That night the cold fell, like a plague, upon the town. It came, sweeping across the long low flats, crisping the dark canals with white frosted ice, stiffening the thin reeds at the river's edge, taking each blade of grass and holding it in its iron hand and then leaving it an independent thing of cold and shining beauty. At last it blew in wild gales down the narrow streets, throwing the colour of those grey walls against a sky of the sharpest blue, making of each glittering star a frozen eye, carrying in its arms a round red sun that it might fasten it, like a frosted orange, against its hard blue canopy.
Already now, at half-past two of the afternoon, there were signs of the early dusk. The blue was slowly being drained from the sky, and against the low horizon a faint golden shadow soon to burn into the heart of the cold blue, was hovering.
Olva Dune, turning into the King's Parade, was conscious of crowds of people, of a gaiety and life that filled the air with sound. He checked sternly with a furious exercise of self-control his impulse to creep back into the narrow streets that he had just left.
"It's an Idea," he repeated over and over, as he stood there. "It's an Idea. . . . You are like any one else—you are as you were . . . before . . . everything. There is no mark—no one knows."
For it seemed to him that above him, around him, always before him and behind him there was a grey shadow, and that as men approached him this shadow, bending, whispered, and, as they came to him, they flung at him a frightened glance . . . and passed.
If only he might take the arm of any one of those bright and careless young men and say to him, "I killed Carfax—thus and thus it was." Oh! the relief! the lifting of the weight! For then—and only then—this pursuing Shadow, so strangely grave, not cruel, but only relentless, would step back. Because that confession—how clearly he knew it!—was the thing that God demanded. So long as he kept silence he resisted the Pursuer—so long as he resisted the Pursuer he must fly, he must escape—first into Silence, then into Sound, then back again to Silence. Somewhere, behind his actual consciousness: there was the knowledge that, did he once yield himself, life would be well, but that yielding meant Confession, Renunciation, Devotion. It was not because it was Carfax that he had killed, but it was because it was God that had spoken to him, that he fled.
A fortnight ago he would have been already defeated—the Pursuer should have caught him, bound him, done with him as he would. But now—in that same instant that young Craven had looked at him with challenge in his eyes, in that instant also he, Olva, had looked at Margaret.
In that silence, yesterday evening, in the dark drawing-room the two facts had together leapt at him—he loved Margaret Craven, he was suspected by Rupert Craven. Love had thus, terribly, grimly, and yet so wonderfully, sprung into his heart that had never, until now, known its lightest touch. Because of it—because Margaret Craven must never know what he had done—he must fight Craven, must lie and twist and turn. . . . His soul must belong to Margaret Craven, not to this terrible, unperturbed, pursuing God.
All night he had fought for control. A very little more and he would rush crying his secret to the whole world; slowly he had summoned calm back to him. Rupert Craven should be defeated; he would, quietly, visit Sannet Wood, face it in its naked fact, stand before it and examine it—and fight down once and for all this imagination of God.
Those glances that men flung upon him, that sudden raising of the eyes to his face . . . a man greeted him, another man waved his hand always this same suspicion . . . the great grey shadow that bent and whispered in their ears.
He saw, too, another picture. High above him some great power was seated, and down to earth there bent a mighty Hand. Into this Hand very gently, very tenderly, certain figures were drawn—Mrs. Craven, Margaret, Rupert, Bunning, even Lawrence. Olva was dragging with him, into the heart of some terrible climax, these so diverse persons; he could not escape now—other lives were twisted into the fabric of his own.
And yet with this certainty of the futility of it, he must still struggle . . . to the very end.
On that cold day the world seemed to stand, as men gather about a coursing match, with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch the hopeless flight. . . .
He fetched Banker from the stable where he was kept and set off along the hard white road. He had behaved very badly to Bunker, a but the dog showed no signs of delight at his release. On other days when he had been kept in his stable for a considerable time he had gone mad with joy and jumped at his master, wagging his whole body in excitement. Now he walked very slowly by Olva's side, a little way behind him; when Olva spoke to him he wagged his tail, but as though it were duty that impelled it.
The air grew colder aid colder—slowly now there had stolen on to the heart of the blue sky white pinnacles of cloud—a dazzling whiteness, but catching, mysteriously, the shadow of the gold light that heralded the setting sun. These clouds were charged with snow; as they hung there they seemed to radiate from their depths an even more piercing coldness. They hung above Olva like a vast mountain range and had in their outline so sharp and real an existence that they were part of the hard black horizon, rising, immediately, out of the long, low, shivering flats.
There was no sound in all the world; behind him, sharply, the Cambridge towers bit the sky—before him like a clenched hand was the little wood.
The silence seemed to have a rhythm and voice of its own so that if one listened, quite clearly the tramp of a marching army came over the level ground. Always an army marching—and when suddenly a bird rose from the canal with a sharp cry the tramping was caught, with the bird, for an instant, into the air, and then when the cry was ended sank down again. The wood enlarged; it lay upon the cold land now like a man's head; a man with a cap. Spaces between the trees were eyes and it seemed that he was lying behind the rim of the world and leaning his head upon the edge of it and gazing. . . .
Bunker suddenly stopped and looked up at his master.
"Come on," Olva turned on to him sharply.
The dog looked at him, pleading. Then in Olva's dark stern face he seemed to see that there was no relenting—that wood must be faced. He moved forward again, but slowly, reluctantly. All this nonsense that Lawrence had talked about Druids. We will soon see what to make of that. And yet, in the wood, it did seem as though there were something waiting. It was now no longer a man's head—only a dark, melancholy band of trees, dead black now against the high white clouds.
There had risen in Olva the fighting spirit. Fear was still there, ghastly fear, but also an anger, a rage. Why should he be thus tormented? What had he done? Who was Carfax that the slaying of him should be so unforgettable a sin? Moreover, had it been the mere vulgar hauntings of remorse, terrors of a frightened conscience, he could have turned upon himself the contempt that any Dune must deserve for so ignoble a submission.
But here there were other things—some-thing that no human resolution could combat. He seized then eagerly on the things that he could conquer—the suspicions of Rupert Craven, the rivalry of Cardillac, the confidences of Bunning, . . . the grave tenderness of Margaret Craven . . . these things he would clutch and hold, let the Pursuing Spirits do what they would.
As he entered the dark wood a few flakes of snow were falling. He knew where the Druid Stones lay. He had once been shown them by some undergraduate interested in such things. They lay a little to the right, below the little crooked path and above the Hollow.
The wood was not dripping now—held in the iron hand of the frost the very leaves on the ground seemed to be made of metal; the bare twisted branches of the trees shone with frosty—the earth crackled beneath his foot and in the wood's silence, when he broke a twig with his boot the sound shot into the air and rang against the listening stillness.
He looked at the Hollow, Bunker close at his heels. He could see the spot where he had first stood, talking to Carfax—there where the ferns now glistened with silver. There was the place where Carfax had fallen. Bunker was smelling with his head down at the ground. What did the dog remember? What had Craven meant when he said that Bunker had found the matchbox?
He stood silently looking down at the Hollow. In his heart now there was no terror. When, during these last days, he had been fighting his fear it had always seemed to him that the heart of it lay in this Hollow. He had always seen the dripping fern, smelt the wet earth, heard the sound of the mist falling from the trees. Now the earth was clear and hard and cold. The great white mountains drove higher into the sky, very softly and gently a few white flakes were falling.
With a great relief, almost a sigh of thank-fulness, he turned back to the Druids' Stones. There they were—two of them standing upright, stained with lichen, grey and weather-beaten, one lying flat, hollowed a little in the centre. The ferns stood above them and the bare branches of the trees crossed in strange shapes against the sky.
Here, too, there was a peaceful, restful silence. No more was God in these quiet stones than He had been in that noisy theatrical Revival Meeting—Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more could the Greek Gods pass smiling into the temples of their worshippers, no more Wodin, Thor and the rest may demand their bloody sacrifice.
These old stones are dead. The Gods are dead—but God? . . .
He stayed there for a while and the snow fell more heavily. The golden light had faded, the high white clouds had swallowed the blue. There would soon be storm.
In the wood—strangest of ironies—there had been peace.
Now he started down the road again and was conscious, as the wood slipped back into distance, of some vague alarm.
The world was now rapidly transformed. There had been promised a blaze of glory, but the sun, red and angry, had been drowned by the thick grey clouds that now flooded the air—dimly seen for an instant outlined against the grey—then suddenly non-existent, leaving a world like a piece of crumpled paper white and dark to all its boundaries.
The snow fell now more swiftly but always gently, imperturbably—almost it might seem with the whispering intention of some important message.
Olva was intensely cold. He buttoned his coat tightly up to his ears, but nevertheless the air was so biting that it hurt. Bunker, with his head down, drove against the snow that was coming now ever more thickly.
The peace that there had been in the little wood was now utterly gone. The air seemed full of voices. They came with the snow, and as the flakes blew more closely against his face and coat there seemed to press about him a multitude of persons.
He drove forward, but this sense of oppression increased with every step. The wood had been swallowed by the storm. Olva felt like a man who has long been struggling with some vice; insidiously the temptation has grown in force and power—his brain, once so active in the struggle, is now dimmed and dulled. His power of resistance, once so vigorous, is now confused—confusion grows to paralysis—he can only now stare, distressed, at the dark temptation, there have swept over him such strong waters that struggle is no longer of avail—one last clutch at the vice, one last desperate and hateful pleasure, and he is gone. . . .
Olva knew that behind him in the storm the Pursuit was again upon him. That brief respite in the wood had not been long granted him. The snow choked him, blinded him, his body was desperately cold, his soul trembling with fear. On every side he was surrounded—the world had vanished, only the thin grey body of his dog, panting at his side, could be dimly seen.
God had not been in the wood, but God was in the storm. . . .
A last desperate resistance held him. He stayed where he was and shouted against the blinding snow.
"Thereisno God. . . . Thereisno God."
Suddenly his voice sank to a whisper. "Thereisno God," he muttered.
The dog was standing, his eyes wide with terror, his feet apart, his body quivering.
Olva gazed into the storm. Then, desperately, he started to run. . . .
On that evening the College Debating Society exercised its mind over the question of Naval Defence.
One gentleman, timid of voice, uncertain in wit, easily dismayed by the derisive laughter of the opposite party, asserted that "This House considers the Naval policy of the present Government fatal to the country's best interests." An eager politician, with a shrill voice and a torrent of words, denied this statement. The College, with the exception of certain gentlemen destined for the Church (they had been told by their parents to speak on every possible public occasion in order to be ready for a prospective pulpit), displayed a sublime and somnolent indifference. The four gentlemen on the paper had prepared their speeches beforehand and were armed with notes and a certain nervous fluency. For the rest, the question was but slightly assisted. The prospective members of the Church thought of many things to say until they rose to their feet when they could only remember "that the last gentleman's speech bad been the most preposterous thing they had ever had the pleasure of listening to—and that, er—er—the Navy was all right, and, er—if the gentleman who had spoken last but two thought it wasn't, well, all they—er—could say was that it reminded them—er—of a story they had once heard (here follows story without point, conclusion or brevity)—and—er—in fact the Navy was all right. . . ."
The Debate, in short, was languishing when Dune and Cardillac entered the room together. Here was an amazing thing.
It was well known that only last night Cardillac and Dune had both been proposed for the office of President of the Wolves. The Wolves, a society of twelve founded for the purpose of dining well and dressing beautifully, was by far the smartest thing that Saul's possessed. It was famous throughout the University for the noise and extravagance of its dinners, and you might not belong to it unless you had played for the University on at least one occasion in some game or another and unless, be it understood, you were, in yourself, quite immensely desirable. Towards the end of every Christmas term a President for the ensuing year was elected; he must be a second year man, and it was considered by the whole college that this was the highest honour that the gods could possibly, during your stay at Cambridge, confer upon you. Even the members of the Christian Union, horrified though they were by the amount of wine that was drunk on dining occasions and the consequent peril to their own goods and chattels, bowed to the shining splendour of the fortunate hero. It had never yet been known that a President of the Wolves should also be a member of the Christian Union, but one must never despair, and nets, the most attractive and genial of nets, were flung to catch the great man.
On the present occasion it had been generally understood that Cardillac would be elected without any possible opposition. Dune had not for a moment occurred to any one. He had; during his first term, when his football prowess had passed, swinging through the University, been elected to the Wolves, but he had only attended one dinner and had then remained severely and unpleasantly sober. There was no other possible rival to Cardillac, to his distinction, his power of witty and malicious after-dinner speaking, his wonderful clothes, his admirable football, his haughty indifference. He would of course be elected.
And then, some three weeks ago, this wonderful, unexpected development of Olva Dune had startled the world. His football, his sudden geniality (he had been seen, it was asserted, at one of Med-Tetloe's revival meetings with, of all people in the world, Bunning), his air of being able to do anything whatever if he wished to exert himself, here was a character indeed—so wonderful that it was felt, even by the most patriotic of Saulines, that he ought, in reality, to have belonged to St. Martin's.
It became at once, of course, a case of rivalry between Dune and Cardillac, and it was confidently expected that Dune would be victorious in every part of the field.
Cardillac had reigned for a considerable period and there were many men to whom he had been exceedingly offensive. Dune, although he admitted no one to closer intimacy, was offensive never. If, moreover, you had seen him play the other day against the Harlequins, you could but fall down on your knees and worship. Here, too, he rivalled Cardillac. Tester, Buchan, and Whymper were quite certain of their places in the University side—Whymper because he was the greatest three-quarter that Cambridge had had for many seasons, and Tester and Buchan because they had been at Fettes together and Buchan had played inside right to Tester's outside since the very tenderest age; they therefore understood one another backward. There remained then only this fourth place, and Cardillac seemed certain enough . . . until Dune's revival. And now it depended on Whymper. He would choose, of the two men, the one who suited him the better. Cardillac had played with him more than had Dune. Cardillac was safe, steady, reliable. Dune was uncertain, capricious, suddenly indifferent. On the other hand not Whymper himself could rival the brilliance of Dune's game against the Harlequins. That was in a place by itself—let him play like that at Queen's Club in December and no Oxford defence could stop him.
So it was argued, so discussed. Certain, at any rate, that Dune's recrudescence threatened the ruin of Cardillac's two dearest ambitions, and Cardillac did not easily either forget or forgive.
And yet behold them now, gravely, the gaze of the entire company, entering together, sitting together by the fire, watching with serious eyes the clumsy efforts of an unhappily ambitious Freshman to make clear his opinions of the Navy, the Government and the British Islands generally—only, ultimately, producing a tittering, stammering apology for having burdened so long with his hapless clamour, the Debate.
Olva liked Cardillac—Cardillac liked Olva. They both in their attitude to College affairs saw beyond the College gates into the wide and bright world. Cardillac, when it had seemed that no danger could threaten either his election to the Wolves or the acquisition of his Football Blue, had regarded both honours quietly and with indifference. It amazed him now when both these Prizes were seriously threatened that he should still appreciate and even seek out Dune's company.
Had it been any other man in the College he would have been a very active enemy, but here was the one man who had that larger air, that finer style whose gravity was beautiful, whose soul was beyond Wolves and Rugby football, whose future in the real world promised to be of a fine and highly ordered kind. Cardillac wished eagerly that these things might yet be his, but if he were to be beaten, then, of all men in the world, let it be by Dune. In his own scant, cynical estimate of his fellow-beings Dune alone demanded a wide and appreciative attention.
To Olva on this evening it mattered but little where he was or what he did. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, under a starry sky, lay white and glistening clear; but still with him storm seemed to hover, its snow beating his body, its fury yieling him no respite.
And now there was no longer any doubt. He faced it with the most matter-of-fact self-possession of which he was capable. Some-thing was waiting for his surrender. He figured it, sitting quietly back in the reading-room, listening to the Debate, watching the faces around him, as the tracing of some one who was dearly loved. There was nothing stranger in it all than his own certainty that the Power that pursued him was tender. And here he crossed the division between the Real and the Unreal, because his present consciousness of this Power was as actual as his consciousness of the chairs and tables that filled the reading-room. That was the essential thing that made the supreme gulf between himself and his companions. It was not because he had murdered Carfax but because he was now absolutely conscious of God that he was so alone. He could not touch his human companions, he could scarcely see them. It was through this isolation that God was driving him to confession. Now, in the outer Court, huge against the white dazzling snow, the great shadow was hovering, its head piercing the stars, its arms outstretched. Let him surrender and at once there would be infinite peace, but with surrender must come submission, confession . . . with confession he must lose the one thing that he desired—Margaret Craven . . . that he might go and talk to her, watch her, listen to her voice. Meanwhile he must not think. If he allowed his brain, for an instant, to rest, it was flooded with the sweeping consciousness of the Presence—always he must be doing something, his football, his companions, and often at the end of it all, calmly, quietly, betrayed—hearing above all the clatter that he might make the gentle accents of that Voice. He remembered that peace that he had had in St. Martin's Chapel on the day of the discovery of the body. What he would give to reclaim that now!
Meanwhile he must battle; must quiet Craven's suspicions, must play football, join company with men who seemed to him now like shadows. As he glanced round at them—at Lawrence, Bunning, Galleon Cardillac—they seemed to have far less existence than the grey shadow in the outer Court. Sounds passed him like smoke—the lights grew faint in his eyes . . . he was being drawn out into a world that was all of ice—black ice stretching to every horizon; on the edge of it, vast against the night sky, was the Grey Figure, waiting.
"Come to Me. Tell Me that you will follow Me. I spoke to you in the wood. You have broken My law. . . ."
"Lot of piffle," he heard Cardillac's voice from a great distance. "These freshers are always gassing." The electric light, seen through a cloud of tobacco smoke, came slowly back to him, dull globes of colour.
"It's so hot—I'm cutting," he whispered to Cardillac, and slipped out of the room.
He climbed to his room, flung back his door and saw that his light was turned on.
Facing him, waiting for him, was Bunning.
"If you don't want me——" he began with his inane giggle.
"Sit down." Olva pulled out the whisky and two siphons of soda. "If I didn't want you I'd say so."
He filled himself a strong glass of whisky and soda and began feverishly to drink.
Bunning sat down.
"Don't be such a blooming fool. Take off your gown if you're going to stop."
Bunning meekly took off his gown. His spectacles seemed so large that they swallowed up the rest of his face; the spectacles and the enormous flat-toed boots were the principal features of Bunning's attire. He sat down again and gazed at Olva with the eyes of a devoted dog. Olva looked at him. Over Bunning's red wrists the brown ends of a Jaeger vest protruded from under the shirt.
"I say, why don't you dress properly?"
"I don't know—-" began Bunning.
"Well, the sleeves of your vest needn't come down like that. It looks horribly dirty. Turn 'em up."
Bunning, blushing almost to tears, turned them back.
"There's no need to make yourself worse than you are, you know," Olva finished his whisky and poured out some more. "Why do you come here? . . . I'm always beastly to you."
"As long as you let me come—I don't mind how beastly you are."
"But what do you get from it?"
Bunning looked down at his huge boots.
"Everything. But it isn't that—it is that, without being here, I haven't got anything else."
"Well, you needn't wear such boots as that—and your shirts and things aren't clean. . . . You don't mind my telling you, do you?"
"No, I like it, Nobody's ever told me."
Here obviously was a new claim for intimacy and this Olva hurriedly disavowed.
"Oh! It's only for your own good, you know. Fellows will like you better if you're decently dressed. Why hasn't any one ever told you?"
"They'd given me up at home." Bunning heaved a great sigh.
"Why? Who are your people?"
"My father's a parson in Yorkshire. They're all clergymen in my family—uncles, cousins, everybody—my elder brother. I was to have been a clergyman."
"Wasto have been? Aren't you going to be one now?"
"No—not since I met you."
"Oh, but you mustn't take such a step on my account. I don't want to prevent you. I've nothing to do with it. I should think you'd make a very good parson."
Olva was brutal. He felt that in Bunning's moist devoted eyes there was a dim pain. But he was brutal because his whole soul revolted against sentimentality, not at all because his soul revolted against Bunning.
"No, I shouldn't make a good parson. I never wanted to be one really. But when your house is full of it, as our house was, you're driven. When it wasn't relations it was all sorts of people in the parish—helpers and workers—women mostly. I hated them."
Here was a real note of passion! Bunning seemed, for an instant, to be quite vigorous.
"That's why I'm so untidy now," Bunning went desperately on; "nobody cared how I looked. I was stupid at school, my reports were awful, and I was a day boy. It is very bad for any one to be a day boy—very!" he added reflectively, as though he were recalling scenes and incidents.
"Yes?" said Olva encouragingly. He was being drawn by Bunning's artless narration away from the Shadow. It was still there, its arm outstretched above the snowy court, but Bunning seemed, in some odd way, to intervene.
"I always wanted to find God in those days. It sounds a stupid thing to say, but they used to speak about Him—mother and the rest—just as though He lived down the street. They knew all about Him and I used to wonder why I didn't know too. But I didn't. It wasn't real to me. I used to make myself think that it was, but it wasn't."
"Why didn't you talk to your mother about it?—
"I did. But they were always too busy with missions and things. And then there was my elder brother.Heunderstood about God and went to all the Bible meetings and things, and he was always so neat-never dirty—I used to wonder how he did it . . . always so neat."
Bunning took off his great spectacles and wiped them with a very dirty handkerchief.
"And had you no friends?"
"None—nobody. I didn't want them after a bit. I was afraid of everybody. I used to go down all the side-streets between school and home for fear lest I should meet some one. I was always very nervous as a boy—very. I still am."
"Nervous of people?"
"Yes, of everybody. And of things, too—things. I still am. You'd be surprised. . . . It's odd because none of the other Bunnings are nervous. I used to have fancies about God."
"What sort of fancies?"
"I used to see Him when I was in bed like a great big shadow, all up against the wall. A grey shadow with his head ever so high. That's how I used to think of Him. I expect that all sounds nonsense to you."
"No, not at all!" said Olva.
"I think they thought me nearly an idiot at home—not sane at all. But they didn't think of me very often. They used to apologise for me when people came to tea. I wasn't clever, of course—that's why they thought I'd make a good parson."
He paused—then very nervously he went on. "But now I've met you I shan't be. Nothing can make me. I've always watched you. I used to look at you in chapel. You're just as different from me as any one can be, and that's why you're like God to me. I don't want you to be decent to me. I think I'd rather you weren't. But I like to come in sometimes and hear you say that I'm dirty and untidy. That shows that you've noticed."
"But I'm not at all the sort of person to make a hero of," Olva said hurriedly. "I don't want you to feel like that about we. That's all sentimentality. You mustn't feel like that about anybody. You must stand on your own legs."
"I never have," said Burning, very solemnly, "and I never will. I've always had somebody to make a hero of. I would love to die for you, I would really. It's the only sort of thing that I can do, because I'm not clever. I know you think me very stupid."
"Yes, I do," said Olva, "and you mustn't talk like a schoolgirl. If we're friends and I let you come in here, you mustn't let your vest come over your cuffs and you must take those spots off your waistcoat, and brush your hair and clean your nails, and you must just be sensible and have a little humour. Why don't you play football?"
"I can't play games, I'm very shortsighted."
"Well, you must take some sort of exercise. Run round Parker's Piece or something, or go and run at Fenner's. You'll get so fat."
"Iamgetting fat. I don't think it matters much what I look like."
"It matters what every one looks like. And now you'd better cut. I've got to go out and see a man."
Burning submissively rose. He said no more but bundled out of the door in his usual untidy fashion. Olva came after him and banged his "oak" behind him. In Outer Court, looking now so vast and solemn in the silence of its snow, Bunning, stopping, pointed to the grey buildings that towered over them.
"It was against a wall like that that I used to imagine God—on a night like this—you'll think that very silly." He hurriedly added, "There's Marshall coming. I know he'll be at me about those Christian Union Cards. Good-night." He vanished.
But it was not Marshall. It was Rupert Craven. The boy was walking hurriedly, his eyes on the ground. He was suddenly conscious of some one and looked up. The change in him was extraordinary. His eyes had the heavy, dazed look of one who has not slept for weeks. His face was a yellow white, his hair unbrushed, and his mouth moved restlessly. He started when he saw Olva.
"Hallo, Craven. You're looking seedy. What's the matter?"
"Nothing, thanks. . . . Good-night."
"No, but wait a minute. Come up to my rooms and have some coffee. I haven't seen you for days."
A fortnight ago Craven would have accepted with joy. Now he shook his head.
"No, thanks. I'm tired: I haven't been sleeping very well."
"Why's that? Overwork?"
"No, it's nothing. I don't know why it is."
"You ought to see somebody. I know what not sleeping means."
"Why? . . . Areyousleeping badly?" Craven's eyes met Olva's.
"No, I'm splendid, thanks. But I had a bout of insomnia years ago. I shan't forget it."
"Youlookall right." Cravan's eyes were busily searching Olva's face. Then suddenly they dropped.
"I'm all right," he said hurriedly. "Tired, that's all."
"Why do you never come and see me now?"
"Oh, I will come—sometime. I'm busy."
"What about?"
Olva stood, a stern dark figure, against the snow.
"Oh, just busy." Craven suddenly looked up as though he were going to ask Olva a question. Then he apparently changed his mind, muttered a good-night and disappeared round the corner of the building.
Olva was alone in the Court. From some room came the sound of voices and laughter, from some other room a piano—some one called a name in Little Court. A sheet of stars drew the white light from the snow to heaven.
Olva turned very slowly and entered his black stairway.
In his heart he was crying, "How long can I stand this? Another day? Another hour? This loneliness. . . . I must break it. I must tell some one. Imusttell some one."
As he entered his room he thought that he saw against the farther wall an old gilt mirror and in the light of it a dark figure facing him; a voice, heavy with some great overburdening sorrow, spoke to him.
"How terrible a thing it is to be alone with God!"
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 vigourdidgive 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 glass 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, reassured. 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 multitude 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. Youarerestful," 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 space, 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 snatch 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 assured her.
But indeed that was exactly what itwaslike, 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 passage 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 assured, 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 pass, 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 God, how lonely she is . . ." and then, "My God, how lonely I am." Slowly and quietly he closed the door behind him.
That night the Shadow was nearer, more insistent; the closer it came the more completely was the real world obscured. This obscurity was now shutting oil from him everything; it was exactly as though his whole body bad been struck numb so that he might touch, might hold, but could feel nothing. Again it was as though he were confined in a damp, underground cell and the world above his head was crying out with life and joy. In his hand was the key of the door; he had only to use it.
Submission—to be taken into those arms, to be told gently what he must do, and then—Obedience—perhaps public confession, perhaps death, struggling, ignominious death . . . at least, never again Margaret Craven, never again her companionship, her understanding, never again to help her and to feel that warm sure clasp of her hand. What would she say, what would she do if she were told? That remained for him now the one abiding question. But he could not doubt what she would do. He saw the warmth fading from the eyes, the hard stern lines settling about the mouth, the cold stiffening of her whole body. No, she must never know, and if Rupert discovered the truth, he, Olva, must force him, for his sister's sake, to keep silence. But if Rupert knew he would tell his sister, and she would believe him. No use denials then.
And on the side of it all was the Shadow, with him now, with him in the room.