The Prelude to Adventure Part 23

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 pa.s.sage he wondered how G.o.d 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 G.o.d."

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 G.o.d. . . ." 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d can do."

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

CHAPTER XIV

G.o.d

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 gra.s.s 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 superst.i.tions 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 creva.s.se. 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 G.o.d, 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.