for a moment looking over the harbour. He stared at the place in the roadstead where the American yacht had been anch.o.r.ed. Only last night had he laughed and chatted with the Athertons? It was a lifetime ago!

In one night his youth had gone from him. In one night he had piled up a debt that was beyond payment. He gave a quick glance up at the brilliant sky and then went into the house. In the sitting-room he started slowly to pace the floor, his hands clasped behind him, an unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. The mechanical action steadied him and enabled him to concentrate his thoughts. Monotonously he tramped up and down the long narrow room, unconscious of time, until at last he dropped on to a chair beside the writing table and laid his head down on his arms with a weary sigh. The little still body seemed present with him. O Hara San's face continually before him--piteous as he had seen it last, joyous as she had greeted him and thoughtful as when he had first seen it.

That first time--the memory of it rose vividly before him. He had been in Yokohama about a month and was settled in his bungalow. He had gone to the woods to sketch and had found her huddled at the foot of a steep rock from which she had slipped. Her ankle was twisted and she could not move. He had offered his a.s.sistance and she had gazed at him, without speaking, for a few moments, with serious grey eyes that looked oddly out of place in her little oval face. Then she had answered him in slow carefully p.r.o.nounced English. He had laughingly insisted on carrying her home and had just gathered her up into his arms when the old armah arrived, voluble with excitement and alarm for her charge. But the girl had explained to her in rapid j.a.panese and the woman had hurried on to the house to prepare for them, leaving Craven to follow more slowly with his light burden. He had stayed only a few minutes, drinking the ceremonial tea that was offered so shyly.

The next day he had convinced himself that it was only polite for him to enquire about the injured foot. Then he had gone again, hoping to relieve the tedium of her forced inactivity, until the going had become a habit. The acquaintance had ripened quickly. From the first she had trusted him, quickly losing her awe of him and accepting his coming with the simplicity of a child. She had early confided to him the story of her short life--of her solitude and friendlessness; of the mother who had died five years before, bequeathing to her the little house which had been the last gift of the Englishman who had been O Hara San's father and who had tired of her mother and left her two years after her own birth; of the poverty against which they had struggled--for the Englishman had left no provision for them; of the faithful old servant, who had been her mother's nurse; of O Hara San's discovery of her own artistic talent which had enabled her to provide for the simple wants of the little household. She had grown up alone--apart from the world, watched over by the old woman, her mind a tangle of fairy-tales and romance--living for her art, content with her solitude. And into her secluded life had come Barry Craven and swept her off her feet. Child of nature that she was she had been unable to hide from him the love that quickly overwhelmed her. And to Craven the incident of O Hara San had come merely as a relief to the monotony of lotus-eating, he had drifted into the connection from sheer ennui. And then had come interest. No woman had ever before interested him. He had never been able to define the attraction she had had for him, the odd tenderness he had felt for her. He had treated her as a plaything, a fragile toy to be teased and petted. And in his hands she had developed from an innocent child into a woman--with a woman's capacity for devotion and self-sacrifice. She had given everything, with trust and gladness. And he had taken all she gave, with colossal egoism, as his right--accepting lightly all she surrendered with no thought for the innocence he contaminated, the purity he soiled. He had stained her soul before he had killed her body. His hands clenched and unclenched convulsively with the agony of remorse. Recollection was torture. Repentance came too late. _Too late!

Too late!_ he words kept singing in his head as if a demon from h.e.l.l was howling them in his ear. Nothing on earth could undo what he had done.

No power could animate that little dead body. And if she had lived! He shuddered. But she had not lived, she had died--because of him. Because of him, Merciful G.o.d, because of him! And he could make no rest.i.tution.

What was there left for him to do? A life of expiation was not atonement enough. There seemed only one solution--a life for a life. And that was no reparation, only justice. He put no value on his own life--he wished vaguely that the worth of it were greater--he had merely wasted it and now he had forfeited it. Remained only to end it--now. There was no reason for delay. He had no preparations to make. His affairs were all in order. His heir was his aunt, his father's only sister, who would be a better guardian of the Craven estates and interests than he had ever been. Peters was independent and Yoshio provided for. There was nothing to be done. He rose and opening a drawer in the table took out a revolver and held it a moment in his hand, looking at it dispa.s.sionately. It was not the ultimate purpose for which it had been intended. He had never imagined a time when he might end his own life.

He had always vaguely connected suicide with cowardice. Was it the coward's way? Perhaps! Who can say what cowardice or courage is required to take the blind leap into the Great Unknown? That did not trouble him.

It was no question of courage or cowardice but he felt convinced that his death was the only payment possible.

But as his finger pressed the trigger there was a slight sound beside him, his wrist and arm were caught in a vice-like grip and the weapon exploded harmlessly in the air as he staggered back, his arm almost broken with the jiu-jitsu hold against which even his great strength could do nothing. He struggled fruitlessly until he was released, then reeled against the table, with teeth set, clasping his wrenched wrist--the sudden frustration of his purpose leaving him, shaking. He turned stiffly. Yoshio was standing by him, phlegmatic as usual, showing no signs of exertion or emotion as he proffered a lacquer tray, with the usual formula: "Master's mail."

Craven's eyes changed slowly from dull suffering to blazing wrath.

Uncontrolled rage filled him. How dared Yoshio interfere? How dared he drag him back into the h.e.l.l from which he had so nearly escaped? He caught the man's shoulder savagely.

"d.a.m.n you!" he cried chokingly. "What the devil do you mean--" But the j.a.p's very impa.s.siveness checked him and with an immense effort he regained command of himself. And imperturbably Yoshio advanced the tray again.

"Master's mail," he repeated, in precisely the same voice as before, but this time he raised his veiled glance to Craven's face. For a moment the two men stared at each other, the grey eyes tortured and drawn, the brown ones lit for an instant with deep devotion. Then Craven took the letters mechanically and dropped heavily into a chair. The j.a.p picked up the revolver and, quietly replacing it in the drawer from which it had been taken, left the room, noiseless as he had entered it. He seemed to know intuitively that it would be left where he put it.

Alone, Craven leaned forward with a groan, burying his face in his hands.

At last he sat up wearily and his eyes fell on the letters lying unopened on the table beside him. He fingered them listlessly and then threw them down again while he searched his pockets absently for the missing cigarette case. Remembering, he jerked himself to his feet with an exclamation of pain. Was all life henceforward to be a series of torturing recollections? He swore, and flung his head up angrily.

Coward! whining already like a kicked cur!

He got a cigarette from a near table and picking up the letters carried them out on to the verandah to read. There were two, both registered.

The handwriting on one envelope was familiar and his eyes widened as he looked at it. He opened it first. It was written from Florence and dated three months earlier. With no formal beginning it straggled up and down the sides of various sheets of cheap foreign paper, the inferior violet ink almost indecipherable in places.

"I wonder in what part of the globe this letter will find you? I have been trying to write to you for a long time--and always putting it off--but they tell me now that if I am to write at all there must be no more _manana_. They have cried 'wolf' so often in the last few months that I had grown sceptical, but even I realise now that there must be no delay. I have delayed because I have procrastinated all my life and because I am ashamed--ashamed for the first time in all my shameless career. But there is no need to tell you what I am--you told me candidly enough yourself in the old days--it is sufficient to say that it is the same John Locke as then--drunkard and gambler, spendthrift and waster!

And I don't think that my worst enemy would have much to add to this record, but then my worst enemy has always been myself. Looking back now over my life--queer what a stimulating effect the certainty of death has to the desire to find even one good action wherewith to appease one's conscience--it is a marvel to me that Providence has allowed me to c.u.mber the earth so long. However, it's all over now--they give me a few days at the outside--so I must write at once or never. Barry, I'm in trouble, the bitterest trouble I have ever experienced--not for myself, G.o.d knows I wouldn't ask even your help, but for another who is dearer to me than all the world and for whose future I can do nothing. You never knew that I married. I committed that indiscretion in Rome with a little Spanish dancer who ought to have known better than to be attracted by my _beaux yeux_--for I had nothing else to offer her. We existed in misery for a couple of years and then she left me, for a more gilded position. But I had the child, which was all I cared about. Thank G.o.d, for her sake, that I was legally married to poor little Lola, she has at least no stain on her birth with which to reproach me. The officious individual who is personally conducting me to the Valley of the Shadow warns me that I must be brief--I kept the child with me as long as I could, people were wonderfully kind, but it was no life for her. I've come down in the social scale even since you knew me, Barry, and at last I sent her away, though it broke my heart. Still even that was better than seeing her day by day lose all respect for me. My miserable pittance dies with me and she is absolutely unprovided for. My family cast off me and all my works many years ago, but I put my pride in my pocket and appealed for help for Gillian and they suggested--a d.a.m.ned charitable inst.i.tution! I was pretty nearly desperate until I thought of you. I know no one else. For G.o.d's sake, Barry, don't fail me. I can and I do trust Gillian to you. I have made you her guardian, it is all legally arranged and my lawyer in London has the papers. He is a well-known man and emanates respectability--my last claim to decency!

Gillian is at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Paris. My only consolation is that you are so rich that financially she will be no embarra.s.sment to you. I realize what I am asking and the enormity of it, but I am a dying man and my excuse is--Gillian. Oh, man, be good to my little girl. I always hoped that something would turn up, but it didn't!

Perhaps I never went to look for it, _quien sabe?_ I shall never have the chance again...."

The signature was barely recognisable, the final letter terminating in a wandering line as if the pen had dropped from nerveless fingers.

Craven stared at the loose sheets in his hands for some time in horrified dismay, at first hardly comprehending, then as the full significance of John Locke's dying bequest dawned on him he flung them down and, walking to the edge of the verandah, looked over the harbour, tugging his moustache and scowling in utter perplexity. A child--a girl child! How could he with his soiled hands a.s.sume the guardianship of a child? He smiled bitterly at the irony of it. Providence was dealing hard with the child in the Paris convent, from dissolute father to criminal guardian. And yet Providence had already that morning intervened on her behalf--two minutes later and there would have been no guardian to take the trust. Providence clearly held the same views as John Locke on charitable inst.i.tutions.

He thought of Locke as he had known him years ago, in Paris, a man twenty years his senior--penniless and intemperate but with an irresistible charm, rolling stone and waster but proud as a Spaniard; a man of the world with the heart of a boy, the enemy of n.o.body but himself, weak but lovable; a ragged coat and the manners of a prince; idealist and failure.

Craven read the letter through again. Locke had forced his hand--he had no option but to take up the charge entrusted to him. What a legacy!

Surely if John Locke had known he would have rather committed his daughter to the tender mercies even of the "inst.i.tution." But he had not known and he had trusted him. The thought was a sudden spur, urging him as nothing else could have done, bringing out all that was best and strongest in his nature. In a few hours he had crashed from the pinnacle on which he had soared in the blindness of egoism down into depths of self-realisation that seemed bottomless, and at the darkest moment when his world was lying in pieces under his feet--this had come. Another chance had been given to him. Craven's jaw set squarely as he thrust Locke's dying appeal into his pocket.

He ripped open the second letter. It was, as he guessed, from the lawyer and merely confirmed Locke's letter, with the additional information that his client had died a few hours after writing the said letter and that he had forwarded the news to the Mother Superior of the Convent School in Paris.

Craven went back into the sitting-room to write cables.

CHAPTER III

Owing to a breakdown on the line the boat-train from Ma.r.s.eilles crawled into the Gare du Lyon a couple of hours late. Craven had not slept. He had given his berth in the waggon-lit to an invalid fellow pa.s.senger and had sat up all night in an overcrowded, overheated carriage, choked with the stifling atmosphere, his long legs cramped for lack of s.p.a.ce.

It was early March, and the difference between the temperature of the train and the raw air of the station struck him unpleasantly as he climbed down on to the platform.

Leaving Yoshio, equally at home in Paris as in Yokohama, to collect luggage, he signalled to a waiting taxi. He had the hood opened and, pushing back his hat, let the keen wind blow about his face. The cab jerked over the rough streets, at this early hour crowded with people--working Paris going to its daily toil--and he watched them hurrying by with the indifference of familiarity. Gradually he ceased even to look at the varied types, the jostling traffic, the bizarre posters and the busy newspaper kiosks. His thoughts were back in Yokohama. It had been six weeks before he could get away, six interminable weeks of misery and self-loathing. He had shirked nothing and evaded nothing. Much had been saved him by the discreet courtesy of the j.a.panese officials, but the ordeal had left him with jangling nerves. Fortunately the ship was nearly empty and the solitude he sought obtainable. He felt an outcast. To have joined as he had always previously done in the light-hearted routine of a crowded ship bent on amus.e.m.e.nts and gaiety would have been impossible.

He sought mental relief in action and hours spent tramping the lonely decks brought, if not relief, endurance.

And, always in the background, Yoshio, capable and devoted, stood between him and the petty annoyances that inevitably occur in travelling--annoyances that in his overwrought state would have been doubly annoying--with a thoughtfulness that was silently expressed in a dozen different devices for his comfort. That the j.a.p knew a great deal more than he himself did of the tragedy that had happened in the little house on the hill Craven felt sure, but no information had been volunteered and he had asked for none. He could not speak of it. And Yoshio, the inscrutable, would continue to be silent. The perpetual reminder of all that he could wish to forget Yoshio became, illogically, more than ever indispensable to him. At first, in his stunned condition, he had scarcely been sensible of the man's tact and care, but gradually he had come to realize how much he owed to his j.a.panese servant. And yet that was the least of his obligation. There was a greater--the matter of a life; whatever it might mean to Craven, to Yoshio the simple payment of a debt contracted years ago in California. That more than this had underlain the j.a.panese mind when it made its quick decision Craven could not determine; the code of the Oriental is not that of the Occidental, the demands of honour are interpreted and satisfied differently. Life in itself is nothing to the j.a.panese, the disposal of it merely the exigency of a moment and withal a personal prerogative. By all the accepted canons of his own national ideals Yoshio should have stood on one side--but he had chosen to interfere. Whatever the motive, Yoshio had paid his debt in full.

The weeks at sea braced Craven as nothing else could have done. As the ship neared France the perplexities of the charge he was preparing to undertake increased. His utter unfitness filled him with dismay. On receipt of John Locke's amazing letter he had both cabled and written to his aunt in London explaining his dilemma, giving suitable extracts from Locke's appeal, and imploring her help. And yet the thought of his aunt in connection with the upbringing of a child brought a smile to his lips. She was about as unsuited, in her own way, as he. Caro Craven was a bachelor lady of fifty--spinster was a term wholly inapplicable to the strong-minded little woman who had been an art student in Paris in the days when insular hands were lifted in horror at the mere idea, and was a designation, moreover, deprecated strongly by herself as an insult to one who stood--at least in her own sphere--on an equality with the lords of creation. She was a sculptor, whose work was known on both sides of the channel. When at home she lived in a big house in London, but she travelled much, accompanied by an elderly maid who had been with her for thirty years. And it was of the maid as much as of the mistress that Craven thought as the taxi b.u.mped over the cobbled streets.

"If we can only interest Mary." There was a gleam of hope in the thought. "She will be the saving of the situation. She spoiled me thoroughly when I was a nipper." And buoyed with the recollection of grim-visaged angular Mary, who hid a very tender heart beneath a somewhat forbidding exterior, he overpaid the chauffeur cheerfully.

There was an acc.u.mulation of letters waiting for him at the hotel, but he shuffled them all into his overcoat pocket, with the exception of one from Peters which he tore open and read immediately, still standing in the lounge.

An hour later he set out on foot for the quiet hotel which had been his aunt's resort since her student days, and where she was waiting for him now, according to a telegram that he had received on his arrival at Ma.r.s.eilles. The hall door of her private suite was opened by the elderly maid, whose face lit up as she greeted him.

"Miss Craven is waiting in the salon, sir. She has been tramping the floor this hour or more, expecting you," she confided as she preceded him down the corridor.

Miss Craven was standing in a characteristic att.i.tude before an open fireplace, her feet planted firmly on the hearthrug, her short plump figure clothed in a grey coat and skirt of severe masculine cut, her hands plunged deep into her jacket pockets, her short curly grey hair considerably ruffled. She bore down on her nephew with out-stretched hands.

"My dear boy, there you are at last! I have been waiting _hours_ for you. Your train must have been very late--abominable railway service!

Have you had any breakfast? Yes? Good. Then take a cigarette--they are in that box at your elbow--and tell me about this amazing thunderbolt that you have hurled at me. What a preposterous proposition for two bachelors like you and me! To be sure your extraordinary friend did not include me in his wild scheme--though no doubt he would have, had he known of my existence. Was the man mad? Who was he, anyhow? John Locke of where? There are dozens of Lockes. And why did he select you of all people? What fools men are!" She subsided suddenly into an easy chair and crossed one neat pump over the other. "All of 'em!" she added emphatically, flicking cigarette ash into the fire with a vigorous sidelong jerk. Her eyes were studying his face attentively, seeking for themselves the answer to the more personal inquiries that would have seemed necessary to a less original woman meeting a much-loved nephew after a lapse of years. Craven smiled at the characteristically peculiar greeting and the well remembered formula. He settled his long limbs comfortably into an opposite chair.

"Even Peter?" he asked, lighting a cigarette.

Miss Craven laughed good temperedly.

"Peter," she rejoined succinctly, "is the one brilliant exception that proves the rule. I have an immense respect for Peter." He looked at her curiously. "And--me, Aunt Caro?" he asked with an odd note in his voice.

Miss Craven glanced for a moment at the big figure sprawled in the chair near her, then looked back at the fire with pursed lips and wrinkled forehead, and rumpled her hair more thoroughly than before.

"My dear boy," she said at last soberly, "you resemble my unhappy brother altogether too much for my peace of mind."

He winced. Her words probed the still raw wound. But unaware of the appositeness of her remark Miss Craven continued thoughtfully, still staring into the fire:

"The Supreme Sculptor, when He made me, denied me the good looks that are proverbial in our family--but in compensation he endowed me with a solid mind to match my solid body. The Family means a great deal to me, Barry--more than anybody has ever realised--and there are times when I wonder why the solidity of mind was given to the one member of the race who could not perpetuate it in the direct line." She sighed, and then as if ashamed of unwonted emotion, jerked her dishevelled grey head with a movement that was singularly reminiscent of her nephew. Craven flushed.

"You're the best man of the family, Aunt Caro."

"So your mother used to say--poor child." Her voice softened suddenly.

She got up restlessly and resumed her former position before the fire, her hands back in the pockets of her mannish coat.

"What about your plans, Barry? What are you going to do?" she said briskly, with an evident desire to avoid further moralising. He joined her on the hearthrug, leaning against the mantelpiece.