The Shadow of the East. Edith Maude Hull

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СКАЧАТЬ all the djinns are gone, Bar-ree,” she said with a little nervous laugh.

      He guessed the struggle she was making and chimed in with her mood.

      “Sensible fellows,” he said lightly, tapping a cigarette on the verandah rail. “Gone home to bed I expect. Time you went to bed too. I’ll just smoke this cigarette.” But as she turned away obediently, he caught her back, with a sudden exclamation:

      “By Jove! I nearly forgot.”

      He took a tiny package from his pocket and gave it to her. Girlishly eager her fingers shook with excitement as she ripped the covering from a small gold case attached to a slender chain. She pressed the spring and uttered a little cry of delight. The miniature of Craven had been painted by a French artist visiting Yokohama and was a faithful portrait.

      “Oh, Bar-ree,” she gasped with shining eyes, lifting her face like a child for his kiss. She leaned against him studying the painting earnestly, appreciating the mastery of a fellow craftsman, ecstatically happy—then she slipped the chain over her head and closing the case tucked it away inside her kimono.

      “Now I have two,” she murmured softly.

      “Two?” said Craven pausing as he lighted his cigarette. “What do you mean?”

      “Wait, I show,” she replied and vanished into the house. She was back in a moment holding in her hand another locket. He took it from her and moved closer under the lantern to look at it. It hung from a thick twisted cable of gold, and set round with pearls it was bigger and heavier than the dainty case O Hara San had hidden against her heart. For a moment he hesitated, overcoming an inexplicable reluctance to open it—then he snapped the spring sharply.

      “Good God!” he whispered slowly through dry lips. And yet he had known, known intuitively before the lid flew back, for it was the second time that he had handled such a locket—the first he had seen and left lying on his dead mother’s breast.

      He stood as if turned to stone, staring with horror at the replica of his own face lying in the hollow of his hand. The thick dark hair, the golden brown moustache, the deep grey eyes—all were the same. Only the chin in the picture was different for it was hidden by a short pointed beard; so was it in the miniature that was buried with his mother, so was it in the big portrait that hung in the dining-room at Craven Towers.

      “Who gave you this?” he asked thickly, and O Hara San stared at him in bewilderment, frightened at the strangeness of his voice.

      “My mother,” she said wonderingly. “He was Bar-ree, too. See,” she added pointing with a slender forefinger to the name engraved inside the case.

      A nightbird shrieked weirdly close to the house and a sudden gust of wind moaned through the pine trees. The sweat stood out on Craven’s forehead in great drops and the cigarette, fallen from his hand, lay smouldering on the matting at his feet.

      He pulled the girl to him and turning her face up stared down into the great grey eyes, piteous now with unknown fear, and cursed his blindness. Often the unrecognised likeness had puzzled him. He dropped the miniature and ground it savagely to powder with his heel, heedless of O Hara San’s sharp cry of distress, and turned to the railing gripping it with shaking hands.

      “Damn him, damn him!”

      Why had instinct never warned him? Why had he, knowing the girl’s mixed parentage and knowing his own family history, made no inquiries? A wave of sick loathing swept over him. His head reeled. He turned to O Hara San crouched sobbing on the matting over the little heap of crushed gold and pearls. Was there still a loop-hole?

      “What was he to you?” he said hoarsely, and he did not recognise his own voice.

      She looked up fearfully, then shrank back with a cry—hiding her eyes to shut out the distorted face that bent over her.

      “He was my father,” she whispered almost inaudibly. But it sounded to Craven as if she had shouted it from the housetop. Without a word he turned from her and stumbled toward the verandah steps. He must get away, he must be alone—alone with the night to wrestle with this ghastly tangle.

      O Hara San sprang to her feet in terror. She did not understand what had happened. Her mother had rarely spoken of the man who had first betrayed and then deserted her—she had loved him too faithfully; with the girl’s limited experience all western faces seemed curiously alike and the similarity of an uncommon name conveyed nothing to her for she did not realize that it was uncommon. She could not comprehend this terrible change in the man who had never been anything but gentle with her. She only knew that he was going, that something inexplicable was taking him from her. A wild scream burst from her lips and she sprang across the verandah, clinging to him frantically, her upturned face beseeching, striving to hold him.

      “Bar-ree, Bar-ree! you must not go. I die without you. Bar-ree! my love—” Her voice broke in a frightened whisper as he caught her head in his hands and stared down at her with eyes that terrified her.

      “Your—love?” he repeated with a strange ring in his voice, and then he laughed—a terrible laugh that echoed horribly in the silent night and seemed to snap some tension in his brain. He tore away her hands and fled down the steps into the garden. He ran blindly, instinctively turning to the hillside track that led further into the country, climbing steadily upward, seeking the solitary woods. He did not hear the girl’s shriek of despair, did not see her fall unconscious on the matting, he did not see a lithe figure that bounded from the back of the house nor hear the feet that tracked him. He heard and saw nothing. His brain was dulled. His only impulse was that of the wounded animal—to hide himself alone with nature and the night. He plunged on up the hillside climbing fiercely, tirelessly, wading mountain streams and forcing his way through thick brushwood. He had taken, off his coat earlier in the evening and his silk shirt was ripped to ribbons. His hair lay wet against his forehead and his cheek dripped blood where a splintered bamboo had torn it, but he did not feel it. He came at last to a tiny clearing in the forest where the moon shone through a break in the trees. There he halted, rocking unsteadily on his feet, passing his hand across his face to clear the blood and perspiration from his eyes, and then dropped like a log. The next moment the bushes parted and his Japanese servant crept noiselessly to his side. He bent down over him for an instant. Craven lay motionless with his face hidden in his arms, but as the Jap watched a shudder shook him from head to foot and the man backed cautiously, disappearing among the bushes as silently as he had come.

      The breeze died away and it was quite still within the moonlit clearing. A broad shaft of cold white light fell directly on the prone figure. He was morally stunned and for a long time the agony of his mind was blunted. But gradually the first shock passed and full realization rushed over him. His hands dug convulsively into the soft earth and he writhed at his helplessness. What he had done was irremediable. It was a sudden thunderbolt that had flashed across his clear sky. This morning the sun had shone as usual and everything had seemed serene to him whose life had always been easy—tonight he was wrestling in a hell of his own making. Why had it come to him? He knew that his life had been comparatively blameless. Why should this one sin, so common throughout the world, recoil on him so terribly? Why should he, among all the thousands of men who had sinned similarly, be reserved for such a nemesis? Why of him alone should such a reckoning be demanded? Surely the fault was not his. Surely it lay with the man who had wrecked his mother’s life and broken her heart, the man who had neglected his duties and repudiated his responsibilities and who had been faithful to neither wife nor mistress. He was to blame. At the thought of his father an access of rage passed over Craven and he cursed him in a kind of dull fury. His fingers gripped the ground as if they were about the throat of the man whom he hated with all the strength of his being. The mystery of his father had always lain like СКАЧАТЬ