The Prelude to Adventure Part 20

Some one had broken the gla.s.s of the street lamp and the gas flared above them, noisily.

CHAPTER XII

LOVE TO THE "VALSE TRISTE"

1

It was all, when one looked back upon it, the rankest melodrama. The darkness, the flaming lamp, Craven's voice and eyes, Bunning . . .

it had all arranged itself as though it bad been worked by a master dramatist. At any rate there they now were, the three of them--Olva, Bunning, Craven--placed in a situation that could not possibly stay as it was. In which direction was it going to develop? Bunning had no control at all, it would be he who would supply the next move . . .

meanwhile in the back of Olva's mind there was that banging sense of urgency, no time to be lost. He must see Margaret and speak before Rupert spoke to her. Perhaps, even now, Craven was not certain. If he only knew of how much Craven was sure! Did he feel sure enough to speak to Margaret?

Meanwhile the first and most obvious thing was that Bunning was in a state of terror that threatened instant exposure. The man was evidently realizing that now, for the first time, he had a big thing with which he must grapple. He must grapple with his devotion to Olva, with his terror of Craven, but, most of all, with his terror of himself. That last was obviously the thing that tortured him, for, having now been given by the High G.o.ds an opportunity of great service, so miserable a creature did he consider himself that he would not for an instant trust his control.

He was trying, Olva saw, with an effort that in its intensity was pathetic to prove himself worthy of the chance that had been offered him, as though it were the one sole opportunity that he would ever be given, but to appear to the world something that he was not was an art that Bunning and his kind could never acquire--that is their tragedy.

It was the fate of Bunning that his boots and spectacles should always negative any attempt that he might make at a striking personality.

On the night after the "Rag" he sat in Olva's room and made a supreme effort at control.

"If you can only hold on," Olva told him, "to the end of term. It's only a week or two now. Just stick it until then; you won't be bothered with me after that."

"You're going away?"

"I don't know--it depends."

"I don't know what I should do if you went. To have to stand that awful secret all alone . . . only me knowing. Oh! I couldn't! I couldn't! and now that Craven--"

"Craven knows nothing. He doesn't even suspect anything. See here, Bunning"--Olva crossed over to him and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Can't you understand that your behaviour makes me wish that I hadn't told you, whereas if you care as you say you do you ought to want to show me how you can carry it, to prove to me that I was right to tell you---"

"Yes, I know. But Craven---"

"Craven knows nothing."

"But he does." Bunning's voice became shrill and his fat hand shook on Olva's arm. "There's something I haven't told you. This morning in Outer Court he stopped me."

"Craven stopped you?"

"Yes. There was no one about. I was going along to my rooms and he met me and he said: 'Hullo, Bunning.'"

"Well?"

"I'd been thinking of it--of his knowing, I mean--all night, so I was dreadfully startled, dreadfully startled. I'm afraid I showed it."

"Get on. What did he say?"

"He said: 'Hullo, Bunning!'"

"Yes, you've told me that. What else?"

"I said 'Hullo!' I was dreadfully startled. I don't think he'd ever spoken to me before. And then he looked so strange--wild, as though he hadn't slept, and white, and his eyes moved all the time. I'm afraid he saw that I was startled."

"Do get on. What else did he ask you?"

"He asked me whether I'd enjoyed last night. He said: 'You were with Dune, weren't you?' He cried, as though he wasn't speaking to me at all: 'That's an odd sort of friend for you to have.' I ought to have been angry I suppose, but I was shaking all over . . . yes . . . well . . .

then he said: 'I thought you were in with all those pi men,' and I just couldn't say anything at all--I was shaking so. He must have thought I looked very odd."

"I'm sure he did," said Olva drily. "Well it won't be many days before _you_ give the show away--_that's_ certain."

What could have made him tell the fellow? What madness? What---?

But Bunning caught on to his sleeve.

"No, no, you mustn't say that, Dune, please, you mustn't. I'm going to do my best, I am really. But his coming suddenly like that, just when I'd been thinking. . . . But it's awful. I told you if any one suspected it would make it so hard---"

"Look here, Bunning, perhaps it will help you if you know the way that I'm feeling about it. I'll try and explain. All these days there's something in me that's urging me to go out and confess."

"Conscience," said Bunning solemnly.

"No, it isn't conscience at all. It's something quite different, because the thing that's urging me isn't urging me because I've done something I'm ashamed of, it's urging me because I'm in a false position. There's that on the one side, and, on the other, I'm in love with Rupert Craven's sister."

Bunning gave a little cry.

"Yes. That complicates things, doesn't it? Now you see why Rupert Craven is the last person who must know anything about it; it's because he loves his sister so much and suspects, I think, that I care for her, that he's going to find out the truth."

"Does she care for you?" Bunning brought out huskily.

"I don't know. That's what I've got to find out."

"Because it all depends on that. If she cares enough it won't matter what you've done, and if she doesn't care enough it won't matter her knowing because you oughtn't to marry her. Oh," and Bunning's eyes as they gazed at Olva were those, once more, of a devoted dog: "she's lucky." Then he repeated, as though to himself, in his odd husky whisper: "Anything that I can do . . . anything that I can do . . ."

2

On the next evening, about five o'clock, Olva went to the house in Rocket Road. He went through a world that, in its frosty stillness, held beauty in its hands like a china cup, so fragile in its colours, so gentle in its outline, with a moon, round and of a creamy white, with a sky faintly red, and stiff trees, black and sharp.

Cambridge came to Olva then as a very lovely thing. The Cambridge life was a lovely thing with its kindness, its simplicity, its optimism. He was penetrated too with a great sadness because he knew that life of that kind was gone, once and for ever, from him; whatever came to him now it could never again be that peace; the long houses flung black shadows across the white road and G.o.d kept him company. . . .

Miss Margaret Craven had not yet come in, but would Mr. Dune, perhaps, go up and see Mrs. Craven? The old woman's teeth chattered in the cold little hall. "We are dead, all of us dead here," the skins on the walls seemed to say; "and you'll be dead soon . . . oh! yes, you will."

Olva went up to Mrs. Craven. The windows of her room were tightly closed and a great fire was blazing; before this she lay stretched out on a sofa of faded green--her black dress, her motionless white hands, her pale face, her moving eyes.

She had beside her to-day a little plate of dry biscuits, and, now and again, her hand would move across her black dress and break one of these with a sharp sound, and then her hand would fall back again.

"I am very glad to see you. Draw your chair to the fire. It is a chill day, but fine, I believe."

She regarded him gravely.

"It is not much of life that I can watch from this room, Mr. Dune. It is good of you to come and see me . . . there must be many other things for you to do."