The Prelude to Adventure Part 14

The next day the frost broke, and after a practice game on the Saul's ground, in preparation for a rugby match at the end of the week, Olva, bathed and feeling physically a fine, overwhelming fitness, went to see Margaret Craven.

This sense of his physical well-being was extraordinary. Mentally he was nearly beaten, almost at the limit of his endurance. Spiritually the catastrophe hovered more closely above him at every advancing moment, but, physically, he had never, in all his life before, felt such magnificent health. He had been sleeping badly now for weeks. He had been eating very little, but he felt no weariness, no faintness. It was as though his body were urging upon him the importance of his resistance, as though he were perceiving, too, with unmistakable clearness the cleavage that there was between body and soul. And indeed this vigour _did_ give him an energy to set about the numberless things that he had arranged to fill every moment of his day--the many little tinkling bells that he had set going to hide the urgent whisper of that other voice. He carried his day through with a rush, a whirl, so that he might be in bed again at night almost before he had finished his dressing in the morning--no pause, no opportunity for silence. . . .

And now he must see Margaret Craven, see her for herself, but also see her to talk to her about her brother. How much did Rupert Craven know?

How much--and here was the one tremendous question--had he told his sister? As Olva waited, once again, in the musty hall, saw once more the dim red gla.s.s of the distant window, smelt again the scent of oranges, his heart was beating so that he could not hear the old woman's trembling voice. How would Margaret receive him? Would there be in her eyes that shadow of distrust that he always saw now in Rupert's? His knees were trembling and he had to stay for an instant and pull himself together before he crossed the drawing-room threshold.

And then he was, instantly, rea.s.sured. Margaret was alone in the dim room, and as she came to meet him he saw in her approach to him that she had been wanting him. In her extended hands he found a welcome that implied also a need. He felt, as he met her and greeted her and looked again into the grave, tender eyes that he had been wanting so badly ever since he had seen them last, that there was nothing more wonderful than the way that their relationship advanced between every meeting. They met, exchanged a word or two and parted, but in the days that separated them their spirits seemed to leap together, to crowd into lonely hours a communion that bound them more closely than any physical intimacy could do.

"Oh! I'm so glad you've come. I had hoped it, wanted it."

He sat down close to her, his dark eyes on her face.

"You're in trouble? I can see."

She bent her eyes gravely on the fire, and as slowly she tried to put together the things that she wished to say he felt, in her earnest thoughtfulness, a rest, a relief, so wonderful that it was like plunging his body into cool water after a long and arid journey.

"No, it is nothing. I don't want to make things more overwhelming than they are. Only, it is, I think, simply that during these last days when mother and Rupert have both been ill, I have been overwhelmed."

"Rupert?"

"Yes, we'll come to him in a moment. You must remember," she smiled up at him as she said it, "that I'm not the least the kind of person who makes the best of things--in fact I'm not a useful person at all. I suppose being abroad so long with my music spoiled me, but whatever it is I seem unable to wrestle with things. They frighten me, overwhelm me, as I say . . . I'm frightened now."

He looked up at her last word and caught a corner reflection in the old gilt mirror--a reflection of a mult.i.tude of little things; silver boxes, photograph frames, old china pots, little silk squares, lying like scattered treasures from a wreck on a dark sea.

"What are you frightened about?"

"Well, there it is--nothing I suppose. Only I'm not good at managing sick people, especially when there's nothing definitely the matter with them. It's a case with all three of us--a case of nerves."

"Well, that's as serious a thing as any other disease."

"Yes, but I don't know what to do with it. Mother lies there all day.

She seldom speaks, she scarcely eats anything. She entirely refuses to have a doctor. But worse than that is the extraordinary feeling that she has had during this last week about Rupert. She refuses to see him,"

Margaret Craven finally brought out.

"Refuses?"

"Yes, she says that he is altered to her. She says that he will not let her alone, that he is imagining things. Poor Rupert is most terribly distressed. He is imagining nothing. He would do anything for her, he is devoted to her."

"Since when has she had this idea?"

"You remember the day that you came last? when Rupert came in and had found your matchbox. It began about then. . . . Of course Rupert has not been well--he has never been well since that dreadful death of Mr.

Carfax, and certainly since that day when you were here I think that he's been worse--strange, utterly unlike himself, sleeping badly, eating nothing. Poor, poor Rupert, I would do anything for him, for them both, but I am so utterly, utterly useless, What can I do?" she finally appealed to him.

"You said once," he answered her slowly, "that I could help you. If you still feel that, tell me, and I will do anything, anything. You know that I will do anything."

They came together, in that terrible room, like two children out of the dark. He suddenly caught her hand and she let him hold it. Then, very gently, she withdrew it.

"I think that you can make all the difference," she answered slowly.

"Mother often speaks of you. I told you before that she wants so much to see you, and if you would do that, if you would go up, for just a little time, and sit with her, I believe you would soothe her as no one else can. I don't know why I feel that, but I know that she feels it too. You _are_ restful," she said suddenly, with a smile, flung up at him.

And again, as on the earlier occasion, he shrank from the thing that she asked him. He had felt, from the very moment this afternoon that he had entered the house, that that thing would be asked of him. Mrs. Craven wanted him. He could feel the compulsion of her wish drawing him through walls and floors and all the obstructions of the world.

"Of course I'll go," he said.

"Ah! that will help. It would be so good of you. Poor mother, it's lonely for her up there all day, and I know that she thinks about things, about father, and it's not good for her. You might perhaps say a word too about Rupert. I cannot imagine what it is that she is feeling about him." She paused, and then with a sigh, rising from their chair, longingly brought out, "Oh! but for all of us! to get away--out of this house, out of this place, that's the thing we want!"

She stood there in her black dress, so simply, so appealingly before him, that it was all that he could do not to catch her in his arms and bold her. He did indeed rise and stand beside her, and there in silence, with the dim room about them, the oppressive silence so ominous and sinister, they came together with a closeness that no earlier intercourse had given them.

Olva seemed, for a short s.p.a.ce, to be relieved from his burdens. For them both, so young, so helpless against powers that were ruthless in the accomplishment of wider destinies, they were allowed to find in these silent minutes a brief reprieve.

Then, with the sudden whirring and shrill clatter of an ancient clock, action began again, but before the striking hour had entirely died away, he said to her, "Whatever happens, we are, at any rate, friends. We can s.n.a.t.c.h a moment together even out of the worst catastrophe."

"You're afraid . . . ?" Her breath caught, as she flung a look about the room.

"One never knows."

"It is all so strange. There in Dresden everything was so happy, so undisturbed, the music and one's friends; it was all so natural. And now--here--with Rupert and mother--it's like walking in one's sleep."

"Well, I'll walk with you," he a.s.sured her.

But indeed that was exactly what it _was_ like, he thought, as he climbed the old and creaking stairs. How often had one dreamed of the old dark house, the dusty latticed windows, the stairs with the gaping boards, at last that thin dark pa.s.sage into which doors so dimly opened, that had black chasms at either end of it, whose very shadows seemed to demand the dripping of some distant water and the shudder of some trembling blind. In a dream too there was that sense of inevitability, of treading unaccustomed ways with an a.s.sured, accustomed tread that was with him now. The old woman who had conducted him stopped at a door, hidden by the dusk, and knocked. She opened it and wheezed out--

"Mr. Dune, m'am;" and then, standing back for him to pa.s.s, left him inside.

As the door closed he was instantly conscious of an overwhelming desire for air, a longing to fling open the little diamond-paned window. The ceiling was very low and a fierce fire burned in the fireplace. There was little furniture, only a huge white bed hovered in the background.

Olva was conscious of a dark figure lying on a low chair by the fire, a figure that gave you instantly those long white hands and those burning eyes and gave you afterwards more slowly the rest of the outline. But its supreme quality was its immobility. That head, that body, those hands, never moved, only behind its dark outline the bright fire crackled and flung its shadows upon the wall.

"I am sorry that you are not so well."

Mrs. Craven's dark eyes searched his face. "You are restful to me. I like you to come. But I would not intrude upon your time."

Olva said, "I am very glad to come if I can be of any service. If there is anything that I can do."

The eyes seemed the only part of her body that lived. It was the eyes that spoke. "No, there is nothing that any one can do. I do not care for talking. Soon I will be downstairs again, I hope. It is lonely for my daughter."

"There is Rupert."

At the mention of the name her eyes were suddenly sheathed. It was like the instant quenching of some light. She did not answer him.

"Tell me about yourself. What you do, what you care about . . . your life."

He told her a little about his home, his father, but he had a strange, overwhelming conviction that she already knew. He felt, also, that she regarded these things that he told her as preliminaries to something else that he would presently say. He paused.

"Yes?" she said.

"I am tiring you. I have talked enough. It is time for me to be back in College."

She did not contradict him. She watched him as he said good-bye. For one moment he touched her chill, unresponsive hand, for an instant their eyes, dark, sombre, met. The thought flew to his brain, "My G.o.d, how lonely she is . . ." and then, "My G.o.d, how lonely I am." Slowly and quietly he closed the door behind him.