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The Shadow of the East

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The blow she had been waiting for had fallen at last, in fulfilment of
her premonition. In her heart she had always known it would come, but
its suddenness paralysed. She had nothing to say. Silently she stood
beside him, her hands tight-locked, numbed with a desperate fear. He
would go--and he would never return. It hammered in her brain, making
her want to shriek. She felt to the full her own powerlessness, nothing
she could say would turn him from his purpose. It was the end she had
always foreseen, the end of all her dreams, the end of everything but
sorrow and pain and loneliness unspeakable. And for him--danger and
possibly death. He had admitted risk, he had set his house in order.
From Craven it meant much. She had learned his complete disregard for
danger from the men who had stayed with them in Scotland; his
recklessness in the hunting field, which was a by-word in the county,
was already known to her. He set no value on his own life--what reason
was there to suppose that, in the mysterious land of sudden and terrible
death, he would take even ordinary precautions? Was he going with a
pre-conceived determination to end a life that had become unbearable?
In agony that seemed to rive her heart she closed her eyes lest he might
see in them the anguish she knew was there. How long a time was left to
her before the parting that would leave her desolate? "When do you go?"
The question burst from her, and Craven glanced at her keenly, trying to
read the colourless face that was like a still white mask. He fancied he
had caught a tremor in her voice, then he called himself a fool as he
noted the composure that seemed to argue indifference. Her calmness
stung while it strengthened him. Why should she care, he asked himself
bitterly. His going could mean to her only relief. And disappointment
made his own voice ring cold and distant. "Within the next few weeks.
The exact date is not yet fixed," he said evasively. Again she was
silent while he wondered what were her thoughts. Suddenly she turned to
him, words pouring out in stammering haste, "While you are away--may I
go to France--to Paris--to work? This life of idleness is killing me!"

He looked at her in amazement, startled at her passionate utterance,
dismayed at a suggestion he had never contemplated. To think of her at
the Towers, in the position he would have her fill, watched over by
Peters, was the only comfort he could take away with him. For a second
he meditated a refusal that seemed within his right, arbitrary though it
might be. But the promise he had made to leave her free stayed him. He
could not break that promise now. "As you please," he said, with forced
unconcern, "you are your own mistress. You can do whatever you wish."
And with a slight shrug he turned toward the house. She walked beside
him in a tumult of emotion. He would now never know the love she bore
him, the aching passion that throbbed like a living thing within her.
She could not speak, the gulf between them was too wide to bridge, and
he would leave her, thinking her indifferent, callous! Tears blinded her
as she stumbled through the dark drawing room. In the dimly lit hall,
standing at the foot of the staircase with his hand clenched on the oaken
rail, Craven watched with tortured eyes the slender drooping figure move
slowly upward, battling with himself, praying for strength to let her
go--for he knew that if she even turned her head his self-control would
shatter. It was weakening now and the sweat broke out in heavy drops on
his forehead as he strove to crush an insidious inward voice that bade
him forget the past and take what was his. "Only one life," it seemed to
shout in mocking derision, "live while you can, take what you can! What
is done, is done; only the present matters. Of what use is regret, of
what use an abstinence that mortifies yet feeds desire? Fool, fool to
set aside the chance of happiness!"

With a deep breath that was almost a groan he sprang forward. Then, in
deadly fear, he checked himself, and wrenching his eyes away from the
woman he craved fled out into the night.




CHAPTER VIII


In a little tent pitched in the midst of an Arab camp in the extreme
south of Southern Algeria Craven sat writing. A day of intense heat had
been succeeded by a night airless and suffocating, and he was wet with
perspiration that dripped from his forehead and formed in sticky pools
under his hand, making writing laborious and difficult, impossible
indeed except for the sheet of blotting paper on which his fingers
rested. His thin silk shirt, widely open at the throat, the sleeves
rolled up above his elbows, clung limply to his broad shoulders. A
multitude of tiny flies attracted by the light circled round the lamp
eddying in the heat of the flame, immolating themselves, and falling
thickly on the closely written sheets of paper that strewed the camp
table, smeared the still wet ink and clogged his pen. He swept them
away impatiently from time to time. Squatting on his heels in a corner,
his inscrutable yellow face damp and glistening, Yoshio was cleaning a
revolver with his usual thoroughness and precision. A ragged square of
canvas beside him held the implements necessary to his work, set out in
methodical order, and as he cleaned, and oiled and polished assiduously
without raising his eyes his deft fingers selected unerringly the tool
he required. The weapon appeared already speckless, but for some time
he continued to rub vigorously, handling it with almost affectionate
care as if loth to put it down; at last with a grunt of demur he
reluctantly laid aside the cloth he was using and wrapping the revolver
in a silk handkerchief slid it slowly into a leathern holster which his
care had kept soft and pliable. Placing it noiselessly on the ground
before him he turned his oblique gaze on Craven and watched him for a
moment or two intently. Assured at length that his master was too
absorbed in his own task to notice the doings of his servant he reached
his hand behind him and produced a second revolver, which he began to
clean more hurriedly, more superficially than the first, keeping the
while a wary eye on the stooping figure at the table. When that too was
finished to his satisfaction and restored to his hip pocket, a flicker
of almost childlike amusement crossed his usually immobile features and
he started operations with an air of fine unconsciousness upon one of a
couple of rifles that stood propped against the tent wall near him. Two
years of hardships and danger had left no mark upon him, the deadly
climate of the region through which he had passed had not impaired his
powerful physique, and disease that had ravaged the scientific mission
had left him, like Craven, unscathed. With no care beyond his master's
comfort, indifferent to fatigue and perils, the months spent in Central
Africa had been far more to his taste than the dull monotony of the
life at Craven Towers. But with his face turned, though indirectly,
toward home--the home of his adoption--Yoshio was still cheerful. For
him life held only one incentive--the man who had years before saved
his life in California. Where Craven was Yoshio was content.

Outside, the Arab camp was in an uproar. Groups of tribesmen passed the
tent continually, conversing eagerly, their raucous voices rising
shrill, shouting, arguing, in noisy excitement. The neighing of horses
came from near by and once a screaming stallion backed heavily against
the canvas wall where Yoshio was sitting, rousing the phlegmatic
Japanese to an unwonted ejaculation of wrath as he ducked and grabbed
into safety the remaining rifle before the animal was hauled clear with
a wealth of detailed Arabic expletives, and he grinned broadly when an
authoritative voice broke into the Arabs' clamour and a subsequent
sudden silence fell in the vicinity of the stranger's tent.

Regardless of the disturbance resounding from all quarters of the camp
Craven wrote on steadily for some time longer. Then with a short sigh
he shuffled the scattered sheets together, brushed clear the clinging
accumulation of scorched wings and tiny shrivelled bodies, and without
re-reading the closely written pages stuffed them into an envelope, and
having closed and directed it, leaned back with an exclamation of
relief.

The letter to Peters was finished but there remained still the more
difficult letter he had yet to address to his wife--a letter he dreaded
and yet longed to write. A letter which, reaching her after the death
he confidently expected and earnestly prayed for, would reveal to her
fully the secret of his past and the passion that had driven him,
unworthy, from her. For never during the two years of adventure and
peril had death seemed more imminent than now, and before he died he
would give himself this one satisfaction--he would break the silence of
years that had eaten like a canker into his soul. At last she would
know all he had never dared to tell her, all his hopeless love, all his
remorse and shame, all his passionate desire for her happiness.

Scores of times during the last two years he had attempted to write
such a letter and had as often refrained, but to-night his need was
imperative. It was his last chance. In the early hours of the dawn he
would ride with his Arab hosts on a punitive expedition from which he
had no intention of returning alive. Death that he had courted openly
since leaving England would surely be easy to find amid the warring
tribes with whom he had thrown in his lot. A curious smile lit his face
for an instant, then passed abruptly at the doubt that shook his
confidence. Would fate again refuse him release from a life that had
become more than ever intolerable?

Haunted as he was with the memory of O Hara San, tortured with longing
for the woman he had made his wife, the double burden had become too
heavy to bear. He had grasped at the opportunity offered by the
scientific mission. The dangerous nature of the country, the fever that
saturated its swamps and forests, was known to him and he had gone to
Africa courting a death that would free him and yet leave no stain on
the name borne by his wife. And the death that would free him would
free her too! The bitter justice of it made him set his teeth. For he
had left her his fortune and his great possessions unrestrictedly to
deal with as she would. Young, rich and free! Who would claim what he
had surrendered? Even now, after months of mental struggle, the thought
was torment.

But death that had laid a heavy toll on his companions had turned away
from him. Disease and disaster had dogged the mission from the outset.
The medical and scientific researches had proved satisfactory beyond
expectation, but the attendant loss of life had been terrible, and
himself utterly reckless and heedless of all precautions Craven had
watched tragedy after tragedy with envy he had been hardly able to
hide. Immune from the sudden and deadly fevers that had swept the camps
periodically with fatal results he had worked fearlessly and untiringly
among the stricken members of the mission and the fast dwindling army
of demoralised porters who had succumbed with alarming rapidity. With
the stolid Japanese always beside him he had wrestled entire nights and
days to save the expedition from extermination. And in the intervals of
nursing, and shepherding the unwilling carriers, he had ranged far and
wide in search of fresh food to supply the wants of the camp. The
danger he deliberately sought, with a rashness that had provoked open
comment, had miraculously evaded him. He had borne a charmed life. He
had snatched at every hazardous enterprise, he had exposed himself
consistently to risk until one evening shortly before the expedition
was due to start on the return march to civilization, when a chance
word spoken by the camp fire had brought home to him abruptly the
dependence of the remnant of the mission on him to bring them to the
coast in safety. By some strange dealing of fate it had been among the
non-scientific members of the expedition that mortality had ranged
highest; the big game hunters, though hardier and physically better
equipped than the students of the party for hardship and endurance had,
with the exception of Craven himself, been wiped out to a man. It had
been an unpremeditated remark uttered in all good faith with no
ulterior motive by a shuddering fever-stricken scientist writing up his
notes and diary by the light of the fire with trembling fingers that
could scarcely hold the fountain pen that moved laboriously driven by
an indomitable will. A grim jest, horrible in its significance, had
followed the startling utterance and Craven had looked with perplexity
at the shivering figure with its drawn yellow face from which a pair of
glittering eyes burned with an almost uncanny brilliance until the
meaning of the man's words slowly penetrated. But the true importance
of the suggestion once realised had aroused in him a full understanding
of the duty he owed to the men he had undertaken to lead. Of those who
could have convoyed the expedition on its homeward march only he
remained. Without him the survivors of the once large party might
eventually reach safety but it was made clear to him that night how
completely his companions relied on him for a quick return and for the
management of the train of porters whose frequent mutinies only Craven
seemed able to quell. He had sat far into the night, staring gloomily
into the blazing fire, smoking pipe after pipe, listening to the
multifarious noises of the forest--the sudden distant crash of falling
trees, the incessant hum of insect life, the long-drawn howl of beasts
of prey hovering on the outskirts of the camp, the soft whoo-whoo of an
owl whose cry brought vividly to his mind the cool fragrance of the
garden at Craven Towers and the nearer more ominous sounds of muffled
agony that came from a tent close beside him where yet another victim
of science was gasping his life away.

Hour after hour he sat thinking. There was no getting away from it--it
was only despicable that he had not himself recognised it earlier. The
narrow path of duty lay before him from which he might not turn aside
to ease the burden of a private grief. He was bound to the men who
trusted him. Honour demanded that he should forego the project he had
formed--until his obligation had been discharged. Loyalty to his
companions must come before every selfish consideration. After all it
was only a postponement, he reflected with a kind of grim satisfaction.
The residue of the mission once safely conducted to the coast his
responsibility would end and he would be free to pursue the course that
would liberate the woman he loved.

In the chill silence of the hour that precedes the dawn he had risen
cramped and shivering from his seat by the dying fire and too late then
to take the rest he had neglected, had roused Yoshio and started on the
usual foraging expedition that was his daily occupation. And from that
time he had been careful of a life which, though valueless to him, was
invaluable to his companions. From that time, too, the ill-luck that
had pursued them ceased. There had been no more deaths, no more
desertions from the already depleted train of carriers. The work had
gone forward with continuing success and, six months ago, after a
hazardous march through a hostile country, Craven had led the remnant
of the expedition safely to the coast. He had waited for some weeks at
the African port after the mission had returned to England, and then
embarking on a small trading steamer, had made his way northward to an
obscure station on the Moroccan seaboard, when by a leisurely and
indirect route he had slowly crossed the desert to the district where
he now was and which he had reached only a week ago. Twice before he
had visited the tribe as the guest of the Sheik Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's
younger son, an officer of Spahis whom he had met in Paris, and the
warm hospitality shown him had left a deep impression. A sudden
unaccountable impulse had led him to revisit a locality where he had
spent some of the happiest months of his life. He had conceived an
intense admiration and liking for the stern old Arab Chief and his two
utterly dissimilar sons; the elder a grave habitually silent man, who
clung to the old traditions with the rigid tenacity of the orthodox
Mohammedan, disdainful of the French jurisdiction under which he was
compelled to live, and occupied solely with the affairs of the tribe
and his beautiful and adored wife who reigned alone in his harem,
despite the fact that she had given him no child; the younger in total
contrast to his brother, a dashing ultra-modern young Arab as deeply
imbued with French tendencies as the conservative Omar was opposed to
them. The wealthy and powerful old Sheik, whose friendship had been
assiduously sought by the French Administration to ensure the
co-operation of a tribe that with its far reaching influence might have
proved a dangerous element in an unsettled district, shared in his
inmost heart the sentiments of his heir, but with a larger and more
discriminating wisdom saw the desirability of associating at least one
of his family with the Government he was obliged, though grudgingly and
half contemptuously, to acknowledge. He had hovered long between
prejudice and policy before he reluctantly gave his consent for Saïd to
be placed on the roll of the regiment of Spahis. And the unusual love
existing between the two brothers had survived a test that might have
proved too strong for its continuance; Omar, bowing to the decision of
the autocratic old Chief, had refrained even from comment, and Saïd,
despite his enthusiasm, had carefully avoided inflaming his brother's
deeply rooted hatred of the nation the younger man was proud to serve.
His easy-going nature adapted itself readily to the two wholly separate
lives he lived, and though secretly preferring the months spent with
his regiment he contrived to extract every possible enjoyment from the
periods of leave for which he returned to the tribe where, laying aside
the picturesque uniform his ardent soul rejoiced in and scrupulously
suppressing every indication of his Francophile inclinations he resumed
with consummate tact the somewhat invidious position of younger son of
the house.

The meeting of the young Spahi with Craven in Paris had led to the
discovery of similar tastes and ultimately to an intimate friendship.
Together in Algeria they had shot panther and Barbary sheep and
eventually Craven had been induced to visit the tribe, where he had
seen the true life of the desert that appealed strongly to his
unconventional wandering disposition. The heartiness of his reception
had been unqualified, even the taciturn Omar had unbent to the
representative of a nation he felt he could respect with no loss of
prestige. To Craven the weeks passed in the Arab camp had been a time
of uninterrupted enjoyment and a second visit had strengthened mutual
esteem. Situated on the extreme fringe of the Algerian frontier, in the
heart of a perpetually disturbed country, the element of danger
prevailing in the district was to Craven not the least of its
attractions. It had been a source of keen disappointment that during
both his visits there had been a cessation of the intertribal warfare
that was carried on in spite of the Government's endeavours to preserve
peace among the great desert families. For generations the tribe of
Mukair Ibn Zarrarah had been at feud with another powerful tribe which,
living further to the south and virtually beyond the suzerainty of the
nominal rulers of the country, harried the border continually. But,
aware of the growing power and resources of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, for
many years the marauders had avoided collision with him and confined
their attention to less dangerous adversaries. The apparent neglect of
his hereditary enemies had not, however, lessened the old Sheik's
precautions. With characteristic oriental distrust he maintained a
continual watch upon them and a well organized system of espionage kept
him conversant with all their movements. Often during his visits Craven
had listened to the stories of past encounters and in the fierce eager
faces around him he had read the deep longing for renewed hostilities
that animated the younger members of the tribe in particular and had
wondered what spark would eventually set ablaze the smouldering fires
of hatred and rivalry that had so long lain dormant. And it had been
really a subconscious presage of such an outbreak that had brought him
back to the camp of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah. His presentiment, the outcome
of earnest desire, had been fulfilled, and in its fulfilment attended
with horrible details which, had it not been already his intention,
would have driven him to beg a place in the ranks of the punitive force
that was preparing to avenge an outrage that involved the honour of the
tribe. A week ago he had arrived to find the camp seething with an
infuriated and passion-swayed people who bore no kind of resemblance to
the orderly well-disciplined tribesmen he had seen on his former
visits, and the daily arrival of reinforcements from outlying districts
had kept the tension strained and swelled the excitement that rioted
day and night.

In the barbaric sumptuousness of his big tent and with a calm dignity
that even tragedy could not shake the old Sheik had received him alone,
for the unhappy Omar was hidden in the desolate solitude of his
ravished harem. To the Englishman, before whom he could speak openly
the old man had revealed the whole terrible story with vivid dramatic
force and all the flowery eloquence of which he was master. It was a
tale of misplaced confidence and faithlessness that, detected and
punished with oriental severity, had led to swift and dastardly
revenge. A headman of the tribe whom both the Sheik and his elder son
trusted implicitly had proved guilty of grave indiscretion that
undetected might have seriously impaired the prestige of the ruling
house. Deposed from his headmanship, and deserted with characteristic
vacillation by the adherents on whom he counted, the delinquent had
fled to the camp of the rival tribe, with whom he had already been in
secret negotiation. This much Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's spies had
ascertained, but not in time to prevent the catastrophe that followed.
Plans thought to be known only to the Sheik and his son had been
disclosed to the marauding Chief, who had long sought an opportunity of
aiming an effectual blow at his hated rival, and on one of Omar's
periodical tours of inspection to the more remote encampments of the
large and scattered tribe, the little caravan had been surrounded by an
overwhelmingly superior force led by the hereditary enemy and the
renegade tribesman. Hemmed in around the litter of the dearly loved
young wife, from whom he rarely parted, Omar and his small bodyguard
had fought desperately, but the outcome had been inevitable from the
first. Outnumbered they had fallen one by one under the vigorous
onslaughts of the attacking party who, victorious, had retired
southward as quickly as they had come, carrying with them the beautiful
Safiya--the price of the traitor's treachery. Covered with wounds and
left for dead under a heap of dying followers Omar and two others had
alone survived, and with death in his heart the young man had lived
only for the hour when he might avenge his honour. Animated by the one
fierce desire that sustained him he had struggled back to life to
superintend the preparations for retaliation that should be both
decisive and final. To old injuries had been added this crowning
insult, and the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, roused to the highest
pitch of fury, were resolved to a man to exterminate or be
exterminated. The preparations had been almost completed when Craven
arrived at the camp, and tonight, for the first time, at a final war
council of all the principal headmen held in the Sheik's tent, he had
seen the stricken man and had hardly recognized in the gaunt attenuated
figure that only an inflexible will seemed to keep upright, the
handsome stalwart Arab who of all the tribe had most nearly approached
his own powerful physique. The frenzied despair in the dark flashing
eyes that met his struck an answering chord in his own heart and the
silent handclasp that passed between them seemed to ratify a common
desire. Here, too, was a man who for love of a woman sought death that
he might escape a life of terrible memory. A sudden sympathy born of
tacit understanding seemed to leap from one to the other, an affinity
of purpose that drew them strangely close together and brought to
Craven an odd sense of kinship that dispelled the difference he had
felt and enabled him to enter reservedly into the discussions that
followed. After this meeting he had gone back to his tent to make his
own final preparations with a feeling almost of exhilaration. To
Yoshio, more than usually stolid, he had given all necessary
instructions for the conveyance of his belongings to England.

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