The Shadow of the East | Page 5

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