by Hugh Walpole
Bunning dropped his hands, looked up, his face ridiculous with its tear-stains.
“You think there’s a God?”
“I know there’s a God.”
“Oh!” Bunning sighed.
“But you mustn’t take it from me, you know. You must think it out for yourself. Everybody has to.”
“Yes — but you matter — more to me than — any one.”
“I?”
“Yes.” Bunning looked at the floor and began to speak very fast. “You’ve always seemed to me wonderful — so different from every one else. You always looked — so wonderful. I’ve always been like that, wanted my hero, and I haven’t generally been able to speak to them — my heroes I mean. I never thought, of course, that I should speak to you. And then they sent me that day to you, and you came with me — it was so wonderful — I’ve thought of nothing else since. I don’t think God would matter if you’d only let me come to see you sometimes and talk to you — like this.”
“Don’t talk that sort of rot. Always glad to see you. Of course you may come in and talk if you wish.”
“Oh! you’re so different — from what I thought. You always looked as though you despised everybody — and now you look — Oh! I don’t know — but I’m afraid of you—”
The wretched Bunning was swiftly regaining confidence. He was now, of course, about to plunge a great deal farther than was necessary and to burden Olva with sell-revelations and the rest.
Olva hurriedly broke in —
“Well, come and see me when you want to. I’ve got a lot of work to do before Hall. But we’ll go for a walk one day. . . .”
Bunning was at once flung back on to his timid self. He pushed his spectacles back, blushed, nearly tumbled over his chair as he got up, and backed confusedly out of the room.
He tried to say something at the door— “I can’t thank you enough. . .” he stuttered and was gone.
As the door closed behind him, swiftly Olva was conscious again of the
Pursuit. . . .
He turned to the empty room— “Leave me alone,” he whispered. “For pity’s sake leave me alone.”
The silence that followed was filled with insistent, mysterious urgency.
2
Craven did not come that night to Hall. Galleon had asked him and Olva to breakfast-the next morning. He did not appear.
About two o’clock in the afternoon a note was sent round to Olva’s rooms. “I’ve been rather seedy. Just out for a long walk — do you mind my taking Bunker? Send word round to my rooms if you mind. — R. C.” Craven had taken Bunker out for walks before and had grown fond of the dog. There was nothing in that. But Olva, as he stood in the middle of his room with the note in his hand, was frightened.
The result of it was that about five o’clock on that afternoon Olva paid his second visit to the dark house in Rocket Road. His motives for going were confused, but he knew that at the back of them was a desire that he should find Margaret Craven, with her grave eyes, waiting for him in the musty little drawing-room, and that Mrs. Craven, that mysterious woman, should not be there. The hall, when the old servant had admitted him, once again seemed to enfold him in its darkness and heavy air with an almost active purpose. It breathed with an actual sound, almost with a melody . . . the “Valse Triste” of Sibelius, a favourite with Olva, seemed to him now to be humming its thin spiral note amongst the skins and Chinese weapons that covered the walls. The House seemed to come forward, on this second occasion, actively, personally. . . . His wish was gratified. Margaret Craven was alone in the dark, low-ceilinged drawing-room, standing, in her black dress, before the great deep fireplace, as though she had known that he would come and had been awaiting his arrival.
“I know that you will excuse my mother,” she said in her grave, quiet voice. “She is not very well. She will be sorry not to have seen you.” Her hand was cool and strong, and, as he held it for an instant, he was strangely conscious that she, as well as the House, had moved into more intimate relation with him since their last meeting.
They sat down and talked quietly, their voices sounding like low notes of music in the heavy room. He was conscious of rest in the repose of her figure, the pale outline of her face, the even voice, and above all the grave tenderness of her eyes. He was aware, too, that she was demanding from him something of the same kind; he divined that for her, too, life had been no easy thing since they last met and that she wanted now a little relief before she must return. He tried to give it her.
All through their conversation he was still conscious in the dim rustle that any breeze made in the room of that thin melody that Sibelius once heard. . . .
“I hope that Mrs. Craven is not seriously ill?
“No. It is one of her headaches. Her nerves are very easily upset. There was a thunder-storm last night. . . . She has never been strong since father died.”
“You will tell her how sorry I am.”
“Thank you. She is wonderfully brave about it. She never complains — she suffers more than we know, I think. I don’t think this house is good for her. Father died here and her bedroom now is the room where he died. That is not good for her, I’m sure. Rupert and I both are agreed about it, but we cannot get her to change her mind. She can be very determined.”
Yes — Olva, remembering her as she sat so sternly before the fire, knew that she could be determined.
“And I am afraid that your brother isn’t very well either.”
She looked at him with troubled eyes. “I am distressed about Rupert. He has taken this death of his friend so terribly to heart. I have never known him morbid about anything before. It is really strange because I don’t think he was greatly attached to Mr. Carfax. There were things I know that he didn’t like.”
“Yes. He doesn’t look the kind of fellow who would let his mind dwell on things. He looks too healthy.”
“No. He came in to see us for an hour last night and sat there without a word. I played to him — he seemed not to hear it. And generally he cares for music.”
“I’m afraid” — their eyes met and Olva held hers until he had finished his sentence— “I’m afraid that it must seem a little lonely and gloomy for you here — in this house — after your years abroad.”
She looked away from him into the fire.
“Yes,” she said, speaking with sudden intensity. “I hate it. I have hated it always — this house, Cambridge, the life we lead here. I love my mother, but since I have been abroad something has happened to change her. There is no confidence between us now. And it is lonely because she speaks so little — I am afraid she is really very ill, but she refuses to see a doctor. . . .”
Then her voice was softer again, and she leant forward a little towards him. “And I have told you this, Mr. Dune, because if you will you can help me — all of us. Do you know that she liked you immensely the other even big? I have never known her take to any one at once, so strongly. She told me afterwards that you had done her more good than fifty doctors — just your being there — so that if, sometimes, you could come and see her — —”
He did not know what it was that suddenly, at her words, brought the terror back to him. He saw Mrs. Craven so upright, so motionless, looking at him across the room — with recognition, with some implied claim. Why, he had spoken scarcely ten words to her. How could he possibly have been of any use to her? And then, afraid lest his momentary pause had been noticeable, he said eagerly —
“It is very kind of Mrs. Craven to say that. Of course I will come if she really cares about it. I am not a man of many friends or many occupations. . . .”
She broke in upon him —
“You could be if you cared. I know, because Rupert has told me. They all think you wonderful, but you don’t care. Don’t throw away friends, Mr. Dune — one can be so lonely without them.”
Her voice shook a little and he was suddenly afraid that she was going to cry. He bent towards her.
“I think, perhaps, we are alike in that, Mis
s Craven. We do not make our friends easily, but they mean a great deal to us when they come. Yes, I am lonely and I am a little tired of bearing my worries alone, in silence. Perhaps I can help you to stand this life a little better if I tell you that — mine is every bit as hard.”
She turned to him eyes that were filled with gratitude. Her whole body seemed to be touched with some new glow. Into the heart of their consciousness of the situation that had arisen between them there came, sharply, the sound of a shutting door. Then steps in the hall.
“That’s Rupert,” she said.
They both rose as he came into the room. He stood back in the shadow for a moment as though surprised at Olva’s presence. Then he came forward very gravely.
“I’ve found something of yours, Dune,” he said. It lay, gleaming, in his hand. “Your matchbox.”
Dune drew a sharp breath. Then he took it and looked at it.
“Where did you find it?”
“In Saunet Wood. Bunker and I have been for a walk there. Bunker found it.”
As the three of them stood there, motionless, in the middle of the dark room, Olva caught, through the open door, the last sad fading breath of the “Valse Triste.”
CHAPTER VII
TERROR
1
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. . . .
2
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 unforg
ettable 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.