Kitabı oku: «The Shadow of the East»
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge."
Ezekiel xviii 2.
CHAPTER I
The American yacht lying off the harbour at Yokohama was brilliantly lit from stem to stern. Between it and the shore the reflection of the full moon glittered on the water up to the steps of the big black landing-stage. The glamour of the eastern night and the moonlight combined to lend enchantment to a scene that by day is blatant and tawdry, and the countless coloured lamps twinkling along the sea wall and dotted over the Bluff transformed the Japanese town into fairyland.
The night was warm and still, and there was barely a ripple on the water. The Bay was full of craft—liners, tramps, and yachts swinging slowly with the tide, and hurrying to and fro sampans and electric launches jostled indiscriminately.
On board the yacht three men were lying in long chairs on the deck. Jermyn Atherton, the millionaire owner, a tall thin American whose keen, clever face looked singularly youthful under a thick crop of iron-grey hair, sat forward in his chair to light a fresh cigar, and then turned to the man on his right. “I guess I’ve had every official in Japan hunting for you these last two days, Barry. If I hadn’t had your wire from Tokio this morning I should have gone to our Consul and churned up the whole Japanese Secret Service and made an international affair of it,” he laughed. “Where in all creation were you? I should hardly have thought it possible to get out of touch in this little old island. The authorities, too, knew all about you, and reckoned they could lay their hands on you in twelve hours. I rattled them up some,” he added, with evident satisfaction.
The Englishman smiled.
“You seem to have done,” he said dryly. “When I got into Tokio this morning I was fallen on by a hysterical inspector of police who implored me with tears to communicate immediately with an infuriated American who was raising Cain in Yokohama over my disappearance. As a matter of fact I was in a little village twenty miles inland from Tokio—quite off the beaten track. There’s an old Shinto temple there that I have been wanting to sketch for a long time.”
“Atherton’s luck!” commented the American complacently. “It generally holds good. I couldn’t leave Japan without seeing you, and I must sail tonight.”
“What’s your hurry—Wall Street going to the dogs without you?”
“No. I’ve cut out from Wall Street. I’ve made all the money I want, and I’m only concerned with spending it now. No, the fact is I—er—I left home rather suddenly.”
A soft chuckle came from the recumbent occupant of the third chair, but Atherton ignored it and hurried on, twirling rapidly, as he spoke, a single eyeglass attached to a thin black cord.
“Ever since Nina and I were married last year we’ve been going the devil of a pace. We had to entertain every one who had entertained us—and a few more folk besides. There was something doing all day and every day until at last it seemed to me that I never saw my wife except at the other end of a dining table with a crowd of silly fools in between us. I reckoned I’d just about had enough of it. Came on me just like a flash sitting in my office down town one morning, so I buzzed home right away in the auto and told her I was sick of the whole thing and that I wanted her to come away with me and see what real life was like—out West or anywhere else on earth away from that durned society crowd. I’ll admit I lost my temper and did some shouting. Nina couldn’t see it from my point of view.
“My God, Jermyn! I should think not,” drawled a sleepy voice from the third chair, and a short, immensely stout man struggled up into a sitting position, mopping his forehead vigorously. “You’ve the instincts of a Turk rather than of an enlightened American citizen. You’ve not seen my sister-in-law yet, Mr. Craven,” he turned to the Englishman. “She’s a peach! Smartest little girl in N’York. Leader of society—dollars no object—small wonder she didn’t fall in with Jermyn’s prehistoric notions. You’re a cave man, elder brother—I put my money on Nina every time. Hell! isn’t it hot?” He sank down again full length, flapping his handkerchief feebly at a persistent mosquito.
“We argued for a week,” resumed Jermyn Atherton when his brother’s sleepy drawl subsided, “and didn’t seem to get any further on. At last I lost my temper completely and decided to clear out alone if Nina wouldn’t come with me. Leslie was not doing anything at the time, so I persuaded him to come along too.”
Leslie Atherton sat up again with a jerk.
“Persuaded!” he exploded, “A dam’ queer notion of persuasion. Shanghaied, I call it. Ran me to earth at the club at five o’clock, and we sailed at eight. If my man hadn’t been fond of the sea and keen on the trip himself, I should have left America for a cruise round the world in the clothes I stood up in—and Jermyn’s duds would be about as useful to me as a suit of reach-me-downs off the line. Persuasion? Shucks! Jermyn thought it was kind of funny to start right off on an ocean trip at a moment’s notice and show Nina he didn’t care a durn. Crazy notion of humour.” He lay back languidly and covered his face with a large silk handkerchief.
Barry Craven turned toward his host with amused curiosity in his grey eyes.
“Well?” He asked at length.
Atherton returned his look with a slightly embarrassed smile.
“It hasn’t been so blamed funny after all,” he said quietly. “A Chinese coffin-ship from ‘Frisco would be hilarious compared with this trip,” rapped a sarcastic voice from behind the silk handkerchief.
“I’ve felt a brute ever since we lost sight of Sandy Hook,” continued Atherton, looking away toward the twinkling lights on shore, “and as soon as we put in here I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I cabled to Nina that I was returning at once. I’m quite prepared to eat humble pie and all the rest of it—in fact I shall relish it,” with a sudden shy laugh.
His brother heaved his vast bulk clear of the deck chair with a mighty effort.
“Humble pie! Huh!” he snorted contemptuously. “She’ll kill the fatted calf and put a halo of glory round your head and invite in all the neighbours ‘for this my prodigal husband has returned to me!’” He ducked with surprising swiftness to avoid a book that Atherton hurled at his head and shook a chubby forefinger at him reprovingly.
“Don’t assault the only guide, philosopher and friend you’ve got who has the courage to tell you a few home truths. Say, Jermyn, d’y’know why I finally consented to come on this crazy cruise, anyway? Because Nina got me on the phone while you were hammering away at me at the club and ordered me to go right along with you and see you didn’t do any dam foolishness. Oh, she’s got me to heel right enough. Well! I guess I’ll turn in and get to sleep before those fool engines start chump-chumping under my pillow. You boys will want a pow-wow to your two selves; there are times when three is a crowd. Good-bye, Mr. Craven, pleased to have met you. Hope to see you in the Adirondacks next summer—a bit more crowded than the Rockies, which are Jermyn’s Mecca, but more home comforts—appeal to a man of my build.” He slipped away with the noiseless tread that is habitual to heavy men.
Jermyn Atherton looked after his retreating figure and laughed uproariously.
“Isn’t he the darndest? A clam is communicative compared with Leslie. Fancy him having that card up his sleeve all the while. Nina’s had the bulge on me right straight along.”
He pushed a cigar-box across the wicker table between them.
“No, thanks,” said Craven, taking a case from his pocket. “I’ll have a cigarette, if you don’t mind.”
The American settled himself in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the harbour lights, his thoughts very obviously some thousands of miles away. Craven watched him speculatively. Atherton the big game-hunter, Atherton the mine-owner, he knew perfectly—but Atherton the New York broker, Atherton married, he was unacquainted with and he was trying to adjust and consolidate the two personalities.
It was the same Atherton—but more human, more humble, if such a word could be applied to an American millionaire. He felt a sudden curiosity to see the woman who had brought that new look into his old friend’s keen blue eyes. He was conscious of an odd feeling of envy. Atherton became aware at last of his attentive gaze and grinned sheepishly.
“Must seem a bit of a fool to you, old man, but I feel like a boy going home for the holidays and that’s the truth. But I’ve been yapping about my own affair all evening. What about you—staying on in Japan? Been here quite a while now, haven’t you?”
“Just over a year.”
“Like it?”
“Yes, Japan has got into my bones.”
“Lazy kind of life, isn’t it?”
There was no apparent change in Atherton’s drawl, but Craven turned his head quickly and looked at him before answering.
“I’m a lazy kind of fellow,” he replied quietly.
“You weren’t lazy in the Rockies,” said Atherton sharply.
“Oh, yes I was. There are grades of laziness.”
Atherton flung the stub of his cigar overboard and selecting a fresh one, cut the end off carefully.
“Still got that Jap boy who was with you in America?”
“Yoshio? Yes. I picked him up in San Francisco ten years ago. He’ll never leave me now.”
“Saved his life, didn’t you? He spun me a great yarn one day in camp.”
Craven laughed and shrugged. “Yoshio has an Oriental imagination and quite a flair for romance. I did pull him out of a hole in ‘Frisco but he was putting up a very tidy little show on his own account. He’s the toughest little beggar I’ve ever come across and doesn’t know the meaning of fear. If I’m ever in a big scrap I hope I shall have Yoshio behind me.”
“You seem to be pretty well known over yonder,” said Atherton with a vague movement of his head toward the shore.
“It is not a big town and the foreign population is not vast. Besides, there are traditions. I am the second Barry Craven to live in Yokohama—my father lived several years and finally died here. He was obsessed with Japan.”
“And with the Japanese?”
“And with the Japanese.”
Atherton frowned at the glowing end of his cigar.
“Nina and I ran down to see Craven Towers when we were on our wedding trip in England last year,” he said at length with seeming irrelevance. “Your agent, Mr. Peters, ran us round.”
“Good old Peters,” murmured Craven lazily. “The place would have gone to the bow-wows long ago if it hadn’t been for him. He adored my mother and has the worst possible opinion of me. But he’s a loyal old bird, he probably endowed me with all the virtues for your benefit.”
But Atherton ignored the comment. He polished his eyeglass vigorously and screwed it firmly into position.
“If I was an Englishman with a place like Craven Towers that had been in my family for generations,” he said soberly, “I should go home and marry a nice girl and settle down on my estate.”
“That’s precisely Peters’ opinion,” replied Craven promptly with a good-tempered laugh. “I get reams from him to that effect nearly every mail—with detailed descriptions of all the eligible debutantes whom he thinks suitable. I often wonder whether he runs the estate on the same lines and keeps a matrimonial agency for the tenants.”
Atherton laughed with him but persisted.
“If your own countrywomen don’t appeal to you, take a run out to the States and see what we can do for you.”
The laugh died out of Craven’s eyes and he moved restlessly in his chair.
“It’s no good, Jermyn. I’m not a marrying man,” he said shortly.
Atherton smiled grimly at the recollection of a similar remark emphatically uttered by himself at their last meeting.
For a time neither spoke. Each was conscious of a vague difference in the other, developed during the years that had elapsed since their last meeting—an intangible barrier checking the open confidence of earlier days.
It was growing late. The sampans had nearly all disappeared and only an occasional launch skimmed across the harbour.
A neighbouring yacht’s band that had been silent for the last hour began to play again—appropriately to the vicinity—Puccini’s well-known opera. The strains came subdued but clear across the water on the scent-laden air. Craven sat forward in his chair, his heels on the ground, his hands loosely clasped between his knees, whistling softly the Consul’s solo in the first act. From behind a cloud of cigar smoke Atherton watched him keenly, and as he watched he was thinking rapidly. He was used to making decisions quickly—he was accustomed to accepting risks at which others shied, but the risk he was now contemplating meant the taking of an unwarranted liberty that might be resented and might result in the loss of a friendship that he valued. But he was going to take the risk—as he had taken many another—he had known that from the first. He screwed his eyeglass firmer into his eye, a characteristic gesture well-known on the New York stock market.
“Ever see Madame Butterfly? he asked abruptly.
“Yes.”
Atherton blew another big cloud of smoke.
“Damn fool, Pinkerton,” he said gruffly, “Never could see the attraction myself—dancing girls—almond eyes—and all that sort of thing.”
Craven made no answer but his whistling stopped suddenly and the knuckles of his clasped hands whitened. Atherton looked away quickly and his eyeglass fell with a little tinkle against a waistcoat button. There was another long pause. Finally the music died away and the stillness was broken only by the soft slap-slap of the water against the ship’s side.
Atherton scowled at his immaculate deck shoes and then seized his eyeglass again decisively.
“Say, Barry, you saved my life in the Rockies that trip and I guess a fellow whose life you’ve saved has a pull on you no one else has. Anyhow I’ll chance it, and if I’m a damned interfering meddler it’s up to you to say so and I’ll apologise—handsomely. Are you in a hole?”
Craven got up, walked away to the side of the yacht and leaning on the rail stared down into the water. A solitary sampan was passing the broad streak of moonlight and he watched it intently until it passed and merged into the shadows beyond.
“I’ve been the usual fool,” he said at last quietly.
“Oh, hell!” came softly from behind him. “Chuck it, Barry. Clear out right now—with us. I’ll put off sailing until tomorrow.”
“I—can’t.”
Atherton rose and joined him, and for a moment his hand rested on the younger man’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry—dashed sorry,” he murmured. “Gee!” he added with a half shy, half humorous glance, wiping his forehead frankly, “I’d rather face a grizzly than do that again. Leslie keeps telling me that my habit of butting in will land me in the family vault before my time.”
Craven smiled wryly.
“It’s all right. I’m grateful—really. But I must hoe my own row.”
The American swung irresolutely on his heels.
“That’s so, that’s so,” he agreed reluctantly. “Oh damn it all,” he burst out, “have a drink!” and going back to the table he pounded in the stopper of a soda-water-bottle savagely.
Craven laughed constrainedly as he tilted the whisky into a glass.
“Universal panacea,” he said a little bitterly, “but it’s not my method of oblivion.”
He put the peg tumbler down with a smothered sigh.
“I must be off, Jermyn. It’s time you were getting under way. It’s been like the old days to have had a yarn with you again. Good luck and a quick run home—you lucky devil.”
Atherton walked with him to the head of the gangway and watched him into the launch.
“We shall count on you for the Adirondacks in the summer,” he called out cheerily, leaning far over the rail.
Craven looked up with a smile and waved his hand, but did not answer and the motor boat shot away toward the shore.
He landed on the big pier and lingered for a moment to watch the launch speeding back to the yacht. Then he walked slowly down the length of the stage and at the entrance found his rickshaw waiting. The two men who were squatting on the ground leaped up at his approach and one hurriedly lit a great dragon-painted paper lantern while the other held out a light dustcoat. Craven tossed it into the rickshaw and silently pointing toward the north, climbed in. He leaned back and lit a cigarette. The men sprang away in a quick dog-trot along the Bund, and then started to climb the hillside at the back of the town. They wound slowly up the narrow tortuous roads, past numberless villas, hung with lights, from which voices floated out into the quiet air.
The moon was brilliant and the night wonderfully light, but Craven paid no attention to the beauty of the scene or to the gaily lit villas. Atherton’s invitation had been curiously hard to decline and even now an almost overpowering desire came over him to bid his men retrace their steps to the harbour. Then hard on the heels of that desire came thoughts that softened the hard lines that had gathered about his mouth. He pitched his cigarette away as if with it he threw from him an actual temptation, and resolutely put out of his mind Atherton and the suggestion of flight.
Still climbing upward the rickshaw passed the last of the outlying European villas and turned down a side road where there were no houses. For a couple of miles the men raced along a level track cut on the side of a hill that rose steeply on the one hand and on the other fell away precipitously down to the sea until they halted with a sudden jerk beside a wooden gateway with a creeper-covered roof on either side of which two matsu trees stood like tall sentinels.
Waiting by the open gate was a short, powerful looking Japanese dressed in European clothes. He came forward as Craven alighted and gathering up the coat and hat from the floor of the rickshaw, dismissed the Japanese who vanished further along the road into the shadows. Then he turned and waited for his master to precede him through the gateway, but Craven signed to him to go on, and as the man disappeared up the garden path he crossed the road and standing on the edge of the cliff looked down across the harbour. The American yacht was the biggest craft of her kind in the roads and easily discernible in the moonlight. The brilliant deck illumination had been shut off and only a few lights showed. He gave a quick sigh. Atherton’s coming had been like a bar drawn suddenly across the stream down which he was drifting. If Jermyn had only come last year! The envy he had felt earlier in the evening increased. He thought of the look he had seen in Atherton’s eyes and the intonation of his voice when the American spoke of the wife to whom he was returning. What did love like that mean to a man? What factor in Atherton’s strenuous and adventurous life had affected him as this had done? What were the ethics of a love that rose purely above physical attraction—environment—temperament; a love that grew and strengthened and absorbed until it ceased to be a part of life and became life itself—the main issue, the fundamental essence?
And as Craven watched he saw the yacht steam slowly down the bay. He drew a deep breath.
“You lucky, lucky devil,” he whispered again and swung on his heel. He paused for a moment just within the gateway where on the only level part of the garden lay a miniature lake, hedged round with bamboo, clumps of oleander, fed by a little twisting stream that came tumbling and splashing down the hillside in a series of tiny waterfalls, its banks fringed with azalea bushes and slender cherry trees. Then he walked slowly along the path that led upward, winding to and fro through clusters of pines and cedars and over mossy slopes to the little house which stood in a clearing at the top of the garden surrounded by fir trees and backed by a high creeper-clad palisade.
From the wide verandah, built out on piles over the terrace, there was an uninterrupted view of the harbour. He climbed the four wooden stairs and on the top step turned and looked again down on to the bay. The yacht was now invisible, but in his mind he followed her slipping down toward the open sea. And Atherton—what were his thoughts while pacing the broad deck or lying in his cabin listening to the screw whose every revolution was taking him nearer the centre of his earthly happiness? Were they anything like his own, he wondered, as he stood there bareheaded in the moonlight, looking strangely big and incongruous on the balcony of the little fairylike doll’s house?
He shrugged impatiently. The comparison was an insult, he thought bitterly. Again he stared out to sea, straining his eyes; trying vainly to pick up the yacht’s lights far down the bay. It was very still, a tiny breeze whispered in the pines and drifted across his face the sweet perfume of a flowering shrub. A cicada chirped in the grass at his feet.
Then behind him came a faint rustle of silk. He heard the soft sibilant sound of a breath drawn quickly in.
“Will my lord honourably be pleased to enter?” the voice was very low and sweet and the English very slow and careful.
Craven did not move.
“Try again, O Hara San.”
A low bubble of girlish laughter rippled out.
“Please to come in, Bar-ree.”
He turned slowly, looking bigger than ever by contrast with the slender little Japanese girl who faced him. She was barely seventeen, dainty and fragile as a porcelain figure, wholly in keeping with her exquisite setting and yet the flush on her cheeks—free from the thick disfiguring white paste used by the women of her country—and the vivid animation of her face were oddly occidental, and the eyes raised so eagerly to Craven’s were as grey as his own.
He held out his arms and she fluttered into them with a little breathless murmur, clinging to him passionately.
“Little O Hara San,” he said gently as she pressed closer to him. He tilted her head, stooping to kiss the tiny mouth that trembled at the touch of his lips. She closed her eyes and he felt an almost convulsive shudder shake her.
“Have you missed me, O Hara San?”
“It is a thousand moons since you are gone,” she whispered unsteadily.
“Are you glad to see me?”
Her grey eyes opened suddenly with a look of utter content and happiness.
“You know, Bar-ree. Oh, Bar-ree!”
His face clouded, the teasing word that rose to his lips died away unspoken and he pressed her head against him almost roughly to hide the look of trusting devotion that suddenly hurt him. For a few moments she lay still, then slipped free of his arms and stood before him, swaying slightly from side to side, her hands busily patting her hair into order and smiling up at him happily.
“Being very rude. Forgetting honourable hospitality. You please forgive?”
She backed a few steps toward the doorway and her pliant figure bent for an instant in the prescribed form of Japanese courtesy and salutation. Then she clasped both hands together with a little cry of dismay. “Oh, so sorree,” she murmured in contrition, “forgot honourable lord forbidding that.”
“Your honourable lord will beat you with a very big stick if you forget again,” said Craven laughing as he followed her into the little room. O Hara San pouted her scarlet lips at him and laughed softly as she subsided on to a mat on the floor and clapped her hands. Craven sat down opposite her more slowly. In spite of the months he had spent in Japan he still found it difficult to adapt his long legs to the national attitude.
In answer to the summons an old armah brought tea and little rice cakes which O Hara San dispensed with great dignity and seriousness. She drank innumerable cupfuls while Craven took three or four to please her and then lit a cigarette. He smoked in silence watching the dainty little kneeling figure, following the quick movements of her hands as she manipulated the fragile china on the low stool before her, the restraint she imposed upon herself as she struggled with the excited happiness that manifested itself in the rapid heaving of her bosom, and the transient smile on her lips, and a heavy frown gathered on his face. She looked up suddenly, the tiny cup poised in her hand midway to her mouth.
“You happy in Tokio?”
“Yes.”
It was not the answer for which she had hoped and her eyes dropped at the curt monosyllable. She put the cup back on the tray and folded her hands in her lap with a faint little sigh of disappointment, her head drooping pensively. Craven knew instinctively that he had hurt her and hated himself. It was like striking a child. But presently she looked up again and gazed at him soberly, wrinkling her forehead in unconscious imitation of his.
“O Hara San very bad selfish girl. Hoping you very unhappy in Tokio,” she said contritely.
He laughed at the naive confession and the gloom vanished from his face as he stood up, his long limbs cramped with the uncongenial attitude.
“What have you been doing while I was away?” he asked, crossing the room to look at a new kakemono on the wall.
She flitted away silently and returned in a few moments carrying a small panel. She put it into his hands, drawing near to him within the arm he slipped round her and slanted her head against him, waiting for his criticism with the innate patience of her race.
Craven looked long at the painting. It was a study of a solitary fir tree, growing at the edge of a cliff—wind-swept, rugged. The high precipice on which it stood was only suggested and far below there was a hint of boundless ocean—foam-crested.
It was the tree that gripped attention—a lonely outpost, clinging doggedly to its jutting headland, rearing its head proudly in its isolation; the wind seemed to rustle through its branches, its gnarled trunk showed rough and weather-beaten. It was a poem of loneliness and strength.
At last Craven laid it down carefully, and gathering up the slender clasped hands, kissed them silently. The mute homage was more to her than words. The colour rushed to her cheeks and her eyes devoured his face almost hungrily.
“You like it?” she whispered wistfully.
“Like it?” he echoed, “Gad! little girl, it’s wonderful. It’s more than a fir tree—it’s power, tenacity, independence. I know that all your work is symbolical to you. What does the tree mean—Japan?”
She turned her head away, the flush deepening in her cheeks, her fingers gripping his.
“It means—more to me than Japan,” she murmured. “More to me than life—it means—you,” she added almost inaudibly.
He swept her up into his arms and carrying her out on to the verandah, dropped into a big cane chair that was a concession to his western limbs.
“You make a god of me, O Hara San,” he said huskily.
“You are my god,” she answered simply, and as he expostulated she laid her soft palm over his mouth and nestled closer into his arms.
“I talk now,” she said quaintly. “I have much to tell.”
But the promised news did not seem forthcoming for she grew silent again, lying quietly content, rubbing her head caressingly from time to time against his arm and twisting his watch-chain round her tiny fingers.
The night was very quiet. No sound came from within the house, and without only the soft wind murmuring in the trees, cicadas chirping unceasingly and the little river dashing down the hillside, splashing noisily, broke the stillness. Nature, the sleepless, was awake making her influence felt with the kindly natural sounds that mitigate the awe of absolute silence—sounds that harmonized with the peacefulness of the little garden. Tonight the contrast between Yokohama, with its pitiful western vulgarity obtruding at every turn, and the quiet beauty of his surroundings struck Craven even more sharply than usual. It seemed impossible that only two miles away was Theatre Street blazing and rioting with all its tinsel tawdriness, flaring lights and whining gramophones. Here was another world—and here he had found more continuous contentment than he had known in the last ten years. The garden was an old one, planned by a master hand. By day it was lovely, but by night it took on a weird beauty that was almost unreal. The light of the moon cast strong black shadows, deep and impenetrable, that hovered among the trees like sinister spirits lurking in the darkness.
The trees themselves, contorted in the moonlight, assumed strange forms—vague shapes played in and out among them—the sombre bushes seemed alive with peeping faces. It was the Garden of Enchantment, peopled with a thousand djinns and demons of Old Japan. The atmosphere was mysterious, the air was saturated with sweet heavy scents.
Craven was a passionate lover of the night. The darkness, the silence, the mystery of it appealed to him. He was familiar with its every phase in many climates. It enticed him for long solitary rambles in all the countries he had visited during the ten years of his wanderings. Nature, always fascinating, was then to him doubly attractive, doubly alluring. To the night he went for sympathy. To the night he went for inspiration. It was during his midnight wanderings that he seemed to get nearer the fundamental root of things. It was to the night he turned for consolation in times of need. It was then that he exorcised the demon of unrest that entered into him periodically. All his life the charm of the night had called to him and all his life he had responded obediently. As a tiny boy one of his earliest recollections was of slipping out of bed and, evading nurses and servants, stealing out into the park at Craven Towers to seek the healing of the night for some childish heartache. He had crept down the long avenue and climbing the iron fence had perched on the rail and watched the deer feeding by the light of the moon until all the sorrow had been chased away and his baby heart was singing with a kind of delirious happiness that he did not understand and that gave way in its turn to a natural childish enjoyment of an adventure that was palpably forbidden. He had slid down from the fence and retraced his steps up the avenue until he came to the path that led to the rose garden and eventually to the terrace near the house. He had trotted along on his little bare feet, shivering now and then, but more from excitement than from cold, until he had come to the long flight of stone steps that led to the terrace. He had laboriously climbed them one foot at a time, his toes curling at the contact with the chill stone, and at the top he had halted suddenly, holding his breath. Close to him was a tall indistinct figure wrapped in dark draperies. For a moment fear gripped him and then an immense curiosity swamped every other feeling and he moved forward cautiously. The tall figure had turned suddenly and it was his mother’s sad girlish face that looked down at him. She had lifted him up into her arms, wrapping her warm cloak round his slightly clad little body—she had asked no questions and she had not scolded. She had seemed to understand, even though he gave no explanation, and it was the beginning of a sympathy between them that had developed to an unusual degree and lasted until her death, ten years ago. She had hugged him tightly and he had always remembered, without fully understanding in his childhood, the half incredulous, half regretful whisper in his ear, “Has it come to you so soon, little son?”
