The women faded away, and he was left to himself. After breakfast he thought that he would write to his father and give him an account of the thing that he had done; if he escaped suspicion he would tear it up. Also he was determined on two things: one was that if he were accused of the crime, he would at once admit everything; the other was that he would do his utmost, until he was accused, to lead his life exactly as though he were in no way concerned. He had now an odd assurance that it was not by his public condemnation that he was intended to work out the results of his act. Why was he so assured of that? What was it that was now so strangely moving him? He faced the world, armed, resolved. It seemed to him that it was important for him, now, to live. This was the first moment of his life that existence had appeared to be of any moment. He wanted time to continue his search.
He wrote to his father—-
MY DEAR FATHER,—-
I have just been arrested on the charge of murdering an undergraduate
here called Carfax. It is quite true that I killed him. We met
yesterday, in the country, quarrelled, and I struck him, hitting him on
the chin. He fell instantly, breaking his neck. He was muck of the worst
kind. I had known him at Rugby; he was always a beast of the lowest
order. He was ruining a fellow here, taking his money, making him drink,
doing for him; also ruining a girl in a tobacconist's shop. All this was
no business of mine, but we had always loathed one another. I think when
I hit him I wanted to kill him. I am not, in any way, sorry, except that
suddenly I do not want to die. You are the only person in the world for
whom I care; you will understand. I have not disgraced the name; it was
killing a rat. I think that you had better not come to see me. I face it
better alone. We have gone along well together, you and I. I send you my
love. Good-bye, OLVA.
As he finished it, he wondered, Would this be sent? Would they come for him? Perhaps, at this moment, they had found the body. He put the letter carefully in the pocket of his shirt. Then, suddenly, he was confronted with the risk. Suppose that he were to be taken ill, to faint, to forget the thing. . . . No, the letter must wait. They would allow him to write, if the time came.
He took the letter, flung it into the fire, watched it burn. He felt as though, in the writing of it, he had communicated with his father. The old man would understand.
2
About eleven o'clock Craven came to see him. Craven's father had been a Fellow of Trinity and Professor of Chinese to the University. He had died some five years ago and now the widow and young Craven's sister lived in Cambridge. Craven had tried, during his first term, to make a friend of Olva, but his happy, eager attitude to the whole world had seemed crude and even priggish to Olva's reserve, and all Craven's overtures had been refused, quietly, kindly, but firmly. Craven had not resented the repulse; it was not his habit to resent anything, and as the year had passed, Olva had realized that Craven's impetuous desire for the friendship of the world was something in him perfectly natural and unforced. Olva had discovered also that Craven's devotion to his mother and sister was the boy's leading motive in life. Olva had only seen the girl, Margaret, once; she had been finishing her education in Dresden, and he remembered her as dark, reserved, aloof—opposite indeed from her brother's cheerful good-fellowship. But for Rupert Craven this girl was his world; she was obviously cleverer, more temperamental than he, and he felt this and bowed to it.
These things Olva liked in him, and had the boy not been so intimate with Cardillac and Carfax, Olva might have made advances, Craven took a man of the Carfax type with extreme simplicity; he thought his geniality and physical strength excused much coarseness and vulgarity. He was still young enough to have the Public School code—the most amazing thing in the history of the British nation—and because Carfax bruised his way as a forward through many football matches, and fought a policeman on Parker's Piece one summer evening, Rupert Craven thought him a jolly good fellow. Carfax also had had probably, at the bottom of his dirty, ignoble soul, more honest affection for Craven than for any one in the world. He had tried to behave himself in that ingenuous youth's company.
Now young Craven, disturbed, unhappy, anxious, stood in Olva's door.
"I say, Dune, I hope I'm not disturbing you?"