The Shadow of the East Part 8

She dropped to her knees and flicked the offended organ with a sc.r.a.p of lace and lawn.

"Powder," she said gravely.

"You can have no idea," she added, looking up suddenly, "how delightful it is to powder your nose when you have been brought up in a convent.

The Nuns consider it the height of depravity," and she laughed, a ringing girlish outburst of amus.e.m.e.nt that Craven had never yet heard.

He looked at her as she knelt on the rug soothing the poodle's outraged feelings and smiling at Peters who was offering his own more adequate handkerchief. That laugh was a revelation--in spite of her self-possession, of her reserve, she was in reality only a girl, hardly more than a child, but influenced by her quiet gravity he had forgotten the fact.

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 subst.i.tuted 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 j.a.pan--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.

The fascination of the old house was growing every moment more insistent, like a spell laid on her. She gave herself up to it, to the odd happiness it inspired. She felt it curiously familiar. A strange feeling came to her--it was as if from childhood she had been journeying and now come home. An absurd thought, but she loved it. She had never had a home, but for the next two years she could pretend. To pretend was easy. All her life she had lived in a land of dreams, tenanted with shadowy inhabitants of her own imagining--puppets who moved obedient to her will through all the devious paths of make-believe; a spirit world where she ranged free of the narrow walls that restricted her liberty.

It had been easy to pretend in the convent--how much easier here in the solid embodiment of a dream castle and stimulated by the real human affection for which her heart had starved. The love she had hitherto known had been unsatisfying, too impersonal, too restrained, too interwoven with mystical devotion. Ma.s.s Craven's affection was of a hardier, more practical nature. Blunt candour and sincerity personified, she did not attempt to disguise her attachment. She had been attracted, had approved, and had finally co-opted Gillian into the family. She had, moreover, great faith in her own judgment. And to justify that faith Gillian would have gone through fire and water.

She looked gratefully at the solid little figure sitting at the foot of the table and a gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt chased the seriousness from her eyes.

Miss Craven was in the throes of a heated discussion with Peters which involved elaborate diagrams traced on the smooth cloth with a salt spoon, and as Gillian watched she completed her design with a fine flourish and leant back triumphant in her chair, rumpling her hair fantastically. But the agent, unconvinced, fell upon her mercilessly and in a moment she was bent forward again in vigorous protest, drumming impatiently on the table with her fingers as he laughingly altered her drawing. They were the best of friends and wrangled continually. To Gillian it was all so fresh, so novel. Then her attention veered.

Throughout dinner Craven had been silent. When once started on a discussion his aunt and Peters tore the controversy amicably to tatters in complete absorption. He had not joined in the argument. As always Gillian was too shy to address him of her own accord, but she was acutely conscious of his nearness. She deprecated her own att.i.tude, yet silence was better than the ba.n.a.l plat.i.tudes which were all she had to offer. Her range was so restricted, his--who had travelled the world over--must be so great. With the exception of one subject her knowledge was negligible. But he too was an artist--hopeless to attempt that topic, she concluded with swift contempt for her own limitations; to offer the opinions of a convent-bred amateur to one who had studied in famous Paris ateliers and was acquainted with the art of many countries would be an impertinence. But yet she knew that sometime she must break through the wall that her own diffidence had built up; in the intimacy of country house life the continuance of such an att.i.tude would be both impossible and ridiculous. Contritely she acknowledged that the tension between them was largely her own fault, a disability due to training.

But she could not go through life sheltering behind that wholly inadequate plea. If there was anything in her at all she must rise above the conventions in which she had been reared; she had done with the narrowness of the past, now she must think broadly, expansively, in all things--even in the trivial matter of social intercourse. A saving sense of humour sent a laugh bubbling into her throat which nearly escaped.

It was such a little thing, but she had magnified it so greatly. What, after all, did it amount to--the awkwardness of a schoolgirl very properly ignored by a guardian who could not be other than bored with her society. _Tant pis!_ She could at least try to be polite. She turned with the heroic intention of breaking the ice and plunging into conversation, ba.n.a.l though it might be. But her eyes did not arrive at his face, they were caught and held by his hand, lying on the white cloth, turning and twisting an empty wine-gla.s.s between long strong fingers. Hands fascinated her. They were indicative of character, testimonies of individual peculiarities. She was sensitive to the impression they conveyed. With the limited material available she had studied them--nuns' hands, priests' hands, hands of the various inmates of the houses where she had stayed, and the hands of the man who had taught her. From him she had learned more than the mere rudiments of her art; under his tuition a crude interest had developed into a definite study, and as she sat looking at Barry Craven's hand a sentence from one of his lectures recurred to her--"there are in some hands, particularly in the case of men, characteristics denoting certain pa.s.sions and attributes that jump to the eye as forcibly as if they were expressions of face."

Engaged in present study she forgot her original purpose, noting the salient points of a fresh type, enumerating details that formed the composite whole. A strong hand that could in its strength be merciless--could it equally in its strength be merciful? The strange thought came unexpectedly as she watched the thin stem of the winegla.s.s turning rapidly and then more slowly until, with a little tinkle, it snapped as the hand clenched suddenly, the knuckles showing white through the tanned skin. Gillian drew a quick breath. Had she been the cause of the mishap--had she stared noticeably, and he been angry at an impertinence? Her cheeks burned and in a misery of shyness she forced her eyes to his face. Her contrition was needless. Heedless of her he was looking at the splintered gla.s.s between his fingers with a faint expression of surprise, as if his wandering thoughts were but half recalled by the accident. For a moment he stared at the shattered pieces--then laid them down indifferently.

Gillian smothered an hysterical inclination to laugh. He was so totally negligent of her presence that even this little incident had failed to make him sensible of her scrutiny. Immersed in his thoughts he was very obviously miles away from Craven Towers and the vicinity of a troublesome ward. And suddenly it hurt. She was nothing to him but a shy _gauche_ girl whose very existence was an embarra.s.sment. The determination so bravely formed died before his cold detachment. More than ever was speech impossible.

She shrugged faintly with a little pout. So, confident of his preoccupation, she continued to study him. Had the homecoming intensified the sadness of his eyes and deepened the lines about his mouth?--were memories of the mother he had adored sharpening tonight the look of suffering on his face? Or was her imagination, over-excited, exaggerating what she saw and fancying a great sorrow where there was only boredom? She pondered, and had almost concluded that the latter was the saner explanation when--watching--she saw a sudden spasm cross his face of such agony that she caught her lip fiercely between her teeth to stifle an exclamation. In the fleeting expression of a moment she had seen the revelation of a soul in torment. She looked away hastily, feeling dismayed at having trespa.s.sed. She had discovered a secret wound. She sat tense, and a quick fear came lest the others might have also seen. She glanced at them furtively. But the argument was still unsettled, the tablecloth between them scored and creased with conflicting sketches. She drew a sharp little sigh of relief. Only she had noticed, and she did not matter. For a few moments her thoughts ran riot until she pulled them up frowningly. It was no business of hers--she had no right even to speculate on his affairs. Angry with herself she turned for distraction to the portraits on the walls--they at least would offer no disturbing problem. But her determination to keep her thoughts from her guardian met with a check at the outset for she found herself staring at Barry Craven as she had visualised him in that first moment of meeting--steel-clad. It was the picture of a young man, dressed in the style of the Elizabethan period, wearing a light inlaid cuira.s.s and leaning negligently against a stone bal.u.s.trade, a hooded falcon on his wrist. The resemblance to the owner of Craven Towers was remarkable--the same build, the same haughty carriage of the head, the same features and colouring; the mouth only of the painted gallant differed, for the lips were not set sternly but curved in a singularly winning smile. The portrait had recently been cleaned and the colours stood out freshly. The pose of the figure was curiously unrestrained for the period, a suggestion of energy--barely concealed by the indolent att.i.tude--broke through the conventional treatment of the time, as if the painter had responded to an influence that had overcome tradition. The whole body seemed to pulsate with life. Gillian looked at it entranced; instinctively her eyes sought the pictured hands. The one that held the falcon was covered with an embroidered leather glove, but the other was bare, holding a set of jesses. And even the hands were similar, the characteristics faithfully transmitted. Peters' voice startled her. "You are looking at the first Barry Craven, Miss Locke. It is a wonderful picture. The resemblance is extraordinary, is it not?"

She looked up and met the agent's magnetic smile across the table.

"It is--extraordinary," she said slowly; "it might be a costume portrait of Mr. Craven, except that in treatment the picture is so different from a modern painting."

Peters laughed.

"The professional eye, Miss Locke! But I am glad that you admit the likeness. I should have quarrelled horribly with you if you had failed to see it. The young man in the picture," he went on, warming to the subject as he saw the girl's interest, "was one of the most romantic personages of his time. He lived in the reign of Elizabeth and was poet, sculptor, and musician--there are two volumes of his verse in the library and the marble Hermes in the hall is his work. When he was seventeen he left the Towers to go to court. He seems to have been universally beloved, judging from various letters that have come down to us. He was a close friend of Sir Philip Sidney and one of Spenser's numerous patrons. A special favourite with Elizabeth--in fact her partiality seems to have been a source of some embarra.s.sment, according to entries in his private journal. She knighted him for no particular reason that has ever transpired, indeed it seems to have been a matter of surprise to himself, for he records it in his journal thus:

"'--dubbed knight this day by Gloriana. G.o.d He knoweth why, but not I.'

He was an idealist and visionary, with the power of putting his thoughts into words--his love poems are the most beautiful I have ever read, but they are quite impersonal. There is no evidence that his love was ever given to any 'faire ladye.' No woman's name was ever connected with his, and from his detached att.i.tude towards the tender pa.s.sion he earned, in a fantastical court, the euphuistic appellation of _L'amant d' Amour._ Quite suddenly, after ten years in the queen's household, he fitted out an expedition to America. He gave no reason. Distaste for the artificial existence prevailing at Court, sorrow at the death of his friend Sidney, or a wander-hunger fed on the tales brought home by the numerous merchant adventurers may have been the cause of this surprising step.

His decision provoked dismay among his friends and brought a furious tirade from Elizabeth who commanded him to remain near her. But in spite of royal oaths and entreaties--more of the former than the latter--he sailed to Virginia on a land expedition. Two letters came from him during the next few years, but after that--silence. His fate is not known. He was the first of many Cravens to vanish into oblivion searching for new lands." The pleasant voice hesitated and dropped to a lower, more serious note. And Gillian was puzzled at the sudden anxiety that clouded the agent's smiling blue eyes. She had listened with eager interest. It was history brought close and made alive in its intimate connection with the house. The dream castle was more wonderful even than she had thought. She smiled her thanks at Peters, and drew a long breath.

"I like that," and looking at the picture again, "the Lover of Love!"

she repeated softly; "it's a very beautiful idea."

"A very unsatisfactory one for any poor soul who may have been fool enough to lose her heart to him." Miss Craven's voice was caustic.

"I have often wondered if any demoiselle 'pined in a green and yellow melancholy for his sake,' she added, rising from the table.

"Reason enough, if he knew of it, for going to Virginia," said Craven, with a hard laugh. "The family traditions have never tended to undue consideration of the weaker s.e.x."

"Barry, you are horrible!"

"Possibly, my dear aunt, but correct," he replied coolly, crossing the room to open the door. "Even Peter, who has the family history at his fingers' ends, cannot deny it." His voice was provocative but Peters, beyond a mildly sarcastic "--thank you for the 'even,' Barry--" refused to be drawn.

Her nephew's words would formerly have aroused a storm of indignant protest from Miss Craven, touched in a tender spot. But now some intuition warned her to silence. She put her arm through Gillian's and left the room without attempting to expostulate.

In the drawing room she sat down to a patience table, lit a cigarette, rumpled her hair, and laid out the cards frowningly. More than ever was she convinced that in the two years he had been away some serious disaster had occurred. His whole character appeared to have undergone a change. He was totally different. The old Barry had been neither hard nor cynical, the new Barry was both. In the last few weeks she had had ample opportunity for judging. She perceived that a heavy shadow lay upon him darkening his home-coming--she had pictured it so very differently, and she sighed over the futility of antic.i.p.ation. His happiness meant to her so much that she raged at her inability to help him. Until he spoke she could do nothing. And she knew that he would never speak. The nightly occupation lost its usual zest, so she shuffled the cards absently and began a fresh game.

Gillian was on the hearthrug, Houston's head in her lap. She leant against Miss Craven's chair, dreaming as she had dreamt in the old convent until the sudden lifting of the dog's head under her hands made her aware of Peters standing beside her. He looked down silently on the card table for a few moments, pointed with a nicotine-stained finger to a move Miss Craven had missed and then wandered across the room and sat down at the piano. For a while his hands moved silently over the keys, then he began to play, and his playing was exquisite. Gillian sat and marvelled. Peters and music had seemed widely apart. He had appeared so essentially a sportsman; in spite of the literary tendency that his sympathetic account of the Elizabethan Barry Craven had suggested she had a.s.sociated him with rougher, more physical pursuits. He was obviously an out-door man; a gun seemed a more natural complement to his hands than the sensitive keys of a piano, his thick rather clumsy fingers manifestly incompatible with the delicate touch that was filling the room with wonderful harmony. It was a check to her cherished theory which she acknowledged reluctantly. But she forgot to theorise in the sheer joy of listening.

"Why did he not make music a career?" she whispered, under cover of some crashing chords. Miss Craven smiled at her eager face.

"Can you see Peter kow-towing to concert directors, and grimacing at an audience?" she replied, rescuing a king from her rubbish heap.

With an answering smile Gillian subsided into her former position.

Music moved her deeply and her highly strung artistic temperament was responding to the beauty of Peters' playing. It was a Russian folk song, plaintive and simple, with a curious minor refrain like the sigh of an aching heart--wild sad harmony with pain in it that gripped the throat.

Swayed by the sorrow-haunted music a wave of foreboding came over her, a strange indefinite fear that was formless but that weighed on her like a crushing burden. The happiness of the last few weeks seemed suddenly swamped in the recollection of the misery rampant in the world. Who, if their inmost hearts were known, were truly happy? And her thoughts, becoming more personal, flitted back over the desolate days of her own sad girlhood and then drifted to the tragedy of her father. Then, with a forward leap that brought her suddenly to the present, she thought of the sorrow she had seen on Craven's face in that breathless moment at dinner time. Was there only sadness in the world? The brooding brown eyes grew misty. A pa.s.sionate prayer welled up in her heart that complete happiness might touch her once, if only for a moment.

Then the music changed and with it the girl's mood. She gave her head a little backward jerk and blinked the moisture from her eyes angrily.

What was the matter with her? Surely she was the most ungrateful girl in the universe. If there was sorrow in the world for her then it must be of her own making. She had been shown almost unbelievable kindness, nothing had been omitted to make her happy. The contrast of her life only a few weeks ago and now was immeasurable. What more did she want?

Was she so selfish that she could even think of the unhappiness that was over? Shame filled her, and she raised her eyes to the woman beside her with a sudden rush of grat.i.tude and love. But Miss Craven, interested at last in her game, was blind to her surroundings, and with a little smile Gillian turned her attention to the silent occupant of the chair near her. Craven had come into the room a few minutes before. He was leaning back listlessly, one hand shading his face, a neglected cigarette dangling from the other. She looked at him long and earnestly, wondering, as she always wondered, what a.s.sociation there had been between him and such a man as her father--what had induced him to take upon himself the burden that had been laid upon him. And her cheeks grew hot again at the thought of the enc.u.mbrance she was to him. It was preposterous that he should be so saddled!

She stifled a sigh and her eyes grew dreamy as she fell to thinking of the future that lay before her. And as she planned with eager confidence her hand moved soothingly over the dog's head in measure to the languorous waltz that Peters was playing.

After a sudden unexpected chord the player rose from the piano and joined the circle at the other end of the room. Miss Craven was shuffling vigorously. "Thank you, Peter," she said, with a smiling nod, "it's like old times to hear you play again. Gillian thinks you have missed your vocation, she would like to see you at the Queen's Hall."

Peters laughed at the girl's blushing protest and sat down near the card table. Miss Craven paused in a deal to light a fresh cigarette.

"What's the news in the county?" she asked, adding for Gillian's benefit: "He's a walking chronicle, my dear."

Peters laughed. "Nothing startling, dear lady. We have been a singularly well-behaved community of late. Old Lacy of Holmwood is dead, Bill Lacy reigns in his stead and is busy cutting down oaks to pay for youthful indiscretions--none of 'em very fierce when all's said and done. The Hamer-Banisters have gone under at last--more's the pity--and Hamer is let to some wealthy Australians who are possessed apparently of unlimited cash, a most curious phraseology, and an a.s.surance which is beautiful to behold. They had good introductions and Alex has taken them up enthusiastically--there are kindred tastes."

"Horses, I presume. How are the Horringfords?"

"Much as usual," replied Peters. "Horringford is absorbed in things Egyptian, and Alex is on the warpath again," he added darkly.

Miss Craven grinned.