The shadow of the East

by E. M. Hull

They passed up the Thames dead slow in a dense fog that grew thicker and murkier as they neared the docks, but they berthed early enough to enable Craven to catch a train that would bring him home in time for dinner. It was better than wasting a night in London.

He had a compartment to himself and spent the time staring out of the misty rain-spattered windows, a prey to violent anxiety and impatience. The five-hour journey had never seemed so long. He had bought a number of papers and periodicals but they lay unheeded on the seat beside him. He was out of touch with current events, and had stopped at the bookstall more from force of habit than from any real interest. He had wired to Peters again from the docks. Would she be waiting for him at the station? It was scarcely probable. Their meeting could not be other than constrained, the platform of a wayside railway station was hardly a suitable place. And why in heaven's name should she do him so much honour? He had no right to expect it, no right to expect anything. That she should be even civil to him was more than he deserved. Would she be changed in any way? God, how he longed to see her! His heart beat furiously even at the thought. With his coat collar turned up about his ears and his cap pulled down over his eyes he shivered in a corner of the cold carriage and dreamed of her as the hours drew out in maddening slowness. Outside it was growing dusk and the window panes had become too steamy for him to recognise familiar landmarks. The train seemed to crawl. There had been an unaccountable wait at the last stopping place, and they did not appear to be making up the lost time.

It was a strange homecoming, he thought suddenly. Stranger even than when, rather more than six years ago, he had travelled down to Craven with his aunt and the shy silent girl whom fate and John Locke had made his ward. Was she also thinking of that time and wishing that a kinder future had been reserved for her? Was she shrinking from his coming, deploring the day he had ever crossed her path? It was unlikely that she could feel otherwise toward him. He had done nothing to make her happy, everything to make her unhappy. With a stifled groan he leant forward and buried his face in his hands, loathing himself. How would she meet him? Suppose she refused to resume the equivocal relationship that had been fraught with so much misery, refused to surrender the greater freedom she had enjoyed during his absence, claimed the right to live her own life apart from him. It would be only natural for her to do so. And morally he would have no right to refuse her. He had forfeited that. And in any case it was not a question of his allowing or refusing anything, it was a question solely of her happiness and her wishes.

Darkness had fallen when the train drew up with a jerk and he stepped out on to the little platform. It was a cheerless night and the wind tore at him as he peered through the gloom and the driving rain, wondering whether anybody had come to meet him. Then he made out Peters' sturdy familiar figure standing under the feeble light of a flickering lamp. Craven hurried toward him with a smile softening his face. His life had been made up of journeys, it seemed to him suddenly, and always at the end of them was Peters waiting for him, Peters who stuck to the job he himself shirked, Peters who stood loyally by an employer he must in his heart despise, Peters whose boots he was not fit to clean.

The two men met quietly, as if weeks not years had elapsed since they had parted on the same little platform.

“Beastly night,” grumbled the agent, though his indifference to bad weather was notorious, “must feel it cold after the tropics. I brought a man to help Yoshio with your kit. Wait a minute while I see that it's all right.” He started off briskly, and with the uncomfortable embarrassment he always felt when Peters chose to emphasise their relative positions, Craven strode after him and grabbed him back with an iron hand.

“There isn't any need,” he said gruffly. “I wish you wouldn't always behave as if you were a kind of upper servant, Peter. It's dam' nonsense. Yoshio is quite capable of looking after the kit, there's very little in any case. I left the bulk of it in Algiers, it wasn't worth bringing along. There are only the gun cases and a couple of bags. We haven't much more than what we stand up in.”

Peters acquiesced good-temperedly and led the way to the closed car that was waiting at the station entrance. As the motor started Craven turned to him eagerly, with the question that had been on his lips for the last ten minutes.

“How is Gillian?”

Peters shot a sidelong glance at him.