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.
She feared anything that might precipitate the upheaval that loomed always before her like a threatening cloud. For sooner or later the unrest that filled him would have to be satisfied. The curse of Craven would claim him again and he would leave her. And she would have to watch him go and wait in agony for his return as other women of the race had watched and agonised. And if he went would he ever return? or would she too know the anguish of suspense, the long drawn horror of uncertainty, the fading hope that year by year would become slighter until at last it would vanish altogether and the bitter waters of despair close over her head? A moan, like the cry of a wounded animal, broke from her. In vivid self-torturing imagination she saw among the sinister record around her another tablet--that would mean finality. He was the last of the Cravens. Did it mean nothing to him--had the sorrow of that past that was unknown to her but which had become woven into her own life so inextricably, so terribly, killed in him even the pride of race? Had he, deep down in the heart that was hidden from her, no thought of parenthood, no desire to perpetuate the family name, the family traditions? It would seem that he had not--and yet she wondered. The woman he had loved--of whose existence she had convinced herself--if she had lived, or proved faithful, would he still have desired no son? She shrank from the stabbing thought with a very bitter sob.