Craven Black

“ A magnificent black stallion was led up to Craven, and the Sheik soothed the beautiful quivering creature, caressing his shapely head with trembling nervy fingers. “He is my favourite, he will carry you well,” he murmured with a proud smile as he watched Craven handling the spirited animal. Mounted Craven bent down and wrung Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's hand and in another moment he found himself riding between Omar and Saïd at the head of the troop as it moved off followed by the ringing shouts of those who were left behind. ”

“ I loved her—I would have been true to her all her days, but you tore us asunder, and drove her to despair, madness and death. You are her murderer!”
Craven Black started, nervously, and looked around him.
“Don’t, Rufus—don’t,” he ejaculated uneasily. “Some one might hear you. The girl is to blame for killing herself, and no one else can be held accountable for it. I offered her money but she would not take it. It was the landlady who drove her to the—the rash act. ”

“ And in fact, to render any such meeting impossible, she left her lodging while I was there.”
Rufus fixed a burning gaze upon his father.
“I don’t believe a word you say,” he cried. “The news you carried to her broke my darling’s heart. Do you suppose I do not know how much she loved me? I was all she had in the wide world—her only friend. Think of that, sir! Her only friend—and you have torn me from her. If she dies of grief, you are her murderer.”
Craven Black shuddered involuntarily, remembering poor Lally’s flight, and his conviction that she had [143] gone to destroy herself. ”

“ It [249] saves a lot of trouble if you’ve got dark eyebrows. Yours don’t rub off and get smeary, do they?”
“It’s curious,” smiled Claudia, removing one of the hats in order to sit down, “that your eyebrows are so light when your hair is so dark.”
Fay gave a whoop that showed her lungs were not affected.
“You dear holy innocent! Did you think my hair was really this colour? Not much. The hair-dresser does it, and jolly expensive it is. My hair, as a child, was a silly soppy sort of light shade, so I improved on it. I’m much more effective with black hair. Makes a bit of a contrast. ”

“ His fingers clenched on the soft hat he held.
“But it does not do at all,” she was saying, and the racking cough that accompanied her words struck through Craven's heart like a knife, “it is the expression that is wrong. If you look like that I can never believe that you are what you say you are. ”

“ And today the sight of the men's straining limbs and heaving chests moved him more than usual. He used a rickshaw of necessity, and had never overcome his distaste for them.
Emerging from a grove of pines they neared the little gateway and as the men flung themselves backward with a deep grunt at the physical exertion of stopping, Craven leaped out and dashed up the path, panic-driven. He took the verandah steps in two strides and then stopped abruptly, his face whitening under the deep tan. ”

“ In the dimly lit hall, standing at the foot of the staircase with his hand clenched on the oaken rail, Craven watched with tortured eyes the slender drooping figure move slowly upward, battling with himself, praying for strength to let her go—for he knew that if she even turned her head his self-control would shatter. It was weakening now and the sweat broke out in heavy drops on his forehead as he strove to crush an insidious inward voice that bade him forget the past and take what was his. “Only one life,” it seemed to shout in mocking derision, “live while you can, take what you can! ”

“ With a broken whisper Craven caught his frail burden closer, as though seeking by the strength and warmth of his own body to animate the fragile limbs lying so cold and lifeless in his arms, and he bent low over the pallid lips he craved and yet did not dare to kiss. ”

“ Then his gaze travelled slowly beyond her to the model who stood on the little dais, and he understood in a flash the reason of the old concierge's vigilance as he saw the manner of man she was painting. The slender darkly clad youth with head thrust forward and sunk deep on his shoulders, with close fitting peaked cap pulled low over his eyes shading his pale sinister face was a typical representative of the class of criminal who had come to be known in Paris as les apaches; no artist's model masquerading as one of the dreaded assassins, but the genuine article. Of that Craven was convinced. ”

“ CUTHBERTSON (emphatically) . So it is, Craven, so it is.
CHARTERIS. Exactly. That's what keeps it so select: nobody but people whose reputations are above suspicion dare belong to it. If we once got a good name, we should become a mere whitewashing shop for all the shady characters in London. Better join us, Craven. Let me put you up.
CRAVEN. What! Join a club where there's some scoundrel who guaranteed my daughter to be an unwomanly woman! If I weren't an invalid, I'd kick him. ”

“ It is quite unlikely that Miss Avon and I shall be under the same roof again, but if we should be, I shall, you may be certain, find out from her whether or not an understanding exists between her and Harold. But what understanding could it be?”
Miss Craven smiled. Was this the man who had made such a reputation for cleverness, she asked herself—a man who placed a limit on the opportunities of lovers, and then inquired what possible understanding could be come to between a penniless man and a girl with “a gray eye or so.” ”

“ But with Craven it was otherwise and he had no liking for the thought that should the morrow's venture go against them his friend's blood would, virtually, be upon his hands! So far had his Francophile tendencies taken him. And the more he dwelt upon the uncomfortable fact the less he liked it. He turned his attention more directly upon the man himself and he noted changes that surprised and disturbed him. The stern weary looking face was not the careless smiling one he remembered. The man he had known had been vividly alive, care-free and animated ”

“ She looked at him again, frankly, with no attempt to disguise her scrutiny, and the perplexity in her eyes grew greater. One small white hand slid to the crucifix hanging on her breast, as if seeking aid from the familiar symbol, and Craven saw that her fingers were trembling. A faint flush rose in her face.
“Monsieur is perhaps married, or—happily—he has a mother?” she asked at last, and the flush deepened as she looked up at the big man standing before her. She made a little gesture of embarrassment but her eyes did not waver. They would not, he thought with sudden intuition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then some brute kills him—he's done for—and you don't care a damn . . . it's beastly—it makes one sick."
"Where do you think he is, Craven?" Olva asked quietly from his shadowy corner.
Craven flung up his head. "Perhaps you can tell us," he cried. There was such hostility in his voice that the whole room was startled. Poor Craven! He really was very unwell. The sight of his tired eyes and white cheeks, the shadow of his hand quivering on his knee—here were signs that all was not as it should be. ”

“ By some strange hap it chanced that Sir James Craven, excited with drink, the bile of his saturnine temper stirred to malignity by heavy losses at cards, alighted from his four in hand at White’s shortly after Volney. Craven’s affairs had gone from bad to worse very rapidly of late. He had been playing the races heavily and ruin stared the man in the face. ”

“ 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? ”

“ She admitted a loyalty due to the dead, she was also acutely conscious of a loyalty due to the living. A few minutes before when Miss Craven had, somewhat shamefacedly, owned to a love of the family to which they belonged she had but faintly expressed her passionate attachment thereto. Pride of race was hers to an unusual degree. All that was best and noblest she craved for the clan. And Barry was the last of the Cravens. Her brother had failed her and dragged her high ideals in the dust. Her courage had restored them to endeavour a second time. If Barry failed her too! ”

“ Craven started up on his arm, screening his eyes from the sun and staring intently in the direction of the hills. But there was nothing to be seen in the wide empty plain, and he sank down again with a smile at his own impatience as the reason of the man's return occurred to him. Reaching the oasis the Arab led his horse among the prostrate sleepers and kicked a comrade into wakefulness to take his place. From time to time the intense stillness was broken by a movement among the horses, and once or twice a vicious scream came from a stallion resenting the attentions of a restless neighbour. ”

“ I also reflected that no one was born with a gun in his hand, and that Craven might not have had opportunity of acquiring dexterity; that there was a beginning to everything, and that it was the business of the more experienced to help the ignorant. So I continued to be as useful to him as I possibly could.
Suddenly, after a particularly provoking miss, Craven exclaimed: "It is all your fault, you stupid dog; you never turn the bird out where one expects it. ”

“ If, at the time Sir Cradock condemned his only son so cruelly, he had looked at him once, and read the sorrow so unmistakeable in his face, the old man might have repented, and wept, and saved a world of weeping. A tear in time saves ninety–nine; but who has the sense to yield it?
Soaked and tired out at last, he reached his little lodgings—quite large enough for him, though—and found Black Wena warming the chair, the only chair he had to sit on. Unluckily, he did not do what a man who cared for himself would have done. ”

“ He would get from it what he could, he thought with a swift smile of self mockery—the flesh still urged in contradiction to his firm resolve. It was a blind country through which they were riding, though seemingly level the ground rose and fell in a succession of long undulating sweeps that made a wide outlook impossible. A regiment could lie hidden in the hollows among the twisting deviating sandy hillocks and be passed unnoticed. And as he topped each rise at the head of the Arab troop Craven looked forward eagerly with unfailing interest. ”

“ I did myself credit, and my master did me justice, and I was happy in my ignorance of coming events. Craven shot and missed, and shot and missed again; but my master's laugh stopped him whenever he was beginning to lay the blame on dog or gun.
"Bad workmen always find fault with their tools, Craven," said my master. "Take better aim."
John tried to teach him, but he would listen to no advice.
It is seldom that a person's fault or folly injures himself alone, and, alas for me! I was the victim of Craven's conceit and obstinacy. ”

“ The Great Summons for which Miss Craven had been so calmly prepared had come more suddenly, more tragically even than she had anticipated. She had passed over as she would have wished, had she been given the choice, not in the awful loneliness of death but one of a company of heroic souls who had voluntarily and willingly stood aside that others might have the chance to live. ”

“ He stiffened perceptibly.
“I shall never marry,” he said shortly. Her eyebrows rose the fraction of an inch but she bit back the answer that rose to her lips.
“Never—is a long day,” she said lightly. “The Cravens are an old family, Barry. One has one's obligations.”
He did not reply and she changed the conversation hastily. She had a horror of forcing a confidence.
“Remains—Mary,” she said, with the air of proposing a final expedient. Craven's tense face relaxed. ”

“ There was a pause, and then with a sudden surprising force, Craven almost appealed—
"Dune, you can help me. You can make a great difference. I am ill; it's quite true. I'm not myself a bit and I'm tortured by imaginations—awful things. I suppose Carfax has got on my nerves and I've had absurd fancies. You can help me if you'll just answer me one question—only one. I don't want to know anything else, I'll never ask you anything else—only this. Where were you on the afternoon that Carfax was murdered?" ”

“ The Frenchman in Algiers had not mattered, but Omar and Craven mattered very much. He resented the suffering he did not understand—the termination of a friendship he valued, for it was almost inevitable should Craven persist in his decision and the loss of a brother who was dearer to him than he would admit and whose death would mean a greater change in his own life than he cared to contemplate. That through a woman this should be possible! ”