Through the quiet silence Gillian made her way up the short central aisle until she reached the chancel steps. For a few minutes she knelt, her face crushed against the flowers she held, in silent passionate prayer that knew neither form nor words—a soundless supplication that was an inchoate appeal to a God of infinite understanding. Then rising slowly she pushed back the iron gate and went into the chancel. Directly to the left the new monument gleamed cleanly white against the old dark wall. Simple and bold, as she would herself have designed it, the sculptor's memorial was the work of the greatest genius of the day who had willingly come from France at Craven's invitation to perpetuate the memory of a sister artist who had also been a lifelong friend.
A rugged pedestal of green bronze—with an inset panel representing the tragedy—rose upward in the shape of billowing curling waves supporting a marble Christ standing erect with outstretched pitying hand, majestic and yet wholly human.
Gillian gazed upward with quivering lips at the Saviour's inclined tender face, and opening her arms let the scented mass of crimson blossom fall slowly to the slab at her feet that bore Miss Craven's name and Mary's cut side by side.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that
a man lay down his life for his friends.”
She read the words aloud, and with a stifled sob slipped down among the roses and carnations that Caro Craven had loved, and leaned her aching head against the cool hard bronze. “Dearest,” she whispered, in an agony of tears, “I wonder can you hear? I wonder are you allowed, where you are, to know what happens here on earth? Oh, Aunt Caro, cherie, do you know that I have failed—failed to bring him the peace and consolation I thought my love was strong enough to give, I have tried so hard to understand, to help ... I have prayed so earnestly that he might turn to me, that I might be to him what you would have me be ... but I have not been able ... I have failed him ... failed you ... myself. Oh, dearest, do you know?”
Prone among the roses, at the feet of the pitying Christ, she cried aloud in her desperate loneliness to the dead woman who had given her the tenderest love she had ever known. The shadows lengthened widely before she rose and drew the scattered flowers into a fragrant heap. She stood for a while studying intently the relief of the wreck; it suggested a train of thought, and with a sudden impulse she traversed the chancel and sought among the memorials of dead Cravens for the tablets commemorating those who had disappeared or died tragically. By chance at first and later by design these had all been placed within the confines of the chancel that formed so large a part of the tiny church. Before the florid Italian monument that recorded all that was known of the short life of the Elizabethan adventurer she paused long, looking with quickening heart-beat at the graceful kneeling figure whose face and form were those of the man she loved.
Barry Craven ... he set his eyes unto the west.... Amongst the calamitous record there were four more of the name—their bodies scattered widely in distant unknown graves, victims of the spirit of adventure and unrest. She moved slowly from one to the other, reading again the tragical inscriptions she knew by heart, cut as deeply in her memory as on the marble slabs before her.
Barry Craven—Lost in the Amazon Forest.
Barry Craven—In the silence of the frozen seas.
Barry Craven—Perished in a sandstorm in the Sahara.
Barry Craven—In Japan.
Barry Craven—Barry Craven.
The name leaped at her from all sides until, with a shudder, she buried her face in her hands to shut out the staring capitals that flamed in black and gold before her eyes. The dread that was with her always seemed suddenly closer than it had ever been, menacing, inevitable. Would the fear that haunted her day and night become at some not far distant time an actual fact? Would the curse that had already led to ten years' perpetual wandering lay hold of him again—would he, too, in quest of the peace he had never found, disappear as they had done? Was it for this that he had insisted on her acquiring a knowledge of his affairs? With the quick intuition of love she had come to understand the deep unrest that beset him periodically, an unrest she recognised as wholly apart and separate from the other shadow that lay across his life. With unfailing patience she had learned to discriminate. Covertly she had watched him, striving to fathom the varying moods that swayed him, endeavouring to anticipate the alternating frames of mind that made any definite comprehension of his character so difficult. The charm of manner and apparent serenity that led others to think of him as one endowed beyond further desire with all that life could give did not deceive her. He played a part, as she did, a part that was contrary to his nature, contrary to his whole inclination. She guessed at the strain on him, a strain it seemed impossible for him to endure, which some day she felt must inevitably break. His habitual self-control was extraordinary—once only during their married life had he lost it when some event, jarring on his overstrung nerves, had evoked a blaze of anger that seemed totally out of proportion to the circumstance, that would have given her proof, had she needed one, of his state of mind.
His outburst had been a perfectly natural reaction, but while she admitted the fact she felt a nervous dread of its recurrence.