The Shadow of the East

One fact only remained, clear and distinct from the confusion in her mind—he did not love her. He did not love her. It hurt so. She hid her face in the pillows, writhing with the shame the knowledge of her own love brought her. The deep booming of the dinner gong awoke her to the necessity of some kind of action. She rang the bell that hung within reach of her hand and, by the maid who answered her summons, sent her excuses to Miss Craven, pleading a headache for remaining upstairs.

A few minutes later Mary, grim-visaged and big-hearted, appeared with a tray, headache remedies and multifarious messages from the dining room. She bathed the girl’s aching head, brushing the tumbled brown hair and piling it afresh into a soft loose knot. Grumbling gently at the long hours of work to which she attributed the unusual indisposition, she took full advantage of the rare opportunity of rendering personal attention and fussed to her heart’s content, stripping off the stained overall and substituting a loose velvet wrapper; and then stood over her, a kindly martinet, until the light dinner she had brought was eaten. Afterwards she packed pillows, made up the fire, and administered a particularly nauseous specific emanating from a homeopathic medicine chest that was her greatest pride, and then took herself away, still mildly admonishing.

Gillian leaned back against the cushions with a feeling of greater ease and restfulness. Food had given her strength and under Mary’s ministrations her mental poise had steadied. She would not let herself dwell on the question that must before long be settled, Miss Craven would be coming soon, and until she had been and gone no definite settlement could be attempted.

She lay looking at the fire, endeavouring to keep her mind a blank. It was odd to be alone, she missed the familiar black form lying on the hearth-rug, but tonight she could not bear even Mouston’s presence, and Mary had taken a request to Yoshio, to whose room the dog had been banished from the studio, that he would keep him until the morning.

A tap at the door and Miss Craven appeared, anxious and questioning.

“Only a headache?—my dear, I don’t believe it!” she protested, plumping down on the side of the sofa and clutching at her hair, that sure sign of perturbation. “You’ve never had a headache like this before. You’ve been working too hard. You were painting all the morning and they tell me you worked throughout the afternoon and had no tea. Gillian, dear, when will you learn sense? I don’t at all approve of you having tea sent to the studio only when you ring for it. Young people require regular meals and as often as not neglect ‘em; young artists are the worst offenders—you needn’t contradict me, I know all about it. I did it myself.” She patted the clasped hands lying near her and scrutinised the girl more closely. “You’re as pale as a ghost and your eyes are too bright. Did Mary take your temperature? No?—the woman must have lost her senses. I’ll telephone to Doctor Harris to come and see you in the morning. If you looked a fraction more feverish I’d send for you to-night, storm or no storm. Peter braved it, open car as usual. He sent his love. Barry turned up from Scotland this afternoon. He looks very tired—says he had a bothering time and a wretched journey—Gillian!” she cried sharply as the girl slid from the sofa on to her knees beside her and raised a quivering piteous face.

“Aunt Caro, I’m not ill,” the words came in tumbling haste, “there’s nothing bodily the matter with me—I’m only dreadfully unhappy. I know Mr. Craven is back—he came to me in the studio this afternoon. He asked me to marry him,” the troubled voice sank to a whisper, “and I—I don’t know what to do.”

“My dear.” The tenderness of Miss Craven’s tone sent a strangling wave of emotion into Gillian’s throat. “Aunt Caro, did you know? Do you wish it too?” she murmured wistfully.

Unwilling to admit a previous knowledge which would be difficult to explain, Miss Craven temporised. “I very greatly hoped for it,” she said guardedly; “you and Barry are all I have to care for, and you are both so—alone. I know you think of a very different life, I know you have dreams of making a career for yourself. But a career is not all that a woman wants in her life; it can perhaps mean independence and fame, it can also mean great loneliness and the loss of the full and perfect happiness that should be every woman’s. You mustn’t judge all cases by me. I have been happy in my own way but I want a greater, richer happiness for you, dear. I want for you the best that the world can give, and that best I believe to be the shelter and the safety of a man’s love.”

The brown head dropped on her knee. “You are thinking of me—I am thinking of him,” came a stifled whisper.

Miss Craven stroked the soft hair tenderly. “Then why not give him what he asks, my dear,” she said gently. “He has known sorrow and suffering. If through you, he can forget the past in a new happiness, will you not grant it him? Oh, Gillian, I have so hoped that you might care for each other; that, together, you might make the Towers the perfect home it should be, a home of mutual trust and love. You and Barry and, please God, after you—your children.” She choked with unexpected emotion and brushed the mist from her eyes impatiently.

And at her knee Gillian knelt motionless, her lip held fast between her teeth to stop the bitter cry that nearly escaped her, her heart almost bursting. The picture Miss Craven’s words called up was an ideal of happiness that might have been. The suffering that reality promised seemed more than she could contemplate. What happiness could come from such a travesty? The strange yearnings she had experienced seemed suddenly crystallised into form, and the knowledge was a greater pain than she had known. What she would have gone down to the gates of death to give him he did not require—the unutterable joy that Miss Craven suggested would never be hers. She searched for words, for an explanation of her silence that must seem strange to the elder woman. Miss Craven obviously knew nothing of the unusual conditions attached to his proposal, her words proved it, and Gillian could not tell her. She could not betray his confidence even if she had so wished. If she could but speak frankly and show all her difficulty to the friend who had never yet failed in love and sympathy–She sought refuge in prevarication. “How can I marry him?” she cried miserably. “You don’t know anything about me. I’m not a fit person to be his wife—my antecedents–”

“Bother your antecedents!” interrupted Miss Craven, with a somewhat shaky laugh. “My dearest girl, Barry isn’t going to marry them, he’s going to marry you. They can have been anything you like or imagine but it does not alter the fact that their daughter is the one woman on earth I want for Barry’s wife.” She stooped and gathered the girl into her arms.

“Gillian, can you give us, Barry and me, this great happiness?”

Gently Gillian disengaged herself and rose slowly to her feet. She made a little helpless gesture, swaying as she stood. “What can I say?” she said brokenly. “Do you think it means nothing to me! Don’t you know that what I already owe you and Mr. Craven is almost more than I can bear, that I would give my life for either of you? But this—oh, you don’t understand—I can’t tell you—I can’t explain–” She dropped back on the sofa and her voice came muffled and entreatingly from among the silken cushions, “If you knew how I long to repay you for your wonderful goodness, if you knew what your love has meant to me! Oh, dearest, I’d give the world to please you! But I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what is honest—and you can’t help me, nobody can help me. I’ve got to settle it myself. I’ve got to think–”

Miss Craven guessed the crying need for solitude conveyed in the last faltering words and rose in obedience to the unspoken request. She stood for a moment, looking tenderly down on the slim prostrate figure, and a fear that grew momentarily stronger came to her that in her endeavour to bring happiness to these two lives she had blundered fatally. She had been a fool, rushing in. And with almost a feeling of dismay she realised it was beyond her ability now to stay what she had put in motion. She was as one who, having wantonly released some complex mechanism, stands aghast and powerless at the consequence of his rashness. And yet, despite the seeming setback to her hopes, the conviction that had urged her to this step was still strong in her; she still had faith in its ultimate achievement. She touched the girl’s shoulder in a quick caress. “You are worn out, child. Go to bed and rest now, and think to-morrow,” she said soothingly.

For long after she left the room Gillian lay without moving. Then with a long shuddering sigh she sat up. She tried to concentrate on the decision she must make but her thoughts, ungovernable, dwelt persistently on the unknown woman whom she had convinced herself he must have loved, and the passionate envy she had felt before swept her again until the pain of it sent a whispered prayer to her lips for strength to put it from her. Huddled on the side of the sofa, her head supported on her hands, she stared fixedly into the fire as if seeking in the leaping flames the answer to the problem that confronted her. Then in her agony of mind inaction became impossible and she rose and paced the room with hurried nervous tread.

To do what was right—to do what was honourable; to conquer the clamorous self that cried out for acceptance of this semblance of happiness that was offered. To bear his name, to have the right to be near him, to care for him and for his interests as far as she might. To be his wife—even if only in name. Dear God, did he know how he had tempted her? But she had no right. The crushing burden of debt she owed rose like an unsurpassable mountain between her and what she longed for. Only by repayment could she keep her self-respect. The dreams of independence, the place she had thought to make for herself in the world, the re-establishing of her father’s name—could she forego what she had planned? Was it not a nobler aim than the gratification of self that urged the easier way? Yet would it be the easier way? Was she not really in her heart shrinking from the difficulty and sadness that this loveless marriage would bring? Was it not cowardice that prompted a supposed nobility of thought that now appeared ignoble? She wrung her hands in desperation. Had she no courage or steadfastness at all? Was the weakness of purpose that had ruined her father’s life to be her curse as it had been his?

She felt suddenly very young, very inexperienced. Her early training that had denied the exercise of individual responsibility and had inculcated a passivity of mind that precluded self-determination had bitten deeper than she knew. Her life since leaving the convent had been smooth and uneventful, there had been no occasion to practise the new liberty of thought and action that was hers. And now before a decision that would be so irrevocable, that would involve her whole life—and not hers alone—she felt to the full the disability of her upbringing. Alone she must make her choice and she shrank from the burden of responsibility that fell upon her. She had nobody to turn to for counsel or advice. In her loneliness she longed for the solace of a mother’s tenderness, the shelter of a mother’s arms, and bitterness came to her as she thought of the parents who had each in their turn abandoned her so callously. She had been robbed of her birthright of love and care. She was alone in the world, alone to fight her own battles, alone in the moment of her direst need.

Then all at once she seemed to see in the trend of her thoughts only a supreme selfishness that had lost sight of all but personal consideration. Was her love of so little worth that in thought for herself she had forgotten him? He had asked her to pity his loneliness—and she had had only pity for herself. Her lips quivered as she whispered his name in an agony of self-condemnation.

Coming back slowly to the fireside she slipped to the floor and leaned her head against the sofa listening to the storm that beat with increasing violence against the house, and the roar of the tempest without seemed in strange agreement with the tumult that was raging in her heart. The words he had used came back to her. Did it really lie in her power to lessen the loneliness of his life? To give him what he asked—was not that, after all, the true way to pay her debt? With a little sob she bowed her head on her hands.... An hour later she rose stiffly, cramped with long sitting, and moving nearer to the fire chafed her cold hands mechanically. Her face was very sad and her wide eyes heavy with unshed tears. She drew a long sobbing breath. “Because I love him,” she murmured. “If I didn’t love him I couldn’t do it.” A thought that brought new hope came to her. She loved him so deeply, might not her love, she wondered wistfully, perhaps some day be strong enough to heal the wound he had sustained—strong enough even to compel his love? Then doubt seized hold on her again. Would she, in the limited scope that she would have, find opportunity—would he ever allow her to get near enough to him?… She flung her hands out in passionate appeal.

“Oh, God! if this thing that I am doing is wrong, if it brings sorrow and unhappiness, let me be the only one to pay!”

A sudden longing to make retraction impossible came over her. She looked anxiously at her watch. Was it too late to go to him to-night? Only when she had told him would she be sure of herself. Her word once given there could be no withdrawal.

It was nearly midnight but she knew he rarely left his study until later. Peters would be gone, he was methodical in his habits and retired punctually at eleven o’clock with a regularity that was unvarying. She was sure of finding him alone. She dared not wait until the morning, she must go now while she had the courage. Delay might bring new doubts, new uncertainty. Impulsively she started towards the door, then paused on a sudden thought that sent the warm blood in a painful wave to her face. Would he misunderstand, think her unwomanly, attribute her hasty decision to a sordid desire for material gain, for the ease that would be hers, for the position that his name would give? It was the natural thought for him who offered so much to one who would give nothing in return. And not for him alone—in the eyes of the world she would be only a little adventuress who had skilfully seized the opportunity that circumstance had given to advantage herself. But the world did not matter, she thought with scornful curling lip, it was only in his eyes that she desired to stand well. Then with quick shame she knew that the sentiments she had ascribed to him were unworthy, the outcome only of her own strained imagination, and she put them from her. She went quickly to the gallery, dimly lit from a single lamp left alight in the hall below—left for Craven as she knew. Silence brooded over the great house. The storm that earlier had beat tempestuously against the dome as if striving to shatter the massive glass plates that opposed its fury had blown itself out and glancing upward Gillian saw the huge cupola shrouded with snow that gleamed palely in the soft light. The stillness oppressed her and odd thoughts chased through her mind. She looked to right and left nervously and in a sudden inexplicable panic sped down the wide staircase and across the shadowy hall until she reached the study door. There she halted with wildly beating heart, panting and breathless. It was a room which she had never before entered, and an almost paralysing shyness made her shake from head to foot. Nerving herself with a strong effort she tapped with trembling fingers and, at the sound of an answering voice, went in.

Strength seemed all at once to leave her. Physically and mentally exhausted, a feeling of unreality supervened. The strange room swam before her eyes. As in a dream she saw him start to his feet and come swiftly to her across a seemingly unending length of carpet that billowed and wavered curiously, his big frame oddly magnified until he appeared a very giant towering above her; as in a dream she felt him take her ice-cold hands in his. But the warm strong grasp, the grave eyes bent compellingly on her, dragged her back from the shuddering abyss into which she was sinking. Far away, as though coming from a great distance, she heard him speaking. And his voice, gentler than she had ever known it, gave her courage to whisper, so low that he had to bend his tall head to catch the fluttering words, the promise she had come to give.