The Shadow of the East | Page 7

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