Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “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 God 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, God 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 glass’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.

  Coming up to him she flung her arms round his neck. “Olva, Olva, tell me, I can’t endure it” — but slowly he detached himself from her and left her.

  As he went through the dark close passage he wondered how God could be so cruel.

  When he came into Mrs. Craven’s room he knew that her presence comforted him. The dark figure on the faded sofa by the fire seemed to him now more real than anything else in the world. Although Mrs. Craven made no movement yet he felt that she encouraged him come to her, that she wanted him. The room was very dark and bare, and although a large fire blazed in the hearth, it was cold. Beyond the window a misty world, dank, with dripping trees, stretched to a dim horizon. Mrs. Craven did not turn her eyes from the fire when she heard him enter. He felt as though she were watching him and knew that he had drawn a chair beside the sofa. Suddenly she moved her hand towards him and he took it and held it for a moment.

  She turned and he saw that she had been crying.

  “I had a talk with my son last night,” she said at last, and her voice seemed to him the saddest thing that he had ever heard. “We had always loved one another until lately. Last night he spoke to me as he has never spoken before. He was very angry and I know that he did not mean all that he said to me — but it hurt me.”

  “I’m afraid, Mrs. Craven, that it was because of me. Rupert is very angry with me and he refuses to consent to Margaret’s marriage with me. Is not that so?”

  “Yes, but it is not only that. For many weeks now he has not been himself with me. I am not a happy woman. I have had much to make me unhappy. My children are a very great deal to me. I think that this has broken my heart.”

  “Mrs. Craven, if there is anything that I can do that will put things right, if I can say anything to Rupert, if I can tell him anything, explain anything, I will. I think I can tell you, Mrs. Craven, why it is that Rupert does not wish me to marry Margaret. I have something to confess — to you.”

  Then he was defeated at last? He had surrendered? In another moment the words “I killed Carfax and Rupert knows that I killed him” would have left his lips — but Mrs. Craven had not heard his words. Her face was turned away from him again and she spoke in a strange, monotonous voice as one speaks in a dream.

  The words seemed to be created out of the faded sofa, the misty window, the dim shadowy bed. She was crying — her hands were pressed to her face — the words came between her sobs.

  “It is too much for me. All these years I have kept silence. Now I can bear it no longer. If Rupert leaves me, it will kill me, but unless I speak to some one I shall die of all this silence, . . . I cannot bear any longer to be alone with God.”

  Was it his own voice? Were these his own words? Had things gone so far with him that he did not know— “I cannot bear any longer to be alone with God. . . .” Was not that his own perpetual cry?

  “Mr. Dune, I killed my husband.”

  In the silence that followed the only sound was her stifled crying and the crackling fire.

  “You knew from the beginning.”

  “No, I did not know.”

  “But you were different from all the others. I felt it at once when I saw you. You knew, you understood, you were sorry for me.”

  “I am sorry. I understand. But I did not know.”

  “Let me tell you.” She turned her face towards him and began to speak eagerly.

  He took her hand between his.

  “Oh! the relief — now at once — after all these years of silence. Fifteen years. . . . It happened when Rupert was a tiny boy. You see he was a bad man. I found it out almost at once — after a month or two. But I loved him madly — utterly. I did not care about his being bad — that does not matter to a woman — but he set about breaking my heart. It amused him. Margaret was born. He used to terrify me with the things that he would teach her. He said that he would make her as big a devil as he was himself. I prayed God that I might never have another child and then Rupert was born. From that moment my one prayer was that my husband might die.

  “At last my opportunity came. He fell ill — dreadful attacks of heart — and one night he had a terrible attack and I held back the medicine that would have saved him. I saw his eyes watching me, pleading for it. I stood and waited . . . he died.”

  She stopped for a moment — then her words came more slowly: “It was a very little thing — it was not a very bad thing — he was a wicked man . . . but God has punished me and He will punish me until I die. All these years He has pursued me, urging me to confess — I have fought and struggled against it, but at last He has beaten me — He has driven me. . . . Oh! the relief! the relief!”

  She looked at him curiously.

  “If you did not know, why did I feel that you understood and sympathized? Have you no horror
of me now?”

  For answer, he bent and kissed her cheek.

  “I too am very lonely. I too know what God can do.”

  Then she clung to him as though she would never let him leave her.

  CHAPTER XIV

  GOD

  1

  Half an hour later he was in his room again, and the real world had come back to him. It had come back with the surprise of some supernatural mechanism; it was as though the sofa, chairs, pictures had five minutes before been grass and toadstools in a world of mist and now were sofa, chairs and pictures again.

  He was absolutely sane, whereas half an hour ago he had been held almost by an enchantment. If Margaret were here with him now, here in his room — not in that dim, horrible Rocket Road house, raised it might almost seem by the superstitions and mists of his own conscience — ah! how he would love her!

  He was filled with a sense of energy and enterprise. He would have it out with Rupert, laugh away his suspicions, reconcile him to the idea of the marriage, finally drag Margaret from that horrible house. As with a man who has furious attacks of neuralgia, and between the agony of them feels, so great is the relief, that no pain will ever come to him again, so Olva was now, for an instant, the Olva of a month ago.

  Four times had the Pursuer thus given him respite — on the morning after the murder, in St. Martin’s Chapel on that same evening, after his confession to Bunning, and now. But Aegidius, looking down from his wall, saw the strong, stern face of his young friend and loved him and knew that, at last, the pursuit was at an end. . . .

  Bunning came in.

  2

  Bunning came in. The little silver clock had just struck a quarter to one. The match was at half-past two.

  Olva knew at his first sight of Bunning that something had happened. The man seemed dazed, he dragged his great legs slowly after him and planted them on the floor as though he wanted something that was secure, like a man who had begun desperately to slip down a crevasse. His back was bowed and his cheeks were flushed as though some one had been striking him, but his eyes told Olva everything. They were the eyes of a child who has been wakened out of sleep and sees Terror.

  “What is it? Sit down. Pull yourself together.”

  “Oh! Dune! . . . My God, Dune!” The man’s voice had the unreality of men walking in a cinematograph. “Craven’s coming.”

  “Coming! Where?”

  “Here!”

  “Now?”

  “I don’t know — when. He knows.”

  “You told him?”

  “I thought it best. I thought I was doing right. It’s all gone wrong.

  Oh! these last two days! what I’ve suffered!”

  Now for the first time in the history of the whole affair Olva Dune may be said to have felt sheer physical terror, not terror of the mist, of the road, of the darkness, of the night, but terror of physical things — of the loss of light and air, of the denial of food, of physical death. . . . For a moment the room swam about him. He heard, in the Court below him, some men laughing — a dog was barking. Then he saw that Bunning was on the edge of hysteria. The bedmaker would come in and find him laughing — as he had laughed once before.

  Olva stilled the room with a tremendous effort — the floor sank, the table and chairs tossed no longer.

  “Now, Bunning, tell me quickly. They’ll be here to lay lunch in a minute. What have you told Craven? And why have you told him anything?”

  “I told him — yesterday — that I did it.”

  “That you did it?”

  “Yes, that I murdered Carfax.”

  “My God! You fool! . . . You fool!”

  A most dangerous thing this devotion of a fool.

  But, strangely, Olva’s words roused in Bunning a kind of protest, so that he pulled his eyes back into their sockets, steadied his hands, held his boots firmly to the floor, and, quite softly, with a little note of urgency in it as though he were pleading before a great court, said —

  “Yes, I know. But he drove me to it; Craven did. I thought it was the only way to save you. He’s been at me now for days; ever since that time he stopped me in Outer Court and asked me why I was a friend of yours. He’s been coming to my room — at night — at all sorts of times — and just sitting there and looking at me.”

  Olva came across and touched Bunning’s arm: “Poor Bunning! What a brute

  I was to tell you!”

  “He used to come and say nothing — just look at me. I couldn’t stand it, you know. I’m not a clever man — not at all clever — and I used to try and think of things to talk about, but it always seemed to come back to Carfax — every time.”

  “And then — when you told me the other day about your caring for Miss Craven — I felt that I must do something. I’d always puzzled, you know, why I should be brought into it at all. I didn’t seem to be the sort of fellow who’d be likely to be mixed up with a man like you. I felt that it must be with some purpose, you know, and now — now — I thought I suddenly saw —

  “I don’t know — I thought he’d believe me — I thought he’d tell the police and they’d arrest me — and that’d be the end of it.”

  Here Bunning took a handkerchief and began miserably to gulp and sniff.

  “But, good heavens!” Olva cried, “you didn’t suppose that they wouldn’t discover it all at the police-station in a minute! Two questions and you’d be done! Why, man —— !”

  “I didn’t know. I thought it would be all right. I was all alone that afternoon, out for a walk by myself — and you’d told me how you did it. I’d only got to tell the same story. I couldn’t see how any one should know — I couldn’t really . . . I don’t suppose” — many gulps— “that I thought much about that — I only wanted to save you.”

  How bright and wonderful the day! How full of colour the world! And it was all over, all absolutely, finally done.

  “Now — look here, stop that sniffing — it’s all right. I’m not angry with you. Just tell me exactly what you said to Craven yesterday when you told him.”

  Bunning thought. “Well, he came into my room quite early after my breakfast. I was reading my Bible, as I used to, you know, every morning, to see whether I could be interested again, as I used to be. I was finding I couldn’t when Craven came in. He looked queer. He’s been looking queerer every day, and I don’t think he’s been sleeping. Then he began to ask me questions, not actually about anything, but odd questions like, Where was I born? and Why did I read the Bible? and things like that — just to make me comfortable — and his eyes were so funny, red and small and never still. Then he got to you.”

  The misery now in Bunning’s eyes was more than Olva could bear. It was dumb, uncomprehending misery, the unhappiness of something caught in a trap — and that trap this glittering dancing world!

  “Then he got to you! He always asked me the same questions. How long I’d known you? — Why we got on together when we were so different? — silly meaningless things — and he didn’t listen to my answers. He was always thinking of the next things to ask and that frightened me so.”

  The misery in Bunning’s eyes grew deeper.

  “Suddenly I thought I saw what was meant — that I was intended to take it on myself. It made me warm all over, the though of it. . . . Now, I was going to do something . . . that’s how I saw it!”

  “Going to do something . . .” he repeated desperately, with choking sobs between the words. “It’s all happened so quickly. He had just said absently, not looking at me, ‘You like Dune, don’t you?’

  “When I came out with it all at once — I said, ‘Yes, I know, I know what you want. You think that Dune killed Carfax and that I know he did, but he didn’t I killed Carfax. . . .’”

  Bunning’s voice quite rang out. His eyes now desperately sought Olva’s face, as though he would find there something that would make the world less black.

  “I wasn’t frightened — not then — that was the odd thing. The only thing I thoug
ht about was saving you — getting you out of it. I didn’t see! I didn’t see!”

  “And then — what did Craven say?” Olva asked quietly.

  “Craven said scarcely anything. He asked me whether I realized what I was saying, whether I saw what I was in for? I said ‘Yes’ — that it had all been too much for my conscience, that I had to tell some one — all the things that you told me. Then he asked me why I’d done it. I told him because Carfax always bullied me — he did, you know — and that one day I couldn’t stand it any longer and I met him in the wood and hit him. He said, ‘You must be very strong,’ and of course I’m not, you know, and that ought to have made me suspect something. But it didn’t. . . . Then he said he must think over what he ought to do, but all the time he was saying it I knew he was thinking of something else and then he went away.”

  “That was yesterday morning?”

  “Yesterday morning, and all day I was terrified, but happy too. I thought I’d done a big thing and I thought that the police would come and carry me off. . . . Nothing happened all day. I sat there waiting. And I thought of you — that you’d be able to marry Miss Craven and would be very happy.

  “Then, this morning, coming from chapel, Craven stopped me. I thought he was going to tell me that he’d thought it his duty to give me away. He would, you know. But it wasn’t that.

  “All he said was: ‘I wonder how you know so much about it, Bunning.’ I couldn’t say anything. Then he said, ‘I’m going to ask Dune.’ That was all . . . all,” he wretchedly repeated, and then, with a movement of utter despair, flung his head into his hands, and cried.

  Olva, standing straight with his hands at his side, looked through his window at the world — at the white lights on the lower sky, at the pearl grey roofs and the little cutting of dim white street and the high grey college wall. He was to begin again, it seemed, at the state in which he’d been on the day after Carfax’s murder. Then he had been sure that arrest would only be a question of hours and he had resolutely faced it with the resolve that he would drain all the life, all the vigour, all the fun from the minutes that remained to him.