Part 22 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 companions.h.i.+p 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?”