Back Aa

Prelude To Adventure

<h2> CHAPTER X — CRAVEN </h2> <h3> 1 </h3> That evening Olva was elected President of the Wolves. It was a ceremony conducted with closed doors and much drinking of wine, by a committee of four and the last reigning President who had the casting vote. The College waited in suspense and at eleven o'clock it was understood that Dune had been elected. According to custom, on the day following in "Hall" Olva would be cheered by the assembled undergraduates whilst the gods on the dais smiled gently and murmured that "boys will be boys." Meanwhile the question that agitated the Sauline world was the way that Cardillac would take it. "If it had been any one else but Dune . . ." but it couldn't have been any one else. There was no other possible rival, and "Cards," like the rest of the world, bowed to Dune's charm. The Dublin match, to be played now in a fortnight's time, would settle the football question. It was generally expected that they would try Dune in that match and judge him finally then on his play. There was a good deal of betting on the matter, and those who remembered his earlier games said that nothing could ever make Dune a reliable player and that it was a reliable player that was wanted. When Olva came into "Hall" that evening he was conscious of two pairs of eyes, Craven's and Bunning's. On either side of the high vaulted hall the tables were ranged, and men, shouting, waving their glasses, lined the benches. Olva's place was at the end farthest from the door and nearest the High Table, and he had therefore the whole room to cross. He was smiling a little, a faint colour in his cheeks. At his own end of the table Craven was standing, silent, with his eyes gravely fixed upon Olva's face. Half-way down the hall there was Bunning, and Olva could see, as he passed up the room, that the man was trembling and was pressing his hands down upon the table to hold his body still. When Olva had sat down and the cheering had passed again into the cheerful hum that was customary, the first voice that greeted him was Cardillac's. "Congratulations, old man. I'm delighted." There was no question of Cardillac's sincerity. Craven was sitting four places lower down; he had turned the other way and was talking eagerly to some man on his farther side—but the eyes that had met Olva's two minutes before had been hostile. Cardillac went on: "Come in to coffee afterwards, Dune; several men are coming in." Olva thanked him and said that he would. The world was waiting to see how "Cards" would take it, and, beyond question, "Cards" was taking it very well. Indeed an observer might have noticed that "Cards" was too absorbed by the way that Dune was "taking it" to "take it" himself consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of "Cards'" last year and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his attitude had been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be reached—perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success he might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this Cardillac—but obsessed by a self-conscious conviction that the world was looking at him; the world never looks for more than an instant at self-consciousness, but it dearly loves self-forgetfulness, for that implies a compliment to itself. Afterwards, in Cardillac's handsome and over-careful rooms, there was an attempt at depth. The set—Lawrence, Galleon, Craven and five or six more—never thought about Life unless drink drove them to do so, and drink drove them to-night. A long, thin man, Williamson by name, with a half-Blue for racquets and a pensive manner, had a favourite formula on these occasions: "But think of a rabbit now . . ." only conveying by the remark that here was a proof of God's supreme, astounding carelessness. "You shoot it, you know, without turning a hair (no joke, you rotter), and it breeds millions a week . . . and—does it think about it, that's what I want to know? Where's its soul? "Hasn't got a soul. . . ." "Well, what is the soul, anyway?" There you are-the thing's properly started, and the more the set drinks the vaguer it gets until finally it goes happily to bed and wakes with a headache and a healthy opinion that "Religion and that sort of stuff is rot" in the morning. That is precisely as far as intellect ever ventured in Saul's. There may have been quaint obscure fellows who sported their oaks every night and talked cleverly on ginger-beer, but they were not admitted as part of the scheme of things. . . . Saulines, to quote Lawrence, "are not clever." They were not especially clever to-night, thought Olva, as he sat in the shadow away from the light of the fire and watched them sitting back in enormous armchairs, with their legs stretched out, blowing wreaths of smoke into the air, drinking whiskies and sodas . . . no, not clever. Craven, the shadows blacker than ever under his eyes, was on the opposite side of the room from Olva. He sat with his head down and was silent. "Think of a rabbit now," said Williamson. "I suppose," said Galleon, who was not gifted, "that they're happy enough." "Yes, but what do they make of it all?" At this moment Craven suddenly burst in with "Where's Carfax?" This question was felt by every one to be tactless. Elaborately, with great care and some considerable effort, Carfax had been forgotten—forgotten, it seemed, by every one save Craven. He had been forgotten because his death did not belong to the Cambridge order of things, because it raised unpleasant ideas, and made one morbid and neurotic. It had, in fact, nothing in common with cold baths, marmalade, rugby football, and musical comedy. On the present occasion the remark was especially unpleasant because Craven had made it in so odd a manner. During the last few weeks it had been very generally noticed that Craven had not been himself—so pleasant and healthy a fellow he had always been, but now this Carfax business was too much for him. "Look out for young Craven" had been the general warning, implied if not expressed. Persons who threatened to be unusual were always marked down in Cambridge. And now Craven had been unusual—"Where's Carfax?" . . . What a dreadful thing to say and how tactless! The note, moreover, in Craven's voice sounded a danger. There was something in the air as though the fellow might, at any moment, burst into tears, fire a pistol into the air, or jump out of the window! So unpleasant, and Carfax was much more real, even now, than an abstract rabbit. "Dear boy," said Cardillac, easily, "Carfax is dead. We all miss him—it was a beastly, horrible affair, but there's no point in dwelling on things; one only gets morbid, and morbidity isn't what we're here for." "It's all very well," Craven was angrily muttering, "but it's scandalous the way you forget a man. Here he was, amongst the whole lot of you, only a month or so ago and he was a friend of every one's. And then some brute kills him—he's done for—and you don't care a damn . . . it's beastly—it makes one sick." "Where do you think he is, Craven?" Olva asked quietly from his shadowy corner. Craven flung up his head. "Perhaps you can tell us," he cried. There was such hostility in his voice that the whole room was startled. Poor Craven! He really was very unwell. The sight of his tired eyes and white cheeks, the shadow of his hand quivering on his knee—here were signs that all was not as it should be. Gone, now, at any rate, any possibility of a comfortable evening. Craven said no more but still sat there with his head banging, his only movement the shaking of his hand. Cardillac tried to bring ease back again, Williamson once more started his rabbits, but now there was danger in that direction. Conversation fell, heavily, helplessly, to the ground. Some man got up to go and some one else followed him. It was the wrong moment for departure for they had drunk enough to make it desirable to drink more, but to escape from that white face of Craven's was the thing—out into the air. At last Craven himself got up. "I must be off," he said heavily. "So must I," Olva said, coming forward from his corner. Craven flung him a frightened glance and then passed stumbling out of the door. Olva caught him up at the bottom of the dark stairs. He put a hand on Craven's trembling arm and held him there. "I want to talk to you, Craven. Come up to my room." Craven tried to wrench his arm away. "No, I'm tired. I want to go to bed." "You haven't been near me for weeks. Why?" "Oh, nothing—let me go. I'll come up another time." "No, I must talk to you—now. Come." Olva's voice was stern—his face white and hard. "No—I won't." "You must. I won't keep you long. I have something to tell you." Craven suddenly ceased to struggle. He gazed straight into Olva's eyes, and the look that he gave him was the strangest thing—something of terror, something of anger, a great wonder, and even—strangest of all!—a struggling affection. "I'll come," he said. In Olva's room he stood, a disturbed figure facing the imperturbability of the other man with restless eyes and hands that moved up and down against his coat. Olva commanded the situation, with stern eyes he seemed to be the accuser. . . . "Sit down—fill a pipe." "No, I won't sit—what do you want?" "Please sit. It's so much easier for us both to talk. I can't say the things that I want to when you're standing over me. Please sit down." Craven sat down. Olva faced him. "Now look here, Craven, a little time ago you came and wished that we should see a good deal of one another. You came in here often and you took me to see your people. You were charming . . . I was delighted to be with you." Olva paused—Craven said nothing. "Then suddenly, for no reason that I can understand, this changed. Do you remember that afternoon when you had tea with me here and I went to sleep? It was after that—you were never the same after that. And it has been growing worse. Now you avoid me altogether—you don't speak to me if you can help it. I'm not a man of many friends and I don't wish to lose one without knowing first what it is that I have done. Will you tell me what it is?" Craven made no answer. His eyes passed restlessly up and down the room as though searching for some way of escape. He made little choking noises in his throat. When Olva had had no answer to his question, he went gravely on— "But it isn't only your attitude to me that matters, although I do want you to explain that. But I want you also to tell me what the damage is. You're most awfully unwell. You're an utterly different man—changed entirely during the last week or two, and we've all noticed it. But it doesn't only worry us here; it worries your mother and sister too. You've no right to keep it to yourself." "There's nothing the matter." "Of course there is. A man doesn't alter in a day for nothing, and I date it all from that evening when you had tea with me, and I can't help feeling that it's something that I can clear up. If it is anything that I can do, if I can clear your bother up in any way, you have only to tell me. And," he added slowly, "I think at least that you owe me an explanation of your own personal avoidance of me. No man has any right to drop a friend without giving his reasons. You know that, Craven." Craven suddenly raised his weary eyes. "I never was a friend of yours. We were acquaintances—that's all." "You made me a friend of your mother and sister. I demand an explanation, Craven." "There is no explanation. I'm not well—out of condition." "Why?" "Why is a fellow ever out of condition? I've been working too hard, I suppose. . . . But you said you'd got something to tell me. What have you got to tell me?" "Tell me first what is troubling you." "No." "You refuse?" "Absolutely." "Then I have nothing to tell you." "Then you brought me in here on a lie. I should never have come if—-" "Yes?" "If I hadn't thought you had something to tell me." "What should I have to tell you?" "I don't know . . . nothing." There was a pause, and then with a sudden surprising force, Craven almost appealed— "Dune, you can help me. You can make a great difference. I am ill; it's quite true. I'm not myself a bit and I'm tortured by imaginations—awful things. I suppose Carfax has got on my nerves and I've had absurd fancies. You can help me if you'll just answer me one question—only one. I don't want to know anything else, I'll never ask you anything else—only this. Where were you on the afternoon that Carfax was murdered?" He brought it out at last, his hands gripping the sides of his chair, all the agonized uncertainty of the last few weeks in his voice. Olva faced him, standing above him, and looking down upon him. "My dear Craven—what an odd question—why do you want to know?" "Well, finding your matchbox like that—there in Sannet Wood—and I know you must have lost it just about then because I remember your looking for it here. I thought that perhaps you might have seen somebody, had some kind of suspicion. . . ." "Well, I was, as a matter of fact, there that very afternoon. I walked through the wood with Bunker—rather late. I met no one during the whole of the time." "No one?" "No one." "You have no suspicion?" "No suspicion." The boy relapsed from his eagerness into his heavy dreary indifference. His lips were working. Olva seemed to catch the words—"Why should it be I? Why should it be I?" Olva came over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Look here, old man, I don't know what's the matter with you, but it's plain enough that you've got this Carfax business on your nerves—drop it. It does no good—it's the worst thing in the world to brood about. Carfax is dead—if I could help you to find his murderer I would—but I can't." Craven's whole body was trembling under Olva's hand. Olva moved back to his chair. "Craven, listen to me. You must listen to me." Then, speaking very slowly he brought out-"I have a right to speak to you—a great right. I wish to marry your sister." Craven started up from his chair. "No, no," he cried. "You! Never, so long as I can prevent it." "You have no right to say that," Olva answered him sternly, "until you have given me your reasons. I don't know that she cares a pin about me—I don't suppose that she does. But she will. I'm going to do my very best to marry her." Craven broke away to the middle of the room. His body was shaking with passion and he flung out his hand as though to ward off Olva from him. "You to marry my sister! My God, I will prevent it—I will tell her—" He caught himself up suddenly. "What will you tell her?" Then Craven collapsed. He stood there, rocking on his feet, his hands covering his face. "It's all too awful," he moaned. "It's all too awful." For a wonderful moment Olva felt that he was about to tell Craven everything. A flood of words rose to his lips—he seemed, for an instant, to be rising with a great joyous freedom, as did Christian when he had dropped his burden, to a new honesty, a high deliverance. Then he remembered Margaret Craven. "You take my advice, Craven, and get your nerves straight. They're in a shocking condition." Craven went to the door and turned. "You can tell nothing?" "Nothing." "I will never rest until I know who murdered Carfax." He closed the door behind him and was gone. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.