2
About eleven o'clock of the next morning Olva went to see Margaret. He had written to her the night before and asked her not to tell Rupert the news of their engagement immediately, but, when the morning came, he could not rest with that. He must know more.
It was a damp, misty morning, the fine frost had gone. He was going to Margaret to try and recover some reality out of the state that he was in. The recent incidents—Craven's suspicions, the 5th of November evening, Bunning's alarm, the scene with Margaret—bad dragged him for a time from that conviction that he was living in an unreal world. That day when he had run in the snowstorm from Sannet Wood had seemed to him, during these last weeks, absurd and an effect, obviously, of excited nerves. Now, on this morning of the Dublin match, he awoke again to that unreal condition. The bedmaker, the men passing through the Court beneath his windows, the porter at the gate—these people were unreal, and above him, around him, the mist seemed ever about to break into new terrible presences.
"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.