by Hugh Walpole
“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.”
“I am getting 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? . . . Are you sleeping 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.”
“You look all 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. I must tell 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!”
CHAPTER IX
REVELATION OF BUNNING (II)
1
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 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 ma
ke 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. 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 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 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 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.
2
That night the Shadow was nearer, more insistent; the closer it came the more completely was the r
eal 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.
All things betray Thee Who betrayest Me.
The line from some poem came to him. It was true, true. His life that had been the life of a man was now the life of a Liar — Liar to his friends, Liar to Margaret, Liar to all the world — so his shuddering soul cowered there, naked, creeping into the uttermost corner to escape the Presence.
If only for an hour he might be again himself — might shout aloud the truth, boast of it, triumph in it, be naked in the glory of it. Day by day the pressure had been increased, day by day his loneliness had grown, day by day the pursuit had drawn closer.
And now he hardly recognized the real from the false. He paced his room frantically. He felt that on the other side of the bedroom door there was terror. He had turned on all his lights; a furious fire was blazing in the grate; beyond the windows cold stars and an icy moon, but in here stifling heat.