The Prelude to Adventure Part 22

CHAPTER XIII

MRS. CRAVEN

1

Afterwards, lying in his easy chair before his fire, he was allowed a brief and beautiful respite. It was almost as though he were already dead--as though, consciously, he might lie there, apart from the world, freed from the eternal pursuit, at last unhara.s.sed, and hold, with both hands, that glorious certainty--Margaret.

He had a picture of her now. He was lying where he had tumbled, there on the floor with the silver trays and boxes, the odd tables, the gimcrack chairs all about him. Slowly he had opened his eyes and had gazed, instantly, as though the gates of heaven had rolled back for him, into her face. She was kneeling on the floor, one hand was behind his head, the other bathed his forehead. He could see her b.r.e.a.s.t.s (so little, so gentle) rise and fall beneath her thin dress, and her great dark eyes caught his soul and held it.

In that one great moment G.o.d withdrew. For the first time in his knowledge of her they were alone, and in the kiss that he gave to her when he drew her down to him they met for the first time. Death and the anger of G.o.d might come to him--that great moment could never be taken from him. It was his. . . .

He had seen that she was gravely distressed with his fainting, and he had been able to give her no reason beyond the heat of the room. He could see that she was puzzled and felt that there was some mystery there that she was not to know, but she too had found in that last kiss a glorious certainty that no other hazard could possibly destroy.

He loved her--she loved him. Let the G.o.ds thunder!

But he knew, nevertheless, as he lay back there in the chair, that he had received a sign. That primrose path with Margaret was not to be allowed him, and so sure was he that now he could lie back and look at it all as though he were a spectator and wonder in what way G.o.d intended to work it out. The other side of him--the fighting, battling creature--was, for the moment, dormant. Soon Bunning would come in and then the fight would begin again, but for the instant there was peace--the first peace that he had known since that far-away evening in St. Martin's Chapel.

As with a drowning man (it is said) so now with Olva his past life stretched, in panorama, before him. He saw the high rocky grey building with its rough shape and s.h.a.ggy lichen, its neglected courtyard, its iron-barred windows, the gaunt trees, like witches, that hemmed it, the white ribbon of road, far, far below it, the shining gleam of the river hidden by purple hills. He saw his father--huge, flowing grey beard, eyebrows stuck, like leeches, on to his weather-beaten face, his gnarled and knotted hands. He saw himself a tiny boy with thin black hair and grave eyes watching his father as he bathed in the mill-pool below the house--his father rising naked from the stream, hung with the mists of early morning, naked with enormous chest, huge flanks, his beard black then and sweeping across his breast, his great thighs shining with the dripping water--primitive, primeval, in the heart of the early morning silence.

Many, many other pictures of those first days, but always Olva and his father, moving together, speaking but seldom, sitting before the fire in the evenings, watching the blaze, despising the world. The contempt that his father had for his fellow-beings! Had a man ever been so alone? Olva himself had drunk of that same contempt and welcomed his solitude at Harrow. The world had been with him a place of war, of hostility, until he had struck that blow in Sannet Wood. He remembered the eagerness with which, at the end of term, he had hastened back to his father. After the noise and clatter of school life how wonderful to go back to the still sound of dripping water, to the crackle of dry leaves under foot, to the heavy solemn tread of cattle, to those evenings when at his father's side he heard the coals click in the fire and the old clock on the stairs wheeze out the pa.s.sing minutes. That relationship with his father bad been, until this term, the only emotion in his life--and now? And now!

It was incredible this change that had come to him. First there was Margaret and then, after her, Mrs. Craven, Rupert, Lawrence, Cardillac, Bunning. All these persons, in varying degree, bad become of concern to him. The world that had always been a place of smoke, of wind, of sky, was now, of a sudden, crowded with figures. He bad been swept from the hill-top down into the market-place. He had been given perhaps one keen glance of a moving world before he was drawn from it altogether. . . .

Now, just as he had tasted human companionship and loved it, must he die?

He knew, too, that his recent popularity in the College had pleased him.

He wanted them to like him . . . he was proud to feel that because he was he therefore Cardillac resigned, willingly, his place to him. But if Cardillac knew him for a felon, knew that he might be hanged in the dark and flung into a nameless grave, what then? If Cardillac knew what Rupert Craven almost knew, would not his horror be the same? The world, did it only know. . . .

To-morrow was the day of the Dublin match. Olva and Cardillac were both playing, and at the end of the game choice might be made between them.

Did Olva care? He did not know . . . but Margaret was coming, and, in the back of his mind, he wanted to show her what he could do.

And yet, whilst that Shadow hovered in the Outer Court, how little a thing this stir and movement was! No tumult that the material world could ever make could sound like that whisper that was with him now again in the room--with him at his very heart--"All things betray Thee.

The respite was over. Bunning came in.

Change had seized Bunning. Here now was the result of his having pulled himself together. Olva could see that the man bad made up his mind to something, and that, further, he was resolved to keep his purpose secret. It was probably the first occasion in Bunning's life of such resolution. There was a faint colour in the fat cheeks, the eyes bad a little light and the man scarcely spoke at all lest this purpose should trickle from his careless lips. Also as he looked at Olva his customary devotion was heightened by an air of frightened pride.

Olva, watching him, was apprehensive--the devotion of a fool is the most dangerous thing in creation.

"Well, have you seen Craven again?"

"Yes. We had a talk."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Rot. He didn't stop and talk to you about the weather. Come on, Bunning, what have you been up to?"

"I haven't been up to anything."

The man's lips were closed. For another half an hour Bunning sat in a chair before the fire--silent. Every now and again he flung a glance at Olva. Sometimes he jerked his head towards the window as though he heard a step.

He had the look of a Christian going into the amphitheatre to face the Beasts.

2

About eleven o'clock of the next morning Olva went to see Margaret. He had written to her the night before and asked her not to tell Rupert the news of their engagement immediately, but, when the morning came, he could not rest with that. He must know more.

It was a damp, misty morning, the fine frost had gone. He was going to Margaret to try and recover some reality out of the state that he was in. The recent incidents--Craven's suspicions, the 5th of November evening, Bunning's alarm, the scene with Margaret--bad dragged him for a time from that conviction that he was living in an unreal world. That day when he had run in the snowstorm from Sannet Wood had seemed to him, during these last weeks, absurd and an effect, obviously, of excited nerves. Now, on this morning of the Dublin match, he awoke again to that unreal condition. The bedmaker, the men pa.s.sing through the Court beneath his windows, the porter at the gate--these people were unreal, and above him, around him, the mist seemed ever about to break into new terrible presences.

"This thing is wearing me down. I shall go off my head if something definite doesn't happen"--and then, there in his room with the stupid breakfast things still on the table, the consciousness of the presence of G.o.d seized him so that he felt as though the pursuit were suddenly at an end and there was nothing left now but complete submission.

In this world of wraiths, G.o.d was the most certain Presence. . . .

There remained only Margaret. Perhaps she could recover reality for him.

He went to her.

He found her waiting for him in the little drawing-room and he could not see her. He knew then that the Pursuing Shadow had taken a new step. It was literally physically true. The room was there, the shining things, the knick-knacks, the mirror, the scent of oranges. He could see her body, her black dress, her eyes, her white neck, the movement towards him that she made when she saw him coming, but there was nothing there.

It was as though he had been asked to love a picture.

He could not think of her at all as Margaret Craven or of himself as Olva Dune. Only in the gla.s.s's reflection he saw the white road stretching to the wood.

"I really am going off my head. She'll see that something's up"--and then from the bottom of his heart, far away as though it had been the cry of another person, "Oh! how I want her How I want her!"

He took her in his arms and kissed her and felt as though he were dead and she were dead and that they were both, being so young am eager for life, struggling to get back existence again.

Her voice came to him from a long distance "Olva, how ill you look! What is it? What won't you tell me? There's something the matter with you all and you all keep me in the dark."

He said nothing and she went on very gently, "It would be so much better, dear, if you were to tell me. After all, I'm part of you now, aren't I? Perhaps I can help you."

His own voice, from a long distance, said: "I don't think that you can help me, Margaret."

She put her hand on his arm and looked up into his face. "I am trying to help you all, but it is so difficult if you will tell me nothing. And, Olva dear, if it is something that you have done--something that you are afraid to tell me--believe me, dear, that there's nothing--nothing in the world--that you could have done that would matter to me now. I love you--nothing can alter that."

He tried to feel that the hand on his arm was real. With a great effort he spoke: "Have you told Rupert?"

"Mother told him last night."

"What did he say?"

"I don't know--but they had a terrible scene. Rupert," her lip quivered, "went away without a word last night. Only he told mother that if I would not give you up he would never come into the house again. But he loves me more than any one in the world, and he can't do without me. I know that he can't, and I know that he will come back. Mother wants to see you; perhaps you will go up to her."

She had moved back from him and was looking at him with sad perplexity.

He knew that he must seem strange and cold standing there, in the middle of the room, without making any movement towards her, but he could not help himself, he seemed to have no power over his own actions.